Dennis Tuuri

Sermon scripture is Ephesians 3:14 through chapter 4:16. Ephesians 3:14 through 4:16. For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that ye being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundant above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that you walk worthy of vocation wherewith you are called with all lowliness and meekness with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

There is one body and one spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. One God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all. But unto every one of us, is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Wherefore he saith, when he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts unto men. Now that he ascended, what is that?

But that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth. He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above the heavens, that he might fill all things. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ. Till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie and wait to deceive, but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.

We continue this morning with our series of talks going through the worship of the church. Next week we will step a bit outside of that in a sense. We’ll have an ordination service for next week for Kent Canoy to the diaconate. And then the following week we’ll return to the subject of communion, the second half of our formal worship service every Sunday. And we’ll be talking about communion as thanksgiving, eucharist.

That’s what the word means. The following week, we’ll talk about the family altar and its relationship to the communion table. And then we’ll conclude the series on worship by talking about the raising of hands in worship and looking at that from a biblical perspective. We’re going to return for a bit this morning just to review briefly. Last week we talked about the sursum corda—the lift up your hearts—and hopefully that if we put that into our liturgy at some point in time in this church or if I just by way of exhortation to you on particular Sunday tell you to lift up your hearts to God, you’ll realize the importance of that.

The fact that we are seated in the heavenlies in Jesus Christ and that in our worship we worship around the throne of God and we’re to gain a heavenly perspective on what we do in worship and then also what we do throughout the week.

It was interesting that I noticed as I was going through my files looking for something else actually I noticed an article by Peter Leithart in the June 89 issue of the Chalcedon Report that I hadn’t read at the time and the article is entitled “The Place of Heaven in the Christian Life” and he says much of what we talked about last Sunday. Actually Leithart says in the last concluding paragraphs of this article and this is really what we were getting at last week in terms of what the reformers understood and what the early church understood about the sursum corda—the fact that we are we do have communion with saints in heaven. Leithart writes that heaven is the vantage point from which we are to understand our earthly situation. When we see by faith Christ ruling from heaven we understand the true situation of the earth and ask with the psalmist why do the heathen rage. From the vantage point of the heavenly sanctuary we see that the wicked are like grass destined for burning like chaff which the wind driveth away. From the vantage point of heaven, we see that by grace we are trees planted by the rivers of water bearing abundant fruit waxing green even in old age.

Heaven is also our pattern for earthly action. The worship of the heavenly host is the pattern for our Lord’s day worship. Revelation 4 and 5. Our future participation in the eschatological judgment of the angels is the pattern for the present exercise of judicial authority in the church. 1 Corinthians 5. Just as Moses and David were told to make dwellings for God according to the pattern revealed from heaven.

We are to remake the true temple the church and likewise we are to rebuild the world according to the heavenly pattern to be a fit dwelling place of God. To the end he says that God willing the world itself will become a pleasing aroma in the nostrils of God. He mentions in here among other things the verse about how you should lay up treasures in heaven and that is a better place for treasures because things can’t be stolen when seen from that perspective.

And I thought about that in relationship to debt. The third Sunday in a row we mentioned that word. But I think that a proper perspective on money on goods on things of value helps us. If we have a heavenly perspective on those things it helps us to avoid debt. How so? Money is a reflection of value or preciousness in a way and ultimately money is indicative of the value that is in God himself. God told Abraham that he was Abraham’s exceeding great reward.

So money is a halfway point as it were of remembering that. Money and gold for instance gets its value because God created it and it indicates the value to us and the preciousness of God and of his word and of our savior Jesus Christ and the great gift of the Holy Spirit. It is idolatry to be greedy over those things because it stops at the thing that God has given us in life to take us to a further knowledge of who he is.

It’s like the communion bread in a way. If you stop at the communion bread and you start worshiping it instead of remembering that it symbolizes it, it’s a picture to us of the body of Jesus Christ given for our sins and the new body of the church. That’s idolatry. And for us to be greedy and to get into debt and do other unlawful things, other things that may be unlawful to attain gold and silver and things is to stop at the midway point instead of realizing all that reflects God’s worth to us from the heavenly perspective.

