Bro. Peter Halliman delivers a sermon on the characteristics and authority of a New Testament church, emphasizing that no preacher or church has the right to go beyond the teachings of the Bible. He highlights the importance of adhering to scriptural authority, distinguishing between customs of Pharisees and true worship. The sermon discusses the historical transition from Old Testament to New Testament practices and the role of John the Baptist in that shift. Bro. Halliman criticizes the infiltration of Catholic customs into Baptist churches and stresses the importance of adhering to biblical teachings. He uses examples from his mission experiences and biblical history to illustrate the principles of church authority and the need for churches to remain within scriptural boundaries.

If you've got one of these, if it's got service, put it on airplane mode or switch it off. Switch it off. It's been a long drive to get here, But I'm here. We talked about this some months back regarding the timetable, the church organisation and service. And I told David that I was committed.

I can't help what other people do or change. I can only help and change and do what I do and hear and change and say. I want to pass a few things before your mind. As we get into the message, and I was not aware of a theme, really doesn't matter, in some sense of the word it may matter, in other words it doesn't, because if we preach Because if we preach from God's Word and we really follow the Lord's leading, The Holy Spirit will work out all the semantics. But I would like for you to turn with me to the book of Matthew chapter 15.

We're going to draw reference to a few scriptures, but I don't want to wear you out with scripture and I will pick it up in a moment but I do want to pass a few words on to you. First of all I would like to thank the Church for inviting me to be here with you and secondly to thank all of you for being a part of the activities of today, Church Service and the Church Organisation. I've been preaching for 38 years and 37, 35 of those have been on the mission field. I've spent most of my life that side of the big pond. And most of the people that I have ministered to have been tribal people, where black is black, white is white, yes is yes, no is no, and outside of that we don't worry about anything.

And I've come to learn That the children of Japheth, that would be you and I. I've come to learn that most children of Japheth, They get things sideways a lot. It takes a whole lot of undoing to get the sideways sorted out. And a lot of the problems we've got today is because people get things sideways. So we're going to open our message with Matthew 15 and I will read, I'll pick it up in verse seven, and I will read down, Ye hypocrites, well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying, This people drawth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoreth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men. Let's pray. Father in heaven we thank you for the reading of your Word. We thank you Father for this day and opportunity. I ask Father that your Spirit might have free course amongst your people today, that your Word might find a hiding place in our hearts and lodge there and produce fruit.

Father, I pray that our worship may indeed be in spirit and in truth, that it might be acceptable to you. Father I pray that your Holy Spirit would do that initial work in each one of us, conviction that only He can do. Bless the service, through the balance of the day and tomorrow's swell, add your blessings upon it. And in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Subject or the title of the message would go something like this.

What is a New Testament church? What is it? Church, what is it? If I were to say to you that it's examination time, clear your desk. Take out a piece of paper, a pen, write your answer within 60 seconds and hand it back to me.

What would you write? What would you say? Would you get it right? Would there be Bible or opinion? What would it be?

Would you have God's word referenced to your answer or not? For the next few moments I want you to totally chuck away everything that you've ever heard, everything you've ever been taught. That's kind of hard to do isn't it? We are a people so motivated and so moved by opinions, group pressure, strong leaders. I didn't say right or wrong, but strong leaders.

But strong leaders. God's people are channeled, cornered, and oftentimes influenced even wrongly, Which will bring me to a point and that point is this. Is there ever a mandate in scripture? Think with me. With me.

Does God ever give space or does God ever give a mandate in Scripture where a preacher or a church? I'm going to go slow because I want it to sink in. Is there a mandate given? Is there space? Given?

Is there space? Does God give way to a preacher or a church that they can ever beyond the teaching of the Word of God. Let me say it in a different way. The New Testament church, which we embrace as the only true church that the Lord left, New Testament type church. New Testament type church.

Does a New Testament church have the prerogative license to ever go beyond what scripture teaches? The answer to those questions is an emphatic no. No preacher ever has the license to go beyond what the word talks about. What's contained between Genesis chapter 1 and Revelation chapter 22, there is no preacher that has liberty though many do it doesn't make it biblical and doesn't make it right God's called preachers. Do we have a license?

