Untitled Sermon (2)

Some of you may be wondering why does this IT guy want to go back to Bangalore to be a Pastor, Lord willing a church planter. What is driving the Singhs to do so ? Well in the short time we have I hope to quickly go through 3 points

The Gospel needs to be preached

Romans 10:14–15 ESV

14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

What breaks my heart the most is to see the lack of Christian witness in our cities. Oh ya there are quite a few churches in the city but the question is, are they preaching the Gospel ?

That Christ died

2. The Church is God’s means for the Gospel to go forth

Wiersbe’s Expository Outlines on the New Testament Introduction

How, then, did the Gospel get to Rome? Acts 2:10 indicates that there were people at Pentecost from Rome. Priscilla and Aquila were Roman Jews who knew the Gospel. Note that the names in chapter 16 are all Gentile, indicating that Gentile Christians from other cities had gravitated to Rome and carried the Gospel with them. These people were probably converts of Paul from other churches. Rome was the great center of the world in that day, and it was not unlikely that thousands of pilgrims made their way over Roman highways to the imperial city. Romans 1:13–15, 11:13 and 15:14–16 all indicate that the majority of the believers who received the letter were Gentiles. Naturally there was also a Jewish element in this Christian community as well as many Gentiles who had been Jewish proselytes.

Romans, Volume 3: God and History (Romans 9–11): An Expositional Commentary Chapter 150: A Plea for Missions (Romans 10:14–15)

When young William Carey, the acknowledged founder of the modern missionary movement, first applied to his church board to be sent to India, he received a classic reply. “Young man,” said one of the older church leaders, “when God chooses to save the heathen of India, he will do so without your help.” Fortunately, Carey knew better than that. He knew that when God determines that something is to happen he also determines the means to make it happen, and, in this case, the first step to the evangelization of India was the pioneer work of William Carey. Carey persevered, and the rest, as they say, is history.

How should a new pastor cultivate/navigate change in a smaller church? 

No Immediate change

Doctrine & Life : Preach the Word and let your life reflect it

Godly Elders & Discipleship

Regular corporate meetings & fellowship : Prayer & Settle in

Speak out and make minor reforms

Cultivate a passion for the Word

Commitment

Doctrine

Life

Cultivate a culture of Discipleship & Fellowship

Concern: Paul said, “I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost, That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh.” (Romans 9:1–3) Paul had the same spirit that Queen Esther had. Queen Esther said, “How can I endure to see the destruction of my [kinfolk]?” (Esther 8:6) Paul said, “I’d be willing to go to hell if it would mean that the Jews could be saved.” Oh, Paul had a heart desire—a burning, yearning, passionate, pleading desire—to see his kinsfolk come to the Lord Jesus Christ. How little heaviness of heart there is in our church! The thing that breaks my heart is that our people are not broken. The people of the First Baptist Church in Merritt Island are becoming fat and sleek and well-satisfied. We’ve got an air-conditioned, upholstered faith, and we think everything is going our way. God is going to judge us unless we get a broken heart. Oh, would that God would lay this community on 

Rogers, A. (2017). A Concern for the Lost. In Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Es 8:6). Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust.

Intercession: The first is intercession. We need to pray more—we need to pray more. The pastor needs to pray more. The deacons need to pray more. The Sunday school superintendents and our workers need to pray more. Look in Romans 10:1. Paul says: “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved.” (Romans 10:1) Now, we can do more than pray after we pray, but we cannot do more than pray until we pray. We can’t just come down here on Tuesday night and grab a handful of cards and run out and expect to lead people to Jesus. You can do more harm than good. We’re going to have to get alone with God and pray. We’re going to have to tarry until we’re endued with power from on high. Intercession.

Some of you are going to be mighty sorry. I don’t know what’s going to happen when you bury your loved one without the Lord Jesus Christ. And every clod that falls on that casket is going to say, “Lost, lost, lost, lost.” You live with them five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, and never witness and never shed a tear—they’re going to die and burn in hell, and you never warned them. You didn’t pray. You didn’t intercede. Number one, my dear friend: intercession.

