Conversion, Evangelism and Membership in the Local Church

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Last week, we began our series called, A Healthy Church, by asking the questions, what should a member expect from the church? And conversely, what should the church expect from its members? From the outset, we made the observation that the very first thing that a member should expect from the church is in regard to the Word of God.
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A member should expect biblical expositional preaching, preaching which reads and explains and applies the text of the Bible.
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A member should expect biblical theology, that everything that is taught and everything that is believed should come from the Bible.
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And a member should expect a biblical understanding of the gospel, which understands both the sinful nature of man and the incredibly amazing grace which is demonstrated in the Bible.
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Simply put, a church that is healthy in regard to the Word is one that preaches, teaches, and formulates its doctrines on the text of the Bible.
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Well, this week we're going to dig further in what a member should expect from the church with the question, what should a member expect in regard to membership? Now, a few weeks ago, we looked at the question of why is church membership important? But today, our focus is on a biblical view of how a person becomes a member of the church and what happens when he or she joins the church.
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This morning, instead of our normal practice of standing together and reading one verse or one section of verses, we're going to be reading various texts to help us understand this passage.
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So instead of starting by standing and reading the text, I'm just going to ask that we pray now and we'll begin our lesson.
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So let's bow our heads.
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Our Father and our God, we thank you for your Word.
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We thank you for the truth of it.
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We thank you that it encourages us, it teaches us, it reproves us, and it leads us in the path of righteousness.
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I pray, O Lord, now that as I seek to get exposition of your text, I pray that you would keep me from error, as I am certainly capable of preaching error.
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I pray that you would open up the hearts of the people to the truth, that everything that is said today would be used first and foremost to glorify you, but also to encourage your people towards a closer walk with you.
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In all this, Lord, we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake.
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Amen.
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Well, well, what should a member expect from the church in regard to membership? Well, if you're taking notes, I'll give you the outline now and then you can go back and add any extra that you want to add.
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But the simple answer is this.
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A biblical understanding of conversion.
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A biblical understanding of evangelism.
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And a biblical understanding of membership.
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So we're going to go over what those three things mean.
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What do I mean by saying that? But if you're taking notes, it is a biblical understanding of conversion, a biblical understanding of evangelism, and a biblical understanding of membership.
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So let's start from the beginning.
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These can easily be three individual sermons, but I put them together because of the series.
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But let's look first at a biblical understanding of conversion.
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The very heart of church membership begins with the question of who qualifies, who qualifies to be a member of the church.
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And the reality is that church membership is limited to those people who have truly been converted to Christ.
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At least biblically speaking, that's what church membership is.
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People who have been converted to Christ, joining together, acting as the local body of Christ in their community.
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But what does it mean to be converted to Christ? Well, there seems to be a lot of confusion in the world about that question.
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Many people call themselves Christians, but have no affection for Christ.
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They have no desire to submit to the Bible.
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They have no desire to assimilate into the local church, and they have no desire for personal righteousness.
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Yet they call themselves Christians, followers of Jesus.
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Furthermore, it seems that the Arminian philosophy of conversion has become the mainstream.
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And that has in itself caused a lot of problems.
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Arminian theology teaches that man is active in his own salvation, that he must willingly participate with God in the act of salvation, exercising by his own free will faith, which in turn causes his regeneration.
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Many people say, well, I like that.
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That sounds pretty good.
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Free will.
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That's a good sounding thing.
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You know, I get to participate.
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I get to act.
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You know, I get to do my part.
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You know, God does have what was it? God votes for me.
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Devil votes against me and I break the tie.
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You think I made that up? That was from an evangelist.
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An Arminian evangelist made that.
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Well, God voted for me and the devil voted against me and I break the tie.
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See, the problem with Arminian philosophy is, well, I'll ask you, what do you think the problem is? Could it be that man is in charge of ultimately who gets saved? Because if you think about it, the person becomes the only active agent that matters.
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If God voted for you and the devil voted against you and you break the tie, guess who's the most important actor in the scene? You are.
