Examine Your Church
I Kings 9:3
(NLT)
The LORD said... “I have set this Temple apart to be holy—this place you have built where my name will be honored forever. I will always watch over it, for it is dear to my heart."
(ESV)
"I have consecrated this house that you have built, by putting my name there forever. My eyes and my heart will be there for all time.’
Is your church a 2 Corinthians 12:20-21 fellowship, with "quarreling, jealousy, anger, selfishness, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorderly behavior...impurity, sexual immorality, and eagerness for lustful pleasure"?
Or a church characterized by "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23, Colossians 3:12-14)..."like-minded, having the same love, being one I spirit and purpose" (Philippians 2:2)?
The question is not "What do you think of your church", but "What does God think of your church?"
Is God glorified; Jesus, the cross & free grace preached with power; the Spirit present and Fruit of the Spirit manifest?
J.C. Ryle Old Paths
http://www.preachtheword.com/bookstore/old-paths-ryle.pdf
You should seriously consider what kind of a ministry you are in the habit of attending, supposing you have a choice. You have reason indeed to be careful. It is not all the same where you go, whatever people may say. There are many places of worship, I fear, where you might look long for Christ crucified, and never find Him. He is buried under outward ceremonies, thrust behind the baptismal font, lost sight of under the shadow of the Church. “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him” (John 20:13). Take heed where you settle yourself.
Try all by this single test, “Is Jesus and free forgiveness proclaimed here?”. There may be comfortable pews, there may be good singing, there may be learned sermons. But if Christ’s Gospel is not the sun and centre of the whole place, do not pitch your tent there. Say rather with Isaac, “Here, is the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb?” (Genesis 22:7). Be very sure this is not the place for your soul.
C.H. Spurgeon
If I had never joined a church till I had found one that was perfect, I should never have joined one at all; and the moment I did join it, if I had found one, I should have spoiled it, for it would not have been a perfect church after I had become a member of it.
If you come into the church of God, and expect to get among angels, you will be mightily mistaken; and if the brethren should receive you, and hope that they are receiving angels unawares, they will be mistaken too.
When a brother says, "There is no love in this church" I know that he has been looking in the (mirror), and that his own reflection has suggested the remark.
“Our Lord’s Prayer for His People’s Sanctification”
John 17:17 “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”
Those who are sanctified in this sense have ceased to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers; they have ceased to run with the multitude to do evil; they are not conformed to this present evil world; they are strangers and pilgrims upon the earth. The more assuredly this is true of them the better. There are some, in these apostate days, who think that the church cannot do better than to come down to the world to learn her ways, follow her maxims, and acquire her “culture.” In fact, the notion is that the world is to be conquered by our conformity to it. This is as contrary to Scripture as the light is to the darkness.
John Hall, Pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City
Congregations must justify their existence. If they only bring people together to be “very much pleased,” why, the Lecture Bureaus will contract for all that. “Did you worship? Were you edified? Did the Lord speak to you? Did you speak to Him? Do you mean more seriously to be pure, honest, upright, generous, manly, holy, from what you did and heard to-day?”
These are the questions which the best part of mankind feel to be proper, and to which we must have affirmative replies.
A.W. Pink Studies in the Scriptures, 1926
Today it is true almost everywhere that we are far more concerned about the results of the gospel than we are about the purity of it! We are more concerned in the blessing of man than we are about the glory of Christ!
The first question we ought to be asking is, how scripturally is the gospel being preached in your church? Is the preacher magnifying Christ? Is the preacher emphasizing the absolute sufficiency of his finished work? Does the preacher make it plain that God does not ask the sinner to do anything, that he has asked Christ to do it all and the Lord has finished the work his Father gave him to do?
Letters of Arthur W. Pink, Letter to Lowell Green, April 10, 1934.
How am I to ascertain whether or not a company of professing Christians (whether in a church, a Bible Institute or anywhere else) will truly help or hinder me? In this way: does their teaching and influence make my conscience more tender or more callous? Does it emphasize the loftiness of the holy standard God has set before me and make me realize how far, far short I come of it, or does it make me pleased with myself? Does it foster pride because my head is becoming full of prophecies, dispensations, doctrines, giving me so ‘much more light’ than many have? Or does it foster humiliation and shame because I realize what a sad failure I am in putting into practice the things of God!
