788. The Mystery of Christ and the Church

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones, Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from the University Chapel platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a study series about the role of the church called Christ's Body, the Church.

Today's message will be preached by Reverend Dan Brooks, pastor at Gospel Hope Church in Riverton, Utah. And would ask you to open your Bibles with me this morning to Ephesians 5. So we come to the word this morning, Ephesians 5, and I want to talk about marriage. But it's not my marriage. It's not your marriage, those of you who are in that relationship. It's not your future marriage, if some of you are praying and hoping and working toward that end.

It's another kind of marriage. And it's revealed to us in this portion of the Scriptures. And I want to challenge you to think in terms of what God is revealing to us. Most of us do not, in fact, bring a great vision of God and Jesus Christ into our participation in his church.

We're hoping someone will help create that vision for us, but for us to carry that vision into the church is sometimes a very foreign thing. Now, six times in this letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul actually uses the word mystery. It first appears in chapter one as he refers to the mystery of his will, that is the will to unite all things in Christ. Then he uses the term mystery in chapter three, three particular times as he speaks of the mystery of Christ, that Gentiles are fellow heirs, that members, they are members of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel. In chapter six, he refers to the mystery of the Gospel.

But here in chapter five before us, he refers to the mystery of Christ and the church. I would ask you to look at verse 25 with me and follow along as I read through verse 32. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself, a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that it should be holy and without blemish. So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.

He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, even as the Lord the church. For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother and shall be joined unto his wife, and they too shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Paul reveals this mystery through the living metaphor of marriage, and he does so that our vision of Christ would expand to the glorious boundaries at which it exists and that our understanding would expand into the massive regions of his love for us.

A love which he describes in chapter three as having no known height or depth or breadth or length, a love that is in truth, incomprehensible, mind-blowing. And if you're going to love the church and if you're going to be vitally connected, contributing to it as God has designed you to contribute to it, if you're going to be engaged with it, exercising the Spirit-given gifts for the edification of the church, then you must begin to understand how much Jesus loves his church. In verse 25, we begin to uncover several different points concerning the love that Jesus Christ has for his church, and I'm going to categorize them under three headings this morning, and the first is this. Christ's love is demonstrated in his sacrifice for the church.

Look again at the text with me if you will please. Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it. The idea of giving himself is that he willfully and intentionally of his own volition delivered himself over to the power of another. The same terminology is used in places like Romans 4 verse 25 where we read of our Savior that he was delivered up, given over for our transgressions and raised for our justification. Or Galatians 1 verse 4, he gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.

Or Galatians 2 verse 20, the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, gave himself over. Beloved, he delivered himself to the verbal abuse and mistreatment of Jewish religious leaders and accusers. He delivered himself intentionally to the physical abuse of the Roman torturers. He delivered himself to the suffering of death on the cross. He delivered himself to the horrors of God's wrath which as he stood on the front side of experiencing those horrors they caused him to tremble. And he delivered himself to being abandoned by the Father with whom he had enjoyed unbroken fellowship and relationship from eternity past. All of this he willingly suffered that he might bring many sons to glory.

All of this he willingly endured so that he might have a bride. This sacrifice is essential to our faith. It is not something we merely acknowledge or add for the sake of historical accuracy or a kind of theological precision. My friends apart from the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ, we have no forgiveness of sins. We have no standing of righteousness before God.

We have no hope of eternal life. We have no irrevocable union with Jesus himself. The love of Christ is undeniably expressed for the church in his sacrifice. Notice he loved the church and gave himself for it or as some of your English translations would even use that pronoun her and that may be a little more accurate and helpful because the particular noun ending and pronoun ending are in fact feminine.

I don't think the force of that argument is made so much about the language and the structure of the original text, but rather the context of what our Lord is telling us that this metaphor of earthly marriage between a husband and wife is revealing to us the mystery of Christ's relationship to his church. It reminds me that Jesus does not think of the assembly of his people in terms of organizational and administrative structure. He does not think of his people in terms of a spiritual corporation. That's not what he purchased with his blood.

