************ Sermon on Belgic Confession Article 27 ************
Doctrine: The Church
By: Rev. Adrian Dieleman
This sermon was preached on January 10, 1999
B.C. 27
Ephesians 4:1-7
"Greater Than We Think"
Introduction
Topic: Church
Subtopic: Membership
Index: 726-761
Date: 1/1999.101
Title: Regular Attenders but Not Members
In a Christianity Today article (March 11, 1991) Robert W. Patterson writes:
Recently I visited a thriving evangelical church on a Sunday morning when new members were being received into the congregation. During the brief ceremony, church members were asked to stand to welcome the new members. Less than half of the entire congregation stood, prompting me to ask about the status of those who remained seated. Were they visitors? Members of other congregations? No, they were "regular attenders," an innocuous phrase applied to so-called independent Christians who see no value in church membership.
Some congregations take this attitude and turn it into an article of faith. People's Church in Willowdale, Ontario, maintains no official membership list. Any person 12 years of age or older who worships there can consider People's Church his or her spiritual home – no public profession, no baptism, no official reception by the church are needed.
I'm afraid that this reflects what is happening in the North American church scene: a decreasing level of commitment to the church. The doctrine of the church is in trouble today, even in Reformed/Presbyterian circles. I see 4 disturbing trends which indicate an indifference to the church.
First, many Christians are unwilling to commit themselves to any particular congregation. They hop from church to church looking for the best spiritual "deal" in town. Instead of submitting themselves to the authority of one church, they attend a handful of different congregations, circulating among them as their needs and moods change. They have what I would call a "McChristian mentality." On Sunday mornings they attend a church that puts on a good praise and worship service, on Sunday evenings they attend a church with good preaching, and during the week they participate in a church with a vibrant youth and Bible Study program.
Second, many Christians and congregations today neglect the sacraments. There was a time when Reformed Christians would rearrange their vacation and work schedules around the celebration of the Lord's Supper; that rarely happens anymore. There was a time when Reformed Christians baptized their children with undue haste – some did it the Sunday immediately following birth even if the mother could not be present; today we have gone to the other extreme – some wait 3,4,5 or even more months.
Third, many Christians withhold their monies from church causes and agencies and give instead to Christian causes outside of the church.
Fourth, many Christians are satisfied with being Christians alone, without the church. "I worship at home," they say, "or by taking a walk in the park, or in front of the TV set." It is frightening the number of people who think this way.
Why has the place and theology of the church hit upon such hard times? I'm afraid that this is but a reflection of the culture we live in. Our culture is marked by a spirit of increasing individualism and an emphasis on individual rights. The net result is a disdain for all authority and tradition, including religious authority and tradition.
The Belgic Confession of Faith stands in marked contrast to the prevailing mood of our culture. Based upon the Word of God it holds to a rather exalted view of the church. It tells us that the church is greater and more important than we think; therefore, it is worth our time and commitment.
I The Church - A Definition
A We've been talking about the church and people's decreasing commitment towards her. What do we mean when we say "church"? What is the church?
Different people give different answers to this question as the following quotations illustrate:
-"Our church is located at 6400 W. Walnut Ave." According to this, the church is a building.
-"We have church at 9:30 a.m. and 6:30 p.m." Church, here, is the same as worship.
-"We are part of the Christian Reformed Church." Here, the church is identified as a particular denomination.
B Based upon Scripture, the Belgic Confession reminds us that the church is not a building, she is not worship, she is not a denomination. Instead, she is
a holy congregation and gathering
of true Christian believers,
awaiting their entire salvation in Jesus Christ
being washed by his blood,
and sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit.
The church is a body of believers. Wherever believers gather together as believers, there is the church.
The church is a body of believers. This means the church is before me in the pews this evening. This means the church meets for choir practice on Wednesday evenings. This means the church gathers for Bible Study many Tuesday and Wednesday nights. This also means the church is in Catechism class Sunday mornings and evenings and in Church School classes after our morning worship. This reminds me of something: more than once I have heard people say, in talking about our children and young people, "They are the future of the church." I cringe and flinch when I hear that. Our children and young people are not the future of the church; they, as much as their parents, are the present of the church – future leaders, maybe – but they, no less than the adults, are part of that holy congregation and gathering awaiting their entire salvation in Jesus Christ. And to say otherwise, is to deny them a place in the Kingdom.
C The church is more than just a body of believers, young and old. She is a body of believers called or chosen by God. The Greek word for church is "ekklesia." Literally, this word means "the called ones." The church is not a voluntary association of like-minded people. She is not like the Lions or Kiwanis or Rotary Clubs – clubs that you decide to join. No, not at all. You don't wake up one morning and decide to join the church. You are picked and chosen for the church. It is God Who has chosen the church in Christ. He has cleansed her with the Savior's blood and dwells in her by His Holy Spirit. It is God Who builds up and adds to the church.
Hence it follows that the church is God's church. She is His workmanship, His creation. It is improper to speak of "my church," or "our church," or "Vink's church." The only proper way to talk here is of "God's church." Scripture points us in this direction when it repeatedly calls the church "the body of Christ" and "the temple of the Holy Spirit."
This teaching is of tremendous importance in the life of the church. Since the church belongs to God all things in her life must be done and must be seen in relation to God. Because she is God's, the church operates not for her own glory or for her pastor's glory but for God's glory. The church is God's possession so she must live and work for the Lord.
