Ep. 034 The Regenerating, Self-Replicating, Salvation Seeking Church

Welcome to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. We are a Bible-Believing Church located

in beautiful British Columbia, Canada. We are proudly part of the Christian Fellowship

Ministries with 3,000 churches around the world. We are a church focused on world evangelism,

discipleship and church planting. Here we will share recent sermons from P.H.S.A. Church

and other sermons from throughout our fellowship. I am Pastor David Bickford and I will be your

host for this podcast. I thank you for listening today and we hope these messages are a blessing

to you and bring you closer to God.

Hello and welcome back to the Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. My name is David Bigford.

I'm the pastor here up in Salmon Arm and the message that I put together today is the

Regenerating Self-Replicating Salvation-Seeking Church. A subheading for this would be Blessings

or Blessing, Fruitfulness and Increase. The text that we are going to be working off of

is going to be Genesis, chapter 1 verse 28, chapter 9 verse 7 and chapter 28 verse 3.

Genesis 1:28

Those will be the portions of scripture that we are going to be using as a jumping off

point today. When I was thinking about putting this message together, the idea of regeneration,

self-replication is something we can see in nature quite regularly, if you will. One idea

is the breeding cycle of rabbits. Unlike many other animals, a rabbit matures early in its

life and can begin reproducing very quickly. Its cycle starts very, very early on in its

lifetime. A doe or a female rabbit will begin to breed around three to five months and bucks

or male rabbits can begin roughly one month later in life. Rabbits are able to have about

60 babies per year. They can fully wean and raise them as expected. This is a pretty crazy

idea even when you consider humanity and the fact of our period from conception to birth

being so much longer, rabbits being able to produce 60 offspring per year. A female rabbit

is receptive to mating 14 days out of 16 days. They are clearly built to reproduce in a rapid

succession. Female rabbits and the gestation period are much different than most mammals,

which usually has that period of time between 31 to 33 days, but for rabbits it is like

the 16 day window. Let's look at our text as we keep this in mind, the idea of the church

and the idea of fruitfulness and the idea of regeneration and replication. In Genesis

1, 28 it says, God blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and increase in number,

fill the earth and subdue it, rule over the fish and the sea and the birds in the sky

and over every living creature that moves on the ground. In Genesis 9, 7 it says, and

you be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. And then

later in Genesis 28, 3 it says, God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply

you that you may become a company of people. Before we jump in, it's important to note

that in society today there's often times people saying, well the times are really bad,

we shouldn't be looking to have kids. This goes against the teachings of God in the scripture

which is always calling us to fruitfulness. We're not supposed to be worried about the

overtaxing of the planet in terms of birth rates because what we actually see in history

right now is people telling us there's too many people on the planet. Meanwhile Canada

has even with the amount of immigration that we've had in the last 10 years still only

has roughly 40 million people in a country that's the size of Russia. It's one of the

largest countries in the world and yet we have a very, very small population. When you

compare us to older civilizations like Russia or China or India, they have way, way more

population than we have. Russia has the population fairly equivalent to the United States, whereas

China and India have populations that are over a billion people. And yet we're still

told that we should be fearful of overpopulation when we're called to be fruitful and multiply

according to the scripture. And so I don't want to get off into the weeds there because

this is not really going to be focused on that kind of regeneration or self-replication

but it's important that we put the Bible in context. And it's also important to understand

that while people are telling us that society is overpopulated, in reality we're coming

to a precipice of declining population. When you look at China and their demographics,

they're getting ready to head off a cliff of negative population because of certain

policies that were enacted by their government throughout the history that were very damaging

to the people of China, but it's also going to be hugely damaging to their growth as a

nation going forward. Similarly, in the United States, they are down to about a 1.7 births

per couple in the United States, which is below what is necessary to even maintain populations.

