Today we have um like a four-part program. We’re going to start out now
and I’m going to talk about the doctrine of what is the church? Um because that’s an important question for us to ask
ourselves. What is the church? Uh and a reason I ask that is because when pastors say the church is doing this
that or the other they normally mean the conference union division structure they rarely mean the local congregation. Uh
pastors will say well my local church is doing this. when they talk about the church, the church is always the legal
structure. So, I want to uh start out today by just uh just laying a foundation of what is the church in
scripture. And uh then as we go into our second service today, um I wrote a
sermon about a week ago and um I called it sleepy saints. I did have another one lined up and um I think I may change the
title of that to lost Adventists. You’ll understand why I use that title when we get to it. And then this afternoon
there’s about two or three on this on that we can draw from and we’ll just see how the Holy Spirit leads this afternoon
before our Q&A. So I always like to um this is a when organizers organize
things they hate you doing this but when you come to a church and you sit in the back and you listen to the Sabbath school you’re trying to get a sense of
what are they talking about? What is happening in this church? Are there any major issues they’re dealing with?
What’s on their hearts right now? What’s the spiritual temperature here? And then you’re asking the Holy Spirit to guide
you as to which sermon you’re actually going to deliver when you stand up to speak. And then the people on the audio
visual say, “Well, we didn’t know about that and we weren’t prepared for that.” And so forth. So um it’s kind of like
every time you start a Sabbath morning, it’s a it’s kind of a journey with the Lord, seeing how the Lord is going to lead us. And uh the preaching of the
word um is essential because um faith comes through the hearing of the word of God. And but it’s not just a hearing of
the word of God. It’s a divine chemistry between the word of God that was given through the Holy Spirit and then the
Holy Spirit speaking conviction to our hearts and minds as we listen to the word of God itself. So um we’re going to
start out today with the doctrine of the church. I’ve called it church 101 and there’s our journey today. Um we’re
going to talk first of all go what is our fundamental belief on the church. Then we’re going to ask ourselves what
actually is the church. Then we’re going to look at three um metaphors or image for the church that we find in
scripture. There’s the church as a body, the church as a temple, and the church as a bride. And then we’re going to come
to our conclusions um in our time together. And um I’m just noticing that
this is really good news. I don’t see a clock anywhere. And uh I I I so um this
is a bad thing for a preacher because when you have a clock somewhere, you know, you’re on the clock and you’re timing your sermon. And if you’re not
careful, a 30 minute talk grows into two hours. You know, there’s nothing worse than giving a preacher a microphone
because they don’t want to let go of it. So, I’m going to have to try and kind of mentally imagine how long this is going
on for. When we get to like 45 minutes, could somebody can like raise your hand at me? Okay. Cuz then I’ll know. Okay.
This is where we are. Okay. Thank you, sister. I’ll trust you for that. So, um uh so that’s what we’re going to do. I
bring greetings from my wife. Uh she’s down in Bering Springs with our daughter this weekend. And um we don’t spend
hardly any weekends at home as a family. um you know so uh she’s at home with my daughter but she sends her best wishes
and I just want to start out by saying it’s an immense privilege to serve the body of Christ. There is no greater joy
in life than to serve people. I know in the last week I’ve uh I was speaking for a funeral and at a wedding and one of
the joys of being a pastor is that you get to walk with people through the highs and lows of life. You get to be
with them in the moments of joy and in the moments of despair. And this is one of the greatest privileges you’ll ever
have to be allowed into people’s lives in those moments and just to help them get through. Um my my preference is
actually to do a funeral over a wedding. Uh because at a funeral nothing worse can go wrong. Whereas at a wedding all
kinds of things can go wrong. So um anyway, that’s kind of where I am on
that. So I invite you um for those of you watching online, we give you a warm welcome as well. And um I invite you to
bow your heads once again as I ask for the uh blessing of the Holy Spirit upon us. So shall we pray? Our dear heavenly
father, I thank you for the blessing we have, the freedom we have to worship you according to our conscience. Lord, we
thank you for the leaders of this congregation here in Graing. Lord, I thank you for their generosity, their
open arms, and I pray your blessing upon this congregation and the pastors here. Father, Lord, as we share these moments
together, we pray for the outpouring of your Holy Spirit that your spirit will speak to our hearts and whisper in our
ears, “This is the way. Walk ye in it.” Father, we ask that if needed, your spirit will be the comforter to bind up
the brokenhearted. Lord, we ask that your spirit may be the teacher of righteousness um to say, “Do not turn to
the right or the left, but this is the path you’re to walk in.” But Lord, may our hearts be open, willing, and ready
to receive the conviction and the conversion of your spirit today. Lord, please speak through me and for me. May
my words be taken from your throne of grace. Uh forgive me for my sins, Lord, and may you be glorified in all that
happens today. In the name of Jesus, we humbly ask. Amen. Okay. So, let’s start
out by uh saying this is what we believe and um this we believe uh you see on the
slide there. This is our fundamental belief and uh there it is. And uh so there’s kind of a lot of text on the
screen there, but I’m going to read it out and if you can follow along uh then praise the Lord. So this is our
fundamental belief. We have 28 fundamental beliefs in our church. And uh this is the one on the church. And it
says this. It says, “The church is the community of believers who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. In continuity
with the people of God in Old Testament times, we are called out from the world and we join together for worship, for
fellowship, for instruction in the word, for the celebration of the Lord’s supper, for service to humanity, and for
the worldwide proclamation of the gospel. The church derives its authority from Christ, who is the incarnate word
revealed in the scriptures. The church is God’s family, adopted by him as children. Its members live on the basis
of the new covenant. The church is the body of Christ, a community of faith of which Christ himself is the head. The
church is the bride for whom Christ died that he might sanctify and cleanse her. At his return in triumph, he will
present her to himself a glorious church, the faithful of all the ages, the purchase of his blood, not having
spot or wrinkle, but holy and without blemish. And so there’s an awful lot
within this this fundamental belief here. And um you could spend the rest of your life just studying the doctrine of
the church and the body of Christ. There is so much richness to this. Um but uh
we’re just going to take a few highlights here. And we’re going to ask ourselves the firstly the question, what
actually is the church? And uh so let’s allow the scriptures to define what the church is as we begin. And the first
text we look at there is on the screen, Isaiah 28:16. And Isaiah is pointing forward to Jesus
Christ here. And he says, “Therefore, thus sayaith the Lord God, see or behold, I’m laying in Zion a foundation
stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation.” And
those are the and one who trusts will not panic. And so, uh, when we walked into the building today, did anybody ask
themselves, I hope that the foundation is okay in this building? No. We always assume the foundations are
strong. And when you walk into a building, there’s an implicit assumption that the foundation is going to hold
this building and however many people walk into this. And the church is a bit like that. And so is salvation. You
know, um, if Muhammad dies in Mecca at the age of seven in a road accident, is he going to be lost or saved? Well, his
the foundation for everybody’s salvation is the death of Christ on Calvary. And
that is a sure foundation for anybody to receive salvation regardless of where they are in the world today. And you
know how God judges little Muhammad age 7 is really a question of Romans 2 uh where in the final day of judgment Paul
writes that their conflicting thoughts will either accuse or excuse them. So God wants us to live in the light that
we have and only God knows what his spirit was convicting us of and whether we rejected the light or whether we
embraced the light. And so in this verse here, the uh prophet Isaiah is pointing
forwards to Jesus. He calls him the precious cornerstone, a sure foundation,
a foundation stone, a tested stone. And so he is a sure foundation and a tested
stone. He’s not an untested stone. He is a tested stone. And you can build the
body of Christ and build your salvation on that cornerstone. And that is Christ himself. Uh the next prophecy that we
have is found in 1 Corinthians 3:11. And uh here the apostle Paul picks up on
this imagery from Isaiah and he says, “For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid.” And
that foundation is who? It’s Jesus Christ. And so Paul speaks of
Jesus as being the foundation stone for the church. Just as Isaiah prophesied
about the coming Messiah that he would be the foundation stone, the cornerstone, the trusted stone. And so
um the apostle Paul picks up on the imagery in 1 Corinthians 11 uh 3:1. Then
in the next slide, 1 Peter 2:4, we see that another of the apostles, he had the
same understanding. It says, “Come to him, that is Christ, a living what? a
stone, though rejected by mortals, yet chosen and precious in God’s sight. And
so, the Apostle Peter testified that Jesus fulfilled Isaiah’s messianic
prophecy. You know, and there are some who say today that um that the church
was built on Peter and the apostles. There are some who say that today. And that they claim apostolic succession
from Peter. And when Jesus said in our next slide you see on the screen Matthew 16:18 when Jesus said to Peter he says
and I tell you you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against
it. I put in red on the screen my because the church belongs to Christ not to Peter. Number one and the text we’ve
just seen in 1 Peter 2:4 is that Peter understands that Christ is
the rock on which the church is built. So when people say to you that Peter was the rock and you I tell you that you are
Peter and on this rock I will build my church. Some argue today that that Jesus
means that Peter is the rock. But Peter himself says as we’ve just seen in first Peter 2:4 that Christ was that living
stone, not Peter himself. And so if anybody suggests to you that that the church is built on Peter and he’s the
head of the apostles and we are in apostolic succession from Peter, you say even Peter didn’t understand it in that
way because he says clearly that that come to him the living stone. He’s speaking about Jesus Christ. And Jesus
says in this passage here that nothing is going to prevail against his church.
