A Real Podcast, Bearing the Sword in Vain, Church Update, Serving other Christians

Hello, this is Michael Coghlan, the host of the Be a Berean podcast, and as some of you have noticed, there has not been much podcasting lately. So what I'd like to do is give you a bit of an update on what has been going on in my life, and that will also explain why there hasn't been as much what I'll call true podcasting. In July of 2020, I was part of a church plant, a new church plant.

So I am now a member of Covenant Bible Church of Ohio. This is a Reformed Baptist church in the tradition of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. we believe that we hold to the confession as it ought to be held to and we practice things like weekly communion and that's one of our one of our distinctives in fact if you go to covenant bible ohio.com on the main page you can actually see what many of our distinctives are family integrated church. We believe in individual membership, a desire to support vocational pastors, a plurality of elders.

We believe in covenantal expository preaching and a Christ-centered hermeneutic. We believe we follow the regulative principle of worship. We're Calvinistic and Baptistic. Calvinistic in our soteriology and Baptistic in our ecclesiology. So that is our conviction, and as the result that led us here in central Ohio to believe that we needed to plant a church that actually held to these things, although there are churches that are some driving distance from central Ohio that hold to some of these same distinctions. we thought this was the time to do this and so we have met for 11 Sundays now our this is our 12th Sunday I'm podcasting on a Sunday morning because we meet at 4 p.m. in the building owned by another church called c3 church and we get together about three we set up some chairs which Lord willing one day won't have to reset up every week and then we meet at four o'clock our service lasts approximately an hour and 45 minutes and then we immediately break down and set up some tables and have a fellowship meal together at about six o'clock and we're usually cleaned up and out of there by about eight and for anybody that is within driving distance of pickerington ohio we would love to have you at our church.

We welcome you to talk to us about doctrine, and you can see a little more about what we do if you went to covenantbibleohio.com forward slash service. I actually publish every week what I'll call the liturgy or the order of worship. So it lists all the songs we'll sing, a few notes there. In fact, let me talk about it. So for anybody that's trying to run a church or be part of a church and trying to help run the services.

These are some of the things we do. I wanted to talk about a couple things. I want to talk about this guy, Chauncey Price, who a 30 year old Colorado man who was sentenced to serve 304 years for human trafficking. Something I read on the discern website. But so our for example, this is how our as service goes. First, we have a call to worship.

Generally, that is the reading of a psalm. So far, that's what it's been. It's not reserved to just psalms, but that's what it's been so far. And the way I see it is if we just do psalms, it's going to take us almost three years to get through all of them. So there's no reason to diverge from that much. Then we sing a song. and often the first song that I select to sing is a song that is very worshipful of Christ or of the Father.

Like this week, it's Soldiers of Christ Arise. Not that other songs are not, but it's really kind of focused on, I think I've picked a couple about soldiers. The next thing we do is we worship through Scripture. and so this week we'll be reading Genesis 12. My anticipation is that we'll be reading a chapter of Genesis for the next you know 39 weeks and then once we finish Genesis I don't see any reason we wouldn't just move right on to Exodus and we'll see what we decide to do with that.

Then we have worship and prayer where a man who's a member of the church gets up and prays. It's in particular attempted to be a prayer of confession of sin and asking God for supplication. Then I read from our London Baptist Confession of Faith. So this week we'll read paragraphs 1 through 3 of chapter 7. And we don't talk about it very much. We do have a little bit of a study time for that throughout the week, where if people have questions about that confession, we can answer those and teach from it. then before we go to the sermon we sing this week 380 from the hymns of grace book my jesus i love thee often the song that's near the preaching is i guess i don't really think too hard about it in that sense not like the soldier song but it's usually a song of devotion to the lord and it's song that we sing two times and one of the intentions is to help our families learn the music and so that we sing songs twice in the service so if the first time you sing it you missed a note or maybe you were thinking about the words because you haven thought about the song for a while or maybe you never heard it you can really worship with it the second time After we sing that song, I will preach from 1 Peter 2, 1-3 this week.

