This message is from the teaching
ministry of James Tippins, pastor of Grace Truth Church. More information
can be found online at gracetruth.org and anchoringfaith.org. A people
for His glory, by His grace. Let's just say in the last year,
I've had many conversations with many people about the idea of
the word and the term and the existence of the church.
And tonight as I get started, I want to repent of an error
of use. So what's that mean? My mind,
I've frivolously used the term church erroneously in jest numerous
times in the last seven years. Because I've said that, okay,
we have believers And what have I always said? That the church
is not a building, but it is a body. It is not an organization,
it is an organism. It is, or we are, the body of
Christ, and this is true, but the word church means called
out, gathered. It has the connotation of both
things. Interestingly enough, the idea
of ekklesia, the Greek word for what we call church, should be
translated literally gathering, gathering. And if we use it accurately
according to the grammatical use of the idea of the gathered
ones in the New Testament, then we should never come to the place
where we say, well I go there to church. or I attend church. You cannot attend church. You
become church. You become the gathered ones.
But becoming the gathered ones is not what makes us the body
of Christ. Those two things are not synonymous,
though they are both and. When the body of Christ gets
together, it is the church, but when it's not together, it's
not the church. However, when the church is together,
when the body is together, it is the church. It's going to
be very difficult for us because we have used the word church
synonymously with just every individual. But every individual
is not the church. Just like every individual is
not the body, but rather a part of the body. If my finger falls
off and gets slung over the wall, when I say my body has slung
off to the wall, I would say my finger has gone. I could say
part of my body or a piece of me has gone and just detached
itself from me. That would make sense in the
imagery of how the apostles, especially Paul, and particularly
Paul, uses the idea of the church as a body. So we can understand
then this idea, and Trey a couple of months ago on Midweek, he
taught the doctrine about the church and he made some comments
about what we call the universal gathering. So if I'm able tonight,
I'd like to try to take the word church and every time I say it,
I want to say the word gathering. So forgive me if I interchange
and correct myself a thousand times. Because in order for us
to understand proper theological things and doctrinal things as
it applies to us, and as a pastor, my entire scope of existence
is applying the teaching, applying the learning of God to our lives
as believers. As, not that I feel is necessary,
as the Scripture reveals and teaches. The universal church. is a phenomenon that has no biblical
place. Because the idea that every believer
in all aspects of time and in every place of the world, no
matter where they are, whether they're in a stall in a bathroom
at Denny's, or whether they're in a cave in Afghanistan hiding
and running for their lives, individually we are not all part
of the universal church. Because the very essence of there
being the gathering is the fact that we are what? Gathered. Now this is going to be difficult
for us. But in order for us to really, and here's why this is
necessary tonight. Because I've been teaching out
of John, I've been teaching out of Romans, we've dealt with pastoral
issues, we've dealt with some family issues, we've dealt with
some discipline issues, we've got a whole lot of things that
we're dealing with. We're learning to grieve together, we're learning
to pray together, we're learning to love and live together and
minister to each other. But there seems to always be
the same coming back to the same thing in this way. How does this
work out in this section of my life for this purpose, and what's
the Bible mean when it teaches this if it's not related to my
position with the Lord? Specifically, the idea of how
we live our life in submission to the Lord, how we live our
life under the rule of Scripture, and how we live our life together
as a people. I'll say on the onset that church
membership, covenant intimacy, is voluntary. You don't see any
involuntary covenants in the New Testament gatherings. The
apostles weren't rounding up with whips all the professing
believers that go, now you've got to be up in here and come
up. Now, believers gathered and many of them stayed in the peripheral
and they would hear the teaching, but those who came into the houses
voluntarily came into the houses and came under the authority
and the submission of the Word of God and the oversight of the
elders of the church. It was voluntary, just like all
of you have voluntarily become committed covenant parts of the
family of this gathering so that when we gather, we all know that
we want to be here, even though sometimes we feel like we should
be someplace else because it would be easier for us. But we come here together, and
because of that, now we are the assembly. Now we are the church. We are the body of Christ. We
are the elect. We are those who are regenerated
by the Holy Spirit. We are those who have the gospel.
