Interpreting the Bible

I'd like to read with you please in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 16 of Matthew's Gospel and I'm reading in verse 13 of Matthew chapter 16 when Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi he asked his disciples saying whom do men say that I the son of man am and they said some say that our John the Baptist some Elias and others Jeremias or one of the prophets he saith unto them but who say ye that I am Simon Peter answered and said thou art the Christ the son of the living God Jesus answered and said unto him blessed art thou Simon Barjona for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my father which is in heaven and I say unto thee that thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ chapter 18 please and verse 15 over if I brother shall trespass against thee go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone if he shall hear thee thou hast gained thy brother but if he will not hear thee then take with thee one or two more that in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established and if he shall neglect and that word is refused if he shall refuse to hear them tell it on to the church but if he refused to hear the church let him be on to thee as an heathen man and a publican verily I say unto you whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whatsoever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven again I say unto you that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall ask it shall be done for them of my father which is in heaven for where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them I would like to read one more brief passage in Ephesians chapter 1 please verse 19 of Ephesians 1 and what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us were who believed according to the working of his mighty power which he brought in Christ when he raised them from the dead and set them at his own right hand and the heavenly places follow of all principality and power and might and dominion and everything that is named not only in this world but also in that which is to come and that put all things under his feet or in subjection under his feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church which is his body the fullness of him that filleth all in all may God bless to us the reading of his word the subject in these ten nights I'm going to call gathering onto his name and that subject is the subject of a book that I am now rating attempting to write as likely many of you know of course the difficulty in writing a book is to try to find the time to do it and time has been a very great problem but I have written 19 chapters of the book and in these meetings I am going to try to give you at least the main substance of what is written in the book I cannot possibly cover all the material that is in the book of course but it is quite a different matter to speak on subjects than to write and they they are very very different so what is written will not be what I am speaking but it will be the same truth although expressed slightly quite differently but tomorrow night if the Lord spares us till then I hope to have an outline for each one who is present at the meeting and therefore if I pass over material tonight that you do not grasp or if I give you titles or names or outlines that you are not able to put down if the Lord willing tomorrow night I'll give you an outline of the material for tonight and for the meeting tomorrow night if the Lord will now we have read tonight two passages in the gospel of Matthew and one in the epistles of the Ephesians that deal with the subject of the church and the churches and I have said that the subject that I'm going to speak on I am calling gathering on to his name now to give you a little idea of what I have before me I would like tonight to speak on a scriptural definition of church and you'll notice that I didn't say the church because I would like to give you a scriptural definition of the church but I would also like to give you a scriptural definition of the churches of local assemblies so the correct title for what I'm going to try to tell you tonight is a scriptural definition of church tomorrow night if the Lord spares us I would like to give you a simple description of a local assembly and that is truth that is very precious to us and it will be the truth that will be occupying us mostly in the nights to come I would like to take up the following night significant distinctions between the body and an assembly and the reason that that truth is so important is that in Christendom the two are confused and often even in the writings of those who understand a great deal of the truth of gathering scriptures that really applied to one have been applied to the other I have gone through them 70 different books that deal with the truth of the church and the truth of a local assembly and I have literally been astounded how many times brethren have used scriptures which are clearly speaking about the body of Christ and yet they applied them to the local assembly and vice versa and it is of the utmost importance that we know the distinction between the body and an assembly and even tonight in this meeting will be speaking on some of the distinctions between the body and an assembly so that will be actually the the subject of the meeting of the Lord will on Wednesday evening and then the following night I would like to take up what I have called a singular demonstration of a testimony for God on earth and of course that deals with a with what the assembly is and how it functions and then I would like to take up the Lord's Supper and I've called that the Supreme Declaration of the death of Christ and then I would like to take up worship the sincere devotion of believers as they gather together and then I would like to take up a sovereign display that is headship displayed in a local company and then to take up the spiritual dependence of an assembly that is our dependence upon the Holy Spirit and that's a vast subject that deals first