Doctrine of the Present Functioning with Christ’s Authority

The author of Hebrews is addressing Jewish Christians who are considering turning back to Judaism due to persecution and unmet expectations. He emphasizes that once they have accepted Jesus Christ, they cannot go back and must press on towards maturity. The author discusses the foundational principles of the doctrine of Christ, including repentance from dead works and faith towards God. He explains that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ, not through keeping the law. The author also mentions the importance of baptism as a symbolic representation of the believer's identification with Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. Additionally, the laying on of hands is mentioned as a way to express a spiritual connection. The author encourages the readers to understand these practices in light of the Old Testament and Jesus' teachings. Amen. If you have your Bibles, turn to Hebrews chapter 6. Hebrews chapter 6. We have been looking at the first principles of the doctrine of Christ in Hebrews chapter 6. If you remember as we've been studying these, chapter 5 laid the foundation that these Jewish Christians were not maturing the way that they needed to be or as quickly as they needed to be. And the main reason for that was because of laziness. They just weren't willing to put in the time or the effort to be able to understand. If you remember the Old Testament is a type or a shadow, a figure of what was to come in Jesus Christ. And so they had everything that they needed to know about Jesus Christ, and when Jesus Christ came and all of a sudden appeared, they should have been ready to accept Him. But we know that what they ended up doing was crucify Jesus Christ, but yet there were some of the Jews that did believe. And the author of Hebrews is writing to these Jewish people that believed on Jesus Christ, but now all of a sudden because of persecution, because things are just not going the way that they expected them to go, they're wanting to turn back to Judaism. They're wanting to go back to the shadow that was there. And so the author is trying to instill in them that once you come in Christ, you can't go back. You have a new life before you, and we are to press toward maturity in that. And so you come to Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 1 and 2 is where our text has been coming from for these topical messages that we've been doing. And he says, Therefore, leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. Notice in this list that he begins with repentance from dead works and faith toward God. This is dealing with the past work of Jesus Christ. This is where he deals with redemption and justification is the big fancy words that we Baptists use for this. This is where Jesus Christ is dealing with the sinner. In other words, we can't have a relationship with Jesus Christ until we have repented from our dead works and we have faith toward God. And once we do that, then we come into the present ministry of Christ. And that's what we looked at last week and we're looking at this week as we see His present work. This is with Jesus Christ and His ministry where He's dealing with saints. And this has to do with sanctification. We are set apart for a purpose. We have a ministry. We have a responsibility. And when you study this, once you have repented from your dead works, recognize that you cannot be saved by the law. And the law was a foreshadow. And Paul said, if it wasn't for the law, I would not have known that I was a sinner. And the law was to show us that we were sinners, not to try to be kept in order to gain holiness. The Bible says in Romans 3.23, For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. Not one individual that has ever lived, save one, has kept the law completely and was without sin. That was Jesus Christ. He paid for us. And the Bible tells us that once we have repented of our dead works, that we can't keep the law, we can't obtain holiness. Then it is our responsibility to have faith toward God. If we can't do it, then what can we do? We can trust God, right? That's our only response is to trust God in the way that He has prepared. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have received and wherein you stand, by which also you are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen of Cephas and of the twelve. He goes on in Romans chapter 10, and he says, But what sayeth it, The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth and in thy heart, that is, the word of faith which we preach, that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth under righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. And so upon this confession of faith, what is our faith? Believing that we are sinners, we repent from our dead works, we have faith toward God. That is our confession. That's what we are saying, that we are sinners, but we accept the gift of Jesus Christ, His death on the cross for our place. Well, all of a sudden, at that very moment, you receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit fills you and indwells you. The Holy Spirit seals you until the day of redemption. You cannot lose your salvation. You cannot keep your salvation. The Holy Spirit has sealed you in salvation until the day of redemption. And then what do we find? In this present ministry, that once we have identified with Jesus Christ, the first act that we do of our sanctification and showing what has taken place on the inside is we submit to the church and baptism. Baptism is simply a symbolic picture of what has happened spiritually being done physically. That's why we immerse, because we have died with Christ, we are buried with Christ, we are resurrected to walk a new life with Jesus Christ. It's in His death, burial, and resurrection that brings us salvation. And so this was the commission to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Baptizing them was given to the church. It wasn't given to any individuals. And so we have that