What Is the Purpose of the Congregation?

For many of you, you've grown up in the church. You don't really remember the first time you came to church. I was seven years old. I actually remember the first time I went to the radio church of God. Because it was quite different than the Methodist church I was in, because it was a lot longer. That was the big thing. And everybody didn't stand up every once in a while and recite creeds. Okay, that was rather because I was used to everybody standing up and reciting a creed every once in a while. They didn't do this. But at the same time, I had to honestly say, there was something in it that caught my mind. What I heard being talked about, that I don't know. This was something special. I couldn't explain it. I didn't know why. But I believed in God and I believed that this was something special. For others of you, you remember the first time you came to church. You were a little nervous. You didn't know anybody. Maybe it was a real small group. Maybe it was a huge group. Maybe there were four, five, six hundred people. And you walked in and you were excited because here were people who believed what you were discovering. They kept the Sabbath. They believed in the Holy Days. It was pretty exciting. At the same time, it was like, wow, they're so perfect. And then after a while, you started to realize, they're not perfect at all. The reality was, they're not perfect. They're just other people just trying to live God's way, trying to do what's right. But remember the excitement when you first came into the truth for those of you that came in older. Then you came into a congregation. Now, for those of you who grew up in this, this is just what you do. And when I say that, I say there's a great danger in it. This is just what you do. You've done it all your life. There's lots of people that get up every Sunday morning and go to church. They sing their songs. They listen to the service. They feel like they've worshipped God. They put their money in their plate. And then they go on Christmas and Easter also. And it's just what they do. This has to be more than just what you do. Now, for those of you who came in, you're not as excited as you used to be, right? I mean, you found out everybody's not perfect. You found out that the church doesn't know everything. And over time, you've probably got on each other's nerves. In fact, you've probably been sinned against at some point. Somebody's mistreated you or you've mistreated somebody else. And, you know, it always hasn't been an easy ride, has it? Being part of a congregation. Why does God create congregations? Why does He do what He does? I read a story years ago. I constantly collect little stories I have that I've looked at and I've read. I think, wow, this has a...there's a real meaning to this. I found it in 1970...well, no, I found it in a book, and the copyright was 1970. I have no idea how old it is. I would guess it goes back...the story itself goes back to the 20s or 30s, I would guess, or 40s. And it was from a newspaper called the Montgomery Advertiser. And the story was about a man out in the West Coast who he had built in a huge garage, and he had filled the entire garage by creating a machine. From wall to wall, from floor to ceiling, it was one giant machine. And here's what the reporter said. He said, using surplus parts, he produced a machine that contained just about every mechanical and electrical device known to modern technology.

On the builder's command, the huge machine was just thousands of parts, gears, motors, relays, actuators, servo mechanisms, and so forth, would begin their complex operations. Obviously, there's no computers involved, so that starts to tell you how long ago it was. From the control panel in the middle of the machine, the operator watched with satisfaction, as lights blinked on and off to indicate what was going well, or occasionally, some section that was in trouble.

Technicians raided the machine a marvel. People came from all over to see this machine that filled this man's garage. The machine was designed and built—oh, he said there was just one sad note—the machine was designed and built to do nothing. It was the magnum opus of a gadgeteer who was carried away with the wonders of the machine age.

He got his kicks just sitting there, pulling switches and watching all those beautiful parts, busying themselves, functioning perfectly to accomplish nothing.

Now, that's an interesting story. The question I want us to think about today is, God has created a congregation here.

This congregation is three generations old. There's a few people here. You go back four generations.

Over time, a congregation gets to be in danger of becoming like that machine. Oh, we function. We come to church. We have people that take our temperature. We have people that hand out songbooks.

We have people that give sermons and sermons and we all sing songs. And many times we have special music. And we have socials. And there's activity. And there's things for the kids. And it's great that we go home. Once in a while, we talk to each other on the phone and have some contact with each other. Not much, but some. And then we come back the next week. But why?

Why does the machine run? What does it produce? Because God isn't building a machine that has no purpose.

A congregation has a purpose.

