SPEAKER_01: Well, I invite you to take your copy of God's Word and open it up to the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: If you're using the Pew Bible in front of you, you'll find it on page 952.
SPEAKER_01: I know some of you are excited as you look at the slide and notice I've only got one verse.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to burst your bubble, but I have six points.
SPEAKER_01: So take that for what it is.
SPEAKER_01: As I stand here, I am reminded of the fact that most of the sermons that I preach in this worship center are wedding sermons.
SPEAKER_01: That is one of the perks of being the singles pastor at a church like an Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: I took a tally last night.
SPEAKER_01: I've done uh 14, 15 different weddings.
SPEAKER_01: I love them, actually.
SPEAKER_01: It's one of my favorite duties as a pastor is getting to preach at weddings.
SPEAKER_01: Because I have the best seat in the room.
SPEAKER_01: At least metaphorically speaking, they've never let me sit while I was preaching yet.
SPEAKER_01: But someday Jesus sat on the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: I don't see why it's that big a deal, but I love preaching at weddings.
SPEAKER_01: And I have the best seat, not because I get to see me, obviously, because I don't.
SPEAKER_01: It's because I get to see the groom.
SPEAKER_01: That is maybe the coolest part of preaching at a wedding.
SPEAKER_01: Because I get to watch the groom as he looks at his bride.
SPEAKER_01: And it's pretty incredible.
SPEAKER_01: And they're kind of standing there with that nervous perma smile breaking through the flop sweat, and their eyes are just large and usually misty as they're just staring at this woman that they love.
SPEAKER_01: He can't take his eyes off of her.
SPEAKER_01: From the moment the doors open in the back of the aisle, and she is there in all of her glory in her wedding dress, walking down the aisle, that guy is enamored.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a great thing to watch.
SPEAKER_01: You know, generally speaking, I'm usually the last guy he gets to talk to as a bachelor.
SPEAKER_01: We're stuck over here in the corner, uh tucked around, and we're trying to make small talk.
SPEAKER_01: I want to make him feel comfortable.
SPEAKER_01: I usually tell a joke, I pray with him.
SPEAKER_01: But if you've ever been in that corner with the groom, minutes before he walks out, there's only one thing he wants to talk about.
SPEAKER_01: His bride.
SPEAKER_01: That's the only thing he cares about in that moment.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to describe her.
SPEAKER_01: He wants to talk about her smile, he wants to talk about how they met, he wants to talk about whether they're gonna go on their honeymoon.
SPEAKER_01: He is enamored with her.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm reminded in those moments, those quiet little moments, tucked in the corner with me and the groom, of the purpose of marriage.
SPEAKER_01: That it is designed by God to be a beautiful picture of the way that Christ loves his bride, the church.
SPEAKER_01: It's a little dim reflection as I get to watch this guy with his heart all aflutter, his corsage thumping with the beat of his heart.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm reminded that Christ loves his church even more than that.
SPEAKER_01: And so in verse 2 of 1 Corinthians chapter 1, just the opening address of the letter, before we even get to the body of the text of it, you get to hear how Jesus loves his bride.
SPEAKER_01: Let's read together.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna read verses 1 through 3.
SPEAKER_01: Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes.
SPEAKER_01: Here's his description.
SPEAKER_01: To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.
SPEAKER_01: Grace to you.
SPEAKER_01: And peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: This is the closest thing we get in the New Testament to a kind of systematic theology description of what the church looks like.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not written in the kind of cold, sometimes dispassionate pen of a textbook.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, this is the warm, affectionate overflow of the groom for his bride.
SPEAKER_01: What you're reading in that verse through the apostle Paul is actually Jesus' description of his church.
SPEAKER_01: That's what it means to say that Paul is an apostle of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: An apostle is the sent designated messenger, the one who carries Christ's words into the world.
SPEAKER_01: And so Paul is speaking here authoritatively about what the church looks like.
SPEAKER_01: Definitively.
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you were to walk into any Christian bookstore, if such a thing still even exists outside of the bounds of a church building, you would find just rows and rows and walls all over there, filled with countless titles about the church and what the church is and what it looks like.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I've got two shelves in my office as the membership pastor here at Emanuel Bible Church filled with different books that try to describe what the church is.
