The next morning several men including my uncle, helped the farmer milk his cows. We were allowed to drink the milk. As much as I love milk, I sure had to get used to drinking milk still warm from the cow.
To feed the family, mother and my uncle and sometimes with others, would walk back to the village and take all the food they could carry. Then from bricks, the people built fireplaces so they could cook. The only meals that I remember eating there were pancakes.
It was dangerous going back to the town, as the Germans were shooting at the Canadian soldiers that were in Holland defending the Dutch. From where we were staying on the farm, we could see that the town was burning. But my mother went back day after day, with several other brave souls.
If they found no food in one house, they would go into another. It was not thought of then as looting or stealing, but survival.
One day, mother went back to the village, with one of the men staying at the farm. She found what she had come looking for, and was ready to go back to the farm. She called out to the man, and just as he stood in the doorway, a shell hit him, instantly killing him.
Time and time again people went back to the town, what else could they do? You had to go, if you wanted to eat and take care of your family.
In the North of Holland the war was over in May of ‘45. A walk was organized from the farm to walk back to our city, twenty kilometres away. The town was too burned for many to go back there.
I never forget seeing some Canadian soldiers across the street and they were laughing. For some reason, I looked down and there on the street were five large cookies, laid out in the form of a five. I knew it was the soldiers who had put them there. They now watched to see who would find them. We had walked several kilometers, when mother spotted army trucks coming our way. She walked to the middle of the road and held up her hands for them to stop.
"Mama you can't do that," I told her. She did, and they stopped. The soldiers said that they would take the people to a school in the city. They took the sick, the old, and some of the children.
When we had walked about ten kilometers we came to a small village called: “Ten Boer.” The rest of the people stayed there sitting at the market square, while my mother and my uncle got hold of a pair of bikes without tires just riding on the rims, with my sister and me on the bike carrier and so we went to the city.
The authorities were notified that a group of people were in need of being picked up from the market square. They al ended up in a school in Groningen.
I went to visit with the people several times, and will always remember the certain smells that permeated that place.
When we returned to Groningen, we stopped at my aunt's place. We found my grandmother staying there. She told that the Germans had killed her daughter, my aunt. My aunt had spotted German army trucks unloading at a school and when she saw it was food, she took some.
The Germans saw her but did nothing. Not believing her good fortune, she called her neighbour and together they set out to get more food. This time the Germans shot in the air to warn them, my aunt did not believe that they would shoot, for she knew that they had let her take food earlier. So she went on taking things and they did shoot her, killing her instantly. She left a husband and three boys motherless. My mother’s brother was killed also. He was in a prisoner of war camp, in Germany.
The German’s knew by then they were losing the war, but they did not want to hear it. My uncle did tell them and was promptly shot dead for his efforts.
Not all the German people were bad. It was the Nazi’s that were the real bad ones, not the common people, they too suffered through happenings from the war. So many of the soldiers were just boys, they could be heard to say; “Ich habe der krieg nicht gewilt:
Mother was hiding two girls in our home why, I can't recall. I was told that when the doorbell rang and I saw through the little door window’s two hats, not to open the door, but to call mommy first. I was very, very scared every time the doorbell rang. The two men with hats I knew were authority, detectives, I found out later.
Well lo and behold, one day it happened two hats were visible at the door window. I froze! They were here! I called out to mother who took her time to open the door, the men stormed passed her up the stairs.
They shouted at mother wanting to know where the girls were. She told them she didn't know.
I stayed with mom who kept the men talking. In the meantime the girls had jumped from our balcony onto the garages of the people below, over back fences they went, until they came to the school, where I later went to Sunday school, and escaped that way. My sister watched it all happening.
In ‘44 food was so scarce, that mother decided to leave the city and go to her sister and her husband. They lived in the country, closer to the farmers. She loaded up a pushcart with some of our belongings and then found a boat that would take us to my aunt’s place, some twenty kilometers away from our city. The town was called Appingedam.
When we got to their place, we found my aunt in bed. She had contracted tuberculosis. Mom thought that she got sick by neglecting her health by using the milk to make butter, and then selling it. I still see that large jar of milk behind the stove. To see in a few day’s, blobs of butter floating on top.
We were at my aunt's house only a few weeks when the German’s ordered everyone in the village to evacuate the town. We had no choice we were once again on the move. Where to now? We started to leave the town and walk. Soon we came to the outskirts.
Here a lot of the land was flooded, and I was petrified. I was afraid of water then and to me this looked like an ocean. Water, water, as far as I could see. I was screaming in terror. (The Dutch had blown up some of their own bridges and flooded the land, to try and stop the Germans from advancing)
My younger sister was sitting on the carrier of the bike my uncle was pushing. Mother finally couldn't stand my wailings any longer and put me on her bike. The bikes we have in Holland all have a carrier on the back of the bike. They are strong enough to hold an adult.
We came to a farm. A good farmer and his wife lived there. They allowed the sick, including my aunt, to go inside the farmhouse and the others had to go to the barn and sleep in the hay. There were quite a few of us, all making a place for ourselves as best as we could. It was not easy sleeping with all those strangers, their noises kept me awake for a long time.
Sometimes people are simply confused about what the gospel is actually saying and what it means. Sometimes people can be confused about what it means to be a Christian. So, there are times when a person can say they are a Christian, but they simply do not understand what they are saying when they make that proclamation. And it's the church's responsibility to determine whether a person's profession of faith in Christ is genuine or misguided. Here's another point that we need to talk about when it comes to baptizing new disciples.
This is something that I don't hear a lot of today. Now, the new believer doesn't have to clean up everything in their life before they get baptized. The pattern that we see in the New Testament is that when a person professed faith in Christ and became a Christian, they got baptized immediately. Was their life perfect when they got baptized? No, not even close.
But had Christ's perfect life been given to them when they had believed? Yes. And having Jesus is what makes us right with God. And if we have really received Christ, then we have everything we need to begin our new life of following Him. A new life that's identified by our baptism.
So, you don't have to clean your whole life up first before you come to Jesus and get baptized in his name. But you do have to communicate that you understand what kind of relationship you're entering into with Jesus. You're entering into a relationship where Jesus has now become the Lord of your life. And because you understand that, you acknowledge that the Lord may require certain things of you. Some of those things he may leave till later to work on with you, but he may require some things of you right away.
There are some things that some people will need to walk away from in their life right out of the gate if they are going to begin following Jesus. In a couple of weeks, we're going to be back in our series walking through the Book of Acts. And when we get there, we're going to see an example of what I'm talking about. The Apostle Paul was in Ephesus preaching the gospel and trying to make new disciples. There, a bunch of people who practiced forbidden magic arts were saved when they heard and believed the Gospel message and listen to what these new believers did right away.
Acts, chapter 19, starting in verse 18. And many who had become believers came confessing and disclosing their practices, while many of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in front of everyone. So, they calculated their value and found it to be 50,000 pieces of silver. In this way, the word of the Lord spread and prevailed. Now, the text isn't clear if they were baptized before or after they burned all their books.
What is clear from this passage is that they could not go back to practicing something God explicitly forbids in His Word. They could not practice magic arts and be a disciple of Jesus at the same time. They had to choose, and they chose wisely. So, the person who gets radically saved by the grace of God doesn't have to get their whole life cleaned up before they get Baptist or even all cleaned up right away after they get baptized. It's going to take the rest of all of our lives to grow into spiritual maturity and become more and more like Jesus.
You may spend the rest of your life learning how to battle the sin of lust in your heart, but you can stop sleeping with your boyfriend or girlfriend starting today. You may spend the rest of your life battling the sin that's in here, but you could move out today if you're living with your boyfriend or girlfriend outside of marriage. That's something that you can do. And that, by the way, is what repentance looks like. And if someone is not willing to give up something like pagan worship or s*xual immorality in order to become a follower of Jesus, then they are not ready yet to become a follower of Jesus
Tell everyone this glorious news. Now sadly, many people will reject this message that Jesus' disciple-making disciples share with them. But praise God, there will be people who receive it, those who receive it and believe it will be saved. Those are the ones who become his disciples and those will be the ones that Jesus builds his church with. He is going to use his people to add people to his people.
He's going to use his disciples to make new disciples. He is going to use his church to build his church. This is the beginning of the disciple making process that Jesus calls them and us to in the great commission. It's what the king authorizes his people to go and do. Now when a person receives the gospel message and believes it and becomes a disciple of Jesus, the work of making a disciple isn't over, is really just beginning.
According to Jesus' words in the Great Commission. What are we supposed to do next after a person becomes a disciple of Jesus? Well, Jesus says that the church is to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now here's another question for you and this one's kind of a trick question. Who decides who gets Baptized and who doesn't?
Does that decision rest solely with the person who just became a new disciple of Jesus? Well, not solely, but yes. They have a part to play. They have to make the decision for themselves if they are going to follow Jesus through the waters of baptism. But is that individual the only one who has a say in whether they get baptized or not?
They aren't. According to Jesus. The church makes the final decision if they are to be baptized or not. Write this down and then we're going to talk about it. Jesus authorizes his church to affirm a new believer's profession of faith by baptizing them.
Jesus authorizes his church to affirm a new believer's profession of faith by baptizing them. Baptism is a formal process that requires more than just a person's desire to get baptized. Now you have to make the decision to get baptized when you become a Christian. Nobody can make that decision for you. It should be a relatively easy decision because it's something that Jesus tells you to do.
But nobody is going to horse you under the water. You have to choose to do it. But the church also plays an important role in deciding if you should be Baptist. Baptism is not just a personal decision, it's also a corporate decision. It's a church decision.
The church has been given the responsibility to discern if your profession of faith is credible. The church has to come to the conclusion that you have heard the true gospel, understood the true gospel, and believed the true gospel. That's it. And if there's evidence that you have received those gospel and believed it, then the church will Baptist you because you have to believe the gospel in order to become a Christian, and only Christians are to be baptized into Jesus' name. The church has to make that decision in concert with you making that decision, the church has to affirm your profession of faith.
