What Is Church?

Good morning, Good News Church. Today we begin a new series of sermons. Isn't that exciting?

If this is your first time here, you're on the ground floor of something, that's wonderful.

So today we begin a new series called Church Unpacked. So this is Church Unpacked Part 1.

Last week, our associate pastor, Doug Davison, did a fantastic job of explaining

what this series is about. Do you remember that?

I told him I thought it was the best announcement we've had here in 15 years

as a church. Oh, which, by the way, this is our 15th year anniversary. Like, we've been 15...

I mean, it was four days ago, but like this is the Sunday. So in 15 years,

I don't think we had as good of an announcement as we did last week.

So Douglas Davison unpacked a box on stage that had all this stuff in it.

It had like a wooden spoon and an old-timey clock and a water gun and a pile

of cash, a pile of real cash. I looked at it afterwards.

And so he explained that this series is going to be an explanation of church life.

And so what we're going to do today, what we're going to do for the next several

weeks, We're going to begin to do metaphorically what Doug did literally last week.

Doug literally unpacked a box. Okay, what we are going to do over these next

several weeks is, I mean, I guess you probably know this, a lot of times when

people say things like, let's unpack that, they don't mean let's pull things out of a box, right?

Often they mean, let's take this,

like constellation of ideas and break it down into its individual parts and

then analyze them and understand them and explain them so that they make sense

in the living of our lives.

And so the plan over these next several weeks is to talk about worship and evangelism

and church discipline and church

giving and baptism and Lord's Supper and things like that so that we know

what to do and so that we know why we do what we do.

And so today's topic is very basic and foundational.

This will be an unusual sermon, I think, in that it will not be on a chapter of the Bible.

It will not be on a paragraph in the Bible. It will not be even on a single verse in the Bible.

Today, we are going to do a word study, okay? Do you know what that is?

Okay, so a word study is when a Bible teacher goes to the Bible and finds multiple

uses of the same word, and not typically in English, usually they go back to

the original language and they go, okay, where does this word appear in Scripture?

They find multiple uses of the same word in different portions of the Bible

in order to figure out how that word is used, like in a sentence,

in a paragraph, and therefore figure out what that word means, okay?

So today we are going to learn the word church, okay?

I think that's a good starting point for a series called Church Unpacked.

Let's start with church.

We're going to go to four different places in the Bible, four different passages

where the Bible talks about church.

Actually, we're going to go to four different places in the Bible where we find

the word ekklesia, or a form of the word ekklesia. Ekklesia,

if you go, I've never heard of that before. It's not an English word.

It is a Greek word. It is from ancient Greek because that's what the New Testament

was written in. The part of the Bible we're going to be learning this morning

is the New Testament, and it was originally written in Greek,

not English. If you did not know that, that's important to know, okay?

The Bible is very old, okay? Super old, way older than English,

okay? English did not even exist when the Bible was written.

So the New Testament was written in ancient Greek and whenever we look at our

Bibles, we are actually looking at a translation from the Greek into the English.

And so the word that's in the original is ekklesia.

And the word, as we look at these four passages, I'll just let you know,

three of the places that we're gonna turn to today, the Greek word ekklesia

is translated into the English word church, which is the way it is most of the time in the Bible.

One of the places we're going to look at today, the word ekklesia is actually

translated into the English word assembly.

And you're going to see why that's the case when it comes to that passage.

So we're not even looking at places where the Bible says church.

We're actually looking for places where the, where the original said ekklesia.

And we want to see what is that, how is that word used? What does it even mean?

What was the Bible talking about?

When I came up with this idea. So the first place we're going to go is Ephesians chapter 5, verse 25.

Ephesians 5:25

This verse that I'm going to read to you is a very famous verse,

and it is often taught when preachers preach about marriage,

okay? But for today, I am not preaching about marriage.

I am using this verse because it has the word church in it, and I want to show

you the way the word church is used. So here it is.

