The pattern of the people in the early church was that they “steadfastly devoted themselves to the apostle's doctrine, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayers. Is this your pattern? We want everyone to see the beauty and functionality of the church, and for those who are not, they would see what they are missing.

Welcome to the Church and Family Life podcast, Church and Family Life Exists to Proclaim the Sufficiency of Scripture. And today we're going to talk about the centrality of the church and we're going to address the matter of the position that the church holds in your life. Is it a side thing? Is it a central thing? And we want to talk about the centrality of the local church in our lives.

So, Jason, we've talked about this in a lot of different ways over the years. That's true. Yep. Yep. And we've been in local churches together for a long time.

Yeah. To preach this and try to practice it. Yeah. Like, we've been together in church life almost your whole life long. So I think I just want to start by citing the practices of the early church.

In Acts 2 42, They steadfastly devoted themselves to the Apostles' doctrine, to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and prayer. It was a central part of their life. It was their life. And I think one of the reasons we want to do this is we just want to encourage people to make the church the center of their life, not something on the periphery of their life. Yeah, amen.

I think, I believe The first time church is mentioned in the New Testament is Matthew 16. We know it as Peter's great confession. Let me just read it. Matthew 16 verses 15 through 18. Jesus said to them, but who do you say that I am?

Simon Peter answered and said, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus answered and said to 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 also say to you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it." So here you have this word translated to church, it's the first occurrence. Jesus calls it his own, I will build my church and the gates of Hades or the gates of hell will not be able to prevail against this church. So Jesus is speaking of an institution that is His institution and that not even the gates of hell will be able to prevail again.

So you get some sense of the magnitude of this institution that Jesus is committed to building. Right. It's the only institution on the planet that Jesus is building. It makes it the most important institution. And so with the towering significance of the church, and we're here to advocate for the towering significance of the local church, We might talk about the distinction between the two, but I think we're talking about making the local church the center of your life.

Right. And in what I just read in Matthew 16, it's clearly used as the universal church, the body of Christ across all periods of time, across all geographies. It's also, that word is used in another way in the New Testament, which is the local church. And the local church is actually the one that matters on a day-to-day practical level. The Universal Church is wonderful theology.

It's true, but you don't interact eyeball to eyeball with the Universal church. It's really the people in this local expression of the universal church, which is a local body that has its own elders, that is self-governing, and it's the place where you really live out the one another's. And that's why Acts 2 42 was a decent place to start because You're talking about people who are steadfastly devoting themselves To particular things these things are tests of Christianity. These are these are marks of true Christianity true Christians engage themselves steadfastly in these matters. Now Jason, I want people to know what they have in a local church.

I want, at least I want the people in our church to understand what a treasure the local church is. And I also want them to know what they're missing. If either they're A, taking it lightly, or B, they're not part of the church because they're not part of Christ, because they're at church listening as an outsider. So I think those are the two things I want people to see more than anything. Yeah, 1st Timothy 3, Paul says this, and 1 Timothy 3, 14 and 15.

These things I write to you, he's writing to Timothy, though I hope to come to you shortly. But if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." So here again God is laying claim to the church. It's His, the church of the living God, and he calls it the pillar and ground of the truth. The church is where we're established in the truth, and it's made to help us make progress in the truth. God's ways are so much higher than our ways, his thoughts are so much higher than our thoughts, and we need to be recalibrated by his truth.

And the church is really the context where that happens, probably more than maybe any other place. Yeah, and you just mentioned one of the images, one of the metaphors of the church, a pillar. The church is a pillar. And there are, there are so many metaphors for the church. You know, God gives us different ways to understand this beautiful, complex, very rich institution.

You know, on the one hand, the church is a body. On the other hand, it's a nation. It's a holy nation. On the other hand, it's a household. It's a family.

It's a flock. It's all these things. You know, God wants us to understand how rich a treasure that is. And it was interesting, I was talking to a couple of young men at church just yesterday about these metaphors. And one of them said to me, you know, Mr.

Brown, these passages, these metaphors make it very clear that there's hardly a line at all between what it means to be a Christian and what it means to be in the church. It is there a line because like if, you know, the church is a body with a head, and the Christ is the head, and if Christ is the head and you're part of the body, you are in Him, and then you are also knit and joined together with believers. So in that metaphor, there is no line. You're part of the head and you're part of one another. You're part of a church.

Right. Christians who are not part of a local church is a foreign idea to the New Testament. The New Testament doesn't even know about those kind of Christians. Let me give you another text of scripture. It's from Hebrews 10 verses 24 and 25.

And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the day approaching." A couple of comments on that. One is, it's an exhortation not to give up meeting together. We translate it church, the Greek word is actually ecclesiast, and it means you called out to gather. Gathering is really central to the definition of what it means to be the church. We meet together.

And then the other thing that's noteworthy here is that you see one phrase twice just in these two verses and it's the phrase one another. Let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works. So Christians are supposed to stir up love and good works in one another. And then it says here, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching. So we all need encouragement, exhortation in our lives, and we're to do it to one another when we assemble.

