The following message is a presentation of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where we're proclaiming the sufficiency of scripture for church and family life. More information about the NCFIC is available at www.ncfic.org. It would be a tragedy to be involved in planting a church. It would be a tragedy to be a member of a church without understanding one gigantically important thing. And that is the subject that we're upon now.

And that is the loveliness of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's so important for us in order to keep our wits about us, in order to help us to know how to navigate in this world with all the confusing things that go on around us, that we have the mind of Christ. And if we would not have the mind of Christ for the church, it would be for the worse for those that we would relate to in the church. We've spoken about the covenants that Christ has made to the church, and it's just so critical in the same fashion that we think about the church the way that Christ thinks about the Church. We are corrupt in our minds.

We have influences that make us have wrong thoughts about the Church. If our thoughts are dark or corrupted or selfish or something less than what they ought to be, the church will be the worst for it. So we must learn how to think like Christ thinks about the church, and in doing so we would be behaving like Christ behaves toward the church to love the way that Christ loves and to develop the same kind of ethos and passion that he has. So I'd like to speak about 11 ways, I'd like to speak about eleven ways Christ's affection toward the church is demonstrated. I trust that God will help us to become like Him in our affections toward the church.

And the first way that we see of His way with the church is that He personally identifies with the church. You recall that amazing story of Saul persecuting the church. Saul is dragging women out of their households and putting them to death and men and all manner of terribly wicked things, and he was a fearful persecutor of the church, and one day he's going down the road, the Damascus Road, and a voice of the Lord Jesus Christ comes, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And here we find something about Christ, not only the conversion of Paul, but we learn something about the Church, and that is this, that He so closely identifies Himself with the Church that when you persecute the church, you're persecuting Him. They are inseparable in His mind.

You can see the same connection between Christ and His people in a number of texts. If you go to Matthew 25, you see Jesus speaking to His people about the final judgment, and what does He say? He says something that gives the truth about his relationship with his people. He says, I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink.

I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. And then they asked, they say, Lord, we never saw you hungry. We never saw you thirsty, we never saw you a stranger, and the Lord Jesus says, truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren.

You did it unto me." Isn't that amazing? What you do to the people in the church, you do to Christ directly. That's the way He sees it. It's not the way we think about it, really, but this is the way He thinks about it. Again, my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your thoughts are not my thoughts, and that's the truth about the church, and how amazing it is to realize that when you touch the church you touch Christ himself.

Ephesians 5 through 33 says that we are actually members of His body, meaning that we, we too, when someone touches me, that person is always, is also touching Christ. Now, That's a mind-boggling thought, but that is true. He says, "...for we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones." It's a remarkable thought that he personally identifies with the Church. So if you persecute the Church, you persecute Jesus. If you feed someone in the Church, you feed Jesus.

If you come into the Church, you come into the presence of Jesus. And if you touch the church in any way, you are touching Jesus Christ, because the church is inextricably connected with the Lord Jesus Christ. And maybe that's why, at least for me, my testimony is that I have been so blessed by the Church of Jesus Christ. Well, now we know why. Because Jesus Christ is there in the midst of the congregation.

He's there in the brothers and the sisters. I look back in my years as a believer how thankful I am for the church I don't know. I shudder to think of where I would be today if it were not for the members of the body of Christ. Samuel Rutherford, that Scottish reformer, Scottish pastor, bulldog on the one hand, but perhaps one of the most tender-hearted pastors that ever lived. Samuel Rutherford has his letters collected up in a big book that has so many wonderful, nourishing things to read about life in the church.

Here's what he says about the church. The great Master Gardener, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in a wonderful providence with His own hand, planted me here, where by His grace in this part of the vineyard I grow, and here I will abide till the great master of the vineyard think fit to transplant me." Here Rutherford knows, He knows that Christ is inextricably connected to the church. He's growing in Christ's vineyard. He sees it as God's nursery, God's place of cultivation all the days of his life. Think of that.