And so we worship around God’s throne room in heaven on Sunday in a very real sense. It should help us get a heavenly perspective on many things in our lives, including for instance, money. And that should help us to avoid temptations to steal it or to go into debt for things that we really cannot in the providence of God right now afford. It’s a lack of contentment. Debt is essentially, and it can be idolatrous if we stop at the thing that is there to symbolize God’s value and worth to us.

Now, it is interesting that part of the reformation of worship at the time of the Reformation which we’ve been making reference to throughout this series was the reinstatement of proper emphasis on prayer, particularly prayer in formal public worship, but also prayer in private homes as well. And we’ll talk about the private home aspect of some of this and the relationship of communion to that when we talk about the family altar.

That was really a Puritan phrase and it has great significance to the topic of worship and communion. In any event, in terms of formal worship, the Reformed churches generally came up with or had developed as they went through reformation of their liturgies two prayers. There was the prayer of confession, much like the prayer of confession that we did a shortened form of just a few minutes ago when we come before God’s throne—that was before the sermon as it were or after the call to worship. There was a prayer of confession and the other formal prayer either written out in formal language to be read or in the Westminster Directory for instance it tells you this is what that prayer should be about. The second formal prayer was the prayer of intercession. Prayer of intercession, placed at various places in the liturgies but normally after the sermon or as a transition into the communion half of the service.

Prayer of intercession. Now I bring this up because the prayer of intercession either in form or instruction provided a mechanism for the Reformation church to remember their communion with saints on earth. They took that—that was one of the things that was indicated in the prayer of intercession. They would pray for other saints throughout the earth. We have obligations in terms of our communion with saints on the earth which is our topic this morning.

And prayer is certainly one which we’ll be emphasizing today as we work through the material that we’ve prepared. And of course I’d remind you as I probably should remind you every week. I hope you have this in the back of your heads that everything I say should be measured against the word of God to see if it is accurate and true and represents it fairly. I don’t know that we’ll end up at Hope Presbyterian, but if we do, it’s interesting that they do have a pulpit off to the side and they have a clear see-through pulpit in the middle from which the word of God is read.

And if we do use that facilities for a while in the afternoons, then we’ll read the scriptures from that pulpit and then when the sermon starts, I’ll move over to the side pulpit. Now, the indication that is given in churches as architectural symbolism is to remind you that the word of God is infallible and what I say isn’t. Okay. Calvin said that most ministers, a good minister, he said a really good one will be right 80% of the time.

That sounds like a good batting average, but remember that means he’s wrong 20% of the time. Okay. So, measure these things against scripture.

First thing we want to talk about in terms of communion with the saints on earth now is its present reality. And I’ve listed some verses there in your outline and what we read a couple of minutes ago in Ephesians 4:3-6 that says that we are endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in verse three in the bond of peace.

Okay. And then he goes on to say because there is one body and one spirit even as you’re called in one hope of your calling. The point here is that it’s easy to think of this as an attempt to gain unity but Paul says our job is to keep unity. Unity is not in the basis of our works or our actions. Unity is a gift of God to the church in response to Jesus’s prayer in John 17 that the church would be one. So there is a present reality to our unity with saints not just here in this building and not just in the greater Portland area and not just in Oregon and not just in America but throughout the world.

We do have a unity in Jesus Christ with saints throughout the world. The basis is not our efforts. The basis is the work of the savior and the gift of God to the church. Now again a heavenly world and life view will have effects on what we do here and when we remember that from Revelation—from Hebrews rather 12:22-24 when the writer of the epistle of the Hebrews says that we have come to these realities one of those realities is the assembled saints not just in heaven but also on earth remember we talked about that went through that passage it is a reality that in worship.

We are worshiping in a real sense with people throughout the whole face of the earth even now as well as with those who have died and are now with Jesus in heaven and with the angels okay around the throne room of God. That’s a real thing in heaven. It is a real thing from a heavenly perspective that we worship with other saints throughout the world. And Ephesians 4 indeed tells us that there is a unity because we’re all one in Jesus Christ.