We are those who believe by faith in Christ alone. And when we
gather, we are the church. When we leave, we're no longer
the gathered ones, are we? We're not. So we really use the
word church too often, and we misapply its usage to the detriment
of our understanding of how we live life together, so much so
that I have to explain church discipline and church maturity
and church submission and church this and church that to so many
people that it sort of hit me yesterday This is all boiling
down to the reality of what Christ has done to the salvation of
His people, and the natural and foundational outcome of regenerative
people is that they want to gather together, and when they gather
together they're the church, and when they're not gathered
together they're not the church. And the use of the word Ecclesia
was used not just for Christians when they got together. It was
used for government officials in the first century. It was
used for those who gathered at sporting events. It was used
the same word. It was used for those who gathered
for public forum, for debate, for entertainment. So the idea
of the word church is to describe any group of people who come
together outside of their normal domicile for a specific purpose. See how screwed up the word is
in our vernacular? You see how easy it is to go
from the idea of a gathered people to a place? Why is it so often? Why do we need a place? I don't
know. Does any of your houses, do any
of your houses have the room to put us all in it? No. None
of us. I've been in all your homes.
They're not big enough to hold us all. Maybe tonight, but you
know. You see, on the Lord's Day when we gather, there's no
one in our congregation, in our family, in our spiritual gathering
who has enough property with shelter and air condition to
put us together. So we were in a gas station,
now we're in a wig shop, and you know, we can meet wherever
we want to meet. Wherever we're able to meet,
we can gather together, and when we do so, we're the church. This
building is not a church. This building can never be a
church. This can be a building for the use by the church or
when the church gathers. You see, we can even say by the
church, can we? Is it really the gathered ones? Is it the
church collectively? Are we the church in the sense
of just an organism? You see how we know the right
thing, but we say the wrong thing. We say the wrong thing. People
have told me recently, well, I know that I need to be somewhere
else. in church. I need to be at another
church. Now see, both of those things
can be true if they understand what they're trying to say. Someone
could say, I need to be at another place in church, in gathering,
in another location. We can have that same conversation.
If the roof caves in, we go, we need to be in another place,
at another place in church, in gathering. But most of the time
it means that somebody knows that they should not be under
the teaching or in the intimacy of a certain people because either
they don't have the Gospel or they don't follow the Scripture
according to what the Bible says about what the church should
be doing, and they know that in the depths of their heart
they're not really part of a family, they're just attending some thing.
They're not part of a community, they're just doing cool stuff.
And for the most part in our world today, most so-called churches
just find alternative for worldly things, some of them not sinful,
but just not spiritual either. And so as I come to Romans, and
as I've been in John, and we see the instruction to Paul,
I mean of Paul to the gathered ones when they gather, he writes
these letters, he writes the letter of Romans to the Christians,
to the body of Christ who assemble in Rome. How did they know who
those who were Christians were? Because they assembled under
the profession of their faith to believe in the gospel of Jesus
Christ. That's why. They were being baptized
and they were doing things together according to the commandments
of God through the apostles. As we see Paul talking about
in the first letter to the Corinthian church about how the church should
look and what the church should be doing. What does he mean by
that? When you gather, act this way. When you gather, do these
things. When you gather together, body. When you gather together
as a family, these are the principles that you need to understand that
rule your gatherings. Friends, it would be very easy.
It would be very easy. It is very easy. for us to push
the Word of God aside and push the assembly to a place that
would be extremely interesting to a lot of people, including
a lot of people who could care less about Scripture. A lot of people. We could get
all the musicians in the church and have an incredible orchestra.
And on Sunday mornings, we could do sometimes, like every fifth
Sunday, just a big music festival. We could write our own stuff
and write our own hymns and have a choir. I mean, we'd be at 300
really fast if we did all that. Especially if we didn't bore
everybody with the Bible. I heard a man say just three
weeks ago how awesome Sunday service was in his local assembly.
He said, man, I enjoy Sundays like we had yesterday. And I'm
like, oh yeah? Why's that? Preacher didn't have but ten
minutes. We had so much music and had some this and that. Didn't
have but ten minutes. That was great. And I'm going,
ah. I didn't know whether to spit
on him or set myself on fire or run away crying or tear my
clothes and put ash on my head. I didn't know what to do. So
I just encouraged him in the Word and helped him see that
he was starving. But I don't know that he's even
regenerate. A lot of people, I wrote on a
napkin today, a lot of people think about the idea that, well,
I'm called to serve in the church, and I'm called to serve at the
church, and I'm called to have a job with the church. What does
that look like when we know that the Word means gathering? What
are we really supposed to organize as the people of God? We're supposed
to be organizing our assembly around the Word of God. The idea
of Sola Scriptura as a pillar of the Protestant Reformation,
as a matter of fact, is extremely Baptistic. I won't say that it's
explicitly Baptist because people will argue with me on that, but
historically I can put very much stock in it that it is historically
Baptist, that it was brought to the table in that context.
