I have terrible news. My outline
is eight pages. We're going to begin in Hebrews
chapter 10, starting in verse 19. Turn with
me there. Hebrews 10, starting in 19. I'm pretty sure that the Apostle
Paul wrote the letter to the Hebrews, and so throughout you'll
probably hear me say that Paul has written or Paul has said
instead of just the Apostle or the author. Verse 19. Therefore, brothers, since we
have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus,
by the new and living way that he opened for us through the
curtain, that is, through his flesh. Since we have a great
priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true
heart and full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean
from an evil conscience and our bodies washed pure with water. Let us hold fast the confession
of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good
works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some,
but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day
drawing near. So I will be continuing on the
theme of the local church that James and I have been focusing
on for many weeks now. There are some more things that
I want to teach you about the local church. Today we're going
to look at some of the things that we do here and why we do
them. This is not new material. I've
taught on this stuff before, so it might be familiar to some
of you. So I've often heard pastors and
preachers began a sermon by saying something like, this message
is going to upset some people. And then what typically follows
from an introduction like that is an incoherent beat down about
one or more particular sins that are plaguing our nation or our
church. Remember a few years ago when
the Supreme Court defended same-sex marriage preachers and pulpits
throughout our nation. We're filled with newly minted
prophets against Sodom and Gomorrah. This message is not about our
nation and it's not really about a sin that has plagued you. Sermons that are about dealing
with sin, which they have their place and they are important,
we should address sin in our lives, in our assemblies. But
sermons about that often amount to little more than just telling
people, have you tried not sinning? You know, just don't sin. How
do I stop sinning in my anger? Don't get angry. How do I stop
lusting? Don't lust. I think we can agree
that this sort of approach to dealing with sin should be thrown
in the trash and set on fire, right? This idea that God's not
gonna bless you until you stop sinning. We're gonna learn today
that without the blessing of God, you can't stop sinning.
The grace of God comes first and is necessary for killing
sin in your life. I have heard some sermons that
will say that the solution to sin in your life is to pray and
read scripture. These are good things. We do
need to be doing that, right? We need to be praying. We need
to be praying for ourselves, for our brothers and sisters
in Christ. We need to be asking God to give
us the grace and the power to overcome those things that we
struggle with. And we need to be reading scripture. We need
to know who Christ is, and the way you know who Christ is is
by reading what he has revealed about himself. But even these things, while
they are absolutely essential to your maturity and to your
faith, They make an incomplete solution
to sin in your life, to growing in your faith, to growing in
your love for one another. So if all you have are prayer
and the reading of scripture, this is less than ideal. Now
scripture gives us a solution to this problem. Scripture tells
us how to grow in our knowledge of Christ, how to grow in our
love for one another, how to kill sin. But we'll get there. I do want
to talk about who this sermon is for and, in general, who the
preaching that happens on the Lord's Day is intended for. Evangelism is not my primary
directive. Right? I'm assuming that those
of you who have come to attend the gathering of the saints on
the Lord's Day are the saints who are gathering. So I'll say it this way. The
church is not for lost people. The assembly of the saints is
for the saints. Remember the boast of one false
teacher. He said, and this is a quote, We don't teach from
books of the Bible because it gets in the way of evangelism.
