The Anatomy of a Church, Part 1-8, Complete Edition

The Anatomy of a Church, Part 1-8, Complete Edition

By John MacArthur

The Skeleton

The Anatomy of the Church: The Skeleton

I don't know how true it is, but someone said to me this week, "People think of you as a preaching machine, and may not really know what's in your heart, because you're very seldom disconnected from a text." And I said, "Well, this Sunday will help then, because I am just gonna share my heart."

We, in our series in Matthew, would normally be beginning chapter 21, which begins the last week of our Lord's life; but before we get into that great, glorious climax of the Book of Matthew for which we all have waited about five years, including myself, I just have some things in my heart to share with you.

When I go away and minister in other places, preach in other places, talk to other folks, spend time in prayer in the Word and reading some books and things, I usually am able to back away from the pressure and think clearly. When I'm here, it's difficult to have the time to do that; and as a result of that, the Lord seems to impress upon my heart certain things that are needful for me to understand, for me to emphasize in my own heart and life and...and for me to share with you; and I...I'm concerned about our church. I...I want you to know that this church is my life. It is the very heart and soul of my life. I don't feel the ministry has plateaued here. I don't feel that we've done it - now we're just gonna try to hang onto it. I feel we've only just begun and that whatever energy I gave in the last 15 years is only preliminary to the energy that I want to give in the next, should the the Lord tarry, 15 years or whatever.

I believe that the future is yet before us. It is exciting, filled with joy and anticipation, and...and tremendous potential of possibility; but I also think we are at a point in our church life where we're at a very, very crisis interval; and there can be a great future for us or there cannot, depending on what we do with the moment of opportunity which we have in our hands right now.

I was playing golf for the first time in my summer the other day, and I had waited a long time to get the time to do that, even while I'm vacationing. I usually find some places to preach while I'm on vacation, so it takes some of the time; but I...I was playing golf with a pastor, and he wanted to know about building a church and had it in his heart to build a church and really was hungry to build a church. Been to our shepherd's conference; and in fact been here twice; and I had preached in his church back east; and...and he said, "Boy, I just...I wanna see God do that. I wanna see a church built," and so forth. And so he was asking me about the ministry; and then he said, "You know, a church like yours, how is it...how is it a church that's as large as yours and with so many things happening, so many ministries, and so forth. Is it difficult?"

Or is it a...is it the implication of his questioning was, "Now that it's there, do you sort of rest?" And I said, "Lemme tell you something." I said, "Being a part of the building of a church is easy. I mean that's like being in a sailboat. Somebody else is blowing it along. You're just sitting in it; and I...I can honestly tell you that the...the growth of Grace Church, the great years of...of tremendous growth when we started out with four or five hundred people and just took off and grew and grew and grew; and all these wonderful things were happening. That was easy."

I mean I didn't know what was going on, to be honest with ya. I came here every Sunday just to see what was happening...In fact, it was so much God's doing. It was so thrilling and so exciting. Sure, there were principles which we applied out of the Word of God, and there were emphases, and there was a drive for excellence and so forth, but...but those were euphoria times. I mean those were just ecstatic times. I...I like to call those the years of discovery. I came here. I didn't know much of anything; and so every week I'd study; and we'd learn together; and then I'd tell 'em what the Bible said; and everybody'd say, "Wow, so that's what the Bible means there. So that's what it's saying to us." And we'd get excited about that, and we'd take another big step in terms of our spiritual growth and understanding, and the Lord would add to the church, and it just kept going like that.

And, really, it was like some kind of a...of a prolonged honeymoon. There was energy everywhere. There was excitement and enthusiasm, and...and everybody was thrilled, and we weren't even doing in those years the things we're doing now, but...but no one ever expected anything. And so everything that came was just marvelous.

My goal, honestly, when I came here, was to keep the people that were already here from leaving. That was my basic goal. If I can just go there, and they won't leave, that'll be a moral victory. I never envisioned this. That's why I've said that the verse in the Bible that has come most true and most to my understanding in the years of ministry here is Ephesians 3:20, "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all you could ask or think." I've seen God do that.

But in those early years, we were all excited. There was a tremendous ecstasy. There was a tremendous sacrifice. Everybody was a part of the building and the growing together. One of the staff fellows said to me a couple weeks ago, he said, "If you look at history in...in just about every area of church life and the life of God's people, it's kinda followed a very interesting pattern. The first generation fights to discover and establish the truth"; and that's what we did. I mean that first flow of years was discovery and laying down the truth and tremendous excitement. And then he said, "The second generation fights to maintain the truth and proclaim the truth." And we've seen that where we put it down in books and on tapes, and we've...we've started sending out men to preach it somewhere else, and drawing people here and teaching them, sending them, and...and working with pastors, and we've started to wanna maintain the truth and...and proclaim the truth.

And then he said, "The third generation could care less. Since they weren't a part of the fight on either front, they really don't have anything at stake. They tend to take it for granted." Boy, that scares me. That really scares me..."The toughest thing," I said to this pastor, "the toughest thing to deal with in the ministry is indifference or apathy, complacency." You can't deal with it. There's no way to deal with it, except to just go at it as best you can in preaching and...and so forth. That is difficult.

Somebody comes to me and, you know, we have problems just like any church would have. In fact, we have more of them, of course, because we have more folks. Didn't have any people, wouldn't have any problems...You understand...But when somebody comes to me and says, "Oh, John, we've got a real problem. We have got a real problem." Now, I've come back. I've been gone and come back several times this summer. Every time I come back, somebody says to me, "We gotta problem. We gotta real problem. Do you know what happened? So and so and so and so having so." And my response to that is, "Terrific, boy, that is exciting. We've got a problem, and we know what it is, and we can solve it with the truth of the Word of God. Terrific."

I mean that's the fun of the ministry. Who would...who could stand a church with no problems? I mean if you find a church, I'll tell young pastors all the time, if you find a church with no problems, don't go there. You'll wreck it...I mean what a great thing to have problems, because problems can be solved with the application of divine truth. So I get excited about that.

But complacency, indifference, or apathy, that's heartbreaking; and to think that we could produce a generation of people who weren't ever a part of the struggle, and who just take it all for granted, just walk in and pile up and...and sort of sit on the outside perimeter and say, "Well, it's all here, folks, we just take it for granted. It'll always be here," and since they didn't know what the price was, they can't even taste the sweet taste of victory. They don't even know what it is to have gone through the whole battle. I mean you only have one shot at life, and I look at it as if God has given me the greatest, most wonderful, thrilling, possible use of the one shot I've got. He's put me right here, and I don't think it's over yet.

But the thing that I fear is that folks who weren't a part of the process of building and the process of fighting and discovering and laying it all down and getting it all moving are gonna come here and not be able to appreciate what it is...that God has done.

And I'm reminded of a passage, and I'd like you to open your Bible to Deuteronomy chapter 6, and I think there is a good illustration, a passage written for our example...of this same kind of thing. God, of course, in His wonderful grace, chose His people Israel...mercifully brought them out of bondage, put them in the Promised Land...literally inundated them with profuse divine grace and blessing...and He says in verse 3 of Deuteronomy 6, "Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it, that it may be well with thee, and that ye may increase mightily, as the Lord God of thy fathers has promised thee, in the land that flows with milk and honey."

He says, "You better keep the commandments. You better be true to the faith. Hear, O Israel...verse 4...The Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul, with all thy might." First thing He says is, "Look, if you're gonna hold true to the faith, you gotta love God with all your heart, soul...all your might." Love God. Love God. Love God more than you love the world. Love God more than you love your new car, your house, your job, your money, your wardrobe, anybody, anything, anyplace.

I've been reading this last week a classic on loving God by Bernard of Clairvaux. Very convicting. Very convicting. He says, "I have three great desires in my soul: to remember God, to contemplate God, to love God." It's a far cry from some of us. If we were asked to list the three great desires of our soul, I wonder if that's what they'd be: to remember God in all things, to contemplate God at all times, to love God."...And so he says, "It starts on the inside. I put you in a land with milk and honey. I put you in the best place of blessing, and you're gonna have to get it in the inside, a commitment to love God."

And then it moves to the outside in verse 6. "These words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart; and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children." Not only in your heart, but on your lips. Teach to your children. Talk about 'em when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, when you rise up. What's your conversation like? Do you talk about godliness? Do you talk about God? Do you talk about Christ? Talk about the Holy Spirit? Talk about the Bible? Talk about virtue? Talk about things that are good and honest and pure and lovely? I mean do you go on a trip with somebody for the weekend and never talk about God, never talk about spiritual things, never talk about things for which you should be accountable in terms of obedience? I mean where is your conversation?

See, if we're gonna hold onto these things, we have to love God with all our heart. We also have to talk about it all the time so that it stimulates our minds; and we need to be exposed to that. I believe one reason God has raised up Christian radio today and tape ministries is because it's the only way that I know of to...to sort of withstand the onslaught of godlessness that comes to people through radio and television. I mean there was a day when you weren't bombarded in society by all that garbage. You just went home and talked to the folk...folks that lived there. Now you got the whole world talking at ya and selling you godless philosophy from every possible angle; and you can hardly make it from Sunday to Sunday without falling out in terms of your own spiritual commitment; and so the Lord's raised up resources. We oughta be buried in those kinda things until we cultivate a pure mind. We need to talk about it all the time.

Is that what you talk about? Is that your conversation? I mean it's fine to talk about the Dodgers once in a while, but it's not the real issue...and all the other stuff that doesn't matter. And then in verse 8, He says do something else. Put reminders up. "Bind 'em for a sign on your hand, and frontlets between your eyes, and write 'em on the posts of your house and on your gates."

In other words, He says, "Jog your memory with some symbols." I mean I believe that Christian homes and...and offices and whatever, wherever we are, we need to have reminders to jolt our memories into the things that we oughta be thinking about. That's all those things were, were just ways to jog their mind and remember...cause them to remember the things they were supposed to be committed to. We need to have those things around, too, to remind us what we forget. So it starts in the heart, and it comes out on the lips, and it oughta be jogged in our minds by signs and symbols. You say, "Why all of this?" I'll tell you why. Because "It'll be, when the Lord thy God has brought thee into the land which He swore unto thy fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give thee great and goodly cities which thou buildest not, and houses full of all good things which thou fills not, and wells digged which thou digs not, vineyards and olive trees which thou plantest not, when thou shalt have eaten and be full, then beware lest thou forget the Lord who brought thee."

I mean the tendency is when you haven't been a part of the process, you take for granted the results...and I guess I fear that some of us even who are a part of the process may forget that process, may forget the hand of God the way we saw God move; and many new folks just come in. You don't even know the price that was paid. You don't even understand the sacrifice of time and talent and effort and money the people made...

I remember a young couple who forfeited their honeymoon, because they wanted to give. I mean that's just one of thousands upon thousands of illustrations; but some people just walk in and it's all there. It's all done well. It's all done right. What happens is, is little things go wrong, and they get real picky; and they don't understand where the real warfare is, and they don't understand the real fight and the big issues, so they quibble about the rest of the stuff. It's like one guy said one time, "They're rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic."...

And sometimes people tell me things, little picky things, and my response inside, I don't always say it, sometimes I do, is "Who cares? I don't care about that. What I do care about is this," and they say, "Oh, oh." Let's get on to the real stuff. Why do people wanna fiddle around with the nonessentials? Get on with the Kingdom. Some people spend their whole life fooling around with trivia, picky little things. They don't understand, and I...I think that the child of apathy is criticism, and it's so easy, you know. I...to get into the place where you take everything for granted, and you become kind of indifferent to it all, and then you start to criticize it. And all of the imperfections you can see, you know, like Thomas Hardy. He said he could...he had a friend who could go into any beautiful meadow and immediately find the manure pile. Well, that's a perspective. That's a perspective that you don't wanna have...

I know that God's given us wonderful people, and we...we are the richest church in...in the world in terms of the wondrous people God's given us. We bless His name for that. But I also know that there are many people who come only when it's convenient. I know, you...some of you come only when it's convenient. It was convenient today, so you came. If it wasn't convenient, you wouldn't come. And you look at the church like you look at everything else in life; and if it serves a need for you, then you go. If you can find something else that serves your need better, you go there. I mean if you think it's better for you to take off, you take off. If it's okay to go to church, you go to church. For some people, it's sort of the...the lesser of alternatives, when the budget's low on the weekend.

For other people, they come whenever they want. They don't see...they don't see any real need for commitment; and Sunday night, to them, is just something they never get involved in. They think one sermon a week is enough. If you think that's true, you need 200 sermons at least this week, maybe. Sorta blast you out of your complacency...

As somebody said, I think it was Kierkegaard said, "People think that the preacher is an actor, and they're supposed to come and be his critics." What they don't know, is they're the actors, and he's the prompter offstage reminding them of their lost lines...

So it's easy for us to get to the point where, you know, we...we live in a world where everything's for you. I mean do your thing. Get it your way. All coming to you, everything coming to you; and even our so-called Christian world spawns that same kind of feeling; and so you look at the church; and if it's got something to offer, you show up. You don't understand the loyalty of supporting the pastor when he's up there or the man of God who's speaking; and I worry about that sometimes when others are speaking besides myself; and...and people say, "Well, it's only so and so speaking. We'll go away. We won't go." And you realize, of course, what that says to that person. They're not blind. They're not stupid. They understand what that says. That that says to them, "It's only you, isn't it?" And that's the kind of attitude that breeds complacency in a church, and that's the kinda thing that can kill a great ministry.

You see, that's right where Ephesus was. They left their first love, and they needed to be jolted to remember what it used to be like. Have you forgotten how it was? So I said to this pastor, "Building a church is easy. It's trying to deal with the big one that's tough. It's trying to get your arms around a thing, keep people from getting complacent, indifferent, taking everything for granted and not understanding what they have. I mean the teaching here is so good, and the music here is so great, so glorious. We just take it granted; and people work so hard to take care of our kids and teach our little ones and so all the things they do, and it's so easy for us to just take it for granted...and we don't even pray like we should.

I mean do you pray for me, regularly? Ah, some people say to me, very often, people that I love will say to me, "I...I pray for you all the time." I hang on that. I hold onto that, because you don't understand. This is a warfare. I know. I'm a preaching machine. I get up here and blllllrrrrr, out it comes; and you...you grade it on a one to ten, maybe; and once in a while one's good enough to keep you coming for another...looking for another good one; and that's all right. I understand that; but do you pray? And what about the others? Do you pray for them, too, the others who teach and preach here? The others who lead and serve?

I mean some folks are quick to criticize and not so quick to pray; and what about those of you in leadership? Are you praying for the people you lead? Or do we think it's all being done so well, we don't need God anymore? See, you don't understand the battle. You don't understand the warfare. You just see the result. It all looks so easy...You don't understand the tears and the toil. You don't understand how we, who are in leadership in the church, have to come alongside each other sometimes just to hold each other up, because it gets very painful, very difficult...And I just want you to remember that we need you to be a part. We need you to be totally committed. We need you to pray. We need to use your gifts, serve...

I had this brought home to my heart, I think rather strongly, by a letter I received from a young pastor; and I wanna share it with you. It's really what kinda triggered my just talking to you from my heart this week and probably next week, too. But my great joy in the ministry is to see young men go into the ministry. I got a letter from one who's thinking about getting out, and that really kinda broke my heart. This is what he said.

"This letter comes to your attention for several reasons; and though we have not met personally, I have read some of your books and heard you on the radio several times. Let me explain my great concern, one which I have not been able to correct and one that is causing me to consider leaving the ministry. Perhaps your...your insights, the Lord will use to give me some light.

"First of all, my position. I firmly believe that the leadership of the church should be the very best, not only in their personal spiritual lives, but also in setting the pace for people they lead. Now, I hasten to add that I am not talking about perfection or any type of superhumanness. Just a living, growing personal relationship with our Lord. I firmly believe that, if the leaders of the church do not present a lifestyle of commitment and dedication to their Lord and to the local body, that those following won't either.

"The problem. Pastor MacArthur, two-thirds of our elected officers attend only one service per week. Again, I'm not talking about being or having to be present every time the doors are opened; but I do believe that other than unforeseen situations, illnesses, and vacations, that the leadership of the church should make a double effort to be present at the services, if for no other reason than for the encouragement of the saints and the pastor...I find it extremely difficult to believe that proper leadership is or can be provided when the leaders do not spend enough time with their people to even know where their hurts and fears are. I go to board meetings and find that, by far, the majority of the time is spent on items that have no direct relationship to the needs and hurts of people. I believe that, because of this, our church has come to a stalemate, which is equal to going backwards instead of moving ahead.

"I have brought this to the attention of our board on several occasions; and, to be honest, not even all of them are faithful in their attendance...and expressed my concern with absolutely no results.

"Again, I'm not talking about men and women who just cannot make it, but about those who could but will not. I receive the normal replies, "My schedule's awfully busy. I'm...I'm just too tired at the end of the day." Or they don't even offer an excuse; but these very same people are not afraid to remind me often that they are the power of the church...it often happens.

"Pastor, I've come to the place where I am, if this is carried on into next year, ready to resign the pastorate. How is it possible for a pastor to direct his flock, establish the needed programs, develop spiritual leadership if he can't even get the backing to get started? I'm open to your advice. I believe our church has great possibilities; but as long as we're lukewarm, the Lord will not bless us or use us."

That letter could've been written by thousands of different pastors, because that's so common...to take for granted the good things God's given us. I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to take it for granted. I don't want you to forget the Lord...I want you to go on fearing His name.

Look with me for a moment at 2 Peter chapter 1, and I'll tell you just where I am in the words of Peter...verse 12...2 Peter 1:12, "Wherefore...Peter says writing to his congregation, in a sense...I will not be negligent." I can understand that. You're given an opportunity by God, you don't wanna blow it. It's a holy calling, a high calling, a great privilege for which you are accountable, responsible. But he says, "I don't wanna be negligent in my calling, so I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance." And I stand here to do the same today.

I'm not gonna say anything new. I'm gonna say some things that are old that you need to remember. He says, "I wanna put you in remembrance of these things, though you know and are established in the present truth. I know you know 'em. You just need to be reminded. You just need something to jolt your memory."...And I'm gonna keep doing this as long as I am in this body, so that when I leave this body, this earthly tabernacle, verse 14 and verse 15 says, "You'll remember even then after I'm dead." There's a certain virtue in harping on the same basic things that cannot be forgotten...and that's what I'd like to do, just share my heart along the line of those things.

Many pastors come here to find out why our church grows and what we're doing; and they usually come wanting to pick up some programs that they can take back and apply in their own church. They come to our Shepherd's Conference. We'll be having one in October. I hope you'll be a part of that. We'll have 250 new pastors here; and they are desirous of knowing what God is doing; and they usually come thinking they can pick up methods, tools, programs, ideas, and take 'em back and stick 'em in their church; which would be like coming to get a body, and just dragging the skin home.

I mean they're looking for how we flesh out our ministry. What they don't understand is all the stuff that's inside; and so when they come for the Shepherd's Conference, we try to teach 'em that. That there's an awful lot under the surface that you don't see that is foundational to make everything else make sense. You see a ministry functioning; but what you have to understand is what's behind the scene that you can't see; and so I'd like to borrow an analogy, if I can, from the Apostle Paul. The analogy of a body, and I believe we can call this "The Anatomy of a Church"; but I believe that the body can be seen in four features. This is not clinical. This is just for the sake of our analogy. Bones or skeleton, internal systems, muscles, and flesh, and a church has to...has to understand itself in that way. There has to be framework, skeleton. There has to be internal systems, which I call the flowing through of certain attitudes; and then there has to be muscle, which is the kinds of function that we do, and then it fleshes out in the form of our ministry.

But the form is not enough. You can't just reproduce the form without the rest. It won't live. It won't stand up. It won't work, so I wanna take us back, if I can and...and start where we are at the beginning; and this is what I believe Christ wants our church to be. This is where we're committed, and we've been committed to this from the very beginning, and we're still committed to it, and the future is greater than the present by far if we really get our act together.

I mean we look around and say, "Hey, look at how crowded it is." Listen, we got a balcony we're waiting to put in this place. We're ready to put it in as soon as we sense there's a need for it, and there oughta be a need for it. We have a million people right in this little valley here; and, on any given Sunday, at the very most 20,000 of 'em are in a church where they're gonna hear the truth...and that leaves us a whole lot left, huh? Maybe 980,000? We can get some kind of skewed perspective when we think it's all been done already. We got people right around the block here who've never been in the door of this place...We wanna do what we need to do in the future, because God's given us the foundation. We don't wanna say, "Hey, we built the foundation. Isn't this a lovely foundation?" We wanna go on and finish the house.

So moving to that familiar Pauline metaphor and borrowing it if I can out of its Biblical pattern, I wanna talk first of all about the skeleton; and I think that's all I'll talk about this morning, just that, the skeleton.

For the body to function and the body to work, it has to have skeleton. It has to have structure. Has to have form. It's the skeleton that gives the basic structure form to the body. Now, I believer that there are certain skeletal truths that we have to be committed to. These are non-negotiable. These are unalterable. These are invariable. These are things that we will not compromise in any way, shape, or form; and these are the skeleton things; and I believe that the church has to be committed to these things. And when I say that, beloved, I mean you. You, the church is you. I'm not talking about some nebulous thing. I'm talking about you. That's - I'm talking about me, too.

Lemme give you what I think to be the skeletal, non-negotiable issues first. A high view of God, a high view of God. Now, I could reach back through all the years and bring up all kinds of things that we've tried to teach on this; but I'm gonna trust your memory for some of these things and just say some general things. It is absolutely essential that the church perceive itself as an institution for the glory of God. You understand that? Now, that's so basic that it just - it seems like you wouldn't even need to say it; but I believe the church, in general, in our country, has descended from that level to become a church for the help of men; and the church thinks its goal is to help people feel better about themselves, to play psychological games with 'em, to patch up their marriages, to give 'em placebos, you know, like patching up a marriage, like Maribel Morgan said, by putting on a black negligee, a rose in your teeth, and getting under the dining room table and winking at your husband. That kinda stuff.

I mean if you've got a rotten marriage, you can do that and still have a rotten marriage, because there's some Biblical foundations, and there are relationships to God that are required between people if they're gonna have right relationships with each other. And those kinds of placebos really aren't the answer; but we have reduced the church from an...from a body or an organism which has, as its goal, to know and glorify God to...to an organization which has its objective to make people feel better about themselves; and that's not the point.

If you know God right, ultimately, you'll get to you, and you'll be a whole lot better off. The answer to everything in your life is to know God, true? Sure, the Lord's the beginning of all wisdom; and when you have a right relationship with God, and you take God seriously, and you get rightly connected with God, then all other things fall out in their proper place...That is not to say we're unconcerned about people's needs. We are concerned, as God is, as Christ is; but it is to say that there is a balance; and everything begins with a high view of God. We must take God seriously.

As I've said before, I...I sometimes wish that God would strike some people dead during the offering...I mean I don't wish that real strongly, but I...because I might be the guy. But I mean some dramatic way to illustrate that God must be taken seriously. We say, oh, you know, somebody dies or something happened..."How could God let that happen?" Listen, friend, that isn't even the question. The question is what are you and I doing alive? A holy God should've blasted us out of existence long ago. That's the issue; and because God is gracious is no reason for you and I to be complacent and indifferent. We gotta take God seriously.

I...I get righteously indignant at these preachers and so forth who drag God off His throne and turn Him into some kind of a servant for men, who has to do all the things they demand... This is an irreverent age. It's irreverent. It does not know how to worship. Even what it calls worship, basically, in many cases, is simply inducing a warm feeling; and they think that's worship. It knows little about God; and as I said in the series on worship, we are too many Marthas and not enough Marys. We're busy serving all the time, and we don't know what it is to bow down and wash Jesus' feet. We don't know what it is to tremble at God's Word. We don't know what it is to have an awesome confrontation with an infinitely holy God that leaves us broken over our own sinfulness and, therefore, usable to Him for His glory. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want ourselves to feel good. We wanna get all that we need, have all our problems solved; and we're being sold a...a sack of religious psychology that is called the church.

Listen, I really - I'll go a step further and say you could take 90 percent of all the books that are being written today and bury 'em in the sea, and we wouldn't be gone - we wouldn't lose anything; 'cause they're just a buncha placebos, superficially attacking them...attacking problems that they can't solve. I go back in history to eras when the church was holy; and they had very few things to read; but the things they did read told 'em how to connect up with God. We've got zillions of things and doesn't seem to solve the problem.

I was amazed recently, they told me at Moody, that at the last pastors' conference, they surveyed the pastors and said, "What do need help on most of all?" And the answer was the family; and I said, "Wait a minute. You can't mean it. You mean to tell me that, with all the stuff that's out there, you still gotta have more stuff about how to help families?" It isn't that. It's isn't that you need more material. It's that, with all that's been said, people don't take God seriously, so they don't walk according to His laws, so they get themselves in the mess they're in.

So we continue to lift up God. That's why we went through the series on worship, and the book is out, and I hope you'll read the book. I really do. I hope you'll read it. I know... you...some of you say, "I bought it. I bought it." I know. I hope you'll read it. You know, James says it. Says, "Draw near to God...in James 4:8...and He'll...what?...draw near to you." Now what could be better than that? How would you like to live life with God near you? Wouldn't you like that? Well, sure, you draw near to God, He'll draw near to you.

You say, "Yeah, but when you get near God, oh, boy, it gets nervous." Sure, that's why he says in the next phrase, "Cleanse your hands, you sinners." Closer you get to God, the more you see your sin, right? Humble yourself. Mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to sorry, and so forth. And then when you're all in a crumble there, it says, "The Lord'll lift you up." But we will take God seriously, and we believe that God must be exalted and lifted up, and we're not gonna have a man-centered church. We wanna reach out to everyone in the love of Christ, in the love of God; but God will be the focus of our worship, our life; and we don't look at the Bible, therefore, as a place where you find little formulas to solve all your problems. We look at it as a book that reveals God. It reveals God.

There's a second non-negotiable, and it flows right out of the first, and that is the absolute authority of Scripture. The absolute authority of Scripture. We...we will not compromise on this. The Bible is constantly being attacked. I read the other day a review of a new book by Louis Smedes at Fuller Seminary in which he says that it's perfectly all right for two homosexual men to have a relationship. That's within the tolerance of God. And if you wanna hold that view, all you have to do is just eliminate the Bible. Very, very convenient, and if you're a professor in seminary, it seems to me to be somewhat inconsistent to be training young men to minister the Word of God while you deny it; but that's where we are. Now, that's a head-on attack.

I believe that there's...there are charismatics who are attacking the Bible by adding all their visions and all their revelations and all their other things as we've shared with you in the past; and...and they...Jesus is telling 'em this; and Jesus is telling 'em that; and God's speaking to 'em over here and over there; and they got all this material being piled up; and they've sudden...they've subtly undermined the Bible, because it's no longer the single authority. I may have told you, but one man said that Jesus comes in the bathroom and puts His arm around him; and my re...he says, "While I'm shaving." My response to that was, in my mind, "Do you keep shaving? Do you keep shaving?"...Because if you keep shaving, it isn't Jesus, because if holy God came in the bathroom while you were shaving, you'd kill yourself because you'd hit the floor so hard. It's an awesome thing to confront an infinitely holy God. Then that kind of silliness, and then get these little special messages from God.

Listen, we will hold God's Word up as the absolute authority. The Bible is always attacked. The worst attack of all is by the people who say they believe and don't know what it teaches, wouldn't you say? That's the worst of all. That's the most subtle there is; but there are people all across America who say, "I believe the Bible from cover to cover." They don't know it period, paragraph. They just believe what they don't know, which is the height of something or other...

Jesus said, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Listen, that's why I'm an expository preacher. If we're to...if we're fed by every word that comes out of the mouth of God, then we oughta study every word; and I don't...I think preaching has lost that; and now preaching is all kinds of different things, not teaching the Word of God...and we've gotta get back to that; and we're gonna stay right where we are. We must teach. We must teach every word. Every word, and if you don't have an appetite for it, that isn't gonna change the way we feel.

You say, "Well, I...you know, we don't need another sermon. We...we like to have fellowship." Well, that's fine. I hope you can find some fellowship. We're just gonna keep giving you the Word, just keep feeding you the Word, because we know what makes you grow. Fellowship's important. All that's very important, but not as a replacement for the Word of God. In fact, if you wanna know the truth, I find the sweetest, purest, best, and most rewarding fellowship is always around the Scripture. Always around the Scripture.

The absolute priority of the Word of God, that's where my heart is. I hope that's where yours is; and I'll tell ya; you say, "Well, we already know so much. We've been taught for so long." Listen, that's the height of pride to say that. I mean the discovery process never stops. Never stops. For me it doesn't; and, as I've said in the past, the great joy of...of my preaching ministry is not the preaching. The preaching is the work part. The joy is the discovery part. Getting in there, finding out things that I never saw before, never knew before, never fully understood; and that happens to me every week of my life. Now, that's an adventure that no one should miss.

I remember a pastor, he said to me when I was back in Michigan one time, he said, "Well," he said, "I only pastor two years in one place, then I leave." I said, "Really?" He said... I said, "Have you been doing it a long time?" "Yeah, I was two years here, two years here, two years here, two years here, two years here." I said, "Why?" He said, "I have 52 sermons. I preach 'em twice. I leave."...That's a funny way. I said, "What about the whole counsel of God?" "I don't give it all. Just the part that I think's important." "Ohhhhh."...I think every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God is important. That's a non-negotiable.

Third, and this again flows out of the second sound doctrine. You start with a high view of God, and if you make your commitment to God, then you're gonna have to stick with His revelation, His Word. If you make a commitment to His Word, you're gonna be stuck with what it teaches, and that's doctrine, sound doctrine. You know, beloved, there is such a doctrinal vagueness across Christianity. There's such a fuzziness. Sermonettes for Christianettes. You know, nice, helpful little things. I don't know what ultimate purpose they fulfill; but they may...they're nice; and sometimes they're interesting; and sometimes they make you feel emotional and you get the warm and fuzzies; and, oh, you feel sad or whatever, or you get pumped up or whatever, and so forth; but...but there's no sound doctrine.

In other words, nobody screaming truth about God, truth about life, death, heaven, hell, truth about man, sin, Christ, angels, Holy Spirit, the position of the believer, the flesh, the world, or whatever. I mean give me something I can get my hand on. Give me a truth. That's why we've always talked about principlizing the text. You take a text. You find out what it says, and then you see what I means. You draw out of it a divine truth, and you establish that truth in the minds of people by banging that truth in about ten ways. In case you don't know, that's what I do when I preach. Take you through the passage, pull out a divine truth, and hit you with it about ten ways. From this passage and that comparative passive, and this passage and the other passage, and so forth, until there's driven home in your mind a truth...a solid truth.

I got that when I was young, because my dad gave me a Bible when I got out of high school; and in the front of it, he encouraged me to read 1 and 2 Timothy; and I did; and I kept hearing Paul say to Timothy, "Teach sound doctrine. Teach sound doctrine. Teach sound doctrine. Nourish up on your own heart and communicating it to your people. Sound doctrine."

There was a day when pastors were theologians. Now, I don't know. I...when I think about the fact that Dick and I went back to the ICBI Congress in Chicago, I don't know, it was a year ago I guess now, Dick; and there were three pastors, I think, out of a hundred scholars. Well, four including you. Four of us, and 96 guys outta colleges and seminaries. When they bring together people to discuss the Bible, they don't even think about pastors; and that's not necessarily a reflection that there aren't any. It's just that that's not where they're looking for people who can deal with Scripture. I, frankly, don't even know why we were there; but...but we've lost that...that doctrinal clarity and distinctiveness in preaching that really belongs in the pulpit. People need answers. Solid answers out of the Word of God.

We...we just...for interest's sake, I wrote a letter a couple of weeks ago to all the various ministries that we knew about that are on the radio, and posed to them a question. We answer Bible questions all the time. We posed a question just to see how they all answered questions. One question was sent out, and everybody that answered gave us a different answer. So if you had sought counseling from all these ministries, every one of 'em would've given you a different answer. Now, that's...that's really kinda sad in a way. There's so much confusion about things that oughta be, and are in fact, clear in the Word of God.

We're committed to drawing some Biblical conclusions. I remember going through the Book of Ephesians early in the ministry here and establishing the believer's position in Christ, which was foundational to this church; and the other day I was... I was with my high school football coach. I hadn't seen him a long time except one time when he came to the church, and he's gone on with the Lord, and he's...he's taught the Word of God. He's a wonderful guy; and we were reminiscing about some of the silly things that happened when we were playing ball in high school; and he said to me, "You know something, John?" He said, "You set in concrete in my life for as long as I live an understanding of the position of the believer, because I listened to Ephesians chapter 1 tapes over and over and over and over and over, and then I taught it year after year after year after year to young people, and" he said, "the solid understanding of the doctrine of the position of the believer in Jesus Christ has given foundation to my entire life."

Well, you see, I'm not commending myself. That's the Book of Ephesians. That's the Holy Spirit. But what I'm saying is that's the kind of thing that people can build a life on, sound, solid, sound doctrine; and I believe we must teach the Word of God and teach it with principles that are divine truths, that are foundational for life. Very essential. So if you wanna know about angels, we oughta have truth that's concrete and...and clear about angels. You wanna know about demons, then we oughta be able to establish what the Bible teaches about that, so we're always laying down solid content.

A fourth non-negotiable, and you know these things, and only want you to remember them. A fourth is personal holiness. Personal holiness. I fear that we're all victimized by an absolutely unholy society. I mean I just cringe in the midst of the society in which we live. The filth and trash and garbage that is pumped out unendingly, not only philosophically that... that corrupts the mind away from God, but immoral stuff. Just a sea of it like drippings of a broken sewer. It just, in fact the sewer isn't just broken, it's completely shattered, and it's flooding the place. I...I don't know if this is new or not, but I...I've always had a problem with contemporary music, because I think, not only do I hate the very...the style itself, but the... I have problems with that. But, basically, that the sexual innuendos of the words are so vile and wretched; and I...you try sometimes to tell this to kids; and "Well, you don't understand. You're an old guy. What do you know, you know; and you don't understand where we're at; and I...I...the words are all right. I take 'em the way I want." And blah-blah.

Well, recently, I turned on one of these...the TV, and I...I saw one of these music video things. That settled it with me. When they put that kind of music to visuals, it's filth. It is. It's, in the first place, its sexual overtones are just rampant. In the second place, it's totally disconnected from any form of reality, which is to divorce people from clear, sane, logical reasoning and an understanding of reality. It's like trying to induce a drug high. Totally disconnected. I watched a whole bunch of totally disconnected, totally disjointed nonsense, no rhyme or reason, no logical connections between what was going on. In fact, it was all utterly bizarre; and I mean I may be 43, but I'm not completely senile...and if you put that stuff to visuals and that's what you get, then that's trash; and then you...you get a whole generation of people, you know, inundated.

Listen, people, we gotta start drawing some lines when it comes to personal holiness and being careful where we expose ourselves and our children and the people around us. You can't be parading in and outta the movie theater and watching anything you...your eyes can set on, and...and reading trash and garbage and exposing yourself to all that, and not pay a price.

I...I just was struck by that, and I just...it...I said to myself, "Is that where we are in our society?" I don't...I don't go to movies, so I don't see that kinda stuff, so this was a jolt to me. Is that where our society is? Is that what thinking goes on in the confused, chaotic minds of kids who've blown their brains on that kinda stuff? I think it's...we're...we're called to a purity of life and I...we can't...we can't negotiate that. There are no comprise there. There's none. We don't compromise that; and we wanna enforce that holiness purity, that...that holiness purity standard.

Second Corinthians 7 always comes to mind, verse 1, "Having these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and Spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." We wanna enforce that. That's why we do church discipline. That's why if somebody sins, we have to go to 'em. You have to go to 'em. I have to go to 'em. We have to. We have to.

I got a letter from some guy, and he was...he was...wrote me and said, "I wanna tell you. One of the people on your church staff is so and so and so and so, and he did this, and he did that, and all the other." He was...he was running down a staff member to me; and I wrote him back and said, "Dear Friend, If you have something against a brother, you go to that brother. You don't slander that brother in front of me. I do not accept what you just said. You go to him if you have a problem. You resolve that; and if it's resolved, I don't even need to know it; but don't you accuse a fellow servant of Jesus Christ to me that you haven't even gone to yourself."

Well, he wrote me back a beautiful letter and confessed the sin that he had committed and asked that I would forgive him and said that he had learned a lesson for life. Well, that's right, and that he should resolve that with the brother that he feels is offended. I'm not even sure there was such an offense; but if you think that's being hardnosed, that's just being Biblical. We just want the church to be pure, right? And so we wanna deal with those kind of things in love, of course. In love.

What...you take the area of personal holiness; and...and you can see how much we've lost in that area. I mean what about our prayer life that cultivates that holiness? What's it like? What about the study of the Word of God? What about fasting? What about meditating? When do you sit and meditate on the Word of God? When do you do that? You say, "Well, I'm a elder. I'm a deacon. I...I...I prepare my Bible study." No, no, when do you sit and meditate on the Word of God? When do you meditate for a prolonged period of time drawing nigh unto God in a moment of prayer that extends beyond a moment? Where are we in terms of holiness? Where are we in terms of real communion with the living God?

You see, it isn't just leaders. It is leaders. It's me and it's everybody else in the leadership, but it's also you folks. I mean we cannot just sit back and live half committed Christian lives and expect God's work to be done God's way...

Well, there's just a final one, and I'll give you this one briefly. Spiritual authority. Spiritual authority. I believe with all my heart that a church must understand that there is authority over those people in that church and that authority is Christ who is the head, who mediates His rule through godly elders. That's just what the Bible says. I mean I didn't invent that. Presbyterian church didn't invent that. That's what the Bible says. That elders have the rule over you in the Lord. It's just that simple. They have authority.

