April 30, 2024 • 21 mins
In this insightful episode, we dive deep into what the essentials of the Christian faith are and introduce the profound concepts of "theological fences". We meticulously dissect the nuanced layers of Christian dogma, doctrine, and practice, guiding listeners to a clearer comprehension of their beliefs.
Journey with us as we explore the core 'inner fence' of Christianity, reflecting on seven essential truths including the Word of God, the Trinity, the virgin birth of Christ, salvation by faith alone, the returned of Jesus Christ, and the consciousness after death. Realizing the potential threats of false teachings, we emphasize not just on knowing what you believe, but also the necessity of understanding why you believe it.
Moving beyond the essential truths, the 'outer fences' discussion dives into the wealth of teachings contained in scripture and their influence on our practice of faith. We discuss key doctrines like baptism, creation, and salvation and their real-world implications. This discussion further highlights the importance of aligning belief with biblical teachings and recognizing the effects of these beliefs in your search of a church and your broader spiritual journey.
This episode seeks to serve as a valuable resource for listeners to constructively engage with the complexities of Christian dogma, doctrines, and tradition. Discover how your belief system can be a protective fence, enabling you to identify authentic Bible-based churches and safeguard against false teachings.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Hey there, friends. Welcome to the Taking Your Next Step podcast from Collegians for Christ.
Through each episode, we will journey together, focusing on knowing what you
believe and why you believe it.
If you are eager, like I am, to strengthen your faith and take your next step.
Music.
Now by joining us in today's episode.
So we're continuing to look at our topic of the local New Testament church,
(00:24):
and we have have looked at the purpose of the church in our episode last week.
We want to move on to two more studies. And for this one, just to give kind
of give you a heads up, there will be some resources via a link down in the description.
This one had some visual aids when we did it in Bible study on campus.
And I believe that can help you to kind of understand what we're talking about.
(00:46):
But I'll try to still go through it and try to explain it as best I can.
But we're looking at at the essentials of the faith, the essentials of the Christian
faith, and you can think about it like this.
If you can imagine a dartboard has a center circle, that bullseye,
and then you have an outer ring where your points begin to spread out,
and then there's another outer ring where your points spread out again.
(01:07):
We're going to look at this thought of the essentials of the Christian faith
with that diagram in mind, but instead of a dartboard, we'll look at those circles,
if you you will, as fences.
Now, when you think about a fence, fences, you may see in a front yard,
a backyard, but fences ultimately maybe are meant to protect.
They keep in what is meant to stay in and they keep out what is meant to stay out.
(01:31):
Fences are good for farm animals in the sense they keep them from wandering
too far off and to keep them contained.
And they also keep predators from coming in. Now, how would that relate to our Christian life?
We see numerous scriptures throughout the Bible that teach us that there are
false teachers, that there are wolves in sheep's clothing.
(01:51):
Jude 1.3 tells us, he said, "'Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto
you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort
you that you should earnestly contend for the faith.
Delivered unto the saints. And so here he gives us that charge to earnestly contend for the faith.
Why is that? He tells us in verse four, for there are certain men crept in unawares
(02:15):
who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men,
turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God
and our Lord Jesus Christ.
So here he says there's people that kept crept in to the church,
to the Bible study group,
to the prayer group, and they crept in unawares, meaning they were hard to discern,
(02:37):
they were hard to pick out, and they began to lead people astray,
lead people away from the essentials, if you will, of the Christian faith.
And so I would say this, you and I need to establish theological fences to protect
correct doctrine and to protect protect believers and ourselves from false teachings.
You see, having a theological fence will protect the doctrine of Jesus that he gave to the apostles.
(03:04):
And again, you can think about that center circle being the main fence,
and we're going to call that fence, that very small circle, the dogma or the
essentials, however you want to look at it.
But these are the essential beliefs of Christianity.
And I would say there are seven core essential truths that make up the inner fence.
(03:25):
I would say these are non-negotiable. There on the link, you'll find these seven
essential truths, but you're talking about what the Word of God is,
that the Bible is God's Word.
We're talking about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
We're talking about who Jesus is, His deity, his virgin birth.
We're talking about salvation by faith alone, plus nothing, minus nothing.
(03:48):
It's a gift. It must be received by calling upon Jesus Christ.
We're talking about Jesus Christ is returning.
We're talking about the fact that when people die, they will either be conscious
in heaven or conscious in hell based on what they have done with the gift of
eternal life given by Jesus Christ.
That's just a quick summation, if you will, of these core essentials.
(04:10):
But how do we determine, and this is a great question, how do we determine which beliefs are essential?
