Baptist Distinctives: The Doctrine of the Church

So thank you.

If you would, in your Bibles, turn to Matthew.

Actually, it's not Matthew, it's Timothy.

First Timothy, chapter three.

That's a way to put brother Donaldson on the spot.

Aren't you glad he came to us?

We couldn't go to him.

He loved us before we loved him.

Sacrifice that he made on Calvary.

First Timothy, chapter three.

Again, the Baptist distinctives.

Look at verse 14.

This has been our text the last three Wednesday nights.

So these things write, I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly.

But if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to

behave thyself in the house of God.

Now notice again the house of God, which is the church of the living

God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

The church is to be the pillar and ground of the truth.

Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we do thank you for the church.

We thank you for our church, family and Lord, what a blessing

it is.

And I pray, Lord, again that we would see the importance of understanding

this most important doctrine and interpreting these Scriptures

biblically and interpreting them right.

Or may the Holy Spirit do the guiding tonight.

I do ask that you would just encourage us and help us to be unified

and work, working together for the cause of the great commission

of leading people to Jesus, seeing him baptized and Lord discipled.

We thank you and love you again.

In Jesus name, Amen.

The Baptist distinctives are a collection of biblical truth unique

to Baptists.

I'm not saying that each one of these doctrines are unique to

Baptists.

I'm saying the collection of them is unique to Baptists and that's

why they're called the Baptist distinctives.

We've covered several doctrines already.

I will not review those tonight.

We'll do that next Wednesday night.

But tonight I want to hop right back into number six.

So we're on number six, and that is the doctrine of the church.

In second Timothy, chapter two, verse two, again Paul says to

Timothy, the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses

the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to

teach others.

Also, I want to again remind you the Bible makes it clear that

the church, the churches are to be the caretakers of the truths

of the Bible, that we are to pass them the things that we have

heard and learned, we're to pass them to the next generation.

And they in turn should pass them to the next generation and to

teach others.

Also.

When we think about the doctrine of the church and the biblical

definition of the church, and that is there is one kind of church

described in the Bible.

And that is a local, visible assembly, a local visible church,

the universal, invisible, made up of the saved, has become an accepted

belief of many Protestants and some Baptists.

So the again, what's being taught out there by most Protestant

churches and even some Baptists is that the church is universal.

It's invisible that it's made up of all the saved.

The Catholic Church is a.

They believe in the universal, visible church, that they are the

church, the universal, visible church, and the Pope is the head.

When the Protestants came out of Catholicism, they're the ones

who came up with this ideal that, well, there's not a physical

universal church, it's really an invisible universal church, some

kind of mystical church out there that all the saved are a part

of.

What is a church?

What is the Bible definition of a church?

Well, based upon the Greek, again, the word ekklesia, which is

found 115 times in the Bible, it's a called out assembly.

That's what the word ekklesia means in the Greek.

And here Jesus said, I will build my church.

He speaks about my church.

What does that mean?

Well, again, mine meaning a called out assembly of believers,

baptized believers fulfilling Christ's commands or fulfilling the

Great Commission.

And that is the purpose of the church is to spread the gospel, to

teach the gospel, to win others and win people to Jesus, to

baptize them in the water by immersion only because baptism means

to plunge under and then to disciple them.

So the purpose of any church is to evangelize, to baptize and

then disciple or stabilize.

And so by definition, and by the word ekklesia, again, an ecclesia

is an assembly, an assembly.

And by definition, it must be local and visible.

You can't have an unassembled assembly.

That's a contradiction of terms.

Kind of hard to fit that in the definition and in keeping with

Paul's three analogies that he gives us, and those analogies of

the church are a body, a building and a bride.

And we'll cover those a little more in a minute.

But again, that illustrates that by way of the body of Christ,

Paul uses a body again for churches.

And I'm going to cover that at the end.

But again, you can't have a body that's made up of, you know,

bones over there and muscle over there and blood over there.

In order to be a body, it's got to be assembled together.

You can't have a building where the lumber's over there and

the cement's over there and the nails are over there.

And you know, it's got to be assembled in order to be a building.

Who wants to marry a universal invisible bride, Right?

You want to marry a bride that's invisible?

Nobody, you know.

