Dennis Tuuri

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat in the throne, a book written within, and on the backside sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the book? And to loose the seals thereof?” And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon.

And one of the elders saith unto me, weep not. Behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne, and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders stood a lamb, as it has been slain, having seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the earth.

And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him that sat upon the throne. Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you for calling us together in holy convocation this day. We thank you, Lord God, that this is the Lord’s day and that this day we come before your special presence in holy convocation to give him worship and to worship you the Father and to worship the Holy Spirit. We thank you, Lord God, that Jesus Christ, your lamb, was slain for our sins.

And because of his shed blood, we have atonement in your sight. His shed blood has produced peace for us where there was wrath for us with you before. We thank you, Lord God, for his work. We thank you on the basis of his righteousness. You have imputed that righteousness to us. And so we come before your presence clothed in his holy garments of his righteousness. Almighty God, we come to you today and worship you.

And we understand that the centrality of that worship must be to our Lord Jesus Christ who this day was resurrected and in this day proclaim forth all the blessings of the covenant and so the book of the covenant blessings has been opened and all history revolves around the blessings to your people that are in the lamb who was slain before the foundations of the world. Almighty God we pray for the power of the Holy Spirit that we might worship you correctly this day and always in Jesus name we pray.

Amen. Exodus 18. And when Jethro, the priest of Midian, Moses’ father-in-law heard of all that God had done for Moses and for Israel his people and that the Lord had brought Israel out of Egypt. Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took Zipporah, Moses’ wife, after he had sent her back, and her two sons of which the name of one was Gershom, for he said, “I have been an alien in a strange land.”

And the name of the other was Eleazar, for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.” And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God. And he said unto Moses, I thy father-in-law Jethro, am unto thee, and thy wife and her two sons with her. And Moses went out to meet his father-in-law, and did obeisance, and kissed him.

And they asked each other of their welfare, and they came into the tent. And Moses told his father-in-law all that the Lord had done unto Pharaoh, and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, and all that travailed that had come upon them by the way and how the Lord delivered them. And Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which the Lord had done to Israel whom he had delivered out of the hand of the Egyptians.

And Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord, who hath delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh, who hath delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that the Lord is greater than all gods. For in the thing wherein they dealt proudly, he was above them.” And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God. And Aaron came and all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God.

And it came to pass on the morrow that Moses sat to judge the people. And the people stood by Moses from the morning unto the evening. And when Moses’ father-in-law saw all that he did to the people, he said, “What is this thing that thou doest to the people? Why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even?” And Moses said unto his father-in-law because the people come unto me to inquire of God.

When they have a matter, they come unto me, and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God and his laws.” And Moses’ father-in-law said unto him, “The thing that you doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away both thou and this people that is with thee, for this thing is too heavy for thee. Thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. Hearken now unto my voice.

I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee. Be thou for the people to Godward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God, and thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shall show them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do. Moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness, and place such over them to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens.

And let them judge the people at all seasons. And it shall be that every great matter they shall bring unto thee, but every small matter they shall judge. So shall it be easier for thyself, and they shall bear the burden with thee. If thou shalt do this thing, and God command thee so, then thou shalt be able to endure, and all this people shall also go to their place in peace.” So Moses hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law, and did all that he had said.

And Moses chose able men out of all Israel, and made them heads over the people, rulers of thousands, rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. And they judged the people at all seasons. The hard cases they brought unto Moses, but every small matter they judged themselves. And Moses let his father-in-law depart, and he went his way into his own land.

This morning, a series of what is presently planned is six talks on church government. And the immediate reason for going through these things now is that we’re going to be meeting as heads of households in a congregational meeting within a few months here to move toward a consideration of more elders and deacons. And I thought it’d be good to review basically what church government is according to the scriptures and next week we’ll move into a consideration of specifically the office of elder and then in later sessions the deacon and the tithe and some other subjects.

