Well, if you would remain standing with me and open your Bibles to Matthew chapter 16. Matthew chapter 16, same text as last week. I'm gonna read it again to us. So here God's Word, verses 13 through 20. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah, one of the prophets. And he said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered, blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter. And on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Then you strictly charge the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Let's pray. Father, we ask as we come to your word this morning that you would help us to have a greater sense of the importance of the local church, what it means to be a member of a local church, and how we all together can strive to love the church and protect the church for your glory. And Father, we pray all of this in the name of our great Jesus. Amen. You may be seated. Well, as I began today, I want to tell you a story. Some of you have heard me mention this story before, maybe. It's a story of one of the deacons in the church that I grew up in. This man is an important, was an important businessman. He was the president and owned controlling stock in the local bank and was very respected in the community and the church. He served the church. Not only served, he was a member for decades. He was a very long serving deacon. Then after a sermon, in a small Baptist church where I grew up, there was an altar call. This long-serving, long-standing member of the church stood up and walked down the aisle. I was not there that day, but my friend was his son, and he called me and said, the most amazing thing happened today. During the sermon, the gospel became clear to my dad. And he stood up. and walked down, and in front of all the people that he had known for years, confessed that he had never actually believed the gospel. For decades, he went to church. For decades, he served because it seemed like it was the right and good thing for him to do. For decades, he went because, culturally, that's what you did, is you went to church. But never believed. I still have so many questions about this situation that will not get answered this side of eternity. But one question that I still ponder, I think about it often, is how in the world could that have happened? How could someone who did not believe in the gospel of Jesus be admitted into the membership of a church? I can tell you, at least From my estimation, because I too was a member of that church, is that church was lacking a proper understanding of church membership. And I think back to my experience there, and I can see how dangerous that situation could have been for that church. By God's grace, nothing terrible happened. But history, church history is full of examples of churches that have died because membership was not restricted for those who believe in the gospel alone. This is one reason is if you look through history, church history, this is why state churches have failed to hold tightly to the gospel. Because to be a member of those churches was to be a member of the state. They admitted anyone in, including those who did not belong to the Lord Jesus. This text addresses problems like this, and understanding what Jesus has to say about building His church is important because the church is the most important institution on this earth. Now, I know that's a bold statement, but I say it because it's true. And it's true because what we find in this text is that Jesus is telling us that the local church is being built by Him. And if He's building the church, and He's fully God, then it becomes the most important institution. And this institution, this church, the local gatherings of believers, should be filled with people that Jesus has redeemed. I can't think of anything more important than Jesus and his people. And I want you to care about the local church. I want you to see in this text today the importance of the local church and what it means to be a member. And I want you to care about the local church, not just conceptually, not just as an idea or a theological concept. I want you to care for this local church. The one named Grace Reformed Baptist Church. I went through this text last week and I told you we would go through it again this time more with an eye on application and what it means to be part of a local church. What Jesus is saying here, these early words about the foundation of what he is going to build. And what we find here today, I think is what I wanna propose to you is the purpose of this sermon and really the application coming forth from this text. So the main idea today would be this, Jesus is building his church and he has given us the tools and responsibility to participate in that by protecting the membership. And we do that by guarding the entrance and through church discipline. We're gonna see all of that here today. But here's what I want to handle the text. I'm going to walk through it again, slightly different points. Some will be more expanded than others and looking at other passages. First, we're going to be reminded, I mentioned this last week, but in case you weren't here, the church is distinctly different than the world. We see that there's confusion in the world. Secondly, we see that the church confesses Jesus as the Christ. And I want us to see what that means for us as a church. Third, we're gonna see that the church is built by Jesus and I want us to see the way that he sets borders and boundaries. And lastly, I want us to see how we go from Peter getting these instructions to the administration of the church being given to the actual church. All right, so we're gonna walk through it in that way. And as we go through that, I will hope, my desire for you from this text and for all of us is to have a stronger, understanding of our responsibility and participation in the church. So let's see how we're distinctly different. Last week, we looked at these first two verses. So look with me, verse 13, Jesus has come back into this district of Caesarea Philippi and he asks his disciples, what do people say about me? And what we find out is that the people couldn't quite figure out who Jesus really was. A lot of confusion in the world. Some thought he was John the Baptist. Others thought he was one of the prophets reincarnated. They were very confused. They did not know who