Please turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 12. We're actually going to be looking at three places this morning. We're going to be looking at Hebrews 12, 18 through 24, Psalm 87, as well as Ephesians 1, 22 and 23. And as we turn to Hebrews 12, 18 through 24, let's remember what Moses said regarding God's word, that this is no empty word for you. But it is your very life. Hebrews chapter 12, starting in verse 18, hear the word of the Lord. For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given. If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned. Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God. the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Let's next turn to Psalm chapter 87. Psalm chapter 87. On the holy mount stands the city he founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God, Selah. Among those who know me, I mention Rahab and Babylon. Behold, Philistia and Tyre with Cush. This one was born there, they say. And of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one were born in her. For the Most High Himself will establish her. The Lord records as He registers the peoples, this one was born there. Singers and dancers alike say, all my springs are in you. And then lastly, we turn to Ephesians chapter 1, verses 22 and 23. Ephesians 1, 22 and 23. And He put all things under his feet, and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him who fills all in all." Thus ends the reading of God's Word. Let's pray. Father, I ask, oh God, for the sake of your people, for the sake of the glory of your son, that you would give us a proper view of your church. God, we can think so lowly of it. Certainly our culture thinks and says such minimizing things about your son's bride. And God, may we not be guilty of the same thing in our hearts or in our actions or in our thoughts. Lord, refresh us this morning. Lord, your word says that we have come to the city of the living God. As your word is preached this morning, God, may you visit us. May you be pleased to come and visit the gates of Zion with your people. We ask these things in Christ's holy name. Amen. All right, please be seated. title to the message this morning is The Meaning and the Marks of the Church. The Meaning and Marks of the Church. As I said in our announcements, this year marks the 500 year anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. 500 years ago, Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg, sparking the greatest revival of Christendom since the apostles. This is a huge year. One of the major conflicts between Rome and Protestants that existed then and still exists down to this day is the definition of the church. What is the church? How would you answer that question? That's right. What is the church? Why does the church exist? Who are the leaders of the church? What does it mean to be a member of the church? We need to be able to answer those questions. If we don't know who we are or why we exist, then we will abandon the calling to which we've been called. Proverbs 28, 19 says, where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. Therefore, God willing, this is where I hope to be taking us over the next five or so weeks. So today, today's message is the meaning and the marks of the church. Next week, I hope to look at the mission of the church. Then we're gonna look at the ministers of the church, part one and part two. And then lastly, we're gonna look at the members of the church. Now let's set the stage for this message. Let's listen to Dutch theologian named Wilhemus L. Brackel. I want him to give us a reality check as we begin to look at what the church is. This is what he says, quote, consider first of all that there are but two kings in this world, each having a kingdom. The kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of the devil, which are mortal enemies to each other. A third kingdom cannot exist. Every person is either a subject of King Jesus or a subject of the devil, the prince of darkness. No matter who you are individually, you are truly a subject of one of these two kingdoms. You are neither neutral, nor are you a subject of both kingdoms simultaneously. Therefore, to which kingdom do you presently belong? The world tells us to pick whatever truth that we want to pick. Every religion is basically the same. All roads lead to Rome. That's false. There are only two kingdoms. Jesus over and over again in the Gospels, He says, whoever is not with Me is against Me, and whoever does not gather with Me scatters. And then He always is pitting the one kingdom against the other kingdom in nearly every single sermon He preaches. He says, you are either wheat or you are a tare. Matthew 13. You are either a sheep or you are a goat, Matthew 24. You are either a child of God or you are of your father the devil, John 8. You are either a branch that bears fruit or you're one that's cut off and thrown into the fire, John 15. You either belong to the church or you belong to the synagogue of Satan, Revelation 2, 9. And on that great and final day of judgment, King Jesus will finally and forever separate those two kingdoms, bringing the one into His everlasting