The you're going to do you do you do you do you do you do you do Is the local church essential or just a nice option for those who like fellowship and face-to-face instruction.

What is that the church offers that you can't accomplish

with just a Bible and a solid reading plan

or online church services for that matter.

We'll hear the answer today on Truth for Life as Alistairbegg teaches from Ephesians Chapter 4

verses 14 and 15.

We find ourselves at a fascinating point in history, in the history of our nation and in the development of Christianity.

We now live in a culture that has embraced essentially religion without God unless you want to call the

earth God which of course many do. We have structures of religious orthodoxy that are devoid of any convictions concerning

the Bible, the divinity of Jesus and so on.

And as a result of that, men and women have decided that if they are to have any kind of spiritual life at all,

then it can be of their own contriving and of their own making, a kind of special designer

religion that includes the bits and pieces that they like and leaves aside anything

that they find distasteful to them. And so a local

congregations such as our own is confronted with that kind of environment. We live in that world and we live also in the world of

the Bible. And so as we turn to the Bible we discover that the Bible speaks to that world

in which we live. It spoke into the world of First

Century Ephesus and it speaks into the world of 21st century Cleveland. I say all of that because Paul is greatly concerned for

this particular church. That's why he writes to it. He had warned them as he took

his leave from them that there would be for them real challenges ahead.

He said in fact you will discover that there will be people from actually inside your congregation who will arise and they will draw people away after them.

And he said, the thing that will stand you in good stead is if you remember that I did not sell myself to you he says but I

...