Do we have credibility in stepping beyond the bounds of scripture? No. No, no, no, we don't. Take it to the higher authority, the local church, the authority upon the earth that Christ left. Does a New Testament church, can they ever find reason Within the scope of their authority, can they find reason to exercise their authority over and beyond what's contained in the New Testament?

The answer to that is no, no, no. They do not. So coming back for swing, all of the Lord's preachers, God called preachers, all of His churches, fall under the prerogative of the Lord's teachings both in preaching as well as in church activity. Anything outside of that is anti-biblical. But you see a lot of Christians are cornered.

What does Hosea speak about? That's where there is no knowledge. My people perish. Why are a lot of church people leaving church? Why are a lot of church people being backed into a corner and they just have no rebuttal as to what goes on?

Why is that? Why are there so many church problems and people just don't know what to do? Why is it that so many decisions are made And people know somewhere it was just wrong, but they don't know how to fix it. Where there is no knowledge, my people perish. A lot of God's people in a lot of good once good churches are parroting, going the way of the world, Incorporating a lot of different forms of worship and they're going the exact different direction because people get the belly full of this.

I thought it was in Papua New Guinea that we only had the problems of Catholicism coming into Baptist churches, but I've learned differently whilst being in America. How in the world did Catholicism ever get into our Baptist churches? Who brought it in? Through what door did it come? Who carried it in?

And why did the people accept it? When you've got a preacher, a pastor who is the leader of the church, he's the under shepherd, not the shepherd. I'll give you an example that we use in Papua New Guinea that you can lock into. It's pretty simple. So if the little ones get it, the big ones will.

And here's the example. There are business people in Papua New Guinea who purchase vehicles to hire them out. Call it renting over here. Car hire, rentals. And people make a business, And so the person who purchases the vehicle will not usually drive it, but look for a driver and they hire the driver.

So the problem in Papua New Guinea is that Just as soon, understand me, just as soon as the driver takes possession of the keys, in his mind the vehicle suddenly belongs to him. And he will drive it where he wants to. He'll make business for the owner, he'll make business for himself, he doesn't care if it gets broken, if there's a problem with it, he uses it for his own personal usage. And I say to people, go ahead, but understand one thing. When the owner catches up with you, the keys are coming out of your hand.

And you're going to be down the road. A lot of pastors have assumed that the keys belong to them. Now I do believe, I do endorse and I do teach that there is pastoral authority, yes? But the Catholicism has entered Baptist churches to where they don't even any longer need a vote. Make the decision, receive members, exclude members, baptize on their own, do mission work on their own, collect the offerings on their own, use the money, pocket it, do whatever on their own.

That's where it's come to, folks. You might say, well, that doesn't happen here. Oh, really? It does happen here and it's going on here. We've got men in Baptist churches who are nothing more than a Catholic priest.

The last I remember reading about the Bible in the church, we're going to get into some of that very quickly, is that the Lord handed the keys over to the church. And if the church doesn't vote on it, you explain to me how does that work. How does that work? There are two groups in the Bible that I want to bring attention to you. I would like for you to think about this group that I read about in Matthew 15 and verse 8 that Jesus was pointing out to the Pharisees, the other group being the opposing party, the Sadducees.

They were always at one another, debating, arguing and quarreling. Seems like that's all that goes on with Baptist anymore too. Let me make a statement. It's... If I were not as convicted and convinced of being Baptist as much as I am, I would leave the Baptist.

I don't say that because I take pride in going to another denomination. I say it to say shame on the Baptist. That's what I'm saying. I'm not as old as some of you but I'm older than some of you. And there's some here near my age and we remember, Brother Chris and others, Brother Jimmy.

Do we not remember the early days of Calvary and Grace Baptist going to the Bible conferences, John Gilpin. I grew up under his preaching. He mentored me. Fred Halleman mentored me. As you say here in America, back in the day.