SPEAKER_01: And over the centuries, men have tried to define and redefine the church, what it is and what it's supposed to look like, and what it's supposed to do, what its mission is.
SPEAKER_01: And it feels like every decade or so, some new fad of Christian church growth, or some sort of new Christian movement and mission comes along, and it tries in vain to reshape the church in its own cultural mold.
SPEAKER_01: Most of you have seen these things come and go, ecumenical crusades and Jesus movements and moral majorities and emergent churches and woke churches and anti-woke churches, just a never-ending cycle of these new, this is what the church has to be.
SPEAKER_01: And you look at all these titles and you see snake oil salesmen and charlatans and well-intentioned crusaders all alike, constantly tilting at the temporary windmills of a so-called cultural relevancy.
SPEAKER_01: I'm only 39 years old, but I've already lost count of the number of times an article has told me that the church will fade into irrelevancy and disappear if we don't change X or Y or Z.
SPEAKER_01: The church is in no danger of disappearing.
SPEAKER_01: Two thousand years ago, Jesus already told us what the church is and what the church looks like and what the church is supposed to do.
SPEAKER_01: And in verse 2, just this opening address, as Paul is writing this letter to a church in Corinth, we get six descriptions, six defining features of what the church is supposed to look like that should make us love the church of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: The first of those defining characteristics, those defining features is that the church is distinct.
SPEAKER_01: It's right there.
SPEAKER_01: In the name of the church, to the church of God.
SPEAKER_01: Now, generally speaking, I don't think it's that important that you need to know a whole bunch of Greek words to be a successful Christian living the successful Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's important.
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to burden you with a bunch of them, but some words are just really pretty and you need to know them.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of those words.
SPEAKER_01: The word for church in Greek is ekklesia.
SPEAKER_01: It's a compound word.
SPEAKER_01: That's the prefix.
SPEAKER_01: It means out from.
SPEAKER_01: And clesia comes from kaleo.
SPEAKER_01: It's a verb that means to call out.
SPEAKER_01: You put it together.
SPEAKER_01: This word eklesia means the called out from people, the ones who've been called out from something.
SPEAKER_01: It's a word that shows up a bunch in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: You should get comfortable with it.
SPEAKER_01: Ecclesia.
SPEAKER_01: It's where we got our word ecclesiology for the study of the church.
SPEAKER_01: Shows up 111 times in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: And usually, overwhelmingly, it's gonna show up as the word church.
SPEAKER_01: Almost every time you see the word church in the New Testament, in fact, every time you see the word church in the New Testament, it's this word ecclesia.
SPEAKER_01: But it sometimes gets translated a little bit differently.
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes you'll see it translated as the assembly of people or the congregation of people.
SPEAKER_01: What it means is it's a group of people who've been called together for a purpose, for an intention.
SPEAKER_01: There's some reason that they are where they are.
SPEAKER_01: It's very different from a mob, though Greek has a different word for a mob.
SPEAKER_01: This is a group that's put together on purpose.
SPEAKER_01: Captain America, Avengers Assemble style, they're there for reason.
SPEAKER_01: And if I were to give you kind of this irreducible point of denotation, the church is a community of people that are called together, that are assembled.
SPEAKER_01: But just inherent in that idea is togetherness.
SPEAKER_01: Togetherness is the default setting for the Christian life.
SPEAKER_01: The New Testament has absolutely no concept of a lone ranger style Christianity where it's just you and Jesus out there making it work, doing it our way.
SPEAKER_01: Like that just is not anywhere in your New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: There are no stories in your Bible of a Christian who's seeking to live his life in isolation from other Christians.
SPEAKER_01: It just doesn't happen.
SPEAKER_01: And the reason is because we've been called together.
SPEAKER_01: Or Peter talks about this in 1 Peter chapter 2, verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people.
SPEAKER_01: We read about it in this same letter, 1 Corinthians chapter 12, or in Ephesians chapter 4, where Paul picks up on this metaphor of a body.
SPEAKER_01: And we learn that the church is this intricately interwoven, interconnected body of Christ with hundreds and even thousands of unique persons who are coming together using their unique gifts that God has given them to work together as one, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies.
SPEAKER_01: So the church is, just in its definition, it's a community.
SPEAKER_01: But it's a distinct community.
SPEAKER_01: That word ecclesia shows up outside of the Bible, and there's all different kinds of assemblies that would be called.
