Devoted to the Church

Introduction

New beginnings are exciting moments, aren’t they? Whether it’s getting married, what lies before me, what excitement lays ahead. Maybe it’s a new job, a new career, starting out for the first time. What will this bring? What will life be like here?

I can still vividly remember being a teenager, when I left intermediate to go to high school. I had been in the same school all the way through primary and intermediate. And then I went to Catholic high school in Hamilton.

And I can still vividly remember the day I finished. So my last day, me and my friends, we thought we were really cool, so we put our money together and we hired a limo to pick us up from school on the last day. And so, there we are. Everyone’s getting picked up by their parents in their mum vans. You know mum vans, right? And then this limo drives in the school carpark, and all the kids are like, “Whoa, there’s a limo here.” And then me and 3 of my friends just hop in this limo, and this limo driver just drives us all around Hamilton. And we’re drinking grape juice in these fancy champagne glasses, feeling like a million dollars. And we’re talking about what’s next? You know, we’re finished intermediate, we’re getting bigger, we’re going to high school. It was all exciting.

And there’s a sense in which that’s where we are, right? The first time we’re meeting together. We don’t know what next week will bring. Will we grow? Will we not? Will we carry on? What will happen? How long will we be in this school? Who might be added to our number? Who will be our first convert? All of these things in our mind, and I think it’s really helpful for us in this moment, as I said, just to pause and consider the New Testament church. Consider the church in its inception, when Christ established it.

Because if we’re going to build a church after Christ’s pattern, it’s really important for us to consider what that pattern is, right?

You see, on the Day of Pentecost, something very significant took place. I know we often just think, “Oh, Pentecost. That’s the day the Holy Spirit came,” and that’s true, but it wasn’t the only thing that happened on the Day of Pentecost.

You see, before Pentecost, what took place? The death and resurrection of the Lord, Jesus Christ, right? Redemption was accomplished, and we go, “Hallelujah. Jesus is raised from the dead.” And then he appeared to his disciples for some 40 days, teaching them about the Kingdom of God. And then, where did Jesus go? He didn’t vanish, right? I mean, he met with his disciples and he ascended and he said, “I’m going back to your Father and my Father.”

And what’s interesting is if you go to the Book of Daniel, we get given a prophetic vision of what it looks like when that happens. Christ enters into the glory of heaven and he comes in, one who looks like the Son of Man, and he sits at the right hand of God. And there, he is enthroned as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

It’s not that he wasn’t the king before. Jesus has always been the king, and he always will be, but now sits a man, the God-man as king, one whom we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands, and love and praise and adore, one in whom our salvation is found. And now, he sits there in heaven.

And then, that king gives gifts to his people, and it’s that king who pours out his Holy Spirit. But he doesn’t just pour out the Holy Spirit upon people. It’s not so much that he says, “Oh, here’s 12 disciples. Here’s 50 people. I’ll zap them with the Holy Spirit.” No. He pours out his Spirit upon the church. It is the Church of Christ that receives the gift of the Spirit.

And on the Day of Pentecost, Jesus simultaneously institutes the New Testament church and gives that church the Spirit of God.

And so the question becomes, well, what is this church? What is the church that Jesus establishes?

It’s very easy for us to sort of look at what we know and just assume that that’s the church, right? Because that’s what we’ve experienced. I grew up in the Reformed Church, and I was there ’til my mid-20s and that was what I thought church was. And other people went to high Anglican churches with incense and candles, and they went, “That’s what church is.” Well, what is the church that Jesus established?

You see, master builders, they follow a pattern, don’t they? Or carpenters? Any creator. They don’t just walk out, go to a house or a site, and go, “Hey, I know. I’m gonna get some wood and start nailing it together,” and they just start smacking pieces of wood together. “Oh, hopefully, a house turns up.” No. The establishment of the church is according to a pattern.

In the Book of Hebrews, we’re told that all of the earthly things we see are according to the heavenly pattern. So the temple, the sacrifices, all of these things were built according to the heavenly pattern given, and the same is true for the church. So what is this pattern that Hebrews 8 and 9 speaks of?

Well, the scriptures give us a bunch of different analogies to help us understand what the church is. Let’s have a look at a few of them.

The Church as a Body

Turn to 1 Corinthians 12 with me. Picking up at verse 12, it says, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit, we were all baptized into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and all were made to drink of one spirit.”

And then it goes on to speak about the different parts. There’s the foot which says, “Well, I’m not a hand. I’m not important,” and there’s the eye that says, “I’m amazing. I don’t need anybody else.” And Paul says, “Nonsense, your body needs every part of you, and without any part of it, the body can’t function.”