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And God is simply waiting in heaven with bated breath, wringing his hands, just waiting for you to accept him.
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You see, that's the picture that we have of Christian conversion, that God is just hoping and praying to someone that you will accept him.
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And this is how people misunderstand conversion and they continue to misunderstand conversion, because, beloved, the Bible teaches a very different view of Christian conversion.
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According to the Bible, Christian conversion is something that God does within us.
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God converts the heart.
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We don't change ourselves.
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As the Bible says, the leopard cannot change his spots.
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The Ethiopian cannot change the color of his skin.
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Neither can we do good who are accustomed to doing evil.
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God does the work in us.
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So let's now go to the Scripture and see if what I'm saying is true.
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I've made a bold declaration.
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Let's go to the text and see if it is, in fact, what the Bible teaches.
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Ephesians chapter 2.
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Now, we read verses 8 through 10, but I want to start back at verse 1.
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And I wish I had time.
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A few months ago, Byron preached while after the baby was born and he preached, I guess, almost six months now.
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But he preached through Ephesians 2, 1 through 10.
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And so I'm not going to give as long an exposition as he did because I have a lot of other verses to look at.
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But I just want to reinforce some of the points that he made about God as the active agent here.
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We are the recipients.
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So let's look at this.
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It says, first and foremost, in verse 1, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins.
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This is something I think a lot of people miss.
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They miss the deadness that we have, that we are, in fact, prior to God converting us, we are dead.
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And I hear people all the time describe sin as an illness.
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They describe sin as a sickness.
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And Jesus provides us the antidote to this sickness.
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No, it's not sickness, it's deadness.
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We are dead in our trespasses and sins.
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And while I have seen many sick people get better and get up and walk out, I've never seen anybody walk out of the morgue.
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I've never seen anybody walk out of the funeral home.
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I've never seen anybody walk out of the grave, save Jesus and those who were raised miraculously.
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So we are described not as being sick in sin, we are described as being dead in sin.
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Everyone agree? Good, we can move on.
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It says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience.
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Referencing there in verse two, the fact that when we were dead in sin, we all followed after the very the very author of sin himself, which is the devil.
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That was our he was our leader.
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You may say, well, I never felt like the devil was my leader.
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Well, it doesn't matter how you feel.
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It matters what is.
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We all walked in accord with the son.
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We all walked in accord with the prince of the power of the air following him.
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And who is now still at work in the sons of disobedience.
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And he says here in verse three, he makes sure we don't miss it.
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Among whom we all once lived in the passage of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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That phrase by nature.
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I remember one time in that fellowship hall in there, we used to have a stage in there and we would have worship in there sometimes.
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And I was teaching one night on a Sunday night.
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This was before I was ever the pastor.
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I was youth minister or something.
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And I was preaching and I said, we are by nature sinners, that we are we are we are actually born in sin and we are we are we are wrought by nature as sinners.
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And this person got offended.
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You are wrong.
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And I took her right here.
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And I said, this text is no doubt we are by nature children of wrath.
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And just as again, like the Ethiopian cannot change his nature, he can't change his spots or his skin color, that the leopard can't change his spots.
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Neither can we by nature change ourselves because it's within our nature to be children of wrath.
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But verse four brings the miracle because verse four doesn't say, but man changed himself.
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It says, but God being rich in mercy.
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Because of the great love with which in which with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace.
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You have been saved.
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You see, that's the key.
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It's not but man came to his senses and realized he was a sinner and came back to God.
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No, it's but God, because he is rich in mercy while we were still dead, made us alive.
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While we were still dead in our sins, God did a work in us.
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And he made us alive and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
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And then comes the passage, which is to me one of the most beautiful in all of Scripture.
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For by grace, you have been saved through faith.
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And this is not your own doing.
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It is the gift of God, beloved.
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Remember this, the grace and the faith are both gifts from God.
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Because it is the grace that enables us to have the faith.
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That is why it says, and this is not of you.
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This is not your own doing.
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You didn't do this, but this is something God has done by his grace.
