Today, I want to talk about what we are eating. Let me rephrase that; what are we being fed? I want to talk this morning about the plight of the American church. The church is not to make ourselves feel good, but to help others find life. We need to understand Who it is that makes that offer, but before we can do that, we must really understand who makes that offer. That person is not your local pastor, but Jesus. I hesitate to say ‘Jesus Christ’ because some think that is His name. His name is Jesus. His title is Christ. But before we can properly talk about Him today, we need to understand just Who He is, and who he is not.
Jesus is not just a good man as many people would have you believe. He was not just a prophet as others would tell you He is. He was nothing short of being fully God and fully man at the same time He walked this earth. He is one-third of the blessed and holy Trinity. He is the Creator of this world; of everything in this world; and He is the Creator of you and me.
Have you ever wondered what His mother Mary thought about as she held Him after giving birth to Him? She probably counted His toes as all mothers do. I wonder if she realized that those were the same feet and toes that had walked on streets of gold for eternity; or the same feet that the multitudes of angels bowed at as they worshiped Him.
Did she realize that those lips she gently rubbed her finger across were the same lips that had spoken this world into existence with?
Did she realize that, as she kissed her newborn baby, she wasn’t just kissing her newborn baby, but she was kissing the actual face of God?
And as she stood there helplessly watching Him hang on that cross 33 short years later, did she realize that He was not being put to death, but He was willingly sacrificing His life so that we would have every opportunity to live with Him for eternity?
And that brings me to the subject today; the subject of the church. Why do we have church? We have church solely for the reason of praising Him as we are lifting each other up in His name while reaching out to others for Him.
We ask ourselves why the local churches are not having that much effect on people nowadays, and then we come up with a list of biblical answers about how Satan is trying to destroy the church. He is trying to destroy the church, and he has always been trying to do so. But the question is – HOW is he doing it?
I believe he is accomplishing his mission by getting us unfocused on what our real mission is! Let me give you a few examples of how he does it.
Look at what the churches are offering. You can browse through any newspaper that lists church activities and you will see the same thing, over and over again. Let’s begin today by asking ourselves;
1. WHAT IS TODAY’S CHURCH DOING?
We are called to share Christ. We can only do this by imitating Him in our own lives. But to do this, we must know Christ and not just know about Him. The only way to do that is by reading the Word of God, and not ignore the Word of God. Is that what our churches are teaching today – or not?
One church recently advertised in a newspaper that they offered an internet safety program on Sunday morning. They wanted to teach you how you and your family could be “safe from Satan” while using the internet.
Another church offered a “Photography and Prayer” service on Sunday morning. I can only assume that their intent was to teach you how to pray while snapping photos. It doesn’t make much sense to me how this would bring you closer to Jesus, or have a deeper understanding of God’s precepts.
One church was having the traditional fellowship luncheon service, where they “preach while they eat.” I know that Christians like to eat as much as anyone else, but there is a time and place for everything.
In school, students never eat lunch while sitting in class. It is next to impossible for a person to learn anything while they are busy focusing on eating food. So I do not understand why they would want to preach a sermon while their congregation is busy eating lunch.
Then, there is the ever-present “Gospel Sing Night.” Have you ever noticed how more people will show up for a time of singing than show up for a Bible study?
Did you know there is a church that celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Andy Griffith TV show recently? And they did this on Sunday morning.
One of the largest churches in America does not preach from the Bible. They put on plays that “show people how to cope with problems in life.” Many more churches have pastors who do not carry Bibles to church, and some churches claim they only want “happy Christians” so they do not talk about sin, hell, or the blood of Jesus.
I attended a Saturday conference for pastors in one church that touted the assembly as “Knowing How to Grow Your Church for the Lord.” The entire time was spent with one proud pastor explaining how he had taken his church from 100 members to over 10,000 members in less than 15 years.
At my daughter’s wedding, I found myself in a conversation with the lady who provided all the flowers. She belonged to a church that just won an award for being the fastest growing church in this area. She seemed to be very proud of that. I felt like asking her how many people were baptized into the body of Christ in that church, or how often they preach from the Bible. I know the pastor of that church, and the answer is an occasional baptism and rarely will he preach a message from the Bible. He does, however, give sermons that help people deal with the anxieties from life.
