Healthy Church

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Met Church podcast. Here at the Met, we are all about connecting people to God and one another. If you have any questions or want more information about what's happening here at the church, then head to our [email protected] we would love to stay connected with you throughout the week through social media, so be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter now. Enjoy the message. [00:00:28] Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you all. You mess a brother up a little bit this morning, but I really appreciate that so very much. And thank you for praying for me during all of that. It's funny how many guys in our church that have gone through that and have encouraged me as well. And so I appreciate that. If I'm pulling a little to the right, it'll get better as we go along here, so don't worry about that. But it's great to see you this morning. And God's been so faithful in the life of our church. I appreciate all the guys that have stepped up and spoke while in my absence and did marvelous job. Corey and Scott, Mary and dan and Dan Jr. I just appreciate all of those guys for coming in. And thank you. Thank you so much for your faithfulness. You know, there's a tendency we have to like who we like. It goes all the way back into biblical times where one said, I like Paul and the other one said, I like Apollos. And then that other group, I keep my eyes on this one, they said, I just like Jesus. You know, that's that pious group. I'd worry about that group, but everybody has their favorites, and I get that. And there's always a concern, you know, when the. When the lead guy steps down, for whatever reason, you fear that the church will kind of fall off. And that didn't happen. That's a testament to your faithfulness because it's not about me, it's about Jesus. And you prove that time and time again. So thank you so much to your faithfulness to the church. And we had an emotional and incredible week this past week. Many of you have followed in the news how our little Eva Moore had died last Sunday out on Grapevine Lake. You probably covered and followed that story. She and the Moore family have been a part of our church for a long time, and it was so sad and so tragic. We came in with the kids. I came in with the kids after spending a few days. We get away for a few days every year to kind of commemorate on the anniversary of Cindy's homegoing. And sorry, we did that again this week. And so came back in. I got. I got back up here about 2:15 before the service at 3:30. And this building was packed with people. There were about 200 airmen from the Air Force Academy here to honor her, that long blue line. And our own Matt Bird, former Thunderbird pilot, he did a flyover, full melody, full military honors. For Ava was, what a remarkable young life. What a remarkable family. And their willingness to forgive that person that killed Ava was remarkable to me. I don't know if you've read that, but the family said, we forgive her. We're going to walk away from that and just turn that over to the Lord. And I can tell you, kind of a God thing. I want to share with you a little inside baseball information. But when they caught the lady that killed Ava was interesting. Did you realize that the person who was on the lead of that investigative team, he works for the. Well, I don't give too much of that away, but he was on the investigative team that caught her. He sent a picture that he actually had her in the front seat of his car and sent that to me. And I thought, here is the person that killed the girl in our church that was taken into custody by a man that attends our church. Isn't that an incredible thing? And so, yeah, that's something. So continue to pray for that family as they're navigating through a very difficult time. And I just wanted to commend our staff. All of the local media were here to cover that event. Channel 4, 5, 8, 11, they were all here. And one of the media people remarked to Kyle, he said, I want to tell you we do a lot of memorial services, but this staff was in. This service was the best organized of anything that we've ever. We've ever attended. So would you take a moment and just give our team a wonderful round of applause for the way they took care of that family. I could not have been more proud of our team and the way they honored that family and Ava's memory. And I am so thankful to be back in the saddle again this morning. Side saddle, maybe, but back in the saddle. I want to talk to you a little bit about healthy. Being healthy. And, and when I talk about being healthy, I want to focus a little bit on having a healthy church, what that looks like. Since the first of the year, we've really tried to focus on getting ourselves healthy, healthy hearts, healthy homes, healthy families. Right. Having healthy businesses. And this morning, and we've been really, I guess for the past few weeks, we've been really thinking about what is a healthy, what is a healthy church? What does it look like? How do you evaluate the health of a church? And really, when you look at it biblically, there is a way you can evaluate the health of a church. There's a way to look at it. And we do as a staff, we try to see where we're lacking and how can we improve and how can we make our church even better. And one of the things you try to focus on, and I know you do this in your business, is how can we do better the things that we do best and when you try to focus on those things. And so this morning I want to talk to you a little bit about having a healthy church. Now, I believe in the church. I've given my life to the church. This year I've shared with you. That is marks my 50th year in full time ministry. I actually went to work in my dad's church