One of the main reasons why churches close their doors is that they've forgotten why they existed in the first place.
But imagine 151 churches in America will close their doors and go out of business this coming week. Is it because the church no longer matters? Is it because God no longer matters? Or is it because the church has lost the sense of why it existed in the first place? Hearing of those churches that'll close their doors this week is tragic.
But once a church forgets why it existed in the first place, there's often very little reason to stick around. Why are we here? That's a huge philosophical question for the human race. But for Christians, we know that our purpose on earth is made very clear in God's Word.
This is Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Today, Stephen is going to encourage us to live with biblical purpose. It applies to our individual lives, and it applies to our churches.
Stephen called today's message, Why We Exist. After years of work and effort, one mega online organization has now digitized 30 million books in digital form, which means you can do word searches now or they can. The body of data has literally created a cultural method or study of analyzing culture in a word they've created called culturomics. They're able to look at the appearances of words, the number of times words appear, and over the centuries, the usages of those words. The data goes all the way back to the year 1800 and then moves forward. It reveals what mattered, what was popular, what people were talking about, what's in novels, books, encyclopedias. For instance, I read that the words ice cream appeared and sort of took off in 1910. It didn't appear before then, but in 1910, just after GE introduced what they called an amazing electric powered home ice box.
Now we had the opportunity to have ice cream, otherwise known of course as the refrigerator. Suddenly, those words find their way into novels and books and articles and publications and encyclopedias. The same data sees a connection in the loss of words. They saw a tremendous drop in more recent years with the appearance of the word Atkins or diet and the dropping off of the word pasta, which is a sad thing to me, but that's exactly the relationship. It's interesting how it's been connected. One of the most interesting, and of course for our study, observations that struck my attention as I read this was the steady decline of the term or word or name God. The decline of the use of that word. It's been in steady decline evidently over the decades and they can track it now. They say that today that word is appearing in publications less than one third of what it did in 1801. God is disappearing, as it were, from the publication world of our culture.
Other research organizations are telling a different, yet I think connected story. If we connect the dots, the church at large, especially in this country, is effectively disappearing right along with God. According to a recent LifeWay research study, they're saying that over the next seven years, 55,000 churches will cease to exist. That's all denominations, but imagine 151 churches in America will close their doors and go out of business this coming week. Is it because the church no longer matters?
Is it because God no longer matters? Or is it because the church has lost the sense of why it existed in the first place? In fact, other research along with the same idea says that it's primarily the mainline liberal Protestant church along with the Catholic church that is losing thousands of attenders annually.
The recent visit of the Pope is really a fairly massive recruiting tool because thousands are literally leaving that particular church. The Evangelical church is growing, if not at least holding steady. But it's interesting, if you burrow a little bit more into that, you discover that only 1% of the Evangelical churches in America are actually growing by means of reaching lost people.
Reaching lost people. Which means then that within the Evangelical church, growth is really not that much growth. It is, as one author writes, nothing more than the shuffling of existing Christians from one church to another. If there was ever a time for the church and the Christian to return to a Biblical understanding of our mission it's today. We talked about who we are in our first discussion. In our second one we talked about why we belong. And today I want to discuss along the theme of why we exist. In other words, why didn't God just sort of whisk us away as soon as we placed our faith in his Son, the Lord Jesus? Wouldn't that be a great incentive to join, to believe?
If you believed then suddenly you were gone? Why did he leave us here? I want to answer that question as best I can even though we're going to take a 35,000 foot overview of it. But I want to give you five statements and take you to two passages of scripture fairly rapidly. The first statement is this, we exist as exhibits of spiritual reality. Take your Bibles and turn to Acts chapter one. A familiar passage, we pray that God will give us fresh insight and open eyes to what it might mean to us. Acts chapter one, Jesus is announcing to his disciples something very special.
It's going to mark their lives. And he says in verse eight, and we can just jump there and look at a phrase or two. He says to them, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. He's speaking of course of the day of Pentecost, the creation of the church. And you shall be my witnesses both in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria.
He's just sort of going outward in concentric circles. And even to the remotest part of the earth, you shall be my witnesses locally, regionally, nationally, globally. By the way, this text in the words of our Lord aren't so much about what they will do, but what they will become.
Jesus doesn't really outline a plan. He really promises a person, the person of the Holy Spirit who will descend as he ascends, inhabit all of us, and empower us to speak of eternal spiritual realities. He's going to empower us then in the light of this word the Lord uses, and I love the choice, divinely chosen, but he places us in the courtroom of public opinion, and we are witnesses. A witness isn't necessarily an expert in everything. A witness simply delivers what he or she has seen, what they know to be true. We are living exhibit A's in the courtroom to the resurrecting power and gospel of Jesus Christ.
There has never been a better time for the Christian to return to this original principle. And let me say this, you are not a computer technician. You are not a housewife. You are not a teacher. You're not a mechanic. You're not a doctor. You're not a lawyer. You're not a painter.
