"Why to Choose a Church" Romans 1:11-12 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Let me direct your attention now in God's word to the book of Romans.

Romans chapter 1 is where we'll be this morning.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

What a joy it is to sing together this morning.

We sang a couple psalms this morning, Psalm 130, Psalm 133.

How good it is for God's people to dwell together.

The Lord is indeed our salvation.

And there's something to be said about singing that song in a group.

Because it is corporate.

The Lord saves individuals, but now in the world, in this era of history, he is saving his church.

He's bringing us to maturity in Christ Jesus, presenting us into the image of his very own Son.

And so it's to this end we strive and labor.

This is why we do our life.

This is why we live our life in this world.

We're striving to be made more and more into the image of Jesus Christ.

He is indeed our salvation.

And it's a joy that we get to do that side by side, as Paul tells the Philippians.

We labor for each other's faith side by side.

And that's what I want to look at this morning.

Let me pray for us before we begin.

Lord, we ask for your mercy and your encouragement this morning.

We ask for your mercy because we beg that you would not treat us as our sins deserve, but instead that you would remove our sins from us as far as the East is from the West.

This is an act of your sovereign grace and divine mercy.

None of us are here this morning having earned or merited our standing before you, but we are all here as beggars.

We're all in need of your mercy.

So unless we begin there, we we can't then push forward into your word.

And having gathered around the table of your word this morning, we pray not just for your mercy, but for your encouragement, your strength, that you would use what's in your word to build us up and to conform us into the image of Jesus Christ.

If we're beggars, this is what we are begging for.

If we are needy, this is what we need the most.

If we are humble, it's only because we've compared ourselves to your perfections seen in your word.

And if we are here this morning, let it only be because we are eager to hear from your word and to be strengthened by it.

This is something only you can do.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Paul says this, for I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you.

That is, we may be mutually encouraged or edified by each other's faith, both yours and mine.

I want to draw our attention to this passage this morning because I do see a somewhat discouraging trend in much of Christianity towards a lack of love for the church or a lack of desire to worship in the church.

When you look around at some of the bigger churches in our world, many of them have an internet campus, for example.

They have a whole gathering of their church that's not designed for those who set physical foot on the campus, but they're designed to reach those who would never go to church.

And when I talk about this, I'm not talking about the homebound people who are, you know, because of age or illness, aren't able to worship.

I'm not talking about people deployed in Iraq who want to gather together around the Lord's word in their home church.

I'm talking about designing a whole system of church for people who don't want to go to church.

And it's something that was very popular in the 90s to do before the advent of an internet church, to design church for those who hate church.

But it's become more popular and even more common now with the advent of being able to stream church, the advent for of you know an internet campus of church.

And it's a it really is a fool's errand to design church for those who don't want to be in church.

Because I mean, imagine designing a restaurant for those who hate my cooking.

It doesn't matter what it looks like on the outside, it doesn't matter how smooth my reservation system is, it's not going to work out very well.

Even here today in a country or world that is rocked by the coronavirus.

I understand that there are many who aren't going to church now because of uh fear of the virus or the contagious nature of it, and I get that, and I'm not, you know, taking a shot at you in all of this.

I understand that there are those that just where they are in their own conscience and in their own concerns for health or caring for elderly people in their family have calculated it's too much of a risk to be at church.

I understand that, and I'm not I'm not dogging after that.

But I am going after the idea that you know what, I just do church better at home.

Church is just more comfortable for me at home.

I get the all the benefits of church without having to leave my house.

I just like it better that way.

And this is not just a global theme, although it is a global theme, but even I've heard from people at Emmanuel that one thing they've learned from the last few months of the shutdown, this is a few people, is how much they just they don't think they're gonna come back.

They just like doing church at their house.

And you're probably watching right now and a little bit uncomfortable.

So, in a sense, I'm talking to those people, and I understand that draw.

I definitely understand that.

I understand when you have kids, it is tough to get out the door in the morning.

And apparently it gets easier when you get older to get out the door in the morning.

Is that right?

Amen.

When you have kids, it's hard to get out the door in the morning.

You gotta get them dressed and you gotta get them fed, and then you gotta, you know, corral them into the car.

My my old pastor used to say, you're allowed to be five minutes late for each kid you have.

And then I met a family last week that had eight kids, and I was like, they've never heard the worship at church.

And then you turn around and you can do church in your jammies.

Do church in your jammies.