SPEAKER_01: They had them all over the place in Greek culture and Roman culture.
SPEAKER_01: There were political assemblies and there were economic assemblies like trade guilds and there were social assemblies and fraternal assemblies, and we're familiar with that because we have those ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We have political assemblies that get called together.
SPEAKER_01: We have CPAC, and I guess there's a D Pac.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how it all works, but we have those things.
SPEAKER_01: We have trade unions, we know what that's about.
SPEAKER_01: We have fraternal organizations.
SPEAKER_01: I remember when I joined the Marine Corps, my dad was so excited because I could finally become a member of the American Legion.
SPEAKER_01: That was a big deal for my dad.
SPEAKER_01: So when I graduated boot camp, my dad, unbeknownst to me, filled out my registration form, mailed in my$16 worth of dues.
SPEAKER_01: And when I came back from boot camp, he gave me my American Legion membership card.
SPEAKER_01: Son, now you can go on post.
SPEAKER_01: Cool.
SPEAKER_01: Not that I did, but cool.
SPEAKER_01: I'm grateful for that, Dad.
SPEAKER_01: And when I came back from Iraq, he did the same thing.
SPEAKER_01: Now you can be in the VFW.
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, cool.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: There was a big deal.
SPEAKER_01: We understand these different kinds of assemblies, but the church, the church is a very different kind of assembly.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's God's assembly.
SPEAKER_01: See how he describes it?
SPEAKER_01: The church of God.
SPEAKER_01: Those two words of God denote ownership.
SPEAKER_01: This assembly that's called together is not like any of the other assemblies because we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: We bear his mark.
SPEAKER_01: This is his church.
SPEAKER_01: And so what unites us together as the church, it's not some sort of shared common political ideology that we have.
SPEAKER_01: It's not some sort of shared mutual interest.
SPEAKER_01: It's not some sort of common background that we all come out of that kind of brings us together.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what unites us.
SPEAKER_01: It's not what defines us as an assembly.
SPEAKER_01: What defines us is that we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: God Himself is the one who unites us.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus does it on the cross through his blood.
SPEAKER_01: The Holy Spirit does it as he comes to indwell believers and unites them together as a new temple, a new building of worship to God.
SPEAKER_01: And so when you read this description, just these first few words, the church of God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is simply saying, through the Apostle Paul, you are my people.
SPEAKER_01: I brought you together.
SPEAKER_01: I knit you together.
SPEAKER_01: I fit you together.
SPEAKER_01: You are mine.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same kind of joy that fills the heart of the bride of the groom as he sees his bride walking in the aisle and he says, Of all the people in the world, she's with me.
SPEAKER_01: And that simple truth.
SPEAKER_01: We're supposed to look different when we gather and sound different and sing differently and think differently and act differently.
SPEAKER_01: We're supposed to look different because we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: We represent God.
SPEAKER_01: We're where God has manifested Himself.
SPEAKER_01: So we do things like love our enemies because we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: We do things like be anxious for nothing because we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: We pursue holiness as He is holy because we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: We can speak the truth and love to each other because we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: We can be angry with each other without sinning because we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: We can put away bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander along with all malice because we belong to God.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to look like he looks.
SPEAKER_01: So the church is, first of all, a distinct community.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, though, the church is definite.
SPEAKER_01: There's a boundary here that's being written in this letter.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the second description.
SPEAKER_01: He says, the church of God that is in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: There's a really delightful paradox when we talk about the church.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's one sense in which it's true that there's only one church, one universal church.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has one bride, he's not a polygamist, he has one bride, and it's made up of every believer in him, from Abel all the way to Zachariah, from John the Baptist to Jesse Johnson, every Christian put together one bride.
SPEAKER_01: Well, amen.
SPEAKER_01: There's one church.
SPEAKER_01: But it's also true, it's simultaneously true that there are lots and lots of individual local churches.
SPEAKER_01: That's how Paul can write a letter that he addresses to the Church of God in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: And he can write that letter in a way that's different from writing a letter to the Church of God in Galatia, or the Church of God in Ephesus, or the Church of God in Thessalonica, or the Church of God in Springfield.
SPEAKER_01: God's church, his one universal church, is manifested, is brought into physicality through lots of local assemblies.
