The Nature and Marks of the Church

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Okay, so like I said in the prayer just now, we're talking about the church, but I want to ask a question just to kind of see what you guys think. I thought this might yield a bunch of different answers. What would you say is an essential. You guys know what essential means, right? What would you say is at least one essential aspect of a church? Without this, there's no church. What's an essential aspect? Yes. Potlucks. Okay, great. You know, that's an interesting answer. Yes, A potluck. Little smokies at the potluck. Yeah. What would you say? Community. Okay, That's a good answer. Yeah. A couple hands went down. The Bible. The Bible, like it. It's just sitting in there. It needs to be. Needs to be taught. Yeah. Okay, so the Bible being used. Were you gonna say something similar? Teaching the Bible. Okay. Yes, he is essential. Yeah, but what about him? Like, do we need to have a statue of him? Should we have a statue of him? [00:01:16] Speaker B: You didn't have Jesus. You, like, wouldn't have a church because there'd be nothing to preach about. [00:01:21] Speaker A: Nothing to preach. Okay, so he should be the content of the preaching. Okay. Yeah. Instruments. Instruments. Okay, interesting answer. Instruments. Yeah, Some. Some ancient Christians would disagree, but, you know, that's okay. Yeah. David, this is gonna. What, an essential aspect of a church? What? In order to have a church, you need to have a church. So you think a church building is an essential for there to be a church? A place to meet? I would agree with that. I would agree with that. There needs to be a place to meet, not necessarily a building. Yes. Membership. Membership. Knowing who's in, who's out. I like that. One or multiple pastors. So there needs to be pastors, some sort of leadership. I like that answer, too. Yeah. Discipline. Church Discipline. Discipline. Okay, I think we might talk about that. So. So that's a good answer. Christians. Yeah. There needs to be Christians. Yeah. The members should all be Christians. That's right. Those are a mixed bag. You know, definitely some essentials in there. There's other answers. Like potluck made it in. All good thoughts, though. Even if we don't see all of those as being essential, you know, we understand why we think these things, so let's think it through biblically. But to start, we need to review what is theology? That's what we're doing. We're doing theology. Okay. Who did I call last time? I think I called Jeremiah last week. Asher. Okay. The study of God and how to be more like him. Very good. This is your bread and Butter. Okay, so what is kind of the main doctrine? We just have been. We spent several weeks studying the doctrine of what? Salvation. That's right. Well, we have finished, so, you know, I'm not going to continue to ask you about each individual lesson. We'll kind of just reset with this new doctrine. We talked about salvation. Now we're looking at the next major. This is the big doctrine. We'll be doing this one for several weeks. This is the doctrine of the church. There's a fancy word for it you might encounter. So if you like learning long words, you can write down ecclesiology. Just sound it out. Ecclesiology is the fancy word for it. It just means the doctrine, the study of the church. Ecclesi. That part comes from the Greek word ekklesia, which means assembly or church. So that's why that word has been chosen. So to start, we're looking at, as you might see on your paper, the nature and marks of the church. The nature and marks of the church. I think I wrote down as a title, this is my soapbox because I talk about this all the time. So I'm happy to talk about the church. You know, I spent a lot of time in the church thinking about it. So let's do the summary. Yeah. What is the summary of the nature marks of the church? Well, you can write this down. This would be where the main idea usually is. The church is the people of God who have been saved by his grace and incorporated as the community of faith. The church is the people of God who have been saved by his grace and incorporated. So that means brought together as the community of faith. So saved and brought together, not just saved to be individuals. We can find in the Bible places that say the opposite. We're not saved to be on our own. We're saved to come together. Here are some of the major affirmations we want to make. So the main points. The first under major affirmations is that the church is made up of all the elect from all of time. All the elect from all of time. Now, we've talked about God, God's election. You know, we don't need to talk about that. Again. This is just a biblical word meaning all people that have believed throughout all time. That's what this means. So all Christians from all time make up the church. So the church is the people of God. The church doesn't contain the people of God. The people of God don't meet in the church. The people of God are the church. Does that make sense? They are the church. The Word church itself means an assembly. I just kind of mentioned that with the Greek word ekklesia. It's an assembly, a gathering. So this is another reason that churches meet every week physically in person, because the word itself means to gather together. If we aren't gathering together, we're not doing what a church does. By definition, we can't be considered a church if we're not gathering together. Now, the New Testament uses the word to refer to different kinds of churches, so local churches. But also we see, you know, like Error Heights is a local church. So we would call this a church. But we also see in the Bible phrases like this. This is in Acts 9:31. Acts 9:31. Actually, let's just turn there. Yeah, turn there and look. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, chapter nine. When we get there, would someone read Acts 9:31? Anybody you want to? Yeah, 9:31. [00:07:37] Speaker B: Okay. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit. [00:07:50] Speaker A: Okay, thank you. So in this verse, we see the church of what specifically? The church of what is a mentioned or the church throughout where? Judea, Galilee, Samaria. Okay, so what is Judea, Galilee and Samaria? What are those? Those are places, and they're different places. Right? So this obviously cannot mean one local assembly. Assembly in all of those places at once. You can't meet in Judea and in Galilee and in Samaria all at the same time. So what we're seeing here is a different use of the word church. So it's not always just meaning one gathering, like Arrow Heights Baptist Church, but we're seeing that the church can mean something more expansive. It's something that can also mean something more broad, like all of the people of God. Now, you know, I just made a fuss about being brought together as an assembly. The reason that we can call the universal church a church is because God will assemble all believers together in heaven. That is why it's called a church. So that church, the church universal, will gather as well. So obviously, this in Acts 9:31 is not one specific local church. Paul refers also to the church of God in First Corinthians 10:32, which again, is more than just one local congregation. It's talking about the universal church. But when we talk about church being the people of God, it might be a question you would ask. Someone might ask, what about Israel? What about Israel? Let's go to Romans, chapter nine for some help to understand if the church Is the people of God. Then who is Israel? All right, so Romans, chapter nine. I'll give you a second to flip over. It's just one book to the right. And then follow along with me as I read. So I'm going to read starting in verse 6. So Romans 9, 6. But it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring. But through Isaac shall your offspring be named. This means that it is not the children of the flesh, but who are the children of God. But the children of the promise are counted as offspring. For this is what the promise said about. This time next year I will return and Sarah will have a son. And not only so, but also when Rebekah had conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, though they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad, in order that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works, but because of him who calls. She was told, the older shall serve the younger as it is written. Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated. So we'll stop there. So what does this tell us about Israel? There's a lot, but maybe focus in on verse 8. What does this tell us about Israel? Anybody have a guess? Well, if we look, we can just see it is not children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise. The reason at this point is coming up for Paul is kind of a different context. But what he's trying to point out is that children, just because you are the son or, you know, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson or granddaughter of Abraham, a descendant of Abraham, doesn't mean that you are among the people of God. And he gives a very practical example by saying Abraham, he had two sons, right? Isaac and Ishmael. But Ishmael and his descendants are not God's people. It was Isaac and his descendants. So it wasn't just because they were born of Abraham and is because of. To whom did God promise? To his people. Who is God's people according to his promise? Well, God has promised salvation to all who believe in Jesus Christ through faith. So having faith in God's promise in the Old Testament, but now that his promise has been revealed, who is revealed in the promise? It is Jesus. So Old Testament saints believe in a promise. God is promising a Messiah. On this side, we know that that Messiah was Christ. So now belief in the promise has changed into belief into Jesus. So what we're seeing is that true Israel are children of the promise through faith. So if you are truly Israel, then you are God's people. And if you are God's people, you. You are in the church. Does that make sense? That making sense. So not all Jews were true Israel, but only those saved through faith, just like today. Therefore, Abraham, David, Moses, in a sense, were members of the church. We wouldn't really call it that way. That phrasing wasn't used until the New Testament. But they were part of the same group of people, the church of God. The church is therefore continuous with the Old Testament. So we see Old Testament, Israel, New Testament church are the same people of God, but it's also a little discontinuous. As in before they were believing in the promise, and now we believe in a revealed promise in Christ. But it is one people of God, and the one people of God are the church. All right, so here's the second affirmation. The church universal. So the universal church is manifested in local churches. It is manifested. What does that mean? What does manifested mean? What does it mean to manifest? Do what? That's part of it. Being made up of it is part of it. That's not the fullest sense of the word. There's a little bit more to it. Yeah. Like form. Yeah, yeah. It's making something knowable, maybe visible or sensible in some way. So the universal church is also called the invisible church. So you might read some books that refer to an invisible church. It's called that because we cannot see it. We cannot see the universal church. Why can't we see it? Well, we can't see Christians of the past who have died. I don't see them. They are buried. They are not here. And even in local churches, we can't see the human heart. We can't see who truly is a believer or not. We can make a good guess, but sometimes we are wrong. You know, we have examples of being wrong of this. So ultimately we can't know that. And so how do we see this invisible universal church that is scattered throughout the world, that has people in the past, the present, and even in the future? How do we see this? Well, we see it in local churches where this universal church is made visible. The invisible is made visible at the local church level. Not because it's a building. That's not what's making it visible. It's not visible because it has a social media presence. It's not visible because it has a good website. It's visible because of, like my wife said, because of a membership. The membership of the church makes the universal church visible because we can see who is in the church, who is not in the church. It kind of marks out the borders of the holy nation. You know, you guys might know this verse. I'll flip there. You don't need to. I'm just going to read it real quick. Matthew 18:20. Just want to make sure I get the wording right. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them. Jesus is saying this because the church is able to make decisions with heaven's authority when they are gathered together. When two or three come together, Christ's name is revealed among them. We can see Christ, we can see his people in the people that are gathered as the church. So the church universal is manifested, made known in local churches. The third affirmation is that the church is. And I have five things. I'll just go through them one by one. So by nature you can say that for all of these. By nature, the church is worshipful is the first. The church is worshipful. Go to John 4, John 4:24. When you get there. Can someone read John 4:24? John 4:24? Anyone? I can do it. Okay, thank you. God is Spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. That's right. So those who worship, they worship in spirit and truth. They worship through the Holy Spirit. They worship according to the truth of God's word. That is something about the church, about God's people. That's true as well. You don't have to flip there. I can Read this. Ephesians 5, 18:20. Ephesians 5, 1820 says, and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery. But be filled with the Spirit. Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart, giving thanks always and. And for everything to God the Father. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ. So to the Ephesian church, Paul even explicitly tells them to sing. He tells them to give thanks in everything. He even tells them to submit to one another. And we can even imply submission to the elders and the authorities of the church out of reverence for Christ. So in the name of Christ, the church worships. That's what they do. We preach, sing, pray. We do all of these things to be worshipful, because that's who the church is. If the church is not worshiping, then what do we do? Like if there was. If worship was off the table, what's something we could do in church today? I'm actually curious. Can anyone think of anything? I can think of one thing. Any guesses? I don't know where to decide on that. We could do the announcements and then wrap it up. I don't think the announcements are worship, but the rest of it is certainly worship. The praying, the singing, the fellowship, the preaching, all of this is worship. This is what the church does. If we don't do it, that we're just a news bulletin or a website. The church worships. The second thing that the church is by nature, the church is word centered. We talked about that at the beginning. The church is word centered. You know, it's kind of difficult. Go to 2 Timothy 4. It was difficult to find one particular passage, so I just chose one. But second Timothy four I think is helpful. Which one? Read second Timothy four one through two. Anyone? Second Timothy 4:1 2. You want to do it? Thank you. Yeah, thank you. [00:21:00] Speaker B: I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom, preach the Word, Be ready in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with complete patience and teaching. [00:21:17] Speaker A: Thank you. So Timothy, who was a pastor, Paul, writes this letter and tells him charges him in the presence of God, who he says is the judge to preach the Word. He doesn't give him a list of things to do. He really just says, preach the Word, be ready. In preaching the Word, you reprove, you rebuke, you exhort people. And really, I should have had us read the verses before that. Because that is the reason you preach the Word. Chapter 3, verse 16. Because all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and for training in righteousness. All of those are things that the Word does. That is the purpose of the Word. That is why the church is word centered is because it's God's word is breathed out by Him. It's useful to teach, reproof, correct, train to exhort. It's the content of the preaching that should be done in season and out of season, no matter what. And the preaching should be faithful and word centered. Because even the next verse, verse three, he says the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. So we need to make sure, even when people don't want sound doctrine, we teach from the Bible sound doctrine. So the church is word centered. Third, by nature, the church is spirit empowered. The church is spirit empowered. And I'll read a verse here from Luke 24:29, the church's spirit empowered. Luke 24:29 says, Let me see. I think I have maybe the wrong verse. I don't know what I was thinking. That's not the right verse. Yeah, it's really not even close to there. I don't think. Well, regardless, the church is empowered by the Spirit. We can think of Acts 1:1:8, even when. So before I think towards. Somewhere towards the end of Luke, he. He tells them to. To wait until they are clothed with power from on high. And they wait until Acts 1:8, when the Spirit, he says he tells them again, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses throughout all of the ends of the earth. That's what he says. Acts 1:8. You can write that one down because that verse actually is helpful to show that the church is Spirit empowered. And what happens in Acts chapter 2? The