The Local Church – Acts 20:28

GRAB THEIR ATTENTION

Sometimes misinformation yields funny results. Think back to the 1989 Disney film, The Little Mermaid. Ariel, the main character is infatuated with life on land; out of the sea. She spends her time swimming from shipwreck to shipwreck collecting various gadgets, gizmos, and thingamabobs. As she collects various items, she brings them to a bird, named Scuttle, who is her only source of information about life above the waves. So, Scuttle famously misinforms Ariel that the silver dinner fork she found in a shipwreck is actually a “Dinglehopper,” a device that humans use to brush their hair. This bit of misinformation seems innocuous until Ariel, who later is transformed into a human, finds herself sitting at a dinner table and begins brushing her hair. After a few confused looks from the dinner party, she realizes that Scuttle may not understand as much as she had thought.

At other times, misinformation yields disastrous results. In 1960, Bernard started his investment firm as a penny stock trader with $5,000 he had earned working as a lifeguard and $50,000 that he had borrowed from his inlaws. By the 1980s, Bernard became the largest dealer in NYSE-listed stock in the U.S.. Because he had built a reputation for investment success, Bernard began to expand his investment empire, promising investors high returns for their investments; investments he would never actually invest but instead would deposit into his bank account and use to fund his lavish lifestyle. By 2008, when Bernie Madoff’s own sons alerted federal authorities of the now infamous Ponzi scheme, more than 4,800 clients learned they had been defrauded to the tune of $64.8 billion dollars of investments over 17 years.

Knowing what something truly is helps you know what it’s supposed to be doing. Dinner forks are for salad and steak, not hair. Investments are meant to be, you know, invested, not squandered. And the same could be said about the church. Knowing what the church is helps us know what the church is supposed to be doing.

RAISE THE NEED, SIGNPOSTS, STATE THE DESTINATION

Our congregation is in the second of four unique sermons. They are unique in that they are topical rather than expository sermons. So, if you are new, we normally go to a Bible passage, read it, and try to unpack all that God is saying there. But for these four sermons, we are focusing on what, really, all of the Bible, but especially the entire New Testament has to teach us about the church. Last week we examined the role of pastors in the local church and today we are defining the church itself in order that our own congregation might become more faithful in both our understanding and our practice.

So, what is a church? The word church gets used in a variety of contexts.

Universal Church

We might define “the” church in a universal sense; that is, the church is the community of all true believers who belong to Christ, past, present, and future. This is what we mean when we confess in the creed: “I believe in one holy universal church.”

Denomination

We may even refer to various Christian denominations as churches. For instance: the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, or the Anglican Church.

Building

You likely have referred to this building as a “church.”

Ekklesia

The New Testament word we translate as “church” is ekklesia, meaning “assembly.” That Greek word is used in the New Testament to refer to Christian assemblies, but it’s also even used for the assembled mob in Ephesus. The assembled crowd, in the New Testament, constitutes the church.

Today, I want to focus our study, not on the church universal, nor the church in its various denominational flavors. Today, we’ll focus on the local church.

What is a local church? And, here’s my working definition which will also serve as our outline for the sermon:

A church is a group of Christians who regularly gather in the name of Jesus in order to affirm and oversee one another’s profession of faith through the preaching of the gospel and the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. (Repeat)

If we break this definition into pieces we see that a church is:

1. A Group of Christians

2. A Regular Gathering

3. A Representation of Christ’s Rule on Earth

4. An Exercise of Affirmation & Oversight

5. Accomplished through Preaching & Ordinances.

That’s our outline for the sermon. And as we work our way through the outline I pray that we all gain a greater understanding of what the local church is; what Lake Wylie Baptist is, in order that we might more faithfully live in this world as we ought.

Friend, if you have come today, and you are not a Christian, I’ve prayed for you this week, that even in a sermon that sounds like it’s for Christians—well, I pray you would hear something of Jesus and your need to believe in who he is and what he has done to save sinners.