But if you know Plato, And if you don't know Plato,
don't start to know him now. But if you know the Platonic ideas
and the Platonic philosophy, what was it about, I don't even
know, 100 BC, 200 BC, I don't even know the dates now. It's
been so long since I studied this stuff. But he began to influence
normal thinking. And the idea of philosophy came
to bear down on the understanding of what the body of Christ was
and how she is supposed to gather And it wasn't until Constantine,
where he married, what did he do? He married government and
power, the state, with the bride of Christ. He married it. It is an abomination to do so. Constantine did not do well for
the Christian faith. As a matter of fact, he paved
the way to Romanism. He paved the way to open doors
of ecumenism. He paved the way so that we would
have Arminian and Pelagian theology so interwoven into our Reformed
traditions that there is very little difference sometimes when
you push the can or kick the can down the road between those
people who hold the 1689 and those people who just have a
good old time as a community club. The idea of being Calvinistic
or Baptist these days means nothing. The idea of sola scriptura, this
is where I was going for, I went on that rabbit trail with my
little soapbox in my head. The idea of sola scriptura is just
permanently a figure. It's a tattoo on the eyebrow.
It's not an essence of being governed by. People love to cheer
it from the stands. Sola Scriptura! Sola Scriptura! Something like you'd see in Romans,
maybe in Ephesus, you know. Great as Artemis of the Ephesians.
And it might be exciting, you know, we'd feel like, just like
an orchestra tuning. I get chills up the back of my
spine. It's awesome. And it feels good when we hear
people chant our song and sing our verses. And it feels good
when we hear people use our language. It feels good. It feels good,
but it doesn't mean that they know what they're talking about.
As a matter of fact, I would beg the wager that most of them
are totally ignorant of the reality that they don't understand, nor
do they hold to the Scripture alone. How do I know? Am I making judgment calls? Yes,
I'm making judgments based on what the Scripture teaches the
judgment should be. And if we hold to the idea of
the Word of God alone as the final court of arbitration, if
we hold to the idea that the Word of God alone is the only
instrument of revelation, and if we hold to the idea that the
Word of God alone, that the Scripture, is all we need for salvation,
and all we need for the church and the instruction of the church.
If we really believe in 2 Timothy 3 where it says that all Scripture
is breathed out by God and is profitable for correction and
rebuke and the training of righteousness that the man of God may be successful
in all that he does. If we believe in the Hebrews
4.12 passage that says the Word of God is living and breathing
and sharper than any two-edged sword and it cuts through flesh
and bone and marrow and spirit. If we believe that, then by golly,
there's a southern expression. And I hope it doesn't mean something
that it shouldn't mean. I get in trouble with these. All my
northern friends are like, that's not a little blasphemous. If
it is, call me out. I'll erase it from my mouth. It's an Andy from Mayberry expression
in my mind. But if it is, you know, sola
scriptura, if we believe it, this is where I was going. My
mind's shot today. I've got a lot on it. Yet we
don't practice it, do we believe it? I want you to listen to this
church. What does it look like to practice the belief that Scripture
is enough? Yes, we believe the Scripture
is true. That's one. Yes, we believe the Scripture
is what? Authentic. Absolutely. We believe the Scripture
is the Word of God. Yeehaw. Is that wrong too? We
believe the Scripture is authoritative. Okay, do you now? You see where
we're getting? We believe the Scripture is enough,
it's sufficient, but we're not going to do what the Scripture
shows us we should be doing. We're not going to learn in the way
that the Scripture shows us we should be learning. We're not
going to hold the Scripture as the necessary instrument of God's
revelation. We're going to talk about what
we enjoy doing, and we're going to put tradition over Scripture
because it's what we do. Sorry people, we don't hold to
the authority of Scripture when we put tradition over Scripture.
Why do I say that? Because never has there been
a time... I want to say something that's going to be extremely
frustrating for a lot of people. I believe there are so few authentic
congregations assembling in the country today that I don't think
we could count with census a true fellowship in this country. I
think if the census workers got out into the byways and highways
and the hills, they haven't done a census here. They have not
taken actual numbers here in 30 years. They won't do it. They just leave town after weeks
and weeks and weeks of no progress. But if we were able to get a
true census and we were to ask specific questions about how
congregations operate and what they do on a week-to-week basis
as a people together assembled in the lives of each other, I
don't think we could get enough data to even say that we can
see the church of Jesus Christ. But yet, in my view right now
as I look out that window, if these walls were not here, I
could see nine buildings that say church on them. I was taught in the early 90s,
early 90s, that church as a thing needed to be something different.
