12 - Lesson 5: The Church, Part 2

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipleship and the class that we are teaching right now is an Introduction to Discipling. We are glad to have you with us. We appreciate every one of you, especially those of you who watch live Monday nights 8 o 'clock.

We appreciate those of you who are watching live, but we welcome the new students. We do know that we have some new students maybe tuning in from our most recent conference that we did. I know there were several that said they were going to be watching for the first time, and if you are, welcome.

We are glad to have you with us. And we are going through a book in our Introduction to Discipling, and we are going through a book called Growing in Grace. It is something that we have available at our store.

If you want to pick a copy up, you can pick them up. I think they're maybe $7 or $7 .50, something like that. You are more than welcome to buy one. They are very useful for homeschoolers, very useful for anyone that you would like to disciple in the faith.

Now we are using this book really as a way of facilitating discipling. You can use many things, and we are trying to teach you things to look for when you are discipling someone. We are also teaching you how to go through a book like this and teach someone the basics of the faith.

We are giving you the answers since, well, there are some fill in the blanks. We are giving you those fill-ins. We are going through these lessons. We are right now in a lesson on the church. This is The Church Serving Our Lord.

We looked at last week, in that lesson, we saw on defining the church, what is the definition of a church. That also explained to us, as we looked at the definition, what a church is. We also saw what the importance of a local church is.

In doing those two, we really kind of saw the beginning parts of what we are going to start with today, which is, what is the purpose of a local church? What is the purpose of a local church? That is what we are going to look at this class, is just looking at the purpose of a local church.

We are going to start with the worship of God, and then we are going to talk about how we are to, as a church, serve fellow believers. We are going to go through this. We are going to look at many scripture verses, but it is very helpful if you paid attention last class.

If you haven't seen the local church part 1, I encourage you to watch that, because we are going to build off what we talked about last week. That is what we are going to do. We are beginning now. If you have your Growing in Grace book, you can follow along.

I am trying to give in this more material than you would probably teach to the average person that you would go through a book like this with. Most people you are going to use this with are children or new believers, people who may not know that much of the scriptures.

But you come across people that are adults when they get saved, and maybe they grew up in the church, and sometimes they have questions that come up, and we are trying to answer those for you as well.

Not only are we trying to teach you how to disciple, but on these subjects, we are trying to teach you some material that maybe you didn't know. When we went over the lesson on prayer, we had someone who grew up in the church and said they thanked us and said that they had never understood prayer.

Maybe you never really understood what the purpose of the local church was. We hope that after this class, you will know not only the purpose of the local church, but understand your place in your local body of believers.

Each member of the body, and we call the church the body of Christ, that is the way it is referred to, 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and each member of the body needs to be actively fulfilling the purposes of the local church.

The Worship of God in the Local Church

What kind of purposes should the local church be fulfilling? The first that I said we would cover is the worship of God. Let us start with Acts 2 verse 47. Acts 2 verse 47 indicates that the entire church was, if you look there, praising God and having favor with all the people.

The Lord added to the number day by day those who were being saved. You see in your syllabus that the first blank there is praising God. The first thing that we see, as the church was just formed in Acts chapter 1 and 2, we see the beginning of the church, Acts chapter 2, there they are, this is the beginning, and the first thing we see them doing is praising God.

And that is one act of worship. So we see that as a church we should be gathering for the purpose of praising our Lord and Savior. Number two, we see that Paul says that a priority of the church is to give on behalf of all men and their leaders, and we are going to look in 1 Timothy 2, 1 Timothy 2, 1 and 2, it says on behalf of all men and leaders, there it says, first of all I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people.

And so in verse 1 you see the blanks there for your syllabus, for your book, on behalf of all men and leaders there should be supplication, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks. All of these are part of the public prayer, the public worship of God.

So part of the church is praising God. A second part or purpose of the church is to be offering of prayers, that's prayers in the ways of supplication. Supplications are making requests to God. Prayers would be lifting things up to the Lord, that would be more of a general term of prayers, not so much for other people, for yourself.

