{"id":18460,"date":"2017-10-22T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-22T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sugar-land-bible-church.local\/sermon\/ecclesiology-001\/"},"modified":"2017-10-22T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T05:00:00","slug":"ecclesiology-001","status":"publish","type":"sermon","link":"https:\/\/slbc.org\/es\/sermon\/ecclesiology-001\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecclesiology 001"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","book":[91],"series_event":[484],"sermon_service_type":[473],"speaker":[6],"class_list":["post-18460","sermon","type-sermon","status-publish","hentry","book-1-corinthians","series_event-ecclesiology","sermon_service_type-sunday-school","speaker-dr-andy-woods","no-post-thumbnail"],"acf":{"sermon_title":"Ecclesiology 001","sermon_date":"20171022","sermon_month":"10","sermon_year":"2017","sermon_notes":"","sermon_slides":5053,"sermon_mp3":5125,"sermon_id":"102217934534","series_or_event":484,"service_type":[473],"speaker":6,"books_of_the_bible":91,"chapter_and_verse":"10:32","sermon_transcript":"

<\/strong>Andy Woods<\/p>\n

Ecclesiology<\/p>\nIntroduction\n\n10-22-17\n\nLet\u2019s pray.\u00a0 Father, we\u2019re grateful for this morning and we\u2019re grateful for Your church, grateful for the weather and thank You for all the folks that You have brought this morning.\u00a0 I do, Father, ask for your hand of blessing on our classes at all different age levels that are being taught this morning and I just ask for Your hand of blessing on our worship service.\u00a0 I particularly ask for this morning, Father, something You promised to give us, the illuminating ministry of the Holy Spirit that can help us understand Your Word and I just ask that that ministry would be present and You would be helping us to grow in the things You\u2019d have us to understand because we know that obedience starts with understanding, you can\u2019t obey something unless you understand what Your Word says.\u00a0 So give us understanding and I pray this week that You would help people, help all of us to follow through and obey the things that You have illuminated to us.\u00a0 We\u2019ll be careful to give You all the praise and the glory.\u00a0 We ask these things in Jesus\u2019 name, and God\u2019s people said\u2026 Amen.\n\nGood morning everybody.\u00a0 If you could take your Bibles and open them to the Book of 1 Corinthians \u00a0chapter 10 and verse 32.\u00a0 Thank you to Jim for making those handouts,\u00a0 you must have gotten here at 5:00 in the morning or last night about 11:00 at night because I didn\u2019t get my power point to him until LATE.\u00a0 So receiving a handout seems like a small thing but Jim had to put in some sweat to get that done in time, so thank you Jim.\u00a0 Thank you Alex also for teaching last week.\u00a0 Did you all enjoy Alex\u2019s teaching.\u00a0 Okay good.\n\nWell, no more Protestant Reformation, right.\u00a0 You guys are way ahead of the learning curve, in fact you guys are so far ahead of the learning curve that we completed a 14 week teaching on it two weeks or three weeks before the Protestant Reformation celebration.\n\n1 Corinthians 10:32, we are starting this morning a brand new class and the class that we\u2019re studying is Ecclesiology.\u00a0 You say what is that?\u00a0 Let me just do a fast review, if I could, of the major areas of systematic theology.\u00a0 The Bible was not written as a systematic theology textbook; the reason for that is the Bible, the way God inspired it is it\u2019s what you call crisis literature.\u00a0 What does that mean?\u00a0 Well, it basically means that behind every biblical book there\u2019s some kind of crisis being addressed that the human author is trying to resolve.\u00a0 And we know from dual authorship that the Bible was written by men but it was also inspired by God.\u00a0 So as these men addressed the crisis actually it was the Holy Spirit at work carrying them along and they, in the process of these various crises ended up penning for us the canon of Scripture.\n\nSo the Book of Galatians was written to resolve the crisis of legalism that was very real in Southern Galatia.\u00a0 You can go right down the Books of the Bible and you can see a crisis behind each book.\u00a0 Corinthians was written to deal with the crisis of immorality amongst God\u2019s people.\u00a0 Colossians was written to refute the Colossian heresy which was coming there into Colossae.\u00a0 1 John, 2 John, 3 John were written to combat the crisis of Gnosticism.\u00a0 We can go right on down the list and you can see behind every biblical book a crisis.\n\nSo when the biblical writers wrote they didn\u2019t say hey, thus saith the Lord, I\u2019m going to write a book on angels today because they weren\u2019t thinking in those categories.\u00a0 So if I want to get the mind of God on angels, for example, I have to go through the whole canon, don\u2019t I, because there\u2019s no angel book.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 There\u2019s crises books and I have to assemble the data together much like you would put together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the work of systematic theologians and once they put the various pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together it makes a beautiful Mosaic and you can kind of step back and say aha, there\u2019s the mind of God on angels.\u00a0 I\u2019ve got all of the data on angels from the Bible, Genesis through Revelation, organized in a way that you can capture the mind of God on angels.\n\nSo what we believe is there\u2019s probably about ten, maybe eleven areas of systematic theology where we need to do this.\u00a0 We need to go through the whole Bible and get the whole mind of God on these ten subjects.\u00a0 And the first one is prolegomena, and these all come from Greek words.; pro means first, legomena means word, so prolegomena literally means first word.\u00a0 And first word means introduction so the first area of systematic theology is figuring out how do you do systematic theology?\u00a0 What is systematic theology?\u00a0 And you get kind of explanations like the one I just gave regarding putting together pieces of the puzzle, like a jigsaw puzzle.