(audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience laughing) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) - Good evening, everybody. Glad to see everybody this night. Let us go ahead and get seated and situated, and then we'll start off with a word of prayer.

All right, would you please join with me? Heavenly Father, we want to pray to you a word of thanksgiving. God, we are, again, so grateful that you're merciful to us, that, Lord, your presence is with us and that you sustain us. We ask, Lord God, as each day has its own worries, burdens, troubles, and more, God, help us to really focus our minds, focus our hearts on you.

And we pray, Lord, one of the great struggles is sometimes we're fatigued and our desires may wane, but help us, Lord God, to have such a desire, a desire to learn from your word, desire to have true fellowship, and, God, a desire to give you worship. Lord, we're thankful for the Bible study and ask that we would glean much.

And now, as we sing songs of worship to you, we do pray that it would be pleasing to your ear. It's in Christ's name, amen. (gentle music) Sing holy, holy, holy. ♪ Holy, holy, holy ♪ ♪ Lord God Almighty ♪ ♪ Early in the morning ♪ ♪ My song shall rise to Thee ♪ ♪ Holy, holy, holy ♪ ♪ Merciful and mighty ♪ ♪ God in three Persons ♪ ♪ Blessed Trinity ♪ Holy, holy, holy, holy.

♪ All the saints adore Thee ♪ ♪ Fasting down their golden crowns ♪ ♪ Around the glassy sea ♪ ♪ Cherubim and seraphim ♪ ♪ Falling down before Thee ♪ ♪ Who was and is and evermore shall be ♪ ♪ Holy, holy, holy ♪ ♪ Though the darkness hide Thee ♪ ♪ Though the eye of sinful man ♪ ♪ Thy glory may not see ♪ ♪ You now are holy ♪ ♪ Fair is none beside Thee ♪ ♪ Perfect in power ♪ ♪ Love and purity ♪ Sing that again, holy.

♪ Holy, holy, holy ♪ ♪ Lord God Almighty ♪ ♪ All Thy works shall praise Thy name ♪ ♪ In earth and sky and sea ♪ ♪ Holy, holy, holy ♪ ♪ Merciful and mighty ♪ ♪ God in three Persons ♪ ♪ Blessed Trinity ♪ ♪ God in three Persons ♪ ♪ Blessed Trinity ♪ Sing one church.

♪ One church, one faith ♪ ♪ One anthem raised ♪ ♪ God and God of all ♪ ♪ One cross, one grace ♪ ♪ One name that saves ♪ ♪ All praise to You belongs ♪ ♪ All praise to You belongs ♪ ♪ We raise to You higher, higher ♪ ♪ God and God alone ♪ ♪ You may be louder, louder ♪ ♪ Than any other song ♪ ♪ You are forever seated on Your throne ♪ ♪ You are forever God and God alone ♪ Who else can wash?

♪ Who else can wash our sin away? ♪ ♪ God and God alone ♪ ♪ Who else can raise us from the grave? ♪ ♪ All praise to You belongs ♪ ♪ Jesus, all praise to You belongs ♪ ♪ We raise to You higher, higher ♪ ♪ God and God alone ♪ ♪ You may be louder, louder ♪ ♪ Than any other song ♪ ♪ You are forever seated on Your throne ♪ ♪ You are forever God and God alone ♪ ♪ And what could separate us from this amazing love?

♪ ♪ What could say it's greater than our God? ♪ ♪ Every knee will bow down ♪ What could separate? ♪ Oh, what could separate us from this amazing love? ♪ ♪ What could say it's greater than our God? ♪ ♪ Every knee will bow down ♪ ♪ Oh, every knee will bow down ♪ ♪ We lift You higher, higher ♪ ♪ God and God alone ♪ ♪ You may be louder, louder ♪ ♪ Than any other song ♪ ♪ You are forever seated on Your throne ♪ ♪ You are forever God and God alone ♪ ♪ So we lift You to go higher, higher ♪ ♪ God and God alone ♪ ♪ You may be louder, louder ♪ ♪ Than any other song ♪ ♪ You are forever seated on Your throne ♪ ♪ You are forever God and God alone ♪ Okay, let's pray.

