The Preeminence of Jesus Christ

Good morning. And welcome to this part of our service today.

Like others have said, I've been blessed by what was shared already today. I was thinking recently, it's kind of interesting, the different words we use to describe the different times and ways we share like this in front of a congregation.

We have the devotional, we have the Sunday school, we have the sermon. But I think I heard a sermon in the devotional, and there was definitely teaching in the Sunday school as well.

Another thing that's interesting is, is it preaching? Is it teaching? What exactly is it that I'm giving to you today? And I think there's a lot of overlap there, and I don't know that the words actually matter so much. But whenever it's a message, the implication is that it's a message from God, and that's a big responsibility.

So I hope that I have a message for you, and I pray that it will be delivered and that it will be received.

I've had a lot of thoughts about the topic that I have this morning, especially recently, maybe the last couple of months, but often for years, really. And I think it's an important topic. It's such a broad thing, it covers almost everything, that I was really having trouble if I wanted to talk about it, figuring out how to condense it into something that's kind of packaged and neat and deliverable.

So I don't know if I've done that or not, but I'm going to try. And one of the things that kind of prompted me, especially just now recently, was I was listening to a sermon that my dad preached 30 years ago, not quite to the day, I think it was the first Sunday of February 1995. So I believe it was the first Sunday morning in our church voting over where Eldon's house was, and I was a newborn. So there's that.

His sermon was entitled "Jesus Stands Alone." And one of the things he was talking a lot about, especially in the beginning, was there's a book he had read. It wasn't just recently written, but it was, I think, a second edition had just come out a couple of years previous to that in '92. And this book is titled "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History." Now, the book does not set out to say who was the greatest person at necessarily any given time, but more so how much influence has a person had overall, even beyond their death.

Now, I think you can see where I'm going with this. I'd be curious to see what your answers would be, and I hope you would all say Jesus. Well, Michael H. Hart, the author, ranks Jesus third. So there's that.

First, he has Muhammad. Second, Isaac Newton. And of course, the list goes on through 100 different people. And one of the reasons he stated in his book for Jesus not being first was, well, he had to share he has Apostle Paul here, number six, and they share a lot of the credit for the church in his mind. So that pulls Jesus down just a bit.

I think there were a couple of other details as far as Jesus didn't actually travel extensively. He stayed in a pretty small area. He didn't write any books. You may disagree with that.

But the way we think about Jesus and his position will directly affect how we act toward him. So the point there is that Jesus is not to be put on a list. If you put Jesus on a list, even if it's at the top, it implies that he has something in common with us. Jesus is preeminent. He is above. He is holy.

The list is here, and Jesus is here. Jesus is over all. He's over every part of our lives.

And you know many people do that. They put Jesus in a place of prominence in their homes, their churches, their lives, maybe. But that isn't enough. And I think we can see what happens if Jesus is not truly overall and just is prominent.

The word holy, by the way, you probably know this, but it comes from a word that roughly translated means set apart for a special purpose.

And so again, Jesus is not higher on our list, but he is set apart. He is separate from us. He is above us.

This was actually just mentioned this morning, but in 1 Peter 1:15-16, he says, "But is he who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, 'Be holy, for I am holy.'" So I think it's interesting how this fits back in with our Sunday school. We are to be taken out of this realm and put up on this one with Jesus.

And how possible that is might depend on who you have for help.

We are to be representatives of Jesus here on earth as though he were here physically. We are supposed to be acting out, like Conrad said, like he is inside, and now I'm doing what he is. You know it's not robotic, but it's alive.

We can try to do it individually, and I think you can to a certain degree. But it is also something that can or must be done collectively.

I found this very interesting. I also looked up what word the Bible uses normally that's translated to church. And some of you may know this as well. It's the word ekklesia, E-K-K-L-E-S-I-A. And that means a called-out assembly.

And so doing church and living like Jesus are nearly synonymous. We're to be like Jesus. We're to be holy and called out. And the church is an assembly of called-out people. So that makes church an incredibly important facet of our Christian lives that I think we should spend a lot of time dealing with and thinking about. So what comes to your mind as you think about church? The word, something practical, something in your mind, maybe. What about being called out? Being holy? What do you think makes a good church? You know I've been to churches before, and we try not to rank churches necessarily, but you go to a church and you get in the car and you're like, "They've got a really nice church.

