Take your Bibles with me and turn to 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians. We are going to be in chapter 14 tonight.
I was planning on preaching this evening from chapter 4 - and I will preach that message next Sunday. But tonight, due to our business meeting, I wanted to speak from a different text on something directly related to our church.
Last week, as most of you know, my parents came to visit. My parents live very far away - New Hampshire is about 20 hours of driving- and they will not fly - so it's a pretty rare thing for them to come here. In fact, its only the third time they've visited in 13 and a half years.
As you can imagine, when you are having visitors, we spent a lot of time cleaning and getting ready. We caught up on a lot of laundry. We deep cleaned the bathrooms. We cleaned Darci and Addie's room really well. We mopped the floors. All the things you do when you are going to have extended visitors.
But despite that, when they were over, and they were in our house, I experienced something some of you maybe can related to. I was hyper conscious of everything that wasn't done.
I mean, there are things in my house that have needed to be done for years that I never think about. I mean, I'm just blind to them, but because my mom was over, I felt super self-conscious of them for the first time in a long time.
- The spot on the wall that we should have painted years ago.
- The landings in our hallway where there is just bare subfloor because I didn't install the floor right.
- The furnace closet that doesn't have a door.
- The trash can that probably should have been deep cleaned.
I suddenly had this urge to fix these things I've long since learned to ignore.
Am I alone here? Do you know what I'm talking about? Isn't it amazing how we can become blind to things we should take care of, and sometimes it takes a visitor (even if they don't point it out) to remind us?
Now, are you in 1 Corinthians 14?
We are getting a bit ahead of ourselves, it's going to be awhile before we get to chapter 14, but I just want to show you one important principle for our church from this passage.
Chapters 12-14 of 1 Corinthians are all about speaking in tongues. Specifically, they are about how the Corinthian church abused and misunderstood speaking in tongues. Apparently, you had a bunch of people in the church at Corinth standing up and just blabbering away at the same time. So Paul takes chapters 13-14 to deal with this very important error.
When he come to verse 20 of chapter 14, he's getting to his conclusion. He's basically saying - you have turned church into a confusing mess with this tongues thing and it isn't helping anybody.
But the verse I want us to look at is verse 23.
[!bible] 1 Corinthians 14:23 - KJV 23. If therefore the whole church be come together into one place, and all speak with tongues, and there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they not say that ye are mad?
Did you catch that? What is Paul doing in this verse? He is asking the Corinthians to think about how their church looks to outsiders. How it looks to visitors.
He is saying that the opinion of unbelievers matters. How we look to unbelievers matters. It's not that we are trying to please men, but if they think we are crazy, we will never win them.
I'll share a very personal story with you. My Dad is not a Christian. I've witnessed to him. I've invited him to church. I've prayed for him countless times.
One time, when I was in High School, I was excited because I got him to go, not to church, but to a Christian school sports banquet. There was going to be a preacher at the banquet, and it was the only time I could ever remember my dad listening to a preacher.
The problem was, that preacher had just been fired from his church, and he had kind of an edge. Rather than teach us, that preacher took about fifteen minutes to yell at us, yelling the same thing over and over again.
I'll never forget this, my dad leaned over to me about ten minutes in and said "if this is what your church is like, I'm never coming back." And he hasn't. He thought we were crazy - and he had good reason to.
I think about that all the time. Very often as I'm working on a sermon I think "what if someone brings their unsaved dad, or their unbelieving wife, or their dear lost friend from work and this is the only sermon he ever listens to - will they think we are crazy?"
In the Corinthian church, they would have thought they were full of crazy people! A lost person would walk into the church and hear a bunch of people speaking in unknown languages, with no interpretation and think "those people had lost their minds. Those people are nuts!"
And so here is the principle I want us to think about tonight:
We should expect visitors, and we should be conscious and careful about how we are perceived by unsaved visitors.
Now, let me quickly give you three points to help you think about this.
The first point I want you to write down is...
