Podcasts about home fellowship

 Many desire fellowship with others, in fact, we are commanded to assemble ourselves.  Yet there isn't always an established group where we live.  Join us as we review some recommendations of do's and don'ts when it comes to setting up a home fellowship. 

Content: How to get started Resist the urge to formalize What our gatherings look like Featured playlist: 7 Core Responsibilities of Manhood Support our ministry and gain access to hours of seminary videos: https://crosstocrown.org/partners/ Song credit: “Beautiful Day” by Gabe Goodin — https://open.spotify.com/artist/654rVNYWPK6wKQjdJyX3BO My books: Exalted: Putting Jesus in His Place — https://www.amazon.com/Exalted-Putting-Jesus-His-Place/dp/0985118709/ref=tmm_pap_title_0 God's Design for Marriage (Married Edition) — https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Design-Marriage-Married-Amazing/dp/0998786306/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1493422125&sr=1-4&keywords=god%27s+design+for+marriage God's Design for Marriage (Pre-married Edition) — https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Design-Marriage-What-Before/dp/0985118725/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top crosstocrown.org @DougGoodin @CrossToCrown

Guest Speakers Doug McDowell, Ed Karl, Jon Bellovich, and Jim Fisher teach about Home Fellowships and why you should join one.

Pastor Josh Laryea; is a preacher of the Gospel of the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Kindly listen to this edition of Grace Pills; Topic: "The Importance Of Home Fellowship"

Together In God Fellowship is a new gathering of Christian believers. It seeks to nurture authentic relationships, promote spiritual growth, and foster unity among believers, emulating the early church's style. Its mission is to glorify God, disciple believers, and evangelize the lost. Together In God Fellowship 3607 New York 14A, Penn Yan, New York 14527, United States Website https://togetheringodfellowship.com Email dave@togetheringodfellowship.com

Content Know your (biblical) purpose for meeting Keep biblical priorities Aim for qualified eldership ASAP Become a CTC Partner for access to hours of NCST course videos: https://crosstocrown.org/partners/ Free John Reisinger resources: http://crosstocrown.org/books/ crosstocrown.org newcovenantschooloftheology.org @DougGoodin @CrossToCrown

Doug McDowell, Brad Grossmann, and Jonny Belovich shares their hearts on home fellowship.

A new MP3 sermon from Woodland Christian Church is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: Home Fellowship - Introduction Speaker: Pastor Nathan Richardson Broadcaster: Woodland Christian Church Event: Sunday School Date: 9/18/2022 Length: 51 min.

Chad Grissom speaks to Home Fellowship Leaders at the CF Leaders Retreat in Feb. 2022.

Chad Grissom speaks to Home Fellowship Leaders at the CF Leaders Retreat in Feb. 2022.

Guest Speakers and Home Fellowship leaders, Jim Fisher, Jonny Bellovich, and Brad Grossmann teach us from God's Word about Home Fellowships and why we should care.

Join us for a question and answer time with our special guest, Brad Jersak!

Join us for a question and answer time with our special guests, Andre and Mary-Anne Rabe!

119 Ministries

In this lecture you’ll learn about the Anabaptist movement and their distinctive beliefs.  We’ll consider the life of Michael Sattler, an important leader of the Anabaptists, and see how he stood firm in his faith even when his life was at risk.  Next, you’ll find out about Melchior Hoffman and how his followers took over Read more about 119 Sattler, Münster, and Simons (Five Hundred 4)[…]

In this lecture you’ll learn about the Anabaptist movement and their distinctive beliefs.  We’ll consider the life of Michael Sattler, an important leader of the Anabaptists, and see how he stood firm in his faith even when his life was at risk.  Next, you’ll find out about Melchior Hoffman and how his followers took over Read more about 119 Sattler, Münster, and Simons (Five Hundred 4)[…]

Learn about the Swiss Reformation, spearheaded by Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich as well as the formation of the sect of Anabaptists known as the Swiss Brethren, including Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock. Key events covered in this episode include: 1519 Ulrich Zwingli begins Reformation in Zurich 1529 Zwingli and Luther part ways over Read more about 118 Zwingli and the Swiss Anabaptists (Five Hundred 3)[…]

Learn about the Swiss Reformation, spearheaded by Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich as well as the formation of the sect of Anabaptists known as the Swiss Brethren, including Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock. Key events covered in this episode include: 1519 Ulrich Zwingli begins Reformation in Zurich 1529 Zwingli and Luther part ways over Read more about 118 Zwingli and the Swiss Anabaptists (Five Hundred 3)[…]

