Maybe just a second to reorganize my papers
Does everybody have a handout? Ok.
And is it recording Zeke
Okay. I have to be sure, we're a request, because I'll be using the computer tonight that Renee would normally zoom on.
And so she wants to be able to watch it tomorrow. The recorded version.
So I don't want to to mess that up and have it steal that computer and then have it not be available for her.
So tonight I've given you a handout.
It's got couple of texts that we'll be looking at.
You will need your Bibles, because the first one I didn't give you assuming you would have brought it.
That'll be from first Corinthians. But I want to look at 3 3 different accounts.
Kind of growing in a fourth, but I'm not really counting it, because we won't include it in the comparison.
It's just an interesting historical tidbit it's also not from a Christian.
It's a pagan text, but we're going to be looking at 3 texts that talk about Christian worship, that talk about the meeting at which Christians were celebrating the Lord's Supper.
3 different points. Early in history, the first one, very early as Paul, writing in First Corinthians, chapter 14, the year 53, and then we'll also be looking at Justin Martyr and Hippolytus.
But before we begin, let's open in prayer.
Father. We thank you that you have given us your word, and you have given us the opportunity and the ability to come together and to worship your son in the way that is described by these 3 people.
We thank you that Paul has given us instruction and correction and direction on this, so that we have inspired account of of how we ought to be when we come together to worship Father as we look tonight at how some of Christians who have come before us have handled this and have tried to to weigh
the the options before them, that we would consider both the choices they made, and the choices that we make, and to make those choices wisely, and to seek to make them in a way that brings glory to you Christ's.
Name we pray, Amen.
All right, so like, I said, we'll be looking tonight at 3 or kind of 4 accounts of Christian worship.
And see how it develops. You know, we're familiar, at least relatively familiar with the account that Paul gives, in first Corinthians, but over the next roughly 200 years there were some changes, or I'll say developments that took place.
I'm saying developments because I don't think that that assigns any value.
And so the word that I'm using doesn't say whether it's getting better or getting worse.
It just developed what it does say is that there's continuity.
They're not just making random changes, and I don't think that either of yeah, I think eventually you maybe kind of get to that.
But at least with these 2 texts, we haven't really gotten into just random changes, either for the sake of random changes or people who aren't any longer thinking about why they're making the changes that they are.
These are both very intentional changes that I think can be helpful to us, and thinking about what they did and why so?
Before I get into it. I want to do sort of an introduction of our our various writers, and I want to do that right up front so that I don't get sucked into it, because well, you all know me.
If I if I get going on the historical stuff, I'll get going too long.
And so if I interspersed it, there's no telling what will happen.
I'll do it right here at the beginning, and hopefully, that'll keep me in check.
Paul, you know, but I'll point to just a couple of highlights that are important about this Paul.
Here, of course, is writing to the Corinthian Church, and we are able to date this letter.
Unlike most of Paul's letters, or most of the New Testament, really we're able to date this letter pretty precisely because Paul talks about people that were in different places while he's in Corinth.
He talks about how long ago things were. So we're fairly secure dating this letter around 53.
It could have been 52 could have been 54, but that's kind of the range that's available for dating First Corinthians.
So we know when that is, it actually gets used as sort of the anchor for dating the rest of Paul's letters.
They mostly get dated relative to First Corinthians, because we know from Roman governmental records, when Golio was in Corinth, or wherever he was operating out of.
I don't know if he operated out of Corinth, but we know when he was there.
So, Paul, you pretty much know plenty. We're not going to go into in the comparison, and I haven't given you the text.
I'll read a little excerpt from it for you, but it's worth mentioning it, just because it's kind of neat.
He was a Roman governor, so in official that was sent from Rome, and he was the governor of Pontus and Bithenia, which is a region in what we know of as Turkey.
He's the region. He's the Governor of Pontus and Bithenia in 111 to 113 AD.
