The Three-Fold DNA of a Missions Church

The Lord’s Day Evening

March 3, 2013

“The Three-Fold DNA of a Missions Church”

Acts 1

The Reverend Dr. Harry L. Reeder III

If you’ve got your
copies of God’s Word, turn with me to the book of Acts and chapter 1, Acts
chapter 1. Join me in prayer if you
would.

Father, I’m
grateful to You for the extraordinary privilege to open Your Word to these, Your
people. Father, do that work which
only You can do by the Holy Spirit, and Father, that is, from this Word through
the inadequacies of the one preaching, there are many.
Father, I pray that You would, by the Holy Spirit, speak to their hearts
so that they might hear Christ and hearing Christ believe and believing so live,
so that Christ might be exalted and shall have dominion though all the earth.
I pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.

Look with me in verse
1:

“In the first book” – this is Luke writing, inspired by the Holy Spirit – “In
the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and
teach, until the day when he was taken up, after he had given commands through
the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.
He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs,
appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God.”

Now before I read any
further, let me just stop at this point and kind of give you a heads-up.
I’ve said it twice since I have been here and this is something very much
upon my heart for my own congregation and by no means is it my assessment of
your congregation, it’s just on my heart for my congregation and any others.
I’m very much disturbed and concerned that a lot of our churches really
have lost a sense of the commitment to world missions.
So whenever I see a church like this, not only holding onto that legacy
but building on it, I rejoice. And
I’m grateful for it and I’m actually concerned among the current movements of
evangelical churches that that’s kind of lost.
And of course the excuse is, “Well the world has come to America,” and
there’s a sense that there’s local missions.
But I think that every church needs to have an intentional commitment
that you go from your Jerusalem to your Judea to your Samaria to the outermost
part of the world, intentionally. I
think that has to be an intentional commitment to seek and to save the lost
throughout all of the Lord’s vineyard.

But the second thing
is, on the other side of that, is that I’m very much concerned that somehow we
get a satisfaction that we send out missionaries, we pray for them, we highlight
world missions, we give Faith Promise giving, therefore we’re a missionary
church. No, no, if you’re a
missionary church then you’re doing the work here as well.
So I begin to try to put my mind into the book of Acts to try to
ascertain what is it, what is it that makes a church effective, not only
locally, but regionally, nationally, and internationally.
What is it that empowers them, that keeps them on mission, on message, in
ministry? What is it that has to be
built into the very integrity? Now
the phrase I’ve used is “The Three-Fold DNA of a Missions Church.”
Now I’ve chosen that because I believe First Pres., like Briarwood, is a
manifestation of the body of Christ.
Now no local church is the body of Christ; we are a manifestation of the body of
Christ. And so what does it looks
like? The body of Christ — what is
the essential DNA that makes the body intentional, effective, vital, and
successful in the cause of the Great Commission?
What would be that three-fold DNA?

Well I’m immediately
going back to the book of Acts. Now
it’s written by the Holy Spirit through Luke.
Luke probably did the work of the gospel of Luke that he wrote.
Now if you’ll notice in what I just read, it said, “This is the second
book I’ve written to you, Theophilus.”
Now there is a lot of discussion — Theophilus:
theo = God; phileo = love; lover of God.
Is that an actual person or is that a term to encompass all of believers
that would read it or is that both, an actual purpose but in God’s providence a
wonderful name for that person that is descriptive of what we ought to be,
lovers of God as well? I don’t
propose to solve that for you now, but I do find it very interesting.
It says this is the second book.
And what I really find interesting is that he says this is the second
book. The first book was “all that
Jesus began to do and teach.” When I
saw that fifteen years ago, I realized my ministry just got revolutionized
again. When I first started doing
discipling, I understood that discipleship — you heard Scott talking about it
today, life on life, I understood that discipleship was informational and
relational. We learn by instruction;
we learn by imitation. It’s not just
like when we first started out discipling.
I’m going to get you through that, you’re discipled, now let’s go.
No, there is mentoring and modeling that takes place.
There is both of them.

But what I hadn’t
seen is the order so clearly enunciated.
See, I had done instruction — “Now that I’ve taught you, watch me do it.”
That’s the way I had been taught.
But it seems as if — now I believe in verbal plenary inspiration; I
believe the order of the words are very important in Scripture.
And so when it says that “The first book that I wrote was about what
Jesus began to do and teach,” not “teach and do” but “do and teach.”
He’s pray. They’d say, “Teach
us to pray.” He’d evangelize; then
He’d teach them about evangelism. It
was do and teach, do and teach. Now
this is the second book. If the
first book was all that Jesus began to do and teach, what is Luke saying by
inference? The second book he’s
writing, the second volume he’s writing, is that Jesus continues to do and
teach.