We don't offer different kinds of Bible studies because it gets
in the way of our evangelism. We don't teach doctrine because
it gets in the way of our evangelism. If you want to be fed God's word
or have the Bible explained to you, then you are a fat, lazy
Christian and you need to shut up and get to work. or you need
to leave this church because we only do evangelism. Wow. My children often have to tell
me, Dad, we don't say stupid. But things like that really make
me want to say it, right? That idea is completely contrary
to the testimony of Scripture. It's the exact opposite of what
Paul tells us to do when we gather on the Lord's Day, what we are
supposed to do as the church. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing
wrong with bringing your lost friends to church. You can bring
your lost friends to church, you can invite people to church,
and they will hear the gospel of Christ. But the meat of my teaching today
is for you, the saints, who know Christ. So bring your lost friends to
church, and they will hear the gospel many times before we untie
them and let them go home. But it's not evangelism to do
that. Evangelism is the testimony of
what Christ has done for you, shared with those around you, the people that you meet, the
people that you love. These things that we're going
to talk about today that we do in the assembly have no application
for lost people except that they hear the voice of the shepherd
in the teaching of the gospel. I've even heard of churches permitting
lost people to be members as long as they are faithful in
service in some way. I wonder if those churches practice
church discipline. Hebrews 10. The first three verses
of this section, verses 19 through 21, Paul tells us the reason
for doing the things that we're told to do in verse 22. Right,
in verse 22, he says, let us draw near. What are we drawing
near to? The thing that we draw near to
is Christ, right? The apostle is upholding Christ
as the center of all religious worship. All the things that
we do are about Christ. And he's making a distinction
between that and the altar in the tabernacle of ancient Israel. He spends the first 18 verses
of chapter 10 and chapters 7, 8, and 9 making this distinction,
that the worship of the old covenant, the worship of Israel, is just
a shadow of the risen Messiah. And so he tells us, draw near
to Christ. Let us be intimate with Christ. And then he gives us an exhortation,
tells us the attitude, the heart that we can have when we draw
near to Christ. He says, with a true heart and
full assurance of faith. So saints, you have been born
again. Your heart is true and you have
full assurance in Christ. And this assurance is part and
parcel to your faith. Right? We don't have faith in
our faith. We have faith in Christ. We don't have faith in a prayer
that we prayed one time or something that we have done or a magical
baptism that we have experienced. But we have faith in Christ,
the one who has done the work. This word from Paul guarantees
the certainty of that salvation. that our hearts are sprinkled
clean from evil consciences, this sprinkling by the blood
of Christ. Our bodies are washed with pure
water, the blood of Christ. So Paul is upholding Christ in
distinction with the ceremony, the work of the Jewish temple. All the people approaching the
temple had to be cleaned because they were nasty and they were
wicked. And there were ceremonies that
they had to undergo before they could even step on the property. But we see here in Hebrews 10
that we have already been washed clean by the blood of Christ
once and for all made pure before him by his work. for the purpose
of worshiping him. So the apostle continues, let
us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for
he who promised is faithful. He declares our full assurance
in the gospel of Christ. So what we have here is everything
that we need to have a fully formed doctrine of assurance. If I ask you, what is your doctrine
of assurance? You can say what I just told
you, that Christ is faithful, that we are washed clean by him. And this is an important thing
to understand given the spiritual climate that we live in. Right, I haven't talked about
our good works yet, right? Your good works, the things that
you do, are not an essential part of the assurance of your
faith. Now, there are good works necessary
for salvation, and there are good works necessary for the
assurance of faith. There's your soundbite, haters. But those good works that are
essential for our salvation, those good works that are necessary
for our full assurance are the works of Christ. The work of Christ in commanding
the lame to walk. The work of Christ in telling
the blind to see. The work of Christ in kneeling
before the Roman guards who beat him. And the work of Christ in
submitting to death at the hands of Rome. And the work of Christ
in crying out, I thirst. And being given a sponge of vinegar. In the work of Christ and crying
out, it is finished and giving up his spirit into the care of
his Father. And in the work of Christ, by
the power of the Holy Spirit, rising from the dead and appearing
to Mary and Mary and Peter and James and John and the rest of
the disciples, and the work of Christ in waiting
patiently at the right hand of his Father for the time when
he will return to judge the nations. These are the good works necessary
for your salvation and the good works necessary for your assurance
in it. Christ alone is sufficient for
our assurance. Now if you're reading ahead to
verse 24, you will see that the phrase good works appears. So there is a distinction I want
us to understand between verses 23 and 24, and that is that we
must understand the difference between what God has done for
us and what God has commanded us to do. Verse 24, Paul writes,
let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good
works. And when he says, let us consider,
that is a rhetorical device. That means I'm going to tell
you, let us consider. I'm going to tell you how to
stir one another up to love and good works. So we talked about
killing sin. We talked about growing in our
faith and maturity, right? Just have more faith. Just stop
sinning. Paul tells us how to do it here.
