The Anatomy of the Church: The Internal Systems, Part 3
Selected Scriptures
Well, as you know, if you've been with us over the last few weeks, we've been endeavoring to share with you a little series as an interlude in our study of Matthew titled "The Anatomy of a Church," and just pull ourselves back to our own foundation. Very often as a church grows, it sort of grows like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It just starts tilting one way or another; and sometime along the way, we need to sorta drop the plumb line and make sure we're going up straight off of our foundations; and that's really what we've been endeavoring to do in this brief series, is to go back and do a little archeology and dig up our footings and find out what it is that made us distinctive in the beginning, what it is we're really committed to.
I have a great desire that the church should be what Christ wants it to be. That is my great passion. I was being interviewed this week by a gentleman who's the editor of a magazine published by the Navigators, and the title of the magazine is Discipleship. It's a very fine magazine, and he asked me what my real desire for the church was, and I said, "My desire for the church is that the church would be what Christ designed it to be." That is the passion of the hearts of our elders and staff and, I know, of you folks, as well.
And so in order to kinda keep us on track and...and to pick up the things we've forgotten, and to reaffirm the things we've remembered, we're going back through some of the basic elements of the anatomy of a church. What is God's design for the church?
Some years ago, when I taught ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church, at Talbot Seminary, I had the students read a book called God's Forgetful Pilgrims. That book is an interesting little book written by Michael Griffiths from England; and in the book among many helpful things, he said this, and this has kinda stuck in my mind. "Christians, collectively, seem to be suffering from a strange amnesia. A high proportion of people who go to church have forgotten what it's all for. Week by week, they attend services in a special building and go through their particular time-honored routine, but give little thought to the purpose of what they are doing. The Bible talks about the bride of Christ, but the church today seems like a ragged Cinderella, hideous among the ashes...She has forgotten that she's supposed to be growing up to be a beautiful lady."
He's right in many ways. The church as we view it in the broad terms across America, which is supposed to be the bride of Christ, is, in a way, a ragged Cinderella...and we need to reaffirm...the non-negotiables, the essential elements of the church. We need to get back to what God designed us to be, and that's what we're endeavoring to do in this particular brief series. Just touch base with major principles upon which the church must act...
We don't wanna get into the situation of misevaluation. In other words of evaluating the church by the wrong terms, the wrong principles. Gene Getz points out that this is done frequently in his book, The Measure of a Church. He writes these things. "Some say a mature church is an active church. They evaluate progress by the number of meetings held each week and the number of different kinds of programs going on...Some say a mature church is a growing church. As long as new people are coming and staying, they believe they are a maturing church. As long as the pastoral staff is enlarging, they believe all is well. Some say a mature church is a giving church. As long as people are contributing financially to the ongoing program of the church and supporting its many ventures, they believe it is a maturing church. Some say a mature church is a soul-winning church. They say this is proof positive, when people are bringing others, when we can account for regular professions of faith and regular baptisms, then, for sure, we have a New Testament church...Some say a mature church is a missionary-minded church, a church that supports missions around the world designating a large percentage of its overall budget to world evangelism...Some say a mature church is a smooth-running church, a church whose organizational machinery is oiled with every degree of regularity. It is a finely-tuned machine with job descriptions, eight-hour days, coffee breaks, and punch cards. Everybody does what he's hired to do on time and efficiently...
"Still others say a mature church is a Spirit-filled church. This is the church that is enthusiastic and dynamic and has lots of emotion and excitement. Everyone in it knows what his gifts are and uses them regularly...And, finally, some say the ultimate mark of maturity is the big church with thousands coming to Sunday School and church every Sunday. Maturity, to them, is represented by a large paid staff, scores of buses that pick up children, multiple programs or radio/television ministry, a Christian day school, a Christian college, and seminary, and, oh, yes, a printing press to prepare its own literature... Unfortunately...says Getz...some people really believe that what I have stated are actually Biblical marks of maturity."
Well, nothing wrong with those things. Nothing wrong with active, growing, giving, soul-winning, missionary-minded, smooth-running, Spirit-filled, big churches...but you could be all of that and be a cult. You could be all that and be a cult. That isn't the heart of it. That isn't the guts of it. That's why we're backing up from the flesh to talk about the anatomy that's behind the scene. What's in the...the inside...and as I said to you a few weeks ago, so often when pastors come here, they wanna know about that external stuff, but we wanna tell 'em about that internal stuff. That's the real issue. We're talking about, not activities; we're talking, basically, about attitudes. Attitudes. The life systems that flow inside the church. Those are key. Those are key.