Um nothing can prevail against the church of Christ, his sacrifice and his teachings.
And so Matthew if we come to our next slide uh we see there in John 7
37-39 Jesus says on the last day of the festival the great day while Jesus was
standing there he cried out let anyone who is thirsty come to me and let the one who believes in me drink as the
scripture has said out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water
and so Jesus did not say let anyone who is thirsty come to Peter or come to the apostles But we come to Christ and it’s
just like John 3:16 that whoever believeth in him here Jesus says let anyone who is thirsty come to me.
Now does anybody here live their life with without ever experiencing thirst?
If there’s one thing we all have in common is that we need to drink water and we need to eat food. So when Jesus
says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.” He’s saying that the body of Christ is open to all people of all backgrounds
in all times. And I say, “Praise the Lord.” Because there are people today who think
God could never accept me because look at the life I’ve led. I say actually the apostle Paul tells
you that we are saved by one man’s obedience and it wasn’t your obedience. It was the perfect obedience of Jesus
Christ that you can claim by faith as your own. But you are not saved by your godly life. You’re not saved because you
return a faithful tithe. You’re not saved because you sit in the pew from week to week. It is the obedience of
Christ that makes your salvation possible, not your own perfection. So don’t beat yourself up about your own
imperfection. Choose to look in faith to your savior every day and ask him to live within you and to cover you with
his righteousness. And so in this passage here, it’s a beautiful passage. Jesus says that out of the believer’s
heart shall flow rivers of living water. And what does that tell us? Well, there was an old English archbishop of
Canterbury called Temple, William Temple, and he had this quote. He said, “The church is the only society in human
history that exists for the benefit of of non-members.”
And that’s profoundly true that the church does not exist for its own benefit. We do not exist as the body of
Christ that we may all hoover up God’s blessings for ourselves. We exist so that God’s blessings might radiate
through us into our community and into the families and the homes all around us. And so when we understand that we
say, “Oh Lord, please bless me today.” We’re asking him to bless us in order that out of the believer’s heart will
flow rivers of living water. That God will bless the community through each and every one of us. And so if we if our
hands are open to receive God’s blessings, they’re also open to pass on God’s blessings. And if you have a glass
of water and and you just have a glass of water and you pour some water into it and you leave it standing there for a
year and you don’t touch that water, would you want to drink that water in a year’s time? No. Because it’s stagnant.
The water is only living when it’s flowing. When water is stagnant, it’s undrinkable.
But what makes water drinkable is the fact that it’s flowing because when it’s flowing, it’s washing away the
imperfections. So when we have the when we come into the body of Christ with the
understanding, the expectation that I’m not just here to receive salvation, I’m here to for God’s to mediate his
salvation to the world around me, for God’s blessings to throw through me to other people. God cleans us in the
process. Does this make sense to everybody? So the next slide we have on
the screen here is um Matthew 18:15 and verse 20. And Jesus says this is a very
famous passage and this is a chapter dealing with forgiveness and conflict within the church. And Jesus says if
another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the faults when the two of you are alone. If the
member listens to you, you have regained that one. For where two or three I gathered in my name, I am there among
them. So according to Jesus when there are at
least two disciples gathered together in his name there Jesus is present.
Now some people may say if the Holy Spirit were to die how soon before your
local church would notice the difference? It’s a sobering thought. Yes. Yeah.
Are we so driven by programs and policies and this is our annual calendar
that we’re just going to carry on going about the business of doing church without realizing that the Holy Spirit
is no longer there? But Jesus defines the church here not as a legal structure
but by a gathering of those who worship him. And it it just requires two people.
When two people are gathered together who love Jesus and who honor his commandments, their Jesus is going to be
present with them. So the church and I’ll be very careful what I say here. The true church of Christ does not need
a legal registration to be the church. The true church of Christ is exists with
or without a legal registration, with or without an ecclesiastical hierarchy,
with or without bank accounts, with or with or without campsites like Campo Sabal, with or without a constitution or
bylaws or legal incorporation paperwork. The true church of Christ exists with or
without a working policy manual, the church manual, insurance and risk management strategies. None of those are
necessary for a gathering of believers to be constituted as the church of Christ. The body of Christ exists
independent of all that legal paraphernalia. And we as Adventists, we’re coming into
a time before Jesus comes again, there’s going to be incredible coercion of conscience. And Matthew 24:10-14,
Jesus says, “You’ll be hated by all men for my men’s sake.” So the world is united against you. Then in the church,
he says, “There will be betrayal. There’ll be false prophets will arise and false messiahs will arise and
there’ll be an increase of lovelessness in the church and there’ll be lawlessness in the church. And so Jesus
says that before I come again the church will have um persecution. It will have um lawlessness is the word anomia. It
means the church will reject the validity of the ten commandments, the law of God. There will be lovelessness in the church. So churches will be cold.
He says there’s going to be schismatic movements within the church. Um but in the midst of all that chaos, verse 14 of
that chapter says, “And the good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed to all nations as attest me to them and then
the end shall come.” Which means that the final gospel proclamation to the nations of the world is going to take
place in the midst of the most horrendous of circumstances outside and inside the church. I want to encourage
you today, wherever you are in Michigan or watching this online, be focused on sharing the good news of a sinbearing
and soon returning savior. That’s what the world needs to hear. It’s the message of Jesus Christ that he
came, he died, he rose, and that he’s coming again. And we’re going to celebrate Christmas, you know, in a few
weeks. Many people are. And it’s we often look back to the the the first advent of Christ, but as Adventists,
we’re choosing to look forward to the next advent of Christ. And the cross and and the cross of Calvary is important,
but the shadows are lengthening with every passing year. But the dawning light of the second coming of Christ is
getting brighter with every coming year. And so in this passage here, we see that
the church is not the structure. I may get into trouble for saying that,
but the fact of the matter is, you know, when when when we as pastors say the church is doing something, we mean the legal structure.
