Who or What Is the Church? (Part 1 of 2)

What comes to mind when you hear the words the church? Responses vary widely. From positive to negative, or even completely dismissive. If your first thought is about a building, you're about to discover why the church is so much more than that. Today, on Truth for Life, Alastair Begg invites us to open our Bibles to find out what Scripture has to say about the Church.

Can I invite you then to turn with me once more to Ephesians chapter two? And if you like the Title of our study this morning is simply Who or What is the Church? Who or What is the Church? Men and women may say, of course, that that is a rather esoteric area of study.

Something that we can perhaps leave well alone. There are more practical and pressing issues given the nature of each of our lives today. But I think we'll discover as we go along that no matter whether we begin from that mindset, we will discover just how vitally relevant and crucial it is at this point to the twenty first century. There is no question that the very word church conjures up all kinds of things in the minds of men and women. It is a word, a phrase, the church that is very often misunderstood.

People will immediately think or talk in terms of buildings that are configured in a certain way. They may speak in terms of individuals that they see in the street who seem to be dressed rather quaintly, identifying themselves as members of the clergy, distinct from the laity that attends these buildings. And the extent to which misunderstanding is represented by a consideration of the church is almost limitless. Other people view the church as an object of mistrust. If you talk with them for any length of time, they will speak of the hypocrisy that they've encountered, and they may also speak of the harm that they have experienced.

I don't like those people. They may say, I don't want to go there ever again. After all, the place is full of hypocrites, and there is never a place I've been more harmed than in Mr.

So-and-so's establishment or whatever it might be. At the same time, the church is increasingly marginalized. in the minds of men and women. Let us not allow the numbers that presently wander into church buildings to confuse this issue. The church in the West is increasingly pushed to the periphery of public life and thought.

The very way in which it is difficult for buildings to find a place now anywhere close to the centre, as it were, of a town or village or city, any opportunity of them being placed in the very heart of the public square is almost non-existent in America. Instead, they're being pushed out to outlying areas and in often, in many cases, actually into industrial sites.

Some people seeing this as a cause for encouragement, others of us, I think, a cause of alarm. And the marginalized way in which the church is regarded by the secular mind. is only Followed two steps behind by the way in which the church is marginalized in the experience of those who would regard themselves as the faithful. I don't want to be unkind to any of you in any way, but I think this makes the point as clearly as I can, namely that when you think that some 2,500 to 3,000 will have been imprisoned in worship this morning, there won't be a third of that here this evening.

Now the answer of course is not in every instance that it is being marginalized, but the answer is in part that it is being marginalized. And even those who would regard it as an issue of concern are themselves saying, once I've done my duty within whatever time frame it is, then I can disperse any other considerations of that and get on with the main business of life. After all, say some, the church is really benign. It's really for old women who need blankets over their legs. It's for the kind of people that like singing in choirs and doing weird things like that.

It deserves to be dwindling to a halt. It really is a completely useless institution. Last Sunday, a friend and I attended worship at a place where the regular congregation is five members. That includes the one who is the minister. We added to the congregation by two, and six other visitors came, bringing up to the right total of thirteen.

If I had time, I would describe it to you, but I won't. At one point, the minister, in a plea of exhortation, said, and I want to remind you that Christianity is not just about church attendance. And I said to myself, well, the congregation clearly got that point. He must have been making it regularly. It wasn't even about church attendance.

As the five of them gathered. Made me think of the observation in a book by Rita Snowden, written some years ago, when she and a friend made journeys through the villages of England, a walking tour of the south of England. And in a little book entitled When We Walked, she talks of coming to a small church, a village church, on a Sunday morning. And having attended worship, this is what she wrote: Hymn and Psalm and prayer, and the quiet murmuring voice of the vicar tended to take my thoughts out of the window into the morning sunlight and over the fields and far away. The pity is, it was all so harmless, so gentle.

So proper.

So harmless, so gentle.

So proper.

So benign. Many of the younger generation regard it not as benign, but frankly as bizarre. that anybody would ever want to give any consideration to these things they regard as something quite outlandish. After all, who are these people and what are they doing and why do they speak in all of those strange words? And why does the man behind the box always seem to have a funny voice?

