The Calling of the Church

Ephesians 1:4-14

     As we began our service this morning, I read to you from the first chapter of Ephesians.  I would like to invite you, if you will, to open your Bible to that chapter as we share some of the great truths out of that portion of Scripture, as we think on this, the 25th anniversary of our church.  Ephesians chapter 1.  Grace Community Church is unique.  It has been the subject of much discussion throughout the years among people, pastors, leaders, laymen, and even the outside world.  Magazines have written articles about us.  Several doctoral students have written their theses on our church.  Reports, seminars, newspapers, journals, tapes, books, all of these have undertaken to analyze Grace Community Church.  We have been dissected, examined, studied, labeled, categorized, scrutinized, copied, blessed, cursed, defended, ignored, endowed, publicized, and even sued...

     Now what has caused all this attention?  Why is it that Grace Community Church has so much of the focus?  Grace Community Church has become a haven, a home, a harbor for those in need,; a family for the needy, the lonely; a school for the untaught; a fortress for the fearful; an open door for those who are shut out; offering love for the unloved; peace for those in chaos; acceptance for the rejected; forgiveness for the guilty; hope for the hopeless; bringing light to darkness; giving life for death...

     I remember when I first came here in February of 1969, several of the young people had a T‑shirt on; and on that T‑shirt it said, "Grace is where it's at."...People through the years have been trying to figure out what it is that's at Grace.  Why is this place so special?  Why is it so unique?  Why is it the object of so much interest, and the channel of so much power?...

     Well, I think the key to understanding Grace Community Church and it's amazing 25-year history is not to analyze its pastors nor its staff, programs, methods, its leaders, its elders, its congregation, its growth; its size; its location.  Though all of those are essential to what it is, they are not really the key.  The real key, and I think it can be simply reduced, is to understand what Grace is by its very name.  I think it's all revealed there...and I don't believe it's in the word Grace, although that's a wonderful word.  There is also a Grace Petroleum Company, and a Grace Shipping Company, and a Grace Investment Company, and would you believe, a Grace Fertilizer Manufacturing Company...

     I'm quite confident it is not in the title Community, because there are a myriad of community agencies...The key to our identity is in that last word - church.  That's it.  That sums up everything we are.  We are not Grace Community Club.  We are not Grace Community Company.  We are not Grace Community Recreation Center.  We are not Grace Community Childcare Agency.  We are not Grace Community Self-Help Association.  We are not Grace Community Divinity School.  We are not Grace Community Convention Center, Grace Community Theater, nor are we Grace Community Psychological and Religious Maladjustment Center...

     We are Grace Community Church, and that's the key.  That's why the world has such a difficult time understanding us, because they don't understand what a church is.  That term sets us apart from all other human institutions; and if you really understand the word church, you understand 25 years of history at this particular place.  We are the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, purchased with His own blood.  No other institution in the world is in any way like the church...and if we can understand what it means to be a church, then we can understand what we are, what we have been, and what we will continue to be...

     Now, when I say the word church, just the term itself doesn't give you all you need to know about what it means.  In fact, the word church has sort of lost its profound richness.  When we say the word church, we usually think of bricks and mortar and...and a building on a corner or in a street somewhere.  Or maybe we think of church as an...as a hierarchy of orders, an institution of some kind.  We've really lost the...the richness of the word church.  We should feel too bad.  Most languages somehow lose the meaning of that by which they designate the body of Christ.  I read this week, that in Japanese, Korean, and Chinese, there is the same root for the word church in all three languages; and it means a teaching society where people gather in a classroom to be lectured by a professional religious teacher.

     Well, a church cannot really be defined as some building in the middle of a block or on a corner, nor can it be defined as a teaching association where there are lectures given by a religious teacher.  So the terms themselves don't really help us.  We've gotta go behind them.  So let's go back.  In the New Testament, we find the word church used repeatedly.  It basically is a translation of a Greek word eklayseah.  I wish, in a way, that the English translators had just transliterated and given us the word eklayseah, so we'd have had a unique word for ourselves; but it comes from a verb root kahleo, which means to call, to call; and there is a very good word for what we are.  We are the called.  In fact, I think we are wonderfully defined in the end of Romans 8:28.  We "are the called according to His purpose."  The church can best be understood as the called ones.  That's what we are.  We are the assembly of the called.  We are Grace Community Called Ones.  We are a group summoned together by God, for His purpose.  We are not a human organization.  We are not the result of man's ingenuity or man's power.  We were not built by good, religious people.  We are called by God into existence.  We are the congregation called together by God.  That is our definition.  That is our identity...

