Okay, so the main point that I made in that presentation was that the church is a special work of God that is distinct from the work of God in the nation of Israel. Some of the points that we looked at and you would find in the handout online and in the presentation recorded there. According to Matthew 16, we see that Christ planned to build his church sometime after his earthly ministry. He said, I will build my church, and that's a future tense verb there. And so if you want to know when the church started, it didn't start in the Old Testament. He hadn't done it yet. He said, I will. We saw that. Ephesians 2, 14 through 15 shows us that it was a result of his atonement work on the cross and also was considered to be something new, which meant it wasn't old. It wasn't something in the Old Testament. we found that it was built on the foundation of the apostles and the New Testament prophets, Ephesians chapter 2 and 3. And so if that is true, and it is, we're not questioning that. If the church was in the Old Testament, It didn't have a foundation. That's interesting. Then we saw in Ephesians 3 and Colossians 1 that it was a mystery unknown in the Old Testament. The word mystery in the New Testament is not like our English word mystery today. meaning that there weren't clues laying around in the Old Testament that we could figure out deductions from and see the church. The church just doesn't exist in the Old Testament. It was revealed in the New Testament. That's what that means. I saw that. We also noted that it really wasn't a possible entity until after Christ resurrected and ascended. So it was something that had to begin not just after the crucifixion, but also after the resurrection and after his ascension, going back up to heaven with his glorified body, if the church, and there are good brothers and sisters who think that the church started before Christ ascended, if that's true, it would have, according to Ephesians 1 and 4, it would have been without a head, because Christ became the head when he ascended and sat down at the throne of God. It would have been a headless thing, and it would have been a giftless thing. It wouldn't have had spiritual gifts that operate. So it would have been not a very developed or sensible thing if it had developed beforehand. We noted that the church is neither a political nor a national entity. We noted Matthew 22, which tells us that Jesus says that we're to give to Caesar what belongs to him, that's human government, and then we're to give to God what belongs to him. The church is not the government, and the government is not the church. Those are two different things that God has put into the world, but he did not blend them. The government is not the family, our family is not our government, and so forth. We looked at that. We also find that it's not a national or political entity in a self-defense way or tactics. John 18 tells us, Jesus says that if my kingdom were of this world, meaning if it was like the other kingdoms around here, then my servants would fight. Now, we have a right to bear arms in our country, and we have a responsibility of self-defense, you could argue, from scripture, but As a church, we should never pick up guns or weapons of any kind to get anything done church-wise. Church ministry and the Great Commission has zero to do with weapons and military strategies, okay? And if you study church history throughout history, you do find some confusing situations at times where organizations or things called the church or people called Christians who may or may not have been Christians were fighting. The churches were fighting with the Muslims or fighting with the Spanish or whatever. These fights throughout history, Jesus says, that's not how I get my work done in the church. That is not legitimate ministry practice. And then we noted at the end that the church does not displace Israel in the plans of God. When God started the church, he did not stop the nation of Israel. Now, he did put on pause some of the things he was doing with the nation of Israel and gave his primary attention to the church. God is getting his work done in the world today through the church, not the nation of Israel, but his promises to Israel are not redundant, or what's the word? Redundant's not the word. They're not done. They're not obsolete, I guess, is the word I'm looking for. When God finishes or stops what he's doing with the church, there is a day that will be the last day of the church, he will resume what he was doing with Israel. And we'll look at that someday in what's called the 70-week prophecy of Daniel and God's plan for Israel. but there is still some part of that left to go. And so God is going to get back to these promises to Israel. God is going to give them a kingdom in this world, a physical political kingdom. They will rule the world. God will be in charge of that kingdom. And eventually that kingdom will go from a thousand years to lasting forever. That's what's going to happen in a very simple form. So the church has not replaced Israel. We did note, this was an interesting observation, why is it that some churches, some denominations, and then the Roman Catholic organization as well, which is not really a church, biblically speaking. If I call it a church, forgive me, we know what we're talking about. But if the Roman Catholic organization or religion, why does that, outfit or some other churches where there even are saved people, why do they have a hard time defending Israel? The Catholic Church and Israel are not great friends. I don't know if you know that. Why is that? It's theological. Because the Roman Catholic religion and then even some other churches that we would call covenant type churches, covenant theology, If you don't understand that, we'll get to these things eventually. But the idea is that they see the church as God's replacement for the nation of Israel. They say that Israel failed, God kind of, as it were, said, okay, that didn't work, let's do the church. That's not what happened. Israel stumbled, they will get back up, but in their stumbling, God introduced the church. to get a work done that Israel couldn't get done. He will get back. But that's why, for instance, the Roman Catholic religion, why do they have priests? Why do they have these various ceremonies? Why is it that when they actually have political authority to run a government, they fit into that like a hand in glove? Why is it that they have no trouble going after theological heretics in their view and criminals all the same with the death penalty and with other judicial consequences and even fighting false religions in warfare? Why? Because they view themselves theologically as replacing Israel and they see themselves as a national and a political thing. That's the reason, it's theological. We