Father, we just thank You for this time of worship and Bible study. We just lift Your praise to You and You alone 'cause You deserve all the praise, God, and You are holy, holy, holy, just like we sang. And God, as we just sing about one church, one faith, one name that saves, God, which is Christ Jesus, I pray that You will truly unite us in our desire to just learn about the church the way You've designed it in Your Word, and that we would just truly grow in just Christ being King and Lord of our lives, Lord.

I would just thank You for this time. I would just give You all the glory, Lord. In Christ's name we pray, amen. All right, just a brief announcement for us. So we do need some helping hands, so here's a volunteer opportunity for you guys. In order to have this set up, we do need helping hands to help us prepare.

We have facility preparers who are setting up tables on the other side, chairs, et cetera. If you can, please sign up, the link is here, but also, if you check your emails, when we started the Bible study, you should have gotten a link for a schedule. Now, it is a little different because it's a big old spreadsheet with parking volunteers, et cetera, but take a look at that spreadsheet, and there's also opportunities to help clean up at the end of the day.

So we're requesting that you guys look at your schedules, look for a day where you can come early or just stay behind a little bit after to help clean, okay? But we do need helping hands right away, so please make sure you sign up for that, okay? All right, so please go ahead at this time to discuss just your observations from the various quiet time passages, and also discuss what you learned from the two chapters of reading, and then we'll be back at eight o'clock.

Thanks, everyone. 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chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) - We can begin to wrap up and get back into the room in one or two minutes.

- How'd you guys get in the same group? How'd you guys get in the same group? (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) - All right, let's get together.

It's eight o'clock. (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) (audience chattering) All right, let me get started here. It's at eight o'clock, a little bit over eight. All right, let me pray for us and we'll get started.

Father, we thank you for this evening, and as we take this time to discuss the First Covenant and the importance of church membership, we pray, Father God, for a deeper understanding of who you are to us. We pray that you would sanctify us and teach us that we may be intentional in the way that we build this church for the sake of your name.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Ah. Ah. It's okay? Okay, all right. All right, so today we're gonna be covering the First Covenant. The First Covenant is I confess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior. Those of you who are new to the church, and I know there's quite a few who are non-members of the church, and so at our church we have membership, and at the end of the membership, eight-week membership, which is actually starting in a few weeks.

I forgot which, in about three weeks we're starting a new class of membership, so those of you who've been waiting, we're gonna start taking sign-ups this Sunday, and so it's an eight-week course where we go over the various aspects of the church, what our church is about, and then at the end of the eight weeks we go over the Tenfold Covenant, and this covenant is basically what we are expecting all the members of the church to commit to, and we renew this every year, and the reason why we do this is so that the building of the church is very intentional, that we're not simply adding numbers to the church, we're not simply asking people to come because they like the fellowship, or they like the people, or they just want to sit in service, and this is the teaching.

All of those things are great, but we want to build the church very intentionally, so the Tenfold Covenant that we're gonna go over through this round of Bible study from now until wintertime are all commitments that we're asking every member to participate in, and take it very seriously, not to just sign the covenant, but to sign it with intention of practicing it, and so that's the main reason why we are going over this covenant, okay?

So the first covenant is I confess Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, so the first covenant is that the members of the church has to be genuine Christians, that we're not simply adding people, but that these are not just confessing, but that there's evidence of this in your life, so the question today is not gonna be about lordship necessarily, it's gonna be about why we practice membership, okay?

Why do we practice membership? Some of you guys may have come from churches that don't practice membership. Maybe you went to church all your life, and membership is kind of a new concept to you, right? It sounds weird to have a church be exclusive, so you may have come from a paradigm thinking that why is this church only allowing some people to be members, some people not to be members, and I'm gonna be explaining that, so hopefully at the end of this Bible study, whether you agree or don't agree, that you at least understand why we feel the need to practice membership, okay?

First of all, the word for church itself in Greek is ekklesia, ekklesia, and it's the two words. Ekk means to be out of. Klesia is a gathering, and so the literal understanding of the meaning is an assembly of people who have been called out, right? That's a literal understanding of the word, and so when Jesus uses this word to describe the church, it's very deliberate.

