LEAVING ANGLICAN CHURCH OF AUSTRALIA

[Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] it's immensely sad uh it's a massive disturbing there is a virus in our national church my name is kay goldsworthy i um i'm an anglican um i was grateful for the meditation so that's been a real gift for me tonight [Music] in 1991 the australian churchman peter carnley wrote that the idea of christ dying in our place leads us to a picture of god of a morally i quote of a morally repugnant kind whose son becomes the hapless victim of his father's righteous anger and far from being a prophet without honour in his own country he was rewarded by being made the primate of the anglican church of [Music] australia we are a church where there are diversities of viewpoint this diversity is an enrichment and we must hold on to that through thick and thin i'm a an anglican by conviction as well as my culture and i think it's the best form of christian identity and christian understanding of the bible two weeks ago in an australian first their local wangaratta church council voted to allow for the formal blessing of civil unions because when i got ordained i promised to uphold these things and i made promises and i made them with integrity [Music] i'm jeremy david grieves to swear that i will pay true and canonical obedience to philip john aspinall archbishop of brisbane and all the successes of that bishop in all things lawful and honest so help me god [Music] so there is there is a virus which is there where i believe that clergy have not been teaching their people the word of god [Music] [Applause] but i have loved the bible study our bible study group's been really terrific and the bible study leaders were fantastic as christians prepare to mark the death and resurrection of christ this easter we need to challenge the belief that the resurrection of jesus from the dead was a physical resurrection the resurrection of jesus all not to be seen in physical terms but as a new spiritual reality there is a virus in our national church and you can see it in the wangaratta synod and the grafton synod you've seen it in resolutions in adelaide and in brisbane that is a reality at the moment that sydney is not agreeing with the rest of most of the rest of the diocese in the country this situation i mean it's 2019 now this situation of anglican synods uh promoting blessings for marriages between people of the same sex that happened at new westminster diocese in canada in 2002 and at when that happened 2002 11 i think it was 11 parishes left the synod have some integrity if you don't believe this stuff if you want to talk about a different jesus not actually the consistent jesus of the new testament not the jesus as the anglican church of australia uh understands him not the official doctrinal positions that we've taken and held for hundreds of years uh you know thousands of years even as a christian church if you want to go and do your own thing that's great go and do it i love the freedom for any of us to do that but don't take the church time to do it i certainly am not going to be bullied by fundamentalist christians so that's for sure good morning and welcome to my friends from australia i'm dr frederick mulder i live in england i've been here for about 13 years i came here to study further at durham university on the resurrection then i went to tyndale house and finished my phd in the netherlands i made great buddies with sydney anglicans and dr bruce winter was still the warden at tyndale house he's from australia moore college and i've got a passion to equip christians to stand firm in love and in truth with the gospel of our lord jesus christ and i want to have a conversation with my sydney anglican brothers today only with you guys or if you're an evangelical christian an australian and this is going to be controversial yes i want to challenge you guys in love and in truth and the issue is at what point are we compromising the gospel when we are partnering at synods at meetings with people who are teaching error at what point should we turn around so the controversial thing i want to ask is this who should leave conservatives say the liberals must leave but we know they're not leaving and what does scripture actually say about partnering with those who deny the gospel so that is the controversial issue that i want to unpack today and you saw in the montage the development of liberalism in the anglican church of australia you've seen the conservatives the frustration david old and archbishop davies and others who are concerned about what's going on so i'm going to divide this into five sections today so first of all number one we're going to look at this very popular view among conservatives that the liberals should leave they can start their own churches and the conservatives they are the ones representing true anglican uh australian christianity number one number two we will look at a test case going back about 20 years of church discipline we'll focus on peter conley number three we will dig into a couple of key texts that is crucial to understand heresy and to separate from heresy number four we will be encouraged and challenged by dr michael jensen and philip jensen describing sydney anglicans how they think how they operate challenging them to follow the lord jesus christ and then philip philip jameson will challenge us to abandon everything for the gospel and then i will wrap up in the in just a short little summary and challenging us to follow the lord jesus christ so here we go number one liberals should go not the conservatives so the overwhelming message we get from conservative evangelicals from sydney diocese is that the liberals should leave they should show integrity they should do the right thing and start their own churches they are unfaithful to the official doctrine of the anglican church of australia archbishop of sydney glenn davies referred to their teaching as a virus that has infected the church now of course i think the bible uses better words to describe it it's more like a cancer or a gangrene that paul writes to timothy and of course as expected the media is persistently mocking and vilifying sydney anglicans for being arrogant divisive and polarizing and over and over we hear the mantra of our national church and the national church of australia i listened to a couple of beautiful sermons from um philip jensen peter jensen and other lots of jensen's there family tradition of of course and we also have the lone family a couple