It's in that capacity that he encountered Christians for the first time, or or maybe he had encountered Christians before, but that was the first time that he encountered Christians, and he was in a position where he had to decide what to do about them and
And so because they've been, you know Christians have been brought before him.
They've been denounced to him as Christians.
He's, he does some things about it, but it's not a good idea to accidentally do something that isn't what the Emperor would have wanted.
So before he goes too far into it. He writes to the Emperor, and asks you know he's like this is what I've done.
Is it a good idea? Not so much. You tell me. I just want to do what you want to do is kind of the gist of his letter.
He had essentially. And I'll I'll give you the the main body of the letter.
Some Christians had been denounced to him in that region, and so he interrogated them, and he, he, the ones who renounced their faith, who said, You know?
No, I'm not a Christian, and proved by worshipping Roman gods or by sacrificing to the Emperor.
He was like, Ok, you're fine. You're good to go.
The ones who would persist for a little while. He'd interrogate them 2 or 3 times to see if he could get them to renounce this identity.
If they did renounce it, he would pardon them.
The ones who persisted. After 2 or 3 different interrogations, he executed, except for the ones who were Roman citizens.
Those he packed off and shipped back to Rome as you know, we're familiar with having happened with Paul, so that's why he's writing this.
And of course, people being people, you can probably imagine what happens once you know somebody you hear about people in town who have been arrested for being Christians, and some of them even executed.
He starts to get anonymous letters, detailing who are Christians, and he's asking the Emperor.
This is starting to get a little crazy. I don't like this, and the Emperor ends up writing him back and saying, you've done.
You've done exactly right. You've done like you should.
We don't want to let them get out of hand.
These Christians can cause problems, but there is no place for aonymous denunciations and Roman jurisprudence.
So, you know, shut that down right away. Don't let people just name their neighbors as Christians.
We don't want to get into that now. In the middle of that.
The only reason that this is even part of what we're talking about tonight, and you may have.
You may have heard of plenty in this context. So after he's talking about people who have were willing to denounce their faith, he said, I also wanted to know a little bit more about what it was they were doing.
You know. Was it? Was it as awful? Basically, how bad are these people?
They're obstinate. And so for that I mean they need to be punished.
But what in the world are they doing? And so, in interrogating them, he, he says, they asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been, that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn, and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as
To a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not to falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so.
When this was there over, it was their custom to depart, and to assemble again to partake of food.
But ordinary and innocent food. Even this they affirmed, this is some of the people who had renounced their faith that he's getting them information from, he says even this they affirmed that they had ceased to do after my edict, by which in accordance, with your instructions, I had forbidden
Political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more.
Necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing 2 female slaves, who were called deaconesses, but I discovered nothing else but toraved, excessive superstition, have a feeling that we might refer to some of the depraved excessive superstition as theology but you know who
knows, so that is Plenty's report right around, you know.
111 to 1, 13. I don't remember.
I don't know exactly when in that range the letter is written, but within those years he's reporting about Christians coming together to sing to Christ Singh hymns to Christ as to a God
So we're getting that report very early, Justin, and Hippolytus, who we are going to be looking at their texts tonight.
You're probably less familiar with so I'll give you a little bit more than I did with Paul, and in your in your packet on the last page gave you some space here that was available for like biographical stuff, the the chart that's on the front is for or the first page is is one that
I'm going to be using for text and analysis. But if you want to make notes about the, you know Paul Justin or Hippolytus, there's some space there.
There's also the back of your sheet, which is always available.
So Justin lives from about 100 don't know his exact birth year, but from around 100 to 165 he's born in Samaria.
The text that we'll be looking at was written around 150.
That's on your, on your 3 column chart as well.
So he's born in Samaria, but he's not ethnically, ethnically, a Samaritan.
He's probably a Greek. It seems like his family had come and helped colonize this area.
And the town where he was living is current day. Nablus, in northern Israel.
