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A Trustworthy Leader Part 2
1 Thessalonians 2:7-12 June 5, 2022 An Enduring Letter to a Local Church We must examine who we follow and how we lead! -local spiritual leadership -popular/well-known preachers -podcasts, online teachings -other Christian friends -Ray Stedman: [We must also remember that] every believer is in the ministry. We all have pastoral responsibilities. If you are a parent, you have a little flock at home to whom you should minister. This passage will help you minister effectively. Some of you have friends with whom you meet at breakfast or lunch, some of you have a Bible class in your home. This passage teaches how to be effective in any ministry, how to touch and change people. A Trustworthy Leader part 2 1. Nurturing vs 7 -trustworthy leaders are “life-giving” -nurturing: strengthening, feeding, supporting, increasing safety 2. Personal vs 8 -Paul and his team were completely transparent with the church -they shared the gospel AND their living examples of obedience -leadership reputation is built through personal relationships -trustworthy leaders build relationships with their followers -any leader can stray apart from real Christian fellowship -pastors need the sanctifying work of the body of Christ as much as any other Christian! -My personal accountability team includes: my wife and children, our church elders, ministry team leaders, other Christian brothers in the church, certain church pastors locally and around the USA. 3. Sacrificial vs 9 -Paul’s team had to work secular jobs to support themselves -trustworthy leaders are hard workers, selfless, -they do whatever it takes to serve the people God entrusts them with -Co-vocational ministry workers is a growing trend today -I thank God for how He supports me and my family through this church family. -The Lord also used supplemental income from other ministry work, including employment at Indiana Tech for 10 yrs -trustworthy leaders are not lazy or freeloaders! 4. Proven integrity vs 10 -Paul appealed to what they knew about Him, what God knew -devout/singlemindedness- holy and set apart for God’s purpose -righteous- leaders behave well and resist lifestyles that may distract followers from trusting and following the Lord -blameless- not sinless, but an open and uncovered life that continually confesses and forsakes sin -trustworthy leaders have a track record of living openly and honestly for God and leading with high integrity 5. Parental vs 11-12 -encouraging and comforting -challenging/imploring people to grow spiritually and follow the Lord more carefully -trustworthy leaders want God’s best for their followers -the goal = living a life worthy of God! -leaders lead people towards God, not their own agendas! Are we following trustworthy leaders? -How well do we know the people we trust to lead us? -High trust = well known people! Are WE trustworthy leaders? -Are we following Jesus Christ personally? -Are we leading people towards Christ and His Word?
Today is Sunday, June 5th, 2022, and welcome to St. Joe Community Church. Today's message is entitled a Trustworthy Leader Part 2, and was delivered by Pastor Greg Byman. For more information, visit www.stjoecommunitychurch.org, click on the sermons tab and find today's broadcast. So now, let's open the Bible, get a notepad and pen and prepare to hear from God's word. Here's Pastor Greg Byman.
1 Thessalonians 2:1-12, unpacks what it means to be a trustworthy leader. And I shared the first six verses with us a few weeks ago, and we're going to dig into 7-12 today. This comes in the middle of what we might call an enduring letter to the local church. It's an enduring letter. It was an important letter for the Thessalonicans, for Thessalonians in Thessalonica in this town that, if all of you had to say that 10 times really fast I'd be, we would let us spit in the air, so don't do it. But it was a church that we know no longer exists. Every church that was written to in the Bible no longer exists as a local congregation. But the local church continues to exist because Jesus is building His church. And it seemed in prayerful consideration and great concert of opinion and spiritual opinion, and it has been, I think, verified over time that this letter was not just to one church, but to all churches. It was inspired by the Holy Spirit. And that's another whole message in itself. And how did we get our Bible? But it's in our Bible because it's a cut above in so many unique and miraculous ways above anything else that was written around that time period. And so, it's not just a letter for that church, but it's an enduring letter for our church. It's a personal letter from God that He gave to us for eternity to come, until Jesus comes again. These are healthy, biblical, good, godly instructions for every local church, ours included. And I've considered using 1 Thessalonians as a way to say God has in so many ways blessed St. Joe Community Church through a difficult time period in history. If you're a student of the Bible, you would discover that the thons letter is actually one of the most positive letters that Paul ever wrote. One of the most negative letters that Paul ever wrote and negative as in he was really upset with them, because they were not doing some good things, was the letter he wrote to the Galatian church, to the Galatians in Galatia. And so, the letter that you never want to get is the letter, the Galatians book in the Bible, and then the letter that you really want to get that's really encouraging and wow, you guys are hitting it out of the park would be the Thessalonians letter. And I wanted to use that one to say that the pandemic had an effect on the local church all over the world. But I only know our part of the world and I'm going to say even in our particular region, and even as I narrow it down to even within walking distance of this church, churches died. They didn't make it. Some, it was time. Some they thought they were fine, but they were what you might call in the spiritual sense, underlying spiritual health issues that were detrimental to their ongoing sustainability. Just like the virus, attacked people who more likely were affected had other underlying health problems that would cause them to go into worst case scenario. Whereas some of us that got COVID 19, we kind of like, well it was miserable, but it wasn't life threatening at that moment in our lives. And I don't understand the science of all that, but in the same way that we saw that in a biological sense in the medical sense, that was true in the spiritual sense that churches didn't fare well when they had to close and couldn't open back up. And when the normal streams of the way you did church, they couldn't adapt as quickly. And we struggled to adapt, but somehow some way, even with the division of opinion, and even with the division of a tremendous political upheaval that took place. And while there was not a unanimity of opinion, there was a unity of the Holy Spirit that I would say was only a miracle of God that we were able to sustain and actually grow and be stronger financially, and to actually emerge as a church that's moving forward. And I say, praise God for that. I say thank God for what He did and how He has worked. And I don't understand it, and there's nothing I could have done to manufacture, Bill Wallace would say occasionally. More than once he said to me, "Pastor, just make a decision. You will be absolutely wrong when you make it, but go ahead and make it." And it's just so encouraging, but it was true. You just don't know what you don't know when you're in the dark. We'd never gone through this in our lifetime before. Dorothy had, a hundred and six year old, she'd been through some pandemics, and she didn't even die from the pandemic. She died from old age. God bless her, she's in heaven. You know, Spanish flu, you know, all that. She saw it all. Crazy, but we didn't know what to do about it, but God was good and God is good, all the time. All the time God is good. And I'm thankful for what He did. And I humbly say that. I don't take for granted that we have tomorrow. We're one crazy situation into chaos in any church situation, even in a good circumstance. So, there's nothing like we're just like gloating, we're in no way holding it over and saying, look at us; we're saying, look at God, because only God could have done what He did. I wanted to preach through a letter that God gave to a church that was highly encouraging, because I just wanted to highly encourage us. And I wanted to be highly encouraged. You know, I don't like reading tough stuff all the time, so that's why we're in Thessalonians for the next season here. As long as I'm preaching, I'll be going through this throughout the summer. This second section really is a section that continues on the first one, two weeks ago. You can look at it online. You can look at the notes online about trustworthy leadership, because we must examine who we follow and how we lead. We've got to examine that. Who are you following? Who is dumping into your life? How well do you know the people that you're listening to on the podcasts? I tend to, for the most part, I believe and trust - Bot Radio Network, that was a big shout out. Tammy works there and she was here in the early service, Tucker's mom. And I've just always found good resource, you know, I'm like, if they kick him off of Bot Radio, he probably should have been kicked off. And if they're on Bot Radio, they're probably decent. Not that you believe everything everybody says about everything. No, of course not. But generally speaking, probably pretty trustworthy. But even so, we've got to examine who we follow. It's much easier at the local level, and that's why we believe in the local church as the primary place where we go and grow together. And that's why we believe in membership in a church. And by the way, on the 17th of July, it's in the bulletin we've put a class on there, Hope It Makes. We've got a few people that can go. But on the 17th of July, right after church, we have a free meal, and then we'll dig into what it means, why we believe membership's important, what it means to belong to a local church from the biblical versus, and having a relationship with God. I says, "Well, I don't know about joining a church. I just need to get closer to God." We talk about that too. So, that's all inclusive and it's an afternoon class. We take breaks, but we just do it all at once, so you don't come back four or five times throughout several weeks, we just do it in one afternoon. And so, I welcome you to sign up for that if you've never taken that class and explored belonging to our local church or maybe any local church. Because you'll know in that class that we take accountability seriously with our leaders. Some crazy stuff that have been happening locally, and I mean locally, like regionally; I'm not going to mention it because I didn't want to mention it, but some really bad things happen on the news. I actually got to meet with coffee with a guy that had to report it on Wayne and it's just awful. And one of the deacons - one of the elders said to me, how would we handle that? I said, "Well, first of all, we'll never handle that. That that should never happen that way." But there's accountability. There's a structure of, yes, we are independent, we're autonomous, we don't have a Pope that controls us here at St. Joe Community Church, although St. Joe sounds like Catholic. Anyway, Jesus is in charge of our church. We also have leadership and we've made a pact, the elders and I that like, if I start saying something that's ungodly, they have the right to come tackle me. Somebody might shoot me before they tackle me. I don't know. I mean, there's just some good accountability in this room, and that should always be the case. You should never just carp blank trust Pastor Greg or any other pastor that's up here. There's standards by which we entrust people with leadership. And it's not because we've always known them forever. Obviously, some people they've known forever, but they didn't know all of them. And so it's important that we entrust one another to thinking carefully. And I'm going to show you some ideas about that. So, you need to examine who you follow. And then you also examine how you lead because all of us are leaders. And I want to quote what I quoted two weeks ago from Ray Steadman, a pastor who's gone home to be with the Lord. As he was preaching through 1 Thessalonians 2, in his commentary he said, "We must also remember that every believer is in the ministry; not just pastors, not just elders, not just ministry, team leaders. We're all leaders." We all have pastoral responsibilities. If you're a parent, you have a little flock at home to whom you should minister. This passage will help you minister effectively. Some of you have friends with whom you meet at breakfast or lunch. Some of you have a Bible class in your home. This passage teaches how to be effective in any ministry, how to touch and how to change people. So everybody's a leader; you always lead somebody, somebody's following you. Somebody is your shadow and you need to be very careful how you're leading them. And so these principles, while you very much have every right to hold me accountable to them and to any leader in our church, you must also hold yourselves accountable to be a better person, to be a better influencer, to be a better leader. So, let's look at what they are, and verse seven, let me just read for us the passage and then we'll break it down as we move forward from chapter two, verse seven. "Although we could have been a burden," this is Paul talking again, we the team that came there and started the 1 Thessalonians church, "although we could have been a burden as Christ apostles, instead we were gentle among you as a nurse nurtures her own children. We cared so much for you that we were pleased to share with you, not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives because you have become dear to us. For you remember our labor and hardship brothers and sisters, working night and day so that we would not burden any of you. We preached God's gospel to you. You are witnesses and so is God of how devoutly, righteously and blamelessly we conducted ourselves with you believers. As you know, like a father with its own children, we encouraged, comforted and implored each one of you to live worthy of God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory." A trustworthy leader, a trustworthy leader, first of all, in verse seven is nurturing, nurturing like a mother nursing, her children - life giving; that's what a leader is, strengthening, feeding, supporting, increasing the safety of the people that they're leading. Now, in other letters, as I said, Paul in his nurturing capacity was kind of harsh. He disciplined the church. He said, I am so amazed that you have so quickly abandoned what I taught you. And that's not a very nice thing to say, but it needs to be said when it needs to be said. And sometimes the hardest thing a parent ever does is discipline their child. And yet that's the best thing they can do when a child needs discipline. It's nurturing though, in this passage, he's like, we came here nurturing, you helping to build you up. Verse eight, it's personal. A leader is not just do as I say, but you don't need to know who I am. A leader is personal, that's why I say local leadership is so much more important than national leadership or regional leadership. There are a lot of good pastors out there that preach circles around me; that's why they're popular in the soundbites out there. But I'll tell you what; how well do you know? Are they personal? I've been in the homes of people or I've talked to people at the coffee shops and they say, "Well, I listen to so and so," and they'll bring up a famous pastor and I'll say, "You know, I listen to that guy too. I like him." And they said, "Well, that's my pastor." I said, "Oh, have you talked to him about your funeral? I don't think David Jeremiah is coming back to do your funeral. The last time you were in the hospital, did an elder from his church come by to say hi to you?" "No, that didn't happen." Okay, so he's your pastor. I would think you'd want somebody a little closer to home that could minister and care for you and be with you and walk with you through the trials of life." Paul says I was personal. They were completely transparent to the church. They shared the gospel and their lives. They didn't just come with a word, they came with their lives. They were trustworthy leaders who were building relationships with the followers. And by the way, I want you to know something; any trustworthy leader can stray into immorality, whether a little bit or a lot. And the difference is, when that leader is in a relationship, accountability to the body of Christ that he or she's leading in and working in; we're working together. Like, I need the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit through the fellowship of the body of Christ, as much as any other man in this church does. And the moment somebody stops asking, how's it going really? And not everybody has the permission to do that, because they don't know me that well, but there ought to be a man that have enough knowledge of who I am to say, how you doing really pastor? How's your thought life? What's going on? Are you going home to your wife regularly and just hanging out with family and not just doing ministry like crazy? Now, a lot of people are saying, I want you to do more. I want you to do more. I want you to do more. Some are saying you need to do less. You need to do less. You need to do less to get home and take care of the home fire. And if there aren't people in a pastor's life doing that, that pastor's on a dangerous path. In fact, there's a book I read recently called Dangerous Calling and that whole idea that you've put pastoral leadership in some kind of a pedestal. And sometimes we do that as soon as they get out of seminary, and they have no accountability and they're expected to be this super hired holy guy that has it all together. Trust me, I certainly didn't have it all together and I still don't have it all together, and I need real friendship. And so, my friendships would be people like, well, first of all, my wife; you wouldn't have to kill me, she would. And you'd all acquit her of that. My children, our church elders, ministry, team leaders, other Christian brothers in the church that you aren't leaders necessarily, but you can come to me and say, "Hey, I see some smoke. Is there any fire?" And then there's pastors that I talk to regularly. And during some of the crazy stuff that's been going on the national scene, I've been making buddy checks with pastors, "Hey, how you doing? Hey, how you doing?" One guy that I know that kind of well, the leader of his ministry stepped down because of infidelity and that whole ministry, national ministry evaporated within 30 days. They will cease to exist June 30th. And I just reached out to him and said, "Hey, how can we...?" Little Indiana, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of other beautiful places in the world, but how can we minister to you? Is there a way we can just hold you tight and encourage you? He wrote me back and we'll see what happens, because there's just chaos going on. And there's people that just need to know, hey, how's it going really? And I don't know how many of my buddies, most of them have great accountability, but we all have each other. And there's some of my seminary buddies that I'll always be friends with until Jesus comes or we go home. And we just call each other and say, how's it really going? And we get honest and real, but I need, and it doesn't replace the local accountability that you all give to me and to my life. A trustworthy leader is personal. A trustworthy leader is also sacrificial. Verse nine, what did he say there; "You remember our labor and hardship brothers and sisters working night and day so that we would not burden any of you, we'll preach the gospel to you." That wording and the way it's worded in the original language, we tend to sense that... Paul, we think he was a tent maker by trade. He had a skillset that was employable outside of the congregation. And he in that situation, not every situation, but in this particular one, he determined and the team determined that they would be self-supporting and that he wouldn't ask the church for anything. And there's a brand new church. He says, "And you recall that we worked really hard. We worked during the day, we worked at night, we were busy doing the things that we needed to do to take care of ourselves even as we preached the gospel to you. Even as we planted this church, we were busy working with our hands." Trustworthy leaders aren't lazy. Trustworthy leaders are not freeloaders. They're working hard. So many people are co-vocational, we call them. Ezekiel Easton might even be in the house right now, getting his stuff up here to get ready for worship when they meet at noon. He works a full day, 9-5, nine to a million. He has a pretty good job right now, but it's a full day's job, every day of the week, and then he pastors his church. Fernando Martinez, pastors Lion of Judah. They meet here at three o'clock Sunday mornings; they use our sanctuary - full-time job. His wife has a full-time job supporting their family, and he's a full-time pastor. There's no such thing as a part-time pastor; working the midnight, oil burning candle at both ends working and laboring for the gospel. I've had the privilege because of the resources and the way God's blessed. I've not had to have a secular job to support our family while we minister the gospel. But because you support me or didn't support me wouldn't change the fact that I'm a pastor and I'm called to preach the gospel. And I told the church when we first started, if we need me to get a job, I'll get one. If I don't have to, I won't, but I'll follow the leadership of the church here, not me on that basis. And I did have a job for a little while at Indiana Tech and had some supplemental income, but it was more really to be on that campus in the minister and serve as a chaplain there than it was to get the income. But by God's grace, you have blessed our family that I've been able to take care of our family without doing that. And yet the same thing applies; pastors aren't lazy. Good trustworthy leadership works hard. Just as you're expected to work hard in your jobs to do a good job and get a paycheck; we work for the Lord and the Lord requires no less than our very best. A trustworthy leader is sacrificial. A trustworthy leader also has proven integrity. And I say proven integrity because it's integrity over time. It's a track record of doing the right thing. And in verse 10, Paul's appealing to what they knew about them. You know us and God knows that we are, and he use three words; devout, righteous and blameless. Devout, single-minded. The translations would also say holy and set apart for God's purpose. They had a single-minded purpose to lead well in the name of Jesus Christ. They weren't distracted by the other things. A good soldier, the Bible says also; it's like a good soldier that isn't distracted by the things that keep them from pursuing what they ought to pursue for the kingdom that they're defending. Devout, righteous - leaders behave well and resist lifestyles that may distract followers from trusting and following the Lord. You know this trustworthy pyramid; the more responsibility you're giving, the less rights you have as an individual. The more you have the right and the privilege and the responsibility to speak; the less you're allowed to say about what you feel. Boy, there's a lot of things I wanted to say during the pandemic online in response to some of you. That's a joke. I have opinions. Take me to coffee, I'll tell you a few of them. I have to, some of you. I'll buy your coffee because you ought to get paid to hear what I think sometimes. But as a leader, I'm not allowed to say certain things. I'm not allowed to shoot my mouth off. A trustworthy leader doesn't shoot their mouth off. A trustworthy leader doesn't just do what they want to do with - well, I'm allowed to doesn't mean you should. There's certain lifestyle habits. I'm not a prude or a legalist about certain things. They just don't benefit me and my influence as a leader to do some of those things, so I don't. It doesn't make me better than anybody else. It's just that a righteous leader is just trying to help people be less distracted by humanity and more distracted by God. And then the word blameless does not mean sinless. If that's the case, I need to step down right now because I'm not sinless. We're all sinners saved by grace; all of us. Nobody that stands here and speaks the word of God is sinless, but they ought to be blameless. And what does blameless mean? An open and uncovered life that continually confesses in forsake sin. Just somebody that's continually moving forward in their walk and people know it. You ask me what I get wrong. You all know what I get wrong. You know me; I've been personal with you sometimes. And some of you don't like to know how wrong I am sometimes because you don't want to think that a pastor would do that. But the reality is that if a pastor does that and doesn't continually try to get better at not doing that; well, that's not a blameless life. A blameless life says, you know what; we trust this guy because he's pretty much walking the same direction he's been walking. And when he doesn't walk that direction, he turns right around and gets going again for God. Proven integrity! Trustworthy leaders have a track record of living openly and honestly for God and leading with high integrity. And then Paul wraps up his conversation about spiritual trustworthiness by talking about being like a father - parental. A trustworthy leader is parental. Verse 11 and 12, I'll read it again. "As you know like a father with his own children, we encouraged, comforted and employed each one of you to live worthy of God who calls you into His own kingdom and glory." Encouraging and comforting, challenging, imploring people to grow spiritually and follow the Lord more carefully. In other words, to be worthy of the Lord; a trustworthy leader wants God's best for their followers. The goal is that all of you will live a life worthy of God. In other words, a trustworthy leader leads people towards God's goals, not their own. Now, I've had some bright ideas a few times; most of them come from the body of Christ and I'll champion bright ideas. But for the most part, the good stuff that God tells us all to do is something He tells all of us to do, not just what I get it from high, I tell you and you guys do it. No, that's not how that works. And that's a good thing. It's sort of like the parental side of this is for instance, a dad has a vocation. He does this. He's always done this. He got it from his dad. His dad taught him how to do that, so Junior's going to do it too. I mean, that's what our family does. Movies have been written about this, books have been written about this, movies have been made where the son is rebelling against the father's plan for his life, or the father who was a pretty good athlete, and he's living vicariously through his son's extraordinary athletic abilities. And he's squashing his son's potential to be who he's supposed to be because the dad has this expectation and dream imposed upon his son or daughter. And it squelches their creativity, it squelches the dream that God has put in their hearts and rebellion begins to well up, and then you have a wonderful story that everybody goes watches at the movies. It's a terrible story if you live in it, and some of you may have had some stuff imposed on you. Well, because I did this, this is what you'll do. I went to college so you go to college. We never assumed any of our kids would go to college. We encouraged them. We said, "Hey, we see that you have what it takes to do that, and maybe that'd be a great way," but it was never an assumption that when we first started having kids that they'd all go to college, just because my wife and I did. We gave them an opportunity, but we wanted them to have an opportunity to do whatever the Lord wanted them to do and however they were designed to live out their lives, to give a life worthy of Greg. No, live a life worthy of the Lord. And that's what a trustworthy leader does. They lead people, friends - followers, if they're really in spiritual leadership, officially, to live a life worthy of God, not a life worthy of supporting what they think is right and wrong about how to do life. How many ever had a word from the Lord from somebody? I got something that I think God wants you to do. Boy, I get that occasionally. And there's some people in town that don't know me that well. And they always have a word for me like, "Oh, I'll pray about that. I'll pray about that. I want to hear from the Lord." And I'd prefer to not say, "Bob, this is what I think you ought to do, but here's some options. Here's some thoughts. And let Bob hear from God what he ought to do, and Judy will tell him what to do. Pick on the couples on the front row that have been married the longest and the most successful, by the way, parental. So, I have a question as we close this morning, are we following trustworthy leaders? Are you following trustworthy leaders who are speaking into your life? Are they grounded on the Bible and in a relationship with God or are the people that you're listening to, to live your life far from God? And if they say they represent God, how well do you know them that they actually do in their personal lives? I think a lot of the problems that we're facing on the national scene could be cleared up if a few more people got more careful about their accountability to people who would help them be a better leader. I shake my head sometimes when I see political leaders make really bad decisions. And I think to myself, does anybody have the courage to tell them that's a bad decision? Or if they just gather around a bunch of people that just say yes all the time? And it's just painful to watch how people just don't put good advisors in their lives. But you know, on the local level, it's hard to get away with that because we know people. We see them, we see them in the grocery store and we say, "Hey, that wasn't a great idea there. You know, because we have a local connection, even more so in the body of Christ, how much better can we be if we just stay close to one another, help one another, follow the Lord? And I pray that anybody who is leading spiritually can say, even as Paul did in another letter, follow me as I am following Jesus. That's not arrogance. That's just saying I'm just a conduit, and I hope I'm a clear window for you to see Jesus through me. That won't be the case every day, that won't be the case every hour, but on a consistent basis, trustworthy leaders, that will be the case over time. I wonder if we could just stand right now, and I don't know where you're at spiritually. Some of you, you're not following God at all, and maybe I don't know that for sure, but I just wonder in a crowd what God might be saying to you. Have you put your faith in Christ, the one true leader, the one true God, the one who leads us to the father, who died for your sins, that if you'll put your trust in Him, He'll give you the power to live a life you could never live without Him, or live a life that's worthy of God? Will you put your hope in Him and trust in Him today? Use a connection card or get online electronically and tell us, hey, I'm ready to put my faith in Christ. Or maybe this morning you're a follower of God and it's time for you to up your game and move forward in a fresh way; to be more accountable, to be more in the body of Christ in a fresh way, just reach out. Our prayer team would love to pray for you and encourage you in whatever way that God is speaking to your heart about what you need to do next to grow in your life and your faith. And I just pray that you will pray for me. And even as I continually pray for you all that, I will not just start well, but finish well. Some of you have stories that you said, well, I didn't start very well. I don't care how you started; I care more how you finish because your past is not a determination of the future; the Holy Spirit is. Amen. He is our future. And so, as much as I pick on Bob and Judy down here, they need to finish well. We need to pray for them to continue to be an example of Christ until they go home to the Lord years from now. I pray that, because no one is out of the woods until we're in heaven. So pray for one another, encourage one another, build up your trustworthiness even as you follow people who are trustworthy so that we all live lives to the glory of God worthy of God. Thank you for joining us today. For more information about the St Joe Ministry, visit www.stjoecommunitychurch.org or call area code (260) 471-4704 or email stjoecommunity@gmail.com. If you are looking for a church home, St. Joe means for worship and fellowship each Sunday morning at 8:30 AM and 10:30 AM. St. Joe is committed to your wellbeing and safety. For the latest policies regarding the COVID 19 pandemic, please visit the COVID section of the St. Joe website. Thanks again for joining us and we'll see you next week. Produced by resermon on the web at www.resermon.com.