also noted that the church does overlap with the nation of Israel spiritually in one point, when God told Abraham that through him, all nations of the world would be blessed. He was speaking of the Messiah that would be born from Abraham through the generations. And it's through that descendant, Jesus Christ, that every ethnicity, every nation in the world is blessed, and that is happening through the church. And so there is that overlap. And in our desire to be theologically balanced and accurate, we have to make sure that in saying that the church is distinct from the nation of Israel, we don't try to make the point so forcefully that we don't recognize that there is that point of overlap. And that's kind of the balance there. Okay, so we concluded with an understanding that the church is something that God introduced to the world after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. It was not mentioned or functioning before that point. Furthermore, it did not replace Israel as a nation. It does not function as a nation, and it does not borrow national protocol from Israel in its operations. The only significant overlap is the spiritual, and we talked about that. Jesus Christ is the foundation for the church, and in fact, we'll see today, the church is also called the body of Christ. That is not a term that was ever applied to the nation of Israel. So we continue our study today by making this next point and explaining it, that the church is a spiritual assembly of people that God is building in the world today. When I say assembly, let's go back to the illustration I used last time of a Lego kit. You get this box, and it has all these little bags in it with all these pieces of Legos in it, and there's an instruction manual, and what do you do with all those little pieces? Whether you just look at the front of the box and try to do this, or you actually get the instructions out and try to do this, you assemble it. That's called an assembly. When you put all those Lego pieces together, you have an assembly. Some of us might work on assembly lines. It's more of a Midwest thing. And these big assembly plants in Detroit, Michigan, we know what an assembly plant is, right? If you're from there at all, because they make all these cars, they assemble these things and they put them together. That's what God is doing in the world today with people. He's putting something new together and it's called the church or the body of Christ. And it's made of people and he's putting us all together. That's the idea. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for this truth regarding this assembly that you are putting together in this time. Thank you that you have chosen us. as pieces in this assembly, help us to fill our role, our individual roles well, and may we not fall short of the design that we fit into. May you be honored and glorified, and even today, may we understand this thing that we're a part of, the church, your body, more accurately, that we would be more responsible and appreciative of our involvement. And if there's anyone here today that you desire to add to your church through salvation, may you work in their hearts that they would put their trust in you today as Savior. In Jesus name, amen. Matthew 16, 18 says, Jesus tells us, upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. The church is something that Jesus said he would do at some point in the future. The question is, when did that happen? We've already noted it had to happen after his crucifixion, after his resurrection, and after his ascension, when he sat down at the right hand of God, victorious with his glorified body. So when, after the ascension, did the church begin? Well, let's put on our Sherlock Holmes hat, or if you prefer, your encyclopedia brown cap, or your Dora the Explorer backpack, or the Hardy Boys, Three Investigators, or Nancy Drew Shoes, whatever your thing is, put it on and let's look for the clues that we need to answer this question. I'm gonna give you the answer ahead of time, okay? The church began at Pentecost, number one, with spirit baptism. The church began at Pentecost with spirit baptism. Now, when I say spirit baptism, I will not be able to fully teach on that subject today. That word, that term is used in different ways, and my design today is not to fully treat that subject, though we will to a certain degree that I hope will be helpful. But it is a key element in the start of the church. If you look in Acts 2 in verse 47, you'll find these words. The church started and the church was active and it says, they were praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the church, there's a word ecclesia, assembly, an assembly of people. The Lord added to this assembly daily such as should be saved. The first, this is the first mention of the word church here in. the Book of Acts. And of course, the Book of Acts tells us the history of the church in its opening years. This is the first mention, I believe, of this word in Acts. Of course, Jesus used it in Matthew. He said, I will build my church. But here we see it. And here it says, the Lord added to the church. So who's doing the adding? The Lord is adding. He's assembling people now. What he said he would do, now he's building it. And that is happening in Acts chapter two through salvations. Now Pentecost, just to understand that, that is not a church thing. Pentecost is the Jewish thing. It was a holiday, a festival, a feast that the Jewish nation observed once every year, according to scripture. And that's what they were doing here. They were observing this. These were not all people who were saved. Some of them were believers, some of them were not. And Peter stood up with Jews from all over the world in this city for the purpose of that holiday, and he preached the gospel that Christ died for our sins and rose again. And many people, when they heard that conclusion drawn about the things that had happened recently at the crucifixion and their knowledge of the Old Testament, they believed it. And thousands of people at that time, in fact, believed it on that holiday. So Pentecost, it's not intended to be a denominational label or any of these kind of thing. It's simply, it's an event, it's a holiday that the Jews were observing. And it was on that day that the church started for the first time. Now, let's draw a few other clues together here. So put your hats on. I want to introduce this matter of spirit baptism. We're gonna go back to Mark chapter one in verse eight, and we're gonna add pieces and you'll see how it ties together. So bear with me. Mark 1.8, John the Baptist says, I indeed have baptized you with water, but he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, referring to the Messiah, to Jesus Christ. So he's baptizing people in the Jordan River, And what