"When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea, Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Who do men say that I, the Son of man, am? And they said, Some say John, the Baptist, some Elijah and others Jeremiah, or one of the prophets. And he said to them, But who do you say that I am? And Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father, who is in heaven, and I also say to you that you're Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you lose on earth will be loosed in heaven."
Jesus said, I'm going to build my church. And he said, I'm going to do that because I'm the Christ. I'm the son of the living God, and as a result of being God, I can do that, I will do that, and I will continue to do that. So, that's what we want to talk about this morning for a few minutes. We want to talk about this Church that Jesus said he's going to build. And to this question this morning, of what is the church, I'm going to suggest to us that if I ask that question to religious and non religious people, you'd get a lot of answers. You'd get a lot of different answers. As I mentioned to you Wednesday night, if you'll just do a quick search and ask how many churches are there in Florence, Alabama, you'd get somewhere probably around 120 to 150. And I want you to think about that there is mass confusion, apparently, about this Church that Jesus said He was going to build. And I want us to talk about that this morning, because I want to be biblically accurate. When I talk about the church, I want to be biblically accurate. I want to be able to tell people and show people. Here's what the New Testament says about the Church that Jesus said He was going to build. If I'm not accurate, then I don't need to be up here, and you sure don't need to listen to me try to tell you what it is that God has said about that. But if, this morning, as we talk about this, if you're convinced that this is what the Bible teaches about that, then I hope that it would not only be something you'd believe, but I would hope it would be something you'd be convicted about. And so I want us to think about it this morning, and I want us to think about it objectively. If I could this morning, here's what I would want you to do. I would want you to forget everything you know about the church. I would like for you this morning to forget everything that you have come to believe to this point. And I'd just like for you to listen and as we talk about that this morning, as we look at these passages, just ask yourself, Okay, what conclusion now am I going to reach based upon what I've been shown from Scripture. That's as simple as I know how to say what I would like to happen this morning. I would like for you to forget what you know and reach a conclusion at the end based upon what you hear.
So, let's all try to be objective, and let's all try to hear with an open mind, and that's hard, because all of us come from circumstances. All of us have in our past lives, we've created an environment that answers that question. Most everybody here this morning could give me their answer to that question, and here's what I would tell you, here's what I would guess, even in this audience, the answers would be different. Some. Some would be the same. But as you give the answers, what does that mean in your mind? And that's what I'm asking you, to think about this morning. Just try to put all this together and think about that.
What is the church? Well, most people, I think, would say, most religious and non-religious people, when you said the word church, they would think of a building. They would think of a physical structure, like this structure, this brick and mortar structure. If you just stop and think about that, that just makes no sense. If Christ came to build his church, and you don't really read about a structure really in Scripture that identifies itself as some church or even church building. It just makes no sense that somebody would have, would reach, that conclusion. You know somebody, sometimes, I meet people and they say, Well, what do you do? I said, Well, I preach. Where do you preach? I preach for the College View the Church of Christ, the group that meets. He's, oh, I know where that church is. I pass that church on the way to work. Every day I work at UNA, and I pass that church on the way. And the concept is, it's this building. There is a sense in which, in a metonymous kind of way, if metonymy is this figure of speech, if you will, that is a type of, a figure, that it's an explanation of something that identifies something else. It's something that's close to an idea. So, there is a sense in which if, if somebody identifies this group of people in this building, to say that this brick and mortar building is the church at college view, there is a slight sense in which that may be correct, but that doesn't at all explain what Jesus meant by it. So, if somebody says that, of course, what we typically want to do is offer an explanation, but that takes a while. That's not just something that's easy to do, that that kind of takes what I'm hoping to do this morning. It takes some level of explanation.
But how would you define church, biblically and clearly. I think it's two words. Its saved people. Somebody says, Kenny, watch the church. Its saved people. Not unsaved people, saved people. Which saved people? All saved people. All saved people make up the church. So, when you get to a passage like Acts two, "and the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved." These are just a few words, but this is such a succinct answer to the question. "The Lord added to the church those who were being saved." How were people saved? Read Acts two. Read what Acts two says before in verse 47 it says this. Read what happened before that. You want to know what happened and how these people were saved, just read what happened before that. Jesus was preached in Acts two. People heard the message. People believed that Jesus was the Christ. They believed he was the resurrected Christ. And when they believed that, when Peter understood and the other apostles understood that, they believed that, they said, Well, what should we do about that? We understand that he is a resurrected Christ. So, what is it that we need to do in order to be saved from our sins? And the text tells us that they were told to repent of their sins. They were told to be baptized for the remission of their sins, and that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That's what would happen to those people who did that on that occasion. And so 3000 people did that very thing on that day.
