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Worship Service - March 17, 2001
Text: Revelation 2 and 3
INTRODUCTION: Well, I'm glad you're here today, being St. Patrick's Day and all. All of the celebration could certainly have kept you out of church - you could be in Chicago swimming in the Chicago River, dyed green for the occasion. Or you could be downtown in Detroit at the Old Shalalee Bar, swimming in beer dyed green for the occasion. Nonetheless, you're in church today, which is where you really ought to be, right? And it's a good thing, because I have a good message for you today, if I do say so myself.
The story begins with a 65-year-old Social Security recipient, whose restaurant was being put out of business by a new Interstate Highway that would be bypassing his town of Corbin, Kentucky. All he had to live on was his $105 per month Social Security check, and a chicken recipe he had perfected over 9 years in his restaurant, and had started trying to franchise in 1952.
Today, the empire which was born out of necessity, and whose beginnings were paid for by the $105 Social Security check, has nearly 11,000 stores in 82 countries around the world. They have 291,000 employees, and in the year 2001 had sales of $8.9 billion dollars!
One of the more memorable advertising slogans that Kentucky Fried Chicken has used during recent years is: "We Do Chicken Right." Now, I don't like chicken, so I don't particulary care how they do the chicken itself. But how they do the business of chicken - that's something important to consider. We can all learn something from an enterprise that started with just one man, one plan, and a big dream, amen?
Sound familiar at all? The story of how the church began starts with just one man, forsaken by everyone he had trained and loved, nearly beaten to death before he was crucified. He had nothing in the way of earthly goods to invest in the promise He had made to His disciples before He was taken away from them: "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it!" One man, one plan, and a big dream!
So what matters for us today, as a franchise, if you will, of that original church, is that we continue to learn how to "do church right." Chuck Swindoll wrote an article for a recent magazine article entitled, "Want to be an effective church?" I saw the article, and my answer was, "Yes, I'd like for Bible Baptist Church to be an effective church." For the past 3 or 4 years, it seems we have been struggling with being an effective church, and I think it's about time we learned how to "do church right."
I can't even remember how many times I've preached and taught from the second and third chapters of Revelation, about the messages that Jesus gave to the seven churches of Asia. I've told you that these were seven literal churches in cities spread across the continent, from what is now Turkey on south into what is now Jordan. I've told you that these churches were representative of churches all over the world who have some of these characteristics. And I've told you that these churches represent seven different stages of church history, each stage being several hundred years long, beginning with the early church of the apostles, and ending with the church that will be on the earth at the end of this age.
What I have failed to teach you in those previous messages, what I think we've lacked in our understanding of those messages to the seven churches, is something that I picked up from that article by Chuck Swindoll, and that is this: each one of those churches gives an example of a different practice, that if done habitually, will sustain our church's effectiveness.
There are seven principles given in these messages to the seven churches that will help us "do church right." Now, I think I'm not the only one that needs to be paying attention to these things, amen? Don't you think when Jesus had John write a message to these churches, addressed to the pastor, that the pastor went on to share the message with the members of his congregation? I think that's how it must have happened. So, I'm going to share with you the principles that I think God has shown me, and hopefully we can learn and practice these things together to be the effective church that God wants us to be in this community!
As we look at these seven messages, you'll see an easy flow, a sort of progression of ideas that has its basis in the message to Ephesus, and builds on that foundation, and on each successive "layer" until we reach the final challenge of maintaining our spiritual disciplines while also remaining culturally relevant in the community we preach to.
So, are you ready to get started? From the message to the church of Ephesus, we learn that we need to . . .
1. Keep our thinking straight.
Interestingly enough, this is the church where John the Beloved was the pastor until he was banished to the Isle of Patmos by the Roman emperor Domitian, where he received His revelation of Jesus Christ. Despite other problems that the church was facing, its leaders kept it orthodox.
I don't mean orthodox in the sense that we think of it today - dead, cold, lifeless. I mean that the local church, of all places, should be the one place where right and wrong are clearly distinguished, and where the lifestyle of its members matches their talk. In Revelation 2:2, John says, "I know you can't tolerate those who are evil!"