I think I could go there." What is it about that church that impressed you? What is it about that that makes it something you would like to be involved in?

Would you say you have vision for church? What does that look like? I think I've been thinking a lot about so I've been thinking about church, and then I've been thinking about how do we think about church? Much like how we think about Jesus and his position, you know we're not splitting hairs. There's actually a difference between being at the top or above something.

How we think about church, you know what should that look like? Jesus has talked about the church in his written word. We have a lot of information about that.

And we want to do exactly what Jesus did or exactly what Jesus would do. So if we can find that we're not doing that in some area, that would definitely necessitate some change, or it would just defeat the whole purpose.

You know and as we think about church, a lot of the goals of church collectively are things that we have to do together or things that only work when there's people working together. But a lot of the responsibilities and the actual actions do come down to the individual person, each one as a member of the body working together to make the whole thing move the way it's supposed to. There's a lot of overlap in those two, like you know in your individual walk and what kind of church life you're going to have.

How we live our lives should also be practical. We can talk about it a lot. We were just saying this morning that you can make bold statements about your ability to do or not do certain things. But until you do them and demonstrate that, the words themselves are kind of meaningless.

So how we view things does affect how we relate toward them. And maybe an example, so the word church in English, maybe it just makes you think of this building that we're in. We go to church.

And you know our language, the way it's developed, that is an accurate statement. You can say that. There's nothing wrong with it. But if you, if in your mind you think of church, broadly speaking, as this building or maybe the service that we also call church, oh, we had church in a different building this morning, if you think about it as the physical part, the traditional maybe part, the things that we do every time that we're here, you may miss out on a lot of what God's church or Jesus' church has to offer.

A year ago exactly, we came home from Guatemala, so I still think about things in Spanish once in a while trying to see how the words compare. It's interesting. Spanish has three or maybe more distinct words for what we use church for. There's the word iglesia. It does not refer to the building. It comes directly from ekklesia, the Greek word meaning the people, the people that are assembled together, being called out.

For a service like we're having this morning, they use a couple of words, but often they use culto, which does translate directly to cult. But in context, it actually comes from a root word meaning cultivation, implying a service like you would have spiritual growth in this service.

And lastly, for the building, excuse me, they have the word capilla, which translates to chapel or basically just a meeting house.

You know I think there's a lot of value in keeping the definitions distinct, at least in my own mind, even if we use the same word for all three.

You know I think just thinking about like what is church? What does it look like? I thought of when Peter was miraculously freed from prison, and he's out in the night. He finds the believers gathered there at Mary's house. They're all praying for him. It's a practical thing. They had a need come up, something that was beyond their control, and they're praying. He meets them there, and they're having church. The Greek word, I looked it up just to be sure, it says the assembly was there, and that's the word ekklesia.

So when we meet here, week after week, we follow kind of the same schedule. It changes once in a while, but we have a kind of prescribed order of the service. We know what's going to happen.

Is that to fill a need? Is this something practical that we're doing in our pursuit of living how Jesus wants us to live? Are we doing it because it's always been like this? It's a good thing. It's wrong on Sundays. It makes sense.

Come together whenever we don't have to work. You know it's just this is the way we're taught. Why would I change it? You know this is certainly not a bad thing.

I'm not saying there's something wrong with the way we do church at all, but I think how we act and think about the practice does make a difference. If we allow a specific ritual or pattern or tradition to get in the way of what Jesus wants us to really do practically in our lives, or if we prevent growth for tradition's sake, then you're going to lose out or compromise on our relationship with him. We must keep Jesus in a place of preeminence above everything else in our minds and in our practice.

I want to look just a little bit at John 1.

John 1, the first five verses.

And in this passage here, we have a couple of words repeated over and over, and they mean something.

It says, "In the beginning was the Word." Well, if you look at it, the Word is not talking about words that are written on a paper. The Word is Jesus Christ. Okay, so in the beginning was Jesus, and Jesus was with God, and Jesus was God.

He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him, nothing was made that was made. In him was life. You might say the breath of life. You might say God's Spirit. And that Spirit or life was the light of men.

