(Wednesday Online) Part Two: Why the Local Church? – April 23, 2025

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Pastor Billy Nettles

The Question:

Why The Local Church?

• The local church is a biblical construct.

Acts 2:46 (NIV)

46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

It does not require a steeple or a cross, but it does require people who love Jesus. The church is dynamic/organic and not static, but constantly growing, adapting and reflecting the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.

• It is a place of corporate worship.

Matthew 18:20 (KJV)

20 For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.

1 Corinthians 14:26 (NIV)

26 What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up.

• Enables sound doctrine.

1 Timothy 6:3-5 (ESV)

3 If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness, 4 he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, 5 and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.

• God wants us to have a regular rhythm of worship.

Hebrews 10:25 (NIV)

25 Not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

• Sanctification happens best in community.

1 Corinthians 14:26-29 (NIV)

26 What then shall we say, brothers and sisters? When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up. 27 If anyone speaks in a tongue, two—or at the most three—should speak, one at a time, and someone must interpret. 28 If there is no interpreter, the speaker should keep quiet in the church and speak to himself and to God. 29 Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said.