June 17, 2018 The Great Commission Come by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Jesus just read to you from the end of Revelation. The end of not just the

New Testament, but of the Scriptures. And here you heard the

Spirit, meaning the Spirit of God, capital S, the Spirit, and the Bride of Christ, who is the

Church, calling out with one voice in fulfillment of the Great Commission, which in a few moments we'll read to you, this one word,

Come. It says, Come. This call of God that has ever been the call of God to a wayward people, which is,

Come. Isaiah 55, which is one of the best known and most loved passages that bring this to the fore, says,

Come, everyone who thirsts. Come to the waters. And he who has no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk, without money and without price.

Come. The Lord Jesus Christ, in Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, he said,

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

The Scripture ends with this call. With the Church, the Bride of Christ, in agreement with the

Holy Spirit, and so heaven and earth in concert with one another, binding and loosing in agreement with earth and heaven.

With this one voice, this same word, Come. And all,

I would argue, in fulfillment with Matthew 28, verses 16 through 20, and this

Great Commission that Jesus Christ gives to his Apostles, and from the Apostles to the

Church, this Church, with this single word, Come.

With God's help this morning, we will finish what has been the three -part series that we've taken from three different parts of Matthew's Gospel, with an overarching topic of Church membership.

Why is Church membership important? Why do we hold so strongly to it? Why is it we feel that the keys of the

Kingdom, Matthew 16, verses 13 through 20, given to those who confess

Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God, are something that are not optional, that every

Christian must employ, though we don't employ them individually and singly, we employ them in concert with the rest of that Church to which we belong.

From Matthew 18, verses 15 through 20, the teaching on Church discipline, and when a there isn't repentance, how does the

Church respond to that? In concert with heaven, where Jesus, repeating from Matthew 16, what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, what you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Why do we find this so important? Why do we take from these three passages in Matthew, in this

Gospel, Matthew 16, 13 through 20, Matthew 18, 15 through 20, and now

Matthew 28, verses 16 through 20, and find in here though perhaps not the main point of the passages, but fairly low -hanging fruit, fairly easy pickings, as they say, membership.

I want to finish this series this morning, and with God's help, we will finish here, and again with his help next week, move on to something else.

This passage, though, this end of Matthew's Gospel, binds together the other two, Matthew 16,

Matthew 18, and gives us this one single cohesive picture. Now I'm going to go through the verses in order,

Matthew 28, 16 through 20, I'll read them in just a moment, but before we do that, it would be good to take a snapshot, an aerial view of what's happening here in Matthew 28.

Jesus here will delegate to the apostles his authority to preach in his name, and to bring them into the church, them meaning those on the byways, those on the highways, to call out this invitation of Christ Jesus, this great commission to come, to come and be in this church, to come in his name, having gained the salvation that Jesus says comes to all those who repent and in faith will trust him.

He gives his authority to preach in his name, that name which is above all other names, and he promises that he is the one who will build his church, and he, in this passage

I'll read, promises his presence, which is so hugely important, unless the

Lord builds the church, he who builds it labors in vain, and yet not in vain because of the

Lord Jesus Christ and his promise here as we finish this series. Matthew 28, let me read these five verses to you.

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and when they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted.

And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Now what's the snapshot, this aerial view that I was speaking of?

Well it's simply this, that this comes right after his resurrection and immediately before his ascension back to his father.

The scattered sheep had been found and regathered, and I don't mean all of his disciples, I'm speaking specifically of the eleven, the eleven disciples who became apostles.

And each of them failed in their own way. Now Peter most famously failed by twice denying the

Lord Jesus Christ, and then being halted in his third time when he swore an oath, began to swore an oath, and the cock crowing stopped him from that, that bird making that sound, reminding

Peter of Jesus' words, that bird doing that at Christ's command. But John, the apostle

John, he seemed to have known the high priest, he was able to go into the house there and be an eyewitness to the proceedings, and yet he records nothing that he said during those proceedings.

So where Peter failed outwardly and verbally and actively, John seems to have in a more passive way by not going out and affirming that this is my master who you are trying to have failed.

