The Lord’s Day Morning

October 8, 2006

Hebrews 10:19-25; I Timothy 3:15

“What It Means to Be a Member of FPC: The Five Questions of Membership (4)”
 4. “Do you promise to support the church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?”

Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

If you have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Hebrews, chapter ten. We’ll look at verses 19-25, and then we’ll turn back a few pages in our Bibles and read together one verse from I Timothy 3. But this morning we’re continuing to make our way through The Five Questions of Membership.

       I just want to remind you briefly of some of the things that we’ve learned from our study of the first three questions of membership over the previous three weeks. This is important because when we understand those questions and we answer them sincerely, as every communing member of this congregation has been called upon to do at some point in your experience here at First Presbyterian Church, there ought to be certain consequences or outworkings of these questions in our lives. And so, we have tried to emphasize some—not all, because we don’t have time to do all—but some of the ramifications of these questions in our lives. If we really understand and mean what we say when we say “I do” to these five questions, there will be certain outworking in our lives based upon the truths that we are affirming in these questions.

       For instance, when we looked at the first question, in which we “acknowledge ourselves to be sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving His displeasure and without hope save in His sovereign mercy,” we said that if we really mean that, if we really understand what we’re affirming when we say “I do” to that question, then we will be a congregation characterized by humility, because we’ll see our sin, we’ll see the greatness of our sin, we’ll see the greatness of our need, and in light of God’s grace we will be humbled by that grace. There will be no room for pride, because we’ve seen our sin and we’ve seen God’s holiness, and we’ve seen our hopelessness apart from His mercy; and so as a people we’ll be characterized by humility not simply when we gather on Sunday mornings, but throughout the whole of our lives: in our relationships with our families, with unbelieving friends, at work and elsewhere, we’ll be characterized by humility.

       But we also said that we would be characterized by joy and celebration of God’s sovereignty, because if God is our only hope and we’re gathered here today in His name acknowledging that He has redeemed us by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, then our salvation is all of Him. It can’t be credited to our goodness, to our deserving, to our works, but only to His sovereignty; so we will be a people that is simultaneously humble and joyful about God’s sovereign work of grace in our lives. That’s two examples of things that flow from the reality which we affirm in that first question.

       The second question is the question in which we affirm that we are trusting in Jesus Christ as the Son of God and Savior of sinners, as He is offered in the gospel, and that we’re trusting in Him alone for salvation. What should that lead to in our lives? Well, again there are many things that it ought to lead to in our lives, but let me suggest three this morning.

       First of all, if we really understand and mean that when we say “I do” to that question, we will be a people of faith. We will be a people characterized by faith in Jesus Christ, and by belief and trust in His word that will permeate the whole of our lives, if we really understand and mean it when we say “I do” to that question.

       Secondly, it will also mean that we are people with a high view of Christ. We live in a culture where it’s OK to believe that Jesus was a great moral teacher, a prophet of some kind, to His own age. But when you start saying that you believe that Jesus Christ is divine, that He is the Son of God, that He is the only way of salvation, that He’s the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, that there’s no way to fellowship to God without Him, then people in our culture begin to look at you like you’re crazy or bigoted, and they begin to look away from your claims, because they don’t like them. And yet, if we really believe what we say when we answer “I do” to that second question of membership, we are going to be a people as a whole with a high view of the Lord Jesus Christ. We will accept Him as the Son of God and Savior of sinners, the only hope of salvation.

       Thirdly, if we answer that question with understanding—if we mean it, if we’re sincere when we say “I do”—we will be a people with a high view of God’s grace, because when we say that we believe, that we receive and rest on Jesus Christ alone for salvation as He is offered in the gospel, we’re saying that only God’s grace to us in Jesus Christ can save us; and, therefore, we’re going to have a very high view of God’s grace. We’re not going to be apologetic about it; we’re going to glory in it. We’re going to tell everybody that we can, and we’re going to live out that grace. If God has been gracious to us, then we’re going to be gracious to others.

