This lecture is Ecclesiology of the Doctrine of the Church. It's something that we've already been talking about and you've been introduced to just even yesterday, this last Lord's Day. Just the communion of the saints and what makes up the church and what is your role in it and what are the joys of being in the assembly of God's people and the benefits of that. We'll give our attention now to Jason as he continues to lecture as soon as we're good on the audio back there. Shane, I never know where to set my water. Let's pray again as we refocus our attention again on the Lord. Father in heaven, we do thank you for this opportunity to come together to learn the marvelous truths that you give to us in your scriptures. And we do thank you for your church, that you loved her and gave your life for her. So we pray that you would, in this time, deepen our love for Christ and for his bride. We do pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, I want to begin this lecture by reading a few passages of scripture. And so if you have your Bibles, first turn with me to Matthew 16. Matthew 16, we'll read verses 13 through 20 and I will be referring back to these in the lecture. This is a well-known portion of scripture where Peter makes that glorious confession that Jesus is the Christ, but on the heels of that confession we get some marvelous truths about the church. So let's give our careful attention to the reading of God's word. Matthew 16 verses 13 through 20. Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say the Son of Man is? And they said, some say John the Baptist. Others say Elijah and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them. But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in him." And he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. Now I'll turn with me to Acts Chapter 20. I just want to read one verse, Acts 20, 28. Paul is speaking to the Ephesian elders and again we get glorious truth about the church he says pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood and one more passage from Ephesians chapter 5 Ephesians 5 Verses 22 through 30. Again, we're thinking about the church. Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife, even as Christ is head of the church, his body. and is himself its savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word. so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way, husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself, for no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes it and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church. Because we are members of his body. We come to now the topic of what is called ecclesiology, which is just a fancy way of saying the doctrine of the church. And if you look at the subtitle I gave to this lecture, loving the church. From the outset, I want us to see that we're not just engaging in some academic exercise. The goal of all of these lectures is to increase our love for Christ and for the things that he has given to us. In this case, that we might love the church more. And so let's begin by just laying a foundation and thinking about terminology before we jump into the main part of the lecture. We want to ask the question, what is ecclesiology or what is the church as we think about the church. So let's think about some of the biblical terms that we see in relation to the church. So the Bible uses the Hebrew and Greek word that I have there in your outlined, kahel, the Hebrew word, and ekklesia to denote the church. Both of these words, in their most essential sense, refer to a called out assembly of people. Our word church that we use is actually derived from a different Greek word, kyriakon, which comes from the word for Lord, kyrios. And so our, now I want you to hear this carefully, our word church, it's okay to use that word, but it doesn't necessarily reflect the rich nuances of the biblical terms we see in the Old and New Testaments. I have 1 Corinthians 11 20. Paul's talking about the Lord's Supper. He says, when you come together, it is not the Lord's, and there's that word, kyrkon, it's not the Lord's Supper that you eat. And if you may have come across the Scottish word kirk, The German word kirche, these all come from this, this word, which means basically the Lords. And so this word church is the word that translators usually use to translate that Greek word ecclesia. It occurs 114 times in the Greek New Testament. But originally, that word was never used to denote the church, but it later became used to refer to the church as a people who belong to the Lord. And I have a quote from Robert Raymond there, and he says, because of this, this translation, he says, English translators have lost a rich nuance of scripture regarding the people of God. In other words, this idea that the church is the people of God has been lost in our day. If you hear the word church, if the average Christian hears the word church, what do you think immediately pops into their minds? Usually it's a building, not a people. So in scripture, The church consists of those whom God has called out from all of humanity to be his people that are called by his name. So the church is a people that have been affectionately called by Christ. A. A. Hodge says, to this church or collective body of the affectionately called, all the promises of the gospel are addressed. It is said to be the pillar and ground of the truth, the body and fullness of Christ, the bride, the Lamb's wife, and it is affirmed that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. William Symington adds that the church consists of all who in every age and every place make a credible profession of true religion together with their children. So the church is a people, a called out assembly of people. Now let's think about bad ecclesiology for a moment. And I have listed four contributing problems that have led to a bad, a wrong view of the church today. The first one I have there is rampant individualism. We see this in our country. This is emphasized in our country. Where the sovereignty of the individual is emphasized. And because of that, because we live in a culture