He, Emily, is probably fairly well off, and so he gets a very good education, and he pursues philosophy as sort of his.
His area of study. He tries out several different philosophical schools, and settles on Platonism as the one that he thinks answers the kinds of questions that he's interested in, which already at that point have to do with God he's he's very interested in that notion in the notion
Of divinities, and he doesn't think stoicism stoicism doesn't answer it.
Forum, and the Pythagoreans want him to learn too much background material.
He didn't want to do the geometry and the astronomy that was required in that course.
So he settled on Platonism by the way, he's not a Christian.
At this point. He's growing up in a pagan family pagan Greek family, and he ends up in probably Caesaria.
Maybe Ephesus, Ephesus, was the old answer, but it's more and more looking likely that he ends up in Caesarea.
Probably for Z. Educational pursuits, you know he's either wanting to learn more, or he's wanting to try to do a little bit of teaching.
He becomes a Christian there around the year 1, 30
Eventually, after that, he he is teaching. He doesn't you know.
He doesn't enter some sort of like full-time Christian clerical life, or anything like that.
He continues, as a sort of a public philosopher, eventually moves to Rome, where he's still going along the same lines.
He opens a school there, a Christian school. At this point, teaching both philosophy and Christian thought.
One of his most famous students is a man Namedation. Think tation was on your your sheet.
He was okay. Soation was on your sheet last week.
He's the one who compiles the dialectseron.
Did I say what? That was? Okay? So the dots are on is a collection of class.
No, it's almost like a harmonization of the 4 Gospels.
So you don't get Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in it, but you get the content of all 4, and it's not laid out like, you know, if you have a harmony of the Gospels at home, it's all in parallel columns.
Not doing that. If Matthew and Mark both have the same material, he's just going to.
And sometimes Matthew, Mark and Luke all have it.
He's just going to bring it all together into a single narrative and filter in John, where John seems to belong in that, so that you have one single narrative that represents all 4.
This was actually and and like Syrian and far Eastern Christianity, this was pretty much the dominant form of getting the Gospels.
It was more popular than the 4 canonical Gospels.
For a long, long time. It was very influential, and we still use it because it preserves.
You know this reading or that reading, and so you can see different textual things that are helpful to textual scholars.
Butation was Justin's most famous student at Rome Station eventually leaves and goes back to Asian.
And then Justin is beheaded that's why he's Justin Martyr that wasn't just a last name.
That's who he that's how he died. He was beheaded around the year 165.
Now the tradition around his execution is that he was denounced by some sort of arrival who really didn't like him, and was mad about it.
The you know, research suggests that that's probably not accurate.
It seems more likely that Justin didn't need any body to denounce him to the courts as a Christian.
Justin was constantly, you know, publicly getting involved in stuff going on.
He was, you know, whenever Christians were being accused of anything, he was there to defend them.
He was going to be well known, and most likely was arrested and executed because he had made too much of a pain of himself for the for the Roman authorities, and certainly they knew the man was a Christian, so that's why he was martyred 3 things that we have from him.
Are the dialogue with Tripo, which Tripo was maybe a fictional Jew, but it's the dialogue with Tripo, a Jew.
The first apology, which is what tonight's reading comes from, and then the second topology.
An apology for anybody who isn't a. It's not like saying you're sorry.
It's apologetics where you're defending the face and that's what's going on in both the first and the second.
Apology.
The last person that we'll be looking at tonight is a man named Hippolytus.
He lived from 170 to 235 mostly, if not all, in and around Rome.
He was somebody that you'd think of as a hardliner.
He didn't like compromise on anything he was.
He was a priest in the church in Rome, and he accused Zephyrinus, who was the bishop at the time, and so, of course, the Catholic Church refers to them as Pope Zephyrinus I don't know if I think That's
Out of like historical. I don't think we're really dealing with Popes yet.
And certainly we're not dealing with with what we now think of as the Pope but Zephyranus is a bishop in Rome.
