This morning we are wrapping up our summer sermon series! For the past many weeks we have been talking all about the Ekklesia – the church – the gathering of God’s people. And if you’ve been with us throughout this series, hopefully you’ve gained a greater understanding of what the church is, what it’s purpose is, and why your involvement in it is so important.
We began, first of all, by defining the church. And we were reminded that the church is not a building… church is not an event we attend each Sunday morning, but the church is the gathering of God’s people. The Bible describes us as the body of Christ or as the family of God.
And as such, we all have an important role to play in the church. Just like a physical body needs all the body different parts to function together (we need the hands to hold stuff, the feet to walk, the ears to listen, the mouth to speak, and all that stuff)… In the same way, every believer has an important role to play in the body of Christ – in the church. We all have a role in this family so that the church can do what God created it to do.
And of course, that leads us to the question, “Well, what then did God create the church to do? What is the purpose of the church and what’s my role in it?”
Well, we identified three main purposes or tasks of the church.
- To bring glory to God through worshipping Him together.
- To bring glory to God by edifying His people.
- To bring glory to God by evangelizing the world.
And so far, we talked about bringing glory to God through worshipping God together – honouring Him by being obedient to all the things that God has commanded us.
We talked about bringing glory to God by edifying God’s people – or building each other up – helping one another become more like Christ.
And now today we want to talk about bringing glory to God by evangelizing the world.
And you may be glad to hear that we don’t have any more greek words to learn today! It seems we’ve had a new foreign word to learn every Sunday in this series – ekklesia, weorthscipe, oikodomeo – but I don’t plan on teaching you any weird and wonderful words today.
I think most of us already have a pretty good understanding of what it means to evangelize the world – the hard part isn’t defining it – the hard part is actually doing it!
But just so that we have all the bases covered, to evangelize the world really just means to tell everyone the good news of Jesus Christ.
That is one of the key purposes of the church – we are God’s means of letting everyone know the good news about Jesus.
There are several places in the Scriptures where we are told this, but perhaps one of the clearest examples in found in the books of Acts.
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