\n\nAnd there are certain things\u00a0 you have to believe in order to do systematic theology.\u00a0\u00a0 You have to believe that the Bible is God\u2019s Word; you have to believe that the Holy Spirit has spoken in His Word and wants to reveal subjects.\u00a0 God wrote in a way that\u2019s understandable.\u00a0 And so you cover those basic categories is prolegomena.\n\nAnd then the first major area of systematic theology beyond that is theology, \u201cTheo\u201d means God, so theology is what does the whole Bible reveal about God.\u00a0 And you can\u2019t find that information in one book; you\u2019ve got to go through all 66 books to get the data.\u00a0 Then we have the subject of Christology which is the study of Christ, the Second Member of the Eternal Triune Godhead.\u00a0 And then you have a wonderful study called pneumatology, pneuma<\/em> is the Greek word for Spirit, so pneumatology is what does the Bible reveal about the Spirit.\n\nPeople say well, that\u2019s the Book of Acts.\u00a0 Well, the Book of Acts has a lot to say about the Spirit but the doctrine of the Holy Spirit begins in Genesis 1:2 where it talks about the Spirit of God\u00a0 brooding or hovering on the waters.\u00a0 [Genesis 1:2, \u201cThe earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.\u201d]\n\nAnd then\u00a0 you would go from there over to the Book of Exodus where the Spirit of God came upon the tabernacle workers.\u00a0 So the Holy Spirit came upon them to help them with tabernacle construction and you eventually go all the way through the Old Testament, you come to passages like in Zechariah, \u201cnot by might nor by power, but by My Spirit says the Lord.\u201d\u00a0 You would come to Zechariah 12:10 where the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of supplication.\n\n[Zechariah 12:10, \u201cI will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him like the bitter weeping over a firstborn.\u201d]\n\nAnd by the way, Charles Lee Feinberg, who was a great scholar from a previous era, was asked at a Bible conference, is the Holy Spirit found in the Old Testament.\u00a0 And this was a Q & A session and so he started from memory with Genesis 1:2 and then he went from there to the tabernacle workers, and from there by memory, with no Bible open, he went through every single reference to the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and the longer he talked the more silent and stunned everybody was because they couldn\u2019t believe that this man had committed so many things to memory.\u00a0 And as the story goes, I wish that was in the days Wi-Fi and You-tube and recordings because I would have loved to hear that, but it took him maybe two to three hours to answer this single question.\u00a0 And so you learn from that wow, the Holy Spirit is all over the Bible.\u00a0 The Book of Acts being an important contribution but you can\u2019t understand the Holy Spirit just from the Book of Acts.\u00a0\u00a0 You\u2019ve got to go through all 66 Books.\u00a0 So that\u2019s what you\u2019re doing in pneumatology.\n\nAnd then anthropology, you recognize the word anthropos,<\/em> right, it\u2019s the Greek word for man, so anthropology is the study of man.\u00a0 What does God say about man?\u00a0 And our views on it are very different than what they\u2019re teaching in public school today because they teach that we\u2019re just naked apes, evolved monkeys or whatever and that\u2019s not what you see in Genesis.\u00a0 It teaches that man is higher than the animals because he\u2019s made in God\u2019s image.\n\nThen there\u2019s a study called hamartiology, the Greek word for sin is hamartia<\/em>, \u201cology\u201d means study of, so hamartiology is the study of sin, because you\u2019ve got to get a man lost before you can get him saved.\n\nAnd then you guys probably know something about this next one since we spent 58 lessons on it, soteriology, soterios<\/em> is the doctrine of salvation, or the word for salvation so soteriology is what does the Bible say about salvation.\n\nAnd then angelology is the study of the angels, so that would include the good angels, the fallen angels.\u00a0 Part of that would include a study of Satan who was once a high ranking angel.\u00a0 And so you can add subcategories, demonology and Satanology to the study of the good angels and all of that makes\u00a0 up the great subject of angelology, a really important issue.\n\nA lot of people on YouTube today are making all kinds of speculations about Genesis 6, thinking that the angelic eruption in Genesis 6 is going to happen in the last days because there\u2019s a verse that says \u201cAs it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be at the coming of the Son of Man.\u201d\u00a0 [NIV]\u00a0 I have a little experience with this because I just got back from a conference where a lot of people were teaching this kind of thing and I wish they had taken my angelology class because some of the things they were saying\u2026 you know, angelology, a study of angelology saves you from some of the errors that were, in my opinion, being made, but I won\u2019t go there.\n\nJumping to the last one there, eschatology, eschatos<\/em> is the Greek word for last or end, so eschatology <\/em>is the study of the end.\u00a0 And you say oh great, that\u2019s the Book of Revelation.\u00a0 No, the Book of Revelation has a lot to say about it but actually the study of eschatology begins as early as Genesis 3:15 where there\u2019s a prophecy that the serpent\u2019s head is one day going to be crushed.\u00a0 \u00a0[Genesis 3:15, \u201cAnd I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.\u201d]\u00a0 That\u2019s an eschatological statement.\u00a0 And the rest of the Scripture just sort of fills out in very detail how that\u2019s going to happen.\n\nAnd then there\u2019s ecclesiology, which as I\u2019ll be sharing with you in a minute, is the study of the church.\u00a0 So for many, many years at the College of Biblical Studies when I was there, I was there seven years, I would teach this class, I think every single semester, and it\u2019s angels, church, prophecy.\u00a0 It was actually angelology, ecclesiology and eschatology.\u00a0 And in our sessions on Sunday morning we\u2019re just going to be focused on the middle part of that, ecclesiology, the doctrine of the church.