That phrase bothers me to no end.

So I get the ease in which you have that.

I get the appeal of it.

In contrast, there's this burning desire that you see in the pages of the New Testament for believers to meet together, for people to be face to face, to encourage one another, to be built up.

And that's what you see here in the book of Romans.

And there is something like right now, this global pandemic that has caused governments to even close churches, and we're thankful we're through that.

Emmanuel, of course, honored our government's request and that we would close the public worship during that time.

And again, I'm not knocking that.

We we honored that request and we went through that together, and uh I praise God for what we learned from that.

But one of the things we learned from that is it brings into clarity what our desires are, it brings into clarity what motivates us, it brings into clarity what is important to us.

And so it's worth asking what was missed during that shutdown time?

What was missed when we couldn't worship together?

What is missed now by those who can't do that?

And let me say it one more time, because I'll say it four times, but there will still perhaps be those that I'm not communicating it clearly too.

So I want to say it one more time.

I know there are those who don't feel comfortable coming back to worship together because of the coronavirus.

And I'm just trying to nudge your dial a little bit more to the middle.

I'm not trying to yank it all the way around.

I'm not trying to say if you're not back at church, you're doing something wrong.

I'm just, I just want to make it a little bit more in perspective.

I want to turn the dial, you know, if you're at a 10 under lockdown and one is, you know, running around everywhere.

I'm gonna just do an eight a little bit.

I'm nudging it a little bit.

That's my goal.

And I want to do that by asking you to think about what is missed, just to bring into focus what is missed.

I know many of you are aware of that, and that's why it is so hard and painful to not be able to gather together as a church because of what is missed.

But I want to spend some time talking this morning specifically about why we want to worship together as a church.

You know, last week we looked at, you know, principles for how to choose a church.

In fact, the sermon was called How to Choose a Church.

So this week I just want to title it this way: Why to choose a church.

Why you want to choose a church, why you want to unite yourself to a body where you worship life on life, person to person.

And to do that, I want to give you an outline this morning.

Three motivations to go to church.

And they're drawn from Romans 1, verses 11 and 12 here.

Romans 1:11

We read it earlier.

This is a precious little passage.

They're kind of throwaway verses, in a sense, in some people's minds, if you've memorized Romans 1, these are the, which I know many people have, these are the verses you kind of skip over real quick.

You know, you you want to get to the so-called the good stuff.

I'm not ashamed of the gospel, Romans 1.16.

Wait, there's stuff before that?

And this is the stuff before that.

Paul's introduction to this book is about his desire to lay his eyes on the Romans, to see them, he says in verse 11, I long to see you.

This is a window into Paul's heart.

Jesus says, of course, the windows are a uh the eyes are a window to the soul.

What he's talking about there is you can tell what a person loves, their countenance, it's an Old Testament illusion, their countenance reveals what their love is and their heart is and their affections are.

And so Paul here says, I long to see you.

I want to lay my eyes on you because I love you.

He's writing to a church that he had not been to.

While he knows many of the Romans by name, he's going to list some of them at the ends of the book.

For now, he's content to just say, I'm sending you this letter, but I want to see you.

This is the the this letter is the pillar of the New Testament in many ways.

It's the most robust systematic theology written.

You want to learn the theology of the New Testament, you go to Romans.

It's the Mount Everest of the Bible in that sense.

It reveals God and it reveals the gospel in an unparalleled way.

It has a sense of urgency in this book.

Paul is driving towards something.

And you know what he's driving for at the end.

He wants to go to Spain.

He wants the Romans to support him as he goes to Spain.

He wants to bring the gospel to people that have yet to hear it.

And he wants the Romans to understand how precious the gospel is, so they will send him on his way well.

So this book is completely urgent.

It has a sense of finality to it.

Paul's understanding all of human history here, from the fall of Adam and Eve, which he talks about in Romans 5, all the way to the glory of the kingdom, which he talks about in Romans 11.

This whole book spans the gauntlet of theology, and at the heart of it is this eager desire in God's heart to save his children.

He uses the law to do that.

He uses conviction of sin to do that.

He uses his Holy Spirit to regenerate and draw them to himself, and then he uses preachers to take that news into the world.

So that's the book of Romans.

But it begins and ends, by the way.

Paul bookends this book with his desire to see them.

How much he longs to lay his eyes on them, how much he longs to worship with them face to face in their church.