You know, our people should really understand why God has sent the church. There are many reasons, but one of them is this, that the littlest child will have a place of the grace of the personality of the Lord Jesus Christ as that child is in the meetings of the church. Isn't that amazing that God would be so kind. He would so connect himself with his people that Christ Himself would be there for you in the church. Well, the loveliness of the church is found in this great truth that He personally identifies with the church.

You know, you look at the church and think, you know, the church is not really that lovely. But here we find that this isn't really true. There's a loveliness there that is often missed. Sometimes we don't think the church is lovely because we're fleshly. We don't think rightly about anything.

We're so selfish, you know, we're so jaded that we don't see Jesus Christ in the church. I just challenge all of us here, when you go into the meeting of the church tomorrow, look for the Lord Jesus Christ. Look for Him on every face. He's there. We are of His flesh and of His bones.

So, he personally identifies with the church. Secondly, he cries out for the church. He loves the church with an everlasting love and he says, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her, how often I wanted to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing.'" Notice two things. Notice the hardness of heart on the one hand of human beings, and on the other hand, the tender-hearted longing that is there in the heart of Christ for his people. If we would have the heart of Christ for the church, we wouldn't be so put off by the hard-hearted.

We would be like the Lord Jesus Christ. Of course, the Lord Jesus Christ doesn't only speak in these terms toward the hard-hearted in the church. He often comes as a thunderbolt, but at the same time we should never forget this heart of Jesus Christ cries out for the church. He says, oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem. You know, these are cries of love, and these cries give us a sense of how precious the church is.

The church is lovely. The church is precious because Christ cries out for her. And then we see that He also fills the church. The Lord Jesus Christ fills the church. Here again we encounter another counterintuitive, kind of staggering idea that Jesus Christ actually fills the church.

And we read in Ephesians chapter 1, and in the range of 15 to 33, we see this whole context, And he says in verse 15 in Ephesians 1, Therefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of his glory in the inheritance in the Saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power which he worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of Him who fills all and all." Again, we come to these two thoughts that the church is His body, it is literally His body, we see that it's of His flesh and of his bones, and then that he fills it.

He actually, he fills the church with him, with himself, which means if you, if you separate yourself from the church, you separate yourself from Christ, in a sense, for he himself fills the church. Would you be so bold as to separate yourself from that body that he fills? That's a dangerous thing, really. There are many people who claim to be believers who I believe are in danger because they've separated themselves from the church. John Calvin in Institutes in Book 4 speaks of this principle.

Steve Bragee brought this quote to me earlier today. For when with all our might we are attempting to overthrow God's truth, we deserve to have him hurl the whole thunderbolt of his wrath to crush us, nor can any more atrocious crime be conceived than for us by sacrilegious disloyalty to violate the marriage that the only begotten Son of God deemed to contract with us." So there's some strong language about separating yourself from the church, about despising what God has filled the church with himself through the Lord Jesus Christ. So he fills the church. We should always remember not to be too wise in our own eyes, not to be too high-minded, that the Lord Jesus Christ does fill his church, and that we should not be so despising of his children as to think poorly of them when in fact Christ, the hope of glory, is in them. It's pretty staggering when you think about it.

Think about how casual you can become in the church, how presumptuous you can be, how judgmental you can be when in fact your brother with whom you do not agree on every point is in fact filled with the Lord Jesus Christ. How dare we treat the members of the body of Christ poorly by separating ourselves from them, in our hearts, despising them, or taking them for granted and not treating them as who they really are, not only made in the image of God, but are inseparably connected to the body of Christ. And when you look into her eyes or his eyes, you're looking into the eyes of Jesus Christ himself. This is a great mystery, but it is true. And so not only does he fill the church, but he also carries the church.