That's what's implied when Jesus says to his disciples and not the ones that are going to become his disciples, but he says to his disciples, he tells them Baptist new disciples. It's implied that the disciples had to be able to recognize if the person they were going to baptize had actually become a disciple because Jesus says to baptize disciples only. Now I don't know if you know this, but maybe you did. Did you know that it's possible, it's possible for a person to call themselves a Christian when they aren't actually a Christian? Sometimes people mean well when they take the name of Christ upon themselves.
Matthew, chapter 28. Starting in verse 16. The eleven disciples traveled to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but some doubted. Jesus came near and said to them, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I've commanded you. And remember, I'm with you always to the end of the age. There are a few things that we need to see in this passage. The first one is this - Jesus authorizes his church to build his church.
Look again at what Jesus says in verse 18. All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. All authority is mine. Jesus says all of it, all of the authority in heaven and all of the authority on earth.
Jesus is king everywhere. And whatever orders the King gives his subjects to accomplish, they go and do that. And they do it under the King's authority. With the king's authority. Jesus said to them, all authority has been given to me in heaven and earth.
Go, therefore, all authority is mine. Therefore, whatever I tell you to go and do, you get to go and do it with my authority. The King delegates his authority to his subjects when he gives them commands to accomplish. The subjects aren't going with their own authority, they're going with the kings. And what does King Jesus authorize his disciples to go and do?
Make disciples of all nations. Now what's another way of saying this? Go and build my church back in Matthew 16, Jesus promised his disciples that he was going to build his church. And there's no confusing these words of Jesus there. He said plainly to his disciples in Matthew 1618, I will build my church.
Here in Matthew 28, he's telling them that he's going to use them to build it. And what was Jesus promising to build when he made the promise to build his church back in Matthew 16? He did not promise to build a Sunday worship service that happened once a week. He did not promise to build a physical structure called the church. He promised to build for himself a distinct group of people called out from the world and separated from the world.
A people that has received forgiveness from God for their sins. A people that has recognized their sinfulness and repented of it. A people who love Jesus. A people who have collectively and willingly laid down their lives in order to follow Jesus as Lord. A people who have received the Holy Spirit.
A people who have been saved. A people whose sole purpose for a living is to make Jesus famous in their lives. A people whose death has no power over them. A people that the Bible calls disciples of Jews. This is the church that Jesus promised he would build back in Matthew 16, a group of his disciples that belongs to him.
So when Jesus says to his disciples in Matthew 28, go therefore and make disciples, he is saying, go and invite people to become my disciples just like you've become my disciples. Go and tell them the good news about what I've done to make a way for them to come and follow me. And invite them to come and follow me. When Jesus says go make disciples, he's saying, go proclaim the gospel message to everyone. Tell everyone I'm God.
Tell them I came to die a brutal shameful death on the cross to pay the price for their sins. Tell them I substituted myself for them. I died so that they could live forever. Tell them I won't count their sins against them if they turn and put their trust in me. Tell them that if they follow me they will live forever because I've conquered death by rising from the dead three days after I died.
He does. He just doesn't use the specific words that we're looking for him to use. Jesus does this with other big issues too. There are times he'll make gigantic statements, but he makes them using words that we aren't accustomed to or looking for. Here's an example of what I'm talking about.
Do you know that in the Bible, Jesus claims to be God? He believed that about himself. But do you also know that Jesus is never recorded using the exact words I am God? He never says those three words in that exact order when he's referring to Himself. Those who oppose the deity of Christ today love to point this fact out in defense of their position.
They say things like, Jesus never said the words I am God. So that means he never believed himself to be God. They think they've just dropped the proverbial mic and walk away from the discussion thinking that the case has been closed. But just because Jesus has never used the exact words I am God in that exact way, that does not mean he never made the claim that he is and was the living God. Jesus claimed to be God on numerous occasions in the Bible.
In John chapter five, Jesus heals a paralyzed man on the Sabbath and then tells him to pick up his mat and walk. The Jews are furious that a man was commanded to carry his own mat on the Sabbath. And here's what happens next John, chapter five, verse 17. Jesus responded to them, to the Jews, my Father is still working, and I'm working also. This is why the Jews began trying all the more to kill him.
Not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal to God. Jesus never said the words I am God, but in John five, he said the words my Father is still working, and I am working also. And the Jews knew exactly what he was saying and what he meant by the words he chose to use. Jesus was claiming to be God when he called God his Father, Jesus knew what he meant. The Jews knew what he meant.
It's one of the reasons they wanted to kill him. Now, there are many more examples of this principle that I could show you, but this one will suffice for now because we can apply this principle to what Jesus has to say about membership in the Bible. We need to pay attention to what Jesus says and we need to determine what he means when he chooses the words he does. And just because he doesn't use the specific words we might be looking for, doesn't mean he isn't using the right words to convey a very important truth to us. And so here's the punchline up front.
It's going to be the first fill-in on your outlines. Jesus prescribed the practice of church membership when he gave the Great Commission to his disciples. Jesus prescribed the practice of church membership when he gave the Great Commission to his disciples. I absolutely love that. It's rightfully called the Great Commission and not the Great Suggestion.
The words that Jesus spoke in the Great Commission are to be understood, cherished, and obeyed by all those who follow Jesus as Lord. The Great Commission cannot be optional for us to do as a church. And the Great Commission is a command from Jesus to practice church membership. Let me read this famous passage for us and then we'll unpack it together. This incredible scene takes place after Jesus has been resurrected from the dead.
The Biblical Prescription for Church Membership Date:9/24/23
Series: Distinct...Speaker: BJ Chursinoff
What does Jesus have to say about church membership? Lots, actually! In this message, we'll see that Jesus tells His disciples to practice church membership. It's a practice that the King prescribes.
The purpose of this series that we're in right now is really simple. I want to show you the biblical nature of something called church membership. I want us to see how the practice of church membership at the local church level is rooted in the Bible and therefore is something that we should practice here at Gospel City. Back in the introduction to this series, we saw that God has always made a distinction between the special group of people on the planet that has faith in Him and those who don't. He has always made this distinction and he always will.
And I said at the end of that message that church membership was the way we can know who is in this distinct group of people and who isn't. There's a way to know that we don't have to guess. Then last week we saw that a clear biblical pattern of formal membership has been practiced all throughout the Bible. Israel practiced it in the Old Testament, and the church practices it in the New. This week we're going to see that church membership isn't merely patterned for us in the Bible.
Tonight we're going to see that Jesus actually tells the church to do church membership. He prescribes the practice of it. Now, if you're joining us for the first time tonight, and you have no idea what I'm talking about when I use the phrase church membership, here's the definition that I shared last week. Church membership is a covenant of union between a particular church and a Christian that consists of the church's affirmation of the Christian's gospel profession, the church's promise to give oversight to the Christian, and the Christian's promise to gather with the church and submit to its oversight in church membership. The local church says to the Christian, we can see and affirm your faith in Jesus Christ as both Savior and Lord, and we give ourselves to help you and you grow in your love for Jesus in real and tangible ways.
And the Christian says to the local church, I want to have my faith in Christ affirmed by this body of believers, and I want to be discipled by this church. Church membership recognizes and identifies all the people who want to be in this kind of formal relationship with the local church that they are part of. Jesus tells us to do this. He tells the church to do what our definition of church membership is describing. I hope I don't have to tell you this, but if Jesus tells Christians to do something, we do that thing, whatever it is.
So if Jesus tells us to practice formal church membership at the local church level, then that is what Christians need to do. But some of you who know your Bible well may be thinking to yourself, wait a minute. Where does Jesus tell us to practice church membership? I've read the New Testament dozens of times and I've never read anywhere of him saying anything about it. If you're thinking that you're right kind of, it's true.
Nowhere in the Bible is Jesus quoted using the phrase church membership. He doesn't talk about Christians taking a class in order to become a member of the church. He doesn't say, Thou must go online and complete the membership pathway, and then you can become a member of my church. You can't find that verse anywhere. He doesn't say any of these specific words or phrases, but that does not mean he isn't telling Christians to submit themselves to the practice of church membership.
Now, it's not an easy process, but we walk out what Jesus prescribes for us to do in Matthew chapter 18. It's not a quick process either, but here's the gist of it. Long story short, and we're going to look at this passage in more detail next week, but if a professing Christian refuses to repent from their act of sinning, if they stubbornly refuse to obey God, then the local church that they are a part of will eventually have to remove them from the collective of God's people. This is never easy. It's never enjoyable.
It's often a long, difficult, patient process. It's a process that's always rooted in the hope that the person will change their ways and come back to following the Lord. Now, there is a path to coming back to the church if you've been removed because of your ongoing unrepentant sin. But that path includes visible, recognizable Godly sorrow, repentance, forgiveness, and newfound obedience to God's Word. And the best part, the celebration.
We will always celebrate and rejoice when a wayward brother or sister comes back home after being put out of the church. Loving Jesus, trusting Jesus, learning the commands Jesus gave us, obeying those commands Jesus gave us. This is really all there is to being a Christian. This is what marks us as the people of God. So in what world would it make sense for a person to claim they are a follower of Jesus, but they don't actually want to follow Jesus in any meaningful way?
We don't follow him with our words only. We follow him with our actions and our lives. If our actions don't line up with our words, we will have brothers and sisters in Christ. Hopefully, we will have brothers and sisters in Christ who will lovingly enter into our life to investigate what's really going on with us. It takes a lot of love and courage and grace, by the way, to do that.
But what I just shared with you is a flyover of what's supposed to happen to a person who says that they belong to God and yet makes the practice of rejecting God's commands. And we can see this pattern paralleled in both Testaments in the Bible.
