{"id":33413,"date":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/why-i-believe-in-church\/"},"modified":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-08-26T00:00:00","slug":"why-i-believe-in-church","status":"publish","type":"sermons","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/why-i-believe-in-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Believe in the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/19\/2005\/08\/18799.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">Introduction<\/h2>\n\n<p>Our society,\nas you know, is increasingly becoming a society of options. We speak more today\nof pluralism than we ever have in our history. Many of the ideas we have as a people,\nmany of the written things that are held dear, were written when America was 90\npercent Protestant, white, and without almost any minorities of any kind. Now\nwe&#8217;ve become pluralistic.<\/p>\n\n<p>That\npluralism reaches beyond ethnic distinctions and becomes a description of our\nreligious life as well. There&#8217;s a kind of paternalism about the church&mdash;that the church is a subgroup in our society not unlike the Amish in Pennsylvania. To many people, the church is\nsort of quaint.<\/p>\n\n<p>In the words of the great American theologian Frank Sinatra, &#8220;I&#8217;m for\nwhatever gets you through the night.&#8221; People obviously need something, and\nif some folks want to be quaint and come to church and listen to some religious\nmusic and get themselves jazzed up about God, if that helps them, fine. If\nother people want to get what they want through drugs, or golf, or whatever, that&#8217;s fine, too.<\/p>\n\n<p>Then there&#8217;s\nthat great host of PBS programs as well as editorials that ask the question,\n&#8220;Is the church relevant?&#8221; I don&#8217;t know about you, but one thing I don&#8217;t want to be is quaint. I don&#8217;t want some busload of tourists pulling up in front of my house to take pictures of me, like I&#8217;m an Amish man. I don&#8217;t like the idea of having people ask the\nquestion, &#8220;Is the church relevant?&#8221; I&#8217;d like to try to answer that question from a personal viewpoint, because I don&#8217;t consider myself to be quaint, nor do I consider myself the kind of person who fools himself about relevance in culture.<\/p>\n\n<p>In Matthew\n16, Jesus looked at a man very much like us and said: It&#8217;s upon the\nprofession of faith, the belief system, the foundations of your life, and other\nlively stones that will come after you, that I&#8217;ll build my church, and the\ngates of hell will not prevail against it.<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">I believe in\nthe church, because it&#8217;s our only institution that deals with eternity.<\/h2>\n   \n\n<p>I believe in\nthe church, first of all, because it&#8217;s the only institution in our society\ndealing with the ultimate issues life, death, eternity, judgment, and forgiveness.\nIt&#8217;s important to deal with subjects like the gross national product, the\nbalance of power, the balance of trade. It&#8217;s important to deal with issues of\nworld health, and hunger. A thousand political problems are very, very important.\nBut if one deals with those and does not deal with issues like, &#8220;Where\nwill I spend eternity? How will I please a holy God?&#8221;&mdash;if one has no answer\nto his sin problem or the problem of his soul&mdash;he has missed the point.<\/p>\n\n<p>We have in\nhistory a man with whom most of you are familiar, I&#8217;m sure&mdash;a medieval\nphilosopher and mathematician named Pascal. He put forth something we commonly\ncall Pascal&#8217;s Proposition, and this proposition to his atheist friends went\nthis way: &#8220;Suppose you are right and I am wrong&#8221; (Pascal was\na believer). &#8220;Suppose God didn&#8217;t make the heavens and the earth. Suppose\nmankind is just a coincidental cosmic joke and has no purpose or reason on the\nearth. He dies like a dog. Now,&#8221; Pascal said, &#8220;I&#8217;ve believed\notherwise. I&#8217;ve believed that the earth was made by God, that mankind is God&#8217;s\ncreation, that man has fallen away from God in sin, and God has sent his Son,\nJesus, who&#8217;s visited the planet and died on the cross and shed his blood for my\nsin, and by faith in him and through his grace, I&#8217;ve been forgiven my sin. I&#8217;m\na new creature, and I&#8217;m on the way to heaven. I&#8217;ve believed that, but it&#8217;s all\nfalse. Therefore,&#8221; he said, &#8220;we both die. None of the promises are\ntrue. You die. I die. Annihilation.