And he gives three reasons why, and we want to go through those this morning first.

He has this longing for Trinitarian fellowship.

And if, you know, perhaps for the littles or the children are taking notes, you can just write down the capital words here because they're going to give you three words, one in each point.

Longing is this first one.

And for the grownups, you're going to be quizzed on the whole thing.

What is Paul longing for?

He's longing for Trinitarian fellowship.

He says in verse 11, I long to see you.

There's this urgency inside of him, a longing inside of him.

It's a drawing.

This word in Greek is this idea of a drawing that's pulling you forward, that's pulling you out.

It can be translated into English here this desire, longing.

You have an urgency inside of you for something else.

And here, what Paul's longing for is to see the Romans.

He's going to say why.

He wants to impart to them a spiritual gift, to strengthen them.

He wants to be encouraged by them.

We'll get to those in a second.

But just this idea first that he has this desire inside of him, this longing inside of him.

And I say it's Trinitarian here because that's what's all over this little first passage of Romans, verse 8.

I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you, because the gospel is proclaimed in the world.

Verse 10, I'm praying for you, that by God's will I may succeed in coming to you.

This is underneath the call of God the Father that is on his life, that he experienced through the salvation, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

He says in verse 1, he's a servant of Christ Jesus, set apart for the gospel of God, preached through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures.

It's all about his son, verse 3, according to the flesh.

Resurrected, verse 4, by the Spirit of Holiness.

And so Paul has this image here of the Father who has sent the Son into the world, and the same Father who sent the Son is sending Paul.

The Father sent the Son into the world to be the Savior for sinners.

The Father is sending Paul into the world to preach the gospel of the Son of God.

Paul believes that Jesus was the Son of God, sent to die on the cross for sin by the work of the Holy Spirit in his life.

The Holy Spirit is the one who resurrected Jesus from the dead.

It's the one that has saved Paul from the dead and is now energizing Paul's prayers and energizing Paul's ministry.

So it's a Father, Son, Spirit progression here.

The Father ordains, the Son executes, and the Spirit applies.

The Father ordains salvation, the Son purchases salvation, the Spirit applies salvation, and that path there doesn't end with the gospel, it goes on into mission work.

The Father ordains his missionaries.

His missionaries preach the gospel of the Son.

His missionaries are powered, fueled, energized, drawn by the Holy Spirit.

And that same pattern goes into the church.

And this is the critical point for understanding the nature of the church.

The Father has designed the church.

The Son has purchased the church.

But it is the Spirit who builds the church.

Now, in a sense, these are all artificial distinctions.

All three persons of the Trinity are doing all three of those things.

They're all operating in unity.

But the scripture over and over and over again presents that order.

This church belongs to God the Father.

It's his church.

But we gather around the worship of what Jesus Christ did on the cross.

And we do that because the Holy Spirit saves us, regenerates us, and draws us together.

It's that last part that is so important when it comes to fellowship.

It's that last part that must be experienced.

The Holy Spirit has to actually save you and work in your life and draw you towards one another.

When you think about it, the Father's will for your life is determined before eternity, before time began.

The Son's work on the cross happened before you were born.

So, in a very real sense, the most immediate person of the eternity to you is the Holy Spirit.

He is the one that dwells in you.

And what that means is that your soul was dead and he made your soul alive.

He made your actual soul, he made it alive by regenerating you through the preaching of God's word, through giving you faith so that you believe.

And now the Holy Spirit has brought your life to life.

You're born again.

That's the work of the Holy Spirit, who does not depart from his saving work in you once you come to faith in Christ, but he still dwells in you, and he dwells in you by striving with you.

He dwells in you by convicting you of sin and motivating you to righteousness.

He dwells in you by opening your eyes to the Word of God.

So when you have any experience about God, any experience about the Father, any knowledge of the Father, any love of Jesus Christ, anything you learn about Jesus Christ or appreciate about Jesus Christ, it's the Spirit's work that's doing that.

You can't learn about the Father except through faith in the Son.

And you cannot have faith in the Son except through the agency of the Holy Spirit.

So no one can say they believe in God but reject Jesus Christ.

I mean they can say that, but it's not true.

In the same way, no one can say they believe in Jesus Christ without the work of the Holy Spirit.

All who say that Jesus is Lord do so, Paul says, by the work of the Spirit.

Now I think we all understand that, but have you kept going in that thought to where it connects to fellowship?

