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Sunday School

Elders Q and A

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Elders

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Summary

This session addresses several important doctrinal questions including seminary requirements for pastors, why doctrinal differences exist among churches, the role of apologetics in evangelism, how to interpret the Old Testament, limited atonement, and whether children should be baptized after professing faith.

Key Lessons:

  1. Seminary is not a biblical requirement for pastoral ministry — the biblical qualifications center on character, giftedness, and life-on-life discipleship rather than formal academic credentials.
  2. Doctrinal differences among churches do not mean Scripture is unclear; rather, they reflect human limitations, presuppositions, cultural pressures, and varying levels of skill in applying hermeneutical principles.
  3. Apologetics and personal testimony serve a supporting role in evangelism by removing shallow objections and gaining a hearing, but only God’s Word has the power to open hearts and bring about salvation.
  4. The Old Testament should be interpreted on its own terms — understanding original author, audience, and purpose — before connecting it to Christ and New Testament realities.

Application: We are called to ground ourselves deeply in God’s Word, approach doctrinal differences with humility and charity, rely on Scripture rather than human arguments for the power of the gospel, and exercise wisdom and patience in matters like the baptism of children.

Discussion Questions:

  1. How should our church evaluate and raise up potential elders if seminary is not a requirement — what does life-on-life discipleship look like practically?
  2. When engaging in evangelism, how can we discern when to address someone’s intellectual objections and when to press past those objections to the heart issue of the gospel?
  3. How should parents navigate the tension between encouraging their children’s profession of faith and ensuring they are not rushed into baptism before demonstrating credible, tested faith?

Scripture Focus: 2 Timothy 2:2 and 2 Timothy 3:16-17 on pastoral training; 1 Peter 3:15 and Luke 16:19-31 on apologetics and its limits; Genesis 37-50 on interpreting the Old Testament; John 6:37-39 and 1 John 2:2 on limited atonement; Acts 2:38 and Hebrews 6:4-8 on baptism and perseverance.

Outline

Introduction

All right. Well, welcome to Sunday school as we continue in our defending doctrinal distinctive series. Our setup, as you can see, is a little bit different today. We had been promising something like this throughout the course, but snow days intervened. We had to adjust our schedule.

Along with overviewing these different important but controversial doctrines that we teach and then answering questions, we wanted to have special days to answer questions on those particular doctrines. We also wanted to have Q&A days where the elders, those who are able to be here—Khalif’s not able to be here today—take whatever questions that you’ve submitted or that we realized we weren’t able to address specifically in some of the targeted lessons that we taught, and come back and answer some of those questions.

That’s what we’re looking to do today. This is our first of at least two, and maybe three, elders Q&A Sunday school lessons. We’ve got about eight questions lined up for today’s Q&A. The format is going to be: I’m going to have one of the elders give the initial answer to the question, and then the other elders can jump in and comment or add something else if they feel so led.

Dave, do you want to say something about Khalif and maybe just pray for him since he can’t be here today?

Yeah, sure. I’m about to pray to start the session, but Khalif’s not able to be here because his wife Sheranne has been going through chemotherapy. I think she just recently had another session, but she was feeling pretty unwell last night and needed to go to the emergency room. They were there most of the night, and it seems like she’s checked out okay. They didn’t see any problems, but just in case the pain that she was experiencing comes back, they might need to go back to the emergency room. So he and Sheranne are home today.

Please continue to pray for them. I’ll be praying for them later in the pastoral prayer, but I’ll be happy to pray for them now. If by some chance we get through all eight questions today, there will be time at the end for follow-up questions to what we presented. We’ll see if we can even get through all eight questions.

We’ll see how it goes today. But thank you for being here. I hope this is an edifying time. Let me pray to start.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your care and for your love. We do ask for your special care and love to be shown to our brother Khalif and our sister Sheranne.

God, I pray that as you have upheld her thus far with the different medical trials, you would do so now. I pray, Lord, that you would heal her, that she would be able to get rest, that there wouldn’t be a return of this pain or these complications that would need her to go to the emergency room. I pray that both of them would be able to rest and be refreshed at home today, and whatever trials, Lord, you may have planned for them, God, just sustain them and glorify yourself, Lord, for this time now.

I pray that it would be profitable, that you would give us good ability to answer and explain, and help us all to be built up more in Jesus Christ and more confident in your truth. In Jesus’ name, amen.

All right. So we have eight questions based on the topics that we’ve taught so far in this course. We’ve covered things like hermeneutics, the Bible, the gospel, baptism, the doctrines of grace, God’s sovereignty and salvation, church leadership, and church discipline.

Question 1: Do You Need Seminary to Be a Pastor?

And we’ve got topics along those lines. The first question I’m going to ask—I’m going to have Mark be our first answerer. That question is: do you need to go to seminary to be a pastor?

If not, why is that the expectation among many Western Christians today? All right, Mark, what would you say?

Sure. I have a seven-part answer. I’m actually not kidding, but it’ll go pretty quickly.

Biblical Qualifications and Discipleship Model

We always want to start with the Bible and look at what it says. The biblical qualifications don’t say anything about this directly. We know that the words elder, pastor, overseer, and bishop are used interchangeably. They all refer to the same thing.

The church office of eldership is open to any qualifying man who meets the biblical qualifications. We see those in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1.

“The church office of eldership is open to any qualifying man who meets the biblical qualifications.”

No training necessarily will impart that. You look at the biblical qualifications first. That said, and we talked about this last week, there are pastors that are referred to as being worthy of double honor because they work hard at preaching and teaching. We see that in 1 Timothy 5:17, which we covered last week.

That gives us a good biblical ground for pastors like Pastor Dave and Pastor Bobby, whom we pay. That’s their full-time vocations, and that’s really the primary basis for that.

Biblically, the model of training for elders is centered on the scriptures. We see this in 2 Timothy 3:16-17. The word of God is profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, training, and righteousness.