Ephesians chapter 5, verse 25.

Ephesians 5:25

It says, Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the, what is it?

The church and gave himself for her. How many of you have heard this verse before?

Yeah, yes. Very, very famous verse. I have preached on this verse many times

when I've talked about the topic of marriage.

But today we're not talking about the topic of marriage. I just want to zoom

in on what in the world was he talking about when he brought this up.

He says husbands are supposed to love their wives the same way that Christ loved

the church and he gave himself for her.

So what does the word church mean in this sentence? Well, I think you can tell

it's talking about a group of people, can't you?

Right? So you have husbands, that's a person. They're supposed to love their

wives, so husbands are people, and then they're supposed to love their wives and they're people.

Okay, and then Christ is a person, and Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

So Jesus gave himself for the church. We know that it must be talking about

a group of people when it says he gave himself up for her. because,

and this is just, we wouldn't know from this verse, but from the rest of the Bible we know.

Jesus Christ, when he died on the cross, did not die on the cross for buildings.

He did not die to save buildings. When it says, and gave himself up for her,

that's a reference to his death on the cross. Jesus did not die on the cross to save buildings.

Jesus did not die on the cross to save nonprofit organizations.

Jesus died on the cross to save people.

So the word ecclesia, the word church, is being used here to describe a group of people.

This particular verse is using the word church in a way that the way that theologians

call the universal church, okay?

And the universal church would mean all the Christians in the world.

Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the people that he called out

from all over the world. God's gigantic congregation across the planet.

That's what the word church means here. It's the universal church.

All right, let's go to Colossians chapter 4. And we're going to see the word

Colossians 4 · chapter mention

church again. But we're going to see that it's used in a slightly different way in Colossians.

So if you have your Bible, turn to Colossians chapter 4. And I will read to

Colossians 4 · chapter mention

you verses 15 through 16. This is the Apostle Paul. He's talking to a different

church here, but the same author as Ephesians.

And this is what he says this time. He says, Give my greetings to the brothers

in Laodicea. That's the name of a city.

And to Nympha, that's the name of a woman, okay, and the church in her home.

When this letter has been read among you, have it read also in the church of

the Laodiceans and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.

Okay, so how is the word church being used here? Well, the word church is again,

being used to describe a group of people, okay, particularly a group of Christians.

But this is not referring to the universal church, is it? How do you know?

Because there's no way every Christian in the universe is fitting in this lady's house, right?

The church that meets in her house. So what we see here, we got the church that's

in her house, and it says, see that you have it read also in the church of Laodiceans,

and see that you also read the letter from Laodicea.

So apparently, Paul sent a letter to one church in one city,

and he sent another letter to another church in the other city, right?

And then he told them, once you're done reading these letters,

exchange so that everybody knows what everybody got.

So the way the church is being used here, the word ecclesia is being used here

kind of the way that theologians, sometimes they will say the local church, okay?

So there's the universal church, and then there's the local church.

In this case, the word is being used to describe a group of Christians,

but it's describing a group of Christians that are in a particular location.

They're in a specific city at a specific place, and they are gathered,

and there's the church, okay? So we've got the universal church,

we've got the local church.

Now let's look at 1 Corinthians chapter 14. 1 Corinthians chapter 14,

1 Corinthians 14 · chapter mention 1 Corinthians 14 · chapter mention

starting in verse 8, this is a verse that is kind of like the marriage verse

in that most of the time a preacher preaches on it, they are talking about a whole other topic.

But again, I'm not going to get into the main topic of this verse.

I just want to show you the way the word church is used.

So in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, verse 18, the apostle Paul says,

1 Corinthians 14:18

I thank God that I speak in other languages more than all of you.

Yet in the, oh, there it is. Yet in the church, I would rather speak five words

with my understanding in order to teach others also than 10,000 words in another language.

Okay. So the topic that usually is brought up when preachers are preaching on

this is the topic of speaking in tongues. Okay. That's what he's referring to here.

