The progressive path of this blog: The Word of God driving The Church of God

I have been writing and working on this blog now for half of January and I just want to make sure everyone who is reading it or following it understands where I have been because then you will have a better understanding of where I am going.


First of all let me mention again the previous three blog entries:

1. REFORMING THE CHURCH is conforming our lives to the Word of God
2. REFORMING THE CHURCH starts with having the ears to hear the Word of God
3. REFORMING THE CHURCH means teaching believers to love the church the way that Christ loves the church

So these three posts have simply laid the foundation for everything else I will be discussing through the life of this blog:

• What reforming the church is
• Where reforming the church starts
• And what reforming the church means

Okay, so you obviously see the trend here: God has given me a passion to see the church as a whole in America go through a reformation. When I looked up the definition of reform one of the basic meanings was "change."

But here are some synonyms that were listed with it:

• re-organize
• re-structure
• transform

So why do I feel the need to see the local church change? Be re-organized? re-structured? transformed?

Because we live in the world. A very dark and very wicked world. And the local church exists in this world of sin and wickedness. 

That is why Christ said this prayer before He went back to be with His Father:

John 17:15

I do not ask that You take them (believers) out of the world, but keep them from the evil one.

That is the key, "keep them from the evil one."

Now Christ is praying for true believers here and because of that true believers will be kept from the evil one, but that does not mean that the evil one will not tempt them and kick them and seek to drag them into the pit with him. I think the first way he seeks to do that is by surrounding believers with the world, inside the local church.


And that is why the local church struggles so much in this world. Because it is not the final bride of Christ. Local churches are filled with both true believers and false believers.

As long as we live in the world, the prince of this world, the evil one, will place "tares in amongst the wheat," weeds will be mixed in with the true crop (Matthew 13:25-30).

So every few years the church gets so filled with the world you can no longer recognize the church, at least true believers can't.

The Word of God for the most part has stopped being preached and stories and jokes have taken its place. But because this happens so slowly and so craftily by Satan, in Matthew 13:25, it says that Satan does this, "While the master's men are asleep," even true believers don't always recognize this is happening until it is too late.

But then the Lord awakens them and it is obvious to them what has happened while everyone else is either still sleeping or doesn't care. That's why most churches are filled with empty pews or sleeping parishioners. Because the true believers have left in search for the Word of God and the rest simply stay because they have developed a dead religious ritual that is comfortable for them and their family.

• What happened to the living vibrant, local church that desperately longs for the preaching of the Word of God?
• What happened to preachers who long to give that preaching to their people?
• What happened to verse by verse expositions through books of the Bible? 
• What happened to preachers being able to freely address the common sins of our day and our culture without being run out of town for it?
• What happened to parishioners who long to learn the Word of God from their pastor and are willing to believe and live out that truth?

That is why Paul Washer recently made the comment, "There are very few churches in America." What he means is that there are very few, true, biblically minded, Christ exalting churches in America. There are a lot of church buildings, a lot of brick and stone and metal with steeples sitting on top of them, but there are very few churches scattered across this land who are willing to hear and live out the Word of God!

Most church buildings today are filled with people who do not love the Word and the preachers are no longer giving it to them. They barely show up for services and when they do it is only to complain or vote the preacher out. That is exactly what this day and age is still seeing in most of its churches. 

WE NEED A RADICAL REFORMATION IN THE CHURCH!

Is there some change happening? Absolutely! But God is not nearly finished yet. So back to my point, this blog is a progressive chain of entries that start with the most basic foundations of a true and biblical church and will extend into many different areas of our lives that need to be reformed in the process. 

And what will guide us in this reformation? What will be the magnifying glass through which we look at the errors in the church of today and then turn around and give us truth on how to change those errors and reform the church? THE LIVING WORD OF GOD!

I will most likely use the phrase Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone) in every blog entry, because of how important that truth is to me and to the church as a whole.

The Protestant Reformers of the 1500s and 1600s used five phrases to explain the only way that the church will ever be vibrant and effective again. It must hold to these 5 non-negotiable truths:

1. Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone)
2. Sola Gratia (by Grace Alone)
3. Sola Fide (through Faith Alone)
4. Solus Christus (in Christ Alone)
5. Soli Deo Glori (All for the glory of God Alone)

ALONE, ALONE, ALONE, ALONE, ALONE!