It's part of the reason why we're called to gather and not forsake the gathering. Well, so then let's talk about this. Then since, you know, since we've advanced to levels of technology and we now are able to have a Zoom church. How do you do these things in the Zoom church? Yeah, speaking of things that are foreign to the New Testament, a Zoom church is foreign to the New Testament.

And in one way, we should be glad that technology allows us some alternatives when there's a snowstorm or hurricane, and it's just like it's impossible to meet together. But in another sense, it's dangerous because you can think of those things as the same thing as actually meeting together in person. And they are not the same thing. It is a poor substitute from eyeball to eyeball. Well, you can't actually practice Christianity on Zoom.

The things that God calls Christians to do and be to one another, the things that God calls the church together to do, they just can't be accomplished remotely. It requires relationship. It requires knowing one another. You know, how do you weep with those who weep when you're on Zoom? You don't know who's weeping.

You don't know. You're watching a preacher. I think this would be a reasonable analogy. Zoom is to local church life, as Facebook is to home life. Facebook, you put only what you want to be seen and to report out there.

Everybody's living their best life on Facebook. If you're going to the home, maybe not so much. A little more difficulty there, but also there are many more blessings there. Zoom is sort of like that. It's the equivalent in local church life.

You only get what comes through the pipe, and actually Christians need a lot more than that. Yeah, they need one another, and they actually need one another in different places in their lives. So When God assembles the church, He brings the young, the old, He brings the mature, the immature. God designed the church so that you actually need to be with immature people. You actually need to be with people who, they might be impolite.

You need to be with people who might shoot their mouths off. You might need to be with people who ignore you because we're all growing into one body. And the mature can help the immature, but we need one another. And the pictures of church life, the relational aspects, they just, they require a face-to-face life. Yeah.

Proverbs says that if you want a clean stall, don't have an ox, you know. But if you want strength, If you want strength, you get the ox and the strength and the messiness that comes along with an ox, and I think that you can definitely apply that to local church life. Let me give you one more text of Scripture, and it is Ephesians 4, starting in verse 11. And he himself, Jesus, gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ." So that's a lot of words and a lot of phrases. Paul does that a lot in his letters.

They're all rich. And a summary of that would be, God has placed these ministry gifts, there's five of them in the local church, to help us grow up to be like Jesus. That's essentially what that's saying. God has actually implanted gifts into the local church to help me make progress in the faith and to become more like Jesus. If you exempt yourself from the church, you exempt yourself from gifts that God has given for that purpose.

Right, and the way that the New Testament presents this is that the body builds up the body. In other words, each member of the body has an effect. And that's why we have such a great responsibility to care for our own souls, so that we cause the body to grow, that we are an influence on the body because we are growing. If you have a Christian who's not growing, the body won't be growing as it could grow. So, and of course, with pastors, let's just say pastors aren't growing.

Let's say pastors aren't repenting. Let's say pastors are into pornography. How about that? Does that have an effect on the body? Absolutely, it does.

So, the body builds up the body. You know, we're an organic entity and we're absolutely intricately connected. Scott, I know we're running low on time, but we can't end without just me giving a personal testimony. So you performed, Janet, and our wedding, Janet, my wedding 30, almost 31 years ago, and you've been saying what we're talking about today to everybody who would listen to you for all the time that I've known you. And we bought what you were selling a long time ago.

I'm so glad we bought what you were selling. We really have, to a greater or lesser extent, built our marriage life, schedule, our home life, our parenting, around local church involvement. And I wouldn't go back for a second and do it another way. It's been an important... And you know our history.

It hasn't always... I mean, there's been conflict at times, there's been hardships, but just taking as a whole, I wouldn't go back in time and do it another way. It's been so important in the health of our family life. That's so good. Yeah, we did that together all these years.

It's been a blessing. Hey, we did all we could to devote ourselves to the Apostles' doctrine. We placed ourselves under teaching all the time. And we devoted ourselves to fellowship and the breaking of bread. And we wish we had prayed a lot more.

But these things are blessings. You should build your whole life around the local church. And just as we wind this up, my counsel to people has always really been the same. Don't add the church life onto your life. Start with church life and then fit other things around your church life.

Get the big things in first so that you've got room for other things. You can do lots of other things, but you can't miss the big things. Somebody described it, you know, like your life is like a jar. You want to fill that jar, first of all, with the most important things so that you have room for the most important things. So build your whole life around the Church of Jesus Christ.

You know, don't decide every Sunday morning whether you're gonna go to prayer or you're gonna go to church. Decide one time. Don't decide every Wednesday night whether you're gonna go to prayer or not. Decide one time and go. Just make it part of your life.

Make the local church the center of your life. Hey, thanks for joining us on the Church and Family Life podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Church and Family Life podcast. We have thousands of resources on our website, announcements of conferences coming up.

Hope you can join us. Go to churchandfamilylife.com. See you next Monday for our next broadcast of the Church and Family Life podcast.