Isaac BrownPreached: October 15, 2017, Tri-Country Christian Church

Resources: Internet / Personal Photos / George, C.F., Prepare Your Church for the Future

Why the Church?

Introduction

I’d like to start out immediately by reading a verse from 1 Kings. It says this.

1 Kings 19:3-4 – Elijah was afraid and ran for his life. When he came to Beersheba in Judah, he left his servant there, while he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness. He came to a broom bush, sat down under it, and prayed that he might die.

Undertake the Christian journey alone… and it’s difficult to say the least. Elijah was arguably one of God’s most bold and brazen prophets, but this wouldn’t be the only time he found himself praying for death. I believe that there is a key to why much of Elijah’s journey was so difficult, and today, I’m going to tell you what it is so that you might not find yourself in such a moment under a broom bush.

Jim and I are wrapping up a series called “Return to Your Roots.” It truly is about a number of concepts and disciplines that are essentials to the good Christian walk. Today I’m going to talk about what is, in my opinion, one of the more easy to grasp concepts of the Christian walk in answering the question, “Why the Church?” I hope that the opening Scripture shocked you a little. It was meant to. You’ll learn through the course of this sermon not only about how our design as human beings naturally leads to the concept of church, but also how our theology as a Christian Church helps to define what exactly church ought to look like.

Know Who We Are?

I’m going to start, then, with who we are as men and women. At the beginning of the Word which we love so dearly, God said in Genesis 1:26 – “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness…” This is a quickly fired point, but and important one. Look again at what God says. “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness.” What is the likeness of God then? It’s plural, isn’t it? Is God talking to Himself in this verse? Kind of… It’s a conversation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, isn’t it? We can see immediately in Scripture

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from the outset that the image of God is one of community. We were designed to be in community with God, but we were also designed to be in community with one another.

Remember when God was creating the universe… Day by day, at the end of each day, He said that things were what? That’s right, Good. Yet on the day that he made man and saw that man was alone, what did He say in Genesis 2:18 – “It is not good for the man to be alone.” “It is not good for the man to be alone.” This is of course what would lead to the creation of woman, and the holy institution of Christian marriage, but marriage aside, the core concept stands. It is not good that we as Christians live a life of solitude. It’s contrary to our design at the very core of our divine DNA and how our Lord designed us.

Know What We Believe

Beyond who we are, I want to talk next about what we believe. You know, one of the goals of this series has been to relate to you in any possible way how these concepts involved in returning to your roots relate to Christian Churches like Tri-County Christian church and others, as it pertains to the manner in which we strive to live. One of the distinctives of Christian Churches like ours is that we harken back as much as possible to the first Christian Churches of old. I’m talking about the Christian churches established in the book of Acts and beyond, immediately following Christ’s resurrection and ascension. We look at the ways in which they praised, lived and worshiped. The reason we do this is because the closer we can come to what a church looked like in the days of the apostles, the closer we can come to the intended image for the church.

My wife and I had the opportunity to visit Europe last year, and I want to show you a picture that I had the fortune of being able to take while there.

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This is a picture of Ulm Minster. Ulm Minster is a Lutheran church still in operation today in Ulm, Germany. I tried to get a panoramic picture of it from the outside, but no picture could honestly do justice to the size of this church.

Here is a better shot. This church is as serene and idyllic on the inside as you might imagine it looks on the outside. This church is approximately 89,000 square feet, and the sanctuary very comfortably seats a congregation of 2,000 people. Before the installation of pews, as many as 20,000 could fit inside for a service. Impressive, isn’t it? I’d like to tell you exactly what this church and buildings like it have to do with the original Christian church, that is, the churches in the days of the apostles. The answer is… NOTHING. …Absolutely nothing.

I don’t know if every pastor has a soap-box or two… I imagine they do. You’re going to hear one of mine right now. In a church the size of Ulm Minster, it’s easy to get lost in a crowd. I honestly believe that we are blessed here at Tri-County Christian church to not have a congregation this size, at least in the respect that I am referring to, but that’s not the main point of what I’d like to express. Ulm Minster was not built until 1377 AD. And for a reference point, the churches we referring to from the book of Acts and beyond are those that were present before the year 100 AD or so. In those times, “the church” was not represented by large cathedrals and minsters like the one in Ulm. To build and maintain such structures would have been to invite death to the persecuted Christian faith.

The church… The original church, my friends, was comprised of a network of small house-churches, or more distinctly, a network of Christian small groups. I need to make something very clear to you. Small groups are essential to effective discipleship and a forward moving Christian walk! I want to invite you now, that if you are not part of a small group, within this church or even with people

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outside of the church. If you are not attending morning Bible Study, or one of the evening Bible Studies of the church, come and join… Or find some friends here within the congregation, or outside of it, and form a small group. This is one indispensable way in which we experience the environment of the early church. So much happens, towards discipleship, in a small group that simply cannot occur when Jim or I simply preach to you.

We have to keep in mind that the church, okay, the church, is not the building that we meet in, but rather the people that meet in it. 1 Peter 2:4-5 says that we are, “like living stones…being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood…”, with Jesus, of course, as the keystone or capstone. To that end, the church is defined by who we are and how we engage one another. We must not forget this as we determine our approach to church and what role it will play in our lives.

Know Where We Came From

We’re going to look next at one of the most iconic examples of the early church and how they operated from the book of Acts. The verse is Acts 2:42-47. Take a moment to turn their in your bibles and read with me. It says this:

Acts 2:42-47 - They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

Let’s look at a number of elements from these verses and see how we relate with them here at Tri-Country. First…

1. Teaching, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayer – These are relatively self-explanatory, but you can see here that in addition to the teaching that occurs in classes like we have in Sunday School and evening Bible Study, they had fellowship… They maintained relationships… VERY important because, remember, we were designed for community. They shared meals together, like we do. And they prayed together. Simple but indispensable pieces of what we call “church.”