But this morning I wanted to just give sort of a little overview to get us going into this subject. What we’re going to do is look at the three dominant forms of church polity or church government. Those being congregationalism, episcopacy, and Presbyterianism. And then we’ll look at the passage that we just read to get a biblical pattern for government laid out in the scriptures. And then we’ll sort of do a little bit of analyzing of the three forms of polity according to some of the things we pointed out from Exodus 18.

Now, along the way here, hopefully we’ll begin to answer some questions that you may have if you’re new to this church, somewhat about why we do things the way we do, why we have a heads of households meeting instead of calling it a congregational meeting. Why are they fairly rare occurrences instead of regularly scheduled meetings? Why do only men vote at these meetings, heads of households? Why are there no votes on budgets, song selection, sermon selections, who fulfill what responsibilities in the church, etc.

Apart from the officers of the church, why no regularly scheduled church business meetings, I guess, as some of us may be used to in congregational or Bible churches that we’ve attended in the past. And then also hopefully the general idea here is that you’ll understand a little bit better from these talks what we mean in our confessional statement when we when a person covenants in, they agree to submit to the authority of the church, the government of the church, and participate in it.

And hopefully that’ll all become a bit clearer this morning as well. We’ll answer some of these questions hopefully. Now, we want to start with, as I said, kind of a little short historical overview of the three basic forms of polity that most of us are familiar with. And obviously this is a very summary sort of approach. And I might as well say here at the beginning that we’ll probably end up offending just about everybody as we go through some of this stuff particularly in the latter half analyzing these forms relative to Exodus 18.

And that’s just the way it is and I don’t see any good way around that in the situation we’re in this country right now and that’ll become clearer as we move toward the end of the talk. Okay, we’ll start with the one that probably most of us are more familiar with right now. Presbyterian government. Many of us have been doing a lot of reading in this area for the last few years. We’ve moved away from a congregationalist approach more toward a Presbyterian form.

And so we’ll start with that one.

Presbyterianism is distinguished by several characteristics. First of all, as the name would imply, it’s ruled by presbyters, which is another word for elders. So Presbyterianism, one of the distinctives is ruled by elders. As a result of this notion, the Presbyterians would distinguish themselves from churches that are ruled, for instance, by strong pastors, where you have one man who runs the show.

Additionally, they would find themselves distinguished from churches that have congregational rule that would indicate a vote by all the congregation on every item. Those sort of the two ends of the spectrum, individualism and all power invested in one man. And the Presbyterian form would seek to eliminate that problem by rule by elders or representatives of the people. Now, it’s important to point out here that is the idea. We’ll talk next week about the two office or three office or four office or five office position.

Today it’s usually talked about in terms of the two or three office position. And I just bring this up briefly now to point out that essentially while Presbyterianism seeks to avoid strong pastors, yet we know probably many of us of various churches in which we do have strong pastors that essentially run the show in Presbyterian churches. The reason for that is I think first of all this distinguishing between a teaching elder and a ruling elder.

And it’s not just a matter of function. There is a separate office. There’s a separate ordination process and examination etc. Additionally we’ll talk about this in a minute but the Presbyterians believe in graded courts or graded assemblies. And so it’s important that you realize that when a local Presbyterian church has a session over it which consists of the elders of that church and the including the teaching and ruling elders that when that church is represented at a presbyterian meeting or at a general assembly meeting the ministers are more heavily represented.

The teaching elders are more heavily represented at that meeting than the ruling elders. They have equal numbers, but normally a church would have say six ruling elders, let’s say, maybe two teaching elders. You’d have two teaching elders and two ruling elders go and so four ruling elders would stay home. And so because of that, there tends to be this distinction that becomes increasingly evident in Presbyterianism today between the ministers or the teaching elders and the ruling elders.

And so they end up really not effectively dealing with that problem. But in any event, the idea is to have rule by elders instead of by a strong pastor or by the congregation. Now just point out here of course that the other office rather in this three or two office position is the deacon. We’re not going to talk about that a lot this morning in terms of distinguishing these forms of government although there are distinguishing elements to them.