In Deuteronomy chapter 1 verses 30 through 33, we're getting ready to launch a study in the book of Deuteronomy in our church, and I'm looking forward to getting to this verse here in verse 30. The Lord your God who goes before you, He will fight for you according to all he did for you in Egypt before your eyes. And in the wilderness where you saw how the Lord your God carried you as a man carries his son in all the way that you went up until you came to this place." Here we see that Christ believes the church is lovely enough to carry her members. Rutherford says, there are many heads lying on Christ's bosom, but there is room enough for yours as well. Here, Christ is carrying His people.

He carries them like He carries a son. Now, if you've had a son or a daughter, you know how precious it is to carry a little child in your arms. And you almost loathe the day when they get so big that you cannot carry them around, but you would carry them around as long as you're able because you have that same sensibility that your father in heaven has and the love of the Lord Jesus Christ as he carries his own children. But I am so attracted to this statement that I carried you as a man carries his son. Just think on that for a minute.

Isn't that one of the most amazing things you've ever heard about you? That He carries you as His own Son. Looking, you know, when you carry your son, you look into his eyes, you can't believe the form of his face, and it's such a helpful, good thing. But so here, Christ so esteems his church that he would carry the members of his church in his arms like a father carries his son. And then this perhaps is one of the most staggering images that we have from the Lord Jesus about the church, that He loves His church because she is as a bride.

The image of a bride I think is a startling image. I think that if you went on the internet and placed a poll up there and had five, you know, what do you, what's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the church and 50, 000 people respond. How many do you think would come back with bride? I don't think very many would, but again our ways are not his ways And He does think of the church as a bride. And you would think that you would think that you know after 2, 000 years she'd be the old lady.

She's not the old lady. She's a bride. She's a precious bride. And he has desire for her. He cherishes her beauty.

Did you ever think that Christ views you as a beautiful bride? I know that's hard for us to imagine, because we don't really understand the love of God for sinners very well. But we need to understand this image. So you, yes, yes, yes, you can be a bride and be a male, okay, in this sense. Here, God is casting a vision for something, you know, to take us into another realm of thinking beyond our own.

And what does He do? Not only does He call her a bride, but then he spends the rest of eternity washing them with the water of the word, working out spots and wrinkles, and continuing to treat us as a precious bride. It's an amazing image. You know, we have all these powerful graphic images. We've spoken about all of them here in this conference, that the church is the body of Christ, that the church is a building of living stones, that the church is a family, the church is a pillar, the church is a flock, and here we find her as a bride.

And our thoughts should be like the Lord Jesus Christ's thoughts here as He considers that she is a bride. You know the Apostle Paul loved the church in the same way. He says, he says, I am spending and being spent for your sakes because he is working for a bride. Well, He loves the church not just as a bride, but he also sacrifices for the church. He has said, this is my body, which was broken for you.

And then he says, do this in remembrance of me. He not only has his body broken, but he has us do something to remind us of that, his sacrifice for the church. So Luke 22 19 says, so He took bread and gave thanks and broke it and gave it to them saying, this is my body which is given for you, do this in remembrance of me. Likewise, He took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant of my blood which is shed for you. So there's a body and then there's blood.

That's the sacrifice of Christ to the church. He purchased the church with his own blood. That's a high price. And this should tell us something about our own disposition toward the church. If God would send his son to shed blood for the church, how much more should we as sons do the same?

How much more should we train our daughters and sons to feel the same way about the church that they would be willing to shed their blood for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ? And then we see that He also provides for the church, and of course He provides many things, but mainly He provides Himself. He says, I will never leave you or forsake you." In Hebrews 13 5, He says in John 14, let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions.

If it were not so, I would have told you. I go and prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also." Here is the provision of Christ, the eternal provision of Christ. He provides for us in this way. He covers all of our long-term liabilities. And He loves the church in such a way, He feels about the church in such a way, that He would perfectly provide for her.

