Please turn your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 12. This along with Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 are classic references for the nature of the visible church and the importance of it. But this chapter is particularly extensive and comprehensive, and so that's why I've chosen it for our reading today. So hear God's word, 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware. You know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to the mute idols, however you were led. Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God says Jesus is accursed, and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are varieties of ministries and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. For to one is given the word of wisdom through the spirit, to another the word of knowledge according to the same spirit, to another faith by the same spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one spirit. And to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues. But one in the same spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually just as he wills. For even as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body, though they are many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of one spirit. For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot says, because I am not a hand, I am not a part of the body, it is not for this reason any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, because I am not an eye, I am not part of the body, it is not for this reason any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But now God has placed the members, each one of them in the body, just as he desired. If they were all one member, where would the body be? But now there are many members, but one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you. Or again, the head to the feet, I have no need of you. On the contrary, it is much truer that the members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. And those members of the body which we deem less honorable, on these we bestow the more abundant honor. And our less presentable members become much more presentable. Whereas our more presentable members have no need of it. But God has so composed the body, giving more abundant honor to that member which lacked. So that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Now, you are Christ's body and individually members of it. And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers. then miracles then gifts of healings helps administrations various kinds of tongues all are not apostles are they all are not profits are they all are not teachers are they all are not workers of miracles are they all do not have gifts of healings do they all do not speak with tongues all do not interpret but earnestly desire the greater gifts And I will show you a still more excellent way, and that of course leads into chapter 13, that says, without love, none of these gifts mean anything. So I'm going to give you an opportunity at the very end, the very end of the sermon, to respond by saying amen. Yeah, at the end, at the very end, I'm going to give you the opportunity. So, listen carefully and to the extent that the Spirit gives you resonance with what I'm preaching, respond. If you don't agree at all, don't say amen. If you agree completely, bring the roof down. Right? So that's the scale, a scale of 0 to 10. Right? So listen carefully so that you know how to gauge your meter at the end. Often I like to make various points and put a picture together and hit each point to make the picture. But today we're going to make one point and we're going to hit it over and over and over and over. So I hope to make One point clearly. As they say, this is the first time for everything. So let's see how this goes. The point is that the church is visible, not just invisible. It is local, not just global. It is invisible and global but it is primarily visible and local. because it is global only in its manifold locations. There are many who assert directly or indirectly, oh I'm a member of the invisible church. That's funny, I can see you. And people say, I'm a member of the global church. Well how can you be everywhere at the same time? The church is physical and particular, visible and local. God made man, formed us from the dust of the ground. We are first and foremost physical beings. And Christ came in the body, was raised in the body, and sits at the right hand of God in the body, and is coming again in the body. And it was only after he made us physical material that he breathed into us the breath of life and man became a living soul. We are primarily physical and then also spiritual that makes us a living soul. The Bible constantly refers to the people of God in every place. Not just generally or globally but locally and particularly and physically. Paul writes to the church in Corinth, to the church in Ephesus, to the members in one place and in another. John in the letters to the churches writes to different places, groups of people, physical, local, and that's what the church is. We'll consider then the truth of the nature of the church and how of all these descriptions of the church are both visible and local, not invisible and global. We have first the church spoken of as the people of God. A people or an ethnic group is visible. They are local. They can be seen and heard. and they dwell in a particular place with their ethnicity. Even