Do not neglect to meet together. Do not neglect the assembly of
the saints. Now, until the end of days, we
will hear people argue that they can have church with their friend
over breakfast on a Tuesday, or that the worship in an individual
family is sufficient for meeting the demands of the word here. But it is not. The apostle is once again upholding
the gospel reality in distinction with the gatherings of Israel.
Under the old covenant, Jews offered sacrifices. They gathered
for worship at the temple. And so once again, the author
of Hebrews is upholding what we're supposed to do as the New
Testament church in distinction with what the Jews did, subjected
to the shadows found in the law. And so this New Testament reality
that those shadows represented is the gathering of the saints
on the Lord's day. And so we're going to talk about
this gathering. We're going to talk about the things that we do, why we
do them. And so the word we have, the
phrase that we have for these things, we call them means of
grace. That's your vocabulary word for
the day. The means of grace, meaning these are the things
that God uses to give us grace for maturity in our faith. These means of grace are those
things that God has promised to use for the dispensation of
some measure of grace, either for the salvation of souls, for
the quickening of the new spirit, or for the mortification of our
flesh. By quickening of the new spirit,
I mean that these are the things that God has given us to encourage
us to a lively and active faith. By the mortification of the flesh,
I mean that these are the things that God has given us to kill
sin in our lives. Right? Because that remnant of
the flesh remains. We have been regenerated by the
power of the Holy Spirit. We have been given grace to do
those things which God commands, and yet our flesh lives on, though
it be dying. And there are times when we act
in our flesh and not in our spirit. And these means of grace are
the things that God has given us to continue to kill our flesh. So there's two different things
I want you to understand about means of grace. There's two types.
There are salvific means of grace and non-salvific means of grace. And when I say salvific means
of grace, I mean this thing saves you. This thing is a means by
which God causes the conversion of a lost soul into a regenerate
soul. And there is only one. The hearing of the gospel. the proclamation of the work
of Christ. This is the only salvific means
of grace. What I mean by that is that God
uses the teaching of scripture, the teaching of the gospel to
save his people. It is the means by which God
pours out his grace upon those elect who have not yet had faith in
him. Psalm 3 verse 8 tells us that
salvation is from the Lord. Your blessing be upon your people. And the first and greatest blessing
that God pours out upon his people is that he saves them from their
wickedness. That he rescues them from the
darkness that they enjoy so much. Paul declares in Romans 1, I
am not ashamed of this gospel. It is the power of God for salvation
to everyone who believes. These means the way in which
God saves his people is the declaration of the gospel of Christ. And this gospel of Christ is
the person and the work of Jesus. who he was, what he did. You'll often hear people who
object to this gospel say things like, if God is sovereign in
all things, and especially in the salvation of his people alone,
Why do we have to have evangelism? All God's people are going to
get saved even if I do nothing about it. We affirm that God has foreordained
all the means unto salvation and he has told us exactly what
those means are. The declaration of the gospel. So yes, God is sovereign and
he has appointed his people to share his gospel with his people
so that all who are elect of God will be drawn to him. The salvific means of grace.
Now, there are non-salvific means of grace. There are more than one. These non-salvific means of grace
are those things that God has established for the strengthening
of our faith. They're the things that God has
given us to do to increase our faith, to put to death our flesh. And these means of grace apply
only to those who have already experienced the salvific means
of grace. These things that we do, hint,
in the church, in the assembly, they apply, they go out to only
those who have been regenerated by the Spirit of God. So they have no application to
those who have not. So we talked a little bit here
in Hebrews about how Paul is upholding the assembly of the
saints in distinction with the assembly of Israel. And so this is the part where
I sort of stray from a explicit exposition here of Hebrews 10
and more explore just sort of those things that we do here
in the church. Remember, the Assembly of the
Saints is the full revelation, the gospel reality of the Jewish
temple. And for this reason, this first
means of grace, this first thing that we do is that we gather. And it's not just that we gather,
but we gather on a particular day, which we call the Lord's
Day, the first day of the week. Now, one of the reasons that
we gather like this is because we have been commanded to do
so, right? You know your Ten Commandments?