The World is Watching
I was reading my devotions this week and I was in 1 Timothy and I read again the qualifications for a pastor. Let me read this to you:
[!bible] 1 Timothy 3:2-7 - KJV 2. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; 3. Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; 4. One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; 5. (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) 6. Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7. Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
Did you notice that last qualification? "A good report of them which are without??"
Why does that matter? Why does the lost world care?
This isn't the only time the Bible tells us to mind how we act around those outside the church.
[!bible] Colossians 4:5 - KJV 5. Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.
[!bible] 1 Thessalonians 4:12 - KJV 12. That ye may walk honestly toward them that are without, and that ye may have lack of nothing.
How "them that are without" sees us matters. We don't just get to say "hey, we are Christians, we are 'peculiar people' so we can be as weird as we want.
The world is watching and it is obviously important to God that we have a good testimony with them.
Our testimony matters
Paul cared about the church's testimony. He didn't want unbelievers to think Christians were crazy. He wanted them to be drawn to Christ, not driven away.
In verses 24-25 Paul tells us what should happen when an unbeliever visits the church:
[!bible] 1 Corinthians 14:24-25 - KJV 24. But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: 25. And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.
The unbeliever should hear a clear message, supported by multiple teachers, and it should cause him to fall down and worship God.
But that didn't happen at Corinth - because Corinth was crazy. The people in Corinth were nuts. And Paul didn't like that.
Church, we are supposed to be a city on a hill. A light on a candlestick. People are supposed to see us as the church and see our light.
Paul tells us in Ephesians three that the church is supposed to show the heavenly principalities the wisdom of God.
The world is watching. Our testimony matters. How outsiders view us matters. Have I made that sufficiently clear to you?
Now, let me give you one more point to write down:
We need to get ready for company
Just like I was conscious of things I had become blind to when my parents came last week - we need to be conscious of how the world sees us and careful not to be crazy.
Different. yes. Crazy. no.
And so I want to challenge you tonight with a few simple applications:
- Is there anything you see around the church, in our worship, in our demeanor, in the way we run our services, anything - that we need to fix? (Maybe God can use you to do it)
- Ask a friend if there is anything about you and your testimony and your behavior that might be a turn off to unbelievers. (Then go work on it)
Paul concluded chapter 14 with a simple command for the church:
[!bible] 1 Corinthians 14:40 - KJV 40. Let all things be done decently and in order.
Let's do what we do decently. Let's' do it well. And let's do what we do orderly.
Let me wrap up with this: How many of you remember when Febreze first came out? They had this advertising problem. Originally Febreze didn't actually smell like anything. What Febreze does is neutralize the smells that are already there.
The problem is when you stink, or your house stinks, you get used to it. So they invented a word "noseblindness" and they built an advertising campaign around that word.
You know what noseblindness is? It's when you can't smell the bad smells in your own house because you've gotten so used to them. The cat litter box, the garbage disposal, the teenage boy's bedroom - you live with it every day so you don't notice it anymore. But when someone visits your house, they smell it immediately.
Church, I'm afraid we might have "church blindness." We might have gotten so used to the way we do things, so comfortable with our habits and our methods, that we can't see what visitors see when they walk through our doors.
Just like I needed my parents to visit to see the bare subfloor and the missing door, maybe we need to ask ourselves: what would an unbeliever see if they visited our church? What would they think about our worship? Our attitudes? The way we treat each other?
The Corinthians had gotten so caught up in their spiritual experiences that they forgot about the very people Jesus came to save. They had "church blindness" - they couldn't see how crazy they looked to the outside world.
Paul's solution was simple: think about the unbeliever. Consider the visitor. Make sure everything you do can be understood and appreciated by someone who doesn't know your church culture.
Tonight, we're going to have a business meeting. We're going to discuss church matters and make decisions as a body. But let's remember - even in how we conduct our business, we're representing Christ to a watching world.
Let's be a church that's always ready for company. Let's be people who are conscious of our testimony, who do things decently and in order, who remember that the world is watching and our witness matters.
Because somewhere out there is someone's unsaved dad, someone's unbelieving spouse, someone's lost friend from work - and they might just visit our church. When they do, let's make sure they don't think we're crazy. Let's make sure they see Christ in us.
Let's pray.