When he says, I thank God that I speak in other languages, the word language

and the word tongue are synonyms.

At least they used to be in English. Okay. So back when people,

that phrase got made, it was because in English, that's what the word tongue

used to mean. If you said people of all different tongues, okay,

it didn't mean like all different shapes. It meant people that speak all different languages.

So in this case, though, it just translates the word languages.

But you can tell by the other words that are in this book, it's not,

when he says, I thank God I speak in other languages more than all of you,

he is not talking about like, I'm so glad I got to take Spanish one and two in high school.

He is saying that there is this miraculous thing that happened where I was able

to miraculously say words that I do not know.

And that's kind of the topic here. So you go, oh, are we going to learn about

speaking in tongues this morning? We are not, okay?

I just want to focus on the word church, but I'm just letting you know that's

what this is about. He says, I thank God that I speak in other languages, more than all of you.

Yet in the, and there it is, yet in the church, I'd rather speak five words

with my understanding in order to teach others also than 10,000 words in another language.

Like when I'm there in this gathering, I would rather say like Jesus died on

the cross than say a bunch of things that nobody understands, okay?

So the word church here is being used again to describe a group of people.

It's being used to describe a group of Christians.

But in this case, it seems to me it is being used specifically to describe the

group of people as they are gathered together, right?

He's saying in, and he's not just saying like a group of people,

he's saying like in this particular meeting that they're having,

when I'm there and they're all there, I would rather just say a few words that

were understandable than a bunch of words that are not.

Okay, so this is the local church, but it's the local church gathered together.

The word church in this verse seems to be used the same way that we use it when

we say like the phrase church service.

Like when I say like, oh, we have two church services, one at 9.15, one at 11.

I'm referring to a particular meeting or a particular gathering.

That's what he's talking about, what he would say in that gathering.

So here the word church is a group of Christians, but it's specifically describing

the meeting that they have. So you can say like, go to church,

okay? It's describing the gathering that they have.

So we've got the universal church. We've got the local church.

We've got the church gathered. The word is used in all these ways.

I'm going to show you one other way that it's used and this one is interesting

This one's interesting because it's a little different than the others And it's

also interesting because it's in a story that's just a little bit crazy that

happened So I'm going to show this to you in Acts chapter 19.

Acts 19 · chapter mention

In Acts chapter 19, starting in verse 28, I'm going to read to you an account

Acts 19 · chapter mention

of, I guess the context is this.

There's a group of missionaries that went to a city called Ephesus,

and they're sharing the gospel with the people of Ephesus, the Ephesians,

and there was a very adverse reaction to the gospel and their missionary efforts.

Like, they went to talk to the people about Jesus, and the Ephesians,

some of them at least, got really, really angry because they worshiped this

goddess named Artemis, and so they

were very offended at how all of this affected the worship of Artemis.

So the missionaries show up, and then I'm just going to jump right into the

middle of the story. Verse 28.

When they had heard this, they being the Ephesians, the people of Ephesus,

when they heard this, they were filled with rage and began to cry out,

great is Artemis of the Ephesians.

So the city was filled with confusion, and they rushed all together into the

amphitheater, dragging along

Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians who were Paul's traveling companions.

Things are about to get violent. It looks like it's going to be a riot.

Verse 30, though Paul wanted to go in before the people, the disciples did not

let him. This dude had like no concern for safety.

Even some of the provincial officials of Asia who were his friends sent word

to him, pleading with him not to take a chance by going into the amphitheater.

He's like, let me go talk to all those angry people. And they're like,

no, you're not. And they wouldn't let him go in.

So there's this riot forming and they're like, you cannot go in there while they're all angry.

Verse 32. Now Here's where we find our word.

Meanwhile, some were shouting one thing and some another because the, what's the word?

The assembly was in confusion.

It's the same word, though. It's from Ecclesia. Because the assembly was in

confusion, and most of them did not know why they had come together.

