The Church's Blueprint
247 | “Back to the Church of the Bible” | Seven sermon summer surfin’ spectacular
Go Back to the Book
We're closing our "Seven Sermon Summer Surfin' Spectacular" by opening the vault! This episode is a time capsule: our very first recording together from an old radio show — our "naked baby pictures" episode. Inspired by "National Back to Church Sunday," we ask a bigger question: What does it mean to go back to the church of the Bible? How does the New Testament's pattern for work, worship, and organization compare to today? And why is unity under Christ's authority so crucial? Join us for a foundational discussion that's still relevant today!
Takeaways
The Big Idea: Rather than choosing a church based on preference, we are called to find and be a part of a local body that faithfully follows the New Testament's pattern.
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Introduction
Ryan: this is like when your parents say, hey, let me get out the photo album and show you naked baby pictures of Bryan and Ryan. Yeah.
Bryan: Oh, cowabunga, everybody. This is our seventh sermon of our seven sermon summer surfing spectacular here on the episodes we've been doing over the summer, a bunch of sermons. We've been dropping out some teachings from some of our friends, from each other. And then today on this episode, the final one in this series, before we get back into another season of episodes on the podcast, we're going to do something different.
And this is an episode where Ryan and I pull from the archives of history. This conversation we had on a radio program way back in the day that was called Back to the Church of the Bible. Was this... I think this was the very first time you and I recorded together. Maybe there was one
Ryan: so. I think so. The other one we did at some point was on marriage and family. But I think that might have been after
Bryan: Yeah, probably. Yeah. So this episode, Ryan and I did together, and you are going to hear a lot of precursors to the Bible Geeks, and you're going to hear a lot of awkward, pre-written sort of like... We definitely had not hit any sort of stride.
Ryan: this is like when your parents say, hey, let me get out the photo album and show you naked baby pictures of Bryan and Ryan. Yeah.
Bryan: This is about as bad as my family watching me play Batman on VHS tape. Yeah, of course, it's really bad. But no, this is a good... We downplayed this episode. Of course, we're going to do that. But this was a really good discussion that Ryan and I had centered around this idea of National Back to Church Sunday, which I didn't even know was a thing, and apparently is still a
Ryan: Yeah. So it's a day that I don't know, somebody came up with in September that is intended to encourage people that have are, you know, the unchurched, as they call them in demography and demographics, is to encourage people to come back to a church, you know, to find their way back to some congregation on a Sunday and a way to just invite others.
But we wanted to do a spin on that. And instead of just saying, go back to a church, we want to encourage people to go all the way back to the church of the Bible. So it's really around the theme of restoration and I guess you would call it, you know, going back to what did the apostles teach?
What was the church that Jesus inspired those early prophets and apostles to direct people to different practices, the way that you're saved, different things like that.
Bryan: Yeah, so we're going to cover a lot here in just a little bit of time here in this episode. So we're going to play that for you now, and then stay tuned.
Sermon 7: "Back to the Church of the Bible"
Bryan: We'll be back to talk a little bit more about it. In this episode, we call it Back to the Church of the Bible.
Ryan: This morning we're going to be talking about the church, and I'm joined by my friend, Bryan Schiele. We both received a message this week promoting something called National Back to Church Sunday, which evidently is next week. And it's, I guess, a marketing idea to encourage people to go worship somewhere.
I'm not sure who came up with it or what it's about. But it got us asking the question, "What does it mean to go back to the church of the Bible? What does it mean to go back to the Bible to see what the church should be?" So my first question for you, Bryan, is, does it matter what church you're a member of?
Bryan: I think that's a deeply personal question that anyone who's really seeking after the Lord, seeking after the truth, is probably going to be asking themselves on a regular basis, "Does it matter what church I'm a member of?" And for a lot of us, it's going to be some backstory there, some reasonings why we actually attend the church that we attend.
For some, it actually might be the church that their parents went to. For others, it might be a church that's very welcoming or a church that offers programs that they're interested in. We find ourselves at a church for a lot of different reasons, I think. And really, the question for me is, is a matter of understanding what the church is.
And when I look to the New Testament and I see that the word "church" is actually, in the Greek, is translated as "ekklesia," which is just really a fancy word that means a gathering or an assembly of people. And so, a church is an assembly of people, is a gathering of people who are interested in the same thing.
And when you look to the early church, the very beginnings of the church in Acts chapter 2, after Peter preached at Pentecost, those people who were being baptized, those people who were being saved, were being added to the church. They were being added to this body or this group or gathering of the saved.
