Membership Has Its Privileges

Introduction

It’s a sad commentary that the best things on television right now are the commercials. Advertisers are pushing their products or their services. And we’re a captive audience. And those advertisers usually use one of two tacts in trying to get us to buy their service or their product. One way is by just simply saying we’re cheaper than our competition. You want to save money, you’ll shop with us.

But we’re worth it. Yes, you’ll pay more for our product or our services, but it’ll be worth it. One company that has done that is the American Express Card. You may know one of the distinct features of the American Express credit card is that it is one of, if not the most expensive, credit card to own. Hide that fact. But they’ve said this for years. Membership has its privileges. They basically are saying it’s worth it. Now, whether it’s true or not, their advertising is simply saying it costs to have this card. But the privileges that come along with owning this card are worth it. Membership has its privileges. I’m obviously not here to sign you up for a credit card this morning. There’s no free t shirts to be given.

And so we’re going to talk about membership in the something else, and you’ve probably already guessed that we’re talking about membership in our Lord’s church. Specifically, I want to talk this morning about local church membership. And many times when we talk about local church membership, we talk about the obligations or duties of what it means to be a member of a local church and the responsibilities that that places on you, and that’s a worthy use of our time. But this morning I’d like to talk about it from the privilege standpoint, the benefits and being a part of a local group such as this.

Let’s spend just a little bit of time this morning talking about membership in a local church, setting the premise that you should be a part of a local church. I think that is heavily seen when we go throughout the New Testament scriptures. That first of all, God did not intend us to be islands in a sea of worldliness. That God wanted us to be with others, as Peter would say, of a like precious faith. And when you study the book of Acts, that is the very beginning and the origins of this Christian experience, that we see people both added to the universal body of Christ, but then we see themselves joining together in their local communities and towns and cities and functioning and worshiping and working together.

So much so that in Acts chapter 9, the Apostle Paul tried to join himself to the disciples in Jerusalem. And in chapters 18 and 19, Apollos was sent to another location with a letter of recommendation that he be received by the brethren there. Local church membership is heavily implied in other passages of Scripture. In both 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and in James chapter 2, it talks about visitors in our assembly. The fact that there are visitors to an assembly strongly implies that there are others who are assembled who are not viewed as visitors. What do we call those non visitors?

In places such as, look with me in the book of 1 Peter, chapter 5, and in verse 2. He’s addressed his specific audience in 1 Peter 5, verse 1, when he refers to the elders in our New Testament, also known as the shepherds or overseers. To the elders, he gives this instruction. 1 Peter 5, verse 2, shepherd the flock which is among you, serving as overseers, not by compulsion, but willingly, not for dishonest gain, but eagerly. Shepherd the flock of God which is among you. No shepherd can be effective unless he knows the sheep. And knows what sheep are under his tutelage. The other side of that coin is that the sheep, the members are told to submit to those, the book of Hebrews, chapter 13.

Submit to those who have the rule over you, who watch for your souls. And so there is the strong implication in all of these passages that we’re to be a part of a local church. That we’re to, in some way, formally or less formally, identify ourselves with the group of God’s people in a particular location, so that we can know who one another are, so that the elders, the shepherds can know what sheep have been entrusted to their care. And so we’re talking about being a part of a local church.

1. The Concept of Fellowship

And there’s some wonderful privileges that go along with that membership. And let’s talk about that this morning. Membership has its privileges. The first privilege that we’ll look at this morning is simply the concept of fellowship. It’s a very common word in our New Testament, the idea of fellowship. Turn with me to Acts chapter 2. And let’s introduce ourselves again to this wonderful spiritual concept of fellowship. And as you’re turning to Acts chapter 2, I want to emphasize to you the New Testament principle of fellowship. In the religious world today, we use that word fellowship to refer to so many different things that there is the tendency of its true New Testament meaning to be watered down somewhat. Every time that the word fellowship is spoken of of Christians in the New Testament, it speaks of a spiritual exercise.

Fellowship at its heart is spiritual. Let’s look at that. Acts chapter 2, start in about verse 20.

Or excuse me. Acts chapter 2, about verse 40. It says, and in many other words, he, the apostle Peter, testified and exhorted them, saying, Be saved from this perverse generation. Then those who gladly received his word were baptized, and that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship in the breaking of bread and in prayers. Again, we emphasize that this New Testament word fellowship is a spiritual exercise. God is spirit, and he is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. And when we worship him and serve him on that spiritual level, we’re engaging in this joint participation, this joint spiritual participation. And what a blessing that is. To be able to come together and to join our spirits together in worshiping our Creator.

You know, God could have ordered it differently. He could have made the instructions to go like this that when you obey the gospel, when you do those things that you need to do in order to become a Christian, don’t tell anybody.

