In this insightful episode, delve into the true meaning of the church, as presented by Bob Enyart in his first-ever sermon. Experience the passionate narrative of a church that is not merely a place of worship but a battleground against spiritual warfare as it seeks to enforce God’s law while offering grace. Reflect on stories of transformative faith, empowering believers to judge with righteous judgment and convert enemies into allies, while tackling modern issues with biblical truth.
Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Bob Enyart Live. Today we’re doing something really special and going back to the first ever, the first ever Bob Enyart sermon at Denver Bible Church. And going back and listening to this, this was January of 2000. This was one year before I was born. And going back to this was so fun and listening to the start of a church that we did not realize how impactful this church would be. So with that said, let’s jump right into this. This is Bob Enyart’s first sermon. Let’s jump right into the sermon.
SPEAKER 02 :
Welcome to our first church service. We’re here, we’re in the new year. Now what do we do? This is our first Sunday morning church service. Now at least we know the meaning of that simple sentence. This is our first Sunday morning church service. I mean, the most complicated word there probably is service. That’s a celebration, a ritual, a ceremony. But how about that word church? What does that mean? What is a church? What are we going to be doing here now that we are here? A church is a place where Christians get together to pray, to worship, to fellowship, and to hear good stories. Well, three out of four ain’t bad so far. But is that all? What else does God want to happen at church? The Lord wants church to be the place where his ambassadors receive their marching orders. He wants a church to be the place where his soldiers get their swords sharpened so that they can pierce asunder soul and spirit. He wants a church to be the place where enemy spies infiltrate just to be discovered and thwarted. God wants a church to be a forward encampment in front of enemy lines, into the battle, drawing fire, and then returning a barrage. A young Christian man might say, I’m not sure where to aim, sir. Just fire, join the battle, we need you. Look at the incoming rounds, shoot toward them. You know, God wants the church to be the place in town where the wounded return to have their injuries mended. He wants a church to be the place where his troops get rearmed for battle. And he wants the church to be the place where the newly revived are sent back out, back out to the battlefield, perhaps to a victorious skirmish, perhaps to be wounded, perhaps never to return. Fighting, weapons, battles, swords. Bob, this is a church. What about love? Where’s the love in all that? Well, the love was in the Patriot missiles, you know, that shot down the Scuds over the skies of Israel. And the love was in the barrel of the guns aimed at the concentration camp guards, threatening them to release the innocent prisoners they held. The love is in the barbs sent out toward a homosexual who hears, perhaps for the first time, the truth of his condition. The love is in the warning of the wicked of their wicked ways. The love is in the condemnation of the local high school and its loose young girls and in shouting of their filthy reputation. There’s the love. And in the warning of the wicked that if they do not repent, if they do not repent, then a brutally imposed death penalty without mercy will not compare to the punishment they will receive at the hand of God for ignoring the crucified Christ. There is the love. What is the danger of sharing love that deep and that committed? Well, you might not be liked. You might be rejected, persecuted maybe even. You may anger your loved ones and your friends. But you will have loved them if you warn them, like only a true friend has the courage to do. Some, if you love people like this, some you will win over to eternal salvation. And then we will rejoice right along with the angels in heaven. But many more you will lose. But you will have warned them. And throughout all eternity, they will know. And we will know. God will know and you will know that you tried. You tried to reach them. You tried. You loved them. What is a church? It’s a gathering of men and women and children who take Paul’s advice in Ephesians 6.10 to be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. It’s a gathering of men whom Paul instructs to put on the whole armor of God Put on the whole armor of God that you might be able to stand against the enemy so that we can battle against the rulers of the darkness of this age. Thus we’re commanded to take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand. Withstand what? The onslaught. that comes at you from every direction, every day. You have a family, children, grandchildren that you want to see up, see to grow up, to be healthy young men and women, to honor God in all around them. Whether it’s on billboards, on your drive to school or work, or in magazine covers, in the grocery store checkout, Television, the commercials, the movies, the things they hear from the neighbor kids, just everywhere there’s an attack from every direction at every moment against your family. And that’s why God tells us to equip ourselves and put on his armor, to stand having girded your waist with