Your Mountain by Apostle Emmanuel Iren: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

The church is people, not a building

I told my executive assistant to bring me water. He brought a bottle of water. He understood that I want the content, and the bottle is only for carriage

As soon as I have downed the contents, the container can no longer be called water

When people hear the name church, they think of the building. The building is just an auditorium. The fellowship in the building is what we call church

What makes a church a church is the fellowship

4 points on the church

1. The church is a family

   Ephesians 3:14-15

   To God we say Father, and we belong to a family. Church is family

   When you understand that, you step into a deeper relationship with God and His church

   Some families have an uncle or auntie, and wherever they are there must be drama. Some family members you love with the love of Christ but you don't particularly like. The Bible says love.

   It doesn't say you must like

   Those from the most dramatic families come into the spiritual family and are shocked that someone in their service unit is acting in some type of way

   Your biological family that shares your DNA is dramatic too, probably more chaotic. Everybody is a work in progress. There are so many imperfect people and there is room for one more. That's why you're here.

   We will work on each other together

   Illustration: the family member

   You helped a family member who was stupid before, and he was stupid again. You warned him, "Don't call me." Then he calls. You try to sleep and you can't, you're rolling on the bed.

   You help because family is family. You can't throw them away

   When you realize church is a spiritual family, you show more endurance, more patience, more determination not to give up on people

2. The church is a family with spiritual ancestry

   Ephesians 3:15

   We have ancestors. In Christ nobody dies. Everyone who slept in Christ is alive and well. They are not in our past, they are in our future

   God considers them active members of the church Hebrews 12:22-23

   Abraham, Isaac, Moses and David are still part of the church

   You've had church hurt and sometimes you wish you could leave. But even death cannot be your escape from the church

   The worst you can do is leave a local church. As a Christian you can never leave the celestial church

3. The church is a relay

   Hebrews 11 to Hebrews 12:1

   Hebrews 11 is a compendum of believers who lived faithfully on the earth and died Hebrews 11:13. In Hebrews 12 those who died now surround you. They are a cloud of witnesses

   It is an allusion to a relay race. When you run your leg and hand over to the next person, you become part of the grandstand, a spectator who can only cheer others on

   Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esther, Rebecca have done their leg. They gave you the baton and now cheer you on

   Delayed pregnancy? You have plenty of witnesses cheering you on. Tempted to cut corners in business? You have witnesses who walked the same road and remained faithful

   God has given you a task bigger than your pockets? You have Noah and all those people there. What's your excuse?

   We are in a race against something. You need to understand what we are running against

4. Everybody in Christ has a race to run

   The race is not for pastors alone. The race is for every believer

   Imagine you are in heaven and they announce that some of your stories entered the Bible, but you don't know who yet. You guess Moses. What about Elijah, will he have a book?

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   Some names won't come to mind, like Rahab. There are stories you would not have thought worth telling, at least from a spiritual standpoint

   When I was in 200 level they gave me opening prayer to lead and I prayed the whole night for a 5 minute prayer.

   When I was done, someone tapped the person by his side and said, "That's the next spiritual leader on this campus." It was only opening prayer. Sometimes it's the little things

   Hebrews 11 shows that small things you ignore matter to God and carry weight in the grand scheme of things

   Matthew 25:35-40

   In that day Jesus will tell people what they did to the least of these

   In your daily life you have the opportunity to do ministry even if you never hold a microphone

   Not all the witnesses were men of God

   Sarah is a witness of what it means to trust God for a child for many years and not compromise in the middle Hebrews 11:11

   God's witness is revealed also in families, not just on platforms

   Your own contribution might just be to be a good mom or a good dad. There is a way my parents could have raised me that would have made it difficult for me to embrace the gospel

   Imagine hearing in heaven that an angel said, "Blessed are you amongst all women." You say it must be Deborah, she went to battle and did what 100 men could not Judges 4

   All Mary did was agree to be the womb through which the Messiah would be born. By that alone she outclassed every woman ever Luke 1:28

   Being a good parent is a valuable contribution to the church. If parents did their job I would have less work

   You shouldn't learn love for the first time in church. You shouldn't learn forgiveness for the first time in church.

