Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Statement Of Faith

The Church Part 1

INTRO: Oxymoron. An oxymoron is two words that just don't go together..they seem to have opposite meanings.  Let me give you a few examples... pretty ugly, Great Depression, terribly nice, student teacher, military intelligence, freezer burn, jumbo shrimp, and in the aftermath of our glorious presidential election: political promise.

 Oxymoron, from the Greek oxys = sharp, and moros = dull / foolish.

 Another term highly used today is Church Marketing. Here the terms, concepts and vision of these two words seem to be headed in very different directions.

 Related to what seems to me to be the oxymoron of Church Marketing are the terms used to describe the process of selling the Church to the market of the unchurched...terms like: Seeker Sensitive, The Church Growth Movement, Growing a healthy church, and Natural Church Development.

 What it seems to come down to is Church Building. Now even this term is ambiguous. Because inherent in the use of the terminology is the idea that bigger is better. Again a few examples of what some would say is the result of positive, aggressive church building.
                                                                                (Show Overheads)

 When it comes down to it, it seems that many of the mega church pastors believe that Church Growth is a matter of marketing strategies and field of dreams mentality...if you build it they will come.

Trans:   But is that what Church Growth means? And do they really know what it is they think they are building?

Our Statement of Faith says
 'The universal' church of Jesus Christ is a living, spiritual body of which Christ is the head and of which all regenerated persons are members.'

 What is the church, how is it built and how does it grow? That is what we will look at over the next few weeks.

I. The Universal Church (Matt. 16:16-18)

DEF: According to the Westminster Confession of Faith 'the Universal Church , which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.'

 What this means is that the Universal Church is not a physical building or any one group of Believers living at any one time.
 It is all believers who have or will ever live, that have been called by the divine grace of God, into fellowship with Christ through the Gospel and are sanctified or made holy by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit.

 All these individuals together make up the universal church. They are all united, made one by the bond of the Holy Spirit.

1 Cor. 12:13: 'By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether it be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been made to drink into one Spirit'.

 Although there are over 2200 different Christian denominations throughout the world, all those who claim salvation by faith alone in Jesus Christ alone are members of the Universal Church.

Trans: OK, definition aside, what is the nature of this Universal church according to the Word of God.

    A. What is the nature of the Universal Church?
Read: Matt. 16:16-18

 Here we have one of the great passages of Scripture of which Catholics and Protestants have been fighting over for centuries. It is not my intent to enter into the fray of the arguments...but to just examine, w/o denominational barriers, what the text has to say about the universal church.

1. Who do people say the Son of Man is?
 The disciples give a few answers. All of which are flattering and honorable. They show the respect the people had for Jesus.
 But note that even though their thought of Jesus were good...they were not right.
 It is not our opinion of who Jesus is that counts for all eternity...it is the  truth of who He is.

2. Who do you say that I am?
 Jesus is always interested in the individual. He goes from the general and safe, to the personal and risky. Jesus asked those who had been with him from the beginning...but who do you say that I am?

 Peter, speaking for the group answers w/o delay 'Thou are the Christ, the Son of the Living God'.  By Christ, he was saying that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the anointed one.

 This is perhaps the greatest statement we could ever hear. Because of the truth of this statement, there is forgiveness of sin and eternal life to all who believe.

   Go Peter, you had your thinking cap on that day....or did he?

3. Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you but my Father who is in heaven.
 Peter didn't finally figure out who Jesus was.. it was revealed to Him by God the Father through God the Spirit.
 For anyone to correctly know and believe who Jesus really is, they must first be drawn by God and then illuminated or shown through the Holy Spirit, the truth...Jesus is God.

 Besides, if it was something for us to figure out after much searching, then we would be the ones who deserve the glory...and Scripture is clear..all glory, all honor is God's alone.