1. There is only one book that we need to know and follow God and that is the Bible. 
2. There is only one reason that God would choose any vile, dead sinner for salvation and that is because of His grace 
3. There is only one necessary gift that God gives dead sinners when He saves them and grants them life and that is the gift of faith to believe in Him and follow Him.
4. There is only one person who was able to extend God's grace to dead, wretched sinners and give them faith and that is Christ alone and His blood on the cross
5. And finally The Bible alone leads us to understand the grace of God, grace that gives us the faith to believe in the only source of life and forgiveness, the person of Christ. And when we trust in Christ alone through faith alone by His grace alone, and not because of any thing that we are or we have done, God receives all the glory and all the praise for it!

We would know none of this without the Word of God! So that is primary.  I hope if this is the first blog entry you are reading from me about the reformation of the church that you will please stop right here and go back to the very first entry. Go back and read it first, then read the second and then the third. All of them build onto one another and will help you understand the context of everything I am writing.

A word to pastors: I hope if you are a pastor this blog both challenges you to preach the truth where you are and encourages you to stand firm in that truth when you are being persecuted for it.

A word to parishioners (lay people in the church): I hope that if your pastor is not leading your church in a biblically healthy way, that this blog will give you the courage to either speak with the pastor personally about your convictions and pray for change, or it will confirm that you need to leave that church and find a better place for your family to be nourished by the Word of God.

In the end, my heart longs to be as passionate for the bride of Christ as He is!

John 2:17

"Zeal for the church has consumed me."


And by the way, if it is going to be real zeal, the kind of Zeal Jesus has for His church, then it must be a zeal to see the church be everything Jesus wants it to be and not everything we want it to be.

Reforming the church means teaching believers to love the church the way Christ loves the Church

How should believers view the local church?


And of course as I have been saying over and over again, the church should want what the Bible wants. So again we must start with Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone), "conforming everything in our lives to the Word of God."


This is a crucial idea for our Christian walk...because ONLY as we conform our lives to His word, does He then conform us into the image of His Son.


2 Corinthians 10:5
We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God (His Word), and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (to being His Word).


God has no greater desire for His children than to make them all look like Christ. That is what we were predestined for. (Romans 8:29).


So if we have an opinion about how we as believers should view the local church we should examine our opinions with Scripture. Let's ask what the Bible says our view of the local church should be.


So in asking this question it is best if we look at what Scripture says in light of what the world around us says or does. And because we as believers still live in the world, sometimes the world comes in and hurts the church by skewing our love for the Word.


If that was not a problem in the church then John would not have warned Christians to not love the world...
1 John 2:15
Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him


So in light of this, one place where the church has allowed the world to creep in is that they have begun to share the world's view of the church. The world has a low view of the church but many Christians have begun to feel the same way without even realizing it. And I am not forgetting the great possibility that many people who are members of local churches are not Christians at all.


So let me clarify for you how the Bible describes the church. It is nothing less than the ransomed bride of Christ. The Father chose a bride for His Son. He chose the bride. He chose her arms and her eyes and her legs and her feet and her hands. He chose everything about her. And He was very specific how He chose her because He was choosing her for His Son. And then He sent His Son to get her and to die for her and to cleanse her from all unrighteousness. And then to bring her back to Himself.


And then the Son looked at this filthy, sin filled, broken bride that His Father had chosen for Him and He gladly laid down His life for Her...why? So that she would be beautiful for His Father! He wanted to go and get her in her filth, completely and radically change her by His righteous blood and then turn back around and present her to His Father...


Ephesians 5:26-27
Christ laid down His life for the bride...So that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the Word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she would be holy and blameless.


To have a low view of the church is to have a low view of what God the Father and God the Son considered priceless. And you don't have to do much to have a low view of what God considers priceless. All you have to do is be uninterested or unpassionate, in her. All you have to do to develop a low view of the precious bride of Christ is to view her as optional for your life.


To view what Christ views as worthy of dying for as optional or uninteresting, or unworthy of giving your entire life for, is to have a low view of the church.


During my last blog post I mentioned that those who "have ears to hear the Word of God" are true believers and true believers learn to love everything their Savior loves and hate everything He hates. And there is nothing that Christ loves more than His church.


And if you love the universal church then you will also love the local church because it is a localized gathering of worshippers who not only love Christ but they love each other and they learn from one another. And they know that when they gather they grow from the Word and from the fellowship they receive in the body.


And these people who love the local church express their love by longing to be with the church as often as possible.


