11 - Lesson 5: The Church, Part 1

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's School of Discipleship. We are in our lessons on an introduction to discipling. We are glad to have you with us. We hope that you find these lessons valuable, that they help you not only in trying to disciple somebody but in other areas of life as well, not only trying to teach you some of the basics of Christian doctrine, the foundations of a Christian belief, but also trying to give to you some insights that may help you in a lot of different areas when training other people up, when teaching them about the things of God, your children, homeschoolers, people in church.

It's always good to remember that not everybody, especially in church, that not everybody grew up with a church background. And so, that is the thing, is that we kind of have to always have that in our minds.

That we kind of tend to think everyone has been around church as much as maybe we have been. We've been around for a while. And so, we've got to remember that not everyone is at the same spiritual level as us and walk as us.

So, as we do that, we're trying to constantly remind you in ways to think the way a new believer would think, remembering that they don't know as much as we might think. So, if you have your copy of Growing in Grace, that is the book that we are using here to basically facilitate the discipling process, you can pick up a copy of it at our store if you want to.

We have them available. You can get them in large quantities. You can use them for homeschooling. You can use them with your children as a way of discipling your children. You can use them in your church.

You can get multiple copies. If you want to get one copy that we're going through here in class that helps you to pay attention to what basically we're going to do is fill in the blanks so that you can then teach this as well.

So, that becomes something that you have. So, if you grab your copy, we're going through, we need to do basically a review from last week, something you always want to do with your discipling, the person you're discipling is to review when you start a new section.

Why? Well, for one reason what you want to do is you want to get them talking back to you. Okay, you don't want your kids talking back to you. No, you do. You want them to recite back what they understand.

So, let's put up a quick little, actually we first have to start with our homework. Alright, so if we could, we have a memory verse to start with. This should be good for all of you, so you really shouldn't read this, you should have it memorized.

So, in whatever translation you have it memorized, go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you, and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

That is the, I hope you all said that out loud with me. You want your student to do that. Let's take an overview of last week's class though, just to remember what we talked about with baptism, and that's cool, you can see, look, if I put my hand, where is it, right here, you can see my hand, look, there's the monitor, whoop, see, I didn't knock it over, it's right there, okay, that's what I get for playing with the engineer who is, you know, didn't put a, I guess, didn't block that out.

So, let's do a quick review of what we have here. We talked about this before, but, last week, but we talked about the way of doing, basically, that you would be able to review this with the student to basically remind them how to, you know, what you talked about, and that's really what this one is for.

And so, here what you want to do is remind them what baptism is, we went over that, and baptism is, basically, you want to remind them that baptism is just going to be a remembering of what, you know, what Christ did on that cross, that His death, His burial, His resurrection, and that that was a picture of our new life in Christ.

We talked about why it's important, so we mentioned that, you can go through the points under there with them. We talked about who should be baptized, we said that only believers should be baptized, and every believer should be baptized, kind of working our way up the stairs there.

We talked about when they should be baptized, and they should be baptized, basically, as soon as they're saved. And then we talked about how, this was a more controversial issue, but how should they be baptized, and that was, we stated, by water immersion, okay, baptism by water.

The Church as the Body of Christ and Local Church Membership

So, let us start this week with lesson number five, where we are going to talk about the church and serving our Lord. This is going to be about serving within the church. So, we're going to give a little bit of a definition of what the church is.

Actually, if you look here, you'll see in the outline what we have. Many people, many believers or people often have a variety of questions concerning church membership, whether we need to be members or not.

Some of the most frequently asked questions is, what is the church? Is it the building? Is it the people? Is it the denomination? What is the church? Which church should I join? What criteria should I use for a basis of choosing a church?

What are believers to do in the church? What has the church function? This study is going to be designed to answering some of those questions, all right? So, that's going to be our goal here today. We are going to start with a definition of the church, a definition of the church.