We just don’t want to take the time to go into those things. We’ll talk about the office of deacon in a couple of weeks. Okay. So that is one particular distinctive: rule by elders. Secondly, and I point this out and I’ll just make the point now. We’ll talk about a little bit later. Presbyterians believe in divine government. The government is church government is divinely established by God’s law, God’s scripture.

It’s not a matter of human invention. And I’ll just make that point briefly and we’ll that’ll distinguish them from the other two forms in some degree later on. So, we’ve got rule by elders, divine government, and then a plurality of elders. Presbyterianism today is distinguished by the idea that in each church you should have two or three elders. Now there is some allowances in a missionary church. When a presbytery starts up a church in a specific area, they may put one allow have one elder to run the church or to be in charge of that church.

But he really is under the oversight of the mission board and over the elders that are in a distant place. But essentially you have a plurality of eldership and the idea that the elders are really a collegiate office that they meet together in session. Okay. So we got rule by elders, divine government, plurality of elders. Fourth, there is an appellate and collegiate sense to the church courts that are established.

And I’ve touched this a little bit, but as I said in Presbyterian government, you have the right of appeal above the local church level. It’s a very important part of their system. And so if you have a court case that you want to appeal, you then have a larger session to go to. The way it works is the individual church has a session or in the continental reformed churches, what they would call a consistory or a spiritual council in the case of the RCUs that consists essentially of the elders.

They meet together of the local church. Beyond that though, then the elders or the churches in a specific region. For instance, in Southern California, there is a Southern California presbytery and that consists of representatives from each of the churches existing in that geographical area. And so those people can meet together in session and recently Dr. Bahnsen’s church there was an appeal of a local decision that his session at the local level had ruled on to the presbytery and the presbytery overturned his church’s rule, his session rule or decisions. And so that idea of graded courts is an essential part of Presbyterianism. And those court systems are essentially characterized as courts of appeal. Okay?

To get there, you usually have to have an appeal in process. It has to be a legal matter before you get to that next step up of church courts. Additionally, as I said, they see these courts as operating exclusively collegiately. Not no one man could ever render a decision. Okay. Above the local area, there are one or two levels depending on the reformed church you’re talking about in America which particular sort of Presbyterian church there then are larger areas represented as well in the uh Presbyterian system above the session as we said we have the presbytery and in the continental reformed churches such as the reformed church in the United States that Reverend Jones is in remember I said the local level was called the consistory or the elders are called the spiritual council and then their larger group instead of being called the presbytery is called a classis.

Okay. And then above that you then go to either the synod or the general assembly. And so you’ve got these different names as these church court levels go up. And I think in the Presbyterian church there’s essentially four levels in most Presbyterian churches in the country in United States today. Okay. So we got rule by elders, plurality of elders, divine government, appellate and collegiate nature to church courts and we have ordination by presbytery.

The Presbyterians teach that the ordination of church officers cannot be done at the individual church level exclusively. The criteria for ordination is set by the denomination. And the presbytery, the step above the local church must approve of the local officers. And so you have to have the witness of the church as it moves up this hierarchial scale as well as the local congregation to put people in church office.

Now important to point out here of course the Presbyterians the elders and the deacons are assented to in different churches or actually chosen by the congregation and then the sitting eldership or the local presbytery will also then either assent to that decision or they’ll pick the people out. It can go either way in different reformed churches that are Presbyterian but there is a congregational assent to the selection of their own officers.

There’s self-government in that sense although it’s checked by this ordination by presbytery. So those are the five things that want to distinguish in terms of Presbyterianism. Now, it’s interesting to point out here, and I won’t do this with the other forms, but all these things have a relation to civil government. What we’re talking about this morning is how does God govern institutions or societies that he establishes?

