943. Five Core Actions Toward the Church

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today's sermon will be preached by Dr. Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University. Well, today is our last day that we are going to cover the series on church matters. And so I want to take a few moments this morning to talk about your relationship, you as an individual, to the church. And by the church, I'm not talking about the body of Christ at large. I'm talking about the local church.

The body of Christ is something God puts you into. The local church is something that you choose to go to. So I want to talk about your relationship with the church.

And as we finish this series, I want to thank publicly Dr. Horn and Mr. Benson for the wonderful and helpful messages that they have brought. These messages or actually these truths are things we've been working on for a couple of years here at the university because we believe it's foundational for our going forward in the future. And your relationship and our relationship to the local churches in the greater Greenville area. And also to teach you biblical principles because as we said in the beginning, that for many of you this is the first time in your life that you're actually making a decision, your own decision about church and where you're going to go. And so we want to lay out before you biblical principles.

And so that's why we have made the focus that we have made, especially on the concept of a doxological church or a church that is intentionally worshiping God. So what I'd like to do this morning is really talk about some so-whats, okay? So we've gone through the semester. We've given you as much doctrine and teaching as we can, as we are allowed to by our time. So what? What's the big deal about it all?

Dr. Warren Wiersbe, perhaps you've heard of him, did a whole series of New Testament commentaries and he called them the Bee Series. And what I'd like to do this morning is give you five important bees or things that we should be doing as a Christian in our relationship to the local church. And so this morning it's not going to be so much doctrinal.

It's just going to be pretty much practical. And whenever you do anything practical, you have a tendency sometimes to upset people. Do you remember Stephen in the New Testament who preached a sermon to the local Jews in Jerusalem? He gave them a really good Hebrew history lesson until he made applications.

And when he made the application, they stoned him. Now, maybe at the end of today's sermon you want to stone me afterwards and get mad at me and perhaps sometimes the applications are upsetting, but you have to have applications to truth. That's the way that we live the Christian life. So this morning what I'd like to do is cover five core actions or just five basic things that as a Christian we should be doing in relationship to the local church.

And the first thing I'd like to cover this morning is that you should be baptized into the church. Church membership in the New Testament was always based on one's profession of faith and their public baptism. For example, on the day of Pentecost, Peter preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. And people came under the conviction of sin. They realized they had sinned and they realized that they had killed the Messiah.

It's kind of like their eyes were open. Suddenly this Jesus that had come was really the one they were looking for, the Messiah. And so they asked Peter the question, what should we do? And what was Peter's answer?

Acts 2, 38. He said, repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sin. So he told them what to do.

So what did they do? Well, Acts 2, 41 says, they that gladly received his word were baptized. And the same day there was added unto them about 3,000 souls.

So think about it, on the day of Pentecost he preaches the Gospel, he tells them what to do, to repent, to turn from their sin to Christ and then follow the Lord in baptism. And so the Bible says that's what they did and he actually numbered them. You know, some people are kind of hyper-spiritual and they're against numbers. Well, often times they're against numbers because they don't have any. But in this case, there were 3,000 people that were saved. For all of us, for the last 2,000 years we've been reading that and thinking how wonderful. I mean, I've never been in a revival meeting where 3,000 people got baptized.

But in this case they did. And the Scripture says they were added unto them. So who's the them? And we read in Acts 2, 47, and the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved. The them were the church.

So in the very beginning of the New Testament, where we see the local church in action, we see that church membership was based on your profession of faith and your public baptism. So, you should be baptized in the church. So I ask you, have you been baptized? You say I'm a Christian.

All right, great. Have you followed the Lord in believers' baptism? Did New Testament disciples baptize people? For example, Peter, James and John, did they baptize folks? Well listen to this. Philip, the evangelist in the book of Acts chapter 8 goes down to Samaria and he preaches.