and ever-increasing glory, and sending the other one into unending destruction in the lake of fire. That's ultimate reality. There is no other. And if you're not living with those two kingdoms in mind, you belong to the kingdom of Satan. That's what it means to have the wool pulled over your eyes and not know what it means to belong to Christ. If you don't belong to the church, meaning if you have not been united to Christ by faith, by a lively faith, then you just do belong to the kingdom of darkness. There's no middle ground. Brothers and sisters, the church is why God created the world. God created the world so that He could create the church. If you remember from our Gospel Changes Everything series, I actually said that Christ is the reason that God created the world. I said that Christ came into the world to display God's glory. And I quoted Colossians 1.16. It says, "...for by Him..." That's Christ. "...for by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him, for Him. Meaning, the world was created so that Christ might be on display. So how can I now say that the world was created for the church? Because, brothers and sisters, the Church is the fullness of Christ. This is one of the most delightful things that I discovered this week. Please turn to Ephesians 1, that last place that we looked at, verses 22 and 23. Listen to what the Apostle Paul says. And he, that's the Father, and he put all things under his feet, that's Christ's feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him, who fills all in all." Now, question, what does the fullness of Him refer to in this verse? The church. The church, Christ considers Himself in some mysterious way, incomplete, until He's united to the church, which is His body. The church is, that's what this verse says, the church is the fullness of Christ. This is a simply unbelievable verse. Listen to what John Calvin says on this point. He says, this is the highest honor of the church, that until Christ is united to us, The Son of God reckons Himself in some measure imperfect. What consolation is it for us to learn that not until we are along with Him does He possess all of His parts or wish to be regarded as complete." Now if I were just to read Calvin without reading Ephesians 1, 22 and 23, I simply would not believe what he said. But this is Paul's argument. Look again at it. Look at the verse. The church, which is His body, is the fullness of Him. How could a head be complete without His body? Likewise, Jesus Christ, the mediator, wouldn't be complete if He didn't come into the full possession of His church, of His bride. Listen to how Jonathan Edwards puts it. The church is said to be the fullness of Christ. As if Christ were not complete without the church. Man is incomplete without the woman. That's what God said in the beginning. So Christ is not complete without His spouse. Dear congregation, the church is why God made the world. You exist. The world exists so that God could make you and bring you to Jesus Christ. That's why the stars and the planets and giraffes and insects and little children exist to bring you into His possession. Does that not shock you? God created the world, yes, we would affirm, God created the world ultimately for His glory and He achieves this by selecting a bride and securing a bride and dying for a bride. This is why Paul can say such stunning things to the Corinthians. He says things like this, For I feel a divine jealousy for you, since I betrothed you to one husband to present you as a pure virgin to Christ. Therefore, dear congregation, let us abandon any low view that we have of the church. Yes, she is imperfect now. And yes, she will disappoint us in this life. But do you know what the culmination of all history is? when the bride gets ushered into heaven and she sits down at the great wedding feast of the Lamb. That's the culmination of history, a wedding feast. Let us rejoice and exult and give Him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and the bride has made herself ready. Here's our big idea. This is where we're going. The world was created so that the Son of God might have a spouse. That is the church. It's a quote by Jonathan Edwards. It was so good, I didn't think I needed to change it, but this is our big idea. The world was created so that the Son of God might have a spouse. That is the church. And here's where we're gonna go in this first sermon in this series. We're going to look at two things. We're going to look at the meaning of the church and we're going to look at the marks of the church. What is the meaning of the church and what are the marks of the church? So first of all, the meaning of the church. Here's my first premise is that the church exists from Genesis to Revelation. We must see that the church did not begin in the New Testament. It did not begin there. It began in Genesis. That view that the church began in the New Testament was, it is a popular view. It was developed in the 19th century under a theology known as dispensationalism. And amongst many of the teachings of dispensationalists, one of them is that there's a radical divorce between Old Testament Israel and the New Testament