Turn your Bibles, please, to Matthew's Gospel, Matthew chapter 16. I thought in light of the fact that we will be bringing in four members. Lord willing, we'll be bringing our brother Charles in next Lord's Supper Fellowship, but tonight we're going to bring four people into membership. So I want to preach on the Church of Christ. and why one should belong to the Church of Christ. Matthew 16, as you know, this is the first time that word is used in the New Testament, the word ekklesia, the word church. And we're told in verse 13 that Jesus came into a district of Caesarea Philippi. He asked his disciples, who do people say that 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 Barjona, 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." Well, let's again look to the Lord. Father, we are again thankful that we can come believing that you are who you say you are, that you are the God from everlasting to everlasting, the God of truth. Tonight we've been reminded even by the reading of your word, the God of righteousness. Perfect righteousness and everything we find in Your Word is right and true because You are the truth. And so, Lord, we pray that tonight You would sanctify us by the truth. Come by Your Holy Spirit and make the things that we have read in our Bibles, that we hear in our ears, make them more precious and real to all of us. And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen. All of us, or everyone, sooner or later asks what you would call the ultimate questions. Every person will ask them at some point in time. Who am I? What is the meaning and purpose of my existence on earth? Why am I here? Why is there so much suffering in this world? Why do people die? And how can we make the world a better place? Well, Christians ask questions too, but our questions deal with God and Christ, we ask questions like this. How can I serve God better? How can I glorify Him? How can I be more holy? And here's a question that I'm sure everyone who is a member has asked the question, but if you're not a member and if you are desiring membership, then I'm sure this is a question you should ask or will ask. Why should I join a church? That's not a question of minor importance. Dr. Mark Devers says, the concept of membership is the key to revitalizing our churches, eventually our nations, and furthering the cause around the world of Christ Jesus and his gospel, and bringing glory to God. The reason I ask the question, again, is because tonight we have five, or four, sorry, who will join us by way of membership. And again, I'm sure they've asked the question, why join the church? And to join the church, or why you would even ask that question, or why you should ask that question, is because of what the church itself is. The church is the most important institution in all the world. The church is important because Christ Himself is important. It's His church. He owns it. He's going to build it. He cares for it. He loved and died for her. And He's going to bring it home to Him there in heaven. Matthew 16, as I said, here's where that word church is mentioned. He clearly takes ownership of it. My church. And He gives us a wonderful promise, a promise of protection, preservation, the gates of hell shall not prevail against her." So, here's the question. Why belong to the church? Why join a church? And I believe the best way to answer that question is to put Jesus Christ in focus. Here's the four reasons. I had five, but I wanted to keep it more of a meditation. We're going to deal with four. Very briefly, why join a church? answers. To know Christ, to conform to Christ, to suffer for Christ, and to serve Christ. The last one was to witness for Christ, but I don't have that tonight. So, to know Christ, conform to Christ, suffer for Christ, and to serve Christ. Let's start with number one, to know Christ. Again, coming to that question why join a church, it really comes back to understanding who Jesus is. No more important institution than the church in all the world, and there's no more important person in all the world than Jesus Christ. No one greater. And when people understand who He is and know Him, the church takes on significance and importance. And nothing more foundational to living the Christian life than knowing Christ. When Jesus asks the question, who do men say that I am? Peter gives the answer. It's the right answer. Peter's right on target here. Sometimes he puts his foot in his mouth, but this time he's right on target. He gets the right answer. You are the Christ. You're the one we've been waiting for. You're the one the whole Old Testament said would come. You're the Christ. You're the Messiah. You've arrived. You're the Christ and the Son of the living God. When John describes Him in that first chapter of John 1, what does he say about Christ? He is God. He says He's the Word. He became flesh, but the Word was with God, and the Word was God. When the writer of Hebrews talks about Jesus, how does he describe Him? He describes Him as the radiance of the glory of God. And when we read our Bibles, we find out that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, who became partaker of flesh and blood. John could say, we saw Him, we beheld His glory, He tabernacled amongst us. And really, when you think about that in terms of his incarnation, it should never cease to amaze us that he became as low as low could be. He wasn't born in a palace, was he? He was born in a barn. Lowest of circumstances. And He lives, and He dies, and He rises again, and He ascends, and He intercedes, and He is building His church, and He is building His kingdom right now, this very moment. And everything rests upon Him. He deals with our greatest problem. He calls us to repentance and faith in Him. And then He brings us into His kingdom and makes us part of His church. And you can't separate Christ from His church any more than you can separate your head from your body. The church is the body of Christ. You can't separate church, His body, from His head. He is the head, but the church is His body. And one of the great reasons you