Sermon Transcript:
Since Kylie and I came up here in the April of 2023, I've tried to keep a pretty consistent, I don't know what you'd call it, preaching schedule or approach to my preaching. And there is a method to my madness. And if you haven't noticed, it really just boils down to this, that each and every week, we're going to preach God's word as revealed in the scriptures, both Old and New Testament. And we do so in a manner that allows us to unflinchingly approach the truth that God.
wants us to know. I started doing that, as I said, in April of 2023 with First John, which we studied verse by verse, chapter by chapter until we finished it in November of last year. Then this past January, we started with a study of the gospel of Luke and we made it 33 verses of Luke one and about the span of three months before we did something that I know is going to be a lot of fun. Never really done before. I took a break. And, uh, we took a break for Easter and really that break led to another astonishing moment.
We took another break and rather than return immediately to our study of Luke immediately after Easter, uh, it seemed as though God wanted me to preach on a few things that were especially pertinent, especially applicable to those of us, um, here in our congregation and things that I think he impressed upon my heart. And so, uh, this past month we've talked about church unity. Uh, we talked about that for a few weeks and then really last week and the week before we talked about giving everyone's favorite subject and we talked about the, the biblical.
command to give and the biblical blessing that comes from that obedience. And the plan was, keyword was, uh, to talk about prayer this week and maybe for the week after, right before we returned to Luke. But now it appears that my breaks break has been broken by yet another break, if you believe that. And rather than preach on prayer this week, I think God was yet again telling me to speak and maybe give us one more pit stop in our study of God's word, a pit stop for a sermon.
on church membership. And I make this pit stop, frankly, because there was a lot of road signs pointing me towards it as this week went about. For example, in a book that I've been reading for probably a couple of months now at home, it's called Disciplines of a Godly Man by R. Kent Hughes. This past week, I read the chapter on the discipline of church membership and how all believers are called to function in a local community of Christians.
Then in one of my textbooks I'm reading for my seminary studies over church history, we've been talking about the function and the role that church membership plays in the early church, namely the first two centuries of the Christian church. And then finally, as our confirmation class... We spent last Sunday... talking about, you guessed it, church membership. And even maybe throw a bonus example into the mix. This coming week in The Advocate, I have my little, I don't know how to call it, your pastoral sermonette.
You just put a little blurb into the paper. And mine this week talks about the church. And so it kind of all came together that as going throughout this week, I kept seeing the signs prompting and guiding and stirring me to talk about our subject this morning. And I trust that by just the will of God and really God's spirit and leading us to where we are today, that what we'll talk about will be as timely and applicable for you guys as it was for me. So with that in mind, we'll kind of look back to our passage up here on the screen. But let me introduce us to the idea of church membership.
And for the confirmation kids, this should sound pretty familiar. First things first, and this might come as a surprise to many of us here, there exists zero commands throughout all of God's word, throughout all of the Bible. There is no commandment. There's no command to be a member of a church. There's nothing that compels a Christian to formally become a member of a church organization or a church building. And I'd start off by asking, did you know that?
Have you perhaps operated under the assumption for many years that you were called by God to be a member of a church? There's nothing that says leaders must initiate some form of membership. There's nothing that says churches must keep track or a role of its members. There's not even any guidelines on what makes a member and on how we determine who can and who cannot be a member of a church. Everything we do as a church, everything the Christian church has done for millennia, is just deduced from basic biblical principles about what it means to be a Christian.
So that Christian worship is organized, Christian worship is orderly, and ultimately it's done so in a manner that honors God. And really it doesn't matter what. what denomination you are in or are raised with or were born with. You can be Presbyterian, Methodist, Catholic, Baptist, non-denominational, evangelical-free, sugar-free, whatever you want to be. It's all nothing that they have is what the Bible says. It's all their own kind of thing.
