Now just a word of prayer together, let
us pray.
Our Father, we thank Thee so much for
this fellowship met together here tonight, gathered from
different parts of this land and from many
parts of the world.
We thank Thee that here we can know
a fellowship that goes so deep that we
discover that we're all one in Christ our
Lord.
We thank Thee for Thy Church, whom Thou
hast gathered out of every land and every
nation in order that there may be made
known to principalities and powers the glory of
the Lord Jesus through the Church.
We ask Thy blessing upon the remaining moments
of this evening hour of worship.
We ask it for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Our subject for this evening in the concluding
message on the series, Learning to Live, in
which we have been talking together about some
of the great words of the Christian faith
such as sin, repentance, faith, surrender, sanctification, the
Holy Spirit and so on.
A series which we've been considering for several
weeks, indeed two or three months now.
For the last of these in this series
we come to consider the question, what is
the Church?
Now this is an important subject and in
the next few moments I'm going to take
you through different verses of the Word of
God in order that we might understand from
Scripture what is the Church.
But before I do that, let me just
lay the foundation of our message briefly for
a moment and remind you that just as
children are born into families and therefore have
a double responsibility to their parents and to
their brothers and sisters, so in the spiritual
family a Christian has a double responsibility.
First of all to God as his Father
and then to his brothers and sisters in
the same spiritual family.
The Christian has this twofold responsibility.
If he knows Jesus Christ personally in his
life, then God is his Father and all
who know the Lord are his brothers and
sisters.
Now you know some Christian people are a
law entirely to themselves and they follow Christ
as individuals.
They are spiritual isolationists and they fail to
accept their family responsibilities.
And mind you they often do that in
the name of a very deep and high
spirituality.
But you see when you belong to the
Lord, you belong to his Church, you belong
to his body.
And in practice that means that you belong
and support loyally a local fellowship of Christian
people.
But perhaps you might excuse yourself by saying
that where you live there is no place
which is true to the Bible and true
to the Gospel.
Well now just remember that no church is
perfect.
You have to wait to heaven till you
get to heaven for a perfect church.
And you recall how Paul deplored the party
spirit that existed in Corinth.
I am of Paul and I am of
Apollos and I am of Cephas and worst
of all I am of Christ.
No party affiliation whatsoever.
You see the Bible tells us that affiliation
with a church, membership of a church, is
not optional for a Christian.
It is a command to be obeyed.
And the Christian who goes from one place
of worship to another is useless in the
body of Christ.
Loyalty involves attendance and participation in the devotional
and missionary and evangelistic work of a local
fellowship, as well as sacrificial giving to maintain
its testimony.
Of course it's true that many churches are
unspiritual and unscriptural.
Many of them do not doubt and deny
the authority of the Word of God.
But let's just remind ourselves tonight that such
places can never be helped by criticism, but
they can be helped by prayer.
Our Lord attended the synagogue regularly.
It was anything but spiritual.
Now I'm not advocating the attendance of a
Christian at a church which is unspiritual and
unscriptural, where he has an alternative where the
Word of God is faithfully preached.
But I am saying that where there's no
alternative, a Christian cannot escape responsibility for attending
a local place of worship simply because he
judges the place to be unsound.
The prayers of that Christian and the prayers
of other people could revolutionize the testimony of
that local church.
Now with this as our background for a
moment, let's ask ourselves one or two questions.
In the first place, how did the church
begin to exist?
Well of course it depends upon what you
mean by the church.
The Bible distinguishes between what we call the
church that is visible and the church that
is invisible.
The second of these, the church which is
invisible, is composed of all who belong by
faith in Jesus Christ our Lord and therefore
are members of his body.
That is the church.
Look with me a moment at Ephesians chapter
5 and verse 25.
And here Paul has something to say to
us about the church, this church, the body
of Christ.
He says in this chapter, in dealing with
the church in particular, the invisible church, husbands
love your wives even as Christ also loved
the church and gave himself for it.
He loved the church and gave himself for
it.