Okay, so there we have it. Eight parallels that exist between membership in Israel in the Old Testament and membership in the church in the New. If we put practices like those in place here in Gospel City Church where we try to identify whether a person's profession of faith in Christ is genuine and if we do recognize that someone has heard and received the gospel. And we call them to get Baptist and expect them to get baptized. And if we call them to formally give themselves to belong to a local church that has its own elders and is distinct from other faithful local churches geographically.
And if we formally number those among us who have not only given themselves to Christ but who have given themselves to one another to do life together in a meaningful way. And if we teach these people and call these people and expect these people and encourage these people to live their lives according to the word of God and if these people indicate to us that they welcome the process of biblical discipleship in their lives. Even if that means they need to be disciplined if sin ever comes a practice in their life. If we do all of these things, is any of it unbiblical? I don't think we can call any of these things unbiblical because we've just seen how all of these things have been patterned for us in the Bible, in both the Old and the New Testaments by both those who belong to Israel and those who belong to the church.
These things are in the Bible, and I think the expectation is that we would continue to observe these same patterns in the church today, and it's these things that mark what biblical church membership should look like. So is church membership biblical? It is if we take into account the patterns that God's people have observed for the last several thousand years.
The Bible calls it being cut off. You could be cut off from God's people for not observing circumcision, to not observing proper s*xual relations, to participating in pagan worship rituals, to being ceremonially unclean, among other things. And if you committed any of these violations and you were rightfully cut off from the people of God, you could actually be brought back into the fold after a designated length of time with an appropriate sacrifice made on your behalf. But there were some lines that could not be crossed. There was no coming back from them.
Some violations in the Old Testament got you the death penalty. Here are some examples. You murder someone, you strike your mom or dad, or you curse them. Kidnapping? I can't believe God had to put this next one in the Bible.
But having sex with an animal, sacrificing your children to pagan gods, adultery, and occult practices you died. If you chose to do any of these things and you got caught as part of the people of God. Now, this might sound harsh, but I'm not against the idea of capital punishment. Death penalty laws cannot change a person's heart. Wicked people will always do wicked things.
That's one of the lessons we learned from reading the Old Testament. They had these laws in place, and people still chose to do these wicked things. But if the death penalty was in place today, I can't help but think that we'd see a lot less of these wicked things happening. Just saying. If you got the death penalty for taking a kid that's not yours, I wonder how many kids would stop going missing each year.
People would have sex with other people's spouses a lot less if it wasn't celebrated, but if you died. But I digress. In the Old Testament, an individual person could be cut off from the people of God or even put to death for disregarding God's commands on how to live as a part of his special people. Now, when we get to the church in the New Testament, the death penalty is gone when it comes to breaking the law of Christ.
But there are still severe ramifications for outright rejecting and trespassing against God's revealed will. Please hear me on this next part. It's very important. No Christian, none is living to live a perfect Christian life. But every genuine Christian will want to live a perfect Christian life and they will grow in living out the Christian life.
That is because God puts his spirit in us to conform us to the image of Jesus. So that's going to happen. God is going to sanctify those who belong to Him. It's just not going to happen without mistakes being made along the way. That's why one of God's most important commands to Christians is that we forgive one another.
We're going to sin against one another even if we don't want to. And when those times come, we need to be people of grace, both ready to extend the grace of forgiveness to one another when we've been wronged. And we need to receive the grace of forgiveness when we're the one who has done the wrong. So there is room for making mistakes in this journey of following Jesus as part of his special people. But we don't want to make mistakes.
And when we do make them, we grieve the fact that we did and we repent and we grow through the trial so that one day we aren't making the same sinful mistakes again and again that we used to. But what with all that said and that's sweet, hopefully it sounds good to you and realistic and true. But with that said, what if a professing Christian doesn't care about an ongoing pattern of unrepentant sin in their life? What if they begin calling something that the Bible plainly calls sin not a sin? What if they begin deliberately crossing the lines that God has plainly laid down for us in His Word that are to govern the way we live as his people?
And the difference is found in what we choose to do with Jesus's words at the end of his earthly ministry. When Jesus is praying to the Father in what we call the High Priestly prayer, we read him say this about the Word of God as it relates to his people. John 17, starting in verse 13, speaking to the Father, he says, now I'm coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they, my disciples, may have joy, my joy completed in them. I've given them your word. The world hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
I'm not praying that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Father, sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I've also sent them into the world.
I sanctify myself for them so that they also may be sanctified by the truth. So reception of belief in and adherence to the Word of God will sanctify us. That means it will set us apart from the world around us. And that is a very good thing. God's people don't make up the rules for their own life.
It's not a build-your-own-adventure kind of life that we've been saved into. Human beings. I don't know if you realize this. Human beings don't know how to live. That's why most of our lives were so jacked up when Christ found us.
So we happily turn our lives and our wills and our decision-making over to God. We submit our life to his commands. And his commands, the Bible says, are not burdensome. They are life. They are the pathway to blessing.
They are what defines us and separates us from everyone else in the world who doesn't belong to the Church. Yet loving and obeying God's Word is what makes us a distinct people from everyone else in the world around us. And next week, we're going to see how Jesus calls us to obey his commands in the context of belonging to a local church. But for now, see how God's distinct people in both the Old and New Testaments are distinct because of the word of God. This brings us to pattern number eight, our final pattern and our final fill-in.
There's always been a severe penalty for not living according to the parameters that govern God's people, removal from the community of God's people. This has always been Israel under the Old Covenant, and the Church under the New Covenant received parameters from God that were to govern the way they were to live as his people. If they lived within the confines of those parameters, they too would have experienced abundant blessings. And they did. When they obeyed, they experienced the fruit of that obedience, and it was so sweet.
But there were consequences. When an individual chose to disobey God's commands, they were removed. Sometimes their removal was temporary, and sometimes it was permanent. The law of God went into great detail, outlining the consequences for certain transactions. Violations of some of God's commands brought about a penalty where you were removed from participation in the daily life of God's people for a designated period of time.
And may the Word of God become that amazing in our own estimation today, too. So, in the Old Testament, God called Moses up Mount Sinai, where he gave them the words. He would then take down the mountain and give to the people. In the New Testament, it's so much better because God Himself came down and gave his word to his people. Jesus, the Son of God, left Heaven to come and live amongst us.
He taught us directly how God wants us to live. He told us what he wants us to do. He modeled for us how he wants to do it. The apostle Paul refers to these words as the law of Christ. These words and deeds of Christ are recorded for us in the first four books of the New Testament known as the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
These are the very words that Jesus points his disciples back to when he meets with them after his resurrection from the dead, again going back to the great commission of Jesus, where Jesus said, go therefore, make disciples, baptize them, and then teach them to observe everything I've commanded you. Where are we going to find everything that Jesus commanded in the Gospels? Teach new disciples, teach new converts, teach new members of the family of God. Teach them to obey My commands. Now, it's not just the commands of Jesus in the Gospels that Christians are to obey, but it's the whole of the teaching of the New Testament.
Because before he died, Jesus told his hand-selected delegates, his apostles, that they were going to receive even more instruction and more information after Jesus was gone, after he died, rose, and ascended to Heaven. That's because the Holy Spirit would come. And when the Spirit came upon them, Jesus said that he would guide the apostles into all the truth. He told them this in the upper room. John 16, verse twelve, he said to them, I still have many things to tell you, but you can't bear them.
Now, when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he will not speak on his own, but he will speak whatever he hears. He will also declare to you what is to come. So, Jesus's teaching of his disciples would continue after he was physically gone from them, and that teaching would come through the Holy Spirit who was given to them. And the rest of the New Testament that comes after the Gospels was inspired and produced by way of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' Apostles.
So, Christians obey the words of Jesus that came out of his mouth, recorded for us in the Gospels, and we obey the words of Jesus that came through the Apostles' mouths by way of the Spirit of Christ that was in them. And it is trust of these words and the adherence to them that marks the life of the people of God today. It makes us a distinct people. Jesus said this at the end of those Histaminer on the Mount Matthew, chapter seven therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house.
Yet it didn't collapse because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and doesn't act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell and the rivers rose, the winds blew and pounded that house, and it collapsed. It collapsed with a great crash. According to Jesus, there are only two groups of people those whose lives are built on a rock and those whose lives are built on sand.
The 3000 who were added to the church at Pentecost were numbered in Acts chapter two, verse 41. In Acts chapter four, verse four, we're told that the number of men in the church had come to be 5000. Now, how did they know it was 5000? They counted them. Every name that is counted and listed in a local church is a name that represents a life that has been radically saved by the grace of God.
It's not unbiblical to count such names and looking at both the Old and the New Testaments, it would be unbiblical not to count them. And I'd argue that we need to count people if we're going to make sure that they're shepherded well. How would we know if one sheep was missing from the 100 if we never counted the 100?
Pattern number seven. It's next. Fill in on your outline. There has always been a specific parameter placed around God's people that governs the way they are to live, and that is His Word. His Word.
God's people have always been called by God to be distinct from the world around them. This is true of those who live under the Old Covenant as a part of Israel, and it's true of those who live under the New Covenant as part of the church. But how do we do that? What is it that distinguishes the people who belong to God and are a part of his special people from everyone around them who isn't? Now, it's really a simple concept.
God, get this. If you take anything away from tonight, take this. God tells us how to live. He gives us words that we can understand. He gives us the ability to do what he says, and he expects us to obey what he says.
And it's obedience to His Word that makes us stick out as a peculiar people compared to those around us. When God delivered Israel out of their slavery in Egypt, he led them by Moses into the wilderness and then into the Promised Land. But before they got to the Promised Land, they had a pivotal detour that brought them to Mount Sinai. It's on Mount Sinai where God gave Moses and the entire people of Israel His word on how he wanted his people to live. Moses went up the mountain and received direct revelation from God.