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This is a gift that he has given by his grace.
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Beloved, this is totally foreign to so many churches.
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They have such an unbiblical view of regeneration, of conversion, of what it means to become a Christian.
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All this talk about accepting Jesus, accepting Jesus.
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I don't use that language because it's not biblical language.
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We receive Christ.
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We don't accept him as if he's something we can just accept and reject by our power.
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No, we receive the gift of grace.
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And it's a much different understanding of salvation than a lot of folks have.
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It's not a result of works, verse nine, so that no one may boast.
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And then in verse 10, he tells us, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
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That's an important part, too, because never think for a second that salvation is something that you're called to and then you're supposed to stop.
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You are called to salvation for a very specific purpose.
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God has created you for good works.
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He has created you to do good things.
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He has created you as his workmanship.
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That means workmanship there in the Greek is something that someone spends time working out a piece of art like an artist makes a sculpture.
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That's his workmanship.
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That's his piece of art.
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That's what you are.
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God has God has raised you from spiritual death.
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He has seated you in heavenly places with Christ because you're in Christ.
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So you are seated with Christ.
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You are no longer judged among the unbeliever.
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You are now righteous before him.
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And so he has called you to do good things.
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That's Christian conversion.
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God has given you spiritual life.
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So live it.
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That's conversion.
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And it's a work of God in you.
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And that's how you can tell is you can tell it's a work of God in you when your change occurs, because you begin to desire Christ.
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You begin to desire to follow after him.
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You begin to desire his word, his people, and to move in accordance with his will rather than your own.
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That's conversion.
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It's not signing a card or getting baptized because somebody expects you to.
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It's a change of heart, which results in a change of action and direction and will.
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That's Christian conversion.
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Let me show you a few other verses again.
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I wish I had time to really flesh all this out.
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But I want to just show you that this idea of conversion being a God thing, being something God does is all through the Bible.
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Turn to John one.
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Most of us are familiar with this phrase or this text.
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It's one of the most condemning passages in the scripture in regard to the Jewish people.
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John one, verse 11.
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Speaking of Jesus, it says he came to his own and his own people did not receive him, his own being the Jews.
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He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.
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This is why, again, I don't use the word accepting Christ, but I use the word receiving Christ.
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It is different.
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It's different in every way.
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And I could given time, I could explain the differences.
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But but I'll show you here in the text how it is the most plain reason it says this in verse 12.
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But to all who did receive him, who belong or who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.
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Who were born, by the way, who were born past tense, it had already happened, who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
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Their being born again was of God.
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Their being born again was not of the will of the flesh.
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It was not of the blood.
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They weren't born into it and they didn't decide to enter into it.
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It was something that God had done in them.
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It wasn't the will of the flesh.
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It wasn't the will of man.
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It was the will of God that they be born again.
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And it was done.
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And that's why they received him.
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The only reason why anyone receives Christ is because God opens up their heart to receive him.
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The only reason why anyone is ever truly converted to Christ is because God has opened their heart to receive him.
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No one can come unto me, Jesus said, unless the father who is in heaven grants it to them.
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Very clear.
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That text is so clear.
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John six and sixty five.
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But let's look again at one of the couple of the Acts 11.
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Acts 11 and 18.
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Peter is telling about.
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The miracle that has happened, the Holy Spirit has fallen on Gentiles and Gentiles are being saved.
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And in verse 18, when they heard these things, they fell silent.
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They were shocked because this was a new thing.
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God was reaching out beyond the walls of the Jews.
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He was reaching out beyond the Jewish people and he was saving people that were non-Jews.
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This was very this was something that was different in the mind of these Jewish people.
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And it says when they heard these things, they fell silent and they glorified God, saying then to the Gentiles also, God has granted repentance that leads to life.
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So is repentance wrought within us or is repentance from God? Well, the text seems to be unambiguous.
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It is something wrought in the heart by God.
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Turn over two chapters to chapter 13 and verse 48.
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One of the most contentious passages in Scripture.
