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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/scott-macleod/the-local-assembly/
Let's turn to Matthew chapter 18, please. Gospel of Matthew chapter 18. Maybe just change the ministry just a little bit, move toward the assembly. New Testament church is what's on my mind. Another way of being able to present your body, a living sacrifice to God.
I believe there's nothing like a local testimony, the ultimate acknowledgment of lordship. And from it, I believe it is God's university, God's teaching center. And I believe it's where the spirit of God would have every one of us.
So just read the very common verse, Matthew 18 and verse number 20. I took this up in ministry here on Wednesday night, but we dealt with the context, but I just want to pick up verse number 20. So Matthew 18 and verse 20.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. As I read that verse again, for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.
Now, this is a wonderful verse. It's probably hung up in every assembly that I've ever been in. I guess the place to start is because I have read this verse does that make this place a New Testament church?
No. I'll go a little further. Because I believe that I'm in a New Testament church. Does that make it a New Testament church? No. It's what the word of God says. That's all it can be. I mean, I could be part of a system that has its origin in the ideas of man, and I could quote this verse until I'm blue in the face.
I could roar to the top of my lungs. That doesn't make it a New Testament church. There's something that I find kind of disturbing, and it's probably part of the reason why I'm on this line. And it's kind of nice because we're going to spend Monday, Lord willing, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, looking at different aspects of the local assembly and the different Bible readings that we're going to take up.
And I hear this mentioned many times. There seems to be just one requirement that people seem to mention to determine if a place is a New Testament church. And they tend to say, well, let's just look at what they're doing.
What are they doing? And can we find what they're doing in the Bible? Now, I'm going to suggest for your consideration that that's only half of the equation, because what the Word of God would teach is, we have to discover, did it start of God?
How did it begin? Because we could easily go to most of our epistles, and if we were just to take a snapshot of Corinth, you would look at, what are they doing? Wow, they got a man sleeping with his stepmother.
They're drunk at the Lord's table. There's poor people coming in and they're putting them way down there. Rich people, you take this high seat. There's all kinds of disorder. There are people in there and they're saying, well, I belong to Paul, and I belong to Apollos, and I belong to Cephas, and another group, I belong to Christ.
And there's all this confusion. So if we were to take just that simple requirement, we would look at Corinth and go, man, that don't line up with the Word of God. There's no way that could be a New Testament church.
Then we could jump over to the book of Revelation, Revelation chapter two and chapter three, and we could look at the seven churches of Asia, just seven that God picks out of that massive province of Asia, which probably had over a thousand, they tell us, history tells us, a thousand New Testament churches.
And God is just giving us a sampling of seven. And what do we discover there? One church, there's a woman teaching, standing up and teaching, and the oversight are allowing it to happen. There's all of these different things.
You go look at it. You would look, if you were planning a trip, you'd say, oh, I'm going there. There'd be no place to go on Sunday. You see what I'm trying to get at? It's not just, what are they presently doing?
You gotta go back and see, how did it start? Did it start as a genuine work of God? Because what we discover from the Word of God is we can go into the book of the Acts, and we can discover the actual formation of the church at Corinth.
We can see how that God brought a gospel preacher into that area. And before the gospel preacher came, there was just the Jewish synagogue, and there was the pagan idol's temple. That's all there was.
There was nothing else. And then after a number of months, a year and a half, the apostle Paul leaves, and as he looks back over his shoulder, what does he see? He still sees the Jewish temple. He still sees the pagan temples, but he sees church of God.
The church of God in Corinth. Tremendous. So God used that man through the preaching of the gospel to actually plant something that belonged to God in that pagan city. Amazing. I want us all to enjoy that.
I have the full confidence, knowing what I know about Stout, that God planted something here. He did. And by God's grace, it has been continuing right up until the present. And I am convinced that where I am today, I am in a New Testament church.
