What is the Church 1689 Chapter 26

Let me pray for a second, and then we'll start with a short teaching, and then we'll have a little bit of time to sing. No, don't go get one right now. I'd rather we bring our own next time, and I ordered some new ones. So let me pray. Father, we are here tonight to pray, primarily. and we also want to take some time to investigate the confession that we hold to and teach it.

So I pray, Lord, that you would increase this meeting over time, that we would find more people that want to be here on whatever nights we can be here and that we may use this time to edify one another, to pray, and maybe even for other purposes one day as you see fit. I pray that tonight you would be with us in our spirit, that we would be people who are truly committed to focusing on you that we would be able to see children saved that we would also grow I pray that you be with people who are not with us that we love and miss I pray for my wife as she's not feeling well that it would be something that passes quickly and that she would do wise things to take care of herself Lord, that you would even especially help her In Christ's name I pray. Amen.

So, if I asked you, what is the church, what would you say? Wesley? Okay, you'd say, I don't know. The people? Okay, anybody else have any ideas? What is the church?

Emery? I didn't hear it. It sounded wonderful, though. It was at least really cute. Jace, any ideas? What's the church?

You don't know? Jack, if your neighbor said, Jack, what's the church, what would you say? You'd say you don't have any clue? Jude, do you have a clue? Mary, do you have a clue? You already said the people.

So you already answered. Nick, do you have a clue? What's your clue? The people of God that gather together. Okay, yeah, that's convenient. Okay.

Well, let's see what the the men who wrote the Confession of Faith said it was. So they said this. They said in chapter 26, paragraph 1, the Catholic, that is, universal church, may be called invisible with respect to the internal work of the Spirit and truth of grace. It consists of the full number of the elect who have been, are, or will be gathered into one under Christ her head.

The church is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him who fills all in all. So the first thing it says is it says the Catholic or universal church. Does anybody know what it means when it says Catholic? And why that word could confuse people? That right That was scary Yeah or demons So the Catholic Church is sometimes what we talk about with the Roman Catholic Church.

Yeah, that's okay. And we talk about how there's a church that says they believe in Jesus and the Bible, but they deny the things that we believe are required for saving faith. That is, that we believe that our faith alone is what God justifies us by because of what Jesus did and not by anything that we've done. But in this book, it's saying the Catholic Church is actually just a word that means universal.

So it just means the whole church. So when it talks about the church, like we're here in a church, which is a building. we're meeting as the church a small group of people meeting together but there's also a thing that the Bible calls the church which is just all the people who believe in Jesus. All of the elect is the word that's used here which is the people who are either believing in Jesus or are going to believe in Jesus.

It says this church may be called invisible with respect to the internal work of the Spirit. so what it means is that it's not like people have a shirt that has a big C on it and that's how you know they're a Christian and other people have a different shirt because there's people who you look at them and you can't tell by looking at them if they're a Christian or not, right? if I just showed you a picture of 50 people right now and it's just a picture of their face you would not know if any of them were Christian or not just from looking at them because it's invisible what God does inside us It doesn't mean it's not real, but it's invisible. We can't see it. And then it says, the church consists of the full number of the elect who have been, are, or will be gathered into one under Christ her head.

So when we talk about the church Catholic or the church universal, we're talking about every person who ever lived or will live, who ever will believe in Jesus Christ. So according to this, even a person who isn't yet saved is considered part of the church. Now we don't treat them that way until we hear them say outwardly that they're part of the church, that they want to identify with Christ and baptism and say that he saved them.

But that's how we talk about it in biblical terms. And that says the church is the spouse. What's a spouse? Someone you're married to. So the church is a spouse, right? Well, if the church is a spouse, that means the church has somebody the church is married to.

Who's that? Jesus, that's right. So Jesus claims his church as his bride or his spouse, even if there's boys in it. So sometimes that seems a little bit weird because we're boys and we're like part of the church which is married to Jesus. But it's not really weird. It just seems that way sometimes when we think about things in like boy-girl terms.

But as part of the church, you're part of Jesus' body, his bride. And when we say that the bride of Christ, the church, is part of his body or is his body, that reminds us about the fact that when we get married in this life, we become one flesh with our spouse. So we're united in a very special way. In the second paragraph it says All people throughout the world who profess the faith of the gospel and obedience to God through Christ in keeping with the gospel are and may be called visible saints So we said there's invisible saints.

So there's people who we don't know yet if they're going to get saved. Maybe they're not Christian, but they're going to get saved. They could be invisible, we'll say. And there's also people who they actually say, hey, I'm Michael Coughlin, and on July 4, 2006, I asked God to forgive me because Jesus Christ died in my place, and I believe he did that.