We had a guest preacher one week, but otherwise I'm the preacher every week right now, and we are hoping to have more men who are qualified to preach come and join our congregation. After the preaching, we have a special time of prayer where the men in the church pray, in particular, about the application of the sermon to the lives of the people who heard it. That's been something that's very new to me, and it's been very special, and I've been very excited about the prayers I've heard from the men in the congregation. following those prayers we then move to worship through communion where we come to the table of the lord and we partake of the body and blood of jesus christ we have a statement on our website that you can find which is why we practice members only communion and that is explained there and it's understood how you could take communion if you're not a member of our church there are There is a way.

We always sing one communion hymn. I usually try to pick one that's related to the crucifixion or the resurrection. And so this week we're going to sing, Are You Washed in the Blood? After communion, we sing My Jesus, I Love Thee Again. So that's where we sing the song a second time, continuing our worship through song. We are working on trying to get the psalms so that we can sing psalms.

We sang Psalm 1 last week, and it was just beautiful. And so one of my goals, one of the things I've been praying about is I would like to be a part of putting together, I'll call it a Psalter, but it's a, I want a psalm songbook that is ESV psalms with the word Yahweh replacing the Lord. I want them to be word for word because the purpose of them is not just for worship, but also to help people actually memorize the scripture.

I believe it could be done in six volumes of 25 psalms each so that they can be released in smaller sets for people to be able to purchase and have for their churches and home worship. So pray about that with me. If you are a talented composer, that's really, I think, what I need. And publishing isn't that difficult. We can always find a printer and we can always figure that aspect of a book out, but it's actually organizing and composing the psalms into something that can be sung congregationally that I really want.

So if anybody wants to help with that kind of thing, let me know. It certainly will cost money, especially if I have to pay musicians to help. So if there's something of interest to you there, let me know. It's a bit of a niche. You have to be an ESV person to care about this project. And in my case, I like to replace the Lord, capital L-O-R-D, in the, I think, poor translation of the Bible and replace it with the word Yahweh.

And so that's a bit of a nuance that people would have to want to have as part of their worship. We finish with the benediction this week. It's 1 Chronicles 28, 11 to 12. Let me look that up for you, and I'll actually read it right now, and you can hear what we're going to read tomorrow. Plus, that'll help me make sure it's correct, because sometimes I have a typo.

1 Chronicles 28, 11 to 12 does not look right, so I'm going to go to 29 and see if maybe that looks right. I'm glad I checked that. Yes, yours O Lord, yours O Yahweh is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom O Yahweh and you are exalted as has above all.

Both riches and honor come from you and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all. Then we sing the doxology and then we're finished. I have a couple of quotes that I put on every one of our bulletins. One is a Bible verse. This week it's those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love but I with the voice of Thanksgiving will sacrifice to you.

What I have vowed I will pay. Salvation belongs to Yahweh. Jonah 2 8 through nine. And then I always have a Spurgeon quote from my handy-dandy book by Carrie Allen, Pastor Carrie Allen in Illinois, Exploring the Mind and Heart of the Prince of Preachers is the version I have. There's a newer version of it, a reprint, I think it's the definitive Spurgeon Quote Collection and there's a forward by John MacArthur.

It's a great book. I have a review of it on Things above us. This week, Spurgeon says to us, the natural birth communicates nature's filthiness, but it cannot convey grace. So for those of you who enjoy my podcast and were disappointed that it turned into a sermon feed, this episode is for you. I just want to talk about some things, and I apologize if you like a podcast but for some reason you don't want to hear me preach sermons.