Seminary Cannot Impart Spiritual Gifts

The primary training is in the word of God. The model that God gives is life-on-life discipleship, which is really spelled out in the patterns of the pastoral letters of First and Second Timothy and Titus.

We see this in 2 Timothy 2:2: “The things which you’ve heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.” Life-on-life discipleship and training in the word of God are essential and foundational for pastoral ministry.

The closest model we see in Scripture—though some have different opinions on this—is the school of Tyrannus in Acts 19, which was apparently a two-year course. That’s perhaps the closest pattern we might see in Scripture.

One important thing to recognize is that we’ll be preaching on spiritual gifts later today. Seminary cannot impart spiritual gifts because they are given by the Spirit, by God. However, it can cultivate and fan into flame those gifts, as it says in 2 Timothy 1:6, and really develop them. But it can’t create them. That’s an important thing to recognize.

Jesus, for example, was not formally trained.

“Seminary cannot impart spiritual gifts because they are given by the Spirit, by God.”

That’s interesting to think about, isn’t it? But what did Scripture say of him regarding his interaction with the Pharisees in Matthew 7:29? It says he spoke with authority and not like one of their scribes.

We have to recognize that while seminary and any kind of academic endeavor can be profitable, it doesn’t create what isn’t there in the first place. The authority and power really comes from God himself. That’s important to recognize.

I heard an illustration I thought was really helpful. One of the things we’ll talk about in our sermon today is that spiritual gifts, and particularly pastoring, is an identity more than it is an ability.

For example, if you have someone who wants to be a major league pitcher and his fastball is 55 miles an hour, it’s not a matter of training. You just have to acknowledge he’s just not been created to be that.

So for us as we talk about eldership and all that, it’s not a matter of us creating them, but recognizing who God has already provided.

Lastly, I found a great quote from John MacArthur in his Pastor’s Library on pastoral ministry. He says, “In essence, the biblical case for seminary rests on Scripture’s sufficiency for ministry preparation and the conviction that those who teach God’s word must themselves be thoroughly grounded in it. Paul said to Timothy, ‘Remember the things you learned and from whom you learned them.’”

That says something to us about the selection of seminary. There are seminaries that might teach good content, but they’re not good examples of pastoring. What we learn is important, and who we learn from is very important as well. Hopefully that helps.

Yeah, it was a really thorough answer.

Greg, was there anything? Was that all seven points?

It was. And I’ll say this too. For example, about Pastor Dave and anyone who goes to seminary at the Master’s Seminary, they’re not going to accept someone into seminary without the recommendation of their local church. They will have affirmed—and they did with you—that you were gifted in this area and have a call to ministry.

That happens before seminary. I think that’s the right pattern.

The Value and Limitations of Seminary

Yeah. And one thing I want to hear from you too, Greg. One thing that I really appreciated about the seminary that I went to, the Master Seminary in Los Angeles, is that almost all the professors are pastors as well. And so it’s not just getting a technical education in understanding Greek or how to prepare a sermon, but it is that discipleship aspect which really should be part of the church.

Ideally, the church leaders have the discipleship capability and even the technical knowledge to be able to raise up more pastors and more elders. But because that isn’t always available and to the level that would be helpful for continuing to teach and preach at a church, seminaries exist. But I feel like TMS is kind of a hybrid of those things. It’s kind of like a seminary, but also because of its close association with Grace Community Church, it’s kind of like a church where you’re being discipled to be a pastor.

And to directly answer the question, I’ll jump in real quick. Greg and I didn’t go to seminary, and I would hope that we’re okay. That’s right. With me, I guess we’ll see. But the idea is that it’s clear we don’t think it’s a requirement for eldership.

Yeah.

The only thing I would add to this is I think that some seminaries are kind of a liability as opposed to a benefit. And it is a particularly western model, right, in terms of taking somebody out of their church for possibly four years, which happened with Pastor Dave, to sort of go to a far away land and they’re not serving at that point. So that is a little bit of a strain on sometimes the local churches.

“Some seminaries are kind of a liability as opposed to a benefit.”

It is a western model. If some of our missionaries who do train pastors, they don’t actually use that model out in the Philippines or in other places. They actually have a different model where they do get together for classes, but they don’t do this by taking the people out of their churches for four years. They do this on weekends or something like this.

And it does seem to happen. But in the western model, one of the sad things that we do see is that a lot of seminaries who are not connected to a local body. For instance, Grace Community Church is sort of like overseeing Master Seminary in a sense. But many seminaries have become sort of their own thing, their own entity.

And when that happens, you begin to have theological drift. And you see over time, many good seminaries that start out very biblical tend to become more and more liberal. In fact, just down the street, we see Princeton Theological Seminary, which is a very sad case of that. Also, New Brunswick Theological Seminary, which used to be a bastion of Dutch Reformed theology.

Yeah.

I remember in seminary, one of my professors pointed out historically, no seminary has been faithful for more than four generations. But there’s hoping that if you stay close to a church, that you can remain faithful there. But otherwise, we just got to keep making a new seminary or continue the work in the church.

Anyways, that was some good answers to that first question, but I want to make sure we can get to some other ones. So let’s keep moving on. We have one question in 15 minutes.

I know. I know.

That’s why I said I’m not sure if we’ll get to all eight. All right. Number two, Greg, we’re coming back to you for this question.

Question 2: Why So Many Doctrinal Differences?

If the Bible is inherent, authoritative, and perspicuous, it’s clear. Why are there so many doctrinal differences among Christian churches today? And why are there differences even among churches that affirm a literal hermeneutic?

This is a really good question actually. It’s one that even I struggled with a long time ago when I was still looking for churches and trying to understand the whole landscape of Lutheran, Anglican, Baptist churches, evangelical, free. There’s a whole bunch of churches out there.

In fact, it’s a common attack from Catholics that you have so many different denominations so confused. Actually, I think I’ll have three parts to my answer, not seven.