Okay. All across this town indeed. Throughout the world, Christians meet normally on Sunday. On a particular day of the week, normally Sunday, the Bible is read. The Bible is taught. Even now as we’re talking and sitting here, thousands of people right in the vicinity in which we are, there’s probably five hundred over right over at Bible Temple. And you begin to think through all the churches and you’re going to have a better idea of that by the way this afternoon because we’re going to be calling up many of those churches in the next week to make sure that we have covered all our B places in terms of a building search and there are lots of churches to call.

There are lots of churches in the greater Portland area. Now, are they all preaching doctrine perfectly? Well, we don’t think so. That’s why we’re here instead of there. But the point is they’re all naming the name of Jesus Christ. In almost every one of those services, this Bible is read as God’s word to man. Maybe they don’t understand it as infallible or inerrant, but they’re still looking to it for what they do in life.

They’re professing Jesus Christ. And so, there is a great amount of attention paid to Jesus on this day regardless of whether or not the attention is improperly placed or not focused correctly et cetera. And this book Operation World which I’ve been making reference to several times today says that there are probably and this was printed in 1986 30 to 35% of the world are Christians profess the name of Jesus Christ and it is important for us to get that kind of heavenly perspective of what’s going on down here.

Now yeah I as I was thinking of this. It helps us to understand that at one point in time in this world things were a little more obvious that this was the case. I have an old book here first done in 1846. It’s called The Bible Through a Looking Glass. And what it is it’s a series of little pictures which you can’t see of course very well from down there but I’ll have this around today.

And then the picture demonstrates or is symbolic of some biblical truth and he lists various scriptures around the picture. In terms of this and in this particular book, one of the pictures is this picture of a representation of the church and various races around the church worshiping as it were God in terms of the church. And this is called “The Triumph of Christianity.” I’m going to read you this poem written in 1846.

It is come the long expected day when sin no longer over the earth bears sway but truth triumphant sheds its mellow light and all below is clear and pure and bright. See Christianity, the gift of grace receives in form the homage of a race. Europa fair, her princely tribute brings a grateful offering to the king of kings. Asia rejects the shasters and the sword throws by the Quran and receives the word.

Low Africa breaks her chains of crime and blood and lowly bending lifts her hands to God. No more she wages war for white man’s gold. No more she mourns her children bought and sold. See to America with pipe of peace. Peace comes now to sue for love and heavenly grace. The tomahawk and bow and cruel knife to exchange for records of eternal life. It has come, it has come, the long expected day. Lo, God has triumphed.

Truth divine bear sway. Loud allelujahs heavenly angels sing for earth renewed with joy receives her king.

Present tense in 1846 is what he was writing. Lest you think this man was somehow just uninformed about world events, I will read another quote from Dominier’s preface to the Reformation that I read from last week and we all respect greatly. We may not know who Mr. John Barber was who wrote this poem but we know who Dominier is most of us a great Christian man very important.

His Reformation is undoubtedly one of the finest examples of a providential view of history. A good Christian man certainly to be accorded credibility in what he writes. And Dominier writing not much earlier than this period of time another 50 years before that or so wrote that quote that religion speaking of Christianity which has now taken possession of the gates of all nations which at this hour reigns or hovers over all the tribes of the earth from east to west and which even a skeptical philosophy is compelled to acknowledge as the spiritual and social law of this world.

Dominier wrote that okay several couple of centuries ago about the state of the earth. The point I’m trying to make here is that we can think through the unity with the church on earth today and there is a reality to that but it was a little more manifest perhaps a couple hundred years ago when people acknowledged the gospel had gone out but if you get this book and go through these nations you’ll find Christians in every nation of the earth and that’s because of the great missionary endeavors of the church we would have to say that in this regard the church today is probably in not so nice days as it was 200 years ago but that we will once again see the manifestation of this unity, this direction of the manifestation of the unity that is there in Jesus Christ is evidenced from the next point of our talk.

And that is that the communion with saints on earth has a growing manifestation. A growing manifestation. We read through verses 13-16 of Ephesians 4 to demonstrate this to you. He the first half of the book of Ephesians talks about the unity, the union, how God has brought Jew and Gentile together in one body, the body of Jesus Christ. And on the basis of that then in chapter 4 he goes into this, goes into the second half of the book talking about the unity of the church throughout the world.

