01 Why the Church?

Welcome to a series which I hope will really help every one of us watching as well as those watching online to find out what God's plan is for the church. It's probably one of the most misunderstood things in our time. As we dig into this over the next few sessions of this series, you're going to be looking at different aspects of church life.

I really trust that as we learn about the Bible together, that we will begin to see exactly what God's plan is and how our lives can align with that. So it's going to be a great series. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Andrew Selley.

I lead a church called Joshua Generation in Cape Town, which we planted in January of 1999. I was sent out of a church in Port Elizabeth where I was part of an eldership team and came down here with six months salary and four people in our first meeting.

Amazingly, JoshGen has grown since then. So that by early 2023, we've got well over 6,000 people and 47 congregations meeting across much of the southern tip of Africa. And then in 2011, we felt the Lord lead us to start something called Four12.

In that context, I serve as an apostle, as one who works into the churches. I'll explain a bit about that later for those of you that that concept might be foreign to. I suppose God put in us a dream when we started, that we would build a church in such a way that it would be bringing the church back to the Bible, back to God's ways, back to Jesus.

And that we would become a church that would become a movement that ultimately churches all over the world would learn from, what God was showing in us and doing to us. That we would eventually see churches everywhere starting to get adjusted. And amazingly already, since starting Four12, we now are well over 400 churches in 22 nations and growing very, very quickly.

We can't raise leaders fast enough to get out there. And what it is, is churches from around the world that have got the same heart, they sense there's something wrong with the church and are wanting to find out—how do we do this God's way?

How do we align ourselves with the ways of God? And so many of them will be using this video as well within their context so that we can try and help everyone see what Jesus says about His own church. In this session we will look at how healthy the church is.

We're going to look at some things that might be a bit shocking, but, stick with me and hopefully by the end of this course, you'll have a great idea of what a healthy church looks like. This will be helpful in any context that you find yourself.

The Church as God's Vehicle for Restoration

So God's plan was always to save the world before He created Adam and Eve. The Bible says that Christ was crucified before the creation of the world. God knew when He made the world that we were going to mess it up, that Adam and Eve were going to fall.

They were going to sin. They were going to fall away from His glory and that the whole world would come into a time of corruption and decay. Then God worked out how He was going to come and save His world. And obviously we know that Jesus came 2,000 years ago, died on a cross, God living the life that a man should have lived.

He was God in the flesh and opened the door for salvation to come to every man. But while Christ did an amazing thing that only He could have done, the plan was not yet finished; that was just the beginning point. That was the foundation of how God is going to restore creation.

And so we are part of that restoration of what God is doing now. I want to look at a few scriptures just to explain what I'm saying. Ephesians 3:10-11. It says this: "His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God would be made known to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly realms, according to His eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord."

God's intent was that now through the church. In other words, the vehicle that God's going to use to bring about His restoration is the church. It's through the church that God's chosen to bring His glory and to reveal His glory to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places.

Quickly to explain that—the Bible says that the world belongs to the devil, he is the god of this age, the prince of this world, and he has rulers that rule over every society, every culture. But now God is doing something of a restoration work through the church to restore creation, to restore mankind and to bring about His kingdom on the earth.

And then it also speaks about, according to His eternal purposes, which He accomplished in Christ Jesus. So Jesus accomplished the way that we would be saved, the means of salvation, but the church is the vehicle by which salvation comes to the world. And so it's very, very important.

As important, I would argue, as Jesus is on the cross. Because both of those things are the two vehicles that God's gonna use. The one is the foundation and the other is the way that it's gonna roll out. And that's us. We are the church.

Evaluating the Health of the Modern Church

And so we have to get this right because if the church doesn't get this right, we don't reflect the kingdom. We don't bring the kingdom and the world stays in bondage and decay and people remain in sin and death. And so the big question I always ask myself is, how are we doing?

What does Jesus really think about the church and our town and our generation? What I want us to do is search in the Bible and explore how the first century churches were doing. And then, in comparison to that, how are we doing and what things must we change so that we can best reflect this plan of God, that we would be the church that He has dreamt of in His mind.

And so we often refer to Acts 2:42-47, because it gives us a picture of what the church looked like. You know, on the day of Pentecost, there were 120 Christians together, the Holy Spirit was poured out and that grew as 3,000 people got saved in a day.

And then they were formed into this church. They believed in Jesus. They were filled with the Holy Spirit, which had been poured out on that day. And this is the first little kind of video clip that we see of how it was. And I think this is probably one of the best illustrations to us of what a healthy church looks like when it's rooted properly in Jesus and the Holy Spirit is free to move.

Lessons from the First Century Church in Acts

We'll read together—I won't go too deeply into this specifically—but as you read this, I want you to just compare this to the modern church. And this is what it says: "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship." So the question we have to ask is, devoted themselves?

There's a deep giving of themselves. When you compare this to the church today, how devoted are people to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship to the church that they're in? And you'll find not many people are. "To the breaking of bread and to prayer, everyone was filled with awe.

Many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people.

And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved." So you've got this picture of this church that is radical in its devotion towards Christ and the kingdom, radical towards one another, and how they would love and care for one another.