Rogers, A. (2017). A Concern for the Lost. In Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Es 8:6). Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust.

Cultivate new approaches for Old Concepts

For the Lost

Number two: imagination. I believe that we’re going to have to take a completely new approach to reaching a completely new generation. Let me share a verse of Scripture with you: 1 Corinthians 9:22. Let start in verse 19: “For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” (1 Corinthians 9:19–22) By all means save some. Paul was saying, “I’ll do anything—I’ll be a missionary; I’ll be an evangelist; I’ll be a tentmaker; I will become like a Jew; I will become like a man who’s never heard the law of God—I’ll do whatever I can do to win men to Jesus Christ.”

Now, we better wake up. The churches today have gone to sleep at the switch. We built our stained-glass prison and chained the Lord Jesus Christ inside; we call them churches. We better wake up. We better use some imagination. That’s one reason I want us to build an activities building over here. I don’t think this activities building is going to be a cure-all. We’re not calling it a “recreation building.” We’re not calling it a “youth building.” We want to call it a “Christian activities building” because we want to emphasize fellowship, Bible study, prayer, evangelism, recreation, and every facet of a well-rounded life. We want to become all things to all men that we might gain people for the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s new. It will be different. But I have a burden on my heart for the lost people of this island, and we had better wake up. If we can provide and don’t provide, may God have mercy upon us.

Imagination—not just in this realm. But we need to put our heads together. We need to think. If you have some ideas about how we might get the job done better for Jesus, please tell me. If you don’t have time to have a conference with me or I’m too tied up, write it out. It may seem like a silly idea, but write it down. Let’s pool our thoughts prayerfully and carefully. How are we going to get the gospel out to as many people in as short a time as possible? Let’s become all things to all men.

Rogers, A. (2017). A Concern for the Lost. In Adrian Rogers Sermon Archive (Es 8:6). Signal Hill, CA: Rogers Family Trust.

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As His disciples, we must take heed what we hear (Mark 4:24) and how we hear (Luke 8:18), because God will hold us accountable. Listening to the wrong things, or listening to the right things with the wrong attitude, will rob us of truth and blessing. If we are faithful to receive the Word and share it, God will give us more; but if we fail to let our light shine, we will lose what we have. It is a solemn thing to hear the Word of God.

Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 201). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

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New Approaches for Old Concepts

Some of the new approaches in the twentieth century have been modifications of time-proven concepts of the past. The significance has not been with the concepts, but rather with the willingness to attempt new variations. 

Terry, J. M., Smith, E. C., & Anderson, J. (1998). Missiology: an introduction to the foundations, history, and strategies of world missions (p. 253). Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers.

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Charles Simeon

Simeon’s Life and Ministry

Born on September 24, 1759, Charles Simeon’s only distinction in childhood was that he was considered to be the ugliest boy in his school. After completing his education at Cambridge and being ordained, he accepted an appointment to Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge in 1782. The response to Simeon’s selection was one of strong opposition from the members of the church. For nearly ten years the congregation refused to listen to Simeon’s sermons by locking their pews so that even visitors would not have a place to sit. When Simeon rented chairs at his own expense and placed them in the aisles, the churchwardens threw them out into the street, forcing visitors to stand while he preached. Opposition to Simeon continued for another 20 years and even included incidents of student’s hurling bricks through his windows while he was preaching. He remained at Holy Trinity Church until his death, having preached there for 54 years.

Simeon’s Preaching

Simeon was an enthusiast, an evangelical. And for him, this meant a radical commitment to the rigorous study and proclamation of God’s Word—and God’s Word alone. This commitment is probably most evident in a statement he made in a letter to the publishers of his Horae Homileticae (his sermon outlines): “My endeavor is to bring out of Scripture what is there and not thrust in what I think might be there. I have a great jealousy on this head, never to speak more or less than I believe the mind of the Spirit in the passage I am expounding.”