like that, it's very hard for us to see ourselves as part of a body. As part of a family. You read the book of first Corinthians. This was an issue that Paul was dealing with. The people in the Corinthian church were functioning as individuals. They were forgetting that they were part of a body, that they had responsibilities to one another, that there was an authority structure in place over them. Secondly, and I stole this from one of Carl Truman's book, but there's a confusion about ownership. And Truman says that we tend to see the church as a human response to divine initiative. And what he means by that is we tend to see the church as our work. In other words, people will think God saved us, that our salvation is wholly a work of God. But now, when it comes to the church, that's our job. The church is ours. We need to build it. We need to run it as we see fit. So there's this confusion about ownership. If any of you are familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism. It's divided into three sections. Guilt, grace, and gratitude. When we think about grace and gratitude, grace is what God has done for us. Gratitude is our response to the Lord. In the Heidelberg Catechism, the church is found under the section on grace. In other words, it's something that the Lord has done for us. It's not a human response to divine initiative, but it is the Lord's work. Thirdly is a consumer mentality. We live in a culture where everything's at our fingertips, where we have been programmed to ask, what's in it for me? And sadly, that is what has happened with many Christians. They come to a church and they ask, what's in it for me? I was a church planting pastor in Tucson, Arizona, and this was one of the major stumbling blocks to seeing a church established. There was people came into a very small, very unimpressive church plant and they're thinking, what's in it for me? There's hardly any people here. There's no kids my age. There's no programs. There's nothing. And usually people didn't stick around because the idea was, well, what's in it for me? And finally, it's just a general neglect of the doctrine of the church. We have really, in the church, let this doctrine sort of slip away. It's not taught on very much. And if you think about it, we have come to focus in reformed churches really on the shorter, the Westminster shorter catechism. If you think through the Westminster shorter catechism, is there anything in there about the church? There's not. We need to go to the larger catechism and to the confession to find the doctrine of the church. And so a neglect of the larger catechism, a neglect of the Westminster confession of faith will lead to a general neglect of the doctrine of the church. And of course, there's many other things that contribute to a low view of the church. But these are, I think, some of the ones that you will all encounter as you grow up, as you go off to college, or whatever you're going to do, as you start to interact with other Christians, with other people. These are things that you will find when it comes to people's views of the church. So let's jump into our outline here to the first point. And I want to first think about the relationship between the visible and the invisible church. And I have Westminster Confession 25-1, where we see one of these terms used. It says, the Catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been are or shall be gathered into one under Christ, the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. And so there is what theologians talk about a visible church, but there's also an invisible church. And is there any extra handouts? Okay, I'm just, I apologize. I've forgotten what I've concluded in there, but in the visible church, we read about a visible church in 1 Corinthians 1-2. 1 Corinthians 1-2, Paul's writing to a specific church. He says, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints. There was a visible church that you could see. There was a church in the city of Corinth. This church here, Westminster Reform Presbyterian Church, it's visible to us. We also read of an invisible church, and we read about this in Hebrews 12, 22, and 23. The writer says, but you have come to Mount Zion. and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly, and that's that word ecclesia there, the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect. Now this idea of the visible and the invisible church was first developed by the theologian Augustine in the 5th century. And he made this distinction between the invisible church and the visible church. And it's a distinction that has been greatly misunderstood. Now I'm just curious, have you heard those terms before? Okay, now these are terms that have been greatly misunderstood. So let's think about the distinctions and their relatedness. Now, what he meant by the visible church was the church as an institution that we can visibly see in this world. It has a list of members on its roles and we can identify a group of people, a group of professing Christians. That's the visible church. The invisible church is something that is mistakenly thought of as something as antithetical to the visible church. Something that's different or outside of the visible church. A professor John Murray corrects this idea. He writes, there is only one Church of Christ. It has an invisible aspect, but there are not two churches. And what we very often see today is we will see people who shun local membership in a church. They'll say, I don't need to belong to a church. They'll say, I belong to the invisible church. That's a complete misunderstanding of this distinction. This is not what Augustine taught. This is not what the Bible teaches. Augustine taught what the Bible teaches, that the invisible church is found within the visible church. So I guess I could draw here. So if we imagined two circles here, and we could say one is the visible church and one is the invisible church. So this is the invisible church, this is the visible church. And so the invisible church is found within the visible church. And this is, I made that bigger than I wanted to. So people, there are people who