is baptism? Baptism is putting somebody under the water and bringing them up. The word is used other times of dishes and cups and platters. The Pharisees washed these things in the temple worship. And it's the same thing at home. You take a dish and you wash it. We're trying to teach our children how to wash dishes. There's a way to wash dishes, there's a way to not wash dishes, right? Taking them and sticking them under a faucet and letting them kind of hit the water in one spot and then pulling them out, that's not washing dishes. You have to put the whole thing under the water, clean it up and bring it back out that way, right? That's the word baptize, immerse, to place under and to bring up from the water. That's what John the Baptist was doing. He was baptizing these people. And he said, but there is coming one that will do more than I'm doing. He's gonna baptize you with the Holy Ghost. He's gonna place you, immerse you into the Holy Ghost. That's what he's going to do. So that's prophesied by John the Baptist in Mark chapter one in verse eight. Then notice what Jesus says in Acts 1.8. Acts 1.8, so you have two 1.8s. Mark 1.8, John the Baptist prophesies this. Acts 1.8, Jesus says, right moments before he ascends, you shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you and ye shall be witnesses unto me. So here we find that Jesus foretells moments before his ascension that he would send the Holy Spirit upon the disciples and Christian believers. And I'm equating Jesus saying, I will send the Holy Spirit upon you, to John saying, he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. And I have reasons for that, I'll show you. Acts chapter 11, verses 15 through 16. Peter is talking and he says, I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them. as on us at the beginning, and at the beginning refers to Pentecost, I'll explain that. Then remembered I the word of the Lord, Acts 1.8, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. That ties these different verses together. This is the Apostle Peter making these inferences. Why was he explaining this? I'll tell you. If you study the Book of Acts, you will find three significant times that the Spirit comes upon groups of people like this. Remember, the Book of Acts tells us about the start of the church, historically and theologically. Acts chapter two, what kind of people were in the crowd when the Holy Ghost came upon them? What holiday was being celebrated? Pentecost, what kind of people were in this crowd? Jews, right? Generally speaking, that was the idea. Pentecost, that was the day the Holy Spirit came upon Jews who believed the gospel. Okay, so the Jews understood that. Up to that point, the church was pretty much Jewish. The members were Jews who were converted to Christianity. Then when you fast forward to Acts chapter 8, you find that the Holy Ghost comes on Samaritans. And John, the apostle, goes up to investigate to see if what he heard about that was actually true. Why was that significant? Why did John have to go check that out? Because Samaritans had Jewish blood in their veins, But they also had Gentile blood in their veins. And this goes all the way back to before the Jews went into captivity to Babylon. The Babylonian Empire left some of the poor Jews and the handicapped Jews and the impoverished Jews back there. They took everyone else out. And then they moved a bunch of other people from other countries in. to mix up the population, to dilute and weaken the strength of that nation, to prevent a Jewish revolt against their government. That was how things were done back then. When Jews from Babylon, or at that point, Syria, were freed and they, or Persia, they came back to resettle that area. They discovered these people who were left behind years ago who had married in with all the Gentiles. By that point, the Samaritans had developed their own religion. It still had elements of Judaism there, but it also added other pagan ideas from all kinds of different nations into their own kind of religion. And so the Jews that moved back looked at that as a threat to their Jewish purity, ethnic purity, and they said, stay away from them. Which is why you have Samaria, as an area between Galilee, northern Palestine, and Judah, southern Palestine, and the Jews would always to get from the north to the south and vice versa, they'd walk around. They would never walk through because they never wanted to come in contact with a Samaritan that was considered unclean. So when Samaritans got saved and the Holy Ghost came on them in Acts 8, John the Apostle had to go check that out because other Jews looked at that skeptically. You mean the church? Has Samaritans in it now? What about this? And that's partially explainable because they had Jewish blood in them. So maybe, okay, we could see that. But then when you get to Acts 10, you find an extended section, Acts 10 and 11, where Peter is praying one day on a rooftop and he falls asleep and he has a dream. You ever fall asleep when you're praying? It's embarrassing. Well, you wake up sometimes, there's that little drool stain on your sofa or your whatever. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Okay, so the Lord actually used a moment like that in Peter's life. It was significant. He gave him a dream, and the dream was this. There was a blanket, and in my mind, I envisioned the stork that brings the babies, you know, not really, but that blanket's kind of tied up in his mouth, and there's a baby hanging there in the bag there. There's a blanket tied up at the corners coming down out of the sky and in it is all kinds of animals crawling around. And all the animals that are there are the ones in the Old Testament lists that the Jews were not supposed to eat because they were unclean, pork and the like. So he's looking at this and he hears a voice from heaven, take and eat. And you can see Peter there praying. And he said, no, not so Lord. These are unclean. He's probably sleeping. You know, he's having this dream, crazy afternoon dream. Well, then he has the same crazy, weird dream. It's just like a dream we have sometimes, weird dreams. He has it again, at least two times, maybe more. And then he wakes up. He's like, what in the world has been going on? And there's a knock at the door. And there's a guy from up north at a Gentile general, military general's house, who was sent. And he's supposed to go up there because he's requesting Peter to come and to tell them how to know Jesus. The timing was impeccable. And so Peter's putting this dream together, and Jews took that very seriously. He took that, the invitation, and he said, okay, I have to do this. Everything inside Peter did not want to go to a Gentile Roman general's house and invite them into the church. He didn't have any Jewish blood in him whatsoever. He