church authority for baptism. And so that's why we baptize. And when I baptize anyone, the first thing I do is I baptize you upon your profession of faith. And basically what that means is that you have repented from dead works. You have faith toward God upon your profession of faith. That's that confession. Then I baptize you under the authority of Kentucky Missionary Baptist Church, a true New Testament church that has commissioned me and authorized me to perform baptism. Not to save you. I cannot save you. You are already saved. All I'm doing is showing physically what you have done spiritually. This is the first act of sanctification. We see also, then we come to the next phrase in this, the laying on of hands. And the laying on of hands, the same thing as baptism, is a way that we can physically express a spiritual connection. And we're going to look at this in the Word of God today. When a person puts their hands on another person or a group of people as part of a blessing or a prayer, we see that Spirit coming into the physical. The Bible does not give any rules or regulations about what Christians could and cannot do when it comes to laying on of hands. And so this is a very vague subject. And so how do we determine what is these laying on of hands? We have to go back to what did these Jewish Christians understand as a Jew in the Old Testament. We've got to see what Jesus Christ meant by laying on of hands in the New Testament. And then we've got to look at the church today. What has progressed and how do we practice this? Understand that this gesture can create a closeness and a bond. There's something about the touch. I was reading in Revelation 1 when Jesus Christ appeared to John on the Isle of Patmos. And John began to see Jesus Christ and he became afraid. And there's a phrase there that Jesus Christ laid His hand and touched Him. And immediately, John relaxed. There's something about a touch. There's something about that connection that we make. And so what exactly are we talking about when we talk about laying on of hands? And this, like a lot of things today, is we have allowed other religions and other people to rob us of the blessings of the Word of God because we get afraid of it because we don't want to be associated with that group. And so we need to understand what does the Bible say? What does the Bible teach us about this? And we understand when you come to the New Testament, what we find, and to kind of put this in context, is we find in Genesis 22, verse 12, that Moses is writing and he said, "...lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him. For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only Son, from Me." You go on over in Genesis 37, verse 22, and he says, "...Reuben..." referring to Joseph, his brother, "...said unto them, Shed no blood, but cast him into this pit, that is the wilderness, and lay no hand upon him." And we really see the meaning of what's going on in Nehemiah 13. Because he said, "...then I testified against them and said unto them, Why lodge you about the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time forth came no more on the Sabbath." We're talking about laying on of hands in a physical way, right? This is not what we're talking about when Paul uses the word laying on of hands. You can see the laying on of hands in the Old Testament and also in the New Testament with Jesus Christ where they tried to lay hands on Him. They tried to arrest Him. They tried to condemn Him. But this is not what we're talking about with the laying on of hands. And so what are we talking about? What does the Bible actually teach about this laying on of hands? And we notice here that in Luke 20, verse 19, I mentioned about Jesus Christ, it says, "...they sought to lay hands on Him." And then in Luke 21, verse 12, "...but before all these, they shall lay their hands on you and persecute you, delivering you up into synagogues and into prison." And so Paul says, or the author of Hebrews says, of the doctrine of baptism and laying on of hands. I wanted to show you that when you do a topical study, not every laying on of hands is what we're talking about. Then we're in a negative sense. And that's not what the author of Hebrews is talking about here. So let's go to the Old Testament and let's see what laying on of hands represented in the Old Testament. And this is the first situation we find in the Bible of someone in a good way laying hands on someone else. We find a father as he lays his hands on another blessing their life afterwards. And so we see this idea that's taught in the Old Testament of this general laying on of hands. And it was done in the sense of a general blessing type of thing. We find it in Genesis 48, verse 14. It says, And Israel stretched out his right hand and laid it upon Ephraim's head, who was the younger, and his left hand upon Manasseh's head, guiding his hand wittingly, for Manasseh was the firstborn. And he blessed Joseph and said, God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life unto this day, the angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads, and let my name be named on them, and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and let them grow into a multitude into the midst of the earth. And when Joseph saw that his father laid his right hand upon the head of Ephraim, it displeased him, and he held up his father's hand to remove it from Ephraim's head unto Manasseh's head. And Joseph said unto his father, Not so, my father, for this is the firstborn. Put thy right hand upon his head. And his father refused and said, I know it, my son, I know it. He also shall become a people, and he also shall be great, but truly his younger brother shall be greater than he, and his seed shall become a multitude of nations. Sometimes when heads were laid upon a person, it was to pass a blessing upon them. It was also laid their hands on to pass a cursing upon the individual. When we look at Leviticus 24 and 14, it says, Bring forth him that hath cursed without the camp, and