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Part 4 of 8
Honest to God Series
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The church is not a building, institution, or name. The church is all of us—the followers of Christ. The Bible refers to the church as the body of Christ with Jesus being the head, the maximum authority, and also as Jesus's bride.
We sometimes use capital C "church" to refer to every single follower of Christ around the world who together form the body of Christ. Then there's the local church—the local group or community of believers that get together regularly, worship together, and contribute to the kingdom of God together. It's the same church; we simply cannot do life with every single believer around the world.
If we really understand that we are the church, then we can have the right expectations. When we expect the church to feed the poor, take care of the widows, disciple the next generation, bless our communities, and be a light in the darkness—you realize that you are the church, right? It's not "the church should do this" or "why doesn't the church do that." The real question is: why don't you do it?
When we see everything that is wrong with the church—hypocrisy, lack of compassion, spiritual pride, loss of first love—again, you are the church. You cannot separate yourself from the church or point your finger and say "the church is" while excluding yourself. When you criticize the church, you're actually criticizing yourself. It means that you are part of what is wrong with it.
There's a trending idea that we should go back to being like the early church. But let's be honest about what the early church actually was. Yes, there are a few chapters in Acts where believers were united in purpose, attended the temple daily, shared possessions with those in need, ate together, and miracles were happening. Beautiful.
But in chapter five of Acts, we read about a man who sold property, gave the money to the church, but kept some of it while pretending he gave it all to appear more generous. He and his family died. This happened around only 30 years after Jesus ascended to heaven. Sin started very early in the church.
Later in Acts, apostles disagreed about doctrinal issues—disagreements so impossible to resolve that they had to separate ways. The Apostle Paul's letters to different churches address heavy issues happening in the first churches: incest, sexual sin, lying, idolatry, false prophets. All of this was happening in the first 50 to 60 years of the church.
I'm not saying these things are okay. We can learn much from the early church. But the church has never been perfect. There has always been sin in the church because there have always been humans in it. The idea that the church is now worse than ever is a lie. We have always had the same issues; there's nothing new under the sun. We just didn't have social media to hear all about it.
I'm not saying this to adopt a mediocre mentality—that because we're all human, it will always be like this, so let's just relax. No. Our Savior gave His all to make us His church. We should give our all to honor Him.
I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, urge you to live in a way that is worthy of the calling to which you have been called, demonstrating all expressions of humility, gentleness, and patience, accepting one another in love. Do your best to maintain the unity of the spirit by means of the bond of peace. (Ephesians 4)
This should be our goal as a church. We should be working hard every day to live this way.
The church is not for you. The church is you for the world. That's very different. What we carry as a church is so precious that we should do our best to be a reflection of that treasure.
Thanks to the mental health movement, we use big terms very lightly these days. When we feel sad or are in a difficult season, we say "my depression." But clinical depression is something very serious—you're just a little sad. If you like things organized in a certain order, you claim "my OCD." If you're in a busy season feeling stressed and overwhelmed, you say "oh my anxiety."
Do we even know what these mental disorders really mean? We self-diagnose, get easy diagnoses, and play with big words based on temporary feelings.
Unfortunately, this trend has infiltrated the church. If a life group leader tells you a hard truth you don't want to hear, they're being judgmental and you call it public shaming. If the church makes a decision you don't like without asking you first, that's abuse of authority. Anybody on a big stage and social media is labeled as having narcissistic issues. If your feedback isn't taken into consideration, that's spiritual abuse. We wrap all of this under the umbrella of "church hurt" just because it makes us feel hurt.
Here comes the hard truth: Your feelings are real. You feel them. They are real. But—and this is crucial—your feelings may not necessarily be true.
I know it's a serious offense in our culture even to question how people feel. We've given feelings so much authority over our lives and so much credibility. That's what's dangerous. We take our feelings as fact. But feelings are not reliable. Jeremiah says their heart is more deceitful than anything.
We've fallen into a trap: if we feel a certain way, then that's the way it is. And if somebody dares to question it, they're victim-shaming.
When you feel hurt, could we just stop for a second and in prayer ask the hard questions?
It's not the same to feel hurt as to get hurt.