So I think perhaps it's about time we looked at ourselves, and asked ourselves whether we have allowed the line between right and wrong to be blurred, whether we're afraid to speak up and call sinful those things the Bible says are sinful, and whether our church has suffered at all as a result. I can only speak from my perspective, and I have no intention of naming anyone's name, whether we're talking about former members or present members. But here's the deal . . .
Have we as a church tolerated homosexuality by overlooking those who were practicing it, perhaps knowing but pretending not to know, or hoping that what we knew to be true somehow might not be true? The answer is yes. Has it hurt us? Again, the answer is yes.
Have we turned a blind eye to young people engaging in sexual relationships without there being any threat of serious reprimand from the church? Have we as a church tolerated heterosexual couples living as a couple without the benefit of being married, in clear violation of the Word of God, and allowed them to feel as comfortable as anyone else in the church? The answer is yes. Has it hurt us? Again, the answer is yes.
Have we as a church tolerated young people growing up and becoming disrespectful to adults, disobedient to their parents, charting their own course without the blessing of their fathers and mothers, hurting the repututation of their families and weakening the family-based structure of the local church? The answer is yes. Has it hurt us? Again, the answer is yes.
Have we as a church tolerated the so-called "diseases" of drug and alcohol abuse, and gone lightly on calling these addictions sins as the Bible says they are, because theses practices destroy the body, which is the temple of the Holy Spirit, which is no longer our own as believers, because we have been bought with the precious blood of Jesus Christ? The answer is yes, our thinking has been messed up in this area. Has it hurt us? Again, the answer is yes.
Have we as a church tolerated the supposedly harmless sin of gambling, excusing those who go gaming occassionaly by saying that it's a harmless form of entertainment, that as long as they don't bet more than they can afford to lose, it's no more a sin than spending money at the arcade at Chuck E. Cheese? The answer is yes. Has it hurt us? Again, the answer is yes.
Are you starting to get the idea here? Of all places in the community, the church needs to be the one place where there is a clear distinction, an unmistakable distinction between things that are right, and things that are wrong. And it's not a matter of discriminating against certain people, but the bottom line is that the church does need to be in the business of discriminating against the practices of evil. All an evildoer needs to do in order to have the full blessing and protection of membership in the church is to do as Christ said, and that is to deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow Him!
But the church cannot be effective in the community unless it has first adopted this posture, that sinful practices, and membership in the church, are biblically incompatible! We need to get our thinking straight, church! We need to start by taking a stand on issues of right versus wrong, and back it up with two things:
1. Irrefutable biblical evidence.
2. Irresistible love as shown by Jesus Christ!
We need to get our thinking straight to remember that Jesus hates sin, but loves sinners so much that He gave His life for them, amen? The lifestyle of the members of our church should match the talk that we talk on Sundays. And the preaching needs to be filled with biblical truth, and clearly applied to the culture in which we live. Then we move on to the church at Smyrna, where we learn that we need to . . .
2. Hold on to our dreams.
We need to hold on to the dreams we have about becoming a church without walls, incorporating our members in an active, daily Christian lifestyle, influencing our community as the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Many people would say, "Well, if the church takes such a hard line against sin, it'll never be popular in the community. You preach against things that way, and you'll never get new people to come."
Those are just the kinds of things that Satan wants you to think. I agree that straight thinking and straight preaching may not guarantee popularity, but we can't let the fear of being unpopular steal our joy, or our boldness, or our dreams of finding new ways to reach out to the lost in our community and win people to Christ.
The church at Smyrna went through trials because of their stand, and they felt like they were impoverished as a result of the mass exodus from the church. Yet Jesus said, "If you'll be faithful unto death, I'll give you a crown of life." Sounds like a dream worth holding on to, amen?
Next, John writes to the church at Pergamos, from whom we learn that the church needs to . . .
3. Be aware of its surroundings, and be relevant.
This church was located in an area that was fraught with demonic activity, and cultural permissiveness. In a time when people, including believers, were blending their thinking to include all kinds of religious ideas and worldly philosophies, the church at Pergamos was still preaching the truth.
