The Healthy Church Part 1 The church that God builds By Julian Bull

I would like to thank you for your words of welcome and for this privilege and this opportunity.
And I know there'll be many people in Newtown who will be praying for us and that God would
make our respective churches healthy churches. Because this is a subject that's been given
to me for the three talks that I've been asked to do on this weekend, the healthy church.
So you'll find that you have an outline in your handouts. It's rather a sketchy outline
but the idea is that you fill in as you go along. I'd also like you to turn to your Bibles
in 1 Corinthians chapter 12. And we'll begin with this passage open before us.
In this first message, all I simply want to do is to introduce the whole concept, the
whole idea of a healthy church. And I want you to really stop and think whether this
is in fact a biblical concept or whether is it in fact that we are to live our life
for the Lord Jesus on this earth and put up with unhealthy churches. Are we to really
believe that the norm for the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is that she staggers from
one disease to another, from one invasion of something which is life threatening to
her to another crisis. Because I think some Christians are beginning to get this rather
cynical view of the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ. So in the first message, is this concept
biblical? The healthy church. And you'll see the outline there, there are three points
and a conclusion. And the first point is this, we want to try and define the concept. It's
all very well to speak about a healthy church. What do we mean when we speak about a healthy
church? What is the concept that we are grappling with? What kind of health have we got in view?
You see many people think in many different ways about the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And many people bring to their view of the church things which are rather worldly. And
sometimes we can be judging the Church of Jesus Christ, judging its health or lack of
health according to criteria which are not helpful and not biblical. So we want to consider
the kind of health that's in view. And very simply I would say this, the kind of health
that's in view is spiritual health. That's the kind of health that's in view. It's not
that we're here to discuss the financial health of a church. We're here to consider the spiritual
health of a church. But what do we mean when we say the spiritual health of a church? What
we mean when we say that is we mean those things which have to do with a living relationship
with God through Jesus Christ. Those things which determine that relationship, which influence
that relationship, which promote that relationship, those things in which that relationship consists.
The relationship between me and my brothers and sisters gather together in a church with
God through Jesus Christ and through the work of His Spirit. So we are talking about spiritual
health, spiritual health. We're talking about spiritually healthy churches. This is the
most important kind of health that a church can have. In fact, as you'll see as we go
through the New Testament, a church may appear to have other kinds of health and yet not
be spiritually healthy. She may indeed be endowed with all sorts of things, but yet
not be spiritually healthy. She may be doing many things, many Christian things, and yet
not be strictly speaking spiritually healthy. So this is the concept we're considering,
the spiritual health of a church. But how do I know if my church is healthy? This is
the question, isn't it? How do I know if I myself am spiritually healthy? How do I
know if I am part of a healthy church? If I say my church is a spiritually healthy church,
why do I say that? Why do I say that? What are the criteria? What are the things by which
I am assessing the spiritual health of a church? It's a very important question. And we want
to just think very briefly about some of the popular criteria and to look at these,
because these days, because of the situation we live in, because of the age we live in
and the culture we live in, there are many unbiblical criteria that are hanging on in
a part and parcel of the way Christians think. These criteria they may bring even back from
their pre-conversion years. They may still be defining success personally in terms of
affluence, in terms of prestige, in terms of influence, in terms of appearance, you
see. And I as an individual may bring those things into my church and begin to apply criteria
to assess the spiritual health of a church, which are not helpful. So we need to think
about certain popular criteria. And we could have biblical examples for these things because
there were churches in the New Testament recorded for us. Corinth is a classic example,
which if you were assessing them according to some criteria would have looked to you
to be very healthy. For example, spiritual giftedness. Now, I don't think there ever
was such a church in terms of gifts, spiritual gifts, as the church at Corinth. And if we
were to come to that church and say, right, now our primary criteria for assessing the
health of this church is, has God deposited all the gifts in it? If he has, it must be
a healthy church. And we would look at Corinth and we would say, my, all the gifts, wonderful
gifts, marvelous gifts, they are all there. But you know, and I know, if we know anything
about the scriptures, that Corinth was not a spiritually healthy church. Why the Apostle
Paul is writing to it for that very reason. He's wanting to address that very situation.
