63 - Church as an Institution, Part 2

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy. This is a ministry of Striving for Eternity. We are in our School of Systematic Theology. We are in an introductory class, and this class we're going to be in is book four of the introductory class, which is God's Program for the Ages, the Doctrine of the Church and the Doctrine of Last Things.

We are going to be looking at doctrines of the church. We're going to start in lesson one with an institution of the church. We're going to look at the people of the church. We're going to look at the church's government.

Then we're going to look at the ordinances of the church. Then we'll start looking at things like end times and what is going to be the future. I encourage you to go to the website at Striving for Eternity.

Go to the store. Pick up a syllabus. It's that way. If you're actually watching on the video, you see we have a picture of the syllabus. You can go to strivingforeternity .org. Pick up Systematic Theology book four to pick up that syllabus.

They're $25 each. Get that. With that said, we're going to do a short review from last week's class. Then we'll pick up and continue on. If you have your syllabus, I encourage you to open that up, read it, and make sure that you are following along there.

That would be good. We started off last lesson. This lesson is lesson number one, the church as an institution. What we dealt with was the origin of the church. We looked at that. As we looked at the origin of church, we talked about the fact that the word church, ekklesia, is a term that we end up seeing in the scriptures to refer to a congregation and assembly.

We looked and took the time to look at how that word became more and more specific throughout history, to be more specified to when we refer to the church, not as a building, but the gathering of God's people.

We talked about the difference between the universal church and the local church. We talked about the function of the church, how that became part of that specifying definition. We looked at the origin by looking at what the word meant.

We looked at the time of the church. When did it start? We looked at the picture of the church. When we looked at the picture, we talked about it being a bride. We talked about it being a body of Christ.

The different pictures that we see. We've got a lot of verses to go through. I don't know if we're going to get through all of them. This is where if you have a syllabus, I'm just saying, it would be helpful.

It would be really helpful if you have a syllabus. This is going to be one of those times where we're just not going to get to everything in the syllabus. I want to encourage you to grab a syllabus. Let's start with the objectives of the church.

This is going to be now where we want to see that all that the church is responsible for may be seen in studying in three types of relationships. Let's start with the first. When I'm saying a relationship, I'm talking a relationship between us and God, as you're going to see, us and other people.

When we look at the objective of the church, I believe, let me give you the three things off the top first, and then we'll look into each one. I believe that there's three areas. At Striving for Eternity, we say we are training people for eternity to exalt God, edify and equip the saints, and evangelize the lost.

Those are the three areas. The function of the church, I believe, is the same thing. The function of the church, the objective of the church is to exalt God, to edify and equip the saints, and to evangelize the lost.

Do you see how that has all three different aspects? First and foremost is God. Our view of God, we lift Him up, we exalt His name. Second is going to be how we relate to other believers. Well, how do we?

Well, we edify one another, we equip one another. And then the third thing is how do we relate to the lost? Well, we evangelize them. Now, we've literated that so it's easy for you to remember. Exalt God.

Edify and equip saints. Evangelize lost. Okay, so as you look at that, that's basically it. So let's start with to exalt God, to exalt God. There's a lot of different ways that we exalt God. Let's just, if we could, let's put the scriptures up and we'll go through them.

First, to praise. To praise God, we see in Acts 2, 47, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved. So what were they doing?

They were praising God. So this is one way we exalt God in church. Another way is in 1 Timothy 2, 1 -2. 1 Timothy 2, 1 -2. First of all, then, I urge the supplications and prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for all people, for kings and all who are in the position that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

So there what you see is that we pray. As a church, we should be praying together. That's an important element of church. I understand it's a missing element. That's one of those things where, I don't know about you, did you ever notice like in church, the prayer meeting?

Now granted, they do, usually a lot of churches have prayer meetings on Wednesday night and so it's hard getting home from work. You know, I've often thought if you had a conference on prayer, no one would show up.

You know, you talk end times and it's going to be packed. You talk prophecy, I mean, it's going to be a packed house. But you talk about prayer and it's like, what are they going to do? It's one of the things that you find at our conferences, the Spreading the Fire conference, is we actually have corporate prayer as part of it.

And I had someone that came to me and said, that's bizarre, like I've never been to a conference where they pray corporately as part of the conference. That just seems weird. Yeah, well, we're weird, what can I say?

We actually believe prayer is like an important thing and not just praying beforehand when we do that, but we also pray at the event. Crazy, crazy idea, isn't it? All right. Proclamation. Proclamation, we see this in 1 Timothy 4 .13.