I remember how it was when preachers really got up and preached. When men took charge of things. And Over the years, the older generation has died out. And a new and younger generation has arisen. It only takes one generation, folks.

And everything changes. And we wake up the next day and we say, how in the world did that ever get in our church? We grow, some of us, we were born in church, grew up in church, we've spent our whole life in church. And now that we are in our mature years, we're wondering how in the world did it ever become this when it was that? What went wrong from point A to point B?

Where did it go wrong? Who lost it on their watch? That's what I want to know. And these two groups were always going at it with one another. They were always quarrelling and complaining and going on.

It was these Pharisees who lived by rules and regulations. If you don't do all of this in this book, 758 pages, I've got the book. Precept by precept, line by line, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin court. If you don't follow these, you're not in my group. You got that?

And if you break one of these laws, I'm not fellowshipping with you. And so you've got this group that has that mentality, and they've got their own ringleaders. And then you have the other group of the Sadducees and they didn't believe in the resurrection that's why they're called sad you see. Sad you see. Just remember that.

They didn't believe in the resurrection, they didn't believe in angels, they didn't believe in the spirit world. The Pharisees believed in all of that, but they were so religious, that's all they had was religion. The world has religion too. Every nation in the world that is full of idolatry, they are full of religion. Heaven forbid that you get involved in taking away some of their idols.

I found that out in Papua New Guinea, my vehicles got bullet holes in it. Well here in America they're not shooting live bullets but they're shooting the tongue. You never ever fully recover from a character assassination. And so these two groups were always pinning themselves against one another and they felt they were the elite of the elite of their day. I know a few people like that today too.

I on purpose do not go to many Bible conferences. And you want to know why? Because most of it's nothing more than what one John speaks about, that there was a man named Deotrephus, That he loved to have the preeminence. He loved it. There are people in groups here in America that love that.

They pride themselves on going to a conference and being the diatrophys. I was at a Bible conference some years ago. Everyone who was a speaker, they were introduced, Dr. So-and-so, Dr. So-and-so, Dr.

So-and-so, finally came time for me to speak, I got up, I said, I really don't know how to behave here, I'm not even a nurse. Do not men pride themselves on the deotrophicers? Always engaging in long debates between the preaching. Why? What's it for?

Why can't preachers just go to a meeting and preach? Why can't that be like that? Why can't God's people just be God's people? Why do you have to be a member of this group, and a member of that group, and a member of that group? And if you're not in this clique, I'm not gonna fellowship with you.

Circles getting smaller and smaller and smaller. But you know what? I became resolved many years ago. About some 22 years ago, I became resolved. And here was my resolvement.

I said, I'm not for sale. A church can support me, I'll thank you, shake your hand, and go do the mission work, but you don't own me. And if they say we can't support you, well that's great, get on with it, I'll get on with my work. But as a young preacher, and maybe there were others who grew up with this, as a young preacher, we all just tried to conform. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

There were other preachers in the group who seemed to be these giants, but they did not have the giant spirit of love. They had the giant spirit of theotrophies, loving to have the preeminence. I'm more educated, I'm more knowledgeable, I've got my doctorate and master's degree. I know this, I know these doctrines. I know the Greek and I know the Hebrew and the Latin and so on and so on.

I told a preacher out in California, I'm not in your Latin class. And most of these preachers who learn Greek can't speak it anyway. My mom's Greek, I got it growing up. All the Latin and the Greek and the Hebrew belongs in the office, not here. You see the Pharisees, they couldn't and didn't communicate with the common people.

You're the common people, I'm the common people. If I'm here I'm not the common people. If I'm sitting there I'm the common one. The preacher is to take God's word and put it on a level that the common people can understand. What is truth?

Do you know it? Have you seen it? Can you defend it? What did Jesus say in John chapter 14? Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, the truth and the life.

Jesus is truth. Everything outside of Christ is untruth. Did not the Lord give his doctrine to the church? He did so. So if it's not in accordance with the doctrine the Lord gave his church, it's untruth, unchrist, unchristian.