I was taught that in order for the church of America to survive
the future, it needed to do something to get more young people into
the door. See how backward just that statement
is? See how erroneous that is? Where does this come from? It
comes from this Neoplatonic Constantinian philosophy. And I'm sorry to
say the Reformers were in bed with this stuff. The confessions are convoluted
with this type of mentality. That's why we trust the authority
of Scripture. So we come here tonight. Who of us think that the church
is a place? Why don't so many people want
to come to church, they would say, because we've got to do
something to get young people or the church will die. Let me
tell you something, Jesus Christ said He will build His church
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. You know why Jesus isn't building
His church? Because the church is nowhere to be found teaching
the words of Jesus that built His church. And of course I say
that very figuratively and fatalistically. We know there are assemblies
across this land, but they're so difficult to find. I use the
expression often for years, for 15 years I've used this expression
about calling people's baby ugly and what it does for us when
we come to start talking about what people do and love most.
and it causes them to be frustrated with us. But is that not the
command of John in his first epistle, the very parting shot
of his great letter of theological teaching, teaches us who Christ
is and who we are and what we have in Christ as God's people,
and then how are we to apply even the application, how are
we to have application with that teaching? Are we just supposed
to ambiguously just say, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, yay, woohoo, the
gospel, the gospel, and I'm not mocking the gospel and I'm not
mocking Jesus, but is that all we're supposed to do? Are we
supposed to forsake 75% of the totality of the New Testament
teaching so that we can just continue to teach over and over
again, what, redemption and justification and propitiation and expatiation
and all of these things? If we teach these things as true,
we do well, and we obey God, and we are pleasing in our practice
to the Lord because we proclaim the gospel of grace, and the
sovereign grace that is. But beloved, because these things
are true, we ask the question, so what? Now what? Where will
we go from here? Now that we are truly a people
who are redeemed by the blood of our Savior, now what shall
we do? What shall we do? Well, it's
right there in the Word of God. And do you realize that every
New Testament epistle, every letter, was either written to
a local group of people gathered as the body, a.k.a. the church, who gathered, or
their elders, their pastors, overseers, presbyteros, etc.,
so that they could what? Teach the church and be instructed
on how they should oversee the church. Every New Testament epistle.
is written for that purpose. So how is it that an orphan who
thinks themselves part of a universal gathering that's invisible and
unable to be seen, that will happen one day, it is that glorification
where every saint, every part of the body of Christ, every
small eyelash of Jesus Christ will be gathered together, then
we can say we are the universal church. But as Jesus wrote through John
in his Apocalypse, He even wrote to what? Seven different regions,
seven different congregations, seven different gatherings of
people. He did not call them my bride. He specifically pointed them
out. He says, you who are in Ephesus, you have forsaken your
first love. You who are in Laodicea, you
Christians, you who are my body there, I'm going to take out
your lampstand. You see, if you don't wake up. You who are here, you who are...
So there is, even in the grammar of Scripture, even in the context
of the writing, the only time that we see the idea of the gathering
is when it is the collective groups of people underneath the
authority of Scripture for the sake of what? The glory of Christ. What are we to do with this?
What are we really to do with it? Well, many people talk about
the unity of the body. I mean, Romans 12, go there with
me. I won't spend a lot of time on
it, but I want you to see it because I'm in Romans, so I won't
exposit the totality of this chapter. Starting in verse 4. Well, look at verse 3, "...for
by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you not to
think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to
think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith
that God has assigned." Now think about that. Who's he talking
to? He's talking to the group of believers who gather in Rome. How would they get this letter?
Did they have a mailing list of professing Christians and
they just sent it to their mailbox? No. If you didn't gather, you
didn't get it. If you didn't gather, you didn't learn it.
If you didn't gather, you didn't live it out. You see? Now let
me give a caveat here because I have become friends with many
orphans. People who are in a barren land
with no true fellowship to be found. No true gospel being preached. And many of them, by the Lord's
mercy, are able to tune in to our Sunday morning streams and
it's been a blessing for them over the last few years to hear
it, you know, ten days later. But now that they can see the
teaching live, they are blessed by it. Some of them are contemplating
moving to our area because they want to be part of a true spiritual
family. They want to gather really in real time with the church.