So when you remove out the immigration that's happened, then you start to see a big issue

because less people are going to be born, which means there's going to be less people

to fund a lot of the systems that have been put in place. And so it's kind of like a Ponzi

scheme when you get down to it because we don't have the growth necessary to sustain

the growth that we've had in the past. And it's the only natural thing that's going

to happen is retraction. But I'm getting a little off topic here. So let's get into

why I'm discussing this, why I brought this idea up, and why am I talking about the mating

cycles of rabbits or the continued call to fruitfulness and increase that's laid out

over and over and over again in the Bible. The Word of God is a blueprint for our lives

and the hysterosity of the Bible should be the foundation of our faith. The lessons taught

in the Bible are lessons learned throughout the entirety of human history. The life of

Adam and Eve gives us the first glimpse of the desired outcome that God has or God has

for his creation. His call to the first couple was to be fruitful and multiply. And the same

call was given to Noah, was given to Jacob, and was given to many others throughout the

Old Testament. So even while the Israelites were slaves to the Pharaoh and exiled into

Babylon, they were mandated to grow in faith and in numbers. Faith and in numbers is the

root of the command. We are commanded by God to grow in our faith and to spread that faith

to others that they might also be saved. That is why we see the language shift in the New

Testament towards a different kind of growth. The growth of one's family and one's nation

becomes less highlighted whereas the focus turns to our hearts and to the hearts of others

that we come in contact with. Having a massive Bible-believing family is great, but being

part of the kingdom on the move is even better. In Matthew 28, 16-20 we read this powerful

piece of scripture which is called the Great Commission and it says in verse 16, Now the

eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them, and when

they saw him they worshipped him, but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them,

All authority in heaven and on earth have been given to me. So go therefore and make

disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy

Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with

you always to the end of the age. So as we read this powerful piece of scripture, you

know we have to reflect that as Christians we are called to have a different view of

the world and a different call that's being placed upon our lives. Back in April, I preached

a sermon that was last April, so this was like a year ago, that was subtitled Prospecting

for You. The reason for that subtitle was simple. In obedience to Christ we are looking

for that next soul who is ready to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Acts 1, 7-8

it says, He said to them, It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has

fixed by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you,

and you will be my witness in Jerusalem and in all of Judea and Samaria and to the end

of the earth. In Acts 12-24 it says, But the word of God increased and multiplied. So here

we have this powerful, powerful picture of the early church and the command from our

Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ being to go into the world and you're going to be regenerated

by the Spirit, but you're going to be self-replicating by sharing the message of Jesus Christ as

we seek a church that's focused on salvation. So it's from this jumping off point that we

need to realize and understand that we are called to be fruitful for the kingdom's sake

and despite the conditions of the world that we live in today. How do we go about the work

of a kingdom? How do we overcome this fallen world and remain fruitful, faithful, and victorious?

We have to learn how to regenerate. When we are injured, this can be for many different

kinds of injuries, spiritual, physical, psychological. We have to learn how to self-replicate or

better yet replicate Christ and others. But finally, we need to always be focused on the

goal that is salvation for others. We need to seek out the loss for that is the Great

Commission. Now it brings me to the first point, which is regeneration. The church suffers

in loss, but can heal itself in Christ. In Titus 3.5, it says,

The need for us as individuals to regenerate is critical to our own faith and salvation.

Even more important is the ability for the church to continually regenerate in Christ.

Christianity has always been under attack by this fallen world and the demonic forces

that wail against the righteousness of Jesus Christ. The crucifixion of Jesus was an attempt

to cut off the head of our faith. This attempt was unsuccessful because nothing the devil

can do will defeat the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. That being said, there are

times when the devil will strike through the failings of men. Back in 2021, Hillsong Church

was affected by a major scandal. The Hillsong Church scandal imperils the future of the

megachurch and the scandalous stories out of Hillsong kept piling up.

We read a little excerpt from an MSNBC columnist. It says,

The hits keep coming at Hillsong Church, but they aren't worship songs. The latest scandal

regarding the global megachurch involves a 2021 internal investigation report leaked

to the Christian Post that, according to the publication, details extensive stories of

sexual abuse and misconduct under the former pastorate of Carl Lentz at Hillsong, New York

City. In that report, which was conducted by a New York law firm at the church's behest,

Lentz is the accused of more than one extramarital affair. He is also accused of causing mental

illness among staffers and volunteers and running a church where, according to the Christian

Post, there were multiple incidents of consensual or non-consensual sexual interactions between

church leaders, congregants, staff, volunteers, and non-churchgoers.