And so those who are in the structure think that they are the church. But if the state of Michigan were to
withdraw the legal registration for the Adventist Association in Lancing, the church, the body of Christ would still
exist in Michigan. It just wouldn’t have a legal association attached to it. It would then be an underground church. But
that is just as valid an expression of the body of Christ as a legally incorporated entity. And actually, it’s
better for the church in terms of church growth. When you face persecution, everybody knows what you stand for. And
people are looking for people who stand for something because their lives are drifting on a sea of meaninglessness and
they want to stand for something as well. And so it’s not a bad thing for the church, the body of Christ to lose
all this legal paraphernalia. That’s maybe heresy to some, but it’s true. The church historically has always
done better when it goes underground, when it has no legal structure. And Jesus says here, “The church exists
where two or three are gathered in my name, and I will be there with them.” It’s a beautiful promise from Jesus. And
so, um, the word he uses here is the word the the word church is ecclesia.
And our next slide shows an example of this. Um, the word ecclesia, it doesn’t necessarily mean church in New in the
New Testament. It just means an assembly of people. And so, what happened in in uh this is an old word. When Jesus used
the word ecclesia, it was already a word in common use at the time. And what happened was in the Greek city states
like Sparta and Athens and Corinth three or 400 years before the life of Christ um what would happen is they would
invite all the free men out of the city into the plane outside the city wall and
that was called an echlasia. The word ek means out of. It’s a preposition.
Ecclesia means those who have been called. So the ecclesia were those who have been called out of the city. They’d
make a decision as the free men of the city and then they’ll be sent back into the city to implement that decision
among the slaves, the women, and the children of the city. Okay? And so when Jesus says, “And on this rock I will
build my ecclesia or build my church,” he’s using a word that the disciples are very familiar with. And this is this is
how the the word is used in the New Testament. You see in the screen there, Acts 19 um up there uh verses 32 and 39.
Um this is um uh in the riot in Ephesus. It says meanwhile some were shouting one
thing some another for the assembly or that’s the word ecclesia was in confusion and most of them did not know
why they had come together. If there is anything further you want to know it must be settled in a regular assembly.
And so um the this is the the the town scribe here is using the word ecclesia
that Jesus uses in Matthew 18 that on this rock I’ll build my church or build my ecclesia. And so in this case here in
acts chapter 19 this is the civic use of the word that the disciples were familiar with. This is an example of a
town gathering where everybody has to come together to make a decision. And that’s the word that Jesus uses for the
body that he is establishing the ecclesia. It means we are called out of the world.
Not to stay out of the world, but we are called out of the world as free men and women. There is freedom in the gospel in
order that you might be sent back into the world to fulfill a task and to implement a decision and to announce
what the decision was. So when we are the church of God, the ecclesia of Jesus Christ, we are called out of the world
not to stay separate from the world, but we are called out of the world to meet our Lord and Savior. And then he sends
us back into the world known as the gospel commission or the great commission. We have a task to do. And so
this is the church of Christ. And so um let’s come to some of the images that the that sister white says about this.
Our next slide talks about uh his very famous passage here uh from the book
upward look page 315. She says God has a church. It is not the great cathedral.
Neither is it the national establishment. Neither is it the various denominations. It is the people who love
God and keep his commandments. Just want to reflect on that. It is the people who love God and who keep his commandments.
You cannot be reconciled with God without being reconciled to his character. And God’s character, the law
of God, the ten commandments are a reflection of his character. And so those who are who love God and
are reconciled to God are reconciled with and uphold his commandments. She goes on to say, “Where two or three are
gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Matthew 18:20. Where Christ is even among the humble
few, this is Christ’s church. For the presence of the high and holy one who inhabitth in eternity can alone
constitute a church. Where two or three are present who love and obey the commandments of God, Jesus there
presides. Let it be in the desolate places of the earth, in the wilderness, in the city, enclosed in prison walls.
So you we don’t need big buildings to cons make the church.
We say on Sabbath morning, we’re going to go to church today as if church is
the building. But the church building is not the church. The church spiritually
are those who love God and who keep his commandments. They they love Jesus. They follow him as Lord and Savior. And they
gather for worship, for witness, for study, for praise, for prayer, for
fellowship, and for ministry one to another. That is what constitutes the church. Uh the next slide says, “The
glory of God has penetrated.” This is the same passage, the prison walls flooding with glorious beams of heavenly
light, the darkest dungeon. His saints may suffer, but their sufferings will, like the apostles of old, spread their
faith and win souls to Christ and glorify his holy name. The bitterest opposition expressed by those who hate
God’s moral standard of righteousness should not and will not shake the steadfast soul who trusts fully in God.
And so, the Apostle Paul says in the book of Philippians, he said, “It is because of my imprisonment that the
gospel is now known throughout the imperial household.” And if you look at the the the early
church in the first century, what spread the gospel faster than anything else was the Roman persecution because when you
when they were persecuted, everybody had to make up their mind, do I stand with these people or do I not stand with with
these people? And what’s going to shed spread the gospel um I believe at the end of time before Christ comes most
effectively will get the gospel to the whole world is when the world is imposing false worship the mark of the
beast at the end of time those who refuse the mark of the beast will be known worldwide
and so persecution is not the end of the world as a Christian it may be a sign that you may be doing
the right thing in some cases persecution isn’t a sign that God has abandoned you is that God has in his
providence You are living in a dark moment in chapter of earth history and he’s asking you to shine for you in the darkness.
Come what may. And what you find and I can tell you this from my experience is
that when you face persecution, it forces you every day to ask for the indwelling of Jesus Christ because every
morning the weeds of anger rise in your heart and if you don’t deal with it in a Christlike manner, it can twist you all
all so you look all ugly on the inside. So when you’re facing persecution for
your faith, um it’s not the sign that God has abandoned you, but it is a sign that you need to spend more time on your
knees asking for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and asking for the infilling of Jesus Christ. And that’s what carries
you through those dark moments. The next slide is from Acts of the Apostles. She
says, “The church is is God’s fortress.” This is the last slide here on this section of our sermon this morning. The
church is God’s fortress, his city of refuge, which he holds in a revolted world. Any betrayal of the church is
treachery to him who has bought mankind with the blood of his only begotten son. From the beginning, faithful souls have
constituted the church on earth. That is from the time of Adam and Eve and Seth and so forth. From from the very
beginning, God counts them as his church. In every age, the Lord has had his watchmen who’ve borne a faithful
message to the generation in which they lived. So God in every generation has a faithful church. In every generation,
there are to be faithful watchmen who have borne a faithful message to their generation. These sentinels gave the
message of warning. And then when they were called to lay off their armor, others took up the work. God brought
these witnesses into covenant relation with himself, uniting the church on earth with a church in heaven. He has
sent forth his angels to minister to his church and the gates of hell have not been able to prevail against his people.
There’s some beautiful promises in this. But what we see here is that the true church of God is not bound by illegal
boundaries. It goes all the way back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. In every age, God has had his true church.
