The Story of The Church

Intro: Imagine you went home today and started talking on the phone with a friend who has no familiarity with the Bible or church or Christianity… and they ask you, “What did you do today?” and you say “I went to church.” And they say, “Yeah, I’ve heard you say that before… what is ‘church’?” What would you say?

Some of you might describe the building we come to...

We drive to 902 Winter Hill Rd Strasburg… it’s a brick building… we rent the first floor… there are some great children’s classrooms… a big room where the adults get together… we sit in rows…

Some of you may describe the activities we do:

We get together on Sundays to sing some songs… pray some prayers… hear teaching from the Bible…

You caught up with a few friends...

Some of you may describe how those activities make you feel:

We sang some songs… prayed some prayers… you’re about to hear teaching from the Bible…

You feel included or empowered or encouraged...

Others might describe the relationships that you have… I have this great group of friends… I love my youth group… or my Sunday school class...

If you are like me, you may have fought to stay focused during that time too...

Now I’m up here telling you to open a book and getting ready to talk for what may seem like a REALLY long time depending on how interested you are…

Later you’ll catch up with a few folks… maybe learn a couple things at a class… jump in your car… and go get a bit to eat…

The truth is that the church is not an easy thing to describe…

It doesn’t APPEAR at face value as all that special…

Sometimes it may even seem unnecessary… or at least optional...

If I can make it, it’s nice… if not, it’s of little consequence...

If I’m feeling it, I’ll participate… if not, it’s not going to make much difference for me or anyone else.

And all of those things that I just mentioned have elements of truth to them… but none of them are the whole truth…

And if we reduce the church to any one of those things, it becomes something less than the cosmic reality that it truly is...

Our gospel communities can feel the same way…

And because it is so hard to describe, the church is something that MANY people… including many believers do not understand...

How many of you have ever heard someone say something like, “I can be a Christian and not go to church.”

A little social time… some praying… some discussion about things that I already know… sharing time that makes me feel awkward… and then I go home…

And all of those things that I just mentioned have elements of truth to them… but none of them are the whole truth…

You hear people say things like, “I can be a Christian and not go to church.”

What do you say to that?

Or some people have been legitimately hurt by the church… and so they stay away...

Yet in doing so, they miss out from the primary tool that God wants to use to bring them closer to Christ and to show Christ to the world…

All around the world, people even go to things that they call “church”… they attend week after week after week...

But the gospel is never proclaimed... and the kingdom isn’t advanced… and Jesus is never treasured...

And I don’t really know what to call what they are doing… but it’s not what the Bible calls the church.

So what… REALLY... is the church?

But I want us to see today... is that what happens in those moments when we gather... is a cosmic reality... with eternal purpose and consequence.

What might sometimes feel mundane or inconsequential… is actually our opportunity to participate in THE CENTRAL activity that God is doing in the present age that will change our eternity forever.

It’s so important that we get that because the church THE CENTRAL PLAN of God in the present age...

The church is the work he is accomplishing RIGHT NOW in this part of his story…

I want us to see that this thing that we are part of called the church... is the center of the story God is writing in the present time.

You didn’t just come to a program or to an event or to a show this morning… you came to a people…

You came to a people who really only have one primary thing in common: that Jesus is Savior and Lord over our lives.

If you don’t know Jesus as Savior and Lord, you are witnessing the work that God is doing in changing our lives… and you can become part of that work through faith in him.

If you DO know Jesus as Savior and Lord, than you are a part of something that God wants to use to change YOUR life… and the lives of everyone around you.

This Fall, we’ve been in a series called “God’s Story, My Story,” and our goal for this series is to find our place in God’s unfolding story of salvation through Jesus Christ.

We’ve been recognizing that the individual stories of our lives are all about the much BIGGER story that God is working out across all time and space…

We find our lives when we lose our lives to find them in HIS story...

