What is a Church?

Romans and Romans 16 and follow as I read from Romans 16 verse 1 down to Romans 16 verse 16. We want to think this morning about the nature of the church. What is the church? And it is in that light then we read the following text of Holy Scripture. I commend to you our sister Phoebe. a servant of the Church of Cancreia, that you may welcome her in the Lord in a way worthy of the saints and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a patron of many and of myself as well. Greet Prisca and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who risked their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but all the Church of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the Church in their house. Greet my beloved Eponidas, who was the first convert to Christ in Asia. Greet Mary, who has worked hard for you. Greet Andronicus and Junia, my kinsmen and my fellow prisoners. They are well known to the apostles and they were in Christ before me. Greet Ampiatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Arbonis, our fellow worker in Christ and my beloved Stachys. Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ. Greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. Greet my kinsmen, Herodian. Greet those in the Lord who belong to the family of Narcissus. Greet those workers in the Lord, Tryphena and Tryphosa. Greet the beloved Persis, who has worked hard in the Lord. Greet Rufus, chosen in the Lord, also his mother, who has been a mother to me as well. Greet Asyncretus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobus, Hermas, and the brothers who are with them. Greet Philologus, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympus and all the saints who are with them. greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you. One of the great questions that Christians have debated and even divided over down through the years is this question that is before us this morning. What is the church? If we were living back in the late Middle Ages, that would be an easy question to answer. The churches, those men and women, who are in communion with the Bishop of Rome, who we describe as the Pope. The Church is the Roman Catholic Church. In the 1500s, though, there were those who, on the basis of Holy Scripture, disputed that. And they argued differently. Men like Martin Luther and John Calvin, they argued, the Church is the place where, first of all, the Word of God is preached. They had problems with the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages because they felt that the Word of God was not being preached. The first thing about the church is a place where the Word of God is preached. Secondly, the church is a place where there is biblical discipline, where men and women seek to walk according to the law of Christ and where those who flagrantly live immoral lives are brought to a place of discipline. And then thirdly, the church is a place where the ordinances, as we call them, they call them sacraments, are administered. What we've seen, baptism, the entry in to the Christian life, as it were, displaying what has happened inwardly in this outward act. And then, as we'll participate in a few minutes, the Lord's Supper. The church is a place where the sacraments or the ordinances, as we call them, are administered. Our Baptist forebears in the 1600s, those who are in a lineage right back from where we are today, those who confess themselves to be Baptists, added one little wrinkle to that. That is, the church is the body of those who have confessed the Lord in the waters of baptism. Those who have put their faith in Christ and then declared that publicly, as we've seen today, as our sister went into the waters of baptism, confessing Christ, that the church is composed of baptized believers. Now, the text in front of us in Romans 16 answers the question, but it does it a bit differently. It's all too easy as we look at those answers and they're all, especially the answers of the Reformers and our Baptist forebears to the question, what is the church? They're good answers, they're biblical answers, but it's all too easy to lose sight of the fact that the church is men and women, people with names and with personal histories and with backgrounds like yourselves. When you go through Romans 16, you see that very clearly. It's one of those lists of names in scripture. I suspect you're all too easy. It's all too easy for you to just run over. After all, some of those names aren't the easiest to pronounce. Some of them are fairly known today. Julia, for example, we use that name. But some of those other names like Tryphena and Tryphosite are a bit of a mouthful. All too easy to look at these names. Well, this is just kind of filler. It's not that important. Let's either get to the good stuff before or some good stuff after. And it's all too easy to see this as one of those lists in the Holy Scripture of names. We have them in the Gospels, the genealogy of our Lord. We have them in the Old Testament, long lists of names. Before we even get into it, looking at how this text speaks to our subject of what is the church, please note these lists are very important. It reminds us that God is interested in individuals. He's interested in your life. That our lives are important, they do make a difference. There is significance to every life lived. And these names remind us that these were once very easy for us to go over those names, read them in a few