SPEAKER_01: Because wherever Christians find themselves on the planet, they gather together to worship and to serve and to pray and to fellowship and to study the Bible together and to hear God's word preached together, to love each other.
SPEAKER_01: And so local churches, a church like Emmanuel Bible Church, is actually a very purposeful and powerful gift that God gives to his bride.
SPEAKER_01: It's his way of manifesting his love for us.
SPEAKER_01: He does these individual salvific works in the lives of individual people where one by one he calls us out of darkness and calls us into light and gives us new hearts and makes us believers and makes us a part of his church.
SPEAKER_01: But then he takes those individual Christians, the thousand of us who are members here at Emmanuel Bible Church, and knits us together into a community of people.
SPEAKER_01: A community of faith.
SPEAKER_01: And then he blesses those local churches.
SPEAKER_01: He gives them shepherds and elders to look over them and watch over them, to care for their souls and to encourage them and exhort them and rebuke them and reprove them when they need it.
SPEAKER_01: That's a gift that God gives us in the local church.
SPEAKER_01: That's where we get that.
SPEAKER_01: He gives us spiritual gifts individually, you and me, and in different ways, and then he sprinkles them all over his church in a very meticulous way that God does, knowing exactly what he knows, so that he can bring exactly these group of people together to accomplish his purpose.
SPEAKER_01: It's an incredible gift he gives us.
SPEAKER_01: Local churches are an immeasurable gift of God's compassionate grace.
SPEAKER_01: It's the place where God is pouring out his love into the hearts of individual Christians in such a way that it washes over the banks and spills onto other Christians around them.
SPEAKER_01: There are 60 somewhat one-anotom commands in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: It's a lot of them.
SPEAKER_01: And it's inside the local church that they find their expression.
SPEAKER_01: We could think about some of these commands in kind of just a general amorphous way.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can love every Christian, I can pray for every Christian, but it's inside the local church where those things actually take root and take hold, and the rubber kind of meets the road.
SPEAKER_01: So when Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, hey, care for one another, that happens inside the church.
SPEAKER_01: Or when he says in 2 Corinthians that we comfort one another with the comfort with which we've been comforted, that happens inside the church.
SPEAKER_01: Or in Colossians 3, where we read, we're supposed to teach one another.
SPEAKER_01: That happens in the church.
SPEAKER_01: Or Hebrews 3, we exhort one another.
SPEAKER_01: Romans 12, he says we're supposed to be devoted to one another.
SPEAKER_01: That happens in the church.
SPEAKER_01: We forgive one another.
SPEAKER_01: We show hospitality to one another.
SPEAKER_01: We pray for one another, James says.
SPEAKER_01: In 11 different times, the Bible tells us to love one another.
SPEAKER_01: That happens inside the church.
SPEAKER_01: Not just amorphously in our hearts, but practically, tangibly.
SPEAKER_01: As we meet one another's needs and encourage one another and weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice, we do that inside the church.
SPEAKER_01: It's where those commands are played out.
SPEAKER_01: And so the local church is a good and a necessary part of God's design for every Christian's life.
SPEAKER_01: He's designed you to live here.
SPEAKER_01: He designed the local church as one of the primary ways that he makes his love for you known in a real way.
SPEAKER_01: And that's part of why he knits us together into these communities with cords of love that are not easily broken or taken lightly.
SPEAKER_01: It's hard to leave a church.
SPEAKER_01: When you've prayed earnestly for someone and wept with someone, shared your home with someone, God uses those experiences to forge a bond inside of his family of God, his body of Christ, inside of his bride that glorifies him.
SPEAKER_01: Just this week, I was sitting in my office and my phone rang and I picked it up.
SPEAKER_01: And it was one of my dear brothers in Christ who's been at Emmanuel for a long time and moved out of the area.
SPEAKER_01: He just wanted to call and share with me some good news that he had.
SPEAKER_01: What a wonderful experience that is.
SPEAKER_01: As we submit to elders who want to care for us and watch over our souls as those who will give an account to the Lord Jesus Christ, as we serve one another with the gifts that he gave us individually, as we surround ourselves with fellow Christians who know us and love us and pray for us every week, as we gather together in corporate worship and discipleship groups.
SPEAKER_01: It is the gift from God to enjoy as the local church.