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I heard a man one time who wanted to argue against reformed theology when he was looked at verse 48.
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He said that that that has to be a mistranslation.
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He said there.
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And he even went to the point of saying there must be a Hebrew original of the Greek that said it differently.
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And it was this long diatribe about how this could not be accurate because it's obviously if it was, it would destroy his position.
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And it does.
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This was one of the strongest reformed salvation verses.
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And a lot of people don't even know it.
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But Acts 11, I'm sorry, Acts 13, 48, the Gentiles were preached repentance to.
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It says that when the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord.
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And as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.
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Let me say it again, as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed.
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You know, in most people's theology, that verse fits nowhere because most people would read it like this, as many believed were appointed to eternal life.
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But it doesn't say that and neither does it say that in the Greek.
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In the Greek, it's very specific.
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Those whom God had appointed, those whom God had chosen, those whom God had elected.
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Oh, there's that dirty word that nobody likes, but that's it.
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That's the ones that had been appointed to eternal life.
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And they are the ones who believe.
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Belief follows the election.
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Belief follows the opening of the heart by God.
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Belief is a result of God's regeneration, not the cause.
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Obviously, this is something that is very meaningful to me.
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I get a little hot under the collar here, calm down a little.
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Turn one last place and I'm simply at this point just reaffirming what I've said to you is from the text of Scripture.
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Second Timothy chapter two.
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Two Timothy two and verse twenty five.
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Next we'll look at verse twenty four first, because this is leading up.
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The apostle Paul is teaching Timothy.
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He is teaching him how to behave as a pastor.
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He's saying the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.
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God may perhaps grant them repentance, leading to a knowledge of the truth.
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And they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will.
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What is the pastor called to do? He's called to rebuke with gentleness, with love, with kindness, because it may be that God will grant them what? Repentance.
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Where does repentance come from, from within or from above? From above.
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It's very clear throughout the Bible that the only reason why people repent is God changes their heart.
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Without the changing of the heart, we would not repent.
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So.
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The active agent in salvation is God.
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He is the one saving.
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He is the one granting the gifts of faith and repentance.
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This is why the Bible says that salvation is of the Lord.
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But I want to digress for a moment.
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I want to ask a question.
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We know that God is the active agent in salvation.
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We're the recipients.
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We receive his salvation.
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We are passive.
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He is active.
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He is the one that acts upon us.
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But the question is, does that mean that I don't participate in my salvation process at all? And the answer to that is no, we do participate, but we participate passively.
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We receive the gift of regeneration, which converts our hearts.
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And as a result, we believe freely.
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We believe prior to conversion.
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We would not want to believe prior to conversion.
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We would have no desire to follow Christ.
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In fact, we would not even be able to.
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Romans chapter eight, verses seven and eight.
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For the mind that is set on the flesh, by the way, every mind that's not converted is set on the flesh.
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In case you wonder, every mind that is not converted is set on the flesh because it can't be set on the spirit.
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The spirit is dead.
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And there's only two.
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The dichotomy in the text is you're either set on the spirit or you're set on the flesh.
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And if the spirit is dead, then you're set on the flesh.
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There's no doubt.
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And the mind that is set on the flesh is what? Hostile to God.
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You might say, well, I know some people who aren't believers.
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They don't seem very hostile to God.
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Spend some time talking with them about their own sin and you will see how hostility will rear its head very quickly.
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Spend some time talking.
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Well, I want to talk to you about their sin.
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It'll make them angry.
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Then we prove my point.
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So let us continue.
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For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law.
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Indeed, it cannot.
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It doesn't say it will not.
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It says it cannot.
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Because why? Because it's set on the flesh.
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Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
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I don't know how the Apostle Paul can make it any clearer.
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I don't know how anybody can stay in the pit of Arminianism.
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I really don't.
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I can see how you can start there because that's where most churches are today and that's what most churches teach.
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But after you've been exposed to these verses, I don't know how you can stay in that pit.
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Well, I can't give up free will.
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It's not about free will.
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Who's more free? You are God.