Listen to what the Bible says. But when they, the Samaritans, believe Philip as he preached good news about the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. What do we know about Philip? He was an evangelist. He traveled. He preached the big crowds. He also shared the Gospel with individuals because in the book of Acts chapter 8, he is told by the Spirit to go down from Jerusalem on the road that leads to Gaza.

Gaza is in the southern part of the country. And he goes down there and he meets a man called the Ethiopian eunuch. He was the servant of the queen. He goes up in the chariot where this man is reading from the book of Isaiah who doesn't understand what he's reading and he preaches to him Jesus. And listen to Acts 2, 36.

And as they were going along the road, they came to the — to some water and the eunuch said, see, here is water. What prevents me from being baptized? And he commanded the chariot to stop and they both went down into the water, Philip and the eunuch, and he baptized them. What is baptism? It is the first step of obedience to Jesus Christ after you get saved. It is your identification of your faith in Jesus Christ. It is an acknowledgement that I've been united to Christ. I am a part of His body.

And I publicly do this to symbolize what has happened in my life. Personally, how I was baptized by the Spirit into the body of Jesus Christ the church. I could read many, many more verses of the New Testament because of time, I'm not going to do that. But I want to say to you, if you've not been baptized, you need to be baptized. I was baptized at the age of 19 years old, between my freshman and sophomore year of college at the Ingleside Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. After I came to salvation, I realized that this is what the Scripture teaches.

And by the way, I struggled with it for about a year. And finally, as I read the Bible, it became very clear that I needed to do this and this and this is the first step. So number one, you should be baptized into the church. Number two, the second practical thing that we should learn from this semester is that you should be devoted to the church. Now that may sound a bit strange, maybe an unusual statement, but I believe it's foundational. That is that as a Christian, we should be devoted to the church.

You say, why would you say this? Listen to Titus 2.14. We are told what Jesus' mission was when He came to this earth.

It says, He gave Himself for us that He might redeem unto — He might redeem us from all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people. Now the word peculiar in the Bible doesn't mean strange, that's the way we look at it. Maybe you'll say, well you know, church is filled with peculiar people. Somebody said the Gospel light attracts some strange bugs. So church is unique, it's an unusual group of people.

But that's not what the word peculiar means, it means special. It means God's own possession. Christ came into the world to redeem.

What does it mean to redeem? It means to buy the freedom of somebody who's a slave. It means to pay the price, and if I could put it in simple terms, Jesus' mission was to make a purchase. He came to buy us. And what was the payment price? What was the currency He used?

Ephesians 1, 7 says, we have redemption through His blood. The payment price that Jesus gave was His own death. And what did He come to buy? He came to buy for Himself a bride. Now in the United States of America, because of our culture, we don't have a dowry to get a bride. In other words, you don't pay off the father-in-law for marrying the girl, you just have to pay it all off the rest of your life. Because marriage is extremely expensive and you'll find that out when you get married. But in many countries, you pay a dowry.

There's a price, a bride's price is what it's called. And the Bible says that Jesus came in the world and He paid a bride's price. It says He loved the church and He gave Himself for it. And this entire act of giving His life for a ransom, we call His passion. Jesus came and He passionately purchased a bride through His death and now He passionately pursues His bride through the preaching of the Gospel in the church. Jesus has devoted Himself to us, the church, with the passion of a bridegroom.

When a man is on a mission, when he is going after a girl, usually you can see it in his eyes. For 20 years, I had Christian young people travel with us on our team. We had 57 young people who traveled with us. And out of that came 10 marriages. So about a third married each other.

Or you could say two-thirds didn't marry each other, however you want to look at it. But after you sat in the van long enough, it's a real clear yes or no. And I could see it in the guy's eyes.

When the guy really wanted to go there, it was really, really obvious. And so we had a no dating policy on the team. We didn't have a no marriage policy, by the way. You could get married, you just couldn't date. You say how'd that work?

Well it worked, they figured it all out. But whenever a guy was passionate about a girl, it became very, very, very clear. Jesus is passionate about His church. And we should follow our Lord's example. We should be committed and devoted to the church. God's passionate work in the world is the establishment of His church. He said, upon this rock I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I believe that we should be committed and devoted to the church.