It's not just any gathering. It's not just wherever people gather together, right? Or some people think the church is because it's inside of you, I just make wherever two or three gather together, that's where the church is, right? But the literal understanding of this word is a assembly. It is an assembly.

It is not just how you feel, your personal relationship with God. You hear all the time people saying Christianity is just your personal relationship with God. It is not. That is a part of it, right? It is not just your personal relationship with God. The church is a gathering of people who are called out.

It is a gathering. So you yourself is not a church. You're a Christian, but you're not a church. You can have a Bible study at your home, that doesn't make it a church. There are very specific things about what the Bible says, what a church looks like. So again, just the meaning itself of the church, and this term was not created by Christ.

This term was already used in the culture, and it was used for an assembly of a political gathering, right? Kind of like what we say today, like the assembly of so-and-so, assembly of California, the assembly members of Congress, men and women of the United States, and these are people who are gathering together, right?

They left their home. They gather together for a particular purpose, and that term was used by Christ to refer to the gathering of Christians who have been called out from the world for a specific purpose. That's the definition of a church. 1 Peter 2, 9 through 10, it says, "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, "a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, "so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him "who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

"For you once were not a people, "but now you are the people of God. "You had not received mercy, "but now you have received mercy." This is a description of God's people. God had called us out, made us a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a nation that belongs to God to proclaim his excellency for his glory from darkness, from where you were before you met Christ, into the light, right?

And so, again, this is another way of understanding what a church is. I asked you to do quiet time, right? Just let me give you a little bit of a plug on the quiet time. In your walk with God, there is nothing that will affect your walk with God, a single activity that will affect your walk with God more than your personal devotion.

And I'm not looking at scripture. There's no verse I'm telling. I'm just telling you from my personal experience and from years of just trying to disciple people. If there's a single activity that you are not doing that you will commit to on a daily basis, that will radically change your spiritual life is your personal devotion before God.

So if you're active at church, evangelizing, serving other people, giving, and yet you're not spending personal time with God on a daily basis, I guarantee you, right, there's no single activity that you will commit to that will make the most practical difference in your life than your personal devotion with God.

And again, this is a plug. So whatever it is that you're engaging in, I would say make your personal time with God a priority. If you say, you know what, all these verses are burdensome or it's just too much, I have this, I have that activity, I would say make this the highest of your priority.

Outside of corporate worship, the second most important thing that you will do in life is your personal time with God, okay? And I can't emphasize that enough, right? So if you're not doing that, you want to be disciple, I want to grow, I'm seeking counsel, if you're not doing this, do this first, okay?

Do this first, and then seek discipleship, and then seek counsel, and then seek whatever it is that you're seeking, okay? I hope I emphasized that strong enough that you understand that this is that important, right? Now, I understand that you may have other devotions that you are doing, I understand that, so you may not be able to devote as much time onto this, but again, if that is not the case, I would strongly recommend every day try to spend at least 15, 20, 30 minutes, and then possibly more than that going forward, right?

Study, pray on a regular basis, and if there's anything that you will do in life that will single-handedly enhance your walk with God is your personal devotion, okay? That's completely just off-tangent, but all right. So let me go through this. The church is initiated and preserved by God's covenant prophets.

This is where Jesus asks Peter who he is, and he gives a confession that says, "Upon this rock I will build my church, "and gates of Hades will not prevail against it." So... So the first thing is that the church is initiated by God. This was not man-made, right?

This was not just some, you know, the church got together, or the group of people who became Christians said, "Well, how are we going to "organize the church? What are we going to do?" And then they came up with this system. He says, "No, this was introduced to us by Christ himself." Number two, the church is a gathering of people who have confessed Jesus as Lord and Savior and believe that Jesus was crucified and resurrected for our sins.

There--oftentimes when people criticize that Christians are like this, or churches are like this, how much of that criticism is about non-Christians? How much of the hatred of the world toward the church is really about non-Christians in the church? Right? Now, we don't know, because there's so much mixture of it, where we don't know where the church begins and the non--you know, non-Christians start.

So because we have saturated the church with non-Christians, that they can't tell the difference between what a church is and what the world is, because there is no distinction, right? And so the church is a gathering of people who have confessed that Christ is their Lord and believe that Jesus is resurrected from the dead.

