What A Church Needs

I just ask the Lord of the church, and He’s revealed it in His Word. And what the church really needs is more consistent, faithful, clear theological exposition of the mind of God through the pages of Scripture. What it needs is better preaching, better sermons, and I may get in trouble for saying this. Fewer small churches with ungifted, untrained, and unskilled preachers. The Word must dominate the church and bear its God-intended power and authority over all who hear. You see, the only way that the church will ever effectively counter the crisis of our time, moral crisis, spiritual crisis, is when the Word of God is working powerfully in the church, listen to what I say, to produce not information, but holiness.

There’s the operative word, folks. Write that down somewhere. That’s the theme of the message this morning. You see, the hope of the church and the impact of the church is all connected to the purity of the church. Holiness is the issue. When Jesus first addressed the church in Matthew 18, the first time He ever said anything related to the church, in that great sermon in Matthew 187, the first thing He said about it is this. If somebody’s in sin, go to Him. If He doesn’t listen, take two or three witnesses.

If He doesn’t listen, tell the church. And after the church has pursued Him, if He still doesn’t repent, throw Him out. Treat Him like an outcast. The first instruction our Lord ever gave to the church had to do with sin. In that very first sermon, Jesus said, if you ever lead another believer into sin, you’d be better off if a millstone were put around your neck and you were drowned in the depths of the sea. The Lord of the church is concerned about the purity of the church. He’s concerned about the holiness of the church.

Sin is the issue to the Lord of the church, and it should be the issue for us. But I dare say, you can go from conference to conference to conference and book to book to book, and this is not the concern today. You won’t hear talk about the holiness of the church, the purity of the church. Church discipline. That is not normally considered a principle of church growth. Most people would assume, if you want to kill a place, do that. Just start poking around in everybody’s life, and they’ll split. Not the people who love righteousness.

Not the people who hate sin. Not the people who want to honour God. Not the people who care about obedience. And that’s the church, isn’t it? That’s the true and redeemed church. It may surprise you to hear this. I believe that ignoring church discipline is the most visible and disastrous failure of the church in our time, because what it conveys is we aren’t really concerned about what? Sin. The Lord of the church is concerned about sin. The Apostle Paul was concerned about sin. It left him with a constant, unrelenting ache in his heart.

The problem with the church is not that it’s got bad methodology or bad technology. The problem with the church is it’s lost its interest in holiness. It’s lost its interest in maintaining purity. Churches have become content to be fellowships of independent members with minimal accountability to God and even have today, actually, we have an entire generation of pastors and an entire generation of church members who have never experienced church discipline. They don’t know anything about it. And the first thing the Lord of the church ever said to his church was, don’t lead another person into sin.

And if you know someone who’s in sin, confront that individual. The Lord of the church cares about the purity of his church. The first act the Ascended Christ ever did in his church, after he went back to heaven. The first thing Jesus did after sending the Holy Spirit, the first actual act where Christ himself moved into his church and acted was in Acts 5. And what he did was kill Ananias and Sapphira in order that they might be excised out of the church for their iniquity. The Lord of the church is concerned about the holiness of his church.

The absence of church discipline, and I mean it’s absolutely a foreign thing in churches. The absence of church discipline is a symptom of the moral decline, the theological indifference of the church. It’s a symptom, I believe, of a shallow commitment to Scripture. It’s not as if the Bible is unclear on the subject. It couldn’t be clearer. It is a lack of reverence for the Lord of the church. It is saying, well, I know you’re concerned about the holiness of the church, but we’re really not. We have other things to be concerned about.

Church discipline is not an elective. It is not an option. It is a necessary integral mark of true Christianity and life in the church. And I say it again. The absence of church discipline is the most glaring evidence of the worldliness of the church. And the worldliness of the church is the reason for its impotence. And you can have all of the entertainment and all the hoopla and all the big crowds that you want and not impact the world. It’s the purity of the church. It’s the holiness of the church that is the cause of its power.

The problem is the church is unholy. Even the idea of confession of sin is outdated in an age of moral relativism and moral ambiguity. The answer is not to break up the congregation and produce less accountability. Let’s get down to house churches where we have less authority, less confrontation, more autonomy, more independence. The answer is not let’s have more compassion. Let’s have a kinder gentler church. Albert Moller, who’s the president of Southern Seminary wrote, and I quote, individuals now claim an enormous zone of personal privacy and moral autonomy. The congregation, redefined as a mere voluntary association, has no right to intrude into this space.

Many congregations have forfeited any responsibility to confront even the most public sins of their members. He says congregations are consumed with pragmatic methods of church growth and what he calls congregational engineering. And most churches just ignore the issues of sin. Thank you for joining us in this exploration of what a church needs. Until next time, remember to keep the faith, stay strong, and continue to shine your light in the world. To hear these daily devotions of your daily bread, please log on to goddessgovernment.com. Goodbye, and may your faith always lead the way.