Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, October 10, 2024. More about church the hidden jewel of God’s plan.
Good Morning, Good Morning my brothers and my sisters and welcome to Turning on the Lights! It is Thursday October 10, 2024 and it is good to be back!
So much happening in the world today – so much sorrow and so much joy. Let’s talk about the role of the church in all of it.
We know that the church is the fulfillment of God’s hidden plan to spread the Good News of salvation throughout the world, but exactly what should that look like, or sound like, or behave like? We discern the answers to many of these questions through the epistles that, coincidentally (I think not) were written to the early churches!
I pray that this talk challenges you and edifies you in your Christian faith. May God bless you and keep you and, as we always say, WE WILL SEE YOU IN CHURCH!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, October 10, 2024. Watch here via the YouTube link!
This is an audio recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, October 10, 2024. Listen here or through your favorite podcast app!
This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, October 10, 2024
Hey, good morning. Good morning. My brothers and my sisters. We’re turning on the lights actually the good Lord is turning. I can’t see I can’t see better. Oh, have you looked outside today? The good Lord is turning on the lights in a big way. It is Georges out there. Absolutely Georges so much stuff going on in the little church on the hill this Sunday. Everybody a very important Sunday in the life of the church. Kids for our King. Kids for our King is meeting and it is a service of the ordinances. And so we will be participating in the washing of feet and the Lord’s Supper. We will be teaching and preaching about such things and about church unity. Here’s the congregation. The congregation. Here’s the congregation. There’s what it looks like on Sunday. I’m just kidding. No, that’s that’s the what’s that called the sanctuary you can hear in my voice. I still have a little salt air in there when you move down to the coast for just a few days. It takes a few days just to get acclimated. Whoops. There we go. Hold on G Willikers. This thing is crazy. It takes a few days just to get acclimated, you know, and then your your sinuses all shift and everything and and justice when we were only there for a night. So then just as you get acclimated, you come on back and it’s dry. It’s beautiful and gorgeous. I’m not complaining a bit, but it’s dry now and it just take now. Here we are. So another 24 hours. I should be just fine, but when you’re as old as I am now, I turned 59 on Sunday. You know you get these things. You know aches and pains. You know you get the the head this and the knees that and it’s been it has been a week. It was it’s been a week since the last time we talked and it has been a week not only just vacation, but so much going on inside and outside of the little church. There is so much to be engaged with so much need to be engaged with in helping obviously everything from individuals in the congregation to hurricane relief. If you get their church town weekly, I urge you to read that and so much need to be engaged with. The joy and the and the absolute presence of Christ and all that we’re doing, it’s just overwhelming at times we sat last evening at a Bible study and we you know we just we have these men’s Bible studies now and they’re they’re beginning to take a little bit of shape and I like them because we just get to teach and talk. I always feel pressure right. I don’t feel led to be the men’s Bibles, the men’s ministry leader. I’d like to be a part of that. I’d like to help with that. I’ll just set that aside, but you always feel pressure. You wanna find a curriculum you wanna do all these fancy things and I don’t think people necessarily want that and I can’t get that out of my head. Last night was the best one that we’ve had. I think ever and we read a chapter of James and we picked it apart with our own questions and then people were looking in other parts of scripture because as we know scripture informs scripture and so we’re you know talked about everything from the the demand of the desire to be right over the desire to find the truth and that’s one of the driving forces in the schisms of Christianity and we talk about the issues within the church from child baptism, believers baptism, women in ministry is feet washing and ordinance all of these different things that we can look at and people tend to find a verse or two and boom there it is. That’s it and they need to be right about that and the desire to be right and then you connect it with this verse that seems to absolutely back up what you think and you ignore the rest of scripture open scripture right you wanna talk about free will versus predestination open scripture and and and read and see and learn in what the Lord has to say about it swipe left to reveal the comments. Oh there we are. There are people here. Hi Rosie. Hi Sandy. Hi Barry. I’m doing miss Marsha. Good morning. It’s a yummy. It was 47 here. It’s 47. So good morning. Good morning. Oh North Carolina Mark. You’re down there visiting or relieving doing a relief work. I’ve got relatives in North Carolina Eastern North Carolina. They’re safe and sound and what a what a mess. What a mess and like a good friend of mine said, I’m trying to stay away from all the conspiracy stuff and all of that. Let’s just get down and get to work. Churchtown found two really good boots on the ground local organizations. 