Matthew 16 & 18 "Membership Matters: Who Speaks For Heaven On Earth?" Rick Graumlich

Church, as I was preparing this sermon, I realized I could either this is gonna be a sermon on church membership, which is really exciting.

And um I realized I could either, as I was working and as going, and and man, it's just getting longer and longer.

And I thought, man, this could be either a really long sermon on church membership, or I could preach two sermons on church membership.

How great's that?

So today I'm gonna start the sermon, and then next week, Lord willing, we'll finish up the sermon.

But I have a long introduction, which is unusual, and I'm just gonna lay the groundwork for our thinking on church membership.

Today I want to answer the question: who represents heaven on earth?

Who represents heaven on earth?

I'm gonna give you a little bit of insight.

I think the answer is the local church.

And then, Lord willing, next week we'll see how this actually works out, being the local church.

So I want to begin by making a couple pastoral remarks.

That I hope you uh give some context and some understanding as we head into the sermon this morning.

We don't have a bunch of core, neat, core values as a church.

Maybe one day that'll be neat, we'll get there.

But one value that runs to our core is expositional preaching.

Expositional preaching aims to expose the text or to exposit, just expose.

This is what the text is saying.

And the main point of this text is the main point of the sermon.

And so if you've been here long enough, you know most of our sermons we're preaching through books of the Bible.

We preach through Ruth and through Ezra and Nehemiah, through Galatians, to be using Colossians, we go through Ecclesiastes, like John.

Um we go through books of the Bible, just expositing, exposing God's word as we go.

That's the main diet, the lion's share of the preaching.

Occasionally, however, we do preach what are called topical sermons, which is a little different.

A topical sermon, it's just that.

There's a topic, so there's an idea, and then we talk about what Scripture says about that idea.

Now, in that, you're still exposing what scripture is saying, but it's not the same quite as we tend to do with our expositional preaching week in and week out here.

So this morning, my aim is to walk through uh two passages, one in Matthew 16 and one in Matthew 18.

And it's gonna be about church membership.

The second remark that I want to make this morning is about membership.

I just want to say from the onset, I know church is hard.

Church is hard because people are flawed.

I'm flawed, in case you didn't know.

And in case you didn't know, you're flawed too.

So we're both flawed.

We're sinful, we're selfish, we're prideful.

We don't give one another the benefit of the doubt as we should.

We're broken.

And this makes church hard.

It makes it difficult, these kind of relationships.

But it does not make church optional.

Church is hard, people are difficult, but that does not make church optional.

I know some people are divinely prohibited, we would say, from regularly gathering with the church due to illness, or they're serving maybe overseas in the military, or they have a unique job for a season.

And so there are things in our life that might keep us for a season away from the regular Sunday, Lord's Day gathering of the church, but it is not an option for us to kind of opt in and opt out.

So as we walk through this sermon this morning, if you feel convicted, I pray that it's God's word and it's spirit that's bringing that conviction.

If I step on your toes and offend you or hurt your feelings, I that's not my heart.

It's not my desire.

So hear me.

I'd love to, if you have questions, I want to talk with you about those things.

But my aim is to illuminate and to expose what the Bible is saying about the church and what it means to be a part of his church.

My heart is for all of us.

But I know sometimes talking about church, it's this awkward thing, like it's like talking about money or talking about divorce.

Like these things go on and we have to talk about them, but they're just kind of awkward.

And they're really awkward for me because this is my job, and then I need you guys to come and to hear what I'm saying, so that I believe you get encouraged and built up in your faith.

But my allegiance to the Lord supersedes any allegiance I have to making people just feel good or comfortable.

I truly believe that what the Bible says about his church and belonging to his church is so important, it's worth even offending or stepping on people's toes, although that is not my intent.

But we will not shy away from these things.

So let's enter into this conversation with gracious hearts.

And I want to start with a picture of helps us understand what the church is.

And think about an embassy.

Right?

An embassy is is a represents one nation inside of another nation.

The United States State Department has embassies in a hundred in 68 countries.

168 countries.

There's only one country in the world that has more embassies in more countries than the United States does.

If you want to know what that is, come ask me after the sermon.

So an embassy is an outpost.

It's an outpost that represents another nation.

It's an institution that declares its home nation's interests to the host nation and protects the citizens of the home nation living in the host nation.

