05-22-11 The CHURCH!

Today we begin

the 4^th and final section

of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

But we begin far more than just that.

We also begin a study

of the 6 operating principles

upon which God designed His church to operate.

For this final section of Paul’s letter

to be of value to us

we’re going to need to start

by undoing some major cultural misconceptions about the church.

When we were studying the 3^rd section of Romans the past few weeks

I mentioned that Paul wrote chapters 9-11

to explain what happens to the Nation of Israel

now that God has created the Church

and committed Himself to revealing Himself to the world through the Church.

But I didn’t say much more

about what the church is

because that discussion belongs

with what we are moving into now.

We are severely hampered in our thinking in these areas

by the thick cultural goo

that has been smeared onto the church

throughout the past 2000 years,

and freeing ourselves from that goo

is no easy task.

But we’ll give it a try.

In our world today

we have moved so far from the way things really are

that we now actually believe

questions like these are reasonable,

legitimate questions:

“Which church do you attend?”

“How many churches were represented at the meeting?”

“Will your church be involved?”

“What church were you a part of before you joined ours?”

If any of those

sound like reasonable statements or questions to you,

then we have some work to do

before we’re ready to move into these final chapters of Romans.

And I think perhaps the easiest way for me to do this

is, rather than spending a lot of time

showing what’s wrong with our cultural church concepts,

to simply explain the true concept of the Church

as our God reveals it to us in the New Testament.

Once we know what the real thing looks like,

our cultural misconceptions will be evident.

The first time the word “Church” ever appears in the Bible

is in the 16^th chapter of the book of Matthew.

The event that we have recorded for us

in that 16^th chapter

takes place after Jesus has been with His disciples for about three years.

Throughout those three years

He has been flooding His followers

with evidences of His identity.

And now,

at a crucial point in His time with them,

at a point when it is essential

that He begins their final preparation

for His approaching death

and resurrection,

and for their leadership role in all that will follow,

He takes His men aside

and, in a private conversation with them,

He asks them the question

upon which everything else depends.

MAT 16:15 He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"

And, for just a few seconds,

for one of the first times in his life up to that point, Peter gets it right.

MAT 16:16 ..."You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

And it is the Lord’s response to those words

that I want us to see.

Jesus responds to the revelation of that truth by saying,

MAT 16:18 "...upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”

That is the first time the word “church” ever appears in the Bible.

It is the first time it ever appears in history.

And, in fact, it only appears one more time

prior to the resurrection of Christ.

For our purposes this morning

there are three important things

I want us to notice

about that exchange between Jesus and Peter.

First, the foundation upon which Christ says He will build His Church

is our personal recognition and acceptance of Jesus

for who He really is.

He isn’t just a great teacher.

He isn’t just a great prophet.

He isn’t just one of several great religious leaders.

He is the literal Son of God,

the Messiah, the only Savior of the world.

Second, Jesus said that He Himself personally will build His church.

It won’t be built in His name.

It won’t be a movement built upon His teachings,

or as a tribute to His memory.

It certainly isn’t just a religion that has grown out of His words and life philosophy.

It is something that He Himself,

personally will build on the earth

following His resurrection.

And, third, there is only one.

He doesn’t say “I will build my churches”.

He says, “I will build my Church.”

When Jesus spoke those words to Peter

His disciples couldn’t have had any idea what He was talking about.

They understood what the Nation of Israel was.

They understood what a synagogue was.

They understood what the Temple in Jerusalem was.

But they had no idea what the Church would be.

And it isn’t until the church is brought into being following Christ’s resurrection and departure from this earth,

and then only as the principles governing the church

are revealed through the New Testament writers,

that we gain a clear understanding of what it is.

And, at the risk of racing through

what is one of the most fascinating revelations

every given to man by God,

this morning I just want to take us

to two other passages in the New Testament

that will help us to see the church

for what it really is.

They are both from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians,

that remarkable letter in which Paul gives us

his panoramic view of the church as a whole.

Now, both of these are dangerous passages for me to get near

because I could easily get us lost in them for weeks

and by the time we resurfaced

Romans would be only a vague

and distant memory.

I will try to resist that urge.

