My Five Year Plan (part 2)

Father in heaven we come before you this morning just thankful To be here thankful to be with those that you have called your own that you have called to yourself

Father as we look to you your word what it says about The church would just pray that you would bless our time strengthen us as we seek to encourage one another to love and good works and to Be a body that is well equipped to Minister the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ father. We pray for these things in Christ's name. Amen Okay, my cell phone is off oh

I thought it was off. I Turned it off. I don't know how it turned itself back on stop that.

It's got a mind of its own Just give me the little thing.

Okay, there we go I Hate that okay So last week we started talking about my own personal five -year plan to transform the church but before I start kind of reviewing

I wanted to Bring in the TBN newsletter And I do this only to embarrass myself

There's somebody here in this newsletter and by the way, you might wonder how do you get this newsletter?

if you'd like to get it See me after class. I Once gave money to a man who's on this page right here

His name is Dwight Thompson and because I did that now I can never get my name off their their mailing list

So that's the only reason I want to bring it up. There is Dwight Thompson. You can well you can't see him But I I did want to mention there is a

Philosophy of ministry that the TBN has which is what what is their philosophy of ministry?

What's that? Show me the money.

Yeah What movie was that Jerry something or other I Don't think that's a good philosophy of ministry

But it might be the philosophy of ministry of this of this operation here because basically if you have enough money

You can get on there error If you send enough money, you can get a gift You can get acknowledged over the air all those kind of things but yeah, show me the money would be a good way to summarize it if you were gonna start a church right now and You listen to the church growth gurus, what would you do?

What would they advise you to do Take a survey Find out what what the people in your area wants and then give them what they want

Old song by the kinks give the people what they want Probably most of you don't know that song

What else would you do if you're starting one right now and you're listening to the people who say? You want to grow the church?

What would you do? I'll tell you what you wouldn't do. What wouldn't you do?

expositional preaching You wouldn't play hymns. You wouldn't there are a lot of things that you wouldn't do and they're all the things that the

Bible says do so Last week we started talking about the three roles of the churches to fill and I mentioned last week that they are first exalting

God through appropriate worship secondly evangelizing the Unbelieving community and thirdly edifying or building up the individual members of the local congregation three

E's Exalting evangelizing edifying or equipping

We talked about exalting God about the idea of not being man -centered, but of being

God centered of making him first And we were getting down to or we started with the six elements of a proper worship service

And we mentioned public reading of Scripture Paul writes to Timothy that he needs to give attention to the public reading of Scripture Why is that?

well, I suppose it's because God likes his word to be the center of Worship of a worship service and it is good for us to hear the

Word of God Secondly Our second of the six elements of worship service

There must be profound Preaching of the Word of God and again, this goes contrary to everything we hear today in fact, you know, what was the big thing about the

The emerging church the emergent church, what was their big conversation

There shouldn't just be one person up here giving an authoritative message there should be kind of a discourse a conversation a chat between There really even shouldn't even be a pulpit should be somebody sitting here and let's just all chat about things and That would be lovely a

Pooling of ignorance as we used to call it, but that's not what we're called to let's look at 1st

Timothy 2 12 1st Timothy 2 12.

Let me see how much context I want to give that here. Well This this just has to do.

Oh, yeah I Just want to make the the simple illustration We won't spend much time on this but that needs to be a man and not a woman

Paul says I do not permit a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man rather She is to remain quiet can't have women elders in fact when

I was I Don't know how many saw this but I this kind of amazed me.

I don't know if you saw this but there is a seminary now Southwestern Baptist seminary,

I think it's in Texas somewhere like Waco or Waco or something and they actually have a

Muslim student at the school and a little bit of controversy surrounding that and I posted on Facebook in an unbelieving friend

Asked the question. Well, what's really kind of wrong with that? and what was funny to me was while I was answering her

I thought I Want to say now listen to this. I want to say

Well in order to have persons Prepared for ministry and then

I thought boy Steve you are really waffling here. Why? because we know that Let's just be candid here.

Women are not to be trained For ministry in other words, I mean if they had a wife track, that'd be fine, but we're talking about getting people prepared to preach and teach the

Bible and and That wouldn't be right. So I'm just like I did. I really didn't want to get into the

Side show that I knew would go with this woman about you know, why can't women be pastors and everything?