And that's the church that I want to be a part of. That's the church that I need to align myself with, and that's the church that I need to be assembling with. And so, there's kind of two answers to the question. I want to be a part of this body, the church that's consisting of the saved, but I also want to attend with a local group in my area that is interested in salvation, that's made up of Christians, that's focusing on serving the Lord and worshiping Him.
And so, there's kind of two parts to that answer. We understand that Christ is the head of the church, He's the head of the body. From Colossians chapter 1 and verse 18, He's the head of the body of the church. And in Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 4, this body is defined as one body. And so, it's kind of an interesting thought to think of the church as being one body, but located in a lot of different places and from city to city.
Yeah, it's definitely important where I'm a member of, what church I'm a member of, and I have to be a member of Christ's church because there's only one, as we see in Ephesians chapter 4. So, what I heard you say is that the way we know whether we're part of the body of the saved is by seeing whether what we're practicing matches the Bible.
Ryan: And the way we know whether we're with a local church that's practicing the right thing is by comparing what we're doing at the local church level with the Bible. It kind of makes me think of Revelation 2 and verse 5. Jesus there is actually giving personalized letters to churches, which is just so cool and also humbling.
Can you imagine if Montevista or whatever church you're a part of got a letter, the local church got a letter from Jesus. But to this local church, He says, "Therefore, remember where you have fallen and repent and do the deeds you did at first or else I am coming to you and will remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent."
And there are all of the churches that he's talking to had these lampstands that seem to represent Jesus recognizing them as faithful to Him. That's the burning, living soul of this congregation. And whenever that's taken away, Jesus doesn't recognize you as His people. Like with Ephesus, evidently when you're not doing the deeds that you're supposed to be doing.
Bryan: Right. There is a pattern for the church. There is a requirement or an obligation that the church follow Christ. And so I guess the next question here is, what is that pattern? What does the Bible say that a church who's trying to pattern themselves after the Bible needs to do? There isn't one place we can go to find the whole pattern of the work of the church and the worship of the church and the organization of the church, but we can piece it together.
Ryan: When we put it together, we see that the purpose of the church is to glorify God. There's a great picture of the church and God's eternal plan in Ephesians 3. And it ends with verse 21 where it says, "To Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations." And the Bible identifies four distinct works for the local church to accomplish God's purposes here on earth and to glorify Him.
The first one and the core purpose, the core work that we have here is to spread the gospel. Paul says in 1 Timothy 3.15 that the church is the pillar and the support of the truth. If you think of a building, the pillar and the foundation of the building are there to hold the building up. And in the same way, the church exists to hold the truth up for the world to see.
The second purpose is to help those who are already in the church grow, to edify the church. As Ephesians 4.16 tells us to make increase in the body, edifying itself in love. A third work is to give financial support to those who are in the church. Acts 11 and verse 29 gives an example of that from the church at Antioch.
It says that the disciples, as they had means, determined to send a contribution for the relief of the brethren living in Judea. So every example we have in the New Testament of the church supporting people financially is support for those who are already in the church, for saints. And the fourth purpose is to worship God.
Bryan: And that's where I think when we go back to Acts and we look at the early church and what they did in their worship, we see in Acts chapter 20 and verse 7 where the church gathered together on the first day of the week to break bread. And that's when Paul had preached to them from morning all the way through to the evening time when actually Eutychus fell out the window because the preaching was so long.
But they were there to break bread, they were there to preach. Over in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 26 we see that there was a partaking of the bread and the fruit of the vine. Paul's actually instructing the church at Corinth there about how they've sort of abused the practices of the Lord's Supper.
But he's teaching them about how the Lord's Supper really began. That they partake of the bread and the fruit of the vine, partaking of the death of Jesus on the first day of the week. And then in 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and verse 15 we see that they prayed with the Spirit, they prayed with the understanding, and they also sang with the Spirit and they sang with the understanding.
So part of their worship was to pray and to sing. And then in 1 Corinthians chapter 16 verses 1 and 2 the church there was instructed to take up a collection for the saints. There was a need there in Judea to support the needy saints there and Paul instructs them to take up this collection on the first day of the week so that no collections would be made when he came.
So these are the things that we see as the example that the early church did during their worship. They gathered together to hear the preaching of the gospel, they took the Lord's Supper together, they prayed, they sang, and they took up a collection for the needy saints. And so that was something that we see in the early church and that's the way we should organize ourselves for worship today as well.