Jesus actually was. This type of confusion is not uncommon even in our own day. All you need to do is turn on the news and read or listen for just a few minutes and what you're going to find out is there's a lot of people They claim to be Christian or speak in such a way about Christians and they don't really understand who this Jesus actually is. In contrast to that, the church is distinctly different because we know and we proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the one who was promised to come. We're different because we know and proclaim something different about Jesus. Now, I want you to know the contrast that's set up here is a contrast that continues. GRBC, I want you to know that we are different than the world. Now, it may not always seem that way, I've grown up in the Bible Belt. I grew up in the buckle of the Bible Belt, the very center, a town of 2,000 people. And at one point, I think I counted 28 churches. Let me tell you, the true church, God's people are different than the world, even though we may not always see it. We believe something different about Jesus. And by necessity, that means that we must be different in the way that we live. We must live in accordance with God's word and what he says is good and right. Do not be surprised. Do not be surprised when you find that you are different than those that you live around, that you work with, maybe even some of your own family members. Let me encourage you, the differences that we're going to see, what it means to be part of God's church and how we're different from the world, be willing to embrace those differences, lean into them, and also be willing to weather the difficulties and the storms that may come from the Lord Jesus. They will come. I don't know what they'll look like, but they will come. Even last night late. saw a short video clip of a bunch of Christians in Nigeria. Their church had been burned down by Islamic militants. And you know what they did? They showed up in a burned building to worship together. Five of their people were killed and they still showed up. You need to be ready and willing to weather the difficulties that come because we are distinctly different. Let's see why we're different. We're different because we find here in this text that the church confesses that Jesus is the Christ. This is the confession of Peter. Look at verse 15 with me. He asked his disciples, who do you say I am? In verse 16, Peter replies, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. This becomes the foundational statement for the church. The world around us does not believe this to be true. And let me tell you, to be part of the church, to be part of God's people, you must believe this statement to be true. If you don't believe this, You're not part of God's kingdom, nor the church. This confession of faith in Jesus is a requirement to enter the kingdom. As we move through the New Testament, this confession of faith gets more details. At the time, Peter doesn't know what it means for Jesus to be the Christ. We know now it means that He went to the cross. It means that he took on the sins of his people. It means that he took the full punishment. It means that he went to the grave and on the third day he came forth victorious. Knowing those facts, believing those facts to be true and placing your hope in that Jesus is the requirement to be part of God's kingdom. And therefore it becomes a requirement to join a church. Now I want you to know, I'm not just making this up. This text here becomes a foundation of what we find in the rest of the New Testament. We know this to be true because as we look at the letters, the epistles that are written to the churches, what we find is that they are always addressed to the church and they are always addressed to people who have confessed this faith in Jesus and have been redeemed. Let me read a few of them to you. In Romans chapter one, Paul introduces himself as an apostle set apart for the gospel. And then as we get to the end of verse five, he says that his apostleship was given to him to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name, that would be the name of Jesus, among all the nations, and then verse six, including you who were called to belong to Jesus Christ. to all those in Rome who are loved by God and called saints. When he writes to the church in Rome, he assumes, or he writes with the assumption that they are all redeemed believers who have placed faith in Jesus. He writes to the Corinthian church in a similar way. 1 Corinthians 1. Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus to our brother, Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, Corinth to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together. He links the church to being those who are sanctified by Jesus and saints. He does the same thing in Ephesians chapter one. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus. Again, those who are saved. Galatians one is the same thing. And he goes, introduces himself, verse two, to the churches of Galatia. Grace to you and peace from God, our Father, linking them together as people who are redeemed. Colossians 1, to the saints and faithful brothers in Christ. Over and over and over, Paul writes in such a way, assuming and knowing, because he planted many of these churches, knowing that the people in the church all believe and have confessed Christ is Lord. So what does that mean for us? Here, right now, in GRBC. That means that we can only allow people to enter the church that are born again. We are guarding the front door, so to speak, by requiring that for membership. How do we go about this? Most of you know, Maybe some of you don't. Here's how we go about accomplishing this here at GRBC. We intentionally have a membership process that's drawn out. And it's drawn out so that not only the elders, but the members of the church can take time to get to know visitors and those who are petitioning for membership. All right, so let me unpack this just for a second. I purposely said not only for the elders, but also for the membership to get to know people. GRVC, members of this church, those of us that are together in this, take the opportunity to get to know people as they work towards membership. You go, well, Derek, I don't even know what to ask. I'm not a pastor. I'm not an elder. You don't have to be. Ask them questions