So again, in meeting with the analogies that Paul makes, word pictures

that Paul makes, in order for us to understand the church and how

it functions even better, it certainly points towards a visible

church, a local visible church.

The first church established by Christ again is our example.

And that is again, Jesus Christ said, I will build my church.

Again.

The church was not started by Peter.

It was not started in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

It was started by Christ before Luke chapter 6:8, in which

the apostles were chosen out of them and that them was the church,

because Corinthians tells us that he placed in the church first

apostles.

And so once, I believe, the church was started around John chapter

four, when Jesus and his disciples began evangelizing, began

baptizing, began building the church, that's when it started.

And they started, of course, with the materials that John the

Baptist gathered.

And so again, the Bible definition of a church is a called

out assembly of baptized believers fulfilling the Great Commission.

And I won't go through all the different illustrations I've given,

especially the Hula Hoop illustration, but not all churches

with a sign out front that says church on them are biblically

a church.

You have to be fulfilling the purpose of a biblical church in order

to be a church.

You might just be more of a fellowship or more of a, you know,

a place to come and eat, a place to come and meet people, a

country club, whatever.

But maybe, maybe not by definition a church.

They again, around 300 AD, we have the rise of the Catholic Church.

And because of that, the Catholic Church began to try to get

everyone under their umbrella, this universal, visible church ideal

with pope and this hierarchy that was put in place.

And so those who would not gather into the fold began to be

persecuted by the Catholic Church.

And that's why you have the Dark ages.

From around 500 AD to 1500 AD, the Catholic Church was the big,

you know, the big bull in town.

They were the ones who were in charge.

If you weren't a part of them, then you were going to suffer.

Whether, for instance, if they found scripture in your house, that

was in your language, if you found scripture in your house that

was English, you were going to die.

That was the penalty.

You died.

You didn't get to have a Bible in your own language.

They only wanted them, they only wanted the priests to have Bibles.

And they were all in Latin and Whatever the case is.

And so just now we've renamed it the Middle Ages, or instead of

the Dark Ages, because it's not politically correct to call it

the Dark Ages, even though millions of people were slaughtered

by the Catholic Church.

And so, again, that's where the rise of this universal ideal.

So what happened?

Well, we have the Protestant Reformation.

We have Martin Luther and so many others who broke away from the

Catholic Church.

And as they broke away from the Catholic Church, they carried

a little bit of baggage with them.

And we're so thankful for the Protestant Reformation.

I, praise the Lord, woke everybody up.

And William Tyndale and so many others gave their life martyred

for the cause of Christ.

In fact, what you hold in your lap, if you hold a King James Bible

in your lap, it's 90% of William Tyndale's work, who was burned

at the stake for doing it by the Catholic Church.

It's amazing the price that was paid for this.

And so these men who risked life and limb, Martin Luther, again,

so many others who protested against the Catholic Church started

the movement.

But I would again tell you, there were people who went through

the Dark Ages who never protested anything in the 1500s because

they didn't need to protest because they never became a part

of the Catholic Church.

And that was those who believe like we do.

Baptists.

We had many names during the Middle Ages, during the Dark Ages,

and most of those names were given to us by the Catholic Church.

Whether it was Dantist or Montanist or Anabaptist was the,

you know, became kind of that again, re.

Baptizers.

That's where we get our Baptist name.

We don't get it from John the Baptist.

Okay?

Some people say, well, you know, we call him Baptist Church

because it's John the Baptist.

He is the Baptist.

That means he was the baptizer.

We get our name honestly from.

In a negative way, from the Catholic Church.

And so again, as we think about the visible universal church

that Catholicism put in place, and now the Protestants break away,

and instead of breaking away completely and go into what the Bible

says, they come up with this universal, invisible church.

And many of the Protestants did have some hierarchy where you

have bishops and you have cardinals and other things that.

And, you know, the local congregation doesn't have autonomy.

They're not independent.

So in light of this, we also talked about last Wednesday night

and preached about how Holy Spirit baptism and that doctrine

has taken such a misinterpretation from the Bible.

Again, John the Baptist prophesied of the baptism by Jesus

with the Holy Spirit.

In other words, Jesus Christ was going to baptize them in the

Holy Spirit and with the Holy Spirit.

And that happened on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two.

And that's why Acts chapter one, verse eight says, and you shall

receive power not because the Holy Ghost comes upon you, but after

the Holy Ghost comes upon you.

