Winona Conference Part 2 – You’re Made for Two Realms – What Is the True Church?

The subject is the spiritual community of the believer, and the reason is, I don’t want to use the word “church” because it conjures up something. Two things I wish to say to you now, and I’m going to use a text that is also found in—well, it’s Ephesians 5. It’s for this morning, and it’s also for tonight, so I’m going to read it for both. Ephesians 5:21, we’ll go through 29. Ephesians 5, 21-29.

And be subject one to another in the fear of Christ. Wives to your husbands as to the Lord. And this is a new passage beginning right here, and it is not on the subject of husbands and wives. It is on the subject of a great mystery.

For the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ also is head of the church. He Himself is the Savior of the body. But as the church is subject to Christ, so also the wives to their husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in her glory, or the church glorious. She has no spot or any other such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless. So, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his own wife loves himself, for no one has ever hated his own flesh (meaning that the wife is the flesh of the husband) but nourishes and cherishes his body, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of His body.

Now, in verse 31, you have this incredible quotation out of Genesis 2. Genesis 2 is a high, exalted chapter, full of great, eternal past events. And then he suddenly inserts this little verse that’s got nothing to do with anything. Have you ever noticed that? How could you talk about husbands leaving their wives when, at the time, there was only Adam and Eve? Can you follow me? Read Genesis 2, and that verse doesn’t fit in there, unless you understand the centrality of the meaning of this verse of Scripture.

For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great, but I’m not speaking about husbands and wives or Adam and Eve, but I am speaking with reference to Christ and the church.

What is she? What is she, this community of believers? She is not what first pops into our minds. I think I’d like to start by telling you all the things she’s not. I wonder how fast I can do this. Will you feel free to interrupt me, please? Alright, in order for me to do this, I’m going to do it really, really fast. You stop me. We have a concept of what the church is. I would like to liquidate it right now. I don’t know how to do that other than to inform you as to how she became what she is today. And when you see where she got all the things she does today, it may help you a little bit to be free from the concept of what we today call the Ecclesia.

But I’m going to raise a question as we look at how she got to be what she is. And this question to me is central. And that is: how in the name of sanity can we find the modern-day church in the New Testament? If we could understand how we are capable of doing that, brother, we would discover the root of most of our problems. And don’t ask me to explain it, because it is, to me, perhaps the most fascinating thing in my life. I don’t think even my wife knows how much time I spend, probably every day, wondering how we believers find present-day Christianity in the New Testament. This fascinates me more than anything else in the world. It fascinates me. It mesmerizes me.

I walk onto a seminary campus, and I see millions and millions and millions of dollars’ worth of buildings, and I think—they raised every bit of that with a Scripture verse. They did. And they found a seminary in the New Testament. They had to. Can you follow me? I’m talking about preachers like myself. You see that tabernacle right over there? They found it in the New Testament, or they couldn’t raise the money to build it. You’re looking at me like you don’t understand what I’m saying. Bible schools all over America—you can’t raise up a Bible school without proving it’s in the New Testament, because we have to be New Testament. Those Bible schools are to bring people back to the Word of God. Don’t you understand that? Do you see the paradox of that?

I would estimate there are 400,000 church buildings in America. You don’t get 400,000 church buildings in America without finding them in the New Testament. Will you give me that? How many people in this room have been to a funeral? Raise your hand. Christian funeral. Would you please find a Christian funeral in the New Testament? Never thought about it.

The things we never think about that we do. I’ve tried to illustrate it. There’s nobody in this room who knows where we got this collar. Boy, we never questioned it. We just put it on. Got a heel on your shoe. It’s throwing your whole spine out of whack. It’s why you’ve got a backache. It’s why everybody in America’s got a backache. It’s why everybody else in the world’s got a backache. Holding your spine up about that much higher than it’s supposed to. It’s kinking everything. Man, dutifully, we get up every morning and put on that shoe with a heel, and we never ask why. Are you following me? Why do I have a sleeve? Well, you don’t know. My land, my cow. Don’t be stupid. You have a sleeve because—because… no? No. The first three or four hundred years after Christ, most of Europe wore robes. And then the fashions of the Nordics went out over the fashions of the Latin. You and I are stuck with the most uncomfortable concept in clothing that man could ever invent.

Call that…(collar) Call that comfortable. Right now, 40 million men are going around. If they had just expressed themselves, it would be—with a tie, and that tie is totally useless. Is it not? Can you name one utilitarian value for a tie? Doesn’t have a foggiest idea why he has that tie. None whatsoever. Yes. That’s right. That’s right. It started as a napkin, and then it became a style. That’s right. It started as a napkin. People tied it around at dinner time, and then it became a style.