minutes, a few seconds. But these were once human beings living and breathing the air of this world. And in fact, because they are in Christ, they are still alive. And if you are in Christ and you have that hope of glory, you will one day meet these people. But how does this text speak to our subject? What is the church? Let me say it addresses that with three ways. First of all, the church is a universal church or to use an old word which we've lost because the Roman Catholic Church uses it. The church is a Catholic church. It's a universal church. The word Catholic means universal. There is a church. that is spread throughout space and time to which every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if they are a true believer, must belong. And that is that universal church. And this speaks to us of that universal church, drawn from men and women of different ethnic backgrounds, different cultural contexts, on things that We should learn from reading Holy Scripture, and this passage will teach us, is that God loves diversity. And he has drawn men and women into the church from not just one people group, but from a variety of backgrounds. That's the first thing. Secondly, the church is universal because it cuts across social barriers. The world in which we live, to a greater or lesser degree, makes much of wealth. And those who are wealthy see themselves in some ways as better off than those who are poor. But in the Church of Christ, there is neither, to use Paul's words in Galatians 3.28, there's neither slave nor free. There's neither rich nor poor. Those things which the world makes much of should not be made much of, in a sense, in the church. And we'll see this again out of this passage. And then the church is composed of men and women. That's not a tough thing for us to confess. It was not it was not necessarily an easy thing in that world, as we will see, because this was a world in which men ruled and it was a male dominated world and men viewed women as inferior. But in Christ. There is neither male nor female. That's the first thing that this passage teaches us. Second thing this passage teaches us is that the church is a holy church. The church is composed of saints. I was raised Roman Catholic. I was raised to think of certain individuals being saints. Saint Michael or Saint Christopher or Saint George. But the truth of the matter is, all who are in Christ are saints. They've been joined in a living union in Christ. And by virtue of that union, they're holy. The church is a holy church. That's why there are a number of warnings in the scriptures, warning against dividing the church. The church is a holy church. And then thirdly, the mark of the church, and we'll see this again from this passage, is love. Of all the places in the world where you should experience love, it should be the church. The church should be a place where you can come and find solace and comfort, encouragement and love. First then, the church is a universal church. As you go down through those lists of names, We have various names in terms of their background. We have some names that are clearly Latin names. For instance, in verse eight, Greet Amphiatus, my beloved in the Lord. That is a Latin name. A Roman name, or verse nine, Greet Urbanus, that is a Roman name. These men may well be Romans. Some of the individuals here are Jews. We know this, for instance, from other passages of scripture, right at the beginning, verse 3, where we read Prissa and Aquila. Aquila, although it's a Roman name, was a Jew. In Acts 18, you might want to look at it later, Acts 18, verses 1 to 3, we find out that Aquila was a Jew from the area of Pontus, that is what is now northern Turkey. Paul describes Andronicus and Junia in verse 7. He says, greet Andronicus and Junia. This is a man and a woman, presumably a husband and wife. My kinsmen, in other words, my fellow Jews. Some of these people are Jews. Some are Romans. Most of the names are Greek. In other words, as Paul writes this letter to Rome, he's thinking of a body of believers there. Some of them are Jews. His own people in the flesh, to whom God gave the old covenant and all of the promises, who were to be a light to the nations. They failed in that. Some of them are Jews. Some of them are Greeks. The gospel, when it first went out into the Gentile world, among the first who were converted were some Greeks. In fact, in our Lord's ministry, there is a time in John 12 where we read of some Greeks who came to see Jesus. Greeks and Jews had ethnic barriers between them. There were things about the Jews that the Greeks didn't like and vice versa. But in Christ, these barriers are broken down. Some of them were Romans. And the Romans were the dominant imperial power in this whole area. They had conquered by military force the Greeks. If you ask a Jew, a typical Jew, who was not a Christian, what he thought of the Romans, what you would get would probably be a long string of hatred. The Romans, after all, had come into Judea and they had occupied it. And their hated legions would be seen marching up and down the roads of Judea with the Roman standards with their idolatrous symbols on them. And all the Jews saw the Romans as was a conquering power. But in Christ, these barriers are broken down. What did the church down through the centuries? It always remembered this. Some of the Puritans, and I have great admiration for the Puritans as a body of men and women, remarkable gospel-centered, Christ-centered men and women. But some of the Puritans, thank God not all of them, when they first came to this country and they encountered the first peoples or Native Americans, the question was asked, could God save Indians? And some of the Puritans, We gain, thank God, not all of them. Some of them answered that question. No, he can't. They are so sunk into idolatry and spiritual darkness, they can't be retrieved. We thank God for men like John Eliot, who spent his life working among the Massachusetts, translating the scriptures into that tongue to reach these people. Or David Brainerd, who gave his life, literally gave his life, In central Pennsylvania, going up and down the Siskihanah, preaching the gospel to Indian villages. In Christ, ethnic barriers, which are not unimportant, are ethnic roots. They're not unimportant. But in Christ, these things should not be barriers. And would that we, as gospel people, remember this always. that God draws men and women from all kinds of people groups, nations. My own background is in some ways a vivid reminder to me of this. My mother was Irish Roman Catholic. Grew up in England. English evangelicals generally look down their noses at Irish Roman Catholics. And I know all too well how the Irish were viewed in England. My father was Kurdish. Came from Iraq. Came to England in the late 1940s. And met my mother, married my mother. He grew up in a Muslim home. He converted to Catholicism. And I can remember my first given name, the name I use now, one of my given names is Michael, but my first given name was Azad, which means freedom. What my father felt when he came from Iraq to England. But I can remember as a little boy going to school, you do the roll call, the names and you get all these very English names and you hit my name. And I remember I remember a teacher saying, what kind of name is that? And the shame and embarrassment I felt. And I remember being in England, everybody there having either fair hair or if they had dark hair, they had blue eyes, but dark hair and brown eyes. either indicated you came from the Mediterranean or the Middle East. And I remember feeling how self-conscious that I had black hair and brown eyes. And I stood out. And sometimes little kids can be very cruel. How my difference was made a reality in the minds of these people and the things they would say to me and the names they would call me. But in Christ, that's the world. where ethnic barriers and ethnic origins are made much of. But in Christ, the most essential thing about us is that we are new creatures. We are Christians. We are joined to Christ. And we have a hope of glory. Secondly, this text speaks of the way in which the gospel cuts across social barriers. Some of the people in this text are slaves. Almost definitely, when Paul says in verse 11, Sorry, verse 10, greet those who belong to the family of Aristobulus. Those are probably slaves. Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus. Aristobulus, if it's the same individual, may well have been the grandson of the Herod the Great, the wicked king who tried to slay the Lord Jesus as an infant. He was a man who went to Rome, made his fortune there, became a friend of the emperor. And these are members, possibly, of his household. It may be a different Aristopoulos, but they're probably slaves. In the next text, verse 11, greet my kinsmen, erodean, greet those in the Lord who belong to the family or household of Narcissus. There was also a very well-known man called Narcissus. Narcissus was a wealthy billionaire, a friend of the Roman Emperor Claudius. He had to commit suicide. was forced to commit suicide during the reign of the Emperor Nero, who was emperor when Paul wrote Romans. These might be slaves of this man, Narcissus, who actually were taken over into the household of Nero. Charles Haddon Spurgeon, who once preached a sermon on this text, pictures the possibility here. Think of it. Christians who are slaves in the household of this wicked, wicked emperor, Nero. Light. in the midst of such darkness. Fifty percent of people in the empire were slaves. Some of these other names here, we don't know for certain, but they may well and probably were slaves. Others, though, are very wealthy. Look at right at the beginning there, verse 3, Greek, Pris and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, for whom not only I give thanks, but all the churches of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greek, the church in their house. To open up your home to the church, you have to have significant space. Most people in the Roman Empire lived in very poor quarters, massive 10, 12 story apartment buildings made completely out of wood, people living in one or two rooms. But the wealthy had larger homes. They could open up a large space. Usually it was the courtyard. And there's evidence that in the early church, churches were house churches. They didn't have buildings like this. And here you have a couple who opened up their home. And if we had the time to track their career, you can actually follow the story of Priscilla and Aquila. You meet them in Acts 18, where they come to Corinth. They open their home. Their home becomes a meeting place for the church. Here they've gone back to Rome in 2 Timothy 4, verse 19. They're in Ephesus. They moved around. It would appear that they had a leatherworking business. This is from Acts 18. And they had a significant degree of wealth. We live in a culture