expatriates are from somewhere and that's where that people is. You have the people of God in Egypt. You have the people of God in the wilderness. You have the people of God in Canaan. You have the people of God in exile. They are visible and they're local as the people of God. You have the nation of Israel. It is a national entity once brought out of Egypt and brought in the promised land. They are a nation and they are seen and they are led by a king. You have the tribes of Israel. Many tribes, one nation. Many tribes in that locality which Joshua prescribed for them according to the will of God. Dan in the far north, Ephraim in the far south, and the other tribes in between. Some on the west side of the Jordan, some on the east side of the Jordan. Everyone had a tribe. They were part of the nation, but by means of being part of a tribe. They did not say, I am an Israelite, denying that they are from the tribe of Ephraim. They were an Israelite by means of being from the tribe of Ephraim. The tribes of Israel were visible and local. The city of God is a visible thing. We see it in Jerusalem, an earthly Jerusalem, but the heavenly Jerusalem that we considered last week is also a visible and physical thing. Christ will come in the body with the city that he has prepared for us that will be physical and will dwell on earth. And we will be raised in the body to dwell in a physical local place. That's the nature of the church. We suffer greatly from a horrible hangover of Greek philosophy which regards the material world as inherently evil and to be rejected, and the greatest aspiration is to be freed from physicality and become a pure spirit. That is not Christian. That is not biblical. And we need to wake up and sober up from that hangover of Greek philosophy that infects and affects the church. the kingdom of God. There's an aspect to the kingdom of Christ dominion. His power is not visible but he has a domain over which he exercises his dominion and that domain is physical. It is visible and local. He sits at the right hand of God ruling over all things visible and invisible in every place. The kingdom of God has visibility and locality. The church throughout the scriptures and most notably for Christians in John 15 is described as the vine of God which he took and planted and caused it to flourish and yet it rebelled against him. Christ says I am the vine, you are the branches. Christ is physical. If Christ could have done all the things that he did for us simply as the second person of the Trinity in his pure spirituality, he would not have come to earth. He would not have become man also. But he did become man to save men, male and female. And as the vine of God, he is physical and it's local. A vine is not invisible. A vine is not global. You can see it and you know where it is and that's the nature of the church and the picture of the olive tree in Romans 11 has the same attributes. Most especially the body of Christ that we just read about in 1st Corinthians 12. The body is one and yet has many members. You can't be a part of the body without being a member of it. The kidney can't say, oh, I'm part of universal humanity. Or the kidney can't say, oh, I'm part of the invisible body. That's just not true. It just doesn't make any sense. It's not true to our experience or to the Word of God. There are many members and every single one of the members of the body is visible and has a place Now, in the fallen world, sometimes parts of the body are misplaced. Our son, we discovered one day, had an inflammation on his chest. And we were concerned about it, so we took him to the doctor, and Dr. Campbell, in his inimitable way, just immediately knew what it was. And what it was, was a piece of lung tissue that was dislocated to the surface of his chest skin, and it sent out a tubule looking for everybody else. That was lung. And the problem with it was that that tubule exposed Paul to infection and so he had to have surgery to have it removed. But ordinarily the lung tissue finds one another and locates roughly in the upper chest. It is visible, it's real, it's physical and it has a place and that is true of every church and every part of it. By the Spirit we are baptized into one body. if you have the Spirit of God you are part of the visible church that's what Paul is saying we are baptized in the body of Christ and the body of Christ is not merely or not only invisible it is not merely global it is visible it is local and if you claim to be spiritual if you claim to have the Spirit of Christ you will be a member of a visible local church. The Bride of Christ. Here's an illustration for you. Bride and groom are settled down for their honeymoon first night together and the husband says to his wife, honey why don't you go ahead to bed, I'll be with you in spirit. There'd be a call to the pastor or a call to the cops. One of the two. It would not go well because as a bride and as a groom it's physical and local and the church is described as the bride of Christ. Christ is physical. His church is physical, local, a thing in a place. That's what the church is. The family of faith. Can you imagine your kid saying, oh, I'm not part of this family, I'm part of the family of man. And so one day your son goes and has dinner over here, and sleeps another night over here, and next week he goes over here, and he, how do you think you would feel But even more, how do you think the people would feel when your son walks