I mean if there's a more pointless thing in life than arguing Doctrine with unbelievers.

I don't know what it is Right, does that make sense? Because they want to argue about the

Bible even though they don't understand it and don't believe it So I just said I just said, you know to train

Pastors I just skipped over the whole issue, but this is that is an issue Sadly today, but why do you think

I would even have a problem with a Muslim being in a seminary? For those of you who didn't see it on Facebook Why do you think that would be a problem?

What's the big deal? So there's a Muslim in a Christian seminary well, yeah,

I mean it's How can two walk together unless they agree right I mean and and and so what we really have ultimately is people giving they give their money to a

Christian seminary to equip men to teach and preach the Word of God and then we're gonna allow somebody in who is

Of a completely different religion You know who believes that Jesus was a prophet faked his death on the cross

Right. He wasn't even he was not even killed on the cross and So, why would we have somebody at that like that at our seminary that would be a complete waste of time and money in Really kind of a fraud.

So this is kind of a controversy that's going on down there But talking about preaching the word let's look at 2nd

Timothy for a Familiar passage, but again, I think it's just important to bring emphasis to this

Language because it is courtroom language You see this a lot in the Old Testament God even calls as witnesses

Sometimes all of creation the Sun the stars and he says I want all of creation as witnesses to what

I'm about to charge To you and listen to what he says or the charge.

He's going to give somebody listen what Paul writes in 2nd Timothy chapter 4 beginning of verse 1

I Charge you now listen to the witnesses in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus Some pretty compelling witnesses that you know, it's kind of like Paul saying here's the contract

Timothy And by the way, you're signing it whether you know it or not Here's your commission witnessed by God the

Father and Jesus Christ Christ Jesus Who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and by his kingdom just to remind you of who

Jesus Christ is Preach the word Be ready in season and out of season reprove rebuke exhort or an exhort with complete patience and teaching

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching but have itching ears, but having itching ears

They will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions What drives me here's what drives me nuts

Somebody might come here and they may or may not like it. I mean that's beside the point but if somebody tells me that they go to a church because The preaching makes them feel good

It seems relevant to their life It's something their kids really enjoy It gives me something to talk about at work

I mean the pastor always has three or four good jokes that I can repeat at work. Those are not good reasons

Preach the word What I like to hear is You know,

I go to such -and -such a church. Maybe it's Bethlehem Bible Church. Maybe it's somewhere else. Why because The word is preached

The Bible is taught when we go there We are brought into as it were the presence of God not through some mystic kind of means

But because God is preached from the pulpits his word is presented to us it's

Explicated it's explained. It's taught in a

Logical fashion in a piercing fashion.

I mean what it what is the Word of God do it pierces between Joint and bone

Bone and marrow. Yeah, that's it that's the point a church -service must have profound preaching of the

Word of God It involves explaining the text in a manner that enables the hearer to get the sense which is

Nehemiah 8 8 pastor must be able to Teach sound doctrine and must be willing and able to refute those who teach

Contrary to Scripture that makes people a lot of people uneasy Why do you have to call out these false teachers?

Why do you have to talk about the people who don't preach the truth? Why do you name names?

Because Scripture does that and it tells us to do that says to Refute those who contradict sound doctrine all those things must take place in a worship surface service third thing

We've had first public reading of Scripture second profound preaching I'm glad I didn't stick with the peas.

Okay third there must be music Music why well,

I guess God likes music. I was I was contemplating thinking about music this week and just it's almost like hardwired into us

Even as I watch my grandkids learn to you know, each one of them. I Introduced them to the profound hymns of the faith

So one of the first songs that they all fall in love with is sugar sugar by the Archie's Maybe not so profound but one by one.

I mean now it's like every time I see autumn You know, she's she'll look at me and go sugar and she doesn't want a spoonful of sugar.

She wants to hear the song Let's look at the Colossians 316 with somebody read that please

Colossians 316 Go ahead. Well, okay talking to a church and he says, you know, this is something that should take place singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs

I'm not gonna break those down today But you know, there are churches that say you should only sing psalms.