There's lots of beliefs, lots of teachings throughout scripture.
So how do we understand which of those are essential?
Well, Jesus and the apostles determine what the essential beliefs are in scripture.
It is this, it's the teachings in scripture that you cannot deny and still be
(04:34):
rightly related to Jesus.
You see this inner fence, that bullseye, if you will, on the target get is these seven essentials.
And as anybody begins to view differently, then I guess this is where it'll help you.
You and I are faced with so much content via YouTube, via social media,
via preachers, teachers, books.
(04:56):
So much content is aimed at us. How do we know what is correct content and what is not?
How do we know when we go to look for a church? How do we find a true Bible-believing
church? What do we look for?
There's so many different denominations. How do we know what denomination is okay?
Is all of them okay or some not? Like, how do we navigate through this?
(05:19):
And as you and I recognize these essential truths of Christianity,
and if someone believes other than or denies, if you will, one of these truths,
we understand they step away from the umbrella of what true Christianity is.
Who gets to determine what Christianity is? Because it's a broad umbrella.
Think about it. So many different sects of Christianity label themselves as Christian.
(05:43):
Now, many of those would be what I would refer to as biblical Christianity.
Christianity. They follow the essential truths. They follow the doctrine taught in Scripture.
Some of them would deny that Jesus is God.
Some of them would deny that he's virgin born. What do we do with that?
Are they still Christian?
Well, looking at Christianity, looking at the core truths, they can call themselves
Christian, but they are not Christ-like.
(06:06):
They're not following the doctrine that Christ taught.
And as a result, they move themselves away out of the umbrella of of the term of Christianity.
And it also shows you and I that they have stepped out of that core fence,
that fence meant to protect, keep in what's supposed to keep in,
the core doctrine, the core dogma, and to keep out the false teachers.
You and I can identify a false teacher when they deny the dogma that we have
(06:32):
within that inner fence.
So as Sean McDowell said it this way, you don't have to affirm every one of
these to be saved, but you cannot deny these and still be rightly related to
Jesus or called a Christian.
I think he puts it so well, meaning you, when I got saved, I didn't know all
the theological teachings.
I went by faith. I believe Jesus died on the cross.
(06:54):
I knew I was a sinner and I called out to him according to what scripture said
and what I was taught at that moment.
Did I fully understand that God was the Trinity, Triune God,
that he's God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit?
I didn't fully understand that. I was I was not denying it, but I was also not
in a place where I had to affirm it.
To say that the Bible is God's word, I believed it, but I didn't know what all
(07:17):
went into that at that moment because I had no background, no church background to base that on.
And so I didn't have to affirm all seven of these truths to be saved.
I cannot deny one of these truths and still be rightly related to Jesus because
I begin to move myself away from biblical Christianity.
(07:38):
And that's what I'm trying to help us to see. And I think this will help you
as you discern what voices to listen to.
You discern what type of church to go to. I think it'll help you.
So the essential fence is the dogma.
And it's meant to protect you personally, to keep your doctrine biblical,
to protect you from false teachers, and to help you discern all the voices and the content.
(08:01):
Again, if one denies one of these core teachings, they move themselves outside
of the umbrella of Jesus and of biblical Christianity.
And so the second circle is we would begin to expand that.
So from our dogma, these seven core essentials, we understand there's lots of
other doctrine or teachings within Scripture.
And so we're going to say the second circle is our doctrine.
(08:24):
That's the teachings contained in Scripture. scripture and these are derived
directly from our dogma.
So if our dogma is correct, then our doctrine will be correct.
If our dogma is incorrect, then you can expect that our doctrine will be incorrect as well.
So our dogma comes from the word of God. Therefore, our doctrine comes from
the word of God. And you can think about Christian doctrine in two ways.
(08:45):
You can think about it as an individual teaching, one specific teaching,
the doctrine of baptism, the doctrine of salvation, salvation,
the doctrine of justification,
whatever you want to look at, or you can look at doctrine as the collective
body of teachings that a group of Christians hold in reference to their faith.
And so doctrine is very, very important. Sometimes we hear doctrine and we think,
(09:07):
oh my, here we go, the academic side. But doctrine is important.
You see, you can be saved and have right doctrine.
You can be saved and have wrong doctrine. But ultimately, doctrine is important
because from your doctrine will come your practice, how you live out your faith.
And so your behavior will come from your doctrine. And so if your doctrine is
(09:30):
incorrect, then your practice will be incorrect.
And we would say this, most disagreements over doctrine are a result of interpretation.
And that's where you can trace the origin of most denominations to the difference
of interpretation of the doctrine and then how it's practiced.
