Why Do I Need A Church?
Heb 10:23-25
“I can worship God just fine on my own.” “I turn on the religious station every
Sunday and listen to the Minister.”
“You know, organized religion is all messed up, so I just do my own
thing.” These are just a few of the
comments made to me about not needing a church. Honestly, when you think about it, we don’t need a church to
worship God. Yet the church was an
integral part of New Testament Christianity.
I think it’s a very fair question to ask. Why do I need a church? Let’s see what the Bible has to say as an
answer to this question.
PRAYER
I. God
Saw Man Needed the Church
A.
Birth of a nation
1.
There are a couple of documents found in Washington D.C. that
you may have heard of; the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of
the United States of America.
2.
These documents hold great significance for us because they
are what we used to declare us as an independent nation.
3.
We didn’t just wake up on July 4, 1776 and say, “let’s have a
nation.” No, our forefathers saw a need
for us to become a nation free from Great Britain and their rule. They planned what needed to be accomplished
and why and then they set in motion what needed to be done to win our freedom
and build a nation with that newfound freedom.
B.
The Church Instituted
1.
The church has much the same beginning.
2.
When man sinned and we separated ourselves from God, He set in
motion a plan that would win our freedom from the grip of Satan and create a
spiritual kingdom.
a)
John 3:16 – For God so loved the world that he gave his one
and only Son. That whoever believes in
him should not perish but have eternal life.
b)
Col 1:13 says – For He delivered us from the domain of
darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son
3.
Peter gave us a declaration of Independence
a)
READ Matt 16:13-18
b)
By knowing who Jesus is in our lives gives us the power to
take the fight to Satan and win.
4.
Jesus took that declaration and built his church, his kingdom
on it.
II. The
Church Provides A Family
A.
The church is more than a building
1.
Show Slide 1 – This is not the church
2.
Slide 2 – this is not the church
3.
Look around you, look at the faces, and look at the
people. THIS is the church
4.
You see the church isn’t the building but the souls added to
the kingdom.
B.
God intended us to be a family
1.
We are referred to as the children of God.
2.
We are called the bride of Christ.
3.
We are referred to as brothers and sisters.
4.
These are all family names!
5.
You can’t be a family all by yourself.
C.
What family means
1.
By this time of the Christmas season, we’ve all probably seen
“A Christmas Carol.” As the ghosts take
Scrooge around he sees Bob Cratchet’s family and you sense in him the
realization of what he has missed in his life.
His nephew, his only living relative, keeps hoping that he will share
the family bond they have together. In
the end, Scrooge builds a bond with both families.
2.
A family implies a bond
3.
Next week, we will be going to my uncle’s house for a
Christmas Eve party. There will be a
group of people there, some of whom I only see once or twice a year, but even
then, it’s a warm feeling when we get together because we have a common bond of
being family.
4.
Whenever we travel across the nation, and worship with a
church, even though I don’t know a soul, there is a bond of family.
D.
God understood we need those bonds to help us grow and
mature.
1.
The larger church is like our extended family. We are related, but we don’t know each other
that well.
2.
The local church is like our immediate family.
a)
We should know how each other feels and thinks.
b)
We should know that we all want the best for each of us.
c)
We should know that we sometimes fight and bicker, but need to
make things right in the end.
d)
A church should be a mirror of the ideal family.
e)
But because we aren’t ideal individuals, we don’t always act
as the ideal family.
3.
He planned for us to meet together and encourage, exhort,
teach and even rebuke when needed.
4.
He understood that we couldn’t last long as individuals
against the onslaught of the world.
5.
Even the greatest warrior will fall when attacked by too many
enemy warriors.
6.
Take advantage of God’s family.
a)
Find love here.
b)
Find strength here.
c)
Find acceptance here.
d)
Find your Father and his family here.
III. The Church
Provides Direction
A.
We need guidance
1.
Many people feel that they can figure out their direction in life
all by themselves. They don’t need
anyone else. Usually they find they
were wrong.
2.
When I lived in Alaska, my roommate and I went on a weeklong
hunt with his dad and another guy. One
day we beached out boat, traded out shotguns for rifles and started to do a
little moose hunting. We came across
this huge, I and mean huge pile of pine cones that squirrels had discarded and
thought that would be a good marking spot to remember where we had beached the
boat. Austin and I set out from there
and began our hunt. After about 20
minutes we ran across that stinking pile again. I don’t know how we turned in a circle, but we did. Well, we decided to move south of there
again and walked and hunted and wouldn’t you know it, we came across that pile
again. Or so we thought. Well picked a different direction and headed
that way and came up to a higher spot where Austin and I climbed a tree to
figure out just exactly where we were.
When we got high enough to see above the trees, we got scared. The river was nowhere to be seen. In Alaska, you can walk hundreds of miles
without coming across civilization.
It’s not a good place to get lost in.
Too many have died that way. The
only thing that saved us was hearing the Train whistle in the distance. Austin was an engineer on the on train and
knew what direction from the train tracks the river would be, so we began
walking in that direction until we eventually found the river much to our
relief. In all of this we ended up 2
miles upriver from our boat and discovered there were huge piles of these cones
throughout the forest there! I vowed I
would learn to carry and use a compos from that point on.
3.
People use hunting guides because they know how to get from
point A to point B as well as find game.
B.
Christians need that same type of guidance.
1.
We need the church help us find and stay on the right course
in our lives.
2.
Heb 3:12-14 READ
C.
We also need teaching and doctrine
1.
The end of Acts 2 shows the first church spending every day
together with the elders learning and understanding what God wanted them to
know.
2.
The gospels were all written to churches of people who needed
to learn different aspects of doctrine to go deeper in their faith.
D.
A church is much more than a social organization
1.
Is fellowship important?
Absolutely.
2.
Is it the only reason for coming together? Absolutely not.
3.
We have a responsibility to each other that can only be
fulfilled by being with each other.
4.
When we separate ourselves from the church we lose.
a)
We lose support.
b)
We lose doctrinal understanding.
c)
We lose spiritual growth.
E.
Vs 26-31 gives us the reason that God wanted to church to be,
and why we need to be a part of the church.
1.
Left to our own, we will drift away from God and his will.
2.
READ verses.
3.
Do you really want to run the risk of falling into the hands
of the living God?
4.
Would you much rather be wrapped in the arms of the Loving God
because you remained faithful to Him?