Unfortunately, very sadly, there is real hurt in the church. There is real abuse that sometimes happens in the church. There is real betrayal that people commit against each other. When we use these big words so lightly, we're being disrespectful to the people who are actually suffering. It deviates our mindset as a church from being action-oriented to state-oriented.
Instead of being focused on our mission as a church—which includes healing the wounded—we are now always focused on how everybody feels about everything all the time.
Pastors get hurt all the time. I don't know why people feel they have the right to say anything they want about their pastor or to their pastor's face. And they can never win.
If they're a little overweight, people say they're struggling with gluttony. If they're fit and go to the gym, people say they're vain and shallow. If they vacation too much, they're misspending offerings. If they don't vacation, they're not taking care of their families. It's impossible. But the difference is this: you don't see a hateful podcast from a pastor saying, "This church member exposed."
Pastors get hurt all the time. I don't know why people feel they have the right to say anything they want about their pastor or to their pastor's face. They can never win—if they're overweight, people say they're struggling with gluttony; if they're fit and go to the gym, people say they're vain and shallow. If they vacation too much, they're misspending offerings. If they don't vacation, they're not taking care of their families. It's impossible.
But here's the difference: you don't see a hateful podcast from a pastor saying, "This church member exposed." You wouldn't believe what they said to me in the foyer after the service. They're a hypocrite. You should never talk to this church member.
Pastors are not a separate thing. They're not exempt to pain and hurt. Pastors are also members of the church. They're also part of the church. We're all one body. The enemy tries to create divisions as if it were pastors against congregations, but we're all one church. So maybe the message for some of you here is that you need to pray for your pastors. You need to maybe apologize to one of them if you have heard or said things about them.
The church is messy and flawed because it is formed by humans. There's real hurt in the church that needs our attention. But we need to be very careful to not confuse feelings with real hurt.
If you have been hurt in the church, I just want to say I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Genuinely, I'm so sorry that you were hurt in the house of the Lord. You went to a place where you were supposed to find hope and healing and you found the opposite. You were supposed to find people that would help you heal and find freedom from your struggles, and they should have pointed you to Jesus. Instead, you ended up hurt and confused and maybe even more lonely than ever.
But listen, that's not what God wanted for you. That's not what was supposed to happen. We're just broken. The church still needs her Savior every day. But God doesn't want you to stay in your hurt. God wants to heal you and give you hope and help you get up and move forward in your walk with him.
The first mistake people make when they're hurt in the church is to get mad at the church or even at God. But listen, I cannot stress this enough: the church didn't hurt you. Somebody in the church hurt you. God didn't hurt you. Somebody in his church hurt you.
The enemy is going to try to get you isolated and make you believe that you can never trust God again or his church. But listen, God will never fail you. He will never hurt you and he will never disappoint you. And his church will always belong to him. Don't walk away from the church. Don't walk away from God.
We get disappointed in the church because we expect too much from it. But we get disappointed in God because we expect too little. We need to change our mind about this.
First of all, something we forget sometimes is the importance of unity in the church—for all of us to be one in Christ. This is not just a pretty idea.
In John 17, Jesus was praying moments before being arrested to be crucified. He knows what's coming. He knows that the end of his time on earth is coming. He starts praying to the Father, saying how he had fulfilled his will on this earth. He prays for his current disciples and then for the disciples that would come after them—meaning us.
This is the only prayer registered in the Bible that Jesus makes to the Father for the future church. There are many teachings, instructions, and commandments for his church, but this is the only prayer registered in the Bible that Jesus made for his church. So this must be important.
I ask not only on behalf of these men, referring to his current disciples, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their message, meaning us, so that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be one in us so that the world may believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me so that they may be one just as we are one. I am in them and you are in me. May they be completely one so that the world may know that you sent me and that you have loved them as you loved me. (John 17:20-23)
Four times he asked the same thing: May they be one. He could have asked, "May they love me with all their hearts. May they be compassionate and feed the poor and take care of the needy. May they preach the gospel boldly." But no—the one thing, the one thing he prayed for: May they be one. Why? So that the world may know that you sent me and that you have loved them as you loved me.
The most effective strategy for us to reach the unreached is to be one. The most effective way to testify about God's love is for us to be one. The most effective way to make the world believe in God is for his church to be one.