You see certain denominations will live out certain doctrines a certain way
in comparison to another, whether it be baptism, whether it be salvation,
(09:54):
whether it be certain sign gifts, spiritual gifts.
Why do all these interpretations vary? That's a great question.
When we think about it, people come to Scripture, and we try to come without
any presuppositions, without anything that we already hold true,
but people come from all different backgrounds, all different experiences,
and all different church traditions.
(10:15):
They're already taught different things. People understand things differently.
People think doctrine should be a certain way. There's all different reasons
why the interpretation of the doctrine varies. Aries, like me,
I didn't come from a church background.
And so when I come to Scripture, I come with a little different perspective
than maybe somebody who grew up in a church and was taught a certain doctrine.
(10:37):
We try to remove any, what I say, presuppositions, anything that we would hold
beforehand that would cause us to interpret it to a certain way.
Like, we would guide that interpretation.
When we come to Scripture, we want to try to remove all that so that we can
truly understand what Scripture is teaching because of what Scripture is teaching.
And so our doctrine is very important. I'm going to give some examples here
(10:59):
at the very end of our episode.
And again, on those visual aids with the link, I think they'll help you as well.
But as we go out in that third ring, we'll refer to this.
So you got your center bullseye, that's your dogma. From that,
the next ring will be your doctrine.
We're talking about baptism. We're talking about salvation.
We'll get into some other ones, creation and different doctrines that the church
(11:22):
teaches or that you and I as believers believe. And then that third circle will
be the practice or the tradition.
So how you live out that doctrine is how we practice the doctrines that we find in Scripture.
And so doctrine is lived out in our lives in a very practical way.
And can I say this? There's a right way to practice and there's a wrong way to practice doctrine.
(11:44):
Our beliefs determine behavior and beliefs have consequences.
OK, so our beliefs have consequences, whether good or bad. bad.
Good or right beliefs on doctrine ultimately will have good consequences.
Bad or wrong beliefs on doctrine can have bad consequences.
And so as you think about the circle, so you got your center circle,
(12:06):
that's our dogma. You go out one, that's another circle.
And within that circle, these are fences, right? They're meant to protect you.
That center circle is the dogma.
It's meant to protect you. The second one is your doctrine. It's still very important.
And that's meant to protect you. And then you go, how we live out our doctrine
is our practice, our traditions.
(12:27):
You may say, hey, this is the tradition of a church, and we see how they live
that out. And so that's very important.
And then on the outside of that ring, we're going to place the word consequences.
Okay, so there's consequences to our beliefs, to our actions.
So I hope you can visualize that.
So here would be some examples. So we have from our core dogma,
(12:47):
we come up with the doctrine of baptism.
All right, there are various interpretations of baptism that would go into the doctrine ring.
Some believe that baptism is by believer, it's believer's baptism by immersion.
I believe scripturally speaking, this is derived from our dogma,
and this is what scripture teaches.
Some would teach baptismal regeneration, or that baptism is required for salvation.
(13:10):
Some would teach that you need to baptize unbelievers or infants, sprinkle them. them.
And so as we look at those three interpretations of doctrine,
they each have consequences.
Okay, so believers' baptism by immersion, that's what we see through Scripture. Jesus was baptized.
He taught. We see the order in the New Testament church in the book of Acts.
(13:33):
They believed. They were baptized.
We see they went down in water. We see the Ethiopian unit went down in water.
Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River.
So we see that being the biblical method.
And we can look at that in great detail, but we want to just try to give a brief view of that.
So the consequence of believer's baptism by immersion is we're practicing the
(13:53):
biblical teachings of scripture, where we're following what Jesus taught.
Now, if we're thinking that baptism is required for salvation,
that can have some consequences.
That means it's making works necessary for salvation, which is not good,
which means somebody may miss salvation or may think they need to work their way to God.
It may make someone think they're saved because they they were baptized and
(14:13):
have a false sense of salvation.
I was baptized. I'm saved, but never call upon Jesus. We know Jesus said,
look, many are going to come to me in that day and say, Lord,
look what I've done. I've done this. I've done that.
And he'll say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.
And so we understand that there are consequences. And some of these would be
severe because someone could go to hell because of the wrong doctrine of baptismal regeneration.
(14:39):
Somebody who would think that baptizing infants or sprinkling infants,
what could they do? It could give a false understanding of salvation.
They think I was baptized when I was an infant. Then I'm fine because maybe
baptism is what gets me to heaven.
Make someone think they're saved. There's no biblical meaning there.
We could look at the doctrine of creation as example.