And just on that day, the text says 3000 were added and the text says, in verse 41 I believe, that they were added to the church. And from that time on, anyone, anyone who would be willing to do what those folks did in Acts two, could be added to the same church. In 1971 I did that. In 1971 I remember telling my dad that I think it's time. I think it's time for me to be added to the church. I don't think I said it that way. I think probably what I said is I want to be baptized. And I wanted to do, I had been convinced even at a fairly young age, that that's what I needed to do. And so, what I had deduced is that I've got to hear what the Gospel says. I need to believe what the Gospel says, and then I need to obey what the Gospel says for me to do, and the text tells me that I needed to be baptized for the remission of my sins. You just can't read Acts 2:38 and not reach that conclusion. The Bible, clearly, does not tell me that you need to be baptized in order to show people that you've been saved. The Bible just doesn't teach that, not anywhere. And most religious people believe that. That what baptism is just a symbol you're already saved by just simply acknowledging who God is. The problem with that, my good friends, is I don't read that anywhere. If I read that somewhere, I'd believe that. I would quickly believe that. I just don't read that anywhere. What I read in Scripture is that I'm baptized in order to be saved. I'm baptized in order to have my sins washed away. I reach that conclusion by reading in Mark 16 and acts 22 in Romans 6 in first Corinthians 1, in second Corinthians 5, in Galatians 3, in Ephesians 2, in Philippians 3, and First Peter 3. I read those passages, and I reach those conclusions based upon those passages, and I can't reach any other conclusion. And if you can help me, help me understand what I'm missing. But when I do that, the Lord adds me, the Lord adds me to his church. He doesn't send me, He doesn't send me anything that says, I've done it. I've added you. He just says in Scripture, if you'll do these things, I'll add you to my church. And if you've done those things, he's added you to His church.
What's the significance of the Lord saving me and adding me? Here's the significance. It's his church. It's his church. It's not your church, it's not my church, it's not somebody else's church. It's his church. It's his group. It's his decision. It's by his authority. It's his call. What he says is the only thing that matters, and what I do with what he says matters as well. It's His church, because he says it is, Paul would say in Ephesians 1, "he put all things under his feet and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, referring to Jesus, the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all." God has given his son to be head over all things to the church. The church is his body. So, when you get to Ephesians four, listen, listen to what Paul said. He says there's one body. There's one body. "There's one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord. There's one faith. There's one baptism. There's one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all." People don't like to hear there's one. I'm not saying that. I'm reading from, I'm reading directly from scripture. Jesus said I'm going to build my church. Paul said There is one body. Paul said, the body is the church. The deduction that I have is that one body equals one church and one baptism is that way into that church. Help me. Is that not what Scripture teaches? Because as I read scripture, those are the conclusions that I reach. That the church, in its universal sense, and I'm going to make a contrast here in just a minute, between that and a local group of people, but the way to state that is the church is just saved people wherever they are. Wherever they are. It doesn't matter when they've lived, doesn't matter where they've lived, as long as they have listened, at least since Christ came into the world and died for sin, if they've listened to what Jesus has done, and they've believed that, and they have acted on that, they're saved. They're in the church.
And so, we find out about the church in the New Testament, in this New Covenant. And there are a lot of things that we could talk about, and I understand it, we could take this back into the Old Testament and understand God's special people then, and God's special people now. And there are a lot of things that would, that really, go into reaching some of these conclusions, and I realize that we don't have time to do all that. This one that that's a great study, and we probably need to do more of that type of study. But we'd find out about this church by just simply reading what the New Testament says. And it would seem to me, this morning, if you're here and you're hearing this, or if you're listening online and hearing this, or if you're listening to this lesson some other time, I'm asking this morning, just listen. Just listen to what we're reading. And just ask yourself, is that what I'm a part of? Have I done what scripture tells me to do in order for God to add me to his church? That's a simple question. Have I done what he's asked me to do so that he would add me to his church? It's His church. For lack of a better way to say it, He makes the the rules. That's not a term we like to hear. He decides what a person must do. He's done some things. He requires some things on our behalf as well. And so, the Bible speaks clearly about what those things are.
