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What Is The Church: Ezekiel 36 · Providence Baptist Church - Sermons

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  If you will please take out your copy of God's Word and turn to Ezekiel 36 and John 10.
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  !
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  We have over the past two weeks and now this morning, been considering what I think are the most
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  pressing questions to be answered. And I've had some other questions posited to me and
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  they're also good questions, although I think all of them are somehow answered within the
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  answers of these three questions as we consider all of the implications of the answers of these
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  three questions. We've talked about what is the Bible. Two weeks ago, last week, we talked
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  about what is the Gospel. And that brings us today to the final question, what is the
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  church? Now, the study of what the church is, is a study called Ecclesiology. And it is one
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  of my favorite topics. I found myself a pastor giving leadership to a church. It matters a
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  lot that I know a fair amount about this, but I also just enjoy it. It's a thing that I am
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  particularly intrigued by. It's also important in our day. It's a pressing matter in our day.
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  There are many institutions led even by Christians that claim to be churches but are not churches
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  at all. There are also some claim to be churches but we would call them irregular churches. And that
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  would be to say they don't really abide by what the Scripture would say they ought to be as a church.
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  So we then kind of have these three categories. We have regular churches, which we want to find
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  ourselves being. We have irregular churches. And then we have some meetings of people that aren't
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  churches at all. And we need to know this. If we want to be faithful in service to our God, we want to
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  be sure that we gather as a church as we should. And we talked two weeks ago about the Bible and one of the
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  doctrines of the doctrines of the Bible we talked about at length was the sufficiency of Scripture.
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  That is to say that the Bible contains in it all that we need for life and godliness. It contains
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  within it, in application to the question, what is the church? Everything we need to know in order
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  to gather properly as a church in a way that's pleasing to our Lord. Too often these days,
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  people are innovating out and beyond the text. What a dangerous thing to do. I'm very thankful,
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  having now served here as a pastor for the past 10 years, that at a very early stage, God gave me such
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  great grace to just plant deep within me a conviction about the sufficiency of Scripture as it regarded
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  our fellowship. And he did that in a number of good books. I've read in the past couple of years more
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  living guys than I've ever read, but I used to read all the old and dead saints, and they had much to say
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  about the sufficiency of Scripture as it concerned the church. I also received, by God's grace,
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  much wise counsel. And I want to give you probably the most prominent example of that, which is my
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  father, who's a member of our fellowship, sitting in the third row over to my right, as he always does.
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  Growing up under his instruction and hearing his concern for the church and its departure from its
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  sufficiency was shaping for me. He worked for one of our denominations entities, and he worked in church
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  planting. He did so for various ways, 30 plus years. And I can remember him carrying a Bible, which I have
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  with me up here. He's given it to me, which I'm going to cherish forever. I don't think he even realizes how
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  much I cherish that he gave this to me. But a Bible that he had foiled. Many of us don't do this
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  anymore, but you remember this? You could foil your name onto the Bible, so his name is on here.
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  Off-centered, which bothers me, but it's on there.
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  But he had foiled on here church planting manual. So as he was traveling around the country and working
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  with people in our denomination to start new churches, he put, I think, predominantly as a
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  reminder to himself, the sufficiency of scripture. This is a church planting manual as it concerns the
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  starting of churches. And then at some point, I think, I believe it was a boss of his, wrote a book
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  called The Church Planting Manual. And so in a bit brighter foil, because it was added at a later date,
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  my dad added above that the original church planting manual.
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  So God has been gracious to me and really concreting in my heart that he has given us all we need for the
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  task ahead of us. The scripture is sufficient for this. Mark Dever wrote in a book I'm going to cite
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  from a fair amount today, the Bible certainly doesn't teach us everything. It doesn't teach us about
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  quantum mechanics, as an example, but neither does it teach us nothing. It should be our desire to
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  search out everything that God has revealed about himself and then to joyfully accept it, adopt it,
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  explore it, submit ourselves to it, and enjoy God's blessing in it. We have a church, the original church
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  manual. We have it in abundance. We should trust it to answer this question, what is the church?
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  So we're going to look in Ezekiel chapter 36 and in John chapter 10, but for a bit. Typically, we would
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  pull all of the points of the sermon out of the particular text. I don't believe, and please correct
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  me if I'm wrong later, that there's a single text that we can quite answer this question from, and I
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  won't even fully answer it this morning. So we're going to look briefly at this text together. I hope what it
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  does is it ignites in you a love for the church. It helps you to lean into what's going to be said
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  concerning the church, and then we're going to go to other texts across this morning's time together.
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  So I'm going to read from Ezekiel chapter 36, verses 22 through 28, and then 37 through 38,
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  and I'll point that out to you, and then we're going to go to John chapter 10 and read a few verses
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  there. Beginning in verse 22, Ezekiel 36. God says through the prophet Ezekiel,
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  Therefore, say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, It is not for your sake, O house of
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  Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the
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  nations to which you came. And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been
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  profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them. And the nations will know that I
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  am the Lord, declares the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.
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  I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own
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  land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncooliness,
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  and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will
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  put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.
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  And I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my
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  rules. You shall dwell in the land that I give to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be
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  your God. So this is exiled Israel that the prophet Ezekiel is writing specifically to,
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  but not all the promises of this prophecy are fulfilled in ethnic Israel. This goes much beyond to
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  the church of God. Look now at verse 37 of Ezekiel chapter 36. Thus says the Lord God,
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  this also I will let the house of Israel ask me to do for them, to increase their people like a flock,
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  like the flock for sacrifices, like the flock at Jerusalem during her appointed feasts,
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  so shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of people. Then they will know that I am the Lord.
