Should I Commit to One Church?

00:00:00.000 | Josh, a podcast listener from Evansville, Indiana, writes in, "Pastor John, I have

00:00:09.480 | a question about the local church.

00:00:11.320 | I've seen a lot of people my age, college age, go to different churches, what's known

00:00:15.280 | as church hopping.

00:00:16.960 | I continue to tell them about covenanting with one particular local church and why it's

00:00:21.000 | beneficial for their growth.

00:00:22.660 | They continue to say that we are all part of the body of Christ and we as believers

00:00:26.000 | are free to go wherever we want.

00:00:28.680 | What would you tell my friends?"

00:00:30.960 | Well, I would ask them a question, first of all.

00:00:35.000 | I would ask, "How do you know those two things that you said, 'We all belong to the body

00:00:40.960 | of Christ and we are free to go wherever we want'?"

00:00:44.760 | I'd say, "How do you know that?"

00:00:47.120 | And if they say, "Because the Bible teaches that," then I would ask, "So you're saying

00:00:54.080 | you want to submit your will to what the Bible teaches about church membership, is that right?

00:00:59.960 | Are you saying that you will do what the Bible says about church membership?"

00:01:04.520 | And if they say, "No," because maybe they're feeling trapped, like, "Whoa, where's this

00:01:09.520 | going?"

00:01:10.520 | If they say, "No," then we've got a bigger issue to deal with, right?

00:01:13.880 | We've got to talk about the folly of presuming to create your own reality out of your own

00:01:18.560 | head when God is the one who creates reality and tells us what it is.

00:01:24.240 | But if they say, "Yes," which I hope they would, then I would try to say, "Okay, if

00:01:31.160 | you want to live your life in submission to the Bible, then let's go to the Bible and

00:01:35.760 | see what it says about church membership."

00:01:38.840 | And I would point them to at least five passages of Scripture.

00:01:43.760 | So I'll just mention them and give a little trajectory here, and people can head off and

00:01:48.240 | study that.

00:01:49.240 | But I would say, have you considered the implications of Matthew 18, 15 to 17, where Jesus is making

00:01:56.080 | the church, a body of believers called the church, the final appeal when considering

00:02:02.080 | the case of unrepentant sin?

00:02:04.000 | Remember, if your brother sins against you, tell it to him privately, and if he doesn't

00:02:08.240 | listen, take two or three people and then tell it to the church.

00:02:12.720 | And how would that church make any judgments if there weren't a number of people who regarded

00:02:19.560 | themselves as the church?

00:02:20.760 | Because at a meeting like that with such sensitivity, you can't just walk in off the street and

00:02:26.320 | say, "I'm a Christian, so I belong to this group that can determine the membership here

00:02:31.040 | or whether this person stays in or out."

00:02:32.880 | So it seems to me that calling the church to make that kind of sensitive rendering assumes

00:02:38.000 | there's some kind of definable group that can be counted on to do that.

00:02:42.000 | That's number one.

00:02:43.000 | Number two is 1 Corinthians 5, 12, where Paul deals with the necessity of putting someone

00:02:49.640 | out of the church.

00:02:51.200 | What do I have to do with judging outsiders?

00:02:53.600 | Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge?

00:02:57.000 | God judges those outside.

00:02:58.840 | Purge the evil person from among you.

00:03:01.500 | And so I see at least two implications there.

00:03:04.640 | One is that there is an in-the-church group and an outside-the-church group that he referred

00:03:11.040 | to.

00:03:12.240 | Being in the church is definable.

00:03:14.320 | So how is it definable if there's no such thing as membership?

00:03:18.580 | And the other implication is that a person can be removed from being in the church.

00:03:25.280 | And so I would ask Josh's friends, are you part of a body of believers so that it would

00:03:30.420 | be meaningful for them to remove you if you walked into open sin and wouldn't repent?

00:03:37.000 | Are you accountable to a group where that could happen?

00:03:39.960 | Because if you're just jumping around, I don't know how that could happen, how exclusion

00:03:44.360 | from an accountable group would make any sense.

00:03:48.160 | Third would be Hebrews 13, 17, where it says, "Obey your leaders, submit to them, for they're

00:03:54.480 | keeping watch over your souls."