that makes much of money and wealth. In fact, we're identical to the ancient world. But in Christ, what does it matter about your economic background? If God has given you wealth, then you'd use it for the gospel. You'd use it to help those who are less fortunate. The gospel is not just for one social class. It cuts across different social classes. You could expand this. It cuts across different intellectual backgrounds. In Christ, there are those who have had university degrees and have gone all the way through to doctorates, and those who have got a grade 10 degree or lower. The things that this world prizes, makes much of, are all relativized in Christ. And then thirdly, The gospel is for men and women. That's easy for us to see. It wasn't so easy in the world in which this gospel first came. In the Jewish world, women were regarded as inferior to men. You didn't teach women. That's why the story of the Lord Jesus teaching Martha and Mary is so revolutionary. Jewish men wouldn't teach their daughters. You don't need to teach your daughter anything. All she needs to know is how to be a good wife. Doesn't need to be given any education. The Greeks had even a lower view of women. The Greeks did not believe that a woman, these Greek men did not believe a woman could be a friend on the same intellectual level as a man. But in Christ, Christ has taught us very differently. Christ has come to save men and women. And you'll notice as you go down through the list, there are 26 individuals listed here, 24 of them by name, two not named. There are nine women. Seven of the women are given names. There's obviously, verse 3, there's Priscilla. Paul actually always calls her Prissa. Luke calls her Priscilla. And it's the same woman, but Priscilla is like a pet name. And for instance, my name is Michael, and one of the ways of making it a pet name or a kind of a familiar name is you shorten it. You often get shortened to Mike. I actually don't like Mike. No offense to anybody here who goes by the name Mike. I don't like Mike, but I like Michael. My mother-in-law, when I first started going out when the woman became my wife, she would call me Mickey. Well, my mother-in-law can do that. Not going to accept that from anybody else. That's the way we do. We shorten the names, usually. So you've got Robert, Bob, or Robert, Bobby, or William, Billy, or Bill. In the Greek and Roman worlds, you normally lengthen the name, if it was the pet name. So Priscilla's real first name is Prisca, and then you lengthen it if you're new or better. And so that means, it's interesting, Paul always calls her Prisca, Luke always calls her Priscilla. Which means Luke probably knew her better. But there's Prisca. And then verse 6, there's Mary. And then verse 7, there's Junia. And that is a woman's name. It's Junia, not Junius. And then as you move down into verse 12, there's Trithena and Triphosa. Those Greek words, they're Greek names. They mean dainty and delicate. And some scholars say that maybe these were twins. You know, sometimes parents who have twins name them similar names. Possible. And then as you go down, there's Rufus, there's Persis in verse 12. There's Rufus's mother. And then verse 15, there's Julia and Nereus, the sister. There's nine women named. Seven of them given their names. And Paul, as he thinks of these women and their labors for Christ, he doesn't spell those labors out, but they have worked for Christ in certain capacities in the life of the church. And he thanks God for these women and sees mirrored in them Christ and Christian service. The gospel is not simply for men, but for men and women. And so the church is a universal church. Secondly, the church is a holy church. It is composed of saints. We are not what we should be, not yet what we will be, but we are not what we once were. We have been changed. All are in Christ have been changed. Why? Because the spirit of God has come into their lives. The spirit comes into the life of a believer. There are two types of people. If you want to divide humanity, there are two types of people in this world. Those who have the spirit of Christ and those who do not. Does the spirit indwell your heart? Are you in Christ? To be in Christ, to be in dwelt by the Spirit is to be a saint, is to be set apart as holy. You've been joined to the Lord Jesus. You are now in Christ. You're in a living union with Him. You are being changed. Thank God we are being changed. What our sister bore testimony about, about the way in which that which was wrong and nasty and bad in her life, was being shaken out and God was transforming her. It's true of every believer. We are not what we once were. With shame, we often recognize we're not what we would like to be. I've been a Christian now 33 years. It's hard to believe that when Mallory was being baptized, I was thinking about my own baptism, April 1974. It's hard to believe. Scary. I look back and it's been 33 years and sometimes I wonder what progress have I made? But thank God there are things that are changed. And I see those changes. It's not as normally, it's not always as fast as I would like. It's not as maybe when I was a young Christian thinking down, what would I be like 30 years from now? When I looked at older saints in the congregation, you know, they were well nigh perfect. Now I'm there and well, it's a bit of a different story. But God is changing us. That's the great hope of the gospel. He has come into our lives. We have been