Introduction I love studying church history. I love looking back at what our brothers and sisters in Christ have done in the past, learning its lessons, and just seeing the movements of the Spirit of God at different times. One of my favorite groups is the Moravians. Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf was a German nobleman who was living a selfish life. At some point he was convicted by a painting of Christ crucified and a caption below it, which said, “All this I did for you. What are you doing for me?” He was convicted by that and began to use his estate and his money to bless refugees in Europe who were fleeing various scourges and afflictions and wars. He drew a community together, at what came to be known as Herrnhut, for refuge, and to do them good in Christ’s name. The community grew there. But after a number of years, there started to be deep divisions, bitter divisions, among the people. They came from a lot of different backgrounds, and they were humans. They were sinners, and there was strife and there was discord. So, Count Nikolaus von Zinzendorf called on his community, in 1727, to extended sacrificial prayer. Within a short amount of time, a revival broke out there in that Moravian community, what they later called the Golden Summer, the summer of 1727. They began to give themselves in extraordinary ways to fervent prayer. They had the idea, based on the way the sacrificial system worked in the Old Testament, that the fire would never go out from the altar, that they should start up a prayer chain twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and just continue. They had twenty-four people sign up for one-hour sifts to carry it through that first week. It continued on. That prayer vigil continued on well beyond the first week, even well beyond the first year, to last well over one hundred years, unbroken. Now, some of you who love sports, you talk about the unbreakable records. Friends, that’s an unbreakable record of unbroken prayer. It will never be topped again. I think, actually, in the end, it lasted one hundred and twenty years, non-stop; twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Six months after it started, Count Zinzendorf called on the people to begin praying for missions, to pray that their community would be a force for world evangelization for missions. Now, you have to understand, at that point there really wasn’t any formal pattern of Protestant missions. This is a little less than seventy years before William Carey. There had been Jesuit missionaries that went out in the name of the Roman Catholic Church, but there was no organized, sustained pattern of Protestant missions. So this was pretty much unheard of, this bold evangelism thrust. They began praying for the West Indies, for the sugar plantations where there were many slaves working, for Greenland, for Turkey, and Lapland, and other places, Turkey being dominated by the Muslims. Praying that God would use their community for missions. The next day, twenty-six Moravians stepped forward, willing to serve wherever the Lord called on them to serve. They were the first of an unprecedented missionary thrust linked to this fervent twenty-four hour prayer chain. The two went together. Over the next sixty plus years, the Moravian community sent out over three hundred missionaries. Moravians would hold funerals for those that they were commissioning, because they assumed that they would go and die in the service of Christ. Think about the boldness, and the courage, and the tears that would be shed as they would hold funerals for people and commission them and then put them on ships and send them off. Some, as is well known, went to the plantations in the West Indies and enslaved, indentured themselves to win the slaves for Christ. The level of boldness, courage, and self-sacrifice was incredible. They are just one of many examples in church history of the indissoluble link between fervent prayer and bold evangelistic outreach. That’s going to be the focus of the sermon today as we look at Ephesians 6:19-20, especially. Over the last number of weeks, we’ve had the opportunity to look at this final section of Paul’s great letter to the Ephesians. He finishes with a focus on spiritual warfare. It culminates in his command to pray in the Spirit for all the saints, and then these verses in which he encourages, or urges, them to pray for him as he shares the gospel. So, we have learned about spiritual warfare. Look again at Ephesians 6:10-13. There, it says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.” We have learned about this invisible spiritual warfare that we Christians have to wage. We have invisible powerful enemies: Satan and his demonic rulers and authorities and powers in the heavenly realms. This is the nature of our warfare that Paul talks about here, “We wrestle not with flesh and blood.” So there’s wrestling, a warfare, that we have to go through. As I’ve said, week after week, I believe every Christian greatly underestimates this spiritual warfare. I think it’s true even still. You can hear dozens of sermons on spiritual warfare and still vastly underestimate the power of Satan and demons in your life every day and the need that you have to obey these verses. Remember how I organized and gave you the focus of those three commands that Paul’s calling for us. First, be strong in the Lord, draw close to Jesus. Have a sense that you cannot fight on your own. Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Secondly, put on the full armor of God. We talked about each part being put on with prayer. We looked at them. We looked at the belt of truth, and the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. And we talked about the helmet of salvation, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit. We talked about these six elements, and how it’s not good for us to just, in a very vague general sense, prepare. We’ve got to get ready for spiritual warfare. These words focus our minds on doctrinal truths about our salvation to get us ready in a very effective way to fight Satan, to stand firm against Satan. We put these things on with prayer. Then we focused on prayer, the need to pray and to get ready, and having done all of these things praying in the Spirit, to stand, to stand firm. We’re not going to give in to the temptation. We’re not going to crumble. We’re not going to melt. We’re gong to stand firm and resist the devil. We focused on prayer, what it means to pray in the Spirit. We talked first about praying in the Spirit. I looked at the Book of Revelation and looked at the various themes there: focus in Christ, the mediator; God and throne, the sovereign King over all the world; the vision of Babylon and seeing the wickedness of this world system; and then the future glory of the church. These four themes are valuable for praying in the Spirit. We’re going to think about that. Praying in the Spirit just means to pray for things the Spirit wants us to pray for in power, or in the manner, or demeanor, that the Spirit gives. Praying in the Spirit. In all of this, I want you to see the link between spiritual warfare and the two infinite journeys that God has given us to make progress in. We are called on, first, to make progress in Christ’s likeness in holiness. We are to make progress and become more and more conformed to Christ. Secondly, we are called on to take the gospel to those who are not yet believers in Christ, even to the distant lands who have never heard of Jesus. We’re to take the gospel to the lost, to the perishing, and boldly see the advance of the kingdom of God. These two journeys, the internal journey of sanctification of holiness, and the external journey of worldwide gospel spread, both of them will be bitterly opposed by Satan. So it’s right for us to think of warfare prayer in light of both of those. There’s going to be warfare prayer for personal holiness. And friends, there’s going to be warfare prayer for gospel advance. That’s what I want to focus my attention on here. I want to keep verses 19-20 in the context, the overall context, of spiritual warfare. Look against at verses 19-20. Paul prays. He says, “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.” Now, the basic idea of this sermon is this: without warfare prayer, the gospel would not advance. Therefore, we should seek prayer partners for ourselves to be bold and faithful in sharing the gospel. That’s the sermon in a nutshell. Part of the logic of the message is, if Paul needed prayer for boldness, how much more do you and I? And we’re going to talk about that. But if he needed that, we need it, I would say, even more. It’s what we’re going to talk about. Prayer and Evangelism are Inseparable If Paul Needed Prayer, How Much More Do We? So prayer and evangelism are absolutely inseparable. Paul was continually seeking prayer for evangelistic outreach from the churches that he planted, from individuals that he knew. 2 Thessalonians 3:1-2 is an example. He says, “Finally, brothers, pray for us that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly and be honored just as it was with you. And pray that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith.” That’s prayer for the external journey, prayer for the gospel to spread rapidly and be held in honor. We see the same thing in Romans 15. In Romans 15, there’s an extended request for prayer that Paul has for the Roman church, a church he’d never met. Hoping to be there, to go there someday, he wrote the Book of Romans in lieu of his ministry. He says, “I have written you quite boldly on some points, as if to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” (Rom 15:15-16) In other words, I’m like a priest with a duty. My job is to go to Gentile cities and towns and preach the gospel so that they, the Gentiles, might become an offering to God through faith in Christ. He said, “That’s my ministry, that’s what I’m called to do.” Now, he says, in Romans 15:20, “It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. Rather, as it is written: ‘Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.’” He said, “I want to go to distant lands, that’s my calling.” In Romans 15:24, he says, “I hope to visit you while passing through and to have you assist me on my journey to Spain…” And then he says in Romans 15:30-31, culminating it, “I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there.” Paul did this all the time. He was continually asking people horizontally, “Pray for me in my witnessing, pray for me in my evangelistic ministry.” Paul was very well aware that the gospel advance to the Gentiles would be bitterly opposed by Satan and his demons. He says at one point, “We wanted to visit you again and again, but Satan stopped us.” So he has a sense of satanic opposition. He was acutely aware of his need for prayer, so he regularly solicited prayer from churches and individuals for the success of his gospel ministry. As I’ve said before, and I’ll probably say at least one more time, if Paul needed prayer for boldness and evangelism, how much more do you and I? Paul was, I think, the boldest, most consistent, most faithful witness for Jesus Christ in the history of the Christian church. I don’t think there’s anybody that can top him. Paul had a track record and a habit of boldness. He had seen fruit from his boldness. He had seen the effectiveness of his boldness. So he had all of those things going for him. He had a habit of boldness and a track record and pattern. He had clear results from his boldness. Everything was wired. He said, “I really need prayer for boldness.” We have, for the most part, none of those things. We don’t have the habits of boldness, it seems. We don’t have that track record. We don’t have a pattern of fruitfulness and this boldness. We don’t see what it will do, and we’ve been through this many times before. We need it even more. That’s the basic logic of this sermon. Prayer and Gospel Advance Have Always Gone Together Throughout church history, prayer and gospel advance have been woven together, from the very beginning of the history of the church. In Acts 1 and 2, we see a clear indication of that. In Acts 1, the church is there after Jesus has ascended to heaven. The church is there in the upper room. They’re praying and waiting for the gift of the Holy Spirit that the Father had promised. They’re up in the upper room and they’re praying. They’re together and they’re praying together. Then suddenly, on the day of Pentecost, there came a sound like the rushing of a violent wind that came from heaven and filled the whole room where they were sitting, a sound like a hurricane. First it was sound, then it was the sight of flames of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. And all of them spoke in other languages as the Spirit moved them. A crowd gathered because of the sound of the rushing wind. They didn’t know what it was. There was a crowd there anyway, because it was a Jewish festival, the festival of Pentecost. So there’s huge crowds, and they gathered near that house. They poured out. The church poured out, empowered by the Holy Spirit. They spoke the Word of God boldly. The apostles preached, and Peter preached, and everyone from all over the world heard them speaking in their own languages. Three thousand were added to the number that day. Three thousand were baptized into the church of Jesus Christ. So, prayer led to bold pouring out of evangelistic activity. You see the same thing in Acts 4. Peter and John went up at the time of prayer, and they healed a very well-known beggar. A crowd gathers; they preach; they’re arrested; and they’re brought in at the beginning of aggressive persecution, but it’s a mild level at that early stage. The Jewish Council, the same ones that had condemned Jesus, were now ready to condemn Peter and John and the whole church. But they weren’t ready yet to arrest him, or punish him, or whatever. So they just warn them not to preach in the name of Jesus. That was not going to happen. But the question is, what did Peter and John do? They immediately went back and gathered the church together at the end of Acts 4. They had a fervent time of prayer. They prayed scripturally. They prayed based on the sovereignty of God. The things that had happened in that city! But they asked God not for removal of persecution. No, not at all. They said, “O God, give us boldness and power to preach in the name of Jesus and to perform great signs and wonders.” God answered their prayer and they spoke the Word of God boldly. Many more people were brought to faith in Christ. So again, we see fervent corporate prayer leading to evangelistic boldness. We see the same thing again and again throughout church history. In Acts 10, Peter is at the house of Simon the Tanner by the sea. He’s praying and he’s hungry. He has a vision of a sheet let down with all kinds of nasty, unclean animals. He’s told, “Get up, Peter, kill and eat.” Three times he’s told, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” God’s getting him ready to go and preach the gospel to Cornelius, the first Gentile convert won to Christ by the preaching of the church. He goes there. He crosses the threshold as a Bible-believing Jew. He felt he wasn’t supposed to go in there, but God showed him that he should go. He preached to Cornelius, this Roman centurion, and all of his assembled Gentile friends and family. And the Holy Spirit is poured out on them. That was the beginning of Gentile evangelism that’s been basically going on for twenty centuries, ever since. It wasn’t long after that that the church in Antioch gathered, predominantly at that point Gentile. They were gathered by the ministry of those that went out and began to speak to Gentiles. There started to be a church growing there in Antioch. In Acts 13, while they were worshipping the Lord and fasting, while they were together praying, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” And so, the Holy Spirit, in answer to prayer, set apart Paul and Barnabas for Paul’s first missionary journey. So, the church is moving out, the gospel is spreading. They go to Cyprus. They go to Asia Minor. Paul goes on three missionary journeys that dominate the Book of Acts. It’s specifically an answer to prayer. As a matter of fact, on one of those missionary journeys, Paul didn’t know what to do. He’s blocked in. He didn’t know where to go. And in prayer, he has a vision of a man from Macedonia saying, “Come over and help us.” So the Holy Spirit guided him through prayer. Again and again, and even once the New testament era ended, we have the same pattern. Just study church history. You’ll see. God’s people gather together for prayer; they’re empowered by the Holy Spirit; and then they move out in new ways to share the gospel with the lost. We just see this again and again, this pattern. For example, in the sixth century, we have a Celtic missionary named Columba, who gathered a community around him on the tiny windswept island of Iona, near Scotland; a small, bleak, barren, foggy island battered by the storms of the sea year-round. Iona became a glowing center of biblical Christianity, of Celtic Christianity, and a launching pad for missions across Europe. It went on for centuries after that. Columba himself led by example. This is one of my favorite stories from missionary history. Columba went to the fierce Northern Picts of Scotland. Some of the fiercest people that have ever been brought to Christ, these Scottish Highlanders. Terrifying. The Romans couldn’t conquer them. Scary people. Columba went and sat outside their Citadel. He could not gain entrance, and did not realize how close they were to killing him. That’s just what they did. He sat outside the gates and fasted and prayed that he’d have a hearing with King Brude. What a name, Brude. Finally, probably just to get rid of him, the king, instead of killing him, calls him in. Eventually, Columba led him and his inner circle to Christ. It spread out from there. Many of those Picts came to faith in Christ and became themselves evangelistic missionaries to that region of the world. It’s incredible. It’s happened again and again. Go ahead. Even beyond Harwood, even beyond the Moravians. The Moravians sent missionaries to the New World. They went back and forth on ships. One of those times, the Moravian missionaries were going back to Europe, and John Wesley was on board with them. There was a terrible storm. It looked like the ship was going to sink in that storm. The Moravians were singing and praising God, ready for heaven. John Wesley wasn’t, and he realized, essentially, that he was unconverted. He had had lots of Christian orthodox training, but he didn’t know Christ, not the way these Moravians did. Eventually, he came to a genuine faith in Christ. He was part of a Holy club there at Oxford. George Whitefield was also part of that with his brother Charles and some others. They gathered to pray. They’re praying together, in 1738. By this point, George Whitefield had begun preaching. He had gone across to the colonies and then come back. They’re having this prayer time. He had a gift of evangelism, but God had something far bigger than that. On December 8, 1738, they went to a Christian meeting in Fetter Lane. They spent time in prayer for the spread of the gospel in England. These are in Wesley’s journals. Then they prayed again seventeen days later, on Christmas Day, praying until four in the morning for the spread of the gospel in England. Over three hundred believers were there praying until four in the morning. But the greatest of these prayer meetings happened on New Year’s Day, 1739. As they prayed until three in the morning, suddenly the Holy Spirit was poured out on the group so astonishingly that everyone there immediately fell on the ground and began crying out in worship to God. “We praise thee, Oh God! We acknowledge thee to be the Lord!” Whitefield wrote in his journal these words, “Sometimes whole nights were spent in prayer after that. Often we have been filled as with new wine. And often we have seen people overwhelmed with the divine presence and crying out, ‘Will God indeed dwell with men upon the earth? How dreadful is this place! This is none other than the house of God. This is the very gate of heaven!’” Well, after that series of extraordinary prayer meetings, there came an awakening so great, the first great awakening, that there’s never been anything like it before or since. It spread all over England, all over Northern Europe, and throughout the colonies, leading to the salvation of tens of thousands. A couple of generations later, in August 1806, in western Massachusetts, there was a sudden thunderstorm that drove five students from nearby Williams College to rest under a haystack and under a lintel to find shelter from the storm and to pray. What had happened was, they began discussing a geography lesson that they had had at the college that day. They began praying for the distant lands that they had just learned about in reference to the geography. Samuel Mills was among them, and others. God led them powerfully to have the idea of the first American Mission Board being formed. One of their students was Adoniram Judson. He was the first American missionary. He and his wife Ann “Nancy” were sent to Burma. This Haystack Prayer Meeting became a fountain of missions in the US for decades after that. The Judsons had converted to Baptist theology and so the Congregational mission sending agency that had sent them cut them off. Luther