And so in Acts chapter two, what you have is not the start of

the Church.

You have the empowerment of the Church in that which the baptism

of the Holy Spirit took place.

And after that we had the feeling of the Holy Spirit.

And it says that Peter was filled the Spirit and stood up and

preached.

The man who denied Christ 50 days earlier denied Christ, stands

up and preaches to this crowd of thousands, thousands calls them

murderers.

The man who denied Christ three times stands up and preaches.

Why?

Because of the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

No, because of the feeling of the Holy Spirit.

And so what are we as Christians supposed to do?

Are we to seek the baptism of the Holy Spirit?

No, we're just seek the feeling of the Holy Spirit, you say?

Well, you just parse in words.

No, this is not parsing words.

There's been a lot of wrong doctrine.

Come out of this baptism, Holy Spirit stuff and understand that

we are commanded.

Paul says in Ephesians to be filled.

Be not drunk with wine wherein is excess, but be ye filled with

the Spirit.

And we should seek the filling of the Spirit.

Again, it's not about how much of the Holy Spirit we have, it's

how much of the Holy Spirit has a hold of us.

When you got saved, the Holy Spirit came and indwelt you.

So thankful for that.

And what the feeling of the Holy Spirit is, is how much of the

Holy Spirit has of you.

Are you letting him into every room of your life?

Have you presented your body a living sacrifice?

Are you totally yielded to him?

And so we come to that.

And I was going to spend a little more time on the baptism,

but we're going to move on because tonight I want to get to

the practical aspects.

Why is this important?

Why is this important?

Why is it important that you understand that the church did not

begin on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, but began in the Gospels,

because the Bible says it, number one, Jesus said it himself.

Jesus began and started the church.

There's no birthday candles in Acts chapter two.

And then it impacts many other doctrines if you're not careful whether

it's the Holy Spirit baptism.

But practically it impacts it.

So I'm going to give you some practical things tonight.

So number one, why does this matter?

Why does it matter whether we believe in a universal, invisible

church or a local visible church?

Well, because the universal, invisible church idea, it's not Bible,

demeans the local church.

In other words, when you think about universal, you think about

bigger, and therefore the local assembly is subject to it.

It's like we're saying, if all the saved make up the church, by

the way, that would be a lousy, as I've said so already the

last couple of weeks, if all the saved make up the church, that

would be a lousy pillar and ground of the truth because there

are so many different views, so many different interpretations

out there of the scriptures.

I mean, vastly different.

And so it's important that we understand that that saying there's

a universal, invisible church out there demeans the local church

and that it gives the ideal that the universal, the larger, should

be superior over the smaller.

You say, well, how does that matter?

Well, the universal visible church we think about again, the

Catholic Church, as the Protestants again broke away, but

they kept some of the hierarchy, the hierarchical system

in place.

Why?

Well, because they still believed in a universal church.

And therefore, if it's universal, then all the same, and

therefore one man could have authority over several churches,

several churches.

So the Pope in the universal visible concept is over all those

churches.

A billion people.

That's amazing, isn't it?

And then the universal church, ideal, invisible church is you have

these hierarchical systems within Protestant denominations like

the Methodist Church or the Lutheran Church or some of these

others.

And so.

And get that idea.

So it sets it up.

It sets it up to again, the system of people influencing churches

who are not even in those churches.

That somebody sitting in an office in Austin or somebody that's

a little political, but I wasn't going to go there.

Somebody sitting in an office in Des Moines, Iowa, Ohio, whatever,

is making up the rules for our church.

That's what happens, that they have control, that they can move

their pastors around like the Methodist church moves their pastors

around.

The congregation doesn't get to decide per se.

They don't just move them around.

That's not what the Bible.

That's not what the Bible implicates at all.

It shows us that each church, the body of Christ is each individual

church.

Heritage Baptist Church, you are the body of Christ.

Victory Baptist Church at Weatherford.

They are the body of Christ with Christ as the head of Victory,

as Christ is the head of Heritage and Christ is the head of

Worth Baptist.

Christ is the Head of Central Baptist and Denton, Christ the head.

You know, and I could go on and on and on.

You say, well, how can Christ have so many heads?

Well, the Bible also says that Christ is the head of every man,

so be careful.

