The True Church

Good morning. Welcome to Insights. This

is Pastor John. Today we're going to be

talking about the true church.

And uh it seems like an odd statement

that you would have to talk about the

true church, but I want to I want to

read something to you out of the book of

Ephesians. It's verse chapter

uh

in chapter 4. Paul starts this out. He

says, "I therefore, the prisoner of the

Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy

of the vocation wherewith you are called

with all loneliness and meekness, with

longsuffering, forbearing one another in

love, endeavoring to keep the unity of

the spirit in the bond of peace. There

is one body and one spirit even as you

are called in one hope of your calling.

One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one

God and father of all who is above all

and through all and in you all.

And as I was reading that and praying

about it, I was taking a look at

different things that the Lord had

uh through the different writers had

shared. And one of the things that

became so

apparent to me was this.

We're all one body

and uh there are

a tremendous number of denominations

out there. You have different religious

beliefs.

Um

but at the end of the day,

irregardless of of what

um

teachings you follow,

the teachings that Paul gave us in the

Bible are sound doctrine. And when he

states that there is one Lord, one

faith, one baptism, one God and father

of all who is above all and through all

and in you all. He's telling us that the

church is not a building. The church is

not a religious group. The church is a

group that is based on faith in one

thing, the Lord Jesus Christ. Without

Jesus being the very center of all you

do, without him being the foundation

that you build on, your faith is in

vain.

And you have to go back to to what God's

word says every time. I want you to

listen to something. This is out of

James chapter 1.

And and it's something we need to

a as a body of believers to grab a hold

of because this is what he says. And

this is about religion

as opposed to a life of faith. He says

pure religion

and undefiled before God and the father

is this

to visit the fatherless and widows in

their affliction and to keep himself

unspotted from the world. You know, I've

made this statement many times. If

someone looks at you and you claim to be

a Christian and they can't tell the

difference between you and what the

world does, you need to check yourself.

Your religion is vain because you're not

you haven't done what he said to do,

which is to come out from among them to

separate yourself from the world and to

live a life that is holy and pleasing

before God.

And that life that being holy what

holiness is is being set aside for

service. That is what holiness is. You

are God has called you out from among

the world and set you aside

for service to mankind to give them the

message that Jesus came to deliver which

was that John 3:16. That's Jesus's me

message that God so loved the world that

he sent his son Jesus Christ to die in

our place as propitiation for our sin

that we could enter into a relationship

with the father because no amount of

animal blood shed could

remove the sin. It could cover it for a

year but it couldn't remove the sin. It

took the God's own blood to cleanse sin.

And so when you're

when you're looking at everything that

God

has done,

it should be a humbling thing for us to

realize that God's love for us is

greater than even our love for our for

our own selves.

We would choose destruction

without a conscience,

without what Jesus came to did and

pointed out came to do and pointed out

to all of us that there is a better way.

He said, "I am the way, the truth, and

the life and no man comes unto the

father but by me." And without Jesus

as the center of our lives, we are lost.

Jesus said, "Narrow is the gate and

straightest the way that leadth unto

righteousness."

There is only one way, his way. And if

you have any doubts about whether your

religion, your your beliefs

are vain or not

is to ask yourself the question. Is this

what Jesus asked me to do? And you're

not going to know that question uh the

answer to that question without you

actually getting into his word and

opening it up and taking a look at it.

It's that important that we as believers

in Christ

uh have to follow the things that he

said and what he said to do. And if we

don't do that, then we put ourselves in

the position of we're not truly

following him. And so he gave us some

things. He says, "By this shall they

know that you are my disciple disciples,

that you have love one for another."

If you can't love someone who has

who's

different from you,

then you've lost the point.

We have to love one another.

We have to be those people that are

willing to take a stand and show the

world what God's love actually is. And

when we understand that that we're all

one body,

um, and and as I said already, the

church is not a building. The church is

not a denomination. The church is

believers. That's who the church is. And

and if you can't look past

all of these things, I I've I can I can

I cannot tell you the number of times uh

in my lifetime that I've heard people of

different denominational backgrounds

make a statement, make this statement,

which is if you don't belong to this

particular church or this particular

denomination,

um then you're not right. You're not

going to be saved. if you're not going

to heaven, so on and so forth. And none

of that is true.

There's only one thing that makes us

eligible to get into heaven, and that's

our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Doesn't matter what else you believe. If

that's not the center focus of what you

believe, then your religion, your belief

system is in vain.

And if it's Jesus Christ and him

crucified,

for those of us that accept and believe

that, it means everything. And for those

that reject it, it means nothing. And um

in fact, the Bible says that to them

that aren't saved, the cross is

foolishness.

It's about Jesus. It's not about you and

me. It's about Jesus. And it's about

what we do with what he's given us. You

know, his his greatest

his greatest example of how to be a

Christian in its truest form

is when he knelt down and washed his own

disciples feet. The king of heaven, he

says, "I came not to be served but to

serve."

And then he washed the disciples feet.

And then he followed that by telling the

disciples to wash each other's feet. We

are in service to each other. We are we

have a responsibility to each other to

do what God has called us to do and to

do it in faith because without faith,

you can't please God. everything you do

in your in your beliefs and in your

worship of Christ and what you do, if

you're not doing it out of faith, if

you're doing it for any other reason,

it's vain.

All those things have to be acts of

faith. So, I want to leave that with you

this week. We got a lot going on in the

next few weeks. uh couple of weeks from

now I'm I'm going to be in Pakistan

um trying to reach people with the

message of Christ

uh encouraging them in their faith.

Um I don't know if we're going to be

able to to broadcast from Pakistan or

not. So, you might have a couple of

weeks where there's no midweek insight,

but don't give up hope because we're

going to have a lot to share because God

is on the move all over the world in

every area and we need to, you know,

lift each other up in prayer. I hope

you'll pray for me. I hope you pray for

success for the mission to Pakistan. And

most of all, I I hope you pray for each

other and that you walk in love above

all things. So, we'll see you guys next

week. And remember, it's all about him,

not about us.