Hey everybody, it's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast, and we're working on the question of church authority in the New Testament. It's all over the place. Paul, Peter, John, James, all these different guys who were commissioned by Jesus seem to acknowledge that throughout the New Testament. And it seems like people who weren't specifically commissioned by Jesus acknowledge the authority of those who were. So there's a whole dynamic here that might be a little bit foreign to a lot of us, but that dynamic pops up in Philemon 1 when Paul alludes to his authority to tell people what to do to do the right thing in the church. When he says, Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I, that's Paul, appeal to you on the basis of love. That's the verse that is sent us running through the New Testament to try to get a better sense of what that would have meant to the original audience. So we were working on it a bunch yesterday, and I kind of paused us abruptly and told you we'd pick up where we left off. And now I'm going to do what I promised, and that is pick up where we left off right after Jeff plays some music. Here we go. If you weren't clear on that, John 17 makes the reality that Jesus' intent is for that to be carried forward all the more evident. Here, starting in verse 20, Jesus, he's about to go die and he's praying for Christians who aren't Christians yet. In John 17, 20, he's praying for you if you're a Christian. He's literally picturing you alive today with an earshot of my voice and me alive today recording this. And he's praying for us. So Jesus is anticipating that people will become Christians after he's resurrected and ascends to heaven, and that there will be a generation, two, three, four, five, fifty, a hundred of Christians in the kingdom in this world. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message. See? That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. I and them and you and me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. So the whole unity thing is part of this apostolic continuity and authority, then as well. Also, isn't John beautiful? That's wonderful language. That would be a great book of the Bible for us to do sometime, maybe even next. Matthew 28 follows through on this concept of apostolic authority in the New Testament. I mean, this is a super famous, I mean mega famous passage. If you haven't memorized this verse here that I'm going to read you in a second, this is one to add to your list of verses to memorize and get down. Even if you're a little kid and you listen to this, you can do this stuff. You can start putting scripture in your brain and make it stick. Here's one to grab. In this scene, Jesus has been crucified, he's risen, he's come back together with the disciples, and he's sending them out with his authority to go and basically build the age of the church, the age you and I are still in right now. Listen to how he says this. All authority, this is verse 18, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you, and surely I am with you always to the very end of the age. I mean, you don't have to be a Bible scholar genius to hear what's going on there. Jesus is saying, I have all this authority, all of it, and now here you go. I'm vesting it in you, my flawed disciples, and you won't be alone. I'm with you always to the very end of the age. So that's the last detail that Matthew records. None of the Gospels obviously record everything that Jesus said and did. John goes out of his way twice to say, he did so much more that we don't have enough paper for it. But everything that I did tell you and write down in my book is written so that you would believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that by believing you would have life in his name. Luke, who wrote another account of Jesus' life, which squares with the other accounts, but also wrote the story of the early church, the book of Acts, goes out of his way to note these remarks from Jesus, of the many closing remarks Jesus no doubt made in his final moments on earth before he ascended to the right hand of the Father. Luke wants to relay this. Acts 1:7. Jesus said to them, It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father is set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Again, it is an authoritative commissioning. You are going out with my message. You are apostles, that is, you are ones who were sent. There's a ton more. Here's some quick highlights. Luke 10, 16. Jesus is saying, Whoever listens to you, listens to me. Okay, that's pretty powerful. John 20, as the father, uh John 20, 21 through 23, it's right in there. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you. The apostle Paul on numerous occasions talks about his own authority. A couple of note. 1 Corinthians 14, it's in it's in 14 somewhere. I didn't write it down. He says, What I'm writing to you right now, it's a command from the Lord. He says in 2 Corinthians toward the end, he says that the authority that God has given me is for building you up, not to hurt you, not to destroy you. That's close. Slight paraphrase is mine. But Paul just casually, oh, it's not that casual, but just frequently is dropping this language about apostolic authority and how he is not the only one who wields it, but he certainly is one of the ones who wields such authority. Now, you also get the impression that Paul is in the process of passing along this authority to Titus and to Timothy. When you go and read the letter of Titus, you know, Titus is having trouble with the Cretans. They're they're difficult, they're stubborn people. And Paul is exhorting Titus to handle himself like he is a commissioned, authoritative man of God, speaking on behalf of Christ, speaking on behalf of the authority of the church to get things in line there with the fledgling church on Crete. Timothy gets the same sort of exhortation. So you don't get the impression that it ends with Paul, you get the impression that it continues in those who are filled with the Holy Spirit, in those who walk by the Spirit, you know, the stuff that Paul described at the end of Galatians, and by those who are faithful to the message of the gospel that has been faithfully handed down to us. It's kind of a weird thing when we think about the New Testament. If you're familiar with it, I know a lot of you are picking this up for the first time, but you know, now you've got a little bit of a sense of it just from what we talked about. But even if you're only kind of familiar with the New Testament, this all feels natural. It all feels right in the context of the Bible. The Bible's authoritative. We're hearing this language from people who wrote parts of the Bible. Well, of course they have authority, but it sounds kind of weird when such church authority gets wielded ham-fistedly by people who are acting kind of hypocritically today. Cults are a thing now. I mean, I guess parachristian cults were a thing back then as well. But cults, like the one thing they all have in common, their defining characteristic is they are Christian adjacent. They look a little bit Bible-y, sort of Christian-y. They always have some very novel interpretation that really reframes everything with one simple little pivot. And there's always this massive exertion of kind of weird, unearned control. And that sort of thing, once it gets its hooks in you or even a family, it is really hard to shake. And probably every single person involved in this conversation, probably every single one of you, has seen that take its toll on someone. So what is the difference then between a cult and the apostolic authority that we're seeing play out here in the New Testament and carry on forward after the Bible into the whole Christian age, all the way up until now? Well, the difference is one, loyal, precise adherence to the message of the gospel that was handed down to us. This is why we have books like Galatians, where Paul is going toe-to-toe with people and being like, no, you cannot mess with the gospel. Let them be eternally condemned. I don't care if even an angel shows up and gives you a different message than the message of Christ that we have all handed on to you, that is a fraud. I say again, let them be eternally condemned. People came to the Galatian churches and messed with the message that was handed down to us. And Paul said about them. If they want to mess with the gospel and they want to add extra rules to it and they want to add circumcision to it, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves. Paul, Peter, John, these guys are not sheepish throughout the New Testament about going absolutely nuclear, like 10 out of 10, still, you know, under control, but 10 out of 10 assertive and direct and saying, no, no, right there. And with that said, I'm gonna do it to you again. We're gonna pause because I'm just not done. And I think this stuff's really important, and I want to keep pulling on this thread. So once again, we're going to pause our conversation about apostolic authority in the New Testament and pick up where we left off tomorrow. Cool, that's good for now. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Do this again soon.