The church, the invisible church, that is to
say the body of our Lord, composed of
all who know him as Savior, who've received
him into their lives irrespective of their country,
their nationality, their color, all who have been
redeemed by the precious blood of Christ and
who are therefore indwelt by his Holy Spirit,
are members of this church which was purchased
by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus.
It was conceived in the mind of God
from all eternity but at the cross it
was purchased by the Lord Jesus Christ and
it was born on the day of Pentecost.
And ever since that day the church has
been indwelt by the Holy Spirit and energized
by the Holy Spirit.
The church is a very wonderful thing.
Have you ever asked yourself how many Christians,
how many people were ready to join it
when it was born?
When the Lord Jesus rose from the dead,
how many believers do you think were ready
to become members of the church?
Just look at some thrilling verses with me
a moment.
In the 28th chapter of the Gospel of
Matthew, here is the risen Lord speaking to
the disciples and this is what he says
to them.
28th chapter and verse 16.
The eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into
a mountain where Jesus had appointed them.
There were eleven of them.
The outcome of the ministry of our Lord
left behind him eleven people who were believers.
Eleven people who had come through the testing
of the cross, the rejection of Christ and
these men were now ready to become members
of the church.
If you turn over your Bible to the
Acts of the Apostles and the first chapter
and the 15th verse you find that this
number has increased somewhat.
For here in the first chapter of the
Acts and the 15th verse we read that
in those days Peter stood up in the
midst of the disciples and said the number
of names together were about a hundred and
twenty.
The eleven have now increased and there are
now one hundred and twenty people who are
ready to be members of the church and
it was this group of a hundred and
twenty who on the day of Pentecost as
they prayed and waited upon God, a sound
came from heaven and they received the Holy
Spirit and they were born anew and they
came to be indwelt by the divine nature
of the Lord Jesus and we might say
that these were the charter members of the
church, the body of Christ.
You will recall that when Paul wrote to
the church at Corinth in the 15th chapter
and the 6th verse he said that the
risen Christ was seen by upwards of five
hundred brethren.
So the eleven have become a hundred and
twenty and the hundred and twenty became five
hundred.
But in the second chapter of the Acts
of the Apostles and the 41st verse we
read they that gladly received his word were
baptized and the same day there were added
unto them about three thousand souls.
So the eleven become a hundred and twenty
and the hundred and twenty become five hundred
and the five hundred now become three thousand
five hundred and the 47th verse of the
same chapter the Lord added to the church
daily such as should be said.
And in the fourth chapter of the Acts
of the Apostles and in the fourth verse
we read many of them which heard the
word believed and the number of the men
was about five thousand.
And in the same chapter and verse 32
the multitude of them that believed were of
one heart and of one soul.
You notice the growth, the tremendous sensational phenomenal
growth of the body of Christ.
Eleven, hundred and twenty, five hundred, three thousand,
five hundred additions, five thousand men now a
multitude.
And in Acts chapter 5 and verse 14
believers were the more added to the Lord
multitudes in the plural both of men and
of women.
And now we've lost count all together and
in the sixth chapter of the Acts of
the Apostles and the seventh verse the word
of God increased and the number of the
disciples multiplied greatly.
I think it's thrilling to observe what happens
when the Spirit of God is really at
work.
Here's the body of Christ born.
Here's this group of people that was only
a little handful of eleven.
Now we've lost all count and they've been
added to them and now they've multiplied.
Oh how thrilling it is and yet how
humiliating.
You see in those days, in those days
Christians and church members were one and the
same thing.
They believed the gospel, they received Christ, they
repented of sin, they trusted of the Lord
and they became members of his body and
of the local assembly of believers.
Now that's not true today.
Every true Christian listening to my voice tonight
is a member of the invisible body of
Christ.
You've been born again into a fellowship.
But not all such are loyal worshipping members
of a visible congregation.
If I happen to speak to someone tonight
who is a Christian and who is not
a member of a local assembly, I say
without any hesitancy that you are disobeying God.
No real Christian obedient to the Lord can
function independently.
He is a member of a fellowship and
has a responsibility to a local group.
On the other hand, today many are members
of a visible church who are not true
believers and are not members of the body
of Christ.
