The Anatomy of the Church: The Internal Systems, Part 1

Selected Scriptures

     Last Lord's Day I...began to talk to you from out of my heart along the subject that I called "The Anatomy of a Church."  I shared with you at that time that I feel that Grace Community Church stands at a very crucial point in its history...God has done great things.  I think there are yet greater things ahead.  I've never in my lifetime been more committed to this church and this ministry and what God would have from me here.  I'm excited about the future; and yet I know that there is an enemy...who would wanna thwart that; and I know that we have a spiritual battle on our hands that is gonna rage hotter than ever in days ahead; and so I just felt the need to sort of depart from the continued series in Matthew and kinda let you into my heart a little bit and share with you where I think our church really is, and what we need to reaffirm...

     And I'm so thankful for the response from last Sunday.  I received a lot of cards and some letters and phone calls and encouraging responses from people in person who said, "I wanna reaffirm my commitment to the Lord, to this church, to uphold your ministry."  And that means so much.  I'm always grateful that you people respond to God's Word and to the heart of the pastor or the shepherd who brings it to you. 

     I wanna continue what we started last time, and...and I guess we could say that this is sort of a brief...bit of spiritual archeology...Some of you have come here, and you don't see the foundation.  You weren't here in the years of building.  You don't really understand what's underneath everything, and so what I'm trying to do is dig up a little bit of foundation for you and let you see the basics of what this ministry is really committed to. 

     And in order to help us see that foundation, to kinda dig down and find out what's really at the bottom of Grace Church, I...I...I wanted to borrow Paul's wonderful analogy of the body; and we're talking about the anatomy of the church; and I suggested that there are four features of the body that we wanna look at:  the skeleton, the internal systems, the muscles, and the flesh.  That's a rather simplified perspective, but it'll serve us well, I think.

     We said last time that the church must have a skeleton.  That gives it form.  That gives it a framework.  That allows it to stand.  That is the non-negotiable, substantial, basic foundation upon which everything else hangs and through which everything else moves.  And we said that our non-negotianal...non-negotiable foundational principles are these five:  a high view of God, the absolute authority of Scripture, doctrinal clarity, personal holiness, and an understanding of spiritual authority.  Those are key things.  We must continue to lift up God, to exalt His blessed holy name.  We must continue to...to prioritize the Word of God, to make it everything, to study it, to preach it, to teach it.  We must also be committed to draw from it doctrine that is clear, precise, and applicable to life.  We must also pursue with all of our strength in the Holy Spirit holiness, virtue, godliness, righteousness; and we must understand spiritual authority. 

     There is a great responsibility in being a spiritual leader and being one who follows those who lead.  And so if, from time to time, you hear me speak about God and Scripture and doctrine and holiness and authority, you'll understand that I have to keep putting in the...the...the structure, the skeleton, the framework; and so these are themes to which you return again and again and again.  And sometimes, if it sounds like the same sermon, it may be; but most of the time, it may not be.  If it is once in a while, I always try to yell in different places, so it looks different on the surface. 

     But it's just that there are these things that have to be reaffirmed, so that, as we saw last time where Peter said, "I want you to remember those things so that, after I am gone, you will still remember them.  You will still remember them."  It's the same thing Paul had in his heart when he wrote to the Philippians and said, "I'm glad for what I see when I'm with you, but I'm even more glad for what I see when I'm absent from you, that you're working out your salvation with fear and trembling."

     I don't know how long the Lord'll give me or how long I'll be in this place, but...but the greatest satisfaction I could ever have would be to be gone, if that is in God's purpose, and to look back, if that is possible from wherever I might be; and I don't know if I can look back from heaven; and to say, "They're going on, and they are still committed to the things that they were committed to in my presence."

     In order to help us to reaffirm those foundational things, we've been re-sort of structuring ourselves.  Now, I believe that it's essential in the life of the church that these non-negotiables be emphasized, which is to say that they will be a part of the preaching ministry again and again and again and again.  Secondly, they must be a part of the teaching ministry.  If you teach a...a fellowship group or a flock or a Bible study or a children's class or a young peoples' Bible class or whatever, wherever you are, if you're discipling somebody, these are the things you have to go back to to continue to put the skeleton in to have the foundation, to have the form that is necessary for the body to be what Christ would have it to be.