We in our community, in fact churches in every community, are facing the same challenge as the church of Pergamos. People were being lulled into thinking that any religion is better than no religion at all, just like today when people think that Muslims, and Buddhists, and Hindus, and any of the thousands of other religious systems that at least on the surface teach some form of morality are just as viable as the religion the world calls Christianity. Well, in fact, those other religions are just as viable as what the world calls Christianity. But those religions are not viable when compared to the preaching of the cross, which the world calls "foolish," but those of us who are saved know to be "the power of God."
So we need to be culturally relevant. But that doesn't mean that our church adopts the culture of the community that surrounds us. It means that we grow to understand the culture, that we learn how to communicate to the lost within our reach in ways they will understand and respond to, without compromising the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ!
This leads us to the next lesson we learn, from the church of Thyatira, and that is that the church needs to . . .
4. Beware of moral compromise of any kind.
In Thyatira, it was a matter of allowing the practice of fornication and idol worship to survive along with the teachings of Christ. One became more of a priority than the other. People wanted to be able to come to church without being offended. They wanted to be able to view their relationship with the church and its ministries as just one more opportunity to feed the desires of the flesh.
The church can be tempted to allow erosion of its moral stand just so people will feel good, and comfortable, but is that what the Lord wants? Well, if you have any sense of spirituality about you at all, you know that as much as the Lord wants believers to fellowship with one another and encourage one another, that the priority of the church is to keep the lost in our community from going to hell, amen? We need to make sure that every one of the ministries of this church has its priorities right. Every ministry of this church needs to have a mission that is consistent with the mission and values of the church as a whole.
If you just want a place to socialize, I'll start making some calls and see if we can sell the building to some developer who can turn this place into a health spa, or a restaurant, or something like that. I'm sure we could even maintain part ownership, and make some money in the process, don't you think? But if you really understand the church's mission in this community, and if you really expect to be standing before the Lord one day to give account of how you spent your life as a Christian, you'd better be thinking about who you can get out and give the Gospel to instead of who's going to come along and pat you on the back and buy you a cup of coffee!
Well, that's pretty good preaching, isn't it? Oh, yeah! Well, what else can we learn? We move on to the church of Sardis, where we find that we need to . . .
5. Believe in the potential for revival.
Sardis had a name that they were alive, but Jesus said they were really dead. They were nothing more than a "morgue with a steeple." Like the story I told you before of the preacher who quit the ministry to become a mortician. When they asked him why, he said, "Because now when I straigthen them out, they stay straight!"
Jesus summoned the church of Sardis to put their past problems behind them, and to stir up the elements that remained within the church that could bring about a revival in their community. I believe we're probably in the same kind of situation as they were.
This church has a long history, and hundreds of souls have come to Christ over the past 49 years, but the last couple years have been pretty dry. We're putting forth an effort to make things look like they're alive, but you want to know the truth? It's all pretty much dead as far as I'm concerned. Now, that may shock you to hear me say that. Oh, yes, all the elements are still here that could make this an effective church, a soul-winning church. We've just allowed those things to grow dormant, and they're almost completely dead.
Well, it's about time for this church to come out of hibernation, don't you think? Like Paul said to the Romans, "It's high time we awake out of sleep!" Let's strengthen the things that remain! We still have the foundation for a fantastic music program, and we're beginning to have some rehearsals and we're going to bring it back to life. We still have the foundation for a tremendous children's ministry, and we're going to make every effort to breathe some life back into the Children's Church program along with our Adventure Bay program so we can reach more families for Christ.
These are the kinds of things I'm talking about, that while they may be sort of in a coma, on life support, I don't think they've reached the irreversible, "pull-the-plug" stage just yet!
Folks, I'm just getting started, because I haven't even gotten to the last two churches, the ones that present some of the greatest contrast between how God sees us and how we see ourselves, between the influence that the world has on us versus the influence we have on the world. But I'm going to keep going, and we're going to finish this today, so just hang on, okay?
We move next to the church of Philadelphia, from whom we learn that the church is supposed to . . .