let all that heard him lay their hands upon his head, and let all the congregation stone him. And thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel, saying, Whosoever curseth his God shall bear his sin. So we have the laying on of hands in a blessing, but we also have the laying on of hands by the people for a cursing right before they were stoned. So that is the general uses that you will find in the Old Testament. There's also a ceremonial use. In other words, that was used in the priesthood. The first we find is the ceremony on the animal. That's what I read this morning in our opening Scripture. It says in Leviticus 1 and verse 3, If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish. He shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord, and he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him. In other words, when you've offered a burnt offering because of your sins and you bring that animal, that lamb or that bull or that dove was the three animals that they allowed in the burnt offering. When you brought that to the tabernacle, you come to the gate and you would lay your hand upon that animal and then the priest would help you as you slit that animal's throat and then the priest would take it and offer it for you. But the idea was that this individual would lay their hand upon it and what it pictured, it didn't do this, but it pictured this transferring of sin into that animal. The Bible says in Hebrews without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. And so what happens is is in the New Testament that the Hebrew Christians were doing what? They wasn't maturing. And so he's going back and he's saying you had this picture, but guess what? It was incomplete. But with Jesus Christ now, guess what? My sins are not just transferred to Jesus Christ, but my sins are fully taken care of in Jesus Christ. And so they have been wiped away. If you go to Leviticus 3, again, it mentions another sacrifice. The oblation be a sacrifice of the peace offering. If he offer it of the herd, whether it be male or female, he shall offer it without blemish before the Lord and he shall lay his hand upon the head of this offering and kill it at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation and Aaron's sons, the priests, shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar round about it. And so we see this individual laying hands upon an animal in the ceremony of what? They are going to make their sacrifices and their offerings to God through the priest in the Old Testament. Then we also see in this ceremony where God also had them lay hands on people. If you look at Leviticus 16, 20, and when he had made an end of reconciling the holy place, the tabernacle of the congregation and the altar, he shall bring the live goat and Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of a live goat and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel and all their transgressions of all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat and he shall send them away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness and the goat shall bear upon him all the iniquities under the land, not inhabited, and he shall let go the goat into the wilderness. And so we see that this idea is getting close to what we're talking about in Hebrews 6, 1, 2 where he mentions the laying on of hands. We see this idea in the first covenant the elementary principles of the doctrine of Christ, the shadow, the forbearance, was prepared by God's people for this new covenant. If you remember under the old covenant, the sacrifice was through the animals. In the new covenant, Jesus Christ now sacrificed Himself for us. While the majority of the Old Testament involves the priest or the first covenant ceremonies passing this curse in the substitution way, two texts in particular, both of them are in Numbers, anticipate how the laying on of hands would come to be used in our age today. And so we see this laying on of hands in an authoritative way. Not in the ceremony and the act of worship, but we see it as authoritative. In Numbers 8, verse 10, it says, And thou shalt bring the Levites... Who are the Levites? The sons of Levi that were going to be the priests that remember the offering, the sacrifice, was going to be handed off to the priest after it was healed. And then the priest would take the blood. Well, notice what it says. Thou shalt bring the Levites before the Lord and the children of Israel shall put their hands up on the Levites. You go down to Numbers 27 and 13 and it says, And the Lord said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay thy hand up on him. And so we see the congregation laying their hands upon the priest. It's a sign of authority recognizing that these are the men that God has placed over the worship area and the tabernacle put a place of authority that was assigned by God, recognized by the people, and they laid hands. Then when Moses' ministry was about to end, remember Moses was not allowed to go into the promised land because he did what? He struck the rock instead of speaking to the rock. So he wasn't allowed to come in. And so what he did was he commissioned Joshua to go in. And so from all of the people, what did he do? He laid his hands on Joshua and he prayed, giving him the authority to take the people. If you remember, and I didn't mention this last week, but if you went through your study notes on your discipleship notes this week, you would have noticed there was also a baptism into Moses. You remember when they crossed the Red Sea when they came out of Egypt? It said every one of them was baptized into Moses. Moses couldn't save anybody, could he? So what was it talking about being baptized into Moses? They accepted his authority and his call of God. They followed him and because he said, put the rod down, the waters parted. They crossed the cross on dry land and Moses became their authority. So when we see with Joshua, what's he doing? He is passing that authority on to Joshua. And so that is always for a blessing, a