of all with the government of an assembly and then deals with the gifts and the way they function and then deals with the subject of priesthood and how the Spirit of God controls a holy priesthood in a local assembly and then there are a number of other subjects which should be touched on and whether there will be a night to deal with them or not remains to be seen but I would like to take up the gospel testimony of an assembly and I would like to take up reception into an assembly and I would like to take up traditions of scripture and I would like to take up assembly discipline and if the Lord will a subject that is very seldom taken up I would like to take up assembly giving and that's a vast amount of material and I assure you we will not be wasting time we will try to cover the material as briefly as we can and as simply as we can and yet as thoroughly as it is possible for me to do it now why do we go back again and again to the subject of the church and the churches Martin Luther on one occasion was asked why it was that he constantly returned in his preaching and in his writings to the subject of justification by faith and I think his answer suits exactly my position tonight in taking up the church and the churches or gathering on to his name Martin Luther said in ancient times when a walled city was under attack if the attack came at the front gate the city did not muster its defense at the back wall or if the attack came at a back corner of the city the soldiers of the city were not lined up at the front of it you see the defense always is mustard where the attack is being made and Satan has so successfully attacked the truth of gathering in our time so that much precious truth that was paid for dearly godly men and women with the Word of God before them on their knees learned the blessed truths of gathering unto the name of the Lord Jesus Christ alone and paid a great price for it personal price oftentimes family turned against them and friends society rejected them and they were looked upon as being oddities but they bore that reproach gladly for the name of Christ and today we are in great danger of losing a great heritage that has been given to us it must be preserved if there is to be collective testimony preserved for God until the Lord Jesus comes back again so the attack is being made and the defenses must be mustard where the attack is being made now tonight we have read in Matthew chapter 16 some very well-known verses regarding the church that the Lord Jesus said he would build and that's a remarkable statement of the Lord Jesus most familiar to you I am certain I will build my church the gates of hell shall not prevail against it before we even look at the subject of the church that the Lord Jesus will build we have to look at how we interpret the Bible I know you have heard me speak about this at times perhaps briefly perhaps on another subject but it is necessary today to give a restatement of how we interpret the Bible and I know there are many people who never think of that subject but it is vitally important I'll tell you why there are some who tell us that each has his own way of interpreting Scripture and to kind of strengthen their case they say even great theologians do not agree on many passages of the Bible so every person is more or less left to themselves and this is why there is such a great variety of opinion on a lot of passages or on a lot of practice even this is why in Christendom you have all kinds of organizations and systems that profess to be going by the Bible because after all the Bible is a very difficult book and everybody must do the best they can to interpret it according to the light they have but you know people who talk like that oftentimes it winds up with a far more serious conclusion even than what I have said so far because it it kind of finishes up like this that really we should never be very dogmatic about what we think the Bible teaches because after all we could be wrong and really none of us have the ability to be absolutely certain that what we are saying is truly based on the Word of God I don't think you think that but many do and those that you meet from time to time will have ideas like that that the Bible is a kind of a book that you can almost make say anything you want now the Bible is not that kind of a book you can be sure if God conveyed his mind to man if God was revealing his will he would do it in language that man could understand and then of course the Holy Spirit of God is the divine teacher for not only do we have inspiration so that the Word of God is God breathed but we have illumination so that the Spirit of God is able to impress upon our hearts the meaning of that which is written and I hope every one of us tonight have a longing desire to know exactly what the Holy Spirit said and what he meant when he said so that we know the meaning of Scripture all of us are aware that much preaching and teaching it that is done is not really the meaning of Scripture much that is given is really application and application is good I am not here to tell you that you should not apply the Scriptures because the Spirit of God applies the Scriptures and absolutely there should be application of the Word of God but no application should ever be given unless the true meaning of the passage from which the application is being made is understood you should always understand the meaning before you give any application and no application should be ever given that is not in keeping with that meaning but the first thing the absolute primary thing in reading the Bible is to read it clearly and to give the sense and to cause people to understand the reading how do we do that well there are what we know as laws of interpretation in the in the theological world they call that subject hermeneutics but whatever they may call it that really doesn't have any great meaning to you than I the fact is that there are principles by which the Bible is interpreted and I'm going to try to tell you some of those principles that apply to our subject