been attempting to emphasize over the past number of weeks now, the idea that the Word of God teaches that those who are followers of Jesus Christ, who name Him as their Lord and who received Him as their Savior, have been called unto holiness and therefore unto loyalty to Him and that by and large we have been called upon not simply to change our lives, but to begin new lives. We are not old creatures made over, but the scriptures tell us that we are new creations in Jesus Christ. We have not been called upon to reform ourselves, We have been called by the Spirit of God to be transformed and changed into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ. Now, all of those things are vitally important for the well-being that is the new creation, the spiritual well-being for any child of God. To ignore those truths and to attempt to achieve whatever it is that you may think is holiness by any other means and in any other way is not holiness at all, but self-righteousness, which almost always, in fact, will always predictably not only lead to your own failure, but perhaps even to the destruction or the impediment of others as well. And as I taught those things and preached those things, I hope that by now some of us at least are impressed with the idea that in terms of what we are, In reflection of our Lord, it simply can be stated that we're not good enough, that we aren't committed enough, that the transformation into a new creation has not manifested itself in our behavior and in our attitudes enough, that because we are sanctified and set apart by the Holy Spirit of God, We still have not yet demonstrated that fact enough. It comes down simply to a system of values which either you embrace as being true and that truth impressing itself upon your consciousness far enough and to the extent and degree at least where it will affect a different direction in your life. So these past few days I've been thinking about how it is, how can I sum up by what means it is that God has provided that these things be accomplished in his people. And I have not shrunk to point out to you the inventions of believers and professed believers and false believers for religious exercise and for religious organizations of all varied myriad types that by and large they are unbiblical and therefore are unproductive. When I say unproductive, however, I'm not speaking in human terms. You must understand that. In the context of my speech this evening, When I say unproductive, I'm speaking in heavenly terms or eternal terms. Something that is of no eternal value is unproductive. And anything which is based upon something other than what the Word of God clearly teaches is unproductive. To ignore what the Word of God teaches and simply do nothing is unproductive. None of those things have any eternal value. Doing nothing has no value. Doing something that may be wrong has no value. Following a pathway which is not defined in the scriptures, but may be moral in some ways or another, and which may even produce magnificent results in human terms. If it's not biblical, it's not of any value. So I thought, the Bible is an amazingly simplistic instrument of teaching. Oh, I know that some of the greatest criticisms against the Bible by those who have never opened this book, opened the cover, is that it's too complicated, too hard to understand. I'd never be able to understand it. It's too dry and I don't want to read it. I've heard that hundreds of times. I've heard that complaint from professed Christians, numbers of times. The Bible is just difficult to understand. And therefore I have no appetite for it. Well, you're wrong. The reason why you have no appetite for it is because you don't understand it. And the reason why you don't understand it probably is because you have never been given an appetite for it. And therefore you probably are not a child of the King bound for heaven, walking the pathway of righteousness because God does give his people desire for godly things. Now, whether or not you suppress that desire or stimulate it is another matter. But by and large, for those who have never had much appetite for the word of God or whose appetite may have been very temporary, very short duration, and not any real deep interest at all. The probability is that you would never, there hasn't been a work of grace accomplished in you. God has provided in his word, in fact in the words of Jesus Christ, a means by which his people would be instructed would be encouraged, would even be disciplined, would be supported by one another, and probably a whole lot of other things that I can't even think of right now. The Lord Jesus Christ said to all of his apostles while he was addressing Peter, I will build my church upon the solid rock of the fact that I am this Christ, the son of the living God, and that church will succeed to such a degree and to such an extent that the gates of death themselves will not be successful in annihilating her. Now, it's obvious he meant something by that. It had to mean something. It doesn't mean nothing. And of course, there have been a number of different views of what he meant by that, because there are a number of different views of what church is. Rather than rehearse all those different views, let me simply tell you that there are those who believe church is a system where there is a titular head who takes the place of Christ upon this earth, that would be the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or that church is a organized system of hierarchy that doesn't have a single head of authority, but there is an organizational authority. Presbyterians have that, Methodists have that, lots of religious organizations have that. Or church is just where two or three are gathered together without any organization at all. Some people think that's what church is. But let me tell you that if you don't really at least, if you don't understand or don't have fixed in your own mind what church is in the New Testament, at least you ought to understand what church does. Because in order to understand what church is, you have to know what church does. Or