Who's, you know, in a position of authority over Hippolytus Hippolytus attacks him, accusing him of modalism, which is a crystallological heresy that we'll probably get into in a couple of weeks and then after Zephyrinus
Dies, he opposed Hippolytus, opposed the next person who was elected bishop, a man named Calyxus, and that was basically on the basis of not thinking that Calyxus was rigorous enough in and how he guarded entry to the church and
Admission to the Lord's Supper, he thought, you know, Calyxus was way too willing to forgive people who had gone off into bad sin, and now come back and work closely to repent of that.
And Calyxus was fairly willing to receive them back into fellowship and Hippolytus wanted to make it harder to let them back into fellowship, and that sort of for a time divided the church at Rome.
There was a rival faction that elected him as bishop, and so he he'll get referred to as an antipope, which is, you know, a in the history of Catholicism.
Whenever you've got a person who's recognized as Pope, and then there are other rivals who, you know, somebody else thinks should be the Pope.
That person gets called the Antipope, and I believe Hippolytus was probably the first one that they would term this way.
But by the end of his life in 235 he was reconciled with the Church.
They had made peace, and he actually dies after being shipped off to a mine for being a Christian.
He sentenced to hard labor for being a Christian, and dies there as a martyr.
He is. It is not a 100% certain that the man I've just been telling you about is the author of this text that we'll be looking at.
It is highly likely, but we don't know for sure.
It is assuming that he's the author then it's a Roman text, and it has to be from before 235, which is how I'm dating it.
It could theoretically also be Syrian or Egyptian in its origin, but in any case it's from you know, sometime in the third century there, and shows the same progression that I want us to be looking at and thinking about any questions before we jump into the text.
I see a couple of thinking faces.
So in saying, you know Pope and Antipope, and all that, that's something that I'm giving you the language that later historians, Catholic historians, would have put on it like I say, I don't think that you're dealing with, anybody that's a Pope, certainly not a
Pope, in the modern sense. At this point in history, if if anybody's calling, I mean Pope is just so, it basically means father, right?
It's papa, and if anybody's referring to them, as you know, the papa, it's in the same way that you know the there they're bishops of churches all over the Eastern world that get referred to as the papa so I don't think it would have
Been any more than that. Certainly not at this point, taking the view that they have authority over the whole church or anything like that. So I was just giving you the the terminology that you'd see if you want to look them up on the Internet
All right. So in that case, let's get into the let's get into comparing the text and the worship services that they describe, because what's going on
That all 3 of them
I'm not plugged in
Oh, this could no, no.
No, I think, need to wait for it to come on
All right while we're oh, good while we're waiting for me to get warmed up and on, and everything you can turn in your Bibles, because that's where the first text comes from.
It's up there, not back there
Turn to first Corinthians. Chapter 14,
Actually, let's start the first Corinthians. Chapter 11.
I'll just read a couple of verses before we skip on to Chapter 14.
Trees, bookmarks goes faster.
All right. So let's start. In first Corinthians.
11, verse 17. This is where Paul is talking a little bit about the Lord's Supper, that as they're celebrating it in Rome in Corinth. Sorry!
And he says, but in the following instructions, I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better, but for the worse, for, in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and he goes on and we're familiar with some of this
Material, but I want to highlight that he's talking about when you come together.
When you come together as a church, we skip down now to verse 27.
He's continuing to talk about this, and he says, Whoever whoever therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner, will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord, let a person examine himself, at then and so eat of the bread, and drink of
the cup, for if anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment unto himself, that is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died, and
Okay. And he continues on. And then in 33, he continues and says, so.
Then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
So now we pass on to Chapter 14 for our main text
Verse 26, he says, what then, brothers? And I bring all this in because he doesn't tell us exactly what the context is here.
But I think it's pretty clear. What then, brothers, when you come together, each one has a hymn, lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation, and he continues on, and you're familiar with it.
But let's for the sake of getting things rolling.
