Back to the Fight

Open with 2 videos, “TAPS” video and “Back to the Fight” with Ronald Reagan.

As you are probably already aware of, tomorrow is the day that this nation has set aside known as Memorial Day. This day, is the day, in which we, the great nation of the United Sates of America, have declared as a time to pay honor and tribute to and remember all of the men and women who have given their lives in serving and protecting this mighty nation!

I know that there are many of us who are already on the road, or will be getting on the road, to join with family and friends all across this nation and take tomorrow as a time to relax from our busy schedules and enjoy food and fellowship together!

And this is good and necessary and healthy action as a body, as a nation!

But, let us, with all love and respect, actually take a moment tomorrow and thank God for those men and women of this great nation, who gave all that they had, (their hopes, their dreams, even their very lives) to give to us the right and freedom and blessing to enjoy this special and humbling time as a nation!

I read something on Friday with regard to Memorial Day that I would like to present to you today, if you are not already aware of it. Our Congress established an exact minute of remembrance. The National Moment of Remembrance Act, which was adopted in December of 2000, which encourages every citizen to pause each Memorial Day at 3:00 p.m. local time to remember the brave men and women who died serving this country. In addition to any federal observances, Major League Baseball games usually come to a stop during the Moment of Remembrance, and for the past several years, Amtrak engineers have taken up the practice of sounding their horns in unison at precisely 3:00 p.m.

I would like to encourage each and every one of you tomorrow to try and remember to do the same thing in honor of those men and women from our families, our communities, our great nation, who died to give you and I the right to walk in freedom. Remember, ““All gave some, some gave all.”

Ask for all veterans to please rise for recognition! (Ask for church to applaud)

Ask for the church to stand for the national pledge of allegiance, as Ray and Pastor Clyde lead.

Well, most of you are pretty much aware that last Sunday came with a major announcement for our church body here at Cumberland Worship Center, right?

With this announcement being made and the direction that we are going to be heading as a church body in the coming months and years, I am being led, now, more than ever, to teach and train people on the necessity of making sure that our walk, as individual Christians, with our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ is where and what it needs to be, from a Biblical viewpoint, so that we can effectively reach the lost and disciple others into their work in the kingdom of God!

And what I mean is simply this; a church is not defined by the location or the building, (as I stated last Sunday), it is not the name that you attach to it, or even a denomination that you are credentialed or backed by. The church, Biblically, comes from the Greek word “ekklesia”. This word, from the purest definition, simply means this: “a called-out assembly or congregation.”

Now apply this to how it is used within the context of the New Testament and the gospel message and what Jesus meant when He first referred to the ekklesia in , where He said to Peter and the other disciples, "I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it” and you can get a more clear picture of what the ekklesia, which was born on the day of Pentecost, means to us and every other believer around the world.

Ekklesia, from the Christian perspective, is the gathering, or assembling of those whom God has “called-out” from the world and into the glorious light of His Son, Jesus the Christ!

So, the church, the ekklesia, is truly, anywhere that fellow Christians assemble in His name for worship and prayer and communion and for the building and edifying of each other, through His indwelling Spirit!

Like I said to you last week, if we all got up right now and walked down the road into a field with cattle and began having our services, then that is where Cumberland Worship Center is at. NOT HERE AT THIS PHYSICAL ADDRESS; that is simply geography, not the true church!

And everyone who is meeting in that field would be a part of the holy Body of Christ! (With the exception of the cows of course. Which, would of course, validate a well known phrase that so many of us use, “HOLY COW!”

So, wherever we assemble in His name and for His glory, is the church of Jesus Christ!

Does everyone understand that and what the true church is?

OK, then let’s move on into today’s message.

You guys know, as I have mentioned to you before, that I love a good action movies, right? How many of you here love to get into a really good adrenaline pumping action movie?

There are those movies, where, for whatever reason, the hero, or heroes of the movie have either not arrived at the fight scene, or they have backed away from engaging into the fight and it looks like all is going to be lost!

Like in the ‘80’s action drama hit, Top Gun, where the US Naval pilots, known as TOP GUN, are engaged in air warfare with the Russian Migs and the hero, Maverick, has disengaged and pulled out of the fight leaving his comrades in a bad place.

And his partner in the plane is screaming at him to re-engage and get back into the fight and then all of a sudden, Maverick pulls the plane back around and starts shooting down the enemy planes.........and they end up winning the fight! WOW!

Well, I want to begin to address something similar with you guys today and possibly in the coming weeks.

When I first watched the Memorial Day video that we saw earlier, with former President Ronald Reagan doing the narrative for, something that he said at the end of that video jumped out at me.

It was his closing statement that grabbed me and held my attention. This statement which was actually a quote from Oliver Wendell Holmes, said, “At the grave of a hero we end, not with sorrow at the inevitable loss, but with the contagion of his courage; and with a kind of desperate joy we go BACK TO THE FIGHT.”