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God is free and I am free.
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But guess what? God is more free than me.
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And when my freedom runs into God's freedom, God wins.
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There is the reformed doctrine of the free will via R.C.
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Sproul.
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I wish I'd have made that one up, but I didn't.
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That was Sproulian theology, but it's the truth.
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God is free.
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I have freedom, but my freedom is less than God's.
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And whenever my freedom runs into God's, he wins every time.
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My freedom is bound by my nature, thus I'm not truly free.
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As Byron says all the time, I can't make myself a tractor.
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I can't will myself to be a bird because it's not within my nature to do so.
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I'm not totally free.
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Such an idea is ridiculous.
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Neither am I free to do which my nature doesn't want to do.
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And my nature doesn't naturally want to follow Christ.
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So the only reason why I would is that God work on me from the outside, that God changed my heart.
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That's why I would say conversion is a work of God.
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We are dead in sin.
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We need spiritual resurrection.
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God is the one who grants spiritual resurrection.
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And by that we believe.
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Freely and faith does come from us, but it's a gift from God because without his regeneration, we would not exercise it.
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So why is that important to understand for church membership? Why is that important to understand for what we're for the series that we're in right now? Because it's been a lot of time on conversion there.
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Well, the reason why it's important to understand is this, because a proper view of conversion or rather an improper view of conversion leads to a very improper view of evangelism.
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And that's where we're going next.
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So that's now we've looked at the biblical view of conversion.
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A healthy church needs a biblical view of conversion and they need a biblical view of evangelism.
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Now, for evangelism, I want us just to look at the great evangelism verse Matthew 28.
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If you want to turn there in your Bible, when most of us are familiar with it, probably could quote it, but we'll still turn there and look at it for a second because I want to just point out the great commission.
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Matthew 28, 18.
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Verse 18 through 20.
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And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
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Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
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Important in this text in verse 19 were the command to go, therefore, it actually could also be translated.
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Therefore, as you go.
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Make disciples.
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It's just another way of reading that text, because the text is not necessarily saying that we all are commanded to be missionaries, as Paul was, and go to different lands.
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But as we go throughout our life, daily, as we interact with people, daily, as we are involved with people, we are to be making disciples of Christ.
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That's our command.
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Go, therefore, as you go, make disciples.
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How do you make disciples? Well, you baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit.
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That's the process of the introduction into the faith.
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By the way, the whole idea of the mourners bench, if we don't have one, but you know what I'm talking about, the bench that's in front of a lot of churches that people come up and cry on at the end of service was actually developed in the Methodist movement as a place for people to come and weep after a sermon, the mourners bench and the whole idea of coming forward.
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And that's where you get saved.
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That's where you demonstrate your faith.
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That's foreign to Scripture.
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The demonstration of faith in Scripture is baptism.
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It always has been.
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Baptism doesn't save us, but it is a demonstration of the faith that we have.
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It's you could go straight to the baptistry here.
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You don't have to come via the aisle.
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If you come to me on Wednesday night, pastor, I perceive Christ as my Lord and Savior.
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I bowed the knee to his lordship.
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Christ has saved me.
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He has regenerated my heart and I have desire to follow him.
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What's next? Baptism.
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That's the natural next.
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And getting back to the subject of evangelism very quickly, a biblical understanding of evangelism.
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If we look at this text in Matthew, it's obvious that evangelism is not just a suggestion from Christ.
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It is a command.
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It is a mandate.
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And many claim to a desire to fulfill this mandate, but their methodologies are unbiblical.
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And this is what this is what concerns me most often.
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The reason why churches have an unbiblical method for evangelism is because they have an unbiblical understanding of conversion.
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Once people believe that conversion is a product of human decision making, once they believe that conversion is a product of human will, they begin to come up with ways to manipulate the will so as to make people make the decision or at least aid them in making the decision.
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And I've heard so many methodologies for winning someone to Christ.
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I've heard you've got to get the right kind of lights because at some point in the service, you've got to dim the lights.
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I've heard that you've got to have the right musical numbers.
