What Makes or Breaks a Church | Sermon 10/13/2024

Good morning. How are you? Good. Awesome.

I think I'm ready to go. Well, forgive me for my rustiness. I haven't preached in the last time

I preached on a Sunday was actually at this church. So you're going to have to give me a little, little,

I can't talk. No, it's really good to be here. I love you guys.

And I'm so honored to be able to come and share the word with you. We're so happy with what's going on here at Apology of Utah.

It's a special thing. It's an unusually special thing. We get to see God blessing the church.

And it's really built upon the leadership. It's built upon you. It's the church is the people. It takes a village when it comes to a successful or a healthy church.

But we're just so pleased to be here. So I just wanted to send you our greetings from Apology of Mesa and all the elders.

We love you guys. And we're thankful for you. So I'm going to get into this. I kind of felt like I wanted to go a bunch of different directions.

But I really just want to be an encouragement to you. Like I had said, there's a really good thing going here.

And we want to keep it going for as long as possible. I was driving,

I think I was driving to work a couple weeks ago. And I hadn't thought about it a lot because time goes by so fast.

But I was thinking about kind of my life and that I've been in 26 years of consecutive leadership ever since God saved me when

I was 18 years old. And after I got saved, I was saved in this

Pentecostal church. It was just sweet people, kind of crazy, just a little bit wacky.

They can get like that. But after two weeks, they had me teaching as an 18 -year -old new convert.

And that is what you do not want to do. Thank God we didn't have phones and that stuff was recorded back then because, wow.

But yeah, I guess through the years of ministry, I've been in really happy and effective and flourishing churches.

And I've been in some dying and ineffective, unhealthy churches. I've seen throughout the years the good, the bad, the ugly, and the crazy.

Because I think some of the craziest things you can see is kind of in a church environment. I remember one time we were having this small little revival at our church, this

Pentecostal church. And the pastor was really getting into it. And a woman had come into the church.

And he couldn't keep himself from getting emotional. So he was going throughout his sermon.

And he was crying. And every time that he would kind of start to cry, this lady would say, cry, baby.

Cry, just as loud as she could do it. And we at first said, OK, maybe this will be the one time she does that.

And so he continues on with his sermon. And then he begins to be emotional. And we hear it again, cry, baby.

So after about the fourth time, nobody was doing anything. I'm this 21 -year -old associate pastor. Then I say, hey, you've got to go.

This is completely disrupting the service. So she was getting kind of mad. I think myself and another deacon walked her out into the foyer.

And there's always the double doors. And she had gone to the front door. And I said, hey, we love you.

But you can't be disrupting the service. And she kind of just looked at me really weird. And then she put her hands down next to her side.

And she did the bowl thing, where the bowl gets ready to charge. So she did the bowl thing.

And I'm there. And she just charges full speed trying to get through me, through the double doors, into the service.

So all I did was just kind of brace myself. And she hit me and hit the floor. And that was that.

But I could go into a lot of other crazy stories when it comes to being a part of the Pentecostal Church. But I think what

I want to do, what I want to do in a short amount of time is just to talk about what makes or breaks a church.

What can we do as God's people and leaders to contribute to the overall healthiness or the health of a church?

Or what can we do to contribute to the downgrade or the digression of the church?

But I wanted to kind of lay a little bit of a foundation before I get into just three main areas that I think that we can focus on when it comes to what we can practice and do as God's people.

That is absolutely going to be good for the church. Because that's what we got to understand, that we the people, when it comes to the church, we make or break the church.

We really do. But to kind of lay the foundation, I have a question for the kids.

And so maybe I can get an answer from one of the kids out there. What is the church? And you parents can help the kids if you would like.

But what is the church? What is it? That's it.

That's it. Good job, buddy. That's exactly what the church is. The church is God's people. A lot of think the church is just some place that you go to.

It's just the four walls of a building. But we know the church is God's people. It's the ecclesia, it's the called out ones.

1 Peter 2 and 9 says, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation of people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

So God's church is not a building, but it's a precious people who

God is building for his glory. What do you think, and you can answer if you would like, but what do you think makes a successful church?

What makes a successful church? Now I think a lot of people have different opinions on that when it comes to a healthy or successful church.

I think we look in the broader American evangelical context and it could be a lot of people, a lot of money, a lot of real estate.

Sometimes we associate those material or external things with church success, but that doesn't always entail that a church is successful.