This should be obvious, but I’m not sure it is. For too long, most Americans have associated church attendance with conversion, but it is simply not the case that attending a church makes you a Christian. As a child, I remember hearing the songwriter, Keith Green, remark that going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to McDonald’s makes you a hamburger.

Now, of course, there are gathered in this room today both Christians and non-Christians, and it’s important to remember that only the Christians are the church.

Whenever the New Testament speaks about the church, it is crystal clear that the church is a group of Christians. In Hebrews 12:23, the author, speaking to about the nature of the church, says that the church is the “assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven.” In other words, the church are children of God, whose names are recorded in God’s heavenly books.

Or consider again, Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesian elders that we read last week in Acts 20:28

28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.

You see, the people of the church are people who were bought, or redeemed, or ransomed with the blood of Jesus Christ. In the letter to the Ephesians, Paul says that Christ “is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.”(Eph. 5:23)

Why is it important to understand that a local church is to be made up of Christians?

Evangelism

Is it because we don’t want non-Christians here? Of course not. We want all kinds of non-Christians here. We’ve been commissioned by Jesus Christ to make disciples of all nations, to baptize those who are professing faith, and to teach obedience to Christ, and the only kind of church that can be effective in that mission is a church of converted Christians.

Ministry to Children

God has blessed this congregation with many families with little children. If that’s you, then God has called you first and foremost to evangelize them. To recognize that being born into a church-going family does not make your children Christians. No, friend, this is why we do not permit unbaptized children to partake in the Lord’s Supper.

It’s not because we don’t love them, but because we do. We want them to see what true repentance of sins and faith in Jesus Christ looks like.

If you are wondering how you can more faithfully point your child to Christ, grab a copy of “Established in the Faith,” from the bookstall at the back, and begin slowly working through it with your child.

As I mentioned earlier, the NT word we translate as “church” is a word that, in the first century, simply meant “gathering,” or “assembly.” A church is a group of Christians characterized by literally assembling together in the same place.

• Acts 2:44, we’re told that “all those who had believed were together.”

• Acts 5:12, “and they were all with one accord in Solomon’s portico.”

• Acts 20:7 “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread”

• 1 Corinthians 16:2 “on the first day of every week, put something aside.”

Over and over, we see that the local church regularly assembles and that the assembly is the church.

What I am saying here runs entirely against the grain of church growth strategy in the last 50 years. For decades, church growth influencers have taken a pragmatic approach to the church.

– We want to reach more people with the gospel.

– Whenever a worship service is at capacity, launch a new service, or many.

– Whenever a campus is at capacity, launch a multi-site model.

So, there are many churches today that have 2, 3, 4, 8 campuses spread over a geographical area, but they all claim to be one church. Not that Campus A is a church, and Campus B is a church, and so on… but that A, B, C, and all are one.

Here at Lake Wylie Baptist, we’ve tried to advocate for a model that doesn’t succumb to pragmatic approaches to growth. Of course, we want more people to hear the gospel. That’s why we’re voting on a campus expansion next Sunday after service. However, this church will never have multiple campuses. And we don’t ever plan to have multiple permanent worship services.

You see, making converts is not the only purpose of the church. The church is also called to the oversight and care of its members. (More on that in a moment.

Friends, you cannot oversee and care for Christians who are at a different campus. In fact, you can’t oversee or care for those who are in a different worship service. And you may ask, “But isn’t that your job, Jonathan? Can’t you be at all those services?” Well, friends, I could. But here’s the problem.

The Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul have not left the power of church oversight and discipline solely in my hands. Jesus, in Matthew 18, and Paul, in 1 Corinthians 5:4-5 tell us that the highest authority in the church, under Christ, is not the pastor—it’s the assembled congregation. Listen to Jesus’ words concerning church discipline in Matthew 18:17

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. (Matt. 18:17-20)

Friends, Jesus says that the assembled congregation, in a special way, represents the very presence of Christ such that when the congregation disciplines a wayward church member, it is as if Christ is standing in their midst agreeing with them.