The Church of God, when we talk about God's church, the church that God is working with, we're talking about a large group of people, different organizations, scattered all over the world.

We don't even know who most of them are. Many of them are.

Now, God worked through ancient Israel. At one time, that was His primary work, right? You read through the Old Testament. From the time of Moses on, God primarily is working through Israel. Before that, He was primarily working through Abraham's family.

Then from the time of Abraham back, it's just individuals.

The primary work of God today is through His church. Look at that big word, the church.

Inside that church are individual organizations and individual congregations.

Now, if you understand, the health of the church breaks down into congregational level.

It's often said that the strength of any nation is its foundational family unit.

The strength of any church of God is its foundational congregational units.

So why did God bring us together as a congregation? And how important is it?

How important is it? What we're looking at today is three directions God gives to the church. I say directions. They're points that He's working towards. He wants us to look at. There's directions He wants us to go in.

And when we look at each of these directions, we will see something God is doing. And what He expects us to do as individuals, yes. But He expects us to do as a group.

There's a group function called a congregation.

The question we finally have to ask as we go through it, is there such thing as an independent Christian? Christian, is that possible? I don't belong to a congregation. I don't have to belong to a congregation. I don't have to submit to anything or anybody. I don't have to put up with all people's problems because it's just me and God. Is that possible?

Is that possible?

Well, let's look at the purpose for a congregation. The first direction that God gives a congregation, I'll call upward.

It's our collective relationship of worship towards Him. I say collective relationship. Each of us has an individual relationship.

Very personal. Every one of you has a very personal relationship with God and Jesus Christ.

Back to Jesus Christ to the Father. He takes us to the Father, right? Every one of you do. That is incredibly important. That's how you come into the church. You come into the church not by an act of birth, like when you're an Israelite. You come into the church, all of us did, by act of God selecting each of us individually. Every one of us was selected individually to be part of this church, this ecclesia, this group of called out ones. We know that. We know the church is the building, right? The church, we're the church. We're the people.

So God is selected to put people together. Here in this area, He's selected to put you together. You're not the only together group, but we are together. There's a reason for it.

There's an important reason for it.

First of all, it is this upward group congregational relationship, collective worship of God. Now we primarily do that on the Sabbath and in the Holy Days.

Our collective experience is primarily in our worship, right? On the Sabbath and Holy Days. Let's go back to Leviticus 23.

Part of the reason for this sermon is just a few things that people brought to me over the last couple of months. It has been interesting how many questions I've been getting. You know, people at home more than normal.

I get phone calls and emails and texts.

And I just took some collection of ideas that bounce around.

And I want to focus this in now on these three directions God gives us as a group.

That we are to do this together.

Leviticus 23.3.

Six days. This of course is the chapter that tells about all the Holy Days, all the Holy Sabbaths. And there's the weekly Sabbath and the annual Sabbath.

Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation.

You shall do no work on it. It is the Sabbath of the Lord in all your dwellings.

It is a holy convocation.

Now over the years I've heard people say, well, really what's important here is you're convoking with God.

So, you know, being part of a congregation isn't that important. That's not what God is really interested in. He's interested in your personal convoking with God.

Every time I hear someone say that, I say, and the first thing, I mean there's a red flag that goes up. First of all, it's an ignorance of that Scripture.

And then I wonder what's your motivation.

The word convocation in English, okay, let's just look at what the word convocation means in English.

Merriam-Webster's dictionary.

We'll just go to the most common dictionary. It means an assembly of persons called together for a meeting.

It's an assembly.

It's a group of people that get together.

The Hebrew word is even more exact.

It means a public meeting, a calling together, an assembly.

And it can mean, and this is very interesting, it can mean a reading or a recital. In other words, you come together to hear somebody read something to you.

You come together to hear a recital.

The Sabbath, when it comes down to our congregational experience, we are called together here because it is holy and is set apart by God. We are called to come together and hear the reading of the Scripture.

Now, there's other reasons, but that's the commanded reason.

That's the commanded reason.

And it is a time to reverence God.

This can't be just a social event.

The holy convocation is, first of all, upward.

We come in our reverence and humility before the Almighty God.