Now, that can be abused. There are men who get into that seat of authority, and they wield that authority as if it were authority given to them by the office or by their own personality. It isn't that. It's the authority of the Word of God in the hands of a godly man. In other words, I don't have any authority to say to you, "Listen, folks, build that building out there." Or, "Listen, folks, I want some more vacation or raise my salary or I demand that these walls be painted green, because I'm in authority." I don't have any authority over the paint. I don't have any authority over that stuff. The only authority I have is to speak and apply the Word of God, right? And when you...when a man gets outside of that, he violates it; but, when it comes to the Word of God, there is authority there. There is authority.

Boy, some people are so paranoid of this. When I was in New York this summer, a guy gave me a 25-page paper. He said, "I think you'll be interested in this." He gave me this big, thick Xerox paper, 25 pages, and the title of it was The Heresy of MacArthurism, and it wasn't talking about the general, either...The Heresy of MacArthurism; and so I was eager to find out what I was her...in what way I was a heretic; and so I...I started out. "First of all, watch out for John MacArthur, because on the surface, he appears to be a good man; but here are the facts. One, he is anti-evangelism. Two, he is anti-missions," and then it went on for about ten things; and the last one was, "He believes in elders, and that's the most deadly of all." See.

As if I invented elders as some heretic? The truth of the matter is that some people just don't want to be under spiritual authority; and maybe in their favor we might say that they were sort of jaded in their understanding of that; because some have abused authority. But the church must understand, beloved, that God has given to the church godly men who have the authority to represent Jesus Christ by example and precept in that church; and the church must lovingly come under their leadership; and it will not be flawless; and it will not be perfect...

Listen, we pray constantly that it may be as close as it can be; but we know there'll be failure...Somebody said, "The only difference with Christians in their army is they shoot their wounded." Meaning to say that when somebody does something wrong in the Christian body, sometimes they get attacked rather mercilessly. It isn't wrong to do wrong. That is wrong to do wrong, but it isn't ultimately a disaster to do wrong if you confess it and move on, only if you continue it. And so when something is done that isn't all that it should be, we'll be the first to wanna know that and move on, glory the Lord; but we have to understand that there has been given in the church those who are to be our leaders; and in 1 Thessalonians 5, it says to honor those people, to esteem them highly in love's sake for their work...

And in Hebrews 13, it says submit to them, for they watch for your souls. Follow their example. And we have a plurality of leaders here. I'm...I'm just one of them. You say, "Well, how come you're the guy that always preaches?" Well, that's just the way gifts work out. I mean you had...you had twelve apostles, right? But every time there's a list of 'em, and there's four lists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts, in every list, Peter's always named first; and he was always the spokesman. That's just the way it is. Doesn't mean that they were...he's better than anybody else. In fact, if the truth were known, he's probably worse than most of 'em; but he had the gifts in that regard; and there's a variation of gifts.

Peter and John traveled together. You think John didn't have a thing to say? Guess again. He wrote Revelation, 1, 2, 3 John, the Gospel of John, and, no doubt with his intimacy to Jesus Christ, could've given great things; but every time he's with Peter for 12 chapters, he never opens his mouth. Why? Because Peter had the...the greater gift in terms of speaking or the more unique gift in terms of speaking.

When you come to Paul and Barnabas, we know Barnabas was a great teacher and a great speaker and probably the leading one in the church till Paul came; but he and Paul travel together; and even the pagans said Paul was the chief speaker. So there are variations in gifts; but in the totality, there is an equality of spiritual authority and leadership given to those that the Bible calls elders or pastors, overseers. We have to understand that; and this church will always come under the care of those people. Always.

So what have we said? If the church is gonna be the body of Christ, it has to have the right framework. It has to have a high view of God, and that has to be its pursuit: to know Him, to know Him, to know Him. And in seeking to know Him, it has to have a high view of Scripture, for that is the place where alone He may be known; and so we will have that high view of Scripture; and we will be committed to doctrinal clarity, sound doctrine, personal holiness; and we will submit our souls to the care of those who are over us in the Lord in spiritual authority.

I tell these pastors this all the time. If you don't have these five things working for you in your church, all the rest of the stuff you're gonna do is short-range, shallow, because these are the things; and I tell 'em this, too. You see, men, you can't pull this off in 18 months. The average stay of a pastor now in a church is 2.6, two years six months. You can't do it. It takes years to lay this kind of foundation, and that's just the skeleton. We haven't even talked about the internal systems and the...and the muscles and then the...the flesh...

I want you to know that I only have one life to live, and I sense the Spirit of God saying that I'm to live it and give it right here, and I couldn't be more happy. For me, the adventure is just beginning, and I'm not saying, "Hey, we did this big deal, and now let's all spread out and go over here and go over there and do all." No, sir, this is the passion of my heart, this church; and I believe God's got a great future for us if we can see where the real war lies, be committed to the real foundational things, and that means you. You, as an individual, you're our hope...Let's bow in prayer.

Father, we have really touched on some very important things to You. May not always be so important to us, but they should be, because they're the most important things to You. Because You are important to You, You're God; and Your Word is important; and what it teaches is important; and holiness is important, because that is what You desire; and spiritual authority is important, because You desire to rule in Your own church, in Your own Kingdom, for You're the King. Help us to consider important what You consider important and not spend all our time fooling around with trivia that doesn't matter. Or worse, become apathetic and indifferent because we've been weaned away by the world or because we've taken for granted the things You've done, because we weren't a part of the battle. Or maybe, Lord, we were a part of the battle, but we just sort of retired. Get us back in there...Father, do a work in my heart and every heart that will be to Your glory.

The Internal Systems, Part 1

The Anatomy of the Church:

Last Lord's Day I...began to talk to you from out of my heart along the subject that I called "The Anatomy of the Church." I shared with you at that time that I feel that Grace Community Church stands at a very crucial point in its history...God has done great things. I think there are yet greater things ahead. I've never in my lifetime been more committed to this church and this ministry and what God would have from me here. I'm excited about the future; and yet I know that there is an enemy...who would wanna thwart that; and I know that we have a spiritual battle on our hands that is gonna rage hotter than ever in days ahead; and so I just felt the need to sort of depart from the continued series in Matthew and kinda let you into my heart a little bit and share with you where I think our church really is, and what we need to reaffirm...

And I'm so thankful for the response from last Sunday. I received a lot of cards and some letters and phone calls and encouraging responses from people in person who said, "I wanna reaffirm my commitment to the Lord, to this church, to uphold your ministry." And that means so much. I'm always grateful that you people respond to God's Word and to the heart of the pastor or the shepherd who brings it to you.

I wanna continue what we started last time, and...and I guess we could say that this is sort of a brief...bit of spiritual archeology...Some of you have come here, and you don't see the foundation. You weren't here in the years of building. You don't really understand what's underneath everything, and so what I'm trying to do is dig up a little bit of foundation for you and let you see the basics of what this ministry is really committed to.

And in order to help us see that foundation, to kinda dig down and find out what's really at the bottom of Grace Church, I...I...I wanted to borrow Paul's wonderful analogy of the body; and we're talking about the anatomy of the church; and I suggested that there are four features of the body that we wanna look at: the skeleton, the internal systems, the muscles, and the flesh. That's a rather simplified perspective, but it'll serve us well, I think.

We said last time that the church must have a skeleton. That gives it form. That gives it a framework. That allows it to stand. That is the non-negotiable, substantial, basic foundation upon which everything else hangs and through which everything else moves. And we said that our non-negotianal...non-negotiable foundational principles are these five: a high view of God, the absolute authority of Scripture, doctrinal clarity, personal holiness, and an understanding of spiritual authority. Those are key things. We must continue to lift up God, to exalt His blessed holy name. We must continue to...to prioritize the Word of God, to make it everything, to study it, to preach it, to teach it. We must also be committed to draw from it doctrine that is clear, precise, and applicable to life. We must also pursue with all of our strength in the Holy Spirit holiness, virtue, godliness, righteousness; and we must understand spiritual authority.

There is a great responsibility in being a spiritual leader and being one who follows those who lead. And so if, from time to time, you hear me speak about God and Scripture and doctrine and holiness and authority, you'll understand that I have to keep putting in the...the...the structure, the skeleton, the framework; and so these are themes to which you return again and again and again. And sometimes, if it sounds like the same sermon, it may be; but most of the time, it may not be. If it is once in a while, I always try to yell in different places, so it looks different on the surface.

But it's just that there are these things that have to be reaffirmed, so that, as we saw last time where Peter said, "I want you to remember those things so that, after I am gone, you will still remember them. You will still remember them." It's the same thing Paul had in his heart when he wrote to the Philippians and said, "I'm glad for what I see when I'm with you, but I'm even more glad for what I see when I'm absent from you, that you're working out your salvation with fear and trembling."

I don't know how long the Lord'll give me or how long I'll be in this place, but...but the greatest satisfaction I could ever have would be to be gone, if that is in God's purpose, and to look back, if that is possible from wherever I might be; and I don't know if I can look back from heaven; and to say, "They're going on, and they are still committed to the things that they were committed to in my presence."

In order to help us to reaffirm those foundational things, we've been re-sort of structuring ourselves. Now, I believe that it's essential in the life of the church that these non-negotiables be emphasized, which is to say that they will be a part of the preaching ministry again and again and again and again. Secondly, they must be a part of the teaching ministry. If you teach a...a fellowship group or a flock or a Bible study or a children's class or a young peoples' Bible class or whatever, wherever you are, if you're discipling somebody, these are the things you have to go back to to continue to put the skeleton in to have the foundation, to have the form that is necessary for the body to be what Christ would have it to be.

And so we must preach it and teach it, and then also example is key. We must model it. There must be a demonstration of commitment to these things, not only in what we say, but in the life we live. I have to be just as committed to personal holiness, doctrinal clarity, this...the authority of Scripture and so forth in my living as I am in my preaching, or it'll all get lost; and so we're committed to these things.

Now, that leads me to a second category, the internal systems; and I wanna talk about them this morning and next week; and we'll see if I can finish even in two weeks; but I wanna talk about the internal systems. I believe that the church must have flowing through it certain spiritual attitudes. A physical body has organs and fluids that flow through and cause that body to be able to be alive and function; and so we are not only a skeleton. A skeleton is not alive. It gives form, but it isn't life. There has to be flowing through of certain spiritual attitudes; and that is what I see as the internal systems of the church.

The...the pastoral endeavor, the...the goal of the elders, the goal of leaders in the church is to generate in the hearts of people certain spiritual attitudes. We're not just trying to get you to do certain things. We're not just gonna hit you with you need to do this and do that and do this, and so; but rather to generate the proper kind of spiritual attitudes which, themselves, will motivate proper kind of behavior. You see, you can do the right thing outwardly and have a bad attitude; but if you have a good attitude, you'll do the right thing outwardly coming out of a good attitude; and so we work on the fruit of the Spirit, if you will. The internal motivation, the internal attitude.

Sometimes young men go into a pastorate, and they come to a church, and they see that the church maybe isn't organized the right way, and maybe they don't see all the things they would like to see going on, so their temptation invariably is to reorganize the church. And sometimes they'll call or talk to me and say, "Boy, we wanna...we wanna get elders, and we wanna reorganize this and reorganize that," and I often say to them, "You know what you're gonna have when you reorganize the church? You're gonna have the same people with the same attitudes in a different structure. That's all, and the problem's gonna be they're not gonna know why you're changing the structure; and it might be very difficult to change."

I remember when I first came to Grace, I had a whole new idea for how to run the Sunday School. This is about the first month I'm here, I get this brainstorm; and I wrote the whole thing out and presented it to the Education Committee; and they unanimously turned it down...They said, "Who are you, kid? We've been here a long time. Where did you come from? Prove yourself." In effect. Years later, they came up with that same system...It was just a question of developing the spiritual attitudes that brought about the right kind of responses.

On the other hand, you can not worry about the structure of the church; and if you build in the right spiritual attitude, structure has a way of taking care of itself...because Spirit-controlled people are gonna do Spirit-led things; and they're gonna find themselves moving toward conformity to the Biblical pattern of the church.

So we have to have an emphasis in the church on attitudes. We have to work on what's going on inside of you. We're not interested in just getting you to behave in a certain way. Make sure you give your money. Make sure you show up Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. Make sure you pray five hours a week or whatever. Make sure you read your Bible every day. Devoted in a dutiful way. That isn't the idea. Now, those are not the approach. We're not approaching things on a legalistic or superficial basis; but the effort of the ministry's always been to generate attitudes; and sometimes you fight a battle; because there are some people who don't come along with right attitudes; and you wanna say to them, "Do it anyway, even with your bad attitude."

But you have to back off of that, because you don't wanna play into the hands of the satisfaction that comes from legalism; and so we work on attitudes; and over the years, these are the attitudes that I have been concerned to see in the hearts and lives of my own...my own personal life, as well as all of the people here.

First of all, and foremost, is obedience. An attitude of obedience. Now, this is the overarching attitude of all attitudes. This says, "If God says something, I do it." This is that no compromising spirit that we were talking about when we looked into the Book of Daniel a little bit a few months ago in our communion service. This is no compromise. I mean if God says it, that's it. It is not debatable. It isn't something you argue about. You do it. Obedience. That is the overarching attitude; and so week after week, month after month, year after year we have just kept pounding the Word of God into the minds and hearts of all of us with the implication, "This is what God says, and you must respond. You must do it...for the glory of God and for your own blessedness and the salvation of souls and the example to other Christians."

For all those reasons, we obey, because it's right and it glorifies God, because it puts us in the place of blessing, because it allows us to be in filled with the Spirit so that we can reach others and set an example for those who watch us to see how we live. Obedience. You say, "Well, it seems pretty obvious." Sure it does, because you were saved by affirming the Lordship of Jesus Christ, right? And that simply is saying, "You're in charge," right? I'm gonna follow. You're Lord, I'm servant."

"Why do you call Me Master and do not the things I say," Jesus says. "I mean that doesn't make any sense. Don't call Me Lord and then don't obey Me. So if I am Lord, then that means you do what I say, right?" Right, that's obvious. That's what He meant in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 7 when He said, "It's a narrow road and a narrow gate and a narrow way." The...the way is narrow, because it's confined by the will of God and the law of God and the Word of God. And so we came in affirming Jesus as Lord, Romans 10:9 and 10. We came in submitting ourselves to His Lordship; and, basically, that is to a life of obedience; and so that's the first and foremost attitude.

Phil Johnson was eager to share with me this week down at the radio ministry a tape that he'd received from one of our listeners who wrote and said that - or, no, he sent a - I guess he sent a letter along with the tape; but he - his tape was basically communicating his heart's desire. For ten minutes he'd talk about how he listened to the program and appreciated the study of the Bible and whatever, whatever. And then he went into his problem. He had a lotta sins in his life the Lord was working with; but one thing in particular he was curious about and wondered what our view was; and that was this: that he didn't feel he ever in his life had a normal feeling toward women. He didn't seem to feel as men should feel toward women, but he did feel very strongly toward farm animals. That's right, farm animals...and he wondered what we thought about that...and he said that he thought that the...that was not a problem. He didn't feel any guilt when he was doing things like that, and he thought the Lord was sort of refining him in other areas, and that area was not a problem.

So a letter was sent back to him, four pages long, expressing to him that it indeed was a problem. In fact, if he we living in the Old Testament, he would've been dead, because if a man lies with a beast, he's killed; and went on to express, in kind terms, that God doesn't compartmentalize life and say, "These sins I'm gonna deal with. These I'm not too worried about." All sin is an affront to His holy name; and so all kinds of Scripture was sent back to the guy; and then we received another tape; and Phil played this tape for me; and here's a quote right off the tape.

"I don't think anybody understands. Christians are so tangled up in the Bible and so tangled up in the Word and so tangled up in what God says, that they don't really understand how God works sometimes or how God feels." It's unbelievable. "Christians are so tangled up in the Word, in the Bible and what God says, they don't know how God feels." How else you gonna know how God feels - you don't read the Bible? What the guy is saying is, "Look, don't lay any Bible trip on me. I don't feel any guilt, and I'm not gonna get hung up on what God says."

My questions about that fella is is he a Christian. I don't care if he goes to church all the time. Says in 1 John 2, "That the one who keeps My commandments, verily in him is the love of God perfected. By this, we know that we know Him." Right? If we keep His commandments...I mean if you can cultivate that kind of abomination in your life and say it doesn't bother you at all, and then just say, well, you don't wanna get all tangled up with Bible stuff, independent of the Bible, you know how God feels, you got a problem; but sin is that kind of thing. You see, it becomes very self-justifying.

Obviously, that's an extreme illustration; but it simply points up the fact that God has called us to obedience to His Word. We know how He feels, because He gives us how He feels in His Word, right? And that's the issue; and the great objective and the great goal of the ministry, listen, this is so clear in Scripture, is to build an obedient people. That's what God intends to do with His people in the Old Testament. That's what He intends to do in the New, is to produce an obedient people. God speaks. We obey...

But, sad to say, very often, when confronted with divine truth that convicts us of something in our life that isn't right, instead of obeying, we just sorta shove it out; and we go in our pattern of disobedience. Maybe...maybe there's a message on forgiveness, and you haven't forgiven somebody. Well, instead of taking care of that, you just push that message out of your conscious mind, go on with your bitter, unforgiving spirit, and so nothing really happens; and that is disobedience; and that is diametrically opposed to all that God wants to accomplish in your life...

You say, "Well, I go to church. I do my part." Well, remember 1 Samuel 15:22 where God said, "To obey is better than...what?...sacrifice." Ritual will never replace obedience; and in 1 Peter chapter 1, Peter writes that, "We are to gird up the loins of our mind." In other words, get our act together. Pull yourself together. Get your priorities right as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance. Don't live like you used to live. You are to be obedient children.

Luke 11:28, Jesus said, "Happy is the person who hears My Word and keeps it...who hears My Word and keeps it." Paul commends Christians in Romans 16:19, "For your obedience has come abroad unto all men, and I am glad." That makes the heart of the pastor glad when the...the obedience of his people is made manifest...

Now, you know some things if you come here, because you're being taught them; but if you don't apply those things in an obedient way, you don't mature...I turned on the radio this week, and I was driving someplace, and on came Howard Hendricks, and he said some things I thought that were very interesting. He said that Christians over 50 should be the most turned on, the most excited, the most committed, the purest, the most enthusiastic, and the most available for service. Why? Because they've been hearing the Word the longest. They've been applying it the longest. They've been maturing the longest, and they oughta be showing the fruit of that process, right? I mean the most turned on, enthusiastic, excited, available, dynamic, and powerful people in a church, the very energy of that church oughta be the people who are over 50, over 55, over 60. They oughta be the like, the joy, the thrill, the energy, the dynamic of that church. They oughta be the people out on the cutting edge in evangelism. They oughta be the people out on the cutting edge in prayer. Why? Because they've lived with God the longest. They've applied the Word, so their obedience pattern has gone on longer. Therefore, they're mature more so than those with fewer years, because of constantly applied truth.

But how often have you heard this? And I agree with Howie exactly. How often have you heard this? "Well, the wonderful thing about our church is that it's...it's...it's got so many young people, you know. They're the energy and the dynamic of the church." Now, I like young people. I'm one...I am, and I... I agree with that. I mean there...there's a certain dynamic about young people. I've always said I like to speak to young people, because, at least if they're not interested, they have the courtesy to talk so you know right away they're not interested...

And there's a...there is a dynamic with young people. But, listen, that's a sad commentary on a church. When you look at a church, and I hear young pastors say this all the time, "Well, it's full of old people." I hear that. "Well, it's a...it's a nice church and a nice area, but it's just fulla old people." That oughta be the dynamic of the church, but you know what the truth is? That if you're a Christian, and you continually fail to apply what you know, you'll just be one of the old people; and by constant non-application of divine truth, you're gonna get over 50 or whatever, and you're just gonna fold up your tent and steal away into the night. You're gonna wanna retire spiritually. "Well, I've served for a lotta years. I don't know. I don't want to get in DE [Discipleship Evangelism]. Oh, I'm...I'm older. Let the young people do that ________." You know?

When we look at the Old Testament, we see the leaders in Israel with the hoary heads, the white haired men and women who were godly. We look at the early church and the dynamism and dynamic of those mature saints, and we look at the contemporary church, and it has to find its life in young kids. I like kids, but I'm...I'm not interested in a teeny-bopper church. I think there's more to the church than that. We need the life and energy that the kids have, but we need the power that the mature believers have, who have lived lives long of applying the truth. But if you can hear the truth and walk out and carry on the same pattern of living without ever a conscious effort in the power of the Spirit to apply that truth, what happens is you just get old. That's all. You don't get more powerful. You don't become more dynamic.

I mean it oughta be that you almost go to heaven by just taking off, you know? It's almost a blast off experience, because you got...there's so much energy rolling by the time you get near that point in life...I wish that were true; but I see so many people who go to church and, as they grow older, because they don't really apply the things they hear. They hear them. They get doctrinally egg-headed. They learn a lotta stuff. It's never been applied, so their life hasn't changed. They've hardened into kind of a spiritual coldness, full of facts, and without power. I don't want that to happen in my life. I mean I just wanna keep firing out. If it means I have to keep picking up my false teeth off the pulpit...until I finally, you know, maybe one of those days, I'll get so carried away, I'll leave... but I'm not about to...to look back on my life and say all the power and all the energy and all the dynamic was gone by the time I was 45 or 50...

I'm not looking to retire from the service of Christ; and I really feel that what happens when people sort of fade away is that they...they've been able to hear the Word of God without its application. Now, in some cases, they haven't really been able to hear it. They haven't been fed. They haven't been taught, but not in this case...and so we must be committed to obedience.

Oh, how very basic this is. Obedience to God's Word. If there's a truth, and you hear it, consciously in the power of the Spirit, start applying it. When you're confronted with conviction, don't pass it off to somebody else. Don't go away saying, "Boy, I wish so and so woulda heard that sermon."...You apply it. You apply it, because you're under the Lordship of Christ; and as you obey, you progress along the path of maturity to a greater usefulness to God. I would love to see this church filled with people of all ages, but the strength and power coming from those who had learned the most and applied the most in an act of response of obedience...

Lemme give you a second attitude. Humility. Humility. That's another thing that we desire greatly to generate in the hearts of people. This has always been a concern of me. I mean I...pride is a problem for me. It's a problem for you, I know. Pride was a major problem for me. I think still is, but used to be maybe more manifest than now. And I always thought once I understood the things of God, that God should make me humble. It's very elusive, though, because just when I say to myself, "You're finally humble," it's gone...So it's very difficult to nail it down. Very elusive, but I have always sought to...to wanna lead the people in an understanding of humility.

I remember when we built the gymnasium, and it was an auditorium that they put a platform on it, and somebody ordered...five big chairs with big arms and crown things sticking up like this. Spires off these chairs, and they...that was for me to sit in the one in the middle. The...the...the one in the middle was mine...They didn't really care who sat in the other ones, but I got the middle one...And I...I tried to sit in that...that crown chair a couple a weeks, and I just felt miserable...I couldn't do that, and so I went down and sat down in the front row, because I...it wasn't that that's an act of humility. It's just that sitting up on the podium with a crown on your head does say something that I really didn't wanna say...

So that's the way it was, and it just put me in a perspective to worship like all the rest of you folks. Only difference between me and you is the fact that God's called me to do this and gives to me to do that and that's all. Has nothing to do with my spirituality...And then when Clayton came, he said, "How come you sit down there?" I said, "I don't know. I just feel comfortable down here." "No, I think you should sit on the platform." So I said, "We don't have any chairs." So he looked around and found some chairs, and the first Sunday he was here, we all had chairs up here; and afterwards he says, "That was no good, was it?" I said, "No...I told ya."...

So he says to me, "You can go back down there."...Well, that's a small thing; but there's an underlying attitude that... that I believe the Spirit of the Scripture conveys to us, and that's one of...of humility that we seek. It isn't that we have found it. It's that we pursue it in the strength of God. When you became a Christian, you weren't on the...under any illusion, I hope, that the Lord was really in need of you. Were you? I hear that. "You know, if the Lord could just save this guy. He's got money. He's got talent. I mean he's a great leader. Wow! If the Lord could just get him." That's ridiculous. The Lord can get anybody He wants, but that isn't the issue.

You see, basically, you got nothing to offer. I don't care who you are. Neither do I. Like the man in the 18th chapter who, when confronted with his $10,000.00 debt...couldn't pay, because, it says, "He had nothing with which to pay." Nothing. Nothing. Nothing to offer. Or like Matthew chapter 5, "When we come to enter the Kingdom...it says...we come begging in spirit. We come as beggars so destitute we can't even work to earn a living. We have to beg. We have nothing." We have not only nothing in our hand, we don't have any talent to earn it, so we only can beg; and that's the way we came in. Bankrupt, and you wanna know something? If we have anything now, it isn't ours. It's what God what? Gave us.

The only thing I have to offer back to God is what He gave me, sanctified by His salvation and His Spirit; and that's not to my credit, but to His glory. So what would cause me to be proud? We have endeavored to withstand the self-esteem cults, the selfishness of our own contemporary society, to point out the fact that God has called us to meekness and selflessness and sacrificing humility, and that's been a major emphasis; and we've come at it from all different angles. We...we remember, don't we, Matthew chapter 10, where the Lord says, "Let a man deny himself. Take up his cross. Forsake life and gain life." And where it says the same thing in chapter 16:24 and 25, "Take up your cross. Deny yourself. Follow Me. Pay the price of self-effacement, self-humility, self-denigration, setting self below others; and we've gone in detail many times into Philippians chapter 2, which says, "Let each man look on the things of others, not on his own things, esteeming others better than himself. Always getting under and saying, 'You're better than I am. I seek what honors You. I seek what lifts You up. I seek what meets Your need.'"

This is so important in the church. If you have in a church a fight for people and to get into the places of authority, you're gonna have the same chaos you had among the disciples, all of whom were seeking to be the greatest, and that's a despicable thing. We're all seeking as it were to be the least; and, at the same time, it doesn't mean that we undervalue ourselves; because, in Christ, we are eternally priceless. But it isn't because of us. It's because of Him. Humility simply says this, "You're more important than I am." That's all it says. It doesn't go around saying, "I'm a worm. I'm a rat. I'm a bum. I'm nothing. I'm garbage." Doesn't say that. It doesn't say, "I'm no good to anything." You are. You're a value to God, because you're redeemed and sanctified and given certain potential to serve Him; but what humility say is, "You are more important than I am to me."...

That's why it says that you're to love your neighbor as what? As yourself. You are to give to your neighbor the same devotion and commitment that you give yourself in meeting needs. You...you remember our study of 1 Corinthians, how Paul severely reprimands the Corinthian church for the proud, boastful, self-centered, egoistic way in which they manifested their ecstatic experiences, and sort of put on spiritual ribbons, as if they were the more spiritual, because they had the more profound ecstasies.

Humility is that which God pursues in His church, and that is an attitude that we must have. It means that I'm not gonna get upset if something goes your way and not mine, because you're more important to me than I am. That's right. It means that I...I wanna make sure that I set aside some of my priorities to make sure your needs are met. It means I say no to my own freedoms to say yes to yours. It means that I'm not gonna violate your conscience. If...if...if meat makes you offend, I'm not gonna eat any meat. If drink makes you offend, I'm not gonna drink any meat...drink anything that...that offends you, for the simple reason that the Kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness, joy, peace in the Holy Spirit, as Romans 14 says. I'm not gonna violate your conscience. I'm not gonna make you stumble. I'm gonna set my liberty aside. I'm not gonna offend you. I'm gonna make sure that if you have a need, I meet that need...

I see myself as one who must care for you, must love you. If you drift from the flock, as Matthew 18 points out, I must go and pursue you and bring you back. That's humility; and it's something like what it says in 2 Corinthians 10:1, "The...the meekness and gentleness of Christ." That's to be mirrored in us. And so it's always been my desire in the church that we would not only be in an overall sense an obedient people, but that there be this flowing through attitude of humility and meekness and loneliness and self-effacement, rather than self-seeking.

So many problems come when people seek their own will, seek their own primacy, if you will, or seek to be lifted up. There are people who have to constantly be stroked, constantly be told how wonderful, how great they are, instead of giving their lives to encourage others, humility. Well, we could say a lot more about that. That's always what I say when I've just run outta notes, right?...

Third, third attitude is love. You can't talk about humility without talking about love, because only humble people love. Nobody loves but humble people. I'm not talking about the world's kind of love that's counterfeit. It's object-oriented. They see a nice object. They feel an emotional attachment. That's why marriages don't last, because that kind of love is only an emotion; and when the emotion's gone or attaches to somebody else, the relationship is gone. But I'm not talking about the world's kind of object-oriented love. I'm not talking about self-feeding love. To the world, love is great because of what I feel when I'm in love, right? Not because what I can give. It's what I get. It's the thrill, and when the thrill goes, hang the relationship.

So that's the world's idea; but love in a Biblical sense is completely different than that. It isn't an emotion at all. Love is simply an act of sacrificial service. Love is an act. Love is not an attitude. It is an act. Love always does something. Read 1 Corinthians, they're all verbs. Love is kind. Love is patient. All those are verb forms. It's love doing this. Love doing that. Love doing this. Love doing that. Love acts.

Now, lemme tell you something. Love is an act of service on your behalf that flows out of a heart of humility, and the heart of humility says, "I care more about you than me, so love is the response." And that's why I say only humble people love. Proud people can't love, because all proud people wanna do is feed themselves. The only love they know is a physical love. The only love they know is an emotional attachment to certain people, and if you're not one of those certain people, you're not gonna feel anything from them. You may not even receive anything from them...They have that kind of...of love that...that really draws them to certain like-minded people that they really enjoy being with, but makes them indifferent to the needs of almost everybody else. You understand the difference?

You know, when I first came to the church, I found it difficult to love emotionally certain people, and it bothered me a lot, because I felt responsible before God to love the whole flock, and, yet, there were some people that, no matter how hard I tried, I really didn't love 'em emotionally. I mean I just didn't care about being with 'em. I was with 'em maybe, and I said, "If I'm never with 'em again, it's okay." And they probably said the same thing. They just, you know, it just didn't click, and that's true. I mean there are some people, I mean I could live my whole life and die and go and heaven and spend all eternity and never spend an hour with 'em, and I'm really not gonna be that sad, and there are a lotta people who feel the same way about me.

In fact, I know there are people who are gonna find a place in heaven far away...from wherever I am...Some are actually anxious to go there, because there won't be tapes in heaven...But nonetheless it's reasonable...it's reasonable to assume that, in our human relationships, that we can't be attracted to everybody, 'cause we're just not that way. But that isn't love. That... that isn't even an issue. Love simply says, "If you have a need, I meet that need." You see, when Jesus explained that you're to love your neighbor as yourself, and the question came to Him, "Well, who is my neighbor? I mean who do...how do I know who You're talking about?" And then He told the story about the... the Good Samaritan. What He was saying was, "You're walking down the road. There's a guy laying there beaten up. He has a need. You meet his need." That's all. Who's your neighbor? Anybody in your path with a need, that's all. Who are you supposed to love? Anybody in your path with a need. How do you love him? Meet his need.

You may never feel emotional. You may never be attracted to the person, and we've tried to emphasize that all through the years that we're called to a love that flows out of humility, and humility says you're more important than I am. The classic illustration, and I can remember when I preached on John 13. the classic illustration is in that chapter. I remember the Sunday. I remember the weather. I remember the chapel scene. I remember how the congregation looked. It was indelibly imprinted in my mind by the Spirit, I'm sure, because of its importance. And Jesus was there, and they were all arguing about who was gonna be the greatest, and it was time to eat, and they already started eating, and it was a supper. And in those days, you reclined at supper, which meant your head was about eight inches from somebody else's feet; and it was common courtesy to wash feet before such an occasion. Can't think of anything worse than not having that have happened.

But no one there was hired to do it. There was no servant, and none of the disciples would do it, 'cause they were arguing about who was the greatest, and none wanted to do that. Stoop down and be a servant, so the Lord took off His outer garment, put a towel around His waist, washed their feet, and gave 'em an unforgettable, profound lesson. Then He said to them, "You're to love one another as I have loved you." How had He just loved them? By feeling emotional? No, the only emotion he felt was probably disgust. They were sickening. So proud and selfish. It wasn't emotion. It was just that that was needed, and what He's saying is, "When you see somebody has a need, you meet it."

Somebody in your path with a need, and you do that instantaneously, spontaneously, and involuntarily, almost like a reflex, because you have a humble heart. 'Cause you have a humble heart. A humble heart will always manifest itself, and it doesn't manifest itself by someone walking around in ragged clothes saying, "I'm a worm. I'm a worm. I'm a worm." Very often, that's a false form of pride...That's the beguiling you of Colossians 2:18 with false humility.

No, humility...humility doesn't go around articulating its humility. Humility can always be seen, because humility acts in service to those in need. Humility considers others better than itself, and it turns into love immediately, and love is an action. Keep it in mind. First John says, "You say the love of God dwells in you? Ask you a simple question. You see your brother have a need? If you close up your compassion toward that need, how dwells the love of God in you?" Because the love of God moves out to meet need. It is not an emotion. It is service to one in need; and if you say you belong to God, 1 John 2:9 to 11 says, and you don't love your brother, you're a liar, because God produces in a Christian true love. So that's an attitude, love, love, love; and it isn't the attitude of...of emotion toward people who are attractive. It's the attitude of serving people with need.

I got a letter this week that illustrates that. I thought it was really great. "Dear Pastor John, This letter's a long time in coming; but, finally, I've taken the time to write it. Last May, my husband and I had the opportunity to fellowship at Grace Community Church; and I wanna tell you, from a visitor's point of view, about your church and congregation. We come from a very large church, too; and our motto is, "The church where love is." Never in my life, though, have I felt as welcome as I did at Grace Community. The people were terrific. They treated us like royalty. Everywhere we went, people surrounded us to welcome us. I met one gentleman, and he gave me an early morning tour of Grace Community Church. Then during the break between first and second service, I met another man. We talked for quite some time. He asked me if I'd like a tape of the morning service. I said, "Of course." A few weeks later, not just one tape arrived, but the whole series on Jesus teaching on divorce. Many of my friends have listened to this six-tape series, and have had many questions answered that they had asked for years. My husband and I are gonna be at Grace Community again on September 18th. We're so looking forward to it. I just though you'd like to know how wonderful your congregation is. God bless you and yours."

Isn't that great? I happen to know...those two folks. First person that gave 'em the tour really didn't have time to do that, 'cause he has tremendous responsibility. Second person that sent 'em the tapes didn't have the money to do that, either. Did it anyway. But, see, that's how love acts, because love flows from a humble heart; and love seeks not its own, but the comfort, satisfaction, joy of others; and it's always been a part of this church. I pray God it always will be. That we have flowing through us an attitude of love, selfless love that flows out of a humble heart.

I'm gonna give you one final comment, and then the next twelve next week...or beyond. Unity. Unity. Something else that has always been of great concern to me is unity. Jesus prayed in John 17, "Oh, Father, that they may be one as You and I are One, that the world may know that You sent Me." Jesus answers my prayers. I'd like to answer His, wouldn't you? He prayed for unity. In the truest sense, the application of that text is to the unity of the believers that exist in the common, eternal life that comes to us in redemption. But the extrapolation from that is that He desires not only a redemptive unity, but a unity in terms of life and purpose in the church; and Christ really desires the unity of His people.

That's why, in Ephesians 4 and verse 3, the Apostle Paul calls to the Ephesians and says, "Do this. Endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Right? He doesn't say generate the unity. You already have it. Just keep it. Do all you can to maintain unity; and I think that's such a...such an important part of church life; and that's why Satan so constantly attacks it.

Have you ever noticed how many churches split? How many people leave churches because they're unhappy. How much divisiveness there can be. I was up at Mount Hermon this week, and a lady came to me every day the first two or three days and said, "Please, I have to talk to you. Please, I have to talk to you." And, finally, we sat down, and we spent about 40 minutes, and she unbared her heart to me. She said, "Ohhhhh, I'm in the midst of a church split. The whole church is splitting right down the middle." And I said..."Why, why?" And she looked at me kinda blank. "I don't know. We can't really figure it out. We don't really know why. Somehow it doesn't even matter why. There's so much division and so many personalities pitted against others that none of us really know the reason anymore."

Isn't that incredible? Just splitting. She said, "What should I do?" I said, "Be a peacemaker. Do anything you can. Do anything you can to keep it together for the sake of the testimony of Jesus Christ." "Well, some people are saying it's God's will." "Well, it isn't God's will. Do you all believe the same?" "Yeah, we all believe the same. It's just personality conflict." That's so tragic. So tragic.

I remember Patricia and I one time were at a Bible conference with the daughter of Dr. Criswell at Dallas First Baptist, who's a very accomplished soprano soloist; and we were talking about church life; and she was saying that, she calls him daddy. It's hard for me to imagine that term for Dr. Criswell, a man of such dignity; but he is her daddy. And she said, "Daddy went through a terrible thing where a man came in, and was on the staff of the church, and tried to gather a faction and split the church, a great church like that." And she said, "He was so overwrought in his heart. He could see it coming. So after one Sunday when he was particularly exercised about that, he called up some construction company, unilaterally acting without consulting the board or anybody. He said, 'I want before next Sunday kneeling benches installed in every pew in this church.'...And so in came the crews; and by the next Sunday, when everybody came, they had flip-down kneeling benches. They're still there to this day in the First Baptist Church of Dallas. And he got up, and he said, 'In the forty-five years' pastorate of George W. Truett, who preceded me, and in the thirty-five or whatever years that I've been here, there has never been a split in this church; and by the grace of God, there never will be.' And he called those people to pull down those kneeling benches and took that entire church of thousands of people to their knees in prayer; and God brought a healing in that congregation."