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I do believe just as I am is very popular.
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And you've got to play it 117 times to make sure that they have enough time to make the right decision.
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You've got to have the right tear jerking story to finalize your sermon, to remind people just how important it is that the hey, you're only 18 inches from hell every time you drive down the road.
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That's how far it is from the car who passes you.
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You're 18 inches and at any moment, because all those things, yes, I hurt my back last night.
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If you're wondering why I'm moving funny, you're supposed to guarantee a person salvation because of these methodologies.
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I had a guy one time teaching an evangelism course that I attended.
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He said he said, given enough time, he can get anybody to receive Jesus.
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You know, I'm talking about given enough time, I can make anybody a believer.
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But here's the problem, folks, beloved, here's the problem.
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All of this unbiblical evangelism has done nothing but bear a nation of dead fruit.
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A.W.
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Tozer said, it is my opinion that tens of thousands of people, if not millions, have been brought into some kind of religious experience by accepting Christ.
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And they have yet not been saved, end quote.
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Dr.
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D.
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James Kennedy, founder of Evangelism Explosion.
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No, it's one with Kennedy was evangelism, great man of God, wonderful man of God.
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It's what he said, the vast majority of people are members in churches in America today are not Christians.
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I say that without the slightest fear of contradiction.
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I base it on empirical evidence of 24 years of examining thousands of people, end quote.
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In November 1970, a number of churches combined for a convention in Fort Worth, Texas, they secured 30,000 decisions for Christ.
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Six months later, the follow up committee could find only 30 of those people were still active in a church.
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Out of 30,000, 30 were still active in the church.
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That's not one percent of 30,000.
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You see, the problem is that many churches have removed the gospel from the church and instead they've replaced it with a sales pitch, a Jesus sales pitch.
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You've heard me use that term before, but I don't ever want you to forget it because that's what often you hear instead of the gospel.
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You hear a Jesus sales pitch and the result is that churches become filled with unregenerate people.
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They have been sold the bill of goods.
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They have responded to the sales pitch with great emotional fervor.
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But when the emotionalism dies down, they are nowhere to be found.
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You know, in previous centuries, Baptistic churches, our church is a Baptistic church, not a Baptist church, but we're Baptistic in the sense that we believe that baptism follows conversion.
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That's called credo baptism.
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For centuries, credo Baptists were normally baptized in adulthood.
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Somewhere between the ages of 17 and 20 is when people would be baptized.
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However, in the last century, that changed dramatically in many churches, baptisms began occurring at younger ages.
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Thirteen, twelve, eleven, ten, seven, six, five year old children were being baptized.
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And it was the norm, not the exception, but it was the norm.
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What has caused the shift? From adults receiving Christ and accepting Christ and being baptized as a result of that regeneration to children, what's the cause? Well, could it be that younger children are easier to manipulate with our sales pitch? Could it be that the parents of younger children are very excited to have their children be baptized because they fear if they're allowed to get too old without locking in their decision that they might drift off into some form of paganism? So we encourage our kids to be baptized.
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We push them into baptism.
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My mother, I'm sure she wouldn't mind if I tell the story.
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And this is my biological mom.
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My other mom is here, Pat.
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But my biological mom, when I was when I was 12 years old, she made me be baptized at the church that she was going to because I had reached the age of accountability.
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She did not want me to be imperiled in my soul.
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She was under the influence of bad theology.
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She knows it now, but didn't know it then.
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But it was like you need to do this because if not, you're going to go to hell if you die.
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One church even built a baptistry that was shaped like a fire engine.
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They put bells and whistles on the baptistry, and every time a child went under the water.
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Bing, bing, bing, bing, lights and sirens.
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Is there any kid in this room that doesn't want to get into the fire truck shaped twinkle? If you couldn't sell that to a youngin, I mean, seriously.
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But that's what it has become.
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And evangelism is no longer about telling people the truth about sin and the gospel.
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It's about how many people can we get to sign a card? How many people can we get to walk an aisle? How many people can we get to get into the baptistry? It's not about conversion anymore.