100% of all monies donated goes to what they do and we are trying to do as much as we can here. So if you’re interested, read the Churchtown Weekly. If you earmark a check and send it to Churchtown, 100% goes to the relief organization and 100% goes from the relief organization into relief. So good for you Mark. There’s my glass. He’s always squinting. Yeah. I need a new pair of glasses. I’ve got a really here’s my life. You guys wanna hear a little bit. So I’ve got this really good pair of glasses with these super flexible frames. These aren’t it, but they’re just so scratched and messed up because I don’t need to wear them all the time. Good, it’s got no need to wear them all the time so they’re off and they’re on. They’re off and they’re on it. Put them in the pocket. They fall out. They get scratched. Whatever these are my backup pair of glasses, same prescription, but then the new dog got him and took a big hunk out of the left lens. Well glasses are expensive and you gotta wait for your insurance to come around. So I’m these are clearer, but I have this bite mark. Anyway, there’s my life. It’s been crazy. This has been a crazy week, both amazingly relaxing and fun and reconnecting and absolutely awesome and wonderful down and you know if you go to the coast in the fall, it’s just amazing. I mean we did it in the middle of summertime twice and it okay, but I’m not the type of person that’s gonna be sitting out on the beach just with a thousand people going okay and you go in the fall and it’s just absolutely amazing and we just had the most amazing time and but like I said, there’s also so much need and so much going on and so much happening and so many events and all of that. So let’s open with the word of prayer. If you got your bibles today, we’re gonna be 1st Corinthians still and we’re gonna talk a little bit about the the passages that we skipped, but we’re gonna go to 1st Corinthians 10. We’re gonna talk about that today because we’ve been the underlying thread. We’ve broken off to talk about politics and those sorts of things. We’ve done some different things last Thursday. We did something different as well, but the underlying thread over these past couple of months has been church and I said, you know when you look at church, you can look at the letters of course all of them because they’re written to the church. One of the primary I do I have a backup here, but it’s the old prescription. So then you’re in that old going back and forth and I can’t do that, but one of the primary things we need to know and remember about the letters is that they’re written to the church when he’s you know Paul is really laying down the law so to speak right turn a phrase there when Paul is really you know speaking into the church. He’s speaking to believers. He’s speaking to the body of Christ. We often think well that’s not me. He’s speaking to pagans. He’s speaking to people outside the body. He’s you know all this stuff about believing and professing and all of those. No he’s speaking to believers in the letters right. It’s the church of Corinth. It’s the church in Ephesus etcetera etcetera etcetera. The church in Rome and so that’s why they’re there for our edification. They are the first commentaries if you will and includes Peter and John the first commentaries if you will of the gospels. So they’re very very important. Jesus never says okay when I leave. I will send the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit through the Holy Spirit. You will create my church and my church will look like this and you will do this and you will etcetera etcetera. We learn all this as history unfolds. He promises God’s Holy Spirit. We know that and the spirit comes down in the day of Pentecost and then it’s on. What now? What now? If the faith you know salvation of Christ is available to all what does that look like? How do we accomplish that? Where do we go from here with this indwelling of God’s Holy Spirit? Well, we go to the teachings of Christ and we learn that you seek first the kingdom of God. You seek first the will of God. You listen to the prayer that says that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. By the way, Father God, we pray your Holy Spirit will guide us in your word today in Jesus name. Amen. And that is what happened and it is messy and they’re trying to figure it out and sometimes as we see in Corinthians, it gets cultish and people don’t understand if these Christ followers are a totally different religion or is it really the fulfillment of the law of the prophecies? Is it what’s going on? And we were talking last evening even in the genealogies of Jesus and that if you were intentionally trying to create a religion intentionally trying to create a cult, you certainly wouldn’t go about it like this. Right and that’s traditionally when you look at the cultish religions and you look at the out and out cults, you see that it’s way more defined. Here is this person who has received this message and you must pay homage, respect, worship this person and this is how you do it and if you don’t do it, this is what happens to you. It’s much more precise. It’s much more here you know and people like that and that’s why people end up in under false religious teaching and or in cults because we’re sort of drawn to doing it the easy way. Oh, here’s a list. Here are the five things I need to do every day. Here are the ten things I need to do every year. Here are the what I need you know etc. etc. What we have here in scripture is a whole different ball game. We see that after the day of Pentecost, the mandate is good morning. The mandate is to follow the will of God. Okay, what does that look like? How does that sound? How do you evangelize? Who is this available to anybody? What you know etc. etc. So we see the letters to these bodies of believers that run the gamut of humanity. Pagan worshipers, idolaters, Jewish individuals who now believe in Christ as the Messiah, Gentiles who followed whatever religion there was of the day but have now follow Christ. Rich, poor, every ethnicity in these churches are in the big cities of the time. The intersections, the crossroads