“That you will know how one should act in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.” 1 Timothy 3:15
Sixth Indictment: An Ignorance Regarding the Nature of the Church – Part One
God has only one religious institution: It is the Church. And our ultimate goal and the ultimate result of revival in this world will be the planting of biblical churches. I have the greatest fear that the local church today is despised. Tell somebody you are an itinerant preacher, that you have a world-wide ministry, and they all bow down. Tell someone you are a pastor of a group of thirty, and they make you sit in the back during the conference. Jesus Christ is not the Prince of itinerant preachers; He is the prince of pastors.
Several years ago, Bill Clinton had a slogan during the election: “It is the economy, stupid!” My pastor, Jeff Noblit—one of the elders in our church, the primary teaching and preaching pastor—he said to me one day, “You know, I’d like to have a bunch of shirts made up.”
“What would they say, brother Jeff?”
“It’s the Church, stupid!”
Jesus gave His life for the Church, a beautiful, virgin, pristine Church. If you want to give your life for something in the ministry, give it to the Church: to a church, a body of believers, a local congregation. It is all about the Church.
Now, I want you to listen well. There is not a remnant of believers in the Church. We all know about the remnant theology, you know, that throughout all the course of Israel there was Israel the people of God and a remnant of true believers. That is not true about the Church. There is not a remnant of believers or a small group of believers inside a larger group called the Church. The Church is the remnant.
If pastors have ever come close to blaspheming, it is with regard to this. I hear theologians, itinerant teachers, and pastors saying these sorts of things: “There is just as much sin in the Church as out of the Church. There is just as much divorce in the Church as out of the Church. There is just as much immorality and pornography in the Church as out of the Church.” And then preachers say, “Yes, the Church is acting like a whore.” I want you to know this: You ought to be very careful calling the bride of Jesus Christ a whore.
I will tell you what the problem is: Pastors and preachers don’t know what the Church is. I want you to know that the Church of Jesus Christ in America is beautiful. She is frail at times. She is weak. She is buffeted. She is not perfect. But I want you to know: She is broken. She is humbly walking with her God. The problem is that we don’t know what the Church is.
Today, because of the lack of biblical preaching, the so called “church” is filled up with carnal, wicked people identified with Christianity. And then, because of all the goats in the midst of the lambs, the lambs are blamed for all the things the goats are doing. And then the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of us (Rom 2:24).
“Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”—Jeremiah 31:31-34
Now I do not want to take away anything from the people called Israel, but this text is also applied to the Church. Understand that. I don’t want to get into any battles on eschatology, but in the Bible, in the New Testament, it is applied to the people of God. “Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt” (vs. 32).
I hear preachers saying all the time, “Well, when you look back and you see Israel, you see a bunch of godless people, idolaters. And in the midst of them there was a tiny remnant of true believers.” That is true, but don’t apply that to the New Testament Church, because God says, “I am going to do something different, Not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD, I will put my law within them” (vs. 33).
If you are converted, God hasn’t given you just a stone tablet of laws. He has supernaturally, through the doctrine of regeneration, written those laws in your heart. And because He has done that, “I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (vs. 33).
And look what it says: “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (vs. 34).
Again, this is the doctrine of regeneration. God is doing a new work these last 2000 years. We don’t have a lot of churches in America; we have a lot of really nice brick buildings on finely manicured lawns! Just because someone says they are of the Church or they are Christian, doesn’t make it so. Look what God says: “They will not even have to teach one another.” That doesn’t mean there won’t be teachers and preachers, but there will be an outstanding knowledge of God among them all, particularly with regard to their sins having been forgiven.
Look at Jeremiah 32:38-40.
And they shall be my people, and I will be their God: And I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: And I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me.
“And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.” God does not say, “I hope so, maybe, if I get lucky, oh, if I can get enough evangelists to work with Me, maybe this will all come out right.” No! Instead, He says, “I am going to pull a people for Me, a people that I am going to give to my Son.” And He says, “And they shall be my people, and I will be their God.”