Why is it that if you meet him in the street, he says, hello, how are you? And if you meet him in the pulpit, he says, good morning, and how are you all today? He said, I don't want to deal with a man like that. I don't want to deal with that kind of thing. One of my friends, Peter Carter, wrote a book years ago called Church Alive.

And in the course of that, he was writing about this distinction between the way in which the average member of the populace goes about their day and talks, and then they come into an establishment that is represented by Christianity, and they have to cross a bridge into another subculture altogether. And he wrote a little poem that he thought might have been on the lips of a bus driver who had attended one of their services. This is written as an Englishman in England. And it goes like this, I drive a bus, yes, that's my job at 60 quid a week. That's uh sixty pounds a week.

Which at the moment is work it out for yourselves. I drive a bus, yes, that's my job at 60 quid a week. I'm a sinner, so they tell me. One, what Jesus came to seek.

So the parson says, and he's the bloke, what really ought to know. with his everlasting sermons, he's the blog what runs the show. At the church down in the high street, Zion Chapel, that's the name. Methodist, or maybe Baptist, I don't know, they're all the same. Services at ten and six, And wear a suit, man, if you please If you've got a cold, don't come, or if you do, don't dare to sneeze, 'Cause the vicar doesn't like it, and he makes an awful fuss.

But you have to treat folks different when you're driver of a bus. I've often thought I'd like to be a Christian just like you, with a hymn book in me hand, and maybe learn a prayer or two. Course I'd have to learn the language, all them these and thous and thuses, and the shouts and shoots and mayests. We don't use em on the buses. Yes, I'd like to be a Christian if the Christians spoke like us.

But you have to talk like humans. When you're a driver. of the boys. We're really going to invite people into the establishment of the church and then make them learn a completely new vocabulary. We're not talking about theological terminology, we're just talking about the way we talk to people.

People say that's bizarre. And yet young families feeling a sense of burden, feeling that now with their garage door opener and their mortgage, they really ought to do something for these kids that are wandering around in the yard, they hasten to bring them along and put them in establishments that they themselves really care very little about. into the into this archaic language of shibboleths and platitudes. The families still come. Pressing upon their youngsters the importance of being in the church while all the time doubting the significance of it themselves.

Doonesbury Months ago, years ago, probably, judging by the color of this paper here from my files. has a quite significant cartoon in this regard. If I was a high-tech minister, it would be up there on the screen. I am a no-tech minister, therefore it is here in front of me on a piece of paper. But it's a mother and father with their boy.

And they're sitting down with their son, and they're saying to him, Alex, honey. Mom and I have been talking and we've decided it's time for us to start attending church as a family. Church? Church is boring.

Well We thought you might say that. All kids think that. Didn't you think church was boring when you were a kid?

Well, sure, I hated going, but church was good for me, so my parents made me stick it out. You may end up hating church too, but you have to come by that feeling honestly. You have to put in the pew time like mom and I did. What if I like it? I think it's like it?

What do you mean? And then says Mum. We'll cross that bridge when we get there, honey. In other words, there is no possibility of you liking it. Who would ever like this benign, bizarre experience that is encapsulated in our culture?

Offered up in a certain way. Prepackaged. Is this church? Who? Or what is the church?

That's the question. And you know, if I gave that as an essay assignment to this congregation, the reason that I need to address it is because I honestly think that 90% of you would be unable to get anything above a C- in answering. You shouldn't feel bad about that for a moment. I should feel horrible, and so should my colleagues. Because to us has been entrusted the privilege and the responsibility of teaching you, so that you then may be able to work these things out for yourselves.

So that we would encourage you to read your Bibles and to ask: is this what the Bible says, or is that just what He is telling me? Is this the instruction of the Bible, or are they just trying to jam me in a certain direction?

So, in the face of misunderstanding, in the face of misgiving, at a time, as I say, when religion is being pushed to the corners of the public square. What I want to do is address with you some of the certain basic truths regarding the nature of the church. I do want to let those of you who come from a Roman Catholic tradition know, and you should just get ready for this, that I'm about to quote from a most recent Roman Catholic piece that is about to make you feel distinctly uncomfortable. I hasten to say, in preparation for it, that I have no interest in making you feel uncomfortable. Nor would I ever seek to allege anything concerning these things, but I feel free to quote what the church itself is saying.