went And he took some other Jews with him as witnesses, just in case anyone questioned him. He went up there and he started preaching the gospel. This man, Cornelius, had himself, his family, and his household. The household means his other military soldiers, his household servants and employees. Everyone was there. And in the middle of his message, Evidently, people believed in their hearts in the middle of the message. He didn't even get to the end. The Holy Spirit came upon them and the same signs, the visible signs indicating the invisible transition that was happening, those same things happened. So when he went back to Jerusalem and the Jews cornered him, Christian Jews, Peter, did we hear that you went all the way and you gave the church, the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles? What are you doing? This is outlandish. Peter said, whoa, okay, wait, I had a dream. I had a dream and it happened like more than one time, this dream that I had, more than one time. Guy knocked on the door. Circumstantial evidence here. I went in. I took witnesses. Guys, you went with me. You saw what happened, right? And I was preaching. And just to be clear, the same thing happened there that happened at Pentecost. I was there. I was the preacher. Remember Pentecost? Don't blame me. I didn't do this. God did this. I didn't want to do it. I mean, Peter, you find out later in Galatians, he still has trouble. He's sitting with the Jews at a feast and Paul has to stand up in front of him and say, Peter, stop this ethnic division nonsense. He has to confront him publicly. If Peter didn't think of this, God did this. That's Acts 10 and 11. So as he's telling the people who are skeptical of what happened up there in Cornelius's house, what he says is this, I began to speak, the Holy Ghost then fell on them just like us at the beginning. And then it's at that moment, the Lord reminded me here of how he said, John baptized with water, you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost. So what happened there and what happened in Acts 2 was the Holy Ghost coming on, it was the Holy Ghost baptizing. That's kind of, if you can digest that, you'll see all those pieces coming together there. So the church started at Pentecost and then was introduced distinctly to Jews, half Jews, non-Jews in this progression that shows us the church is for anybody. The Holy Ghost will come on anybody. And when does he come on them? Baptize them when they believe. It is the thing that happens the moment a person believes on Jesus Christ for salvation. That is what happens. And it's something that is unique to the church. It did not happen in the Old Testament. It's what makes the church the church. It brings everybody together under the auspices of the same Holy Spirit. We are joined together spiritually, not just doctrinally. It's not just that we've all made the same decision to look forward to the Messiah by faith, that's Old Testament. The same decision is made looking back to the Messiah, but when we make it, we actually receive a spiritual union that places us into this thing called the church. It is something that is directly tied to the throne of God. Jesus is the officiating head, and it includes all of us. There's a lot there that we can't fully explore, but that's the simple idea. One more verse, 1 Corinthians 12, 13. Remember, the book of Acts gives us the story, the history, and some theology, but primarily it's a story of what happened. It's a factual account of what happened when the church began. The epistles are sort of like the manual that give us explanations for what happened and how things should continue to happen. Do the epistles explain what the book of Acts introduces? So when you see events in the Book of Acts, sometimes you can find explanations for them in the epistles. Here in 1 Corinthians 12, 13, here's what Paul says. For by one spirit, theological here, are we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, whether bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one spirit. That kind of ties together the summary that I just gave you from the Book of Acts of this historical progression of what was being introduced and what we see from the Gospels and Jesus in Acts 1 as being the starting of the church. A lot was just said right there. Does anybody have any questions in particular, focused on anything that I said? If I say, does that all make sense, you all nod your heads and I will partly believe it. Brother Roberts. Most of us. Yes. Yes. Yes. You don't see the visible signs every time of cloven tongues. Those were things designed to point out, no, what's happening here? Something's happening here. It happened when they got saved. And Paul says in Corinthians, that's what happens to all of us. He said, I didn't have any cloven tongues of fire. That's not the point. The theological thing is what happens to all of us. When we believe, we receive the word of the gospel, we get placed into the Holy Spirit. Jew, Gentile, Samaritan, all the same. That is audacious. To the Jews stepping back and seeing that, all throughout history since Abraham, it's been the Jews. And if you want to be a Jewish proselyte, you have to come in and follow the same rituals as them and they'll let you in. This was not Jewish proselytism. This was not becoming a Jew. It was a Jew, a Gentile, and a Samaritan all submitting to the same gospel and having equal terms. Eventually, and this is getting a little off track, you get to Acts 15, where you have the debate really rise to a head between the primarily Gentile church in Antioch of Syria and the primarily Jewish church of Jerusalem. The discussion of, well, should the non-Jewish Christians follow the same laws that the Jews feel compelled to follow? And the point is, you can still follow some of these laws, but not for righteousness. Even a Jew doesn't have to, and the Gentiles do not have to. There's a lot that could be said there in Acts 15. I don't want to get into all of that. But that was the issue that Acts is exploring. And it's showing us how over time this thing was explained, unpacked, and resolved. And the church moved forward. And the Jews that did not believe, what you find became the real bad guys the rest of the book. It wasn't the Roman government. They were chasing Paul everywhere, trying to kill him. They were persecuting the Christians because they didn't submit to the gospel. They were stuck in the national ethnic perspective of what God was doing in the world. Brother Burns? Jesus could care less. He walked right through. And his disciples said, Lord, what are you doing? He went through, he sat down at a well, he talked to a lady. He let a lady draw water for him and serve it to him. That was like passing on her impurity, as far as anyone was concerned. She handed the water