For example, if you were living abroad and you lost your passport or expired, you would go to the embassy and then they would issue you a new passport.

Now, the embassy doesn't make you a citizen.

If you're an American citizen, this happens to you.

The embassy doesn't make you an American citizen.

That's important to know.

The embassy doesn't do that.

But they do officially affirm that you are, in fact, a U.S.

citizen.

And the church is like an embassy.

It represents the kingdom of Christ here in a foreign land, in a temporary place.

The church doesn't make you a Christian, doesn't have that kind of authority, but the church does affirm you are a Christian.

And it does this through church membership, namely through the ordinances.

For most people, church membership is not a sermon topic that they're just kind of thrilled about.

It's not a topic that seems exciting or interesting, but to be honest, it is very necessary.

After all, where is church membership in the Bible?

It's a question I get a lot.

Why are we forcing extra biblical demands on people?

We don't see this practiced in the scriptures.

So I'm pretty passionate about church membership, and I think you should be too.

I think it's biblical, I think it's necessary, and I hope that you will see this this morning, how central church membership is to being a Christian.

Now, if you're unsure or a skeptic, or your first impulse, again, is to ask, well, where's that at the Bible?

Show us where Jesus says, everyone who follows me must be a member of Proclamation Church or a member of a church.

It's a good question.

It's a really good question.

It's a good instinct.

But the root of that question, or I should say the root of that question is good.

Where at in the Bible?

It's all over the scriptures.

All over the New Testament.

All over.

There's an understanding that if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you will be submitted to and belong to a local church.

So maybe I grant you for sure the word membership is not in the Bible, but the concept and the practice very much is.

No.

Well, that's where the language falls short.

Sometimes you might hear someone say, I joined a church.

It's a little closer language.

I joined a church.

I'm a part of something.

The real concept of church membership is submission.

Church submission.

So I don't go around saying, hey, I'm a big proponent of church submission, because I feel like that needs a lot more unpacking than church membership.

But it is what we're called to.

I'll gladly use the term church membership and I'll define it and we'll see what the Bible says about it.

But first I want to just take a moment and acknowledge a couple things.

One, the way that we practice church membership here in our context is going to look different.

So if we're a church and we're in Iran or North Korea, we're so small in number, there's so few believers in our circles that we don't need to kind of have some of the extra layers of what it means to kind of come in and be a part of our church.

Why?

The culture has built all these barriers for us.

So if you're in North Korea and you're like, hey, I want to be a part of your church, and we kind of get to know you a little bit, we hear your testimony, we see evidence in your life, that's it.

We don't have to have a class or have you read a book.

Just the fact that you're in a nation that is so hostile to the things of God.

They're probably not going to have the same process we do.

But here we live in a day and age and in a culture around us where so many people think they're Christians.

They grew up in the church, they shook the pastor's hand, they went down at the altar and said a prayer.

There's so many different things that go on, they just assume I'm a Christian.

Without ever having the church hear their testimony, see evidence in their life, and then continue.

Yeah, we affirm that.

We think you're a Christian as well.

They kind of self-identify as Christians.

And we don't see that in the New Testament.

The pattern, the usual typical pattern we see in the New Testament, is the church, the local church, preaching, proclaiming Christ.

Then when a believer or someone makes a profession of faith and they see evidence of their faith, they baptize that brother or sister, bringing them into the church, affirming their belief.

Again, not making them a Christian, not granting them citizenship, but affirming citizenship.

So it might be practiced different ways, but we find it in our culture.

It's really good to strive for what we call regenerate, regenerate church membership.

And what that means is regeneration is a big theological word which just means born again.

It means you've been born again.

You were once dead in your sin, Christ has saved you, you're born again.

It's regeneration.

And so if you're a member of our church, to the best of our ability, we want to make sure that you're born again.

And so that's what we're striving for: a regenerate church membership in that matters.

So the second thing I want to say is it seems like this idea of church membership has fallen on hard times.

It's not very esteemed or valued as it once was.

I'm going to give some research from Barter Research Group.

They surveyed thousands of American Christians and their findings were interesting.

They categorized practicing Christians, okay?

So there's a categorization, practicing Christians as Christians who attend church on average once a month.

So that's one category.

Go to church once a month, practicing Christians.

The next, they would categorize church adults.

And these are people who have attended church at least once in the last six months.