As for the others, they all ran to his arrest, one so fast they left his clothes behind.

They all failed just prior to this. And here they are, standing before the resurrected

Lord, the glorified Jesus Christ, and hearing these final instructions before he goes.

You think of the wonder they must have felt. You think of the embarrassment for their disbelief, for their failure just prior to that.

There he was, just as he had promised so many times, when during his journeys with them as he turned towards Jerusalem, as he moved towards Calvary, and told them that the

Son of Man will be beaten, will be mocked, will be crucified, he will be put in the tomb and on the third day he will rise again.

And there he was. And how that must have brought back to them their failures, their lack of belief, all the things that they heard

Jesus Christ say, and they couldn't quite step out of the box, as we might say today, to realize his meaning and to truly believe all these things would happen.

But there he was, just as he promised, back after three days in the ground.

Now Peter, James, and John might have recognized his appearance. They are the three who went to the

Mount of Transfiguration. They're the ones who saw him with his clothes as bright as the sun. This shining, glorious Christ, with the veil of sinful flesh, that form in which he came, taken away.

And they saw him talking to Elijah and Moses, but they saw him in his glory. They saw this short picture past the humanity, and clothed in the glory and the majesty that he had left behind when he came from heaven to earth.

They had seen that glorified manifestation of the Lord on the Mount where he was transfigured. So they might have recognized this.

They might have jabbed each other in the side a little bit and said, that's him. Do you remember?

Just a few weeks ago, or months ago, or whenever it was. There he is again. This is the Jesus Christ.

This is now clothed in what he had left behind. And for the others, they hadn't been there.

It was only the three who went up. So this Jesus may have been foreign to them, and perhaps that's why some doubted.

Though when he says, they worshipped him, though some doubted, Matthew's not very concerned about exact chronological sequence here.

He's bringing forth a point. They worshipped him, but some doubted, saying,

I'm aware that this happened. I'm aware that Thomas doubted and said, unless I see, and so forth. But they worshipped him.

They moved from doubt to falling down at his feet, recognizing him for who he is and who he was.

Maybe it was his voice, as it was for Mary. When she thought she was talking to the gardener, and he turns to her and he says, Mary, and she knew that was her master, her teacher, her beloved

Lord. Perhaps even then, the doubt was dispelled when they heard the voice. And he said,

Matthew, Andrew, and so forth. But this was no appearances at the transfiguration that we have at the end of this gospel.

This was his proper state. This is him in his divinity and his glory, shining bright as the sun and his clothes as white as light.

What they saw here was not a transfiguration that was but a glimpse past his humanity, but an unfiltered view of his eternal and his rightful glory.

Here he was, clothed in all the pure and glorious shining vestments of his deity, of his godhood.

Here there could be no doubt that they were seeing and hearing from God. They worshipped him because now there's no more question.

Now they could answer their own question from some time before. Do you remember when he stood up in the boat and he told the waves and the story?

He said, just be still. And they said, who then is this that even wind and wave obey him?

Who indeed? He is the one who next said in verse 18 of Matthew 28, all power has been given to me.

All power has been given to me. Where before they say, who is this who has power to command wind and water and rain to do what he will?

Who can this be? He is the one who can say, all power has been given to me.

And we might ask when? When was all power given to Jesus Christ?

We're speaking of this great commission and we're speaking of how this great commission feeds our doctrine of church membership, formal association and joining to a local assembly.

When was this power given to him? It could not have been after his suffering.

It couldn't have been after his suffering for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it wouldn't be as if his suffering, his going through the trials, going through the beatings, going through the scourging, going through the cross, made him able to deserve this power from God.

That would be sort of like what we did yesterday when we together as a church joined in rejoicing with our brother

Jesus Gredado, our sister Amy Cruz, in having graduated from Stanford. And they got a diploma.

They say, okay, you've gone through your suffering, in a sense, and here's what you deserve.

Here's the power to execute the things that you have learned, to continue a researcher, to become a professor, whatever the case is.

That is not the case with Jesus Christ. Before his suffering, did he not say to the disciples that I have the power,

I have the authority, if I called upon my Father in Heaven right now, this puny little arrest company with their puny little swords and spears and shields, they'd be gone in an instant.