of very prominent evangelical families and i try to get under the skin of my australian friends trying to understand what it feels like to be an aussie and you know commemoration of the first world war and how they describe how australians gave their lives their lives during the war and and and being a aussie anglican is part of their cultural heritage and i respect that and i think i've got a i i got a feel for that this week as i went through this so there's this national identity that there's this mixture between being an anglican christian and part of the national church of australia and with the appointment of archbishop jeffrey smith as the new primate of the anglican church of australia there can be little doubt that his main objective will be to unify the church to keep the conservatives the moderates and the liberals around the sinner tables their strategy will be to maintain church unity at all cost so the question is who should leave who should separate who should leave the national synod who should leave house of bishop meetings whose integrity is on the line the liberals or the conservatives now let's hear archbishop dave is talking about listening at general synod for over 20 years he's going to say the time for action is truly past and at the next sinner they should make decisive decisions he's going to be saying this church is not going to change and he's calling on the liberals to start their own churches let's listen to him i think we've been listening for well for 20 years and i think what we should have at next general sound is the opportunity to actually make decisions about this so that people can realize well this church isn't going to change uh if i want to pursue my sexual agenda join a different church start a different church and i will say god bless you and off you go so this really sounds like music to the ears of evangelicals doesn't it now we'll get into more biblical texts later but i want us just briefly to listen to how archbishop davis brought the apostle paul into this conversation challenging us to remain faithful to scripture he starts off saying that he believes the clergy in australia have not been teaching their people the word of god and then he goes on asking christians how many sermons they've actually heard about sexual ethics calling on believers to follow the word of god and not the wisdom of the age let's listen to him i i would ask people on this podcast for example how many sermons have you heard about sexual identity about homosexual practice about the teaching of the old testament and the new testament how many sermons have you heard so if you don't hear sermons about it you know you won't you won't know you'll just follow the media conversation or the spirit of the age which is exactly what the apostle paul warned us not to follow so bible teaching is what will ground people and understand the word of god so you notice there where he said that exactly what the apostle paul warned us not to follow so the question is how did we get here what happened that caused such a flood of progressive liberal theologies to sweep across the anglican church of australia over the past 10 15 years and to answer this we have to go back at least 20 years well actually we have to go back 33 years to understand how we got to this position and this brings us then to the test case on church discipline now the list of progressive or liberal theologians have indeed multiplied over the past couple of years and we can think of bishop goldsworthy bishop greaves canon john shepard as we saw in the montage but i want us to go further back to probably the most controversial famous and indeed profoundly important controversy over the past 20 30 years and that was the appointment as primate of the anglican church of australia of peter conley now for my phd i had to work through basically this whole book of peter carnley tom wright took him on kindly denies the bodily resurrection of christ we saw in the montage he denies the substitutionary atonement of christ as professor simon gather cold illustrated and crucially a majority of bishops elected him to become the primer the spiritual leader of the anglican church of australia in the year 2000 this book was written in 1987. i'm not familiar with any church discipline proceedings against him i haven't done all of that research but i think the significance of this appointment cannot be overstated so what we have to see where this appointment is on the highest level a person was appointed as the spiritual leader of a whole denomination who denies the bodily resurrection of christ and the atonement of christ and he was elected by a majority of the bishops now the response can be divided in three groups they are probably more nuanced positions in between but i want us to focus on three responses to this appointment and the kind of agenda and strategy that comes into play the first group are the liberals they are the theological progressives who supported him enthusiastically and who wants to maintain church unity at all cost then you've got the moderates the in-between people they want to they're not sure whether they agree with everything he says but they want church unity and then you have some trouble makers the conservatives the sydney anglicans so that would be the three categories that i quickly want us to look at so the first category are the liberals and there you will have bishop greaves uh bishop k girls where the ship john shepard and those guys who will support the liberals now very interestingly when peter conley was installed they had an interview with him and there was talk of some of the parishes that wanted to break away because of his liberalism and listen very closely to his response when that question was posed to him for perishing my diocese tried to do that i would be jumping on them like a ton of bricks you heard that he says that if a parish in his diocese wants to break away i would jump on them like a ton of bricks this is interesting he rejects the fundamentalists but he becomes fundamentalist just selecting those church unity texts and says he will jump on them like with bricks if they want to separate from the church so liberals always want the conservatives to stay they need them for many reasons we know that the evangelical churches are growing the liberal churches are dying but the liberals will all take fight to the death to maintain church unity that's the first group the second group will be the moderates and then you will have of course