We see a lot of that today.

Core Doctrines Churches Agree On

They’ll be quick. The first point is that we should not be brought down so low about this. We should not be in despair about this. In fact, a lot of churches do agree on many of the core doctrines of the faith—things like the nature of Christ, the hypostatic union, fully man and fully God, the nature of God as triune, the sinfulness of man, the need for a savior, and salvation by grace through faith.

These are things that many Christians hold to, many churches hold to. It’s not really rare except maybe in New Jersey, but it’s not really rare to find a Bible-believing church in the United States.

“A lot of churches do in fact agree on many of the core doctrines of the faith.”

There are some denominational differences that arise from what we would consider secondary issues. Things like exactly when people should be baptized, God’s sovereignty, human responsibility, how exactly that lines up. Things like the end times, things like worship and liturgy.

But I think in the Bible, it’s clear that there are some things that are more important than others. In 1 Corinthians 15:3, Paul says, “I delivered to you of first importance that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.” That is of first importance, and if you believe in that, we can call you a Bible-believing church and we call you a church that preaches the gospel.

So that’s my first point: we should not be in despair about this. In fact, we should realize that many churches of many different denominations do hold to the true gospel. But what about the disagreement? I think it’s definitely irrefutable that there are many different denominations.

Theological Drift and Cultural Pressures

And I would say that in fact, if you look at the question, there is a little bit of an assumption baked in here that I think many churches would affirm a literal hermeneutic. I actually think that’s fairly rare today—that many churches affirm a strictly literal hermeneutic.

There are many reasons for this, especially among mainline churches. Many of us Methodists, for example, have sort of departed very publicly from a literal hermeneutic, and we haven’t really been hiding it. As I said before, in the case of seminaries, the theological drift of a lot of these denominations tends to only be in one direction.

Very rarely do we see denominations become more conservative, right? It’s not impossible, but it’s almost always in the more liberal direction. We could speculate about why that is.

There seems to be that if churches are ruled by a synod or a far away governing entity, it really only takes one or two of those people to become compromised for the entire denomination to go to a bad place. People can be swayed by culture. People can be swayed by being unsaved. If you get into a position of leadership, not long ago there was a big exposé about how certain leaders of denominations were openly corrupt and actually taking money from liberal causes to get votes for one party. So that was a public thing.

I think that maybe it’s not the case that there are many churches that have heard of the rural harmony. But even amongst those who do, this is my third point: even among those who do, churches can come to different understandings, and we have to sort of leave a little bit of room for that.

We have to realize that because two churches come to different understandings that do believe in a literal hermeneutic, it does not mean that scripture itself is unclear. It’s merely that we, as imperfect people, can’t necessarily always come to the same or the right understanding. And that is, as we said before, presuppositions and convictions. We read things into the text. Maybe we’re trained in some theological systems that sort of impose a structure on the text that isn’t there.

“Theological drift of denominations tends to only be in one direction — almost always more liberal.”

Sometimes it’s cultural pressures. There are many cultural pressures to lean a certain way on the role of men and women in the church, LGBTQ rights, and the doctrine of hell.

I think a lot of times you don’t realize how easy it is for a new denomination to come up. All it takes is one charismatic leader.

People by and large out in the culture today are not very educated about scripture. Many people are easily led astray.

Human Limitations in Interpretation

So besides that, the last part is that the Bible is actually difficult in its perspicuity. However you say it, but it does not mean that it’s easy to understand. It takes work to understand this, right?

In fact, that’s why you go to seminary for four years to learn how to do this. And even so, even having spent four years in seminary, whenever any of us preach, it’s like maybe 40 hours trying just to understand like six verses. And even after that, sometimes we’re like, “Did I get that right? I’m not quite sure.”

So a lot of times the Bible takes work to understand. I love what Peter says about even the apostle Paul in 2 Peter 3:15. “Just as our beloved brother Paul also writes in these letters,” and in verse 16, “speaking of them these things in which there are some things that are hard to understand.” Even the apostle Peter says Paul’s writings sometimes are hard to understand.

So to sum that up, we just have to realize that we as humans are limited, maybe in our ability to always get everything right. There is a little bit of humility that we have to take to this. We have to give people charity. We shouldn’t be too puffed up and be like, “We got everything right, everything lined up.” Maybe that’s not always the case, but we shouldn’t give up because the scriptures are interpretable.

“The Bible takes work to understand, and we as humans are limited in our ability to always get everything right.”

So yeah, it’s well said. Anything to add, Mark?

Just one comment that I’ve observed, particularly with eschatology: while the exact meaning may be hard to understand, the application to our lives often is not.

God makes that very clear to us. And his primary concern is that we obey. So, for example, in Revelation 1, it says, “Blessed are those who hear and heed the words of this prophecy.” Notice it doesn’t say, “Blessed are those who hear and fully understand it all.” Praise God.

Revelation 1:3: “Blessed are those who hear and heed the words of this prophecy.”

But it gives us enough to run with to obey. And so I take great encouragement from that. Yeah.

Thanks, Mark.

I’ll just add one paragraph from my hermeneutics class in seminary. This is what my professor wrote: “Since exegesis—so the process of understanding the Bible—is the application of select hermeneutical principles, the results of exegesis will depend on the principles applied as well as the consistency with which they are applied. This is why interpreters can come to the same text, exert the same amount of time and energy, and come to different conclusions.

The problem is not with the text but with either the difference in principles used and/or the different consistency with which they applied them.”

Hermeneutics is a science, but it’s also a skill. And we have varying degrees of skill, and we’re growing in that skill. But like Greg said, it’s not something we say, “Okay, well, we’ll never figure it out.” No, it is able to be figured out, but God is going to have to keep bringing us along in that.

Let’s go to the next question. And Mark, we’re going to come back to you for this one.

Question 3: The Role of Apologetics in Evangelism

If only God’s preached word has power to save, what role do apologetic arguments and personal testimony play in evangelism?