There was a well-known missionary who was my privilege to know named Darrell Champlin and he ministered in Congo in Suriname, he is now with the Lord, he was a great missionary. And he would often preach in his sermons about the passion for the church. And he made this statement many times, he said, the eternal purpose of God is to call out from every kindred, tongue, people, and nation a multitude redeemed by the blood of His Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world, over whom He will crown His Son, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, King of Kings and Lord of Lords forever. This is the passion of the heart of God that cannot be quenched, the obsession of His mind that cannot be denied, the vision of His eye that cannot grow dim, and the destination to which He has committed His omnipotent, immutable, eternal being, a destination He will not abandon.

The passion of God is for His church and therefore we should be passionate for His church. Jesus gave His disciples the great commission. The great commission is shaped within the context of the church, for He said to go and make disciples, and how do you do that?

Baptize them and teach them. The great commission is not a call to evangelize, it is to call to start churches. Because evangelism is the foundation of church planting. But when you go baptize and church — and teach, that's what the church is to do. The great commission is to go into all the world and plant churches and establish them.

We should be passionate about that. We should be devoted to the church. And let me say very practically, in my own life, in my marriage with my wife, we made the church the center of our life's experience. When my wife and I were married and our wedding vows — our wedding vows were written by my pastor Dr. Ed Nelson, and that's Dr. Coleman's father-in-law.

He just had his birthday this week, he's 96 years old. And he wrote in the wedding vows our commitment, first of all, to one another and it should be manifested through the church. And my wife and I made a commitment to the Lord and His church within our wedding vows. And from that, from the time we started dating, we always made the church the core of what we were doing. When we dated, we served together in the church.

When we got married, it was in the church. When we went on our honeymoon, yes, we actually went to church on our honeymoon. When we moved two weeks after we were married, we went to serve in the church. Some of our favorite dates as a married couple were going out on Thursday mornings doing evangelistic work, sharing the Gospel, and then meeting for lunch afterwards and having a wonderful time together. When we traveled in evangelism, we served churches. In fact, as we lived in local church parking lots, my children grew up in the church nursery. Our social life was built around the church.

Our best friends were in the church. On the weekends, I go out right now here as the president of Bob Jones to preach in churches. People say to me, does that bother you to go out on Sunday mornings? No, it doesn't bother me because I get to go to church. I get to go to church.

Pressure for me is not Sunday morning, pressure for me is Monday morning. I work at Bob Jones. But I get to go to church. Every open door of ministry I've ever had came while serving in the church, even being recommended to be the president of Bob Jones University was because of serving in local churches. You should love your church. You should love your pastor. You should love the people of the church. You should be devoted to the church.

And then number three, you should be serving in the church. God has gifted every one of you. He has enabled you and He has empowered you, both male and female, to serve the church and have a spiritual impact in the lives of others.

Listen to the book of Ephesians. But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. And He gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers — why? For the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Every one of us should be involved serving the church. The church is a body and we are members of that body and God has given to every believer spiritual gifts for the benefit and the blessing of the church. Romans 12, for as in one body we have many members and the members do not all have the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. Oftentimes churches languish because people don't serve.

You should be involved. The end result of our gifts is for the common benefit of the whole. First Corinthians 12, for now there are varieties of gifts but the same Spirit. There are varieties of service but the same Lord. There are varieties of activities but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. That's the trinity being involved in your gifts. Now listen to this, to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.

Good means benefit and blessing. You are a blessing and you are a benefit to the church and without you doing your part, the church languishes and the common good is not there. You say then how can I know my spiritual gift? Well the answer is only by serving.

It is — you can take a spiritual gifts test and still not be sure what your gift is. The only way you really discover your gift is by serving. God has called all of us to be His servants and we discover it by using and taking my time and investing it and it will come out. So serve the church. That means you ought to go to church and volunteer and say to your pastor, reporting for duty sir, what can I do? When I came here to Bob Jones University, the first thing I did is I joined a church.