the new um primer jeffrey smith and others who would want to maintain the unity at all cost you also have a couple of evangelicals in that group and one of them with the installation of peter conley was the archbishop of sydney and that was archbishop harry goody now i just want to qualify this first there are many evangelicals that respect him i don't know all his work and i heard that he did stand up to era in other contexts as well so we just have to do to qualify that but with the installation of peter conley um archbishop harry good you he did criticize candy's theology but he also sent out an open letter to all the clergy of sydney and he said quote he was not planning to boycott the installation ceremony which he said would be tantamount to severing relations with the rest of the church now if this is correct it means for the sake of church unity a sydney anglican bishop was willing to compromise the atonement the bodily resurrection of christ for the sake of church unity and then let's go to the conservative response and here we've got a beautiful example dr john woodhouse who later on became the principal at moore college and this was his response to the installation of peter carney let's listen today at 3 p.m in sedandre's cathedral in sydney there will be a service to mark the inauguration of archbishop carnelly as primate this is an enormous embarrassment to us all i was asked several times during this week whether or not i will attend the service i've replied that i will not and that i would discourage others from doing so i didn't think that i could be present because i thought that my presence would indicate to people uh support of peter and what he was using his office to say and therefore i didn't want to be present and i wanted to discourage others from being present so why did john woodhouse refuse to go to this service to this installation because he believed he would compromise scripture and he will participate in error he will cause his sheep to stumble had he been there so archbishop davis earlier said it's a terrible day it's a tragic day what happened recently with same-sex unions i want to propose that the saddest day in the history of the anglican church of australia did not occur a couple of years ago or a few months ago it happened in the year 2000 when a bishop was appointed who denies the bodily resurrection and the atonement of christ and the rest is history that multiplied he taught students those students have gone all over australia and we see from these more recent developments that once you allow error it becomes like a cancer that spreads and that's a good point now to go to this the texts uh important texts in the new testament that help us understand church discipline and how to separate from error so let's start with the lord jesus christ in matthew 18 where he says that if your brother sins against you if your brother commits a sin or if he's teaching false doctrine the lord jesus gives us the model you first go privately discuss it with him if he doesn't change take a brother with if if he's still stubbornly possessed in error say it to the church make it public and if they continue in their era then you should separate from them and you should treat them as if they were pagans or tax collectors this is what the lord jesus christ says and this is what should have happened with peter conley 20 years ago let's go to paul roman 16 paul says i urge you brothers to watch over those who cause division and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned keep away from them don't attain synod with them one corinthians 5 9-11 paul says i wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexual immoral people not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral or the greedy or swindlers or idolatrous in that case you would have to leave the world of course we have to share the love of christ with the world but now paul says i'm writing to you that you must not associate with anyone bishops cannons vickers who claim to be brothers or sisters in christ but is sexually immoral idolaters slanders and so forth now he says do not even eat with such people in 1 corinthians 15 where there were some who denied the bodily resurrection paul says in verse 32 and 33 if the day do not rise let us what let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die that's very popular today isn't it and then he says to them do not be misled bad company corrupts good character come back to your senses so he says do not be in the company of those who deny the bodily resurrection of christ in 2 timothy 2 we have the same thing where the future bodily resurrection was denied and paul says they destroy the faith of some and he says it's like a cancer or a gangrene bishop davis spoke about a virus it's much worse paul says he's a gangrene that destroys the faith of some in ephesians 5 the beautiful book on church unity and love and the body of christ we have in chapter 5 paul says those who live in this way will not inherit the kingdom of god and then he said let no one deceive you with empty words for because of such things god's wrath comes on those who are disobedient therefore do not be partners with them do not be partners with them at synod do not attend it with them separate yourself from them is what i think paul is saying and then into john where is about the gospel the the incarnation the christology of the church john says to to the christians if anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching do not take them into your house or welcome them anyone who welcomes them anyone who welcomes them shares in their wicked work and then just the last verse before we go to the jensen family in revelation 3 the church to laodicea what does the lord jesus christ say to the church he says i know your deeds that you are neither cold nor hot i wish you were either one or the other so because you are lukewarm neither hot nor cold i'm about to spit you out of my mouth so number four let's go to the jensen family and uh i remember buying this book from michael jensen a couple of years ago sydney anglicans i enjoyed reading this book and i really want to encourage you even if you disagree with him to get this book and i just want to quote a couple of paragraphs at the end of the book describing the sydney anglicans to really encourage you guys to really really take hold of this marvelous tradition in sydney michael writes sydney anglicans are toughened by bad news they are used to ridicule they're not