Sermon Tone Analysis

TEXT: Ephesians 5:21-32

TOPIC: The Kind of Church God Wants

Sunday Morning, January 18, 1998

Ephesians 5:21-33

21 Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God.

22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.

23 For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body.

24 Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.

25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; 26 That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, 27 That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.

28 So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies.

He that loveth his wife loveth himself.

29 For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church: 30 For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

31 For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh.

32 This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church.

Six times the Apostle Paul makes a direct reference to the “church,” in these twelve verses.

Another four times Paul refers to the church using the personal pronoun, “it.”

One thing is clear from the new testament: The church of the Lord Jesus Christ occupies a dominant place in the lives of Christians!

I believe in the absolute, essential, indispensable, role of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ still today.

Let me settle one issue early.

“You don’t have to go to church to become a Christian.

But a Christian will want to go to church.”

Why would any truly, born-again believer not want to be a part of the house of God?

The Psalmist said,

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. 2 My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? 3 My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? 4 When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.

5 Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

(Psalm 42:1-5)

ILLUSTRATION: A preacher was once approached by a group of unbelieving men and asked, “Preacher, you don’t really believe a person has to go to church in order to go to heaven do you?”

The preacher thought a moment and then responded by saying, “Let me ask you a question.

‘Why would you want to go to heaven to spend an eternity with those you work so very hard to avoid here on earth?

Why go to heaven where you will spend an eternity worshipping and praising One whom you never worshipped or praise here on earth?’”

Having said all that, let me ask you a question today that serves as title of my message today.

First Baptist Icard, what kind of church are we?

What kind of church do we have here at First Baptist Icard?

Are we a New Testament, bible-believing, gospel-preaching church?

You helped answer that question one year ago this month when we adopted our church’s long range plans.

This is what we said about ourselves then.

First Baptist Church Icard is a fellowship of caring Christians, forgiven by the grace of God, united under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Serving Him, through the leadership and power of the Holy Spirit, we seek to: (and then we stated what we believe the five major purposes of the church is)

1. Evangelize

2. Disciple

3. Minister

4. Fellowship

5. Worship

A better question might be “what kind of a church does God want us to be?”

As your pastor I have been praying about the kind of church God wants us to be.

Let me give you four characteristics or qualities I pray we will become.

I.

A SOUL-WINNING CHURCH

Our first purpose within our mission statement has to do with evangelism.

We understand evangelism to be a priority of a New Testament church.

Our purpose statement says we are to “witness to our community and the world around us of Christ’s love and His saving grace which leads to eternal life.”

Evangelism has certainly received its share of emphasis here in our church.

I have preached it as the “main thing” of the church.

I have said the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing and the main thing is evangelism.

What have we done?

Since I came as your pastor in 1990 we have seen close to 5000 members out in the streets, the highways and the hedges in Icard, Connelly Springs, Hildebran and Hickory witnessing and inviting people to church.

Those people have made over 13,500 contacts for the Lord.

We have shared Christ with the lost 440 times.

And praise God, we have seen some 173 persons say yes to Jesus on Monday nights!

In eight revival campaigns we have witnessed an incredible number of decisions for Christ.

A conservative estimate would be in the neighborhood of 350 salvations, 200 decisions of renewal or rededication, and many other significant decisions.

Add to this decisions we see for Christ from Sunday to Sunday just as Sheila Taylor trusted Christ just two Sundays ago.

As a result of our evangelist effort our church has consistently ranked among the highest in the state for baptisms year after year.

Over the decade of the nineties we have witnessed some 540 people profess their faith in Christ through believer’s baptism right here in this baptistery.

A large number of our members have been trained in effective methods of sharing their faith, everything from the Roman Road, to One Day Soul-winning training, to CWT to People Sharing Jesus.

Right now nine new members are active in learning to share the gospel through Continuous Witness Training.

But are we the kind of Soul-winning church that God wants us to be? No, not yet.

Acts 2:47 says that the Lord added daily to the church those who were being saved.

You say, “Pastor surely you don’t expect us to win a soul to Christ everyday do you?”

If we’re to become a soul-winning church then our model is the New Testament church which witnessed daily conversions.

When we begin winning, baptizing and adding 365 new members per year, then we are a New Testament Soul-winning church!

II.

A DISCIPLEMAKING CHURCH

Another major purpose of our church is to disciple every member.

Our mission statement says it this way, “equip our fellow Christians for spiritual growth in their personal lives and train them for God’s work.”

Let me say to you with a broken heart that it has taken me nearly fifteen years of pastoral ministry to come to grips with the critical issue of disciplemaking.

Although I have always understood the biblical mandate to “make disciples” and have often experienced the same frustration as many of you when many, (usually about one-half of all new believers) quickly fall away from the church, I am just know coming to understand the strategy needed to truly make disciples.

I cannot share with you glowing statistics about the number of members we have seen experience spiritual maturity and discipleship, (and that is an indictment in and of itself), I can share with you our newfound commitment to develop a proven disciplemaking process.

A process that is well underway.

We will not turn our church into a disciplemaking church overnight.

Like so many other churches, we have not done it so long, that it will take time to do it right.

There are many things about disciplemaking that we do not know, but one thing we know is that it takes time to make disciples.

If it took our Lord Jesus three years to make just 12 disciples, then understand it make take us even longer to make disciples.

But we will.

III.

A PRAYING CHURCH

Another area or quality that must be developed in our church is prayer.

Strangely enough, our mission statement and long range planning has little to say about our prayer ministry or our need to improve in this area.

It’s difficult to track of the number of people actually praying.

Usually those who consistently participate in prayer within the church are those whose lives show the greatest consistency in their Christian walk.

Our church believes in prayer and practices prayer.

Recently we examined the ministries that focus on prayer.

We were surprised to learn the large number of groups, classes, organizations and members who are involved in prayer.

The downside of this kind of praying within the church is that much of our praying is simply token praying.

We too often take prayer too lightly.

When we close our eyes and bow our heads we should open our minds and lift our hearts to the very throne room of God Almighty.

Thank God for a small band of faithful members who have met for years in an upper room for prayer every Sunday morning.

Thank God for members who come to the church to pray or kneel at their prayer closets to lift this church to God everyday.

Thank God for the members who still recognize Wednesday nights as the hour of power with God through prayer.

Thank God also for our recent focus on prayer through Celebrate Jesus 2000.