The second point I want to make is in Ephesians chapter 4, flip over to Ephesians chapter
4, and this one kind of ties in with what we have in Romans chapter 10 about being sent
out.
Not only do people misunderstand the purpose of soul winning, that it's to get people saved,
they think it's to bring people into the church, but what goes hand in hand with that is they
misunderstand what is the purpose of church.
They get confused on the purpose of church.
Ephesians 4 actually explains to us what the purpose of church is, beginning in verse number
11 the Bible reads, and he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and
some pastors and teachers, watch this, for the perfecting of the saints.
Let me ask you this, is that the saved or the unsaved, the saints?
So why did God give us pastors and teachers, was it for the unsaved or for the saved in
the church?
It says he did it for the perfecting of the saints, watch this, for the work of the ministry,
for the edifying of the body of Christ.
Who needs to be edified in the local church?
The body, the saints, the saved.
He says this, till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son
of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,
that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind
of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive,
but speaking the truth in love, may grow up into him in all things, which is the head
even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which
every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, watch
this, making increase, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.
See the Bible talks about us in the church as being members of the body of Christ.
Now you hear the word church member a lot but I think a lot of people have forgotten
why they call it a church member because actually the word member in the Bible means body part.
David talked about being formed and fashioned in his mother's womb and he talked about how
all of his members were being fashioned and the Bible says that we are the body of Christ
and members in particular and he talks about one person being the nose or the ear or the
hand or the foot.
We as God's people are supposed to be like a functioning body part in the body of Christ.
We are supposed to be a member of the church, not meaning that we join and carry a card
and our name is on a list somewhere, but rather that we are the body parts.
We have a function.
I mean do we have any body part that has no function?
Well maybe some evolutionist will tell you that.
They used to say there were like 100 and some body parts that are the vestigial organs,
the things you don't need.
They're just leftovers from evolution until they just keep finding out how they have a
purpose.
Your tonsils have a purpose.
You know your appendix has a purpose.
There are a lot of parts of the body that we don't think are important but they all
have a purpose.
Everything has a function that it's performing and that's how the church should be.
Everybody should be here to perform a certain function and to have a job and not to just
come here and to just be a parasite of the body, but to actually be here to serve and
to work and to operate, not to just be a dead weight that we're dragging around.
Like this is just a leg that doesn't work.
Just drag it around.
It's slowing me down.
It's not helping me get anywhere.
That's not what we need to be as a church member, dead weight.
But the purpose of the preaching and the teaching very clearly in the verses that we just read
is to edify the body of Christ, to edify the saints, to perfect the saints and so forth.
Why is that important?
Because today people think that the goal of church is to basically bring in unsaved people
and get them saved.
They think, and remember, what's the word church mean?
Assembly or congregation.
So they think that we need to bring unsaved people into the congregation and get them
saved and that's the purpose of our service.
No that is not the purpose of our church service.
Our purpose on Sunday morning is to edify the saints.
Our purpose on Sunday night is to edify the saints.
Our purpose on Wednesday night is to edify the saints.
Well then how are you reaching the unsaved?
Going out and reaching the unsaved.
That's why he said they are sent.
That's why he said how beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace and
bring glad ties of good things.
Because it's always associated with go.
It's always associated with the feet.
It's always associated with being sent.
Why?
Because our church is a called out assembly of born again baptized believers.
It's not just a crowd of people that gets preached to.
That's not a New Testament church and it's funny how everybody will define it that way
on paper but then they keep talking about how we got to bring in all these unsaved people
to church.
No, if you know somebody who's unsaved, win them to Christ.
Then bring them in.
Now, again, we're totally fine with unsaved people visiting our church and the Bible does
talk about in 1 Corinthians 14 about how an unsaved person could come to church and
be convinced of all and so forth.
But that's not the primary purpose.
Just like when we go out soul winning, we're also going to get people to come to our church
but that's not our primary purpose.
My primary purpose when I go soul winning is not to bring people to this church.
My primary purpose is to get people saved.
My secondary purpose is to try to get them to come to church.
Of course, I invite every person and try to get them to come.
But that's not the main purpose because if that were the main purpose, there would be
a better, more efficient way of doing it to bring people into the church but then we just
let our city go to hell.
Just let the city go to hell but we have more church members coming.
Yeah, this is great.
We grew by 20.
I'd rather give the gospel to 20,000.
That's what we ought to be doing and by the way, God said that he would build the church.
He said, upon this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it.
He said that there went with King Saul a band of men whose hearts God had touched.
I'll let God worry about building the church.
I'm going to do what he told me to do which is to go out and preach the gospel to every
creature.