You don’t appreciate this until you lose a limb. I haven’t lost a limb, but my dad’s best friend lost his leg. Went out on a bike ride one day, truck came around the corner, door opened on the side, took him out, and he lost his leg. He lost a lot of weight, but life was awkward. All of a sudden, you have to learn how to function. And within around about 2 years, his other leg started to completely give out because he was bearing all of his weight on his one good leg. Your body can’t function unless it has all of its parts functioning together in harmony.

And this analogy sets for us a little bit of what the church is like. The church is a little bit like an organization that has lots of different parts.

The Church as a Temple

But then, we get another analogy in Ephesians 2. Paul is addressing the reconciliation between Jews and Greeks and the way that God has taken both Jew and Greek and made them one nation, one people together, removing the dividing wall in His flesh. And then in verse 18, he says this, “For through Him, being Jesus, we both have access in one spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In Him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”

Now, I wonder if you picked up the temple language there. Remember the Old Testament? What was the temple? It was the dwelling place of the Lord, right? It was the place where the Lord dwelt among His people. And here, Paul is telling us that the church is a little bit like a temple. It’s a place where people go to do what? To worship.

You see, the church, yes, it’s an organization which has parts that move and function together, but it’s also a worshiping community. It’s a place that exists to give praise and honor to the living God.

The Church as a Bride

But then we’re given another analogy in Ephesians 5. Paul, instructing wives and husbands in verse 22 onward, says, “Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the Church, His body, and is Himself its savior. Now, as the Church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, so that He might present the church to Himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.”

I wonder if you say, what is the church? She’s a bride, right? And then in Revelation 19, what’s the picture? The great marriage feast of the lamb, where the husband, Christ, the lamb comes and gets his bride and they dwell together in blissful adoration and love together.

You see, because the church is not just like a building temple, it’s not just like a body organization, but it’s also something that is devoted, right? It is filled with devotion for her husband. She is the glory of her husband, and she lives for his existence.

We could go on. There’s actually a lot more smaller ones, like for example, we’re a flock. John 10, “I am the good shepherd,” and so we follow him. We’re followers.

The Church Is a Family

But here’s the interesting thing. If I was to ask you which one of these is the church, I wonder what you’d say. Whether you’d say the church is a body, organization, or it is a temple, or it is a flock, or it is a bride. You see, all of these things are analogies and metaphors, painted pictures that help us understand parts of the church, or the way the church functions, but they’re not what the church is.

You see, the church is the sum of the whole, so what is the church? Well, what’s really interesting is that the Bible doesn’t actually explicitly state it, but it is implicitly everywhere in the text.

So for example, we all have one Father, right? There’s not lots of Fathers. There’s just one Father of the church. There is one elder brother for every part of the church around the world. No matter where you travel in the world, you go into a church and you are greeted by who? Brothers and sisters.

And this strikes you when you go into a foreign place where they don’t speak English. It struck us when we went to Japan, and you walk into a Japanese church and there’s no English, and they embrace you, and they feed you, and they sing with you, and you sense something. You sense that you’re part, that you belong. You sense that this is family, right?

This is why the Apostle John in his epistle will write and say, “You fathers, do this. You children, do this.” And when Paul writes to Timothy, who’s younger than him, he calls him his what? Son. And he says to his son, “Treat the older men like fathers, and the older women like mothers, and the young women like sisters.”

Now, what’s interesting is that in Roman times, this is very unusual. In fact, it was illegal for you to refer to someone as your actual brother unless they were biologically related to you for the simple fact of inheritances. And yet the Christian Church is calling one another brothers and sisters from its inception. Why? Because the church is a family.

This gathering here, we’re not a gathering of different families from different places, though we’re made up of families. We are one family. We are brothers and sisters, and we delight to gather together. This is why we care for one another. This is why we love one another. This is why it brings us such us such great joy to serve and to care and to provide for each other.

You see all those other things, all those metaphors are things that the family does, right? As a family, we need some level of organization that keeps us together. We’ve got different parts. As a family, we worship like a temple. As a family, we follow Christ together like sheep. As a family, we adore our husband together, like a bride.

And it is this family reality, turning back to Acts, that explains the outrageous behavior of the early church. I mean, can you imagine if all of a sudden one of us stood up this morning and said, “I’ve decided I’m selling my house and my car, and I’m giving it all to this family.” I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else said, “I don’t think you should do that. You gotta have somewhere to live, right? You need to take care of yourself.”

