1 Timothy 3:15 “If I am delayed, you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.”

We guard the gospel in the way we live. This to me is very important. I read that those inside the churches and outside the churches have 65 common values. So what is it that should define the Body of Christ so that it is seen, known and even feared as the Body of Christ? For this is the power of the gospel of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.  As it is, there is NO bold difference today between those who are in the churches and those who are outside.

When I think of this there are two things that come to my mind. First, the local fellowship should be autonomously controlled and not centrally control. Baxter said: “It is a significant fact that although the New Testament gives counsels and directions as to the organizing of local Christian assemblies or ‘churches’ (1 Corinthians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus), it nowhere even hints at any central board of administration such as those which have since developed and which exist with such wide powers today.”

This is one of the main problems with denominations today. Often it is more centrally controlled than we might like to admit. If we are honest, one of the reasons for this is finance. It is amazing how finance moves the work of God rather than the Holy Spirit moving the work of God. Yes, finances are important, but I think what Hudson Taylor said is the key: “God’s work God’s way will never lack God’s supply.” This is how God’s work spread in his days when he was penetrating China with the gospel through the “China Inland Mission.”

Secondly, our conduct as Christians is very important. Titus 2:10 says, “So that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.” Paul, was laying out how the Body of Christ should conduct themselves so that our teaching about Christ will be attractive, or influential and convincing. This is the bottom line. Our lives should be a sweet fragrance wherever we go and in whatever we do whether in our work, at school, in play, and most important – in our homes. Jesus tells us:

“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:14-16) The first place mentioned is the home, how we live with each other there because this is where we are really ourselves.

Another aspect of reformation will be seen in preaching. Isn’t it interesting that when Jesus started His ministry the first thing that He preached was ‘repentance.’ When He sent out His 12 disciples, and later the 72 – He told them to go and preach ‘repentance.’ When I read the letters that John wrote to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3, to all but two, to the majority of His people – His message to them was to repent. Often the preaching that we have today is how to feel better about ourselves, how to build successful relationships, how to enjoy a marriage, etc. I am not against all this, but all the problems we have is simply rooted in our sinful nature and the need we have is to acknowledge when we sin, and then to repent of our sin; turn away from it with God’s help.

Paul said to Titus: “At his appointed season he brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior.” (Titus 1:3) I thought that this was interesting because it was through preaching that the Word of God comes to light. So often the preaching today is to read a Scripture verse and then carry on with our own ideas and philosophies.

We need ‘practical’ preaching that takes us back to the realism and expediency of the Word of God. Reformation will bring our preaching under the scope of God’s Word for all the issues of today.

Acts 13:1 “In the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen (who had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.”

Is the church an organism or an organization? I think most of you who are reading this would say that it is an organism. And you would be right. An organism has life in itself. An organization has no life in itself.

There is one church, but many fellowships because of geography, but we are still one organism with one Head: the Lord Jesus Christ. What we see today is many organizations called churches and with their many heads.

We have seen in the Scripture that the church is a family, a building, a temple, but now it is time to see the church working as an army called to battle. We are in a spiritual battle that is being raged more and more as the Day of the Lord approaches, and we are involved whether we know it or not. There is no such thing as surrender, retreat or home-leave. We are in this battle until the trumpet sounds and the Lord Jesus Christ calls His Body home. This is how we need to think, train and prepare the next generation.

Like in any army we are to be united and connected to the Head for our instructions, our encouragement and our empowerment for the spiritual battle. The enemy will try and destroy this line of communication that we have with our Chief in Command. If the communication lines are broken then it will result in confusion, fear and ultimate defeat. Isn’t this what has been happening with God’s people?

The last temptation that Satan threw at Christ in the wilderness was to take Him to a high mountain and show Him all of the kingdoms of the world. He said to our Lord: “All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:9) Jesus knew something that Satan did not know. The kingdom of God was about to invade the kingdoms of the world. After the temptation of Satan and Jesus returned full of the Holy Spirit – He started to preach saying: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” and at hand. (Matthew 4:17) Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of God. And, He is the only way in. No one comes into the Kingdom of God, but by Him.