It's number four. Remember the Sabbath day and
keep it holy. So this fourth commandment is
established as an ordinance of creation. Remember God rested
on the seventh day of creation. Now, there are those who would
argue that this one command, don't worry
about it anymore. You've got 10 commands, 1, 2,
3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. Don't worry about number 4. This
command has not passed away, just as none of the others have
passed away. This command is part of our obedience
to the command of Christ to love the Lord your God. Now it's important to observe
that this command does not actually tell us what day we're supposed
to observe, right? Are you familiar with the Seventh
Day Adventists? their beloved false prophet,
Ellen White, would tell us that what we are doing right now is
the Mark of the Beast. The gathering on the first day
of the week is the Mark of the Beast described in Revelation. But the command doesn't tell
us when we are to gather. It was actually a different context
in which the Jews in particular were told to rest on the seventh
day. The Jewish Sabbath, the seventh
day of the week, is observed in remembrance of the exodus
from Egypt. And in contrast, our Sabbath,
the Christian Sabbath, is observed in remembrance of Christ's exodus
from the grave. Which happened on which day of
the week? Sunday. The meaning of our Sabbath is
prophesied by the psalmist in Psalm 118. 22 to 24, the stone
that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This
is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.
This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and
be glad in it. This stone is Christ. And we can observe that Christ
was dead on the Jewish Sabbath. But he rested in glory on the
first day in his resurrection. And then finally, and probably
most importantly, in Acts 20, we see the example of the apostles
gathering with the saints for the teaching of the word on the
first day of the week. In Acts chapter 20, verse 7,
on the first day of the week when we were gathered together
to break bread, Paul began talking to them. intending to leave the
next day and he prolonged his message until midnight. His outline
was 28 pages. And so this is the context. All these other non-salvific
means of grace are given in exactly this context. They are things that we do when
we gather on the Lord's Day as commanded. So the first one that
we have is the preaching of the Word. Every Sunday you come and you
listen to one of us teach the Word. And again, that's exactly
what we see Paul doing there in Acts chapter 20. 2 Timothy
3, 16 and 17 tells us that God equips man for every good work, specifically through Scripture. And so we teach this scripture. Doing good works is a spiritual
ambition that is made possible only through the work of the
spirit in us. And so this equipping of man
from scripture by God is a dispensation of grace given by the spirit
of God through the means of teaching the scripture. What else do we do when we gather?
We sing songs, don't we? Colossians 3 verse 16, Paul tells
us, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing
one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And so at the
command of the apostle, we sing songs. Through those songs, we
teach one another. We worship God. We express our
thankfulness to him for the work that he has done. We learn about
him. We are filled up with joy by
the Holy Spirit when we sing. And Paul intends that our songs
teach. So about that, it's really important
that the songs that we sing are faithful to the teaching of scripture,
right? It's important that the songs
that we sing actually be about God, right? It's important that the songs
that we sing be more than something to make us feel good. Right,
now don't get me wrong. Music is given to us to make
us feel something. God has given us music, commanded
us to sing, and we are supposed to feel something. It's supposed
to make us feel something. But we cannot take that emotion
that we have when we sing and uphold it above all other things
that we are supposed to do when we sing. When we gather together, those
who profess faith in the gospel of Christ, are commanded to be
baptized, right? This physical baptism, commanded
of all believers, is a picture, an image, representing this baptism
by the Spirit into the death of Christ. As Paul tells us in
Romans 6 verse 4, we have been buried with him through baptism
into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, through
the glory of the Father so we might walk in newness of life. So when a new believer is baptized,
it is a profession to the assembly of the saints that they have
buried their flesh. Their flesh has been put to death
and their spirit has been brought to life with Christ and his resurrection. God gives us grace in this. Grace to the one baptized and
grace to the assembly observing for the strengthening of our
faith. Now, every Lord's Day, we take
the Lord's table. I grew up going to a church that
did it quarterly, which always seemed really strange to me.
Especially once I started reading what scripture has to say about
the Lord's table. Paul tells us that this, he calls
it a cup of blessing. He tells us that this taking
of the Lord's table is a participation in the death and resurrection
of Christ. But four times a year is good enough. 1 Corinthians 11, 23-26, For I
received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that
the Lord Jesus in the night in which he was betrayed took bread.
