About

·      Introduction

They love the mighty Red. They are united by the game. They sing with one voice “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart, And you’ll never walk alone, You’ll never walk alone.” Liverpool football club is full of fanatic supporters. Passionate fans who pour out millions into their club and follow their team to games right throughout England. Supporting a team like Liverpool is no individual work, it takes an entire community of support to cheer on that team. In Football season The Liverpool fan base is ‘a regularly assembling community’. In this regular assembly, Grown men and women are seen cheering, cuddling, screaming, crying, eating, drinking all together. Sound familiar?

Tonight we will be exploring The regularly assembling community of God’s people – The Church. But unlike a fan of Liverpool FC where you may hug a fellow supporter in celebration during a bit but then sit next to them on the train home and not even acknowledge their existence. The Church is the family of God, the body of Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit. They are Spiritually bound together in a stronger bond than that of flesh and blood.

Church is one of those words isn’t it?
We just use it to mean all sorts of things. Over the last few years here are a few ways I’ve noticed it used:

A building

A service provider

A nationwide institution
God’s people gathered in heaven

An entertainment provider

A local organisation
A gathering of God’s people

A community

An innovation hub

The great musician Frank Sinatra said about the Church:
I believe that God knows what each of us wants and needs. It's not necessary for us to make it to church on Sunday to reach Him. You can find Him any place.

Justin Bieber the great…well…Justin Bieber says
You don't need to go to church to be a Christian. If you go to Taco Bell, that doesn't make you a taco.

The American actor Michael Keaton says
I find there are a few places where I like to meditate more than in other places. There's a little Catholic church that I go to, and there's another temple I go to - there are certain places where I just feel more comfortable.

What on earth is the church?
Is it a building? A place for meditation? An institution? A social club?
Is it Anglican? Pentecostal? Catholic? Independent or Baptist?
What on earth is the church?

We are a church aren’t we? What does that mean? Who are we?

It is clear from the examples we have just heard that most people don’t associate ‘the church’ with actual people.
But in fact in the scriptures the church is one of the main designations that God gives to his people.
As we zoom out just in the scriptures, we notice that God describes his people with a rich diversity and uniqueness.
We are Family, Sons and daughters, God’s temple, a Royal priesthood, Branches of the vine, The dwelling of the Holy Spirit, a Holy nation,  Christ’s bride,  The house of God, Members of God’s Household, Christ’s body and…The church.
Each of these titles is significant and worthy of careful consideration. As with all of these titles, the title of the Church holds a unique significance. So the question is, What is that significance?
To find out who we are as the church, we first have to look at who He is. Knowing who God is helps us understand who we are.
[Illustration]
It’s a little bit like when people meet [HEATHCOTE: Tim Griffith] Jye Cox…Nice kid, you know, works hard and all that, but every now and then you say to yourself, why does he do that funny thing, or say that in that way? Then you meet [HEATHCOTE: Lyall Griffith] Andrew Cox and you go, ahhhh, that’s where he gets it from.
And so as we get a glimpse of who God is we will say…ahhhh that’s where the church gets it from…

·      Theology of Church = Before asking, ‘who are we’, we must ask, ‘who is he’.

So who is God? What is he like?

Last year we spent a fair bit of time in the gospel of John considering God as the Triune God – Father, Son & Holy Spirit. 1 God in 3 persons. In John 17:20-26 which we read earlier, we see for a moment the inner life of God himself. Jesus speaks of the Father’s love for him three times. Jesus prays that those who trust in him would Verse 24 “see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world”. From all eternity, the Trinity has existed in love. The Father loved the Son even before the beginning of time. God has always existed, not as a solitary individual, but as a divine community. God is persons-in-relationship, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, who love each other perfectly.

Now this might seem a bit out there...But it is really important. 
Imagine if God was a solitary being. Like the atheist might accuse him of being. 
What was he doing before the creation of the world? There were no humans to rule over, no sun or moon or planets to keep in the balance, no universe to govern. What was he doing? 
God was in loving relationship. God the Father was loving God the Son, God the Holy Spirit was loving God the Son. 