Church. God has two distinct people in their view with two distinct plans for them. Now, we admit that there are differences between the Old and the New Covenant, certainly. Gerardus Vos says this, quote, the church under the old covenant was more than a church. It was equally a state. It was also essentially a national church. That is, it was limited to one nation. And so Israel, the church in the Old Testament looked radically different. In order to become part of the Old Testament people of God, you had to convert to Judaism if you weren't born into that nation. And so there are differences in form and manifestation, but what I'm claiming is that the essence of the church remains the same throughout the entire Bible. Now our dispensational friends may object and say, well, the church in the New Testament is always defined as the body of Christ. That's entirely a New Testament reference. But the church in the Old Testament, if you want to call it that, was labeled as Israel, or Jerusalem, or Zion. And so those aren't equivalent terms. Thus we see in our passage from Psalm 87 this morning, it says, on the holy mount stands the city he founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God. So notice in that verse, the Old Testament people of God were called Zion. They were called the city of God. But did you hear how the author of Hebrews calls us this morning? From Hebrews 12, it says, you, in verse 22, you, New Testament people, you have come to Mount Zion. You have come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. The New Testament takes terms from the Old Testament and applies it to the New Testament people of God. And the New Testament stresses this point by continually calling the church by very decidedly Old Testament terms. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3.16, he calls the people of God the temple of God. Old Testament term. In Galatians 4.26, he calls the church the Jerusalem above. In Galatians 3.29, he calls the church Abraham's offspring. In Philippians 3.3, he calls the church the circumcision. In Galatians 4.26, he calls the church the true Israel. And likewise, in the New Testament, the authors continually recognize the Old Testament saints as belonging to Christ. It's shocking. In Galatians 3.8, it says the gospel was preached to Abraham. In Hebrews 11.26, it says that Moses considered the reproaches of Christ greater than the wealth of Egypt. In Acts 2.31 it says that David, King David, foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of Christ. Therefore, although we admit that under the New Covenant the form and manifestation look different than that of the old, yet the essence of the Church has always remained the same. So what is the essence of the Church? Well, the New Testament uses the word ekklesia. Ekklesia. Whenever you see the word church in the New Testament, it's the Greek word ekklesia. And it's a compound of two root words. Ekk, which means out of, and kleo, which means call. So ekklesia means to call out. The Bible uses that word ekklesia to point to an assembly of people who have been called out of the mass of fallen humanity by the preaching of the gospel to form a society of believers. That's what ekklesia means. Called out of them into this by the preaching of the gospel to form the body of Christ. Now we can see the New Testament using that word ekklesia in at least four different ways in the New Testament. The first usage of ekklesia points to a group of believers who are in a particular location even if they are not gathered for worship. So, the first usage of ekklesia points to a group of believers who are gathered even if they're not gathered for worship. In Acts 5, verse 11, you may remember Ananias and Sapphira had just been struck dead for lying to the Holy Spirit. And that news spread quickly abroad. And Luke writes in Acts 5.11, And great fear came upon the whole ekklesia, the whole church, and upon all who heard these things. That church wasn't necessarily gathered for worship, but it spoke about them because they were in that place. The second usage of the word ekklesia can also point to a group of believers that met in homes for worship. Second usage of ekklesia is to point to a group of believers that met in home for worship. 1 Corinthians 16, 19. Aquila and Prissa, together with the ekklesia, the church, in their house, send you hearty greetings in the Lord. The third usage of ekklesia points to the entire body of professing believers throughout the world. who gather for worship under appointed officers. Third usage again, Ecclesia points to the entire body of professing believers throughout the world who gather for worship under appointed officers. 1 Corinthians 12, 27 and 28. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the Ecclesia first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, etc. And then lastly, the fourth usage of Ekklesia points to the complete body of the elect. Those in heaven, those on earth who are. or will be united to Christ as their Savior. So the complete body of God's elect. Ephesians 5.25, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Paul wasn't talking about just the church in Ephesians, he was talking about the church from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. One of the most fundamental misunderstandings of the word church in our time is to reduce the word church to a building. I know all of us do this. I do this all the time. Church is where you go to worship. It's spiritual slaying of sorts, I suppose. But the problem is when we use the word like that, it begins to gut the glory out of the word. to truly belong to the church means that you belong to the body of Jesus Christ. Meaning not only have you been united to Christ by faith, but you have been united to the whole body and all of its members. You're connected to Abraham. You're connected to King David. You're connected to our Chinese and North Korean and Ethiopian and Egyptian and South African brothers and sisters whom you've never seen. You have a relationship with them that's more special than any relationship in the universe. To truly belong to the body of Christ means that when we gather together here on Lord's Day, This constitutes the very dwelling place of God on earth. We suffer from unbelief, but that's what this represents. This is the dwelling place of God. Hebrews chapter 12, 22, the passage we read this morning says that we are the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. In the Old Testament, Jerusalem represented that city that God dwelt, where He manifested Himself in between the cherubim in order to commune with His people. That's who we are. When Christ is preached here in the gathering of His saints, the living God dwells amongst us. To truly belong to the church means that we constitute the very pillar and ground of truth. First Timothy 3.15 says that the church is the pillar and the buttress of truth. That's what the church is, the pillar and the buttress of truth, meaning as Louis Burkhoff says, the church is the guardian of the truth, the citadel of the truth, the defender of the truth over against all the enemies of the kingdom of God. No, dear congregation, when we go to church, we're not going to a building. We're going to the center of the universe. I would like to think that I'm using hyperbole. This is not hyperbole. When Christ is preached truly, when the people gather to pray, when the people gather to commune with Him, when the sacraments are received, God is there. God is there, God is with us when we're preaching right now, when we're receiving from Him. We constitute the city of the living God and there's cities all over this city and there's cities all over this world where God is meeting with His people. But there's another urgent distinction that we must consider when thinking about the church. There is a visible, and an invisible aspect of the church, a visible and invisible aspect to the church. In Romans 9, Paul is struggling with the fact that many of his fellow Israelites had rejected God's purposes. Many who belonged to the ekklesia under the old covenant had been cut off from Christ. And now Paul, he's like venting these affections out loud in verse 2. He says, he has great sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart over them. But we have to ask the question, well, how could the Old Testament people of God be cut off from Christ? Paul answers in verse 6, he says, it's not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. Paul is saying that belonging to the state church or simply being natural children of Abraham did not mean that you truly belonged to God. And the same thing is true today, dear congregation. A person can merely belong to the visible church. What's the visible church? Well, the visible church consists of all who profess Jesus Christ to be Savior along with their children. That's the definition of the visible church. This is the visible church. People who come in to hear Christ, that's what the visible church is. But just like Israel, Many under the new covenant can perform all the outward signs of being a Christian. They can give lip service to Christ. They can be a faithful attender. They can partake of baptism. They can take the Lord's Supper. They can do good works. And yet they cannot be united to Christ. Going through the external motions of church does not mean you've been united to Him in a lively faith. We must belong to the invisible church that is God's elect, meaning you must be genuinely converted. Solomon Stoddard, who was Jonathan Edwards' grandfather, he said that the greatest change that men undergo in this world is conversion. Conversion is the greatest change that any person can undergo in this world. Those who have truly been united to Christ are new creatures. If you've been converted, you know what's happened to you. Your heart of stone has been taken away. All things have become new. The old has passed away. You see, what happens to true believers is they hate the sin they once loved. Now, this doesn't mean that we don't sin anymore. We do. But it grieves us because we know that our sin dishonors Jesus. True believers desire to please Christ, to be near to Him, to commune with Him. Is that you, friend? Have you truly closed with Jesus Christ? The Son of God put on flesh so that He could win His beloved Bride through