And we’ve been singing song this morning about God governing his people with his laws. And those laws apply to how we organize our churches as well. We would agree, I think, wholeheartedly with the Presbyterian distinctive that government in churches is divinely established by God and has to be run according to his laws. In civil government, we would say the same thing is true. Now, it’s interesting that in terms of civil government, there is often a correlation between the ruling forces in the church and the representation of that government at the civil level.

This is certainly true of Presbyterianism. This correlation between biblical Presbyterianism and our system of civil government in this country is rather obvious. God and his providence has made it even more obvious and direct. It so happens that in 1789 there were two constitutional conventions called and if you teaching your older children US history you’ll know that one of them was the constitutional convention to establish the United States of America but the other constitutional convention held in 1789 was the one that established the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America in the USA Lewis Dbor in his introduction to EC Wines’s book the Hebrew Republic talks about that correlation between church government and civil government in the following way he says there were that year two constitutional conventions guided by the same set of scriptural and republican principles of government.

And they produced two parallel republics in church and state. Then and there were produced two federal unions of graded republican courts, the local or municipal, county, state, and federal levels in the state corresponding to the sessions, presbyteries, synods, and the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church. Small wonder that King George’s advisers were prone to call it a Presbyterian revolt. With similar perception, the divine right of kings, Stuart kings of England sought to force episcopacy on Scotland and maintain it in England against the Presbyterians.

They feared Presbyterianism with its staunch republicanism. And their cry therefore was “No bishop, no king.” So they’re saying if we don’t have a bishop and we don’t have episcopacy, the divine right of kings is also threatened as a result of that. They knew full well that true Presbyterianism would never coexist with absolute monarchy and that helps you to get a little picture of the correlation between civil government and church government and also gives you a picture of the Presbyterian form and why it sees itself in distinction to the Episcopal form.

We’ll return to Presbyterianism after we discuss congregationalism a little bit as kind of a rebuttal to congregationalism. But first, excuse me, I have a cold this morning. Most of my family isn’t here, but I am.

Episcopacy is what we’ll look at next. And I suppose that really isn’t a valid word. It’s supposed to be episcopacy, but I thought it the outlines it looked a little better if we called it episcopacy.

Episcopacy as its name suggests is that bishops are distinguished in the New Testament. The Greek term is episcopos, which refers to overseer. So episcopacy is characterized by a rule by bishops individually over specific geographic areas. Okay, they don’t believe in two or three office or in the differentiations of the teaching office through pastor and minister. Rather, the episcopal form teaches a separate office for bishop and then also above that archbishop.

And so there’s various gradations all which they say are biblical or divine or excuse me which are valid church offices and that is the distinguishing characteristic. Now for instance the archbishop of Canterbury would oversee a large geographic area and there was a bishop of London who we’ll be quoting here in a couple of minutes as well and the archbishop is above the bishop and the bishop is above the local churches and so you have this hierarchal function but not of equal men who are equal in status as elders or presbyters. Now you’ve got rule by specific officers called bishops or archbishops over these local congregations and so that’s a large difference with Presbyterianism.

Now in terms of remember I mentioned the Presbyterians believed in a divinely ordered government and whether or not the Episcopalians do as a matter of some discussion. Originally when the reformation sought to reshape and reform church government and Presbyterianism took exception to episcopacy in the church of England. The defense of Presbyterianism in England did not take the position that church government is divinely ordered by God. Rather, they took the position that it is just convenient and left up to the expediency of man.

Specifically let’s see Whitgift the Archbishop of Canterbury said that the church was free to adjust its government to meet the necessities of the day. So it wasn’t divinely ordered it was free to adjust the government. The bishop of London Hooker held that the office of bishop was divine but that no fixed order was prescribed by scripture. He wasn’t going to give up the divinely ordered office of bishop but he said really no fixed order is divinely established by scripture and so it really isn’t something to be arguing about is essentially is what they were saying although they believe in their position of course but they were saying that in terms of the scriptures it’s not necessarily divinely ordered.