Rice came back and started a Baptist mission sending agency, which eventually led to the Southern Baptist Convention and the International Mission Board, which is something that we contribute to. FBC: We Need to Pray for Evangelistic Fruit! Samuel Mills, who was part of the Haystack Prayer Meeting, gave his entire life to recruiting foreign missionaries. Five men under a haystack, praying in a rain storm, and the world gets changed. This happens from time to time. So let me speak plainly. First Baptist Church, we need to pray for evangelistic fruit. We need to pray in a fervent, powerful, spiritual warfare kind of sense, that the Gospel would spread from us to reach Durham, and rally in Chapel Hill, and influence to the ends of the earth, even to distant lands, in ways we can’t even imagine. We need to pray like that. For years, we have recognized that FBC has amazing opportunities to spread the gospel in this booming region. People are flowing into this area from all over the country. Indeed, from all over the world, they are coming here to live. What are our responsibilities? What are our opportunities in reference to that? There are thousands of college students coming to study at the great universities that are around here. Duke, NC State, UNC Chapel Hill, NC Central, and Durham Tech. We’ve got thousands of college students, and most of them are unchurched. Most of them are lost. We see refugees coming in, or just people from other countries. For example, the Gujarati that we have adopted, working with James Cooper. We have adopted them to plant a church among the Gujarati. They are extremely hard to reach in India, but they’re here. And we can reach them. They’re here in Morrisville. We have undocumented aliens that are here working in our community. We have refugees that have come in, even from Iraq. I’ve been able to meet a family recently, so glad to meet them, delighted, and a chance to reach out with the gospel to people who come from this area. We have great medical care here. We have great hospitals, research hospitals, so people with dread diseases come from all over the country, indeed from all over the world, to receive medical care here. Medical professionals come to work here. We have an opportunity to share the Gospel with them. We’re an urban center. We live in an urban area. We can reach the urban poor. We can be a voice for racial reconciliation in this state, and indeed in this nation. We have opportunities. But for all of that, I think we do not see a corresponding or a proportional evangelistic fruit. We don’t see the fruit that we would love to see. That we should see, really. My friend Mark Dever has been pastor at Capitol Hill Baptist Church for several decades now. On Sunday evenings, they gather together and they have a Sunday evening service. They have their small groups scattered throughout the week, but they have a Sunday evening service. It’s basically just an evangelistic testimony and prayer sharing time. People from all over that group come to say, “Hey, I’m trying to reach my boss. I’m trying to reach a co-worker. There’s a neighbor who just moved in, named so and so, we’d love to have them over and we need prayer. We would love you guys to pray for us for that.” This kind of stuff is going on, what we would call a culture of evangelism, of getting prayer for evangelistic projects that God has laid on our hearts for people that we’re trusting God for. Now, I don’t think that we at FBC believe the facts of the gospel any less than they do at CHBC. I don’t think so. I think we really believe the facts of the gospel. I think we believe that people have to believe the gospel of Jesus Christ to be saved. I think we would assent that we know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is beautiful and true and powerful. We know that. So why don’t we share it more? Well, I can only conclude that Satan has done a beguiling work of deception on our hearts that will look very different to us on judgment day. We need to fight spiritual warfare battles to become more effective evangelistically. If we just maintain the status quo, we will not be effective evangelistically. But if we fight, and fight together as a body of Christ, as we hold each other up and pray with and for each other, we will be more fruitful evangelistically. I think that as Satan especially works on our hearts in reference to fear of man, we fear other people, what they will do to us, what they’ll think of us. The Lord has shown us again and again how we can overcome fear of man, and, in a powerful love for Him, share the Gospel. The Mystery of the Gospel Start with the Message… What Paul called the “Mystery of the Gospel” What I want to do is look at the details of Ephesians 6:19-20, and see how we can learn for Paul’s Gospel. So look toward the end of the section. There, he says, “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.” This is going to give me an opportunity to summarize what we’ve learned from the Book of Ephesians. We’re almost done. Next week will be, God willing, the last sermon that I’ll preach in Ephesians. I don’t think any book more clearly unfolds the depths and the glories and the beauty of the gospel, other than the Book of Romans, than does Ephesians. I think those two stand towering above all the other books of the Bible, in terms of clarity on the depths of doctrine that is linked to the gospel. So, the mystery of the gospel. Why does Paul call it a mystery? A mystery is something that was hidden for long ages past, in God, but has now been revealed and made known by the Spirit. That’s what he means by mystery. Look at Ephesians 1:3-7. This is the very beginning of the epistle. We’ve had opportunity to look at it a number of times. This is they mystery of the gospel. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sin.” So, putting it simply, before the foundation of the world, God chose people by name, to be, finally, in the end, perfectly holy and blameless forever in His sight in heaven. So before the foundation of the world, He chose them to be eternally saved in Christ. In love, He predestined those people to be adopted as His sons and daughters. That’s what it says. Now, this is a mystery. We’ll never fully understand this. The depths are infinitely beyond anything that we can comprehend. But this is true. He did all of this for the praise of His glorious grace, that He would get glory and praise from a multitude, from every tribe and language and people and nation, worshipping Him. That’s why He did it. And He gave Christ to be our savior, that by Jesus, by the shedding of His blood on the cross, we have redemption, forgiveness of sins. Oh, how sweet is that blessing! Think about it. All of your sins, past, present, and future, cleansed by the blood of Christ. His final purpose in all of this was to bring all of the fractured, destroyed elements of His creation together under one head and make them one in Jesus, to bring together the fragmentation grenade of sin, bring it together and make it one in Christ. The book also reveals how individual sinners are saved. How are they saved? Look at Ephesians 1:11-14. It says, “In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of His will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.” Look at verse 13: “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit.” Do you see that? What that means is that individual sinners are made right with God by hearing a message that’s proclaimed and believing in it. At that moment, they are forgiven. They are drawn into Christ. They receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and they’re part of the work of God. Now, in Ephesians 2, we learn the condition of those we’re trying to reach, out of which we’re trying to reach them. Here’s where you get to the spiritual warfare. Ephesians 2:1-3 says, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sin, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” See all that past tense language? You were, you were. That’s what you were. That’s what they are now. They’re enslaved by Satan, now. They’re disobedient to God’s laws, now. They are, by nature, objects of wrath, now. We were like that. We were rescued out of that. But they are now in Satan’s dark dungeon. Do you not see, then, the spiritual warfare aspect about this? Jesus said He is like a powerful warrior with armor and weapons, and He’s defending His house. I would say dungeon, He’s defending His dungeon. And we have to put on the armor of God and be instruments of God’s sovereign grace and come and rescue the perishing. That’s our calling. That’s what we’re called to do. Satan is powerful, but God is more powerful. Look at Ephesians 2:4, “But God, because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” This is the mystery of the Gospel. “For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is a gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” That’s the mystery of the Gospel. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” In the rest of the chapter, he talks about this beautiful spiritual temple that’s rising and becoming more and more glorious all the time, rising and becoming more and more glorious. Those are the good works we’re supposed to do, the good works of spiritual gift ministry within the church, and then evangelism reaching out, that builds the church. It’s beautiful. We are called on to reach out with the Gospel. We are called on as Paul was. He calls himself an ambassador in chains. So maybe we can be ambassadors unchained, at least for now. Unchained. We are ambassadors for Christ. Praying for Frequent Opportunities Paul’s First Request Implied: LOTS of Opportunities What did Paul pray for specifically? Look at it with me. He prayed for frequent opportunities. Verses 19-20 say, “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me.” Do you see that? “Whenever I speak, I want to speak for Christ.” So, frequent opportunities. I think that’s where we fail a lot of times. I think we dabble in evangelism, but we don’t do that broadcast sowing of seed. We’ll take out a single precious seed and put it in one place. It’s as if, well, God can do amazing things, and you can lead a person to Christ that way. It does happen. But we, I think, are called on to be “whenever we open our mouth” kind of people. Frequent opportunities. Lots of opportunities. Paul Was an Ambassador in Chains Paul calls himself an ambassador in chains. We are called on to be Christ’s ambassadors. 2 Corinthians 5:19-20 says, “He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors.” Listen to this, “As though God himself were making his appeal through us… be reconciled to God.” So we get to be ambassadors. We are kind of like an enclave of heaven, a colony of heaven. We get to speak for the king. We get to be those that speak the Gospel boldly in a surrounding hostile territory. We get to be ambassadors. Praying for Spirit-Given Words Need for WORDS… He also prays for spirit-given words. Look at what he says, “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me.” Words. I need words. Is that what we need? We need words. I heard one of the most foolish slogans I ever heard in church history. I don’t know who said it. No one knows. Listen to this, “Preach the Gospel. Use words if necessary.” Ever heard this one? It’s about people that are really into social works, all that “Preach the Gospel. Use words if necessary.” What in the world? I remember somebody, I think it was Tim Keller, said, “It’s like saying, ‘Feed the hungry. Use food if necessary.’” What in the world does that even mean? Friends, let me just say it simply. Words are necessary. You need to speak. You need to say things to lost coworkers and neighbors and friends and family. You need to speak. But Paul says, “I need to know what words to say.” Now, Paul is not saying, “I need to reinvent the gospel every time.” The gospel is set. It’s done. Nothing’s going to change it. But the articulation of the gospel is going to be different every time. Need for Spirit-Given Words There are going to be different situations into which you’re going to speak, and you don’t know what their situation is. So feel helpless. You should feel helpless. Feel weak. Feel like you don’t know what to say. What’s the best way to get this timeless gospel message across specifically to this hurting, broken, enslaved sinner? How do I do it? So Paul said, “Pray for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me [by the Spirit of God].” And Jesus said, “When they arrest you, don’t worry about what to say. At that time, it will be given you what to say. For it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.” Ask for that. Oh God, give me spirit-filled words! Spirit-given words. Why? Because faith comes by hearing the message. That’s how they will be saved. Paul says in Romans 10:13-15, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” That’s words. “And how can they preach unless they are seen?” We have got to preach the gospel. We need spirit-given words. He prayed for boldness. He prayed for courage, just simple fearlessness. Look again at 19-20. He says, “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.” Praying for Fearlessness The Centerpiece of Paul’s Request for Prayer: FEARLESSNESS Fearlessly. Paul prayed for fearlessness. We are paralyzed by fear of what people will think. Paralyzed. I remember one time, and I have told this story before, but it’s very poignant for me. I’ve frequently been paralyzed by fear. I remember there was this one guy I used to work with that was so gruff. His name was Ron, and he was the foreman of the assembly, part of the floor. He was a tough-looking guy. He was tough, and I felt the Lord leading me to share the Gospel with him. And I’ll never forget that paralyzing fear I had of crossing the floor at lunch to share with Ron. I remember peeking around the corner and there he was at his workbench, eating alone. Perfect opportunity. I remember going to a friend. I said, “I really want to share with Ron.” And he got these big eyes like, “Share what?” He knew what I meant, but he was trying to clarify. “So would you pray for me?” He said, “Yeah, I’ll pray for you.” Wow. Because I mean the guy was, he was gruff. And I remember saying, “All right, I’m going to put a fleece down.” I was so afraid. I said, “All right, I’m praying that if he is still sitting at his bench eating his sandwich, that means You want me to share with him.” God wants me to share with him whether he’s eating a sandwich or not. But there he was right in the middle of a bite. I’ll never forget that. My heart sank. But I remembered that Marty, my friend, was praying for me. I went around and I could barely speak to this guy. You know how Paul says, “I was with you in weakness and fear and much trembling.” I gave him a tract and I said, “I’m a Christian.” He said, “I know.” And I said, “Well, I just think you need Jesus too.” And I hand him a tract. That was all I could manage. I don’t know what happened with that. I don’t know. Example from My Own Life: Outreach in Salem But I’m telling you, fear is powerful in many, many ways. I remember an outreach that I was trying to organize in Salem. I don’t want to go into the details. It was a Halloween outreach and I was paralyzed that entire workday by the fear of leading a group of people to go do street evangelism in Salem that evening. But I was memorizing Isaiah 51 and it changed my life. It changed my heart. That was the night of the perfect storm, the Halloween storm. I’ve told you guys this story before. Isaiah 51:12-16 is a powerful antidote to fear. He says, “I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mortal men, the sons of men, who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretched out the heavens and laid the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror every day because of the wrath of the oppressor, who is bent on destruction? For where is the wrath of the oppressor? The cowering prisoners will be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread. For I am the Lord your God, who churns up the sea so that its waves roar – the Lord Almighty is his name. I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand – I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, ‘You are my people.’” Isaiah 51. If that’s not a remedy to fear, I don’t know what is. How could I fear what people will do? We went out and had one of the greatest evangelistic outreaches I’ve ever had in my life. Amazing that Paul Felt the Need for Prayer Paul felt the need for prayer very much. He felt it to the end of his life. At the end of his life, even then, he was afraid that, having been delivered to be in front of Nero, he would fail to share the Gospel with Nero. I’ll never forget this. It’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever seen about the apostle Paul. He said this, “At my first defense, no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the gospel might be fully proclaimed to all the Gentiles. And I was delivered from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom.” (2 Tim 4:16-18) The attack is Satan’s attack to get Paul to wimp out at the finish line of his life and his ministry. He didn’t. God gave him strength and he was bold. So again, I’m going to say, if Paul felt the need to ask for prayer in boldness, how much more do we? I have a missionary friend who served for many years in Izmir. He’s now stateside working on mobilizing missionaries. He said that Satan’s fear is (I love this image) like the banner that’s held by cheerleaders at the homecoming football game that the football players run through to take the field. Have you ever seen that before? They just run right through. Satan puts up this wall of terror and you just run through it. It’s like, okay, that wasn’t so hard. What are they going to do to you? What’s the worst thing they could do to you? Torture you and kill you, right? Paul calls that light and momentary. And if they do do that to you, you will receive a hero’s welcome to heaven. It happens to a very few. Instead, what usually happens is we’re afraid somebody might sneer or snarl a little bit, or intimidate us, or that we might be disadvantaged at work or something. God has called on us to do this. Praying for Clarity Paul also Prays for CLARITY Finally, Paul prays for clarity. This is from Colossians. I’ll say it quickly. Then, I’ll apply it to you guys, and it will be done. It says, “Pray also for us, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I’m in chains. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly, as I should.” (Col 4:3-4) We just need to make it clear. Let’s make the Gospel clear and plain to the people that we’re sharing with. Application To the Unsaved… it is you that we’ve been thinking about! Application. I’ve been making it all the way through. It’s just simple. First, I just want to say something to the unsaved. I know that there are people here today that are outside of Christ. I know it. You need to know that God, the God who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and everything in them, wants a relationship with you. He created everything, but He especially created people, in His image. He made laws by which they are to walk in His sight, and be holy in His sight, and love each other. We have sinned against Him. We have violated those laws. We have not loved Him with all of our heart, soul, and mind. We have not loved our neighbors. We are sinners, and we deserve to die, not just physically, but eternally in hell. God knew we couldn’t save ourselves, so He sent Jesus, born of a virgin, who lived a sinless life, who was truly a human being, but truly God the Son. He did signs and wonders, but especially, He died in our place on the cross. The wrath of God, the justice of God, poured out on Him, so that we sinners might be, in Christ, the righteousness of God and exchange our sin on Jesus. He died. His righteousness was given to us, and we live. You need to repent and believe in Him. Just by hearing that message and believing, your sins will be forgiven. That’s the gospel. Use Home Fellowship as a PRAYER BASE for FBC’s Evangelic Thrust Now, if you came in here as a believer in Christ, a member, the application for you is simple, too. Get friends to pray for you. Get projects, people, that you’re doing. It could be a specific pattern of ministry. It could be something you’re doing with an elementary school or something that could be an urban ministry. It could be international connections. It could be just people that you’re getting to know and they’re getting to know you, and you would love to share with people at a coffee shop that you go to, or the supermarket, or at the workplace, or in your neighborhood. You could say, “I want to reach our neighbors. We just don’t know them. Could you pray that we’d have an opportunity to get to know our neighbors?” I would urge specifically that you use Home Fellowship for that. Each of you in Home Fellowship should have five people that you are praying for, lost people that you’d like to have opportunities for. That will be a form of accountability for you. Pray these kinds of things, say, “Give me opportunities to share. Give me boldness. I’m a wimp. Give me courage that I don’t wimp out.” You may be a college student, and say, “I want to reach my dorm. I want to reach the people on my floor with the gospel. Will you pray for me that I would make friends for the gospel? I want to share with them, but I’m afraid. Will you pray that I would proclaim it fearlessly, as I should?” Ask for those kinds of prayers and let’s see what God will do. Prayer Close with me in prayer. Father, we thank You for the chance we’ve had to hear Your word and to be moved by it. Lord help us. Forgive us for our weakness. Forgive us that we fear other people more than we fear You. Forgive us that we love what other people think more than we love You. Help us to love the lost, as You do. I pray that the love of Christ would constrain us and compel us to share. Help us to see more and more people water-baptized and then discipled and trained in the Christian faith. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Introduction Before I begin my message, I just want to invite any of you that would like to join the elders tomorrow night in prayer for racial reconciliation and for wisdom in our community here in Durham and for the situation in Charlotte and across the nation to join us at 6:30. It's a regularly scheduled elder's meeting, but we would like to invite you to come and pray with us if you'd like to. If this is something that has been pressing on your heart, something that you don't know the answer to, we don't either. But we're going to look to God and say, "Lord, just give us wisdom and help us to minister here in this community ." So, that's 6:30 to 7:30. Then we're going to ask you to leave because we've got work to do. I’m just kidding, but maybe you could just join us. Maybe the Holy Spirit will be poured out on us in an awesome way and that would be incredible. We're going to meet in the Welcome Center where we usually meet and if a large number of you come, we'll transition in here for an hour of prayer. Be praying even if you can't come at 6:30, for us to have wisdom to know how to minister here in Durham, in light of recent events. I would like to turn our attention now to Ephesian 6, specifically to verse 18. There, Paul urges us to pray in the Spirit as the capstone to his teaching on spiritual warfare. "Pray in the Spirit in all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints." We're going to look at each of those phrases today. And really, it is remarkable how Paul brings this incredible letter to a close with a really intensive focus on prayer. We're going to look one week at it. Next week, and specifically praying for evangelism and missions as Paul asked for prayer for himself to boldly, clearly share the Gospel. We're going to talk more about that next week. Prayer: An Indicator of Spiritual Strength and Maturity But it is amazing, the astonishingly deep theology of the Book of Ephesians, the reasoning, the teaching, the unfolding of deep, Christian doctrine. All of that means nothing if it doesn't result in a deep, consistent, full prayer life with Almighty God. Martin Lloyd Jones put it this way, "The ultimate test of the Christian life is the amount of time that we give to prayer." The amount of time that we give to prayer. The end to which all knowledge and teaching in scripture is meant to bring us, is to know God, to have fellowship with God, to realize our utter dependence on Him, and the power of His might. To realize it intensively, to feel it and to turn it back up to God in prayer, that's the measure of maturity in Christ. All Christians should have a full, deep, personal prayer life for themselves. Every day, begun with a rich time of worship, of confession of sin and thanksgiving, scriptural meditation, watchful preparation, and the context here for spiritual warfare, mindful of the fact that you yourself are going to be assaulted by the world, the flesh and the devil, and you need to get ready for that. You need to put on the spiritual armor to be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. You need to get yourself ready by putting on the full armor of God, each piece put on with prayer. “Then having done everything in preparation that you should stand firm in the day of testing.” But, what verse 18 does for me is, it gets me to branch and to look horizontally and to look at other brothers and sisters in Christ who are going to go through the exact same thing I am today. I should care about that. It shouldn matter to me that my brothers and sisters throughout the world are going to go through the same kinds of assaults that I am, and I should be praying for them. We should be drawing our hearts together in intercessory prayer. Elijah’s Faithfulness in Prayer Some time ago, a number of weeks ago, I was meditating on Elijah. I was thinking about James 5:16, which talks about the prayer of elders for a sick person, saying the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. The Lord will raise him up, therefore, pray for each other. Confess your sins to each other. Then it says, “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” We should pray for each other because of powerful and effectual, the King James Version says, prayer, produces an effect. Now, later in this message, I am going to talk about how that has scrambled my brain, my entire Christian life and probably will never get unscrambled. I'm going to talk about how I've gotten past that to still pray and to pray fervently. But there is an amazing power in prayer taught throughout the scriptures. Then he gives us this example of Elijah. Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain and it did not rain for 3 1/2 years. Again, he prayed, and the heavens produced the rain and the earth produced it's crops. So, that's an example. Now, in my mind, I was going to the story of Elijah. Now Elijah was an amazing individual. When you say that he was just like us, it's like, huh? But, what he was saying is that Elijah was human, he was just a human being, just a regular human being. You remember the story how he pops up in the account in 1 Kings 17, he pops and confronts wicked King Ahab with these words, "As surely as the Lord, the God of Israel lives, there will be no rain or dew on the land except by my word [going forward.]" Then he disappears. And the Lord commanded him to go to the brook, Caroth, where said, “I have commanded the ravens to feed you.” It's a fascinating account, and I remember meditating on that. And so in the morning, the ravens would bring him food. Then in the evening, the ravens would bring him food. Then it hit me, this question came to me, "What did he do for the rest of the day?" There certainly wasn't any cell coverage out there at the brook, Hedron. I don't think he brought any books with him. He didn't have anyone to talk to. He did have that raven meal to look forward to, that was going to be good. My guess is that it probably wasn't sumptuous but just enough to keep him going. He had the brook to drink from. "Now what? I've eaten the raven breakfast, drunk a bit from the brook, I'm good there. What now?" I don't think that he wondered what to do at all. He spent his day in prayer with God. He walked with God, like Enoch, like Noah. He walked with God. He had such a deep, rich, full relationship with God that it was delightful to him to spend it in prayer. Now, what James tells us, what we didn't know, is that before he even showed up in the account, he has already fervently prayed that it wouldn't rain. That's already happened. The account actually doesn't tell us that. James tells us that. We don't have any information about it. James told us that he prayed earnestly, fervently that it would not rain. It's an odd prayer if you think about it. But he did it because that was in the curses, the Mosaic curses, that if the land turns to idolatry which Israel definitely had, one of the covenant curses would be drought. He prayed fervently that it wouldn't rain. God’s Power Displayed in Prayer Then in the course of time, God commanded Elijah to show himself and to have a contest with the prophets of Baal. You remember how all of that turns out. One of the most dramatic moments of redemptive history, Elijah versus the hundreds of wicked prophets of Baal, and how they cried out to a god that didn't exist. "Oh, Baal, hear us." Remember how there was a contest and they had each set up an altar with sacrifice but they were not to light the fire. The fire would come down from heaven and the god who answers by fire, he is God. But Baal didn't hear, there was no answer, no one was there. The fervent of the prophets of Baal didn't affect anything. It was not powerful at all because there is no Baal. Then it was time for Elijah to show the power of God in answer to prayer. Remember how he has them soak the sacrifice with water, and again, then a third time. It was totally soaked with water down to the trench. The whole thing was drenched. Then he prays a simple prayer. Elijah was a man just like us and he prayed, "Oh, Lord, answer by fire so that, number one, all people may know that You are God, and number two that I have done all of these things at Your command." Now that's the mystery, God's sovereign initiative and Elijah's prayer. And God answered by fire. He sent fire from heaven and it consumed everything there, and the people fell down and said, "The Lord, He is God." But Elijah's praying wasn't done for that day. He got down and prayed that it would rain that day because the Lord had already revealed to him that today was the day that the rain was coming. Elijah was just responding at every moment to God's initiative and then the Lord heard and answered Elijah's prayer. Rained poured down from heaven. This powerful thing was prayer. A Defense Against the Evil Forces No, I don't understand how it all works, but I know this, the people of God are under constant assault by the world, the flesh and the devil, including you. Prayer is a mighty, powerful, effective force in defending ourselves against satan's attacks. I also know this, we're called on to mission. We're called on to advance. The two infinite journeys, we're called on to advance internally in personal holiness. We're called on to advance with the Gospel to those who are presently lost or even more to those who have no possibility of hearing the Gospel today, frontier missions. We're called to move out and I say to you, both the internal journey and the external journey will be bitterly opposed every step of the way, by satanic forces. Only by prayer are we going to make even a single step of progress. We must pray. We're coming to the topic of prayer and spiritual warfare. Look at the context again, you've heard it read, verse 10-13, "Be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power." If I could just stop say that you do that by prayer. That's how you are strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Draw near to Him in prayer. "Oh, God, give me power and strength to fight the devil today." Verse 11, "Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes for our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. When the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground and after you've done everything, to stand.” So I've told you those three steps, be strong in the Lord and His mighty power, draw near to Him in prayer to do that. Put on the elements of the full armor of God, each one of them reminding you so some aspect of God's saving work in your soul. Each piece, put on with prayer, as the hymn writer put it. And then when the day of evil comes, at the time of testing, stand. Those are the three steps. Now, what we're going to do is to reach out, horizontally, to seek to help brothers and sisters do the same thing. We're not alone, we're in an army, a family. We're in a family that is at war. So, verse 18, "Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” There is a sense of supersaturation in that language, "all, all, all, every." We're going to look at it phrase by phrase. Samuel Chadwick said, "The one concern of the devil is to keep saints from prayer. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom. But, he trembles when we pray!” In spiritual warfare, prayer works in concert with the previous commands. They work together, the ministry of the word in prayer. I think we should see a strong connection between verses 17 and 18. NIV starts like a new command in verse 18, but it really is just a continuation, “taking up the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God and praying in the Spirit.” There's taking up the word, taking up prayer. They harmonize beautifully and powerfully. Pray in the Spirit The Most Vital Aspect of Prayer Last week, we looked at that first step. The issue of praying in the Spirit. This is vital. This is the most vital aspect of our prayer lives. Cold, lifeless prayer is dead, it's worthless, but the Spirit, as we saw last week from Romans 8:26 and 27, is given to help us in our weakness, specifically in prayer. We don't know what to pray for, we don't know how to pray. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. He does that in a variety of ways. Most importantly, by the fact that He Himself is interceding for us as Jesus is at the right hand of God. The Spirit is interceding for you. So you are entering into the prayer ministry of Jesus and the Spirit as you pray in the Spirit. It's already going on. But, the Spirit also teaches us what to pray for. What Is It to Pray “in the Spirit”? We said last week that praying in the Spirit is praying for the right things in the right manner. Then I brought you to the book of Revelation. Remember how we followed the phrase, 'in the Spirit' four times. John was 'in the Spirit' on Patmos and saw Jesus the mediator, the resurrected, glorified mediator by whom we intercede, through whom we have access into the throne room of God. Keep Jesus in mind as you intercede. 'Praying in the Spirit' means intensely mindful of Jesus' blood, shed for you. To open up access for you into the second vision, Revelation 4, John was in the Spirit and went through a doorway into heaven and saw a throne with someone seated on it, the throne of Almighty God. The God of the universe, the King over all kings, the Lord over all lords. That's Almighty God, He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth. All the people are like grasshoppers, like drops in a bucket, dust on the scales. This is the infinite God. Praying in the Spirit is mindful of the sovereign power of God and the wisdom of God. Thirdly, in Revelation 17, remember, 'in the Spirit' John traveled and moved. He saw this woman on a beast and it represented the satanic evil, wicked, world system. This woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, and intoxicated with the lusts of this age, and we can see through spiritual eyes, the danger of the world system that we're in. That's the opposition we're facing and so to pray'in the Spirit' is to be very mindful of Babylon, so to speak, and all of the attacks on our soul that are going to come. Finally in Revelation 21, we see the Bride of Christ, glorified, radiant and beautiful. We see how we're going to win in the end, we're going to be glorious. We're going to make it! We're going to make it and all of the elect are going to be saved. They're going to be glorified. They're going to be in Heaven. No one will be lost. It's going to be radiant and beautiful in Heaven. We see that, and we pray toward that end. That was last week. Pray for All the Saints A Clear Vision for Prayer in the Church Now, we're going to extend out to pray for all the saints. We're going to think about intercessory prayer. The Spirit's going to lead us to pray for the saints. Now, again, the word 'saints' does not mean what the Roman Catholic Church meant on September 4th when it canonized Mother Theresa. In preparation for this sermon, I read the rules of canonization, of becoming a saint in the Roman Catholic Church. I got more confused, not less. It's an elaborate process. I don't really know what they mean by 'saint.' I know that in my town, there was St. Anselm's and St. Jeremiah's and all that. I was a Catholic and I went to St. Jeremiah's and then we went to St. Anselm's. So, the saints are especially special people who have done especially special things. They are voted on by the church. They are then seen to be saints, worthy of special veneration. I don't think any of this is true. I don't think that's what the Bible teaches. Saints are believers in Jesus, simply put. Ephesians 1:1, right in the beginning, "Paul, an Apostle of Christ Jesus, by the will of God, to the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus." Faithful in Christ Jesus are the saints. We see the same thing in Philippians 1. He writes to the saints in Philippi. These are just the set apart ones under God, we're the holy ones, made holy by our faith in Christ. That's what saints are. So, we're to pray for other Christians. Paul has already given us examples in this book, of prayer for the saints. He prays that. In Ephesians 1:18, he says, "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints and His incomparably great power for those who believe." For us who believe, so that’s Ephesians 1. Then in Ephesians 3 he says, "I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And to know that love that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." So Paul is praying that all the saints will be “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Paul gives us examples of that. Paul has also given us, in the book of Ephesians, a vision for the church. A vision for the people of God, for the church. We are to see this, Ephesians 2, a holy temple, this spiritual structure, rising. I love that, that dynamos image, rising to become a temple in which God lives by His Spirit. It's in construction. As we brought in 1 Peter 3, the new, “living stones” that are quarried from Satan's dark kingdom. They're put into the walls. It's just rising in every conversion, every elect person who comes to faith in Christ. It just got a little bit bigger, a little more glorious. Awesome! That's what's going on now. That's what the Gilowe's are going to do. We get to be a part of that too here in Durham and to the ends of the earth. We get to add new people through evangelism and missions to that Church. It's becoming more glorious, not just by evangelism, but also by discipleship, by sanctification. It's becoming more glorious by putting sin to death and growing in holiness. We're more radiant. We need to have a vision for that. Ephesians 4 has a vision more of a body, joined and held together by supporting ligaments. It's growing and building itself up in love. So we have two different images, but it's the same thing. It's the people of God, the Church, getting more and more glorious and more and more perfect in Christ. We need to pray about that. It's what we're getting at here in verse 18. We need to be involved in that in prayer, by prayer. Spiritual Warfare Upon Us All So, you have to see first and foremost that our brothers and sisters are under attack. They’re under attack. They're under spiritual attack. You know exactly what I'm talking about because it's happening to you too. The same things that are happening to you are happening to everyone else around the world. You should care about that. It should matter to you. It's a universal satanic attack. 1 Peter 5:8-9 says, "Be self controlled and alert. Your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that you're brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kinds of sufferings." The same kinds as you are. You should take the attacks that you're experiencing in your soul and then just normalize them horizontal and say, "Everybody is going through this." 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man." What Satan tries to do is that he likes to isolate us, to separate us, so that we're on our own. He can pick us off, one at a time. He likes to isolate us from the Body of Christ. Together, we're terrifyingly powerful to him but isolated, he can pick us off. So, if you are isolated as you face satanic assault you're going to think that you alone are going through these kinds of things. You're going to feel especially dirty, especially weird. Alone, very alone on this struggle. You feel there's no one you can talk to. There's no one who would understand what you're going through. Satan is a master at isolating us. This will tend to increase our guilt at our sin in a very bad way, make us feel that we are unique and really to some degree, unforgivable because there's such a special set of wickedness in our lives. Or, if we're going through afflicting circumstances or trials, it will have the effect of greatly increasing our complaining, our discontent. "No one knows the troubles I see. No one's going through what I'm going through. No one." If I could just share with you brother or sister, others are going through similar things. It might not be exactly like what you're going through, but actually, people are going through these kinds of afflictions. Praying for others, then, lifts our eyes off of our immediate circumstances, up to Heaven, up to Almighty God. From Heaven, horizontally, pray for this brother, pray for this sister, things are going on. Then little by little, you're less discontent in your own circumstance. You're more powerfully able to fight sin in your life. Help starts coming from looking up and then looking around you to the Body of Christ. Intercessory pray also tends to humble you. It tends to make you realize that it's not just Jesus and me, just us two. You know that Jesus is doing a work that's going to blow your mind! Just think about the words, 'a multitude greater than anyone could count,' looks like. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of people redeemed by Jesus. I just think that the more you meditate on that, the more humble you'll get. Just think about that. "I'm one of 500 million." There's a lot of people that God has loved. It just tends to humble us. We have to band together. Therefore, if our brothers and sisters are persecuted, we should care, we should intercede for them. If they're going through natural disasters like hurricanes, floods, or earthquakes, or different things and they have lost their homes, we should care about them. We can care far more in prayer than we can by any other physical means of ministry. There's a limit to how much time, energy and money we have. We have to be wise about how we can help, but in prayer our hearts can become very expansive. We can be grieved about certain situations. We can weep about certain situations. We may never personally touch them, but we can care about them and we can pray. And, if individuals are struggling with sin, it should matter to us, especially in the local church that we are committed to. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 11:29, talking about all of his sufferings. "Five times I was beaten, 30 lashes minus 1, 3 times beaten with rods." On top of all that, the ship wrecks and all, you almost get the sense that this is the worst of all. "It's the constant pressure I feel of my concern for all the churches. I'm constantly worried about how they are doing spiritually." Then he says this, "Who is weak and I do not feel weak? Who was led into sin and I do not inwardly burn?" That's the horizontal connection, I care about the sins that my brothers and sisters are struggling with. It matters to me if there is sin in our church, horizontally. It should matter to me. So, we're praying in the Spirit for all the saints. We're going to reach out and pray. Prayer “Changes Things” Now, here we come to the mystery of prayer. I touched on it in the beginning. I don't fully understand, it's a mystery. The psychology of prayer, the spirituality of prayer, what it does to me, makes perfect sense. For that reason alone, it's worth doing. It recalibrates my mind. It makes me more heavenly minded. It makes me more loving toward other people. It makes me, makes me, makes me do all of what's true and good and right. How about this slogan, "Prayer changes things." That's where my brain gets scrambled. "Changes from what?" They haven't happened yet. Now, that's my engineering mind. That's why I just think too much."Pastor, you overthink things! Just pray!" Amen. I'm going to just pray! How does pray change things? Well, I think what that means is, before we prayed, there was this situation. Then we prayed and this situation got much better by biblical patterns. I think that's what it means and I think that's simply true. I have reasoned it out this way, that prayer works this way. It's part of God's sovereign plan. He knew that we were going to pray, He motivates us to pray ahead of time. But, He won't do the 'X' until we pray. He withholds certain blessings from a prayerless people. You won't get that thing. Then when you pray, then it happens. The Pilgrims’ Prayers I read the story about the Pilgrims. You know that they landed in Cape Cod. Then they had a really rough winter and then they survived, somehow. They planted some crops and then they had the first Thanksgiving celebration in 1621, that's true. In 1622, they did not plant enough crops to celebrate. They couldn't afford a feast so they didn't have it. In 1623, they planted far more crops but there was a drought for many, many, many weeks. As a matter of fact it was so great that the Native Americans said that they'd never seen anything like it. They had no memory of such drought. Their lives were hanging in the balance. So, the leadership of that community called the people together and said, "We need to fast and pray." They got together, they fasted, they prayed. They prayed all day. By the evening, storm clouds were gathering, literal clouds. The next morning, there came a gentle rain that continued on and off, intermittently, with some sunshine. Then there was more rain for 14 days. Praise God! Do you think those people thought it was an answer to prayer? I'm thinking they did. Now, can I figure all this out? No, I can't figure it out. Let me give you an illustration that's been helpful for me, geek that I am. On our refrigerator we have a bunch of things that we like looking at, artwork, prayer cards, photographs. They're held to the refrigerator by magnets. How many of you understand magnetism? One of you raised your hand. I'm going to talk to her afterwards, okay? I'm serious. You get a powerful magnet, you put it about 6 inches above a paperclip and what happens? The paperclip clicks to the magnet, just like that! Can you explain that? Neither can I, but it works. I don't need to figure out the physics of it. They don't know either. I can tell you right now, I've known some of the smartest physicists and they don't know either. They just have fancier names and more descriptions of the phenomenon. But, they don't know either, anymore than they know gravity. It's a mystery, but it works. All I know is I've got this thing and it goes,"Thunk" and there it is! So, when we go to the Word of God, and we find out what God is doing in the world, then we get on our knees, we pray and keep praying. This blessing comes that wasn't there before, we can say, "prayer changes things," and "God answers prayer." That's the best way I can explain it. If you have another answer, that's fine. It doesn't matter to me, just pray! Pray in the Spirit and pray for the things that God has called you to pray for. It's very difficult to work out God's sovereignty and human responsibility. But, we know that God answers prayer, powerfully. How to Intercede for All the Saints Be in the Spirit Now, what I want to do for the rest of the time is just step through the phrases to learn something about intercessory prayer. I'm going to try to be a practical as I can in the remaining minutes that we have. We've already talked about being in the Spirit. Let me say again that the first thing you need to do, to intercede for all the saints, is to be sure that you're in the Spirit. What you do is you take a recent spiritual temperature check. "Have I been in the Spirit, leading up into this prayer time? Have I been characterized by the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control?" Ask those near you, "Would you say that's characterized me, this afternoon?" If you don't need to ask and you know it's not, then you need to begin by confessing your sins to God and asking for forgiveness. Ask Him to forgive you for the sins that He brings to you mind. Then pray to be filled with the Spirit. Begin by praying to be filled with the Spirit. Don't waste your time praying if you're not in the Spirit. It would be a waste of time, start there. Pray At All Times Secondly, it says, "Pray at all times," effectively. Pray in the Spirit on all occasions. So what this means is, all different opportunities, different times, different occasions in your life for prayer. What I think first and foremost is, just make time for prayer. I believe you need to have a concentrated prayer time doing nothing but praying, everyday. I believe it's best, first thing in the day, early in the morning, like Jesus did. It's not the same as praying while driving. I think that praying while driving is a very good thing as long as you keep your eyes open. That would be a bad form or distracted driving. Calvin is taking driver education. I don't know that they've covered prayer while driving. Thinking not, but you can pray, but keep your eyes open. Now, I'm not talking about praying without ceasing, we'll get to that in a moment. I'm talking about a concentrated pray time in which you're doing nothing but praying. Like we said last week, remember Praying Hyde, how it took like 10 minutes for him to get his heart quiet and right before God and to know who he's talking to? We can't always do that, but there are really special, important times we should do every day. I'm talking about your quiet time. Then having had your quiet time, you can have other occasions like that through the day. Daniel did them three times a day, three times a day! You can extend those. It doesn't just have to be in the morning. You could do it morning, noon and night. Having had that quiet time, then you're going to want to secondly, "pray without ceasing," so on all occasions. So, we have a concentrated prayer time, then you're going to have "praying without ceasing" throughout the day. Then, we can have other times, like special prayer meetings. I just invited you to come and pray with the elders tomorrow at 6:30pm. That's a special prayer meeting. You have prayer times with your Home Fellowship. Pray in the Spirit on those times. You have all occasions for that, seize the time. Pray With All Kinds of Prayer Next, pray with all kinds of prayer. There are different types of prayers that we pray, "On all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests" he uses two words, prayers and requests. I'm not going to go into the details of different types of words for prayer, but there are many different types of words for prayer. The point is, there are different patterns for prayer. Use them all! There are quick prayers, there are longer prayers, there are pre-written prayers, planned prayers, impromptu prayers, corporate prayers, small group prayers, retreat prayers, Nehemiah-like prayers, you know where Nehemiah is there, the cupbearer and the king. He makes a 'big ask' of the king. Right before he does, he prays and then answers the king. Those are the quick, arrow-to-heaven type prayers. There are lots of things to pray for. Give time for praying for all the saints. I think you need to organize it, I need to organize it. I have prayed best in intercessory prayer by being organized. I would suggest that you organize your prayer life. Get Organized John Piper talked about having no organization in your prayer life is like, "going off on a family vacation with no plan." I love that picture. The whole family gets into the car, they're all there dressed as they were that morning. 'Here we are. Where are we going? Family vacation. Oh, huh. Where are we going? Don't know, we're just driving.' Pulls out of the driveway. Does he go left, does he go right? We don't know. That's just ridiculous. We have to plan and think ahead of time, how it's going to be. The more organized that we are in our prayers, the better, to a point. I'm not saying we can't be immediately moved when we hear something, and pray. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that in general, for intercessory prayer be organized. I would suggest concentric circles. Pray much more frequently for the people much closer to you. If you're married, pray for your spouse everyday and even multiple times a day. Same thing for you kids or your parents. If you're single, there's going to be a tight circle of people you know best. Pray in Concentric Circles That brings us to most people's circle. That is, pray for your church family. Pray for the brothers and sisters in Christ who you know best, who are around you, people in your Home Fellowship, people that you interact with, accountability partners, people that you meet together with, pray for them consistently and regularly. What should you pray? I think you can write down requests, you can keep a prayer notebook. If you can remember it, do it, but just pray concentric circles. Pray also for the leadership of the church. Pray for the elders, the deacons. Pray for key leaders in the church, women ministry leaders, others that you know are playing a key role in the life of the church. Pray for them! Then just pray, concentric circles, for the whole church. Pray for them by name. Go through the church directory. Pray through it once a month. You're praying even for people that you don't know so well, once a month. Then further out in concentric circles, pray for our community, for the Raleigh-Durham area, for what's going in the city. Pray for what's going in this area and then further out to the state, Charlotte, NC and further on. Pray for brothers and sisters in Christ, for the saints in these locations. Pray for other churches here in the Raleigh-Durham area. Pray for folks that are ministering in Charlotte. Pray mindfully. Further out, pray for our nation, what's going on in the US. Again, pray for Christians in Washington, DC. Pray for Christians in Massachusetts. I mention Massachusetts because I found out that there's a new law that the churches in Massachusetts need to have gender neutral bathrooms and have to use gender appropriate pronouns as the individual is defined. This is going to be a terrible thing for freedom of religion if it takes root, not just in Massachusetts, but throughout the nation. Pray about that. Pray for the proper response to these kinds of things. Then to the world. Pray for the world. Next week we're going to talk more about how to pray for missionaries, how to pray for the spread of the Gospel. Pray for special categories. We'll talk more next week about missionaries reaching unreached people groups. Pray for the persecuted church. Pray for brothers and sisters that are being persecuted. Pray With A Purpose I went to Voice of the Martyrs website this morning just to look at it again. There was a brother there, an elder in the Philippines who was killed by Muslims, according to the story. I don't know that much about the story, but they have been trying to get the land that the church owns. The church has been resisting, and now this man was killed. I'm not 100% sure if it was persecution, but it sure looks that way. There are things like this all over the world. There are nations that are making laws that make it difficult to be Christians in that area. Pray for the persecuted church. Pray for Christians that are facing natural disasters. You may ask, "What should we pray for?" Pray with a purpose. What is God doing in the world? He's saving the elect, moving them from justification through sanctification, in to glorification. Pray for those things. Pray for Ephesians 1:15-18, Ephesians 3:14-21, pray as Paul teaches us how to pray. Pray for those things. Pray with a purpose. Look at what it says, "With this in mind," or ESV has, "To that end, pray." Think about what God is doing. “He is saving people that He chose from before the foundation of the world, making them holy and blameless, in Christ.” Walk through the things that you've learned, theologically, praying purposefully. Then pray alertly. It says, "Pray in the Spirit, on all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests, with this in mind, be alert." Here, there are two levels. One is just, being aware of what's actually going on for the brothers and sisters that you're praying for. What's happening in their lives? What's happening in the big picture, being aware of what Satan is doing, for we are not unaware of his schemes. You're asking people, "How can I pray for you? What's happening?" Be alert, be aware of how Satan is attacking. Or, imagine, what would a pastor, who regularly preaches, how would it benefit Satan to pull me down into sin. If it would be strategic, you could pray for me that, that would not happen. Not just for me but for the other elders. Godly elders are special focuses of Satanic attack. Pray for their protection, as many of you do. You tell me that you do. Keep praying for them. Be aware and then just, be alert while you're praying. Pray Alertly Have you ever had a really, really, really quiet, quiet time? The kind that's really quiet. It's unbelievable. It's like time just flew by, an hour goes by and you don't even know what happened. I'll tell you what happened. The same thing that James, Peter and John were doing when Jesus was praying. What were they doing? I've had some really sleepy prayer times and it's hard! For me, I get up early and I don't generally have trouble getting up but sometimes I have trouble getting up and being alert. Sometimes you have to get up and pace back and forth, stir yourself up. Awake my soul and well, don't sing because there might still be some sleeping, and it wouldn't be appreciated. You know how in Proverbs it says, "Greet your neighbor with a loud greeting in the morning, it would be considered a curse.” So don't do that. "But I'm praying for you!" But be alert. I'm amazed at how often I get sleepy in prayer, almost at any time of day. I actually think it's a satanic attack for me. I want to be alert while I'm praying. Be vigilant. Be aware of what's happening. Let's be alert of what's happening in each other's lives. The church covenant says, "We will watch over one another in brotherly love." The elders have to do that. We have to be alert. But, you be alert in each other's lives. "What's happening with you, I've not seen you recently. Are you doing OK? How can I pray for you?" The Perseverance We Need Then, pray with perseverance. It says, "With this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints." It is so easy to want to just give up in prayer. Jesus told of the prayer of the persistent widow, that we should always pray and never give up, Luke 18:1. We tend to give up. George Mueller is one of the greatest examples of persistent prayer that you'll ever find. Listen to what he says about persistence in prayer. "We must continually, continue to wait patiently on God until the blessing we seek is granted for we observe that nothing is said in the text, ‘Ask and it will be given to you,’ about the time and circumstances of when it will be given. There is a positive promise, ‘Ask and it will be given to you,’ but nothing as to time. Someone may ask, "Is it necessary that I should bring a matter before God, 2, 3, 5, or even 20 times? Isn't it enough for me to tell Him just once? We might as well say that there's no need to tell Him just once, for He already knew before you asked." Very sharp answer. There wasn't even a need to tell Him just once if there's no need for you to tell Him 20 times. Tell Him 20 times! As a matter of fact, keep on praying until you have the answer. That's what He is saying. He wants us to prove that we have confidence in Him, and that we take our place as creatures under the Creator. Sometimes He makes us wait just because He's the King, and it would be bad for our pride if He instantly granted everything we requested. We would become so arrogant. We have to wait because it humbles us. Mueller says this, "I am now, in 1864, waiting upon God for certain blessings for which I have daily besought Him for 19 years and 6 months, without 1 day's intermission. Nineteen years and six months, still the full answer is not given concerning the conversion of certain individuals. In the meantime, I have received many thousands of answers to prayer. I have also prayed daily without intermission for the conversion of other individuals, for about 10 years, for others about 6 or 7 years, for others 3 or 4, for others about 2 years, for others 18 months and the answers are still not granted. Yet, I am daily continuing in prayer and expecting the answer. Be encouraged, dear Christian, with fresh earnestness to give yourself to prayer, if you can only be sure that the things that you ask for are according to the will of God." That's just advice from Ephesians 6:18 on intercessory prayer. Next week I'm going to talk more about praying for the spread of the Gospel. It's been my passionate desire to see this church, far more evangelistically fruitful than we are and I think that prayer is the key. So, next week we're going to talk about that. Gospel Call It would be wrong for me though to end without making a direct appeal to lost people to come to faith in Christ. Honestly, you cannot pray in Jesus' name as a non-Christian. The first and most important prayer that you should pray is the prayer of that broken-hearted tax collector who stood a distance and wouldn't lift up his eyes but just beat his breast and said, "Be merciful to me, Oh, God, this sinner." So, if you are lost, you're on the outside and you're looking in, I urge you to call on the name of the Lord Jesus. I mentioned at the beginning of this sermon that it's because of His shed blood that sinners like us can come into the presence of God and pray. All you have to do is say, "Lord Jesus, save me," and your sins will be forgiven. You don't have to do any good works. Good works will follow, certainly. But just by simple faith in Christ, all your sins will be forgiven. Close with me in prayer. Prayer Father, thank you for the time we've had to look at Ephesians and its instructions on prayer. Teach us to pray. Lord, we're not good at it and we need to grow. Help us to be a praying people. Lord, I pray specifically for tomorrow at 6:30. Would you call out some people from this church to join with the elders in praying about racial ministry in this city, racial reconciliation, and the joy of seeing the Gospel, victorious in this very sad and dark time. Lord, I pray that You call up prayer warriors to do that. Lord, I pray that you would make our church more fruitful and passionate in prayer. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Many desire fellowship with others, in fact, we are commanded to assemble ourselves. Yet there isn’t always an established group where we live. Join us as we review some recommendations of do’s and don’ts when it comes to setting up a home fellowship.

