1. Everyone receives various kinds of invitations from time to time. Mostly, we receive them for weddings and special occasions of a particular nature. Can you remember an invitation that you didn’t want to get? An invitation that you didn’t want to accept?
2. How many of you gentlemen (as well some ladies) served in Vietnam? Did you get drafted? Did you want to be? If you remember, Vietnam was not a very popular war (if there should be any sort of a thing), and many people did not want to receive an invitation to participate in that particular war.
3. How about an invitation to come to church? I can make people feel uncomfortable by inviting them to church. Just the other day someone told me how uncomfortable it made them feel when I asked them to come to church.
4. There is another example of an invitation that sometimes makes people feel uncomfortable, anyone care to guess? The Altar call.
5. There is story told of a young man who hadn’t been in church much, but had a college roommate who attended church regularly. One Sunday Marty decided to accompany his roommate to church. Once he got there halfway through the service his thought was “this isn’t that bad. The preacher is actually interesting, but still it is really a waste of good sleep-in time.” However, Marty wasn’t ready for what happened next…the preacher came down front, everyone was asked to stand, the music began to play, the lights dimmed down, and the Pastor in a very soft voice asked Marty to walk out right in front of everyone and kneel at the altar. Well he didn’t really mention Marty’s name, but it certainly seemed that way. His ears and face felt hot, it seemed everyone was looking at the back of his head and was encouraging him to go up to the preacher. He just wanted the service to be over, and he felt like he could disappear right into the floor. Marty had experienced his first invitation or altar call.
6. Where does the “invitation” come from and how important is it?
7. First of all, Jesus is often considered as having given the first invitation when He approached Peter and Andrew as they were fishing and commanded them to come follow Him as we see in our scripture passage today.
8. This, however, might be an invitation to deeper discipleship, much like rededicating your life, than an initial invitation to be born again.
9. A better example might be found in Acts where Peter preached at Pentecost where he said, “Repent and be baptized, each of you in the name of Jesus the Messiah for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2: 38). So what did people do, when they wanted to get saved? The “repented and where baptized.” Baptism was the natural response to the calling and invitation of Christ.
10. Around 200 years later, someone got the bright idea, and really a pretty good idea, to enroll the new converts in a class before they were baptized and joined the church. So class, and then baptism, was what someone did when they responded to the invitation of Christ.
11. At the time of Augustine and then through the Middle ages, historians believed that aside from missionary endeavors, most converts were made by mothers rushing their children from birth to the baptismal pools. Does anyone know why? Infant mortality was so great!!! So for over 1500 years, in form, the obvious response to accepting Christ wasn’t rushing forward at the beck and call of the preacher.
12. In fact, not even the Reformation (with Martin Luther and his gang of reformers) brought in the type of altar call or invitation that we enjoy today. Great preachers like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards proclaimed their message without doing things as we do it today.
13. Not until the 1800’s with the old fashion Camp meetings with revivalism sweeping America did the altar call as we know it become a part of Protestant worship.
14. So if it is such a late addition to our Christian worship and practice, why do we do it? First, I feel that even though what happens between us and God is a private matter, Jesus did say: “Everyone therefore who shall confess Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But whoever shall deny Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.” What better, and even though it isn’t always easy to do , what easier place is there to confess Christ in front of people who love you and are praying for you to be the type of person that Christ wants you to be?
15. Two, the altar call emphasizes a personal individual decision to accept Christ. In much of history, people saw themselves as members of a group. The group made decisions and they went along with the group’s decision. Do you remember what the Philippian jailer did when he got saved? He went home and all his family was saved. In history, entire families, clans, and even nations would “become Christian” when their leader or king did.
16. Today people see themselves as being individuals first, then members of a church, and we would not even think of allowing someone else to make a personal decision for Christ for us.
17. In addition, early religious Americans, those we call the Puritans, as well as others of that time, believed that conversion was not an immediate experience but something that happened gradually, over years of attending church and sitting under the influence of preaching and scripture. Revivalism changed that, by the time it swept across America, many people begin to believe that you could be instantly saved and changed by responding to the Gospel.
18. A third thing that fueled the modern day altar call was that people began to believe that they could be saved and could have the assurance of their salvation. In the early 1700’s, people believed that only God alone could know if you were saved or not, and that humans could never know for sure about matters of eternal destiny. It was through the preaching of John Wesley and others like him who argued that the individual believer could know if they were truly saved or not. An assurance that was brought on by believing scripture and the witness of the Holy Spirit.
19. Last but not least, the invitation is your time. The Gospel has been preached, the message has been heard, the Holy Spirit is doing the prompting and by the grace of God we are allowed to respond.
20. Even though it doesn’t have a lot of history behind it, it is a holy time. A time that the message has been put to the people, and the Holy Spirit is leading and convicting in some.
21. Some may be uncomfortable and wanting desperately to get out, because of what God is doing with them…but others should be praying. Praying that no matter what happens and no matter how long it might take that God’s will be done.
22. People shouldn’t be moving, shouldn’t be looking around, gathering their things to leave, but they should be in prayer that people will respond to the invitation that Christ, not the preaching, is giving.