about life. Get to know them. Ask them about how they came to know Jesus. Tell them how you came to know Jesus. Encourage them in the gospel in that way. This is a hospitable, this is a kind, this is a generous way to treat people, and it's a way to start finding out about the person's faith. And then when people petition formally to join this church, the elders, we will schedule an interview with them so that we can hear them formally tell us about how they came to know Jesus. Those of you that has been a while since you've been through an interview, these are the things that we ask. We we want to know, how did you become a Christian? Tell us about that. We want to hear their understanding of the gospel and understanding of their faith in Jesus and how it covers their sin. His work covers their sin. We want to know other things, too, about past church life, about any discipline issues about their baptism, about ways they might be able to integrate and serve our church. We want to do all of those things, but what we're mainly trying to do, as best as we can, even though we've likely heard all of this before, is to be confident in their understanding of the gospel. And then, what we'll do is we report back to you, you've heard this even in recent weeks, we report back to the congregation that as best as humanly possible to know, we attest, we believe that they've been regenerated and understand the gospel and confess Jesus. And then what we do is we open it up for the congregation again one last time for you to talk to them, to know someone, to bring up any potential problems that we may not know about before we go to a vote. And then notice that as a congregation as a whole, we vote. It's our responsibility we're gonna see in a minute as a church to do this. Church family, it's very important that we take regenerate church membership seriously. It's important because first and foremost, God's word tells us that those who have repented and believed can be members. Secondly, If those who are redeemed by the blood of Jesus are distinct from the world, then it is very important that we only let those who are distinct and different enter in. I think back to that story I told you at the beginning of that deacon, and how dangerous that could have been for the church, because those who are not Christians are not gonna be making distinctly Christian decisions. Those who are not Christians are not ones who can care for your soul and to keep you from being gathered and caught by every wave of doctrine or wind that may blow in our culture as Ephesians tells us. They will not make decisions that are always in line with God's Word. It's very important that as a congregation that we make sure that people who enter in are like Peter and confess that Jesus is the Christ. Not all churches go through a process like this. Some look different. Some accomplish the same goals differently. But then there are some that vote in people without any sort of interview, without any sort of getting to know people, without hearing a testimony, without any sort of way for the congregation to check to see if the person understands the gospel. I know this to be true because I've been a member of those churches. I've seen people walk down an aisle and then the pastor immediately say, church body, this is so and so. I don't know who that is. We'd like to vote right now on their membership. That's a good way to add numbers to a church. It's a good way to build a large group of people, but it ignores what the Bible says we must be careful of. To make sure a person is eligible to join a local church. Let me tell you in the long run it will destroy, it will destroy a congregation. A church full of people that don't know Jesus will make decisions about doctrine, about discipline, about discipleship, and they will make those type of decisions like people who do not know Jesus. I'll give you a real life example, another one. I hesitate to do this because Some of these people are very dear to my heart and close to me. If you want a case study on this, you can go look at the United Methodist Church. It's like these folks right next door. I don't know about this congregation personally, but as a whole, as a group, as a denomination, they've slid to the point of denying clear biblical teaching. If you start looking at the membership process on the way that they go about that, they are not careful about their membership. I know that to be true because I too was once a member of one of those churches. We must be very careful. We must be very careful that we guard the membership to be eligible for those who are redeemed by Jesus. Let me tell you, you can have a really big church just by letting everybody in. But it becomes pretty much impossible to do everything the New Testament tells you to do with the church if you're a mile wide and an inch deep. Or a mile wide and just a fraction of the people being Christians. Instead, the church is to be built by Jesus. This is our next point here. It's going to be built on a confession of Jesus, but it is built by Jesus. He talks about this here in this text. He says he's going to build his church. And as we as we think about that, that term and what Jesus means, there's borders that are naturally formed. All right, borders and walls. Walls is not a good word. Borders and those who are in and those who are out. The word that Jesus uses here in Matthew chapter 16, the Greek word ekklesia, you've heard that word. You've probably driven by a church and across it, it said, ekklesia church. Those of you who know the Greek, you're like, oh, it's the church church. The word comes from the Greek translation of the Old Testament. We call it the Septuagint. It's the version that people in Jesus' day most often read. And when they read the Old Testament, when we talked about a gathered assembly of people, the word that was used, not just any assembly, but the gathered assembly of God's people is the word ekklesia. I asked Tom to read that Deuteronomy passage today. One of the reasons is because we get a picture of that, a group of God's people a symbol. Jesus is using that language of his old covenant people and he's using it as a promise that he's going to build a new people through a new covenant. And he calls them the Ekklesia, the church. Now, when Jesus speaks about the church that he's building, he by necessity means