Why Do We Have Church? Series

Mathew 22 37-40 and Mathew 28 18-20

Why Do We Have Church?

I. Introduction

A. Attention Graber

1. When I was in 7th grade we had to do what I thought was the most ridiculous project in I had ever done

2. We had to put together a leaf notebook explain the different kinds of leaves from different trees and we had to put them in different classifications

3. This seemed to me to be busy work. I hate busy work. I want to know why I am doing something

4. I want to know the purpose behind what I am doing.

5. So I asked my Teacher flat out “What is the purpose of this”

6. He seemed quite disturbed that I would ask a question like that, his only answer was when your on a date with a girl you can sound smart and tell her what type of tree it is.

7. That was not good enough for me

B. Problems

1. I think we often have the same reaction to Church; we have a hard time understanding why we have church.

2. And because of that hard time we often loose interest

3. But why do we have church?

4. What is the purpose of the Church?

C. To find the purpose of the Church we need to ask ourselves four questions

1. Why Does the Church Exist?

2. What we are to be as a Church?

3. What are we to do as a Church?

4. How are We to do it?

D. These are very difficult question to answer

E. There are a lot scripture that have to do with the Church, a real quick study I did found there to be 43 different scriptures passages dealing with the Church.

F. So how can we understand what the purpose of the church is with that many different passages, we like thing that are easy to understand

G. Our Risen Savior, Jesus, did something real easy for us

H. He took explained the purpose of the Church in 2 Scripture Passages that we know well

1. The first one in the Great Commandment (Notice I did not say the 10 commandments) found in Mathew 22:37-40

2. The Great Commission Found in Mathew 28:18-20

I. From these two classic passages we find the five purpose of the Church

I. Purpose #1: Worship

A. Explanation

1. The first phrase in the Great Commandment is “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart”

2. How do we do that?

3. In what ways can we Love the Lord with all our Heart?

4. We have a word we like to use for this. Worship

5. I have played around trying to think of another word to use, but Worship is the only one that fits

6. Worship is simply our expression of Love for God

7. It is the way we communicate to God how much we love Him.

8. We as humans have a tendency to make things harder then they are

9. Worship is purely an expression of our love to God

10. When we add on to that definition when end up running into trouble

B. Explanation

1. What does this mean for our Church

2. We should not be worshiping out of duty

3. We worship out of love

4. We worship because we are expressing our love to God

C. Illustration

1. How do you show your spouse you love her? Gary Smalley wrote a great book called the Five Love languages. By the way you can order it from the Lighthouse. In this book he suggest that everyone people have a different way they like to receive love and show love.

2. Worship should never be confined to Sunday Morning when we are together singing.

3. Worship can be done by our selves or with a group of 100,000 people

4. Worship is more then just a song.

5. Most of us do not use the same way to express our love to our spouses we try different things

6. The same should be true with worship

7. Next week we are going to dive heavily into this subject of worship.

II. Purpose #2: Connect

A. Explanation

1. Read 28:19

2. Notice the word baptizing

3. Immediately you are thinking dunking is a purpose of the Church

4. Well sort of, we are suppose to baptize people

5. But why do we baptize people, to ask our favorite question, what is the purpose of Baptism?

6. We get baptize to be identified as a believer of Christ

7. Being identified as a believer of Christ automatically identifies you with the collective body of Christ

8. Baptism is not only a symbol of salvation, it is a symbol of connecting with other believers