You're not a repairman. That's what you do. What you are is a witness in those arenas to the reality of the gospel of Christ. Let's remind ourselves there is not one verse in the New Testament that ever tells an unbeliever to come to church. I'm always intrigued by churches that put banners out that say, please come. I mean, nothing in the New Testament tells the unbeliever to come. In fact, if you read the book of Acts, they were afraid to come. They heard the news that two of them got killed for lying.
I don't want to go there. They stayed away. And yet God was adding to their number daily. The awesome sense of spiritual reality through the lives of these changed individuals was so impactful. If the world is not being reached, if our American culture, if only one percent of the church in America is seeing individuals come to faith in Jesus Christ, could it be that the church isn't really all that committed to the gospel of Jesus Christ?
That isn't a non sequitur. Could we take responsibility? And think of it this way.
If this church, this local church depended upon what you did to grow, where would we be today as opposed to last year and the year before and the year before? Does the church really believe that mankind is eternally lost without Christ? Do we really buy that? Do we really think about it?
Do we really believe it? And Jesus saw the wandering, shepherd-less masses of people and we're told often that he was moved with compassion for them. Matthew 9, Matthew chapter 14, Matthew chapter 18. We're told that Jesus rode into Jerusalem on that donkey and everybody's waving palm branches and everybody's celebrating and you get the idea in your mind that he's smiling. No, the Bible tells us he is weeping as he's riding on that donkey.
He's weeping over the unbelief of the nation. Luke 19. Charles Spurgeon, the great pastor of the 1800s, once wrote that every unbeliever ought to go to hell with our arms wrapped around their legs as if we were doing everything possible to keep them from going. Here are the questions the church ought to be asking. Not what color the carpet is, not if the programs are nice, not if you use an organ or a guitar or whatever the dress code might be, but do we believe the gospel, that there's a heaven or hell? Do we rely on the power of the gospel?
It is the saving power of God unto salvation. Are we getting the gospel right? Are we getting the gospel out? Are we praying for the work of the gospel? Are we investing our lives for the gospel? Are we training the next generation in the gospel? These are the kind of questions you ask of the church you want to join because it is our mission, according to Jesus Christ, to be living exhibitors of spiritual reality and we gather as he defines the church to rehearse the truths and teach them and co-labor together in strategy and method to deliver it.
Let me give you another. Secondly, we exist to expose sinful corruption. In other words, and here's the disaceful part and this is why you hear preachers on television or a newscast say, we don't really want to talk about sin. This is the other side of the gospel. We deliver the gospel and when we deliver the gospel, we deliver the need for the gospel and you need the gospel because you're a sinner and you need a savior. Turn back to Matthew chapter 5. The Lord is informing us that we are witnesses.
We exist to testify to the spiritual reality of Christ and the gospel. Now notice his rather shocking words. They always shock me because we think of the Lord as in these terms but he says this of us. Verse 13, you are the salt of the earth. He doesn't then tell us what we're supposed to do.
He just says this is who you are. You're salt. Don't become tasteless. That's worthless except to be trampled underfoot by men.
It becomes part of the pathway. Jesus is speaking to his disciples and he's challenging them that they are salt. Now whenever we as the average American or perhaps international as a part of our church think of salt, we typically think of food. In fact, in the South, we love salt.
We salt our food before tasting it. At least I do because I just assume I need more. Now I'm getting old enough. They say use that substitute stuff. Forget that. I'm using the real thing. I'm going to die early.
I'm going to heaven. Now the problem is we don't think like the first century person did. They used salt for a number of things. One of them was they used it for currency. Roman soldiers were often paid in salt. It was so valuable they'd barter and sell it for more than it was worth. In fact, we have an expression that goes all the way back to that time when we say a man is not worth his salt.
He's saying he doesn't deserve his paycheck. It represented purity to the first century unbeliever, mystically pure. In fact, the Gentiles would often offer salt as an offering to their gods. They had attached all kinds of superstition to this shimmering white appearance and it created their view.
In fact, the Greeks called it theion, divinity. That's some kind of divine power. Out of that comes superstitions.
I can help you overcome bad luck, throw a little bit over your shoulder or whatever. Of course, we know it flavored food. We know salt creates thirst.
I mean, we can, isogenically, we can build into this text what we believe it means and what God wants us to understand. We certainly can understand that it deters corruption and decay. I don't want to focus there.
The presence of salt both exposes the need for it because that substance it is attached to is decaying or decomposing. It serves in effect to deter that, to inhibit it, to slow it down. The life of a human being, it's a little different. It hurts. We think of salt in a wound. That's very painful.
It's an ordeal. I think it's good for the church to remember and every Christian that God in his word never called us sugar, like the waitress at Cracker Barrel. He calls us salt. Not that we're not supposed to be kind or compassionate or gracious or tactful, but our very presence to a decaying culture is like salt to a wound. Our presence, our existence, then you can anticipate it creates a frustration to a decaying culture because we expose it, we deter it, and often we're like salt in a wound. Thirdly, we expel satanic darkness. We expel, we exist to expel satanic darkness. Notice further in the text at verse 14, you are the light of the world.
