Scripture Matters Podcast — S2E6 — The Church Matters

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The wedding has finally arrived.
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Months of planning, hundreds of phone calls, thousands of little details, and now everything is ready.
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Family begins filling the seats.
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Friends greet one another.
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The music starts.
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People smile.
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Some quietly wipe away tears before the ceremony even begins.
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Then everyone stands.
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The doors swing open, and there she is, the bride, beautiful, radiant, walking slowly toward the man who's been waiting for her.
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And every eye follows her.
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Every eye that is, except one.
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Instead, there is one empty chair.
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Front row reserved for someone who had been specially invited but chose not to come.
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It wasn't because they were sick, it wasn't even because they couldn't travel.
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They simply decided I don't really need to be there.
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They sent a message instead saying, I love both of you.
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I truly support your marriage.
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Folks, just imagine saying that to the bride.
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Nothing personal.
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I love you.
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I just don't care enough about your wedding to actually be there.
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You would never expect those words to strengthen the relationship because love always desires to be present.
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Which makes me wonder, folks, how often has Jesus heard something remarkably similar?
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Words like, Lord, I love you.
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Yes, I believe in you.
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I just don't need your church.
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The bridegroom cannot be separated from his bride.
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The scripture never does.
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So why do we?
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Maybe it's because somewhere along the way, friends, the church stopped becoming precious and started becoming optional, something to attend instead of someone Christ purchased with his own blood.
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But what if we have misunderstood the church all along?
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What if we have been looking at the bride through layers of dust, tradition, personal disappointment, church politics, hypocrisy, and even human failure?
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Until we can barely recognize the beauty Jesus sees.
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Maybe the problem isn't that Christ's bride has somehow become less beautiful.
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Maybe it's that we've forgotten how to look at her.
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So before we ask whether the church matters, perhaps we should first ask, why does she matter so much to Christ?
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Because if we can answer that one question, everything else will begin to truly make sense.
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And as always, that's why Scripture Matters.
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Today's conversation will be entitled The Church Matters.
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Right here on the Scripture Matters Podcast.
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You've tuned in to the Scripture Matters Podcast, produced and published in cooperation with the Waters Road Church of Christ.
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Looking for a church home in the Houston area that lovingly stands upon God's Word?
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Waters Road is the place where you belong.
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If you need more information about the Waters Road Church of Christ, check out their website at www.wrc.org.
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We'd like to thank each of you who helped make this podcast possible, especially the prayerful support of our wives and families.
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And now, good folks, let's get back to another episode of the Scripture Matters Podcast.
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Well, good afternoon, good folks, and welcome back once again to another episode of the Scripture Matters Podcast.
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If perhaps this is your first opportunity to join us here on the Scripture Matters Podcast, let us begin by introducing ourselves.
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My name is Jonathan Sanford.
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I am blessed to serve as the pulpit minister for the good brethren of the Waters Road Church of Christ.
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And I'm Cliff Thompson.
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I serve as one of the elders at Waters Road, and I also teach in our adult Bible class program.
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And we want you to know that whether you are watching us on YouTube or possibly Facebook or listening through one of the many podcast platforms, we're so, so very thankful you have chosen to spend this time with us this afternoon.
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Yeah, we certainly are.
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And we want to take this opportunity to recognize my son Billy Sanford, who helps to make things go in the background during each of these episodes of the Scripture Matters podcast.
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Without his help, this would not be possible.
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And Jonathan, before we move into today's conversation, we should briefly look back at last week's episode, Truth Matters.
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That's right.
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Last week we established that truth is not something that we as human beings create, reshape, or redefine.
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Instead, truth comes from God and is revealed to us through his word.
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We also challenged ourselves to love that truth when it corrects us and to communicate it to others along with the love and character of Jesus.
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And we really appreciate each one of you who watched, listened, commented, shared, and liked last week's conversation.
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Your response continues to encourage everyone involved in this work.
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Yeah, because last week forced us to ask whether the word of God truly has authority over what we believe and how we live.
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And today we turn to a subject that is so familiar that many Christians may assume they already know everything there is to say about it.
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The church.
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Because familiarity can cause us to overlook the value of something that we should consider precious.
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And perhaps before we decide what place the church should have in our lives, we need to see it again through the eyes of the one to whom it truly belongs.
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And that's where today's conversation will begin.
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Jonathan, can I ask you something that has puzzled me for quite a while before we get started?
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Sure, Cliff, what's on your heart?
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Have you ever noticed just how easy it is for people to say certain things about the church that they would never dream of even saying about Jesus?
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That's an interesting observation, but give me an example.