One day I'm hoping to separate my sermon feed from this podcast feed so that those of you who just want podcasts will be able to get them. Hopefully, if you like my podcasting, my sermons are something that are pleasing to you as well. Let me put it that way. On the discern app so it that disrn website that Adam Ford runs there an article Colorado Man Sentenced to 304 Years for Human Trafficking by Joel Abbott And it's a story of a guy named Chauncey Price who was convicted on 13 counts, a pipping of children, three of his victims testified, and it's pretty gruesome what he did to these people, and it's terrible. but it says here this is this is what I wanted to read to you district attorney George Brauchler referring to prices repeated incarceration and behavior said what possible rehabilitation can there be for someone who repeatedly and wantonly engages in this inhuman conduct so he's saying there can be no repeat rehabilitation which he's right i believe and he says spoiler alert there is none this is why we build presence and it was that line that struck me because when i read in some of the extremely famous passages of scripture now like romans 13 i read in Romans 13 verse 4 about the authorities for he is God's servant for your good but if you do wrong be afraid for he does not bear the sword in vain when I read that this guy says this is why we build prisons what I read is we bear the sword in vain we are the government of Colorado in this case we have the authority from God to put to death men who commit atrocities such as as child rape, child sex trafficking, which is always a form of rape, people who murder others, we have the authority to put them to death, to make an example of them to anyone else who fears death.

And instead, the good people of Colorado who pay taxes are going to fund this 30-year-old man's life for the next maybe 50 years. They will pay for his meals. They will pay for his electricity, his health care, his education. Everything that this man will do, he will do without the freedom that we, in theory, experience outside of prison. And he will do it at the expense of the people of Colorado who will pay for it.

This is not why we build prisons. Prisons are built so that people could temporarily be separated from society while they rehabilitated or maybe where they did something where they could repay their debt. A prison should not be a place where a person who is guilty of of a capital crime, worthy of death, will get to basically enjoy some comfort forever.

So in God's justice, unfortunately, oftentimes somebody else takes justice into their own hands, and somebody like this will receive a death sentence at the hands of some evildoer who should not be the one who executes this guy. The state should do that. and so they are bearing the sword in vain. I am more afraid of walking outside without a mask some days than this guy needs to be of any problems.

He may even be able to continue to run his evil enterprise somehow from within prison. These things have happened. These guys have access to the internet and they're they're smart and devious and they find a way to do the things they want to do. So when you are thinking about your government and you're thinking about what your government should do, you need to think about what Romans 13 really tells us the government ought to do.

The government is a terror to evildoers. This is why the government should not be a terror to people that simply want to walk outside without a mask on, people who want to interact with one another, while they're maybe, possibly going to spread a virus that, practically speaking, doesn't kill people. The fact that the coronavirus has caused some deaths is only relevant if it caused any more deaths than other things that the government allows. there is plenty of things in our society that we are free to do and we accept the risk of those things so that's my first soapbox i wanted to get on the second thing i wanted to share with you is i had a very interesting experience yesterday providentially my wife told me that i should go to the store and get some supplies for church because the family that normally brings those supplies is sick this week.

I pray for my dear, dear friend, Jason Roberts and his family, if you hear this, that they would feel better soon. And so I went to the store and I bought plates and cups and just all the stuff we need to have a meal. And one of the things that I did that I didn't think I wanted to do was I went to the church building that we rent to drop off our supplies.

When I got there, I realized that the church that meets there Saturday night was getting ready to start their service. And so I was trying to figure out if I could get into the building, if I was going to interrupt somebody. They were taking temperature, so I was trying to figure out how that whole thing was going to go And what happened was is I ended up meeting the pastor of that church who I had met his wife earlier and she was very friendly And he knew that I existed and he just hadn had a chance to call me yet And so we said hello, and then I put my stuff where I wanted to put it, and then I asked, I said, well, can I just stay?

And they said, well, of course. And so I stayed for somebody else's church service, which is held in the same building as my own. And normally, I don't visit a lot of churches, and I do have my own new church that I'm trying to help right now to grow and serve the Lord in. But because these people share a building with me, I thought, this isn't a bad group of people that I should maybe try to reach out to.