We must move on, but it is crucial that we commit ourselves to this weekly assembly, not just because the church is called to assemble, but that the assembly is the church.

A church is a group of Christians who regularly gather in the name of Jesus. This should be rather obvious, but this is so easily overlooked.

Matthew 28:18-20 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

So, the church is called to this mission: making disciples. This is why the mission statement of our church is on the welcome slide every week: we exist to glorify God by making disciples of every nation, beginning in Lake Wylie.

We are on this hill because God has assigned us the task of representing the rule and reign of Christ to this corner of the world.

So, we say, with the church in every age: Jesus Christ is Lord. And that Lordship isn’t a mere technicality. No, when he was raised, all authority in heaven and earth was given to Jesus. So, Jesus is Lord over everything. The land and the sea. The sky, the earth, and everything under the earth. He is Lord of mayflies and mountains and everything in between.

As we approach November, you will hear many lessons and sermons dealing with the political woes of our age, and how the King, Jesus Christ, speaks to those woes. And it is critical that those who give those lessons and the men who preach those sermons understand who they are representing:

– They are not representing themselves and their own political opinions.

– We, as a church, are not representing you, or the community. We are not trying to be a mirror, telling you and our neighbors what you want to hear in order to try and grow.

– Most importantly, we are not representing political parties. Lake Wylie Baptist Church is not an errand boy for political parties or candidates.

The church is to stand apart from and above every political party teaching them all to obey Jesus Christ. Our chief responsibility must be preserving our ability to speak prophetically to every candidate on behalf of the risen Lord. Our political order is intimately connected to our faith, our personal lives, our families, and even our church.

Friends, when we vote in good governments, which allow more free speech, which make the world safer, and more affordable it allows us, the church, to proclaim the gospel more easily in the world; to plant more churches, to send more missionaries, to live lives of holiness in peace and quiet instead of being targeted.

So, we care deeply about politics, but we don’t carry water for any human king, president, or candidate from this pulpit. We preach Christ and his laws. The church represents Christ.

First, the local church has a responsibility to affirm an individual’s profession of faith. We do that through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. All those we baptize, we are publicly pronouncing that they truly belong to Christ. All who we admit to the Lord’s Table, we are declaring, as a body, that they belong to Jesus. So, we are publicly witnessing and affirming their profession of faith.

Think of our church as an embassy of heaven. An embassy, if you’re unfamiliar with the idea, is an officially sanctioned outpost of one nation inside the borders of another nation. It represents and speaks for that foreign nation.

For instance, in 2008 I was doing mission work in a nation that was closed to the gospel. Imagine that while I was in that nation, my US passport expired. So I would need to travel to the U. S. Embassy in that nation. Stepping inside, I would technically be on American soil. That building, the ambassador to that nation, and all the state department officials working inside bear the authority of the U. S. government. They can speak for my government in a way that I, though a U.S. citizen, cannot, at least not in any official sense. Embassies and ambassadors present the official judgments of a foreign nation—what that nation wants, what it will do, what it believes.

After looking at my expired passport and checking their records, they render a judgment: I am in fact a US citizen and they give me a new passport.

An embassy is able to affirm my statement that I’m a citizen. In the same way, a church is responsible for affirming, or in some cases, denying an individual’s profession that they are a Christian. The church is an outpost and embassy of the kingdom of Christ.

This is what Jesus meant when he gave authority to the apostles and the church in Matthew 16:18

18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

He isn’t saying we can make people Christians no more than an embassy could make me an American. Rather, he is saying that churches can make official (albeit, preliminary) pronouncements.

What is a right confession of faith? Who is a true confessor of Christ? Well, it is the responsibility of the church to exercise oversight and affirmation of Christians.