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2. Giving – They sold possessions and gave to anyone who had need. Friends, there’s real power in giving, especially when we do it corporately, as a body of believers. When you use your resources to send water down to hurricane victims, don’t underestimate the grace and power that our Lord puts behind such a generous act! We’ll talk a lot more in depth about giving in next week’s message.

3. They continued to meet together , in their churches, and their homes – The events described here in Acts were not a flash in a pan. Okay? This wasn’t a solitary event from which they all went their own ways and never crossed paths again. The continued to meet together, and again, we’re looking at the question, “Why the Church?” It’s evident that we’re meant to maintain our unity when looking at the example that the early church lived out for us.

4. Praising God – They praised God. We do this in so many ways, but I want to take this opportunity to give a big thank you to the members of our praise band, who lead us in praise of God in song every week. Donating their time and their talents. We all have time and talents that we can give to the Lord in praise. We’ll talk about that next week as well.

5. Finally, it led to kingdom multiplication – The Bible says that the Word of God will not return void. That is to say, if we live out a “church-life,” not only inside these walls but also in the world around us, God’s kingdom will increase on Earth. God’s kingdom will increase on Earth.

Know That We Need One Another

Let’s look at another illustration now.

This is a pile of hot coals. When grouped together… They feed off the heat from one another, and the fire grows and stays increasingly hot. Now, what would

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happen to a coal if I took it out of this fire and placed it off to the side? That’s right, it would cool off. Is it still a coal? Yes, but its warmth would fade until it was cold and hard. Your experience as a Christian can be quite similar! The author of the book of Hebrews said to us in Hebrews 10…

Hebrews 10:24-25 – And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Look at some of the words that occur and reoccur in this passage. Let us consider how we may spur one another… not giving up on meeting together… encouraging one another… Put simply, we cannot “one another” if we are going at it alone. We cannot “one another” without… Church! Is this concept of one another truly a theme in the Bible, or is it isolated?

Listen to this list of examples from the New Testament alone.

1. Romans 12:10 – Be devoted to one another… Honor one another above yourselves…

2. Romans 12:16 – Live in Harmony with one another…3. Galatians 5:13 – Serve one another in love…4. Ephesians 4:2 – Be patient, bearing with one another in love, forgiving each

other…5. Ephesians 4:32 – Be kind and compassionate to one another…6. Colossians 3:16 – Teach one another…7. Hebrews 3:13 – Encourage one another daily…8. Hebrews 10:24 – Spur one another on toward love and good deeds…9. 1 Peter 3:8 – Love one another deeply from the heart…10.1 Peter 4:9 – Offer hospitality to one another…

These are 10 examples that I pulled from a list of 59 verses containing the concept of one another, and I’m not asserting that those 59 verses form comprehensive list. The concept of love one another is mentioned no fewer than 15 times in the New Testament alone, out of the mouths of everyone from Peter, to John, to Paul, to Jesus Himself. This concept of being there for one another, this concept of church, was more than just an ordinance from Christ and the apostles. It was a basic axiom, that is, a basic truth, about how life was supposed to be structured.

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We’re meant to keep each other warm, encouraged, active in our faith. We’re meant to share in our joys and our sorrows. We were built for community. We were built to do this together. We were built for church.

We’ve covered a lot of scriptures today, and I feel that I need to let you know exactly why I am telling all of you this. After all, you’re here, aren’t you? You’ve elected to come to church, so to some extent, you get this already. Am I preaching to the choir? I know that I am preaching to the praise band, because they’re in the audience now. The fact of the matter is, we need to keep the importance of church in the forefront of our minds. The temptation to skip church will always be there. The temptation to claim your mornings for sleep… The temptation to find that extra time we need in the week, because skipping church doesn’t “cost us” anything… The temptation to withdraw and not be a burden to others when we are hurting… Those temptations will always be there. I’m sure that each of us has felt one or more of them in the past.

We simply have to resist these temptations. Subtle and innocuous as they may seem, they’re schemings of the Adversary. Anything he can do to try to get us out of the warmth of one another so that we might become cold and hard… We must be alert.

Conclusion

Truth be told, I don’t know how I could possibly make a case for a Christian journey that did not involve church. Church is ingrained into our very DNA. It’s who we were built to be. It’s what we were meant to do. Loving one another… Lifting one another up… Even if I felt like it was my place to challenge you to take your Christian walk alone, I never, never, NEVER would. Do you remember how well Elijah wasn’t doing on his own? Let me send you home with a question. Who was the one Man on Earth who had the power to do anything that He wanted on His own? That’s right, Jesus. Jesus was fully man and is fully God. He could certainly have conducted His ministry, by Himself, with no complications. …But did He? …If He didn’t, then should we? The Day of the Lord is one day closer with every sunset we see, and as surely as the church was a matter of sanity and survival for the ancient Christians, so it will be for me, you, and the person beside you. We need each other. We need church.

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Invitation

If you’ve been going alone, without church, but more importantly, without God, you’ve been doing it for far too long… as many years as you’ve been alive. You were built for community, with people, and with God. If you want to know that God today, please don’t go it alone any longer. I’ll be right down here in front. If you’d like to invite God into your life and become a part of the large and wonderful community we know as the Body of Christ, I would love to talk with you and help you make the commitment. The Day of the Lord is coming, and we’re all going to need one another. Please don’t wait any longer.

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