"Pastors don’t have to call them and look for them and knock on their doors wondering why they aren’t worshipping regularly with the body. These people are running to the church building every time the doors are open because they can’t wait to hear what they now have ears to hear with - the voice of their Savior through the Word of God!"


The Apostle Paul commanded us to do good to all people but then He went out of His way to specify that the first people we need to serve and do good to are our brothers and sisters in Christ in the local church.

Galatians 6:10

So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the  household of the faith. 

Then in Hebrews God takes this idea even further and says that we should not only do good to those within our local churches and serve them as we have opportunity, but that we should look for opportunities to be with them and serve them and speak truth into their lives. 

Hebrews 10:24-25

And let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds, not forsaking our own assembling together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

So according to these verse of Scripture not only should we look for opportunities to serve them but we work to encourage them to start serving others. We should long for them to pour out their lives to serve the body along with us. According tot he word of God if our hearts don't long for that, if our hearts don't view the church in that way, then we have a low view of the church.

I you are involved in your community or in charity work or in sports activities or whatever it is, and those things begin to take precedence over attending and serving your local church, then you have an unbiblical view of the church. And because Scripture is our standard and not how we feel then it is a low view of the church to treat it any other way.

Ephesians 4:15-16

(In your local church) speak the truth in love, while you are growing up in all aspects into Him, who is the Head, Christ, from whom the whole body being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.

The Bible often compares the local church to a body with different working parts, well just like in the human body, if the leg is hurting or not functioning properly it does not just hurt the leg, it hurts the whole body. If one member is not serving he body with the enthusiasm and love that the other members are serving with then it hurts the whole body.

Do you have a low view of the local church? Are you going above and beyond to serve the members of your church with the Word of God and with your regular support and attendance? Are you supporting your pastor or elders with your prayers and encouragement?

How does Christ view the church? As His bride that He stepped down from His throne to serve and die for. Do you view the church like Christ?

Ephesians 5:25-27

Husbands love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of the water with the Word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would holy and blameless.

Jono Simms compared loving the local church to loving your local wife!

You say, ‘Well now preacher, I’m a member of the universal church.’ I don't have to attend the local church or be active in it. No, you're lazy. You don’t want accountability. You want to do your own thing, how you want to do it, where you want to do it, and you don’t want to be accountable. I tell you what you can do, sir. You go home today and tell your wife, ‘Baby, I’m just gonna start loving all the women. I’m just gonna love all the women and I’m gonna love her just like I love you, and her just like I love you. I’m gong to spend Thursday with Sally and I’m going to spend Friday with Jessie…and on Sunday I’ll come home, honey, and I’ll spend time with you.' You go see how that works. And likewise you go up to the Lord Jesus Christ and say ‘Lord, I sure do love you, but I have no interest in your local church. I’m not going to tithe, I’m not going to be faithful, I’m not going to sing, I’m not going to give, I’m not going to serve, I’m not going to involved in the benevolence ministry, but boy, Jesus, I sure do love you. You’re the only one for me.’ I’ll tell you what you are brother. You’re as one that beateth the air. That’s just hot air. That’s just pontification. All you’re doing is just blowing steam, because your actions speak louder than your words.”

My our aim be to love the local church with the same passion that Jesus Christ had when He laid down His life for her.

Reforming the church starts with having the ears to hear

I have had the opportunity to speak with many Christians over the past 15 years that I have been a believer. And one of the most common topics of conversation has been the topic of free will. Most Christians, at least in America and especially the south, seem to think that they do have free will. When it comes to this topic they tell me something like this. They say that first people must hear the Word of God and then they can decide by their own free will whether they want to follow Him or not.

I have to admit that sounds really good at first. I could believe that if it weren't for the Word of God. Because when you really study the Bible you will find that the idea of free will is nowhere to be found.


Sure you may find a verse here or a verse there. Like Old MacDonald, "here a verse, there a verse, every where a verse, verse." Anyone can take a verse here or there and rip it out of its context and make it say whatever you want it to. But the truth is, those verses always end up explaining more about what God wills and what God has done than what we have done. And what we have done is only because He willed it to be done, not because we were free outside of His will.


James 4:13-15
Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit." Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that."


Now back to the people who say that once we hear the Word of God preached then it is up to our free will to believe and follow Christ or not.


The problem with their reasoning is they are only partly right. People do need to hear the Word of God preached and people do need to choose Christ in order to know Him. In other words, they must display faith in Him at some point. I have no argument with them over that. All of that is biblical and true. You must hear and you must believe in order to be saved.

Romans 10:14 (NASB)

"How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him who they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?"