profess Jesus Christ and we don't know if they're part of the invisible church or not. Only God knows that. Our business is the visible church, what we can see. And so when your elders interviewed you to come to the Lord's table, they might have said to you, they're looking for a credible profession of faith. We can't see into your hearts. We don't know if you're really part of the invisible church. Our job is to just discern a credible profession of faith. This is our business. We can see the visible church. Only the Lord knows the invisible church. But notice the invisible church is found within this visible church. And we'll get to this later. There might be a very small portion of people that were not found in the earthly visible church, but yet are in the invisible church. They are few and far between. And we'll get to that in a little bit. Now, we want to ask, why did Augustine even speak of an invisible church? He does does this to be faithful to the teaching of Jesus in the New Testament. Augustine taught what Jesus taught, that the church is a mixed body. It's made up of a mixture of people. And Westminster Confession 25.4 alludes to this. It says the Catholic Church has been sometimes more, sometimes less visible. In particular churches which are members thereof are more or less pure. According as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced ordinances administered and public worship performed more or less purely. So again is this. Pathetic diagram suggests that within the physical confines of the visible church. There are people who are true believers, but there are also unbelievers inside the visible church. They're in the church, but they're not in Christ. Jesus said of some of the people of his day in Matthew 15, 18, he said, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Jesus recognized that there were people in Israel who were not true believers. They identified with the church, but they weren't true believers. Paul said something similar when he said, not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. In other words, there were people who went through the rituals. They were part of the covenant community, the visible covenant community. They were participating in all of the activities. but they were not part of the invisible church of Christ. And the best way to think about this, the way that I have found most helpful is God's perspective is the invisible church. And our perspective is the visible church. Calvin explained that scripture speaks of the church in two perspectives. He says the church from God's perspective and the church from the perspective of God's people. So from God's perspective, he sees what we can't see. We can only see what is here on earth. So let me pause there. Are we tracking together? You don't look too confused. Okay, let's move on to the ownership. of the church. And again, we already identified this problem, this confusion about ownership, thinking that we own the church. So listen again to the Confession 25-1. The Catholic or universal church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one. under Christ, the head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." And so we see that the church is the Lord's, that Christ is the head of the church. And we read that passage from Matthew 16, where Jesus says, and I tell you, you are Peter, And on this rock, I will build my church. I will build my church. Notice that personal pronoun, my. In the Greek, that word is given a particular stress. Jesus is emphasizing his ownership of the church. He says, it is my church. Now this is striking because our Lord didn't use this word very often. He talks about my father, my disciples, my teaching. The things about which Jesus said, this is mine, are relatively few. So this should get our attention. And it's also striking that Jesus uses that word that we talked about in the beginning, that word ekklesia. It's a word that occurs only one other place in the four Gospels. And while this word is rare in the Gospels, it's not rare in the Old Testament, specifically the Greek version of the Old Testament. Remember at the beginning we talked about those two words, the Hebrew word kahel, and the Greek word, ekklesia. And the word that the Greek translators of the Hebrew Old Testament used to translate that Hebrew word, kahel, is that word, ekklesia. So this was the term that was used for Israel, for the people of God, the congregation, the people on which God had placed his special covenantal love. And so what is taking place here in Matthew 16 is significant because Jesus is taking this word, which had been so familiar to his disciples, and he's applying it to them. It's a pivotal point in redemptive history because what Jesus is doing is he's confirming that the church is the church of Jesus Christ. Even in the Old Testament, the church was still the church of Christ. But when Christ came as the God-man and died and rose again, he inherited a new and a special rule over his church as the mediator. I'm not sure, do we have a I don't know that we have a lecture scheduled on the Mediatorial Kingship, but this is part of Christ's Mediatorial Kingship, this special rule over His church. Now we value in our culture things that are owned by famous people. I mean, you could go buy a $4 football or basketball from Walmart, But you get it signed by a professional athlete, all of a sudden, it becomes very, very valuable. It has their signature on it. Or we could, you know, people buy things from athletes all the time, you know, silly things like this was so-and-so batting glove that they used in the World Series, you know, this old smelly thing. But it's valuable because of who owned it. And we need to remember that the church to which we belong is owned by Jesus Christ. It's not our church. It's His church. We are not free to do what we like, what we want. It is His church. He has emphatically said, this is mine. Brothers and sisters, that's what makes the church precious. It is Christ's. And it should become even more precious to us when we remember how Christ came to own it. We read in Ephesians 5.25 that Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. 