- Okay, Christianity for Beginners.
This is lesson number six.
The title of this lesson The Church.
As mentioned, this is the sixth lesson in our series.
Tonight, we're going to talk about the church
and specifically what does the Bible say about the church,
and what does the Bible say the church should be.
Before starting with the positive comments,
I want to begin with misconceptions
concerning the Christian church.
Before we look at what the Bible says about the church,
I want to review some of the false notions
that people have and continue to have
concerning the Christian church.
For example, the most common one, the church is a building.
This is the most common idea about the church,
that it is simply a structure.
People say I go to the church on Main Street
or where's your church located.
They see the church as a thing, a place,
a type of architecture devoted to a religious function.
Another misconception, the church is a human organization.
That misconception creates a lot of problems.
In other words, the church is a group of people
that are identified by a certain brand name,
Catholic brand church,
Protestant brand church, Baptist, Pentecostal.
Each group has its characteristics, its traditions,
even styles of architecture for its buildings
that identify and distinguish them from other church brands.
Have you ever noticed?
Methodist Church is a lot different than Catholic churches.
Misconception number three, all churches are the same.
This idea is based on the notion that one church
is as good as the other
because they're all doing the same thing,
they're all serving God.
We're all the same, it's all the same.
It's like McDonald's and Burger King.
Different names, different brands,
but basically the same type of fast food restaurant
serving basically the same food.
Now when we examine what the Bible actually says
about the church however, we see that the church really is,
we see how it really is and how inaccurate
these misconceptions really are.
The surest way to have the correct picture of the church
is to consult the Bible.
After all, the one who started the Christian church, Jesus,
and the ones who established it in the first century,
the apostles, are all recorded in the New Testament part
of the Bible.
So, if we want to know about the church,
therefore, we need to consult the source book
for information about it,
which is the New Testament portion of the Bible.
Let's deal with the misconceptions first, shall we?
Go back again.
The church is a building.
Well, although most of the public worship of the church
takes place in a building,
even one that has a special type of architecture,
the building itself, as we know, is not the church.
The church building is only a building used by the church.
Second misconception, the church is a human organization.
Although the church is organized,
it is not like a human organization.
One of the biggest mistakes that churches make
is they think and act and try to solve problems
using human organizational methods.
So, the church has structure, of course,
but it's not identified like other groups
that have certain names and compete with other groups
for position and power.
We're not in competition with anybody.
And the idea that all church are the same,
this misconception presupposes
that there are many types of churches
and that they basically all fulfill the same purpose.
The Bible however teaches
that there's really only one church
and it doesn't compete or divide over itself.
I mean, to teach the idea that the Bible says
there is only one church doesn't make you
some sort of legalist.
That's actually what the Bible teaches.
You don't see that there are different types of churches
in the New Testament.
It's always talking about the same church, the same group.
Now the simplest way to describe the church
is identify what the original word for church referred to.
We know of course that the New Testament
was originally written in the Greek language.
And the Greek word translated into the English word church
was the word ekklesia.
This word was a combination of two expressions:
to call and to call out of.
So, the word literally meant those who are called out,
those who are called out or those who are gathered.
Now among the Greeks,
the word referred to a body of citizens gathered together
to discuss affairs of the state.
It has also been translated into the English word
assembly or congregation.
Jesus first uses the word church in Matthew 16:18
when he says, "I will build my church."
When Jesus begins using this word,
he is referring to his disciples.
And what he does is he appropriates a common word
being used at that time, but he gives it a special meaning.
He will call out disciples, he will build his assembly,
he will build his congregation.
So, from the very beginning,
the church always referred to people,
not buildings, not organizations.
Of course, the church was not just any assembly
or just any gathering or congregation of people.
The church, as Jesus described it,
was the assembly of people
who were disciples of Jesus Christ.
Or you could say it in another way,
the church is the gathering of all those who are saved
by faith in Jesus Christ.
That's the church.
That's the church that the New Testament describes.