Everyone agrees that God created the heavens and the earth. We see that in Genesis
(15:02):
1.1. Now, there are various interpretations of that.
Was it a literal six days, which means the earth is roughly 6,000 years?
Were the days 1,000 years each, which we see somebody would take that and say,
well, in 2 Peter, it talks about one day is 1,000 years, and 1,000 years with
the Lord is one day. So they would apply that.
Some would say there's a gap between Genesis 1.1 and 1.2, where there's millions
(15:26):
of years evolution occurred.
Some would say each day was a period of millions of years to try to fit in the
evolutionary thinking worldview.
There are consequences, good and bad, for each of these views.
Now, if you follow the literal six days, the earth is roughly 6,000 years,
that fits the biblical context and fits within the biblical teachings found throughout Scripture.
(15:50):
So that follows the biblical account. It would keep your doctrine safe.
It would make you practice correctly the teachings found in Scripture.
Scripture. Let's say that you say that it's a thousand years.
Each day is a thousand years.
Well, it doesn't follow directly from the context of this passage,
but from what I can see, it doesn't alter anything within scripture.
And then if you look at the gap theory and you say, hey, each day was a million
(16:15):
years, is there consequences with that?
Well, there is because it places sin, evil, and death before the fall in Genesis number three.
And so that would say sin existed before for God said that creation was good and perfect.
And there's a problem here that begins to make our doctrine and our practice wrong.
And people will miss the reality of an eternal death, and they'll miss the offer of salvation.
(16:40):
It calls God's character into question. And again, it places death before we
see what sin calls death.
And so there's a contradiction within scripture. We can look at salvation the
same way, and I'll give this as our last example. there are various interpretations of salvation.
We would find from our dogma, the correct doctrine would be a person must call
(17:01):
on Jesus Christ to save them, and then they're saved for eternity.
Somebody may say, well, God chooses a person to heaven and chooses others to hell.
That would be another interpretation of the doctrine of salvation.
Another interpretation would be a person can lose their salvation.
There are obviously consequences to each of these.
(17:21):
If we follow the doctrine of the person must call on Jesus Christ to receive
salvation, that follows the biblical account.
And then their practice and their evangelism and the mission will all follow
suit. how we live out what God has commanded the local church to do.
Now, if we follow the doctrine of people are chosen to heaven and some are chosen
(17:42):
to hell, there's some severe consequences for this to the negative.
People will not call on Jesus for salvation and not get saved because they're
assuming that they have been chosen or they're hoping that they have been chosen.
How we live that out. People don't need to go out and share the gospel like
Jesus commanded, if that's what we believe.
God's character of love is called into question. If God can select some to heaven
(18:06):
and then thump some into hell, it calls in God's character of love.
And it also begins to contradict scripture.
2 Peter 3.9 says, God is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count
slackness, but as longsuffering to us, we're not willing that any should perish.
So how can we rectify the fact that God says any should perish with the fact
(18:27):
that God is selecting some and just sent into hell for whatever reason.
It does not fit with scripture. And so we could go through many of these examples.
I pray this will be a help to you because what you can do is you're looking
for a church to be a part of.
You want to find out what are their core beliefs. And are.
(18:50):
First, you need to know what you believe and why you believe it.
And this is why we say this. You'll hear me say it often on our podcast as I teach.
It's essential that you know what you believe and why you believe it.
You need to know what your center fence is.
You can look at the seven key essentials. These come directly from Scripture.
These are not mine, but I have made them mine because I find them in Scripture.
(19:12):
You can't deny them or else you move yourself away from biblical Christianity. Christianity.
So you need to understand what your core dogma or your core essential beliefs are.
And as you determine those, you'll begin to determine what your doctrine is.
And so as you're looking for a church, as you're trying to discern the voices,
should I listen to this person? Should I follow behind this person?
(19:33):
Should I read behind this person? What is their dogma?
What is their doctrine? How are they living it out? Because there's consequences.
And so you need to know know what you believe and why. You need to check and
follow and discern what the voices are.
It's interesting to me as we went through this, I had one of our students went
to another Bible study to just encourage someone that they knew they were teaching it.
(19:57):
And some conversation came up through that Bible study and after it,
and some teachings were different on salvation.
And that student admittedly, he said, I began to see something was different.
And I began to hear hear a few words different.
And my radars went up because I realized this is not in line with what I've
made my doctrine, I mean, my dogma.
(20:17):
I realized their view on salvation was different.
And then it began to be the doctrine and how they practiced that.
But what it did, he was able to discern when he heard someone else speaking
and talking to say, well, something's wrong there.
Something's different there. They're moving their self outside of my protective fence.