Now, let's talk about the church in a little different idea. What I read in Scripture is that when those people, whoever they were, when they did what they were instructed to do, when, when they listened to the preaching of the Gospel, or they listened to what was written, and they heard this is what I need to do. When they were willing to do that they were saved people. And what those saved people did, they began to collect together. They began to find each other. They began to talk about what they had done and and they begin to find each other. And they, what I call, they collected, and they collected in local areas. That was clear from Scripture. They collected in places like Corinth, and they collected in places like Ephesus, and they collected in places like the area of Galatia. There were churches that are talked about in Galatians. They gathered in Thessalonica. They gathered in other places in Scripture. And these people collected into these groups. And so, you have a passage like Galatians, 1:22, "I was known," Paul says, "by face to the churches of Judea which were in Christ." Paul says there were churches in Judea. And he's using that as there were multiple churches. There were these groups of saved people who gathered in these places. And he says "I was unknown by faith." And go back and look at that context. And my only point here is just simply to say that, he says, there were churches in Judea, which were in Christ. They they had done what Christ had instructed them to do. And so they collected.
And these groups that collected in these areas, they were organized by what scripture, would by a way in Scripture, that scripture would tell them. Philippians one says, "Paul and Timothy bond servants of Jesus Christ, to all the saints in Christ, Jesus, who were in Philippi with the bishops and the deacons." Here was a church who had men qualified to serve as bishops. We sometimes, the word that's most common to us is elders. I prefer the word shepherd of all of them, because I think it identifies more of, really what an overseer is. And deacons. He says there were bishops or deacons, bishops and deacons, or shepherds and deacons, or elders and deacons. And God's plan from scripture, from Titus and First Timothy and from other places that identify that. That his plan is when there are these local groups of Christians who collect, his plan is for bishops and deacons to be a part of that group and to serve, as we see from other places, in special roles. Not roles that are above anybody, but they're just unique to those men. And they're roles for men to play, again from Scripture. And these groups, these local churches, were their own groups. That's important. There was not a collecting of local churches. There was no sense in which a group in this area were together, in a sense, and a group in this area, each of these local churches was a group by itself. It didn't mean they didn't know other people who were Christians. Didn't mean that at all, but it meant in terms of their work and how they were organized, it was just that group. And these local churches, these local collections of saved people, did what they did to advance the Lord's cause. Now that doesn't mean that everybody who was in a local church, or who would gather in a local church, or who would assemble in a local church was a person who was saved. But even the saved in a local area, they wanted other people to come and be a part of what they did collectively. That's part of how they reached people of the gospel. Read First Corinthians 14. That'll help you understand that the believers and the non believers. They wanted that. These local churches did what they could do to advance the Lord's cause.
The passage that Shane read a little earlier for us about what Paul said, and I'm not gonna take the time, I'm just going to put this up here. But if you just scan that passage that probably is pretty familiar with this group, you'll see that the Lord gave these gifts to men to help with this advancement. He gave apostles and prophets, and again, from Scripture, the apostles and the prophets had a specific purpose in terms of the beginning of the church. They were the, in a sense, the foundation, the beginning of that. And because the foundation, in terms and the beginning specifically, no longer exists, there's no longer a need for that. And I think it's, to me, it's an easy deduction to see that apostles and prophets no longer exist. They're not needed anymore, but evangelists and pastors and teachers, there is a group of people mentioned here, that are still needed in order to edify and build up the church, the local church. That's part of what happens here. Hopefully. That these gifts that God has planned are still a part of a local church. They are here. We have, I am at this point, I serve as the evangelist of this group. We have four men who serve us as elders, shepherds. We have teachers, both among men and women, who teach in their specific roles that God has instructed them to be in. And all that is to edify. It's to help this body of people. It's to help this body grow. And if you read all these passage or read these verses here, you see the word edify and the word body a lot. And verse 13, says, "till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect, to a complete man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." That's exactly what all this, why all this was given. So that as we live on this earth and we're part of this particular collective, we are maturing, we're growing, we're becoming more toward the fullness of Christ. Toward the stature of a spiritual man, who's the kind of man God wants us to be, man or a woman.
