Rob Morgan - What's Right with the Church-
Rob Morgan - What's Right with the Church?
Morgan
Church
What’s Right with the Church? A Pocket Paper
from
The Donelson Fellowship
*______________* *Robert J. Morgan
*July 1, 2007 ---- The other day I saw a little brochure that said on the cover, “Why I Never Take a Bath.” Being curious, I thought I’d see what it said and why the author had an aversion to bathing. As it turned out, the man who wrote it had some very good reasons for never going near a bathtub or a shower: 1. I was forced to bathe as a child. 2. People who bathe are hypocrites; they think they’re cleaner than anyone else. 3. There are so many different kinds of soap; I can’t decide which is best. 4. It’s too boring. 5. I wash only on special occasions, like Christmas and Easter 6. The soapmakers are only after your money. 7. The last time I bathed, someone was rude to me. 8. I’m too dirty to get clean; I’d clog up the drain. 9. I will bathe only when I find a bathroom that is exactly right for me. 10. I can watch other people bathing on television. 11. I can bathe on the golfcourse. 12. The bathroom is never the right temperature and I don’t like the sound of the plumbing. Well, if you don’t see the point to that little brochure I’m not going to take time to explain it; but I do want to say that in our series of messages on the ABCs of the Christian walk, we’re coming to day to C = Church. A lot of people are wondering what’s gone wrong with the church. The /Times of London/ recently ran an article on difficulties facing congregations in the United Kingdom, and it was so interesting I circulated it among our staff. The article opened with a disturbing paragraph about the condition of many Anglican congregations: “Churches in Britain are a ‘toxic cocktail’ of bullying and terror, as parish priests struggle to lead congregations dominated by neurotic worshippers who spread havoc with gossip and manipulation.” The article said that “peace and love are in desperately short supply in the pews,” and that increasing numbers of clergy are succumbing to a new illness, dubbed “Irritable Clergy Syndrome.” (“Evil-Minded Parishioners Making Life Hell for Clergy,” by Ruth Gledhill in The Times On-Line, December 9, 2006, accessed on December 11, 2006, at http:~/~/www.timesonline.co.uk~/article~/0,,2-2494814,00.html.) Well, we’re all occasionally irritable, and I’m going to preach an evening message soon about irritability. I myself have been afflicted with that problem on occasion—I call it Pastoral Ministry Syndrome--or PMS. We can all be irritable at times, and churches can become unhealthy places. But I don’t want to talk about what’s wrong with the church. We need to focus on what’s /right/ with the church. I have a deep respect for an appreciation of the church. When Jesus Christ returned to heaven, He established an organism and an organization—an enterprise and entity—to carry on His work and evangelize the nations until He comes again. He didn’t establish a school or a college. He didn’t establish a civic club. He didn’t establish a corporation or a labor union. He didn’t establish a men’s club or a women’s group. He didn’t establish a political movement, or a city or a state or a nation. He didn’t establish a charity or a resort. He established His church. He said, “I will build my church.” There has never been an organization like it in human history and there never will be again. It has a limited engagement; it began on the Day of Pentecost and it will end at the soon-approaching rapture, and it is commissioned to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ in word and in deed to the ends of the earth. It isn’t a perfect institution, and the churches we read about in the New Testament were fraught with problems. But it’s the church that has changed the world in so many ways. For example, the great humanitarian movements that have changed history have been church-related programs for helping the needy—schools and orphanages, the abolition of slavery, the reform of prisons, and the rights of the oppressed. All this has originated with the church. Take hospitals, for example. Healing was a part of our Lord’s earthly ministry, and from the very beginning churches have been concerned for the sick and diseased. During the first three centuries, Christians could offer little organized help to the sick, for believers were outlawed and persecuted. They did what they could privately. But when Christianity was legalized after AD 313, things changed. At the great council of the church in Nicaea in AD 325, the first of the great councils of the early church, bishops directed that hospices to be established in every city to shelter the poor and sick. Shortly afterward, St. Basil built the first hospital (as such) in Caesarea of Cappadocia, and soon hospitals began appearing in many cities. In his book, /How Christianity Changed the World, /Alvin J. Schmidt wrote, “Nearly four hundred years after Christians began erecting hospitals, the practice drew the attention of the Arabs in the eighth century. Impressed with the humanitarian work of Christian hospitals, the Arab Muslims began constructing hospitals in Arab countries. Thus, Christ’s influence, which moved His followers to build and operate hospitals, spilled over into the Arab-Islamic world, demonstrating once more that Christianity was a major catalyst in changing the world…. Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan had become more than merely an interesting story.” (Alvin J. Schmidt, /How Christianity Changed the World /(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001, 2004), pp. 157-158.) Christianity is a force for good in this world, and I believe with all my heart that when churches are healthy and functioning as God intends, they’re the most wonderful environments on earth for worshipping God, for maintaining our morale, for caring for others, for learning the truths of the Bible, for growing to be better people, for developing relationships, and for raising our families in the nurture of the Lord. One of the best paragraphs in the Bible on maintaining healthy church relationships is Hebrews 10:19-25. This passage begins with a premise, and then presents a three-fold plan, and today I’d like for us to read that passage together. /Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is His body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience, and having our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching./ *The Premise of our Church: We Can Enter Directly Into God’s Presence * *(vv. 19-21)* Verses 19-21 present the premise of this passage—we can live in God’s direct presence. It says: /Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is His body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith./ The book of Hebrews harkens back to the Old Testament and to the story of the Tabernacle in the Wilderness, which we studied in a series of sermons two or three years ago. It’s one of the greatest pictures in the Bible. When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, they stopped at Mount Sinai where God gave the Ten Commandments and also a detailed set of architectural plans for a portable worship center called the Tabernacle. The Tabernacle is the most incredible structure ever built, and fifty chapters in the Bible are devoted to it. The innermost room of the Tabernacle was the Holy of Holies. It was here that God resided in terms of His localized presence among His people. Only one person was allowed to enter this room—the High Priest, and he could only enter once a year, on the Day of Atonement. In this room was the famous Ark of the Covenant, and to this place each year the High Priest would bring to the sacrificial blood of atonement. The multitudes of Israelites were undoubtedly curious to see what was inside that room. Aren’t you curious to know what certain places are like when you can’t visit them? That’s why certain magazines present photographic tours of homes of the stars. During the Reagan administration, /Architectural Digest/ presented a photo shoot of the president’s bedroom and private living areas in the White House. Almost no photographs have ever been allowed of that area. As a result, that issue of the magazine is a sort of collector’s issue. I was in Washington last month and I walked around the White House, but I couldn’t get in because there were barriers and fences and gates and snipers on the roof. But I confess that as I saw the windows that serve as the President’s private living quarters I was curious to know what it looked like on the inside. Well, in the Old Testament, the Holy of Holies was the room in the center of the Tabernacle (and later of the Temple) that served, in effect, as the private living quarters of Almighty God. Only the High Priest could enter this room and only once a year, on Yom Kippur. But when Jesus died on the cross, at the very moment of His death according to Matthew 27:51, the veil—the thick curtain that sealed off this room of the temple—suddenly and mysterious split in two, as though an invisible hand ripped it apart. Hebrews 10 explains the significance. Jesus Christ is our Great High Priest, and the Old Testament rituals were simply foreshadowings of His work on the cross. When He shed His blood for us, He made it possible for us to be justified and reconciled to God. We can enter into God’s presence now through faith, into the Holy of Holies. We can boldly go where no one could go before. By receiving His gift of pardon and eternal life, we can know God and be His friend and live in His presence. This is the primary distinction between Israel in the Old Testament and the Church in the New Testament. The Israelites came to Jerusalem to worship God and were represented before Him by a priest. But as Christians and members of His body, we can worship Him anywhere and everywhere because through Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit indwells us and lives in our hearts. We have confidence to enter the Most Holy Pace by the blood of Jesus Christ and we have a great High Priest, Jesus Christ the Righteous One. That’s the premise of this passage. That’s the premise of our church. The second half of this paragraph goes on with the implications of that as it relates to the church. We are partners with God in the building of His work, and the key phrase in these verses are the words “Let us….” Notice the five “Let us” phrases in these verses. *Let Us Confess our Sins* First, let us confess our sins and draw near to God with a clean heart. Look at verse 22: /Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. /Since we’re friends of God, assembled into a group of likeminded worshippers, let’s draw near to Him. And notice how the writer states it. We can draw near because we are not hindered by an evil conscience. Many people are hindered from going to church by a guilty conscience. I’ve had people to say to me, “I can’t go to church the way I’m living right now. It would be hypocritical. I can’t live the way I am and then come to church on Sunday and pretend to be a good Christian.” And I can appreciate that feeling. But this passage says that we can come before Him having our hearts sprinkled form an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. What does that mean? Some people think that it refers to the blood of Jesus on the inside and the baptismal waters on the outside. The blood of Jesus cleanses our hearts, and when we’re baptized it’s symbolic of this cleansing and washing. Other people believe that it’s a reference to the Old Testament’s