Formed and reFormed by the Church
Wayne Grudem: The power of the church is its God-given authority to carry on spiritual warfare, proclaim the Gospel and exercise church discipline.
Sometimes The Church Abuses Its Power and “Poisons Everything”
See Keller Reason for God “The Church Is Responsible For So Much Injustice”
Story of Mark Lilla – Associate Professor at the University of Chicago
- born again in high school
- in college he de-converted
- Why?
- He went to a church with a national reputation for spiritual vitality
- It was a crushing disappointment
- The community was authoritarian and dogmatic
- Very combative
- He thought about how they used the Bible to control people’s lives
- “the thought penetrated my mind – that the Bible might be wrong … it was my first step out of the world of faith.”
- He left the church, not because of philosophy, logic, historical evidence or scientific problems
- He was resisting a particular person or group of people
- Religion takes cultural and racial differences and aggregates them.
- “Religion is not unlike racism, one version of it inspires and provokes the other. Religion has been an enormous multiplier of tribal suspicion and hatred.” - Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens “God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”
My answer – “Yes, we’ve blown it…but Jesus didn’t”
I told my friend from elementary school that he’s right to reject that sort of thing, but that isn’t the same as rejecting Jesus.
Notice the leap between rejecting people and rejecting Jesus?
- My friend is rejecting a community that mixes Christianity with Republican Politics and child abuse.
I know others who reject churches that cater to Democratic Politics and do more protesting social issues than they do teaching the Bible.
? What was the early church known for?
- They didn’t go to the arena to watch the bloody fights of the gladiators
- They didn’t join the army to support Caesar’s wars of conquest
- They empowered women
- They were against abortion and infanticide
- Roman practice to discard baby girls and handicapped children
- They were against sex outside of marriage
- They mixed races and social classes
- They believed that Jesus was the only way to salvation
- They were sacrificially supportive of the poor
? Is this liberal or conservative? Republican or Democratic?
It’s neither … its just an authentic way of following Jesus
I think the church today doesn’t walk in its true authority because we have no idea what its authority really is.
- We think our authority is in politics
- We think our authority is in telling people what movies to watch and how to educate their children
- We think our authority is in social issues
- Instead our authority as a church is focused in specific, but pivotal, areas
Titus 2:15 - Declare these things; exhort and rebuke with all authority. Let no one disregard you. - Titus 2:15
That’s not a crossing guard mentality … Paul is saying that the church has real authority. But it falls in two specialized categories.
So, if the church has authority, we need to understand it so that we don’t abuse it ourselves.
Four Questions:
1. Why Does the Church Need Authority
2. Where Does the Church Get Its Authority?
3. What Is Our Authority?
4. What Will A Church With Authority Look Like?
1. Why Does the Church Need Authority?
A. “Declare these things”
? What Things?
In general – the message of Jesus.
In particular – Titus 2:11-14
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. - Titus 2:11-14
Grace has appeared
Grace will train us to turn away from sin and turn towards Jesus.
B. The goal of the church is to build a community that helps people get closer to Jesus.
- People outside the church to come in and hear about Jesus
- People inside the church to put off their sinful habits and act like Jesus
- This should be the main point of our community
- Older Men and Older Women teaching
- Young Men becoming self-controlled
- Leaders being held to a high standard
- Good theology
- All serving to draw us near to Jesus
Him [Jesus] we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. - Colossians 1:28
Romans 8:29:
For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. - Romans 8:29
CS Lewis It is easy to think that the Church has a lot of different objects-education, buildings, missions, holding services. … The church exists for nothing else but to draw men to Christ, to make them little Christ’s.
If they are not doing that, all the cathedrals, missions, sermons, even the Bible itself, are simply a waste of time. God became man for no other purpose.
C. Is The Church Working On This?
I have to ask ... do we all see the church’s mission in this way?
If so, what are we doing to purposefully follow this goal?
Monks
Vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and sometimes silence
Yeah, probably no exactly what the Bible was describing
But those vows of poverty, chastity and obedience were serious attacks on the most common expressions of the flesh:
- Greed
- Sensuality
- Pride
? What are we doing that shows equal seriousness and equal commitment to disengage from conformity to the world?
How are we teaching people to “renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives” ??? (Titus 2:12)
We need authority to do this because no human community will naturally follow Jesus.
2. Where Does the Church Get Its Authority?
Easy answer: Jesus
But there’s more to it than that.
Peter and the Keys of the Kingdom
The authority of the church was first mentioned back in Matthew 16:13-19
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
Peter’s Confession – you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God
And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” - Matthew 16:17-19
Keys of the Kingdom
- Peter is often pictured holding a big key
? What is a “key”?