Now, at first we talked about the skeleton, didn't we? We talked about how important it is that we have affirmed the non-negotiable foundational shaping form of the church. Those things like a high view of God, the absolutely priority of Scripture...Scripture, doctrinal clarity, personal holiness, and spiritual authority. We said those are non-negotiable, skeletal formation concepts. We have to have those.
And then after setting the skeleton in place, we said the church has to have certain internal systems. That is, like a body has flowing through it the systems that are its life, so the church must have flowing through it certain systems. These are attitudes; and, you see, that's what we're really after. We don't want the church to be mechanical. We don't want to be inect, it to be an external routine, a ritual, a performance, lest we hear from God the same thing the people of Israel heard through Amos the prophet who said, "I hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies, even though you offer up to me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them. I will not even look at the peace offerings of your fatlings. Take away from me the noise of your songs. I will not even listen to the sound of your harps, but let justice roll down like waters in righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."
And Hosea saw the same truth. He said, "What shall I do with you, O Ephraim? What shall I do with you, O Judah? For your loyalty is like a morning cloud and like the dew which goes away early. Therefore, I have hewn them in pieces by the prophets. I have slain them by the words of my mouth, and the judgments on you are like the light that goes forth. For I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice. In the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings."
Or the words of Isaiah, "What are your multiplied sacrifices to me...says the Lord...I've had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle. I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before Me, who requires of you this trampling of my courts? Bring your worthless offerings no longer. Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies, I cannot endure iniquity in the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals, appointed feasts. They have become a burden to Me. I'm weary of bearing them; so when you spread out your hands in prayer, I'll hide my eyes from you; and when you multiply your prayers, I will not listen."
In other words, Israel was guilty of having external religion without proper attitudes; and that's what we're looking at. I really believe that the heart and soul of the ministry is to lay that skeletal foundation, and then spend your time trying to create in people right heart attitudes. That's what makes the church a beautiful lady. That's what builds the church up to the fullness of the stature of Jesus Christ.
Now, we've already looked at several of these internal attitudes. We've talked about obedience, humility, love, unity, service, joy, peace, and thankfulness. I wanna consider three more this morning; and this isn't gonna get us through; but I do wanna look at these three; and I feel very strongly about them. This is No. 9 in my list. I don't know how yours adds up; but this is a...a very essential attitude. Let's call it self-discipline. Self-discipline.
Self-discipline, oh, how important it is that we, as Christians, understand the need to conform to a divine standard, to live the disciplined life. Oh, you know what self-discipline is? It's saying no to sin. It's saying no to sin. Saying yes to good or to righteousness. That's....that's not too complicated a definition; and, yet, it captures the truth. The disciplined life understands the law of God, and says no to anything outside the bounds of that standard.
Now, lemme illustrate this to you. Open your Bible to 1 Corinthians chapter 9; 1 Corinthians chapter 9...verse 24...and Paul picks a metaphor which is very familiar to us in this athletic society in which we live. It is the metaphor of a race, something we all understand. In verse 24, he says, "Know ye not that they who run in a race all run." That in a race, everybody in the race runs. That's pretty clear. "But one receives the prize." Now, in a race, everybody runs for a prize. So run that you may obtain.
Now, you have to run to win the prize. That's the reason you're in the race. So we, as believers, have been called to a race, as it were; and that metaphor is used in several places in Scripture. We're running a race, not only here, but elsewhere in the Word of God, that same imagery is presented to us. And as we run this race, we have in mind that we are running to win. Now, what is necessary to accomplish that goal? Well, verse 25 helps us. "And every man who...and the old English says strives for the mastery...completes in athletics...is temperate in all things."
What does that mean? Self-discipline. Is self-discipline. He's got himself under control; and that is the substance of dedication to victory. I mean, obviously, a guy cannot get in a race to win who's 30 pounds overweight, or who is a victim of atrophying muscles. I mean there is a tremendously obvious discipline involved...
When we think about the hours and hours daily and weekly and monthly and yearly that athletes put in to get to the level of victory, it's staggering. A year from now, we will have already seen the 1984 Olympics in our city; and we will have been exposed by the media to all of the wonders of athletic endeavor. To all of the tremendous self-discipline of those who will go away with gold and silver and bronze medals.