a defined group. There is a defined group in the Old Testament. It's very clearly defined. You're either part of God's covenant people and living in the nation of Israel or you're not. And back then it was really easy to tell them who they were. You either look like you were Jewish or you didn't. It was easy. Not so easy now because of all the tongues and tribes and nations, right? Jesus is building in a defined group And as we read the New Testament, we see when he says he's building his church, it's a defined group of local churches. In fact, the overwhelming use of this word in the New Testament refers to a local collection of people. that are committed to Christ, that regularly assemble, that has God's words preached to them, that obeys God's word, that practices the ordinances and practices church discipline. That is what we see all the way through the New Testament when we have this word ekklesia, all right? And Jesus is saying, I'm going to build that. There's a defined group. To be part of this group, you have to be a member. We can see this membership spoken of in different places. And I think I mentioned this last week, I remember having a coworker ask me about this, like, Dirk, why do we have church, I was in seminary, working in the oil and gas company. And he said, Dirk, why are there churches with memberships? Because didn't Jesus just send out his disciples two by two? Shouldn't we just do that? And I thought, wow, I'm trying to finish this project. That is a big question to try to unpack for you at the moment. We talked about it some over the next days, And I wish I wish I would have been more prepared to be able to tell him this. You see what we have throughout the New Testament. We see church membership spoken of. It's not necessarily overt, but it's very clear and not hidden either. In the introductions of the epistles, they're all written to a very specific group of people that are gathering together to hear it read. They know who they are. We also see in the New Testament that churches are to appoint deacons and elders. Those elders are then charged for caring for members' souls and that they will give an account for those people one day, meaning that those pastors, those elders must know who the group of people are that they're gonna be accountable for. I'm not accountable for every Christian in this world. One day, It terrifies me to even say this, but one day I'm going to be accountable for you. Not some undefined group. Other places that we see this in Scripture, we find that there are lists in Scripture, helpful evidence and acts. There's a list of widows that are being kept. They even know which ones are Jewish and which ones aren't. We also see in Revelation that God even keeps a list in the Lamb's Book of Life. He knows who is a member of His greater church. We read in the New Testament about church discipline and how people are to be put out of the group. How can you be put out of something if it's not defined? Lastly, we see that when Paul writes his letters, those letters, They're addressed to the church members, but they're not just addressed to the church members. When he writes and appeals, he's appealing to the members of the church. The instructions are to them individually as people and part of that church that's meeting. And all this means for us, it means as a church, we need to be able to define and to give boundaries to what is GRDC. not just the elders being able to do that, we as a congregation are responsible for this, all of us. Now, last point here, let me make this case for you, the administration of the church, all right? The things here that, let me show you what I mean by that. Jesus says, on this rock, Peter, I'm gonna build, I'm gonna give you keys, there's gonna be binding and loosing, the administration of that part of the church has now been given to the church, and the members of the church. See, Jesus said he's gonna build the church, and he's gonna do that work through Peter first, but last time I checked, Peter's not around here anymore. So how could this be possible? Well, what we find is we read the New Testament, Jesus doesn't only use Peter, he also uses the apostles. And then, Those apostles instruct the churches how to do this. There's several places that we see this in scripture. I'll give you a few places where we see this happening. One, at the end of Matthew, Jesus tells his disciples to go and to make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. So they're to carry on all that Jesus has commanded the apostles. Part of that would be guarding the door of the church and making course corrections when necessary. Secondly, the apostles teach and write to the churches in such a way that shows that the churches have the authority to not only let people into the church, but also to remove them from the congregation. The apostles always appeal to the congregations. And they appeal to the congregations to do what Peter is told to do here. There's all sorts of ways that we can go about doing that. We have tools and statements of faiths and covenants and confessions and things that we can use and bylaws and all of that to help us govern it, but we are called to continue on what was first given to Peter. Now, There's a real clear place in scripture this is outlined for us. In Ephesians chapter two, starting in verse 19, Paul writes, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple of the Lord. Paul is telling the church in Ephesus They were built on this foundation that the apostles had. And once those apostles are gone, the members of the household, by necessity, are going to be responsible to build the church, to do the things, to partner with Christ in that. Now, one more connection I want to make. Turn your eyes with me to verse 19. This is what Jesus tells Peter, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Binding and loosing are rabbinical terms of authority that they would use for declaring what is right and wrong, what is permitted and not. The way this reads is that the decisions made by Peter are going to be found to have already been made in heaven. All right? It's not that what Peter does and heaven's gonna react to, it's that Peter's doing what God has already said would happen. Now, specifically, this passage is speaking of membership in church discipline. And you may be thinking, well, I don't see that. It