Now the key thing to understand therefore
is that the church is made up of people
who have been saved and follow Jesus as Lord.
In the Book of Acts, Luke describes this process
when he recounts how Peter was preaching about Jesus,
his death and resurrection,
and he was encouraging people to believe.
Observe how Luke describes the formation of the church
in this process.
We'll read a familiar passage, of course.
Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain
that God has made him, meaning Jesus,
both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
So, this is Peter speaking to the crowd on Pentecost Sunday.
Now when they heard this, they were pierced to the heart
and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles,
"Brethren, what shall we do?"
Peter said to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized
"in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness
"of your sins, and you will receive the gift
"of the Holy Spirit.
"For the promise is for you and your children
"and for all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God
"will call to himself."
And with many other words, he solemnly testified
and kept on exhorting them, saying,
"Be saved from this perverse generation."
So then, those who had received his word were baptized.
And that day, there were added about 3,000 souls.
So, note how people became members of the church
according to the New Testament.
First, the gospel was preached, the story of Jesus,
why he came, his death, what significance it had,
his burial, his resurrection,
and his instructions to his followers.
So, the gospel is preached.
Then those who believe express that faith
by repenting and being baptized.
They're saved just as Jesus they would be in Mark 16:16.
He said, "Those who believe and are baptized will be saved."
Peter gets up and he preaches and he says, "Save yourself
"from this perverse generation."
And what do they do?
Well, they repent and they're baptized,
exactly the instructions that Jesus gave the apostles
in Mark 16.
The apostles follow through with those instructions
in Act 2:38 when Peter begins to preach.
And then very interestingly, it says they are added.
It says, "And that day, there were added about 3,000 souls."
That means in the crowd, 3,000 of those people came forward
and were baptized.
So, they were added, meaning they were joined to something.
Well, what were they joined to?
Well, they were joined to the existing assembly,
the church, who had already been saved.
So, the church, not a building,
not even a quote organization that you can join,
not one of many, but a group of people
who have been called out of disbelief to belief
in Jesus Christ and have assembled together as one group.
Now this group exists on a worldwide basis.
The people who have believed in Jesus,
having heard the gospel in Mandarin, living in China
who were baptized over there,
who will never come over here probably,
along with the people who are in Nigeria,
who heard the gospel and they were baptized,
along with the people in New Zealand,
and Uruguay and Iceland and New York City and Oklahoma.
All of these people, different language, different culture,
different background all did the same thing
in respect to the gospel.
They believed that Jesus was the son of God
and they expressed their faith by repenting of their sins
and were baptized.
All those people all over the world
who don't know each other but who have obeyed the gospel
have become part of the church.
They were added to the church.
And then of course on a smaller scale,
Christians who gather in a local congregation
in various places for worship and service,
these people are also the church.
At its most basic level however,
the church in the Bible refers to those
who are saved by faith in Jesus Christ and who obey his word
as faithful disciples, and this is the church,
even if they meet in a elaborate building somewhere
or if they meet in somebody's living room.
They call themselves by a brand name
or they only use the simple term Christian or disciple.
If you are a faithful follower of Jesus,
you have been automatically to his church,
his assembly, his congregation.
That's not exactly what a lot of people think or teach.
A lot of people say, well, if you're not part of our brand,
then you don't count, you're not part of that,
but we're not the ones that make the criteria
for who is added to the church.
Jesus has made that criteria and has given it to us
in the New Testament.
And notice he adds, the Lord adds.
We don't add.
Now even though the basic concept of the church is simple,
how it functions and the role it plays in God's plan
is complex, and it's quite an exalted thing.
People will say, well, I'm a believer,
but I don't need the church.
Whenever anyone says that to me, oh yeah,
but I don't need the church, it's not important,
the one thing I am absolutely sure of of that person
because of what they said is that they have never read
the New Testament. [laughs]
They haven't read it carefully
when they say things like that.
In the New Testament, there are literally dozens
of metaphors used to describe the church
and how God sees its position and attributes
in the spiritual realm.