There's no biblical passages that command church membership. So if a priest or a pastor or a preacher or a Sunday school class or a class has told you otherwise, they lied. So what I want to do then today is I want to show you what the Bible does say, about the closest we can get to church membership. And I think in doing so, what we'll learn, what we will learn, will kind of help us at least develop an understanding of church membership.
so that we approach it as God wants us to approach it. So to do that, let me take us to John 10. If you have a Bible, you can flip with John 10, but I'll have it up here for us. I'm going to take us to John 10. And in John 10, Jesus is speaking, and is giving his hearers a familiar illustration. You know, within Israel, we all know where the Bible and the context of the Bible is set. Within Israel, the land in which Christ walked and talked, it's an agrarian society much like ours. You know, there's a lot of farming, a lot of farmers, fishermen,
people like that who are used to harvesting from the land. And what Jesus is doing is he's going to give them some common imagery that they would understand in their agrarian society. Very familiar to us, John 10, Jesus gives his familiar phrase, I am the good shepherd. So the imagery at play here is shepherding. He says, I am the good shepherd, verse 11. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, referring to his future death. And verse 14, very bottom, I am the good shepherd again.
I know my sheep and my sheep know me. And he's using the shepherding language because of the people he's talking to understand. shepherding. I think without even, there's really probably not shepherders, sheep herders here, but I think we would all kind of get how it works. There's a guy with a stick and there's a bunch of clueless animals following him. And so he's saying, we are the clueless animals. He is the good shepherd. We are his sheep. And that's the key truth he wants us to understand from this imagery, from this illustration he's giving his followers. He says, true Christians are a part of a flock.
in which Christ is the shepherd, in which Christ lays his life down for them. And he gives this whole spiel about how other people are not willing to do that in verse 12 and 13. And he returns to the fact that he is the shepherd, a very simple illustration. The shepherd leads, the sheep follow. And he says, that is me to my people. The apostle Peter speaks to this reality in 1 Peter 1. Apostle Paul speaks to this reality in the book of Acts. Overall, even if you just have only ever been to Sunday school, you've probably heard.
about Jesus being a shepherd. Conveniently enough, if you see the laser, we have a picture in the back middle. Jesus leading the sheep. It's a very familiar truth. You expect to hear that in church. So keep that in mind as we move along. So for our second illustration, let me perhaps take us away from the flock imagery, and we're going to look at ourselves, the Christian body, Christians in general, with another word picture that God uses. And this time, it's not a flock, but it's a family. And in many passages, Romans 8, Galatians 4, Ephesians 1,
all of them talk about Christians as a family. In those passages, the Apostle Paul tells believers that once they believe in Christ, they are then adopted into God's family. Romans 8, 15, The spirit you receive from God does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit you receive has brought about your adoption. And he even goes so far as to intimately say, by this adoption, we can cry out, Abba, Father. We can call God our Father now, because we have been adopted.
Ephesians 1.5, same thing. God has predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ. And it says that it pleased Him, and it was His will to do so. It pleases God to take sinners and to make them His sons and daughters. And now that image, it's not necessarily a shepherd leading his flock, but now it's much more intimate. It is a father adopting children into his family. And Christ is saying through the Apostle Paul in both of these passages,
that is what God has done to us. He has gone intimately further forward with us to make us His children. It's much more personal, much more intimate, and by and large, much more loving than a shepherd with his flock. You know, the Apostle John had it right when he said, see what great love God has lavished on us, that we should be called what? Children of God. See what great love God has given us, that we are called children. Whereas we were once separated and alienated from God's love,
as Colossians 1 says, we have now been reconciled and brought into the family which pleases God. And that is the position of a true Christian. Notice it doesn't say he has made us roommates with fellow Christians. It doesn't say he has made us cousins, twice cousins, third removed with all other Christians. But he says these are your spiritual siblings. You have been adopted into a family in which they are your siblings, in which Christ himself is your brother.
And he says that's the family you have been brought into. You are now a part of one family. And the operative word there is one. Because if you've placed your faith in Christ, you have gone from a spiritual orphan and essentially a spiritual outcast to now being... a sibling in God's singular eternal family. One big, happy, eternal family. And that's the reason Paul uses this very familiar passage, which I quote probably once a week,
in explaining the Christian faith and the body of Christ. He says there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, one Father of all who is over all and through all. And to tag on to the end of that, that you are called to one flock and one family in which God is the shepherd and the Father. And so the imagery of our relationship to one another is now much more intimate. You know, sheep can just bump into each other.