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Well, I've heard people say the church just isn't that important to me anymore.
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I I've heard them say I don't really need the church.
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I've heard them say the church is full of hypocrites.
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I love Jesus, I just don't care that much for the church.
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But Jonathan, I've never heard anyone comfortably say Jesus isn't that important to me anymore, or I love the church.
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I just don't need Jesus.
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Cliff, I don't think I've honestly ever looked at it that way.
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And I think the reason why, because somewhere along the way, many people have become comfortable separating two things that the New Testament never separates.
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What do you think that happened, Jonathan?
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Well, I've spent a lot of time in my life asking that question.
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And I have to wonder if one reason is because many of us have unintentionally reduced the church that to into something that we go to instead of someone who belongs to Christ.
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And once that begins to happen, the church becomes a service, a schedule, a building, an obligation instead of something infinitely precious to our Lord.
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So we're evaluating the church almost entirely from our own experiences with it, instead of asking how Christ views it.
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Exactly.
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And think about just for a moment how we normally describe a congregation.
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We'll make statements like, hey, I like the preaching there, or I love the song service, or man, they have a great youth program, or they've got activities for my kiddos.
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Now, those those certain things, they have a place.
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But I find it interesting, Cliff, that we often evaluate the church in the same way that people evaluate a restaurant or a gym membership.
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Like, what am I getting out of this?
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Jonathan, that's a little uncomfortable to hear because I I think there's some truth to it.
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There is.
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And here's what really challenged me.
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Jesus, when you study his word, he never spoke about his church in that way.
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Not once.
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He didn't speak about convenience.
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He didn't speak about preference.
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He didn't ask people, hey, did you find it entertaining?
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No, he spoke about it uh as something he would build.
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I will build my church, right?
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Something that he would purchase and something he deeply loved.
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Jonathan tells us the church was never intended to revolve around us.
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And that's exactly right.
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And I think that's where this conversation often begins to change.
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Because when I'm asking what can the church do for me, I'm starting with the wrong person.
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The better question is what is the church of Christ?
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Because until I understand what she means to him, I'll never appreciate what she should mean to me.
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Jonathan, I think that is one of the biggest differences between today's culture and the New Testament.
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People have become very comfortable saying my relationship with Jesus is personal.
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And that may be true in one sense, Cliff, because the reality is no one can believe for me, no one can obey for me, no one can be faithful for me.
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My relationship to Christ, yes, is deeply personal.
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But here's where we sometimes, I think, make a leap that the New Testament never truly makes.
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We assume that because faith is personal, that it was also intended to only be private.
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But those two are not the same thing, brother.
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Jonathan, that's a distinction I've never really thought about before.
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And neither had I, I think, for a very long time.
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And then one day it just kind of hit me like a load of bricks.
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Every illustration that God gives us about Christ and his people is relational.
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Think about it this way: Christ is the head, right?
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The church is his body, Christ is the shepherd, the church is his flock, Christ is the bridegroom, the church is his bride, Christ is the king, the church is his kingdom, the Holy Spirit keeps bringing Christ and his people together.
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Yet, Jonathan, we seem to keep trying to pull them apart.
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And if heaven continually tries to join those two together, well, maybe we ought to be very cautious before we start trying to separate them ourselves.
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I couldn't agree more because before we ever ask whether the church is relevant or necessary or even worth our time, Cliff, first we have to ask a much bigger question.
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That question, are we looking at the church through our experiences or through the eyes of Jesus Christ?
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Cliff, there is something that I've wanted to share here on the Scripture Matters podcast for quite some time.
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In many ways, I think what I'm about to share helped to shape the way I think about today's subject.
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When I was just a little boy, there was something that I wanted more than just about anything else in this entire world.
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I wanted my dad to come with me to worship.
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And like little, most little boys, I loved my father.
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I looked up to him.
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And every Saturday, every Sunday, I hoped that my dad would get in that car and ride with me and my mama to church.
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And so every Saturday or Sunday, I would I would take the courage to ask him, Dad, will you come to church with us?
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And more than once, his answer was something that I'll never forget.
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He said, I'm not going to go and worship with a bunch of hypocrites.
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Now I can hear him saying that even right now, so many years later.
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He's been gone for many years, but I still hear those words.
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And as a little boy, I really didn't know what to say to that.
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I had no idea how to truly answer him.
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I wasn't thinking about, let's say, church history or I wasn't thinking about theology.
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I wasn't thinking about really anything other than the fact that I just wanted my dad to get up and go with me to worship.
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I was hoping one day I would walk in that room and say those words, and my dad would say, Yeah, I'm gonna come.