church becomes Spirit empowered. The Holy Spirit fills the members of the church, and from then on, it is a consistent testimony in Scripture that believers are indwelt by the Spirit. First Corinthians 6 tells us that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. That means the Holy Spirit lives within the believer because each member of the church, and therefore the church as a whole, is Spirit empowered. The fourth, by nature, the church is covenantal. So covenantal, what this just means we have a covenantal relationship with God under the new covenant of Christ. So it is a covenant like a marriage is a covenant. It is a sacred oath, a relationship to not be broken. And we agree to come together as a church in a covenant relationship with one another. So it begins by, you have a new covenant relationship with God. Because of that, we join local churches that covenant together. We have a sacred bond that should not, ought not, must not be broken. That is why, as a side point, that's why, you know, it should be a very serious thing to ever leave a church. It should never just be something. I don't like the music as much here. This is not shopping, you know, These are covenant relationships that we form when we join churches. We should take them seriously, like we would marriages. The church is covenantal. And then finally, the church is confessional by nature. It is confessional. The covenant relationship cannot exist without confessionalism. This is a long shot. Does anyone have any guess what I mean by this, that the church is confessional? Any guesses? Yeah. Yeah. So that's actually a really great guess. It's not what I'm looking for. Churches should confess sins to one another. That is an important part of our relationship. But just historically, the way this word is used confusingly is more about what we believe. We are confessing. We might more say profess, but you want to say confess because we're doing it together. It means we state what we believe and we believe what Christians in the past have believed. That's why churches have statements of faith in the past. We would call those confessions of faith. That might help you. So when we're talking about being confessional means we have stated beliefs and we believe those. If a church does not have stated beliefs or they have basically none, that's probably not a good sign. We want to believe what the church has always believed. We're not a new novel church with some bright idea to believe a little less so more people can join. No, we've inherited the church from church history. And so we should believe what Christians have always believed to the best of our ability, so long as it aligns with Scripture. Okay, so now here is the fourth major affirmation. So those are sub points of the third one, the fourth major affirmation. So letter D or maybe. Yeah, I think it's. Is it D or is it listed as 4? It's listed as 4, so I couldn't remember how it is on yours. It's D on my paper. That's really, really smart of me. The church universal is one holy, Catholic and apostolic. That's the way it's been confessed for a long time. One holy, Catholic and apostolic. Or you can think of apostle, I see at the end, apostolic. So it is one. We'll just go through those really quick. It is one and that there's only one true church universal. There's not one true local church, but the Church Universal. There is only one. It is in unity, believing in the Gospel. The universal church is holy in that true believers have been set apart by God and declared holy in his sight. The universal church is Catholic in that it is universal. That is just an old word that means universal. That's why, you know, you should probably write it with a lowercase C just to distinguish. This is not Roman Catholic. It is Catholic, as in universal. It has been handed down finally, apostolically. The church is apostolic in that it's been handed down by the apostles. Christ taught the apostles. The apostles taught the first generation of the church. They wrote the New Testament, or close associates of theirs wrote the New Testament. So every book in the New Testament was written by an apostle, one of their close friends that would have been with them as they wrote it. And so the faith we have is handed down by the apostles. Okay, this is the final major affirmation. The church local. So that last point was about the church universal. Now we're talking about local churches. A local church is distinguished as true or false by 3 marks. So these are what I would say are essential. Now, they're not going to be practiced perfectly. Right. We're not looking at perfection, 100% purity, because churches are still made up of sinners. But we want to see at least some semblance of these three marks to determine if a church is true or false. These are what I'm saying are essential. So historically, many church traditions have, coming from the Protestant Reformation, use two or three. So I'm going to give two. And those are the two that are widely agreed upon. The third is a little less common, but I think is still important. So number one. So this is Mark number one. First, it is the right preaching of God's Word. I think we even mentioned this at the beginning. We were talking about what's an essential. We must have the right preaching of God's Word. You know, we read 2nd Timothy 4, 2, preach the word in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all patience and teaching. That's what we do. We preach the Word. The Word is always central. That's why we see Paul appointing and making sure that elders are appointed at every single church. And why he would tell one such elder to always be preaching the Word. He's making sure these elders are preaching the Word everywhere. But more than that, Galatians 1:9. I'll just read this. Says, as we have said before. So now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. So it's not just that we're preaching with an open Bible, but the gospel, the true gospel, must be