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/250-years-the-legacy-of-charles-simeon-by-david-helm/

Holy Trinity Church was a center of evangelical witness and spiritual life in Cambridge, but Simeon’s preaching had a mixed reception there. Some didn’t like his gospel-centered preaching at all, and they locked their pews and would refuse to go in protest. The students, however, came in droves.

Simeon’s ministry had three emphases. One was his influence on preachers and preaching. From the 1810s on, he held weekly “conversation parties.” These were for young men seeking ordination, and anywhere from sixty to eighty men would show up each week for this time with Simeon. He taught them how to preach, and he taught them about preaching. Simeon had a threefold criterion for a sermon. He said you can ask these three questions: Does it humble a sinner? Secondly, does it exalt the Savior? And Thirdly, does it promote holiness?

He was not for the status quo, and he was not for nominalism. He was for a church that took the gospel and the Bible seriously.

https://www.5minutesinchurchhistory.com/charles-simeon/

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PURITANS

Puritans was the name given in the 16th century to the more extreme Protestants within the Church of England who thought the English Reformation had not gone far enough in reforming the doctrines and structure of the church; they wanted to purify their national church by eliminating every shred of Catholic influence. In the 17th century many Puritans emigrated to the New World, where they sought to found a holy commonwealth in New England. Puritanism remained the dominant cultural force in that area into the 19th century.

Many of them were graduates of Cambridge University, and they became Anglican priests to make changes in their local churches. They encouraged direct personal religious experience, sincere moral conduct, and simple worship services. Worship was the area in which Puritans tried to change things most; their efforts in that direction were sustained by intense theological convictions and definite expectations about how seriously Christianity should be taken as the focus of human existence.

https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/articles/teaching-content/what-puritanism/

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To Puritans in 16th and 17th century England, Catholicism represented idolatry, materialism and excess in violation of God's will. After formally separating from the Roman Catholic Church, the Puritans still felt the Church of England had retained too many remnants of Catholicism and needed to be reformed.

PRAYER:

The sermons of the Reformers and Puritans are not that different than ours. We’re saying essentially the same thing. What was so different was their prayer lives.

True prayer is putting ourselves into our petitions, crying out to God Almighty and praying in our prayers. The problem is not that we don’t pray, but rather that seldom we truly prayerfully pray in our prayers. What is this praying? The primary exercise of faith. Private prayerful praying is the work of the triune God. It has more to do with God than with us.

The giants of church history dwarf us because of the time and energy that they devoted to private prayer. They were Daniels in private and in public. Luther spent the first two hours of every day in prayer. He once said to Melanchton that he had so much to do that he needed to spend an extra hour in prayer. On the contrary, we too often see prayer as an interruption to our ambition.

Luther was not shy in is prayers. He would often pray loudly and boldly. He said praying was hard work. And he’s right. There is so much working against us in our prayers. Distraction arises in our cold heart and disturbance comes up in those around us.

In all of his busyness, Calvin spent hours in prayer every day. Unless we fix certain hours of every day in prayer, he said, it would slip from our memory. We must taste the sweetness of the fellowship of God in our prayer. We need to strive to grow in prayer.

The Puritans were the same way. They often would rise early, hours before sunrise, to fellowship with God in prayer. John Knox said that the prayers of the great cloud of witnesses rebuked us in our prayerlessness.

