The Centrality of the Church #1 - "Making God's Perspective on the Church Yours" (1 Tim 3:14-16)

The Church as God's Household, the Living God's Assembly, and the Pillar of Truth

Have a Bible and I hope you do take it in turn with me to 1st Timothy and chapter 3. 1st Timothy chapter 3. 1st Timothy chapter 3 and verses 14 through 16. 1st Timothy chapter 3 verses 14 through 16. If you've got one of the red Bibles we give away that's on page 1052.

Page 1052 1st Timothy chapter 3 and verses 14 to 16 and if you're able to do so can I invite you to stand with me one more time to stand at this point in our service to show our commitment to the Word of God and our reverence for it.

So 1st Timothy chapter 3 beginning in verse 14 and reading through to verse 16. Brothers and sisters these are God's words. I write these things to you hoping to come to you soon but if I should be delayed I have written so that you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God's household which is the Church of the Living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.

And most certainly the mystery of godliness is great. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

Pray that God will bless that reading of his Word and give us understanding of it. Allow me to pray, ask for the Spirit's help and we'll get to work in God's Word this morning. Let's pray together. Well Heavenly Father we thank you for your Word.

We thank you for the clarity that it brings. We thank you for the guidance that it brings. And Father we would simply ask that as we open up your Word that you would speak to us through it. That as we think about a subject that we can be tempted to take for granted, I ask that your Spirit would help us to grapple with and to understand the glory of the church, this wonderful and amazing body that you have put together.

And Father as you think about the church this morning we want to take a moment to pray for all of the churches here in our valley. Lord you know the state of the church as the Bible in Revelation 1 pictures you as the Lord of the church who walks in its midst.

Lord you know the state of every local church. Father we thank you for those churches that are being faithful, who are holding to your Word. We may not agree on every secondary and third level detail, but for those who are indeed preaching your gospel and seeking to be faithful to your Word, we thank you for them and we pray for continued strength, pray for continued passion on the part of those who are involved.

Pray that you would raise up men who would lead the churches in the ministry of the Word and in the ministry of service. Father we pray even for those churches that may be struggling for one reason or another.

Lord you are the life of the church. You give to it its strength, its vitality. So we ask Father that for those churches that may be struggling or may be beset by one weakness or another, we pray that you would bring reformation and revival.

Father we pray that for all of us that as we seek to serve you in this valley and to see those who don't know you come to know you. Father in the words of the psalm we pray that you would revive us again, that we would live in your sight.

And Father we thank you that you give us the means of grace as one of the ways in which that happens and so as we partake of the primary means of grace now through the hearing of your Word, pray that you would use this time in all of our lives to make us more like you.

We ask these things in Jesus name and for his sake, Amen. Please be seated. I want for a moment to have you join me back in the year 2020. Someone just said do we have to? For the purpose of this thought experiment, yes we do.

I think we can all agree that 2020 was the year that the world changed in a lot of ways. I'm not convinced all of it for the better but that's a whole other conversation for another time. Of course we all kind of grimace when we think of 2020 because that was the year of COVID.

When COVID hit, it was what, February, March of 2020. I remember the year. It started pretty well. We were expecting Gareth. Laura was well down the road on that front. February 2020 was awesome. I got to go back to the UK.

I went to go celebrate my dad's 60th birthday. I was there for a couple of weeks, caught up with the church that's so dear to my heart that I was raised in and spent time with family and friends. 2020 started really well.

Got home, went to the Shepherds Conference like I do every year, had a great time. Somehow didn't catch COVID there with thousands of people but again, conversation for another time. And then came home and within weeks the world as we knew it changed.

At that time our church was less than a year old. Our church was planted in June of 2019. So we were less than a year old when all of this was happening. It was already a really tumultuous time in the life of our church and whatever tumult we were experiencing was made worse by the fact that we were, at least at the time thought, banned from meeting together.

But the months that followed, a lot was happening in the life of our church and it forced on my part some serious introspection about what I understood about the church. You see, as I've had a little more time on my hands than usual, I began to realize as I had time to think and to study and to pray and to reflect, I began to realize that it's all too easy to assume a healthy understanding of what a church is.

On my own personal part, for almost 10 years I was a member of two very healthy churches. And so I just, yeah, I can say this. I assumed more or less that, okay, if we all just know the pastors know what they're doing, so as long as I just kind of just follow them in what they're doing, yeah, the church is healthy.

