'Be the church!'

Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Jordan explains, “Notice that verse says ‘all things work together for good.’ The good in that verse is not money, fame, popularity, wealth, health and success.

“You’ve already read down through the passage and figured that out. What’s the good in the verse? The good is the purpose of God.

“All of life, good, bad or indifferent, works together for the good. People who love God are people who operate on grace motivation. We love Him because He first loved us.

“What is His purpose in your life? That we should be conformed to the image of His Son. That is fantastic. Galatians 2:20 says, ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’

“I want to tell you something, folks. The apathy and the shallowness, the worldliness, the failure to give and the burnout in the pulpit and in the pew, the teen dropout rate, the fear of soul-winning, the flabby self-discipline, the maxed-out schedules, the chronic shortage of strong men in the work of the ministry.

“All the problems people point to are not going to be fixed by programs. There are, according to the pollsters, 500 million evangelical Christians in the world. That means there are 3 ½ billion people in the world who are not evangelical Christians.

“You take a piece of paper and do the math. If every evangelical Christian won seven people to Christ this year we’d win the whole world to Christ.

“The reason they’re not going to get to the goal has nothing to do with them not praying enough, sacrificing enough, studying their Bible enough, witnessing enough, working fast enough, trying hard enough, reading enough Christian books, putting enough time into it, living for it. The reason they’re going to get there has nothing to do with any of that!

“It has to do with the fact they don’t rightly divide the Word of truth so they don’t have any idea what they’re really doing. They don’t even know the right message to preach to win people or to have it be the real power of God working through them. So they think the church is a bunch of programs running a building. It’s time you and I, the church, just went and be the church. Let’s go be who we are in Christ.

“Ephesians 4 says, 31] Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice:
[32] And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

“The transparent reality that ought to be there will be there. He says in that passage that we’re not to give place to the devil. He’s talking about animosity. He says, ‘Let him that stole steal no more.’ They’ll be the giving. They’ll be a group of people that say, ‘You know, enough is enough! You can only make so much money and use it on yourself. You can only live in so many houses. You can only drive so many cars, have so many boats, so many diamond rings. There’s enough and now I can use my resources to help others that are in need.’

“It says, ‘Be ye kind one to another, tender-hearted.’ There’ll be a genuine community brought together. You know why the godhead is a trinity? Because that’s who God is. The Muslims says, ‘God is one.’ No, He’s not. He’s one God (there’s only one God) but He’s in three persons.

“Did you know a Muslim will cut your head off for that? Their teachings, their doctrine, their religion says you’re a heretic if you don’t believe there’s only one God, one person, one All-Supreme Allah? You can be supreme—the top dog—if you’re just one, but you know there’s some limitations to you.

“Adam was alone and God said it wasn’t good. That’s not the kind of life the trinity lives. You can have two people and you can have unity and harmony and you can say, ‘Well I love you,’ but you know, it’s hard to love when it’s just two people. You know why? Because you never know for sure what would happen if a third person came along. Would they love each other and not me?

“To have community you have to have three or more. And with community, you can have not only harmony, but you can have real love and living for others. When there’s two, you can live for the other person but you’re doing it and you get the byproduct. When there’s three or more, you can live for another and it be just genuine living.

“You know the kind of life that the godhead lives, the kind of life He gave you, is a life that God the Father lives for God the Son and God the Son lives for the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit lives to glorify the Son. Each member of the godhead lives in community for the other. That’s why Paul says, ‘To make all men see what is the fellowship (not the dispensation).’

“He didn’t say, ‘Make everybody just see the chart.’ He said, ‘Let everybody see the life of Christ in you; The life of the triune God living.’ You don’t see that in buildings. You see that in people. Be the church! The armor is a spiritual armor of doctrine designed to produce the edification and energy so that you’ll just be who you are individually and collectively for His glory.”