       And how does Jesus say that that grace is most worked out? In forgiveness. If God has forgiven us, we’re going to be able to forgive others. How very significant that is in our own day and age, with so much strife...broken relationships...that we would be characterized as a forgiving people. By the way, that’s exactly what the Women In the Church are going to be studying at that meeting with Tara Barthel in November, is just the whole concept of forgiveness and reconciliation in the Christian life. It’s so, so, important to our well-being and to our witness.

       Now, thirdly, when we looked at that third question of membership and we said that we were going to “resolve and promise, in humble reliance upon divine grace, to live as becomes followers of our Lord Jesus Christ”, what are the implications of that question for the Christian life?  What implications flow from our understanding and sincerely affirming that question?

       Well, again there are a lot of answers to that, but let me just suggest two. For one, if we really understand and mean it when we say “I do” to that question, we are going to be characterized as a people who realize that we need God’s grace for sanctification as much as we need it for justification. In other words, we need God’s grace on our behalf just as much to grow and to become mature in the Christian life as we needed it to be forgiven for our sins and reconciled to God, and that means that we’re going to be a people constantly dependent upon the grace of God to grow. We recognize that growing and maturing as disciples is not an easy thing. We need God’s grace for that.

       And, secondly, if we really mean this question...when we say “I do” to it...if we really affirm it, understanding what it entails, we will also be a people serious about living the Christian life. We won’t give lip service to living the Christian life; we’ll be serious about being different from the world, about having different priorities from the world, about living for Christ in this world, about not being conformed to the prevailing views in our culture or to the prevailing ways of living in our culture. We will live distinctively as disciples of Christ.

       So you understand that all of these questions have ramifications.  They have implications. They have applications in the Christian life, and it’s our concern as we go through them to remember that, because we don’t want to simply give lip service to these things. These things are at the very heart of what we are about together at First Presbyterian Church as Christians.

       And you’ll notice that none of these things are sectarian things. These are all at the very core of what it means to be a Christian in the great stream of the martyrs and the apostles, and the prophets of old, and the thousands and thousands of men and women and boys and girls who for the last 2,000 years have affirmed faith in Jesus Christ.

       Now today we come to the fourth question, and the fourth question pertains especially to the local church because it asks us whether we are ready to support that church of which we are a part to the very best of our abilities in both its work and its worship. So let’s look to the Scriptures for guidance in those areas, and let’s begin in Hebrews 10. And before we do, let’s pray and ask for God’s help and blessing.

       Heavenly Father, thank You for this Your word. Teach us truth from the Scriptures about how we are to live as members in this local congregation. We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.

       Hear God’s word:

“Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our body washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful; and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more, as you see the day drawing near.”

Amen. Thus far the reading of God’s word.

       Now if you turn back with me just a few pages to I Timothy 3, and look at verse 15; and I really just want to zero in on one part of verse 15. In that verse Paul gives three descriptions of what the local church is, and here’s what he says:

“I write so that you will know how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.”

Amen. And thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant word. May He write its eternal truth upon our hearts.

       The fourth question of church membership that we are all to understand and to truly affirm in our hearts, and which we are all asked to stand up and affirm before the elders (and with most of us, we’ve actually affirmed before the whole congregation) is:

       “Do you promise to support the church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?”

       And in order to answer that question with understanding and sincerity, we must have an appreciation of three things: We need to understand and love the church (and especially I mean by that the local church); we must understand and love the worship of the church; and we must understand and love the work of the church. And so I want to think about those three things with you very briefly this morning.

       Let’s start with the church, because if we’re going to support the church in its worship and work to the best of our ability, we need to know what the church is. We need to understand what it’s for. And in I Timothy 3:15, the Apostle Paul, in those three descriptions of the church, tells you that the church is God’s family; the church is God’s temple or meeting place; and, he tells you that the church is God’s plan for discipleship.

       First of all, he tells you it’s God’s family. Notice how he says it. “The church is the household of God.” He’s reminding you of the enormous privilege. When you were adopted by God through the finished work of Jesus Christ into His family, you became brothers and sisters with the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s staggering to think of - that you become God’s children, His sons and His daughters. But that also means what? That you become one another’s brothers and sisters. Did you notice how the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 10:19 addressed his fellow Christians? Brethren. You’ll find that throughout the New Testament. That’s not just something that Baptists do! That’s Christian talk. We’re brothers and sisters in the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is your family. And as God designed us to be reared in a loving Christian family so that we mature in the faith, so also He calls us to be reared and discipled in a loving Christian family called the church, the local church. So Paul is reminding us here that you are family now, in Jesus Christ. This is God’s family. What a tremendous privilege that is!