But here we find this early church, it’s selling all its stuff, it’s giving it away, anyone that has need. Everyone’s just sharing everything. It’s families that do that, right? I mean, the reality is, if one of my kids needed something, I would sell everything I have to give it to them. If my brother rung me up and said, “Logan, I need help.” I would empty my wallet. Why? Because he’s my brother.

And that’s why this church so willingly gives of itself, because it doesn’t see one another as just people at a rugby club, or people at work that you share lunch with, but a family. And it’s been so encouraging to see you all doing this, caring for one another, opening up your homes to one another, contacting one another, “Hey, how are you doing? I’m here for you. I’m praying for you.” I would get phone calls from some of you saying, “Hey, have you heard something happened to so-and-so?” Why? Because you’re a family, and we love one another, and so it brings us such joy to come together.

It explains also why in verse 38, we’re told that the children are included because in families, throughout all of the Scriptures, what happens? All of the family is together. They worship together. They delight together. They experience the goodness of God together. God serves His people together.

Why Did Jesus Establish the Church?

There are so many implications that come from this, right? How we are to give ourselves and support one another, and we’ll get there. Don’t rush there yet, because there’s another question we have to ask first. We just asked the question, what is the church? It’s a family that functions in different ways. But why the church? Why did Jesus establish the church? He didn’t have to, right? He could’ve done something different. But Christ established a church. I mean, why didn’t he establish a Roman army? I mean, that would be a lot more helpful, right? There’s not much persecution if you’ve got a Roman army with you. He established a church, a weak church. Why?

Well, I want to suggest 5 reasons. There’s many more; let me just suggest 5 reasons for why Christ would establish the church.

