Intro– Bill and his family lived in the house behind us for 2 years.  I met him soon after they moved in and had the chance to disciple him for about a year before they moved away.  He told me this testimony about what God had done for him.  His brother was born again and was after Bill to read the Bible.  Bill respected his brother, but didn’t understand his new religion.  One day, Mormons came to Bill’s door and tried to led him into this cult.  Bill knew from comments his brother had made that they were theologically wrong, but didn’t understand why, so he immediately called his brother and asked what he should read so he could interact with people from this cult.  Bill’s brother gave him many passages to read in the Bible and Bill did so, but he didn’t understand what he was reading– it didn’t make much sense to him.  His brother had suggested that Bill pray and ask Jesus to open his mind to understand the Scriptures, so one day Bill did just that.  He prayed a prayer something like this: “Lord, I don’t know how to pray very well, but I need help from you to show me who you are, so I might accept you and understand the Scriptures better, so I can know the truth from falsehood as people from the Mormon cult come to my door next week.”  Bill told me he felt a warmth in his heart that he had never known before, a peace which descended on him and he knew Jesus was real.  When he opened the Bible, he said, “It was unbelievable!  The Word just jumped off of the page and I understood it for the first time.  It made perfect sense.  I couldn’t get enough of it, so studied for a few hours each day.  The next time the Mormons came, I was much more ready, because now I knew the truth which had set me free.  It was like the difference between night and day!”

“Like the difference between night and day” is what the Bible says about the difference between our lifestyle and that of the lost world around us.  If you know Jesus Christ this morning, you are light for the world, which is in darkness.  Too often, Christians struggle with who they really are.  When we struggle with who we are, we do not live according to who God has called us to be.  As we embrace who we are in Christ, then we are able to be used by God in His plans to redeem His world.

The last 2 weeks, we have been looking at the subject of revival.  According to the Bible, revival means refreshing and giving new zeal to believers in Christ, and bringing conviction of sin and salvation to many non-Christians.  This is a work of the Holy Spirit.  I can’t save anyone.  Neither can you.  We have a part to play, given to us by our Lord, but it is He who saves and He who ultimately revives His people.  Our focus in this series is on calling us , as God’s children and as God’s soldiers, to do our part, and then rejoice as we see God build His Kingdom in and through us.  Two weeks ago, we began by calling on us to marvel at the incredible grace and love of the Lord for us, and then seeking Him to deepen our relationship with Him.  Last week, our theme was repentance– turning from our sin back to the Lord so we might walk in the freedom the Lord desires for us to have.  Are you doing your part so far– seeking to deepen your relationship with Jesus every day by marveling at His grace and love as you worship, pray and study His Word, and are you repenting of your sin each day, asking the Lord to remove these sins from your life that you might be refreshed in Him?  Are you doing your part so far, people of God at Trinity?  We have to act according to what God has shown to us.  The next part of our action or response will come in today’s sermon.  Our theme this morning is God is working in this world to redeem it for His own glory, and He wants to use His church as the vessel through whom He works.

I. Our identity in Christ.

We will not be available to be used by our Lord until we act according to who we are as followers of Christ.  Think about this with me for a moment.  What God says is true about who we are, period.  It doesn’t matter what anyone else has said– what God says is true, is in fact true.  Do you agree with that statement?

Then the question becomes– what does God say about who we are as Christians?  II Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”    What is new?  Your heart is new– you now have a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone.  You now are alive in your spirit whereas before you were dead.  You were a slave to sin, but now you are a slave to righteousness.  What you now do in your actions reflects who Christ has made you to be.  You now reflect the character of Christ and His righteousness, not because you have to, but because you now are able and you want to!  You are new, or born again in your heart of hearts.

Let me tell you how this can and should make a difference in your every day life.  You are tempted to fall into an old pattern of your former lifestyle– gossip, critical spirit, judgmental spirit, lust, smoking, anger, etc.; but you stop for a moment and you remind yourself who you now are in Christ– “wait a minute, I am new in Christ.  He has given me a new heart and that is who I am, so I am going to live according to who I am, not who I was!”  Paul tells the Christians in Corinth (I Corinthians 6:9‑11), “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders  nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”  You were those sinful things, but you are no longer!  You were washed in the blood of Jesus– so you are now clean.  You were sanctified– made holy like Jesus is holy– so now you are holy.  And you were justified, which means He has declared you not guilty!!  The Judge has slammed down the gavel and given His final verdict– you are not guilty!  Live as free men and women– free of the sin which used to keep you in bondage.  If you do fall into sin, confess it and repent of it as we talked about last week.  You have an advocate, One who will take up for your defense.  The key for us here is whether or not we believe what the Word of God says about who we are or whether we will believe the lie! 