That's shocking to me. We know Jesus is the light of the world. He says, you are the light of the world.
You are. And then he doesn't give us 10 things that a light's supposed to do, but he does say, look, a city up on a hill can't be hidden. You don't light a candle and put something over it, a basket or a bushel. Children, you know, sing this little light of mine, I'm gonna let it what? Shine.
Hide it under a bushel? No. It's time we live it.
Like they sing it. You say, oh, but our culture is so dark, so dark. Absolutely.
What better time for light to exist than now? When God planted the very first New Testament church in Jerusalem, that first century idolized the human body along with its pantheon of gods and superstitions. The athletes who competed in those early years in the Olympic Games competed completely naked so that the entire body could be magnified and idolized. The Roman culture at large mocked heterosexuality as prudish, closed-minded. Bisexuality was normative. The Roman Emperor Nero had both married several women in succession and he had also married publicly a man without any apparent public reaction. In that generation, drugs were legal and rampant and were actually part of worship. Drunkenness, child prostitution was legalized and pornography was an epidemic. We have one letter dated one year before the birth of Christ from a man named Hilarion to his wife where he writes, if you have our child while I am away and it is a boy, let it live.
If it is a girl, expose it and let it die. That would have been legal. Seneca, in fact, one of Nero's court advisors wrote these words that give us a little hint into how little human life was valued during the days of the early church. He wrote these words.
He was a brilliant senator and court advisor. He said as he simply exposed their culture, quote, we slaughter a fierce ox. We strangle a mad dog and the child who is born weak or deformed, we drown. And this is the generation when God effectively says, you know, this is the perfect time to create the New Testament church. There's no better time than now to sprinkle the earth with people like salt, to have them shine like light. What a perfect time to reveal that there is a way out of enslavement to the darkness of the world and into the kingdom of light. Peter would motivate us all to proclaim the excellencies of the one who has called us out of darkness into a marvelous light, 1 Peter 2.9. Paul reminded the Corinthians that they had received the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ, 2 Corinthians 4.6. Paul described the Ephesian believers as those who once belonged to the darkness but are now light in the Lord. And to the Roman Christians, he challenged them to put on the armor of light.
Shine. This is why we exist, Jesus says here. You are the light of the world. The word for world in this text is cosmos, which refers to the world system. You might write that on the margin of your Bible. The world system. We know that Satan is the chief ruler, he has delegated authority, he has given permission by God to do whatever he does for the purposes of God, but he has created this incredible complex kingdom. We call it the kingdom of darkness. And we have this world system rule that's under his thumb as it were.
We have the organization of, Paul writes to the Ephesians, of rulers. Speaking of Satan and his hierarchy, rulers and powers and world forces of this darkness. So you and I are light, individually and collectively, light in the midst of a world system under the influence of Satan. And our world system is wandering around in the darkness of sin. It is lost, it is entirely confused.
It was ironic to me in the midst of studying for this sermon that I got this past week's edition of Time Magazine. Its front cover, if you saw it, it's red, completely red, and then all over the cover are question marks. All these question marks. And underneath each question mark is a little question. The headline at the top cover reads, is monogamy over?
Question mark. And the subtitle reads, 21 other questions about the way we live now. See, the world is open about its questions. Are we open about the answers? I found it interesting, the question that provoked me, in fact there were several by the way, I read through the whole article, they're dealing with questions, some important, some not so important, but one of the questions is related to public nudity and authors weigh in on why it's good or why it's bad.
Is there a way to call offensive art, blasphemous art, good, and they weigh in on that as polygamy to be accepted and authors weighed in on that on both sides. But the one question that really stood out to me on the front cover down near the bottom, and they didn't deal with it on the inside, but it is the question, what will we regret? Let me answer that. Everything.
Everything. Listen to the darker the world system, the more necessary and more distinctive and more dramatic and more different and more disliked your light will be. Culture's response in fact is going to be like you shining a flashlight in someone's face. They're going to tell you, turn off that light, get that light out of my eye. Our culture though, you know it's so dark, what are we going to do?
Look, let's stop crying in our soup for one thing. There's no better time to be light than in a dark place. God is as much on the throne today as he was in first century Rome, right? Yes, Satan is loose but he's on a leash and that leash is held in the hand of our sovereign Lord and he has chosen us to be in this generation, in this location, in this world, in this country with this influence now to shine and to be salt. The church doesn't need freedom in order to be fruitful and I think it's important to remember, talk to our brothers and sisters in China where evangelical believers are now estimated to outnumber members of the Communist Party. The church doesn't need approval from its culture in order to receive the approval of God. And can I say the church is way off the mark when all it wants to do is receive the approval of man.
There's more that we need to learn about God's purpose for the church, but we don't have time to develop it today. When we come back next time, we'll conclude this message. Be sure and join us. You're listening to Wisdom for the Heart with Stephen Davey. Stephen is the president of Wisdom International and he pastors the Shepherd's Church in Cary, North Carolina.
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