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Now, looking back now as an adult, I understand that my father had been disappointed by people and he had seen things and heard things that hurt him deeply.
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He had formed convictions based on those personal experiences, and not for even a moment do I question the sincerity of those feelings.
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But I've often wondered how many people out there have repeated those same words without ever stopping to ask whether they're judging Christ's church by something that Christ never intended his church to be.
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Jonathan, in all reality, I really think about everyone listening knows someone who has said exactly what your father said.
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Yeah, I think so too.
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In fact, I would imagine there's possibly somebody watching this podcast today who may have said those words at some point themselves.
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And let's be honest, hypocrisy, folks, is real.
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The church has never denied that.
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No, Jesus certainly never denied it.
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Uh, in fact, some of his strongest words in his ministry were directed towards people whose religion had become nothing more than just outward performance.
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So pretending that hypocrisy doesn't exist, that's just not the answer.
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But here's what I've always found interesting, Jonathan.
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When someone says, I'm not going because they are hypocrites there, they usually don't apply that reasoning anywhere else in their lives.
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No, that's true.
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You think about it.
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People don't stop going to the grocery store just because there's bad people in the building.
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People don't stop going to the doctor just because they had a less than than great experience with a doctor uh along the way.
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Um, we don't abandon our jobs just because people that we've worked beside could be a hypocrite, but somehow, somehow, because flawed people um uh come into the church, folks, it does not automatically invalidate the purpose of the church or those other places.
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Yeah, that's is when it comes to the church.
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Many people make that leap.
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And I think part of the reason that is so is because we're expecting the church to be something that Christ never claimed it to be.
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Jesus never once promised you a congregation filled with perfect people.
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No, he promised people who are being transformed and then in various stages of transformation, and there's a tremendous difference.
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That's an important distinction, too, Jonathan, because the church isn't a museum displaying perfect Christians, it's a place where sinners are learning to become more like Christ.
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No, you're right, and every congregation is going to have immature Christians, every congregation has people who struggle, every congregation has people who from time to time are going to disappoint one another.
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Not because Christ failed, but because his people are still growing.
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And Jonathan, if perfection becomes a standard by which we choose whether to belong to Christ's church, none of us could honestly stay.
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No, and the irony is, brother, every one of us at some point in time has needed patience.
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Every one of us at some point has needed grace.
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Every one of us has needed forgiveness, including me, and I would imagine, including yourself.
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The church, let's think about it this way, has never been a gathering of people who never needed Christ's mercy any longer.
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No, it's a gathering of people who know they always do.
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Jonathan, I've been thinking about the wedding scene that opened today's episode.
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And I have to tell you, something about it bothers me like a festered bunk.
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Uh uh oh, brother.
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What's that?
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Jonathan, your bride, Jennifer, she's so precious to you, just as my bride, Edwina, is precious to me.
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Now, imagine someone walking into my house, looking at me square in the eye, and saying, Cliff, I'm taking your place in that marriage.
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From this point forward, I will be the one determining what that relationship looks like and how it operates.
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Man, you're making me sweat because I don't imagine that conversation would be a very peaceful conversation.
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Not at all.
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No, sir.
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And I know you would feel the same way if someone attempted to take your place in the covenant relationship you shared with Jennifer too.
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Absolutely.
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Neither of us owns our wife, Jonathan, but we would immediately recognize that person as introducing us into some type of a relationship and claiming an authority that folks that he just does not have.
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And yet, think about it this way when it comes to the bride of Christ, he His church, does it not seem weird that human beings have acted as though the church were theirs to claim and rename and reorganize and redirect?
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Yes, sir.
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And that's what troubles me, Jonathan.
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Scripture says the church belongs to Jesus, but history is filled with people placing their own names upon it, establishing earthly headquarters over it, or evaluating human counsels and religious leaders into positions of authority that Christ never gave to them.
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Which I think raises a question that gets to the very heart of our conversation here today.
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Who does the church ultimately belong to?
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To man or to Christ?
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Exactly, Jonathan.
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And the scripture does not leave that question unanswered in Acts 20, verse 28.
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Paul told the elders to care for what?
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The church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
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Now think about the weight of that statement for a second, Jonathan.
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The church was purchased with the blood of Jesus Christ.
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And you and I both know that when someone pays the price for something, the person who made the purchase holds the rightful claim to it.
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Absolutely.
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We did not purchase the church.
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No preacher purchased the church.
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No council purchased the church.
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No religious movement purchased the church.
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Christ purchased that church, Jonathan.
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Which means we uh, folks, we're not owners of the church.
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Not in any way, not in any fashion, and not in any form.