   Some people are so damaged that we have to do work to get them to the starting point before discipleship can even start

   Enoch preached with his life

   What sermon did Enoch preach? Jude 1:14 alludes to something Enoch preached, but we don't have the sermons canonized. So Enoch's sermon was his life. Enoch walked with God Genesis 5:24

   He had the report that he pleased God Hebrews 11:5

   Even if you never hold a microphone, your fidelity to the gospel and your faithfulness in devotion can be a sermon. God can make that a pattern in the body of Christ

   Rahab

   Hebrews 11 also talks about the mighty prophets Hebrews 11:33-34

   But look at Rahab. What did Rahab do? Hospitality. Hospitality can also be a ministry Hebrews 11:31

   Every one of us must have a consciousness of how what we are doing contributes to the advancement of God and His church

   Moses refused

   Moses has highlights. A rod dropped and became a serpent. He touched the river and it turned to blood. He pointed to the sky and locusts ravaged. The Red Sea.

   He raised his hands and people losing a battle started winning

   But the one thing Hebrews 11 says about him is that he refused Hebrews 11:24-26

   This is one of the most important demonstrations of Christian values. Even Christ let it go and identified with servants Philippians 2:6-7

   In a country like ours you can be so blessed financially that you are out of touch with reality. You can be so privileged that you are inoculated from corporate reality

   You complain about power supply but you have an inverter or a generator. All your life you lived in a house with its own borehole.

   They give you easy passage when you show up in your nice car, so you don't know the real state of the justice system

   Moses was in a similar situation and he refused. Identifying with the pains of people, the Bible identifies as a demonstration of faith

   I am bringing the pulpit to your house, to let you know you have a sermon to preach with your life. Deliberately feel pain

If the church does not change, it will feed agnosticism

It is ironic that if we don't change as a church, the church will be one of the greatest reasons for the rise of agnosticism

People ask what happens to those who never hear the gospel. The go-to text is Romans 1:20

Illustration: two pastors

Two pastors hold two parts. One represents God and the other creation. Even if you have never seen God, by the intelligence in His creation you can trace it to an invisible God behind it

Nowhere else in nature can chaos produce order. If there is order, somebody ordered it

The earth rotates at thousands of kilometers per hour without any physical foundation. If there is no God, be afraid. We are all in trouble

The same way we help agnostics and atheists trace from creation to God, we have to trace them back to the church, to show that God can be found in society and not only in church

We want healing, we pray here. We want good governance, we pray here. Then people look at nations who don't have God, or are less religious, getting those things, and conclude they don't need God.

We are creating that impression

We created it because we have not taught the connection between faith and works

Hebrews 11 is a compendum of people in several ministries who pleased God. He didn't pick prophets alone. They are businessmen. They are politicians. Until we understand that, we will not be truly effective as a church

Your mountain

People are quick to think of sphere of influence. I am saying that in the seemingly small position God has given you, there is a lot you can influence for Him

Ministry is Christ revealed through ordinary believers in the place He puts them

Small things can have great impact

I differ a little from the notion of mountains of influence, because that suggests you have to get to the top of the mountain to influence it

Rahab was not any notable person. She was not even a moral example.

The servant girl of the leprous soldier said, "There's a prophet, if you listen to him I believe the leprosy can go." She didn't need a high office to influence 2 Kings 5:3

Even if Joseph became a prime minister, never forget that he interpreted dreams first as a prisoner Genesis 40

The Bible is replete with examples of people who had great impact from where they stood. Cumulatively, every one of us playing our part can change the world

Testimony: the sermon that angered me

As an undergraduate I listened to a sermon that angered me. I was hitting things on the floor and saying, God, why will you allow preachers get away with this kind of thing?

I won't tell you exactly what He said, let me speak in parables. Until Samuel is of age, God will not tell Eli he's done. The work must be done 1 Samuel 3

I am not insinuating we are the only ones getting it right. God has 7,000 who have not bowed 1 Kings 19:18

That encounter did something to me. He said, "Don't be part of the people who stand back, complain and give commentary.