Now I've chosen 20 of these
to highlight the value and the beauty God accords
to the assembly or the congregation or the church,
all the same thing, right?
And I've put these in the order
that they appear in the Bible.
And I'm not going to explain every one,
I'm just going to list them and read them for you, okay?
So, the first five, imagery of the church in the Bible,
Kingdom of Heaven, Matthew 3:2,
Kingdom of God, Matthew 6:33,
Church of God, Acts 20:28,
Church of Christ, Romans 16:16,
God's Field, 1 Corinthians 3:9.
All of these expressions, metaphors for the church.
God's Building, 1 Corinthians 3:9,
Heavenly Jerusalem, Galatians 4:26,
Israel of God, Galatians 6:16,
Body of Christ, Ephesians 1:22 and three,
Holy Temple, Ephesians 2:21,
Dwelling Where God Lives, Ephesians 2:2,
Household of God, 1 Timothy 3:15,
Pillar and Ground of the Truth, again 1 Timothy 3:15,
Mount Zion, Hebrews 12:22,
City of the Living God, Hebrews 12:22,
Church of the Firstborn, Hebrews 12:23,
Flock of God, 1 Peter 5:2,
Golden Lamp Stand, Revelation 1:21,
the New Jerusalem, Revelation 21:2,
Bride and Wife of the Lamb, Revelation 21:9.
That's 20.
There are more, but I just picked to 20.
So, at its most basic level,
the church is the gathering of all those
who are saved by Christ.
But God also has an exalted view and function
for the church, which reflects its importance
and key role in accomplishing God's will.
Every one of these terms that describes the church
describes a facet of the church or a reason for its being
or a way that it serves or a way that God sees it
or quality of its existence.
Every expression, always about the church
but always something different,
expressing something different.
Note that these images are not meant to be brand names.
They're not meant to be brand names.
You can call your church on the sign in front
Church of the Firstborn, and you would be biblically correct
just like we say Church of Christ.
We're biblically correct, Romans 16:!6
'cause the name that we choose to identify our assembly
is found in the Bible.
If the Bible can call the assembly the Church of Christ,
well then we can do so too.
But remember, the Bible also refers to the assembly
as the Church of the Firstborn.
We could take down that sign
and tomorrow put a sign Church of the Firstborn, and yeah,
or we could put up the New Jerusalem Church.
You see what I'm saying?
But these things are not designed to be brand names.
That's the point I'm trying to make.
They're meant to demonstrate different facets
of the church in the eyes of the God.
Ah.
So, couple of metaphors there.
As I say, I could go on for hours
describing the significance of each of these names
and references, but suffice to say that they demonstrate
the unique and spiritual character and gifts
shared by each individual who makes up the church
that Jesus built.
All right.
If you were to drive down any major street in any city,
you would soon notice that,
contrary to what the Bible teaches,
just what the Bible teaches that we've looked at so far,
there are many types of churches, not just one church
as the Bible teaches.
There are several reasons for this phenomena.
I remember when I was first converted in Canada.
A couple of years after my conversion,
I traveled down to the United States,
southern United States.
We would drive and I had never been,
I've never been to the United States before. [laughs]
I was amazed 'cause see, in Canada or in Quebec
or at least when I grew up, 95% of the people were Catholic.
So, at every street corner, there was a church,
but it was a Catholic church.
It was Saint Brendan's Catholic Church,
it was Holy Mary Catholic Church,
it was Saint Luke's Catholic Church.
You know what I mean.
But they were all Catholic churches.
When I came to the United States and we were driving
with Jim, Jim Meder, the preacher who baptized me,
and we're driving down the street and I'd say whoa, whoa,
First Baptist Church, Methodist Church,
Presbyterian Church, Church of Christ, da da da.
And sometimes like here at the corner,
we have three different churches, one on each corner.
I'm waiting for them to sell the land across the way.
They complete the thing.
Let's have four churches on each corner.