Supplications would be bringing requests for yourself, intercessions would be when you are interceding for someone else, giving thanks is just being thankful to the Lord for the things He has given you.

Prayers would be more I think in this category maybe of things that we are just talking directly to the Lord about, adoration, things like that. Number three, so after praising God and praying to God publicly as a church, we see in 1 Timothy 4 .13 that a responsibility of the church to give, here you see it says, until I come, devote yourself or give attention to the public reading of the scriptures to exhortation and to teaching.

So three things that we have here that we are to give ourselves to, and these are your blanks in your book, reading the scriptures, exhortation and teaching. So the purpose of the church is to give themselves to these three things, all of which are related to the public reading of God's Word, the public reading.

That is what we as a church should be doing, praising God, praying to God, proclaiming His Word. Those are three. Let's look at number four. The fourth one is in Colossians 3 .16, Colossians 3 .16, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

So if you look in your book at your blanks there, leave that up for a second while I go do it again. Teaching, number four is the church is to be teaching and admonishing one another through what? Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs.

Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. Those are three ways of describing it. We should be singing to the Lord. It's an act of worship. So we worship the Lord God by praising Him, by praying to Him, by the proclamation of His Word, the reading of His Word, the singing of songs.

And then lastly, one that maybe you wouldn't have expected is in 1 Corinthians 16, 1 and 2 is the collection for the saints. The collection for the saints. It was taken during the public part of worship.

Look at this. Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches to do on the first day of the week, each of, now notice on the first day of the week is indicative that it is a prayer time.

Okay? So what that would say is that this is something we would do as part of the public worship. They would take a collection on the first day of the week. Alright? Now, that is the first part. So letter A, we have the worship of God.

That's the purpose of the church. We worship God by praising Him, by praying to Him, by proclaiming His Word, by singing of songs, by collection, by the collection. There's other ways we can worship God.

But these are just some of the things that we see that we want to focus our minds on when we go to church. Part of church is to serve others. Part of it is to serve God. None of it is to serve ourselves.

What do I mean by that? There are many people who go to church to be, they say, fed or to be served. They're going to church for selfish reasons. We go to church to worship God and serve others. Those are the two reasons we should go to church.

And if we're going to church for selfish reasons, we're not going to be able to minister among the body of Christ like we should. So my encouragement is as we're going through this lesson and you plan to go to church, think about this.

Think about the purpose of what church is for and say, you know what? This is the thing I should be doing. Let me focus in on that. So let us now go transition from the worship of God to serving fellow believers because that is the second thing we should be seeking to do.

Serving Fellow Believers Through the Church

We are to be worshiping God and serving one another. That sounds like, I think Jesus mentioned something about two commandments. What were they? The first and greatest commandment, oh right, to love the Lord your God with all your mind, heart, soul, and strength.

And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself. You see the trend there. So what's the purpose of church? It fits in with those two. Worship God. Love the Lord your God. Love your neighbor.

In this case, your brother or sister. So let's look at how we serve one another. Several ways that we're going to talk about. We're going to give you a lot of blanks to fill in here. So sorry if we're going to give you hand cramps.

But the first way is through participating with fellow believers. You can't serve fellow believers unless you participate with fellow believers. I mean, I know that's a crazy thought. But let's go back to Acts chapter 2 and see six points in this text of what we see they did.

Okay, in Acts 2, 41 and 42, once they received the word, those believers received the word, six activities that we see from this text that they participated in. So let's read this. So those who received his word were, one, baptized.

So immediately after receiving the word, the first thing is they were baptized or baptizing. And there were added to the church 3 ,000 souls. So we see their membership. So they got saved. They received the word.

They were baptized or baptizing. They were received or receiving into membership. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. That's your third one is teaching. You see here, they received the teaching and they were teaching.

