Why Church?

Gospel of Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also when you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation and believed in him was sealed with the promised holy spirit who is in guaranteed of our inheritance until we acquire positions of it to the to the praise of his glory this is the word of the Lord.

Let me just uh open in a word of prayer and then we’ll come to this passage. Heavenly Father we as always, we come to you meriting nothing. We come to you in our utter dependence. we come to you in the name of Jesus and in that name alone and we ask that you draw us to yourself that you would make yourself known in all your glory that you would help us to understand your purposes and in particular your purpose for the church, so that we might live out that purpose. we pray that you would be with us now by your spirit in Jesus’ name, amen.

I don’t need to remind you that it’s election season. Reggie mentioned it in his prayer. we see it everywhere, everybody’s got a manifesto. and we’ve all seen the slogans. it might be land and jobs manje, or it might be we get things done, or let’s fix south Africa, or building better communities together. take your pick. the slogans are everywhere, and they point to the manifestos and the manifestos tell us why the party exists, who they are, what they’re going to do. what if you had a manifesto for the church, what would it say? I think the closest thing we have to a manifesto for the church in all of the bible is Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. the interesting thing about this letter is that it probably wasn’t just written to the Ephesians, I don’t know if you knew that about this letter. the evidence suggests it seems to have been written to a number of local churches in a particular region of what we know as modern-day Turkey. it was a circular letter, kind of a bulk email which is why it’s so broad. it doesn’t deal with the narrow issues of any one local church like the letter to the Galatians or the letter to the Corinthians. It deals with the with church in theory if you like. it deals with church in broad brushstrokes. it zooms out and it gives us church in general principles. it’s a manifesto for the church and that’s so helpful right about now, isn’t it? Because it seems like many people have decided to vote against the church. they’re voting with their feet, they’re voting with their mouths, they’re voting online. now if we want to engage with them, it’s not good enough to say you must go to church. why? because it’s the right thing to do. why? because my gran said so. it’s not enough, is it? and if that’s all we’ve got to offer the church is not just in danger of losing the person you are engaging with the church is in danger of losing you.

At some point you’re going to stop hearing your granny’s voice on a Sunday morning, “Prince, get up Prince it’s time to get up you need to get to church.” At some point you’re going to be able to block it out just pull over your head and roll over back to sleep, and then what? We need a reason to be here. because think about this what are we actually doing here? You know we gather on a Sunday night of all times to sing songs, pray, read from ancient religious texts that were written to foreign cultures thousands of years ago, when it’s all a bit strange isn’t it? What are we actually doing here? if you’ve come here in the hope of meeting a marriage partner well surely, surely the News Cafe or The Grand is a better bet. If you’ve come here to exercise your musical gifts well, there’s always Idols or YouTube. This is not exactly a catapult for your career as much as we love you.

So, what are we doing here? what are we doing here?  We need an answer, we need an answer to the question why church? That’s what we’re going to focus on this evening that’s all we’re going to focus on. Why church? It’s the one question we want to answer and it’s the first part in a series that is hopefully going to give us the full manifesto for the church. I’m so excited for this series I have to tell you. I’m excited for you. Reggie, Blaque, Gareth, Rapha, these guys have thought long and hard and prayed and come up with a very, very exciting series and the book of Ephesians is so wonderful. So, we’re going to be looking at topics like church and sex, church and politics, church and the isms: racism, tribalism, sexism. Church and social media, and a bunch of other topics. But before we get any to any of that we have to have an answer to our question, why church? Before we can talk about how the church relates to social media, we need to know why the church exists at all. So why church? That’s our question.

And like any good manifesto Ephesians answers that question straight up. First up, just an aside preaching from Ephesians 1 is a bit like building a sandcastle in front of Mount Kilimanjaro. You are not going to do it justice. Ephesians 1 is so beautiful, so grand so sweeping, you’re just never going to do it justice. The best you can hope for is to get out of the way and let its glory shine through, let it speak for itself. Now that’s not an apology for this sermon, it’s just an encouragement for you to go and read this letter for yourself. Go and read this chapter for yourself, drink deep of it. Now that everything that Bantu read was one sentence when Paul wrote. It it’s like his heart just exploded. SO go and read it for yourself.

Anyway, why church? why is an ultimate question. it’s a question of purpose. to answer a question of purpose we have to ask the purposer, we have to ask the designer, we have to go back to the beginning and ask about intentions. and in Ephesians 1 Paul does exactly that. He goes back to the beginning, and he shows us what God was doing so that he can build towards showing us why he was doing it. So, let’s go back to the beginning pick it up in verse 4. Great if you have your bibles open pick it up in verse 4. Before the foundation of the world, you see those words, that’s pretty much the beginning, isn’t it? In the beginning God chose you. Before the foundation of the world God chose you. and he chose you to be holy and blameless. Imagine it. without blame, without blame, spotless, guiltless, pure. That’s what he chose you for and his motive was love. In love, verse 5, he decided beforehand that you would be his son or his daughter and this was a free gift from him to you to the praise of his glorious grace, verse 6, his glorious grace. The Father gives us the free gift of his son his beloved so that, verse 7, we can be bought out of our slavery to sin and by his blood we can be forgiven our trespasses. And he hasn’t kept it all from us, he hasn’t left us in the darkness, he hasn’t left it all shrouded in mystery, no. He’s led us into his plan he shared his purpose with us that’s verses 8-9 and he’s done all of these things, verse 10, as a plan for the fullness of time. As a plan for the fullness of time, for the apex of history. What is that plan? what is God’s plan for the fullness of time? what is the purpose of all of history? See the words there, to unite all things in Christ. it’s all about Christ. he is the means, he is the end, he is the instrument, and the goal. He is the goal. That’s why he’s just about everywhere in our passage.