They can walk along. They can steal grass from one another. And all they can do is bleed at each other. But he's saying you aren't just sheep, but you are siblings. And yes, siblings fight. Yes, siblings squabble. Yes, siblings have their issues. But now it is one. One family and one household. Okay, put a pin in that. Let me give us one more illustration to speak to this intimacy. If you have a Bible, we're going to go to 1 Corinthians 12. And I'm going to give us three or four verses from this,
and we'll be in this for a little while. So if you're going to flip there, 1 Corinthians 12. And once again, surprise, surprise, God's word is talking about oneness, unity, the relationship believers have with one another. And here's another word picture. Verse 12 of 1 Corinthians 12. Just as a body, though one has many parts, but all its many parts form that one body, so it is with Christ.
Now, what we are to understand from this is that the body of believers is compared to a literal, physical body. Which, if you're sitting here today, it is something we're all familiar with. You spend your... days feeding yours. You spend your day hydrating yours, resting yours, working yours, and hopefully bathing yours, because we're all familiar with having a body. Paul says you understand your body. It's an easy concept. So you understand that it is one, and even though it is one, it yet has many.
parts. You got arms, you got legs, you got feet, you got ears, you got a nose, you got all of those things. And he says because you have all those things, we still understand it to be, end of verse 12, one singular body. And that's why he says at the very end, so it is with Christ. Verse 13 tells us, for we were all baptized by that, there's that one spirit again, by one spirit, and in that it forms one body. Many members, all different, all have different roles, different jobs, different.
functions, different everything, but in Christ we exist in the eyes of God as one. singular body. There are those vital members that make up our bodies, and Paul says, you are the same. Think of your own body. You have, even go to your heart, your lungs, all of those things. Think of how vital those are to your body. God wants to tell us that you exist in that vital stature, that vital position for the body of Christ. You are vital to that body as the heart is.
to the human body. And then he goes on saying, in much of 1 Corinthians 12, some of you are hands of the body of Christ, some of you are feet of the body of Christ, some of you are ears, some of you are eyes, but the point isn't necessarily the members itself. The point is that it makes up one singular body. And the truth of the matter is, is that as a Christian, you are inexplicably linked to Christ. You are inexplicably linked to all other believers through your faith in Christ, and now you must contribute to that.
singular body. And that's what Paul says. Singular body as, One of its members. Verse 27 says it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. Therefore, God's word tells us, play your part. Do your job. Be the vital part of the body of Christ that you were called to be. Be a good member of the body. Don't be a diseased or atrophied member of the body.
that though attached, it still saps and steals and withdraws vitality from the body. Don't be a weak limb that cannot bear its own weight, which it was designed to hold. Don't expect that as a member of Christ's body, you can just wander off, as if an arm could just suddenly wander off from my body. He's saying you are vital to the core, and so live that way. The body needs its members to survive, so Christ's body.
needs its members to survive. And really what that tells us, and the reason we've started this conversation on church membership, is that's what we are. The health of the local church, the health of the body of Christ, the health of the local manifestation of believers, is contingent upon its individual members, on each and every one of us playing the part that we are called to play. And notice the codependency spoken of here. Notice the reliance that each member has.
upon the others. God tells us that those are the dynamics that guide the human body, and therefore those are the dynamics that should guide the local church. Just as others in the church should rely upon me being a member of the body, I should rely upon them. Just as others in the church depend on my contribution to the church to be healthy, to be vital, to be powerful, so it is God's design that we would depend on other believers as well. And really to stretch this out, to our other illustrations,
a sheep is at its safest and strongest when it's a part of the flock. Or a family is at its strongest when they remain together. And so it is with believers who have been united with each other in Christ. And so knowing all that, back to our point of conversation, what does this tell us about church membership? What does this say about church membership? Well, if the truth is as God says it is, that though we are many different sheep,
we are now one flock, that though we were various spiritual orphans, but now we are one family, and though we have many different parts, but we are one body, then consider this. And this is the whole kind of kit and caboodle of this sermon. Wouldn't it make sense that if the positional and spiritual truth is that we are one, then we are one. wouldn't it make sense that we as the physical church,
the physical believers, the individual members of the body are routinely getting together and uniting and fellowshipping with each other as one as well? Or maybe to say it another way, if in the spiritual realm we are one body, one flock, one family, then wouldn't it only make sense that I want to routinely gather with the other members of that family, the other sheep in God's flock, the other members of Christ's body?