Now, I will say that if you want to get a pretty good definition of the church, just go to the website down there where you can also, if I didn't mention it, you can enroll in the academy and get copies of the syllabus yourself.

We will have some pretty cool news coming up hopefully before the end of the year, some really exciting news with the academy. We're working on a totally new section of the website, actually a total new website.

I hope to get it up before the end of the year. I don't know if it will, if that section of it, but it's going to be really cool when we get it and that will be for enrolled students only. But, so, we're going to try to bring that in with the new year, but we do have basically the church, oh the website, right.

So, on the website is a, under the systematic theology, there is a section on the church or the ecclesiology and that is going to have an overview of the word church throughout time. I'm working on a book that should be published, we hope soon.

I got one more chapter to finish up that's kind of a systematic theology primer and that will go into a little bit more than what we have on the website because I expanded what we put up on the web. So, let us look in our Growing in Grace book and see what it says here under a definition of the church.

The word church, okay, in our Bible is used to translate a Greek word, ecclesia, okay, ecclesia. Now, ecclesia is a term that means an assembly of people for a called out, that have been called out of the community for a specific purpose.

The first time we see the word ecclesia being used is in Greece where they used it to, basically it was the purpose of people getting together was the purpose of voting. Everyone had a requirement to vote on things of the community and the ecclesia was when the men of the community would come together to vote on the affairs.

Because they were a republic and that's what they did. So, that is the first time that we see the word used, ecclesia, and it changed over time. By this time that we see in the first century, nearly every time actually in the New Testament that the word is used, it is to refer to a specific group of people, okay.

And so, you're going to see that from the time of Christ, the word starts morphing and changing. Ecclesia goes from a general assembly of people for a called out purpose to a more specific group of people in the New Testament.

We're just going to focus on the New Testament, but we'll get a little bit more in when we look at the local church of a definition of how it's continued to morph through the Reformation age and even into today.

But there's certain things that we see in the New Testament, the specific reference of people that were given. And we see first is that the first thing that defined these special group of people, the ecclesia, this called, this meeting, okay.

So, is the church the service? Yeah. Is church the believers? Yeah. Is church a building? Kind of. You see, it's kind of all those things, but church really, it's not so much the building though that's how people in our vernacular refer to it, the church they would think of as the building.

But in the New Testament time, ecclesia had a reference, as you see there, letter A, have all been born again through faith in Jesus Christ. By the New Testament times, almost every time that ecclesia is used, I think there's one reference to it in Ephesus, in the town of Ephesus used for when they gathered either for the theater or for a meeting or something like that.

So, I think there may be one reference that is in the New Testament that's used in a secular sense. But everything else we see, it refers to people who have been born again through Jesus Christ. Second, have been baptized, I would say by immersion, as a testimony of their faith.

Let's take a look at one example of that. We're going to look at many. Let's start with Acts chapter 2. It is, those who received his word were baptized and were added to, well, this doesn't say, some translations will say added or some manuscripts say added to the church.

Some say just added that day about 3 ,000 souls. So, what you have there is the idea that there were 3 ,000 souls added to the church. Alright, let's look at the next one, and that is letter C there. Letter C is, have separated themselves from the life of the world.

So, we see believers, born again believers that have been baptized and have separated themselves to a life of Christ. Separated from their old life to, okay, to a new life in Christ. Number four, letter D, are committed to the building up of the saints and to the worship of the Savior, Ephesians chapter 4.

There we go. I don't know what the double flashing was. That was neat though. He gave the apostles and prophets. So, you're just going to do one more flash? Thank you. It's hard to read the screen when you're doing that.

Okay, he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. The body of Christ is a reference to the church, the ecclesia.

Until we all obtain to the unity of the faith and have knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by every wind and by every wave and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by man cunning, by craftiness and deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head of Christ. So, you see there that we should be about the business of building up the church. We also see this in 1 Timothy.