Hillsong's biggest draw was the charismatic leadership that was attached to the entertainment

world as well as the political world. So what are we supposed to do when our leaders fail

us? What is the appropriate response to these kind of situations? In our fellowship, we

have procedures for dealing with these kind of issues. Many would consider the way that

we deal with these issues to be quite severe, but not without purpose. We can also look

directly to the Word of God for methods to deal with the injury in the church and how

we can heal these wounds. Matthew 18, 15-17 says, If your brother sins against you, go

and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained

your brother, but if he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, that every

charge may be established by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to

listen to them, tell it to the church, and if he refuses to listen even to the church,

let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. We can look at this because we had a similar

incident happen with two other leaders of other churches recently where one called another

out in public. All we can hope is that there was an attempt beforehand to reach out between

the leaders before it became the scene that it was with the other leader being on stage

and basically coming against what was happening in that event. These kind of things happen

and we have to remember Jesus' way of handling these things is different than the way that

we typically would want to. So when you think of Hillsong and their investigation, it was

started internally. There was a desire to expose the sin and hopefully heal from it.

In fact, if you look at the animal kingdom, we can learn something about how at least

one animal deals with this issue of contamination. So this is about the amazing regenerative

abilities that we see in nature. Whether making a quick getaway or recovering from an injury,

certain creatures have incredible capabilities to regenerate parts of their body. Off with

their head, the sea slug Elysia marginata never loses its head, but it does sometimes

lose its body. Researchers suspect the slug detaches its head when its body becomes infected

with parasites. The head continues crawling around until the creature regrows its missing

body parts within 20 days. Here's a powerful view of something we can look at in nature

that God can do in our own lives. Now we can't regrow our bodies, but spiritually, the church,

we can regenerate. In Mark 9, 43 it says, and if your hand causes you to sin, cut it

off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands and go to hell to the

unquenchable fire. So as a church, we have, we need to be able to continually regenerate

ourselves in the word of God. Sometimes that means that parts are left behind. This might

be new convictions are held to and other things are cut out from our life or the church body,

but it is for the sanctity and the health of the body so that we do not become complacent

to the will of God in our lives. Now I'm not saying go off and chop your hand and I don't

believe Jesus was saying that either, but I believe it was the stark contrast to the

culture at the time of covering and hiding sin that made his, his parable or his story

so much more impactful to the audience he was speaking to. In Romans 13, 11 it says,

beside this, you know that the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep for

salvation is near to us now than it was when we first believe the goal is to be a healthy

believer for Christ and part of a healthy church or a group of believers in Christ so

that we can communally be self replicating believers and, and a self replicating church.

This brings me to my next point, which is self replicating and John eight 31 it says,

so Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, if you abide in my word, you are truly

my disciples. Matthew four 19 says, and he said to them, follow me and I will make you

fishers of men as a group of believers and a church body. We are meant to grow in our

faith and to spread that faith far and wide. Then we are meant to send out workers to new

areas to start again and do the same thing so that the whole earth will be reached with

the gospel. It is critical that this remains our focus. Unfortunately, many churches today

have lost this vision to seek the lost and they have become comfortable to stay where

they are and simply maintain what they have. Churches can lose their ability to self replicate

and this is a sad eventuality. Let's look again at the animal kingdom for why. Plenarians

or flatworms, if you cut them into pieces, each piece can grow into a new worm. See cucumbers

have bodies that can grow to be three feet long and if you cut them into pieces, each

one can become a new C cucumber. Sponges can divide can be divided and in that case the

cells of the sponge will regrow and combined exactly as before. A church should be able

to expand and grow and then when attack or is broken up like the first church was in

Israel, they can become a number of churches in a number of cities. This is critical to

the call of God and to the health of the body believers. It is part of our necessary resoluteness

to stand for the gospel even in the face of adversity. This is even more important in

today's day and age with everything going on even with the US Congress trying to make

certain parts of the Bible considered hate speech. And I don't have even a problem saying

this certain people on both sides of the aisle, Democrat and Republican, voted to make certain

things that if you were to read from the Bible, we could be considered hate speech and this

is a very scary thing in our day and age. So we will come under attack and we have to

understand that and we have to be able to remain a healthy body of believers when the

attacks come. And each of these examples from nature, it's important to notice the fact

that the worm, the C cucumber, the sponge did not become a new creature, but each segment

became an individual creature, but still the same as what came before it. So we, the church,

need to be able to withstand what the world's going to throw at us and what the world is