We started this series all the way back in September with the Creation in Genesis 1... and we worked our way through the Fall of mankind into sin… God’s promise to the patriarchs… through the story of Israel and the many periods of their history…

We then came to Jesus… HE is the fulfillment of the WHOLE story… working redemption and building his kingdom...

And last week we started into the present part of the story… the Spirit was poured out and the good news about Jesus went forward through the witness of his disciples to the ends of the earth…

And the church was built and multiplied.

Last week we talked about “the story of the Spirit” from the book of Acts...

And from a different perspective, we could equally call Acts the story of the church.

The CHURCH is what the Spirit is working in and through in this part of the story.

So what we get in the book of Acts is HOW the church was formed… and then what we get in the rest of the NT are letters… we call them EPISTLES… the truths that those churches were founded upon and the ways they needed to conform to them.

And it’s in the EPISTLES that we learn the nature of the gospel… and the church.

In Acts, we learn what happened to form the church…

in the Epistles, we learn what MUST happen for us to BE the church.

And we come to find that the church is not just a series of programs or events we attend...

It’s primarily not a building we come to...

It’s something we ARE.

It’s a fundamental part of our identity as believers…

And we discover in the New Testament: The church isn’t just PART of the story of the believer… but rather it’s the only story that God is writing in which you play a part. [repeat]

God is working out his kingdom in the present age THROUGH the church… through his people who are uniquely united and devoted to one another…

Either you are saved by grace through faith in Jesus and therefore part of the church… or you are not saved by grace because you do not believe... and God wants to use his church to proclaim the good news of Jesus to you.

So here is our big idea for this morning…

Big Idea: Through faith in Jesus Christ, your story is inseparably united to the story of every other believer through the church.

The Christian faith is not just about our individual salvation… it’s about the people God is uniting to write HIS unfolding story of salvation across all time and space…

God is calling a people to himself… and to one another… through faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the church.

It all starts with faith in Jesus. You don’t have a church apart from faith in Jesus. You can’t be part of the church without faith in Jesus.

The whole story of God is about God’s unfolding plan of salvation through Jesus Christ...

He is the CENTERPIECE of God’s story…

And the church belongs to HIM.

We see this so clearly in the book of Ephesians...

(it was already read this morning)… Paul takes us back to before time began… that God the Father “chose us in [Christ Jesus] BEFORE the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.” ( ESV)

And we get this picture of God’s people as a church… an assembly… spiritually gathered around the throne of Christ in heaven experiencing their spiritual blessings together.

(that was read earlier) takes us back and gives us this picture of our fallenness… that “you were DEAD in our trespasses and sins in which we once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air.” ( ESV)

Paul is describing the story of every single one of us in terms of God’s big story… Remember the Fall into sin right at the beginning of God’s story…

The prince of the power of the air is Satan… that ancient serpent… who tempted Adam and Eve to SIN against God… they trespass on God’s territory...

He lured them into thinking that they could be LIKE GOD without God...

And so the world went on in the same course… rejecting God… sinning against him by nature and by choice…

continued… “we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” (, ESV)

That’s the story of every single person apart from God for the entire history of the world...

Kids… youth… adults… we all can relate to this…

We do what feels good… what we THINK is right… we do what we WANT to in the moment instead of what God wants...

We make choices out of our sinful hearts… our sin nature... that is fighting God’s authority and deserving of his wrath…

The picture the Bible paints for those apart from Christ is hopeless… look at that verse again… … we are dead… incapable of producing life…

Our stories are futile and empty from an eternal perspective… we live forever separated from the one for whom we were created...

That’s a tragic story.

But then… in verse 4... we read some of the most beautiful words ever written: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” ( ESV)

When we were spiritually dead because of our sin… Christ died… in our place… for our sin…

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.

And he didn’t just die… God raised him up again… and he made us dead sinners ALIVE WITH HIM!!!

That was not because we were deserving or special… it was because of HIS GREAT LOVE… it was entirely because of HIS GRACE…

And the way that we access that grace is through faith…

Verse 8 - For by grace you have been saved through faith.

To access the grace of God, we must put our faith in God...