I could call legions of angels at this moment. He had the power and authority to do that before the suffering.

And as I mentioned, he stood on the boat and told the waves to be still. He had the power and the authority over nature and said, be still, and it was still.

Heaven and earth at his beck and call. When bread was needed, the authority and the power of his blessing made a few loaves of bread stretch to feed thousands of people.

When the Lord, by his power and authority, long before his suffering, called upon Lazarus to come out of his tomb, his power and his authority was irresistible and the corpse obeyed its maker.

So what we're saying here is when Jesus says all power has been given to me, all authority is mine, it didn't occur then.

He's making a statement of his eternal state, his rightful position, one of all power and all authority.

Before we move on to this great commission and think about that, we need to just consider who it is who sent the apostles, who said, go therefore.

Who is this Lord who sent them to found this church? And that commission then going from them to church after church after church to this very day and this very place.

Colossians chapter 1 verses 15 through 20 says this of him. He, Jesus, is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities.

All things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

Notice again that imagery of earth and heaven being in concert with one another because of Christ Jesus, that bridge between the two.

He being the reason we can bind on earth and is bound in heaven, we can loose on earth and is loosed in heaven because of him,

Christ Jesus, and none other. Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3 says Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.

After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. The 33rd

Psalm says of him, by the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their hosts.

So what should we then do? That being the case, the psalmist goes on, and he says, let all the earth fear the

Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him. Psalm 147, the 4th and 5th verse, say this of our

Lord, he determines the number of stars. He gives to all of them their names. Great is our

Lord, and abundant in power. His understanding is beyond measure.

This is the Lord Jesus, who there in Galilee, standing with his 11 disciples, said all authority in heaven and on earth has been given him.

Not then at that moment. Not when he rose from the dead. Not when he obeyed the

Father and went to the cross. Not when he restrained himself from calling down the legions of angels to stop his arrest.

And as I'm going back in the history in the gospels, you can see where we're going. Not then, eternally.

Never was Jesus not, and never was Jesus without this power and authority that he says at that moment has been given to him.

Not deserved, not earned, his by right of nature as God.

When he commands disciples to be made. When he says to the church, go therefore and make disciples, that command is with the authority of him who tells stars when to shine, stars when to fall, and when stars will exist.

And that same authority, that same Lord tells sparrows how long they will fly and when they will fall to the ground.

This church is the Jesus who gives this command. This is his authority.

This is his power. Go therefore, now that we have a picture of who he is, and we cannot stand with the awe,

I don't believe, that the disciples did, seeing him physically, being able to touch him, knowing that he had come from the grave, he's the one who says to them, go therefore.

You see the resurrected Lord saying this. This gospel then, if we think of this, is not something being brought to a foreign land, but to the nations of the earth.

And whose are those nations? They're his. They belong to Jesus Christ.

Now, I have a tremendous respect for missionaries whose lives are given over to making the gospel understandable to people in different and distinct cultures, with different and distinct languages and ways of thinking.

Their myths, their legends, their whole way is different than ours. And I have a huge respect for men and women who put their life into that for the sake of the gospel.

It's beyond me. I do not have that talent. I don't have that skill. They do it, and we need them to do it, valuable, necessary as that is.

We need to also understand that the gospel, no matter where it goes, does not flow into foreign territory.

When we go to our neighbor and tell them about Jesus Christ, we are telling them, in essence, this is not some strange

Lord. This is he who made you. This is he in whose house you are living because it's his to have given you.

The clothes you're wearing actually belong to him, and he is the one who ordained you should have them. The language you speak,

Acts chapter 17. The borders in which you live, Acts chapter 17 again, Paul at the

Areopagus saying it is God who determined your borders and your times and your ways and the laws under which you will live and the leaders who will rule over you and whether or not you get to vote for someone as we do in this country.

All that under the Lordship of him to whom all authority has been given.

So it's not really bringing the gospel to a foreign land. We could even say that if you are here breathing, you're borrowing air from our sovereign

Lord. We could even say that if you are here and not believing in him, you're sort of a squatter.