And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. And my point here is, speaking of Jesus' preeminence, I think sometimes I think of Jesus as sort of coming later because you have God, God, God, God all through the Old Testament. And it makes these predictions, these references to the future, prophecies.

And then Jesus comes, and now we have God and Jesus. But this is saying that Jesus was there from the beginning. Nothing was created without him being involved. It sounds like he was in the creation.

Now, excuse me. Now, looking at the next couple of verses, jumping over just a few down to verse 10, 10 to 13, the Jews did not accept Jesus, at least not for the most part. I'll read it. It says, "He," that's speaking of Jesus, "was in the world. The world was made through him, but the world and the world did not know him. He came to his own," that would be, if I understand correctly, the Israelites, "and his own did not receive him.

But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

So here we see that Jesus came to his people, and they kind of missed it. Now, there were some people that got it. Some of the Jews did, and a lot of other people did. But it didn't have anything to do with how you were born, who raised you, how hard you tried, really.

But there was opportunity to become God's sons, and that did happen. But the thing that really intrigued me is, I wondered sometimes, I was like, well, maybe they forgot to look for Jesus. They didn't know what he was going to look like.

But if you go on down, verse 19 through 28, it makes it pretty clear that they were looking for him, but missed him anyway. Because they were talking to John, they sent out, I guess, a detachment of some of their teachers.

And it says, now this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, "Who are you?" He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, "I am not the Christ." So it seems like he kind of knew what they were wanting right off the bat. He's like, "I am not the Christ."

They asked him, "What are you then? Are you Elijah?" And he said, "I am not. Are you the prophet?" And he answered, "No." Then they said to him, "Who are you that we may give an answer to those who sent us? What do you say about yourself?"

He said, "I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord," as the prophet Isaiah said. Now, those who were sent were from the Pharisees, and they asked him, saying, "Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?"

John answered them, saying, "I baptize with water, but there stands one among you whom you do not know. It is he who, coming after me, is preferred before me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to loose." These things were done in Bethlehem, beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing. So where did the Jews go wrong, I guess, is my kind of my first question here.

How could a people that were so religious, so focused, so conservative, miss the very thing they'd been working toward for so many generations? We get a really good clue in Matthew 23. And I'm not going to read nearly the whole thing, but I'll read 23 through 28.

This is Jesus speaking to the scribes and Pharisees and the Jews, some of these same people. He says in verse 23, "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith.

These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone, blind guides who strain out a nat and swallow a camel. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence.

Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you are like whitewashed tombs, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.

Even so, you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness." You know many of the things the Jews did and were doing were good things. But they became so focused on their works and their, I'll call them, ends justified means, that they became self-focused and self-righteous.

A focus or pursuit of self is sin. In spite of the law being given by God directly to them, Jesus had no time for their traditions or lifestyle because they had omitted the weightier matters of the law. They had neglected what was really the point, what God was trying to get them to do, how he was trying to get them to live, the way he wanted them to think about about God.

I think, unfortunately, we have a major problem that is somewhat similar facing the church at large today.

There's been a recent movement and a push to have more tradition in our churches and to build a culture that sets us apart. I am convinced this will be damaging to Jesus' church. A pursuit of culture and tradition will distract us from following Jesus.

If our pursuit is Jesus, and he's above all else, a culture and maybe a tradition will grow out of that. The traditions that we've been given as part of a Christian heritage developed because the people that were following Jesus developed that tradition through that pursuit, not the other way around.

Jesus supersedes tradition.

He must be held above all areas of our lives. You know we talk in church often, I think, about longevity, keeping our young people. We want to leave a legacy. These are all good things. We want those. But if Jesus is not the focus, we will miss the point. What good is a legacy? What good is having longevity? What good is having the hope of a generation to follow you if Jesus is not there?

You know the religion and tradition of Judaism has endured millennia. It started thousands of years ago, and it's going today, and it's changed somewhat, but it's still very like what it was. Yet the Jews missed having a personal relationship with Jesus, even when he was right in front of them physically.

And I think that's really, really sad. In contrast to that, we can look at John's response to Jesus, found there still in 1 John, verses 29 to 37. It says, "The next day," this was after John baptized Jesus, "The next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who has preferred before me, for he was before me.