       But, secondly, he tells you that the church is the assembly of the living God. Remember what we read in Psalm 84, that Old Testament saint saying, ‘Lord, I would rather be in Your house even if I had to be a doorkeeper; even if I had to stand right at the edge and I couldn’t go into the temple, I’d rather be there than dwell in the tents of iniquity.’ And over and over the Old Testament saints talk about – what? How blessed it was to be able to go to the temple. Why? Because in the Old Testament the temple was the visible, tangible symbol of God’s special presence with His people. It was at the temple that God manifested the fact that He favored the people Israel, that He had chosen the people Israel, that He had redeemed the people Israel, that He had blessed the people of Israel, and that it was His purpose to have eternal fellowship with the children of Abraham through faith forever.

       But in the New Testament, where’s the temple? The temple is you. You are now the house and temple of God, and especially when you are gathered together. The Lord Jesus Christ would say – what? “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am.” In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ is saying when the local church is gathered, it is especially then when God manifests His nearness to the people of God, and that’s so important for us to realize.

       For one thing, it teaches us that the Christian life is bigger than us. The Christian life is bigger than even God’s plan for us. There are plenty of people who want to know what God’s purpose is for “my life,” for “our lives.” But when we gather together on the Lord’s Day, what is one thing that we are regularly reminded of? That God’s plan is bigger than His plan for my life. God’s plan entails His plan for the lives of all these, my brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ, and I’m just part of that bigger plan. The Christian life is bigger than me. It’s about a plan, a project, that is bigger than just God’s plan for my life. (Now of course that’s true for all the Christians around the world, but we can’t see them on Sunday morning. We can only see the congregation that we’re a part of, but we’re reminded one day in every seven that God’s plan is bigger than just us, and we’re a part of His plan for all of us as we encourage one another in love and good deeds.) And so the Apostle Paul reminds us that’s what the local church is. It’s not only the family of God, it’s not only the place that God especially meets with His people, but it reminds you that God is about something bigger than just you.

       And, of course, he says it’s the pillar and support of the truth. What does he mean by that? He means that it’s the place where God propagates and defends the truth. It’s the place where He defends the truth and builds up the people of God in truth, and propagates that truth to the next generation. In other words, it’s the place that He plans for discipleship to happen.

       Discipleship doesn’t happen off on our own, apart from everyone else. It happens in the context of mutual love and service. It happens in the context of the people of God. God plants us in a family, and He intends us to grow up in grace in that family, and so the local church is the place of discipleship. And it’s not until we appreciate those things that we’re really ready to answer the question that we support the church in its worship and work to the best of our ability, because until we know what the church is, until we realize how important it is, how significant it is—and let’s face it, friends, we live in a day and age where people don’t think that the local church is very important—until we realize how important it is as God’s family, as God’s temple, and as God’s plan for discipleship, we’re really not ready to answer “I do” to that question. But the Apostle Paul has set before us a description of the local church that reminds us just how significant it is.

       Now there’s a second thing I want you to see, and we see this especially in Hebrews 10:25, because if we’re going to answer this question with understanding, then we need also to understand the church’s worship.

       Now it is true that as Christians we are to worship God in all of life; that is, in everything that we do, whether we eat, or drink, whether we are at work or play, our goal is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever in everything that we do, so that in the way we relate to our husbands and wives, the way that we relate to our children, the way we work when we’re off at our vocations, the way we relate to our neighbors – the totality of our lives is to be an act of worship. That is both an Old Testament and a New Testament emphasis, and it’s a needed emphasis, because we know many people (and maybe we were this way ourselves) who worship God for an hour on Sunday, and then live the rest of the week worshiping another God. Maybe you were like that. You went through the motions of worshiping the true God for one hour on Sunday, but the rest of the week you were worshiping yourself. You were worshiping somebody else, but you weren’t worshiping the one true God. Maybe God brought you to your senses and you realized that you must either worship Him or someone else but you can’t worship both, and you were saved into a realization that you are to glorify and enjoy God 24/7...all the time, in everything that you do. All of life is worship. That is so true, and it’s so important.