Churches today are too busy catering to their congregations by offering nothing but watered down sermons and fun activities. That is why today’s churches are becoming more and more ineffective.
It is no wonder that today’s churches are actually hurting people spiritually by keeping the truth of salvation from them! We have become the church of Laodicea! The next step will be that most of our churches will begin preaching false gospels, and sermons that try to get as much money from you as possible.
You hear preachers all the time saying you need to give a “seed” to their ministry and God will reward you back with many times that amount. What a crock!
LUKE 8:11 explains the parable of the seeds by saying that the “seed is the Word of God.” We are to sow a seed, but that means we are to give others the Word of God and then that will be rewarded by seeing souls saved!
Is this what Jesus wants Christians and churches to do? I hope He shows great mercy on us today, as we certainly need it.
The activities I mentioned a moment ago are not wrong to do. It is wrong, however, for a church to offer them in place of a sermon about Jesus Christ. The type of pastor we are talking about in the aforementioned churches are those who have lost the focus they had on God and replaced it with a focus on the world.
Oh, I forgot to mention that one church did offer an old-fashion preaching service. This one church seems to have gotten it right. We need to offer good old-fashioned services where our main focus is on Jesus Christ, not on us! Why would we want to talk about what we think, instead of talking about what God knows? Today’s churches talk a lot about their opinions, but forget that the only opinion that counts is God’s opinion.
This is the second type of pastor; one who remains true to his focus on God’s priorities. He will rarely see his church become large, but he will most definitely see his church become successful: Successful in the eyes of our Lord.
2. WHAT DOES GOD EXPECT FROM HIS CHURCH?
Jesus expects great things from His church. Probably the greatest of these is that we keep intently focused on Him and what He offers humanity, and that is salvation from our sin and eternal life in Heaven. After all, I would think that is far more important than using a service in church to explain how deal with rude people in a grocery store.
God’s Word says to train up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from that training. Let me say this …. If you have children, it is your direct responsibility to raise them in the Word of God. The church should be doing the same.
Rather than offering children games to play during the adult service, it is mandatory that the church teach them about Jesus and what God wants from them! Many of the children have one or more parents that are unsaved, and this might be the only chance they have of hearing what will save them. Our churches should never pass on that opportunity by just offering games instead. Let the schools teach them how to act on the playground. Let the churches teach them about the Lord.
There is nothing more important than teaching a person what God says, whether it be a child or an adult.
PSALM 119:11 tells us why we need to know the Word of God.
“I have hidden your Word in my heart that I might not sin against You.”
PSALM 119:105 explains why we can follow and depend on God’s Word;
“Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”
These verses leave no questions about what God’s Word means to us. By being taught His Word, we can store them to our memories so they can help us in future times, and we can depend on His Word to show us the path we should follow.
Our churches need to start getting serious about what we are supposed to be doing! We are not to concentrate on growing so big that the church owns an entire community that surrounds the church building. There is a church in Colorado that owns about 30 acres. They have town homes on it, theaters, restaurants, and everything else a person could want, except for offering sermons that teach the meat of God’s Word. All they receive are messages that make them feel good about themselves.
I am sorry if I sound so stern today, but this has been building for quite some time. I had a preacher tell me once that they had grown so big that they could not afford to offer messages that offended anyone. I asked why, and he said that he needed all the people to keep coming so they could afford their big buildings they still owed on.
When I heard that, my spirit was shattered! And since then, I have paid attention to what the American church is doing nowadays. We have grown into con men, from people who offer feel good messages in exchange for your offerings, to people whose only message is for you to send them as much of your money as they can get, so God can replenish it many times over! Again, may God have mercy on us for what we are doing against His wishes.
The church is supposed to be a place where we come together to humble our hearts in true worship to Jesus Christ. To be thankful for every blessing we have received and to honor God by turning our backs on the sin of this world and take His salvation as a serious reality in our lives.
And the church is a place where we are to teach His Word. For how can we have a personal relationship with God if we do not know what He wants from us? The Word encourages us to love others enough to offer them God’s love and truth.
Church is not a place where we sit and wait for others to find us and come in. It is a place where we learn how to reach out to them and teach them about Jesus. It isn’t about getting the largest congregation in town, but about growing the number of believers in Jesus Christ.
MATTHEW 28:19-20 commands us,
“Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the end of the age."
