What Makes A Healthy Church #6

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Text: Ephesians 3:1-11

How wonderful to be part of the family of God! If there is one parent who provides a perfectly healthy environment for his children to grow up in it is God!
Yet, even in God's family we the children can develop certain traits or characteristics that are not that healthy. They are not healthy for others and certainly for us.
So, we have been going over the past 6 weeks different ideas that Paul writes in the Ephesian letter that describes healthy churches!
It is kind of like the great Physicians orders to nurse a church into adulthood!

  1. - focusing only on Christ!
    Paul says repeatedly in this book you are the people of God because you are in Christ!
    Our focus is not on power or adoration but on being His church.
  2. - Preaching & practicing love, grace & comfort!
    We all were sinful and undeserving of God's welcome, but we receive it nonetheless!
  3. - The Call to Responsibility!
    Because of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, we are expected to live differently! We don't live differently to become Christians, we live different because we are Christians!
  4. - The Desire to Serve!
    Now, that we are in the body of Christ, we seek to serve the body and ultimately Christ himself.
  5. - We are bound by the Bible!
    We believe in speaking only the oracles of God!
Why do we want this? What's important about church health?
Our King is trying to perform in His church a great work and if we will let Him, He will!
As we have read in previous works, Paul's goal for the church is summed up in chapter 4:12,13!

Before we leave this series, we want to look at one final trait of church health! Turn to Ephesians 3:1-11!
The sixth trait of a healthy church is a church that knows and believes in the unsearchable riches of Christ! Everyone here might say they do, but if we really believe in it, it makes a big difference with how we react to Christ himself!

Vs.3,4- Paul says he knows or understands the mystery of Christ and he wants all who will read it to understand it as well! There is this great plan that has been veiled for century after century, and Paul is now going to make it known!
Vs.5- in other ages, men could not know it! But now, the Spirit of God is revealing it through different men, particularly the apostles and prophets!
Vs.6- here is the great mystery: Both Gentile & Israelite should share in the promise of Christ! The great mystery of God is that all men of all races, languages & tongues can share in Christ!
Vs.8- what is the value of the promise of Christ? Paul says, the unsearchable riches of Christ Jesus!
Vs.9-11- upon responding to these riches, God's eternal purpose is revealed in the church! Not in Israel, not in any other group of people but the church!

Turn to Gal.4:4-7 and listen to how Paul described the great mystery of the ages there! Somehow, God had a plan that began before the world that was to involve Jew, Gentile and Jesus! That plan was kept hidden until the 1st century and has now been revealed!
What are the unsearchable riches of Christ?
Look at Ephesians 2:13-17! From Galatians, the riches could be called sonship or becoming an heir! Now from Ephesians the great riches of Christ Jesus is this: reconciliation with God!

The most amazing thing about the call of Christ is the fact that no matter who you are, what you have done, or how bad you might think you are, if you come to Jesus Christ you are in a right relationship with God!
Phil.3:8- the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord! I have counted everything else but junk, so that I might have Christ!

To be a healthy church we have got to once again collectively grab hold of the amazement of this fact: we are one with God!
To think that my soul is now in the hands of the All-mighty God and that I no longer need to be afraid of rejection is awesome!
Do we believe this?
Does this grab us and shake us and move us to the innermost parts of our beings? We have been made right with God! We have what the whole world so desperately needs!
Everyone of us before we came to Jesus Christ were so starved and in need of something and we maybe didn't know what it was and then think back to the time when Jesus Christ made sense to you and you confessed your faith in him and then went down into that watery grave, what did your soul feel?
Maybe, you wandered away from the Lord, Church became something of indifference in your life and then again after many attempts you finally answered the door to your heart and there was your old trusted friend, more than a friend Your Saviour welcoming you back, what did you feel?
Paul says, "this grace has been given unto me, me who am less than the least of all the saints that I should preach to the nations the unsearchable riches of Christ"!

What do we note about this?
  1. it is offered to everyone! Gentile & Israelite!
    Mark 16:15, Romans 10:24-26
  2. all are equal partners in Christ! Eph.2:8,9
  3. all who are saved have these riches! 1 Cor.3:21-23
  4. if we believe it, we will live it and preach it!
There's a story about how a church had a sign at the front of the building "we preach Christ crucified" and a plant was growing next to it. Well, over the years the plant grew and the sign read "we preach Christ". Then "we preach". Finally, "we".
What are we preaching? Matt.23:13-15!

Can anyone truly understand the wonder of God's call into Jesus Christ and His church and not have his whole life shaken by it?
"Christ's church does not exist to promote religionism but to announce the gospel of grace. God's people are not on the earth to model religious neuroticism, but to show the world what it is to live in the security of divine acceptance given as an absolutely free gift through Christ."

If we are going to be a healthy church, we have got to once again or at least maintain the knowledge of what really has transpired when we come to God through Christ! It is unsearchable!
Jer.9:23,24!
The worldly man says I can put a new suit on a man.
The godly man says My Lord can put a new man in a suit!
And we continue to believe that that is exactly what he continues to do!
Let me tell you a story:
Jesus Christ came to this earth one day and found a world filled with cheaters, liars, drunkards, murderers and a host of others who had been burned by them. He found people starving, he found them hurting, he found them confused and unsure about the future!
Then he declared this "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." John 3:16,17
Those people he saved, he called His church. His church will shine forever in the glory of heaven praising Jesus night and day.

Let me ask you, Do you know such a feeling?
Have you these riches that we have been talking about?
Are you saved?
If you are, does the thought of it just thrill you?
If you aren't why not?
If you believe Jesus is the Son of God.
If you believe that Jesus died on the old rugged cross.
If you believe that he shed his blood so that people might get to heaven.
Why not believe that he shed his blood so you could get to heaven?
If you do, why don't you arise and be baptized and wash your sins away?
Just imagine, everything you have ever said, thought or done that was wrong, is wiped out when you go down in that water. Not because of the water, but because of Jesus and the faith you are putting in Him.
Come…

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