Some of them are considering going to Cincinnati. Some of
them are considering moving to Texas. Some of them are considering
moving places, and they don't know where they're going to work,
they don't know where they're going to live, they don't know what they're going to do, but they're so desperate
to be part of a living fellowship of saints so that they can be
in the church and of the church and with the church, you see.
they can gather together, that they're willing to forsake everything
for it because they're so desperate. Let's remember that as we gather
together each week so that we do not take for granted the special
and precious gift that God has given us in this moment and season
of our life because it may not always exist this way. May we
pray that God would extend our days beyond the decades. beyond the centuries, and that
we would plant more congregations, that we would put men who are
equipped and ready to preach and shepherd God's people with
a heart of affection more than a head of doctrine. Although
the head of doctrine is important, you must have a heart of affection
for God's people before you can pastor them. As a matter of fact,
the qualifications to even open your mouth to teach, you must
have a heart that cares for those who listen. But friends, I'm not talking
about those people and I'm not talking about any people. I'm
talking about us. We who are sitting right here
before me this night. Part of our assembly that will
come on Sunday or possibly even be watching live because of illness
or travel. We are talking to each other. We need to get the wording right
and understand. Here, Paul is talking to those
gathered ones in Rome. If you didn't gather, you didn't
get the instruction. And he's saying to them, don't
think as you get together, as you work together, as you live
together, as you are intimate with each other, don't think
more highly of yourself. but each according to the measure
of faith that God has assigned." 4, verse 4, this is where I am,
"...as in one body we have many members." Now what is a member?
A member is anything on our body. A member. An arm, a leg, a finger,
a hand, a toenail, a pinky nail, the first digit of this pinky
nail, an eyeball, a foot, a hand. So we all are one body. As in one body, we have many
members and the members do not have the same function. We don't
all have the same function. Friends, what good is a member
of a body severed from the body? Is it part of the body anymore?
No. It cannot be. It cannot be. And I'm not saying that people
aren't believers. I'm not saying they're not part
of the body. But when they're not with the body, they're not
the church. Do you see the point? If we use
the word rightly. They're not the assembly. They're not assembled. Let's just put it in the preposition. They're not assembled. In our
location, we're not assembled when we're not together, are
we? No. So the idea of the word church,
it means that. Many members do not have the
same function. Not everybody's up here talking
the way I'm talking. Not everybody's called to shepherd
the church. Not everybody's called to play
some music or whatever, or to lead the church in study, or
to do whatever it is that the church is supposed to be doing
according to the Scripture. We are supposed to hear the Word
of God, to pray, to take the Lord's table, to observe baptism.
We're supposed to sing hymns. Songs and spiritual songs, it's
not different. We're all supposed to sing praises to the Lord and
learn. We're supposed to admonish one another and do all these
things that we're supposed to be doing. We do it together,
and not all of us have the same giftedness, and none of us can
exercise our gift to each other until we're what? Together. The members do not have all the
same function. You notice Paul includes himself
in that. He was a member of the church
of Rome. He considered himself a Christian
who was in Rome, and so he would gather with the churches when
he was there. But Paul, like the other apostles
also who no longer live, and there is no office of apostolos
in the context of the church, no apostle living today, They were called to a different
thing, a different type of mission. And we see it throughout the
book of Acts and what they were to do. But even then, Paul considers
himself part of the member of the body. But listen to this. We are one body in Christ, though
many. And individually, each of us
are members one of another. Why? We're members of the body
of Christ. So, in this way, we can say that
our friend in the toilet at Denny's in the West Coast, and our friend
in the cave in Afghanistan, hiding, running for his life because
he's got a bag of Bibles, are what? Members of the same body.
who is Christ. You see? So if that's what people
mean when they say church, then I agree with them. But that's
not what Paul means when he says church. That's not what the New
Testament writers use in the grammar when they say church.
They're talking about when the church gets together. Now, so I'm a
member of the guy in Denny's, and he's a member of me, and
you're a member of me, and I'm a member of you, and the guy
in the cave is also a member, and we're a member of them, and
so when we are able to be together, if we are to connect online,
if we're to get on the telephone, if we're to be able to write
letters to one another, that's still not assembly, but it is
still ministry, and we still can do the work of the ministry
together, and that we can still be blessed by it, but it's still
impartial, isn't it? It's still lacking. It may be the best we can do,
but it's still lacking. And our prayer is that what? That God would put and plant
an assembly everywhere where all of His sheep, where all the
elect can be a part of. How many of you have sought for
years to find a church that you could be a part of, that you
could gather with, that you could be loved on and literally be
taught and live out that teaching together in power? Let me keep
on going. And each individually members
of one another having gifts that differ. Why do our gifts differ? I want to be a hand. I want to
be a foot. I don't know who'd want to be a foot. Who'd want
to be a toenail? You see? Who'd want to be an
eyeball? Just an eyeball? Nobody? But oh, if I was an eye,
I could be part of the body. Well, if I was a toenail and
I could protect the right foot, the pinky toe on that right foot's
a real tender thing, without which you can't walk straight.