But I think to be balanced, lots of people can be a tremendous blessing. We want a lot of people in the church because as you faithfully evangelize, as we look all throughout the book of Acts, God will add to the church, sovereignly saving people.

And so we want a lot of people. And who doesn't want to have a lot of money? If you start to love and worship and bow down to the altar of money, it could be a problem, but money is a very good thing.

God created money and money is what we need to do stuff and to keep the lights on and the rent paid.

So money can be a blessing, a lot of building, sure. All of those things can be blessings, but they're not necessarily like a primary marker of what a successful church is.

And we look at all throughout our nation and the world, and there's really men who hide themselves within churches and they're charlatans and they're hucksters and they're false teachers and they've got all sorts of money, right?

They're flying around in jets, they've got entourage and people worshiping them and buying their books, but their churches aren't successful at all.

We would say that those type of church environments are a church of the tares and not necessarily a church of the wheat, right?

So all that stuff doesn't necessarily mean God is blessing, but I think when it comes to the health or the successfulness of a church,

I think the primary marker is that the successfulness of a church is directly proportional to the spiritual maturity or the maturation of God's people, right?

We are successful as a church and as a church leadership and as elders insofar as you, our flock, are maturing and growing and thriving and being cared for by us, your pastors.

Colossians 1 .28 says this, Paul says this, he says, him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

So genuine, authentic shepherds should want that. It's not about popularity, it's not about notoriety and it's not necessarily about us, it shouldn't be about us.

We should be men who lay down our lives sacrificially every day so that the people that God has gifted to us thrive and mature.

That's really what it's all about. A successful church is one in which God's people are spiritually progressing and being cared for by God's pastors.

How do we cultivate or create successful churches or healthy churches? I think that, again, you can come at this from a lot of different directions, but kind of like a focal point in your mind this morning is successful churches have an all hands on deck mentality.

So each family or individual has decided, this is where I am, this is where God has brought me and I'm gonna be a contributing member to the mission of the church.

I'm all in kind of a thing. This is where I'm gonna love the people, I'm gonna create peace within the church and I'm gonna exercise all of the gifts that God has given me or move in all the gifts and talents that God has given me for the benefit of the church.

That's really, I guess you could say, a primary reason why churches are so healthy and actually successful.

Ephesians 4, 15 through 16 says, rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ.

For from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint which it is equipped.

This is important. When each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself in love, not necessarily grow bigger.

I mean, that's a great blessing, right? But it's talking about the health of the body that the body would grow into healthiness, not necessarily largeness, right?

A church in which the people have collectively decided to commit themselves to the mission of the church is becoming increasingly healthy and increasingly effective.

That's what happens, again, when we commit to it. And I think as you look throughout,

I guess as you evaluate the church, generally, and this is not a hard and fast rule, but churches kind of fall into, consist of a population of people that fall into two different categories.

So one segment, and this could be really true in any church, but not necessarily, but one segment of the church, it really values anonymity and disconnectedness from the body.

And because of that, there's a low level of commitment within that population. So, you know, and unfortunately, that's not necessarily the fault of the people coming into churches because we kind of set it up that way, right?

We funnel people in. There's like a focal point on one guy and there's, don't really want commitment at all.

We just want you to come in so that we can get as many people in and out of as many services as we possibly can.

Again, we don't wanna hate on that too much, but that's not necessarily bad, but there is this type of church structure that's not about the growth of the people.

It's just the addition of the people so that we can feel successful as a church.

As I was preparing myself to become a pastor, I was mentored by a man who had thousands of people at his church and he said, well, what do you wanna do?

And I said, well, I think what I wanna do is disciple the people that God sends me.

And he said, it was just so surprising. It's like, I can see his face, like it was sitting right here today. He said, why would you wanna do that?

And that like floored me. I said, well, isn't that the basis of what we are to do as pastors, is we're there to help the people, to grow the people, to teach the people, to feed, that's what shepherds do.

They feed and lead and love the people unto growth and spiritual maturation. He said, no, it's just about collecting, collecting the people.

You just wanna collect and do as much as you can. You need to hit home run sermons every single Sunday. And then

I was like, whoa, I better discontinue this relationship with you because everything that I just heard come out of your mouth was not biblical.

But that's the way it is in large part in the greater American evangelical church.

It's a very performance -based model. And what we have done in that type of model is we adopt success standards from the world and we incorporate them into the church when our success standards should not flow from worldly standards, but from biblical standards, right?

And really the sad reality when it comes to churches set up like this, who foster anonymity or disconnectedness or a low level of commitment, when it comes to that, the people don't grow.