Then the need to preserve that unity and how that unity will be manifested in a stronger and stronger sense over time. And so verses 13-16 talk about people growing in grace till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God unto a perfect man. See there is unity. It is a fact. We’re not to break that unity. We’re to help that unity and we’re to manifest that unity increasingly as we all grow in maturation in the faith.

Ephesians chapter 2, the end of chapter 2, before Paul gets into what some of the stuff we read, he’s talking about the fact that we are now one building and that building is being fitly framed together and it’s growing into a holy temple in the Lord in whom ye also are builded together in verse 22 of Ephesians 2 for inhabitation of God through the spirit. The imagery is the temple or the tabernacle.

And if we think of the tabernacle and the temple, you should realize there is a progression then in order of magnitude. The temple was doubled in terms of all its dimensions from the tabernacle. And things that were silver in the tabernacle become gold in the temple. And if you are silly, you will stop at the external manifestations of God’s glory, not realizing that God has gone on to give us a greater temple in Jesus Christ.

And we in Christ are being built in the true temple of God. The temple is a living organism. The temple is the church individually and also corporately the temple is that as we are in Jesus Christ. The point is that the scriptures talk about going from glory to glory. And that is true of the external buildings that God gave the people to remind them of the great heavenly realities that we think of in worship.

And it’s also true in terms of this unity. We are given a positional unity in Jesus Christ. There is one spirit who God sheds abroad over the whole world and into our hearts who guides and directs all of the church. And the spirit in that manifests that unity one to another increasingly over time. Now, I guess in a way it’s sort of like this great dissension over Christian reconstruction and the idea of the kingdom.

We’re trying to bring in the kingdom of God. People say, “No, Jesus’s work is the basis for the kingdom.” But the kingdom is manifested over time increasingly through the preaching of the gospel, conversion of men of nations as the church does its job. And so, the same thing is true of the unity we have in Jesus Christ. There is unity now. Jesus prayed for it. God gave it to the church. Ephesians says, “Preserve that unity.” And that unity becomes increasingly manifested as the church works and does the things that God commands us to do through the mouth of Paul here in this text.

Well, what are some of those things we’re supposed to do? There are duties associated with the present reality and the growing manifestation of the unity we have in the communion with saints on earth. First of all, we have a duty of having a correct attitude. When we read in Ephesians 4 again from our text, Paul says that as the prisoner of the Lord, he beseeches you that you walk worthy of vocation with you are called.

And remember, this is beginning the second half of the book. He’s talked to them about the great unity they have, Jew and Gentile being one in Jesus Christ. That’s the calling we have been given by God. And he says, I want you to walk worthy of the calling in verse two then with all lowliness, meekness, and longsuffering. There are attitudinal things spoken of here in terms of our humility before God and in terms of our understanding of our place in the kingdom of God and in this union that God has brought apart and to pass rather.

Now we normally think of these verses about our attitude being humble and servant-like and 1 Corinthians 13 useful and patient. We only think of those in terms of our local church and that’s a good thing because it applies there. But see Paul’s whole point here in Ephesians is the greatness of the temple of God that’s being built up throughout the whole face of the earth. So you don’t want to restrict it to that.

We should have a humility and a long-suffering spirit and a patient attitude toward believers outside of our local fellowship down the over at Bible Temple over at the First Orthodox Presbyterian Church over at the various churches around the Portland area that claim the name of Jesus Christ and profess Christianity and then throughout the world as well. We’re to have this attitude. Now, we know that some of these churches aren’t perfect like our church.

I got to thinking as I was thinking through some of these things, you know, if we had if we knew about a church down the block and probably some of us have at various points in time where they were actually allowing openly open adultery to continue in the church under the guise of cheap grace and we’re actually kind of making a big deal. Yeah, we’re we what’s wrong with that? Yeah, you can go ahead and keep having this adulterous affair with another man’s wife.

It’s okay. Would we think of that as a true church today? We’ve questioned whether churches are true. I’ve heard it come up in our discussion times whether churches are true churches or not because they don’t keep all the theonomic rules of Exodus 20-24. So if we think of a church that has that kind of open allowed cheap grace adultery going on, how are we going to treat that church? Well, hopefully we’ll have the mind of Christ like the Apostle Paul did because he knew of a church where it wasn’t just adultery where a man was sleeping with his own mother-in-law.