to him. He drank out of the cup that she had. He was making a bold statement, foreshadowing his perspective. In various shades and ways, the Roman Catholic religion certainly does. Anglicanism would. Lutheranism, Presbyterianism, Protestantism in general does. We mentioned Martin Luther and the Mighty Fortress song. Martin Luther, you have to understand this in context. He is a hero because he stood up against the Roman religion and stood on justification by faith. And we can't expect too much of one man. But the fact is Martin Luther didn't fix everything. He didn't get rid of infant baptism. He didn't get rid of some of these things in his own theology. And so some of these things still blend over into Protestantism, though they believe in justification by faith. Even in Lutheranism, we have some previous Lutherans here, it's possible to be saved in Lutheranism, but there's still so many vestiges of the old Roman-ish ways, that the gospel is not always very clear. That's why it's not clear when you talk to a Lutheran sometimes, are they saved or not? The gospel's there, but it's not clear. It's still muddied up by some of the things that Luther didn't ever get to letting go of in his theology. But general Protestantism is that way. By the way, a Baptist is not a Protestant. I don't have time. We'll talk about that a little bit more on our Sunday morning series coming up. There are many Protestants going to heaven, so don't get me wrong on that, but Baptists are different. There are some doctrinal things tied to that. Brother Donovan? So JWs would fit into that as well. A good observation. Brother Atai? I have a question about the thing that you said that you didn't have. Obviously, from your understanding is that you don't get to say that that should go to the general customer. Some people take that thing off of you, meaning that now, I think it's not the point. The point is much bigger and much deeper than that. But I do think a byproduct of all of this, if you look at Acts 15, the church is not obliged or required to follow the kosher food laws. In fact, Paul himself says, even food offered to idols, you can eat it because the idol isn't anything anyway. But if you have a problem with that or there's a brother who will stumble, you're totally free to not eat food offered to idols too, and that's probably the better choice. Another time he says, look, to the person that eats, he eats, just make sure you're thanking God. And if you don't eat, just make sure you're thanking God. You can eat meat. These different meats can be eaten. It's interesting in Acts 15, as this is all kind of officially unpacked, because it's the question of the day. How do these Jewish laws and Gentile ways kind of come together in the church? and the conclusion, and James actually, who we're looking at in the morning, he gives the official presentation as the church, a pastor in Jerusalem, the conclusion of the council, so to speak, and he says that they don't have to be circumcised, they don't have to follow all these laws if they're a Gentile Christian, but if you're a Gentile Christian, please abstain from fornication, things offered to idols, and eating food with blood in it. He's referring to ceremonial practices. So he's not saying by no to the Jewish laws, kosher laws and so forth for the Christian who's a Gentile. We're not saying anything a Gentile does is fine. There are things Gentiles do that are not fine. And he was referring to some pagan practices that occurred. Ritual type practices, eating blood. It doesn't mean you can't eat a medium rare steak today. That's not the point. There were some religious practices involved. Fornication. Paul spends a lot of time in his writings addressing this matter. Because the Gentiles still had, it was such a part of their lifestyle, fornication was. He had to teach them doctrinally. You don't have freedom to commit fornication. That is not a part of the Christian life. You can't say I'm a Gentile, I can do that. So there were these pagan things that also had to be rooted out. This is key for mission strategy, the contextualization that's out there today, this kind of theological talk. When you go into another culture to church plant or to start a ministry to reach people, You have to be careful on one side not to carry American Christianity in, the patriotism and the American constitution. This has nothing to do with the gospel, right? We take the gospel in. We also have to make sure that we're discerning and we don't just say because this is the kind of music that they do and because this is just the way that they don't dress and because this is some of their practices, they can do anything they want as long as they're worshiping the God of the Bible. A person on the front lines of missions realizes that you don't bring your Americanism in as a part of the gospel, but you also don't give blanket permission for them to do anything that they do culturally. They need to change some things. They need to put some clothing on their bodies, and they need to adjust some of their musical performances that they do. You don't just take the music you use to worship Satan and do it with Christian words. So we have to hit both sides of the balance, and that's the challenge. but we've kind of gotten off on something else. But this is a challenge we face in the world, bringing the church to the world, anyone in the world. So, okay, good questions. The church is not a physical structure or a superstructure for an international formal organization. It is a spiritual thing. It is what is true in our hearts. Number two, it is called the church. It is called the churches. And I give you some references here. I'll just read them. Acts 5 11 says, great fear came upon all the church and upon as many as heard these things. And here you have the word ecclesia used again with the article, the church, this thing that God, Jesus said he would build. Acts 9.31, then had the churches rest throughout all Judea. So now you have the word church used, but now it's used in a plural way, which is an interesting development. So you go from the church that we're all a part of to churches. Well, how does that play out? We'll look at that. 1 Corinthians 12, 27, 28, now you are the body of Christ. and members in particular. So together, we're the body of Christ. Individually, we're members of that. God has set some in the church, first apostles and prophets and teachers and evangelists and so forth. So there's different gifts that he gives, but we're all members. Ephesians 1.22, he hath put all things under his feet, there he is sitting at the throne in heaven, post-ascension, and gave him to be the head over all things to or by the church. So his authority in the world spiritually today comes through the church. Or the church is, however you want to look