So you have church adults and you have um you have cat practicing Christians.

You're a church adult, you've gone to church once in the last six months.

And this is what they found.

For practicing Christians, this would say their faith is an important role in their life, it takes an important role.

And they attend church on average once a month.

27% of the time, so over a quarter of the time, they go to more than one church.

So this is an active, practicing Christian, a quarter of the time, over a quarter, 27% of the time, they go to more than one church, splitting their time between churches.

Now, for the church adult category, they attend church at least once every six months, and 38% of the respondents said they go to more than one church.

So just this little snapshot, this little data, if you will, reveals in our culture how common it is for people to just kind of have a kind of laissez-faire idea about church.

If I want to go, I'll go.

If I don't feel like I want to go, I probably won't go.

And what church do you want to go to this month?

Where do you want to go?

And so you begin to see the need for the local church to say, hey, it's not just enough that you come here on Sunday morning and you sit in a seat.

That doesn't make you a Christian.

It doesn't make you a part of our church, it makes you an attender to our service.

We're glad you're here.

But we see a pattern in our culture of people just kind of in and out and over here and over there, and they're not committed.

They're not in, they're not in agreement.

This is what church membership should bring about: a commitment, an authority, a weight in your life that anchors you, that the rest of your life circles around.

Your week.

And again, I don't say this because I think everyone should just come here and give money so I can get paid more.

Your week should revolve around the Lord's Day gathering of the local church.

That should be your highest priority in the week.

I say that and I'm gonna say at the same time, I get it.

Job, family, sickness, all kinds of things happen.

So no one's here ticking a box.

Well, who's here?

Who's not?

Who's here?

But there's an idea that our life begins to have a pattern, and it's revolved around the gathered church.

The church gathered together in the Lord's day.

Why?

Well, one, because you you need to be here to hear what God has for you from the elders of the church, from his word, from those who are preaching.

You need to be here to worship him corporately together through song, to confess together our sins, to hear the word proclaimed.

But you also need to be here for one another.

You need to be here for the other person who's struggling, who needs encouragement in their faith.

They need you to talk to them, to encourage them, just to be present and to be glorifying the Lord and singing to them and to the Lord as Colossians commands.

So we gather together for these things.

So important.

And I would argue that our thinking on church membership, the more we think about what it means to submit and belong and be committed, the healthier our interactions with one another get.

The healthier kind of the atmosphere that the culture is as a church.

I found Jonathan Lehman's writings on the and his books very helpful in this area.

And I've gleaned a lot from them.

And if you've read the book, Church Membership, some of this, my chairman you'll recognize is from that book.

And he lists out a symptom or some symptoms of wrongful thinking about church membership.

I'm just going to read a few of these.

He says, these are kind of symptoms we see in our culture within the church that reveal our low thinking about what it means to submit and belong to a church.

Here are some.

Christians think it's fine to a church to attend a church indefinitely without joining or becoming a member.

Christians think of being baptized apart from joining the local church.

As if it's something separate from being unified with the church.

Christians perpetually take the Lord's Supper without joining the local church, as if it's kind of their own thing.

Christians, again, view the Lord's Supper as communion as their own private mystical experience for Christians and not as an activity for church members who are incorporated into body life together.

Christians don't integrate their Monday to Saturday lives with the lives of other saints.

Christians assume they can make perpetual habits of being absent from the church's gatherings a few Sundays a month or more.

Christians make major life decisions, accepting jobs, moving, choosing a spouse, etc., without considering the effects of those decisions on the family of the church.

And without consulting the wisdom of the church's leaders and members.

Christians buy homes or rent apartments with scant regard for how the factors such as finances and cost and distance will affect their abilities to serve their church.

Christians don't realize that they're partially responsible for both the spiritual welfare and the physical livelihood, excuse me, of other members of their church.

Even members they don't even necessarily know that well or know at all.

In this situation, when one mourns, one mourns by himself.

One rejoices, one rejoices by himself.

And so Lehman's just kind of painting this picture, this way of thinking that so many Christians have.

That there's the church, I appreciate it.

It's there when I need it, but I'm not a part of it.

I'm not responsible for one another.

They're not responsible for me.

Maybe you've never thought about belonging to a church and how it would affect or how it should affect how you live and how you practice the ordinances, communion and baptism, and who you're responsible for.