Is that what it was? Terrible, terrible sin openly allowed in the church and boasted of in the church. Did Paul say, “Corinthians, you’re no longer a church of Jesus Christ. We’re taking away the lampstand.” He did not. He wrote to them correctively. He assumed the unity of the spirit that he writes us of here in Ephesians 4. And our attitude should be the same way toward churches around us. Doesn’t mean you put up with sin.

It doesn’t mean you let people go on in that sin. We’ll talk about the balance there. But it certainly means that we better be very careful if people profess the name of Jesus Christ to treat them the way that Scriptures tell us to treat them until we presume, presumptively to think of them as part of the unity of the faith and our part of our communion that we have with saints on earth. Now, we’re going to talk a little bit later about the unity that’s manifested in this in the demonstration these things I’m talking about in terms of the attitude as the mark of the world rather of the genuineness of Christ’s mission on earth and we’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes but I think that the reason why the scriptures say that the unity is that important in terms of the church is that division schisms sectarianism breakups conflict is the natural thing to do is that wisdom from below that Richard talked about leads to division schisms breakups, et cetera.

I mean, it is the easiest thing in the world to fight with somebody and the hardest thing in the world to be at peace with one another, particularly peace in terms of the truth. And so, I want to point out here that while we’re talking about having an attitude toward our communion with the saints on earth that is long-suffering and patient, the only way to accomplish that is through regeneration and through the gift of the Holy Spirit bring these things to pass in our life.

Ephesians 3:16, Paul says that he prays to God that God would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might by his spirit in the inner man. That includes our attitudes toward things. Ephesians 4:22-23, Paul says, “Put off the former conversation. Be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” And so, if we’re going to have a proper understanding of our communion with saints on earth, we have to have a proper attitude toward our relationship to those that name the name of Jesus Christ.

And that can only come about if we rely upon the work of the Holy Spirit in our inner man changing us and changing our attitudes, the sinful ways in which we think, make and act. We cannot change our attitudes saved by the work of the Holy Spirit who has been shed abroad in our hearts to teach us his word. We should in this regard then pray about our attitude to other churches, read the Bible, and work hard at our attitude.

Now, I think one of the ways I thought in which you could perhaps teach your children about other members of the body of Christ that are not doing things correctly necessarily in the world around us is it’s sort of like you may have. They may have an aunt or an uncle that they have a particular time they don’t like particularly or there are things they do wrong or something. And you teach your children, I’m sure, in context of the family to be long-suffering toward those other relatives because they’re part of your family.

And the same thing is true in terms of some of these churches that are doing things wrong that aren’t necessarily driving up with the scriptures. We should teach our children that if they name the name of Jesus Christ and they come across somebody in the world who says, “Yes, I’m a Christian.” Presumptively, they’re supposed to give them the benefit of the doubt. They’re supposed to believe things about them.

They’re supposed to work with them and treat them as they’re members of their extended family. Very important here. Now, we’ll get to the balance to that, but the point is it’s a very important attitude to develop in the context of our family and our extended family in terms of the church as well. Now, one vehicle another example you can do with your children in terms of this, we have taken downstairs in the communion service to I’ve taken to instructing my young boys that when we take the piece of bread.

I said, “Now, look around the room here. See who else has pieces of bread before we eat it here. You’re that’s part of our extended family. That’s part of the household of God that we’re called to exercise Christian love and patience toward.” And what you can also tell them is that throughout the world, people are having bread today. The bread that they see as Jesus Christ, perhaps in some perverted way, but nonetheless, if we see people around the world who are taking communion in an orthodox fashion, our children should also recognize that those Christians also are presumptively within the household of God.

Now, attitudes are frequently based on information. And one of the ways that God in a secondary means works to change our attitude is to give us information about a particular subject or people. And again, I’m going to mention this book. It’s called Operation World. It’s written or put together by Patrick Johnstone. Operation World. You can probably get it at Christian Supply. I know Greg Harris sells this book.

It’s not that difficult to pick up. This last version was done in ’86 and reprinted in ’87 I believe and this has information on Christians all around the world and this will help your children to develop an attitude of communion with the saints on earth throughout the whole earth as they go through the information presented in this book for instance for today November 1st through 7th the country that’s singled out for prayer and information is the Soviet Union by God’s providence and there are in terms of the USSR there are six pages of information here.

There’s statistical information in terms of population, in terms of religious affiliations, what percentage of the country is Protestant, which percent which percentage of the country are Muslims, et cetera. The Soviet Union, for instance, 52% of the population or maybe as high as 75%, some of these statistics are hard to get, they say, but they estimate 52% of the population are non-religious or atheists.

18% of the population of Russia or the USSR are Muslim. 33% are Christian and then they break that Christian down in terms of Protestant denominations, Orthodox denominations and Catholic denominations. 2.6% of the total population of USSR are Protestants. And then they even break it down below that in terms of Lutheran or reformed or whatever it is. Great deal of information both to religious affairs also political life of that country.

You’ll find out about the political situation that the churches have to operate in. And then they have listed series of prayer requests you can use in your prayers. The point is this is going to give you a lot of information about the communion with the saints on earth with whom we have communion in Christ around the whole face of the earth and that information should help to develop an attitude of catholicity in terms of your family.

Now attitude of course isn’t enough. God says that we should then have actions as well. Paul says that you’re to walk worthy in verse one of chapter 4 the vocation. You’re certain you’re supposed to have lowliness, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another in love, but that’s supposed to translate into actions in terms of you have toward other people and by way of application this morning to those around the world.

The attitude that we have spoken of toward those outside of our own church here in Portland and America and around the world should lead into actions toward them as well.

Now, Romans 14:19 says that let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace and things wherewith one may edify another. I’ll read that again. Let us therefore follow after things which make for peace and things wherewith one may edify another. And I think that’s a good way to summarize the things we’re supposed to do in terms of our actions toward the extended church of Jesus Christ.

He says here to make for peace and we are then also to edify one another. We’re to be at peace. We’re not to attack one another. We’re to help guard each other. And we’re also to help nourish each other and to edify each other outside of our own particular fellowship, the whole body of Christ around the world to whatever way we can. We’re to have that kind of perspective. Now, in terms of all this, we have a real obligation to work with the church of God to assist them in whatever way we possibly can.

Now, our work flows out of our attitude. And if we have done our work correctly and getting a correct attitude toward communion with saints on earth, then which should help us avoid some of the ways in which people that advocate Christian reconstruction are sometimes seen. Some are seen in a very sectarian sense. We have and I mentioned this on the radio when I was on KPDQ and in some of our Bible studies.

We have to critique a dispensationalist doctrine because it has affected the church at large. But why are we talking about dispensationalism in this church time after time and critiquing it? We’re doing it because the dispensationalist churches believe by and large that this is the word of God. They are willing to go to a common standard, the word of God, and to talk to see if that word of God applies in the way we’ve told them it applies.

You see, they believe in Jesus Christ. We have an we should have an attitude then that they’re within the family of God. And we want to help them whenever we can to develop that understanding of the word of God and to help them flesh it out and to see the implications of the gospel and all that they do. And this is actually going on today. We are to help guard the church even though we may not be in doctrinal agreement with all parts of it in a couple of different ways that I can think of first from oppression.

It’s interesting to me one of the things that was really helped me to see my the attitude of service toward people outside of our own fellowship was our work in 1985 with the homeschool bill. And some of you have already heard about this but it won’t hurt to remind us of it again. I was when we originally got into that we were essentially selfish in our motivation that we were things that we wanted to protect ourselves from in this church.

But then we went down to some of the hearings for the bill. There were women who would drive across the state from eastern Oregon, from southern Oregon, just to sit in the back of the hearing room when the bill was being heard and pray that God would grant success to this measure and relieve the oppression from his people that the state was bringing to bear on homeschoolers. And that really something clicked in me.

Then God used that in his providence to help me realize what we were involved with is not just helping ourselves ultimately we were involved with is trying to help stem the oppression of God’s people throughout this state. And we should develop that kind of an attitude toward our brothers and sisters. We don’t just want to protect ourselves. We want to help protect the church of Jesus Christ and in whatever way we can to reach out to those people in whatever way we can to help guard them from oppression.