Ryan: And it's noteworthy that he says, "As I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you." So as you would expect for a pattern, he's instructing the churches to do the same thing everywhere he goes. So we've talked about the work of the church, we've talked about the worship of the church, and now we need to understand how the church is supposed to be organized.
Bryan: Who's the head? Who's in charge? Well, we already talked also about how Christ is the head of the church. He is the only leadership and the only structure there is to the whole church. That's all of us who are saved. But at the local level, we are given a specific organization for how the church should be laid out.
Ryan: Philippians 1, 1, Paul addresses the letter to all the saints at Philippi, including the overseers and the deacons. And then whenever Paul was addressing the elders of the church at Ephesus, remember he was about to leave and he was so sad and so worried about them, and he charges them to shepherd the flock amongst them.
And he calls them elders and he calls them overseers. So we really see three different names for this group. Overseers, sometimes that's translated bishop, a group that manages, looks after a group. Shepherds or pastors, those two words mean the same thing, who are overseeing the flock and tending to us.
And third, elders. And 1 Timothy 3 lays out the qualifications for both overseers as well as this other group we see, deacons, which just means servants, a group of people who are there to provide service to the church. So if this is a picture of what the early church should look like, what are some key differences you see between the church we read of in the New Testament and most churches we see in the world today?
Bryan: So I think the thing that shocks me and disappoints me the most is to look back and to see that Christ wants the church to be united. He wants the church to agree on his word, to follow his word. And when we really start to look at the world and the way that the world has organized themselves, it's really become this splintered and factious kind of organization where for one reason or another, people are aligning themselves with other men, people are following after traditions, people are interested in what feels good and what sounds good, rather than getting back to being what Peter talks about in 1 Peter 2, verse 9, rather than being a chosen generation, rather than being a royal priesthood and a holy nation, rather than being God's own special people.
That's what we should want to be, but it seems that the world has become okay organizing itself the way that it wants to organize itself, wants to worship the Lord the way that it wants to worship the Lord, and wants to do the kind of works that it wants to do. Without regard to going back to God's word, without regard to following his commandments, it's easy for us to make up our own rules, it's easy for us to blaze our own trail, and I think that's what the majority of churches have done today, is defined their own way and found their own path, rather than going back to the specific instruction that Christ gives us for how we should organize ourselves as the church.
And as well-meaning and as honestly intentioned as many of these churches are, we can see clearly that because there's one church and there's one way and there's one path, unless we're following after Christ, then there will be many who are lost on that day. You know, it may have struck some people as judgmental whenever you describe people who call themselves Christians as part of the world.
Ryan: But you didn't draw that line, Jesus drew that line. And it's a sobering, it's a scary thought for me that Jesus says in Matthew 7 21, "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven will enter." And those are religious people.
Bryan: Those are people who are going to church every Sunday. Those are people who are trying to do their best, but they're just not focused on following after Christ. And like you said, that is a really sobering verse to think about because I'm interested in following Christ, you're interested in following Christ, but are we going to find ourselves on that last day not having him know us?
So when we look around today at all of the different denominations, all of the different ideas about how to pattern the church, how did we get so far off track? Well, we drifted. We fell away from the instructions of God, as God's people, given enough time, have often done. And the way back is always to go back to the book.
Ryan: A study of the history of the Israelites shows that over time, they often found themselves drifting away from what they knew God wanted them to do. And then a generation rose up that didn't know what God wanted them to do. And the way they came back was they would find the book of the law. Remember Josiah discovered the book of the law, and it was a revelation.
And they found that when they just looked at what it said and compared it with what they were doing, the distinction was clear. They could restore the work and worship that God wanted by just obeying the law of God. And I love the example of Josiah there, because when you look back at the old law, and you see somebody who was willing, like he was, to investigate all the practices that were going on, all the things that were commonly accepted during that time, and really honestly examine whether they matched with the law, Josiah was willing to repent.
Bryan: He was willing to change. He was willing to take all of the idol worship and all of the pagan practices and just get rid of them completely. And we need to be honest with ourselves, and we need to be soft-hearted like Josiah was, to look around and say, "Am I stuck following these traditional practices, things that have just been passed down to me, things that I haven't really thought about, things that I haven't really considered?
Am I willing to check those against God's word?" And I think when we look around at the world today and the various practices and all of the various innovations and things that have happened over the last few thousand years, I think we have a lot to look at. I think there's a lot of things for us to consider.