Now, that brings God glory, doesn't it? That honors His name, and I believe that the enemy is ever incessantly trying to divide the church, and I thank Him and praise Him that in the twenty-five plus years' ministry of this church, there's never been a church split. Oh, you have picky little things, and some folks would get upset, and they'd wanna leave, because the color of the curtains isn't right, or because some...something didn't go the way they oughta have it go, they thought. And, very often, they might be right; but humility and love doesn't act that way anyway.

And so we have endeavored to somehow cultivate in the heart of God's people, and in my own heart, as well, unity. Satan wants to shred things. It just never stops. He either wants to get into the staff, someone who's unhappy, and cause a...a faction there; and I bless the name of God for the sweetest unity we've ever had in the history of this church on our staff. I mean we just praise God for it, and we keep an eye out, because we know the enemy always wants to sow discord. Always.

And every once in a while, somebody comes along, you know, and they wanna make a little discord about this or that. We just ask God, "Give us a congregation full of peacemakers...who wanna make sure they maintain unity, not sow discord."...And even if they're right, just because you're right, you don't always have to get the platform, do you? Sometimes you can say, "God, You and I know I'm right, but let's set that aside and seek unity." And nobody's perfect. There's gonna be cause for disagreement. But bless God, when we get on our knees together, we can seek to maintain the unity and the Spirit and the bond of peace.

This is the desire of the New Testament writers. Colossians, we...or Corinthians 1:10, 1 Corinthians says, "I beseech you, brethren," and Paul is really pouring out his heart to the Corinthians, "by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, not for me, not for my sake, not for the sake of my reputation or anything else, but for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ, speak the same thing. Let there be no division among you. Be perfectly knit together in the same mind and the same judgment."

He says in the next verse, "I hear there are contentions among you, and I can't stand it...he says...I can't stand it. Is Christ divided?...he says...It can't be. Christ is not divided." Philippians 1, he says, "You oughta be striving together for the Gospel." Unity.

Attitudes. Do you see 'em in your life? Is your life characterized by obedience so that there's a progressing maturity? There's a...a mounting degree of sanctification as you hear the Word and instantly and properly apply it, can you see growth? So that when you reach the end of your earthly years, you will be reaching the climax of your spiritual life in terms of dedication.

And what about humility? Have you abandoned yourself for the sake of others so that out of that humble heart comes loving action? And do you, at all costs, and at all self-sacrifice, seek by making peace to maintain the unity of the spirit? This is what we're after. This is what we're after...and I believe this is God's will for us. Let's bow in prayer...

Father, I ask that You would start with me...rekindle in my heart a dedication to obedience...Help me to...by the grace of the Spirit of God experience...the humility that looks on others, not on myself, and sees others better than myself...Help me to make sacrifices in meeting needs for any in my path whose need I am able to meet and seek nothing in return. And at all costs, Lord...with my action and my tongue may I be a source of unity and not discord...For if there's not humility and there's not love and...there's not a pursuit of unity, then there's not really obedience, either; and I would be guilty, as all of us would, of hearing the truth and not applying it and becoming hardened and stagnant...cold...

We're gonna close in prayer in a moment; but while your head's bowed, I'd like all of us to sort of covenant together in our hearts before God. And would you pray and ask the Lord...to produce in you these four attitudes we've talked about this morning?...You pray silently...for God to give you a heart of obedience...no matter what the price...for God to break your pride and...humble you...give you love that reaches out to those in need...and make you a peacemaker who seeks it at all costs the unity of the body...

If you found it difficult to pray for those things, it only says how hardened your heart has become. If you were unwilling, all the harder...You have heard and not obeyed; and now you have developed habits of disobedience, so hard to break...and perhaps you must pursue in...intercessory prayer a breaking of spirit... the launching of a new habit of obedience...

The Internal Systems, Part 2

This morning it's on my heart to continue to share from my heart with you. Several weeks ago, I felt the need to just talk about things that I believe are important for our church. And I confess to you that this is something which the Spirit of God has impressed upon my mind, not so much as a sermon, but as a passion. And as I said when we began, I, I'm not always certain how I'm going to say it, how it's going to come out, how the Spirit of God may direct my thinking to frame it. But I really believe it's needful that we talk about the essential ingredients, the essential elements in a church that honors the Lord Jesus Christ.

God has blessed this church. There are reasons why He has. His sovereignty is one reason. But another is because Grace Community Church has been committed, I believe, through the years of its existence, to the right things; and, by that, I mean to the things of the Word of God. And we're taking a few weeks to just reaffirm those things; so for those of us who may have forgotten or for those of us who are new, we can kind of reestablish where we have found our strength and our blessing.

And I've entitled this brief series "The Anatomy of a Church," "The Anatomy of a Church." We've borrowed the biblical analogy of a body; and we've said that, basically, we could reduce the body to four elements. This is not clinical. This is just for the sake of analogy. A body is skeleton, internal systems, muscles, and flesh; and so is a church that is the body of Christ. There must be the skeleton, and we talked about that in our first study together, and we said that there are some things that frame and form the church without which it would be a shapeless blob. There are some bottom line things, some non-negotiable, some irreducible minimums, some foundations, some framework things, some form and substance realities that must be at the very center of our life as a church. And I suggested five of them.

First is a high view of God. A church, to be what God wants it to be, must have as its focus God Himself. And there are a lot of other possible foci, if you will, but there's only one proper focus, and that's on God. In other words, as we focus on God, everything finds its proper place. There can be no compromise when God is all in all, and all we do is for His consummate glory. Now that is essentially the meaning of whatever you do, whether you eat or drink, do it all to the glory of God. That's the focus of everything. And then we suggested, secondly, the absolute priority of Scripture; because we cannot focus on God unless we know who He is; and we do not know who He is unless we understand His revelation, which is the Word of God. So we begin with a high view of God, and we affirm the absolute priority of Scripture, which reveals God.

Thirdly, we are committed to doctrinal clarity; looking at God through His Word, drawing truth out of His Word. And then, fourthly, to personal holiness, applying that truth to life; and then fifthly, spiritual authority, holding people accountable for the living out of that truth. Now, these are framework things: high view of God, which means we are absolutely committed to the revelation which He's given of Himself, which means that we must clarify that and give it to folks in a practical, understandable way, so that they can apply it in the matter of personal holiness and then bring that all under spiritual authority.

Those are framework truths. Therefore, they must be preached. They must be taught. They must be modeled and patterned; and they are continually needing to be reaffirmed; and that's why we go back to those things. You know, when we meet on the Lord's Day, and when we have classes and Bible studies and fellowship groups and so forth, one of the very essential features of that is a continual reaffirmation of our basic values.

We meet together to reaffirm the things to which we are committed; and when we come together on the Lord's Day, what do we do? Well, first of all, we worship in song and prayer and in the Scripture that offers praise to God; and that's why I always read the Psalms, or most always. And then the choir sings great truths about our glorious God; and the instruments play to His praise, as it says in Psalm 150. And all of that is to cultivate in our hearts and reaffirm a high view of a holy God. And then behind that comes the Word of God, because we prioritize the Word, and so we teach the Scripture. And as we teach the Scripture, we draw out of it truth or doctrinal clarity. And then in the message, as it comes to a conclusion, we apply that to the heart, where personal holiness can be the response. And, as you go from this place, we hope that you take that fourth step, personal holiness, with you and you go out to live it. And then we come behind that with shepherding, which is the spiritual authority that gives oversight to the flock. So what we do is not just grab-bag. It is to step into consistent line with these irreducible realities that we've affirmed.

Now, secondly, and in our last message, we began to look at these; and we will for several messages, because there are several of them that I want to emphasis. We talked about internal systems. A body has to have internal systems. You can't just have a skeleton and muscles, flesh. You wouldn't have life. There has to be a flowing through of all the systems of the body, and I believe that's true in the church. You can't just affirm solid doctrinal foundations. There has to be a life flow. And I believe that life flow is proper attitudes, proper attitudes. It's a battle for the mind, folks. It really is. It's a battle for the mind, because as a man--what?--thinks in his heart, so is he. It's a battle for the mind.

And so what we are trying to do in the ministry is to get you to have proper spiritual attitudes; to cultivate in you right kind of thinking, that you may be--to put in Pauline terms--renewed in the spirit of your mind; that you may--as Paul said to the Philippians--"think on these things." That you may have a renewed mind. That you may put on the mind of Christ. That you may be spiritually-minded. All those are biblical phrases. In other words, we want to get you thinking right.

To be honest with you, it isn't a question of, of trying to control your behavior. It's a question of trying to get a handle on your thinking, which will produce right behavior. You may be forced to do right things with wrong thoughts and motives and reasons and attitudes; and all your right things are nothing more than hypocrisy. That's all, just hypocrisy. And so, we don't major on forcing you to conform outwardly, but on the endeavor to create within your thinking right spiritual attitudes. And when you think right, you act right. So we're not just interested in programs. We're not just interested in activities. We're not just interested in conformity to some kind of external code, but rather in cultivating internal attitudes that honor God. So the flowing through in the body of the systems is what it ought to be, and the body is whole and healthy and productive and dynamic and rightly representative of its head, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, let me just review what we said in our last study together. The first and foremost attitude that needs to be cultivated is the attitude of obedience, of obedience. That is the sine qua non of all attitudes. It is the all-pervasive attitude. It is the attitude that says, "I will obey God at any cost." It is the attitude of no compromise. It is the attitude that says, "If God says it, that settles it. I'll do it." It is the attitude that doesn't negotiate with God, that doesn't justify sin; but it seeks always and only to do the will of the Lord. It is better than sacrifice. That is, it is better than any external act of worship. It is internal obedience; and all right spiritual attitudes start there. If you're not willing to obey God to start with, there's nothing going to come beyond that but difficulty, trial, negative circumstance.

The second attitude we talked about was humility. Humility. Obedience and humility; and that basically is the attitude that thinks other people are more important than I am. You're more important than I am. Your needs are more important than my needs. Your wants are more important than my wants. Your happiness is more important than my happiness. Your joy is more important than my joy. Your place is more important than my place. Your reputation is more important than mine. All of those things. It's the selflessness of the Lord Jesus Christ who humbled Himself (Philippians chapter 2). That is an essential attitude, because pride is such a devastating thing.

Thirdly, we talked about the attitude of love, and love is humility in action. Love is simply humility doing things. Humility and love are inseparable, you see, because only humble people can love. I can't give myself to you unless I care more about you than I do me. I can't abandon myself to your needs unless I really am humble, and so humility gives a launching pad for love. If humility is selflessness, then love is selfless service; selfless giving.

And then, fourthly, we talked about unity. When you have people committed to obedience, and you have people committed to love, because they have hearts that are humble, you will see the result, which will be unity. Humility leads to love, and love leads to unity; because where people are all giving themselves away to others, there's marvelous unity. You meet my needs, I'll meet your needs, and it goes on and on; and that kind of interchange is what builds the true, one-heart, one-mind, one-soul unity of which the Bible speaks. But it springs out of humility. That's such a critical matter.

So we talked about those first elements, and I want to read you a letter that someone sent in response to those first ones, and I think it's just very heartwarming and, and encouraging to all of us. Listen to it:

"Your last two sermons on 'The Anatomy of a Church' have been convicting. I am praying that God will use this series to do a great work in the hearts of the flock at Grace. This morning you spoke about humility. I would like to share with you how the Lord is working in my life regarding this issue.

“In the early summer, I read a book by Andrew Murray on humility and I began to pray that God would teach me to be humble. Well, you know what happens when we pray according to His will. A few weeks ago, He gave me the opportunity to exercise all the Scripture knowledge that I had been learning here at Grace. I volunteered to go with four others from Grace to the trash dumps in Mexico to minister to the people who live there. It was an experience I will never forget. Aside from the poor living conditions, the filth was enough to make you sick. My job, once we got there, was to wash the heads of the children, which had lice. This was something I had never done before. Can you imagine 25 children in a line before you, all with various degrees of lice? Not to mention, we had no running water, just tubs of water that were used over and over and over for all the children.

“We stood outside in the sun, and it was over 100 degrees. As I stood there washing head after head, my thoughts went from disgust to joy. One little boy had lice so bad that he had sores on his head. Well, I must admit that, at first, I wasn't too wild about touching those sores. However, I started to think about how Jesus had washed the disciples' feet, and I was humbled right then before God, realizing that this child's need was much greater than my comfort.

“I learned some great lessons that day about sacrifice and considering others more important than myself, and I pray that God'll continue to work in my life to teach me the things that will bring Him glory."

Well, that's a wonderful letter, and that's the expression of a humble heart. That's the expression of a loving heart. It makes sacrifices to meet the needs of others. Those are attitudes for which there is no substitute; and if there's to be life flowing through the church, there must be obedience, humility, love, sense of unity.

Now, let me go on to talk about a few more of these attitudes. Let's call the fifth one willingness to serve. Willingness to serve, because it flows right out of what we've just said about love and humility and so forth and really is another way to say the same thing. Willingness to serve. Someone said to me the other day, "You know we don't go to your church anymore. We've gone to a small church where they need us." People say that to me often, and I don't quite, that's okay. Maybe the Spirit of God led them. God bless them. They're dear people and I, I, I'm sure the Lord led them there.

But it isn't that we don't need you. I mean, look at all of these people. You think they don't have needs? It isn't that the more people you have, the less need you have. What people seem to mean is that they got programs over there, and they don't have anybody to run them; and they need folks to help them with the program; and that might be right. But ministry is not necessarily related to church-designed programs. You got that one? It isn't. I mean, you could come here and say, "Well, we go to the church, but we don't do, I mean we don't do anything. We don't sing in the choir or teach a class or sweep the floor or do whatever. We, we, we don't do anything. We, we go there, and we just don't know whether there's a need." Take a look around you, all kinds of people with need all over the place. It's all depending, it all depends on your perspective, see.

Go to 1 Corinthians for a minute, chapter 4, and I want to show some Scriptures with you, to you, and then make a conclusion. 1 Corinthians 4, and Paul says this: "Let a man so account of us..." In other words, when it comes to rendering a judgment about me and the ones with me, when it comes to saying, "Well, who was this guy?" When it comes to writing my epitaph, if you will, when it comes to saying my eulogy, when it comes to reciting what contribution I made, when it comes to my time to be praised, would you please say this? "He was a servant of Christ." I like that. I can think of at least a half a dozen words in the Greek language for servant, of which he uses the, the lowest one. The word: huperetes. Huper: under. Etes: from the word to row. An under rower. They had great, hulking, wooden ships. They had in the hull of those ships three tiers. They were called triremes, three tiers of slaves chained to their oars, and they pulled those hulking masses through the seas. The guys on the bottom were the under rowers. Paul says, look, when it comes time to evaluate the apostle Paul, don't name cathedrals after him. Don't even name a city in Minnesota after me, he says. Don't name a school after me. Don't give me an honorary doctorate. Just say, “He was a third-level galley slave, and bless his heart, he pulled his oar." Servant. Lot of, lot of, people want to be a hotshot. God wants people who pull the oar.

In verse 2, he says the key to this whole thing is that a man be found--what?--faithful. Faithful. You don't want a clever rower who's got a new way to do it and, meanwhile, shears off everybody else's oars in the process. You want a faithful rower. That's it; who sees himself as a servant. In verse 3, he says, "With me it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or man's judgment." What are you saying? "I'm not in this deal for your opinion. I'm not doing this to get accolades. I'm not serving the Lord Jesus Christ to be judged by you. I can't accept your judgment.” And I understand what he's saying. I really do. You see, people don't always know what's going on inside. They may praise you, and you may have corrupt motives. They may curse you, and you may have the purest motives in the world, and you're struggling to get through your own humanness.

I mean, you don't really--sometimes you preach your heart out--and you know it was terrible. You missed it. You blew it. And I've had those times and gone away with tears, because I just, I didn't do what I thought should honor God. And you go away, and some dear soul will say, "Marvelous, the greatest sermon you've ever preached." And you smile and shake their hand and say, "Thank you." And you know they don't know. And other times, man, you've just been flying like an eagle, and you go down, and someone says, "You're not feeling well today, are you?" And you say, "What? Man, I never pr--I never felt better." "No, you didn't seem like yourself; kind of fumbled around." Then people criticize you and evaluate you, praise you, blame you, bless you, curse you.

Paul says, "I, I'm not getting into that game. I just want to pull my oar. That's all, and I'm really not interested in what people say." He says, "They don't know the facts." And I like this at the end of verse 3. "And I'm not even judging my own self. You know that? I can't even trust my own judgment. I'm so biased in my own favor." He says in verse 4, "Even when I don't know anything against myself, that doesn't justify me. I may not be uncovering all the rocks in my life. I may think I'm doing good. That doesn't justify me. He that judges me is--what?--the Lord. The Lord: And so I'm going to judge nothing before that day when He comes and manifests the attitudes of the heart, the motives of the heart, and when He sees there a servant's heart, that's what I want."

So he's called us to be third-level galley slaves, pull our oar, be faithful, not try to make a reputation, not even evaluate our own selves favorably; just pull our oar and let the Lord judge. That's why in Acts 20, he says, "Serving the Lord with all humility of mind." We're right back to that humility. You, these things are inextricably woven together. In fact, you could just about take any one of these attitudes; and if you cultivated that one attitude in your life, the spin-off would be: Every one of these other attitudes would have to occur. You couldn't have love without humility. You couldn't have humility without love. You couldn't have true unity in the fellowship without love and humility. You can't truly serve with a servant's heart without love, and you can't be a servant with a servant's heart without humility. It, it's all interwoven. It's as if the Lord is coming at the same issue from all different angles; and if He could just get us to grab onto one, lock into it, and concentrate on that, everything else would take its, find its proper place.

You say, "Well, what do you mean by ‘a willingness to serve?’" I, I simply mean this. I'm not talking about church programs. Go with me to Romans, chapter 12 for a moment. We talked about motive. Now let's talk about function. In Romans, chapter 12, verse 4, we pick up this body analogy again, and it says, "As we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same function: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us..." You can stop there. So we have this body, right, and the body has all different members, like a human body, and the church is the same way, and every one of us has different gifts. And then he, he demands of us, "If you have gifts of prophesying, then prophesy; of ministry, then let us minister; teaching, then teach; exhorting, then exhort; giving, then give; ruling, do with diligence; showing mercy, do it with cheerfulness." In other words, he says, "Get on with it, man. You don't need a program." If you're a believer, you have a God-given ability to minister, and it needs to flow out of your life.

It may be within a structure. Bless God, that's a wonderful way. It may be very, very personally; but a believer who's not ministering is a contradiction in terms, because a believer is one indwelt by the Spirit of God, empowered by the Spirit of God, for service; and not to serve is to somewhere create a bottleneck. And to come to a church and say, "Well, I, I came there, but they got all these people, and I don't really know where I could serve." Listen, man, if you're spill, filled with the Spirit of God, He wants to cultivate through you a ministry that is absolutely essential.

Now, it says here the word prophecy, and then it talks about ministry. Those are very broad terms. Teaching: very broad. Exhorting, giving, ruling, showing mercy: very broad. Those are really not just narrow, little, tiny, isolated things; but those are categories. Within the category of giving, there's all kinds of ways to give; within the category of showing mercy, multitude of ways to show mercy. In the category of preaching and teaching, myriad ways to preach and teach and styles and so forth and so on. The point is this: these are categories of giftedness; and in your life and mine, the Lord has blended from those various categories a perfect blend and given us a gift that is ours alone, that is the perfect blending together of those categories of giftedness. There are others listed in 1 Corinthians 12 also. So I see them as categories; and out of them, the Lord picks a dimension and mixes it with another and another and another. I look at my own life, and I say, "Obviously, God has called me to preach and to teach and to lead and to exhort and to demonstrate the gift of knowledge, perhaps."

So He's picked this and that and this; and He blends it so that every one of us becomes a spiritual snowflake; no two alike. And if you don't function, if you don't serve in whatever simple way you can, it's not the attitude that God would have. And we, it's so easy to generate a spectator sort of thing. That's not it. This church has never been content with it. I remember years ago when Moody Monthly came out and wanted to do an article on our church. We were still over in the chapel, but we had people busting out all over the place, and they wanted to do a thing on us, and I didn't really know them in those days. It was long before I'd written books for Moody Press and things. They came out and Lowell Saunders did an article on our church. And after studying it, surveying it, and interviewing folks, the title he gave to the article was "The Church with 900 Ministers," because we had 900 people in those days; and he said, "Everybody's serving." We had less programs then than we do now in terms of formal programming, but everybody was after it. They were doing it. They were just doing it, ministering their gifts.

People were calling up and say, "Is there anybody in the hospital I could go see? Can I help in the nursery? Can I go over there and help those dear ladies who are chasing those little guys all over the carpet? Can I move chairs? Can I clean restrooms? Can I wash windows? I just want to use the gift that helps. Is there a place you could use somebody who, who wants to teach? I, I'd love to learn if you train me. Is there a place you could put somebody who, who wants to reach people with the Gospel? We'd like to help." Or else we'd hear, "Hey, we got a ministry going over here, and it's marvelous, and God's blessing it. We're using our gifts. Glory to His name! And all this." That's the way it ought to be in the church. Maybe when it gets big, everybody thinks somebody else is going to do it; but the bigger it gets, the greater the need is; and we just need more folks being involved. But it isn't just that. It isn't that we need to do something to build the church, you know, quote unquote, or to accomplish some program goal.

If you're a Christian, and you're in the body of Christ, you got to be doing your part, if you want to know joy, if you want to know blessing, if you want to be obedient. So many needs; just start using your gifts. Doesn't matter; you don't have to analyze your gift. You may never know what it. I don't know what my gift is other than I know I preach, I teach, I do a few things. I can't, I don't need to catalogue the thing. You don't need a computer deal. You could send away. Get a deal, send, they'll send a computer printout on what your gift is. Yeah, but that's ridiculous. Computer doesn't know. I've, I've been watching myself for a long time, and I'm not, I'm not sure that I know the, the way God's blended it all together. I, I basically know what I don't do well probably better than I knew, know what I do. But the way I understand my gift is when I start to minister, and I just turn around and look back and says, "So that's what I do." And when you get into flow of ministry and the power of the Spirit of God, you'll see what God'll do through you.

You know, there's no end to the need. I just heard the other day that 70 percent of the people over eighteen in the San Fernando Valley are single. Is that incredible? A lot of homes are just flying apart, aren't they? 70 percent. This is the swinger's age, divorcees, single parents. Talk about needs. People, we have needs. Needs everywhere. Needs all around our fellowship.

I'll say another thing about single people while I'm talking about it. I think sometimes single people think the only thing in life for them is to get married. Let me tell you. You have an alternative, a better thing than that. Read 1 Corinthians 7. Paul says only get married if you have to; I mean if you can't get out of it. And if you don't have the gift of singleness, and you just burn, and you just got to get married, get married. But, man, if you can stay single, stay single. I believe in our church single people provide probably the greatest resource for spiritual ministry, because they're not encumbered. It says in 1 Corinthians 7:35-36, that whole thing from 32 on, single people care for the things of the Lord. Married people care for the family, their wives, their spouse, and all the needful things to care for. That's not wrong. It's just that if you can be single, enjoy it; and think about all the single people we need to reach. Listen, there are myriad of things. Just cultivate whatever ministry God has put in your heart, God has gifted you for.

Oh, I want to just introduce you to two favorite people of mine that are a little bit obscure. Colossians 4:12. Colossians 4:12. This man's name is Epaphras. Epaphras. Listen to this. I, I like this so much. It says, "Epaphras, who is one of you." Isn't that good? Who is he? Ph.D., D.D., L.L.D, M.D., seminary grad, Phi Beta Kappa? No, no, no, no. Ordained? No, no. "Epaphras, who is one of you.” Folks, just folks; bless him. “He's a servant of [Whom?] Christ." Isn't that beautiful? I mean I, I thought of that years back. I thought that would be a wonderful, thing to put on somebody's tombstone who was just a, a beloved, wonderful Christian. Just say his name, one of us, a servant of Christ, just one of us. It's a very high calling. He greets you. What was his ministry? Great preacher? Great orator? No, no, no. What was his ministry? Oh. "He's always laboring to the point of exhaustion fervently for you in prayer." Isn't that good? God, give us some Epaphras. "He's just one of you," he says to the Philippian, the Colossians. "Just one of your guys; and he always fervently prays." So what's he praying for? "He's praying that you, you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God." Here is a guy who carries on his heart the burden of everybody's spiritual development. I believe this is the gift of faith. The, the gift of faith is linked to prayer. Here is a guy with the gift of faith, and I don't know what other gifts were mingled in; but, man, he just exercised it to the hilt. He didn't need an organized program. He just got on his knees and stayed there. Prayed. Prayed.

There's another fellow in Philippians, chapter 2, verse 25; name's even close: "Epaphroditus, my brother and companion in labor and fellow soldier, but your messenger." In other words, "You sent him to me," and what is his thing? What does he do? Oh. "He ministered to my need." What was he? He was a companion. You know how valuable it is to have a companion? You know what it means just to have somebody along when you're in the battle? Just to be a loved friend? Somebody to take up the sword and fight with you? Lots of folks need that. "And he ministered to my need. He longed after you all. He was full of heaviness, because you heard that he was sick." I mean this is unbelievable. The guy is upset. He's full of a heavy heart. Why? Because he knows that his church found out he's sick. He thinks they'll be sad about it, and he's so sad that they're sad about him being sick. He's not sad that he's sick. He's sad that they're sad that he's sick. What a guy! He's not riding back from the field saying, "Pray for me. I have a hangnail." You know? He's sad because they're sad that he's sick. What a loving relationship those folks must've had, huh? And he was sick. Verse 27: He was so sick he nearly died. He got sick and nearly died.

You say, "Well, how'd he get sick?" Oh, verse 30, humph, “For the work of Christ he, he nearly died. He was so busy trying to supply your service to me." I don't know, I think when we get to heaven, people like this are going to stick out. We're going to have to look hard to find some of the ones we knew better. Bless his heart. So in verse 29, he says, "Receive him. I'm sending him to you. Just receive him and hold him in high reputation." Oh, what, what has he done? Oh, he was a companion. He was a helper. You see, folks, it's a matter of spontaneity. It's, it's a matter of what's inside. If you just have a willingness to serve, it just is going to come out. I mean if you're always standing back saying, "Well, I don't want to get involved in that deal. I don't know if they'll accept me." Or, "I don't know if I like working with those." I mean you could play those games all you want. Or you could just serve. Just serve.

Let me give you another one. Joy. Joy. That's the sixth internal spiritual attitude. In our tent meetings the last couple nights, Ken Poor was talking about this matter of joy. We had a wonderful time thinking about it, talking about it, and we enjoyed a lot of it, I think, too. What do we mean by joy? Well, joy is sort of an outward exuberance. It's sort of a, it's the response of the heart, the soul, the mind, the body, the whole person, to the relationship to Jesus Christ; and one of the things we've endeavored to cultivate in this church is joy.

There's a seriousness in the Word of God. Oh, yes. There's a seriousness in dealing with the infinitely holy and all-wise God, sovereign God with whom we have to do. There's a great seriousness in struggling through the terrible pressures and anxieties of life and death and all that humanness brings to bear upon us. There are lots of things that pain us; but, at the same time, we are filled with joy; and that is a deep soul enthusiasm that all is well and ultimately all will be glorious.

I believe that joy comes out of the Word of God. I believe as we study the Word of God, as we obey the Word of God, joy is ours. "These things I write unto you,” 1 John 1:4 says, “that your joy may be [What?] full." "And the Kingdom of God,” it says in Romans, “is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit." Jesus said that He came to give us joy. Paul says, "Rejoice always, again, I say rejoice," and I, I, I'm convinced that joy is linked to this whole matter of a willingness to serve. I see people getting involved in the things of the Lord and doing things and using their gifts; and there is joy. Why? Because the joy comes in giving yourself away. People who are introspective, well, they're trying to collect it all and meet their own needs and solve their own problems and satisfy all their own wants, become inwardly ingrown, self-contemplating, miserable human beings.

It's the people who throw their lives away that are filled with joy, and we want a church that's filled with joy. I mean I, I get excited about things; and I, I don't let things steal my joy. I, I, I fight to maintain my joy. Some people try to take my joy. They do. They come and say, "John, we got a real problem over here, very serious, very serious." I say, "Well, what is it?" And they tell me some little thing, you know, a little nothing thing, and I, I just say, "Well, we'll just see if the Lord won't solve that problem. We'll do what we can." And sometimes they'll come and have a problem that's a problem. It's a big problem; and I've just cultivated in my own heart, just a cultivating thing, that whenever I have a real big problem, I instantly react by saying, "That is really exciting. Boy, that's terrific! Thank you so much. I'm so excited about that problem."

Some of you who've been around me know that's what I've been saying. "Boy, I'm so glad to know that. What a terrific problem!" They look at me, you know, like my elevator doesn't go to the top floor. But, you see, if I know what the problem is, I, I'm ahead of the game, right? Because I know the problem solver. But if I don't know what the problems are, then I am really in trouble. I don't have any trouble if I know where the problems are. I have joy, because I know the one who solves the problems.

You can lose your joy. You can start looking for the manure pile in every meadow if you want. You can live life that way. I mean you can just go, it's a choice. It's a choice you make. I choose to be joyful. I choose to be happy. I choose to be enthusiastic. I choose to be excited about what God's doing; and I don't care what you tell me. You're not going to affect that if I can help it in the strength, in the Spirit of God, because I believe the Bible commands me to rejoice always; and, again, I say, "Rejoice." And so I say to my spirit, "Rejoice, MacArthur, rejoice. Rejoice in the God who redeemed you and loves you in spite of yourself. Rejoice that someday you're going to have, going to heaven. Sure you have problems, but someday you're going to get to heaven. You're going to have a whole congregation of perfect people. They're going to have a perfect preacher, and you won't even need another, so you can dismiss church and all go home."

Listen, don't let anybody take your joy; and if you don't have the joy of the Lord, it's because you're looking at the wrong stuff. Joy's available. We can rejoice in anything. We're going to talk about that tonight. All things work together for good; therefore, whatever comes is a source of joy. I never saw people any happier than when they know they've solved a problem. You can't get that happy if you don't have one to start with.

Let me talk about a sixth attitude. Peace. Peace. That's a beautiful word, isn't it? Peace. "My peace I leave with you; not as the world giveth give I unto you. Let not your heart be [What?] troubled. Neither let it be afraid." Jesus gave us His peace. First Corinthians 7:15 says, "God has called us to peace." Let the peace of God rule in your hearts, Philippians 4 says. "Live in peace," 2 Corinthians 13:11. "Be at peace among yourselves," 1 Thessalonians 5:13. Peace; if joy is the outward exuberance, peace is the inward contentment. And when you see people who come to the Lord, and they talk about joy and peace don't they? The joy of the Lord and its deep, settled peace. Peace. In other words, that's the inward contentment that says, "Everything is under control. Everything's under control."

Now that's not true if there's sin in your life. But where you're dealing with sin, and you're walking in the Spirit, no matter what happens, peace. We should never allow anyone to take our peace. Through the years of ministry here, we have tried to cultivate in the heart an attitude of peace, an attitude of rest, an attitude of confidence in God. I've been pouring out my soul for weeks now on Romans, chapter 8, trying to, trying to show you that you're secure in Jesus Christ, and the byproduct of that kind of security is a deep, profound sense of rest. Peace. Peace of soul. No reason to be troubled. No reason to be anxious. That's why Paul says, “Be anxious for [What?] nothing.” Nothing; let the peace of God rule your soul. All of us are tested at that point, sure; and we don't perfectly live in peace; but that's an attitude we must have. An attitude of peace.

Let me give you a corollary, and this is what I really want to emphasize. We could say a lot about peace itself. In Matthew, chapter 5, our Lord said, "Blessed are the peace [What?] makers for they shall be called the sons of God." Christians should be peacemakers. Beloved, you couldn't do anything more wonderful for the kingdom of God, the church of Jesus Christ, than to be a peacemaker. What a wonderful thing.

Human nature tends toward conflict, doesn't it? Just as, as Job says: "Man is born into trouble as the sparks fly upward." I mean, life just sparks as people rub against each other. Conflict; it, it just happens. It happens in personalities. It happens just continually, and the thing that we could do that would be just marvelous is to be peacemakers. Don't foment the anxiety. Soothe it. I mean I, I hear things. Somebody'll say, "Well, you know, something's wrong at Grace Church, boy," and then they get this little thing going here, and somebody else hears it, somebody else. And all of a sudden, this tidal wave comes, chhhhhhwwwwwooooo, you know, in over me. And I say, "Wait, I think that's a little out of proportion, folks." And instead of somebody along the line being a peacemaker, we have this sort of piling up of people who, rather than making peace, made trouble. And I, and I've been part of that, too, sometimes. We all fall into that.

Somewhere in our hearts has to be that commitment to that attitude that says, "I am at peace. All is well. God is in control. He's still on His throne. I'll be a peacemaker." Oh, what a beautiful thing. Be a peacemaker. Be a peacemaker. Every time you get an opportunity to come into a conflict, make peace. Bring two parties together, so that they can embrace each other. Be a peacemaker. Don't take a side over here against this person over here. Try to find what's good about this person, good about this person. Eliminate the things that are bad; and, on the basis of what you can see that's right about that thing, cultivate proper relationships and be a peacemaker. Start in your own family.

You know, there are some things, men, that you can say that'll send your wife into orbit, and you know it. Don't say those things. Why would you do that? You know, there are some times in our family when I'm right. My wife thinks I'm wrong sometimes, but I'm right. Sometimes I'm wrong, but sometimes I'm right. And there are some times when she thinks I'm wrong, and I am right; and God and I may be the only two that know, but I'm right. But I'm not going to assert that because it doesn't make peace. I'm not going to compromise conviction, but I'm certainly not going to defend my rights if they don't make peace; because peace is more important to me than my own will and my own way. It's not more important to me than God's way; and that's why I do fight some battles continually against those who deny the truth of God, but make peace with those who are in His family. We must be peacemakers. Oh, if, if you could just understand these things, how simple life can become.

One more: Thankfulness. And these are so obvious, and this is just simple review, these just basic things. "In everything give thanks," 1 Thessalonians 5:18. In everything give thanks. “In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God concerning you." People stumble all over trying to find the will of God, looking for the will of God. They think God is a universal Easter Bunny who stashed it in the bushes, and He's saying, "You're getting warmer. You're getting warmer," as they poke around in God's will.

I just read a 425-page book on how to find God's will. I found God's will in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, "In everything give thanks." Four words: just be thankful. Just be thankful. People say, "Oh, if I had a better job, I had a better wife, had a better husband, had a better family, had a better situation, better car, better this, better that, didn't have all these problems, all." Be thankful. Thanksgiving is the most powerful thing, I'm telling you, in your life. If you can ever cultivate a thankful heart, you can solve so many problems. All you have to do is just keep offering God thanks and praise, and it'll eliminate all your problems. You just don't see them anymore.

I mean that's what the Psalmist did. He'd get in a problem. He'd be hiding somewhere under a rock, because he's afraid Absalom is going to kill him. I mean this is David, right? He's got nobody to defend him. He's out in the desert all by himself. Absalom's trying to take the throne away from him. He's chasing him out in the wilderness, and he's sitting under a rock, and he's crying, "Oh, God, oh, God, why do the wicked prosper? And why are You doing this? How long, oh, Lord, am I going to be here? Why don't You go in there and, and destroy them?" And, oh, on and on, and then finally he'll start to think about what God's done, and he'll start to recite everything: “God, Oh, Lord, You did this. Oh, Lord, You did that. Oh, You're so high. Oh, You're so mighty. Oh, You're so glorious. Oh, I thank You for this. I thank You for that." And then give, when you get to the end of the Psalm, “Oh, Lord!” He's terrific, he's just completely freed. He's under the same rock; Absalom's doing the same deal. He's just cultivated a whole different perspective.

And if you got trouble, and you're grumbling and griping all the time, has nothing to do with your circumstances. It has to do with your inability to be thankful for the things God's doing that are positive. Cultivate thankfulness. Let your lips be filled with praise. In Psalm 30 verse 4, it says we ought to be thankful for the remembrance of God's holiness. In Psalm 106:1, we ought to be thankful for the goodness and mercy that He gives us. In 2 Corinthians 9:15, we ought to be thankful for the gift of Christ. In Revelation 11:17, we ought to be thankful for Christ's power and coming kingdom. In 1 Thessalonians 2:13, we ought to be thankful for the reception and effectual working of the Word of God. In Romans 7:23 to 25, we ought to be thankful for the fact that Christ has delivered us from the power of indwelling sin. In 1 Corinthians 15:57, we ought to be filled with thanksgiving that we have been promised: victory over death; and resurrection. In Daniel 2:23, Daniel was thankful for “wisdom and strength.” In 2 Corinthians 2:14, we should be thankful for the triumph of the gospel. In Romans 6:17, we ought to be thankful for the conversion of other people. In Romans 1:8, we ought to be thankful for the faith exhibited by others, as Paul was. And in 2 Thessalonians 1:3, he was thankful for the love that he saw in other believers, for their hard work for the kingdom's sake. In 1 Corinthians 1:4, he was thankful for grace bestowed on others. He was thankful in 2 Corinthians 8:16, for the zeal for Christ that he saw in the lives of others.

