Sunday, January 20, 2019

Want to See a Christian Church?

Way back in the Middle Ages, a monk wrote:  The church is something like Noah’s ark; if it weren’t for the storm outside, you couldn’t stand the smell inside.  Dead things DO smell!  And dead churches are no exception.
In the 1960’s Robert Adolfs wrote The Grave of God.  In that work he made the observation that the reason for the God is Dead movement is that …men looked at a dead church and though its owner was dead.
A dead church is a contradiction in terms.  If a group of people, meeting at a particular building can be described as a dead church, then it is only an institution, not a church.  Jesus said that the church was a living group. 
What causes a living church to become a dead institution?  Simply put – it is when original sin is re-enacted.  When our pride and preferences become more precious than Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God will not participate…AND THE BODY WITHOUT A SPIRIT IS DEAD!
The church at Corinth had that kind of problem.  There were at least four groups that divided that fellowship, and threatened it with extinction:
There were some who admired and followed Paul.  These folks liked the way Paul talked about liberty, and not following the rules of Judaism.  Today the Paul group are those who say:  I really don’t need to go to church.  I can worship anywhere; don’t tell me what to do.
There were those who revered and followed Apollos in his intellectual teaching.  They loved to find the great obscurities and dwell on them.  For instance, some believed that since Abraham[2] circumcised 318 men, and the Greek number 18 was roughly equivalent to the first two letters of Jesus’ name, and that the Greek number 300 was the same as the symbol for the cross, that Abraham’s act of circumcising 318 stood for the cross of Christ! 
Today this group still lives.  In the name of deeper-life-in-Jesus they study the Bible and never get around to living it!  They are so heavenly-minded they’re no earthly good.
Add to these those who followed Peter, the Jewish sect, who said we must keep the law.  These turned from grace towards works.  We have many groups today who like to make sure others keep the rules.  It gives them no greater pleasure than to point out someone else’s breach of their little litany of written do’s and don’ts, that they spend all their time criticizing, virtually losing any sense of being a credible witness for Christ; instead they have a cesspool kind of sourness. 
Above all the others are the Jesus followers.  This small, but rigid sect were the self-proclaimed only true Christians at Corinth.  These may have been the same ones who abused the gifts at this famous church. 
You have seen these people in church as well as the others.  They have studied deeper, taught better, know and feel more, and DO less than anyone else.  They are quick to tell you about their accomplishments, but somehow, they are never really involved in DOING anything, except telling how nobody else is doing anything.  It would be good for a church to have one member who just got saved, witnessing daily to a lost person, then seventy-five of these so-called true-believers just taking-up space, and usually demanding the most attention.  Our need is people who love Jesus more than themselves.
The late, great and scholarly Casey Stengel,[3] manager of the NY Yankees, and later the NY Mets, once said about baseball teams:  
It’s easy to get good players.
Gettin’ ‘em to play together, that’s the hard part
Can you imagine attempting to get the Corinthian groups to act like a team?  As the man said, you can’t get there from here!
Paul goes on to teach us some of the characteristics of a Christian church:
The Church is a Fellowship of Unity

Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people.  I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ.  I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger.  And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature.  You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other.  Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature?  Aren’t you living like people of the world?  When one of you says, “I am a follower of Paul,” and another says, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you acting just like people of the world?            1 Corinthians 3:1-4(NLT)

Factiousness is necessary in a democratic government; it is death to a church!  Jealousy isn’t from God either.  Paul states the problem as a lack of unity the body of Christ should have. 
The problem with many churches is what the church at Corinth had – a lack of love for each other.  We speak not of the Sunday smile kind of love, but the unselfish love that makes relationships worthwhile.  A little girl in Sunday School was asked where Adam and Eve lived.  She said, “Moscow”.  The teacher asked, “Why Moscow”?  “Well, they lived in a place where they couldn’t leave, they were naked, and had only one apple to eat, and were told it was Paradise.  Sounds like Moscow to me.”  Now, the real problem is that Eden stopped being Paradise when Adam and Eve broke relationship (unity) with God.  And THAT’S a problem for any church.
The church is to be different than a broken world.  A small girl wandered away from her home in Canada in 1990.  When the family realized she was missing they called for the townspeople to search.  Each went his own way looking for the girl.  Soon it was dark, and it started snowing.  Late that night someone suggested that the searchers join hands and cover the fields.  It was too late.  They found the child curled-up, frozen in the cold.  One of the searchers lamented:  If only we’d joined hands sooner.  What could the church accomplish if we really joined hands and worked together to reach our community for Christ?
The Church is a Field of Industry

After all, who is Apollos?  Who is Paul?  We are only God’s servants through whom you believed the Good News.  Each of us did the work the Lord gave us.  I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.  It’s not important who does the planting, or who does the watering.   What’s important is that God makes the seed grow.  The one who plants and the one who waters work together with the same purpose.  And both will be rewarded for their own hard work.  For we are both God’s workers.  And you are God’s field.  You are God’s building.  1 Corinthians 3:5-9(NLT)

The apostle describes us as servants, which is the word we translate deacon.  A servant that doesn’t serve is useless.  Our business is to serve this world by telling the story.  Steve Brown is a Presbyterian brother who states it well:  The business of the church is to have a party, and then to take that party into the world…and so, we’re party animals.  Of course, the party to which he refers is the joyous celebration we have in worship, because of Jesus.
The pictures we see in this passage are of planting and watering.  We are the fellow-workers of Jesus.  The job is (as George MacLeod put it) to take the cross out of the cathedral and back into the marketplace.  Jesus was, after all, not crucified between two candles in a Cathedral…He was nailed to a rough-hewn crossbeam, stretched-out between two thieves on the town garbage dump.  He was murdered where men cuss and gamble for dead men’s clothes.  That’s where He died; that’s where we need to take Him; that’s where He is needed!
In Africa an elderly blind man was seen by a missionary doctor.  The doctor operated and the native man was given back his sight.  After recuperating the man returned to his village.  But, within a few days he returned to the clinic with ten other old blind men.  Whatever your job in the church house, your job in the kingdom of God is to bring others who are as blind as once you were.
The Church is a Foundation of Victory

Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder.  Now others are building on it.  But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful.  For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ.  Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw.  But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done.  The fire will show if a person’s work has any value.  If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward.  But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss.  The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.  1 Corinthians 3:10-15(NLT)

The only real victory the church can experience is to elevate Jesus.  The Psalm writer (118:22) called the Messiah a rejected stone that became the capstone.  Paul echoed this, saying that Jesus is the foundation.  What is a church without Jesus, high and lifted-up?  It is a dead institution, an organization without organism.  A church without Jesus as our victory is an electric outlet that isn’t connected to the power source.  Martin Luther wrote the hymn we sing; The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ Her Lord. 
There IS no other foundation for the church.
A person may say that our particular local church body doesn’t fit their style of worship, and go elsewhere.  But no matter where you go to worship it ought to be a place where the Carpenter from Nazareth is lifted up as the Son of God, co-equal with the Father and Spirit.  The Bible declares He is Lord of all.
Everything we do ought to lift-up the name of Jesus.  After all, it was not faith that died for us.  It was not miracles that died for us.  It was not the pastor, or a bishop, or worldwide organizations that died for us.  Jesus is Lord, because He died our death, and won victory over the grave!  There is no victory in anything this local church body does, unless you can point to the lifting up of Jesus.  Budgets, buildings, and programs are just numbers, walls and words for year-end reports, unless they point people to Jesus.  Christ defines the church.  If we are not Jesus people, we are not a church!
What is it like for a church to do all we do and not lead people to Jesus?  We are like the young man who was mentally-challenged, and the town council wanted to help him with his dignity in earning a living.  So, they gave him the job of polishing the cannon on the town square.  Each day the young man tediously polished that cannon for eight hours.  About three years went by and the young man came to the town manager and told him:  I quit.  The manager, knowing the young man’s limitations wanted to know how he was going to support himself.  Easy; I’ve worked hard these past three years, and I’ve saved my money.  This morning I bought my own cannon; I’m going into business for myself.
Resolved
Jesus is either a capstone to a magnificent church, or He is the headstone that marks where the dead church left off serving Him and began serving self.  Peter, the great Apostle and leader of the early church said you can either celebrate or stumble, depending on what you do with Jesus.

And, “He is the stone that makes people stumble, the rock that makes them fall.”  They stumble because they do not obey God’s word, and so they meet the fate that was planned for them.  But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people.  You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.  1 Peter 2:8-9(NLT)

In this church we are working on being a church of unity IN Christ, working FOR Christ, built on the foundation OF Christ.
I served a church in Jacksonville, Florida for several years.  In that river city there are bridges everywhere.  Most of the bridges are steel and concrete, huge edifices towering over the landscape. 
Each of those bridges is held together by rivets in the steel and secured, anchored to the pylons that go deep into the earth beneath the river. [4] 
Each rivet holding a bridge together is like a member of Jesus’ church in fellowship with all the others.  Each rivet bears its share of the load, doing the job.  And like those rivets, secured in their places, there is one breathtaking view when you are in your place, doing your job, connected to the strong foundation.
And, for those who see us from afar, whether we are a very large church body, or a small membership body, our bridge over the troubled waters of these days is a magnificent structure that offers:
·      sanctuary to the weary and troubled
·      salvation to the sinner
·      a place of service for expressing love to God
·      a family to support in times of need, sorrow, or healing
That’s what a Christian church looks like.
Are you a rivet or a passenger just crossing over the bridge?  Can you point to a time when you were fastened to the Lord and His church?
Do you want to give your life and love to Jesus? Come to the only true bridge to the Father in Heaven.
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Let the church say “Amen”!


[1] Title Image:  Pixabay.com
[2] Genesis 14-18
[3] Casey Stengel image, via Wikimedia Commons, unknown author
[4] Image of bridge via Pixabay.com

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