All right, today we are talking about exploring healthy biblical community.

You better explain what we're talking about.

Because when I first saw this, I thought, what are we talking about?

Yeah. Well, the body of Christ, the church, is a community.

It's made up of individuals that are called to be accountable to one another,

called to love one another, called to pray for one another,

called to serve one another, called to proclaim the gospel together.

And we live in an era where this has seriously become just a lost virtue, if I could call it that.

Can I say something here?

Yeah.

The church is hidden from the world, it would seem.

You ask most secular people, what's the church?

They really don't know that it's the community of believers around the world. The foundation

of God stands sure having this seal, the Lord knows them that are his. And so the true believers are

those who are trusting in Jesus despite their so-called denomination. Right. For most people,

they hear the word church or think about church and they're immediately going to the building.

They're going to just, you know, I go to a church, you know, rather than seeing that the church is the community of God's people.

That it's not just a place, of course, you can use the word church to describe the place where the saints gather, but ultimately it is the people of God.

We are the church.

The genuine church is a fellowship of true believers, and there are some who are lonely because

they're disillusioned by the church, but if you go to a genuine church and you approach someone

and show an interest in them, the love of God will radiate from them to you and you'll become part of that fellowship. And you'll get no good friends, true friends. But what we don't realize is a lot of church has got false converts in them. It's what Charles Spurgeon said. Nobody can do as much damage to the church of God as the man who is within its walls, but not within its life.

...