History of the Alliance

Introduction to Series: Where We’ve Been

This year our church will turn 124 years old.

in that time the church has experience

over a dozen pastors

2 world wars

2 worldwide pandemics

The beginning of flight

the moon landing

the beginning of the Christian and Missionary Alliance

FAC and it’s people, that’s us, has seen over a century of victories and disappointments, incredible grace and hardship.

I began to think, on this side of a pandemic, looking into the future, that we needed to begin by looking into the past. We need to see our history to understand how to go forward.

I want you to think of the future as a vehicle. A car or tank or truck. IT is the way that we will get into the future. And next month we will look at that.

But I want you to think of the past as the road the vehicle drives on. A vehicle is great but needs a road to get to where it needs to be.

Over the next 4 weeks we will discover a road to help us understand how we will move into the future as a church.

Looking back to see Christ in our history will clear the way to see Christ in our future

Now let’s get into the message for this morning as we begin to look into where we have been.

The History of the C&MA

RIght now one of the only things we have in common is that we don’t know what is going to happen next. None of us can know the future. If we rewind 2 years of our lives there are many many things we could not have predicted. I have actually learned I am terrible at predicting the future.

We spend a lot of time working at predicting the future.

in fact, anxiety is the work of predicting a future that may or may not happen.

So any time spend in anxiety is the work of prediction of future events.

But what if we could set that down and not have to worry about the future, or fret about what comes next?

What if we had a road that could help us to know how we can get to where we need to be?

Talk about a time when anxiety got the best of you and you tried to predict a future that ended up not happening as badly as you thought?

This morning we are going to look at this idea, from the words of AB Simpson

All of Jesus to All the World

We are going to watch a short video to look at the history of the Alliance. I can’t tell it better than this and it will help us to understand where we are coming from.

It’s about 10 minutes but helps us to capture a picture of how our movement of churches, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, began.

The most important thing we can understand about our history is how our history has viewed Jesus Christ.

Our movement began in 1897 with a few people and some newly saved immigrants who had come into America looking for a new life.

We are now in 88 countries, have 22,000 churches worldwide and have over 6,200,000 members of which we are a part.

But all that data means little compared to who Christ is and how we see Him.

I am going to take the rest of the time to talk through how we view Christ. We have a statement about Jesus called the Fourfold Gospel. It is one of the distinguishing marks of the CMA. Not that we are the only ones to believe it but that we highlight it as a primary understanding of how we do ministry

Christ as Savior

Christ as Sanctifier

Christ as Healer

Christ as Coming King

Christ as Savior is how we find Him

Each one of these areas is intended to enlarge our understanding of the greatness of Christ and His mission for the world.

Christ alone is the one who saves.

English Standard Version Chapter 14

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Christ names Himself as the way. He is salvation itself. Prior to this passage Christ speaks peace. He tells us don’t let your hearts be troubled. Why? Because God is preparing a place for us and Christ knows the way.

We were lost and now we are found.

The fourfold Gospel communicates that salvation is found in no one else. It is in Christ alone.

AB Simpson wrote a book called the fourfold Gospel in which he details each area and how Christ is the only one who can fulfill that.

He writes:

“And they cried with a loud voice, saying, salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.” Rev. vii. 10. This is the cry of the ransomed around the throne when the universe is dissolving in wreck, and terror is filling the hearts of men. It is the first cry of the ransomed after they reach their home and have seen all that it means to be lost and to be saved, while the earth is reeling, and the elements are melting, and all things are quaking and trembling in the first approaches of the great catastrophe.” -AB Simpson

We need saving. And we often look to many different places to find salvation. But we need to be reminded that only Christ can offer true salvation.

Modernity is defined by our options and our desire for those options. We not only have options but we desire options. We don’t want to be stuck with just one thing.

The real problem with that is while we have many options, the issue is how well those options work. We may desire that something works and saves us but it does not have the ability to save us.

I went paddleboarding for the first time in Uruugay. We went in the ocean and it was a beautiful but somewhat windy day. One of the missionaries, Matt, runs an adventure camp and has a good number of paddleboards. He is a great teacher and sent me on my way. I paddled into the waves on my knees on the board and then tried to stand up. And between my size, the wind, and the waves, I couldn’t stand up. There are no less than 9 videos on my phone of me attempting to stand up and falling into the water. My wife was recording and I think she was enjoying the folly of it.

No matter what I did I could not stand. Even the small waves knocked me off my balance.

We often live like that, standing on things that we just can’t stay up on.