of culture and economics and politics and philosophy and the Lord just boom planted these babies right there and the word goes. Pretty amazing stuff but it’s kind of the hard way. And so when we look at our faith, we can say, you know, if you’re trying to start a Jesus cult, you probably wouldn’t do it this way. There’s a whole lot that we have to figure out on our own. Well, not on our own, but there’s a whole lot we have to figure out and we’re commanded to figure out by seeking the kingdom of God first. We’re commanded to figure it out by immersing ourselves in the will of God and following him. Good morning. Thank you. And so here we are and the first things about this are the letters to the churches, some of which is very encouraging. A lot of which is, hey, this is what you were taught. Excuse me. Told you about that. This is what you were taught. This is what you’re doing. Let’s get back in line with what you were taught. Exactly right, right. That’s the whole thing. The pressure comes down and the church goes out. Talk about blood martyrdom for the first three 400 years. You weren’t considered doing your job as an evangelist, if you will, if you were not killed for it and people were signing up to do it. They’re like, yes, this is my calling and you needed, you know, the Lord led these martyrs to press in so hard that they eventually were martyred, murdered for what they were preaching and teaching. And we look at the, just the way the church develops so quickly and goes out to all of the world. Of course, he knows what he’s doing, but man, it’s kind of a mess for us here, figuring it out, following his will. But everything about Christianity, the cornerstone of it is faith, faith in God and our Trinitarian God, our Triune God, faith in the completed work of the cross and Jesus Christ as our Lord and Salvia as our savior. Thank you. And the Lord of our lives. It’s all based in stems from faith. There isn’t a list, right? So this is what the letters address. And like I said, we didn’t even get into the Corinthians 10 yet, but just the overall picture of what the letters address and why they address it the way they address it, because people who are earnestly seeking the will of God on earth, earnestly seeking to be a part, to create this church of which he speaks. Now we talk about that because we have some really good questions about the church. When we talk, the last time I gave a sermon. The church, Paul talks about the church as the revealing of the mystery that not even the angels knew about the church on earth is the tip of the spear, if you will, of the kingdom of God on earth. And the plan for his church on earth was not revealed until after the day of Pentecost. Paul says, this is a mystery that no human knew about no angel knew about no created being knew about. That would include the satan, the opposer of God’s will. But this mystery, this plan for the church was his plan all along. It has been revealed to us now. And we are a part of it via our faith in Christ. And then here we go. Now what? So we talk about ordinances and we talk about ritual and we talk about liturgy and we talk about ecclesiology. We talk about when do we sing and when do we either chant or do responsive readings? What does the sermon look like? Where are we supposed to go with all of that? And we’ve been working on it. We’ve been working on it and you can study the history of the church. There are many, many good books out there. I can recommend a couple if you want. But and you see that different people have had different ideas. But is that church grounded that in the fact that Christ lived Christ died Christ rose again. And in so doing, he saved you from sin and the power of sin and death and the power of death. Do you profess him as savior and you follow him as Lord of your life? Now we can have that. Let’s have that conversation about what other stuff there is. Okay, so that’s where we are and that’s what people have been picking apart the letters to see what church looks like, sounds like, is like ever since. And you and I a few months ago started in here in 1 Corinthians. When you look at Romans, you look at a lot of thick embedded deep theology and theological teaching and we can get there. We can do chapters and we can do pieces if you wanna do the whole book. We can do that as well. But Corinthians you see this very, very practical application of all of that. We left off and he gives a little it’s kind of feels like a little sermon on the Mountish because he begins to address issues in the church one by one. We left off with him addressing sexual immorality that is blatantly on display in the church body. What do you do? Do you just say, Oh well, okay. Well, at least you’re in church and you can hear the word of God and we will really pray that you would change and you’d stop sleeping with your mom. Okay. No, Paul says address it. This is going to cause division. This is immoral. This is going to cause strife within the body. Address it and if you address it in the proper way according to scripture and there nothing comes of it, then those individuals need to be set out of the assembly until something comes of it and things change and repentance occurs. Right, we talked about that last night. What does it mean to be a peacemaker? Oftentimes, if you have peace and then something happens if you want peace on the other side of that, you have to go through the conflict. So going through the conflict in the proper way is very very important. All you married people know that you’ve got peace. Something happens. You need to move through the conflict to find the peace on the other side again. So there’s that’s going to happen in the church because Satan is always going to want to destroy the image bearers of God and the church of Jesus Christ. There’s no doubt about that. Once he discovered what the church is. Right