That's the nature of the church. A gathering of people who have not confessed Christ as Lord and Savior is not a church. It is just a gathering. It is not a church, right? And so when people often ask, "How come our church isn't concerned about non-Christians who are coming to our Sunday worship?" It's not that we're not concerned, but Sunday worship is not designed for non-Christians, because we call it worship, and non-Christians do not come to worship, right?

So Sunday worship is for worship. So non-Christians can come, they can sit there, they can ask questions, and we can evangelize to them, but Sunday worship is worship for Christians, okay? And so it's not that we don't care about them, but we can't call it worship and then have the main target for the worship non-Christians.

Then it's a contradiction in terms, okay? Three, their church is a gathering of people for the purpose of worship, as we said. John 4, 7-26, this is a passage where Jesus is encountering the Samaritan woman. They go back and forth. She recognizes that He's the Messiah, and He says to the Samaritan woman that there's going to come a time when God is looking for people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth, right?

Both. The reason why Jesus says spirit and in truth is because the Samaritans believed that their heart was in the right place. Jesus says the Jews have the truth because they have the Word of God. They have the law. And the Samaritans have a version of it of their own.

But He was basically rebuking both. The Jews were worshiping based on what they thought was the law. Samaritans may have had the right heart, but what God is looking for are genuine worshipers who will worship in spirit and in truth, right? So that's the primary thing that He says He's looking for in the church, right?

Are people very well-educated? Are they obedient? Are they giving? All these things are important things that the Bible teaches. But the primary thing that God is looking for, how does God determine a good church versus a bad church? Right? Programs? Feeding the poor? How do you determine it's a good church or a bad church?

Expository preaching? All these things are good things, but ultimately what God is looking for is are the people in this church genuinely worshiping God in spirit and in truth, right? So obviously you're going to require the teaching. You're going to require discipleship. But the primary thing that God will determine that's a good church versus this church is not a good church is genuine worship of spirit and truth happening, right?

What happens to a church that worships in spirit but not in truth? If you understand what I'm saying. Your intentions are good, right? You cry every time you go to worship God. You raise your hand and you sing and your praise is awesome. But they lack truth. They don't know the Word of God.

What happens to a church that is worshiping in spirit but not in truth? Somebody. Charismatic, okay. I was looking for something more specific. Why is that dangerous? Huh? Okay, yeah, I'm looking for something more specific. Something more dangerous. Heresy, right? All these--the people who are flocking to cults because the cults seem more passionate and sincere than the church that they came from.

They go to the--so many people who end up going to cults used to go to a church. And they say, "You know what? "The people there, they're not really sincere. "They don't practice what they preach." But these people really practice. They actually go witnessing. They actually pray. They actually give.

That's what draws them there. And even though you go through the Scripture and say, "Well, Scripturally, they're all--you know, this is wrong "and they're interpreting this wrong." They said, "Well, but they're very sincere. "They're the most sincere people I've ever met. "They're very loving. "Community is awesome." But the problem with that is when they don't have truth, they're open to all kinds of heresy.

What happens to a church that practices truth but not spirit? Legalism. It's a dead church. It's a dead church. So what if you have right doctrine? So what if you have right teaching? He doesn't want us to come and check off the box and say, "Oh, everybody with right doctrine come to heaven." Even the demons believe that and they shudder.

They have better doctrine than we do. It's a dead church. Either way, it's dangerous. He said what God is looking for are people who will worship him in spirit and in truth. So if you have truth and you don't have passion and you don't have zeal for God, it's dead orthodoxy.

It's useless. But if you have passion and you don't have the truth, you're open to all kinds of heresy that may come in. And you're not even able to discern if it is heresy or not because you're not studying the Word of God. So you need both. The church is a gathering of people for the purpose of worship.

That's the primary thing he's looking for. The church is a gathering of God's people for the purpose of equipping, Ephesians 4, 11 through 16, where God gave apostles, prophets. What comes after that? I'm going to get it wrong. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, all for the purpose of what?

Equipping the saints, right? For the purpose of equipping. All of them for the purpose of equipping so that we may be equipped for the building up of the body of Christ as each one does his own part, right? So ultimately so that we may come to the fullness of Christ.

