We have our scripture lesson before you in two passages of the Bible, Psalm 84 and Matthew chapter 16 today. We're coming to the next phrase in the Apostles' Creed, in believing, I believe, the Holy Catholic Church. Psalm 84 expresses God's love for His people as they are gathered together in worship. And Matthew chapter 16 speaks about our Savior building His church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Let's read God's words. Psalm 84. How lovely are your dwelling places, O Lord of hosts! My soul longed and even yearned for the course of the Lord. My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. The bird also has found a house and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. How blessed are those who dwell in your house! They are ever praising you, Selah! How blessed is the man whose strength is in you, and whose heart are the highways to Zion! Passing through the valley of Vaca, they make it a spring. The early rain also covers it with blessings. They go from strength to strength. Every one of them appears before God in Zion. O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer. Give ear, O God of Jacob. Behold our shield, O God, and look upon the face of your anointed. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand outside. I would rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness. For the Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord gives grace and glory. No good thing does He withhold from those who walk uprightly. O Lord of hosts, how blessed is the man who trusts in You." Wonderful lines from Psalm 84. Then Matthew 16, verses 13-20. This is God's Holy Word. Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist, and others Elijah, but still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood do not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven." Then he warned the disciples that they should tell no one that he was the Christ. thus far the reading of God's blessed word here in both of these portions today as we come to the topic of the church. I believe in one Catholic church says our Apostles Creed, a summary from the early church of what the New Testament in particular taught. I believe the Holy Catholic Church. What do we think of when we think of the word church? There are many ideas that pop into people's minds when they are confronted with that word. Some good ideas, some bad ideas, but all of us have some sort of a conception. Something comes into our thinking when we say the word church. Many think merely of a building. When you think of church, you think of a white building, maybe prominently displayed on some corner somewhere that has a pointy top and perhaps a cross upon the steeple. It has funny chairs that you sit in, these pews. And they have these colorful windows that decorate its exterior. Maybe that's what you think of when you think of church. You think about church as, I'm going to church. I'm going to that building. I'm going to that place. But the Bible teaches that we are the church. You and I, believer, are the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible teaches that the church is a people. That the church is a fellowship. The church is the communion of the saints. That's what the Bible teaches. Again, some think too meanly of the church. When they think of church, they think, well, that's not the important stuff in the Bible. What's so important, as Matthew 16 brings out, is the fact that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is the only one who can save us from our sins. And that is the center message of the Bible. The central message is that we are sinners, and we need a Savior. And so there are those who say, well, because I've had this bad experience with the church, or it seems like the institutional, the organized church seems to be so far off the beam, that it's not at all important. We recognize it's not all important, but it's not important at all. It's unimportant. And there are even some in our day and age who would say, it doesn't matter whether you join the church or not. It doesn't matter whether you go to worship. You just worship God in your own way. You will find nothing like that on any page of Scripture that I'm aware of. I'm not saying I'm aware of everything in Scripture, but I've studied the Bible for 30 years and I'm still looking for that one. So there are those when they think of church, because of their bad experiences or because they want to just make a few things important in the Bible, they diminish the importance of the church. And then you have the opposite end, where the pendulum swings the opposite. Instead of thinking too meanly of the Church, there are those who place the Church first and highest. The Church is the most important thing. In fact, there has been one branch of the Christian Church that comes here in the West that has made the Church all in all, and would put the word Roman in front of Catholic. and say that this is the one true church and you have to be a part of this particular branch of the church in order to be deemed as part of the church, part of the Christian movement. This church and no other. There are those who say this church right or wrong. They seem to have exalted the idea of the papacy and of the church at such a high position. You'd almost expect that in the Apostles' Creed, instead of beginning with, I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, it begins with, I believe in the Holy Pontiff, and I believe in the Roman Catholic Church. So they will stay there no matter what that church says or does, and that church says and does some amazing things that are unbiblical. Even as we saw this last week, as you read how the Pope said, atheists who are good are going to Heaven. Wow, again, still looking for that one in the great book, in the good book. Dear ones, forget these other things. How are we to think of the church? It's important for how we think. What are we thinking when we think of the church? What comes into our minds? Let us be novel here and say, let's find out what the Bible says. Let's try to know what the scripture says about the church. What is the church? Because the church is described in the Bible. It doesn't leave it up to us to say, here, fill in your own definition. In