Sense, doesn't mean I have to be mean, doesn't mean I have to be rude,
(20:39):
doesn't mean I can't talk to them, but I have to understand and begin to identify
them that their doctrine and their dogma is different.
And so I may not want to align with them. I may not want to go to the same church
as them because the doctrine may be different.
And so I pray this will be a help to you. Find the resource link there.
You'll see the visuals and you'll see the essentials. spirituals.
(21:00):
And we'll look at one more study next week as we look at the mission of the local church.
Music.
Hey there, friends. Welcome to the Taking Your Next Step podcast from Collegians for Christ.
Through each episode, we will journey together, focusing on knowing what you
believe and why you believe it.
If you are eager, like I am, to strengthen your faith and take your next step.
Music.
Now by joining us in today's episode.
So we're continuing to look at our topic of the local New Testament church,
(00:24):
and we have have looked at the purpose of the church in our episode last week.
We want to move on to two more studies. And for this one, just to give kind
of give you a heads up, there will be some resources via a link down in the description.
This one had some visual aids when we did it in Bible study on campus.
And I believe that can help you to kind of understand what we're talking about.
(00:46):
But I'll try to still go through it and try to explain it as best I can.
But we're looking at at the essentials of the faith, the essentials of the Christian
faith, and you can think about it like this.
If you can imagine a dartboard has a center circle, that bullseye,
and then you have an outer ring where your points begin to spread out,
and then there's another outer ring where your points spread out again.
(01:07):
We're going to look at this thought of the essentials of the Christian faith
with that diagram in mind, but instead of a dartboard, we'll look at those circles,
if you you will, as fences.
Now, when you think about a fence, fences, you may see in a front yard,
a backyard, but fences ultimately maybe are meant to protect.
They keep in what is meant to stay in and they keep out what is meant to stay out.
(01:31):
Fences are good for farm animals in the sense they keep them from wandering
too far off and to keep them contained.
And they also keep predators from coming in. Now, how would that relate to our Christian life?
We see numerous scriptures throughout the Bible that teach us that there are
false teachers, that there are wolves in sheep's clothing.
(01:51):
Jude 1.3 tells us, he said, "'Beloved, when I gave all diligence to write unto
you of the common salvation, it was needful for me to write unto you and exhort
you that you should earnestly contend for the faith.
Delivered unto the saints. And so here he gives us that charge to earnestly contend for the faith.
Why is that? He tells us in verse four, for there are certain men crept in unawares
(02:15):
who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men,
turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness and denying the only Lord God
and our Lord Jesus Christ.
So here he says there's people that kept crept in to the church,
to the Bible study group,
to the prayer group, and they crept in unawares, meaning they were hard to discern,
(02:37):
they were hard to pick out, and they began to lead people astray,
lead people away from the essentials, if you will, of the Christian faith.
And so I would say this, you and I need to establish theological fences to protect
correct doctrine and to protect protect believers and ourselves from false teachings.
You see, having a theological fence will protect the doctrine of Jesus that he gave to the apostles.
(03:04):
And again, you can think about that center circle being the main fence,
and we're going to call that fence, that very small circle, the dogma or the
essentials, however you want to look at it.
But these are the essential beliefs of Christianity.
And I would say there are seven core essential truths that make up the inner fence.
(03:25):
I would say these are non-negotiable. There on the link, you'll find these seven
essential truths, but you're talking about what the Word of God is,
that the Bible is God's Word.
We're talking about God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.
We're talking about who Jesus is, His deity, his virgin birth.
We're talking about salvation by faith alone, plus nothing, minus nothing.
(03:48):
It's a gift. It must be received by calling upon Jesus Christ.
We're talking about Jesus Christ is returning.
We're talking about the fact that when people die, they will either be conscious
in heaven or conscious in hell based on what they have done with the gift of
eternal life given by Jesus Christ.
That's just a quick summation, if you will, of these core essentials.
(04:10):
But how do we determine, and this is a great question, how do we determine which beliefs are essential?
There's lots of beliefs, lots of teachings throughout scripture.
So how do we understand which of those are essential?
Well, Jesus and the apostles determine what the essential beliefs are in scripture.
It is this, it's the teachings in scripture that you cannot deny and still be
(04:34):
rightly related to Jesus.
You see this inner fence, that bullseye, if you will, on the target get is these seven essentials.
And as anybody begins to view differently, then I guess this is where it'll help you.
You and I are faced with so much content via YouTube, via social media,
via preachers, teachers, books.
(04:56):
So much content is aimed at us. How do we know what is correct content and what is not?