Through faith, God unites us to Christ so that his righteousness becomes our righteousness...

His death our death...

His life our life...

His inheritance as THE Son of God becomes our inheritance…

This faith means that we must turn from the lie that we can be like God apart from God… we must turn from the lie of thinking that created things that we can control can be God...

And we must BELIEVE that GOD intervened when we were DEAD… undeserving sinners... by his own grace.

We must BELIEVE that JESUS is who God proved him to be: the promised Savior King who is the hero of the whole story…

Which means that we surrender our lives to his authority as our Lord.

That faith changes our life: Jesus didn’t just save us FROM our sin… he saved us FOR a whole new life… for a whole new purpose and story that he has written…

Look at verse 8 again… For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” ( ESV)

We are just walking out the story that God wrote for his people since the beginning of time.

Here’s the thing… because God saved dead sinners and made them alive… he gets to write the story on what that new life should look like...

And as he writes your story, he is writing the story of everyone around you who is made alive through faith in Christ too.

So Paul goes on in the rest of the book to help us understand those new works… in chapter 2 and 3 he gives us the context for that new work… the church God is building through faith in Christ… and then in chapters 4-6, he gives us how that work looks practically as we do life together…

So in chapter 2, he starts to talk about how this saving work of Jesus Christ started a NEW creation in the present age… he calls it a new man…

That before Christ came… in the Old Testament… it used to be just Israel that had access to God… they had the covenant where they learned how to relate to God and where sacrifices were made...

And every other nation was on the outside of that covenant…

But now that the Christ had come… and his final sacrifice for sin was made… a NEW creation… one NEW man was formed in the place of what was once two divided peoples: the Jews and the Gentiles or the nations...

Now in the place of two, you have one… that’s the church.

Like it or not… and I hope you love it… Through faith in Jesus Christ, your story is inseparably united to the story of every other believer through the church.

So then what is the church? I wanted to be really clear on that faith in Jesus part because you need to know how you become part of the church to understand the church.

But now we need to ask again, “what is this church?” What is the NATURE of the church that we automatically become part of through faith in Christ?

Like, if I’m automatically a part of the church, then what role do I play in this whole thing? What exactly is my relationship to other believers besides sitting next to them on a Sunday morning or being friendly when we see each other in the grocery store? And how does this relate to the “good works that God prepared beforehand to walk in?”

Well… throughout the book of Ephesians, Paul helps the church be the church… and one thing he does that is especially helpful is that he gives 5 pictures of this spiritual reality that is the church… these are:

Five Pictures of Your Place in the Church:

Read

In these short verses, we get three of the five pictures of your place in the church, and the first is this...

1) Citizens together in a Kingdom (2:19a)

Verse 19 - So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints.

Explain: Citizenship… especially in the context of is kingdom language.

You are a citizen of a kingdom or a nation.

Remember how we’ve defined God’s kingdom using the definition by Vaughan Roberts: God’s people… in God’s place… experiencing God’s rule and blessing…

And from the time of the Exodus through the time of Jesus’ first coming, that Kingdom took a very national shape…

A specific bloodline from a guy named Jacob… or his other name was Israel… grew into a nation… and God established a covenant law with them…

He made a treaty with them that he would be their God… their ruler… and they would be his people...

And the only people on the face of the earth who received that covenant relationship were from that one specific nation.

Eventually, God set up a representative ruler over that Kingdom… a human king named David... and made to him this promise that one of his sons would sit on his throne forever...

So up until this point, the only hope of a non-Israelite to be restored in their relationship to God was for them to be a sojourner… an alien… a foreigner… in Israel...

As a foreigner… he had SOME benefits… he had his visa stamped… but he was an outsider...

And what Paul is saying is that the nations… the Gentiles... through Jesus coming as the Promised Anointed King who sits on David’s throne… and through Jesus making the final sacrifice for sin… the nations... get to become citizens of the Kingdom of God.

See it there in black and white in … don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: you (Gentiles) are fellow citizens with the saints of Israel.