and I should commit ourselves to the church of Christ is to know Him and find out as much as we possibly can about Him. If you knew or asked the question to the Apostle Paul, what was your great ambition in life? That's what he would say, to know Christ. If you turn to Philippians 3, you find that very language in Philippians 3. He puts it right here on the top of the list. It was, this great desire, this great passion in his life to know Christ. Look what he says, Philippians 3 verse 10, that I might know Him. And it's clear that he devalues everything else in light of this one thing. Look what he says earlier in verse 8, Indeed I count all things lost, for the excellence of the knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord. That was his great ambition. He wanted to know Jesus Christ and he also wanted everybody else who was brought into his family to know Christ as well. He even prayed to that end. If you turn to Ephesians chapter 3, You have one of those great prayers by the Apostle. He has several of them, even in this very letter of Ephesians. But here, in chapter 3 of Ephesians, we have one of those great Trinitarian prayers. Look how it starts. For this reason, he says, verse 14, I bow my knees. He's using, perhaps, Figurative language, it even could be literal language. He's on his knees praying. He's telling his Ephesians, when I go into my prayer closet, here's the one thing I'm praying for. Again, this is a Trinitarian prayer. It's shaped by the doctrine of the Trinity. Notice he starts off by mentioning the Father in verse 14. He goes on to mention The Spirit, in verse 16, that He would grant you to be strengthened with the power through His Spirit in your inner being. And here's the great purpose of the great burden of this prayer. Verse 17, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith. That you, being rooted and grounded, may comprehend with all the saints what is the height of the love of Christ. that surpasses knowledge. He wants them to grow. He wants them to grow in their knowledge of Christ Jesus and His unfathomable love for them. Let me ask you, is there a better subject to contemplate and to fuel and to energize the Christian life than experiential knowledge of the Savior and His love for us? There's a book on my bookshelf. I'm sure some of you have it as well. It's by Dr. Packer. It's a classic, Knowing God. It's probably the book that I go back to for whatever reason more than any other book on my shelf. But I often go back to that very first page or second page in that book. It's Packer introducing us to C.H. Spurgeon. Spurgeon at the age of 20. Spurgeon never went to seminary. Never went to a theological school. This is him at the age of 20. The sermon he preached on January 7, 1855. Here's what he says, a 20-year-old man. The most excellent study for expanding the soul is the science of Christ. Christ and Him crucified. and the knowledge of the Godhead in the glorious Trinity. If you turn to Ephesians 4, you can sense that that was Paul's great ambition again here in chapter 4, to know Him, to expand his soul by the signs of Christ and Him crucified. Here in chapter 4, he's talking about spiritual gifts. In verses 11 through 16 of this chapter, that big, long sentence, sort of like chapter one, you have that long, run-on sentence. Well, Paul wasn't probably great in terms of his... he wouldn't have been considered great in terms of his English major, perhaps, but he loved long sentences. And here he starts off telling these Ephesian Christians that Christ has gifted them. Every gift comes from the ascended Christ. Notice verse 11, and he gave and fatigued he. He's talking about Christ. If you look back at Verse 8, the ascended Christ, and he goes on to describe the nature of gifts. He will explain this wonderful diversity of gifts. He picks up that metaphor of body in several of his epistles to illustrate the diversity of gifts among the various members of the church. But he focuses upon, initially anyways, the speaking gifts. Notice what he says here. Apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Who's the author of the gifts? Christ. What are the gifts? Well, he focuses on diversity of speaking gifts and the people who represent these gifts. And then he tells us the purpose of these gifts. And it has to do with our progressive sanctification or our spiritual maturity. When God saves us, He wants us to grow and develop into mature Christian men and women. In verse 14, He talks about these gifts are given to equip and strengthen the body so that it will have spiritual stability. He doesn't want Christians to be Tossed to and fro like that kite in the wind, but to be strong and mature and stable. And then verse 13, notice back in verse 13, He gives us, you could say, the track upon which to reach maturity and stability as Christians. Verse 13, attained the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God. If you want to be a mature Christian, you have to know Him. You have to know Christ and you have to grow in your knowledge of Christ. The stronger and healthier you are as a Christian will depend upon your knowledge of Christ. Why do you find such a diversity among Christians? Some are just as weak as we can be. and some are so fruitful and useful, it goes back to Christ, your knowledge of Christ, your love for Him, and your awareness of His love for you. That's why church membership is important, so you can grow, mature, become stable, knowing your Savior. Second reason why we should join the Church of the Fellowship of Saints is to conform to Christ. Why did Christ, O God, save you? Why did He choose you from all eternity? Why did He set His love upon you in time and space? Why did He grant you repentance and faith? Why did He justify you, forgive your sins? Why did He bring you into His family by adopting you? Well, the great reason is what? Romans 8, 29, to those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to His Son. That's right. He wants you to become like His Son. That's the ultimate goal of redemption, character renewal and transformation. Remember, we