To think that the trinity for all eternity has been in loving relationship...and then...He turns his face toward the creature, toward his church, toward his people and pours out his love on them. This is no amateur love - like a Newly married couple sorting out who will wash the dishes after dinner. This is expert love. Love that has been practiced and lived for all eternity. As God turns and directs his love toward his people he begins to form a community of love that reflects and embodies his very being – the divine community of love. 

It's staggering isn't it? This one God in divine loving community. 

And knowing this really matters. 
I don’t know about you but teaching on the trinity can sometimes feel a bit like our appendix. 
We know it's there but if we had it removed it probably wouldn't make a difference. Have you ever met someone who has just had their appendix out? And you ask them “so what does that mean? You can’t eat gluten anymore or something like that”. And they just say “Well no, nothing changes, the appendix doesn’t do all that much”. Seriously why does that thing exist?

·      Definition of Church No. 1 [Theological implication]

Well it is precisely in learning about what the Church is that our understanding of the triune God becomes vitally relevant. We move from seeing the trinity as the appendix, to realising that it is actually the beating heart of not just the church, but all of our understanding. 

This is exactly what Paul does in Galations 4. He shows how each person of the trinty is actively involved in saving sinners and gathering together as his Church. Have a look on with me.

Galations 4 says ‘But when the set time had fully come, God [that is God the Father] sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. 6 Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.”’

Paul is saying, the people of God are saved by the work of God the Son, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, who restores our relationship with God the Father. Here’s where our understanding of God as triune is vital. If God is not triune, our salvation is impossible, and we do not have a restored relationship with the Father. But as it is, God works through the Holy Spirit, to unite us to Christ both in his death and resurrection and in all this we are restored to the Father.

In this sense we can conclude that the Church is the family of God the Father, the body of Christ the Son and the communion of the Holy Spirit. Owing it’s entire existence to God’s person and work. This means, the church is not made up of individuals, but is a family who reflects God’s nature, for he has formed the church and is saving it!

It’s a bit like a cake tin. The size and shape of the cake tin will shape that cake’s existence. If you have a rectangle shaped tin, you pour the cake mixture in, pop it in the oven on 180C and what comes out [most of the time] is a cake in the shape of a….rectangle. This is like the church’s relationship with God, God is the cake tin and when a group of people get baked in the trinity, what comes out has a similar shape and character to it. God is a divine community, he is love and so goes the Church.

And this was always God’s plan. The church is the culmination of God’s plan for all of history. He has been planning to have a people of his own who will represent him in the world for the glory and honor of his name. This is no small thing we are talking about.

We see it in God’s promise to Abraham in Genesis 12. God says ‘I will make you a great nation’. and Exodus 6:5-7 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. 6 Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. 7 I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God.
After the fall in Genesis 3, God made a promise to make a people for himself.  We see a shadow of this reality with Old Testament Israel, time and time again God saves his people and brings them together under his care. In the New Testament we see Jesus, God the Son, enter in as the true embodiment of what it means to be one of the people of God. He did what God’s people in Israel failed to do over and over, he did what we could never do, Jesus walked perfectly with his Father. And through Jesus God is drawing his people together, calling them from among the nations and bringing them together under his care.
Like the emergency services who go into hurricane devastated areas, you hear the stories don’t you? People isolated by floods, no power or communication, no food or clean water. Trained men and women sweep into the area by truck, by boat, by helicopter. They have one job - rescue these stranded individuals. They gather these people from all around the surrounding towns and take them to a safe emergency shelter on high ground. This is like what God is doing in gathering his church, he rescues them and gathers them together in the safety of his new community.