I did not know him, but that he should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water.'

And John bore witness, saying, 'I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he remained upon him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'Upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on him, that is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I have seen and testified that this," and I could imagine him pointing at Jesus, "this is the Son of God. And then again, the next day, John stood with two of his disciples, I assume that means his own disciples, and looking at Jesus as he walked, he said, 'Behold, the Lamb of God.' And those two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus."

John was also looking for Jesus.

You know he probably didn't understand quite everything that was happening. He definitely had some clues there to put together. But it seems like he had an understanding of God or some connection with God where God could speak to him and reveal some of these things.

And when he saw Jesus, he recognized him almost immediately. He baptized him. He saw the Holy Spirit descend. And he's like, "That's it. That's the one." And I'm impressed by one of the first things John did after that was he shared his testimony with the people that were around him and pointed them to Christ. And I believe that is a very key role that both individually and collectively as a church, we have to do as well. You know we follow him. We need to bring others to him. In everything we do, we need to bring glory to God. And I was just trying to imagine, I think a lot of people are trying to do that, but can you imagine if every person in every church really did that?

You know sometimes we try to bring people to church, and that's good. I'm not saying otherwise. But the thought occurred to me, are we bringing people to a church? Are we bringing people to Jesus? If we're bringing them here because we're like, "We have it figured out. I think we can fix this person. We've got a really wrong attitude, and we're not going to be successful."

Now, we can bring them here if this is the best place we have for them to see Jesus. Now, that is something that will work.

So our attitude really does matter.

We do not have the answers. We have some answers for ourselves, but that might look different to different people. The only thing we can do for another person is point them to the source of where we found answers for ourselves and let God do the work in them.

We have to trust God to do the work in them. I think sometimes we're afraid God won't, or maybe we just, I'm not sure, we don't have enough faith, perhaps, and we feel like we have to kind of push it along. But I do believe that if we do bring people to a place where they can see Jesus and they can see reality, that that will make a difference for them, and God can work with that.

So an incorrect view of the church will limit the power and efficacy of Christ's body and make it difficult to bring others to him. So we should keep focused on Jesus.

Another aspect of church you might think about is sharing. We've been called to share one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. And many churches do have programs and structures designed to help others, whether inside or outside the church. And I think that is very good and very commendable. I think we've tried to make that a part of our church here. And I think for the most part, I can say we've been fairly successful. I've definitely been blessed by seeing and witnessing and sharing and being shared with in practical ways here.

You know if you think about it, there are a lot of different ways to share. We often think about it in sharing material things, and that is a big part of it. But that verse that commands to share the burdens of others, I was looking at the context there, and it's actually just following where it talks about helping a brother or sister who's been overcome in a trespass, or some versions might say, fault.

This is Galatians 6:1-2. It says, "Brother, and if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself, lest you also be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ."

So I had to think about this for a while. I wasn't sure if I knew what it meant entirely, and I still don't. But I did a little digging on what some of the different words meant and what kind of their roots were. And the word trespass or fault is definitely a different word than the one for sin. We're not talking about sin here.

Being overtaken in a trespass also implies that this is not a deliberate, malicious act or something, but it's a misstep. It's a falling away, a mistake that was made, perhaps.

So in a case like this, we're not to condemn or isolate that person. And we don't ignore it either. That's not good. We are called to gently help and restore that person to a full relationship, first of all, to God, but hopefully to everyone else as well.

Then I was thinking, you who are spiritual, so who's it talking to? Is this like the leaders? Is these the elders, maybe?

In context here, I think it simply means any of us as part of the church that claims to have Jesus' Spirit. That makes you spiritual. You are not of this realm anymore. You're of this realm. And so that makes you a candidate to help other people in this way.

Now, this is the last place we want to have pride. The other verses here talk about that. It says, "We need to consider ourselves, lest we are also tempted." At one point, I thought maybe it was saying that if you're helping somebody with their sin or their fault, maybe you'll fall into the same sin or fault. And I guess that could happen.

But I think what it really means is when you're sharing with somebody, when you're restoring somebody that's had some fault or issue or something they need to work on, we have to consider what we are, lest we're tempted to become proud.