when I was a junior in high school. I started working in full time ministry then 1975. And so since that time I've been a part of the church full time for 50 years of my life and 40 of those years have been as a senior pastor. So this has been a very significant year, hitting a lot of those markers in my life. And I always joke about when I tell you that, you always say, well, you should be better at it by now if you've been at it that long. But we're working on it. But the point is I've been a part of a church for a long time, so I feel like I can speak with some sense of experience when I speak on this subject. And when you look at the organization of the church, where it began, let me give you the biblical basis for that. In Matthew chapter 16:16 and verse 18, you see really the birth of the church. Now I know a lot of times we, we will look at Acts chapter 2 as the birth of the church, but actually the church was conceived by Christ in Matthew 16. And here's what he said. He said, I say that you are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against my church. Now with that in mind, Jesus established two major things that the church is to be about. One of those is called the Great Commandment. Jesus gave the church a great commandment, something that we are to follow. He gave the church the second thing, which is the Great Commission. And so a church should be governed by the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Well, what is the Great Commandment? Well, the Bible says in Matthew 22, verse 36, the commandment is, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. This is the first. Here it is. And greatest commandment. And then he said, the second is, like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself. And then he said, all the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. So the first way we're going to evaluate a healthy church is by how well they follow the Great Commandment. And then the second way we'll evaluate a healthy church is how well do they follow the Great Commission? The Great Commission is Matthew 28. Look at verse 19 and 20. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations. And baptizing them, as Scott talked about last weekend, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I've commanded you. And surely I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Now, when you put the Great Commandment and the Great Commission together and you and you really began to parse a little bit about what Jesus is teaching in those two passages. There are five systems that become very apparent in the life of a church. And the way you evaluate the healthy church is kind of the way you evaluate a healthy body. You begin to look at systems. You check the blood, right? You check the, you know, there's just a lot of systems. You check maybe the heart, respiratory. There's just a doctor. If you're having a problem in one of those areas, a doctor is going to try to assess and evaluate the systems of your body to see where the problem is. What is keeping you from being healthy. Well, the way you evaluate a healthy church is you have to look at the commandment and you have to look at the Commission. And I've given you five things to think about when it comes to the commandment and the Commission. Let me give them quickly to you. Number one is worship. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. That's worship. How well does a church do worship? Now, when I say worship, let me explain that. I mean more than just the singing that happens on the stage. A lot of times we think about worship in terms of the four songs. Some churches may do five, some do three. We all pretty much do the same type songs. We sing about Jesus. We try to do it in a culturally relevant way so that connects with people in the style of music that they're listening to today. We don't do a lot of Tibetan chants here. Cause that's probably not on your playlist. So we try to find the style of music that fits kind of where people are and to be culturally relevant in our worship style. But really, if the only time you worship is when you come here on Sunday morning, you'll never have the worship needs of your life satisfied. This is not where your worship should commence. This is where your worship should continue. If you're a child of God, we should bring our worship with us. We should come worshiping, we should walk into the room worshiping. Because there is a spiritual level that happens in a church when worship is attained. And most of the time it takes three or four songs. Get the church spiritually where they should have been at the moment they walked in. And can you imagine how much higher you could go if you came in at that level? So the point is, worship is something we should bring with us. We're bringing our worship. When we go to church. We worship every day. In fact, worship is a part of life. I worship in how I work, how I treat my neighbor, how I treat one another. So if I'm evaluating a church, I want to look at how do they worship? Are the people bringing their worship with them? Are they a worship worshiping people? And the second way you evaluate is ministry. The Bible says we are to love our neighbor as yourself. How well do we do that now in our church? I think we're pretty healthy in that regard. That's why we have the CRC. That's why we take care of 1200-1500 families every week. With the market and with the. And with the mobile market on Saturday and with the hundreds of volunteers, many of you in this room, you come and serve. And if you don't, you just gotta come see this thing on Saturday, it will blow your hat in the creek. You will just not believe everything that happens on Saturday. When they are taking care of all of these families. So ministries, how well do we take