·      Definition of Church No. 2 - Regularly Assembling Community [Practical Implication]

God, has kept his long standing promise to make a people for himself and he is in the business of making a people who share in his likeness.
And so when it come to looking at the New Testament word ‘Church’ it shouldn’t surprise us that it literally means assembly or gathering.
So defined by their communal nature, the people of God are described as a ‘Regularly Assembling Community’. When we search the scriptures on the subject of this ‘Church’, we find that it is used most frequently to describe the activity of God’s people gathering together.[1] But it is also used more broadly to refer to the people of God.[2]  It is quite hard to separate these two ideas. And not only that, but Hebrews tells us this earthly community is but a physical manifestation of a greater Spiritual reality. [As we read earlier] Hebrews Chapter 12 recalls a day when God appeared and spoke to Moses and the people. On this day he made promises and gave his people the law which they were to live by. As God descended on Mount Sinai, we are told there was thunder and lightning, smoke and cloud, the sound of trumpets, we are told the whole mountain trembled.
The writer of Hebrews then as if to say ‘that was nothing’ says: You haven’t come to Mount Sinai,

22 ...you have come to Mount Zion...the heavenly Jerusalem.

The day God’s people gathered at mount Sinai was a great day, but what we read here is that today is greater. As God’s people gather together we not only gather on earth but because we have the Holy Spirit and have been united to Christ who is in heaven, the people of God also gather in this heavenly gathering in the very presence of God.

So this earthly gathering of saved sinners is an earthly expression of the heavenly reality.
The question is why does that matter? Like, it’s amazing, but what difference does it make?

The key is in verse 25: ‘See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks.’ God by his word set here before us, speaks to us from heaven when we gather as his people.
‘God’s people are the saved community of love, who…gather regularly to hear the voice of their God’, to be reminded of his promises, be receiving instruction for life, to cause us to walk in repentance and faith, to remind us to love Him and love our neighbor, to be reminded that He loves us and to get us to the end still trusting Jesus.

This series we have been preaching through is about ‘Life in the Last Days’. Well, the church is the great community of the last days. As we look back we see the death and resurrection of Christ and the sending of the Holy Spirit which brings the church into existence, and as we look forward we see the new creation where God will dwell with his people forever. But in life between these two realities, the Church forms ‘the community of the Last Days’.

Implications:

What does a community of the Last Days look like in real life?
Let’s have a brief look at 4 ways the Church is essential to ‘living in the last days’.

1. The church is a gathering community
You may have heard it said ‘you don’t have to go to church to be a Christian’. I hope that after what we have heard so far, you can see how utterly ridiculous that statement is. A Christian who doesn’t gather with God’s people is like a marathon runner that doesn’t run. The gathering is what constitutes the people of God. It is the earthly expression of the glorious heavenly reality. The church is a gathering community.
As the Church gathers it gathers to hear the voice of God. That is, when it gathers it has qualified leaders who have been appointed to speak God’s words to his people. In the full life of the Church this is the moment that shapes and forms the rest of our life together. Brothers and sisters this is step one. The purpose of gathering and listening to God in his word, is to scatter and obey. Gathering and listening is step one, let’s get that right first. The church is a gathering community, it’s what we do.
The next step, as we go out from this gathering, is to live the life of the people of God in response to what He says. That’s why point 2 is:

2. The Church is our everyday community
The church is not a social accessory or an add on to our already busy lives. The church is our most important network of relationships. We are not independent individuals, we are those who in the power of the Holy Spirit have been united to Christ and united to one another.
And so whether we live it or not we are united to one another we are a body.
God is forming among us an inter-dependent body. We need one another. And in an age where you can church hop, you can shop around and you can choose church based on convenient service times and a preferred music style, you can even sit in front of a computer and live stream a church service on the other side of the world.
It is costly for us to live as the Church that God calls us to be.
It will cost us to love the people of God.
It costs us to give our lives for one another. It will cost us when the service times become inconvenient or when the music isn’t right. We pay lip service to ‘Doing Life Together’ but how is it that we actually realize it?