Until I come, devote yourselves to the public reading of Scripture, to the exaltation to teaching. So there's three things that the church should be devoting itself to, and that's the public reading of Scripture, the exaltation of Scripture, and the teaching.

Next is music. I'm not one of those musically talented people, but Colossians 3 .16 and 17 says, Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

And whatever you do, in word or deed, in everything, in the name of the Lord Jesus, give thanks to God the Father through Him. So here you see not only music, you also see thanksgiving. That's something the church should be doing.

To exalt God, we exalt God by praising Him, by praying to Him, by proclaiming Him through His word, the explanation of it, the teaching of it, through music, through singing songs to Him, through thanksgiving.

There's one more that sometimes surprises people, through giving. Yeah, giving. Giving is a way you honor God, you exalt God. Look what it says in 1 Corinthians 16, 1 -4. 1 Corinthians 16, 1 -4. Now concerning the collection for the saints as I directed the churches in Galatia, so you also are to do.

On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as they may prosper so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredited by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.

If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. So you end up seeing there that there is giving as an element of the church in giving exaltation to God. It's one of the ways that we worship God.

Now, that's a relationship to God. The church should be focused on God. Now, there's a reason I put these in this order. If you don't have the exaltation of God first and foremost as primary importance of the church, if you put people in front of God as the focus and the ministry of the church, you start getting into problems.

What we see a lot in America is that what many churches have done is instead of putting God first, they put the lost first. And they flip this. So instead of putting exalting God, equipping and edifying the saints, and evangelizing the lost, they say evangelizing the lost, fellowshipping with the saints because they don't really equip and they don't really edify because exalting Christ is at the bottom.

You see, if our focus is on winning the lost alone, we are going to do things that don't honor God. And we won't be equipping the saints properly. We won't be edifying the saints properly. And we definitely won't be exalting God.

We must first exalt God. And in that, the rest of it works out. But if we hold up our outreach to people, we start getting into messed up things, messed up theology. We start doing dramas instead of preaching.

We replace good, sound theology with things that make people, to reach people's felt needs. We remove those hymns that have rich theology that make you think and meditate upon God with songs that talk all about me and how God should be happy that He saved me.

And I know I'm doing some broad strokes there. It's clearly not every church. But it is a serious concern that I have with the churches when they don't put the exaltation of God first, when they put evangelizing the lost as the first and primary thing.

Now, I'm saying that as one who is an evangelist, okay? I am one who goes out regularly and evangelizes. I don't think anyone could criticize me for not evangelizing and not having a concern for the lost.

But the issue is I have a greater concern for God's honor and glory than someone's salvation. Did you hear that? That's important. You see, here's why. Because I'm more concerned with exalting God than evangelizing the lost.

I'm more concerned with how God is going to view things than how a lost person is going to view things. You know, the reason why people water down the gospel is very simple. We don't water down the gospel because we love Christ.

No, we water down the gospel because we want people to love us. We have to get over ourselves. We're not important. It doesn't matter whether that lost person likes us, loves us, hates us. It matters whether they know Christ.

It matters whether they're going to exalt God for all of eternity. And so, therefore, I have to be more focused on what God wants me to do than what I want them to do. I need to focus more on what God wants.

God may have me proclaim the gospel to someone so that they're without excuse when they face Him on Judgment Day. And I have to accept that. I have to deliver that message the way God wants that message delivered.

This is the thing the church needs to do. We need to rise up. The reality is we have a lot of churches that are doing nothing more than being atheist factories. That's right. Many of these churches are providing a false gospel, a watered down gospel, so that they can try to make a lot of decisions, get a lot of people who claim Christ, get people that go to church, raise kids that go to church, but those kids don't believe in Christ.

Those youth groups and those junior churches never explaining the gospel, never explaining the theology. These people go off to college, go off to high school, go off to school, and they hear evolution, and they think this is real, this is science, and some Sunday school teacher was telling Bible stories.

And what do they do? They think the Bible's a bunch of stories, and the evolution is real. And they end up believing that stuff. And what ends up happening? These churches are nothing more than atheist factories.

They're producing a bunch of children, false converts, from parents that are false converts, to go out into the world, and all these kids do when they get older is hate Christ. That's what they do. It's like the guy who quit smoking.

He is the guy that wants everyone to quit smoking, right? Because he struggled with it, and he wants everyone else to. Well, that person that grew up in church, that grows up to hate the church because they think they were deceived, because they, well, actually, in all honesty, they were deceived.

They weren't told the truth. They were told God loves them, but they weren't told how, that he died for them because they were sinners. They didn't want to say that part, so it's just God loves you. But the reality is, because they weren't given the full gospel message, they were given this watered-down gospel message, they end up hating Christ, hating church, because their flesh wants to do that anyway, and they want everyone else to as well.