If we go there, come until I come, until I come. I can't read, can I? Until I come, devote yourself to public reading of Scripture, to exhortation, to teaching. Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you.

Practice these things. Immerse yourself. That's baptized, by the way. So that you may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by doing so you will save yourself and your hearers.

So, what you see there is that we should be committed with the building up of the saints. And as we go through this definition, I hope that this, even though we'll look in more detail next week at this, I hope it helps you to see some of what the church's function should be.

Alright, that this functioning is even within this definition giving you a little bit of an insight. Alright, letter E there, the church establishes qualified pastors for teaching and the administration of church and deacons for the service of the church.

Now, note that the title bishop or overseer, elder, and pastor are all used to refer to the same office. We're going to look at some verses on that in a moment. Now, I will say before we look at the passages of scripture on this, that this is why for those who argue that going out on the street corner and preaching the gospel is the church, I argue where are your pastors, where are your deacons?

A church functions by having an establishment of elders or pastors and deacons. And if you don't have that, that's not what we see as the church. Now, 1 Timothy 3, 1 -13 is a long passage that I'd encourage you to read.

If I was sitting down with someone that I was discipling, I would have them read that. We're going to look at 1 Timothy 5 -17, and we're going to do that because we want to show this. But 1 Timothy 3 basically deals with the qualifications of a pastor.

1 Timothy 5, and in there, just put it up, I'll just read the first verse. It says, this is a trustworthy saying, if anyone aspires to the office of an overseer, he desires a noble task. So, there was that.

Here you see, let elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor in the preaching and teaching. The idea here is those who are doing the preaching and teaching should not only have the honor of the people in the congregation, but have the honor of a payment.

That's the thought there. You see in 1 Peter, 1 Peter 5, 1 -4, Shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercise oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive an unfading crown of glory. So, a pastor is not to be beating up the sheep, not to be browbeating them, not to be trying to be forceful with their authority, but to be loving and caring.

Now, I said that we see the verses, the titles used interchangeably. We have Acts chapter 20. This is kind of a lengthy one. So, let's turn, let's just go to Titus 1 -5 if we could do that one. Titus 1 -5 says, You may appoint what is above reproach, the husband and one wife.

And so, this gets into the qualifications again. But the reason I want to show you here is notice in verse 5, appoint who? Appoint elders. Verse 7, for an overseer. Okay? So, here you see both of those in use.

There's one that's even more so, and that's 1 Peter 5, 1 and 2. So, I exhort the elders among you as a fellow elder. So, we see the word elder used, okay? To partake in the glory which is revealed. Shepherd, there's the word for pastor, shepherd.

And then exercising oversight, that's the overseer or the bishop. So, you see in this passage, these two verses, you see all three of these terms used for the same office. I understand that some churches have pastors, they're paid, elders, they're not.

The dilemma I have with that is it kind of creates a hierarchy. Some churches believe you have the paid pastor, the senior pastor they call him. Everyone else is under him. I don't think that's biblically either.

You have pastors and you have deacons. Those are the two offices. All right, let's continue on because we've got a lot of verses to get through here. Letter F, reach the lost for Christ in the local church evangelism and personal evangelism.

This is what we see in the church. In Acts chapter 1, we see it was the church that went out. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. That's where they were at the time.

So, it's Jerusalem, all of Judea. Judea is a little bit further region from Jerusalem and they would be mostly Jewish people. And Samaria, now the Samaritans were people who were from Jewish descent that intermarried.

They were left in the northern territories when Assyria carried Israel off into captivity. And so, Samaritans and Jews did not get along but they were better than the Gentiles, which is to the end of the earth.

So, you see here a progression. Jerusalem, those that were in Jerusalem to the rest of the Jews, to kind of the half-Jews, the intermarried, the half-breeds, to the end of the world to the Gentiles.

You see an expanding and in a Jewish mindset, that would be like a radical thought. And that was the idea is that the gospel should be spread out. It is part of the function of the church to spread the gospel.