Don’t tell anybody what you’ve just done. You worship me only in private. But he didn’t make it that way because he didn’t make us that way.

He said, rather, you seek out others. That’s what we see throughout the book of Acts. Throughout the epistles to both individuals and churches, we see the admonition, the instruction, you seek out others who share your faith. And you have fellowship that sharing with that joint participation with them. Now, ultimately, our relationship to God is individual, even worship itself. But it’s to be done in a corporate setting. It’s to be done with others. And what a blessing that is. So much so that the Apostle Paul, we won’t turn over there, but in 1 Corinthians chapter 11, in talking about the Lord’s Supper, one of those group activities that he would say of them, because of their misuse and abuse of that fellowship, he said, some of you are sick, some of you are weak, and some of you are dead.

2. Social Contact

Spiritually. And so membership has its privileges, and one of the grand privileges is that we get to come together. And fellowship. We get to come together in spirit and in mind. Because that’s the way God made us, and that’s the way God made it. Now let’s take it another step further. That this fellowship, which is at its very heart, in essence, a spiritual exercise, but there’s more than that. That because of this, because we have identified one another, and we have this joint participation with one another, we also have social contact. God made us social beings. Now I understand there are exceptions to this. There are those people who don’t like anybody. And they have hermetized themselves and isolated themselves and don’t want to have anything to do with anybody else.

They are the exception, not the rule to God’s creation. Most of us crave and need other people. And not only do we crave and need other people, but it seems that it is almost innate within us that we are drawn to people with whom we share some similarities.

No booze from you gator fan. I did missionary work in the state of Missouri.

If I would see anybody with a t shirt or a ball cap that had anything about Alabama on it, I was drawn to them. I would walk up to them. And I would say, well, you know what I would say. And I would strike up a conversation. Are you from Alabama? Well, what part? Well, I’m from here. I grew up there, and I’ve lived here, here, and there. And we would just have a conversation because we had that in common, and that would draw us together. It was a little embarrassing after spending nine years in Missouri, we moved back to Alabama, and I would do that to people in Alabama. Walk up to them and say, Hey, are you from Alabama? So it took me a little while to learn.

It’s a little different now. And I do that now in Florida. If I see somebody with an Alabama shirt on or a cap on, I’ll walk right up to them. Because there’s we have something in common. And there is that social need within most of us to be drawn to those with whom we have something in common. Should it not be that way? In fact, is it not that way with our faith that we have in common? That we are put together in this community of faith, and we should be drawn together in this community of faith. Are you still in Acts chapter 2? He talked about the spiritual aspect of fellowship in verses 40, 41, and 42, when he says that they continued in the apostles’ doctrine in the breaking of bread.

I take that breaking of bread to be the spiritual exercise of the Lord’s Supper and in prayers, but then skip down. Verse 44. Now all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they sold their possessions and goods and divided them among all, as anyone had need. So continuing daily with one another in the temple and breaking bread from house to house, I take that to be the idea of sharing a common meal together. Breaking bread from house to house, they ate their food with gladness and simplicity of heart. Do you see what happened almost instantly with this community? They now have something in common. They have something that both isolates themselves from the rest of the world and draws them together with those who are in their world.

And so they got together. They knew that they always had somebody. Somebody in time of need.

But by my interaction with them, I’ll actually be drawn closer to you. And that’s a privilege. Look over in the book of 1 Corinthians, chapter 12. This social contact. By social contact, I’m not simply talking about going to a ball game together or a restaurant together, although those were wonderful things. But social in every aspect of the word. That we are there for one another. Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12, where I ask you to turn, are similar in the sense they talk about this body concept and what we can do for one another in this body as being parts of the body. And what is stated as a command in Romans chapter 12 is actually stated in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 as just a natural result of being a part of a body.

Look in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 26. Where he says about being a part of a body. 1 Corinthians 12, verse 26, if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. Or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. Again, in Romans 12, the command is given, rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. But here it’s stated as if it’s just a natural result of being a part of a body, which it is. If one member suffers, all the members suffer. That’s the way it is in the physical body. Pain is not isolated to one joint of the body, is it? The rest of the body enjoys that pain. And so it is in a spiritual body, the body of Christ.

3. Guided and Helped Along

When one member suffers, we all suffer as the result of that. But when one member rejoices, we all feel that. And I’m going to tell you on both ends of the spectrum, whether it be suffering or rejoicing, there’s a great blessing in having others join the chorus. Membership has its privileges. One privilege that the next two sometimes we don’t view as privileges, but they are absolutely that.