And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is
my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
In the same way, he took the cup after supper, saying, This
cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you
drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this
bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until
he comes. So shall we now proclaim the
Lord's death quarterly? The cup of blessing that we bless,
1 Corinthians 10 verse 16, is it not a participation in the
blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it
not a participation in the body of Christ? There is one bread,
we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one
bread. When we take the Lord's table,
we proclaim the Lord's death. And what happened in the Lord's
death? In the Lord's death, he takes
on the sins of his people. He endures the wrath of the Father
on behalf of his people. When we take the Lord's table,
we proclaim the propitiation of the saints. We proclaim that God's wrath
has been satisfied for us in Christ. And more than this, this cup
is a cup of blessing. When we take it, grace is poured
out. Grace for the strengthening of
our faith. Now, to be clear, you can engage
with all of these things in a manner that is without grace. You can
engage with the assembly of the saints apart from faith. And remember when I said these
things are not for lost people. It is a lively, living faith
in Christ that is strengthened by these
things. Paul tells us that we feed upon
Christ. This language is congruent, consistent
with what Jesus talks about in John 6. He confuses a lot of
people when he tells them that I am
the bread of life. You eat my body and you will
live. And those among him who had not
ears to hear the spiritual truth were very concerned. So 1 Corinthians 10 where We
talk about this participation in the body and blood of Christ.
It's referring spiritually to the truth of John 6, 47 through
59. Let's go there and read it. Jesus said a lot of things to
make the Pharisees uncomfortable. That's one of the reasons he
teaches in parables so often. He teaches in parables for the
good of the church so that those with spiritual ears and spiritual
eyes can hear and see what he is saying. And those without
them think he's telling a dumb story. John 6, verse 47. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever
believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your
fathers ate the manna in the wilderness and they died. This is the bread that comes
down from heaven so that one may eat of it and not die. I
am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats
this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give
for the life of the world is my flesh. And here it is. The Jews then
disputed among themselves saying, how can this man give us his
flesh to eat? So Jesus said to them, Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man
and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds
on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will
raise him up on the last day, for my flesh is true food and
my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and
drinks my blood abides in me and I in him. As the living father
sent me and I live because of the father, so whoever feeds
on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that
came down from heaven, not like the bread that the fathers ate
and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. Jesus
said these things in the synagogue as he taught at Capernaum. He's saying this in the assembly
of the Jews. Now, when Jesus is talking about
this stuff in John 6, he's not talking about that. He's not
saying, eat that and you will live. He's talking about himself. He's talking about faith in the
work that he would go on to do. To eat the flesh and drink the
blood of Christ is to have faith in the work that he performed. But, when Paul, in 1 Corinthians
10, talks about doing that, he's telling us, remember the work
of Christ. Receive the grace of God for
the strengthening of your faith in the work of Christ. by taking
the Lord's table. So, no, the point of John 6 is
not the Lord's table, but the point of the Lord's table is
John 6. What else do we do? We pray. We pray together. We pray for
one another. We see throughout Paul's letters
that Paul is praying for you, church. We see commands that
we should pray for one another. We should pray for our leaders.
We should pray for our kings. We should pray for our elders.
We should pray for our brothers and sisters. 2 Corinthians 1
verse 11, you also must help us by prayer so that many will
give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through
the prayers of many. Paul's writing a letter to this
church because he needs help. And he says, pray for me. Because
Paul believes that the prayers of the saints are powerful. Ephesians 6, 18 through 20, praying
at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication.