truth, put on the breastplate of righteousness, shod your feet with the gospel, Above all, take the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit. What is the sword of the Spirit? Paul says in that verse, it’s the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit. And then Paul adds, he says, “…for me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel.” The mystery of the gospel. That’s what the battle is all about, the mystery between law and grace, the mystery of the gospel. Attacking the enemy with the law. You see, we want to minister grace to him, but in order to do that effectively, we first must attack him and all his followers with the law, lashing at him in the dark with the accusations of the law. That’s how men find out that they’re sinners. Where do we find those accusations of the law that we’re to bring against the unbelievers so that they know that they need Jesus Christ so that they’ll learn? Where do we find that? Well, it’s in our hand. It’s on our sword. We find it right on the edge of the blade of the sword, the accusations of the law. They’re bound up in the Word of God. In fact, at the beginning and at the end of your Bible, you find the law, the two-edged sword that God has given us to wield in this battle. And then, if we succeed in our mission to wound our enemy, what does that mean, to wound our enemy? When people think they stand, when they think they’re whole, when they think they’re healthy and righteous, they don’t need a God because they’ve invented God. Whatever they think is right is right. When people stand like that, they’re in desperate need of the truth, desperate need, because they will go to hell as enemies of God unless they realize that they’re hurting and that they’re desperate. And so we seek to wound them in their very soul so that they’ll learn that they’re sinful and that they’re in need of forgiveness and healing. Well, When we wound an unbeliever, and then as he lies gasping, bleeding, before his pain transforms into the grief of eternal damnation, then at that moment we could offer him the healing ointment, the water that will quench his thirst, the illumination that will light up his path home. Then we can offer him the grace of God. the mystery of the Gospel. You work to defeat him. Now God can rebuild him when you minister to him from the grace of the gospel of the Lord. But before he will look for that healing of grace, he needs to know that he is fatally wounded, that he’s a fallen soldier. He needs to know that. Paul says in Galatians 3 that the law leads men to Christ. The law condemns them. The law tells them that they’re sinners and wicked, headed to hell, and they need to hear the ministry of the law so that they’re willing to ask God to forgive them. Christians have given up on the ministry of the law. They’ve thrown it out. They’ve said, this is the age of grace, which it is for us in the body of Christ. But people who are not in the body of Christ, for them, it’s still the age of the law. And on judgment day, when they stand before God and he sentences them to hell, will they be judged by grace or by law? By law. Romans 3.19, Paul says, and this is true of today, that all the world is under the law and guilty before God. All the world is. So in order to convince this fallen soldier, one of the ranks of the enemy, that he needs forgiveness, that he needs to be made whole, that he needs to be healed, we have to judge him. We have to judge him. And perhaps that will be the main mission of our church. Certainly, it’s been my personal focus of the last decade, teaching Christians to judge. and refuting the judge not mentality. Now, some of you may have seen the latest issue of a popular newsletter. It’s called Washington Watch. I printed off their lead story off the internet so I could show you just the headline. Washington Watch is published by Family Research Council out of DC. And Family Research Council, you may know about them. Focus on the Family, James Dobson is a big supporter, helped to get Family Research Council going. Their president for years has been Gary Bauer. Gary Bauer, who’s now running for president. Maybe running is too strong of a verb, but he’s thinking about the presidency. Well, their newsletter is very popular. And the headline, the banner headline across their newsletter, this latest issue, this is just a print off from the internet, but Judge Not, Sound Theology or Sound Bite? That is pretty incredible. That is the first time in my life I’ve seen a major ministry take a bold statement and say there’s something wrong with Judge Not. There’s something wrong with it. Because when Jesus uttered those words in Matthew 7, he said, judge not like a hypocrite. First, stop doing the same sin your brother is doing, and then you will be able to judge him. Because if you don’t judge him, Jesus said in John 7, 24, that we are to judge. He commanded us to judge with righteous judgment. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians that we have the mind of Christ and he who is spiritual judges all things. And he said, do you not know that we will judge the angels? Do you not know that we saints will judge the world? And are you unable to judge in the slightest matters? I’m ashamed of you. So it’s true that the Bible teaches don’t judge like a hypocrite. Don’t judge wrongly. Don’t judge on your own standard. But surely we could tell a child molester that he’s wrong. Or a man selling drugs to kids on a playground that what he’s doing is evil and he better repent. And those things are judging. There’s an entire body of scripture that teaches us to judge. Only judge not, Jesus said, like a hypocrite. So we take encouragement from this development. that we’ve been pounding on this. I don’t think there’s been a day in 10 years that we haven’t talked about judging to believers and unbelievers alike, and that good men who’ve been made good by Jesus Christ need to judge. The world desperately needs us to judge, and we are making a difference. And I pray that this coming decade, Judge not will lose its reign as the shared anthem of the church and the wicked. Because whether it’s Planned Parenthood or homosexuals or Hollywood or Hillary, they all chant, judge not, judge not. And we have to ask ourselves, why are so many wicked? taking up that refrain because it’s been twisted and it’s taken the Christians out of the battle. What is a church? The Greek word for church is ekklesia. There’s nothing especially spiritual about that word. Ekklesia is a called out group. And any group could potentially be called an ekklesia. Any group meeting could be meeting in an ekklesia. We Christians today are members of the body of Christ. And the body of Christ is a term, body, that only the Apostle Paul used in the Bible. And we are uniquely referred to as the body of Christ. Prior to the body, descendants of Abraham who believed in God, they were called members of Israel’s kingdom. They were members of God’s kingdom on earth. Now, members of either group of Israel, Israel’s kingdom, or the body of Christ can be called a church. Whether it’s in the Old Testament or the New, it could be called the church. And we could speak overall of the church of God, incorporating all believers from every age. I’d like you to turn to Matthew 16 to hear from Jesus on this question of what is a church. And I’d like to look at the at Christ’s first use of the term ecclesia as recorded in the New Testament. Matthew chapter 16 says, verse 15 and then 16, Jesus was speaking to his disciples and he said, but who do you say that I am? Simon Peter answered and said, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And that’s what a Christian is. Someone whose life acknowledges the person of Jesus Christ as the son of the living God. And the Bible loves to refer to the Lord as the living God, not the stagnant God that has crept into Christian theology, but the living, vibrant, passionate God. Jesus, you are the son of the living God. Verse 17, Jesus answered and said to him, Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock, the rock of Christ’s identity, who he is, on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Hades is what we would say in English, hell. The gates of hell shall not prevail against my church. Wow. Cool. Storming the gates of hell. You know, you can do that. At work, you could do that from the sidewalk outside of an abortion mill. You could storm the gates of hell over the dinner table. You can do that calling into a talk show or posting on a website forum. You can do that over a backyard fence or from the inside of a limousine. You know, Jane Fonda, when you speak of the gates of hell and you think of the sentries that are keeping guard, or shuffling people in. You know, you might think of Hillary on one side and Jane Fonda on the other. But storming the gates of hell, there’s a report on World Net Daily by Joseph Fara. And the report I’m going to share with you is a little bit hard to believe. It’s a little hard to believe, and if it wasn’t from such a credible source like World Net Daily and Joseph Fara, I wouldn’t repeat it. He’s talked to people who are close to Jane Fonda. And you know, she’s just split up with Ted Turner, who’s one of the few men there at the gates of hell position. Ted Turner, the man who said that Christianity is for losers. a leader of the liberals who say respect all religions, diversity and tolerance, honor all views. But he was quoted in Talk Magazine in the issue in which Hillary admitted that her husband has been misusing women for many years. Earlier last year, Ted Turner was quoted as saying, Christianity is for losers. So he and Jane Fonda split up, which has made the news. But this hasn’t made the news yet. According to Joseph Farah, who’s talked to some of her friends, Jane Fonda has become a born-again Christian. Now that is really hard to believe. That’s hard to believe. And if you believe that readily, we have an investment that we’d like to talk to you about. But Jane Fonda just may have, I’m going to give you some of the details, she just may have become a Christian. It’s hard to believe. It’s very hard to believe. And throughout my life, you hear about some celebrity who’s become a Christian, and then they’re doing a nude scene in some major release motion picture. So quite often it’s not believable. But in this case, World Net Daily quoted something she said a year and a half ago. Now the story goes that two years ago, her limousine driver began to witness to it. And she got very angry at him and annoyed, and she was uncomfortable with the conversation. But then she grew to welcome this discussion about God and the Bible, and eventually she started going to church. and Bible study. And it was reported by Joseph Farah that she was recently at an environmental