I think I only have three parts to this as I think about it.

The Seed Is the Word of God

Well, it’s interesting and we’ve talked about this. The parable of the sower in the Gospels—I don’t have the reference right in front of me.

Someone could help me with that.

The seed is the word of God and the soil are the various hearts of people.

Our responsibility is to make sure that we’re sowing the seed, right?

If there’s no seed, in 1 Peter 1, I think verse 23, you’ve been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is through the living and abiding word of God. So understanding what the word of God is and what salvation is is absolutely fundamental.

We need to be about the business of sowing the seeds of the word of God. Colossians 4:2 talks about how we do it, but what do we pray for? Open doors for the word.

1 Peter 1:23: “You’ve been born again not of perishable seed but imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.”

We just need to be really skilled at understanding and sowing the word of God. The second thing that I would say is the primary text for apologetics is in 1 Peter 3:15, which may be familiar to you: “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always being ready to give a defense for the hope that is in you.”

And yet we do it how? With gentleness and reverence. That is in the context of fiery trials of opposition.

The Lord would call us to always be ready to give an answer. That’s something that we can cultivate in our own lives, in our own time in the word. But if you would look with me at Luke 16:19, I think this says something to us that you might not have considered with regard to apologetics.

Let me get my phone out because it’s faster.

Jonathan, did you need to tell us something?

Mark chapter 4. Thank you, Jonathan.

I do this to make sure you guys are paying attention and I appreciate that.

I thought you were going to get your phone.

The Limits of Apologetics

I was in Luke 16 starting in verse 19. It’s the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. I’ll just read parts of it.

“Now there was a rich man, and he habitually dressed in purple and fine linen, joyously living in splendor every day. And a poor man named Lazarus was laid at his gate, covered with sores, and longing to be fed with the crumbs which were falling from the rich man’s table. Besides, even the dogs were coming and licking his sores.

Now the poor man died, and was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom, and the rich man also died and was buried in Hades. He lifted up his eyes being in torment and saw Abraham far away and Lazarus in his bosom and he cried out and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me.’

So I won’t read the rest of it, but it’s basically about going back to his family and warning them about this place. How does it end?

“I have five brothers in order that this is verse 28. Warn them, right?” But Abraham said, “They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them.” And he said, “No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” But he said to them, “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead.”

I refer to this as the limits of apologetics. This isn’t theoretical. This happened.

Jesus did rise from the dead and people didn’t believe. Was there anything lacking in Jesus’s evangelistic approach? Of course not. So we just have to recognize that people are born again not because they believe the evidence.

“People are born again not because they believe the evidence.”

Although that’s helpful, I think apologetics is actually more helpful for believers to bolster their faith.

But if we understand what faith is and what salvation is, it is a spiritual exercise by which God opens the eyes of someone’s heart through the means of the word of God. Evidence cannot do that. If someone doesn’t want to believe that, they still won’t. But if someone does and God is so working in their hearts, they will.

So I think the pressure is on in one sense to use the word of God skillfully, but the pressure is off to demonstrate through evidence that the gospel is true. That make sense?

Apologetics Removes Shallow Objections

Okay. I would just add that this is what the Apostle Paul does at Mars Hill. He actually uses what we would call apologetic arguments, appealing to the unknown god. The other thing I would say is we’re called to contend for the faith. That is, we’re not just quoting scripture at people—we should do that—but we also have to explain to people what that means. A lot of times that does lead to what we would call apologetic arguments and personal testimonies.

That’s good, Greg. The one thing I was thinking about through this is that first of all, it’s important to stress that the best kind of apologetics and personal testimony assists the word of God and is based on the word of God.

Assume that the word of God is true. Don’t be like, “Okay, let’s pretend that we don’t know whether the word of God is true and let’s look at these arguments.” No, you can’t start from that. There’s no neutral ground, as Answers in Genesis likes to say.

Whatever apologetic arguments you’re making, let them be based on an assumption that the word of God is true. And your testimony, let it be based on the word of God being true, and you’re looking to explain that.

“There’s no neutral ground. Whatever apologetic arguments you make, let them be based on the word of God being true.”

In short, my view of how these things can play a role in the gospel is that they can gain an ear and they can remove shallow objections to the gospel. I think even going back to the example that you just mentioned, I was thinking about Paul’s speech in Acts 17 where he says, “We ought not to suppose that the divine is made out of silver and gold, for we ourselves are his children as your own poets have said.”

It’s like, look, you guys already recognize that divinity must be more than silver and gold because he made us. So that’s not a direct appeal to scripture, but it’s just showing, look, we should remove this objection because it’s obvious from your own culture.

Or I think about Acts 2 where everybody’s declaring the word of God in languages that they hadn’t learned before. Some people say, “Oh, these people are full of sweet wine. They’re drunk.” But what’s Peter’s response? They’re not drunk. It’s the beginning of the day. They haven’t had time to get drunk. So let’s get rid of that stupid argument and now let me tell you the truth.

Again, as Mark stressed, there’s only a limited ability in these things. But if you can quickly remove a shallow argument—like sometimes people say, oh, I can’t believe the Bible because how did Noah get all those animals on the ark—you can deal with that quickly and be like, look, that’s a shallow objection. It can be easily answered.

But when you find that people are just offering objection after objection after objection, you say, all right, look, we can answer those questions, but what’s the real issue? It’s the gospel, and you’re resisting that because it attacks your pride and it attacks your desire for your own righteousness.

Question 4: How to Interpret the Old Testament

All right, let’s go to question number four, and I’m going to take the lead on this one.

How should we interpret the Old Testament in a way that is relevant for New Testament Christians? I’ve been thinking about this question since I did the first lesson. After that lesson, I spoke with somebody who asked, “So, how should we interpret the Old Testament?” I thought I had explained that, so I’m worried there might be some confusion.

