The Church

The Church

Intro: In the sermon on theMount Jesus explains what it means to be His disciple. He has explained some blessings with the Beatitudes. Last week w looked at how the disciples are to interact with and live in this world that is apart from Heaven.

The next section of Jesus Sermon starts to get into particulars of conduct and properly framing what the Law means and how we sin more than we think because Jesus actually drills down into our hearts and what conducts our conduct.

This week, since we are shortening our Time so we can have our business meeting, It is a good opportunity to look at what are we expected and asking other people to do when we talk about coming to church and ultimately joining the church.

Read Verses

Main Point: Church members are participants, not patrons. (Joe Thorn,The Character of the Church, 89)

I. What Is a Church?

Article six of the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 which is a document that Southern Baptist Churches can accept to adhere to says that “A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth.

Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through democratic processes. In such a congregation each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord. Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons.

While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.

The New Testament speaks also of the church as the Body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages, believers from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.

II. What is a Church Member?

As the main pointed out that church members are participating in the church. We don’t just go to Church. We are the church.

As states, those who accepted his message were baptized and that day people were added to them.

The condition to become a Church member is accepting the message of The Saving power of Jesus over your sins and that you have repented of those sin. The church members are the ones who have been called by God.

Verse 44 says Now all the believers were to their and held all things in common.

When you join the church people now know who is in and who is out. This helps us determine who should be held to the Christian standard. And who can make decisions to elect leaders, and deacons and the direction of the church.

In all of the letters of the New Testament the author, like Paul, Peter and John are writing to churches because as new people joined certain problems arose and theology needed to be clarified. But they were all believers in Jesus Christ. That is the unifying theme.

Christ is the head of the Church. God’s word is central to how the Church is structured and how it is run. But the collective local church members gets to decide how we fulfill the great commission.it is not just left to one or a small group of people.

Colossians 1:18 ESV

And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.

Church members are assembled by God to do the work he needs done at the right times. That is to proclaim and advance th eGood news of Jesus Christ.

I am going to close with Paul’s words to the Church at Corinth in chapter 12:24 But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. 27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.