To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication
for all the saints and also for me, that words may be given to
me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the
gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare
it boldly as I ought to speak. James 5, 13 through 18, is anyone
among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise. Is anyone
among you sick? Let him call for the elders of
the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with
oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will
save the one who is sick and the Lord will raise him up. If
he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Therefore confess
your sins to one another and pray for one another that you
may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person
has great power as it is working. Elijah was a man with a nature
like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for
three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. And
he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its
fruit. We must pray for one another,
church. I always find it more difficult
to pray for someone than to go do something to help them, right? If I come and help you, I can
see the work of my hands. I can see what I have done. And
I can look at it and say, I have done a good job. But when I pray, I cannot see
anything. cannot see the work that I am
doing. Right, because the blessing, the work, and our prayer is done
by God. The power of our prayers is found
in the sovereignty and the faithfulness of the Father. And there's grace in it. There's
grace for us, there's grace for those we pray for. there is another means of grace. Now I told you that the means
of grace that we exercise, that we engage in, these are not for
lost people and they're not for people outside of the assembly. But this is sort of an exception. When the church engages in church
discipline, that is a means of grace. It's the only non-salvific means
of grace that is given to those outside the local assembly, but
it is still given through the exercise of the saints in the
local assembly. In church discipline, all these
other non-salvific means of grace are removed from the one under
discipline, at the command of Christ in Matthew 18. And so from the inside, looking
out, church discipline can appear to be a salvific means of grace. Because we are instructed to
treat the one cast out as a Gentile and a tax collector. It can have
the appearance of an unbeliever returning to the faith. Jesus tells us that when our
brother repents. It is as if we have gained a
brother. It is as though they have been
saved. To the one that is cast out,
grace can be given through the proclamation of the gospel. And
if they are unregenerate, only through this proclamation if the one cast out is elect
of God. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians
5 verse 5, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction
of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the
Lord. So in church discipline, even
those elect of God may experience grievous sin. They may experience
being cast out of the fellowship of the saints in accordance with
Jesus' instruction in Matthew 18. And there is grace in that. Paul
tells us that we cast them out for the destruction of their
flesh so that in the day of the Lord they may be saved. Church discipline is hard when
it gets to that last step that Jesus describes in Matthew 18.
We've done it before, and it hurts. It hurts to see one who we once
called brother or sister treated as a Gentile and a tax collector. We must trust that God is faithful
to do what he has said he will do. If our brother cast out is
elect, then God will be faithful to call them back to the assembly of the saints. And so that is what we do. That's what we do here when we
gather on the Lord's Day. So now we're going to talk about
some theological words for a minute. If you read our Statement of
Faith, if you read any theology, ecclesiology that's been written
in the last 1600 years, you read the creeds, remember the ancient
creeds, apostles' creeds, 19 creeds, there are three words
that you might come across. Universal, invisible, Catholic. Okay? So these are words, you
might hear the phrase universal church, invisible church, the
church Catholic, and really what people are trying
to say when they say this is just to sort of refer generally
to the elect of God. And so I'm going to tell you
that these words are not a biblical category. When we talk about invisible
church and universal church, what I mean by not a biblical
category is that scripture doesn't really look at it that way. Scripture doesn't talk about
the saints that way. Scripture doesn't talk about our assembly,
our church, or the elect of God in that way. And so, I'll say that there is no meaningful
distinction between the universal, the invisible Catholic church
and local visible churches. Except possibly that there are
members of local churches who are not born again, sometimes. Now, there are exceptions to
how we talk about this. I mean that the whole elect of
God are in some sense a subset of all the visible churches.
The whole elect of God are in some sense just part of local
churches, right? But understand what I mean, we
need to talk about these exceptions to that claim. What am I not
claiming? I'm not claiming that if you
skip church, you ain't saved. I'm not claiming that you have to go to church in order
to receive salvation. But what I am claiming is that
a elect person finding themselves separated from the assembly of
the saints is either living in sin by doing so, or is the result of some kind of
sin, or it has been the will of God to
make them unable to go? I'm sure you could find some
other exceptions and say, gotcha with what I'm saying here. But it is always suboptimal. It is always not ideal for an
elect person to be separated from the assembly of the saints.
Let's talk about some of these exceptions. An elect person being
under church discipline, having been cast out of the fellowship.