I think everything that happens God will use to teach lessons.

He's a teacher. I don't care what happens in your life, God will use it to teach you something.

He's doing it all the time.

I think the stress and the problems that the whole world is going through right now, the fact that we have 50 percent, basically, of our congregation that aren't here every Sabbath because of the COVID-19 crisis.

And they've chosen at this point not to be here because of health reasons. Most of them are older people.

And in that, it is causing us to learn something.

I can't tell you what—it's hard to explain the experience I've had over the last three months. I'll just explain some things that happened this week.

A person who hasn't been to church here for three months, an elderly person, and because of, you know, the fragile health hasn't been here. Called me to say, I just wanted to call to see how you're doing.

How are you and Kim doing? Are you doing okay?

Now, here's a person that you would think would be, because of the isolation and not being able to be at church, there would be like, woe is me. And it was the opposite. It was, I'm calling you to see how you're doing. I'm worried about you. You have to go to Cincinnati. You have to go places. You have to do things. You have to go to annoying people. Yeah. Well, I just want to call to see how you're doing. Another person called me, who hasn't been to church, and this is, you know, some of them are both the congregations, hasn't been to church since all this started and said, I just wanted to call to see what can I do to serve people since I'm not coming right now? What did you think about that statement?

What can I do to serve since I can't come to services right now?

I have, you know, I get emails constantly with Bible questions. I get emails constantly with people saying, I know that we're supposed to go to Sabbath services, but I'm 80 years old and I have a heart condition and I think maybe I should stay home for a little bit. And I'll run back and say, okay.

There's no problem with that.

There's no problem with that. In fact, it's a good idea.

But notice over and over again I'll get, I miss everyone so much.

I've had people say, I just called because I want to hear your voice. Oh, I see a church. I didn't know it was that important.

You know, I have been actually encouraged by the experience. And then you find out whether there's three or four people over here. They're shuddier all the time. The only time they get out is on Sabbath to drive up. They're close to each other. They drive a couple of miles to someone's house. And maybe two or three people are watching this service together because at least, you know, they know they haven't been exposed to anybody because they're all basically alone. And they go, and they're keeping services right now with us.

They're connected. And that connection is so important.

That connection is so important. Those people who aren't coming, I can guarantee you, are appreciating the Holy Convocation more than we are.

Because they're not getting to participate the way we do.

That's why we have to be very careful about saying, well, they should be here. No, they shouldn't.

You know, there's personal decisions.

God doesn't take our personal decisions away. We don't have the right to take anybody else's personal decision away on certain things. You know, if you're going to go out and steal, sorry, that's not a personal decision. Well, it's a personal decision. But God says, no, you can't do that. Making a health decision is a personal decision.

And we accept that. And we're going to get in a minute why we accept that.

Why we have to accept it. And why we're expected to accept it. And it should not. The last thing we should be doing is not paying attention to the people who aren't here.

In fact, all of us should be connecting to those people on a regular basis. If you know they're not here and they haven't been back to church in the last four weeks, you need to at least call and say, we missed you too.

Because they're missing us. Can I do anything for you?

The woman would call me, what can I do to help? What can I do to serve since I can't be there right now?

We are here together because God's called us. And He's called them too. And we can't ignore those people or somehow forget those people. We're not saying we're ignoring them, but we can't forget them.

We are here too to hear the Word of God. There is a recital.

You know, it's interesting. In Ezra, the Jews came back from the Babylonian captivity. And we read this sometimes on the Feast of Tabernacles. Because they got together on the Feast of Tabernacles, and they hadn't heard for years.

Some of the younger generation had never heard the readings from the Scripture. And Ezra got up on a platform, surrounded himself with all the elders of Judah, opened up the book, and read to them about a holy Sabbath day that they were supposed to be keeping. And it was the Feast of Trumpets. And they were so shocked. What's amazing, when he opened the book, with a bit of scroll, when he opened the scroll, they all stood up. And if you read it, they must have stood up for hours.

You know, oh no, man, our services go for an hour and a half. Sometimes an hour and forty-five minutes. They stood for hours. Why? Reverence for the Word of God. And when he was finished, they all bowed their head and said, Amen. This is a literally, the whole congregation bowed their head and said, Amen.