shocked by invective against them insult them all you like it makes little difference you could also point to a resourcefulness of spirit and a stubborn determination to bear the gospel come what may there is an edge to the sydney diocese that has not yet been blunted by the relentless pressure to go quietly into what from a secularist point of view would be a sweet and silent oblivion certainly anglicans have inherited a wealth of spiritual and intellectual resources that ought not to be despised by themselves or by others sydney opponents are wrong to dismiss them as lightweight unanglican and anti-intellectual advocating the cause of the gospel of jesus christ is certainly not going to become any easier in the sydney of the next few decades now crucial in order to ready themselves to meet those challenges sydney anglicans need to return with due humility to the sources of their faith the only recipe for security is a prayerful commitment to meet jesus christ as he is revealed in scripture not our own jesus not a comfortable jesus not a jesus that compromise that sin or attending sinners i would argue with liberals by the jesus christ as he is revealed to us in scripture so late here dr philip jensen challenging us if you're a sydney anglican can i invite you to be challenged by philip jensen he's going to ask you when you are dead one day what do you want people to say about you you had a good golf swing you had a boat you sailed you had a nice garden you became a partner at the business maybe you became a bishop you became an important person or are you willing to forsake everything for a bigger for a bigger goal for a bigger thing that's bigger than yourself the gospel changing the world and we know that philip jensen planted many evangelical churches can i encourage you let's listen to philip johnson friends what are you going to do with your life yeah when you come to a job interview they say where do you hope to be in five years ten years except you know that silly question working for you slaving hard going ahead making progress whatever dumb answer you can think up that might possibly get you a job it's a phony situation phony question and even phone to your answer but where would you be in 10 years 20 years 40 years what's going to be written in your over obituary i mean if you were really writing your own obituary what would you want to write if you were conducting your own funeral service i had people there today what would you once said what do you want to say about this is what i did in the life i had he left no foot marks pathetic isn't it isn't that pitiable so i think that's what my life has added up to well what do you want them to say he played a good golf game he enjoyed sailing yeah you kept a very nice garden he he made senior partner but what do you think will matter in this world climb the ladder if you want to but i'll tell you what the view is at the top nothing except other people climbing up the ladder trying to push you off ultimately in the end they're not doing good for anybody because it's all about me so about my progress my career my advancement you don't actually get there that way friends why not give up your small ambitions why not be like paul with a big mind who has a big vision for a great work that doesn't doesn't matter about yourself you can lose yourself in it i don't care if they're preaching out of envy and spite towards me i just wanted that jesus is preached i don't care they've locked me up in prison god i've reached the guards i never could have reached them any other way in fact chained up i've had terrific opportunities see he's a man who lived for something bigger than himself you're living for something bigger than yourself if you're a christian you should be but if you're living something bigger than yourself then why live for the smaller things of this world why not give it in give up your small ambitions live for christ throw it all away and go into the world and make a change make a difference for you can because you have the gospel of the lord jesus christ that regenerates people transforms society and takes people not only in a regenerated transformed society in the here and now but takes them into heaven for eternity hallelujah can i encourage you my brothers and sisters to give up your small ambitions and live for jesus christ are we willing to pay the price we recently just read that in victoria now it's been criminalized to spread the gospel and convert people are we willing to be persecuted for the lord jesus christ so let's wrap this up in conclusion i want to challenge my sydney anglican brothers and sisters are you willing to separate from liberal bishops and synods and follow christ follow paul in separating from era in love in humility in truth but not compromising the gospel i want to challenge you to either boycott the general centered or separate from them i want to encourage you to prayerfully consider for the sake of god for the sake of your flock for the sake of the lord jesus christ to separate from error and spread the good news of jesus christ [Music] thank you so much for listening today you are so welcome to disagree with me you're welcome to leave comments contact me this is evangelical platform a youtube channel dedicated to preserving the gospel in a complex messy postmodern world the lord bless you and have a wonderful blessed week [Music] goodbye in 2008 there was a meeting that we were all meant to go to and half of us decided not to go to that meeting because it would be to compromise so we went to jerusalem instead and gaffcon was born the gaffcon movement is saying no this is this is a matter in which souls will be lost in which people are in huge danger of the loss of their souls and unless we make a stand and say the bible is the word of god this is what the word of god says we will not have fellowship with you because we want you to come back we want you to repent we want you to give this up and turn back to what the bible says that's the gaffron message i didn't think that i could be present because i thought that my presence would indicate to people uh support of peter and what he was using his office to say [Music] and therefore i didn't want to be present i wanted to discourage others from being present [Music] you [Music] you

Channel: Evangelical Platform

Views: 1,311

Rating: 4.8400002 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: V_FUXx1KLmA

Length: 34min 21sec (2061 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020