in and sits down at their dinner table or walks in and sleeps in somebody else's bed? Is this Goldilocks? It's not the nature of a family. A family is physical and a family is local. It's the nature of the case and the church is described as the household of God, the family of God. The Lord instructs the 70, as we recently considered, when you go to a city, find a house and stay there. Don't move from house to house looking for a better deal. The same with a church. Find a church, stay there, don't go from church to church looking for a better deal. It's the nature, the physical revealed nature of the church. Lastly, the church is described in 1st Timothy 3 as the pillar in support of the truth. It's like a beautiful diamond. You don't just throw it on a table. You have a special display in the middle of the museum and you have it elevated on a pillar with a flat surface and a velvet cloth with a box locked over it to display it. And Christ, sorry, Christ is made visible to the world by means of the church. The church in its being is not invisible because it is called and commissioned and created to make Christ visible. How does the church know Jesus? By seeing, how does the world know Jesus? By seeing the visible church and hearing. The Honorable Church. In all of these pictures, Christ's Church is visible and local, not merely global and invisible. Let's consider other illustrations of this principle. We already talked about marriage and family. We're thinking along those same lines. Consider a business. Businesses now are very largely virtual. They're online. And they're invisible. But somewhere, someone is behind this online presence. There can't be an online presence without some physical, local person creating these things and managing these things, at least at some point. the military. Much is done remotely with drones, flying drones in the Middle East from Fort Drum. It's amazing, but the drone is seen and it is in a place and the person operating it is a physical presence in a local place. Amazon. Amazon doesn't have, as far as I know, they don't have any storefronts. But they do have warehouses. They are not invisible. They are not merely global. They are visible and they have a global presence because they have local presence everywhere. Sports. I don't, I think I'll get an amen on this at the end, at the end. You cannot be a fan of the Buffalo Bills and the New England Patriots. Am I right? Yeah, exactly. It's specific. Your affections and your labors and your money can't go to both places. If that doesn't really resonate with you, how about the Yankees and the Red Sox? You just can't do both. Somehow you just can't do both. a location and a manifestation of these things. Let's take the second one, the invisible church. Now, I'm not arguing the church is not, I'm not arguing against the truth that the church goes beyond visible. But the church is more than visible, but not less than. So you have in Romans 9, 6, it's not as though the word of God had failed for they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel. Paul's making the point that you have the visible church But the invisible church is within that of those who are true believers as opposed to those who are pretending. And it does call us to careful examination that we are not deceiving ourselves and that we are truly of the church. But notice, all of those who are in the invisible church are part of the visible church. The invisible church is a subset of the visible church. It isn't additional to or other than. So the invisible church presumes the visible, not is against it. There will be a time, however, unless the Lord comes beforehand. when each of us will be part of the invisible church only. We will no longer be part of the visible church and only part of the invisible church. This is in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 23. The General Assembly, Church of the Firstborn are ruled in heaven, the God, the judge of all and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect. These folks are part of the invisible church but no longer part of the visible church. So, you can say that you are part of the invisible church only when you're dead. If someone says to you, oh, I'm just part of the invisible church. You ain't dead yet. There was a doctrine called docetism which asserted that Christ's physical body wasn't real. It was just an appearance and it came from the hangover from Greek philosophy that matter and the body is evil and if it's evil then Christ could not have had a real body. But this doctrine was rejected by the early church because Christ did have a real body and our salvation is predicated upon that. This docetism was part of Gnosticism which was a full inebriation in Greek philosophy that said all matter is evil and therefore there has to be separation from all matter. And the position that a person can be part of the invisible global church only is Gnostic. It is rejecting the reality and the goodness of what is visible and what is local. You also have the assertion of pan-church membership. People assert, I'm not a member of a church in Oswego, I'm a member of the church in Oswego. You could Paraphrase it, I'm a member of the OEA, the Association of Evangelical Churches. But the OEA doesn't assemble on the Lord's Day. The OEA doesn't worship together each week. The OEA doesn't have a physical perpetual existence. Now, Paul went from church to church to church. He went on his missionary