What are some things here that Paul is telling us about? First of all, when he says in verse 27, when you wait
Oh, sorry. Verse 26, when he says, when you come together, what is he talking about?
When you come together
The.
Coming together as a church's body, I think, though also he's not just talking about any coming together.
With the church as a body. I think he's talking about coming together for the Lord's Supper.
He's what he's been saying all through chapter 11 and all of this is just continued.
So I think we can pull that in
Oh, I need my
Key
All right.
So when you come together, that's the first thing that we know about it.
And and I think we can say the context for this, and don't worry about that number 4 that'll connect later.
But that the point of coming together here is the bread and wine, and we can draw that in from chapter 11, and also
No, that's verse 33 is a different bit.
All right. So what else, though, can we say about what Paul describes the meeting and meeting together for the Lord's Supper?
From this whole passage, going all the way down through 26, through 33,
Right? Okay, it should be orderly.
There's, and he says that directly in verse 40, that things should be done decently and in order, what else?
How is it conducted
Any characteristics of it that you want to pull out from this passage.
Who's who's the one who's leading it?
Well, who of the people are taking a leading in this? Right?
Ok, the men. We get that from another passage, though right?
This one says, what
Oh, that's true. Later on, in that's in 34.
I'm only going through 33. That's sorry
So here he says.
If any, if any, speak in a tongue, and earlier in the previous material, he talked about every one of you, though we know that
Each one has a hymn or a lesson, or a revelation, or and Renee told me I was going to have to.
There we go she told me I was going to have to scroll down and lose the title to keep everything else.
So each one has a hymn, a lesson, revelation, a tongue, and an or an interpretation right?
So that's how they were supposed to come together with everybody having something like this.
Now, what else does he say about that? More specifically
Ok, it's all done for edification. Looking more just for the for the mechanics of it.
So he says, when he talks about them, coming with the the hymn, particularly when he talks about tongues.
He says, you know in turn and tool, or 3 at most, you know not.
Let's see, did I have the oh, I had. I had the in turn more on the prophecy, so we'll just get those all right, he says.
A tongue, 2 or 3 at most, and there needs to be somebody to interpret and profits tour or 3 at most, and then the the last thing that we don't have up there yet that if there's a revelation that should also be one at a time, so he's saying with the profits let you know let
That what they say be weighed. You should be. You should be considering what the people are saying.
Not just waiting for him to stop, so that you can get up there and say your bit right Paul said.
Don't just get in line. Weigh what the prophet says.
So this is sort of the outline that Paul gives us will, we'll say, more qualitative stuff after we have more points of comparison here.
So let's move on to Justin Martyr, and it's getting late enough that I'm not going to try to illicit too much.
I'll just read and pop them up on the screen as we're going
All right. So chapter 67 is the one and I've sort of marked it off for you.
A little bit. But chapter 67 is the chapter of the First Apology, where Justin is describing what Christians do, as he says on a Sunday.
If you look down around the fourth line, he says, on the day which is called Sunday, we have a common assembly.
So, and in the translation I was using when I made this, when I put all this together, it says, the day named after the sun.
But this one more loosely translates it as Sunday.
That's when they come together is on Sunday, and what I should tell you about this text oh, Zeke, you're having problems following me, I bet, because I keep wandering.
Nope! I'm fine! Oh, good! So what I should tell you about this text is that it is addressed.
It's an apology, right? So it is making a difficult of the faith, and it is addressed to the Emperor.
Now I doubt if the Emperor actually read it you know.
That's about as likely as Joe Biden reading a letter.
If I mailed a letter to the White House I think there are lots of people who get between the President and random letters that some random guy in Milwaukee sends and probably files them appropriately in a wastebasket so I think the Emperor probably never read it but
Ostensibly it's a addressed to the Emperor.
More importantly, I think it's a address to a pagan audience, and so they don't know.