I was speaking with a counselor who told the story of a young Christian man who was in bondage to sexually perverse things.  He had tried everything in exploring his sexuality and now found himself stuck.  The counselor turned to the passage we just read and read the passage and asked the young man, “Who are you?  Are you a homosexual offender or sexually immoral, or are you a child of God because you can’t be both.  You need to decide who you are and then battle to believe this.  As you are convinced about who you are, it will make all the difference in your life.”  You know, I have even seen this in sports.  Many years ago, there was a good team at NC State, coached by Jim Valvano.  He had one player, named Sylvester Charles, who was strong as an ox, but kind of a project as a basketball player until his senior year.  He began to dominate inside.  Someone asked Jim Valvano what made such a huge difference in this player from last year to this year.  Valvano said, “I have him believing he is superman who cannot be stopped and he is playing like that.  He always had the physical capability, but didn’t have the conviction about who he was as a player!”  Do you believe you are new in Christ?  Do you believe you are one of His children?  Then live like it with your lifestyle, your words and your motives.  Have confidence in who you are in Christ!

II. The church triumphant in this world.

God has an incredible plan!  The Bible is a story of God choosing a man Abraham and calling Him into a covenant relationship with Himself.  Out of this love relationship, God promises that He will bless Abraham and bless all the peoples’ of the world through Abraham’s Seed, ultimately meaning through Jesus.  A people comes from the loins of Abraham, just as God promised, and this promise is passed on through Abraham’s descendants.  God calls Israel His people and blesses them in every way imaginable, so that the surrounding nations know that the Lord of Israel is the One, true, living God.  There were periods in Israel’s history when God’s purposes were fulfilled as they obeyed God’s instructions on how to take the Promised Land. The surrounding nations knew, after the walls at Jericho fell, that the Lord would battle for His people and through His people and there was no use resisting, because of this.  Then, in Solomon’s day, the queen of Sheba makes a long journey to see if what she has heard is in fact true.  She finds that she has not been told the half of what the Lord of Israel has done.  There are ramifications of this trip to Israel for a long time in the area of Arabia.  At the same time, Israel rebelled against God and went her own way repeatedly.  When sin and idolatry would take root among them, God would send a people in judgement to destroy Israel, until she repented, and then God would send a judge to restore her to a right relationship with Himself.  God was the initiator in all things, but had a better plan for His children in the last days.  He would send His Son as King of kings to the earth.  But He would be rejected and eventually killed on a cross.  God would win an ultimate victory over all His enemies in this most unlikely way– Jesus would die on the cross, but then be raised from the dead by the power of the Spirit, the first fruits of many others who would be raised to life.  God would establish us as His people, giving us all that we needed to live as the church triumphant! 

Now the church is God’s chosen people, just as Israel was God’s chosen people in the O.T.  We have been called by God.  Listen to the way Peter puts this in 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”  You as an individual and we as a body have been chosen by God, loved by God so that we belong to Him.  He has placed us where we are and desires to use us where He has placed us.
Is it God’s plan for His church to be weak, to be compromised, to have little affect on the culture around her?  Is it God’s plan for His church to be afraid of influences around her in the culture so she has to hide behind walls which she thinks will protect her?  This isn’t God’s plan for us!  Look at the images the Scriptures use to describe the church.  We are light in darkness.  When you bring a lit candle into a dark room, what happens in the room?  The darkness is pushed back.  Darkness flees at the overwhelming presence of light.  We are light which pushes back darkness around us!  Light must go into darkness to push it back.

