If the church is going to be the body of Christ, it has to have the right framework. It has to have a high view of God. And that has to be its pursuit to know Him, to know Him, to know Him.
And in seeking to know Him, it has to have a high view of Scripture, for that is the place where alone He may be known. In 2012, a six-story shopping center in Ghana collapsed just a few months after it was built. Fourteen people died, and more than 75 people had to be saved from the rubble. And what caused the collapse?
It was a faulty foundation. Now, as tragic as that incident was, if your church is built on a bad spiritual foundation, the results could be even more disastrous. So what are the essential doctrines that your church should be built on? John MacArthur helps answer that question today by looking at what he calls the skeleton, the basic structure of the local church. And he'll also show you how you can help strengthen your church's foundation.
It's part of his study, The Anatomy of a Church. John, before you continue this study, speak for a minute about your own role, your ministry as part of a local church. And specifically, tell our listeners how you came to be pastor of Grace Community Church.
Well, it was long, long ago, back in 1968. I was in my late 20s, and I was doing a lot of youth speaking, speaking to kids, speaking to young people's groups, and all over the place. And it so happened that I was speaking at a camp where the young people from Grace Community Church had come.
It was a high school camp, and we had a great week, and I loved the leadership and thoroughly enjoyed the kids. And they told me that their pastor had just died of a heart attack. In fact, the previous pastor had died of a heart attack. They then got a second pastor. He died of a heart attack, so they were looking for a new pastor. I think they wanted a younger one, because both of them were older gentlemen. So they talked to me, Would you be interested in candidating to think about being the pastor of our church?
And it was kind of all the exuberance of the kids having a great time at camp. So they went back and said, We'd like to have John MacArthur come. So they invited me to come to the church at that time without a pastor. And I don't think the leadership was particularly thinking of me as a candidate, but maybe just to speak and see where it went.
So I did. I preached. And as a result of that, they began to talk to me, and the next thing I knew, I was the pastor and launched the first Sunday on February 9, 1969, with Patricia and our little family at the time. It was a divine appointment. There's no question about it.
Obviously, that's a long time ago. And I have not for five minutes during all these years questioned the calling of God to Grace Community Church. It's been incredible to see what God does in a ministry that's centered on the Word of God over decades and decades. Amazing to see what the Word of God does over the long haul. It's been a profound joy.
Yes, it has. Thank you, John. It's been a joy for me and all the congregation as well. And now, friend, to help identify the kind of church that glorifies God and to show you how you fit into that, here's John with today's lesson, The Anatomy of a Church. I'd like to borrow an analogy, if I can, from the Apostle Paul. The analogy of a body. And I believe we can call this the anatomy of a church. But I believe that the body can be seen in four features. This is not clinical.
This is just for the sake of our analogy. Bones or skeleton. Internal systems.
Muscles and flesh. And a church has to understand itself in that way. There has to be framework, skeleton.
There has to be internal systems, which I call the flowing through of certain attitudes. And then there has to be muscle, which is the kinds of function that we do, and then it fleshes out in the form of our ministry. So moving to that familiar Pauline metaphor and borrowing it, if I can, out of its biblical pattern, I want to talk first of all about the skeleton. For the body to function and the body to work, it has to have skeleton. It has to have structure. It has to have form.
It's the skeleton that gives the basic structure form to the body. Now, I believe that there are certain skeletal truths that we have to be committed to. These are non-negotiable. These are unalterable. These are invariable. These are things that we will not compromise in any way, shape, or form.
And these are the skeleton things. And I believe that the church has to be committed to these things. And when I say that, Beloved, I mean you. You.
The church is you. I'm not talking about some nebulous thing. I'm talking about you.
I'm talking about me too. Let me give you what I think to be the skeletal, non-negotiable issues. First, a high view of God. A high view of God. Now, I could reach back through all the years and bring up all kinds of things that we've tried to teach on this, but I'm going to trust your memory for some of these things and just say some general things. It is absolutely essential that the church perceive itself as an institution for the glory of God. You understand that?