I'm certainly not going to cover all the grounds of the principles of interpretation but there are certain principles of interpretation that have a great meaning when we apply that meaning to the church and the churches it was Myles Coverdale the man who first interpreted or translated the Bible into the English language the very first English translation it was Myles Coverdale who said that when you read the Bible it will greatly help you to understand scripture if you mark not only what is spoken or written but of whom to whom with what words at what time where to what purpose with what circumstances considering what goes before and what follows and that's one of the most concise statements of biblical hermeneutics that I have ever read because each of the points that he covers is of vital importance if we're going to understand the scriptures now of course the principles that Myles Coverdale mentions are really principles for understanding almost anything but they have a very particular meaning when we're trying to understand the Bible now the very first law it's the last law that Myles Coverdale mentions but it's the very first law of importance to us and that is the law of context and it is of the greatest importance to understand that you never should interpret a single statement of the Bible out of its context there are times when the Spirit of God may do that he may take an Old Testament passage and he may take it out of his its context but after all he is the author of the scriptures and he has the right to use his words in a different way if it so pleases him but we have no such right so that you never interpret a single statement of scripture out of the context and the context of course as you know is what goes before and what follows after and always in the understanding of the scripture we obey that law the law of context first of all there would not be many of the cults existing today at least not pleading verses from the Bible to support their teaching if they had recognized the law of context the second law that is of the greatest importance and understanding the church and the churches is the law of relevance this is the way the law of relevance works God's Word was given at one time oh I know it was given over a period of many hundreds of years likely 1,600 years would compass the writing of the of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation but I mean it was given by God in its entirety it was a faith once for all delivered and the scriptures when they were completed contained what God would have us know about divine truth and it has no improvement you cannot possibly make it better adding to it is a sin that the Bible condemns and it's very closing verses taking from it is equally a greatest sin so the law of relevance just means this that the Word of God was given at one time for all time and let me tell you what that means now in the subject we're looking at we should never say well in the days of the New Testament it was the normal thing for all believers to be baptized and to be gathered with a company of believers in a local church in a local assembly and they all met in that scriptural way whereas today believers are scattered everywhere you have all kinds of organizations and systems and you have believers in many of them and so we can hardly apply what's in the New Testament to our conditions today but you see that's denying the law of relevance that's as much as saying the Word of God was sufficient for those early days of testimony but it's not sufficient for the day that's like saying God did not know what was coming and therefore we have to we have to find other things to guide us now surely God must have understood that there would be these great organizations formed and that men would band together and make great ecclesiastical systems surely God knew all that and therefore God expects us to know he doesn't do any such thing because we should never take the present confusion in Christendom with Christians divided up into sects and systems we should never take that confused mess and and put that back into the Bible and try to use the present circumstance as a tool to understand what was written in the New Testament therefore we take the New Testament as it is written and we believe that God knew everything that would come and he gave us guidance for it all and he never once mentioned any of these great organizations and systems except in a bad way so we believe that the Word of God has been given to us to the end of time how do I know that well the scripture tells me that very very clearly when Paul was writing to Timothy he said all scripture is is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for correction for reproof for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be perfect complete truly furnished unto all good works nothing missing it's all there nothing lacking so the law of relevance just says that what was written was not only written for that time it is written for our time be very careful of people who tell you that the that the culture of a certain time that that women wore head coverings but our culture today is different the Word of God was not given to a culture the Word of God was given to God's people for the ages and it applies as much today as it was written that's the law of relevance the law of positive pattern is a very important law in understanding assembly truth because what is given to us in the New Testament is a positive pattern whenever a blueprint is being drawn for a building it tells what should be done not what should not be done and I've often used this as a crude and simple illustration when the blueprint was being built for this building it did not have written in the middle of this floorplan no stairwell should be put in the middle of this auditorium no such thing it wasn't needed you don't have to put into a blueprint all the things you should not do what you put into a blueprint is positive facts that should be carried out and when those positive facts are carried out then everything is right so