Many have joined a local group but they
have never been born of God's Spirit, identified
with the invisible church which is his body.
Today there are a multiplication of churches but
alas few additions and no multiplications.
You know the first five centuries, if you
know a little bit of church history, in
the first five centuries the church maintained more
or less its purity and its unity.
But there came the dark ages of division
when the church suffered persecution until there came
movement of the Holy Spirit in the time
of the Reformation.
And since that day the visible church in
the world by and large, broadly speaking, has
been divided into two main groups, the Roman
Catholic and the Protestant.
The first of these groups teach that membership
of their church brings a man into relationship
with God.
The second of these groups, the Protestant group,
teaches that relationship with God brings a man
into membership of the church.
They're as different as that.
And it is on this foundation, this second
foundation, which runs right through the New Testament
that all evangelical churches stand.
Once a man is a child of God
through the new birth, once he has been
born from above he is a member of
the invisible church and with that privilege goes
the responsibility of uniting with a local church.
Joining a church or attending one never makes
a man a Christian.
But once he is a Christian he will
never neglect his responsibility to worship with other
people.
I think it's important to say these things
because some of us just don't accept that
responsibility.
But listen, this is what I want to
get at this evening.
What does joining a church involve?
What does it mean in my life to
become a member of a local fellowship?
It means several things that you will never
know without it.
In the first place it means Christian fellowship.
Christianity is social as well as personal.
Christians are personally related to the Lord and
they're personally related to each other.
The church is a fellowship.
The members of it are a congregation, not
an aggregation.
That is to say they're a flock joined
together, not added together as independent units.
The word in the New Testament for fellowship
is koinonia, communion, fellowship, a togetherness, a oneness,
members of the body of Christ, members of
one another.
Christian fellowship, there's nothing like it in all
the world.
Nothing like it in all the world.
There's no Christian fellowship that's perfect, but oh
it's so wonderful to be members one of
another.
Brethren and sisters, listen to me.
You've got to be very careful how you
treat the church, very careful how you handle
the body of Christ, that you don't grieve
the Spirit of God.
When you join the local church you become
involved in Christian fellowship.
You become also involved in worship.
There's a significant word spoken to us by
the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews
in the 10th chapter and the 24th verse
that I would like just to read to
you this evening.
It says this, let us consider one another
to provoke each other.
Now lots of people provoke each other, but
it says a bit more than that.
It says to provoke one another unto love
and to good works, not forsaking the assembling
of ourselves together as the manner of some
is, but exhorting one another and so much
the more as you see the day, that
is the coming of the Lord, approaching.
You notice what we are reading?
We are to consider one another to provoke
each other unto love and to good works,
and this is something that can be done
through the assembling together of the people of
God.
You know, when a Christian fails to observe
this responsibility, it means a cooling off in
the whole spiritual temperature of the church.
When one Christian fails to pull his weight
in a local assembly, the witness of the
whole assembly is weakened.
When one Christian sits on the sidelines and
criticizes everything that's done, he lowers the spiritual
temperature all around him.
The eye of your body can see, and
the ear can hear, and the hand can
work, only as each of them is in
the place that God has put them.
I'm reminded, of course, in a different context
of the word that Jonathan spoke to David,
in which he said, uh, thou shalt be
missed because thy seat will be empty.
I hope that isn't true of any of
us.
May I say we're very thankful for the
privilege of broadcasting our service, but may I
say to our radio audience that radio listening
is no substitute for church attendance.
The radio can make it too easy.
It's the assembling of ourselves together as a
group that brings the presence and the power
of the Spirit of God into that group,
and it's every Christian pulling his weight for
the glory of God and working together as
a fellowship and as a team for his
glory, which pleases our Lord.
When I join a church, I'm introduced, therefore,
to fellowship and to this wonderful, wonderful experience
of united corporate worship.
I'm also introduced into one of the main
ways in which we can grow as Christians.
Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 12 is a
verse that's often in our minds and thinking,
I'm sure, I'd like just to ask you
to look at it for a moment tonight,
where Paul is speaking about the church and
the gifts of God to the church, and
this is what he says in verse 11.