And in every age with the existence of the church, there is always deviation from truth. So in every age, God raises
faithful watchmen to stand up and blow the trumpet. And the trumpet has to have a certain
sound for everybody to to hear it. And the watchmen who stand up have to be willing for people to either accept what
they’re saying or to reject what they’re saying. What matters is not whether people accept what you say as a
watchman, but whether you are faithful to the one who’s called you to be a watchman and you’re faithful in discharging the the responsibility that
he has placed upon you. And I would say this here to say if you’re a Sabbath school teacher, if you’re an elder, if
you’re a deacon or a deaconess or if you host the hospitality ministry or whatever you do, be faithful in
discharging the responsibilities that God has given you. It’s not just the watchman on the walls. To the extent
that we are all faithful in discharging the gifts using the gifts that God has given us to edify and build up the body
of Christ, the body of Christ is a healthy place. And when we’re not faithful collectively
or individually in using the gifts that God has given us, life is very difficult. Have you ever noticed that if
you injure a small part of your body, you suddenly become very aware of how much you need that part of your body?
Yes. Like you you may like injure your right thumb and you suddenly realize I
really need this right thumb back again as soon as possible because you can’t hold anything and it’s hard to type.
It’s hard to hold anything with any grip. uh there’s no torque or power there. And so when when a part of your
body is injured and is not functioning as it should, you suddenly notice in a very very intense way that something’s
wrong. And the Lord may that finger or may that thumb, may that toe get better as soon as possible. I’ve said this
before, but I sleep in many different beds during the week. And when I wake up in the night, I don’t jump out of bed to
go to the restroom. I lie there and I think to myself, now which bed am I in here? And do I get out on the right or
do I get out on the left? And when I before I went to bed, I check underneath the bed. Does this person
have like a a steel box under the bed? Do they have an iron an iron block by
the door to hold the door open? I mean, some people do. And then when when you walk to the west, you don’t walk like
this. You kind of walk like a stalk with your feet going up like this because uh seriously, I’ve stubbed my toes so many
times at 3:00 in the morning in strange people’s homes. I’ve had to stand in the pull pit with cellar tape around your
four toes down there because your little toe is like black and just hanging limply there and I think it’s been
broken multiple times. I’m not sure why I’m telling you this story. But uh anyway, the Holy Spirit led in that
direction. I have to This is a senior moment. I’ve forgotten why am I telling you this story. Sorry. Body of the church.
The body of the church. Exactly. Yeah. So when you stand up here with a broken toe and your foot’s wrapped together with cellar tape, you are acutely aware
that oh Lord help my toe to heal in the next three or four weeks. That’s what it takes about a month to heal back. Um so
the point about this is God has a church. It exists from Adam and Eve onwards. It does not depend or require
legal definition, legal parameters, legal incorporation. The church is comprised of those who love God and who
keep his commandments. And um in every generation, God has to raise up watchmen
for that church to guide that church. And those watchmen are not to be damned.
They’re to be treasured because God speaks to those watchmen.
And so with this in mind, let’s move on to the first picture of the church in scripture. And this is the church as a
body. And this kind of flows naturally from what we’ve just been talking about. The text here I’m sure you’re all very
familiar with is 1 Corinthians 12 12-17. And uh the Apostle Paul says this. He
says, “For just as the body is what? One. And has many members and all the
members of the body, though many are what? One body, so it is with Christ. For if
in the one spirit we’re all baptized into one body, Jews or Greek, slaves or free,
and we’re all made to drink of one spirit. Indeed, the body does not consist of one member, but of many. If
the foot would say, “Because I’m not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the
body. And if the ear would say, “Because I’m not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any lesser
part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would
the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as he chose. The text goes
on, well, this is a long screen, isn’t it? I’m testing my eyesight on the back screen here. Says, “If all were a single
member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have
no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that
seem to be weaker are what? indispensable. And those members of the body that we think less honorable, we
clothe with greater honor. And our less respectable members are treated with greater respect, whereas our more
respectable members do not need this. But says Paul, God has so arranged the
body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the
members may all have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it. If one member
is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now, if you are the body, now you are the body of Christ and individually
members of it. Now, I’ve noticed this one thing about the human body and that
it’s not a very nice thing to look at. Have you noticed that human bodies are
never static? They’re always changing. And when you’re a young kid, you think,
I just want to grow up really fast because the grown-ups have all the fun. There’s a young kid nodding her head
there. Yes, that’s true, sister. So, when you’re growing up, you just want to be an adult because the adults get to do
all the fun stuff. But when you hit about 18 years old, that’s your physical peak. And from then on, you’re kind of
starting to go downhill. Sorry to say everybody. And that that that downhill experience accelerates beyond the age of
40, let’s say, when your doctor says, “Oh, you’ve turned 40, Mr. Vine. It’s time for certain medical procedures to
be done on you on an annual basis.” Then you realize you’re getting old. And then when they say now the time has come,
you’re 50 years of age, now you have to have a colonoscopy every other year or five years. They think I really am
getting old. And it seems like the doctors have this metric and they put you on certain tests at certain age
because they know the body changes. You know, the human body is never static. It’s always changing. It’s either getting bigger or it’s getting um
smaller. Yes. And that at some stages in life, you’re getting taller and you reach a stage of life where you’re
starting to get shorter. And then we we we chop bits off the body and we add bits to the body. Okay? And some people
are more added bits than original bits. And so our bodies are a constantly
changing thing. And it’s why when you get married, and a hint to all the young people here today, you don’t marry a
body, you marry a mind. Because it’s the mind that you’re really marrying. The body will just change
shape throughout the years. They say that when a man gets married, he hopes that his wife will never change, but she
always does. And when a woman gets married, she hopes that her husband will change, but he never does. All right?
So, [clears throat and laughter] so when you get married, so as as you go through life, you become acutely aware
of the fact that the body is always changing. But whether it’s the body when you’re 6 years old or 16 or 60, it is
still created by a loving creator and it’s still you. and your local church
and my local church will always go through change. Churches are never static like the human
body. Sometimes God gives you like a growth of there’s a surge of young families into
the church and they’re there for like 15 20 years then you get a 15-year drought
then there’s a surge of young families into the church again. Churches go through these cycles and sometimes God
gives you an abundance of musical gifts because he knows there’s going to be a musical ministry in your church and then
a few years later there’s nobody with any musical gifts in the church. And so the body of Christ is always changing.
To expect the body of Christ to be always static um is the denial of what the human body really is like. What
matters is whether I or you or we are using the gifts that God has given us
today in the body of Christ where I happen to worship.
And no gift is more important than another. The preacher is no more important than
the greeter at the front door. The the people who work in the fellowship hall to prepare lunch for
everybody are no less valued in the church than the elders and the deacons or the board members. Everybody is
needed to have a healthy functional church. Praise God for those who are maybe not at the front uh but who have a
quiet more hidden ministry. Praise God for those members of the church who notice when somebody’s not there that
Sabbath, they’ll give them a call that evening, maybe make a visit. Praise God for maybe some of the members of the
church who themselves are more elderly who go and make hospital visits on a regular basis because the working adults
don’t have time to do that in the working day. Praise God for every member who uses their gifts to bless the body
of Christ. I want to encourage you today, use your gifts to bless the body of Christ and ask God if if you God has
given you one talent, be faithful in that because then God can give you two talents and God sees you can be trusted
with those talents, maybe he’ll grow it to five talents. So be faithful in the gifts that God has given you to bless
the body of Christ. The church is a body and God gives us spiritual gifts that
contribute to the healthy functioning and mission of the church. And if you read the parable of the talents in
Matthew 25, the guy who had the one talent and who buried it, in that
parable, he’s cast into outer darkness. And and the parable is there is there in
Luke 19. And we don’t think about it. We think about the parable of the talents is if you are faithful in the talents
that God gives you, God will give you more talents. But the other side of that parable is more sobering. Is if you have
a talent and you bury it, it means it’s not just that you’re burying it, but your local church is weaker as a result
of that because God’s entrusting you with that talent to bless your church. If you don’t use your talents for God’s
glory, you’re going to face eternal judgment in those parables, eternal destruction.
