Jesus never went to church

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Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. Matthew 16:17  #church #ChurchLeadership #faith #jesus #Messiah #salvation #SignsOfTheTimes  https://lightforthelastdays.co.uk/articles/jesus-and-judaism/jesus-never-went-to-church/

Transcript

00:00Now it's interesting, when you look at the Gospels, you find that the word church is actually only used twice.

00:07And as I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that Jesus never went to church.

00:11You ever thought about that?

00:13Maybe Jesus had the church which was in embryo in his disciples as they went around and met together

00:19because it says in the scriptures where two or three gathered together in my name, I'm there in the midst.

00:24And Jesus was there in the midst with his disciples.

00:26There was actually no formal church which existed at the time of Jesus.

00:31In fact, Jesus went to synagogue, as we'll see in a moment.

00:34And in Matthew's Gospel, there is one scripture where he does speak about the church.

00:38In Matthew chapter 16, verse 15, where he's been asked to be the Son of the living God.

00:45Jesus answered and said to him,

00:46Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven.

00:51And I say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

00:59And I will give you the keys of the kingdom, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

01:06So Peter says that, in answer to the question, who do you say to them?

01:10He says, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

01:13And Jesus commends him for that answer.

01:15He says that the Holy Spirit has revealed this to you.

01:19My Father in heaven has revealed this to you.

01:21He says, I'm going to build my church upon you, or upon this revelation?

01:28Which one is it?

01:29Is he going to build this church upon Peter the man, or upon what Peter has just confessed?

01:34If you go to the Roman Catholic Church, it's built upon Peter.

01:36He's the first Pope, and everything else flows from Peter.

01:39Which is not the point.

01:40In fact, in the Greek, the word is Petros.

01:44You are Peter Petros, which means a small pebble.

01:47And on this Petra, which is a great foundation stone, I will build my church.

01:54So Peter, the man, is the small pebble, but the foundation stone is Peter's confession of faith.

01:59That Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

02:02And that's what Jesus is going to build his church upon.

02:04That confession of faith in Jesus, the Messiah.

02:08And he says that the keys of the kingdom are given to you.

02:11Now, the keys of the kingdom, again, if you go to the Roman Catholic Church, you'll see Peter with the keys on this.

02:16And he's opening the door to heaven.

02:19And if you don't go through Peter's way, you won't get into heaven.

02:22Which is not the case at all.

02:23Not Peter the man, but again, they're the gospel of Jesus Christ.

02:28Now, the keys of the kingdom were committed to Peter.

02:30Peter, and in fact, Peter has the role of preaching the gospel, first to the Jews in Acts chapter 2, and then to the Gentiles in Acts chapter 10.

02:40So he does open the door to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.

02:43And he has a privileged position as the leading apostle.

02:46But the keys are not his to open the door to God through there.

02:50The Lord Jesus is able to open the door to heaven through faith in him.

02:55And he's the one who opens the keys to the kingdom.

02:58And he's also the one who gives the doctrine, which the apostles were going to bring into bear.

03:08Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

03:10Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

03:14That means that the doctrine of the church was going to be fixed in the time of the apostles.

03:18Whatever they bind on earth will be bound in heaven.

03:21Whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

03:23What you apostles of mine allow and fix as doctrine will be allowed.

03:27Lord, what you forbid will be forbidden.

03:30Now this relates to what I said the other week when I was talking about the apostles' doctrine.

03:35One of the things we have to bear in mind when we're talking about the building of the church

03:39is that the doctrine of the church was fixed by the time the last apostle had died.

03:45And the writings of the New Testament were completed at that time.

03:48And the doctrines of the church were to be completed by the time of the end of the writing of the New Testament.

03:56So we talked last time about some of the things which are fixed in the doctrines of the church.

04:01Some of which actually come out in this little hymn in 1 Timothy chapter 5.

04:06And by the apostles also we mean those who saw the Lord, who were witnesses of his life and his resurrection,

04:14and who fixed the apostles' doctrine in the first century church, which was not to be changed by any later churches.

04:21And you find what has happened, if you look at church history, is that people have added things and they've taken things away from them.

04:26Go to the end of the Bible, the New Testament, in the book of Revelation, chapter 22.

04:30There's a verse which says that not to add or to take anything away from the words that are written in this book.

04:37If you add or take away, then God is going to add his curses to you and he's going to take away his blessings from you.

04:44So we're not to add or take away anything from the apostles' doctrine.

04:48Look at church history, that's exactly what has happened.

04:51You have the Gnostic Gospels who added new Gospels which actually compromised the position of Jesus Christ.

04:55You have the Roman Catholics coming in with all kinds of new doctrines which were fixed much later,

05:00which started about the 5th century and after that, which changed some of the basic principles of the Gospel.

05:07You have the Muslims who came in and changed the whole book and gave us a completely new religion which was totally against true Christianity.

05:15And you had Protestantism which came in and reformed it, but then also went astray with liberal doctrines coming in,

05:21denying some of the truths of the Gospel and so on.

05:23And today you have lots of modern cults which have added or taken away from the Gospel truth.

05:28So we have to go back to the original, and the original document is here in the Bible, it's here in the New Testament,

05:35and what was fixed by the apostles is not going to be changed.

05:38That's one important thing we have to recognize when we're thinking about building the church.

05:42It's not going to be changed, it's not going to be added to or taken away from.

05:48If you go back to that little hymn in 1 Timothy, you see it contains doctrinal truths.

05:53It says that Jesus is God manifested in the flesh, otherwise He's both Son of God and Son of Man.

06:00It says that the Holy Spirit is going to bear witness to Him.

06:02So the work of the Holy Spirit is primarily, or basically to bear witness to Jesus

06:08and to bring the truth of the Gospel to those that believe in Him.

06:12It says that angels have seen Him.

06:14You see that in the New Testament.

06:16Angels were messengers from God.

06:17They ministered to Jesus during His time.

06:19Angels appeared at His birth, His temptation at Gethsemane, at the resurrection,

06:27bringing God's comfort and God's strength to the Lord Jesus.

06:31It also speaks about the Gospel being preached.

06:34Phillips also talked to us about the Gospel being preached to the ends of the earth,

06:38and that in itself is a sign of the truth of this message.

06:41In fact, the fact that here we are, thousands of miles away from when the event happened,

06:45and nearly 2,000 years after it happened, believing the same things as the early church believed.

06:51That's a testimony to the truth of what we have in Jesus Christ.

06:55So the Gospel is preached, salvation, message to Jews and Gentiles,

06:59and that Jesus is now received up into glory, glorified in heaven,

07:04from where He will return at the last day.

07:07Now, in this passage in 1 Timothy, he says,

07:12I write to you so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God.

07:18Conduct yourself would be like how you should behave in the church of God.

07:22So, question, how should we behave in the church of the living God?

07:27Obviously, if it's just a kind of organization, a kind of social club, if you like,

07:30I guess you can do your own thing up to a point, behave how you like,

07:35just behave within the rules of that club.

07:40But if it's indeed a place where you meet with the living God,

07:43and the people who belong to the living God,

07:46then there are certain principles which have to govern our conduct and our beliefs.

07:51And if you look in Paul's epistles, he outlines how we should behave.

07:55And indeed, that's actually why Paul was chosen,

07:59because Paul was a very gifted and learned person,

08:02able to write these things down, and to preserve them for posterity.

08:07Now, as I said earlier, when Jesus was on the earth,

08:09the church as such did not exist, but Jesus never went to church.

08:14And the Gospels themselves don't actually contain any teaching on how to run churches.

08:19They contain wonderful teaching from Jesus about how to live

08:23and how to behave in the kingdom of God.

08:26But they don't actually contain instructions on how to run a church,

08:29because Jesus was speaking to Jewish people at the time,

08:32before the church had come into being.

08:34So he's going to leave it until after his resurrection,

08:37to give these instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles,

08:40particularly to the Apostle Paul,

08:42but also to others who wrote the epistles in the New Testament,

08:45on how we should behave in the church of God.

08:49And we say Jesus actually functioned within a Jewish context.

08:53He didn't go to church.

08:55He did go to synagogue.

08:58He participated in Jewish festivals.

09:01He even affirmed Moses and the prophets.

09:04And we have some interesting examples of what happened when Jesus went to synagogue.

09:07One of them in Luke chapter 4, verse 16.

09:13Luke chapter 4, verse 16.

09:15So he came to Nazareth where he'd been brought up,

09:17and as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day and stood up to read.

09:22Note that little phrase, as his custom was.

09:24So Jesus regularly went to synagogue, apparently.

09:29Perhaps while his youth, when he was living in Nazareth, he attended the synagogue.

09:33He learned from the teachers there.

09:36And we read here that he stood up to read.

09:39And he was handed the book of the prophet Isaiah.

09:41And when he opened the book, he found the place where it was written,

09:43The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.

09:48He sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives,

09:52and recovery of sight to the blind.

09:54He said, At liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

09:58Then he closed the book and gave it to the attendant and sat down.

10:02And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him.

10:05And he began to say to them, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

10:08So all bore witness to him and marveled at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth.

10:14And they said, Is not this Joseph's son?

10:17A couple of interesting things you can deduce from that passage.

10:20One is that in a synagogue service, they would read from the scriptures.

10:24Like we do.

10:25So there were similarities.

10:27Also, it would be likely that the person who read from the scriptures would give some kind of explanation to it.

10:33Like we do.

10:35So obviously there were parallels and there were similarities.

10:37Now Jesus here gives an explanation to the passage he just read, which was quite out of the ordinary.

10:43He says, What I've just read to you is about me.

10:46I'm the one he's spoken of.

10:48I'm the Messiah.

10:49I'm the one who's come to bring you the message of good news.

10:52And I'm fulfilling this scripture, which is taken from Isaiah chapter 61.

10:57He's saying, It's all about me.

10:59And I'm the one.

11:01And he says, Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.

11:04That caused a bit of a stir because they asked the question, Isn't this Joseph's son?

11:10We know him.

11:10He's brought up in here.

11:11We know him.

11:12We know his family.

11:14He's claiming to be someone more than he is.

11:16But he is.

11:17He is the Messiah.

11:18And he's actually declaring here the truth.

11:20He's coming out, if you like, as the Messiah.

11:22The one of whom the prophets speak.

11:24So that little passage is interesting because it tells you that, although Jesus didn't go

11:29to church, he did go to synagogue.

11:32And there are certain similarities in what happened in a synagogue to what happened today

11:35in services like this.

11:37ãos?

11:38Thanks.

11:38Bye-bye.

11:39See you as soon as you guys have set questions.

11:40Bye-bye.

11:41Bye-bye.

11:42Bye-bye.

11:43Bye-bye.

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