Wow. Ezra didn't even have to say, give me an Amen.

That's the reverence they showed the Word of God. We are gathered here now at a holy congregation, to look upwards.

That's why we're here. To look upwards.

Towards God and to Jesus Christ and to listen from this book. Now, that brings us to our second point.

We are to look inward. When I say inward, I mean, we're to look at ourselves at this congregation, and we are to nurture each other in our spiritual growth.

In other words, part of the purpose of a congregation is the relationship that happens between us.

Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 4, verse 11.

And he himself, speaking of Christ, and he himself gave some to be apostles, he's the head of the church, he's given some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers. In other words, God actually chooses and trains people to do these things in the congregation. There is a purpose for this. My aunt, she was a Methodist, and I remember years ago, I went to visit her, and she said, Gary, what do you think about women pastors? And I said, well, it's not biblical.

She said, I don't think it is either, but they just ordained a woman pastor in my church. I think if they keep this up, I won't go back. A few years later, she said, Gary, what do you think about ordaining, practicing homosexuals as pastors? I said, it's not biblical. It's against God. She said, I think so too, but they're talking about doing that in my church. Of course, by the time she died, they were accepting transgender pastors.

We have to accept something that is all human beings are imperfect, and ministers go bad, and every once in a while, you get one that shouldn't even have been a minister. But God is picking and choosing and working with people here, and He does this for a reason. Here's the reason, and this is what I want you to center in on. Why is there a reciting of the Scripture today? Verse 12, for the equipping of the saints, that means the completion, the working in you, that's the...you're the saints, right?

There's some special group of people that have special virtue and end up...you know, you can pray to them. That's not what saints are. Saints are just the average person called by God and have received God's Spirit. He says, for the equipping of the saints, for the work of ministry, that means service. Your work of service to God. When I said the work of God is in His church, yes, that means the preaching of the gospel, but it's in us too.

In fact, if it's not in us, how in the work can we preach the gospel? So the work of God is us. Wow. Makes you wonder if God does what He's doing. I mean, us, right? Oh, yeah, He does. He does know what He's doing. He says, for the edifying of the body of Christ, that's the whole church, till we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

The purpose is that we all become Christ-like. We literally become the children of God. That's what we're supposed to do here. We need this for that work to be fulfilled. It's not impossible for a person to be alone and be converted. I've met all kinds of people that are sometimes 400 miles from a church, especially overseas. But that's not what God designed. Those people have a special calling and a special gift.

The rest of us are called to be part of a congregation so that we learn how to be Christ-like. It's part of our training. Being part of this is part of the command that God wants you to do in your life. He says that no one—I'm sorry, verse 14— that we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting.

In other words, we need to be to the place where core, basic doctrine we know. Now there's all kinds of little things we don't know. And there's all kinds of little things—I know some of you have come to me for a Bible question, and there's times I've looked at you and said, I have no idea. I have no idea what that phrase means. And it's all disappointment. I say, well, if you can find somebody who knows what it means, let me know. Sometimes things don't translate well. There's parts of the Bible—like I went through Micah— there's part of Micah that doesn't translate well because it's puns.

And no one knows exactly what the puns mean today. They meant something at the time of Micah. In the 700s B.C., they were probably hilarious. They don't mean anything to us today. We know what the words mean. We just don't know what the meaning of—I mean, you can tell the meaning of each individual word, but we don't understand the meaning of the pun.

And everybody who reads that, who knows Hebrew, says, boy, that must have been hilarious at the time. Or powerful. You know, puns can be very powerful. But the basic core stuff we are supposed to know—and we work it out here. We work it out together. He says, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things unto him who is the head, Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effect of working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself and love.

Every part does its share. You know, I gave a sermon back in January on the gifts of the Spirit. I went through a whole chapter in Romans. The whole sermon was about a chapter in Romans. I could have gone to the chapter in 1 Corinthians 12 and covered the same material there. It's a little more poetic in 1 Corinthians 12, because Paul compares the church to a human body. Every body, every part has meaning.