And again, I think that's fine You know if people just want to use the book of Psalms as their him thing what it what

I really don't like and I mentioned this often is I just don't like songs that have little to do with God and say much about us and there are plenty of them.

I mean, we should just do that I mean, I maybe I'll do that sometime I'll just go here are all the bad hymns in our hymnal and I'll just kind of And there are a number of them.

I mean there are some where I just kind of go I don't even know how that got in there and then there are some that I I just object to For no other reason then they just remind me of bad things like let's see.

There's one here. Well Sorry, I'll step on a few toes here my tribute and one of the reasons

I don't like it is because I Seriously wonder about the guy who wrote the song being saved given how many times he was arrested for cocaine

I mean He wrote the song and then he got arrested over and over and over again and I just wonder about that I'm not saying he's not a

Christian. I'm just kind of curious about it. Then there's a Let's see another song up here early in the thing.

Where is it? Anyway, it's morning has broken and I go every time

I hear that song. What do I think of? Yusuf Islam You know Used to be

Cat Stevens. And so I don't really care for that one either even though it's an old Irish song It just reminds me of that.

But anyway Listen to this the music in Our services ought not to be a distraction or a stumbling block

What does that mean a distraction or a stumbling block what would a distract a song that's a distraction be

There's one song that I actually it's in our hymnal and I actually like it The problem is when we start singing it it sounds so Rogers and Hammerstein that people can't sit still

Yeah, we all start, you know bouncing around everything like that And so, you know pretty much we don't sing it anymore not because there's anything wrong with the song but because the music is so you cannot you know, you have to Kind of and so it's

I think in my mind. It's a distraction and I've used this illustration before but you know

I mean just imagine we said Charlie this morning.

I want you to just plug into your amp, you know, bring in your strat and You know just just have at it

You know And then he just breaks his guitar and smash it and everything and sends

Taylor the bill now that That would be a distraction if the point is

Ultimately what we should be working up towards is that the preaching should be the pinnacle the high point of the service

Although I have argued by the way in L in even in elders meetings that just like one Sunday Way to have what

I propose calling Pearl Harbor Sunday Where we do the preaching first so that everybody who's consistently 15 or 20 minutes late walks in goes

What happened I mean we go well, you know, you'll have to listen online or show up earlier next time

Anyway, I digress What what kind of thing could be a distraction in the songs or a stumbling block

I Think anything that takes you away from Worshiping God that causes you to wander off.

So, you know lyrics that are Inappropriate or that could be interpreted a multitude of ways.

I don't think we'd want those Any other thoughts about the singing or music or things that we ought not to do

Charlie? Can we give Charlie a mic?

See you could teach this on a Sunday morning. That's what I'm saying. We should have a Sunday school like that What Charlie was saying is words so kind of weld themselves to the tune that it becomes easier to Memorize to learn scripture to learn profound theology and so we're able to recall these things and keep them in mind

I mean I I could still I mean I remember the The books of the Old Testament because of a song that I learned in high school

You know, how do you how do you do that? Well, that's how you do it You know, otherwise, it's just if you have to force yourself by rote memory

It's harder, but if it's if it's kind of easy and just sort of you know, now there are a few exceptions

You could play my wife is extremely sophisticated because if Blending things music and lyrics if the idea is to help the unsophisticated remember things

My wife is very sophisticated because she can hear a song a hundred times and not remember the words. So So the contrary is obviously true too,

I think it's funny I'll go do you know that song and she'll go no and I'll go But now yeah, that's true, right songs.

Yeah ABC In fact, we're listening. It's funny how just to kind of jump off that we're talking about yesterday how kids can go

You know how many songs have the same tune? ABC and twinkle twinkle little star and they all have and so they'll just kind of mash all those songs together, you know and you'll go

ABCD how I wonder where you are and whatever, you know, and it's Right, I guess

And if you'll notice there are a lot of songs that have the same Tune in our hymnal, which is helpful, right?

Because you go. Yeah, I know that song and then it's just new lyrics and so that's pretty easy But yeah, that is it.

That is a great way to learn and I remember this when my son was in high school

He said I mean he had a bunch of CDs I went through a CD collection after I got saved and I just started tossing things out and And He goes, you know,

I don't even listen to the lyrics Came I came home. I was working graveyard at the time.