Think about it. The world is messed up. There's division everywhere. Everybody only cares about themselves. Everybody wants to impose their opinions on others. Everybody is fighting each other about everything all the time. How will the church stand out? How will the church show there's a different way? How will the church preach convincingly about God's love? By being united.
Why do you think this is the church's greatest weakness? Unity is the number one target of our enemy against the church. We so easily fall into that trap.
So when the time comes—not if, but when the time comes—when we have to take action against sin, we should keep this in mind: keeping the unity within the church is our number one priority. I'm not saying to cover up sin or don't say anything about what is wrong with the church. I'm not saying to hush everybody for the sake of unity. If you see something, speak up. All I'm saying is our goal should be reconciliation.
Don't bash the church. Don't go on social media saying everything that is wrong with the church. We're supposed to rule the world with Christ one day, and what we do is go out to the world to vent our problems within the church. We're fighting each other in front of the world to see. Again, it's not the church that wronged you, but a person or a small group of people in the church that wronged you. When you go publicly trashing the church, you're hurting the whole church. How does that help the church get better? How does that help our mission? How would that help the non-believer who is already hesitant to come? How would that help the world to know that God sent Jesus and that God loves them as he loved Jesus?
Act against the sin, not the church.
I want to share the story of Paul, previously known as Saul. He was a very well-educated man, a member of the Sanhedrin, which was one of the most elite and respected groups of Bible teachers at that time. When Jesus's followers started preaching the gospel and the church started growing, he started persecuting them, having them arrested or even killed.
We could think, "Oh, Paul was such an evil man." Not exactly. He was a very religious man. He was very protective of the integrity of the Word. He was genuinely worried that there were people spreading false teachings. In his mind, he was proactively defending the Word of God. Back then, the punishment for heresy was death. So in his mind, he was doing God's will. He was doing the right thing.
He starts persecuting the new believers until Jesus appears to him on the road to Damascus. Listen to what Jesus asked him: "Why are you persecuting me?" And Paul said, "Who are you, Lord?" And Jesus said, "I am Jesus whom you are persecuting."
Paul was not persecuting Jesus. Jesus was long gone to heaven. He was persecuting the believers, the church. But Jesus asked him, "Why are you persecuting me?" If you persecute Jesus's church, he takes it very personal. It's like Jesus saying, "If you mess with my church, you're messing with me."
Yes, we must definitely act against sin, but be very careful to never act against his church.
Another mistake we can make when we are hurt in the church is to take upon ourselves to fix the problem. There are three things that we see in the Bible that Jesus does and will do for his church.
First, he will build his church. Matthew 16:18 says:
I tell you, you are Peter and on this rock and the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, our Lord and Savior, I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
Jesus says, "I will build my church." The original word in Greek is ecclesia—very similar to the word in Spanish, eglesia. The word means a summoned group of people. It was used when a group of people was summoned or convened to deliberate on something. It was an assembly of people called for a specific purpose. And Jesus said, "I will build that. I will build my people. I will build my group of followers that I called for my specific purpose. And even when things go bad, even when things get messy, I will keep building my church and nothing will prevail against it."
Isn't that a relief? Doesn't that just fill you up with hope? Even though we are broken and sometimes messed up, the church will continue because Jesus has taken upon himself to build his body. This also means that the church will go on with or without you. And I don't know about you, but I want to be on board.
The second thing that the Bible says Jesus will do for his church is that he will cleanse his church. Ephesians 5:25 says:
The Messiah loved the church and gave himself for it so that he make it holy by cleansing it, washing it with water and the word, and that he might present the church to himself in all its glory without a spot or wrinkle or anything of the kind but holy and without fault.
Isn't this beautiful? Such a sweet and tender love from Jesus to his church. And listen, you and I cannot cleanse the church. We cannot fix the church. I mean, honestly, can you even clean yourself? Can you even fix yourself? Only God can do that. So we can rest in that. He will cleanse his church. He will fix everything that is wrong with it. Some things in this life, some things in the next. Sometimes we'll see it. Sometimes we won't get to see it. But it will happen.
There is hurt caused unintentionally. There is hurt caused by true believers that just mess up. But there is hurt caused by evil people that infiltrates the church to steal, kill, and destroy. Well, Jesus will take care of that, too.
The last thing that Jesus will do for his church is that he will come back for his church. The Bible describes God's church as Jesus's bride.