You're not in a foreign place. You're on Jesus' territory, his land, because all power is his, all authority is his and always has been, and this message is for you.

This message is for you, sinner, whose confidence is in yourself and the strength of your right hand.

You are here at the indulgence of Jesus Christ. You are borrowing oxygen that he, this moment, is ordaining for you to have.

He is Christ. Jesus is our Lord. He is the ruler of heaven and earth and you owe him your allegiance, which we call faith.

God commands all men everywhere now to repent and to put their faith and their trust and their hope and their life and their all in Jesus Christ, the

Lord. So we're not imposing some strange rule on you. We tell you of a master of whom you've been ignorant.

We tell you of a master of a God who will forgive your dullness as he forgives all else if you will but trust in the

Lord Jesus Christ. Now you are not ignorant, but this

Lord Jesus Christ has authority over all, which goes from the heavens to the earth to this nation, to this county, to this city, to your home, to your car, to this place, even now.

Now you're not ignorant. Now you know this Lord Jesus Christ, or you know of him, who we proclaim to you, the one who says, go therefore.

He says, go because all authority is mine, so go. Therefore, because this authority is proven by my resurrection, he says, go.

Therefore, without doubting what you now see and what we, having not seen, believe, and Jesus Christ said, blessed are those who have not seen yet believe, he says, go and preach repentance in my name.

And to you who believe not in the Lord Jesus Christ, he commands you, repentance in his name.

He promises his presence. The psalm I quoted earlier, well known to all of us, unless the

Lord builds the house, they who build it labor in vain. We cannot proceed without his presence.

When Moses was interceding for Israel after the golden calf, he said to God, when they're going back and forth, and God had said,

I will destroy this people, and I will make a greater nation out of you, and Moses says, no, then the nations will say, you were unable to do it.

And he goes on in this conversation and says, unless your presence goes with us, do not send us from this place.

Jesus Christ promising his presence in Matthew 18, 20, for when we come together in matters of discipline.

Do you remember that from last week? Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Now it is promised to attend with the apostles, and after the apostles with the church, when they go forth.

He doesn't tell us to go and then sit back and see what happens, because left on our own, what would happen would be a train wreck.

We need Jesus Christ with us, and so he promises he will. He says, I will build my church.

In Ephesians chapter 2, he is building his church through them, the apostles now, through us, the church today.

And how do we know that our labor is fruitful? How do we know that our meeting is not in vain?

Well, we can make many signs. I could point to people who have repented of their sin and are growing in sanctification and holiness, people who come in here and know

Jesus Christ better as an individual. And then with that better knowledge of themselves, they bring more to us.

And so we are being built up as a church. We can point to things like that. Certainly not numerical superiority.

We're a very small church. We always have been. How do we know that our labor is fruitful?

That all the effort we put into coming here on Sunday is getting the kids ready, driving through the traffic, preparing for the meal, preparing the sermon, all the things that we have to do to come here.

How do we know that this is fruitful work? Because Christ Jesus promises that he will build his church and is building it now.

And with that, Matthew 28 and 20, he promises his presence.

It's him building his church by directing our trials as we set each brick in place.

He working through means of people like you and me. And yet him being the one who gets all the glory and all the credit, it is him building his church even through us.

He says he'll be with us to the end of the age.

And by that we find the church pulled into the orb of this promise. By that we know it's not just for the apostles.

The apostles all died. And yet no one would say that Christ's spirit died with them. And few would say that Christ's spirit was not meant to go from then to the church that they founded at his command and under his direction.

No, Christ has been building his church. He has kept his word. He's been fulfilling his word.

When Matthew 16, 18, when Peter made that great confession, you are the Christ, the son of the living God, and Christ returned to him and said, upon this rock,

I will build my church, Matthew 16, 18. The promise being kept.

And to the end of the age must mean his return from now, this moment, until then he will continue this.

So he says, go and make. This is the Lord of all authority, of all power, saying, now you in my name, with this power, with this authority given me, now delegated to you, go and make.

And it is not go and make the command that accomplishes his I will build.