This, it's an analogy, is helping us to understand the church's

relationship with Jesus Christ.

And he should be the head of each church in that he governs it

by way of his scriptures.

All right, so by the way, you say, well, the Bible says there's

pastors, bishops and elders.

Well, pastor, the word pastor, bishop, and elder all refer to the

same office.

And in this church, this is the office that I hold.

But it's the same office.

It's different way or different way of describing the office

that I hold.

Pastor, bishop, or elder.

Okay.

You say, well, are there still apostles around?

If there's still apostles around, then yes, there could be

a hierarchical system because the apostles had authority over all

the churches.

Well, the apostles, one of the.

Again, as I've said this before, Acts tells us that in order

to be an apostle, you would have had to seen Jesus Christ in

the flesh.

And about 100 A.D.

we know that John the Revelator, the apostle, died.

And with him died the apostleship.

There was no more apostles, no need for the apostles, because now

you had Christ as the head.

Through his Word.

When that which is perfect has come, that which is a part will be

done away with.

Right now I look through a glass darkly.

That verse is so misused.

That verse saying, I look through a glass darkly but then face

to face.

That verse is referring to the church in its infancy, the church

as a toddler, when it wasn't clear, when there was a need for

God to reveal himself directly to mankind through tongues and through

prophecies.

But there in Corinthians, it says, when that which is perfect

has come, that which is in part will be done away with.

And it says, tongues shall cease, prophecy shall be done away

with.

All those were done away with.

Because now we no longer look through a glass darkly because we

have the completed Word of God.

When that which is perfect has come, that is not referring to Jesus

Christ.

That is not an it.

Jesus is not an it.

He's a he.

This is an it.

This is the perfect Word of God.

Complete around 990 A.D.

everything we need for the church to function, everything we

need for the church to function in every aspect is found

in the Word of God.

No longer a need for apostles, no longer a need for this hierarchical

system.

And by the way, there was really no hierarchical system in

the New Testament either you just had apostles and then it was

pastors because pastor, elder, bishop again is the same office and

so no longer have those.

I've gone a little too long on that point.

So again, why does it matter?

It demeans the local church.

Number two, it misinterprets and therefore distorts the application.

Again, if a universal or universal, visible or invisible can

apply to which one applies.

In other words, what verses apply to the universal church and

what applies to the local church?

You ever thought of it that way?

You know, for the church to operate properly and be effective,

its true nature needs to be understood.

Again in Second Corinthians, chapter 12, if the universal invisible

2 Corinthians 12 · chapter mention

church so called, then how can all the the Bible in 1 Corinthians

12, in 1st Corinthians 12 and you have that also in Romans 12 you

have the the Bible refers to as the gifts that were given to the

church.

Right?

To members of the churches.

All right, so it says some are hands, some are feet, some are taught,

but all members of the body.

Everybody remember the analogy Paul gives in both instances, right?

And it says whether one member suffer.

What does it say?

All the members suffer?

Well, if it's a universal invisible church, how would one person

know that another person is suffering?

If it's a universal invisible church and I'm and there's a one

sided person who's saved over in the Middle east, which we know

this is going on, who's suffering?

How am I going to know they're suffering?

Whether one member suffer, they all suffer.

I know that sounds silly because it is silly because again

as you think through it, you're going, then it has to be local,

visible, it has to apply to each individual church.

There are many examples that we could do and give.

Let me look at some of the others I wrote down.

But again, because the application is that we are a body.

That's what analogy that Paul uses.

That's the word picture Paul uses.

And I did not bring my other sheet down here, but it speaks about

some being eyes and some being arms and that the church would be

what have unity.

The church would unify, work together.

Is there unity among all the saved today?

Oh no, not even close.

Not even close.

We have many and I will say majority of churches in America preaching

a false gospel, preaching works for salvation, the that you

got to do this and this and this in order to be saved.

So there's not unity.

Well then there must be something wrong because we are commanded

to have unity in the Church, that when one member suffers, we

all suffer.

That one member shouldn't be put above another member.

That each gift that has been given to each member is as important

as any other gift.

Praise the Lord.

Right.

And that God has given those gifts to each member as he saw fit.

I'm summarizing.

But in other words, we as believers have been given the gift,

our gifts from the Lord at salvation.

