What Church Should I Join?
Many of you here tonight have
recently been converted to God. A few weeks ago you were asking the
all-important question “What must I do to be saved?” And this you had answered
by the Word of God telling you, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou
shalt be saved” (Acts 16: 31). You have believed, and you are saved, for
God was as good as His Word. As young believers, other inquiries now rise among
you, and among these, as some of you have expressed it, is the question:
What Church
should I join? Or where, and with whom, can I have Christian fellowship?
This is a very important question,
and I am glad to know that many of you are deeply exercised before God about
it. Next to your soul's salvation and your individual walk with Him, nothing
can be of more importance than to be guided aright in the matter of “Church
Fellowship”. Your decision in this will have an abiding effect on your
afterlife, either for good or evil. Many seem to think it does not matter much
where they go, or with whom they have fellowship, provided they get on
smoothly; and consequently they make it a matter of their own choice, “what
Church they join”. Or, as it happens very often, they just drop in where
they have been in the “habit” of going, and where, perhaps, their
parents are “Members”. Now this would be all right, if God had left it
an “open question”—a thing to “please themselves” about. But if
He has given His will on the matter, it surely becomes every one of His people
to find out what that is, and then unhesitatingly to do it.
In seeking to answer your question—”What
Church should I join?” I
would impress upon my own soul and yours, the absolute necessity of being
guided wholly and solely by the Word of God. Men's ideas and advises are of no
use here; not even the counsel of a pious parent. The Word of God, and that
alone, must answer the question. And this makes it at once simple and easy; for
if God has told me in His Word where,
and with whom I am to have Church Fellowship, it ceases to be a question of
what I think or what my friends think, or what any man says, and becomes a
question of “What saith the Lord?” Where does He say I am to be, and
where does He forbid me to go? That's the point to get settled first of all.
And then, no matter how much opposition may arise to hinder you, or how much
failure there may be around you, you'll have the consciousness that you stand
where God has commanded you, and have in your soul the testimony that you are
pleasing Him. And what can be put into the balance against that? Nothing, no,
nothing! For if you have the witness that you are pleasing God, and that He is
on your side, it will make you as bold as a lion, even if earth and hell be
engaged against you.
We will open the Book then—the
precious Book-the “lamp to our feet”—the “light to our path”—and
see what God says about the Church, and who they are that compose it. When once
we get to know this, there will not be so much difficulty left about the “joining”.
First of all then—the word “Church”
is never used in the Scriptures as the name of a building used for religious
purposes, as many of us from our childhood have been accustomed to use it. It
is always used in connection with persons, and signifies “called out”
ones. Turn to Acts 20:28. There we read of “the Church of God, which He hath
purchased with His own blood”; and again, “Christ . . . loved the Church
and gave Himself for it” (Ephesians
5:25).
Here we see Whose the Church is, and
at what a cost it was purchased. It is the “Church of God” not the
Church of a nation, a country, a creed, or a person, but “of God”;
purchased by the precious blood of Christ, and the object of His everlasting
love. Like the merchantman seeking goodly pearls, who, when he had found one
pearl of great price, sold all to buy it. The Lord Jesus gave Himself to obtain
the Church for His Bride, to be the sharer of His glory forever. It is spoken of in the New Testament (and not
found in the Old at all, save in-type) under the figures of a Body, a Temple, a
House, a Bride, and a City. It is called the Body of Christ, the Temple of God,
the House of God, the Bride of the Lamb, and the Holy City, New Jerusalem (see Ephesians
2:22-23; 1 Corinthians 3:16; 1 Timothy 3:15; Revelation 21:2-9).
Of His Body, Christ risen and
glorified is the one and only Head. For God hath made “Him to be the Head
over all things to the Church which is His Body” (Ephesians 1: 22-23); and,
“He is before all things, and by Him all things consist, and He is the Head
of the body the Church” (Colossians 1:17-18). To Him the Church is called
to be in subjection, as the wife is to her husband, (Ephesians 5:23-24) and to
Him alone.
No Pope or Archbishop, no Council,
or Assembly, has any divine warrant to legislate for the Church of God. They
have never been called to issue bulls, frame canons, or devise laws outside the
Word of God, for her obedience. Her Head yet lives, seated at the right hand of
God, to nourish, sustain, and rule His Body. The Spirit of God dwells within
each member, uniting them to the Living Head and the Word of God containing all
His counsel is in our hand. What more need we?
As there is but one Head, so also is
there but one Body (Ephesians 4:4). It is composed of many members, differing
in rank and attainment, even as in our natural bodies we have the eye, the
hand, the foot; but though many members, yet only one Body (1 Corinthians 12:20).