We have to realize that our own human nature is flawed and just susceptible to failure as they would be. Verse three says, "If anyone thinks he is something, when he's not, he deceives himself."

So again, like before, we're not coming to this person with the answers necessarily, but we point to the one who has the answers. You know this can be really practical. This is really hard work.

We're all burdened in this life with situations and things that are beyond our control that are bigger than us. Sometimes, a lot of times, we cause them ourselves. I know personally, I can be kind of talking mindlessly, and I say something, and I think, "Shoot." And then you have to fix it. That's a burden that we have to carry.

How better can we exemplify Jesus than supporting others and lightening the loads that they carry? A member of Jesus' body searches for opportunity to help others, even if that person doesn't seem deserving. And I think that's a key thing to keep in mind.

Closely related with sharing burdens, I immediately thought of the command to take up our cross. You know I was thinking about it. Jesus was baptized. He received the Holy Spirit. He had his ministry and did the work of his Father. His entire life brought glory to God, but his mission was not complete until he was put to death on the cross, which gave a remedy for sin. Now, I'd like to note that sometimes we, or at least I'll say I, am speaking to myself here, feel like the cross is this thing that's just like pushed on you. It's this burden that you're forced to carry.

Jesus was the perfect sacrifice to ransom the lives of men. He did not deserve it. You know a sacrifice is the voluntary giving up of something in exchange for something else, usually something significantly better.

The cross, both figuratively and literally, demands everything, our best, our worst, all of it. When we voluntarily put ourselves on the cross, figuratively speaking, the earthly part in us can be put to death, and we get in exchange the heavenly part that is eternal.

So Jesus was put on the cross by men, yes, but we know that it was only because he allowed it when the time was right. There were many other times that the people were out to get him. They wanted to grab him, and he just walked away.

So I think it is fair to say that this was voluntary.

But it's interesting too that Jesus, in his physical form, was unable to bear that cross alone, at least the whole way. He had help from Simon, who was a man. I believe this is symbolic of how we are to help each other and share.

We certainly don't put each other on the cross. That would be wrong. But it must be a voluntary sacrifice. We can help each other with the burden or consequence that the cross brings.

Does this sound easy? Does it sound fun?

I wouldn't say it's fun, but if you can get this down, this will make all the difference. This is the key, I think, to having fulfillment, having joy, not happiness, but all of those things in your Christian life.

And you know I was trying to think of examples to make it more closer to home. Like what how do we help somebody carry their cross? How do we help them with their burden, their heavy load that's just overwhelming them? And there's so many examples you could give. I think some of them are just really, really practical. I didn't write it down here, but just a little further on, there's a verse that says, you know if you're receiving teaching from a teacher, you should share with them in all good things. And I think that's just simply saying, you know it takes a lot of work for somebody who's in leadership, who's preaching the word, who's teaching, who's you know going house to house to minister to people.

And you should be generous with them because their time is valuable. Sometimes I don't know that the way you share a burden is maybe physical or directly related to the person I'm not coming to you. But how we speak or act toward or about other people in our church can lighten or make the load much heavier for that person, maybe for ourselves or for other people.

If you speak negatively about somebody, you know if you're just graping about somebody who's difficult and they're so hard to get along with, and again, I'm preaching to myself, that adds to someone's load. That does not lighten the load for anyone.

Restoring the relationship by communicating directly with them, Matthew 18, for example, building them up, encouraging what's good in them, praying for them, those kinds of things would be what Jesus would do. And that is what we're called to do.

I'm very thankful to be part of a called-out assembly that promotes sharing. And may we be given the strength to share in all things as Jesus shared. In our sharing, if Jesus is not the focus, taking up our cross might make us a martyr, but not necessarily a follower of him.

So this is not by any means a final or complete list. I had one more kind of aspect of church that came to my mind.

You know just thinking about church, you think about membership, accountability, the teaching to submit to each other. It is important to define what sort of membership you're talking about. Are you talking formal commitment to a local group of people like we have here, or are you talking about just being part of the kingdom of God? You are a member in Jesus' church.

