Adult Sunday School: Our Church · Pastor Adam Wood · November 2, 2025

Transcript:
Alright, we are going, we're going to be in actually several passages of scripture today starting in Matthew chapter 18, so you can go ahead and turn there. I'll say a few things to introduce our subject here. We have, when we've gone through this Sunday School series about our church, we've looked at various angles, various issues, various matters. Most recently we've considered our church's music and why it is the way it is. Most recently we looked at our church's music and we examined that subject from a number of different directions. We've also considered, at the beginning we looked at corporate decision making and so we've looked at that. Some of what we'll say today and over the next couple of weeks we'll overlap that a little bit. We also looked at various aspects of our church regarding, you know, just sundry doctrines that are important to our church and there are still a few that are left that we want to cover. Maybe they're not a whole lesson but just part of a lesson. We've looked at church membership. We've looked at, let's try to think off the top of my head because I don't have my notes in front of me, but anyway, we've looked at a number of things and the majors, at least the majors, that are important questions as it regards our church, our particular local church. Now we understand that not all local churches have the same position and viewpoint on everything and this is exactly why what we're looking at today is so important. I know there's a tendency to look at other churches, you know, we might look at other churches or hear of other churches and think, why do they do that? And the liberating thing is we don't have to answer that question. We don't have to care, right? Now we all should care what's going on in our church but what's going on in other people's churches is their business and they will give an account to that for good or for bad, hopefully for good and that's their business. But as far as our church, this is where our focus is on. So we're not trying to be in the business of trying to be busybodies and criticize everything that's going on. I mean we might have a position and an opinion on it but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to try to put our oar in for that church when we have enough things to consider in our own church. So when I say these things, it is not to make it sound like that our way is the only way and there's no other way or anything like that. We want to hold scriptural positions but there are times when churches do things differently than us and it's still scriptural. That is a possible thing. Don't stare at me blankly. It is possible to hold a different position in some ways. I mean of course when you start getting into some things we'll talk about today then there might be issues but again this is honestly the paradigm and the way the Lord has described it in scripture that churches, individual local churches are answerable directly to God. This is the independence principle behind our church. We don't have a denomination that is dictating anything to us whatsoever either directly or indirectly and so with that comes liberty of course. We can do as the Lord directs us but with that also comes responsibility like everything And so what we're going to look at today is we're going to start to look at, don't worry, we're not going to go line upon line in the church constitution but we do want to look at the church constitution. Now the Bible says we should go line upon line in the scripture but we don't want to bore everybody with line upon line in the church constitution because it's not the same as the Bible. We do want to look at it and cover a couple of points, a couple of salient and important points regarding our church constitution because it is a significant doctrine regarding our church and why some things are there and some things aren't and why we even have it. That's what we're going to look at this morning. So let's pray and ask the Lord to guide us and help us in our study. Our Father we thank you for the chance to study your word once again. I thank you for those that have come out and thank you for the weather Lord. What a beautiful day. The leaves are changing and Lord we're just reminded of the beauty that you put in nature for our benefit, for our joy and Lord we do thank you for that. We thank you for the crisp weather but the warm weather later in the afternoon and we thank you for the opportunity to fellowship together with your people and to love one another and to encourage one another. Help us to do that this morning. I pray that as we meet together not only in Sunday school but also in the services that you would meet with us and you would help us to grow, you would help our hearts to be inclined to your word and to your will. Lord bless the kids' class as well as they learn the Scripture. Help them to learn it well and I pray that it will profit those kids also in their life as they grow. We ask these things all in Jesus' name. Amen. So the question I want to pose to everyone is this. Why if we have a Bible, one of the things we covered in our church is what is independent Baptist? What does that mean? And part of that is part of the Baptist part of that means that we have and accept only one rule for faith and practice. Where do we get what we believe and do? We get it from Scripture, the Bible and nothing else. So the question, the follow-up question to that and the logical question to that is if that's the case then why do we have a constitution at all? If we have a Bible, what's the need for a constitution? Is a church constitution necessary? Why don't we just use the Bible? And why do we have a church constitution if we do not see church constitutions in the New Testament? Right? That's a, that's a, I think a valid question. If the Bible is our basis for what we do in our church, why then do we have something and use something in our church that is not in the Bible? There are many things in our church that we use that are not in the Bible. The easiest and most handy of which is this. And these and those and these and these, a multitude of other things we use and we don't say boo about that but all of a sudden with some particulars we get a little bit ornery about it, do we not? And so, but these are, I think these are valid questions especially about our church constitution. Why is it necessary? So basically I have for this, I have three things. I have a, I want to show you a biblical basis, I want to show you practical reasons and then I want to look at just very briefly legal reasons. We won't get to the third one today. So I want to look at the biblical basis for a church constitution. Now you might, I just said I might have contradicted myself or you might think I contradicted myself which is this. If church constitutions are not in the Bible then how are we going to study the Bible to find out about church constitutions? And I admit there are no church constitutions in the Bible but there are principles of scripture that definitely allow and I would even say to some degree call for something similar to a church constitution. So let's just go through the New Testament starting in Matthew 18 verse 15 and just look at a few examples of how, what the Lord says and then how the New Testament churches operated to help us to get a better view of what is, I believe, a biblical basis for something like a church constitution, okay? Matthew 18 verse number 15. This might be a little bit familiar to you from last Sunday. It says this, moreover, if thy brother trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone. If he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother. But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. So a witness is someone who knows the ...