I came home and his alarm clock went off and it was some Horrid sounding song whatever it was that came on the radio and as soon as it went off He knew all the words.

I'm like, oh, yeah, you don't listen to lyrics. Okay. Sure. Whatever those things just stick in our heads

Okay, so music fourth fourth thing that must be in a church service the ordinances of the church

Now, what are those? the ordinances Baptism and communion.

Yes Obviously if you don't have anybody who needs to be baptized you can't just fake it

You know anybody who wants to be baptized this morning and and you know, it should not be done lightly

Why do I say that baptism should not be done lightly? Amelia Okay, it's a really important symbolism of who we are in Christ, right?

We're testifying publicly of what has occurred inwardly

So for you know somebody and I've seen this happen I was I mentioned before I was at a

Easter service in California a couple years ago and The guy actually did preach the gospel.

I And then just people started walking forward and You know they just came forward and there was a like a lake behind him and they just started dunking people like and I'm like I Don't know.

I'd at least want to do you know a little interview with him and make sure they understood what they were We're doing but and no public testimony just right in the water, so I don't

I don't think that's the right way to go. But then the Lord's table also And it should be regularly done well, what does that mean regularly well

Here we do communion once a month We could do it more often

Some churches do it every week. It doesn't really say in the Bible how often we should do it I mean we do it twice a day.

I don't know but We're just to do it is to be a practice the fifth one

Fifth thing that must be in church services prayer Let's go to first Timothy 2 8 and again.

It's interesting as we as we do this how often the pastoral epistles are used

Because if you're going to instruct a young pastor on how to run a church, these are good things for him to know

First Timothy 2 8 I'll just read that I desire that in every place

And he doesn't mean Every place he's talking about every church the men should pray lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling

There should be prayer even earlier in the chapter. He's saying first of all I urge that supplications prayers intercessions and Thanksgiving be made for all people all kinds of people

So prayer is to be made Within the confines of a church service.

We are to pray What sort of? Prayers are appropriate for a church service

Ones that honor God, okay? Brian Okay prayers.

They're in response to the word, okay? Any other thoughts? So you gotta watch out if you start scratching your head.

I'm gonna go Amelia Okay, prayers for the needs of the church.

Yep. I think that's good individual members or the corporate body. Yep pray

Repentance yep And especially when we're doing that's okay,

I I mean as One of the elders gets up there I think it's appropriate to kind of what we are sinners, and it's good to acknowledge that when we're praying

Any other thoughts? Thanksgiving excellent. Yeah totally

Okay, and the sixth thing that must be in a church service. Let's look at 2nd

Corinthians chapter 8 Versus 1 to 5 and if I can get a volunteer to read that 2nd

Corinthians 8 verses 1 to 5. Yeah, go ahead mark.

Okay it It's a a good thing to do that and and in fact if we looked elsewhere

We would see that how are we to give we would see that we are to give you know thoughtfully?

We talked about giving in the past. We're to plan ahead of time And Which is something that I think people don't often do

We're to do it from the heart Voluntarily in fact let's let's just look at that First Corinthians chapter 9

Actually that's not what I want isn't I Think what I was talking about is in I Don't think it's there

Anyway that the principle is that we are to give we're to plan ahead of time we are to give voluntarily

We're to give generously This is pleasing and good to the

Lord It's also to why do we do it? Well, we give to support the work of the ministry

We also do it to help the poor widows orphans who are in the church Okay, so giving is an important part of a church service, let's go to the second part of The first part was exalting

God the so we've talked about all the things that would take place in a church service Let's talk about evangelizing the community the second role of the church is to fulfill is that of evangelism

How do we know that we know that from for example

Matthew? 28 the Great Commission Where we are to make disciples go, what do we do?

We preach the gospel in more modern terms Even Spurgeon would say that we're you know, what to win souls for Christ.

How do we do that by proclaiming the gospel? Now that this command may be

Obeyed in two ways number one within the confines of the local community through outreach programs and then secondly by the sending of missionaries

Let's talk about the local church the local church has a duty to see Christ proclaimed across the globe

That would be missionaries and if possible by equipping funding sending out gifted men for the purpose of preaching and teaching in Areas that would be beyond the way or beyond the means of the local church now ideally to me

We've never been able to do this. Maybe we will someday I would love to see us raise up a missionary from this church and to fully fund them from this church

Why do I think that'd be good? What do what do missionaries typically spend a lot of their time doing there in in one sense?