The New Testament doesn't actually, from what I can from what I've read, doesn't differentiate a whole lot between the two. It does say, you know the church that is at you know this city or this town, um and so on. But it seems like for the most part, um it says they were added to the church, and then later it might say they gathered you know with this this group. But it does not talk a lot about what it meant to be like a difference in membership between one or the other. But what we do know from the New Testament, there were essentially three requisites to be to being considered a member of the church.

And that is, one, a belief in Jesus as the Son of God, who died physically and rose from the dead, excuse me, and that he alone can free from sin. So you have this belief. You have two, a public confession of that belief and faith in God. And then three, water baptism for the receiving of the Holy Spirit.

That, from as nearly as I can tell, it might be a little bit oversimplified, but that is what the New Testament um would demonstrate meant becoming a church member.

Now, importantly, I think it would be wrong to withhold baptism from an individual that requests it upon confession of faith. You know we have the example of Philip in Acts 8. I'll just read that quickly. Acts 8, 35 to 39. It says, "Then Philip opened his mouth." This is, he was prompted by the Holy Spirit to go down this path, and he meets this man in a chariot who's reading scripture.

And he invited him in, and they're riding along together now. And Philip opened his mouth and, beginning at this scripture, preached Jesus to him.

Right, so the man had been reading scripture and having a little trouble understanding what's it talking about exactly. He wanted a little help sorting out the details. And so Philip stepped in, and right there where he was, he didn't say, "Well, I have a better one that'll explain it better." He started there and just started explaining and preaching Jesus to him. And then, as they went down the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, "See, here is water. What hinders me from being baptized?" Then Philip said, "If you believe with all your heart, you may."

And he answered him, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." So he commanded the chariot to stand still, and both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water, and he baptized him. Now, when they came out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away so that the eunuch saw him no more, and he went on his way rejoicing.

And I'm not saying that we need to follow this method necessarily exactly as far as baptism, but I do think this is an example of, upon a simple confession of faith, that's the part that we can see. That's the part we can understand.

Much like marriage is a very basic principle that non-believers can do, and I think it is a blessed union. When somebody believes and confesses and is baptized with water, they receive the Holy Spirit if their heart is genuine.

You know, and if we do believe that the pouring out of of the Holy Spirit comes with baptism, I would say we would do well to baptize as soon as it's practical. It is good to instruct people in the ways of God at all times.

And a new believer most certainly needs instruction, and I think they should receive that. But I also believe that a new convert would be hindered in their progress if they were to try to live a Christian life without the Holy Spirit. I think the time for instruction is teaching them the things to the point where they say they believe, and then after they've received the Holy Spirit to help them grow and develop.

So then there's the subject of formal church membership in a local body. Now, I want to be clear that I do not think I have all the answers. I'm still, this is something I've been thinking a lot about a lot. And so I'm not quite sure I know all the details. But it is a really important issue that I think we should consider carefully. You know, thinking again of the church as a called-out assembly, you might make the argument that gathering with a group of people in pursuit of Jesus makes you a church member, makes one a church member, because you're called out and you're assembling. So that now you're, now this is a church.

I don't know that that's entirely wrong. I don't know if it's perfect either. But I do believe if you kind of look at it that way, it has maybe a couple of advantages.

One of the things you'll often hear, or you might think, for a good reason to have local, formal membership is accountability.

The problem that comes to my mind is that unfortunately, that by itself does not create accountability. Just being here and saying, "I am a member here," and even saying, "I want to do what you all want," doesn't really make me accountable by itself.

And worse than that, if a church demands accountability to itself,

or to its own standards rather, instead of the example that we've been given by Jesus, I think it will create confusion and frustration in its members. I think accountability can go well beyond church membership. I think sometimes we limit it to that. I think it can go well beyond church membership if each one is sensitive to the Holy Spirit.

And you know, if the believers generally, wherever they are, are lifting each other up in the way that Jesus would, I think you have accountability.

Now, before anyone thinks that I don't value or see the need for a local gathered body, that's not at all what I'm trying to say here. I want to make that clear. I'm just trying to think about what parts of church are what Jesus has commanded, what parts are the most important, what parts will keep us on track. I believe having a connection with people around you who have a genuine desire to follow Jesus is vitally important. Now, I had a kind of a thought here that'll sound, you might see where it's going. I'll make sure it connects at some point. If you've ever thought about like technology, current things, not necessarily electronics, but more just the precision and machines and the working together of things that we have, it requires things to be flat, it requires things to be straight, it requires them to be round, perfectly square.