The question is this, is their hearing and is their believing by their own free will? No. That is simply not in the Bible. 
John 1:12-13

But as many as received Him, to them He had given the power (the ability) to become children of God, to those who believe in His name, (because) they were not born of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but they were born again by the will of God.

At the fall in the garden, mankind did not simply fall out of a tree and break their legs, they fell totally and completely and died. God said, that is Adam and Eve ate from the tree they would surely, "die." That is die spiritually. They would;d lose all ability to choose any spiritual good at all. And they did. Now all people are dead in sin.

Ephesians 2:1

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins…

If we are going to be “conformed into the image of Christ” we need to start with understanding Sola Scriptura (Scripture alone) and molding all of our thoughts to it and not how we feel.

A few verses down from Romans 10:14 is Romans 10:17, which says

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ.

You see what this verse does? It is the summary verse of how our salvation works. You need faith and you need to hear and your need the Word of Christ. All of those elements together create salvation in the heart of a sinner.

Faith must come from hearing. So we know where faith comes from, but where does “hearing” come from?

Here is the key to the whole understanding of salvation. The Bible never talks about hearing the Word of God in the physical sense when it comes to salvation.  Anyone can show up at any given church on any given Sunday and be physically present with physical ears and listen to the Bible read and preached, but no one on their own can “hear” that what is actually being preached and read is the Word of God and respond to that word.

No one can “hear” Word of God as the Gospel call on their own and respond. Why? Because they don’t have the ears yet. They are dead. And dead people can’t hear and can’t respond and can’t produce the faith and repentance it takes to be saved!

Isaiah 43:8

They are blind, even though they have eyes, and they are deaf, even though they have ears.

In order to go from simply using physical ears to hear a physical Bible read, to using spiritual ears to hear the living Word of God, a person must be raised from the dead and given new eyes and new ears.

And do you know whose command accomplishes that? Do you know what sovereign general simply speaks and raises the dead? Simply gives the Word and blind men see and deaf men hear? Jesus Christ!

Romans 10:17

So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ.

Hearing comes from the Word of Christ. And when Christ gives the Word to a dead sinner’s heart they come alive and hear the Gospel and respond!

He gives them ears hear what they could never hear on their own! "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" (Matt.11:15).

Jesus also said, "Many are called but few are chosen" (Matthew 22:14). Every time a preacher rises to the pulpit and pours out his heart to preach an accurate Gospel message he is in his own ability calling men to respond to that message. He is calling the people who are physically present to receive that Gospel and be changed by it, but unless those people are given ears to hear the Word of God, unless they are chosen by the Word of Christ, they will never come, they will never respond and they will never be changed.

But if they are changed, if they do respond, and again I don't mean physically coming to the altar, or physically talking to the preacher or praying a prayer or signing a card, I mean if they spiritually respond. If their hearts are actually changed by the Gospel message, then they will begin to believe in and follow Christ! They will begin to realize their sin and run after the one who can free them from it.


John Piper recently asked the question: "Christian, have you thanked God (like Paul) that you heard the words of man as the very words of God?"

1 Thessalonians 2:13

For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the Word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the Word of God, which also PERFORMS ITS WORK IN YOU, who believe.


In other words, when men accurately preach the Word of God, just because you are physically there and physically hear them, that does not necessarily mean that you can spiritually believe in it as the Word of God. You cannot create your own spiritual ears or your own spiritual heart to hear and believe! It must be created in you.

And these people…the people with ears to hear and eyes to see and new hearts follow with, they love the church. Pastors don’t have to call them and look for them and knock on their doors wondering why they aren’t worshipping regularly with the body. These people are running to the church building every time the doors are open because they can’t wait to hear what they now have ears to hear with - the voice of their Savior through the Word of God!

John 10:27

My sheep HEAR My voice and I know them, and they follow Me.

This is the heartbeat of the Gospel. So many people today think far too little of God and far too much of themselves. This understanding of the sovereignty of God in salvation reverses that. It thinks much of God and little of man (which is the view of Scripture), so that God is now in His rightful place...the highest and most exalted place possible, where He alone saves sinners according to His will and for His glory!
Isaiah 48:9-11
"For My own sake I will act; for how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another."

This is the heartbeat of reforming the church. It does not matter how well the preacher preaches, if the church is not made up of sheep that long to hear their Savior so they can follow Him in every area of their lives. 