“We go BACK TO THE FIGHT!”

We re-engage the enemy again and again and again.

We fight to win and save others. And not with sorrow, but with all JOY!

This is where and what I want to begin speaking with you about today, getting “back to the fight!”

I read an article in one of the Christian publications that I subscribe to the other day and something that author said began to resonate with me and my spirit.

He started off talking about an article in the Harvard Business Review, that he had read, titled, “Market Myopia”.

Myopia meaning you are near sighted; you can see up close, but not far away. (LIKE I AM!)

The main gist of the article that he had read was that people did not understand the true nature of their business.

Example: Railroad people did not realize that they worked in the transportation business; they imagined they labored in the railroad business.

If they had realized their industry was the transportation business, the railroad people would have invested in the airplane! You follow me?!

In other words, you have to see the whole picture, present and future to really see what you are doing and the impact that you are making and will eventually make.

Similarly, the telegraph people believed that they worked in the telegraph business, vs the “communications” business.

Had they realized that they actually worked in the “communications” business, then they could have bought all of the telephone patents that happened in or around 1886 for $40,000 and would have forever changed the course of their history and the industry.

They didn’t comprehend the true identity of their business.

Having used these examples, the author of this article that I read wrote the following:

READ exert from “Knowing Your Identity” from June 2018, Midnight Call magazine article, written by Dr. Ron J. Bigalke.

Did you catch that statement of, “God’s people are always in danger of meandering into a maintenance mentality of their identity” and then the closing statement of that exert, “The book of Acts itself is a persistent indictment upon mere maintenance-oriented Christianity”?

And what the author was saying is this: We, as true followers of Jesus Christ, are called and commissioned to engage the world and win souls for the kingdom; that is our “identity”, to be Jesus to the world and not settle for some in-house maintenance program where we sit in church pews and pass around collection plates to fund the next social dinner!!

The body of Christ (the ekklesia), is to be focused on spreading the gospel message wherever they are located at.

THAT IS WHO AND WHAT WE ARE!

Whenever a church building becomes “internally” focused, vs “eternally” focused, then they are a dying or already dead part of the body!

This happens, because somehow, someway, the enemy has crept in and dulled the understanding and hearts of the people and the leadership have become comfortable with the money and started teaching a watered down version of the gospel message that requires nothing and demands nothing of themselves or the members of that body.

It is like a statement that my dear friend Alex Tasca gave to me recently , which says, “Satan doesn’t want to fight the church; he wants to join it!”

Now having read this article, it spurred me to go back re-read the letters that Jesus wrote to the churches of Sardis and Laodicea in .

Between the these two churches alone, listen to what Jesus said had to say about their health and condition : To the church of Sardis,“I know all the things you do, and that you have a reputation for being alive—but you are dead. Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God. Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.”

And to the church of Laodicea He said, “I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth! You say, ‘I am rich. I have everything I want. I don’t need a thing!’ And you don’t realize that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. So I advise you to buy gold from me—gold that has been purified by fire. Then you will be rich. Also buy white garments from me so you will not be shamed by your nakedness, and ointment for your eyes so you will be able to see.”

Now combine the conditions of these two churches along with that of the church at Ephesus and their abandoning their love for Jesus, Pergamum and their embracing heresy and moral impurity, along with Thyatira and their bringing in the teaching of and practicing immorality and you begin to see a pretty good depiction of a lot of the modern churches in this nation and in the world today.

Jesus, Himself, in writing these warning letters to the seven churches of Asia Minor makes mention that these churches were still doing things that were good: He notes their loyalty to Him in situations, that they showed love and faith and dedicated service and patient endurance and worked with hard work in their churches and stood defiant against evil practices.

Yet all five of these churches, despite their apparent physical health, were on the way to being severely punished or even eradicated, because they were not operating as His body!

And here is my point in mentioning these churches and the letters written to them by our Lord Jesus; the church that Jesus built, the one that He first mentioned in , was birthed and empowered to spread the gospel message and grow the kingdom.

The church and the people that make it up, are all combined to operate as the living “body of Jesus” here on earth; He is the head and whatever the head tells the body to, the body responds and does so accordingly.

EXAMPLE: if I want to pick up my Bible, my head (a.k.a. the “brain and control center of the body) thinks of what it wants to have happen and then it sends the message to SPECIFIC muscles within whichever arm it chooses, and the arm muscles instantly respond and, VOILA, the Bible is picked up.

It’s the same way with me walking. My head chooses where the body is to go and sends out all of the individual nerve “messengers” to the body and the body instantly responds (in complete compliance) and it all just happens. (There are many things that must happen just to ambulate, that we never even consider, and so it is with what goes on within the kingdom through the individual church members and their representative parts of the whole body of Christ!)