And so the gathering of the church is for the purpose of worship and for the purpose of equipping. And this is where the equipping is happening. And so the purpose of why you're doing Bible study is not to scratch your ears and say, "Oh, I know better now," right?

Because what happens to people who are constantly learning and not practicing? You become proud, right? So knowledge becomes a source to judge other people if you're not practicing. And so it's for the purpose of equipping. So everything you're learning today, how is this going to equip you to build up the body of Christ, right?

It's for the purpose of equipping. Five, the church is a gathering of God's people for the purpose of fellowship, right? In Galatians 6, 1 and 2, it says bear each other's burden and those who are more spiritual, right, to confront, to care with gentleness that they turn from their sins.

Hebrews chapter, right, 10, 25, let us not forsake gathering together as it is the habit of some but consider how to stimulate one another on toward love and good deeds, especially as you see the day drawing near. So the purpose of the church is so that we may actively seek to stimulate and encourage other people, right?

So if you come to church and the only thought you have is, what am I going to get out of it, right? You're not -- you're thinking only of yourself, right? The purpose of the church is so that those who are strong could seek and encourage and turn them away.

And if you've ever been a part of the church and you're away, right, you know physically the difference a good church makes, a good fellowship, having brothers and sisters around you, right? And that was designed that way. God did not design human beings to be alone. God did not design Christians to be alone, right?

He designed our sanctification and worship of God to happen in the context of the body of Christ, right? And then finally, the church is a gathering of God's people for the purpose of evangelism, right? This is something that happens to a church that's been around for a while, and after a while, instead of evangelizing, we get so caught up in maintaining that we forget evangelism.

But evangelism is the heartbeat of the church, right? Worship and then evangelism, okay? So I'm going to give you this, okay? We're almost at the end. I want you to memorize this, right? And I'm going to test you. The church is or was, okay, established by Christ for the gathering of believers for the purpose of worship, equipping, fellowship, and evangelism, okay?

So it has all the elements that I just said. The church was established by Christ, right, established by Christ for the gathering of believers for the purpose of worship, equipping, fellowship, and evangelism, okay? Who thinks they can say that? Free coffee. If you can say this without looking at this, free coffee.

Nobody? You don't want free coffee? Gummy bears. Okay, whatever. What I'm going to ask you to do is I want you to do your best to memorize it, at least get the key elements, those six things. Church was established by Christ, right? Established by Christ for the gathering of believers for the purpose of worship, equipping, fellowship, and evangelism.

You think you can get that by the time you guys go to your small groups? Okay? One more time, okay? Don't look at it. Don't look at it, okay? Don't cheat. The church was established by Christ for the gathering of believers for the purpose of worship, equipping, fellowship, and evangelism, okay?

I'm going to ask you guys to see if you can do that in your small group, okay, afterwards. So that's what leads to our fourfold vision at church, okay? This is where we get our fourfold vision. Engaging in God-centered worship, equipping believers with God's word, building Christ-centered community, reaching out with the gospel of Christ.

And let me give you a brief explanation because worship, equipping, fellowship, and outreach is all mentioned, but they have descriptions. It's not just any worship. What kind of worship is it? God-centered worship, right? It's not worship if the primary focus is you, right? Worship is we see something beyond us, and we give it worth.

That's where the English word "worship" comes from. We are esquipe. It means to give worth to something else. If you come and you're the primary concern of the church, you're the primary concern of why you're gathered, then that's not worship, right? So that's why we say it's God-centered. So it's not just any worship.

It's God-centered worship. Two, equipping believers. A lot of people say, "Well, we're going to equip." Equipping with what? The Word of God, right? We can do training. We can do, you know, all kinds of exercises. We're going to have, you know, community exercises where we're going to learn how to, you know, be team building and all this stuff.

And all this stuff you can say, "Oh, we're equipping." But the equipping we're talking about is with the Word of God, right, specifically with the Word of God. Building Christ-centered community. Just because the church gathers together and they practice community doesn't mean it's a church. It must be Christ-centered.

In other words, it must be Christ-glorifying, Christ-imitating, right, Christ-exalting, and lead us to the fullness of Christ. So fellowship, just because you gather together and Christians spend time together, that's not fellowship. It must be Christ-centered fellowship, okay? Finally, reaching out with what? The Gospel of Christ. Not just reaching out, not just because they're poor, not just because there's some, you know, people who are in need, but specifically reaching out with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, right?