cursing, or for an authority in the Old Testament. So let's jump right ahead right quick to the New Testament, to the Gospel and Acts. When we look at the Gospel and Acts, we find a very noticeable shift of this typical use of the laying on hands because now we see Jesus Christ, the Son of God Himself among us. He is now tabernacled with us and we find a new positive use for this phrase as Jesus would lay His hands on people in order to heal them. And so Jesus would lay His hands on them and heal them. We see this in Matthew 9.18. While He spake these things unto them, behold, there came a certain ruler and worshipped him, saying, My daughter is even now dead, but come and lay thy hand upon her and she shall live. In Mark 6.5, it says that he could do there no more mighty work save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folks and he healed them. Mark 8.22, And he cometh to Bethsaida, and they bring a blind man unto him, and he besought him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of his town. And when he had spit on his eyes, he put his hands upon him, and he asked him if he saw alt. And he looked up and said, I see men as trees walking. After that, he put his hands again upon his eyes and made him look, and it was restored and saw every man clearly. And so we see Jesus using the laying on of hands to bring healing in the New Testament. In Matthew 19, it says, Then were there brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them and pray, and the disciples rebuked him. But Jesus said, Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven. And he laid his hands on them and departed thence. Now when we think about the healing of Jesus Christ, did Jesus Christ lay His hands on everyone that was healed? No, He only did it on some. The very first one that I mentioned where His daughter was sick, what did He do? He said, Go, your faith has saved her, right? He didn't go and lay hands on her. He healed her from where He was at. So He didn't always lay His hands. But in some cases, in a lot of the cases, He did lay hands. And then we see Him laying the hands upon the children and blessing them. We see in Mark 10 and verse 16, and He took them up in His arms, put His hands upon them, and blessed them. And so when we look at this, we see Jesus Christ using it for blessings and for healing, which the healings was also a part of the blessing when they were healed. We come to Acts, and this is where we start to start sorting things out. The book of Acts is a transitional book going from the Jewish culture to Christianity. And so as we look at this laying on of hands, it begins to come clearly what we are to do. And in Acts, we find that it was to heal and to authorize was the two ways that it was used. In Acts 9 and verse 12, you remember when Paul, the apostle Saul, was saved and his name was changed to Paul. In Acts 9 and verse 12, it says that he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in and putting his hand on him that he might receive his sight. And Ananias went his way and entered into the house and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest has sent me that thou mightest receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And so what happened? We see Ananias coming in. Paul was blind. Now I've told him to go to Simon's house and to wait. He saw a dream of Ananias coming and laying his hands on him. What do we know about Ananias? Ananias was a member of the church at Jerusalem. God sent him to Damascus and so we see not only did it heal Paul of his eyesight, but it also authorized Paul in the church to do the ministry of God. And we see that because then the apostle Paul now picks up in Acts and he begins to lay hands on people. As a matter of fact, in Acts chapter 14, a few chapters over, he said, Long time therefore abode they speaking boldly in the Lord, which gave testimony unto the word of his grace and granted signs and wonders to be done by their hands. And if you look at verse 11 of chapter 19, it says, And God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul. And so we know that he even touched people for healing. In Acts 28 and verse 8, it says, And it came to pass that the father of Publius lay sick of a fever and of a bloody flux, to whom Paul entered in and prayed and laid his hands on him and he healed him. And so when you look at this, what's new in the Gospels is Jesus is healing through the laying on of hands. But what's new in the book of Acts is the giving and the receiving of the Holy Spirit come with the laying on of hands. And as the Gospel makes this progress as we go from Jerusalem to Judea to Samaria to the uttermost parts of the world, God is pleased and God uses the apostles to lay hands on individuals to give them the Spirit. The Holy Spirit. Why? Remember we talked about last week and the week before the baptism of the Holy Spirit. There's only been one baptism of the Holy Spirit. That was upon the church there in Acts 2. It was the only baptism of the Holy Spirit. Now we are indwelt with the Holy Spirit and we are filled with the Holy Spirit. But what happened is the apostles, because they were the first of the church, the ones that was built upon the foundation of Jesus Christ, were the apostles, the prophets, and the Word of God. What's happening? They were authorized to lay hands on people and when they recognized that authority and accepted that authority, the Holy Spirit would fall upon them. They did that three different groups of people fulfilling Acts 1.8. Once that was done, it only happened once. The rest of the other three times was through the apostles laying on of hands that it was given. And so this laying on of hands now becomes this visible marker which was a means of the coming of the Spirit among new people and places. It happened in Acts 8 in Samaria and then it went to Acts 19 at Ephesus where the apostles laid hands upon the people. And so we come to Acts 8 in verse 14 and we see this at Ephesus. He says, Who, when they were come down, prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Ghost. For as yet, He was falling upon none of them only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then laid they their hands on them and they received the Holy Ghost. Now, then in Ephesus that I mentioned in Acts 19 when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came upon them and they spake with tongues and prophesied. And so we see this authority through the giving of the Holy Spirit as it's played out in Acts. Once you get past Acts, you never see it again. So let's go back to the Gospel and the church, the New Testament, the epistles. What do we find about how do we do the laying on of hands today? How do we practice this? How do we mature this? How do we move on? As we begin to see what is the normative in the church today, we find two remaining uses from Acts which echo these two mentions above first of all in Numbers and then also in the course of Paul's references when he writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy. He says in Numbers 27, And the Lord said unto Moses, Take thee Joshua, the son of Nun, a man in whom is the Spirit, and lay thy hand upon them. In Acts chapter 6, Whom they set before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid their hands on them. In Numbers and in Acts, we see the same identical thing. We see someone that was called by God, that was authorized by God, laying hands of authority on another individual. Moses on the Joshua, and we see the apostles and the pastors doing what? To the deacons in Acts chapter 6. And so it's used as a commissioning, as a ceremony. When we talk about laying on of hands today, we are commissioning as a ceremony. In Acts chapter 13, They ministered to the Lord. They fasted. The Holy Ghost said, Separate me, Barnabas and Saul, for the work whereunto I have called them. Remember, they're at Antioch and Antioch is fixing to endorse them, to go into the world and start missions and start churches. And so as they do this, notice what he says in verse 3. They fasted, and then he said, Separate Barnabas and Saul. And when they had fasted and prayed, laid their hands on them, and they sent them away. Then, when you come back and you remember when Paul, now they have gone out and what do they do? And they've been authorized by the church at Antioch to go out and start churches. And so this is where we see that perpetuity of the New Testament church. And then when we get out of the Scriptures, what do we follow it by? We follow our perpetuity by water baptism only after salvation. That once you've identified and confessed, then baptism is given by the church, by the New Testament church. And so you can go all the way back and you can find, trace through different groups and different people all the way that have preached the baptism by water, by immersion as entrance into the church, and that have observed the Lord's Supper as they closed only those that are baptized and assembled within that body that was there. And so we come to 1 Timothy 4 and verse 14, and it gives us an understanding. He tells Timothy, Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Timothy went with Paul on his first mission. He picked him up on his first missionary journey. He went with him on his second and third missionary journey. When he's writing to Timothy, he's leaving him back at Ephesus where Timothy was obviously saved and there had the presbytery was them pastors, the apostles, those in authority had somewhat laid hands on him in a public meal sanctifying his ministry that was there. Now, look at what he tells him in 2 Timothy. He says, Wherefore, I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. And so this is probably the most instructive text that we have that he tells us. He says, Timothy, remember when we laid hands on you. Remember that authority, that recognition that you was giving there. And then he tells Timothy this, and this kind of gives us the idea of what laying on of hands is today. He comes back to Timothy in chapter 5 and verse 22, and he says, Lay hands suddenly on no man. Neither be a partaker of other men's sins. Keep thyselves pure. And so we see this commissioning as a ceremony before the people. And then we see this commissioning of authority. It's the opposite of washing one's hands. If you remember, we said each one of these couplets in this deal is two sides of the same coin. When we looked at baptisms, it literally means the washings. And it goes back to all of the times that the Israelites would wash their hands. We see a perfect example when Pilate, you remember after Pilate said, I find no fault in them. What did he do? He said, I wash my hands of this decision. In other words, he ceremonially, openly in front of them, cleansed himself. But guess what? God didn't forgive him. That cleansing didn't work, did it? So the sins are going to be upon him and his children's children. And so it didn't work. And that's what he's talking about here. The flip side of that is laying hands when you don't have the authority to do that. When it's not a ceremony and authority. Commission him to a particular role of service and they commended him to those among whom he will serve. And so when Paul had hands laid upon him, he was commissioned by the church for a particular service. Then, they commended him to those among whom he will serve. That authorization then was passed on to the people that he would serve. You look at Hebrews 13 in our own book that we're doing here to explain this. He says, Remember them which have the rule over you who have spoken unto you the Word of God whose faith follow considering the end of their conversation. He goes on in verse 17 and he says, Obey them that have rule over you and submit yourselves for they watch for your souls as they that must give account that they may do it with joy and not with grief for that is unprofitable to you. And so what we have here and all in all, is the giver and the blesser is God. He gives the gifts. You remember he said in Ephesians that we studied that He gave some pastors and