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Now, our scripture tonight comes from Matthew 16, and we will pick up at verse 15, Matthew 16, verse 15. And he, Jesus, said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, You are the Christ, the son of the living God. Now, notice what Jesus says here. Jesus said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter and upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not overpower 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. Now, This passage, of course, is a little bit controversial because we would all have liked to have seen Jesus's body gesture as he said, upon this rock, I will build my church. What was the this? Was the this Peter, as the Roman Catholics say, or was the this the gospel that Peter confessed? We're not going to get into that subject so much tonight, though we do have to deal with it a little bit in our last paragraph of the Westminster Confession. But tonight, what I want us really to focus on, though, is the church that Christ says here. However, you might come to this passage. I'm going to build my church and that Christ has a church that is his body and it's his wife. And I want us to look at the confession tonight. If you'll note here on page 685, there are six paragraphs. I just want to run through these here with you. The Catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect. They have been, are, or shall be gathered into one under Christ, the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body and the fullness of him that filleth all in all. Let's stop there just for a moment here and talk about what is it that the Westminster divines are saying here? Well, first of all, the Westminster divines are teaching us that there is one Catholic universal church. The word Catholic is not to be understood, boys and girls, as any particular denomination, such as in Roman Catholic. Catholic is a good word. It simply means universal. It's an acknowledgment that the church does not belong to any one particular nation or people anymore, but that Jesus is building his church all over the world and that there is one church ultimately, not many churches, but one church. Now, the Westminster Divines Use a very imperfect word, but I think it works. And that is they speak of what is known as the invisible church, the invisible church. And that sounds kind of strange. I know, boys and girls, because when we think of church, we think of a particular place where we go and the particular people that we see. And that is true. The church is visible. We go to church and we see the body of Christ and we see the members of Christ's church. So we do know that the church is visible. But what theologians are trying to say is very important, and that is we don't get to see the whole picture, though, do we? That is, the church is a lot bigger than what you and I see. The church encompasses many millennia, even going back all the way to Adam and Eve. You remember, boys and girls, that Adam and Eve had the gospel preached to them after they transgressed and sinned against God and they were kicked out of the garden. What is it that God promised? He said that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, that was the gospel that was preached, and we trust that by God's grace, Adam and Eve believed that message and they became the first members of Christ's church. They were a part of the church back then. Now, as you move through the Old Testament, God eventually calls Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the nation of Israel. And that was the church back in the Old Testament. And then as you move into the New Testament, the church begins to spread as the Holy Spirit is given and begins to encompass the Gentiles and all the nations. So the church includes people from the past, people from the present. And you know what? It includes people yet to be born. because in the mind of God, God has already chosen all his elect. So there are people who have yet to be created, people who have yet to be born, people who are coming later in the centuries to come. However long God is going to allow history to go and he is going to have an elect group of people that will be a part of his church. So the church includes the past, includes the present, includes the future, all ages, and in all nations. So that is why theologians grapple with how do we label that church? What do we call that church? And they've decided on the word invisible. Now, I realize it's imperfect, but I think it helps us to understand what they're getting at. That is, there's a lot of the church that we don't see that is invisible to us. There are people in heaven that are a part of the church, church triumphant. They are they are part of the invisible church. OK, we don't see them. But they nevertheless are part of the body of Christ. So this is the way that theologians have tried to describe the entire body of Christ. Now, the invisible church one day will be visible. In the end, when Christ comes back, he raises the dead. He judges between the righteous and the unrighteous and all the righteous people, all the elect of Christ will be on his right hand and the wicked will be placed into the place of outer darkness carried away by the angels. We will then see the invisible church and you get a sense of it in Revelation seven, nine. When the Apostle John said that, behold, I saw a great multitude that no man could number from every tribe, every tongue and every nation. So we need to remember as Presbyterians that the elect is not a small number. It is a great innumerable people from all over the world. I think when it's all said and done, we will see