He purchased a bride. He laid down his life in order that he might unite to a gathering of people that he views in a spousal relationship. I wonder how you view the church this morning. Some of you think of church in the way you think of a club. They're running a good deal on membership and offer lots of benefits and one club offers more benefits than another so you pick that one. You get excited about things that contribute to your well-being and contribute to your personal interests and you say, wow, this church now offers an early morning CrossFit Bible study. I bring my Bible and they give me a towel and a water bottle because we all know that when you get into this kind of intensive Bible study, you really work up a sweat.

And by the way, there's really great child care for my children and they're going to be taken care of and highly entertained and they even have organic gluten-free snacks. And then when your interest in those particular benefits runs out, you look around and see if there's another better deal and you just don't even hesitate to change because it's little more than a club. We tend to be rather consumeristic in our approach sometimes to the church, don't we? Jesus does not come into this relationship as a consumer saying, what will these people contribute to me? He expresses his love in sacrifice and you know our love for the church ought to carry that same kind of sacrificial quality to it. Does your love for the church reflect that sense of Christ-like sacrifice? Are you willingly giving yourself so that others may grow, be built up in the faith? There's a second expression of Christ's love that's found in this passage.

Look at verse 26 with me. Christ's love is demonstrated in his sanctification of his church. He sanctifies the church that she might be pure. Christ did not select this bride because she was already perfect in beauty and holiness, but because he intends to make her beautiful and holy that he might sanctify, that he might cleanse her. Those two terms have the idea of making her pure. It's clear that he understands she is not yet pure. Cleansing has the idea of making her free from filth. Well, clearly he understands that she retains some filth. You know, a few of us look for a potential mate who is a project, do we?

I didn't when I was looking for a mate and neither do you. I met my wife here while we were students and we were friends initially and then something happened. It's like God gave me a new set of eyes to see her in a way that I never had before and I can still remember I was on the back campus and had been, I was working with the yard crew that summer and we'd been laying sod all day in the August heat. It was hot and we were tired and I was back there with Mr. Murr rolling out a few extra rolls of the sod and we were going to put sprinklers on it and use it for a few other places in the days to come and it was down by one of the pavilions and my wife who was an officer in her society had come a couple days early for some organizational meetings and she happened to arrive about an hour before the meeting was scheduled to arrive. Just a little mix-up in her calendar and such but as she got out of the car and started walking down toward the pavilion I was there and again we were just friends at this point but I saw her and I mean it was like this glorious moment as if I'd never seen her before. The wow factor.

Inexplicable and I thought to myself, this is amazing. Never seen this person like this before and as I spent more time with her over the semester I grew to understand that I mean there was beauty within and out. She was funny. She was warm. She was caring. She was compassionate. She loved the Lord. I loved the Lord. I mean what was not to like about her?

She was and is to this day my dream girl but she wasn't a project. Jesus didn't look for a potential spouse who was perfect in his estimation. He didn't set his love on the church because he found her to be everything that he had dreamed of in eternity past.

He set his love upon her in order that she would become everything he had purposed in the past. He sanctifies and cleanses her with the washing of the water by the Word. We don't have time to explore all that is loaded into that phrase, the washing of the water by the Word because time is short.

I want to just go to that particular point. What is this word and how does Jesus use it in the life of the church? And there is some discussion and debate as to what that word might be in a very narrow sense. Some actually see it as a baptismal formula that would be pronounced over a new believer, a candidate for baptism. I think it's broader than that and I think that phrase by the Word or through the Word has reference more to the cleansing than it does the washing or the water. As one author notes that that Word could have the more general sense of the Gospel message. The writer would then be saying that the church is cleansed through the purifying Word of the Gospel and that brings us to something else worth our consideration this morning when thinking about a church that you're going to connect to and build your life around and in. Is it a place where the Word of God is preached faithfully? Faithfulness to the text, not some particular strain of church politics or even denominational preferences but the full-orbed preaching of the Gospel is the means whereby Jesus sanctifies his church. The church will never grow in purity and true holiness and beauty where the Word of God is not faithfully preached.