It’s a sobering thought. Matthew 25 and Luke 19. Those two those two tellings of the parable by Jesus.
We need to take seriously the use of the talents that God has given us. We need to recognize that we are mutually
independent. Our gifts are not our own, but they’re given us by a loving creator for the blessing and the edification of
his believers and the body of Christ and those who are not yet believers. So the church is not a body of Christians. The
church is the body of Christ. the we are the body in Christ in Romans
12:5 and we are the body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12:27. And Calvary recognizes all believers
quotes to God in one body. Ephesians 2:16. And believers are member of his body. Ephesians 5:30. We read also in
the scriptures that Christ is the head of the body. Colossians 1:18. He’s also the head of the church. Ephesians 5:23.
But the church is not an extension of Christ because there is a clear distinction between Christ the head and
the rest of the body. Christ is both the source of the church and he’s also the focal point of authority and we are
called to be obedient to the commandments of Jesus Christ first and foremost.
You know, before Eve existed, um I’m tempted to tell a mother-in-law
joke here, but I really shouldn’t because some people get offended when I say those things, but Adam didn’t have a mother-in-law. He’s probably a very
happy man. But he um when God first created Adam in in Genesis 2, Jesus says
in Ma Matthew 22, the first and greatest commandment is this. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul,
and mind. be and the then Jesus says in Matthew 22 and the second is like unto it you shall love your neighbor as
yourself. So the first commandment is your relationship with God and the second commandment is is your horizontal
relationship with those around you. And in the garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 2, God first created Adam and he gave
the instructions for the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life only to Adam, not to Eve because she wasn’t yet existing then. And so
Adam’s first loyalty and relationship was to God. And then Eve was created. Then he could love his neighbor as
himself. Which tells you in these times we know when religious liberty has been on the
line in so many ways. Our first responsibility is to walk in harmony with the teaching and guiding of God’s
Holy Spirit. And because God is perfect and God is all knowing, God is all loving, the the
the more closely I can walk in the light that God has given me, inevitably the
better the relationships will be with those around me. If I focus on improving my human
relationships without connecting with my Lord and Savior every day, it’s going to be like um there’s a lot of outward
performance but not much in inward change. But when I focus every morning in my walk with my heavenly father and I
love the lord the god with all my heart, soul and mind, that means it’s the natural overflow of that loving relationship is the agape love of god
flowing to those around me. So there’s a lot in this doctrine of the church as the body and um but I want to
move on here to the idea of the church as a temple. Now the church is a temple and we [clears throat] find this
reference in Ephesians chapter 2 21 and this is what it says. In him the whole
structure is joined together and grows into a ho into a holy temple in the Lord. I put there in Greek it says um a
non hagon enuro that’s what the Greek means there into a temple holy in the Lord. That’s the literal translation. It
says in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for
God. Now there are two words for temple in the New Testament and they have quite distinct meanings. So in Acts chapter 3,
Peter and John went up to the temple of Jerusalem to pray and the word that it uses is heron and uh the the an is the
head of something. So the heron ar was the head of the temple. It’s where we get the word hierarchy from. Okay. So
the word here means the temple. It’s a generic sense for the temple like pagan temples um or the the temple of
Jerusalem. But the word natos which Paul uses here, you see it in the Greek aison
hagon. Those first three words in Greek that that is the dwelling place for God in the temple. It’s like the holy of
holies in the temple. So the temple of Jerusalem is the heron of Jerusalem. But
the holy of holies in the temple was the natos. That is the meeting place between God and man. So Paul says here that
talking about the church he says in him that is in Christ the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy
temple in the Lord. Now when Jesus came to the earth the first time um the Jews
believed that the temple of Jerusalem was the meeting place between God and man. And it was,
you know, the tabernacle onwards, you got the holy of holies there, you got the shikina glory. And so the temple was
the meeting place between God and man. But now Paul is saying here in Ephesians 2, now Christ is the meeting place
between God and man. And the church is to be the place where people meet with Christ.
That’s an important point. Do our services uplift Jesus Christ?
Do we teach people to follow Jesus Christ? When new believers come into the
church and they’re baptized, do we just say, “Okay, now they’re in the church. We’ll let them kind of sink or swim.” Or
do we actually intentionally disciple them to be obedient to the teachings of Christ to learn to read the teachings of
Christ to um apply them in their own lives or not? Often times we don’t do
this, but the church is to be the holy temple in the Lord. That is it’s to be the meeting place, the dwelling place
for God Almighty and we meet together as we worship and fellowship uh and turn our eyes to our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. So the church is a holy temple where God dwells in the midst of his people. And Peter says in 1 Peter 2:5,
he says, “Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood to offer
spiritual ac sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” And I love
the the the imagery here because he says, “You’re a living stone letting yourselves be built into a spiritual
house, which is uh when when you see builders working in brick layers um and
not maybe maybe modern bricks, there’s less of a need for this, but certainly in England where I come from, they would
make these these um stone br stone walls across the countryside. And each stone
had to be, you know, they’d pick up the stones and they would carefully chisel them around the sides so they fit in so
that the the the stone wall had structural strength. Those stone walls a thousand years later are standing
strong. And those guys a thousand years ago, they were good engineers. Some of the
the the stone walls in England, they’re not straight. They’re really narrow. If they were straight and narrow, they
could easily be pushed over. But what they did was they they they build the walls in a wave pattern like that. And
the wave pattern gives it a structural stability that a straight wall will never get. And so those walls a thousand
years later are standing stronger than our, you know, dry walls that we have today in in England and in America. And
but the idea here is that in the body of Christ, you are a stone.
And it says, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house. That is, God’s going to have to shave some sharp edges
off you. Like when you enter the body of Christ, it’s not that you can say, “This is who I am. I’m never going to change.”
No, God’s expecting you to fit in and he’s going to have some chisels, some hard edges off you so that you don’t
hurt those around you. So when we enter the body of Christ as the the temple, the church as the temple of God, we’re
asking the Holy Spirit to shape us on an ongoing basis so that um we are but most
suited for our unique role within the temple that we are living stones and also that when you’re a stone in the
temple, you share in the loadbearing of that temple. Not every stone, not there
isn’t one stone in the wall that carries all the load. If you look at a building like this, if this were made of bricks
like in England, every brick is needed in the wall for the wall to have structural integrity. That is, if the
church is a temple and we are all living stones in that temple, it means that I must be willing and ready and able to
bear my fair share of the load. I’m not just here for the ride. I have
responsibilities in the body of Christ. I will be a loadbearer in order that the wall may grow higher around me. I’m not
going to sherk my responsibilities. And so the next passage is 1 Corinthians 3:16-17.
And Paul says there, do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s spirit dwells within you? And the word
in red there’s naos. It’s not hereon. So that that is God dwells within you. If
anyone destroys God’s naos or temple, God will destroy that prison or person.