\u00a0 At some point we\u2019ll get to the others.\n\nSo here is the road map of the things that we\u2019re going to be looking at in ecclesiology, at least twelve areas.\u00a0 We\u2019re going to define what ecclesiology is, we\u2019ll probably do that today.\u00a0 We\u2019ll study the differences between the universal church and the local church, because those are two different things. We will look at the six or so word pictures of the church.\u00a0 And we hit this a little bit on Wednesday night, we\u2019ll be coming back to it, we\u2019ll be getting into a subject that\u2019s become an issue of great debate today, when did the church start?\u00a0 What was its birthday?\u00a0 What was its origin?\u00a0 Did the church start with Abraham?\u00a0 Did the church start with Jesus?\u00a0 Did the church start with Paul?\u00a0 And the answer to those is all no, the Holy Spirit started doing something really unique in Acts 2 which He continues to do.\u00a0 But we\u2019ll be able to think through that.\n\nMany, many people today are very confused on the differences between Israel and the church.\u00a0 When it comes to fund raising everybody, all these preachers open up to Malachi 3:8-11 and it says bring to the storehouse the whole tithe and it talks about how if you do this test me and see if this is true, God says, you\u2019re going to be blessed and I\u2019ll pour out so great a blessing on you that you won\u2019t be able to contain it.\u00a0 I will rebuke the devourer.\u00a0 [Malachi 3:8, \u201cWill a man rob God? Yet you are robbing Me! But you say, \u2018How have we robbed You?\u2019 In tithes and offerings.\u00a0 [9] You are cursed with a curse, for you are robbing Me, the whole nation of you!<\/em> \u00a0[10] Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,\u201d says the LORD of hosts, \u201cif I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows. [11] Then I will rebuke the devourer for you, so that it will not destroy the fruits of the ground; nor will your vine in the field cast its grapes,<\/em>\u201d says the LORD of hosts.\u201d]\n\nAnd so many, many churches, when they want to raise funds they begin to go to Malachi 3.\u00a0 Well, \u00a0the problem with that is that is a passage when God is governing Israel under the suzerain vassal covenant called the Mosaic Covenant.\u00a0 In other words, that passage teaches us a lot of truths about God but it doesn\u2019t directly bind or govern the church.\u00a0 And if you want to go under part of the Law you\u2019ve to go under all of the Law.\u00a0 So you need to bring your tithe to the storehouse, which is what?\u00a0 The temple in the Middle East. Well, there\u2019s a problem there because there\u2019s no temple standing there right now.\u00a0 And by the way, don\u2019t show up on Sunday, you\u2019d better show up on Saturday.\n\nSo what people do is they willy-nilly take passages that are aimed at the nation of Israel and they\u00a0\u00a0 just sort of act like it\u2019s part of God\u2019s plan and program for the church.\u00a0\u00a0 If you want to understand the principles of giving and finance for the church age you don\u2019t go to Malachi; that\u2019s Israel.\u00a0 You go to 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 where several adverbs, which modify verbs, are used to describe giving.\u00a0 So I just throw that in because that\u2019s how foundational the Israel\/church distinction is.\u00a0 It shows you what passages to teach and which ones not to teach.\u00a0 Which ones directly govern God\u2019s people; which ones don\u2019t, because a lot of people think that they\u2019re going to be blessed by God financially because they gave a tithe and the reality of the situation is if you gave just a tithe that\u2019s not going to work because the Old Testament had three tithes, two annually and one every three years. So to get the blessing under Malachi 3:8-10 you need to bring to the Lord twenty-three and a third percent of your income.\u00a0 There\u2019s so little teaching today on Israel and the church; people are very confused about what passages apply, which ones don\u2019t.\u00a0 So we\u2019ll cover that.\u00a0 We\u2019ll cover the idea of what the church is; many, many theologians think the church is the new Israel, that the church is fulfilling Israel\u2019s purposes and nothing could be further from the truth; the church is an intercalation, Roman numeral VI, or an interruption in God\u2019s past and future program with Israel.\n\nThen we\u2019ll look at Roman numeral VII, and don\u2019t panic, we\u2019re not going to do all these today, I\u2019m just giving you the lay of the land here.\u00a0 Under Roman numeral VII\u00a0 we\u2019re going to talk about the purposes of the church.\u00a0 Why do we exist?\u00a0 And what a foundational question to ask, I mean, why are we here?\u00a0 Why do we come here on a Sunday morning when we could have slept in.\u00a0 I was sleeping very soundly and my wife woke me up; I\u2019d probably be asleep right now if she hadn\u2019t\u00a0 done that.\u00a0 So why come out here in the rain on a Sunday morning when we could be at home comfortable. Why are we here, what is the church?\u00a0 So we\u2019ll deal with the purposes of the church.\n\nAnd then once we\u00a0 understand its basic purposes we\u2019ll\u00a0 understand the activities that are to take place in a church and we\u2019ll be using Acts 2:41-47 to help us with that because that\u2019s the first church meeting. [Acts 2:41-47, \u201cAnd it shall be that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.\u2019 [22] Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know [23] this Man,<\/em> delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him<\/em> to death. [24] But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power.\u00a0 [25] For David says of Him, \u2018I saw the Lord always in my presence; for He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken.\u00a0 [26] Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; moreover my flesh also will live in hope;\u00a0 [27] because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.\u201d]\n\nAnd then Roman numeral IX we\u2019re going to talk about the government of the church.