There's dozens of churches in my city, and I'm not going to reach out to every one of them to make friends or to say, hey, we're the new guys in town. Do you want to work together on things? We're not going to do those types of things. But what we will do is probably try to reach out to some of them, and as well, we will reach out to the ones that we share a building with.

There's a providentially created relationship there. So I had a good time being at another church service and just seeing how they did things. And what I particularly wanted to bring up is what to some people is a bit of a sensitive topic. And that is that this church could, by any normal thought process, be called a black church. And I know we don't like to use those terms.

I'm not a big fan of using those terms to separate people I think that's part of the problem we have today is that we look at things as a black thing or a white thing rather than just as a people thing and as a Christian thing but to be honest there is a difference that we have in our country where there's people of different cultures generally subdivided by their skin color who do some things differently, often due to their tradition. So I really enjoyed being there and seeing other people who were worshiping the Lord and listening to a man speak to the people and preach. And he quoted a lot of scripture.

And I didn't agree with everything he said. And there were some things he said that I would have taken an exception to. And some of them I thought, well, maybe he's close to being where I would be on it, and he's just saying it differently than I would say it. But it was enjoyable to just say hi to people and be welcomed there and meet the church that's meeting in our building.

But what strikes me about it that I wanted to bring up is that if you read the news, particularly we'll call the mainstream media, if you listen to the news, if you watch Twitter and these places that I don't hang out at anymore, Facebook, the impression you would get is that there is a non-stop war between whites and blacks going on. You would first of all believe that black people basically wake up every morning afraid that today is going to be the day of their demise. and that they are effectively afraid of just almost any white person. You would also get the impression that we're at the point where white people are all constantly afraid of black people because black people are so afraid of white people that they're going to do something and we should be afraid that something's going to happen.

And my personal experience is not that narrative. I have neighbors to one side of my home who are very clearly a black family. I get along with them just fine. We've never had any kind of problem. we've never talked about any of these things in great detail either but I've never gotten the impression that there's any problem between us and of course some people would argue well that's because your neighbors too afraid to tell you but I'm not a terrible judge of people and my neighbor just seems very comfortable to talk to me and let his kids play with my kids and I've just not experience that type of friction that is portrayed by the media.

But then I went to this church and I even thought to myself, I thought, you know, if this is like a critical race theory church, a social justicey church, then I'm gonna see all these people walk in here with Black Lives Matter shirts and it's gonna be black power and they're gonna look at me like I'm infiltrating and I don't belong there. And I'm not saying I expected that. I'm saying that's what I think I should expect if I believe what the media tells me.

And the media is telling me a story, and that story is true for maybe a half a percent of our population. But what I found was I just found a group of people who live in my city who got together to worship the Lord, and they seemed relatively non-caring that I was there. I actually may have, I may criticize them to say I would have expected maybe more people to reach out to an obvious guest.

I had never been to their church before, and anyone who regularly attends a church, I think, should recognize a guest. So I may have appreciated a little more reach out from people. I was even introduced by the pastor, and so maybe people thought, well, he's been welcomed. We don't need to talk to them, and they have their own things to do. But I didn't feel any kind of animosity or fear, and that's been my experience.

I live in what I would call one of the more diverse cities that I've seen, where I go to the store and I see a very good mixture of people of different cultures and races. and I've just generally experienced that we get along just fine. Even people that are wearing masks or t-shirts with slogans that I know I disagree with, I have found that they're still very friendly to me and when I go and hand them a tract or try to speak to them, it's nothing like the media portrays it to be. And so I have hope there, not because I hope in man and secular things, my hope's in the Lord of course but what I mean is I have hope that things actually aren't as bad as a very small percentage of people are making them out to be and or trying to cause them to be when I see a black person rather than see someone who probably is into critical race theory because it benefits them or probably they're all up in black lives matter or probably they think all whiteness is wickedness rather than see them that way which would be a racist tendency on my part what I just see is another human being it was my neighbor who because of their outward appearance they may resemble other people of my culture in a way more than they resemble me and who may or may not be identified with that portion of the culture and in my city uh we seem to get along we seem to have people we even have we have Black Lives Matter demonstrators on a main street in our city, and I've been meaning to go speak to them and maybe even try to preach while they're out there.

