Word of Salvation – December 2018
B.C.27 – The Christian Church
Sermon by Rev. John Westendorp
Scripture Readings: Ephesians 4:1-16 & Matthew 16:13-21
Introd: It’s fairly obvious that there is a great deal of misunderstanding and confusion about the church today.
Even we who are within the church have our struggles with the church.
We have our problems with what goes on among us at times.
We even have our problems with the very term “church”.
Mention ‘church’ and many of us immediately think of this building here on Richmond Road.
Others among us would want to say: No, the church is the people gathered for worship.
But does that mean that when the worship stops the church ceases to exist?
Non Christians have even more difficulties.
The world around us has some very conflicting ideas about the church.
OTOH: They expect the church not to interfere in affairs of daily life.
It mustn’t touch politics or interfere with Government.
Times when churches have dared criticise politicians they have remarked:
“The church should keep out of it and stick with preaching the gospel.”
Others blame the church for sticking its nose into people’s private lives.
OTOH: The church is often accused of inactivity and blamed for non-involvement.
For not solving every problem from war to poverty.
It is expected to be relevant and to address today’s issues.
Something went wrong and immediately the church is blamed for not doing anything.
What then is the Church and what is its task?
Let’s face it – it is an important subject for us who are in the church.
The Christian cannot think of Christianity apart from thinking of the church.
Even worse we cannot even live apart from the church.
John Calvin said:- God is our Father, but the church is our Mother.
He meant that you cannot be a Christian and not be part of the church.
So we cannot have a low view of the church.
And to despise the church is to despise the Body of Christ.
We are going to spend some weeks examining the church.
The B.C. spends 6 articles on the subject of the church.
And in this article we want to look at three things we confess about the church.
Each of which can be extremely hard to see in reality.
A] THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH.
- First of all let’s consider the unity of the Christian church.
In all our creeds and confessions we speak of ONE catholic or universal church.
And that simply echoes Scripture.
There is only ONE Bride of Christ and not many Brides.
Eph. 4 speaks of ONE body… just as there is ONE Lord.
There are not two Bodies of Christ just as there are not two Lords.
There is only ONE Body made up of all true Christian believers.
All those who expect their salvation in Jesus Christ alone.
All who have been washed by His blood and made holy by His Spirit.
Or let’s put it in terms of Math 16:
Wherever people make that confession that Peter made:
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”…
There we find that ONE church.
Problem is that it’s difficult for us to see that in reality.
In the greater Blacktown area there are more than 60 Christian churches.
Anglican… Salvation Army… Uniting Church… Church of Christ… Baptist… and many more.
On your way here you possibly passed several other churches.
Each claims to be a Christian church… some refusing any contact with other churches.
And many of us probably have good Christian friends in other churches.
- Not surprisingly many dismiss the Christian church for exactly this reason.
They see the church as a totally fragmented reality.
Maybe it has happened that you have encouraged a non-Christian to attend church.
And you’ve been given a very typical reply… I’m sure we’ve all heard it said.
The unbelievers says: Ok, so I should go to church. But which church?
In fact why should I go at all?
You Christians can’t even agree among each other.
And in many places you even actively oppose each other.
Think only of the sad history of Northern Ireland.
In view of that there are two things we ought to point out.
FIRST of all when we speak about the ONE church
then we are not reporting on something we have studied and discovered.
We are talking about what we believe… not what we have seen with our eyes.
Not what is evident to outward appearances.
We are talking about what we see with the eyes of faith.
About what God has revealed in Scripture about the church.
So we must look deeper than all the outward dividedness of Christianity.
And see a deeper underlying unity.
- SECONDLY there is a helpful distinction we might make at this point.
A distinction between an ORGANISATION and an ORGANISM.
An organisation has to do with things such as membership… programs… meetings.
All around us there are all kinds of organisations…
service clubs… Rotary and Jaycees… sporting clubs.
Numerous organisations… and the church is another one of them.
We must affirm that there is an organisational aspect to the church.
It is a place where meetings are held and worship is conducted.
The church has programs and functions.
There have to be office bearers who see to the affairs of the local church.
That is Biblical… those are all valid parts of the ORGANISATION of the church.
But the trouble is that too often we see no further than just the organisation.
And then we see the dividedness of the church
because we are only looking at the church from an organisational aspect.
And then all we are seeing is lots of little organisations.
A Baptist organisation… a Reformed one… a Presbyterian one.
Later we do want to study the organisational aspects of the church.
It’s important that we do that…. and the B.C. devotes some time to that too.
It considers – for example – the office bearers of the church.
However at this point we must first look at the church in a different way.
- The church can also be looked at in terms of an ORGANISM.
An organism is a complex, living, growing thing.
And in the N.T. we have several images of the church as such an organism.
There is the Body image of Eph. 4.
A body joined together by all its supporting ligaments.
A body that grows and builds itself up.
There is the image of the vine and the branches in John 15.
And all these images are a reminder that we should look deeper
than just the organisational structures of the church.
Obviously we can’t play down the organisational aspects of the church.
Here in this life we need organisation.
But we do need to stress that the church is FIRST OF ALL a living organism.
An organism where all the parts have their own purpose and function
and yet belonging together… sharing a common life… having a common unity.
That common life being the life of Christ
And that common unity being our oneness in Him.
Let me add that this is a very practical matter.
Practical because it relates to the way we look at ourselves and at other denominations.
How do you and I in this church relate to other Christians?
Because the church is an organism all of us ought to have an appreciation
for the fact that the church of Jesus Christ is far wider and broader
than just our own denomination… or than even just Protestant churches.