They hear terrible rumors about what's going on with these Christians when they get together but they don't know, and so Justin in this section is trying to make that clear he's trying to explain to them, what do we actually do?
So he says, on the day which is called Sunday, we have a common assembly all the all those who live in the cities, or in the outlying districts, and the memoirs of the apostles, or the writings of the prophets, are read as long as there is
Time. So the first thing he mentions them doing are the memoirs of the Apostles, and the profits.
And it's interesting. He says they're red as long as there is time, so I don't know exactly how they timed this, but maybe it varied week to week, or maybe it was.
You know, varied from how they planned to do things, but it's you know, he says, they're red as long as there is time.
Then, when the reader has finished, the President of the Assembly or the presider, is how I have them in my notes, sorry for the disconnect there, but the presider verbally admonishes and invites to imitate such examples, of virtue, so the presider gives a
verbal exhortation that sounds kind of like a sermon to me. Right?
Think we're basically talking about a sermon on those texts.
Then we all stand together and pray. So that's his next
Step. We all stand up together and offer up our prayers, and, as we said before, and he's talking about in an earlier passage, where he was describing another part of Christian practice, as we said before, after we finish our prayers, bread and wine and water are presented
Water, because the early church typically and I think I think the Catholic Church still does this, and maybe some Protestant churches.
I'm not sure but wine was not served straight at bottle strength, but it was mixed with water.
That was a typical Roman practice at the time, for how wine was served and it's how it was done in the church, and it has, I believe, continued.
But don't hold me to that, because I never trained as a Catholic priest, so I didn't.
Don't have to know exactly how to mix that. But anyway, bread and wine and water, I'm just saying, you know, the water being there, we're still just talking about what we would think of as the bread and wine
Bread and wine and water are presented. He who presides.
So we've got that presider again, likewise offers up prayers and thanksgiving as much as he is able
Furs up prayers and thanksgiving to the best of his ability, and the people express their approval by saying, Amen.
People than a sand
The Eucharistic elements are distributed and consumed by those present to those who are absent, they are sent through the deacons.
So, after all, that we get the distribution and participation in the Eucharist and the wealthy, if they wish, contribute whatever they desire, and the collection is placed in the custody of the President, and he goes on to describe how that gets used
All right, so
You've got all that Justin has laid out a little bit more of a step by step.
This is how, what we this is, what we do, and what order we do.
It. This is approximately a 100 years after Paul and Justins and Rome.
By this point. There's a little bit of scholarly debate whether he's more describing the practice at Rome, the practice from Caesarea, because apparently there were differences in regardless.
They're pretty close, and he's describing the practice about 150 AD.
Onto the last reading, and think for the sake of time we won't actually read it.
But if you glance through it you'll see that there's a priest line.
And then a response line, and so there's a sort of column.
Well, not calling response. The term is escaping me right now, but there are scripted lines that are used at the beginning, and then what follows is a Eucharistic prayer.
What happens? What's going on in this text is Hippolytus is writing a church, order.
The apostolic traditions in is in a genre called Church Orders.
And it's basically an instruction manual for how to run the church.
All the way down to when it's time to give thanks for the bread and the wine.
This is, these are the words that you pray. It is scripted to that point, but by Hippolytus.
Now it's not a 100% sure whether people actually ever used exactly what a politics said, at least not at the time of Hippolytus.
But it was a pretty influential text, and we see traces of it, you know, recorded liturgies from the third century in the fourth century.
In several different parts of the world, where clearly they are using Hippolytus, and maybe, or using the apostolic traditions which we think is maybe making some alterations here or there, but still they're following the same basic procedures.
And they've got exact terminology. So what I'd say for Hippolytus is that we have a specific priest and layer responses.
And then the priest praises pacific, constructed prayer before distributing the bread and the wine.
So with what little time we have left, which
I guess we'll define it as we'll still have a little bit.
How would you describe or characterize the shift, the the development, the change that we've seen in the course of almost 200 years, from 53 to 150 to 235
Yeah, right.