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  Now turn to John chapter 10.
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  Jesus here picks up on this idea of God's people being like a flock. And if you have been in the
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  church very much, you're not unfamiliar with this idea. But in John chapter 10, beginning in verse 14,
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  he says,
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  one shepherd. Amen to the glory of God. God is about the saving work of gathering together a people
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  for his praise. Beloved, we should care about the church because Jesus cares about the church.
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  He is its founder. He is its head. She is his bride. He died for the sake of the church.
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  If you're in Christ, it is true that Jesus died for you. But do not lose sight of the fact that he died
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  for you as one amongst many. Jesus died for you as one amongst many. Jesus died to save a people for the eternal glory of God,
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  the Father. John Stott, who's a 20th century British theologian, once wrote,
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  the church lies at the very center of the eternal purpose of God. It is not a divine afterthought. It is not an accident of history.
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  So, what is the church? There are many layers of answers that could be given to this question.
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  Definitions both simple and complex. So my strategy for today is to give a simple definition from a book called
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  The Church by Mark Dever, which I mentioned previously, and then develop the idea further with five points.
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  Much of what I will say today is found in this book, The Church. So if you're interested in that, I encourage you to pick it up
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  and to read it at length. It's out there in the book now. I heartily recommend it to you.
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  So what is the church? Mark Dever gives this very simple definition, which I love,
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  as we've been talking about what the gospel is just recently, and he says,
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  the church is the gospel made visible. The church is the effect of the gospel,
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  and it is the agency of the gospel. When people come to Saving Faith, they are brought into the church,
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  and it is the church that works by God's working to bring people to Saving Faith.
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  This is the mission of the church, the evangelization of the world, going out in order to bring in.
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  As God uses His church to this great end, we should be deeply concerned about how He instructs us to play our part in doing so.
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  How is it that we are to measure any degree of success as we conduct ourselves in this mission
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  if we're not doing things God's way?
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  I can tell you now that I can manipulate people into buying into something.
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  There have been and will be cults throughout history where people do crazy things
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  because somebody charismatically leads them to do such crazy things.
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  The largest supposed church in our nation right now is a church that doesn't preach the gospel of Jesus Christ at all.
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  These are examples of what I mean.
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  How can we know that we are seeing God's result if we're not doing things in God's way?
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  I once heard a pastor say, probably one of the old dead pastors, something like this.
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  If you want to know how to grow the church, go out into your community and interview every lost person that you can.
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  Ask them exactly what they would like to see as the church gathers together.
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  What that would look like for them.
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  And make a very careful list.
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  And then go back to your study and shut the door.
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  Lock it.
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  Turn off the lights.
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  Lay on your face.
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  And pray to God that you never do any of those things.
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  Amen.
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  We're a new society.
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  We're a people set apart from the world for the praise of God.
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  Spurgeon once said, this is on the front of your bulletin,
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  The very church which the world likes best is sure to be that which God abhors.
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  Let that sink for a second.
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  Now, let's consider the idea that the church is the gospel made visible further.
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  And I have provided an outline on the back of your bulletin.
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  This may or may not be helpful to you.
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  There's almost no space for notes.
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  My apologies.
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  But maybe it'll help you track where we're headed together.
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  Number one, let's talk a bit about the nature of the church.
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  First, I think it must be said what the church is not.
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  And there's a lot of not that we could talk about.
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  But I want to very quickly and pointedly say the church is not property and programs.
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  The church is people.
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  We are the church.
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  This building is not the church.
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  The particular set of events we put together are not the church.
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  Gatherings of?
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  Sure.
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  But not the church itself.
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  The Greek word that we most often see in the Scripture as church is the Greek word ekklesia.
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  And I've said already, the study of the church is the study of ecclesiology.
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  It's the Greek word ekklesia.
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  Ekklesia.
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  This word is used 114 times in the New Testament.
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  Twice to refer to groups of people gathered for a specific task.
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  Stephen references God's people as a congregation in the wilderness from the book of Exodus.
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  In Acts chapter 7 verse 38.
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  And we can see the term congregation again in Hebrews chapter 2 verse 12 as its author cites Psalm chapter 22 and verse 22.
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  The other 109 times when the New Testament...
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  Oh, excuse me.
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  I didn't count for three of them, did I?
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  In the book of Acts, when there's a riot at Ephesus, in that chapter, that riot, that gathering of people coming to riot against the gospel are called an ekklesia, a gathering of people.
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  The other 109 times when the New Testament uses the term ekklesia, it is referring to a Christian assembly.
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  And most regularly, a local assembly of Christians.
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  I think that the word assembly would have been a better English word to use in this place.
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  But back in our long line of English translation history, something unfortunate happened.
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  This word that we use today for church is derived from an old English version of a German word, kerk.
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  I'm probably not pronouncing it correctly.
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  And that word meant building.
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  Church building.
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  Church building.
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  Right?
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  A better equivalent to kerk in our day might be chapel.
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  Right?
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  But the word church was used instead.
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  And so the way we often use the word to refer to a building as the church is very consistent with its etymology back to the German word kerk.
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  However, because the scripture, now these translations we have use the word church to speak of God's people assembled, we shouldn't use the word that way anymore.
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  Don't call this building the church.
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  It's not.
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  If this building burned to the ground, will we still exist as a church?
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  Yes.
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  We absolutely would.
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  And you better believe we would meet that Lord's Day.