The Anatomy of the Church: The Muscles and the Flesh, Part 2

Selected Scriptures

     This morning...we come to our theme, "The Anatomy of a Church."  For the last six weeks, I've been basically sharing from my heart, I trust what has been a helpful understanding of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ.  We've been trying to reexamine who we are and what we are called to be and to do and to say... And the Lord has really just impressed upon me week after week that this is a needful thing; and so I have had a great sense of confirmation from Him that we're right in the place that He wants us to be as we've shared these great truths together...

     My life is the church in many ways.  I don't have a 9:00 to 5:00 job.  It never ends.  You never stop doing what you do when you minister in the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ; and, as a believer, you don't either.  Life, for me, is the church of Jesus Christ.  Every waking moment of my life, thoughts in my mind have to do with His Kingdom and His work and His people and His Word.  It's a...it's a total saturation.  I've been called to unique calling; and I understand that; and, with gratitude, express my appreciation to God.

     And while there is tremendous joy and great exhilaration and wonderful privilege involved, there's also a serious and weighty responsibility; and I'm often reminded of several heart-searching passages in Scripture like James 3:1 that says, "Stop being so many teachers, for theirs is a greater condemnation."  And James is saying to us, "Don't be in a hurry to be in a place of spiritual responsibility unless you're ready to deal with the consequence of failure."  And I'm reminded also of Hebrews 13:17 where it says that, "We watch for men's souls as those who must give an account...to the Lord."  And there is an accountability factor in ministry.  There's an accountability factor in pasturing and shepherding.  There's an accountability factor in leading the church of Jesus Christ that's very serious.

     And while life on the one hand is filled with joy and happiness and blessedness, there is always that lingering reality of the immense seriousness with which one deals with the church...In 1 Corinthians chapter 4 there is a text that perhaps can give us a perspective with which to begin.  Open your Bible, if you will, to that.  In 1 Corinthians chapter 4, the Apostle Paul is expressing to the Corinthian believers his own view of his place in the ministry; and he says in verse 1, "Let a man so account of us."  In other words, "Let it be that men say this about us," or "Let this be their evaluation of us, that we were servants of Christ," and he uses the word hooperatase, which means under rower, the lowest of slaves.  "Let it be said of us, when all is said and done, and we're evaluated, that we were low-level slaves of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God."

     The mysteries of God are those great truths imparted to Paul in the New Testament; and a steward is one who manages what he does not own for someone else.  And so he says, "Let it be said of me that I was a...a low-level slave of Christ, on the lowest rung of slavery, and that I was a steward who owned nothing but managed things well, namely the mysteries of God.  Moreover... verse 2 says...it is required in stewards that a man be found faithful."  Faithful, trustworthy.

     Paul says, "This is what I want out of my life, to be a faithful slave, to handle what God gives me, and have Him say, 'He's trustworthy.  He's faithful to the cause and the call.'"  And he says in verse 3, "With me it's really a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or of men's judgment.  Yea, I judge not mine own self."  He says, "And, by the way, in the process of doing this, I'm not looking for some human evaluation.  It matters very little to me what public opinion is about me.  It matters very little to me what your opinion is.  It really matters very little to me what my opinion is.  The truth is you don't know my heart, and I really don't know my heart either, because, in my sinfulness, I'm blind to some of my own weaknesses.  So, ultimately, not you and not me can stand in the place of true judgment."

     Verse 4 says, "Even when I know nothing against myself, in other words, I can't find some overt, flagrant, exterior sin that I can nail down, even when I can't find that, I'm not thereby justified.  That doesn't make me right.  But He that judges me is the Lord."  Serious, isn't it?  He says, "I'm in the ministry, and let it be said that I was a slave of Christ and a steward of the mysteries of God, and that I am not concerned with the judgment of men, nor am I concerned with my own self-evaluation, because men don't know all the facts, and they may be biased, and I am biased and don't know all the facts.  The One that judges me is the Lord."  And everyone who serves Christ will be judged by Him, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ to receive the things done in the body, whether they be good or useless.  All of us. 