     The church, then, beloved, is not the subject of the sentence.  The church is the object of the sentence.  We are the called, and God is the caller.  When people ask me, and they ask me all the time, how did we build Grace Church; I give 'em the same answer.  We didn't.  God did, and that doesn't seem to help them.  They wanna know, "What did you do?  How can I take what you've got and make it into what it is that you're seeing in terms of results in my own location?  How can I reproduce what you've got?  How can I do this?"  But the problem is we are what we are because God called us into being, not because we made ourselves into what we are.  We are the called. 

     This is emphasized throughout the New Testament.  If you are to look, for example, at Romans chapter 1 for just a moment...you would find there in verse 6, Paul writing the church at Rome says, "Among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ."  That is the best definition of a church, the called of Jesus Christ.  "To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints."  First Corinthians, you hear the same thing to the Corinthian church, verse 2 of 1 Corinthians 1.  "Unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints...then listen to this...with all that in every place shall call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." 

     In other words, anybody in anyplace who calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus...is a called one.  Called saints.  We have been called together.  In 1 Corinthians 1:26, "You see your calling, brethren," and then he goes on to describe the nature of the makeup of the church.  "God has called you into existence."  You find in Ephesians chapter 4 verse 1, "Walk worthy of the vocation to which you are called."  Verse 4, "You are called in one hope of your calling."  You find, similarly, in 1 Thessalonians 2:12, "Walk worthy of God, who has called you unto His Kingdom."  Second Timothy 1:9, "God saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose."  And it goes on like that. 

     In fact, that term appears in Scripture either in Old Testament form or New Testament form over 700 times.  The church is best identified as the called.  The called according to His purpose.  Peter picks up the same thing in 1 Peter chapter 5 and verse 10, and basically says identically what Paul said.  "The God of all grace who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus."  We are called of God.  That is the reason we are what we are, and that explains us, basically. 

     Now, if there's anything I believe about this church, if there's anything at all, the bottom line of everything, I believe this church is called into existence by God Himself; and I believe what we are, we are because God has so ordained us to be that.  It is not due to the expression of the religious genius of man or the charisma of some leaders or the power of persuasive speech or the affluence of our membership or the effectiveness of our facility or the wisdom of our committees or our programs or the result of hard work or brilliance.  It is the work of God...

     This church has never been led by men.  It has only been served by men.  It has always been led by God through the lordship of Jesus Christ mediated by the Holy Spirit through the Word in the lives of obedient people.  It is Christ's church, and I confess to you...and I like the name Grace Community Church very much; but if I had a choice for the name of a church, I would name a church Christ's Church, so that nobody would have any question to whom it belonged.  It is His church.  He builds it.  He leads it.  He is the caller.  We are the called.

     Now that fact, beloved, explains all our goodness and all our success and all our power and all our blessing and all our spiritual richness.  That explains all of that.  On the other hand, may I hasten to add, the weakness and the failures of our church are explained by the fact that God has chosen to work through human agencies...When we succeed, it is Him, not us.  When we fail, it is us, not Him.  Wherever God moves, the flowers bloom.  Wherever we walk along, they die...and that is why it is so very difficult to analyze us.  One seminary used to bring its students here to analyze us, and they stopped doing that, because it confused the students.  Because we didn't fit the standard pattern, they couldn't figure out how we did things, and how things got done without following certain procedures. 

     You know why it is difficult to analyze us?  It's easy to analyze our failures.  Those are human; but nobody cares to analyze and repeat those.  It's well nigh impossible to analyze our success, because that is supernatural, and you can't can it...And so when we succeed, it is Him; and when we fail, it is us. 

     Now, what I'm saying is that Grace Community Church for 25 years has been blessed only when it has fully functioned as God's called people.  Not some human organization.  The single great goal of this church is to let God work, to let God be active, to let God build His Kingdom, build His church, and to clear a path for Him through our obedient submission to His Word and His Spirit.  We are the called.