Now, unfortunately, when it come to Corinth, we see that in a short five years, it slid. It slid pretty low. But what proved its reality is that when Paul wrote 2 Corinthians, he's now commending them for the way they responded to 1 Corinthians.
And you see the genuine respond to the word of God. And they start to come online, so to speak. I'm sure we can all relate to that in our Christian lives where maybe we have had a friend or whatever relation it might be, and they were once on fire for God.
And they were witnessing for God. And all of a sudden, something happened and they got discouraged and they got away from God. You ever go and talk to those people? And you kind of try to figure it all out.
And then you try to encourage them. You ever notice when you talk about Christ, there seems to be like a spark. There's something there that responds. You know what you go away thinking? I know they're saved.
They're just not living right. And it gives you a little bit of courage to pray for them, that God will continue to restore them. And you'd love to see them, as it were, come back online and come back into the full enjoyment of their salvation.
So the very same thing that can happen to assemblies is it can happen to believers. And may God preserve us. That's really what I'm thinking about today. I'm just thinking about the wonder, just the amazing truth that I am in a New Testament church.
You enjoy it. I recently had a conversation with an elder. He called me on a particular issue, wanted to know a little bit of information. And he's an older man and he's well-respected. And so when you get an opportunity to talk to someone like that, I like to kind of draw some information out of them and kind of learn a little bit from their wisdom and years of knowledge.
And we started talking about a few issues. And you know what he said to me? He said, you know, Scott, he said, I've been around for a long while. He said, you know what the saddest thing is to watch? You start to see someone who was once happy in God's assembly, and they start to get dissatisfied.
He says, I never see it improve. It just starts sliding slowly. It might take years, but just that once I'm happy, I'm content, I'm convinced that where I am is right. Now all of a sudden things have happened.
Now they're starting to look elsewhere. Am I addressing anyone like that here today? You see, if you're not convinced that where you are is right, if you're not convinced that where I am, God has led me here, God wants me here, he won't plug your all into it.
Why would you give yourself to something you're not convinced is 100%. Can I challenge even those that are married? I said this the other night, I am convinced that the woman I'm married to is the one that God wants for me.
There's not even a doubt. You say, you're saying that because she's here. No, I've told her that one, just mean here or there, here or there, whatever, here or there. I am convinced of that. So it doesn't matter what happens.
My mind is predisposed to start at this point. It's gonna work. It's not it might work. It's going to work. How's your attitude toward the assembly? I've been around long enough to see individuals who were convinced and then all of a sudden a relationship comes in.
And you watch as their affections for the local assembly starts to wane. And it starts to go this way. I find that sad, I do. I find that absolutely sad because there's no place like God's assembly. That's sad, just a little ripple of an amen.
Are we that numbed in 2017? Have we been so overcome by the tolerance society all around us that we're almost afraid to stand up and say, I believe I'm in God's place. I believe it. I'm gonna practice it.
I'm gonna live it. I'm going to enjoy it. That's why God has you in the assembly here, child of God, to enjoy it. I've been asking God that give me help to enjoy the meetings of the assembly. Help me to be into it.
Help me, God, to be paying attention when someone is praying so that I'm following them. I'm learning from them. Help me when someone is ministering that I'm not sitting over there going through my Bible looking, getting all taken up with my word of ministry.
Help me to get focused on the man that's speaking. Help me to learn from the people of God. There's a tremendous richness when God tries to feed us individually. That's marvelous, absolutely marvelous.
Every single child of God on the face of this earth can be fed individually by their Savior. But there's a total uniqueness. Those that are gathered to the Lord's name in the corporate setting, Christ is in the midst.
The priesthood of all believers is allowed to function. The Spirit of God is able to move upon certain individuals causing them to rise to their feet, to bring things from the word of God to our attention.
You ever noticed your child of God? I hope we all, every single assembly that is represented here, I have had the sad experience of being in assemblies where they have ceased to have a midweek Bible study.
One place because of issues that was happening with contentious brethren in the meeting, they stopped the public Bible readings. And they've just gone to ministry. I hope we understand that public Bible readings are a New Testament assembly.