BUT, IF WE ARE NOT CAREFUL TO PROTECT AND GUARD THE BODY AND IF WE LET OUR GUARD DOWN AND THE ENEMY FINDS A WAY IN, THEN IT HAPPENS: SPIRITUAL SICKNESS AND WEAKNESS IN THE BODY. (Just like the churches that Jesus warned in Revelation, who thought they were healthy and yet they were found to be sick and weak.)

And this warning was for ALL CHURCHES and to EVERY PART of the BODY OF CHRIST, until He returns!

I worked for over 17 years in Physical Therapy and I have seen the damage that can be caused when sickness affects the body and its functions!

Let’s use the analogy of a CVA (Cerebrovascular Accident), or what we commonly call, a STROKE.

Let’s say, for this analogy, that the damage that affects the body, that is, the reason that the “stroke” occurs, is because the body was neglected and didn’t keep it’s spiritual health going and the enemy (a.k.a. the“sickness”) crept in and caused the body to no longer be able to receive the signals from the head and everything became affected!

ELABORATE ON THE DAMAGE FROM A STROKE AND ITS EFFECT ON FUNCTION!

Here is my point guys, the human body was created to respond to the control center, the brain, the head, right?

Well, it is exactly the same with the “body of Christ” (the ekklesia), it was designed to respond to the control center, THE HEAD, (Jesus the Christ) and move in accordance!

And the body of Christs’ prime directive, which has never changed, is the GREAT COMMISSION.

It is a perpetual command that never ceases, much like the autonomic commands that drive our cardiovascular and respiratory systems! (They run 24/7 and 365, without ceasing and if they CEASE, then there are IMMEDIATE repercussions, right?!)

If you don’t get blood flow or oxygen to the body, then proper function shuts down; YOU’RE IN TROUBLE!

Well, I have said all of this to point and focus our attention to the function of the BODY, the CHURCH.

If something is wrong with our natural bodies, you go to a physician and he/she begins the process of diagnosing the issue based upon the signs and symptoms, right?

The doctor doesn’t just look at you as a whole and say, “Yep, your’e sick. That will be $200 for the visit and my assessment!”

They have to look at the individual parts and systems of the body, based upon the S/S and assess their HEALTH and FUNCTION to find the problem!

That is what we are looking at today and what we are going to start looking at: WHAT IS IT WITHIN THE “BODY OF CHRIST” THAT HAS CAUSED US TO DISENGAGE AND STOP DECLARING THE GOSPEL MESSAGE WHEREVER WE GO?

You know, there are actually various reasons as to why many of us do not share our faith and belief in Jesus and work to plant seeds for the kingdom of God.

It is a reality though, that many, many of the people who sit in church buildings every week, as members of that particular church and who are professing followers of Jesus, will never, or hardly ever, share their faith with another person.

Just take a moment and listen to some of this:

In his book Witness Essentials, Dan Meyer lists some encouraging statistics about the growth of the church around the world:

In 1900 Korea had no Protestant church. Today, there are over 7,000 churches in just the city of Seoul, South Korea. At the end of the 19th century, the southern portion of Africa was only 3 percent Christian. Today, 63 percent of the population is Christian, while membership in the churches in Africa is increasing by 34,000 people per day. In India, 14 million of the 140 million members of the "untouchable" caste have become Christians. More people in the Islamic world have come to Christ in the last 25 years than in the entire history of Christian missions. In Islamic Indonesia, the percentage of Christians is now so high (around 15 percent) that the Muslim government will no longer print statistics. In China, it is estimated that there are now more self-avowed disciples of Jesus than members of the Communist party. Even the most conservative estimates suggest that China will soon have more Christians than any country. Across the planet, followers of Jesus are increasing by more than eighty thousand per day. 510 new churches form every day.

Meyer concludes: "The irony is that, except for the Middle East (where Christianity was born) and Europe and America (to whose civilization it gave birth), Christianity is expanding everywhere today."

Republicans are more likely (45 percent) to be born again, compared to Democrats (27 percent) and independent voters (26 percent). The survey also found that 51 percent of political conservatives met the born again criteria, compared to only 27 percent of moderates and 19 percent of liberals. 

The researchers believe that the decline in born again Christians is largely due to attitudes toward evangelism and salvation. Only 21 percent of adults affirm that they have a strong personal responsibility to share the Gospel with people who hold different views. Among born again Christ followers, 39 percent agree.

"Even more disturbing is the fact that adults are about equally likely to believe that eternal salvation can be earned through personal goodness or good deeds (25 percent) as believe salvation cannot be earned (20 percent).

Do you see and understand what these stats are saying about the condition of the church in America?

The men and women who make up the “body of Christ” in America, have, large and in part, become complacent!

This is not a blanket statement that applies to everyone, but it is a wake-up call of sorts!