He is wanting to point out to them that they're not spiritually healthy. They're not healthy
as they should be, even though they have the gifts. In fact, he argues, and that's part
of his argument in 1 Corinthians 12 and so on, that they are employing the gifts of God
in a wrong way. And that's contributing to the ill health that is part of that church
at this time. So spiritual giftedness, for example, is a criteria. Now, this is everywhere
today. This is everywhere today. Experience, new kinds of experience, a new kind of blessing,
the Toronto blessing. Now, is this going to guarantee this is going to make my church
healthy? You see, the Toronto blessing, the experience, the gift. Surely this is what
will bring the church off the plateau and get it on the upward march again. This is
what you need. Is that a correct criteria by which to judge the health of a church?
Of course it's not. Of course it's not. But there are others. You could think of the church
in Laodicea, in Revelation, in the letters to Revelation. And you remember that the inference
drawn from the way the Laodiceans saw themselves was that they understood that they were materially
very prosperous. And now would it be right then to say, well, this church is financially
healthy. This is a financially healthy church. Look at it. Look at the amount of money. The
Lord is blessing, and here is the proof of it. We must be a healthy church. While we're
financially strong, we are financially healthy. You remember what he says to the Laodiceans.
Christ says to them, because you say, I am rich and have become wealthy and have need
of nothing. And we're to understand that they're saying that in terms of material prosperity,
because Laodicea was a prosperous place. And yet the Lord says, you do not know that you
are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. Now you see what's happening there.
Here is the church bringing the wrong criteria to assess itself. And Laodicea is saying,
we are rich, we are wealthy, we have need of nothing. And the Lord Jesus, looking at
this church, he's using an altogether different set of criteria. And he says, in fact, the
opposite is the case. You're not at all healthy. So you understand my point. We must have the
correct criteria. We must be bringing to an assessment of our life together the correct
criteria, not allowing the world to creep into our thinking and not bringing the kind
of worldly assessment that a worldly corporation or a worldly organization may make of itself.
Not that happening in the Church of Jesus Christ. We could consider other criteria which
are popular, you know, strength numerically, size, organization, the age of a church, the
actual facilities that a church may have and so on. You can imagine you can fill in the
rest. There are any number of all sorts of criteria, which in and of themselves, if they
are used in this way, are really rather worldly. Now, this is not to say that certain of these
things may not be the fruit of a healthy church's ministry and service. And it's not to say
that we wouldn't be right in looking at these things and saying, yes, God has blessed us.
But when we begin to look at those things as being foolproof, as being the main criteria,
then we're in a dangerous situation. So we think about this and we'll fill in as we go
along and we'll begin to get a biblical picture of how we would assess this. But in this first
point of defining this concept, what about a definition? How would we define a healthy
church? This is not easy and I've struggled with this, trying to come up with a kind of
a definition that may be helpful. And we would all, I suppose, perhaps come up with
something different. But trying to put the definition into a sentence, I've come up with
this. A healthy church will at least be a church united in a well-balanced, practical
and total commitment to the living out of the whole counsel of God's word. Now, that's
very hard to manage. It's not very good grammar, probably, and it doesn't, it doesn't probably
sit so well with us, but it's all important. And we could go through and we could unpack
each one of those concepts. It must be a church. It must be a church. And not just,
not just jumping to conclusions and saying, well, this group of people is a church. It
must be a church. It must be composed of people who are redeemed and saved. And there must
be the marks of the church about it. There must be unity, a church united, united because
there's no hope of health if there is no unity within the church. So it must be united.
There must be balance. Well balanced, I've said. Well balanced because this is a crucial
area for the health of the church. The church being true to the holiness of God and a church
being true to the love of God, to use some popular analogies. The church being committed
to reformation, that is, putting the Word of God into practice in her life, and the
church being committed to outreach and to proclaiming the Gospel. So this balance is
very important. Practical, practical commitment I've mentioned in this definition. Living
out. Without this there is no health. Without this there is already disease. There must
be the living out of the teaching of the whole counsel of God's Word. So this is a
definition attempted. You can probably fill this in as we go on in the three talks and
you may be able to come up with a better definition, rather less cumbersome than that definition.
You do get the point though, and I would stress this point about balance. Very, very important
that we stress this point. We would say, for example, worship, warfare, witness. These
are all things that the church must be involved in. We would say the preservation and the
proclamation of the Gospel. We would say inward and outward. Inward and outward. The inner
life, the church of the life, the life of the church, I beg your pardon, as she is the
church, looking inward on ourselves. Are we functioning as we should? Are we implementing
the Word of God? But then outward, are we proclaiming the Gospel? So there should be
discipline, there should be catholicity, we should be exclusive and inclusive within the
biblical bounds of those concepts. Well here you are, this is a definition that is attempted.
And as I say, you can fill it in. But let me now move on to the second point, and that
is the concept defended. Because it's all very well to define a concept or to attempt
to define a concept. Yes, we're talking about a healthy church and we understand what we
mean by this, at least to some degree now. But is this based on the Bible? Is this in
fact a concept which is biblical? A healthy church? Well of course it is, you must have
seen that already by the fact that we've read from 1 Corinthians 12. You've seen there that
God chooses a particular metaphor or an analogy or an illustration for the church of the Lord
Jesus Christ. He says it's a body. And he spells out in 1 Corinthians 12 the intimate
connection, the organic union, one with another, one part of the body with another part of
the body. And he's introduced this analogy of the body, meaning a physical body. That's
the metaphor if you like, that's the illustration. He's saying the church in this way is like
a body, members knitted and joined one to the other. And then as you go through you
begin to find that this metaphor is built on in the Bible. And you begin to find that
there are bodies, they are legitimate bodies, they are churches. But as you look at them
as they're described in the pages of the New Testament, there are many things wrong with
them. And God is addressing the things that are wrong with them and through them the things
that are wrong with churches in every age. Of course Revelation chapters 2 and 3, a classic
example of this. Because here is God speaking to several churches, there's no doubt they
are churches, there's no doubt the Corinthians are a church because he's called them a church
in the very first verses. But things are not right. There is illness, there is disease,
there is sickness and God is addressing those things. And we could take it even further,
we could think of individual instances of the way this metaphor is employed. For example
the Lord Jesus in Luke 4 and verse 4 when he's being tempted in the wilderness, he says
now man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth
of God. And you begin to make a connection in your mind, food and the word of God. You
go to a passage such as Hebrews 5 and verse 12 and you'll be familiar with this passage.
Everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness for
he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses
trained to discern good and evil. And he has said previously, just previously in verse
12, he says by this time you ought to be teachers but you need again for someone to teach you
the elementary principles of the oracles of God. You have come to need milk and not solid
food. You remember 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 2, desire the sincere milk of the word, long
for the sincere milk of the word that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. So
this is a biblical concept, the body, the body feeding, the word of God being the food.
And gradually if you think it through you can see how the metaphor is filled out in
scriptures. And what scripture is saying at a very basic level is this, as I defend this
concept the scripture is saying that just like the human body there are certain things
which will promote the health of the body of Christ. There are certain things which
will minister to building up the body, to increasing its strength, to feeding it. And
to reduce it to its most simple and obvious it is this, the church has a diet. The church
is to be fed. The body of Christ is to feed. There is a diet. She is to feed herself. We
are all to feed ourselves. We are to have a personal Bible study and we are to study
the word of God. There is to be self-feeding in the church of God. But the whole of New
Testament is continually testifying to the fact that that is not sufficient. There must
be the proclamation and teaching, formal teaching and preaching of the word of God. So the body
has to be fed. The body has a diet. And as there is a connection in the physical realm
in this metaphor between the diet and the body, and what happens in the body and to
the body, so there is a connection in the spiritual realm as you fill out this metaphor.
