Just gonna look at just a few verses here by way of just casting a vision for some of the elements of what is a church. But Romans 12, four through eight gives sort of a practical snapshot of that, and then I wanna walk through a number of issues. Romans 12, four reads, for as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them If prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith, or ministry, let us use it in our ministering. He who teaches in teaching, he who exhorts in exhortation, he who gives with liberality, he who leads with diligence, he who shows mercy with cheerfulness. Now, there are particular things that are brought out here. First of all, that there are, that there is one thing that makes a church a church, and that is unity in Jesus Christ. That's the primary thing. And, you know, the first purpose of the church is to glorify God. And this purpose is best expressed through the preaching and the obedience to the Word of God. I think we need to recognize that glorifying God in the church is not some mystical, ethereal thing. It's something that is real, and it manifests itself in the way that the people in the church live together. Now, there are three particular things that you're gonna hear throughout this time dealing with church membership, and that the church exists to demonstrate the power of the gospel, to live in a beautiful community, and to proclaim the gospel and the joy of the Lord that attends it. Those three things. It's the gospel, it's the community, it's proclamation. It's the power of the gospel, it's the beauty of the community, and it's the joyful proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord. you're gonna hear that type of thing being said. Churches need to focus. They need to understand who they are. And many of the failures that are related to church life boil down to a failure in understanding the true nature of the church. You know, we talked about it a little bit this morning. A lot of people want different things from their relationship with Christ, and they want different things from the church. So I pray that this will help us define what we ought to want and what we ought to do. Why do something on church membership now? Well, we do have a lot of new people. We haven't really gone through this stuff systematically with any member. We've asked people to read our church covenant. We've asked them to read our doctrinal statement. We've asked them to read our constitution. But we've never actually walked through it with our people. So that's what we want to do. We think it's good to do that and it's a good time to do it. Now, we want the members of our church to understand the significance of the church in the world and the significance of the church in their own lives. And we do not want the members of our church to have a flawed vision. We don't want the members of the church to have their own vision. We want them to have a biblical vision of the church. That's hard to come by, by the way. We all grow up in this world. You never went to a perfect church, they don't exist, so your roadmap is a little bit fuzzy, or maybe it's actually a little bit wrong. That's true of every church, but we want the members of this church to understand the significance of the church. Also, there's the matter of alignment. We want the members of our church to be aligned with the Bible and with the elders of the church. We want to be thinking the same thing. You know, this is something that's important in every area of life. Like, if you're a husband and a wife and you think differently about your marriage, it'll go differently unless you think the same. Thinking the same about life, your mission in life, the purpose of your family, what marriage is, what children are all about, and what you should do. It's really important to get alignment. So we want to use this time to get alignment. Alignment with the Bible and alignment with the elders in the way that they're leading this church. And we don't want the members of the church to have a different view of the church. We want them to have an aligned vision for the church with Jesus Christ. And also, too, we don't want the members of our church, are you ready for this, to have a minimalist view of the church. We think the church is a big deal. I mean, we think it's a gigantic deal. We think that people should actually build their lives around the life of a local church. Not to fit it in, but to build their lives around it. We think that highly of the church. We also recognize we live in a world where people don't think that highly of the church. But we want our members to think really highly of the church. Here's the bottom line. There's one single institution that Jesus established when he left the church. Nothing else. He didn't leave educational systems. He didn't leave societies. He left a church. The church is God's vehicle for the evangelization of the world and the equipping of the saints and all the various comforts that take place in the midst of that. So we don't want anybody to have a minimalist view of the church, and we want you to wrap your whole life around the church and where the elders are taking it, okay? There you have it. During this time, we want to define what ministry opportunities look like in the church and its expression here. We want the people in our church to understand how they should view ministry. Now, I'm gonna sum it up too tightly here, but we'll elaborate on this later. But what is your ministry? What is your ministry in this church? Your ministry is the next person you meet. That's your ministry. It's not that complex. Treat each person the way that Jesus Christ would have you treat them. God will take care of the rest. And he'll deploy you, he'll mobilize you, if your heart is there to serve him with every person that you meet. And even in a time like this, when we're eating together, isn't it fantastic to eat together? I just can't get over it. I haven't been able to get over it. We've been doing this for 17 years, 16 years. And I just can't get over it, it's just nice. But during these times, we really want that to come out, the love for the brethren. Okay, now, in the remaining time, I wanna speak about the following things. I wanna talk about what is the church, I'm gonna give us some definitions, and then I'm gonna talk about what the church is supposed to