fact, the Bible gives us many wonderful portraits and pictures. It's very simple how the Bible presents to us what the church is, because the Bible loves to use word pictures, metaphors, similes, for us to get our heads around what the church is. Think of these portraits that we find in the Bible that are so prominent, we oftentimes just glaze over them. And yet, in each of these portraits, we could have an entire three-point sermon if we were so inclined and had the time. Think about the fact that the church is the flock of God. You are God's flock. You are His sheep. That means that God cares for you. God has made you sheep who once were goats. You've been brought into His arms. You've been brought into His fold. This speaks about the fact that the church is needy. We are dependent upon whom? The Good Shepherd. Our Good Shepherd. The church needs a shepherd. The church is fed and protected, provided for by that Great Shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. And above all, that Shepherd who laid down His life for us. There's how we define the church. What's the church? We are the flock of God who are needy. We go astray so easily, but we have a good shepherd who is caring for us, calls us back, and most importantly, has died for all of our sins. That's not the only picture. The Bible says that Jesus is the vine and you are the branches. Here's a picture of being a living entity. We are the branches that are engrafted into Christ. We are alive in Him as a tree of righteousness. We are planted. We are rooted. We are grounded. There's a picture of strength that's involved there. We are growing as well as being firmly planted. We are developing. We're supposed to be growing until our last breath. And most importantly, as plants, we are supposed to bring forth blossoms and fruit unto the Lord. That's what we are to be doing. You are made for God, and you are to be bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, long-suffering, goodness, kindness, and so forth. Self-control. So there's a beautiful picture of the life that we have. We are fruit-bearing branches. We are fruit-bearing trees, planted by the Lord, trees of righteousness. And then, the Bible likens us to a building or a temple. not the building that we happen to be meeting in, because God's people are sometimes met in caves, and in catacombs, and in the woods, and hiding from persecutors, so it's not the building that makes the church, but we are the building of God, says Paul in the book of Ephesians. In fact, he mixes, there's a mix-a-four that takes place here, of a plant and a building, so the building is growing. Buildings don't grow. This building that was built, what, back in the late 1990s, is pretty much the exact same structure. Maybe it's shrunk a little bit. Maybe it's settled a little bit, but it has not grown. Dear ones, the building of God grows. And that, again, is a picture of firmness. We have a foundation. We have a structure. We have stability. This is the house. We are the house of God, and God dwells and abides in our midst. He dwells in our hearts. He lives in us individually and corporately. Wonderful picture. Again, we have a whole sermon on that. And then, we are likened to the city of God. We are likened to a structure of citizenry. We have been brought into this holy nation. We have a king. We have a ruler. Jesus is our president. Jesus is our congress. Jesus is our judiciary. He is the one who has laws for us that protect us, that are for our good. He is the one who provides for us and protects us against enemies, as our armies are supposed to protect us. He is the one who has made us his city, and he is the great governor over all. But being a part of a city is not so warm as being part of a family. And another metaphor that the Bible uses of the church is that you are the children of God. You are one family. You are brothers and sisters in Christ. Christ is your elder brother. You are imbued with the spirit of adoption. And who is over this family? But God the Father. God who looks upon you as His family, His children. You see that especially in the Old Testament expression of the church. God actually chose one man by the name of Abraham and from his loins chose a church that was supposed to reach out to all of the nations. What comes to our minds when we think of a family? Why we have the same nature. You know that your own brothers and sisters, they have the same characteristics as you do. When you get together with them at family reunions, you kind of see yourself in the mirror a little bit. You see the same curly hair, or in my case, the same graying hair as my brothers. You have the same makeup, the same nature. You've come through the same experiences. You can talk to your brothers and sisters of the things that you enjoy privately, uniquely in your homes. You've had the same experiences, and you have this one family tie. And that's what the church is. We've been made one. We've been made a family. We have new hearts. We have the same hope. We've experienced the great change from being in sin and darkness and being brought into grace and into the light of the Lord. These things are ours. You see how each of these are a sermon to us. They tell us what to think about when we think about the church. But dear ones, the two most precious images that God has given to you to think about when it comes to the church is that you are the body of the Lord and you are the bride of Christ. Those, I believe, are the images par excellence. You're the body of Christ. Christ is the head. Think about your own body. You have, I hope, you have control over your body. You have a connection with your hands, with your arms, with your feet, with your legs, with your torso. You control all of this. This is you, and yet it's distinct from you. And here is this relationship then between Jesus, who is the head. He is the life of the church. He is the leader of the church. He is the center of the church. And the body flows forth from Him. All life, all the church is the church because of Jesus. What's special about the church is not the body, but the head. And that's why we need to be telling people when they come to church, when they say, what's so special about being a Christian? It's Christ. It's