If the Holy Spirit dwells in you, and the Holy Spirit dwells in me, and the Holy Spirit dwells in that person and that person, then we are like-minded in a very real sense.

We have one spirit.

Now we're all individuals, of course, but we share the same spirit.

It's the spirit of love.

It's the in a in a very real sense, it's the spirit of Christ.

He dwells in each and every believer.

That's the doctrine of the universal church, that every believer in the world has the spirit of Christ inside of him.

But there's even a more narrow doctrine than that, the doctrine of the local church.

What is the Holy Spirit doing in the world in this era of time?

Well, he's building his churches, multiple churches.

And how does he do that?

He puts believer brick by brick, Paul tells the Corinthians, into the building.

He builds us together.

And so while the same spirit dwells in every believer in the world, the spirit draws particular believers together into fellowship in one body.

That's what you experience in the church.

It's this like-mindedness, this like spirit that happens as the Holy Spirit Himself puts us together in a body.

The Son is always our Savior, the Father is always our Father, the Spirit is always our keeper, and He is shared among us.

This is the concept of Christian unity.

And Christian unity, by the way, is not something you build, it's something that exists.

It's an ontological reality at this very moment.

We are one in Christ.

It's very dangerous to say the church must do this or do that to make the church one.

No, Jesus did this and that, and specifically, God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in our hearts.

That's what gives the church the sense of unity.

Your labor doesn't give the church a sense of unity.

The Holy Spirit gives the church its unity.

We then live that out as we love one another and strive side by side together in like faith.

As we co-labor, we're expressing our unity in Christ, but that unity is an ontological reality.

It just exists by the work of the Holy Spirit.

And then we experience it.

So how do you experience that reality of our oneness, our union in Christ?

By meeting together, by worshiping together, by fellowshipping with one another, encouraging one another as long as it is called today, Paul tells the Hebrews.

His language is filled with this.

In almost all of his letters, he's declaring that they need to meet together to provoke one another to love and good deeds.

Let me even say it a different way.

With God, fellowship begins with the knowledge of God in the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Their fellowship is rooted around their knowledge and their love and affection for each other.

Adam and Eve had that fellowship.

Adam and Eve knew God.

They walked with him in the garden, the scripture says, before the fall, they had this intimate fellowship with God.

Now, sin, of course, marred that, and they can no longer walk with God again.

Jesus, in a sense, restores that as he comes to earth and walks with his disciples and walks with us.

We now experience that as his spirit can go where his body couldn't.

His body was localized.

It was important that Jesus became to earth incarnate.

He had to come to earth as a person with a human nature in one place at one time so he could live a real life and he could die a real death.

But there are limitations to him being in one place at one time.

Namely, we can't all share him.

There's limitations to him dying.

Namely, he's not on earth right now.

This is why Jesus says it's so much better for me to send you a helper, the Holy Spirit, who will come, so that when he's gone, we get something better.

Namely, someone better, the Holy Spirit, who is not localized.

In any one particular time, any one particular place, but dwells in all of us.

Now that is the restoration of fellowship with God.

What a contrast with the Old Testament, isn't it?

That when God set his favor on Israel, the Spirit dwelled in the temple.

They would make pilgrimages to the temple a few times a year.

When he removed his spirit from the temple in the days of Manasseh, the hope for Israel was gone.

It became a future hope then in the coming of a future Savior, which those people didn't get to live to see.

But now when God restores his favor, he doesn't restore it by placing his spirit in a temple in Israel.

He restores it by placing his spirit in the hearts of those who believe.

This is why Jesus can say, John 17, verse 3, this is eternal life, that you know the only true God.

John 17:3

And Jesus Christ whom he sent.

Notice the basis of our fellowship.

It's the knowledge of God seen through Jesus Christ.

And that goes straight to the Holy Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12, verse 1.

1 Corinthians 12:1

We are one body because of that we have gifts for the building up of the body.

So you have faith in God through Jesus Christ, though you have that faith because the Holy Spirit dwells in your heart.

By the virtue of the Holy Spirit in your heart, you're not a brick into this building that is built together.

And that's why there's a longing to be with each other.

You know what you call a brick on the side of the road?

Garbage.

You know what you call a brick in a building?

Significant.

It's a wall, it's important.

How many of them can you remove before the wall falls off?

How many of you want to you want to test that?

You want to take a few bricks out of your house and see what happens?

This is what gives the church its unique flavor.