We see that Satan has locked the entire human race into separate little kingdoms that are always conflicting with one another. People are kept in these prisons through Satan’s lies of acceptance and rejection. Fear is far greater and stronger than bars of steel. A human need that we all have is to be accepted. A human fear we all have is that of being rejected. This strategy of the devil has been very successful in the world throughout time.

When Jesus came into our world the kingdom of heaven invaded these worldly kingdoms and has been calling for prisoners to be set free in Him. Isaiah 61:1 says, “The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” We read in Ephesians 1:6, “To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” This need we all have for acceptance is fully met in Christ Jesus who accepts us when we come to believe in Him, according to His own Word.

Satan separated the human race by appealing to the fleshly desires of man, and so we see the continual conflicting kingdoms of this world. And so it also seems to be the same in how Satan has been successful in separating the Body of Christ through conflicting denominations of religions. Our denomination becomes our identity. This should not be. When we talk to people we talk about the church we go to. This is not what Jesus taught or expects from us.

When this happens the world will see a power unleashed that has not been seen since the first generation of Christianity. We read and see that the first generation of Christians were all of one mind and purpose. Jesus prayed: “I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” (John 17:23) When this happens (complete unity) the result will be this prayer from our Savior being fulfilled.

I believe that real reformation will break down the denominational barriers that are separating God’s people and gloriously set the Body of Christ free to be one as God is one, as our Lord prayed and taught.

Matthew 16:18 “I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.”

Another thing that reformation will do is clear up our thinking on the church. If there is any subject that needs reformed biblical thinking it is on the purpose of the church. We read from our text that it is Jesus who will build His own church. He is the architect and the foundational stone; author and finisher of faith in God.

Our thinking about the church has become so confused with too much of man’s terminology being used today. We talk about ‘our’ Nazarene church, Baptist church, Pentecostal church, Presbyterian church, etc. It would seem that we have many denominations of churches today and not just ONE as the Body of Christ in fullness. We talk about going to church on Sunday morning. I often wonder how we go to something that God says “we are.” We are the church; we do not go to church.

The entry into the church is through the gospel of the Kingdom. There is no other way. When Jesus said in John 14:6 “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me,” He meant just that. In other words, our faith in Christ’s life and sacrifice on the cross, and our commitment to Him – is what gains us entry into HIS body called the church.

The church then is a body of people who have had a common experience of faith in Jesus Christ; they have a common birthright and future with the same Father. Through the acceptance of the gospel we are brought into the Body of Christ, the Church of Jesus Christ. This has become so confusing today with all of our different ways and words that we use, and with all the denominations that have been raised up, etc. We have lost the true significance of what the church truly and simply is.

There are several different examples that is used to bring out what the Body of Christ is. For example it is known as God’s building, a temple, a house, the church, etc., but all of these point to one thing; that this one body is to be God’s representative here on earth, to let the world know who God is and what God has done.

In the Old Testament God chose one man. His name was Abram and God said to him: Genesis 12:1-3 “The LORD had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” It is through this one man a nation came into being called “ISRAEL.” They were God’s chosen nation. God gave them His laws that set them above all of the other nations. They were to represent God in who He was and what He had done because all of the other nations were following false gods, deceived and totally lost and depraved.