Now, that's so basic that it just, it seems like you wouldn't even need to say it. But I believe the church in general in our country has descended from that level to become a church for the help of men. And the church thinks its goal is to help people feel better about themselves. To play psychological games with them. To patch up their marriages. To give them placebos. You know, like patching up a marriage like Maribel Morgan said by putting on a black negligee or rose in your teeth and getting under the dining room table and winking at your husband.
That kind of stuff. I mean, if you've got a rotten marriage, you can do that and still have a rotten marriage. Because there are some biblical foundations and there are relationships to God that are required between people if they're going to have right relationships with each other. And those kinds of placebos really aren't the answer. But we have reduced the church from a body or an organism which has as its goal to know and glorify God to an organization which has as its objective to make people feel better about themselves.
And that's not the point. If you know God right, ultimately you'll get to you and you'll be a whole lot better off. The answer to everything in your life is to know God.
True? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. And when you have a right relationship with God and you take God seriously and you get rightly connected with God, then all other things fall out in their proper place. That is not to say we're unconcerned about people's needs.
We are concerned. As God is, as Christ was. But it is to say that there's a balance and everything begins with a high view of God. We must take God seriously. As I've said before, I sometimes wish that God would strike some people dead during the offering.
I mean, I don't wish that real strongly because I might be the guy. But I mean some dramatic way to illustrate that God must be taken seriously. When we say, oh, you know, somebody dies or something happens, how could God let that happen? Listen, friend, that isn't even the question.
The question is what are you and I doing alive? A holy God should have blasted us out of existence long ago. That's the issue. And because God is gracious, there's no reason for you and I to be complacent and indifferent. We've got to take God seriously. I get righteously indignant at these preachers and so forth who drag God off His throne and turn Him into some kind of a servant for men who has to do all the things they demand. This is an irreverent age.
It's irreverent. It does not know how to worship. Even what it calls worship basically in many cases is simply inducing a warm feeling and they think that's worship. It knows little about God.
We are too many Marthas and not enough Marys. We're busy serving all the time and we don't know what it is to bow down and wash Jesus' feet. We don't know what it is to tremble at God's Word.
We don't know what it is to have an awesome confrontation with an infinitely holy God that leaves us broken over our own sinfulness and therefore usable to Him for His glory. We want to feel good about ourselves. We want ourselves to feel good. We want to get all that we need, have all our problems solved and we're being sold a sack of religious psychology that is called the church. Listen, I'll go a step further and say you can take 90% of all the books that are being written today and bury them in the sea and we wouldn't lose anything.
Because they're just a bunch of placebos superficially attacking problems that they can't solve. I go back in history to eras when the church was holy and they had very few things to read but the things they did read told them how to connect up with God. We've got zillions of things and it doesn't seem to solve the problem. I was amazed recently, they told me at Moody that at the last pastors conference they surveyed the pastors and said what do you need help on most of all and the answer was the family.
And I said, wait a minute, you can't mean it. You mean to tell me that with all the stuff that's out there you still got to have more stuff about how to help families? It isn't that.
It isn't that you need more material. It's that with all that's been said people don't take God seriously so they don't walk according to his laws so they get themselves in the mess they're in. So we continue to lift up God.
You know James says it. He says draw near to God in James 4-8 and heal what? Draw near to you. Now what could be better than that? How would you like to live life with God near you?
Wouldn't you like that? Well sure you draw near to God he'll draw near to you. You say yeah but when you get near God oh boy it gets nervous sure that's why he says in the next phrase cleanse your hands you sinners. Closer you get to God the more you see your sin right?
Humble yourself, mourn and weep, let your laughter be turned to sorrow and so forth. And then when you're all in a crumble there it says the Lord will lift you up. But we will take God seriously and we believe that God must be exalted and lifted up and we're not going to have a man centered church. We want to reach out to everyone in the love of Christ and the love of God but God will be the focus of our worship, our life. And we don't look at the Bible therefore as a place where you find little formulas to solve all your problems. We look at it as a book that reveals God.
It reveals God. There's a second non-negotiable and it flows right out of the first and that is the absolute authority of Scripture. The absolute authority of Scripture.
We will not compromise on this. The Bible is constantly being attacked. The Bible is always attacked. The worst attack of all is by the people who say they believe it and don't know what it teaches. Wouldn't you say? That's the worst of all.