at that. Both are accurate views that come together. So to summarize, God is doing a special work in the world today, an assembly of people he's putting together called the church. It's also called the body of Christ. It is made possible through spirit baptism. His spirit joins us together, Jew, Gentile, it's all the same, who've trusted the gospel for salvation. So that's, here's the next question then. What does it take to become a part of this assembly? So point three, there are qualifications for membership. Acts 2 41, I think your notes say 2 42. It should be 241. It says, then they that gladly received his word, that's salvation, were baptized, that's their testimony, the same day there were added unto them about 3,000 souls. And then, of course, if you go down later to Acts 247, and the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. So then he calls this thing happening, the church. The first qualification we see here in Acts 2.41 from the very beginning is gladly receiving the word, or I've called this Christian belief. You have to believe the gospel. You have to be born again. You have to be saved, regenerated. So they gladly received the word and were added. You could, of course, look at John 3 and look at the explanation of being born again and so forth. But when God gives you this spiritual life at regeneration, you are placed into union oneness with Christ by the Holy Spirit, and you're also placed into the church. Letter B, you also have this qualification of Christian baptism. They that gladly received the word, his word, and were baptized, the same day there were added unto them about 3,000 souls. So this receiving the word and then being baptized are key elements here. Notice down in Acts 2.47 where it says, again, praising God, having favor with all the people, the Lord added to the church daily those that were being saved, or such as should be saved. To be added to the church, generally speaking, the church at large, I'm gonna call it, the big thing that God is doing in the world, putting all of us into, what is the key element there? You have to be saved. Baptism is kind of that other element that is the ingredient needed to become part of a local church, a congregation within the big church. Does that make sense? People don't just walk into the church and say, I, in my heart, trusted Jesus Christ. Were you baptized? Did you make that public the way God wanted you to? Anyone can say this. Were you baptized, though? So let me say it in a very simple way. You become a part of the body of Christ and the world at large, the thing that he's doing called the church, when you get saved. Baptizes you with the spirit. When you submit to Christian baptism, that's when your testimony is clear to the people watching, and that's when you can be added to the church formally in a local way. That make sense? It's very simple. But let's talk a little bit more about this worldwide church at large idea in the local congregational level. I think that's something we're probably interested in. Number four, by the way, we'll get back and we'll talk more about membership and baptism either in an upcoming session or in the course of our Baptist discussion. So these are topics, I'm introducing a lot of things right now and I have no time to give full explanations for all of them. This is the problem. When I was a Bible college teacher, I had hours to lecture. So I'm trying to condense this down and then we can kind of build and unpack later. The church functions as the body of Christ. Point four. Think of it this way. Jesus Christ on the earth was one person. That was how he was represented. When he died, was resurrected, and ascended to heaven, he sent the spirit, equal with him in the trinity, same in essence. He sent the spirit with the authority of the resurrection. Anyone who believes on him is placed into union with him through the Spirit, and Christ is represented in the world today by more than one person. Equally, by every person who's joined with him through salvation. Every member of the church at large in the world today is an equal partner in the Great Commission, is equally important, equally accepted, and has the same full authority as Jesus Christ. I do not have more spiritual authority regarding the gospel and the Great Commission than you do. We all do, regardless of ethnicity or any other such thing. we're all one with Christ because we've all been placed into the same spirit. And that is what gives us the authority we have. When I give someone the gospel, I have authority to do that. And that act is backed up by the throne of heaven and the power of the resurrection. That's powerful. All of us have that access and that authority. Oh, the church at the worldwide level in which we're all a part through the baptism of the spirit, which happens at salvation. Letter A, this is at the worldwide level. Ephesians 1, 22 through 23 says, he hath put all things under his feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. Is that just talking about one congregation? How many times can you use the word all here? It's all, all, and all, and all. I mean, all the churches, all the people, all the Christians in the world is what we're talking about here. 1 Corinthians 12, 13. For as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body. How many times can you say this? It kind of says the same thing a couple times in one half sentence. So also is Christ. There's only one Christ, right? For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body. Redundancy here, but there's trying to make the point. Whether we be Jews or Gentiles, bond or free, we have all been made to drink into one spirit. How many bodies of Christ are there in the world today? One, just like there's one Christ, there's one spirit. And all of us are in that body. There's only one body of Christ in the world. There's only one Christ, one spirit. Okay. Hebrews 12, 23 broadens this even further in a sense. He says, 12, 23 in Hebrews, to the general assembly and the church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven. And God, the judge of all, unto the spirits of just men made perfect. Sounds like there's a list in heaven of all the people who are part of this thing called the body of Christ. So that's kind of the idea. So this is the church at large. Some people theologically, a lot of times you'll see this referred to in theology books and so forth as the universal church. I use that term sometimes. But let us be clear what that means and doesn't mean. First of all, the word universal church is not in the Bible anywhere. It's a word that theologians use to describe a concept that has different features and so a label is given to refer to all those features at once theologically. Some people have no time for the term or no time for the concept