Introduction This morning I was pondering a question that came, you know, just because of current events, thinking about different things. And the question is what brings significance to your life? When you're on your deathbed, and you look back on a successful life, what will you say was the most significant thing you were ever involved in, most significant thing you ever did, that you invested yourself in? What will be the crown jewel of your life's work? The Emptiness of a Godless Life Two weeks ago, Glenn Frey founding member of the rock group the Eagles died, and various programs that I listen to were just ruminating with that thinking about the passing of an era. I watched an interview with him and he said these words, he said, “The greatest thing I ever did was to be part of the Eagles, to tour with them to record songs write songs with them. That was the greatest thing I ever did.” So I was thinking about that, and I thought about other such statements that I've heard from various ones. For example, I saw an interview with a NASA engineer that had been involved in the Space Race and been involved also in that amazing rescue of Apollo 13 that later there was a movie and he said, “The greatest moment of my life, is when we got those astronauts back safely from outer space back to Earth.” I knew a man some time ago, his name was Jim and he was a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, and seemed like if you gave him three minutes, he would talk about the Battle of the Bulge decades later, and it seemed to be without a doubt, the most significant thing that ever happened to him, he was part of a group, he never missed the VBoB meetings, Veterans of the Battle of the Bulge and it was just seemed to define his whole life. Saw another interview with Ron Howard, and he was talking about what it was like to be part of two really significant TV shows, The Andy Griffith Show, and then Happy Days, and he made a similar statement, the greatest time in my life was to be part of those shows. And you see interviews from time to time with athletes, to talk about what it was like to be on that team that won the Super Bowl etcetera. And they use that same type of language. And honestly for me as a Christian, all of that just seems empty. It all seems temporary, and the more I meditate on spiritual gifts, and the good works that God has for us to do, the more I see the incredible grace God has shown us in Christ to not just deliver us from condemnation, and wrath and judgment that we will be completely forgiven, and that we would be adopted into his family, but more than that, that we have been graced with gifts, spiritual gifts and ministries connected with that, that will have eternal consequences. That we're delivered from wasting our lives, and that we'll be able to say at the end of our lives. The most significant thing I ever put my hand to was the building of the Church of Jesus Christ. And I think that's going to be abundantly clear to us on Judgment Day, when Jesus torches our “pile of works, and the gold, the silver, the costly stones, the wood, the hay and the straw, are all going to get tested by fire.” And then we'll see the unifying theme of those things at last, those things they were done for the glory of God, by the power of the Spirit that brought Him glory, and built the Church of Jesus Christ. That's what's going to last, and God has given us through these spiritual gifts and Avenue, a pattern of ministry that he wants us to do. What Are Spiritual Gifts? So this is our third sermon now, third time looking at the topic of spiritual gifts. What are spiritual gifts? Spiritual gifts are special abilities given to us by the grace of God, that enable us by the Spirit of God to build the Church of Jesus Christ. Special abilities. Now, big picture, we know that we have been saved, delivered from our sins, so beautifully unfolded for us in Ephesians 1-2, chosen before the foundation of the world, predestined to be adopted as His sons and daughters, predestined to be holy and blameless in His sight, Jesus shed His blood for our redemption, we, having heard the word of truth, were included in the Church of Jesus Christ by repentance and faith, that we have been saved, rescued from serving Satan, from being enslaved to Satan's dark kingdom. And we've been delivered from that by the sovereign power of God, not by our own works. “For by grace we have been saved through faith, and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” But having said that, then we have that beautiful Ephesians 2:10, which says that, “we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God planned in advance that we should walk in them.” And what I am saying to you these spiritual gifts a third time we've had a chance to look at this, will organize many of the good works God has ordained for you to do. Many of them will come along the pattern of your spiritual gift ministry. And that's a beautiful thing now in that same chapter, in Ephesians 2, we have this grand and glorious vision of a church, a holy temple, a spiritual dwelling place that's rising, in the Lord, more and more glorious, all the time more and more ornate, bigger and bigger all the time. With every sinner that comes to faith in Christ. We are part of that. To bring it in language from 1 Peter 2, we are “living stones” set in that spiritual temple. And so that's a glorious picture. I get the picture of a medieval Cathedral, and there's this master craftsman, this architect, that has the blueprints and the plans, and just runs the whole worksite. But then you have these skilled craftsmen, these stone workers, masons, you know these carpenters and glaziers, experts in glass and those majestic stain glass windows, and then common laborers, and all kinds of workers on this work site in this cathedral that just rises from the surface of the earth 120 feet off the ground. But this is even better, this is eternal, this is glorious and we all have a role to play. Every Christian has a role. Grow in the Spiritual Gifts So what we're going to do one final time, here is we're going to look at spiritual gifts and organize it along the pattern of these four Ds that I commended to you. Discover spiritual gifts, delight in spiritual gifts, develop spiritual gifts, and deploy your spiritual gifts. So we're going to look one more time at these. We're going to start again with “discover,” and what we're going to do is take the “discover” section, break it into two parts, discover generally about spiritual gifts, that work is mostly done. But I'm just going to go through Ephesians 4:7-16 one more time. So we understand what they are, generally. Then, we're going to go over to Romans 12 and I'm going to use Roman 12, Romans 12:1-8, and I'm going to take you through that so you can already begin flipping there, or turning there, or pressing there. I don't know what the verbs are anymore, but clicking there. But we're going to get there Romans 12:1-8. I'm just going to walk through that text because I just don't think there's a better text in the New Testament for answering the question what yet, but “What are my spiritual gifts? What role do I personally play? How can I discover my personal gift?” So that's the Discover section. Secondly, I'm just going to exhort you. It shouldn't be hard to just delight in this whole glorious thing. I want to give you a vision, again, of the heavenly in Jerusalem. I want you to delight in it, I want you to enjoy it, and I want you to delight, in your heart, in building it, I want you to do your gifts with the light. And then, thirdly, I'm going to advocate that all of us have to develop our spiritual gifts that you should be better if the Lord allows you to live, and doesn't return. You should be much better at your spiritual gift package, in the ministry that corresponds to it, 10 years from now than you are now. You should learn how to do it better than ever before. I should be a better preacher and teacher and Pastor 10 years from now, than I am now if the Lord gives me time. And all of us should develop our gifts. And then finally, I'm just going to advocate that you do them, that you deploy yourself, get busy, and you've got an insert, and in your bulletin we're going to look at that various avenues of service. I'm going to just look at that as an incredible menu, and you say, "Well I just don't know what to do." Well, there are ample ways and on-ramps into ministry here in this local church, and I want to talk about that. Okay, that's a road map. Gifts Given by Grace Let's look first at “discover” generally one more time, look at the text in Ephesians 4:7-16. I just want to start at 4:7, “But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it,” so the word “but” means we're going to go in a slightly different direction. He was just talking about unity, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is overall, and through it all and in all.” Unity, unity, unity. But to each one of us grace. So unity, but not uniformity. We are all part of one body, but we don't all have the same function, same role, we've already talked about that, “but to each one of us.” So every Christian has a spiritual gift package. I prefer that language than just to the singular spiritual gift because there's just an array of abilities that God's going to give you that line up with a pattern of ministry He wants you to do and He's going to gift you for that, and that's everybody, “but to each one of us,” grace. I already said why this is grace. God didn't have to do this. How gracious of God to give you a role to play Amen. You should be so thankful and see that you got far more than you deserve, but by the grace of God, you have this ministry and you can work hard and do things of eternal consequence, but to each one of us grace has been given, according to the measure of Christ. So Christ has measured out, the Greek word “metron.” I love the sense of careful thinking he has pondered you and has chosen a spiritual gift package, for you and a spiritual gift ministry, for you. According to the measure of Christ, we know also from other texts, that the Father has done this in the Spirit as well. So the Father, Son and Spirit together have gifted you, everyone. Now, in the next few verses, it talks about how these spiritual gifts are part of what Christ won for us by His victory at the cross and the empty tomb it pictures Christ as an ascendant victorious Conqueror who came down from Heaven to Earth to rescue sinners like us and then goes back up from Earth to Heaven, leading captives in his train. And just pouring out gifts to everybody. And so it's like booty, or plunder, something like that, a sense of the spoils of the victory and through the Spirit, He just gives us these good things. That's the image in verses 8-10. And then he gives us some examples, but they're not just any examples as we've talked about. “He gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, some to be pastors and teachers.” Those are five gift type ministries, each of them has their own gifting. And we talked about this, but they unify around this one theme, the delivery system of the word of God from the mind of God through these gifted ones “apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers” to the people of God, the word of God is delivered. So the ministry of the word primes the pump for the use of spiritual gifts. Christians Prepared for Works of Service So, we go right from that to prepare God's people for works of service. So God's people are made ready by the ministry of the word of God, to do works of service. The works of service, do the building up of the body. Does that make sense? So all of the works of service, that's what builds up the Body of Christ, so the Body of Christ may be built up, and that's the goal of spiritual gift ministry, the maturation, the full maturity of the Body of Jesus Christ that were moved from “being infants blown back and forth by the waves,” immature doctrinally immature in our understanding of Christ and of the church, and of the world to full maturity in Christ-likeness. And so, when every individual elect person has been brought from death to life through evangelism and missions, and then discipled and trained by a healthy church ministry, up to full maturity and then even more in glorification. When we graduate the ultimate graduation moving from earthly life to heavenly life, when all of the elect have been glorified then the work is finished. And that's what spiritual gifts are given to do. And that's a glorious thing. And so as each part does its work, the Body of Christ is built to full maturity. So spiritual gifts are vital to this whole redemptive plan of God. And as we individually use our gifts and as we're out and about using the gifts, and then as we're receiving other people's gifts, all of us grow up, we grow up by serving and we grow up by being served with the spiritual gifts and that's what a local church is all about. It's so sweet and powerful. So that's the picture, generally. So water spiritual gifts, Ephesians 4:7-16 really gives us a glorious overall picture. Discover Your Gifts (Romans 12:1-8) Live in Light of God’s Gospel Now, let's get to specifically,. “discover” my gifts, “how would I do that?” Well look at Romans 12:1-8, let's zero in on that in particular. Romans 12:1-8 is almost like a step-by-step field manual in how to discover your spiritual gifts. Often, people quote Romans 12:1-2, and sever it from the flow of thought that follows. So I think a real impact comes in connecting the famous Romans 12:1-2 with the not-so-famous Romans 12:3-8. Keep them together and you will see a powerful image and we're going to walk through Romans 12:1-8, and just bring it back again and again, to the touchstone of spiritual gifts. How can I know what my spiritual gifts are? Romans 12:1-8 is the biblical answer to that. Okay, we start with this. “Therefore brothers, in view of God's mercies, I urge you to present your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you'll be able to test and approve what God's will is, his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given to me I say to every one of you do not think of yourself more highly than you ought” and he goes off to talk about spiritual gifts. So just start at the beginning, Romans 12:1-2 and see it in the light of spiritual gifts. So how do I know what my spiritual gifts are? Well, begin by having a view through the scripture, through faith of the overarching glorious mercies of God, Romans 1-11, or Ephesians 1-3. The overarching picture of the redemptive plan of God start there in view of or seeing God's mercies in Christ. Present Your Body to God Next, “present your bodies to Him as living sacrifice.” So I would say in view of God's mercy, just starts with faith in Christ. This is for believers, not for non-believers. If you ask, "Okay, you know I'm a visitor here and I'm not a Christian, but I'm interested in spiritual gifts.” Can I just say set that aside, that's not what you need. When they came to Jesus and said, "What must we do to work the works of God?” He said to them, unregenerate people. This is the work of God, believe in the one he is sent, so you need to trust in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins that's the mercies of God. God sent His Son to die in your place, to take your wrath on Himself, and to give you His perfect righteousness that's the mercy of God. You don't have any spiritual gifts, you don't have any spiritual life, if you're not a Christian, if you're not born again so don't leave this place “dead in your transgressions and sins,” but repent and trust in Him right now, and then immediately you'll receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and He will work a spiritual gift ministry in you that's the order. So, in view of God's mercy, then Christian present your body to Him as a living sacrifice. So what is this presentation? Well, Romans 6 makes it very plain what it is but basically used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to sin, now offer the parts you of your body to God. And so here's the thing, the image I have here is you're just presenting, you're saying, "I am yours to command, I want to use my life for your glory, I offer myself to you, to serve you.” Now you say, "When do I do that?" Well, in one sense you do it once for all, at conversion. When you come to faith in Christ, you said “I am yours, you are my king, I am your servant. I’m yours.” And that's true, but the image here is one of continual presentation and we get that from the idea of a living sacrifice. Old Testament was all about a dead sacrifice. It was an animal blood poured out and its body burned, and send it up, and it was an offering, but now we've got a different idea, same idea of sacrifice, but now your body offered to God continually, as a living sacrifice. So in your morning quiet time. Yes, but throughout the day. Abiding in Christ continually thinking about Him and just saying, I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours, I'm yours to command all the time, continual offering of yourself, your hands, your feet, your eyes, your mouth, every part of you. Don’t Be Conformed to this World And then he says “holy and pleasing to God.” You will be able to discover your spiritual gifts, better and better the more you put sin to death, if there's no sin clouding your judgment, there's no wickedness going on in your life. If those things are going, you will not be able to discern what your spiritual gifts are. That's not the top priority for you. And we're never going to be perfectly holy, but our discernment and our ability to understand the spiritual gifts of God are in proportion to being holy and pleasing to Him. And he says, “this is your spiritual act of worship.” This is what worship is for you, this ongoing presentation of your body holy and pleasing to him. So how do I know what my spiritual gifts are? Start there in Romans 12:1, do that, and then he says, “do not be conformed” or masquerade or act like, “the world any longer.” Don't do that, don't. Another translation, “don't let the world squeeze you into its mold.” Don't be conformed. All right, so it was after the spiritual gift and the lifestyle that flows from it. Don't think like the world about your life, don't have worldly goals for your life. Learn now, what is going to be “gold, silver, and costly stones” on Judgment Day, and live for that and not for the stuff that's “wood, hay, and straw,” which is going to get burned up. Live for Christ, live for His kingdom. “Seek first His kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” And these things that get added or not while you're alive. And so, don't think like the world about your life anymore. Don't think like the world about your time and energy and money and how you're investing yourself. Don't think like the world about your career and what you want to achieve, but instead “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Now though the word of God is not specifically mentioned here, we all know that's the only power there is to do that. How do you think differently? It's the power of the Holy Spirit who uses the word of God in changing the way you think, and if you change the way you think you will change the way you live. I'll talk about this more later in Ephesians 4. New thinking leads to new living. Be Transformed by the Renewing of Your Mind And so “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” be in the Word, be listening to good preaching. Be getting good teaching, be reading good Christian books, be in the Word every day your quiet time all the time, then, he says, As you are transformed more and more by the renewing of your mind, you will be able, and I like the NIV's translation here. They unfold the Greek word, I think pretty well for us. You'll be able, equipped, to test and approve what God's will is, for you. “His good, pleasing, and perfect will.” So the big question we're asking is “discover.” “What are my gifts?” This is just leading you by the hand to answer the question. You'll be able to test and approve. Well, what do we mean by test and approve? Well, one of the images I have here is of the Great Gold Rush, the minor 49ers and all that in 1850 and all that, and they go to the California and they're getting rocks out of rivers and out of mines, and they're bringing them to a place called an assayer's office, and the assayer is an expert at looking and saying, “That's fool's gold, that's real goal. The quality of it silver too,” whatever, that's what they do, they're able to assess what's on the table in front of them and say, what it really is. Well, that's you, you'll be able to test and approve God's will for you, this is God's will for me. And not only is it God's will, I know what it is, but I like it, I approve it, I want it, that's something good for me. So already we've come a long way. Romans 12:1-2 just gives you step-by-step how to answer the question, “What is my spiritual gift?” Do Not Think More Highly Of Yourself than You Ought But Paul is not done 4:3, “by the grace given to me,” and that's code language for spiritual gifts, later in the same text in Romans 12:6, I think it is. We have different gifts according to the grace given to us, that's exactly what he's thinking about. “Okay, by my spiritual gift of Apostle I say to you X.” That's the language he's using. “By my spiritual gift package of being an apostle, I'm going to give you some advice about your spiritual gifts.” So, “by the grace given to me I say to every one of you,” and the first thing he says is, “do not think of yourself more highly than you ought.” He starts right away with humility, humble yourself, don't think of yourself as a first round draft pick on God's team, okay? Don't think of yourself as indispensable. “God is lucky to have me.” Every one of us is dispensable, every one of us is replaceable, be humble about that. Think how blessed you are already to even be on this team doing this work. Humble yourself. And that's going to be even more true as you progress and develop your spiritual gift and God uses you more and more and gives you a wider and wider platform of ministry, and you see fruit and you start to get tempted to be elevated and forget where it all came from, and how you can't do anything apart from Jesus, and He's just being gracious to you to even let you be involved and any change that ever happened in another person's life, it's been happening by the word of God in the Spirit. If you are the avenue the conduit of it, praise God, be happy. But it was God that did it. And so don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but now comes a hidden step, which is so vital, but the more I talk about it, it just makes perfect sense. But think about yourself, do think about yourself. Value Feedback from the Church Members So you're like, “All right, how do I discover what my spiritual gifts are?” Ponder yourself, like the thinker. Who am I? I'm pondering not my spiritual naval, but I'm pondering my tendencies, my habits, my patterns, my proclivities, my likes and dislikes, pondering what I do, and specifically in the light of spiritual gifts. “What kinds of ministries do I enjoy? What kinds of ministries have come to me, and I've done them and I've enjoyed doing that. And this is the beauty of being a really healthy church. I've gotten a feedback loop of encouragement from the Body of Christ.” And so, I think you discover your spiritual gifts, the more you get involved in a local church, a healthy local church, will help you discover what your gifts are. That's just a plug for being a covenant member of a healthy local church, know and be known on spiritual gifts, know other people's gifts, and let them know your gifts. So I'm just going to do a brief segue here. Stay in Romans 12. But just in your mind, a corresponding thing you are thinking about yourself, you also want others thinking about you. And those things come together for discovering your gift, right? So who should think about you? The church, the local church, how? Hebrews 10:24, it says, "Let us consider one another, to spur toward love and good deeds. Not neglecting meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another and all the more as you see the day approaching.” That's a partner to think about yourself with sober judgment. They’re partner verses. So you think about yourself as sober judgment and get some good friends to think about you as sober judgment, let them consider you, “Who are you? What are you good at?” And they should, lovingly, encourage you about what you're good at, and what you're blessed at. See? I'm blessed by that. Blessed by the Spiritual Gifts Marveling at the Spiritual Gifts in Action. And so I was thinking about that and I pondered it, and I have all of these examples of encouragement that I wrote. I think about different people who have blessed me. Now, if you're listening to this and you're like, "I know I'm that person,” All right? Well, you probably are, but I didn't put any names in here, but I'm just blessed all the time, by members of this Body of Christ. So I think about people who have the gift of hospitality and I want to say to that brother or sister, “You have such a gift when you open your home you make me feel like you're doing me a favor for us being there, like you're so incredibly blessed to have 43 people come to your home for home fellowship.” That's just a gift of hospitality. There's not a sense of burden at all, it's a gift, Thank you, praise God for that. Or the gift of service. Brother, thank you for coming every Sunday morning and making coffee for so many people. 