SPEAKER_01: And so there's a sense in which the church is definite.
SPEAKER_01: We know who we are.
SPEAKER_01: We can tell that we're distinct in the same way that.
SPEAKER_01: With my little American Legion card, and I could walk into any American Legion post, and there was like a kindredness that we immediately knew.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, we share something.
SPEAKER_01: That's true inside the church as well.
SPEAKER_01: So the church is definite in that way.
SPEAKER_01: But thirdly, the church is delivered.
SPEAKER_01: Look at the third description he gives us in this address.
SPEAKER_01: To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: This word sanctified there, it means to be made holy.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the word sanctified means.
SPEAKER_01: To be made holy.
SPEAKER_01: And there's two senses in which that word gets used in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: The first is kind of a positional sense.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we mean when we say the word justification, right?
SPEAKER_01: That we're declared holy, that we are pronounced holy by the judge, God Himself.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way the word gets used in a place like 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verse 11.
SPEAKER_01: Paul has been talking about the sins that marked our former lives, and he says, such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
SPEAKER_01: There's this positional sanctification.
SPEAKER_01: God has declared you are holy.
SPEAKER_01: There's another sense, which this word gets used in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of a progressive sense.
SPEAKER_01: This ongoing work of purification that happens in a believer's life through the work of the Holy Spirit in them.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what we see in places like 2 Timothy 2.
SPEAKER_01: If anyone cleanses himself from these things, talking about sinful behaviors, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.
SPEAKER_01: Now, both of those senses are true of the church.
SPEAKER_01: We're sanctified in both of those ways.
SPEAKER_01: We're declared to be holy, and every day we're being made more holy as we're being sanctified by the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's this first sense that's what Paul is talking about here in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 2.
SPEAKER_01: Because he uses a perfect passive firm of this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm from Texas, you'll have to embrace it.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I think the Nazbi does an excellent job of translating this word.
SPEAKER_01: Those who have been sanctified.
SPEAKER_01: Something happened to you.
SPEAKER_01: It's already complete, it's already done.
SPEAKER_01: You have been made holy as God declared you that way.
SPEAKER_01: And secondly, he says, you've been sanctified in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is the agent of sanctification here.
SPEAKER_01: Not talking necessarily about the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives as we read our Bibles and study and come together and enjoy the means of grace, but something that's happened to us by Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So what Paul is talking about here, what he's saying here, is that when Jesus looks at his bride, the church, he sees people that he made holy.
SPEAKER_01: And it was a costly holiness.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't cheaply bought.
SPEAKER_01: In Acts chapter 20, verse 28, Paul is exhorting the elders of the church in Ephesus.
SPEAKER_01: And he says to them, Shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood.
SPEAKER_01: So what makes this community, the church, different from every other community and fraternity and social club and country club and political organization that's ever existed in the history of the world, is that God himself took on human flesh and shed his blood to purchase this church out of its sin.
SPEAKER_01: One redeemed life at a time.
SPEAKER_01: If you're reading your Bible from start to finish, and I hope that you are, you're reading in Genesis and you're working your way to Revelation, about the time you get to the Psalms, you realize you've got a problem.
SPEAKER_01: Because the psalmists and the prophets are continuously pointing out that in order to stand in the congregation of the holy, in order to ascend God's holy hill, in order to dwell in God's temple, you must be holy.
SPEAKER_01: That's the necessary requirement for being there.
SPEAKER_01: And there is no one who is holy, not one.
SPEAKER_01: There's no one who's righteous, not one.
SPEAKER_01: All of us, everyone in this room, like the prophet Isaiah, has to declare, I'm a man of unclean lips.
SPEAKER_01: And I live among a people of unclean lips.
SPEAKER_01: There's no one, not a single Christian, who is in the church on account of his own merits, myself certainly included.
SPEAKER_01: All of us have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_01: Every pastor, every elder, every deacon, every worship leader, and Sunday school teacher and nursery worker and parking lot attendant and pew inhabitant, every one of us here today are condemned by our sin before God.
SPEAKER_01: There's no amount of effort, no amount of good works or good deeds, no penance, no performance, no sacrifice that you could ever engage in that could absolve you of that sin.
SPEAKER_01: That's what the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, whose name may have rhymed with Paul, says.