lost the image of God when we fell into sin. The image of God was severely damaged, impaired, disfigured because of the fall, but salvation restores the image of God or the image of Christ because Jesus is the image of the invisible God. That should be one of the reasons why you pick up your Bibles every day and read them, asking to see more of Christ and know Him more. That's why you should gather corporately to come under biblical preaching so you'll grow in your Christ-likeness. And when you think of all of the graces that were so beautifully exemplified in Christ's life, think of the meekness, and love, and self-control, and kindness, and patience, and compassion. Will you find a humbler man than Jesus? Will you find anyone more compassionate than Jesus? Anyone who is more patient, more long-suffering, think of that first incident we have, at least it's one of the first incidents in Mark's Gospel, Mark chapter 1, one of the first miracles Jesus performed. You have a leper coming to Jesus and bowing down before him and pleading, will you cleanse me? Most people, if you ever saw a leper, what would you do? You'd run. Get out of here. Scram. Jesus doesn't run. He reaches out and He touches them. And we're told why. Moved with compassion. Moved with compassion. If you want to learn how to love people, even your enemies, look at Christ. On the cross, He can pray for His enemies. Father, forgive them. They know not what they tell. He's the great model when it comes to humility, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness. And when you belong to a church that are full of Christ-like people, think about that. Everyone sitting here, if you're a Christian, you're being conformed to Christ, right? So you're Christ-like. We're never perfectly like Christ. We'll always be imperfect because of our own sin and our own growth in sanctification. It never gets finished, this side of glory. But every one of you, every one of you, if you're a Christian, you reflect the image of Christ. Christ is patient. Aren't there people that you meet and you say, I wish I had more of that grace? Aren't there people you'd meet? I think of two men in our church who have gone through long, long bouts of suffering with their wives. And I'm amazed at the level of patience and the care. That should stir us up. I need to be more like that. When you see someone who's been under attack, there's about three pastors in my life who I knew went through a period of time in their lives where they were just hammered by lies and deceits. And I thought, man, what's going to happen to them? They bore it with such meekness, never sensed one ounce of bitterness. One man said to me, I have to become more like the Lamb who suffered in silence. And you see when you get close to people like that, you begin to see Christ, more of Christ, and you can even cry, Lord, just like Paul said, be an imitator of me as I am of Christ. Lord, make me more like that person, more like that person who exemplifies that particular grace of Christ. No better place to grow as a Christian in your likeness to Christ than the context of a local church. Why join a church? To know Christ, to conform to Christ. Thirdly, to suffer for Christ. Probably one of the reasons why church membership will never be always on the top of the list as far as the best things to do or the best place to belong is because when you sign up and become a Christian and become a member of a church, you sign up for suffering. Who wants to suffer? Health and wealth, Gospels today are all around us. People love that. They love comfort. They love convenience. Who likes suffering? Who likes pain? But if we are going to become like Christ, and if we are going to be part of his body, we will suffer. Jesus makes that a prerequisite, doesn't he? He says, you've got to pick up your cross and follow me. That's a lot of pain involved in picking up that cross. The last beatitude in Matthew 5 is really about suffering and persecution. Matthew 5, verse 10, Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you when you are reviled, and they say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. That's normative Christianity. Don't forget our Savior is a scarred Savior. Don't forget that he was betrayed. Don't forget he was mocked. Don't forget he was tortured. And most of his suffering, he did it on his own. He had to go it alone. But the church of Christ suffers together, and they often suffer as a collective whole. Read the book of Acts. Just read it. I mean, the church is birthed. In Acts chapter 2, and I'm sure once people heard about that, they were ready to go, let's sign up, let's become members of that amazing community that had this supernatural experience and all these fiery tongues and the spoken tongues and let's join up. Acts chapter 3. Suffering starts. You find Acts chapter 4. Two outbreaks of persecution by religious authorities. Acts chapter 5, more persecution, more opposition. Acts chapter 6, Stephen is martyred for his faith. Acts chapter 9, the church is ravaged by a guy named Saul of Tarsus. He is dragging Christians off from their homes, putting men and women in jail. All because They carried a different passport. Citizenship was of heaven. The Book of Revelation is another book you should read just to give us reality checks when it comes to the Christian life in the Church of Christ. The Book of Revelation almost from beginning to end is a book of conflict. And there's a change from Revelation in terms of how the conflict or the persecution is represented in Revelation as opposed to the book of Acts. In the book of Acts, it's clear who's doing the persecuting. It's men. You see the hands of men everywhere in the book of Acts, but not in the book of Revelation. You know who you see? The devil. That's who's behind it all. He's attacking the church. And Jesus knew He would attack the church. Remember what He said? The gates of hell shall not prevail against you. That's the good news. The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church. Christ will preserve His church. But the church has