How powerful and special and important we are together in
place. So we have gifts that differ. How are they different? As Paul
would teach us in 1 Corinthians, he said God gives gifts to the
church as He sees fit. God puts the church together
as He sees fit. So wherever we are today, beloved,
wherever you are today, is where God has you today. So rejoice
in that and pray that God would put us where we need to be together,
even if it's through distance. But we have gifts that differ
according to the grace given to us. Let us use them then.
How do we use them? Let's look at some of these gifts.
I'm just proving a topical point doctrinally tonight. If prophecy
in proportion to our faith, you know what that doesn't include? It doesn't include living in
an apartment by yourself, writing five papers a week, and publishing
them on your blog, and getting 10,000 followers of people that
you teach the Scripture. You don't have the authority
or the right to do that. Because what often happens in so many
congregations, so many gatherings, is there's so much extra food
that people are trying to nibble on, they're not getting the nutrition
for the sake of the local assembly. Did you hear that? I'm not saying
we don't engage, don't share the faith. I'm not saying that.
But beloved, you know what I'm talking about. There are people
out there who call themselves a ministry, but they're not ministering
to anybody. They're just ministering to whoever.
No real name, no real... I spend more time talking to
you all and sharing life with you all and praying for you. And if I didn't, I shouldn't
be standing here. And yes, I have people in other
parts of the world that I also am able to have intimacy with
in the faith. And they are just as important
as any of us. And by the Lord's grace, we will
see God plant them. But even in that, and some of
you have made friends with some of them, but even there, it is
lacking something, isn't it? It's lacking something. Why?
Because God's perfect plan for His body is to be gathered together
as often as possible. As often as possible. So we are
glad. to use our gifts. If prophecy
in proportion to our faith. If service in our serving. Can
you serve someone long distance? Yes, and if you can, do it. But
that's as much as you can do. That's as much as you can do.
Can you pray from one long distance? Better than if you were there
sometimes. And that's great, and it's a great ministry. And
we can do that much. But can you go help someone clean up
a mess? Can you go help someone at a
funeral parlor? No, so some of these things that
you can receive by not being gathered can be received, you
know, universally, I guess, but there are some things that cannot
be. You don't really weep together intimately as a whole church,
as a whole gathering. We pray for the situation we
prayed for before we started teaching tonight. I mean, no
matter the outcome of that, it is heart-wrenching. Do we weep
together for that? We weep together. We rejoice
together in those things. We're intimate with each other's
lives to such a degree that there is giftedness being exercised
and gifts being exercised toward each other. That only takes place
when we are gathered together. Many people in this congregation
will say to me, I just can't get this, or I just can't feel
this, or I can't... And I say to them, You are forsaking
the gathering together. You know what that would say
if we translated everything equivocally in the New Testament? You are
forsaking the church. Do not forsake the church, as
some are accustomed to doing. But what does he say there? Encourage
one another? Pushing each other, striving
together toward works and to love and good deeds, all that
together. How do we do that? How do we
do that? We live in a very different day
where we are able to touch the lives of many people apart from
those who live in close proximity to us. And friends, oftentimes
people forget that this is a real-life person on the other side of that
emoticon. It may seem impersonal, but beloved, there is one thing
that if I had power, I would have the power to explode the
heads of those very mean bullies who hurt the sheep of Christ.
Thank God I don't have that power, because someone else would blow
my head up sometime soon. Back to the point. Let us use
them. Prophecy of service and serving.
The one who teaches in his teaching. The one who exhorts in his exhortation.
The one who contributes in generosity. What would happen if we had no
one serving? What would happen if we had no
one teaching? What would happen if we did not exhort one another?
What would happen if no one contributed? What would happen if no one took
leadership roles with zeal? What would happen if the one
who has mercy doesn't do it with cheerfulness? We would not be
a church. We would not be gathered together.