And I remember
again when I first became a Christian asking Jim,
"Why are there so many different type of churches?
"I mean, don't they read the Bible?"
That was a hard question.
The answer, or at least I'm trying to answer that question,
why, why are there so many different churches.
Well, first of all,
many of them are based on unbiblical foundations.
The Bible determines what the church is
and how it should function and how it needs to be organized.
Since Jesus and the apostles left all the information
about the church in the Bible, and nowhere else by the way,
the Bible is the only legitimate blueprint or guidebook
to establish and grow the church.
Lot of churches are formed unfortunately with people
not even looking at the Bible.
They just see it as, well, a religious organization.
We need this, we need that.
Now there are different types of churches
because people insist on adding human ideas and traditions
and teachings in the place of the Bible
or in addition to the Bible.
Every time you do this,
you create a variation of the original.
And with many changes and additions over the centuries,
there have also been a multiplication
of the types of churches that come into being.
A way that I can try to explain this.
Thank you.
I think everybody sees what I'm showing here.
This is a pattern.
If you're a seamstress, if you sew, you know what this is.
You buy these at the store, you buy a pattern
because, you know, you're shopping,
and you see this here is a little dress,
a little summer dress, and you say oh that's cute,
I think I'm going to make this dress, this will be fun.
And of course inside, you have all the instructions,
and the pattern, if you wish, to make this dress.
Now you can make this dress with different materials,
so on and so forth, with different color if you want.
But if you follow the pattern,
it will always look like this
'cause you're following the pattern.
But one day, you said, you know, it's going to be the fall,
and I like the style of this dress,
but oof, my shoulders are not covered,
just a little thing like this,
I think I like the way it cuts and everything,
but I'm going to add some shoulders,
I'm going to add sleeves to this dress,
I'm going to change the pattern.
Do you now have a dress according to this pattern?
Well, no.
Why?
Well, you added something.
You changed the original pattern.
I say this here because in the same way, the Bible
is the pattern for building or organizing or founding
the New Testament church.
The Bible is the pattern for that.
If you follow its pattern, you will produce the church
of the Bible over and over and over again
in every generation and in every place.
Oh the color might be different,
meaning the culture might be different.
It might be a French-speaking biblical church,
or it may be a biblical church made up mostly of Africans
because you started it in Africa,
but it'll be the very same church
because you have built it and organized it
according to the pattern for the church
that is found in the New Testament.
However, if you deviate, you will create variations.
You will create something that is not the church
in the New Testament.
This is how new and different churches come into being.
They have a church that's designed along the pattern
that we find in the New Testament,
and then along comes someone says, you know,
well, I think we shouldn't this anymore,
is baptism really necessary, people baptize,
that's an ancient rite, it's cold,
we live in a cold country, it's so inconvenient,
the ladies who have long hair getting baptized in January,
oh no, no, no, why don't we just have baptism once a year,
we'll do it once a year, it's not that important.
Well, all of a sudden, you have changed something
that is part of the pattern of the New Testament.
So, now you have a church that doesn't baptize people
or you have a church that teaches
that baptism is not really important.
Someone says, well, you know, we take the bread,
and the Bible teaches that the church in the New Testament
on the Lord's day takes a bread and wine,
the unleavened bread
and the fruit of the vine as communion.
And someone says, you know what,
that grape juice is getting awfully expensive. [laughs]
Some numbers cruncher, a part of the budget committee
decides we'd save a ton of money,
if you know what, let's just have the preacher up there
or the priest, let's just let him take the wine symbolically
for everybody and they can have the bread,
but he'll do the bread and the wine.
Well, now all of a sudden,
you don't have the pattern anymore,
you're not building the church according to the pattern.
You've deviated, you've added something.
I mentioned two things, baptism and communion,
because they're so common.
They're common to pretty much all groups.
But if you look around,
not everybody does it in the same way.
So, why so many types of churches?
Because different groups begin to change
the original pattern, and they end up with something
that kind of looks like the church
but not the church that is described in the New Testament.