He would not withhold anything that she actually needs. He would not withhold anything that is unnecessary for her. So here we find his love for the church, you know, communicated in the way that he provides for her. And then he builds the church. This also tells us about his disposition toward the church.

In Matthew 16, he said, "'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, flesh and blood is not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, and I say to you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." And here now we see that Christ is personally certifying the perpetuity of the Church. He will not let it die. It will go on. We never need to worry too much about the church because she is in good hands. We shouldn't get too worried about the direction or the way the culture is going.

Christ is head of the church. He has commanded us to reprove and rebuke and exhort. He has commanded us to shepherd the flock of God and preach the Word of God with boldness. But at the same time, we should do it happily. We should do it well because we know that the church is covered.

God will take care of her that the gates of hell will not prevail against her. Here's Samuel Rutherford again. He says, Dear brother, Let God make of you what He will. He will end all with consolation and shall make glory out of your sufferings." And would you wish for a better work than that? So, because He is His head of the church, because He will build His church, and because the gates of hell will not prevail against it, then we can be happy of the end that He has prepared for the church.

And we can be a blessing to the church without too much stress in our own souls because we know that he is faithful and he will take it. We can know that we are not responsible for making the church be what it has to be. The Spirit of God is big enough for that and He is able to deal with every synapse of every brain in the church and He can turn any one of them in a nanosecond if He wishes. And so there's a great peace in knowing that He is building His church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And then He heals the church.

This also gives another view of His love. He is involved in healing the church. In Matthew 9, verses 9 through 13, Jesus said, Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. But Go and learn what this means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice.

For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." You know, here we have the doctrine of sanctification. We have the doctrine of the healing salve of the blood of Jesus Christ. Here we have, you know, the healing of the personality. Here we have the rescue of the human soul from worldly things. And how good God is to the church to come and rescue sinners, take them right where they are with all of their foolishness and bad ideas, and then take them, hey, one year at a time.

And He ushers them on their heavenly journey and completes it. And so in this time of sanctification, you know, often His hand is on us like a hammer. And he would be flattening things that are bulging out. Or he would be knocking off things like pride. He would be kicking out the props that we love to rely on so much.

He does that for our sanctification. He might raise up an enemy so that He might afflict you, so that you wouldn't think so highly of yourself. Or He might desire to withhold something from you that would be a blessing to your soul. You can always say in this life, you can always say, Thank you Lord for what you've given. Thank you for what you've taken away.

And thank you Lord for what you have withheld from me. Because He has done it all for your healing. He takes the sick, those who need a physician, and then He heals them and He brings sinners into his own heavenly hospital. So he shows his love by what he does and his healing of the individuals in the church. And then he brings the church together.

He pulls people together. He so loves his own body that he brings them together. How's that? He wants his body together. So he collects them up in these organisms called local churches.

And not only that, they can be walking down the street in another country, and another believer will be there, and there's an instant connection. And faith meets faith. And it's an amazing thing. Christ brings people together. That's why He says, be devoted to one another.

That's why He has said, do not speak evil against one another. Do not complain against one another. Confess your sins to one another. Do not judge one another. Accept one another.

Give preference to one another in honor Christ through his commands is always bringing us together in love. What a fantastic place the church is when she fulfills these things. Think of how much God must love His church. To give her such beautiful commands, to give her such life-giving direction, He must love His church so much and that he would ask them to forgive one another and to be subject to one another and to regard one another as more important than yourself, to bear one another's burdens, to comfort one another, to build up one another, to be hospitable to one another, to have fellowship with one another. This shows that God's desires for His church are for love, and He gives His people a household, and then He brings them together and binds them together by commands, the one anothers in the New Testament.

And then, Lastly, He eagerly desires to eat with us. Christ loves the Church. Christ sees the Church in its loveliness in a way that we never could, and so He desires to partake of food with the church. In Luke chapter 22 verses 14 to 20, we read of it. And when the hour had come, He sat down with the 12.