You have to understand it doesn't matter what your background is, it doesn't matter what your skill sets are, it doesn't matter what education you had, it doesn't even matter what age you are. God doesn't build useless machines for his garage. It's not what he does. Everything he does has a purpose. He builds his church because he's fulfilling a purpose, and he called you—we talked about predestination last week, right? Predestination is God determines when he's going to call you. He determined to call you. Now, you decided to answer the phone, but he determined to call you.

Understand that. You didn't determine to get the call, he determined it. He said, I will call you. You answer. I predestined you to this destiny. Now, you can leave your destiny, you know, so the unpardonable sin. But you have now been predestined. This is your time of calling. This is the time. Someone wrote me a person who's not able to be here, staying at home because of age and health, and said, it is so—I wish I could remember the exact words— it is so humbling to realize that God chose me. There's no reason why God chose me. Yeah.

What we realize here, every one of us has gifts. There are no useless parts. Every one of us has something we're supposed to give. Now, what he says in 1 Corinthians 12 is, what we tend to think is that different parts of the body are more important than others. I guess they are. I mean, you could lose a finger. It's better than losing an eye, right?

But when we look at the body, we prioritize it in ways that God does not. I mean, I don't know too many people who want to say, oh, I really like to wear sandals because I want people to look at my feet.

Most men, let's face it, if it wasn't for the Passover, you would never trim your toenails.

But it's like, I don't want people to see my feet. Feet are not exactly like... I mean, you never heard a group of men say, wow, look at her feet.

Now, God says no feet are just as important.

Talk to an athlete who's lost a toe, and they will tell you, they can't play anymore. They can't play anymore. I've seen NFL players that were incredible get turf toe in the big toe and never be able to play again. The rest of them were fine. Big toe won't bend anymore. And they can't play. Big toe is important.

Every one of us have importance because we're all part of the body of Christ. But there's a purpose for it. We just looked at it in Ephesians 4. This goal, this purpose that God is doing. Now, in this relationship then, we come as a congregation on Sabbath and Holy Days to look upward and to hear recital of this word. Then we're supposed to have a relationship with each other, and we're supposed to be a family. That's what we're supposed to be. The family of God. But there's something else here, too. Jesus said, by this all will know that you are my disciples if you have one love, one for another. There is supposed to be something about our relationship with each other. That is different enough that people like it. They may not like what we teach, but they somehow like who we are and who we are with each other. That's one reason why it's so sad. You know, I've been in the Church of God way back to the radio Church of God. And most of the time it's been conflict. People fight each other, fight each other, fight each other. Between members, between ministers. Sometimes I wonder, how in the world do we show the world that we are the disciples of Jesus Christ? How in the world do we do that? Our history isn't very good.

Overall, I'm not talking about anyone here personally or even this congregation. I'm just saying our history isn't very good. Because all men will know you are one of those Jesus people. Because there's something special about you. And that brings us to the third point, the third direction that God gives us. And that is outward. If a congregation is only inward, and it's very interesting, I read articles constantly. I'm always studying because there's sociologists and religious people and different people studying the death of Protestant churches. Why do so many Protestant churches, they're dead or dying? And one of the things is, they're inward. All they do is talk about themselves.

All they care about is a new paint job, making sure that the hall looks really nice, making sure that the Sunday school was run perfectly. They're all inward. We can't become just inward. Oh, look at us, we're the people of God. Oh, look at us, we're the people of God. We get like that, and eventually we won't be acting like the people of God. If we're upward, and we're inward in that we have the relationship God wants for us to have, and automatically becomes outward, God doesn't put His Spirit in us just to stay there. It comes through us, and it comes out to do what He wills. If we are His work, God's Spirit can't stop in us, it has to go outward from us to do the work He wants done. So we have to understand there's an outwardness that we must have in how we approach life. And that means that you and I have to preach the gospel every day in all of our actions, in our words. You can't... I've said it before, but you can't put on me, oh, well you do TV, and you write articles for BT Magazine, you're the guy preaching the gospel. No, I'm a guy using a tool. You and I every day have to preach that gospel in our actions, in our words, all the time. God doesn't let us hide this. We are supposed to be His light in a dark world. That's who you are. You are God's light in a dark world. We give that up, and we will start to die. You know, one of the things I'm going to give here, either towards the end of this year or the beginning of next year, I'm going to give eight sermons on the congregations of Revelation 2 and 3. And the reason why, there's an important prophetic lesson there that we're supposed to learn, but there's something else. The message to every one of those churches, it says, you read this message in all of the churches. Every one of those messages to every one of those churches means something to you and me today. And we've ignored many of them. We tend to center on two, and we ignore the rest of the messages. So we're going to go through all those churches.