do. And we've defined actually what the church is supposed to do, and we've had it defined for many years, and I'm gonna run through it. it exists in our Constitution. And then finally I want to talk about, I want to touch on various financial priorities that we have and that are really on, and that are upon us. And then Al Burke is going to come and he's going to give us a really brief financial report and then I'm going to come back and wrap it up. So that's what's going to happen in the next few minutes. Okay, what is the Church? Well the Church has an authority, and the authority is Jesus Christ. The church has a head, and God the Father has appointed Jesus Christ as the head of the institution of the church, and in him is vested all of the authority that God desires for his church. Colossians 1.18 says, and he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, in that that in all things he may have preeminence. Now, what does this mean? This means that this church is not our church. This church belongs to Jesus Christ. This church is not our palette for creativity. The Lord's church has stewards in it, and we are those stewards. We are stewards of the messages that God has for his church. You know, making up the church on your own is a corrupt idea. Our heart's desire, as imperfectly as we execute it, is that we would be obedient to the heavenly vision, like the Apostle Paul said. Paul said in Acts, I was obedient to the heavenly vision. I pray that for us. As it turns out, that's actually a process. And we pray we're on that process. The church has a head. The church is a supernatural family. The church is a supernatural family. If you are united with Jesus Christ, you are united with all the other sons and daughters of Jesus Christ. This is not like a human institution. This is not like a club downtown. This is not like a sports affiliation where you come and you play tennis or something. This is a supernatural family that God has established. And that's why in Romans 12, verse four, I read earlier, for as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function. We being one body in Christ. Okay, we are in Christ. He is in us, we are in him. and we have fellowship with one another, and it's a supernatural connection and fellowship. It's not a fellowship that is a theological box-checking function. Okay, we agree on these things. It's deeper than that. It's deeper than agreement on every point of doctrine. It's a spiritual family. Our unity supersedes our opinions on things, and it's found in Jesus Christ. You know, there are lots of images in the Bible that describe what the church is. You know, the church is a family. It's a body. It's a kingdom of priests. It's a bride. And the church is a spiritual family. And the members of the church are members with Christ, and they are members of one another. And also too, the church being a supernatural institution, there's something about the church that doesn't exist in any other gathering you'll ever be a part of. And here it is, Jesus is here. The book of Revelation says that Jesus is always walking among the lampstands of the church. When Jesus is walking among this lampstand, he's here. When we sing, Jesus is singing. When we pray, of course, Jesus is praying all the time, Bible says. He's interceding for us all the time. But this supernatural family has many, many benefits, and we need to recognize that. The church also is the pillar and ground of the truth. 1 Timothy 3.14 makes this very clear, and he just makes this statement that the church of the living God is the pillar and ground of the truth. And the church has been put in the world to proclaim truth, to stand for truth. Ideas about truth are always fluxing and flowing. We live in a very relativistic age, but we're not a relativistic people in the midst of this age. We have driven, there's a stake driven into the ground that's immovable. It's the stake of truth. And so we often find ourselves contrary to the world because we have a fixed position of truth and that fixed position is the word of God. So, but the church is the pillar and ground of the truth. Also the church is both visible and invisible. The invisible church is the true church of the elect. The visible church is composed of those who participate in the activities of the church, in the external ordinances of the church. The visible church has members that have made a profession and they participate in the external functions of the church. But the visible church is not the true church. The invisible church is the true church composed of real believers, Israelites in whom there is no guile. The visible church is a mixed community. The church always exists as a mixed community, and that's why, you know, when we preach the word of God, it's obvious that God, in His wisdom, has assumed that the church is a mixed community, because we preach the gospel every time we get together. There are always going to be people in the church who need to hear the gospel. You may not think they need to hear it, but sometimes there are people that actually do need to embrace it. But they do everything just right. They do everything. They're always there. They have nice families. They're really nice people. and they dress like Christians, they talk like Christians, but they're not Christians. So the church exists as a visible and an invisible church. The church also is not only global, but it's also local. It's very important that we as a church understand the difference between the global and the local church. The Baptist Confession, addresses this in chapter 26 in paragraph five, but you do have this manifestation of the invisible church that exists worldwide, but God, by design, has established this church to meet in local congregations where there's local authority and local officers, and there are local practices that those local communities have. And they exist performing the functions of the one another's. Like, you know, if you're going to an online church, it's not this kind of local church that we're talking about. The local church brings people together in relationship, and they have a covenant with one another, and they actually have been given responsibility by God to define who's in and who's out. Like when there's church discipline, a church has to decide whether those people are out. Out of where? Well, out of a local