No one's needs would be met. No spiritual growth and maturity
would ever be there. I'd love to go to Ephesians 4,
but time has gotten away from me. But the unity of the church
The unity of churches is clear that we are a body, and when
we gather together we get the fullness of this. And if we're
missing pieces, and just because we have an assembly doesn't make
us in a better place sometimes than those who don't have an
assembly. Yes, we may have more opportunity for ministry to each
other, but what if we're missing certain key aspects of that ministry?
What if there is no people who are generous? What if there is
no people who can teach? Are we really a spiritual church? Are we really the church of Jesus
Christ, or are we just gathering around hoping to be? Why am I
telling you all this? Well, I told you this beginning,
that it's constantly come back, well, how do you deal with people
who say, for example, you don't have to follow after Christ and
you've got sin in your life, it doesn't matter. Well, that's
what church discipline does. Guess what you can't have happen
if you're not assembled? Discipline. So the only place
that works is with the assembly. Blocking somebody on Facebook
is not church discipline. The elders of a church privately
telling a man he needs to hit the road is not church discipline.
That's abuse. The church must know together,
gathered, they must know What's happening? But what can we do? We are one
body. We can remove people from among
our fellowship. As Paul would say to the churches
of Galatia, we're no longer under a guardian, because in Christ
Jesus we are all sons of God, we've been adopted by God. And
in Ephesians 4, there are some actions that the body does together
when they assemble. and I'll just read them out to
you in a list. We walk worthy before each other. We walk worthy
in a manner worthy of the call that God has given us through
Christ Jesus, the effectual call of redemption that Jesus Christ
has paid for our sins and we are atoned for, and the call
that God gives through the gospel of grace by the power of the
Spirit brings us to life and we believe. And because we believe,
we are forgiven, right? We know we are forgiven. Why?
Because we believe. Because Christ has taken our guilt. He has paid
for our sins. We know that we are forgiven.
We are the body of Christ. He bought us. He redeemed us.
We then can, together, walk in a manner worthy of the calling.
Did it say perfect? No. Did it give a list of details? Did it give a fruit inspection
certificate at the end of every Sunday? Well, St. Brother Bob there had a little
sorry attitude. He gets a C. Little stale fruit. You're failing, Bob. You stink. I may have a great attitude,
but I can still stink like Bob. Because I can think to myself,
man, I'm glad I ain't got an attitude like Bob's. And I get an F for that. Walking of men are worthy. That's
what we're to do together. Yes, individually. We go out
into the world and we're eating at Denny's, going to the bathroom,
or we're in the cave in Afghanistan, or wherever it might be, those
poor guys, if they're listening, please let us know you're okay.
You've been in there a while. Sorry. It's been a long day. What was I talking about? Oh,
yeah. We're there. We've got these people. Yeah,
you're to walk in a man of worthy before all men. But most importantly,
collectively, when we assemble, we need to walk in a manner worthy.
We need to walk in a manner worthy that looks like this, Paul says
in Ephesians 4, with humility. What's that look like? The same
thing Paul said in Romans 12. Not thinking about ourselves
as better than anybody else, not thinking too often or too
highly of ourselves, but we are to be humble, we should have
humility, we should be gentle. What is gentleness? You know
what gentleness really comes with? Patience. How am I gentle
when I'm patient? And that's the exact order that
Paul says, with all humility and gentleness and patience.
And then he says, bearing with one another. Is that called a bear with the
Facebook troll? Absolutely. Bear with the Facebook troll.
But was that what Paul had in mind, that the Roman Christians
would bear with the Corinthians? Nope. It's not what Paul had
in mind, and this is the point of the text. Paul was not talking
to the Romans about dealing with the Corinthians, and he was not
talking about the Corinthians about the sin of the Romans,
and he was not talking about the Romans when he was talking
to the Thessalonians. He was talking to each individual
region, each individual gathering of the body of Christ in those
areas who were overseen by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ
and His headship through the commanded and instituted oversight
of the elders of the church under the authority of Scripture. We bear with each other in love. And we must have an eagerness
to maintain the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. Friends,
we ought to have that with every single person in the world that
claims to be in Christ. But we must first and foremost
put it to work within us. I want us to really think about
what it means to be together, to have the gathering. I preach,
and by the Lord's mercy, I haven't lost my mind yet with everything
that goes on in life. I mean, is your life a piece
of cake? No. It's not a piece of cake. It's
constant turmoil. And I've got friends up in the north that
I need to call tonight and talk to, and it just seems like every
time I sit down to plan to have a conversation, six weeks ago,
it's just like one thing after another every single week. And one night I'm like, oh, there's
no problems, and the power goes out. You can't Skype when the
power's out. What do we do? We do what we
can. You know who I can be with when the power goes out? You. And I will be. But beloved, one
of the main reasons I wanted to share this with you tonight
is because there is a deep and desperate need for church plants.