at least what it's supposed to do. Now we know that the Lord Jesus Christ gave a commission, a set of instruction with authority, that's what a commission is, to the 11 remaining apostles on the seashore of Galilee, and the commission is go and preach and make disciples and then baptize those disciples that you have made and then teach those disciples that you have baptized. Well, that probably is as good a synopsis of definition of what church does as anything can be. But the New Testament certainly amplifies the idea of this commission. Church is primarily for the purpose of instructing, encouraging, and strengthening the saints of God. That's what church does. It does it in a number of different ways. But it always does it because it assembles. That's why the New Testament, the Holy Spirit chose the word assembly to define church. Every time you read the word church in the New Testament, without exception, it comes from the Greek word called out assembly. So whatever you think church is, there's one thing you must conclude that one of the things the church does is assemble. And it's on the basis of the fact that it assembles, that it derives its strength or from which the members derive their strength. I want you to turn to the book of Acts chapter 2 for a moment or two. In the book of Acts, the second chapter, there is a historical account of the most outstanding day of Pentecost in Jewish history, because it was on that day that about 120 Jews who were believers in Jesus Christ went public. For the first time, any assembly, any church, any group of followers of Christ who were assembled together, for the first time in Bible history, They went public. They came out into the open. They preached the gospel of Christ. They made converts. They baptized those converts. They retained those converts to teach them and to strengthen them and to love them. That's why assembly is assembly because none of those things happen without assembly. All you say, I can love without assembly. Not for long you can't. The ethereal love that a believer, a professed believer in Christ has for say, a believer in Kokomo, that he doesn't know, has never met, because he says we're members of the same church, is not the kind of love that is engendered from assembling. It's entirely different. It's impersonal. It produces no relationship between the two. After all, love, the purpose of love, is to stimulate and to promote horizontal relationships between one another. Heavenly love is designed to stimulate and promote vertical relationships between God the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and a redeemed sinner saved by grace. So this horizontal love or this love of saint for saint cannot properly be stimulated according to the scriptures and according to any casual observation unless there is assembly or unless there is contact. So on this day of Pentecost, the church went public and there was this great display of power as the Holy Spirit came down and immersed the church in its power. And Peter got up and he began to speak and he began to speak and the others as well in tongues of utterance that they had never learned before, had never been exposed to before. And everybody was absolutely amazed when they heard all these different languages being spoken by all these untaught people. And the 37th verse simply says, as Peter spoke to them and taught them of Christ and of Christ's messiahship, that Jesus is Lord and that his crucifixion was at the hands of the very people to whom he was preaching and that they were guilty of blood and of rejection and of stiff-neckedness and had been for century upon century blinded against the truth of God, Some of them, even by today's terms of numbers, a lot of them were convicted of their sinfulness and of their waywardness, convicted of their lost condition, convinced that what Peter said was true, and they were drawn to immediate action. Immediate action begins to be described in the 37th verse of chapter two. Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? And Peter said unto them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost for the promises unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. With many other words did he testify and exhort saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. Then they, now please note this, these next two verses are critical to understanding church, church activity. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized. And the same day there were added unto them about 3000 souls, And they continued steadfastly in the apostles teaching and fellowship and breaking of bread and prayers. Now, you don't have to read very deeply in other portions of the New Testament, most notably in the book of Ephesians and the Corinthian writings to conclude that the objective of the fellowship of these saved people who were added to this number or to this assembly at Jerusalem were added for the purpose, one, of being builded up in the faith. That's why teachers and pastors were provided. Teachers and pastors operate in churches. I'm always amused, sadly amused. Every time I turn on the radio and I hear someone being introduced as the radio pastor of such and such, or this radio pastor, or this television pastor, no assembly, you can be sure that what you're going to hear in teaching is going to be chock full of error because the first premise is wrong. They don't understand church. They don't understand its purpose. They've overcomplicated it. The Word of God simplifies it, makes it very clear. So not only was church provided that they may be converted to Christ and that they may be taught or grounded in the faith and have their faith built up upon a sound, solid foundation, but also that they would have company, that they wouldn't be alone. It's not simply a matter of saying, I am included in the number of the elect, and as of this moment, there may be 4 million of us, or 10 million, or 100 million of us in the world. That's of little help to you. When you need support, when you need encouragement, when you need strengthening, When you need to know that you aren't