Jesus IS YOUR KING if you have truly come to saving faith in him.

So just tease that out: think about how much being a citizen of a nation impacts your day to day life.

We sometimes take that reality for granted… but think about our global partners Nate and Marie… and all the visa issues that they face in Malaysia because they aren’t CITIZENS there…

We pray all the time about the visa issues that Nate and Marie have in Malaysia because they aren’t CITIZENS there…

There are rights and privileges that they do not have in Malaysia that they have here.

As citizens of Christ’s Kingdom, we have the rights and privileges of the Kingdom…

We have access to God through faith-filled prayer...

We have the Holy Spirit himself indwelling us and leading us...

We have his law written upon our hearts and his love motivating our love…

And in addition to rights and privileges… it means that we live under the authority of the ruler of the country where we are a citizen.

And the good news is that JESUS is the best king there is.

reminds us that he is the KING who brings PEACE… WHOLENESS… UNITY...

Everything being as it should be.

The more we submit to the rule of King Jesus, the more we experience true peace.

But citizens also serve their kingdom, don’t they?

Some countries require military service...

In our schools, we pledge allegiance to the flag...

We pay taxes… we perform civic duties...

The strength of a nation is dependent upon the loyalty of its fellow citizens to that nation.

And we each contribute our part to the whole.

When we become citizens of God’s Kingdom through faith in Jesus, our primary allegiance must be that Kingdom.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t serve our countries of citizenship here on earth… we aren’t in heaven yet!

But it DOES mean that our highest allegiance… our highest responsibility… is to the Kingdom of Heaven.

And we do that through little embassies of the kingdom called local churches.

The church… just like an embassy… is populated by citizens of a kingdom gathered together to further the purposes of that kingdom in a foreign land...

So the first part you play in Christ’s church is as a citizen of the Kingdom working together with other citizens in his kingdom to ADVANCE HIS kingdom purposes…

[How do the privileges and responsibilities of Christ’s kingdom shape your day to day story?]

Now in case that first picture feels a bit too formal to you… it’s not the only picture Paul gives us…

He says in 2:19… you are fellow citizens with the saints, members of the household of God.

This second picture is a bit more intimate but not contradictory to the first:

2) Members together in a family (2:19b)

Explain: We say it often around here: the church isn’t just LIKE a family… it IS a family.

We are very literally the family of God.

Here’s why: says that God predestined us to ADOPTION… when he chooses those who will be his people, he chooses them as CHILDREN. He ADOPTS them.

We are not MERELY citizens… we become CHILDREN of the KING.

So let me ask a question to those who have been adopted or who have adopted children… don’t get mad at me because I KNOW the answer to this question… it’s sort of rhetorical, but I want you to answer out loud anyway:

When you adopt a child, is it LIKE they are your child, or are they actually your child???

THEY ARE ACTUALLY YOUR CHILD.

OK… if that family has siblings… biological or adopted… is it LIKE the adopted child is a sibling to the other ones… or are they actually siblings???

THEY ARE ACTUALLY SIBLINGS.

They FIGHT the same… they LOVE the same… they receive the same care… they are SIBLINGS…

So again… says that God predestined us to ADOPTION…

He made us his CHILDREN… is it LIKE we are his children… or are we actually children??? WE ARE ACTUALLY HIS CHILDREN.

And if he adopted us as his ACTUAL children… actual heirs with his Son Jesus Christ… then is it LIKE we are brothers and sisters in Christ… or are we ACTUALLY a family???

I know this may seem so simple… but it has MASSIVE effects in the way we live our lives.

Jesus said, “Who are my brothers and sisters and mother… those who do the will of my father in heaven.”

He said, unless you are willing to HATE your father and mother and brother and sister and come after me, you are not worthy to be called my disciple…

And listen… I’m not trying to break down good family values where they honor Christ…

I’m saying that the family of Christ is your forever family.

So think about your family: no one person is the sum total of your family…

I do not get to make decisions just for me, myself, and I… My life is inescapably united to Katy’s as her husband…

I will always be dad to Levi and Titus and Asher....