They're like politicians. What do politicians spend most of their time doing? Raising money and what a missionary spend most of their time doing or at least a lot of it too much of it raising money

Why is that well because you know if they need I'll just make up a number of $50 ,000 a year.

You know the typical missionary gets probably about You probably gets first of all forty nine thousand five hundred dollars a year if he if he needed 50 ,000 and then the other part of it is you know he gets $500 from You know however many churches that is how many is that a hundred hundred churches, it's just like it's it's so spread out

Excuse me to where one church doesn't really have that much input for the missionary

And ideally I think a church one church was sitting on a missionary in that way the missionary would be

Accountable to that board of elders they would know who he is you know there would be more communication

That would be a better situation. I think that's just my opinion I don't have any great scripture to pass that to back that up, but I think that would be the ideal situation

Now let's just talk in the local area Church leadership should be involved in preparing

Membership Individually to give an answer and apologetic for their hope for the hope that they have of eternal life first Peter 315

Why do I say it that way? That we should be involved in preparing members

Individually to give an answer Isn't it your job pastor to preach the gospel to everybody

Shouldn't all Worcester hear about Jesus Christ from you That'd be good

But I'm one guy Mike is one guy Pradeep is one guy

Scott is one guy Harry is one guy now Harry you know my count is more than one guy, but The point is what's more effective for us to you know

For everybody to sit back and kind of be the audience to go and good job. Good job Mike Whoo, whoo, whoo

Steve, you know, we'll have cheerleaders and everybody go out Is that more effective or is it more effective to have 300 missionaries?

The ideal situation of course, we don't have 300 members, but the ideal situation would be Every member a missionary every member equipped

To preach and teach the gospel, you don't have to teach everything in Scripture, but you should know the gospel

And you say well, I I don't know how to how to I don't know how to do that I would ask this simple question for a while a couple simple questions.

First of all, are you saved and If you're saved, how do you know that you're saved something has happened, right?

if you can't articulate the gospel then There's something missing if you can't say

I was a sinner God opened my eyes to that fact

I was in rebellion to him and when he opened my eyes and I saw Jesus for who he was

I ran to the cross. I Believe in his perfect life his death in my place his resurrection and because of that and that alone

I am saved if you can't say that I don't know.

I don't know what to tell you You Should be able to you should have heard it enough. You should believe that if you're not then

How is it that you can say that you're a Christian you have to know what does it mean to be a Christian be born again?

Well, what happened to you? The second question

I would have is have you been baptized if you were baptized Then you made a profession of faith there when you were baptized wherever it was

You say well, I was baptized as a child Well, then be baptized again if you were a baby and you didn't understand the gospel, obviously

Then you should be baptized if you're a believer now But our calling

I don't want to call it our job. Our calling is to equip you for the work of ministry let's look at Ephesians chapter 4 and I'm actually planning on preaching through this here in the not -too -distant future, but let's

Let's look at Ephesians chapter 4. It's an interesting passage for a number of reasons

But verses 11 through 13 if somebody would read that please 11 to 13.

Yes. Go ahead Gary Okay now who's he in verse 11

Okay, Christ. He gave the Apostles that etc. Etc. Etc. Why and listen

You know shepherds teachers why to equip the Saints for the work of ministry

To equip the

Saints for the work of ministry. You guys are supposed to do the work. Okay, I can sit down Again, it's it's a it's a basic principle.

You know, you send some people to school you you have some people that are teachers and preachers

Why to equip you to do the work of ministry? What's better one person or 300?

What's better one person trying to figure out how to make everything run or people voluntarily coming together and making it all work out

And what else does the local church do we we also go after those who stray?

But let's stay on on the unity of the body here This is this is a theme.

I like to hit often It is when well, let's just let's just back up here for a second.

We'll stay in Ephesians chapter Well, no, we won't we'll go to 1st Corinthians 2 11 1st

Corinthians chapter 12, pardon me verse 11 What do we know about spiritual gifts?