And he said to them, with fervent desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. This fervent desire, it's an eager desire. I have eagerly desired, I have fervently desired to eat this supper with you before I suffer. What a dramatic thing to say. He desires to sit down with his disciples and eat with them and to share a meal.

And this also gives another picture of the loveliness of the church. The Lord Jesus Christ is in the midst of her. He's gathering his flock around so that they would all eat together. Tomorrow when we gather at church we will do that and the Lord Jesus Christ will be there with us. He will be in the midst of his church in in the form of His presence in all of the individual members, the ligaments and the bones that make up the structure of His body, all together.

And then we will eat with one another. Well, so is it obvious enough that the Church has a loveliness? Is it obvious enough that we should see the church that way, that we should have the mind of Christ toward the church and that all of these beautiful impulses in the Lord Jesus Christ would teach us about our impulses and it would also show us when our impulses are going off course because they do. Pride, hurt feelings, whatever, sin, who knows what it might be at any given moment, can cause us to have a diminished view and not be able to say that the church is a lovely thing. When we say the church is not a lovely thing, we have to ask ourselves how far we might have slipped from a real view of things.

You know, we've spent the last two days, hours and hours, you know, speaking about so many things concerning the church. We started with the centrality, the supremacy of the word of Christ in the church, that all inventions in the brain of man are idolatry. So we must stay with the words. We spoke about the importance of establishing the elements of biblical church life, that we should be governed and penned in by what God has told us to do in the church and to do those and not end up with a monstrosity created in our own image. We've spoken about how the church and the family work together in unity for the blessing of all the saints.

We spoke of some nuts and bolts about how to plant churches, a church planter's checklist, you know, a number of items to remember to cover before, you know, any of us would plant churches. We've spoken about church membership and all of the the ins and outs that that we can think of to help us be better church members and also to teach the people in our church what it means to be a member of the body of Christ. We spoke about covenants and the covenants of Christ toward the church and how important it is that we have that same heart of commitment to the church, that the church isn't just some side thing. It's a central thing and there are particular commitments and responsibilities that we have to the church. We've spoken about establishing doctrinal unity, the importance of doctrine on the one hand, and also the importance of instruction and teaching and mercy and grace in bringing unity to the church, even though we are a church that can't agree on everything.

How do we bring unity in that kind of environment? We can. And there will be threats to it as well. So we must be vigilant. And God has given us many instructions about how to deal with times of disunity.

If I don't remember if I did this earlier, but I want to highly recommend Dan Horan's sermon at Hope Baptist Church on Romans 16, 17 through 20 on what do you do when people try to cause divisions in the church. It's, I think, one of the most helpful, clear expositions of that passage, and I think could be a great blessing. I wish all church members everywhere in the world would listen to it. So how do you establish unity in the church? Well there are specific ways.

Well how do we bring together a conference like this where we've covered you know all these different kinds of things. Here's what I would just like to suggest that we are able to leave with and that is that we at least leave with this that we would have fire for the Church of Jesus Christ, and that that fire would cause a boiling point of love for her, that we would not neglect her, that we would not treat her poorly, but that we would have the same mind as Christ has for the church, that He would love her, that He would be connected to her, that He would beautify her, that He would carry her, and that we would be like Him every day that God gives us breath. And in our hearts we would say, with fervent desire, I have desired to eat this Passover with you. I pray that this would be the legacy of our hours spent together, that it would be more love for the Church of Jesus Christ and that we would nourish and cherish her in the same way He has done us. Let's pray.

Now to Him who is able to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Christ Jesus for obedience to the faith. To Him be glory in the church forever and ever. Amen. Thank you for listening to this presentation of the National Center for Family Integrated Churches. We invite you to visit our website at www.ncfic.org where you can keep up to date on what is new, as well as find articles, videos, audio sermons, and much more at no charge.

The N.C.F.I.C. Exists to proclaim the sufficiency of Scripture for both church and family life.