We share DNA… we share looks… we share memories… we share finances… we share food… we share sick germs…

And in addition to that, I don’t know about you, but in my family, we all have a role to play.

Husbands and wives and parents have some responsibilities and some authority based on their roles.

I will always be their dad… we share DNA… we share looks… we share moments…

Husbands and wives and parents have some responsibilities and some authority based on their roles.

Kids have some responsibilities and are learning some authority along the way...

We all help with the household chores.

Brothers and sisters are expected to learn how to love one another…

And we don’t just go find another family when things get hard!

And the same is true in the family of families that is the church!

God has set up elders to lead his church...

He’s set up members to use their spiritual gifts to serve the church (more on that later)...

He has a special role for the relationship between OLDER members in the family and YOUNGER members in the family...

Some of us need to become aware that we ARE the older to many of those who are younger… and we need to step up into that role...

And younger people… kids… students… young adults… contrary to what the world tells you, you don’t just need more people who are like you… who are in the same age as you… who have the common interests as you… you need the generations who have gone before...

That’s WHY we do our NextGen discipleship stuff… that’s WHY we don’t have a young adult program…

We want you to see that you are part of the bigger family…

One of my greatest joys to see in our church is that Bruce personally disciples at least 4 people in their late teens to mid-twenties in our church...

But Bruce can’t do it all! And if you can look around and find someone younger than you… take the initiative… reach out…

In addition to our roles and gifts and ages, there is also the reality that in a family, we share finances… we contribute to the needs of the family… we have a family budget...

Sometimes there are also just some chores around the house that no one really likes but they need to get done...

Like when a couple guys from our church removed the A/C units from the kids windows… they had some accountability time while they were at it… it was a win-win!

Our facility is going to need decorated for Christmas this week… Laura is going to be reaching out to some of you for help with that (especially if you are in her GC I believe)…

We have chores… we also need to maintain our relationships… we need to learn to love one another and forgive and forebear and maintain unity…

We need to do things that stoke the flames of relationship… Katy and I are going on a date today because we realize that in a family, some relationships just need extra attention and face-time....

Being a family can be HARD! And in the end... when things get challenging… we don’t just go find another family… we lean in… and we work on it.

And in the end... when things get hard… we don’t just go find another family !

So let me ask you this: What are your roles and responsibilities in our church family? Are you fulfilling them?

And it you are visiting with us… and you are a follower of Jesus… are you seeking out a local church family to be a part of?

Together we are members of the household of God.

Now this word “household” is such an interesting word in the original… just like our English word “house,” it can mean a family line… a family relationship… OR it can mean the actual structure in which the family dwells… and it can be further used of the dwelling place of a deity…

And so Paul turns on that word “household” to introduce another picture of your role in the church…

“So then you are… members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.” (, ESV)

Here’s the third picture:

3) Building blocks together in a temple (2:20-22)

Explain: Get this… Paul is saying that the presence of God… the GLORY of God... that once filled the most holy place in the Old Testament Temple… uniquely dwells in the church TOGETHER.

We know and talked about last week… that the Holy Spirit… God himself... indwells every true believer in Jesus Christ...

But something spectacular happens when those Spirit-indwelled believers are joined together… built together… brick upon brick.

When we as a church start to understand that, watch out!!!

God starts to do POWERFUL things in our midst…

Paul prays this prayer in chapter 3 where he’s reflecting on this reality…

And he prays that the Ephesian church may be STRENGTHENED in their inner being… they can’t handle it on their own it’s so big!

What God wants to do in and through his church is BEYOND what they can ask or imagine so that more and more glory goes God THROUGH the Church and THROUGH Christ Jesus forever and ever, AMEN!

God wants to do something AWESOME through his church as he joins their lives together as his temple.

But here’s what we need to pay attention to… the church (and I’m talking about the people)… the church is God’s building… not ours.

We aren’t coming up with whatever we want the church to be...