When asked, do you understand what you’re reading? Simply said, How can I? Unless somebody show me. None of us should be so arrogant. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been a Christian, how well you know the scriptures. We understand that we need somebody to help us. Look over in 1 Timothy chapter 4. We talked about that this a little bit this morning in the 9 o’clock hour and talking about the older people being teachers of good. That we learn from one another, that we’re guided and helped along in this journey. In 1 Timothy chapter 4, we see that. 1 Timothy chapter 4, verse 6. Paul tells Timothy, if you instruct the brethren in these things, you’ll be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished in the words of faith and of good doctrine, which you carefully follow.

Skip down to verse 11. These things command and teach. You know, when we read 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, these letters that were specifically written by one preacher of the gospel to another preacher of the gospel, specifically about their work as preachers of the gospel. When you read those three epistles, the preaching epistles, you come away with the understanding that the primary role of these men, these preachers of the gospel was to instruct the brethren, and to encourage those who had already obeyed. That’s not to say that an evangelist doesn’t have a role in teaching the lost. But the primary objective in 12 Timothy and in Titus is you instruct the brethren. And being a member of the local church, you have a teaching program.

4. Corrective Discipline

In both some formal sense, as we talked about this morning in the 9 o’clock hour, also in some informal sense, that there’s always some teaching, some guidance taking place. And we need that. I need that. And I’m so thankful that God told me to seek you out so that you could teach me something, so that you could guide me. And I need this as well, that when I get off of that guidance, that you would discipline me. I’ve separated guidance from discipline. Really, guidance is discipline. But most of the time we think of discipline the idea of a negative aspect of corrective discipline. And that’s again something that we don’t always look at as a privilege, as a benefit, but we should.

Thanks for all the spankings, Mom. Thanks for grounding me. But we recognize that later, don’t we? That that was a blessing. That was a privilege. Same way on a spiritual level, there is a spiritual blessing there. Go to James chapter 5. We recognize maturity causes us to recognize the blessing of even corrective discipline because we see the intrinsic value of it. And once we recognize that what we’re doing here is we’re not just playing church, that this is everything. That this is about modeling ourselves and one another to be fit citizens in the kingdom of God such that we could find our home with Him for eternity. And we want to do everything, striving together, striving to make that our goal. And anything that can help me in that is a blessing.

Such as James chapter 5, verses 19 and 20, the last two verses of this epistle says, brethren, if anyone among you wonders from the truth, and someone turns him back, let him know that he who turns a sinner from the air of his way will save a soul from death and cover a multitude of sin. In case you didn’t already know it.

Please, please bring me back.

5. Sincere Love of the Brethren

But when gentleness doesn’t work, you have my permission to get rough. If a soft word and an arm around my shoulder doesn’t work, then you use any means necessary. Sticks, rocks. You do whatever you can to save my soul from death. You see, membership has its privileges. I’m thankful that I’m a part of a group of people who are looking out for me. From the shepherds all the way down to every member who is watching out for my soul and is waiting for an opportunity to serve in a compassionate, giving way, but also in a stern, disciplining way. And lastly, membership has its privileges. And this can really all be summed up in one beautiful word. Love. In First Peter chapter one, we see enjoined upon us this love that we’re to have for one another.

Now let me make it clear that as a Christian, I have the obligation to love everyone. Jesus goes so far as to tell me to love my enemies. Those who hate me, who will say all manner of evil against me, who would even if it was in their power, would have me and those first century Christians have me persecuted, maybe even to the point of death. I’m told to love them. But when the New Testament talks about brotherly love, we understand the distinction, don’t we? That we understand that this is maybe not another definition of love, but certainly a deeper, a deeper manifestation of this love. Do you see that in 1 Peter 1 verse 22? Where he says, Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart.

Membership has its privileges because of that. Sincere love of the brethren, loving one another fervently with a pure heart. God didn’t just put us together and say, come together on Sunday and set by one another. He put us together for a purpose. That we might encourage and admonish and even correct one another. But that ultimately and finally we would love one another fervently. That because of that which we share in common, that we will love one another with a fervency. Because of that which binds us together. Because we’re a part of something. Are there obligations, are there duties, are there sacrifices that are going to be required in being a part of not just the body of Christ, but a local church? Yes. But it’s worth it.

Conclusion

Membership has its privileges. Are you a part of the body of Christ this morning? Let’s start there. That’s the most important thing is that you’re a part of Christ’s body. The day of Pentecost, we saw what those did in order to become a part of that body. They repented of their sins based upon their faith that they were willing to confess, and they were baptized into his body. Will you do that this morning? Maybe you’ve done that and you’ve never become a part of a local church. Or maybe you currently you’re not. You understand the privileges that you’re missing out on. You understand the obligations that you’re not fulfilling. And the privileges that you’re missing out on in not being a part of a body of local believers who will love one another, who will fellowship together, who will encourage and guide and admonish one another.

If we can help you in your spiritual journey this morning, if we can help you become a Christian or to come back to Him and become a part of this body, then why not let that be known right now as together we stand and as we sing.