By being placed on the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea (the only piece of real estate tied to three continents without a body of water: Africa, Asia and Europe) they were to be ‘centripetal.’ This means that the nations were to come to the God of Israel and this is what happened. Any army that marched, trade that took place, etc. they had to come through Israel and when they did, like the Queen of Sheba when she came to Solomon, she was ‘overwhelmed’ by what she saw and heard. 1 Kings 10:3-5

We read in 1 Peter 2:4, 5 “As you come to him, the living Stone — rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him—you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” We too, in the New Testament, have been chosen (John 15:16) and brought into Christ’s Body that is also known as a Holy Nation. Unlike Israel in the Old Testament the Body of Christ does not have any boundaries, we do not belong to any one national country, language, ethic group, physical heritage or world culture. Unlike Israel, that was to be centripetal, we are to be centrifugal. We are to go out, scatter ourselves and in the process share the great things that the Lord has done for us. (Matthew 28:19, 20)

Reformation brings us back to what the church is here for.

I began to think about what was written on Facebook about President Trump, the government shut down and some of the issues that we are faced with in the 21^st century. First, knowing that the eagle is the American symbol; for the eagle to soar it must have two wings that are balanced and working in perfect order. So, it is with the American Republic; we need two wings, or rather two parties, to keep America balanced in what she is to do for the good. However, both parties must be working for ‘the good’ and not for ‘the party.’

It would seem that the Democratic Party has become high-jacked and it is not the same as what I grew up with. It is not the same Party as when other past presidents such as Truman and Kennedy were in the White House. The Democrat Party has been high-jacked wanting to move ‘progressively’ towards a one world government where the ‘elite,’ or so-called “chosen ones” will govern worldwide and eventually tell us all what to believe, and what truth really is.

As a Christian I have to look at things from the Holy Scripture, what God’s Word is talking about, because I believe that within Scripture we learn the truth and how to govern ourselves rightly. I know that there are many who will not believe this way, and that’s their choice. We can choose to live any way we want, believe what we want and say what we want. There will be consequences in all that we choose to believe, say and do, and we must take personal responsibility and blame for the choices that we make. So, my advice is to “choose wisely.”

When it comes to the progressive movement of the Democratic Party with their open borders and big government, etc. we need to go back and look at history, especially ‘biblical’ history and see if there is something that we can learn. In so doing this takes me back to Genesis 11 where there was a one world government led by a dictator: Nimrod. Here we learn that they had one language, one culture, etc. What happened and what can we learn for our day?

First, we find that man naturally does NOT move towards God, but against God. Man’s nature is on a steady downward course and this is why out of 6000 years of our world’s recorded history there has been very few years of relative peace. Man has been at war. There are a number of reasons for this that we will look at later. However, back to Nimrod in Genesis 11 as to what we find God doing as the result of that condition.

God saw that man’s heart was evil and so He stepped in and divided the people into different languages, families, ethnic groups and scattered them throughout the earth to slow down the progression of evil on the earth. We read later on in Acts: “…and He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.” Acts 17:26-28

Because of the downward nature of man the result has been war and the result of war has been the mixing of these different ethnic groups having to flee – which is causing some of the problems that we have today.

After WW2 France and England came and divided the Middle East into different countries and lumping together these different ethnic groups. To keep peace this has given rise to dictatorship, because it takes a strong force to keep countries composed. One example of this is the former Yugoslavia. Under the strong rule of Tito he kept the country calm, but once he was gone we see the conflicts that broke out in the 20^th century and now the country is divided into different ethnic groups.

This is one of the main problems in the Middle East with the different ethnic groups wanting their own identity, language, culture, etc. For example: the Kurds. This is the largest ethnic group in the world (at least 25 million) that has no country or boundaries of their own. They are scattered in Syria, Turkey, Iran and Iraq – holding on to their ethnicity.

Some countries have been divided among religious orientation. We see this with India when it became independent from England. The Muslims with their religion wanted their own country and so a line was drawn on the western side of the subcontinent of India and it was called West Pakistan and one thousand miles away on the East side of the sub-continent another line was drawn called East Pakistan. In so doing this, families were oppressed and displaced. The result was a massive slaughter that took place. Read the book called FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT.