4. You are Peter and upon this rock
 What rock? Herein lies the great debate. Again, putting aside all denominational baggage, lets see what the text says.

 a. Two different words in the Greek are used for Peter and Rock. So textually these two can not be the same.

 b. The Greek grammar doesn't have Peter as the antecedent for the phrase 'and upon this rock'. The word Peter is masculine and the word Rock is feminine. We have to look earlier in the text to see to what this phrase is associated. The closest phrase  it can agree within gender is Peter's confession.

     Remember this was the greatest and most important statement that could ever have been made, revealed by God himself to Peter.

 Grammatically and from the basic flow of the text, 'upon this rock' is connected with Peter's confession.

 That is why we expend such great effort to present, share and proclaim the gospel to all who will hear. What is the Gospel? Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God.

5. I will build
 I believe this short, yet pointed truth sheds much light on Church Growth and Church Marketing schemes and plans.  The builder and sustainer of the Church is Christ Himself.

Acts 2:47 'And the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.'

1 Cor. 3:5-7 'What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth.  So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.'

 Can that be any more clear?  Jesus said I will build my church, not clever marketing strategies, not entertaining services, not professional choirs or drama teams.  The church grows when the gospel is proclaimed and the Lord opens the ears of the sinner to hear.

6. My Church
 Jesus said that He will build not a church, or the church, but, my church. The church belongs to Him and to Him alone. He is the builder and sustainer. And I believe He takes what happens to His church very seriously. That is why He said...

7. And the gates of Hades shall not overpower it.
 Nothing, not even Satan himself, with all his demon army can overpower or stop the universal church from being built and held together by Christ.  It is interesting to note that to the ancient Hebrew of Jesus' day, the gates of Hades was symbolic for death. There are many commentators who think that this was yet another time Jesus was speaking of His own upcoming death.

 He was saying , look guys, remember I have been telling you that I must die but I will be raised from the dead? Well, even in my death, the church will live on and the Devil still will have no power over it.

 What a comfort that must have been to those disciples who were soon to be severely  tested in their faith. But Jesus promised and He always keeps his promises!

Conclusion

 I believe if the Church Growth people and the Church Marketing gurus really understood all this, they would be doing things a lot differently. Because they would understand what God's church is all about.

 And instead of looking outside for how to make the church better, more presentable to the world, they would look inside, inside the Word of God to find out what Jesus said about the church and then promote that. Then and only then will Jesus be pleased with how we join Him in His building of His church.

1 Peter 2:4-5 'As you come to Him, the living stone - rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to Him - you also, like living stones are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.'

 This picture from God's Word tells of a worshipping community of men women and children, joined together through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ who by the power of the Holy Spirit daily delight in, demonstrate and declare the glory and goodness of God.

 Church growth is when the worshipping community, believers like you and I, grow in the likeness of Christ, when we grow in our relationship to God through the worship of His Son. And when God adds more worshippers thru faith in His Son.
 It has nothing to do with facilities or physical plant, or marketing strategies to increase our numbers, so we can increase the size of our building, so we can be like the big guys....Rick Warren, Bill Hybals, Charles Stanley, John MacArthur, or Chuck Smith to name a few of the mega church pastors around the US.

 What does this mean to you and I since we are not a mega church? Well 2 things.

1. CBC is not the universal church. Neither is the Methodist church in town or the Catholic church down the street.
 While individuals from those churches may be part of the universal church, those individual churches have no right to claim sole possession of all spiritual truth.

 The NT church did not display uniform worship, structure or even theology.
 The challenge to us today, and especially as Baptist and Reformed Believers, is to live in unity with other Christian churches w/o insisting that our kind of worship, structure or theology is more correct and more like the NT church than any other.

2. It means as a local church we must be very careful and prayerful about the means we use to grow the church.
 We must understand the boundaries Scripture gives us and be willing to understand that  it is Christ who is building His church.

 No where in Scripture does God say if you do this and this I will add people to your church. I believe our efforts ought to be sharing the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ to all who will hear and let God do the work of adding them where He so desires.