not the body. We're not supposed to be saying, see how wonderful this body is, and showing off our bodies to the people around us. No, we should be pointing to Christ. Christ is the centerpiece. Here's this intimacy again. We're all part of this. We all have a connection with this same Savior, with this same Lord. We are important to each other. If one of us hurts, all of us should hurt. If my big toe gets hammered, gets stepped on, the rest of the body goes, well, I'm glad I'm not the big toe. The rest of the body says, ouch, and feels the pain of that one member. And so Paul frequently speaks about us being members of each other, and all of us supposed to be doing our part. We have a variety amongst us, don't we? We're not all the exact same here. We are different members. Some of us are big toes. Some of us are fingers. Some of us are hands. Some of us are eyes. Some of us are ears. Some of us are mouths. I guess I'm the mouth. I get to talk a lot. So, God gives us these qualities, these parts. And we are to fulfill them as members of His body. But then He calls you also His bride. And really, bride and body are so close because the Bible says that when I married my wife, She became one flesh with me. We are one body. We are one in the Lord. Heirs together of the grace of life. Even though she's my bride, she's my flesh, and my flesh is my bride, she's my wife. Jesus loves the church. That's why he did everything necessary to save her and to bring her to heaven, which especially centers upon what he was doing on the cross. Jesus loves the bride uniquely. I am supposed to love all people, says the Bible, but I am not supposed to love all people like I love my wife. I love my Nancy more and differently and better than I love any other human being in this world, even more than my children in certain ways. She is unique to me, my spouse, my girl. That's how Jesus treats the wife, the church. He loves you. He has given himself for you. He will never let you go. Here's again the tenderness, here's the love and at the same time the bond and the strength that's involved there. Jesus will never divorce you. Jesus will never leave you behind or forsake you. You see so many marriages today that are just broken. broken beyond repair. You see, husbands that are acting so foolishly, turning their backs upon their weaker vessel, their brides, and doing things to damage them, instead of loving them, caring for them, nurturing them, providing for them, dying for them, you see. And so, between the bride and the groom, between the Church and the Lord Jesus, we have been made alive for Him. And He loves us uniquely. And we are to love Him uniquely. We are to love Him alone as our Husband, as our Lord, as our Man, as our King. And allow no rivals to come in, you see. That's why in the Bible, you'll notice as you read, especially in the Old Testament, how idolatry, going after other gods, is called adultery by the Lord. It's going and sleeping with somebody who is not your spouse. Giving your love, giving your commitment to somebody else is adultery. But when you are worshipping some other God, when you are not serving your Savior, who is your husband, then you are committing spiritual adultery. What a terrible picture that is. Why? Because Jesus deserves all of your love. He should be the center of your heart and of your life. He is purifying you. He has set you apart for Himself. He loves you with an everlasting love. He holds you by the hand. And one day He is going to present you faultless, without spot, without wrinkle, without any defect in you. What a wonderful thing that is! He is going to perfect you. I sat in on a funeral yesterday and it's just so striking. And here was a woman who was alive just a week and a half ago, and God took this servant of His out of this world. And to think, right now, this woman who had been struggling with cancer, had lived a long, precious life, but was a sinner, and yet trusted in Christ, is now perfected. She no longer sins. She no longer has any sorrow or sadness. She is perfected in the presence of her heavenly husband, her Savior Jesus. What a wonderful thing that is. And that's what Christ is calling us home to. That's the house that He takes His bride, picks her up in His arms, and brings her across that threshold to be with Him forever and ever. What marvelous truths are here for us. We believe in the Church that Jesus is building. that Jesus has made, that Jesus has planted, that Jesus has called, that Jesus has saved, that Jesus is sanctifying, that Jesus is going to glorify. We believe in the Holy Catholic Church, says the Apostles Creed. When it says that she is holy, it doesn't mean that we walk around with halos on our head and pretend to be holy. No. Holy has the idea in the Bible of being set apart. We are unique. There is no other institution under the sun that is like the Church. The Church is special. The Church is one holy, special, united nation or people of God. She is Catholic. And that word Catholic means, from the Latin, it just means universal. This is why we mentioned the Roman Catholics earlier. Do you recognize that Roman Catholic is an oxymoron? Here is the word Roman that means local, and here is the word Catholic that means universal. So if you are a Roman Catholic, you believe in a local universal. Those are contradictory terms. It's like jumbo shrimp. Right? Jumbo is huge. Shrimp is tiny. Right? Roman Catholic is local, universal. Dear ones, the universal church is not just in Rome. It's in London. It's in Washington. It's in Beijing. It's across this world. All who trust in Christ. In the Old Testament it was localized to one family, reaching out to all the nations. But that has changed because the dividing walls have been knocked down. This Catholic Church is made up of a great host which no man can number, from every tongue and tribe and people and nation, with skins that are black and white, which are red and yellow. We have different heights, different genders, different backgrounds, different social structures or strata in our lives, different economics. But we are one in Christ, you see. And then she is the Church. That term church comes from the Greek word ekklesia. And you'll recognize the word ecclesiastical from that. We