All these people were shouting, and the church was in confusion,

but they didn't know why they were meeting together. It was like an accidental church.

But the reason that they don't translate a church is because it's not what we

think of when we think of church.

This was a group of people that were all really upset there in Ephesus.

The assembly was in confusion. Most of them did not know why they'd come together.

Now, I'm really angry about something. What is it? I don't know.

He told me we were supposed to be upset.

So a local politician calms the group down. And I'm going to skip to that part. Verse 35.

However, when the city clerk had calmed the crowd down, he said,

man of Ephesus, what man is there who doesn't know that the city of the Ephesians

is the temple guardian of the great Artemis and the image that fell from heaven?

Therefore, since these things are undeniable, you must keep calm and not do anything rash.

For you have brought these men here who are not temple robbers,

or blasphemers of our goddess.

So if Demetrius and the craftsmen who are with him have a case against anyone,

the courts are in session and there are proconsuls. Let them bring charges against one another.

But if you want something else, it must be decided in a legal what?

Assembly. If you want something else, there has to be a legal gathering.

You got to have a legal church, right? You have to have a legal assembly.

In fact, we run a risk of being charged with.

After.

Saying this, he dismissed the assembly. And I looked it up. And assembly and

gathering and assembly and an earlier on assembly. All of them are forms of

this word, ecclesia. Ecclesia.

So what we see here is the word in ancient Greek, again, is being used to describe people.

It's being used to describe a group of people. But in this case,

they're not Christians, which is, I think, why the English Bible didn't go with

the word church, because they would have been like, what?

He dismissed the church? No, none of these people are even Christians.

But what we can see by the way that Luke, who wrote Acts, the way he uses this

Greek word, we can tell, and we can also, I think, tell this from other Greek literature at the time.

The word ekklesia was not a particularly religious word like our word churches.

It wasn't a particularly Christian word.

It's just the Greek word for assembly or gathering.

Okay, so looking at the four instances, and I think probably most of the places

where ekklesia is found in the Bible, it fits one of these instances.

These are kind of the ways that the word is used in the Bible.

We see that it means the same thing always, but also sort of means different

things on different occasions.

It could mean all the Christians.

It could mean a local congregation. It could mean a meeting of Christians.

It could even be an assembly of non-Christians.

But the one thing that they all have in common, did you get what it was?

They're people. They're people. They're people. They're people.

They're people. They're people.

It's people. Church is people. It's a gathering of or a collection of people.

There is no place in the Bible that I'm aware of where this word is ever used to describe a building.

There is no place in the Bible where the word is ever used to describe a non-profit organization.

That's just not what the word means. Now, that doesn't mean it's bad to have

a building. It doesn't mean it's bad to have a non-profit organization.

Personally, I am glad that we have this building to meet in.

I'm glad that when you think about like, well, who owns this building?

The deed for this building is in the name Good News Church of Ocala,

Inc. Okay? I think that, I'm glad about that.

I would rather have that than like this building somehow be owned by like hundreds of co-owners.

Could you imagine how that would be if everybody had to buy in and then you

moved out of town and you had to sell your share to a new member?

Like, I'm glad that it's just good news that has this building rather than all

of us trying to somehow share it.

I'm glad that when the electric bill comes in, aren't you?

It comes to Good News Church, right? It doesn't get split like 500 ways and

all go to all of our houses where we all pay our share, all right?

So I got no problem with buildings. I got no problem with nonprofits.

I think they're very convenient.

But what I am saying is when we look at what the Bible says about church over

the next 11 weeks in this series, for the rest of your life,

for that matter, when we look at what the Bible says about church,

it is important for you to know it's never talking about that.

It's not ever referring to a building. It's not ever talking about a nonprofit organization.

It's always talking about a group of people or a group of people gathered.

Now, you might say, okay, why is that so important, Mario? I am glad you asked.