\u00a0 How do you govern a church.\u00a0 Is it one man or one woman one vote?\u00a0 Is it congregational rule?\u00a0 Does the majority always win?\u00a0 To me that sounds more like mobocracy than governing the church.\u00a0 That\u2019s kind of like letting the inmates run the asylum, isn\u2019t it?\n\nSo we\u2019re going to see specifically that the New Testament lays out governing principles; it\u2019s called elder rule, I\u2019ll show you exactly where those passages are and why God set it up that way.\u00a0 What is an elder, we\u2019ll look at officers.\u00a0 How do you become an elder?\u00a0 What is God looking for in an elder?\u00a0 This is kind of practical, isn\u2019t it, because we vote on elders, don\u2019t we?\u00a0 Or nominate them.\u00a0 And what\u2019s the difference, looking at officers there, what\u2019s the difference between elders and deacons.\u00a0 I mean, what does a deacon do versus what does an elder do?\u00a0 Do you have to be a deacon first to become an elder, or if you get kicked off being an elder do you get demoted to being a deacon.\u00a0 Or is deacon an demotion?\u00a0 And I\u2019ll give you specifically when the office of deacon was raised up in the middle of a difficult time in the church, Acts 6, and how their functions are different than elders.\n\nAnd then under Roman numeral XI we\u2019re going to look at the ordinances of the church and these are basic practices that the Lord wants consistently applied in His church.\u00a0 And we\u2019re going to discover that there are two of them; one of them is communion, which we do here the first of every month, and the next one is baptism.\u00a0 Now my wife was raised in a denomination, a very good denomination, the Brethren Assembly where they practiced foot-washing.\u00a0 And so people want to know is foot-washing something to be practiced in the church, that\u2019s there in John 13.\u00a0 I mean, why aren\u2019t we practicing foot washing.\u00a0 Have\u00a0 you guys ever been to a foot washing service, a literal foot washing?\u00a0 And everybody sort of cleans their feet up before they go to the service I notice.\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve been through several of those, it\u2019s a wonderful experience.\u00a0 Is it wrong to do foot washing?\u00a0 Or are we all supposed to be practicing foot washing. So you get into that kind of subject under ordinances.\n\nAnd then here is the church, the body of Christ, functioning in the devil\u2019s world so how in the world does the church keep itself pure?\u00a0 We know that we are positionally pure because of our relationship to Christ but practically how does the church keep itself pure.\u00a0 I mean, what do you do when someone in the church is involved in a perpetual sin?\u00a0 What do you do then?\u00a0\u00a0 Because the Bible says, \u201cA little leaven leavens the whole loaf of dough.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 [Galatians 5:9]\n\nAnd actually the New Testament has some very practical commands related to purity and things that are to happen in a church in order for the church to keep itself pure.\u00a0 And part of the discussion of purity we\u2019re going to talk about the ecumenical movement.\u00a0 The ecumenical movement is the urge to merge.\u00a0 There\u2019s a mindset out there that says let\u2019s get together and there are key Christian leaders that say this, let\u2019s get together, let\u2019s forget theology, let\u2019s forget differences between Christians and lest\u2019 join with Roman Catholics, let\u2019s join with Mormons, and let\u2019s save America.\u00a0 So let\u2019s solve the abortion issue, let\u2019s solve the pornography issue, let\u2019s fight against humanism in the public schools, and let\u2019s all\u2026 it\u2019s what called the cobelligerent movement.\u00a0 Let\u2019s become cobelligerents against the evil of the day, whether it be abortion, pornography, humanism.\u00a0 And in order to win this battle we\u2019ve got to stop this theology stuff.\u00a0 And once we save America then we\u2019ll get back to theology.\n\nSo is it ever acceptable to become a cobelligerent with a group like Mormonism that is totally outside our theological boundaries?\u00a0 And so I would say no, I\u2019ll try to make a case that the answer to that is no because the church loses its purity at that point.\u00a0 And there is a doctrine called separation which is clearly taught in the New Testament.\u00a0 Paul and others over and over again say separate, separate, separate for the purpose of what?\u00a0 Keeping the church pure.\u00a0 So church discipline, the doctrine of separation, those are things we talk about under purity of the church.\u00a0 So anyway, that\u2019s the road map as to where we\u2019re going.\u00a0 And at least you can kind of see what we\u2019re trying to do in terms of the big picture.\n\nWe\u2019re going to start this morning with the definition of the church.\u00a0 The Greek word for church is ekkl\u0113s\u00eda (\u1f10\u03ba\u03ba\u03bb\u03b7\u03c3\u03af\u03b1) it\u2019s a compound word.\u00a0\u00a0 You know what a compound word is?\u00a0 Two words make up one word.\u00a0 So ek <\/em>is a Greek preposition and it literally means out of.\u00a0 So when Jesus said take the log out of your own eye before you take the splinter out of\u00a0 your brother\u2019s eye, He was using in Matthew 7 the Greek preposition ek<\/em>.\u00a0 [Matthew 7:5, \u201c\"You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye.\u201d]\u00a0 So ek<\/em> means \u201cout of\u201d or removal.\u00a0 And that word in ekkl\u0113s\u00eda is combined with the Greek verb kaleo<\/em> (\u03ba\u03b1\u03bb\u03ad\u03c9) which means to call.\u00a0 So ekklesia or the church literally means the called out ones.\u00a0 That\u2019s the church, those that are \u201ccalled out.\u201d\u00a0 Called out from what?\u00a0 Called out from Satan\u2019s turf, Satan\u2019s world,\u00a0 loyalty to Satan.\n\nProbably one of the best statements in the Bible about the church is found in the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15:14 and here I think James is talking, if I\u2019m not mistaken.\u00a0 This is the same James that wrote the Book of James; this would be James, the half-brother of Christ.\u00a0 You might want to double check me on that. I think this statement comes from James.