Church

You know, whenever Vern isn't here and Roger and I pinch it, we have been going through the doctrinal statement and the next subject for today is the church. As I look out there, I see we have two churches here. We have our regular church and then we have the Andersons. And they're all the holy people on this side. Okay, in the beginning of the doctrinal statement, I think in the handout I just had the doctrinal statement printed there, and then a space for you to take notes if you'd like.

The first part is, we believe that the Church, which is now the body, and shall be the Bride of Christ, is a spiritual organism made up of born-again persons, originated at Pentecost, and to be taken up bodily at the Rapture. The church, let's first spend a few minutes defining the word church.

It's the word ekklesia made up of two Greek words, ek and kaleo. Ek means it's a primary preposition denoting origin. And it's a derivative of kaleo, which means a calling out. So you could say that there's a new purpose in this age, which is the outcalling of a heavenly people.

The church are the called out from the world by an out loud calling to leave where they are and become an exclusive member of the called out ones. That's what the word church means. We're all members of the called out ones. So when did the church begin? Well, the church began as a body and was formed at Pentecost through the new ministry of the Holy Spirit. Believers at that time, and through the baptism of the Spirit, became an organism by virtue of a divine life indwelling all, and that life was Christ himself. Acts 2 verses 1-4 is a description of what happened at the Day of Pentecost When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all gathered in one place.

And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind that filled the whole house. And they were all sitting. And there appeared to them tongues of fire distributing themselves and resting upon each one. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.

A few verses down from there, it says, now when they heard this, Peter gets up and he gives his first sermon. And it runs in scripture for, oh, maybe 30 some verses. And when he's finished speaking, the word says, and now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart. His words had an effect on them.

And said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brethren, what should we do now? What shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent, or change your mind about who Christ is, and each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promises for you and for your children and all are far off, and watch this next part, as many as the Lord our God will call to himself.

So then those who received his word were baptized, and that day were added to the church 3,000 souls. 3,000. So Pentecost work was both profound and extensive. 3,000 souls that day wasn't a small amount. But in every way, it suited to prove that a divine person had just come in grace and no less than power both to save and to gather.

Acts 2.47 says, praising God and having favor with all the people. And again, he repeats himself, and the Lord added to the church daily as those that should be saved. This was a work of the Lord. So is there a process by which the body is being formed? And the answer is yes, there is. This heavenly body is formed by a process that God has designed, and it's been distinct from the very beginning. Watch the sequence here as this goes together.

It could not have existed before the cross because God must be reconciled by that cross first. It could not have existed before the resurrection of Christ for its members must share in his resurrection life. It could not have existed before his ascension for it would have been a body without a head. It could not have existed prior to Pentecost. For until then, there could have been no organic union by the baptism of the Spirit into one body in the glorified Lord. So Pentecost is the perfect time. So how does one then get into the body of Christ? How does one become a member of this called out group?

When a person believes in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, that person is saved and then baptized by the Spirit or placed by the Spirit into Christ at the point of Christ's death. We study this verse a lot in this church. Romans 6, 3-4, Do you not know that all who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death, and therefore, having been buried with him through baptism into death, so that when Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life." Now there's a couple of things going on here. One, my faith is individual. It does not unite me to the body of Christ, though it does fit me out for union with him.

One believes the gospel from one's own salvation, and the believer receives the life of the Son of God, the resurrected life, who is life and who quickens those that are dead. By faith, every individual gets the life of Christ and is justified. He's adopted as a child of God, and he's blessed with every special blessings in Christ. But the baptism of the Spirit is over and above that life.

It is given, therefore, not to dead unbelievers, but to those who are made alive. And the issue is one body. Over and above his faith, he's sealed by the Spirit. Then and only then is the body the church formed. It supposes that the individual salvation question already settled by faith. And then the corporate relationship begins. It is established by the Spirit of God and now on the earth.

And it's the privilege indeed of the highest kind. And yet at once involves the greatest responsibilities. I think these transactions are simultaneous. Actually, when a person is saved, there's no less than 34 things that happens to him at the very instant that he believes. So maybe I could say it this way.

The difference between the gospel for salvation and the church might be this. In the gospel, we get our title to heaven. Christ's death entitles me to it. In the church, I'm seated as a member of Christ's body in heavenly places. So, how would you say then this organism or this church is described in scripture?

There are seven figures that are used primarily in the New Testament and they are all various contributions that are needed to explain this relationship which Christ maintains with the church. He is the vine, the first one, he is the vine, and we are the branches. He is the shepherd, and we are the sheep. He's the chief cornerstone, and we are the stones in the building. He is the high priest, and we are a kingdom of priests. He's the last Adam, the head of a new order of beings, and we are the new creation. He's the head of the body, and we are members of it in particular. He's the bridegroom and we are the bride.