is, so what I want you to do is flip over with me, maybe one page in your Bible, In Matthew chapter 18, Tom read it for us this morning. What I want us to see here as we walk through this is that it's very important that we have a Regenerate Church membership and that we do because membership and discipline are connected. I don't want people who don't believe in Christ trying to bring discipline on anyone. Now, very well-known passage here. Jesus instructs us like this. If your brother sins against you, go and talk to him, point out his sin. If he listens, this is what's supposed to happen. This is good. And I often tell people when we do prospectus courses and they're about to join, like this type of thing happens all the time in our congregation. Praise be to God, we're helping one another out. If he doesn't, then take one or two along with you so that there's witnesses of evidence here. I'm not just saying that. The idea is, if I approached you, I would say it's not just me saying that. Other people see the same dangerous sin in your life. And if this person still refuses to repent, and then you tell it to the church, all right? And then, there's this really interesting language at the end. All right, really interesting. Look at verse 18. Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Does that sound familiar? It's Matthew chapter 16 language. But now, instead of Peter doing the correction, who's doing the correction for him? The church. When someone refuses to repent and acts like an unbeliever, then the church body is to remove the person from membership. It's the exact same Greek wording as our wording in Matthew 16, except for one important change. In Matthew chapter 16, when Peter says, whatever you bind and loose, that second person pronoun, is singular because he's talking to Peter. When Jesus says the same thing in Matthew chapter 18, the only difference is it's no longer second person singular. It's second person plural. You as a congregation. Plural. The people of the congregation are responsible. Responsible for doing the hard work of discipline. For doing the difficult work of having to remove someone who refuses to repent. Doing the hard work of enforcing the borders and the boundaries that Jesus himself has set up. Brothers and sisters, this is not the only place that we find this. In 1 Corinthians 5, verse 12, Paul tells the church body to remove a man who is guilty of gross sexual sin. No one, two people, bring it to, it is so terrible that Paul says bring it straight to the church and it is the church's plural responsibility to remove the man who refuses to repent. Paul mentions later of the punishment of the majority being enough in 2 Corinthians 2 5. We have this idea of of the church members being the ones who enforce the boundaries together. What does this mean for us as a local church? It means that we must strive to continue to have a regenerate church membership. This is not only the responsibility of the elders, it's also the responsibility of you and me as members. We vote together to bring in new members as a congregation because we together have these keys to let people in and we also have the responsibility to remove someone together if they refuse to repent. If we find that there is someone who has been let in that is not a Christian or who refuses to repent, we as a congregation, we as a congregation must remove them. And this is directly connected to membership. We vote to let someone in together, we vote to send them out together. One last thing, a word on that. If we have a congregation that have to remove a person from membership, we must take the responsibility and say, we also were the ones who voted them in. There have been times in this congregation, and just knowing the nature of sin, there will likely be times again where we have to remove people. And Jesus knew this. And he gave us the tools and the process to do it. Brothers and sisters, it is not loving to ignore church discipline. It's not loving to tell people that it is OK to continue to sin and to not repent. It is not loving. It is not loving to them to find out that they don't believe in Jesus and to tell them it's OK, you can still be part of this kingdom. It's not loving to ignore them and to not help them. You know, ignoring discipline is a strategy that some church growth people will tell you to do. Just ignore it and then you can grow the church big. And I think that's dangerous. It's dangerous because it ignores all that Jesus has to say about membership. Brothers and sisters, I want you to see from this text how important the local church is. It's vitally important. It's our little slice of the kingdom of heaven. The church is important because Jesus said he is the one who's going to build it. And I want you to see that you as a member, if you're a member here at GRBC, you have a responsibility to love and to care for the church by helping guard that door of membership. And then being a part of being loving and enacting discipline. I also want you to not see this as a scary thing, but see this as a big family and to love this family. because we have been brought together by Jesus and His work. And I want you to grow in knowing each other and loving each other enough that you would even discipline one another for our own good and for the love of Christ. May God continue, may Jesus continue to build His church worldwide and may He continue to build and strengthen this piece of that church. Let's pray. Father, we are thankful. We are thankful that you have sent a great Savior. We are thankful that you are building your church. We are thankful that you have done all of this. We are also thankful that you have put the Holy Spirit within us because this task of membership is overwhelming unless you are with us. but we trust that you are. Would you help us all? Help us all. Would you help us all to see the importance of caring for one another as people redeemed by Jesus? Would you help us to see the importance of church membership and to take it seriously and to want to know each other and to care for one another? And to do all of this for your glory. Father, we ask that you would work among this church, grace-reformed at this church. We ask that you would work among us and that you would be glorified in all that we do. And we pray these things in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.