That's the most subtle there is. Well there are people all across America who say I believe the Bible from cover to cover. They don't know it. Period. Paragraph. They just believe what they don't know which is the height of something or other. Jesus said man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. Listen, that's why I'm an expository preacher. If we're fed by every word that comes out of the mouth of God then we ought to study every word.
And I think preaching has lost that and now preaching is all kinds of different things not teaching the word of God. And we've got to get back to that and we're going to stay right where we are. We must teach. We must teach every word.
Every word. And if you don't have an appetite for it that isn't going to change the way we feel. You say well you know we don't need another sermon. We like to have fellowship.
Well that's fine. I hope you can find some fellowship. We're just going to keep giving you the word.
Just keep feeding you the word because we know what makes you grow. Fellowship's important. All that's very important. But not as a replacement for the word of God. In fact if you want to know the truth I find the sweetest, purest, best and most rewarding fellowship is always around the scripture. Always around the scripture. The absolute priority of the word of God. That's where my heart is.
I hope that's where yours is. And I'll tell you. You say well we already know so much. We've been taught for so long. Listen.
That's the height of pride to say that. I mean the discovery process never stops. Never stops.
For me it doesn't. And as I've said in the past the great joy of my preaching ministry is not the preaching. The preaching is the work part. The joy is the discovery part. Getting in there and finding out things that I never saw before. Never knew before. Never fully understood. And that happens to me every week of my life.
Now that's an adventure that no one should miss. I remember a pastor who said to me when I was back in Michigan one time. He said well I only pastor two years in one place then I leave. I said really? He said have you been doing a lot of time?
Yeah I was two years here, two years here, two years here, two years here, two years here. I said why? He said I have 52 sermons. I preach them twice I leave.
That's a funny way. I said what about the whole council of God? I don't give it all. Just the part that I think is important. Oh. I think every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God is important.
That's a non-negotiable. Third, and this again flows out of the second, sound doctrine. You start with a high view of God and if you make a commitment to God then you're going to have to stick with His revelation, His word. If you make a commitment to His word you're going to be stuck with what it teaches and that's doctrine, sound doctrine. You know beloved there is such a doctrinal vagueness across Christianity.
There's such a fuzziness. Sermonettes for Christianettes. You know nice helpful little things. I don't know what ultimate purpose they fulfill.
But they're nice and sometimes they're interesting and sometimes they make you feel emotional and you get the warm and fuzzies and you feel sad or whatever or you get pumped up or whatever and so forth. But there's no sound doctrine. In other words nobody's framing truth about God, truth about life, death, heaven, hell, truth about man, sin, Christ, angels, Holy Spirit, the position of the believer, the flesh, the world or whatever.
I mean give me something I can get my hand on. Give me a truth. That's why we've always talked about principalizing the text. You take a text, you find out what it says and then you see what it means. You draw out of it a divine truth and you establish that truth in the minds of people by banging that truth in about ten ways. In case you don't know that's what I do when I preach. Take you through the passage, pull out a divine truth and hit you with it about ten ways.
From this passage and that comparative passage and this passage and the other passage and so forth until there's driven home in your mind a truth, a solid truth. I got that when I was young because my dad gave me a Bible when I got out of high school and in the front of it he encouraged me to read 1 and 2 Timothy and I did and I kept hearing Paul say to Timothy, Teach sound doctrine. Teach sound doctrine. Teach sound doctrine.
Nourish up on your own heart and communicating it to your people. Sound doctrine. We just for interest sake wrote a letter a couple of weeks ago to all the various ministries that we knew about that are on the radio and posed to them a question. We answer Bible questions all the time. We posed a question just to see how they all answered questions. One question was sent out. Everybody that answered gave us a different answer. So if you had sought counseling from all these ministries every one of them would have given you a different answer.
Now that's really kind of sad in a way. There's so much confusion about things that ought to be and are in fact clear in the Word of God. We're committed to drawing some biblical conclusions. I remember going through the book of Ephesians early in the ministry here and establishing the believer's position in Christ which was foundational to this church. And the other day I was with my high school football coach. I hadn't seen him in a long time except one time when he came to the church and he's gone on with the Lord and he's taught the Word of God.