We aren’t building it on "whatever works” and “it seems to me that this would be a good idea” and “what if we try this or that out”...

The true household temple of God is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets… Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

Now why not just “built upon Jesus”??? Why “the apostles and prophets”???

Because God used the apostles and prophets to reveal his plan for the church.

We are not just red-letter Christians, only paying attention to the words Jesus says in the Bible…

They are ALL his words as he spoke through the Apostles and the prophets and used them to establish his church…

So many people say, “Well, there are a lot of ways to do church… Jesus didn’t tell us how...”

And I say, “Yes he did, you’re just not reading your Bible.”

The foundation of the apostles and prophets is revealed in the New Testament letters… they tell us EXACTLY how to be the church...

They don’t give us specifics about musical styles and what kind of building we should meet in and what size our congregation should be...

But God… through the Apostles and Prophets… revealed CLEARLY how to be the church...

things like how a church should be led… by biblically qualified elders…

Things like what activities should consume our time...

And what should be our hope and power and joy...

And ultimately, the way we do church points back to what we believe about Jesus: do we really believe that he is the perfect cornerstone?

Do we believe that he is the one who sets the direction of the rest of the foundation?

Do we believe that he is the Lord of his church?

Once we get that settled… and recognize that he ACTUALLY revealed his plan through the apostles and prophets… the rest falls into place pretty quickly.

And we must not get sidetracked on personal preferences and feel-good experiences… we must focus on experiencing the presence of God in our midst.

So as a building block in the temple, here’s the part you play: your participation is necessary to help others experience the presence of God together.

What if you were looking at a temple building and there were just blocks missing all out of the side of the wall???

That would be a big problem...

Or what if the blocks were all out of wack… they were crooked and facing different directions…

The integrity of the whole building is at stake.

If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you are a building block in his temple...

And you need to understand first and foremost that the cornerstone is Jesus Christ… your life needs to be lined up with his...

And then you need to line up on top of the New Testament writings that lay the foundation of every church.

You need to understand and pursue how the church is supposed to be built and ordered. That’s not just for the leaders…

Now I want to remind you… you don’t do that alone… or in your own power…

You are being built… notice in v. 22... BY THE SPIRIT…

He is leading his followers into the truth of Jesus Christ...

Into understanding how that truth is lived out on a day to day basis.

Now in chapter 4, we see this BUILDING work of the Spirit in another picture that helps us understand yet another part we play in the Church:

Look at 4:15-16 [turn and read]

Here’s the next picture:

4) Organs together in a Body (4:15-16)

Explain: Paul begins chapter 4 by talking about the unity of the church… and how Jesus rose on high and gave gifts to people…

And then he talks about how he gave specific gifts to specific leaders to EQUIP the saints for the work of the ministry… for the building up of the body of Christ… to the full stature of the measure of Christ.

Understand… he’s saying that the church TOGETHER… is to reach maturity in Christ.

Spiritual maturity is not an individual endeavor...

If you think you are mature… but you look around and you are being “mature” all by yourself… you are not actually mature in Christ.

Instead, we reach maturity in Christ when we all grow together.

As his body, we are actually Christ’s physical manifestation on earth in the present age.

Just as our physical bodies are enlivened by a soul, so too Christ’s church is enlivened by his Spirit…

Just as our physical bodies grow and work and strengthen… so the church is to build itself up through the use of Spiritual gifts.

But here’s the heart of this picture: you aren’t the whole body… you are just one organ.

The head is Christ… the rest of us are just body parts...

And this is such a great analogy, because we live with it every day.

When one part of your body is sick… like if you have a head-cold... how much does the rest of your body suffer?

Or how about this… the well-being of your toes is entirely dependent upon the well-being of your heart… which is entirely dependent on the well-being of your lungs… and so on and so on...

There are very few body parts you can remove without feeling the loss.

And no one body part can claim to be the whole deal… or even the most important part of the body except for the head… which is CHRIST.

Here’s what this means: your spiritual growth is not just about you.