And so what many churches are doing is producing future atheist factories. That's what it is, a future atheist factory. If you don't start with the exaltation of God, we need to lift God up on high, not ourselves.

We need to be very low in recognizing how low we are compared to God. We need to look at God and realize, He's awesome. He's great. There is no end that we will ever come to in naming the praises of who God is.

We need to exalt God first and foremost. And that, that exaltation of God needs to permeate, needs to work through our entire life. So everything that we do, everywhere we go, everything we do, how we parent, how we handle our finances, how we do things at church, our marriage, everything, exalting God needs to come through all of that.

It needs to work its way through every area of our life. You want a solution to your marriage? You're having a rough marriage? Exalt God. Exalt God. If both you and your spouse are both looking to do nothing more than exalt God in every area of your life, you're going to draw closer together because you're both going to the same source, God.

You're both headed in the same direction. You will come closer together. Now, if you want to exalt man, you want to exalt self, you want to exalt others and not God, you're not going to draw closer. Okay?

All right. I'll get off that soapbox. All right. So let's look at... Yeah. So I say to edify believers. I've added since working on this, edify and equip believers because that's going to be one of the things that I think is the purpose of the church, is the equipping of the saints.

So, and I'm going to go through this kind of quick because I want to spend a little bit of time with spiritual gifts. Did I just mention the spiritual gift word? Oh, no. I thought, Andrew, I thought you don't believe in the charismatic gifts.

There are other spiritual gifts by the way. I mean, just, you know, it's funny you mentioned spiritual gifts and people act like, people have like the craziest notions with that. Let's go. We'll go through it.

All right. Don't think I'm going all charismatic. And for you charismatics that say, hey, hey, hey, whoa, you don't believe in tongues. You say, do I speak English? I believe in tongues. I even speak some Greek and Hebrew and Chinese.

So I speak a lot of different tongues. Just saying. But we could disagree on that and still agree on what the function of the church is. All right. So let's look at edifying the believers. First, we must participate.

Kind of hard to be in church and not participate. But let's look. This one's going to have, this is Acts 2, 42. Acts 2, 42. And in here, you're going to see several things. If you have your syllabus, you see them.

But let's look at Acts 2, verse 42. Are you there? Okay. So, Acts 2, 42 says, and they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and the prayers. Now, notice these.

You have fellowship. You have the idea of, well, the idea of learning or teaching. You have serving the prayers, which we mentioned earlier. So, as you go through this, you see doctrine, by the way. The apostles' teaching means doctrine, means theology.

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. So it's not just, it's the theology and then teaching it, the fellowship. The breaking of bread is, I think in here, is a fellowship. I don't think it's the Lord's Supper.

I think this is one where it's fellowship. There is, and the reason I say that is because in that text, in Acts 2, you see breaking of bread or sorry, in this one, I think it's the Lord's Supper. You see that it says that they went from house to house breaking bread and then this one is breaking bread in the connection of the service.

So I believe that in that, there is a separation. So he's saying here, I would also say would be the Lord's Supper as well as sharing meals together because I think there's both are included. But Acts 2, you see a lot of the functioning of the church.

Acts 4, verses 36 to 37. Then Joseph, who was called by the apostles Barnabas, which means son of encouragement, a Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and he brought money and laid it at the apostles feet.

So you see that giving is actually a way. Now this is different than the giving that we said earlier. Before it was exalting God in our giving is giving God from our resources that we give it to God by giving it to the church so the church can function to serve others.

But this is actually a case where Barnabas sold what he had so that he could give to others. The purpose of it was to function to meeting other people's needs, okay, not the church's needs. So, as we mentioned serving, Acts 6, one through seven, we see here what many think is the case of the first deacons.

Now it was in those days that the disciples were increasing in number. A complaint by the Hellenists, now let me stop there, the Hellenists are Jewish people that lived in a Greek culture so they didn't live in, they weren't living in Jerusalem, okay.

So you had Jews that lived in Jerusalem, Jews that didn't and these were widows that were in a Greek culture, they didn't speak Hebrew and they were being treated different, okay. The complaint by the Hellenists, the Greek speaking Jews, rose up against the Hebrews, so the Hebrew speaking Jews, because of their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

So here what you have is a case where they would take care of the widows, this is the first welfare system, right, this was part of Christianity, not the government's role, the government didn't care for the widows but the church did and so they would have a daily distribution, well actually the synagogues did I should say because that's really where this came from and the Hellenist Jews, the Greek speaking Jews, were not being cared for within the church and the twelve were summoned the full number of the disciples and said it is not right that we should give up the preaching of the word of God to serve tables, therefore, and serving tables means to go out amongst all these people and basically provide their food, get food for them and bring it to them and all things like that.

