Summary: Welcome, to the Crimson Cord Podcast... Where we discuss the ongoing process of confidently living our life, through the experience of spirituality, until the day we find ourselves living our spiritual hope forever! In this podcast we're going to look at the nexus of the Church. We're going to travel back in time and observe the moment of the inception of the church, and discover whether the church, today, is or isn't what Christ intended it to be... Welcome back to Crimson Cord... I'm happy that you've decided to listen to this Podcast, and I appreciate that you've taken this time to be a part of the Crimson Cord community... Our purpose here is to help each of us develop a full and satisfying spiritual walk with God, and grow closer in our personal relationship with Christ. With everything that we see going on around us today, it's more important than ever that we know who we are in Christ, and how God wants us to respond to the events happening in our world. Today, I want to discuss The Church. Here's some statistics to think about... there are 3.7 million churches in the world... 67,000 different denominations... 50,000 new churches every year... the growth is in South America, Africa, and Asia... Let's go back to the beginning, and find out what the church was intended to be... The Church is first mentioned by Christ in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 16, starting at verse 13, with this statement; "Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, He was asking His disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" A better translation is, "Whom do men say that I am? The Son of man?" We must always remember that there is no punctuation in the Greek. There are no periods, question marks, paragraphs, chapters. It's all continuous writing. The translator decides on the punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, and structure. Continuing in verse 14, "And they said, 'Some say John the Baptist; and others Elijah; but still others, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets." Those living in Israel at the time of Christ believed that a great prophet would appear prior to the coming of the Messiah. So Jesus asked them directly in verse 16, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." And Jesus responded, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter (or "you are a stone") and upon this rock (petra) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it." "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." When Jesus said he would build His church... he used the Greek word ekklesia... When Jewish people gathered they were called a "sunagoge" or synagogue, which means - a distinct assembly separate from others or separate from Gentiles. Using ekklesia Jesus distinguished His believers from the Jewish community. In the ancient world, an ekklesia was any gathering of people who were called to a meeting. It was a scheduled assembly, by invitation only. Trade Union, Town... The ekklesia, or church is any called meeting... Jesus uses it for believers... 1. The Foundation of the Church: What was the foundation of the Church? It was the fact that, as Peter confessed, "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God." The Plan or Blueprint for the church was already completed by God... Now it was time to lay the foundation... The foundation is the support for everything else that's going into the building. The foundation is primary, everything else is secondary. The foundation isn't that Peter is the first Pope... It isn't baptism... it isn't being born again... it isn't speaking in tongues... it isn't holiness... it isn't the inerrancy of the Bible... it isn't the cross...
