Metaphors for the Church

7 I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

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Jeremiah 31:33-34

I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

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Introduction

· Each of us here have a picture of what the church is.

· This picture most likely comes from your personal experience attending church.

· So, Let’s take a moment and let our mind paint the picture of the church from your own perspective.

· There were probably many different pictures of the church in this room.

· Examples:

· You may have pictured a building with a steeple and stain glass windows.

· Others may have seen a new state of the art building with all the bells and whistles.

· Some heard the singing of old traditional hymns.

· Others heard the worship of a full band with having a concert feel to it.

· Well, none of these or other pictures you may have had are necessarily wrong.

· But I’ve found that most of the time, these are our personal preferences for the church service.

· Not the definition the Biblical church.

I want to share a few of my preaching experiences in 5 different environments.

· I’ve preached:

· In a traditional setting of the church with about 15 people.

· At a fairground with about 100 people.

· In a hollowed out concrete building without electricity in Ecuador using a translator.

· In a run-down auditorium in Cambodia, again, using a translator.

· In a small village outdoors in Cambodia where the huts they lived in had no walls. A definite third world environment. And yes, with a translator.

· A few of these environments probably differ greatly from what you pictured.

· And as you can see, the environments alone were drastically different from each other, but the key is that they all were the church.

· And regardless of the environment, they all had in common the preaching of the Gospel.

· So, as we begin our message today, let’s try to put aside our own personal picture of the church to open our minds as to what the Bible has to say.

Today

The sermon focus today will be on:

· The invisible church and the visible church

· Then we will look at 4 metaphors or images the Bible uses for the church.

· These metaphors all describe and define the identity of what the New Testament Church is.

Prayer

Main sermon body

1. We’ll begin with the invisible and visible church

Invisible Church or Universal Church

· Consists of only the community of all true believers throughout history.

· Including believers in the Old Testament.

· It consists of those who have and those who will come into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.

· There are no denominations.

Contrast that with the Visible Church or Local Church

· Refers to the imperfect local church that exists here on earth during any particular time and place.

· The members consist of both saved and unsaved people.

· This means that there are members of the visible church who are not part of the invisible church.

· A good example of this is Jesus and His 12 Disciples.

· They were all believers except one, Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus.

· The one whom Jesus said it would have been better for him to have never been born. YIKES!

· The visible church consists of different denominations.

· Thunder Basin is a visible or local church.

· Our mission is to lead people to Jesus so they will belong to the invisible church by coming to faith by grace in Christ.

Let’s turn our attention to the 4 Metaphors for the church

1. The Church is the Body of Christ.

· Probably the most extensive metaphor or image of the church in the New Testament.

1 Corinthians 12:27

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

· In using the word “YOU”, Paul is speaking specifically to the Church in Corinth.

· Which refers to the visible church as a body.

Ephesians 1:22-23

22 And He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.

· Here, Paul is speaking about the Church in a general way.

· He is referring to the body of the invisible church.

The church exists for each member of the body to carry on Jesus’ ministry that He began in His physical body on earth.

Now the church body has 2 points of connection.

1stConnection

· Is the connection between the body and Christ with Jesus as the head of the church.

· This connection is our union with Christ.

Colossians 2:9-10

9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

Colossians 1:17-18

17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church.

2nd Connection

· Chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians reveals the 2nd connection.

· That the church body is unified and interconnected with each other.

· As I mentioned last week, the Christian life is not merely in terms of an individual relationship with Jesus.

1 Corinthians 12:12

12 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.

There are other aspects of our connection with each other as a body.

· One aspect is that members of the body have different gifts and roles in which they contribute to the Church.

· And each member depends on one another.

· They are all equal in value and equally important for the effectiveness of the church.

1 Corinthians 12:14-20 paints a great picture of this using the physical parts of our body.

14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? 18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.

· A 2nd aspect is not only is Jesus the head of the church, but He also nourishes the body.

Colossians 2:19

19 And not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.

2. The church is the Temple of the Lord – The dwelling place of God.

· In the Old Testament, the Temple of the Lord was in a specific place for the Israelites to be in the presence of God.