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Today’s message is entitled Encouraging Word and was delivered on Sunday, May 15, 2022 by Greg Byman.
Encouraging Word
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 May 15, 2022 Letters change lives Introduction to 1 Thessalonians -Paul, with others, wrote this letter to the Thessalonians -Thessalonica- 100k people, affluent, peaceful, politically free, full of idol worship, not unlike many USA cities today -Acts 17:1-4 Paul shared the Gospel, several people believed -Acts 17:5-10 Paul left after three weeks due to a riot against Him, which he refers to in 1 Thes 2:17 -Paul sent Timothy to encourage them 1 Thes 3:2 -This church was growing spiritually! 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Hello! verse 1 -Common form, similar to Paul’s other church letters -a bit brief, maybe because he knew them so well -Father, Lord = phrase denotes them as co-equal -Grace to you and peace- Prayer of Thanks verse 2-3 -Paul prayed for them regularly -Paul thanked God for their testimony -work produced by faith- faith prompts work -we don’t work to earn God’s favor or keep our salvation -we don’t work so God isn’t disappointed (we’d never win) -labor motivated by love- -illust: duty vs. delight- we serve because we love! -endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ -who is thanking God for us? -I thank God for St Joe Community Church! Supernatural Response vs 4-6 -Paul reminds them (side note) they are “loved by God” -The Holy Spirit convicted and saved them -the Word was the Old Testament- Jesus is in every book! -Spurgeon: “Paul came there without prestige, without friends, when he was in the lowest condition, for had just been beaten and imprisoned in Philippi and had fled from that city.” -Their commitment to Jesus Christ was an act of God! -Our church wants every person to follow Jesus Christ -but we must always depend on the Holy Spirit to convict -we must be careful not to use evangelist methods that try to Talk or manipulate people into making spiritual decisions -I thank God for many of you in our church who have been supernaturally changed by God! Inspiring Faith vs 7-10 -they became an example to believers in other places -Their lives speak for themselves -they turned from idols- rejected popular culture -to serve the living and true God -They looked forward to the return of Jesus -the one who raised from the dead -the one who rescues us from the coming wrath -Who is inspired by your faith in Jesus Christ? -what are you most known for in your family, among friends? https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/1-2-thessalonians/ The world should not see its reflection when it peers into the church. Instead, it should see a kind of life available nowhere else. It should see the grace of Jesus, lavished on humble sinners, embodied in self-giving love. Our unbelieving friends and neighbors are clamoring after things that will never satisfy them. They know neither why they are here nor where they are going. What awaits them beyond the grave is terrifying, not beautiful. What letter would someone write you? -Would it be an encouraging word? -What is God telling you to do right now? In Genesis, He's the breath of life In Exodus, the Passover Lamb In Leviticus, He's our High Priest Numbers, The fire by night Deuteronomy, He's Moses' voice In Joshua, He is salvation's choice Judges, law giver In Ruth, the kinsmen-redeemer First and second Samuel, our trusted prophet In Kings and Chronicles, He's sovereign Ezra, true and faithful scribe Nehemiah, He's the rebuilder of broken walls and lives In Esther, He's Mordecai's courage In Job, the timeless redeemer In Psalms, He is our morning song In Proverbs, wisdom's cry Ecclesiastes, the time and season In the Song of Solomon, He is the lover's dream He is, He is, HE IS! In Isaiah, He's Prince of Peace Jeremiah, the weeping prophet In Lamentations, the cry for Israel Ezekiel, He's the call from sin In Daniel, the stranger in the fire In Hosea, He is forever faithful In Joel, He's the Spirits power In Amos, the arms that carry us In Obadiah, He's the Lord our Savior In Jonah, He's the great missionary In Micah, the promise of peace In Nahum, He is our strength and our shield In Habakkuk and Zephaniah, He's pleading for revival In Haggai, He restores a lost heritage In Zechariah, our fountain In Malachi, He is the son of righteousness rising with healing in His wings He is, He is, HE IS! In Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, He is God, Man, Messiah In the book of Acts, He is fire from heaven In Romans, He's the grace of God In Corinthians, the power of love In Galatians, He is freedom from the curse of sin Ephesians, our glorious treasure Philippians, the servants heart In Colossians, He's the Godhead Trinity Thessalonians, our coming King In Timothy, Titus, Philemon He's our mediator and our faithful Pastor In Hebrews, the everlasting covenant In James, the one who heals the sick. In First and Second Peter, he is our Shepherd In John and in Jude, He is the lover coming for His bride In the Revelation, He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords He is, He is, HE IS! The prince of peace The Son of man The Lamb of God The great I AM He's the alpha and omega Our God and our Savior He is Jesus Christ the Lord And when time is no more He is, HE IS!
1 Thessalonians is where we're going to be. And whenever I'm here, unless the Lord leads a little differently, we're going to be preaching through this letter that Paul wrote to Thessalonians in a city called Thessalonica. And this morning's message is called Encouraging Word. And that's pretty much what you could say about this entire letter is that it is an encouraging word to this church.
Now, Paul wrote letters to a lot of churches and they weren't always so positive. This one is incredibly positive. And I actually selected this... I felt led and I just made a choice and didn't sense it should be any differently. But I chose to walk through this letter and preach through it because I want to remind you at St. Joe Community Church, that God has done some amazing things. And He has brought us through some very difficult waters as a nation, as a world and the political scheme. And in spite of all the ways in which our country and our world seems to be dividing and devouring, we have hung on. And I believe it is the power of the Holy Spirit that's at work in this church family. This isn't anything; this isn't some masterminded wonderful leadership plan that I had. I was praying often that we would just get through the storm of all the different things that were dividing our country that still continues to divide people, that we would find a way through the thick and the weeds, and find a way to still be glorifying and honoring to Jesus Christ, loving one another, and being a witness to our world of the power and the grace and the wonder of Jesus Christ. And this letter was a letter that was sent to the Thessalonians and a particular time period, probably in about 40 AD. It was one of the earliest letters that Paul wrote. Not long after, of course, Christ crucified, rose again, ascended into heaven, the church is birthed. And then the missionary journeys of Paul began after his radical conversion. He was actually against the church. He was a very devout Jew who felt like the church was an aberration. It was heretical. It was ungodly. And he was persecuting and even saw and oversaw the execution of Christians, and the imprisonment of Christians. God got ahold of his life and Jesus appeared to him directly and said, what are you doing Paul? I'm paraphrasing. And it changed Paul, became physically blind. And at the same moment that he became spiritually awake and could see that it was Jesus, who was the one true God, the savior of the world, the risen Christ; he became physically able to see again, and he became a powerful force to be reckoned with on the scene, not only in the Jewish culture, but around the entire region of the Roman world. Churches were planted all over that Roman world. And they all had the fingerprints of Paul, the church planter. The church of Thessalonians was no different. It was a church that was planted. And now he's sending a letter back to this church, talking to them and encouraging them about their lives and about what he's seeing is happening in their lives. You see, letters changed lives. How many of you have gotten an old fashioned handwritten letter on paper within the last six months - anybody here at all? Just a few of us. How many have gotten an email in the last six minutes? Yeah. How many, you received a letter from somebody that cared about you and you care about, and it was just like, you've kind of kept it for keepsake. It's like safe keeping. It's an important letter. I have a shoebox full of letters from my girlfriend who is now my wife. Yeah, still have those. And I have the acceptance letter - how many have gotten an acceptance letter into job or college or something like, yeah. And that's kind of special. Sometimes you frame it and you go, "Look what, somebody actually cares about me. Look at this - besides my mom." How many have gotten a mom letter, you know, letter from your mom? In college, I used to get scraps of paper. It would be on the backside of her shopping list. She'd be done shopping and then on the other side, she'd be in the card. She'd scribble a note and throw it in the mail to me. And sometimes it had some other paper in it called money. That was nice. But thank you, mom. She watches us all the time. So, thank you mom, for all those letters. And I have some letters from my grandmother, and they're just special. My grandmother is with the Lord now. And they're things that, I even have gotten a letter or two from my son who has found the old art of letter writing. And some of you have gotten letters from him. I don't know who all, but he is a letter writer. And so, I thought that's - and you actually can read his handwriting. I think his mother taught him how to write properly, not his father. Letters changed lives. You know, sometimes they just... how many have gotten an anonymous letter and it wasn't so fun. Oh, not very many leaders in the room. I don't know. I've gotten a few of those. There are worth as much as a cheque that's not signed, right? I mean, you can't cash a cheque that's not signed. And I usually don't in on the advice that's given to me by an anonymous letter, because oftentimes it's a letter that doesn't have the courage to tell you who they really are. And I usually just throw those away. Sometimes I read them, I'm just curious, how bad is it? Pretty bad, okay. And I usually don't pay attention to it after that. So, if you want to write me a letter and you care about what you think, and you want me to care about what you think, put your name on it. Give me that much respect. I will talk to you about it. I don't mind somebody disagreeing with me; I just like to know who it is so we can talk about it. And maybe we still won't agree with each other after we talk, but at least we can be agreeable even as we disagree. Anyway, that's just a little note there. You know, they don't even publish anonymous letters in the newspaper because you got to own what you believe if you believe it, if it's good or bad. Letters change lives, and these are important in our lives, and this letter is no different. And this letter, unlike maybe many other letters that Paul may have written in his lifetime to churches, this letter is not just a letter to Thessalonians, but this is a letter to St. Joe Community Church. And what we're going to do throughout this series is we're going to say, what did that letter mean and how did they receive it when they were in the first century in 40 AD? And what were those things that were important to them? What are those things that are always important to every church in any generation, in every single culture, and then what should we do about it? We all, I mean, like do the right thing. That's an enduring statement; don't steal, don't commit adultery honor, your father and mother, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul strength and mind. These are enduring things, that whether you're in the first century, second, third, fourth, 19th, 20th, 21st century, or future centuries that you and I won't be alive for, these will be truths that are true that we ought to live out in our lives, no matter what. And that's what we're going to try to find in this letter. What are those truths that will always be true, that were true for them, but were also true for us? Now, this letter that was written was written to a church that was in a town of about a hundred thousand people. Now on that day, it would be like - that's a major city. That would be like Indianapolis in the mindset of the people of that day. The cities just didn't get very big, and this was an amazingly large church. It was a pretty affluent church. It was full of pagan worship, lots of idol, worship, all kinds of pantheism, multi-gods all over the place. It wasn't just like, oh, we are a city of churches here we call ourselves. Well, it was the city of all kinds of different religions. That's the reputation. Pretty free, politically. They were under the Roman rule, but they had a lot of freedom, and so there was very little military oversight. It was just a very free society and a lot of exchange of ideas and thoughts and commerce. It was probably a very easy city to live in. Paul shows up, and in Acts 17, if you want to read the story, he's running for his life because in Philippi, he was beaten and he had to run out OF town in the darken night. He comes to Thessalonica, and for three weeks he goes to the synagogue; there was a Jewish enclave there, and he preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, he didn't have the New Testament, because he was actually inspired later to even write this letter to them. He had the Old Testament, and Jesus is all over the pages of the Old Testament. That's how they know about Jesus is because of the prophecies and everything that was said about Jesus in the Old Testament. And there's actually a song that if you looked online at my notes, I actually, in the second page of my notes, I actually printed out the lyrics to a song called "He Is" by Aaron Jeffrey, back in the nineties. And I won't read it for you now, but they point out in their song every single book of the Bible and how Jesus can be reflected or the foreshadowing or the prophecy of Jesus is in every book of every Old Testament book that we have. And Paul was reasoning with them in the synagogues about Jesus Christ, and it says that a group of people came to know Jesus, including several affluent, prominent people; and especially some prominent women who came to know Jesus as their Lord and savior. They were converted, and then a riot breaks out. They didn't quite like what he was doing. Paul's kind of whisked away from the home where he lived, but they get to this place and they pull out the homeowner and say, what are you doing bringing this [Charlot10:52] in here preaching a different gospel, [unclear10:55] story. It's going against all the things that are happening in our city, and it's certainly against the Jewish culture. What are you doing? And they were going to beat them, and finally this guy pays them off and says, don't do that. He pays a fine to the government and he releases them. But then Paul, in the darkness of night, once again is whisked away, away from the city so that his life is not taken or he is not imprisoned or beaten. And yet in spite of that difficult circumstance and even the short time that Paul was there, the church was born. And now Paul is writing to a church that's actually thriving spiritually in spite of the persecution and the difficulties. And the fact that many of the people who were affluent and prominent in that city were now looked down upon. I mean, they went to the networking group for their business and they said, "Are you one of those Jesus freaks? Get out of here." And they've lost their prominence. And in spite of their loss of social status, and the fact that so many people in that city did not care about the Christian faith, this church was hanging on and it was growing, and their faith was inspiring, not just around themselves, but throughout the region. Well, let's read the story. Let's read the first chapter as we immerse ourselves in this church that Paul is writing to. It says here, "Paul, Silvanus and Timothy, to the church of Thessalonians in God, the father and the Lord, Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace." So, let's just break this down. I'm going to read this little by little instead of last service I read the whole thing. Let me just read it in pieces. Verse one is basically the hello, the hello part of the letter. And in those days, the hello part of the letter, would be a part of the letter that was a lot more of flowery or it was much more wordy. And in fact, some of the hello parts of Paul's letters would also include his little LinkedIn bio. "Hey, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. I have the authority to come to you and talk to you about these things." But he didn't say that in this letter, he kind of just says, "Hi, it's Paul and my gang here, Silvanus and Timothy. And we're just wanting to write you a note and grace to peace to you." Just a real simple. It must mean that Paul was well known to them, was well received by them and had a lot of trust built between them. And then he goes on to say in verse two and three, "We always thank God for all of you making mention of you constantly in our prayers. We recall in the presence of our God and father, your work produced by faith, your labor motivated by love and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." This is a prayer of thanks. He's saying I pray for you all the time. And here's some reasons why I'm so excited about you guys. You have a faith and that faith produces work. You actually live out your faith. There's product in this. It's not just a word only; your faith is action oriented. And isn't that what a church ought to be. We ought not just be a holy huddle where we say some words and we have some ritual and I don't mind ritual. Ritual's a good thing. We have our own non-traditional looking ritual as a church. It's a pretty much the same rhythm. You come here and you kind of get it, but it shouldn't just be that. In other words, our lives should be changed. The way you work, the way you teach, the way you lead, the way you drive a vehicle, a truck or whatever you do for a living in the service industry, serving people at their tables; whatever you do ought to be marked by the fact that you trusted in Jesus and that he is controlling your life and your work, how you love people, how you encourage people, how you forgive people and don't hold grudges. And how you care about people is a reflection of the fact that you have a faith in God. And this faith is not - you don't work in order to keep your faith. You don't work in order to somehow impress God with how good you are as a Christian. You're just prompted because it's the right thing to do. I want to live for God. I want to love people. I want to reach out and encourage people. I want to be there for people in their time of greatest need. And you're prompted because you have a faith in Jesus Christ. And he says also that you have a labor that's motivated by love. This is kind of the difference between duty or delight. Duty or delight. It's sort of like on Mother's Day, you say, "Well, I'm going to go see mom. It's Mother's Day, I'm supposed to. Hallmark has got this thing out for us that we got to buy their cards and I'm going to get her a card, because I'm supposed to." Now how loving is that and how much would your mother just go, "Oh, warm fuzzies, because you did this for me." Or if a spouse - husbands, if you go, "Well, I've heard in a book somewhere that I'm supposed to bring flowers to my wife. It's my duty to send her flowers or to bring them to her and to hug her once in a while." Now, isn't that just lovely? Or do you have a love that motivates you to want to care about somebody because you love them, because you want to do the right thing because you care about them? You care about your relationship with them. Your labor and caring for people is motivated by love, not by duty or it's what you're supposed to do. And then he says here, "Your endurance that is inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." You see, this church was going through some tough times. And you know, we, as a church, family might go through some tough times. It might be that Christianity becomes less and less popular in America. It's very unpopular in other parts of the world. We have a very unusual privilege of it being a fairly respectable and acceptable faith. But in many other parts of the world, it is very unacceptable, and it is very much looked down upon and people lose their social status and sometimes even lose their jobs when they convert to Jesus Christ. And in some places, they are marked with a death sentence and ostracized by their family when they put their faith in Jesus Christ. And this church was going through some tough times, and their faith in God was not some kind of like fair weathered friend Christianity. They were enduring. And why were they enduring? Because they had a hope in a future that was not based on their present circumstances. They knew Jesus was coming again. They knew that someday God will make everything right that was wrong. That God was the one they could trust in when they couldn't trust in anything else around them. Their hope in the future, their hope and the reward that we have for living for eternal things instead of earthly things; that was motivating them to endure in their faith and to endure as a church family. I have a question, who is God thanking, who is thanking God for you? Are there people that say, "Man, I am all the time saying thank you, God, that this person's in my life." Is there anybody like that praying about you that way? Is your life so inspiring and encouraging that they're saying I'm so thankful that this person is in my life? I thank God for my grandparents. I thank God for my mom and dad and their faith in Jesus Christ. And I thank God for their encouragement that they give me and the example they've given me throughout the years. I wonder how many people thank God that St Joe Community Church is alive and well? How many people say I'm so glad that St Joe, that Church that meets there on Sunday mornings on North Anthony, I'm glad they're around? I'm glad that for 19 years they've made it. But in all those years that they were bouncing around to different rental places, and they were in the movie theater for a while and getting sticky feet from the stuff on the ground. And the one movie theater we looked at, it's not even a movie anymore. We were looking at it and we were kind of afraid when we were turning the lights on. If we were going to see mice. I mean, it was so nasty in there, I said, "Man, if you put your Bible on the ground, like you'd lose the bottom half of it because it was just be stuck." And ladies would put their purse down there, nobody would steal it because they weren't getting it back off. You know, it was just like, it was pretty ugh. And then we got so bad to be looking for a place to meet that my kids would go around and say, "Hey, there's a vacant building, Dad, let's check that one out." I mean, it was just like, you know you're a church planner when your kids are starting to look at vacant buildings and say, "Man, we could just make that into a church." But do people even care that we survived these 19 years? I'll tell you what you go to meetings as pastors and you hear people say, so how's it going? And that's code word and pastor life to how many people were there, was your offering good and how many people got baptized recently? It's just, you know, nickels and noses. How many butts in the seat and how many people got wet? I mean, that's just kind of - how'd it go? It's just a big deal. Am I allowed to say that on Sunday? Sorry. And then when things aren't so good, you're listening, you're leaning into everybody else's story and you're not talking about how many people didn't come to church, and you have this game you play. I got a friend that I talk to once a week. And when he asked me that question or when I ask him that question, I'm asking Jimmy not how many people came to church on Sunday, but how many lives, was there any mark of the Holy Spirit at work in this church? He said, "Oh, you won't believe it. Somebody, man, they gave their life to Christ several years ago and they've been dry for so many years and they're sober. Or this person over here, they finally got their life around and they got their kids back. Or they've been able to do some things over here and their lives are better because of this. Or this family, they celebrated 45 years married." Yay. I mean, we talk about the spiritual victories in our lives, in our church; that's what's more important. It's not about how many people come; it's about how many people's lives are marked by a change because of the power of the Holy Spirit in their lives. I'm excited when reconciliation happens; I'm excited when things are going on. And I want to tell you something, you may not know this or not, but the reputation of St Joe is that she is a church that has endured through the test of time. It gets talked about. I want you to know that church family. I want to tell you that if somebody were to talk about St. Joe, they would say, yeah, I know that church. You used to be over here and now you're over here. Or I know so-and-so in your church. You know how many times I go to a meeting and they'll say, "Oh, I know so-and-so in your church." And we are not the biggest church in town by far not the biggest, yet that it seems that God has enabled us to have an impact spiritually, that I couldn't manufacture if I tried to, as a leader. God's at work inside of your lives and people know it and recognize it. And Paul is saying this, and I want to say this to you, thank God for what God's doing in your lives here at St. Joe Community Church. He goes on in verses four through six to say, "For we know brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you because our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full assurance. You know how we lived among you for your benefit and you yourselves became imitators of us and of the Lord. When in spite of severe