preached. This is why what we believe in, doctrine is so important, so we can know what is true, what is right preaching. Well, right preaching is faithful to the gospel. Is faithful to the gospel. It doesn't mean there aren't mistakes. It doesn't mean a sermon can never be better. It means it is faithful preaching, faithful to the Bible. All right, so that's the first Mark, right? Preaching of God's word. The second mark is the right at this. You know, deal with me, just bear with me. The right administration, administration of the ordinances or sacraments. Those words are interchangeable. Sacrament is maybe an older word. Ordinance is something that's been ordained by Jesus. For churches to do so, administration. Does anyone know what that means? Kind of the, like, process of doling it out. This may be a way you can understand it. So there are two of these ordinances. That's the word we typically use here. But sacraments is acceptable. There are two that Jesus gave the church to do. And we need to do those two things right. And I think we're going to practice one of them today. I think, right? Or is that not today? I thought you told me we were. Oh, yeah, they are Baptism and the Lord's Supper. We're going to talk about each of those. So Matthew 28:19 tells us to make disciples of all nations. This is Jesus telling the church to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So Jesus ordains the church to baptize. So we must baptize. And this is for the church, not for individuals or camps. He tells this to the church. That's who the audience is of Matthew 28. They must baptize. Likewise, in Luke 22:14 20, we don't have time to read all of that, but we. We see the phrase, you might recognize. Jesus says, do this in remembrance of me. This is the Last Supper. He breaks the bread, he pours the wine, the cup, and he says to do this in remembrance of me. So he's telling the church, these are the apostles, the apostles that handed down the church. So that's the audience. It's not just to a married couple or to an individual in their dorm room. This is to the church to practice. So the church specifically does the Lord's Supper and they should do this. So to do these rightly means that the church only gives them to the right people and in the right way. So the church must do these two things to the right people and in the right way. So let's think about baptism for a minute when just do these real quick. Baptism, it means immersion, just by definition. So what we do is we immerse somebody in the water. This upholds the depiction of representing Christ being buried and raised to new life. You are united to Christ, and baptism shows that you die with him and are raised to new life in Him. It should only be done to those who believe what it depicts. If you don't believe in Christ, you should not be baptized. So a church should work hard to make sure that they're only baptizing true believers. As for the Lord's Supper, again, it's the church's duty to do this, only true believers can take the Lord's Supper. Otherwise, whoever is taking it is heaping judgment on themselves because they're taking a meal that represents something that they don't believe that is bad. The meal is only for believers who have been baptized. If the church has not seen your profession of faith as credible for baptism, then the church should not serve you the Lord's Supper and you must not take it. I would encourage you to read First Corinthians. You can write this down. 11, 27, 30, when you have time, just to remind you of the serious nature of taking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner, as an unbaptized person or as a non Christian is very serious. Even people at this time were becoming sick by taking the Lord's Supper in an unworthy manner. So I would highly discourage that. The third mark, which is debated but I agree with, is church discipline. That was mentioned earlier. It just means that there's a recognized membership in some way. We need to know who the members are, who are the pastors supposed to pastor, who are the members supposed to love one another with? If we don't know who actually is in the church and who isn't, and discipline is the part of church membership that holds people accountable. We're never holding people accountable. Then the membership will probably be filled with believers and non believers. And that's not good. That is not the mark of a true church. So discipline doesn't always mean kicking people out. It only means that when there's no repentance, discipline begins when a brother or sister points out a sin lovingly and calls you to repentance. And when you repent, you're restored again. Only refusal to repent leads to removal and therefore to no longer taking the Lord's Supper. So in order to practice the ordinances right, we must not allow, you know, excommunicated people to join at the Lord's Supper until they repent. This is important. This keeps the purity of the church to the best of our ability. So finally, just to enact it, I would encourage you guys to dwell on these things when there's time or we're out of time. But be thankful for God's gracious gift of Christian community, to be thankful for that. Thank God that He doesn't let us just wander alone in the world without a church. We certainly would not survive without the church. And then to whom it might apply to repent of, disrespect for or rejection of the Church of Jesus Christ. Now, don't disrespect the church, don't consider it unimportant, and don't reject the church, but join it through belief in Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the church, the wonderful, gracious gift that it is. Would we pray that you would draw more people into the church even today. Especially as we witness what is depicted in the Lord's Supper. Dwelling on the broken body and the blood poured out of your son, Jesus Christ, so that through faith, all who might believe can be welcomed into your family. We pray this in Christ's name, Amen.