I mean, you just cultivate and cultivate thankfulness, instead of going around moaning about how bad things are. You say, "Well, I, I'm not thankful, but my circumstance." No, it's not your circumstance. See, the reason you're not thankful is very simple. You're not, the reason you're not thankful is you don't think you're getting what you deserve. That's right; and if you got what you deserved, you'd be in hell, so eliminate that. You don't want what you deserve. You don't even want, you don't even want what you want unless you know God wants it for you. Be thankful--so many--cultivate thanks. It'll take all the sourness out of your life.

These are simple things, aren't they? Thankfulness, peace, joy, willingness to serve, unity, love, humility, obedience. Listen carefully. I don't, what I'm going to say may sound like heresy, but it isn't. Here's, here's eight things I gave you. Now, listen, you could take any one of them, just any one of them; and if that one thing were reigning supreme in your life, all the rest would be there, too. Just take obedience. You have an attitude of obedience, takes care of everything. Take humility. If you're humble, truly humble, selfless, then you're going to love, and then you're going to find unity. And if you love like that, you're going to serve; and out of that service is going to come joy; and out of that service and that love, a deep sense of peace; and when you have a deep sense of peace and a deep sense of joy and your life is filled with meaningful service, you're going to offer God what? Thanks.

Take love. If your life is totally dominated by love, what's going to happen? Well, in the first place, "If you love Me, you keep My [What?] commandments." So if you just love God, you'll obey everything; and if you just love God, you're going to be humble; and you're going to find unity; and out of that great love will come service and joy and peace and thanksgiving, because you're going to thank the one you love. Isn't that true? And you're going to be joyful, and you're going to have a peace in your heart in that contented love relationship you have.

Or you could just, you could take unity. I mean, if you really sought to be one heart, one soul, knit together with every other believer--boy, I'll tell you--to do that you'd have to express love, and humility, and obedience. It's all; it doesn't matter. I mean it's almost like the Lord is saying, "Look, I'm giving you about eight thousand ways to approach this deal. Just pick any one." It's like when Galatians 5, it says, "But the fruit of the Spirit [not fruits, but fruit] is love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control." You get all or none. You can't say, "Well, my life is full of love, true love of God, love generated by the Holy Spirit. It's just that I'm miserable, wretched. I have no joy in my life." No, no, life filled with love is going to be joy and peace and gentleness and goodness. I mean it all just comes, see. Or let's say you just decided you're going to be joyful. You're just going to cultivate joy. Out of your joy is going to come thanks and peace and service. I mean you see what I'm saying? Jump in anyplace.

Well, I believe that we understand the exhortation. Let me speak a word of commendation. I praise God continuously that you are obedient; and I'm not saying you're not; and you are humble and loving; and you have a beautiful unity, a willingness to serve, joy, peace. Thanksgiving is definitely in your lives. I see it. I praise God for it. I commend you, but I only remind you to reinforce in case those things may have slipped a little. It's not that we don't have these things. We do. We need more of what good things we have, right? And we need more folks living this to the fullest. I want to close with a letter that I think is a wonderful blessing. You will, too. Listen:

"Today marks our family's one-year anniversary at Grace Community Church. We stepped out on faith from our home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Coming out West to attend Grace Church has been the most exciting year of our family's Christian life. It's like moving to California for the Gold Rush, only it's not corruptible gold we're seeking but an incorruptible richness in the Word of God that so freely is available at Grace Church. Although we were truly growing in God's Word through your blessed radio ministry, we felt it was time that we give of ourselves in a service ministry to help the body of Christ grow at Grace Church. [Isn't that wonderful?]

"My husband and I are involved in the flocks ministry, the Union Rescue Mission, as well as serving in reception, as you know; and it is truly a joy to be a part of the church that Christ is building. Serving and getting out of it [What?] joy. I'm also overwhelmed at how the people, as well as the staff, have helped us to not only grow in the Lord, but to meet our various needs, such as food and clothing, and helping us find a home when we first got here.

“I haven't felt alone during our trials, because the faithful saints at Grace have truly born our burdens when we were in need. And Psalm 34 has grown to be very special to all of our family. When we were in need, we cried to the Lord, and He did hear us and deliver us out of all our troubles through the beloved saints at Grace Church; and we have tasted and seen that the Lord is good; and we are truly happy, because we all put our trust in Him. We have nothing but praise to our Lord for how Grace Church has ministered to us through its saints, both financially as well as spiritually. Thank you so much for loving your people enough to teach them the Word of God and to teach them how to apply the Scriptures to their lives on a daily basis. We remember without ceasing your work of faith, and labor of love, and patience, of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the sight of God and our Father."

What kind of a church can make that kind of an impact? What kind of a church does it take to touch a family like that? That's only one of many. A church that has the right attitudes, right heart attitudes: love, humility, service, joy, peace, thankfulness, all those things. Those are the things that change a church, and a church like that is the thing that changes a world. Well, let's pray.

Father, we have come this morning with hearts filled with anticipation that You would meet us. We, we worship You. We lifted up Your name in our songs, and praise, and in our hearts. We looked at Your Word, and we heard You speak, and our souls were convicted. We want more to conform, dear Lord, to that perfect Man who stands in the fullness of the stature of Christ. Fill our hearts, Father, with the good things. May we be those who are thankful. Thankful for everything, everything. Joyful, peaceful, willing to serve, using our gifts wherever available. And may there be such a desire for obedience that we literally overflow with the love and the humility that marks truly committed people. And, Lord, we know, too, that where we represent You in the world, Your Kingdom goes forward, and Your people are blessed. To that end, we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

The Internal Systems, Part 3

The Anatomy of the Church:

Well, as you know, if you've been with us over the last few weeks, we've been endeavoring to share with you a little series as an interlude in our study of Matthew titled "The Anatomy of a Church," and just pull ourselves back to our own foundation. Very often as a church grows, it sort of grows like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It just starts tilting one way or another; and sometime along the way, we need to sorta drop the plumb line and make sure we're going up straight off of our foundations; and that's really what we've been endeavoring to do in this brief series, is to go back and do a little archeology and dig up our footings and find out what it is that made us distinctive in the beginning, what it is we're really committed to.

I have a great desire that the church should be what Christ wants it to be. That is my great passion. I was being interviewed this week by a gentleman who's the editor of a magazine published by the Navigators, and the title of the magazine is Discipleship. It's a very fine magazine, and he asked me what my real desire for the church was, and I said, "My desire for the church is that the church would be what Christ designed it to be." That is the passion of the hearts of our elders and staff and, I know, of you folks, as well.

And so in order to kinda keep us on track and...and to pick up the things we've forgotten, and to reaffirm the things we've remembered, we're going back through some of the basic elements of the anatomy of a church. What is God's design for the church?

Some years ago, when I taught ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, at Talbot Seminary, I had the students read a book called God's Forgetful Pilgrims. That book is an interesting little book written by Michael Griffiths from England; and in the book among many helpful things, he said this, and this has kinda stuck in my mind. "Christians, collectively, seem to be suffering from a strange amnesia. A high proportion of people who go to church have forgotten what it's all for. Week by week, they attend services in a special building and go through their particular time-honored routine, but give little thought to the purpose of what they are doing. The Bible talks about the bride of Christ, but the church today seems like a ragged Cinderella, hideous among the ashes...She has forgotten that she's supposed to be growing up to be a beautiful lady."

He's right in many ways. The church as we view it in the broad terms across America, which is supposed to be the bride of Christ, is, in a way, a ragged Cinderella...and we need to reaffirm...the non-negotiables, the essential elements of the church. We need to get back to what God designed us to be, and that's what we're endeavoring to do in this particular brief series. Just touch base with major principles upon which the church must act...

We don't wanna get into the situation of misevaluation. In other words of evaluating the church by the wrong terms, the wrong principles. Gene Getz points out that this is done frequently in his book, The Measure of a Church. He writes these things. "Some say a mature church is an active church. They evaluate progress by the number of meetings held each week and the number of different kinds of programs going on...Some say a mature church is a growing church. As long as new people are coming and staying, they believe they are a maturing church. As long as the pastoral staff is enlarging, they believe all is well. Some say a mature church is a giving church. As long as people are contributing financially to the ongoing program of the church and supporting its many ventures, they believe it is a maturing church. Some say a mature church is a soul-winning church. They say this is proof positive, when people are bringing others, when we can account for regular professions of faith and regular baptisms, then, for sure, we have a New Testament church...Some say a mature church is a missionary-minded church, a church that supports missions around the world designating a large percentage of its overall budget to world evangelism...Some say a mature church is a smooth-running church, a church whose organizational machinery is oiled with every degree of regularity. It is a finely-tuned machine with job descriptions, eight-hour days, coffee breaks, and punch cards. Everybody does what he's hired to do on time and efficiently...

"Still others say a mature church is a Spirit-filled church. This is the church that is enthusiastic and dynamic and has lots of emotion and excitement. Everyone in it knows what his gifts are and uses them regularly...And, finally, some say the ultimate mark of maturity is the big church with thousands coming to Sunday School and church every Sunday. Maturity, to them, is represented by a large paid staff, scores of buses that pick up children, multiple programs or radio/television ministry, a Christian day school, a Christian college, and seminary, and, oh, yes, a printing press to prepare its own literature... Unfortunately...says Getz...some people really believe that what I have stated are actually Biblical marks of maturity."

Well, nothing wrong with those things. Nothing wrong with active, growing, giving, soul-winning, missionary-minded, smooth-running, Spirit-filled, big churches...but you could be all of that and be a cult. You could be all that and be a cult. That isn't the heart of it. That isn't the guts of it. That's why we're backing up from the flesh to talk about the anatomy that's behind the scene. What's in the...the inside...and as I said to you a few weeks ago, so often when pastors come here, they wanna know about that external stuff, but we wanna tell 'em about that internal stuff. That's the real issue. We're talking about, not activities; we're talking, basically, about attitudes. Attitudes. The life systems that flow inside the church. Those are key. Those are key.

Now, at first we talked about the skeleton, didn't we? We talked about how important it is that we have affirmed the non-negotiable foundational shaping form of the church. Those things like a high view of God, the absolutely priority of Scripture...Scripture, doctrinal clarity, personal holiness, and spiritual authority. We said those are non-negotiable, skeletal formation concepts. We have to have those.

And then after setting the skeleton in place, we said the church has to have certain internal systems. That is, like a body has flowing through it the systems that are its life, so the church must have flowing through it certain systems. These are attitudes; and, you see, that's what we're really after. We don't want the church to be mechanical. We don't want to be inect, it to be an external routine, a ritual, a performance, lest we hear from God the same thing the people of Israel heard through Amos the prophet who said, "I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies, even though you offer up to me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. Take away from me the noise of your songs. I will not even listen to the sound of your harps, but let justice roll down like waters in righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

And Hosea saw the same truth. He said, "What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and like the dew which goes away early. Therefore, I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets. I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth. For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice. In the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."

Or the words of Isaiah, "What are your multiplied sacrifices to me...says the Lord...I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity in the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals, appointed feasts. They have become a burden to Me. I'm weary of bearing them; so when you spread out your hands in prayer, I'll hide my eyes from you; and when you multiply your prayers, I will not listen."

In other words, Israel was guilty of having external religion without proper attitudes; and that's what we're looking at. I really believe that the heart and soul of the ministry is to lay that skeletal foundation, and then spend your time trying to create in people right heart attitudes. That's what makes the church a beautiful lady. That's what builds the church up to the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ.

Now, we've already looked at several of these internal attitudes. We've talked about obedience, humility, love, unity, service, joy, peace, and thankfulness. I wanna consider three more this morning; and this isn't gonna get us through; but I do wanna look at these three; and I feel very strongly about them. This is No. 9 in my list. I don't know how yours adds up; but this is a...a very essential attitude. Let's call it self-discipline. Self-discipline.

Self-discipline, oh, how important it is that we, as Christians, understand the need to conform to a divine standard, to live the disciplined life. Oh, you know what self-discipline is? It's saying no to sin. It's saying no to sin. Saying yes to good or to righteousness. That's....that's not too complicated a definition; and, yet, it captures the truth. The disciplined life understands the law of God, and says no to anything outside the bounds of that standard.

Now, lemme illustrate this to you. Open your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 9; 1 Corinthians chapter 9...verse 24...and Paul picks a metaphor which is very familiar to us in this athletic society in which we live. It is the metaphor of a race, something we all understand. In verse 24, he says, "Know ye not that they who run in a race all run." That in a race, everybody in the race runs. That's pretty clear. "But one receives the prize." Now, in a race, everybody runs for a prize. So run that you may obtain.

Now, you have to run to win the prize. That's the reason you're in the race. So we, as believers, have been called to a race, as it were; and that metaphor is used in several places in Scripture. We're running a race, not only here, but elsewhere in the Word of God, that same imagery is presented to us. And as we run this race, we have in mind that we are running to win. Now, what is necessary to accomplish that goal? Well, verse 25 helps us. "And every man who...and the old English says strives for the mastery...completes in athletics...is temperate in all things."

What does that mean? Self-discipline. Is self-discipline. He's got himself under control; and that is the substance of dedication to victory. I mean, obviously, a guy cannot get in a race to win who's 30 pounds overweight, or who is a victim of atrophying muscles. I mean there is a tremendously obvious discipline involved...

When we think about the hours and hours daily and weekly and monthly and yearly that athletes put in to get to the level of victory, it's staggering. A year from now, we will have already seen the 1984 Olympics in our city; and we will have been exposed by the media to all of the wonders of athletic endeavor. To all of the tremendous self-discipline of those who will go away with gold and silver and bronze medals.

Victory in athletics on a world level demands an incredible price. It is not uncommon for athletes like that to train six to eight hours a day for five to ten years of their life and even more. Tremendous amount of dedication. They literally push themselves past the point of any pain. They know what it is. We talk about second wind. They know what it is to go beyond second wind. They know what it is to go beyond the point of pain; and even will us that there is a euphoria beyond pain that only the athlete can experience; and I've had enough athletics in my background to experience something of that euphoria. You talk about a high, there's a...there's an incredible sense of freedom, a...an incredible sense of energy that comes beyond the point of pain.

It's hard to explain to someone who's never paid that price in an...in an athletic endeavor; but Paul is saying, "Look, I'm in a race," and he's talking about a spiritual race, and he says, "In that race, I know that I wanna win; and in order to win, I've gotta get myself under control...so further he says...I run...verse 26...not uncertainly." In other words, "I really know where I'm going. I stay on course." It's very much like Paul's words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, where he says a man who engages in athletic endeavor knows that if he is to win the crown, he must engage himself, and then he uses the word nominas, according to the rules. He's gotta stay within the law. He's gotta stay within the limits. He's gotta stay on the course. He can't cross the line. He can't go outta the circle. He can't get out of bounds. He can't leave the track.

In other words, whatever the conformity of that event demands, he must stay within it if he's to be victorious; and that's what Paul is saying. "I wanna win, so I give a maximum effort." And the verb used here of striving for the masteries includes self-discipline, self-sacrifice, great effort; and then that comes about by self-discipline and encompasses the idea of staying within the rules. And then in verse 27, it all comes together when he says, "I literally keep under my body, I literally keep it under control. I beat it into submission and bring it into subjection...he says...lest that in preaching to others, which is my race, I, myself, should become disqualified by some sin."

In other words, I don't wanna be sinning and lose out on the spiritual victory anymore than an athlete wants to be sinning against his body and against his training and lose out on a physical victory; and these athletes do put out a tremendous amount of energy, tremendous amount of effort.

I was talking last Monday to the Miami Dolphins, and I went down to do a Bible study with them, and I took them where I wanna take you right now, to Ephesians chapter 6, and they were just about ready to go down to the Coliseum to put on their armor to go out and lose, as it turned out, to the...Raiders...and just the whole process of them, some of their ankles and legs were already taped up, and they were ready to go and do battle, and I took the occasion to share with them the fact that they had spent years of their life and tremendous hours and tremendous energy and tremendous time to come to a peak of athletic performance. And that, in the peak of that athletic performance, they would then go down, and they would put on their armor, and they would go out, and they would do battle, and they would do it to obtain a corruptible crown, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown.

But I suggested to them that there was another far more important warfare than that, a spiritual warfare for an incorruptible crown, for an inheritance eternal, laid away in glory that never fades, that there was a warfare far more important than any football game in all of their life, and there as, for that warfare, an armor far more important than shoulder pads and chest pads and arm pads and helmets and hip pads and all the other stuff that you wear. There was a different armor. A vital armor if they were gonna know victory in the spiritual warfare. And I introduced them to verse 11 of Ephesians 6, "Put on the whole armor of God...that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil."

You've gotta have your armor on. I said to them, "You're no more gonna go out there and fight against the L.A. Raiders in your gym shorts than you oughta go out to fight against the enemy of your souls unprepared."..."For we wrestle...it says in verse 12...not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." We are in a battle, and the battle isn't really with men. Men are only the pawns and the playthings of the unseen demonic world. The real battle is with demons. I...know that well.

I will never forget the battle with the demon-possessed girl one night Jerry Mitchell and I endured as she kicked and screamed and threw furniture around a room; and I'll never forget walking in the room and hearing her say, "Get him out. Anybody but him. Not him. Don't let him in." And it was coming in a voice other than her own, and I realized the demons knew who I was. That's a frightening thing. When she started saying, you know, "Not him. Not him." My human reaction was fine...I'm gone. Then I began to realize that if they didn't...if they knew me and didn't like me, I must be on the right team; and I stood in the power of God against that situation; and we spent hours of agonizing effort there until God, in His grace, by her confession of sin, stepped in to purge and purify. But from that time on, I've never had a question about where the real battle is. I know where the real battle is. It's a serious battle on a spiritual level that is unseen; and men, as I said, are pawns and playthings in the hands of demons; and we have to understand the seriousness of the warfare wrought, really, against Christ and all who belong to Christ.

So we have to put on the armor, it says, to be able to stand. We have to be ready for this effort. I wanna just point out two elements in verse 14. First, we must "have our loins girded about with truth." The Roman soldier wouldn't have thought of going into battle with his tunic just as gathered material flying around in a hand-to-hand combat for life and death. He would've become very vulnerable. He could've easily been pulled down by it; or it could've gotten in his way and caused his own death; and so he would put on a belt and pull it all tight and gather it all together so that it wouldn't be lose at all, but tightly pulled around him.

And the apostle says, "That is the...the belt or the girdle of truthfulness or sincerity." It's really commitment that he's talking about. He's talking about self-discipline. He's talking about the person going into battle serious about the battle, pulling your act together, getting all the loose ends in. You're not kidding about the thing. I mean you're gonna do what needs to be done, and I really believe in this matter of self-discipline that, we, as Christians, need to get our act together. We need to start saying, "Here is the narrow path, and here is the way God wants us to walk, and here we will walk." And it isn't easy, because all along the path, the voices are calling to us...to divert; and if we love pleasure more than we love God, if we love self-satisfaction more than we love God at any point in time, then we're gone off the track, and we have not exercised self-discipline and entered into sin.

And so you see the Apostle Paul saying, "This is a war, and you better be serious, and you better pull up your...your tunic, cinch it together, in an act of real commitment to victory." And then he goes on to talk about the breastplate of righteousness. A Roman soldier wore a plate over his chest to protect his vital organs; and, obviously, if he didn't have this, he was tremendously vulnerable to an arrow that could fly into his chest, to a knife that could be thrust in fatally. He wanted his armor, and the armor is righteousness or holiness, doing what's right, self-discipline to God's law or we're vulnerable.

We're in a race to win, and we've gotta be disciplined to win, and we've gotta have a life that is lived in obedience to God's will in a matter of purity. That's what Paul is calling us to. He says it another way in 2 Corinthians 7:1. He says, "Having therefore these promises," it's as if he is saying, "God has given you so much, dearly beloved, God has given you so much that you shall be My sons and daughters," says the Lord Almighty, in chapter 6 verse 18. I mean all that is ours in being sons and daughters of God, "Seeing that you have all of these things, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."

I mean let's get the belt on, and let's get the breastplate on, and let's run the race to win the thing. Let's keep the rules and stay within the limits. Let's give a full, wholehearted effort. I grieve when I see undisciplined Christians. I grieve when I see Christians who have so much leakage in their life. Oh, there's a line of obedience; but they're always off it. They understand it. They're just not that committed to it.

Paul says it yet another way at the end of Philippians, the last chapter, the 4th chapter and the 8th verse. "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and any praise...what?...set your mind on these things." Listen, folks, your self-discipline is a matter of where you put your mind, where you set your mind, where you set your thinking; because, as a man thinks in his heart, what? So is he; and a pure life and a self-disciplined life is wrought by a life that is saturated by the Word of God.

You see, the reason we teach you and give you the Word is so it's in there; and when you're confronted with temptation, the Spirit of God can draw you back to that Word that's planted there. The reason you are to read the Scripture and meditate on the Scripture is so that that Word may be resident in your heart; and then, as David said, "Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin." And so your thinking must be controlled with the Word of God. "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly," says Colossians 3.

So that's the source of self-discipline. Then it demands a commitment on your part, and I'm concerned about this. I...I'm concerned that in Christianity, in our time, there is a lack of discipline. God hasn't changed His standard. God hasn't changed the narrow way or the narrow path. It isn't changed at all. God's law hasn't opened up any more than it was when God originally gave it; and the standard of obedience is the same; but Christians tend to have widened it themselves and created an artificial tolerance...and we have listened to the sirens of the world calling us off our course. Tragic...

This...month, earlier in the month, I had occasion to go up to Oregon. I took Chris Mueller, our junior high pastor, with me; and we went up to speak to 3,000 men out in the woods up there. We had a great time. God blessed. Some men came to Christ. Others were encouraged in faith and greater commitment. Wonderful, wonderful three days, and Chris and I talked a lot about things up there. He told me some things that were quite astounding to me...in working with junior high young people that may help us to put a finger on where we really are in our Christian society.

For example, he did a little survey at junior high camp this summer. Took 54 junior high kids and found that nine of the 54 had never seen an R-rated movie; 45 had...He took seventh-grade boys; and out of 35 seventh-grade boys, 25 had seen an R-rated movie. That's 12 years old or so. Twenty-six had been reading to one degree or another pornographic magazines, and 24 out of those 35 go to Christian schools...And he went on to tell me about how many of them have in their home, home cable TV where they watched filth pumped in wholesale on the movie channels and all the rest of the garbage that comes with it.

I was really distressed by that. I was greatly distressed. Lemme tell you something, people...You can't expose a seventh-grade kid to an R-rated movie without it making an absolutely devastating impact on his life or hers. There's no way that a seventh-grade mind can compute that without having negative responses. You can't look at 18-feet high naked people without remembering that imagery; and if you are...if you have your head in the sand so much that you think your junior high kid can handle that, you are wrong. You need help. If you allow your junior high young person to go to an R-rated movie, you're contributing to their sin. You're jamming in their minds things they can't handle. If you allow them to sit at home and watch filth on a cable television station, then don't be shocked later on when they don't have any interest in the things of God...and don't say, "Well, we took him to church all the time."

It's devastating. Lemme tell you another thing. If you go to an R-rated movie, you're contributing to your own sinfulness. You say, "Well, it's art." No, it isn't art. It's garbage, just plain garbage. You say, "Well, it has some social value. I mean it's...it's a comment on our culture." Sure, you think it's not gonna be promoted that way? How else can they attract good, moral people and contribute to the devastation of their thinking? I mean there's no place in the life of a Christian for profanity that comes even out of a PG movie, let alone the nudity that comes out of those filthy things they call R movies. And if you go, you know why you go? You go because you've been so suckered by the world that you're a victim, not only of the thing you see when you sit there, but you're a victim of their advertising technique that got you there to start with...

And I'm cer...I'm strong about this, because I feel so strongly in my heart. That you can't expect to cultivate godly thinking in people who are looking at massive images and incessant images of garbage, or who are funneling through filthy, rotten magazines. You can't do it. I...we can't fight it. And, parent, you need to set an example. You say, "Well, I never let mine go. I take them." God help you if you do that...

You say, "Well, I don't know what he does." That's worse of all. You better know, because that little life is a stewardship from God, and Jesus gave you that little life; and if you're allowing that thing to be pumped up with garbage, you're gonna be an accountable person for that...I mean 45 out of 54 junior high kids have been to an R movie? Shocking...

You say, "Well, I can't help it what my child does." Ohhhhh, you better; and you better never go to one of those things. You better never go to one of those supposedly good ones where there's profanity. All that does is just keep lowering... it just attacks the standard, attacks the standard, attacks the standard, attacks; and the same thing with the music. It just keeps attacking it and attacking it until, finally, our rigid commitment to purity is broken down; and it's all subliminally happening. I won't expose myself to that, because I want to hold God's view of things, not the world's.

And there's a sense in which you gotta isolate yourself. You say, "Well, I mean you're...you don't know what's going on." That's right, and I don't care. I have a good idea what's going on. I've never been to an R-rated movie, and I don't ever intend to go to one, and I'm not interested ever to go to a PG movie or anything else. I mean, for me, it's either Little Bo Peepor forget the whole thing, you know?...I've no interest in exposing my mind to the garbage of the world. Why would I do that? Grieves my heart to think that little kids...I mean that does not...that does not help a child. That does not help an adolescent. That doesn't help a teenage kid trying to deal with all the struggles of life and developing sexual ideas and identity, to expose them to that kinda stuff...

And I'm not talking about some legalism, folks. I'm talking about sin, just plain ugly sin. I mean what...what worse thing could the world do than parade in front of young eyes filth, and they've got...they're at it right now. They're at it every way they can. This is a time, beloved, for disciplined living. This is a time for disciplined living. This is a time to stop being a victim, stop being diverted off course by the sirens that are screaming, "Come over here. Come over here. We'll make you happy. We'll give you pleasure."...No place for it.

And I'll tell you something. If you go to those things, then I don't care how often you're in church, you have not yet given your life fully to the commitment that God calls for. You haven't. At that moment, you've abandoned yourself from the disciplined path of obedience; and if you're rejecting this in your little mind, that shows me or you that you are in the battle, and you're losing. You're losing. And it isn't even a question of how bad it is, because we're supposed to think, not on things that aren't bad, but on things that are what? That are good.

Well, lemme take you to a second attitude that I wanna talk about this morning. This is the attitude of accountability. Accountability...and I just wanna...I just wanna go back to the basics again on this one. It is necessary that we teach the church that it has to exist in accountability. In other words, we're all accountable for each other. That most of all, we oughta be concerned about each other, not what color the carpet is or the wallpaper or...or not how this little program goes or that little program goes or whether we like this or that. We're to be concerned about each other.

Go to Matthew 7 for a moment. Lemme see if I can't refresh your mind about what accountability refers to. In...in Matthew 7, I wanna just mention two verses, verses 3 and 4...Says, "And why beholdest thou the mote...or the splinter, toothpick, if you will...that's in thy brother's eye." You're concerned about this...this toothpick in your brother's eye. What does that refer to? Well, it refers to some sin, some failure, some something wrong; and you should be concerned; but it says, "Why are you concerned about that but not concerned about the eight by eight beam in your own eye?"...Verse 4, "Or how will you say to thy brother, 'Let me pull the toothpick out of your eye,' and behold an eight by eight's in your own eye?" I mean it's...it's ...it's hyperbole here. It's a ridiculo...if it was a cartoon, we'd laugh. It's silly; but what he's saying is, "Look, how can you do what you need to do for your brother if you haven't got your own life together?"

Now what this points up to us is very important. We have a responsibility to each other to take care of those things that are in each other's eye. We have a responsibility to deal with sin in each other; but before we can do that, we have to do what? Deal with our own. Now, I believe accountability in the church is a very important thing. I believe we're all accountable for each other; but before I can be accountable for you, I gotta get my own act together; and accountability, then, has a reverse effect. When I realize my responsibility is to care for you, then I'm gonna have to make sure I'm okay.

Now, lemme put it into practical terms. You know somebody who doesn't come to church anymore. Think about it long enough, and you probably do. You know somebody who came for a while, doesn't come anymore. You have a responsibility to go to that person and say, "Look, you're forsaking the assembly. You need to be with God's people. You need to be less committed to making money, the curse of laying up treasure on earth, and more committed to being with God's people." You say, "Well, who am I to do that? I got problems in my own life." That's the point. Get your own life cleaned up, and get the beam outta your eye. Then go do that. That's why I say accountability's a self-purifying reality, see. As I become concerned about other people, I by, by by-product, have to be concerned about myself because I can't deal with you till I've dealt with me.

Galatians 6 says, "Look, if a brother be overtaken in a fall, ye that are...what?...spiritual restore him." So if he's a state of disobedience, it's gonna take one who's walking in obedience to help. So before you can help him, you're gonna help yourself. So as long as people get into accountability-relationships, it has a self-purifying effect. You show me a church where people are not taught to care about others falling into sin, where they're not taught to restore others, and I'll show you a church where people are also not exposed as to their own sin...and they can hide it and cover it much easier. There must be accountability; and when I'm accountable for you, I'm accountable for me...so very, very important. Necessary.

Now let's go to Matthew 18 and see how this works out. If I've taken care of the eight by eight in my own eye, what am I gonna do about you, and when you fall into sin? All right, verse 15 of Matthew 18, you remember we studied it some months ago. Says, "If your brother sins, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone." So if he sins, you go to him. That's the way to do it. A church has to have that kind of accountability. I mean if you know somebody, for example, who has got a business; and you know they're not doing right. They're not treating employees right. They're not treating their partners right. They're being dishonest in their business. You have an obligation before God as His child to go to that person who's a Christian and to say, "You are in sin." And you do it lovingly, but you have respon...

You say, "I can't do that. I got my own..." Then get your own problems straightened out. You say, "Well, that'll take a long time." No, it's only as long as a prayer of confession; and with a pure heart and a loving spirit, you go to that individual and confront that sin. If you know somebody that's not being right and true to their partner in marriage or parents that aren't being faithful to their children to do as they ought, or children that are not doing what they should to their parents, if you know someone who's out of line in any way in the church, it's your responsibility in love to go to that person; and, you see, that's a self-purifying thing.

What it does is it purifies me before I can go. Secondly, if we all begin to do that, then everybody is looking at his own life and saying, "Boy, I wanna be sure my life is right." Church really must have accountability. Must. It doesn't matter who you are. I mean in Galatians chapter 2, Paul went to Peter and "withstood him to the face...it says in verses 11 to 14...because he was to be blamed," and he nailed him in public. Really, I say in public, because it's in the Bible...and everybody knew. Nobody's exempt, but elders or those who are really high are rebuked before all that others may fear.

I mean I received a letter this week, someone who called to my attention a failure in my own life, an irresponsible act in my own life, and something that I should've done and did not do, and brought it to my attention; and I wrote them back and asked their forgiveness and thanked them for bringing it to my attention. I...see, I wanna know that as much as you wanna know that; but if you don't tell me that, then you don't help me; 'cause I keep making the same mistakes again. I keep falling into the same trap again until you confront me with that. The church must have that kind of accountability; and I'm talking about accountability on this level where it really matters, on the level of life purity.

Husband, you need to hold your wife accountable. Wife, you need to hold your husband accountable. It isn't right for you to tolerate their sinfulness. Lovingly, they should be confronted...lovingly; and so you go, "What if they don't listen?" Well, verse 16 says take two people with you, one or two people. And if they still don't, tell the whole church; and what happens when you tell the whole church? The whole church goes after 'em. Last communion, we mentioned three names of people who have fallen into sin; and we told the whole church. I wonder how many of us have gone or written a card or a letter, maybe called the church office to get an address so that we could send them a word from the Lord's Word to encourage them to come out of that sin. That's our responsibility, accountability; and it keeps the church pure. It's a self-purifying thing.

I remember when we first were committed to doing this when we came to Grace Church, and a couple of pastors said to me, "You'll wreck the place, MacArthur." This is my first pastorate, right, and they said, "You don't know what you're doing. You can't go into a church and do that - have everybody looking around for everybody else's sin. Can't do that. You'll wreck it." I said, "Well, we'll do it, because the Bible says. Then we'll let God decide what happens to it." My job is not to try to build the church. Christ said He'd build the church. I'm not gonna compete with Him. That's not my job. My job is to try to do all I can to make sure the people in the church understand what the Word of God says and live it out. Then we'll see where God takes the church.

And early in those years, I had a wonderful illustration. A wife called me. She said, "My husband just left. He went to shack up with another lady." I said, "Do you know the lady's name?" "Yeah, she's...he's over there. He's gonna live with her now. He's left his home and kids." I said, "What's her name?" She told me the name, so I went to the phone book, looked up the name, and got the phone number, called, and he answered the phone; and I said, "This is John at the church," and it was a shock...I mean a real jolt; and I said...I told him I was calling, you know, in the name of Christ, calling him to obedience. To get outta that place before he sinned a sin against the Lord and his wife and his church and go home; and a little while later...and he said he would. And his wife called me and said she was there; and the next Sunday when he saw me, he embraced me and said, "Thanks, I didn't wanna be there. I was tempted. I didn't think anybody cared."

See, it didn't alienate him at all. Pulled him right in, because that's what we need. You see, for a Christian, that isn't what we wanna do. That's what we don't wanna do, right? "The things I wanna do...Paul says...I don't do. Things I don't wanna do, I do." It's the fleshhhhhh. So accountability is not invading someone's private personality. It's helping them in their battle with their own sinfulness. See? That's what we oughta be concerned about...

Accountability. That's why we come to the Lord's Table, you know, to get our lives right, get the boards out of our own eyes, so we could help other people, so we can restore each other in love, so we can provoke one another to love and good works. It comes down to the one anothers of the Scripture. I mean are you exhorting one another, rebuking one another, reproving one another, praying for one another, loving one another, teaching one another, edifying, admonishing? All those one anothers. They're all over the place. Praying for one another. That's the life of the church. That's...that's the flow-through stuff, see.

One final, very brief. You can't deal with this one without the next; and that's forgiveness. The church cannot survive unless there is forgiveness. That's another necessary attitude, because we are...we're human; and we...we fail. I mean that's the way it is. I do and everybody else does, and we...we're gonna fail; but if you can't forgive and you can't forgive particularly the one who fails you or who sins against you, then you've got a cancer in you, and there's a cancer in the body of Christ...

In Matthew, go back to six for a moment; and I will refresh you on the disciples' prayer, verse....12, "And forgive us our debts," and every sin committed is a debt owed to God which could only be paid by the perfect sacrifice of Christ. "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." In other words, You forgive us as we forgive others. If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

In other words, if you don't forgive, He won't. Now, this is not talking about redemptive, eternal forgiveness. This is talking about parental, temporal forgiveness. Redemptive, eternal forgiveness is ours in Christ; but that parental, temporal, for here and now kind of forgiveness that keeps the clear lines of fellowship open and pure and blessed comes to us only if we forgive others. So if you don't forgive somebody, I don't care what they did to you, if you don't forgive them, then you have a cancer in you. I believe that an unforgiving heart is the reason for an awful lotta tragedy. In fact, I think the body catches the soul's diseases; and that there...there are many people who may be dead and may be dead, actually, of real cancer because they had such an unforgiving spirit.

I'm not acting or talking clinically. I just know that the body catches the diseases of the mind, and guilt is the severest of all diseases; and an unforgiving heart creates bitter, bitter, bitter feelings, and also guilt, as well.

So if you will be forgiven on a daily basis by the Lord to know the clear and sweet and pure fellowship that He wants us to have in this life, it'll be because you forgive others also. And, my goodness, who are you not to forgive, right? Who are you not to forgive? You remember the parable in Matthew 18 of the man who owed 10,000 talents, and he came and said, "I don't have it. I don't anything to pay," and the man said, "I forgive you everything," and then he went out and found a guy who owed him 18 bucks and strangled him and threw him in jail and said, "Stay there till you pay me"? And the Lord was saying, "Who are you, who have been forgiven an inestimable, unpayable debt; and you won't forgive somebody else 18 bucks?"

It's Ephesians 4:32, "Be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake has forgiven you." Listen, we oughta forgive, because we've been forgiven. We've been forgiven so much, we can forgive so little? Oh, the church needs to be filled with forgiving people; because we're gonna fail, folks. We really are. I mean I'm gonna do things that might irritate folks; and folks are gonna do irri...things that irritate each other. You're gonna have a problem, maybe, with somebody in the church or something. But if you can forgive, you're free from that. You're free from the bondage of that bitterness, and you're free to be forgiven and know the blessing of God. But if you harbor an unforgiving heart, you have bitterness, who needs that?...

Forgiveness, such a beautiful thing. So self-discipline in my life, accountability for others, and, when they do sin, I wanna be there to lift 'em up, and I also wanna forgive them, even if they've sinned against me. Even against me. And where you have a church that doesn't forgive, you have...terrible problems. Terrible problems.

By the way, only humble people forgive, remember that? Only humble people...who are not so proud as to say, "Boy, you did that to me. Nobody does that to me." But who get down and say, "Hey, you're more important than I am, anyway...and I wanna love you in the love of forgiveness."

Well, there's more for next time. Let's pray.

Father, we thank You for what we've learned...about the attitudes You want in Your church: obedience, humility, love, unity, service, joy, peace, thankfulness, self-discipline, accountability, forgiveness. Beautiful things...May this church be marked by those things. It's such a wonderful place, such wonderful people. We see these things in them. Thank You, Lord, for the sweet forgiveness that we've all enjoyed in this fellowship, for the wonderful accountability that is carried out so wonderfully, and the self-discipline we see in so many lives...Thank You, Father, for their modeling and their example, their pattern. But, Father, just remind us of these things and the need to continue to be faithful; and for those who maybe have...have seen the whole thing as kind of a spectator sport, you buy a ticket, you watch what happens. Lord, move 'em away from that. May they know that it's attitudes that you desire, right attitudes, flowing through the fellowship...and may the Spirit of God be released...to accomplish all the holy purpose of the Savior for His redeemed people, so that none of us may exist on the fringe, but in the mainstream as you build Your church for Your glory...