And there's this deep sense of the presence of God amongst them in such a way that there's miracles, there's signs and wonders. And every single day people are getting saved because they are seeing what God is like through the vehicle of the church and are coming into the kingdom.

That little church that we read about turned the world upside down. I mean, we're here today because of them, because they were the first church. Without them, there would be no church anymore. And so that little model that we read about turned the world upside down.

Within a very short space of time, Christianity went from persecuted to actually the most influential religion in the world. And it was really through these people and how they loved and how they served, and so we need to go back and learn from them because I believe that Jesus still wants to turn the world upside down through the vehicle of the church.

Degrees of Health in the Body of Christ

And if we don't go back and learn, we're just gonna keep stumbling forward without ever really seeing the kingdom coming. And so, to realize this, the church has got many names in the Bible, but one of the very helpful ones is the church is the body of Christ.

Sitting here today, you all carry a body and each one of you is in a different degree of health. I look at you and I can't see who's healthy and who is sick, but I guarantee you, if I had to speak to some of your doctors, I would hear things about cholesterol, I'd hear things about, maybe bones that are growing wrong and arthritis and possibly even worse things.

And because we all, while we are humans, we have a body and a form. We're not all in the same degree of health. And this is very much how it is with the church. Not every church is the same. There are some that are healthy and there's some that are really sick and there's even some that are dead churches.

So let's dig into this as we look at the first century and the writings of the apostles and we try and work out how is the church doing? This is quite scary, so fasten your seatbelts. But first, let's talk to the healthy church.

The Model Church of Thessalonica

In 1 Thessalonians 1:7-8, we see a church which is called a model church. We can read it together. Paul's writing to the church in Thessalonica, and He first tells them how powerfully they've been saved and how radical they're living. And then He says, "And so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia."

That would be the regions around them. "The Lord's message rang out not only in Macedonia and Achaia, your faith in God has become known everywhere. Therefore, we do not need to say anything about it." This church had become a model church and I love that word model because in our culture we have models.

And models are normally beautiful people that wear beautiful clothes and in some ways define culture. They are those who stand up in shows and show us what we're all going to be wearing next season. And now Paul is writing to this church and He says, this church is such a healthy church that it's become a model for the believers all around them.

In fact, it's actually a model even to us today. And so this is a very, very healthy church and the kind of church you want to be a part of. A model church. It's beautiful in every way and Paul can boast about it and says, I don't even need to boast about it because everyone can see what you are like.

Identifying the Deception of Sick Churches

But then we also see sick churches. And different degrees of sickness. Now, what's interesting to me is every single church in the New Testament that I read about thought they were doing well. And we'll see that just now. So, the fact that we think we're doing well isn't an indicator that we actually are doing well.

And maybe to show you I'll read 1 Corinthians 5:2. Paul, who's a master builder and apostle of Jesus, writes to the church in Corinth, and He says this. The background is, there's a guy who is having sexual relationship with his father's new wife.

His mother's probably died, or she's not there. And this guy is now having sex with his father's new wife. And the church, if you read between the lines, is actually boasting about it. And they're saying, Isn't the grace of God amazing? This guy can have sex with his new mother and he's still loved by God.

They are proud of this. So Paul writes to them and He's kind of shocked and He says, "and you are proud?" He asks them, are you proud about that? Which tells you how deceived they had become and how deceived we can become. "Shouldn't you have been filled with grief and put out of your fellowship, the man who did this."

So while they boasting about how amazing the grace of God is, a true apostle of Jesus is saying you are actually seriously ill and you need to sort this thing out. The church is really not doing well at all because Paul would go on to write about, not just that scenario, but a number of other scenarios within just this local church.

In 1 Corinthians 11:17, Paul says the most profound things. He says in the following directives, "I have no praise for you." In other words, I've got nothing good to say about you. "For your meetings," He says, "do more harm than good." Now, for someone of His stature, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to write to a church that thinks it's doing well, and to say, your meetings are doing more harm than good, tells us in His mind, actually, it'd be better if they didn't meet.

In other words, the kingdom of God was here and after they met, there was more harm done than good. There was some good, but the bad was so bad, it was totally displacing the good that was done. And so this now, becomes a little bit concerning to me when I read this, because I think they thought they were doing well.

He goes on to say in 2 Corinthians 2:4, "Whenever I wrote to you out of distress and anguish of heart and with many tears." And so now you've got this apostle who's thinking about them and writing to them. And He's actually in great distress and He's got anguish in His heart.

And whenever I read that, I think, I'm now at 52 turning 53 soon, but I remember in my late teens, I went off the rails. I'd been a decent kid, but I got into drugs, I got into the occult. I ended up getting really deceived and my parents began to see that I was going off the rails.

And I'll never forget whenever I was with them, there were tears and they were anguished because a parent loves a child and wants the best for that child. And they saw me throwing my life away. This is really how the apostle is writing to this church in Corinth.

Serious Consequences of an Unhealthy Church

"Whenever I think of you like a parent, I have great distress and anguish of heart." He's got a real deep concern for the health of this local church. It's so dangerous to be a part of this church that in 1 Corinthians 11:29-30, Paul says this, when they break bread, which is kind of a big deal, we're supposed to break bread in remembrance of Jesus.