throwing at us and remain faithful to Christ. That way we remain rooted in Christ even as

the world falls further and further away. We remain able to spread the seed of the gospel

further and further while remaining strong in our faith. Again, we look at nature and

we see plants like dandelions, milkweed, cottonwood, trees, and how they take advantage of tufts

of hairs attached to their seeds called papai. These papai can catch the wind like little

parachutes allowing seeds to sail for a hundred miles propelled by the wind. We need to remain

focused on the purpose of the gospel and therefore the church. That purpose is salvation, our

salvation, yours, mine, theirs. And just like these little seeds on the wind, we should

be able to send out workers into the rest of the world where these seeds can take root

into new lives and new churches and new converts to Christ can be born. And they can start

that cycle all over again. So this brings me to my final point, which is the salvation-seeking

church. Matthew 4.19 says, and he said to them, follow me and I will make you fishers

and men. We read that in John 4.28.30 it says, so the woman left her water jar and went away

into the town and said to the people, come and see a man who told me all that I ever

did. Can this be the Christ? They went out of the town and were coming to him. And then

later in that same chapter, John 4.39, many Samaritans from the town believed in him because

of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. When Jesus called upon his first

disciples, he called to them by way of their occupation. These fishermen were challenged

to become something more than what they were. Instead of seeking fish to catch, they were

called to catch the hearts of men and women with the gospel. They were called to be fishers

of men. They did not fully understand this. They didn't understand what this call meant,

but we know that this was the call to salvation, not only for themselves, but for the whole

world in Christ Jesus. Later on, when Jesus met with the woman at the well, the disciples

were given another valuable lesson. The woman was confronted with the revelation of who

Jesus is and we see her salvation in Christ, but we also see the immediate desire to share

the transformation to others. She becomes a witnessing machine for the gospel of Jesus

Christ. Time and again in the Bible, we see people grab ahold of the gospel. The gospel

will grab ahold of them and then they just immediately, it changes their lives. It changes

their goals. It changes their desires. We need to hold on to that fire. We need to spread

that fire and share the message of Jesus Christ far and wide. In doing so, we must never forget

that the purpose is salvation and not condemnation. In John 3, 16 through 21, there's a very famous

scripture that I'm going to read here. It says, for God so loved the world that he gave

his only son and that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Everybody's heard that part, but I really like this next part. For God did not send

his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved

through him, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe in

him is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God.

And this is the judgment. The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness

rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things

hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever

does what is true comes to the light so that it may be clearly seen that his works have

been carried out in God. The prodigal son story shows us another picture of this. It

shows us how we should always hold out to the hope that the lost will find their way

home and that we should be glad for their salvation and not jealous of the immense grace

of God. And Luke 1532 says it was fitting to celebrate and to be glad that this younger

brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and he is now found.

So in closing, let's think about regeneration. We need to be able to regenerate ourselves

in Christ, healing ourselves with the word of God, with our brothers and sisters in Christ,

strengthening ourselves in prayer, fellowship, and through common purpose. The ultimate regeneration

was our rebirth in Christ. We are a new creation in Christ and in Christ we are transformed.

In 2 Corinthians 5, 16-17 it says, From now on, therefore, we regard no one according

to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard Him

thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has

passed away. Behold, the new has come. Self-replicate. Ultimately, disciple-making is about making

more disciples. It's pretty common sense, right? But a lot of this, the church has seemed

to miss. They want to be a club that doesn't require growth. They want it to be all about

pizza parties or, you know, buff, you know, what is it called? Potlucks and different

things of that nature. Or they want one massive church where there's very, very little going

on in between the individuals there. There might be a core of believers that are trying,

but oftentimes the breaking up of that larger body is what's necessary for the members of

that body to truly grow. So it's often very easy to get so wrapped up in our own personal

growth and the growth of your specific group that it's easy to forget that one of the most

important things we can do as disciples is to make more disciples. This often involves

leaving the group we are in and starting a new group. It also involves sharing the gospel

with the lost and leading them as they become followers of Jesus Christ and have personal

relations with them and with other disciples. Now what I meant about that, about leaving

one group and starting, that's church planting. That's within the structure of church planting

or starting a Bible study on your own, like a small group Bible study on a college campus

or at your school. That's what I mean by that. You're not leaving the gathering of the brethren

necessarily, but you're becoming another offshoot of growth from it. In 2 Timothy 2, it talks

about how the most well used treasured scripture verses on discipleship. And in that verse

of scripture it says, and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses

and trusts faithful men who will be able to teach others also. So here's three areas of

replication. Replicate yourself. The first arena replication is to replicate yourself.