That's our fourfold vision. And hopefully if you're members at our church that you can also memorize this. I'm not going to test you today, okay? No free drinks or snacks. The other one I'm going to ask you to do, this one hopefully we say it enough and repeat it enough that you can just repeat this to somebody else and explain.

If somebody asks you, "What is your church about? What is BCC about?" You can explain this, okay? None of this is unique to our church. This is just a summary of what we see in the Bible. Why do we practice membership? Worship, equipping, fellowship, evangelism can only be practiced with those who are genuine believers.

We can't practice any of this with non-Christians. They're not able to worship. How do you equip non-believers when they don't believe in God or the word? How do you have fellowship when fellowship means to partner? How do you partner with a non-Christian? How do you evangelize when they're the ones we're trying to evangelize, right?

So we practice membership to identify them. Early church, the way they had membership, that if you were not a baptized believer, you weren't allowed to come to worship, right? It was exclusive. That membership happened at the door, right? But we don't live in that culture. We live in a post-Christian culture where the doors are open, where non-Christian can come, where you can invite your family and friends, right?

Because we are doing that, we are allowing the non-Christians to--non-members to come to the door, we need to be able to identify who's the church. And that's the primary reason why we have membership, to know who are actually at the church, not just who are visiting the church, not just who are people who are curious about the church, but who is the church.

That's why we have membership. If we open our doors to allow non-believers to be in the gathering of the church, we need to be able to identify who the genuine believers are, okay? So this is the reason why we practice membership. So just a quick summary of what you read.

In summary, and I'm not going to go through all that, I'm just going to show you the pages because I know you guys read through this. So at our church, to practice all of this, to have God-centered worship, we have to have a high view of God. God is not our servant.

He is--we are his servant, right? He didn't offend us. We offended him. He's the one who's gracious to us, not us to him. We don't come to church. Like if God giving you his only begotten son is not enough, something's wrong with you, right? Like I believe that Jesus gave his only begotten son.

He died for me. And then you're living every day and say, "Yeah, but he didn't give me health. He didn't give me the job that I wanted. He didn't give me this. He didn't give me that." Imagine one day you have a child, right, that you've given everything and they say, "But you didn't give me Jamba Juice.

You didn't let me go to Disneyland," right? Imagine how that sounds like to God, right? He gave us his only begotten son. So no matter where you are in life, we owe him our life. This is a gathering of people who have been saved from eternal damnation through the blood of Christ.

The son of God gave up his glory for us. So no matter where you are in life, the church is filled with people who owe him everything, right? So it doesn't make sense that we do not have this high view of God. And so that's where church begins, a gathering of people who are indebted to what God has done, and so we come here to thank him, glorify him, praise him, right?

So it needs to have a high view of God. Secondly, we need to have a high view of his word. If you have a high view of God, where is that reflected? In your high view of his word, right? So whatever he says goes. We don't look at the scripture and say, "You know what?

I don't know if I like this male leadership." If you have a high view of God, we listen to him. We don't change him. And in time, even if it doesn't make sense to you, I guarantee you in time you will understand the wisdom behind everything that God does.

You may not understand it in your teens. Maybe some things you might have a hard time understanding when you're in your 20s, but I guarantee you every part of this, there's going to come a time in your life you're going to look back at that and see God's wisdom behind it, right?

Think how dumb we were just 10 years ago, right? I mean, honestly, every single one of us, no matter how old you are, think about how you were thinking, what you did 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Every single one of us, if we turned the clock back and said, "Man, I would have done that different.

I wish I knew this when I was young," every single one of us, you think that's not going to happen in another 10 years and 20 years? You think you've come to the peak of knowledge and understanding and wisdom, and you know what I mean? So from this point on, all your judgment is correct, and people who regret just 10, 15 years ago are going to look at an almighty God and say, "I don't know about that, God." The arrogance, right?

I mean, we're going to regret just 20 years ago, even if nothing ever changes. 20 years ago, you're going to look back. The things that you're thinking because of different perspective and experience that you're going to have, and you're going to say, "Oh, I was so dumb. I should have done this.