And we're going to look at them. And we're going to look at the messages we have that we can glean from those today. So anyways, we'll be doing that sometime. If we're this light for the world, here's what happens. That this is going to be uncomfortable. You become the conscience for the people around you, and they can hate you for that. People will get very uncomfortable when they know that you're against homosexuality, right? You don't hate homosexuals, but you believe homosexuality is a sin. Right? But what are you going to do?

You know what really makes me...it just disturbs me. You know what we need...I'm talking about just this country. In the church, we did an honest discussion about racism. And you know why we can't have it? Sometimes? Because racism, homosexuality, transgenderism, and abortions all lump together, and you can't separate them. And they shouldn't be. Homosexuality is a sin. Transgenderism is a sin. Abortion is a sin. Racism is a sin.

Oh, wait a minute. You have to accept all four. No! I don't accept all four. And that's what really bothers me. We can't at times have an honest discussion, because it's all mixed together. Because we have to deal with the fact...and I'm not...you know, I'm not... care much about talking about racism in our country. There's been times they've had it, there's been times it's been good, there's been times it's been worse. I mean, I can talk about the history of racism in this country. Slavery was one of the worst things we've ever done. And those who say it wasn't don't understand it.

They have a political agenda. But that's really not my concern. My concern is the Kingdom of God. And as citizens of the Kingdom of God, we should question, do we have racism? Or are there people who misunderstand what we teach?

Many years ago when I was in Houston, Texas, I had a young black woman come up to me, and basically because of my...what she perceived as my ethnic background, she said, would you pray for me?

And I remember saying, no. I will pray for you as your brother in Christ. I will pray for you as an associate pastor. But I won't pray for you because somehow you think my background gives me a special pass to God that you don't have? Sorry. It's not true. You and I have the same path, the same privilege. So, no. I won't pray for you for that reason. I only pray for you because we're a brother and sister. Dad, I will pray. She was surprised by the answer. That's a reality that happened years and years ago, long before the United Church of God.

But it put in my mind a realization that we have to talk about this. We have to talk about this. But how do you talk about it when it's mixed in with all this other stuff? Well, that's where we have to have the conscience to do that. No. I will have an honest discussion about this, and I will look at myself and say, okay, as a Christian, how should I approach this? Not as a Republican, not as a Democrat, because I don't care.

I don't care. But as a Christian, how do we approach this? As a Christian, how do I approach the fact that in one of the New England cities this week, they just passed a law that you can have a community marriage? A man and two women, a woman and two men, two men and three women? It doesn't matter. You can all marry each other. Okay. I'm against that. Why? Because God's against it. That's why. I don't have any reason to be against it.

I mean, my personality would be, I don't care what you do, just leave me alone. But that's not what we're allowed to do. We are the light in the world. No. God is the light. We're all we are are little lamps. We're just little lamps. We're not the light.

We're not even really lamps. We're just reflectors of the light. We're just reflectors of the light. It's God who is the light. But that means if you really believe this and you're going to live this, you are going to become a conscience to people around you.

And as this world gets worse, and it will, they won't like that. They won't. It doesn't change the fact that that's what we are to be. That's our calling. That's who we are. It's interesting in Acts 17, the Christians were accused of turning the world upside down. They were actually turning it right side up. They were turning their whole world upside down. This country is changing, and as it does, anybody with core Christian values of any kind is going to end up in trouble because it's going to become a small minority.