And those gifts are to be used in the church, in the body of Christ,

to build up the church, to equip members of the church, to encourage

members of the church, to provoke members of the church.

Right.

Maybe some have one gift, some may have three or four.

And even there in First Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, Paul

encouraged them, said, hey, no one should be jealous of another

person's gift, because again, God is the one who gives those gifts

as he sees fit.

And then he goes on to say, but everybody should use their gift.

I'm summarizing, really summarizing.

Everybody should use your gift.

Everybody should be a part.

Everybody should be a part of ministering to one another in the

body of Christ.

Everybody should want to do that.

We should want to encourage each other.

We should want to work together.

And this is usually where I use a silly analogy, that there are

some churches who fight over the colored carpet.

That should never happen because our purpose is to spread

the Gospel.

And as long as we are focused on our purpose, we're not going to

have schisms and little skirmishes over stuff that doesn't

matter to a hill of beans.

Amen.

Amen.

That we hupitas.

So we line up as soldiers of the Lord, as soldiers of the cross,

and fulfill the Great Commission baptizing believers.

Then number three.

Why is it important or why does it matter?

Well, because the Great Commission was given in Matthew 28

was also given the other three Gospels.

If the commission and the Gospels was given and the church

was not already in existence, then who was the commission given

to?

Was it given to all the saved?

Well, if that's the case, then it's going to be kind of hard to

defend or hard to argue or hard to debate who is authorized

to give the ordinances to baptize and give the Lord's Supper.

The Bible makes it clear that the church is the one who has the

authority to do so.

But if all the saved of the church, then that means each individual

could just go baptize our Son in the bathtub at home.

Is that Bible?

No.

You just go in your refrigerator, take out some grape

juice, and, you know, get you some bread and have the Lord's Supper

at the house.

No, no, no.

We know that the ordinances, those things ordained by God, that

commission, or that those ordinances were given to churches.

Churches.

The church is the only one authorized to again give those ordinances.

It's not even me, by the way.

When we baptize, I don't have the authority to go home and baptize.

The authority to baptize is not given to the pastor.

It's given to Heritage Baptist Church.

Do you realize over the years we've had people baptized who were

not even on our staff?

And this is very, very few exceptions.

We wouldn't do this normally at all, but.

But there have been a few exceptions where the church could

vote literally to have anyone in the congregation baptize someone.

You could do that.

The church is the one who has the authority to send missionaries

out, right?

It's the one who has the authority to start other churches.

And so who has the authority to ordain ministers?

We know that the epistles teach very clearly that.

That the churches are the ones who have the authority to ordain

ministers.

Otherwise, anybody could just do it.

It's a novel concept.

That's why when we ordain, when we ordained Jonathan Moore or

we ordained Jesse Latta, it was really.

You had to vote on it if you were at the ordination service.

If you'll remember, we had the church vote because the church is

the one doing the ordaining.

We're just making sure, as the presbyter, as the preachers, to make

sure they're qualified and to recommend to the church that you

ordain that man.

Isn't that cool?

The authority is in the church.

Jesus started the church.

So again, the Great Commission was given to the church.

And then lastly, there's about seven or eight of these, but I'm

just going to give you four.

And this one is so apparent in our day and age.

Why does it matter?

Well, it matters because a universal, invisible church concept

tends towards denominationalism.

Denominationalism, in other words, as we've already talked about,

a little bit, control of churches by outside officers.

Outside officers.

In other words, churches giving up their autonomy, their independence

to an outside source and therefore having to tolerate doctrinal

differences for the sake of the all.

And we would call this the ecumenical movement today.

The ecumenical movement's been around a long, long time, but it's

become very popular in the last 50 years.

Many of them associated with strong movements.

You know, I forget the name of the Men's movement.

Several years ago there was meeting in the, you know, NFL stadiums

and yeah, Promise keepers, many of those type of things.

And many of those have, have good ambitions and even good goals.

But the problem is there had to be a compromise in order for that

to happen.

And if we're compromising whether or not I like Dr.

Pepper, but you like Coke, not a big deal, but we have a Catholic

priest sitting on the platform with a Protestant bishop.

And then, and I could go on down the line and then you had the

Baptist sitting over here with, with all of them.

You said, well, what makes Baptists any better than any of them?