Now there's all kinds of social clubs in the world.

All kinds of social clubs.

Somebody told Dider recently, a non-Christian that we know told Dider she knows Christians are excited for churches to be able to meet back together again because it's, you know, it's kind of a social club and you meet your friends there and all that stuff.

And I heard that, and initially I was like, yeah, in a sense that's right.

And DJ said, ah, no, we're not a social club.

And we talked more about it later, and I understand what she means, and she is right, and I'm used to saying that.

You know, there's all kinds of social clubs in the world.

You know, there's a biker club.

There's a chess club.

There's bingo.

There's all kinds of things that people gather around, and what there draws them is a shared interest in that thing.

What draws the bikers together is a shared interest in biking.

What draws the chess clubs together is a shared interest in the king's opening or whatever.

What draws bingo people together is the game.

So what draws the church together?

It's the Holy Spirit who dwells in each of us, that gives us a love for Christ, that transcends those other categories.

That transcends nations, that transcends ethnic groups, it transcends cultures and styles and socioeconomic class, it transcends political views, that transcends your taste in food or your taste in music, it transcends all of those things.

So what binds the church together is our union in Christ.

It's a supernatural union we have.

It's supernatural because it comes with gifts.

And Paul says that in verse 11 I want to give you a spiritual gift.

And that phrase spiritual gift, it becomes so hackneyed, it becomes so overused that we lose sight of what the word actually means.

Gift means it's given to you.

That's what the word gift means.

That it is a gift you have.

You didn't earn it, you didn't work for it.

It was given to you as an act of grace.

In fact, the word for gift and the word for grace is practically the same word in the Greek.

It's just given to you.

Now, who gives it to you?

The Holy Spirit.

That's why it's called a spiritual gift.

And what is the Holy Spirit doing with it?

He's building his church.

So that's what a spiritual gift is: something that God gives you through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit for use in the building up of the church.

Your spiritual gift is not something you do by yourself outside of the church.

That's not a spiritual gift.

Your spiritual gift is something that God gives you to use in the building of the church.

Do you see how it is by essence supernatural?

Because it's God who's giving it to you.

He doesn't need to use us to build the church.

But he does.

He uses means.

The means that God uses to build his kingdom is us through the gifts that he gives us.

The Holy Spirit could build his church by just building it directly.

He could build the church by encouraging you directly.

He could build you up personally.

He regenerated you so he could also mature you and present you complete in Christ without any other means.

But instead, he uses means.

He uses other people to do that.

He uses my friends who can who confront me on sin or who encourage me in godliness, who pray with me and provoke me and cause me to grow more into the image of Christ.

He does it.

The Holy Spirit doesn't need to use my friends.

He could just do that to me directly.

But he chooses to use my friends.

He chooses to use people in the church to do that.

And if you're not meeting together, you have lost both the positive and negative elements of that.

You've lost the ability to be building in the church, and you've lost the ability to let the church be building into you.

Again, the Holy Spirit doesn't need that.

He could just present you mature in Christ immediately, but rather he uses other people to present the corporate nature of the church.

He does that through the gospel.

Romans 5.15 says that Christ through the preaching of the gospel is a spiritual gift.

It's a gift given to us by the Holy Spirit.

He does that through salvation.

Romans 11.29 says that the gifts of God are irrevocable, speaking of salvation.

But mostly he does that through spiritual gifts that other people use for your benefit.

And so Paul understands that, and that's why he longs to see the Romans.

That's the first point.

The second point, longing, the second point, imparting.

Imparting.

The second motivation to go to church, first is longing, the second is imparting, specifically imparting a spiritual blessing.

Now Paul is writing the most significant city in the Western world, the capital of the Roman Empire, the home of the philosophers and the scholars, the home of the Colosseum, the home of Caesar and the Senate.

This is the headquarters of the Western civilization.

And he's writing them a letter and he tells them, I have something you need.

I just want you to marvel at the boldness of Paul right there.

You guys think you have it all in Rome?

Listen, I got something you need.

And what do they need?

They need to receive something from him.

He has a spiritual gift to impart to them, he says in verse 11.

I want to impart to you some spiritual gift.

The word sum there, it's a kind of an anatherous word.

It's not particular.

Paul doesn't know the gift he wants to impart to them.

He just has some gift that he has.

He knows he has many gifts, but he wants to give them some gift.

The reason he doesn't name the gift is he doesn't know what they need.