what we have is a positive pattern of truth in the New Testament the law of total mention is very important to us you see the law of total mention means that there are truths in the Bible that occupy a lot of space for instance there are twenty one hundred and sixty three references in the Bible to the coming again of the Lord Jesus that's interesting isn't it two thousand one hundred and sixty three references to the Lord's return that occupies a great part of the Bible because those references are not just a word those references are passages of the Bible and it's amazing how much of the Bible is given to that subject it must be very important to God the law of total mention is very important when you consider that there are 21 verses to tell us how the heavens and earth were created and there are 38 chapters to tell us how the tabernacle was to be constructed how can you account for that 21 verses that describe the flaming suns in the universe and all that we know in this physical creation and 38 chapters to describe a little tent out in a desert that would have been most unattractive to see from the outside where a wandering people gathered around to worship Jehovah why did God give so many chapters about that tabernacle you know the answer every word of it honors his glory God loves to speak of his son he loves to give glory to the Lord Jesus and so when God gives a great deal of mention to a subject that law of total mention means that that's a most important subject now you'll easily see how that applies to the church in the New Testament because the church is literally one of the major themes of the entire 27 books of the New Testament so whenever you're whenever you're thinking of a subject in the Bible does that have a large place in the Bible if it has a large place in the Bible you can be sure that that is a subject of the greatest importance then of course there is the law of plain sense you wouldn't hardly think we would need this to think but we do need to say because the law of plain sense is a very excellent law in understanding difficult passages for instance there are people who have taken an obscure passage what is obscure to them a difficult passage for instance Acts 2 and 38 which are the words of Peter to the Jews there on the day of Pentecost when they said what shall we do and Peter said to them repent and be baptized for the remission of sins there's another verse like that is it is it is Acts chapter 22 and verse 16 and here's what people do with those two verses there are there are at least two major denominations in the United States who take those two verses and with those two verses they interpret every gospel text in the New Testament and there are hundreds of them every clear verse a verse like John 3 16 is interpreted in the light of Acts 2 and 38 now that is that is nonsense you never take a difficult verse and use that verse to interpret all the plain clearly understood verses of the Bible very obviously the law of plain sense would say that you take the clear statements of the Bible and you use those clear statements of the Bible to explain what might be difficult to you and of course the law of plain sense comes in in many other ways you take the plain sense of a scripture that the clear sense of it and if that clear sense makes good sense don't look for any other sense or it will be nonsense and that's why people come up with such fanciful interpretations of verses they can find the strangest things in verses no one else can see them in them but they've seen these very strange fanciful things because they've ignored the law of plain sense and if God is revealing his mind if God is making known his great counsels and he's using words to do it and he's the father of all language and why would he not give us plain sense so the law of plain sense is common sense as far as I can see there is of course the law of grammar the the whole idea of grammar to some people is that that's how you interpret the Bible but I would have to say that the laws of grammar are very very important but the laws of grammar must give place to these other laws and I have listed these laws in their importance and understanding the scriptures when I say the law of grammar is important you'll understand that when you read the epistle to the Galatians for in Galatians you have the fact that a word is a is a singular the word seed in the promise to Abraham that it's a singular and not a plural and had it been a plural the Spirit of God points out that it could not have had the meaning it had because that seed is Christ so that's the law of grammar in other words whether the word is a singular or plural has a tremendous difference to its meaning and from that I can learn that I should understand clearly the language that is being used and why the Spirit of God chose to use those particular words in those particular parts of speech and that's why it's such a diligent study and a lifelong study and I have learned of course in my own little life that it is far too short to learn the Word of God these laws are not something we invented in other words what I have told you so far has solid scriptural basis I hope you know that it isn't a matter of some clever people saying here's the way you understand things and they've invented some kind of an artificial framework and then they bring this whole theory and they superimpose that on the scriptures and they say here now here's the way to understand it and if you use our key if you use our method you'll get the right understanding that is not what I have done you know what I've been doing I've been actually giving you the way the New Testament interprets the Old Testament in each one of these laws that I have tried to point out to you what I've been really doing is telling you exactly how the Holy Spirit of God has interpreted Old Testament scriptures but we have many many examples in the New Testament of how the Old Testament is interpreted for instance Matthew 1 and 23 interprets for us Isaiah 7 and 14 too bad modern unbelievers that's what they