The first six of these represent an affiliation between Christ and his church, and the seventh is future. Let's just look at some verses. In 1 Corinthians 12 through 14, Paul describes this relationship between Christ and his body by talking about a human body. He says, for as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body being many, our one body, so also is the Christ.

For by one Spirit, every one of us was baptized into one body, whether we were Jews or Gentiles, whether we were bond or free, we have all been made to drink into one Spirit, for the body is not one member, but many." So the church is identified with him, and this because we were, by virtue of the fact that by one spirit, we were all baptized into this one body, every single one of us. And it didn't matter where we came from, whether we were Jews or Gentiles, or we were free or bond, or we were Republicans or Democrats. It doesn't matter.

The body is the sphere in which the spirit of God acts. This leads to a very blessed unfolding of the truth of the church, viewed as the body of Christ. According to God's order, Believers do not exercise gifts as isolated individuals, but as members of this body of Christ for the good of the whole body.

It's a really important issue. In Ephesians 1, 22 and 23, Paul tells us that God has put all things under his feet and he gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that fills all. When you turn to the glorified Christ at God's right hand, you can say a couple of things. There is my head.

The church is his body, the fullness or the complement of who he is. Whom is his divine being fills all things. And think of the link here, how complete, how intimate. we shall find it is so intimate that Christ and his church are spoken under one name." If you look at verse 12 it says, and so also is the Christ. We are so united to him we are spoken of as in one name.

Therefore it's added that the Lord Jesus under whose feet God has put everything has been given to the church as head over all things. Notice it doesn't say that he is the head over all things. But it says, as the head of all things, he's given to the church. What position does that put you in then? The church shares his place of rulership or headship over all things.

But as his body, an inseparable union with him, the body of Christ, the body is Christ's body and includes Christ and all of his members. It is his body to express himself. The Christian is now a member of Christ's body, and that by the Holy Spirit, in the most intimate association with Christ as it possibly could be, not only as having life in him, but as enjoying oneness in him, who is the supreme exalted head over all. The believer is a member of his body. When you read that you will come and rule and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ in the Millennial Kingdom, you are in a position that He's in. You're a ruler and a reigner as a member of the body of Christ.

Colossians 3.14 and 15 says, Above all things put on love, which is the bond of perfectness, and let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which indeed you are called in one body, and be ye thankful.

This body that we belong to is the vehicle for the spirit. The church is the body of Christ, as the body of Christ is the vehicle, may we say, for the activities of Christ. He uses the church through the indwelling spirit to perform his work in the world and to represent himself. So not only individually, but in particular, we as a body, the spirit uses to manifest the person of Christ to the world. So, what does the future hold for us?

In the meantime, right now, 2 Corinthians 11 says, for I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy, I have espoused you to one husband, and I may present you a chaste virgin to Christ." We're now espoused to Christ. Ephesians 5, 25 and 27, with the focus on husbands and wife, but listen to how the church is mentioned in here. Husbands, love your wife, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify it, set it apart, and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. that he might present to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish.

That is the work of the Lord Jesus Christ himself for us as his espoused ones. We, like the Lord, are awaiting the day of the marriage union with Christ. And there's a vast number of believers that are already in the heavenlies. and here on the earth that are now espoused to Christ. In the future Christ will come again to receive his called out ones who are still here on the earth and to himself and to heaven we will all go and we will go to the marriage feast of the Lamb.

In Revelation 19.7 John says, Let us rejoice and be glad and give the glory to him, for the marriage feast of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready.

It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean, for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. So then he said to me, Right, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb. And he said to me, These are the true words of God. Lewis Perry Chaffer made a very interesting comment on these verses. He said, No human imagination can measure the change that will be fashioned by the power of God in those who comprise the bride of the Lamb.

He, the Infinite One, will be ravished with the adorable loveliness of His bride, so for all eternity she will have been perfected to this immeasurable and infinite degree. So, the next part of this doctrinal statement is God has instituted baptism, water baptism, and the Lord's Supper to be observed until his return. So I got to thinking, why did he do those two things? Why didn't he do something else? Those are only two, we call them ordinances. Well, or observances that he's asked us to do or commanded us to do.

There are really two types of baptism, as best I understand, and both are distinguished by the same Greek word, baptizo, and they can be described as real baptism and ritual baptism. Real baptism is accomplished by the Holy Spirit at the moment of new birth. The minute that we believe, the Spirit of God places us into Christ at the point of His death so that we can share in His burial and resurrection and ascension and seeding. Ritual baptism is administered with water and can be accomplished by any believer. What baptism does, ritual baptism, it demonstrates our identity with the Lord Jesus's death.