We will not initiate a movement if we have not successfully initiated the first arena.

You may lead someone to Christ and have the opportunity to show this new believer how

to meditate on God's word, pray, live in a biblical community and replicate themselves

in someone else. Perhaps you know a church member or someone of, or some small group

with whom you could form a group around to help them better follow Jesus. But the fact

of the matter is, a mature disciple is a replicating disciple. And then you replicate the group.

When a disciple forms a new discipleship group, they should immediately begin making plans

to lead that group to start another group, or even groups. Now this is again a picture

of churches. When a group fails to replicate, it freezes the movement at a generation. It

robs the disciples in the group of opportunity to start new groups themselves, and for the

multiplication to occur, groups must replicate, and the more often, the better. So replication

and movement. Disciple making does not become a movement until the individual disciples

are making disciples evangelistically and personally. And individual groups are replicating

and forming more groups. Paul had a massive impact on making disciples not just personally

or in groups, but as a movement because he encouraged both personal and group disciple

making. So as we're coming to a close with this, we want to be salvation seeking because

that is always the point. As we examine ourselves to see if we are in the truth, we must hold

two things in tension. God is growing us in holiness. Remember our life is not perfection,

but we should be moving in that direction. And two, we are not holy enough. If you examine

your fruit and recognize that you are growing in holiness, but fail to see that you are

not as holy as you should be, you'll become self-sufficient and prideful. And worst of

all, you will forget the grace of the gospel. However, if you only recognize that you are

not as holy as you should be, but you fail to recognize that God is growing you in holiness,

then you will always doubt your salvation. As Christians, you sin too much, but Jesus

died for the ungodly, which we can see in Romans 5-6. So there is no condemnation to

those who are in Christ Jesus, Romans 8-1. As a Christian, you will keep growing in grace

in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ, 2 Peter 3-8. You don't do as much as you

should, but Jesus did. His perfection has been credited to your account, so when you

confess your sin, He is faithful to forgive you and cleanse you. You must proclaim the

good news to yourself daily, or you will certainly end up in a ditch of despair or in the pit

of pride. God does not want you in either place, but rather walking with confidence

and assurance that you are His. So with that, if I could have everyone bowed, every eye

closed as long as you're not doing something where you need your eyes open. Now I just

want to come to a quick invitation. If this message has impacted you and you recognize

that either you've never given your life to Jesus Christ or you've walked away from

that and you're not right with God, but you want to be, I want you to raise your hand,

signify that up on the hand, I can't see it, but God sees everything. If you did that

and you mean it, I want you to repeat this prayer after me. Dear Lord God, I know that

I'm a sinner, but I know that you sent your Son Jesus Christ and He died for my sins.

I repent of my sins. I accept Him as my Lord and Savior, and I thank you for salvation

through grace in Jesus name. Amen. It's a very simple prayer. It's a very simple message.

And I just pray that it really does impact you and help you to become a better Christian,

a more regenerative, self-replicating, salvation seeking Christian. And with that being said

too, what are the next steps? It's obviously to pray, cry out to God, read the Word of

God and find a Bible believing church that's salvation seeking for yourself to lock into.

You can come to the church and the seminar. We'd love to have you, but if you're not

from here and you're listening online, well then we have 3,500 churches globally and I'd

be more than happy to help you find one. My contact information is in the show notes.

And then lastly, I just like if this message did impact you, that you would like to share

and subscribe to this podcast. It really does help us get the word out there. We're on all

the platforms. We're on Apple. We're on RSS feed. We're on Google, I believe, and we're

on Spotify as well. And we're also on YouTube. So with that, I just want to thank you and

I'll just close in a quick prayer. Dear Lord God, I give you all the praise and glory for

this message, for this time, Lord God, and I pray that you bless everyone as they go.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

Thank you for listening to the PHA Potter's House Salmon Arm podcast. Be sure to follow

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doing. Join the conversation and discover how Jesus Christ can revolutionize your life.