So for those of you who need to just sit a little. More comfortably in your seat, then do be prepared. First of all, this is what we want to say. The church is not a human invention, it is a divine institution. When you listen to people talk, you have the impression that the church is simply a human society that owes its origin and its establishment to some kind of voluntary agreement among its members.

In other words, it's a kind of Christian rotary club, if you like. Everybody gets together, they're from a similar background, and they all sit down and they like doing the same sort of things. And so somebody along the journey of time said, you know, why don't we establish this as a kind of institution? In the same way that you find people in your neighborhood saying, do you like to bowl? I like to bowl.

Why don't we have a bowling club? Why don't we have a religious club? And so you have the church. Nobody really knows where it came from or why it should have emerged, but it has been perpetuated down through the years as a result of somebody having the bright idea, why don't everybody that likes this kind of thing, why don't we all just get together and have a society? I will read the Bible, and what does the Bible say?

The Bible says that the church owes its origin not to man, but to God. There is no such thing as the church were it not for the fact that God from all of eternity planned to have a people that are his very own. And the solidarity and the corporate distinctiveness of the people of God. as distinct from all other communities. can be tied to only one thing, namely to the call of God.

That's why, when you read the Old Testament, you find that Abram is going about his day, and God comes to him and he calls him and He says, Hey, Abraham. And everyone says, yes. And he says, Abram, this is what I want you to do, and this is where I want you to go.

Now, was it that Abraham said, You know, I'd like to be involved in a religious society? No, he was just going about his day, and God said, Hello. And suddenly, he established a relationship.

Now that same call then came down through the line of the prophets. In order that, as he promised to Abraham through his descendants, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That I suggest to you is a strange thing to say to anybody. not least of all to one of the patriarchs. Abraham, here you are and you're living at this moment in time.

Time is about to come all out in front of you, extend for thousands of years, and I want you to know that through your descendants, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. What could that possibly mean? What does it possibly mean? How is such a blessing brought about in all the nations of the world? And what is the blessing?

Well, that's why we read from Ephesians 2. You thought I was never going to refer to it, but let me turn you back to it just now. Ephesians Chapter two And verse Thirteen What we discovered is this: that through the death and resurrection of Jesus. God's purpose from all eternity Finds fulfillment as he establishes what he refers to as this new man. which is nothing other than the church.

Now he's writing to these Gentile believers and he says, Now in Christ Jesus, notice the phrase, in Christ Jesus, we'll come back to that. You who were once far away have been brought near, and how has this happened? Through the blood of Christ. Why?

Well, he himself is our peace. He has made the two one. He has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new man out of the two Thus making peace. And what he is referring to here is the way that the promises of God to the nation of Israel ultimately find their fulfillment as he calls the Gentiles to faith in himself.

And so we have a community now that is not distinguishable by ethnic origin, but is identifiable as a result of God's grace. in terms of his initiative throughout all of time. And that's why, as you come to the end of the chapter, verse 22, it says, in him. Verse 21, sorry, in him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord, and in him you two are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.

Now, let's just leave that there and move on. The first point is this: the Bible makes it clear that the church is not a human invention, it is a divine institution. Second point to notice is this: that membership in that church. Is not a matter of external attachment, but of spiritual union. It is not a matter of external attachment, but of spiritual union.

We'll say more about this in a moment, but we daren't go any further without recognizing that right alongside the question, the church, what is it? Is the question, and it's a crux question. Who's in it? And the correlative question By what means? If there is a church that not everyone is in, Who's in?

And how do you get in? I think it would become immediately apparent to each one of us that we're not talking here about how you become a member of the local gathering of the church. We're talking about a much bigger, cosmic, more significant question. How do I, as someone who by virtue of my birth, is not a member of the church, is not part of the community of God, how is it that I would ever be in it? And I suggest to you that the answer to that question and the disagreements over the answer to that question are absolutely crucial.

Because clearly, not every answer that is given is the right answer. And if there is a right answer that the Bible gives, then we need to discover it because it's going to have an impact not only on the immediacy of our lives and the way in which we rear our children and the things that we say to our friends and neighbors, but it matters for all of eternity. For the community that God has been putting together from eternity to eternity. Is this community? The church.

