Our CAUSE (I Love My Church - Series)
theCrossroads UPC
Sunday 4-25-21
Pastor A.J. Dummitt
37 Then He *said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38 Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” —Matthew 9:37-38 (NASB)
LOVE IS THE MOTIVATION
When there is ethical and moral chaos like we are experiencing in our world today, it is impossible to correctly comprehend or predict present and future happenings in our world. For this reason, the church must see clearly its mission and make whatever commitment is necessary to fill it. We must know the
The church is the
The whole theme of Christ’s life was
The disciples wanted to keep Jesus to themselves. They were like many of us who attempt to box Him into the
Romans, the fifth chapter, states clearly, “In that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God has a tremendous equity in
History reveals that whenever Christianity faces a new frontier, it finds new strength and life. When the church ceases to be interested in the
The church is left in the world for the express
SO CLOSE TO FREEDOM
Soon after the Berlin wall was erected between East and West Germany, a man sought to escape by crawling through a sewer pipe. He knew that the pipe led into West Germany. Bit by bit he discovered, as he inched his way along, that the pipe narrowed down.
At the initial state just where he entered, he could walk by bending over. Soon he found himself stooping lower. Finally he was crawling. Luckily, as the pipe narrowed, it also slanted upward. He knew that he was coming near the surface and that that surface was somewhere inside of West Berlin.
With the hope that he would find an opening, he pressed forward. He had no way of knowing how deep beneath the surface of the ground he still was. He had no way of knowing if he could make anyone who happened to be on the ground above hear him. Still he pushed his body forward. He came to the place that he could go no further and to his horror, he discovered that neither could he back up. He was stuck fast in the darkness of the pipe.
The air was foul and heavy. Terror clawed at him. Struggling to keep his presence of mind, he began to bang on the pipe above him and to cry out. Luckily a man in a warehouse heard the beating on the pipe. With others, he broke through a concrete floor and found the man almost beside himself, limp and fainting under eighteen inches of concrete and dirt. — Original Author Unknown
Two questions we MUST ANSWER:
1. Is the salvation that Jesus Christ offers really essential?
2. Is it any less essential that we make known to others the salvation of Jesus we have received?
It doesn’t make any difference whether a man is
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?”
And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” —Isaiah 6:8 (NIV)
Almost
The Gospel must be brought near to the people who need it. If people are to be saved, they must hear the Gospel from the life of a believer. Unless flesh and blood brings the claims of Calvary to bear on a lost soul, that individual will die and go to
KEY POINT of the MESSAGE TODAY:
WHEN WE FOCUS ON THE TRUE CAUSE OF THE CHURCH - LIKE JESUS COMMANDED - WE WILL BE MOVED TO ACTION!
For the last several years we have been praying over the our city and our region, our state and for the world. This is very Biblical, that our WITNESS should not be confined to one geographical location ONLY:
Acts 1:8 (KJV)
8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.
We know God wants to save people in the communities surrounding us that do not have a United Pentecostal Church. So we started praying for the cities and county seats in our neighboring counties, that God would send us contacts and people to connect with in these communities that could help us plant churches in these areas.
So for several years now, we have been praying for:
FORT KNOX - around 20,000 people
MEADE COUNTY - 28,751 people
BRECKINRIDGE COUNTY - 20,000 people
LARUE COUNTY - 14,127 people
NELSON COUNTY - 44,875 people
BULLITT COUNTY - 77,727 people, the 10th most populated county in Kentucky.
HARDIN COUNTY - 107,573 people, the 6th most populated county in Kentucky.
JEFFERSON COUNTY - 765,352 people, it is the #1 most populated county in Kentucky.
In Jefferson County, we currently have about 9 Apostolic Pentecostal Churches (with a total constituency of about 1,000 people in service on our BEST SUNDAYS). That means that we have 764,352 people NOT in services every Sunday.
If the churches we have in Jefferson County were adequate right now…that would mean that each church would need to be able to grow to 84,928 people.
If every church grew and grew, and grew and even had multiple services each weekend…let’s say each could handle double the crowd they have each week, and they held 3 services on Saturdays and 4 services on Sundays…we could then cover a total of 14,000 people in service on the weekends and we would then only have 750,352 people left to reach in Jefferson County.
What if we could have 20 Churches in Jefferson County that averaged 500 people each Sunday, (10,000) and we could get them to hold 3 services on Sunday, and 2 on Saturday (50,000) we could then reach about 15.3% of Jefferson County. —Rough Estimates
What if we could have 30, or 50 or 100 Churches in Jefferson County? (In Houston, Texas they have over 200 UPCI churches in Houston Metro.) WHAT IF WE TRULY UNDERSTOOD WHY THE CHURCH IS HERE and realized what the Harvest Fields looked like today?
Being conservative with these numbers… do you realize that in our
Why do we need understand our CAUSE? Why do we need to stretch, and offer God our TIME, TALENT, and TREASURE like never before? Because the
Three questions sum up the responsibility of the church:
1. When Christ died and was raised again, did He provide adequate salvation for every man?
2. As a result of this death, will every man automatically go to Heaven?
3. Can a man believe if he never hears?
Immediately we find ourselves in the middle of Romans 10. “How can they hear without a preacher?”