It's quite legitimate to do this because God uses it this way. So there's a connection
between the diet, the intake of a church and her condition and her health. What is
she being fed upon? Is she being fed upon the whole counsel of God, all of the word
of God? And then going further with this idea, you can see already before I say it that we
understand in the physical realm that food is for a purpose. This is the whole reason.
Food really basically is to give us strength that we may do something. It is to give us
strength that we may live, that we may act, that we may function. You see? And we find
this is exactly the case as the New Testament spells it out to us. That a church that is
just simply concerned with taking in the food and is not concerned with putting the
food to work and using it for strength, then that church is on the road to disease. That
church is on the road to ill health. It may be able to keep up that pattern of living
for a while, but ultimately as it is true in the physical realm, so it is true in the
spiritual realm. The food is for a purpose to strengthen us and to produce energy and
we must use that energy. Now this is a very important point and I would just stress how
important this is because I think it's an area where we need to really focus. You see,
we say that we must practice what we preach. We must practice what we preach. And we say
if we don't do that, if all we do is we go and hear sermons as the Church of God, then
we are being disobedient. We're being disobedient. But let's think it through. Actually in what
sense are we being disobedient and how serious is it? It's very serious because we're actually
violating the purpose for which God gave us the Word. And the Word is given to us for
the building up of ourselves and one another. It is given to fortify us for living and worshipping
and witnessing. It is given to fortify us for proclaiming Christ in the world, living
out our witness. And this is why the Word of God is given to us. It's not just given
to us that we may sit and academically look at it and say, yes, that's a wonderful Word.
My, that's a beautiful Word and that's a wonderful God. And it's a very, very glorious
and marvelous system that God has given us in his revelation of himself. But it is actually
for me to fortify me to then go and live for the glory of God. And if I don't do that,
I am violating, I'm short circuiting, I'm violating the purpose given for God's Word.
And I think that there's a dynamic that goes on in church which is even more serious than
this. That if a new, a new Christian comes to a church, someone is converted and comes
to a church and they come to the church and they begin to get the impression that what
the church does is hear sermons. This is very important. He looks around himself and he
sees and he observes and he says, yes, I can see this is a very important thing to this
group of people. It is the hearing of sermons. But then as he spends time amongst that people
of God, it comes to his mind, he begins to realize that there isn't actually very much
being done with the hearing of the sermons. It's just that we will go and hear more sermons.
And as he looks at the life of the church, he can't see reformation personally or corporately.
He can't see individuals that are putting that Word into practice in their life. Perhaps
he can't see that the elders or elder are insisting that the Word be put into practice.
And what happens is that we actually, if we're not careful, end up teaching and training
people in hypocrisy. And that is the last thing that we want to do. If we really end
up in a situation where we are confirming to new converts that this is all a bit of
a game. It's not actually important that we do do anything with the food God gives us.
It's actually the taking in of the food that's the most important thing. This is a club.
This is a game, you see. You're not really expected to run out there and live and die
for the glory of God. You're expected to come and hear. Come and hear. Everyone will be
happy with you. Now this is not going to promote a healthy church. The Word of God is to be
used for the chief end of man. For enjoying and glorifying God. It's to be used in the
church of Jesus Christ. It's to be used for worship. It's to be used for witness. It's
to be used to build up the body of Christ, for edifying each other, for fellowship and
so on. It is to be put to work. To be put to work. And to give people the message that
we say we believe things are true, but we don't actually do them. The doing of them
isn't important. The saying that they're true is important. The hearing of them is important,
but the actual doing of them is not important. That is absolutely the wrong message. That
is confirming people in their unbelief. And that is not what we want to accomplish.
But then of course alternatively and conversely on this particular point, there is a situation
and there often is a situation where there are genuine children of God and Christians
and they're not fed. And they have nothing with which to practice. They're famished.