journeys. And so you could perhaps see someone say, well, I'm just like the Apostle Paul, and I visit various churches. But the Apostle Paul did not go on his journey on his own initiative. The church in Antioch sent him. He had a home church. that he went from and came back to on each of his missionary journeys except for his last one where he went to Rome and didn't come back. Even Paul had a home church that he was a member of and this exception proves the rule. There is in the contemporary church an aversion to the term member, church member. And so other terms are substituted for it. One is associate and another is partner. I am an associate of the blank blank church. Is this Walmart? A Walmart associate? And I'm a partner in such and such church. It sounds like a law firm. And both of these terms have a significant degree of looseness in them. You're associated with someone, which suggests that you can come and go as you wish. You're a partner with someone, like someone who is a partner rather than a spouse. You're not married. She's not a spouse, but you're a partner and you're cohabiting. And so the image is someone who is loosely associated with a congregation or is cohabiting with a congregation rather than being covenanted with them. The scripture chooses the term member. The term member, the idea of member is a biblical term. Associate is not. Partner is not. The biblical term is member, which is the tightest bond between one part and another that can be imagined. There is a covenant as between a man and woman in marriage. Our relationship with each other in Christ is like that. Not identical, but it is like that. and we are only as tight with Christ as we are with his church. If you are loosely affiliated with the visible church of Christ, then you are by implication loosely affiliated with Christ himself. If you are not committed to his church, you are not committed to him. It's the nature of the case as portrayed by the scriptures. Consider the bride. Does she want to be loosely affiliated with her husband such that he can come and go as he pleases? Or does the bride want the exclusive attention of her husband as her man? The Song of Solomon. Have eyes only for each other. In the bond, the bondage, in every good sense, of marriage. We have a ring in our finger, but could just as easily be a ring in our nose. That's the nature of the commitment to each other. Consider the body. Would you like your kidney to be loosely associated with your body? That's not a kidney, that's dialysis. You go for dialysis, you have a loose association, then you go away. You want your kidney to be completely committed to your body, and your body to be completely committed to your kidney. And your kidney doesn't move from body to body to body. You may donate a kidney once, but it's not going to be moved again. There's stability in that. How about the buildings next door? What if all the buildings in Champlain Commons, none of them had any fasteners? No nails, no screws, no dovetailing, nothing. But all the parts were just touching each other. How long would that last? Not a day. It would completely fall apart. And the church, we are nailed to each other, we are screwed into each other, we are bound and glued to each other. That is the nature of the church. Now, part of the aversion to the term member is that church members are notorious for being uninvolved. And the historical suggestion, not the biblical proclamation, but the historical experience is that you have members of the church that are on the roll, but are not actively involved. That is an historical reality, but it is not the biblical truth. I'm not arguing for you to be a tumor. I'm arguing for you to be a member of the body, living and active, and sometimes with a tongue as sharp as a two-edged sword. but I'm arguing for you to be a member, committed, giving and receiving, not a tumor or a sebaceous cyst that just sits there and does nothing, and if it does anything, it doesn't do anything good. So, if you want one take home for today, be a member, not a tumor. How's that? Be a member, not a, what'd your pastor preach about? Oh, he said be a member and not a tumor. What does that mean? That's why you have your outline, explain the rest. An associated idea is that part of the thing that drives people from one church to another is just looking for a better deal like the 70 were warned against in Luke chapter 10. But what you need to look for in a church that you should be a part of is prescribed by the scriptures. The word with the sacraments, prayer, praise, fellowship, mutual and ministering. That's what the church is, that's what the church does. You want neither more nor less. Don't look for a church with a superhero pastor who's written a lot of books and does a lot of conferences because as we continue to see tragically, people like that will disappoint you. Not all of them will, but some of them will. Don't go to a church because of the person of the pastor. Go to a church because of the work of a pastor, not who he is but what he does, though who he is must qualify him for what he does. Don't look for superheroes and don't look for fads, don't look for the last a version of technology in the last program that is in every Christian magazine, the latest thing. There are only a few things that you must have in a church. The teaching of the scriptures, the preaching of the gospel, the sacraments, prayer, and fellowship. Settle for nothing