BBC Sermon Cast

Church planting in black South Africa, at least in terms of planting solid, biblical churches, has not always proven to be a successful venture. There are some specific challenges in this regard, particularly as it relates to biblical authority. Pastor Chris Mnuguni details three specific authority challenges for church planting in black South Africa: the authority of the ancestors, the authority of the witch doctors, and the authority of the traditional leaders and elders.

Far too often, Christians are thirsty for change, and yet we do not experience what we desire. The source that satisfies our thirst is actually right in front of us, and is able to meet our need, and yet we don’t know how to experience it. We expect the change to come automatically. And nothing happens—all because we are not following the instructions; because we are not paying attention to how God enacts and affects change. But if we will pay close attention to the Bible, and to what God has revealed about how to change, then we can overcome sin and sinful habits. We can change. Our thirst for change can be satisfied. We can be refreshed to continue to run the race set before us.

We are living in some very exciting days. For Christians living in South Africa, this is doubtlessly true. We are living in the midst of some serious social upheaval, which is producing a wonderful opportunity for the church and therefore for the gospel. One of my major motivations for addressing the issue of racism, which is very front and centre, is to equip us to make the most of the opportunity to show that the only true hope for racial reconciliation is in the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and therefore in the church.

The church must speak to racism because the Bible does! We dare not bury our head, we dare not divorce it from the gospel, we dare not secularise this issue by pretending that this issue is outside of the sphere of the church. It is an issue that matters to God, and therefore it must matter to the Christian church. And so we must speak up and we must listen up!

The disciple of Jesus Christ follows in the footsteps of his Master. This requires regeneration and repentance—ongoing repentance. The result is an ongoing reformation of life. And the change is remarkable.

Christians desire to change. The Holy Spirit, who dwells within us, is concerned with holiness. There is a battle that rages within us as the flesh wars against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh.

In Ephesians 4:17–24, Paul lays a doctrinal foundation that undergirds our ongoing transformation as a community of faith. As these verses reveal, we have experienced a remarkable change from a grotesque condition, by a gracious conversion, to godly conduct.

Because we love the church, we desire her best. We desire that our own local church, as well as the global church, experience more and more of the best of God’s gifts, being remade into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. We desire to change from the way we are to the way we are destined to be. This matter of the church changing as it conforms to Jesus Christ is a major theme Ephesians 4. But the all-important question is, how do Christians change? We will begin to study the answer to this in Ephesians 4:17–24.

It can be healthy to keep a large vision before you. If the vision is rooted in biblical truth, then a sanctified imagination is a good thing. The Bible stirs our imagination. It presents the ideal of the Christian life and this ideal is what we are to pursue. Such a pursuit will deliver us from mediocrity. The vision that Paul describes in Ephesians 4 is that of the church growing to such perfect maturity that it resembles the perfect and glorious Lord Jesus Christ. Paul’s imagination was “running wild,” yet it was an inspired imagination. In this study, we want to consider Paul’s inspired imagination with a goal to stirring our own imagination of what we as a local church can be—and what the global church one day will be.

Do we truly worship God from the heart or do we just go through the motions? When we go through the motions, worship becomes perfunctory, merely a matter of habit. In Malachi 1, the prophet faced off against a generation of God’s people that had fallen into the habit of worship, and he called them back to true worship of the living God. His words serve as a warning against mediocrity in worship.

The Christian is a person who has been effectively called by God to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ—irresistibly summonsed to repent of their sins and to pledge fidelity and loyalty to follow the Lord Jesus Christ, having embraced Him as Saviour. As disciples follow the Lord Jesus Christ they increasingly take on the character of the Lord Jesus, which is manifested in their conduct.

Psalm 146 comes from the heart, hands and harp of someone with happy faith. He is happy because of his faith in the God who helps and who therefore gives him hope. The psalmist was happy, and he wants his readers to be happy too. But more to the point, he expects those who are happy to speak like it, to sing like it, to submit like it, to serve like it and, generally, to live like it.