once he discovered this mysterious plan that now God is revealing it and it’s spreading all throughout the earth. Satan is scrambling to tell everybody else how bad church is and he’s scrambling to tell people in the church how bad church is and how bad that person sitting next to you is and why are you here and you’re weak and it’s a crutch and all of these different things. Satan is scrambling to lie and to oppose God’s will and to get you as an individual and we as a church to go against God’s will for us in our lives. Hi Rick. And we need that’s what we’ve addressed many times that is the inherent spiritual warfare of which the church is the tip of the spear. This is where we learn and we grow and we become. It’s where we are equipped. To engage in the spiritual warfare large and small. So that’s what Paul’s talking about. He talks about food sacrificed to idols. He talks about avoiding sexual sin and you know and this is one of the great you say I’m allowed to do anything but not everything is good for you and even though I’m allowed to do anything, I must not become a slave to anything now. We can talk about you know the freedom that you have in Christ and the choice as an autonomous moral being you make your own choices and you’re free to do anything. If you are a slave to Christ, even you can rebuke him if you will and say I’m going to go out of the will of God and go get this. Well, remember if you have to go out of the will of God to go get something you need to stay out of the will of God to keep it. So yeah, you’re free to do that. Christ is not going to send a lightning bolt like Zeus down and zap you, but you’re turning your back. You’re turning on your back on your savior. You’re not fulfilling or or following his word or his will. And you will become a slave to something. Paul says become a slave to righteousness become a slave to Christ because you are built to follow you are built to worship and you will worship something somebody. Why don’t you worship Yahweh right creator redeemer sustainer. So he talks about avoiding sexual sin talks about marriage. He talks about sacrificing food to idols and the general theme is moving away from old ways of thinking and into the new way of thinking and the new way of thinking is dictated by God. How do we know what that is? We seek the will of God. How do we seek the will of God? We pray we immerse ourselves in his word. We are surrounded by other followers of Christ and we are inspired to have godly conversations right. We have those moments when we seek discernment for decisions or discernment about how to follow his will. What is your will and we sense great turbulence and anxiety red flags or great peace. Even though the challenge may be great. There is great peace in endeavoring to do it. So we seek the will of God in those ways and this is how we live our lives as individuals collectively as the church the ecclesia the gathering nothing changes. Do you want to know what the will of God for Churchtown Church of God is let’s seek the will of God. Let’s pray every week together collectively corporately. Good morning Jane right. Let us sing and worship together. Let us praise God together. Let us share our burdens together. Let us go into his word together and discern his will for this church in the life of the church. Again, once again, I’ll say it again. If I’m creating a cult, if I’m creating something that’s cultish good morning, Cheryl. I’m not doing this. This leaves the doors wide open for shall we say interpretation or descent or it really takes acts of intentionality to come together in unity and worship collectively and it will take for you to swallow your ego when you think something else is right or the church body should be going in this direction or doing this or whatever, but collectively if we are authentic, we are being led in a different direction. You say I follow that I will or if you absolutely feel that strongly of course to leave. Leading church seems to be quite easy for a lot of folks. It’s really weird, but I think that those are folks that are not committed to seeking the will of the Lord together and doing it the hard way. Please give me a legalistic church where I know where to sit, what to say, what to wear, what to do. Give me a list of rules to follow that and again we seek the easy to say well that’s awful. It’s very attractive to those who are lost. It’s very attractive to those who seek that kind of structure and purpose and design. It’s very attractive and I’m not saying that churches that operate in that way are necessarily bad. Right, we look at our more conservative brothers and sisters in the men and night traditions and the Amish traditions and I you know it’s I’m very hard pressed to say no they’re not Christian. But that’s one portion of the Christian church one aspect and both extremes can be true. There is no structure and it’s a complete free for all and we see that in the writings to Corinth. There’s no structure and it’s complete free for all or you’ve taken what you’ve discerned from scripture and you create a more legalistic environment, but then you take it to the extreme and usually that ends up with me or this small group of elders control everything and everybody. That’s the other extreme. Operating within those extremes is what we’re talking about. So you give up your rights as a human being you. The old man is dead. This is chapter nine. I give myself to the Lord and he talks about very practical things like yes preachers of the word people who travel and preach and teach and keep congregations together. They deserve their wages. They’ve earned them. They’re working for them. Their vocation is ministry. Is there such a thing? Vocation is ministry. What does that look like? The old priesthood? Nope. What does it look like? Well, we’re figuring that out as we seek God’s will for ourselves in our