community. We'll elaborate more on that point in time to come. But the church is not only global, it's also local. The confession speaks of it like this, that they walk together in particular societies or churches for their mutual edification and the due performance of that public worship which he requireth of them in the world. The next thing I want to say is that the church is a mixture of error. Now this is something that we can extract directly from the Baptist Confession on the church in chapter 26, and I like the way that they explain this. It's very clear. The purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error. Our church is one of those churches. The confession goes on to say there are some churches that have degenerated to such a degree that they are so full of error that they cease to be true churches. But I think we need to just, I want us to recognize that our church is a mixture of error and it's always gonna be that way. We're always gonna be seeking the Lord to try to refine it. And I think we can give thanks to God for His mercy upon us for things that we don't get right, that we don't know. I think we should be a lot like Nehemiah. Remember Nehemiah 13? Several times he says, oh Lord, remember me for my good. One of those occasions he says, Lord, have mercy, remember me for my good. I think what Nehemiah was saying is that his heart desired to do what was right, but in our flesh, because of our background, the society we exist in, our own sin, there's going to be a mixture here. And it's really important that all of us here just recognize that and we're okay with that. It's not the same thing as just giving a pass for sin. That's not what I'm saying. But I'm saying that there should be a spirit of humility and patience, that God is carrying his church in his arms. It's our duty to do everything we can to be faithful to Scripture and to change anything that's not faithful to Scripture. That's our duty, we know that. But let's don't be so proud to think that we got it all together. We don't. And I think our confession acknowledges that. And then the church is also everlasting. And the Lord Jesus Christ spoke of the everlasting power of the church when he said, the gates of hell will not prevail against it. God is not going to allow the light of his church to be extinguished in the world. Isn't that a blessing? You know, it's easy to get worried about the church. You hear all the statistics, you know, fidelity to Christianity is dropping all over the world. Here's the deal the statisticians don't know. It ain't going away, okay? It's not. You cannot extinguish the church. Governments have tried to do it. They try to kill people to do it. They try to burn down churches. Let them burn them. Let them kill people. They will never, never extinguish the church of Jesus Christ. It's a futile effort. So when you see those things, I think you can pray and weep, but you can also smile and you can give thanks that God's not gonna let his church die. Some of you are reading through the Bible this year. One of the things that you see when you read through the Bible is that God's really faithful to sinful people. He carries his people. In our family, we were just reading through the patriarchs. And again, I was just astonished at how messed up these families were, how the family lines are all crossed up. There's kids from all kinds of different mothers and fathers, and it was a mess. Look at the family life of the patriarchs. It's a mess. Here's the deal. God is going to preserve His Church through the Mass. And He is in the process of straightening the crookedness that's been created by our sin. Thank the Lord for that. The Church is everlasting. And then also the Church is interrelated with other churches. I won't belabor this, but in chapter 26, paragraph 14 of our confession, we recognize that local churches should have relationships with one another. Ephesians 6.18 alludes to this when the Apostle Paul speaks of praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints. You know how this works. When we get together on Wednesday nights to pray, we're almost always praying for other churches. We have relationships with lots of churches. And many of us know the pastors and the saints in those churches. We should be praying for them. I've been so delighted to be in churches like that. Hey, pray for Jeff Pollard down in Pensacola. He's not feeling good at all. Just pray for him. I'm glad we know to pray for him. you know, he's a dear brother, but we should be praying for churches and being connected with other churches. We're not, hey, we're not the perfect church sitting out here on an island, and we don't need anybody. But churches are related. Okay, so, in this first section, I wanted to just explain what the church is, okay? Now I want to explain what the church does, drawing from what we've called for many years the pillars of Hope Baptist Church. So I'm going to walk us through the pillars, just kind of let them soak in. If you have a copy of the Constitution, you can read them. And these pillars really define the way that we believe the Bible calls us to glorify Him in this church. And you'll see the focus of various things that we do. Each one of these pillars, you can look at things we do tangibly to try to fulfill those pillars. And these are kind of principles and practices that we hereby have committed ourselves to. And we've been attempting to be committed to these things for many, many years, and there won't be any change. We want to continue to be committed to these things, first of all, and is the centrality of the gospel. All of our messages and activities in this church have their source in the gospel of Jesus Christ, that sinners are justified by faith alone, and that the righteousness of Christ is imputed to believers by God's sovereign decree. But the centrality of the gospel is critical. The first message of our church isn't clean up your life. The first message of our church is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and he'll clean up your life. Secondly, expository preaching. We have a firm conviction that the preaching of the word of God is the central matter for church life in terms of equipping the saints and evangelizing. And we believe that a diet of expository preaching is the most effective way to build up the body of Christ. Teaching