Now if you’ll let me
just be a very simple person, because I am, the first book describes the life
and ministry of Jesus Christ. Right?
His earthly ministry, the gospel of Luke.
So that means that the gospel of Luke covers how many years?
This isn’t hard. Thirty-three
years; thirty-three years. So the Father sent the Son to do His will.
To save the people He’s given to them.
Jesus comes. “Father, I lose
not one but will raise them up on the last day.”
So Jesus could do that, He takes upon Himself — He doesn’t diminish His
deity; He lays aside privileges of His deity.
We didn’t have thirty-three years without a Trinity.
So He takes upon Himself humanity.
So that by a man came death, by a man comes the resurrection of the dead,
and in that body He lived a perfect life and in that body He died an atoning
death and that body was put into a tomb and that body, glorified, was raised,
and that body ascended and that body is at the right hand of the Father where He
now intercedes for us. And in that
glorified body, He will come again one day.
In between the ascension and the Second Coming, you are body number 2.
That’s why Paul, Paul uses all of the metaphors in the Old Testament to
describe God’s covenant people. He
uses all of them and he adds one that you don’t find in the Old Testament and
that’s this — the body of Christ.

We are how Jesus
continues to do and teach. “The
Father sent Me. As the Father sent
Me, now I send you.” So he then
writes the second volume. And by the
way, guess how many years are covered in the gospel of Acts?
Thirty-three years. The first
volume is all that Jesus began to do and teach; the second volume is all that
Jesus continues to do and teach. I
don’t want to lose you; I don’t want to lose you, but if you look at the last
chapter it’s just a period. It
doesn’t end because it’s not supposed to end.
Jesus is continuing to do and teach through First Presbyterian Jackson.
What is He doing? He is
fulfilling the Great Commission.
“All authority has been given to Me in heaven and earth.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in
the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” And so when the church
gets started, He gives them their marching orders again.

Now look with me in
Acts chapter 1 and look down to verse 4:

“And while staying with them he ordered them not to depart from Jerusalem, but
to wait for the promise of the Father, which, he said, ‘you heard from me; for
John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many
days from now.’

So when they had come together, they asked him, ‘Lord, will you at this time
restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He
said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has
fixed by his own authority. But you
will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my
witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria, and to the end of the
earth.”

And then He was taken
up into glory to the right hand of the Father, from which He will come again.

So you go through the
book of Acts and guess what the book of Acts is?
The book of Acts is the Holy Spirit coming upon them, the church is
conceived in a prayer meeting — Acts chapter 1 — it is birthed in the sermon —
Acts chapter 2 — and then the first eight chapters is the power of the Holy
Spirit through the body of Christ with the Gospel reaching Jerusalem — 3,000,
5,000 every single day people are being converted.
The evil empire strikes back.
All that does is multiply the church.
Then, what is Acts chapters 9 through 12?
Acts 9 through 12 is the kingdom going to Judea and Samaria.
And then what happens after that?
Then you have the kingdom of God going to the world — Acts 13 through 28.
Acts 1 through 8 is the kingdom of God going to Jerusalem and the
powerful church, the body of Christ, the church at Jerusalem.
Then Judea and Samaria, a powerful church, the church of Antioch.
Then to the whole world, another powerful church, the church at Ephesus.
And when Paul dies, he’s ready to go to Spain and he’s looking for
another church from which will be this epicenter work of the Gospel, this Gospel
earthquake. And that church will be
Rome, so he writes an exposition of the Gospel to lay the ground work to go and
do that.

Harry, why are you
going through this? Because when you
get to Acts chapter 17 and the Gospel is going to the world, to the very thing
that I preached on this morning, is when it lands in Thessalonica and the evil
empire strikes back — and by the way you’ll see that every time, every city.
When Paul gives to the city, he evangelizes and disciples and he meets
with success, then the empire of Satan strikes back and he’s persecuted or
arrested or stoned or whipped or something that happened.
Three, God intervenes. God
intervenes on behalf of His people.
Number four, they go right back into the city and get more success.
Number five, they plant a church and then move on to the next city.
That happens time after time after time after time.