I argued against a redemptive historical, Christocentric, or New Testament priority hermeneutic. This is the approach where you have to understand the Old Testament only by looking at the New Testament first and reading back those New Testament realities into the Old Testament. I argued against that because it’s not really a literal hermeneutic and that’s not really how the word of God works.

So, how do you understand the Old Testament? I’m going to give an answer in three parts with three brief recommendations. We could do a whole lesson on this. I think we could do a whole Sunday school series on this, but I’m going to try to give you three brief recommendations in about five minutes.

Interpret Old Testament Books Like New Testament Books

The first thing is number one: interpret Old Testament books like you do New Testament books. Come at it with the basic same approach. When we look at New Testament books and we’re getting serious about studying and understanding them, we consider aspects like author, recipient, date, historical occasion, and the purpose of writing.

We need to do the same thing with Old Testament books so that we can appreciate the original main message of the book and then the meaning of individual verses and sections within that book.

The New Testament is not wrong to say that the Old Testament gives us examples, but it does more than that. It gives us arguments, teachings, proofs.

For example, Genesis 39. This is the account of Joseph’s ordeal with Potiphar’s wife. What is the meaning of that passage?

Before you start comparing Joseph to Jesus or looking at the New Testament exhortations to flee immorality, you should go back and ask: What is Moses’ purpose in this book as a whole in the book of Genesis? And then, because it’s only one part of the first five books, what is Moses’ purpose in writing the Torah?

Here’s my answer. The Torah is written to educate the people of Israel regarding their gracious position as the chosen people of God and to encourage them to faith and obedience as they begin the daunting Canaan conquest.

“The Torah is written to educate the people of Israel and encourage them to faith and obedience.”

The Torah was written as an occasional book. There was a certain occasion that prompted it. You second generation are about to go into the land. You need to know certain things so that you will continue to follow the Lord and obey him.

Every aspect of those five books is about pursuing that end. So what about Genesis 39 and that account of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife? How does that fit into the purpose?

It’s not really about Joseph. It’s not really about fleeing immorality. It’s about God’s providence.

What is really a larger section going from Genesis 37 to Genesis 50. Joseph going through all these terrible things and it leading to not only his exaltation but the deliverance of Israel. As Joseph says near the end of that section, “What you meant for evil, God meant for good, even to bring about this present situation. Many people alive.”

From that you can see an original application pretty clearly. You people of Israel going into Canaan, don’t be afraid to trust God and obey him.

Though things may seem lost temporarily, he will bring about deliverance. Look, this is the kind of God he is. He is the providential God. He is faithful.

Isn’t our application as Christians very similar? Yes, we face a different task and we have different promises specifically to equip us in that, but it’s essentially the same message, the same application. Now, you could pull Christ in more specifically into that by application.

“Our application as Christians is very similar — it’s essentially the same message.”

He’s the greater example than Joseph when it comes to trusting in God’s providence and going through all these trials and seeing the deliverance. He is the one who secures for us all the promises of God’s kind providence by salvation. And he, as we’ve learned in John recently, is the agent who brings it about for his people.

But it is not necessary or proper to start with Christ and the New Testament in interpreting this Old Testament passage. Start in the Old Testament. Approach it like you would any other Bible book. And then when it comes to application and significance, think about how it connects to Christ. That’s my first principle.

Ask What a Passage Reveals About God

Interpret Old Testament books like you do New Testament books. My second recommendation: ask what an Old Testament passage reveals about God. I believe it is an error always to ask what does this passage reveal about Christ, because not all passages are directly about that. But it is correct to ask what a passage reveals about God because that goes back to the nature of Scripture. It is the revelation of God. So ultimately these things are telling us something about God.

Let me give you an example.

“It is correct to ask what a passage reveals about God because that goes back to the nature of Scripture.”

Numbers 5:11-31 describes the ritual of jealousy or the right of marital suspicion. It’s a fascinating ritual—kind of a trial by ordeal or a divine lie detector test. When a husband is suspicious that his wife has committed adultery against him but doesn’t have proof, he brings her to the priest.

There are certain curses written out on a scroll that say, “If you’ve been unfaithful, may these curses come upon you.” The curses are washed into water and the wife drinks it. It says, “If you’ve been unfaithful, these curses will come upon you. But if you’ve not been, let these curses pass away.”

How should we interpret this? If we start by asking, “What does this passage say about Christ?” we’ll be drawn into an interpretation along the lines of Christ being the woman who bears the curse for us. She drinks it so we don’t have to. But we’re really twisting the passage, straining it to make it say that, because the analogy does not fit very well.

But if we’re looking for what this passage says about God, we can see something actually quite poignant: God is a God who is holy but also compassionate. If you sin sexually against your spouse, curses will indeed come upon you. Yet he recognizes the weakness of human flesh.

There will even be situations where someone is so jealous, so suspicious of his spouse, but he can’t prove it. How can that marriage move forward? God says, “I’m going to put a ritual so that you can lay these suspicions to rest. You can let me decide it by my own providence and get on with your marriage.” That’s what this ritual seems to be.

“God is a God who is holy but also compassionate.”

This is God’s holiness and his compassion on display. Asking what an Old Testament passage says about God was very instructive to me one time when I was doing marriage counseling with both a husband and wife. The wife was responding very well to the counseling, but the husband was kind of being nonchalant about it.

One of the things that struck me as a difference between the two is that the wife read the Old Testament and the New Testament as part of her Bible reading, but the husband read only the New Testament. I see a correlation there. There was not that same reverence for the holiness of God in the husband as there was in the wife. I think it had to do with not receiving that necessary instruction, that necessary emphasis from the Old Testament.

So interpret Old Testament books like you do New Testament books. Ask what an Old Testament passage reveals about God.

Be Aware of the Typical Reformed Approach

And then number three, be aware of the typical reformed Old Testament approach.