Jesus didn’t sit at the city gates waiting for people to come to Him. He was constantly on the move looking everywhere for the lost, finding them and declaring salvation to them.
So, what does God expect from His church? He doesn’t care if we have fellowship dinners, but instead of gossiping while we eat, we should be encouraging one another by praising the name of Jesus while we eat.
3. HOW DO WE FIX OUR BROKEN CHURCHES?
Do you remember your very first love? You couldn’t keep your mind off that handsome little boy or cute little girl, could you? Your entire life was consumed by how you felt towards them. You ate, slept, and lived with nothing on your mind but them.
That is how we first started off being Christians; we couldn’t think of anything but Jesus, and the more we thought about Him, the more excited we got! But the relationship seems to have lost its passion.
Johnny Cash and his wife June had a song where one line said “nothing’s as cold as the ashes, once the fire is out.”
Today’s churches are teaching today’s Christians to live in the ashes. The end result is that few of us are still in love with our Savior as we once were. We prefer to be entertained rather than be taught. We end up just “going through the motions.”
So, how do we fix our broken churches?
Let’s start by understanding Who the Holy Spirit is and what He means to us.
I grew up in a church that only mentioned the Holy Spirit when it was read in Scripture. There was no explanation about Who He is or what He does. I think one of the most important things today’s churches can do is start reading and teaching the entire bible, and that includes teaching about the Holy Spirit.
In too many churches, He is either misunderstood or totally ignored. The One given to unite the body of Christ is often viewed as not important enough to talk about. We are so tightly programmed that we no longer “DEPEND” on Him, but on our programs. Yet Jesus said, “Without Me, you can do nothing!” And that is reiterated in
PHILIPPEANS 4:13 –
“I can do all things through Christ Jesus, who gives me strength.”
This verse shows that we must fully depend on; to fully rely on; and to fully trust everything Jesus said.
If I called you up here right now and asked you to turn around with your back to me, would you do it? If I asked you to then close your eyes and fall backwards, reassuring you that I would catch you, would you do it? Probably not. Or, if you did, you would keep one eye open and keep turning your head back t make sure I would keep my word.
That is not trust. Yet, that is how many people view Jesus. They heard Him say to trust in Him, but they need to do it under their own power; that does not fully trust. So, do you get the picture I am trying to paint? We are to trust Christ – period; fully and without hesitation. Yet most churches do nothing to teach that nowadays.
And one of the things Jesus said when He was preparing to leave was that He would ask His Father to send someone to take His place … and that Someone is the Holy Spirit. If we do not acknowledge the Holy Spirit in our lives, are we really being obedient to Christ?
The late Dr. A.W. Tozer once said that if the Holy Spirit were to leave the American church today, very few would notice anything different. What a sad commentary on today’s churches.
I mention this to show an example of how we sometimes do not fully follow God’s plan for us, both as individuals and as churches. Sometimes we get so busy “doing” that we forget what we are supposed to “do.”
The bible refers to the Holy Spirit as the “sweet spirit of God.” Just like Jesus, He is real and is one third of the Trinity. EPHESIANS 4:30 tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit. He has feelings because He cares for us. Yet, do we care enough about Him to teach about Him or read about Him?
Now, after we understand Who the Holy Spirit is and what He means to us as believers, let us understand that we need to understand what God wants by reading His Word. And once we read His Word, we need to ponder what we have read; to think about what it means and how we might instill that meaning into our personal lives. If we straighten our personal lives out, our churches will soon follow our lead.
Jesus told the last of the seven churches that it had become lukewarm and that He found them so vile that He would vomit them out of His mouth. He said they had become that way because they had become rich and didn’t feel as if they really needed the church any longer and in so doing, they were wretched and didn’t even know it.
We are that church today. We are the church of Laodicea.
In REVELATION 3:20, it tells us that Jesus is standing at our door and knocking, waiting us to open it and invite Him in. I think He has been knocking on the doors of some churches now so long that He has developed calluses on knuckles. All I can say is that I thank God He still loved the Laodicean church and He still loves us today, too.
We fix today’s churches by knowing God’s priorities.
God’s priority is not being entertained on Sunday mornings. His priority is our being taught from His Word. It is being encouraged in church to tell others about the loving grace God offers. It is becoming focused on His will, not our pleasure.