through the books of the Bible handling them in their context, focusing on the emphasis of that book, not what the preachers are feeling necessarily, you know, that week, though that may be important, not necessarily, you know, what we're excited about, you know. We don't want the church to be led by the pastor's excitements. We want them to be led by the Word of God's enticements. That's what we want. We want to entice church to the Word of God. So that's expository preaching. And we don't think expository preaching is the only kind of preaching that should happen in church. After all, we're doing something topically in church membership right now. The third element is fervent prayer. We want our church life to be bathed in regular fervent prayer, individually and corporately. We meet on Wednesday night to pray. We walk in the room. When we pray, we want to warm up our souls with singing, and then we go straight to prayer. And we pray for different things. Prayer is so critical. We want to encourage family prayer and prayer of all kinds. And then number four, worship, authentic worship. We define authentic worship as worship that is defined by biblical truth, and that we participate in the elements of worship that God has prescribed. And those things include prayer, singing, scripture reading, preaching, believers' baptism, and the Lord's Supper. And you could add evangelism to that as an extension of worship. But when we get together to worship, we're gonna do those things. That's what we think. You won't see us showing movie clips. You won't show us doing interpretive dance, you know, up front. You won't see, you just aren't, you're not going to see plays to illustrate things here. We're gonna pray, we're gonna sing, we're gonna preach, we're gonna take the Lord's Supper. So that's what we think. Those things define authentic worship. It doesn't define the heart of worship, but it defines the things that you do. And then the fifth thing is community, and that's a loving community to cultivate Christian love, rejoicing together, being one with one another in the family through the various relationships. Next week, I'm gonna deal with our church covenant because The life in the community is really defined there. What kind of people are we, what kind of people are we covenanting with one another to be? So that's next week is the church covenant. Then there's church discipline, number six. We believe that the word of God requires us to exercise biblical church discipline that's administered in a spirit of obedience and humility. and that church discipline promotes the fear of God and the purity of the church, and it offers a means for repentance and reconciliation of people with God and people with people. We did a whole conference on church discipline here three years ago, something like that, which we really tried to define what that looks like. And then number seven, personal evangelism. We talked about evangelism a lot this morning in the sermon in John, but we really desire to equip and send into the community and in various places that we exist, in workplaces, in neighborhoods, and that there is evangelism that's going on. You know, this morning we talked about your friends and your relatives. Those are really critical things. We just want to encourage people to operate with the gospel on their lips. And then number eight, church planting. We want to make intentional efforts to reach the world by planting and giving and going and really rejoicing in God's plan to multiply churches in the world. A few years ago, we planted a church. I'm really thankful. When we planted that church, Sovereign Redeemer, the preaching, the discipleship, the evangelism, it didn't just double. It might have tripled when we did that in this area. So we want to multiply local churches and to send people out to plant churches. Maybe someday some of you will be part of planting a church. When we fill up this building, we're going to want to plant a church, praying that God would raise up the leaders to do it. Number nine, the sufficiency of scripture. We want to regard scripture as sufficient for life and for godliness. and to use scripture as a means of encouragement and reproof and instruction in righteousness, and to regard scripture as the final answer in our hearts, in our homes, in our businesses, and in the church as well. Scripture is sufficient. And then number 10, which is related to the item on worship, But we have this sort of identified specialty, just to underscore it, the regulative principle, where our heart's desire is to regulate church life by scripture alone and recognizing that God has given the scriptures to regulate everything in the church. And so that we want to focus on those things that God has given and that Whatever is not warranted in scripture is forbidden for us in worship. So those are the things that we are committing ourselves to do, those 10 things that I just listed. Now, as a result of all those things, we also exist in a world where there are financial obligations, there are commands that are given, and we collect our resources when we gather together, and we distribute those resources specifically for the preaching of the word, to finance the spreading of the gospel, and for being a blessing to churches around the world and even close by, and so there are There are financial implications of each one of these things that I've just identified. We believe that we should allocate our resources to get the word of God out as far and wide as we can. Christians multiply. And so we want to fill the world with the word of God. We want to fill the world. How do you do that? Well, there are various ways that we're doing it now. but we want to even more broadcast the messages of the kingdom of God for church life, for family life, and every other kind of life. And so if you were here when we were preaching through Isaiah, the Lord gives us vision where he says, expand your tents, expand your tents. So we want to do that. And that does have financial implications. We're interested in church planting. You know, I just visited a bunch of pastors in the Midwest, and I'll be doing the same thing in Alabama and Texas and Colorado this year, as far as I know, if the Lord wills. But all of those activities have to do with encouraging local churches to embrace the scriptures and to plant churches.