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It's about numbers.
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And I've heard people say this about our church, I've heard people make the observation that we are not as committed to evangelism as we should be.
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And what I think they mean when they say that is that we do not have the typical evangelism programs which you see in a lot of churches.
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We don't have a revival service once a year wherein we bring a speaker from another town to come in and speak to our people and make sure that everybody's prayed up and ready to go to heaven.
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We don't have a revival service.
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We don't have judgment house wherein we gather people up and show them a bunch of people dying and then put them in a room and say, hey, now you need to decide Jesus because that could be you next.
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We don't host a weekly neighborhood canvassing wherein we go knocking door to door preaching to people.
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And some say because we don't, we're not fulfilling the Great Commission.
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Well, beloved, we can always do more to evangelize the lost.
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I know that we can always do more to evangelize the lost.
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And that is no doubt.
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But hear me now, the vast majority of the common evangelistic methods bear nothing but dead fruit.
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The vast majority of modern evangelistic methods do nothing but bear dead fruit.
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One young man challenged me, Tony was here, a few other people were here, young man challenged me at the back door one day because we were not canvassing door to door.
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We were not fulfilling the Great Commission.
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We were not trying to save souls because we were not going door to door.
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And if we didn't, we did not have the blessing of Christ.
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And I said, well, tell me about what you do.
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He says, well, I take a survey to the door.
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They don't even know that I'm from the church.
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They don't know what I'm doing.
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I get them talking and I get them wrapped into the conversation.
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And before they know it, I'm talking to them about Jesus and I've tricked them into subliminally.
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Remember the word he said? Subliminally, I've tricked them into answering my questions.
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I said, well, glory be.
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Why don't I just become a hypnotist? I have all the followers in the world.
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If subliminal messages and sales tactics are how somebody gets saved, then the gospel is not true.
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Yes, I want us to engage in evangelism.
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Yes, we need to do more to evangelize.
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But our evangelism must be biblical.
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It must be.
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It cannot be man centered pop psychology.
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It cannot be based in trickery.
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It cannot be bad history set by fire trucks and Miley Cyrus concerts.
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It must be the gospel.
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That's why I don't believe there is a method.
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I don't believe there is such a thing as a evangelistic method.
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I think you share the truth with people about sin, about Christ and about salvation.
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You don't have to trick them.
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You don't have to fool them.
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And guess what? You don't have to convince them.
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The Holy Spirit changes the heart.
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God brought new life, brings new life into the dead soul.
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You just are responsible to tell the truth.
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It's not your job to convince anyone.
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Only God can change your heart.
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You will never fail as long as you tell the truth.
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All right, well, we're exhausted my time.
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But I do want to say a few things about understanding membership.
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Let's go to the last part.
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And I will make this brief.
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I do want to quote Mark Dever.
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Mark Dever, remember, wrote the book Nine Marks.
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I told you that was part and parcel of what helped me write this series.
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Mark said this in his book.
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He said the only true growth is growth that comes from God.
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The only true growth is growth that comes from God.
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So if you're worried about church growth, pray that God will send us people who want to hear the gospel.
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Pray that God will open up doors for us to talk to people who want to hear the gospel.
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He has prepared their hearts as fertile soil for the seed of the gospel to go in and grow and bear fruit.
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We don't need a thousand people and nine hundred of them are unsaved.
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That's not a church.
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That's a social club that's ready to die.
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We need people who desire Christ, follow him, are here and are working towards that goal.
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And that's what we seek out is people who want to follow Christ.
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Finally, biblical understanding of membership, when we look at when we looked at why church membership was important a few weeks ago, we investigated whether or not it was actually a biblical concept.
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We saw that church membership is a biblical concept.
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But the problem is a lot of people are Christians by membership only in the church, but they're not Christians in their heart.
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That's why conversion is important.
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We know that's true.
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The Bible warns us they'll always be sheep and goats together.
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There will always be tares in with the wheat.
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And that's true.