<\/p>\n\n<p>&#8220;But,&#8221;\nsaid Pascal, &#8220;suppose that&#8217;s not the way it is. Suppose I&#8217;m right and\nyou&#8217;re wrong. Suppose there is a God and all these things I&#8217;ve described are\ntrue. We both die. Then you find yourself, because there is a God in heaven and\nbecause he&#8217;s just and holy, separated from God in eternal damnation in a\nsinner&#8217;s hell. But I am the recipient of the promises of God through\nfaith.&#8221; Pascal said, &#8220;In both cases, you have everything to lose and\nnothing to gain, but I have everything to gain and nothing to lose.&#8221; I\nbelieve in the church because it deals with these issues.<\/p>\n\n<p>One of my favorite novels is <em>Watership Down.<\/em> In <em>Watership Down,<\/em> you remember, we have a group of rabbits. Their warren is going to be destroyed by a bulldozer, and a subdivision is going to be built where they live. So we have a little\nrabbit like Moses who&#8217;s going to lead them to this place called\nWatership Down, to the Promised Land. The novel is the story of the\npilgrimage of these little rabbits.<\/p>\n\n<p>Well, our\nlittle wild rabbits come to a hole in a fence, go through, and find rabbits\nlike they&#8217;ve never seen before. These rabbits are bigger than they are. They&#8217;re\nfatter. They have longer hair. They look very happy. They never seem to forage\nfor food. They never work. So our little rabbits move in with them and begin to\ndiscuss life. They say, &#8220;What do you eat? You don&#8217;t forage.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>The larger rabbits say,\n&#8220;We eat pellets. If you come out of your hole, you&#8217;ll find a little\nceramic dish, and in that dish are pellets. You just eat the pellets and chew\nyour cud. It&#8217;s a marvelous life. You grow fatter, and your hair grows\nlonger.&#8221; So our little wild rabbits don&#8217;t take long to get into the rhythm\nof this thing. They eat pellets and they grow heavier, and this is a marvelous\nplace to live.<\/p>\n\n<p>One day our\nlittle Moses rabbit notices that the biggest, fattest rabbit is\ngone. He says, &#8220;Where has old Fuzzy gone?&#8221; Folks say, &#8220;We don&#8217;t know. Every once in a while, one of us disappears, but we don&#8217;t ask questions about it. They just are gone.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>Our little\nrabbit is not quite as domesticated. He goes out and finds a twig bent over to the ground. Hanging from the twig is a wire with a little lasso on it. He studies it for a while and eventually kicks some grass into it. As soon as he kicks grass into it, it sets off the snare, and the grass is pulled up by the lasso. He becomes almost\nsick to his stomach, because he can see old Fuzzy hanging there and realizes\nthat Fuzzy is now in some farmer&#8217;s rabbit stew. He goes to the other rabbits\nand says, &#8220;Don&#8217;t you understand what happens when a rabbit\ndisappears?&#8221; They say, &#8220;We don&#8217;t like to think about it. We just eat our pellets.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>We live in a\nsociety that lives something like that. We don&#8217;t like to think about it. We buy\nour ski boats and our bowling balls and our carpet and don&#8217;t think about it.\nBut I am glad the church of Jesus Christ exists in the middle of it to remind\nme there&#8217;s something about me that shall live for all of eternity. There&#8217;s a God\nin heaven, and I must please him and have a way to overcome my sin and know\nhim. I&#8217;m glad the church of Jesus Christ tells me how to be saved.<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">I believe in\nthe church because it gives dignity to mankind.<\/h2>\n     \n<p>I believe in\nthe church because it provides perspective to give dignity to man. Psalm 8 has\na very interesting phrase: &#8220;What is man that thou art mindful of\nhim?&#8221; It goes on to say, &#8220;Man is a little lower than the\nangels.&#8221; We live in a society that doesn&#8217;t think of man as a little lower\nthan the angels. We live in a society that thinks of man as a little higher\nthan the animals, as if there is no qualitative distinction between man\nand the rest of the creation. As a result, man&#8217;s highest goal is seen in his\nsocietal efforts. Suddenly society becomes more important than man. Man\nbecomes a means to an end. If someone asked me what I felt one of modern man&#8217;s greatest problems would be, I&#8217;d say,\n&#8220;Modern man thinks of himself as a means rather than an end.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>The most\nextreme expression of that problem was given by Mr. Khrushchev in the United Nations\nsome years ago when he said, &#8220;You have to break eggs to make an\nomelet.