But as we consider it, what it means to belong to a church, hopefully you'll see how important it is to become a member, submit to, belong to a local church.

Now I know that this feels like a long runway for a short flight, but stick with me on this.

Let me ask you this question.

Who speaks for heaven on earth?

Who represents Jesus on earth?

The people of Israel did under the old covenant.

Jesus did what he was walking the earth.

Then he instituted something while he was here, before he ascended.

Called the church.

The local church.

Now maybe you've heard the term the universal church or the Little Sea Catholic Church.

This is, if you never heard that, what that means is all believers throughout all time are part of this universal church.

All repentant, regenerate people who belong to Christ are a part of the universal church.

Praise God for that.

But it is the local church who represents heaven on earth.

It's the local church that does this through the proclamation of God's word and through the correct observation of the ordinances, baptism and communion.

Here's what I mean.

Baptism is the first sign that someone is a believer.

Communion is the ongoing sign.

Baptism is when a new person who's new in the faith, they profess Christ, they've repented of their sin, they seem to be following Christ, and they say, I'm new in Christ.

I want to be identified publicly as a Christ follower.

And so that person then makes a right confession of faith.

They declare who God is.

And then it's the church that baptizes that brother or sister, affirming their faith, giving them the initial sign.

Of baptism.

And communion is the ongoing sign.

We continue to affirm one another as Christians.

We're going to do that later at the end of the sermon.

We're going to continue to affirm we are Christians.

We're holding to the right confession that Christ is God.

The price for our sin, our hope, and our faith is in him.

So you have the first sign, then you have the ongoing sign.

And then you have church discipline.

Church discipline is when the church can no longer affirm.

They can no longer continue to give someone the ongoing sign because they can't continue to affirm someone's faith.

This happens because someone is living an unrepentant sin.

As we look at Matthew 16 and Matthew 18, keep baptism and communion in mind.

Turn with me to Matthew.

The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

If you're not there, I give you plenty of time.

Okay.

Alright.

Look at me in verses.

Picking up in verse 13.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say the Son of Man is?

And they said, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

He said to them, But who do you say that I am?

Simon Peter replied, You are Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound, and whatever you bind, excuse me, on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosened in heaven.

Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

So you see, begin to see this, the reality of what Jesus is saying to Peter.

He's asking first and foremost for what?

Who can make a right confession?

Who can make a right confession?

Now, this is one of the key passages of the Roman Catholic churches that use to argue for papal authority.

The argument is that Jesus was saying Peter was going to be elevated to this supreme popal divine authority.

That Peter was, he was a leader in the early church, we know that.

But he did not have this kind of divine, special divine authority.

One commentator points this out as Jesus is talking about how he's going to build his church.

How is he going to build it?

He's going to build on the rock.

And what is the rock?

Well, there's been this debate about is it Peter or is it his confession?

Is it Peter or is it the confession?

Edmund Clowney, again, one commentator says the confession cannot be separated from Peter, neither Peter separated from his confession.

But Jesus builds his church on words, not on words, but on people who have his confession.

Excuse me, let me say that again.

Jesus will build his church not on words and not on people, but on people who believe the right gospel words.

Jesus will build the church on confessors.

Jesus will build his church on confessors.

Jesus then gives Peter and the apostles the keys of the kingdom.

He gives Peter the authority to do what Jesus had just done with him, to act as God's official representative on earth for affirming true gospel, confessions, and confessors.

The interaction here between heaven and earth in this passage is remarkable to consider.

Peter rightly confesses who Jesus is.

And Jesus said to the Peter's right answer, it came from, that right answer came from the Father.

Though Jesus was on earth, he spoke on behalf of heaven.

Then in the very next breath, he authorized Peter to do the same, to represent what's bound and loosened in heaven by binding and loosing on earth.

In other words, the apostles had heaven's authority to declare what on earth, on who on earth is a kingdom citizen, and therefore represents heaven.

Again, the apostles had heaven's authority to declare who on earth is a kingdom citizen and therefore who represents heaven.

Now turn with me to Matthew chapter 18.

Matthew 18 · chapter mention

Picking it up in verse 15 of Matthew 18.

If your brother sins against you, go and tell him first his faults between you and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother.

But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.

And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

Truly I tell you, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Again I say, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.

This passage clearly lays out how a church is to do church discipline.

Again, I know the word discipline in general has come into kind of such negative connotations in our culture.