Another reason so many churches,
people don't agree on the meaning of the Bible.
It's not something that Christians like to admit,
but there is often disagreement about the meaning
and the application of certain texts in the Bible.
Unfortunately when two groups can't agree
on how to interpret or put into a practice
a certain teaching or passage of Scripture,
what do they do?
They form two different groups
in order to promote their point of view.
Now you have division,
you have two different types of churches.
These separate groups often grow into separate churches
with different identities, different traditions
that have little to do with each other.
This is why you have hundreds of different types of groups
all claiming to be the church
but having different practices and points of view
on a variety of issues.
I believe that Jesus knew enough about human nature
to know that this type of thing would eventually happen
in the church that he was creating during his time on earth.
This is why at the very beginning of the formation
of the church, as he was calling out
the very first disciples,
he prayed for unity among his followers.
He prayed as we see on the slide, John 17.
Holy Father, keep them in your name,
the name which you have given me,
that they may be one as we are.
Jesus prayed for unity.
Imagine long before the church was actually formed,
he was praying for unity.
Why?
Because he knew unity would be difficult to maintain.
According to the Bible, the church is united
in its love, in its beliefs, its organization,
its practice, its worship, and its service.
Paul explains it this way to the Ephesians church.
He says, "Being diligent to preserve the unity
"of the spirit in the bond of peace."
He says, "Be diligent to preserve the unity of the spirit."
Why does he say, "Be diligent to do this"?
Because it's going to be a very difficult task,
that's why. [laughs]
Keep at it 'cause it's not going to be easy.
"There is," he says, "One body, one spirit
"just as you were also called with one hope of your calling,
"one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God,
"and one father of all who is over all and through all."
The pressure of division was already being felt
in the first century church,
but Paul holds forth the ideal of the church
given to him by God in Christ.
So, there is only one church,
and it is perfectly united and created
according to God's plan and purpose.
The pattern for that true church is in the New Testament.
And God calls on every Christian in every generation
to follow his pattern in the task of establishing
and building his church.
I want to make one point here.
When I say the pattern for the New Testament church,
I'm not saying the church at Corinth that we read about
that it was the pattern for the New Testament church.
I'm not saying that even though as much as Paul loved
the church at Philippi for example,
I'm not saying that the Philippian church was the pattern
that we are to follow to build the New Testament church
in our generation.
What I'm saying is that the ideal New Testament church
is described in various teachings, in various instructions
that we have in the New Testament.
And these church, Corinth and Ephesus and Philippi
are churches like us today who are trying diligently
to follow that pattern.
Most of the epistles are instructions to these people
to help them pursue that goal, to be the church
that was being described, the ideal church
that was being presented to them in the teachings
of Paul and Peter and Hebrews and all the other things
'cause that's one thing people say.
If you're talking about the New Testament churches
is in the New Testament,
and I say, well, the church at Corinth,
they had a lot of problems,
how are they the New Testament church.
Well, they are the New Testament church
because their goal was the same as our goal.
They were trying to perfect,
they were trying to achieve,
they were trying to build the church
that they understood that the apostles were teaching about.
They themselves knew they fell short of that,
but they were following that ideal.
I always tell people when they say,
oh you think you're the only ones,
I said no, no, no, no, no.
I said, why are you still with the Church of Christ,
a lot of Churches of Christ that I know have problems
or have people who are sinners in them.
I said, I stay with the Church of Christ theoretically
because we're pursuing a correct goal.
We've got the right goal.
I'm not ashamed, and it's not pride or boasting to say
we have the right goal.
What is the right goal?
We're pursuing, [laughs]
we're trying to be the church that the Bible describes.
We understand we haven't been there yet,
we haven't arrived.
There are a lot of failings that are easy to recognize,
but we do have the right idea, we do have the right goal.
We are pursuing a biblical objective in a biblical way
even though we haven't arrived perfectly at our goal yet.
So, the pattern for that true church
is in the New Testament.
