Biblical Principles of Church (Part 3) - Pastor Steve Estes

Full Transcript: (Note that the speaker references Matthew 18 in his opening remarks, but intended to say Matthew 16. This is corrected in the transcript.)

In the New Testament, the church is clearly seen in multiple places as an organization.  Think of it this way - we’re called Christ’s body.  A human body has flesh and muscles and sinews and organs.  This mirrors God’s church as an organism.  But a body also has a skeleton framework to support the flesh, the bones, in an orderly way.  The skeletons or bones mirror the church as an organization. This is the way it is with the body of Christ.  It’s an organism and an organization.  And our passage we’ve been reading in Matthew 16 gives us our first glimpse of this. 

You remember in verse 18 and 19, Jesus says “I will build my church,” and then he makes his first promise: “ …the gates of Hell won’t overcome it.”  And then the first thing he says in describing his church is - he gives to Peter in verse 19, the keys of the kingdom of heaven.  And he gives to Peter, as an apostle, the authorization in the church to bind certain things and loose certain things.

We’ll discuss the meaning of this the next time we’re together, but he does this - this clearly has some notion of authority.  Later in Matthew 18, Jesus gives this same authority to all the apostles. It was not just Peter as a first Pope or something.  And then later in the book of Acts, Jesus, through the apostle Paul and the elders, gives this authority to elders in every local church.

But its point is that Jesus started describing his church by starting with Peter, describing certain authority being given to leaders, authority that is matched in heaven: Whatever you bind and loose on earth will be bound and loosed in heaven.  Whatever that means - it means that the authority is very deep and very real and is dealing with spiritual realities - it’s not just some man-made construct.  

When he said that he gives to Peter the keys to the Kingdom - a person who has keys unlocks doors and locks them.  Thus the person with keys admits certain people and can close and lock the door and refuse admission to certain people.  This is a matter of authority.  It’s the first thing Jesus talked about when he described his church.  

When he talks about binding and loosing, he’s talking about - at least partly - allowing certain things to be and disallowing certain things to be.  There’s some authority exercised.  There’s some structure.  There’s some organization.

A number of points:

First, the New Testament church had officers.  And thus it had offices.  It started with the apostles, they were clearly the leaders.  Later, in Acts chapter 6, there arose a need for a second office in the church.  You may recall that in Jerusalem, there were adherents to the Jewish faith who were of the Jewish race.  There were adherents to the Jewish faith who were of other races, Greek: the Greek race, or perhaps they spoke Greek or they had Jewish culture and they dressed like Greeks and they ate like Greeks.  And they found that certain widows who were among the Greeks, they got overlooked in the daily distribution of food, whereas the Jewish widows got all the food that they needed.  

And so the apostles saw that there was a problem.  In Acts chapter 6 verse 3, they called together the congregation, and they said, “Brothers, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of wisdom and the Holy Spirit, and we’ll turn this responsibility of feeding the poor over to them.”

These seven men became the first deacons.  And notice how they were - how they were chosen.  The congregation is called together for a meeting.  Certain qualification are given: what it would take to be a deacon.  You need to be full of wisdom, you need to be full of the Holy Spirit.  And so there’s a definite organization to it.  

Then these seven are elected by a congregation, presumably at a congregational meeting since they couldn’t vote by email.  Later then - so now you have apostles, you have deacons, and later you have the office of elder.  That’s all the way through the New Testament.  You may recall in Acts chapter 20, verse 17, Paul is traveling and he travels near the city of Ephesus where he had spent so much time, but he couldn’t quite go there.  He needed to get on a boat and go away, so he sent word and it says that he sent for the elders of the church.  

Or in Acts chapter 14 verse 23, we read that Paul and his companion Barnabas appointed elders in each church.  Sometimes in the New Testament these elders are called overseers, they’re - those words are interchangeable, they’re one in the same things.  Sometimes they are called shepherds, and in our English words, the English word for shepherds is pastors.  Pastors, shepherds, elders, overseers, they’re all the same person in the same office and they were established in the New Testament.  

And like with deacons, the Bible talks about certain qualifications that you need to become an elder.  It was an organized process.  In 1st Timothy 3 there’s a long list of qualifications.  An elder candidate must be above reproach, above criticism from the outside, he must have a good reputation with others.  Able to teach and manage his family well, and so forth.  

In 1st Timothy chapter 5 verse 17, we read that elders were divided up in their responsibilities into two.  Certain elders were to major upon teaching, they had become in our parlance today, pastors.  Other elders were to major on ruling.  And what that means is the oversight of the congregation, both through personal relationships and through making policy decisions and so forth.  

And then in 1st Timothy 4:14, you have another example of organization when it comes to elders.  You have the account of an ordination service for a pastor.  A service is called together, a pastor is examined, the elders come and lay hands on him, then he becomes an elder.  It’s an orderly process.  

The same thing you find in 1st Timothy 3.  In most of the chapter for 1st Timothy 3, Paul discusses first the role of qualification of elders, and then he discusses the same about deacons.  Officers imply a certain amount of organization.  The officer had to clearly be part of a church in order to be elected to the position. The examiners who examined them clearly had to be a part of the church in order to be trusted people to get these letters and the elders in the door and keep out those who shouldn’t be there.  There had to be some clear understanding of who was part of the church and who was not part of the church.  Now there are other examples of ordination.