They're weakened. They have no fortification. They have no stamina. They have no strength.
They have nothing. They get nothing on Sundays. There's nothing there for them except perhaps
a bit of chaff. And there's no food. And it's all poultry. And consequently they are a great
loss when they have to stand in the world for the Lord Jesus Christ. You see it's the
same principle isn't it, but in reverse. It's the lack of food. It's the lack of food. How
the diet affects the health. The lack of food. It will minister to a lack of stamina and
a lack of strength. And it's just as serious. Or perhaps it's just that there's an abundance
of food but it's poor. It's almost non-existent. It's what we may say is spiritual junk food.
And that is just as serious. And there comes a time doesn't there sometimes when you personally
have to take steps to deal with this spiritual malnutrition. And perhaps you even have to
say well I've got to go somewhere. I've got to find somewhere where I'm going to be fed.
Where I'm going to be fed. Because my life, my sanity, my life and service as a Christian
depends upon this. And this is all involved you see. This is not pushing the metaphor
too far. This is underlying so much of what the New Testament is saying. There are certain
things that promote a healthy body. You take in the word of God. The idea is it's for a
purpose. It's to cause me to grow. To make me strong. To fortify me. To equip me to do.
To do for the glory of God. Now the doing as you'll see in the third talk doesn't have
to be defined in this activity centred idea that some people have. But there does have
to be the doing and the putting to work of the word of God. And we could say that certain
things as well as we defend this concept, certain things threaten health. Threaten good
health. And we've emphasised, as we have talked in this last point, we've emphasised things
which are rather, we would say, personal and internal, if you like. But we also realise
that there are things which will invade the body, which will attack the body. We can emphasise
the most basic things such as a diet and exercise and rest, crucial to good health. But then
we have to realise that there are things which will attack the body. There are things which
will come and wage war against the body. And if the body doesn't have a good immune system,
it will fall prey to these things. And if the church, if your church, does not have
a good immune system, she will fall prey to these things. There is false teaching. There
are all sorts of erroneous ideas. All kinds of false teachings that are floating around.
That if you were to take them in, would threaten the very life and the very testimony and witness
of your church. And so you could develop that in your own mind. The things that may invade
the body, the things that may come from outside, that may attack the Church of God. There are
many of these things in the New Testament we're told about. And there are the things
which we ourselves may introduce into the Church of God because we're out of thoughts
with God. We're not doing what we should be doing. We're disobedient and we actually begin
to introduce. How dare we do it? We actually introduce into the body of Christ things which
are a danger not just to myself, but are a danger to the people of God around me. So
there are things that threaten good health. There are things that promote good health.
It's true physically. It is true spiritually. It's true for the body. It's true for the
body of Christ. So I'm defending the concept. I say, yes, it's a biblical concept. From
start to finish, it's a biblical concept. And it underlies so much of what the New Testament
is saying. But let me now in the third place declare this concept. We've defined it or
attempted to define it and defended it. And now to declare it. And in declaring it, I
would make this point, that the scriptures are telling us all the time that spiritual
health is of paramount importance. It's emphasizing the relevance and the importance of spiritual
health and of spiritually healthy churches. Say, where's the text? Don't talk about text.
Talk about letters. Because to my mind, the New Testament is made up of letters which
are declaring the relevance and importance of spiritually healthy churches. It's not
just that this is tied to a text here and a text there and a text somewhere else. This
is the fundamental thesis of nearly every one of the teaching epistles in the New Testament.
You see? This concept is declared. It's important. It's relevant. And it's saying that this
is not just an option. We may look out upon the Christian situation in which we are. And
especially those of us who are over perhaps a reform persuasion and we're familiar with
other churches that are like-minded. And there seems to be something of a mentality. We look
out and we say, well, now, yes, it's all right for that church. That church can do that.