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/cultivating-private-prayer-as-a-pastor

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https://www.reformation21.org/blog/the-roots-of-puritan-worship

Our visits to a medieval service of 1413 and a Puritan service of 1643 reveal that huge changes have taken place. The Puritans reestablished the biblical basis for worship, engaged the common people in the praise of God, greatly simplified the service, made the Word of God central and pervasive, and emphasized spiritual and heartfelt devotion as opposed to ritual and set forms.[3]

What happened that explains this massive change in worship? It was the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

Though the Lutheran arm of the Reformation retained some man-made rituals and images from medieval worship, the Reformed arm pursued a more consistently biblical approach to worship. John Calvin (1509–1564), the great Reformer of Geneva, Switzerland, believed that worship is the soul of a righteous life; it is one of the twin pillars of Christianity, the other being the gospel of Jesus Christ.[8] He said, “We are not to seek from men the doctrine of the true worship of God, for the Lord has faithfully and fully instructed us how he is to be worshiped.” He based this upon the sufficiency of Christ to be our whole wisdom, as taught in Colossians 2. Like Paul, Calvin condemned “self-made religion” (or “will worship,” Col. 2:23, KJV). Adding human traditions to or making innovations in public worship creates spiritual bondage.[9] This subjection of worship to the law and gospel of Christ is characteristic of Reformed worship.

Puritan worship, at its core, is Reformed worship.[10] Malcolm Watts, in his book, What Is a Reformed Church,writes, “‘Reformed worship’ is worship that is conducted strictly according to God’s written Word, which is ‘the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.’”[11] William Perkins (1558–1602), one of the fathers of the Puritan movement, gave this definition of worship: “The worship or service of God is, when upon the right knowledge of God, we freely give him the honor that is proper to him, in our hearts according to his own will.”[12]

Puritan worship aimed to fulfill the mandate of Colossians 3:16, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” In tracing out the principles of Puritan worship, I will present its foundation, its rule, its songs, and its spirit.

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Effects of charismatic influence include greater concern for specific acts of the Holy Spirit, but even more a general turn toward subjective spirituality, even in churches where specific Pentecostal teachings are unknown. The great changes in church music that began to take place in the 1960s were almost all related to charismatic influences. Many congregations and fellowships began to sing newly written choruses and scripture texts set to catchy melodies. By the 1980s, church musicians were exploiting a full range of pop, folk, and even rock styles as settings for this new wave of song. The increasingly common practice of singing with a combination of guitar, drums, and synthesizer has begun to push aside the organ as the instrument of choice in many Protestant and some Catholic churches. Songs projected by an overhead onto a screen have supplemented or replaced the hymnbook in many places.

Noll, M. A. (2002). The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity (p. 182). Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

The general sources of revivalism are the Protestant emphasis on preaching, the Puritan emphasis on a noticeable conversion experience and the pietistic emphasis on warmhearted faith. To these may be added Solomon Stoddard’s belief that the Spirit works in “seasons of harvest.” By the early eighteenth century, the notion of periodic awakenings in reponse to preaching and resulting in renewed spiritual life had emerged.

Reid, D. G., Linder, R. D., Shelley, B. L., & Stout, H. S. (1990). In Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

The Great Awakening reached its zenith in the 1740s with the preaching tours of the Grand Itinerant, George Whitefield. His powerful delivery and strong appeals, often given in outdoor settings, made him a popular and effective preacher and set the model for other itinerants to follow. Whitefield continued to itinerate, and the revival moved South in the 1740s and 1750s, but by 1750 its influence had ebbed.

The effects of the Great Awakening were clear enough. Belief in awakenings became the commonly held legacy of the movement, based largely on Edwards’s apologetic work and on the experience in scores of churches. Detractors also came to the fore, producing Old (anti-revival) and New (pro-revival) Lights, indicative of the dividing effects that revivalism was always to have among American Protestants. Education also was affected, with several colleges founded by revival advocates. And in many congregations experiential piety replaced the religious formalism that had threatened Protestantism earlier in the century.

Whether the Great Awakening created the national consciousness needed for the Revolution is debated, but it clearly created a church consciousness among the majority of Protestants that helped make revivalism the staple of church life it became in the Second Awakening.

Reid, D. G., Linder, R. D., Shelley, B. L., & Stout, H. S. (1990). In Dictionary of Christianity in America. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

https://www.9marks.org/article/should-pastors-change-anything-first-year/