Selected Scriptures

June 23, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts at 14:50 in the audio file.

Or, Looking at an Assembly Living Godly in the Present Age

Series: The Marks of a Maturing Church – Redux (Part 3)

Life would be different if God had no goals. Life would be different if we had no goals as well, but God Himself has a perfect telos, an aim, a glory point. Unlike ours, God’s goals are not uncertain; He always accomplishes His intentions. So just as His ways are higher than our ways, so His sovereign goals are more sure than ours.

God clearly loves getting toward those goals via patient process rather than immediate accomplishment. It doesn’t take too much looking around to see that He enjoys the process of smaller becoming larger, of fewer becoming many, of weaker becoming stronger, of immature becoming mature. We are born babies who grow into adults. We are spiritually born as babies, too, and must grow into the fulness of the stature of Christ. God has goals for each of His kids: to be conformed to the image of His Son (Romans 8:29). God has goals for the Bride of Christ, all the family considered collectively: mature manhood and the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:13).

So it is not man’s idea for a church to be growing. It is not a standard of modernity that says we must be maturing. God reveals where He wants us to go and we can see some of the benchmarks along the way that help us to know if we are maturing.

You can tell if a church is maturing by looking at how they look at different things. So far in our series on the marks of a maturing church redux we’ve considered that a maturing church looks at her leaders with high expectations for ongoing and obvious progress. A maturing church looks at God in worship with humble expectations of blessing. A maturing church looks at Scripture with a submissive hunger. A maturing church looks at the responsibility of each individual member, especially when it comes to take responsibility for sin.

There are three more marks to mention today.

How a church looks at herself as a body is the fifth mark of maturing.

We spent a lot of time going through 1 Corinthians 12-14 a few months ago. It has been a theme that I’ve tried to emphasize since last September: you are the body of Christ. It is inescapable, not a whether or not question, but how so? Together we are a local body and each believer is a part, are we a maturing body or not?

Each part is different, but we each must do our part. No part can say to another part, “I don’t need you.” Likewise, no part can say to another part, “You don’t need me.” More specifically, one part ought not be envious of another part, as if the foot threw a fit because it’s not a hand (1 Corinthians 12:15); that’s just another face of pride. And no part ought to exalt itself over another part, as if the eye could hear or hold our coffee or walk for us.

We are connected, like it or not. You can pick your friends but you can’t pick your eternal family. It’s why we rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep (Romans 12:15), because in a spiritual sense we are joined together. “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

This is not just how God has arranged us, which is true. It is also how God arranged for our growth.

Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. (Ephesians 4:15-16).

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