Victory in athletics on a world level demands an incredible price. It is not uncommon for athletes like that to train six to eight hours a day for five to ten years of their life and even more. Tremendous amount of dedication. They literally push themselves past the point of any pain. They know what it is. We talk about second wind. They know what it is to go beyond second wind. They know what it is to go beyond the point of pain; and even will us that there is a euphoria beyond pain that only the athlete can experience; and I've had enough athletics in my background to experience something of that euphoria. You talk about a high, there's a...there's an incredible sense of freedom, a...an incredible sense of energy that comes beyond the point of pain.
It's hard to explain to someone who's never paid that price in an...in an athletic endeavor; but Paul is saying, "Look, I'm in a race," and he's talking about a spiritual race, and he says, "In that race, I know that I wanna win; and in order to win, I've gotta get myself under control...so further he says...I run...verse 26...not uncertainly." In other words, "I really know where I'm going. I stay on course." It's very much like Paul's words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, where he says a man who engages in athletic endeavor knows that if he is to win the crown, he must engage himself, and then he uses the word nominas, according to the rules. He's gotta stay within the law. He's gotta stay within the limits. He's gotta stay on the course. He can't cross the line. He can't go outta the circle. He can't get out of bounds. He can't leave the track.
In other words, whatever the conformity of that event demands, he must stay within it if he's to be victorious; and that's what Paul is saying. "I wanna win, so I give a maximum effort." And the verb used here of striving for the masteries includes self-discipline, self-sacrifice, great effort; and then that comes about by self-discipline and encompasses the idea of staying within the rules. And then in verse 27, it all comes together when he says, "I literally keep under my body, I literally keep it under control. I beat it into submission and bring it into subjection...he says...lest that in preaching to others, which is my race, I, myself, should become disqualified by some sin."
In other words, I don't wanna be sinning and lose out on the spiritual victory anymore than an athlete wants to be sinning against his body and against his training and lose out on a physical victory; and these athletes do put out a tremendous amount of energy, tremendous amount of effort.
I was talking last Monday to the Miami Dolphins, and I went down to do a Bible study with them, and I took them where I wanna take you right now, to Ephesians chapter 6, and they were just about ready to go down to the Coliseum to put on their armor to go out and lose, as it turned out, to the...Raiders...and just the whole process of them, some of their ankles and legs were already taped up, and they were ready to go and do battle, and I took the occasion to share with them the fact that they had spent years of their life and tremendous hours and tremendous energy and tremendous time to come to a peak of athletic performance. And that, in the peak of that athletic performance, they would then go down, and they would put on their armor, and they would go out, and they would do battle, and they would do it to obtain a corruptible crown, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9. They do it to obtain a corruptible crown.
But I suggested to them that there was another far more important warfare than that, a spiritual warfare for an incorruptible crown, for an inheritance eternal, laid away in glory that never fades, that there was a warfare far more important than any football game in all of their life, and there as, for that warfare, an armor far more important than shoulder pads and chest pads and arm pads and helmets and hip pads and all the other stuff that you wear. There was a different armor. A vital armor if they were gonna know victory in the spiritual warfare. And I introduced them to verse 11 of Ephesians 6, "Put on the whole armor of God...that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil."
You've gotta have your armor on. I said to them, "You're no more gonna go out there and fight against the L.A. Raiders in your gym shorts than you oughta go out to fight against the enemy of your souls unprepared."..."For we wrestle...it says in verse 12...not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places." We are in a battle, and the battle isn't really with men. Men are only the pawns and the playthings of the unseen demonic world. The real battle is with demons. I...know that well.
I will never forget the battle with the demon-possessed girl one night Jerry Mitchell and I endured as she kicked and screamed and threw furniture around a room; and I'll never forget walking in the room and hearing her say, "Get him out. Anybody but him. Not him. Don't let him in." And it was coming in a voice other than her own, and I realized the demons knew who I was. That's a frightening thing. When she started saying, you know, "Not him. Not him." My human reaction was fine...I'm gone. Then I began to realize that if they didn't...if they knew me and didn't like me, I must be on the right team; and I stood in the power of God against that situation; and we spent hours of agonizing effort there until God, in His grace, by her confession of sin, stepped in to purge and purify. But from that time on, I've never had a question about where the real battle is. I know where the real battle is. It's a serious battle on a spiritual level that is unseen; and men, as I said, are pawns and playthings in the hands of demons; and we have to understand the seriousness of the warfare wrought, really, against Christ and all who belong to Christ.