Jesus Christ says I will build. He's not here. He's in heaven. He builds by telling us, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the

Father and the Son of the Holy Spirit, teaching them all things that I have commanded you. That's the command that accomplishes his

I will build. Here is the act of binding on earth what is bound in heaven.

Jesus was on his final leg of his earthly sojourn. Atonement for sin had been accomplished.

The Father's certification that his son's mission was complete is proven by the resurrection.

And Christ would soon ascend back from whence he came and from there and by his spirit rule his church as he indwells the church's hearts.

His spirit on earth, he in heaven, bound here, bound there, loosed here, loosed there.

It all comes together. At the end of John's gospel, he says it this way, as the

Father has sent me, so I am sending you. How did the Father send Jesus?

As John said so often in so many ways throughout his gospel, the Father sent the Son to speak for him and that exactly.

Jesus said in John chapter 8 verse 28, when you have lifted up the Son of Man, speaking of the cross, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak just as the

Father taught me. So how are the apostles sent? With the authority of the

Father by way of the Son. And this brings it all together. Jesus gives the keys to the confessors of him as the

Christ, the Son of the living God, and with that authority we bind and loose on earth with heaven's license and heaven's charter.

Jesus, now in heaven, he is the bridge, he is the conduit by whose word and through whose person heaven and earth are united.

The church is that stage upon which this living drama of agreement, of concert between us and heaven is played out.

So the Bible ends with come. The Bible ends with come. The church longs for him to come.

Even so, come Lord Jesus. He is that blessed hope whose glory and appearing will set all things in this fallen world right again.

And he says at the end of the scripture, surely I am coming soon, and the church responds, come

Lord Jesus. In the meantime, according to this great commission, we make disciples.

Jesus read to you from Revelation 22, which says the spirit and the bride say come and let he who hears say come.

And then the spirit of Isaiah's prophecy can be brought forward here at the end of the scriptures. Let the one who is thirsty come,

Isaiah 55 .1. Come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, the ones

Jesus calls living waters. Revelation 16 .17,

let the one who desires take the water of life without price. Isaiah said, and he who has no money, come buy and eat, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Come is our answer to Jesus' command that we go. He said go and make, and we say to them, come.

And it's this last picture of the church that Jesus is building with which we're going to finish this series at the end of Matthew's gospel.

I had Jesus read to you from the end of Revelation for a particular reason. And I was looking out as he read from Song of Solomon, which is a rather unusual

Old Testament reading for us, is it not? I just saw a few worried frowns like, what are we going to do with the

Song of Solomon here? Well, it ties to the end of scripture. It ties to the final metaphor of the church that Jesus says, all authority is mine, so go and build this church for me.

And what is that picture? What is that metaphor with which I want to end this series, with which the

Bible itself ends? It's the church as Christ's bride.

It's the church as a bride decked in glorious robes and arrayed before her bridegroom, spotless, unblemished.

And as that, we, the church, the bride of Christ, get to say to the world, come.

Come. Excuse me. Now, this is not a very manly picture for us manly men in this place, is it?

To be a spotless, unblemished, beautifully arrayed, demure, virginal bride of the great bridegroom.

But that's what the scripture says. That's how the church is described there.

At the very end of the whole Bible, as the bride, the spirit and the bride speak as one.

How is this? Because the spirit of God indwells the bride of Christ. And when the bride speaks, the spirit brings it to heaven where our groom is, watching us grow into the beautiful one that he loved and gave himself up for.

Now, we're not going to go there now, and I don't know if I shall ever preach from it, but the Song of Solomon, which

Jesus read to you from, which seems so difficult to explain. When I was an early, early in my

Christian life, my wife and I went to a marriage seminar way down south in the L .A. area. And a man who seemed so intelligent, because he had a

Scottish accent. If you have a Scottish accent, you seem so smart, don't you? It just sounds bright to me.

If you have an English accent, you sound pretty intelligent, but the Scots have it all over them. And he was talking to me about the

Song of Solomon, and how confoundingly hard it was to understand all the imagery there, which could lead you into some very funny places if you allow yourself to be a little bit unhinged in your hermeneutic, in your way of approaching the

Scripture. Now, I don't know if I will ever preach from this book, but really, the

Song of Solomon and all that imagery, all that rapturous love between Solomon and the

Shumanite woman, his bride, his lover, and their desire for one another, very easily explained.