And God calls on every Christian in every generation
to follow his pattern in the task of establishing
and building his church.
If there was a time machine that brought me into the future
and dropped me off in the future
and God said okay, go to work, what would I do?
Well, I take the Bible.
We try to establish a New Testament church in the year 2325
using the tools and the resources that were available
in the year 2325.
But my objective would be the same as 2019,
the same as in the year 64.
Always the same objective,
trying to build the New Testament church
using the New Testament pattern.
Okay.
One of the things I am asked most often as a minister
is what kind of church is the Church of Christ.
I serve a congregation of course here.
And so, people are invariably curious and anxious
to figure out what type or what denomination
I and my church fit.
Of course, this is normal considering what I've explained
about churches in this lesson.
Well, I tell people that the Church of Christ
is a New Testament church.
This means that our goal is to follow the pattern
for what the church is contained in the New Testament
as carefully as we can so that we can resemble that church.
This is important because Jesus said,
"I will build my church," Matthew 16:18.
And in the rest of the New Testament,
the spirit describes what the church did,
how it was organized, how it functions, so on and so forth.
Well, we want to be that church.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Of course, we're not alone in this.
There are 10s of thousands of other churches
around the world striving for the same thing,
and we're just one of them.
I like to say, we're trying to restore
New Testament Christianity.
Are you the only ones doing that?
No, there are many trying to restore
New Testament Christianity.
It's not like a secret idea.
Lot of people have that idea.
I do say however is that we are one
of the most successful groups to do that
because our churches are everywhere in the world.
You go to the church in the Philippines one day,
you're on vacation in the Philippines,
you're in the Philippines on business,
and you look for a Church of Christ somewhere,
and you find one, and you walk into that church,
and you go hey, they're taking the communion,
they're preaching the Bible, they welcome strangers.
Now here's the disclaimer, have we achieved our goal
in becoming the perfect model yet?
Of course no.
And why?
Well, we don't understand everything in the Scripture yet,
and we don't always agree with our brothers and sisters
on everything, and we're sinners and imperfect people
who don't always do the things that we do understand.
But here's the motivation and encouragement
to keep on going, this is the right target to shoot for
as far as church is concerned,
using only God's word to produce God's church.
This is what a New Testament church does
and how it is different than other churches.
People say, how are you different
from the church across the street,
our friends at the Baptist, First Baptist Church.
How are we different than them?
This class that I'm giving tonight, we're talking about,
they don't have this class.
This class doesn't get taught over there.
And I'm not criticizing them,
I'm just telling you, this is not a theological objective
of our friends across the street
or our friends across the street there.
This is not a theological objective of that group.
They do not articulate the idea that one of their main goals
is to the establish the church
according to the New Testament.
That's not something that's part
of their religious conversation.
So, when you visit a Church of Christ,
realize that you are in an assembly
that tries to support all of its teachings and practices
with the teachings and practices of the church
found in the New Testament.
No additions, no changes.
We believe that this is the only way
to accomplish the three main goals of the church
given to it by Jesus.
Goal number one, to reach and save the lost, Matthew 28.
Goal number two, to build his church, Matthew 16:18.
But here is the key, to build his church his way, [laughs]
not to build the church my way,
to build the church his way.
And he has provided us instructions
for how he wants that done.
And thirdly, to create and maintain unity in the church.
So, if you're not in the church,
of course here I pretty much know anybody,
but people watching online, if you're not in the church,
you don't join the church.
The Lord adds you to the church
when you respond to the gospel
through repentance and baptism.
Well, you know, just one lesson on the church
is not a whole lot.
But I wanted to kind of underscore the idea
of who we are in the Church of Christ.
We are New Testament churches trying to establish
the New Testament church according to the teachings
of the New Testament.
Easy to say, easy to say not always easy to do.
But at least that's our target.
All right.
Next lesson which would be the last in this series,
the Christianity for beginners,
will be the Christian lifestyle.
Okay.
That's the lesson for tonight.
Thank you for your attention.