alone by experiencing the presence of a loved one in Christ or a number of them. When you can come to an assembly and say, I have a terrible need and I need your help. Pray for me, help me please. And two or three or five or 10 or 20 or all will rally to your support. Try that in some invisible universal applied assembly sometime and see where you get. The purpose for church is to strengthen saints. That's the reason for its being. And they continued steadfastly in the apostle's doctrine, teaching, and fellowship in breaking of bread and of prayers. Now would you turn to the book of Ephesians, please. Chapter 4, starting with the 11th verse. Previous verses of this chapter, in fact, the previous verses of all the previous chapters continually lead to the idea and bring about and bring to bear the idea that Christ is supreme, that he has accomplished all that he has accomplished, and it's beyond record really what he has accomplished, but he's done so at great price, with great pain, great sorrow, with great loneliness. You see, you have to remember that when the Bible says that Jesus Christ died, loved his church, and gave himself for her, you've got to remember what he experienced while he was giving himself. And one of the things which he experienced while he was giving himself was being completely forsaken of the God Father whom he loved, whom he loved. So when we say that Christ died for our sins so that we would not have to pay for them, we say accurately a biblical truth. But we equally could say with the same accuracy that Christ died for our loneliness or aloneness so that we would never have to be. because Jesus Christ loved his church and gave himself for her. The premier reason for the church's existence is that the saints of God may gather together in mutual support and love, in mutual learning and understanding, in mutual agreement of faith and doctrine. That's the reason for it. That's why church is called assembly in the Bible. That's why it has that name. So the previous verses talk about that and it talks about one Lord and one faith and one baptism. It talks about being grounded and built upon the foundation of the apostles and the prophets and Jesus Christ himself is the chief cornerstone. It talks about all those things. And then we come to the 11th verse and it says, after it talks about his loneliness, and he says, he gave some to be apostles and some prophets, that would be the writers of scripture, and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. And then he goes on to say, and the reason why he gave those gifts was for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying or building up of the body of Christ. That's the reason for it. It's the reason he did all this. Until we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect or full-grown person, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie and wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love may grow up unto him in all things which is the head, even Christ, now notice. from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working and the measure of every part make an increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love." And I suppose if you read the 16th verse, you may at first have a little difficulty understanding what it's saying. So I will interpret it for you and hopefully in very clear terms. What the 16th verses say is that all these things have been provided Christ himself providing them, and then Christ himself being the head of it, for the purpose that the body, the church, the assembly, should become more tightly compacted together. And that the more tightly compacted we are together, the more that each one supplies the other with what it needs for the whole body to survive. The end objective is to make the increase of the body and build it up in love. You probably have all heard about this Chernobyl nuclear accident and how it is that the only way for severe radiation sickness to be treated at all is with bone marrow transplants. Because even Solomon knew, who was a wise man, of course, that if the bones are joyful, the body is healthy. Did you know that? I mean, Solomon said that. The joy and strength of the marrow of the bones makes everything else work great. Well, here we are in the 20th century and they found that out. That's pretty good. I'm glad they did. And so here we got an American surgeon, specialist in bone marrow transplants who went to the Soviet Union for the purpose of trying to make these sick people well by placing within their bones healthy marrow. On the theory and proven fact that if you can make the marrow of the bones healthy, you can make the rest of the body healthy. That's exactly what this is saying. In the New Testament, the body, the human body is likened unto the body of Christ, the assembly, the church. And this verse simply says, we have teachers, we have pastors, we have had those who have written the word of God, we have had Christ, and he is the head of it all, In fact, it is from him that the whole body is joined together, tightly compacted, framed and knit together, so that we're supplying one another according to that which is effective and it works in every part. Look, church means something. Can't mean nothing. Reponderance of the New Testament writings were written to and about church. To ignore church is at your own peril. One would think that such a major subject, one to which so much verbiage has been given by the Holy Spirit of God, that one ought to be interested in knowing what it means. And certainly if you believe that it means assembly, one ought to be interested in Assembling, one would think. But I started off by saying that a system of values becomes part and parcel of that which the Word of God says is a new creation in Jesus Christ. So not only are directions changed, but appetites are changed too. May it please God that he would stimulate our appetites for doing the things that we are told in the scriptures are the best for us. Preachers just love to do the things which are the worst for us. till we crucify the flesh and go to war against it.