I understand not all churches are doing that. The way they're doing it is come to church and that's their evangelism. That was not the evangelism. Do you notice the difference? This is not sending missionaries out to the farthest reaches of the world.

This was the church going. We are to get out the doors and go. That's where we go. That's where the mission field is. It's not to invite people to church and hope that your pastor will preach a message that this unbeliever is going to hear the gospel and receive.

No, and that's perfectly fine to do, but we are to go out into the world and preach the gospel. And so, that was letter F. Letter G, exercise godly love and biblical discipline over believers. Did someone say that?

Yes, Matthew 18. Let's not, we won't read it, but Matthew 18, 15 to 17 talks about church discipline. Thank you. I have it here. We have this you can get from our store if you wanted. What this is, is if you ever want to know a good way to deal with someone that is, you need to reconcile with.

This two page, it's a kind of a hard stock, kind of nice, actually acts as a nice fan too. Kind of a nice hard stock, glossy covering. And the nice thing about it, what it does is it provides you a little flow chart of a way to go about following the steps of Matthew 18.

And what to do before you get to Matthew 18, but that's the idea there. But 1 Corinthians 5 would be another one where we see church discipline. Difference there is because in 1 Corinthians 5, Paul is saying kind of an abbreviated version of Matthew 18 because of the fact that the church is getting its name slandered by the acts of an individual who is sleeping with his father's wife.

And so because the sin is public, they needed to step up the process. But the process I think was still followed. Letter H, the church is defined by those people who keep themselves pure from worldliness, false doctrine, and false teachers.

Okay, so we keep ourselves pure. Let's look at some of those passages. 2 Corinthians 6, do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? What fellowship does light with darkness?

What accord has Christ with Baal? What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people.

Therefore go out into the midst and be separated from them, and separate them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing. Then I will welcome you and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons of God.

Now, we'll read Jude 3 and 4 and then I want to come back to this one. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write to you, appealing to you to contend for the faith, that which was once delivered to all the saints.

Certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designed for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, when you're dealing with a newer believer, that passage in 2 Corinthians 6 is going to be one you're going to probably deal with. If you're dealing with a new believer, especially someone who is saved as an adult, you're going to have some questions that probably come up.

One, well, I'm married to someone who's not a believer, or I'm engaged to someone who's not a believer, or I'm dating someone who's not a believer, or I'm in business with someone who's not a believer.

What does this passage say I must do? Do I divorce my wife? No. Paul talks elsewhere to the Corinthians that if you're now in a state of being married and you're saved, you don't get divorced, you stay in the state that you're currently in.

But if you're engaged to an unbeliever, I would say put off that wedding date. Now, here's the thing that you have with this. You will have this with someone who is engaged or dating an unbeliever. You may have that unbelieving partner.

Suddenly, when you say, hey, look, I've got to call it off if you're not a Christian. Suddenly, you know what they do? They don't want anything to do with you, or they fake it. Okay? One of those two is typically the reaction.

Either they say, well, you know what? I don't want to compete with Jesus. See ya. Okay, that's one. But the other, and I see this very often, is that because of a desire to be with you, what they are tempted to do is go to church, walk the walk, talk the talk, but not actually be regenerate.

Okay? This is where I like to encourage people that time and truth go hand in hand. Give them enough time and the truth will be known. But don't commit yourself to that marriage until you're really sure that they're a believer.

Because a lot of people fake it. Now, you're in business with somebody. I had this with a friend of mine who got saved and he had two unbelieving partners in a business together. And he was struggling with what to do because he actually owned the business and he was just bringing them in as partners.

And so, what should he do? And he chose to continue with the partnership because it was kind of already moved along where he felt that if he pulled out of it now, there might be a lawsuit. And that was the decision that he had made.

But that's going to be a tricky one. If you're already in a business with an unbeliever, does this mean you must quit? Some people interpret it that way. I believe this is more of a long-term partnership.