And you take the bread and the wine, and this is supposed to be in a sense, remind us of the cross, remind us of what God has done for us. But Paul tells them, when you're breaking bread, it's not doing what God intends, because you're doing it all wrong.

And He says, "For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord, eats and drinks judgment on himself." So you're thinking, this thing, breaking bread, is supposed to bring blessing to us, but this church has become so unhealthy. There's factions, there's divisions, there's rich and poor, and they're not mixing.

And so now Paul says, when you break bread, because you're not recognizing the body of Christ properly, the church properly, you're actually eating and drinking judgment on yourself, which means God's now forced to judge you when you do this. And then He says, "That is why many among you are weak and sick. And a number of you have fallen asleep."

Now the context of falling asleep for a Christian is—you've died. So in other words, they're breaking bread, going, "Thank You, Jesus, for Your grace," and they're drinking judgment on themselves as they do this very thing.

And so some of this church have actually grown sick and are getting illness because they're breaking bread in the wrong way and God's judgment is breaking out upon them. And some of them have even died. Now if you ask me, would I like to join the church in Corinth? I think I don't know if I want to join that church because just being a part of that church could kill you. This is serious. We have to get this right. We've really got to dig in and make sure we get this right.

Five Unhealthy Churches in Revelation

I want you to see this is not just one church. This is a big problem. Even towards the end of the first century, the church started well, but very quickly it began to drift into various things. In the book of Revelation, which is the last book in the Bible, John is the last apostle left.

The rest have all been martyred for their faith, they've all been killed. And John is on the island of Patmos as a prisoner for Jesus. The Romans have basically put him in jail. And from the island of Patmos, he's praying. It's the Lord's Day, so it's Sunday morning when the church gathers, and he's praying in this—he's all by himself in a jail.

And in this prayer and worship, he has a vision of Jesus and the book of Revelation is really written out of that moment with Jesus. What does he see? He gets taken into heaven. He sees the most amazing things. He sees the future.

So it's a profound book, but it's the last book that an apostle writes, at the end of the first century, probably written about 95 AD. So he writes to seven churches, and the churches he writes to were planted by Paul. The one in Ephesus, for example, had Timothy, who was Paul's true son, and he was actually still in Ephesus leading that church.

And John had actually lived in Ephesus for much of his later life and then went to jail. And then right at the end of his life, he was so old, they let him out and he went back to Ephesus. So these are churches that have got a lot of good teachers, a lot of good influence.

And there's seven churches mentioned. Five unhealthy churches, and only two are healthy. Those are terrifying stats, and these are churches that are planted by the early apostles. They've still got John alive. Timothy is still in that church. Titus and the others are traveling around.

Ephesus: Forsaking First Love

This is really concerning to me as a leader today. Ephesus has lost the love that they had at first. So the first church is Ephesus and Jesus says to them, "You've lost the love you once had. You were born in love, but you've lost it."

And so we'll read together in Revelation 2:4-5. Jesus says to this church, "Yet I hold this against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Remember the height from which you've fallen. Repent and do the things you did at first."

And so He's calling them back to what they were once like. They'd lost something. They were once radical. They're no longer radical in their love. He says, "If you do not repent"—so He kind of exhorts them and then He starts to warn them—"I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."

This is a very stern warning. I, Jesus, will come to you. Now most of us say, yes, Lord, come. We want Your presence. He says, if I come to you now, I have to remove your lamp from its stand. Now, please understand what He is saying.

He is saying, I'm going to shut you down, and how He's going to do that. Jesus is called the Lamp in Revelation 21 and 22. We start in Revelation 2 and see Jesus walking among the seven golden lampstands. So the churches are the lampstands and Jesus is the light of the world that shines out of them.

Pergamum: The Danger of Bad Teaching

But He says, if you don't repent, I'm going to take My presence, the lamp, and I'm going to remove it from you, which means you will die. The second church is a church in Pergamum, and this church has got bad teachings, and invariably bad teaching will lead to bad practice.

We live out what we believe. So, because bad teachers have got into this church. There was a lot of bad teachers then, I wanna say, there's a lot more today. But this church got bad teachers and bad practices, and in Revelation 2:16, Jesus says—"Repent therefore, otherwise I will soon come to you and will fight against them"—the people in the church that are following these bad practices—"with the sword of My mouth."

So now you've got Jesus coming to the church and saying, I'm going to come, but I'm going to come and I'm going to fight against the people that are following these bad teachings with the sword of My mouth. So now you've got God's word coming to cut and destroy His own people.

I think it's in 1 Chronicles 21, King David in the Old Testament sins—and at one point, he falls into God's hands and the angel of the Lord comes with a sword and kills 70,000 people over a few days. And then David cries out—I have sinned, have mercy on the people—and he looks up and he sees the angel of the Lord with a sword in his hand—and now the sword is bringing death and judgment.

This is Jesus coming with a sword to fight against the church. Now, we always say if God is for me, who can be against me? But if God is against you, who can be for you? You've got Jesus fighting against His own church and the call is: Repent, I don't want to do this.

Thyatira: Sinful Living and Judgment

I'm warning you so that you escape My judgment, but you must change. Alright, the third bad church is Thyatira. Again, bad teachers and bad teachings, which resulted in sinful living. They've embraced a lot of the bad teachers. One of them is a lady called Jezebel—and He says in Revelation 2:20-23—"I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling, so I will cast her on a bed of suffering."