Okay. Spontaneous, descripted. That's good.
What else would you? How else would anybody want to describe it?
Right. That's another big thing, in my opinion, is that not only have we gone from spontaneous freedom to, you know, sort of a scripted, tinking, tink, tinking, but we've also had sort of a narrowing.
You know it's no longer, you know, any any number of people, but there's one guy who keeps getting invested with with responsibilities. Here.
Z
Yeah.
Right, right.
So both of them are in both of the later ones. You're not.
Just you first you narrow it down some, or you schedule it out some.
Then, by the time of Hippolytus, it's totally controlled
So let me ask them.
I'll ask 2 questions at once, and you can. You can feel them whichever way you're more comfortable with, or have an answer for, what?
Well, I think we kind of talked a little bit about what's lost, what might be gained in this kind of progression.
Why would people? Why would the Christians in the first 2 centuries?
Why would they have done this? Why would they have made these choices
Right right, so I'll sort of restate and maybe summarize, although you were fairly succinct.
So for those on zoom the what Neil's suggesting is that you know, as you had all these different people saying things they could have, you know, tripped over this subject or or said things that were not right and needed to be corrected, or whatever and so there would be a tendency then instead of you
Know, letting that continue to kind of tighten the reins, I think, is the phrase that you used.
Leadership would tighten the reins on that sort of restrict who got to say something to the point that by the time you get to 235 Hippolytus is saying, you know, we're just not going to let any of the riffraff say anything we've got this
One guy. Neil didn't say riffraff. That was sorry.
That was me. I'm the one who said riffraff. We're not gonna let any of the riff Raff talk.
We've got this one priest if they want to say anything they get to say, and with your spirit, then they get to say, we have lifted them to the Lord.
Then they get to say it is proper and right, and other than that they keep their mouths shut, because, you know, you can't count on them to say anything that actually is edifying.
That is even accurate, Zeke, did you want to add something
Ok, so, Zeke, well, we're not quite going to Gaul yet.
Oh, yeah, we are in gall. We're not quite going to the British Isles yet, but we'll get there soon.
But the point is good, and that is that if you're wanting to spread the church and you, you know you go to this village and let's say that you're just a really amazing evangelist.
So you get there, you share the gospel, and this whole village of Britons says, Oh, yeah, that sounds great.
Well, then, the very next morning, if you're going with a politics scheme, they're probably capable of the responses, and you only have to have the priest there in order to conduct a worship service, whereas you know when Paul goes to a town it takes him a long time to be able to bring these
People up, to speed to the point that you can really let them go.
You don't have to to educate everybody so you could view it.
As you know, this this would be advanced in that sense, and and it'll be simpler that way.
So.
I'm trying to sort of summarize my thoughts so that we can come to a little bit of a conclusion, because I think these are some right thoughts.
I think the biggest problem probably, was the the fact that you know people say anything and and you can get especially from a group of Christians where there is no, you know, printed Bible that they have available to them yet.
And and even by the time of Justin and Hippolytus, where you know the Bible is starting to come a little bit more together, fairly sure what it is.
Still, hardly anybody's got access to it. I mean, they're super expensive.
And so, who knows what somebody might say? And there's a knee-jerk reaction.
I think it's not a power grab. I don't think I think it is a protective move to say, you know what. Let's let's say, you know, just these couple of people
That I think those are the choices that they made.
You know we can. We can judge those choices as right or wrong, I'm going to say that I think the vast majority of Christianity, you know, most of us are probably thinking about.
You know, a Catholic priest, and that level, particularly with the, you know, absolutely scripted, laid out, you know, before Vatican 2.
They've messed up one word in the mass. You had to go back and start over from the beginning.
Kind of thing, so you know, that's how scripted they had it, and that's probably what a lot of us are thinking about.
But really, if you walk into most evangelical churches, nobody's getting in that pulpit who's not an ordained and approved minister by the denomination, Congregational churches are a little bit different.