That certainly does NOT mean that we just accept everything
that goes under the name “Christian” or that any old church is good enough.
I deplore the fact that many today change churches as readily as they change a pair of socks.
The kind of church you choose is vitally important.
And we want to come back to that in the coming weeks too.
However the fact that the church is a living organism
made up of all those who expect their salvation in Jesus
means we cannot narrow our view of the church to our own comfortable group.
It means that any church that claims that their particular denomination is the only true church…
or that their congregation is the sole remnant of the elect…
are being sectarian and heretical.
The true church is being built there wherever men and women confess with Peter
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.
B] THE HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH.
- A second thing that we as Christians confess about the church is that it is holy.
We confess a HOLY catholic church.
Or in the words of our Confession: This church is a holy congregation.
If you have trouble with the confession that there is only ONE church
you’ll have even more problems with the idea that this one church is a HOLY congregation.
It is good to be aware that the Bible uses the word HOLY in two senses.
- First there is moral holiness. Holiness in the sense of moral perfection.
And right away that leads us to problems.
To say that there is a lot of moral UNholiness in the church is an understatement.
Some of the infighting amongst Christians falls a long way short of holiness.
We are painfully aware that scandals are not foreign to the church.
Unbelievers have often been ‘turned off’ church because of dumb things done by Christians.
However I again hasten to say that here too we are not reporting on what we see with our own eyes
or on what we are able to achieve by our own efforts.
Again we are simply confessing what Scripture teaches.
Scripture teaches that this congregation is a holy people.
So, if it takes faith to see the oneness… the unity of the church…
then it also takes faith the see the holiness of the church.
Here we have the mystery of the gospel: That God calls sinners “saints”.
He calls a bunch of unholy no-hopers a holy congregation.
And no one will ever understand the holiness of the church
if they do not understand what the gospel is all about.
All of us here this afternoon know that this congregation is far from holy.
We know we have some skeletons in the closet.
We know how imperfect we are:-
There are some deep resentments amongst us… and petty jealousies.
We are aware or the anger and hurts that live among us.
When it comes to us there is no holiness.
But the gospel is that Jesus washed us clean by His blood… made us holy by the working of His Spirit.
So we are people who – in principle – are holy saints.
Only because of the saving work of Jesus and for no other reason.
And now the Spirit of God is making us to be more and more what we already are in principle.
We are being sanctified… we are growing in holiness.
That is why our confession relates the holiness of this congregation
to the washing by the blood of Jesus and the sanctifying work of the Spirit.
- However there is a second way in which the Bible uses the word HOLY.
And that is in the sense of something being set apart… consecrated to God.
In that sense too the church is holy.
It is Christ’s church.
Jesus said to the apostles: I will build MY church. The church is His.
He is our eternal king and we in the church are His subjects.
And because the church is Christ’s it is holy.
Holy… not just in the sense of being morally holy thru the cleansing work of Jesus Christ
but also holy in the sense of set apart for Christ.
It is in fact the very Body of Christ.
C] THE CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH.
- Finally there is yet a third thing we confess about the Church.
And that is its CATHOLICITY… we believe holy catholic church.
This has nothing to do with the church of Rome.
By Catholicity we mean UNIVERSALITY.
Here there are some beautiful thoughts expressed in our confession.
Some beautiful Scriptural truths are brought home to us.
In Revelation we read of a great multitude that no man can number
people from every tribe and language and nation.
Scripture actually teaches us that the Church of Jesus began already in paradise
when God made the first promise of a Saviour to Adam and Eve.
So we rightly confess that the Christian church is not confined or bound to a certain time or place.
Nor is it limited to certain kinds of people.
Instead it is dispersed throughout the world and throughout history.
- I find this a very encouraging note on which to close.
Often it seems that the church to which I belong is very weak and small.
And in times of trouble it seems so very vulnerable and fragile.
Today in our society many churches are dwindling in membership…
many are closing their doors and buildings are being sold for commercial use.
Sometimes it seems that the gates of Hades could easily overcome the church.
Sometimes it even seem to us like it did to the prophet Elijah.
That the opponents of the church are too strong.
A small struggling community trying to uphold standards of godliness
and all around there is opposition and hostility.
What hope is there for the church in our day and age?
Many are only too happy to write the church off.
Fit only as a museum piece of the past.
It has outlived its ‘use by’ date.
Yet whenever people have thought that, they have repeatedly been surprised.
In China, during the cultural revolution – everyone thought it was the end for the church.
Yet the church not only survived but it even grew in leaps and bounds.
God preserves His church… He will always ensure its security.
There will always be a church drawn from every tribe, language and people.
And so the Lord leaves His people this perspective of a universal church.
A catholic church that spans the world and that embraces the past, the present and future.
- Today I can now look beyond our own small, local organisation.
I see it as part of that great organism – the universal Body of Christ.
And then I thank God – that by faith in Jesus
I too am a member of that great multitude that no man can number.
As a Christian I confess it with joy:
I believe One, holy catholic church. Amen!
BC stands for Basic Christianity. What are the fundamentals of the faith?
BC also stands for Belgic Confession – a document in which the Christian church (in a time of great persecution) spelled out the basics of what she believes.
When Christianity is a mile wide and an inch deep it needs to grasp again the basics of the faith and confess them in a world where the faith is increasingly under attack.
Those who drew up the BC declared that they were ready to obey the government in all lawful things, but that they would “offer their backs to stripes, their tongues to knives, their mouths to gags and their whole bodies to the fire” rather than deny the truth expressed in this confession.