care of one another? Now? Sometimes, you know, we fall short and we do it not intentionally, but sometimes just, you know, accidents happen and you miss it. Sometimes with a family or with a person. But the heart of the church is to minister to the needs of people. And so that's the second way you evaluate a church. So taking a commandment, taking the commission, breaking them apart in this way you have worship, you have ministry. Here's the third evaluation. You have evangelism. How interested is the church on reaching people who do not know Jesus? Now? So important, because in the life of the average Christ follower, within the first Two years after a person meets Jesus, they virtually have no friendships with people who do not know Jesus. In other words, there's a tendency we have, once we know Christ, to insulate ourselves and isolate ourselves from people who don't know Christ. And so I think that's a tragedy, because what happens is that a church is collectively what we are individually. And so if a church begins to insulate and isolate from people who don't know Jesus, we don't have relationships with people who don't know Jesus. We insulate and isolate, and we only hang with people who are like us, think like us, believe like us. And we have no friendships outside of those circles. We. We are losing an opportunity. We're losing an opportunity to reach people for Jesus. We should constantly be building redemptive relationships to people who do not yet know Jesus. I have a lot of people in my circles that do not know Jesus. I have friends who would consider themselves atheists, but they respect what I do. They don't agree with my positions on things, but I've built a relationship with them. Because you know what? Sooner or later, they're going to get a diagnosis like I got, or sooner or later they're going to walk through some heartache like I did a few years ago, and they're gonna find themselves needing something greater than they have within themselves. So if I have positioned myself in such a way so that I can reach out to them, and when they reach out to me and I've got credibility with them and I have a relationship with them, I'm gonna have that opportunity to share Jesus with them. So you're building redemptive relationships with people who don't know Jesus. So how well do we do that? Every one of us in this room knows of someone who does not yet know Jesus. So how are we effectively, are we nurturing those relationships? That is a way whereby you evaluate a healthy church. How do they do worship? What does the ministry look like? How about evangelism? Here's a fourth quality, and that is fellowship. The Bible says baptizing them, that's incorporating them into the life of the church, getting them into Bible studies and getting them into groups and offering things where they can grow in their faith. Now, there's not a one size fits all in any church because everybody is in a different season. That's why we offer so many different ways to try to get people engaged. You can get as much or as little as you are based on the season of life that you're in. And some of you guys may not be ready for ministry. Some of you may be in a place right now where you're hurting and you need healing, and you just need to come and sit and be a part of a church experience. And you just need to be ministered to. You don't need to minister to others. Sometimes you need to receive instead of give. And so it depends on the season of life that you're in. But a healthy church is a church that is purposefully, intentionally trying to get people locked in somewhere into the life of the church, into fellowship. And here's the fifth and final evaluation, and that is discipleship. How well are we teaching them to observe, to do all the things Jesus has commanded? And that is we are developing people to grow in their faith. [00:15:05] Speaker A: And. [00:15:05] Speaker B: And so those are the five systems. And when you. When we as a staff look at our church and we say, okay, have we plateaued a little bit? Are we not growing? Do we need to look at. We will evaluate those systems. Okay, is the problem in worship? Is it in discipleship? Is it evangelism? Is it in fellowship? Where are we lacking somewhere? There's something missing in one of those systems. And that is the way whereby you evaluate a healthy church. Now, when Jesus launched the church, he used four words to describe his church. And in these four words, you see the unique qualities of a church. Number one, he said, a church is a flock. A flock. We're called sheep. He is the shepherd. As a pastor, I'm an under shepherd, meaning I serve under the great shepherd, and we are the sheep of his fold. In Matthew 26:31, he speaks of the church as being sheep. So we are a flock of sheep. We're being led by an under shepherd who is being led by the great shepherd. So we're a flock. The second word the Bible uses to describe a church is a fellowship that's incorporated into our name. Metroport Cities. Fellowship is the name of our church. Somebody says, why you call the Met? Well, it's Metroport City's Fellowship Church. I'll tell you a little story about that. When we started this thing nearly now, 30 years ago, we were looking at what is going to be a name that will tie all of these cities together out here, you know, they'll tie South Lake, that will tie Keller, that will tie, you know, Haslet. What is what? Well, the hub of this area is the Alliance Airport and all the things that have been going on and all the development that it's attracted as a result of that development with the Perot family. So we knew, okay, this is. We're in the zone. We're where people are going to be. If the goal is to catch fish, you got to put your boat where the fish are. So we thought, okay, our boat is right in the middle of a lot of fish. We got a lot of people here we can reach. So we felt like strategically we're in the right location. We were trying to find a name. What are we gonna call the church that will speak of a regional ministry, not just a community. We felt like we had a potential for more a regional type ministry. And so I said, well, what are they. Are they gonna use a name to tie these communities together? You know, you had the mid cities, you had these different way that when you think about areas around Fort Worth, they have names that kind of identify the community. Well, somebody told me it's gonna be called the Metropolitan Cities. You have Metroport Cities, Humane Society, you have the Metropolitan Cities, Meals on Wheels. And I thought, that's it. We're going to be on the ground floor of the name that's going to Metroport cities. 