He hasn't been there yet.

He wants to see there.

He wants to see them and meet them and be in the church before he knows how he can best serve them.

That's the nature of Christian fellowship.

It's not focused on self, it's focused on others.

Paul is the one with the gifts and he wants to encourage them.

He doesn't know the best way to encourage them.

I remember the first time Pastor John MacArthur preached here.

He asked me, what would encourage your congregation?

What should I preach on?

And I said, Preach on whatever what would encourage me is whatever you want to preach on.

And so he did, and it was it was great.

He preached on Romans 1, actually, not this verse, but Romans 1.16.

Then he came back another time.

And the second time he came back, he asked me the same question.

What would encourage your congregation?

I said, Whatever you want.

And he said, That's what he said last time.

What does your congregation really need to hear?

And I was just about done with Mark's gospel, and I did not know how to preach the ending of Mark's gospel.

It's one of those things they don't teach in seminary.

In fact, in seminary, they say no one knows how to preach the ending of Mark's gospel.

So I said, What our congregation needs is somebody who can preach the ending of Mark's gospel.

And so he did.

He came here and preached the ending of Mark's gospel, and I'm sure you were encouraged, but I was.

This is Paul's attitude.

I'm coming to you.

I don't know what I'm going to bring.

I want to meet you and see what you need, and I'll give you that.

He describes this later in Romans 12 that God has given us gifts that differ according to the grace we have.

So use them.

Some are gifted in prophecy and proportion of their faith, which is the proclamation of God's truth.

Some in service, some in teaching, some in exhorting, some in contributing, some in generosity, some in leading, some with zeal, some with mercy, some with cheerfulness.

God has given all of you different gifts, and they're all to be used in the church body, and you don't know how to use it the best way.

You just have to meet the people and see how you can best serve the church.

You have something the church needs.

This is not a consumer industry.

That's the main worldview that's missing from the concept of a church is that you can just do it at home.

That's a consumer industry, then.

If you can just do it at home, you might prefer Netflix or Apple TV or Amazon Prime or whatever you pay and you receive from them.

They don't ask you for ideas.

They don't ask you for suggestions.

They give you suggestions.

That's how those companies work, right?

You're done watching something.

Here's what you need to watch next.

Back off, okay?

The church doesn't work like that.

The church, you are contributing.

You're contributing with whatever your gifts are.

Some of the gifted in giving and their generosity, some in teaching, some in praying, some in serving, some in exhorting, some in leading, some with mercy.

You have a gift.

And so Paul is challenging you to use it in the church.

You have something to offer.

You cannot offer it when you are not here.

Paul wasn't going to Rome for a tour of the Colosseum.

He's not writing them and saying, here's the tour.

I'm going to be there for two weeks, and I'm happy to serve you in any way I can, but here's three things I really want to see.

I want to see the Colosseum.

I want to see a lion encounter.

I want to see the gladiators.

I want to see the Vatican.

I get chronology of it, it doesn't line up quite right.

He's going there to serve.

You have something to offer this church.

In a world without planes and a world where travel was difficult and time-consuming, Paul was on his way around the world to serve this church.

A basic way you can do that is put thought into how you want to encourage each other at church.

Don't come to church just to receive.

Come to church to give.

Come to church to give in conversations.

Put thought into who you want to talk to.

Put thought into what questions you want to ask people.

Put thought into how you can best encourage people.

Ask somebody, how can I pray for you this week?

And then pray for them this week.

And then next week, ask them about it.

That's a basic way to encourage one another in the church, which requires a little bit of foresight.

It requires a little bit of foresight.

Think through how you want to give to the church.

Some of you give by teaching Sunday school.

Praise God for that.

My kids love it.

And I'm grateful for the thought and work you put into how you think about your class and what you're going to teach and what you want to give them.

Some of you serve by in the fellowship groups with your table groups and praying for each other, the table groups, or meeting new visitors.

We challenge our girls and we drive to church on Sunday.

We pray together in the car.

Usually I'm not there because multiple service thing.

But DJ will ask the girls, how are you going to be an encouragement to someone today?

Find somebody new to talk to.

Ask one of your friends a question.

So-and-so's mommy is moving or daddy is sick or whatever.

Ask them those questions.

Calculate into your thinking how you want to be a blessing to people at church.

Paul certainly did this.

He writes about this in 1 Thessalonians chapter 2.