For God’s temple is holy and you are that temple. So Paul is talking here
about those. This isn’t speaking about you as an individual. This is the collective. Do you not know is in the
plural. So Paul is speaking to the body of believers. And he says, “Do you not know Adventists here in in Graing,
Michigan, that you collectively are God’s dwelling place? And you shouldn’t be destroying God’s
dwelling place.” And God will bring judgment on those who are seeking to destroy the dwelling place of God. And
that may be on external persecution, but it also may be on false prophets and schismatic movements within the church.
Thank you, sister. All right, I need to scoot along here, don’t I? So, 45
minutes. Yes, the clock doesn’t lie. So, I’ve been given my marching orders here. Thank you, sister. So, um this is a
warning that we are to take care of the church. There may be external persecution and internal apostasy, and
God will hold those forces accountable. And the next slide is 1 Corinthians 6:19 through 20. And here people is Paul is
speaking to you as individuals. He says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you
which you have from God and that you are not your own? For you are bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God in your
body.” And so in this passage here, in the verses before this, Paul is speaking
about joining your body, the members of your body, which is your private parts, with with in sexual immorality with
prostitution. And so Paul is speaking primarily here about sexual purity within the church. And he says, do you
not know that your body is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit?
And when you join with somebody sexually, you join with them spiritually. And between Christ and
Satan, there is no agreement. And if your body is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, then as a Christian, if you
want to retain the Holy Spirit, you cannot be joining your body with
fallen spirits in sexual immorality. Not just with godless immoral bodies, but in
sexual immorality because there’s a sharing of those spirits.
uh we’d say in the modern age maybe the the number one cause of
demonization among Christians these days is pornography and maybe the second most
pre uh most common cause is childhood abuse something that’s visited upon you
do you not know if you’re watching pornography that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit
and there is no agreement between Christ and Satan. You yield to the control of your mind to
the fallen spirits that come with pornography. The Holy Spirit’s not going to want to hang around.
Take this very seriously. This isn’t just theological discussion.
In my experience as a pastor and to a lot of people who complain of demonization, porn addiction is a
significant problem in the body of Christ. And by the God, by the grace of God, you
can gain victory over it. We’re not helpless. But you can’t claim your body as the
temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit if you’re watching stuff online or engaging in sexual immorality and uh
and opening your body to demonic influences in that same process.
So Christians who to understand the body as the temple, the church as a temple,
we’re not to engage in sexual immoralities because our body is now the dwelling place of the spirit of God. To
pollute our bodies physically or sexually or to put anything into it against the convictions of our
conscience would be to sin against the Holy Spirit. We do not live for the gratification of physical or sexual
appetites because we belong to God and we’ve been bought with a price and we belong to our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. We are to live to bring him who bought us glory in all aspects of our lives including how we treat our bodies.
Your value is reckoned by the price paid and the price paid for you and I was the blood of the son of God. Thus we are
more valuable than anything else on planet earth. In the west, we know the cost of
everything, but we really don’t know the value of anything. We’ve priced everything out,
but we’ve lost our sense of what real value is in human life and human experience.
Because we are purchased by God, the redeemed sinner is morally obligated to live for God only, to obey his commands,
to flee all forms of lensiousness. How we treat our bodies is to be guided
by the owner of the body and that is not ourselves but it is our heavenly father. He speaks to us through the holy spirit
and thus we treat our bodies how we treat our bodies is thus a matter of conscience for how the spirit leads us
and convicts us as how we’re to honor this body temple. And there are some people [snorts] and this is a diversion
and I’m just going to say to the sister who’s watching the clock on me there and thank you for doing that sister. Um,
time goes at a different pace depending where we are in the universe. We know that from general theory of relativity.
So, I’m just going to say for a few minutes that time is more slowly running up here than down on your clock, but thank you for letting me know that. But
if you turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 16, Acts chapter 16, this isn’t a text on the screen and verse 6.
[clears throat] Um, once you’ve established that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, once you’ve
established that you belong to God, once you’ve establishes that you are to honor the owner of the body, your body, which
is not you, but the God himself, then you have to ask, well, how do I treat that body? And in Acts 16:6, this is
talking about Paul’s second missionary journey. It says they went through the region of Friia and Galatia, having been
forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. Now, you say, why is he talking about this verse here? Let me
ask you this. Is there anything in the Bible that says that Paul should not
preach in in modern day Turkey? Is there any text in the Bible that says the gospel should not go to modern day
Turkey? No. All right. So, what happens here is the Holy Spirit brought a
conviction upon Paul and um Paul and his uh the I think it’s Silas with him here.
Um the apostle Paul brings conviction on Silas, Paul and Silas that they need to do something and the topic is something
that’s not covered anywhere else in scripture. Do you follow that? Yes.
Okay. So in the last 5 years, people said um vaccine mandates are not a matter of
religious liberty. That is the ability to follow the convictions of the Holy Spirit upon your conscience because the
Bible says nothing about vaccines. But what we see in this passage here is the Holy Spirit will bring you
conviction in areas that the scripture is silent on in general. It doesn’t mean it’s any lesser convictions of the Holy
Spirit. It doesn’t mean that you are not required to follow through on the convictions of the Holy Spirit either.
And so when you decide to get married, you generally pray about it. There’s not when you say, “Lord, is this the right
person for me to marry?” There’s nothing in the Bible that says who you are to marry. When you’re deciding whether to
invest in a business, buy a house, sell a house, go through a cancer treatment or not, you pray about it. You ask for
the convictions of the Holy Spirit upon your conscience, none of that is covered in scripture and the specifics of your
case. But then you you pray and then you act as you were so convicted by the Holy Spirit. And the point about this is is
that your body is the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. It’s the temple of the Holy Spirit. And you pray about it and
you are convicted by the Holy Spirit. That is a matter of conscience. It is a matter of religious liberty,
liberty of conscience for you to treat your body and to honor the owner of the body which is our heavenly father as he
so impresses you through the Holy Spirit. [snorts] So [clears throat] let’s come back to our main passage
here. 2 Corinthians um let’s move on. The church is a bride. I think we should
move on brother because our time is moving out here. The church as a bride. Um I think we all like weddings. Yes.
Yes. Do you know why we have bridesmaids for weddings?