Play your part." In playing your part you may never know how God will bless and multiply those efforts

Did Nehemiah know that what he was doing would end up at the scale it did? Probably not.

He was a butler who wouldn't enjoy job security at the expense of what God was trying to do Nehemiah 2

Ecclesia: citizens gathered to impact the city

Jesus was not the first to use the word church. It was not religious terminology. The gathering to honor Diana was also called church Acts 19

When Jesus used the word ecclesia he used a term already common in Greek culture. In Greek civic life it refers to citizens convened to deliberate and make decisions concerning the city

The ecclesia was supposed to be a gathering with the mentality and the aim of impacting society

Evidence from church history

There is evidence that something is wrong. People reading the same Bible we read were moved to do things many of us are not doing anymore. They didn't just pray. They didn't just read their Bible.

They built things

They believed you couldn't know Jesus and be indifferent to social impact

Igbobi College, founded in 1932, produced educated people. It was planted by the joint initiative of the Anglican and Methodist Church. Another school was planted by the Catholic Church. Baptist Boys High School, Abeokuta, produced leaders

The church came. The religion your grandparents worshiped, where are the schools they founded? If the church is the problem of society, where are the schools?

The church's impact is visible around us, and those who benefited from these institutions have been key leaders in this nation. It is raw, undisputable evidence

Maybe at some point we got distracted. Compare the number of mission schools built then with now

The church needs to be reminded that righteousness is not only positional. It is manifested in social impact

Kingdom impact has been democratized

In the story of the good Samaritan you don't have to be a priest or a Levite to do the Lord's work Luke 10:25-37

The priest and the Levite did not do the right thing. It was the Samaritan who helped. Jesus is saying kingdom impact has been democratized

Don't think you need a title. Don't think you need to register a church. Don't think you need a microphone

To do righteousness and justice

Proverbs 21:3

Righteousness is not just who you are. It is what you do

This is what the parable of the good Samaritan explains. The priest and the Levite were on their way from the temple. They had offered sacrifice, but they saw injustice and wanted to look away

Hebrews 11 shows several applications of righteousness and faith. See what is wrong in family structure and stand out by personal example. Voice godly family convictions. Stand out in business

As a nation we have to talk to ourselves. We act like we want a better nation until it's time to build one. Many Nigerians are not ready for the accountability it requires

How many would rather throw trash in the gutter when it's raining than pay for a dustbin? Is government responsible for that too? We have to tell ourselves the truth

Illustration: the man on the electric pole

In Abuja for church mission I heard sounds in the night. I looked out and saw a man sitting on the electric pole trying to cut the armoured cable

You complain that power supply cannot be consistent, meanwhile people like him go to steal from the transformer. People steal the rods from train tracks and sell them as iron

It comes in cycles. When you impoverish people they are desperate and too hungry to think of development. But we can't keep playing the blame game

There is a role we all have to play. Be a voice in your society. Refuse to participate in some ills. That is how things will change. Sometimes just your presence will convict people

Drop your sacrifice first

Matthew 5:23-24

You come to the temple to pray and remember you fought with somebody

Jesus was constantly against the idea that you can have a church devotional life that absolves you from social impact and from thinking how the doctrine you hear influences how you act out there

The problem we have now is a lot of praying and not a lot of impact, because we don't see the connection

How does our knowledge of God's word impact how we do business? How does it influence how we do family? How does it influence our perspective of justice? Everybody wants thieves caught until it's their brother

Illustration: the governor's critic

A comedian who is a member of this church was jokingly criticizing a very efficient governor, acting as a corrupt governor. It was satire.

The people in the state did not know he was joking and bombarded his DMs with insults

He had to put up a disclaimer. Someone sent five voice notes, "How dare you talk to our father like that?"

Nigerians are not asking for much. You don't have to campaign if you do well. Just do the right thing

I spoke with a faithful, disciplined Christian who works with that government.

Even church people who heard his position say, "Sir, I need money, I need school fees."