Well when they got to
Thessalonica, an adversary of the Gospel, an adversary of the kingdom, says
this. “These people who have turned
the world upside-down have now come here also.”
Let’s stop and think. Less
than twenty-five years after the ascension of Jesus, all the way in Europe, an
adversary of the Gospel is frustrated by the world shaking movement of the
kingdom. All the way in Europe.
Well I think the key to it starts back in Acts chapter 1.
Jesus says, “You’re going to go to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and
the uttermost part of the world, but don’t go until you go back to that Upper
Room. And I want you to get on your
knees. And there is a promise that the Father has given and it can’t be given
until I ascend, but when I ascend, it will be given.
And the one whom the Father has promised in My name will be poured out
upon you and you will be My witnesses and you will receive power and you will be
My witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the world.”

And therefore I think
He puts in place very clearly what is this three-fold DNA of a missions,
world-shaking church. So you say,
“Well pastor, we’ve got a nice sized church.
Are you sure we can shake the world?”
A hundred and twenty people in the Upper Room.
A hundred and twenty, and some of them had been running in fear just a
couple of days before. “Pastor,
could that really happen to the church you pastor, to the church I pastor?”
Most of the time we think the key is how we’re going to strategize.
And I’m all for strategic thinking.
My goodness, that’s a vein in my life.
I love to think strategically.
But brothers and sisters, I believe that the body of Christ that is
effective to send the Gospel around the world is a church that has three marks
that Jesus said, “Don’t go until this happens.”

DNA OF A MISSIONS CHURCH: HOLY SPIRIT FILLED

Number one.
Here it is. I’m going to give
you the three-fold DNA. DNA number 1
— the church must be Spirit filled, must be Holy Spirit filled.
He said, “Go, and I’ll pour out the Holy Spirit upon you and when He
comes you will receive power.” The
Christian life cannot be lived without the Holy Spirit and the Great Commission
cannot be accomplished without the Holy Spirit.
That’s why the last thing He says is, “I’ll be with you until the end of
the age because you can’t get this done without Me.”
So we must be utterly surrendered.
Now let me give you the good news.
If you’re a Christian here today — I was going to ask for hands to be
raised but I won’t do that lest you — then I was going to tell you the buses are
waiting for you but I wasn’t going to do that either. But if you’re a believer
here today, first of all I’ve got good news – you have the Holy Spirit.
He has been poured out upon you.
That’s why I believe John says, “There is one coming after me.
He will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire.”
Jesus is the baptizer. He has
two agents that He baptizes with.
He’ll either baptize His people with the Holy Spirit or He will baptize and
gather, I’m sorry, He will baptize with fire, meaning judgment.
I think the context is very clear.

The Holy Spirit is
poured out upon His people because the next verse says, “He gathers His wheat
into His barn.” Then the next part
of that verse says, “and the chaff will burn with unquenchable fire.”
So today, if you know Jesus, then you have been baptized with the Holy
Spirit. If anyone has not the Spirit
of God he does not belong to Christ because you’re still dead in your sins.
To have come to Christ required the intervention of the Holy Spirit to
bring you from a spiritual boneyard of death to life evermore.
My dear friends, you and I were not sin-sick before we became Christians,
we were sin-dead. We weren’t in the
intensive care unit, we were in the morgue. Every single one of you that know
Christ, He uprooted the tomb of sin and brought you to the triumph of His
resurrection and He did that by the Holy Spirit whom he poured out upon you and
He is the down payment of your everlasting life and He is the one who empowers
you. I am not asking you today if
you’re a Christian, “Do you have the Holy Spirit?”
I’m asking you, “Are you surrendered to Him or do you neglect Him?”

A lady came up to me
one time after a sermon and she said, “Can I ask you a question?”
I said, “Yes, ma’am.” She
said, “Have you gotten the second blessing?”
And I said, “Yes, ma’am.” And
she said, “I thought so.” And I
said, “Ma’am, can I tell you something?”
She said, “What?” I said,
“I’ve got the third one.” She said,
“The what?” I said, “The third one.”
She said, “I haven’t heard about that one.”
And I said, “I’ve got the fourth one.”
She said, “No.” I said,
“Absolutely.” Then I turned to
Ephesians 1:3 — “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has
blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
“Ma’am, my problem is not that I don’t have what I need; my problem is
that I keep trying to act like I don’t need Him.”
Here’s what the Bible says.
“Without Him I can do nothing.” But
I’ve got great news. “I can do all
things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Who is the strengthening power of Christ?
The Holy Spirit. So this
church, and this church will not be surrendered to the Holy Spirit unless its
members intentionally surrender.