persecution, you welcome the message with joy from the Holy Spirit." He reminds them, first of all, you're love by God, He chose you, and you're following Him, that the Holy Spirit was at work and that's what changed your lives. Not my persuasive words, but the power of God. "We shared the word of God with you, but it was the word that changed your life by the power of the Holy Spirit, not just me talking you into something," Paul said. And that's my prayer here at St. Joe, that you don't try to do something because somehow we've sung a song that you got emotionally attached and you became moved and emotionally, and you had a feeling and then Greg gets up here and bam, he really hits it on all cylinders this morning. And suddenly you're going to change your life because of what happened up here. I want to see your lives change because of what happens from the Holy Spirit inside of here of each of you. I said earlier, we're a pro-life church, and I'm praying that we will protect the unborn throughout the nation or the least that we'll have the right to vote on it. But it's not about a legal decision; it's about the hearts and souls of people believing that. And I know there might be even people in this room that they may disagree with what I just said about that. And I'm not here to beat you into submission to say, you better believe this. I want you to understand what God is saying about it. And I want you to find inform conviction based on what the Holy Spirit's saying, not what I'm talking you into. I would pray for a supernatural response. We're not here to manipulate people to have come to Christ. We're here to say come to Christ, may the Holy Spirit work in your life, and may you respond as God tells you to follow Him and what he's telling you to do. Brae went to this conference, and he's talking about the fact that he needed to figure out whether he's a sent person or if he's the one sending people. And so, he came to me and said, "Hey, I got this six week opportunity to go to Brazil." And you know, he's our leader for the worship team. And he's like, "Is that okay?" And I'm like, "So you're trying to follow God and you believe God is telling you to do this. And why would we not help you do that?" Like, it sounds kind of crazy that someone would leave for six weeks - must be of God. No, I mean, it's kind of cool. I mean, why wouldn't you as a young man who's not married that's trying to figure out what's going on in his life and for the rest of his life, why wouldn't we support him? And for someone just to say - and it's not a vacation by any means, he's going to be working the whole time he's there. He's signing up for something hard. That's a supernatural response. And we get behind those kinds of things around here. See, we want everyone to follow Jesus Christ, but we're not here to try to manipulate people into following Jesus Christ. You know, I thank God for the many people in this church that inspire me to be a stronger Christian in my life. And I question is, is there someone around you that's saying, you know there's something going on in you that only can be explained that God's in you and I'm thankful for your life? Is that the way you live your life? Are there people around you that would say that about you? There's a supernatural response that took place in your life. It's not just ritual. It's not just religion. It's a relationship with God through faith in Jesus. And then they have this inspiring faith. He closes it out, and I want to finish out here this in verse seven and following as a result - "As a result of you receiving the message, as a result of you becoming a Christian and becoming a follower of the Lord, Jesus Christ, you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and Ikea." That was the region where Thessalonica was - "For the word of the Lord rang out from you, not only in Macedonia and Ikea, but in every place that your faith in God has gone out. Therefore, we don't need to say anything for they themselves or report what kind of reception we had from you, how you turn to God for idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for His son from heaven, who He raised from the dead, Jesus who rescues us from the coming wrath." They had inspiring faith. They became an example to believers, not just in their town, but in towns all around them and in the region. And everywhere that they heard about this church, they were inspiring to the people around them; that they had turned from idols, they had rejected the popular culture to serve the living and true God. They looked forward to the return of Jesus Christ; that Jesus who was raised from the dead and who died on the cross to rescue us from the coming wrath of God. My question this morning is who is inspired by your faith in Jesus Christ? What are you most known for in your family, among friends, among your coworkers? Is your faith well-known? I just want you to know that there's a fan of St. Joe Community Church in the room today. There's a guy that I can testify who watched a church go through a pandemic, where every decision the leadership made was wrong from somebody's angle. A church that didn't have unanimity on what they believed, because we had people on every side of extreme when it came to responding to the pandemic. And then you had a church that faced a political divide that this whole nation was dealing with. And you had, again, people on different sides of the coin, and sides of the coin I didn't even know existed politically. And yet in the midst of all of that, and in the midst of what I know... look, I'm not too old fashioned. I know social media, I get on there once in a while, and I've seen some things. I've seen some things I've prayed a little harder about. I try very hard not to comment on much of anything, unless it's something positive or spiritually motivated. But I've watched this church; you didn't all agree with each other the whole time. Let's be honest. There was a lot of disagreement in this room on how to respond. But what I did see was the power of the Holy Spirit that still brought us together and kept us together. And we have not only grown through the pandemic, but we were actually financially stronger than we've ever been as a church family, which is just an indicator, it's not the only thing. And there are many other signs that show me that this was something that God was doing to keep us as a church family, in spite of the ways in which our nation and our world have been dividing people left and right. And I thank God for that. I'm the fan of St. Joe Community Church. I'm the guy that wants to say, God bless you, and that God has blessed you. I've watched multiple churches die through the pandemic. I've seen pastors and leaders resign and get out of the ministry completely because of the situations and the fiascos that were taking place. I've watched churches, not only did they lose people, but they financially dwindled to nothing. They still love Jesus, but they didn't have any resources to keep going and their buildings are now for sale. I've watched a lot of troubled situations take place. And I want to tell you as I go to different places, and as I network with other churches, as I go to the city prayer wide gathering that we do at the Muriel Center each month, what I hear is - God's done a special work at St. Joe. And it's not attributed because of your pastor being some special guy or your elders have got it all together. I think they're one of the best group of guys you'd ever be with by the way. But I believe it's because God in His sovereignty did a work in you all and you listened to the Holy Spirit and you've continued to listen to Him more than to the calamity that's out there. And while we might all disagree, I've watched you more disagree agreeably than I've seen in any other church. And for that, I thank God for. I pray that we will continue to be a church of inspiring faith, not just in our generation today, but in generations to come; that the 46805 zip code, that the North Anthony corridor area, that Northeast Fort Wayne quadrant, and maybe even the region of Allen County in Northeast Indiana might be inspired. Not because we're anything special, but because we serve and yield ourselves to an almighty holy God, who is changing our lives day by day. And we have a hope in what he has for us beyond our circumstances, and that may, it inspire people of all generations to put their hope in faith in Jesus Christ even as we have done. That's the kind of church that Paul was writing to, and I wanted to bring up 1 Thessalonian in this letter to us, because I believe that we can say... now I let me first say, as a musician, Brae could tell you how many things might have gone wrong every single Sunday in music, but most of you wouldn't even notice it. And as a leader, I can tell you five things that need to be fixed in our church. Don't get me wrong. It's not like we've arrived. We're still arriving every single day, but I'll tell you what all in all, I've come to realize that we don't celebrate enough for what God is doing. And I wanted to pause for at least a season as we go through Thessalonians and celebrate what God has and is doing in the life of our church family. And you've been a part of that. This letter is as encouraging I hope to them as it is to you; as God's love letter is written to you to say you are an inspiring church to other people around you. So, I have a question this morning, as we close, what letter would someone write to you about your faith? Is maybe this morning, a moment where you've had a gut check to say, I want to be more inspiring; I want to be more influential in my faith? Well, what's the step that you need to take to do that? What open commitment do you need to make to Jesus this morning so that you actually are leading your family, your coworkers, your friends, your neighbors towards Jesus Christ? There's really no middle road. You're either for or against. Well, I'm not going to make a decision today; then you've made a decision not to trust Jesus in that particular area of your life. And so this morning, what is it? I don't know what it is. I'm not here to brow beat you. I'm not here to make you do anything, but I believe that the Holy Spirit is at work in this room. What next step do you need to take spiritually, physically, mentally, openly, that you might be the person that God wants to use in the lives of the people around you, and that your life would actually get stronger and better because of it as well, and it would be to the glory of Jesus Christ? I pray you take that connection card and you put on there what it is, give it to us when you leave or put it in the offering box. Or step by, and I know Jerry and Becky are here this morning, and they're going to be behind the glass wall. And maybe you need to step back and ask for prayer. I'll be down here singing away in our last two songs that we're going to sing. And maybe you can come down and maybe you'd like to have prayer with me. I don't know what you need to do, but I pray that you won't miss the opportunity to move forward in your faith this morning. Father, God help us to be a church, a church that continues to be a church that people are thankful for; a place where supernatural response is taking place, not just some sort of a ritual; a family of God that is inspiring to others in their faith. And it takes one person at a time to make that happen this morning. And I pray that you'll show me what steps I need to take, even as you're showing everyone else. And may we simply be obedient to what you're telling us to do; it's in Jesus name that I pray, amen.
Sunday, May 8, 2022. Welcome to St Joe Community Church. Today’s message is entitled Children of God and was delivered on Sunday, May 8, 2022 by Greg Byman. For more information visit www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org, click on the Sermons tab, and find today’s broadcast.
Children of God
John 1:12-13 May 8, 2022 Today we honor and appreciate mothers -call your mom, thank God for her -thank God if you are a mother- a privilege not shared by all The best gift moms can give their children is faith in Jesus -A personal and growing faith in Jesus Christ -A guiding faith in Jesus- showing their children how to place their own faith in Jesus Christ Families following Jesus last forever -God intended earthly families to reflect His spiritual family -Psalm 127:1 Unless the Lord builds a house, its builders labor over it in vain. -Family traditions are wonderful- I hope you have them! -The only tradition that makes a family last forever is passing down our faith to the next generation Children of God But to all who did receive him -vs 11 the Jews rejected Jesus -Spurgeon “You will never go to heaven in a crowd.” -we are born spiritually like we are born physically, one by one! -many choose the path of destruction, only a few choose Jesus -illustration: minority is often right -receive = accept He gave them to right to be children of God -God gave them the right or authorization -be = better translated “become”, a change in status -before they received Jesus = not children of God To those who believe in his name -believe = ginoskein, to trust in, believe on, not just knowledge -in his name = “to believe that God is the God we see revealed in the Word and to put our trust in that God (Jesus Christ). -The name Jesus is not a magical formula or incantation How do we become children of God? Not because our family members were Christians -not of natural descent -I’m not physically born a Christian Not because we appear good enough -not by the “will of the flesh” -I cannot declare myself a Christian because I feel like one! Not because someone says we are a Christian -not by the “will of man” -church membership doesn’t make me a Christian We must be born “of God” -Leon Morris: All human initiative is ruled out -John 3:3 Jesus said “Unless someone is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” -John 1:12 all wo did receive him(Jesus), He (God) gave them the right (conferred upon them the rights and privileges) to be children of God. Are YOU a child of God? -Stop trusting in human efforts to become acceptable to God -Trust in Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross to save you from your sins -John 20:31 place your faith in Jesus Christ to receive life! -Connection Card, Prayer Team, Contact us online
Sunday, April 17, 2022. Welcome to St Joe Community Church. Today’s message is entitled Jesus is Alive and was delivered on Sunday, April 17, 2022 by Greg Byman. For more information visit www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org, click on the Sermons tab, and find today’s broadcast.
Jesus Is Alive!
Matthew 28:1-7 What are you looking for? Relief from troubles, difficulties, pain? A good life, family, career, happiness? Purpose in life? Where are you looking? Matthew 28:1-7 -The women were coming to the tomb on Sunday morning -An angel descends from heaven causing an earthquake -The angel rolled back the stone and sat on it -other accounts…moved/picked up the stone -1-2 ton stone -Jesus was already gone -The guards “became like dead men” -men guarding a dead man became like dead men! -The angel knew the women were looking for -Jesus who was crucified- killed, executed -He is not here. For he has risen, just as he said. -was raised- God the Father raised him from the dead -Jesus predicted his resurrection -We don’t know HOW Jesus was raised -The stone was rolled away to SHOW he was raised -Come and see- Jesus was not where they put him Friday -Then go quickly and tell his disciples The Resurrection Story Told by all four gospel writers Incredible -no one ever stayed “raised from the dead” -Matthew is writing much later, a body was never found -Lazarus may have died by now, he did at some point! Credible -Jewish men would NEVER have fabricated a story with Women as the primary witnesses -all four gospels write unique details, no collusion, no lie -everyone who saw Jesus alive staked their lives on it -many were willing to be killed than recant He is not here. He is risen! Stop looking for answers in dead places Trust that Jesus can take care of any problem you face Trust everything Jesus says Admit Believe Commit
They set everything up, they allowed us to come in early and set things up. And when you joined our church as a portable church, it was more like you'd say, "Great, you own a truck with a hitch because you can join, right now. Like, no membership fee if you come." No. And now, if you can walk to church from your house, that's great because we don't have a lot of parking. Anyway, all kidding aside, we were sitting there looking and waiting for cars and people to come. We'd sent the flyers out. We'd sent word of mouth. We'd had public events to tell people, people were praying all over the country for us. And we were just like, you know, 20 minutes till, and I knew - pick your denomination. They had to have been some denomination because everybody comes in late, you know, like whatever's going on here. And we're like, who's coming? Who's coming? Who's coming?
And if it's just us, we're still going to praise and worship God. But it'd be really nice if some people joined us. And they did. And suddenly it's like a traffic cop... I mean, literally it felt like policemen just stopped on Maple Creston and said, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn. And they all just started coming in. And a bunch of people that we had never met in our entire lives joined us for worship that day. Some are still members and worshipers with us today and others have moved on. A lot of our people that were with us at the beginning are still with us and we're still with most of the people that join. Anyway, but seriously, we had a blast of a time. And so, Easter Sunday - so we always celebrate our anniversary on Easter, even though the 20th of this month is actually when we started, but we celebrate on Easter. And what a grand time it is to talk about the stories of lives that have changed, hundreds of people that have come to faith in Christ; many of those baptized in our church family. Over a hundred people that have been sent on missions somewhere, either here in the United States or somewhere around the world to send them out in Jesus name, to come back. God is doing His work and he's continuing to do work. And we're not looking at the rear view mirror to say, look what we were, but we're then the wide front window, the windshield of life to say, where is God taking us next? That's what it's all about, because we haven't arrived. We've arrived when we're in heaven. We've arrived when we're in heaven. And until then, we got something to do. We got something to do for the Lord Jesus Christ. And I prayed that you've come here ready to hear what God wants for your lives. I pray that I'll just share what God wants me to say that it might be an encouragement to you, it might be strengthening; it might illuminate what God's word has already said in this very familiar story. Someone asked me that was John. He says, isn't it hard to sometimes - you have to share the same story everybody knows every year on Easter. And so, I'm going to talk about Jonah today. No, I'm not going to do that. You know, because you're like, what can you say? And you don't want to be creative, so creative that you like out create God, and that would be like blasphemy, so I'm not going to try to do that, so very simple story. I pray in very real ways that you will hear a fresh word from God this morning. That's my prayer. So the first thing I'm going to ask you is what are you looking for? What are you looking for? What are you looking for in life now? Now, I am one of those... if you are married, one of you is a shopper and one of you is a buyer. Somebody brought that up. That was a good analogy. And I go back and forth, you know, put me at Menards, I'm a shopper. I'm just looking around. What are you looking for? And you know, they're helpful - some of them are, at Menards, and they're saying, can I help you? And you're like, not really, you know, my wife is tried, but you know, I joke with them. And then at the end of the day, you know, like, is there something you're looking for? And I'm like, "Well, no." You know, and if I am there quick, yeah, but some days I am looking for something, but you know, there's a kickball and you know, we might need a kickball, or cereal, Menards sell cereal. What's that? I'll buy some lumber, buy corn flakes; they both taste the same. I mean, we can do this. This is all good. I like cornflakes by the way, put lots of sugar on it. But I'm telling you what; it's a fun place to be for me. Now, I'm a guy, I like guy things, you know, put me at Joanne's Fabric Shop and you're like, "Well, when can we get out of here?" And as a kid, my mom was a sewer. She sewed my first leisure suit. Anybody have the privilege of wearing a leisure suit in the seventies that your parents - your mom made you? Well, pray for me. I've got scars. But anyway, I've got awesome pictures of the leisure suit. I think it was burnt orange. I'm serious. This is true, but my mom would go and she would look and look for patterns and bolds of fabric. And I had the most wild, crazy imagination and I can make believe anywhere. I was an only kid for five years and I was the only boy in my house forever, and I had two sisters. I knew how to make things up; you cannot make up make believe in a fabric store. It was just so stink and boring in there. I mean, it was just like, there's another bold of fabric, and there's another bold of fabric and the chairs are too high to get to the fabric. Anyway, it is an awful place. Some of you, you go shopping because you love your spouse and you go with them. And some of you, you love your spouse enough to not go with them and make them suffer while you're going, "Are we going home yet?" You know, but you're looking for things and you'll know it when you'll find it. And so, I'll know what I'm looking for when I find it. Anybody said that, thank you, pastor, I receive that word. You hear that? Okay. And for those of you, we pray for you, but pray for me because you never get home. And this is a rabbit trail. How many of you say, "Look, honey, I saved $50." How much you have to spend to save $50? That's in my brain. I'm like, there's a percentage here. It was 30% off, that's $50. Like, I wasn't good at math, but I can do the math. We're going to pay for this. Anyway, it's all fun. It's all fun. But, what are you looking for? Some of you, if in all seriousness are looking for relief, you're looking for answers. You're looking for some kind of a situation, a career change. Maybe no more career. Maybe it's a new season of life. But it's, what do I do with these little children in my life? What do I do when I get children? What do I do, I'm brand new married? How many it's their first Easter married today? Ooh, you're newlyweds. Right here. Right here. Let's give them a round of applause. Awesome, awesome. Okay, have you decided where you're going to go to this afternoon because that's the family you love the most, right? Oh, that's awful. That's awful. That's awful. Okay, but pray about it because you know, we don't want you to offend anybody, no. How many here - that's the real question is which family do we go to and not offend the other? Yeah, that happens. That's a real story on Easter. But anyway, we're praying for you. We're praying for you. Anyway, I had the privilege of walking up and being with both these couples this year. Some of you're looking for forgiveness. You're looking for absolutely or some sort of redemption from something. And the question really is, where are you looking? Where are you looking for those answers? Where are you shopping for your life values? Where are you shopping for your self-worth? Where are you shopping for hope and healing? I talked to somebody - I use this phrase and most of you have heard me say it before; "doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result is just silly." It's insanity. And I used that at a car parts store. Yeah, I was shopping. I don't know - I went buying. I needed a part. But I went there and a guy was talking about something, and he says, I work seven days a week. I'm like, really? "Done it for five years." I said really? That is amazing. Seven days a week. I didn't have time to ask him what his family thought of that. Young man, and I said seven days a week, wow! Are you getting ahead? That's a lot of time to be getting. He says, "Not at all. I'm getting behind." Huh? I said, you know, if you don't take off a regular time, like take of; God will give you a bunch in a row. And I said are you getting ahead? "No, I'm not getting ahead. I'm farther behind than when I started all this. I said, you know, doing the same thing over and over again as what - and the counter clerk, her name is Angel she said. Insanity! And why is it that we think we're looking for all the answers in all the wrong places, looking for that country song. I'm looking for love in all the wrong places. You're looking in the wrong places and you keep thinking you're going to find it. How many times you go to the closet looking for the one thing that you thought you put in that closet? And how many times are you going to look there and realize it's not there? The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a game changer for anything you're looking for. It changes everything. If this is just one more club, then we need a great marketing program to get a bunch of people here and entice them. And maybe we'll do a like half off price to join or something. Really, we don't charge people to join. But I mean, you know, what are we going to - you know, we're just a business. We're just the lions club. We do a little bit better philanthropy than others. We give a little bit more to this. We do this niche of helping people in Jesus name, but you know, Jesus is dead, so it's not... but He's a good figure of follow because He was a really nice guy when He lived on the earth. I mean, if that's all it's about, then we've really kind of missed the mark here. The resurrection of Jesus Christ isn't just something we think is important on Easter Sunday. It's something that so changed the spiritual world that people began to worship, not the Sabbath, but on Sunday. Like Jewish people, that it was ingrained in their brain, you worship on Saturday. And they switched to Sunday because on the first day of the week. In the early breaking dawn, some girls went to a tomb and found it empty. And it so changed the world that we even whoever does or does not believe in Jesus proclaims that Jesus at least made a mark in history because they write a date down that's tied to BC and AD. If you're looking for real answers, you're going to find it in the empty tomb. You're going to find it in a relationship with Jesus Christ. Now, let me tell the story here - kind of unpack it. You've already read it. John read it for us in Matthew 28. If you have your Bible turn there, and I'm just going to walk through the story a little bit here. After the Sabbath, the week was dawning, the first day of the week, then Mary Magdalene, the other Mary, they came to the tomb. Was it a tradition of them to go to the tomb and mourn in the death and the loss of a friend, of someone they cared for deeply? Were they coming to prepare the body a little bit more? Who was going to roll the stone away? In one passage it says in another gospel story, that they were going to go, and in haste had prepared the body because it was about to be Passover, and they had to get his body off the cross and into that borrowed tomb. And they thought, well, but we need to fix them right. But they were going to the tomb. And it says here, Matthew kind of inserts while he's telling the story of them coming. But by the way, there's a big earthquake that took place. And it took place because an angel descended from heaven and it was so powerful when he came that an earthquake occurred. And now, Matthew's explaining these things to us about 90 years of AD 90 - 40, 50 years later he's telling the story. And I'm going to tell you that this would not have lasted or the test of time if he had been telling a lie. What he's telling and when it was received by the Christians, it was a commonly understood story. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have it in our Bible today because there's a lot of stories that were made up about this whole event that were not real, that did not have truth in them, and we don't have them today. And anybody that you watch those history stations, they really love on Easter to take, oh, the lost gospel of Judas, the lost gospel of James, the lost gospel of Thomas, and most of those that they have the label of a person's name were written hundreds of years later, or at least over the time, beyond the time in which the actual disciples name, the disciple existed, he was dead by then and somebody was faking it. And it's very easy to see as a historian, if you really wanted to look at it credibly; anybody can say that's not a lost gospel of Mark; that's, somebody's attempt to pervert the real gospel that we have. You know why it's lost? You know why the church voted it down? Because it was false, and they would've quickly voted out the resurrection story that Matthew told if it was false. They didn't. We have it today in antiquity. We have it today in current times. The angel descends down, caused an earthquake, and it says here that he rule rolled back the stone and was sitting on it. And I was listening to David Jeremiah on the radio, and he made mentioned that in one of the versions of one of the gospel stories, the word is that he picked it up and moved it. The stone would normally be in a groove and it would roll across the opening of the grave of the tomb that Jesus would be in. And it was so big, it would be as big enough to be like a four foot by this wide, really kind of a doorway. And the stone would have to be so big; it would be about one to two tons in weight. And they would leverage it with several people to get it out of the way. They'd put the body in there; put it back so that they wouldn't be desecrated by wild animals. And in this case, the guards were guarding it because they didn't want the disciples to come and steal the body and pretend like Jesus had come back to life. And it says the angels picked it up, moved it aside and He was sitting on it, waiting for the ladies to show up. There He was, bright, white, glowing, and incredible. You know how big of a story it was? Read in there. The soldiers, the grown men that were supposed to cover the grave, fell back in fear and were like dead men. They passed out. They fainted. Tell that to your commanding officer. How bad was it? I fainted. You don't get to go back out again. They bought them off, by the way, you can read that later, to tell a lie about what had happened there. It's interesting that guards who were there to guard a dead man; when that dead man came back to lie, they became as dead man. Kind of ironic. Little twist in the story that, you know, wow, that's interesting. The angel I think knew that He was coming. In fact, they said, "You're looking for Jesus, aren't you? The one who is crucified! You know what? He's not here. He's alive. Come look and see where He lay, where He used to be." He was raised the Bible says. God, the father raised the son. Jesus himself had predicted three times. I talked about this already, last handful of Sundays ago that He predicted that he would rise. In fact, He says it's the same one. He said that He told you that He would do this. That's the one. Now, the Bible doesn't say how He was raised. It doesn't say that anybody witnessed his resurrection. All we have is the evidence. They rolled the stone away, not to let Jesus out, but to let us in to see that He was no longer there. And He says, you can see he for yourself, ladies. He's not here. Come and see. It's not where we put Jesus. Jesus isn't where you put Him on Friday. He's gone. And then says, go quickly and tell his disciples. They got to be the first ones to declare that Jesus was alive. I remember some of the early times, I can't remember the first time I ever did it, where I was able to actually share my story with somebody and help them find their story by trusting their lives in Jesus Christ. Wow. What a blessing to tell somebody the story, my story, but really tell His story and let them and invite them to have their story enveloped in His story, where they put their faith in Jesus Christ. And at the end of my sermon this morning, I have three words. And if you write those three words down, you could with your story, talking about His story, use those three words to help someone else find Jesus this week, or whenever. Just have it handy, have it ready. And when people ask you, "Why do you have hope? This is kind not such a cool thing - situation going life. Why are you not so jarred by the horrible things that are going on in this world?" Oh, I'm sad. I'm very sad. It really breaks my heart. I get emotional when I see the images on TV right now, what's going on in another continent. I'm struggled to see the bad things that are going and I struggle to see the hopelessness. I struggle as I watch the news of what's going on in our city, as I watch people in their lives with hopelessness in their hearts and minds, because they don't feel like it's worth moving forward. It breaks my heart. I can't stand to see the abuse that takes place to our children, when Allen County is one of the highest infant and toddler mortality rates in the State. I know that's a give and take, ebb and flow, and it is not something that anybody... we want it to disappear. Being a metropolis, being so many people by percentages, we're going to have more things happen, probably that are not good, but I want to have that percentage reduced to zero, by the way. It breaks my heart. I'm not here to say I'm not affected by it, but I know who I'm serving. And who's in my heart and where my real hope lies. And I know that the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the fact that He conquered death, the fact that He overcame evil, the fact that I am forgiven of my sins and I can offer that to anybody in this place, anybody around the world and they too can find forgiveness in Christ, and their lives too can be changed by the power of Jesus; that's the only hope I know for this world. That's the only hope I have. And some days if I come up to a scene and I have to be a chaplain and I have to be there; I'm just the presence of Christ. They don't know that I'm the presence of Christ, because I don't have an opportunity to talk to them about that. But boy, as soon as the door is open, I'm ready, and it's exciting to share Jesus. These women we're the first one. And you imagine how excited they were. He's not here. He's risen. We went there. And the guy said I don't believe you, in another story, another gospel story. They ran in to find out for themselves, because what do women know? No, I mean, I have to see it to believe it. I'm going to bring it... I say that for a reason. You are like, "Man, you're really hitting the numbers today." No, I got a reason for telling you that. You see the resurrection, I'm telling you this morning was told by all four Gospel writers and you say, but there are differences. One gospel writer said it this way, Matthew said it this way, Mark said it that way, Luke said it this way, John said it this way, and yet it doesn't look like they match in their story. Now, how many of you are teachers or you've worked with preschoolers, actually teachers with older kids? Anybody? You ever had to - how about your own kids? You have more than two or three kids in your lifetime. Okay. And what if something bad happened? You know, somebody carved their initials - well, that you would know who it was. They used a permanent marker on a dry erase board or they did something that shouldn't have done or somebody stole something or something bad happened. And you pull them in one at a time to tell story, right? You tell little Johnny, little Julie and you go what happened here? And they both have the exact same story verbatim. What do you know? They're called a liar. They're telling a story, because they somehow got together and says let's get this right. We got to figure this out, because they're going to ask us what happened. Okay, you're going to say this and I'm going to say this, and they collude with one another. And police officers know this when they're investigating a crime that when two guys are saying the very same story, it ain't the same story that actually happened. Odds are, it's a story, but not the story. So when you have all four gospel writers looking at, let's just say an accident occurs in the middle of the intersection and they're sitting on all four corners. They all have a different perspective. My perspective is this is the angle how I saw the cars hit. This is how I saw the cars hit. This is how I saw the cars hit. And all four are a collection of the story that actually happened because none of them had the same viewpoint of the accident. And all of the gospel writers come from their own personal viewpoint; not viewpoint like opinion, but their own facts that they know about out on their corner of the street as they looked at the story of Jesus. And so it's the additive principle. You add them together to find the real story. You don't subtract from one another, because one didn't say this and the other said and say that. This resurrection story is, if you looked at it from human perspectives - incredible. It's incredible. No one ever stayed raised from the dead. No one ever stayed raised from the dead. If Lazarus had died again, because remember he got raised by Jesus. They'd still be talking about it. If that little girl who was raised from the dead; that Jesus raised from the dead was still alive, there'd probably be a gospel in her name. Some kind of a name like, wow, who's this person? But all evidence suggests that Lazarus and that little girl eventually did enter the grave on this side of heaven. Their faith was in Christ, my hope and prayer is I'm assuming Lazarus did, but they died. The one that didn't was Jesus, and that's the one we're still talking about. That's the one we're singing about. That's the one that people gave their lives for. It's incredible. Matthew is writing much later, like I told you already, and so if they had found his body in a Creek somewhere, tossed aside somewhere, buried in a different grave - Oh, they just got the wrong tomb. That's a theory out there. Don't you know they would've done everything they could to unearth the truth about this. Who was in charge, the Christians? No, there were very few Christians at that moment. Who was in charge were all the people that had everything to lose if they didn't find the body of Jesus, and nobody did. It's incredible. But you know what? It's also a very credible story. And here's the part that I referred to just a moment ago. You see, truth be told, and thank God, women have a say legally. And they have as much right and they're just as equal in their opinions in their weight of what they say in our world today, than they ever were hundreds of thousands of years ago. And it's been in recent history that women have had equal rights. And so, I say that not to say, yay, I say that's not good. But the thing is, if this story had been fabricated by the men who wrote it down, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, they would have never made up the story that a woman found Jesus alive before men. They just wouldn't have. And say well, that's not right. I'm just saying that's how it is; that it's even more credible to believe that it's a true story because you can't make it up. I mean, I've come home and said, "Honey, you won't believe what I witnessed today." And she'll do the same with her job. And we'll say, and you know, we won't share names but share stories and we try to decompress a little bit and we go - you can't make this up. It just, you can't make it up. You have an incredible story. You can't make up the fact that these women found the tomb empty, because in that day and time, it would've been knocked aside as poo-poo. No, there's no way. That gives women some kind of status that they don't even have in this world, and so, it's very credible. It's very credible that all four Gospels would write unique details that these women were the ones that found the tomb empty. And it's very credible. When you think that the people who believed and saw that Jesus was alive, staked their very lives and died many of them for that truth. What would you die for? What lie would you die for? What lie would you die for? At one point you'd finally say, "Okay, that crossed. No, He's dead. I just lied." They didn't do that. They willingly suffered for the name of Jesus Christ because their lives had been so changed. What did it say in 1 Corinthians 15, "For I passed on to you as most important what I also received." Paul says this, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures and that He appeared to Cephas, that would be Peter, then to the 12, and then he appeared to over 500 brothers and sisters at one time. Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. And then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, He also appeared to me. And then Paul goes on later and he says, verse 17, "And if Christ has not been raised, you’re worthless. You are still in your sins. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be petty more than anyone." This resurrection story is not just a good story to tell on Easter and we get a nice little outfit or in my case, in the seventies, a leisure suit. This isn't one of those things where we just say, "Oh, He has risen." Oh, you got the story; you know how to do this, yeah. It's sort of like Christians. We know how to do this. God is good - All the time. Oh, you got it. You're in the club. This isn't ritual. It's ritual with a purpose. I ritually come to church on Sundays because I believe Jesus came back to life. I ritually pray to God because I believe God is alive. I ritually thank God for my sins being forgiven because He really forgave me of my sins. He paid the price. And so, you might call it a ritual, you might call it a religious practice, but the meaning behind it is not ritual or religion. The meaning behind it is relationship - knowing Him personally. And so, He's not here, He's risen. I want to end on that note before we leave today. He's not here, He's risen. Look, what are you looking for? He's here. What are you looking for? Store clerk comes up, "What are you looking for?" "I don't know. I'm looking for this." "We don't have that here." You've ever been somewhere like that? Boy, try to find a fan belt on the first big day of snow, or try to find a snowblower belt on the first big day of snow. We don't have one of those; they were all out all over this city. There's no dead body here, He's gone. What are you looking for? Why are you looking somewhere else for your answers? Stop looking in dead places for answers to live life. Stop looking in dead end places. Stop looking where you already know the answer does not exist. Stop looking where you know you should not be looking. Don't go into that rebound relationship. Don't go into that new debt program. Don't go into that buy one more new thing; I'll maybe be happier at this place than that place. Quit trying to buy your love into what's going on trying to find someone else. I'll tell you what; some of you, you're still living in a past that someone created for you in an evil way. They're chirping in your ear; "You're not good enough. You're not pretty enough. You'll never amount to anything." Heaven forbid it, it's your parents, it might be a teacher; it's somebody in your life, and you can't overcome being last picked at the playground at kickball because of how awkward you are when you went and played, you can't get over a shadow story that is not in charge of you, but you're letting it be in charge of you. You keep going to the graveyard for answers and he's not there. Stop it! Stop it! He's risen, and His power and His life, and by His authority you can get over. You can go over. You can be healed from. You can grow. You can become, and you have purpose and meaning in the name of Jesus Christ. There's living proof in this room that that's true. Trust Jesus to take care of any problem that you're facing. Trust Jesus and everything that he says. He said, "I'm going to come back to life. Oh, by the way, guys, I'm coming back to life. Oh, by the way, I'm going to be raised from the dead." And he did. And if God, the father and God, the son could walk together in a situation and bring the holy spirit and all that; if all of that can happen and they can bring together a story that so shook the world that we talk about it today. And if Jesus is true to His word and He fulfilled everything that the father had for him to do, and scripture was fulfilled from the Old Testament and it was written about in the New Testament; if Jesus kept His word all of that way, He will keep His word with you. If He said you're forgiven, you are. Quit bringing up something you've already asked His forgiveness for. I know there's a thing called regret. It's horrible. I know there's a thing called I have a past and I remember it. I know a thing called that - you know, we just don't like what happened. But we don't have to live in the chains of the way it was. As I mentioned our earlier, we have a windshield full of opportunity; don't look in the tiny mirror, mu mirror of what used to be. Look forward, not behind. Put on the full armor of God, the Bible says. You know that full armor; it's that frontal stuff, nothing on the back. It means that we keep moving forward, but we don't go with some kind of a death wish; we go in the name and the power of Jesus Christ. He promised to come back to life. He did. He promised security, peace, and hope. He gives it. He promised forgiveness. Will you trust Him this morning? Stop trusting in your past story. Stop trusting your broken family. Stop trusting the things that you know are lies from the pit of hell, and trust in the risen savior, Jesus Christ. Three words and we're out of here. You know how you start believing in Jesus and trusting Him complete with your life; you start admitting that you've missed the mark. You admit to Him that you are a sinner for all of sin and fallen short of the glory of God. The wages of sin is death. I deserve punishment forever. Apart from a holy God, I deserve to be separated from God forever. And you do not have a relationship with Jesus Christ if you've not first, come to him for forgiveness of your sins. He's not just some good story that He put across on your chain and now I'm a Christian. No, you need to admit to Him. Repent therefore, and be baptized. Let people know. I'm no longer going to live that way. I know that's wrong. I know what you call wrong is wrong, and I admit that. I fall short of being perfect like you, Father. I ask you to forgive me. And then I believe - I believe, Jesus, that you've died and rose again. If you believe in your heart, that God raised Him from the dead and you confessed with your mouth Jesus is Lord, you'll be saved. You got to believe this story is real. This isn't just something you talk about that's a fun little story. This actually happened. Real man really died, really came back to life, and I believe that. You believe. I believe, Jesus. You're the hope. Jesus said I'm the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me. I believe Jesus, you're the only way to heaven. There's no other door I can get in. It's through you. And finally, I commit. I'm all yours, Jesus. With all my breath I give you my life. Paraphrasing what we sang a little bit ago. I commit as best I know how, I give you my life to do with as you please. Whatever you want from me, I'm yours. Even unto death, Jesus, I want to live for you. I'm tired of living a lie. I'm tired of living my shadow past that isn't good. I'm tired of living in answers that don't give true hope. I admit I'm a sinner. I believe Jesus you died on the cross and rose again, and then now commit my life to you as my savior and Lord. Let's stand one last time this morning, if you would. It was mentioned earlier that we had these connection cards. They're on the back table. As you go out this door, maybe you need to grab one, put something on there. Lord, I've got something. You're talking to God and you say, "Lord, what do you want me to do?" And this card might help you. It says here, accepting Christ as savior. Maybe the first time you've never put your life in Jesus' hands. Today would be the day that you admit, believe and commit your life to Jesus Christ. Maybe it's a re-surrendering of your life. Maybe it's requesting baptism. Maybe your next step is I'll come back next week. Look, if you've never gone anywhere for a long time, your best next step might be just; I'm committed to coming back, but don't not do what God's told you to do. And by the way, you're ready to make a decision right now. You might not be ready tomorrow, so I encourage you to do it now. And let someone know that you've done it now so that we can be praying for you and encouraging you and helping you to make good on what you know God has asked you to do this morning. And so, don't be silent. Speak up, let us know. I'll be down here in the front. Jerry will be in the back. Some others will be in the back, Becky as well, to help encourage you and to pray with you if you feel led to do so. And so, please, let's just respond as the Lord has called us to do. Father God help us all to be obedient to whatever you've told us to do. Nothing I want them to do, God, this isn't about me. It's about you, Jesus. So Lord, speak to every heart in this room, including mine, and help us to move forward the way you want us to spiritually in Jesus' name, amen.
Palm Sunday and Lord’s Supper
April 10, 2022 Palm Sunday: Jesus in the crowd Jesus was a Crowd Favorite! -Read Matthew 11:7-11 -they were welcoming a king, their savior -He rode in on a donkey- came peacefully -Their expectations did not match what Jesus came to do -They wanted Jesus to overthrow their earthly oppressors -Jesus came to set them free from their own oppressive sin -Result over the next week: Their Loyalty Was Short Lived Thursday Night: Jesus and His Disciples The Lord’s Supper: Affirmation Of Loyalty -Jesus established an enduring practice of remembering His death Mark 14:22-26 As they were eating, He took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is My body.” Then He took a cup, and after giving thanks, He gave it to them, and so they all drank from it. He said to them, “This is My blood that establishes the covenant; it is shed for many. I assure you: I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it in a new way in the kingdom of God.” The Lord’s Supper is… A Symbolic Reminder -Jesus used elements from the Passover Supper -Bread symbolized his broken body -The Cup symbolizes his blood shed for our sins For Christ’s Followers -We invite fully committed followers of Christ -Are you a Palm Sunday or Thursday night follower? A Declaration -We declare Jesus died for our sins -We declare He is coming again Come carefully to the Lord’s Supper 1 Corinthians 11:28 “A man ought to examine himself before he eats the bread or drinks the cup.” -Confess your sins and Receive Forgiveness -Submit again to Christ’s Authority in specific areas of your life -Restore broken relationships “as much as it depends on you” The Lord’s Supper Take your time- pray about your heart attitude first Come forward to receive the elements Pray before eating and drinking Keep Worship Area Quiet- let others partake in peace Use Connection Card- to declare your spiritual commitments Come for Prayer- Prayer Team members are ready to help you My Next Steps Connection Card in Offering Box -everyone can do this -be sure to mark your spiritual commitments, pledges, prayer needs Good Friday Worship at Noon Easter Sunday Worship -This is the best time to invite friends and family to worship After singing psalms, they went out to the Mount of Olives. -We can’t stay in the “upper room” -Jesus is leading us to a life of sacrifice and victory!
To the cheers and adulation of the crowd, they were putting Palm branches, leafy branches, Palm branches down; they were putting their coats down. They were signifying that this Royal King deserved a coronation. That He was coming in, in such a way that they were like, "Yes, this is him, Hosanna!" They were just singing the praise. He was the rockstar of the morning. I just want to clarify for those of you, and this came up this week in our elders meeting, that some of you might have been offended when I called Jesus a goat. And I just want to remind you that culturally speaking, when you call somebody the goat, it is an acronym for "greatest of all time". So, I was not defaming Jesus by calling him a goat. That would be bad, don't do that. Don't do that. He was the goat. He was the greatest of all times.