A church is a group of Christians who regularly gather in the name of Jesus in order to affirm and oversee one another’s profession of faith through the preaching of the gospel and the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

Preaching

The first mark of a healthy church is expositional preaching. By that, I mean the systematic preaching of Biblical texts that takes the point of the passage as the point of the sermon. That’s it. The preacher opens the Word of God, reads it, and unfolds it for the people. Ironically, that is not what we are doing in this series of messages. But, but God’s grace, that is what we do 99% of the time.

Why preach expositionally through Bible texts? I’m glad you asked. 2 Timothy 3:16-17, a text well worth your time to memorize, says:

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.

All the Bible is God’s Word. This means that all of it is authoritative. Not some of it. All of it. God cannot lie, therefore his Word cannot lie. God wields ultimate authority, so his Word is authoritative.

By committing ourselves to expository preaching, we no longer get to pick and choose what we want to hear. We don’t get to decide what is authoritative for our church. Friends, expositional preaching is an active commitment to submit to God and what he has said.

How can we represent Christ to the world without proclaiming his Word? How can we oversee one another’s profession of faith if we have not proclaimed, from God’s Word, what that faith is?

You see, a church without the right preaching of the Word of God isn’t a church.

Ordinances

And the same can be said of the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. If baptism and the Lord’s Supper are the primary ways our church affirms and oversees someone’s profession of faith, then these two ordinances must be at the center of our life together.

Think of it this way: God creates the church in two steps. In the first step, he creates Christians. How does he do that? He sends people to preach Christ. He sends his Spirit to enable someone to hear and believe in Christ. So God creates his church by the sending of his Word.

And then, step two, he takes those individual Christians and brings them together in one body. But a local church doesn’t automatically spring into existence whenever two or more Christians are gathered. Otherwise, whenever you bump into a Christian at the grocery store, a church would emerge, and it would evaporate the moment you walk away. (Jameison)

 So, how does God formally create local churches? He does this through baptism and the Lord’s Supper. These are what bind us together.

The preaching of the gospel and faith in Christ is what makes us one with God. In the same way, baptism and the Lord’s Supper are what make us one with another in this church.

Baptism is where faith goes public. It’s how a new convert shows up on the radar as a Christian. In baptism, the church is saying to the world, “This one belongs to Jesus.”

And in the Lord’s Supper, we renew our commitment to Christ and his people. We renew our commitment to one another. Baptism is the initial sign of fellowship with Christ and his people. The Supper is the ongoing sign of that fellowship

1 Corinthians 10:16-17 says,

16 The cup of blessing that we bless, 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? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

We are not one because we wanted to be one. We are not unified because we chose unity over division this morning. Not ultimately. We are one because we have gone under the waters of Baptism, and because we have symbolically ate and drank the body and blood of Christ together.

So, where are you today? Are you a Christian? Have you come to believe that you are a sinner, that your sins have offended God’s law and his person? And have you come to see that Jesus Christ is the only savior of sinners? That through his death, he paid the penalty for your sin, and that now, because he lives you can go to God, admitting your need, trusting in Christ and be forgiven? Friend, you can do that today. If you have questions about the gospel, come talk to me after the sermon. Talk to one of our members.

Well, if you are a Christian, have you been baptized? By that I mean, that as a professing Christian, have you received baptism? Not as a baby, not as an unbeliever. If not, Jesus is calling you to go public with your faith. Declare him as your Lord before men. If you have questions about baptism, come and talk to me after the morning service.

Have you formally joined a church? We have a membership matters course scheduled for the end of September. You ought to consider taking that class, learning more, and submitting your Christian walk to the loving oversight of a church.

Lake Wylie Baptist, if we will be effective for Christ, we have to know what we are. If we will please Christ, we’ll need to live according to his design for the church.

A church is a group of Christians who regularly gather in the name of Jesus in order to affirm and oversee one another’s profession of faith through the preaching of the gospel and the right administration of baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

May God give us the grace to believe this, and to live it out for his glory in the world.