The people down at the base of the mountain witnessed it, and it was quite the scene. Moses came down the mountain and relayed all that info to God's people. And it's this info that fills the Torah or the first five books of the Old Testament Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. It's in these books where God's people had their law that shaped their culture and community and identity. Adherence to this law is what made them a distinct people from the nations around them.
It informed the way they worshiped God through the sacrificial system. It told them how they were to interact with other members of God's people. It told them or instructed them on how they were to give financially to the work God was doing among them. It shaped the way they worked and did business. It gave them guidelines for their feasts and festivals.
It told them how to party. Now, you might be tempted to think that following rules takes the fun out of everything. But the rules that we make up for ourselves most of the time don't lead to fullness of life, but the rules that God gives us. They are literally the very best way a person can live. And if they were obeyed, they would lead to fullness of joy and the deepest level of satisfaction.
The Book of Psalms opens this way. Psalm chapter one, verses one and two how happy, how happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked, or stand in the pathway with sinners, or sit in the company of mockers. Instead, his delight is in the Lord's instruction, and he meditates on it day and night. Psalm 119 is the longest chapter in the Bible, and it's a poem dedicated to reveling in and rejoicing in how awesome God's word is. Read it sometime this week and see how amazing the word of God was to the Psalmist.
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We get our word pastor from the word shepherd. The Bible calls these under-shepherds who pastor Jesus's local churches, "elders." And we see that elders are the ones appointed by God to lead local churches. Acts, chapter 14, verse 21 through 23 says this and after Paul and Barnabas had preached the Gospel in Derbe and made many disciples they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the disciples by encouraging them to continue into faith and by telling them it's necessary for you to go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God. When they had appointed elders, very important plural elders, for them in every church singular and prayed with fasting, they committed them to the Lord in whom they had believed.
Every local church on the planet should have a plurality of elders who provide oversight and shepherding and governance of that local body. This is the biblical model for leadership in the local church today, and there's no other. Jesus is the boss, and he calls elders to be the ones who exercise pastoral leadership over his churches. Every church should have a plurality of elders if it's to be a healthy biblical church. Pattern number six.
This is going to be the next fill-in on your outline. Those who are part of the community of God's people have always been numbered, always. This is an aspect that some people really don't like about church membership today. The act of counting people and numbering them, it feels so impersonal to some people, like an inmate got a number. But you want to know why I have zero problem with counting our members and numbering them?
Because God's people are routinely numbered in both the Old and the New Testaments, although many people skip reading it. There's a book in the Bible called Numbers. It's a part of the Torah. It's part of the first five books of the Bible, and its name kind of gives its purpose away. It numbers people that's like, why it exists as a book in the Bible.
We see the numbering of Israel in the Bible from the very inception of the nation onward, the twelve sons of Israel are numbered 70 is the number of their extended family that went into Egypt. 600,000 men was the count of the nation. When they left Egypt a little over 400 years later, Moses counted the people under his care and divided them up into smaller units so that he could care for them better. If you remember, he did this at his father-in-law Jethro's advice. Exodus, chapter 18, verse 21.
But you should select men, he told Moses, from all the people. Let me start again. You should select from all the people, able men, God-fearing, trustworthy, and hating dishonest profit. Place them over the people as commanders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. I don't know if you realize this.
You have to count people in order to make these kinds of groups. There were censuses taken. Now this went south when David did it in a dishonorable way. But his sin didn't render the act of counting the number of people of Israel a wrong thing to do in and of itself. The pointing of Israel was so detailed that those in charge could know who belonged to the nation before they were exiled, while they were in exile, and after they came back from their exile.
Read Ezra, chapter two, and Nehemiah chapter seven for examples of this detailed numbering. The Old Testament is filled with the detailed numbering of those who not only belong to the nation of Israel but of those who belong to his individual tribes as well. And we see this practice of numbering continue into the New Testament with the church. Those were various counts of Jesus's disciples. There was the three, the Twelve, the 70, the 120 at Pentecost.
The 3000 who were added to the church at Pentecost were numbered in Acts chapter two, verse 41. In Acts chapter four, verse four, we're told that the number of men in the church had come to be 5000. Now, how did they know it was 5000? They counted them.
And while these men provided leadership over the entirety of God's people, there were other men who were appointed to lead the smaller subcommunities of God's people under the leadership of the one main leader. In Numbers, chapter one, verses one through 16, we see that Moses was the big leader over all of Israel at that time. The men mentioned by name in this passage were each heads or leaders of the twelve individual tribes. In one Chronicles chapter 27, verses 16 to 22, David was King over all of Israel, he was the big-leader. The men mentioned by name in this passage were leaders over each of the tribes within Israel, one big leader over the whole group of God's people, and multiple leaders providing oversight over the subcommunities of God's people.
We can see that pattern plainly in the Old Testament. Now, there could be some confusion when some people try to misapply this principle in the wrong way to the church today. Because here's how a problem can arise, and it's a big one. There is one big-leader over the universal church today. There is one Father, there is only one High Priest, there is only one judge, there is only one King, and no human being on this planet is Him.
No human being on this planet is to fulfill any of those roles we see fulfilled in the Old Testament by big-leaders. And you want to know why? Because all of those roles are filled by one and the same person. And he is a human being. It's just that at the moment he doesn't reside on this planet.
He is the God-man, Jesus Christ, and he is filling all of these big-leader roles from his current position on his those in heaven. Jesus is the Eternal Father, spoken of in Isaiah chapter nine. Jesus is our great High Priest, interceding for us and making atonement for us in the heavens after the order of Melchizedek, spoken of in Hebrews chapters four and five. Jesus is the one who very soon will judge the living and the dead. Jesus is the King who was born into the line of David, whose kingdom will know no end.
Jesus is the greater Moses. Jesus is the head of the church. Jesus is the bridegroom of the church. Jesus is the founder, the builder, and the sustainer of the church. And he alone fills all these roles, and no human being should try to take this mantle from him.
No pastor, no priest, no pope, no government official. Jesus is the boss over the entire church. And we will always run into major problems when mere mortals try to be like Moses today or David in the church today. Men who want to be the big- leader run away. If you're ever a part of a church where one single man has or wants.
All the power and answers to no one. That's not biblical. What is biblical is that Jesus is the chief shepherd over his flock, the church, and yet he, like Moses, and like both Moses and David did, he appoints under-shepherds, tasked with providing oversight to the smaller subcommittees of local churches that are spread all across the world. As the church was growing in the first century, we can see that the leadership of individual churches was given to biblically qualified men who were tasked with shepherding the church. Jesus is always the chief shepherd, but these men were to be the boots on the ground, so to speak, shepherding Jesus' Church in a way that would honor Jesus and take care of the ones he spilled his blood.
Each local church exists in its own geographical area. There are churches in those provinces, there are churches in the city. There are churches that met in homes. It might be hard to read because it's hard to fit it all in there, but I'm going to show a list on the screen behind me of all the different churches we see in the New Testament. Now, if you wanted to do the research, you could find these churches on a map, and you can see that every single one of them is distinct from every other one.
Geographically they're separate. Now, I need to be clear about one difference we can observe between the tribes in the Old Testament and the local churches in the New. God commanded the geographical distinction in his word in the Old Testament. In the New Testament church, each local church exists separate from all the other local churches. But God didn't specifically mandate their geographical distinction and yet we see it in the Bible.
And I think it's interesting that we can see in the scriptures how local churches honored each other and their distinct identity. When you read through the letters to the churches in the New Testament, keep your eyes open for the language of sending and receiving. There are times a local church would send one or more of its members to another local church to minister, and that local church would receive them into its fellowship. It was a formal sending and receiving, probably keeping with the custom of the day. A Christian who was sent from one church to another was probably accompanied by a letter of recommendation from the sending church.
The sending church would in essence say, this person that we're sending to you is a Christian who is a part of our fellowship. You can trust that they are a Christian because we've already affirmed that they are one. And that would give the receiving church peace of mind bringing a stranger into their midst. And they would welcome their brother or sister into their fellowship for as long as they were in town. Jews in the Old Testament did not jump from tribe to tribe.
They weren't allowed to. And Christians in the New Testament didn't go from church to church willy-nilly either. Tribe hopping wasn't a thing in the Old. Church hopping wasn't and shouldn't be a thing in the New. That's because each tribe or local church was its own distinct subgroup of God's people and there was a level of formality involved with belonging to each one.
Pattern number five there have always been specific leaders that govern all of God's people and there have also always been leaders that govern the subcommunities of God's people. There's a long list of great leaders in Israel that gave leadership over the entire nation. First, there were the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then there were the deliverers and the judges like Moses and Samuel and others. Then were then the time came for the long line of kings beginning with David and Solomon and so forth.
The twelve sons of Jacob formed the basis for the twelve tribes of Israel in order from the oldest to the youngest. They are Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulon, Joseph and Benjamin. If you were a part of Israel, you were part of one of the twelve tribes. And if you were part of one of the twelve tribes, you were a part of Israel. There was no scenario where someone was a part of Israel and not a part of one of the twelve tribes.
This concept didn't exist. Now we can see the same pattern play out in the New Testament Church, the Big-C Church, the universal, the global Church is one single, supposed to be unified, body of believers who belong to God. And this group stretches to the four corners of the earth. And although the church is one, it too is made up of smaller, individual, separate local churches. If you are a part of the one big C church, you will or should be part of one of the smaller local churches.
And if you are part of a smaller local church, then that identifies you as being part of the one big church. There was no scenario in the New Testament where someone was a part of the church and not a part of a local church. This concept did not exist in the first century and it shouldn't exist today. Pattern number four the smaller subcommunities of God's people have always been separated from one another geographically. Each of the twelve tribes of Israel was given specific boundaries that they would live within.
And you can see this both when they were in the wilderness coming out of Egypt and when they crossed over into the Promised Land. After the Israelites left Egypt and came out of slavery, God commanded Moses to have them set up their wilderness camp in a very specific way. They didn't gather willy-nilly. I'm going to use willy-nilly lots in this sermon. They didn't gather willy-nilly as each of them thought best.