I think you could do business with the unbelievers. But I think that in the context is dealing more with a marriage issue, dating. Well, we might think of it as a dating issue. So, but it's going to keep, you know, but it's the idea, keeping ourselves away from being, you know, with yoking ourselves, tying ourselves to unbelievers, okay, where they're making decisions for our life.

Lastly, the definition of church is have a mutual love and concern for one another. Did you know that? Did you know that in the church, we're supposed to do a lot of one-anothering in loving one another and having a mutual concern for one another?

Galatians chapter 6 talks about this in the first three verses. Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should gossip about them, tear them down and beat them up. No, that's not what it says, does it?

Wow. Okay, what does that say? You who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of, what's that? Oh, gentleness. Wow, a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, least you be tempted to. That's actually very good because a lot of times when people are bearing their sins, see it says bear one another's burdens so that to fulfill the law of Christ.

Well, sometimes when people bear burdens one to another, they give a little bit too much details and it causes some others to stumble. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

Notice this is not the focus on the person who is spiritually weak. It's the focus on those that are saying they're spiritually strong. You who are spiritual, you who say you're spiritually mature, prove it basically.

How do you prove it? Well, when you see a sinning brother or sister, you don't beat them up. You don't berate them. You don't make them feel like they're not really a Christian. You don't make them feel little.

You don't gossip about them. You don't go talking about them. You don't tell them they got to stop doing all ministry because they, you know, they didn't do something that they just weren't aware of and things like that.

No, you who are spiritual, you come alongside them with a spirit of gentleness and you bear their burden. You're the one that's supposed to be more spiritual, right? They're not. So if they're weaker, you should be coming alongside them and helping them in a mutual love and concern for their well-being, not for yourself.

Selfishness will tear them down because it makes you feel better. Love builds them up even if it doesn't make you look better in the eyes of others. Okay, so let us go. We went to the definition of the church.

The Importance of the Local Church and Church Membership

Let's go to the importance of the church. Let's bring that up, the importance of the church. And there we see here, when we look at the importance of the church, we say, have here in the notes, about 100 of the 106 times that the word ekklesia is used, it refers to a local body of believers.

This places the importance on the local church, all right? And so what you see is this is showing if this 100 times out of 106 says that that's pretty important, okay? That's the thing. Now this, as I said, the definition of the church originally went from ekklesia, just a general assembly to a more specific group of people.

And then what we end up seeing is as time went on, theologians start referring to the church in two different ways. The local church and the universal church, or sometimes you'll hear it referred to as the visible church and the invisible church.

The local or visible church is that church which you see, that church which gathers together and that could be filled with unbelievers. We see much of the letters that are written to local churches are encouraging people to examine their faith to see if they're saved.

So the local visible church is that local gathering of people that meet for a church service in a building, say, and there could be unbelievers there. But the universal or invisible church is only those believers all around the world.

That is the body of believers all around the world universally. So what you started to see is that this change, again, the term church got more and more specific through time. So it went from a general assembly to a general assembly that came for the worship of Jesus Christ that did all these things that we just got done talking about.

Now into looking at a more specific, the local church gathering as opposed to those, just those believers but the local church. And then during the Reformation, this isn't in notes but just for your information, in the Reformation they said there were three things that would define a church, three minimum things a church must do.

The preaching of God's Word, the sacraments or the ordinances, the baptism and Lord's Supper, and church discipline. All right, I think that later in history as theology continued to progress, we then saw that a further more specific defining of it being that the church is not Israel, a separation of that thought, that Roman Catholic teaching.

So let us look in here, letter A. We have some blanks for you to fill in. Now you guys have been going, hey, I haven't had a lot of writing to do. Now you get a chance to do your writing for those who look forward to that.

Letter A here, the Bible teaches that believers should not forsake the assembling, forsake the assembling of themselves. That's your blanks there. This passage is in Hebrews 10. So we should not forsake, that's your first blank.