So just in case, if you're listening, maybe that was you. I don't know who it was, but there was a comment back that maybe that wasn't appropriate, and I didn't mean in any way to offend, especially Jesus Christ. Let's give Him honor to whom honor is due. But guess what? This crowd, as excited as they looked, had an agenda for Jesus Christ. Jesus is in the crowd and here He was being welcomed in as the King, their savior. Now, Jesus was not meeting their expectations. In fact, the way He was entering was not like He should have in order to match what they wanted Him to be. He was riding in on a colt, so you know which team He roots for. Anyway, that was... See the second service, I get a little excited, you know, I get a little... my wife says, "Tamp it down, Pastor Greg. Tamp it down husband." Anyway, He wrote in on a colt; He was coming in peacefully. He was making sure that the Roman authorities and anybody who thought they were in charge, that He was making it very clear that He was not trying to [unclear02:31] any earthly authority. If He was going to be put to death, it was not because He was a rebel who is trying to incite an insurrection. His death would be the result of His own people, condemning Him for no other reason than that He claimed to be equal to God; that he claimed to be God. He's in this crowd, and He's not meeting their expectations. He's not going to meet their expectations. They wanted Jesus to overthrow their earthly oppressors. Jesus came to set us free from our own oppressive sin. And the result over the next week would be a very short lived popularity where this same crowd would be converted into a mob that would cry out, "Crucify Him! Crucify Him. Put Him to death in the worst way possible. He's not our king." You think, how can a crowd be so fickle? I'll give you an illustration. You have someone who is starting a new company; maybe they're a politician and they are starting a new term as a newly elected official. Or in my case, I work with a lot of church planners. And of course, I was part of the beginnings of planting St. Joe Community Church. And this next Sunday, we traditionally celebrated, it's the 20th or the 21st of April, but we celebrated on Easter Sunday will be our 19th anniversary. And I think back on how we said, "This is how we're going to do it. This is what we're going to do. This is the way in which this is the mission and purpose, the vision of our church." And many church planners will do that, and they'll gather a crowd of people and they'll move that crowd to move forward. And God will be working in the middle of all that, and there'll just be this swell of people that will come. And then about year two or three, as they begin to implement the vision that God had given them that they clearly said, this is where we're going, this is what we're doing; a few of the people in the crowd will go, "Well, that's not what I signed up for." They didn't read the bulletin. They didn't read the fine print. They didn't really hear what they wanted. They heard what they wanted to hear. And they joined the crowd of people doing a new thing in town with their own agenda and their own version of what they wanted to happen in that new company or that business or that church or that politician. And when that person was true to what they said they would do, they weren't so happy about it and they faded. And bar none, every new church, every new organization, every political leader, or any kind of leader who says, I'm now the new leader, who everybody champions at the beginning; there will always be a few people that didn't really hear what they wanted to do. And when they actually did it, they get mad and leave. It just happens. And so Jesus, I mean, case in point, this crowd said, "This is what you are to us. We hate the Romans. We want him out of our lives. Oh, king, get this over with." And He didn't come to overthrow an earthly kingdom. He came to overthrow in the spiritual kingdom that's behind every pagan, earthly kingdom. He came here not to overthrow Putin, but to overthrow the one who's the mastermind behind all the evil that exists in this world. Now, he has a pure choice to do good or evil, and he is owning evil like nobody's business. And it's horrible. But the ruler of this world is Satan himself, and he wants to cause everybody to be in bondage to send until eternity when they spend eternity away and banished from God forever to pay for their sins. And he wants to drag as many people with him as possible. And Jesus came not to overthrow a temporal kingdom that was underneath a spiritual kingdom that was against the ways of God; he came to overthrow the very kingdom that had us in slavery to our own sins. He came to overcome your personal kingdom that is in charge of you that's causing you to sin and to do things that are destructive to yourself and to people around you. Jesus came to set us free. He came to die. He was a crowd favorite in this moment, but then we see later Thursday night, we see Jesus and his disciples. We see Him in the crowd. Yay! But when he really gets down to brass tacks of what he's going to do, he's left with just a few. And even when he had the few, one ran off to continue to press Him into the vision that he had for Jesus' life. Some think that when Judas betrayed Jesus, that Judas, we think, no one knows, but there's a possibility that Judas may have thought if I can just push Jesus's buttons, if I can press against him the authorities, then He'll step forward and be the king that I want him to be. Or maybe by this time, he was so angry that Jesus wasn't the man that he wanted Him to be, that he was in spite betraying Him so that he would say, "Well, if that's what you want, you get what you deserve, and I'll just help it along by betraying you into the hands of the authorities." We don't know. But even in the 12, there was one that stepped away and said, I'm not really into this. So, we have a much smaller group of people who are following Jesus Christ at this moment in time. And we pick up in Mark 14, where Jesus institutes the first Lord Supper and on the screen is the version that I'm going to read from out of the Christian Standard Bible, where it says, and you are welcome to read out loud along with me this morning, if you would, starting at verse 22 on the screen. "As they were eating, He took bread, blessed and broke it, gave it to them and said, 'Take it, this is my body.' Then He took a cup and after giving thanks, He gave it to them and they all drank from it. He said to them, 'This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly I tell you, I will no longer drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.' After singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives." What's going on here? Well, this night of gathering was in keeping with what God had instituted in the Old Testament called the Passover Supper. We're not getting get into the intricacies of that. That in itself is a very unique story; a word picture of all the elements that you can tie to our savior Jesus Christ. But the two that He pulled from the Passover supper were the bread and the cup. And He took this, what they knew to be the Passover Supper, and he instituted a new supper that we now call the Lord's Supper. And He used it as a symbolic reminder. He used elements that are symbolic of His broken body and His spilled blood. And that's what we'll do today in a few moments; we'll take the bread and we'll take the cup. And as we eat and we drink, we remember His death until he comes again. Again, this is upper room conversation, not crowd conversation. These are people who are all in following Jesus, that's who we invite to be part of what we're doing. This upper room, this room where we have to choose to belong into the family of Jesus Christ, that we choose to put our faith in Jesus as our Lord and our savior; that we're willing to even die. Take up your cross and follow me. We've talked about this in the last handful of Sundays, about the cost of following Jesus Christ. We're symbolically remembering that this forgiveness of our sins came at a price and the price was the life of Jesus Christ. The human being, the God man, God in the flesh, divinely God who came to take our place. A symbolic reminder -when I'm working with young children, I talk to them about substitution of punishment by saying, let's just say little Johnny did something wrong. And since we're already going with little Johnny, Jack says we have a John and a Jack in his room. And says, "I know Johnny did it, but I'll take his punishment for him. I'll take time out instead all the time." All the time. God bless you. We have a moment of forgiveness and a few moments of confession. And Jack says, "I know John deserves to be in punishment for two hours in his room by himself, not doing anything and not playing in the yard, but I'm going to, instead of John taking the punishment he deserves, I'll take his place and I'll go sit in his room and sit in timeout. And Johnny can go and hang outside with the friends and do all the fun stuff that he doesn't deserve to do, but he'll get to do because I'm replacing him in his punishment." That's exactly what Jesus did for us. He replaced us in our time out zone. He replaced us by not letting us not making us have to die and be forever separated in hell from a holy God because of what we did to offend Him. When you offend an infinitely, holy God, it takes an infinitely long time to pay that off. In other words, you'll never pay it off. And God knew that, and that's why for God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whosoever would believe in him would not perish, but have everlasting life. Jesus came to die. He came to perish physically, with his blood pay for, and the perfect sacrifice, because He knew no sin, became sin that we might become the righteousness of God. He took our place. He could. No one else in humanity could. They couldn't find anything wrong with the guy when they put Him to death, except for that he blasphemed God by claiming to be God. They couldn't find any witnesses. They had liars come up and say what He was, and they couldn't agree on enough witnesses. And even in their own human pagan court, they couldn't find a way to rig it so that He could be put to death for something He did wrong on this earth. He died for us and these are symbols of his death, reminding us that he paid our price. And as I already said, this is for Christ's followers; not for people who are thinking about following Christ, not for people who might want to follow Christ but they're not sure yet, or for people that are just trying to figure things out. The crowd is not invited to us. Followers are invited to this. And so, if you are a follower in the middle of the crowd, we welcome you to join us at the Lord's Supper table. In other words, are you a Palm Sunday or a Thursday night follower? If you're just a Palm Sunday follower, that's not what we're talking about. Someone that wants Jesus to kind of come through for them, and then when He doesn't, I'm not so happy about Jesus. I want my way of doing things, so could you change the Bible to match what I want? God says, "No, you got to match what I want. And when you can't, you just say, 'I'm sorry, please forgive me. I was wrong. And I ask your forgiveness so that I can do it the right way, the way you want me to do it.'" There isn't a single person here that can say I deserve to come to the Lord's Supper table. We've all blown it; every one of us in our own way, shape or form. And we've either been slapped on the hand by somebody in authority or we've had the Holy Spirit slap us upside the spiritual head to tell us we did something wrong. You know you did it wrong. And all God's asking us to do is not to say, "Oh, I'm good enough." No, say I'm not good enough, and I know it, and I agree, and I ask and I confess and I'm willing to say I want to do it your way instead of my way." I want to go to the upper room. I want to live in the upper room. I want to live to follow Jesus whatever it takes. This table is for that kind of a person this morning. And if you're like me, you've blown it this week, somewhere shape or form; either it's a thought or an action or an attitude. And all we're saying is just ask forgiveness, say, "God, I'm not worthy to come to the table, but I know I'm a follower, and so I ask your forgiveness and will you clean me up? Will you give me strength? Will you help me to do better this week? I want to be more like you this afternoon than I was last night." I don't know where you're at or where you've been, but come as you are - leave changed. And then finally it's a symbolic reminder, it's for Christ followers, but it's also a declaration. We're declaring that Jesus died for our sins and we declare that He's coming again. On Friday at noon, I have the privilege of bringing a brief message and that message will be, "It is finished". Jesus said that when He died on the cross. He said several things when He was on the cross. But the one thing that I thought that we ought to talk about on Friday morning that I felt impressed to talk about is that one phrase, "It is finished". Stop working for your sins to be paid off, stop trying to pay off God with works. You know, some people they give God just enough and then they think, "Well, I didn't give Him a whole lot here, so I'm going to do a lot of work around the church or I'm going to be a good person, or I'm going to donate a bunch to the salvation army, or I'm going to do all this," because you don't really want Jesus to be in fully in charge so you sort of like bargain with God. Well, if I'm a good enough person over here, that kind of balances out my not so good over here. And Jesus said on the cross, "It is balanced." No, He said it is finished. I did everything possible and necessary for you to be forgiven of your sins; stop trying to pay me off. And so, it's a declaration that I'm trusting, not in myself, I'm not trusting in anything I did. Our righteousness is like filthy rags, the Bible says. I'm not trusting in what I'm doing. I'm trusting in what Jesus already did, so that's what this is about this morning. And so we come to the table, reminding ourselves of the symbol of His broken body and His spilled blood; as a follower of Jesus Christ, an upper room Christian, not a crowd Christian, and we come declaring that Jesus paid it all. There's a hymn, isn't there? Jesus paid it. Jesus paid it some... no, Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe, sin had left a Crimson stain, He made it white as snow. We're declaring that we have victory over the things that we cannot in this lifetime fully experience victory over. We're still struggling in that. But even in the struggle, we know we've already won when we're trusting in Jesus. We invite you to participate with us as we come to the Lord's Supper in that attitude and spiritual commitment. One more thing before we actually open the table for you to come, and that is I suggest that you come carefully to the Lord's Supper table. We've already made it clear that only believers should come today and partake with us. And we're not going to sit here and be the judge of hearts. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, I'm not going to say, 'Well, no, you're not. You're not." We're not going to do that. Nor are we going to say, "Are you fest up and are you ready to receive the Lord Supper in a worthy manner?" And so even that, I think we need to look at this morning to say, even as a believer, the Bible in 1 Corinthians 11:28 say, "A man ought to examine himself, in this way, let him eat the bread and drink from the cup." We exam am in ourselves. We don't want to come and as later the verses say, in an unworthy manner. We don't want to disrespect the table. You see, Paul who wrote this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit to the Corinthian church, 1 Corinthians is the letter. They were part partying, they were having food and they weren't sharing it with poor people who didn't have enough food. There was this class prejudice moment going on. There was this total disrespect. They were getting drunk. There was just this party attitude instead of this worship respect for Jesus attitude. And Paul says, this is really how it's supposed to be. When you come to the Lord's Supper table, you need to examine yourself. See, some of you, you've gotten sick and some of you died. I've never had that happen in a worship service, but I don't want it to. I want you to come in a worthy manner. He said, in other words, there's consequences for being disrespectful of Jesus Christ when you come to the table. And a man or a woman, we ought to examine themselves. In other words, where am I at, Jesus? What have I done to offend you? How have I not asked your forgiveness in ways that I offended you? And before you come to the table this morning, stay at your seat long enough to do business with God, and to just confess. You might need to write a name down of somebody that you need to ask forgiveness for when you leave this place. Nobody will be offended if you pull your phone out and you send a text while you're here to say, "Hey, we need to meet as soon as possible. God got a hold of me," or whatever you feel comfortable saying at that moment. But, God gets a hold of you about a relationship that's off kilter. And some people, I've even known them to not come to the Lord's Supper table until they get it right with the person that they have personally offended. That's up to you, and that person has to do their part of the reconciliation. But if you've been rebellious in reconciling and forgiving somebody, it's important for you to get that right. And as God as your witness, say that you will move forward in that way, from this day forward living for Jesus in that area of your life the way he wants you to. And so, examine yourself before you come and just ask forgiveness. You might need to take a slip back and get a connection card if you didn't pick one up on your way in. Or on your phone, go to our website and go to our contact page and send us a note, a prayer request - "This area of my life, I got to get better. I need help. I need prayer. I need support. I need some resources, some people to come into my life, maybe a Bible study or some way I need to be connected so that I can get better." I've heard it said before, we're only as sick as our secrets. And if you're being secretive about something, and if you're withholding something in your life that you're struggling with, and you're not getting partnership with; you're going to probably continue to struggle with it until you get someone in your life. We confess our sins, one to another that we might be healed, the Bible says. And you're in not really feeling the healing, because you're not inviting others in your journey. You're not humbling yourself in a way that, not to go get beat up, but for someone to support you and lift you up as you're teetering on the brink of disaster in that particular area of your life. So, we invite you in confidence. We have our prayer team during the ending of our Lord's Supper time; Jerry and Becky are going to be probably towards the back, right? And they're going to be receiving people if you want prayer. I'll be up front if you want to come forward for prayer. Put your connection card in the box, the offering box as you leave, if that's something you feel, somehow some way, move forward spiritually and let us know how you did it. So, I'm going to pray, and I'm going to invite you to come forward. We'll come to the middle aisle, if you would, just kind of as you respectfully come over with each other, grab the elements; they'll be given to you or you'll pick the cup up, and I think we're going to give you the bread. And then you'll move to the side either this way or that way to the outer aisles and get back to your seat or to somewhere in this room or even out there if you feel more comfortable. Maybe come with people, if you're with a group of people or come by yourself, but we're all participating kind of at our own pace. Take the elements. If you're with a group, invite someone in that group to just breathe a prayer, say thank you, Jesus, for dying for us. Take the bread, take the cup. If nobody's got the courage to pray out loud, say, okay, we're just going to sit here quietly and pray, and then somebody say, amen. At least have the courage to stop the prayer. And just somehow respectfully pray, and then partake, and then sit down and kind of quietly allow everybody to participate until we're all finished this morning. That's how we're going to do that today. And so let me pray, and then as we have this pause of you coming and reflecting on what God wants you to do and the way He wants you to come, you come as the Lord leads. Father God help us to honor you with our lives as we publicly declare to the world and to the people in this room that we have trusted you completely for the forgiveness, us of our sins, that you've removed our guilt. You've set us free. You've given us a new name. You've placed us in your family forever. I thank you for that promise. And it doesn't matter how far we've gone as a believer, we can always come back. It doesn't matter what we've done, none of us, not one of us, even one sin keeps us from deserving to come before you this morning. But we trust in the blood that was shed on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins, and we want to tell the world that we are or followers; not our agenda, but your agenda; not our vision, we want your vision; not our plan for what kind of a king you ought to be, but God, we trust you as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords to do with our lives and to work in this world however you choose to do so. We trust you, Jesus. And I pray this in your strong name, amen.
available 4/6/22
Jesus Defines Greatness
Matthew 20:20-28 G.O.A.T. is a normal human measurement Greatest Of All Time Behavioral research reveals we naturally shift to competitive mode when doing projects with other people How many ways do you tend to keep score in life? How often do we apply God’s standards when measuring GOAT? Jesus defines greatness in God’s kingdom! Read passage Matthew 20:20-28 1. Jesus just predicted his crucifixion and resurrection -Matthew 20:17-19 “Promise that these two sons of mine may sit, one on your right and the other on your left, in your kingdom.” -Mother of James and John (the sons of Zebedee) asks this -Mark 10:35-37 says only the sons asked about this -They are asking for the greatest positions in God’s kingdom “You don’t know what you’re asking” -Jesus challenged their understanding, he just said he was going to suffer greatly -How often do we pray with similar ignorance??? -Do we really know the consequences of what we ask for? -Can you drink this cup?? Can you take what I’m about to take? -Matthew 26:39, 42 the cup in Jesus’s prayer- cup of suffering -James and John (obviously with their mom in this request) tell Jesus they are able -Jesus explains they WILL suffer (drink this cup) -James was the first person killed/martyred Acts 12:2 -Jesus affirms He is under his Father’s authority- he didn’t have the right to determine greatness/status in His kingdom. -Jesus neither grants nor denies their request Jesus Defines Greatness “It must not be like that among you” -Spiritual greatness is not defined by how many people you rule over (lord it over = political, positional power) -Spiritual leadership is not about disregarding who you rule over (act as tyrants = manipulate, exploit, all for personal gain) -The world defines greatness according to how much authority a person has to rule and control people -Note: Jesus doesn’t actually condemn authority or leadership -Jesus re-defines for us what a great leader actually does -Jesus has all authority, submitted to his Father’s authority “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant” -servant- Greek word diakonos, deacon, minister -ironically, the church struggles NOT to give people with these titles a special status in the church! “Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave” -slave- literally doulos -lowliest person with no worldly rights, puts everyone else first -how have your decisions benefited others? “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve” -Jesus had every right as our king to be served -Jesus set the example of spiritual greatness -Philippians 2:4 -do you serve others or expect others to serve you? “And to give his life as a ransom for many” -Jesus identifies himself again as the Isaiah 53 suffering servant -Philippians 2:5-11 Christ became great through selfless suffering Do you want to be great? Reject the world’s definition of greatness “Adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus” Phil 5:5
There's a lot of good music out there. My daughters were at a concert in Illinois; my youngest is visiting her sister, my other daughter in Purdue this weekend. And they took a picture of the name of the... I have never heard of these people before. And they're worshiping God - I didn't know if it was a secular concert or Christian concert and I looked it up and now it's on my Spotify. All the way into church this morning I'm listening to music that my daughters went to hear in a concert, paid good money, I think my money. Anyway, to go see - and at least some of it, and all comes from one source anyway. But there's so many ways and styles, and the way in which we worship evolves, but it all goes back to what we're singing, not the style. Are the words honoring to God? Are they honoring God? Are they talking to God? Are they talking about God to God's people together? So, I really appreciate the diversity and the variety that Bra and the team bring to us each week that we worship together.
Worship is not only singing and praying and hearing and reading God's word, but hearing about God's word. And so, here we are in the worship time where we hear about the word of God in Matthew 20 this morning, where Jesus defines greatness. And we are heading towards the cross, which then three days later is the resurrection. And next Sunday will be remembering the Lord's Supper together. And for those of you that are watching us online, just prepare ahead of time, get some juice and some flat bread or cracker or something. Or if you need some help with that, we can help you this week and bring it to you. But we will be worshiping the Lord together and observing the Lord's supper this coming Sunday which is Palm Sunday/ it's the Sunday that we also remember in history that Jesus came into Jerusalem and they laid down palm branches and they were singing Hosanna, Hosanna, and praising His name. And that same crowd would be turned, and so many behind the scenes would turn that entire scene into a scenery of execution where in by God's divine providence, Jesus died for our sins. And that gets right to the heart of this story because greatness is not determined by the way, in which we think greatness is determined. I have a question to ask, Goat! Who in your mind is the goat in sports? Now, right now, some of you don't even care about sports, and God bless you, you have a lot more time on your hands to do other things. But so for those of you, that love sports right now and if you're watching, I want you to shout out loud who you think the goat is. I don't care what sport it is. I don't care if you pick swimming, I don't care if you pick bowling or NFL or ooh, who wants that, you know, NCAA; I don't care what you think, but who is the goat? 1, 2, 3. I don't agree with any of you. I don't agree with any of you. Is there an asterisk by any of your goats? Oh, home run hitters. They had some asterisks now in baseball history. Anyway, but we all have this idea of what the goat is because behavioral research reveals that we naturally shift to competitive mode when doing projects with other people. I don't care what the project is. I remember as a kid, we would swing, and may have swings - I don't know if they still have those anymore, if they're dangerous or not, but we had swings. And I think every kid has to sign a liability sheet that says, if I get her on the swing, I will not sue you, and so my parents neither will blackburn somebody else. Anyway, but there's all these rules and regulations, but we had swing sets and we would swing and we would jump... this is the worst part. We'd jump off the swing. How many jumped off a swing, lived to tell, here you are today? We did. And then you would mark in the grass, a rock usually, because what else do you have to mark where you landed to see who landed the furthest. It wasn't just fun. Let's all jump off the swing together and have fun and tumble and not break our legs. No, let's see how far we can jump without breaking our legs and see who wins. And you know, how many made it to... we always had these competitions - jump off the monkey bars. We do everything. It's human nature. I participated in this team, building powerful ministry teams. I'm certified to teach it and all that and all fun stuff. And we had this thing where we had to get in a group, two or three different groups and we had to solve a project together, solve a problem. And invariably, not only did we see what the other team was doing... are we getting done faster than they are? The only rule was, solve the problem. They didn't give us a time limit and they didn't tell us that we got chocolate if we won first. I mean, they didn't do anything. They just said solve the problem. And invariably, we went into competition mode. Ours is better than yours. We have a better answer than you have. We got done first. And researchers have shown that that just tends to be the case every single time we do something. One time I remember being a part of a team that went together and they actually, there was this path that you had to walk on and it was like a grid. And then electronically, it had the landmines - oh, you had to start over again. You had to start over and you had to get to the end. And there were two pads and you had to walk without getting on the wrong spot. I remember one team actually helped the other team finish because they couldn't get it done. And he said, "Yay, you win," because it wasn't about competition. It was just about completing the project. But by human nature, it tends to come out that we just want to be better/good. We want to be the goat. We want to be the goat or at least kind of like it, kind of close. How many ways do you keep score in life? My kids dressed not as funny as your kids dressed. I don't know. I heard from my kids this week. Well, I didn't hear from my kids. We get this competitive mode of everything is got to be better than somebody else. So many times we have a better back shadow, a backstory of being beat down in life somehow; maybe physically, heaven forbid, but that's probably true statistically in this room; spiritually, mentally, verbally abused. You were in a relationship that you are in abuse, and that backstory always comes roaring ahead, and you always keep score about how well you're doing based on how well you might look in the eyes of someone in the past that shouldn't even have the dignity of having any kind of say about how good or bad your life is. And we just do this, and it roars ahead of us, and it gets in our current story even though the past story is over and we're not living it anymore, it still affects our present story in our lives. The question I want to ask here is how often do we apply God's standards when measuring goat? How are we measuring it according to what God thinks? And that's what this is all about this morning. Jesus is going to define for us what true greatness is. Jesus defines greatness in God's kingdom here in this passage. Matthew 20:20, "Then the mother of Zebedee sons approach him with her sons..." And by the way, the mother of Zebedee sons, the sons are James and John, the disciples of Jesus, and here's mom and her boys. "...And she knelt down to ask him for something. 