I don't need to think about the internal workings of a church as such, what a church is. We come together, we've got leaders who open up the Bible and explain it and we're all kind of serving in different areas.

Yeah, I don't need to think about this. But now I was in a position where, okay, I'm involved in leadership in a church plant. And honestly, I'm not quite as clear on the church as I should be. Kind of a problem when, fast forward to May of 2021, I start serving as a teaching pastor of the church.

Now I really need to be clear on this. And so I did what I always do when I don't understand something. I commit to studying and praying about it. And as I did, I began to realize something. I began to realize that the church, and when I use the church, I'm gonna use the word church in two interchangeable senses.

Both local churches, like we are gathered now, this is a local church, a local expression of the church. And also the universal church, all of God's people who have placed their faith in Jesus and are brought together into a family called the church.

I'm gonna use it in both senses. I'll leave you to figure out which is which as I'm going. But as I began to study and to pray, I began to realize that my conception of the church was that the church was a part of my Christian life.

But as I began to read the New Testament and as I began to read the reflections of God's people for the last, really, 2 ,000 years and how they viewed the church, I began to realize that the church, in God's design, isn't meant to be just part of our Christian lives.

It's supposed to be central to our Christian lives. And I began to realize that, in fact, not only is it meant to be central, that it's more central than we often realize. And so I began to read old books on the church because I began to realize very quickly I couldn't really trust a lot of modern stuff on the church.

So I started to read really old books on what the church was. And what I discovered was that older writers had a view of the church that was very different to how I viewed the church. I began to notice that the writers of generations past saw from the New Testament that the church was at the center of the Christian life.

That it wasn't just a part of our Christian lives, but the real stuff of Christianity happens outside of church. But that the church was at the center of the Christian life. Allow me to give you one example.

Back in the 1860s, a Scottish Presbyterian theologian called James Batterman wrote a book called The Church of Christ. Good book on the whole, I disagree with parts here and there, but especially the first half of the book, I think is excellent.

And in that book Batterman says this. It's gonna be a bit of a long quote, but follow me here. Batterman says, quote, alone with God, I must realize the Bible as if it were a message from him to my solitary self, singled out and separated from other men, and feeling my own individual responsibility in receiving and rejecting it.

His simple point is that when you come to God's Word, God's Word is first and foremost speaking to you. It's not speaking to the person next to you, it's not speaking to the person you think needs to hear it.

When we encounter God's Word, we must first and foremost view God's Word as speaking to us. But he goes on, he says, but the Bible does not stop here. It deals with man, not only as a solitary unit in his relation to God, but also as a member of a spiritual society, gathered together in the name of Jesus.

It is not a mere system of doctrines to be believed and precepts to be observed by each individual Christian independently of others and apart from others. It is a system of doctrines and precepts designed and adapted for a society of Christians.

This agreement and cooperation of men holding the same faith and the same Savior is not an accidental or a voluntary union, when he says voluntary, he says that you can choose to do it or not, which has grown up of itself.

It is a union designed beforehand, appointed from the beginning by God, and plainly contemplated and required on every page of the New Testament Scriptures. In other words, this idea of the church is not a negotiable part of Christianity, Bannerman argued.

He says that you see it required on every page of the New Testament. But that's not all he had to say. He goes on, there are precepts in the Bible addressed, not to believers separately or individually, but to believers associated together in a corporate society.

There are duties that are enjoined upon the body and not upon the members of the body which it is imposed. There are powers assigned to the community, to which the individuals of the community are strangers.

There is a government, an order, a code of laws, a system of ordinances and offices described in Scripture which none other than, excuse me, which can apply to none other than a collective association of Christians.

Bannerman goes on, this I'm gonna put on screen, I want you to see it. He goes on and he says, without the existence of a church or of a body of believers as contradistinguished, in other words, as opposed to from believers individually, very much of what is contained in the Bible would be unintelligible and without practical excuse me, practical application.

Let me read that last sentence again. Very much of what is contained in the Bible would be unintelligible and without practical application. For a moment, I just want to ask one question. What is your response when you read words like that?

How does that hit you? Normally I don't ask that question when I preach, but I am gonna ask it in this instance. And I'd like to say that Bannerman is alone in that, but as I read authors from the past, they all seem, Baptist and Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist, early church fathers who had no strict denomination, they all seem to say statements like this.