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We are servants within the church that Christ purchased with his own blood.
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And Christ did not merely purchase the church and then stepped away from it.
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Colossians chapter 1, verse 18 says, He is the head of the body, the church.
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And that that ought to settle for everybody out there the question of authority.
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A body does not have several, let's say, competing heads.
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No, Christ alone is the head of the church.
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So when questions arise concerning doctrine, worship, morality, leadership, or the mission of the church, our first question cannot be, what does the culture prefer?
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Or what about this one?
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What will attract the largest crowd?
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Or even what have people traditionally done?
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No, the question must be: what has Christ, the head, revealed through his word?
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Because ownership carries authority.
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Well, folks, I've got to share this with you.
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Of all the episodes that we've done here with the Scripture Matters podcast, this one has the potential to be the most personal.
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Because some of you watching this episode right now, or you're listening to this, you've been hurt.
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You've been hurt by people in a congregation.
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You've witnessed hypocrisy, you've endured conflict, you've trusted somebody within a church who failed you.
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And that disappointment can become so painful that you begin to associate that failure with the church itself.
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Please know that neither I nor Cliff would ever minimize your pain.
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Nor would we ever act as if your experiences don't matter.
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All I'm asking today, please do not allow the failures of imperfect people to become the final word concerning something that Jesus still loves, still leads, and still calls his own.
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The church does not matter because every Christian always represents Christ perfectly.
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No, the church matters because Christ remains perfect even when his people are far from it.
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We are truly imperfect people inside a perfect church.
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And for those of us who have been part of the church for most of our lives, perhaps our danger is a little different.
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The fact is, the church can become so familiar to us that we stop seeing its beauty.
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It can become like an old piece of furniture hidden beneath layers and layers of varnish.
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Human traditions, personal preferences, pride, personalities, conflicts, and disappointments can accumulate until what Christ intended becomes difficult to recognize.
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But the answer is not to discard what belongs to Christ.
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The answer is to strip away every layer of that ugliness that we as human beings have added and rediscover the church as scripture reveals her, purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ, led by Jesus as her only head, and called to display his wisdom and his glory before the world.
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Folks, that's beautiful.
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As much as I might wish I could, I cannot go back and stand behind that skinny little red-headed boy who kept asking his father to come worship beside him and mommy.
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I cannot give him the words that he didn't know how to say.
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But if I could, good folks, I think I would tell him that day, I think I would tell my father, Dad, you are right that hypocrites can be found among religious people.
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Jesus warned us about them too.
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But please do not judge the perfect Christ solely by people who sometimes fail to look like him.
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Do not allow another person's inconsistency to keep you from the Savior who loved his church enough to purchase her with his own blood.
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And perhaps someone out there watching this today, maybe you need to hear those same words.
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Do not allow disappointments with people to become separation from Christ and the people who belong to him.
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Jonathan, when everything we have discussed today is brought together, the conclusion is really very clear.
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Yes, sir.
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The church matters because she matters to Jesus.
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She's not ours to claim, rename, or reinvent according to human preferences.
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No, she belongs to the one who promised to build her, purchased her with his own blood, and reigns today as her only head.
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And recognizing his ownership should affect far more than just the name displayed outside the building.
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No, it should govern the doctrine taught inside it, the worship offered within it, the mission pursued through it, and the lives of every Christian who claims to belong to him.
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So the question every congregation must ask is not merely does the name of Christ appears on our building, but also can the authority, character, and teachings of Christ be seen in the people who gather inside it?
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Because the church bears his name, and the church must always reflect his glory.
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Well, with that, sadly, friends, we are out of time for today's episode of Scripture Matters podcast.
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But the good news is season two, well, it's just getting warmed up, isn't it, Jonathan?
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That's right, Cliff.
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And next Friday we turn our attention to something every Christian practices, hopefully, but perhaps not every Christian fully understands.
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What is prayer accomplishing when we cannot see anything changing?
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Why do some prayers appear to be remaining unanswered?
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And how should we pray, shaping our relationship with God?
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Next week's conversation, good folks, will be called Prayer Matters.
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So until next time, my name is Jonathan Sanford.
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And I'm Cliff Thompson.
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Reminding every one of you out there, as always, to stay focused and stay grounded.
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And remember, good folks, Scripture Matters.
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Goodbye, everybody.
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Thanks for spending part of your day with us on the Scripture Matters Podcast.
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We'll be back with a new conversation every Friday at 3.30 p.m.
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on YouTube, Facebook, and all major podcast platforms.
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Until then, may the word guide you and your week.
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And as always, remember Scripture Matters.