- Christ has offered a firm foundation that will hold us up no matter how high the waves reach.

How have you experienced Christ as Savior?

Christ as Sanctifier is how we follow Him

Christ is the way, He is also the truth

English Standard Version Chapter 14

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Christ is the way and He is the truth.

He leads us into all truth, forming and shaping us into His image.

That is the process of sanctification.

Sanctification is a fancy way of saying that being changed and transformed into Christlikeness.

When we are sanctified we are made more and more like Christ.

FOllowing Christ is not getting a ticket to heaven and then getting a pass to do whatever we want.

Following Christ is a relationship, it is ongoing and daily.

As we follow Him the parts of us that don’t fit any longer are chipped away and broken through repentance and faith.

And we are made more and more like Christ.

Again, from Simpson about sanctification

“It comes through the personal indwelling of Jesus. He does not put righteousness into the heart simply, but He comes there personally Himself to live. Words are weak; they, indeed, are utterly inadequate to express this thought. When we arrive at complete despair of all other ways we learn this truth. And Jesus Christ Himself comes into the heart and lives His own life there, and so becomes the sanctification of the soul. -AB Simpson

Sanctification is not about doing better, it is not about making better choices. It is the reality of Christ living in us and changing us as we give Him more and more access to our lives.

Christianity cannot be done and never has been done without Christ.

How have you experienced Christ as Sanctifier?

Christ as Healer is how we see Him

English Standard Version Chapter 14

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

Christ is our Savior and foundation.

Christ is our sanctification and means of salvation

Christ is also our life. He is the ongoing means of life for us.

The CMA believes in healing for the mind, body, and soul. There is no part of our lives that Christ cannot access or does not have supernatural sovereignty over.

Christ is the One who heals our primary wound in being separated from God. Salvation is the ultimate healing

But God is attentive to our other wounds

physical

spiritual

emotional

Christ can and desires to heal us. Simpson knew that biblically and through His experience with Christ. He was healed of a chronic sickness and that changed His life forever.

This is from the introduction to the fourfold Gospel

“Addressing an audience in London many years ago, Dr. Simpson related the following experiences which marked three great epochs in his life: “Some twenty-seven years ago, I foundered for ten months. in the waters of despondency, and I got out of them just by believing in Jesus as my Saviour. About twelve years ago I got into another deep experience of conviction, and I got out of that by believing in Jesus as my Sanctifier. After years of teaching and waiting on Him, the Lord Jesus Christ showed me four years ago that it was His blessed will to be my complete Saviour for body as well as soul.””

Simpson believed Christ biblically and knew Christ experientially. He trusted what He knew about the Scriptures and applied it to His own life.

How have you experienced Christ as Healer?

English Standard Version Chapter 53

4  Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

5  But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

Christ as Coming King is how we worship Him.

Christ has ascended to Heaven as savior and will come again as King

English Standard Version Chapter 14

14 “Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. 4 And you know the way to where I am going.”

Jesus tells us explicitely about Himself that He is the way and the truth and the life. HE is Savior, Sanctifier, HEaler and Coming King.

HE is victorious over sin and death and will come again as King.

We are saved by His sacrifice and are awaiting His return as King.

Simpson writes:

“This cannot be the publication of the Gospel, but must be HIS PERSONAL, VISIBLE, AND GLORIOUS APPEARING. The Gospel is to be widely diffused; His truth is to prevail; His cause is to triumph, but He is coming personally, and He is infinitely more than even His truth and cause.” - AB Simpson

— The Fourfold Gospel Annotated by Albert B. Simpson

https://a.co/2mh89qS

When Christ arrives it will be personal, visible and glorious.

The fulfillment of everything we have been waiting for.

God has put it into the heart of humanity to long for more. We desire in our waiting. We long in our waiting.

I can prove it by asking about the last time you checked where a package was that you ordered from Amazon?

its three stops away!

We long for more and it is found in Christ and in His return.

English Standard Version Chapter 4

16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.

All that we hope for we find in Christ. Every longing, every bit of impatience is satisfied in Christ.

ALl of JEsus.

The Call of the Alliance is to know Christ in such a way that we take all of who Christ is to all the world.

We can trust Christ for all of our longings and hurts.

And when we do we can see that we can trust Him for our neighbors longings and hurts as well.

Don’t stop until Christ is your Savior, Sanctifier, healer and coming King

And don’t stop until He is your neighbors as well.

How can your longing remind you of Christ our Coming King?

One of the ways we can know Christ as Savior, Sanctifier, Healer and coming King is through communion.