They were instructed on how to gather, and they were told to gather according to the tribe each was a part of. And each tribe was placed in a specific position around the Tabernacle, which was always in the middle of God's people. Numbers chapter two, it's on your outline, says this the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, every one of the children of Israel shall camp by his own banner beside the emblems of his Father's house. They shall camp some distance from the Tabernacle of meeting the children of Israel did according to all, the Lord commanded Moses, so they camped by their banners and so they broke camp, each one by his family, according to their father's houses. I'm going to put an image on the screen behind me of what it looked like in the wilderness.
And this is how they traveled for 40 years. They maintained this tribal distinction among them in the wilderness for four decades. Now. This distinction between tribes was maintained once they eventually entered into the Promised Land. During the conquest of Canaan, Joshua allotted the land to the tribes of Israel.
You can read how he did that, how he distributed the land to each of the tribes in Joshua chapters 13 to 19. Now, here's a picture on the screen of what their allotment looked like.
Each of the twelve tribes was to live in geographically distinct areas from the other tribes. And we can see the same pattern of geographical distinction among the local churches in the New Testament, there is only one church, just like there is only one Israel. But just like Israel was made up of smaller tribes, the church is made up of smaller tribes. We call these local churches. And each of the local churches we see in Scripture are distinct from one another geographically.
Every male born in your household or purchased from any foreigner and not our offspring, whether born in your household or purchased, he must be circumcised. My covenant will be marked in your flesh as a permanent covenant. If any male is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that man will be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. Now, God said that to Abraham, but he also says this to Moses' regarding the foreigner among God's people.
Exodus twelve. If any alien resides among you and wants to observe the Lord's Passover, every male in his household must be circumcised, and then he may participate. He will become like a native of the land, but no uncircumcised person may eat. The same law will apply both to the native and the alien who resides among you. And so, the sign of circumcision was necessary, whether you became an Israelite by being born into Abraham's line or you were a convert.
It's the official ritual that formally identifies you as belonging to God's special, distinct people. Now. Praise God. The Bible is crystal clear that circumcision has absolutely no value for the person united to Christ under the new covenant today. Those who come to be a part of Jesus' Church today go through the waters of baptism of fully immersion instead
Now, Baptist publicly identifies anyone who has become a Christian, both men and women, that they have trusted in Christ and are now a part of his family, the Church. This is what Jesus has commanded us to do in the Great Commission. When we preach the Gospel and someone responds to our message in faith by believing in Jesus, the next thing we do is baptize them. Matthew 28 Jesus says, Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations. Baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Jesus tells us to baptize those who believe in Him and become a part of his family through faith. Now, speaking to Christians at Colossae, the Apostle Paul connects the practice of baptism under the New Covenant to the role of circumcision under the Old. He says this to the Colossians, and he says it to us as well. Colossians, chapter two, verse eleven. You were also circumcised in him with a circumcision not done with hands by putting off the body of flesh in the circumcision of Christ.
When you were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead. When a professional athlete gets traded from one team to another and put their New Jersey on for the first time, that change of jersey identifies them as having changed teams. When a man and woman get married and they put their ring on for the very first time, that ring is a symbol identifying that their identities have changed. They are no longer two, but they're one. When Jewish men were circumcised, that was the mark that they belonged to God's special people in the Old Testament.
And when Christian men and women are baptized, that is the mark that they belong to God's special people. In the New Testament, baptism identifies those who have switched over to God's team and are now united. To Him. It signifies an identity change. You're no longer separate from God.
You are now one with Him and with his people. There were and are no exceptions. You could not and you would not be recognized as part of the people of God without participating in either of these rituals. Pattern number three. Next fill-in your outline. There have always been smaller, official, recognizable subcommunities within the larger community of God's people. And these subcommunities collectively make up the people of God tribes in the Old Testament, local churches. In the new tribes and local churches, Israel was to be one single unified nation under God. And although it was to be one, it was made up of twelve individual, separate tribes.
You have to choose to become a follower of Jesus. No one is physically or naturally born a Christian the way a person was born an Israelite. It doesn't matter if both your parents are Christian. It doesn't matter if both your parents are Christians. It doesn't matter if you come from a lineage where everyone in your family has been a Christian dating back to 2000 years to the time of Christ.
Christianity isn't an ethnicity that you can be born into. Everyone has to make the choice for themselves to repent of their sin, believe in Jesus, and follow him with their entire life. It's called conversion. Our repentance and belief or faith or biblical Christianity. You believe Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins and to make a way for you to gain entrance into his family.
You acknowledge your sinfulness before God, and you turn from that sin in your life and you turn your life towards Christ. You receive forgiveness by faith. You choose that. And when you do, you have become a Christian and a part of God's family. That's the conversion part of being incorporated into the church.
When a person makes this choice, they are in. But now there's a birth aspect to this too. Jesus says in John, chapter three, that to enter the kingdom of God, one has to be born again. We've all been born naturally and physically into this world. And when we were, we came into this world spiritually stillborn.
We had physical life when we were born, but all of us were born spiritually dead. And you can thank Adam and Eve for that. Therefore, we need to be spiritually born. We need to be born a second time or born again. This is the spiritual birth that incorporates you into God's family as a child of his.
And this event of your new spiritual birth happens the moment you choose to become a Christian. It happens at your conversion. When you place your faith in Christ, your sins are forgiven and removed, and God causes your dead spirit to come alive within you and he places his own loving spirit within you. You become spiritually born, spiritually alive to God for the first time. You are now a child of God.
You are now part of his family. New birth and conversion. Conversion and new birth. Only one of these two is necessary in order to be incorporated into the people of Israel. Both are at play when a person is incorporated into the church today.
Now, here's a question. When a person became an official part of Israel, either by birth or conversion, how did the rest of the people recognize their inclusion into the people of God? Or when a person becomes a Christian today and they become an official part of the Church by both their conversion and their new spiritual birth, how do the rest of the members of the church recognize their inclusion into the people of God? This brings us to the second pattern. We can observe and it's this.
There has always been a specific mandatory ritual performed one time that officially identifies you as a member of God's people. Circumcision in the Old Testament and baptism in the New. In the Old Testament, it was the same ritual whether you were brought into the people of Israel through natural birth or you became a Jew through religious conversion. Whatever way you came in, you got the snip. If you were a male and God gave this command to Abraham in Genesis 17.
God said to Abraham, as for you, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations are to keep my covenant. This is my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you, which you are to keep. Every one of your males must be circumcised. You must circumcise the flesh of your foreskin to serve as a sign of the covenant between me and you throughout your generations. Every Caleb among you is to be circumcised at eight days old.
What if we saw that in the Old Testament, the Jewish people practiced membership as it related to them belonging to Israel? And then what if we saw in the New Testament that Christians practiced the same kind of membership that formally included them and identified them as belonging to the church? If we can see a pattern where the people of God in the Old Testament practiced membership for centuries, and then we see those same practices instituted by the early church in the pages of the New Testament, if we can see that pattern plainly, would that be enough for us to deem the practice biblical? If God's people have only and always practiced it, and if it's recorded for us in the Bible? Well, I think the answer would be yes.
So, let's take a look at it. I'm going to show you eight patterns that exist between membership in Israel in the Old Testament and membership in the church in the New Testament. Here's pattern number one. It's going to be the next. Fill in on your outline.
There has always been a specific event that incorporates a person into the distinct group of God's people - birth and/or religious conversion. Birth and/or religious conversion. There are two ways in which a person could become an official member of the people of Israel. In the Old Testament, the first way was to become an Israelite by natural birth. You were physically born into the people of God. Your dad was Jewish, and your mom was Jewish.
Then one night you were just a twinkle in their eye, and nine months later you came onto the scene a brand-new baby Israelite born to proud Israelite parents. This was by far and away the most common way to become a part of Israel. But it wasn't the only way a person could become a part of Israel. You didn't have to be born a Jew in order to become a part of the Jewish people. If you weren't a Jew, you could become a proselyte or a convert to Judaism.
You could be grafted into the people of God. There have been Gentiles in the Old Testament who recognized that the God of Israel was the one true God, and they wanted to be a part of God's people, living for God and belonging to God. The prophet Isaiah, speaking on behalf of the Lord, said this about Gentiles becoming a part of God's people. This is on your outline Isaiah 56, starting in verse three. No foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord should say, the Lord will exclude me from his people.
And the eunuch should not say, Look, I'm a dried-up tree. For the Lord says this for the eunuchs who keep my Sabbath and choose what pleases me and hold firmly to my covenant, I will give them in my house and within my walls a memorial and a name better than sons and daughters. I will give each of them an everlasting name that will never be cut off. As for the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, to love the name of the Lord, and to become his servants, all who keep the Sabbath without desecrating it and hold firmly to my covenant, I will bring them to my holy mountain and let them rejoice in My house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.
And so, in the Old Testament, there were two different ways a person could become a part of Israel by natural birth or by religious conversion. And we get to the New Testament. We see that both of these birth and conversion are true of a person who becomes a part of Jesus's church. Both the decision to convert to Christ and the need to be born into God's family are at play. Every single person who has become a Christian over the past 2000 years has had to make the choice to become one.
If you are shown that the biblical nature of church membership from the scriptures and you are a Christian, there would be only one appropriate next step for you and that would be pursuing becoming a member in a local church. But that is of course only if the practice of church membership is biblical. And if I can end up showing you that church membership is biblical then I will be able to address probably the number one reason that Christians give for not becoming a member of a local church and their reason often is that in their minds church membership isn't biblical. And if that's been your reason then that's the only reason I can truly appreciate because "I don't like the idea of church membership" is not a good enough reason not to become a member of your local church. "I don't like the way church membership makes me feel." is not a good reason to not become a member of your local church. But I don't believe that church membership is biblical. That would be a rock-solid reason for not becoming a member of your local church if, in fact, it's not biblical. But here's the thing we're going to see it is, it is biblical and that is exactly what I want to show everyone in this series. So, let's take a moment to talk a bit about what church membership is.