&#8221; What does that mean? If I have a political purpose to achieve&mdash;if\nI want to bring a country into the twentieth century and I have to kill a few\nmillion people to make it happen&mdash;then so be it. &#8220;You have to break eggs\nto make an omelet.&#8221; After all, people are not as important as society.<\/p>\n\n<p>C. S. Lewis\nhelps us deal with this issue. He gives us a kind of fraction. He\nsays, &#8220;Think of a man 100 years old. You draw a line and then you put\nbelow the line the combined dynasties of China 5,000 years. Man lives to be 100\nyears, society 5,000. Society must be 50 times more important than a man;\ntherefore, men are expendable. You can use them up for society&#8217;s\npurposes.&#8221; This is basically the argument that must be used by every\npolitician, every great mover of people. C. S. Lewis\nsays, &#8220;Suppose it doesn&#8217;t work this way. Suppose man doesn&#8217;t live to be\n100, but suppose he&#8217;s eternal.&#8221; It&#8217;s a little hard to write eternity\nin a number. We&#8217;ll have to take something more limited for our limited minds. We&#8217;ll\ntake a billion. A man lives a billion years; the combined dynasties\nof China 5,000 years. What do we conclude? Man is infinitely more important\nthan society.<\/p>\n\n<p>I have a\nfriend who went into a village in South America. He&#8217;s a Wycliffe translator to\na group called the Cofan Indians. There&#8217;s only 600 of them. He\nwent as a linguist. He would make noises; they would make noises back. Imagine\nthe adventure of this. &#8220;Nose.&#8221; &#8220;Nose.&#8221; &#8220;Ear.&#8221;\n&#8220;Ear.&#8221; &#8220;Mouth.&#8221; &#8220;Mouth.&#8221; He would make these\nnoises and eventually teach them that their sounds could be put on paper. Then\nwhen they&#8217;d see the sounds on paper, they could say them back. He taught them\nto reduce their spoken language to a written language. Then he took the written\nlanguage, translated the Bible into it, and a group from our church went down\nto dedicate a Bible to the Cofans.<\/p>\n\n<p>There are\nonly 600 of these people on the earth. Why wouldn&#8217;t you put them in cattle trucks, take\nthem to Quito, teach them to speak pidgin Spanish, and have them drive taxis?\nWhy dignify them by sending a man with a $40,000 Wheaton College education and\na $20,000 graduate education to teach those few unimportant people to read the\nWord of God? Because the unique and distinct Christian truth held by the church\nof Jesus Christ is that man is more important than society. I believe in the\nchurch because it&#8217;s the only institution dealing with the ultimate issues, and\nit provides perspective to give dignity to man.<\/p>\n   \n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">I believe in\nthe church because it provides a moral compass.<\/h2>\n     \n\n<p>Third, I\nbelieve in the church of Jesus Christ because it provides a moral and ethical\ncompass in the midst of relativism. There are no absolutes in our world now. You can tell how well a man is educated not by his nouns but by his adjectives. An educated man never uses a naked noun. He says, &#8220;usually, sometimes, often.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>I learned a\nlittle about this from kids. I&#8217;ve been in youth work for thirty years. Every\nyear, Youth for Christ has about 15,000 boys committed to them by the courts.\nThese boys are guilty of everything from grand theft auto&mdash;meaning that when you were in church, they borrowed your car, cut it into smaller pieces, and sold it&mdash;to murder. I&#8217;ve been in camp with those kind of boys.<\/p>\n\n<p>During one\nparticular summer, I remember, I was standing by the shack where we sold pop to\nthe kids. A young man walked by and as he walked by, another kid sneaked up\nbehind him, took a pop bottle, and hit this kid over the head. It didn&#8217;t knock\nthe kid out, but it knocked him down. He jumped on him just like a cat, put one\nknee on the kid&#8217;s Adam&#8217;s apple, the other knee on his chest, and began beating\nhim across the head with this pop bottle. I grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved\nhim up against the building. &#8220;What kind of kid are you? Sneak up behind\nsomebody; hit him with a pop bottle. What kind of boy?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>He said, &#8220;Well, if\nyou&#8217;re going to hit him with a pop bottle, why would you come up in front of\nhim? He&#8217;d see you. I mean, you ought to come up behind him, because if you come\nup behind him you can get him.&#8221; I realized this kid lived in a neighborhood where there wasn&#8217;t a cat with a whole tail.