30 years later. I don't think anybody knows that's what this area is called. Nobody knows that. It's just like, that's why. I get it. Well, why is the Metro. What's Metropolitan? It's going to happen. It's gonna happen. Hang around, but it's gonna. Eventually, this is gonna be called Metroport City. I may be dead and gone, and y' all just come out to my grave and go, you did it. Way to go. You were right. Hadn't yet. We're close, you know, But I think about that. I think everything in life I've squared into, I've kind of moonwalked myself into about everything I've ever done in life. Right? So I. Right. I thought, hey, we're gonna be in South Lake. No, you're not. You're going west, young man. You're not going east. And so here we are. But Metroport City is the Met Church. So that's why we call it that. It's a fellowship. Here's the fourth word. And this is what I wanna focus on with just the balance of my time. The church is called. Well, no, it's not. Third one. Let me give you the Third 1. Family first, Peter 3, 8. We're called a family now. My tradition growing up, we call people brother so and so, or sister so and so. Any of you had that tradition when you were growing up? You called them sister so and so, brother so and so. You know, the pastor was Brother so and so. Well, it's. Cause it's a family. We're a family. You and I are connected by. By our. Our. Our. Our Heavenly Father. And we're in the same family. So we're in a family together. And then here's the one I want to focus on. It's a body. The church is a body, right? A healthy body. And the Bible speaks of the church as a body in First Corinthians 12, verse 12, where he talks of the body of Christ. So here we are as a church, a flock, a fellowship, a family. And when I think about the church as a body, and I think about that metaphor, I go back to when God created the original body. Remember back in Genesis, chapter two, verse seven. The Bible says, first of all, the Lord formed man. He formed this body of the dust of the ground. Second thing he did, he breathed into the nostrils, breath of life. And the third thing that happened, man became a living soul. Man had a purpose for that life. So when I think about what God did when he formed the first body and he filled the body that he formed, and then he gave the body that he formed and he filled. He gave it a function. I said, that's what a church is. The first thing you have to consider when the church is a body, you have to consider the church that was formed and how this organization, which is also, by the way, an organism, it's an organization in that there's structure. And in fact, in Ephesians 4, it talks about all of the officers within a church. It talks about. It talks about pastors, and it talks about teachers, and it talks about the structure of the church. So a church is an organization. When God formed it, he gave it structure. The body had a certain form. And so a church is an organization, so it needs structure. But the church also is an organism, meaning that is alive. It's a living entity. It's not just an organization. Now, if you go to either extreme in a church, if you put all the focus on the structure and you put all the focus on that, then it becomes cold. It feels corporate. It doesn't feel warm. They have great structure, but there's no warmth within that church. It just feels like a corporate entity that's a church that's leaned too far into the organization. But if you go too far into the organism, then it's a church that has a lot of life, but it doesn't have a lot of structure. They don't follow up very well. They can't maintain the growth that they're Achieving very well. They just need some help in that regard. So to find balance, you have to balance the form of the church by evaluating your structure, realizing it's an organization. And you have to evaluate your. The way you function. You have to evaluate the fact that it's an organism. And so the church that was formed, it was formed by Jesus, and he gave to the church a certain structure. In fact, when he was talking to Peter back in Matthew 16, a lot of people believe that Peter was the foundation upon which the church was built. A lot of my Catholic friends have that idea that Peter is kind of the foundation of the church, and they base it on this Matthew 16 verse. But when you really break that verse apart, what Jesus was saying in this exchange with Peter, in this talk with Peter, and when you look at the actual meaning of the name Peter as opposed to rock, when Jesus used to describe himself, there are two different things he says to Peter. He said, you are. You are, Peter. You are. You are Petros. And petros in the Greek means you're a stone, you're a rock. You're solid, man. I can count on you. Even though there's times where you're a little flaky and you'll, you know, and you say things you shouldn't say, and you do some things you shouldn't do, but you're still. You're solid. At