And we're going to have to still make our stand. It's going to be stupid. You know, don't stand on the street corner and you'll repent. Although I had someone ask me one time, okay, you're used to, for years, you've written articles, you've been on television, you've been on radio. What happens if all that disappears? I said, well, sort of, you know, you start using tools.

I said, I'll be the guy that everybody thinks the crazy man that's walking up and down the street is going to repent and is near. That'll be me, okay? You know, I probably won't get persecuted because everybody will think I'm nuts. And it's hands. In the inner direction, how do we turn that outward? Let's go to Philippians 1. I'm going to actually cover a little bit here of what Mr.

Walker covered, but I want to cover the whole context of it. Philippians 1, verse 27. He's talking to the church in Philippi, and let's look at exactly what he says to them.

Let your conduct be worthy of that word. Our conduct has to be worthy of the gospel. And he says, and you strive to do this with one mind. This is what's interesting. God wants perfect unity in the greater church, and it just doesn't seem to be possible. That is a spiritual immaturity on the part of the people of God. But you can't fix the whole. You can only fix the little part. You can only fix where you are. So they're striving to have their conduct worthy of the gospel. That's what he told the church at Philippi to do. Now let's skip down to chapter 2, verse 1.

That's an entire sermon. But that's the relationship, the inward relationship of the church. No, you can't be an independent Christian and do that. To really do that, you've got to be part of other people. You have to. I don't know how you do that. I don't know how you follow that command if we're not part of other people. So we have to be part of other people. So here you are. Now, you may have picked other people to be with if you had your choice, right? Nope. God picked you to be with each other. There you go. God picked you to be with each other. It's His choice. And He says, now, let's work this together. Let's let this become who we are. This is who we become in our differences and in our arguments and of all the other stuff that goes on between us. And then He explains how you do it because verses 5 through verse 11 is, be like Christ. If you want to understand, you've got to be like Jesus Christ. You have to have His mind in you because He's the only one that knows what it's like to be a human being and be this way. So we've got to learn to be like Him. So He tells us how. He says, He starts with, your conduct has to be worthy of the gospel. And then He says, this is the personal relationship within the Church. Then He says, you can only do this if you follow the example of Jesus Christ. Now this is leading up to what I wanted to read. Originally, when I prepared this sermon, there were only two verses out of this passage that I was going to read. This morning I got up and spent over an hour expanding that out to the context of what it said. Because I thought, you know, there's something more important here. There's something that leads up to this point. Verse 12, Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure. Now I want to stop there a minute because I have heard verse 12 quoted a lot of times over the years with two basic emphasis. One group of people looked at that and said, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. And they have connected that back to, let your conduct be worthy of the gospel of Christ. They've connected it back to, here's the relationship. This is the product of this. If your conduct is worthy of the gospel, then chapter 2, verses 1 through 4 is how we're going to strive to relate to each other.

Verse 5 through 11 is going to tell us where we learned it from. So these people are focused on Christ and focused on verse 13, for as God who works in you both to will and to do His good pleasure. And so these people read that and say, I have to work out my own salvation with fear and trembling, which means, Almighty God, please save me. There's a lot of fear and trembling. Because you know what? We can't get each other into the kingdom. I can't convert you. You can't convert me. You can't drag your husband into the kingdom. You can't drag your wife into the kingdom. You can't drag your kids into the kingdom. You can't drag your parents into the kingdom. All of us stand before God alone in terms of salvation. So that way, we're working out our own salvation. But those who really understand that are a bit intimidated by it. They find themselves on their knees before God. Then there's the other people interpret this, and for years, I've had this conversation. And people will say, well, you know what? I don't feel like I have to belong to any church. I don't feel like I have to belong to any congregation. I don't feel like I have to submit to anybody. And I sure don't have to work with all these people with all their problems, you know? I don't like people in that group anyways, that congregation. There's bad people. It's just me and God, because I'm working out my own salvation with fear and trembling. And over the years, I've never said it, but I think next time I see that, I'm going to. I'm going to say, where's your fear and trembling? Because there's people who quote that with no fear and trembling, and that scares me. I have fear and trembling every time I hear someone throw that in someone's face as sort of this independence, declaration of independence. It's just me and God. Well, wait a minute. If you put that in the context of what we read, it's me and God and Christ in the church. It even goes beyond that. Look at the next verse. Do all things without complaining, verse 14, and disputing, that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God, without fault, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. So we're upward towards God and Christ. We're inward towards each other, and we're lights to the world. That's what working out your own salvation with fear and trembling produces. If you're really working out your own salvation with fear and trembling, you're upward, inward, and outward in your relationship with God, your congregation, and the world. That's what you become. Working out your own salvation with fear and trembling, which is basically thumping your chest and saying, I'm special, there needs to be more fear and trembling.

