Sermon Tone Analysis
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What Is a Church to Do?
Rick Blount
I have been a pastor for awhile now and when God called me as a pastor,
I wanted to be everything God wanted me to be as a pastor.
I knew God had called me to be a pastor, but I wasn't sure just exactly what I was to do and how I was to go about it.
I started back on education and one of the first books that I studied in school was the book of Acts.
Someone has called the book of Acts, "Infant's Progress," because in this book we have the birth and the growth of the baby church.
There you see the principles and the procedures which the Holy Spirit gave to the church in those days so that the church would be everything that God would want it to be.
As I began to go through the book of Acts and study it, I found what the church is intended to do.
As you move through the book of Acts, you will discover that there are certain stopping points and there are certain passages and pictures in the book of Acts which describe that growth and development of the early church.
It's like a little cameo of what a church is intended to be.
It's like someone who is climbing a mountain and you get to a certain place and you stop there on a plateau and you look back on where you have been and where you are going.
The thirty-first verse is one of those cameos, one of those plateaus in Scripture.
It summarizes what the church is intended to be and what the church is intended to do.
There are two words that are the load bearing words in this verse.
It says, "Then had the churches rest and were edified."
That's the first word.
"Walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, were multiplied."
Those of you who had heard me preach through a period of years here probably have those two verses circled in your Bible.
The churches were edified and the churches were multiplied.
What you find here is a church in perfect balance.
It is exactly what God wants a church to be.
I have noticed in the years of my ministry that there is a tendency for churches, as well as Christians, to get out of balance.
Sometimes churches get out of balance in the direction of evangelism.
We know that the Bible teaches us that we are to win people to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But if you are not very careful, you can get out of balance.
You can beat the drum with only one drumstick.
You can try to see-saw only one side of the see-saw.
There are some churches that put all of the emphasis on evangelism, winning people to faith in Jesus Christ.
I believe that is the primary purpose of the church.
I think that is what God wants a church to be.
But if all of the emphasis is on evangelism and there is no emphasis on growing and developing those who are saved, then you have a church that is out of balance.
On the other hand there are churches that get out of balance in the direction of discipleship.
The emphasis there is that we have a ministry to God's people.
The purpose of our church is to help God's people grow and develop in the Christian life.
There are some places where they say, "We just feed the sheep.
Our job is to feed the sheep."
Certainly that is true.
But you've got to find the sheep before you can feed the sheep.
I've been a shepherd of sheep for a number of years now.
I have discovered that there are certain characteristics of sheep.
Sometimes sheep go into another pasture.
They move their letter and they are no longer with you.
There are other sheep that go astray.
They get away and you can't have a ministry to them.
In fact, sometimes sheep even die.
If a church is not reaching more sheep and winning more people to Christ, it will have less and less people to minister to and to grow and develop.
What we need is that beautiful balance.
It's not an either/or, does a church do evangelism or does it do discipleship, but rather it is a both/and.
The church is to do both of these assignments of the early church.
The Lord Jesus Christ gave us what we call "The Great Commission."
Jesus said, "Go ye therefore, and make disciples."
Evangelism.
Then He said, "Baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you."
That's discipleship.
Did you notice that you have that perfect balance here?
It says that the churches were edified and then it says that the churches were multiplied.
Edification is the discipleship ministry of the church.
Multiply is the evangelism ministry of the church.
I want to talk to you about what the church is to do.
I want to do it from these verses of scripture.
I. Ministry to Saints.
The first thing that I want you to notice is that the church is to have a ministry to saints.
"Then were the churches edified."
We have a ministry to the saints.
I want to make a statement and I'll come back to it a time or two along the way, but I want you to get hold of this statement.
God has to work on the inside of a church before He can work on the outside of a church.
God has to do something in the church before He can do something through the church.
There you have it.
The churches were edified.
I want you to draw a circle somewhere in your notes.
On the inside of that circle put the word "edify" and on the outside of that circle put the word "multiply."
You have the inward ministry of the church and you have the outward ministry of the church.
You have the ministry to saints and then you have the ministry to sinners.
"Then had the churches rest and were edified."
The word "edify" means to build.
We talk about a building and we call it an edifice.
The word "edify" is a beautiful picture of the church.
It means the church is like a building.
Sometimes in the Bible the church is described as a bride.
There the emphasis is upon the fidelity of the church to the heavenly bridegroom, the Lord Jesus Christ.
On other occasions, the church is compared to a body.
When the church is compared to a body, the emphasis there is upon the function of the church, every part of the body functioning the way it ought to function.
But here the picture is the church like a building.
"Then had the churches rest and were edified."
Look at want you to see a beautiful picture of the church as a building and to see this edification, this growing and developing work of the ministry of the church to the saints of God.
Verses 20 through 22 say, "And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone."
Verse 21 says, "In whom all the building fitly framed together growth unto an holy temple in the Lord; In whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit."
There are three aspects of the church as a building given to us in these three verses.
For instance, in verse 20 he talks about the church's foundation.
He says, "And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophet, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone."
You and I know that a building is going to be a building largely on the basis of its foundation.
A building is dependent upon what kind of foundation it has.
I saw a city I had never seen before.
I remember the first time I went down on Canal Street in New Orleans.
They were building a building on Canal Street and they had a large pile of telephone posts.
They were taken those posts and pile driving them one right on top of the other.
I said to someone there, "What are they doing?"
They said, "New Orleans is under water."
We certainly know that is true.
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