Be aware of the typical reformed Old Testament approach. You say, “What are you talking about?” Well, our church, let’s face it, is somewhat unique. We have a reformed soteriology, but not a typically reformed hermeneutic. When I say soteriology, we’re talking about we believe in God’s sovereignty and salvation. It’s not typical of Baptist churches. It’s not typical of many Christian churches, but we are reformed when it comes to our understanding of salvation.

But usually, if you’re reformed in that way, you’re reformed in a bunch of other ways. You have an adherence to a theological system known as covenant theology or covenantalism. What’s that? Too much to explain right now. It’s not merely an affirmation of biblical covenants like the Noaic covenant or the Davidic covenant or something like that. It’s a theological system.

And what it is fundamentally based on is three divine covenants that are inferred, not stated in scripture, but inferred from scripture. There is a covenant of redemption between the members of the Godhead. A covenant of works, perhaps between God and Adam and maybe Moses. And then a covenant of grace, which governs the rest of redemptive history.

This theological system stresses continuity in God’s dealings between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Typical facets that are part of or that grow out from this theological understanding are things like infant baptism, amillennialism, a three-fold understanding of the Old Testament law that partly continues, church and Israel being the same, a New Testament priority hermeneutic, and therefore the allegorizing of some Old Testament passages and promises. They get spiritualized.

Things that are about physical things are applied to Christ and the church and said to be fulfilled in the church or fulfilled by Jesus Christ.

Now, we love many of these teachers. They are solid believers. They are wonderful theologians. But we just have to be aware that in many cases they are slightly off in their Old Testament interpretation. These are theologians that we admire from history: John Calvin, the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards. They’re going to spiritualize a lot of things from the Old Testament, which is not really practicing a literal hermeneutic.

And some famous teachers from today, if they’re part of that reformed tradition, that Presbyterian tradition: RC Sproul, J.I. Packer, Tim Keller, Ligon Duncan.

“We love many of these teachers, but we must be aware they approach the Old Testament slightly differently than we do.”

Now, what I’m saying to you in this last point is not that we must avoid these reformed teachers. They have many valuable things to share, but we just need to remember that they approach the Old Testament slightly differently than we do. So interpret Old Testament books like you do New Testament books. Ask what an Old Testament passage reveals about God and be aware of the typical reformed Old Testament approach.

Okay, any comments? I have one very brief comment. It’s so wonderful to see how the New Testament interprets the Old Testament. So when we see those patterns, we should do it the way Jesus and the apostles did it.

Yeah. I mean, I love what you said. It was just so great, Dave. Thank you. I learned so much from that.

But for example, if you see someone trying to allegorize the Old Testament temple, like a lot of Roman Catholics do, these things represent things today. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a New Testament book that interpreted the Old Testament covenants and Old Testament practices for us?

Yeah, we do. It’s called Hebrews. Beautiful. So say what that says. But as I said, I believe Paul in one of the Corinthians says, don’t go beyond what is written. We just want to go with that.

And I think you’ve expressed that really well, Dave. Thank you.

Let’s go on to the next one.

Okay. 9:45.

Yeah. All right. Number five, Greg, come back for you.

Question 5: Why Do Some Object to Limited Atonement?

Why do some who otherwise hold to God’s total sovereignty and salvation object to limited atonement?

I should first say at the outset that this is supposed to be Khalif’s question, but I’ll do my best in his stead.

I think there is just a lot of confusion when it comes to the topic of limited atonement. There are a lot of churches out there—I think specifically Calvary Chapel is one of them—who actually come out and say they’re four-point Calvinists or three-point Calvinists. And there are others as well.

But just not on this one point, which is limited atonement. I think this just comes out of a confusion of what this doctrine is really teaching. This is actually one reason why many people prefer the term particular redemption because it’s maybe a little bit more precise.

But anyways, why is this such a controversial term and so confusing? It’s because it just sounds like we’re limiting God’s power, right? It sounds like we’re asking: is God’s power limited?

Are we saying that God’s not powerful enough to save everyone? And that’s not what we’re saying at all.

“It sounds like we’re limiting God’s power — and that’s not what we’re saying at all.”

What Everyone Agrees On

First, let’s lay out what everyone believes, whether you believe in limited atonement or not. The question is: who should the gospel be preached to?

Obviously, the gospel should be preached to everyone. Now, the people who are against limited atonement would say, “Oh, but you’re saying that we should only preach it to the elect.” And we would say, “That’s not true. We should preach it to everybody because, first of all, we have no idea who’s elect.” And it’s not—these are the things of God, not the things of man.

So, both sides of this debate agree: the gospel should be preached to everyone.

For whom is Christ’s atonement sufficient? Here’s the question: who is it sufficient for? And the answer on both sides again is that it’s sufficient for everyone. We’re not going to say that Christ’s power is limited. He could apply it to everyone. The power in his atonement is unlimited.

The third question that we all agree on is: who will finally be saved? And unless you are a universalist—which means that you believe everyone goes to heaven regardless of your belief—you believe that the people who are saved are those who are going to repent and believe.

Limited in Scope or Limited in Power

Okay? These are not controversial, and in fact both sides agree on all these things. That’s a critical thing to understand. Now why then the debate? Well, because people say that if you believe in limited atonement, you’re limiting God. Here we have to stop and realize that everyone actually believes in limited atonement in some way. You either believe that the atonement of Christ is limited in scope—that is, it’s limited to a group of people—or you believe that it’s limited in power.

“Everyone believes in limited atonement — either limited in scope or limited in power.”

So it’s applied to everyone, but it’s limited in power in that it’s not quite effective for everyone. There’s an additional thing that needs to happen. You need to receive that in the semi-Pelagian view, which we talked about in one of our Sunday schools.

That goes as extreme as saying you must respond to that out of your own goodness as a person. So again, you either believe that Christ’s atonement is limited in scope or in power. We believe that it is limited in scope. It’s effective fully for those to whom it is applied.