actually. Some desire to remain entirely distant from the Roman Catholic religion. And of course, Catholic means universal worldwide. And they want nothing to do with that. And so they refuse to use the term universal church. That's fine. But what they will even do sometimes is not even admit the concept. And that's not fine. The Bible does talk about this thing around the world. It's one body. If you want to be a real, real purist, you could say, I don't believe in the universal church, I just believe in the body of Christ. You can do that. I use universal church because it's used. But I'm not talking about Roman Catholicism. I'm also not talking about ecumenicalism. This is a problem some people have, and so they won't use the term or the concept even. and the idea that all religions all lead to the same place and we just all need to get along together and disregard our doctrinal differences and just kind of get along. That's non-biblical. We need to separate from false doctrine, keep the gospel pure, and be careful regarding these things. Just because something calls itself a church doesn't mean I sit down and dialogue and pray just the same as I would with any other brother or sister in Christ. You'll never see a Roman Catholic priest standing up here at Faith Baptist Church giving any sort of message, okay? That's ecumenicalism. That's not the universal church doctrine, though. Also, some people, they have an aversion to this idea totally because they're afraid of what we might call church hopping. People who say, well, I'm a member of the Universal Church. I'm not beholden to any particular congregation. That's a cop out, okay? We're gonna look at sometime in the future about our responsibility to be accountable to a local congregation. Yes, there is a worldwide thing called the church, the universal body of Christ. But that's not practical, that's theological. The practical element is the churches, the local churches, the smaller congregations. That's how the church works. Any organization understands this, especially Jesus Christ. He's the master administrator, right? You have a large organization like Chase Bank or something, you don't have a bunch of employees who say, I don't answer to anybody. I just answer to the guy who's in charge of Chase. It doesn't work that way. You have to be committed to a particular division and a particular group within the group. That's how the church works as well. There are local congregations. So I have Good friends, and I know of good men who resist any idea of this universal church or full church in the world today. I can appreciate not wanting to use the word universal church. I'm fine with it if you understand it right. I'm simply referring to Ephesians 1, 1 Corinthians 12, Hebrews 12. That's what I'm referring to. But I will admit this point. The universal aspect is not the emphasis of the New Testament. The emphasis of the New Testament is local congregations. I can make that case. I think people overstate that case by ignoring the other aspect of the body of Christ. I refuse to ignore it. By the way, here's how that helps. It helps me theologically if I believe in the universal church to let an evangelist from another church come in and preach. It is theologically inconsistent To say I do not admit to any fuller idea of the church. If the Bible says that an evangelist or a pastor is given to the church to equip the saints, then he can only talk to the church that he was given to, right? To which church was Apostle Paul given to in his gift? Antioch of Syria, that church is gone. We still preach from the Bible. His gift was given to the church at large, right? You ever read a book from another gifted person, a pastor of another church? Can you theologically do that? You are theologically inconsistent if his gift has no effect on your life whatsoever. But if you realize that God is doing something bigger in the world than just your congregation, you are forced to be humble and realize God is working other places too. And I'm a part of that. And that gives me theological grounds to bring other guest speakers in, to support a missionary from another church and so forth, and enables me to be theologically consistent. However, the primary emphasis is local church cooperation. That's the emphasis of the New Testament. Acts 11.22 refers to the church at Jerusalem, specific location. Acts 13, the church at Antioch of Syria, another location, the church there. Then you look in Revelation 2-3, we don't have time to do this, there are seven different local congregations that seven different little mini epistles are written to and they're condensed and collected into Revelation 2-3. There's a specific message for each individual congregation there. You have so many references to local churches that the list is so much longer than the list for the body of Christ in the world at large. Romans 16.5, get this. See if you pick up this little interesting thing here. Where's the location? It's not even a city. Romans 16.5 says, likewise, greet the church that is in their house. Colossians 4.15, salute the brethren which are in Laodicea and Nymphos and the church which is in his house. So a church is a thing that can be defined locally by the place that it primarily assembles. We don't meet in a house, we meet in this brick structure. Sometimes the church is met in a lecture hall, like the school at Tyrannus is one example, not Tyrannosaurus Rex. But there's a guy named Tyrannus, he owned a lecture hall as a public school, basically, and the church met there because the synagogue kicked them out. They met in synagogues sometimes, the church met in the catacombs, in underground burial yards to stay away from public notice. There is nothing magical about meeting in a house. The key is that you assemble in a location. I can make a very good case for the importance of believers meeting regularly in a particular location and identifying with the group that does that. Otherwise, who is a pastor supposed to pastor? Anyone who wants to walk through? No, there has to be a level of familial, family commitment to the local congregation. So churches met in various locations, in cities, towns, and even more specifically in certain spots in those cities and towns, houses, synagogues, and so forth. Theologically speaking, God is doing a worldwide thing today called the church, and you're a part of it. That's why you can be encouraged when you read different magazines and so forth about what's happening in Russia and what's happening in Thailand. You're a part of this. But practically speaking, God is building his church at the local assembly level. It's common for people to say that this is, they believe in the local church. People will say, you'll hear this sometimes, I'm a local only person. I don't believe in the universal church, I