(CM 05) What Are a Church and Its Members Like?
Notes
Transcript
Handout
1. The church and its members are like a fruit bowl.
1. The church and its members are like a fruit bowl.
This is a metaphor that will help us understand the metaphors for church we find in scripture.
But first let’s back up to last week and work forward.
Last week we saw the importance of the institutional side of the local church.
The church is an assembly of believers that Christ instituted for the purpose of excising the keys to the kingdom, making disciples, and observing the ordinances.
Ending our description there would be like saying that marriage is only a covenant while saying nothing about the things that the covenant makes uniquely joyful in a marriage.
The institutional side needs the organic side to be complete.
Back our fruit bowl metaphor…
We could say the institutional side that we learned about a couple weeks ago is the fruit bowl.
The organic side is all the fruit.
They key carrying institution of the church is the bowl.
It holds everything together.
You can’t have a fruit bowl without the bowl.
Its a mess of fruit everywhere.
No order.
Not pretty.
When you read the Bible and and see how the church is described… the word pictures used…
A body.
A flock of sheep.
A bride,
Branches of a vine.
God’s building.
The word pictures are abundant.
These pictures are the fruit.
The organic side of the church.
You can’t have a fruit bowl without the fruit.
Its just a bowl.
Its just cold religion.
Yet, the bowl, the rules, the institution empower us.
They give us a place to come together and live out
The body
The bride
The flock.
Where else can we do that if not for the structure of the local church.
It isn’t enough to say the church is an embassy.
A gathering of official citizens.
As much as we love that picture…
The church is much more.
Ever wonder why there are so many word pictures in scripture for the church?
Because it is special.
Because there is nothing like it on earth.
Yet we roll in casually.
We show up when its convenient.
We complain when things aren’t quite what we like.
All while missing the incredible value that Christ gave us!
2. The importance of biblical word pictures of the church.
2. The importance of biblical word pictures of the church.
Let’s take some time to understand how these word pictures help us better understand the value of the church and church membership.
A. Each one paints part of the picture of the union of the church.
A. Each one paints part of the picture of the union of the church.
Each picture shows us something different about the church and its members.
To describe the church as a family is to highlight its relational intimacy and shared identity.
To call it a body is to see the members as living breathing organism with each member playing a vital and active role its life. Though each role is different each member is mutually dependent on the other.
Think of it as a union.
The union of a married couple is different than the union of two bricks on a building because they are different unions.
So what is the union within our churches supposed to be like?
A marriage union?
A union of two bricks?
We have to borrow ideas from different pictures to help us understand.
When people ask: “is church membership in the Bible?”
We could say no.
At least not in the way they think of it.
It is there in a much richer and more complex picture for how Christians should live out their unity in the local church.
Maybe we could say we’ve been looking for apples when we should have been looking for fruit bowls.
There is nothing on earth like the local church.
Therefore…
B. We need all these pictures to understand the church and its members.
B. We need all these pictures to understand the church and its members.
If all the pictures teach us something we need them all.
We can’t just pick the ones we like best.
Just like we can’t just eat our favorite fruit from the bowl.
We have to eat it all.
We tend to focus on the aspects of the church that make us more comfortable or seem to bring us the most joy.
We need them all to remind us of the things we are less drawn to.
The help us know how the church is supposed to work and what our role is in it all.
C. Each picture is practiced locally.
C. Each picture is practiced locally.
Each of these word pictures of the church as not some grand imagination or theory.
They are truths to be lived by every Christian.
They can only be lived out to their fullest in the local assembly.
You may be asking: “Isn’t every Christian everywhere a part of the family of God?”
Yes - but God gives us the opportunity to act like family in our local church.
It is only possible to fully live as family when you are together.
Paul helps us understand this better in his letter to the Corinthians.
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.
This is local language.
It doesn’t do your body much good to have an arm if the arm is in a different location.
To be the body you must be together.
For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
Paul was in Ephesus writing to the church in Rome.
He use the words WE and ALL.
There he is speaking of the universal church.
The universal church is present within the local church.
The local church is an outpost of the future universal church.
On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable,
We see local church language again.
1 Cor 12 shows us the church as a whole, both local and universal.
If not for the local church, how would you effectively fulfill some of commands?
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.
Who do I know who I am responsible to love as Christ loved?
I cannot possibly love every single christian that way.
Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.
The same question can be asked about this verse.
As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace:
C. Each picture is practiced locally.
C. Each picture is practiced locally.
D. The word pictures are more shadows than pictures.
D. The word pictures are more shadows than pictures.
Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.
For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior.
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.
Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her,
that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
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.
In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
because we are members of his body.
“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.
We focus a lot on the relationship between husbands and wives.
Is it possible we miss another key piece of this passage?
The words church and Christ or words referring to them are used more times than husband and wife.
Look at verses 32 and 33…
Ephesians 5:32–33 (ESV)
This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.
It isn’t wrong to make an application to marriage, but it is wrong if we don’t see this is a passage about the church.
Marriage is a visual of Christ and the church.
Marriage is a shadow of the union that is to come.
We get it backwards when we think marriage is the reality and Christ decided to describe it by using a word picture of marriage.
We would be better to think of it as when God created the world he knew He needed a way to help us understand His love for the church so He created the institution of marriage as a shadowy outline to help us understand the reality of God’s love for the church!
We should think the same way about the church as a…
Body
Family
Children
Any word picture.
The point of this is to understand the value of the church.
Not only thinking about it through these shadows, but realizing God values it enough that He designed the world so that we can better understand it.
3. There is nothing like the church.
3. There is nothing like the church.
Are you understanding why we’ve said there is nothing like the church?
It is hard for us to grasp the church is.
The New Testament is full of word pictures helping us understand it.
Even the world unknowingly shows off is a way Christ’s love for the church.
The relationships we experience in the local church will prove to last longer than our own bodies.
Eternity.
Every one of us understand that the local church falls short of these shadows.
The church made up of broken sinful people.
As long as we are on this earth we will be so we will fall short of what God intended.
We should always be learning and striving towards God’s intended purpose for our lives and the church.
How much do you value the church?
Where does it rank in the things that are important in your life?