\u00a0 But anyway, the statement is, \u201cSimeon\u201d that\u2019s Peter, \u201chas related how God first concerned Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for His name.\u201d\n\nSimeon has related how God first concerns Himself about taking from among the Gentiles a people for His own name.\u00a0 That\u2019s the church.\u00a0 What is the Lord doing in this present age of grace?\u00a0 He is\u2026 not that Jews don\u2019t get saved, many do, but they\u2019re certainly not in the majority.\u00a0 The general pattern of God is He is looking out at the great mass of humanity that\u2019s out there, what, seven billion people on planet earth, and He is taking out from amongst that people a people for His own name.\u00a0 This is something He\u2019s doing worldwide.\u00a0 This is a global movement of God and that\u2019s a wonderful description of the ekkl\u0113s\u00eda.\u00a0 Now logos, don\u2019t think computers here, logos means word and so from the word logos we get the word ology, which means the study of.\n\nSo you take ekkl\u0113s\u00eda the called out ones, and you combine it with ology, the study of and you have ecclesiology which is the study of the church.\u00a0 What does the Bible say about the church?\u00a0 And I can\u2019t think of a more fundamental thing to discuss other than soteriology because ecclesiology is the explanation of what we, as members of Christ\u2019s body, are supposed to be doing in the present.\n\nNow take a look at 1 Corinthians 10:32.\u00a0 Paul says here, \u201cGive no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God;\u201d\u00a0 and in the process he identifies the three major divisions of the human race.\u00a0 The first people he identifies are the Greeks and I think here he\u2019s using Greeks as a synonym for the Gentiles.\u00a0 So the very first people group that ever existed are a group of people that we would call Gentiles.\u00a0 And you read about them all the way through Genesis 1-11.\u00a0 That\u2019s the only people group that exists.\u00a0 Genesis 3:15, the first Messianic and eschatological statement in the whole Bible says, \u201cAnd I will put enmity Between you and the woman,\u201d who\u2019s the woman?\u00a0 Eve.\u00a0 \u201cAnd between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, but you shall bruise him on the heel.\u201d\n\nSo we know that there is coming one into the human race who is coming from the seed of the woman who is going to crush the devil\u2019s head.\u00a0 So this is called the protoevangelium which means first gospel. It\u2019s the first formal proclamation of the gospel in the entire Bible.\n\nNow the issue becomes through which nation is God going to bring forth His promise?\u00a0 And the short answer to that is He can\u2019t use any nation.\u00a0 Why is that?\u00a0 Because every single nation on planet earth can trace it\u2019s origins back to the tower of Babel.\u00a0 And according to Alexander Hislop in his book, The Two Babylons<\/em>, and that\u2019s the authority I\u2019m basing this on, and he gets his conclusions by studying Babylonian tradition, it\u2019s a classic book.\u00a0 He describes the religious system that was taking place at the tower of Babel.\u00a0 There was how many languages at the tower of Babel, before God scattered them?\u00a0 One language.\u00a0 So the tower of Babel is a lot like taking a rock and throwing it into a pond and it reverberates outward in every direction.\n\nWhatever sin was taking place at the tower of Babel was taken into every single culture originating at the tower of Babel.\u00a0 So what was happening at the tower of Babel? Well, Hislop describes that there was something going on called the Mother-Child Cult, the worship of the mother and the worship of the child.\u00a0 And the man that was bringing the tower of Babel into existence was a man named Nimrod.\u00a0 Nimrod\u2019s name is mentioned in the Bible; he\u2019s the first leader of world govern\u00adment.\u00a0 He would be a great leader of the United Nations today, this guy, Nimrod, because he was all about globalism.\u00a0 And his name means rebellion or revolt in Hebrew; he was married to a woman named Semiramis, who is not mentioned in the Bible but is referenced in extra-biblical Babylonian tradition.\u00a0 The two of them had a child by the name of Tammuz. Tammuz, according to this legend, was killed by a wild animal and was satanically brought back to life, much like the devil in the end times will resurrect, I take it as a literal resurrection, the antichrist.\n\nSo when this resurrection happens to this child named Tammuz everybody started worshipping the mother and the child.\u00a0 And that was a very real religious system that was taking place at the tower of Babel.\u00a0 So when God did what He did and you know the story from Sunday School, He confused the languages.\u00a0 Everybody took with them into their own culture this mother-child system.\u00a0 And Hislop, in The Two Babylons<\/em> says you can find this mother child system in every single culture.\u00a0 It\u2019s just the names change from place to place because they all originally got this religious idea from what was happening at the tower of Babel when there was just one group and one language.\n\nIn Assyria the mother is called Ishtar, and the child is called Tammuz.\u00a0 And by the way, what word do we use today that sounds a lot like Ishtar?\u00a0 Easter, a lot of us celebrate Easter; the problem with that is the Bible never uses the word \u201cEaster.\u201d\u00a0 If you want to celebrate the resurrection of Christ the proper name for it is Resurrection Sunday.\u00a0 And by the way, when people celebrate Easter today they have all these, like peculiar eggs and bunnies and things, and where did all of that stuff come from?\u00a0 Well, that comes from the Babylonian tradition; the Babylonian cult a symbol of pagan fertility.\u00a0 And people, well-intentioned people bring all of this stuff into their houses, sadly they bring it into the church and they don\u2019t really understand its origin of Babylonian nature.\n\nThen you go down to Phoenicia the mother is called Astarte, the child is called Baal.