Yes. To protect the bride because in the Middle Ages there would be witches in the in the church and you wanted to make
sure that the bride wasn’t cursed by a witch. So you’d have six ladies all walking and dressed as the bride and the
witch was didn’t know who the bride was. And so the chances are that she’d escape from the from the curse. Do you know why
brides carried such large posies of flowers? is because in the middle ages people
didn’t have baths. You know, Queen Mary of England, we call her bloody Mary because she killed so
many Protestants. She she boasted that in her life she had three mar three three um three baths. One was when she
was born, the the second was on the morning she got married and the third was when they were going to lay out her
body after her death. Okay. So, body odor was a problem in the middle ages. And for that reason, brides wore fresh
posies of some of carried them in their hands just to dispel the odor around them just for a few brief moments as
they went to the altar. But the text, the first text we look at here is Hosea 21:19. It says, “And I will take you for
my wife forever.” God speaking to his people, “I will take you for my wife in righteousness and in justice, in
steadfast love and in mercy.” And Hosea is speaking to a backsliding
people. And then Jeremiah says, “Turn, O back, backsliding children, sayaith the Lord, for I am what unto you? I’m
married unto you.” And so God was married to his people. And for those of you who’ve gone through divorce, which
is one of the most painful things you can go through, God says in Ezekiel chapter 3, he says, “I wrote a
certificate of divorce.” He’s speaking to Judah here, “And I sent the northern 10 tribes away with a certificate of
divorce.” That is [snorts] God has gone through divorce himself. God is the
divine divorcee. He actually states it explicitly. I wrote a certificate of divorce and sent the northern 10 tribes
way into captivity. And so in Malachi chapter um 3:16, it says God says, I
hate divorce. God knows what it is to go through the pain of a breakup. It’s not a sign that you’re a moral failure if
you’ve gone through a divorce. These things do happen in life. Um but God is a divorcee and but he was faithful to
his people, but they were not faithful to him. So in 2 Corinthians 11:12,
the Apostle Paul says, “I feel a divine jealousy for you, for I promised you in marriage to one husband to present you
as a chasteed virgin to Christ.” We’re going to be looking at the parable of the virgins in our next service. Christ
is looking for a pure and a faithful bride when he returns,
a pure and faithful bride. And then Ephesians 5 25- 27, this metaphor is the
church as a bride. We read, “Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her in
order to make her holy by cleansing her with a washing of water by the word so as to present the church to himself in
splendor without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind.” Yes. So that she may be holy and without blemish.
So how does Christ purify his church in this passage? He says he cleanses her
with the washing of water by the word. So this morning when I got up, I walked
carefully to the restroom and I had a shower.
Most people or many people when I grew up in England, okay, we lived up in that
we grew up in like the post um rationing era. We would have one one night a week
was bath night in our family. It was Thursday. We didn’t have showers. We had bath iron bathtubs. My mom would half
fill the water. The good boys, the good we had four children. The good kid got first in the bath water. The naughty kid
got last in the bath water. The first kid, you could see the bottom of the the water, the bottom of the bath. The
fourth kid, you could see the grime around the side of the bath. Okay? And it was like a soapy gray mess that you got into. So, we all wanted
[clears throat] to be the good kids so we could get first into the bath. That’s how it was in England. But nowadays, we have, you know, showers on a daily
basis. But most people today have a shower once a day. Is that fair to say? So, don’t go
like this. Okay, everybody should be saying this at this moment in time. Okay, and if you’re [clears throat] doing like this, you somebody should
nudge you and say, “Oh, you should be doing it, you know, once a day.” But just as we wash our bodies every day, so
Christ cleanses the church through the washing of water by the word. Christ cleanses his church through
running the word, the water of the word of God through our minds on a daily basis. And that cleans us out bit by
bit, imperceptibly, but bit by bit, God prepares his bride through the washing
of the water of the word. I want encourage you today to be washing your mind with the water of the word of
God. To run the word of God through your mind on a daily basis. And then if you
even if you just do one word, blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. to think
about that one verse as you go through the day and allow it to guide the decisions and the interactions that you
engage in. So it’s not just something you do in the morning just as you have a shower in the morning and you feel clean for the rest of the day. Um so run the
put put the water of the word of God in your mind and let it guide you through the rest of the day as well. Even if
it’s just one saying of Christ, let that guide you as you go through the day. And that’s how Christ wa um that’s how
Christ sanctifies his church through the washing of the water of the of the word
as the body of Christ. The church must remain pure and faithful to her one husband Jesus Christ. That
means the church cannot go after other suitors. The church cannot engage or celebrate
godless ideologies that permeate our western society. She can never say as the Jews said to
Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar.” When they said, “We have no king but Caesar.” In John’s gospel, John 19:15,
they were saying, “We’re giving up our messianic hopes.” Because they’re quoting from the Old Testament, which
says, “Oh Lord, other kings we have had beside you, but you remain our king.” And then the Jews turn that same and
they say to to Pilate, “We have no king but Caesar.” It was the abandonment of the messianic hopes of the Jewish
people. So if the church is to remain pure, she can never accept the mandates of men over the commandments of God. If
the church is to remain pure, she can never accept ideologies in her colleges
that come from the pits of hell and lead our young people into the pits of hell. If the church is to remain pure, she is
to defend herself and her young against the attacks of Satan in every generation. The church if the church is
to remain true to her husband, she must contend for the faith that’s been passed on. faithfully from generation to
generation. Hence, every generation needs watchmen to stand up to bring the church back to the faith that has been
passed on to us. Sister Dwight puts it this way. She says, “Christ is seeking to reproduce in himself himself in the
hearts of men. And he does this and does this through those who believe in him.
The object of the Christian life is fruitbearing, the reproduction of Christ’s character in the believer that
it may be reproduced in others. Christ is waiting with longing desire for the manifestation of himself in his church.
When the character of Christ shall be perfectly reproduced in his people, then he will come to claim them as his own.
And so Christ is looking for a pure bride, a bride that chooses every day to be faithful to her bridegroom, that is
Jesus Christ. And if you’re choosing to be faithful to Christ, that means you’re turning your back and you’re turning
your face and your back and your attention away from the suitors of this world, the ideologies and the movements
and the politicians and the kingdoms and the powers and the ethoses and the the
ideas that that permeate our western society. The church is to remain pure. And we
remain pure when we allow the word of God to filter through through our minds on a daily basis and allow the word of
God to shape our thinking. So don’t just be a seventh day Adventist. That is you read your Bible on the Sabbath. Be a
7-day Adventist. Allow the word of God to change you every single day. Some people’s Bibles
are on their shelves through the week and they’re gathering dust. You know that because when you pay a partial visit, you see this.
You know that somebody’s not reading their Bible when you visit them and you say, “Do you have your Bible with you?” And they have to hunt around the house
for it. All right? You just know that. Do you know where your phone is right now?
Does everybody have a phone? Do you know where your phone is right now? Okay. So, every Christian should know
where their Bible is at all times. And when you visit and they don’t know where their Bible is, that tells you that
they’re not allowing the washing of the water of the words take place on a daily basis. And if we are to grow in
Christlikkeness, if we are to be a chasteed and a pure bride for the bridegroom when Jesus comes again, then
we are to allow the water of the word of God to flow through our minds on a daily basis. Christ is looking for his
character to be reproduced in his people. That means in me and in you.
That means I get up in the morning and say, “Lord, um I want to be a different person tonight to the person that got up in the
morning. I want you to change me.” It’s not what you see is what you get. I’m not this immovable block of granite.
Lord, I need you to shape me. The slave trader Newton wrote later in his life. He said, “I’m not the man that I want to
be.” He says, “But by the grace of God, neither am I the man that I used to be.” He recognized the sanctifying influence
and change of the Holy Spirit through his life. And the Christian is one who partners with the Holy Spirit to grow to
spiritual maturity so that God washes away the works of the flesh and yields in your character the fruit of the
spirit. And so, uh, Revelation 19:7-8, one of our last texts here, says this,
“Let us rejoice and exalt and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself
ready. To her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure, for the fine linen is the
righteous deeds of the saints.” So Christ purifies his church and we are to
cooperate with the groom through the putting away of sin through asking daily for the baptism of the Holy Spirit for
asking for the fruit of the spirit to be manifest in our characters and through yes asking God to give us victory over
those besetting sins and then serving one another in sacrificial love. It’s an
adventure with God to be a Christian because God, the greatest advert for the
gospel is not what you preach, but it’s a changed life. Someone went from being the scoundrel to being a living saint.
You know, one of the um most important figures in Christian history was St. Augustine, as the Catholics call him.