How do we know when we go to look for a church? How do we find a true Bible-believing
church? What do we look for?
There's so many different denominations. How do we know what denomination is okay?
Is all of them okay or some not? Like, how do we navigate through this?
(05:19):
And as you and I recognize these essential truths of Christianity,
and if someone believes other than or denies, if you will, one of these truths,
we understand they step away from the umbrella of what true Christianity is.
Who gets to determine what Christianity is? Because it's a broad umbrella.
Think about it. So many different sects of Christianity label themselves as Christian.
(05:43):
Now, many of those would be what I would refer to as biblical Christianity.
Christianity. They follow the essential truths. They follow the doctrine taught in Scripture.
Some of them would deny that Jesus is God.
Some of them would deny that he's virgin born. What do we do with that?
Are they still Christian?
Well, looking at Christianity, looking at the core truths, they can call themselves
Christian, but they are not Christ-like.
(06:06):
They're not following the doctrine that Christ taught.
And as a result, they move themselves away out of the umbrella of of the term of Christianity.
And it also shows you and I that they have stepped out of that core fence,
that fence meant to protect, keep in what's supposed to keep in,
the core doctrine, the core dogma, and to keep out the false teachers.
You and I can identify a false teacher when they deny the dogma that we have
(06:32):
within that inner fence.
So as Sean McDowell said it this way, you don't have to affirm every one of
these to be saved, but you cannot deny these and still be rightly related to
Jesus or called a Christian.
I think he puts it so well, meaning you, when I got saved, I didn't know all
the theological teachings.
I went by faith. I believe Jesus died on the cross.
(06:54):
I knew I was a sinner and I called out to him according to what scripture said
and what I was taught at that moment.
Did I fully understand that God was the Trinity, Triune God,
that he's God, the Father, God, the Son, God, the Holy Spirit?
I didn't fully understand that. I was I was not denying it, but I was also not
in a place where I had to affirm it.
To say that the Bible is God's word, I believed it, but I didn't know what all
(07:17):
went into that at that moment because I had no background, no church background to base that on.
And so I didn't have to affirm all seven of these truths to be saved.
I cannot deny one of these truths and still be rightly related to Jesus because
I begin to move myself away from biblical Christianity.
(07:38):
And that's what I'm trying to help us to see. And I think this will help you
as you discern what voices to listen to.
You discern what type of church to go to. I think it'll help you.
So the essential fence is the dogma.
And it's meant to protect you personally, to keep your doctrine biblical,
to protect you from false teachers, and to help you discern all the voices and the content.
(08:01):
Again, if one denies one of these core teachings, they move themselves outside
of the umbrella of Jesus and of biblical Christianity.
And so the second circle is we would begin to expand that.
So from our dogma, these seven core essentials, we understand there's lots of
other doctrine or teachings within Scripture.
And so we're going to say the second circle is our doctrine.
(08:24):
That's the teachings contained in Scripture. scripture and these are derived
directly from our dogma.
So if our dogma is correct, then our doctrine will be correct.
If our dogma is incorrect, then you can expect that our doctrine will be incorrect as well.
So our dogma comes from the word of God. Therefore, our doctrine comes from
the word of God. And you can think about Christian doctrine in two ways.
(08:45):
You can think about it as an individual teaching, one specific teaching,
the doctrine of baptism, the doctrine of salvation, salvation,
the doctrine of justification,
whatever you want to look at, or you can look at doctrine as the collective
body of teachings that a group of Christians hold in reference to their faith.
And so doctrine is very, very important. Sometimes we hear doctrine and we think,
(09:07):
oh my, here we go, the academic side. But doctrine is important.
You see, you can be saved and have right doctrine.
You can be saved and have wrong doctrine. But ultimately, doctrine is important
because from your doctrine will come your practice, how you live out your faith.
And so your behavior will come from your doctrine. And so if your doctrine is
(09:30):
incorrect, then your practice will be incorrect.
And we would say this, most disagreements over doctrine are a result of interpretation.
And that's where you can trace the origin of most denominations to the difference
of interpretation of the doctrine and then how it's practiced.
You see certain denominations will live out certain doctrines a certain way
in comparison to another, whether it be baptism, whether it be salvation,
(09:54):
whether it be certain sign gifts, spiritual gifts.
Why do all these interpretations vary? That's a great question.
When we think about it, people come to Scripture, and we try to come without
any presuppositions, without anything that we already hold true,
but people come from all different backgrounds, all different experiences,
and all different church traditions.
(10:15):
They're already taught different things. People understand things differently.
People think doctrine should be a certain way. There's all different reasons
why the interpretation of the doctrine varies. Aries, like me,
I didn't come from a church background.