lives, but basically it amounts to pastoral care, teaching all of those different things. And then the famous ending of chapter nine. When I am with those who are weak, I share their weakness for I want to bring the weak to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone doing everything I can to save some. I do everything to spread the good news and share in its blessings. Some say that this what he’s compromising to the world. He’s becoming secular. No, I think I don’t really like this phrase, but it’s more appropriate meeting people where they are. And just being authentic. And from that starting point, you began the spreading the teaching of the good news. Don’t you realize that in a race everyone runs, but only one person gets the prize. So run to win. Be intentional. All athletes are disciplined in their training. They do it to win a prize that will fade away, but we do it for an eternal prize. So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadow boxing. I discipline my body like an athlete training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others, I myself might be disqualified. It says a lot right about ministry and being in spiritual shape for ministry and staying the course in ministry and you must stay connected and you must stay empowered by God’s Holy Spirit. You must stay immersed in his will or it will eat you alive. If you’re outside of his will, it will absolutely destroy you from the inside out and you will be disqualified. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to be I’m going to do what I want. I don’t care about God’s will anymore. I’m going to do what I want and then the church goes off the rails big time that individual that pastor that teacher that elder goes off the rails big time. Right. So here we go. It’s finally getting to ten and we’ll begin with this and we’ll pick it up next week. Remember this Sunday is a service of the ordinance ordinances and kids for our king. So bring your kids bring your grandkids. It’s a lovely, amazing, empowering experience. Up front, we always have somebody people to people that perform the ordinance of feet washing. I should engage not perform. It’s a bad word. Engage in the ordinance of feet washing up front for the sake of the congregation, people of the congregation who are not participating and for those who are watching on the live stream and this week we have a very unique couple of people and I think it’s going to be a very powerful symbol and a power very powerful message regarding servitude and the teaching of it. I don’t want you to forget dear brothers and sisters about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground in the cloud and in the sea. All of them were baptized as followers of Moses. All of them ate the same spiritual food. All of them drank the same spiritual water for they drank from the spiritual rock that traveled with them and that rock was Christ. Yet God was not pleased with most of them and their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. These things happened as a warning to us so that we would not crave evil things that they did or worship idols as they did as the scripture say the people celebrating with feasting and drinking and they indulged in pagan revelry and we must not engage in sexual immorality as some of them did causing 23,000 of them to die in one day nor should we put Christ to the test as some of them did and then died from snake bites and don’t grumble as some of them did and then were destroyed by the angel of death. These things happen to them as examples for us. They were written down to warn us who live at the end of the age. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Follow Christ. Follow the you know, have him as your rock. Have your faith in him as the foundation of your life. Seek his will in the old days of old testament. It was written. In the in the new testament of Christ, the new testament of Christ comes from the new temple which is your heart. That’s the new testimony of Christ. The new testimony of Christ is I was once was blind but now I see. I once was lost but now I’m found. And that let his will be done in my life. You testify to the power of God, the transformational power of his grace in your life. That’s the new testament of Jesus in the world today and it is you and you are a part of his church. You are engaged in his design to share the good news around the world. It’s amazing and we’re always talking in here. New testament tying to old testament, old testament referring to new testament and all of it. We look and say, oh wow that was written for us 2000 years ago. We just did that today. I remember last night we were talking about like what other book we’re we were examining one verse of James three for 15 minutes like what give me another book where you’re examining two sentences of that book and it’s dramatic and impactful impact in your life. Only the Bible baby. Let’s bring the Bible back. Father God, we pray that your church will shine this weekend. Will glorify you and people both inside and outside of your kingdom will see that and be attracted to that light that grace. We pray that you would lead us in all things of worship every aspect of our lives. Every breath that we take Lord Jesus. We seek you and you alone. It’s in your name. We pray we pray for all the need that is out there. We pray for all the rejoicing that is out there. We pray for everything that is happening. Around the world in the church universal and right here in the church local. Thank you Lord. You are our rock and our salvation in Jesus name. Amen. God bless you all it is going to be an amazing weekend here at a little church on the hill, but wherever you are, you know what I’m going to say wherever you are be intentional engage in the body of Christ. Go to church. It’s important.
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