1. It was always His plan. You see, going right back to the very beginning, God’s purpose was to have one people of His choosing, gathered together as one family. And so what did He do? He gave a man. He didn’t give 7 men and 7 wives as different families. He gave one pair, so that all people would descend from this one pair under God. Because His plan was to have one people of His choosing. But when that went wrong, fast-forward, what happens? We get to Abraham, and the people are spread abroad everywhere, and sin is abounding everywhere, and God chooses what? One man. One man of His choosing from which to establish His people again. But that people doesn’t follow Him steadfastly, Israel is faithless, and Israel rejects her God, and rejects her King. But in the plan of God, it’s to bring about the eldest son, to bring about Christ and our redemption. And then what happens? Matthew 16. “I will build my church. I will build my family. I will do it,” Jesus says. And he establishes the church, and he plants the church, and then Acts 2, the church begins. Now, the wonderful thing about this is that it reminds us that what we’re engaging in is not some new thing, some new thing today, or some new thing post-Jesus. But it’s the plan of God from beginning to end. And when we get out the other end, into eternity, the Church of Christ will still be the plan for the world. We will gather and worship. We will be a family. But there’ll be no more sin. We will be a perfected church. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
2. To propagate the gospel. You know what I mean to propagate, right? If you propagate plants, you make more of them. But if you want to have something expand and grow, it needs the right environment, right? And so God chose, in His wisdom, to use the Church as the primary means for the propagation of the gospel around the world, which means the Church is the hope for the nations. This is why the Apostle Peter, at the inception of the Church, preaches the Word of God and the gospel. And what happens? 3,000 souls are gathered in, in a day, and day-by-day, souls are being saved. The church is not, “Well, I’m just gonna bunker down with these 3,000 people. You know, we can play it safe.” No. They’re worshiping in the temple and day-by-day, sinners are being brought in by the gospel. This place is a gospel propagation facility, where sinners come to meet a savior. The greatest thing you can do for your friends and family and sinners in your workplaces is to get them to go to church. I know it’s old-fashioned. How many times people have said to me, “No, don’t invite people to church. That doesn’t work. People don’t wanna go to church. We need cultural engagement, and we need friendship evangelism.” Now, please, evangelize your friends. But what people need is the preaching of the gospel in the worship of God’s people. It’s like 1 Corinthians says, “If everyone prophesies and God is present among you, sinners will come in and they’ll go, ‘Wow, God is in this place!’”. You see, when Christ is proclaimed, peculiarly so, in the preaching of the gospel from a pulpit, sinners are brought face-to-face with God. That is God’s plan for the salvation of sinners.
3. To maintain the truth of God in the face of the devil. Remember the words of Jesus, I think it’s in John 10, where He says, “The devil was a liar from the beginning.” He’s always been a liar. He’s a deceiver. He deceived Adam and Eve, and he’s been deceiving people ever since. And throughout the ages, have we not seen the truth of God maligned, twisted, battered, torn? And it still happens today, doesn’t it? How many so-called churches of God completely neglect the truth of Christ? And yet, Paul can write to Timothy and say that the church is the buttress of the truth. The church is to be the place where you go to know the truth of God. You see, you go out there, you go on YouTube, you go on Twitter, you go on all the different things, you’re gonna find no truth. You’re gonna find lies, you’re gonna find deception. But the one place you ought to go to find the truth is the Church of Jesus Christ. Why? Because the Church of Jesus Christ has a book from God, the truth of God’s Word. And so we maintain and we fight for the truth at all costs. Whenever someone undermines the truth, whenever someone seeks to distort the truth, we declare what is true. And if anyone stands up here and says anything that’s not the truth, we have nothing to do with them. Because as Jesus says, “The truth will set you free.” A lie will only bind.
4. For the building up of the saints and the nurturing of the people of God. Matthew 28, you know those famous words, “Go therefore into all the nations,” and do what? Make disciples. How do you make a disciple? “You train them,” Jesus says. The church is like an incubator for saints. Life’s hard. The world’s dark. It’s filled with people that hate Christians. And so you spend 6 days in the world and you get beaten up. Not physically, I hope. But you never know, maybe one day. But then you come to church, and what happens? You get refueled. You get built back up again. You get fed again. And you gather with other people throughout the week, maybe prayer meeting Wednesday night, or someone invites you for a meal. You fellowship with other believers, and what happens? Your faith gets strengthened. You come in weak and you see a strong believer, and they encourage you, and you feel spurred on to do it again. Or you fail and you sin grievously, and you come to church and you find the means of grace and the forgiveness of God, and you find renewal, and you’re strengthened and restored to go out and do it all again.
5. For the glory of her husband. Do you remember those seemingly strange words some of you maybe struggle with, ladies? In 1 Corinthians 11 when it says that the wife is the glory of her husband. There’s some people really struggle with that concept that they would just be the glory of their husband. Why don’t they get their own glory? Why do I have to be someone else’s glory? I often wonder if that was primarily written for the sake of the bride. It’s true for human relationship too. But the Church of Jesus Christ is the glory of her husband. Now, this is the way it works. It works the same in your human marriage, by the way. But this is the way it works. People ought to see the church and say, “Isn’t Christ amazing?” God forbid that they come to this church and say, “Isn’t Logan amazing?” Or, “Isn’t this church amazing?” But, “Isn’t Christ amazing? What kind of husband must he be who married such an amazing woman as this?” That’s how it works in a human relationship. Wives, when someone meets you, this is how you’re the glory of your husband. You are so amazing that people say, “Whoever managed to win this woman must be the most profound man on the face of the planet.” And that’s what the church does for Christ. It’s the same thing that we were meant to do as image bearers, right? That we would display God’s image and His glory so that people would look at us and say, “Who created this? Look at the eyes, look at the fingers, look at the thumbs, look at how this whole body works, look at the way they create, look at the way they think, look at how masterful they are. They make instruments and they play them and they can sing. No other animal can do any of this.” Whoever made these humans must be incredible. And so may this church be, that teachers in this place might come here and say, “Oh, I don’t know who their God is, but whoever He is, He must be amazing. Look at them. Look at this family. Look at the way they function. Look at the way they love. Look at the way they care.”

How Should We Respond?

God has one plan, brothers and sisters, for the Church and for this world. It’s the family of God. There’s no plan B. The Church is the hope of the nations. The solution to the darkness of our society is the planting of churches. Oh, doesn’t it break your heart when you go into towns and there’s just not a church anywhere? I noticed this down in Southland, driving around the place. You drive through towns, they’re not big towns, but they’re towns with souls and there is no church. Not even just a bad church, there’s just no church. And how many centers don’t have faithful gospel preaching in them?

So Christ establishes the family of God and He does it for these reasons. How should we respond? As a people, as individuals, what does this mean for us? You see, Christ has done this glorious plan, this glorious purpose. What should we do?

Firstly, let me give you 5 exhortations today.