That's what, that's not only what, is supposed to be happening at a place like this. That's what I believe is happening. I believe that's happening here. The Lord wants, and he wanted, local churches to be strong. He wanted them to be spiritual entities who are sounding forth the gospel. What is it that we're accomplishing here at College View? He wants us to sound forth the gospel. He wants us to be what the Thessalonians were when Paul wrote them, he said, "For from you, the word of the Lord is sounded forth, not only in Macedonia and Achaia, but also in every place." Thessalonica was in Macedonia. He said, You and your faith have sounded forth to this area and to Achaia. It's gone south, he said, but it's also gone to every place. I just have a question for you to think about. What is it when people think of this churches, this group of collected group of slave people. What is it that people think about? I hope they think about a faith that is sounded forth. I hope that's what they see. To hear it, that's good, but I hope it's what they see. That's what the Bible tells us a local church does. It sounds forth the gospel, and that's exactly who we want to be. We grow, and we're built up spiritually, and then we sound it forth. And this church doing what it ought to do is always what's most important. That's why, on a regular basis, our elders, they meet, and the objective is, what's going on here? The question is, let's talk about what's going on among this local group of people, over which they have, they have the oversight. That's part of their responsibility. That's why they're so concerned about every single one of us. And so, they talk about that. They talk about how we can do it better and how we can do it more effectively. And that's why that periodically, there are changes that happen. There are different attempts at different things to try to accomplish this spiritual work that we begin. That's why those things happen, because that's what they have been assigned. They they have been assigned, they've been given the task to help us. That's part of what I've been given. I've been given that task as an evangelist. All the teachers have been given that task. You as a member have been given that task. You have responsibilities. All of us have responsibilities to each other. That's what makes this collective such an important part each local church doing what it can do.
I'll tell you what you won't find. You won't find it in Scripture either, but you're not going to find any convention that we're a part of. You're not going to find any complex grouping that we're a part of. You're not going to find a mission control, so to speak, one area or one church or one place, one entity, one institution, that says, You know what, okay, what y'all do is determine by what we say. You're not going to find that. Why not? Because you don't find any scripture. That's a simple answer to a simple question. Why don't you find that? You know, you drive around this you drive around the Shoals area, you'll find some buildings that say, this the association of this church, association of these churches or groups. This iswhere the head of the church in this area. You'll find that around here, but that's not in Scripture. It's just not and so you're not going to find that, what you will find, I think, and I hope, is that you'll find a group of people who have collected themselves to help each other get to Heaven, to help each other get to heaven. So, among this particular local group of saved people, or a group which is made up, in part anyway, of saved people in a local church, you'll find among us a group of people that try to edify its own.
Let me tell you something about that. If you're a part of this group and you're not being edified, you don't need to be here. That sounds harsh. I don't mean leave, but if you're not being edified by being part of this group, something's not clicking, something's not right, and we need to know that so that we can help that. I believe most are, hopefully all are. But that's part of what a collective group of people do. They edify its own people. And that that happens in a variety of ways. And again, that's part of what elders do. They they talk about that, you know, how, how can we better edify each other? How, how can we build up the group of people over which we have this oversight? How can that happen? And I will tell you, that's a that's a pretty major task, that's a very sobering task, because you can boil that down and say, you know, how do we, how can we, better help people get to heaven? How do we help the group that we have? Because everybody has different needs. You know, some situations are different. How can we help those people get to heaven? When you're sitting talking about that, and I talk with them about that particular thing, that's a very sobering task. Because nobody here, nobody's circumstance is exactly the same. Everybody has different needs, spiritually, and they and I have to think about that, and part of the way we do that is we talk to you, and you talk to us, and we try to help each other. And if that conversation needs to be had, then it needs to be had, and we want it to be had. If there's needs that you have that are not being met, let us know. If there are needs that are being met, let us know. Let them know, because it's an important thing.
Not only does the local church edify its own people, it helps its own people, it helps its own people as needed. Because we are part of a local church, God has given us the task of helping each other. And some of that may not just be spiritual. There may be other needs that people have, that are needs that need to be met in order for them to survive and in order for them to live, and part of our responsibility is when they can't take care of those, then part of our responsibility as a group that is collected is to help each other. It's what we do. That's important. That's important. And I think, again, I think that, from my vantage point, we try to stay aware of those things and try to help. Almost every month, there are needs of our people who are being met, and there are needs of other people throughout the world who are being met. And that's result of what we see in Scripture. Christians help Christians, and so we try to do that.