It's a meeting of the assembly that we can prove from the book of the Acts and the epistles. What I am very concerned about today is this. There is so much emphasis on non-scriptural meetings as opposed to scriptural meetings.
Very concerned. We have a rising generation that almost thinks it's only tradition that there are distinct assembly meetings that we can prove from the New Testament where the spirit of God is promised to be, where Christ is promised to be, where there is a unique presence of the corporate aspect of the Lord Jesus.
And yet we've got all this emphasis upon, as I said, non-scriptural events. And we're trying to claim the same promises for scriptural events for non-scriptural. They are different. I hope we all understand that, like last night when we got together at Dustin and Crystal's house for a sing song, and we sang about the Lord, and a brother got up and read a little word of encouragement from the Bible.
That was not an assembly meeting. It's not. Oh, it was a wonderful function. It was enjoyable. But you could not stand up in the midst of that and say, for where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them.
Because when we come and understand from the... For where? There. There's consistency in this verse. A local assembly is not something that just sort of migrates through the state of Iowa. Oh, we're gonna break bread over in that field in that little barn for a few weeks, and then we're gonna migrate over to this area and break bread over there for a little bit.
No, there is an actual location. That's why we read 1 Corinthians 1, the church of God in Corinth. It's in a location. So are we all getting it at the moment? Do we all understand that there's tremendous...
Actually, if you go to 1 Corinthians 3, which we'll be touching, the local assembly is called God's till field. God's husbandry. I love it. I think it's one of the tenderest pictures of a local assembly.
You know how I know when I go up and down these roads here? I look at the fields, and I can see ones that are culivated, fertilized. Then there's others. Very few, though, by the way. There's full of weeds.
Do you understand, dear child of God, the privilege of being in a local assembly? It is your protection. It's your protection. You ever notice how the Gospel of John ends? A woman addresses the Lord as the gardener.
Are you the gardener? Then we come into 1 Corinthians 3, where we have that lovely picture of a local assembly likened to a tilled field. When I see a field that is tilled and prepared, you know what it is?
It's the idea of purpose. There's care. There's someone that I'm not even aware of as I drive up and down these roads, and they've got a tremendous investment in that field. They're not occupied with trying to fertilize the pavement.
Nothing's gonna grow on the pavement. They don't go by the ditch and say, oh, I don't care if half my seed falls into the ditch. They're not trying to grow anything in the ditch. They've got a segregated field.
There it is, marked out. And they've got tremendous, that's what the local assembly is to Christ. And have you ever noticed the connection between things that are emphasized in your weekly Bible studies?
You ever notice the connection of maybe ministry connected with your Bible studies? You ever notice that maybe a visiting, I always used to find that interesting, being just in my local assembly, and it'd be announced that a visiting preacher or whatever was coming along, and oh, he's gonna give us ministry.
Our midweek meeting is Tuesday night. He's gonna give us ministry Tuesday night. And I used to come to meeting Tuesday night and go, okay, okay, Lord, what do we need here? Here's someone coming from the outside.
He hasn't been primed by somebody to say, now, when you come to Charleston, I want you to preach on this because this is what they need. No, no, no. He comes just neutral. And all of a sudden, something's laid upon his heart, and he stands up, and he might not even realize that he's hitting the buttons, right?
And all of a sudden, you sit there and you go, wow, that was good. Wow, we need that. Do you not find it amazing that in 2017, God still speaks to us? I find that amazing. I find that tremendous. I hope we can get beyond this auditorium today, okay?
I hope in your little local assembly, you can get beyond the confines of that building, and I hope you can get beyond maybe the refined speech of the preacher, and maybe he's got all of his little points lined up under A's or B's or C's or P's or whatever, and I hope you can get to the point.
There's the potential that God could actually use that man to speak to us. That's marvelous. That's precious. That is not what the denominational world has. That is Christianity. Oh, I believe that God can use a man, a woman, anywhere in an individual sense.
I'm now looking at the corporate aspect where God-given gift has been distributed by the Spirit of God, and those individuals have been drawn together by the Spirit of God. Amazing to think, and then the Spirit exercises, encourages, lays things upon people's hearts, and as a result, the people of God are fed.
Dear child of God, that's a miracle. That's not professionalism. That's not something that some Christian university or college can duplicate. We're gonna take this individual, we're gonna train them to be a pastor, a teacher of the Word of God, and we're gonna then assign them to a particular building with a congregation, and there it goes.
No, no, no, that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about something that uniquely belongs to the one who died for you. I couldn't begin to measure the care that he has in his heart for you.
That's why he loves to see you at all assembly meetings. He see you don't get back to, are you plugged in? How many of us are arranging assembly meetings around our schedules? Well, if I get there, I get there.
Ho hum, it's not a big deal, you know. I gotta go there. I'm gonna pick on Mike again. I picked on Mike on Wednesday night. I gotta go there and listen to Mike in the Bible study. He's so boring. Maybe, he is not boring by the way.
Maybe, God just might use him to say the very thing I need, if I'm willing to hear it. All kind, don't we have our favorite preachers? Some put you to sleep, some wake you up, right? Not the way you're looking at it.
It's just possible because we've got too many examples in the word of God where God uses the unnoticed just to feed his people. Think of the multitude on the side of the hill. And you know, well, why don't you feed them, Lord says.
What are we gonna feed them with? Oh, by the way, there's this little boy here and he happens to have five pieces of bread and two fishes. Did you not notice the crowd? Like we've got 4 ,000 plus here, 5 ,000 plus.
I mean, this is laughable. What's this? You see, it's not you and my, it's not our job to try to meet your need. Do you know what my job is? Just give to God what I'm enjoying, that's all. It might be very, very short and it might be very, very long.
But once I hand it over to the master, my sakes, tremendous things can happen. Now you say, I got the five minutes to say that. You say, you better get to your verse. I'm gonna get to my verse. Let's get to the verse now.
For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Now, you have probably heard preachers say this. We get from this verse consistency. For where two or three having been gathered together and gathered together and planning to be gathered together, there am I in the midst of them.
And I've been challenged by some young people and they say, well, that's not what my Bible says. Well, dear child of God, we learned that from the grammar of the verbs, Mr. Newberry, right on. That's why I am a big supporter of Mr. Newberry.
So you look at the verse. For where two or three are, there's your first verb. For where two or three are, that's the present tense. Now we all know time. We got past, present, and future, okay? So the first verb is right smack in the middle.
For two or three are. Then you come to the next verb. It's two words in English, but one in Greek. Gathered together, gathered together. Now, don't go to sleep on me. I'm gonna say a grammar word. It's the perfect.
And everybody passes out. Oh my man, he's getting tactical. No, no, no, no, no, no. It's the perfect. You know what the perfect is? It's something that is complete in the past. And the results of that are still with us here in the present.
So the first verb hits the present. The second verb is reaching us into the past. And it's bringing those results up into the present. But not only is that second verb a perfect. Here's another one now.
Don't go to, don't freak out. It's a parsable, I-N-G. It's the idea of continual motion forward. Stretching into the future. See the consistency of it? So a local assembly is not something that is just, sort of, we would say willy-nilly.
That's where I come from. I hope you understand that, willy-nilly. Whatever, no, no, no, no. You know what I find interesting? I learn a lot of pictures. We all learn pictures from the Old Testament, right?
They're written for our example. It wasn't Moses's idea that God be with his people. No. Go back and read it next to this. God comes to Moses and says, I want to be with my people. Ah, that's amazing.
So then, how's this all going to happen? God didn't sit back and say, okay, Moses, you've heard my desire. Now I'm just going to, sort of, set you off and you just, sort of, figure out a way to make it work.
No. He gives him the dimensions of the building, all the material to use, everything. It's all laid out there perfectly. And you know what I've been enjoying recently? You come to the end of Exodus. And you know what?
God even told Moses what day to start. He said, I'm going to set it up so that he could fill it. See, he left nothing to Moses. Sure, he gave him enough to be involved in the construction. I understand that.
But it's not that the people of Israel got together and said, you know what? Let's come together. We got a real good idea here. I think this would be a great spot right here in the wilderness to have a building.
And we're then going to ask God to come down into it. No, no. Those people were only following what God wanted. Can we not bring that into the New Testament? That's why it's so important. The foundation, the planting of an assembly.
I'll tell you why. Come to the verse. We're going to get a little technical here, but you know, I thought to myself, three o 'clock, if you're like me, three o 'clock on Sunday afternoon is when I just start to go to my sleep.
But when you're thinking of speaking, you're just real sharp as a tack. So I know we had a good dinner. It looks like I haven't lost anybody yet. But we're going to talk about two prepositions. They look the same in our English Bible, but they're very different.
Look at verse 20. For where two or three are gathered together in my name. Now, that's the idea of onto. It's the idea of motion. It's the idea that there's an object before you and you're focused on it and you're moving toward it, okay?
Then look at the next expression. There am I in the midst. It's a different preposition. It's the idea of something in the center at rest. Things are around it. So come back to the verse. For where two or three are gathered together in, onto, my name, motion linked with his name.
You know what that brings before me? Dear brethren, isn't it wonderful to know that the things we do are based on the authority of the word of God. We move in his authority. That's why I do not fear contradiction from nobody.
When I stand up on this platform or when I say personally to somebody, the Bible teaches one cup. There's nobody that can contradict that. That's what the Bible says. That's what the Lord Jesus says. The Bible teaches one loaf.
That's from the mouth of the Lord Jesus. Those are the commandments of the Lord Jesus. I don't have to almost go in the corner and go, oh, oh, oh, oh, by the way, keep this hush-hush now. We believe in one cup and one loaf.
Barest of it, it's scriptural. The fact that I said the priesthood of all believers, that's what the word of God teaches. The fact that women are silent. I know that's not popular in 2017. I understand that.
It's amazing we haven't been sued by now. Who cares if we err? It's what the Bible teaches. The fact that women have their head covered, that's not a suppressive thing. That's what the Bible teaches. It's in his name.
It's unto him. And we could go on and on and on. These things are precious, dear child of God. I know you know this. We can get so used to the humdrum, can't we? You see, and then all of a sudden we start to get unhappy with things.
And then the next thing that comes into our mind is, well, that's just tradition. That's what these old men taught us. And we've got newer ways today. No. For where two or three are gathered together onto, in the authority, moving toward him, there am I in the midst of them.
There am I in resting. Have you ever stopped and just thought about it? The Lord Jesus is comfortable in the midst of his people. He enjoys it. Why shouldn't I? We are always so, well, we're in the generation of selfies, aren't we?
It's all about me. And we've got all, we're all taken up with, what can this place give me? And what can you give me? You ever stopped and almost just sort of have an out of the body experience and come up to the corner of this building and just look down upon this congregation today.
This is an assembly meeting, by the way. We can prove that from the word of God. And just picture your Lord resting in the midst of his people. He looks around at you. Y 'all look good to me. He can read the devotion of every heart.
He knows everything. Wouldn't it be great just to be fully engaged in that? So that when he reads my heart, you know, he says, Scott, he's really glad to be here. He loves it. He's enjoying it. I brought him here to enjoy it.
And he's enjoying it. God helps to be there. God help us to treasure it. And you know what you'll do? When you treasure something, you'll protect it because it's precious to him. Acts chapter 20, I'll end with this.
Acts chapter 20, the spirit of God would tell those Ephesian elders that that little local assembly has been purchased with the blood of his own. That is amazing. So God help us to value the presence of our Lord Jesus in the midst of his people.