And so when I come to Scripture, I come with a little different perspective
than maybe somebody who grew up in a church and was taught a certain doctrine.
(10:37):
We try to remove any, what I say, presuppositions, anything that we would hold
beforehand that would cause us to interpret it to a certain way.
Like, we would guide that interpretation.
When we come to Scripture, we want to try to remove all that so that we can
truly understand what Scripture is teaching because of what Scripture is teaching.
And so our doctrine is very important. I'm going to give some examples here
(10:59):
at the very end of our episode.
And again, on those visual aids with the link, I think they'll help you as well.
But as we go out in that third ring, we'll refer to this.
So you got your center bullseye, that's your dogma. From that,
the next ring will be your doctrine.
We're talking about baptism. We're talking about salvation.
We'll get into some other ones, creation and different doctrines that the church
(11:22):
teaches or that you and I as believers believe. And then that third circle will
be the practice or the tradition.
So how you live out that doctrine is how we practice the doctrines that we find in Scripture.
And so doctrine is lived out in our lives in a very practical way.
And can I say this? There's a right way to practice and there's a wrong way to practice doctrine.
(11:44):
Our beliefs determine behavior and beliefs have consequences.
OK, so our beliefs have consequences, whether good or bad. bad.
Good or right beliefs on doctrine ultimately will have good consequences.
Bad or wrong beliefs on doctrine can have bad consequences.
And so as you think about the circle, so you got your center circle,
(12:06):
that's our dogma. You go out one, that's another circle.
And within that circle, these are fences, right? They're meant to protect you.
That center circle is the dogma.
It's meant to protect you. The second one is your doctrine. It's still very important.
And that's meant to protect you. And then you go, how we live out our doctrine
is our practice, our traditions.
(12:27):
You may say, hey, this is the tradition of a church, and we see how they live
that out. And so that's very important.
And then on the outside of that ring, we're going to place the word consequences.
Okay, so there's consequences to our beliefs, to our actions.
So I hope you can visualize that.
So here would be some examples. So we have from our core dogma,
(12:47):
we come up with the doctrine of baptism.
All right, there are various interpretations of baptism that would go into the doctrine ring.
Some believe that baptism is by believer, it's believer's baptism by immersion.
I believe scripturally speaking, this is derived from our dogma,
and this is what scripture teaches.
Some would teach baptismal regeneration, or that baptism is required for salvation.
(13:10):
Some would teach that you need to baptize unbelievers or infants, sprinkle them. them.
And so as we look at those three interpretations of doctrine,
they each have consequences.
Okay, so believers' baptism by immersion, that's what we see through Scripture. Jesus was baptized.
He taught. We see the order in the New Testament church in the book of Acts.
(13:33):
They believed. They were baptized.
We see they went down in water. We see the Ethiopian unit went down in water.
Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River.
So we see that being the biblical method.
And we can look at that in great detail, but we want to just try to give a brief view of that.
So the consequence of believer's baptism by immersion is we're practicing the
(13:53):
biblical teachings of scripture, where we're following what Jesus taught.
Now, if we're thinking that baptism is required for salvation,
that can have some consequences.
That means it's making works necessary for salvation, which is not good,
which means somebody may miss salvation or may think they need to work their way to God.
It may make someone think they're saved because they they were baptized and
(14:13):
have a false sense of salvation.
I was baptized. I'm saved, but never call upon Jesus. We know Jesus said,
look, many are going to come to me in that day and say, Lord,
look what I've done. I've done this. I've done that.
And he'll say, depart from me, you workers of iniquity. I never knew you.
And so we understand that there are consequences. And some of these would be
severe because someone could go to hell because of the wrong doctrine of baptismal regeneration.
(14:39):
Somebody who would think that baptizing infants or sprinkling infants,
what could they do? It could give a false understanding of salvation.
They think I was baptized when I was an infant. Then I'm fine because maybe
baptism is what gets me to heaven.
Make someone think they're saved. There's no biblical meaning there.
We could look at the doctrine of creation as example.
Everyone agrees that God created the heavens and the earth. We see that in Genesis
(15:02):
1.1. Now, there are various interpretations of that.
Was it a literal six days, which means the earth is roughly 6,000 years?
Were the days 1,000 years each, which we see somebody would take that and say,
well, in 2 Peter, it talks about one day is 1,000 years, and 1,000 years with
the Lord is one day. So they would apply that.
Some would say there's a gap between Genesis 1.1 and 1.2, where there's millions
(15:26):
of years evolution occurred.