And they just seem very friendly to me. It's a very friendly, kind, we have our opinion and we're proclaiming it kind of deal. I've got some children screaming in the background. It distracts me while I'm speaking as well as when I'm preaching. So I just wanted to share that. that I'm really hoping that my relationship with this other church will grow.

And if we are close enough in our beliefs that we can worship together, maybe we'll do some of that. If we're close enough in our beliefs that we can just at least have a fellowship meal every few months and just be together and maybe sing a song or two and have some scripture. And maybe we won't have a service combined, but we can just be friends with them. maybe make some new friends in our city that's what I would like as some of you may know I'm very hesitant to team up with other people who call themselves Christians because of the differences we often have and so it is a tough decision for me to try to figure out where to draw the line do I invite someone to participate in evangelism with me if the church they're going to invite someone to I believe is going to lead them down the wrong path that's a tough one So I need to be a little more sure of some things, but I'm happy so far.

Basically, I'm happy that my experience is not what the media portrays that our experience would be. So another thing I wanted to talk about is that in 1 Timothy 6 you It says believers and beloved. I just want to point out that verse that it seems that what Paul is saying is that Christians who are still fighting the corruption of their flesh, they may be tempted to be disrespectful to a Christian employer.

In this case, it's a Christian, you know, slave master, bondservant thing, but you may be tempted to be disrespectful to your Christian employer or if you're a wife to your husband who is over you in authority or to governmental officials on the ground that they're brothers like so so i can get away with this because you have to forgive me i can do a bad job when i work for you if you complain then you're just a complainer and and i can mark you off as a bad christian but that's not how it should work We should all the more want to do a good job for other Christians. We should want to see them successful. When I take my car to my mechanic, who is a Christian brother, I take it to him partially because I want his business to be successful, particularly in relation to other auto mechanics.

I want my Christian brother to make money, and even if he charged me a little more, I want him to do well and I want him to be able to do what he's going to do with the money he earns for the kingdom of God. So sometimes as Christians, we can be, and he should want to do a very good job of working for me. He shouldn't want to do a bad job and know that, well, Michael's a Christian, he has to forgive me.

But I look at it from the perspective of I want to see my Christian brother successful. And so, yeah, I can go to Amazon and I can go to Walmart. I can be a good steward of my money and save. So I can buy soap and shampoo and napkins. And I could buy a million things cheap and save money on them because there's businesses that are capable of buying things in bulk and producing things in bulk, and they have the investment to do it.

Some stores are willing to just lose money on certain items because it gets you in the store, and then you buy other items. So that's why you can get a store that can actually sell you things for less than what you'd pay buying the same product direct from the manufacturer. and they don't care if they lose $50,000 a year on some item if it gets you in there and gets 50,000 people in there, let's say, who end up buying other things as they're walking through a store. And so there's tactics that stores use to get you in there and they don't care, let me put it this way, they don't care if they lose money on one product if statistically they can show that that's actually helping them make more money bottom line so what I want you to think about is that being a good steward of your money is not necessarily mean always paying as little as possible for what you buy in some cases it may mean using your money to support Christian causes so if you save money on forks and spoons and knives for your picnic and then the leftover money that you may have spent had you gone somewhere else you donate to missions, that's great.

That's a good use of money that you've saved. There's nothing wrong with trying to save money. But what I want you to think about is that there's times that you probably could maybe buy from a Christian. Maybe you could support a Christian who's trying to sell something, and they don't have the power of an Amazon or a Walmart. They don't have the capital to do those things, but they're working hard for the Lord just to take care of their own family.