regulations regarding the priests. Before the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies, he had to offer a blood sacrifice and then to wash and bathe himself top to bottom so that he was perfectly pure and clean on both the inside and outside of his life. But the main point, here, is that we can’t approach the holiness of God if we’re covered with sin. We need to be and to feel forgiven as we live in God’s presence. I read the other day in a devotional book called /Voices of the Faithful /about a missionary woman in South Asia who was walking down the street of her city alongside her husband just as the sun was going down. She failed to see a huge hole in the sidewalk that was not covered by concrete. Her foot went into the hole, and her entire leg was in the sewer. It was as loathsome and foul as you can possible imagine. Her husband and a passerby helped extricate her, but her leg was covered with waste, and the stench was terrible and something like thick, black muck covered her leg up to her knee. She said that when she got home she knew she needed deep cleansing and she scrubbed and scrubbed to get all that filth removed. But afterward, when she again felt clean, she realized that without the cleansing of the blood of Jesus, the stench of her sins was just as great. And just as wonderful is the feeling of being cleansed on the inside as on the outside. You don’t have to live with guilt any longer. I don’t know what you may feel guilty about, but when you confess it as best you know how and turn from it with God’s help and ask for His forgiveness and cleansing, it’s given instantly. We can draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and our bodies washed in pure water. *Let Us Cherish Our Doctrine* The second “Let Us” is in verse 23: /Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful. /The phrase “hold unswervingly” is one word in the Greek – κατέχω. It means to cherish and value and hold fast. I can tell you that there are many churches in this city and in this nation that do not preach the inspiration, the infallibility, the inerrancy, and the authority of Scripture as we do. I read the other day that in Seattle, Washington, Washington, there is an Episcopal pastor (priest) named Rev. Ann Holmes Redding who was featured in a major article in the Sunday edition of the Seattle Times. She is very unusual because she is both an Episcopal priest and a practicing Muslim. The only possible way that can happen is to give up the historic and biblical doctrine of Jesus Christ, because Muslims don’t believe that Jesus was God Himself. They acknowledge Jesus as a historical figure and as a great prophet, but they deny that He died on the cross and rose from the dead. And they deny His deity. There are many other contradictions between Christianity and Islam, but nothing is more central than our doctrine of the person of Jesus Christ, whose identity is at the core of Scripture. That isn’t a problem for Dr. Redding because she says that she believes that the Trinity is an idea about God that cannot be taken literally, and that Jesus is not God; He is only “divine” in the way that all humans are “divine.” Her bishop had something to say about this. He declared that Dr. Redding’s declaration of being both Christian and Muslim is “exciting in terms of interfaith understanding.” (From Al Mohler’s blog, “Clueless in Seattle: Can You Be Both a Christian and a Muslim?” posted on June 20, 2007 at http:~/~/www.albertmohler.com~/blog.php.) I’m not bashing the Episcopalians, but this is another in thousands of illustrations of how churches across America are losing the distinctive power of their theology. The writer of Hebrews tells us here to hold fast to our profession of faith and hope. He says that since we can enter into the Holy of Holies through a new and living way, let us confess our sins, let us cherish our beliefs, and finally let us attend our services. *Let Us Attend our Services* The last three “Let Us” commandments have to do with the encouragement we find as we meet with one another in regular worship. The text goes on to say: /And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds. Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching./ / / In other words, let’s be faithful to becoming positive influences in our local congregations, devoted to faithful attendance and to a consistent ministry of love and good works. I read of a pastor who worried that things weren’t going well in his church so he asked one of his deacons, “What’s wrong with our church? Is it ignorance or apathy?” The deacons replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care!” Well, we do care, and we do care about one another. One of the reasons I love the church so much is because my parents were committed to it while I was growing up. They didn’t just attend when it was convenient; we were there Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, and for special revival meetings twice a year. I knew it was important to them, and as a result it became important to me. It’s easy to grow critical, to complain, to feel neglected, and to ask, “What’s wrong with the church?” After all, we’re made up of many people of varying levels of maturity from many backgrounds and with diverse opinions on many subjects. But let’s take the biblically positive approach. We are people called to live in the very presence of God Himself, and we can boldly enter the Holies of Holies and be friends of God. So let’s draw near to Him each day. Let’s hold firmly to our faith. And let’s consider one another, how we can stimulate each other to love and good works. Don’t forsake the assembling of yourselves together as some do, but be faithful to His church—especially because we’re closer to the coming of Christ than we’ve ever been before.