And the fellowship, that's your fourth one, fellowshiped with one another. So they fellowshiped to the breaking of bread. This is what we would think of as the Lord's table. The breaking of bread. This is early on.

This would be a time of fellowshipping around the meal. And then the last one, the sixth one, is prayer. Okay, so you see, you don't have to have these worded. You may have different translations. Because of that, you may have these worded differently.

But it's these six ideas that are the first thing we see of how the church participated together to serve one another. They were baptizing. They came together for the purpose of church membership. They were teaching.

They were fellowshiping. They were communing in the Lord's Supper. And they were together in prayer. So this is the participating with fellow believers. Number two, we see the ministering to fellow believers.

Now, when you are dealing with a new believer or a child maybe that you're discipling, there may not be so many opportunities for them to do some of this ministering among the body. So you want to set this to say, this is a goal for them.

They're clearly not going to get saved and suddenly start teaching. Well, I guess Paul did that. But Paul would be different. He was in a time period that was different when he understood the Bible very, very well.

Being a Pharisee, an expert in the Old Testament. So that aside though, there's certain things that when you come into salvation, come into the church, you're not going to be serving right away in certain areas.

But set this as a goal for the person you're discipling that this is where they should be headed. You don't want to disciple them to be pew sitters. You don't want to be teaching them to just sit and learn.

You want them finding ways they can serve. Many people can usher. That's something that is a good ministry for many. There's other areas where people can do things that are in the backgrounds, things that maybe don't take a lot of spiritual knowledge or concern that they can serve in until they learn more.

Alright, so as we go through that, we see that there are some things that they're going to have to maybe wait on. Most churches will make them wait on. But there's some things they can do right away. And in the idea of ministering to one another, we talk about the one another's of the New Testament that provide for each believer instructions on the importance of ministering to one another.

So we're going to read many verses. And then as we read each one of these verses, we're going to give you the fill in the blank here. We're going to go one by one. So let's go one at a time. Romans 15, and we're going to look for what the one another is.

And some translations may not be as clear. But Romans 15, 14 is to instruct one another. You see that there? I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another.

Paul was satisfied. He was happy with a church he had not visited, a church he maybe knew some people in it. But what he's glad with this church is that they were able to instruct one another right away.

Galatians, we see in, there we go. Galatians 5, 13 is to serve one another. You see it at the end there. For you were called to freedom, brothers, only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, that's important.

Through love, serve one another. Through love tells us how we should be going about serving one another. Let's go on to staying in Galatians. We'll go to Galatians 6, 1. Galatians 6, 1 says is to restore one another.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in a transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him. Some translations say should restore one another. In a spirit of gentleness, do you notice that? In a spirit of gentleness is how we should restore one another.

Keep watch on yourself, least you be tempted. So as we deal with one another, we should be trying to restore one another if they have fallen into sin, trying to bring them back to a strengthened position, but careful not to fall into sin ourselves.

And following on that, the next verse says that we should bear one another's burdens. Bear one another's burdens. So we should bear burdens with one another, and so fulfill the law of Christ. In Ephesians 4, we have two of them here.

Be kind to one another. That is your first blank there, letter E. Be kind to one another, tender-hearted. Forgiving one another is letter F. Forgiving one another. So we should be kind to one another, and we should be forgiving.

We should forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. Staying in Ephesians, Ephesians 5, we see submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. So there, letter G, you have submit to one another.

Submit to one another. Colossians 3, 16, is teaching and admonishing one another. So teaching one another and admonishing one another. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your heart to God.

Notice the emphasis is on, the focus is on God. The focus is on having a heart unto God, and that's where we need to have the focus. And so what we want to see there is, we are to be teaching and admonishing.

Now, like I said, you're going to say, well, maybe I'm a new believer. Well, a new believer can still teach in some areas. And that's what you want to pay attention to, all right? So, let's move on to 1 Thessalonians 4, 18.

1 Thessalonians 4, 18, therefore encourage one another. That's your blank there, encourage one another with these words. So we should be encouraging one another. That's not really what we see on Facebook, is it?