They're going to do things that are, they're going to do them well. They're going to give you good forks. They're going to give you a good oil change. They're going to do your computer work well. They're going to cut your grass well. Like, Christians are going to do a good job for you sometimes, and it's going to cost you a little more to help that brother or help that sister or help that Christian family.

It may cost more than what it would cost you to do it another way. And I just want to challenge you that good stewardship is not the same as just spending as little as you can all the time. Being able to provide some other Christian with a means to support their family, with which they're going to go forth and proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to this world.

That's worth thinking about. So I'm not saying go and spend double on everything either. I think it's an individual decision how you're going to do those things. But I know that in my case, as for me and my house, we're going to serve the Lord. there's going to be times that trying to save a nickel is not worth the fact that there's somebody out there who maybe could use that nickel, who needs me to buy from them.

So if you're a Christian and you run a business, if you're an employee, you should be working hard as unto the Lord, and you should be the type of person people want to buy from. and if you're a Christian and you're purchasing things keep it in your mind that where you spend your money has an effect on things what business you support ultimately will help businesses and families stay in business, it will help them be able to do more and it will help them be able to advance their agendas and so even though so you're not responsible if you buy something from company if you buy an Oreo cookie I'm not mad at you even though they're promoting homosexual stuff I think I think if you want an Oreo cookie you can buy one are there other cookies that aren't promoting gay stuff that if you did a little bit of work you could find and maybe they'll taste about as good maybe they'll even taste better. I think that's worth considering, and I think that if more Christians were committed in those ways, it would have a good effect on each other, and ultimately then it may have a good effect on society. One of the reasons is that the non-Christians out there, as much as they love their wickedness and their paganism, most of them, I'm going to say most of them are not as convicted about their wickedness that they're going to die for it.

So when you, if enough people stopped buying Netflix, Netflix would change what they're selling. So there is power in a boycott. I not saying you have to boycott it and I not saying boycott is always the right thing I saying there power in it You can have an effect when you spend your money differently And so I do think that if Christians were a little more intentional about some of those things, some of these businesses would cave into the pressure of the almighty dollar rather than the pressure of the mob and the social implications of being seen as right or wrong in some cases.

And then I do think that we're getting to the point in our society where some people are ready to actually lay down their lives for their faith, who are faithful to the devil, basically. and one of the reasons idolatry is so wicked is that your idol will demand your time your money, your sacrifice, your devotion your worship and ultimately all gods demand your life thankfully our God demands our life in the sense that we die daily take up our cross and follow Jesus who gave up his life for us but your neighbor who's worshipping social justice your neighbor who's worshiping, whatever idol it is right now, your neighbor is going to be asked to give his life for that one day. And we may be able to sway them from going too far down that path if we can offer some encouragement to do right things for people. So it's one of the reasons why we have the death penalty, why we have laws and crimes, because there are people who, as much as they love doing bad things, are kept from doing the bad things because of simply the love of their freedom.

They don't want to go to jail. They don't want the embarrassment of being arrested and having that put in the newspaper. They don't want their marriage broken up. And so there are people who, even though they're sinning in their heart oftentimes, they won't actually do the outward acts of wickedness that devastate a community and a nation because of the consequences that are known to happen.

So that's why when you take away consequences, when you take away consequences of homosexual behavior, when you take away consequences of aborting and murdering your children, you actually encourage people to follow their hearts into the wickedness that they really want to do. and so use God's law the way it's meant to be used lawfully which in many cases is a deterrent the threatening of the punishment of God's law ought to deter people from some outward actions at least so thank you for listening I hope this was enjoyable it was just an off the cuff rant of some things that were on my mind I am now going to get ready to read some passages to refresh myself for my preaching I'll do in just a few hours at Covenant Bible Church and so I hope to hear from you if you have any questions comments needs let me know anybody wants to pray for my church we are small and we need the Lord to grow us numerically to grow us spiritually and to send us Christians who are mature and ready to serve and as well to send us Christians who are at an early stage and need some service. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website, michaelcoughlin.net. you can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures