Dr. Ron Sumners
January 13, 2002
The church is the Lord’s Church! It has staying power. Jesus said at Ceaserea-Phillippi, “Upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” (Matthew 16:18) So often, I’ve heard people talk about the church like it is on its last legs, and there was no hope for its survival. My dear friends, there will always be a church and one day Christ will return and claim it as His own. We would do well to stop worrying about the future of the church, because it is assured, and start paying attention to our own relationship to the church!
We may lose our connection to the church if we do not regularly re-evaluate our response to it. A negative emotional response to church because of something that has happened there or someone who goes there might sever us from the vine. If that happens, we will experience what every severed limb experiences, death! A response to church, which is continually nurtured by its roots in God’s Word and the Holy Spirit, will blossom and bear fruit.
The church, in our society, is a minority. In this community, on any given Sunday, there will be many more people outside the church than inside. God forgive us, a good percentage of those absentees are church members. As the church becomes more of a minority, the need for openness becomes more real. We often feel just the opposite, so we build walls to protect the church. We shut ourselves in and we shut others out. This stands in direct opposition to the Great Commission! Anything that turns in on itself has nothing in its future but the grave. And I have no desire to be a member of a tomb!
One way of settling the question of the business of the church is to ask, “Who is God? And who is Jesus?”
God is the God and Father of us all. Jesus is the Savior of the world. That means that the church is for others besides us. It is our job to carry Church to those others!
Our calling, as a church, is to be clearly and evidently Christ’s people.
It was a pretty loose company that followed Jesus. There was very little structure. There is no hint in the New Testament that any office was thought to be superior to another. Humility was the badge of the Christian.
Some who followed were on the fringes with no plans for a permanent attachment. They hoped for some small benefits. By contrast, the disciples were those who were reached by Jesus’ words, and who came to see that they were called to give and suffer, not to get and prosper.
The disciples were all those who received the Holy Spirit. The Bible explains that this meant that they had a different spirit within them because of their faith. This became the sign of the true Israel. This is the reason people who began following Jesus, were called Christians. They were people who lived like Jesus Christ.
Paul’s words to the church in Ephesus now come to life. He exhorted the Christians there to be Christ’s men and women, apart from the world. He said that life out of Christ is fruitless and frustrating. This is the way we all lived before we came to know Him as Lord!
Life out of Christ misses the mark. God has a plan for every person born. All good parents have dreams for their children, hopes for what they want them to be. Sin is missing the mark of what God has planned for us. It is to spoil His plan and shatter His dreams for us. Sin is to fall short of what we could be. The word about us is that very fine, good, respectable people fail to be what they could be for the Lord. That includes you and me!
Sin soaks and saturates life. Heavy rains often soak the California coastal regions resulting in mudslides, which do a tremendous amount of damage. Sin is like that, it soaks us until we can no longer stand our ground and we are in danger of spiritual destruction.
Sin, is to take the wrong road and thus miss your destination. Sin is failure, and all have failed.
A few years ago, there was an 18 year old student in New York who was suing his high school for $5,000,000 because he never learned to read and write. It seems that it never occurred to him that the failure to learn was his! Learning is up to the pupil. New kinds of failure suits are being tried every day. I’m sure that if it were possible there would be folks in hell wanting to sue the church because they are there.
The church is responsible for making it clear what sin is about and pointing people to Jesus Christ who saves us from our sin. It is the responsibility of every person to decide what to do with that truth. One of the most freeing moments in my life is when I realized that I am only responsible for the proclamation of the Gospel, not your response. That is entirely yours! No one can turn over to someone else the responsibility of his or her salvation.
William Barclay has said that sin has killing power. It kills innocence. There is no one here who doesn’t wish that his or her life were still as pure as those babies in the nursery. Lost innocence can never be recovered. Remember that young people, lost virtue and innocence can never be recovered.
Sin kills ideals. It is a type of suicide. One murder of your principles leads to another until all your values are gone. Like the prodigal son, we leave the Father’s house with innocence in our hands. Little by little, we squander it until we are in the pigsty.
Sin kills the will. A habit becomes as necessity and the necessity makes us its slave.
One man’s weakness may be physical; another man’s may be spiritual. Just because you escape the sins of the body does not mean you are safe. There are sins of the mind and of the heart that are equally as destructive as overt sin. To live without God and the saving grace of Jesus Christ is to inherit God’s wrath.
By contrast, life in Christ has a new direction. It is a new lifestyle that is different from the world. God created us for a life of good works. He made us a new people to live in peace with one another.
Any time you are headed in a new direction, you need a good map before you and you need to pay attention to the road signs. Paul’s letter to Titus gives us such a map. He describes Christian character in action. Taking each age group, he lays down a route for them to follow.
The older men are to be sober. He doesn’t mean just to abstain from alcohol. He means to keep your values straight; to realize that self-indulgence is expensive not only in money but also in wasted life. They are to be serious, that is, they are to live each day in the light of eternity. They are to be prudent, putting all things in their proper place, learning from their years of experience. Their faith ought to be strong. They should show tolerance and compassion.
The senior women ought to bring to the church serenity, sympathy and understanding. They should put away harmful gossip and be a source of genuine encouragement to the young.
Young women can make a good home for their husbands and children. They ought to be enablers for their families, giving moral support and spiritual motivation. Their consecration can turn drudgery into opportunity.
The young men must keep passions under control and guard against the evils that can shipwreck a life. They must learn self-mastery.
These may not sound romantic and glamorous but they are the stuff that forms the foundation of life!
Can you imagine the impact Meadow Brook Baptist Church could make on this community if its members took this advice seriously?
Our job is to show the world what a Christian can be. That is often hard. Many will have nothing to do with the church and do not make friends among Christians. There is only one way to reach them; that is to show them what a Christian is.
Once, Francis of Assisi said to one of his young friars, “Let’s go down to the village and preach to the people.” So, they went. They stopped to talk to this one and that one. They played with children and exchanged greetings with those they met. Then they turned to go home. “But when do we preach?” asked the novice. “Preach?” smiled Francis, “Every step we took, every word we spoke, every action we did, has been a sermon.”
We can’t expect special allowances because we are trying to live as Christians. Don’t ever make your faith an excuse for inefficiency or irresponsibility. For example, don’t be late for work because you spent too long praying. That would be a bad advertisement for your Christian faith.
Christians know that there are lines of authority necessary for an orderly society and they respect these. Christians endeavor to do more than his or her job requires. They are faithful to fulfill their tasks well. Such behavior commends Christ to others.
Our call is to leave the paths of sin, to understand that life out of Christ is hopeless, and to be clearly and evidently God’s people.
A track star was once asked his secret to winning. “It’s simple,” he stated. “I just take the lead at the start of the race and steadily improve my position.” When you choose to follow Christ, you have taken the lead. We should be steadily improving our position all of our lives.
We are called to be with Christ in ministry.
I saw a comic strip once in which a little boy asks another, “Will you help me paint my wagon?” His friend responds, “Don’t you know that God helps those who help themselves?” “Yes,” said the first little boy, “But you’re closer.”
This is the way God often works. He uses someone closer. You may be the means by which God will answer someone's prayers. You are the means by which God will bring in His Kingdom.
The Book of Acts was written to help us see that Christ is for others. The church exists to share the Gospel in every possible way. God’s love for the whole world compels us to share that love with the world.
We Christians are a minority in a secular world. Evangelism becomes more and more difficult. This means that our commitment level to the Kingdom of God has to grow stronger. We have to have more energy and enthusiasm.
There is another problem. We are a people; I speak mainly of Southern Baptist, who don’t know what we believe.
For the first disciples, it was their bond with Jesus that mattered the most. Once they came to love Him, they were eager to know more about Him and His Kingdom. I fear that our real problem is that we have churches filled with good people, who believe in Jesus, but do not know Jesus!
We have to fall in love with Jesus and then we will want to know more and more about Him and we will share Him with the world. It is our relationship with Jesus that matters the most. If you get the relationship right, then everything else falls into place.
Jacques Cousteau told the story of the strange behavior of a dolphin sighted near the coast of Corsica. He was not swimming but just watching the boat. They decided that the dolphin was sick so they netted it and examined it. The animal showed no signs of fear. There were no wounds. They injected a stimulant but it didn’t help. An hour later the dolphin was dead. The conclusion they reached was that the dolphin had been driven out of its group for some reason. It had become desperate; willing to attach itself to anything or anyone, even die in order to not be alone.
People need other people. God knew this so He set in the world the caring fellowship of the church.
Our call is to be clearly and evidently God’s people in this place and to reach others with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. Even with a shiny, new building, we are not the church if we do not do those things!
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