Discipline isn't a kind of a thriving idea, let alone the idea of church discipline done by a church.

Now, for some that might feel almost like a cult or something.

But church discipline is one of the most loving and important things we can do as a church and as Christians.

And I just want to be clear, 90, probably 90 some percent, the vast, vast majority of church discipline, it happens and you know nothing about it.

Or only a few people know about it.

Because it begins and ends with the first thing.

A brother or a sister comes to another brother and sister and says, hey, you know, you've sinned against me in this way.

Maybe you've said something hurtful that was wrong, or maybe your lifestyle, the way you're living and rejecting the gospel, is causing a harm on my faith.

You're sinning against me by your disregard for God's commands.

You go to that brother and sister, they hear you, they repent, they confess, they apologize, and then they're restored.

And that's where the vast majority of church discipline happens, and it's over.

Praise God.

You're encouraged, they're encouraged, maybe you've done this with someone, maybe someone has done this to you, they just said, hey, you know, I think that you're just not being very serious about your faith.

Or they see a pattern of sin in your life and they just call you out on it.

Like, what are you doing?

What a blessing to have brothers and sisters who are committed to one another to do these things.

But that doesn't always end that way.

Sometimes, occasionally, there's a case where someone, a brother or sister, is living in an unrepentant sin.

They've received the first sign of baptism, church affirming them as Christians.

And they're continuing to receive the sign of communion, the second sign that we're still in communion.

You're a right confessor, but they're no longer living out that right confession.

Does that make sense?

They're no longer living as Christ has called them to live.

So the most loving and gracious and kind thing a church can do is say, we can no longer affirm your citizenship in heaven.

We love you.

We care about you.

We will be praying for you.

We'll be evangelizing you.

We will be evangelizing you.

We'll be having you into our home, we'll be meeting with you.

We cannot continue to affirm your confession.

We cannot continue to affirm your citizenship in heaven because you're not living at all like a citizen of heaven.

Now look again at look at verse 17.

I'll make a few observations here.

Picking it up in verse 17.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be uh to you as a Gentile and a tax collector, which means a non-believer.

Truly I say to you, whoever you buy, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loosen on earth shall be loosened in heaven.

Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.

So the first thing I want us to see, we must know who belongs to the local church in order to complete this step.

We don't share this kind of information with whoever wants to know.

This idea, this church discipline that's happening, that's that Jesus is commanding his people to do in Matthew 18.

We're not taking people out to the public square and saying, hey, listen, we got some news.

We're not standing out on Sunday morning and saying, All right, church, everyone who's just here this morning, we got a situation.

We have a brother or sister in unrepentant sin.

It's for those who are committed to one another.

It's those who have made the distinction of, I see what's going on at Proclamation Church or a Grace Church or a Life Point Church or a Gethsemane Baptist Church.

I see what's going on, and it's nice.

Versus those who are, I'm in.

This is my church.

These are my people.

I'm responsible for them.

I love them.

I'm committed to them.

I'm bearing the weight of this church.

See, those who have the authority to excommunicate this brother or sister had better be the ones who have been praying for him, who have been loving him, who have been serving him, who are committed to him.

Not just someone who walks in and takes a seat.

Not someone who shows up once every six months or whenever they feel like it, and this is the place they want to land on a Sunday morning.

It's for those who are submitted, those who are in.

How do we know who those people are?

Those who are who raise their hand, I want to belong here.

What's the steps to belong here at this church, at proclamation church?

Well, we want to we want you to sit down for a few hours and hear about us and what we believe.

That's called our membership class.

We want you to read more about what it means to become a member.

And we want to sit down with you.

We want to hear you tell us what your faith is.

We want to hear you articulate the gospel.

We want to hear you share how Jesus has saved you and changed you and how you're committed to Him.

And then we as a church, as members, we all decide.

Are we gonna pick up the responsibility for this brother and sister?

Are we gonna show up for them and bring them in, be responsible for them?

And if they live in sin, be responsible for doing this hard, hard thing, if required?

Yes, we will.

That's what it means to be in.

So the first thing we see in this passage is that they had to know who was in, who was committed.

The second thing is that this is done with the authority of heaven.

This is why the local church is so important.

There is nothing else that does this.

The elders don't do this.

A gathering of church people doesn't do this, a council doesn't do this.