I’ll just share with
you what I do. I’m a very simple
person. Before I get to my quiet
time, before I get to anything else in the day, I just wake up in the bed and
say, “Lord, first thing, I just want You to keep me amazed at grace today.
Second thing, I want to thank You for saving me.
Third thing is, I need Your help; I need Your power to do what’s before
me today.” Just surrender every day
intentionally. Don’t negotiate.
Just surrender to the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

“Harry, how do you
know if we’re surrendered to the Holy Spirit?”
Well here, I’ll just get a little controversial.
It’s not whether you speak in tongues, it’s not whether you don’t speak
in tongues, it’s not whether the evidence, the singular evidence of the Holy
Spirit — now yes, the Holy Spirit gives the Fruit of the Spirit, yes the Holy
Spirit gives gifts, yes the Holy Spirit gives all of that, but the singular
evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit in a Spirit-filled Christian and a
Spirit-filled church is this — they are always talking about and exalting Jesus
Christ. As J.I. Packer says, the
Holy Spirit is the shy Spirit. He
did not come to bring attention to Himself or even His gifts.
He came to bring — now certainly we need to teach about the Holy Spirit,
but when the Holy Spirit comes, when He’s doing His work, that church and that
Christian is making much about Jesus.
What did Jesus say? He said,
“When He comes you will receive power.”
And what’s the result of Him showing up?
“You will be My witnesses.”
When the Holy Spirit comes, then those in whom He dwells lift up and exalt
Jesus. And if Christ is exalted He
will draw all men to Himself.

DNA OF A MISSIONS CHURCH: CHRIST-CENTERED

Well that’s DNA
number two. DNA number two is — the
Holy Spirit leads you to exalt Jesus Christ.
Christ is exalted. So a, what
is a world shaking missions church?
It is one that is Spirit-filled and it is one that is Christ-centered.
It is one that is Christ-centered.
Christ is the center, the sum, the substance, and the circumference of
everything we teach, everything we do, every doctrine that we have.
Is it leadership? Sure it’s
leadership. What do you do?
You shepherd! That’s a
leader! How do you shepherd?
The way Christ did. He laid
down His life for His sheep.
Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church.
Wives, how do you submit to your husbands?
As to the Lord. Christ is the
center, the sum, the substance, the circumference of all that we do.
And when He’s lifted up it’s amazing what happens in that church and from
that church.

I was sent to plant a
church in Charlotte, North Carolina.
We had about thirty-eight folks and Ralph and Wendy were there for a while, but
before they were there we had our thirty-eight folks and our modular unit and —
I’ll tell you what a modular unit is.
It’s a double-wide trailer with the wheels covered up is what it is.
We had our thirty-eight people that were there and this family comes in.
And this lady with four children, we get to talking to her, we get to
ministering to her, and praise the Lord she was a wonderful lady and one day she
comes to me and she says, “Pastor, my husband has left me four times for another
woman. He’s come back three but this
time I’m just wondering what I’m teaching these boys.
I think it’s time that he’s got to have some accountability.”
And obviously she had grounds for divorce.
So I said, “Okay, we’ll we’re going to walk with you through this but is
it okay if I go after him?” And she
said, “Well, yeah, but he’s heard it.”
Well long story short because I haven’t got much time here, but let me at
least put it this way — he said pretty — he became a Christian after their
divorce. We started discipling him.
One day he showed up and he said — and they’d let me use that name.
He said, “Harry, is it okay if I, do you think it’s okay if I start; do
you think Marty would remarry me?”
And I said, “I don’t know. You
forfeited that right. Why don’t you
start courting her?” So he did. Long
story short again, they got married.
Now Steve was way up there. You know
that big level in the financial industry in Charlotte.
And we’re meeting now in a gymnasium with these that we called, “the
widow makers.” I’m serious.
I’d be preaching and people would just disappear; they would just
disappear. I mean I thought at first
they were getting slain in the Spirit but that wasn’t it!
They were just disappearing!