so many people say that we truly will say Jesus is savior of the world, that Jesus came and saved the world. So the Westminster divines here are starting there. How do we understand the church? We have to understand the church in its most universal sense, sometimes called the invisible church. Now, the Apostle Paul uses various analogies for this invisible church. For example, if you look at Ephesians chapter one, where Paul talks about the elect in Ephesians, chapter one, and then you go on further to verse twenty two. We see that the apostle Paul says he has put all things in subjection under his feet, that is, God has placed everything under the feet of Christ and gave him that is Christ as head over all things to the church. So we see here that Christ is called the head. What would that make us? Well, Paul says we are the body of Christ. And so, for example, in Ephesians chapter five, Paul takes up this theme again as he's comparing Christ and the church. He does so with husband and wife that just as the husband is the head of the wife and she is a member of his body, he is to love his wife because no man hates his own flesh. She is his body. So we see it with Christ. Paul says he's speaking here of a great mystery, but he's speaking, he says, in verse 32, Ephesians 5, with reference to Christ and the church. That is, while it has implications for marriage in how a husband should deal with his wife and love her as Christ laid down his life for her and how a wife should be in subjection unto her husband as the church to Christ. But Paul says, you know, there's something even more important than the implications for family life, and that is the church itself. Now, this is what we need to really understand, boys and girls, as we think together about the universal church. God is very concerned about the church, just as any good husband is about his wife. He is the head, the church is his body. And I don't think I have to tell you that when the body and the head are severed from one another, bad things happen to our body and to our head, right? We need the head as a body. And this is very important because we live in a day and in a culture, particularly here in America, with rugged American individualism that says, I don't need the church. I don't need organized religion. How many times have you heard somebody say that you're talking to a neighbor, you invite them to church? I don't believe in organized religion. I'm a spiritual person, dot, dot, dot. But I don't need the church. Church is full of hypocrites. Church is this, church is that. They just want your money. All those excuses that people always give us. Well, that is not God's view at all. God says, no, the church is my wife. And if you love me, you better love my wife. Right. I mean, you're not going to get along with any man if you say, man, I love you, but I cannot stand your wife. Right. If we are to be. A part of God's body, we need to be a part of the church, the invisible, And as I'm going to argue here, secondly, the visible church. So look at the second paragraph here on page 686, the second paragraph of the Westminster Confession. So the divine move on. And by the way, when I use the word divine kids, that's just a way of saying these are guys who basically had PhDs in divinity. OK, these were doctors of the faith. OK, so don't let that word that's not some you know, weird thing like, you know, what's a divine? You know, are there some super spiritual? These are guys who have PhDs. We call them, you know, doctors or professors today. But they were called the divines, Westminster divines. Now, look at what they say in the second paragraph here. The visible church, they move from the invisible to the visible. The visible church, which is also Catholic and universal, very important. that we are a part of the universal church. We say that every time we confess the Apostles Creed. We believe in one Catholic church. All right. So the visible church, which is also Catholic or universal under the gospel, not confined to one nation as before under the law, consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion and of their children. We'll spend a little time on that. And is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Now, there's a lot there. And I want to break this down. They really have about six points to this idea of the visible church. Number one, it is Catholic. It is it is the visible church. If it really is the gospel that is being taught in that church, it's a part of the invisible church as well. It's part of the universal church. Also, the Westminster Divines note here redemptive historical development. And that is particularly they're noting here that the church was usually and almost exclusively confined to Israel in the Old Covenant. Now, yes, you had your Rahab's. who, you know, got in through faith before the walls of Jericho fell down in her family. Interestingly, they said the whole family was saved, not just Ray Hab, individually, solitarily, whole family was saved. You had, for example, Ruth, who said to Naomi, your God shall be my God, your people, my people. So that was clearly a confession of faith. You had the woman, the Queen of Sheba, coming to King Solomon to hear his wisdom. And she was commended by Jesus. So you do have some Gentiles coming to faith in the living God. But for the most part, the church was confined to Israel in the Old Covenant. Your relatives and my relatives probably did not know the gospel in the days of Moses or Solomon. We have to realize, and I'm speaking, I'm assuming here we're mostly Gentiles here in this room, that our relatives were worshiping idols, totem poles, leprechauns, etc., while