A deep and desperate need for there to be a planting of the
gathering of the saints. If it were not for that call
in my life, we would not be here tonight. And I want us to begin
to pray. I want us to begin to pray. And
when I'm talking about this, it's nothing new. It's in our
documents, it's in our mission statement, it's in all those
nifty little things that don't matter, that nobody looks at
after they join the church. But we must be praying that God
would plant the church. that He would plant people. We
must be praying that God would begin to equip men to pastor
the body of Christ at large in all parts, not just the United
States, but in all parts of the world. There are people who contact
me over and over again from Palestine, from Pakistan, Uganda, and other parts of Western
Africa, and they can't find anybody to help train them. Persecuted
parts of India. Kansas, Texas. Surely there's got to be a church
in Texas. You know what I think? I think we need to be more prayerful
and more diligent about the opportunity to help train people for the
ministry. I want you to begin to pray that
God would send qualified men to us to grow with us, that we
could send them back out, or that God would grow, both and,
and that God would grow some of us, some of our men out to
leave town and go. Some of our young men. I'm just
pointing at you, there you all are. You youth, you got more
freedom now than you will ever have. God may be calling some
of us to be equipped to pastor the church. And you might think,
well, why does it matter? It matters because that's what
God's called us to do. I want to see every orphan in
the world in a body of believers gathered. And until then, I'm
going to start deliberately connecting some of you with some of those
that we have assembled together in certain little groups on Facebook
and we're very protective of them because there's four of
us pastors who sort of help administrate the group and they have been
coming, they have began to start ministering to each other, these
orphan sheep. Some of them you know, some of
them have visited us here in the last few months. But some
of you may be able to be encouraging to them and vice versa because
we need to be careful to make sure that we pray diligently.
Missions, it's not what it used to be. Missionaries are no longer
on the forefront. I mean, it's very difficult to
find people who are called to mission work anymore, and mission
work primarily should be for the equipping and the planting
of the church of Jesus Christ in the local area of those places. Please, church, be in prayer
that God would do it. If we pray, God will answer the
prayer. His sheep will not starve, and
they will not starve for intimacy. Because there's enough teaching
to be seen with social media, but they need intimacy and they
want intimacy, and I want us to be in prayer for the intimacy
of God's assembled. Can we do that? I know we have
not even a full quorum, if we will, for our midweek services,
but beloved, I'm going to encourage the church to listen to this
task, to listen to this topic in the week to come, and so that
we might, as a people, not think so much about ourselves all the
time, But we could also, at the same time as we minister to each
other, pray that God would bring the harvest of workers to go
out and to call the sheep in. Let's pray. Thank you, Father,
for the truth of your word, Lord. And I seem to have talked too
much tonight, God. It's the nature of my flesh that
I get excited about a particular thing, and I want to share it,
and I blab on, and I do that which is not necessary when Your
Word is sufficient. But God, it is what it is, and
this is where we are. So I pray that You would work
in us to incite us, to encourage us, to compel us to be where
we are in this present day. And most importantly, that we
would be prayerful about where You would have us be tomorrow
and in the years to come. God, I do pray that Grace Truth
can be a people who see churches plant. And Father, I don't want
any of our families to leave us. I really don't. I pray you
just call some other folks to come and we could train them
and send them back home. But Lord, I also am not going to be selfish
in that, Lord, that if it is your will that you would call
some to be trained over the next few years to go and plant churches,
God. It is not something we do hastily. It's not like, we've
got to do this next year, Father. You know that's not our heart.
But Lord, in the decade to come, let us see a few churches. Let
us see more and more in progression of sound doctrine and sound ecclesiology
so that we can be multiplying in that vein and get away from
the status quo ecumenism and evangelical cultism that's so
rampant today that people have lost focus of the Word and of
the truth and of intimacy. Lord, help us to beat this drum
until you return and send your Son to us. And it's in His name
we pray. Amen. Thank you, Church. Thank you for listening. We hope
that this message has encouraged you in the faith. Subscribe to
these messages and other teaching resources and podcasts at anchoringfaith.org. More information about the church
can be found at gracetruth.org.