G. Campbell Morgan "Witnesses"
Find me a church where the resurrection light is not shining, where the passion of blood is not proclaimed, and the enthroned Lord is not revealed, and the working Lord is not felt, and it is a tomb, an insult to God and to man.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones delivered 232 expository sermons on Ephesians on Sunday mornings between 1954 and 1962.
“The Church and the World” on Ephesians 4:13
https://opentheo.org/i/4854880398305503014/the-church-and-the-world
The real tragedy today is the failure of the Christian church to speak, to speak from God, to speak the biblical message and to speak it with authority. And that I suggest is due to the fact that she so persistently fails to take her commends and her orders from the Bible itself, but rather takes it from her own thinking and philosophizing and indeed perhaps from the world itself.
The only message of the gospel to the world is to tell it to repent because it's under the wrath of God. And that unless it repents, it's lost and lost eternally. There is no other message.
God in and through Christ is calling out a people for himself. This message of repentance and of belief in Christ is sent out to all men and those who believe it are the called of God in Christ and he calls them unto himself.
Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, "Introduction" (From sermons preached at Westminster Chapel in the 1940s)
https://www.monergism.com/introduction-sermon-mount
The world has come into the Church and the Church has become worldly. We have been told that we have to make the Church attractive to the man outside, and the idea is to become as much like him as we can. (But) the glory of the Gospel is that when the Church is absolutely different from the world, she invariable attracts it. It is then that the world is made to listen to her message.
A.W. Tozer
The Set of the Sail
The Church is the body of Christ, the bride of the Lamb, the habitation of God through the Spirit, the pillar and ground of the truth. The local church is a community of ransomed men, a minority group, a colony of heavenly souls dwelling apart on the earth, a division of soldiers on a foreign soil, a band of reapers, working under the direction of the Lord of the harvest, a flock of sheep following the Good Shepherd, a brotherhood of like-minded men, a visible representative of the Invisible God.
The church as the New Testament pictures it is a company of regenerate believers met in the name of Jesus Christ. Such a company is called out from the world and gathered to Christ as a flock of sheep is gathered to the shepherd. The members of this company constitute a despised minority group standing in bold moral contradiction to the world. Their witness is Christ: His person, work, office and present position at the right hand of the Majesty in the heavens. They carry His gospel to the world and plead ''Be ye reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20), then they return to their own company to worship, pray, teach and listen to the Word of the Lord as it is expounded by men of God. They also exhort, testify and exercise for the good of all such spiritual gifts as each one may possess from the Spirit.
Those religio-social institutions, with which we are all too familiar, where worship is a form, the sermon an essay and the prayer an embarrassed address to someone who isn't there, certainly do not qualify as churches under any scriptural terms.
The Warfare of the Spirit
The church must examine herself constantly to see if she be in the faith; she must engage in severe self-criticism with a cheerful readiness to make amends; she must live in a state of perpetual penitence, seeking God with her whole heart; she must constantly check her life and conduct against the Holy Scriptures and bring her life into line with the will of God.
Respectable sins that exist with the sanction of or at least the connivance of the church (include) pride, vanity, self-centeredness, levity, worldliness, gluttony, the telling of "white" lies, borderline dishonesty, lack of compassion for the unfortunate, complacency, absorption in the affairs of this life, love of pleasure, the holding of grudges, stinginess, gossiping and various dirty habits not expressly forbidden by name in the Scriptures.
These sins are so common that they have been accepted as normal by the average church and are either not mentioned at all or referred to in smiling half-humor by the clergy. They are seldom recognized as sin and are practically never repented of. They remain year after year to grieve the Spirit and sap the life of the church, while everyone continues to speak the words of the true faith and go through the motions of perfunctory godliness, not knowing that there is anything wrong.
The Size of the Soul
A weak church is imitating a strong world to the amusement of intelligent sinners and to her own everlasting shame.
The Divine Conquest
1 Corinthians 2:4 “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.”
In the average church service the most real thing is the shadowy unreality of everything. The worshiper sits in a state of suspended mentation; a kind of dreamy numbness creeps upon him; he hears words but they do not register, he cannot relate them to anything on his own life-level. He is conscious of having entered a kind of half-world; his mind surrenders itself to a more or less pleasant mood that passes with the benediction leaving no trace behind. It does not affect anything in his everyday life. He is aware of no power, no Presence, no spiritual reality. There is simply nothing in his experience corresponding to the things that he heard from the pulpit or sang in the hymns.