This is Jesus speaking. "And I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely." And it was those who listened to her teachings—to Him, it's like he's committing adultery. And so if you commit adultery with this bad woman and this bad teaching, I'm going to cause you to suffer intently.

He says, unless they repent of their ways, I will strike her children dead. Those that follow these teachings, Jesus will actually now strike dead. Are you realizing that this is the Bible I'm quoting from? This is not just the Gospel of Andrew. This is the Bible, and this is Jesus Himself talking to the churches.

Then He says, "All the churches will know that I am He who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds." So you sit there thinking, oh my goodness, again, do I want to be in that church that Jesus is going to come and do these things.

Sardis: A Dead Church with a Living Reputation

"I cast you in a bed of suffering and even death." The fourth church is Sardis, and He says, interesting, "I find your deeds incomplete." In other words, effectively, you're not working hard enough in your love for Me, in your service of Me. In Revelation 3:1-2 says, "I know your deeds.

You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead. Wake up, strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your deeds complete in the sight of My God." The problem in this church is—it's effectively dead—and He's going to try and resuscitate it, to try and wake it up—to make it alive.

It's dead already, but it's going to be sick and dead if it doesn't respond to what He's saying. And He says, you've got this reputation. This is the scary part. You've got this cool reputation. Everyone says their church is such a rocking church.

You've got this reputation being alive, but Jesus said, you're dead. I don't know about you, but I figured Jesus is the one I'm going to go with, not what people think. And again, that means we've got to be very careful how we look at these things because we can all be wrong.

We can all think, this is an amazing church, and Jesus might say, no, it's actually a dead church. And then He says this to this church in Revelation 3:3—"if you don't repent, I'll come like a thief in the night and you will not know what time I'll come to you."

So now the picture of His coming is not a good one. You've got Him coming like a thief in the night, and then He says—"only those who overcome, their names I will not remove from the book of life." Which implies that there are people in those churches who are not overcoming, and that He will remove their name from the book of life, but He will not remove those who do repent and overcome.

Laodicea: Lukewarmness and Being Spit Out

Do you get how serious this is? I know many of us are like, what? I've never heard anything like this—this is the biggest cult—no, this is the Bible! The fifth church is a Laodicean church, and she's lukewarm. In other words, she's kind of there, but she's not flat out.

She's not devoted, she's not passionate about God and His kingdom. And so in Revelation 3:16, He says—"So because you are lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I am about to spit you out of my mouth." The King James or the New King James, in some translations says vomit.

It's a forceful expelling you out of My mouth. And the picture you've got is of a body ejecting something that's foreign to it. God is not lukewarm. God is a jealous, pure, holy God. And if His people become different from Him for long enough and remain lukewarm, at some point He can spit or vomit them out of His mouth.

Are you getting an idea how serious this could be? The Corinthian people are dying. These guys, there's death, there's sickness, there's judgment coming against Christ's own church by the hand of Jesus Himself. And the call is always to repent. And remember this, God does not want to judge the world, God wants to save the world.

But we need to take this thing seriously. If He died for a church to be pure and spotless and holy, well then we better make sure that we are the thing that He died for and that we give ourselves to the things that He is zealous about.

Continuous Correction and Remaining in Christ

So when you read the New Testament, it's quite interesting, every letter that you read except one—letters from Paul, Jude, Peter...—they're all bringing correctives. In other words, each of the churches has got something that needs to be tweaked and fixed, and we'll deal with this in one of the later sessions—how do we make sure that we are continually being tweaked.

Because all of us drift, and we need to come back and come back and come back. How do we make sure that we remain in Him? And He remains in us so that we bear much fruit. I could jump into some other church quickly.

The Galatians, they're falling back under Jewish pressure and pushing for circumcision. And basically they warned, if you go down that road, then Christ is no use to you. The Hebrews are going back to their Jewishness because they've been persecuted. And again, if you go back to that...

Then you are trampling the Son of God under your feet. You now have no hope of salvation, only a dreadful expectation of judgment and of wrath to come against those who are the enemies of God. So, these are very strong warnings that God is not messing around when it comes to His churches.

The Danger of Losing Connection with Jesus

And then you've got dead churches, one of them was dead. Obviously the church in Sardis, you have a reputation of being alive, but you were dead. Colossians 2:19—you've lost connection with the Head. If you lose connection with Jesus, if your body loses connection with the Head, how long is your body going to live for?

As soon as the church loses connection with Jesus, it starts to die. It is already dead, actually. And so you can see here churches that are actually even regarded by Jesus as dead. They still look like a body, but there's nothing of the life of Christ in them anymore.

The Remnant and the End-Time Church

And I wonder today as we visit churches and see churches in us and around us—how many of those that are actually dead? Like Elvis has left the building. Christ has left the building. When we look at the end time church, it gets really freaky because there's not one good scripture that I can find about the church in the end times.

They all are pretty depressing and demoralizing except for this. God says this—it'll look like even the elect can be deceived if that were possible. But He talks about keeping a remnant, a small group that will hold the line and will keep fighting the fight faithfully.