less, ask for nothing more. And lastly, another disincentive to church membership is that people just, they want to be independent. They want to be their own persons. They do not want to be told what is true that they must believe and what is right that they must do. No one in modern America or modern western society wants to be under anybody else. Wives don't want to be Under their husbands, kids don't want to be under their parents, and individuals don't want to be under church elders. They want to maintain their freedom to believe what they want, to do what they want, and go where they want. And that is not the nature of the church or the commandment of the scriptures. Just for one example of the three I've listed, Hebrews 13, obey your leaders and submit to them for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give account and let them do this with joy not with grief for this would be unprofitable for you. Some final thoughts. If you are not a formal and functional member of a visible local church, what is keeping you from it? Is it fear of commitment such that you are cohabiting in Christ's church or even communing around? Is it pride in refusing to admit your needs that require you humbly to receive the gifts of others? Is it selfishness in refusing to share the gifts that God has given you for his visible church? Is it a false humility in thinking that you have nothing to offer when God tells you that he has given you something that others in his church need? Is it rebellion in refusing to submit to the shepherds whom Christ has appointed to care for his church? At least while you live on earth, you cannot be a part of the invisible church and not a part of the visible church. Unless you presume to be God and omnipresent, you cannot be part of the global church and not part of a local church. You cannot be part of the body of the resurrected Christ and apart from the body of his visible church. You cannot be committed to the person of Christ in heaven and uncovenanted with a particular assembly of his people on earth. You cannot be communing with Christ and his benefits in heaven and neglecting the means of grace in a local church on earth. The word is to be taught and heard by people who know each other face to face and not merely by remote technology. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are visible and local. You cannot participate in the sacraments spiritually only by video streaming for example. It's awfully hard to give you juice and to give you bread by video streaming. We extend the privilege of the Lord's Supper to visitors only when they are settled in some true branch of the visible church or we are trying to help them become settled. It is said that all politics is local. Likewise, all church is local. The church is also global, but you are part of the global church by means of being a part of the local church, just as an Israelite was part of the nation by being part of a tribe. Being part of the global church assumes that you're part of the local church. Being a part of the global invisible church is necessarily manifested by being part of a local visible church. A man and a woman who will live together should get married and stayed married. Similarly, anyone who would be a faithful Christian should become a formal and functional member of a local church and stay there unless the Lord moves you. And ordinarily, he won't move you very often, any more than a kidney is repeatedly moved from body to body. Don't sing, I'm a church hopper by Carmen, dancing the tune of I'm a girl watcher. Let that settle in for just a second. I'm a church hopper to the tune of I'm a Girl Watcher. Don't sing this by going from a church with deep teaching to one with eloquent preaching, to one with dynamic leadership, to one with great instrumentalists, to one with mystical contemplation, to one with community activism, to one with Scottish accents. Don't be church queer or ecclesiastically fluid, identifying with this local church one week, and that local church next month, and yet another local church in the coming year. The point is this. According to the will of God revealed in the scriptures, every Christian must be a formally committed and functionally active member of some congregation of a Bible teaching, gospel preaching, sacrament observing, joyfully praising, earnestly praying, lovingly fellowshipping, good works pressing needs meeting, visible, local, church. I didn't ask yet. Amen? That's a little scattered. We need to be one body here and speak with one voice. Amen? Thank you. Okay, that'll do. Let's pray. Lord God, we desire to think your thoughts after you. We desire to walk in your ways. And we live in a world that is just pulling us apart with their own ideas even as the church has always suffered from this. Whether dwelling in Canaan in the midst of gross idolatry or living in the Greek culture with unbiblical notions of creation and humanity. And Lord, in our own day, the church is infected and permeated by ideas of itself that are contrary to your word and destructive to your people. And so Lord, we pray that you would order our minds, that you incline our hearts to the truth of the scriptures and to the value, necessity, and blessing of formal and functional membership in some true branch of your church. Please, Lord, Establish this in the life of everyone who calls on your name. For the glory of your name and for the good of your people, in Jesus' name we pray, amen.