But before he was St. Augustine, as they say, he was a 30-year-old drunkard playboy in waistrol in Rome.
He was and he was he woke up one morning if you read his his his testimony is called the
confessions of St. Augustine. He woke up one morning with a hangover in Rome. He
had a praying mother and she never stopped praying for her boy and he write he writes about the fact that he picked
up the Bible and he had a Bible there and he heard a voice saying to him, “Read.”
and he opened up his Bible and the Bible fell to Romans 13 which
says this. Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake
from sleep. He was waking up. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first became believers. The night is
first gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness or put on the armor of light. Let us live
honorably as in the day, not in reing and drunkenness, not in de debauchery and lentiousness, not in quarreling and
jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires. And he
read that passage that was the passage’s Bible fell to and he gave his life to the Lord Jesus in that moment and it
changed his life completely. And the greatest advert for the gospel, for the truth of the gospel, is not how fancy
your theology is, how beautiful your singing is, but it’s the change that God has wrought in your life.
And if we are to be the pure bride of Christ, doesn’t a bride prepare herself for a wedding? Yeah. They go and get
their hair done. They shave. They dye their hair. They put their makeup on. We
call Russian plasmas. All the Russ They put their makeup on their face. They get into a nice dress and they go out with
the the girls for a hen night out and stuff. Brides get ready for their wedding. And so we should be getting
ready for the bridegroom and the wedding supper of the lamb. So if a bride is intentional about her
wedding, we’re to be intentional about our wedding as well. So, we’ve seen that the church is a
temple, the church is a body, and the church is a bride. And uh sort of move to our conclusion
here. Ephesians 4 says this, “I therefore,” Paul speaking, the prisoner in the Lord, Ephesians 4:4-6, “beg you
to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you’ve been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience,
bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. There
is how many body? One body and one spirit. Just as you all called to
the one hope of your calling, there is one Lord, there is
one faith, there is and there is one God and father of all who is above all and through all and in
all. And so the spirit brings us to conversion and we enter God’s spirit kingdom through the baptism of water and
the baptism of the Holy Spirit. As the members of the body of Christ, I want to ch challenge you today. Cooperate with
the Holy Spirit in turning away from the works of the flesh and ask him to transform you every day through the
washing of the water of the word and to experience the baptism of the Holy Spirit so that you may be a living stone
in the temple of God bearing your share of the weight. That you may be that your body may be the temple of the Holy
Spirit. That you may be the the ever more pure bride of Christ waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ. and
that you may be an active healthy part of the body of Christ as well. Yes, the church is a body, the church is a temple
and the church is a bride. And there is something in those three teachings that apply to each and every one of us here
today. And my experience of the church is this. As I grow closer to Christ,
so I grow closer to everybody else who’s always also being drawn closer to Christ. If Christ is here and I’m here
and I am coming closer to him and you’re over there and you’re coming closer to him, the fact that we’re both coming
closer to Christ means we’re coming closer to one another at the same time. And the closer I come to Christ, the
closer I come to my brothers and my sisters and in the pandemic, we saw that you
need to know who you can trust in times of trouble. You need to know who you can trust to
ask for something like ivormectin [clears throat] if you had a bad case of worms, you know. If you needed
ivormectin, you need to know who to trust and to ask. And if somebody knocked on your door at 2 in the morning
and said, “My mother’s dying of COVID. Do you have any ivormectin and do you hand any ivormectin over?”
You need to know, do you trust this person? You know, maybe they’ve got a bad case of worms and co who knows.
When I brought back a suitcase of ivormectin once, the the guy in O’Hare said, “Why are you carrying so much
ivormectton?” reported back from Mosamb beek. I said, I’ve got a bad case of the worms.
That was in the pandemic. Bad case, bad, bad case of the worms. But the point is this. As we draw closer
to Christ, so we draw closer to another. And as we love Christ, so that love for
Christ overflows into love for our brothers and our sisters. Our world is divided along every possible line today.
It’s divided on racial lines, on gender lines, on economic lines, on political
lines, on generational lines. You know, you’re Gen X, you’re a millennial, you’re a Gen Z. We just like to divide
everybody up into slice and dice all of humanity. But the opposite is true in the body of Christ. But the closer we
come to Christ, those divisions are to melt away. We’re to be one body in Christ where it doesn’t matter my age,
my gender, my sex, my education, uh where I come from, the color of my skin, my passport. That is irrelevant in the
kingdom of God. Christ’s character is to be manifest among his people that all
men will know that we are his disciples by the love that we have for one another. So in practice, this is my
testimony about the church. When I am alone, my church is where I find my friends. When I am discouraged, it is in
my church that I find strength. When I am persecuted, my church is my refuge.
When I am depressed, my church is my source of stability. When I’m sailing through troubled waters, I’m not sure
what to do. My the brothers and sisters in my church, they are my rudder to keep me straight. When I sin, my church is
redemptive. When I am in grieving, they are my source of comfort and solidarity. When I am filled with joy, they share in
my joy. When I am in hospital, they visit. When I am homeless, they are my shelter. When I am in trouble, my church
is my lifeline. Wherever I go in the world, my church is always there for me and I choose to be there for them as
well. The church is an absolute blessing. It’s the body of Christ on
earth. Matthew 16:18, our last text says this, “And I tell you, Peter saying,
Jesus speaking to Peter, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail
against it.” That is, no matter what Satan does to attack this church,
whatever Satan does to attack your church, the gates of hell will not prevail against it because it’s the body
of Christ. It is the temple of the Holy Spirit. It is the bride of Christ and
God fights for his own. So my experience of the church is that life would be
unthinkable without the body of Christ. It is everything for me.
Every blessing I have in life comes through the body of Christ. I want to challenge you today to let the
blessings of God pass through you to those around you in your local congregation that they may experience
the blessings of God in their lives and open yourselves up to people ministering to you as well. As Christians, we like
to minister to others, but we don’t like people to minister to us because that involves vulnerability. But allow yourself to be ministered to by other
people. In that case, we grow, we thrive, and all disciples will know
that. All men will know that you’re my disciples, says Jesus. Not because of the correctness of your doctrines, not
because of the fanciness of your buildings, not because you have a conference union division structure, but because there is a self-sacrificing love
among those who who bear my name. So allow the love of Jesus to be
manifest in your home, in your marriage, in your local congregation. What people
want today in a divided world is a place where they can find peace and acceptance
and love. And my prayer is that our churches will in truth be the temple of the Holy
Spirit. They will be the body of Christ. And with every passing week, they’ll be
purer and purer as the bride of Christ awaiting for the coming of the groom.
Let’s live and honor and be all that the B the church of Christ is called to be.
Amen. I might like to invite you to bow your heads for a word of prayer. Heavenly
Father, I thank you for these teachings from scripture, these these pictures of what
the church is to be. [sighs] Father, we know that there are times when we fall short. There are times when
we’re not all that you are calling us to be. But today, Father, for those of us gathered here today in Grailing,
Michigan, or for those who are watching online around the world, today, Father, we’re asking that we you
by your grace, we can turn over a new leaf. By your grace, we can write a new chapter. That your Holy Spirit will
write that new chapter for us. That our local families, our marriages, our local
congregations will be all that Christ wants for his church. And Father, I pray
that the world will know that we are your disciples because of the love that we have one for another. So, Father,
please work this miracle in us, through us, and for us. This is our prayer in Jesus’ name. Amen.