joined to the Lord Jesus and we shall be changed into his image. It will not be perfect until that great day when we are all in his presence. But we are being changed. And as you go through this passage, you'll notice how frequently he uses that phrase in Christ. Verse three, Greek person Aquila, my fellow workers, in Christ Jesus. Or greet Andrew Nikeson, Jr., my kinsman, my fellow prisoners. They were in Christ before me. Greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ. Greet Apelles, who is approved in Christ, and so on. The word in Christ is being used here two ways. First of all, it's used of entry. To work for the Lord Jesus, you must first be in Christ. Are you in Christ today? Does the Spirit of God dwell in your heart? I'm not asking you, can you think back to an exact day or time? For some people, conversion is significantly in the past that they may not be able to remember the time. My wife grew up in a Christian home. She can never remember exactly as a youngster when she put her faith in Christ. She has in her testimony, there's never been a time she didn't believe. But there were times when she obviously had to reconfirm that. And there was a time when she was a teenager, she went through the waters of baptism. The critical question is not can I necessarily pinpoint a day at a time, but are you in Christ now? Are you a Christian? Is the Lord Jesus and his glory and his church the most important thing to you in the world? Before I became a Christian and I was caught up in the late 60s, a lot of the student radical turmoil. And I was actually a committed Marxist for a period of time. I remember a discussion I had with friends. Very idealistic youth and idealistic friends and asking questions. Is there anything we would be prepared to die for? And I thank God that within probably three years of that discussion, I found something that is worth giving my all for. The Lord Jesus. He is worthy of all my life. of all that I am, all that I long to be, all my energy, all my substance. He is worthy of that. Are you in Christ? Are you a Christian? The Lord is not at this point calling you to lay down your life physically for Him. But is He the most precious thing ultimately in your life? That's what it means to be a Christian, is to love the Lord Jesus with an unquenchable love, a love that he gives us, a love that he nurtures, a love that he keeps. Are you outside of Christ? Is all of this a foreign language to you? In the providence of God, he has brought you here this morning and you need to reflect on that. Are you a Christian? If you are not, will you not this day give your life to Christ? There's a great saying that a man named Jim Elliott, who did lay down his life for Christ, said as a young man in his mid-twenties, he or she is no fool who gives up what he or she cannot keep to gain what he or she cannot lose. You are no fool if you give up what you cannot keep. All of this world and all of its riches Our passing. Yesterday, I had the privilege, your pastor took me up to Monticello to see the home of. Thomas Jefferson. Blows you away, I'm sure many of you being there, if you're not, you should go, it's just a there's a marvelous piece of architecture and you see the riches that he had in this world. It was one of those brilliant men of his generation. But he died without Christ. All this world treasures, when you pass on this scene, will be lost. But if you have Christ, to give up what you cannot keep, to gain what you cannot lose. You cannot lose Christ because once a man or a woman has given their life to Christ, Christ will keep them and keep them forever. It's His power, His keeping power, that we trust in. You are no fool. It's not foolish to give up what you cannot keep, to gain Him, the pearl of great price, whom you cannot lose. The church is a holy church. To serve the Lord Jesus, you must first be in Christ. And then finally, the church is to be a place of love. The great thing we preach and we teach is love. All of our gathering together, ultimately, is to nurture love in God's people, love for one another, love for God. 1 Timothy 1, verse 5, Paul can say, the end of our teaching is love. What a shame, so often the church is a place of strife and conflict. I'm not talking here about strife and conflict over the gospel. Sometimes that has to be the case where there has to be separation for the gospel's sake. I'm talking about separation and strife over much lesser things. Power struggles and personality conflicts and frankly, sin. We're not perfect people. We rub each other sometimes the wrong way. Our temperaments don't get along, but we always have to remind ourselves we are being shaped into people of love. That's why we're here, to love God, to express that love and to love one another. The church is a place of love. You'll notice as he goes through this how Paul frequently says, my beloved. For instance, in verse eight, greet Ampliatus, my beloved in the Lord. Verse 9, greet Urbanus, our fellow worker in Christ, and my beloved stockies. And then if you go down to verse 12, greet the beloved purses. As Paul thinks of these brethren in Christ, he thinks of the love that he has for them, for Jesus' sake. It's interesting, by the way, that he switches from a personal pronoun, my, to the definite article, the. The first two, Ampiatus, my beloved in the Lord, and Stachys, my beloved Stachys, they're men. Persis is a woman. It's very important to see these little things because if Paul had said, greet my beloved Persis, he'd be indicating there was more to their relationship than simply being sister and brother in Christ, that he had some sort of personal relationship that might lead to marriage. And that's why he switches from my beloved to the beloved. The love that is in the church here, Paul illustrates, he ends, notice how he ends, he says, greet one another with a holy kiss. We don't do that today. I'm told in Russia they do it. I've often spoken in Quebec and I can remember the first time going into a church in Quebec, a rural church, where they still do do this holy kiss. My wife was actually in front of me and met one of the deacons of the door. And then to my horror, I saw him kissing her on both cheeks. And I thought, what is going on here? Well, that's a cultural thing. We don't do that. We culturally, we shake one of his hands or embrace. The form is not as important as what lies behind it. At the beginning of the passage, actually, he gives us an illustration of love. Greet Pris and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, who rest their necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but all the church of the Gentiles give thanks as well. Greet also the church in their house. Let me begin by the church in their house. When you open your home for brothers and sisters to meet in, all kinds of things can happen. Things can get broken. Things get dirty. You can imagine this period of time, 40, 50 people crowding into that home. Some of them coming from degrees of poverty, but they weren't used to maybe some of the wealth that Pris and Aquila had. Vases might have got broken or dirt might have been trampled into the house. These were acts of love for them opening their home. Notice what these acts of love lead to. There was an occasion, Paul does not tell us when, when Pris and Aquila who are willing to give their lives, their physical lives, for Paul. They risked their necks for Paul. Paul never forgot it. But it begins, notice it, that's the big thing. 1 John 3.16 tells us, not John 3.16, which John 3.16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. 1 John 3.16, what is our love for God? What has to be demonstrated? that we love the brethren, that we are willing to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. But the actual physical possibility of physically giving your life for a brother or sister doesn't start there. It starts with the little things, the little acts of love. When I went to seminary in 1974, in the year that I came in, there were 12 other men It was a very different day in some respects. The seminary I went to was one in which most of the students were male. Well, in fact, all of them were male. And we're all right out of BAs, and we're all single, and we all lived in residence together, and we had three meals a day together, and we prayed together, and so on. And in that first year, there were 12 men or so, and 11 of them looking at them. Well, 10 of them, and I was one of the 12. It was quite clear they were evangelical, solid men. There was one man, I'll give his name, his name was Warren. And a number of us had questions about Warren. He just didn't seem to be as evangelical as we thought he should be. And to be honest, in our first year, we sometimes, behind his back, made a little fun of Warren. And we were very wrong to do so. I can remember in my second year, I've never forgotten this. Warren knew that I was interested in a early church writer called Athanasius, great theologian, defender of the faith in the fourth century. He was at a book sale and he saw a little book written by Athanasius called On the Incarnation. And it was in the original Greek and I was studying Greek at the time and Warren bought that book for me. I can still remember him coming to me and giving the book. I was just blown away. It only cost him a couple of dollars. I've never forgotten that act of love. I'll be honest, I had not been that kind of Warren. I had questioned the reality of his faith. I had questions about a bit of elements of his personality. But I have never forgotten the love he showed me. despite my lack of love to him." That's where it begins. Before we ever get to Priscilla and Aquila laying down their lives, the possibility of laying down their lives for Paul, it begins with these acts of love. May I encourage you, as Christians, together as part of Jefferson Park Baptist Church, that this be a place of love, known for your love for one another, that when Men and women who don't know Christ come into this church. One of the first things that will hit them after they've been here a while is these men and women love each other. And the question that was often asked in the early church, why? What is the church? Church is a church that is drawn from every strata of society, from every type of people group, every nation, so that on that great day there will be men and women As Revelation 7 tells us, of every nation, people, tribe and tongue around the throne, worshiping the Lamb. Drawn from every different social group, men and women, every different educational background. The church is a holy church because we've been joined with Christ. The Lord Jesus is here in the power of His Spirit. And this is to be a place of love. where the love of God for sinners is proclaimed, that Jesus died for sinners, and where we are growing, seeking to grow into that image. May God make it so, to His glory and to His honor. Amen.