They just don't. So there's been large studies on this from mega church pastors that actually went in to see if the people that were coming in and out, all these thousands of people were coming, being conformed to the image of Christ or growing and it wasn't happening.

And they were like, we gotta change. But the fanfare and the money coming in, it's just too alluring.

And a lot of these churches just went right back to that model of a kind of church government.

But we can know that disconnection or anonymity, as that goes up in the life of the

Christian and the commitment level goes down, that will equal no spiritual maturity and that equals contributing really to the unhealthiness of the church.

So I'll say it again, if you wanna be disconnected or remain anonymous, not a part of the church, as that goes up, your commitment will simultaneously go down, you will not grow and the church will begin to digress.

But thankfully, there's also another segment of the population of any church and that's a segment of the population that values connectedness and commitment.

So they're resolved to commit to the church, to be a part of that church with a full heart.

So it's like, I'm here, I'm fully invested with my time, with my particular gifts, with the resources that God has given me and I'm just gonna do my best to bless the church with all that I am.

Connectedness and commitment, that goes up in the life of a Christian and the lack of commitment goes down, that will equal spiritual maturity or spiritual progression and that contributes to the health and the success of a church.

So connectedness and committedness is absolutely essential if we wanna foster and maintain a healthy church, especially here.

And God describes his church as a flock in a family, in a body. You think about those descriptions and it's all related to connectedness.

When we're family members, we should be connected one with another. Of course, a body, Paul goes into 1

Corinthians 12 and talks about that we are the body of Christ, that we all are different body parts but you think that, of course, if we're parts of a body, that's a high level of connectedness.

You really can't have a body without the parts being connected one to another. It's a flock, a family, and a body.

That's who the church is called to be. So it really gives no room for disconnectedness. Does that make sense? It really gives no room for lack of commitment because we fail to be the church that God has called us to be and we fail to really move forward.

I think when it comes to, you know, if you're thinking about it yourself, when it comes to evaluating our lives and saying, okay,

I really wanna be this fully invested part of the church. We really have to look at the way that we value things.

Because I'll just tell you this, what we truly value is what we put our heart and mind and soul into.

What we truly value is what we spend our time on, we spend our resources on.

And so we have to think about that. We spend our resources on what we think is valuable. And I think the church is valuable for multiple reasons but we kind of have to go through that thought process before we have this type of all -in mentality.

First Timothy 3 .15 says, if I delay, you may know. He says, if I delay, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living

God, a pillar in the buttress of the truth. And the word pillar or buttress, it just means the support of truth.

The church is so incredibly valuable because we have the words of the living God. And in any good, godly, authentic church, every single

Sunday, all throughout the week, the truth is flowing in and flowing out into the world.

That's why it's extremely valuable. You think about it, like I just said, we as Christians, we think about the descriptions of the church, we have no life or no function or no purpose outside of our church body.

And that's kind of correlates with what the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12, when he calls the church a body.

And you imagine taking your arm, cutting it off and throwing it away from yourself, that arm dies, right?

It has to have connection to the body for that arm to have life and that arm to have purpose. So the church is so, the local church, our church is so powerful in one that the truth flows out, but we have no purpose as Christians without it.

We shrivel up, we die, and we fail to really fulfill all that God would have for us individually and corporately.

And when I was 19, you know, God had saved me, I didn't grow up in a Christian environment or anything like that, just saved me radically.

I didn't have any type of Christian influence, I just started kind of feeling like I needed to read my Bible and then through that, and then my buddy was inviting me to church and I finally went to that weird

Pentecostal church. But in the midst of it, God saved me. And, you know,

I was thinking, okay, God, I think, yeah, I'm all in here, I'm Jesus, you're my

Lord, you're my Savior, what do you want for me? And so I was thinking about my life's path and all the different plans that I could make for myself.

And I came upon this verse, the kind of these series of verses, this

Bible study of this thought process that really changed or altered the course of my life.

And to this day, and it started with Proverbs 19, 21, it says, many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the

Lord that will stand. So I, as a young man, what do you want with my life?

Where should I go and where should I invest? What should I do as, you know, one of your sons? And it's not necessarily about all the plans that I can make, it's understanding that the purpose of God will prevail.

That I just don't wanna spin my wheels and invest in something that's not gonna have any type of impact, right?

Then I went to Job 42, 2, and it says, I know that you can do all things that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.

So his plans and his purpose will stand, prevail, and it can't be thwarted, as Pastor Wade had said earlier, and that's to stop from being accomplished.

