Is Your Church FAKE? The 3 Signs of a True Biblical Church
Brothers and sisters, I’m not here to play church with you today. I’m not here to make you feel comfortable. I’m here to tell you that most churches you see on the street corner with their lights, their music, and their slogans are not the church of Jesus Christ. They are monuments to man’s pride, not altars to God’s glory. You say that sounds harsh. No.
What’s harsh is lying to people while they march toward hell. What’s cruel is telling a man he’s saved when he’s never bowed his knee to Christ. The word of God is clear. Not every building with a cross on top belongs to the king. Jesus himself warned in Matthew 7:21. Not everyone who says to me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my father.
The true church of Jesus Christ is not defined by the size of its building. We the popularity of its pastor or the number of social media followers it can boast. It is not determined by the style of its music, the trendiness of its programs, or the emotional experience it can produce during a service.
The definition of the church comes from one place, the word of the living God. And if that makes someone uncomfortable, it should because this means your personal opinion, my opinion, or the culture’s opinion doesn’t matter when it comes to defining what the church is. The question isn’t what do you like in a church, but rather what does God require of his church? The very moment we begin to measure the church by human preferences instead of divine standards, we are already off the narrow path.
Acts 242 gives us one of the clearest pictures of what the true church looks like. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. This was not a loose gathering of spiritual consumers looking for entertainment or self help tips. They were a blood spiritfilled people committed to the truth handed down from Christ through his apostles. That truth was not up for negotiation.