00:03:57.160 | If you downplay the importance of membership, it's hard for me to see how you could take

00:04:03.440 | these commands to submit to leaders seriously.

00:04:08.000 | We have to know who our leaders are if we're going to submit to them.

00:04:12.560 | But if we're jumping from church to church, we're not likely, it seems to me, to come

00:04:17.920 | under that kind of leadership and give ourselves to that kind of submission.

00:04:24.120 | And the fourth one, it seems to me even more significant, is how will leaders know whom

00:04:30.920 | they are accountable for?

00:04:33.360 | Because the Bible's pretty serious to us pastors when it says in Acts 20, 28, "Be

00:04:38.760 | careful and pay attention to the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers

00:04:45.680 | to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood."

00:04:49.280 | How in the world, I mean, this is one of the biggest struggles for me all the years at

00:04:53.560 | Bethlehem is to whom am I accountable at the last day when the Lord says to me, "Did you

00:04:59.840 | keep watch over your flock?

00:05:02.400 | You will give an account for their souls."

00:05:05.360 | So who are they?

00:05:06.480 | And covenant membership became really crucial to us because lots of people came through

00:05:13.040 | the doors at Bethlehem, and there's no way I could fulfill this command for the thousands

00:05:19.520 | of people that rotated through those doors.

00:05:22.440 | But I think there was a body who said, "We are here.

00:05:25.640 | We belong.

00:05:26.640 | You're our shepherd.

00:05:27.860 | We are your people.

00:05:28.860 | We expect you to hold us accountable.

00:05:29.860 | We're going to hold you accountable to be a faithful shepherd."

00:05:33.040 | That kind of relationship, then it becomes definable, and I can be held accountable for

00:05:37.280 | whether I've cared for those people as I ought.

00:05:41.320 | And the last one I would point to is 1 Corinthians 12, where the members of the body are described

00:05:50.160 | as members of a local body.

00:05:53.640 | And if the person says, "Yeah, but in Ephesians 1 and Ephesians 4, Christ is the head of the

00:05:58.200 | universal body, and that's the body that I'm a part of," I say, "Right, right.

00:06:02.080 | Yes, you are."

00:06:03.400 | But it's different and more specific in 1 Corinthians 12 because the head, we know this,

00:06:10.560 | the head in verse 21 of 1 Corinthians 12 is not Christ.

00:06:16.600 | It says, "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head

00:06:22.020 | to the feet, 'I have no need of you,'" which means that we are all part of a local

00:06:30.000 | body and we are functioning as a foot or a head or an eye or an ear, and in that body

00:06:40.520 | we are called to fulfill that gifting and that responsibility.

00:06:46.300 | So I don't think Jesus died to create unattached, free-floating Christians.

00:06:53.160 | I think he died to create the church where the real, true individuality of every believer

00:07:01.100 | comes into its own.

00:07:03.180 | The more disconnected we are from a local church, the more confused we will be about

00:07:10.620 | who we are, who God made us to be.

00:07:13.740 | We find our true individual selves in relationship to others.

00:07:21.540 | Well said.

00:07:22.540 | Thank you for that, Pastor John.

00:07:23.540 | And we are putting the final touches on our preparations for the Desiring God National

00:07:27.220 | Conference, which begins here in Minneapolis next week at the Minneapolis Convention Center.

00:07:31.780 | The conference is titled "Look at the Book, Reading the Bible for Yourself."

00:07:35.060 | It will be our 12th national conference, and it will also be our final national conference.

00:07:41.140 | Bittersweet.

00:07:42.340 | And I know many of you will be there.

00:07:44.980 | As the national conference approaches, we return next week to address some of the most

00:07:48.780 | common questions we face trying to read the Bible for ourselves.

00:07:53.100 | I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:07:54.140 | Have a wonderful weekend.

00:07:55.220 | [END]

00:07:57.220 | 1.

00:07:58.220 | What is the Bible?

00:07:59.220 | The Bible is a book.

00:08:00.220 | It is a book of words.

00:08:01.220 | It is a book of ideas.

00:08:02.220 | It is a book of words.

00:08:03.220 | It is a book of ideas.

Should I Commit to One Church?

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