For example, his separation from the world, his resurrection into newness of life. It's mentioned a lot of times, especially in Acts, when Peter said to the people that were listening to him, Repent and each of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins and you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit in 241 so then those who had received his word were baptized and that day there were added about 3,000 souls 836 as they went along and this is the eunuch as they went along the road they came to some water and the eunuch said Laura look water what prevents me from being baptized and And Philip said, if you believe with your heart, you may. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus is the son of God. And he ordered the chariot to stop, and they both went down into the water, and Philip as well as the eunuch, and he baptized him.

Acts 9.18, we're talking about the apostle Paul. And immediately there fell from his eyes something like scales, and he regained his sight, and he got up and was baptized.

Acts 19.5 talks about it, and they were all baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Baptism really is a symbol of your co-crucifixion with Christ. When you go down in that water, it's an outward symbol of exactly what happened to you spiritually when you died with Christ. Now, what death means is separation. So, what you're saying to the world is that I have been separated from you. I have been called out from you to be a member of the body of Christ of the called out ones.

I've always thought that baptismals ought to be on the front lawns of churches because it really is an ordinance in which we say goodbye and they need to see us leave so that when we are raised up out of the water we are in newness of life and we no longer belong to the world.

The second ordinance he asks us to observe as believers and members of the body of Christ is the Lord's Supper or the Lord's Table. We are to partake of the bread and the cup as a remembrance of the Lord's death until he comes. And we celebrate that here once a month. And we read every time 1 Corinthians chapter 11, 23 through 26.

And Paul says in that first verse, For I have received of the Lord that which I also delivered unto you." Significant in the fact that Paul got this direction specifically from Christ. He didn't go ask the other apostles, hey what was it like on the Last Supper and what did you do and yeah maybe we ought to... pick up on this bread and cup thing. Now, the resurrected glorified Lord that taught Paul about the church instituted this ordinance with him specifically. And he goes through that in the same night in which the Lord was betrayed. He took bread and etc. We all know the verses. And so the Lord asked us to do something specific. He asked us to remember his death. the significant and key event in all of mankind.

At the end of verse 26 he says, by doing this you do show or you proclaim or you preach the Lord's death until he comes. So I would say these two ordinances are actions ordained and divinely appointed testimonies for the believer's heart to God respecting his trust in Christ's efficacious death. That's why you do it. Now, the last part has to do with, we believe that the establishment, continuance, and biblical leadership of the local church is clearly taught and defined in scripture. It's very interesting when you tackle verses that have to do with this subject. It's almost like an employment application. And you take a look at that and you think, my goodness, nobody's ever going to measure up to these qualifications.

But maybe if we looked at it in a little different way, the idea of love in any true sense implies that there must be care and oversight of the objects that are loved. And in proportion, as there is wisdom and authority, so must this oversight become a responsibility. God has in this age given us a commandment that we should love one another as I have loved you. It is therefore now the responsibility of every individual believer to love his brother as Christ has loved him.

Well, if you're like me and you study that, you think, well, there's no way that's ever going to happen. That's just not possible. That's true. It's not out of your own strength. But as resurrected ones in Christ, with the resurrected life of Christ, he's giving a commandment to us in that life that is not only easy to carry out, but is part and parcel of the life that we have. So because there's grace given to him, and it's the nature of Christ in us to do exactly that.

So in the church, everyone is responsible to wash his brother's feet. I cannot, however, discharge my responsibility beyond my ability. But lack of ability never absolves me from my responsibility. The responsibility is that each should, by divine skill, remove from his brother everything that hinders his communion with Christ. I have that responsibility to you. You have that responsibility to me. Now, as this is common to all believers and incumbent on all, it's easy, I think, to see that the elder brother should be the most competent for this great and arduous service.

So what God does is that he calls and raises these overseers up. And we don't decide who they are. He decides. And we recognize them because they are functioning that way. And we say, oh, yeah, there's one. you know, we probably ought to talk to him about being an overseer or an elder because he's already doing what God has called him to do.

Every local church, in every local church, the Lord has put in place the criteria for loving leadership of that body. Because it's his body, he creates it and he makes provision for its health. So, in Ephesians 4, 11 through 13, Paul says that he, the Lord, gave to the church some apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers. And here's why he did it.

For the equipping of the saints for the work of service to the building up of the body of Christ. If you look in your Bible at verse 12, you will see that there are no commas in there. that the equipping of the saints for the work of the service to the building up of the body of Christ is all one issue. Every believer and every body of believers has gifted men given to that body to equip saints to carry on the equipping until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the fullness which belongs to the fullness of Christ. That's what our job is as members of this body.