So, have a look again we’ve been blessed in Christ, verse three, chosen in him, verse four, adopted through him, verse five, he is the beloved of, verse 6, in him we have redemption verse 7. In verse 9 the Father reveals his purposes in Christ and that purpose is to place all things under Christ, verse 1. That’s God’s plan, it’s his plan for all of history, it’s his plan for the church and it’s his plan for your life. When people ask me about God’s plan for their life this is where I bring them Ephesians 1 because it’s true God does have a plan for your life his plan is to unite all things under Christ and believe it or not you are part of all things. we’d like to think we’re in a category all by ourselves, no we’re part of all things. His plan is that you join all other things under the loving gracious saving rule of king Jesus. That’s his plan. And once we know his plan our job is to align our plans with his plan.

So, who do you marry? marry someone who will partner with you in living under the loving gracious saving rule of king Jesus. what job do you take? it doesn’t really matter as long as you can do it unto the Lord. And beyond that it’s just a question of sanctified common sense. should I buy the car? should I buy the car? if Jesus is king maybe I should buy it second hand and give the balance to Nokuphila. You see how this works? Was that the chairman giving an Amen? You see how it works? If you know what God is doing and you do because you’ve read Ephesians chapter 1 verse 10 then throw yourself into what he’s doing, and he will help you arrange the details of your life accordingly.

The Christian life is a bit like the Congo River. That is, I have to admit it and I hate to admit it in front of Rapha, that it is probably the most impressive body of water I’ve ever seen, with respect to the Jukskei, the mighty Jukskei. I’ve stood in Kinshasa, and I’ve looked across the Congo at Brazzaville, you can barely see the other side, that’s the width of the river. If you are swimming in the Congo there literally thousands of channels you could take, thousands of lanes in which you could swim, thousands upon thousands. There’s so much freedom. The one thing you don’t want to do is swim upstream, right? you want to make sure you’re swimming with the current. If you swim upstream in the Congo, it’s not going to go well. You’re not going to get anywhere. Same thing with the church. The Father is placing all things under king Jesus, the church serves that purpose. There are thousands of different parts we can take but that’s our true north. that is swimming with the current, that’s our purpose. Why church? because God is putting all things under the loving saving gracious rule of king Jesus. That’s why, that’s an answer isn’t it?

But we can push deeper. why does the Father want to place all things under his son? why? we have an answer in verse 3. blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. God is placing all things under Christ to bless us. Ephesians 1 is a catalogue of blessings that we have in Christ, and I hope you can see what an extraordinary blessing he is. it’s election season. Think about our leaders the leaders on offer think of the range think of your particular favourites. how much can we trust them? if you think we can, maybe you haven’t lived long enough. Forgive the cynicism of a middle-aged man. now just imagine there’s a king, he’s a powerful king he has no rivals, none but he’s also kind and wise and loving and gracious. He serves his people. He’s merciful. Wouldn’t you want him to be your king? You would choose him as your leader, wouldn’t you? but imagine he chooses you and he chooses you because he wants to give you the keys to the kingdom. And imagine he chooses you while you’re still a rebel, while you’re still on the opposition benches, actively working to undermine him, actively working to bring him down. And he doesn’t just choose you he chooses you and he pardons you. imagine this good king whom you have betrayed loves you enough to die for you so that he can bring you in so that he can give you a seat at the king’s table. you are going to eat at the king’s table every night. it’s a banquet he’s hosting for all the slaves and rebels that he’s loved. and imagine he brought us all together so that he could love us in this way so that he could teach us to love each other so that we could live in this kingdom of love and grow this kingdom of love together forever.

Now are you listening? Because here’s the blessing, you don’t have to imagine. All of that is yours in Christ as we stand and sit here this evening. all of it is yours. God created the church because he wants to put all things under Christ. And he wants to put all things under Christ because he wants to bless us. And he wants to bless us because he wants to bless us that’s just who he is. It has everything to do with him and nothing to do with us. He’s the God of the church, that’s the God of the church. That’s why all of us everything we’ve said is to the praise of his glory, verse 14. That’s why the only possible response is that we bless him in return and that’s what Ephesians 1 is it’s a song of praise. We’ve been singing songs of praise; this is a song of praise. The first line says it all. The first line is the banner over the whole thing. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s how it starts, and it ends in praise for his glory.

So why church? for our blessing and for God’s glory. And those two things always go together. Once we know that it empowers us to move on and to answer all the other questions we’re going to answer in this series. So, if the church exists so that God can place all things under Christ in order to bless us for his glory, that helps us frame the question of how the church relates to racism or sexism or tribalism. Or we can think about social media, if the church exists as God’s means to place all things under Christ in order to bless his people for his glory, well that gives us strong guidance in how to conduct ourselves online doesn’t it? we have enormous freedom, enormous freedom, but the current is strong, and we want to swim with the current not against it. do you see? or even take next week’s question, what is the church? Do you see that if Christ is the head, we have half an answer to that question already, if Christ is the head what is the church? And so, it goes. Why church? To paraphrase the Westminster Confession the chief end of the church is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Why church? Because God wants to bless us by placing us under the loving rule of his son that will bring him glory and the more glory, he gets the more blessed we are. Why church? To place all things under Christ for our blessing and for God’s glory.

let’s pray. Father we thank you that in Christ we have every true blessing. in Christ there is no blessing we lack. he is the blessing from which all blessings flow. and so, we bless you Father, we praise you that you are the God who is determined to bless his people. we thank you for the precious gift of the church, Father. And over the next few weeks as we think through together under your word as we think through what the church is what it does, help us never to lose sight of why it exists in the first place, as a means to place all things under Christ so that you can bless your people and be revealed in all your glory. help us to align our lives individually and as a church with that great purpose. and we pray these things in the name of the blessed one himself, our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.