Is that practice found in God's word? Do I have the authority to do those things? And if not, we need to be willing like Josiah was to change, to go back to following the truth and only the truth. We look at John chapter 15 and verse 5 where Jesus makes a very clear statement. He says, "I am the vine, you are the branches."
And a lot of people have actually looked at that and thought that that's a justification for all of these other denominational practices in the world, but that's not what Jesus is saying at all. He's saying, "He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me, you can do nothing." Think about that.
If we're not in Christ, if we're not connected to Christ, if we don't have a relationship with Christ, then we can't do anything. If anyone does not abide in me, he says, he is cast out as a branch and is withered and they gather them up and throw them into the fire and they're burned. And so he's basically saying, if you're not connected to me, if you're not following me or abiding in my teaching, then you're basically just ready to be gathered up and thrown away.
And that sounds really harsh, but Jesus is very clear saying that unless we're connected to him, unless we're following him, then we're not with him. It's hard not to jump from abiding in him to 2 John 9. Anyone who goes too far and doesn't abide in the teaching of Christ doesn't have God. The one who abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.
Ryan: It's kind of a commentary on that passage in John 15. How do we abide in Christ? We abide in his teaching. We're fenced in by the word of God. It creates the boundaries by which we connect ourselves to him. And when you look back to the Old Testament, that's exactly the problem that we see with the children of Israel, that they were destroyed for a lack of knowledge.
Bryan: They didn't know the truth. They weren't looking for the truth. They weren't seeking the truth. And unless we're seeking the truth, and unless we know the truth, unless we're trying to abide in the truth, then we're never going to be connected with Jesus, have a relationship with him the way that we say that we want to.
So the question keeps coming back to authority. Who is our leader and what is our creed? What is our guidebook? There are churches with men, with presidents and popes and bishops and councils that lead them. And then there's the church of the Bible, which clearly says Jesus is the one and only leader and Lord.
Ryan: And the New Testament, the book of God, is the only creed. So I think it'd be really easy for people to listen to this and think we're saying we're the only ones going to heaven. Is that what you're saying? It's a really challenging thing to discuss the church, to discuss the organization of the church and the worship of the church and the authority that we have from Christ and how we set up the church, and not to make it sound like we have all of the answers.
Bryan: But the fact is in Acts chapter 4 verse 12, it says, "Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved." And so Christ is the only way that we can all be saved. Christ is the only way that a church can be saved. And so is the Monte Vista Church of Christ the only church that anyone can be a part of to be saved?
And the answer is no, because anyone who is following the authority of Christ can be saved. And that's really the purpose of this lesson is not to draw these lines of distinction to say that we are perfect and we've never sinned, but all of the rest of the world has. The purpose of this lesson is for us all to examine ourselves, no matter what church you go to, no matter where you're a member at, but to ask yourself, are you following the authority of Christ?
And if you're not following the authority of Christ, it doesn't matter what name is on the outside of the building that you attend at, it doesn't matter what you call yourself. If you're not following the authority of Christ, then you won't be saved. And I'm not going to be saved if I don't follow the authority of Christ.
The church that I go to, the membership there will not be saved if they don't follow the authority of Christ. And that applies for you as well. And so really the question that we all need to ask ourselves is who is our head and who do we submit to for our authority? And there's a very personal responsibility that I have to not only look at myself, but to look at the group I'm associated with and say, does this church have its candlestick?
Ryan: Is this church organized and working and worshiping in a way that's prescribed by the Bible? Am I wearing the name that's given to me in the New Testament? You quoted Acts 4, "There's no other name by which we must be saved but the name of Jesus." That's the name that the disciples went by. Acts 11 and verse 26, the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
We need to ask ourselves, are we wearing another name in addition to Christian? We talked about how the church is organized and the work of the church, the worship of the church, what name we're called by, what our faith is, what our creed is. Another really important, maybe most important question about the pattern of the church is how do you enter the church?
Bryan: How are you saved? So, I think the easiest way to answer that question is really just to go back to the beginning in Acts chapter 2 when Peter preached that sermon on the day of Pentecost where he says in verse 36, "Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."
And now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" And so, they were sincerely wondering what it was that they needed to do now that they realized that they had crucified Christ. And in verse 38, Peter says to them, "Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
So, we see that repentance and baptism was a response to their question about what they needed to do to be saved. Then we go on and see in verse 41, "Then those who gladly received his word were baptized and that day about 3,000 souls were added to them." If you drop down to verse 47 of Acts chapter 2, it says that, "The Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved."