· Here is a chronological list of where the Temple of the Lord resided.

· First, before the fall because of sin, God was present with Adam and Eve.

· Then later, when the Israelites were freed from Egypt, God’s Temple was in the cloud by day and fire by night as He guided them in the wilderness.

· The 3rd place: When Moses received the 10 commandments, he was instructed to build an arc to put those commandments in.

· He also built the tent of meeting to house the Arc of the Covenant.

· This became God’s dwelling place.

· And last, in King Solomon’s time, he built the Temple in Jerusalem as God’s dwelling place.

· But these were just prototypes of the real Temple fulfilled through Jesus.

· Because of this fulfillment, the church is now the temple of the Lord so that the world may encounter the presence of God.

· Specifically, the church is the Temple of the Lord through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit both individually and collectively.

· And the Holy Spirit empowers the church, again, to carry out Jesus’ ministry He started on earth.

1 Corinthians 3:16-17

16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17 If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

3. The church is like a building.

· ‌But not like the buildings we may think of.

· ‌The building metaphor for the church is described as being established by Jesus – “On this rock I will build my church.”

· And Jesus is the “Cornerstone.”

· The cornerstone is the critical stone in the foundation of a building that holds the entire structure together.

· ‌Now the foundation of the building is built on the Gospel message as proclaimed, taught and written by the Apostles and prophets.

· ‌And the church is continuing to be built by those who gather together to worship and glorify God.

4. The Church is the Bride of Christ

· The marriage between a husband and wife represents the relationship between Christ and His church.

· It’s interesting is that what many of us find to be one of the most important aspects of our life, marriage,

+ God uses to point to the most important marriage, the union between Christ and His church.

Ephesians 5:25-32 best describes this image.

25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, 27 so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. 28 In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, 30 because we are members of his body. 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” 32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

· This image of the church as the Bride of Christ is ultimately fulfilled in the end times with the marriage supper of the Lamb.

· It’s the time when Christ returns to establish the Kingdom of God, the New Heaven and New Earth.

· The last book of the Bible is Revelation.

· It was written by the Apostle John when he was taken up into heaven in the Spirit to be shown the things that soon must take place.

Revelation 19:6-9 – What John saw and heard from the Throne room of God.

6 Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty peals of thunder, crying out,

“Hallelujah!

For the Lord our God

the Almighty reigns.

7 Let us rejoice and exult

and give him the glory,

for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

and his Bride has made herself ready;

8 it was granted her to clothe herself

with fine linen, bright and pure”—

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

9 And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.”

· What an amazing picture.

Conclusion and Application

· As I mentioned earlier, these 4 metaphors or images of the church describe and define the identity of the church.

· Our take-away for today is to have a much better understanding of what the church is through these images.

· But the most important take-away comes from what all 4 of these metaphors have in common.

· They all are imbedded in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

· Remember, the church cannot exist without the Gospel; which is Christ’s life, death, resurrection, and ascension.

Let’s take a few minutes to see the aspects of the Gospel that establish these images of the church.

As for The church as the Body of Christ

· We are the body as a result of Christ’s work on the cross.

· As we come to faith in the Gospel message, we are then united, one body in Jesus.

· And we are now empowered by the Holy Spirit to serve and glorify God as Jesus’ representative on earth.

Church is the Temple of the Lord

· This metaphor is fulfilled through Christ’s ascension.

· We learned that the Holy Spirit dwells within the church individually and collectively.

· But the Spirit could only be sent after Jesus was resurrected and ascended into Heaven.

· It was Christ’s ascension that made it possible for the church to be the Temple of the Holy Spirit.

The church as a building

· When we were dead in our sins, we were eternally separated from God.

· But that all changed when we were made holy and righteous through Christ’s perfect sinless life.

+ And for the forgiveness of our sin through His death.

· Through faith, we are now members of God’s building, or God’s household.

The church as His Bride

· Upon His death, resurrection, and ascension we are in union with Jesus like the union in marriage.

· And because Jesus rose from the dead, we too will be raised and in perfect union with Christ in Heaven.