First thing I did. I went to the church and I, I figured my best place to serve was in the youth department so I walked into the youth group and the youth pastor had only been there a couple of weeks. He was a brand new youth pastor.

I said I'm here to serve, whatever I can do, I'll do it. My first year I was there I was, I was given the opportunities to speak in Sunday school classes. I did my vehicle for church visitation, I helped out in youth activities, we held teen Bible clubs and I was, I was able to teach and be involved in that and then my second year I got a step up. I was given the opportunity to teach the fifth grade boys Sunday school class. Now let me tell you something, if you cannot preach to fifth grade boys and hold their attention, you're gonna be a sorry preacher. You say man that's a hard group to, that's my, that's my point. And so I had the fifth grade boys Sunday school in the hallway, actually the stairwell of the church.

That was the only place we could have it. And as the years have gone by, I have gone and preached in churches and a grown man comes up to me and he says you are my fifth grade Sunday school teacher. One day I preached on the millennial kingdom, I thought how can I get these kids excited about the millennial kingdom? And when I read Isaiah it said that the lamb will lay down with the lion and you'll lead about a lion. Because you know what, in the millennial kingdom you're gonna have a lion as a house pet. You know what the boys said? They didn't say amen, they said cool.

It says you're gonna play upon the hull of a cobra. How many of you would love to have a lion for a house pet and you wouldn't have to worry about him eating you? I mean how many would think that's cool? Yeah. Can you say cool? No, say cool, yeah. How many of you would like to have a cobra who wouldn't bite?

And you never had to worry about him biting you. How many of you think that that would be cool? No, not many of you.

Yeah, that's cool, thank you. Well by the time I finished the sermon, those fifth grade boys were not saying amen. They were standing on their chairs shouting. Man, it was awesome.

I loved it. Serve the church. And one day the pastor of the church that I attended here in Greenville, South Carolina got a phone call from a pastor in Michigan saying that he was looking for a youth pastor, do you have any recommendations? And he kindly and graciously recommended me and I ended up serving in that church for five years. Serve the church. Some of you should consider spending your first few years in helping a local church after you graduate.

A church plant, a church revitalization, maybe a small struggling church. I've met so many BJU grads who took Dr. Bob Jones III's challenge to go and help a church and they, they did it. You have been given so much doctrinal knowledge and so much leadership skills. You've sat in so many services.

For some of you, you've gotten bloated. Spiritually, you're wobbling. And you need to go and work out what you know and put it in the practice and serve the local church. You should serve the church. And then number four, you should be supporting the church. I believe that you should support the local church financially.

Why? Because primarily God's work in the world is the New Testament local church. In the Old Testament, the fundamental way of supporting God's work was through giving 10%. We call that a tithe. We know tithing existed before the law because Abraham rescued his nephew Lot, who had been kidnapped in the book of Genesis, Abraham went and rescued him and captured the spoils of the battle.

On his return back, he met King Melchizedek, the king and priest of Jerusalem. And what did Abraham do with those spoils? He gave Melchizedek 10% of them. Why? Why did he do that?

For two reasons. Number one, he wanted everybody around him who worshiped idols to know that Melchizedek, who worshiped the true and the living God, was the God that he worshiped. And by giving to him, he was honoring the Lord. Secondly, he gave to support the priesthood. And historically, that's been the main purpose of tithing, to honor the Lord, to testify that he's the one who provides, to give him glory, and then secondly, to provide for those who serve and work in the worship. Under Moses, the law had many commands about tithing, but still the people gave to the Lord to support the work of God. You say, preacher, what if people don't give the tithe? Well, one of the most important verses in the Old Testament concerning tithing is found in Malachi chapter three, verse eight.

Will a man rob God? Yet you have robbed me, but you say, wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. You are cursed with a curse, you have robbed me. Even this whole nation bringing all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house.