And to risk completely throwing us off track, think of it this way. Think of the logic we use every single holiday to determine our plans. Basically, there's about three questions that determine all of our holiday plans in this room. Is there a holiday or birthday coming up? Am I related to said person that I'm considering gathering with? And do I like deviled eggs? And if you answer yes to at least one of those, then you pretty much have your holiday plans figured out.
Because the natural law of the world is that when holidays come around, it's families that get together. It's siblings that get together. That's just how it's always been. That is almost the natural social law of things. And if you think about it, there's no law that says you have to do that. There is no law that says you have to spend Christmas with your in-laws or your parents. There's no law that says you blood relatives get first dibs on your holiday plans.
But I think it's to that reality. We just know that's how it is. And so God's Word would say if that's the case, if that is just what's guiding your actions, your plans, your desires, just everything when it comes to this, then why don't we desire infinitely more so to gather with the family of God? You know, if natural blood... The blood law is determining your plans, and you don't even think about it. And why isn't your desire to regularly gather with the church family even stronger?
Because it's with those people that your bond is infinitely greater. It's with those people that the Word of God has made you one family, one flock, one everything, under the Lord our God. And so the connection you have with them, yes, blood is important, but the connection you have with them is through the God of the universe, which is infinitely deeper and more spiritual than any earthly relation. And so therefore, knowing that truth, Hebrews 10, 23 through 25 told us,
let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised it is faithful. Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, verse 25, not giving. Giving up me. together. Because we have the same hope, because we are one family, because we have one God, think about whatever it is that you need to do to encourage your brothers in Christ and sisters in.
Christ, and whatever you do, never, ever, ever stop gathering with them. Apparently, that was a problem in the early church. Apparently, the Hebrews, the group of Jews to whom this letter was written, there were people who started to think that gathering regularly with the fellow believers in their community was below them. They were coming up with excuses to avoid.
fellowshipping with their brothers and sisters in Christ. And I'm sure their list of excuses, overlaps generously and significantly with ours. You know, I couldn't make it because I had a long night. I was up late. I couldn't make it because I had an early morning. You know, my alarm didn't go off. My rooster didn't go off. My in-laws are in town. My in-laws are out of town. All of the above just to skip routine fellowship. And it's not just those practical reasons either. I'm sure there are folks saying, you know, it's a nice church.
I like the Christians in our community, but man, their music is not my taste. Or maybe it was, you know, they're nice people, but they're not my people. You know, some of them too old, some of them too young. Some of them are a little too extroverted. Some of them pretty introverted, kind of weird. Like, you know, we have all these reasons, or maybe even my personal favorite, the church is just too personal. You know, they want me to be involved. They keep telling me to get involved.
They want me to get plugged in, to get involved with, you know, Bible studies, volunteering, ministry, serving, doing a reading plan, whatever it is, when in reality all I want, I just want to show up. I maybe just sing a little bit, maybe listen to the sermon, maybe take a nap during it. And I just want to leave without anybody saying anything to me. And that's the mentality. And it's to those people that God says that's wrong.
That is consumer driven Christianity. God says you're sinning against the other Christians in your community because you are not willing to gather with them. You are sinning against yourself because you withdraw from the fellowship of the family, of the flock, and you are sinning against God because you refuse your own spiritual family whom Christ died for. If he died for you and he died for them, how can we think we're above gathering with them?
You know, in that scenario, it's the arm that refuses to be a part of the body. You're the leg that refuses to be used by the body, that refuses to associate with the body. And so therefore, the writer of Hebrews says, here's what you should be doing. Look around you. Look around you and consider how you can actually spur the other members of Christ around you toward being more loving, towards doing more things for Christ. Consider how you can begin to meet more regularly, verse 25, with the other believers around you.
Consider how you can be rightly fed and rightly feed the fellowship that the church of God is called to have right here in your own community. And that is as close as the Bible gets to commanding church membership. That is as close as God's word gets to telling people, hey, you need to be getting together regularly, even if you don't even feel like it. Because you're giving up meeting together and you're failing to do what I'm calling you to do.