I think there can be no doubt that the need above all other needs in the Church of God at this moment is the power of the Holy Spirit. More education, better organization, finer equipment, more advanced methods—all are unavailing. It is like bringing a better (respirator) after the patient is dead. Good as these things are they can never give life. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth." (John 6:63) Good as they are they can never bring power. "Power belongeth unto God." (Psalm 62:11)
Protestantism is on the wrong road when it tries to win merely by means of a "united front." It is not organizational unity we need most; the great need is power. The headstones in the cemetery present a united front, but they stand mute and helpless while the world passes by.
The trouble with us today is that we have tried to bridge the gulf between two opposites, the world and the Church, and have performed an illicit marriage for which there is no biblical authority. No real union between the world and the Church is possible. When the Church joins up with the world, it is the true Church no longer but only a pitiful hybrid thing, an object of smiling contempt to the world and an abomination to the Lord.
Renewed Day by Day
We live in a time of soft, easy Christianity. Many find it hard to understand how large numbers of Christian believers (are now dying) in our own generation! Professing Christians in our North American churches can hardly comprehend so costly a price for the faith we take for granted. Material prosperity and popular acceptance have sapped the vitality of our Christian witness!
Rut, Rot or Revival
The church should be a healthy, fruitful vineyard that will bring honor to Christ, a church after Christ's own heart where He can look at the travail of His soul and be satisfied. Among the people should be a beautiful simplicity and a radiant Christian love so it would impossible to find gossips and talebearers. There should be a feeling of humble reverence and an air of joyous informality, where each one esteems others better than himself or herself, where everyone is willing to serve but no one jockeys to serve. Childlike candor without duplicity or dishonesty should mark the church, and the presence of Christ should be felt. Prayers should be answered so regularly that we think nothing of it. It would be common because God is God, and we are His people. When necessary, miracles would not be uncommon. Is that, in the light of Scripture, unreasonable and undesirable to expect of a church?
Robert Roberts of Clynnog, on visiting London and George Whitefield’s pulpit in the summer of 1797
I listened there to a good number of English preachers, but, while I listened to them, I only felt these sighs arising in my breast: Behold the altar, behold the sacrifice, but where is the fire? Behold the pulpit of Whitefield, but where is his God? Oh! great, but miserable congregations! Is it the swelling sound of the pipes of the organ you get instead of the voice of the Almighty?
Samuel Chadwick The Way To Pentecost
https://www.sermonindex.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=58225&forum=34
When the church is run on the same lines as a circus, there may be crowds, but there is no Shekinah. That is why prayer is the test of faith and the means of spiritual power. The Spirit of God travails in the prayer-life of the soul. Miracles are the direct work of his power, and without miracles the church cannot live. The carnal can argue, but it is the Spirit of God that regenerates. Education can civilize, but it is being born of the Spirit that saves. The energy of the flesh can run bazaars, organize amusements, and raise millions; but it is the presence of the Holy Spirit that makes a Temple of the Living God. The root-trouble of the present distress is that many churches have more faith in the world and in the flesh than in the Holy Ghost, and things will get no better till we get back to Christ’s realized presence and power. The breath of the four winds can turn death into life and dry bones into mighty armies, but one of the indispensable means by which that breath comes is by prayer. Without him we can do nothing.
A.W. Tozer Paths to Power
https://archive.org/details/pathstopower0000awto/mode/2up
Evangelical Christianity, at least in the United States, is now tragically below the New Testament standard. Worldliness is an accepted part of our way of life. Our religious mood is social instead of spiritual. We have lost the art of worship. We are not producing saints. Our models are successful businessmen, celebrated athletes and theatrical personalities. We carry on our religious activities after the methods of the modern advertiser. Our homes have been turned into theaters. Our literature is shallow and our hymnody borders on sacrilege. And scarcely anyone appears to care.
"New Testament Christianity and Ours"
It is time we checked our brand of Christianity against the New Testament.
CAUTION
C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
If a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing [for Satan and his devils to do] is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches. The reasons are obvious. In the first place the parochial organization should always be attacked, because, being a unity of place and not of likings, it brings people of different classes and psychology together in the kind of unity the [Lord] desires… In the second place, the search for a “suitable” church makes the man a critic where the [Lord] wants him to be a pupil.