It's Too Late to Have Church As Usual

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Preached Sunday evening, August 14, 2022, late in a long revival service at the church carried by the Apostolic Messages channel (pastor, Brother Epley), after more than an hour of worship and choir singing. He promised to preach quick — the hour was late in both senses, he said: late tonight, and late for the church in the world — and read Proverbs 24:30-34, the field of the slothful and the vineyard of the man void of understanding: once no doubt a beautiful place, found grown over with thorns and its hedge broken down, and the observer's lesson — "Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: so shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man." His subject: "It's too late to have church as usual."

The sermon is a defence of the church joined to a warning to it. First the defence: the church is the bride of Christ — God's wife — and critics should be careful how they talk about her; the door of salvation is still open only because she is still here, and the Holy Ghost is the difference-maker who gives people what they need to make it through what God does not simply fix. Then the warning: tasting the Holy Ghost and joining the bride is not a licence to coast. The vineyard did not fall into ruin because its keeper left for another vineyard; he was still there — he had simply gotten lazy and complacent with what God gave him. Isaiah's vineyard makes the stakes plain: fruitlessness is what brought God's judgment and the hedge's removal. The dangerous place is neither the backslider who walked away nor the sinner who has never come in, but the saint sitting in the land of satisfaction saying with Esau, "I have enough" — when in reality it takes only a little sleep and a little slumber for spiritual poverty to come on anyone, this strong, blessed, growing church included. "If God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he also spare not thee" is quoted against every trace of spiritual arrogance: nobody deserves this; it is grace, and somebody paid the price for the atmosphere this church takes for granted. The anointing is needed as much in the pew, the choir, the Sunday school class, and the Walmart aisle as in the pulpit.

His evidence is the church's own recent history. COVID emptied the sanctuary — his pastor preaching to a near-empty room, services online and in parking lots — and fear drove people deeper: backsliders prayed through, sinners received the Holy Ghost, the complacent caught fire; the church has always thrived under pressure. The first service back, after months without a handshake or a hug, had an expectancy he has never seen matched at any conference or camp meeting of his life. And then, within weeks, as restaurants reopened and life normalised, the urgency lifted and the church drifted back to how it was before. His word from prayer this week: don't go back to normal; don't let life lure you back to sleep. If a shutdown world could not keep the church awake, what will? He aims the close at his own generation — if we do not learn to pay the price the way the elders did, what was handed to us will be stolen; all it takes is a little sleep — and opens the altar against Ichabod: don't let it ever be said that the glory was once here, and we got comfortable, and it departed.