As it has been in every age, today we are faced with great challenges to living out our lives together.
- For one, we live in an individualist culture where many people are happy to have Jesus and inherit eternal life, but many hesitate when it comes to inheriting the church and inheriting each other’s mess.
- On top of that, we’re busy people aren’t we? In a busy culture. We are tired and already doing so much.
- Further, for many of us just living locally is costly, high house prices, high cost of living and the pressure of a materialistic culture that wants us to continually spend, sign up and subscribe.
There are great challenges for us to live as the people of God.
But just as those who have gone before us, we will make conscious choices to prioritise the people of God, to stay connected with the body and to sit under the leadership, direction and preaching of our pastors, to commit to living with and loving one another.
When we know that we have a mediator in Christ, when we know that we are the church of the firstborn whose names have been written in heaven, when we know that we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, we will boldly bear whatever cost we must, to give our lives for the people that God has saved and gathered together here.
This not only in formal ministries but also in the daily mundane stuff of life. For it is here where we actually live our lives. Here is where we must be willing to open our lives to one another. Because, it is in the everyday stuff of life that sin and selfishness is most obvious, where our true character is on display. It is easy to throw on some nice clothes and gather together each Sunday, it is possible to lead in a ministry each week and yet conceal our sin, hide our fears and our struggles.
It is sometimes tempting to think that in order to live for Jesus we need to do things out there [pointing]. Become a missionary, plant a church, lead from the front or start an activist group. But God is calling us to be the people of God where ever we are. To dig deep into the lives of those around us, to let people into the everyday mess of our lives. For this is where God is working in our hearts to change us and make us his people together. The Church is our everyday community. And that is why point 3 is:


3. The Church is a community of change. 

We’ve been talking a lot in this series about the kingdom. The now and the not yet of the kingdom. God’s kingdom has come. But in what sense is the kingdom ‘now’? How has it come? Well, the now of the kingdom is realised in this.
God is bringing his kingdom by saving people and beginning to transform them through his Word and his Spirit. Let me say that again.
God is bringing his kingdom by saving people and beginning to transform them through his Word and his Spirit.

God is really saving people, he really is changing people, we really are growing, he is making US like HIM. This is the kingdom work that God is doing and he does it in and through the Church.

Think about this with me. How does God change and transform people? Through his word and his Holy Spirit. Get this, who is it that delivers the word to us? Who is it that is preaching and teaching each week? Who is it that sit across from us in our small groups? Who is it that sits across from us in the café, next to us in the car, beside us in the hospital? It’s the people of God.

One of the key ingredients that God uses to change and conform our hearts to him is, the people, of God. We have a responsibility to one another, to speak truth, to call out error and selfish living and to speak the gospel into one another’s lives. This is why The Church is a community of change. 

Finally 
4. The Church is a Missional community
As the church is formed by God, as we gather together to listen to his voice, as we depend on one another and help one another live a life of change the Church becomes a missional community. One of the reasons God is doing all these things in the Church, is so that through the church he might grow his kingdom and spread the name and fame of Jesus both in heaven and on earth. 
What happens when the church lives out this gathering, listening, growing, depending, transforming, changing life? 
People get saved. 
In letter 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter writes to the Church. He says that when God’s people live in the world they become witnesses to the gospel and people get saved. Let’s have a look at it. 
1 Peter 2:12 says:
‘Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.’ 
So it is a priority for us to gather as the people of God each week. But Peter here is also calling us to live life together 'among the pagans'. And Peter’s hope is, as we do that, people will be drawn in and saved. And so as we live out this gospel centred life ‘among unbelievers’ the lost have an opportunity both to hear the gospel and SEE the gospel lived out in action. There is a consistency between what God’s people proclaim and the way they live. 
It must have been a beautiful thing to both hear the apostle Paul preach the gospel and also watch him live it out. That’s why he could say ‘Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.’ There is great power in Paul’s example is that his life becomes a model of the gospel. It is almost as if the gospel is dramatised in front of our eyes.

As we live out our calling as God’s people one of the natural out workings is mission & evangelism. As we live as this distinctive community of inter-dependence and costly self giving love, we are witnesses to the character and nature of God himself. The Church is a Missional community


Conclusion:

The church undermines individualism
The church undermines materialism
The church undermines the selfish lifestyle
The Church truly is the community of the last days...

We are the family of God Father, the body of Christ and the communion of the Holy Spirit. We are Spiritually bound together, in a stronger bond than that of flesh and blood.
May God help us to be the Missional community, the community of change, the everyday community and the gathering community that he calls us to be.... as we await his return.

Let’s pray.