Now the Anglican church during this time put out a statement that read that since the apostles time it is obvious to all that there has been three offices of the church: priests, bishops, and deacons. There was no attempt in this statement as a rebuttal to Presbyterianism to prove a scriptural basis apart from the traditions of the church or the necessities of the time for the episcopacy of their particular system.

Okay? Instead, the attempt was just to show that in the apostolic age, these offices existed and therefore they’re good and proper things. They’re approved by tradition and they’re also approved by the necessity of rightly ordering a group of people and this is the way to do it. So, at first there was no real claim for divine authority. However, as the debate heated up and as the arguments went back and forth, the claim was made for scriptural warrant.

By the way, I point that out because frequently and if you’re reading Presbyterian writings, you’ll read all kinds of quotations from Episcopalians that this was just a traditional office and not scripturally warranted. And it’s important to realize that wasn’t a concession to the Presbyterians. They were just saying that’s not the issue here in charge. They didn’t believe in divine government. Now, as the discussion progressed, however, the Episcopalian system did try to defend itself on the basis of scriptural warrant.

And it’s important to note that change and not believe the argument was closed with these people like Whitgift and Hooker who said it wasn’t necessarily divinely ordered. In 1588, Bishop Bancroft at St. Paul’s Church made a sermon and in that sermon tried to lay forth a scriptural warrant for episcopacy. This assertion was made then and later in 1640, Bishop Hall wrote in episcopacy by divine right asserted name of the work that the office of bishop was demonstrable from Paul’s letters to Timothy and Titus whom he held to be diocesan bishops possessing apostolic authority as Paul had done for the churches the other apostles would also have done for the churches they oversaw as later church history they claimed bore out.

And so they said the fact that Paul wrote these letters to Timothy and to Titus and told them to ordain people in these areas means that he was passing on the apostolic succession as it were and his power in terms of a bishop to these gentlemen and the history shows that the other apostles did the same thing and that’s where episcopacy comes from. This book by Hall was significant because as I said it asserted the divine government of episcopacy. This book by Hall was answered by a work entitled I’m not going to pronounce this right.

It was entitled, as far as I can tell, Smectymnuus. Maybe somebody here knows how to pronounce that better than I do. But in any event, this was a joint effort by various Puritan writers who addressed Hall’s book. In the rebuttal to this, it was asserted that as Jerome had asserted, the terms bishop and presbyter were used interchangeably in the scriptures. And anybody who does a word study on those two terms knows that’s exactly the case.

They’re used interchangeably in the scriptures. Further, they pointed out that neither Titus nor Timothy were called bishops, and that’s also quite clear from scripture. Nor do we have any biblical evidence that they were set permanently in Crete in Ephesus. You see, the basis for Hall’s assertion was they were set permanently in these geographic areas. They then oversaw the church. But we have no record that they were set permanently there.

Rather, the Puritans asserted that they were traveling evangelists or church planters. They also pointed out that they were not told to appoint bishops in these places, but elders or presbyters. So if you got apostolic succession going on, it’s interesting that Timothy and Titus instead appoint elders and presbyters, not bishops. Additionally, the Puritans asserted that the so-called bishops of the second and third century were really not diocesan bishops at all over large geographic areas.

In other words, operating independently, but rather they were pastors of local churches is what the Puritans asserted. So in any event, the divine government in terms of Presbyterianism is a matter of some dispute. No plurality is necessary under the episcopal system. Rather, the normal process is where these men operate as bishops, archbishops, etc. individually instead of collegiately. Okay. ordination was by the bishop and of course there’s the whole idea of apostolic succession which we don’t want to get into but ordination could be by a single individual as opposed to a collegiate number of elders.

And so those are some of the distinctions between Presbyterianism and episcopacy. Now the third form of government we want to talk about and this is even more confusing unfortunately for you is congregationalism. Now congregationalism is a bit tough to talk about because it’s kind of a moving target. You had obvious okay first congregationalism was more decentralized because Presbyterianism and episcopacy is more centralized with the bureaucracy as it were.