How is that explained? It's the very end of the Bible itself. The church is the bride. And if we use that and impose that back upon the

Song of Solomon, if we follow the way of the apostles and the way of Jesus and take the revelation of Jesus Christ as the

Son of the living God, and use that as the interpretive scheme for the Old Testament, it seems to fall easily into place.

The Song of Solomon is the picture of Christ and His church. As the Shumanite could think of none but her lover, so the church we today are engulfed in love for our

Lord. As Solomon demanded his love's safety, so our king looks to ours.

Who is Solomon in the Song of Solomon? He's a prefiguring of Christ, spending all of his energy towards his lovely

Shumanite as Christ does the church. So Christ sends the apostle and he tells them, as it were, go and fill my bride with treasures, with saints, with these saints for whom

I died. I've bound the strong man, now go, plunder what he thought to be his and bring them to me.

Tell them that their master says, come. And so the spirit and the bride say to you, come.

We say to our neighbors, our co -workers, our friends, our family, our children, our parents, come.

Come and be part of this bride of Christ. Be part of this growing and more and more beautiful bride every day as we grow into the image of Him who bought us.

That's the message. It's come. That's the great commission. It's come.

That's the authority of Christ, repeated by us, His bride. Come. He says, go and bring them in.

I died for them. He says, here they are. They're written on my hands. I bore them to the cross the way

Aaron bore the twelve tribes into the holy place. Go out on the byways and the highways and tell her

I am awaiting. Go and bring her to me, glorious and resplendent and radiant in her robe and washed white in the blood of my cross.

The bride of Christ is known to Him and handed to Him from before the foundation of the world, His lovely one, made beautiful and spotless by the clothing that He gives her, which one day will fit us perfectly.

In our Lord's parable in Matthew 22, 1 through 4, the one where there was that wedding feast where the father sent out to everyone, say, come because my son's going to be married and come to the feast

I prepared. And there was that one who came in. I'm not going to read the whole parable to you now, but that one came in who was not dressed properly.

He wasn't in festive clothes. He wasn't ready to worship and to join in the joy.

And he was sent out. He was sent out to where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The ones who remained were the intimate friends, those who rejoiced to see the bride and her groom finally united.

Paul in Ephesians chapter 5, verses 22 to 33, he uses the same metaphor of marriage where he likens the husband and the wife in that holy institution to Christ and His church.

And he extends that metaphor when he says the two shall become one flesh, quoting from Genesis 2. The two shall become one flesh, the human husband and wife.

But that relates to the church, the bride of Christ with her bridegroom. The two shall become one flesh.

And he can't quite explain it to us. He never says anything, but this mystery is profound. Well, if Paul says it's profound, if Paul says it's inexplicable,

I will not try to explain it to you. But I will tell you that he's taking that picture of this divinely ordained institution of marriage, the relationship between a man and a woman, in which the intimacy that God ordained for that is to be had, and likens that to us with Christ.

Again, I say again, the entire canon of the Bible ends with that picture of the church as that bride pining away and waiting to be united to her bridegroom.

Well, not a very macho picture for us tough men. I think the women understand that much better than we do, but that's what it says.

That's what the image means. Where do we find membership here? You would expect a message at the end of Matthew in the

Great Commission to tell you something about how to go and what to tell your neighbor when you knock on the door and how to explain this to your co -worker.

I just want us to understand who we are, who the Bible says we are, who it is who tells us to go, and why we find membership here in this final picture of the church at the end of Matthew and at the end of the

Bible. Where do we find membership? Why do we insist upon membership as the necessary precursor to entering into the privileges and the duties that are not optional for the

Christian? It's in the intimacy and covenant commitment of a man and his wife.

Not as we have it today. Not as it's corrupted outside these walls and too often within the walls of the church, but the way

God intended it. Therefore, man shall forsake all others.

I paraphrase. I went through it very quickly. I understand that. And be united to this one.