But I have to tell you

there are some things going on in the words I am about to read to you

that literally give me a rush of adrenalin when I remember them.

The first passage I want to take us to

is in Ephesians chapter 1.

And, if you’d like a little hint

about how to figure out

what Paul’s letters are about

and why he wrote them,

look at the prayers he places

at the beginning of most of his letters.

You see, before Paul writes his letters

he prays that God will do in his readers

whatever it is he then tries to do

through the letter he is writing.

And listen to the prayer Paul offers

at the beginning of the book of Ephesians.

He says,

EPH 1:18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints,

EPH 1:19 and what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe...

He prays that we will know three things:

1. ...what is the hope of His calling...

If I were to paraphrase that,

I believe Paul is saying, “ I pray you will know what you’re here for.”

He wants us to know the goal, the purpose of the calling we have received

when we received Christ.

And wouldn’t that be a nice thing to know?

Wouldn’t it help to take the pressure off?

Wouldn’t it help to quite

all of those voices from the religious world around us

and from deep inside ourselves,

voices forever telling us

all those things we really should be doing

in order to fulfill our calling?

2. He wants us to know the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.

Now, that one is even more amazing.

Paul is talking about an inheritance,

about something that someone receives

as a result of a person’s death.

But the amazing thing

is that he is talking not about our inheritance,

but about GOD’s inheritance.

He wants us to understand

the inheritance that God Himself received

as a result of the death of Jesus Christ.

We are so accustomed to thinking in terms

of OUR inheritance,

of what WE have received as a result of Christ’s death.

But in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians

he reveals to his readers

not what they inherited through Christ’s death,

but what God Himself inherited upon the death of Christ.

And he describes that inheritance

with the words “riches” and “glory”.

And, because we cannot take a 10 week side-track

to study our way through the book of Ephesians,

I’ll tell you right now

what that inheritance is.

It’s the Church.

God inherited the Church

as a result of the death of Christ.

And He is thrilled with what He got.

3. And then,

the final thing Paul prays that we will know is...what is the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe...

Given the significance of who we are,

and what it means to God,

Paul wants us to know the tremendous power of God

both in us

and through us

to equip us for the role that He has given to us as the Church.

And whatever you do, don’t leave me right now.

I know I’ve been going about 15 minutes,

and so far you may not feel as though

you’re hearing me say much that relates

to all of that real life you dragged in here with you,

but I need to have you stay focused for a few more minutes.

You see, immediately following that prayer,

Paul goes on to say

that those three things are “in accordance with”

all that God has accomplished through Jesus Christ -

His victory over death,

and His victory over Satan,

and His victory over sin.

And then Paul goes on to say

that God has placed Christ...

EPH 1:21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.

EPH 1:22 And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as head over all things to the church,

EPH 1:23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

Now, look at this!

God has placed Christ

as the supreme authority

over all of creation

both now and forever more,

and then He gave Him, as head over all things,

to the church,

which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all.

HUH?

Let me state it in two sentences.

1. The Church is made up of all true Christians on this earth at any given time.

2. The Church is the literal, physical body of Jesus Christ on this earth,

with Christ Himself serving as the head of this body.

When Satan moved in the hearts and minds

of men and women 2000 years ago,

filling them with evil,

motivating them to nail Jesus Christ to that cross,

he did so because he knew

that his agenda on this earth

could never prevail as long as Jesus was here.

And at the time he and they thought they had achieved a great victory.

But when they killed that mortal physical body in which Christ lived,

at the same time

they created the opportunity

for Christ to assume the leadership of a new body,

a body unlike anything anyone had ever expected.

It is a body made up

of hundreds of thousands of different parts and pieces,

different “members”,

each fulfilling it’s own special role,

all functioning under the headship of Christ Himself.

Once there was only one physical body in which the Spirit of Christ dwelt,

with one set of eyes,

and ears,

one voice,

one point of focus at a time.

And if His body was in Capernaum,

then He couldn’t, at the same time, be in Jerusalem,

or New York,

or Seattle,

or Soldotna, Alaska.

But now there are literally hundreds of thousands of bodies

in which the Spirit of Christ dwells,

and they are spread throughout the entire world,

speaking every language known to man,

from every nation,

and tribe,

and tongue,

and people.