are who deny the virgin birth did not see that Matthew 1 and 23 is the Holy Spirit's interpretation of Isaiah 7 and 14 because in Matthew 1 and 23 there's no problem whatever it's a virgin that conceives and bears a son and that in keeping with the promise of Isaiah 7 and 14 it gives a literal sense of a literal virgin and a miraculous conception a supernatural birth and the New Testament interprets the Old Testament according to these very principles that I've been trying to tell you when Matthew chapter 2 and verse 6 interprets Micah chapter 5 and verse 1 it does it in the most literal way it says there's a village called Bethlehem with 20 families in it and it's the birthplace of our Lord so the New Testament does interpret the Old Testament according to these principles and we learn from that how to interpret all scripture there is a law that affects us now tonight in what we have read is called the law of first mention and the law of first mention is important because Matthew 16 is the first mention of the church that the Lord Jesus would build and it hadn't yet been built it was still future and Matthew 18 is the first mention of an assembly and that law of first mention has very great meaning for this reason that the first mention of a truth in the Bible the very first time a truth is mentioned for instance the first time the Lamb is ever mentioned in the Bible where is that some think it's Genesis 4 but it is not Genesis 4 for no lamb is mentioned in Genesis 4 the first lamb that is ever mentioned is mentioned in a question asked by Isaac of his father and the answer that was given to that question is the truth of the Lamb in its simplest most concise Abraham said my son God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering that's the very first mention of the Lord Jesus as the lamb I know that there was a lamb that evil offered I know that well the New Testament tells me that in Hebrews 12 but the first mention is Genesis 22 and the very first mention gives us many many truths about the Lamb you can enumerate them he is to be God's provision in fact he is to be deity he is to be offered as a sacrifice he is to feel the night he is to be in the fire all those things are mentioned in the first mention of the Lamb in the Bible now the first mention of a subject doesn't give us all the truth of the subject but the first mention of the subject gives us the truth in its in its simplest to use a word that has been coined quite freely in this regard in its embryo form it is still to be developed but here's the first mention of it and in that first mention you have all the vital features so the law first mention is very important in Matthew 16 and Matthew 18 there is another law that is important to us it is the law of progressive mention in other words a truth that can begin with a very simple statement and then throughout the scriptures that truth develops prayer is a good example of the law of progressive mention because you have prayer mentioned by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 5 or Matthew 6 asking you shall receive now is that all the truth about prayer what if a person was reading that passage and they said asking you shall receive why that's it that's the whole thing no that's not the whole thing and you go all the way through the New Testament and you learn all those other things about prayer asking in his name asking according to the will of God and as you come to the finally to the close of the epistles 1st John chapter 5 gives us a statement about prayer that seems to be perhaps one of the most important in all the Bible and if we ask anything according to his will he heareth us and we know that we have the request that we ask of him so you see the truth of a progressive development of teaching is most important in the understanding of Scripture so I'm sorry to have taken so long with that but I hope that it will have some influence on us because throughout our study of gathering on to his name we will try to apply those laws of interpretation so we are not left to ourselves to say this is the way we do it we are bound to understand the Scripture according to its own laws Scripture is interpreted by Scripture not by anything else now there is a scriptural definition for church church is a wonderful word the English word may not be so wonderful but the Greek word from which it comes is one as you know it is the word Ecclesia and Ecclesia is made up of two words and to translate those two words into the simplest English form which be to say outcalling so church means outcalling and that's the simplest way to say I know there are those who say it's a call to people and so forth that's all right that's not exactly in the word but that's what we understand by but what is in the word itself is simply out calling so how is that word used in the Bible that to us should be very very important it is used a hundred and fifteen times in the New Testament the word church is used 115 times 111 times it refers to the church which is his body or to a local assembly and the only way we can know whether it is referring to the large spiritual aspect the church which is his body which the Lord says in Matthew 16 I will build either it refers to that or it refers to a local company and the only way we can know which is by looking at the context there's the law of context you always understand the use of a word in its context and so whenever we have the context to guide us we will know clearly whether it is speaking of the body or whether it is speaking of a local company and the word church in the New Testament has those two meanings and in a spiritual sense it only has those two meanings but I said there were 115 mentions of the word church in the New Testament and that is right in Acts 19 the word church is found three times and in Acts 19 it is called in every one of those three cases assembly but it is not an assembly of believers it is actually a municipal assembly in the city of Ephesus now it's tragic to me I have often thought this and often often wondered about it