Improve me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Why do people say they don't, they can't tithe? Because they can't afford it.

Well, you can't not afford it. Because the whole teaching of the Bible is that God blessed the people through the priest, and God blessed the priest through the people, they supported one another. The priests were the mediators, and the people supported the priests with the tithe, and the blessing of God came. There is no question that God blessed the Jews for tithing and supplied their needs. And when we come into the New Testament, tithing is not as evident in the New Testament. So I'm not here to say to you that you are under the law to tithe because you don't really read that in the New Testament.

But what you do read in the New Testament, first of all, is Jesus commended even the Pharisees for their tithing. But what you see in the New Testament is even a, even a higher level, and that's called grace-giving. And in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9, we find Paul writing about grace-giving, and grace-giving was seen when the people gave generously out of poverty and joyfully out of adversity. Because grace is always the ability to do what you cannot naturally do.

It's always above and beyond. And in the New Testament, what we find is God calls us to sacrificially gracefully give. That we are to give cheerfully and we are to give beyond our ability.

So whether you give a tithe or more than a tithe, we know it's biblical and we are to give generously out of our heart to be able to support the work of God. The future generation of the church is dependent upon the people of God to support the church. If we do not support the church, then the church languishes. And when the church languishes, you languish. Read the Bible, study it carefully.

This is crucial. And if this generation, if you folks don't support the church in going forward, where are we going to be? So practically, we should support the church and then finally, you should be worshiping in the church.

I could say a whole lot more and I've cut out a lot for the message. But let me say you should be worshiping in the church. God's built a rhythm in creation. It's called a seven day week.

That's from the very beginning. What does he tell us to do in that seven day week? Labor six days and rest on the seventh day. That's called the Sabbath or Shabbat. Just like tithing predated the law, so did the Sabbath.

So it's built into life. And in the New Testament, it is observed that worship shifted from Saturday to Sunday because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because when Jesus came, everything changed. It changed the way we date our years. What is this year?

It's 2019 AD. What does that mean in the year of our Lord? Our date, 2019, goes all the way back to Jesus. When Jesus came, the world changed. He changed the way we worship in the week because it was on the last day, now it's on the first day of the week. And so when we read the New Testament, we have various passages that speak about this. For example, Acts 27, on the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with them, intending to depart on the next day and he prolonged his speech until midnight.

By the way, that's called a long service. In Revelation chapter one and verse ten, it's — John says, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. What was the Lord's day? It was Sunday.

Basically, they worshiped on Sunday, the Lord's day. Since Sunday is every — since Sunday is every week, then we should worship every week on Sunday. Sunday is not a day for golf, it's a day for God. Sunday is not a day for shopping, Sunday is a day for service. Sunday is the Lord's day, it's not your day, it's His day.

And it is for your benefit. It is for your spiritual renewal and refreshment. God has put it in the rhythm of the week to help us to stay faithful to Him.

And what are we to do on that day? We are to go to church and we are to worship God. Sunday is a day for worship.

And this should be clear that going to church is ultimately for the Lord. I come to offer Him worship. I come to offer Him the sacrifice of praise.

I come to offer to Him the sacrifice of the work week as I have worked and I want to come and support. I come to dedicate my life to Him and worship should be based on clear biblical principles. I don't have the right to worship God the way I want to worship Him. I should worship Him the way He has revealed it. And so worship in the New Testament is really simple, it's not complicated. It's centered around the Bible, we don't worship the Bible as if it's God, but we worship God in spirit from our heart and truth which is the Bible. So when we come to church we pray the Bible, we read the Bible, we give according to the Bible, we sing the Bible, and we preach and expound the Bible and through spirit and through truth we worship the Lord. There's so many things I cannot say because of time, but my exhortation to you is that you be a committed, faithful, loyal member of a local church and serve God through what God is doing in this world. Father, thank you for your word. Bless us now we pray in Jesus' name, amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Steve Pettit, president of Bob Jones University. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow at this same time as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.