the end of the day, man, you're gonna make some mistakes, but you're gonna come out on the right side of things. You know anybody like that, or you kind of like that, at the end of the day, you can count on them. That's Petros. You are. You're a rock. But he said, peter, I can count on you, man. Upon you, but upon this rock. And I believe he was speaking of himself because it's a different word. He said, upon this rock is Petra. Petra means a boulder. One is a stone, the other is a boulder. And so why is he using the difference? Because he's talking about two different things. He says, you're Peter, you're a stone. But upon this rock. I believe he was speaking of himself, Petra, I will build my church. And when I build it, he said, the gates of hell will not prevail against my church. And then in verse 19, he said, I'm going to give to this church the keys of the kingdom. And I'll tell you in a moment what I believe that is. But he was giving the church form. And I said again, when you go back to Ephesians, chapter four, he talks about the role primarily of a pastor. And he said the role of a pastor should be to lead, to feed and guide the sheep. And the pastor should be someone who is anointed and called to do the job that God has given them to do. Now, there are several Greek words that describe the work of a pastor. There's the work poimain, which is the idea of a shepherd, as I said, to lead and to feed sheep, poimein. There is the word presbyteras. We get the word presbyterian or presbytery from that word. It means an elder. It means someone who has a. A maturity about them, someone who has the confidence of people to lead. So a pastor has a shepherd's heart. A pastor has some leadership ability. And then the third word the Bible uses to describe a pastor is episcopal. Epi. EPI is over. Scopus is to say, have a scope on a rifle scope. Boss is. It's the oversee. A pastor is an overseer. You get the word Episcopal from that idea. So a pastor has the role of a shepherd to lead, feed sheep. The pastor has a leadership ability. A pastor also has an oversight ability. Doesn't mean the pastor's supposed to do everything. Just means the pastor should get everything, make sure everything gets done. And so that's the structure of a church. So I'm just saying that when God formed a church, he first of all gathered all the pieces together, put it in place. And so you have structure, but the structure in itself is not life. Like I said, it's great structure, but there's no life. So the second thing God did to bring life into the church is he breathed into the nostrils of that man, the breath of life. Man became a living soul. So that which God formed first of all. The second thing he did, he then filled it. You had the filling of the church. Now, what does the filling of the church represent? The Holy Spirit. The filling of the church represents the coming of the Holy Spirit. In Matthew 16, Jesus forms the church. You're a stone, but upon this rock I'll build my church. Paul later describes the way it becomes an organization and how it is structured and all the things, the role of a pastor and all he's supposed to do. Even though the idea of deacons, the Bible talks about Diaconos, it means a minister. And the growth of the church by Acts 7 was so incredible that they needed people to help them to step up in leadership. And so the pastors then appointed people within the church to take on roles of ministry so the pastor's hands could be freed to lead and to feed the sheep. And we have, in our church, we don't call them deacons, we call them volunteers. And if, if you volunteer somewhere, you're a Diaconos in the life of the man, you're a deacon. You say, how long do I get to be a deacon? Long as you serve. And when you quit, you ain't a deacon anymore. So. But as long as you're serving, you get to be that. Isn't that fun? So that's what really all it was. It's not some weird kind of a thing that you, you make something greater of it than it actually is. It just is very practical. You just serve. And in that serving, you become a leader with your influence in the life of a church. And so that's how the church was structured. But the church structure just still didn't have life until Jesus breathed into the church the breath of life. In Acts chapter two, it was the coming of the Holy Spirit. And once the Holy Spirit filled the church with his presence, the church became a living entity. And so the life of the Holy Spirit and the life of the church is what gives the church freshness. It's what gives the church vibrancy. And a church that has been formed must secondly be a church that is filled. In fact, Jesus told them in Acts chapter one, verse four, he said, wait, don't go out and serve yet until you receive the filling of the Holy Spirit. The filling of the Holy Spirit doesn't come until Acts chapter two. Acts chapter one. They had an organization, they had structure, they had leadership. Those apostles knew their place. There were about 120 people that made up that early church at that point. But in Acts chapter two, he said, wait until you receive the Holy Spirit. And in Acts chapter two, you have the dynamic of the Holy Spirit coming into the life of that church and filling the life of the church with his presence. And Scott talked about that last week, how all of a sudden, man, when Peter stood up to preach, people were hearing the words that he spoke in their own languages. They had never heard a message like Peter preached. And on that day, God took that church from 120 people to over 3,000 people joined that church in just one day. That's a pretty good weekend. That's a big growth within the life of that church. Somebody said, let me chase this rabbit. Somebody said, well, I just don't want to be a part of a big church. And I