Let's define it because we need to be on the same page with this because everyone brings different experiences and different ideas and different expectations to this discussion. So, what is church membership? The definition is a little bit wordy, but it covers everything that it needs to. It's going to be the first fill-in on your outline. Church membership is a covenant of union between a particular church and a Christian that consists of the church's affirmation of the Christian's gospel profession, the church's promise to give oversight to the Christian, and the Christian's promise to gather with the church and submit to its oversight.
Now "covenant" is very strong language, it's formal, it's official, it's binding, it's a commitment of the highest order and you need to know right out of the gate that nothing about church membership is willy-nilly, just like there's nothing willy nilly about putting rings on each other's finger when you marry your spouse. And church membership is more like that than it is to, say, a friendship or a dating relationship. Let me encourage you not to be put off by any kind of covenant language. Lean into it. It's so good.
The Bible uses marriage language when it talks about Jesus and his church. Christians have entered into a covenantal relationship with Jesus. When they decided to follow Him, we each said yes to Jesus. He said yes to us, and it's binding. But no individual Christian is the bride of Christ.
That can make for some really weird theology. The church collectively is the bride of Christ. Collectively. We've all entered into the same covenant relationship with Jesus, and we are in that covenant together with Him as a people, as a church. So, if you have bound yourself to Christ, you have done so with others who have also done the same.
And it's this collective, this body of believers who are in covenant with Jesus together. Our convenient with Jesus binds us together as we are bound together with Him. The covenant aspect of church membership is beautiful. But is it biblical? Again, that's the question.
That's what I'm going to attempt to answer with each of the messages in this series. Each message will attempt to answer that question in a different way. In this message tonight, we're going to look at what I'm calling the biblical pattern of church membership. Let me ask you a few questions. Would it be reasonable to conclude that church membership is biblical if we saw that the people of God have practiced formal membership all throughout the Bible?
The Biblical Pattern for Church Membership Date:9/17/23
Series: Distinct...Speaker: BJ Chursinoff
Is church membership biblical? That's the question this series will attempt to answer. In this message, we look in the Bible at how God’s people have always practiced formal membership. It was practiced when it came to belonging to Israel in the Old Testament and it was practiced when it came to belonging to the Church in the New Testament. When we observe this pattern, it should lead us to ask the question: Can a practice be unbiblical if it is practiced all throughout the Bible?
We're picking things up where we left off six weeks ago, where we introduced this new series for the first time, a series that we've titled Distinct. This is a sermon series that is all about something called church membership. Back in our introductory message to this series, I explained why we're talking about church membership again. And I went on to address one of the main pushbacks I hear to the idea of church membership - that it's too rigid and too exclusive for a local church to draw a line around a group of people that belongs to the church and that distinguishes them from everyone else who isn't. And I showed you from the Scriptures how God has always made a rigid distinction between those who are his people and those who are not.
He always has and he always will. And we saw examples of that from Genesis all the way to Revelation. If you weren't here for that message, and you haven't had a chance to listen to it yet online, I encourage you to do so this week. I put the link on it for you, on your outline. And at the end of that message, I asked the question how do we know, or how can we know who has crossed over the line into belonging to God's people and who hasn't?
Without explaining myself at the time, I simply said the answer to that question is church membership. The practice of church membership at the local church level is the way everyone knows who belongs to Jesus and is a part of his people and who isn't. I'm going to use the rest of this series to show you why that statement is true. I'm going to show you why it's true by taking three messages to answer one big overarching question. And the question is is this the practice of church membership biblical?
For the Christian, this should be the only question that matters. For the Christian, it doesn't matter how the idea of church membership makes me feel. All that matters is whether or not we can see that the idea of church membership is rooted in the Scriptures, and it's something that God expects us to do at the local church level. If we can see that church membership is biblical, that should lead us to some powerful conclusions. If we can see that it's biblical, then that means that practicing church membership is good because God is good.
And that means that anything God tells us to do is good. Good flows from good, and God is the ultimate supreme source of all goodness. So, if God is telling us in his word that we ought to practice church membership, then we should get excited about the idea of practicing it, because it would be good for us to do so. That is only if it proves to be biblical. If we can see that church membership is biblical, that means that those of you here who aren't Christians yet will know what you need to do after you become a Christian.
When you stop fighting against the grace of God in your life and you finally decide to turn your life over to Christ, to trust Him and to follow Him, then you will know that pursuing membership in a local church is the next thing to do after you do that. But that is only if church membership is biblical. If we can see that church membership is biblical then that means that those of you who do know Christ but have not yet come to the conclusion that you should become a member of a local church.
They were burning retirement plans and investment portfolios, and that required significant faith, because they chose to believe that whatever they gave up for Christ, he would provide for them and he would meet their needs, and they didn't think twice, and Jesus did. The Lord provided for them, and he will provide for you. Listen, whatever it costs you to obey Christ, he will meet your needs. He will trust him. Put Him first, and then lastly, in verse 20, we read in this way, the word of the Lord spread and prevailed.
Now, notice this. When did the word of the Lord spread and prevail? When believers got radical about personal holiness and did all they could to get sin out of their lives. How often I find that when my appetite for the things of God diminishes, it's because there's something in my life that needs to be burned up. When I lose my passion for being around my brothers and sisters in Christ, when I lose my passion for serving the Lord, reading His Word, worshiping Him and praying, it's almost always because I filled my life with something useless, an idol that's taking up my time and attention, energies and passions.
How do I get that passion back for the things of the Lord? I ask Him, okay, Lord, where's the idol? Where is it? I know it's hiding in here somewhere. Please find it and please smash it.
And if I'm willing to act on what he reveals to me, the passion returns as my focus becomes oriented once again where it belongs, on Christ. But hear me on this do not bother asking the Lord to show you where the idol is in your life unless you've already determined that you're willing to let Him destroy it. God doesn't play games. It's an insult for Him for you to say, show me what the idol is, and then I'll decide if I want you to destroy it or not. He's not going to show you anything.
If that's the attitude, it has to be, Lord, find it. Whatever it is, destroy it. Free me from it, please. And if there's anything I can do, any actions I need to take to help that happen, I'm committed to doing them. Then the Lord says, okay, I'll put my finger right on it for you.
He'll show you tonight if you ask Him to do that. Repentance means turning from sin and turning to Christ. And if you have not yet turned to Christ, I beg you, turn to Christ today. Turn to Him today, because you are turning away only from sin and death and guilt and shame, and you are turning only to good things in the Lord Jesus. And if your focus has turned from Him, I urge you to return your gaze to Him.
There is but one throne in your life and mine, and it cannot be shared. And right now, it is not being shared. There's something on the throne in every life in this room, mine included. There's not room on that throne for Christ and our idols, no matter how precious to us they may be, and the Lord has no intention of tolerating them. If you don't want Jesus to smash your idols, you're going to have a miserable time trying to follow him.
Because those who love Jesus want him to smash the idols in our lives over and over and over again. Because we've recognized that all they do is enslave us while the rule and reign of Christ sets us free. And so, the believer's prayer is always, lord, if you find any idol in my life, please destroy it. As our brother John put it, this is what loves for God, is to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden.
They're not a burden. They're the path to freedom. Why would you want to go through such upheaval? Why would you want to choose to upend your life in such a radical way as the Ephesians did? Because this is the truth.
My sin is far uglier and Christ far lovelier than I could ever imagine.
And while the issue of lust, the internal heart issue, may take a long time to work on, there are action steps that can be taken immediately and where we can take action. Hear me on this. Christ expects us to take action because he assumes we want to obey Him. Would you write this down where we can? Christ expects us to take immediate action to obey Him and make it harder to indulge sin in our lives.
Listen, if you love the Lord, if you really love the Lord, then you are genuinely grateful for those times when you can just make a decision, take an action, and obey the Lord. You are. You're grateful that, hey, if I want to start honoring the Lord in my finances, I just got to write a check and my heart might not be all the way there yet, but I can just make this decision and then do it, and then I'm doing it. The most frustrating part of following Christ is the slow pace at which my heart changes.
Anybody's heart changes at the speed they thought it would when they first got saved. No. Anybody like this is taking much longer than I anticipated. All of us, right? Because my heart is so uncooperative, it is so resistant to the work of the Spirit.
So, when I can obey Christ by just making a decision and taking an action, I'm so glad. I'm so glad. Just burn those books and then I'm done with that. Yeah, then you're done with that. Oh, praise God.
Being anyone's disciple, this is going to be a news flash for some. But being anyone's disciple means you want to be like them. This is what the word means. And so, you're submitting yourself to them to learn from them how you can be like them. So when Jesus says, this is how you can be like me, do this, don't do that, think this way, don't think that way.
We're so glad and grateful for his instruction because we want to be like him. Because we are disciples of Christ. We seek to obey Christ. We want to obey Christ. Why?
Because obeying him is what's going to make us more like Him. And that's the whole point. Now, hear me on this. There is no such thing as a disciple who does not want to be like Christ. There's no such thing.
And there's no such thing as a person who wants to be like Christ but doesn't want to obey Christ. Doesn't even make sense. If you don't want to be like Jesus, you're not a disciple of Jesus. If you don't want to obey Jesus, you're not a disciple of Jesus. When someone turns to Christ, his spirit, the Holy Spirit, comes into their life, producing an immediate change in desires.
We saw that in Ephesus when Christ comes into a person, the things that they want begin to immediately change. Most notably, they want more of Christ. Show me a person who has no appetite for God's Word, no desire to serve and love their brothers and sisters in Christ, no desire for the Church gathering and fellowship, no desire to obey the commands of Jesus, no conviction over their sin. And I'll show you someone who's not a Christian. When God comes into a person's life, the change is seismic.