His death and resurrection. Have you put your faith in that? Have you repented of your sins and turned to Jesus as your only hope? There is no other name given under heaven by which a man must be saved. Have you called upon Christ for mercy? So that's the meaning of the church. Let's look at the marks of the church. How do you know if you're in a true church? And you know you're not being duped. Are there marks or signs of a true church? What does the scripture tell us? The one indispensable mark of the true church is the Word of God sincerely preached. the Word of God sincerely preached. And this is what the Scripture says. If this is lost, if the Word of God is not preached, the church is lost. John 8, 31, Jesus tells His disciples who are following Him, some of which have a spurious faith, He says, if you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciples. Meaning, if the church doesn't abide in God's Word, it's not a church. When Paul said his farewell to the Ephesians in Acts chapter 20, he declared to the Ephesians that he had fulfilled his whole duty to them and that he was innocent of the blood of all of them. And why did he say that? He says in verse 27, because I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. Why was Paul innocent? Because he didn't fail in preaching the Word of God to them. In the pastoral letters, When Paul was instructing Timothy how to take care of the local church, the very first charge that he gives Timothy is he says, remain at Ephesus so that you can charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine. And then just in case Timothy forgot that, it's also the very last charge that Paul gives Timothy. In chapter 4, he says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is the judge of the living and the dead, and by His appearing in His kingdom, preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. Preaching the truth of God's Word is the one indispensable mark of the church, such that if it doesn't exist, neither does the church." It's why Jesus spoke to Peter the way He did at the end of John, when He said, Peter, feed My lambs, tend My sheep. Feed my sheep. Now, this doesn't mean that the preaching has to be perfect in order for a church to be considered a true church. Thank God for that, because none of us would ever find a true church. that were the standard, there would be no church. Churches will be more or less pure in their doctrine and more or less pure in their practice and can still be considered true churches. It's when a church denies the fundamental doctrines of the faith, such as the Trinity, or that Jesus Christ is fully God, or that justification is by faith alone. When those fundamentals of the faith are denied, that's when a church ceases to be a church. Are there other marks? Are there other marks of a true church? Well, the Reformed tradition often adds two other marks. For instance, in the Belgic Confession, it says that the three marks of a true church are the pure preaching of the gospel, which we agree with, the pure administration of the sacraments and church discipline. So it adds three marks. I would just say this, I think it's important on this point to distinguish those elements which are necessary for a church's being and those elements which are necessary for a church's well-being. There's a difference between a true church and a healthy church. And that distinction is made within the Westminster Confession itself. To paraphrase what the Westminster Confession says, it says that the profession of the true religion is the only indispensable thing, while the practices and discipline and worship will render particular churches more or less pure. You see, what the Puritans wrestled with is that they didn't think it was biblical to unchurch their Baptist or Quaker friends because they had a different view of the sacraments than they. And regarding church discipline, church discipline is vital to the health of a church. But you can't say biblically that a church ceases to be a church if it fails in church discipline. Look at the Corinthian church. The Corinthian church was almost entirely corrupt. Read it. They had divisions. They had lawsuits. They had incest. They had abuse of the gifts. They had abuse of the Lord's table. They had a failure to love each other. And what does Paul do? Does he abandon them? No. He calls them the church of God. And he calls them saints. And then he seeks to correct them. But he doesn't abandon them. And why? Why? Why didn't Paul cease to abandon the church? Because the gospel of Jesus Christ still held sway with the Corinthians. They were still willing to receive the Word of God and repent when they heard it. You can see that throughout the letter. Dear congregation, this is what it means to be a reformed church ultimately. Being a reformed church doesn't mean that we're lining up on teams and throwing rocks at each other. You're in that camp and I'm in this camp. That's not what reformed means. There's only one church. There's only one church. There's only one body, one spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father who is over all and through all and in all. Being reformed means that