Additionally, we should help guard the church from starvation. There are some very practical things that by way of application that Paul makes throughout the epistles. Paul many times talked about the need for collection for the saints in Jerusalem where there is a particular starvation or hard times come upon that church there and he made collections from the saints in one part of the country to take to people that didn’t have enough food where they were at.

And so I think that in terms of us today, it is incomprehensible if we understand our need to reach out and minister to the church across the earth to take the great wealth that God has given to this land for instance and not see some responsibilities we have toward helping other believers, other members of the body of Jesus Christ in other parts of the world who may be actually starving and not having enough food to eat, et cetera.

This will probably become increasingly the case as God brings his judgment upon communism and collectivism throughout the eastern world. And as those people try to transition into some sort of free market economy, there’s going to be great periods of disjuncture and the church is going to need assistance from other parts of the world. And when Paul set us the example of Jerusalem and the other saints that he would call for collections to those people.

I think that should be in our minds as well. Now, in this sense, we always have a problem with information. They had the Apostle Paul telling them, “This church is worthy. They need help. Give it to them.” And if we had the Apostle Paul today, I suppose we would maybe listen up a little more. Information is a problem in our day and age. It’s hard to get accurate information, but increasingly, this is an information age, and increasingly, it’s quite easy to find fairly reliable sources of information about needs of the church throughout the world.

World magazine is a good one put out by Christians. The international and national religious development newsletter is another one that tells about things going on in the church throughout the globe. There’s many sources of information we can turn to today. And that information brings with it an accountability for us to move on the basis of what God brings us into awareness of.

I hope you know this doesn’t we know that there is guilt manipulation that can be used in this context. But remember that Paul didn’t spend Paul did spend a great deal of time reminding congregations who are more blessed in material possessions of their responsibilities before God in terms of the use of those possessions for the extended household of God throughout the earth. And I think it’s important that we understand that edification is another side of this.

We want to make peace. We want to help people avoid persecution and starvation across the earth. And we also want to be used in whatever way possible to help edify them. For instance, we put out this little publication, “What is Christian Reconstruction.” I got a call Friday night from a fellow who’s a student at Biola down at La Mirada, Biola, whatever it’s called university or college. It’s a essentially an evangelical school and would not agree with Christian reconstruction.

However, there is a student newspaper there, not the officially sanctioned one, but another one that is essentially consists of people who are questioning much in terms of Christian reconstruction and looking at it very favorably. And the call essentially was he wanted to know if we could reprint large portions of our booklet, “What is Christian Reconstruction,” in that student newspaper because they’re trying to get people exposed at Biola to this educational activity and to help them rethink the application of God’s law in terms of life.

And that’s part of the way in which the edification of the church apart from our own little fellowship can be done. And again, Denny Woods really prodded me enough to get that going and it was a way in which we could put into action some of this stuff in terms of our responsibilities toward the church throughout the world. It was interesting when we were down at Chalcedon a year and a half ago.

We were talking to Reverend Rushdoony about working with charismatics and Catholics and this sort of stuff and he made a very strong point that you know the point when you get involved with such groups don’t hit them at what they’re doing wrong. They come to us and they do frequently for help and assistance in particular areas, church state conflicts or whatever it is. And we should work with them and not just reject them out of the hand because they speak in tongues or because they have to attend a Roman Catholic church.

Now, you want to keep those things in mind and as much as possible, you want to edify them and build them up in the faith. If you’re working with a Roman Catholic person, for instance, one of the first things you want to begin to talk to them about is the implications of justification by faith, cardinal doctrine, which the official dogma of the Roman Catholic Church is incorrect. But the point is, you don’t beat on people at first.

You try to help meet their needs and show them the implications of the true gospel of Jesus Christ in that particular area. So, we have responsibilities in terms of actions. We also have responsibilities in terms of prayer. And this is probably the greatest area of responsibility that we need more emphasis on and we can do something very positive about even today in this particular worship service.

In Ephesians 3:14 and 15, Paul talks about his prayer for them. And he mentions the fact that God is of whom, let’s see, he says, “For this cause I bow my knees under the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. And Paul was very specific in many of his prayers for praying for people in other regions and getting churches in localized areas to pray for churches in other areas.