You know, but my church could never do that. We could never be like that. Yes, isn't it
wonderful that there is a church like that that's serious and doing this? My church could
never be like that. That is not what the New Testament is saying. It's not saying, look,
this is an option so that as you look out, the situation will be like this. There will
be a few really spiritually healthy churches and there'll be a lot which are not spiritually
healthy. And, you know, the dynamic of the thing is that the spiritually healthy can
carry the disease churches. It can be a kind of crutch to other churches to carry them
through. No, I think the New Testament is in fact saying that every church, this is
not an option. This is for every single fellowship of believers. This concept is not an option
for some churches. It's something which has to be taken to heart by every single church.
It is absolutely crucial. And it's absolutely crucial in many areas of life and service
and witness. And I've jotted down a few there under this point about the concept being declared.
It's fundamental that we have a spiritually healthy church. It's important. It's paramount
for the people of God, for the saved. Now let's, you know, let's think of it in terms
of just in terms of our everyday witness, of our everyday functioning. How good is it
if you've ever experienced it, for as a saved person to be in a church that is suffering
because it's diseased and it's ill and it's sick? It's very hard. It's a very, very difficult
situation for a Christian to be in. And it begins to sap the life out of you. It begins
to, even if you are one of the ones who is a very loyal and committed person in that
church. And yet it has an effect on you. It's absolutely crucial. Before we start talking
about our testimony to the world, even to carry on the most basic tasks that God has
given us as saved people to do, this is crucial. When disease invades the church, when the
church begins to be unhealthy, then basic tasks become very difficult. Let me clarify
something because I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm saying. We're not talking about perfect
health. We could say that perfect health is not an option. A perfect health, in terms
of perfection, it's not an option. It's not an option for you physically. Perfect health.
We may talk like that, but it's not an option for you physically because you're a fallen
human being. And it is not that we're suggesting that there is perfection in the church. We're
simply talking about good health, good health, good basic health, as opposed to being diseased
and as opposed to being ill, whether that is self-inflicted or whether it's the invasion
of other things. So it's important for the saved. It's most important for unsaved people
because we are trying to reach unsaved people with the message of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We realize that is a very important task the church has been given, our testimony to the
unsaved. We witness to them. We befriend them. We love them. We share the gospel with them.
We look forward, we hope, to the day when we will introduce them to the church. Or perhaps
introducing them to the church in terms of them still being unsaved and just asking them
to come and hear the word of God. Exposing them to the life and witness and testimony
of the church as she is gathered together. Not suggesting that they are a part of the
church yet, but exposing them to the life and testimony of the church. And what are
they going to see? What are they going to hear? What are they going to actually witness?
What are they going to witness when they come? And the health of the church is very,
very, very important. God forbid that the situation is that when I bring my non-Christian
friend into the orbit of the friendships of my Christian brothers and sisters, he sees
a great discrepancy. He sees a great discrepancy between what I've been saying are my values
and as he sees the people of God, as he sees the people of God functioning together. So
it's very important. It's not an option. This is fundamental to our witness. It's fundamental
to our service. It's fundamental to our witness. It's fundamental to our testimony to the glory
of the Lord Jesus, to the glorifying of our Saviour. We cannot glorify our Saviour as
we should without we are healthy, healthy bodies, healthy bodies, healthy churches.