It is seismic. The Bible says they're given a new nature. Paul expected to see dramatic, immediate change in the desires of the Corinthians who had turned to Christ. Why? Because, as he said, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.
The old has passed away, and see, the new has come. I cannot overstate the profound difference the Holy Spirit makes in a person's life. Doesn't make us perfect at all, but it changes what we want. It changes what we want. For many of those Ephesian converts, their occultic books were the most significant investment they owned.
He will give you the power through the Holy Spirit, and he expects you to want that power. He expects you to want the power to free your life from the grip of sin and bondage. Now, some changes can take a lifetime. There are some issues we will be battling until we go to be with the Lord. We can experience greater victory in those areas, but perhaps not total victory until we go to be with the Lord.
And I say that because most of the time you can't snap your fingers and just change certain heart issues. Lust is a great example. I wish you could be saved and just don't lust anymore because I love Jesus now. But most men and many women will battle it until they go to be with the Lord. And generally, we can experience greater victory and freedom as we allow the Lord to sanctify us, but not total victory until we arrive in his presence.
Patterns of thinking, deeply held beliefs, and attitudes that are being stirred up by repressed life events. There can be all kinds of heart issues that take time to change. And the change we experience will be dramatically impacted by our desire to change and our willingness to confront those issues with the help of the Holy Spirit. But hear me on this some sin issues can be dealt with immediately or at a minimum, significantly impacted. I'm talking about situations where you can make a decision and then take an action that will free you from that sin or at least make it significantly harder to get caught up in it again.
I'm talking about things like burning occultic books. How do I know I won't be tempted to go back and look at the book again? Burn it. Just destroy it. The Ephesians are a perfect example.
It would take a while for them to learn solid theology and grow in their Bible knowledge of the spiritual world, but they could make a choice. They could take a specific action and free themselves from the power of sin in that area by getting rid of anything and everything they owned that had anything to do with the occult. Hear me on this. They didn't need time to weigh it, time to think about it, time to discern the will of the Lord. They didn't need time to grieve over it or grieve having to let go of it or emotionally process letting it go.
They didn't need to say, I'll destroy one page a week. I'll make a commitment and I'll get there. They just needed to get rid of it and they could do it in a moment. And the only issue was, do you want to obey Christ or not? Yes or no?
You can decide and stop living with your boyfriend or girlfriend. You can put your stuff in a box and move out. You can do that. You can stop paying for our part of the rent. You can decide and stop going to those places, those bars, those clubs.
You can decide to install covenant eyes on your phone and all your computers. You can decide to ask a mature brother or sister to be an accountability partner. You can decide to cancel TV service that give you access to sexually immoral content. You can decide to throw out your drug paraphernalia and go to rehab if it's needed. You can make a choice.
You can decide to stop being part of non-biblical spiritual practices and get rid of all other spiritually related stuff that's in your life and in your home. Our thinking is so often flawed in this area because we see things clearly when it concerns more serious sins. None of us would say it's nuanced, Jeff. None of us would say this if I said to you, how long should the murderer keep murdering after salvation? How should we taper that down over time?
How long should the thief keep stealing? Well, maybe he can lower the dollar amount, like incrementally, you know, how long should the witch keep practicing wicca? But we pretend it's somehow more complicated and nuanced and I don't know something about grace. When the question is something like how long should the fornicator keep fornicating? The answer, of course, is they shouldn't.
And we see this reality play out today all the time when we see people who refuse to obey Christ because it goes against their family traditions. I've seen this many times, oh, I don't want to get baptized because I come from an Episcopalian family, and I got sprinkled, and it might be offensive to my parents if I get baptized by immersion because it goes against our family traditions. And Jesus would just say coldly, then you can't be my disciple, because you're more concerned about offending your family than you are about offending me. We see this with people who refuse to obey Christ because of the wishes of their children or the wishes of their spouses.
Then Jesus says, Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. In other words, we've got to be ready to pay whatever price it ends up costing to follow Jesus. There's no option where we get to say yes to the Lord, say, but on one condition, as long as it doesn't include suffering if those are our terms. Jesus says, you cannot be my disciple if you're not willing to die for me, you cannot be my disciple. You're not willing to suffer for me, you cannot be my disciple.
I imagine the crowd starts thinning pretty quick for which of you, wanting to build a tower doesn't first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it. Otherwise, after he's laid the foundation and cannot finish it, all the onlookers will begin to ridicule him, saying, that this man started to build and wasn't able to finish. Jesus points out that we need to count the cost of following him before we commit to follow him. He's been very, very clear in His Word about what he's offering and what it will cost. He's been very clear about the price you need to be willing to pay if you want to follow him.
And Jesus says, don't impulsively raise your hand in a church service just because your emotions were stirred, and they were playing that song and you got caught up in the moment. He says think. Weigh the cost, weigh the benefits, and then decide with a sober mind or what king going to war against another king will not first sit down and decide if he is able with 10,000 to oppose the one who comes against him with 20,000. If not, while the other is still far off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.
In the same way. Therefore, every one of you who does not renounce - that means leave - all his possessions cannot be my disciple. Jesus likens himself to a mighty king. And indeed, he will judge the living and the dead one day as the King of kings. And we would be wise to ask what his terms of peace are, knowing that he's coming as a conquering king.
And when we stand before Him one day, we will be powerless. And he's told us his terms. Him over everything. Those are his terms. If we refuse, we cannot be his disciples.
Now, salt is good, but if salt loses its taste, how will it be made salty? It isn't fit for the soil or for the manure pile, and they throw it out. That everyone who has ears to hear, listen. Lastly, Jesus says if we try to find neutral ground, try to have it both ways and refuse to make a decision.
We are making a decision by not saying yes to Him and his conditions. We are saying no. And ultimately that will result in us being cast from his presence to spend eternity apart from Him. Christ has laid out the terms of salvation and they are simple. We get all of Him and he gets all of us.
No other gods, no other idols. Those are the terms. And I want to clarify the kinds of changes that Christ expects upon salvation. I've already shared that the Lord does not expect you to change your life before you come to Him, because you can't. You don't have the power.
And it's not an accident. That thing where you think, oh, man, if this command wasn't just in the Bible if the Lord didn't just ask this, why does he have to make such a big deal over this issue? Because that's your issue. He's putting his finger right on it, and he does it with the rich young ruler, and he says to him, go sell all your belongings and give to the poor and you'll have treasure in heaven, then come and follow me.
Jesus didn't say that to anybody else. He didn't go to any of the disciples and say, sell everything you have. Didn't need to. Then in Matthew's Gospel, we read, when the young man heard that, he went away grieving because he had many possessions. And I'm always struck when I read this that Jesus did not chase after him.
There are so many Christians today who would have chided Jesus, corrected Jesus, and rebuked Jesus in that situation for being cold and legalistic. I know many Christians who would have said, he's just a baby Christian, Jesus. You can't expect him to make such radical changes so fast. People take time to change Jesus. He needs to experience love and community first, and then his heart can change over time.
Don't be so judgmental, Jesus. Listen to me, church. And if you're listening or watching online, tune in, because I believe the modern church needs to hear this. We fear making Christianity too hard for people, and so we lower the bar on God's behalf, something we do not have the authority to do. And when we lower the bar and redefine what it means to be a Christian, we devalue Jews, we lower the value of Christ.
We say to people, I know Christ is pretty expensive, he's costly, but what if I took 50% off the cost? Would you be interested then? Would you be a buyer then? What if I told you you could keep your sin and have Christ? What if I offered you 50% off Jesus as Savior, but you don't have to take him as Lord as well?
Would you be interested then?
May God have mercy on us for trying to lower the value of the perfect Son of God and the priceless sacrifice he made on our behalf. May the Lord forgive us for cheapening his blood, his broken body, and his death on our behalf. And this is how twisted much of the modern church has become, how distorted our view of grace has become, that we think we're putting too much of a burden on people if we tell them that in order to follow Christ, they must abandon all their other gods and idols. We think that's asking too much of people when Jesus says they can't have him and their idols too. As though Jesus Christ is asking too much when he offers us freedom from sin and death.
As though Christ is asking too much when he refuses to share the throne with idols. And if you think I'm misrepresenting Jesus or the Bible in this, let's allow the Lord to speak for Himself. This is going to be on your outlines. Our brother Luke, who recorded the Book of Acts, also wrote this in chapter 14 of his Gospel. He wrote, now great crowds were traveling with him, with Jesus.
So, he turned and said to them, I love this. Do you understand what's happening here? There are great crowds traveling with Jesus, and it says that he turned to them. There are great crowds. So, Jesus literally says, I got to do something about this.
There are so many people following me. I have to do something about this. So, he turned and said to them, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Now, here's what Jesus is saying. He's simply saying, if you love your family more than you love me, you cannot be my disciple.
And when he saw that nothing he could build on Earth seemed all that impressive anymore. Hebrews 11 tells us of Abraham by faith. He stayed as a foreigner in the land of promise, living in tents, for he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God. What happened to Paul after he encountered Christ and Abraham after God visited him, what happened to the Ephesians? They caught just a glimpse of God's glory and goodness and worth.
They understood just a tiny bit of it and nothing could compare. And their immediate response was, I'll do anything to have Christ. I'll do anything just to have Him. There's no record of anybody telling them to burn their books or confess their spells. They just did it.
They were moved by the Holy Spirit that had come into them. They were convicted by the Spirit and driven by a desire to have more of Christ. And they understood intrinsically, if I want more of Christ, I have to make more room for Christ in my life. So, these things have to go. As we said, the Lord will not share the throne if you want Him to come into your life.
Everything else must bow to Him. And to state the obvious, that can only happen if we want everything else to bow to Him. So, write this down the Ephesian converts gladly traded the vestiges of their old lives for new lives in Christ. They gladly gave up the old for the new, gladly gave up death for life. And I want to be very clear about something as we talk about this.
