The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace to You.

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And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here is Grace to You Bible teacher John MacArthur.

As you know, it's a couple of weeks ago that we wrapped up a series on heaven on earth,

and I was talking about the

church being heaven on earth in that series. And in response to that series, I wanted to take

one particular Sunday, and that's this one, to talk about the implications of that. We identified the church as heaven on earth, and I want to

take it from understanding the theology of the church to understanding not just the orthodoxy,

but the orthopraxy what it is that we are to do and be in response to that.

So the title today is the faithful believer's relationship to the church.

And while in my mind that is not a confusing subject and not a difficult one to understand,

there appears to be some kind of a distinction,

some kind of a line drawn between being a quote unquote Christian, having a personal relationship

with Jesus Christ, and necessarily belonging to a church. You hear people say, well, I love Jesus. I don't like the church.

I was wounded by the church. I had a bad experience in the church. And I'm content to have my

relationship with Christ be very personal. That's pretty common. And also in the culture that we live where people want their privacy

and they want a certain degree of isolation, there is a real trend, even in the church growth

...