\u00a0\u00a0 You go down to Egypt and the mother is called Isis, the child is called Osirus or Horus, then you go down to Greece and the mother is called Aphrodite, see, it\u2019s the same system just different names; the child is called Eros.\u00a0 Then you go to Rome and the mother is called Venus and the child is called Cupid.\u00a0 Now I\u2019ve already wrecked Easter for everybody, might as well ruin Valentine\u2019s day too, right?\u00a0 I mean, this idea where you shoot an arrow into someone and they madly fall in love with you, is that found in the Bible.\u00a0 No, that\u2019s tradition, it\u2019s pagan tradition.\n\nNow I don\u2019t recommend you going home and saying to your significant other or your spouse we\u2019re not celebrating Valentine\u2019s day anymore because it\u2019s Babylonian.\u00a0 You got to, in life, pick your battles and it\u2019s the same with the Easter eggs.\u00a0 Do you bring Easter eggs into your home?\u00a0 I\u2019ve taken a stand at this church that we shouldn\u2019t have Easter eggs and bunnies and things like that in the church.\u00a0 How you handle that in your home is really on the basis of grace.\u00a0 I\u2019m not trying to be a legalist on you, I\u2019m just trying to show you where some of these things come from.\u00a0 If you want to accommodate a celebration like that I think it\u2019s important that you at least tell your children where the stuff comes from and the important thing is what\u2019s in the Bible.\u00a0 So how you handle this in your family is just a matter of conscience.\n\nWe have Rome, Venus and Cupid, and we go down to Asia and the mother is called Cybele and the child is called Desius.\u00a0 Then you go to India, the mother is called Isi, the child is called Aswara, and oh no, look at this one down here, this is what Hislop says, you go into Roman Catholicism and the mother is called Mary and the child is called what?\u00a0 Jesus.\u00a0 Now by this time, since we\u2019ve done four lessons in the Protestant Reformation you know that the mother and the child in Roman Catholicism is not the mother and child of the Bible.\u00a0 Do we all know that?\u00a0 That\u2019s why there was a Protestant Reformation.\u00a0 The Mary in the Roman Catholic system may have the same name as the Mary in the Bible but it\u2019s not the same Mary.\n\nHow do I\u00a0 know that?\u00a0 Because in Roman Catholicism Mary is someone that you pray to; she is looked at as sort of a co-Redemptress, co-mediator.\u00a0 Now that goes right against the Word of God and my mindset is to respect Mary in the Bible, she was obviously a woman used of God.\u00a0 I want to give her her proper place, I don\u2019t want in any way to be disrespectful towards her but at the same time I don\u2019t want to elevate her beyond what the Scripture says, which is what you have in Roman Catholicism.\u00a0\u00a0 She\u2019s like a co-Redemptress co-mediator.\u00a0 That\u2019s a big problem because 1 Timothy 2:5 says, \u201cFor there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.\u201d\u00a0 Now notice in 1 Timothy 2:5 the emphasis on \u201cGod and men.\u201d\u00a0 How can you be a mediator or a go-between between \u201cGod and men.\u201d\n\nAnd when you go to Job 9, which was the earliest or first book of the Bible\u2026 did you all know that Job was the first book of the Bible?\u00a0 That\u2019s Job\u2019s complaint, I have no mediator, I have no umpire he says, I have no one to stand between us.\u00a0 [Job 9:33, \u201cIf only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together,\u201d NASB]\u00a0 If I could just get into heaven and make my case to God He would listen to me but I can\u2019t do that because I\u2019m just a man and not God, what I need is a mediator.\u00a0 So the rest of the Bible is answering the plea of Job, in a sense, that there is a mediator coming.\u00a0 The mediator is who?\u00a0 Jesus, who 100% God and 100% man.\u00a0 Only somebody who has two natures, God AND man, what we call in Christology the hypostatic union, only such a person or being could represent man to God and God to man.\u00a0 That\u2019s why the Bible is very clear there\u2019s only one mediator because a mediator must be God and man to represent both.\u00a0 Do you see that?\n\nAnd the last time I checked the only person that\u2019s ever walked this earth that\u2019s God and man is Jesus.\u00a0 Mary, as wonderful as she is, or was and is, continues to be, you know, in heaven, she was never fully God; she was just a human being.\u00a0 So this explains the folly of the Roman Catholic system or any system where you pray to a saint.\u00a0 We had a student at the college I was working for, CBS, I\u2019m not exactly sure how he got in, this student, but he was very Roman Catholic in his beliefs and when he graduated the sent out an e-mail to all of his professors and he says I want to thank the Lord for my professors, I want to thank Jesus Christ, my Savior, and I\u2019m reading and it sounds good so far, and then he started saying I want to thank Thomas Aquinas who\u2019s interceded for me, I want to thank Mary\u2026 and it\u2019s like WOW, this goes right against 1 Timothy 2:5, \u201cfor there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.\u201d\u00a0 Mary doesn\u2019t qualify.\n\nBeyond that in the Roman Catholic system what you\u2019ll discover is Mary remained a virgin her whole life. \u00a0This is the doctrine called the perpetual virginity of Mary.\u00a0 The problem with that again is the Bible.\u00a0 Matthew 13:55 says, \u201cIs not this the carpenter's son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers\u2026\u201d\u00a0 Now the Roman Catholic Church at this point says those are just the spiritual brothers.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s not what the passage says, because they\u2019re trying to protect the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary.\u00a0 It says, \u201cand His brothers,\u201d literal brothers, \u201cJames and Joseph and Simon and\u201d it says \u201cJudas.\u201d\u00a0 Judas actually was a common name back in this time.\u00a0 It\u2019s not today for obvious reasons; how many kids do you know named Judas, if a kid\u2019s named Judas I\u2019d be a little worried about that kid.\u00a0 But it\u2019s better translated Jude.\u00a0 So \u201cIs this not the carpenter\u2019s son?