Please, just for a moment, keep your head bowed before we close; and let me just say that this would be a great time for all of us to make a...prayer of real commitment to the Lord...a time to say, "Father, I desire to be self-disciplined. I covenant with You this moment...to be obedient, to think on things pure...to walk the narrow path...And out of a self-disciplined and pure life, to step into the arena of accountability and minister and be ministered to, to be a forgiver...Can you covenant that with God in your heart?

The Internal Systems, Part 4

The Anatomy of the Church:

One of the most powerful and wonderful presentations of the worthy Lamb, the Son of God is given in Revelation chapter 1; and as we come to the study of the Word of God this morning I would like to invite you to open your Bible to Revelation chapter 1; and I wanna share with you the first vision of the Lord Jesus Christ given in this great revelation...

Beginning in Revelation chapter 1 verse 9, we read, "I, John, who also am your brother and companion in Tribulation and in the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the Word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord's Day, and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet, saying, 'I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last,' and, 'What thou seest, write in a book and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia: unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamum, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And being turned, I saw seven golden lamp stands; and in the midst of the seven lamp stands One like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot and girded about the breasts with a golden girdle. His head and His hair were white like wool, and white as snow, and His eyes were like a flame of fire; and His feet like fine bronze, as if they burned in a furnace, and His voice like the sound of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars, and out of His mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and His countenance was as the sun shineth in its strength."

John has an incredible vision; and what he sees is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ, the Alpha and the Omega; and he sees Christ in this vision moving among seven golden lamp stands. They represent the seven churches in verse 11...The seven stars in His hand, according to verse 20, are the seven ministers of those churches. So what do you see here? You see Christ moving among His churches; and the seven churches of Asia Minor listed here, to which letters are written in chapters 2 and 3, are representative of all kinds of churches throughout all of church history; and here you have a picture of the Lord moving among His churches, moving among His people, caring for the church which He purchased with His own precious blood; and that hasn't changed.

I believe the Lord is as alive and active in His church today as He was then; and the vision that John has is not just a vision for that place and that time, but a vision for all the time of the church. That Christ is ever alive and moving in His church; and you notice in verse 13 that He is garmented down to the foot, girded with a golden girdle. If you look closely at that, you will find that that could be the garb of a prophet. It could be the garb of a priest. It could be the garb of a king, and is it not fitting that He, indeed, is King and Prophet and Priest. Moving in His church as the sovereign. Moving in His church as the One who speaks from God, and who takes the people to God.

In verse 14, we see His head and His hair as white as wool, as white as snow, indicating His absolute and utter pure holiness...And so the holy Son of God, perfect King, Priest, Prophet, moves in His church; and as He moves in His church, it says in verse 14, "His eyes were like a flame of fire." That is a penetrating gaze. As He moves in the church, His eyes are searching out its strengths and weaknesses. His eyes are penetrating behind what appears on the surface to affirm and ascertain what is really going on.

Oh, what a marvelous thing it is to know that Christ is alive in His church. That this is not our work; it's His work. That it is not determined by our cleverness or left to our devices to figure out what is being done right or what should be done; but Christ is alive in His church; and He searches with a penetrating gaze; and "His feet are like fine bronze as if they burned in a furnace, and His voice like the sound of many waters." And these are the feet of judgment and the voice of judgment. When He finds that in the church which displeases Him, He comes in judgment. He speaks in judgment to that church...

You say, "Why are you reading that?" Because I think it's a good place to start today...to remember this: that we are the church that Christ is building, right? We are the lamp stand that Christ is caring for. We are the light, as it were, that Christ is trimming; and He does so with a penetrating gaze; and He seeks to find that which in us is not right and to bring against that the thunder of His own Voice, the strength of His own chastening judgment; because He seeks to refine us; and if we resist the refining, then He will remove His blessing; and one of the mixed passages of all Scripture is Revelation 2 and 3, where you find some churches who are commended, but most who are condemned; for the Lord did not find there what He sought to find.

Grace Church stands, in a sense, in Revelation 1; and Christ moves through this church; and I believe he commends and condemns. I believe He searches out and blesses. I believe He searches out and chastens, as He discovers things that are according to His will and things that are not. And so it is my prayer that, as I stand in these days and share with you the thoughts of my own heart, and I'm just sharing my heart, but I really believe that, as I'm doing this, I stand in...in a place where Christ would stand. I stand in His behalf to tell you what His searching eyes wish to see, and see sometimes and do not see other times.

Now, I'm not under some illusion that I am an anointed prophet of God, distinct from any other. I just believe that the Spirit of God has brought us to this time in our church, and the Spirit of God has prompted us to this particular series. When I started to talk about the anatomy of a church five weeks ago, I...I really didn't know why I was doing it. I just felt compelled to do it. Worse than that, I had no idea what I was gonna say. I wrote down a little outline, and I'm still working off that same outline...and asking the Spirit of God to enable me to, as it were, be the instrument of Christ as the church is searched out to try to help us to see what it is that He sees...

And you've responded so well that I know it's of the Spirit. I know it's of God what we've talked about. I've seen it in your response. I have received more mail from the last few sermons than any other I've ever preached, I think; and the...and the mail ranges the gamut. I received two letters that I can think of, more than that yesterday, maybe five or so, but two of them kind of were interesting. One of them said, "I wish this were a black church, so I could stand up and yell, 'Preach it, brother, preach it.'"...And that's all right. You know, I...I've been in a black church where they stand up and yell, "Blow your trumpet," and, you know, I mean that's...that'll get you revved up if you're not revved up to start with.

I mean all the way from that kind of response. I also saw a letter yesterday, and a dear person said, "I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed. I'm ashamed," and signed it "A Repentant One," having faced the reality of coming very short of what God wanted His church to be. I don't know where you are in the...in the line from standing up and yelling, "Preach it, brother," to feeling quietly ashamed; but I...I've seen God touch our hearts, and mine, as well, through this; and so I wanna return this morning to our thoughts about the anatomy of a church and let Christ penetrate our church a little more deeply and...and reveal to us things that we need to see.

Now, we've already talked about the skeleton. We've talked about if we are like a body, if we are using the analogy of a body, and we're like a body, we have to have a skeleton; and we...we talked about those skeletal things: a high view of God, the absolute priority of Scripture, doctrinal clarity, personal holiness, and the idea of spiritual authority. And then we moved into the internal systems: the flowing through of the life principles. Like in a body, the body is dependent for life on the flowing through of those systems, so we are dependent on certain spiritual attitudes; and those attitudes have to flow through the body; and we've been suggesting to you the attitudes that are most critical. We've talked about obedience, which seems to me to be a rather supremely important attitude. The attitude of humility, of love, unity, service, joy, peace, thankfulness, self-discipline, accountability; and I think last time we ended with forgiveness.

Now, all of these are attitudes that must be cultivated in God's people; and when the Lord moves through His church, I believe those are the things He looks for. To see a people who have an attitude of love, an attitude of peace, an attitude of discipline, an attitude of obedience, of...of service, of joy, of thankfulness, of peace. All of those things. Searching out behind the exterior to see what's in the heart, for the Lord searches the heart...

And that's eleven of them we've already talked about; and I'm gonna give you the remaining five this morning; and I wanna wrap them up this morning, so I'm gonna try to get through five of 'em. No. 12 in my list, not that that matters, is dependence. Dependence...If you wanted to put it in negative terms, it would be the attitude of insufficiency or the sense that you are not sufficient, so that there is in you a basic dependence; and this doesn't come easy to capable people. It doesn't come easy to effective, God-blessed churches like ours. See, our church is sort of well-oiled, in a sense. I mean the...the machinery moves. Things get done. We have competent people. We have hardworking people. We have creative people. We have a past program development that says, "Man, we're doing it," see. And...and we can get to the point where we lose the sense of insufficiency. We lose the sense of dependence, because we've figured out how to do it; and what you're really doing, if you're not careful, is eliminating God; and you come to the point in your ministry where, by virtue of the strength of your work force and your creative people and the program that's already in place, you just say goodbye to God and take off...

And maybe it isn't so easy to do that if you happen to be a little band of believers behind the Iron Curtain that are living every day in the fear of death with absolutely no resources at all...But for us who have so much, who so very much have been blessed by God, like Israel of old as we mentioned who, having come into the land and inherited a land we really didn't work for, and partaken from wells we didn't dig, we forget God; and we just move out in a flurry of activity and great ideas and bright hopes and challenging thoughts. I guess what I'm saying, people, is that we really don't wanna do anything ever that we don't believe is God's perfect purpose for us...and so we must maintain an attitude of dependence. Dependence.

And we could talk about it from a lot of angles. In the Psalm that I read this morning, Psalm 19, David says, "Keep me back from presumptuous sins." It's so easy to just blast ahead without really being dependent on God, without searching for the heart of God and the mind of God. You could sit in a meeting and decide to do this or decide to do that; and where's the prayer; and where is the patience; and where is the enduring communion with God, until the heart is not only free to do it, but has the sense of doing the work of God...

I've always, throughout all my ministry, been fearful that I would do something God wasn't a part of...I always wanna be sure that I'm just going along at the same pace in the same direction with the same goal that He has, because Christ is building His church, and I don't wanna compete with Him. That's a loser...But we can so easily run into presumptuous sins. Great idea and off we go...

I remember when I was in seminary, in Talbot Seminary, everybody had to preach in those days, twice in chapel. We have more students now; and I don't think everybody has to; but everybody did; and when we preached, the whole faculty sat on the platform behind us; and they had 8 1/2 by 17 criticism sheets; and the whole time you're preaching, they were filling them out, which was a good exercise for them, because it kept them awake during the more boring sermons, I think...

But they would sit there, and you'd hear the paper shuffle; and if you were ten minutes in, and the guy was already flipping his paper over, you knew you were really in hot water, right? But you did your best to preach; and I was assigned 2 Samuel chapter 7; and 2 Samuel chapter 7, I've never forgotten it. I mean I wanted that sermon down so pat when I preached that thing that I memorized every single thing in it, even my pauses. I think my breathing I had figured out. I was really gonna be careful on that one, and I got into the chapter...and David looks at his palace. He says, "I've got this beautiful palace." He look at the house of God. God was living in a tent in those days, you know, tabernacle. He says, "It is not fitting that God should dwell in a tent while I dwell in this massive palace...he says...I will build a house for God.

Commendable, huh? Very commendable. And so he goes to Nathan the prophet, and he says, "Nathan, this is my desire," and Nathan says, "Commendable. Go, do whatever's in your heart, David, a great idea." And God put down the big hook and yanked Nathan over and said, "Nathan, you didn't check in. Who told you to tell him that? He will never build My house, for he is a man of bloody hands."...It was Solomon who would build the house; but when God took away something, He put something in its place; and He gave to David a wonderful promise.

So I preached on the sin of presuming on God, of venturing into good things that God isn't interested in...It was really a life-changing experience for me, 'cause that message has stuck in my mind through the years. It's an incidental footnote, however, that, as I was leaving, Dr. Feinberghanded me his criticism sheet. He was the dean. Folded over, and I had felt so good about that message, 'cause it spoke to my heart; and I opened it up; and he hadn't bothered to check off anything. He just wrote across the front, "You missed the entire point of the passage."...

That was a bad day...a very bad day and a very good lesson. He thought I should've preached on the Kingdom promise. It was a choice. I knew the passage promised the Kingdom, but I felt my own heart needed to hear about presumption; because I tend to be that kind of person who runs really fast in a new direction, and maybe has great ideas or great vision for what could be done; and I need to back up to the point of dependence, sense an insufficiency that drives me to seek the heart and mind of God.

All you gotta do is start something by yourself that God isn't in and just get out on that limb and watch it get sawed off a few times. It helps to cure you. What I'm really talking about is prayer. The church must have a spirit of dependence. People, look, we haven't arrived. I mean I...we walk. We got all this stuff. We come here. It's all for us ready to go, all these wonderful programs and ministries; and we can get the idea that we just don't need to depend on God anymore; but it can be gone that fast. There must be a sustained dependence.

Look with me for a moment at John 14, just to touch this concept of dependence from another angle. In John 14, you know the situation, I'm sure, in John 14. The Lord is leaving. It's the upper room, the last discourse of our Lord with His disciples; and He's promising them all kinds of wonderful things; because they're really afraid. They have depended on Him for everything, everything. They have followed him for three years. He made food that fed them. He caught fish so they could pay their taxes. He told them everything they needed to know about the Kingdom, about God, about man, about sin, about righteousness. They were utterly dependent on Him; and now He was going away; and they were troubled. They were deeply troubled; because they had awakened to their dependence. They needed Him desperately. I mean even when He was there, they floundered rather constantly, didn't they? And so they knew their dependence.

And when He announced to them that He was going away, it was panic time. Really panic time. But in the midst of that, He makes a promise to them that is so marvelous. It's in verse 13 and 14 of John 14. "And whatever you shall ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask anything in My name, I'll do it." You can't get a better promise than that, can ya? Anything we wanna ask in His name, He'll do it.

You say, "Well, does it mean then? Anything you ask?" Well, no, anything you ask in His name. You say, "Well, what does that mean? Stick on the end of your prayer 'In Jesus' name. Amen,' and God has to do it? Some people think that. That isn't what it means. In the Old Testament, God said, "My name is I am that I am." In other words, "My name is all that I am," and the name of Christ is all that He is, so you ask anything consistent with who Jesus is and what His work is and what His will is and what His desire is and what His plan is and what His purpose is, and He'll do it. It doesn't mean you can ask for anything and slam down on the end of your prayer and get it. It means that, when you ask consistently with His will and His purpose, then He will do it.

And so we need to learn, as believers, to live in a life of constant dependency, the prayer of which is, "Oh, Lord, whatever is in Your will to do, do it. Do it."...So there's no bitterness if it doesn't come off, if it doesn't get done, if it doesn't happen. If we're dependent on Him to energize it and bring it to pass only if it's in line with His perfect will. And, you see, this is the way the Father is glorified; because then the Father is doing what the Father wants to do for His own glory; and then the ministry that's being carried on is the ministry of God in the name of the Son.

And, beloved, that is what I want in this church. I don't want the ministry of clever men. I don't want the ministry of creative people. We want the ministry of the Spirit of God in the name of the Son of God for the glory of God Himself, don't we? And I'm talking to you just in a general perspective sense; but there needs to be in our hearts a sense of insufficiency to know what to do and how best to do it that drives us to dependency on God, where in the midst of our prayers we call out for that which Jesus wants done...

So important. It's the heart of the disciples' prayer in Matthew 6, frankly, where when they came to Jesus and said, "Teach us to pray," He said, "Pray like this. Our Father who art in Heaven...hallowed by Your name." In other words, glorious be Your name. Holy be Your name. Set apart be Your name. Unique be Your name. In other words, Lord, all we really want is for You to be glorified, for Your name to be exalted, for all that You are and all that You will and all that You desire, to come to pass. Then, "Thy Kingdom come." You do Your work Your way in Your Kingdom. "Thy will be...what?...done on earth, as it is in Heaven."

And so that prayer begins not with give us, give us, give us; but "Hallowed by Thy name. Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done," and until we've gotten that perspective in place, we have no right to ask for anything. And so we are taught, I believe, there to pray in a dependent way...in a sense of insufficiency that cries out for God to do His work in His way.

That's always been our desire here. That's always been our goal...is that Christ would be building His church, and that we would just be being part of that; and I worry sometimes that we get so program-oriented, we get so good at what we do, we get so far down the line with our plans, that prayer has no part except when the disaster hits. It's after the fact. Oops, get us out of this one, Lord; and we probably wouldn't be in it if we'd have asked.

I don't know about you, but I don't want anything for me that God doesn't want for me. Do you? Nothing, and so I think there has to be an attitude of dependence; and, bless God, there has been; and I only encourage you that there be that attitude more and more. We have depended on God. We have depended on His Word. We have depended on prayer. But we need more. I think maybe we're caught up in this sort of milieu of contemporary Christianity where we work a whole lot and pray very little...

There's nothing more wonderful than having spent time in prayer, to enter into something and sense that tremendous freedom that comes to the heart that knows it's walking down a path side by side with the Savior whose will is being expressed...

That's why I said that, because, you know, it doesn't always happen this way; but when I started this series, I didn't really know where the Lord was gonna take us. I don't even know yet what I'm gonna say till I say it; but I've had the sense of the companionship of Jesus Christ step by step through this whole thing; because I really believe in my heart that, as I sought Him as to what our church needed for this time, and what He wanted to do in our fellowship for these days, He took me this way; and this is the expression of His heart to us; and so this is Him moving, if you will, through the candlesticks. Dependence. We do a lotta things well, not so well we wanna do 'em in the flesh, right?

Lemme give you another attitude that needs to be in the church. Flexibility. Flexibility. I'm not gonna talk a long time about this, but it's important...Flexibility. That is we need to be able to change. Somebody wrote a book, said the seven last words of the church, "We've never done it that way before." And that's really true. Some people have substituted what Jesus said in Matthew 15. You remember? He confronted the Pharisees and scribes. They came to Him. They confronted Him, and they said, "Why do Your disciples violate the commandments of men by not washing their hands?" They were eating, you know, without going through...not...not physically cleansing washing, but ceremonial ritual. And he says, "Why do your disciples violate the commandment of men or the tradition of man, the tradition of the elders?" he says. And Jesus says, "Why do your traditions violate the commandments of God?"

Now, lemme tell you. We've all had experience. Churches can get piled high with tradition that becomes a block wall to what the Word of God says to do. Right? Happens all the time. "Well, we...we certainly can't do that in our church. We...we have this tradition," see.  Churches can have an organization that's totally unbiblical. They can have a style of ministry that's utterly unbiblical; and when you try to introduce the thing that God wants under the divine mandate of a commandment from God Himself, it runs right into the stone wall of tradition; and so there must be in the attitude of the church flexibility.

Now, if you've been in Grace very long, you've gotta be flexible. I mean we just keep changing. People say, "How...how is your church organized? Could you send us an organizational chart?" We get letters like that all the time. That's really a joke. It would have to be a 16 millimeter film. Would have to be moving...Just like this. It never stops. We can't box it and capture it, because God works through people; and they ebb and flow, and they're strong and weak and committed and less committed; and more people pile in somewhere. We gotta do something about it; and so there's a changing, constant kind of organic function that I think is so wonderful; because it never lets us just stop and administrate. You can't ever just sit down and crank out the papers. It's always people; and it's always picking up this and strengthening this and changing that and... and that's wonderful; because we're never confused, hopefully, the difference between routine and reality. We don't wanna be confused about that. I mean we don't wanna substitute false for the true just because we've always done it that way...

My wife had an old aunt who passed away not long ago, or distant relative, I guess, not really an aunt. But anyway, we used to go see her around the holiday season, take her little cookies and things; and so the last time we went to see her, it was Christmas season; and she said, "Well, John...she goes to the Methodist church. She said, "Do you have a Christmas Eve service?" I said, "No, we don't have a Christmas Eve service." She says, "You don't?" I said, "No, we don't. We just encourage everybody to go home and...and be with their family and talk about the meaning of Christmas and the birth of the Lord; but we don't have a service." She said, "Oh, too bad."...She was very sad. She said, "You know, at our church, we've always had a Christmas Eve service." I said, "Really?" She, "Oh, yes." I said, "Do you go?" She said, "Oh, no one goes...but we've always had a Christmas Eve service."..."No one goes?" I said. She closed the conversation by saying, "Oh, well, it's...it's just too bad that you don't have a Christmas Eve service."...

Boy, I'll tell you, we are creatures of habit. You know that? It's both good and bad. You get good habits, it's a good thing you're a creature of habit. You get bad habits, they're tough to break, aren't they? You get a whole collection of people together who basically are created with the habitual tendencies; and they get locked into a certain way to do things; and you try to move 'em; and it's amazing how resistant they are to that. But sometimes you just have to change things so people don't get confused between routine and reality...so there needs to be a little ebb and flow, a little change, a little flexibility.

We all have to be that way; and when you link that up with the prior point that we made initiating the message on dependence, we have to be flexible, because we depend on God, and God may be doing different things. It grieves my heart when a young pastor goes into a church, and he's got a great desire to teach the Word and the apply the Word, and he runs into a stone wall of tradition, and people won't let him move. They, "Well, we'll really have problems if we try to do that, because we've got this deal over here. Boy, if they...those people'll get very upset." But, but, but why are you letting the traditions of men stand in the way of the commandments of God?

You see, that's what's so wonderful about this church. When...when we started years ago to discover the Word of God, we said, "Hey, that's in the Bible. We gotta change that. We gotta change that. We have to change. We gotta get in line with this." And Grace Church has always been that way. It's so wonderful. Sometimes we send out young men, and they come back bruised and bleeding in six months saying, "I've been smashing myself against this wall of tradition. I don't know if it'll ever change." But we have to be flexible.

It comes down to personal life, too. I always think about Acts 16, and Paul was a kind of a go-get-'em guy, right? I don't think he ever sat down. He just kept moving all the time; and he'd finished his ministry in Galatia and Phrygia. That's modern-day Turkey area; and he decided that we're gonna go to Asia, south, down into Asia. Great place. Boy, a significant place. The seven churches of Asia Minor over there. That area. And he started to go there, and the Bible says in Acts 16:6 to 10 that the Holy Spirit prevented him. Now, I don't know how the Holy Spirit did it, but somehow put up a big roadblock. Said, "Nope, that's not it, Paul."

What do you think Paul did? Go back at home...at home and just sorta say, "Well, they...they don't want my ministry. There's no openings in the Asia ministry." No, he said, "All right, we can't go...we've already been to east. We can't go south. Let's go north. Bithynia, guys. Here we go. Let's go to Bithynia." Holy Spirit, whammo. "Can't go there." "Oh, well, let's see, we already been east, can't go south, can't go north, west. We're going west." Pssssssht, ocean...

So he goes to sleep...and he musta gone to sleep probably praying about where God wanted him to go, because in the middle of the night, he had a vision; and there was a man of Macedonia saying, "Come over and...what?...help us." And he went, and the Gospel became more than a Middle Eastern sect. It touched the world. Flexibility. Flexibility.

Marty Wolf'sone of our elders, I wrote about this in my book on God's will, and I remember when he was gonna go to...he had a burden to reach Jewish people, being Jewish himself; and his burden was to go to France and reach them in Paris; and this was his great goal; and so he got involved with the Bible Christian Union Mission serving in France. And, boy, it was exciting. He did all his training and got all his preparation. We put up a plaque in the church. It was my dad's church, and said, "Marty Wolf, France." And the day came when he went to Canada...That's where he went. French-speaking Jews also live in Montreal. God had a different place. Flexibility.

That's how it is in serving Christ; and the church needs that flexibility, that sense of dependence, that sense of flexibility that says, "God, we depend on the way You lead us, and we flex when You do." That's so important. Lemme just encourage you, when things in the church shift and change and move, just pray with us that God's taken us that direction and be flexible to move with that very important attitude.

Lemme give you another one. Growth. Attitude of growth. Attitude of growth. I guess maybe this is as important as anything - that we have the, flowing through us, the desire to grow. The desire to grow. To be in the process of growing. First Peter 2:2 sums it up as, "Babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may...what?...grow." Now, that analogy is marvelous, because it says this. It's not like milk of the Word as opposed to meat. That's a different analogy, 1 Corinthians 3. What he's saying there, as in the say...Peter is saying, "In the same way babies desire milk, you must desire the Word to grow."

Now, how much does a baby desire milk? Had a baby around lately? Kick, scream, holler, tantrums till you get that deal in there, right? I mean, basically, babies only care about two things. Give 'em milk and deal with the consequences. That's the beginning, the end of the whole business...It's that single-minded devotion, see. It's that consuming desire for one thing that Peter's driving at. How strong is your desire for the Word? Can you take it or leave it? Are you a little bored with what's going on this morning? Are you looking at your watch, saying, "I gotta get outta this place. The sun's shining for the first time in five days."...

I mean do you really hunger for the Word? Is it some kind of a...an exercise in...in tyranny, that you have to open the Bible to read it? Or is there something magnetic about it that draws your heart? Do you really sense you're growing? I mean that's so important.

Now, we all don't have the same capacities to grow; but... whatever the capacity that we do have is, we need to grow to that extent; and we grow by feeding on the Word of God. You know, we have a wonderful ministry in our church for some of the folks who are mentally disabled; and some of them are good friends of mine. Excellent, good friends. In fact, I think I see Rodney down here in the second row. Rodney's my good friend, aren't you? Right.

Well, I remember when Rodney was baptized. Do you remember when you were baptized, Rodney? That's been a little while back. And so he said, "Yeah," he said, "I wanna be baptized; and I wanna be baptized because," he said, "John baptizes everybody else who has Jesus in his heart, and I have Jesus in my heart. I wanna be baptized." So I said to Greg Barshop, "Great." So we were over in the side over here, and I said, "Now, Rodney, I just wanna be sure about this." He probably doesn't remember this. I said, "Rodney, just...'cause you're gonna come out, and you're gonna give your testimony." I said, "Now, you just tell me. Who is Jesus Christ?" He wrinkled up his nose and says, "You mean you don't even know that?"...

I said, "What a silly question. Of course, I know that. I'm the preacher. I'm the minister." And he was baptized, and he gave his testimony of his love for the Lord. And, afterwards, I...I had a opportunity to get him a Bible, 'cause his other Bible was all beaten up; and he told me he wanted a Bible with big numbers, 'cause he could see the number I was talking about, and he could see the number of the verses and so forth, and people helped him. A few weeks after that, I don't know if you remember this, either. You came up to the front, and you said... you said, "Sit down." You said, "Sit down after the service." So I said, "Okay." So I sat on the steps, and he said, "I have a surprise for you." And he recited the 23rd Psalm...and that blessed my heart.

You know, we have all different abilities, but the Spirit of God works in the heart, doesn't He, to bring us to love His Word and to grow at the...at the pace that we can grow. And I guess the thing that would put the most fear in my heart would be if the church ever stopped growing. I mean if people just said, "Well, I've had enough. I've had theology all I can take. I've had so much exposition. I...I really...I...I know more than I care to know. I mean I can't even find places for the tapes. I got 'em in the garage. I got in the trunk. I...and I...I can't even find anybody to give 'em to, 'cause everybody's got 'em...I mean I really don't need to know any more. I...I just...I'm gonna fold up my tent and steal away into the night."

But, you know, there needs to be that ongoing hunger to grow, doesn't it? I just pray God we never lose that attitude. You know, Peter said it in another way in second epistle, chapter 3 verse 18. "Grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." We're not just learning facts in a book. We're growing in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We're not getting to know facts. We're getting to know Him. Right?

You see, when you're born into the family of God, 1 John 2:13 says you're a little baby, and you know the Father, da-da, goo-goo, basic. And then you become a spiritual young man, the Word of God dwells in you. You're strong. You overcome the wicked one, but it doesn't end there. First you know God in a simple way. Then you know doctrine, and then it says you become a spiritual father who knows Him who is from the beginning. We're not learning to know doctrine. We're learning to know God; and the more you know God, the more the fellowship is enriching.

Listen, think of the most wonderful person in the whole wide world, the most wonderful person you ever met, and think how great it would be to just have that relationship grow and grow and grow; and then compare that with knowing the infinite Holy God of the universe in a growing relationship...Growing. Feed on the Word. Do you have a hunger for it? Do you meditate on it? Do its truths run around in your mind? Is it your daily food? Can you say with Job that you love the Word of God more than your necessary food?

We oughta be growing, and you say, "Well, I've been here a long time. I know so much." Well, if you've gotten to the point where you think you know a lot, you're just at the point where you really don't know what you oughta know; and that is that you don't know enough. Oh, you may have enough facts; but are you telling me you know God as well as you'd like to get to know Him? See, when I study a passage, I always look for what I can find out about God's character in there, so I can know Him better. Growth.

Lemme give you two more attitudes. Faithfulness. Faithfulness. Boy, you know, there are an awful lot of Christians that are sort of spiritual sprinters. Choooooo, they're done. They sign up, blast off, boomp, it's all over. They're looking for spiritual retirement, and what God is looking for is marathoners. Long-range people, distance runners. "Moreover, brethren...1 Corinthians 4:2 says...it is required in stewards that a man be found...what?...faithful." Something to be said for endurance, for long-term spiritual commitment. I love it when older people say to me, "You know, oh, you know, could you slow down, because I have trouble getting all my notes down." And somebody said to me recently, is in their 80s. I just love that. 80-year-old taking notes? Still excited. Still faithful to the Word of God, the truth of God, the life of God, the church of God, the ministry. I mean they haven't bailed out.

And there are those people who teach year after year after year, who disciple year after year after year, who make long-range commitments and follow through. Though -- they're the real stalwarts of the faith; because, you see, what they do is not based on an emotional appeal. It is not based upon immediate response. It is based upon character, and character has that enduring quality. There...there are lots of people who come to Grace Church whenever they can, and who might even do something whenever they can; but they usually can't 'cause they have other things. And then there are those who just faithfully move on. Oh, how we need the spirit of faithfulness.

The mark of real character is enduring commitment, enduring commitment. Look at 2 Timothy. Lemme just kind of use Paul, who, of course, is a model; and in 2 Timothy 4...verse 6, he says, "For I am now ready to be offered,"...and he knew he was gonna be a sacrifice..."and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight; I have finished the course; I have kept the faith." Boy what a...what a great statement. He, you know what he's saying? "God, I can die now. I'm done. I'm done. It's over. I've carried it out. I've finished the course. I've fought the fight. I've kept the faith."

Oh, you know, that's so wonderful. I guess it's kinda sad when you see a saint grow old and indifferent, or one that belongs to Christ get old and bitter; and sometimes you even see preachers or teachers or whatever Christian workers. They get old, and they get kinda sour and kinda bitter and sort of self-centered and whatever; and you just wonder what went wrong. But where you have that sweet grace of growing old in a life of faithful service is such a beautiful thing. Such a beautiful spirit. Faithfulness. Faithfulness.

You have a responsibility, and you're there. You fulfill it; and when the Lord's people meet, you're there. You know, we've always said if everybody that says they go to Grace Church actually came here, it would be amazing. It would be amazing. I mean I meet people like that all the time. I mean all the time, no matter where. If I go to the market with my wife. I push the cart. She buys the stuff...Somebody'll come down the aisle and say, "Oh, I know you. You're John MacArthur. I go to your church." "Oh, do you? Well, how wonderful. Uh, I haven't seen you there." "Oh, well, well, I come. Yeah, I come." "Oh, do you really? Were you there Sunday?" "Oh, no, I wasn't there Sunday. No, oh, it's been a while. Ohhhhh, we love it."..."Oh, good, good."

That's kinda...kinda sad, you know? Makes me feel a little bit badly. Or I hear, "Well, when we go, we always go to Grace. We enjoy it."...Faithfulness. Faithfulness. Just being there to worship consistently, to serve consistently, to pray consistently, all these things; and it's such a distracted society where we're all ripped umpteen directions. It's hard to keep the priorities.

A last, wish I could say more about that one. Time's gone. A last attitude is hope. Hope. Oh, what a great word, hope. It means security for the future. It means we don't fear death. It means we actually look forward to what's ahead of us in life and death. In fact, I love the expressions in Romans 12:12, "Rejoicing in hope." Hey, death holds no fear for us. I mean we have a...a funeral service around here; and it's a celebration; and we rejoice; and we praise God...because one we love has passed from this vale of tears into the place where all tears are forever dried. Place of disease to a place where there's no more disease. A place of death to a place where there is no death. A place of limitation to a place of unbounded realization.

We live in hope. We've been learning that in Romans 8. We are saved in hope. We are saved in hope, and we look forward to eternity, to being like Christ. We look forward to the fulfillment of the promise of Romans 8 that we'll have a redeemed body to go with our redeemed soul; and we'll be in the image of Jesus Christ. We live in hope. Oh, people, we've gotta have a hopeful attitude; and what that says to us practically is this. We don't get too bound up in what's going on here, right? I mean we get the picture when Jesus said, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust doth corrupt, thieves break through and steal...Matthew 6:19 to 21...but lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven where moth and rust doth not corrupt nor thieves break through and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

So if our heart's up there hoping in eternity, our treasure's gonna be up there; and everything else is gonna go with it. I hope you're not living for the time. I hope you're not living for the temporal. I hope you're not living for the passing.

Listen, people, we should be living in hope; and hope means that we are far greater in our commitment to invest in forever than we are in time; and so our energies and our thoughts and our prayers and our dreams and our visions and our money and all that we possess is only held as a means to invest in an eternal reality...We live in hope. We live in the light of eternity. It's a wonderful day as we look into that future.

Yesterday, I went to the hospital. Jack Coleman, who was our choir director, warm and gentle and loving, wonderful man. Was having heart failure, and I went into the room and we prayed with he and Sarah, and he said, "Three days ago, I almost died." And he said, "I...I knew I had just a few breaths left, and... and I'm still here." And Sarah said, "You know when he...when he was just about dying three days ago, he kept saying, "And I hit him with a right, and I hit him with a left, and I hit him with a right. I hit him with a left." And she said, "I don't what he was doing. It's not like him to box." You know?

So she said to him after he came out of it, she said, "What were you doing?" She says...he said, "I was hitting the devil, and I knocked him out."...See, he had the idea the devil was trying to take him early, and he had a few things yet to do. And he said to me, he said, "I wrote you a letter, and I wanted to be sure that I could write you that letter and send you a picture." Well, I mean that's probably one of a lotta little things that he didn't quite yet get done; and so he wasn't ready to say, "I finished my course. I kept the faith. I'm done. Take me outta here." So he in his mind thought he was having a boxing match with the devil who was trying to check him out early.

Now, I don't know all the spiritual ramifications of that, or if, in fact, that was true; but that's the way he perceived it. But we rejoiced together, and we prayed together, because if he goes to be with the Lord, that is the ultimate promotion. That's hope. Would you like to live in this world without that? Then bless God for our hope, huh? And if we have that hope, John says, "It is a purifying hope," 1 John 3:3, "He that hath this hope in himself purifies himself."

Listen, if you really live for eternity, it's gonna change dramatically the way you exist in time. It really is. Oh, attitudes flowing through the church will make it what Christ wants it to be. Let's bow.

Our Father, we thank You that You again have given us such a clear Word. You've called us to obedience and humility and love and unity and service and joy and peace and thankfulness, self-discipline, accountability. You've called us to forgiveness, dependence, flexibility, growth, faithfulness, hope. And, Lord, this, so that we may be Your church magnifying, glorifying, praising Your name; and so that You may bless us in response... Move through us, oh, Christ, and trim the lamp. Search us out. See where we are weak, and bring the loving hand of chastening to us to conform us to Your holy purpose...Be our priest and prophet and king...our example of pure holiness...And may we be a church in which You are glorified...

The Muscles and the Flesh, Part 1

The Anatomy of the Church:

This morning we're going to be discussing our theme of the last five weeks on "The Anatomy of a Church." The Lord has led us, I believe, into a discussion of what it is that He desires to be characteristic of His church. God has so blessed us here. God has built here, I believe, a church that desires, in the heart of its people, to be all that He would have it be. Certainly that is true in the leaders' hearts, and I know in your hearts as well. God has blessed us in unique and wonderful, wonderful ways.

We are as rich in spiritual things as any church could be; and it's important for us, while we enjoy these things, to understand the foundations, to understand the...the causes, if you will, that bring about God's blessing, that allow us to receive from Him the best that He has to give; and so we're doing, as I've termed it, a little spiritual archeology and digging back up our foundations to see what it is that we're committed to. God has given us so many new folks; and we praise Him and bless His name for them, for all of them; and many of you who have come in the past few years maybe have not had an opportunity to understand what is Grace Church, what's it really all about, what makes it different, what are we committed to. And so we've been going back and just sort of touching base with some things we know very well.

We're not trying to say new things. We're just trying to emphasize things that are foundational for us to give us a perspective of what our church is really all about; and I think that, when we're finished, and, hopefully, we'll finish next Sunday, we'll have a nice little package of tapes that we can give to folks when they come to our church, and they say, "What's this church all about? What makes this church what it is? What are the emphases of this church?" And we'll be able to say, "Here, here are the things to which we are committed."

Now, lemme say, as we begin today, that I rejoice in the Lord, because I see the work of God in you; and when I speak like this to you, it isn't that I'm rebuking you because I don't see these things. It's because I see these things and wanna see them continue and see them more. As Paul, when he wrote and said, "I know that nobody needs to teach you to love, because God has taught you Himself how to love; but let your love abound more and more," he says. And it's in that kind of perspective that I come to you, not to say these do not exist, but that they do, and they need more and more to exist.

I guess my fear is that, as the church grows and we get further and further away from the foundational things that God used to bless us and upon which His Spirit has built, we lose touch with those things; and then we begin to decline rather than ascend in terms of His usefulness and His blessing. But I do see in the ministries of this church and the hearts and lives of you, His people, these virtues and graces and things that the Spirit of God has accomplished. I only wanna call you to a greater commitment to them than ever before.

And just in...in terms of letting you know how you're seen by others, I have three letters in my hand from pastors who came for our Shepherd's Conference; and they're reacting to what they saw here; and you might be interested in their reaction.