Assembling is the second. Not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some but encouraging one another and all the more as the day draws near. So do not neglect to come together and meet. So we shouldn't be forsaking the assembly.

So basically don't neglect meeting. So you could say neglect the meeting or forsake the assembling, either one. Alright, and so let's look at next. We have that the believers in the New Testament were automatically added to the church, to the church, the ecclesia.

Believers were automatically added to the church. Look at this in Acts chapter 2. You see here, praising God and having favor with all people and the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

So you see there that they were added to the church. That's, that would be church membership. Notice that there is no biblical record of a New Testament church who is not part of a local church. So a New Testament Christian, sorry.

Every New Testament Christian that we know of was tied to a local church, alright. And notice that they were added to it. This has the idea of church membership. I understand some churches don't have that, but that is the case.

That's the biblical case, I'll say. Then we have letter C. The church is to be the pillar and ground of the truth. Those are your blanks there. Pillar, ground, and truth are your three blanks. Let's look at 1 Timothy, 1 Timothy 3 .15.

If I delay, you may know how you ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, a pillar and buttress of the truth. So it could be pillar and ground or pillar and buttress, pillar and foundation.

Those are different translations that people use. Letter D. The church was given men gifted for teaching and pastoring so that they could equip, that's your first blank, equip the saints that they in turn could do the work of ministry, that's your next blank, ministry for the edifying, that's your third blank, edifying the body of Christ.

Let's look at Ephesians 4 and see this. So it's not the job of the pastor to do everything. The pastor doesn't do all the work. The pastor, as you see here, he gave, he being Christ, gave the apostles and the prophets and the evangelists and the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints to do the work of the ministry for the building up or the edifying of the body of Christ.

So you see, that's the role. So the pastor is to equip you who sit in the church to do the work of the ministry and to build one another up. It's not your pastor's job to do all the work or to do all the building up.

That's our job as the church. Letter E. All the epistles from Romans to Revelation were written with churches in mind, with the possible exception of Philemon who is written to an individual. Some would say the same for 1st, 2nd, 3rd John, or at least 2nd and 3rd John, but those seem to also be written with a church in mind.

Letter F. Christ loved the church, that's your blank there, the church, and gave himself for it. And you see that in Ephesians 5 .25. Letter G, we'll wrap up with this and pick up the rest of it next week.

The church is the God-ordained governing body over the activities of believers. What kind of activities? Well, they kept the roll call. We already looked at Acts 2, but if we could look at 1 Timothy 5.

This is a long one. I don't want to read all of it, but just the idea of what you have here is that there is this idea there's widows and there's widows that are on the roll. And so what's that roll? That roll is a membership.

So 1 Timothy 5, the widows are on the roll. It's known who they're going to care for because the members are known to the church body. Acts 2, they were added to the church. The idea of church membership.

Membership is important. We're going to look into this more next week, but I think membership to a church is important. Accountability, that's where you should have accountability. Churches that don't have you have to be a member to serve don't have accountability.

There's an accountability to that. I think I actually believe, and when I pastored a church, I did not have people who are non-members serving in ministry. That is something for our members. They've committed themselves to the body, therefore they have the privilege of serving that body.

Don't like these people that just show up to church and they want to act like they're part of the body when they're not part of the local body because they don't want to commit themselves to the body.

So, continuing on, the church is the God-ordained governing body over the activities of keeping the role. They had officers, as we saw previously. Acts 14, 23, Philippians 1, 1, 1 Timothy 3, 1 -13, Titus 1, verse 5, you see it, there were officers of the church.

They sent out missionaries, Acts 13. They sent out missionaries. They didn't invite people to church. They receive funds for the support of the ministries and the needs. That's part of what would happen in the church.

Those guys that want to say that they are church on the street, do they collect an offering? Most street preachers don't want to collect an offering because they don't want to be seen as doing it for money, which is, I would say, the right thing.