And the Bible just tells us the truth. It says you're one flock, you're one family, you're one body. So act like it. You know, you have one faith, one spirit, one God, one Lord, just like every other Christian in your community. And actually, Christ determined from eternity past to bring that person into his family. And if you're a Christian, he determined from eternity past to put you into his family. So who are you to reject that? And so why wouldn't we want to gather with every believer.
every chance we get to study together, to pray together, to share a meal together, to fast together, to read together, to share together, to work together, to volunteer together, to serve together, to have fun together, to do life together. It says do everything you can possibly do for the health of the body because you are a part of that body. That's how flocks work. how families work, that's how bodies work. And so the truth is there, but as the writer of Hebrews.
would be concerned with, are we obeying it? You know, when it comes to unity and fellowship in the church, as I preached on a couple weeks ago, you are either part of the solution, encouraging believers to gather, attending and serving where you can, praying for the health and unity of the church, or you're part of the problem, refusing to meet with the local church, refusing to use your gifts for the betterment of the body, and neglecting the health of the church that you have been called to be a member of. Now, the early church wasn't perfect, but I think God's word.
records what happened in the book of Acts to maybe just give us a little bit of insight as to what the church should be. And I think this is what we should aspire to be. You know, I think what God records here is what should determine how we act. And it's really the framework that I pray that, our own church would bear when it comes to our unity. And here it is, Acts 4, right after Christ ascended and rose to heaven, it says, verse 32, all the believers were one in heart and mind. That's a good start.
No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything, they had. That's not communism, but if you're not confused by what that is, I can explain it to you, but it's not communism. Some people will preach that it is. It's absolutely not. Verse 33, with great power, apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord and God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons.
among them, for from time to time, those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales, put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to those who had need. Now, every single word I read for you is exactly my prayer for the Lord. But I want to highlight one phrase, end of verse 33. And God's grace was so powerfully at work in them all. Do you know how that happens? Do you want to be a part of a church in which God's grace is moving powerfully?
Do you know what makes that possible? It happens when one family and one flock are gathering together as one family and one flock to do the work in the will of God and not letting their pride get in the way. And that happens when Christians commit themselves to the church. When a Christian says, I will make a covenant, an agreement, not a deal, but a membership with this church to say that I am here to serve.
I am here to be the member I'm supposed to be. I'm here to be the sheep I'm supposed to be. I'm here to be the sibling I'm meant to be. And so I will do just that because I want to be like my family. who also gave himself for the church, except he died doing it. God's telling us we need to live for the church to fulfill our role. And that's why our church practices church membership. That's why everything we do, it comes down to having church leaders doing what we're called to do,
having congregants providing the opportunities for them to serve, them to use their gifts, them to learn, to worship, to do everything that they need to do. And so my challenge for all of us as I close this up here is, where do we stand? Where are we with the church? Am I committed to some manner? Have I put myself on the line for the body? Am I a member? Have I committed in that way? So that at any given point,
I can't just leave. I can't just kind of dip out and be unaffected. Just as an arm can't just leave and the body not be affected. I'll close with a quote from Kevin DeYoung in his book called The Hole in Our Holiness. And here's what he says. He says, quote, The man who attempts Christianity without the church shoots himself in the foot. He then shoots his children in the leg, and then he shoots his grandchildren in the heart.
End quote. And so in the same way, what are we doing with the local church? What is our relationship to a local church? Are we being the members we're called to be? I trust that the Lord is speaking to us what it is he wants us to do in that regard. So let me pray for us. Lord, the reality is our desire to be a part of a church is as natural as our desire to feed and to care for others.
It is in Christ we have been made one with him. He is the body, or he is the head, we are the body. All other believers make up that body. And so to do anything but rejoice and unite and gather with that body, would just be rejecting Christ who is the head. And so, Lord, I trust that for each and every one of us in this room, as the Word of God speaks to them, that you would call them to the next thought, the next step,
the next plan that it is for them to be a part of the body. Lord, not that we preach forced membership or that being a part of a church saves you or does anything of that nature, but it is just a natural response, when we understand our relationship to those around us. And so be with us, Lord, and press these things upon our heart. Help us be a stronger church. Help us be a more united and loving and fellowshipping local church. Because, God, as you continue the work you've begun, we all bear the fruit of that unity.
And it's that unity to which we seek every single week, every single weekend. And it's to that unity you prayed for, for us to be the answer. And so we thank you for this time, Lord. I pray that the Spirit would speak what it needs to speak to those who are here, and to me especially. And that we would just pray and understand all of these truths by the work and the will of your Spirit. And so we pray this in your name. Amen.