So two cautions come to my mind. One is that skillful delivery and substantial content are not the same things. An individual may be a great orator and communicator but have little or no biblical substance. A great question to ask, what does this preacher say about Christ?

How much does he make of the cross? How central is the Gospel to everything that is taking place here in this setting? I'd rather sit under a preacher who has averaged to poor communication skills, who faithfully preaches the text, than a skillful communicator who fails to preach the message of the cross and Christ crucified. Jesus is not using great oratory and powerful presentations to build his church. He uses the preaching of the cross and the crucifixion of his Son.

Caution number two, keep realistic about expectations for your pastor. You know there seems to be evidence in the New Testament that Paul was unimpressive as a public speaker. In 2 Corinthians 10 verse 10 he is addressing the objections to his apostolic ministry and if you can believe this, there were some in the church at Corinth who were apparently saying of Paul, and this is written in the text, his letters are weighty and powerful but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible. It makes me wonder how many people, even in our generation, would remain in Paul's church if those things were true about his presentation. And this may be part of the explanation that the church at Corinth was divided along party lines and some were big fans of Apollos and some Peter and some Paul and some tried to make Jesus their mascot.

Paul, perhaps by public estimation, was not an impressive communicator but the substance of what he preached was a revelation as he said earlier in a letter to the Corinthians of the Spirit's power. Christ sanctifies the church that she might be pure. Look at verse 27 with me. He also sanctifies the church that he might present it to himself, a glorious church.

Now there's something future in view. This is not the current work, finished work, that Jesus intends. There is in view glory and that word glorious has to do with the external appearance and what the church is externally matches what he has finally made her to be internally. For the moment, the bride of Christ is still a mess. There is so much brokenness in our local assemblies, beloved.

Don't ever be surprised by that. We want to be glorious. We wish that our churches did not have the spots of immorality and self-righteousness. We wish that our churches didn't have the wrinkles of disagreement and division. We wish that our churches didn't have the blemishes of personal conflict and theological confusion, but they do. Every single local assembly has these imperfections and anybody who says, well my church doesn't, just doesn't really know what's going on.

Glory is coming. Jesus is at work. You need to stop looking for the perfect church here and now. It doesn't exist. Stop looking for a church that is free from messes and difficulties and challenges.

It doesn't exist. But as you join a church with all its spots and wrinkles and blemishes, know that Christ's love will not relent until he has the church of his hopes and his purposes. The beauty is that you personally are caught up in that purpose. You will be everything that Jesus intends for you to be. Your struggle with sin will come to an end. Your confusion and doubt and fear will cease, but his church will be everything that he intends it to be and that is because he expresses his love in this powerful work of sanctification.

When I consider that, there's something in my heart that says I want to be a part of that. Don't you? Here's the third manifestation of his love. Look at verses 28 and following.

His love is demonstrated in the strengthening of his church. The two terms that appear here are nourish and cherish. Nourish conveys the idea of feeding or of nurturing, to bring a child up to maturity. The terminology appears in chapter 6 verse 4. The second term, cherish, means to make warm, literally, a non-theological or non-spiritual sense of that word. Paul uses it in his letter to the Thessalonians in chapter 2 verse 7 saying, we were gentle among you like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. These are words that convey great tenderness. And through this ministry of nourishing and cherishing, Jesus is actually strengthening his church, building her, growing her, maturing her.

And look at verse 30 with me. Why does he do it? Because we are members of his body. His body. He views us as his people in the same way that you view yourself.

You look at the various appendages and parts and external and internal and all of it's valuable to you for good reason. We are members of his body. That means that your hurts are his hurts, that your struggles are his struggles, your joy is his joy. And that's not true only of you as an individual.

It's true of your local assembly. Jesus is committed to the nurture and care of that body and it's difficult for us to understand how intensely he loves us but this is a demonstration of his love. And he could no sooner give up the care of his church than a man could give up the care of his own body.