So we have to put on the armor, it says, to be able to stand. We have to be ready for this effort. I wanna just point out two elements in verse 14. First, we must "have our loins girded about with truth." The Roman soldier wouldn't have thought of going into battle with his tunic just as gathered material flying around in a hand-to-hand combat for life and death. He would've become very vulnerable. He could've easily been pulled down by it; or it could've gotten in his way and caused his own death; and so he would put on a belt and pull it all tight and gather it all together so that it wouldn't be lose at all, but tightly pulled around him.
And the apostle says, "That is the...the belt or the girdle of truthfulness or sincerity." It's really commitment that he's talking about. He's talking about self-discipline. He's talking about the person going into battle serious about the battle, pulling your act together, getting all the loose ends in. You're not kidding about the thing. I mean you're gonna do what needs to be done, and I really believe in this matter of self-discipline that, we, as Christians, need to get our act together. We need to start saying, "Here is the narrow path, and here is the way God wants us to walk, and here we will walk." And it isn't easy, because all along the path, the voices are calling to us...to divert; and if we love pleasure more than we love God, if we love self-satisfaction more than we love God at any point in time, then we're gone off the track, and we have not exercised self-discipline and entered into sin.
And so you see the Apostle Paul saying, "This is a war, and you better be serious, and you better pull up your...your tunic, cinch it together, in an act of real commitment to victory." And then he goes on to talk about the breastplate of righteousness. A Roman soldier wore a plate over his chest to protect his vital organs; and, obviously, if he didn't have this, he was tremendously vulnerable to an arrow that could fly into his chest, to a knife that could be thrust in fatally. He wanted his armor, and the armor is righteousness or holiness, doing what's right, self-discipline to God's law or we're vulnerable.
We're in a race to win, and we've gotta be disciplined to win, and we've gotta have a life that is lived in obedience to God's will in a matter of purity. That's what Paul is calling us to. He says it another way in 2 Corinthians 7:1. He says, "Having therefore these promises," it's as if he is saying, "God has given you so much, dearly beloved, God has given you so much that you shall be My sons and daughters," says the Lord Almighty, in chapter 6 verse 18. I mean all that is ours in being sons and daughters of God, "Seeing that you have all of these things, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
I mean let's get the belt on, and let's get the breastplate on, and let's run the race to win the thing. Let's keep the rules and stay within the limits. Let's give a full, wholehearted effort. I grieve when I see undisciplined Christians. I grieve when I see Christians who have so much leakage in their life. Oh, there's a line of obedience; but they're always off it. They understand it. They're just not that committed to it.
Paul says it yet another way at the end of Philippians, the last chapter, the 4th chapter and the 8th verse. "Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are honest, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there be any virtue and any praise...what?...set your mind on these things." Listen, folks, your self-discipline is a matter of where you put your mind, where you set your mind, where you set your thinking; because, as a man thinks in his heart, what? So is he; and a pure life and a self-disciplined life is wrought by a life that is saturated by the Word of God.
You see, the reason we teach you and give you the Word is so it's in there; and when you're confronted with temptation, the Spirit of God can draw you back to that Word that's planted there. The reason you are to read the Scripture and meditate on the Scripture is so that that Word may be resident in your heart; and then, as David said, "Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin." And so your thinking must be controlled with the Word of God. "Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly," says Colossians 3.
So that's the source of self-discipline. Then it demands a commitment on your part, and I'm concerned about this. I...I'm concerned that in Christianity, in our time, there is a lack of discipline. God hasn't changed His standard. God hasn't changed the narrow way or the narrow path. It isn't changed at all. God's law hasn't opened up any more than it was when God originally gave it; and the standard of obedience is the same; but Christians tend to have widened it themselves and created an artificial tolerance...and we have listened to the sirens of the world calling us off our course. Tragic...
This...month, earlier in the month, I had occasion to go up to Oregon. I took Chris Mueller, our junior high pastor, with me; and we went up to speak to 3,000 men out in the woods up there. We had a great time. God blessed. Some men came to Christ. Others were encouraged in faith and greater commitment. Wonderful, wonderful three days, and Chris and I talked a lot about things up there. He told me some things that were quite astounding to me...in working with junior high young people that may help us to put a finger on where we really are in our Christian society.