There is an ethnic difference between West and East Pakistan that eventually brought about a war in the early 70’s of the 20^th century when ten million people were displaced and three million died, but then a new country was born called Bangladesh. Right now we find a group of people called Rohingya (over 600,000 Muslims) being persecuted in Myanmar (Burma) and moving into Cox Bazar, Bangladesh.

We can see what is happening in Europe at the moment with so many displaced people having moved into Europe, and still moving in, from the Middle East as well as from Africa. They are coming in with their own language, culture, etc. and not being simulated into the home country. Eventually the country becomes what we call “Balkanized,” and this naturally brings about disputes and rivalries.

Yes, it’s noble when we ‘open our arms’ to the poor, the tired, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and the wretched refuse of what other nations call the people that they cast out, the homeless among us, etc. (As it was later inscribed at the base of our Statue of Liberty; she who holds the lamp beside the golden door). And millions have come in from all over the world, but when they came in legally they eagerly learned the nation’s language and willingly adjusted into the culture of the country; they learned the Constitution (our nation’s laws and principles) by which to live by as an American. They became “Americans.” Now we see how this has progressively changed with: African Americans, Spanish or Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, etc. bringing in their own languages and cultures – causing disputes and upsets.

My wife is European, and when she came to America she already knew the language, but she went to school to learn the Constitution, true history of America and so became an “American” citizen.

Yes, we need “two wings” (two parties) in our Republic. Yes, we need to compromise but do what is best for the true citizens of America. We especially need to learn wisdom from history so we make right decisions for the good of America’s future and those who choose to be Americans.

Matthew 24:14 “And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a testimony unto all the nations; and then shall the end come.”

To me one of the great signs of His coming is the worldwide preaching of the gospel of His Kingdom. However, it is interesting to note that it is talking about the gospel of His Kingdom. Reformation will bring us back to the truth and reality of Christ’s Kingdom.

Many have been duped by a cheap salvation, a salvation which excludes the suffering of a cross that bids us to come and also die.  It has been a gospel where Christ has come to save us from our troubles rather than from our sinful lives.  Perhaps this is why so few persevere and go on in their Christian life, or why there is not much difference today between those in the church and those who are on the outside.

When we come to Christ we find that we are not delivered from troubles, but just the opposite. Our lives are full of troubles, and all the more when we find that this fallen world is against us. Because we do not understand what to expect as journey with Jesus, and we have not been trained properly in how to stand up and faithfully face all kinds of difficulties, we fall away and lose out on what we could’ve had with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Being born-again is the beginning of a great journey toward the full maturity that God is wanting for His children. For the church to go on to maturity it must begin with the message. Our message is a message of hope, for it is a call to battle with the promise of victory as we persevere with maturing faith. It is a message that the rightful King is coming to take over. To be saved by the revelation of this glorious Kingdom is an enlistment into the army of the coming King. How does one “enlist” and then refuse needed training?

The preaching of the gospel today seems to be as if the Christian is doing the Lord a favor whenever someone accepts the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. But, the preaching of the gospel is more than forgiveness; it’s seeing Christ’s Kingdom, bowing before Him in full submission and ready for the battle before us, trained and prepared. According to Matthew 24:14 we are to be preaching the gospel of the Kingdom.

It is interesting to note the pattern in Scripture. In Genesis we see the power of God. In Exodus we have not only the power of God being revealed in bringing His people (Israel) out of bondage or slavery, but we see the holiness of God in the giving of His Law, and then the love of God in the Tabernacle of how God dwells with us.

This is something that we are missing today in the presentation of the true gospel. We bring out the love of God – how we see it – but not all the truth about the power and holiness of God. Presenting the Lord’s gospel is like a three-legged stool and with any one leg missing will not hold up anyone who sits on it.

I think it is interesting that when Paul speaks to the man without the Bible Paul starts with the wrath of God. Romans 1:18 “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hinder the truth in unrighteousness.” Paul is following the order and reasoning God laid out in Scripture.

Jesus did not come to just be our Savior, but our King. Reformation will bring us back to this truth.