I am going to spend the rest of the sermon on that, okay? Why is it so important

that we get the definition of this word right?

I think I'm going to explain it in maybe three different ways.

First is by way of analogy. I want you to imagine this, okay?

I'm trying to answer the question, why does it matter that we get the word church right, okay?

Imagine that you live in a culture where eight out of 10 people use the word

family to describe the house that they live in, okay?

Just imagine you're living in a culture where 80% of the people use the word

family to describe the structure that they go home to each night, okay?

And then imagine these people show up at a church and a preacher is trying to

explain things about family from the Bible.

And the preacher gets up and says things like, Like, it is so important that you value your family.

And the people walk away going like, boy, I know, I'm gonna go home and put

new wood floors down to up the value of my family.

And imagine if the preacher says, like, it's really important,

the scripture teaches us, you need to love your family.

And someone goes, well, I do love my family. That's why I'm getting another one in Daytona.

Like, I'm gonna have a family here for the school year and then a family over there in the summer.

Like, do you see how if eight out of 10 people defined the word differently

than the Bible does, like that would screw up so many sermons and so much application

and so many Bible studies and so much like one-on-one conversations where people

are talking about what God requires of them?

Here's a second example. Imagine that you have a young man and a young woman.

Maybe they're in their late teens or early 20s, and they're dating,

and then they fall in love, and they get engaged.

And then they go to their families, and they're talking about the upcoming wedding,

and they're picking out invitations and stuff.

And the bride says to her parents, we've decided we want to rent the Azalea

Gardens, and we want to get married under a canopy there at the Azalea Gardens.

And imagine one of the parents goes, no daughter of mine is getting married outside of the church.

Can you imagine this? Yeah, I'm pretty sure that has happened.

Like, I don't think I made up a crazy scenario. Like, I think that's a thing, okay?

That somebody at some point has said like, well, if I'm paying for this thing,

it's gonna be the way it ought to be. It's gonna be a wedding in the church.

In fact, I would bet, I bet there are instances, I bet there's somebody here

in this room that would say, yep, yep, that's Uncle Larry.

Okay that I bet you there are some people who don't even go to church

like they're not even a part of a congregation okay but they want to make sure

that the wedding is in the church okay and after the wedding they don't plan

on ever going back to being a part of a church right,

but it's just important that it happened there they're not a part of one they're

not going to be a part of one but it needs to happen there right.

And if you think that there is some kind of spiritual blessing that is bestowed

upon the bride and groom, if they get married in a building that has a steeple on it,

you're gonna have a hard time justifying that from the Bible,

because the Bible doesn't even talk like that, doesn't know such things,

doesn't have that kind of category.

Okay, here's the last one. And this one is the one I think is really,

if you go, well, what does it have to do with my life? Okay, here we go.

The church is the people. The church is the people gathered.

If you get that wrong, it has grave consequences for your spiritual life.

So final illustration, I want you to imagine person A and person B, okay?

And person A attends church every week, okay?

Person A, and by attends church every week, I mean, they physically go to a

building, the same building, and they go to that same building every seven days.

And they do it because they were raised that way. And they were taught like

their family and friends, everybody said like, you got to go to church and you

need to go to church weekly. Okay. At least weekly.

If you don't want God to be mad at you. Okay. If you don't want God to be mad

at you every seven days, you got to be in church.

And so this person becomes an adult and they go, all right, like everybody I

respect says it, that's fine.

So I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to go to church every week because

I want to stay on God's good side. Okay.

And then every seven days they go, but they hate the people that are there and

they avoid the people that are there like at all costs.

So they show up and they're like, these are not my people. Have you ever met

this before? Somebody that they would say, well, I'm a Christian,

but I kind of hate Christians. Okay.

And so this person's like, yeah, I don't really, I don't like the other people

that are there, but I got to go. So every seven days I go.

But what I do to avoid the people is I show up, this is person A,

I show up like three or four minutes into the service, okay?