understand that. But you know what? In the average church, and I've read stats on this, remember this Is is what I do. I've read stats on this. And did you know the person in the average church will never know more than a couple of dozen people? You could be in a church that runs 60 to 80 people. The average church in America runs about 120. Because they've determined that the average pastor only has the bandwidth to take care of about 120 people. That's about all one person can take care of. Minister effectively. So what do you do when a church outgrows that? We have to do as we've done. You have to add other pastors and then you have to get better structure and you have to have more diaconost. You have more people who are serving in the life of the church, where the church begins to minister to itself as the church grows. And you say, well, our church is too big. How do you fix that? Who do I tell? Stay home. Who do I tell? Go away with two. We're full. Stay away. You know, that's just not how it works. I remember when we first went to our second service, I had some of well intentioned. They just said, oh man, I hate we're having to go to the second service. Cause we're never gonna know a lot of the people. We're gonna be two different churches. And man, at one point when we were at the grocery store, before we moved out from this location, we were in five services on the weekends. We had two on Saturday, three on Sunday. We were running over 6,000 people in the weekend. I mean, it was insane. The growth that we were experiencing in that season of our ministry. It was just running to stay ahead of it. I've got a plaque in my office that says there they go. And I must hasten after them for I am their leader. And that's kind of what it was. It was like standing in front of a fire hose. But it was an incredible problem. But yet it was something that we had because we were trying to get the organization to keep up with the organism. And it was hard to keep the structure ahead of the growth during that season of our church's life. And so I'm just saying that in those periods of time, you are reorganizing, you're organizing, you're evaluating. Because when the church begins to be filled with the Holy Spirit, life happens and the Holy Spirit begins to move in power and people become a part of that and are attracted to that. And so you have on that church you have 3120 people. And so you have to accommodate them. Now the dynamics of The Church of Jerusalem, that first church that we're referring to here in Acts 2. The dynamic of that is they began to serve during a time, and they were organized during a time when it wasn't legal to be a church. Rome moved in and said, you're not gonna have these organized. You're not gonna have these large gatherings. After the day of Pentecost, when Peter preached and there were thousands of people there, Rome moved in and said, that's not gonna happen anymore. They didn't know how to control this thing called the church. And so they outlawed the church. So the church went underground. And so what the church consisted of were small groups. They were meeting in homes, and there were thousands of them meeting in homes. G. Campbell Morgan was a great scholar, and he said on one occasion that he believed the Church of Jerusalem at its peak grew out to over 250,000 members. That's a big church. In the church of over 250,000 people were a part of that very first church. But the dynamic of that church happened in Acts 2, when the Holy Spirit filled. Filled the church. Now, how does the Holy Spirit fill the church today? Remember, a church is a group collectively of what we are individually. Well, how does the Holy Spirit fill us? Well, there's two things that happen with the coming of the Holy Spirit. Number one, when you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior. My view of that is that is the baptism of the Holy Spirit. That's when you receive Jesus as your Savior. I don't believe receiving the Holy Spirit is a second work of grace, meaning that you get Jesus now and you get the Holy Spirit later. In fact, in Romans, chapter seven, Paul wrote and said, if anyone does not have the Spirit of God, they do not belong to him. So Jesus is not duplicitous. He's not divided. You don't get God on the installment plan. You don't get Jesus at salvation, and later on you get the Holy Spirit. And then a little later on, you get a relationship with Holy Father. There are three that bear witness in heaven. Those three are one. How can you have one without three? So here's the problem. You get the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. But the problem is the Holy Spirit doesn't get all of you. You get all of him, he doesn't get all of you. So then you have the second part. And this is where most people misunderstand this teaching. You have the filling of the Holy Spirit. In other words, the Holy Spirit has the opportunity to preside to lead in your life and for the first time, you've given him access to every area of your life. That's why in First Corinthians 3, he said, you're bought with a price. Therefore, remember, when you see the word therefore, look and see what it's there for. It connects what he's about to say with what he just said. He said you're bought with a price. And because that's true, therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, your attitude, both belong to Him. Now here's what happens. You receive Jesus as savior, baptism of the Holy Spirit, sealed with the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption. Ephesians chapter one, verse 18. So you're saved and secure. But you don't give the Holy Spirit access to all of your life. He owns the house, you just don't let him in all the rooms. You just say, God, that's my junk room. I got some stuff going on