That's what that is. The church, the New Testament church, it had its history and you've probably heard it, but that's all right. Repetition is good for the memory. Long before the church ever became the church, There was a history that precedes that. Whatever your surname is, I've got up to, I can call up to nine generations of the Halliman name.

Can you? Do you know your history? Do you know your heritage? Do you know where you came from by history? Is your surname important to you?

We all agree to it that it is important. I'm Peter Halleman, the son of Fred Halleman. And Fred Halleman was the son of William Halleman and so on and so on all the way back to 1106 in England. Baptist history, is it important? Yes, it's important.

Because it tells us who we are, where we came from, and it gives you that ability to know how to behave because you can relate to the Baptist before you. How did they behave? How did they worship? How did they practice? What did they do?

What did they not do? Study history. Bible history and secular history. I was in Wales, I've seen with the Welsh Baptist, where they did not stay home, When they were under fierce persecution from the Catholics, it would have been very easy for them to say, for mommy to say, well I'm not going to church and I'm not taking the little ones to church either Because we might be killed in the way, so Mr. Husband, if you want to go, you go right on." They could have said that, but they didn't say that.

The husbands put things in order, the house was in order, wifey got in order, the children got in order and they went out and they hid out in caves and underground worship places. I've been to them in Wales. There are monuments there now. Is that what Baptists do here in America in the 21st century when COVID-19 hit? I've been across the United States from leaving Rick Perdue's residence in Roseville, California to here I've driven three thousand three hundred and seventy miles to get here Would you It was important for me to come here.

I didn't come here for you. I came here for this and for my Lord. Baptist history. How do you know how to behave as a Baptist? We've all got children.

And the grandparents say, well, I would have never let you, meaning their children now. And now we, their children, grow up and we've got children. And so now the way our children behave, the grandparents say, well we'd have never let you get by with that. So what happened? How are these children now going to know how to behave if they don't know the history?

How their parents and their parents and their parents, how they behaved? You behave like this because this is how we are. This is the kind of people that we are. We know how Baptist behave because we read Baptist history, we study it, we read the Bible. We start with the New Testament, we start with the Old Testament about God's people, And we go to the New Testament about the Lord's Church and we follow through history as to how the churches behaved.

And you go back to the Old Testament. And God chose a nation of people leading up to where I want to go. There was this nation called Israel and God gave them the law. He didn't give the other tribes the law. He gave Israel the prophets, not the other tribes.

He gave Israel the worship, not the other tribes. He gave the miracles to Israel, not the other tribes. He gave his preachers to Israel, not the other tribes. It's teaching the people how to behave. Generation, generation, generation.

They knew about the tabernacle. They knew about the temple. For 1, 800 years they worshipped like this over and over and over. When you come down to worship, bring an offering. Mommy, why are we going to church with an offering?

Because that's what we do. That's what God commanded. That's what our parents did. That's what God taught our people. It's history.

Learn the history. When we go down to church, who are we gonna see? You're gonna see the priest working. You're gonna see the priest working. Do we have priests working today in our churches?

Who's a priest, Brother Halliman? If You're a Christian and a church member, you're a priest. Are you working? You're going to leave your offering, the priest is going to take it, and then there's the high priest and so on and so on. And they did this for 1, 800 years.

Do you think that along there, somewhere along that time, do you think some customs would have developed? I've been all over America, I've met different denominations of people, I've met different ethnic groups of people, I've got a Greekish background, we have customs. Let me share with you how a custom gets started. With a people, a custom starts in this way by habitual exercise. Habitual.

We do it today and we do it at this time. And tomorrow we do it this way at this time. And so on, so on. And our children, you come to the table, you sit this way. We eat with the fork, knife, so on.

What? Customs. You say, please and excuse me, you don't reach in front of people, and you don't walk in front of people, and you drive this way, and you use your manners, and you are polite to people. Why do we do that? It's our custom.