That's this picture. Marriage. Hebrews 13 .4

says that this institution, the marriage bed, is to be honored by all. And why given such high esteem?

Because it was given by God to set our minds on Christ. That's how we explain

Genesis 2. Why is there marriage? So we'll understand who the church is compared to Jesus. What our relationship to Him is.

That's why there is marriage. Why was the Song of Solomon written? With all those metaphors. With all those pictures.

With all those very clear passages. It's so hard to understand what it's doing in the

Scripture. Why is it there? So we understand who we, as the bride of Christ, His church, are in relation to Him.

We are tasked with the duty of filling His church with His people, who together make up the one bride.

We want to be sure they know what the groom requires of the bride, which is all things that He has commanded us.

Teaching them all things I have commanded you, so I changed the pronouns to our plural. He has commanded us. It's a binding relationship.

It's a commitment to Him. Oh, not to me. I'm not worth committing to at all.

Neither is anyone in this place. But as we come together as this body inhabited by Christ and indwelt by His Spirit and attended with by His Spirit, as I so often pray, this is what we are.

In Matthew 16, the keys are given to the church with the responsibility for their proper use in binding and loosing.

In chapter 18 was the loosing, which demanded a deeper view of sin than we often have. And now in chapter 28, the

Lord commands us and then promises to abide with us as we carry out His will. And from this, again, we see the imperative of formal membership in the church.

It's going through that whole process. Why do we, when we take the

Lord's table, ask it to be taken by those who are members of true churches?

Think of the commitment that in God's economy, a man is to have to his wife and a wife to her husband.

The church is the bride of Christ. Ephesians 5, 22 -33.

As a husband is to the wife, so Christ is to the church. This carries throughout the entire scripture.

As I said, it goes back to Genesis 2. It picks up the Song of Solomon, makes sense out of the whole thing as far as I can see.

It's that kind of commitment. Not a shackle on your ankle where once you join, let's say, here, you can never go, you can't move, you're stuck with us.

That would be a cult. That's not the case. But we enjoin you to understand this

Lord who has all authority, who told the disciples to go, who promised His presence, who is present in the church, and the church is

His bride, and all these metaphors that I've tried to bring before you. What level of commitment does that speak to you?

So membership, is it so necessary as to risk people's ire and to strain relationships?

Well, the keys to the kingdom, Matthew 16, 13 -20 say yes. Christ gives the keys to the kingdom of heaven to the church.

And their administration, their use is not optional. So yes, it is worth some discomfort.

Heaven's concord with the church say yes, it is worth the hard teaching.

The scriptures preach this, this idea of membership. The fact that the church is the bride of Christ, that we are

His wife in that sense, well, it uses the word bride, and I like that better. But it's that kind of commitment.

It's that sort of one -on -one relationship. Today's most respected churchmen, men like Mark Dever and John MacArthur, and a host of others say yes, this is that important.

The bride says on earth, come. The Spirit brings agreement of heaven and says come.

No more is your relationship to this groom contingent than is the salvation he gained. It is by faith that we come.

It is by faith that the wedding garments are prepared for us and over time tailored to better fit the honor of our husband.

So we say come. Put your faith in him, that's first. Our bridegroom will never leave you or forsake you.

You are his bride, and neither will his bride him. As Christ's sacrifice was sure, so must be our relation to him.

Without contingency, without reservation, without escape clauses, as committed to, formally committed to, him, in a local body like this one,

I admit a certain lack of objectivity, but I think this is a pretty good local fellowship that tries as hard as sinners can try together to meet the image of Christ and to grow into his image.

This is what the scriptures call for. And this is what the great men of the church call for. And this is the kind of commitment that a bride must have to a bridegroom.

And as the scriptures end, this is the last metaphor for you, for us all together as the bride of Christ.

Now let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for the day you've given us once more. Thank you for our

Lord Jesus Christ and for the redemption that we have in him. And Father, for the ongoing presence that we have from him.

That he promised to be with us to the end of the age so we know, Father, that our bridegroom is here with us now, guiding and directing and,

God willing, building his church, even here in this place. And I thank you for these things and we pray in Jesus' name.