He's a wonderful guy. And we were reminiscing about some of the silly things that happened when we were playing ball in high school. And he said to me, you know something John? He said, you set in concrete in my life for as long as I live an understanding of the position of the believer. Because I listened to Ephesians chapter 1 over and over and over and over and over. And then I taught it year after year after year after year to young people. And he said the solid understanding of the doctrine of the position of the believer in Jesus Christ has given foundation in my entire life.
Well you see, now I'm not committing myself. That's the book of Ephesians. That's the Holy Spirit. But what I'm saying is that's the kind of thing that people can build a life on. Solid sound doctrine. And I believe we must teach the Word of God and teach it with principles that are divine truths that are foundational for life. Very essential. So if you want to know about angels, we ought to have truth that's concrete and clear about angels.
If you want to know about demons, then we ought to be able to establish what the Bible teaches about that. So we're always laying down solid content. A fourth, non-negotiable. And you know these things and I only want you to remember them. A fourth is personal holiness. Personal holiness. I fear that we're all victimized by an absolutely unholy society.
I mean I just cringe in the midst of the society in which we live. The filth and trash and garbage that is pumped out, unendingly, not only philosophically that corrupts the mind away from God, but immoral stuff. Just a sea of it. Like drippings of a broken sewer. In fact the sewer isn't just broken.
It's completely shattered and it's flooding the place. I don't know if this is new or not, but I've always had a problem with contemporary music because I think not only do I hate the style itself, but I have problems with that, but basically the sexual innuendos of the words are so vile and wretched. And you try sometimes to tell this to kids and wow, you don't understand. You're an old guy. What do you know, you know? And you don't understand where we're at. And the words are all right.
I take them the way I want. Blah, blah. Well recently I turned on one of these TV and I saw one of these music video things. That settled it with me. When they put that kind of music to visuals, it's filth.
It is. In the first place, it's sexual overtones are just rampant. In the second place, it's totally disconnected from any form of reality. Which is to divorce people from clear, sane, logical reasoning and an understanding of reality.
It's like trying to induce a drug high. Totally disconnected. I watched a whole bunch of totally disconnected, totally disjointed, nonsense, no rhyme or reason, no logical connections between what was going on.
In fact, it was all utterly bizarre. And if you put that stuff to visuals and that's what you get, then that's trash. And then you get a whole generation of people. Listen people, we've got to start drawing some lines when it comes to personal holiness and being careful where we expose ourselves and our children and the people around us. You can't be parading in and out of the movie theater and watching anything your eyes can set on and reading trash and garbage and exposing yourself to all of that and not pay a price. I just was struck by that and I just, I said to myself, is that where we are in our society? I don't go to movies so I don't see that kind of stuff. So this was a jolt to me. Is that where our society is?
Is that what thinking goes on in the confused, chaotic minds of kids who've blown their brains on that kind of stuff? I think we're called to a purity of life and we can't negotiate that. There's no compromise there.
There's none. We don't compromise that. And we want to enforce that holiness purity, that holiness purity standard. Second Corinthians seven always comes to mind. Verse one, having these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit perfecting holiness and the fear of God. We want to enforce that. That's why we do church discipline.
That's why if somebody sins, we have to go to them. You have to go to them. I have to go to them. We have to. We have to.
We have to. You take the area of personal holiness and you can see how much we've lost in that area. What about our prayer life that cultivates that holiness?
What's it like? What about the study of the word of God? What about fasting? What about meditating? When do you sit and meditate on the word of God?
When do you do that? You say, I'm an elder. I'm a deacon. I prepare my Bible study.
No, no. When do you sit and meditate on the word of God? When do you meditate for a prolonged period of time, drawing nigh unto God in a moment of prayer that extends beyond a moment? Where are we in terms of holiness?
Where are we in terms of real communion with the living God? You see, it isn't just leaders. It is leaders. It's me and it's everybody else in the leadership, but it's also you folks. I mean, we cannot just sit back and live half-committed Christian lives and expect God's work to be done God's way.