People depend on leaders in every area of their lives. Jesus called us “sheep” for a very good reason. Spiritually speaking, we are totally defenseless just like sheep are; we get lost very easily unless we are led, just like sheep are; and if we have no proper leader, we end up wandering aimlessly in the desert until we meet our demise, just as sheep do.
So we need proper church leadership: Leadership who puts God first and not themselves. Church leaders who understand that church leadership, in itself, has nothing to do with position, esteem, or power, but it has everything to do with responsibility. A responsibility to do it Gods way, not theirs.
There is nothing worse than serving in a church where the church leaders have become the owners of the church and everything they do is bent around keeping them and their positions in a place of authority. And with that in mind, I want to spend a few minutes talking about church leaders; pastors in particular. There are a few types of pastors, and you, as the congregation need to know this so you will be able to choose the pastor who is best for you.
The pastors who have been truly called by Jesus to shepherd His flock and who are obedient to His Word in doing so, will have churches in tune with our Lord’s commands. Remember, we are only the body. He is the head.
And a church being successful does not have anything to do with the size of the congregation. I pastured a church that had 92 members, and in one year we saw 57 new people receive Jesus and baptize them. I knew the pastor of a local church there that had over 1,500 members, and during the same period of time, he told me they had 14 new people accept Jesus and only 4 of them got baptized. Why the discrepancy? It surely wasn’t me, but it was about what I was doing. I purposely put the focus of our church on Jesus Christ and the teaching of the bible. My pastor friend’s main focus was on building his church.
There is nothing wrong with building a larger church, as long as it is done right. But to be successful as a church has nothing at all to do with how large it is. It is, however, all about what they are doing for Jesus.
I have a friend in another state that pastors a very large church. He boasts of taking it from 100 members to over 5,000 members in less than 15 years. But he said he has to give them the sermons that make them want to keep coming back, as it is their tithes that are paying for his huge buildings.
But let me give you the flip side. There is a pastor of a fairly large church just up the road in Chandler. His church also numbers in the thousands. I used to serve in his church. This pastor does all he can to make sure that everyone in his church really understands who Jesus really is and what salvation is really all about. He said he prays that this church will stop growing if he ever gets too busy to do his job properly. By the way, God blesses us when we strive to bless Him. This pastor’s church is fairly large and has many buildings … all paid for.
Those pastors who focus mainly on growing their church in numbers while leaving them devoid of any biblical teaching will suffer a harsher judgment from the Lord for their lack of devotion to Jesus. Keep in mind that when I say they will be judged, am saying they will be judged on their works, not necessarily their salvation.
We have talked about two types of pastors; those who have lost their focus and replaced it with having a larger business rather than having a Godly church, and one who is properly focused on the Lord and tries to teach his congregation how to do the same.
But there is a third type of pastor. This is the man who is pastoring a local church, but is not called by God to do so. I think I know a pastor who fits that description. From birth, his parents had instilled in him that he was to become a pastor. He grew up literally being told that he had no alternative but to be a minister in a church.
This man was once a Youth Pastor for a Church. He described the job he did as such. He said his youth church was one hour long. Out of that hour, he gave a 10 minute sermonette. Then, they talked about it for 10 minutes and then closed in prayer And the rest of the hour was spent letting the kids play the games and listen to radio! Now I am not judging this man, but I certainly will look at his fruits. He later became the pastor of the church he said he does not understand that the membership has declined from over 200 to less than 30 since he took the position just 3 years ago. And he is alarmed that they have no children at all in their church now!
In my last conversation with the young man, I advised him to stop doing everything he is doing and start teaching and preaching out of the bible while letting his congregation know the important of doing what JAMES 1:22 means when it says we are all to become doers of the word and not just hearers only.
Those who have not been truly called by God to pastor the flock, but do it anyway, are charlatans in my opinion. They hold on to their jobs but rarely see it as their calling. Oh, they might be successful in the world’s eyes, but they are failures in God’s eyes.
One such successful pastor was told by his mother to take his father’s place as pastor when the father died. He tried to get out of it, but the mother was very domineering and insisted. He now has a church that numbers in the tens of thousands, but to keep them happy, he says he will not preach on sin, hell, or the shed blood of Jesus. Now, who do you think views him as successful and who does not view him as successful?