SPEAKER_01: It's impossible, impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
SPEAKER_01: I can't step into the assembly of the righteous.
SPEAKER_01: I can't ascend God's holy hill.
SPEAKER_01: I can't dwell in his tents.
SPEAKER_01: And my only hope for reconciliation as a sinner before the thrice holy God is that God Himself would come and make that reconciliation.
SPEAKER_01: And because God is merciful, he comes and saves us.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus loved his bride so much that he gave himself up for her.
SPEAKER_01: He went sinlessly to the cross, whereupon God the Father laid upon God the Son the weight of every sin of his bride, the church.
SPEAKER_01: And so the author of Hebrews in chapter 10 would say, By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all.
SPEAKER_01: And so by his death on the cross, he pays finally, perfectly, completely for every sin.
SPEAKER_01: And through faith in him, he unites us to himself in such a way that his atoning work perfectly covers our sin.
SPEAKER_01: And so when Jesus declares on the cross it is finished, and he gave up his spirit on Calvary, he ensured that for all of eternity, when he looked at his bride, he would see her not in her sinfulness, but in the manifest glory of his salvation.
SPEAKER_01: So there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Paul said, right?
SPEAKER_01: Such were some of you.
SPEAKER_01: But you were washed.
SPEAKER_01: You were sanctified.
SPEAKER_01: You were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Spirit of our God.
SPEAKER_01: So there's no cause for boasting in the church.
SPEAKER_01: Everyone here is here by grace and mercy.
SPEAKER_01: There's no room for judging in the church because we belong to someone else.
SPEAKER_01: The church is the place where forgiveness must reign.
SPEAKER_01: Because the church is delivered.
SPEAKER_01: Fourthly, the church is drawn.
SPEAKER_01: That's his fourth description.
SPEAKER_01: To the church of God, that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He says they're called to be saints.
SPEAKER_01: There's that word again.
SPEAKER_01: Called.
SPEAKER_01: It shows up again over and over.
SPEAKER_01: Three times in this chapter, not even counting the word ecclesia, three times in this chapter you see the word called.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 1, Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 2, those who are called to be saints.
SPEAKER_01: And all the way down to verse 24.
SPEAKER_01: Christians who are called to accept the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: So what's the significance of this word called?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it reminds us, the readers, that it was God who took the initiative in our salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Just think about how Paul was called to be an apostle.
SPEAKER_01: Was he looking for it?
SPEAKER_01: Was he diligently striving to get it?
SPEAKER_01: Did he go to the right seminary to make sure he could get the right qualifications to hang the right diploma on his wall so that he could be an apostle?
SPEAKER_01: No.
SPEAKER_01: He was riding a donkey to Damascus so that he could find more Christians to persecute and imprison and execute.
SPEAKER_01: And that's when Jesus called out his name.
SPEAKER_01: Saul, Saul.
SPEAKER_01: Why are you persecuting me?
SPEAKER_01: In fact, Paul describes his qualifications to be an apostle in the 15th chapter of this very letter.
SPEAKER_01: Paul says, I delivered to you as of first importance, but I also received that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, it's Peter, then to the twelve, then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are alive, some have fallen asleep.
SPEAKER_01: Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
SPEAKER_01: For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
SPEAKER_01: But by the grace of God I am what I am.
SPEAKER_01: And his grace toward me was not in vain.
SPEAKER_01: He's the least of the apostles, he says.
SPEAKER_01: Perhaps the greatest miracle in the church today is that I get to be a part of it.
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not just saying that as some sort of false humility.
SPEAKER_01: I mean it.
SPEAKER_01: It's literally a miracle of God that I get to be a part of his church because I'm a sinner.
SPEAKER_01: The first 23 years of my life, I lived in rank rebellion against the God of the universe.
SPEAKER_01: And I was content in my rebellion.
SPEAKER_01: Because it let me be in charge of my life.
SPEAKER_01: I got to call the shots.
SPEAKER_01: I got to do whatever I wanted to do.
SPEAKER_01: For the record, most of what I did was not great.
SPEAKER_01: So I was content in my rebellion.
SPEAKER_01: I was complacent also in my rebellion because when I was a kid, I said a prayer and I got dunked, and so I was covered, and I didn't, all my bases were handled.
SPEAKER_01: And I was continuing in my rebellion because I couldn't do anything else.