So my thinking in all of this went from, okay, this is not about you, Lord, telling me about my specific plan.

This is not necessarily about me saying, Lord, what's your will for my life? It's, no, it's

God, what is your will? What are you doing? What are you accomplishing in the earth? And I wanna do that,

I wanna support that, because my individual plans really don't matter too much.

And then after that, Matthew 16, 18, after kind of going through that process, Matthew 16, 18 was this blinding light after really understanding or coming into the knowledge of God's sovereign will and the power of his purpose, and nothing can stop it, that what he has already decreed and what he ordains will happen, and nobody can slow it down, nobody can stop that from being accomplished.

Matthew 16, 18, Jesus says this, I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

So what is God doing in the world today? He's building his church. Why is the church so incomprehensibly valuable?

Because that is what God is doing. He's doing it for his glory, he's building his people.

So as a 19 -year -old, I said, well, this is it. I know what my path is, and it's simply to serve the church, to be helpful in the church, to exercise whatever gifts

God has given me to bless the church. Because I can know and we can know as we understand this that if I invest my time and give to the church and continually pour out my life to the church and stick with the church when it's very painful, which it is, stick with the church when you go through conflict or when you are hurt by church members which happens, that if I can just move forward and love the church, then all of that effort, all of the pain, all of the focus that I put in the church, all the sacrifice will not be in vain.

It'll not only have earthly results, but eternal results. If I value the church like Jesus values his church, then

I should have no problem fully committing all of my heart and all of my focus and all of my resources into the health and the advancement of the church.

And so I think that I wanted to just build that foundation this morning for you because we really have to come to the,

I guess, come to the understanding of the value of who we are as Christ's bride and Christ's body before we will be a fully functioning, committed member of that body.

And so for the remainder of the sermon, there's lots of things that we can talk about when it comes to things that we can do, things that we shouldn't do inside of the church to make or break the church or to create a healthy church environment.

But I just wanted to focus on three pretty big deals or pretty big issues that we can look at and do as Christians, which will absolutely facilitate this healthy church that we all want.

And number one, it's resolved to be rooted in the church. Rootedness in the body of Christ, rootedness as God's people is absolutely essential.

And I'll just tell you, as you go about your Christian life, you will be, I'll put it this way, the enemy and everybody else around you will want to uproot you out of the church because if we can get

God's people uprooted out of the church, well then, the church will increasingly become unhealthy and that individual

Christian will become unhealthy. John 15, eight, Jesus says some powerful words here all throughout that chapter of John 15, but he says, by this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

So Jesus says in just a short amount of words there, he says, God is glorified, which we know that God's highest priority is his glory.

And if God had a day planner, which we don't use anymore, or maybe things that he does every day, which is glorify myself, glorify myself, he has created all things for his glory.

And so Jesus says, God is glorified and you prove to be my disciples. The authenticity of your

Christianity is your fruit bearing. It's about bearing fruit. And I think we can know that we have no capacity whatsoever as Christians to bear any type of fruit if we are not rooted, right?

No fruit, or sorry, no root, no fruit. We just read this verse right here, Psalm one, one through three, it says, blessed is the man who walks in the counsel of the wicked nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers, but his delight is in the law of the

Lord and on his law, he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in season and its leaf does not wither in all that he does, he prospers.

So the blessed man is not a man who's walking or standing or sitting where he shouldn't be, but he's firmly planted where he should be.

Rootedness all throughout the scriptures and we can go through so many different areas or directions when it comes to just looking through the scriptures, but rootedness equals the blessed life, the life that we all want to live.

And if we are not rooted individually and we're not rooted corporately, then we can rest assured that we're not gonna yield the fruit that comes from being rooted.

I think one of the biggest reasons, I would say maybe the biggest reasons that God has blessed

Apology of Church Mason, Apology of Church Utah, is because the men and women that he has brought us.

It's my favorite thing about the church, just the people, right? We have high caliber, incredible people that God has brought us to lead and to serve.

And specifically he's brought us incredible deacons that come alongside of us and serve like some of the best men that I've ever met in my life, the deacons that serve not only in Mesa, but here.

And I was talking to one of our deacons, Brian Simpson, we were counting the offering the other day, and he had said it kind of like in a nonchalant, maybe passing way, but he told me, he says,

I've been married to my wife for 27 years. I've been in the same home for 26 years.

I've been doing the same job for 18 years. And I looked at his life and his family is a family that we really look up to.

