Scripture: Selected Scriptures
Date: August 14, 2011
Speaker: Sean Higgins
Last week we began a brief series on the Marks of a Maturing Church. Our first leaders’ retreat starts next weekend and we want to have some criteria in place for reflection and evaluation of our church health. In particular, we want to make sure that our vine is growing and growing in the best direction. These marks are intended to inform our expectations and help us assess the maturing process.
The first mark is that a maturing church has leaders who are godly and growing. God has always given men to His people and to the church He “gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain…to mature manhood” (Ephesians 4:11-13). Shepherds/elders must demonstrate distinct and dependable Christian character in order to be effective conduits of grace as God grows His people. The application extends to every leader in the church and in each Christian family. A maturing church will have mature and ever-more-maturing men to lead.
A maturing church has, second:
This mark could be listed first since Scripture is the ultimate authority, not men. However, for most of the church’s history, she has not had members with their own copies; she depended on God using men to reveal and read and explain His Word. The early church devoted themselves to the apostle’s teaching (Acts 2:42) and, while we are privileged to have our own Bible’s today, God still uses men who provide example of obedience to His Word not merely expository messages.
Scripture is particularly powerful and necessary for a church’s maturing. The “living and abiding word of God” causes new birth (1 Peter 1:23-25), and new birth is an obvious prerequisite to growth. After regeneration “the word of His grace” (a.k.a., “the whole counsel of God”) “is able to build you up” (Acts 20:32). In other words, the Bible yields regenerating and sanctifying fruit (see Isaiah 55:11).
That’s why Peter wrote:
Therefore, putting aside all malice and all guile and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babes, long for the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord. (1 Peter 2:1–3, NAS)
In order to “grow up into salvation,” in order to mature, a believer must “long for,” “crave” (NIV), desire the “pure milk of the word” (NAS). God never commands individual believers to read the Bible, partly because copies were limited (and incomplete), but mostly because reading is only part of what’s necessary. Crave it, want it! That’s the command. Maturing believers have a healthy appetite for Scripture, they don’t just have a good reading plan on their plate.
For that matter, craving the Word is not enough either. We must be doing the Word, too.
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. (James 1:22–25)
We’re commanded to crave it. We’re obligated to obey it. Notice the danger: those who hear and don’t do deceive themselves. About what? They deceive themselves that hearing equals doing. Many deceived religious people love the Bible; they enjoy preaching or hearing verse by verse sermons. All that truth-loving without truth-living is smoke and forgotten mirrors. Jesus said “everyone who hears these words of mind and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand…and great was the fall of it” (Matthew 7:26-27).
”The sacred writings…make [one] wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is breathed out by God…that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:15-17). God’s Word makes mature, and a maturing church will crave it, in her corporate meetings and in daily delight and meditation (see Psalm 1:1-3; Joshua 1:8).
A maturing church has, third:
God’s Word reveals the amazing story of redemption from beginning to end. Immediately after Adam’s fall God promised a seed who would crush the serpent’s head (Genesis 3:15). The rest of the Old Testament prophesied more about the seed of the woman, the Messiah, a suffering servant who would be a perfect, sinless, substitutionary sacrifice to bear the iniquities of His people. The New Testament identifies the seed as Jesus of Nazareth and documents His life, death, and resurrection. All those who believe in Him are accounted righteous before God and have eternal life in His name. This is the gospel, the good news, the evangel.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the εὐαγγέλιον I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you— unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:1-4)
The gospel is our salvation, our story, our song. “There is only one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ” (1 Timothy 2:15); “there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). The good news is the “imperishable seed” that causes new birth (1 Peter 1:23-25) and tells us how to grow up in righteousness (Romans 6:1-23). We preach Christ and Him crucified (1 Corinthians 2:2), and no one comes to the Father except through Him (John 14:6). No church will mature without proclaiming the gospel because there are no Christians without it.
Speaking the gospel, however, is not the end. Toddlers can parrot an outline. We who believe it must also incarnate it. We don’t proclaim ourselves, “but Jesus Christ as Lord with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake” (2 Corinthians 4:5). We take on a servant’s life like our Lord (Philippians 2:5-11), and that imitative life includes dying to bring life.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Corinthians 4:7–12)
Our lives must exhibit the gospel, put it on display, give feet to it. All our lives must be dying for life, sacrificing ourselves “so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 4:15). Our death isn’t redemptive; we can’t pay for anyone’s sins because we have our own sins. But as those redeemed by Christ, our daily dying illustrates the gospel and sloshes grace onto others. We need grace to grow. We preach the gospel from grace and we exhibit it. A maturing church requires consistency between, and commitment to, our gospel content and our conduct.
A maturing church has, fourth:
Starting with the leaders, a maturing church does not consist of truth tubes being filled higher and higher. God’s Word, the gospel, is forming certain sorts of persons not merely sentences on pages. We believe and we speak and we follow. We imitate our Master, follow in His steps and imitate those who follow Him. That is what it means to be a disciple: follow Christ and help others follow Christ.
There are three developmental phases of discipleship and the maturation process should be apparent.
When Jesus commissioned His disciples, He gave a large directive: “make disciples of all nations.” He explained that the Holy Spirit would empower their witness “in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). That means they were starting from scratch. Even worse that scratch, they were starting with spiritually dead people.
Evangelism involves speaking and living the gospel so that others would believe it, be born again, begin the pilgrim’s progress following Christ toward the Celestial City. We pray that God would cause more to be born again, which is another way of saying that a maturing church will be full of immature disciples.
Profession of faith isn’t the fished line; nor do we drop off the new, immature disciple at the starting line to fend for himself. As we follow Christ we help others follow Him more closely, “teaching them to observe all that He commanded” (Matthew 28:20).
I’m not sure which “all” is more consuming: all nations or all He commanded. Edification is the process of helping another move from milk to meat, of helping the disciple become independently dependent on Christ, working to present them complete in Christ. To edify means to strengthen and build. All disciples need ongoing edification until we’re with Christ. Edification is not a responsibility left to a particular group, but a work for everyone: “when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love” (Ephesians 4:16).
The third phase involves training a disciple to make his own disciple(s). As in physical life, reproduction indicates a certain level of maturity. Every disciple needs strengthening and every disciple needs training in strengthening others. This is the work of the ministry: making disciples who mature in Christlikeness and leaders are to equip the saints for that work (Ephesians 4:12).
A maturing church must be discipleship obsessive. Most churches default to distance learning—even if from the pulpit from the pew. While the air war can provide certain resources, the troops on the ground do the lion’s share of discipling.
Disciple-making requires passion and purpose, intensity and intentionality. Church history teaches us that the church is prone to distraction. The church deceives herself thinking that disciples are made via podcast. Discipleship proper will always be personal, life on life, day by day. A maturing church has disciples who make disciples.
A maturing church has (in flowing bullet form):
Leaders who love God and live that love into others by grace
according to the life-giving and life-growing truth of God’s Word. All believers will hunger for it and obey it
and tell the story of Christ and Him crucified. As Christians they will proclaim Him exclusively and picture His sacrifice for others that they may see the gospel in flesh.
That is the disciple’s passion, their consuming and orienting desire, a life-on-life spilling of grace onto others, for salvation and then for sanctification.
The growing body of sanctified ones will pursue maturity, helping the immature parts and protecting the whole from the unrepentant.
More next week.