The authority to do this based on God's word has been given to one institution, and that happens to be the only institution that will stand the test of time.

That is the local church.

So we're not just kind of playing games.

This isn't a fun thing.

We're just kind of like, you know, for church is kind of fun.

It's something to do on Sunday.

We're speaking for heaven.

We're representing heaven.

The third thing is this is done when the church is gathered.

If I haven't said enough things that have offended people this morning, let me go ahead and say something else.

The church isn't the church unless it's gathered together.

Now we're all a part of the church.

We're scattered out, we're we're doing our thing.

But this happens when we're assembled.

We're never more the church.

We're never more like heaven.

There's never more a foretaste of what heaven's gonna be like than when the church is gathered, as it's commanded in Hebrews 10, on the Lord's Day, which is the pattern we see in the New Testament.

So this is done when the church is gathered.

This is why you can't have internet church, virtual church.

It just doesn't, it's an oxymoron.

Right?

You can you can say it and you can put in meaning to it, but it doesn't work.

I'm just gonna say this.

It's the same thing like homosexual marriage.

It does not mean anything.

We can assign words to it or meaning to it, but you cannot redesign what God has instituted.

He's instituted the church to be a gathered and assembled thing.

Ecclesia is the Greek word.

It means gathered together.

We are an ecclesia, the gathered church.

So baptism is the doorway into the church.

It's the first initial affirmation of the church.

The Lord's Supper is the continued affirmation.

Continuing to affirm.

Church discipline.

So we say we cannot continue to affirm these things.

We can't continue on affirming this, brother and sister.

We love them too much, we love the church too much, we love the gospel too much to let someone act in a way that is contrary to scripture, willingly, knowingly, act in a way that's contrary to scripture without us saying no.

That's not what scripture says.

And no, that's you're not acting as a Christian should act.

This is a loving and gracious thing to do.

So when we say, when we say that membership matters, we mean it.

I mean it.

It really, it's meaningful.

It's not vote on just vote on a budget or put in some deacons to help serve in some areas.

It really, really matters because we're representing heaven on earth.

And again, it's the loving thing we can do.

It's so loving and gracious to be able to affirm someone as a believer or not a believer.

As Christians, we should be clear about what it means to follow Christ, what it means to be a part of his church.

We should be clear on what the gospel is.

So many people want to have conversations about church and what it means to be a part of the church, but they can't even tell us what the gospel is.

That God is holy and perfect and just.

This is his universe, his creation.

He says all things, he made all things.

It's his.

And then we as men have rebelled against him.

We've chosen to do our own thing, go our own way.

And then Christ has come because we need a savior.

Because in our rebellion, we've separated ourselves from our creator.

We've separated ourselves that we're destined without salvation to be condemned in hell.

So we need a savior that is Christ Jesus.

So we respond in repentance and faith to what Christ has done.

We should be clear about the gospel and clear about what the local church is.

It's interesting.

I mentioned this a moment ago.

All other institutions will fail.

Every single one of them is going to be undone.

It will be undone.

The government, universities, peace accords, even the institution of marriage, which is God has brought about, and the institution of government, which God has brought about, will be dissolved and done away with.

But the bride of Christ, the church, it will not be done away with.

It will stand the test of time.

Again, an embassy, it's an institution that represents one nation inside another nation.

It declares its home nation's interests to the host nation, and it protects the citizens of the home nation living in the host nation.

Our home is in heaven.

We are foreigners, aliens, and strangers.

But it's a job of the local church to protect and advocate and defend its citizens, to share the good news of the gospel with the people of this land.

The church is God's means for reaching the nations.

We're to submit, to join.

But we're not called to just reject, to let go of, to just have an opinion of like, well, it doesn't really matter.

Christ has died for his bride.

We likewise should follow after Christ, cherishing and loving the church.

1 Peter 2 says that we are strangers and sojourners.

This is not our home.

But while we are here, we represent a better nation, a better kingdom, the kingdom of Christ.

The kingdom will be established through the bride, the church.

The king will return.

And when he returns, all creation will bow.

And the king will feast with his bride.

And the church, his bride.

The church represents this heaven on earth.

We're broken, we're sinful, we're fledgling, we're making mistakes.

But the church, the bride of Christ, purchased by his blood, is committed to him and committed to one another.

So let us be clear about that.

Let us be clear about that.

Let's pray.