Some would say each day was a period of millions of years to try to fit in the
evolutionary thinking worldview.
There are consequences, good and bad, for each of these views.
Now, if you follow the literal six days, the earth is roughly 6,000 years,
that fits the biblical context and fits within the biblical teachings found throughout Scripture.
(15:50):
So that follows the biblical account. It would keep your doctrine safe.
It would make you practice correctly the teachings found in Scripture.
Scripture. Let's say that you say that it's a thousand years.
Each day is a thousand years.
Well, it doesn't follow directly from the context of this passage,
but from what I can see, it doesn't alter anything within scripture.
And then if you look at the gap theory and you say, hey, each day was a million
(16:15):
years, is there consequences with that?
Well, there is because it places sin, evil, and death before the fall in Genesis number three.
And so that would say sin existed before for God said that creation was good and perfect.
And there's a problem here that begins to make our doctrine and our practice wrong.
And people will miss the reality of an eternal death, and they'll miss the offer of salvation.
(16:40):
It calls God's character into question. And again, it places death before we
see what sin calls death.
And so there's a contradiction within scripture. We can look at salvation the
same way, and I'll give this as our last example. there are various interpretations of salvation.
We would find from our dogma, the correct doctrine would be a person must call
(17:01):
on Jesus Christ to save them, and then they're saved for eternity.
Somebody may say, well, God chooses a person to heaven and chooses others to hell.
That would be another interpretation of the doctrine of salvation.
Another interpretation would be a person can lose their salvation.
There are obviously consequences to each of these.
(17:21):
If we follow the doctrine of the person must call on Jesus Christ to receive
salvation, that follows the biblical account.
And then their practice and their evangelism and the mission will all follow
suit. how we live out what God has commanded the local church to do.
Now, if we follow the doctrine of people are chosen to heaven and some are chosen
(17:42):
to hell, there's some severe consequences for this to the negative.
People will not call on Jesus for salvation and not get saved because they're
assuming that they have been chosen or they're hoping that they have been chosen.
How we live that out. People don't need to go out and share the gospel like
Jesus commanded, if that's what we believe.
God's character of love is called into question. If God can select some to heaven
(18:06):
and then thump some into hell, it calls in God's character of love.
And it also begins to contradict scripture.
2 Peter 3.9 says, God is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count
slackness, but as longsuffering to us, we're not willing that any should perish.
So how can we rectify the fact that God says any should perish with the fact
(18:27):
that God is selecting some and just sent into hell for whatever reason.
It does not fit with scripture. And so we could go through many of these examples.
I pray this will be a help to you because what you can do is you're looking
for a church to be a part of.
You want to find out what are their core beliefs. And are.
(18:50):
First, you need to know what you believe and why you believe it.
And this is why we say this. You'll hear me say it often on our podcast as I teach.
It's essential that you know what you believe and why you believe it.
You need to know what your center fence is.
You can look at the seven key essentials. These come directly from Scripture.
These are not mine, but I have made them mine because I find them in Scripture.
(19:12):
You can't deny them or else you move yourself away from biblical Christianity. Christianity.
So you need to understand what your core dogma or your core essential beliefs are.
And as you determine those, you'll begin to determine what your doctrine is.
And so as you're looking for a church, as you're trying to discern the voices,
should I listen to this person? Should I follow behind this person?
(19:33):
Should I read behind this person? What is their dogma?
What is their doctrine? How are they living it out? Because there's consequences.
And so you need to know know what you believe and why. You need to check and
follow and discern what the voices are.
It's interesting to me as we went through this, I had one of our students went
to another Bible study to just encourage someone that they knew they were teaching it.
(19:57):
And some conversation came up through that Bible study and after it,
and some teachings were different on salvation.
And that student admittedly, he said, I began to see something was different.
And I began to hear hear a few words different.
And my radars went up because I realized this is not in line with what I've
made my doctrine, I mean, my dogma.
(20:17):
I realized their view on salvation was different.
And then it began to be the doctrine and how they practiced that.
But what it did, he was able to discern when he heard someone else speaking
and talking to say, well, something's wrong there.
Something's different there. They're moving their self outside of my protective fence.
Sense, doesn't mean I have to be mean, doesn't mean I have to be rude,
(20:39):
doesn't mean I can't talk to them, but I have to understand and begin to identify
them that their doctrine and their dogma is different.
And so I may not want to align with them. I may not want to go to the same church
as them because the doctrine may be different.
And so I pray this will be a help to you. Find the resource link there.
You'll see the visuals and you'll see the essentials. spirituals.
(21:00):
And we'll look at one more study next week as we look at the mission of the local church.
Music.
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