So I don't have to talk to anybody ahead of time.

Because I've noticed before, if I show up a little early, like those people,

they just want to talk to me about stuff.

And I don't want to, I don't want to know them. I don't want to have anything to do with their life.

It's crazy Harold. I definitely show up early. Crazy Harold is going to come

up to me and talk to me about his latest insights from the book of Revelation, okay?

And I think Revelation's a weird book, and I think Harold's a weird guy,

and I just don't want it and so I come late every week so I don't have to talk to him.

And then I do the service, and then as soon as it's done, like,

I shoot right out of there because I don't have anything in common with those people, right?

Why am I going? Because I want to make sure I stay on God's good side.

So can you picture person A?

Okay. Person A is real. You know this, right? Like, I'm not going to make up

something. Person A lives in Ocala. There's several of them.

Okay. Now, person B. Person B goes to church every other week, okay?

And the reason why, person B would love to go to church as much as possible,

but person B can't go because of his job.

In order to provide for his family, he has a job where he sometimes has to do

night shifts and sometimes has to do morning shifts. And so every other Sunday,

he ends up having to work in the morning and he can't go to church.

So he goes to church 26 Sundays a year.

And on the 26 Sundays a year that he shows up, he shows up early because he

wants to talk with his brothers and sisters.

And he's excited to talk to them. And so he's purposely like in the lobby because

he wants to be able to like encourage people and catch up with people and care

about what's going on in their lives.

And he stays afterwards as well, sometimes like 30 minutes after church,

still talking to people because these are his brothers and sisters and he wants

to be able to encourage them and help them and care for them and share what's

going on in his life and what's going on in theirs.

And in fact, he even has joined a community group at his church because he realizes

there's only so much of that that can only go so deep on Sunday morning.

And so he joins a community group so that there is a group of people that like

they can sit around in a living room for sort of an unrushed time period,

and I can minister to them, they can minister to me, and I don't want to be

in these people's lives because this is my family.

You picturing person B? Okay, so here's my point.

If we don't know what church is, we might think that person A is rightly relating

to their church because of their perfect attendance at the building.

And person B is not doing so good because of all that spotty attendance.

And in reality, person A hates the church and person B loves the church.

Do you see why it's important for us to get this word right,

okay so we're going to end with a nursery rhyme okay when I was a kid I was

taught this okay I was taught,

you know what I'm about to do okay so this you you had a good childhood didn't

you it was wonderful this is the church what's this the steeple I open up the doors,

there's all the people and it's great and you teach it to little kids and it's

so wonderful and so if you're if you have never heard it you just you interlock

your fingers, and then you say, this is the church.

These two fingers are the steeple. You move the thumbs out of the way. That's the doors.

And then the people come out, and you do it again, and it's so cute,

okay? And it's false doctrine.

It's very cute. False doctrine. So we're going to fix it. Are you ready?

This is a building. This is a steeple.

Open up the doors, and there's the church, and that's who Jesus died for, not the building.

Come back next week and Lord willing, we'll get to do more of this.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you. Thank you for communicating to us,

revealing us. We're not in this world. We're not lost. We're not alone. We have you.

We have your spirit within us. We have your word. We have other believers. And I just thank you.

So I pray for us as a church.

I pray that you would help us to relate to our church, each other,

in the way that we ought to. I pray that you would cause us to be people who

love your church and do what you've called us to do within your church.

And I thank you so much for calling us to be a part of your church,

calling us out to be your people.

And so I pray that you would make us into the church that you want us to be.

We thank you, Jesus, for giving yourself up for us, the church.

We love you and we worship you. And I pray for all of us as individuals.

I don't know what the next step is for everybody here, but I just pray you'd

help us with whatever the next thing is.

So that we would follow after your will. They would know your grace and your

love. In Jesus' name I ask this. Amen.

What are we gonna end with? I guess we'll go with Ephesians 5.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. That is good news.