This letter was written to Dick Mayhue. "I wanna take the time to thank you for your many hours of work put into arranging all of the details to bring about such a successful Shepherd's Conference. This was my third conference, and each time I have gained more insight and help in the ministry. Thank you for your faithfulness and your servant's heart that made this possible. Also, I would commend Grace Community Church and its people for their continued demonstration of a serving people to those of us who attended. One of the most singularly amazing things about Grace Church is the very spirit which permeates from the highest level of staff involvement to the people working in the kitchen. Please let those good folks know how much we appreciate the work done. Our church board has made a commitment to see to it that each one of our members attend the Shepherd's Conference; and so we will be seeing you in the future. Thanks again for letting the Spirit of God lead, for extending an open door to men throughout the nation and around the world to learn more about how to apply scriptural principles in the atmosphere of the local church. May God continue to minister to you and through you."

One of the goals we have when we have a Shepherd's Conference or a radio conference is just to expose people to you, and so we encourage you to have 'em for dinner, to take 'em to your home, to keep them, to get to know them. We want them to know that there are things happening in your lives that honor the Lord Jesus Christ. We have nothing to hide.

I head the other day that, since we're gonna have the Olympics in Los Angeles in 1984, there was a movement afoot in the city of Los Angeles to pick up all the bums in Los Angeles and relocate them in Newhall during the Olympics...The idea being that nobody on the outside would know we had these kind of people in our city, unless they happened to visit Newhall, which is highly unlikely...

Well, when we have 250 pastors here, our idea is not to pick up all of the people in our church that we're concerned about and put them over somewhere else. We really believe that God is at work in the lives of our people; and that these who come to look at our church and find out if it really is what it is said to be and find out if the things that we advocate really do see life-changing results, we want them exposed to the people, so that those things can be verified; and this pastor who wrote that letter from Washington state was encouraged to see in the hearts of the people the realization of the things we were teaching.

I have another letter that comes from a young pastor in Mississippi. He writes, "Just a line to say thank you for all that you've allowed God to do to me through this week. I'm learning more about God's grace, His work, and so forth through the ministries here at Grace. This week at the Shepherd's Conference has totally and forever reinforced in my spirit the commitment, joy, and desire to know my Lord through His Word, and to make Him known by His Word. Thank you a million times... Preachers sometimes exaggerate...For your hospitality and graciousness this week. You have all truly lived out your life's message." What a wonderful thought. "You have all truly lived out your life's message. In precept and example you have showed the heart of a servant, and we have come to love you all deeply." Boy, that's so encouraging. To hear someone on the outside come to Grace Church, meet our people, be here for a week, and say, "You're living out your message," the greatest commendation.

And then this from a pastor in Michigan. "While I realize you must receive many letters such as this one after each Shepherd's Conference, I still feel impressed to write and express my deep appreciation for you and the ministry at Grace. I have heard of your church since my days at Bible College, and have been eager to see your ministry. When my senior pastor agreed to send me to the conference, I immediately began to sense that the Lord was going to bless me in a very special way. He had already been working in my heart about leaving our ministry here and assuming the pastorate of my own church, yet He had not opened any doors of opportunity. Now I know why. Our teen ministry here had been viewed as very successful. Many kids have been saved, and my teaching on Sunday mornings has always been practical and need-oriented.

"However, after three-and-a-half years, my wife and I shared a discouragement based on a feeling that somehow we were missing the boat as far as true Biblical ministry was concerned. Being with you and your staff showed me the basic problem. We had built tremendous relationships with our kids; and they had a real sense of excitement and commitment to our department and the church; but they didn't have a commitment to the Word of God personally or in a practical way. We had missed the basis of the ministry. The sad fact is that I don't really think we had ever been exposed to a church that, in fact, had this goal. Of course, the real root of the problem was that we ourselves were not in the Word as we should've been. Let me share with you how the Lord revealed this to us.

"During the conference, my wife and I were staying with friends. We had been asked to teach the college ministry at their church on Sunday morning; so I planned on missing your Sunday morning service; but all week I kept hearing how important it was to share in the worship; so, finally, on Saturday afternoon, I relented and told my friend that I'd be going back up to Grace Church on Sunday morning. The next morning, my wife and I entered the worship center, not really knowing what to expect. You need to understand that we both tend to be somewhat skeptical toward new ideas. By the time we left the service, we both realized that we just experienced something totally foreign to our idea of the ministry. My wife summed it up best when she commented that in our churches people come to church gasping, just barely making it through the week, and anticipating another fix to take them to the next service. But it seems that with your people, they came already full, because they have been led to be in the Word for themselves. When they came, they do so to get...when they come, they do so to get more; but more particularly, to worship. I'm dismayed to say that we had never seen that before.

"I'm thankful to say that, since that morning, our lives have been different. Daily, we have been in the Word, and when I teach or preach, I've done so verse by verse. I never knew there could be so much joy and satisfaction in the ministry. I've learned so much in such a short time. Folks have come up and asked what happened in our lives in California. It all sounds so easy; and I've heard it all my life. Unfortunately, I'd never seen it before. We're now trusting the Lord He'll soon provide a place in which we can institute some of the principles the Lord has revealed to us in a full way. Thank you so much for the revolutionary impact your ministry has had on our ministry."

And I received a letter from that young man just a month or so ago saying that he now is the pastor of his own church, and he was writing to see if we'd load him up with some things that he could use to get started.

What is so wonderful about that is that what they are responding to, those men, is the total life of the church. They're not writing saying, "Oh, it was a great seminar. It was a great class," or "You had a profound thing to say about this or that." But there is a whole ministry to them by virtue of this church. Wednesday night, Moishe Rosen was with us, and I was in the hall talking to him before he came to speak; and he said, "I just got back from London." He's the head of Jews for Jesus, and he said, "I was in London, and I went to several places, and, at each place, there was a person who came to me and said, 'You're from California. Do you know of Grace Community Church?' And in each case I said, 'I know of it,' and they said, 'Well, could you tell us about it?'"

He said, "I'm amazed how the reputation of your people has extended to everywhere I go. In fact," he says, "I'm envious that you have such a people." Well, that's a wonderful thing, and I...I said to him, "I...I pinch myself all the time and say, 'Are you sure you got the right guy here, Lord?' in this wonderful God-blessed ministry."

We have a great, great responsibility to these who look to us, to see in us that which they maybe have not seen somewhere else; and I believe there are reasons why God has blessed. I...I believe there are...there are principles that place us in the... in the position of maximum blessing; and it isn't just that we're large. It's the attitude that people catch. It's the commitments that they catch. It's...it's those things that exist in us as committed believers that they see, that they don't always see in others who name the name of Christ.

So we've been going back in our series and saying, "Well, what is it then that makes a church all that a church can be. I mean what is it that we should have? Many of you are new in our church, and you may wonder the same thing. You may wanna be able to sort of line up and say, "Well, here are the things...here are the things that we need to be committed to. Here's what we need to work on. Here are the things that we wanna teach and...and proclaim and disciple in others." And so we're going back over these things. They're very basic things.

In fact, I feel like this is sort of a large fundamentals of the faith class. That...that I'm talking about very familiar territory; and I keep saying to my wife after each Sunday, "You know, it all seems so basic. It seems so basic. I...I...I hope it's...it's the right thing to do." And she assures me by saying, "Well, there are a lotta folks to whom it's not as basic as it is to you." And I need that from my wife now and then, just a little encouragement that I'm on the right track; because it seems so very, very basic. And, yet, we have to keep going back and putting that foundation down again, don't we?

I'm reminded of Peter's words that I wanna put you in remembrance of these things. Not that you don't know them. You already know them, but I want you to be sure you remember 'em. You have to keep on track. You know, you start down the track; and, all of a sudden, you go one way or you start to go another way, you just keep laying that same track down again, so we know where we're going.

And so we've been looking, then, at the church; and we've used the analogy of a body. We said that, first of all, a church, to be what God wants it to be, has to have a skeleton. In other words, foundation, which gives it form. And, basically, we've said that there are some non-negotiable, bottom-line, foundational truths; and we suggested five of them: a high view of God, the absolutely priority of Scripture, doctrinal clarity, personal holiness, and spiritual authority; and we tied those all together; and that was sort of our skeleton.

Now, moving on from that into the second dimension of our analogy, we said that a body has to have internal systems flowing through it. Those are the life systems. That's what gives it it's life and capability to act and react. And in the church, we have to have internal systems; and those, I believe, are right spiritual attitudes. What is flowing through the lives of the people behind the scenes is the issue.

We tell pastors all the time who come and look at our church, "Don't just take what you see on the surface and try to incorporate it. Behind that, behind that flesh, if you will, there's a...there's a flowing through of certain internal attitudes that have to be built into peoples' hearts before ministry can be what God wants it to be."

And I gave you a whole list of those. Let me just remind you briefly of them: obedience, humility, love, unity, service, joy, peace, thankfulness, self-discipline, forgiveness, dependence, flexibility, accountability, growth, faithfulness, and hope. I don't expect you to write all that down. You've already gotten that. But just to kinda refresh your mind. Those are the attitudes that I believe we must cultivate among ourselves by our preaching and teaching and discipling, and all that we do to build into ourselves those strong kinds of attitudes, spiritual attitude.

Now, when the skeleton is right and the right kind of attitudes are flowing through, we're ready to move to dimension No. 3; and we're gonna do that today. And that is function, or the muscles in the body. The body now has form and it has life; and now what is it to do? What is its function? What...what is the church's responsibility in the world? What are we to be about? Or, in simple terms, what's our ministry?

If somebody said to you, "What is the church supposed to do?" You've got a church that's committed to the worship of God, the authority of Scripture, doctrine, sound doctrine, peoples' lives are right. They're concerned with personal holiness. They're under spiritual authority of those that God has placed over them in the Lord. They've got cultivated in their hearts the right attitudes. They got all this power going, all this flow-through of life. What are they to do?

If you were to mandate the church as to its responsibility, what would it be? That's what we wanna look at now; and I call these the muscles. This is function. This makes us move...And I wanna spend today and next time on this, and then we'll just wrap up with the flesh very briefly next time also. I think we can do it in two weeks; but for this morning I wanna give you four things that I believe are priority functions; and they're so basic that you know them well. But lemme just refresh you, so you'll understand, maybe in fresh way, the things we're committed to.

The first one is preaching and teaching; and I combine those two, because they both have to do with the proclamation of Biblical truth. Preaching and teaching. That, as I see it, is the primary function of the church. The church is the receiver of the revelation of God; and, therefore, the church must be the dispenser of the revelation of God. If God has revealed Himself to us, it is in order that we might understand Him. We are then to be the hearers of the Word and the proclaimers of the Word; and so, when you come here, you will hear the Word of God. When you go to a class, you will hear the Word of God. When you go to a Bible study, you will discuss and study the Word of God; because, primarily, the church is to be a place where the Word of God is preached and taught...

Now, I am committed to that as an absolute priority in the church. That is a function of the church. We must be about proclaiming the Word of God. I...I kinda grieve in my heart over the...a lot of sermonizing that goes on; and some of it is helpful. Some of it is good. A lot of sort of, I call it counseling from the pulpit that goes on. There are a lotta sort of ethical issues that are dealt with in the church. There are a lot of little classes that meet together where everybody pools their ignorance, because nobody knows anything. They just sorta guess what the Bible means.

But the church has, as a priority function, the clear... understandable, direct, authoritative proclamation of the Word of God; and so Grace Church will always be committed to a strong emphasis on preaching and teaching. A strong emphasis on preaching and teaching.

Now, look...look with me for a moment at two epistles written by Paul to Timothy. Now, these epistles were written, I think, to help us understand the ministry, both from the viewpoint of the minister and his congregation. In fact...it even tells us in 1 Timothy 3:15 that this epistle was written to teach us how to behave in the house of God, which is the church. So here is an epistle that is to tell us how we are to behave in the church, how we are to function in the church, how we are to operate in the church...

And I believe the emphasis of both 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy is that we are to operate primarily in the area of proclaiming sound doctrine, preaching the Word of God. That same chapter, 1 Timothy 3 verse 16 is an interesting verse; and it sums up the wonder of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. It says that, without controversy, that is, without any debate or argument, it's an incontrovertible fact that the mystery godliness is a great thing. And what is the mystery of godliness? That God was manifest in the flesh. That's just an incredible thing. No one's gonna argue that that is a great truth, right? That God was manifest in the flesh. That's the heart, the core, that's the substance of our Christian faith, isn't it? We don't have anything if God didn't manifest Himself in the flesh of Jesus Christ, right? Die and rise again.

So that is at the very heart of our faith. Without any argument, that is a great, great revealed truth. But notice what it says. "He was manifest in the flesh. He was justified in the Spirit. He was seen of angels. He was believed on in the world. He was received up into glory," and then tucked in the middle, "preached unto the nations." And if I look at that 16th verse of 1 Timothy 3, I see some essential things in the incarnation; and one of them is preaching. Preaching is an essential element in God manifesting Himself in the flesh. What happened must be preached. That's what he's saying. There must be proclamation of the message. Preaching is unique to Christianity; and it's the one marvelous thing that the church does, that holy men of God do, that nothing in the world can match. I mean the world can have its movies, and they can have their...their books, and the world can have lots of different means to communicate; but preaching, it seems to me, is something so very unique as men of God who are given gifts of the Spirit and the knowledge of the Word proclaim its truth; and I believe, therefore, at the heart of the church is the incarnation; and at the heart of the incarnation is the proclamation of that incarnation. And so preaching finds a central place in the life of the church.

Now, it follows, then, that Paul is going to emphasize to young Timothy as he moves out in his ministry that he, indeed, should be faithful to the preaching; and you'll notice in verse 6 of chapter 4 that, right away, Paul says, "If you put the brethren in remembrance of these things," and he's just talked to them...to him about some things; and he says, "Your job is to put your people in remembrance of these things. You're, first of all, a teacher, Timothy. You're a teacher. Whatever you've received from God's Spirit, you give it out; and let the church be the place where things are taught. The truth of God is taught. You know how marvelous that is in a world where people are groping for truth. You understand that? You know how wonderful it is in a place where people have just about given up on anything that can be guaranteed as being true? Where it's morality by majority? Where it's everybody for himself and whatever opinion you want? Where truth is elusive? Where men are left with their own inane philosophy to try to figure out meaning in life? We can stand up and say, 'This is truth.'"

I mean even Pilate, the ultimate cynic of the New Testament said, "What is truth? What is truth?" We know the truth. We know the truth. Jesus said in John 17 to the Father, "Thy Word is truth." Oh, what a legacy; and that's what we must impart. That's what we must impart; and God has blessed this church, I believe, because its primary function has always been, in part, to proclaim the truth, the Word of God. Not to talk about the Bible, but to talk from the Bible; and I can't tell you how many hundreds, even thousands of people through the years have spoken to us or written to us and said they come to Grace Church because they're fed the Word of God. It's always what we hear...

And that's our commitment. That's our function, and it isn't just my job. It's everybody's job. We're all to be those who proclaim and preach and teach the Word. Some gifted, of course, uniquely. Verse 11, following up the same thought of chapter 4 verse 6, he says, "You are a minister who is a good minister, if you, yourself, are nourished up in the...the Words of the faith and...and the sound doctrine." In other words, if you've got the truth in, and you're giving it to your people, he says in verse 11, "Command them and teach them." In other words, teach with authority. Teach with authority.

I remember I was doing the commencement at the Police Academy one time; and the fellow that I was sitting next to was talking to me about the various graduates who were graduating from the Los Angeles Police Academy; and he said, "We had to flunk one fella out because of his voice." I said, "That's interesting." He said, "Yeah, you just can't go up behind a robber and say, 'Stick 'em up. You're under arrest...Halt in the name of the law.'" I mean it just leaves something out, doesn't it? And I said, "Well, that's interesting." "Yeah," he said, "there had to be a certain authority in his voice."

And I began to think about the fact that his authority, basically, was the law, right? The law was his authority; and if I sound like I speak with authority, I do, because the authority's the Word of God. I will not speak authoritatively on my opinion, but I'll speak authoritatively on the Word of God; and that's what he's saying here in 1 Timothy 4:11. "You...you don't just teach it. You command it." In other words, you call people to a...to a mandate of responsibility...

And so verse 16, he says, or verse 13, rather, he says, "Until I come, give your attention to reading, exhortation, and doctrine." Then he tells him how to do it. "Read the text. Explain the text, and apply the text." Reading, that's just read it to 'em. Exhortation, that's apply it. Doctrine, that's give 'em the doctrine or the teaching. So he says, "You get the text open. You read it to 'em. You explain to 'em. That's doctrine, and you exhort 'em to behave; and don't neglect...in verse 14 says...don't neglect it. Meditate on it...verse 15 says...Take heed to it...verse 16 says...and you continue in it." In other words, we are all called to obey the Word and proclaim the Word. Preaching, teaching, proclaiming, instructing. What a thrilling responsibility.

Now, in chapter 5 verse 17, he comes to another dimension. "Let the elders that rule well...be counted worthy of double timae...double pay, double respect, probably embraces all those things...but ones who...who do well should be doubly honored, especially those who work hard in preaching and teaching." Again, the focus of leadership in the church is on the preaching and the teaching role. That's our function. That's our function. That's our function.

We're here to proclaim God's Word. I've heard people criticize Grace Church and say, "Well, Grace Church is...is over balanced in the area of teaching. There's too much preaching, too much teaching, and not enough of this or that or the other thing." You...you...I don't see that you could ever have too much of that. I mean unless you have mastered all of God's revelation, and that's a...an utter impossibility. There can't be too much. It could be out of balance if we didn't obey the teaching; but the reason we dominate our lives with teaching is because teaching is what sets everything else in motion. We have to know what the Bible says about a certain thing before we can carry it out; and so teaching is...is the sine quo non of everything.

We have to know what to do. We...we can't know how to worship unless we know what the Bible says. We can't know how to pray unless we know what the Bible says. We can't know how to evangelize. We can't know how to disciple or shepherd. We can't know how to train people. We...we can't know how to help people and their families. We can't do anything unless we understand what God says. So we preach, we teach, we preach, we teach.

The end of chapter 6, Paul says to Timothy, "Keep that which is committed." In other words, I think he's referring to the... the deposit of truth, the revelation of God, the faith, if you will, the content of true doctrine. Keep it and stay away from the garbage of the world, the philosophies and the errant theologies and the supposed knowledge of men who really don't know anything at all. Hang in there with the right stuff. We don't wanna get deviated away from it. We don't wanna get pushed away into the thoughts of men that are afar from God.

Second Timothy deserves a brief look, verse 15 of chapter 2...He says, "Be diligent to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." In other words, you've got the Word. You're committed to it. Now handle it correctly.

Back in verse 13 of chapter 1, he says, "Hold fast the form of sound words." So the first thing you do is you hold onto it, and then you rightly dispense it. You hang onto the truth, and you dish it out as it ought to be, so that you may be approved of God; and again he says in 16 and following, "Stay away from the garbage of the world. Stay away from their errors and heresies and philosophies, and stick to the truth of God."

Down in verse 24 of chapter 2, he says, "Anyone who leads in the church, who's a servant of the Lord, should be skilled in his teaching. Skilled in his teaching." And, of course, that great passage in chapter 3 where it says that, "All Scripture is inspired, that we may be perfected." So you can see, then, as Paul instructs Timothy regarding the church, this tremendous emphasis is made on preaching and teaching.

Now go to chapter 4, and we'll draw it all together. Chapter 4 of 2 Timothy verse 1, and here is a...here is a mandate given to Timothy, one of the really great ones in the New Testament. "I charge thee, or I hold thee accountable, or I command thee this therefore..." Since the Word of God can perfect, since the Word of God can save as it says in 3:15 to 17...Since the Word of God can do all these things, since it can give you the salvation...that you've received. Since it can give you all that you need to be perfected in Christ, "Then I charge you before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the living and dead at His appearing in His Kingdom."

That's a very solid charge. He says, "I hold you accountable before God and Jesus Christ. I hold you accountable before the...the Father and Son." Verse 2, do what? What? "Preach the Word. Preach the Word." It is the Word that makes people wise unto salvation. It is the Word that perfects, that brings doctrine, reproof, correction, instruction, and righteousness. That makes the man of God thoroughly furnish unto all good words. It is the Word that does that, so he says, "Timothy, sum it up simple. I hold you accountable to God the Father. I hold you accountable to God the Son. Man, preach the Word. Proclaim the Word, and be diligent at it. Work hard at it. Hang in there. Do it in season and out of season, when it seems appropriate and inappropriate. When it seems like somebody might be offended or not, you keep doing it. All the time, in season, out of season," means all the time. You can't be any more than either in season or out of season.

And then he says this, and it's interesting, isn't it? He doesn't say comfort and encourage. He says, "Reprove, rebuke, and exhort." In other words, "Lay it on 'em, Timothy." Why does he say that? Because he knows that even Christians basically have to fight with their sin, right? And so he says, "Preaching has to be confrontive. It has to be reproving. It has to be rebuking. It has to be exhorting." And the mildest of those words is exhortation, and it means to encourage to a change of behavior in view of judgment if they don't.

In other words, you keep going the way you're going, God's gonna have to deal with you. So preaching has to have that element in it. It's confrontive. It pulls you up short. It's convicting. It's heart searching. It's heartbreaking; and that's what he tells him. "Preach it that way, and let the content of your ministry be that which demonstrates long suffering." So you preach with great zeal. You preach with great conviction. You confront people. You sort of slam 'em to the wall, and they've gotta decide yes or no to what you said. You make 'em look at their own heart, see the failure of their own life, and realize this: that they're not gonna change overnight, so in the process be what? Patient. Be patient.

And then he says, "Not only be patient; but, in this process...he says, and this is such an important word...do it with all patience and doctrine." Teaching, the heart of the ministry, beloved, is patiently teaching the Word of God in a confrontive way that pulls people up short in self-examination, so that their life can be brought to an accountability before God. That's the function of the church. That's the function of the church. When you come here, you're called to that accountability. When you go to a fellowship group, one of the things you're called to in the teaching of the Word of God is am I responding rightly to this Word. You go to a flock or a Bible study; and somebody opens up the Bible; and you're...you're called by the authority of the Word of God to the place where you say, "I'm doing that, or I'm not doing that." And you're repute...reproved or rebuked or exhorted, and patiently so, until your life can be what God would have it to be.

So, as Paul bows out and Timothy steps in to take his mantle, he says, "Timothy, it's all summed in this, son. Preach the Word. Preach the Word." Say, "Why so?" Because it's the Word in the mind that generates the behavior. It's the Word that comes into the mind that generates the behavior; and that's why the Bible says in Ephesians 4:23, "Be renewed in the spirit of your mind. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind." Transformation, Romans 12, "Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind." And that's your thinking part. You have to have the Word into your thinking, so that it can start that flywheel of behavior moving...and so we teach and preach the Word. No substitute for that.

A second function is evangelism and mission. Evangelism and missions. We...and I use those two terms just to give you a comprehensive perspective. Evangelism seems to speak of personal things, and missions seems to speak of something very large; and so, since those terms are thought of in that way, we'll use them. We are to be committed to the fact that our church is not only for it's own sake, but for the sake of the world, right? That the reason we wanna be what God wants us to be is so that we can be a shining light in the midst of a dark and perverse generation. We wanna be all that God wants us to be so that He can, through us, reach others.

You see, the ultimate goal of all ministry is that we would reach someone for Christ; and so we've got be about evangelism, evangelism, evangelism. We've gotta be about it basically two ways: by life example and by word. And as we've said so many times, people, it's our lives out there that make our testimony either believable or unbelievable. I mean if we have a church where Christ is exalted, where people are living righteous lives, where they're dealing with their sin in honesty before God, where they're endeavoring to walk in obedience in His holy purposes, if we have that kind of church, then we're gonna lay out a platform on which individual testimony can be believed.

It's what you are out there in the world. That's what's so wonderful when people come here and they say, "Hey, your people live your message. Your people really do obey the Word of God." That's so thrilling, because that makes Christianity so credible, see. I mean why do you think that, instead of Satan just coming into the world and just blasting churches out existence, he comes into the world and proliferates churches all over the place who have no credibility? Because that undermines the whole message. I mean how people say, "Oh, I went to a church over there. That was really some place. They have a lotta hypocrites there, so forth and so forth and so on. They don't care about anybody over there. Why, the pastor ran off and did this. He was crooked. He embezzled money outta the church and blah-blah-blah."

You see, all that Satan can do to keep the church going in name and to corrupt it is done in a way that undermines the integrity of the message of the church...Satan doesn't wanna eliminate churches. He just wants to corrupt them so that there's no foundation on which individual testimony can be believed...And I really believe that we have been called to live a life in the community that is a life of...of evangelism.

It's summed up, you know, we've gone through this in years past in Matthew 5, where our Lord says, "You are two things. You are the salt of the earth...Matthew 5:13...and if the salt...if the salt's lost its savor, with what shall it be salted?" You're the salt of the earth. I mean you're just out there as a preservative. You're...you're just out there as a deterrent. You're out there distinct. You have a flavor different than they do. I mean you're out there unique; and that's why, see, beloved, that's why we call people to a separated life. That's why we call people to a pure life. That...that's why I'm so exercised in my spirit that you live a godly, virtuous, holy, righteous life. Not just for the glory of God from the viewpoint of you, but for the glory of God from the viewpoint of others who see and are drawn to that kind of purity. Where you can be used as an example. You're the salt.

And then in verse 14, you're the light of the world, and if the light is hidden under a bushel, isn't gonna be seen; and the bushel, I'm sure, is an indication of sin or clouding of the testimony of your life. But if you're out there and you're shining bright and you're salt that's really salty, now you're gonna have an impact on the world; and it's by what you are before it is what you say. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who's in Heaven."...

I mean I'm amazed sometimes. You know, I...I meet a lotta people in a lot of interesting circumstances; and some of them are very embarrassed in the circumstances that they meet me; because I say, "Ohhhhh, don't I know you?" So I can't tell you how many people have tried to swallow a cigarette when they saw me. It's really funny, really funny. I mean, "Well, hello." Gulp-unk-dink, you know...Oh, I can...I can be in a restaurant and...and somebody will have a drink; and they'll get it up just a little ways, and I'll just...smile and wave, and instant panic sets in. I didn't say a thing...

I've, on some occasions, even gone over to a table and greeted them just as a reminder...that there is, for Christians, a certain standard of...of life for the sake of those who watch us. I remember in a restaurant one time, sometimes when you go and you're waiting, there's a cocktail waitress who comes; and this cocktail waitress came; and she walked up and said, "Would you like a...no, you wouldn't, would you?" And I said, "No, I wouldn't. You look familiar." And then, "Oh, I...I have to apologize. You see, I...I," and on she went with this story; but it was very interesting; because, in her heart, she knew that she was completely out of sync with the reality of where she should've been as a Christian just living in the world; and it was embarrassing to her to see me; and I thought to myself, "It should more offend her that unbelievers see her doing something that's not like Christ than that I should see it. I can handle it."

We have a foundation of credibility to lay with our lives, and it's so very important; and so he sums it up, doesn't he, in Matthew 5:16 when he says, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who's in Heaven." You know, they oughta look at your life and say, "Look, only God could make a life like that. I mean only God could do that to somebody." What a wonderful life; and so we lay a foundation of evangelism.

And then, beyond that, we need to talk. We need to speak. We need to proclaim the message. I mean we need to be ready to speak, to give an answer for the hope that is in us, to proclaim Jesus Christ. We need to have our lips unsealed. Someone once said that most Christians are like the Artic River, frozen over at the mouth; and it's unfortunate that, in many cases, that is true. For some reason, resistant to speak.

Oh, how we oughta be as eager to speak about the Lord as we are to speak about some other mundane, inane thing; and so that we understand the responsibility to evangelize, to witness, to reach out. Part of that is having people that we know who aren't Christians, and that's hard for some of us, very hard; 'cause our world is narrowed. Someone said it's like a pyramid. The higher you go, the...the fewer people you know that aren't Christians.

And then, too, as we proclaim, we wanna make sure we have the right message; and that's why we spend so much time articulating the Gospel here, making sure you understand the terms that Christ has given. That's why, when we get to the rich, young ruler, we spend time seeing how Christ evangelized, or the Sermon on the Mount, what did He call men from and what did He call them to, and what are the real Biblical terms of evangelism? Because I know full well the churches of our country and our world are filled with people who aren't saved, but think they are.

And so we are committed to evangelism. Now, beyond that, to missions. I mean that's a worldwide view to...to reaching way beyond here to whatever God will allow us to do across the globe. I received a letter this week from a pastor in the Philippines. He said, "I...I've been hearing about your church. I wanna build my church as God would have it built; and could you send me some help so that I can begin to move in the right direction?" And we have people now strategizing and setting a vision for us to reach as far beyond our own walls as we possibly can. Worldwide as much as the Lord allows, because He said to go into all the world, didn't He? And we wanna go as far as we can go, as far as our resources allow us to go; and what we're doing here is training up people here so that we can go more effectively; and we're committed to that, to going, to preaching, baptizing, teaching as far as we can go.

There's a third of these functions, and you know this one well, so I'm not gonna spend a lotta time. Worship. Corporate worship. We've done a series recently. I hope you've read the book, The Ultimate Priorityon worship. We are called to corporate worship. "We are those who worship the Lord in Spirit, who have no confidence in the flesh," Paul says to the Philippians. "We're true worshippers...John 4...who worship the Father in Spirit and truth." "We have been called as those who are like priests, who offer our bodies a living sacrifice to God in a holy act of worship, spiritual sacrifice." "We are worshippers. We are a priesthood who offer up sacrifices unto God," says Peter.

We were talking the other day in one of our staff meetings about the concern we have. There are many people who come to the worship service, but how many of them really worship? How many hearts are really lifted up to God? How many hearts are filled with praise and adoration? And how many are thinking about when it's gonna be over or what they're gonna do today, or where they're going tomorrow or...or whatever; and we get so blasted and bombarded by the cleverness of Satan's media in the world. We see images of pictures in our minds, and we hear jingles of commercials, and we're blasted by the things that we continually see passing before our eyes. And to try to sit down and get the clutter outta there and to meditate on the things of God, you'd almost have to go into a monastery to filter your brain clean again.

So how hard is it...is it for us to come and to really think of the songs we're singing, and to hear the Psalm when it's read and calls us to worship, and to meditate on the things of God that come through the teaching and the preaching? But we need to cultivate that. We need to be a worshipping people, not just here. This is just a catalyst to get us to worship at all times. As we tried to say some months ago in that series, we worship best when we obey most. We worship best when we respond to God in willing obedience, so that obedience is the...is the basic definition of worship. We obediently offer in praise. We obediently do what He says. Obedience and worship, synonymous, in a sense, become, then, a way of life rather than just an exercise on Sunday.

But I believe we're called to draw near unto God. You know what that means? To draw near unto God, Hebrews says, "Draw near unto God." James talks about "drawing near unto God, and He'll draw near unto you." What great thoughts those are. I mean when do you really draw near unto God in an unhurried way? And when do you just let your heart and mind ascend, as it were, in the words of the hymns and in the words of Scripture or in times of deep devotion and prayer? When do you meditate? The word almost has no meaning to us except to see some strange guru squatting somewhere. We don't understand what it is to meditate; but I believe we are...we function in worship. We function in worship.

Timothy, Paul said to Timothy, "You know let holy men lift up their hands in prayer and let the church come together for that expressed purpose of praise." We are to be a worshipping people; and it thrills my heart that so many, many, like this young man who wrote from Michigan. They come to our church, and they've never experienced a worship like this. Their hearts have always been ready, but they've never been provided that kind of environment that can lift that heart to God; and maybe we could do better than we do. Maybe we could do better.

Here's a last function that the church must be given to that I wanna talk about this morning. We'll finish it next time, and that's prayer; and I don't need to say much about this. I just need to remind you. I just wanna place it in your memory. I don't wanna guild the lily, except to say that I believe, beloved, I believe this with all my heart. Prayer's the hardest spiritual exercise we engage in for two reasons. Reason No. 1, it's hard work. It's hard work, because it's selfless. True prayer extends to embrace the Kingdom of God. "Thy name be hallowed. Thy will be done. Thy Kingdom come." It extends to embrace the Kingdom of God; and it extends to embrace the people of God. "Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses. Lead us not into temptation." There's no "I" in the disciple's prayer of Matthew 6:9 to 12. It embraces the Kingdom of God in His glory. It embraces the needs of His people; and so prayer is unselfish exercise. Only unselfish, only humble people can abandon themselves to embrace the...the will of God, the Kingdom of God, the needs of people.

And when Paul says in Ephesians 6:18, "Praying always for all saints, with all prayer and supplication," he is calling us to the kind of prayer that turns outward from us to embrace God's glorious purposes and the needs of God's people. And it's selfless, and so it's limited to selfless people. It's hard work, because you are there, and you're pouring out your heart on behalf of God, on behalf of God's redeemed people, on behalf of His purposes and their needs; and you're beyond yourself.

We find, on the other hand, prayer very easy when it hits us. When we have a disabling injury, or when we have a debilitating sickness in the family, or we lose a loved one, or when one of our children strays from the Lord, or when our kids are making decisions about who they're gonna marry, or about when some tragedy comes in, or we're caught in some dishonest deed, or some immoral act; and, immediately, because we are at stake, we find ourselves rather easily drawn to prayer on our own behalf.

But that doesn't demonstrate the strength of prayer. That demonstrates the weakness of prayer. The strength of prayer is to abandon my life in unceasing prayer on behalf of the extension and glory of God in His eternal Kingdom, and the needs of His redeemed people beyond myself, you see. And that's why it's so hard...I mean I don't have any question that in Luke 11, I could be the guy banging on the door, getting the bread, if I was hungry; and I'd bang all night till the guy gave me the bread to get rid of me. The question is, "Can I bang on the door all night for the bread for somebody else?" That's the question.

I mean we can have a Sunday night deal and have ice cream, and you'll have 3,000 people over there gobbling up ice cream. You can have...you can call a prayer meeting, and you have to get binoculars to find the folks...You see, because prayer is so selfless. It...it...it...it's an embracing of things other than ourselves in its purest, truest sense. I'm not saying you don't pray. I'm not saying I don't pray. I don't pray as I ought to pray, and...and we all feel like we don't, don't we? We're gonna have a monthly prayer meeting on a Wednesday night each month, and we're gonna call the folks to prayer, and I believe God answers prayer. I said in an interview on the radio in Chicago yesterday that one of the benefits of growing older, and there are some, is that you begin to have a longer list of things that God has demonstrated in His power to answer prayer. And the older you get, the more you see God do things that only He could do. And the longer that list becomes, the more confident you become in your prayers, so I think older people pray better than younger people. At least in that sense, because they have the track record of the proving of God's response.

The second reason that prayer's difficult, not only because it's selfless, is because it's so private. It's so private, and this is sort of like the selfless idea; but, when you pray, you pray all by yourself and no one knows; and so you'd gotta have the self-discipline and the strength to do it without peer pressure or approval. I mean there are a lotta things we do because we know people will know we did them, right? I mean we go to Bible study because people will say, "He goes to Bible study." And we read the Bible because somebody's gonna say, "Hey, I've been reading so." "Well, I've been reading so and so." "Boy, the other day I read so and so. Yeah." And you read it just so you could make sure that when the conversation came up, you could say you read it.

You see, prayer is difficult, first of all, because it's selfless and, secondly, because it has no visible rewards; and you don't have any peer pressure. Nobody sees you perform; and we perform much better when we know people are going around. Listen, I...I really prepare for sermons, 'cause I got all these people listening. I find it much easier not to pray. In Acts 6:4, it says the apostles gave themselves continually to prayer and to ministry of the Word. I find it much easier to give myself to the ministry of the Word than prayer, because I don't have a whole lotta choice about the ministry of the Word. If I show up here on Sunday, haven't got anything to say, I'm in real trouble; but I can not pray and no one will know. Oh, eventually, you'd know; but you wouldn't know right away; and that's why prayer's such hard work. That's why the Bible talks about prevailing in prayer; because it's something that, first of all, is selfless and, secondly, has no visible rewards on the spot in terms of the affirmation and the approval of people.

I thank God for those selfless people who pray; and I pray God that we'll have more of 'em in our fellowship. We have a little group of people that pray on Monday, little group, older people. They're getting older all the time, but the Lord isn't letting 'em die; 'cause I don't know who'd take their place. It's a handful of people. They've been praying for years, over ten years; and they pray; and God hears and answers their prayers; and we cash in on their faithfulness.

God help us to be faithful in our prayers. As I've said in the past, prayer is the nerve that moves the muscles of omnipotence. I don't understand how it works. I just know God hears and answers prayer; and "The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much," says James; and I wanna be that righteous man who prays; because I wanna see God do all He can possibly do and give Him all the glory. So we must be committed to prayer; and Paul couldn't have said it any more clearly than he said it in 1 Thessalonians 5, and he says in verse 17, "Pray without...what?...feasting." We say, "What does that mean?"

Well, it simply means that you pray...all the time, which is to say you live in God-consciousness, that all, you're whole life is offered as a prayer. You all your whole life is offered as a prayer. You just...you...all the time, you're aware of God, all the time, you think, you act, you respond, you talk, aware that God is there. Every...every act of life, every thought of life is offered as a prayer as if to say, "I'm gonna do this. Is this all right, Lord? Oh, I see You in that." In other words, you interpret life as if you were looking through the very mind and heart of God.

It isn't that you go around mumbling and with your eyes closed. Prayer is just the way of living in the conscious presence of...of God, so that everything is offered to Him. Everything is communed with Him. Prayer is two thing...two way thing, you know? You hear His voice. You feel the leading of the Spirit of God. You offer Him your petitions and your thoughts and your joys and your problems. It's living life in a God-conscious way. And so our functions are very, very foundational. Preach and teach. Evangelize and extend to the world. Worship. Pray.

I'll give you the rest of 'em next time. Let's pray together.