<\/p>\n\n<p>Now if you\nask certain secular people, &#8220;Give me a definition of education,&#8221;\nthey&#8217;ll define education something like this: &#8220;Education is the\ninculcation of that body of truth that prepares a person to cope adequately and\nsucceed in his environment.&#8221; I don&#8217;t buy that, but that is the definition\nwe&#8217;d be given. This kid was educated.<\/p>\n\n<p>I tried\nsomething else on him, and this is the point of my little story. I used this\nword, and when I used the word, it entered his eyes and went through his brain,\nhit the back of his skull, and came back at me uninterrupted. It didn&#8217;t even\nslow down. I said this foolish thing: &#8220;You ought not hit somebody with a\npop bottle.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>I immediately realized, <em>How stupid!<\/em> Why ought not? Why ought not steal? Why ought not murder? Why ought not commit adultery? Why ought not lie? If your government is in power and your political purposes are large enough and global enough to\ncapture everybody&#8217;s imagination, you can roast six million people in a furnace,\nand it&#8217;s a moral thing because society&#8217;s more important than people. You can drag\na man into his front yard in Argentina and slit his throat in front of his six\nchildren and say you&#8217;re doing a moral thing. It&#8217;s necessary.<\/p>\n\n<p>I say that\nJesus Christ and his church have stood against that kind of relativism for all\nof history. If you lived in England one hundred years before the American Civil\nWar, you could have bought stock, mutual funds, and penny stocks (if you were\nvery poor) in the slave trade. Never get the idea that the slave trade involved a\nfew inconsequential, isolated sea captains. At one point more than half of the\nBritish gross national product was generated by taking slaves from Africa to\nthe New World.<\/p>\n\n<p>John Wesley\npreached the gospel of Jesus Christ in England. He preached mostly to the poor\nand to the miners, and a great movement of God arose among common folk. But a\nfew influential people of power were saved, among them a young dandy who had\ninherited his place in Parliament. That young dandy named William Wilberforce\ncame to know Christ as Savior, the Word of God penetrated his heart, and he\nbecame convinced of the ugliness and the sinfulness of slavery. For 50 years he\nstood in the British Parliament to condemn the ugly sinfulness of the British\nEmpire and its wholesale interest in slavery.<\/p>\n\n<p>Two weeks\nafter he died and 25 years before Abraham Lincoln pronounced the Emancipation\nProclamation in this country, the British Parliament voted to end the evil of\nslavery as a result of one Christian man and his friends in the Clapham Group.\nI believe in the church because it provides a moral and ethical compass in the\nmidst of relativism.<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">I believe in\nthe church because it provides a loving community.<\/h2>\n\n<p>Fourth, I\nbelieve in the church because it&#8217;s a place where I can find community, healing,\nand love. We can belong to lots of things, but I see the church of Jesus Christ\nas an extended family beyond any of that. I remember my boy, when he was small,\nwas running full speed through the basement of the church, and my good friend,\nJohn Horn, reached out and grabbed him by the collar. His little legs were still\ngoing, and John was holding him there. He said to him, &#8220;Bruce, slow down!&#8221; Bruce looked\nat him and said, &#8220;Put me down! You&#8217;re not my dad.&#8221; John replied,\n&#8220;No, I&#8217;m not your dad, but I&#8217;m your uncle. I&#8217;m your uncle because your\ndaddy is my brother in Christ, and I love you as much as if you were my real\nnephew. I want to help you become the kind of man you ought to be, so you just\nslow down. OK?&#8221; We need that in a church&mdash;to care for each other&#8217;s sons\nand daughters.<\/p>\n\n<p>Janie has\nheaded up the seniors in our church for 15 years. I&#8217;ve been watching her\ngroup, and I&#8217;ve seen there&#8217;s an informal ratio of about seven ladies to every\none man. I know, statistically, I&#8217;m going to go  before Janie. Who\nwill bring her to church? Who will invite her over for Thanksgiving dinner? Who\nwill fix her sump pump? Who will help her get her shopping done at Christmas?\nThe church of Jesus Christ does that sort of thing.<\/p>\n\n<p>When a\nperson&#8217;s life comes unglued and the effects of this culture absolutely destroy\na person, where can he go to find forgiveness and understanding? To a group of\nmen who will come around him in a nonjudgmental fashion and simply say,\n&#8220;There, but for the grace of God, go I. Jay, come along. We love you.