1 Thessalonians 2 · chapter mention

He says, Since we were torn away from your brothers, I mean he's only there for a few weeks, the Thessaloniki, for a short time in person, not in heart, we endeavored the more eagerly and with great desire to see you face to face.

As we pray most earnestly, night and day, that we may see you face to face and supply what is lacking in your faith.

I mean, Paul was yanked out of that church, and he has been praying and pleading with the Lord to put him back there so that he can receive some kind of encouragement from them, and he can encourage them as well.

He wants to see them.

It wasn't his will that they were broken up, but he wants to get back to see them.

This leads to the third point.

Receiving spiritual encouragement.

We looked at longing, imparting, and now receiving.

Longing, imparting, and receiving spiritual encouragement.

Romans chapter 1, verse 12, that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other's faith, yours and mine.

Romans 1:12

He's using reciprocal words here.

He says, I want to get to you so I can give you something.

But notice the humility of Paul.

He turns around and says, I also want to receive from you.

Can you imagine?

Paul saying that.

The guy who wrote the New Testament.

He's writing to this relatively new and relatively immature church.

And he says, I'm coming to see you because I want to be encouraged by you.

That's really a staggering picture of humility.

He understood that there's something that happens by his presence there that doesn't happen in a vacuum.

It happens with him being there.

He wants to receive.

And in the same way I said a second ago, put thought into how you're going to contribute to church.

Also put thought into how you're going to receive from church.

Put thought in how you're going to apply the things that you hear preach.

Put thought into how you're going to have your life strengthened by the fellowship of other people, by the preaching of the word.

This is not just a show what's happening here.

It's something that's supposed to actually impact your life.

And it doesn't do it just for me saying it.

It impacts your life by you applying it.

And that's the thing with online church.

You can find lots of good church services online.

Did you and I often on Sunday afternoon will live stream our former church in California.

We watch it.

But it's, you know, we're watching it at a distance.

The people in that church have come and gone, and they're not the same people anymore, and it's just so we listen to the sermon and it impacts us, but it's not the same, you know.

If you're shopping around for a good church to watch online, you can find good churches to watch online.

But it's not the same thing as being part of a church.

It's not about the actual content of the words.

You understand that, right?

It's about the application of the words in the lives of those that you know.

I mean, why does Paul want to go to Rome?

Why can't he just send them Romans?

Gather around and read Romans.

Believe me, the book of Romans, why are you here this morning?

Couldn't you just stay home and read the book of Romans this week?

The book of Romans is better than this sermon.

And I'm not offended by saying that.

Wouldn't you just be better off spiritually if you just read the book of Romans this week?

This is why there's a one-two punch in your own devotional life.

You do read the book of Romans this week, you do wrestle through it this week, you do let Paul speak to you directly, but then you live your life out in the context of others.

God's word is only one part of that.

That's one element.

Remember, if you're dealing with a Trinitarian approach here, it's the Father who ordains your life and salvation.

You have the word of God, which is God's word incarnate, taking on, you know, words in the page here that you can read, and now you need the spiritual effect of that as you live out your life around other people.

One of my daughters has learned to play.

Joyful, joyful, we adore thee on the piano.

It's one of the most beautiful songs in the world.

Beethoven.

You can find the Conservancy of Boston, or classical music in Boston has an incredible orchestral version of it.

You can find it on YouTube if you dig long enough.

It's amazing.

Like the cat gets saved listening to it.

It's incredible.

And I have a daughter who can play it on the piano or a little electric keyboard, she can play it.

What's more beautiful?

Now I know what you would say.

But as a dad, what is more beautiful?

It's the one that I know.

You know, we sing songs tonight before we go to bed.

We sang at Calvary a few nights ago, and there's the casting crowns version of it that's incredible.

But I'd rather hear my girls sing it, honestly.

Because I know them.

That's our life together.

So you can watch a sermon online.

You can listen to it in your headphones.

But that's not the same thing as being around each other and encouraging one another.

John writes this, too.

This isn't unique to Paul, or John writes this to John, verse 12, though I have much to write you.

And John, anything rivals Romans in the Bible, it would be the Gospel of John.

So John is right, the guy who writes the Gospel of John is writing this.

I have much to write you.

And I think 2 John was likely even written before John's Gospel, is the way I understand it.

Could be wrong about that, find out in heaven.

But I just want to think, this verse is possibly even pointing forward to John's Gospel.