we are constantly reforming the church according to the principles of God's holy word. It's not a football team. How do we apply the meaning and marks of the church to our lives? First of all, our doctrine. Our doctrine is that there is no salvation outside of the church. No salvation outside of the church. And there's a very wrong way to understand that sentence. Historically, Rome has applied that sentence to mean that outside of Rome's visible boundaries, outside of Rome's physical rituals, outside of the Pope as the distributor of all blessings, there's no salvation. We know that's wrong. And so we don't mean that unless you're baptized, or unless you're accepted as a member, Or unless you partake in the Lord's Supper, you cannot be saved. We don't mean that. Neither do we mean that a person can't be saved outside of a church building. Remember, ecclesia is never defined like that in scripture. Physical location is not the issue. What I mean by that there's no salvation outside the church is that just as there was no physical salvation for Noah and his family outside of the ark, so there's no spiritual salvation outside of the church. How can there be? The church is Christ's own body. To be outside of union with Christ is to be naked. To be outside of the union of Christ is to stand condemned under the weight of your own sin before a holy God. If you don't belong to the church, that is if you're not united to Jesus Christ, you can't be saved. Remember how I defined it. Don't put in modern conceptions of what that word means. Turn with me again to Psalm 87. Let's look at how the psalmist speaks belonging to the church. Let's start in verses 4-6. So God is speaking, Christ is speaking here. Among those who know me, I mention Rahab and Babylon. Philistia and Tyre with Cush. This one was born there, they say." What's happening here is Christ is pointing forward to the opening of the kingdom to all the Gentiles. Notice what He says about them. Those who know Me are those who are born there. Born where? The city of God. The church. That's the context of verse 3. And remember what Hebrews 12.22 says about us. You have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God. So if we've come to Christ, we belong to Zion, the city of the living God. Now look at verse 5. And of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one were born in her. for the Most High Himself will establish her. The Lord records as He registers the peoples, this one was born there." Three times the psalmist says, this one was born there. Where? In the church, in the city of God. We're born into, we're born again, when we're born again, we're born into the invisible church. Which is why Galatians 4.26 says that Jerusalem above is our mother. What a weird verse. God is your Father, the church is your mother. You've been born into her. It's why Louis Burckhoff says the church is the mother of believers, a means of salvation, the agency for the conversion of sinners and the perfection of the saints. I think this probably hits some of us like, man, that's weird. It's because we have a low concept of the church. Brothers and sisters, how do unbelievers get saved? Unbelievers are saved when the church arms itself with the Word of God and proclaims to them the gospel. As Paul says, how are they to believe in Him of whom they've never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? Unbelievers are saved because the church goes out militant and proclaims to them the gospel. Without that, there's no salvation. It's the means. It's the means. So that's our doctrine. There's no salvation outside of the church. Therefore, our duty is to love the church like God loves the church. Amongst evangelicals, and especially American evangelicals, we have a very low view of the church. And what I mean by church at this point, I mean the local visible church that gathers to worship. One author has said, Christianity is often reduced to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. How often have you heard, well, I don't need to go to church to be saved. What I mean by that is I'm not going to church. And as a result of that type of radical individualism, church is seen as something that you can take or leave. How tragic, how dangerous. The Apostle John says in 1 John 2.18, They went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they are not all of us. People who abandon the visible church wholesale, it's because they don't belong to God. That's what that verse means. It doesn't mean if people leave this or that local assembly, they're not part of the body of Christ. It means people who abandon the church wholesale, it's because they don't belong to God. Now perhaps there's seasons of life where a person is checked out of church for a while, and it's, I'm not pronouncing judgment, God is the one who judges. But that's what that verse means. If you don't belong to a visible church on some level, if you've abandoned a wholesale, it's because you don't belong to the invisible church. Dear congregation, if you've been united to Christ, you are His property. That's what that word church means. Church is translated as church in the English, it's Kirk in the