I go to other parts of the world, they eat with their hands, not flatware. Custom. We go to New Guinea, the men associate with the men live with the men in the men's house, not women men, custom. The Pharisees had customs. Their customs was to go into the markets and have long prayers.

Their customs was to make a show of their religion. Their customs was to try to get the audience of others, not that they believed it, they just wanted the praise of other people. Customs. And the Lord came and said, Your customs you honor me with your mouth and your lips, but your heart is far from me. You're not even close to me.

I know some people like that too. They're more concerned about worship, edicacy, than they are about true worship. Have you ever read John chapter 4 and wondered why the Lord said that God was seeking? You know the verse. We read how the Lord came in Matthew chapter 1, how the Lord came to seek, seek and save His people.

We read that. It's in the Bible. Why is the Lord seeking? The Lord's seeking because they're lost. You fast forward John chapter 4 and God the Father is seeking for such to worship Him in spirit and in truth.

Why is God seeking? There's a whole lot of worship going on that's not in spirit and in truth. That's why. All this history of the Old Testament, John the Baptist was sent. He was prophesied in Isaiah, prophesied in Malachi.

Matthew came, told them, understand this. From Isaiah to Malachi there were 700 years. How did Malachi know to preach to the people about John the Baptist? How did he know? Because the author is the same.

Now I want you to think about something. What would our churches be like if there was no preacher for 400 years? If God did not raise up a preacher, all these preachers now die out. We die out tomorrow And the clock starts. And for 400 long years, no preacher.

God doesn't send a preacher. Can you imagine the confusion amongst Christians? Look what it is now and we have preachers. What would it be like if there were no preachers? I give you that point because from Malachi to Matthew, 400 silent years, God didn't send a preacher.

And now we come into the New Testament and it's all brand new. Everything is new. John the Baptist comes on the scene, he's new. The first Baptist missionary, He's new. You have all these Jews.

Israel, Pharisees, Sadducees, Israel, chief priests, Israel. What's in their mind? 1, 800 years of Old Testament, that's what's in their mind. All of a sudden now we've got a Baptist preacher on the scene. He comes preaching in the spirit of Elijah and people see him coming and then before that scene fades out we see the Lord coming.

Let me pause. Let me pause. Before John the Baptist, where was the authority? I want you to think with me. I've challenged preachers all over this country from North Carolina to California, proved me wrong.

I've not been proven wrong yet. I'm still searching for a different answer. I can't find it. And here's the point and here's the question. Before John the Baptist, When John the Baptist came on the scene and before him, did God give the authority to one man to do New Testament mission work before John the Baptist?

The answer is no, he did not. So the Lord gave, God gave the authority to John the Baptist, it comes vertical. No man gave it, the church wasn't even birthed. John the Baptist had authority from heaven. His name was from heaven, his birth was foretold, predestinated, foretold.

His name John was from heaven. It wasn't John Zacharias. I'm Peter Hellerman. I'm a Baptist but I've got a surname. John's surname was not Zachariah.

It was just simply John the Baptist. His name was from heaven. His vocation was from heaven. His authority was from heaven. His calling was from heaven.

His mission was from heaven. God sent him out and he did mission work preparing the way. He prepared the way and his time halted. John, you're not to do any more. Talked about perpetual mission works.

Let me tell you where I'm at. In 35 years of mission work I've never had a perpetual mission point. I go preach everywhere, anywhere. When God saves some and they make a confession, public confession, it doesn't matter if they are the only two and three. I ask them, do you desire to be constituted into a New Testament church?

If their answer is yes, I get on with it. If they're unsure or want to wait, then they join another existing Baptist church within the locality where they live. But the point of this perpetual mission work is for another diatrophist to be laying claim to that point. If they can be a mission, they can be a church. And I've got another question for all of you.

When and where does God ever give probation in the Bible for His people? You're saved, you've got to wait this long to be baptized. There's no probation on that. I read immediately they were saved, immediately they were baptized. I read immediately they were baptized and there was a church, a birthing of a church.