And so I said, “Would
y’all like —“ Because I knew CEOs and COOs and CFOs and UFOs and they were all
going to be there and I said — I was just trying to figure out whether we should
rent a church or not. And they said,
“We worship here; we’ll get married here.”
So we had the wedding and Steve gave his testimony, Marty gave hers, and
we got those four boys like stair-steps there. And after that I got a phone call
and it was a guy by the name of Harvey.
And Harvey said to me, “Harry, I work with Steve and he’s been telling me
about Jesus. And I’ve never seen a
wedding like that.” He said, “Could
I talk to you about that?” And I
said, “Sure, meet me at the Chateau Restaurant.”
So we met at the Chateau Restaurant, I asked him two questions, wrote
down three things — our situation, God’s solution, and your salvation.
I explained it to him for about thirty-five, forty minutes.
I said, “Harvey, do you understand?”
He said, “Yes.” I said, “Is
there any reason why you shouldn’t become a Christian, Harvey?”
He said, “Absolutely not.”
And so he prayed, took the napkin, stuck it in his Bible, and he said, “Praise
the Lord! I’m a Christian now!”
I said, “Well come to church, read this, and I’ll meet with you next
week.”

What I didn’t know is
that he went home — I didn’t realize it but he had a relationship with a woman
we used to call “living without the benefit of clergy” and he said to her, he
said, “I’m a Christian. You’ve got
to move out.” She said, “What kind
of cult are you in?” So she came
that next Sunday. She told me — I
can still see her. Red hair, red
face, red everything, and she was really upset with all this stuff that was
going on. She said, “I was sure you
were going to bring out a box of snakes any minute!”
And she was just all upset about everything so she had to come down
there. And I sat there with her and
I introduced her to a lady named Miriam.
Miriam led her to Christ and Harvey and Beth started dating and I did
their marriage. And again, Harvey
works with Steve and all of these people are back with the “widow maker chairs”
and then Harvey gives his testimony.

And then Bev and I
get a phone call the next day and it’s a guy by the name of Joe — I’m sorry it’s
a guy by the name of Dan. And Dan
said to me, he said, “Harry, you know I work with Harvey and Steve and they’ve
been telling me about Jesus and what he’s done in their life and I’ve been to
those weddings — I’ve never seen weddings like that before.
Can I talk to you about that?”
I said, “Sure, meet me at that Chateau Restaurant.”
So we met at the Chateau Restaurant.
So I pulled out a napkin, asked two questions, wrote down three things.
“Do you understand? Is there
any reason why you shouldn’t become a Christian?”
“No.” And so the next thing
you know, praise the Lord, Dan’s a believer.
Now his wife had left him, I wish I could tell you she did come back, but
a wonderful lady that actually taught on the same faculty that Wendy did,
Ralph’s wife there, she got married and, just a wonderful couple, and I got a
phone call and it was a guy by the name of Joe.
And Joe said, “Harry, I work with Steve and Dan and Harvey and they’ve
been telling me about Jesus. And by
the way, I’ve been to those weddings and I’ve never seen weddings like that
before. Could I talk to you about
that?” I said, “Sure, meet me at the
Chateau Restaurant. You’d better
bring a napkin; I think they’re out!” And then Joe became a Christian, went
home, brought his wife to church, and Betty became a Christian.

Y’all get the
picture? Just lift up Christ.
“I will draw all men to myself.”
I love my confession, I love my denomination, I love my church
government. I love all of those
things. And I believe Christ is in
the middle of all of that but what we want to lift up is Christ.
People need to hear Christ.
That’s why Nebuchadnezzar looks into a furnace and he’s startled.
The same man that said, “What god can deliver you out of my hands?”
When he sees Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego come out, what does he say?
“What kind of a God saves like this?”
He had heard of gods that blew up furnaces.
He had never heard of a God who would come down to a furnace to save His
people. And that’s the glorious work
of Christ. Have you ever wondered
why Jesus loved — do you remember when Nebuchadnezzar said, “Did we put three
men? I see four, one like the Son of
Man.” Jesus, that day, went to that
fiery furnace to tell us about the day on the cross when He would go to our
fiery furnace to save us from our sins.
Just lift Him up. It’s at the
cross where the love of God meets the holiness of God and sinners are saved by
the grace of God to the glory of God.

Joe, Joe became the
president of the Men in the Church.
His wife became president of the Women in the Church.
Dan and Chris helped us plant our first church and helped us — they
adopted four children from Russia and helped to bring in Bethany Adoption
agency. Harvey became an elder in
the church and he and Beth oversaw our Evangelism Explosion ministry.
Steve is now, Steve has been Vice President for Reformed Theological
Seminary. His wife, the headmaster
at Covenant Day School. One son is
the youngest tenured professor at Princeton.
The other son just became president at Covenant College three months ago.
Spirit-filled, Christ-centered saves the world.

