Tonight we will continue our look at the challenge I lay before you as members of FBC Runnelstown to “Be a Good Church Member.”
You can look around tonight and see how many are willing to take this challenge from the morning service and how many aren’t. It is sad when other priorities come BEFORE God on a regular basis.
“I would like to begin with a story about a boy. When Joey Barrow was a teenager, his schoolmates labeled him the class sissy. At eighteen, while the other guys were involved in more "masculine" activities, Joey was taking violin lessons. One day, they called him "sissy" one time too many. Joey smashed the boy who made fun of him smack on the head with (you guessed it) his violin. It didn’t help. The story simply brought another round of laughter from Joey’s classmates.
One boy did not laugh. Big, strapping Thurston McKinney decided it was time Joey got involved in something with a little more muscle. Thurston exercised regularly at a local gym and asked Joey to come along. As always, Joey had his violin with him. "If you want to work out with me," said Thurston, "you’ll have to rent a locker." Locker rental was fifty cents. The only money Joey had was what his mom had given him for that week’s violin lesson. So Joey borrowed some gym trunks and some old tennis shoes from Thurston, rented the locker with his violin money, and put the violin inside.
The first time Thurston invited Joey to spar with him, Joey clobbered him. Flattened him. The dazed response of Thurston McKinney, himself already a Detroit Golden Gloves Champion, was, "Boy, throw that violin away!" With the money his mother had intended to finance weekly violin lessons, Joey kept a permanent locker. In five years, Joey Barrow would turn twenty-three and be the heavyweight boxing champion of the world!
The anthologies of athletics say little about Thurston McKinney, but he took Joey Barrow under his wing. Joey dropped his last name, so his mother wouldn’t know the newspapers were talking about her son. The world knew for years before she did that sissy Joey Barrow had been transformed into the unbeatable "Brown Bomber," Joe Louis.
Another transformed man wrote 2 Peter. His name is Simon Peter His transformation did not produce a fighter, but just the opposite. Peter was transformed from a fighter into a servant of Jesus Christ. So dramatic was the change in Peter’s life that he wrote this letter to remind his readers Christian faith was never intended to remain unchanged or static. Christian faith always adds something. It is always growing.” Holman New Testament Commentary, Vol. 11, p. 106
This morning we looked at 3 of the 5 “B’s” I wanted to share with you. They were: (1) Be Something, (2) Be a Disciple, (3) Be Faithful. Tonight we will examine the final two.
I. BE-lieve Something
A. D. L. Moody, I believe, is the one who first said, “Unless we stand for something, we will fall for anything”.
1. I am proud to live in America
a) I am glad that the land I live in is a land that allows me to worship how I see fit.
b) I can belong to any church I so desire.
B. But regardless which church we belong, we need to know what our church stand for.
1. And we need to join the one that we can accept their teachings
a) If you can’t stand for the teachings of this church, then you shouldn’t belong to this church.
(1) You should find a denomination and a church that supports your interpretations.
2. I don’t know why in the province of God that there are so many different beliefs in churches.
a) But I do believe (except for extreme doctrines) that it is the province of God.
b) I have an idea of why God does this:
(1) So that more people can be reached.
(2) Everybody ain’t alike.
C. Hear me and hear me plainly.
1. If you believe Jesus is who He said He is that is the main thing
a) Dr. Adrian Rodgers once said, “If you are wrong about Jesus, it doesn’t matter what you have right.”
2. If you are a Baptist, then you need to know what a Baptist believes.
a) Study the Doctrine of your church.
b) Study Scripture.
c) And BE-lieve Something!
II. BE-hold Something
A. What do you see out in our world?
1. Jesus put it this way, “Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” (John 4:35 NKJV)
a) Do you BEHOLD that in our community?
b) If not – what do you see?
2. As William Carey worked as a shoe cobbler, he would study his bible and gaze at a globe.
a) It is here where God gave him a vision of a lost world.
b) It is here where God placed within him the desire to “attempt great things for God and expect great things from God.”
B. Look up and behold a world that needs Jesus.
1. When you get a glimpse of the real need of this world.
a) A need for a Jesus.
b) And you are willing to share Him,
c) then you will be a good church member
2. You might not ever become a missionary around the world,
a) But you can send one around the world while you take care of home.
Will you tonight tell God, I want to be a Christian in my heart? Jesus, I want to share you with the world and I will begin right here in Runnelstown. Will you come?