conference and they were all going to meditate and she refused and said, you’d be better off praying to Jesus. Now, if that’s true, if that’s true, that’s big. There was an, maybe the devil could get saved after all. There was an extended quote in that report on the internet from her remarks to the National Press Club a while back, in fact, a year and a half ago, where she was asked about the prudish Christian, the Christian coalition, and who, they’re against sex education for kids, and how could they be so cruel and so uncaring for children’s well-being. And Jane Fonda went on with a lengthy babbling response that was completely contradictory. It’s like, you know, she has some reasonable intelligence. Why is she contradicting herself and saying, she was saying kind words toward Christians, even to some leaders of the Christian coalition. But then she was lashing out viciously at them. and then saying kind things, and then saying that when she actually speaks with them, she realizes how naive she’s truly been. Could you imagine that being uttered? Think of Randall Terry saying, well, I met with the leaders of Planned Parenthood, and I didn’t realize how naive I was. That can’t be uttered. That can’t happen. So when Jane Fonda said those words, an astute observer would realize there’s some turmoil going on inside of her. Nine years ago, she, one of the leading feminists who’ve told the women of America and the world, you don’t need a man, you need a career to make you happy. And you don’t need a home, you need daycare provided by the government to make you happy. That was her message. And she’s destroyed the lives of millions of women who bought into the feminist lie and traded a marriage and a family and raising kids for rush hour traffic and daycare bills. Well, I was on Politically Incorrect a couple months ago and brought up Jane Fonda. And I was mocked for it. They were saying, Jane Fonda, she hasn’t been in the news since the 60s. What are you talking about? And I said, oh, she’s recently said that she was never a fulfilled woman until she quit her job and married a strong man and stayed at his side. I almost fell over when she said that. But I said, do you realize that she is now admitting that she misled millions? And if a woman wants to have a career, that’s great. but to tell every woman that you’ll only be happy with a degree and a career. That’s a lie. And so we noticed way back in 1991 that Jane Fonda still had a spark of warmth in that cold heart of hers. And maybe that true womanhood that was within her might be open to receiving truth from a relationship, from someone around her. So it was her limousine driver. that stormed the gates of hell, that said to Jane Fonda that you are evil and you need Jesus Christ or you’re in trouble. Wow. The gates of hell shall not prevail against my church. What does that mean, the gates of hell? What does that mean? Well, gates are not offensive weapons. If you’re going to attack someone, some village, you’re not going to bring your gates with you. You’re going to leave your gates behind at the entrance of your city just in case someone attacks you. Gates are defensive weapons. They’re not offensive. Your fortified borders don’t go with you into battle. They stay behind. Offensive weapons include a sword. Now that’s part of the weapons that you take out to battle. And using resources to outfit an army of soldiers with body armor, mobile shields, swords, that all suggests an aggressive battle plan. If you’re worried about just hunkering down because the enemy’s coming, then you’re going to pour your resources into fortifying the ramparts of the city. reinforcing the walls, a thicker gate. But when you start to equip an army for a mobile battle, that means that you’re an aggressor. You’re not just staying fending off attacks, you’re going after the enemy. The weapons of our warfare and the armor that God tells us to put on are forward-looking armor, suggesting that God wants an aggressive posture, not always defending our territory, but taking ground from the enemy, storming the gates of hell. The church at large seems to have misplaced its battlefield instructions. Consider Christ’s words again. The gates of hell will not prevail against my church. Gates are not offensive, but defensive. You don’t come up against your enemy’s gates unless you’re storming his stronghold. That’s when you come up against his gates. And Jesus said his gates will not prevail. We have the knowledge, the certainty of the knowledge that because of Jesus Christ and the weapons of warfare that he has given us, that we could win battles. We don’t have to only defend ourselves. We can go out as the aggressors and win battles. God does not want us simply to sustain the blows from the enemy and hold our own. He wants us on the offensive, storming the very gates of hell. What is a church? It’s an encampment which houses the army of God, ready for battle, ready to obey whatever command he shouts. God bless you guys.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, and this is Dominic Enyart again in studio. Thanks for listening to that. If you want, you can get access to all of Bob Enyart’s sermons from that very first sermon up until his latest sermon in 2021. If you want to get those, you can get those by going to Enyart.shop for just $10 all of the entire Bob Enyart sermon library. You don’t want to miss it. Again, Enyart.shop.