And they're so blessed because of his staying power, right? He said, you know what?

I am going to stick put, I'm gonna stay put. I'm gonna stay in the same job, stay in the same house.

I'm gonna stay in the same marriage, of course. And from that comes blessing.

So with rootedness comes individual and corporate blessing. Really, you could say the degree of health in a church is directly proportional to the rootedness of her members.

Say it a different way, maybe the healthy church is comprised of stable members because they have decided to plant themselves where the

Lord has led them. And I think to be balanced, I really wanna be balanced, there are legitimate reasons why you have to uproot and you gotta leave, absolutely, right?

So your family is your highest ministry, your family is your highest priority. And we can be rightly motivated to uproot and move our family.

It's maybe a better job or a financial opportunity that you have to pull up stakes and go because of that, we can understand that.

Maybe it's to go buy land and you wanna expand and you wanna build and you wanna plan for the future. You actually wanna be post mill, right?

That's a good reason to go. The better overall environment, yeah, we can get that health reason.

Sometimes our family members are debilitating health issues and you gotta jump ship or move across the nation to provide for them.

Your theological convictions can change. I know that was the case for me, especially being in that Pentecostal church and then

I come into reform theology. I was listening to some characters and then

I started listening to guys like John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul and man, once you know, I could no longer sit in that environment, we had to go.

So we can totally understand that your theological convictions can evolve and mature, which should happen and that can be a good reason to go.

And also, maybe from the negative, you can't get a job and we've experienced that for people who've, you know, come to Apologia Mesa wanting to come and be a part of the church and they just can't make it.

And you gotta go where the work is. You gotta also go because your church is unhealthy.

You know, the church is demonstrably unhealthy in a sense and the leadership will not address it.

You know, they won't fix the glaring issues that are causing the overall unhealthiness of the church.

That's a good reason to go as well. Church leadership goes bad and we do, we can.

And that's a big reason to leave the church. As pastors disqualify themselves. We had a prominent pastor just do that, it's painful.

It's a good reason to go. They're not pursuing their character qualifications. You look for 1

Timothy 3, most of the qualifications for an elder are character qualifications and these guys are no longer doing that.

Pastors fail to protect and feed and lead the church. Pastors can become very self -enamored and that can thrive in the greater

American evangelical church because we celebratize spiritual leaders when we absolutely should not do that.

Flattery is one of the worst things that you can ever do to anybody, but especially a man that stands up in front of a crowd of people and you begin to flatter and celebratize and praise and worship, don't ever do that because that is not beneficial for you and it's not beneficial for him.

And I can understand being thankful for a spiritual leader who is really equipped and handles the word of God well and has been transformative for you in the way that he leads and that he handles

God's word, but we should be very careful not to flatter. Pastors can become very narcissistic or enamored with themselves and make the ministries about themselves.

I worked for a very narcissistic leader and I was a associate pastor and that was very, very painful to go through, but it was good for me, even though I had to go through that and it was so educational because I was so naive at that point of being a younger pastor that I didn't see that.

I didn't see through that. I really didn't understand that. I thought that was kind of what we needed to do, but it was good, again, for me to go through that so I can understand this is not what it's all about.

Pastors can use their own flock for their own self -promotion and selfish gain.

They desire to be served and not to serve their flock, so there's all sorts of reasons why you should uproot positive and negative, but what

I want to get to is the principle is rootedness. It's wherever I go, God, you may, if I'm here to be an apology of Utah for 50 years, yes,

Lord, but if you need to move me, I completely understand that, but no matter what, I'm going to have that principle of rootedness here.

I'm staying and I'm gonna serve and I'm fully committed. We gotta also understand, especially as apologians, we're rare in our evangelism.

There's a whole bunch of people at Apology of Mesa. They've got churches that they attend to in the morning and they come to our church at the night because we meet in the afternoon and they do it because they have no evangelistic outlet or ministry within the church.

We love them and they come, but when you're a church like ours and you consistently impact the culture with the gospel, you're gonna get the enemy's attention and the enemy is gonna attack and I have never been so attacked or experienced so much attack as a pastor or as a church ever since I came to be a pastor at Apology of six years ago.

So what happens is the attack comes in and I'm gonna get into this a little bit more and it's painful and it's harmful and the sheep can leave because what they do is they look at the attack, they look at what's going on, they immediately associate that with a problem within the church so we can make assumptions as God's people and we leave and we uproot, not based upon good information just because of what we feel like is happening.