- in the Bible the word “Key” is used to talk about authority
- the authority to open a door, enter a place or give permission to enter a realm
- Jesus has the keys of Death and Hades
- In Revelation 5 an angel is given a Key to the Abyss to open it and let out smoke and locusts
- Jesus accused False Teachers of taking away the key of knowledge, without entering into knowledge themselves
- Keys give authority over Hell, over judgment, over knowledge
- The keys given to Peter, and the church, also had authority
“…whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”
So the question we’re on is “Where does the church get its authority?”
- The answer is that the church gets its authority from Jesus, and only continues to have authority so long as it faithfully preaches and follows Jesus.
- The keys of the Kingdom are a good metaphor of that authority
This is authority to preach the Gospel of Jesus and to open the door to Heaven.
- This doesn’t mean Peter sits at the Pearly Gates
- It means that Peter was the first one who told anyone how to get into the Pearly Gates
In Matthew 16:16 Peter said “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”
The Gospels = the story of a spirit filled, authoritative Jesus
Acts = the story of a spirit filled, authoritative Church
In Acts 2 Peter preached the first Spirit-Filled sermon
“Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know— this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. – Acts 2:22-24
Let all the house of
Keys of the Kingdom = Preaching the Gospel of Jesus
Matthew 18 on Binding and Loosing
Just after talking about confronting someone:
- Fist one on one
- Then with two or three witnesses
- Then to the whole church
Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. - Matthew 18:18-19
This shows the second use of the keys of the kingdom.
- If the first use of the Keys of the Kingdom is to invite people into the
- The second is to identify people who think they are in the kingdom who actually aren’t (or who aren’t acting like it) and to treat them properly (i.e. like a sinner who needs to be saved by grace).
This doesn’t mean that we can actually pull people out of heaven by “binding them”.
Greek phrasing:
Whatever you shall bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven.
Whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.
* O
* Instead the church is confidently mirroring what God is doing in heaven
- If someone is saying that they follow Jesus but are continuing in sin even though they’ve been lovingly confronted, if their life isn’t changing, if they are not growing in grace, if their words and deeds look nothing like Jesus’ … we can be pretty confident that they aren’t going to heaven.
- They have been “bound”
- If someone believes that Jesus is the Son of God who rose from the dead for their sins, and by their life shows that even though they struggle, they are trying to follow Him – we can confidently say that they are going to heaven.
- they have been “loosed”
- We can confidently pronounce it
- Calvin’s Assurance of Pardon
- Let each of you confess that he is really a sinner who has humbled himself before God. He must believe that the heavenly Father will be gracious to him in Jesus Christ. To all who have repentance and who seek Jesus Christ for their salvation, I pronounce forgiveness in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
3. What Is Our Authority?
Wayne Grudem:
The power of the church is its God-given authority to carry on spiritual warfare, proclaim the Gospel and exercise church discipline.
Exhort and Rebuke
Exhort
At first I thought these were two similar words, both meaning firm talk.
In my research this week I found out that the word “Exhort” is far deeper and more complex.
Webster’s Dictionary on “exhort”: to incite by argument or advice : urge strongly
Sounds a lot like “rebuke” to incite by argument or advice : urge strongly or an expression of strong disapproval
Exhort in Greek = parakaleo
It’s more about comfort than about frustration
Peter in Acts 2:40 “And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them”
2 Cor 1 Parakeleo = Comfort
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. - 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will lead him and restore comfort to him and his mourners, - Isaiah 57:18
The Best Comfort We Can Offer is JESUS
Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal (exhorting/parakaleo) through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. - 2 Corinthians 5:20
Read Context: 2 Cor 5:13-21
Exhortation = the authoritative offer of salvation
It’s preaching Jesus
- When people far from Jesus hear the Gospel, they are asked to enter the
- When people who are already followers of Jesus hear the Gospel, they are asked to lead lives worthy of the Gospel
- This isn’t an appeal to morality
- Its an appeal to the Cross
- Exhort = The first use of the Keys of the Kingdom; inviting people into the
- Rebuke = The second use of the Keys of the Kingdom; identifying people who think they are in the kingdom who actually aren’t (or who aren’t acting like it) and treating them properly (i.e. like a sinner who needs to be saved by grace).
Rebuke
To show someone his or her sin and to lead them to repentance.
Done by Jesus:
Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent. - Revelation 3:19
Church Discipline
4. What Will A Church With Authority Look Like?
Gathered & Scattered
Together we have authority in groups
Individually we are unleashed to carry out this authority
Expanding & Contracting
Growing larger in size
Growing smaller in Community
Cross Generational
Many ages coming together
Changing to Be Authentic Followers of Jesus
Conclusion / Communion
Introduce the Table
Elders