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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.
The Purpose of Church
must assemble in order to instruct, encourage, strengthen & support
| Sermon ID | 314241926447633 |
| Duration | 27:12 |
| Date | |
| Category | Midweek Service |
| Bible Text | Ephesians 4:11-16 |
| Language | English |
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