And have you ever wondered how you get something to be like that?

If you're curious, you can get down a huge hole with that. It's deep, and I unfortunately did. It took a while. But there's a lot of science in that. And to make, to check if something's flat, well, you need a tool for that. Well, how do you make the tool to make the flat thing? You need something that is true to make that. You need things to check against each other.

So our, I don't understand all of this to be quite honest, but I did learn that one of the most basic, earliest, easiest ways to get started with something true is if you would take three big pieces of rock, say granite maybe, and they're kind of flat on one side already. One rock by itself is not flat at all, unless it's maybe a crystal or something. But a piece of granite is bumpy and lumpy. It has all these different bits to the top. If you take another piece of granite and you rub those two together, the high points will knock off of each other until the high points aren't so high and they get lower and lower.

And in theory, you would end up with all the low spots and it would be flat, right? Two doesn't work. It gets flatter, but if you scrub it this way, it'll be flat along the lines you've made, but then there'll be ridges the other way. If you go the other way, now it just makes a grid. If you go in circles, now you have circles. It gets flatter, but it never will be perfect.

But they have figured out that if you take three rocks or something that is abrasive against each other, and you rub these two together, and then this one with that one, and then this one with that one, and then those two with each other, and do that long enough, they will get so flat, just, I mean, perfectly flat. They will become mirror smooth to the level that of the size of the molecules in whatever it is you're working with. So there's obviously a limit, and the limit is atomic.

It's incredible, and I didn't know this until recently. And then if you take those flat things, now you can start having a guide for, well, here's another tool that is straight on one edge. Now you can start building off that, and it becomes what we have today with all the the tools that can be calibrated and are very, very precise.

So if I'm not stretching it too far, I think that if you're alone in your Christian walk, you can maybe do that. I think it's technically possible. You might live somewhere where there's no other believers, and you make do with that because that's what you have.

But if you have two people working together, now you can start balancing things out. You can start working on the high points, the weak points. And that's very valuable. If you have three or more, three points of reference is what it takes, at least physically speaking, to make something flat, something true, to have a reference point that you can depend on. And so I like to think about that in terms of our membership. Um, regardless of what your individual view of exactly how membership should work out, how form what should be, how well defined, I don't think there's any argument that having more than one person working together will improve each of your lives, and it will better help you demonstrate Jesus to others.

And one other point about if you're not part of something bigger, you know, we have the verse, "By your love for each other, all men shall know you are to my disciples." If you're by yourself, what testimony is left? If that is the primary witness to your neighbors around you, what left is there for your neighbor to see that you're a disciple of God? And they may, they should see some witness, I would certainly hope. But they're missing out on a key part. Then I thought, you know, if God's people cannot learn or find a way to live together in harmony, find a way to work this out, we already said it's difficult. It's a lot of hard work.

But if we can't, how can we possibly expect to have the power to practice Luke 6? You know, and you might say, well, that brother is so difficult. Everything I say just opposes, and you don't get along. And I think we've all experienced that at some point or another. But in Luke 6, 27-31, very familiar verses, it says, "But I say to you, we just, just were talking about this.

Love your enemies. But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who spitefully use you, and to him who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other also. And from him who takes away your cloak, do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and from him who takes away from your goods, do not ask them back. And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise."

You know, it just came so clear to me. We all know it, I think, like we said earlier today, you know it in your head. But to actually work this out, if we cannot get along with the people that we're most like, the people that want us to succeed, even if they're flawed, even if it's not perfect, how can you possibly expect to develop to the point where you do love your enemy, the actual person that wants to kill you, the person who wants to take your belongings, the person who not only taxes you, but then rips you off and takes some more for himself because he's selfish?

I really do believe that belonging to a local body is good and right. But you know, some of the specifics of how that is worked out might be less of an issue if we truly acted toward each other as Jesus would. I've been thinking too, right along the same lines, like what authority then does the church have over an individual member?