Every saint of God needs to see themselves as a missionary on mission every day of their life. Everyone in here, YOUR
The most awful fact in the world is the fact of
We may pointedly ask ourselves this question also, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” The answer comes back in a resounding “
God, speaking to the prophet Ezekiel, stated:
17 Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel: therefore hear the word at my mouth, and give them warning from me.
18 When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die; and thou givest him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life; the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
19 Yet if thou warn the wicked, and he turn not from his wickedness, nor from his wicked way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.
20 Again, When a righteous man doth turn from his righteousness, and commit iniquity, and I lay a stumbling-block before him, he shall die: because thou hast not given him warning, he shall die in his sin, and his righteousness which he hath done shall not be remembered; but his blood will I require at thine hand.
21 Nevertheless if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned; also thou hast delivered thy soul. —Ezekiel 3:17-21 (KJV)
For each of us… to win a soul to Jesus and disciple them is a mission of
The greatest asset of the church is not held in the total worth of facilities, or in the sum total of our church buildings and campus. The greatest asset of the church is the potential of the existing membership to
In order for us to accomplish our cause, we must be a strong local assembly. We must be strong spiritually, numerically, and financially if we are to reach the uttermost part of our sin-sick world. If we are to accomplish our God-given task in this generation, we must renew our consecration and dedication to the cause of missions in the pattern of Jesus. This includes, soul-winning activity in our local church and communities through our SACRIFICE of OUR TIME, TALENT and TREASURE.
The greatest work any man could ever do in this life, the greatest gift that any man could give to the world is a church. To give a church is to give an aisle down which the bride and groom will come with their hopes for tomorrow. To give a church is to give a place where little children will come and learn of Jesus. To give a church is to arrange a place where the casket will be rolled and the last words spoken over the deceased.
To build a church is to furnish a minister who will go to the home of the bereaved with his Bible and words of comfort. Here is where the babies are dedicated at the beginning of life and where the dead are bade farewell when life’s curtain falls.
The pastor of the church plant constructs an altar where the sinner sheds his tears of repentance, and a baptistry where his sins are remitted. To build a church is to unleash in this world a fountain of comfort and benevolence. Offerings will be taken there month after month that will go to the ends of the earth, bringing the Gospel to the heathen. The greatest gift possible for any man to give is a church. To give a church is to give hope to a city. —THE GREATEST GIFT
On a dangerous seacoast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a little life-saving station. The building was primitive, and there was just one boat, but the members of the life-saving station were committed and kept a constant watch over the sea. When a ship went down, they unselfishly went out day or night to save the lost. Because so many lives were saved by that station, it became famous.
Consequently, many people wanted to be associated with the station to give their time, talent, and money to support its important work. New boats were bought, new crews were recruited, a formal training session was offered. As the membership in the life-saving station grew, some of the members became unhappy that the building was so primitive and that the equipment was so outdated. They wanted a better place to welcome the survivors pulled from the sea. So they replaced the emergency cots with beds and put better furniture in the enlarged and newly decorated building.
Now the life-saving station became a popular gathering place for its members. They met regularly and when they did, it was apparent how they loved one another. They greeted each other, hugged each other, and shared with one another the events that had been going on in their lives. But fewer members were now interested in going to sea on life-saving missions; so they hired lifeboat crews to do this for them. About this time, a large ship was wrecked off the coast, and the hired crews brought into the life-saving station boatloads of cold, wet, dirty, sick, and half-drowned people. Some of them had black skin, and some had yellow skin. Some could speak English well, and some could hardly speak it at all. Some were first-class cabin passengers of the ship, and some were the deck hands. The beautiful meeting place became a place of chaos. The plush carpets got dirty. Some of the exquisite furniture got scratched. So the property committee immediately had a shower built outside the house where the victims of shipwreck could be cleaned up before coming inside.
At the next meeting there was rift in the membership. Most of the members wanted to stop the club’s life-saving activities, for they were unpleasant and a hindrance to the normal fellowship of the members. Other members insisted that life-saving was their primary purpose and pointed out that they were still called a life-saving station. But they were finally voted down and told that if they wanted to save the lives of all those various kinds of people who would be shipwrecked, they could begin their own life-saving station down the coast. And do you know what? That is what they did.
As the years passed, the new station experienced the same changes that had occurred in the old. It evolved into a place to meet regularly for fellowship, for committee meetings, and for special training sessions about their mission, but few went out to the drowning people. The drowning people were no longer welcomed in that new life-saving station. So another life-saving station was founded further down the coast. History continued to repeat itself. And if you visit that seacoast today, you will find a number of adequate meeting places with ample parking and plush carpeting. Shipwrecks are frequent in those waters, but most of the people drown. —Thomas Wedel, Ecumenical Review, October, 1953, paraphrased in Heaven Bound Living, Knofel Stanton, Standard, 1989, p. 99-101.
REPENT, and BE BAPTIZED and let God fill you with the Gift of the Holy Spirit!
- Repent: confess sin, express sorrow, surrender all to God, ask for His forgiveness.
- Believe: trust God, open your heart.
- Repentance and faith are the only two requirements for receiving the Holy Ghost.
- Once you have fully repented, praise God with your mouth and with joy and expectancy.
- As the Spirit begins to move on your tongue, yield and let the new language come out.
- If you have not yet been baptized by full immersion in water in the name of Jesus Christ, please contact us and we will make arrangements for you to be baptized here, or wherever you live.