SPEAKER_01: I had no other option.
SPEAKER_01: But God showed mercy to me and called me out of death into life.
SPEAKER_01: Like Lazarus, I was there rotting in the tomb of my own spiritual death until the God of mercy said, Alex, come forth.
SPEAKER_01: And so there isn't a single person in the church who climbed their way in on their own initiative.
SPEAKER_01: It is God who plucks sinners out of darkness and says, You are mine.
SPEAKER_01: The church of God is distinct, it's definite, it's delivered, it's drawn, and it's diverse.
SPEAKER_01: Look what he says here.
SPEAKER_01: To the church of God that's in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And so the fifth description he gives us highlights the diversity, the idea that this church that Jesus is building transcends our boundaries.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, just look at his words, together with all the saints in every place.
SPEAKER_01: And it takes this, the Corinthians, this local congregation that exists in one city in Asia Minor, and he expands their connection back into the church universal.
SPEAKER_01: And they needed this reminder right here at the start of this letter.
SPEAKER_01: As you read the letter that Paul writes to the Corinthians, you start to notice how easily this local church has been derailed with internal squabbling and factionalism.
SPEAKER_01: Chloe's told me that there's all these cliques that are showing up, and people are suing each other, and there's favoritism when you come into the corporate worship setting, and there's people jockeying for prominence inside the church assembly.
SPEAKER_01: And Paul preempts all of that line of thinking right here in verse two of the first chapter, right at the start, by reminding them: hey, you are a part of something bigger than just the things that are happening in Corinth.
SPEAKER_01: You are united together with all the saints in all the places.
SPEAKER_01: In Jerusalem and in Antioch and in Ephesus and in Rome, Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, just like we sang a few minutes ago in our worship service, elect from every nation, yet one or all the earth.
SPEAKER_01: Paul is saying, hey, God has called all y'all together as one church.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that this description, by the way, is merely incidental to the purpose of the letter he's writing.
SPEAKER_01: What better antidote is there to the divisive and destructive disagreements that so easily entangle local churches than to be reminded of God's greater redemptive purposes going on in the world?
SPEAKER_01: To look up from our judgmental scowls and to see men and women from every tribe and every tongue and every nation and every people together glorifying God.
SPEAKER_01: God is doing something incredible through his gospel.
SPEAKER_01: He's magnifying the manifold glory of his grace through neighborhoods and nations.
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes we need to get a little bit better perspective of our place in the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: But the church is a beautiful, multicultural, multi-ethnic, diverse body.
SPEAKER_01: In a way that no other organization is.
SPEAKER_01: What is it that unites this diverse church together?
SPEAKER_01: It's our shared devotion to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: This is how he says it.
SPEAKER_01: Called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.
SPEAKER_01: I had the privilege of traveling on many mission trips.
SPEAKER_01: I had the privilege of going down to Cuba twice, where I got to share a room with the indomitable Dan Crabtree.
SPEAKER_01: There's pros and cons.
SPEAKER_01: There's crosses that we bear.
SPEAKER_01: And I got to enjoy the fellowship of these brothers and sisters down in Cuba.
SPEAKER_01: But what is it that united us together?
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't some, I mean, shared language.
SPEAKER_01: There was a pretty significant language barrier that all of my years of excellent Texas public education could not surmount.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, no Play-Doh, a blar.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what united us, it's not what made us connected to each other.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't some our shared culture.
SPEAKER_01: My life is very different from their life in lots and lots of ways.
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't some shared background, it wasn't our shared skin color.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what knit us together.
SPEAKER_01: So what was it?
SPEAKER_01: It was that both they and I called Jesus Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That we belonged to him.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing that's united every Christian from every church for 2,000 years.
SPEAKER_01: We call Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: The church is born out of a common confession.
SPEAKER_01: It was first voiced by the Apostle Paul in Matthew chapter 16.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus asks his disciples, Who do you say that I am?
SPEAKER_01: And Peter, always Peter, chirps up, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says that it's on that confession, I'm going to build my church.
SPEAKER_01: And so we are united.
SPEAKER_01: Every Christian in this building, every Christian in our church, every Christian around the world united by one common confession, that Jesus Christ is the King of kings and he is the Lord of Lords.
SPEAKER_01: And that all authority in heaven and earth has been granted to him.