1. Give your all for the Church of Jesus Christ. Not just this one, but the Church of Jesus Christ. Whether here, whether overseas, give everything you have for the Church. There’s been a temptation in the past within churches and within Christianity for people to push the church down, because it’s kind of dysfunctional. And because (you’ve probably heard this before) I had a bad experience in a church once. I was mistreated in a church. My pastor turned out to be an absolute nut job. You know, a whole host of different reasons. Or actually, the parachurch organizations, they just do a way better job. They’re functional. Let’s just go there. Let’s just use them. Don’t buy it. Give everything you have for the Church of Christ. Like the early church did, right? Giving of its time, giving of its money, giving of its energy, giving of its everything for the sake of this family. Don’t hold anything back. Because as Jesus says, “Anyone who gives father or mother, anyone who loses his house or inheritance will receive 100-fold back in eternity to come.” And so you can just give, right? And you can just pour out, because the day is coming when the Lord will return all with more.
2. Labor in prayer for the family of God. We are in a spiritual battle, are we not? Remember those words in Ephesians 6? “We labor not against flesh and blood.” It’s hard to remember this, because we see flesh and blood. We feel the attacks of flesh and blood. But we labor not against flesh and blood. We labor against principalities. The Devil! The prince of the power of the air and all of his evil spirits are aligned against the Church of Christ. And they would delight with nothing more than to see her torn down, to see the bride of Christ maligned, to see the bride of Christ driven into the dirt. So pray for her. Pray for her leaders. Pray for her workers. Pray for one another. Pray for the gathering of God’s people here and elsewhere.
3. Labor to build Christ’s church and not your own. It’s the husband and the head of a house that sets the way a family runs, right? And the same is true in the Church. As we all know, this is not my church. This is not even our church. This is Christ’s church. And so, we always have to guard our hearts from coming in, especially in new beginnings, and saying to ourselves, “Well, I really want X. I really love X. I really need X. And unless I get X…” Brothers and sisters, we are here to build the Church of Jesus Christ, in the image of Jesus Christ, according to the pattern of Jesus Christ. And so all things are subservient to His will. And all things are done for His good pleasure.
4. Labor for the purity of the Church. The Church is to be the reflection of the glory of Christ. There is no spot or wrinkle in Jesus Christ. There is no dirt. Jesus is in the business of washing His church, right? Ephesians 5; “That He might present her blameless, spotless, and perfect.” So let us be part of it. Let us labor for purity in ourselves and in the Church. That means discipline. Hebrews says, “No father disciplines his children because he hates him, but because he loves him.” And so in the Church, we discipline people. And we exhort one another, and we call out sin, and we encourage one another, and we lift one another up in our prayer, and we forgive one another, and we bear up with one another because we want to be pure for our husband. So let me encourage you on this point. Lay down your burdens at Christ’s feet. A lot of stuff’s happened in the last year, I know. And I’m sure many of us have different feelings and thoughts within us, maybe thoughts of bitterness, maybe frustration, maybe anger. Forgive. You cannot be pure in heart without a forgiving heart. Just let it go. Don’t hold onto any baggage. Don’t allow someone else to control you and this church because you just can’t bring yourself to forgive. Freely, we have received and so freely we give. And so regardless of what’s happened to you this week, this month, this year, in your lifetime. Maybe it’s something from a long time ago, something buried deep down. Just forgive. Though you may never have opportunity this side of glory to sit down and address your pain, you can forgive in your heart. You can let it go and move on with your life and be free. Don’t take the foolish path of power. You see, unforgiveness is a pathway of power whereby you seek to hold another person to ransom. Imagine if God did that to us. We’d be sunk, as the hymn says, “’Neath the debt I could never afford.” Brother and sister, let it go. Forgive and be pure before your God, who makes you pure.
5. Labor to see more churches planted. Oh, how this world needs more plants, how we need churches in Whangarei and in Northland and in China and in North Korea. Everywhere where there are souls, we need churches. So pray and labor and give for the establishment and the building up of the Kingdom of God, because it is the hope for the nations. Pray for those we know—the Fielding Church, pray for American Samoa, pray for all of the churches around New Zealand that we might see them built up and the Gospel go forth.

Conclusion

There’s much more we could say and there’s much we will unpack in weeks to come as we walk through those 4 things of Acts 2:42—the Word, fellowship, the Lord’s Supper, baptism, prayer—as we unpack those things.

But for now, let us just remember, brothers and sisters, that all around the world, the rich, the powerful, the famous, the movers and shakers of the world meet day in and day out, and they plot and they scheme and they plan, and this little humble gathering is more important than all of them.

This church gathering is more significant than the meeting of the heads of state. It’s more important than when politicians meet. It’s more important than a meeting with the King or the Queen. Because when the Church of Christ meets, she meets with the King of Glory. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord God Almighty. He is the King of Glory, the Thrice Holy One. We stand in the presence of God this morning. What has the UN got on that?

And you know what? The Lord delights to use the weak and the foolish and the poor things of this world to shame the strong, and to shame the rich, and to shame the powerful. And so we can have confidence, we can have boldness, we can have courage, because the same God who spoke to Zechariah speaks to us today and says to us, “Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit says the Lord of Hosts, for who has despised the day of small beginnings, he shall rejoice.”

And may God do so here for us. Amen.

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