He talks about a remnant being a small group. Like in the time of the Jews, when Jesus came, the whole nation rejected Him—so the Bible speaks of the time of the Gentiles that will come. The time of the Gentiles is when the Jews start to get saved.

The Gentiles get these 2,000 years to come to Christ. At the end of this time, whenever it is, the time of the Gentiles comes to an end. And at the end of the time of the Gentiles, you realize there'll be hardly anything left of the Gentiles.

There were really 120 Jews that were following Jesus when He was on the earth. And the picture you've got is of a whole nation saying, "We're the people of God," and there's 120 that really are. And now you're going to see that same type of thing happen to the Gentile world, that you'll see everyone saying, "We're the people of God," and Jesus will say, "I don't know you."

You're nothing like Me. You've damaged and destroyed the integrity of My kingdom. And you're no longer even connected to Me. So these are, these are scary times and we need to heed what the Bible says and be very, very careful. I'll give you a few scriptures.

The Rise of Self-Centered Christianity

Luke 18:8—Jesus is speaking—it's Jesus almost looking forward and saying, "Am I going to find faith? Is there going to be anything there?" The Bible warns in many places, I don't have time to go to all of them, but one of the clear ones is in 2 Timothy 3:2, the Apostle Paul writes to Timothy about an end times church.

And it says this, "But mark this, in the end times, people will be lovers of themselves." All right, so this is exactly what an end times Christian is going to look like. Self-love. Secular humanism is now the echo of our generation, isn't it?

Humans are valuable. And so churches are built around people instead of around Jesus. And so what you start to find is an end times generation that will shift from the truths of putting everything before the Lord and will actually build a church around people.

And people choose churches that meet their needs. Self-love. I'm going there because I love the kids' ministry, I love the teacher, I love the preacher. But it's self-love. They're not going to give to sacrifice to pour out their love. The kind of Christianity that the end times will have will be a selfish, self-centered Christianity.

Does this church meet my needs? And that's terrible. It's one of the things that Paul said just now—have nothing to do with that kind of thing. It's nothing like the kingdom of God. And can I be honest, there's actually pastors around the world now, in the Western world certainly, who have built their churches around what people want.

There was a leader in America who basically wanted to build a mega church and interviewed people in his area and asked them, what kind of church would you like? And made notes. And then gave them the kind of church that they wanted. The Bible says another thing, in the end times, people gather teachers to tell them what their itchy ears want to hear.

And so churches are being built to give people what their itchy ears want to hear, rather than what does Christ in the Bible actually say? And how do you live your life for God? We often joke, the greatest commandment in our generation is, "God must love me with all His heart, mind, soul and strength."

But actually, the greatest commandment is that I must love God with all my heart, mind, soul, and strength. And the second commandment, Jesus said, is like the first, that I would love my neighbor. I'd love you as I love myself and He pulled them together into one context.

Rejecting the Prosperity Gospel and Love of Money

Are you getting this? The second thing is lovers of money. Well, you've got the prosperity gospel. It's the biggest gospel in America today. It's massive in Africa. I heard a preacher this last week say this: "Jesus became poor on the cross so that we could be made rich."

And that's a scripture, but the context of rich is not money. The context of rich is blessing—that God will give us blessing. And this man says, "Therefore, if Christ became poor, who had everything, so that I can become rich—then it's only right for me as a Christian that I must be wealthy and rich."

And the gospel becomes a way of making money. It's huge now in Africa because there's so much poverty. People come in and they peddle the gospel around money. Jesus will bless you. He'll give you a better life. He'll give you money. He'll give you health.

And so we actually find it's the wrong foundation. And we actually read about this in 1 Timothy 6:5. Paul writes to Timothy and he says, about people who have been robbed of the truth and who think that godliness is a means to financial gain.

Many Christians today believe that God wants them wealthy and prosperous. Actually, the gospel promises us suffering like Christ, that God will meet our needs, but that we will probably have a pretty difficult life. In fact, the Bible says if there's no resurrection, then we should be pitied more than all men.

Pride and Independence from Church Structures

That's what Paul the Apostle said, because there was such a deep devotion. They did not live for this world. They lived for Christ and when He returned. Are you with me? "They were boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful," I could dig into each one, but I'll just put them in brackets.

Those who will break out of family, disobedient to their parents, who break out of church structures. I don't need teachers. A boastful pride. I can do this on my own. How many people do you know that call themselves Christian that have just given up on the church?

They'll only submit to Jesus. But the Bible says in Hebrews 13:17, "Obey your leaders and submit to the authority for they keep watch over you as men who must give an account." So you've got these people that'll call themselves Christian, but they won't even belong to the very vehicle that God has chosen.

Warning Against Hyper-Grace and Moral License

And they'll redefine words. Where two are together, there Jesus is. So the church is just me and my mate in a coffee shop, which is nothing like what the Bible says church really is. How's this one? "Unholy." One of the most dangerous teachings in our generation is what I call the hyper grace.

I wish I'd called it deficient grace because I think hyper grace picked on and a lot of guys have gone down that road. Basically, there's a teaching that's going around today. This is a warning about end times. Jude 4 picks up on this—it says—"For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you."