Not very often. And we in this academy, we try to help by encouraging people. We want this to be a place where we remind you to be encouraging one another, because realistically, we don't see a lot of encouraging, at least on social media.

We want to be encouraging you to encourage others. And the reason is because of this next one in 1 Thessalonians 5, 11, is to edify one another. Therefore encourage one another and build up. And build up is the word edify.

Now, you could say, therefore encourage one another and build up one another or edify one another, just as you are doing. So, letter J there could be edify or build up. Either one. Hebrews 10, 25 is to encourage one another, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another.

Do you notice that? That is in the context of those who are not going to church. We should be going to church. And one of the purposes of going to church by this passage is to be encouraging to one another, to each other.

James 5 says that we should confess our sins to each other. Therefore confess your sins to one another. And also the next one, letter M, pray for one another. Okay, so we should confess our sins to one another and also pray for one another.

First Peter 4 and 9, we should show hospitality to one another without grumbling. So, I want to show hospitality is your blank there for N. Letter O is First Peter 4, 10. We should serve one another as each has received a gift.

Use it to serve one another. As good stewards of God's varying grace. Now, we're going to spend the bulk or the rest of the class time on this idea of these gifts that we're to serve one another with.

So, we're going to look into a little bit more on that. The last one we have in our list is going to be First John 3, 11 and it is to love one another. We've actually seen this one a couple times. Just like we saw encourage one another a couple times.

So, this one is for this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. So, those are the ways in which we minister to one another in the body of Christ. Now, as you go through that list, recognize that you can't do those things alone with a TV.

There are people who are not used to going to church. They become a Christian and they're transitioning. They're having a difficulty. Why do I have to go to church? Can't I just watch it on TV and stay home?

You can't do all those one another's by yourself. You need another to one another. And so, I would encourage you to encourage those you disciple to be part of a local church, not only because it is what is the normal practice of the church, but also we should be doing that because that is realistically a major part of what the church should be doing as it serves one another.

Now, I mentioned this idea of spiritual gifts and number three in your book there is we serve one another. We are going to serve fellow believers by the utilization, the utilizing of our spiritual gifts.

What is a spiritual gift? Let me first, and this is something that may be important for you to explain to a new believer that you're discipling. There's a difference between a spiritual gift and a talent.

A spiritual gift is something you get at salvation. It is a gift of the Holy Spirit. He gives every believer a certain amount of gifts. There are several gifts listed and He gives each of them a certain portion of each gift so that they would serve the local body that He has them to serve in.

Alright, we're going to look at those gifts. But they are different from a talent. A talent is something you're born with. So, you're born with a talent. You've had that all your life. But a spiritual gift is something you received at salvation.

Now, if you're dealing with someone who grew up in a church and was saved at a young age, they may not be able to distinguish between them. Let me give you some examples. When it comes to a talent, I am naturally organized.

I am an organizer. I like things in order. Everything must be proper. Okay, I'm a little bit OCD, I guess. Long before OCD was OCD, before they had a name for it. During recess, when I was in kindergarten, first, second grade, it used to drive me nuts that all of the kids went out after lunch.

It was back when we had, you know, lunch boxes because our parents actually made us lunch and we were sent to school with a homemade lunch from mom. And so, everyone would take their lunch boxes and just bolt out the back door to go outside and play and just drop their lunch boxes right there on the ground.

And by the time I would get there, I would look at this mess of lunch boxes and I couldn't stand it. I had to organize them in size order. The largest to the left, smallest to the right. You knew where your lunch box was after recess by its size because this knucklehead had to do it.

Where everyone else went off to play, I was organizing lunch boxes until I went to a different school and they didn't have a recess in that way. So, when I was in elementary school, that's what I used to do.

I organized everything. I organized my books in my library. I had a friend of mine who said that he came in to help me move and he looked at my attic. He says, even his attic is organized. I organize things.