     And so we must preach it and teach it, and then also example is key.  We must model it.  There must be a demonstration of commitment to these things, not only in what we say, but in the life we live.  I have to be just as committed to personal holiness, doctrinal clarity, this...the authority of Scripture and so forth in my living as I am in my preaching, or it'll all get lost; and so we're committed to these things.

     Now, that leads me to a second category, the internal systems; and I wanna talk about them this morning and next week; and we'll see if I can finish even in two weeks; but I wanna talk about the internal systems.  I believe that the church must have flowing through it certain spiritual attitudes.  A physical body has organs and fluids that flow through and cause that body to be able to be alive and function; and so we are not only a skeleton.  A skeleton is not alive.  It gives form, but it isn't life.  There has to be flowing through of certain spiritual attitudes; and that is what I see as the internal systems of the church. 

     The...the pastoral endeavor, the...the goal of the elders, the goal of leaders in the church is to generate in the hearts of people certain spiritual attitudes.  We're not just trying to get you to do certain things.  We're not just gonna hit you with you need to do this and do that and do this, and so; but rather to generate the proper kind of spiritual attitudes which, themselves, will motivate proper kind of behavior.  You see, you can do the right thing outwardly and have a bad attitude; but if you have a good attitude, you'll do the right thing outwardly coming out of a good attitude; and so we work on the fruit of the Spirit, if you will.  The internal motivation, the internal attitude. 

     Sometimes young men go into a pastorate, and they come to a church, and they see that the church maybe isn't organized the right way, and maybe they don't see all the things they would like to see going on, so their temptation invariably is to reorganize the church.  And sometimes they'll call or talk to me and say, "Boy, we wanna...we wanna get elders, and we wanna reorganize this and reorganize that," and I often say to them, "You know what you're gonna have when you reorganize the church?  You're gonna have the same people with the same attitudes in a different structure.  That's all, and the problem's gonna be they're not gonna know why you're changing the structure; and it might be very difficult to change."

     I remember when I first came to Grace, I had a whole new idea for how to run the Sunday School.  This is about the first month I'm here, I get this brainstorm; and I wrote the whole thing out and presented it to the Education Committee; and they unanimously turned it down...They said, "Who are you, kid?  We've been here a long time.  Where did you come from?  Prove yourself."  In effect.  Years later, they came up with that same system...It was just a question of developing the spiritual attitudes that brought about the right kind of responses.

     On the other hand, you can not worry about the structure of the church; and if you build in the right spiritual attitude, structure has a way of taking care of itself...because Spirit-controlled people are gonna do Spirit-led things; and they're gonna find themselves moving toward conformity to the Biblical pattern of the church.

     So we have to have an emphasis in the church on attitudes.  We have to work on what's going on inside of you.  We're not interested in just getting you to behave in a certain way.  Make sure you give your money.  Make sure you show up Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night.  Make sure you pray five hours a week or whatever.  Make sure you read your Bible every day.  Devoted in a dutiful way.  That isn't the idea.  Now, those are not the approach.  We're not approaching things on a legalistic or superficial basis; but the effort of the ministry's always been to generate attitudes; and sometimes you fight a battle; because there are some people who don't come along with right attitudes; and you wanna say to them, "Do it anyway, even with your bad attitude."

     But you have to back off of that, because you don't wanna play into the hands of the satisfaction that comes from legalism; and so we work on attitudes; and over the years, these are the attitudes that I have been concerned to see in the hearts and lives of my own...my own personal life, as well as all of the people here.

     First of all, and foremost, is obedience.  An attitude of obedience.  Now, this is the overarching attitude of all attitudes.  This says, "If God says something, I do it."  This is that no compromising spirit that we were talking about when we looked into the Book of Daniel a little bit a few months ago in our communion service.  This is no compromise.  I mean if God says it, that's it.  It is not debatable.  It isn't something you argue about.  You do it.  Obedience.  That is the overarching attitude; and so week after week, month after month, year after year we have just kept pounding the Word of God into the minds and hearts of all of us with the implication, "This is what God says, and you must respond.  You must do it...for the glory of God and for your own blessedness and the salvation of souls and the example to other Christians."

