The King's Church in Ilford
The following is the text of the talk given on 18th January 2009 by Robin Hawkins
"The Foundational Church"
The Foundational Church
Reading: Eph 1:22 & 4:1-16
A Bundle of Laughs - page 49
- I don't know how you see church. It may be as somewhere to come and worship on Sunday; but it's separate from how you live your life the rest of the week.
- Maybe you see it as a place to express your relationship with God, but you don't see it so much as a place to build friendships with others.
- Maybe it's more of a social thing to you. This is where your community gathers, so it's where you come to meet your friends.
There may be other reasons. But if it's for any of the above reasons, you're selling yourself short. The church is much more than this. I'm not talking about the Church universal now - all Cns everywhere through the centruries. That is one way the Bible talks about the Church. I'm talking about the local church - congregations of Believers in different places. This is another way the Bible talks about the Church - the church in a town, in Ephesus, Corinth etc. These days, we get many congregations in a town, sadly often operating separately from one another, but when Jesus returns, he is coming for one church only - and it's not the Baptists or the Pentecostals or Methodists. But wherever there are Believers, they are the ones for whom he is coming.
Meanwhile we don't "go to church". We are the church! But the church in this country often fails to realise who we really are. Some say we're having an Identity Crisis! The media belittles the church and undermines it. Our own experiences sometimes leave us feeling we'd be better off without it. We can end up having a low view, a poor opinion of the church. But the Bible has a very high view of church and life in the church. For a start:
- Do you realise that when history is wound up, the only thing from this planet that will survive into eternity is the church?
- Do you not realise that when God flung stars into space and created the cosmos, the sun and the moon, it was ultimately for the benefit of the church. This earth belongs to the Lord. He created it with the sole purpose of creating a people for himself - the church.
- He loves the church passionately - he even gave his very life for her.
I'm not just talking here about the church universal - that is, the church throughout time and location. I'm talking about individual local churches. Jesus cares passionately for the local church. He knows each one intimately. He knows our strengths and weaknesses. You have only to look at Rev. 2 & 3 to see Jesus' concern for local churches. Our Lord does not stand remote from his church. He moves among the churches commending one, exhorting another, and rebuking a third.
It's as though each local church has its own corporate identity. There are good churches and bad churches, weak ones and strong ones, zealous and lethargic. Some are even ripe for closure. Some ripe for explosion. Christ is clearly concerned with the life and health of every local church. He can prosper it and cause it to grow, or he can remove it completely (although we may keep our doors open long after Jesus has removed the lampstand.) So pause for a minute and ask yourself how much your own attitude reflects his? Do you love this church, with all its strengths and weaknesses, or do you merely attend it?
Terry Virgo puts it like this: "People who have never experienced the joy and delight of belonging to a loving and vital Christian Body have missed one of the thrills of the Christian life. Mere "church-going" was never in God's plan for you." God's plan is to knit us together as a group of friends who are dear to one another and with whom we can share our lives. He does not want lonely or isolated Christians. He invites us to bear one another's burdens, pray for one another, confess our faults to one another, build one another up in our faith, encourage one another, exhort and warn one another, provoke one another to love and good works. All this requires close fellowship, love and trust.
Knowing ourselves to be children of God, loved and accepted by Jesus sets us free to love one another. Thus we become a family - God's Household - held together by the love and fatherhood of God (Eph 2:19). Fatherhood is about raising children in a secure environment. Thus the church is about raising spiritual children - disciples - in a community of love. Not surprisingly then, the church is a place where it is His delight to dwell. Eph 2:22 speaks of us as living temple in which God lives by his Spirit. So if anyone wants to ask the question: "Why should we value the church?" - the answer is very simple. It's the place where God has chosen to live. So if you want to find God, you should find him in the local church. So when people come among us, we should expect them to meet with God.
If this is God's goal for His church, we shouldn't be surprised if satan tries to attack and undermine it. He will try and attack relationships by sowing seeds of mistrust and distorting our view of other people's failures. He tries to peel people off into loneliness. He will use any means he can to make people pull back from intimate involvement with the local church. Some are held back by their sense of failure. Some are afraid of what it might cost to get involved. He makes sure others are offended and hurt so that they withdraw. Anything that will get people isolated from one another so that they fail to draw upon the strength of being together.
In the NT, the severest punishment that the church could inflict on a person was to exclude them from the fellowship of the local church. Tragically, many today do that by choice without realising the harm they are doing to themselves. Clinging to their grievances, they make themselves vulnerable to satanic attack. As well as that, they become increasingly ineffective in advancing the Kingdom, because God has ordained that the local church is the most effective means through which the gospel will be advanced.
We need to see that the local church is not only Christ's delight, it is also his main strategy for advancing the Kingdom. The local church is his Body (1Cor 12:ff). It is the living, vital, expression of Jesus in the community. If we want to do the things that Jesus did, and carry on his ministry of proclaiming the Kingdom, we must operate as part of his Body. It stands to reason: my hand does not operate detached from my arm. My eye sees things so that my hand can pick them up. We need one another if we are going to minister effectively. These days we would call it Teamwork. Together, we can grow into an effective expression of Jesus (Eph 4:15-16).
Spiritual Maturity is one of the biggest needs in the church today. It is because of this Christ has given gifts to his church to help us grow to maturity So we have Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors & Teachers - not so that they can do all the work, and the rest can just sit and watch them do it. Rather their task is to equip the rest for the work of ministry themselves.
This work of ministry is described in 1Pet 2:9. These are wonderful descriptions of the church. Do you know what a royal priesthood is? It is a people appointed by the king for the purpose of introducing people to the King. Elsewhere, Paul calls it a ministry of reconciliation. Jesus calls it "going into the world and making disciples of all nations. We have a mission that we're all called to - reaching this world with the gospel. We can't leave it to a few gifted evangelists. We're all called to this. It is a family matter. The church is a wonderful means of reaching out to people, drawing them into this community of
love, discipling them, then getting them to disciple others, eventually sending them out to do the work of ministry themselves.
This, everybody, is the Church as Jesus intends it to be. This is what Jesus is trying to build here at King's. Trust Him to succeed, because He's actually very good at it. In spite of the fact that we make it hard for Him sometimes. In spite of all our faults and failures, Jesus will build His church. He is not Lord for nothing! He calls us to join Him in this work, and to give ourselves to it - which means giving ourselves to Him and to one another first. Once you get a glimpse of the church as it should be, you'll be spoiled for life, and you'll always want to reach out for a better expression of it. It's something worth fighting for - not one another - but the enemy of our souls whose one goal is to destroy us. But Jesus, the King of Kings has already defeated him. Jesus the King of Kings is the victorious One, who has said, "I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it! Hallelujah!