DNA OF A MISSIONS CHURCH: GOSPEL DRIVEN

Finally this is it.
Number three is this one.
You’re going to be Spirit-filled, Christ-centered, and you’re going to be
Gospel-driven; Gospel-saturated. So
the DNA is Spirit-filled, Christ-centered, Gospel-driven.
The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes.
I am not ashamed of the Gospel.
It is the power of God. The
first time I knew the Gospel was powerful was when I was fifteen years old and I
was in a church called the Christian Missionary Alliance.
And our AYF, Alliance Youth Fellowship, was having a retreat that
Saturday. And my dad said, “You’re
going.” And I said, “Dad, I don’t
want to go.” He said, “You’re
going.” Now I was in a home that
children didn’t choose church. I
hear that all the time — “Well my children want to go here.”
Oh my goodness. That just
utterly — I’ve tried to think of a moment on a Sunday when I would wake up and
Daddy would say, “What church do y’all want to go to today kids?”
I’m trying to think of that moment.
I just don’t have a category for that one!
And I tell people I got saved by the drug problem.
My dad and mom drug me to church every Sunday morning, every Sunday
night. (laughter)
At least I thought it was a drug problem.

So he said, “You’re
going.” And I said, “Okay, I’m
going.” I wasn’t happy but I got
there. I did not know.
I thought retreat was fun and games and actually it was two students from
Toccoa Falls Bible College who came and taught us how to share the Gospel.
And then after lunch they took us out door to door to share the Gospel.
People ask me, “Harry, does the Lord hear the prayers of unsaved people.”
Yes sir, I can tell you that.
First door as we’re walking up to it, “Oh Jesus, I know I’m not a Christian but
please don’t let anybody be at home.” Nobody was home!
The Lord hears the prayers of unsaved people!
(laughter) But on the third
house, the Lord said, “Nope, it’s time for somebody to be home.”
We got in there and the Toccoa Falls guys were halfway through and they
said, “Okay, Ike,” Ike, that was my nickname, “Ike, you finish it.”
Oh. Well I finished it and I
just sort of said what I had memorized and I said, “Now you wouldn’t want to be
a Christian, would you?” They said,
“I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me about this.”
And he became a Christian.
That day I realized, at least I became to sense, that the Gospel was the power
not the deliverer.

The Gospel is
powerful. I know the world makes fun
of it, but it’s so unique, it’s so glorious, and the world makes fun of it.
You know why the world makes fun of it?
Because they hate it. Because
it tells them you need a Savior.
They don’t want to be told that. It
tells them they can’t save themselves.
We think this gift thing would be great.
No, the reason it’s a gift is that you can’t save yourself.
They don’t want to hear that.
And by the way, your religion, whatever it is, it can’t save you.
I don’t care how sincerely you believe it.
It’s only Christ that saves.
So they either respond angrily or they respond making fun of it.

If you’ll allow me
just one more little illustration – this is the way I like to think of the
Gospel because I get to talk about it every single day of my life and I get the
privilege to do that. Thank you,
church. I’m scared to death they’d
find out I’d do this for free. It’s
just amazing. I love it. I love to
see what the Gospel does in people’s lives.
So I get into these. I’m
reminded of the time when I was sixteen years old, one year later, and my dad
said to me, “Son, you’re sixteen.” I
said, “Yes sir.” He said, “Happy
birthday.” I said, “Thank you.”
He said, “I got you a car.”
Now folks, you could have knocked me over with a feather.
My dad was in minor league baseball and there was a lot of month at the
end of the money in our family, a lot of month at the end of the money.
And then he said, “It’s a ’57 Ford.”
Now let me tell you something, if he couldn’t get a ’57 Chevy or a ’57
Thunderbird in 1963, ’57 Ford was number three.