\nWe&#8217;ll help you.&#8221; I believe in the church of Jesus Christ because it&#8217;s a\nplace where I can find community, healing, and love.<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">I believe in\nthe church because it has produced lasting, selfless contributions to humanity.<\/h2>\n\n<p>Lastly, I\nbelieve in the church because it has provided motivation for the most lasting,\nvaluable, and selfless efforts of mankind. From whence came schools and\nhospitals and orphanages and colleges and relief agencies and the abolition of\nslavery and women&#8217;s rights and the end of child labor? These came when men and\nwomen, moved by God against the backdrop of God&#8217;s holy justice, decided to\nchange the world.<\/p>\n\n<p>If you were\nto put a syringe into the world today and pull from it the influence of\nChristian missions, the world would implode of its own moral weight. There&#8217;s\nhardly a senior leader in all of Africa who wasn&#8217;t taught to read by a\nmissionary. I believe in the church.<\/p>\n\n<p>Some of you\nhave read Barbara Tuckman&#8217;s great historical account, <em>The Distant Mirror,<\/em>\nin which she records that in one  period during the Dark Ages, one\nthird of the population of the entire earth from Moscow to Cairo died of the\nblack plague. Who were those men in little brown outfits out picking up\nthe dead and caring for the sick and so on? Saint Francis wasn&#8217;t just somebody\nwe sing about with birds on his head. Saint Francis went out in the name of\nJesus Christ to alleviate the greatest suffering this world&#8217;s ever seen,\nsomething almost like what we would experience, but not quite, if we had\nnuclear holocaust.I believe in the church. <\/p>\n\n<p>Attending and being a vital part of the church of Jesus Christ is\nnot just something quaint that we folks do who are hanging on to our ancient\ntraditions. It&#8217;s not some irrelevant chanting of ancient and dead religious\nphrases. Being part of the church of Jesus Christ is being part of something\nthat Jesus Christ started, and he said, &#8220;The gates of hell shall not\nprevail against it.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n<p>If we drew a\nschematic drawing of this church, it would be far more complicated than some\nsimple thing like a television or a computer. It would involve every one of\nyour lives. But when you finish looking at that schematic, it wouldn&#8217;t be a\nbunch of arrows coming in here so we could come together and sing, &#8220;Hold\nthe Fort for I Am Coming.&#8221; It would be a great group of arrows going out\nwhere this man goes into business, and this woman goes into teaching, and this woman goes into homemaking, and this man becomes a plumber, and this one becomes a student, and this person becomes a nurse. We go out into the world to be the church of Jesus Christ. Aren&#8217;t you glad to be part of something that is world changing, that has stood for 2,000\nyears, that makes a difference? Amen. I believe in the church. <\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead1\">Jay Kesler is president of Taylor University in Upland, Indiana. He was formerly president of Youth for\nChrist\/USA and the preaching pastor of First Baptist Church of Geneva,\nIllinois. He has many books to his\ncredit, including <em>Being Holy, Being Human<\/em>.<\/h2>\n\n<p>Jay Kesler\nPreaching Today Tape #37\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.preachingtodaysermons.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">www.PreachingTodaySermons.com<\/a>\nA resource of Christianity Today International<\/p>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[306],"tax_ctp_authors":[1858],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_field_guide_subcategory":[],"tax_ctp_field_guides":[],"tax_ctp_format":[170],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[412],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_sermon_series":[],"tax_ctp_tags":[3601,4205],"tax_ctp_topics":[],"class_list":["post-33413","sermons","type-sermons","status-publish","hentry","tax_ctp_authors-jay-kesler","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-church","tax_ctp_tags-ideologies-belief-systems"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Why I Believe in the Church - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermons\/why-i-believe-in-church\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why I Believe in the Church - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Introduction Our society, as you know, is increasingly becoming a society of options. We speak more today of pluralism than we ever have in our history. 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