\u00a0 Is not His mother called Mary, and His brothers called James and Joseph and Simon and Judas\u201d or \u201cJude.\u201d\n\nSo obviously what happened is Mary was a virgin at the time of she received the miraculous conception of Jesus Christ.\u00a0 But that child, the Savior of the world, was born into the world and Joseph and Mary had a normal marital relationship, a normal sexual relationship and from that normal sexual relationship came these other brothers of Christ, better referred to as the half-brothers of Christ.\u00a0 They\u2019re called the half-brothers of Christ because these brothers shared the same womb, the same common mother, Mary, but they didn\u2019t share the same father.\u00a0 So these brothers had the biological father Joseph; not so with Jesus.\u00a0 And praise God for that because if Jesus biological father was Joseph what would have been passed down to him?\u00a0 The sin nature, and He would not have been qualified to be the sinless sacrifice, the perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world.\n\nSo you can see right here just by looking at this verse that the doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Mary is an incorrect do.\u00a0 And beyond that part of Roman Catholic dogma is the sinless perfection of Mary.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s a problem because the Bible keeps interrupting these doctrines, doesn\u2019t it?\u00a0 Luke 1:46-47 it says this: \u201cAnd Mary said:\u201d of Jesus, \u2018\u201cMy soul exalts the Lord, [47] And my spirit has rejoiced in God\u201d what\u2019s the word in front of \u201cSavior\u201d?\u00a0 \u201cmy Savior.\u201d So Mary is acknowledging here that she\u2019s a sinner just like anybody else, that she needs to be saved just like anybody else.\u00a0 Right?\u00a0 That make sense, because Romans 3:23 says, \u201cFor\u201d what? \u00a0\u201call have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cAll\u201d is a big category; would that not include Mary?\n\nSo Mary is not a perpetual virgin; Mary is not a co-Redemptress, Mary is not a mediator, and Mary did not achieve sinless perfection.\u00a0 So where in the world did the Roman Catholic Church get all of these false ideas of Mary.\u00a0 They got it because the Mother-child cult, according to Alexander Hislop, gained influence over time in Roman Catholicism and if you mention Alexander Hislop around Roman Catholics who are knowledgeable you\u2019re like to get a very visceral, angry reaction because he\u2019s saying their whole system of thought\u2026 and I\u2019ve just given you a little bit of it) does not come from the Bible, it comes from the Mother-child cult.\u00a0 So here\u2019s what going on here.\u00a0 This Mother-child system that\u2019s part of the tower of Babel, that all nations owe its origin to, spread into every single culture.\u00a0 The names just changed from place to place.\n\nSo the issue becomes well then who is God going to use to bring forth His promise of Genesis 3:15? All of this is described in Genesis 11 and what follows Genesis 11?\u00a0 Genesis 12.\u00a0 Genesis 11 is the crisis, God can\u2019t use any existing Gentile nation because of her idolatry and connection to the Mother-child system.\u00a0 So what does God do?\u00a0 He raises up a second people group, sometimes called the Jews, or the Hebrew nation.\n\nSo Paul says, going back to 1 Corinthians 10:32, \u201cGive no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God;\u201d\u00a0 we\u2019ve talked about the Greeks or the Gentiles, the only people group that existed in Genesis 1-11, and why none of those nations are qualified to bring forth the Messiah.\u00a0 So now God raises up a second people group in Genesis 12 called the Jews.\u00a0 Abraham, who was called Abram, was also personally affected by the Mother-child cult.\u00a0 How do I know this?\u00a0 I know this because in Joshua 24:2 it says this: \u201c\u2026Abraham, the father of Nahor, and they served other gods.\u201d\u00a0 Abraham, at that time called Abram, in the Ur of the Chaldeans was an idolater just like the rest of the world.\n\nSo what does God do? He puts a calling on this man, Abram\u2019s life.\u00a0 He tells him to walk by faith, to leave his country, to leave his land, to go somewhere where he doesn\u2019t even know where he\u2019s going and what is God doing?\u00a0 He is separating Abram from the mother-child cult; He is sanctifying Abram and in the process He is creating a new nation.\u00a0 Why does God want a new nation?\u00a0 Because He wants a nation through which the fulfillment of Genesis 3:15 can be mediated to the world.\u00a0 [Genesis 3:15, \u201cAnd I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.\u201d]\n\nAnd that\u2019s the origin of the nation of Israel.\u00a0 Genesis 11 gives you the crisis, the universal impact of the mother-child system all over the world; Genesis 12 gives you the solution. Aha, there\u2019s a solution here, God is beginning to work with this man, Abram, He\u2019s sanctifying him, He\u2019s separating him and he\u2019s starting a brand new nation through which Genesis 3:15 will be fulfilled.\u00a0 And that\u2019s the significance of the nation of Israel.\u00a0 That\u2019s why Israel is such a big deal, because she is the only nation in the history of the world that was started independently of the mother-child system.\u00a0 All the other cultures have been corrupted by it.\n\nTragically what happened to Israel?\u00a0 She lost her vision and why she was to exist because in time the nation of Israel wanted a king (and they picked a really bad one by the way, in Saul).\u00a0 Why did they want a king and why did they want Saul so badly?\u00a0 Because we want to be like all the nations; everybody else, God, has a king, we want a king.\u00a0 And the Lord is slapping His forehead when they say this because they\u2019ve lost sight of why they exist.\u00a0 They\u2019re not in existence to be like everybody else; they\u2019re supposed to be different.\u00a0 They were started independently of all of these other nations.\n\nAnd tragically what happens is the Mother-child system, much later in biblical history, around the time of the 6th<\/sup> century, just before the Babylonian deportation, the Mother-child system eventually goes right into the borders of Israel.