Jesus in his high priestly prayer of John 17, which we’ll get to in a couple of minutes, started with himself first and then he moved on to pray for his disciples and then he prayed for the disciples that would come as a result of their preaching and he ended up praying for the whole world. In that sense, our prayer should be modeled in the same way and our prayers and our family devotions and here at church shouldn’t stop at the four walls of Reformation Covenant Church.

It should go outward. I’m very pleased when prayer requests come through people in our church from Christians in other parts of the state or other parts of the country. Even a few of those have made it onto our prayer chain. I’m pleased with that because it’s an opportunity to talk to our children then about the implications of us being part of a much greater household of God than is seen just here in our four walls on Sunday worship.

It helps us give us that attitude promoting us to action to work with the extended communion of the saints on earth with who we have true communion with. Now this is particularly important I think in terms of our church. We have some very definite and defined doctrinal distinctives that we believe in. And we must then because of that take the time to nurture a sense of catholicity with the extended body of Jesus Christ to our children and for ourselves of course.

And prayer is a great place to begin in terms of churches in other parts of the world. Again, this Operation World booklet is an excellent tool in this regard. It is set up so that every day of the year you can be praying for a different nation. Sometimes there are four or five days spent in one particular country if it’s very large.

The point is you can go through this in a year and pray for the whole world every year as you go through this book. Additionally, in our instance in our geography classes in homeschooling, this would be an excellent tool to supplement geography and teach our children about a particular country by talking about the church in that country and what kind of problems the church faces and what sort of things we should be praying for and sometimes what sort of things we should be giving money to in terms of evangelism and also helping the church avoid starvation and oppression.

It’s interesting in this book for instance that if we’re praying our perspective becomes different again it becomes more heavenly I guess the author of this book says in the beginning the implications of prayer are enormous. He says do you realize prayer may have brought about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It sounds pretty radical, doesn’t it? He says that this was judgment on a nation that had resisted Christianity and killed those who responded to the gospel message and it was also redemptive.

He says because since the invasion, there’s been a great revival in Afghanistan. Point is, if you had been praying for Afghanistan 10 years ago and realized that Afghanistan persecuted Christians and killed people that responded to the faith and then you saw the invasion of Afghanistan by Russia, you would have had a far different perspective on it than if you just read about it in the newspapers and got the worldly perspective as it were on it.

And so it helps our perspective to be praying about the needs of the Christians and then to read our newspapers and see what God is doing in terms of the church in that particular country. It’s interesting in that regard that in the Seattle Bible study, we’re praying for a couple of individuals in terms of salvation. And with both the people we’ve prayed for so far, their lives have just gone right downhill, illness, financial problems, et cetera.

And again, it’s a link there showing that God may well be bringing judgment upon these people to break them and to bring them to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

Okay, its goals, our communities on earth, its goals are truth and love. In verse 13 of Ephesians 4, Paul says, “Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God and to a perfect man.” And then in verse 15, he describes what this is.

Speaking the truth in love.

And this is very important. I said before there’s a balance between love and truth. And balance isn’t really probably the correct word to use here. The probably the proper word is synergy. These are not and should not be focused upon as necessarily separate things, but rather as part of a synergistic element in terms of the development of the communion of saints. They work together.

In other words, synergy means two things that when you bring them together you have more than the sum of the parts. The whole represents more than the sum of the parts. So individually you have so much you put them together and you have even more and that’s what this is. This is a synergistic relationship between love and truth and these things are not to be balanced in that sense but be put together in terms of communion with the saints on earth.

When I was at the Placerville conference, one of the charismatic men there was talking to me about how we seem to be talking about doctrinal relationships, a doctrinal basis to fellowship instead of a relational base to fellowship. And I thought that was very interesting. I never thought of it that way. But apparently he seems to think, and this is a really an older, very wise man whom I respect very much.

He seems to think this is one of the great differences in many churches. There are churches that are relational in base and those that are doctrinal in base. And I guess that here at Reformation Covenant Church, we do stress the doctrinal base, but we say that if the doctrinal base doesn’t relate to a relational concept to the church then the doctrine has been wrong. These things should be worked together.

Our Lord prayed in the high priestly prayer that we would be sanctified in truth and then he said in that prayer that the word is that truth in which we are to be sanctified and brought into this unity.