He gave some apostles and some prophets and
some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for
the perfecting or for the adjustment or for
the maturing of the saints or for the
joining together of the saints, the equipment of
the saints, for their work, for their work
of ministry, for the edifying of the body
of Christ.
You see, it's in the fellowship of the
Christian church that you grow.
Last night at El Masel branch church down
the road, we had a farewell meeting for
a very dear friend who has been pastor
there for nearly three years, Pastor Jim Johnson.
He's leaving to take further study in Michigan
University, and in the course of his brief
word last evening, he said that when he
came to the church and when he met
the board of elders concerning his appointment, he
said to them that he felt this task
to be one of great responsibility because he
felt so immature in his own Christian life.
And the answer of one member of that
board to him which brought him great encouragement
was, well, we'll grow together.
And you know that's the very wonderful thing
about Christian fellowship, that's exactly what we do.
We grow together.
No Christian can grow if he's an isolationist.
No Christian can grow properly except within the
fellowship of the Christian church where God has
given gifts in order that we might be
helped to grow.
It's a vital factor in the growth of
a Christian to be a member of a
local church.
That's where he grows.
How does he grow?
Well, he grows by the study of the
word with other people.
He grows by sharing the experiences of the
Christian life and testimony.
He grows by mutual and public prayer.
He grows by learning to work with people
he doesn't like.
He grows by learning to walk with God
and with others who are of different temperaments.
He grows by learning to disagree with people
agreeably without breaking fellowship.
He grows by learning to differ in opinion
from other people without involving separation from them.
He grows by learning that he can love
people who naturally he wouldn't like, and in
all these different ways within the church he
begins to grow.
Oh, there's so many, so many opportunities for
Christian growth that a man can only know
within the fellowship of the Christian church.
And then, of course, he's introduced to a
tremendous privilege of service.
What did the church do in the New
Testament?
Let's just look for a moment briefly, scan
quickly through the Acts of the Apostles to
see some of the things that the church
did.
Second chapter of Acts, and in verse 47,
Acts 2 and verse 47.
They were praising God and having favor with
all the people, and the Lord added to
the church daily, such as should be saved.
One of the things the church did was
it became the instrument through whom God reached
unconverted people.
I believe that the Bible teaches us that
God only reaches men through men.
And I believe that his great instrument in
winning others for Christ is the Christian church,
is the fellowship of believing people.
And it is through the united testimony of
a fellowship that the people who are without
God and without hope are one for the
Lord.
The church received the same.
In the eighth chapter of the Acts of
the Apostles, the eighth chapter in the first
verse, we read this.
At that time there was a great persecution
against the church which was at Jerusalem, and
they were all scattered abroad throughout the region
of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.
The church suffered persecution.
God permitted this, and in the suffering of
persecution it was scattered abroad.
It became a missionary church because it was
persecuted and driven to it.
Now the church of Jesus Christ today, and
this day in which we live, is going
through that very thing in different areas.
Perhaps no more so than in Congo, in
China, in Korea, where people who have stood
for their faith have sometimes paid the very
supreme price for it.
But it's always true that growth comes through
persecution.
And it's through times like this that the
church is scattered everywhere, and other people who
would never have heard the message of the
gospel are hearing it.
It's such a wonderful thing, and I'm sure
you know about it, to discover how so
many countries in the last ten years have
heard the message of the gospel that would
never have heard it if it hadn't been
for the persecution of the church in China,
and how many missionaries and Chinese Christians had
been driven from that country to preach the
gospel in other lands.
They were scattered everywhere.
The church therefore receives the unconverted, and the
church suffers persecution.
The church did other things in the Acts
of the Apostles.
For instance, in the 14th chapter and the
23rd verse, the church ordained elders.
And when they had ordained them elders in
every church and had prayed with fasting, they
commended them to the Lord on whom they
believed.
A church must have organization.
It must have recognized a leadership and recognized
authority.
And from the very beginning of this body
of Christ, the visible church was under the
spiritual leadership of spiritual men.
They ordained elders.