the true religion was confined to Israel. But notice here that the Westminster divine say that with the coming of Christ, all that changed. All right. So that with Jesus's death and resurrection. Yes, Jesus came chiefly for his own. To the children of Israel, but when he ascended to the throne, to the father, what did he do? He gave the Holy Spirit and the Spirit of God does what in Acts chapter two, the Spirit of God enables these men from Nazareth to begin to preach. the gospel in a language they never had studied before. So whether you were an Egyptian or a Parthian or a Greek or wherever you came from, you were hearing the gospel being proclaimed in your own native tongue. And that was a clear sign from God that now the gospel was going out from Jerusalem to Judea, Samaria and to the outer ends of the earth. Now the church is not going to be confined to one nation with its headquarters in Jerusalem with a physical temple. The temple will is destroyed by the death and resurrection of Christ. Christ has supplanted the temple later in God's providence in 8070. God will destroy the temple in Jerusalem, according to Matthew 24, by the hand of the Roman General Titus. And we will see in the book of Acts of the church growing. to include Jews and Gentiles. Paul starts in the synagogue, but he doesn't stay in the synagogue. He brings the gospel wherever he goes on the first, second, third missionary journeys to include the Gentiles. Now, notice here that the church includes now people from all over the world, but it also notice here it includes those who profess Christ and their children. Now, this is very important. This is This is really if I have to put my finger on where our difference with our Baptist brethren really lies. It's not so much on the baptism issue. It's on church membership. It's how we view the membership of the church. Because what we as Presbyterians and our confession teaches here, we believe that the church consists of everybody who professes faith in Jesus Christ. But it also includes their children who may be too young yet to profess Christ. And that is why we baptize our children before they make a credible profession of faith at 12 or 14 or 16 or whenever they do. It's because it's not that we just view the baptism differently, but we view membership differently. And you say, well, Pastor, where do you get that in scripture? And I realize I do live in the South and I need to defend this point. So First Corinthians, chapter seven would be probably one of the first places I'd take you. And what I want you to see here is that the Apostle Paul, I think, gives us an indication that children of believers are to be considered part of the visible church, even though they may be too young to make a profession of faith. That is not to say they are too young to have the Holy Spirit in them. I mean, we just saw, did we not a couple of weeks ago, John the Baptist before he's even born, he's born again. He's got the Spirit of God while yet in his mother's womb and he leaps in his mother's womb at the sound of Mary's voice. So we see clearly here that the Holy Spirit works wherever, whenever he wants, including causing children to be born again, sometimes before they're born. Now. That's not where my argument chiefly lies. It lies here in First Corinthians 714. Notice what Paul says here. Now, the context of First Corinthians 7 is really about marriage and divorce and questions are being raised. What do I do if I've come to faith in Jesus Christ out of my pagan Gentile background, but my spouse has not come to faith? What if I, as a wife, believe in Jesus Christ, but my husband still refuses to come to Christ? Should I divorce my husband? Now, Paul is going to say, absolutely not. Don't do that. He says in verse 14, for the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, meaning she has a influence, a gospel influence in his life that sets him apart from other Gentile pagan men who don't have a believing wife. But then he goes on, he doesn't stop there. And he says, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified to her believing husband. And then he says, this is the part that involves children for otherwise your children are unclean, but now they are holy. What is he saying? He is saying this, that even if you have a home where formerly they were pagans, And through Paul's missionary journey, one of you has come to faith in Jesus, but the other still is not yet Paul saying, don't divorce the unbelieving spouse through your influence. They may yet come to Christ. And he says, besides, don't divorce your spouse, because as it is right now, your children are holy. That is, they are set apart unto God through the faith of even only one believing parent. So that Paul is saying here, your children are not to be viewed as children of two nonbelieving parents, but the children is to be understood as a part of the covenant community based on the faith of even one parent. If you look at Ezekiel chapter 16, the Old Testament also. Was teaching that children of believers are a part of the visible church. They are part of God's covenant community. They are not to be understood as pagans waiting for a profession of faith like those out in the world know that the children of believers have a special relationship and God is so bold as to say that these children belong to him. Look at Ezekiel chapter 16 and look at verse 20. Now this was in a day When nations surrounding Israel would do terrible things, sometimes to their children, even sacrificing them to false gods. Israel sometimes would do the same thing. And here, Ezekiel, the prophet says in verse 20, Ezekiel 16, verse 20, moreover, you