     So in verse 5, he says, "Judge nothing before the time."  And when is the time?  "It's the time when the Lord comes; and when He comes, He will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and make manifest the counsels of the hearts."  In other words, the real issue is what's inside you.  It may not be how clever you were or how glib or how good a preacher or how dynamic a leader, but what God's gonna evaluate is your heart; and men can't see your heart; and you're not even always able to see the truth.  It's only then that every man will have praise of God.

     So I confess to you that the church carries with it a great amount of seriousness for me.  I am under double condemnation for failure, and so are all those who minister and teach the Word.  I must give an account to God for how I have shepherded the sheep, fed the flock, and, ultimately, will be judged by the Lord Himself; and I want not to live under some illusion that I can be satisfied by the very gracious and kind evaluation of men, nor by the tendency to evaluate myself in a positive way.

     So I...I'm sharing with you my heart, because these are burdens which I bear and which all who serve Christ bear; and I just need all of you to bear it with me, to share the load...And so we've been talking about the things that God would have us be as a church; and so important that we understand that this is not an optional thing.  You know, when the Apostle Paul gathered together the Ephesian elders at Miletus on his way back to Jerusalem, they came down to visit with him there while his ship was in port; and he got them all around him; and he said to them these very important words, "Take heed to yourselves."  In other words, "As you lead the people, first do an inventory on your own life.  Take heed to yourselves and then the flock of God over which He's made you an overseer to feed the...the church of God."

     In other words, first you do your own spiritual inventory; then you examine where your church is - the church that the Lord has given you to lead and feed.  And then he says, "What church is it?  The church of God which He has purchased with His own blood."  And therein lies the issue.  We're not dealing with a... a triviality when we deal with the church.  We're dealing with something that easy come/easy go.  We're dealing with the most precious commodity that exists in all of eternity, because it is purchased with the blood of God's Son.  The price was infinitely high for the church; and when that church is placed into the care of God's people, it is to be cared for with a sense of the awesomeness of the price that was involved...

     And so I've sort of tried to halve the load a little bit and share the heart - my heart and the heart of our elders and pastors - with all of you, so that, together, with us, you can understand what it is that God wants us to be, that our accounting before Him may be pleasing to Him.  And, as we have been looking at the church and what the church should be, we've been using the analogy, which is a Pauline analogy, of a body; and we've been trying to see the church as a body, though using a Pauline analogy, we've been looking at it in a non-Pauline way.  Kind of a topical look; and we said that a body could basically be divided into four elements:  the skeleton, the internal systems, the muscles, and the flesh. 

     And so with a church.  First of all, there has to be a skeleton.  That is, that which gives it form and foundation.  Those are the bottom line, non-negotiable, basic foundational truths upon which it must be formed and framed.  And then we said flowing through the church, there must be certain internal systems.  We called them spiritual attitudes; and we talked about those for several weeks.  And then last time we began to talk about the muscles; and the muscles represent function. 

     Now that we understand our form and have our foundation and flowing through are the right spiritual attitudes, what are we supposed to do?  And muscle is how we begin to function; and I wanna finish that and say a little bit about the flesh today; and then next Lord's Day, I wanna complete the series with a special message on the head of the body who is Christ and how He ties it all together. 

     But let's talk about the muscles, the function of the church.  How it moves and ministers and operates.  Last week, we said, first of all, one of the functions, a critical one, is preaching and teaching.  Preaching and teaching.  In 2 Timothy 4:2, Paul instructed Timothy, "Preach the Word."  And he also said in that same verse, "Be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort with all long suffering and teaching."  So preaching, teaching, basic function for the church.

     Secondly, last week, we also talked about evangelism and missions - that we are mandated to go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature; that we are called as those who know the terror of the Lord to persuade men.  In other words, because we can see the impending doom on the ungodly, we are mandated to go out and warn them; and so we're called to missions and evangelism as function.

     Thirdly, we talked about worship, both individually and corporately, we are to be a worshipping group.  We are to worship in the heart, as Philippians 3:3, which is the best definition of a Christian I know in the Bible.  "We are the Circumcision who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh."  "We're to be the true worshippers... John 4...who worship in spirit and truth."  So, individually, we are called to be worshippers; and, also, collectively, we are the temple of the Spirit of God, and God dwells within the praises of His redeemed people; and so we worship, not only individually, but collectively.  And Hebrews 10 tells us to "Draw near unto God with clean hands and pure heart." 