I ran out the back
door, I looked and I saw that ’57 Ford and my face hit the ground.
I turned to my daddy and I said, “Daddy, I can’t drive this car to
school.” And then my daddy said, and
my daddy had a way of saying things that I’m convinced are in the Bible; they’re
somewhere in there. I haven’t
found this one yet but he said, “Son, a poor ride is better than a proud walk.
It’s nine miles to East Mecklenburg High School.
You can either walk it or drive this.”
He said, “Why are you so upset?”
I said, “Daddy, I can’t drive it” — it was pink! The car was pink!
I said, “Daddy, I can’t drive a pink Ford.
I mean, it’s a ’57 but it’s pink!”
He said, “It’s not pink; it’s coral.”
I said, “It’s pink.” Now he
said, “Son, I bought this at an auction for seventy-five dollars.”
Then I realized how we got this car!
I said, “Did they pay you or did you pay them?”
Now he said, “Before you get too uppity, look under the hood.”
So he lifted up the hood and he said, “I bought this at the South
Carolina State Highway Patrol. It’s
a retired South Carolina State Highway Patrol interceptor.”
Well interceptor kind of got my attention.
And when he lifted up the hood I looked under and it was a 390 engine.
And I said, “You know, Daddy, I kind of like this coral color.”

And I’ll finish with
this. Now it’s only my — first of
all, the next thing I’m about to say, all teenagers, I was not converted yet.
So I would pull up and Corvettes and Chevies and ’57 Chevies would all
pull up and laugh. They’d laugh at
my ’57 Ford; my pink Ford. And I’d
just point. And they’d point back at
me. And so now that I am a Christian
it’s only my humility that causes me to refrain from telling you how many of
those Chevies and Corvettes sucked right up the exhaust pipe of my ’57 Ford.
Spirit-filled, Christ-centered, Gospel-driven.
Folks, there’s nothing more powerful than
the Gospel. It is unique; it is
glorious. All we’ve got to do is
lift the hood. Just lift the hood
and watch what happens. It’s life
changing. And watch the earth
shaking. How many of you know who
Edward Kimbrell is? Well let me tell
you who Edward Kimbrell is. He was a
Spirit-filled, Christ-centered, Gospel-driven shoe salesman that taught a Sunday
school class. And this teenage boy
was working with him and he walked by him three times and finally he got the
courage and he said, “Would you like to come to my Sunday school class?”
And he said, “Sure.” So that
little teenage boy went with him to Sunday school class, became converted, and
his name was D.L. Moody. Don’t you
love Edward Kimbrell? He’s a world
shaker.

And by the way, Moody — how many people?
How about F.B. Meyer? He
mentored and changed the course of F.B. Meyer’s life. And he went and God used
him with Wilbur Chapman. Anybody
ever heard of Youth For Christ?
Wilbur Chapman, who, by the way, Billy Sunday — Wilbur Chapman developed and
discipled Billy Sunday, who, by the way, developed and discipled Mordechai Hand,
who came to Charlotte, North Carolina in 1943.
Edward Kimbrell, D.L. Moody, D.L. Moody, F.B. Meyer, F.B. Meyer, Wilbur
Chapman, Wilbur Chapman, Billy Sunday, Billy Sunday, Mordechai Hand — and he
came there to Charlotte in 1943 and twenty-seven people went forward in that
meeting. In fact, if I started
naming those people, many of you that are old enough would know their names,
most of them.
But one of them, most of you will know; his name is Billy Graham.

Billy Frank Graham went forward that day in Charlotte in 1943.
Then in 1948 he came back to Charlotte, North Carolina to preach his very
first crusade. And he stood at
Calvary Church and he preached and at the end of the service an eighteen year
old man and his seventeen year old bride and their two month old baby came to
the front to give their life to Christ.
That was my daddy and mama. I
was the baby. I thank the Lord for
Edward Kimbrell. Spirit-filled,
Christ-centered, Gospel-saturated.

Father, thank
You for the moments to be together.
Thank You for the privilege to be with this congregation, and Father, to explore
what it means to have the very elements of vitality at work within us
intentionally. Lord, while we
rejoice in everything and anything and all things that have been done, we do not
want to live in the past, we want to live in the present to change the future
and shape the world for Jesus Christ.
So while we love to strategize, we love to think, and we love the gifted
people that are around us, help us to intentionally, prayerfully to be
Spirit-filled surrendered to Him every day.
And that there be evidence of that, that Chris is the center, the sum,
the substance, and the circumference of all that we do and say.
And that the Gospel power would drive our lives, our ministries, and our
missions and our missionaries. And Father could we hear one more time — these
people have turned the world upside-down and now they come here also.
I pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Would you please
stand for the benediction? I believe
after that, I believe after that you close with singing.

May the Lord bless
you and keep you, may the Lord cause His face to shine upon you, may the Lord be
gracious to you, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And God’s people
said, amen. Let’s sing.