That's what I do. I've done it all my life. But teaching is something I never wanted to do until I became a believer. When I became a believer in Christ, that is when I just decided I liked to teach. I didn't really decide it so much.

I think it was more that it just started being a desire in my heart. And that's some of the things that you will get when you have a spiritual gift. It starts with a desire and sometimes it's a desire that wasn't there before.

You didn't notice it. And it's something where you start just wanting to do it. Now, there's one thing I want to point out. When we go through this list of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, keep in mind that the gifts that continue for today are commanded by God for every believer to do.

This is going to distinguish certain gifts because clearly, Paul made very clear in 1 Corinthians 12 that not everybody will have certain gifts. There are certain gifts that were for a period of time that I would say are no longer for today.

But those gifts were not commanded for everybody to have. But when it comes to things like serving one another, teaching, giving, administering, all these things, showing mercy, showing exhortation, those things, all of us are commanded to do.

So it's just that some of them are going to come more naturally to us. And as we start to have a desire, it's going to come more naturally either because you have a talent for it or you're going to do it because you have a spiritual gift for it.

But it's going to be something you start to desire or it comes a little bit more natural to you. So let's look at 1 Peter 4 .10 again. As each of you received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards.

Now notice that, that's the point, we are stewards of this. So when you look at this, we are to receive these gifts that God gives us and we are to be stewards of them. Stewards of God's varied grace.

So see that's showing the variety in which He is going to give us these. Now let's leave this up and answer the questions in the book. How many believers have been given spiritual gifts? Well, it says as each received.

So each one, every believer, any of those answers are fine. And again, I'll remind you as you have this, you want the person you're discipling to go through this book, fill in the answers with pencil.

Now you're going over them again. You want to fill them in with pen maybe, but now you're giving them the answers. There could be a variety of answers. This, for example, could be as each or each one or everyone, each believer, every believer, any of those answers are fine.

It gets the point across. Number two, who are the beneficiaries of spiritual gifts? Notice, this is important, notice spiritual gifts are to serve others. So others is the answer and that's important because there's certain gifts that people argue are spiritual gifts that they have to serve themselves, to edify themselves.

And that is not the purpose of a spiritual gift. Lastly, by utilizing our spiritual gifts, we become, your blank here is good stewards of the manifold grace of God or the varied grace of God. So we see here that every believer is given a gift to be used for other people.

And that gift is something that we are to be good stewards of. All right, why is it important to utilize these gifts? Well, let's take a look at Romans 12, 4 and 5 and see why is it important to utilize, to utilizing of our spiritual gifts within the local body.

Four, as in one body, we all have many members and many members do not have the same function. So we, through many, are one body in Christ, individual members of one another. So we are, and this you're going to have some differing answers here, but I have as an answer, to function with unity as one body.

Okay, to function with unity as one body. You're going to have some different answers there and that's fine. The different answers are okay, but it's basically to serve the body, to be unified, to minister to those in the body of Christ, all right.

Now, one last verse that we're going to take a look at briefly, and it's going to give us a list of the gifts and that's in Romans 12 and 6 to 8. And let's see how many of these we can mention. So here, what are the spiritual gifts listed in Romans 12, 6 to 8 that are to be used to build up the body?

Let's look at them here and I'm going to try to give some definitions also. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us. So notice, these gifts differ. They differ so we each use the gifts that we're given.

Let us use them. That's the stewardship now. So we're given different gifts from one another. We use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith. So prophecy would be the first gift. Many people see prophecy as the ability to proclaim God's word, to preach God's word.

Number two, in service. In our serving. So in service, number two would be service, which is the ministering. The idea of being able to minister behind the scenes. The one who teaches in teaching. So number three is teaching.

Teaching is the ability to communicate God's word to others. The one who exhorts in his exhortation. So that's number four is exhortation. Exhortation is the ability to confront one another with sin. So we have to do that.