It’s much easier to see what their structure is. But congregationalism because it held to essentially locally autonomous churches a much more decentralized system. It’s much more difficult to categorize all congregationalists as this, this or this. You can’t do that. There’s a really kind of a spectrum of beliefs. However, having said that, there was sort of a codification that came later in terms of history, and we’ll talk about that a little bit.

Now, so with the congregationalists, we’re going to start with some historical analysis first and then sum up the differences between it and Presbyterianism at the end of this analysis. In the 1500s, Robert Brown was one of the prime movers behind the separatist churches. And the separatist churches would normally be included on the congregational churches, although they came to be different from them.

The separatists, you know, said, “You can’t reform these wicked churches. We got to separate from them.” Well, Robert Brown was one of the movers behind some of this. And Brown taught that congregations were to be seen as totally self-governing, having no ecclesiastical authority over them beyond the local church level. Extreme decentralization was taught. Instead, he advocated fellowships of churches, all under the lordship or kingship of Jesus Christ.

And in these associations, the ministers may well go to each other for advice and exhortation even. But there was no binding power one upon the other. They were local self-governing autonomous churches. Additionally, Brown favored a kind of ecclesiastical democracy in which the congregation had votes in just about everything. Probably most of us have come out of or are maybe in associations or maybe have come out of baptistic churches or Bible churches that are run pretty much this way.

They may be part of an association, but the association has no binding power upon them. Well, Brown’s successors, Henry Barrow and John Greenwood, who were, by the way, imprisoned for many years and finally hanged for their faith and for their reforming zeal, also held to congregational autonomy. But they moderated Brown’s position in that they believed that while they agreed with him that rule was under the headship of Jesus Christ and not ecclesiastical authority, they moved away from democracy in local congregations to rule by elders.

Others and they kind of incorporated Presbyterianism at the local level here. Then now John Cotton who probably some of you are familiar with in this country also approved of the scheme generally taught by Barrow and Greenwood although he distanced himself from those two men specifically he rather cites the writings of Parker Paul Baynes and William Ames for his views of congregational self-government.

Ames has been called the father of the New England congregationalists. Ames wrote and seemed to suggest the rejection of the invisible/visible church distinction that many of us may make. He said rather that scriptures use the word church to refer specifically to local churches instead of to the corporate church. Okay. And so we find the use of the term church. It’s always referring to a local autonomous self-governing congregation.

Although Presbyterian in the sense that it’s ruled by elders. Now some have asserted here in terms of government that because of this radical decentralization of the New England congregationalists for it to be effective the assistance of the civil government in securing the unity of the loosely associated local congregations was very important almost necessary see they didn’t have this big structure denominational affiliation and episcopacy to keep them going or to have their influence through large numbers and so they relied a lot upon the civil magistrate to suppress heresy etc.

Because of their strong emphasis on localism then they really needed a friendly civil magistrate and without it became in some people’s mind somewhat doomed. Now it’s interesting that Massachusetts, a strongly congregationalist state, did indeed restrict the franchise to church members. Not a state church at all. If you understand this congregational formula I’m putting out here, but rather that a person had to be a member of a church, although local and autonomous, though the church may be.

One other thing about congregationalism which is quite important to understand is they believed in a church covenant and the church covenant took on great importance for the congregationalists. The covenant was the creating document of the local autonomous church. It wasn’t started by a denomination. It was started instead through covenant. It wasn’t started by the king through the government, but it was started by a group of self-governing men and women coming together under covenant with God and with each other to form their churches.

Now, as I pointed out the congregationalists’ final evolved position of adopting a Presbyterian government at the local level was then codified in the platforms of church discipline written in 1646. Quoting from the platform now the Holy Ghost frequently yea always where it mentioned church rule and church government ascribed it to elders whereas the work and duty of the people is expressed in the phrase of obeying their elders.