Therefore brothers, pack, pick out from among you seven men of good repute full of the spirit and wisdom whom we will appoint to this day but we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word and what they said pleased the whole gathering and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit and Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parnimus and Nicolaus a proselyte of Antioch these they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid hands on them and the word of God continued to increase and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests came to be obedient to the faith.

So you see there this element of service that was included in how they served one another. You see that one of the things you see in this is remember we talked about the picture last class of the church being a body many members serving in different ways but all being one body here's where you see it.

The apostles said look we need to focus on the proclaiming of God's word if we're busy all day taking care of widows and these things it becomes something that distracts us from what we should be focused on and we need to be able to instruct you and therefore we need to get some men call out seven men to do this work.

Now those men whether they were the first deacons some say yes some say no whether they were or not what it is clear is that these men were serving one another. They were serving the widows. They were also serving the apostles in freeing the apostles up from having to deal with these things.

Another is praying Acts 12 5. So Peter was kept in prison but earnest prayer for him was made to God. By who? The church. So the church the church prayed to one another. Okay um so what we see there is the church participates together by fellowship by giving by learning or teaching by serving and by praying.

We also have relationships and you can look at this by all the one another's in the bible. Okay there's many of them. We're gonna go through them. Uh I'm not gonna give you all the scripture verses. Okay because there's there's.

Well alright we have them. Alright so let's go through some of them. Uh first James 5. James 5 is confessing false one to another. Do you see that there in James 5 16 therefore confess your sins one to another and pray for one another that you may be healed.

The prayers of a righteous man may uh avail of much. So you see there you see confess your sins confessing false or sins to one another. You also see praying uh for one another. You see in in first Thessalonians 5 11.

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up. So that build up is edify. So we should be encouraging one another. We should be edifying one another. Galatians 6 2 bear one another's burdens.

So we we should be bearing the burdens of one another. James 5 16 we already mentioned praying for one another. Ephesians uh 4 32 we should be kind to one another tender hearted forgive one another as another just as Christ forgave you.

So we should be kind to one another forgive one another. Ephesians 5 21 submit to one another. That's in the context by the way of wives submitting to their husbands. It's just before that by the way.

So wives submit to your husbands. Husbands love your wives. And what does it say before. We should all be submitting to one another. So we submit to one another uh 1 Peter 4 10 showing hostility to one another.

As each has received a gift use it to serve one another as good stewards of God. So we serve one another. Um Galatians 5 13 for you are called to freedom brothers only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh.

But through love serve one another. Then we have in 1 Thessalonians 4 18 therefore encourage one another with these words. Then we have uh 1 Thessalonians 5 11 where we're gonna. We already looked at that one to encourage one another.

Um we have to restore one another is part of Galatians 6 1 that we looked at brothers if anyone is caught in a trespass. Actually we didn't look at this one. Sorry it was Galatians 6 2. We looked at Galatians 6 1.

Brothers if anyone of you is caught in any transgression you who are spiritual should restore him in the spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourselves lest you be tempted. So we should be restoring one another.

We should be forgiving one another. Ephesians 4 32. Um Colossians 3 16 we should be admonishing one another. Um let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Teaching and admonishing. We have both teaching and admonishing one another.

Then we have Hebrews 3 13 but exalt one another every day. So we should be exalting one another. And then lastly in Hebrews 10. Uh sorry no Hebrews 10 is not the sorry Hebrews 10 not neglecting the meeting together as is the habit of some.

But encourage one another. So again we should encourage. And the last two is we should be loving one another. 1 Peter 1 22 having purified your soul by obedience in truth. For sincerely brother sincere brotherly love love one another earnestly from a pure heart.

We also see this in John. Uh 1 John 3 11. 1 John 3 11 says this. For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning that we should love one another. So you see all those one another. This is the way the church should be relating to one another.

Let me go through them real quick. Rapid fire. If you want you can email us. Just email us at academy at striving for eternity dot org. If you want that list I'll be happy to send it to you academy at striving for eternity dot org.

I'll send you the whole list. If you don't have the syllabus that would be the best way though. Get the syllabus and just look on page 4 you know. But here it is. Here's the list. I'll go. Rapid fire.

Confessing your faults to one another. Edify one another. Bear one another's burdens. Praying for one another. Be kind to one another. Submit to one another. Show hospitality to one another. Serve one another.

Comfort one another. Restore one another. Forgive one another. Admonish one another. Teach one another. Exhorting one another. Loving one another. Those are the functions. This is how the church should function.