We don't all like doing that. Some people do it more naturally. They know how to do it with love and not pride. The one who contributes in generosity. So this is giving. Giving is more than just money.

It's also your time. But that's a spiritual gift. Some have the gift of generosity. If you have that gift, let me know. We'd be happy to help you have a place to give with our ministry. That's sort of like a joke.

But we will be happy to take if you choose to give. The one who leads with zeal. So number six there is leadership. There are some who naturally lead and some who lead by a spiritual gift. The one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

And that's your last one. Number seven is mercy. So what you see here is that there are seven gifts that we have listed. Prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leading, and mercy. There's up to some count as much as 19 gifts.

Not all of which are still active today. But as you see with each of these gifts, we're commanded to do each one of them. But the question often comes up. And this is something you'd have with a new believer.

And this is why we're going to go over this now. How do I know which gift is mine? Right? You look at this list and someone's going to say, Well, how do I know which one I should be doing? Well, what you do is you do all of them.

But here's some helpful guidelines to try to utilize your gifts and figure out which is your gift. You give of your time. You give your money. You try to teach and lead and show mercy and exhortation and service and prophecy.

I mean, you do everything because we're commanded to. But read the list there carefully. Analyze the activities that come easiest for you. Which ones came easiest before salvation? And which ones started with your salvation?

If you can tell. Like I said, some people got saved at a very young age and can't tell. Number two, ask godly Christians what your gifts are. Now, this may take time. You have a new believer. It may take time for those gifts to be seen.

So don't rush into anything. Once you have an idea, ask the leadership of your church to help you utilize these gifts. If this is a gift that's yours, the leadership will help evaluate that. We had a woman who felt she was gifted to teach.

That she felt was her calling and her gifting. And so we allowed her to teach the children once. It only took one lesson for the leadership and the children to realize she was not gifted in the realm of teaching.

Even after hours of study. Number four there is learn the biblical principles which give you the guidelines of your gift. So if you have an idea, you're gifted in giving. Well, look at what the scriptures say about giving.

How you should give. That you should give cheerfully. Mercy. You should be merciful. But you should also not be a doormat. Exhortation. Well, you should do that with love and charity. Not beating someone up.

Right? These are ways that principles that we see in the scriptures of how to use your gifts. And number five there. As you utilize your gift in the church, ask people to evaluate your fruitfulness of them.

This way you can confirm whether they actually are your gifts. Now I understand that there are online and different places that you can go to do these tests to evaluate your gifts. And many of them I think are pretty good.

You fill out a bunch of questions. A lot of questions. And they give you an idea of your spiritual gift. And so with that you can try those things. Some of them are good. Some aren't. So next week what you'd be asking your student to do is to memorize.

Or for your next lesson I should say. Memorize Hebrews 10 24 and 25. So let's say this together. Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works. Not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some.

But encouraging one another. And all the more as you see the day of the Lord drawing near. Now we do these scripture memory verses because you want to build into the person you're discipling the importance of memorization.

So that they are memorizing. You also see on your next page that you have a series of questions that you want your student to complete. This is a little bit more on the homework. But you want them to fill out some things.

After you've received Christ as Lord and Savior what other requirements. Requirement that you fulfill before becoming a member of a local church. The answer is baptism. Right. You should be baptized. Before becoming a member.

Number two. Whom did God establish as overseers of the local church. You have some passages there. Well you have your pastors. Your elders. Your bishops. However you want to word that. Your deacons serve the church.

They don't oversee the church. And then you can look at these others. What are some of the responsibilities of a church member. We have some differing passages here. Okay. Acts 1 right. We should be going out and teaching.

Matthew 28. We should be making disciples. Hebrews 10 the verse we're going to memorize. We should be you know fellowshipping together right. Do you know and understand your spiritual gift. Now that one there's not a right or wrong answer.

That you're going to go back and forth and discuss with your student. Do you know how to use your spiritual gifts within the local church. Those last two are going to be used for you to have discussion with the person you're discipling.