And so they saw Presbyterian government. Further document stated that the church is composed of two parts. Some that are governors, others that are governed in the Lord. So they weren’t radical individualists anymore. They were really Presbyterian but just at a local level with no denominational affiliations. Now this strong emphasis on local self-government was also pointed out for instance in their admonitions that discipline was made everybody’s business and not just the ecclesiastical authorities business anymore.

Quoting now from the Puritan Oligarchy by Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker. He reads that discipline in the church was every man’s business. If Master Smith broke the Sabbath, it was the duty of his neighbors to reprove him. If Mistress Peters gossiped about her neighbors, it was certain to be reported to the elders. When one member committed an offense against another, the injured brother was to go to him privately to admonish him.

And if this didn’t suffice, then return with the company of two or three others to renew the attempt. And then they would bring the church into it. Now, that’s you know, pretty much a biblical pattern. But I read it to stress that again, congregationalism stressed local self-governing churches and as a result they also had to stress local self-governing individuals who would take an active part for instance in the disciplinary actions of the church.

Okay. The differences between congregationalism and Presbyterianism became rather well developed and some rather fixed lines in the 1600s. Prior to that time the term Puritan and Presbyterian were used somewhat interchangeably. But now the differences were beginning to be seen more clearly between Puritan congregationalists and Presbyterians. Those differences may be seen by looking at the Westminster divines which of course produced the confession of the catechisms.

Part of those divines although albeit a small part were congregationalists not Presbyterians. The congregationalists while a minority had a strong center of five men: Philip Nye, Thomas Goodwin, Sidrach Simpson, William Bridge, and Jeremy Burroughs. These men and the congregationalists after the adoption of the Westminster standards are during that process specifically inserted a specific objection to the standards on the basis of three things that it was going to move toward which they thought were unbiblical.

So this helps us to see the differences between it and Presbyterianism which was essentially the mode of government adopted in the Westminster standards in the form of Kirk Church government specifically that was appended to those standards. What were the three things of Presbyterianism that the congregationalists objected to help us draw those distinctions? One, they objected to the fact that particular congregations were placed under one Presbyterian government.

Okay. As opposed to being local, autonomous. Two, they objected to a system of standing assemblies that were to be set up, congregational, classical, provincial, and national. So this idea of four tiers, and they’d be standing assemblies is an important part of that objection. In other words, they would meet at regular times to consider whatever came up. They objected to that. And then third, they objected to the fact that no single congregation was allowed the right of ordination.

Ordination had to be approved by these higher governments that they denied the authenticity of all these practices they found objectionable because they imposed upon the rights of the local congregations. Now, if you if you’re a student here and kind of been thinking about what I’ve been saying, you’ll see that while we espouse Presbyterianism in this church, we are in effect right now practicing a form of congregationalism where we are moving toward a more overt form of Presbyterian rule by multiple elders in the local congregation.

We do not appear to be moving very rapidly toward affiliation with a denomination. So you might say that we’re congregational, but remember that the congregationalists were committed to these principles on the basis of what they thought scripture taught. Burroughs attempted to state the differences according to one principle. Burroughs said, “The principle is whether or not a minister’s ruling power extends any further than his pastoral powers of word and sacrament.”

In other words, as I mentioned earlier, the illustration of Dr. Bahnsen and the Southern California presbytery, he has authority as long as he is in the congregation over which he administers word and sacrament but he has no authority his authority cannot extend to other churches in which he doesn’t exercise the pastoral gifts of word and sacrament and yet when Dr. Bahnsen sits as part of the southern California presbytery if he does according to the Presbyterian system his authority does extend to other churches you see where he doesn’t minister so Burroughs said that’s the central argument between congregationalism and Presbyterianism.

Two personages it’s a tough nut to kind of work through and to try to figure out who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy here. And this is pointed out by the fact that two personages of no less stature than Samuel Rutherford and John Cotton engaged in statement in response over these specific questions in 1644. Cotton the congregationalist wrote The Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to which Rutherford replied with The Due Right of Presbyteries and charges went back and forth. Frequently the charges were out of line with reality.