SPEAKER_01: He's the Lord here in Virginia, he's the Lord in Cuba, he's the Lord in North Korea and China, He's the Lord of Spain and South Africa, He's the Lord of Brazil and British Columbia, he is our King.
SPEAKER_01: And we live for Him.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we gather to worship, we want to worship the way the Lord does it.
SPEAKER_01: When we gather to serve, we want to serve the Lord's way.
SPEAKER_01: When we gather to study, we want to study the Lord's way.
SPEAKER_01: When we gather to fellowship, we want to fellowship the Lord's way.
SPEAKER_01: And when we live and laugh and cry and rejoice and forgive, we want to do all of it the Lord's way.
SPEAKER_01: So that on that day when we stand face to face before our Lord and Savior, we may hear our master say, Well done, my good and faithful servant.
SPEAKER_01: And we join into the assembly of men and women from every nation and tribe and tongue gathered around the throne, saying, Blessed and glory to the Lamb.
SPEAKER_01: That's what binds us together.
SPEAKER_01: So how does Jesus see his church?
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus looks at the church, what does he see?
SPEAKER_01: He sees the bride that he himself made ready.
SPEAKER_01: He sees a church that's very distinct from the world.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't look like the world around it.
SPEAKER_01: He sees a church that's defined with intentional communities and intentional membership together.
SPEAKER_01: He sees a church that's delivered from the stain of sin.
SPEAKER_01: He sees a church that's been drawn out of darkness and into light by his loving call.
SPEAKER_01: He sees a church that's diverse in its makeup and yet devoted in its common confession, and he loves it.
SPEAKER_01: And he gave himself up for it so that he could wash it and sanctify it in the word.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of potential applications that I could give you in this sermon because of this passage.
SPEAKER_01: I could tell you that you should become a member of Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_01: And that's true, you should.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, we're going to do a membership class in two weeks at 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_01: I will teach it.
SPEAKER_01: You can sign up for it on the church website.
SPEAKER_01: I encourage you to do that.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not the application I'm going to give you.
SPEAKER_01: I could tell you that you should get more involved in the church and more connected to the church and be a part of an ABF or join and serve in one of the ministries.
SPEAKER_01: And you should do that.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, in three weeks, we're going to do a ministry fair here in the Mania Bible church.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to set up tables in the atrium and set up tables in the gym, and we're going to have people standing there to tell you about all the different groups and opportunities to serve inside the church.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, I've got to serve, I'm supposed to have four of those tables in two different rooms.
SPEAKER_01: So if anyone here has the gift of multiplicity, please come see me after the service.
SPEAKER_01: You should do those things, but that's not the application I'm going to give you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you one application.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to love the church.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to see it the way Jesus sees it.
SPEAKER_01: I want your heart to swell with affection for the church.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to delight in it.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to love the church.
SPEAKER_01: If you're a Christian, that's the one application to take away.
SPEAKER_01: But if you're here and you're not a Christian, then that's not the application for you.
SPEAKER_01: Because you're not in the church.
SPEAKER_01: You're on the outside looking in.
SPEAKER_01: And if you've never committed your life to Jesus Christ and you've never confessed him as your Lord and Savior, then it doesn't matter how many times you've sat in the pew, how many weeks you come back here, the places you serve.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter if you come and join us next week for communion and you even eat the bread and the wine, which you shouldn't do if you're not a believer.
SPEAKER_01: But even if you do all of those things, you can't love the church.
SPEAKER_01: You're on the outside of it.
SPEAKER_01: There's only one way to become a part of this church, and that is to confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior.
SPEAKER_01: And the same Jesus that drew his church to him now for two thousand years extends that same invitation to you.
SPEAKER_01: If you're here and you're not a Christian, I invite you to call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
SPEAKER_01: That's how we respond.
SPEAKER_01: Almighty God, we love you.
SPEAKER_01: We trust you and we thank you for the gift of your church.
SPEAKER_01: I pray that you would strengthen it and build it.
SPEAKER_01: And we pray that confident in the knowledge that you've said the gates of hell won't prevail against it.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for your love for us.
SPEAKER_01: Your undeserved, unmerited, unending love for us.
SPEAKER_01: We love you and we trust you.
SPEAKER_01: It's in Christ's name that we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you.