And I am trying to obey God's laws and commands because I love him, and his laws are not burdensome because they're actually a gift to me. And I'm trying to go to church and faithfully do those things. Well, you get to call me a Christian. and I'm a visible saint. That means that you can see in my life and in my profession that I'm a Christian. And it says as long as they do not destroy their own profession by any foundational errors or unholy living.

So as long as people live in a way that shows that they agree with what God says and as long as they keep saying things that show they agree with what God says, we don't have any reason to doubt that a person is a Christian if they say they are. but the final part of this paragraph says all local congregations ought to be made up of these and so what that's saying is that if you have a church so we said that a church could be like the building right we say it's a church building we also say things like we're going to church which makes it almost like an activity we're doing or something like we use the word differently The church is all of the elect, but also a church is a local group of people that get together to practice worshiping God, practice his sacraments together, pray together, have fellowship meals together, love one another, disciple one another, and a whole host of other things that the New Testament tells us about church people. But what's important to understand is that the people who you allow into your church that actually you call part of your local church, they have to visibly be saints in the Lord. So we don't let people in because they were a baby of a really great guy that was a Christian.

We don't say, well, Mr. Roberts is a great guy. He's a holy man of God. He loves the Lord, and he's walking with Christ. and so he had baby avi well lindsey did most of the work there but you get the picture and so we're going to just take baby avi we're going to make her part of the church that's not how god builds his churches god builds his churches on the foundation of professions of faith in jesus christ his son so that's why some of you are not actually considered members of our church yet and it's because you have not personally repented of your sin trusted that Jesus died for you and then come forward to announce that to the church in a way where you let people know that you want to be a visible saint of covenant Bible church.

And so some of you, that's because you just haven't done that for whatever reason. You're a Christian, but you haven't decided to join a church. Some of you, it's because you don't yet know Jesus Christ as your Savior. And so you should be praying to God every day, Lord have mercy on me a sinner that's what you should be asking God to be merciful to you and make you born again and those of you who say you're Christian and you're not a member of a church you should be thinking about the fact that in the Bible nobody is ever a Christian outside of a church it's just not how the Bible portrays Christianity and so it a challenge to you I not even saying you would have to join this one I mean in some of your cases that you don have a lot of options but we should want to be part of a local body of visible saints One of the neat things if you look at this London Baptist Confession of Faith that we hold to, if you compare it to some of the other documents that people have written, one of them called the Westminster Confession of Faith, what you'll see is that they actually say right in there in the same paragraph, they say the babies of believers.

And so that's one of the things that makes us distinct. It makes us different. But even though there's Christians who we don't do things the same way they do, and even though we disagree with Christians that make their babies part of the church, and they sprinkle water on them, and they say that that's called baptism, even though we don't believe that, we still love those people because, like the paragraph said, all the saints of the earth that are the elect of Jesus, they're all Christians, and they're all part of the church universal, the church Catholic.

And so we still love people who we have some even important disagreements with, and that's part of what Jesus said would happen when we do church, is that we would find ways to love one another even when we disagree. But I know that all you guys are brothers and sisters, and so you're constantly practicing loving people and being tender and kind with them even though you disagree sometimes. So you guys are all ready to become Christian.

Or maybe we need to work on loving people that we disagree with a little more based on some of the looks I got when I made that statement. But that's normal. Brothers and sisters don't get along sometimes, even Christian brothers and sisters. So we need to pray that God would help us to love one another first and foremost. And to remember that the bond you share with someone in Jesus is more important than any differences that you might have with them.

So does anybody have any questions or anything that made them think of in regards to the church? What? What's a member of a church? A member of a church is a person who actually stands up and tells the church, you know, I believe Jesus died for me, and I want to make a covenant with this group of people to be held accountable by them, to hold other people accountable, to worship together, practice the ordinances and sacraments of the church together, to say that we're going to work together for the common good of promoting Jesus Christ through this group of people. and it's a very important concept that is spoken of in scripture in many different ways actually Chase you look like you have a question no? okay so if you just remember one thing tonight it's that the church is the people of God and that they are to love one another and that would be a really good thing just to try to remember if you can't remember a lot of the things we talked about.

And if you ever want to read about the church and what we think of it, chapter 26 of the Confession of Faith will tell you the things that your dads think about the church because we agree with the people who wrote that. Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website, michaelcoghlan.net.

You can contact me by emailing me, michael at thingsabove.us. I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.