28, Paul calls the church, the church of God which Christ purchased with His own blood. Christ bought the church with His very life. And that should make it infinitely valuable to us. It is His church. We all need to come to grips with this. You need to remember this. When you are tempted, and you will be tempted, to be critical of your brothers and sisters. When you're tempted to be critical of the leadership in your church, of your pastors and your elders, you need to remember that these are the people that Christ loved and gave himself up for. Jesus died for the church. He purchased it with his own blood, and that is where its worth is found, that it is Christ's. Next, let's think very briefly about authority structure and administration in the church. And again, this is just a very brief overview. Because Christ owns the church, it follows that he has the right to establish its authority structure. And so Christ determines how his church will be administered in this world. Again, back to that passage in Matthew 16 in verse 19. He says to Peter and the other disciples, I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Now, again, this is language that is a bit strange to us, but in Christ's day, keys would have been a symbol of authority. The one who has the keys of the kingdom determines who should be let in and who should be kept out. So Jesus is giving the right to Peter and the apostles to exercise authority on earth. Edmund Clowney in his book on the church writes, the authority of the keys enable the apostles to declare on what terms the kingdom of heaven was opened or shut to men and women. All authority belongs to Christ. Christ has chosen to exercise his authority by means of stewards or servants. And this authority structure is confirmed and affirmed in other places. Where else in Matthew's gospel do we see Christ giving authority to the disciples? Well-known passage at the end of the at the end of Matthew's gospel, the Great Commission. Paul affirms the authority structure and tells us that it's for the benefit of the church. In Ephesians 4, 11 through 13, he says, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up the body of Christ. until we all attain to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to mature manhood, the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. And so the church authority structure is for our good, it's for our benefit. And this is assumed in other places. In Hebrews 13, verses 7 and 17, The writer says, remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. There's an assumption that there are pastors and elders over them that they must submit to. In verse 17, obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will give have to give an account. Let them do this with joy and not groaning, for that would be of no advantage to you. Again, the assumption is that there's an authority structure in the local church. We, of course, read of qualifications for elders in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1. One writer said these offices do not come from below, but from above. Even though the office bearers come from the church itself. I know that's sometimes hard to believe when you meet some pastors and elders like us. We are normal, sinful, imperfect men. But yet the Lord chooses to govern his church in this way through imperfect leadership as we will see in a moment. Edmund Clowney adds that all government in the church is stewardship. That is, its leaders are servant managers who use their authority only to advance the interests of those they represent and serve. So the church is Christ and all authority in the church belongs to him. Next, let's consider the foundation of the church. Jesus said to Peter, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Now, there's much debate over this passage about whether Christ was referring to Peter himself or Peter's confession. The Roman Catholic Church emphatically says that Jesus is referring to Peter and they use that as their justification for the Pope. We can't, we don't believe in the Pope obviously, but we can't reject that interpretation right out of hand just because the Roman Catholics hold it. Responsible commentators will agree that Jesus is referring both to Peter as a person and his confession of faith. He's referring to both. And here's the takeaway that I want you to get. The takeaway is that the church is built on a foundation of committed disciples of Christ. It's built on a foundation of committed disciples of Christ. And so he's referring to Peter here as the leader of the twelve. But what he's saying to Peter, he's really saying to all of the disciples. Ted Donnelly said, the church is built on the foundation of people committed to Jesus Christ. And John Calvin said, if we do not prefer the church to all other objects of our interest, we are unworthy of being counted among her members. Think about that. How many times today we will hear people say, well, I love Christ. I just don't love his church. I'm a Christian, but I just can't stand the church. Calvin would say that a person who says that is unworthy of being counted among her members. And so an uncommitted Christian, a Christian who is not part of a church, who doesn't love the church, is a complete and total contradiction. In fact, it's a weird kind of self-loathing because someone says, I'm a Christian, but I don't love the church. They're saying they don't love themselves because they're part of that church. And so we see that the church is built upon committed disciples of Jesus. And if Jesus loved his church and gave his life for her, who are we to say, well, I just don't love his church. That's his bride. Men, some of you understand once you're married, someone insults your wife, I mean, you're ready to fight. What does Christ think when people who profess his name say, I just don't love his bride. So the church is built on committed disciples, people who love the church. But secondly, The church is also built on imperfect people and imperfect leadership. Have you ever wondered why Jesus chose Judas? It's clear from the Gospels that he knew that Judas was not really a believer, but yet he chose him. I think he did that to show that the church is a mixed multitude that is not a perfect organization. And then if we would have read on in Matthew 16, and remember the scene, Peter makes this glorious confession that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God. I mean, can you imagine if you were there? I mean, that would have been an amazing high point for the disciples. Jesus replies, you are Peter and on this rock I'm going to build my church. There must have been an amazing moment of excitement and of joy. But we read on and we read this. From that time on Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised. And here's Peter who just made this glorious confession. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, Far be it from you, Lord, this shall never happen. But he turned and said to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. You are a hindrance to me, for you are not setting your mind on the things of God. on the things of man. This is the nature of the church in this world. This is Peter the Apostle. Peter, the leader of the twelve, completely out of step with the plan of God. He went from being called blessed to being called Satan. Jesus saying, you're a hindrance to me. You're not thinking like God, you're thinking like man. And it's a reminder to us that the church is built on imperfect people and imperfect leadership. And again, I just want to urge this caution. Satan's going to tempt you to focus on the imperfections of your brothers and sisters. of the leaders in your church. He's going to want you to focus on that. And think, who are these people? Why am I part of this organization? Here we're reminded that this is Christ's plan. He's fully aware of the fact that his church is made up of imperfect sinners. Finally, let's Briefly think about the victory and apparent failure of the church. Again, we need to pay attention to our Lord's words. Matthew 16, 18, Jesus said, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will, that's a fact. Jesus will build his church. And we read about this language of gates. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. And we have this picture in our minds often of Satan sort of attacking us and we're holding him off. But this language of gates here, this picture's an offensive operation on the church's part. We're the ones attacking the gates of hell. We're not just sitting in a defensive posture, but we are attacking the gates of hell. The church violently presses itself into this world and transforms it to the gospel of Jesus Christ. So the church will be victorious. But the problem is it just doesn't seem that way. The victory and the apparent failure of the church. We walk by faith and not by sight in this life. And it's very easy for us to look at the church and the condition that she is in and get discouraged and disheartened and maybe even embarrassed that we're part of something that seems like it's losing the battle. We need to remember these words that Jesus guaranteed the victory of the church. Zechariah 4, 6, and 10. This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel, not by might nor by power, but my spirit, says the Lord of hosts. We can't get caught up in appearances. Christ has promised that his church will win the battle. We need to accept that by faith and press forward with confidence. We're coming up on our time here, but I just want to give you a concluding thought on church membership and involvement and specifically answer this question. Do you have to go to church to be a Christian? church attendance, assuming that you are physically able to attend, is that a requirement to go to heaven? The short answer to that is no. You don't necessarily have to be a church member to go to heaven. But I want you to consider a few things as we answer this question. First of all, Christ very clearly in his word in Hebrews 10 25 commanded his people to not forsake the assembling of themselves together. And that was in reference to worship on the Lord's Day to a local body of believers. And when God constituted the people of Israel. He organized them into a visible assembly and he placed upon them a clear obligation to be in corporate worship before him. And so if a person is in Christ, they're called to participate in the fellowship of other Christians and worship God according to the precepts of Christ. We can use this very simple analogy. In a marriage, it would be a complete contradiction if I said, well, I really love my wife, but I really don't want to spend time with her. We would recognize the clear contradiction. But yet, somehow there's this argument among Christians that, well, I love Christ, but I don't want to go to church. I don't want to be with him. The second thing we have to realize is that there are 58 one another commands. One another that address not just pastors, but address all believers. In other words, we have an obligation to one another in the church. an obligation that cannot be fulfilled if we're not in a local body, a local church. Hebrews 10, 24, 25 is just one example of this. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another And all the more as you see the day drawing near. So here's the writer urging these people, you can't forsake meeting together with one another. You have an obligation to one another. If you read on in Hebrews 10, the very next section is a warning against apostasy. Apostasy is denying the faith And so the writer sees this forsaking of the assembling of themselves together, of distancing themselves from the church, he sees that as a possible first step toward denying the faith altogether. And so if a person knows all of these things, and yet persistently and willfully refuses to join the church, Would that not raise questions about the reality of that person's conversion? Perhaps a person could be a new Christian and take that position, but I think that would be highly unlikely. I'll close with this quote from R.C. Sproul. He's commenting on this issue. He said, Some of us may be deceiving ourselves in terms of our own conversion. We may claim to be Christians, but if we love Christ How can we despise his bride? How can we consistently and persistently refuse that which he has called us to join his visible church? I offer a sober warning to those who are doing this. You may, in fact, be deluding yourself about the state of your soul. Church is Christ. It's a glorious body. It's for our benefit. It's a foretaste of heaven. Let's pray together. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for Christ and his great work. We thank you that he loved us and purchased us with his own blood. So we pray, Lord, that you would Increase our love for your bride. Or that we might have right perspective that we would acknowledge that we are all sinners in a great need for Christ and his mercy and grace. May that unite us. Pray Lord that you would guard us against temptations to be critical of the church. And that we would remember your wonderful promise that you will build your church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. We praise you. We thank you. We do pray in the name of Christ. Amen. Before we take our break, we have about five minutes for questions. So any questions, please direct to Jason. I have a question about your third point about contributing problems. The consumer mentality, what's in it for you? How do you balance avoiding the consumer mentality while trying to find the right church that fits your needs and the needs of your family? I think that it's going to have to do with priorities. So the question was, how do we avoid the consumer mentality when it comes to church and balance that with finding the church that is right for us. And maybe I can ask you to, can you elaborate a little bit on the second part of the question, talking about finding a church that is right for us? Are you talking about in terms of practice of worship, or? Or maybe you're, like my family, there's a bunch of younger ones in, while we're not always going for a good Sunday school program that is one of the priorities, so that the kids can have people their age that they can interact with, even as we get older, that we have people my age in the church that I can talk to, and that we can grow and grow. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's helpful. Okay. I think, first of all, it boils down to priorities. We have to It's not wrong to think about those things, but I think our priority must be, we must understand that we are part of that visible church and therefore we need to think in terms of what is my duty, what is my responsibility to a local body of Christ. And then secondarily, I think we can then begin to think about those other things. And it's like many things in the Christian life. The answer is going to be different for everyone. You know, the Lord might be, let's say there's Church A and B, and Church A is a small struggling church, and Church B is a church that might have many young believers your age which you could fellowship with. The Lord might be calling you to Church A. They might need you and you might have to sacrifice your own desires to be to be part of Church A and to serve it and to help it. And again I come back to my own personal church planting experience. We had a core group of people who were sacrificing. It was hard. I mean, it's hard when you're in a small church and there's not a lot of people. But yet, as we saw people come in and out with that consumer mentality, if all of the people that came through and said, you know, wow, you know, I really wish we could stay here, but you don't have a youth group or you don't have any kids my age. If all the people that came through, all the people that said that would have stayed, We would have tons of people, tons of kids their age. So I think it's a balance and the answer is going to be different for everyone. Would you say that the last group of people that you mentioned, new believers who aren't in church, missionaries, people homebound, would you say that those are the people who are in your little sliver of an oval? Yes. So Sarah's question was that either new believers or people who are homebound who are not able to attend church Are they part of my pathetic diagram, this little small sliver, people who are part of the invisible church but not part of the visible church? And the answer to that is yes. Our confession says there is no ordinary means of salvation outside of the visible church. Ordinary is the key word. Thanks guys. You may get a chance. I would like to just address Daniel's question. My wife and I have had to ask that question, especially when we moved to Los Angeles, and we were the only people our age, and most everyone was from 70 to 90 years old. So I relate to that question personally. But the question that's often not asked is, what does Christ have me do in this church where I am? We are very, I was just talking to someone recently, and I remember moving from LA to here, and someone said, so do they have a church there in Colorado Springs? And I said, yeah, there's lots of churches there. But you know, I never asked the question, what would my leaving our church, how would my and Kelly's leaving our church affect the local church? So I would add to Jason's answer that you need to ask how Christ is using you in his church. Read Romans 12, read 1 Corinthians 12 about we are, the church is made up of many parts. And you're not there, you're not necessarily here in the church just to get served. You are here. under the public means of grace to feed upon Christ. You're also here under the public means of grace to encourage one another in the singing of Psalms. When you sing about the gospel and sing about judgment, you're calling your brothers and sisters, whether they're old or young or whatever, to embrace Christ with you. But you may need to be that person that is here, the sacrificial member of the church, and the Lord can bless you in that. So add to your question what I think is maybe the priority question, and that is, how does Christ will us to be involved in the local church we're in now? Okay, that's all the time we have for questions. We will take our last 30 minute break before our last lecture and then dinner time. So be back at 4.30.