I should have done that," right? So does that make sense for finite, flawed beings, even morally flawed people, to look at an almighty, perfect being and then question him, right? So if you have a high view of God, you must have a high view of his word. And then if you have a high view of his word, the way that gets translated is high view of doctrine, right?

So some people think that if you have a high view of the word of God, but doctrine is divisive. No, doctrine is an accumulation of the word of God, right? That's why doctrine is important. It doesn't mean that every doctrine has the same weight, but doctrine basically is an accumulation of studies.

So the more you study the word of God, the more you're going to accumulate certain views of certain things, right? So we have a high view of doctrine, right? Why do we make such a big deal about baptism? Because we believe in our accumulation of understanding what the word of God says that that's what the Bible says.

So we're trying to practice that, okay? So if you have a high view of God, high view of the word, high view of doctrine, then there must be a high view of your personal walk with God, your personal holiness because you belong to him, right? We're not our own.

So if we're his and we have a high view of God, you must have a high view of your own holiness. And then finally, spiritual authority, right? So you have a -- and I'm going to conclude. High view of God, high view of his word, high view of doctrine, high view of your holiness, right, your personal application, and high view of the church, right?

You must have a high view of the church because this is where he says, "Do you not know that you are the temple of God and the spirit of God dwells in you," plural, that this is the temple of God? Our gathering is holy, right? So therefore, we have to have a high view of his church.

So if you're going to have a high view of God, high view of the word, high view of doctrine, high view of our holiness, and high view of the church, how is that the most practically expressed? We must have the highest view of corporate worship. Now, that's not my subject today, so I'm not going to get into that, right?

All this is interconnected. If you're going to have a high view of God, you must have a high view of corporate worship. We're going to deal with that another time. So this -- I'm not going to read it, but this basically says the goal -- I know there's a lot of things that you may have discussed in this chapter, but the goal of the church is not simply to get you to change your behavior, right?

It's to get you to think properly and have a proper attitude, right? So if you have an attitude of thanksgiving, does that affect the way you serve? Yes. Does that affect the way you love people? Yes. Does that affect the way that you worship God? Yes. Does that affect the way you evangelize?

Yes. But if you have somebody where their inner person is bitter, grumpy, angry, judgmental, and yet they're high-functioning, they take worship very seriously, they're always memorizing Scripture, they're doing -- what happens to that person? Is God honored, glorified by an individual who's high-functioning but have a bad attitude? No, because real worship happens from within, right?

Real worship happens from within. He doesn't want people just to get an A, right? Oh, you got all the right answers, right? He wants a church to worship him in spirit and in truth. So the primary goal of the church is so that your inner being would become more and more of somebody that can worship, that can serve, that can evangelize, right?

So the focus of sanctification is who you are before what you do. And that's why the key is the teaching of the Word of God, right? Everybody could be very high-functioning, serving everywhere, memorizing Scripture, doing all their Bible study, but inwardly they're grumbling, complaining, pointing fingers at everybody. God is not honored by that, right?

He wants to see the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is what leads to evangelism, what leads to worship, what leads to love and grace, okay? Okay. Now we're at the end. Okay. So we have four questions. What is the primary purpose of the church? Try to recite the definition of the church by memory, which is homework for you tonight, okay?

So I'm going to test you next week. Number two, what does it mean practically to have a high view of God, His Word, and His church, right? We say you have the high view, but what does that mean practically in application? Think of at least three examples of how these things should impact the way we practice our Christian lives, okay?

This is practical application. Why do you think practicing membership is important for the health of the church? What are some ramifications of a church that has low expectations of their members? Or think of one practical application on how you can be a better member of Christ's church this coming week, okay?

Would you pray for us, and then I'll give you time to discuss these questions. Father, we pray that the truths of Your Word would impact our hearts, and as You told us, Lord God, that You are seeking people to worship You in spirit and in truth, help us, Lord, to understand Your purpose in the church and why You have made a covenant with it, and that we would have a deeper understanding of why we are gathered and what it is exactly that we are building.

So I pray that You would bless a time of discussion, help us to be open and honest, and that we would be able to practically apply all that You teach us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.