And I'll be honest, can I tell you how I felt when I first started reading stuff like this? It made me very uncomfortable. But, I was talking to my in-laws about this yesterday, our natural nature, when something is uncomfortable, we just want to get rid of it.

Instead of asking the question, why does this make me feel uncomfortable? As some of you know, a couple of months ago I was having an issue with my foot. I was limping around like I couldn't walk. It really hurt at points.

But my response was not, although I felt like it on some days, cut my foot off. The response was, hmm I should probably go talk to my doctor and figure out what's going on here. Why? Because the feeling of discomfort isn't something that you should ignore, it's supposed to lead you to action.

And so I asked myself, why do I find this so uncomfortable? And then it began to hit me. The reason I find this uncomfortable is, as much as I love God's Word, and as much as I love the church, I don't have as high a view of the church as some of our fathers in the faith did.

And I began to think, well why don't I? And then it hit me, well I'm a child of my times. Think about this, we often use this phrase, and I don't think it's a bad phrase in and of itself. We'll talk about our personal relationship with Jesus, or our personal relationship with the Savior, which by the way, if you're a Christian, you do have a personal relationship with Jesus.

You do have a personal relationship with the Savior. That's a glorious and wonderful privilege of being a Christian. Oftentimes, and maybe you've encountered this if you've been around church enough, we kind of talk about our personal relationship with Jesus as though that's the important part.

The church part is, at best, a happy by-product of that. And the reality is, that I think we've lost something of the centrality of the church in the plans and purposes of God. That's why for the beginning of, well the end of this year and the beginning of next year, this Sunday and next, I wanted to take some time to deal with what I've entitled, recovering the centrality of the church.

Because I want to put it to you, that the church is not just a, you know, by-product of our relationship with Jesus, that actually it's an essential part of that relationship. But I think we can agree, if you look around the church by and large, not every Christian loves the church.

Some love the church, and I happen to think that if you're here, you probably are among those folks, so that's great. But we can agree, there are lots of Christians who don't necessarily love the church.

And so for a moment, I want you to think with me. Let's think about some reasons why people might not love the church. Why might some people struggle with the idea of the church? I'll try and make this quick, but I have got five reasons, I think, and there are a lot more we could add.

I think for one thing, individualism is a big part of it. Individualism is just a fancy way of saying that we primarily view ourselves as individuals and individuals alone. I'm speaking to a primarily American audience.

If I use the term rugged individualism, most of you know what that means. It's a good thing in a lot of ways. But think about this for a moment when we think about the church. American culture, and as a result, Western culture, since in lots of ways America sets the thermostat, if you will, for lots of cultures around the world.

American culture, and as a result, Western culture as a whole, prizes rugged individualism to varying degrees above everything else. Which is great if you want to climb the corporate ladder, if you want to buy a house or start a business, that is great and wonderful.

The fact that you are not necessarily dependent on other people to be able to realize your dreams in that sense, that's a great and wonderful thing we should be thankful for. But the problem is, that can lead us to think sometimes that, oh, the church?

I don't really need that as much. I'm good on my own. That's one reason. Another reason, another big fancy word for you this morning, anti-institutionalism is another problem. Here's my simple definition of anti-institutionalism.

Individuals, good. Organized groups of individuals, bad. Mostly. We shouldn't, but let's be honest, most of us hate the government. You know, the Bible kind of rebukes us all on that one. We should honor the government even if we don't necessarily like the government.

But the reality is, we don't like the government. Why? Because for lots of people, the government is a faceless institution that ruins everything. Not entirely untrue sometimes, but again, conversation for another time.

We hate big corporations, money-grubbing thieves that they are that don't care about people. We hate organizations in general, unless they benefit us, the individual. So if a church looks a little too organized, or it looks a little bit too structured, think about this.

How many people do you know dislike churches because the church seems very organized and structured? True Christianity, just free-flowing. We can do what we want. Who said that? How many times have I heard that one?

Follow the Spirit. The Spirit just doesn't do stuff like that. Read the book of Acts, actually, he does. But there's a, again, a world of assumptions we bring to that. Again, we are people of our time.

There was a thing in this country called the Second Great Awakening. I have my thoughts about the Second Great Awakening. One of them is that an unfortunate byproduct of that was the local churches got sidelined because God was doing his best work outside of local churches.