And then, what local church does? It shares the gospel with other people. It shares the gospel with other people. And that happens multiple ways. I think it happens primarily it's because we talk about it. We ought to talk about it, and maybe more importantly, talking about is we ought to show it. When people look at you, are you imitating Christ? When people look at you, do they look at you and say, You know what? That's what a Christian is. That's what I want to be. I'm going to find out more about that. That seems to me, the best way for us to accomplish that task is by showing them what being a Christian really does mean. I think that's enough. Again, when I look at scripture, that's what I see. I see people living day to day, being the kind of people they need to live, and sharing the gospel with people, and that's what people talk about. And as a result, other people are led to Christ. But not all churches do that. I received this in my mailbox a few months ago. I'm very confident that the people who are part of this particular religious group are good people, spiritual people, to some degree anyway. But the advertisement is for a community party, and the four things that are going to happen at that party is they're going to give free lunch, live music, inflatables and giveaways. I like all of them, especially the food part. But there's nothing about that that's spiritual, not one thing. It's kind of odd to me. That's why I looked at and that's why I kept it. Because I think this is, I think this kind of shows the idea that a lot of people have. Let's give all this away, and let's provide this. And I'm assuming that the issue is and maybe people will be interested in the Gospel. The problem with that is that's not what I see in Scripture. I just don't see that in Scripture. I don't see that approach in Scripture. So, I'm glad I'm not a part of a church that does this. There's nothing spiritual in any of that that I have shared with you this morning, but I like all four things, but not as an enticement to share the gospel with somebody. You know what? If somebody wants to share something me, I'll tell you the best way to get me to listen to something, just give me cash. You just give me cash and I'll listen to it. If it's about an enticement, but when you're talking about God, when you're talking about his son, when you're talking about being saved from your sins, when you're talking about living the kind of life that'll get you to heaven, we're not talking about that kind of enticement. We're talking about reaching people who are willing to hear and listen to the gospel. We do have a responsibility in that. We have a responsibility in our community to do that. We have responsibility to our community to show them the gospel. And I think long before I showed up here on the scene, I think that this church was doing that. Were you doing that to the best of your ability? Are we doing that to the best of our ability? Now I don't, probably not. I think the answer is no, we're not. We can. We can all do better. But I think the focus of what we're trying to accomplish is still what it ought to be, and that is to help people be where they need to be spiritually. So, that's what we're trying to do.
So, let me, let me offer, as I close this lesson, let me offer. I want to offer two questions that I'd like for you to answer. If you're here, just answer these two questions. So, what I've tried to help us do this morning is, and in a very brief and a kind of a broad kind of way, I've tried to answer the question, what is the church? What is it biblically? What is it from Scripture? What is the church? And so, the two questions that I would encourage each of us to answer this morning is, first of all this, have you done what you need to do to be added to the church? Have you done what Peter and the apostles preached that those people need to do on the day of Pentecost? If you've done that, if you've been baptized for the remission of your sins, you've done. Tthat you've been added to the church. You've been added. Praise God. You've been added to his church. What is it? It's all the saved people. All the saved people. If you've done what he told you to do, you've been added to his church because you have been saved from your sins.
And the second question then is this, have you collected with a group of saved people who are trying to be the church in a local area that we read about in Scripture? As you read what the New Testament says about these local churches and about what they did, about what they accomplished, have you collected yourself as a saved person with a group of people who are making an attempt to be the church in a local area that scripture talks about? That's just two simple questions. How do you answer those questions? And there are a lot of people, I get it. Let's just address the elephant in the room. There are a lot of people who ask questions, and when they ask those questions, it makes it seem; you're so narrow minded. Let me tell you something. All I've done this morning is just read what the Lord said. It's all I've done. And all I'm asking is that what you've done? Is that what I've done? I don't think that's narrow minded at all. The Lord clearly says there is only one church. It's clear. And so, the point is, if there's only one, have I done what I needed to do to be in that group of saved people? And when that happens, then have I identified with at least a group of saved people who are attempting to accomplish what God wants them to do, according to what God has said? Is that hard? Is that hard to see? I'll say this to you, those are hard questions. And I would love to hear what you think about that. I really would.
Now, if you're going to tell me what you think about it, here's the only qualifier, it must be based upon what this says. I'm not interested in what you think. I am interested in what you think this says, okay? And I hope you're interested in what I think this says. But when I think about the church, I want to do, and I want to be a part of what about what I read in Scripture, and that's all. That's all.
Well, that's my lesson today. So, let's ask that question. Have you, have you done what we just read? Have you heard the gospel? Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? Are you convicted about that? And are you willing then to do what that's going to lead you to do, which is to repent of your sins and to be baptized into Christ for the remission of your sins? You can do that this morning and be added to the church. Think about that. In a matter of minutes. This morning, you can be added. You can be saved, and you can be added to the church by the one who built the church. You can do that. But if you don't do that, you're not in the church, you're not among saved people. Think about that. We want you. He wants you to be saved, and he's made provision for that to happen. If you're in this audience this morning, I would beg you. I would beg you to think about that, and this morning, if you need to respond to His invitation.