     For all those reasons, we obey, because it's right and it glorifies God, because it puts us in the place of blessing, because it allows us to be in filled with the Spirit so that we can reach others and set an example for those who watch us to see how we live.  Obedience.  You say, "Well, it seems pretty obvious."  Sure it does, because you were saved by affirming the Lordship of Jesus Christ, right?  And that simply is saying, "You're in charge," right?  I'm gonna follow.  You're Lord, I'm servant."

     "Why do you call Me Master and do not the things I say," Jesus says.  "I mean that doesn't make any sense.  Don't call Me Lord and then don't obey Me.  So if I am Lord, then that means you do what I say, right?"  Right, that's obvious.  That's what He meant in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 7 when He said, "It's a narrow road and a narrow gate and a narrow way."  The...the way is narrow, because it's confined by the will of God and the law of God and the Word of God.  And so we came in affirming Jesus as Lord, Romans 10:9 and 10.  We came in submitting ourselves to His Lordship; and, basically, that is to a life of obedience; and so that's the first and foremost attitude.

     Phil Johnson was eager to share with me this week down at the radio ministry a tape that he'd received from one of our listeners who wrote and said that - or, no, he sent a - I guess he sent a letter along with the tape; but he - his tape was basically communicating his heart's desire.  For ten minutes he'd talk about how he listened to the program and appreciated the study of the Bible and whatever, whatever.  And then he went into his problem.  He had a lotta sins in his life the Lord was working with; but one thing in particular he was curious about and wondered what our view was; and that was this:  that he didn't feel he ever in his life had a normal feeling toward women.  He didn't seem to feel as men should feel toward women, but he did feel very strongly toward farm animals.  That's right, farm animals...and he wondered what we thought about that...and he said that he thought that the...that was not a problem.  He didn't feel any guilt when he was doing things like that, and he thought the Lord was sort of refining him in other areas, and that area was not a problem. 

     So a letter was sent back to him, four pages long, expressing to him that it indeed was a problem.  In fact, if he we living in the Old Testament, he would've been dead, because if a man lies with a beast, he's killed; and went on to express, in kind terms, that God doesn't compartmentalize life and say, "These sins I'm gonna deal with.  These I'm not too worried about."  All sin is an affront to His holy name; and so all kinds of Scripture was sent back to the guy; and then we received another tape; and Phil played this tape for me; and here's a quote right off the tape.

     "I don't think anybody understands.  Christians are so tangled up in the Bible and so tangled up in the Word and so tangled up in what God says, that they don't really understand how God works sometimes or how God feels."  It's unbelievable.  "Christians are so tangled up in the Word, in the Bible and what God says, they don't know how God feels."  How else you gonna know how God feels - you don't read the Bible?  What the guy is saying is, "Look, don't lay any Bible trip on me.  I don't feel any guilt, and I'm not gonna get hung up on what God says."

     My questions about that fella is is he a Christian.  I don't care if he goes to church all the time.  Says in 1 John 2, "That the one who keeps My commandments, verily in him is the love of God perfected.  By this, we know that we know Him."  Right?  If we keep His commandments...I mean if you can cultivate that kind of abomination in your life and say it doesn't bother you at all, and then just say, well, you don't wanna get all tangled up with Bible stuff, independent of the Bible, you know how God feels, you got a problem; but sin is that kind of thing.  You see, it becomes very self-justifying.

     Obviously, that's an extreme illustration; but it simply points up the fact that God has called us to obedience to His Word.  We know how He feels, because He gives us how He feels in His Word, right?  And that's the issue; and the great objective and the great goal of the ministry, listen, this is so clear in Scripture, is to build an obedient people.  That's what God intends to do with His people in the Old Testament.  That's what He intends to do in the New, is to produce an obedient people.  God speaks.  We obey...

     But, sad to say, very often, when confronted with divine truth that convicts us of something in our life that isn't right, instead of obeying, we just sorta shove it out; and we go in our pattern of disobedience.  Maybe...maybe there's a message on forgiveness, and you haven't forgiven somebody.  Well, instead of taking care of that, you just push that message out of your conscious mind, go on with your bitter, unforgiving spirit, and so nothing really happens; and that is disobedience; and that is diametrically opposed to all that God wants to accomplish in your life...