Charges against the congregationalist or that they were anarchist and they were promoting anarchy. Charges against the Presbyterians is that they were tyrannical and promoting despotism. And so they kind of, you know, blew things to their exaggerated them kind of out of proportion. The commonalities then now summing up between congregationalism and Presbyterianism, they both shared in divinely appointed officers.

They believed the government and the officers of the church were divinely appointed and they didn’t believe in bishops in that sense. They both believed in church discipline through censure, suspension, excommunication, and readmission of the repentant upon evidence. They both believed in congregational presbyteries. And they both believed in liberty as evidenced in the congregation by the election of the church’s own officers, the place of the congregation of selecting officers.

Okay. Some of the differences now the differences as I said before related to the visible church, invisible church distinctions the Presbyterians made as opposed to the congregationalists which said that the visible church are real saints. Okay. Differences were in ordination versus no ordination. The congregationalists by and large although this changed later did not particularly approve of ordination because ordination had the connotation to it of having authority from outside the local congregation.

No appeal was made to outside local church appeal courts on the part of the congregationalists. Anything outside of the local church, in other words, they didn’t like. Okay, so those are the two differences. So they believed in rule by elders, albeit local elders. They did not believe in appellate courts. They did not believe in outside confirmation of ordination, simply internal ordination or setting aside to office.

And they both agreed on divinely appointed government, although the congregationalists and the separatist movement did not. Presbyterians responded to independent congregationalists in many ways. George Gillespie’s responses are good to point out. I think they’re quite accurate. Matthew 18, Gillespie pointed out that the word for church there that if you know if the person won’t hear two or three then tell it to the church is used to stand for elders by way of synecdoche.

I didn’t think I’d pronounce that right. Synecdoche is a literary form where the part represents the whole. And Gillespie pointed out that throughout scripture you have the synecdoche in work where you have the part representing the whole. For instance, in Exodus 12:3, we read, “Speak ye unto all the congregations of Israel.” God tells Moses. And then in verse 21, when Moses goes to do that, he says that Moses called for all the elders of Israel.

Okay? And so God says, “Speak to the congregation really intended Moses to speak to the elders, which is what Moses did.” The part is used for the whole or the whole is used for the part in this verbal literary device. Again, in Exodus 19:7 and 8, in verse 7, it says that Moses came and called for the elders of the people. Then in verse 8 it says all the people answered whatever the Lord says will do it.

And so the elders represent those people by way of synecdoche. But more than that we’d have to say that what we have here is covenantal representation of the part of the elders for the covenant group the congregation. In response to the congregationalists Gillespie pointed out that we have many congregations at both Corinth and Ephesus but there’s one government talked about there. Paul gathered the elders of Ephesus.

Even though there were many congregations at place in Ephesus. Gillespie also cited the council of Jerusalem that bound churches not represented in the council. Remember we talked about that a year or two ago and went through church offices a couple years ago. We pointed out that Acts 21 was a binding set of decrees upon churches that were not represented at that church council. No doubt about it. Gillespie’s work is excellent along that line to point out the binding nature of the decree that came out of the Jerusalem Council.

An important consideration here that I’ll just briefly touch on is also where the authority for these officers lay. William Perkins wrote that although a congregation might make the selection of an officer manifest, God had actually called the minister. The congregation having no power to make a minister. Okay. Some of the radical congregationalists taught that authority was given to the church divinely by God and the church could turn around and delegate that to an officer, but that the officer then was created by the church.

In opposition to that, the Presbyterians and some of the more Presbyterian congregationalists held that officers come from God and the congregation ratifies what God has already put in choice. And we talked about this in terms of the Old Testament offices before terms of pre-existent functioning. The idea that you don’t get ahead of God. God makes manifest who he has chosen and the church then really ratifies that decision.

The church doesn’t create officers. The church ratifies God’s creation of the minister. Okay. Now, let’s turn to the scriptures then having given a little brief overview of these forms and look at how well they match up with what’s taught in Exodus 18.