teachers for what? The work of the ministry for equipping the saints to do the ministry. What is a pastor? The pastor is an ordained office. The deacons are ordained office. Today, when we ordain a pastor or ordain a deacon, when I was ordained, I was ordained by Glen Rose Missionary Baptist Church. I have my ordination papers still in my office. And what happens is, is that Glen Rose Missionary Baptist Church after observing me, after I was called to preach and after I proved myself, I went to seminary. I graduated seminary. I finally got a church that wanted to call me as pastor. So Glen Rose said, you know what? We have watched Donny Haynes. We believe the Spirit is upon him. We believe his calling. And therefore, we are going to authorize, we are going to ordain him for the work of the ministry to go and pastor churches. And I still go back and I look and that serves as two things. Not only was it a visible picture of me at the end of that ordination service, I went down to the front of the service and every ordained individual that was there in that service, ordained pastor and ordained deacon came through. They laid their hands physically on my head and they gave the blessing from God upon my ministry. I still go back because it was a symbolic thing. I still go back and I look at my ordination papers where every one of them that laid their hands on me signed my ordination papers. And it's a reminder. So many of them have passed away since then. But it's a reminder that guess what? These guys have entrusted me to carry out the Gospel that God has entrusted them with. And so, not only was it for me, but it was also for Glen Rose Missionary Baptist Church who had observed. The church that I went to was Hammond Missionary Baptist Church in Hot Springs. Guess what? Their members was there to see this authorization from an established local New Testament church that I was a member. They authorized and ordained me to pastor. And so Hammond got to see them lay hands on them and they accepted the will of the church and they called me as pastor. And then guess what? They'll now through the years, 25 years later, Kentucky called me to be pastor. And what happened? When y'all questioned me, one of the first things you questioned was who ordained you. That's Glen Rose Missionary Baptist Church. And so there was that authority that was passed on there. And so we see this commissioning as an authority. And so now, real quickly, and we're fixing to close, I want to kind of put it to you. If you remember last week, I mentioned three things that Christ in the church... Remember, the church is first of all a building. And Christ is what? The cornerstone. And we are built upon that building, right? We are stones. Peter said we are lively stones in that church. The church is a local, visible, New Testament body. We assemble together. We have a purpose. The purpose is the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are united under a covenant and a doctrinal agreement to carry forth that gospel. And so in the church, when you think about the body, the question is, are you building upon His foundation? See, and so this laying on of hands has to do with this authority, this blessing upon individuals. When we work as a local body, Christ is the head, and then He has put over the church, what? Pastors and teachers. And so Hebrews 13 says what? That you need to obey those that rule over you. How do you know the rulers? Because the church has laid hands. They have authorized them to be the leaders. We're not to be leading. We're leading because as the author said, we're going to give an account of your soul. It's our job, our responsibility in the commissioning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. When we have a missionary, we don't have one that we support personally right now that we have sent out. But when you do that, you authorize them as a church and lay hands on them to go to a particular place in a particular area to start a New Testament church. And so they become their authority rests under your authority. And so how are you building on this foundation? Christ is the cornerstone. Your leaders are giving, you know, teachers here at the church, even though I don't go and lay hands on each teacher. Every teacher here is under my authority as pastor. I'm going to stand accountable for what you teach, what you do, and how you do your classrooms. And so this is this idea, this picture of authority. Then what about the headship, the body of Christ? The body of Christ. Christ is the head and we are the members of the body, right? And so how are we functioning under His headship? Are we doing things by His authority? See, under His headship, that means we have to seek Him first. We have to obey Him. We have to do what He tells us to do. And so are we functioning under His headship? Are we seeking Him and the purity of everything? And then the third example of the church was a bride. Are you engaged to Christ? When you wear a bride, what happens? The groom completes the bride. They're opposites. They're the helpmeet, right? And God brings them together. Christ is the groom. The church is the bride. And so only the bride is the one that is authorized to be the bride. And so, how are you engaged to Christ? How are you serving Christ? And so the laying on of hands has to do with our ministry and our service. It's not my ministry. It's our ministry. We're the body. We're the building. We're the bride. And we're all working together, but we're working under the chain of command. And that laying on of hands shows that commissioning and that commending toward others. And so that's how we do it. So the next week what we'll do is we'll go into the future. What's Christ's work in the future? We're going to see the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. How will God... And that deals with our glorification that is there. As we stand, we have a verse of invitation today. How are you serving? How are you working? Are you doing it under the authority of a church? Page 437.