So hopefully that came out clearly, but because of who we are and what we do, attack will come in, but it's not necessarily a bad thing and it's not necessarily a reason to leave.

So I would say don't let righteous conflict or assumptions uproot you and along with that, there's gonna be trends and fads, grass is greener on the other side scenarios, very difficult hardships that you will go through within your life as a

Christian and a part of the church, don't let that uproot you. If it's not a legitimate reason to uproot you.

Rootedness really is how we cultivate and maintain a healthy church.

So be rooted, be committed. Don't go unless you need to. Untied to that, number two, is we have to handle conflict biblically.

If we're going to be a part again of this healthy church, successful church, we have to understand how to navigate conflict because how we handle conflict individually and corporately within a church can be very life -giving to a church, but it can also be incredibly destructive and incredibly painful for not only the leaders, but everybody else.

Conflict is gonna happen. I mean, wherever you go and whatever you do, if you're a part of a community of people, you're gonna get into it with somebody or at least gonna be attached to some kind of conflict that may not be your own.

I mean, look, Adam and Eve, what was one of the first things that Adam said when Sin entered into creation is, you know, it was the woman that you gave me.

Blame shifting, right? He's going at his wife for what had happened.

It's gonna happen. And again, conflict is going to happen when you're evangelistic.

So what happens, and when we started to do our bills of abolition, that's when the enemy really just opened up on us and we knew it was gonna happen.

We're like, okay, you know, we started in abortion now and the whole effort was to get churches on board and, you know, resourced and equipped to go to the abortion clinics and save babies.

And then we said, okay, now we wanna be legislative and now we wanna start introducing these bills of abolition to try to outlaw abortion and, you know, equal protection for the baby in the womb.

And when we did that, wow, wow. It has been a ride that has never stopped.

And what we have seen is that we can kind of handle, and I know the pastors, Pastor Andrew and Pastor Wade can understand, we can kind of handle, you know, attacks from the outside, ridicule and critique, and that stuff kind of runs off the back of the duck kind of a thing.

But it's hard when it's internal conflict. The enemy will do his most devastating work within the church, destructive work within the church, as he sends agents of Satan within the church that seem great, but they're there to hurt.

They're there to tear down. They are there to cause turmoil. And as a church that faithfully, you know, commits to church discipline and deals with sin the way that we need to deal with it, people, man, people don't like that.

So a lot of the pain, a lot of the struggle, a lot of the conflict that we go through is because we've had to bring people in front of the church very reluctantly.

We are not trigger happy to go through church discipline. We want to err, and I think we do on the side of grace and calling people to repentance when their sins are exposed, but there comes a time, unfortunately, when you have to come before the church and then you have to present this issue before the church because this individual or individuals have just dug their heels in and they don't want to repent.

And that's after we as the pastors have messaged and called and said, please repent, please don't make us do this because this is horrible.

It's just the worst thing about being a pastor. But what we've seen is that, you know, we've had to do that and we bring it before the church and that doesn't go well with a person that doesn't want to repent.

And so what they will do in light of that is they will begin to slander, build factions, so strive, so discord, and ultimately seek to remove the sheep from the sheepfold.

And this, I mean, it happens so, I guess you can say pattern -like. Every time we have to go through it, we can just see it coming.

It's like somebody sins that's exposed to us. We pour out our heart asking them to repent, turn from their sin, they won't do it.

We bring it before the church. And then what they do is they go to other members of the church and they begin to talk and they begin to accuse and slander all for the purpose of disrupting the flock to get them out of the sheepfold.

Now you can know when Satan's at work because he is the wolf, right, who seeks to devour and destroy.

And what does he always want to do? He wants to prey on the sheep. He wants to separate them from the fold because there's no safety or protection within the fold so that they can be open game for them.

That's how you can know when somebody's really doing his work is when they want to get the sheep out of a good church.

Now it's good to get the sheep out of a bad church. It's good to warn the flock when the leaders have gone bad and the church is unhealthy and the people are not growing and they're not being cared for.

It's good, that's a good thing. But when you have a good church that's healthy and the shepherds are being faithful and consistently faithful, and those people want to get you out of the church, then you can know that's probably the work of the enemy trying to just attack and hurt the church.

When conflict really isn't handled biblically but fleshly, it causes massive amounts of stress and turmoil within the church and leadership.

And I already kind of went into the pain that that could cause. So if someone sins against you, handle it biblically, right?