get ecclesiastical history as the history of the church. And ekklesia means a compound word that means called out of. Ekk means out of. Klesia comes from kaleo that means to call. We are the called out ones. Where are we called out from? We are called out from the world. We're called out from this fallen evil age. We're called out of the dominion of sin and of the wicked one and we are called into fellowship, this bond with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That's what's unique about the church. We are the called out ones. You wonder why we don't use the word Ekklesia anymore. The history of the word Church is quite interesting. Basically we have the word Church because the word Ekklesia went through an evolution that passed through Scotland. Did you not know that? Church ultimately comes from the word Kirk. And that goes back to the Greek word Kurios. Kurios is the word for Lord. And so we went from this evolution of we are the Lord, we are the property of the kurios, and it became kirk, and then it became church. So that's why we use the term church to translate from our English to the word ekklesia, but really it's the idea of being called out. We've been called out of our sins. We've been called into the fellowship, into the covenant of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Now I have A lot more notes here, and I'm not going to be able to get to those today. We'll wait until next time to talk about the communion that we have as saints. But let me close with this. How do we know that we are the church of the Lord? That we are the called out ones? Well, dear ones, the church has marks about her. You can define her. Not by just the name church on the outside of the building. Anybody can put the name church on a building and say, here, we're a church. Oh, but that doesn't make the church the church. We've just seen what makes the church the church is the Lord Jesus Christ. Unless Jesus is the head, we are not his church. And so the mark of the church, the central mark is this. It's the preaching of the gospel. It's the gospel that has shown us our sins and has called us out of our sins and to Jesus Christ. The body, the religious group that does not have the cross at the center is not the church. The church is about the gospel. The church is about the good news. The church is about the reality that Jesus died for sinners. We've recognized our sin by the Word of God and we've been called into new life through Jesus dying for us and rising again that third day. Without the gospel, we're not the church. Without the Gospel, we are lost. Without the Gospel, we're still in the world. We're still in our sins. And let me tell you folks, there are many, many, many buildings out there with many, many, many nicely dressed men and now women standing in front of a group, listening attentively, who are not preaching the Gospel. They're not preaching what Jesus did. They're taking that message. They're setting it aside. They're diminishing it. They're just teaching people, just be good. Just be kind people. Just be happy people. Seek to coexist with other religions. Try to get along with everybody. Now, you're supposed to be loving. But it's not the love of the church that's the central message. It's the love of Christ who laid down his life for us. And then that one mark of the church, then the gospel, flows out to the fact that we must We must be set apart by that gospel. And you are set apart in this way. God has solemnly placed his name upon you when you were baptized. When you were baptized, you were baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. There is the gospel made visible. it's set apart, you are set apart in baptism and you can continue in fellowship with this mediator who's brought you into fellowship with the triune God as you participate in the Lord's Supper. There's the second mark, it's the holy administration of the sacraments. The sacraments put a difference between us and the world. It's not the building that puts a difference between us and the world, it's our profession, it's our attachment, our faith in Christ that is materially put before us in our baptism and Lord's Supper. But dear ones, not everybody is baptized, and not everybody who participates in the Lord's Supper is a Christian. There are those who are not of us. There are those who go through the motions. There are those who look very good on the outside. And thus the third mark of the Church is Church discipline. that says, this is the gospel, if you're not a believer, you should not be a member of the church until you believe, until you repent. And likewise, if somebody is in the church, and begins to live contrary to Christ, contrary to his faith, contrary to obedience in him, then also there is to be a removal of such a one. The worst thing I can imagine is telling somebody that they are one of God's people, and going to heaven when they are not. That's about the worst thing I can imagine ever telling somebody. As somebody whose calling and profession is to teach people about the Bible, it would be the worst thing to me to tell people, you're really a Christian, you really love God, you really are on your way to heaven when you are not. And there are many people, nicely dressed, standing in front of congregations today doing that very thing. God have mercy on their souls for leading people astray. Do not be blind following the blind which will fall into a ditch. Open your eyes to the good news of Christ, to his gospel, and follow Jesus as you rest and trust in him. We'll continue this next week as we look at the fact that we believe in the communion of the saints. And what a wonderful truth that is. Let's pray together. Father, we ask your blessing upon these things from your word today. Dismiss us now with your blessing, with joy in our hearts. For Lord, you have not only saved us for yourself, but you've placed us in a great family, in a great host. We thank you, Lord, for your love to us. We thank you for making us your bride, your body, for making us the flock of the Lord. May we act as your children, not just this morning or just this day, but throughout the whole week. We pray, Lord, your presence to go before us and with us. In Jesus' name, his mighty name, we pray. Amen.