     You say, "Well, I go to church.  I do my part."  Well, remember 1 Samuel 15:22 where God said, "To obey is better than...what?...sacrifice."  Ritual will never replace obedience; and in 1 Peter chapter 1, Peter writes that, "We are to gird up the loins of our mind."  In other words, get our act together.  Pull yourself together.  Get your priorities right as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance.  Don't live like you used to live.  You are to be obedient children.

     Luke 11:28, Jesus said, "Happy is the person who hears My Word and keeps it...who hears My Word and keeps it."  Paul commends Christians in Romans 16:19, "For your obedience has come abroad unto all men, and I am glad."  That makes the heart of the pastor glad when the...the obedience of his people is made manifest...

     Now, you know some things if you come here, because you're being taught them; but if you don't apply those things in an obedient way, you don't mature...I turned on the radio this week, and I was driving someplace, and on came Howard Hendricks, and he said some things I thought that were very interesting.  He said that Christians over 50 should be the most turned on, the most excited, the most committed, the purest, the most enthusiastic, and the most available for service.  Why?  Because they've been hearing the Word the longest.  They've been applying it the longest.  They've been maturing the longest, and they oughta be showing the fruit of that process, right?  I mean the most turned on, enthusiastic, excited, available, dynamic, and powerful people in a church, the very energy of that church oughta be the people who are over 50, over 55, over 60.  They oughta be the like, the joy, the thrill, the energy, the dynamic of that church.  They oughta be the people out on the cutting edge in evangelism.  They oughta be the people out on the cutting edge in prayer.  Why?  Because they've lived with God the longest.  They've applied the Word, so their obedience pattern has gone on longer.  Therefore, they're mature more so than those with fewer years, because of constantly applied truth.

     But how often have you heard this?  And I agree with Howie exactly.  How often have you heard this?  "Well, the wonderful thing about our church is that it's...it's...it's got so many young people, you know.  They're the energy and the dynamic of the church."  Now, I like young people.  I'm one...I am, and I... I agree with that.  I mean there...there's a certain dynamic about young people.  I've always said I like to speak to young people, because, at least if they're not interested, they have the courtesy to talk so you know right away they're not interested...

     And there's a...there is a dynamic with young people.  But, listen, that's a sad commentary on a church.  When you look at a church, and I hear young pastors say this all the time, "Well, it's full of old people."  I hear that.  "Well, it's a...it's a nice church and a nice area, but it's just fulla old people."  That oughta be the dynamic of the church, but you know what the truth is?  That if you're a Christian, and you continually fail to apply what you know, you'll just be one of the old people; and by constant non-application of divine truth, you're gonna get over 50 or whatever, and you're just gonna fold up your tent and steal away into the night.  You're gonna wanna retire spiritually.  "Well, I've served for a lotta years.  I don't know.  I don't wanna get in DE.  Oh, I'm...I'm older.  Let the young people do that ________."  You know? 

     When we look at the Old Testament, we see the leaders in Israel with the hoary heads, the white haired men and women who were godly.  We look at the early church and the dynamism and dynamic of those mature saints, and we look at the contemporary church, and it has to find its life in young kids.  I like kids, but I'm...I'm not interested in a teeny-bopper church.  I think there's more to the church than that.  We need the life and energy that the kids have, but we need the power that the mature believers have, who have lived lives long of applying the truth.  But if you can hear the truth and walk out and carry on the same pattern of living without ever a conscious effort in the power of the Spirit to apply that truth, what happens is you just get old.  That's all.  You don't get more powerful.  You don't become more dynamic.

     I mean it oughta be that you almost go to heaven by just taking off, you know?  It's almost a blast off experience, because you got...there's so much energy rolling by the time you get near that point in life...I wish that were true; but I see so many people who go to church and, as they grow older, because they don't really apply the things they hear.  They hear them.  They get doctrinally egg-headed.  They learn a lotta stuff.  It's never been applied, so their life hasn't changed.  They've hardened into kind of a spiritual coldness, full of facts, and without power.  I don't want that to happen in my life.  I mean I just wanna keep firing out.  If it means I have to keep picking up my false teeth off the pulpit...until I finally, you know, maybe one of those days, I'll get so carried away, I'll leave... but I'm not about to...to look back on my life and say all the power and all the energy and all the dynamic was gone by the time I was 45 or 50...