always, always, always suffered and been persecuted. If you've been a Christian for any length of time, Just get ready. Get ready. And the good thing about suffering is there's a lot of fringe benefits. Suffering brings you closer to Christ. Psalm 23, walking through the valley of the shadow of death, he's there with me. Suffering takes away the glibness of life. Suffering sobers you. Life just isn't a barrel of laughs anymore. My wife says to me at times, Honey, you really changed once we got married. I was a real jokester before. Believe it or not, I was. I said, Honey, life just sobered me and the ministry sobers me. Suffering also matures us, right? Home is fine. Suffering gets us ready for heaven. Isn't that why Paul could say that the affliction of this present life is momentary? He saw something of eternity, a place where there's no more sorrow and there's no more tears. And when our bodies begin to wear down and get more decrepit, we can have the hope of the resurrection. It gets us ready for that day when Christ will return and He will say, rise from the dead, all of you, just like He said, rise, Lazarus. And He will call us up from the grave. Suffering gives us the opportunity to put Christ on display. Suffering produces, it should produce, a desperate kind of praying. That's why we suffer sometimes. So, God's going to teach us how to pray. Not just with words, but with passion. Paul could pray, Lord, deliver me. from that thorn in the flesh." Three times, he said. Three times. I went to the Lord and I pleaded, Lord, deliver me from the thorn in the flesh. The church of Jesus Christ suffers. You and I will suffer. And that's why it's good to belong to the church because we suffer together. And you can also learn from your brethren how to suffer well. I met a man about two weeks ago who was suffering from exactly the same kind of disease, whatever you want to call it, that someone in our church is suffering from. And the contrast was shocking to me. His attitude was so, so bitter and angry with God. The men in our church, I've never heard them once complain against God. You see, in the church, you get up close to God's people, and you begin to see people who can suffer well. Some of the ladies in our church, you don't know the long history, but some of our ladies who've been married to unconscious men, and yet they have suffered well for decades of time. You get to see them up close. Why join a church? To know Christ, to conform to Christ, to suffer for Christ. Fourthly, to serve Christ. To know Him, conform, suffer for Him, and to serve Him. One of the reasons God wants you and I to join a church is so we can serve one another. Think of all of those one another commandments. I've said from the pulpit several times there's a hundred. I have to correct myself. I think there's only sixty, but that's enough. Sixty commandments. Sixty plus commandments. One another commandments. Be at peace with one another. Love one another. Prefer one another. Have the same mind as one another. Admonish one another. Pray for one another. Receive one another. Comfort one another. Stir up one another for good work. Confess your sins to one another. Practice hospitality to one another. One another. One another. One another. Why are they there? Because God wants us to give and serve one another. And too often in our days, people come through the church doors, they're not looking to serve. They're often looking to consume. They come as consumers. Or come as spectators. We've come to a church door as servants. Someone has suggested that every time you walk through a church door, you might want to sit in a different place. So you get to meet different people and find out about different people and begin to serve different people. And even ask yourself, before you ever sit on a pew, God, put me beside someone who I might be able to serve. God has put you here to make good use of your gifts and your graces. He wants us to put His Son on display who was the servant of servants. Doesn't have to be big stuff, does it? Front page news kind of stuff? Just be an ordinary Christian. Jesus says, cold glasses of water. I don't even think that one translation even has cold there. It just has to be a glass of water. He says, you do that in my name, you got a reward. Think of the church. There's nothing like the church. Hospitals can care for your bodies. Banks and financial institutions, they can care for your money. The gymnasium, it can help build up your body, at least for a while. But the church, the church is the only place that cares for body and soul. What a privilege to belong to a community where people actually enter into your life. The life of the sick and the disabled and the depressed and the grieving and provide healing comfort. Sometimes something as simple as one little email, one little text can be used by God to bring comfort to another believer. Jesus says, when you do that for the least of mine, you do it for me. You might never get a thank you, never get a card in the mail, an appreciation, but that's not why you're doing it, right? It's ultimately for Christ, and you're doing it for Christ, and all that He's done for you. And it's well worth it. And if you don't, If you don't think it's well worth it, just think of what's going to happen on Judgment Day when you're welcomed into His presence and He says this to you. I think it will be the greatest moment in your life. Well done, my good and faithful servants. Well done, my good and faithful servants. You join a church to serve. May God help us, brethren, to give ourselves to all of the duties and activities and reasons as to why the Church of Christ is so crucial for the Christian mind. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for your Word, for its truth, for its practicality. Help us again to take to heart these things and help All of those, Lord, who will become members here at Grace, even tonight, to become very useful, fruitful servants of Jesus Christ. May they become the strong ones, the mature ones amongst us. Use them, bless them, and we ask this in your Son's name. Amen.