believe in the local church. Okay, you can help me out and jump ahead and tell me that the word universal church is in the Bible, I'll agree with that. So can I finish the discussion? You know the word local church isn't in the Bible either. So we don't have an argument. But I can make a very clear case that there is something bigger in the world that God is doing. You're a part of it because of spirit baptism. I mean, we had a family this last week in Chicago, and if they went to another church there, they are not accountable to that church. But they can walk in and be blessed by that church just as if they were here. Because of that theological grid. But, call it whatever you want, local church, that's not in the Bible, by the way, but you can call it that, we know what we're talking about. A church that meets in a place, in a particular spot. That's how the church works. And that's practically, not theologically, but practically how God does what he's doing in the world at large theologically. Does that make sense? I mean, I've unloaded a bunch of stuff on you today. Really more of an overview and a summary. Any last questions here? I have lived for the last, except for this last year, so going back now before I came here, in the theological realm, I had to deal with students coming into my class from different Baptist churches. Baptist pastors can be a little cranky and have some interesting views on things. All of us do. I'll have my views corrected at heaven someday. If you're not a Baptist pastor, this is an over-stereotype, you get your doctrine from headquarters and they give you a little manual and you just preach what that says. But that's oversimplification. Baptist pastors have interesting ideas. Every Baptist pastor has at least one interesting idea usually. And that's why it's helpful for pastors to read broadly and benefit from the church at large anyway. Some pastors, some students coming, they believe what I'm saying. Other students came in and their pastors were local only guys, no universal church. And I had to weed through all this in a way that didn't cause division in their churches and yet still begged the point Maybe we can set the labels aside. but we can't ignore the verses in the Bible that give us the broader aspect. And I love that broader aspect, though it's not the emphasis, because it helps me to be theologically consistent in so many things, reading publications, writing them, having guest speakers come in, supporting missionaries. You take that away, and I ask some of these guys, you're being inconsistent. How can you be local only and have a conference that invites all the people all around to come? How can you write a book about your theology and sell it online to members of other congregations? That's undermining their pastors. It's a hard question to answer, right? But we cannot just park on that. We have to realize the emphasis is local accountability, local practice, local functioning. Brother Roberts. I'll try. From a historical vantage point, what we call Baptists were people who were not coming out of the Catholic Church, historically speaking. They were people on a different track who are interacting with the scriptures themselves and coming to beliefs that were distinct from what was happening in the Reformation. They are not products of the Reformation. They are products of people studying their Bibles separately, generally speaking. You can't look at Baptist heritage and follow it on a timeline and bump back into Martin Luther or Zwingli or Calvin or these kinds of people in that sense. If you are a family camp, we talked about this. It was a key point I made in my one session. Let me try to make this really short. It's a powerful, important point. Having complete copies of the Bible in our language, or even in Greek and Hebrew available to us today, is not something that we are guaranteed. It's a luxury. The early church only had what was available to them. The Old Testament was chained to a desk in the synagogue. That's why they had to be able to have access to a synagogue. That's where the Old Testament was. It's the only way they could get to it at that point. They had availability sometimes to some of the letters that were floating around and eventually they got copied. All of this can be answered in this way, the same way they did in the Old Testament. Even in the Old Testament, the scripture, except for some things that were copied and maybe worn on their heads, little rolls, were back in the temple or the tabernacle. That's where the scripture was. And you would show up for worship on the Sabbath day or holidays and festivals, and that's where you got your Bible digest. It was read, it was explained, it was preached, it was taught. And that's where, when the Bible says, These words shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate on them day and night. They shall be in your heart. You should talk about them to your children. Meditation is moving your lips and saying the words over and over and over. It's what you do for an exam in medical college or any college. You say them over and over again. And for all the Bibles that we have available to us in our houses, and all the translations, and all the renditions, and all the bindings, and all the study help, The Bible is mostly on our shelves, and it's less in our hearts than it was for the people who had to walk out of church. See, if you were back in these times, on the fringes of church history, or in the Old Testament, you would walk out of church today saying, wow, pastor said a lot of things, a little bit too much, actually. Let's focus on James, okay? James chapter one, verse 11. Be not a judge, okay? And then on the drive home, hey, can you say that first phrase? I can't forget it because I don't have it written down anywhere. You didn't have little notes of paper to carry around. You'd have to keep talking about it. Keep talking about it. The memory might not have been word perfect, but it was there. We say, oh, OK, that's fine. I don't have to write anything down today because I have it on here or whatever. I've got it. That's a cop out. And the blessing that we have in having complete copies of the scripture actually, if we're not careful, we're letting it rob us of putting it in our hearts. Which is why I have one verse in each bulletin now at the very beginning. That's one verse taken out of the morning message to aid us in giving us at least one verse to talk about even though it's in our printed Bibles. Let's pretend like we don't have printed Bibles and work on that verse, talk about it as a family. So we're blessed today. The promise is that the words of the Bible would never be destroyed. They're all present today in the world, but they're not always available to the people of God at all times. We're just blessed.