With the horrendous statistics given about the local church’s ineffectiveness to pervade today’s morally decadent culture with the life changing message of the love of God and the gospel of Jesus, coupled with the staggering truth that numerous churches in our denomination did not reach one single person for Christ last year should sound the alarm. It’s time to WAKE UP from our slumber. This is precisely the challenge that was issued to local churches by the leadership of the Southern Baptist Convention, it was issued to our youth at camp, and now it is intentionally the purpose of this article to issue the challenge to our church. It’s time for Poplar Spring to be the church that God has called us to be.
Let’s examine the problem from some practical illustrations. Picture a member of the paramedics arriving at the scene of an accident and standing idly by, never engaging in treatment of the victims, or doctors in an emergency room refusing to treat a heart attack victim, but simply sitting and watching him suffer until he dies, while they gather around a table in the corner discussing the latest medical lingo and techniques. Or consider firefighters arriving on the scene of a house fire in your neighborhood, but merely proceeding to wash and shine their trucks with the fire hydrant water or a highway patrol officer watching a hit and run unfold involving a pedestrian and yet staying in his car monitoring his radar because it was more fascinating.
All of these scenarios would have the general public up in arms at the criminal negligence of these men whose job it is to “act” to give whatever trained assistance they can to help in the given emergency situation. That is exactly the state of affairs within many of our churches.
My fellow brothers and sisters, God holds you and I as sinfully negligent when we sit idly by and watch those whom we see everyday in our family, workplace, church, and community suffer because of sin in their lives. They are lost (they do not have a personal relationship with Jesus) and on their way to hell while we gather together in our buildings on Sunday mornings and say and do nothing during the week!
WHY is it this way? Most probably, the main reason is that we just don’t have a correct overall big picture of the world - or to put it another way, the Biblical worldview - that God wants every child of His to envision.
We must understand that there is only One true God, not many gods or different names and ways for reaching him. There is only one holy God who created all men, loves them graciously, and mercifully wants to offer them an opportunity to have a restored relationship with Him.
We must understand that this one true God has chosen to reveal Himself to all men through His Word, which Psalm 19, 119, 2 Timothy 3:16, and 2 Peter 1:21 so clearly state.
We must ‘get it right’ concerning what we believe about man, and his sinful state which separates him from holy God as Genesis 3, Romans 5, and Ephesians 2:1-3 tell us.
We must ‘get it right’ about what we hold to be true about Jesus; both His person and His work of atonement, that by dying on the cross for the sins of you and me and rising on the third day, Jesus, is victorious over death and sin.
We must ‘get it right’ that Jesus is the only way of salvation (being rightly restored to a relationship with holy God) as John 3:16, 14:6, Romans 10:9-10, and Acts 4:12 state explicitly.
Finally, we must ‘get it right’ that holy God is a God of judgment and those who do not meet His standard of perfection, which is that righteousness is obtained by accepting by faith the blood of Jesus which covers sin (Isaiah 1:18, 2 Corinthians 5:21), will be cast into an eternal lake of fire, tormented forever in a place which the Bible calls hell (Matt. 5:22-30, Luke 16:19-31, and Rev. 19:20, 20:9-10,15).
WHAT can we do about it? The first step is simply acknowledging and accepting the Biblical worldview that God has revealed as ‘truth.’ Armed with a new way of thinking about our world, we should be motivated to ‘ACT’ as God also commanded that we, Poplar Spring Baptist Church, should be His hands and feet every day in our sphere of influence (with the people that you see). Just as those first century Christians heard Jesus, so we too hear Him say ‘GO TELL’ the good news (Matt. 28:18-20). Tell it to your spouse, your children, your family, your neighbor, your friend, your co-worker, your team-mates, your classmates, your acquaintances.
Come join us on Saturday mornings as we tell it to those who are within arms length of our building, but desperately need to see it at their doorstep! My prayer is that the passion will be stirred in your heart afresh and anew to be a part of something that is larger than yourself.
It’s past time for Poplar Spring to awaken and make a difference for the kingdom of God joining Him with a vision for reaching the lost right outside our doors, in our state, our nation, and our world. That’s exactly what your staff is committed to do and have given our lives for, who will join us?