Sermon Tone Analysis

What is the church?

What exactly is the NT church?

What should it be according to the Scriptures?

What should it look like?

How should it function?

What are its goals and what is its purpose?

Specifically, how should each one of us, as members of this church, function?

What are the roles and responsibilities of every member of a church?

Why even join a church membership in the first place?

To begin answering that question we have looked at many different pictures from the NT of what the church is like.

And these pictures have given us a biblical perspective of the church.

Primarily, these pictures have informed our understanding about what the Universal, Invisible church is like- that is all believers from the time of Pentecost until the time of the Rapture.

We refer to the sum total of all of these believers as the universal, invisible church.

Today we are going to switch our focus and begin looking at the local visible church.

We, right here in Oconomowoc, WI, are an example of a local, visible church.

It was essential to begin our understanding of the church with a discussion of the Universal church because it must shape our thinking about our discussion of the local church.

The local church is a microcosm of the Universal church.

The local church must strive to model the universal church as closely as possible.

We are a miniature representation of the universal body of Christ, and therefore we want to act, as closely as possible, just like the body of Christ as a whole.

So the teaching and instruction of the Universal church must shape our thinking about the purpose of our specific local church.

What teaching about the universal church should shape our thinking about our local church?

Summary of the Images:

One Flock, One Shepherd- great desire by Jesus for all of us to be one.

He made us into one flock.

So the idea of unity in our local church is very important.

And, subjectively, we enjoy unity, we become One Flock when, all of us to the best of our ability follow after our One Shepherd.

One New Humanity- Again unity in the church is of utmost importance to God.

So much so, that God created, an objective unity for those who are part of His church.

God created an entirely new race- we are now part of the Christian race.

Christ broke down the dividing wall of hostility by means of his blood, and He made us all into one new ethnicity, one new family- And our new humanity transcends all other races.

“That they all may be One”- Jesus in his high priestly prayer, prayed that the Father would give us unity, and this unity is living and organic, it is like the unity that the Father and the Son enjoy.

But again, unity, oneness, is critical.

The other critical lesson that we found in John 17 is that this unity this oneness that is so crucial to being a church, is found in our common belief of the Word of God.

Many other pictures of the church:

Ephesians 2- The church is a building- what kind of building?

It is a holy temple (how should that shape our understanding of our church?),

we are a dwelling place for God by means of the Spirit

I Cor 3- You are God’s field (garden), You are God’s building and there are proper and improper materials of which to build the church, You are God’s temple

I Cor 12- Image of the Body of Christ

Heb 10- Image of the people of God and the priesthood

Eph 5- Image of the Bride of Christ

John 15- Image of the vine and the branches (Picture of Christ’s relationship to the individual believer)

Summary of the Images:

All of these pictures emphasize all different kinds of relationships in the church.

And I believe they all begin to describe what Christian fellowship looks like.

There are different kinds or different levels of fellowship that we all have with other believers, and the question becomes at what level can we as believers fellowship together?

At a minimum we can all of us have personal fellowship (One new humanity- when you meet another person for the first time and find out they are a believer- there is instantly a level of personal fellowship with that person because of the unity we enjoy through Christ’s blood)

I think at maximum is the kind of people we fellowship with in our local church.

We are to be One body, One flock, One new humanity, We are to be One and the Father and Son are One.

How do we achieve that kind of unity, how do we enjoy that level of fellowship with the other believers in our church?

The answer is tied to the biblical necessity of Church membership.

Some people will argue that in the early NT church there was no such thing as church membership- especially like the membership we practice today.

There was no membership list, people didn’t join the church membership like we do today.

So, they view being a member of a local church as unimportant.

I would argue, that a proper understanding of Scripture, not only teaches church membership, but teaches the absolute necessity of church membership.

Pastor, where do you get that from?

Answer: I Corinthians 5.

I. Church membership is necessary because of the responsibility of every believer to hold one another accountable and even to exercise discipline over one another

This responsibility, this relationship of believers is detailed in I Cor 5.

In I Cor 5 you find a professing brother who was engaged in scandalous behavior.

I Cor 5 is instruction for church disciple when the church is dealing with public sin.

There was a man in the church who was participating in fornication with his father’s wife (step mother).

This was a public sin, and it was so scandalous that even the Gentiles (unbelievers) knew about it and were shocked.

This kind of thing was not done even amongst the unsaved!

So, Paul instructed the church to take specific action against this man.

A. The instruction concerning church discipline (vv.

2-5a)

Paul insisted that the church should already have taken this man out of the church- “that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.”

Also notice that Paul lays this responsibility and decision on the church itself.

Paul does not use his own authority to remove this man engaged in scandal, but instructs the local church in Corinth to take him “away from among you.”

V. 3-

Here Paul states that he had already heard enough from afar to judge the situation himself- even though I am absent in the body (I am not there personally to see and hear myself), but I have heard enough already to judge the situation as though I were present, concerning this man who has sinned.

So again, Paul instructs the church, when you are gathered together.

Notice the significance Paul places on the authority of the local church when it assembles and passes judgment!

This is so significant.

When the church assembles and when they operate according to the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that is they are following the commandments laid down by Jesus Christ in His Word, when they do this, they operate with the power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In other words the judgment of the assemble church is very significant, it is very weighty!

Notice what they are to do in v. 5

They were to remove this man from the church, and place him outside the church, and in placing him outside of the church they would be, in effect, delivering him unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh.

In other words, when they removed this man from the church, he would be removed from the protection of being part of the church, and would be open to physical chastisement brought about by the wiles of Satan himself.

B. The purposes of church discipline (vv.

5b-8)

This was not a malicious act, in fact this was a redemptive act, the purpose of such a judgement was so that this man’s spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus- the purpose of such a judgement was to bring the man unto repentance and reconciliation (that is always one of the purposes of church discipline by the way)

A second purpose of church disciple is found in v. 6

The public sin of this man was polluting the whole church, especially in the eyes of the Gentiles.

(V.

1- “such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles”)

Church discipline maintains a good testimony of the church among the unsaved.

Even a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.

A third purpose of church disciple is found in v. 7

Church discipline halts the spread of sin, it causes others in the church to be careful in their walk with the Lord- to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling.

(Sourdough starter spreads to the whole dough)

And the final purpose is found in v. 8

(v.

7b) For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

The fourth goal of church discipline is to maintain the clarity of the gospel and the purity of our fellowship with Christ.

In the end of v. 7 Christ is called our passover lamb sacrificed for us.

What happened in the first passover?

It was the occasion where God killed the firstborn in every Egyptian household, but He spared the firstborn in Israel through the blood of the sacrificial Passover lamb.

Here Paul says that Christ has been sacrificed as the Passover lamb for believers.