Another way of saying that, I think more clearly, is that Christ’s atonement is sufficient for all but efficient for the elect. It’s sufficient for all. If God had intended it to be so, it could be applied to all people with complete power and complete efficaciousness.

However, in his sovereignty, he chose to apply it to the elect. I think one of the verses we get this from is in John 6. Jesus says, “All that the father has given me will come to me, and the one who comes to me, I will certainly not cast out. All that the father has given me will come to me. I will not lose nothing.”

So these verses in John 6:37 are very clear that there is a group of people—Jesus calls them his sheep—whom the father has given him from before the beginning of time. This is who we call the elect. We have no way to know who these people are, so we preach the gospel to everyone. But in God’s reality, he has given us a peek behind the curtain. That power of Jesus’ atonement is given fully and efficaciously to the elect.

“Christ’s atonement is sufficient for all but efficient for the elect.”

Balancing Universal and Particular Passages

You have anything to add? I think the only thing that I would add here is that you can see biblically where you can go against the doctrine of limited atonement, especially because of the passages that seem to emphasize a universality to the application of Jesus’ salvation work. For example, 1 John 2:2.

1 John 2:2 says, “And he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” I mean, that sounds like not limited atonement.

There are other verses that talk about all or the whole world. You might say you can’t believe in limited atonement if you see those verses. But the problem is, as Greg emphasized, there are other verses that emphasize it’s only a particular group. Like another one from John, John 10:11: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Or from Matthew, what we looked at over Christmas: “He will save his people from their sins.”

You have to look at both. You can’t just look at one. I think the solution biblically is that these passages in the scriptures that seem like they’re talking about salvation going to all people don’t mean everyone without exception, but they mean mankind generally or all the elect or all people without distinction.

Can I just add a quick comment? It’s this: I think we can appreciate the beauty and we can all agree that Christ’s atonement was perfect, can’t we?

Amen. And so how that all works, we can’t totally parse that. But when I look at the book of Revelation and where it says that you have redeemed for yourself people from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, that was done from eternity past.

I think the question we have to ask ourselves is: what did Jesus accomplish on the cross? An actual redemption or a potential redemption?

“What did Jesus accomplish on the cross? An actual redemption or a potential redemption?”

If we say it’s only potential, I would just say that’s really limiting the atonement.

I’ll just leave it at that. Well said. All right, I’m going to skip the next question just in case we don’t have any time. We’ll come back to it maybe at the end. So that means Greg, sorry, come back to you for this one.

Question 6: Should Children Be Baptized After Professing Faith?

Should children be baptized after a profession of faith?

And should parents be afraid of the situation described in Hebrews 6:4-8 for children being baptized too soon? If you’re not familiar with the passage, it talks about those who basically believe but then fall away. It’s impossible to renew them to repentance.

This is a great question. I thank whoever asked this question. It’s a question that I’ve been thinking about personally just because I have children in my household who profess faith. What do you do with this?

Because it is clearly a biblical command that people who profess faith in Christ should be baptized. This is Acts 2:38: repent and be baptized. This is a direct command and it’s something we have to think through very carefully as a church.

What are the two sides here? It boils down to this. If a child professes faith, is it maybe sort of disobedient of us or wrong of us to keep them from baptism because we’re keeping them from obeying this command?

Or on the other side, is it in fact dangerous to baptize children too early? Because we see so many instances of children who are baptized who later depart from the faith. Is it dangerous then to give them that false assurance of baptism?

Baptism Is Required but Not for Salvation

And there are many reasons that go into this. Children tend to be impressionable, and a lot of times they by default assume the beliefs of their parents, but it has not been tested. They have not really gone out in the world to stress test that or lived on their own.

They haven’t had the opportunity to demonstrate that when they live on their own they will still be of the faith. As I said, there’s a high rate of observed apostasy of children who have been baptized and then later leave the faith.

So how do we think through this? I want to lay out this very quickly. Before we get to the actual arguments, I just want to lay down a few things. We have to first acknowledge that baptism is required for every believer, but it is not required for salvation.

“Baptism is required for every believer but it is not required for salvation.”

Just as a reminder, we’re not withholding salvation from children by not baptizing them immediately. That is a critical point to make because some churches who do believe in baptismal regeneration would say you’re actually withholding salvation. That’s not what we believe.

We also believe that even though the scriptural pattern in the New Testament seems to be that you are baptized pretty much immediately after you come to faith, there is no mandate to do that. There is no scriptural prescription or even a prescription of the amount of time that’s acceptable.

Fairly early after the initial period, the early church—even in the third and fourth centuries—saw a lot of heresies come into the church. Many councils had to take place, and pastors and teachers in their wisdom started to insert a time period between the profession of faith and baptism, essentially a baptism class.

By the fourth and fifth centuries, it became a four to five week membership class that was a sort of norm. I also have to say that we have very few scriptural examples of what to do with children in particular. Besides some mentions of households being baptized, it’s not even clear who’s in that household or what age the children might be. There is no prescription in the Bible of what to do with children, especially how to evaluate their faith.

At the outset, before I lay out the argument, I just want to be clear that different churches have the freedom—we believe this is one of those things where we have the freedom to decide with scriptural wisdom what to do on this matter and how to handle it.

So how do we think through it? Well, this is how we think through it. We believe it is possible for you to become a Christian at any age. It is possible for you, as soon as you begin to understand the gospel at an early age, to become saved, which is something we rejoice in.

Children can have genuine faith in Christ. We see that in testimonies of people here, but also we see some examples in the Bible of teenagers such as Samuel or even Timothy, who was probably saved at an early age, and Mary, who was about thirteen.

Erring on the Side of Credible Baptism

It is possible for children, especially teenagers, to be true Christians. Secondly, in all cases, I think in this church, we want to err on the side of seeing less false professions of faith.

This goes for not only children, but also adults.

There’s nothing sadder than to baptize somebody up here in a joyous occasion and then a few weeks later to see them walk away from the faith. If you’ve been here long enough, you’ve seen that.

“There’s nothing sadder than to baptize somebody in a joyous occasion and then see them walk away from the faith.”

You have seen that. That’s why we have guard rails. For adults, sometimes these guard rails can stretch out to maybe months. Maybe not ideal, but that is how we’ve been doing it with membership class and baptism class.

For children, the waiting period might be a little bit longer because we really want to make sure that they understand their profession. They have time to demonstrate some fruit: growing in obedience, grieving over sin, willingness to count the cost.

Part of that reason we really want to make sure about this is because once you become baptized, you are a member of the church. You’re a full member of the church. You have all the rights of a member of the church, but you also have all the expectations. You are to stand on your own two feet as a Christian and to hold the line doctrinally with us. You are to serve. You are to submit to the scriptures, participate in the body, pray, exhort, and give.

You’re now under the direct authority of the church. Children of members who are in the church are under the authority of the church, but they’re more under an indirect authority. They’re under the authority of the parents who are under the authority of the church.

We just believe there was a time at which you’re under the authority of guardians and managers. As it says in Galatians 4, Paul makes this analogy: until the time you come of age. I think that we err on the side of a credible baptism more than we err on the side of a quick baptism.

There is no set age really. We can’t say 13 and you’re good to go. But in our experience—I’ve been here for 20-something years—it’s rare that we’ll baptize somebody who’s less than that age. Not that it’s impossible and not that it will never be done, but that just seems like the right age, or maybe even a little later in the later teenage years, to have the opportunity to really grow a little bit in their faith.

Of course, we acknowledge that not everybody matures at the same rate. Even though we take this view that we don’t want children to be baptized too early, we do want to treat them like Christians if they do have a profession of faith. That means we’re not trying to exclude them from the life of the church. We don’t want to take a skeptical view of their salvation. We wouldn’t do this with adults either, right?

We want to treat them as Christians, not as second-class citizens. We intentionally try to train them how to serve, how to be good stewards in the church. That’s part of discipling them as well.

“We err on the side of a credible baptism more than we err on the side of a quick baptism.”

That’s why we allow children to serve in some of these ministries that we have even before they’re baptized.

Hebrews 6 and the Limits of Human Discernment

And the last part—I know we’re out of time—but Hebrews 6:4-8. We don’t believe that, okay? This is a very complicated passage, probably one of the hardest passages to really dive into and interpret in the Bible.

I don’t believe that passage—if you can look at it yourself, I don’t have time to read it now—but I don’t believe that is talking about losing your salvation. Why? Because if you look at it, it says people who essentially fall away will no longer—it’s impossible for them to be restored. And if you say that this is about losing your salvation, it also has to say that you can never be restored to salvation again.

And we know that’s not true because we’ve seen examples of that happen. So I think the spirit of the question though is whether we should be afraid of baptizing children falsely. Is that dangerous? And it is dangerous in the sense that I think we give a false sense of assurance. But I do think we need to be a little bit careful here because there is a broader point: it is impossible for us in the church to really discern anybody’s genuineness of their faith.

It’s not the expectation. We kind of do the best we can, I think, but we know that we’re not going to be perfect on this.

In fact, a great example of this is Simon the magician in Acts 8. This is really funny because in verse 12, he’s baptized by the apostle Philip himself. So he’s baptized by Philip, but it only takes 12 verses for him to then be declared a false convert by the apostle Peter.

So even the apostles didn’t get everything right. And if it’s not up to them to get everything right, it’s not up to us either. We just want to do the best we can.

“Even the apostles didn’t get everything right. If it’s not up to them, it’s not up to us either.”

Yeah, well said. I’ll add quickly that experientially I can testify to both of those things that Greg keyed on. I made a profession of faith at five years old and was baptized, but I realized when I turned close to 13 that I didn’t really believe because I hadn’t faced the cost of following Christ. I hadn’t faced the allures of the world that I did at around that age.

And that’s where I began to walk away from God and try to do God and my own thing at the same time. But then the Lord brought me back at that time, and that’s where I really came to believe and was baptized again. So I feel like that experientially goes along with what Greg said.

And then in terms of returning to repentance, I again have an example in my own family of someone who was raised Christian, departed from the faith after being baptized and all that, but then came back. And she’s one of the strongest believers that I know.

So whatever Hebrews 6 is talking about, it’s not that if you get baptized and depart or if you turn away from Jesus, you can never come back. It is a warning though: don’t say you’re going to temporarily go away from Christ and then just come back later. You might not be able to come back with the way that you turn against Christ like that.

Closing Remarks and Prayer

All right, I think that does it for our time. We’re not going to be able to get to our other two questions, but maybe we can include them in the next elders Q&A or just talk separately about them. I hope this was an edifying time for you.

Maybe you have some follow-up questions you’d like to bring to the elders afterwards. We welcome that, or you can send an email. But next week, we are going to our next topic where we’re going to look at young earth six-day creationism. Talk about a controversial doctrine that even really solid Christians don’t all agree on.

Why do we take this stance at our church? We’re going to start going through that. You think I talked a lot today. Greg’s heading up this topic next time, so just get ready for that. All right.

Mark, would you mind closing us in a word of prayer?

Glad to.

I’ve learned a lot from you guys today. Thank you. It was a feast.

Father, we’re just so thankful for the beauty and richness and sufficiency of your word. We recognize that even in this time you are our great shepherd and that you have taught us through your word. These are not our own ideas. And so we want to give you praise and glory for that.

I pray for the things where members of our congregation and even we may be struggling, that we would just maybe even if we believe things, really embrace them with our own hearts. Father, help us to out of worship believe what you say even if we don’t fully understand it because we love you.

And show us how we might live these things out, even the things on salvation and apologetics. May that fuel us to a greater heart for the salvation of those around us, those we love, and a greater equipping to do that and a building up of your body here in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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