6. Attempt bold innovation.
This is the only church that received no admonishment from the Lord whatsoever. Every other church was told, "I have something against you." Not the Philadelphia church. No, Jesus said to them, "I have set before you an open door, and no one can shut it." Jesus didn't say to this church, "Look, you're on probation. You've done some things wrong, and I don't trust you so much any more. I'm going to pull the reins in on you for a while, and keep a closer eye on you to see if you improve."
Instead, he said, "I'm giving your program a blank check! You guys have proven yourselves over and over again, and I have openend the door of possiblities before you, knowing that you are equipped to take full advantage of every opportunity."
I believe our church can look for opportunities to serve unreached groups in our community. I believe things like new technology can help us minister to those who wouldn't otherwise know we even exist. I believe that ministries like Reformer's Unanimous, a truly Christian alternative to Alcoholics Anonymous, can help us meet a genuine need in the lives of many individuals without compromising the message of the cross of Christ. I believe we can take advantage of financial partnerships with agencies that can help breathe new life into our daycare and school to help us reach more of those families with the love of Jesus Christ.
Those are just a few of the doors that I see are being opened to us these days, that will let us offer hope to more and more people. We just need to be bold, and innovative, and responsive, and active, and we'll see all that potential turn into spiritual produce, right?
Finally, we can even learn something from the message to the church of Laodicea. Whether you accept the idea that this church represents the mediocrity that is commonplace in churches in "the last days," or not, from this church we learn that we need to . . .
7. Accept the challenge to grow.
Laodicea is the church that was known for making the Lord sick, you know? He said, "Because you are lukewarm, I will spew you out of my mouth!" Their belief was that they were "good enough." And I think that church members in this day and age have come to the point where they just look for "good enough." Well, let me tell you how I see it.
I see our church fighting mediocrity because too many people think that their level of spirituality is already "good enough." We try to raise the standards for our congregation, and people stubbornly resist, obviously because they think the way things are is "good enough." We try to get people to go on visitation, and a significantly small portion of the congregation responds, and in my mind it's because you think that the attendance we already have, or the level of faithfulness among our current members, or the number of visitors we have (or don't have), or the number of lost people we see walking the aisles and stirring the waters in the baptistry are already "good enough."
We try to provide opportunities for people to improve in their spiritual disciplines. We finally quit announcing that we were going to have prayer time before church on Sunday morning and Sunday evening, because almost nobody came, those who did come didn't show up on time, and most of them didn't want to pray so much as they wanted to complain and belly-ache about something! For them, that was "good enough."
I don't know about other churches, and I have no responsibility for the oversight of other churches. I just know about ours, and I have to "call it as I see it" because God is going to hold me accountable in the end for all I did or didn't do as the leader of this congregation. I really want to improve my own spiritual discipline, and I've tried to start some programs that would help you do the same.
Are you pursuing your own spiritual disciplines? Or do you think that the way things are is just "good enough"? Instead of talking to God in prayer, do you want to just talk to one of your friends? Instead of reading your Bible, do you want to entertain yourself with music or television or games? Instead of going out to witness to the lost, do you want to just wait and see who comes, and let the lost just take their chances with hell?
I'm just telling you, folks, we need to raise the standard for our congregation, and we need to follow the programs that we have in place that will equip us to meet and surpass those standards! We need to forget the silly notion that there is anything about this church that is already "good enough." You heard me right - there is absolutely nothing about this church, any of its leaders, any of its ministries, or any of its members, that is already "good enough!" Amen, or, oh me?
CONCLUSION: I think it's time we decided to "do church right." The world of the 21st century is a very confused place. Everybody is wary of everybody else. People aren't sure who they can trust. People have really retreated into an "everyone for himself" kind of philosophy. People in the 21st century need a church in their community that is like that 1st century fortress that Jesus promised, when He said, "The gates of Hell will not prevail against it!" We can "do church right."bbWe can take our church's mission statement, our goals, our purpose, and we really kind be who we say we are, amen? Remember, I said I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe it, and I hope that's true for you as well.