wouldn't it have been a lovely thing if the if the King James translators had just reversed themselves wouldn't it have been nice if every time they came across the word ecclesia there they had translated the assembly except in those three cases in Acts 19 and then they could have called that whatever they wanted but they didn't do that they translated the word 111 times they translated it church in fact 112 times they did because the one other occasion is in Acts in the preaching of Stephen you'll likely remember in Acts 7 and Stephen speaks of the church which is in the wilderness it is the only time the word church ever applies to Israel but don't get alarmed because that exception only proves the rule Israel is not the church but it's easy to understand why the Spirit of God through Stephen spoke of that company out in the wilderness as an outcalling you can understand that can't you they were brought out of Egypt they came to a gathering center they were goths testimony in that day and so they are called an outcalling there in in in Stephen's address in Acts 7 but in every other case now 111 times the word church has one of two meanings it is either the body or an assembly that's the two meanings of the New Testament now listen this is what is so important no other use of church is in the New Testament it never means a building and it would be ridiculous as all of you know the call of a building a church because in the New Testament you read about the ears of the church and you read about the health of the church and you read about the rest of the church a church having rest and a church having years and many times you read about a church in the house and Mr. Archie Stewart used to say it would be an awful job to get the steeple up through the roof but of course that is not the meaning of church it is not a building it is a company an outcalling and it only has those two meanings either the body or a local assembly strange that it has two meanings in the religious world to the word church has actually two meanings in the religious world it may have more but it has at least two major meanings that the one meaning is a great ecclesiastical system and this is said without any criticism or at this point trying to be derogatory at all but you have great systems such as the Presbyterian Church the Episcopal Church the Baptist Church and those are great systems they are great organizations and the other way that it is used in the New Testament is for a building or for a local congregation or the other way it is used in the religious world and oftentimes it is used for a building as you know but that is not the way the Spirit of God uses the Spirit of God never uses it for the building but it uses it for the people who gather in the local assembly it's very interesting to study how the Spirit of God uses the word church you never you never have in the New Testament the Church of Galatia that's interesting or the Church of Judea referring to a number of assemblies never never once in the New Testament are a number of assemblies important to our understanding supposing there were supposing there were 50 local assemblies in Jackson County the Spirit of God in the New Testament never calls it the Church of Jackson County whenever it's referring to a number of companies it always calls them churches and it never puts them together and bends them into a Confederation and calls that Confederation Church never men do that but the New Testament doesn't do it and I would challenge anyone to find it in the New Testament because I have gone through every single reference to church in the New Testament and I'm absolutely confident as I am here before you tonight that the Spirit of God never uses it for any association of congregations not at any time there is a case that some have taken up in Acts 9 and 31 where it says that the Church of Judea and Samaria had rest and it is a singular though in our King James Version the plural but actually in the original it is a singular but that church mentioned in Acts 9 and 31 is the Church of Jerusalem that was scattered through persecution so Acts 9 and 31 is referring to one assembly the Assembly of Jerusalem that had been scattered throughout Judea Samaria and Galilee but it was one assembly of course very quickly those scattered Christians were gathered together in various communities because the very end of that verse tells us about the multiplication of assemblies but then it uses the word plural at least the word in the plural and doesn't use it in the singular so in the singular it never refers to any confederation an organization of various churches and we have no authority to do such a thing because in this world God sees two things in this world God sees a spiritual body and in this world God sees a local company and nothing else and if we saw that it would save us from a lot of difficulty in interpreting the Bible so we use terms that are not right even even those of us who try to be careful in how we speak we use terms that are not right I sometimes have referred to the early church and what did I mean by the early church well I meant all those assemblies in that time that's a completely wrong use of the term you do not speak about the early church unless you're talking about one assembly you do not talk about the early church there is no such thing then as the church on earth except the local assembly there is no such thing as the church of the 20th century except at the local assembly there is no such thing as a visible church unless it is a local assembly in fact there is no such thing as the church triumphant or the church militant unless you are talking about a local assembly so how wrongly we use those terms even ourselves very easy to make a mistake so in the Bible you have terms like this the churches of God and when it is the churches of God it has to do with their purpose and when it is the churches of Christ it has to do with their Lord and when it is the churches of the Saints it has to do with how they are composed what makes them up believers