He asks, "If you want me to build you a house because I work with the government, where do you want me to get it from?"

We all act as if we want the country to move forward. Maybe our anger is that we're not part of the corruption

Righteousness and justice go hand in hand

Psalm 89:14

When you have positional righteousness with God you will want justice. You want things done the right way, the God way, and you stop looking away

It is this same Bible that people read and became abolitionists. It is this same Bible that people read and decided to build hospitals when they didn't have all the medical answers for viral diseases

The first hospital in history was built by a church. They were called hospices because they believed every human is made in the image of God.

We may not have the cure for their ailments, but we can't let them die

Now people read the same Bible and all they want to build is bigger churches and better programs. That has its place.

But the light we receive must be seen as something with practical application, not just corporately but individually

Matthew 25:42

On that day you will realize your personal life is a ministry too

Illustration: light rays (C.S. Lewis)

Have you been in a dark room with a small hole where light rays come through? As a child it fascinated me. I tried to catch the rays with my hand

C.S. Lewis said he could see the light rays, but more importantly, because of the rays he could see the room

You have two options with light. Sit and admire it, or use it to see other things

So many in church sit with theology for the sake of theology, enjoying Greek words and Hebrew words. They don't use the light to see other things

If this is true in God's word, it means we can't do governance like this. We can't do family like this

God is saying, you cannot truly know Me and not be big on social impact

Ecclesia means governance in your sphere

Genghis Khan's system was also an ecclesia. He conquered territories and his children were in charge of them. Every once in a while they came together.

It was both a family meeting and a governance meeting, to discuss how to effectively discharge their duties in those societies

When Jesus uses the term ecclesia, every one of us in our own small sphere of influence has governance to do

We come, we catch fire, we receive marching orders and then we go

Righteousness is not just singing in church. It is how we deploy responsibilities and execute kingdom values in society. That is God's will for the church

Isaiah 58

Isaiah 58:1-7

They are doing all the religious calisthenics

They ask why God is not answering. God's response is that even as you are fasting, you are still a wicked boss

It doesn't matter how much prayer you do in church. If you ignore social impact, I will ignore you

As I was praying yesterday, the Lord spoke to me clearly. He said, "I fed thousands of people twice before I told them I am the bread." It never dawned on me

While you are still trying to tell people the purpose of the church is deeper than welfare, do it first

Two miracles of feeding. Seven loaves. Five loaves and two fish. He had done it twice before He told them He is the bread Matthew 14:17-21, Matthew 15:34-38, John 6:35

God wants a church that can take the light. Fasting is not just afflicting your soul. When you are fasting, let it translate in how you treat your staff. Otherwise your fast is a waste

For the last 100 years we were building churches and Satan was raising influential people

It is you who must run, not the local church you attend Hebrews 12:1

You have a race to run. It might be your patience that typifies and exemplifies kingdom virtues. It might be your business. It might be the things you refuse to do, not even the things you do

Commitment and prayer

Today I make a commitment to write my own faith story. I will be an example. I play my part in the industry God has given me, the race He told me to run. I refuse compromise

God is raising saviors in the church. Deliverers in the church. There must be a reason God made you hear this sermon

• Make me an ambassador of what You are doing in my day.

As important as fellowship is, one of the major reasons God created man is to represent Him on the earth in terms of procreation and dominion Genesis 1:26-28

Those simple things are a crucial aspect of what it means to be man, to be an image of God

If God only wanted worshippers, He didn't need to give us a body. He could have made us like the angels, spirit beings, because angels can worship

There's a reason He made you man. That's for dominion. It means the works of your hands will also give Him glory as much as the songs on your lips

• May the Lord anoint you. May grace carry you to demonstrate kingdom virtues.
• May the things God does through you outlive you.
• May the things you produce point people to God.
• May the Lord give you capital.
• Every one of you who has said secretly in your heart, if only I had the platform, the vehicle, the privilege, the position, I would do such and such, may the Lord put in your hand the capacity to do what is in your heart.
• May this nation recognize itself blessed because of your presence.