I have much to write you, like John's Gospel, but I'd rather not use paper and ink.

Instead, I hope to come to you and talk to you face to face so that our joy might be complete.

This is the nature of what we do in the church.

We receive spiritual encouragement from one another.

And when I think about John saying that, I think there's just some things that are better done in person than online.

And Paul understood that dynamic too.

And Paul writes this, 2 Corinthians 10, verse 1, I Paul myself entreat you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ.

2 Corinthians 10:1

I who am humble when face to face with you am bold towards you when I'm away.

That's something that his accusers had said.

They had said, you don't need to listen to Paul.

You know, when Paul's around you, he's all nice and godly, but in his letters rar.

Is that true?

Who knows?

His letters are pretty bold.

It's better to be face to face, though.

And you know this.

The equivalent of this day would be Facebook.

Some of you guys are so nice in person.

And you're so wicked on Facebook.

You are.

You know, eight reasons Hillary should be in jail.

Ten reasons all of President Trump's supporters are racist.

And you come to church and you're like, I don't know why these people don't like me.

Because you're being dumb online is why they don't like you.

Better to have in-person fellowship than to argue with your aunts in front of a hundred of your friends.

A simple principle for being online is act, it's social media, act socially.

Act like you would in person.

Don't wreck your Christian testimony because you got, you know, know some political guy who doesn't agree with you that you want to yell at online.

And that's going to be tough for you to remember when the election starts getting closer.

Some of you all are going to lose your minds.

So I I think it's better to refer to Facebook as sin book.

If you approach it with that attitude, you'll do much better.

You know, share pictures of your family, share a verse you're reading, share some spiritual encouragement.

Yell at the Washington Nationals.

Those are all appropriate things to do online.

But to be rude to each other?

Not appropriate.

Some of you are so nice face to face, Paul writes.

I'm so nice face to face.

So I want to see you.

I want to get there.

I want to be encouraged by you.

The bottom line principle from this you guys gotta get your face in the place.

You gotta be here to worship and to be encouraged by each other.

To be built up in the church.

Now, of course, all of this is just making the gospel visible.

This is what the gospel is.

Could God have canceled the record of wrongs you did in your life without physically coming to earth?

I suppose you could conceive of a way that's possible.

That's not the universe God made.

God made the universe where there can be no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood, and that the only blood that can be an acceptable sacrifice is sinless blood from the Son of David and David's Lord.

So God had to become incarnate, had to take on a human nature.

He had to really put his face in the place.

And then he sends the Spirit to encourage us and draw us together.

So why is it important to go to church?

Because that's the gospel lived out.

That's the gospel made visible.

That God is holy and he has adopted us into his family.

That we are brothers and sisters in the faith, and Jesus Christ is not ashamed to call us our bis brother.

We're together in the family.

And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love who binds our hearts to each other.

Lord, we pray for joy in our fellowship.

We pray for wisdom in our fellowship.

We pray for joy in our fellowship.

As we pursue you, as we want to be transformed as the image of Christ, more so every passing day.

We do pray for those in our congregation who can't be with us because of health or because of the virus, because of illness, because of distance deployment around the world.

We're so thankful for them that can tune in.

We're thankful for this technology.

I know even people right now that are in uh Bahrain and Iraq and around the world, Afghanistan even, that are able to still worship with us even though they're not here.

So we're so thankful for that, and we do pray that they would be encouraged and that you would even use this message to provoke a sense of longing in them for when they return.

And we look forward to seeing them and receiving them back from their deployments.

I think of the elderly and the homebound, many who have been faithfully living out these verses for decades, decades after decades in this church.

Who now can't leave their homes.

We do pray for them, our hearts do break for them.

Thinking of some in particular right now who are staying home to care for their wives.

We're thankful for their leadership and their encouragement they bring to their family.

And we do pray that as they experience the loss of in-person fellowship, that they would have the bonds of peace and the bonds of friendship that they've built up over the decades here, and that they would sustain them through these trials.

For the joy that we have in our like-mindedness or fellowship or friendship that transcends other man-made boundaries.

It's a joy to worship our resurrected Savior.

In his name we pray.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thank you for joining Emmanuel Bible Church today through this resource.

It's my prayer that if you live in the DC area, I'll be able to meet you on some Sunday at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church, you can go to iBc.church.

Or for information on the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource helps you seek God through Jesus Christ, serve the Lord with joy, and share him with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.