We have become so “internally” focused as “church buildings” and gotten away from evangelizing our nation, that we now have stats to prove whether one political party belief vs another is a good indicator of someone becoming born again or not!

Do you honestly think that the Apostle Paul, who was held prisoner by the nation of Rome (a pagan society and a totally different political and socioeconomic structure than that of a Jew) was ever concerned about the plausibility of a Roman citizen coming to salvation vs a non-Roman citizen? And did this effect his ability to spread the gospel message?!

NO........the answer is NO! Paul took this message everywhere he went and shared it with everyone he came across, regardless of their political arena, their nationality or religious background!

Now let me say this with regard to the churches in this nation; IT IS NOT THE CHURCHES’ RESPONSIBILITY TO DEVELOP AND GROW YOUR PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS!

Did you all catch that? When people try to play that card and say, “the church that I was attending let me down and hurt me and offended me, and so I just had to walk away and that is why I don’t really have any belief, or a relationship with Jesus now”, then there needs to be some major redirecting right then and there.

Although, yes it is a major fault in many churches, that new Christians are not being discipled and trained for teaching others and many are falling through the cracks, it must be stressed that everyone’s relationship with Jesus is a daily, consensual decision to go after Him and pursue Him at all cost!

NO ONE IS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS EXCEPT YOU!

Having said that, let me come to back to reiterate a point and move into a closing thought or two. In order for the “body of Jesus Christ” to work effectively in the areas of our calling, teaching and equipping, spreading the gospel message and being Jesus to the world, it must begin at the individual level.

A church, the individual buildings that the true church body meets in, are only as effective in the kingdom as its individual members.

I will come back to this in a second as I close out.

Listen to this report guys that is back from March of this year, “In partnership with Seed Company, Barna conducted a study of the U.S. Church’s ideas about missions, social justice, Bible translation and other aspects of spreading the gospel around the world, available now in the new report Translating the Great Commission. When asked if they had previously “heard of the Great Commission,” half of U.S. churchgoers (51%) say they do not know this term!”

51% of churchgoers do not recognize the “great commission”!!!

So then, in the study, they took 5 familiar passages and showed them to the people (churchgoing people, mind you) to see if they would be able to recognize the verse amongst others. (SHOW SLIDE)

Are you seeing a huge problem?

Right now ,according to what studies and polls are showing, of the current churchgoers in this country, 73% are sure they’re commanded to be witnesses, yet less than half do…and less than half that group (48%) has never witnessed to anyone at all!

One interesting fact was that the poorer the Christian was, the more likely they were to be evangelizing. (Read more: https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/why-dont-more-christians-share-their-faith/#ixzz5Ghs7NzoA)

(Read more: https://www.whatchristianswanttoknow.com/why-dont-more-christians-share-their-faith/#ixzz5Ghs7NzoA)

Within these current studies and polls, a “growing number of Christians don’t see sharing the good news as a personal responsibility.” Over the past couple of decades, there has been an increasing feeling among Christians that this “evangelism stuff” is something for the Church, not for us humble lay people.

The BIG PROBLEM here, is that the CHURCH, is the HUMBLE LAY PEOPLE!

My intention this morning, was to start, “building the case for”, if you will, the necessity within our part of the body of Christ, of teaching and equipping and training up others for the kingdom of God!

This is not a brow beating message guys, this is what the Lord is saying to me stirring inside of my heart, just as He said to the churches some two thousand years ago; “Wake up! Strengthen what little remains, for even what is left is almost dead. I find that your actions do not meet the requirements of my God. 3 Go back to what you heard and believed at first; hold to it firmly. Repent and turn to me again. If you don’t wake up, I will come to you suddenly, as unexpected as a thief.”

I don’t want a show of hands this morning, but I am going to ask you to start evaluating your walk with and your relationship with the Lord and how important in your life is spreading the gospel message.

LISTEN TO ME VERY CAREFULLY RIGHT NOW! Guys, this is huge, we, as the body at Cumberland Worship Center, are on the verge of a major overhaul and change in the direction of our church body!

This is exciting! It is going to be a wild ride and it will forever make a difference in the lives of people, not only in this area, but even worldwide!

So, I am coming back to this message next week and we are going to look at reasons why people struggle in sharing the gospel message and allow the Word of God and Holy Spirit to begin to show us what and how we need to do to overcome this and move forward!

And if you are thinking, “Man this too much, I just can’t do this; I can’t witness to others, because of “_________”!

I want to remind you of three very simple verses that I will close with:

Jesus says to you, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

You say that you can’t become a witness and yet the Bible reminds you, “I have strength for all things in Christ Who empowers me [I am ready for anything and equal to anything through Him Who infuses inner strength into me; I am self-sufficient in Christ’s sufficiency].”

And finally, the closing of Yeshuas’ words to the disciples before He ascended, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Please plan on being here next week, as we begin this journey together!