And I mean a male. And we all know how committed males are to caring for their own body. Most of us do it just out of a sense of self-preservation and ego. Jesus is not doing it out of that kind of immature and self-serving interest. It is an expression of his eternal, unfailing, intensely personal love for his people. He sanctifies and strengthens because he has sacrificed everything for the church. No one loves the church more than Jesus Christ does.

He loves his church in an unparalleled way and if you are a follower of Jesus this morning, you are the recipient of the full force of that love and all its eternal benefits. But I want you to see that this love is poured out for the benefit and in the context of a local assembly. Several years ago we were on vacation, had some time with our kids and we ran down to the beach for a few days and I took several books with me and one of those books was a book on marriage and as I began to read through it, there was more and more of it that was compelling to me and I would stop and as my wife and I were sitting there, toes buried in the sand, I would say, honey, listen to this.

This is really good. And she was very kind to listen because she always gets her own reading going. There was one paragraph that I came across that just moved me to tears and even as I read the truth of this, it was so compelling to both of us that we just had to stop and talk and commit ourselves to this kind of love. The author writes, within the Christian vision for marriage, which is very and should be very different from the world's vision of marriage, within the Christian vision for marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating and to say, I see what God is making you to be. And that excites me. I want to be a part of that. I want to partner with you and God in the journey you are taking to his throne. And when we get there, I will look at your magnificence and say, I always knew you could be like this.

I got a glimpse of it on earth, but now look at you. Each spouse should see the great thing that Jesus is doing in the life of their maid through the word, the gospel. Each spouse then should give him or herself to be a vehicle for that work and envision the day that you will stand together before God, seeing each other presented in spotless beauty and glory. And my friends, I submit to you that within the biblical vision for the church and as we work out the truth of Christ's love for the church through the metaphor of earthly marriage, Jesus Christ intends for us to understand this vision and to commit ourselves to one another in a similar way. And yet it's for an even greater eternal purpose than what a Christian husband and Christian wife could experience as they come together for the glory of God. And it ought to be the kind of vision that compels us to say of our local assemblies, I see what God is making this church to be and it excites me.

I want to be a part of that. I want to partner with this Christ and this local assembly in this journey we are taking to the throne. And when this now spotted, wrinkled, blemished bride is glorious and we gather with local assemblies from around the world from all the ages, we will look upon the magnificence of our Christ and his glorified church and we will say, we always knew that we could be like this.

We got glimpses of it on earth, but look at this now. That's the kind of vision that will sustain you through the difficulties of life in the church in this present age. That's the kind of vision Jesus has for his church. That's why he laid down his life to purchase us with his own blood. It's why he continues relentlessly in this process of sanctification. It's why he continues to strengthen his people day by day, nourishing and cherishing them.

It's not because of what we are right now. It's because of what he has purposed us to be. And that, beloved, may be one of the most compelling reasons, in my estimation, to join wholeheartedly and eagerly, in faith and in hope, to join personally with one little local manifestation of the larger church in the world.

Would you bow your heads with me, please? Lord Jesus, we praise you for your love. It is, in fact, higher and deeper and broader and longer than we can fathom. The proof and evidence of your love is the sacrifice on the cross. Present proof is the way you continue to make us pure and clean. And we praise your name that you have an eternal purpose at work that is unstoppable, that no entity could overthrow or inhibit. And you have called us as your people to join you in that eternal and irrevocable relationship, but you have also called us to enter into relationship with one another in the context of the church.

And so, because you want us to take a share in this great purpose, would you now empower us to live and love in light of these truths? What an astonishing and amazing romance it is of Christ and his church. For all that you are, for all that you have done and promised to do and will accomplish, we give you our praise and our thanks and let your blessing rest upon these dear saints. In the name of Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached at Bob Jones University by Pastor Dan Brooks, which was part of the study series about the church titled Christ's Body, the Church. Join us again tomorrow for more sermons from Bob Jones University Chapel Services here on The Daily Platform.