     And then fourthly, we said that our function also demands prayer.  We are to be functioning in prayer.  That is a priority, beloved.  When you go to Ephesians 6:10 to 18, Paul describes the armor of a believer, and he goes through all the sequence of elements of armor; and finally caps it off at the very end, after of all of that, he says, "Praying always," which is the ultimate weapon.  The ultimate weapon, because that says, "With all that I have available to me, I still am utterly dependent on God.  And with all my armor on and a knowledge of the Word of God and the sword in my hand, I wanna pray, because no matter what I may know or what I may be, I cannot function independent of the power source, praying always."

     And in the early church, the apostles said, "Look, we will give our selves continually to prayer, that's first, and the ministry of the Word."  The priority is prayer.  Why?  Because we must ever and always be fused with God.  I mean the plug is pulled if we're not, and the flesh can do no good thing.  That's why, first of all...says Paul to Timothy in setting the church in order, 1 Timothy 2, "First of all supplications, prayers, intercessions, giving of thanks.  All men everywhere lift up holy hands in prayer."  First of all, we're called to pray. 

     Now I wanna talk about some other functions today, and I... I'm gonna go through them rather rapidly.  We could spend a lot more time, but I've taught them over and over.  I'm just gonna touch them...The next one is discipling.  This is a function of the church.  In Matthew 28:19 and 20, our Lord said, "Going into all the world, make disciples."  Mafaytusateh, make disciples.  The word mafaytuo is the word disciple or learner.  Make learners.  Make disciples.  "Baptizing them."  That's how you get 'em started.  "Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I've commanded you."  That's how you keep them going.  Discipling, then, is bringing people to Christ and leading them in Christ to maturity.  That's the discipling process. 

     I love what it says in the Book of Matthew when it says that, "Jesus discipled Joseph of Arimathea.  The text actually says, "And Joseph of Arimathea, who was discipled by Jesus."  What a wonderful thought.  We're all in that process.  In Acts 1:1, Luke writes, "The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus," referring to the Gospel of Luke.  "The former writing...he says...I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach."  Isn't that a wonderful thing?  He says, "My other letter was all about Jesus began, and this one, the Book of Acts, is all about the carrying on of that work.  Jesus discipled twelve, and now in the Book of Acts, we find what the twelve did with their generation; and the Book of Acts is a flowing through from what Jesus began.  And here you and I are 2,000 years later, and we're still working on what Jesus began.  Somebody gave the baton to the apostles.  They gave it to somebody else and somebody else and somebody else; and somebody gave it to us; and we're in the same succession of having heard these things to be committed, 2 Timothy 2:2, "To passing them on the faithful men who shall be able to teach others also."

     You see, every Christian's in a relay race.  He takes the baton.  He hands the baton, and none of us is in a solo effort.  I mean we're all in flow; and somebody invested in us; and we need to invest it in somebody else, which is to say to a believer, "You ought to be being discipled and be discipling."  You say, "I don't know much."  Find somebody who knows less than you do and tell 'em what you know.  Find somebody who knows more than you do and listen to 'em.  Plug in someplace.  Plug in, be taught, and teach.

     I mean I...I pour my heart into some people in the discipling process, and I'm pulling it from somewhere else.  All of us gotta be in the flow somewhere.  We're not isolated people out there.  We're in the flow.  We're a chain all linked and hooked together. 

     Back to 1 Corinthians 4, where I was a moment ago.  I think you have a wonderful indirect insight into the discipling process here.  Paul is writing a letter that's basically a rebuke to the Corinthian church, which he, himself, brought into existence by the grace of God and the power of the Spirit, and they have departed in many ways from the...the primitive things that should've been basic to their faith, and they've launched off into all kinds of sinful things, so Paul writes to correct them; and he begins in verse 14 with a good insight into helping us understand the relationship of a discipler to his disciple.  In verse 14, he says, "I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons, I warn you.  For though you have ten thousand piedegagos...which means moral guardians or people giving you spiritual advice in Christ...yet you have not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the Gospel."

     Now, he throws this in, because, by now, they're saying to themselves, after four-and-a-half chapters of rebuke, "Who does this guy think he is?  What gives him the right to talk to us like this?"  He stops and says, "Here's why.  First of all, I'm your