Vine defined it this way, in the Christian churches those who being raised up and qualified by the work of the Holy Spirit were appointed to have the spiritual care of and to exercise oversight over the churches. The divine arrangement seen through the New Testament was for a plurality of those appointed in each church.

God's system is not one person leading. It's a plurality. It's a group of men who are overseers. And you have to refer back to the idea that these are people who are lovers. These are people that care and have oversight for the objects that Christ loves, so that their responsibility is enormous.

In Acts 14.23, it says that when they had ordained them elders in every church and they prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord on whom they believed.

Acts 20, 17 talks about from Miletus he sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the church. Acts 20, 27 and 28, for I've not shunned to declare unto you all the counsels of God. Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. And feed the church of God, which has been purchased by his own blood.

Now, there's several passages that talk about qualifications, and I'm only going to go through one because we don't want to be repetitive. But in 1 Timothy 3, Paul writes to Timothy and he says, this is a trustworthy statement. If any man aspires to the office of overseer, it is a fine work that he desires to do. So God has to put that desire in a man's heart. An overseer then must be, and here's the job qualifications, he must be above reproach.

He must be the husband of one wife. He must be temperate, prudent, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not addicted to wine, or pugnacious, which means confrontational, but gentle, peaceable, free from the love of money. He must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity. But if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church or the called out ones of God? And not a new convert, so that he will not become conceited and fall into the condemnation incurred by the devil. He must have a good reputation with those outside the church, so that he will not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.

I have to tell you, when I read that, I thought, is anybody qualified? Is there anybody that measures up to this? And I thought, well, you know, the Lord has his local bodies of believers and he has persons that he has called and suited them out as flawed men to carry out these functions.

And even though they have the responsibility of overseer, they're constantly growing too. They're constantly learning about their ministry all the time. Deacons, likewise, must be men of dignity, not double-tongued or addicted to much wine or fond of sordid gain, but holding to the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience. These men must also first be tested, then let them serve as deacons if they are beyond reproach."

So the qualifications are pretty stringent, but what I find interesting How else would you want somebody to be an overseer? Someone who's just sort of got half of this down? A person like this fits these qualifications only because they individually and personally have come into a greater intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ and are being more and more conformed to his very image. You'll notice that these criteria fit Christ. in terms of the personality and the temperament of the man who's called to be an overseer.

Deacons must be husbands of only one wife and good managers of their children in their own household, for those who have served well as deacons obtain for themselves a high standing and great confidence in the faith that is in Jesus Christ. The one thing you have to understand about those that are elders and deacons is that in their mind they are servants.

And that's how they view themselves. They do not view themselves as bosses. They view themselves as servants. That's what they're here to do is serve. And they also have in their mind that there isn't a long window of opportunity to serve the body of Christ. It's a short time because all of us who serve the Lord and everybody in this body of believers, do you realize that you'll only have this chance once in eternity? that once you leave this planet, you don't get to do this again. You don't get to serve the Lord in this capacity. So the time is short.

In Titus 1, 5 and 11, For this reason I left you in Crete, that you should set in order what remains in appointed elders in every city I directed you. And he repeats again the qualifications for an overseer. And then in 1 Peter 5, 1 through 4, Peter says, therefore, I exhort the elders among you. He's exhorting the overseers.

As your fellow elder and witness of the sufferings of Christ and a partaker also of his glory that is to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God that's among you. Exercise oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily. according to the will of God and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness. Nor yet as lording it over those allotted to your charge, but proving to be examples to the flock. And when this chief shepherd appears, you will receive an unfading crown of glory."

So in closing, I'd like to quote something I saw from J.B. Stoney. He says this, the right to oversee and rule implies a reciprocity. And what reciprocity means is a mutual exchange or a reciprocal relationship on the part of others. If there be grace to submit to oversight and rule, and particularly where there is most oversight and godly rule, there is always a happier state. in the church than where there is much more apparent gift and little oversight and rule.

For when divine love is truly exercised and duly received and responded to, there must be the greatest development and manifestation of every Christian grace. Let's pray. Dear Father, how we thank you. How we thank you for that you have designed your church to really be the body of your son, the Lord Jesus, with all of the characteristics of the head. And that as we recognize and go into eternity, we will understand that for all eternity you have determined that your glory will be manifest to all your creation. through the Lord Jesus as the head and through us, his body and bride. Father, we are overwhelmingly grateful and overwhelmingly thankful. And we pray in your son's name. Amen.