You can be elect of God. You can be regenerate. And by giving your flesh enough
food to grow and fester and rot, You can find yourself on the
wrong end of the discipline described in Matthew 18, right? And then you find yourself
separated from the assembly of the saints, and that, of course,
is a result of sin, right? An elect person can experience
a season of rebellion and remove themselves from the assembly
of the saints. You miss a few weeks because
you were sick. You realize that it's easier
not to go, right? You can find yourself living
in this habit of being away from the assembly. An elect person can be wrongfully
cast out of the local assembly, right? That could happen. In
that case, yes, it's the result of sin. It's our sin. It's not
their sin. You might have an elect person
having believed the gospel through the teaching of some evangelist
and their ill-conceived mission being left by them with no access
to a local assembly. That's why I don't understand things like, I call it missionary
tourism. We're going to go into this place
with no churches. When we leave, there's going to be no churches. But we're still going to hope
that they end up with a lively and active faith. Right, because once you have
faith in Christ, you ask the question, what now? You gather
with the saints and you partake of these means of grace and you
grow in your faith together with your brothers and sisters in
Christ. Right, okay, I have faith in
Christ, what do I do now? You go be baptized. which is
a declaration of your faith to the saints. So if your plan for evangelism
involves leaving people without access to the saints, you should
rethink your plan. I'm not saying don't go evangelize.
People need to hear the gospel. If we build schools without building
churches, we're not really doing evangelism. If we train teachers without
training pastors, we aren't doing evangelism. And an elect person can find
themselves with no access to a biblical assembly. Because
if you go out there, you will find that biblical assembly is
a lot more rare than I once thought. And it is for those people that
my heart hurts. It's every Lord's Day morning
when I've not seen Sister Karen that
my heart hurts. It is seeing her this morning
that fills me with inexpressible joy. It is a joy that only comes from
Christ. It is a joy that only comes from
the assembly of the saints, seeing you, brothers and sisters. We have nothing in common except
this gospel that is all I need to be filled with joy when I
see you. That is the assembly. That's
how you kill sin. You gather together. You love
one another. You take and eat and drink of
Christ's flesh and blood. It's how you get to know Christ.
You hear his word taught. It's how you are filled with
joy. The music of the saints. Right, we don't have a... Our
band isn't very fancy, is it? I've been part of worship bands
that were really good. And I've never been filled with
joy the way I am when I hear your voices. Worshipping in spirit and in
truth. When we have new believers, when
our children profess faith in Christ, they are baptized. We are filled with joy to see
their professions made. And the last time I taught this
material, I gave my sermon a clickbait title called, Sometimes God Cannot
Be Trusted. The maturing of your faith is
found here in the grace of God poured out in these means of
grace. God has promised grace upon grace
for love and good works, for the strengthening of your faith
in these things. And the reality for those who
forsake them is that God has not promised that same grace. God has not promised to bless
you with grace for the strength and
maturity outside of the assembly of the saints. Now, the Lord
is certainly free to bless you with immeasurable grace for the
strengthening of your flesh, for the strengthening of your
faith, the killing of your flesh. And sometimes he does, but he
has not promised this outside of the assembly. And that is
why we gather, because it is here that he has promised to raise us up. It's here that we can encourage
one another. And that's why we're called a
body, because we're essential to the body, each of us. You don't go to work having cut
off your hands and expect to do a good job, right? You don't cut off your hands. That's what it's like when we
gather and some of us are missing. We love our own bodies. We nourish
and cherish our own body parts. We have to do the same for our
brothers and sisters. When our brothers and sisters
are missing, we have a duty to love them, to care for them. Not to be judgmental, right? I'm not calling you when you
miss church to let you know, hey, that was,
you're sinning again. Come on. I miss you. I want to see you. All of this is given for your
joy, for your peace, for your comfort, for the strengthening of your
faith. All of these things are given
so that we may grow unto maturity. Right, this is the spiritual
meat we talked about last time I was up here. Remember in Hebrews
6, Paul talks about You know, spiritual milk. Some of you are
still drinking that spiritual milk. You should go on to solid
food. And these things we will do if
the Lord wills. Love you, church. Let's pray. God, give us grace. Grace to hear your word, to receive
your word. Grace to grow in our maturity.
Grace for knowing that Christ is faithful. Grace for loving our brothers
and sisters. God, we thank you that through
your word we may see these things, hear these things, know these
things. God, I pray for all my brothers
and sisters that you would continue to fill them with a
love for you, for your son, for your word, for your saints. Pray these things in the name
of Christ. Amen.