The doctrine they teach, the Catholics teach works for salvation.

You have to do this, this and this in order to go to heaven, by

the way.

We're not.

There are a lot of good Catholics out there and there'll

be Catholics in heaven as long as they're putting their trust in

Jesus Christ and not in the Pope and not in their priests.

I'm telling you, we're gonna get to heaven.

We're gonna be surprised.

We're like, that guy went to the Catholic Church.

How's he here?

Well, he put his faith and trust in Jesus.

Instead of the.

You say, well, is there enough truth in Catholic doctrine for them

to be able to.

There's a tiny, itsy bitsy piece of it.

And there's some of them that get it.

Same thing with the Lutherans or whatever else you want to say.

You have this other guy over here, this Protestant who believes

that baptism saves you.

Baptism getting wet doesn't get you to heaven.

It don't get you any closer than you were.

You just got really, really wet.

Right?

I'm telling you, we have the ecumenical movement that the universal

invisible church concept or even the visible church concept tends

towards doctrinal compromise.

And we are told, we are told to steadfast in the faith.

We are told to not let it slip.

We're told not to be cared about by every window doctrine.

We're told to keep the faith, be strong in the faith, quit you

like men, be strong.

We're not to compromise when it comes to Bible doctrine.

We're not to compromise when it comes to Bible truth.

And we certainly shouldn't get up and sit on the platform and let

somebody get up here and speak in a very, a very watered down version

of anything.

Because he didn't want to offend the Catholics.

He don't want to offend the Church of Christ and he don't want

to offend the Baptist.

So he's preaching something.

It's really, it's just a watered down social gospel that doesn't

have enough truth in it for anybody to get saved.

It's not a Billy Graham crusade.

We could all have a conversation about Billy Graham,

but my goodness, what, what a fiery evangelist who preached, by

the way, he was led to the Lord by independent Baptists and

started out as an independent Baptist man.

As time has gone on, ecumenical movement has asked for

everybody just to kind of lay down your arms.

Why can't we all get along?

There are points of interest that we can help and do when it comes

to helping people from a poverty point of view.

And there's some things we might be able to help, but I'm telling

you, we should never compromise and set on the platform

or have an Easter program with others.

Preachers, priests, whatever you want to call them, and other

denominations and other entities who do not preach the truth

of the gospel of Jesus Christ, who do not believe that we are saved

by grace through faith, never should compromise.

And as I've already stated to you, all doctrine is important, all

teaching is important.

I'm talking about Bible truth and we shouldn't compromise any truth

found in the word of God.

So this universal concept tends towards this denominationalism.

Again, a oneness.

If Paul is using the analogy of the body of Christ and says we

ought to be unified, we ought to be one in the body of Christ,

and that applies to everyone, then there's going to have to be

compromise.

There'll have to be compromise.

And what does that lead to?

We know it's going to happen.

It's already been prophesied, it's going to happen.

There is a one world church coming, there's a one world government

coming, and there's a one world church coming.

And the way that's going to happen is we're already seeing it

and it's been going on for years.

And now we see it politically too.

Because now those of us who believe and practice the word of

God as it's written, when it comes to morality, hello, we are

now being ostracized.

I mean, there's some places that wouldn't even let Christians

who believe like we do come and eat in their restaurant.

If you believe that killing a baby in the womb is murder, there

are people, there was restaurant owners that wouldn't let

people in there.

I'm telling you folks, it's gonna get there.

It's gonna get there.

By the way, life begins at conception to kill, to abort a fetus

at any Point is murder.

I'm thankful God forgives.

By the way, Paul was a murderer.

He wrote over half the New Testament.

I just remind you that if you've been through an abortion and

you've gone through that man, God is a loving and wonderful God

who forgives.

Moses was a murderer.

Y'all remember?

Let me go throughout the Old and New Testament tell you who all

were murderers, but God forgave them and God used them mightily

even after that.

Isn't that amazing?

We have such a great God.

But let us Heritage Baptist Church never compromise.

Let us never give in to the political correctness of today.

And that why can't we all just get along?

And again, I think we can be content without being contentious.

We can disagree without being disagreeable.

We need to be loving, preach the truth in love.

The Bible says there are some churches out there and some movements

out there that are just meant.

And a Christian should never be identified or be described as

being mean and hateful.