     Now, look with me at Ephesians chapter 1, and I think I can maybe begin, at least, to fill up in your mind a comprehension of what it means to be called or to be the church, by just taking the word called and adding a string of prepositions to it, all of which are pointed out in the first chapter of Ephesians verses 3 to 14; and the reason I chose Ephesians 1 is because this chapter, more than any other, presents the definition of the church theologically, and also because it's been such a blessed chapter in the study through the years that we've engaged in here at Grace. 

     Let's begin at the beginning.  First of all, we are called before.  Now, remember, we are the called.  That's what church means, and the first thing we have to understand is we are called before.  That is our election, and you can follow your outline, by the way, in the bulletin if you helps you to stay along.  But notice verse 4.  In talking about the church, Paul writes, "He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world."  In verse 5, "He has predestinated us unto the adoption of sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will."  Verse 11, "He has predestinated us according to the purpose of Him who works all things after the counsel of His own will."  He hath chosen us by His will, by His own will before the foundation of the world.  We are called before, beloved. 

     This is not something that just comes into being adlib.  This is not something that men build by their own wisdom or ingenuity or promotion or publicity or whatever.  This church, as the church in total, is a result of God's predetermined, sovereign, pre-Creation call.  In 2 Timothy, I mentioned a verse earlier.  I'll just reread it.  It says, "We have been saved and called, not according to our works...2 Timothy 1:9...but according to His own purpose and grace...listen to this...which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began."  We were called before.  We were picked out by God for God before the world began...

     Now, it's very difficult then, isn't it, to can that and pass it around.  The uniqueness of this church is bound up in the sovereign call of God before the world began.  We are what we are because of God's sovereign, independent, unaffected choice.  George Chadwick said, "I sought the Lord, and afterwards I knew He moved my soul to seek Him seeking me.  It was not I that found, O Savior true.  No, I was found by Thee."

     If you're at Grace Community Church, you didn't find us.  God found you, and you're here by divine appointment, and so am I.  That's why we are what we are.  We are fulfilling a predetermined destiny, a calling from beyond space and before time.  We are called before the world began.  You see, in God's conscious mind, there is no time; and everything is in an immediate eternal present; and we were as real before the world began as we are now to Him.  God adds to this church those that He determined before the world began would be added to this church...Think about it.  When there were only eight people left in the world, He had drowned everybody else...God knew that out of the loins of those eight people would come the pastors and the leaders and the people of this church; and He knew it would be a symbol in the way that it is assembled.

     I look at my childhood, and it's getting harder to see all the time as it gets further away, I admit; but I look at my childhood.  I think about my mother who prayed that God would give her son who would preach; and then when I was born, she kept asking God, "Is this the one?  You got a little work to do, Lord, if this is the one."  Through the years of all of my difficulties...I didn't know where I was going in life.  Oh, when I was a little kid, I would stand on a soapbox in the backyard and preach at my sisters; but that was because I was kinda copying my dad.  That's what I heard him do, and I went through life - a couple of times almost lost my life.  One time I fell off a cliff up by Forest Home.  Another time, a car accident almost took my life.  God spared me both times...

     Breaking my own human will, my own desires, charting my course all through the years, God knew exactly where I'd be.  All before the world began.  You know, that gives me such a tremendous sense...of confidence, that I belong in this place in this little piece of history, redemptive history, and so do you.  I was on the staff of Talbot Seminary before I came here; and about three months before I was contacted to come here and to be considered as a possible pastoral candidate, another church called me.  At that time, it was a bigger church, well-known church, wonderful church; and they called and said, "We would be interested in talking to you about being our pastor," and so we began to talk, and we talked over a period of a month and so forth and so on.  And, finally, after all these conversations, they said to me, "You know, we just feel that you're too young and inexperienced for...for our church; and so we're gonna go find someone else."  Well, I was open to whatever the Lord wanted me to do, I that's where He wanted me to go.  I was disappointed, but that wasn't where God wanted me.  The plan wasn't for me to be there.  The plan was to be here, and before the foundation of the world, God knew that He would use this church to redeem souls, and that I would be a part of that process.

     We're all here, folks, for just such a time as this.  This is destiny.  Every time I hear about somebody being saved in this church, I - something just clicks in my mind.  That's another fulfillment of God's destined plan.  And those of you who have joined our church, and now for 13 years I've been going to new member's meetings, and I always feel the same thing inside.  These people aren't here by accident.  The Lord is building His church.  Every one of you are here because you're here under His sovereign plan.  That's...that just takes a tremendous pressure off me.  I don't have to build the church, you know that?  In fact, a reporter asked me some years ago, he said, "Do you have a great desire to build the church?"  I said, "I have no desire to build the church, none at all."  He was surprised.  He said, "I've talked to other pastors across the country.  They don't answer that way."  I said, "I have no desire to build the church."  He said, "Why?"  I said, "Because Christ said He would build the church, Matthew 16, and I certainly don't wanna compete with Him.  I just wanna be a part of what He's building, that's all."