They're in the church. They're godless men. "Who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ, our only sovereign and Lord." One of the things that the teaching will do is will teach us that grace teaches us that nothing I do will affect my relationship with God.

It's a license to sin. In other words, nothing I do will change the way God feels about me. You know, I'm just accepted the way I am, and so it's a license for sin—because of the cross. I've got a license to sin.

It would be like if there's no law and there's no traffic officer, then you can't catch me for doing 80 in a 60 zone because, there is no 60 zone, so I can't sin. And then it talks about a license to sin, which is a common teaching now.

Submitting to Jesus as Lord

And then he talks about, who denies Jesus—our only sovereign and Lord. And that word Lord is "kyrios"—master. It's the language of a slave master over servants or slaves. And effectively it means that Jesus should be the Lord of our lives—the One we live for.

We no longer live for ourselves. I think it was Hudson Taylor that said this, "Christ is either Lord of all or He's not Lord at all". In other words, either Jesus is the Lord of our whole life, or He's actually not our Lord at all.

If He's not our Lord at all, we're probably not saved. Part of salvation is to bring us to obedience by the power of the gospel written onto our heart and the power of the Holy Spirit—to help us live the life. What the law couldn't do, Christ is going to help us by His grace working it into our lives.

So without love, unforgiving, slanderous, and again, people that are going to be without love. Love holds no record of wrongs. How many people do you know that have been hurt and pulled away, "unforgiving"? I'm never going back there. "Slanderous", that place sucks. And you'll find people that are like this now, and it's again a warning about end times Christians because the root of everything will become humanistic and self centered.

People think they're far too important. They'll hold to their rights, where love lays down its rights to care for and love others. This generation will be a generation that lives for their rights, how they feel, and they'll be unforgiving if anyone crosses them.

Lovers of Pleasure Rather Than Lovers of God

"Without self control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God." In other words, they'll do whatever they want. I'm a Christian, I go to that church, I even tithe, but I actually live the life I want to live.

And so it's a false Christianity. It's not the Christianity that we read about in the New Testament. Are you all depressed yet? It is quite scary, isn't it? You read this and you think, dear God, have mercy on me. And that's probably a good posture to have because it seems that as you read the Bible, that actually the church in our generation is terminally ill.

I would say it's far worse than the five and two ratio. Because that ratio looked forward and said it's going to be terrible in the last days, it's gonna be worse. And so how many churches are even connected to Jesus today? How many churches have any resemblance of health?

Living for the King and His Glory

And how many are really dangerous and not the kind of church you want to be in? The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, "For Christ's love compels us because we are convinced that one died for all and therefore all died and He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and was raised again."

If we truly say by the grace of God, then His love compels us, it spurs us on. Then we live our lives for Him and for His glory. Our life priority is the King and His kingdom. And it's not that we live selfish lives, self-centered lives.

The Danger of Empty Traditions

We lay down our lives for Him and for our brothers. And this is what it is to be a Christian. The last one that he mentions is in 2 Timothy 3:5, "having a form of godliness, but denying its power." It says it has nothing to do with them, and he includes them as all of the above that I've just read about.

So, having a form of godliness, and this for me speaks about a church that is bound up in a form of godliness. It looks godly, it's got the teachings, it's got the Bible, it's got tithing. It's got all those different things, but there's nothing of the power of God in the life of this church.

And so you have a form without the power of the Gospel. And in some ways, traditional church can very easily fill this role. In fact, in Mark 7:13 Jesus said this—"by your traditions, you nullify the word of God"—when He spoke to the Jews.

When we bring traditions into the church, those traditions begin to set themselves up against Jesus so that when He wants to move, we say—You can't do that because our tradition says this is how it must be. And it's not the Bible now that we are holding to, it's our church tradition.

And so the traditions begin to nullify the word of God, who is Jesus Himself. And so Jesus is not able to effectively minister and move in His own church. The sad thing for me is this. Many of the churches that are holding to better doctrine are normally those that are more traditional right now, and most of your charismatic churches have lost the plot, but the problem with the traditional churches, while they hold to the Scripture in many ways, they don't come to Jesus, and Jesus is the core, the heart of the church.

We'll see that in the session I will do after this. And so Jesus would say to the Jews of His time, something that I think He would say to many today, in John 5:39-40, "You diligently study the scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life." And so, the point of Christianity is a relationship with Jesus. The Scriptures can teach us about Him, but the Scriptures can't save us. I wanna say I'm bound to the text—I'm not gonna go beyond what's written.

Understanding Sin as Missing the Mark

But the Scriptures themselves can't save. They'll only point us to the one who can save, and His name is Jesus. So we need every aspect of health. Sin, in Greek is *hamartia*, the Bible's written in Greek, and so they use the word *hamartia*, and it literally means just to miss the mark.

Think of an archer that aims at something and maybe hits two inches to the left or a few centimeters to the left. That's missing the mark. This is a picture of what sin is, and sin is whenever God says, I want it done like this, and we don't quite hit it, that's sin.

And so when we do church, we've got to be careful to come back to how God wants church to look. Otherwise, even the way we do church can miss the mark—*hamartia*—and effectively then the church sins, whenever it does that. And you see that you're breaking bread wrong, you're bringing judgment in yourself, you're doing things that are not hitting what God intends.