What can we say, Lord? What can we say? You have blessed us so much. You've blessed us with salvation. You've blessed us with the Word, the Spirit. You've blessed us with the assembly of Your redeemed and beloved people. You've blessed us with friends, with family, with life partners who love you. You've blessed us with a wonderful place where we can fellowship and worship. You've blessed us with beautiful songs we can sing, instruments to which we listen, which cause our hearts to rejoice. You've blessed us with the beauty of your creation, which we, who are redeemed alone can fully appreciate as a gift of Your love...unlike the world who thinks it's some cosmic accident...You've given us so much. Father, it's our desire as Grace Community Church to function as You would have us function, preaching, teaching, evangelizing, worshipping, praying. Right back to those basic things, and to know that it isn't so important what the programs are. It's only so important what we do...as individuals...to be faithful in these areas...Thank You for sharpening our focus in these days...May we be faithful to respond as we see the truth...We pray in Christ's name. Amen.

The Muscles and the Flesh, Part 2

This morning we come to our theme, "The Anatomy of a Church." For the last six weeks, I've been basically sharing from my heart, I trust what has been a helpful understanding of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. We've been trying to reexamine who we are and what we are called to be and to do and to say. And the Lord has really just impressed upon me week after week that this is a needful thing. And so I have had a great sense of confirmation from Him that we're right in the place that He wants us to be as we've shared these great truths together.

My life is the church, in many ways. I don't have a nine-to-five job; it never ends. You never stop doing what you do when you minister in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ; and, as a believer, you don't either. Life, for me, is the church of Jesus Christ. Every waking moment of my life, thoughts in my mind have to do with His kingdom and His work and His people and His Word. It's a, it's a total saturation. I've been called to a unique calling; and I understand that, and with gratitude express my appreciation to God. And while there is tremendous joy and great exhilaration and wonderful privilege involved, there's also a serious and weighty responsibility. And I'm often reminded of several heart-searching passages in Scripture, like James 3:1, that says, stop being, so many, teachers, for theirs is a greater condemnation. And James is saying to us, "Don't be in a hurry to be in a place of spiritual responsibility unless you're ready to deal with the consequence of failure." And I'm reminded also of Hebrews 13:17, where it says that we watch for men's souls as those who must give an account to the Lord. And there is an accountability factor in ministry. There's an accountability factor in pasturing and shepherding. There's an accountability factor in leading the church of Jesus Christ that's very serious.

And while life on the one hand is filled with joy and happiness and blessedness, there is always that lingering reality of the immense seriousness with which one deals with the church. In 1 Corinthians chapter 4 there is a text that perhaps can give us a perspective with which to begin. Open your Bible, if you will, to that. In 1 Corinthians chapter 4, the apostle Paul is expressing to the Corinthian believers his own view of his place in the ministry. And he says in verse 1: "Let a man so account of us..." In other words, "Let it be that men say this about us," or "Let this be their evaluation of us, that we were servants of Christ." And he uses the word huperetes, which means under-rower, the lowest of slaves. "Let it be said of us, when all is said and done, and we're evaluated, that we were low-level slaves of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God." The mysteries of God are those great truths imparted to Paul in the New Testament; and a steward is one who manages what he does not own for someone else. And so he says, "Let it be said of me that I was a, a low-level slave of Christ, on the lowest rung of slavery, and that I was a steward who owned nothing but managed things well, namely the mysteries of God. Moreover, verse 2 says, “It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful.” Faithful. Trustworthy.

Paul says, "This is what I want out of my life, to be a faithful slave, to handle what God gives me, and have Him say, 'He's trustworthy. He's faithful to the cause and the call.'" And he says in verse 3, "With me it's really a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or of men's judgment. Yea, I judge not mine own self." He says, "And, by the way, in the process of doing this, I'm not looking for some human evaluation. It matters very little to me what public opinion is about me. It matters very little to me what your opinion is. It really matters very little to me what my opinion is. The truth is you don't know my heart, and I really don't know my heart either, because, in my sinfulness, I'm blind to some of my own weaknesses. So, ultimately, not you and not me can stand in the place of true judgment."

Verse 4 says, "Even when I know nothing against myself,” in other words, I can't find some overt, flagrant, exterior sin that I can nail down, even when I can't find that, “I'm not thereby justified.” That doesn't make me right. “But He that judges me is the Lord." Serious, isn't it? He says, "I'm in the ministry, and let it be said that I was a slave of Christ and a steward of the mysteries of God, and that I am not concerned with the judgment of men, nor am I concerned with my own self-evaluation, because men don't know all the facts, and they may be biased, and I am biased and don't know all the facts. The One that judges me is the Lord." And everyone who serves Christ will be judged by Him, “for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ...[to] receive the things done in the body, whether they be good or useless.” All of us.

So in verse 5, he says, "Judge nothing before the time." And when is the time? It's the time when the Lord comes. And when He comes, He “will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts." In other words, the real issue is what's inside you. It may not be how clever you were or how glib or how good a preacher or how dynamic a leader, but what God's going to evaluate is your heart. And men can't see your heart, and you're not even always able to see the truth. It's only “then that every man will have praise of God.”

So I confess to you that the church carries with it a great amount of seriousness for me. I am under double condemnation for failure, and so are all those who minister and teach the Word. I must give an account to God for how I have shepherded the sheep, fed the flock, and, ultimately, will be judged by the Lord Himself. And I want not to live under some illusion that I can be satisfied by the very gracious and kind evaluation of men, nor by the tendency to evaluate myself in a positive way.

So I, I'm sharing with you my heart, because these are burdens which I bear and which all who serve Christ bear; and I just need all of you to bear it with me, to share the load. And so we've been talking about the things that God would have us be as a church; and so important that we understand that this is not an optional thing. You know, when the apostle Paul gathered together the Ephesian elders at Miletus on his way back to Jerusalem, they came down to visit with him there while his ship was in port; and he got them all around him; and he said to them these very important words, "Take heed to yourselves." In other words, "As you lead the people, first do an inventory on your own life. Take heed to yourselves, and then the flock of God over which He's made you an overseer to feed the, the church of God." In other words, first you do your own spiritual inventory; then you examine where your church is--the church that the Lord has given you to lead and feed. And then he says, "What church is it? The church of God which He has purchased with His own blood." And therein lies the issue. We're not dealing with a, a triviality when we deal with the church. We're not dealing with something that’s easy come, easy go. We're dealing with the most precious commodity that exists in all of eternity, because it is purchased with the blood of God's Son. The price was infinitely high for the church; and when that church is placed into the care of God's people, it is to be cared for with a sense of the awesomeness of the price that was involved.

And so I've sort of tried to halve the load a little bit and share the heart--my heart and the heart of our elders and pastors--with all of you, so that, together with us, you can understand what it is that God wants us to be, that our accounting before Him may be pleasing to Him. And, as we have been looking at the church and what the church should be, we've been using the analogy, which is a Pauline analogy, of a body. And we've been trying to see the church as a body. Though using a Pauline analogy, we've been looking at it in a non-Pauline way. Kind of a topical look; and we said that a body could basically be divided into four elements: the skeleton, the internal systems, the muscles, and the flesh.

And so with a church; first of all, there has to be a skeleton; that is, that which gives it form and foundation. Those are the bottom-line, non-negotiable, basic, foundational truths upon which it must be formed and framed. And then, we said, flowing through the church there must be certain internal systems. We called them spiritual attitudes, and we talked about those for several weeks. And then last time we began to talk about the muscles; and the muscles represent function. Now that we understand our form and have our foundation and flowing through are the right spiritual attitudes, what are we supposed to do?

And muscle is how we begin to function; and I want to finish that and say a little bit about the flesh today. And then next Lord's Day, I want to complete the series with a special message on the head of the body, who is Christ, and how He ties it all together.

But let's talk about the muscles, the function of the church, how it moves and ministers and operates. Last week, we said, first of all, one of the functions, a critical one, is preaching and teaching. Preaching and teaching. In 2 Timothy 4:2, Paul instructed Timothy, "Preach the Word." And he also said in that same verse, "Be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all long-suffering and teaching." So, preaching, teaching: basic function for the church.

Secondly, last week, we also talked about evangelism and missions; that we are mandated to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature; that we are called, as those who know the terror of the Lord, to persuade men. In other words, because we can see the impending doom on the ungodly, we are mandated to go out and warn them; and so we're called to missions and evangelism as function.

Thirdly, we talked about worship. Both individually and corporately, we are to be a worshiping group. We are to worship in the heart, as Philippians 3:3, which is the best definition of a Christian I know in the Bible. "We are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." We're to be the true worshipers (John 4), who worship in spirit and truth. So, individually, we are called to be worshipers. And also collectively, we are the temple of the Spirit of God. And God dwells within the praises of His redeemed people; and so we worship, not only individually, but collectively. And Hebrews 10 tells us to "draw near unto God with clean hands and pure heart."

And then fourthly, we said that our function also demands prayer. We are to be functioning in prayer. That is a priority, beloved. When you go to Ephesians 6:10-18, Paul describes the armor of a believer. And he goes through all the sequence of elements of armor and finally caps it off. At the very end, after all of that, he says, "praying always," which is the ultimate weapon. The ultimate weapon, because that says, "With all that I have available to me, I still am utterly dependent on God. And with all my armor on and a knowledge of the Word of God and the sword in my hand, I want to pray, because no matter what I may know or what I may be, I cannot function independent of the power source, praying always."

And in the early church, the apostles said, "Look, we will give ourselves continually to prayer, that's first, and the ministry of the Word." The priority is prayer. Why? Because we must ever and always be fused with God. I mean, the plug is pulled if we're not, and the flesh can do no good thing. That's why, first of all, says Paul to Timothy in setting the church in order, 1 Timothy 2, "First of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks....All men everywhere lift up holy hands in prayer." First of all, we're called to pray.

Now I want to talk about some other functions today, and I, I'm going to go through them rather rapidly. We could spend a lot more time, but I've taught them over and over. I'm just going to touch them. The next one is discipling. This is a function of the church. In Matthew 28:19 and 20, our Lord said, going into all the world, “make disciples.” Mathetes autou: make disciples. The word mathetoi: the word disciple or learner. Make learners. Make disciples, "baptizing them." That's how you get them started. "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you." That's how you keep them going. Discipling, then, is bringing people to Christ and leading them in Christ to maturity. That's the discipling process. I love what it says in the book of Matthew when it says that, "Jesus discipled Joseph of Arimathea. The text actually says, "And Joseph of Arimathea, who was discipled by Jesus." What a wonderful thought. We're all in that process. In Acts 1:1, Luke writes, "The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus," referring to the gospel of Luke. The former writing, he says, I wrote “about all that Jesus began to do and teach." Isn't that a wonderful thing? He says, "My other letter was all about what Jesus began, and this one, the book of Acts, is all about the carrying on of that work.

Jesus discipled twelve, and now in the book of Acts, we find what the twelve did with their generation; and the book of Acts is a flowing through from what Jesus began. And here you and I are two thousand years later, and we're still working on what Jesus began. Somebody gave the baton to the apostles. They gave it to somebody else and somebody else and somebody else; and somebody gave it to us. And we're in the same succession of having heard these things to be committed (2 Timothy 2:2) to passing them on to “faithful men who shall be able to teach others also." You see, every Christian's in a relay race. He takes the baton. He hands the baton, and none of us is in a solo effort. I mean we're all in flow, and somebody invested in us. And we need to invest it in somebody else, which is to say to a believer, "You ought to be being discipled and be discipling." You say, "I don't know much." Find somebody who knows less than you do and tell them what you know. Find somebody who knows more than you do and listen to them. Plug in someplace. Plug in, be taught, and teach. I mean I, I pour my heart into some people in the discipling process, and I'm pulling it from somewhere else. All of us got to be in the flow somewhere. We're not isolated people out there. We're in the flow. We're a chain all linked and hooked together.

Back to 1 Corinthians 4: where I was a moment ago. I think you have a wonderful indirect insight into the discipling process here. Paul is writing a letter that's basically a rebuke to the Corinthian church, which he, himself, brought into existence by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit. And they have departed in many ways from the, the primitive things that should've been basic to their faith, and they've launched off into all kinds of sinful things, so Paul writes to correct them. And he begins in verse 14 with a good insight into helping us understand the relationship of a discipler to his disciple. In verse 14, he says, "I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons, I warn you. For though you have ten thousand” paidagogos, which means moral guardians or people giving you spiritual advice “in Christ, yet you have not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel." Now he throws this in, because, by now they're saying to themselves, after four-and-a-half chapters of rebuke, "Who does this guy think he is? What gives him the right to talk to us like this?" He stops and says, "Here's why. First of all, I'm your spiritual father. That is, I brought you into existence." And that's the first thing about discipling. People say, "Well, your church is into discipleship. What's your view of evangelism? You can't do discipleship unless you do evangelism. Who you going to disciple? You have to begat before you can build up, right? You have to have a baby before one can grow."

Of course we're committed to that, and the best place for discipleship to begin is to lead someone to Jesus Christ; and there will be a link there that doesn't exist when you weren't that, that key person. Oh, it can be pretty strong with others, but there's something marvelous about that link of regeneration. When God uses you to bring someone to Christ, there is indebtedness and a sense of responsibility and a sense of love to you, to you from them that ties you together and enables you to say things to them that you might feel a little hesitant to say to somebody else. But when they know that you are God's agent to bring them to Christ, there's something wonderful there that links you together; and so discipleship begins with evangelism. Now, all of us have picked up somebody else's, you know, child, kicking and screaming somewhere, that nobody is willing to disciple; and we've taken them on; and that's wonderful. That's wonderful, and we need to keep doing it. Keep doing it, but the link between two people, one of who led the other to Christ, is marvelous. It all begins in evangelism; and then discipling moves.

Look at verse 14, he says, "My beloved sons." The attitude in which discipleship occurs is an attitude of love. And love, as I've said, is not an emotion. It's a commitment of self-sacrificing, humble service to one in need. And so you have an environment of love, which says, "I'll give my life for you. I'll give my time for you. I'll give my prayers for you. I'll give my insights for you. I give you myself." That's an element. You can't, you see, if you don't care about a person; and if you're not willing to sacrifice, you never really have the discipling process working in its richest potential.

And then, thirdly, in verse 14, he says, "I warn you," and that's the word noutheteo, which means to admonish or to warnpeople with a view to judgment if they don't change their behavior. It's corrective, and that's the third thing about discipling. It, first of all, begins with salvation. It exists in an era of, in a, an aura, really, of love; and it is marked by warning. It's just like a child. You have to warn your children what to stay away from. You can't just give positive instruction to your kids. You have to give negative instruction, too. That's why Paul said to the Ephesian elders in that same passage in Acts 20 at Miletus, "I have not ceased for the space of three years, night and day, with tears, to warn you.” To warn you. To warn you. To warn you. I was asked a week ago, "How important to you is a ministry of warning?" It's essential. And in discipling, we've got to say to folks, "You can't keep doing that. You've got to stop that. You, you've got to put the fences up and the barriers up," and that's part of discipling.

And then the key, I guess, to all of it's in verse 16. "Wherefore I beseech you, be you followers of me." You need to say to that disciple, "Look, you've got to, you got to be like me." You say, "Whoa, that's where I bail out, folks. You got to be like me?” That's right. In other words, you've got to be further along the path than they are in your spiritual development. You've got to be able to give some leadership. The Lord isn't asking for perfection; it's direction He's after. It isn't that you have reached perfection. It's just that you're in the right direction; and that other one'll follow along. And your imperfection may only reinforce how important it is to follow. If you were perfect, I don't know about you, but I'd bail out. I wouldn't try to follow a perfect person. That'd be very difficult. It's the imperfection of the person that I follow that helps me understand the path.

And so there needs to be example. That's the whole point. Paul said, "Be followers of me as I am of [Whom?] Christ." You need to be able to say to someone, "I want you to follow me the way I'm following Christ." You don't say it proudly. Say it what? Humbly: understanding your own weakness. And there's another element in discipleship. In verse 17, he says he's going to send Timothy; and what'll Timothy do? "He'll bring you into remembrance of my ways which are in Christ, as I teach everywhere." And Timothy was going to come and teach, and that's another ingredient. There's got to be an imparting of divine truth, because people function off of truth.

So discipling means bringing someone to Christ; building a relationship of sacrificial love with that person; admonishing that person to change their behavior if it's going to come to the point of chastening or forfeiture of blessing; setting a model or a pattern that they can follow; and inputting them with the truth of God. And that's what, Paul says, "I'm trying to do with you people, and that's why I talk the way I talk. In fact,” he says, “if you don't shape up, when I come to you, I'm going to bring a rod with me,” in verse 21, “and let you have it. “Now, he says, “if you shape up, I'll come in a spirit of love and meekness." So he really was raising spiritual children, wasn't he? And, beloved, this is what we're committed to. This has always been the heart of our church. Jesus said, "And when a man is fully discipled, he'll be like his teacher." Isn't that good? "When a man is fully discipled,” it says in the gospel of Luke, “he'll be like his teacher." We're trying to reproduce ourselves, reproduce ourselves. See, one of the, one of the characteristics of life is that it reproduces. Life that doesn't reproduce isn't life; it's death. Life reproduces, and you're pouring yourself into somebody else: maybe a partner in marriage; maybe children; maybe a dear friend; maybe the person you led to Jesus Christ; maybe a bunch of little kids you have in a group; maybe a, an FOF class of brand new baby Christians; maybe a friend at work. Who knows? But you're pouring your life in, see.

And built into that kind of thing is accountability, right? Because if you've got somebody looking at you and saying, "Show me how. Show me how. Teach me how. Teach me how." You got to get your act together. And the accountability is so good. And the ultimate end, of course, is in 1 John 2:6. If we say we, we belong to Christ, we say we're in Him, we ought to walk the way He walked, right? So our model is Christ, and we're trying to nurture people along in the walk with Christ. And our church is committed to this. We've always been committed to this. We've always desired to do this; and this is a function that we must be about, every one of us. No, it isn't optional. It isn't optional. We're all to go and bring people to the knowledge of the Savior and begin the process of nurturing and developing. We're all to pick up those that the Lord brings across our path who need to be discipled; and there might be all different kinds of relationships involved in it.

I've always said that discipling is nothing more than building a true friendship with a spiritual center. That's what it is. So that you're not friends because you both like baseball, or you're not friends because you both happen to like the same music, or you both work the same place, or you have certain likes and dislikes, or you have the same hobby, or you both knew somebody from Indiana. You're not friends because of some kind of superficial thing. You're friends, and it's very deep, and it's very profound, because at the core of that friendship is openness about spiritual issues; and that's what carries discipleship along. You see, what you're basically doing is teaching people a godly lifestyle. You're teaching them biblical responses; and I've always said spiritual maturity is when your involuntary responses are godly. When your involuntary reactions are virtuous, then you know the Spirit of God has control; and we're trying to bring people to the point where they don't have to think to act right. They react right. That's the process.

And, you know, along the way, you're going to have some failures. I, I spent an hour, 6:30 to 7:30 every morning for six months with one man, Ph.D., philosophy professor at UCLA. Said he came to Christ, wanted to know the truth. He said, "Could you meet with me?" I met an hour every morning, 6:30 to 7:30 on Tuesday every week for six months. At the end of that time, he said, "Well, I've heard all I want to hear," and he left. He's now an Episcopal rector somewhere. And you look back on those and you say, "What was the point of all that effort, all that time?" And if nothing else, you fellowship in the sufferings of Christ who had even a worse thing happen. One of His own sold Him for 30 pieces of silver to be crucified. And if nothing else, you gain a wonderful new understanding of the sufferings of Christ, only in a very small way compared to His discipling.

There's another function the church has to be involved in, and that is shepherding. And we could talk a lot about this. But let, let me just say that we're committed to the fact that you've got sheep and you've got shepherds, and it basically says, "Everybody's got to care for everybody." We've got to be involved in mutually caring and, and meeting needs. Jesus said to Peter, "Do you love Me? Do you love Me? Do you love Me?" Peter says, "You know I do. You know I do. You know I do." And Jesus says, "Feed My sheep. Feed My lambs. Feed My sheep." Shepherd, take care of folks; and, basically, it's feeding them and leading them. First Peter tells us that. Feed the flock. Take the oversight. Acts 20:28, same thing: Feed and lead, feed and lead, feed and lead, just like a shepherd. And we want to do that, because how can we say we love God when we see our brother have need and close up our compassion, right? How does the love of God dwell in you if you don't care about people, if you don't care about their needs? And may I suggest to you that we all have to be involved in the shepherding process? I mean you're out there bumping into the sheep. You got to find out where they hurt, meet their needs, care for them. If you've got enough food on your plate to feed them, and they don't have any, share your food. If you have enough insight to share with them, and they're lost and wandering, lead them back.

You see, the shepherding process takes place all over. First Peter says, "The Lord is the Chief Shepherd," and the implication that we are His under-shepherds, and we're all involved in caring for the sheep. It's so essential. You know, we, we want to shepherd and it's hard sometimes. People do fall through the cracks. There's no question about it. It always breaks my heart, you know, when somebody says, "Well, you know, I, no one called me. I was sick," or "I had a problem, and no one called me. No one seems to care." Sometimes I get a letter from distraught people, and they say, "You know, such and such happened, and you didn't call us, and you didn't care, and no one from the church came by," and my heart just aches when I hear that. And I don't know, sometimes maybe people's expectation is beyond reality, that they expect maybe that I could be everywhere. As much as that would be something I would love, that's not possible; but that usually isn't the case. It's usually not that I wasn't there. It's usually that nobody was there. I mean nobody seemed to step into that time. And this very often happens when people have death in the family. And, as soon as the death occurs, everybody swarms around the person, there's tremendous reinforcement. And then, after the funeral it's back to life as usual, and there's a tremendous depression. All the strength and support has dissipated, and everybody's back to normal, and the person is left alone just at the time when the real grief begins to take place, and we lose that sensitive touch.

Like the shepherd, you know, who, it says in John 10, he said, "I am the Shepherd,” and then he said, “I am the Door." What that meant was it was the shepherd who was lying down across the doorway. Every sheep that came in or went out had to go over him, and he dropped his staff when they came in and stopped every one of them and checked them over for every bruise and every nick, and when there was a need, he took oil, and he, he put it in. That's why it talks about, "My cup runneth over, and the staff comforts me," in Psalm 23. And the shepherd cared for his sheep. There's that shepherding responsibility. You know, and I realize, too, that there are some wonderful people, quiet folks, and they don't get shepherded, because they're just out there, and they're quiet, and we don't know about it, and they get minimal shepherding. And then there are some people always in sin and all messed up, and they got shepherds hovering around them all the time in groups trying to get them straightened out. I mean, really, we have committee meetings on some people. Eight elders: "What are we going do with them?" Well, we brought up one this morning in our prayer time. What are we going to do with this guy? This guy's unfaithful to his wife. This guy's, and this is the umpteenth time, and every time we go through this process, he does it again. What are we going to do with him? So we did, we prayerfully brought him to God. You know, we kind of give up in the human realm. But I mean he, he gets shepherded. He doesn't even want to be shepherded. He just wants, "Get out of my life." And then other dear folks are quietly sitting somewhere saying, "Please come into my life," and we don't know that. And I realize that, and that's why, you see, we can't carry the full load. We all have to see ourselves as sheep and, and shepherds, too, in a sense, caring for each other.

I really do want us to shepherd. We have an account to give to God about this. It's your church, you know. It's not John MacArthur's church. It's yours. It's Christ's church. He's given it into your stewardship. It's yours and mine and all of us, and we all have to care, and we all have to give account. Shepherding is a function of mutual caring, meeting needs, making sure people are moving down the track spiritually. You think we have you fill out your registration card on Sunday just as an exercise? Those cards are gone over by some dear folks every week, and they're sent out to folks who can call those who are absent over a period of time to try to shepherd those people, find out why they're not here. What are your needs? What are your problems? That is essential. First thing I did at Grace Church, the first week I came to this church over in a little office in the front of the chapel, was to develop a way that we could shepherd the people. I knew we could feed them. We just want to make sure we could lead them, because a shepherd feeds and leads, and lead them to Christ-likeness.

There's another function, and that's the function of building up families, building up families. I believe that the family is God's unit for passing righteousness on from one generation to the next. I believe this is abundantly clear in Deuteronomy chapter 6, that God ordains the family as the basic unit of righteous preservation in the world; and it's to pass on its truth from one generation to the next. Now you know as well as I do that whatever God has ordained, Satan has attacked, right? Whatever God made to preserve righteousness, Satan attacks; and, basically, that comes down to three things: the family, the church, and the government. And where God has ordained a government for the punishment of evildoers and the, the, the good and, and the, the good of those who are right, Satan will destroy that if he can. And wherever there is church, where Christ is exalted and the Word is proclaimed, he will attack that. And wherever there is a family to pass on righteousness, he'll do all he can to disintegrate that. Those are the basic units of preservation in society: the family, the church, and the home, and the, and the government.

And do you, people say, "Do you think there's a conspiracy to tear up our government?" Of course there is, and, and it's succeeding. Our, our society is on the way down. Why? Because the mass of our society are godless people; and so, naturally, they are the pawns of Satan, and the system will collapse. And do you think he's attacking the church? Well, of course. The church is, is rank with liberalism. It's revolting. I read this week about the new non-sexist Bible that the National Council of Churches has just published, with all sexist terms removed, such as Christ is the Son of God. He's no longer the Son of God in this Bible. He's the child of God. It's non-sexist. They have absolutely no concern with whether or not the Holy Spirit said He was the Son of God, and that just attacks the, that's the National Council of Churches, folks, churches.

And then the family--disintegrated and blasted from pillar to post by the attacks of an immoral, lust-filled society--can hardly survive. And the church stands in a vital place of preserving that unit of society, the family. And we are committed to that as a function, aren't we? We're committed to teaching the kids and teaching the young people and the, the junior high, the high school, the college kids. We're committed to discipling them. I'm so thrilled to see guys discipling, one-on-one, little sixth-grade kids. I'm, I'm thrilled to, to see people tied into our young people, because they're the ones that have to preserve this thing in the next generation. I want them to know what God's standards are of marriage and the family. It's wonderful that we have counselors and we have family ministries, a family center over there, and many things that work toward the preservation, the building of a godly church of families.

Ephesians 5, you know, says, "Don't be drunk with wine." And the text, of course, in 5:18 is talking about religious drunkenness. The, the cultists of the day of the apostle Paul used to think they could ascend to communion with the deities if they could get drunk enough. And they got drunk like the people in the Orient do, on a high with drugs to commune with God, to ascend to a higher plane. And in their drunken stupor, they thought they were communing with the gods through their lustful orgies with temple prostitutes. And Paul says, "If you think you want to communicate with God, it isn't going to be done through drunkenness. It's going to be done through the filling of the Spirit of God. That's how you commune with a living God." And as a result of that, one of the things that'll happen is you'll submit to one another. And how does that flesh out? Wives will submit to their husbands. Husbands will submit to their wives by loving them with a nourishing, cherishing, purifying love. Children will submit to their parents, and parents will submit to the needs of their children by not provoking them to wrath, but nurturing them and bringing them up in the things of Christ.

All of that flows out of a Spirit-controlled kind of life; and that's what we want to see. A function of the church, then, is to bring families to the control of the Spirit of God where they can see submission, because only in submission can relationships be meaningful and blessed. Where you have everybody fighting for their supremacy and fighting for their own rights, you disintegrate the possibility of any meaningful relationship. So family is a function. We want to hold up each other's family. Want to help each other with kids. Pray for each other's kids. You pray for your friends? When you see some kid that's rowdy and unruly or isn't the way he ought to be, what's your reaction, to pray for them? Do you call the folks and say, "I'd like to help you if there's anything I can do to work with your child." Got to care for family. That's a function.

Another function is training, training; and by this I mean equipping people, equipping them for a ministry, equipping them for a task. And He gave some, apostles, and prophets, and evangelists, and teaching pastors, Ephesians 4:11 says, for the perfecting, or the bringing to the perfection, or the bringing to, to a useful place, of the saints. Equipping them, for the equipping of the saints, the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry: Ephesians 4:12.

We're trying to train people for ministry. That's our desire, not just to give out spiritual truth in sort of general terms, but to train people, so they can use that. And you take a course in evangelism, and you take all those verses that are floating around in your head, and you nail them all down. You get a plan as to how they work, and you go out with a new holy zeal and boldness, because you're confident in how the presentation should go. Or maybe you feel in your heart called to the mission field, and you run to somebody. You say, "Boy, God's calling me to the mission field." We're not going to pick you up and ship you next week. We're going to spend a few years getting you ready, so that when you go, you're going to be maximally equipped. The church has got to be an equipping ministry, a training ministry, constantly training people.

We have courses--I don't know if you know this--in our church for training people, training them ultimately to be deacons and elders. There are courses here for training in evangelism, and there are missions training courses. We have many things. I don't know if you know it, but Logos has a second-year program for training people to work with young people. That's a full year’s course in youth work. Training people in the seminary for preaching the Word of God and teaching it. Training young people for ministry in the church through Logos. Not just giving them generalities, but tracking them down a way that they can be trained, and out the other end they're prepared, and ready, and equipped. The church has got to function in the training area. We have to train children so that they'll know how to be the right kind of parents. So they'll know how to be the right kind of mates when they marry. So they'll know how to be the right kind of leaders in the church. Training. That is taking the teaching and putting it together in a way that gives a person a track where they can move from an undeveloped to a developed place, from a minimally useful to a maximally useful place. Training is essential, and the equipping of the saints is all part of that. You ought to be involved in that. You ought to be being trained for some specific task consistent with your gifts.

Another, wish I could say more about that. Time is getting away. Another one is giving, giving. That's a function of the church. Giving; that's a function. I mean ask yourself the question: Are you involved in shepherding? Are you functioning in shepherding? Are you functioning at prayer? Are you functioning in discipling? Are you functioning in helping the family be sustained as God would have it? Are you functioning by training or being trained? Are you functioning in giving? I ask myself that. Lord, do You want more? Am I doing what You want me to do? And I want to let, listen to the Spirit of God as He prompts my heart about all these things, to be more faithful. I mean I, I want to spend my life. I'm not trying to keep any of it. I want to do my last gasp on the last day God has for me here. I want to end up right on target. I don't want to be full of energy and going to heaven. Like Henry Martyn said, "Let me burn out for God.” I just want to go when I'm spent. But I want to maximize that. And I see so many Christians, who just sort of tentatively play around on the surface, and they make no major investment in the dynamics of function and ministry; and so there's no sense of accomplishment; and there will be, however, a time of accountability and a forfeiture of some things.

What about giving? Macedonians gave abundantly out of their deep poverty. It's never a question of how much you have. That has nothing to do with it. People say, "If I had more, I'd give more." No, that's not true, because it's not a matter of how much you have. It's a matter of your heart, isn't it? And Paul said in 2 Corinthians 9: Sow sparingly, reap sparingly; sow bountifully, reap bountifully. You give a little, you get a little back. You give a lot, you get a lot back. In other words, whatever you give, God returns to you interest. You invest with God. You don't really give, you just invest. Jesus said, "Give, and it'll be given to you, pressed down, shaken together, running over." And so God is trying to teach us that we can trust Him with our stuff. Got that? You see, it's just the reverse of what He's asking you. He gives you stuff and says, "Can I trust you with the stuff?" And you prove that He can trust you with the stuff when you can trust Him with the stuff. Then you give it back. You see, the best lesson you'll ever learn in terms of stewardship is you don't own anything, nothing. Nothing you have is yours. It's His. It's only to be managed to prove whether you're a worthy steward, that's all. That's all. And if you can't manage that, He's not going to give you the true riches. That's what it says in Luke.

What about giving? Some, some people, some of you don't give at all. You don't give at all. Oh, maybe token. You don't give. I don't know why, but you don't. We don't need your money. I don't want your money. Grace Church is not fading away. But you're missing something wonderful, because you're missing the place of obedience and the place of multiplied blessing. And some people give a little. I mean they throw in a couple of bucks, or they give minimally, and can't give more than that, because they're spending it all on things that are going to burn up, and that's kind of sad. I mean it's real sad, and I grieve, not for us, but for them. I hope you're giving generously, I, because I want you to be in the place of blessing. Don't just throw God tokens. David says, "I'm not going to give God that which costs me nothing. That's a mockery." You've got to learn first it doesn't belong to you; and then once you release it, you're free; and then you just manage it; and if somebody else needs it more than you do, it's theirs, and that's the Spirit. The book of Acts, they had all things in common; and they were selling and giving as those had need. Where are we in that?

One of the guys showed me a little deal, a church that has half as many people attending as we do and gets twice as much in the offering. And he said, "Why do you think this is?" I said, "I don't know." And as I began to think about it, I thought, "Well, it might be for the wrong motives. Maybe they're under a legalistic system where they have to give; and if that's the case, doesn't matter what they give; because if it's all given for the wrong reason, what's the difference, right? Because it brings back to them no blessing.” But on the other hand, if they're all giving out of an abundant heart of love, it's pretty exciting. But I know this, folks, awful lot of people in this church aren't doing what they should; and week by week. It says, "Lay by in store the first day of the week." I have to examine my own heart, because there are weeks when I don't do what I should've done, either; and I'm not obedient to the Spirit of God; and I want to wrestle with that every week, every week.

Giving is a function; and not only giving that we may have the, the work here go on; but giving beyond here. See, the only reason we want to ministry here is to advance the kingdom beyond here. You got the picture? I mean whatever comes in here goes right back out again. We're not trying to amass a fortune. We were talk, talking this morning. This auditorium basically, just the auditorium part of this facility, this auditorium was built and furnished for about $750,000, little more maybe. That's pretty good. I mean you don't need a worship, you don't need a holy, lot of holy hardware hanging everywhere, do you? Stained glass windows and all that stuff? You don't need all that stuff. And the money that we do have, we try to be good stewards of and send the rest out. Train people to go, reach those who have need. I mean God gave, didn't He? Christ gave. How can God's people in Christ's church not give? Be consistent.

Finally, fellowship is a function, and I know that you believe it's an essential one. Fellowship just means a common life together; and I guess, in a way, it sums up everything we've said. It's just, it's just communing, just being together, loving each other, sharing life with each other. It's sitting at a table and hearing someone unbear their heart. It's praying with someone who has a need. It's visiting in a hospital. It's sitting in a class. It's going to a home Bible study. It's singing a hymn with somebody you never met, holding the same hymnal, and maybe talking about what Christ means to you. It's new Christians sharing their joy. It's sharing a prayer request about a loved one that's ill. It's all kinds of things. It's common life, see, common life. It's having everything in common, everything. That's fellowship, and that's a function. Do you belong somewhere? Do you fellowship? You open your life up? Do you expose yourself with all your scars and all your problems to some other folks who have scars and problems, too? So together, you can minister, fellowship.

So what are the functions? Pretty simple, really: preaching, teaching, evangelism, missions, worship, prayer, discipling, shepherding, family, training, giving, fellowship. Those are the essential ones. Now listen. You say, "John, we talked about skeletons?" Right? "Talked about internal attitudes?" Right. "Talked about function? What about flesh?"

You want to know something? It really doesn't matter. It really doesn't matter. I mean if I can borrow my body analogy, man looks on the outward appearance. God looks--what?--on the heart. You want to know something? A church is what a church is at its heart. What I want to know about a church is: What is its skeleton? Is it a church committed to a high view of God, to the absolute priority of Scripture, doctrinal clarity, personal holiness, and spiritual authority? And what are its attitudes flowing through? Obedience and love and service and unity and all of those things. And what are its functions?

And then, folks, it really wasn't, it isn't going to matter a bit what it looks like on the outside or how it fleshes out or how its programs take shape. You understand that? When God, by His wonderful grace, brought me to Grace Church, I, in my own heart, said, first of all, and then said it to the men, "God, I know this. That if we are what You want us to be, there'll be no trouble ministering effectively; because what we are is the issue." The flesh, that's just the case; and so many times, as we said earlier in the series, when pastors come, like this week, to our church, they're looking for some flesh to drag back and implement in their church; and it won't hold up, won't stand. It won't live, because it doesn't have in it all these things that are its life, you see. And if all of these things are there, the flesh is really not that important. It isn't so important what it looks like on the outside. It's the beauty that it is on the inside that speaks of its reality.

We flesh out our ministries. How do we, let me just think about the flesh for a minute. What is the flesh, the outward manifestation of our preaching, teaching? Well, it goes on all the time: Goes on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, home Bible studies, our Flocks groups, fellowship groups, classes, Logos, our Christian school, our seminary. I mean we're teaching, teaching, teaching, preaching, preaching here, preaching in the jails, preaching in the rescue missions, preaching on tape, preaching on radio. I mean it goes on all the time. On any given Sunday, many of our elders are out preaching other places. We're constantly out at that work.

And what about evangelism and missions? We have lifestyle evangelism. We have friendship evangelism in choir, Bible studies, Fundamentals of the Faith for those that are newly born, discipleship evangelism training programs. There are all kinds of things. Our baptismal services are basically a testimony of the grace of God and the saving of souls and an impetus to further evangelism. We look at missions, and we see the development of a strategy for all around the world. We have a training group of people that are process meeting every month, a large group ready to go to the mission field when God has brought all things into readiness. We have foreign radio development now in the Philippines and Guam, reaching out with tape centers in Singapore, and Bombay, and I don't know where all, Manila, we're in South America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe. I mean as far as fleshing out, it's going on, you know?

And now I understand that they've translated the family series into Japanese, and all the evangelical churches in Japan are going to see me speaking Japanese; hard to imagine. In our, we're developing video now. We're going to start doing video, because the church in Liberia, which is an English-speaking country in Africa, they have asked if we would send materials and people, teams, over to Liberia to train the evangelicals of the nation of Liberia. And all of these things just kind of flesh out, and it can happen all different ways if the heart is right, see. Corporate worship, we worship on the Lord's Day. Our service in the morning is to lift up God, to praise His name, to praise the name of the Savior, to sing songs about His glory, His attributes, and all that He is to us; and we worship at His table. We worship in special services. Our music is geared for worship.