“for by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13).
Each member has a place and sphere assigned to him by God. The unity is
God-made, and God-sustained. Man never formed it, and he can never break it,
because its keeping is in the hands of God-it is divine. By forming many and
varied sects, man may ignore or deny this unity; but that in no way annuls it.
The Church, viewed as the Body of Christ, is one in spite of all man's failure
and schism. It embraces every child of God, north, south, east, and west, by
whatever name they may be known among men. They are all redeemed by the same
precious blood. They are sealed and indwelt by the same Spirit, and encircled
and enlocked by the same Almighty Arms of Love. And they are to be in the same
glorious home throughout eternity. These are everlasting links between saint
and saint and they shall know no decay, though, sad to say, they are oftentimes
disowned here, while others of man's making take their place.
Dear young believer, this is the
Church as spoken of in the Scriptures. Begun on the day of Pentecost by the
descent of the Holy Ghost— at present being gathered out from the nations of
the earth through the preaching of the Gospel. Having no earthly inheritance or
potentate—separate— alike from Jew and Gentile—One New Man—One Holy Church—the
Bride of Christ— to be completed and presented to Him when He comes.
Of this Body (the only one mentioned
in the Scriptures) you are already a “member” you have already been “joined” to
it. Nothing on your part can make you any more a member than you at present
are. And you cannot “unchurch” yourself. By the act of God you became a member
of the Church which is Christ's body on the day of your conversion, and you'll
continue so for all eternity. Hallelujah!
Part of the members of this Church
are now absent from the body, and “present with the Lord”. Others are
for the present, living in the world among men, and must needs live in some
city, town, or country. It is not the will of God that they should remain
isolated one from another, for His Word has said—”Not forsaking the
assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is” (Hebrews 10:25).
The Christ-life within each of them also craves for fellowship with other
members in whom the same life dwells, for “we are members one of another”.
Their association must therefore be one of life, and not mere outward
uniformity—and the dead— that is the unconverted cannot have any share in it,
for what fellowship has life with death, or light with darkness? Clearly none
whatever. Therefore it is impossible that anything like true fellowship can
exist in those Churches where the living and the dead—the children of God and
the children of the Devil—are massed together. God distinctly forbids that such
should be, in the words-”Be ye not unequally yoked together with
unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness and
what communion hath light with darkness…Wherefore come out from among them, and
be ye separate, saith the Lord” (2
Corinthians6: 14-17). The tares and the wheat are to grow side by side in the
world until the end. The
field is the world and not the Church. See Matt. 13.38) But in the Church
of the living God the unsaved should have no place: they ought to be “without”
(see 1 Thessalonians 4:12; Colossians 4:5).
It was so at the beginning. We find
in the New Testament there were local Churches, such as the Church at Jerusalem
(Acts 8:1), the Church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 1:12), the Churches of Galatia
(Galatians 1:2), and the Church in the house of Nymphas (Colossians 4:15). These
Churches consisted of believers, and believers only. They were gathered into a
divinely constituted fellowship, in subjection to Christ as Lord, the pattern
of which remains for us to follow. They received all* whom the Lord had
received, even those who were “weak” and required “support” (see Romans14:1; 1 Thessalonians5:14);
and to have been narrower than this they would have become a sect. In their assemblies
they worshipped God, guided by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 14.); they observed
the Lord's Supper on the first day of the week, (Acts 20: 7) but we hear no
word of any “presiding minister” or “elder” at the head of the
table. They owned and received the gifts of the risen Christ—evangelists,
pastors and teachers; but they did not choose, elect, or ordain their own
ministers. Nor was there any such person known in these Churches as the modern “minister”,
who is chosen by the congregation to do all the preaching, teaching, and
shepherding of the flock. At Antioch there were five teachers (Acts 13:1), and
at Philippi several Bishops (Phil.1:1) in one church. How would that do
now-a-days? What would become of “the minister”? These Churches owned
and obeyed those whom God had fitted to rule (Hebrews13: 7-17) They exercised
godly discipline towards the erring, and if any one among them became guilty of
holding and teaching evil doctrine (Revelation2: 17-20), or of immoral practice
(1 Corinthians 5: 11), they put away the offender.
[The only warrant for the
rejection or exclusion of any believer from Church-fellowship is, that he be
guilty of any of those sins specified in Scripture for which God excludes him (see 1 Corinthians 5: 11-13; Romans 16:
17; Titus 3:10).]
Such are a few of the characteristic
features of the Churches mentioned in Scripture, and they are the patterns of
what Churches ought to be till the Lord come. I have no more right to devise a
new order or fellowship in the Church of God, than I have to make a new way of
salvation. God has given both in His Word, and it endureth forever.