Is your church functioning that way. Well before you blame others look in the mirror. I mean are you functioning that way. You know what. If you function that way maybe others will. So these. This is the way the church should be functioning to edify one another.

To teach one another right. The edifying and equipping of the saints. And then another one that I have is so we have. We edify and equip the saints by participating with one another by participation by relationships.

And the third is through serving one another. Okay through serving. So participation relationships serving. Those are the three areas that we edify the church. Now what I want to do here is focus a bulk of our time in Romans chapter 12 before we turn there.

You'll also see this in 1 Corinthians 12. It makes it really easy to remember 1 Corinthians 12. Romans 12. Those are the passages. But let's read Romans 12 3 -8. We're going to focus there in those verses.

So turn to Romans 12. And it says here. Romans 12 3 -8. For the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think but to think with sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we are many members and the members do not all have the same function. So we thought many are one body in Christ and individually members individually members one of another having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

Let us use them if prophecy in proportion to our faith if service in our serving that one who teaches in his teaching the one who exhorts in his exhortations the one who contributes in generosity the one who leads with zeal the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

So what you see there is you see and we're going to spend a little bit of time here. But we serve Christ in a local church when we utilize the spiritual gifts as good stewards of God. Let's look at what 1 Peter 4 .10 says.

1 Peter 4 .10 says. As we received a gift. So okay as each. Sorry as each has received a gift. So this tells us that each I believe this is very clear that every believer each of us that knows Christ receives a gift.

We are to use it. We don't hide it. We use it. We are to use it according to serve one another as good stewards of God's varied grace. So here's what you end up seeing here what is clear. And this is the issue that you see in some of the charismatic church.

I'm not going to go into you know a whole thing on this. I just want to point out some differences because you can't talk about spiritual gifts without addressing this. When some charismatic churches argue that everyone should have the same gift everyone should speak in tongues.

What they're doing is saying that everyone should have a single gift. When what Romans Romans 12 says and 1 Corinthians 12 says the emphasis of 1 Corinthians 12 is that we should be loving one another.

That's the primary thing we're all going to have different gifts. Is everyone an eye. Is everyone an ear. Is everyone a head. No every part of the body is different. Serves a different function. You saw that in Romans 12 everyone everyone if you are a believer in Christ you have a gift to the faith.

And this is what it says in Romans. Which is why I like reading that one to whatever faith you have serve with that gift. That's the point. Will you gain more faith? Yes. Will you gain more experience?

Yes. But you are to serve the church. This is not this idea that you sit on the sidelines until you become more spiritual. God has gifted you. If you are a believer serve because every person serves in a specific way in the church.

Everyone has their own function that God has put them in that church to serve. That's why it's a unique function a unique gifting. God gives each of us a unique amount. Now here's the thing with these spiritual gifts.

Let me let me just make this really clear when you look at the spiritual gifts every one of us is commanded to teach but teaching will come more easily to those who are gifted to teach. Every one of us is commanded to exhort but those who are gifted it's gonna come easy more easy.

Everyone of us is commanded to give but those that are gifted to do so it's gonna come a little bit easier it's gonna be more of a desire you have some who are commanded to leave it's a giftedness but we are all commanded to do that we're all commanded to do all of these things, okay?

Every gift is a command, except for some of those ones that were spiritual gifts that were for a period of time, I believe, okay? But all these gifts that are mentioned in this passage are ones that are commanded, we should all do them, which is that some are gonna come easier.

Now, there is a difference between a spiritual gift and a talent. I have a talent to be organized. I did it, I mean, from you, everything had to be in the right place. I mean, when I would go, I know, this is pathetic, and you're going to laugh at me, and I understand that, but it's who I am.

When I was like in first grade, I remember all the kids at recess would run out to go play after lunch, and they'd just drop their lunchboxes. Do you guys even know what lunchboxes are anymore? Yeah, we didn't have lunch served to us back in those days.

You brought lunch. If you didn't bring lunch, you didn't eat. Now, we had a lunchbox, and it bugged me that everyone would drop their lunchbox on the ground and run and play because they were just all over the place.

Everyone couldn't wait to play if they just dropped them. I would spend the entire recess organizing all the lunchboxes in size order, largest to the left, smallest to the right. Every day, that's what I did.

I mean, I just sat by myself, and it had to be organized. My sister hated the fact that everything in my room was always put in the right place because my mother would always be like, why can't you keep your room nice and neat like Andrew?

I had a friend of mine who came over once to help me move, and he's like, even his attic is organized. That is something that's just natural to me. I had it at birth. That's a talent. Music's not a talent.