God calls the church, God gathers the church, God forms the church. This says something about God's will for all believers – God's will is that no believer attempt to believe alone; instead, God's will is that believers be part of a group.
God calls the church, God gathers the church, God forms the church. This says something not only about God's will for all believers but also about God's mission for the church. The church's God-given job, her God-given calling, is to gather together all believers. This not only means missions, evangelism, and outreach but it also means a sincere effort at reclaiming the solitary Christian. Over and over again we must aggressively affirm the necessary connection between faith in Christ and commitment to His church. One cannot exist without the other, as demonstrated repeatedly in the book of Acts. There we see that no one was counted as a Christian until he or she was baptized and received into the community of God's people (Acts 1:5, 1:22, 2:38, 2:41, 8:12, 8:13, 8:16, 8:36, 8:38, 9:18, 10:37, 10:47, 10:48, 11:16, 13:24, 16:15, 16:33, 18:8, 18:25, 19:3, 19:4, 19:5, 22:16). God's will is that solitary or independent Christians need to be incorporated into the life and discipline of the church. And, those who are church members need to be committed to their church, taking seriously their accountability to the congregation and resisting the temptation to "jump ship" when problems develop.
D The church is also more than a body of young and old believers called by God. She is a body of true believers called by God and expecting to be saved. The church is found only where true believers are to be found. In other words, the church is found where faith is found – a faith that believes in Jesus and expects to be saved. In those places where the church has sank to the level of being a social club, the church is no longer to be found. When the church is just a world affairs or liberation theology group she also ceases to be church. The church is church only when people still believe and have a true faith. The church is not church when people no longer believe the essentials of the faith: that God is triune, that Jesus is true God and true man, that God is the Maker of heaven and earth, that Jesus arose from the grave, that salvation is only by grace through faith, that the Bible alone is our infallible guide for faith and practice. Those are the essentials of the faith that must be believed in by the true church.
E What is the church? She is a congregation of true Christian believers, young and old, called by God and awaiting their entire salvation in Christ. From a purely human perspective she may not look like much. But we know and believe she is greater than man thinks; we know and believe that she is worth our time and commitment.
II The Church - Her Attributes
A Article 27 gives us not only a capsule definition of the church but also her attributes, her characteristics. First, is the affirmation that there is only one church:
We believe and confess
one single catholic or universal church ...
Yet, much of church history, sad to say, makes a mockery of this confession. Right now there are over 2000 different denominations in the world and there are over 200 different Reformed denominations. Consider our denomination's sad history of disunity. The roots of the Christian Reformed Church go back to the Afscheiding or Secession of 1834 and the Doleantie or Separation of 1886 when our forefathers broke away from the Hervormde Kerk. In 1857 we broke away again, this time from the Reformed Church of America. In the 1920s the Protestant Reformed Church broke away from us. In the last number of years others have broken away from us and started the Orthodox Christian Reformed Church and United Reformed Church. Since the time of the Reformation and before, our history has been and is one of schism, disunity, and disharmony.
As we look at the church with human eyes, we see a badly splintered, divided, broken church. But we can also look at the church from God's perspective. From this perspective we see there is more to the church than what our eyes show us. From this perspective we see that the church is one. I think here of what Paul writes in our Scripture reading:
(Eph 4:4-6) There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to one hope when you were called-- (5) one Lord, one faith, one baptism; (6) one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
Why is there this great difference between what God sees and what we see? With our human eyes we look at the visible church. That, after all, is the only one we can see. This visible church is badly divided. But God looks at the invisible church – the church He calls and saves – and this church is one:
... joined and united
in heart and will,
in one and the same Spirit,
by the power of faith.
B The second attribute or characteristic of the church is her holiness. Says the Confession:
We believe and confess
one single catholic or universal church--
a holy congregation and gathering ...
Again, there is a tension between what the world sees and what God sees. The world sees the sin that exists in the church. The world sees and laughs at ministers – like Jimmy Swaggert and Jimmy Bakker – who get caught in sin like adultery and theft. "What a bunch of hypocrites," it says.
God looks at the church after she has been cleansed by the blood of Christ. He sees sinners, forgiven sinners, "washed by (the) blood, sanctified and sealed by the Spirit." He sees a people called out of the world, set apart from the world, and indwelt by the Spirit of holiness. Again, we see the visible church whereas God sees the invisible church.
C The third attribute or characteristic of the church is her catholicity, the fact that she is world-wide:
And so this holy church
is not confined,
bound,
or limited to a certain place or certain persons.
But it is spread and dispersed
throughout the entire world.
Again, the eyes of man sees so little. Like Elijah, we look for the church, we can't see it, and we assume – quite wrongly – that she has been snuffed out. Remember the cry of Elijah? "I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too" (1 Kings 19:10,14). But God had to remind him that 7,000 in Israel did not bow to Baal and still worshiped the Lord. The same thing happened in China. When missionaries were forced to leave after the communists took over it was thought the Chinese Church would be quickly snuffed out. Instead, it grew by leaps and bounds and today numbers well over 60 million souls. The same thing happened in the former U.S.S.R. and we can only pray the same thing will also happen in Muslim lands.
God looks for the invisible church, for true Christian believers wherever they may be. He sees it in places where we think it is dead.
Conclusion
The church, dear people, is greater than we think. With the eyes of man we see a church that is badly splintered, filled with sin and hypocrites, sometimes at the point of being snuffed out. But God sees "one single, holy, catholic or universal church" that prevails against and even flourishes through the attacks of the powers of darkness.