who are saved and gathered to the Lord's name when it speaks of the churches of the Gentiles it's talking about their background what they came from and when you read about the churches of Galatia or any other such expression as that that refers to their location as you might speak of the churches of Michigan the assemblies of Michigan but you would never say the assembly referring to a number of them together now how do you know the difference between the body or the church that Christ would build and the local a local company when you come across the word church in the New Testament and you might say let me give you an example 1st Timothy chapter 3 and verse 15 if I tarry long these things write I unto thee Paul says to Timothy and if I tarry long that men may know how they ought to behave themselves in the house of God which is the church of the living God a pillar and ground of the truth what if someone said to you is that the local assembly or is that the body what would you how would you answer it just look at the context and what is the context well first Timothy chapter 3 is dealing with government in the local assembly it's dealing with elders and deacons in the local assembly it's dealing with behavior how you conduct yourself in the local assembly the context is the local assembly is clear as crystal so the Church of God in verse 15 is the local assembly always use the law of context to understand the meaning of the word now every every exhortation to behavior how you live how you conduct yourself every one of them is in relation to the local assembly that's very interesting because the body is spiritual it's a great spiritual truth and I don't want to in any way diminish the meaning of the one body it is one of the greatest truths of the Bible it is the purpose of God for this age and I'm going to close quickly on time now if I can but the very purpose of God for this age is that God should take out of the nations of people for his name Acts 15 and verse 14 is a key verse of the Bible it tells us what God is doing in this present time by his spirit through his servants through the preaching of the gospel to the teaching of the Word of God God is using this world as the quarry if you will as the field if you will or even as the ocean if you're thinking of the pearl and out of this vast sea God has one purpose he is gathering out of it a precious precious treasure the church the body of Christ and that truth is a wondrous and precious truth you see if you grasp that it would keep you from being involved in the world's politics for instance it wouldn't keep you it would keep you from being involved with trying to make the world a better place to live and many dear Christians true believers are all taken up with that sort of thing mr. McVean had a simple illustration that I think is is most helpful at this point he used to say that in a large city he saw a vast building under construction as you often do see a great skyscraper and that great skyscraper required a tremendous amount of scaffolding during its construction you've seen those great buildings and the network of scaffolding about that building is sometimes larger than the building itself and of course when you look at the structure the first thing you see is the scaffolding all that paraphernalia that's necessary so men can work on the building but you don't go up and say they're building scaffolding here not at all like you don't get taken up with a scaffolding at all because that's not what's being built the building the scaffolding is temporary it's only there until the building is completed and then the scaffolding all comes down in fact it's not until the scaffolding comes down that you say well now now they're getting well along with the structure they're taking down the scaffolding the scaffolding is being taken down dear Christian the scaffolding is coming down the building is almost complete the Lord said in Matthew 16 I will build my church and this world and the nations of men and all that people are occupied with every day of their lives is only the scaffolding and it's all coming down that's why we don't spend our time on the scaffolding that's why we don't try to fix it up and patch it up and make it better another illustration which has been a very great help to me is to picture a ship at sea and that ship is rotten in every plank and a storm is coming and when that storm comes there's no hope that that ship will survive the storm and so how would you occupy yourself if you were in the vicinity of that of that ship a rotten ship and a storm descending upon it what would you do get some nails and and boards and a hammer and try to patch it up not at all you know what you would do you would do your utmost to save as many people from the wreckage you could get off that's the business of the believer in the world today this world is like that ship rotten in every plank and the storm is coming don't get taken up with the rotten ship you've taken up with the souls that may be rescued from before it's destroyed and the storm is coming now a person that grasps that understands that we're waiting for the rapture we're waiting for the Lord from heaven we're not waiting for the world to get better we know it'll get worse and we're waiting for the Lord Jesus to come from heaven for his own it's what you believe about those things that would keep you out of systems like are being formed today and I am not particularly interested in in criticizing men's organizations but the moral majority does not understand what I've just been preaching because they spend their time and all their efforts in improving the rotten ship and working on the scaffolding and all the time that's not God's purpose now tomorrow night we'll deal with that much more fully I hope because in in Ephesians chapters 3 you have the great mystery of this age and we have only begun the subject and it was only an introduction and not a very good one but I trust you'll have enough appetite to come back and that God will bless his word to our hearts shall we pray