took your sons and daughters whom you had born to me and sacrificed them to idols to be devoured. Were your harlotry so small a matter? Now, listen to what he says in verse twenty one about this great sin. He says, you slaughtered. My. Children. And offered them up to idols by causing them to pass through the fire. Now, notice what the Lord says, whose children are they? They belong to the Lord. Ultimately, our children are not our own. They belong to Christ. They are part of his church, his kingdom. And we must raise them in the fear and the admonition of the Lord. That is why in Genesis chapter 17, verse seven, Paul Paul, the Lord said to Abraham on the eighth day, I want you to give not only the men who profess faith in me, The sign of circumcision. But on the eighth day, your infant son shall also have this sign, even though Isaac is too young to even say the word Dada. Never let much less make a profession of faith. Nevertheless, I view him as a part of the visible church, and I want him to have the sign of the visible church. And we believe in that that sign was replaced by baptism. The sign of circumcision gave way to baptism. And that is one of the reasons why we baptize our children, because we view our children as members of the body of Christ. Do not hinder them, for such belongs the kingdom, Jesus said. Jesus reserved his greatest wrath for his own disciples when they were hindering the children. Because Christ views them as a part of his kingdom, of his church, and even sets them as an example for us adults that we would humble ourselves. As children before the father, so the visible church consists of those who profess faith and their children now, does that mean that we are not active in teaching our children the gospel? Not at all. We teach them the gospel. from the earliest days in the hopes that through the ordinary blessing of God, they will come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, the Westminster Divines say something else, and this may sound controversial to evangelical ears today, but as Chad Van Dixhorn in his commentary on the Westminster Confession notes that the Westminster Divines are in a good long line of Theologians such as Cyprian, Augustine, the medieval church and the Protestant reformers, when they say this, that there is no ordinary possibility of salvation outside the church. Now, I bet you have a lot of evangelicals. Who probably at that sentence pull up a little bit. That there is no ordinary possibility of salvation outside of the church, but but but wait, they say. What about, you know who they always go to first, right? I had a woman say this to me just a few weeks ago, but what about the thief on the cross? Yes, you're right. The thief on the cross never truly in a formal way became a member of the church, but he did profess faith on the cross. But the exception is there because what? It's an exception. Yes, there is the thief on the cross. Yes. There is maybe the person on their deathbed who comes to faith in Christ. He's a hired vineyard worker at the last hour. Yes, there. Thank God there is the Muslim who, through reading on the Internet, comes to faith and he is yet to find any other believers in Saudi Arabia that he's able to confess quietly to and join a church. But those are the exceptions. The ordinary means through which God brings salvation to his people is through his church. The church is is the the means by which God most commonly brings. The gospel, and that's why they use the word ordinary possibility of salvation. Here's what I think we need to pick up on that the Westminster divines are saying that I think many of our evangelical friends need to hear. And that is that when people refuse to join a church in the face of biblical instruction, says Chad Van Dixon and providential opportunity, when you have those two things together. When people have been that is that they're not refusing to join because they're ignorant. And they're not refusing to join because they live in some extraordinary circumstance that they are providentially hindered from joining. Chad Van Dixhorn says it should worry us. When people will when people refuse to join a church, it casts doubt on their profession, he says. He compares it to a couple that says they love each other, but they won't marry. What is what is the ultimate. Act of commitment is marriage is taking the vows. And that's saying for better or for worse, we pledge ourselves to each other in this marital bond. That speaks more loudly than any amount of emotional gushing. about how much verbally they say they love each other. People may say, oh, I love Jesus. I love Jesus. But I don't want to be a part of the church. Acts chapter two, verse 47, says the Lord added to the church those who were being saved, they joined and became a part of the church. Well, we need to keep moving here and I'm going to have to speed this up very quickly here. The other third thing that the Westminster Divines note is that gifts are given to the visible church. The reason one of the reasons the church is so important is this is the ministry that God ordinarily uses. The word and the sacraments are unique to the church. There's no club, no civic group, no business, no athletic team that can provide what the church alone provides. namely the preaching and teaching of God's word and the right administration of the sacraments, which the spirit uses effectually in the lives of the believers. Now, God does this for two primary purposes. Number one, to gather people into the church. He uses the preaching and the sacrament to convince people of the love of Jesus Christ for them and that they might believe on him. The second