As a, as a pastor in the prayer of the morning, I try to be a priest who lifts you to God that you may enter His presence and, and worship Him. And all the teaching we give is that you may know Him better, and out of that knowledge may come worship. Prayer goes on all the time. Every Tuesday morning of every week, our staff meets together; and we spend an hour in the Word of God, then an hour in prayer and worship, taking to God the needs of the church. The elders meet every Sunday morning for prayer. Have done that for years and years and years. Bearing the burdens of the people, and all through the week, there are prayer groups here and there and everywhere going on: homes, Flocks, groups of people here among our staff and leaders.

Discipling, it goes on everywhere. Every group in our church is committed to a discipling process, every group; discipling the leaders and discipling the constituents of every group from the littlest kids to the oldest adults, through Flocks and all of our ministries. And how does shepherding flesh out? With elders and deacons and deaconesses who care for people, with our love in action ministry. You can call in, if you have a need, and we've got folks to meet that need. In fact, through our Flocks, you know, we have a whole system now where if a person has a need, they let, let us know. And we can find out somebody in their area who's volunteered to meet that kind of need, everything from fixing a transmission to calling on somebody in the hospital. That's all a part of shepherding.

Family: all kinds of classes and training means, working with your kids and your children and your babies and all the family center ministries. Every Woman's Grace. We have classes for women whose husbands are not Christians; and, by the way, when one becomes a Christian, they have a graduation party; and it's a big celebration when a person graduates out of that class. All kinds of things: proverbs; programs for parents; fathers' coaching clinics for fathers, to teach them how to be a family priest; premarital classes, wonderful, wonderful course for those that are being married. Really puts them in touch with the things they need to know. Training courses for evangelism and for jail work and mission work. It just goes on and on in the training area, all kinds of things that are happening.

In the giving area, our Sunday offerings; and then the time you give and the effort that you give in sacrificing time and energy and gifts and serving Christ go on all the time. Fellowship? Fellowship fleshes out everywhere at all times. Fellowship groups on Sunday are a great focus for that, great focus; Flocks, many other things.

That isn't really the issue. The fleshing out just happens when all the stuff on the inside is right. I believe God's called our church into existence and it's a unique place. It is a unique place. Rarely does a Sunday go by when I stand in the first-time visitors’ reception, and a group doesn't come by and say, "Oh, we're from so and so." Last week it was Florida or Michigan there. Last week was Michigan, and the week before was Florida or vice versa, and they said, "We're from [let's say] Michigan." "Oh, how nice. Are you visiting?" "No, we just moved here." "Oh, you did. Why?" "To come to this church." "Oh." And then they'll say, "Do you know a place where we might find somewhere to stay or a house and maybe a job?" "You mean you just packed up and left everything and came?" "Yes, we wanted to come to Grace Church."

And a lot of times, there's not just one or two, but there's shhhh, a whole bunch of little ones, and they'll say, "Do you have anybody who could kind of help us find a place to stay? And we just believe life centers around the church, not the job." And that happens, and I get a little lump in my throat, and I say, "Lord, keep us what You want us to be." Seems lot of folks, lot of folks look into that. We want to be His church, built His way, for His glory. Amen?

Thank You, Father, for our time this morning. Good time. Sweet songs of faith ring in our ears; and the thought that You're in this very room. Because You're here, there's quite a lot, quite enough love for all of us, quite enough joy, quite enough hope, quite enough power to chase away any darkness. Oh, what a thrilling thought that is. Thank You for what You've done in our fellowship and in this church. For all that is good, You've done. All that is less than that, we've done. Help us to let You work in Your way.

Christ: The Head of the Church

As we come again this morning to...a study of the Word of God, we come to the final message in our very special series on "The Anatomy of a Church."...And in concluding the series, we have really come to the most important message. We've tried to see the church in the analogy of a body...We've talked about the skeleton, basic foundational truths the church must be committed to. We've talked about the internal systems, spiritual attitudes that must exist in the hearts of its people. We've talked about muscle, the function of ministry; and we've talked about flesh, the form that ministry takes. But no body would be complete without its head; and so in our study this morning, I want us to look to the Word of God to gain an understanding of the head of the body who is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, we've been saying an awful lot about the things that we are to do in the church; and you've responded so wonderfully to these things. It's been a great encouragement to me, tremendous encouragement; and you've heard the things that were very confrontive and very direct and very moving on our hearts; and I have seen the spirit of God bear fruit already in these areas; and we really have majored for seven weeks on what we are to be doing, what we are to be believing, what we are to be thinking, what we are to be planning; and it would be very much out of balance if we didn't come to talk about the head, who is Jesus Christ, and what He is doing in His church.

And this, by the way, beloved, is the ultimate comfort. You see, the ultimate comfort is to know that with all of the things that we do and do so inadequately, with all of the things that we fail to do, with all of the mistakes that we make, and all of the sins that so easily beset us in the...in the race to do the will of God, we have this overriding confidence that Christ is building His church. That is a tremendous encouragement, and we wanna talk about that. Paul talked about it. In Ephesians chapter 4, he said that, "We all are growing up into Him who is the Head that is Christ." Then he said this, listen, "From Him the whole body joined and held together by every supporting ligament grows and builds itself up in love as each part does its work."

In other words, Paul said, "We have to give everything we've got. We have to endeavor to do all we can do and be all we can be in the full knowledge that it is really the power of Christ that makes it all work; and this, again, beloved, is the divine paradox, isn't it? We give supreme effort, and if anything is done, it is of God; and it is supreme comfort to know that where we fail, He succeeds; and so I want this morning for us to focus on the One who is our head, without Whom we can do what? "Nothing," says Paul, "nothing."

And as I was thinking of a passage we might examine, I was drawn to the majestic benediction at the conclusion of the epistle to the Hebrews. Would you turn in your Bibles to Hebrews 13 verses 20 and 21? And I really wanna use this verse as just a point of contact with truth to move us about some other passages in the New Testament that will enrich our understanding of the work of the Lord for His church.

We've talked for seven weeks about what we're to do. Now we're gonna talk about what Christ does for His church. And really this should be a series of its own; but we're pressed to condense it into one message. It is, by the way, a majestic doxology. It's just dropped into the closing words of this great epistle; and it says, "Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

Beautiful doxology. Beautiful benediction. But in a...in a ...in a way, that benediction wraps up in a summary form the work of Christ. In fact, it even wraps up in a summary form the message of the epistle to the Hebrews, but we'll not look at it particularly in that regard. The doxology is intended as a closing praise for the God of peace; and He is so-called because, through the blood of Jesus Christ, He has made peace with sinful men. He is the God of peace who once was the God of wrath, the God of war, the God of judgment, the God of fury; but He has become to us the God of peace, so always a God of peace but, to us, He becomes the God of peace through the blood of Jesus Christ when we make peace and He makes peace with us. And so it is a doxology to praise the God of peace; but in praising the God of peace, it delineates how He became the God of peace through the work of Jesus Christ.

It starts with the affirmation that He is the God of peace. It ends with a statement that He is to be glorified for ever and ever, and the means to that is in the middle, the work, the wonderful work of the Lord Jesus Christ. What does Christ do for His church? Well, it's...it's here...in this passage that we get a glimpse of that...as we begin to look at it.

First of all, He is the Savior of His church. He is the Savior of His church. Several things in this text point to the saving work of Christ in behalf of His church. The first one that I noted was His name Lord Jesus in verse 20. "Jesus...was to be His name...says Matthew 1:21...You shall call His name Jesus for he shall...what?...save His people from their sins." That name means...means Jehovah Saves. It is Jeshua or Joshua of the Old Testament. It means Jehovah Saves. So His very name is the name of one who saves. Earlier, the writer of Hebrews in chapter 2 and verse 9 and 10 wrote, "But we see Jesus...who is made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor, that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through suffering."

Jesus is the one who tasted death for every man. Jesus is the one who became the archegos, the pioneer, the captain, the leader, the trailblazer, the beginner of salvation...and He was made perfect in His own offering of Himself. In fact, the name Jesus speaks of our salvation so much so that the writer in Acts 4:12 says there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved," than the name of Jesus. So His very name here speaks of His saving work; and so there is a praise note here as the benediction begins in just the name Jesus, the Savior; but there's much more.

For verse 20 says that He had done His saving work, "Through the blood of the everlasting covenant." That's a marvelous phrase. "The blood of the everlasting covenant." You see, the Jews always knew that sin had to be atoned for by blood. There was no other way; and that's part of the message of this Book of Hebrews. Back in chapter 9 and verse 18, we read this, "Whereupon neither the first covenant or the first testament...that is the old one under Moses...was dedicated without blood."

Every Jew knew that the ratification of the old covenant in Leviticus 17:11 was by blood...The old covenant was inaugurated and ratified by the shedding of blood, because it was by God's design that there had to be bloodshed to deal with sin. Moses was God's agent to sprinkle that blood, to ratify that covenant, to set it in motion; "For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, 'This is the blood of the covenant or testament which God has enjoined unto you. Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry." Now, God is making a very major point here. There was blood everywhere, blood all over the book of the law, blood all over the people. There was blood all over the tabernacle, and all the vessels in the tabernacle. It was a bloody mess, blood every place; and God was saying that, "There is no covenant made with Me without the shedding of blood." But all of that was only symbolic of the ultimate bloodshed that could bring men to peace with God. Right?...

And so it says in verse 22, "Almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is... what?...no remission." No forgiveness, no peace with God. That's why Jesus ratified the new covenant, Matthew 26:28 by saying this, "This is blood of the covenant which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." And He was, in effect, saying that, "My blood will be the inaugurator of a new covenant." So covenants were made in blood; and if a man was to have peace with God, it would be through the shedding of blood, and no animal sacrifice could effect that true peace. There had to be the ultimate sacrifice of Christ of which the animal sacrifices were only previews and pictures.

And if you look again at what it says in Hebrews 13:20, it says it is "the blood of the everlasting covenant." The Mosaic covenant, the old covenant was not everlasting. It was a temporary covenant. It was only a shadow of things to come. It is replaced by the everlasting covenant, "For Jesus Christ, in one offering, perfected forever them that are sanctified. He by that one act of sacrifice brought about an everlasting salvation."

In Hebrews 9:12, it says, "Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, He entered in once into the Holy Place, having obtained eternal redemption." And the priest went in again and again and again and again, and there was sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. Christ went in once, came out, never again and He purchased for us eternal redemption, eternal redemption.

So we see in this passage that He's the Savior of His church. That's His name, and that was His work on the cross. And then we see also another phrase there at the beginning of verse 20, when it says, "The God of peace brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus." That's also is a very essential element in His saving work, for when the Father brought Jesus from the dead, it was the Father's stamp of approval on His finished work. We think of the resurrection as a means to our own resurrection. We think of the resurrection as a conquering of death which we, too, shall enjoy; and those are right ways to think; but they are not all encompassing. We must look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ as the single greatest affirmation of God's approval upon His saving work. When He raised Him from the dead, He was affirming that He had accomplished what He had gone to the cross to do.

And so the saving work of Christ comes to us very clearly through verse 20. Jesus, through His blood, brings us into an everlasting covenant; and, in response, the God of peace raises Him from the dead; and it is Christ who is, Paul says in Ephesians 2, "Our peace." He is our peace. He has made peace. In Colossians 1:20, it says, "Through the blood of His cross," and I think that's why in Luke 10, I think it's verse 6, we are called, "sons of peace." So He's the Savior of His church.

Now, beloved, lemme say what this means. This church is not a human organization, nor is any church of Jesus Christ. You don't get into this church by signing up. You don't just become a member because you like the kinda folks that hang out here or you think it might be good for business or it might sort of upgrade your lifestyle or you might like to get in on some of the fun things that we do or you might enjoy the music or it sorta makes you feel better about yourself. No, you come into the church by virtue of the sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus Christ; and entrance belongs to those who are redeemed and washed through His precious blood. We're not building the church. He's building it. It's His church. He's the Savior of His church. He brings people into His church.

Let's talk about that. There are two elements in that that I wanna speak to. First, He loves His church. His saving work is built upon His saving love. We love Him, because He first loved us. It is God who predetermined the love relationship with us before we ever existed and loved us while we hated Him; and even when we were enemies, God, through His great love, reconciled us to Himself through the death of His Son. He loves us. It was His love that redeemed us. It was His love that made Him give up...His precious blood, more precious than...any human commodity.

In Ephesians chapter 5, there's a wonderful statement in verse 2 that you're familiar with, no doubt. It says, "Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance." Christ loved us so much, He gave Himself for us. It's wonderful to know you're loved. It's wonderful to know that. He loves the church. He loves the church so much, He gave Himself for the church; and in the process of when we are ministering and giving our lives and all the best that we have, and we become anxious because the church isn't all that it oughta be, and we see people slipping through the cracks, and we wonder why it doesn't come out the way it oughta come out, and we say to ourselves as men of God or ministers or those who lead, "Oh, Lord, this is my life. This is my passion. I'm giving all that I have to this. I care about this. I live for this, and it isn't all that I want it to be. May our grief be assuaged by the fact that He loves it infinitely more than we do?"

And is not my own heart comforted in the fact that when I am in grief over those who do not do as they ought to do, and do not respond as they ought to respond, and I am grieved because of that. Think how much He who loves the church infinitely is grieved, and yet still loves. He loves His church, and having loved them, it says in John 13, "Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto perfection." He doesn't stop loving His people because they fail. He doesn't stop loving His people because they fall. He doesn't stop loving His people because they are indifferent, because they don't take advantage of opportunity, resource, and privilege. He doesn't stop loving them; and we must remember, too, that the One who knows infinitely everything there is to know, loves even the people He knows so well; and we are comforted in the fact that He loves His church.

He predetermined to set His love upon them before the world began and He, in fact, will fulfill that until the world is reborn in eternity future. He loves us so much that He became sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. He is at work in His church, loving His people, into the church and loving them while they're in the church; and His love was rising to God, it says in Ephesians 5:2, "As a sweet-smelling fragrance in the nostrils of the Holy One." So comforting. Christ loves His church.

That tells me I need to love His church in spite of things. It also tells me not to fear because, if I'm concerned about the church I love, He is infinitely more concerned about the church He loved. If I think that I have a right to be concerned because I've given so much of myself to the church, then how much of Himself has He given to the church that He should be so concerned, too, and far more than I.

In Revelation chapter 1 verse 5, there's just a beautiful statement there. It says, and, again, it's a doxology of praise. It's a glorious, majestic benediction; and what it says is this: "Unto Him that loves us, and washed us from our sins in His own blood, and has made us priests unto God."....Comprehensible. He loves His church. Present tense, by the way.

And what shall separate us from that love? Shall tribulation? Stress? Persecution? Famine? Nakedness? Peril? Sword? How about life? Death? Angels? Principalities? Things present? Things to come? Powers? Height? Depth? Any other creation? Never. "Having loved His own, which were in the world, He loves them unto perfection." So comforting to me, I...I just hold onto it. He loves the church far more than I love the church, and that says He'll give His attention to the object of His love.

Secondly, when you think about Him as the Savior of the church, you have to remember that He builds the church. As the one who saves, He's the one who builds. He brings us in. He adds to His church. He thickly frames it together that it might grow as a holy temple to Himself. I love it in Matthew 16, one of my favorite passages, "I will build My church." Oh, what a great thought. I mean we're not in the church building business...He is. It's not my job to build the church or anybody else's. It is not our job to contrive devices and means, schemes of human wisdom...to build the church. He'll build His church, and the gates of Hades won't prevail against it. That is a euphemism for death. That's a Hebrew euphemism for death. Death is the ultimate weapon that's in the hand of the adversary, according to Hebrews 2, who has the power of death, Satan.

And what He is saying is, "I will build My church, and the worst that could be done, killing them, won't prevail against it. You kill the church, and all you're doing is populating glory. That's all...I'll build My church." You know, I just wanna be a part of the church He's building. That's all. I just wanna be a part of the church He's building. That's why I'm so committed to the fact that we have to work by the...by the book. We don't wanna do anything that's gonna confuse us. We don't wanna be using all the human devices to build the church, because then we don't know whether we did it or He did it, right? And I don't wanna live with that. I just wanna be a part of what He's doing. What He's doing.

And I love what He says there, "I will build...not the church...I will build My church." What a great truth. He's the possessor. I'm often asked, "Who...who owns your church?" I like that question. Who owns our church? Lord Jesus Christ. He purchased it with His own precious blood. He owns it. He builds it. In fact, do you know something? He adds to the church daily such as should be saved. He's in the church building business.

In...in John 10, He says, "I know My sheep. My sheep know Me. They hear My voice. They follow Me. My sheep." I like that. We belong to Him. He's the builder/owner/purchaser/chief cornerstone/foundation/possessor. It's His church. It's being built with a certainty, bound up in the promise of God that cannot fail. Against all opposition, against all threats, against all carnality, against all human ineptitude, against all indifference, apathy, apostasy, liberalism, denominationalism, and every other ism and spasm and all the rest of it, He's building His church, see. He's building His church. He's building His church...

First Corinthians 3:9 says, "You're God's building. You're God's building." Ephesians 2 says, "You've been built up a holy temple, a habitation of the Spirit."...Paul says to Timothy, "I'm telling you how you oughta behave in the church of the living God. It's His church. So He's the Savior, and He loves and builds His church. Secondly, in Hebrews 13:20, He's the Shepherd. It's a lovely, lovely thought. He is the great Shepherd of the sheep it says. As the Savior, He loves and builds. As the Shepherd, He has some very unique and special functions, too. But first of all, we wanna note that He's the great Shepherd in contrast to all other shepherds, who are just earthly. He's the great Shepherd.

Psalm 77:20 said of Moses, "Thou didst lead Thy people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." And they were shepherds, but not great shepherds. Three times in the New Testament it calls Jesus Christ the Shepherd. John 10, He's the good Shepherd; 1 Peter 5, He's the chief Shepherd; and Hebrews 13, He's the great Shepherd. Good Shepherd, chief Shepherd, great Shepherd. And, you know, in Scripture, I...I counted over half a dozen places at least where the Bible identifies ungodly peoples as nations with this title. They were "as sheep without...what?... a shepherd." So if we are believers, we are sheep what? With a Shepherd.

You know, we were meeting a week or so ago with our men, and we were talking and discussing and trying to develop a way to do a better job of shepherding; and I...I come away from times like that, because say, "You know, these people aren't getting into... involved, and these people aren't following through, and we're... we're not...we're losing some people over here; and...and we've got folks we haven't seen for a long time; and we wonder where they went, and we're...we're trying to track 'em down; and we...we have all of these sort of logistical issues to try to resolve," and you go away. You say, "Oh, Lord, how are we gonna keep track of these people? They don't come for a few weeks. Where are they? Or they're ill, and we don't know it. Or we hear about a tragedy; and...and we haven't talked to the people to find out if they're really moving along with the Lord, if their salvation is really genuine, and there's anxiety in the heart, and you worry about it." And I tell ya, some of those times, I go home and I...I...I find myself staring at the ceiling with my mind filled with the...the thought of, "How can we shepherd the sheep?"

But we are comforted in this, beloved: that the great Shepherd is shepherding His sheep. I think sometimes we think if a person gets saved and doesn't get into a follow-up program, they'll lose their salvation. We gotta help the Holy Spirit along. You can't just leave people up to the Lord. Gotta, you gotta get 'em in the program.

Now, we don't...we're not out of balance on that as long as we understand we wanna have all the tools; but the Lord is the Shepherd; and I'm not gonna worry about His sheep. I'm gonna do all I can to be involved, but, hey, they're His sheep. I wanna be faithful to what He gives me. But, listen, I can't maintain my sanity if I feel I've got ultimate responsibility...I mean I'll give my whole heart to it, not because I think it depends on me. You wanna perspective, get this perspective. I don't serve the Lord Jesus Christ, teach His Word, or whatever. None of us do as elders or leaders of the church, pastors. None of us do that because we feel we're responsible for the church. I don't know about you, but I do it because I wanna be part of what Christ is doing. That's all.

You know something? He'll build His church with or without me. That's right. Listen, if the gates of hell can't prevail against you, you think John MacArthur could? He'll build His church without me. But I lose, and my wholehearted service to Christ, and all of our wholehearted service to Christ, is not to help God do what He otherwise couldn't do. It's to be a part of what He's doing...What a joy. So we shepherd with all our hearts in the best way we can; but when we run out of resources, and we don't know what to do or what to say, and we just don't know how to take care of people and meet their needs the way they oughta be met, we have to lean back and say, "But the great Shepherd is the Shepherd, isn't He?"

I was told yesterday of a lady who gave birth to a child in our church. She died, and the child is premature, on life support systems, and time period without oxygen to the brain, all this. Father's left without a wife and with a child like this; and you say, "Well, what do you say?" and you sort of stumble around, and then you fall back on the fact that the great Shepherd shepherds the sheep, doesn't He? That's...that's where human resources come to an end...but the Lord is the great Shepherd, chief Shepherd, good Shepherd.

As such, two things we look at that He does. First, He equips. He equips. Notice in verse 21 that, "The great Shepherd of the sheep, through means of the blood of the everlasting covenant, makes you perfect in every good work to do His will." The reason He perfected us in salvation, the reason He bought... brought us to saving perfection in Himself was in order to cause us to do His will. He's perfecting us to do His will. He's equipping us to do His will. Oh, it's so wonderful. He uses the Word to shape us and mold us into His will.

"Given Scripture...it says in 2 Timothy 3:16...for what purpose? That the man of God may be perfect." Equipped, thoroughly furnished to all good works; and so He's given us His Word; and then He's given us gifted men. Ephesians 4, and He gave some apostles and prophets and evangelists and teaching pastors or teaching shepherds for the perfecting, for the equipping of the saints. So He gives the Word, and He gives us the Word, and not only the Word, but some uniquely gifted men of God who can pour that Word into us. Then He gives us teachers, and then according to 1 Peter 5:10, it says, "After you've suffered a while, the Lord make you perfect." He gives us trials in which the Word can work, right?

In...in John's Gospel chapter 15, it says, "The Word is like a...it's like a knife, and it prunes us." Prunes us, so you take the Word brought to us individually and brought to us through gifted men, and then the Lord comes in and brings suffering. After you've suffered a while, the Lord puts us through trials and temptations and painful suffering. Why? Because that's the context in which we are forced to apply the Word, right? That's the refining process.

You see, it's when I'm in a struggle, when I'm in struggling with sin and struggling with suffering, going through anxiety and pain and grief in my life, when I'm going through the troubled times, those are the times when I see boiling up within me the ugliness of my own sinfulness, and I learn to hate sin more. Those are the times when I may question God and doubt, and I learn to hate my own doubts and my own sinfulness more. Those are the times when I'm driven to my knees; and that's good. The times when I wanna draw night to God, and that's good. The times when I long for heaven and deliverance from this world, and that's good. And so suffering works a good thing. So the Lord brings the suffering. We bring the Word. Preachers aren't supposed to bring the suffering. Don't get confused on what your duty is. The Lord'll take care of that. You bring the Word.

So the Lord equips, builds up, strengthens. He gives us the power of the Holy Spirit. Says, "You shall be my witnesses after the Spirit's power comes upon you...in Acts 1:8...Judea, or Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth." "And you'll go forth...He says in John 15...and bear much fruit." "And out of your belly...in John 7...will flow rivers of living water." And so He's equipping His church. Boy, it's so wonderful.

We have training class. We were talking about this. We have discipling. We gotta be involved in evangelism. And all the time we're working as hard as we can work, we remember in our mind that the Lord is equipping His church. He's doing it through the Word, through trials, through the power of the Spirit of God. Boy, that's so wonderful; and it isn't up to us. We're doing our best, because we wanna be a part of what He's doing, see? Can't think of a greater privilege...

In Ephesians 5:29, a verse that normally is used to speak of marriage, but really, perhaps more than anything, speaks of the church. It says, "No man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it even as the Lord the church." The Lord nourishes and cherishes the church. Two beautiful words: nourish means to feed, and cherish means to warm with body heat. It'd be like a...it would be like a nursing mother for us... the...the...the term cherish is used of a nursing mother in 1 Thessalonians 2:7; and it's as if the Lord takes in His beloved and nurses and nurtures and warms. It means to warm with body heat, to melt or to soften. And here's intimacy. The Lord comes and shepherds us, feeding us, and warming us, and melting us down to reshape us. Beautiful thought. Beautiful thought.

He's at work. He's at work. That's a comforting thing. When I've run out of resources, when I've run out of ideas, when I'm frustrated in my mind, I say, "Lord, how do we get people more committed? How do we get 'em moving along, more equipped, more faithful, growing, maturing? Lord, we...we need new way... ways to do it, new levels of commitment," and I'm comforted in the fact that He's doing it. He's moving His church along. He's equipping His church. He's nourishing, cherishing His church... Great comfort.

Secondly, as Shepherd, He intercedes for His church. Just like a shepherd would go out and fight off the wolf, the Lord Jesus Christ fights off the adversary who comes constantly before the throne of God to accuse the brethren. He comes before the throne of God to...to accuse us, as he did to accuse Job; and Jesus comes to our rescue and defends us. He is our defender. He is our intercessor. He is our advocate. He is our empathizer. He is our sympathizer. He is our high Priest. Oh, what a great thought.

And you see Him in John 17 as He prays to the Father, and He says, "Oh, Father, I pray not for those that are in the world, but for those that you've given unto Me that they may be one. Oh, Father, I pray that they may be one with Me as I am one with You." And He prays for His own in that marvelous passage, and you see continuing through the New Testament His high priestly work. First John 2 says, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." In other words, when you sin and the accusation of your sin is brought before the throne of God, Jesus stands as your advocate and says, "Father, that sin is paid for. That sin is paid for. My blood paid for that sin." And that's why no sin can be charged against God's elect. Is God gonna charge it against your...you as His elect when He has elected you? Is he gonna charge it against you when He has justified you already? Shall God that justified you once charge some sin against your account? Is there information He didn't have or a higher court than God? Shall Christ condemn you, who bore your sin in His own body on the tree? Shall He who perfectly expiated all your sin have some sin that He will hold against you? Not on your life, and so there is that ever, ever interceding Christ.

So He intercedes for His church. He talks to the Father about our needs, too, because we have many needs. He is not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. He knows exactly what we go through; and so He's able to succor us or help us, it says in Hebrews 2:18. "He is a perfect high Priest...Hebrews 7:25 says...who ever lives to make intercession for us." He was hungry. He was thirsty. He was overcome with fatigue. He slept. He was taught. He grew. He was loved. He was hated. He loved. He hated. He was astonished. He marveled. He was glad. He was sad. He was angry. He was indignant. He was sarcastic. He was grieved. He was troubled. He was overcome by future events. He exercised faith. He read Scripture. He prayed all night. He poured out His heart over the pain of men, and He wept when His own heart ached. Oh, He's been there. Sympathetic. Empathetic, and defending us. Great thought. He is our faithful high Priest. Always interceding.

And so we see Him then as Shepherd, on the one hand feeding in a nurturing kind of cherishing kind of relationship to equip His church to do His will. In another sense, He intercedes on our behalf making sure there's never anything against us. "His blood keeps on cleansing us from all sin...1 John 1:9." Savior of His church, Shepherd of His church.

Thirdly, He's Sovereign of His church. He's Sovereign of His church. Look again at the text and notice the word Lord. Ninety-two times kourias is used in the New Testament; and we may discuss various shades of meanings of the word, but one thing is very clear. When it is used in the New Testament in reference to the Son of God, it means Sovereign One. It's means controlling One. It means One who is in complete authority. He is the Lord. He is the Lord. He is the Sovereign in His own church.

It tells us in Ephesians chapter 1 that, "God has put all things under His feet and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all." He is in charge. Colossians chapter 1 says essentially the same thing in verse 19. It says, "It pleased the Father that in Him should all divine fullness dwell. Therefore...verse 18 says...He's the head of the church. He's the beginning. He's the protatikas, the preeminent One that in all things He might have the preeminence."

So the concept of Lord has to do with the fact that Jesus Christ is the Sovereign One. Now that manifests itself in the church again in two ways that I wanna emphasize for you. First, He rules His church. As the Lord of His church, He rules His church. Lemme tell you something, folks. If anyone asks you who is in charge of Grace Church, you tell 'em Jesus Christ; and that is not being said facetiously. Jesus Christ is the head of His church. Ephesians 5:23 says He's the head. The word used there is keffalay, basically has to do with sorta the idea of being first or being prominent or being supreme or being the determiner. The one who's calling the shots. The sovereign is the idea again. He is the head of His church. That's repeated several places in the New Testament. And, as the head, He has the authority in His church. He rules in His church. You see Him in Revelation 1, and He's moving among the candlesticks, each representative of His church, and He's trimming the lamps, and He's coming with bronzed feet and burning, penetrating eyes as He searches out the sin that needs to be crushed out of His church. He is the Lord of His church. That is why in Matthew 18, where you have the discipline process and sin being dealt with there, it says, "When two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them," and it isn't two or three in a prayer meeting. It's two or three witnesses who confirm the sin of someone in a discipline. The whole passage is about discipline, and He says, "Don't hesitate to do it, because when you call together the right witnesses and affirm the sin, you don't need to hold back, because I'm there in the midst doing it with you." So you're only binding on earth what's already been bound in heaven; and you're only loosing on earth what's already been loosed in heaven. So you act in behalf of Christ. Great truth.

He rules His church, and He rules through a plurality of godly men as He always had, and that's why have 50-some elders at Grace Church, and we have one goal. Our single goal is do what Christ wants us to do. Now, we know a lot of what He wants us to do, because it's written here; and where the Book doesn't speak, and where we don't have information in...in the Scripture itself to speak to a certain issue, it's up to us to discern the mind of God, prayerfully, thoughtfully, patiently, to wait till God unfolds to us the thing He wants to do. That's why we've always been committed to the fact that everything we decide, 50-plus men, is unanimous or we don't do it. It's unanimous, because God only has one will. It's up to all of us who are His...we're under shepherds of Jesus Christ, to know what that will is. It's up to us to know what Christ wants to do in His church, and we will seek His mind till all of us come to an understanding of what that mind is.

Christ rules His church. I don't want the responsibility nor does any human who thinks clearly...It's bad enough to have to answer for your own life without having to answer for a whole host of others. So we seek the mind of God through prayer till the Spirit of God reveals His will; but he is the ruler of His church; and the only thing we wanna do is discern His will. That's all we wanna do. We wanna discern His will. That's why we go by this Book, see. Now, that's...it simplifies it.

Secondly, as we think about the Lord Jesus Christ in His church, He not only rules His church, but He teaches His church. He teaches His church. That's part of His ruling. He has authority to exercise in all matters, and He has authority to reveal in all truth. He...He's our teacher. His will is revealed through His Word. His will is revealed through human instruments, but He's the teacher. In fact, He said to the disciples in the Gospel of John several times that this would be the case. In John 14, I believe it's verse 20, He says, "You will know that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you. You're gonna know these things. You're gonna know a lotta things."

How you gonna know that? Verse 26, "The Comforter, who is the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He'll teach you all things. He'll bring all things to your remembrance, whatever I have said unto you." Verse 26 of chapter 15, "When the Comforter is come, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, He shall testify of Me. He'll tell you about Me. He'll tell you what you need to know." Chapter 16 verse 12, "I have many things to say to you. You can't bear them now. Nevertheless, when He, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He'll guide you into all truth; He'll not speak of Himself, but whatever He shall hear, that shall He speak; and He will show you things to come; and He'll glorify Me, for He shall receive from Me and give unto you."

So, see, the Lord keeps the controlling place. He rules, and He feeds and teaches His church through the Word and the Spirit. Through the Word and the Spirit. Through the Word and the Spirit. And so when we go to the Word of God, we see what's clear in the Word, and we draw on the Spirit. That's 1 John 2:20 and 27. It says, "We have an anointing from God. We don't need human teachers. We have an anointing from God." That is earthly, worldly teachers outside the Kingdom who don't know the Word of God. We don't need that kind of wisdom, because we have an anointing from God; and that anointing is none other than the Holy Spirit. So we have the Word of God and the author, the Spirit of God, pouring truth though the gifted men of God; and, thus, Christ is leading His church.

I'm not here to give you my opinion on anything. If I ever do that, you run me outta town. I'm not here to give you my opinion on anything. I'm not here to talk on social issues that aren't relative to the Word of God. I'm here to open to you the Word of God that you may know the mind of God and the heart of the Savior, that He may teach His church. And I've said this before. I say it again. I'm only a...I'm only a waiter. I didn't cook the meal. I'm only supposed to deliver it without messing it up, and get it to you hot...

Lastly, He's not only the Savior who loves and builds His church and the Shepherd who equips and intercedes for His church and the Sovereign who rules and teaches His church, but He's the Sanctifier who purifies and glorifies His church. He's the Sanctifier who purifies and glorifies His church. Look at verse 21. The ultimate goal is to work in you. Oh, that's so good. You see, it's so good to know that He's at work in us, isn't it? He's the Sanctifier. He's the one setting us apart from sin. He's the one purifying us; and, also, He's the one leading us to give Him glory for ever and ever. He's the Sanctifier, Purifier, Glorifier.

Ah, you know, we...we get concerned. You do, too. You see somebody that's a Christian, but there's sin in their life, and you just...you worry about it. You wanna see them out of that. You confront 'em, and maybe the discipline process goes on, and we talked today about a guy who just keeps getting into sin, and then he says he's gonna stop, and then he keeps in it again, and then he comes out, and again he's in and out and...and here we are again, needing to...to go back through the discipline again. And...and you can...you become so grieving in your heart over these kinds of things; and the only comfort you have that if He belongs to Jesus Christ, He is the Purifier of His church. It may be that He'll purify His church with removal. It may be He'll purify His church with a death of a believer who's unfaithful, as in 1 Corinthians 11 and 1 John 5. It may be that He'll purify His church by strengthening that Christian and drawing him into holiness. That's...that's for Him to do. But His goal is to do that. That's what it says in Ephesians 5.

Listen to what it says, "Husbands, love your wives as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for it." Why'd He do that? Why did He do that? "That He might sanctify, set it apart from the world and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word." He wants His church pure and clean in order that ultimately He might present it to Himself a glorious church. That's the glory of the church. He purifies it to bring it to glory that He might have a church which is without spot, without wrinkle, or any such thing, but holy and without blemish.

So He's the Purifier and the Glorifier. He purifies. Ultimately, He glorifies. And glorifying is simply ultimate purification, isn't it?..."Someday we will be to the praise and the glory of God; and through Jesus Christ, the God of Peace will receive glory for ever and ever. Amen." From us. Christ purifies, and He's at work purifying, purging. Well, that's so comforting to know that. And bringing us to glory, bringing us to glory. When we get up there, folks, we'll all be perfect, without spot, without blemish.

Well, I hope it's as hopeful to you to hear these things as it is...as it is to me - that we're not alone in this deal. Lemme say it again what I said earlier. It's a key thought. Listen. We're not doing what Christ can't do, folks. We're not building the church because He needs us to build it. If Grace Church blew up today...I don't expect it...if it did, the church of Jesus Christ would move ahead. If I drop dead and every one of our leaders did, the church would move ahead. He does not need us to build His church. You say, "Well, why are we working so hard?" I'll tell you why. Because there's no more marvelous, thrilling, glorious, joy-producing, soul-satisfying function than to be a part of what Jesus Christ is building for His eternal glory.

Reporter came up to the construction site of St. Paul's Cathedral in London many years ago. He was doing a story on the building of that great cathedral. He said to a guy there with a bunch of stones in his hand, he said, "What are you doing?" He said, "Can't you see what I'm doing? I'm sticking stones in here to build this thing. Just more stones all the time. Just carrying these stones." Went to a second guy, and he said, "What are you doing?" He said, "I'm earning a living. I got a family, a buncha children. I'm...I'm earning a living." Went to a third fella and said, "What are you doing?" "Oh," he said, "I'm...I'm helping Sir Christopher Wren build St. Paul's Cathedral." That's a different perspective, isn't it?

What are you doing? "Well, I'm just sticking these stones in here. I gotta do this, you know." "Well, I'm earning a living. I mean, after all, I'm a Christian. I gotta do something...spiritual." "Well, no, I'm...I'm a part of Christ building His eternal Kingdom." Boy, what a glorious thought...

Father, we thank You that You've given us Your Word and left us with no doubt and no confusion as to what it means to us and what it requires of us. And, yet, You've also given us Yourself and it's really Your work. Do it, Lord, do it for Your glory, and let us be a part, not because You need us, but because we wanna be a part of something that's eternal. We wanna show our love. We wanna work with you. We wanna know the joy and thrill of blessing that comes to the obedient, faithful, diligent...

In the silence of this moment, you might offer to the Lord some thanks for the Savior who loved you and built you into His church. For the Shepherd who equips you, intercedes for you. For the Sovereign who rules and teaches you. For the Sanctifier who purifies and ultimately will glorify you...Your heart oughta be filled with thanksgiving...Some of you don't even know the Lord, but maybe there's a moving in your heart of the Spirit of God and a prompting that says, "I want Christ...to take my sin away. I want Him to be Lord in my life. I wanna turn the destiny of my life over to Him." Seek Him in that regard. Open your heart to Him...in response to the prompting of the Spirit of God. Others of you, perhaps, sense the need to belong to a fellowship, to become a part of this church...or any church where Christ is lifted up and exalted, and you can serve His holy name...Let your heart be easily plied by the Spirit of God.