Commit to handling it biblically. If we want to see Apology Utah continue to progress and continue to have an impact in Utah and thrive and have longevity, which

I want with all my heart, and see babies saved, we're gonna be rooted, but we're also gonna do this important work of handling conflict biblically.

Matthew 18 talks about it. It says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between him and him alone.

If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you that every charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses.

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. And if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as a

Gentile or a tax collector. And I think your pastors have kind of already explained this process, but if somebody sins against you, you go to them.

But what do we want to do? What do we do in our flesh is we want to go to everybody else. And we want to begin to gossip and tear down and maybe because it's the pain that that sin has caused us.

And we want to build factions. So a faction is a group of people now that you get on your side to kind of come against this person that has so hurt you instead of going to them directly with your sins.

And then if they fail to repent, then you get, you involve more parties until the point of bringing it before the church and unfortunately having to put them out of the church.

But I think it's important when you look at Matthew 18, because if you go to the beginning of the chapter, Jesus talks about the greatest and he talks about humility.

And he says, the greatest among you is to be like a child. And then he goes on to talk about the woe or the condemnation that comes upon a person who causes other people to sin.

And so when it comes to handling conflict or handling the sin against you in your life, humility is so essential to this, just like that humble child.

Because what we can do is we can respond in the flesh and we can cause other people to sin by bringing them into our faction, bringing them into business that is not their own because we're so hurt and we don't want to deal with it the right way.

It's so important. So we got to squash gossip, just have nothing to do with it.

And sometimes we just allow it, right? Could be on social media, could be with people that we love, could be with family members, could be with somebody that is so gossipy that that is just who they are.

And then you just sit there and give an ear to it. And what you're doing in that is tearing down the church, just a little by little.

And sometimes, I mean, you don't have to be a meanie about or hit somebody over the hammer, but it's definitely okay.

And it's absolutely, I would just say this is absolutely essential for you to tell the person, hey, I love you and I appreciate you.

And I think you're hurting right now and I want to do my best to help you. And I'm not helping you by listening to this.

I'm not helping you by facilitating gossip, by giving party to it, by listening to it.

So we got to squash it in a very kind way. We got to squash slander, right?

Slander is false accusations against another person. We got to squash faction building when that happens within the church.

These things, if they have already not happened, they will, they will. As you grow and you become even more effective, this is what we will have to deal with.

So if you're gonna be rooted and committed, deal with conflict the way that God has called us to.

And when you deal with it, there's been so many times throughout the history of Apologia and even when I've been there that we've had to bring things before the church and we're like, man, how is this gonna affect everybody?

And when we do it right and we make sure we do it right as God's elders and God's pastors, it brings life into the church.

I can't tell you how many times that we have with shaky hands are going up in front of the church and oh no, we have to deal with this again.

We don't wanna deal with this, it's painful. Afterwards, people come up to us and they say, you know what?

I didn't know about membership within the church. I really didn't know too much about Apologia up to this point, but I'm fully,

I wanna become a member, thank you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you for handling this the right way because I'll tell you, and not to throw any stones, but church discipline is not practiced within the greater

American evangelical church when it should be. And then what happens when we don't practice church discipline within the church?

We allow sin to proliferate within the body and we do not promote holiness within the life of the church.

We just say, hey, you know what? You can go ahead and sin and sin and sin and hurt people in the church and we'll just turn a blind eye to that because we don't wanna go through the hard process of conflict potentially and confrontation, confronting that sin lovingly and saying, quit it.

Don't do that anymore, repent of the sin. This is what, not what we say, this is what God says. So again, handling conflict biblically will bring so much life in the church, but if you don't do it, you'll hurt yourself and you'll hurt the body of Christ around you.

So one, be rooted. Two, handle conflict biblically. And lastly, and very simply and very briefly, just pray and read your

Bible daily. Maintain your relationship with Jesus.

It's so crucial. Matthew 4 .4 says, man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.

So God sovereignly regenerates us. He makes us spiritually alive and we go from death to life.

And by his great mercy, Ephesians 2 says, he has made us alive in Christ. Now we have a spirit man, spirit woman.

And we need to understand that our spiritual strength comes through our relationship and communion with God.

Really, the essence, the sum and substance of our Christianity is relationship with God, is communion with God, is intimacy with God.

Scripture reading and prayer are not just some religious practices that we do to check off the check board to make sure we're being good

Christians and gaining anything. In that sense, those are the means by which we grow in our relationship with God.