Building on the Foundation of Jesus Christ

In 1 Corinthians 3:10-17, Paul the apostle writes to us and he says, "by the grace God has given me I laid a foundation as an expert builder", so we don't go beyond the foundations of the Bible. Someone else is building on it, but each one should be careful how he builds.

In other words, every church has got to be very careful how you build this—"for no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ." Now, when he says that—you can lay foundation different to Jesus, but no true church can have a foundation other than the one of Jesus Christ.

That's the only foundation that will last. But then you have got to be careful how you build on that. He says, "if you build using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay, or straw, his work will be shown up for what it is because the day of judgment will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each man's work."

So God is going to test every single church, every single work, every single man's work within the church will be tested. If what he's built survives, he will receive his reward, but if it's burned up, he will suffer loss. He himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames, whatever that means.

I don't want to find out what that means. "Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?" If anyone destroys God's temple, if anyone destroys God's church, God will destroy him, for God's temple is sacred, and you are—the church—you are that temple.

So now you've got people that are destroying the church, and God says, I'll destroy them on the day of judgment. Teachers face a stricter judgment. The Bible says in that last day, we're not mucking around. This is serious stuff. This thing that brings such hope, God is as zealous and passionate that we don't mess it up.

The Danger of Cultural Shifts and Human Traditions

Because if we mess it up, what hope does the world have? So, and we could look at different things. I mean, leadership structure is important. We'll look at that. If your leadership structure is wrong—senior pastor—where's that in the Bible? Voting—where's that in the Bible?

There's a lot of things that we bring from the world into the church, but the church is not the world. The church is Christ's body. We'll look at that in the next session. And so we've got to be very careful what we bring in because our then traditions begin to nullify the life of God and the person of Jesus in the church.

Obviously, theology and teaching is key. We've seen that right through. Even what we've already seen in some of those churches. Bad teaching is very prominent. A lot of Christians think, well, I've got the Holy Spirit in me, I can discern good from bad, and yet, those people that we read about, they all had the same Spirit and they all got deceived.

So the warning in scripture is actually: ring-fence bad teachings and run away from them. Don't think you can hang around with them and remain untainted. There's a lot of arrogance in the modern church, which is quite scary. And obviously there were a lot of things that they were doing wrong.

Jewish principles, the roles, even the gifts of the Spirit are sometimes wrong. There are too much or too little, beliefs in the resurrection or not in the resurrection. But in our generation, we obviously have a strong cultural drift. And we're seeing things invading the church now around issues of morality, sexuality, gender roles.

These are all new shifts that are happening in our culture, and they're starting to appear in the churches. Quite interesting that in the churches in Revelation, each of the churches that Jesus speaks to, He actually mentions things that are specific to their culture, and He pulls them out.

And culture is a terrible way of infecting the way we read the Bible. We cannot let our culture define what God's Word says. Our culture shifts with the sand, our morality shifts with the sand, but God is eternally the same. He's unchanging. And we have to go back to the Bible and define our value system as Christians who are separate from the world, as God's value system.

Avoiding the Consumer Church Model

Otherwise, we bring this into the church and we can get in all sorts of trouble. I mean, we even have churches that build themselves around different value systems. So have you heard of biker churches or surfer churches? And you'll have youth churches where it is just for the youth.

And these are not good reflections of what the Bible says. The Bible speaks about old and young meeting together. The Bible speaks about rich and poor, Jewish and gentile—people that have got nothing in common, finding Jesus in common and being joined together.

But the fastest way to grow a church today is to ask people, put people in little groups that they like with the same idols. And then pan it to them. So the youth service will be more lively, the old person service will be a bit more toned down, because old folk are a bit more conservative.

And so what you're doing is you're effectively building the church around people, not around Jesus. And that's a very dangerous thing to do. And so what we do is we actually bring humanism into the church and we begin to destroy and infect the fabric of what the church is.

The church for me is to be built for one person, His name is Jesus. He's the Head, He's the leader, He's the groom, we're the bride. And so we have to find out what the Lord wants. And anyone who's been married for longer than five minutes realizes this, that my spouse likes things differently to me.

It's not often that you just have everything in common. You think you do, and then you get married. You realize, oh my goodness, this is gonna take a lot of work because I've gotta learn what he loves. I've got to learn what she loves.

And it's exactly the same with the Lord when you come to Him—actually what He likes and what we like is often different, but He's the Head and so we've got to learn what He likes and give ourselves to Him. This thing of the Bible and doing it right is very important.

Following the Apostolic Pattern

Let me run ahead in my notes. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 4:16-17, he says—"I urge you"—and he's talking about how he wants the church to be built here, and says—"I urge you to imitate me", and now this is written, and I would ask you, are you imitating Paul?

Are you living your life like him with the same priorities? And I realize he was living at a different time, but is your priority in life to live as in the Bible? Can you say, that's how I live? "I urge you to imitate me. For this reason, I'm sending to you Timothy, my son, whom I love, who's faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus." In other words, he's imitating me, and him being with you, he'll remind you of how I live, which agrees with what I teach everywhere, in every church.

And so Paul's saying to the church, effectively, somehow God gave him this revelation of how it works. And he wants everyone to live that way and to imitate him and to imitate the patterns that he brought into the church. And the thing of patterns is quite a big thing.

