Pastoral Reminder Regarding Membership Requirements

Driving home: accurately to assess the precise needs, and wisely to administer the means that will address those needs.

The parable of the Good Samaritan, specifically the Samaritan entrusting the injured man to the innkeeper's care, illustrates the meaning of 'taking care of' someone, which is applied to an elder's responsibility for the church.

how shall he take care of the church of God? And reasoning from the requirement that a man administer his own house well to the implications, and the implications of that for his task as an elder, the apostle uses the terminology taking care of the church of God. Now that verb is found in a very interesting parallel setting and helps us to feel something of its significance in Luke chapter 10, in the well-known parable of the good Samaritan, and you brethren just be patient at the rear, I haven't forgotten you, Luke chapter 10, you'll remember that the Samaritan picked up the man who had been ...

2:47 - 4:13 Read in full sermon

The point: Remember the conduct commitments you made if you are a member of Trinity Baptist Church.

The analogy of a marriage commitment, entered into voluntarily but entailing solemn duties once made, is used to explain the nature of church membership commitments.

Once is once admitted into membership, voluntarily, uncoerced, to be married, to be his wife. When he's Christian, he will have his judgment in that decision guided by the principles of the word of God. Rise with the woman. She should never be married with a gun at her head or her arm in a hammer or anything else, but voluntarily to this man for life. However, however.

14:50 - 15:55 Read in full sermon

The point: Honor the Lord with your substance, even when it is difficult or inconvenient.

Martin recounts a conference attendee's question about elders demanding checkbooks to verify tithing, which he refutes as a 'vicious, far out and stinking, slanderous lie,' to clarify the church's stance on giving privacy.

And to my knowledge, not another elder knows. It's none of our business to go crying into what is given. One man came to me at a conference and said, Pastor Martin, I'm embarrassed to even ask you this, but it's been reported to me by a very reliable source that the elders at Trinity in their pastoral visits demand that people hand over their checkbooks and they examine them to see if they're giving their tithe. He was dead.

29:02 - 29:27 Read in full sermon