back there. I don't want you in that room. You can't see what's going on in there. It's like bringing guests over to your house. You ever have one of those rooms that just kind of comes with collect everything room and you're going to get to it a little while and five years later you're still going to get to it. But you just had, right? Or you don't let them see the garage. For the love of God, don't let them go in the garage. Right? We all have had those little seasons of life where you got to get yourself a little more organized. Well, that's what happens when you receive the Holy Spirit of God and you have the now the filling of the Holy Spirit of God. You're opening the doors and you're letting him in. Areas of your life you've never let him in before. That's why sometimes the feeling is so emotional and overcoming to people who are genuinely filled with the Holy Spirit. Because the first time in their life they're giving God access to every area of their life, some areas they've held onto, and now they're freely giving him access. So you had the baptism of the Holy Spirit, now you have the filling of the Holy Spirit. That's why I said In Ephesians chapter 5, in verse 18, it's a constant thing. Be you being filled, be filled with the Holy Spirit. How do you. How are you filled with the Holy Spirit? You yield. And as you yield, you give him access. He fills. You have to do it every day. You know why? Cause we take it back. You ever been in a Service like this, and God's given you a word and you have this epiphany and you decide, I'm gonna make some changes in my life, the things are gonna be different. And then before you get in the car, you kind of. Those old habits are right back in there again. It's because the things that you had gotten victory over, you now relinquish and you take back control over. And so it's a battle. That's why I said, be you being filled. The filling of the Spirit has to happen every day. It's not a one and done. You have to every day get up and say, God, you've given me life today. Help me be sensitive to what you would have me to do to make a difference in somebody else's life. So I'm filled with your Holy Spirit in a church that's vibrant and a church that is growing is a church that is not only formed with good structure, but a church that is filled with the Holy Spirit. Here's the last one. And we'll go home. It's also a church that is functioning. Functioning. We're formed and we're filled and we're. And he does that. So we function. We're to function. You ready? With unction. We're to function with the power of the Holy Spirit. He's given us something to do. I go Back to Ecclesiastes 3, verse 1. You are. I am immortal until God is finished with us. This body will be here as long as God has a purpose for this body. That's why he says that there's a time and a season to every purpose under heaven. God will give you time for every purpose under heaven. And as long as you have a purpose, God will give you time for that purpose. According to Ecclesiastes 3:1. Well, a church is designed as a body. A church has a purpose. And there is a season for the life of a church. And God has a purpose during that season. And the purpose of the church. Go back to the five systems. What we're to do is we're to worship and we're to evangelize, and we're to disciple and. And we're to incorporate people into fellowship, those five systems of the church. That's what we're to do. And so a church should function every day. In fact, when Jesus established it, remember I said it come back to this in Matthew chapter 16, verse 19. He said, I'm gonna give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven. Whatever this church binds on earth will be bound in Heaven. Whatever this church looses on earth will be loose in heaven. Now what does that mean? Well, the keys mean access. You got a fob or you have a key to your car, a key to your house, that gives you access, right? Anytime you have the keys, you have access. Keys to the kingdom means the church has access to the kingdom. What does that access give us permission to do? To bind and to loose. What does binding mean? Binding is to prohibit. What is loosing. Loosing is to permit. Binding is prohibiting. Loosing is permitting. What does that mean? That means the power of the church is we can loose people who have been repentant and they have asked Jesus for forgiveness. The church has the power to see them forgiven, to loose them from their sin. I go back to the leading edge of a church. It is to reach people who don't know Jesus. And when they are loosed from their sin, they are loosed not only on earth, but they're loosed in heaven. When they're bound in their sin, that means they've rejected the message of Jesus. They've turned away, they've been to the church, they've heard the message, they said no to Jesus and they're bound. They're still bound. And if they die in that condition, they won't reach heaven. But the church has this incredible power. It has a power not only in our community, but it has a power that reaches to the end of the world. We have the greatest message in all the world and that is to tell people Jesus loves them, he died for them, and if you will receive him, he will forgive you of your sin and you can have an eternity in heaven with him one day. What a liberating, what a loosing, what a freeing message that is. That's the message of the church. And so I go back to kind of where I started. We never want to minimize the significance of the church. It is that organization, it is that organism that God created and he founded. And that's why he said in Hebrews, he said, don't forsake the assembling of the church as many do. But so much the more gather as you see the day approaching, meaning the day of his coming, as you see that day approaching. Man, I