Hello.

But not at the expense of compromise.

Never give in.

115 times the word ecclesia is used in the New Testament.

A hundred of those speaks of a definite local church.

In other words, the church at Philippi or the church at Colossae

or the churches of Galatia.

It refers to an individual church of the 15 times it speaks

of the church as an institution.

As an institution or in abstract.

Again, the metaphors that Paul uses bodybuilding and bride help

us to apply and understand what a true church is.

That in order to be an assembly, it has to be assembled

together.

I'm thankful for our livestream tonight.

I'm thankful that people can watch online.

I'm so thankful for that.

And we've come a long ways by the way, we started live streaming

in 2006.

I'm thankful for it.

We have shut ins at the house.

I think about the clems.

I know that watch and so many others that watch at home because

they cannot be here.

Praise the Lord.

I'm thankful for a ministry like that.

But I'm sorry, the Bible makes it clear that if you're watching

from online or you're watching a TV program, you're not in church.

Because a church is a called out assembly of born again baptized

believers.

And I'm telling you it makes a difference, doesn't it?

When you are in here rather than watching it online?

We found that out in Covid.

There's a difference.

There's oneness of all believers.

Listen and I'm done.

There is a oneness of all believers.

All Right.

So let me clear.

I'm not even parsing words here.

This is.

There is a oneness of all believers in that we're all a part

of the family of God.

If you're saved, the Bible says we become children of God, we

become family.

So be careful.

That Lutheran that accepted Christ as their savior and truly

accepted Christ, they're part of the family.

They're part of the family of God.

That Catholic who accepted, didn't put his faith in the Pope

or in some priests in a telephone booth, but it put his faith

and trust in Jesus Christ and his life, his death and his resurrection.

He's part of the family, or she's part of the family of God.

The Bible would also refer to the phrase called the kingdom of

God.

The kingdom of God.

We are part of the family of God.

We're part of the kingdom of God.

All the saved are part of the family of God.

And therefore we ought to love one another as family.

Bill Gaither, who's an Arminian, by the way, doesn't believe

in salvation by grace through faith or Armenian.

Sorry, not Calvinist.

No, Arminian, that's right.

He believes and works for salvation.

He publicly says it, but he wrote a song, and it's a good song.

I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God.

I've been washed in the fountain, cleansed by his blood and

I won't sing the whole thing, but joint heirs with Jesus as we

gather this far.

I'm so glad I'm a part of the family of God.

You may notice we say brother and sister around here.

It's because we're a family and our hearts are so dear.

Right.

The country church I was raised in, it was brother so and

so and sister so and so.

That's how you addressed everybody.

I don't think necessarily we have to do that.

I'm not saying that, but we are brothers and sisters.

It helps remind us we are brothers and sisters in Christ, joint

heirs with Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is our big brother.

And that's not being heretical at all.

That is what the Bible says.

He is our brother.

It's amazing, amazing truth.

Each member is a part of the body, and we ought to be working

together, functioning together for the good of the church.

Unity.

One purpose.

When one person gets sick, we all feel it.

You know, I think about Ms.

Gibson and just recently, again, a little setback and back

in the hospital, going on dialysis.

I pray for her every week.

I pray for her.

I think about the clems I have several.

I think about Ms.

Chalene and so many others.

Just praying for when one member hurts, we ought to hurt.

It's like when.

You know, when I have.

When my mother was sick so much I felt for her.

Right.

And we feel for each other.

We need to be careful.

We also take strength in one another.

We also take encouragement with one another.

We take help with one another.

We're to love one another, encourage one another.

Fellowship with one another.

Part of the family of God.

Amen.

Striving together laboring together with God let's all stand

let's sing a verse invitation hymn 500 pass me not O gentle Savior

after we pray Heavenly Father, we.

I hope tonight that we've made it clear I hope tonight it's been

in the right spirit.

Lord, we so thankful for those who in any denomination or any institution.

We're so thankful for those who put their faith and trust in

you and you alone, Lord, I'm thankful for my church family.

Thankful that we have a church family who loves one another and

works together to fulfill the Great Commission.

Lord, may you continue, Lord, to unify us.

May you continue to help us to be one body that we might fulfill

your commission in a greater way.

We love you and we thank you.

In Jesus name, amen.