You see, whether we like it or not, the situation is this. The glory and the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is my Saviour, is tied to the church which bears his name. And he has
made it so. Now I may, like some people, be so cynical and disillusioned with the situation
that I want to drive a wedge into that. I say, look, forget about the church because
if you go near the church, you're going to be disappointed. You just need Jesus. Well,
that is not the answer. Jesus, the church bears his name. His honour and his glory is
inextricably tied up with the church, with the visible church, with a group of people
who have professed his name and who gather as his church. So the glory of our Saviour,
healthy churches, the good of our souls, of course the good of our souls, healthy churches
and the good of my soul. Not just that my concept of the church is that what I do is
I go along on a Sunday and I hear the elders and the pastors preaching and this is where
I get all my challenge from. This is where I get all my conviction from. But hopefully
also this other level that I'm getting a challenge and I'm getting a conviction from the people
of God around me because the New Testament is bearing witness to that. And the church
being healthy and the people of God of which I'm a part being healthy, here I am and I'm
being targeted from two directions as I go on in my Christian life. I come on the Lord's
Day and the worship and I hear the preaching of the word or I come to a conference, I hear
the preaching of the word. I perhaps would like to sit back in my seat when it's all
over and say, oh that's great, I'm safe now. But no, some brother comes to me and he says,
what did you think about that point? Or what did you think about this point? Or share some
particular aspect of that message and I'm being targeted again from this level and from
this level. How crucial, how crucial to my life as a Christian. The proclamation of the
Gospel, well of course the proclamation of the Gospel, as we've said the unsaved, we
could put these two things under the same heading. And you know I'm sure the importance
of this, the proclamation of the Gospel from a healthy body. How inconsistent. If we say
we have a life giving message, if we say we have a health giving message, health in
the sense of restoring rebellious man's relationship with God through the blood of Jesus Christ,
real health, spiritual health. We say this is the message we proclaim but actually we're
a disease ridden body. No, it's a ridiculous concept. In my preparation for this series
of talks I looked out the three young ladies in our own church who are medical students
and I asked them to give me, to write me a definition of good health. I was hoping they
would come up with a sentence or two but I got about three or four A4 pages from each
of them. But there is one thing that stuck in my mind and one of these students had made
this observation at the end of this rather long statement. She said good health, and
she's simply talking about physical health, she says good health is a priceless blessing
from God for the achievement of man's chief end. Good health is a priceless blessing from
God for the achievement of man's chief end. Now apply that to spiritual health and you
really have it in a nutshell. Spiritual health, essential, essential, a blessing, priceless
blessing. Do I value the diet of my church? See, do I value the priceless blessing of
a healthy church, a healthy body? A priceless blessing for the achievement of man's chief
end. And you know what she's put her finger on? She's put her finger on a most important
factor and I think this runs absolutely against most of the common way we think about health.
You see the way the world thinks about health, even in physical terms, is that I need to
be healthy for my sake. You see, I need to be healthy. I don't want to die. I don't want
pain, I don't want discomfort, but when all is said and done I want it for myself. I want
it for my end. And what she's done with this little definition is she's put her finger
on the selfless aspect of it. And this is exactly why we would want it in the Church
of Jesus Christ. See, the whole concept of a healthy church is this selflessness. A healthy,
not for me, not just for my comfort, but healthy for the benefit of brothers and sisters, for
the benefit of the unsaved, for the glory of my Saviour. Not health which just terminates
upon me and my own comfort, but upon God. It's selfless, not selfish, not but selfless.
What a challenge this is to churches, isn't it? Why do we want a healthy body? Why do
we want a healthy church? Do we want a healthy church for selfless reasons or do we want
a healthy church for selfish reasons? And this brings me to my conclusion and my conclusion
is just making two points. The first point is very obvious and I would stress it again.
I would simply say that it is absolutely, without question, incumbent on every single
church to have this as their goal, that they be a healthy church. I say that because Ephesians
5 tells us this is Christ's goal for the church, that he will ultimately present her
to himself spotless, without blemish, without wrinkle, holy, blameless. This is his goal
for the church. It is incumbent on every church to have this goal. But let me say this, this
is the second point and this is where it gets relevant to each one of us because you may
sit back there and you think, this is what my elders have got to do, you know. This is
what my leaders have got to do. They've got to make sure this church is healthy. But I
would say this, that collective health is determined by individual health. Collective
health is determined by individual health and of course this is borne out by the metaphor
or the illustration used in 1 Corinthians 12 which is the organic unity of all of these
members together. And if something goes wrong with one member, then the other members feel
it. And we know that in practical terms, if I hit my nail with a hammer, I may feel so
nauseous in the few seconds following that when the pain registers. It's got nothing
to do with my finger. It's a different centre in my brain.
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