Each one has access to the mind of Christ,

each one with the potential

of daily living out the life and the will of Christ.

This is the hope of our calling.

And this is God’s great inheritance in the saints.

Do you know what this truth is called in Scripture?

It’s called “a mystery”.

There are several “mysteries” revealed to us in the New Testament.

A “mystery” in the Bible

is some truth that was never mentioned in the Old Testament,

something that God told no one about

until He actually accomplished it.

I’m just guessing here,

but I wonder if God may have kept the Church a mystery

not because He didn’t want us to know about it until it happened,

but because He didn’t want Satan to know about it until it happened.

Because if Satan would have known

the change that would take place in the body of Christ

as a result of the death of Christ

he would never have driven his people

to perform their appointed roles in the crucifixion of Christ.

And one more passage will help us better understand

the awesomeness of this mystery

before I try to pull this whole thing together and bring us back to Romans.

It is also found in the book of Ephesians,

and it comes as the great finale

to Paul’s presentation of God’s creation of the Church.

In a single sentence

he reveals to us

why God is so thrilled

with “His inheritance in the saints”.

This is what He received through the Church.

The passage is found

in Ephesians 3:10

where Paul tells us that God brought the Church into being,

“...so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.”

If you’ve been around here any length of time

you’ve heard me refer to this passage before.

That word “manifold” means literally “many hued” or “many colored”.

And in that statement

Paul is telling us that the Church,

the body of Christ,

affects the revelation of the wisdom of God

in the same way a prism affects a beam of light.

The wisdom of God

can be compared to a pure white beam of light

moving through human history.

He’s revealed Himself in all sorts of ways and places in the past.

But now that pure white beam of God's wisdom has hit the Church,

His special creation.

When a beam of light hits a prism

it comes out on the other side

in a glorious display of rainbow colors.

And through the Church

God's wisdom is revealed to all of creation

in a brilliant rainbow display

that was never possible

before Christ was able to indwell His people.

Each one of us has the ability

to radiate a special hue of God Himself,

a unique aspect of His wisdom,

and together we become His vibrant rainbow display

projected for all to see.

This is what we do for one another

every time another person sees the life of Christ in us.

And this, too, is another one of those areas

in which true Christianity

stands in stark contrast to man-made religious systems.

Where religion has taken root in a group of people

it isn’t long before everyone begins to look the same,

and talk the same,

and worship the same,

and pray the same,

and measure their success

by how effectively they are able to cram themselves into the established mold.

But where the Spirit of God is truly at work

there will be seen

a flow of endless variety

in the way in which the life of God

is expressed through the people of God,

with each individual offering his or her own special reflection

of the God who dwells within them.

We are moving into a section of the book of Romans

in which Paul reveals to us

the 6 foundation principles

upon which the Church is designed to operate.

But the power of this section of the letter

can easily be lost to us

if we do not begin

with a clear concept of what the Church really is.

For a number of reasons we do not have time to go into now,

we have within our culture

a concept of “church”

that brings to mind a building,

and a weekly meeting,

and a paid staff,

and a program,

and a tax-deductible status.

We may even think in terms of

God measuring His success on the earth

by how many “churches” He has,

and how many people file into them on Sunday mornings.

But the truth is

God is not and never has been

trying to get people to “go to church”.

From the very beginning

He has been attempting to get the Church,

His Church,

to discover who we really are,

and what our high calling is on this earth,

and how He seeks to fulfill that calling through us.

These final chapters of Romans

reveal to us the six key principles

that equip us to do just that.

And just so that you have an idea where Paul takes us in this,

let me conclude

by listing those six principles.

Then, next week we’ll study our way through the first one.

#1. He talks to us about the battle we face - that of bringing our physical bodies

under the leadership of our recreated spirits.

#2. He talks with us about spiritual gifts -

the unique tools given to us by God

that equip us for the work He has for us to do.

#3. He talks with us about the church’s relationship to human authority structures.

#4. He reveals to us the one law we are still obligated to obey.

#5. He talks with us about the enemy we face and how to fight him.

#6. And then, finally, he talks with us about the use and abuse of our freedom in Christ.