Lights in the world. You don't see yourself as a light.

The closer you get to God, the more blinding that light can be to other people, because you and I are forgotten sometimes when it lives in total darkness.

We've forgotten when it lives in total darkness. There's a little bit of light that's been in this world is going out. It's going to go out.

I don't know when, but you can see it going out all over the place.

The United States isn't going down the tubes tomorrow, but the light's going out. The light's going out all over the world. I'm an alarmist, and you can see it happening.

You can just see it happening.

That means your light's going to get brighter.

The less light there is, the little bit of light there is gets brighter.

But that's one of the reasons you were called.

That's one of the reasons we have a congregation.

As individuals, we shine as a group we shine.

The less we are together, the less we can shine.

That's just the way it is.

God hasn't created His church to function like the machine I talked about at the beginning.

The church has three functions that we've talked about as three directions from God.

Upward, a relationship of worship with God.

And to have that, we have to have an attitude of reverence towards God and an attitude of reverence and fear towards the Word of God.

The proper kind of fear.

The inward, a relationship of personal growth inside the church and that we nurture each other in that personal growth. We work with each other. We put up with each other. And sometimes we carry each other.

What do we do with the people who can't come to church? We help carry them. We do whatever it takes to keep them out there so that we're connected to them and they're connected to God until whatever crisis goes away. That's what we do.

Every person should be a committee of one to connect with as many people that aren't here.

To say, hey, just wanted to see Him. How are you doing?

That call I got this week was the first time I've had someone call me that hasn't been to church for three months. I just want to know how you're doing. Or, is Kim there? I just want to hear her voice. So you didn't call to me to talk to me at all? No, I didn't. I literally want to talk to her. Okay.

And I think, wow, this is neat.

This is neat. This is good.

And sometimes I've called people and they said, hello. And I said, hi, scary Penny. I just want to hear your voice. Oh, hi, Mr. Penny.

Sometimes it's 45 minutes later.

Our brothers and sisters need us to keep them connected.

And this is what we're supposed to do.

In this inward part, we develop a Biblical understanding, a unity of doctrine, to develop unity as the family of God, and to develop the gifts that God has given to each one of us so that we all contribute to what God is doing.

And then there's the outward, a relationship to shine as lights to the world. It's to preach the gospel through our words and actions every day.

It is to make a moral stand in an evil world when it's proper to do so.

I mean, there's no need going out and pounding on your neighbor's door and saying, hey, I heard you sell dope and I'm here to tell you repent.

There's no need to do that, okay?

But there is a time.

We need to make our moral stands.

We can't be seen as everybody is...

Oh, they just don't care.

Now, you have to be careful. I mean, sometimes I just...

I'll be out someplace and conversations will start and I'll just keep my mouth shut.

There's no... I mean, it's not going to produce anything.

I do enjoy, though, saying, what do you do as a living? Oh, I'm a pastor.

I like watching the discomfort.

That's a shame, but I do.

And we are to exhibit God's love for humanity.

You have been called by God to become like His Son, Jesus Christ.

I mean, Jesus Christ came to show us what it's like.

I mean, the Word would have stated in heaven we would not know.

He came to become like us to show us.

We know we have an example to follow.

The more we are Christ-like, the more we're going to be involved, and the more we're going to desire to be involved in what He's doing, the more Christ-like we are, the more we're going to want to be involved in what He is doing.

And what is He doing?

He's doing the work of His Father in a place called the Church.