When any one was converted he did
not require to ask, “What Church should I join?” for there was only one
Church in each place, and he there and then became identified with it.
For example, in Jerusalem there were
one hundred and twenty disciples on the day of Pentecost in an upper room.
Three thousand more were converted, and we read, ”the same day there were added unto
them about three thousand souls,…and all that believed were together” (Acts
2:41-44). And this was not only on the “special occasion” of that “great
Revival”, but ”they continued
steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread
and in prayers” (Acts 2:43), “and of the rest durst no man join himself
unto them” (Acts 5:13).
There were no unconverted “young
communicants”, no “dead members” in that Church. They “durst not join
themselves to them”, The ungodly Jews carried on their religion in the
temple headed by the high priest and his “colleagues”, who condemned the Son of
God, even as the unconverted religious people do now in their churches and
chapels. But the young converts could have had no fellowship with such persons,
and I'm sure neither would you. Like Saul of Tarsus, you would have gone to the
disciples, and been received to their fellowship as he was (see Acts 9:2-28).
You see your path would have been plain then. It is very different now.
Numerous sects are spread over the face of the earth. The church and the world
are mixed up together, and when God's newborn babes open their eyes, it is not
to look upon the Church as it was in the beginning, but Sect after sect is
named after their founder, their creed, or their country. And all contending
for the mastery—who'll be the greatest.
What is to be done? That's the
point: and we must fairly face it. Here in —, you have most of the leading
sects represented, and you wish to know which of them you ought to join. Well,
the simplest answer to your question is, “Which of them is according to the
Word of God? Which of them answers to the pattern given in the Book?”
Let us test them and see. The
leading churches are far from the mark. They allow the unconverted to sit at
the Lord's Table—there can be no doubt about that. If you question this, just
go up to some of them and ask the plain and legitimate question, “Is your soul
saved?” and you'll see. They choose their own ministers, some of which are
unconverted beyond all doubt. They have one man set up who acts as evangelist,
pastor, and teacher, and for this he receives a stated salary— in short, is “hired”
to do the people's religion. He says all the prayers, gives out all the hymns
and does all the preaching. No matter who else may be called of God to speak or
pray while they are at “public worship”, they dare not do it, else they would
be turned out. The Holy Ghost must act through “the minister”, or not at
all. And all this honour is conferred upon him, because he is an “ordained
man”. That is, because the hands of some other of his fellow ministers were
once laid upon his head, in imitation of the apostles—which most honest men now
see to be a sham. These are serious obstacles to anyone whose desire is to
please God and obey His Word, by “joining”, or having church fellowship
in such places, are they not? Then there are others, who make
“water baptism” the door of admission into the church, and have no room
for the Spirit's guidance in worship or the exercise of all God's gifts in
ministry. This is sectarian, and apart from the Word of God. Others gather on “the
ground of the one body”, and exclude many of God's people who are walking
in the truth. This is highly sectarian, and strongly condemned in the Word of
God (see 3 John 10). What then is to be done? Where can we go? Must we out of
many evils “choose the least”? Certainly not! We must have the right
thing—the God-appointed church fellowship and order, or none. Surely nothing
less will satisfy a true-hearted saint who wants to do the will of God in this
matter.
Well, then, find out if there are
any believers gathering in the name of the Lord Jesus, and having Him in their
midst, according to Matt 18:20. Who have left all Sects and parties, with their
names, creeds, and traditions, because they are contrary to Scripture, and who
have returned to the first principles of the Church of God. Who have no name
but that of Christ; who are gathered according to the divine pattern, who have
room for the exercise of all His gifts, liberty for all the operations of His
Spirit, and have His Word alone for their creed. This is what is commanded in
the Book, —this is what we see was practiced in the early churches—and this is
your place. Shrink not from taking it, and when you have taken it, “continue
steadfastly” in it—hold it fast. Those so gathering may be but a “little
flock”; poor and despised compared with the crowd of religious professors
around them. But Jesus says, “Where two or three are gathered together in My
name there am I in the midst”; and surely it is better to be where He is,
than in the crowd without Him.
Let those who thus gather make no
pretensions to be “the only people of God”, for this they are not, so
long as there are saints in the sects around them who nevertheless are dear to
God, and will be in the same heaven for all eternity. Let us love such as
brethren, who are one with us in Christ, although the systems they are mixed up
in we must ignore. And having gained the right position in Church fellowship,
let us live in the right condition in fellowship with God, and so walk among
men as to commend the truth to every man's conscience in the sight of God. May He help us individually so to do. Amen. [