And of course, there's the reality that the visible church is not always its own best friend. In recent years, we've heard story after story after story of spiritual abuse, sexual abuse, and cultural compromise within the church.

And people can look at that and, I think, with an ounce of fairness, say, but if that's what the church is about, I want no part in that. So there's individualism as a problem, there's anti-institutionalism as a problem.

This is gonna be a long intro, by the way. Long intro, and we'll get to the message soon enough, I promise. And for some, it's just convenience. Everything about, we are the most convenience-driven society, arguably, to have ever existed.

Think about this. In an age where I can get my groceries dropped off at my front door, my wife signed up for Walmart Plus. It's pretty convenient. Like, you know, she pushes a few buttons. In fact, I don't even need to know when it happens.

And then she'll just get up, go open the door, oh, groceries are here. That's great! If I'm hungry, I can push a few buttons, and someone will bring a meal to my house. I don't have to leave what I'm doing, they'll just bring it to me.

If I don't know something, I can Google it. I can ask she who will not be named because all your phones will go off. You know who I'm talking about. And she will answer me in seconds. All of those are great and wonderful things.

I use the thing that begins with S on my iPad a lot. I use Google. I've ordered meals on DoorDash before, and I've ordered groceries at the house using Instacart before. They're all great and wonderful things.

They're conveniences. What's the problem with convenience when it comes to the church? Well, we know this if you've been around church long enough. Church is not always convenient, is it? And if we are the products of society that can't countenance the idea of anything being hard or difficult, well, why would you deal with the church?

Just this week, as I was preparing this message, I read a bunch of surveys that said that the new trend among people who are looking for churches is, catch this, they want churches that are quote, low commitment, low in expectations.

This was not me. This is a survey that was done. There are low commitment, low in expectations, and don't require me to alter or change my present lifestyle. And the sad thing from this survey was lots of churches were willing to do just that.

Rather than, well, I would argue what the Bible says we should do, which is to disciple people up to God's standards, what are we doing? We are lowering the church's standards. Because let's be honest, the reality is church is messy.

I mean, it just is. It's glorious, it's God-ordained, it's beautiful, and yet it is messy. And if I have the option of something more convenient, why would I not take it? Why commit to the messiness of church when you can make things easier?

I've got to keep moving. Sentimentalism is another problem. Another big fancy word for you this morning. Viewing the church through sentimental lenses. One of my favorite preachers, Dr. Voldy Bockham, he calls this the affective principle of worship.

The affective principle of worship. In other words, to do with the affections. Church is right when it makes me feel good. For some, that's tied to some nostalgia. They think of church when they were growing up.

Oh, church was great, that's where I made friends, and I, you know, it was always such a warm, comforting place. It was a societal place where we all got together, and so church isn't like that anymore.

So I don't really like church. Or, I'm going to chase churches that make me feel that feeling I had in the past. For some, it might be nostalgia. For others, it's this very therapeutic air in which we breathe.

The church is here primarily to help me deal with my problems, and to make me feel better as a result. The church is basically mass therapy. I have no problem with therapy when it's done well, and according to biblical principles, so please don't hear me as saying therapy is bad, far from it.

But if your understanding of the church is primarily driven by sentiment and not by truth, but what happens when a church doesn't meet your sentimental needs? And the danger is that even for Christians who hold to the Bible, this book, as our rule of faith and practice, there is still a danger that we can reinterpret the Bible on sentimental terms.

I read verses, or I read stuff, and immediately I think, well, it must mean this because this makes me feel good. Including how we view the church. But of course, always, I have to talk about this when I get the chance, biblical and doctrinal illiteracy is half the problem.

Personally, I think this is like top three of all problems everywhere when it comes to church. We just don't know God's Word to the degree that we ought to. And part of that problem of widespread biblical and doctrinal illiteracy, the fact that we don't know the Word of God and the doctrines it teaches as well as we should, part of the danger of that is we don't know what the Bible says about the church like we should.

Just in case you weren't sure, I happen to agree with Bannerman. There are large parts of your Bible that make no sense if you don't have a healthy, functioning understanding of the church. But can we agree, as you scroll through all of these various reasons, that the church, and particularly the doctrine of the church, has hit hard times.

And I casted our mind back to Covid -1 because I wanted to walk you through the journey that I've been on. But also think about what happened with so many during Covid. We all bought into an idea. I bought into it.