And I need to run quickly now, but I'll just mention the scriptures. God was going to judge the world. He was going to flood the world. He's going to bring a vehicle of salvation, which is an ark—a wooden boat. God tells Noah in Genesis 6:15—this is how you are to build it according to the pattern.

And in Genesis 6:22, Noah did everything just as God commanded. God gave a pattern and Noah built it according to the pattern. When God came to Moses with the temple, He said this in Exodus 25:40—"see that you make them", the things in the temple, "according to the pattern shown you on the mountain."

Moses, I'm showing you in heaven, actually, what it looks like in heaven, and I want you to build on earth what it looks like in heaven. And so Moses is to build according to the pattern. I want you to remember that word. Pattern.

Lessons from King David: Doing Things God's Way

It's such a key thing that King David at one point breaks the pattern—and King David is loved by God. He's one of the famous kings in Israel, and at one point he tried to bring the ark, which is the presence of God from where it's been at the Philistines, into the capital city, Jerusalem.

The ark comes to them, because it had been stolen under the time of Eli, by the Philistines in a battle and the Philistines had all sorts of things going wrong. And so they put this ark on an ox cart. And said, if this is a true God, they left a young calf with the mother.

So the mother should stay with the calf. If the mothers walk away and leave their calves, we know that this is God. And so the mothers leave their calves and walk back to Israel. And the Jews are amazed. Yay! God has brought the ark back to us.

Some Israelites look into the ark. You're not supposed to do that. The Bible says, don't touch it—and they die. Everyone didn't think God would do that. So they just leave it there, because now everyone's a bit scared of the presence of God.

Then David says, hang on a minute—I want the presence of God back in Jerusalem. So what he does is he goes and finds the ark. It came to them on an ox cart. He saw people touch it and they died, so he just figured, well, if it came to us in that way, let's use an ox cart to take it to Jerusalem.

So they start this journey, and the ox cart stumbles, and Uzzah, one of his friends, reaches out and touches the ox cart and he dies. And again, the whole procession stops and David's upset with God. Why did You kill one of us? We're trying to build something for You.

And he ends up just leaving it. And he hears about the blessing of God where it is. And he says, I can't leave it. I've got to have it with me in Jerusalem. And then he says this in 1 Chronicles 15:13. "It is because you Levites did not bring it up the first time that the Lord our God broke out in anger against us. We did not inquire of Him about how to do it in the prescribed way."

We didn't actually ask Him how He wants it done. We just did it our way and it brought judgment. Can I suggest to you that whenever the church does it our way, it brings the judgment of God.

We don't have a right to build the church our way. We have to come back to learn how does God want this thing done. And even if we're David and we're loved by God, we can still see His judgment break out on us.

The Fear of the Lord and the Prescribed Way

So there's a fear that needs to come into the church. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. In other words, it makes us realize, Oh my goodness, we've got to be careful how we do this because we could get in trouble if we just don't do it the prescribed way.

So when Paul tells us about the pattern that he's set in all the churches, you realize that Paul doesn't have different churches for different folk. You might say, well, I like this church and he likes that church, and I like worship to be a bit more conservative.

It's not about what you like. It's about what He likes. Christians, everyone needs to learn, there's only one way. Paul says, I don't teach different kinds of things for different churches. This is what I teach in all the churches. Worship looks like this. Leadership looks like this. Communion looks like this. And we do not have the right to change it around our own likes or our own cultures. It is God's church, not ours.

Guarding the Pattern of Sound Teaching

In 2 Timothy 1:13-14, Paul says this: "What you've heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you—guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." Here's the thing. We need to be very careful that we guard the things that we read about in the Bible, that we build according to the patterns, the prescribed way when it comes to leadership, when it comes to meetings, when it comes to everything that we do.

Because if we build it right—there's no perfect church. In other words, you can miss it to a point and God will talk to us. But there's a place where it actually becomes really unhealthy. I think that's the thing that I want you to consider—that at the end times the standard is so rotten.

The Bible as the Standard for Church

We actually have to be very, very careful. We can't look at the churches around us and go, well, how are they doing? Well, we look better than them, because actually the standard is the Bible and the way is revealed in the Scriptures, and so we must grapple with the Bible, grapple with the ways of God and make sure that we build the vehicle that God's chosen to change the world—the church—that we build it the prescribed way.

And as we dig into this, over the next few sessions, we'll learn about how God sees leadership, how it works, how we relate to leadership, how money works. Everything. As many aspects as we can in the short piece of time we're gonna dig into it, so that we can know what is the prescribed way of doing church.

And so I hope that out of this time, that you will also have a deeper understanding and a deeper reverence for this thing that God's chosen. It's through the church God's chosen to reveal His glory to the rulers, the authorities in the heavenly places.

Revealing God's Glory Through the Church

There is no plan B. We're it. And we must get it right because the point of this is: if we do it right, the church will turn cities and nations upside down. We need to seriously look at the Scriptures and if need be, repent of what we've done or what we haven't done and come back to the ways of the Lord.

And allow Him to build His church in us—and then through us. So that principalities and powers will come down and the kingdom of God will come to the earth and we'll see His glory covering it as people get saved. Amen. End of session one.