Or how about the image of us as an army.  We are soldiers in a battle for the souls of men and women.  Does an army which is encamped have much affect?  No.  We are called to move out or move forward to take ground from the enemy.  This is true in our lives as individuals, and it is true of us corporately in our city.  God wants His people to follow their General, Jesus, and reclaim and redeem any place where darkness has taken root.  This is a battle in which we are engaged.  The final victory has been won already, but there are still many battles for us to fight along the way to secure victory in these areas and in peoples’ lives who live in these areas.  If we believed the Lord was leading us to reclaim an area in north Florence for Jesus, what would this involve?  We would begin with prayer, asking the Lord to lead us and to take the ground in the heavenly realm.  We would drive through that neighborhood and pray specifically for people we see there.  We would partner with the few churches who are struggling there, to walk with them to serve the neighborhood in a variety of different ways.  We would fill needs and watch how God opens doors for the gospel when we love others through service.  This is our calling.

The reason I am sharing this perspective with you today, is because I want for you, each of you to pray with us for the Lord to lead us to reclaim territory which has been given over to drug addicts, to gang activity or to poverty.  The police and government and schools all have a role to play, but until the church fills her place, these other efforts will have little impact.  This is a spiritual war we are in.  It has physical ramifications, but the root problems are spiritual!  Look again at Matthew 7:21.  This verse tells us that those who do the will of God will enter the Kingdom.  Talking about it isn’t God’s will for us.  Wishing it were different doesn’t cut it.  The only thing which measures what we really believe is what we do.  James tells us to be doers of the Word of God and not hearers only!  Our actions in love show that we believe the Word of God.  We are acting according to His will, and His blessing will reside on us as we respond in obedience, participating with God to reclaim those in darkness.

III. Moving forward following God’s lead.

 What action or response is God asking of us, for revival to come in our midst?  He is asking us to leave our comfort zones, to step out in faith, believing that God has gone before us to claim the world for Christ.  Without action, there is no real love shown to people.  I have seen marriages where the husband says he loves his wife, but repeatedly does things which deeply wound her.  This doesn’t work!  We have to act in a manner which reflects the love of Christ, or we will not have an audience for the gospel. 

One of our texts today, Matthew 7:18ff, tells about the good fruit which a tree bears, or the bad fruit a tree bears.  A good tree will bear good fruit, and a bad tree will bear bad fruit.  You know a tree by its fruit.  What are we talking about when we say ‘tree’?  We are talking, first about peoples’ lives.  If there is good fruit in your life, then other people will be blessed by being around you.  God is our Judge, but those around you confirm the kind and amount of fruit in your life.  The kind of tree and the fruit being born also refers to us corporately.  Are people growing in grace at Trinity, deepening in their faith in Jesus Christ?  Are people who do not know the Lord Jesus coming to faith in Christ through Trinity?  Overall, I believe there is much good fruit, but we need to continue to grow in areas.  We haven’t yet arrived at the point of bearing all the fruit the Lord has designed for us to bear.  I believe we are to make Prayer Evangelism a part of our lifestyle.  Those of you who have done this, keep it up!!  If we believe the gospel, embrace who we are as the church triumphant, live lives of love which we pour out on those around us, there will be a great harvest won!  I believe this is the will of God, and that as the Lord revives us, many people will be won to Christ.

We have 4 great opportunities coming up as a church to act in love towards others.  This afternoon, many Hispanic folks will gather together at POSH restaurant on Route 76 in downtown Florence to hear and respond to the gospel preached by our dear brother Sergio Handel.  We always need people who can show love to those who will come.  Show up today between 2-6 and we will give you something to do to help.  Saturday, October 27th, 10:30- 12:30, Rev Bill Fuller and some from his church will be with us to model Prayer Evangelism.  If you would like more training and a model for what this looks like, come.  We want this to be a lifestyle for all of us at Trinity.  Then, October 31, we are working together to provide a wonderful and God honoring alternative to Halloween.  This date was originally adopted by the church to honor those who have gone before us to their heavenly home.  Christians who have died are an example to us to press on in our faith, so we will be showing kids something about this on October 31.  Ellen needs your help in making this an effective outreach.   November 17 is our Fall Festival, which will be a perfect opportunity to reach out to love people.  We have a team which has been working to put this together and they need your help.  Praise the Lord for the next month!  Right here you have 4 opportunities to be used by God, to obey His call to love others.  God’s intent is to form His Word and character in us and then pour His Spirit through us to build His Kingdom.  We have many opportunities to do what our Lord has asked us to do.  Won’t you join us in several of these events!