Yes, the gathering of the church is important, but we can substitute it with something else. And guess what? A bunch of evangelicals believe that the numbers still say that in 2023, three years removed from those events in the early part of 2020.

Most recent numbers I read, 20 of people who left the church still haven't come back. The church has taken a few hits. And so I purposed that when I began to serve in regular teaching ministry at Redeemer, that while I wasn't going to make this a hobby horse, you know what I mean when I say a hobby horse?

You know, a subject I constantly come back to all the time. Bible's a big book. I want to talk about all of it, not just the parts that I think are important. But I did want to make sure that every now and again I would come back to deal with some of these themes relating to the church.

And so I figured on the cusp of a new year, this might be a good time to do some of that. And so with that in mind, like I said, I want to take this Sunday, the last one of the year, and next Sunday, the first one of 2024, to talk about the church and specifically to talk about the centrality of the church in the Christian life.

Alright, that's my long intro over. Let's come to our passage. Before we come to our particular verses, since we're parachuting into 1st Timothy chapter 3, we might need to do a little bit of background on this letter as a whole.

1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus, these three letters, traditionally are called the pastoral epistles. Steve Meister, who you'll get to meet in February, clued me into something in a sermon series he preached a few years ago through these letters, where he made a very good point that technically neither Timothy nor Titus were pastors.

They were more like interim pastors that Paul sent in to get these churches on their feet, but they weren't pastors in the typical sense. They weren't placing themselves in one congregation for the rest of their lives, serving that body.

Paul sends Timothy and Titus and a few others to different churches all the time. And so technically, my friends, these should be called the church epistles, not just the pastoral epistles. And I think he's on to something.

And as you come to this first letter of Timothy, Paul gives us three reasons why he's writing. So you're in chapter 3, turn back a couple of pages to chapter 1, 1 Timothy chapter 1, and the first reason comes to us in verse 3 and 4.

First reason he writes this letter, Timothy was to safeguard the health of the church by identifying and fighting off false teaching. So 1 Timothy 1, 3 and 4, as I urged you when I went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine or to pay attention to myths and endless genealogies.

These promote empty speculations rather than God's plan, which operates by faith. So the first reason Paul writes to Timothy is to remind him that he is to safeguard the health of this local church in Ephesus by identifying and fighting off false teaching.

But there's a second reason he gives. So we're still in chapter 1, jump down to verse 18. So verse 18, Timothy number 2 was to safeguard his own effectiveness in ministry by remembering his God-given assignment.

So verse 18, Timothy my son I am giving you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies previously made about you so that by recalling them you may fight the good fight. So Timothy's to safeguard the health of the church by identifying and fighting off false teaching and he's to safeguard his own effectiveness in ministry by remembering his assignment.

If you're taking notes you can add chapter 4 verse 16, I won't read it, but that's another verse which talks about Timothy safeguarding his own effectiveness in ministry. And then there's a third reason, which is the text that we are going to look at this morning.

The third reason Paul writes this letter is that Timothy was to safeguard the church by remembering the mission and identity of the church. Timothy was to safeguard the church by remembering the mission and the identity of the church.

And in the verses that we're going to consider, Paul is going to give us some valuable insight into how God views his church. That's why I've titled this morning's message, Making God's Perspective on the Church Your Perspective.

Because I think we can all agree the only perspective on the church that ultimately matters is God's perspective. And if God's perspective is the only one that matters, then what needs to happen is not we form the church according to our perspective, but we make God's perspective on the church his own.

And I think the verses that are before us will give us God's own perspective on the church. My big idea for this message is a simple one. That we can't love the church until we understand and embrace God's perspective on the church.

That regardless of what's going on in culture around us, and regardless of what goes on with our own internal feelings about the church, we cannot come to love the church. We cannot come to make the church central to our Christian lives.

Not until we understand and embrace God's perspective on the church. So again, my big idea for this message, we can't love the church until we understand and embrace God's perspective on the church. As we think about God's perspective on the church this morning, for the rest of our time, I want to consider Paul's three inspired descriptions of the church.

We're going to get three descriptions of the church that Paul gives us. And as we look at these descriptions, I want you to see how they can help you to have God's perspective on the church. So Paul's three inspired descriptions of the church, and how they can help you have God's perspective on the church.

The Church as God's Disciplined Family

So three descriptions. I've already taken up half my time, so I'm going to have to be very quick here. I also might not finish this message today. Pray for me that I do. But three descriptions, because if you're going to have God's perspective on the church, that can't happen without point number one, recognizing that the church is God's disciplined family.