A word to pastors: So what part do we play? We make absolutely sure that the Gospel we are preaching is the Word of Christ and nothing less and then we feed it to our people over and over again. And as we do that we pray like crazy that our loving God will graciously grant our people the ears to hear. In other words we spend hours on our faces before the throne of grace on behalf of our people. Because before they are our people they are His people. And we must be completely dependent upon God to save Hs people and reform His church. He is our only hope and He wants it that way!

Reforming the church is conforming our lives to the Word of God

What does it look like to reform a local church?  


I believe that it must start where the Protestant Reformation started, with Sola Scriptura (Scripture Alone), which is why this blog is called, "Reformed Grace." Every member of the local church needs to understand that the most basic need they have as born-again believers is the Word of God.


I am not saying that they simply need to read the Word of God or hear it preached. They do need that, but if it stops there, then they have not understood why Christ saved them. He saved (predestined) them according to Romans 8:29 to be "conformed into the image of Christ." That's it, that is God's only purpose for every believer. This is not some special goal for really holy believers. This is God's goal for every believer, that they be conformed into the image of His Son. And He will accomplish that goal.


But the only way that can happen is if they "hear" the Word of God and begin to actually apply it to their everyday lives.


The application of the Word of God into the lives of each member of the congregation is the process of reforming a church. It is the process of helping them to understand how to live out the Word of God in every area of their lives: how husbands lead their wives, how wives submit to their husbands, how fathers and mothers instruct their children, how children obey their parents, how young people go about finding a spouse, how workers respond to their bosses and to their co-workers, and on and on it goes. We cannot just believe what the Word of God says, we must desire it to inform every area of our lives.


Jesus was very compassionate to the teachable. But He had no time and no grace for the proud or arrogant.
James sums this up when he says, "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (James 4:6).


Jesus was the harshest against those who did not realize their own sinful condition. When it came to the New Testament pharisees and teachers of the law they thought they did not need anyone because they had so much pride in their own abilities and accomplishments.  Their greatest source of pride and arrogance was their knowledge of the Scriptures.


John 5:39-40
"You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me but you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life."


These people have replaced Christ with how much knowledge they have of the Bible. We can know what the Bible says without truly understanding what the Bible means.


I like to say it this way, a person can read a book all about how to drive a car. They can study it from front to back. They read how to start the car and how to stop the car and how to steer and parallel park and all of that. Because they have read this manual and know what it says they may start to think they actually understand how to drive a car. But until they get in the car and start the car and drive the car down the street without wrapping it around a tree or killing someone, they do not understand how to drive a car.


That is exactly what it means to reform a church. You want to take people from a cursory knowledge of what the Bible says to the deeper understanding of what it means by placing it in every area of their lives where they begin to live it out. And until they start doing that, then they will never understand the point of the Bible or have a real knowledge of Christ. They know a lot about the car but they have not gotten in and driven the car.


When Christ saves us His Word begins to inform our lives, but if we think that we already know how to live for Christ simply because we have heard all of this before, we are arrogant and unteachable, and unless our hearts change we cannot grow and begin to be a true church.


This Bible has one purpose and it lines up with the purpose of God, in "conforming you into the image of Christ." The Bible seeks to destroy your thoughts and your desires and your words and give you new thoughts and new desires and new words. That's what the apostle Paul means when He says,
"We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:5).


Until a church is ready to humble themselves beneath the cross of Christ and hear the Word of God with fresh ears and desire to obey it and submit to it in every area of their lives, they will not grow and they will not prosper.


Joshua 1:8
This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it; for then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have success.


The moment we start to say, "I don't mind hearing the Word of God or reading the Word of God or talking about the Word of God, but I will not follow the Word of God in this area of my life" (forgiving someone who has hurt me, heeding my pastor's counsel, leading my wife, submitting to my husband, obeying my parents, leading my family in the Word, examining the movies or television shows that I watch, refraining from gossip, etc) then we have stopped understanding its very purpose for our lives.


The very purpose of God is this: to reform His church by conforming all of its members to the Word of God.


And that is also the reason I started this blog, to discuss all of the above areas our lives as we live as the church and examine our hearts with the Word of God. So I will be discussing all of the above topics and more in this blog. My calling is to be a pastor and so I love the church and want to see her grow and prosper and be a light in a dark world. If you follow this blog you will see my heart and hopefully be challenged and encouraged to pray with me for the ongoing reformation of the local church.


Are you helping the church to reform by your willingness to submit to truth or are you hindering it by your unwillingness to examine every area your life by the Word of God?