For example, he did a little survey at junior high camp this summer. Took 54 junior high kids and found that nine of the 54 had never seen an R-rated movie; 45 had...He took seventh-grade boys; and out of 35 seventh-grade boys, 25 had seen an R-rated movie. That's 12 years old or so. Twenty-six had been reading to one degree or another pornographic magazines, and 24 out of those 35 go to Christian schools...And he went on to tell me about how many of them have in their home, home cable TV where they watched filth pumped in wholesale on the movie channels and all the rest of the garbage that comes with it.
I was really distressed by that. I was greatly distressed. Lemme tell you something, people...You can't expose a seventh-grade kid to an R-rated movie without it making an absolutely devastating impact on his life or hers. There's no way that a seventh-grade mind can compute that without having negative responses. You can't look at 18-feet high naked people without remembering that imagery; and if you are...if you have your head in the sand so much that you think your junior high kid can handle that, you are wrong. You need help. If you allow your junior high young person to go to an R-rated movie, you're contributing to their sin. You're jamming in their minds things they can't handle. If you allow them to sit at home and watch filth on a cable television station, then don't be shocked later on when they don't have any interest in the things of God...and don't say, "Well, we took him to church all the time."
It's devastating. Lemme tell you another thing. If you go to an R-rated movie, you're contributing to your own sinfulness. You say, "Well, it's art." No, it isn't art. It's garbage, just plain garbage. You say, "Well, it has some social value. I mean it's...it's a comment on our culture." Sure, you think it's not gonna be promoted that way? How else can they attract good, moral people and contribute to the devastation of their thinking? I mean there's no place in the life of a Christian for profanity that comes even out of a PG movie, let alone the nudity that comes out of those filthy things they call R movies. And if you go, you know why you go? You go because you've been so suckered by the world that you're a victim, not only of the thing you see when you sit there, but you're a victim of their advertising technique that got you there to start with...
And I'm cer...I'm strong about this, because I feel so strongly in my heart. That you can't expect to cultivate godly thinking in people who are looking at massive images and incessant images of garbage, or who are funneling through filthy, rotten magazines. You can't do it. I...we can't fight it. And, parent, you need to set an example. You say, "Well, I never let mine go. I take them." God help you if you do that...
You say, "Well, I don't know what he does." That's worse of all. You better know, because that little life is a stewardship from God, and Jesus gave you that little life; and if you're allowing that thing to be pumped up with garbage, you're gonna be an accountable person for that...I mean 45 out of 54 junior high kids have been to an R movie? Shocking...
You say, "Well, I can't help it what my child does." Ohhhhh, you better; and you better never go to one of those things. You better never go to one of those supposedly good ones where there's profanity. All that does is just keep lowering... it just attacks the standard, attacks the standard, attacks the standard, attacks; and the same thing with the music. It just keeps attacking it and attacking it until, finally, our rigid commitment to purity is broken down; and it's all subliminally happening. I won't expose myself to that, because I want to hold God's view of things, not the world's.
And there's a sense in which you gotta isolate yourself. You say, "Well, I mean you're...you don't know what's going on." That's right, and I don't care. I have a good idea what's going on. I've never been to an R-rated movie, and I don't ever intend to go to one, and I'm not interested ever to go to a PG movie or anything else. I mean, for me, it's either Little Bo Peep or forget the whole thing, you know?...I've no interest in exposing my mind to the garbage of the world. Why would I do that? Grieves my heart to think that little kids...I mean that does not...that does not help a child. That does not help an adolescent. That doesn't help a teenage kid trying to deal with all the struggles of life and developing sexual ideas and identity, to expose them to that kinda stuff...
And I'm not talking about some legalism, folks. I'm talking about sin, just plain ugly sin. I mean what...what worse thing could the world do than parade in front of young eyes filth, and they've got...they're at it right now. They're at it every way they can. This is a time, beloved, for disciplined living. This is a time for disciplined living. This is a time to stop being a victim, stop being diverted off course by the sirens that are screaming, "Come over here. Come over here. We'll make you happy. We'll give you pleasure."...No place for it.
And I'll tell you something. If you go to those things, then I don't care how often you're in church, you have not yet given your life fully to the commitment that God calls for. You haven't. At that moment, you've abandoned yourself from the disciplined path of obedience; and if you're rejecting this in your little mind, that shows me or you that you are in the battle, and you're losing. You're losing. And it isn't even a question of how bad it is, because we're supposed to think, not on things that aren't bad, but on things