So, those who were convicted by the truth that they had crucified Christ, those who repented of their sins, those who were baptized for the remission of those sins were being added to this church that we're talking about. And so, that's how one is saved. And that's the pattern throughout the New Testament that faith and repentance and confessing our faith in Jesus Christ and baptism, immersion, precedes salvation, precedes receiving the forgiveness of our sins.
Ryan: And that is our entry into Christ's kingdom, the body, the church. We want to close this morning by reading from the prayer Jesus prayed in Gethsemane before he was crucified. He prayed in John 17, first for his disciples, the apostles that he'd selected. And then in verse 20, he says, "I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their word."
That's you and me. "That they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me." That's our prayer this morning, that the church that Christ redeemed by his blood would be united, would be one. Not by all of us just agreeing to disagree and get along and have different truths that we ascribe to, but by going back to the book and seeking to be one by understanding and practicing the teaching of Christ and abiding therein.
When we go back to the Bible, we go back to the church that God wants us to be.
Discussing the Sermon
Bryan: So I was going back through, and I realized that we had done this in September on the 7th of 2013.
So very long time ago in the grand history of the Bible Geeks. I don't think we started doing stuff until like 2019. So this was a few handful of good years before that. But yeah, you can tell we were youngins back then. And it was a lot of fun to listen to that. A little cringy for me, but it's okay. Yeah,
Ryan: Oh, that's fun. It was fun. At the time we were doing these radio programs that the church at Monta Vista was doing these radio programs. Ken Leach had been doing them. And then afterwards we were asked to handle some.
And we got the bright idea to, hey, what if we tag team one of these? I really liked it. And that yeah, I guess that was the birth of the Bible Geeks
Bryan: it was absolutely. And funny story, if you go to our website, biblegeeks.fm/about, there will be a photo I think that we took while we were actually recording this. So
Ryan: Oh,
Bryan: one of our photos there on our About page is actually of this recording. And you, I think, were using the proper mic, and I was using the like, "I think I'm cool.
I have my own mic." And mine didn't sound as good as yours did, but who cares?
Ryan: Yeah. So, you know, the the main ideas in this lesson, obviously, they go back to this concept that the purest form of Christianity is the form that Christ revealed to his apostles. You know, after Christ died and rose and and then ascended into heaven, he sent his spirit. And then there are in Acts two on the day of Pentecost, the spirit descends upon the disciples. And they over the period that we read about in Acts and then thereafter throughout the first century are leading the church as Christ through his spirit is leading them.
And it's not that they got everything right. They did a lot of things that they got off track, but they had insight from Christ that we don't have except through the New Testament, where they have their writings and other prophets have captured examples about them to help us to understand what that church was intended to be.
And so we believe that the the best way to be true and faithful to the church and and to the kind of Christianity that Jesus wants us to practice is to make sure that we are spending our time trying to mine the scriptures to understand what that is, rather than us innovating something that is brand new and maybe sounds really cool, but it was foreign to the basic principles and way of practicing Christianity as the apostles and the early church knew
Bryan: Yeah, I mean, we tackled an idea there in the middle of the discussion about unity, and what are some key differences that you see between the church that we read of in the New Testament and many of the churches out in the world today was a question that we asked there. And I really, I think that's even maybe a more relevant question today than it even was back then.
And it's been a relevant question for a long time. It's like, why, why when we look around, do we see things in churches, in religion today that looks so different? know, this is not really a topic we tackle on the podcast very often, but I think it's really an interesting exploration of what it means to be united.
Like, what is unity really all about? And, you know, everyone's going to have lots of different ideas, and it's why I think a lesson like this is helpful because it's not about just going to any church or to being a part of or working with any group out there that believes any certain thing, but it's about trying to find that church that you just talked about based on the apostles' teaching and their doctrine and the things that they put in place and were enabled by the Spirit to do and to put into practice in the world at that time.
And it's so hard because even then, you know, we're looking back as we talked about in our Meet Your Bible episode, we're looking back and it's like, we don't live in the same culture that they did. You know, we don't speak the same language that they spoke. We have all sorts of technology and things at our disposal.
Our culture is just so different. Like, our, you know, our homes are way more spread out than they may have been back there in their times. And so, it's that balance, right, of like trying to understand what it is that they did and practice that we need to emulate and follow, what it is that they did and practiced that aren't really specifically called, you know, calling for us to do.