     It's His church.  This is not the result of some brilliant mind or some human organization.  This is Christ's church.  You don't understand that, you don't understand us; and you know what that does for me?  There's no sense of panic in the ministry.  There's no sense of frustration.  There's no reason to seek worldly means or worldly promotion or...or worldly systems to try to stir it all up.  All you need to do is rest in the spirit of God.  Be faithful to give your life in commitment to Jesus Christ.  He'll build His church; and I never wanted to do it artificially, because I was afraid it might be my church, not His, and then I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. 

     I can't find words to express the...the very special sense I feel in my heart knowing Christ has built this church; and I'm part of that; and you're part of that.  This little, small chunk of redemptive history is our destiny; and so we've always had at Grace Church a strong emphasis on the sovereignty of God.  We're His church, called before the foundation of the world.

     Second, we're not only called before, we're called out.  We're called out.  This is our redemption.  Called before is our election.  Called out is our redemption.  It says in verse 7, that it is in Christ "In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace."  Then it says further in verse 13 that "We heard the word of truth, the Gospel of our salvation.  We believe and receive the Holy Spirit."  And Paul here identifies the church as those who have been redeemed.  Those who have been forgiven.  Those who have received grace.  Those who have heard the Word.  Those who have been saved because they believed.  The church, then, is called out.  It is a redeemed, regenerate group...

     What do you mean called out?  Called out of sin.  Called out of death.  Called out of darkness.  Called out of despair.  Called out of lostness.  Translated, Colossians 1:13, "From the kingdom of darkness into the Kingdom of His dear Son."...Romans 6 tells us we were involved in death, and we were called out of that into life.  We are called out of the world.  We are a redeemed community.  We are regenerate.  That is the only reason we are the true church.  If we're not redeemed, we're not a church.  People running around under a religious banner with a title church who are not redeemed are not the church.  The church is the called out.  Called out of the world, out of sin, out of the kingdom of darkness...

     Now, we realize that the great concentration of the church has to be on a regenerate membership, redeemed people...I mean this is the church.  There are quote unquote churches all over the place that have a name that they live, but they're dead.  There's no regenerate people there.  That is not a church.  They are not called out.  They are a part of the world.  They're just religious...And, you know, so important is this to me, that the first Sunday I was here, I preached on this subject.  The first service I ever preached as pastor of this church in February of 1969, my text was Matthew 7:21 to 23, "Many shall say unto Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and I'll say unto them, 'Depart from me.  I never knew you.'" 

     Now, some people might think, "Well, boy, I mean you could at least warm up a little bit to 'em before you hit 'em between the eyes."  But, you see, I was concerned that there would be people who thought they were part of the church who weren't the church; and you need to understand from the very beginning what the church is, so you know where you're going.  We are a called out group, and I remember preaching that sermon, and several couples left the church...And we had even, I can think of at least one elder that was not a Christian.  I told them, "You have to distinguish between the wheat and the tares, the true and the false, those who play church and those who are the church."  In fact, the title of that first sermon was "How to Play Church,"...and I quoted Luke 6:46, "Why call ye Me, 'Lord, Lord,' and do not the things I say?"  And I...I read them an old slab engraving from the cathedral of Lebec, Germany, and this is what it said.  "Thus speaketh Christ our Lord to us.  You call Me Master and obey Me not.  You call Me light and see Me not.  You call Me the way and walk Me not.  You call Me life and live Me not.  You call Me wise and follow Me not.  You call Me fair and love Me not.  You call Me rich and ask Me not.  You call Me eternal and seek Me not.  If I condemn Thee, blame Me not."

     And then I gave an illustration.  The first illustration I ever gave here.  There was an old pastor, so old that he had been forced to retire.  His voice cracked from years of preaching.  He was a humble old gentleman.  He was invited to a high society kind of luncheon by a friend.  He really was out of his league, frankly, but he went; and there was a famous actor there, and the one who was heading up the luncheon said to that actor in the midst of a