Your walk with God… your participation in his story… is not just about you.

You cannot be healthy as a Christian… yes, I am saying it that strongly because that’s what this picture is teaching us… you cannot be healthy as a Christian apart from the church any more than your arm can be healthy flopping around on the floor separated from your body.

And further… the longer you are unhealthy while attached to the body...

The more you entertain your sin… the more you are apathetic to spiritual things… the more you act like nobody else needs your Spiritual gifts… the more the body suffers.

Look at the picture again: the joints are equipping… those are the five ministry gifts given for leadership in the church… the joints are equipping… but all the parts are doing the work of building the body...

God isn’t building up his body mystically from outside… he’s building up his body from within...

And it’s being built up in love. Specifically SPEAKING the truth in love...

Not just fulfilling some service role… TRUE ministry where you are taking the truth of Jesus Christ and SPEAKING it to others out of love for them and for him.

Are you using your spiritual gift to SPEAK the truth in love to the other parts of our body so that we grow to be mature in Christ together?

We are going to devote a whole series to this in the month of March… I can’t wait!

We.. TOGETHER… are the body of Christ… and interestingly… Paul ties that analogy of the body into this last picture of your role in the church...

Look at 5:25-32

Do you see that crazy tie in...

We are one body with Christ… one flesh… and it’s actually a picture… not just of the body, but of marriage...

the one flesh marriage of a husband and wife is a PICTURE of Christ and the church...

In fact Paul says that marriage… from … is actually REVEALING this mystery of Christ and the church…

That’s crazy!

So here’s the picture:

5) Bride together of a Groom (5:25-32)

Explain: Now before you men start getting weirded out… Paul is NOT saying that we are each INDIVIDUALLY married to Christ...

This picture is so often used wrongly… as an individual reality… listen to WJTL… it’s messed up… which just gets weird if you follow the picture...

We TOGETHER are the bride of Chist…

He says that the unity that a husband and wife experiences is a picture of Christ and the church, and specifically of Christ’s sacrificially loving leadership.

So notice what is in this picture:

Christ is pictured as a groom who gave up his life for his bride…

Christ nourishes and cherishes the church.

He did this to SANCTIFY Her… to set her apart as holy and unique…

He did that to sanctify her… to

He cleansed her and made her pure by the washing of water with the word (it’s a picture of the baptism of the Holy Spirit that comes through faith in the gospel message)...

In other words, he set his bride apart for his wedding day.

But here’s the thing about weddings in that time...

You were betrothed… and when you were betrothed, you were legally married… you couldn’t get out of it...

But you didn’t live together yet...

And the husband went off to prepare the home for his bride...

And then one day, unexpectedly… he would parade through town and go and get his bride and they would have this big feast and he would bring her home.

Church… that’s what is in this picture of the Bride and the groom.

We are the spotless bride of Christ… set apart as holy by his blood...

We have been washed by the holy Spirit through the preaching of his word...

And our job is to wait patiently and eagerly together for the bridegroom together.

As we wait, we are getting ready...

We are remaining pure… unstained from the world… we are submitting ourselves to Christ...

And we are inviting everyone we can into this cosmic reality that is the church.

The world needs to know what this church thing really is!!! It’s so much bigger than the billboards and mailers make it out to be!

And your role in the church is not just in one of these pictures… it’s all of them together...

But which picture do you need to focus on most today?

Which one do you need to study and gaze upon and wonder at… so that you can be part of the church you were created to be?

Do you need to shift your mindset to prioritize the Kingdom of God?

Maybe you need to realize that God’s family really is your family and you need to take some family responsibility there?

Do you need to return to the cornerstone of Jesus and the foundation of the Apostles teaching so that you really understand his design for the church?

Do you need to see your need for the rest of the body, and their need for you?

Do you need to be reminded to turn your attention with others to heaven… looking for the bridegroom to return?

Next week we will glimpse into that return as we conclude this series, but for today, let’s do some work with God to focus on this part of our story…

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