       But it is also important that when we gather together, God gathers us for worship: to meet with Him, to experience His blessing, to receive His means of grace, to give Him praise, to offer up prayer. For all these reasons we gather every Lord’s Day morning and evening, and when we say “I will support the worship of the church” we’re saying ‘Yes, Lord. You are a priority. I will be there when Your people gather.’

       Young folks, when your parents bring you here Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day, morning and evening, they are saying to you without words that God is more important than anything else in their lives. They’re busy people. They could be working today, or they could be playing today. They could be doing something else today. But the fact that they are here and they’re beginning and ending this day in worship...the fact that one day in seven they stop their lives and they devote themselves to the living God is telling you that God is more important than anything in this world to them. That’s what we do when we gather together to worship. We are acknowledging that God is more important than anyone, than anything, in this world. What a huge and important message that is in this crazy 24/7 culture that breaks down any commitment to something outside of us and outside of the temporal pressures of day to day life, to pause and say no, the treadmill is not the most important thing in life. God is the most important thing in life, and we pause to worship Him. When we say “I do” to this question, we’re saying ‘Brothers and sisters, I’m going to be there.’

       You know, one of the great encouragements I get is that I get to look out at you Lord’s Day after Lord’s Day and realize ‘You know, that person could be doing something else. It’s not that that person wouldn’t be able to be doing something else right now. That person very well could be doing something else right now, but she has chosen to be here, he has chosen to be here, as an act of allegiance to the one true and living God.’ And you know what? It encourages me to see you here. And you know what else? It encourages one another to see one another here, and so in the very act of coming together with the saints for the worship of the living God you are fulfilling Hebrews 10:25. You are encouraging one another to love and good deeds.

       Third and finally, when we say “I do” to the question that we will support the church in its worship and work to the best of our ability, we are saying that we are committed to the church’s work in worship, discipleship, and outreach. That’s how our elders have for many, many years summarized the work of this congregation, and those are three good biblical words and ways to summarize the work of the church. Since we’ve just talked about worship, let me zero in on discipleship and outreach for a few moments.

       When we say that we are going to support the church in its work, we mean that we think that the church’s work of discipleship and witness, of discipleship and outreach, are very, very important. We love and care about and are committed to participating in that work. That means giving of ourselves in that labor, thinking that those things are so important that we’re going to help in Sunday School, or we’re going to help in Vacation Bible School, or we’re going to go on short-term mission trips, or we’re going to give of our own substance in order that the gospel can be preached, and that witness can be given, and that children can be built up in the faith, and that unbelievers can be told about Christ.

       Have you ever thought about it? When you give of your substance, you are not only acknowledging that everything that you have came from God in the first place and it belongs to Him; you’re not only acknowledging that all of you belongs to God, and so you’re giving back a portion of what you have as a token of giving the whole of yourself: you are showing that God’s kingdom, God’s work in the church, is more important to you than anything else. Your giving in support of the church is a testimony that you agree with Jesus’ words of Matthew 6:33, that the Christian is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. While the world is chasing “all these things,” by giving in support of the church you’re saying ‘I’m seeking the kingdom. That’s what I’m seeking first, and I’ll let God take care of the ‘all things.’’ It’s one of those ways that we radically distinguish ourselves from the world, because we’re so committed to the work of the church in discipleship and outreach. In all these three areas, we see the ramifications of our answer “I do” to the question:

       “Do you promise to support the church in its worship and work to the best of your ability?”

       May God help us all mean it, and do it. Let’s pray.

       Heavenly Father, thank You for this Your word. Make this question to be more and more a reality in our lives together in this congregation, as we fulfill it not simply with our lips but with our lives, because we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

       Would you take your hymnals in hand with me as we prepare for the Lord’s Supper, and turn to No. 252.

                        [Congregational Hymn: When I Survey the Wondrous Cross]

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Sunday, October 08, 2006