The church is God's disciplined family. So look at verse 15 of our text. Verse 15 is really where we're going to camp in this message. Paul intended to come to Timothy. He said, I might be delayed. And so he says, but if I should be delayed, verse 15, I have written so that you will know how people ought to, if you're the marking type in your Bible, you might want to mark this word, conduct themselves.

How people ought to conduct themselves in God's household. Paul reminds Timothy that the church, first and foremost, is God's household. Now this idea of a household is in an uncommon picture in the New Testament.

So Galatians 6 .10 says that we should work for the good of all, but especially those who are of the household of faith. My favorite book in the New Testament, which is the book of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 3 verse 6 speaks of the church and says that we are God's household.

If we hold on to our confidence and the hope in which we boast. Peter will say in first Timothy 4 .17 that judgment was to begin with God's household. So this is a picture that is common to the New Testament.

This idea of the church as God's household, as God's family. But we have to be very careful that we don't import 21st century meanings of what a family or a Bible. You see, in the first century, a household was not just mom, dad, and a few kids.

Households were actually quite large and they often included non-blood members like slaves and temporary servants. And the thing that kept a household together wasn't just family ties, true as that was, it was also structure and order.

More wealthy households typically had someone called a household manager. His job was to make sure everything in the house ran smoothly, the education of the children, the provision of day-to-day needs, finances.

In less wealthy households, there was still an expectation that every member played a role to some degree. In fact, in the ancient world, you could find these things that were written. They were called household codes.

They laid out responsibilities and roles in the home and ways to ensure that a home, a household, ran smoothly. In fact, you've read some of them. You didn't know that that's what they were. So when Paul starts talking in Ephesians 5 about wives, submit to your own husbands, husbands love your wives, children obey your parents in the Lord, parents don't provoke your children to anger, he's using the form of the first century household code.

Colossians 3 and 4, he does a similar thing, same thing. First Peter 2 and 3, first Peter chapter 2 and 3, excuse me, those of you who were here a couple summers ago, we worked our way through first Peter, same thing.

They all follow the same structure of a household code, tweaked of course to reflect the gospel. But as one writer puts it, just as there are rules of accepted behavior, relationships to observe, and responsibilities to fulfill within a household, so there are analogous patterns to be observed in God's Church.

Therefore, believers must know how to behave as members of God's household. Have you ever thought about that? That there's a way that we should behave as the church? Oftentimes we can have this idea that the church is just an amorphous get-together of folks who like each other and like Jesus.

Now yes, the church is a gathering of people who like each other, at least you hope they like each other. People who like each other and, well, more than that, should love one another. And we love Jesus, of course.

But I think that there's a danger that we can fall into where we simply think that the church is just about getting together and hanging out. You see, the church is indeed a family. And like any good family, it's a finely tuned balance between warmth and familiarity and genuine love and care, and structure and order on the other hand.

And here's the thing that I think sometimes churches can get wrong. We can lean too heavy in one direction or another. So there are churches that they are very good on warmth and familiarity. They're extremely friendly, but heaven help you if you can figure out what's going on in this church.

And then there are churches where the theme verse of the church is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14, let all things be done decently and in order. And they are cold and uncaring and there is no warmth and vitality there.

So let me be clear, there's a danger to leaning one way or another way too hard. Yes, a church needs care and love for one another. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, if you've taken notes, 1 Corinthians 12, 25, that the members of the body are supposed to have the same concern for each other.

And so of course there is warmth and familiarity that should characterize the church. But I put it to you that Paul's not focusing on that part of being a family here. Why? Because of that word I told you to pay attention to, conduct yourselves or how people should conduct themselves.

That word conduct carries this idea of following through on a set of principles or a set of guidelines. There's an orderliness, a discipline, in the positive sense of the word, that the church operates on.

Let's be honest, it might be cute to keep things lighthearted and unstructured and have no expectations and no commitments, but can I put it to you that the church is the kind of family that operates the right way?

I don't know the background of the families you came from, but I've observed that the best families, the happiest families, the healthiest families, are those that have that balance of lightness and joy and freedom.

But it's very clear that there are rules and structure here. And that's how God has designed his church to be. The church is the church when it maintains that balance and it maintains it well. Okay, if you're all well and good, what does this have to do with the church being central?