'What do you want?' he asked her. 'Promise,' she said to him, 'that these two sons of mine may sit on your right and the other on your left in your kingdom.' Jesus answered, 'You don't know what you're asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I'm about to drink?' 'We are able,' they said to Him. He told them, 'You will indeed drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and left is not mine to give. Instead it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my father.' And when the 10 disciples heard this, they became indignant with the two brothers. Jesus called them over and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant. And whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave. Just as a son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.'" So, what's going on in this passage? While we see here that this comes right after Jesus has predicted His crucifixion and resurrection. We went over the three different times He said that last Sunday in worship. He had just said I'm going to suffer a crucifixion. He described what they would immediately know as the most horrid, feared way of being killed in that time period and probably of all time periods, and that's to be nailed to a Roman cross. This is what's going to happen to me, and then I'm going to rise again. And they didn't catch what was going on because right after that, mom zooms up, the first century helicopter mom. And she said, "My boys, you look how special they are." I had a grandma who's in heaven today, and if she's looking down she'll chuckle, I think. I don't know if you can see us down here, but I tell you what, she'd say, "You know, I know you're the only grandson I have. And I know a lot of people in the world say they have wonderful grandchildren, but I really do think you're the best grandson anybody could ever have." And I'm taking it to the bank. I was my grandma's goat. I'm just saying. I mean, she wasn't biased, right? I mean, no, not at all. Of course not. But here's this mom coming up, telling Jesus that she wanted her boys to sit on the right and the other on the left; the most prominent positions in the kingdom of God. Will you please let my boys have top dog spots in your kingdom? I hear there's a kingdom coming. And when it all said and done, can you put them in the most prominent position possible in your kingdom, Jesus? Now we know that it's James and John, we know Mark 10 actually mentions James and John; he doesn't mention that their mom is advocate for that position. So, here's this story and here they are asking questions, and you know, this is Jesus, the son of God. He calls himself the son of man to identify himself that He is human and He is with us, but He's also the son of God. He's divine and He is human. And He's always being asked for something. And isn't this the case? I mean, wouldn't this wear on you if you're being asked something all the time? If you ever, you have a leader that you know, or somebody you see, and you see somebody - in fact, there are people I know that they're in leadership position, and even at most meetings, even if we're in a public gather, I just don't go over to them right away because I know that oftentimes they're getting bombarded by people. And most of the time people are asking for favors. When you meet somebody who's very prominent and you asking why in the world are they just kind of not so excited? Because most of the people that come to someone like that is usually coming to get something. And the best thing you can do by the way, just a side note has nothing to do with this. The best thing you can do with someone who's an authority or someone who is a person of prominence, person of wealth, is when you come to them, say, how can I pray for you? That's all you need to ask. I need to ask a favor. Oh, what is it? I just want to pray for you. We don't have to right now; that person might not be a person of faith. They might be weirded out by your faith. I don't know. I'm glad they're being weirded out if that's the case, by the way. They need to know that you support them as they support and influence people in their lives. Just pray for them, just encourage them' just a side note, just a thought, and then ask for the selfie. I'm kidding. Don't do that. No, no, no. Don't ask. I'm kidding. You don't know what you're asking for, Jesus said. You don't know what are asking for. How many of you have prayed a prayer and you really didn't know what you're asking God for? We've all done this. We pray out of this ignorance of, I think I know how the universe runs. And if you give me this, the universe will run a whole lot better. Ain't that what we pray? I know better than you, God, because you haven't given me what I want, and what I want's more important than what I already got, so give it to me now. I'll get here in a second here. I'm not saying not to pray big prayers. I'm just saying that sometimes when we pray, maybe oftentimes, we really don't know what we're asking for. He challenged their understanding because He had just said, "I'm going to suffer greatly. If you follow me, take up your cross and follow me.: He had said that earlier. Did you forget that guys? Guys, do you realize that the greatest person in the world, Jesus, I'm going to die? Are you following me to my death, to your death? Do you really know what you're asking for? Do you know the consequences of your request if it's granted? Can you drink this cup? What do you mean drink this cup - the challenge, the Holy Grail, the one that Indiana Jones was going after, is that what we talking about? What kind of cup are we talking about? No, it's euphemism for the idea. Can you drink... can you come after and deal with what I'm going to have to deal with? What did he say in the garden of Gethsemane? "Father, if it be that will, could you take this cup from me? This cup of wrath, this moment of suffering that's about to take place in my life, but nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done." The same word imagery, this word picture of I'm going to have to drink the worst thing I've ever had. I'm going to have to drink into my life the worst thing that's ever happened to me. Are you willing - are you able to drink the cup? And of course they said, "Yeah, we can do that. We can do that." And Jesus says, "Well, yeah, you're going to suffer. You're going to drink from my cup. You're going to be ostracized. You're going to be cast out. James, He didn't tell him this, but James would be the first murder of the Christian Church, he'd be put to death before anybody else. And then later on, John would suffer greatly in his ministry for Jesus Christ. He'd be banished to the Island of Patmos. And he would receive as a blessing, a tremendous revelation, which we have today recorded as the Revelation of Jesus Christ about the end times. And it is historically tradition has says that basically he did die of an old age. He didn't die and suffer a martyr's death of crucifixion like Peter did, or by being filet to death by some other means by horrible means as some others did. You know, even doubting Thomas died a martyr's death. And so, this one that was doubting Jesus, and this one that we go, how weak his faith was, how strong his faith was in the end according to a tradition. Yeah, you're going to drink the cup of mine. But by the way, guys; boys, I just want you to know it is not mine to give whether or not you're on my right or my left. That's up to the father. Because as a person in authority, I am under authority and my authority is trumped by God's authority, by my father's authority. I'm God the son, He's God the father, and He's the one that's prepared those decisions, not mine. He neither denied nor granted their request. He just said, let's leave it in the hands of the father. I think there's been at least three times I've been asked, do you think this is it, Pastor Greg, do you think this is it? Do you really think I've been around different scenarios and different circumstances, some horrific, some exciting, and all these different places you keep hearing, you know, Russia is getting, and this is happening and that's going, and our nation's getting... and I think maybe my lifetime maybe and all these different things are happening. And even when I talk about that, I say, "Well, it could be; we're closer than we've ever been." And then you're in the car and you say how close are we? Closer than we were five minutes ago when you asked. I mean, we are getting closer and it does seem like there's some things going on. But I want to tell you, Jesus even said, when they said when you're coming back? When's this going to happen? And in Acts 1, He said, "It is not for you to know it's the father's business. I don't even know. But you will be my witnesses here and everywhere." In other words, keep after it. Look at the signs. Look what's going on. But trust the father's divine plan. Don't quit. Don't sell your house yet. Although it's a good time to sell houses. Don't do it. Don't give up the shop yet. Keep working, keep living, keep doing, look forward, but trust the Father's divine authority over the times and the ends and trust the Father for who's going to be first and second and third in the pecking order of the kingdom of God. That's up to Him, not Jesus. And he's like, yeah, you're going to suffer, but that's one part. But guess what? The other part where you're going to be, that's really up to my father. You don't know what you're asking. You don't realize the authority question that you're asking. And so then, Jesus now defines greatness. After this, the disciples come up, it's like, "What are you boys asking for? Come on!" Now, were they mad because they were asking first? Didn't say! We wanted to ask that question. You know, Peter's like, "Why not me? You said I'd be the rock." By the way, he never took steroid. I should stay on script. Sorry guys. Yeah. Yeah. Amen, oh me. It must not be like that among you, that's what Jesus said. What did He say? You know that the rulers are the Gentiles lorded over them. And those in high positions act as tyrants over them, but it must not be like that among you. In other words, He said, there's a world system, there's people who lorded over others and there are tyrants. And by the way, don't get your democratic, the people are in charge and don't deal with this hierarchy. They were used to hierarchy. They had no idea what voting was - human rights. You had zero rights under most authorities. Paul even said obey those in leadership, they don't wield the sword for nothing. God had put them in charge to maintain order. Whether they were godly or not, you need to honor authority in the world. And there's a whole ethic of conversation about doing the right thing, and I'm not getting into that today. But Jesus is saying, this is what you're used to seeing; political powers, they lorded over people, they're lords. And then there's people that have authority by their wealth or influence, and they hold it over people; they're like tyrants. And you know that's kind of how the world acts, and a great person is seen by how many people they are in charge of. Spiritual greatness is not defined by how many people you rule over or how many people you can manipulate. It's not about disregarding, who you rule over; acting as a tyrant, manipulating, exploiting all for personal gain. This is not how greatness is defined. You don't come here and try to get in the kingdom and say, "Well, I want a position." It's not about position. At our church we often have said, and we'll say it again. I'm saying it right now. We're not here to give out titles. We're here to give out towels. The world defines greatness according to how much authority a person has to rule or control people. Now, Jesus doesn't actually condemn authority or leadership; He's just redefining what a great leader is. He's defining greatness. He's not denigrating leadership or position. He's just saying that if you want to be a great person, it's not based on position; it's based on how you live out in whatever position of life God has given you. Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant. The word Diakonos, the Greek word, where we also get later on in the New Testament, the word for deacon, the word for minister, but that's not what Jesus is establishing here. He's saying you need to be a servant. You need to serve. He's not putting a title here. He's saying we're looking for a way of living, serving other people. Up in the upper room, He said, "This is what you're supposed to do." And He gets down on His knees and He washes their dirty feet. And He says, "And as I've done for you, you do for others." You need to serve and need to be willing to take... nothing should be beneath you. We were talking about some kind of activity or something or washing or mopping or something. And wasn't a point of arrogance; it was just, well, that's not beneath me. It should never be beneath you. Serving people, serving generally. You know when you know that you're not a good servant is when someone calls you one and you don't like it. Ouch! You must be a servant. Ironically, the church struggles not to give people with these titles special status: the deacon board, the minister. These titles are I think, honorable and good and biblical. And yet, why is it that they become the elevated person that now is lording it over in access tyrants over the church, and an unhealthy church system lets it happen? Because we are taking the world's definition and we're imposing it on the church's life, instead of letting the definition of Jesus interpret for us what greatness is. And then He says, "Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave." Another word he uses, "doulos" slave, the lowliest person with no worldly rights who puts everyone else first. I have a question. How have your decisions this week about you lived your life benefited other people? I'm not saying we deny our basic needs; take care of us... I'm not saying that we like, I'm a worthless worm, I'm nothing. We need to eat, sleep, drink. We need to do our things, we need to have... But I'm talking about as you make decisions, how has it affected positively the people around you? When I talk about men being the spiritual leaders of their home, and I talk about a husband leading his wife spiritually; I always ask the question, will you be willing to put your wife and your children first whenever you make a decision and your last? That's what a servant leader is in the home. As elders, as ministry team leaders in our church, as people who have spiritual leadership in our church, every decision we make is based on what is best for what everybody else needs, not what our needs are. I have personal preferences. I like it this way. I like blue. Other people like red. I like this. I like fufu coffee. Other people don't care. I mean, we have these ways of living that we think, well, this is how it ought to be done, but it's usually how I want it to be done, not how is it best done for the benefit of not only today's church, but the future church and the generations of church until Jesus comes again church. I said a long time ago when we started the church; we started at a certain benchmark of style and way in which we did things. Method never changes. The message never changes - methods do. And I said, I'm sure that in the end of my ministry, we'll be doing methods that I probably won't really like so much just because I'm an old fogie, but I pray and I will fight tooth and nail that the message never changes. Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant. If you want to be first, you need to be last. You need to be the slave, because the son of man did not come to be served but to serve. You're following me; be a servant. You're making out me to be the greatest of all time; well, the greatest of all time just bent down and served you. And by the way, this is how he served you and to give His life as a ransom for many. Jesus had every right as the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords to be served. And He said, "I didn't come here to be served. I came here to serve you. I didn't come here to be the greatest of all time on this earth in this earthly system that you guys are living in. I came here to be the greatest of all time for the kingdom of God forever and ever to the glory of God, the Father, amen and amen. And I came here to do that by serving you, because God wants a people for a kingdom of himself. He wants a priest to the believers. He wants a group of people that honor and love Him, and there's no way we can earn our way into heaven. I'm going to die for you so that you can get there without your own ways of getting there. I'm going to do it for you. I'm going to die so that I will pay off what you owe God. You owe him eternal death for what you've done to rebel against a holy God. And I'm going to take that punishment for you so that you don't have to take it so that you can receive by faith, the grace, the unmerited favor of God." The forgiveness of your sins, eternal life; not by any kind of work so that no one can boast and say, I got in this way, how'd you get in? We all got in because of Jesus. You know the one question they'll ask you in heaven; I don't know, preacher said this all the time and I don't know how that's going to go down in heaven. But the one question to be asked is what did you do with Jesus when you enter into eternity, did you trust Him or reject Him? And if you trusted Him, He says, "If you will confess me before others, I confess you before the Father. But if you refuse to confess me before others, then I'll have to refuse to confess you before the Father." "No one gets to the father, except through me." Jesus said. "I came to die for you, to serve you." And if you want to be great, if you want to be the goat in your lifetime, you need to be like Jesus. So based on this passage, we look at Philippians 2 where Paul later on identifies a little bit more in chapter 2 where he says, "If you're going to honor people in your life, you need to honor them the way Jesus did. Everyone should look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others." Adopt the same attitude as that of Jesus Christ. Emphasizing what Jesus says here in Matthew 20, "Jesus who existed in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on the cross." He died to pay the ransom for many, his punishment for our inequities - Isaiah 53. So, who is the goat? You want to modify your answer? Who's the goat? Who's the goat? Jesus is the goat. He's the greatest of all time. And if you want to be like Jesus, and if you're a Christian, if you say I'm a follower of Christ, you're Christian; that means you are trying to be like Christ. And you want to be the greatest of all time under Christ; you're not trying to compete against Him, right? But if you are having a mindset to want to do the way Jesus did, to be as Jesus was and to live as Jesus lived; then you too will live out a life of service and slavery to the best of what God has intended and wanted for the people in your life and around you and the people you influence. If you happen to make your way into a person of authority and status, he's not telling you to sell everything and become a slave of the world. He's saying that in your position of authority, in your slavery to what God wants - you do the right with whatever you have to do with. If you're a leader, you lead in such a way that is not about your leadership; it's about the best of the people that you lead. It's about taking care of the people that you need to take care of. It's about America saying that we have been given so many privileges and responsibilities that, yes, we do owe a debt to the world of taking care of and doing things to encourage and help in ways that other nations never could, because by the grace of God, we have what so many others never have had. We have an opportunity to be a shining light of encouragement as Christians, as believers in Jesus Christ to make a difference in other people's lives, by serving, not by telling and by lording it over and acting as a tyrant and acting not like Jesus when we don't get our way. We say, Jesus, you're in charge of my life, and because you were a servant and bow yourself to the point of death, I want to live my life pleasing to you. A passage that I didn't have in the notes, but I think is appropriate to read, 2 Corinthians 5:15, where it says, "And He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for the one who died for them and was raised." I pray this morning that we will reject the world's definition of greatness, that we'll stop living in competition for those things that don't even matter. Yeah, kids, keep jumping off the swing and seeing who gets first. That's fun, but our status and our worth is not determined by how fast or how far we go compared to everyone else in the world. Our status and our worth is already been settled in heaven. We're valuable enough for a King of King to die for us, and so the least we can do is just say I'm willing to die to myself to live for Him as I serve and encourage others around me. Let's reject the world's definition of greatness, and let's adopt the same attitude as that of Jesus Christ. Let's adopt the attitude of Jesus. I don't know if it means for the first time you put your faith in him and you tell the world I'm a Christian. Maybe before Easter or right on Easter Sunday, we'd be more than happy to help you follow through in believers’ baptism. Or maybe it's to say, "I re-surrender again, because I'm done in all this competitiveness that Io keep living in; it's my back story that's getting in the way of my present story. I got to get into the God story of my life." And maybe that connection card, maybe you just say, "I'm not even sure what I'm asking for, but I'd just like to meet with somebody and pray with them, or just pray for me this week so that I define greatness the way God wants me to and get rid of my stinking thinking." Let's adopt the same attitude of Jesus Christ. Let's pray right now. Father, God, I don't know what you want to do in this room and how you want to move and who you're working on. You've been working on me all week on this. What is leadership? And this just puts a wrinkle in, in all the ways in which we've been taught in this lifetime, in this world of what leadership is and what leaders do. And I thank you that you get in our way and you help us to not think in temporal finite terms, but think in eternal terms. And I know that these two men that were asking questions went on to greatness because of their sacrifice of their lives for you, Jesus. And so, I thank you for the examples of James and John. Yeah, a little arrogant at the front end, and God, I just pray that we won't be afraid to ask big prayers because we might be asking wrong. But Lord, be willing to submit to your final answer when we ask them. I just pray that you'll help us to be successful spiritually in front of you. This week, as we think about the people we influence and encourage, that we might influence and encourage them in a way that benefits them and honors and glorifies you. Show us how to do that, Jesus, we're still learners. We're still growing. And help us to be obedient to publicly proclaim today whatever it is you want us to. And I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
Jesus Predicts His Death and Resurrection
Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19 March 27, 2022 Introduction Jesus came to die for our sins! -He didn’t just teach good principles to live by -He wasn’t just a good example of a human to follow Jesus clearly explained his mission -Matthew 9:15 he makes a passing reference -Matt 10:38 A follower must be willing to take up his cross -Jesus explains his plan to the disciples three times Read Matthew 16:21; 17:22-23; 20:17-19 The combined details of Christ’s prediction 1. He will be killed and resurrected in Jerusalem -16:21 and 20:17-19 2. He will be betrayed and be handed over -betrayed= 17:22 -handed over= 20:18 3. The elders, chief priests and scribes will condemn him -16:21 and 20:18 4. Gentiles will kill him by crucifixion -killed= all three times -Gentiles will crucify him= 20:19 5. He will be raised up on the third day -all three times Jesus demonstrated his Supernatural Power -specific predictions of future events -his enemies fulfilled Old Testament prophecy Sacrificial Purpose -Jesus said “it was necessary” 16:21 -Jesus was undistracted from his purpose -Jesus refused to let his disciples stop him -Jesus carried this burden alone- disciples didn’t understand -Romans 5:8 But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Salvation Plan -Jesus overcame the punishment of sin by rising from death -God planned all along to save us from our sins -Jesus became the final High Priest and Perfect Sacrifice for us What now? Trust Jesus to be right -He correctly predicted his death and resurrection -He will correctly lead us right now! Trust Jesus to save us -Romans 10:9-10 Matt 16:21 Matt 17:22-23 Matt 20:17-19 The Son of Man The Son of Man The Son of Man He must go to Jerusalem We are going to Jerusalem Suffer many things from the elders, chief priests and scribes Be betrayed into the hands of men Handed over to the chief priests and scribes Be killed They will kill him They will condemn him to death They will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked, flogged, and crucified And be raised the third day On the third day he will be raised up On the third day he will be raised Peter rebukes Jesus The disciples were filled with grief A mother asks Jesus to give her sons special status in His kingdom 
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How to be Great Matthew 18:1-5 March 20, 2022 What is the measure of greatness The World has a standard Jesus set the standard Christians still struggle with Christ’s standard! Matthew 18:1-5 We must “turn and become like children” -repent of our human definitions of greatness -become- choose a new lifestyle, attitude -like children- fully dependent on God our Father We must “humble” ourselves -Matthew 23:12 The proud will be humbled, the humbled will be exalted -James 4:6 God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble The opposite of humility: Matthew 18:6-7 Jesus warns abusers of divine judgment -FWPD: Crimes against persons division -Financial exploitation -Racial discrimination -Sexual harassment, abuse Do whatever it takes to stop offending “little ones”! -Great people will always care for the “little ones” -“little ones” are the great people in this world! How do we do this? 1. Identify what you are trying to control -people, situations, a project, a ministry responsibility -something that affects how you feel about your self-worth 2. Admit you don’t control anything! -your successes depended on a Holy God who enabled you to succeed -your personal worth is not determined by how successful you look to other people or even to yourself -Admit that you are prideful and independent, and that you are opposing Almighty God. -my story: pride = referring to how our church was before the pandemic. St Joe successes don’t define our worth, God does! Our focus on “the little children” now is what matters most! 3. Surrender to Christ’s full control -Depend on God like a little child depends on a parent -Trust God to provide all you need to be great! -Proverbs 3:5-6 John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in hi produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me. 4. “Welcome” the least important people -Matthew 25:40 serve the least of these = serving Jesus -hungry, thirsty, stranger, without clothes, sick, in prison -Stand up for the oppressed, marginalized, discriminated -Welcome people who have no voice in this world Welcome Hello and welcome to St Joe Community Church online worship. We’re so glad that you joined us in the safety of your home. Maybe you’re checking out church for the first time and you’re checking out what we’re like. I hope that you will take out your bible, your notepad, you’ll remove all your other distractions, and you’ll listen, you’ll sing, you’ll read out loud. Whatever you’re doing, if you were in person doing it with us, that you would do that right where you are in your home. And while you’re watching, and after you’re watching, or whenever you can, I hope you will get in touch with us. Use our Facebook page. Go our website (www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org). Some how let us know that you’re watching. Like us, do a thumbs-up on the YouTube page. However you can do it, let us know, because we want to engage with you, and encourage you, pray for you, help you take your Next Right Step, send a resource to you, whatever you need so that we can start helping you find and build community around you for the future. God bless you, and we’ll talk to you at the very end of this with some more details. Sermon Well, if you have your Bible, please turn to Matthew 18. If you have it on your smartphone or you have the physical copy. And for those of you who are interested, we do have Bibles to my left in the very back on the foyer on top of the piano back there, there are Bibles. And if you don't have one, you're welcome to take one with you. If you want a modern translation, the one we use and you don't have one of those, you're welcome to take that as well as they disappear, we buy more. That's just how that works. So if you want to borrow one today, you can put it back when you're done and that's fine as well. I mentioned how we'd love for you to be a greeter. I failed to mention that the best way to let us know is to either send us a note on our contact page on the website, or use a connection card and physically write your name and best phone number. We have connection cards in the back as you walk out and you can actually grab it and put it in an offering box out in the great room, just stick it in there. Especially also for those of you who are new, welcome, and we would welcome you to do so. We'd love to thank you in person through a note in the mail. We won't come knock on your door, I promise, unless you want us to. We also have a gift for all our newcomers today, and I hope that you will grab that as you go out today. Thank you for coming and being with us today and worship. Matthew 18, we are highlighting stories from the time that the crowds of Jesus were starting to peel away from Him because He was not fulfilling their expectations of what a Messiah king was supposed to be all the way he traveled down, and He's traveling down to the cross where He would be crucified and then three days later rise again from the dead. So we're basically between now and Easter Sunday, the next four weeks, and it's that quick. We are going to highlight stories in between this time period and we're using the gospel or the good news story that was inspired by the Holy Spirit that Matthew wrote down by the inspiration of Holy Spirit in Matthew's gospel. So we'll just keep staying in Matthew. And if you want to read ahead and look at what we're are doing ahead of time, or kind of soak it up beforehand or afterwards, Matthew 18 and following is pretty much where we're going to be from here on out. Not only was He coming towards Jerusalem or heading towards Jerusalem, but it was actually in the geography of the land, it actually is going down. So yes, in literary terms, He was going down to His death, and in physical terms, He was physically traveling down to Jerusalem. Interesting note, maybe not important to your spiritual life, but I thought that to be an interesting fact. And we are coming off of the heels of a conversation