I am not saying that you must clean out your life and get rid of everything before you come to Christ. You can't, you won't because you do not have the power. The power comes from the Holy Spirit. And when he enters your life, he gives you the power to get rid of the things that need to go. He breaks the chains of the things that are holding you captive, the things holding you in bondage and in shame and in condemnation and loving destruction in your life.
He goes to work changing us from the inside out. But before we come to Christ, we must decide whether we want the Holy Spirit to do that work. We must decide whether we want Him to turn over tables in our hearts, command wicked things to leave, shine a light in dark corners, smash our precious idols, and kick out anything that desires to be on the throne instead of the Lord. When we come to Christ, we must understand that is what he is going to do. He is not offering to come into our lives and serve on a committee of advisors whose counsel we can take or leave.
He's coming to reign. He's coming to establish a monarchy in our hearts. And those who have seen just a glimpse of the goodness of God, say, yes. Come and do it, Lord, please.
That is the only gospel offer there is. There is no other offer of salvation through Christ where you have Christ as Savior, but you don't have to have Him as Lord. There's no offer where turning to Christ doesn't also mean turning from sin. There's no solution where you can live cross-eyed. It's not loving to work.
I think of the rich young ruler when I think of people who think they can negotiate with God, people who want to come to the Lord and say, hey, I want you, Jesus, but I also want to keep my sin. The rich young ruler came to Jesus, and in his heart, he was hoping to negotiate. He wanted to strike a deal where he could be right with God and yet continue serving money as his Lord and master. But Jesus knew what was going on in his heart, and he knew that money was this man's God. And so, Jesus, like he does with us, put his finger right on that pressure point.
He probably hasn't come to many of you and said, like, you need to give up everything. You have to follow me. Give up all your money. Because some of you are probably like me, and you're like, okay, listen, Lord, if you want my $12 that bad, it's yours. You can take it, Jesus. But the Lord has probably put his finger on that pressure point, and maybe he's doing it now.
God and everything else are in opposite directions. So, if you're walking toward one, you're walking away from the other, and if you turn toward one, you are turning away from the other. The Ephesians understood that turning to Christ meant turning from sin and all other gods. There was a belief at the time that spells and incantations lost their power if they were not kept secret. And so, as people turned to Christ, they understood that would mean turning from their occultic practices.
And so, they begin reading their spells and their incantations aloud, not as a way to practice them or use them, but as a way to render them useless, to read them out in public based on their thinking at the time. Again, this is not theologically true, but they're coming from a real place of sincerity and devotion to Christ. They're making the choice, they believe, to render all of those things worthless and useless. And I want us to note that they didn't try and sell their spells and books. They destroyed them.
They spoke them aloud, believing that would render them worthless, and then they burned their books. If the Lord ever leads you to get rid of something because it's sinful, don't sell it. Don't put it on Facebook marketplace. Don't be like, great deal on a bong. Don't do that.
Don't donate it to a thrift store either. Destroy it. Because heaven forbid you give someone a great deal on something that's going to help them sin more. Don't do that. I don't care what it is.
I don't care how much it's worth. We're told the value of all the books they burned was 50,000 pieces of silver. That is basically the equivalent of 50,000 days wages. But they weren't concerned about the value of what they were giving up. They were only concerned with the value of what they were gaining Christ.
They were gaining eternal life in the Holy Spirit, a right relationship with God, freedom from sin and guilt and shame and death, and receiving in its place joy and life and hope and peace. What they were gaining was priceless. They didn't even stop to think about the value of what they were destroying. Somebody else who was on the side was like, this is a lot of stuff. I wonder how much this is worth.
When our brother Paul wrote to the Philippian believers, he laid out for them all the things he had confidence and trust in before he came to Christ. His lineage, his education, his social status, his good works. And then Paul wrote this. He said but everything that was a gain to me I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.
Because of Him I've suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know Him. Paul says, I've seen Christ, and nothing is anything compared to Him. By most accounts, Abraham became one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest men on earth over the course of his life. And yet Scripture says he never even built himself a home because God gave him a glimpse of what awaited him in Heaven.
A couple of weeks ago, we looked at several examples of Jesus casting demons out of people in the Gospels. And in each case, I'm struck by the effortlessness with which Jesus commands spiritual powers. He has authority, real authority. It's that simple. If he tells a demon to flee, it must flee.
There's no discussion, no battle, no, "The power of Christ compels you!" Just effortless, authority, effortless. He's the king of what? Everything. Everything and just as word had spread throughout Ephesus of the miracles being worked by Paul, so too did word spread rapidly of the spectacular failure of the sons of sea to invoke the name of Jesus Paul preached about.
And so, we read in verse 17, when this became known to everyone, underline everyone, everyone who lived in Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, the whole city heard about it. Hey, look, there's those guys who ran out of that house naked. The whole city knew. And when the whole city heard about it, the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high esteem. You see, first, they had seen Jesus work miracles that no other God could perform through Paul.
Second, they had seen Jesus behave not like other gods. Men could not summon him with a spell or an incantation. This Jesus was something else entirely, something other, something more powerful and more awesome than anything they had ever experienced or even heard about. And as a result, they were filled with fear, the good kind of fear, the fear that Scripture says is the beginning of wisdom, because they understood that God was real and all powerful, and his messengers are to be taken seriously. And the name of the Lord Jesus was held in high esteem.
As I mentioned earlier, there was a tendency back then to do the same thing that many people do today with spirituality. Simply add anything new that you find that is good or that you like to your spiritual toolbox, pick up a Bible and add it to your bookshelf. Put it on the same shelf as all your other books on spirituality and occultic practices and the secret and things like that. But anyone in Ephesus who was paying attention realized very quickly that this Jesus was not like any other god. And the Jesus Paul preached, demanded exclusivity.
He claimed to be the only true God and demanded that his followers renounce all other gods. He said, you want to put Me on the shelf? Everything else on the shelf has to go. So logically, Jesus is not compatible with other belief systems. You can't fit him into universalism or pluralism, because he claims to be the only true God and demands to be the only object of worship.
He refuses to share the throne in terms of power. Jesus stands alone. There's no other God like him. Those who have been part of home groups will know that in the Old Testament, the Lord repeatedly points to his unique ability to predict the future and then bring it about to pass. In fact, he directly challenges any other god to do the same thing because he knows they can't.
Jesus is the king of kings. He's the Lord of Lords. He's the God of gods. And that's why we see the following response. For many in Ephesus, beginning in verse 18, it says and many who had become believers came confessing and disclosing their practices.
While many of those who had practiced magic collected their books and burned them in front of everyone. So, they calculated their value and found it to be 50,000 pieces of silver. In response to the incredible displays of God's power among the Ephesians, it says, many turned to Christ. I'm going to ask you to make a note of this because we see here a demonstration of the reality that turning to Christ means turning from sin and all other gods. Turning to Christ means turning from sin and all other gods.
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LEST WE FORGET
The next morning several men including my uncle, helped the farmer milk his cows. We were allowed to drink the milk.As much as I love milk, I sure had to get used to drinking milk still warm from the cow.
To feed the family, mother and my uncle and sometimes with others, would walk back to the village and take all the food they could carry.
Then from bricks, the people built fireplaces so they could cook. The only meals that I remember eating there were pancakes.
It was dangerous going back to the town, as the Germans were shooting at the Canadian soldiers that were in Holland defending the Dutch. From where we were staying on the farm, we could see that the town was burning.
But my mother went back day after day, with several other brave souls.
If they found no food in one house, they would go into another. It was not thought of then as looting or stealing, but survival.
One day, mother went back to the village, with one of the men staying at the farm. She found what she had come looking for, and was ready to go back to the farm.
She called out to the man, and just as he stood in the doorway, a shell hit him, instantly killing him.
Time and time again people went back to the town, what else could they do? You had to go, if you wanted to eat and take care of your family.
In the North of Holland the war was over in May of ‘45.
A walk was organized from the farm to walk back to our city, twenty kilometres away. The town was too burned for many to go back there.
I never forget seeing some Canadian soldiers across the street and they were laughing.
For some reason, I looked down and there on the street were five large cookies, laid out in the form of a five. I knew it was the soldiers who had put them there. They now watched to see who would find them. We had walked several kilometers, when mother spotted army trucks coming our way. She walked to the middle of the road and held up her hands for them to stop.
"Mama you can't do that," I told her. She did, and they stopped.
The soldiers said that they would take the people to a school in the city. They took the sick, the old, and some of the children.
When we had walked about ten kilometers we came to a small village called: “Ten Boer.” The rest of the people stayed there sitting at the market square, while my mother and my uncle got hold of a pair of bikes without tires just riding on the rims, with my sister and me on the bike carrier and so we went to the city.
The authorities were notified that a group of people were in need of being picked up from the market square. They al ended up in a school in Groningen.
I went to visit with the people several times, and will always remember the certain smells that permeated that place.
When we returned to Groningen, we stopped at my aunt's place. We found my grandmother staying there. She told that the Germans had killed her daughter, my aunt. My aunt had spotted German army trucks unloading at a school and when she saw it was food, she took some.
The Germans saw her but did nothing. Not believing her good fortune, she called her neighbour and together they set out to get more food.
This time the Germans shot in the air to warn them, my aunt did not believe that they would shoot, for she knew that they had let her take food earlier.
So she went on taking things and they did shoot her, killing her instantly.
She left a husband and three boys motherless. My mother’s brother was killed also. He was in a prisoner of war camp, in Germany.
The German’s knew by then they were losing the war, but they did not want to hear it. My uncle did tell them and was promptly shot dead for his efforts.
Not all the German people were bad.
It was the Nazi’s that were the real bad ones, not the common people, they too suffered through happenings from the war.
So many of the soldiers were just boys, they could be heard to say; “Ich habe der krieg nicht gewilt: