Marks of a Faithful Church Member

This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

Biblical Church Membership and the Responsibilities of Membership

Well, today we're continuing our study on the topic of biblical church membership. I know that we had about only half of our group around last time, so what I'll do is I'll start briefly by reviewing what it is that we covered last week, very briefly, and then we'll move along in our study.

So if you were here last week, you'll remember that we asked three essential questions that help us to form a foundation, the foundation for a biblical understanding of church membership. And I won't test you guys, but the first question that we asked is this, is church membership biblical?

Is that something even that we find in the Bible? The second question we asked is, if church membership is biblical, what does that look like? And then thirdly, we had made the statement, or we asked the question, why should every Christian join as a member of the local church?

And if you missed last week's study, I would encourage you, do go back, go to our website, listen to that online, and I trust that you'll be helped by it. And if you have questions, just come and ask me.

But what we did find in a brief summary of last week's lesson was that church membership is biblical. Church membership is biblical, and not only is it biblical, but it is essential. It is a non-negotiable for the Christian life, both for the health and the spiritual vitality of every individual Christian, and also for the health and the vitality of every local church.

The church and the believer need each other. Secondly, we defined biblical church membership in this way. We said that a local church, or a biblical church membership, excuse me, is a local church taking specific responsibility for an individual Christian.

And that individual Christian, reciprocating that, takes specific responsibility for that local church. It's a reciprocal commitment to each other in love. And then thirdly, we saw that every believer in Jesus Christ should be the member of a solid local church.

Committed participation in the life of the local church is not optional. And we're going to talk about that a little bit more today. So that's what we learned last time. Now this time around, what we're doing is we're directing our attention now at the responsibilities of church membership, or what I'm calling the marks of a faithful church member.

There we go. Or if we were to frame it in the form of a question, what are the character qualities? What are the personal attributes of a person who is to be a Christ-honoring member of the local church?

What are the marks that God requires of believers in the local church? That's what we're going to look at today. And like we did last week, and Steve alluded to it just in our prayer time and the announcement time, these are topical messages, which in some ways I know for at least Steve and I now feel foreign.

I felt like I kind of stumbled through the last one. But as listeners, if you can just track along, we're not going to be rooted in one text. We're going to bounce around a little bit.

But follow along.

Everything that we're searching to, we're seeking to teach is from the Scriptures. And if you disagree, come afterwards and challenge me on it. But I want to start by asking you this question. Who here has ever been the member of a gym or a fitness center in your lifetime?

Okay, we've got quite a few. So if you've ever been the member of a gym or a fitness center, or if you haven't, I'll explain a little bit about that. The membership requirements to be part of a gym, to go to a gym on a regular basis, those membership requirements are very, very limited.

They're far from demanding. Often the only requirement to be the member of a gym is that you pay your due at the end of the month or at the beginning of the year or whatever it is. And as long as you pay that membership fee, there is absolutely no obligation.

You're under no obligation to ever step foot in that building again. And I know that in my experience, having had an annual gym membership before, that that was the case. You know, we get excited. We get a gym membership.

In this case, it was a cheap one, but still a one-year membership. And I went really faithfully for the first three months. And then, well, you can see me after that. We know what happened. And the same is the case for gym memberships.

There's no obligation that you ever lift a single weight or run a lap around the track or swim a lane. All you have to do is pay the fee, and you're in, and you can stay in as long as you pay that fee.

And so you could say that gym membership is membership with no strings attached. There are no obligations. There are no expectations. No expectations that you'll even become fit as a result of that. There are no commitments required.

And while this is the case for gym membership, despite what many people think, this is hardly the case when it comes to church membership. In fact, in stark contrast to the easy membership requirements of the local gym, the last gym that you joined, membership in the body and the bride of the Lord Jesus Christ requires the believer's full commitment.

All of your commitment. All of your life. Even though there are many well-intentioned churches, and I don't know if you've ever been a part of one of those, that maybe diminishes the responsibilities of church leadership to win people over, to gain more appeal to the masses.

God himself, God himself has established obligations and expectations that are non-negotiable for membership in his church. And some people might think that I'm exaggerating when I say this, but when you come into the fellowship of one of Christ's visible local churches, one of these that we're in, Grace Fellowship Church, when you come into the membership of a true local church, not only does Christ demand that you faithfully attend, that you be here, that you belong, but he requires that you love that church, whatever church it is, even unto death, to give all of yourself.

Now you might say, Shane, is that a bit of a stretch? I mean, is that really biblical? In 1 John 3 .16, John writes a letter to the church and he says this, By this we know love. How do we know love? He says that he, that's Christ, laid down his life for us.

That's love. Now what's the application? And he says, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. Just as Christ loved his church and gave himself up for her, the members of the local church are to love their brothers and sisters.

They're to love the organism that is the local church. And they're, if necessary, even to lay down their lives for their brothers and sisters. So there are responsibilities for church membership. I want to establish that at the beginning before we look at the marks of biblical church membership.

Now if we were to do an exhaustive study of this, I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but we would be here, not for months, but for years, looking at all the responsibilities that a Christian has towards the local church.

And in a real sense, as long as God wills that this church exists, that's what we'll be doing, is looking at the Bible, preaching and teaching the whole counsel of God and seeing what it means to belong to God and to belong to Christ and to belong to his church.

But for today's purposes, because this is a membership class and we don't want you to have to get into membership in 10 years or 15 years, what we'll do today is we'll look at nine marks, just like the nine marks of a healthy church series.

I didn't design it that way, but nine marks of faithful church membership or the nine marks of a faithful church member. And so for the sake of time, because it's a nine-point sermon, we're going to start now.

And I assure you it's not going to be, hopefully it doesn't feel like a nine-point sermon. So the first mark of a faithful church member, if you're writing notes, is this. It is a faithful and devoted life.

It starts with the individual, a faithful and devoted life. Perhaps that goes without saying, but if any of us in this room are going to be members of a local church, our lives must first be marked by a saving faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's what some theologians would call regenerate church membership. The true people of God are first and foremost new people. They're born again by the Spirit. They're raised from spiritual death and made alive in Christ.

And if we look back, if we remember, we studied Acts 2 .41 last week. When there were 3 ,000 souls added to the church, before those souls could be added to the church, what needed to happen? They needed to repent of their sin.

They needed to put their faith in Christ. They needed to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins. And so the defining mark, the first and defining mark of a faithful church member is faith.

It's faith.

Now, my wife and I belonged to a church at one time where there were lots of people that had faith, but it was this nebulous faith in this distant and unknown God. That's not the kind of faith that we are talking about when we talk about faith as an essential element of being a member of the church.

It's not just a vague faith, but it is a concrete faith. It is a firm faith, and it's a faith in Jesus Christ alone, faith alone in Christ alone to shield us from wrath. I know some of you understand this already, but think about this, to shield us from wrath, to justify us, to reconcile us to God.

That is the first, but there's more, as we know, to being faithful and devoted than just saving faith. In order for us to glorify God and to contribute, if you want to contribute beneficially, think about this, to the life of the local church, you must first be a person that maintains a close and abiding relationship with God.

Every one of us need to have an abiding union with Christ. Our lives must be characterized by spiritual vitality, and the only way that vitality comes is by the power of God through the Holy Spirit, through faith in Christ.

What does union with Christ look like? Union with Christ is this, it is daily walking with God in prayer. I think I've shared this before, why we named our son Noah, it's because he was a righteous man, and he walked in close fellowship with God.

That's what our hope is for you, bud. And that's my hope for this church, to be righteous men and women walking in close fellowship with God. People of the Word consistently, carefully, systematically reading the Word, making the Word of God your study and your meditation, and hungering and thirsting for righteousness, seeking to live a holy life, desiring greater maturity, keeping a closer watch for sin in our lives, not that we could cherish it, but so that we could kill it.

To have a deep abiding relationship with God is to be a person of prayer, of the Word, of holiness. You'll have very, very little to offer the church if you are not first a faithful, devoted Christian walking in close fellowship with Jesus.

Christ taught himself, if anyone remembers this, in John 15, 5. He said, I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me, whoever abides in him, he it is that bears much fruit. And the kicker, he says, apart from me, you can do nothing.

Nothing. Devotion, faithfulness, holiness, that's what this church needs from you first, before anything else. A love for Christ, an appreciation for him, and a desire and a commitment to live for him with all of your being while you have that being.

Robert Murray McShane said this, I love this quote. He said, it is not great talents God blesses. Not great talents. Never mind what you can bring by way of natural ability. But he says this, it's not great talents God blesses so much as likeness to Jesus.

He says a holy minister, but I'll say a holy man or woman is an awful weapon in the hand of God. Holiness, devotion, faith. We need to recognize this, the vitality, the maturity, the faithfulness of this church will never rise above the spiritual lives of its leaders and its members.

If we want this to be a righteous church, a fruitful church, it starts with the individual. It starts with you. Next mark we see, number two, is this habitual church attendance. I'm not sure if this has ever happened to you guys, but I find that I'm continuously in conversations with people who see absolutely no need to regularly attend the church.

I find it with co-workers. I find it with people on the street. Sometimes I'm laying in the dentist chair talking to my dental hygienist about why she needs to go to church. She used to go to church, but she finds now more peace in nature.

And almost every time I have this conversation with people, I hear something like this. There's just no place in the Bible that says that I have to go to church to be a Christian. I can be a Christian without the church.

That's what the Bible says. And sometimes what I say when the mirror and whatever it is, the suction thing is in my mouth, is something like this. Yes, but there is also no place in the Bible where that type of Christian exists in obedience, where that type of Christian exists and is healthy and growing and alive.

And so for anybody that knows their Bibles, there's no way that we can somehow shoehorn this type of churchless Christian into the paradigm that we see in our New Testaments. Somehow, any Christian that exists outside of the church exists outside of the teachings of Christ.

They exist outside of the teachings of the New Testament. They exist outside of the wisdom of the Old Testament. They exist apart from and in defiance to the approximately 59 one another commands between Matthew 1 and Revelation 22.

Those 59 are repeated over a hundred times. But those 59, if we distill them all down, that churchless Christian exists divorced from that, apart from that. How can that be? The author of Hebrews had that type of Christian in mind.

If you're that type of Christian, you're in the Bible. And he says in Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, he says this. I'm sorry, it's not flattering. He says, let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

That's what we're supposed to do here on Sundays and on Thursdays. Stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near.

These professing Christians who regularly neglect the meeting of the church are not seen as enlightened. They're not seen as virtuous. They're not seen as super spiritual, but they're seen as immature.

And they're immature with a bad habit. And that bad habit isn't the typical vices that we would think of, like smoking or drinking or dancing. It's not that type of vice, but it's this. It's a habit of forsaking the assembly of the church.

It's a bad habit of neglecting the people of God. It's a habit that belongs to the spiritually stunted and immature Christian. They've clearly failed to recognize the supreme value of faithfully assembling with the people of God and strengthening each other, as the author of Hebrews 10 says, as the day draws near, as we prepare for the return of Christ, or as we prepare to go to Him.

That's the unfaithful church member. They have a habit of neglecting the church. They have an inconsistent participation in the church. In contrast to this, the faithful Christian, the faithful church member, not only recognizes the importance of the church gatherings, but they have a good habit.

They are habitually present at the assembly of the church. They're habitually here. They're consistent. They're reliable. They're dependent. Unless there's a good reason for their absence, you'll see them every single week.

You can count on it. You can say on Thursday, see you Sunday. They're going to be there. The Puritans, you know, I love the Puritans. The Puritans called Sunday, the market day of the soul. Kids, I know with the pandemic lately, we don't get out of the house nearly as much as we would like, but do you like it or have you liked it in the last few months when you get to get out of the house, go for dinner, go to the mall, go visit friends, maybe go to an indoor playground, something like that, right?

Get out of the house.

Yes. Amen.

You get to go to the market. The Puritans called Sunday, the market day of the soul. For them, it was the highlight of the week. They got to get out and be with the people of God and hear the word of God.

It was on Sunday that they could be strengthened and encouraged. That was when they got their spiritual groceries. They got their food for the week to carry on, to live a faithful life in a fallen world.

The Lord's Day was the crescendo. It was the climax of the week. I remember hearing about one brother who would get up in the morning and he would race to his children's room and say,.

It's the Lord's Day. It's Sunday, the best day of the week.

As parents, we should be doing that. Today we get to go and worship our God with his people. That's the market day of the soul. We read from some of the Puritan writers, too, that that celebration, the preparation for that crescendo, didn't start on Sunday morning, or in our case, it didn't start Sunday at 259.

That started early in the week, Friday night, Saturday night. The Puritans, what they used to do is they would bake their bread. This is before GE ovens. They would bake their bread, and then Saturday night they would take that loaf of bread and they would set it on the fireplace mantle.

And the heat, because they also didn't have furnaces, the heat that would heat their home would heat that loaf of bread. And so come Sunday morning, when Dad races into the kids' rooms, that loaf of bread was nice and warm for breakfast.

And they said that that, too, was an illustration of what the Christians should be doing in preparation day, or preparation for the market day of the soul, is warming your heart, readying yourself for worship in the church, readying yourself for the assembly, not neglecting it, but looking forward to it, longing for it, eagerly awaiting it.

Now, functionally, as a church member, what does that look like now? We have ovens already, and we don't have to put our fire or our bread on the mantle of the fireplace, but maybe for us that's getting a good night's sleep, going to bed at a reasonable time, waking up at a reasonable time, praying ahead of the service, reading the word ahead of the service, pray, and pray earnestly.

And if I could ask, pray for me and pray for us as we prepare the men that preach at church on Sundays. I love the church, the Dutch reformers used to say to their congregations, they used to tell them this, they would say, pray me full and I will preach you full.

Pray me empty and I will preach you empty. And what they meant by that is that if you would pray that God would break me and show me my need for Christ, I will come on Sunday and I'll return the favor.

So pray, prepare, look forward to that assembly. Mark 3, a hunger for God's word. Peter wrote to the dispersed church in 1 Peter 2, verses 2 and 3.

He said,.

Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. Long for the pure spiritual milk. The faithful church member not only prepares for the Sunday worship of the church, but the faithful church member also comes with an appetite for the word of God.

An appetite for the word of God. A hunger that can only be satisfied by the faithful, accurate exposition of the Bible. You should come hungry for that. And so on the Sundays when you don't hear that, you should be disappointed.

David Platt, he tells a story of one of his missionary trips to visit the underground church overseas. And one day he was invited, I don't know where this was, what country, but he was invited to this underground church to teach on a book in the Old Testament.

And so he came with a short Bible study, what we might call a North American Bible study, on this Old Testament book. And so he went through this Bible study, maybe in the course of an hour or so, and the people in this underground church, they said, can you teach us about another Old Testament book?

And he said, sure, I'll teach you about another Old Testament book. He taught about a new book. And then after that book, they said, can you teach us about another one? And he said, sure. And so he taught them, this group, there were about 60 of them in this small room, and he taught them for eight hours.

And eventually he had to send them home. You need to go home. You need to get back home safely. And before they would go home, they said to him, will you teach us tomorrow? He said, I'll teach you tomorrow.

He said, do you want to start at the same time? They said, no, we want to start earlier. We want to get more hours in. And so he taught the next day through more books of the Old Testament. Eventually, this went on until he taught through the entire Old Testament.

And at the end of the Old Testament, he said, well, I've taught through the Old Testament. They said, we have one more request. Could you teach through the New Testament? And so he stayed and taught through the New Testament, sometimes for eight hours a day, 11 hours a day.

And in his account, he writes this, despite its small size, this room that they were in, 60 believers crammed inside. They were all ages, from precious little girls, like your guys' age, little girls, little boys, Noah, to 70-year-old women.

They were sitting either on the floor or small stools, lying shoulder to shoulder, huddled together with their Bibles in their laps. The roof was low, and one light bulb dangled from the middle of the ceiling as the sole source of illumination.

No sound system, no band, no guitar, no entertainment, no cushioned chairs, no heated or air-conditioned building, nothing but the people of God and the Word of God. That's what coming to Sunday worship looks like when you come with an appetite.

Now, you guys were talking about this a little bit earlier. I didn't want to weigh in. But not only do we need to come with an appetite, but we need to come with preparation to eat. You can show up for a wonderful meal that has been prepared for you, but if you do not pick up your fork and put it in the food and take that food and put it in your mouth to be digested, it does not matter how wonderful that feast was.

It doesn't matter how many courses are in that meal. Proverbs 26 .15 says this,. The sluggard buries his hand in the dish, it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth. Listening to expository preaching is demanding.

It really is. And Steve and I and other brothers, we have a responsibility to not bludgeon you with a boring sermon. And sometimes it happens and we lay an egg. But for the most part, you have a responsibility to be an active listener when you come to the table.

You have to pick up your fork and you have to eat. Listening to a sermon, an expository sermon at least, is not like watching TV or scrolling Instagram. It's not a passive activity. It demands focus. It demands attention.

It demands that four-letter word that starts with a W.

Work.

It really does. It requires work, and especially perhaps in our media-saturated age where we're used to just a quick flickering of images in front of our eyes. Our brains have been trained to be easily distracted.

But here are a few practical suggestions. Almost without fail, especially when we're doing our expository series, we will put next week's text in the bulletin. I encourage you to take that bulletin home with you.

Tuck it in your Bible. And when you have a chance, look at the text that we're going to be preaching on next week.

Read it.

Study it.

Try to know stuff about it that we're not going to preach on Sunday. And then we know one church, a sister church, where they have something after the service. They call it Roast the Preacher where after the service, everybody sits around and they ask questions about the sermon.

If you're going to preach there, you better know what you're going to talk about or what you are talking about. And in the same way, I encourage you, Roast the Preacher. Follow along in your Bible. Unless your Bible is on your phone, put your phone away.

Lean forward.

Make eye contact. Ask questions afterward. Agree out loud if you agree. And perhaps the most beneficial strategy I have for myself is taking notes. I heard doodling here. Taking notes. Doodling. Write an outline as the preacher preaches the text.

See where they're going. Anticipate where it is. Ask questions. Disagree. Interact with the sermon on the page in front of you.

Children.

Kids.

Color.

Draw what it is that you're hearing in the sermon. Think about what it is that you're hearing. There's a story about a man named George Gillespie who was part of the Westminster Assembly. That was the assembly that put together the Westminster Catechism and the Westminster Confession of Faith.

And in that assembly, it was common for people to write notes, to take notes down as the assembly went on. And Gillespie was no different. You could see him judiciously taking notes as this assembly happened.

And one day he refuted an argument in just the most marvelous way. And so everyone wanted to see what did Gillespie have in his notebook. What did he have in his notebook? And so they snuck over. I'm not sure what it would have looked like, but to his desk they opened his notebook.

And this is what it said in this frantic scribbling on the page. This is all. Lord, send light. Lord, give assistance. Lord, defend thine own cause.

That was it.

He wasn't even writing notes. He was just engaged. Lord, help me. The fourth mark. Eagerness for fellowship. Christianity and the church should be attractive not because we are like the world, but because we are altogether different from the world.

There is a need within the church for what some people call compelling community, deep fellowship, something that is otherworldly, that cannot be explained apart from the power of God. We read about this in Acts 2 .42.

It says,. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done through the apostles.

And if we skip over a little bit, it says this,. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all people.

And wouldn't you know it, the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved. In the Bible, we see far more in terms of fellowship than a handshake or a two-minute talk after church.

We see life lived together. We see the church portrayed as a body, yes, as a flock, yes, as a building, as a field, but also as a family. It's a new family when you enter into the church universal, and it's a new family when you enter into the church local.

You're not joining an organization. It's not a company. It's not a country club. It's a household. It's the household of faith. The person next to you is not... Look at the person next to you. They're not an associate.

They're not an associate. They're not a colleague. They're not even a friend. They're a brother or a sister in Christ, a family member. And what that means is that we need to work at this. We need to work to get to know each other, just like it takes effort to listen to a sermon.

It takes effort to know one another, to love one another, to care for one another, to cherish one another as siblings in Christ. The faithful church member comes early, and he or she stays late. You're not content with conversations about the weather.

That might be how it starts, but it doesn't end there. The faithful church member steers conversations towards things that are edifying and encouraging about Christ and the Gospel and the Word. The faithful church member is known for their hospitality.

A lot of people get away with practicing no hospitality in their lives because they say, well, hospitality is a gift, and it's not my gift. Hospitality is not a gift.

It's a command.

It's a command. Alexander Stroke tells the story of one woman who was in a local church, and she commuted to this church. I'm not sure how long it was, but it was quite a long commute. And so this particular church had a morning service and an evening service.

And so what she would do is she would drive to the service. She would sit down, partake in the first service, and then every day after that service, she would have a lunch packed. She would go into a park and eat her lunch alone and wait for the next service to start.

And so for years, she did that every day, going to church with all of these other people that she sees every week, twice on Sundays. And they would go and sit alone in this park. And it was four years of sitting alone in that park before someone in that church said, hey, would you like to come out for lunch?

If you remember in this church, don't let that be the story of this church. Don't let someone come in this door without welcoming them, without inviting them, without getting their number, without sharing your number.

When you look in the Old Testament, when you look through Scripture, one of the attributes, the qualities of a godly person is their hospitality. And often in the Bible, we see the opposite of that. We see that illustrated in a contrasting way where it'd be a fellowship that is defined by love.

By this, all people will know that you are my disciples, by your love for one another. That was four. Five, we're going to speed up, I promise, is this unceasing prayer. Unceasing prayer is the next mark.

Paul writes in Colossians 4, 2, and 5, continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

So pray.

And then he says, at the same time, pray also for us that God may open to us a door for the word to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison, that I may make it clear which is how I ought to speak.

In the life of the local church, some of the greatest needs that we have are those needs which only God can answer. It is a spiritual, supernatural work that the church is involved in. And we're a needy bunch.

We're continuously in need of wisdom and direction, and provision, and power. And if you look at the New Testament, especially the Pauline epistles, I was doing a little bit of a study this week on how often Paul asked for prayer, and exhorted prayer, where prayer was given and prayer requests were received.

You can see that the New Testament church had an acute awareness that the mission and the purposes of the church are absolutely dependent. Like I said, completely impossible apart from the power of God.

And therefore, one of the best church members that we can have in this church is a praying church member. And often the praying church members are the healthiest church members. Martin Lloyd-Jones said this about prayer.

He said, When man, when us, when we, when man is speaking to God, he is at his very best. It is the highest activity of the human soul. And therefore, it is at the same time the ultimate test of man's true spiritual condition.

There is nothing that tells the truth about us as Christian people so much as our prayer life. Everything we do in the Christian life is easier than prayer. I find that true. And yet few things in the Christian life are as important as prayer.

So let me encourage you. Pray. Pray for one another. Share prayer requests. It should not be odd to see people praying together after the service. It should not be odd to see you at the prayer meeting on Thursdays.

If anyone knows about the Moravians, anyone heard of the Moravians before? Moravians? So the Moravians, they come from Moravia, which I believe is near or part of Germany now. And they were an instrument that was used by God in a very special way to bring about a number of revivals.

God used the Moravians to save John and Charles Wesley. God used the Moravians for one of the most powerful missionary movements in the history of the church. They sent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of missionaries across the world.

All before there were buses, trains, cars, airplanes, spaceships, Blue Origin, whatever it is. And it all started with a prayer meeting. And not just any prayer meeting. If you know about the Moravians' prayer meeting, they started the prayer meeting, if you can think about this, where they would take turns praying and they prayed consecutively.

And that prayer meeting lasted 100 years. It was a 100-year prayer meeting. And I heard one church historian say that when they look at the Reformation and all the great awakenings and the revivals in the church and they narrow it all down to one common denominator, that common denominator was that it was a praying church.

It wasn't just a praying man, but a praying church. All of us, the people in the churches, were on their knees. Mark number six. You'll see I am speeding up. Sacrificial service is the next mark. Matthew 20, verse 25.