where Peter's saying, "You're the Messiah. You're awesome. You're the one. You're the one true God." And then there's this argument here and there about who's the greatest in the kingdom or who's more important. And they're getting the idea that Jesus is claiming to be the king, and they believe in Him as the king. And now they're thinking who's going to be on His right and left. Who's going to be hanging out with Him? Who's going to be important in your administration? The closer people get to being electable, the more friends they seem to make. You're like, "I want to be around this guy. He's a winner. And when he's a winner, he's going to take me with him so I can be a winner." Greatness! You see, the world has a measure of greatness. They have a measure of greatness, and we all are subject to that definition. Any of you back... I mean, some of us are old enough to remember when were allowed to play King of the Hill in the playground. Yeah, the biggest and the baddest got to the top and they just kept kicking them off, whatever they had to do, probably not allowed to play that anymore. We used to play that on the monkey bars. That was painful. Anybody here have a chip tooth from that, anybody? The world has a standard. Have you ever felt like the rung on somebody's success ladder? They were just climbing over you to get to the top and you were a pawn in their game of success. There just seems to be the world has it all figured out what to be successful is. You have more money, more stuff, and you can just say what address you live in, in town and your eyebrows are, "Oh, you live in that part of the neighborhood. Oh, you live over there. Oh, you live over there." We do this. And maybe we do it naturally and we don't think about it, it's ingrained in us. Greatness has been defined for us and we've bought into it too many times. In no way am I denigrating worth based on someone is highly skilled or someone is smarter. I know a lot of people smarter than me, I will give honor to whom honor is due. Don't get me wrong. Somebody has a lot of power and they're able to lead well with that power, man, God bless them. You need to pray for leaders with responsibilities of leading and the accountability they have over lives in the decisions that they make. But ultimately, Jesus sets the standard for greatness, not us. We got to listen to Him. I've been touring some art museums recently. I got to go out with my dad out to Virginia Beach and there was an art museum out there, and that was one thing you did and walked around. And some art you look at and you go, "Hmm." Anybody? And I'm not really a big [unclear06:32]. I'm not really a big, but hey, there's art, it's free and it's me, I'll go watch the art. So I went there and I'm like, "Hmm." And then you read the little caption next to it and the artist tells you what he or she depicted and you go, huh? And then sometimes you read it and you still go, "Hmm." But anyway, at the end of the day, the artist tells you what you're supposed to be looking at. One time my dad... Robert Frost, anybody? Poet, right. He wrote some poems. And is it whose was is this - I think I know. Anybody? My dad used to quoted all the time. He's probably going to watch this online. Dad, thank you for ingraining this in my brain. He's an important person. And his professor said, "Well, I think that this means that" - and he had this big extrapolated reason for why he wrote "whose was is this". And so when he came to town, my dad asked him at the campus, college campus. He said, "So does this what you meant?" No, it's just a woods. His professor didn't care for that. But you let the artist tell you, you let the poet tell you, you let the king of the world tell you how to run the world. Let's not call the shots. Let's let the one who made this world tell us how it works best. And last I checked, there's a lot of self-help books out there, marriage self-help books, how to gain your self-esteem, how to be a better you, better you tomorrow, better you in 10 days, a better you in - how about a whole lifetime? I don't know. Whatever it is, that wouldn't sell. And these self-help section is growing by leaps and bounds. I mean, there's been more trees sacrificed in the name of self-help for books that would've been better if they'd just been left trees so they could walk around in the woods instead of read the books. And all of these books have not really helped humanity get any better. Putin is still trying to take over Ukraine, last I checked. The self-help section has not showed him what greatness is. And the last I checked, the oppressed in our country are still being oppressed. And the little ones, the least of these, still don't have a voice in the machinery of government. And when it seems like even when government says they have a voice for them, it's really a ploy to abuse and use them. Not always, but it seems so often disappointing. And by the way, Christians are still struggling with this standard as well. If you know anything about the history of the United States church today, you know there is this thing called celebrity pastor, and they're put on a pedestal. And the greatest and coolest, and so many times some of these movements called a church are more interested in being hip than holy. I'm not throwing a rock at anyone I'm saying in particular, I just know this is a phenomenon that's going on. Even in this church, we are going to fight the humanity of this church to fight against clique and fight against groupings, and fight against looking down and looking up, and having some kind of a pecking order in our mind based on social status or money. It's just something we're all going to fight till Jesus comes. So let's not say it's happening out there. Let's look in the mirror. I'm looking in the mirror. As I read these few verses, let this be reflecting back to us, are we doing this? Say, "Oh me, oh my, Oh God, help me." Let's read together. I'm reading from the Christian Standard Bible version, Chapter 18:1, "At that time, the disciples came to Jesus and asked, 'So who is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?' He called a child and had him stand among them, 'Truly I tell you,' he said, 'unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child, this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one child like this in my name welcomes me.'" What is he saying here? What is he saying in terms of what greatness is? What's the definition of greatness? How do you become great in this world? You turn and become like children. That word turn means to repent. You're going one direction and you're going to go a new direction. You're making about face. I'm going to make this... I'm heading towards - greatness is measured in status, social status, power, money, things, he who has the most gold makes the golden rule is, what? He who has the gold makes the rule, right? Okay, that's what it is. I want all the gold so I make all the rules. And God is saying, no, you need to stop trampling on the least of these to get where you're supposed to go, and you need to become like a little child. You need to turn from your way of thinking. Repent of our human definitions of greatness and choose a new lifestyle or a new attitude. We need to be like children, fully dependent on God the father. I don't mean the bratty little kid, no tantrums in the room, please. That's not what we're saying here. Jesus is taking a child in a culture and time period where children worth zero value. They couldn't work, you had to feed them, you had to take care of them; they were like livestock until they became valuable and working. Let's just be honest, women bear children, take care of the house, men go out and work. As a division of labor and until you were good enough to be a laborer of either of those two, you weren't much good to society. They worth zero value. There was another time period where the children were coming up to Jesus, even after He said this, and the disciple's like, "Get away," like secret service. Here comes the celebrity Jesus, stay away children. Get away, get away. Bogie on nine o'clock, we got to get them out of here. And Jesus is like, "Stop! Don't keep the children from coming to me, that's the kind of people that's in the kingdom of God, children. Children, the least of these, the unimportant, because they are important to God. The ones that understand and know that they're the neediest people in the world. When a baby cries, it needs to eat, it needs to sleep, it needs a diaper change. I think that one, what's that - away in the manger and no crying He makes; Jesus probably cried. He was a baby. If He didn't cry, they wouldn't have fed Him. That's just normal for children to do. It's normal for a child. They need help. They're needy. And that's how we need to be in front of God. I need you God for every part of my life. I don't know, there's animals out there that are born in this world, they don't need nurturing. Humans need nurturing. And if you don't nurture them, they die. My wife is in business the rest of her career as a social worker, because parents don't know how to be parents. She'll never be out of a job; so sad, because children need parents. If the parents won't be parents, they need other parents. And we need families around families, around families. We need people. We need help. And here's the deal; you need help and I need help. I am a middle aged guy and I still need to be like a child in front of God saying, "God, help me. I need you." Yeah, I've learned a few things, I've read a few books, I've learned a thing or two, because I've seen a thing or two, you know that little commercial. So, how do you know this? Well, I put my hand on the burner once too. And it was hot and I burn my hand, so I'm just encouraging you not to do that. So learn from my mistakes. We've all arrived at a spot where we're at, where we are better at things than we used to be. We are growing in our skills. I hope you are. I hope you're growing hope. You're better than you were five years ago, two years ago, maybe even six months ago. But we haven't arrived. We still need help. And the success that you did have, or you did gain, even if you didn't acknowledge God, came from God in the first place. We must humble ourselves. Matthew 23:12, "The proud is going to be humbled in the humble they will be exalted," Jesus said. And in James 4:6 it says, "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble." What? Did you hear that? God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. I don't know about you, but have you ever been resisted by somebody like opposed like a human being, that they've just opposed you at something you wanted to do? Or maybe in something that you should do that was the right thing to do and they just kept stiff arming you? If you're an athlete, maybe you're a defender and the receiver grabbed the ball and they stiff armed you and they knocked you out of the way to make a touchdown. God will stiff arm you if you're proud. Heaven help us. I don't want God stiff arming me. I don't want God to resist me. I want him to give me grace. And the only way I receive the help, the unmerited favor that God wants to flow out into my life is if I humble myself and acknowledge that I need it. Jesus said I didn't come for the people who were well, I came for the sick. A doctor doesn't go to well people, he goes to sick people. If you don't realize you need Jesus, you won't look for Jesus and you won't get the help that He gives you. And the great physician will not heal your home, your life, your attitude, your addictions, your problems, because you're too proud to ask Him for that kind of help. Now, as a little side note, but I want to get back to the ending of these first few verses, but I want to highlight real quickly the next few verses because since we're here, I want to talk about it. The opposite of humility Is Matthews 18:6-7, "But whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to fall away, it would be better for him if a heavy millstone were hung around his neck and he were drowned in the depths of the sea." What? Whoa to the world, because of offenses, for offenses will inevitably come. That's just part of humanity, part of life, but woe to that person, by whom those offenses come. Jesus warns abusers of divine judgment. I've had to walk with too many people who have a childhood memory that they should never have had because of an abuser. People who have been bullied because they were the weaker In the crowd, women because they were not as strong as the men in their lives were abused, thrown away. And God warns the abuser that it would be better if you not only drowned, but you were so drowned that you were at the bottom of the sea drowned with the heaviest stone you can think of wrapped around your neck. That would be better for you than to face God's divine judgment for abusing a little one. I stumbled in one day, I do my rounds at the Fort Wayne Police Department and I came into the Division of crimes against persons. And I knew existed, and I talked to people, but I got to talk to the detectives. And this was a particular week when a couple of cases actually made the newspaper that they had had some major convictions and some major sentencing, some major confessions. And so, I don't know if you can celebrate that, but we're just grateful that those people could no longer harm anybody and that justice was being done to show the victims that they mattered. And I was just saying, thank you for what you do. You don't want to have to be in the witness room interrogating and trying to get out of somebody the kind of information you would never want to hear, ever. You can't unsee it, you can't unthink it. Jesus warns, abusers of divine judgment. I think there's other abuse that we can think of - financial exploitation, racial discrimination, because in some way you have some kind of power over somebody because of your status as a person. Any kind of way in which the least of these that society has marginal and not given a voice to, and you're choosing to join the world and not giving them a voice or raising them up, you are part of the problem, not part of the solution. And churches do this too. We have a pretty stringent policy to protect children. We have a pretty high bar for protecting ourselves from the temptation of crossing the line in terms of relations as far as staff. I talk to Bra, our leader here and David and myself, and we just say, you know, and the elders and I, we have some kind of accountability rules for making sure that we're just lying on the up and up, and that we're holding each other to a higher standard of respect and accountability in terms of the way we handle our lives. The three person rule for guy and gals is a very common rule. And society laughed at it a handful of years ago when one leader said that he would never be a woman alone. And I'm just telling you if I've ever been with anybody accidentally, or somehow we were somewhere, my wife knows right away. Not because like, oh, Greg's going to go do something crazy. Well, you know, I'm still a human being. And the pastor that has said that'll never happen to me is usually the one that falls. And so, we just have some ideas of rules for how we just keep hedges of protection around our lives. I would not in any way, want to give off the impression that I was trying to exploit any kind of person nor would I want this community to know that anybody in this church was ever trying to do the same, that we're trying to lift up people, not tear down people. And we're trying to create safe space for our children so that families know their kids are safe. And we really aren't comfortable relating well to churches that are sloppy about that. It's an important thing. We must take care of little ones. We must take care of the little ones. You see, great people will always care for the little ones. And the little ones are really the great people in the world anyway. So Jesus goes real quickly to, this is how you humble yourself and this is the person that's not humbling themselves. So, how do we do this? What are some key things? I want to give you four thoughts before we leave today. Number one, let's identify What we're trying to control. Are we trying to control people, situations, a project at work or at our house? In the church, leaders, are we trying to control a ministry responsibility because somehow we think that our control over that is measuring our worth and value? Something that affects how you feel about your self-worth, is you're just trying to control this. So many times when somebody is really trying to be a real bossy controlling person, they're usually out of control over here, or they're not in control over here because of a search circumstance, or maybe they have a background story that they were completely out of control of. And they said, that'll never happen to me. And they fight tooth and nail to be in control of that part of their lives only to turn around and destroy other people in the process and destroy relationships. Marriages struggle with that. If one spouse was abused or something bad happened in their past, and they're like, "You know, my dad spent all our money or my mom did this or that. And she did all this wrong and she had a secret gambling habit." And then there's this dead set fight for finances. Or a husband that says I'll never be this or that and because something happened in his past and instead of giving it over to God, they're trying to control this part of the world because if they can control that, then everything's fine. And I look better and I am better. We need to identify what is that one thing that you're trying to control and not give God control of; you're not turning and becoming like a little child in that area, and admit that you don't control anything. Your successes - even when you didn't depend on God in your mind, was still dependent on God giving you that success. There is no self-made millionaire. God allowed that person to be a millionaire. God allowed that athlete to be successful even if they blasted Him every Sunday during the game. You didn't get there by yourself. And your personal worth is not determined by successful you look in other people's eyes or even in your own eyes. You are already valuable in God's eyes. He still loves you. His love never fails. It never gives up. It never runs out on you. Did we just sing that? There is nothing you can do to lower or raise your value in God's eyes. He loves you this much. He died for you. He gave his life for you. Admit that you don't control anything; that you are prideful independent, and that you're opposing almighty God, you, you, you, you. Pastor, what about you? Yeah, I'll tell you what I got nailed between the eyes this week. I'm in a luncheon and we're talking about, oh, isn't it great to see everybody again? And we had a big CEO that was there talking to us and praying over us and encouraging us and saying, we're so glad you pastors are still in the game and in the hunt and going after it. And this is the great resignation season they say. There's a lot of pastors resigning and everything, and you guys are making it, go for it. And then they got to thinking about how we still aren't in control and how we felt so out of control before, but who were we in control before COVID? And then they started doing some gut checks and they said, "So what's your vocabulary like? How are you treating the future instead of the past?" And I got to realizing that whenever someone would ask about our church, I'd say, "Well, you know, before COVID we, blah, blah, blah, blah. Before COVID we were doing... and now we're kind of like, you know?" Do I need to fill in the blanks here? My self-worth as a pastor was being based on what we used to be instead of where we're headed and instead of what God thinks in the meantime. And I had to put my pride on the altar and say, "God, forgive me for using past language." I'm looking in the rear view mirror instead of the front windshield of life. And there's so much more to see because it's a bigger window than the rear view mirror. I can't change the past, but I'm living right now. That's the best season to live in, by the way. Say what? I'm saying because you're alive and you're living in it, so get on it and trust God. You've never been in control. You never will be in control. Admit it, and let God be in control and surrender our full control to Christ. Surrender, I'm done, I raise the white flag. I surrender - old song on the radio. We need to depend on God like a little child, depends on a parent. I need to pretend - I need to have that visual picture that I'm walking across and I see parking lot, and I'm not very good on my feet and I need my heavenly father to hold my hand so I don't slip and fall. I need help and you need help and we need help to surrender to Christ full control. Oftentimes when I send out a little note to graduates or resend them a graduation congratulations, we'll write in there Proverbs 3:5-6. It was in one of my graduation cards when I graduated from high school. It says trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not rely on your own understanding, in all your ways know Him or acknowledge Him (King James) and He will make your or path straight. And then it goes on to say, don't be wise in your own eyes, fear the Lord and turn away from evil. This will be healing for your body and strengthening for your bones. I needed that in high school. I needed that in college. I need that as a middle aged guy. I can't trust in my own understanding. Sometimes I have the worst thoughts in the world about how to solve a problem. And then sometimes God gives them to me and it's like, yay. And if it matches with what this says and pretty much what the body of Christ and godly people are saying, let's go for it. Let's see what's going on. But I don't trust in myself. We should trust completely in Christ. What did he say in John 15:5? "I am the vine. You are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit because you can do nothing without me." You can do nothing without me. The double negative packs a punch. Finally, if we're really do this right, if we've identified what we're trying to control and we admit, and we admit that we can't control it and we've surrendered to Christ's full control, then the result is going to be that we will welcome the least important people in our lives. That's going to be the test. Have you done it? "Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child, this one is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven," verse five, "And whoever welcomes one child like this in my name welcomes me." Later He describes the least of these in Matthew 25, He says, that's the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the person without clothes, the sick, the one in prison. God calls us to stand up for the oppressed, the marginalized, the discriminated against. We need to welcome people who have no voice in this world and be voices for those people in this world. I close with one particular project that has been brought to our attention in the last few weeks. I had a meeting downtown and had several email requests. We are officially a partner of the Fort Wayne Rescue mission. Not because we give the largest amount of money to the Rescue Mission or that we send the most amount of volunteers to the Rescue Mission, but because they've identified something that you all have continued to do over the past three to four years, kind of slowed down during COVID, but it's starting to ramp back up again, that you have become a bridge to help men and women walk forward beyond the Rescue Mission into the family of God. And one of the ways in which they're asking for us to pray about, and I'm praying about, we talked about it. We had a little prayer meeting here on Wednesday nights is that we're praying for a team to advocate on behalf of St. Joe Community Church for the Rescue Mission at our church, that they're a bridge team, that through them, we would send qualified volunteers. We would learn from them what the needs are for volunteering. And ultimately, not just to go and pour soup in a bowl for somebody, but build relationships that would lead to discipleship and growing them spiritually. And as these clients walk in and they start getting on some meds because 60 to 70 to 80% of them have mental disease, and they start walking through recovery programs to get out of their addictions of choice and they start stabilizing in ways that they may not have been given opportunity to in past environments. They're going to step out of the Rescue Mission and they're going to step into somewhere else. And they're praying that churches like ours would be that stepping block that they would say, "Look, there's homeless people that came from the 05." Well, they're going to go back to the 05, 46805. So, why don't we be the choice church that's trusting that receives them? And not when they get here, but while they're still down there, and down there being the Rescue Mission, and we bring them in. I'm just praying that we will continue to be a safe harbor for the least of these, that particular part of our city being case in point. We're going to sing this last song. This is a song of blessing over us, but I pray that as God blesses us, that we will leak and that our blessing from Him will spill out into other people's lives. It might be that you need to put on that connection card, show me how to get involved on this new Rescue Mission team. I just need to keep coming. I would like to know more information about X, Y or Z. Let us know how to partner with you and encourage you and resource you and pray for you as you take your next step forward in the name of Jesus. Turning from the world's definition and our own worldly definition of what greatness is, to become great in the way that God wants us to be as we continue to lift others up who are very great in God's eyes. God, help us to be obedient to whatever you call us to do in this moment in Jesus name. Amen. Conclusion Thanks again for worshipping with us online. I hope that you will contact us. Go to our Facebook page, our website (www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org). Put a comment at the bottom of this video. However you can do that. Just let us know that you’re out there. We want to be able to pray for you, resource you, encourage you, answer any questions you might have. For those of you who have been giving online, thank you very much. We continue to have needs and continue to do things like this online worship experience, and other ministry needs and practical ways, and if you don’t know how to do that, just go to our website and there are instructions there. (www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org) so that you can also participate in our ministries and partner with us. Again, I’m Pastor Greg Byman, and on behalf of St Joe Community Church, God bless you, and we’ll see you next time. Thank you for joining us today. For more information about the St Joe ministry, visit www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org or call (260) 471-4704 or email StJoeCommunity@gmail.com. If you are looking for a church home, St Joe meets for worship and fellowship each Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. St Joe is committed to your well-being and safety. For the latest policies regarding the Covid 19 pandemic, please visit the Covid section of the St Joe website. Thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you next week. All or Nothing Matthew 16:24-26 What Is Worth Dying For? Jesus declares He is worth dying for Matthew 16:24 If anyone wants to follow me… 1. Deny yourself -free will, voluntarily submitting to Jesus -renounce everything that might personally hinder our loyalty To Jesus Christ, or keep us from being more like Him -NOT self-abuse or lack of self-worth -A child of God should be the most secure in self-worth! -Jesus came to die for us, redeem us, adopt us 2. Take up your cross -echoes Matthew 10:38 -opposite of what Peter thought- Matthew 16:21-23 -willing to suffer the shame and rejection by this world -willing to pay the ultimate price if necessary 3. Follow Jesus -energetic and active decision, not passive -we follow Jesus in the way he already lived -Hebrews 4:15-16 He knows our struggles! What do we have to lose? Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it. -Does your object of worship promise eternal life? -Are you experiencing true meaning and purpose? -Does what you worship truly satisfy your soul? -Jesus invites us to trust in Him to find real life and purpose! For what will it benefit someone if he gains the whole world yet loses his life? Or what will anyone give in exchange for his life? -Everyone sells out to something! (we all worship) -We must measure the cost with an eye on eternity! -Worship this world and you will only get what this world offers Psalm 49:6-9 They trust in their wealth and boast of their abundant riches. Yet these cannot redeem a person or pay his ransom to God—since the price of redeeming him is too costly, one should forever stop trying—so that he may forever live and not see the Pit. Stop trying to redeem your life and trust in the One who already did! How do we follow Jesus? Believe in Jesus John 3:16 Trust Jesus completely John 14:6 Keep following Jesus John 15:4-5 -Bible study- what did Jesus do, say, command? -Prayer -Godly People- what is their advice, encouragement, warning? -Circumstances- what can you do right now -Connection Card, Email, Facebook Message Welcome Hello and welcome to St Joe Community Church online worship. We’re so glad that you joined us in the safety of your home. Maybe you’re checking out church for the first time and you’re checking out what we’re like. I hope that you will take out your bible, your notepad, you’ll remove all your other distractions, and you’ll listen, you’ll sing, you’ll read out loud. Whatever you’re doing, if you were in person doing it with us, that you would do that right where you are in your home. And while you’re watching, and after you’re watching, or whenever you can, I hope you will get in touch with us. Use our Facebook page. Go our website (www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org). Some how let us know that you’re watching. Like us, do a thumbs-up on the YouTube page. However you can do it, let us know, because we want to engage with you, and encourage you, pray for you, help you take your Next Right Step, send a resource to you, whatever you need so that we can start helping you find and build community around you for the future. God bless you, and we’ll talk to you at the very end of this with some more details. Sermon Well, if you'll turn to Matthew 16, we will be there. We're going to travel through Matthew, all the way to the cross and all the way into Easter to the resurrection. For the next several weeks, we're going to be in Matthew. We've been in Matthew already. I told you when we took to Matthew 13, what a big chapter it was with several stories - parables, and we're going to continue on through that now. And if you want, if you're one of those that likes to look ahead, I encourage you to read chapter 16 and following and kind of get a feel for the entire context of what we're going to be talking about, because we're not going to be able to highlight in the short few weeks that we'll be together before Easter; we are not going to be highlight every single story in the rest of Matthew's Gospel. Matthew was a disciple of Jesus Christ, the tax collector that Jesus said follow me. He left his post as a tax collector for the Roman government and he began to follow Jesus Christ. And he indeed was... it is rumored tradition that he was murdered for his faith in Jesus Christ. He writes this story to us of the life and times of Jesus Christ that we might believe in Jesus Christ. In the context of this particular passage that we are going to discuss this morning in chapter 16 is right after the moment in which Peter uttered his famous words about who Jesus was. Jesus said, "But who, who do you say that I am?" And Peter would say in verse 16, as it's recorded in Matthew's Gospel, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God, and Jesus said, "That's the right thing. You got it. Bing, ding, ding, ding, ding, winner, winner, chicken dinner. You got it." And then he begins to talk about the church and how Peter's faith was the kind of faith that the church will be built on, and the rock. All of this imagery that we see here, and then Peter, just like you and I - don't we like, yay, victory. We win. And then we do something really silly. Dare I say the curse word stupid. Hi Cindy, let's give it up for Cindy, she's here today. I can't believe I didn't see her, man! You can't know a person that tries harder to get to church than that lady right there. I'm just telling you right. So anyway, I'm glad you're here. Good stuff. So Peter he's like puts his foot in his mouth immediately because Jesus says, "Oh, by the way, this Messiah that you've just proclaimed, me, the Messiah, I'm going to die and rise again. I'm going to suffer at the hands of the Jews. We're going down to Jerusalem. And this was the moment literally that they're kind of on this upper area of kind of north or they're above Jerusalem. And literally, in the topography of the land, they were actually higher than Jerusalem. And Jesus is walking down towards Jerusalem and He would be going down, down, down, down, down, down, down to His death. It was at this moment that more and more people were scattering. They didn't want to be around Him because He was saying things that they didn't like. They were there to get, get, get, get and Jesus was giving it. He was feeding them. He was healing them. But He began to say the hard things that were causing them to go, wait a minute, I thought He was the revolutionary that would overthrow this government that was oppressing us. And when He began to say things that didn't mix with what they thought He should be saying, they began to leave Him. So this is the moment in life, where we are with the life of Jesus Christ. It's going down, down, down eventually to the cross and more and more people are appealing off of Him in His public ministry. And Peter's like, "There's no way that's going to happen. God forbid that this would happen. There's no way that was going to happen that you're going to die." And Jesus turned to Peter, the one who he had just said, "Boy, you got it right." And he said, "Get behind me, Satan." Have you ever kind a by Satan? I mean, that person is a representation of evil. Get away from me. What you just said, I don't want anything to do with. That's a very serious statement. Jesus didn't say anything flippantly; everything he said was perfect. Now, you calling someone Satan, I'm not. I don't know if that was perfect or not. But Jesus, He was absolutely spot on when He said, "Peter, what you're saying is Satanic. I must suffer and die for the sins of the world." What do we just sing? We just sang it. They said His dying breath has brought me life, I know that it is finished. We just sang that. We know on this side of Calvary, this side of the cross, that it was His death that brings us life. But Peter didn't see that yet. He didn't know the end of the story. The end of the story hadn't yet been lived nor written about. And so, Peter just get had it all mixed up and Jesus says that is Satanic, get away from me. So this is the context that we're in the middle of, and so Peter's like, what? You can imagine the disciples are like, you know, Jesus is saying all these things and we don't really think about what were the expressions of the disciples. Like, "Whoa, he just called Peter what?" And Jesus explained himself. Jesus said to His disciples, verse 24, "If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it. For what will it benefit someone if he gains the whole world yet loses his life, or what will anyone give in exchange for his?" I have a question to ask this morning, what is worth dying for? What is worth dying for? Freedom? We live in the land of the free because somebody decided - quite a few people decided that they were going to fight the tyranny of England and break free to be what would we now have called the United States of America. And people died in wars to fight for the freedom of our nation. When you see a soldier, when you see somebody who's signed on the dotted line, they'll pay the ultimate price. I just say, thank you, I'm grateful for what you've done. I'm glad that you didn't have to pay the ultimate price, but you were willing because you believed it was worth fighting for. Ukraine, you know, that whole nation could have said, "All right, Putin, you can have it. We're out of here." Now you can't move that many people as fast as what Putin is coming across them, such an evil thing that's going on. But there are people that are moving, they're doubling back into the country. Young people that are saying, I can't stay over here in Poland, I got to go back over there and fight for my country because to them, it is worth dying for the cause of the independence and the sovereignty of the nation of Ukraine. Standing up against evil; we know that police officers and others, keepers of the peace, they choose to put themselves in harm's way because it's worth the dying for the innocent lives that would be lost if somebody didn't stand to protect them. And then most recently there was the story, you may have read about it, when the massive tornado came through, which is unusual for this time of the year in Oklahoma. I believe it was Oklahoma where a husband paid the ultimate sacrifice because he laid on top of his wife to save her from the storm; he died and she lived. He believed that his wife was worth it. What's worth dying for? We all have our limits, we all have our answers, and we're not looking for courage in the room today for those issues that I just talked about. We're not even here to vote on what I just said. I just want you all to know that we all have a line. We all think about that. Some people believe in the right to carry arms and bear arms - concealed weapons. Around here, it's a don't ask don't tell. People are protecting us in this room, usually every Sunday, somewhere; we don't know who they are. I might know, but you don't know and it doesn't matter. And they believe that it's worth making sure that if some deranged or very clearly minded evil person comes in here to do harm as has been done in some houses of worship, they're willing to do what it takes to stop that person. And then other people would not necessarily make that decision. All I'm saying to you is we all have an answer to that. And I'm telling you that Jesus proclaimed that He is worth dying for. He said in this passage, he said, "I am worth dying more. If you want to follow me, you need to deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me." And I want to unpack what He was asking of His followers in those three things. First of all, He said we need to deny ourselves. This is a free will voluntary submission to Jesus Christ. We're renouncing everything that might personally hinder our loyalty to Jesus Christ or keep us from being more like him. We're saying following Jesus is more important than satisfying my flesh. Following Jesus is more important than any other loyalty that I might have to this world system. Now, this denying yourself is not saying I'm self-abased, I'm just a worthless worm. Some theologians call it worm theology. I'm just a worm. I'm just nothing. You know Christian ought to have the most highest self-worth feelings of any person in the world, because we know that the creator of the world looked down on where we were and saw what we were doing and said we were worth more than the behavior we were exhibiting in our lives and chose to come down, crawl up on a cross and die in our place that we might not have to pay the eternal punishment for what we did wrong. We were valuable. We were worth that much. You all clap for a sign. Can we clap for the fact that Jesus loves us? We're worth it. And if there's anyone here that says, “I don't mean anything, I'm not valuable" - you're listening to a lie. Get behind me, Satan. That's not true. You are valuable. You are loved. And He loved you this much. And he loves you this much where He invites anyone who might come. No matter where you are, no matter where you came from, no matter how far you feel, you are from God, He calls you out and wants you to be with himself. He wants to free you from the tyranny of sin and death and suffering. He wants to free you from addiction. He wants to pull you from the things which you know are not satisfying and you need help escaping. This is not self-abuse or a lack of self-worth when you deny yourself. It's the same denial that a soldier says when he or she puts their name on the line that says, "I will suffer as a person, I will renounce the privileges of normal citizenship in our nation in order... I'll give up my rights in order to serve a higher cause. I'll deny myself." It's the same conversation, right or wrong, like or not like it. When that man decided that he would not go into the school when there was a shooting going on and he hid, right or wrong, I don't know the whole story, but he was vilified. Why? Because he had put his name on the line that he was willing to sacrifice himself, and he put the uniform to say that he would, and he didn't, and he was ridiculed for what he did because he didn't do what he said he would do. I will deny my personal safety in order to protect the safety of other people. That's what military people do. That's what police officers do. That's what firefighters do. It's a normal thing. And Jesus is just saying in that same way that you would renounce yourself in normal circumstances, I'm telling you, deny yourself for the sake of me that others might find and know me, that your family might know me personally as savior and Lord, that your children and your children's children, and that all that you influence in the world would know that I'm more important than your personal gratification. Deny yourself and take up your cross. Echoing Matthew 10:38, where He had said it earlier in His ministry, you must take up your cross and follow me. Luke adds that Jesus said, during this moment; take up your cross daily. This is a daily dying to self - the opposite of what Peter was saying, "No, Jesus, you're not supposed to die." If you follow Jesus, he died, if we follow Jesus we might possibly die. Now, this is not saying that everybody's going to. John the apostle did not die a martyr's death; he died of old age. Many, many, many, many, many Christians will never die a suffering death because of their faith in Jesus Christ. Praise God! This is not like a death wish. I don't want to die for Jesus, but I am I willing, right? Will I if I had to pay the ultimate price? If you're in the Columbine High School and that young lady said, do you believe in Jesus? And she said yes and he kills her. Would you have stood that test if you were asked by the gunman? I hope none of us have to answer that question. But Jesus is saying, when you sign up to follow me, the answer is, yes, I'm willing to do that. God help me if I ever have to. Take up your cross, willing to suffer the shame and the rejection of the world. You know what a cross is. This was very common. This was something, this is not a, you know, my daily cross is my cancer. Cancer's horrible, but that's not a cross. My cross is the abuse I suffered at the hands of somebody who should never have done that to me. That's horrible. That's a scar. That's not the cross Jesus is talking about. Bear with me, somebody said, wait a minute, come on. Now I'm telling you, you got to read the Bible according to the context of the people listening to it for the first time, none of them would've ever put those things inserted into Jesus conversation. What they immediately went to were all the crosses were lined up along the public road of non-Roman citizens that were guilty and sentenced to capital crime, to capital death, and they were executed on these crosses. They were beaten half to death, stripped naked, nailed to the cross and made to rot there and die a horrific several days death. And if they were dead enough acting, maybe the birds would start picking at their flesh while they could do nothing about it until they finally succumbed to death. And it was the most humiliating, most horrific, most excruciatingly and painful death known to man. And if you're a Roman citizen, you weren't allowed to die that way; they'd cut your head off. If you were sentenced to death, they'd cut your head off. That was mercy killing. But if you were not a Roman citizen, they'd strap you up on that horrible thing. And the Romans, they pretty much... they almost relished in this. It was a fear factor. Don't do what that guy did. Don't do what that girl did. Don't do what that guy did. If you do that, that's what happens to you. That's called deterrence to an nth degree. Get in line or suffer that. And when Jesus said, if you follow me, you need to be willing that even if it comes to that, get on a cross and die for me. And that the whole world might laugh at you, ridicule you, humiliate you in your suffering. And Jesus says, it's all or nothing. It's not, "I'm a Christian now, I'm going to get a bunch of crosses and put them on my chain. I'm going to get a little sticker on the back of my car." A lot of people don't get bumper stickers anymore, but they put these little fish on there, they do little things here and they put little sayings. And once in a while, you post a nice little saying on Facebook because you're a Christian now, you do these things. And you get a little devotional book and you put here and there, and you get a little Jesus something for your work. And that's my cross. No, your cross is to die to self. Your cross is to follow Jesus no matter the cost. It's a whole different thing than this beautiful little thing that we have up here on the wall or we have behind the screen when we have the baptismal open. It's an ugly reminder that when you are friends with Jesus, you're an enemy of the world system. We live in the world system, I pay my taxes, I pray for our governmental authorities, I pray for, I support, I do things, people we serve. Just because you become a Christian, you don't stop serving in the military. I mean, we move through this world, but we're not of this world. We're of a world to come that's eternal. And Jesus says, if in the midst of this world, it takes you suffering for me, that's what I'm asking you to do if you're following me. And he says follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. The wording in the Greek indicates an energetic and active decision. Not some passive decision. "Well, I'll think about it. I'll kind of follow Jesus today. I got something else doing this weekend, maybe I won't get the people of God. You know, I'm going to read my Bible. I'm just so - there's so many pages. I mean, there's not even pictures in mind." I mean, we have all these excuses of what we do and we say, I just don't know if that's really going to... No, following him says I'm actively participating in what God's up to in this world. End of discussion. By the way, you're not measuring up to my standard, you're measuring up to His, because I'm at times, and even this week, sometimes a miserable example of the standard. Do you hear me here? I'm preaching to myself this morning. There ought to be a mirror on the back wall so I can see myself while I'm talking. I'm still working on this. I'm still what we call ourselves hypocrites in recovery. I'm not there. And last night as I was praying through this and this morning as I prayed through, I thought how much of a failure I am. And you might not see it on the outside, but on the inside, you know, have you ever been openly accepting of what's going on around you, but inwardly rebellious in your attitude? Have you ever done something but you didn't feel like doing it, but you did it anyway because your boss made you? How about kids? Have we ever obeyed our parents but we didn't have the right heart attitude? I mean, both hands in the air. I mean, we've done this. I mean, this is normal, sadly, unless they were really wrong about what they were making me do. But when it comes to Jesus and He makes you do something, we should be going, "Yeah, I don't want to, but I need to, help me want to. Help my attitude." Forgive your enemies. Yeah, I just stepped on a toe, didn't I? I mean, that's hard to do, and Jesus says do it, energetically, enthusiastically, that's what I'm calling you to, follow me. And by the way, we follow a Jesus who already lived this way. Jesus, the one who it is said about in Hebrews 4:15, "We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are yet without sin. Therefore let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in time of need." This Jesus that says follow me was to tempted in the same way you were tempted, but he never sinned. If any of you have ever tried to get over something you know is wrong in your life, it's called an addiction. It could be addiction to overeating, it could be addiction to a substance, it could be addiction to lust and sex, it could be an addiction, to you name it; it's just pure and simple rebellion. We do what we want to do and we know it's wrong but we want to do it anyway. But you stop doing it for a while - there's a word for that. We have a craving. Our flesh is still saying, feed me, feed me. What's the movie, Feed Me Seymour. Yeah, a little shop of horse. I'm a product of the eighties. And it grows. And the longer you don't do it, your body's saying, "You haven't taken care of me lately. Come on!" Jesus never gave in to the cravings. If anybody knows how to get over anything, He does. Well, He never had to get over anything because He never started anything. If anyone knows how to be completely victorious, He does. And if anybody knows what it feels like to want to do something and not do it, He does. If there's someone to follow, I want to follow winners. Don't you? I want to follow someone who wins and is victorious. I sometimes am a bandwagon fan. I just want you to know that. Team starts winning a lot, I go, "Yeah, I'm going to root for that guy in the super bowl," because they're winning. I want to know how to win. I like being around winners. How many of you like to be around losers? I mean, I don't know, I don't think. We like winners. Jesus is the ultimate winner. If you're following Him, you're following a winner. I don't know about this death thing, this suffering thing, but okay, He walked through the cross to the victory of resurrection Sunday. I want to find resurrection Sunday, but it does come through. It could possibly come through and it does come through denial, cross and follow. And that's what Jesus is saying here. And the question is, what do we have to lose? What do we have to lose? We have everything to lose. What does it say? "Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it." And that next verse, "For what will it benefit someone if he gains the whole world yet loses his life, or what will anyone give in exchange for his life?" I have a question as we it closer to the end here this morning. Does your object of worship promise you eternal life? You said what do you mean my object of worship? I mean that which you cherish the most, other than Jesus Christ. How much time do you spend on something that is apart from your worship of God? I'm not talking about that I love taking nature walks and it's God's nature and I'm enjoying what God gave me. I'm talking about you worship that thing more than you worship God. Like if it was like, be a part of what God's up to or be a part of this over here; I like that more. What do you spend your money on? Do you spend money on God honoring entertainment or do you spend your money on things that are very much against God in entertainment? I'm not saying that all secular entertainment is ungodly. I'm just saying, are you investing in things that are leading you away from God, more than leading you towards God? Some people worship their children more than they worship God. If it's all about the children, more important than God, himself, modeling for their children that they are God. And that is a very sad moment because no child should ever be put the pressure on to perform like God performs. What do you invest your money in? I'm not talking about boosting the money for the building fund and all I'm talking about. How do you spend your money? Do you spend it in a way that God is telling you, you can spend it, you do whatever you want and you kind of have this, well, I'm supposed to give God percent and the rest I do whatever I want with? Or have you really come to the realization that God owns it all and you manage all of it of which a portion of it, He does ask us to trust him in tithing and offerings? But He owns all of it, which means I answer to Him how I spend my money on my house, how I spend my money in entertainment, how I spend my money on cars and things and food. I answer to Him for all of that, not just the part I give to the church. In other words, what are you investing in? Are you investing in now? You're going to get what now gives you. Or are you investing in eternity, and eternity gives you forever? You see, everyone sells out to something. We all worship something, and we've got to measure the cost with eternity in mind. Worship this world and you'll get what only this world offers. You worship God, and as you're doing what you do, you're investing in what lasts forever. You're not going to preserve your life by investing in anything that this world is saying that you need to invest in. Yeah, I'm trying to save up enough money so that when I get old and feeble I don't move in with my children, unless they want me to and then I'm okay with that. No, she said no. I'm praying for one lawyer, doctor or somebody. That's not the... you know, but I'm not living for retirement. I'm living for Jesus, even when I'm retired. Zero sum. I'm okay with that too. The last check is for what it costs to bury me, that's it. I wouldn't mind passing some onto my kids; I think that's a valuable noble thing, but my money's not going to buy them happiness. What they do with it and how they view it to the glory of God, that's where happiness comes from. What I'm saying is, Psalm 49, and maybe Jesus was alluding to this. When he was saying these things where it says in verse 6-9, "They trust in their wealth and boast of their abundant riches, yet these cannot redeem a person or pay his ransom to God. Since the price of redeeming him is too costly, one should forever stop trying so that he may forever live and not see the pit." Don't try to ransom your life with stuff. Jesus already redeemed your life. His dying breath has brought me life, I know that it is finished. I have been to the cemetery, and rich and poor alike, the answer is, have they trusted in Jesus? Some are in some wonderful caskets, beautiful crips, [musilums30:47], some are in cardboard boxes that are made to look a little bit nicer than cardboard. They're all dead. And they're all answering to almighty God for how they invested themselves eternally. While I wouldn't give up somebody to have a beautiful casket; that's not the point here. I don't care which, I go for it. That's kind of cool looking. I'm kind of mesmerized by some of the awesome statues and things in the cemeteries. I'm not here knocking any of that - I'm just saying. And I'm not here knocking going to an entertainment venue. I'm not here knocking going to the 10 Caps. I'm not here, no, I'm just saying that when you're done, sort of like at Christmas time, I love getting Christmas gifts. I get a Christmas gift or I get a birthday gift or I get something; the anticipation of getting it is more fun than a minute after I open it. You get home from vacation, you almost got to recover from vacation for a day, right? I mean, my son just went out west. He has all these awesome pictures of this landscape I've never seen with my own eyes and I'm sure his camera could not capture. And he is home now, he's back in Muncy. Nothing like where he was at. I mean, it's a nice place. My wife's from there, so I got to be careful. She's listening maybe. But seriously, it's going to wear off pretty quick, because he's not there anymore. He's back in class on Monday. What's rewarding is beyond the experience, and that's the abiding experience of walking and being with Jesus while you're on vacation, while you're at home, while you're in entertainment, while you're doing the hard labor of work. When you've accomplished something at work and after you've accomplished something at work, because what you know is that what you've accomplished will fade, will have to be rebuilt, refixed, revived, renovated, remodeled, no matter what. Whatever you do is going to last for a season, but how you do it and who you do it for lasts forever. That's the bottom line. Stop trying to redeem your life by what you're doing or what you're investing and trust in the one who already redeemed it. So how do we follow Jesus as we close? John 3:16 says we need to, whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. We had to believe in Jesus that he's the one true savior of the world, that He died for our sins and came back to life three days later. Believe in Him. We've got to trust Him completely. Trust in Jesus. He said, "I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life. No one comes to the father except through me." We believe in Jesus. But more than belief, we got to really trust Him. Like, He's not one option of many. He's every option. He's the option. He's the only option. We trust him alone to save us. We don't hedge our bets on other things and other religions and other practices; we say He's the one. Jesus said that, not me. You want to follow me? Deny yourself, take up your cross, follow me, no other. And finally this morning, we need to keep following Him. For those of us that have put our trust in Jesus, let's keep following Him. Let's not just say "I followed Him, I got my baptism certificate. That's it. I'm done. I went to membership class. I'm in, yay." Oh, it's a continual process. Take up your cross daily and follow me, Luke explains Jesus to have said. You keep following Jesus through our Bible study time. How do I know how to follow him? Well, he said a lot of things in here about what to do, how to follow and what to do the right things. His example, the example of other believers in the Bible, the letters that were inspired by the Holy Spirit to the churches. This Bible is the textbook for right and wrong. It's the template upon which we put everything else we do in life. If it squares with this, we got it. But then you say, "Yeah, but there's things that the Bible doesn't exactly talk about, you know, like how much should I put in retirement? Or how much should I do to this or that? Or should I go to this or that venue or situation." To that I would say we pray about it. We talk to other people that are following God. We get godly counsel. If a bunch of people are saying, you probably ought not do that. Some of us, we have to make financial commitments; buy a house, buy a car, this or that. And you're like, "I'm not really sure if God's in this or not." Go ask some people that are godly that know how to handle money. And if they all say, maybe not, then don't. I mean, you can, if you want, but it might be wise not to. Ultimately, prayer, Bible study, ask some godly people, and finally the circumstances. Of the best doors that were closed for me, it just closed before I had a chance to go through them. Some of the worst girls I could have ever married just never said yes, or I was too scared to ask them. And that was a good thing. Me being a bashful kid early on, kept me for the God wanted me to be with for the rest of my life. That's my story. I'm sticking to it. Yeah, there you go. Thank God she said yes. But all aside, keep following Him. It's a process. This thing doesn't happen overnight. It's not a one-time event. It's an ongoing life choice, one decision at a time. This morning I want ask you to make that decision, to put your faith in Him for the very first time if you've never done so. Don't let me tell you to do it. If the Holy Spirit is convicting you and you know this is exactly what you must do, then make the decision today. Follow Him. Put it on a connection card say, "I am putting my faith in Jesus Christ. I want to be baptized. I want to tell the world I'm a Christian." Maybe some of you have been baptized, but you've never joined our church officially and it's time for you to get serious about becoming a family member of the church. We got our class today; we still got a few spots available. I'll give you my ham sandwich if there's too many people there. I'll figure it out. But no, we'd love to hang out with you a little bit and tell you what it means to belong to our church family. We'll have some other classes, but there's one today. Sign up for the next one if you can't make it today. I don't know what God's telling you to do, but I pray that you'll do it before you leave this room. Make good on it, make it public. Tell the world, tell me, tell somebody so we can pray for you to take your next step forward. Let's stand. Let's get ready to sing. God help us to act on what you've called us to do, and I pray this in Jesus name, amen. Take that time, maybe on your phone you need to put an email to us or go to the contact page on our website. I don't know what you need to do, but let's just all worship God with either our voices or our action, one way or the other, let's do so. Conclusion Thanks again for worshipping with us online. I hope that you will contact us. Go to our Facebook page, our website (www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org). Put a comment at the bottom of this video. However you can do that. Just let us know that you’re out there. We want to be able to pray for you, resource you, encourage you, answer any questions you might have. For those of you who have been giving online, thank you very much. We continue to have needs and continue to do things like this online worship experience, and other ministry needs and practical ways, and if you don’t know how to do that, just go to our website and there are instructions there. (www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org) so that you can also participate in our ministries and partner with us. Again, I’m Pastor Greg Byman, and on behalf of St Joe Community Church, God bless you, and we’ll see you next time. Thank you for joining us today. For more information about the St Joe ministry, visit www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org or call (260) 471-4704 or email StJoeCommunity@gmail.com. If you are looking for a church home, St Joe meets for worship and fellowship each Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. St Joe is committed to your well-being and safety. For the latest policies regarding the Covid 19 pandemic, please visit the Covid section of the St Joe website. Thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you next week.
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2900 North Anthony Blvd.
Fort Wayne, Indiana 46805 (260) 471-4704 www.StJoeCommunityChurch.org Sunday Worship: 8:30 AM & 10:30 AM (Live cast at 10:30 am) Sunday Kids Connection Classes (infants-5th grade): 10:30 AM Wednesday Prayer & Bible Study: 6:30 PM |
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