And the early church rejoiced with her missionaries
in verse 27 of the same chapter when
they were come and gathered the church together,
rehearsed all that God had done with them,
and how he had opened the door of
faith unto the Gentiles.
The church has that wonderful, unique joy of
sharing the victory of those who've gone forth
in its name to preach the word.
The church had a missionary program in the
15th chapter and the 3rd verse, being brought
on their way by the church.
Right from the very beginning, the church was
a missionary society concerned about the evangelization of
the world.
And these missionaries are brought on their way.
They're supported by the church.
And no true local fellowship can possibly compare
to that.
They claim to be in line with the
word of God unless it has a missionary
vision.
And if I may say so, far wider
than its denomination.
And the church faced problems.
22nd verse of the same chapter, Acts chapter
15, tells us, There's
much more that could be said, but let's
just pause a moment and say this to
each other.
You see, you have here in the word
of God, the Lord beginning to build this
wonderful fellowship.
And you remember that he said in his
day upon earth, that he would make his
church so strong that the gates of hell
should never prevail against it.
Matthew 16, 18.
And the force of that word does not
suggest that the gates of hell are attacking,
but rather defending, and that the church of
Jesus Christ is on the attack.
And even the gates of hell cannot stand
against it.
That's true of the invisible church.
May I say that it also should be
true of the visible church?
Why is it that it isn't true?
I'll tell you.
It is failing in the basic purpose for
which God created it.
It is failing in that which was supposed
to be in the mind of our Lord,
its greatest glory, when he prayed in his
high priestly prayer that we all might be
one, that the world might believe.
My dear friend, that is not a prayer
for uniformity, but it is a prayer for
unity.
And the church is failing today, the Protestant
church, failing desperately because it is so tragically
divided over secondary issues.
Each one of us here has a positive
contribution to make to maintain the unity of
the fellowship of the body of Christ.
We are one in spirit.
We have been born of the Spirit of
God, redeemed by the blood of Christ.
We're in one great family, and the days
are so desperate that the church cannot afford
the luxury of civil war.
And that's exactly what's happening today, taking away
the power and effectiveness of our testimony, and
this is one of the saddest reasons of
our failure.
In conclusion, may I ask you just one
or two very simple, straight questions.
First, are you a member of the church
of Christ?
I mean the invisible church.
Has there been a moment in your life
when you've come to the end of your
own effort to get right with God, and
you've received Jesus Christ into your life as
your Savior, and you've been born of his
Spirit, and you've become a member of his
body?
Has there been a moment?
If not, make that moment now.
That's how you join the church, in repentance
and faith, in Christ crucified and risen, you
become a member of his body.
If you have, are you a member of
his visible church?
If not, join a local fellowship at the
earliest possible moment, somewhere where you will receive
help in the word of God, fellowship with
other Christians, where you will be caused to
grow, and where you will have an opportunity
of service.
But may I say, if you are a
member of the invisible church, and you are
a member of the visible church, what contribution
are you making towards its testimony, towards its
oneness?
Are you a Christian who is aloof, alone,
critical, or are you a Christian who is
pulling his weight in the team, in the
fellowship, pitching in with everything you've got, with
the wholehearted consecration of your life, and abandonment
of your life to the Lord, and to
his church?
Let's ask ourselves these questions as we bow
for a word of prayer together.
Shall we pray?
O God our Father, we thank thee for
this, the body of the Lord Jesus, thy
church, and as we think of this tremendous
fellowship scattered throughout all the world, how we
thank thee that there's coming a day, and
coming soon, when our Savior shall come and
take his church to be with him.
We pray that each of us may be
ready for that day, because we're members of
his body.
And we ask thee, our Heavenly Father, that
every one of us here, and listening to
this service, may be taking a vital, practical
part in the unity, and testimony, and worship
of the local church.
Lord, grant that each of us may pull
our weight for thy glory.
Deliver us, Lord, from merely sitting on the
side.
Give to us the joy of service, and
witness, and testimony.
And grant that every one of our lives
may be usable, because they've been cleansed in
the precious blood of Christ, and indwelt by
his Holy Spirit.
We ask it for Jesus' sake.
Amen.