And those are the means by which we become spiritually strong. So out of relationship with God, the

Bible says comes joy and pleasures forevermore, spiritual maturity. But again, it's the spiritual strength that you need to be this contributing part of the church body.

Spiritual weakness is primarily expressed in fleshly living, right?

So if we, and I'll just say it this way, as we counsel the body, which that's what

I do primarily is counsel the flock, you know, one of the things that we return to, pretty much given any situation we're dealing with is somebody has let that go.

Their spiritual disciplines have fallen by the wayside, right? So they've fallen into, or they walked into sin, life dominating sin issues, addiction, whatever it may be, because their relationship with God has been pushed off to the side, which we can do.

And so when we do that, and we're not intentionally carving out time every single day to get into the word and to be in prayer, we can rest assured absolutely that you will be spiritually emaciated and malnourished.

And when you do that, when you do that, you will become very fleshly, right?

So if I'm gonna be rooted, I'm gonna handle conflict well, I need to be spiritually strong. One of my pastors said this, and it's stuck with me all throughout my life and my pastor, he says, if you feed the flesh, you're gonna have no desire or craving for spiritual things.

So it's like, what's the flesh? The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life, just what the flesh desires, giving into temptation, right?

Just feeding the flesh. You're not gonna wanna be in the word of God. You're not gonna want to be in the house of God. And you're not gonna wanna talk to God and commune with him through prayer.

But as you starve the flesh, and you are focused intentionally on your relationship with the living

God, then you'll be spiritually strong, and you'll mitigate the cravings of the flesh.

Galatians 4 talks about it, it says, for the whole law is fulfilled in one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.

For the desires of the flesh are against the spirit, and the desires of the spirit are against the flesh. For these are opposed to each other, and to keep you from doing the things that you want to do.

So walking by the spirit comes when you strengthen your spirit through regular communion with God. So thank you for listening to me stumble through this.

But I, just in summary, you know, as I came here, and as I think about your pastors and you, all

I wanna do is be an encouragement to you. You know, the greater American Evangelical Church, I know you've used that term a lot, is in a big digression, churches are folding.

Churches are shutting down, especially within our nation. Now that's not globally, a lot of times we look at what's happening in the world, and we look it through American glasses, and that's not necessarily the case in different countries.

You can track it, and God is saving people in South America and China, and God's doing incredible work.

But we could say, on the home front, things are not so good, you know? Things are in a decline.

And so what do we wanna do as Christians? Is we wanna be committed to the body.

We wanna be committed to the church. And that's my charge and challenge for you, is to just examine yourself.

And we can go through times of great, I guess you can say great contribution to the body, or great strength in a

Christian walk, and then we can go through a lot of pain, and difficulty, and health issues, and job issues, and relationship issues, and marriage issues, and there absolutely is a very real and present enemy that just wants nothing more than to divide you from the flock.

Don't let it happen. Be rooted, be rooted. And again, and I touched on this briefly, there's not only negative things that can happen within the

Christian life that wants to pull you away, but there's also the grass is greener, and unfortunately, as Christians, we can follow very charismatic people who are incredibly persuasive, and just incredible communicators.

And they can kind of draw people to themselves, which is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm all for good communicators, and powerful people like that.

But what we wanna be drawn to as Christians is just faithful, dutiful service to the local body that God has given us as God's men,

God's pastors, are not necessarily some powerhouses out there that everybody flocks to, but just faithful, character -driven men of God that love the flock, and that truly have given up their lives for the betterment of the flock.

So that's where this rootedness comes in. Root yourself. Deal with conflict well.

Pray and read your Bible. Focus on your relationship with Christ, and we will become even more increasingly healthy here, and even more effective.

All right? Awesome, let me go ahead and pray, and then I'll let Pastor come up.

Father, I thank you for these words that you have given me. Lord, we love you, and we're so thankful for our salvation.

We're so thankful for what Jesus has done in his life and his death for us, that you have saved us, and that we are yours, and that our lives are not our own, and we follow our master.

We are truly slaves to you. And so I pray that we collectively as the called -out ones, the saved ones, would value you, would value your people, would value this church, and we'd make an effort daily to be vigilant, to be vigilant to the attacks of the enemy, to be vigilant when things wanna come into our life and either positively or maybe even negatively uproot us, to be vigilant,

Lord, to squash and to stomp on the things within that can come within the church that want to produce strife and turmoil and destruction like gossip and slander.

So I pray, Lord, that we as a people would be committed to you, committed to one another, loving one another, and we pray all these things in Jesus's name, amen.