Good Church

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

It is a privilege to stand before you today with such great an opportunity to dive into the Word of God.

I want to say once again how thankful I am for the group God has put together here at Durbin Memorial Baptist Church. This past week the church came together as whole to put on an absolutely wonderful Vacation Bible School. So many devoted their time, efforts, and resources to get everything ready for a really great three days of fun and worship.

It is no secret that we are small congregation in our corner of Clay’s Ferry here in Lexington Kentucky. Some may ask why we would put so much effort into an event such as Vacation Bible School. The answer to that is three fold.

First, building up the next generation in the admonition of the Lord is vitally important. With the plethora of enticing and destruction vices found all around us in this world, children need to see the great Joy there is in learning about and serving the Lord.

Secondly, it is integral to the DNA of our church to promote the Word of God. Our first Core Value says that we share God’s message with the World. Our Second Core Value says that we build our lives and our church around the truthfulness of God’s Word. We want to promote that in as many ways as we are equipped to do so.

And the third reason we put great effort into all that we do is faithfulness. We put for our best efforts to be faithful to the calling that God has given to us. As sinners who have been reconciled to the Perfect God, by His great grace, our lives, our efforts are owed to Him! Through faith in Jesus Christ we have become great victors! Everywhere we go, and in everything we do, we should be carrying with us the fragrance of Jesus Christ.

We see this analogy used in 2 Corinthians.

2 Corinthians 2:14–17 ESV

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.

Our Great Savior, Jesus Christ, leads us in triumphal procession. We must not and do not do things to peddle out a false representation of God’s Word, but instead we sincerely speak of Christ with truth in love in all the opportunities we are given. As we are led by the Lord in our lives, as a triumphal procession, some latch on to the aroma of Christ, others will reject. It is not our job to be their nostrils, rather we just continue on praising the Savior and extending the invitation.

Church, we are simply called to be faithful and diligently steward our resources giving glory to the God who saved us.

That is why we put effort into ministries such as Vacation Bible School. We are asking God to use us to be the aroma of Christ. We evaluate our success as a church not by numerical growth, but in faithfulness to live our lives for the glory of God. Whether that be VBS, personal evangelism, or even simply participating in the life of the church.

For the next couple of weeks, both on Sunday morning and Sunday evening we will be taking a look at ecclesiology. Ecclesiology is a fancy word for the study of the church. We will not be able to cover all aspects of the church in this period, but it is an area that we should be familiar with.(USED THIS IN LAST WEEKS SERMON) We should be thinking about the form and function of the church, especially as we are begin to review our proposed constitutional revision.

Many think that the church as an organized, functional body is irrelevant or unnecessary. But as we stand upon the Word of God and see God’s instruction for the church in the New Testament, it becomes evident just how important a healthy, functioning, local body of believers is and how God uses the local church to accomplish His Will.

This morning we are beginning to look at 3 John. Much like in 2 John, the Elder pastor John is writing to his dear friend Gaius. In this letter we see John addressing what has been happening in Gaius’ local church context. This letter is a mixture of commendation and admonishment. All centered around helping Gaius’ personal and corporate ministry flourish for the glory of God. John, the Elder Pastor of the church in Ephesus, is writing to Gaius, whose church is likely located somewhere else in Asia Minor, to encourage and correct church function.

We should note from this that what our church does matters! If the Holy Spirit inspired John to write these words and provide insight on church function, then we cannot understate the importance of the church! If you profess Christ as your Savior, you absolutely should connect with a local church. And if you profess Christ as your Savior, you absolutely should seek for your church to be Christ-centered, and God honoring in everything that it does. It should be our God-given desire to work with other believers and be a “Good Church.”