We fix our broken churches by not attending churches like these and finding churches that preach and teach the Bible, in its entirety, excluding nothing. I again apologize for my terse tone today, but it is high time that Christians and pastors begin speaking out against the shenanigans that seem to have infiltrated our churches and try to help bring the focus of our churches back to the Lord.
In 2 TIMOTHY 2:15, we are told to study the Word to show ourselves approved by God. When you take the accurate teaching of the Bible out of the church and replace it with easy listening messages that offend nobody, you end up with a country club that offends the Lord.
The Word of God will always be offensive to everybody at one point in time. We can sugar coat it all day long, but the moment we tell the unsaved that they will go to hell without Jesus as their Savior, it will offend them. It is called conviction, and that is one of the things the Holy Spirit does is to convict us of our sin.
Another thing Christians can do to fix our churches is to stop reading all the books about the Bible instead of reading the Bible itself. I know several Christians who do not read the Bible because it is “too hard to understand” so they depend on reading what others say about the Bible. This is nothing more than trusting someone else’s opinion to get you to Heaven. We must remember that the Bible is God’s Word and every other book is just one man’s opinion. Is that what you really want to trust to make sure you go to Heaven?
We will all meet Jesus before we are fully ready. We will either meet Him when we die, or when He comes back in the Rapture to call us up to Him. I cannot help but wonder, if the Rapture would come tomorrow, how many would be taken from the local church and how many would be left because they were not serious about their devotion to God and His Word.
I began this message by telling you about what other churches had advertised in the local newspapers. When I read those, I was appalled. It was very clear that many churches have strayed from the truth and have gone the way of the world. And this is causing many Christians to not have a clue as to the truth of God. The blind are leading the blind. And the sheep don’t even have a clue as to where the wolves in sheep’s clothing are leading them.
Is it any wonder why most people stay away from church so they can spend time in worldly pursuits? Is it any wonder that most churches put more focus on their buildings than the One who really owns those buildings?
Jesus told the Laodicean church that He stands at the door and knocks. He is waiting for someone to answer and invite Him in. Do we hear Him knocking, or are we so busy going through the motions that we hear nothing?
We are living in the final stage of church history. The next event on God’s calendar is when Jesus comes to collect the real believers and takes them to Heaven. That is called the Rapture. It does not matter if you believe it or not. Our opinions might keep us comfortable, but they do nothing to keep us safe.
You can stand in the middle of the freeway blindfolded during rush hour traffic and claim all day long that you are safe. But the very moment you get run over, and you will get run over, you will become an instant believer in the stupidity of your actions
You can stay away from church; refuse to read the Bible; go to these churches that make a mockery out of our Lord’s house; or anything else you want while you satisfy yourself that you are safe. But the very instant you meet Jesus, you will become an instant believer in the stupidity of your choices. Are you sure you want to take a chance doing that on so great an issue? After all, at that point in time, there will be no more “do-overs”.
We can fix today’s church by standing up and speaking God’s Word. Right is right and wrong is wrong. The world says to let others do what they want and you can do what you want. God says that we should all do what He wants whether it is politically correct or not.
And if we do speak out with Jesus as our Shepherd and number one priority, we will fix today’s churches. I would rather sit on my back porch all alone and worship Jesus by myself than to cover myself with the unholy stench of a church who worships going to church instead of going to Christ.
Paul said we are to put on Christ. Let me give you a quick analogy of what that means.
A little boy was born with a horrible facial defect. He was so bad he made “ugly” look beautiful. He spent most of his youth by himself, hurting, and ashamed.
When he became a man, he decided to leave that town and go to a new town and get a new start in life. On his way there, he found a beautiful mask. He put it on and looked in a mirror. It looked like a normal face and you couldn’t tell it was a mask at all. And it made him look very handsome. It was very uncomfortable but he kept it on anyway.
In the new town, he made many friends and eventually fell in love. Everything was going fine until a wicked woman from his previous town saw him in the new town and decided to tell everyone what he was really like.
In front of everyone, she made him remove his mask. To her surprise, when he removed the mask, his face was very handsome. Over time, his face had actually conformed to the mask, changing what his face used to look like into what the mask made it look like now.
When we put on Christ, or become a devoted Christian, it may be a little uncomfortable in the beginning, but as the days roll on, we actually get transformed from what we were like, into what we have become – a reflection of Jesus Himself.
And when we begin to do this, we change our churches. And when we begin to change our churches, we begin to change people’s lives.