And that's why his focus is not on America. That's why his focus is not on Britain. That's why God in heaven is not somehow or another preoccupied even with Jerusalem at the moment or with Peking. Because his focus is on his people. A people that he is determined to call out from all of time.

Now, Paul addresses this in Ephesians 2. He reminds these Ephesian Christians, first of all, of what they were. Consider, he says, what you wear. And I can't expound all of this, I don't have time, but I don't want you to miss it. What does he say they were?

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins. In other words, you were spiritually dead. That's not difficult to understand. There was no life. Spiritually, in us at all.

We are depraved. That doesn't mean that we're as bad as we could possibly be, but it does mean that there is no part of our human nature that is not touched and tainted by sin. And we have no ability to disassociate ourselves from that trap in which we're born. Spiritually dead. Disobedient, pleasing ourselves, and at the end of verse 3, the objects of wrath.

This, if you like, my friends, is the plight of man. This you will not find in the average newspaper, indeed in hardly any newspaper. This you will not find in the history books as an explanation for the sad and sorry predicament in which we find ourselves. People are trying desperately to explain it in terms of their responses to various factors in life, whether they're economic factors or environmental factors or whatever they might be. We are better equipped in analyzing that than we have ever been in the history of humanity.

And yet even the leaders of our country are unable to extricate themselves from the sorriness and the rottenness and the fallenness and the sinfulness of it all. And these are the people to whom we would look in order to provide the solutions for our predicament? No, our predicament is a pro is so deep that there is no human agency that is going to be ext able to extricate ourselves. And yet the message comes, try and fix yourself, try and find yourself, try and reform yourself, try and embrace religion, try and be a little better. And all of these apparent stepping stones are nothing other than stumbling blocks.

My dear friends, if we're going to be made spiritually alive, it's going to have to happen as a result of a power outside of ourselves and not as a result of our being able to look into ourselves and find the God part in ourselves or find the spiritual part in ourselves. Which is of course so much contemporary thought. Why don't you just go away for the afternoon and find yourself? And you'll find that you have a lovely self in there. And if you can just cultivate that like a large sunflower, then you will just be a lovely sunflower just sitting in your car at the traffic lights.

Well, I encourage you to try it, and you'll see how quickly a sunflower can wither wither as a result of self-help. Consider what you wear. Consider secondly what Christ did, verse 13. He shed his blood. Why?

Because without the shedding of blood, there is no way for sin to be remitted. If there is any other way, then there is no need for a crucified Christ. He shed his blood. He brought us near He made us alive. He saved us.

That's why he's then able to go on and say, consider what you are. Verse 6: You are seated in the heavenly realms. You are ready, verse 10, to do good. Verse 7, you're being prepared for a quite incredible show and tell. He's seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might have a show and tell of the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Jesus.

In other words, he's going to have this amazing event and he's going to bring people along and he'll say, There she is. Look at her. Do you know what she once was? Middle life. Saved.

Transform. This is the church. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alastair Begg, and we'll hear more about the church tomorrow. Yeah. If you're enjoying this study in the basics of the Christian faith and you'd like to go deeper into these topics, let me tell you about a book that will make a helpful companion to this teaching series.

It's called The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction, and the author is Sinclair Ferguson, who is a friend of Alistair's, a fellow pastor, someone he often quotes. This is an easy-to-read book that uses scripture to outline for us practical guidelines for how to live the Christian life. As you read, Sinclair will guide you through Christian doctrine in detail, offering many rich insights, things I know you will find helpful. He covers key biblical themes like grace and faith, repentance, the new birth, and lays out for us what our salvation is and what it looks like to live your life for Christ. Alastair said about this book, It was a tremendous help to me.

First, just in my own personal walk with God, but then also in being able to articulate some of these basic elements of Christian doctrine. The book is yours when you donate to support the ministry of Truth for Life. You can give a one-time gift at truthforlife.org/slash donate, or you can arrange to set up an automatic monthly donation when you visit truthforlife.org/slash truthpartner. If it's easier, just call us at 888-588-7884. Thanks for listening.

Tomorrow, we will learn the most important question any of us needs to ask ourselves. The Bible teaching of Alastair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the Learning is for Living.