don't know how much time we have left on this earth. I know the next event, the calendar of eternity in my view is the rapture of the church. Boy, I'm telling you, I'm not looking for the undertaker, I'm looking for the upper taker. I'm ready for the rapture. Did you know, that could happen before the day is done. Can I give you my opinion? It's free, like the rest of it. I think the only thing, the only thing he's waiting for is for his body on this earth to be completed. There's someone that is known in the mind of God that will be that last someone that will receive Jesus. And when that last someone known in the mind of God, when that last someone says yes to Jesus, the Father will turn to the Son and say, that's the last one. Go get him. And the Bible says in 1st Thessalonians 4, the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, with the trump of God. And those who have died in Christ will be raised first. Think about Ava. I think about Cindy. I think about my granddaughter, Evie. We went out to those cemeteries and we laid those bodies to rest, knowing that their spirit and souls were with God. But that body was sleeping in the earth. Solomon would ride ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Ashes to ashes indicates cremation. Dust to dust indicates normal decay. And we lay those bodies in the earth. And when the body Bible speaks of those bodies, he said, they're sleeping. You know, that's a beautiful word because anything asleep is subject to be awakened at any moment. Those bodies are sleeping, meaning one day they're going to be awakening. And when the Lord one day descends from heaven with a shout, there's going to be a commotion in the cemetery. There's going to be people getting up out of those graves, and they're going to be caught up. And all of a sudden, not only will they be caught up with us, they're going to be caught up and reunited with that spirit and soul that's been with God. And that body will be recreated, it will be reunited, that body will be rejoined. And one day we're going to see our loved ones again, and we're going to see them in a perfected manner. Next time Cindy sees this fat boy, I'm going to be handsome and ripped. I'll pull my shirt off next time. Hey, baby. What do you think about this glorified body, you say? Yeah. Where was that? For 42 years, I got to tell you this. I hadn't talked down five, six weeks. So just bear with me a minute here. I'll stress them a little bit on the parking lot. For the love of God, we got another service. It'll be all right. They'll be all right. We had a guy in the church, man, he was like, Dwayne Mahan just ripped, you know, one of those guys. I always tell I'm gonna be like Dwayne when I grow up. I mean, just, you know, just one of those guys that just fit. Just looks amazing. And this guy was. He's just big old ripped guy. And so Cindy hugged him one time, and she goes, man, his body was so hard. And I'm looking at her like, right? And she realized, you know, kind of how I took what she just said, and she goes, no, no, no, no, no. I like your body. You're squishy. I said, honey, I never met a man in my life that want to be told his body is squishy. Good Lord. Oh, man, I'm squishy. But, boy, one day in that glorified body, that won't be the case. Oh, man. You know, when we see our loved ones again, they're not going to battle the battles they battled down here. There's not going to be any more neurological illnesses. There's not going to be anybody else that will take the lives of our loved ones from us. There's not going to be anything like that. There's no cemeteries in heaven. There's no hospitals in heaven. There's no cemeteries in heaven. One of these days, folks, when we step in the presence of our God and we're reunited and this church is raptured out of here, we're gonna be reunited with them forevermore. We're just on the battlefield for a little while. We're just here for just a little skinny minute, and we're here to make a difference in the lives of other people. So, folks, I'm glad you're a part of this church. And I hope and pray that this church can minister to you and your family and that we can see others who are given the message of Jesus through the life of this church. And God will do something significant through us in the time that he's given us. Together. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for these wonderful people who are here. And thank you, Lord, for the prayers. Thank you for the heart of this church and for the love of these people. And, Lord, I pray for a lot of people who may be just kind of kicking the tires and they don't know if this is where they should be. And they're still trying to make that decision. Some of them just felt led to leave where they've been and find a new experience. Some of them are hurt. Some of them have gone through some stuff. Some are going through some stuff. So, Father, I pray that those that you're leading here will feel comfortable and feel confirmed. And we'll see the church continue to grow as it effectively reaches people. Father, we pray for those maybe in the room or watching online who may never have trusted you as Savior, that this might be the moment where they say, lord Jesus, with all that I know about me, I now trust all that I know about you. Come into my heart and forgive my sin. I pray that will be their prayer and give us a great week. Watch over us, keep us safe. Thank you, Father for all that you're doing and all that you promised to do. We give you praise in Christ's name. Amen. [00:43:06] Speaker A: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you have any questions, questions or prayer requests, please contact us by visiting metchurch.com so that we can follow up with you this week. We look forward to seeing you next week.