thing is, what do you do once people are added to the church? They need to be built up in the faith. We all need to grow in our likeness to Jesus Christ. And my friends, it's not some flashy conference or some kind of mountaintop retreat experience that's going to do it. Now, I am all for conferences, I love to go to conferences. And they are a blessing. I mean, I do think God blesses you when you intensely study his word over a period of several days. But. What God, I think more often uses than not, is that Sunday by Sunday, by Sunday, by Sunday, by Sunday, worship services, preaching and administration, sacrament. The weekend week out. Same old, same old. Is what God often uses to make us like Jesus Christ. Now, the Westminster Divines say they talk about the church itself and they use a term more and less visible. What do they mean by that? Essentially, what they mean is the church. Sometimes the church. Is very visible. good teaching and preaching, good doctrine, not a perfect church, obviously, but the lives are upright. People are earnest in their faith. The word is being preached. The sacraments rightly administered. There's some measure of discipline that would be a highly visible church, less visible, maybe like the days of Elijah when Elijah said, Lord, you know, I'm the only guy left now. That's not true, boys and girls. There were seven thousand others that had not bowed the knee to bail. But The church didn't seem that visible to Elijah. So the divines are saying here a couple of things. Number one, the best churches in this world are mixed with error. The best churches, the purest churches are always going to have problems and errors. However, some churches. declined so badly, say the Westminster Divines, they can no longer be called true churches anymore. They might still have a steeple. They might still have Sunday services. They might have some form of service and preaching and stuff. But the gospel is so absent from the church that it really can't be called a church. There's no level of discipline whatsoever. The people are the same as the world. And the Westminster Divines say that they become essentially synagogues of Satan. Nevertheless, there will always be a church on the earth. All right. One more thing. And I want to close. And that is the head of the church. The Westminster divines are clear here that the head of the church is Jesus Christ alone. Now, probably one of the most controversial things about this chapter was in the historic original text, but is not in the modern version that the OPC subscribes to today. And that is the question of the pope. Let me read to you the historic text. The historic text in Section 6 said this. This is not what you'll find in your hymnal. There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof. But is that antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition that exalts himself in the church against Christ and all that is called God. That's pretty tough. The Westminster divines here said that they called the Pope the Antichrist, the man of sin and the son of perdition. Now, two of those references come from Second Thessalonians, chapter two. And then the term Antichrist comes from three passages in John's epistles, two from First John and one from Second John. What are we to make of this? Is the Pope the Antichrist? Is he the man of sin and the son of perdition? And why did Presbyterians soften that to simply this? There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ, nor can the Pope of Rome in any sense behead thereof. Why did we delete the latter part of the original text? Let me read to you what Chad Van Dixhorn says. And we need to close basically this. He said Presbyterians were in full sympathy with the assembly's dismay at the blasphemous claims of the papacy agreed with the assembly that such departures from the truth of Scripture are predicted in Scripture and heard in them dangerous echoes of the devil's own deceptions. Revelation 13 6. However, many were not willing to interpret these particular passages. and these names as references to the papacy. And so in 1903, it was removed from most of the American editions of the Westminster Confession of Faith, namely this. That is, they did not necessarily disagree that the pope was attributing to himself things that were wrong and things that one might even call blasphemous. However, what they were saying is when you went to the actual text of scripture, second Thessalonians, chapter two and first John, second John, what they were saying is they didn't believe that in the mind. of Paul, or in the mind of John, he had the Pope exactly in mind when they wrote those things in Scripture. They felt that they were going beyond Scripture at that point. Later Presbyterians did, then the Westminster divines. So that is why it was deleted. The men used to take exceptions to those lines, and eventually the church decided to change that part of the Constitution. The papacy, you have to remember, was created after the Scriptures were written. And, in fact, the papacy as it became known really didn't emerge until after the first two centuries, says Chad Van Dixhorn. And so for that reason, they thought it was dubious to take those verses that Paul was referring to and John and apply them directly to the Pope specifically. It may have application. But it was not a clear biblical reference to the papacy, and therefore they thought it was going beyond the scriptures to call it so. And that is why we amended that part of our confession. Let's close in prayer.
Church Training: The Church
설교 아이디( ID) | 1201815433710 |
기간 | 35:35 |
날짜 | |
카테고리 | 일요일-오후 |
성경 본문 | 마태복음 16:15-19 |
언어 | 영어 |