Dutch, and it's Kirche in Germany. And that word doesn't come from the word ecclesia. It comes from the word karyakos, which means belonging to the Lord. The church belongs to God. If you've come into relationship with Jesus Christ, if you've been born again, you are His property. It's just like in a marriage. When a wife marries her husband, what does she do? She takes on His name. She gives up her personal rights and she submits and belongs in a loving relationship to her husband. She gives up her rights for him. And that's how we are, beloved. We belong to Christ. We don't belong to ourselves. Oh, how Christ loves His church. Look again at verses 1 through 3 in Psalm 87. On the holy mount stands the city He founded. The Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob." Do you see? Do you see what he's saying? God loves certain events more than other events. God loves certain dwelling places more than other dwelling places. To translate for us, that means that God loves the gathering of His people on the Lord's day more than any other event in the universe. That's what it means. When the bride gathers for her husband, father is passionate for his son. Joel Beeky on this point says that God comes to us in a special way when his people meet together, even more than in private or family devotions. End quote. Dear congregation, is that your view of church? Not the building? Do you hunger and thirst for the nourishment that God provides you through his bride? Do you have an expectation to meet with God at the gates of Zion? And you should wake up on Sunday morning and say, I'm going to meet with God today. I get to meet with God. I'm going to be with his saints today. I'm going to be in the communion and hear prayers and be with God's people. The most special place on the planet. Is that your view of the church? So that's our duty. To love the church like God loves the church. Therefore, our delight is to see that the church is the glory of Christ. The church is the glory of Christ. Recall our big idea. The world was created so that the Son of God might have a spouse that is the church. Have you ever just stopped to consider what accounts for the existence of the church. The church is the most attacked institution on the planet. Dictators have tried to destroy it, armies have tried to defeat it, legislators have tried to ban it, families have cast out its members for joining it, and yet the church remains. Why? Because the church was why the world was created. The Son of God wanted a bride And His bride, the church, is His glory on planet earth. Listen to what Brackel says again on this point. The church is the glory of Christ. It is there that Christ is confessed. It is there that Christ is proclaimed throughout the world, being held forth as a banner upon a hill, around which one must gather himself. This is the city upon a hill, and a light shining in the darkness. The church is the means whereby the truth is made known and preserved, and is the means unto the conversion of souls. Beloved, the church is the gospel's masterpiece. The church shows the world that Jesus Christ still forgives sinners through His bloody cross. The church shows that Jesus can transform the vilest of men and women, men like you, and women like you, and men like me, into saints that He loves and adores. That's what the church proclaims to the world. The church is Christ's megaphone to the nations, offering pardon to all who trust in Him alone plus nothing. Yes. The church is the glory of Christ on planet earth. The church is the gospel's masterpiece. Listen to how Paul says it. Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. That's what's happening here. We're being prepared to be joined with our Husband. And that's the glory of Christ on the earth. Let's pray. O great God, God, I confess that I struggle with unbelief even in this message, Lord, that You would create the stars and the galaxies and the measureless cosmos in order to secure a bride for Your Son. That's simply unbelievable. That You created the world in order to find a bride for your son, Christ. God, and I ask, Lord, that you would speak to our hearts right now. God, for those of us who have a low view of what your church is, for those of you who say demeaning things or think demeaning things about it, God, help us, cause us, bring us to repentance to see that the world exists so that Christ could secure a bride. And Lord, for those of us in here who don't know You, who are simply sitting in our seats, part of the visible church, part of the tares among the wheat, God, that You would convict of sin. Help us to see the truth of that quote from the beginning of this message, Lord, that there are two kingdoms, Christ and the devils, and there is no other kingdom. Lord, You can bring new birth. Lord, in your word it says that the Lord added to the church daily those that were being saved. And if any are going to be added here today, it must come from your great hand. And so God, we commit now this time to you. Lord, let us see that you have come down and visited your people now. Let us lift our voices to you, our great God. We bless you, oh God. In Christ's holy name, Amen.