Even in the matter of exclusion, There's still no probation, folks. Read the Bible. If someone's excluded today, right in the service, excluded by vote, and even before the service is over and the church member repents and feels that exclusion and repents and says to the church I want to be reinstated please you tell me where the probation is well we've got to go home and think about it and pray about it. That's fine. Find it.

When you find it and tell me and show me, I'll start practicing. Catholicism. And John the Baptist, here comes Christ. He baptized Christ. Vertical authority passed horizontally to Christ.

And Jesus was now in control. John said, I must decrease and you must increase. What was that all about? The passing along of the authority. And Jesus now took that authority, called his disciples, organized his church, whether you want to believe it in Matthew 16, I personally believe it was by the seaside.

The Lord called Peter and Andrew, James and John. The Lord started the church with two, not four, not ten, not twelve. He started with two. That's why he said where two or three are gathered. He himself did it.

Dave the example. The other two were added and more were, Matthew was added, more were added. And guess what? In the middle of all those church members, one of them was a devil. None of them knew that except the Lord.

Even Judas was not aware of it until the very ending. So we need to be very, very careful about differentiating. Well, I don't know about so and so. You let the Lord take care of that. And the Lord constituted His church, and I'll quickly come to this point, but I'm running out of time, I want to share this with you.

The New Testament church. In Matthew chapter 10, the Lord gave a commission to the disciples, sent them out, call it whatever you want. He sent them out two by two, Matthew chapter 10. And the Lord said, when you go out, don't go to the heathen of other nations. Don't go to Galilee, don't go to Samaria, don't go to the Gentiles, go where?

To the house of Israel. And all through the ministry of Christ, it was to the house of Israel. To the house of Israel. Three and a half years later, in Acts chapter one verse eight, the Lord changes the mission program. He changed it, not the disciples, not the church.

It's in there. And the Lord said, now You are to go, continue to go to the house of Israel, but... Let me share something with you about this but. You went to school, I went to school. In English, there's a conjunction called but.

It links two different thoughts in a sentence, sometimes in a paragraph, can be multiple, can be singular. It helps to understand some grammar, It helps to understand words. Words mean things. And when you hear that but, it means like this. Everything preceding the but meant one thing.

It completes the thought, you come to the but. Everything after that is a complete opposite of this. Did you get that? So the Lord in Matthew chapter 10 said, here's your commission, here's your mission work, go preach to Israel. Acts chapter 1 verse 8, but you shall now go to all the other ends of the earth, to Samaria, to Judea, to the other most parts of Galilee go to the Gentiles take the mission work take the Lord's Word to all people and nations the Lord changed the mission work he went back to heaven I have a lot more but I'm going to leave you with a thought.

Here's the thought I want to leave with you with a new church being birthed. Once the authority is handed over, keys, you see there are two Greek words for authority and in English It goes like this. In Romans chapter 1 verse 16 Paul used the word dunamis, where we get our English word dynamite. And that's associated, connected, linked with the Gospel. So it doesn't matter if it's Brother Green, me, Brother Chris, the older people or the little ones.

Give them a stick of dynamite, each one of us, take it out here and ignite it. And it doesn't matter if it's the little one or the 80-year-old or the middle-aged, all of the sticks of dynamite that have been ignited, they all go what? Boom. They do their own initial work. The gospel does its initial work.

That's the dynamite. Jesus did not use the word dynamite over in Matthew 28. For authority, he used the word exucia, which means authority, the kind of judicial authority, The kind of authority that courts make. The kind of authority that lawmakers make. The kind of authority that parents make.

I'm making this decision and you're not going to argue with it. I'll tell you how it works in my house. You come to my house, you walk in the doors of my house, you immediately, by your own confession, place yourself under my authority. If I say sit here, do this, go there and do that, that's what you will do or get out. That's the kind of authority Jesus was talking about in Matthew 28.

So to sum it up, a summation. The new church. They will have that key, they will have that authority. No church, no pastor, no missionary, No church member, inside or outside, will tell you what to do. This will tell you what to do.

And no church is free to act outside of this. That's the New Testament church. May the Lord add his blessings to these words. Brother David.