     I'm not looking to retire from the service of Christ; and I really feel that what happens when people sort of fade away is that they...they've been able to hear the Word of God without its application.  Now, in some cases, they haven't really been able to hear it.  They haven't been fed.  They haven't been taught, but not in this case...and so we must be committed to obedience.

     Oh, how very basic this is.  Obedience to God's Word.  If there's a truth, and you hear it, consciously in the power of the Spirit, start applying it.  When you're confronted with conviction, don't pass it off to somebody else.  Don't go away saying, "Boy, I wish so and so woulda heard that sermon."...You apply it.  You apply it, because you're under the Lordship of Christ; and as you obey, you progress along the path of maturity to a greater usefulness to God.  I would love to see this church filled with people of all ages, but the strength and power coming from those who had learned the most and applied the most in an act of response of obedience...

     Lemme give you a second attitude.  Humility.  Humility.  That's another thing that we desire greatly to generate in the hearts of people.  This has always been a concern of me.  I mean I...pride is a problem for me.  It's a problem for you, I know.  Pride was a major problem for me.  I think still is, but used to be maybe more manifest than now.  And I always thought once I understood the things of God, that God should make me humble.  It's very elusive, though, because just when I say to myself, "You're finally humble," it's gone...So it's very difficult to nail it down.  Very elusive, but I have always sought to...to wanna lead the people in an understanding of humility.

     I remember when we built the gymnasium, and it was an auditorium that they put a platform on it, and somebody ordered...five big chairs with big arms and crown things sticking up like this.  Spires off these chairs, and they...that was for me to sit in the one in the middle.  The...the...the one in the middle was mine...They didn't really care who sat in the other ones, but I got the middle one...And I...I tried to sit in that...that crown chair a couple a weeks, and I just felt miserable...I couldn't do that, and so I went down and sat down in the front row, because I...it wasn't that that's an act of humility.  It's just that sitting up on the podium with a crown on your head does say something that I really didn't wanna say...

     So that's the way it was, and it just put me in a perspective to worship like all the rest of you folks.  Only difference between me and you is the fact that God's called me to do this and gives to me to do that and that's all.  Has nothing to do with my spirituality...And then when Clayton came, he said, "How come you sit down there?"  I said, "I don't know.  I just feel comfortable down here."  "No, I think you should sit on the platform."  So I said, "We don't have any chairs."  So he looked around and found some chairs, and the first Sunday he was here, we all had chairs up here; and afterwards he says, "That was no good, was it?"  I said, "No...I told ya."...

     So he says to me, "You can go back down there."...Well, that's a small thing; but there's an underlying attitude that... that I believe the Spirit of the Scripture conveys to us, and that's one of...of humility that we seek.  It isn't that we have found it.  It's that we pursue it in the strength of God.  When you became a Christian, you weren't on the...under any illusion, I hope, that the Lord was really in need of you.  Were you?  I hear that.  "You know, if the Lord could just save this guy.  He's got money.  He's got talent.  I mean he's a great leader.  Wow!  If the Lord could just get him."  That's ridiculous.  The Lord can get anybody He wants, but that isn't the issue.

     You see, basically, you got nothing to offer.  I don't care who you are.  Neither do I.  Like the man in the 18th chapter who, when confronted with his $10,000.00 debt...couldn't pay, because, it says, "He had nothing with which to pay."  Nothing.  Nothing.  Nothing to offer.  Or like Matthew chapter 5, "When we come to enter the Kingdom...it says...we come begging in spirit.  We come as beggars so destitute we can't even work to earn a living.  We have to beg.  We have nothing."  We have not only nothing in our hand, we don't have any talent to earn it, so we only can beg; and that's the way we came in.  Bankrupt, and you wanna know something?  If we have anything now, it isn't ours.  It's what God what?  Gave us. 

     The only thing I have to offe