Well, there's just a final one and I'll give you this one briefly. Spiritual authority. Spiritual authority. I believe with all my heart that a church must understand that there is authority over those people in that church. And that authority is Christ who is the head, who mediates his rule through godly elders. That's just what the Bible says. I mean, I didn't invent that. The Presbyterian Church didn't invent that. That's what the Bible says, that elders have the rule over you in the Lord.
It's that simple. They have authority. Now that can be abused. There are men who get into that seat of authority and they wield that authority as if it were authority given to them by the office or by their own personality and it isn't that. It's the authority of the word of God in the hands of a godly man. In other words, I don't have any authority to say to you, listen folks, build that building out there or listen folks, I want some more vacation or raise my salary or I demand that these walls be painted green because I'm in authority.
I don't have any authority over the paint. I don't have any authority over that stuff. The only authority I have is to speak and apply the word of God, right? And when a man gets outside of that, he violates it. But when it comes to the word of God, there is authority there. There is authority. It isn't wrong to do wrong.
It is wrong to do wrong, but it isn't ultimately a disaster to do wrong if you confess it and move on, only if you continue it. And so when something is done that isn't all that it should be, we'll be the first to want to know that and move on in the glory of the Lord. But we have to understand that there has been given in the church those who are to be our leaders and in 1 Thessalonians 5 it says to honor those people, to esteem them highly in love, sake, for their work.
And in Hebrews 13 it says submit to them, for they watch for your souls. Follow their example. And we have a plurality of leaders here. I'm just one of them. You say, well, how come you're the guy that always preaches? Well, that's just the way the gifts work out. I mean, you had 12 apostles, right? But every time there's a list of them, and there's four lists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts, and every list Peter's always named first, and he was always the spokesman.
That's just the way it is. It doesn't mean that he's better than anybody else. In fact, if the truth were known, he's probably worse than most of them. But he had the gifts in that regard, and there's a variation of gifts. Peter and John travel together. You think John didn't have a thing to say?
Guess again. He wrote Revelation first, second, third John, the Gospel of John, and no doubt with his intimacy to Jesus Christ could have given great things. But every time he's with Peter for 12 chapters, he never opens his mouth.
Why? Because Peter had the greater gift in terms of speaking, or the more unique gift in terms of speaking. When you come to Paul and Barnabas, we know Barnabas was a great teacher and a great speaker, and probably the leading one in the church until Paul came, but he and Paul travel together, and even the pagans said Paul was the chief speaker. So there are variations in gifts, but in the totality there is an equality of spiritual authority and leadership given to those that the Bible calls elders or pastors, overseers. We have to understand that.
So what have we said? If the church is going to be the body of Christ, it has to have the right framework. It has to have a high view of God, and that has to be its pursuit to know Him, to know Him, to know Him. And in seeking to know Him, it has to have a high view of Scripture, for that is the place where alone He may be known.
And so we will have that high view of Scripture, and we will be committed to doctrinal clarity, sound doctrine, personal holiness, and we will submit our souls to the care of those who are over us in the Lord in spiritual authority. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary, helping you see the biblical design for your local church. Today's lesson here on Grace to You is from John's study called The Anatomy of a Church. Now friend, keep in mind, this broadcast is available in your area because of the generosity of listeners like you. If you are benefiting from these programs and you want to help others benefit, express your support when you contact us today. You can mail your tax-deductible donation to Grace to You, Post Office Box 4000, Panorama City, CA 91412. You can also make a gift when you call us at 800-55-GRACE or when you go to the website gty.org.
The web address one more time, gty.org. Well, back to the subject of the local church that John looked at today, an essential purpose of the church is evangelism. And of course, evangelism in the local church comes back to you, the individual members. To help you grow in this fundamental Christian discipline, pick up a copy of John's book, Nothing But the Truth. It will show you why there is only one road to heaven and it will help you tell others about that narrow path with love, yet without compromise.
To order a copy, call 800-55-GRACE or go to our website gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today and be here again tomorrow to consider what does a successful church look like? Is it a growing congregation? A captivating sermon? A dynamic pastor? Find out when John returns with another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