The second way we know the church had organization in the New Testament is the New Testament church had congregational meetings. [drops head on the pulpit…] But it did.  It truly did.  For instance, we just read about in Acts chapter 6, when certain widows were being neglected, they called a congregational meeting, and the church chose certain men to be deacons.  In 1st Corinthians 5, we have a long account — pretty much the whole chapter is about a congregational meeting where certain judicial decisions needed to be made about a difficult issue that had come up in the church.

In 2nd Corinthians chapter 2 verse 6, Paul just briefly speaks about a decision that was made by [quote] “the majority of the congregation”.  Here, they obviously knew who was in the congregation and who a majority was.  That’s the second reason: the church had congregational meetings.  

Was the church an organism and an organization both?  Yeah.  

Because thirdly, the New Testament church did not shy away from (and here you might even want to swallow hard, but it’s a clear teaching in the Bible) — the New Testament church did not shy away from counting numbers of people.

But in the New Testament we read in the first Christian sermon after Jesus rose from the dead and went back to heaven, we read that in Acts 2:41, that after Peter’s sermon about 3,000 were added to their number that day.  And then just a little while later in Acts chapter 4 verse 4. we read at that time the number of men grew to about 5,000.  This is organization.  

Number 4:  The New Testament had lists of people in its ministries.  We get that, for instance, from 1st Timothy chapter 5.  In 1st Timothy chapter 5, we read about a list of widows.  Now it’s unclear whether this means a list of widows in the church who received financial help from the church.  Or did it mean a list of official women in the church who were widows who acted, as it were, as staff in the church, who helped women in the ritual of baptism or ministered to other people in some way.  I don’t know whether it was widows receiving help or widows giving help, but in any case, it says in 1st Timothy 5:9: “No widow may be put on the list of widows unless she is 1.) over 60, and 2.) faithful to her husband.”  That’s an organization.  

Number 5:  When somebody, some Christian moved or traveled, the New Testament was known to send letters of recommendation from one church to another.  You see this in multiple places in the letters of Paul when somebody has gone to a number - some other place.  

Let me give you an example, Romans chapter 16, verse 1.  Paul is writing from the city of Corinth.  He’s writing across the sea to the city of Rome and he says, “I commend to you our sister, Phoebe.”  She’s clearly part of the Corinthian church, but now she’s going to Rome.  “I commend to you our sister, Phoebe, a servant of the church here, who now is coming to you.” 

So, no wonder the apostle Paul wrote this little phrase in Colossians chapter 2 verse 5 - it is easy to gloss over and miss.  Paul wrote to the Colossians and said, [quote] “I delight to see your orderliness”.  Your orderliness.  That word, translate orderliness - means “an arranging of things,” or “an orderly manner.”  Paul says, “I delight in seeing this in your church.”

* Interlude with Pastor Al Kimball.

And so we see the Biblical support for principle 8, the church is also an organization.  Christ himself appointed structure, offices and ordinances for it.  For the next principle, Steve references Acts chapter 2.

* Back to Pastor Steve Estes.  

Now 3,000 were added that day.  Well the rest of the paragraph in Acts 2 describes what “they’re being added” to that local church, to the only local church in the world looked like, by describing what these people did once they were converted.  

Verse 42, they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, and to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.  They were quite busy with their church.  Verse 44 says all the believers were together.  Verse 45, the second half of the verse, they gave to anyone as he had need - they took offerings.  Verse 46, every day they continued to meet together, they broke bread in their homes, they ate together with glad and sincere hearts.  

In other words, these people who became believers and were baptized did not become free floating Christians.  They participated in the church in the most intimate way possible.  They devoted themselves to the church life.  They did so under the leadership of the apostles.  That’s what membership is all about.  The point is, the way that the book of Acts describes the result of people being saved is that people get baptized and then they get added - not just at Christ’s universal church - but to the visible church in their area, to a local people of God.

Now this being added to the local church as I say, was an act that was inseparable from their conversion and their baptism.  Baptism was the ritual of entrance into Christ’s visible church.  We might say, “into a local church” and thus becoming a church member, becoming identified with a particular church was not a sign of Christian maturity that you waited a number of years until you felt ready to commit - but it was a sign of being a Christian in the first place in the book of Acts.  It was a first and basic step, converts openly identified with the visible local church - that is, they became members.  

To use Paul’s language from Galatians 3: “All of them were baptized into Christ.”  But also, to use Paul’s language in 1st Corinthians 12: “All of them were baptized into one body.”

* Epilogue with Pastor Al Kimball.

In review, the church is also an organization.  Christ himself appointed structure, offices and ordinances for it.  In the New Testament, reception into the local church occurred at baptism.  It was the first step of the Christian life, not a sign of spiritual maturity.

These sermon clips are taken from sermons preached on October 31, 2021 and November 7, 2021 titled “I Will Build My Church” (Parts D & E).