They're given by God. That's why they're gifts, right? there were Spiritual skills and that would be something that we could study on our own and kind of pick them up and get better at them

But let's read 1st Corinthians chapter 12 verse 11 and again this chapter has to do with spiritual gifts.

Listen All these are empowered all these people all these believers are empowered by one of the same spirit

Who apportions to each one individually? Who gives? gifts to each one individually as He wills

So these are gifts of the Holy Spirit he sovereignly decides what gift to give every single person and Then what are they to do with those gifts

I think ultimately is the issue let's just keep Reading here. I think

I think we'll get to that Well, we will in 18 and 27 18 but as it is

God arranged the members of the body each one of them as he chose if all were a single member

Where would the body be as it is there are many parts yet one body the

I cannot say to the hand I have no need of you Nor again the head to the feet I have no need of you on the contrary the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are

Indispensable and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable We bestow the greater honor and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty

Which are more? Which our more presentable parts do not require

But God has so composed the body giving greater honor to the part that lacked it that there may be no division in the body but that the members may have the same care for one another if One member suffers all suffer together if one member is honored all rejoice together

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it And I think it's so important for us to remember that We all have different gifts

But we are one body The unity of the body is vital.

It is the key the most gifted individual in The local church is absolutely useless

Without the other members of the body As it says you know the head cannot say to the feet.

I have no use for you The all the all the different things why because the body functions better when it functions together

Now what else do we know about spiritual giftedness what about you know somebody just being proud or boastful about their spiritual gift

Go ahead. It was worn as a badge of honor didn't contribute the whole body and you said the real key there

It was without love It was without love for the body and what did

Paul say 1st Corinthians 13 The one that's read at weddings and has nothing to do with weddings

They're meaningless if you're exercising your gift without love without care for one another then your gift is meaningness meaning

Yeah, it's not very good Hi, my wife has this little saying is she in here this morning out there.

She is I've been talking about her all the time and She Has this thing in fact we did it the other day

You know where if you're serving somebody else, and you have the wrong attitude, and she'll just say you know

She'll look at me and Kind of pat me on the shoulder and say well that one just burned up Right with that love

We're wasting our time, right? We have to have the right attitude about it

And it really does if we're going to think rightly about ourselves And how we fit into the big scheme of things no matter who we are there has to be a certain humility attached

Because we have to think okay. I'm not exercising this gift for me for my fame for my

Benefits, but for the benefit of everyone else and not in such a way where we just think Well, I'm such a gift to you guys.

I have to exercise my gift That's the wrong attitude It's like we need to be thinking if I don't do what

I'm doing Not only am I not honoring the Lord. I'm not fulfilling the function that he gave me

He gave me this to do and I need to do it why because as I do it I am actually helping the entire body whatever it is you say well

I don't get you know clean how cleaning the kitchen helps I do

I Don't get how making sure you know the nursery schedule is set helps.

Well, I do Because if all those things if everything is functioning well, then these are issues that other people don't need to take care of and believe me the more cohesively the more kind of Independently people are functioning as they are gifted the easier things go

We need to close there, but let me just say that Just summarize the giftedness part

Again every single Christian is given a gift we don't get to choose it, but we have a gift and it may be a

Composite of several different gifts that are listed in Scripture, but our It's both our joy and our burden

To exercise that sometimes you might think well, I don't necessarily want to do that or What have you sometimes you might have to stretch a little bit to get beyond yourself?

But what you will find is as you exercise your giftedness other people will say you know what?

Thank you. I appreciate that and things go better when you're doing whatever it is So we need to we need to do that.

It's for the unity of the body. It's we're commanded by Scripture It's for the building up of the body. Ultimately.

Let's pray a father in heaven Lord. We thank you that You have blessed us here at grace her

Bethlehem Bible Church What's so many people who are? gifted by you and not just pastors elders deacons but folks who work behind behind the scenes and are just kind of Would almost seem invisible sometimes

But Lord those That you have given that we would deem not that important Or who maybe don't feel that important the scripture tells us are very important none of us

Physically would want to do without our toes without our fingers Without our legs arms and yet we think

That for whatever reason maybe we're not that important Each and every believer here at Bethlehem Bible Church has a role to play and father

Would you through your spirit so work in us? That we would in love desire to please you and Serve one another that the body of Christ might be whole that it might be