And to find that balance while also being unified together through the Spirit, through Jesus, a tough task, I
Ryan: is. It is. I mean, I hope that we in no way imply that this is there's this clear and easy, you know, obvious answer. There's a lot of challenging questions that we wrestle with and work through, and it's an ongoing, like I believe every generation needs to do this work of instead of just inheriting what they've received from whoever's teaching them, rather go back and keep the search going and make sure you're going back to the original sources and say, OK, what are we being true to?
What where maybe have we lost our way and constantly doing that work? I was just asked this question that you just asked about where did you know, why doesn't everybody practice the things that we read in the New Testament? I was asked that two Sundays ago, one of our elders preached a sermon on baptism, and it was very much like our session eight in
Bryan: Sure.
Ryan: the Square One series
so this man came forward and we baptized him. And as we were about to baptize him, he said, I, you know, I've never heard it like this.
And I don't understand why other people don't teach it this way.And it is it is a tragedy. And it's something that we all have to watch out for, because what has happened is people are teaching other things that they've layered on top of the Bible.
It's like books about books instead of going back to the book. And and so we just pick up our traditions and we have our interpretations and we really respect the way this guy took it and the way this church established a credo of faith or whatever it is. And slowly we start to lose our way. And we all I mean, I watch this in my own life as I come back.
And how did I miss this? This was here all the time. And, you know, as I sometimes say, I don't agree with myself a year ago, so I can't say that everybody has to agree with me at every moment. But we have to keep going back in order to see more clearly. And a lot of people neglect also the idea or don't realize that the Restoration Movement, the American Restoration Movement in the 1800s is a part of our background, you know, has affected you and me and and where we come from.
And our worldview and philosophy about the Scriptures as we try to go back to these old things. And it was a unity movement. It was not about dividing people. It was about saying, hey, what if, you know, we've got all these denominations. What if we went back to just the Scriptures and we just said, what is happening here?
Maybe then Christ's church wouldn't be split up all over the place. And in reality, in practice, often, you know, people and churches that we have grown up around, you and I, have not been true to that. And there's been more division than unity, unfortunately. But the ideal is to constantly go back and say, how can this unify us if we just say, what does it what does it say?
What can we do if we're just true to this
Bryan: It is so hard. And I think, you know, that's why an episode like this is probably very - still very timely and relevant because we're still dealing with these things. And I am still dealing with these things, you know, in my own life, just making sure that I'm not treating kind of - it's very similar, I think, to the ideas that we had in the Meet Your Bible lesson, right?
It's like, when you think you know something, you stop getting curious and you just become entrenched and you don't - you don't look anymore. And boy, I just need to keep looking. And, you know, maybe somebody out there has a really good idea about something and they're implementing it in a way that I should also be taking on because it actually more closely mirrors the church of the New Testament than I want to admit because all the rest of the things they might be doing, I don't agree with, so I'm not going to - I'm not going to view those things.
I'm not going to see them. And it also reminds me of that conversation we had about Christmas with Alan, you know? It's like, you could just - you could allow the pendulum to swing so far the other direction where you don't even want to talk about something because it's associated with a group who has a totally different belief system than you do and, you know, they talk about it so we don't want to.
And I'm very careful about those kinds of things and I really - I feel like an episode like this is just another kick in the pants to say, "Okay, make sure your faith is your own. Make sure you've thought through everything, considered it all, and of course, used the New Testament church as the model as we always should."
Ryan: you know, in this opportunity we found to do the first of these Bible Geeks conversations, it's some of like the old timey-est points that we ever make because we're going back to just kind of trying to lay foundations. And so hopefully that was helpful to someone, maybe that it can be thought provoking as you think about some of these basic fundamental truths that are so easy to let slip away.
Bryan: And maybe if you have all these things on lock, at least you were entertained by the, you know, listening to baby Ryan and I talk on the episode. That was sure fun, boy. Okay, so this has been our seven sermon, Summer Surfing Spectacular, and
Conclusion
Bryan: We will be back for a normal episode. Have no idea what we're even doing on that one. We're still working through it all, but we're really excited to get back Thanks so much, everyone, for tuning in. And Ryan, I know it's been a summer, so get ready to get back into it next time.
Ryan: Yeah, I'm ready. But I've enjoyed this series. And maybe this is maybe this is a new Bible Geeks tradition. We can bring in some different guests and do sermons again next summer.
I would
Bryan: Yeah. I mean, there's always opportunities for the seven sermon, Summer Surfing Spectacular, every summer, and I'm good. Let's let it roll. So, until the next episode, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in. May the Lord bless you and keep you.