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There's no way to absolutely assure that every person who has joined the church is, in fact, born again.
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There's no way to ensure that every person who's joined the church has legitimately received Christ the Savior.
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Now, we don't have to be a believer or a believer.
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All we can do is receive someone's testimony, receive their testimony by faith.
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And then we look for evidences in one another and we encourage those evidences in one another.
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But here's the thing.
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If we have a proper understanding of conversion and a proper understanding of evangelism, them, then we will see less false converts in the church because we will not be trying to convert them by unbiblical means.
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The reason why so many churches are filled with unconverted people is because their evangelistic methods are carnal and their understanding of conversion is man centered.
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So what is biblical membership? Biblical membership is this.
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A person has been properly evangelized with the gospel, their heart has been changed in regard to their sin, they see their need of a savior, they have called out to him for salvation, they have made a profession of faith publicly before the people of God, and they've been obedient to Christ in baptism and they have become an active member in the body of Christ.
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That's church membership.
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That's how someone goes from being not a member to being a member.
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He is encouraged after that point to discover his spiritual gift, to use his spiritual gift within the congregation.
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He's encouraged to receive the blessing of experiencing the spiritual gifts of others.
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He submits to the Bible and to the leadership structure which God has established, which is the elders whose job it is to examine and interpret the scriptures.
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And he begins the process of actively sharing his faith, which he now has, and encouraging other people to believe as he has.
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That is church membership.
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Simply put, biblical church membership is simply acting on the conversion which God has wrought in the heart.
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Biblical church membership is acting on the conversion which God has wrought in the heart.
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Beloved, what should a member expect from the church in regard to membership? Members should expect the church to practice an evangelism which teaches a true spiritual conversion and not one that simply seeks to manipulate people into following Jesus.
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Members should expect that we are all believers, fit for the kingdom, submissive to the church leadership, to the scripture, and ultimately to one another as we work together for the cause of Christ.
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That's biblical church membership.
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And it's a valuable thing, it's a beautiful thing.
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You know, God has given us three homes.
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For the Christian, he has provided three homes through which we experience his blessing.
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The first home is our heavenly home.
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That's the home we look forward to, that's the home we know we're going to, and that provides us the hope that no matter what we face in this life, that's the hope that we have coming.
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So we have the heavenly home that we look forward to as our hope.
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Second, he's provided our family home.
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The family home is supposed to, and I know it isn't this way for everybody, it is supposed to be a place of spiritual discipline, of learning and upbuilding.
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That's what it's supposed to be.
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And it's supposed to be a place where we learn to look at father and mother as authorities and we understand to respect authority.
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And through them, we learn about God and we learn to respect his authority and his discipline the same way they disciplined us.
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He disciplines us as his children.
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We learn through our family home.
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But number three, there's a third home that we're given.
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We're given a heavenly home to look forward to, an earthly home to raise us up in.
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But we have the church home.
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And the church home is a valuable blessing of God that he has given to us so that our spiritual gifts can work along with other spiritual gifts and we can in turn be the body of Christ.
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We have people who are hands, we have people who are feet, we have people who are mouths and all of us share together as part of the body of Christ.
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It's a beautiful thing, it's a wonderful thing.
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And when we see each other, we should see each other as fellow workers.
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And that body, our father and our God, we thank you for the opportunity to have studied your word, we thank you for the ministry of the church and we pray, oh Lord, that we would draw closer to you through the work of the church, coming together, experiencing our spiritual gifts together, growing and upbuilding.
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And Lord God, seeking your face in every way, thank you for all the gifts you've given to us, pray that we'd use them responsibly.
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And Lord, I do pray that if there are those here who have never heard the gospel, that they've heard it today, that they've heard about conversion, which comes from you.
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And I pray, oh Lord, that you'd use that, that you'd implant that in their heart and that you'd open their heart to understand and believe.
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But this is something only you can do and we trust you to do it.
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In Jesus name we pray, Amen.
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Beloved, let's stand together, we're going to sing and if you have a need for prayer, please come as we sing.