Usually then the local church is the ordaining body, and so they have more flexibility than, say, President, search where the Presbyterian Church hierarchy has to ordain.
But even there nobody else is likely to get into that pulpit at least very easily.
So that choice has been made there as well. We have made a little bit of a different choice.
We are favoring still that that early model with more freedom
So what I would say there is. What do we have to do?
Because the the calculus that led them to say, You know what?
Let's what's keep this restricted to people that we know we can trust.
What do we have to do in order to not run into the same problems that they were trying to avoid
Because the first of all do we agree that those problems are real?
Somebody getting up and teaching, you know, heresy, even if by accident.
You know those problems are real. So what were you saying?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, but but you're right. It requires good and strong leadership.
And and also leadership. That's that's able to think about this in real time.
Right? Haveppolytus wasn't even satisfied with what Justin describes, where the presider, you know, exhort or exhorts.
However, he wants to praise as much as he's able.
Hippolytus says, you know. What? How about you?
Just use these words. Well, if we do that, then we can vet that we can get, you know.
Really look at it and make sure that there's nothing wrong.
With these words, we can do that beforehand. If we come in here for the Lord's Supper, and somebody walks up here to the microphone.
We have to be doing that in real time while they're talking, considering what they're saying, and you know, and it's incumbent particular.
The the elders, so I'll you know, throw that to you guys, because that's part of the responsibility that you accepted it's incumbent upon them to evaluate that.
And in real time, while it's happening, and say Whoa!
That's out of bounds. That's not right.
And then not only do they have to have that theological judgment, then they have to decide.
Alright. These, you know, when people get up and say something wrong at the Lord's Supper, it falls into kind of maybe it falls into 3 categories I don't know.
Maybe there's a category where you just shake your head and don't really need to do anything about it.
I don't know whether those exist or not, but certainly there are 2 others, and those are the ones where you need to go to them afterward and take them aside and do some redirecting, and and then and I've only seen it a couple of times where it had to happen but then you have
Instances, where now you don't wait until afterwards to take them aside.
Something needs to be said right now, and that's a heavy responsibility, and it's not easy to do right.
You don't know when you're doing it a lot of times.
What the right answer there is. So by expiring the freedom we accept the responsibility to sort of I don't want to use the word police, but it's kind of the right word to police it in real time, actively thinking actively paying attention actively engaged by giving up some of the freedom people
make the choice to be able to do that. Policing in advance not have to be as actively engaged in real time.
But these are the kinds of choices that were going on in the early church already
Goes in completely different directions. As you get out of my time period.
Well, even late. In the patristic period it goes in different directions, and I think you can't be.
I'm not able to be as sympathetic as I'm able to be with Hippolysis and Justin.
But but at the beginning, at least, this is what they were after, and I think you know it's incompetent upon us, you know.
Keep in mind the responsibilities that comb with the choices that we've made.
I like the choices we've made, but they come with responsibilities
And that's that's all I've got to say about that.
As Forrest Gump would say, I'm not going to ask if there are any questions.
If there are, you can come, grab me afterwards, or email me, or text me, or whatever I'm just going to close this in prayer.
And then I assume, Jim, am I turning it over to you for
Okay.
Father, we thank you again for the opportunity to worship. We thank you that we are welcomed into your presence, that we can boldly come before you, father.
We pray that we would take seriously not only that privilege, but that responsibility, that we would come before you boldly, but also come before you appropriately and thoughtfully, reverently, knowing that that it is important that it be done correctly.
Father. We we hope that tonight we've been able to look at these Christians and think about the the choices they made, and that we can learn from them.
Learn both from the the good decisions that they made, and also choices that we might not have made father.
We pray that we can faithfully go forward and and worship you in a way that brings honor and glory to you, and also enjoy the freedom that you have allowed for us to have in that worship in Christ's name.
We pray, Amen.