\u00a0 Now notice the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel, who prophesied around the same time, during the days of the Babylonian deportation.\u00a0 Jeremiah says in Jeremiah 7:18, \u201cThe children gather wood and the fathers kindle the fire and the women knead dough to make cakes for the Queen of heaven\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 Who is that \u201cQueen of heaven\u201d?\u00a0 That would be Semiramis.\u00a0 In fact, when I was teaching this at the Bible College I had a student in class who at one time was studying to be a nun in the Roman Catholic Church but left that and is now Protestant born again evangelical Christian and when I mentioned this \u201cQueen of Heaven\u201d in Jeremiah 7:18 she raised her hand and she said that\u2019s exactly what they call Mother Mary today, since Vatican II in Roman Catholicism.\u00a0 They call her the Queen of Heaven.\n\nJeremiah continues in chapter 44, verse 17, and says, \u201cBut rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths, by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven [and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem; for then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune.\u201d]\n\nAnd then Ezekiel, written around the same time as Jeremiah gets into the act.\u00a0 It says, \u201cThen He brought me to the entrance of the gate of the Lord\u2019s house which was<\/em> toward the north; and behold, women were sitting there\u201d this is in the land of Israel, they \u201cwere sitting there weeping for\u201d who? \u201cTammuz<\/u>.\u201d\u00a0 See how the worship of Semiramis and Tammuz eventually made its way into the borders of Israel?\u00a0 And this explains the anger of God at His people.\u00a0 They were started to be different than the Mother\/child system that spread all over the earth due to Nimrod and his system.\u00a0 And now just before the captivity they have become just like everybody else; they had fulfilled the desire of their own heart to be like all the other nations.\n\nSo that becomes the theological explanation for the Babylonian deportation.\u00a0 God sent the nation of Israel into the Babylonian deportation subsequent to the prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel to purge Israel of the Mother-child system.\u00a0 And so when she came out of that Babylonian deportation, having gone through that season of discipline, Israel may have been a lot of things but she was not an idolater in that sense any longer.\u00a0 Idolatry, as I\u2019m describing it here, was no longer a problem.\n\nBut tragically we know what happened is the nation of Israel rejected her own Messiah. Right?\u00a0 Let\u2019s go back to 1 Corinthians 10:32, \u201cGive no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God;\u201d\u00a0 because Israel rejected her own Messiah and God never leaves the earth without a witness of Himself He created, beginning in Acts 2, the body of Christ.\u00a0 I\u2019m part of the body of Christ, you\u2019re part of the body of Christ, we are the people that have trusted in the very Messiah that national Israel rejected.\n\nSo now to one people group God adds another, the Jews, beginning in Genesis 12, or the Hebrews.\u00a0 Then He adds a third people group, the church beginning in Acts 2.\u00a0 Now God always knew what was going to happen, the church is not a reaction on the part of God, He knew that the nation would reject its own Savior or Messiah and so the church is part of the eternal purpose of God.\u00a0 Ephesians 3:11.\u00a0 [Ephesians 3:11, \u201cThis was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord,\u201d]\n\nSo don\u2019t think of the church as plan B.\u00a0 God says oh no, My own nation rejected My own Son, what am I going to do? Oh, I know what I\u2019ll do, I\u2019ll create the church.\u00a0 See what\u2019s happening is these various rejections and rebellions that are happening in history, God is actually using those to execute the next phase of His plan, the manifold multicolored multidimensional plan of God.\u00a0 The Book of Ephesians 3 talks about.\n\nSo then who is the church?\u00a0 The church consists of all people, both Jew and Gentile who have trusted in the very Messiah rejected by first century national Israel.\u00a0 That\u2019s who the church is.\u00a0 That\u2019s who we are.\u00a0 That\u2019s how we fit into this whole picture.\u00a0 And what I just explained in an hour Paul explained in a verse, where he says, \u201cGive no offence either to the Jews or to the Greeks or to the church of God.\u201d\u00a0 What Paul is doing there is he\u2019s describing the three people groups of humanity.\u00a0 All you have are Gentiles in Genesis 1-11, unqualified to bring forth the Messiah because of the universal influence of the mother-child cult.\u00a0 So the next phase of God\u2019s plan is to bring forth the Hebrew nation, which He does in Genesis 12 by separating Abram from that idolatrous background or origin.\n\nSadly the mother-child system that Israel started to be different from comes right into the borders of Israel and Israel becomes just like all the other nations and it got so bad that she even rejected her own Messiah.\u00a0 So God took the nation of Israel and did not cancel her program but put her in time out.\u00a0 Ever put your kids in time out?\u00a0 Israel has been in time out for about 2,000 years.\u00a0 One of these days they\u2019re going to come out of time out but in the interim God is working through a completely different man, a spiritual man, a spiritual organism called the church of God which begins in Acts 2.\u00a0 So it\u2019s very important to understand who these three major people groups are and when they arose and if you start understanding that then you start saying aha, here\u2019s where I fit as a Gentile Christian, into the outworking of God\u2019s purposes.\u00a0 I have trusted in the Messiah that national Israel rejected and so I\u2019m part of a new man called the body of Christ.\n\nSo that is the best I can do of a definition of the church and the next time we\u2019re together we will look at the differences between the universal church and the local church.","series_sermon_number":""},"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t