12 pots one after the other, all different types of flavors. Very few people may see you do it, but thank you for that gift of service. I'm encouraged by the way you serve. Or evangelism. “Brother, when you go out witnessing and you just get in these conversations and it just seems to flow, and even though you don't know them, they don't know you, pretty soon you're talking to a lost person, so easily about the Gospel. I just want to ride your coattails, I want to be with you. Can I just come and watch it and get credit for doing evangelism? I just want to do that, because you have such a gift.” I love that. And then, the gift of mercy. “You have such a heart for the poor and needy, sister. I'll tell you what, when I drive through this community, I don't see it the way you do. But you see needs, you see avenues of service, you see people whose lives are broken, and you have such a heart of compassion for them. I am so blessed by that.” The gift of prayer. “I love praying with you, I just love the way you pray, I just feel like we're in the presence of God, the way you pause and the way you have your tone of voice and the things you say in prayer. I'm blessed by that, you have a gift. And I'm blessed by that.” The gift of leadership, “I love the way you organize mission trips, the way you organize ministries, the way you think about details, the way you cast a vision for it, the way you're able to call people to make sacrifices for that vision, and to move out and go in that direction. I'm blessed by your gift of leadership or the gift of giving, you just give so regularly, and so faith filled, I know that God's blessed you and abundantly.” But you don't see those things as yours ultimately you see them as God's, and you give generously. You give generously to missions, you fund mission trips, you fund laborers for the harvest field, you give tithes and offerings to the local church as well. I'm just blessed by the way you give. The gift of teaching. “When you open up the Scripture, I hear things in the word that I hadn't, I see things that, they're there, but I never saw them and I'm blessed by that. Thank you for showing me things in the word of God that strengthen my faith.” Or the gift of music or worship. “The way you play your instruments, and the way you sing. I feel like I'm just laid on the heavenlies, and that my emotions flow, and there's just such a beauty to the gift of music.” And then the gift of administration, of organization, the caring center ministry, so many details. Clothing comes in, clothing goes out. There's money, there's all these things, the whole thing's set up so well. “Thank you sister for the way you have organized the caring center. Your gift of administration with a gift of counseling. “Our marriage was not doing well, but we sat down with you as a couple, and you showed us sin, patterns in our lives, and you counseled with us, from the word of God, and you really saved our marriage. Thank you.” Now, when all of those practical ministries are being done and there's that beautiful feedback loop. I couched all of that in light of encouragement. The Body of Christ encourages people to “loving good deeds.” And so, it's our job to think about ourselves, definitely think about ourselves, but we need to think about one another too. We need to think about each other. And so, as that happens, we can discover our spiritual gifts, what they are. So think about yourself with sober judgment. Get involved in ministries. You're going to get a chance at the end of this message to look at it. Don't worry if you don't know what your spiritual gifts are, you really don't know. Just get busy. Do some things along the pattern of the ministries we suggest and just see how you are, see how you fly like that balsa wood airplane, the way that the wings are set. Are you going to do a barrel roll, are you going to fly for distance? What are you? Are you going to curve left or right as you get the air under the wings you're going to show your tendencies? Get busy. So think about yourself with sober judgment in accordance with the “measure of faith that God has given you.” And then he goes on to teach about spiritual gifts. So I would just step by step by step go through Romans 12, and you'll discover what your gifts are. Okay? Now, at the end of that section, he says this, and we'll come back to Romans 12:6-8 on the final D. But it says, “if it is encouraging, let him encourage. If it is contributing to needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern diligently, if it is showing mercy, let him do it,” what? “Cheerfully.” “Cheerfully.” I think about 2 Corinthians 9:7, talking about financial giving, says, “not reluctantly or under compulsion,” why? “Because God loves a cheerful giver.” You have to have a delight in your heart when using your spiritual gifts, you have to delight in it, and I think the best way to delight to be a cheerful giver is to see the glorious vision of what you are doing. I've already given it to you, I'll give it to you again. It is the heavenly Zion of Isaiah 62 “Arise and shine O Zion for your light has come and the glory of the Lord shines upon you.” It's the New Jerusalem that at some point in the future is going to “come down out of Heaven like a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.” It is this city, this golden, glorious, transparent amazing city that's radiant with the glory of God. And you know what occurred to me? All local church ministry is temporary. All of it. But the eternal church is eternal, and get this. I love this. I gave you guys that image of the small cover or cloud cover. Sometimes you have to fly up above the clouds, and see, from a heavenly perspective, the New Jerusalem, and you know what the Lord is saying to my heart about that? Yes, local church ministry is temporary lots of changes, lots of things happen, but things are looking really good from up here. The New Jerusalem every day gets a little bigger and a little more glorious, a living stone gets put in the wall. Every day, there's not a single backward step, for the New Jerusalem. Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us and He's doing it, and oh it's glorious! It is glorious. So you should be very cheerful using your spiritual gift, you should delight in it, because you're doing an eternally glorious work. Develop Your Gifts Spiritual Gifts Need to Be Developed All right, thirdly, “develop.” How do we develop our guests? Well, you developing by using them, etcetera, but that you should develop the gift. I'm just wanting to command this one text. 1 Timothy 4:15, all right? I'm just going to read 1 Timothy 4:13-16, and we'll talk briefly about “develop.” There, Paul, the mentor says to his protegé, Timothy, about pastoral ministry about preaching and teaching, and shepherding, and doing the work of an evangelist all the things that go into being a pastor, he says, “until I come,” 1 Timothy 4:13-16, “until I come, devote yourself to the public reading of the word of scripture to preaching into teaching.” Devote yourself to it. Then he says, "do not neglect your gift, which was given you through a prophetic word when the body of elders laid their hands on you.” Don't neglect your gift. Another place he says, “fan it into flame.” That's going to be the same image but I'm zeroing in here. 1 Timothy 4:15, “Be diligent in these matters, give yourself wholly to them so that everyone may see your progress.” So, Timothy, let it be said there in Ephesus that when they come five years later they’ll say, “Timothy, you're a much better preacher now than you were five years ago.” Don't be hurt by that, be happy, be encouraged. Be a better preacher in five years, be a better shepherd in five years. Well, I'm just taking that idea and extend it to all the spiritual gifts, all of them. Devote yourself fully to your spiritual gift ministry, so that everyone may see your progress. Be a better giver. 10 years from now than you are now. Be better at administration or leadership 10 years from now than you are now. Study it, as a science, as an art, however you want to say it devote yourself to your spiritual gift ministry and get better at it. That's all. He says “watch your life and your doctrine closely. Persevere in them because if you do, you'll save both yourself and your hearers.” I think that's true of all spiritual gifts. That as we use our spiritual gifts, we will be instrumental in the salvation of the saved. Like huh, well you said save both yourself Timothy and your hearers. He's saved doesn't he? But yes, Already, not yet. He is saved, but he's not done being saved. And so as we use our gifts and progress in them, we will see the church growing more and more toward maturity in Christ. That's salvation. So we've seen discover, delight in the gifts, develop, now, finally deploy. We Develop Them by Using Them Deploy is kind of a military term, I guess, to some degree. First time I went through this years ago, I used the word “use,” but I've been inspired by my alliteration friends. So you got to have all the same letter, do you know it's the same letters all the time, is Ds and Ps and all that? Poor letter Z or X, I mean whoever does alliteration with those? I guess kids on Mother's Day if they can get 26 ways that they love their mom. Don't use the word Xerox. She's not going to be encouraged by that. That's not good. But deploy. It's a military image, it's like God is going to deploy us on the battlefield. This gifted Church, He's going to deploy. So I'm urging you to deploy your gifts, use them. So there we go back to Romans 12:6-8, “we have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man's gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith, if it is serving, let him serve. If it is teaching, let him teach. If it is encouraging, let him encourage, if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously. If it is leadership, let him govern, diligently if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully.” Do it. What good is the gift if you're not using it, and this is where I just want to convict you, look at your lifestyle, look at your pattern. Are you using your gifts? Are you involved in a regular pattern of spiritual gift ministry? And as I've said a few weeks ago, if not the first thing you really did need to do is to repent, say, “Lord, I have wasted some time up to this point, I've not really been using my gifts, I've not been investing in the Church the way I need to, and I want to do that. I've been worldly. I've been living for worldly goals, and I don't want to do that anymore, I really want to get involved in ministry.” Deploy Your Gifts So “deploy.” You know remember the parable or the talents, the five talents two talents, the one talent? You don't want to be the one that got a talent and hid it in the ground. Matthew 25-25, he said, “so I was afraid and went out and dug a hole and hid your talent in the ground.” Here's what belongs to you. All of our gifts, we're going to give them back 'cause they're not ours. He's going, “I want to know the interest. What did you do with it? Did you invest it? Show me the increase, show me the growth.” That's what Judgment Day is going to be like for all of us. So let's deploy our gifts. Let's get involved. Now, you might say, "How do I do that? How do I do that?" Well, this is a really encouraging brochure that some on the staff put together, did a great job, and it breaks opportunities for service into three main categories. Ministry teams, those are run by the deacons in a beautiful way, but so many ministries flow through these ministry teams, many of them have to do the infrastructure and the strength and health of the Church, and you can see them Children's Ministry, there are various needs there, Encouragement Ministry, Meals and Preparations, it's like Meal Baby. Or if there's a bereavement issue such a blessing for people to step up and do that. Facilities ministry just taking care of the building, etcetera. Host Ministry is just how we present ourselves to visitors. How do we make ourselves open and welcoming to visitors and they just do a phenomenal job with that. The Host Ministry does. And then there's Membership Assimilation. New members come in. We're going to have a New Member Sunday real soon, and we're going to see a bunch of new people and they're going to be like, "Okay, here I am. Teach me about FBC how can I get assimilated?” And the new member assimilation team does a great job of getting those folks assimilated. Then there's Men's Ministry and later because it's alphabetical, but Women's Ministry, both of those focused on issues relevant to men's discipleship and women's discipleship, and there are teams of people that are doing both of that and you may have a heart for that and want to get involved. Opportunities to Deploy Spiritual Gifts Security Ministry, there are needs there. Homebound Ministry, Senior Adult Ministry, etcetera. Worship Ministry, including Lord’s Supper preparation. Then I see what we call International Connections. Tremendous out-reaching opportunities. I don't think there's an easier way to do evangelism in our church right now, than through international ministry. Every Wednesday, they come here wanting to learn English, and let me put it gently, willing to put up with Bible or Gospel to get the English. And you know how we're fishers of men, and we can draw people in, and they have felt needs and somewhere in there that might be a turn and say, “I came here for English, I found Christ.” And how sweet is that just how beautiful is that? To just sit down, in our building, with a lost person and talk to them about their background. They're very intelligent gifted, talented people, but they need Christ. That's the IC ministry that's there. Isn't this awesome? So many opportunities. Then there's Home Fellowship, and Home Fellowship is a great platform for spiritual gift ministry. You think all of the gifts there are they're all at work during home fellowships, hosting, teaching, welcoming, administration aspects. It's a wonderful way to use your gifts. And then there's just outreaches that we can be doing, they're all listed here. Recently, my wife and I went to Cheesecake Factory. I'm blown away by their menu. I don't know, what they have, 50 different chefs back there? They’ve got page after page after page after page after page in 12 major categories. It's like, “how can it be? How can they be good at all of these things equally?” I don't think they are. But this is like that. I was going to use Golden Corral, but I decided Cheesecake Factory better, all right? All of the opportunities you're like, "I don't know what to do, there's no on-ramps, there are on-ramps to serve, so just find a place to serve. Find a place. Friends, our life is going to be over soon. “It's a mist, it's a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” Only one life ‘twill soon be past, only what's done for Christ will last. Build the church, build the church. Close with me in prayer. Prayer Father, thank you for the time we've had three weeks now, looking at spiritual gifts. God please, unleash this church, unleash the members of this church into patterns of spiritual gift ministry, that you have thought out, and prepared them for, that this church may become rich with good works and rich with maturity and rich with converts that are new disciples and are growing, God, make us rich we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, for the next two weeks, we're going to be looking at this incredible passage of scripture that Chase just read, Ephesians 2:11-17. And it's a powerful text, I think, that gives us hope for some of the most poignant issues that are facing us even in this day. It's the only hope I think there is for racism, for dealing with the issues of racism in our country. We'll talk much more clearly and directly about that next week. But these problems of division in our world, and hatred, and hostility, and what this text calls a barrier dividing wall of hostility. These things can only be removed by the sovereign grace of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. They cannot be removed by diplomacy, or government regulations, or United Nations, or any of those things. Those barriers, those dividing walls of hostility, will not come down that way, but only through the Gospel of Christ. The only hope for unity in our world is the Gospel, and this morning we're going to zero in specifically on the division between Jews and Gentiles. The Jew-Gentile division in the scripture and what Christ has done for that. History of Conflict And I think the overwhelming majority of us who are here today, are Gentiles. There may be some of Jewish descent here, but the overwhelming majority of those that assemble on Sunday mornings to hear the good news of Christ, and to study the scriptures are Gentiles. And we need to hear what Paul is saying to us. What you just heard in the text. How it was for us as Gentiles. We need to understand the astounding work that Christ has done in bringing us as Gentiles, who were so far away from hope, so far away from God's work in redemption, in the world, and bringing us near in Christ, and we need to celebrate that. It's amazing. And this text has the power to do that. Paul here goes to the root of hatred and hostility between Jews and Gentiles, and shows us how the work of Jesus Christ on the cross has removed that forever among those that believe in Christ. Gentiles’ Hostility Toward Jews Now, from the Gentile side, there is the arrogance, and the military superiority, and the vicious persecution, and even genocidal mania that has stained the pages of history. We know that very well from the 20th century from the rise of Nazism, and its virulent anti-semitism, and 6 million Jews slaughtered in what they called the final solution of Auschwitz, and other death camps, but that wasn't the first expression of anti-Semitism in history. It's not the first time we see that hostility or hatred from the Gentiles toward the Jews. Throughout history, if you saw a fiddler on the roof, for example, there's a pogrom right in the middle of that in Czarist Russia. That gives you a sense of the history there. The Jews have been persecuted throughout the nations of Europe. They were persecuted during the time of the Inquisition. Going further back, the Crusades were focused not just on driving the Muslims out of Jerusalem, but also they were anti-Semitic in nature. And it goes all the way back even within the scriptures to what happened in the Book of Esther, as Haman was seeking some kind of a genocidal work on the Jews, wiping them out entirely. So, Gentile history of hatred for the Jews is well-established, along with their military superiority. Hostility of Jews Toward Gentiles But the Bible also makes plain the other side. The hostility of the Jews toward the Gentiles. The Jewish jealousy and hatred of the Gentile world as well. The arrogance, religiously. The fact that the Gentiles were, as the text says, "excluded from citizenship in Israel." They were cast out in effect by the Law of Moses, as we're going to talk about today. They were outsiders, and that had the tendency to make the Jews feel religiously superior to those that were inferior to them. They were the chosen people. Then, in the course of time, when the Jews rebelled against God's covenant, as God said they would through Moses, but when they rebelled in the Promised Land, against God's covenant, failed to keep it, God began to give the Jews over again and again to Gentile conquest. Again, and again, God would raise up Gentiles to come in from the surrounding nations and punish the Jews. You see this in the Book of Judges, you see God raising up the various nations that surrounded them. The Midianites, the Ammonites, Syrians, the Philistines, the Egyptians. And again and again, God would give the Jews into the hands of the Gentiles. The very thing that God said He would do as a curse in the Mosaic covenant, in the Old Covenant. He said this in Deuteronomy 28:25, "The Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You'll come at them from one direction, but flee from them in seven. You will become a thing of horror to all the kingdoms of the Earth." And then again in Deuteronomy 32:21, God says this, "They, the Jews, made me jealous by what is no God and angered me with their worthless idols, so I will make them jealous by those who are not a people," speaking of the Gentiles. "I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding." So, you Jews made me jealous by your idolatry, then I'm going to make you jealous by giving you over militarily to the Gentiles. This is the very thing you said you would do in the song of Moses before they even enter the Promised Land. Ultimately, this was completed, consummated in some ways, by the exiles under the Assyrians, and under the Babylonians, as the Jews were driven out from the Promised Land militarily. Then one succession of Gentile overlords after another rose up to dominate them even when a small remnant under Ezra and Nehemiah, came back to rebuild the Jewish presence in the Promised Land, they were still, as was said in those books, slaves in their own land. They were under Gentile domination. And that was very, very difficult. So you see some of that hatred in that history. It's interesting, even this morning I was looking at a couple of verses in Ezra and Nehemiah. It says in Nehemiah 2:20, as Nehemiah's just beginning his work of building the city wall around Jerusalem, some Gentiles come and show up and begin talking to him about that project, and this is what Nehemiah said to these Gentiles. "You have no portion, no right, and no claim in Jerusalem." Well, praise God we do have a portion, right, and claim in the New Jerusalem. Amen. We were outsiders. What was Nehemiah building? A wall. What was that for? To keep them out. And then again in Ezra as they're starting to build the temple, in Ezra 4:3 says, "You have nothing to do with us in building this temple for our God in which we will worship." Again, spoken to the Gentiles. “You're outsiders.” Well, this attitude, this hostility, Jew toward Gentile, which is made much more fierce because they were, in effect, under Gentile domination, and slaves in their own land, came to a fever pitch in the New Testament. When God raised up Saul of Tarsus, converted him, made him the Apostle to the Gentiles, and he began to go from place to place, teaching that in Christ, the very things he's saying here in Ephesians are true, “we gentiles have become sons and daughters of Abraham. And that we're now included in the covenant, the new covenant in Christ.” The nationalistic Jews were extremely angry about that, those that had not yet come to faith in Christ. And they were enraged actually. Started riots in many cities in reference to Paul's ministry to the Gentiles. Well, you see that in Acts 21, when Paul's there and he's with a Gentile, and they assumed that he had brought this Gentile into the temple area, which was absolutely forbidden. And they started to try to kill him, and started a riot and all that. The Romans came in and rescued Paul, and they're bringing him to the barracks where they're going to beat him. Paul had a hard life. I mean really. What a ministry. But here he says, "Just a minute, I'd like to speak to the crowd." I just think that's amazing, Acts 22, it's a witnessing moment. A chance to share the Gospel. I mean, how he thought was amazing. But he stands up and he's sharing his testimony and for the second time in the Book of Acts. We get the story of the road to Damascus, and how he's converted, and they're listing quietly, until he gets to one word. One word. And this is what it says, "Then the Lord said to me," this is Paul talking about his own testimony. They'd been quiet up to this point. "Go. I will send you far away to the Gentiles." The crowd listened carefully to Paul until he said this. Then they raised their voices, and shouted, "Rid the earth of him. He's not fit to live." And then they're shouting and throwing off their cloaks, and flinging dust in the air. One word sent them into anger, “Gentiles.” So there's that Jew Gentile hostility. We've seen it both sides of the equation. Now, it is true that God had chosen the Jews and blessed them. They were in a very special way, the focus point of his redemptive work on Earth. He said at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:5-6, to the Jewish nation, "Now if you obey me fully and if you keep my covenant, then out of all the nations, you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole Earth is mine, you will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." But it was for the purpose of blessing the entire world with the Abrahamic blessing. "Through you,” Abraham, “all peoples on Earth blessed," and I don't think they understood that. They didn't see that. And that theme had long since disappeared from the Jewish mindset, and from the Jewish way of life. In Christ, it is fulfilled. In Christ, it is consummated. “We Gentiles, who were once so far away have now been brought near” and are included in what God had always planned to do through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Well, that's all by way of introduction. The Distance Between Gentiles and God Remember What You Were, Gentiles Let's look now very carefully at these verses that teach so much about our condition as Gentile believers in Christ. Let's begin in verses 11 and 12 where it makes it very plain that Gentiles, who are formally excluded and without hope, have now been brought near. We were formally excluded. We were on the outside, and without hope. Look at Verse 11-12, "Therefore remember that formally, you who are Gentiles, by birth, and called uncircumcised by those who call themselves the circumcision, that done in the body by the hands of men. Remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” So Paul here calls on the Gentiles to remember what they were formally. We've already seen that earlier in the worship service today. The benefit of going back and remembering how it was. Now, Ephesus, these Ephesians, they were from the city of Ephesus. It was in Asia Minor, modern day Turkey. And that was a Gentile region, a Gentile city, and a Gentile region. And they worshiped Pagan deities, like Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, whose image had supposedly fallen out of Heaven. And they built this huge temple to her, that was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. There was paganism, it was a pagan place, they worshiped idols. Their men were uncircumcised, as Paul mentions in this text. They were seen by Jews, by some Jews anyway, to be unclean dogs. "They were," verse 11, "Gentiles by birth” or more literally “Gentiles in the flesh." Their genealogy, their racial lineage, was Gentile, not Jew. Paul wants them to look back and to remember how it was for them as a nation, and group. Why is that? Well, it's just a truth. And we've been seeing this again and again. The more you realize what you were before you were converted, the more joyful and thankful you'll be now and energetic in service to Christ. The more you know just how black, and dark, and distant all of that was, the better it is for you. I just love singing that song, Jesus, Thank You. Don't you? I leaned over to Daphne this morning? I said, "I love this song. It gives me a chance to tell Jesus, ‘Thank you.’ Just to say, ‘Thank you for saving me.’” And we've already seen this already, this morning, and earlier in Ephesians 2, how Paul has already brought their minds back. In verses 1-3, look, "As for you," he says, "You were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live. When you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air. Spirit who is now at work and those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.” That's what we were. Remember how you were. Look back at how you were. Understand that condition. Formerly Called “Uncircumcision” by the Circumcised Now, he wants to tell these Gentiles even more about their situation. God had begun a work of redemption through the Jews. Think of the world like a dark howling wasteland. Like a blizzard in some mountainous region, and there's some light shining and a fire that started, and there's some food cooking, and there's this place of warmth, and you're in the blizzard. But it's like you can see the light, and then as you draw nearer you find that there's this huge wall erected around it. You are on the outside and there was a wall there preventing you from coming in. You couldn't be included, that's what he's saying. You were on the outside. Now, Paul himself was raised in a Gentile region. He was also raised in Asia Minor. He was in the city of Tarsus, 700 miles to the east of Ephesus, right along pretty much the same latitude, right across. And he knew what it was like to be surrounded by Gentiles. He himself was a Roman citizen and he understood this situation. So, he doesn't know how much these Gentiles knew about Jewish laws and regulations, but he's going to tell them. He's going to say, "Remember that formally, you who were called the uncircumcision." Alright, “Gentiles in the flesh and called uncircumcised, by those who call themselves the circumcision.” You're seen to be outsiders by these Jews, “called uncircumcised by those who call themselves as circumcision.” Now, to some degree, this statement here is a bit of a digression an aside. Paul's interrupting his thought and said, "There are some people who think hard thoughts about you and they call themselves the circumcision. These Jewish nationalists. I understand them, I was one of them myself at one point. And they call themselves the circumcision. They have a sense of spiritual superiority to you, hostility toward you. They have a certain hatred toward you, but their circumcision," Paul alludes to this, "their circumcision is merely external, and physical, it's not spiritual." He's going to talk about this in Romans 2:28 and 29. He says, "A man is not a Jew if he is only one outwardly. Nor is circumcision merely outward and physical. No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly, and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man's praise does not come from men, but from God." So that's a true Jew. Okay. They've had that inner-work of transformation by the Holy Spirit. It's a circumcision of the heart. They've been transformed. The very thing that happened in Ephesians 2:4-5. Go ahead and look at it. "But God made us alive even when we were dead in transgressions, it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up." That's another way of saying the same thing. That spiritual circumcision, by the Spirit, not by the written code, that hasn't happened to these people, they call themselves a circumcision and they're only focusing on the physical. Six Facts About the Gentile Condition Okay, well anyway, you Gentiles, alright, what should we remember? Well, let's remember six devastating things about you in that condition. “Remember that at that time, when you were not a Christian. Back then, before you were converted, alright, you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel, and foreigners to the covenants of the Promise, without hope, without God in the world.” Six different things that Paul says was true of us as Gentile, unconverted people. Separate from Christ So first he says, "You are separate from Christ, you are outside of Christ, you are apart from Christ, you are not in fellowship with Christ." Christ for us is everything. Christ is life, Christ is our hope. We have nothing apart from Christ. And so, when you are not a Christian you had nothing from Christ, you were separate from Him. Christ is the fullness of joy. He is life and power and peace and everything good in the universe. But more than that, you Gentiles, you didn't even have any promises or any hopes or any thoughts about Christ? You didn't have a heritage of waiting for the Messiah. You didn't even know about Him. You didn't know that one had been promised who would come would be the Savior of the world. You didn't have those kinds of thoughts. So you were separate from Christ. You had nothing like that. Excluded from Citizenship in Israel And secondly he says, "You were excluded from citizenship in Israel." Citizenship, the language of citizenship is something these Gentiles would have understood, dominated as they were by the Romans, and there was such a thing as Roman citizenship. Paul himself was born a citizen of Rome,. And so being a citizen of Rome brought you certain rights and privileges. Certain advantages and benefits. Well, they were outsiders, they had no rights and privileges when it came to Israel. And why? Because the law of Moses kept them out, it excluded them, told them they were not permitted to enter the assembly of the righteous. They were outsiders. In Deuteronomy 23:2-3, it says this, “No one born of a foreign marriage nor any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord even down to the 10th generation.” That's right in the law of Moses. “No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord even down to the 10th generation.” When they came back under Ezra and Nehemiah, they were all about genealogies. You've read those books. Genealogy all the time. “Are you Jewish?” That's the question. And then in Nehemiah 13:1-3, it says on that day, the Book of Moses was read aloud and the hearing of the people and it was found written, “that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever be entered into the Assembly of God.” Now listen to this, the kind of extension of this “when the people heard this law, they excluded from Israel all who were of foreign descent,” everybody. So you might say, “Wait a minute. I'm not Ammonite I'm not a Moabite.” Well, you're included, excluded, included in the excluded. If you're not Jewish, you're out. What's interesting though is honestly the entire Old Covenant was about exclusion, for everybody. Wasn't it? Wasn't the tabernacle, just a bunch of cloth walls that kept people out? Wasn't the Temple, a more permanent bunch of walls that kept people out? Wasn't it true that you couldn't enter the Holy of Holies, unless you were descended from Levi and descended from Aaron and it was the Day of Atonement, and you brought blood, and you better get out of there, quickly? So there are these barriers, all of this. We'll get back to that in a moment. But God had set this up, He had set up this barrier, He had set up this dividing wall, He had set all of this up with its commandments and regulations. It excluded all uncircumcised people, from the sacred assembly. The Gentiles were outsiders. Look at Verses 14-15. Do you see the words there? “Barrier.” “Dividing wall.” See it? Verse 15, “the Law with its commandments and regulations.” That's what kept us out. The circumcision rule, the dietary regulations, all of the Jewish laws. Kept us out. Foreigners to the Covenants of the Promise Thirdly, foreigners to the covenants of the Promise, what is this? Well, God made a promise to Abraham, when He called him out of Ur of the Chaldees. “Leave your country and your people, and go to the land I will show you.” "I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." So that's a promise. Then He made him even more promises, He says at one very incredible time. It was night time, and He takes him out, God takes Abraham out of the tent and has him look up at the stars and he says, "Look up at the stars and count them if you can", then He makes him a promise, “So shall your offspring be.” “You're going to have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky,” that's a promise made from God to him. The very next verse is key to our salvation. “Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.” So you first have to hear a promise, then you can believe it. But the Gentiles had no promise made to them, none that we could believe. And then, it mentions the “covenants of the Promise,” “the covenants of the Promise,” and so in Genesis 15, that very same chapter He makes him the second word. “I'm going to give this land that you're walking on here to you and to your descendants forever.” So how do I know that I'm going to get it? It's not looking too good right now God. So then God had him make a covenant. He had him have animals, and he sacrificed them, and laid them out and made a path between them, as that was a covenant cutting ceremony, and suddenly, mysteriously, this fire pot, representing the presence of God, moved between the pieces and in effect, God said “May I personally cease to exist, if I don't keep this promise to you, I will keep my promise to you, I will keep this covenant, you will get the land forever.” Well, that was Jewish though. The Gentiles had no such covenant cutting ceremony, they had no covenant made with them. Nope, no such promises have been made to the Gentiles, their outsiders. God wasn't making them any promise at all. And notice, it's plural “covenants.” The second covenant I think that Paul has in mind is the covenant made with David, that God would raise up one of David's sons and seat Him on His throne, the throne of David, and he would reign forever and ever a king reigning over a chosen people, in an eternal land that would be theirs forever and ever. That's what God was doing through the covenants, but the Gentiles were outsiders. They were excluded from the covenants of the Promise. Without Hope Fourthly, they, “were without hope.” I would say just like Ephesians 2:10 I would say, there's very few days that go by I don't think about Ephesians 2:10, “that I am God's workmanship created to do good works today, which I want to do which God has prepared for me.” How about this one. That the non-Christians that surround us, the lost people are “without hope and without God in the world.” Think about that every day, think about what it would be like to go through life without hope and without God. It's inconceivable how much misery, human misery, is packed into these words. “Without hope.” What do people do when they're hopeless? Well, some of them kill themselves. Other people drown their sorrows in drugs and alcohol. Or in workaholism or achievements or material possessions, or entertainment, or sports. Because they don't have anything, and as they go on there's more and more sense of despair that just doesn't satisfy doesn't satisfy it's “Vanity of vanities, it's meaningless.” Now, I think there are three types of hope. I've talked to people, non-Christians and Christians alike about this, and it just has to do with a time frame. Hope always has to do with the future. “Who hopes for what he already has?” We don't hope about past things. Hope always has to do with the future. What is hope? Hope is a feeling in the heart, a positive feeling that the future is bright. “I'm looking forward to the future, the future will have good things for me.” Okay? Time frame. First, let's start with eternity, that I'm looking forward to eternity. I'm not afraid to die, I believe in eternal life, and I think eternally, I'll be happy, eternal hope. No one on earth but Christians has any reason for eternal hope, none. Then there's long range hope. “I like how my life is going.” Might have to do with your career, might have to do with a long-term goal. Maybe you just got married, and you're looking forward to a beautiful life with your wife, with your husband. looking forward to that. Things are looking good for you down the road and from now until death, it's going to be good, long range hope. And then there's that short-term, immediate hope. “We're going out to eat tonight at my favorite restaurant. Looking forward to that! Future is looking bright. Short, short range future.” What ends up happening is more and more non-Christians get down to that final one. More and more, and they just live for today. “Let us eat and drink and be merry, because I don't even know if tomorrow's ever going to come and if it does, it's probably going to be bad.” So that's what it means to be without hope. We have a God who has gone ahead of us, in time, and has basically said, “Not only have I been to your future and seen it. I've ordained it, I've decreed it, and nothing will stop it. Your future is bright. So be filled with hope. Be filled with joy.” We have that as Christians. Non-Christians, don't have that. “Without hope, and without God” means without God as a blessing. God sees everything they do. He is a constant watcher of men and women, He knows everything that we do, that's not it, that's like Hell. That's God. There to punish. God, there to curse. God, there to pour out wrath, not God to bless. That's what, “without God” means here, that God isn't making any commitment to bless you. He's made no promises to bless you. “Without hope and without God in the world.” The world is just Satan's world where Satan is in charge and dominant. Can I just stop and just do an application here? Do you not see how we have to be evangelistic in this world? Do you not see how we have got to reach out to non-Christians? We've got to see non-Christians that we live with differently, that these folks have no hope and we have hope in our hearts! Our centers are radiant with hope! By the way, you need to live that out, right? Just live out hope, just speak your hope all the time. Because somebody's going to come and ask you to “give a reason for the hope that you have,” so you have to be putting that hope on display. Amen? So just put that hope on display and hopeless people will say, “What is going on with you?” They're out in the howling wilderness and it's dark and cold and you're like, sitting around a very warm campfire, eating well, and you're protected, and they're like, “I want in. How do I get in?” “Repent and believe in Jesus.” Well, they're “without hope and without God in the world” But now, He says, in verse 13, “In Christ Jesus, you who were once far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. But now,” isn't that almost exactly like, “But God?” Isn't that fantastic just like, “But God”? In verse 4, we have “But now.” Gentiles Now Brought Near by Christ You who were once far away you have been brought near, and how amazing is that we're near, near to what? Not so much near to the Jews. Although we'll get to that. You've been brought near to God. This infinite, high and holy God, the one who, as Daniel quoted earlier, “I live in a high and holy place.” “I live in a high and holy place,” but also with him who is contrite and “lowly in spirit,” “I live with people that are broken-hearted and that come to me through faith in Christ.” You've been brought near. This is the God who sits, “enthroned above the circle of the Earth, and its people are like grasshoppers.” We were as sinners distant from God, and now we have been “brought near” and it says, “through the blood of Christ,” or “by the blood of Christ.” There is no salvation for us sinners, apart from the “shed blood of Christ,” we will never be done talking about the blood of Christ, it says in Leviticus 17, “the life of the creature, of the animal, is in the blood, and I've given it to you to make atonement for your sins.” Well, that was in the old covenant, but we learned in the new covenant that “the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin.” It was just a symbol, And “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness,” but blood has been shed for us, amen? Isn't that beautiful? “The blood of Christ has brought us near.” Jesus died on the cross, He shed His blood in our place that we, who were once distant might be now brought near to God. Brought Near by Christ’s Bloodshed Now, here's the key to the “barrier, the dividing wall of hostility coming down.” We're going to talk much more about this next week. This is the key to the end of racism. This is the key to the end of the hostility between Jews and Gentiles. This is it. Christ has made us one. Look at verses 14 and 15, “For He Himself is our peace, who has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace.” Well, Christ is our peace. This section here, verses 14 and 15, begins and ends with peace, and so, Christ by His bloodshed on the cross has taken away the wrath of God. So, the peace horizontally takes a back seat to the first, and that is peace vertically with God. God was at war with us, we were His enemies, but now, in Christ, God has reconciled us to Him, through faith in Christ. And so we now have as we saw earlier, Romans 5:1-2, “we have peace with God” through our Lord Jesus Christ. So vertically, we now have peace with God. And so what that means is horizontally we are drawn close to oneness with one another. We, having been reconciled to God, we can be reconciled to each other. Look at verses 15 and 16, “His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two,” one out of two, “thus making peace and in this one body, to reconcile both of them to God through the cross by which He put to death their hostility.” So, the war is ended. The war is ended with us and God, and then with us and brothers and sisters in Christ, we are one with each other, we are reconciled to one another, we have been made at peace with each other. So he says that the two, Christ has now made one. Now, the key to that is our spiritual unity with Jesus, if you come to faith in Christ, you are made one with Jesus, look back at verses 4 through 6, “But God who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ, with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved.” Verse 6, “And God raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms, in Christ Jesus.” We are one with Christ, And that's true of every single Christian on the face of the earth. We are one with Christ, all of us. It is impossible for two individuals to be each of them, one with Christ and not one with each other. We are in a status of oneness with Christ. Now, we need to act like it in terms of our walk with Christ, in holiness. We are also in a status of oneness with each other, and we need to act like it and walk like it. And so on that basis, Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians are made one with each other, as well, one body united in Christ. Now, later he's going to say this in Ephesians 4:3-6, he says, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace.There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope, when you're called - one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is overall, and through all, and in all.” Unity Made Possible Only Through Christ Now, there are some difficult passages to interpret in the Bible, but what's the main important word there? I think it's “one.” I mean It's kind of like you have to be dense, not to see it. One. There's “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” “One” hope we are one, we have all been made one in Christ. Now the way he does that is by transforming us individually, making us new men and women, new boys and girls. Look at verse 15, "His purpose was to create in Himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace.” 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, behold everything has become new.” We're changed, we're transformed and we're going to talk next week about racism and all of those issues. So much of it just has to do with the change of the heart, and covering of the history, and forgiveness, and all of those things God has done that for us, he has transformed our hearts and made us into new people. So, no longer Jew, no longer Gentile. Now with a new name Christian, A believer in Christ. Amen? One new man, one new work he's doing, it's the only designation that matters and the Spirit takes that hatred, that bitterness, that's based on history, based on actual sins that have occurred and takes it away. Christ’s Miraculous Power to Change Hearts I love the scene in the movie, Ben-Hur, one of my favorite movies, and there Judah Ben-Hur, a Jewish man had had a Roman friend when he was a boy, Messala, but when each of them grew up Judah Ben-Hur grew up as it as a Jew, and very nationalistic and caring about his people, Messala grew up as a Roman and grew up very nationalistic, and caring about his people, they came back together after having an apart since they were teenagers, they could not be friends and Messala was bitter and negative toward the Jews, but wanted to use Judah Ben-Hur to betray his people And use him as an informant and all that, and Judah wouldn't do that. So, Messala turns and punishes Judah Ben-Hur, sends him on a slave galley, takes Judah's mother and sister beloved, mother and sister and throws them in prison with no charges where they contract leprosy. Somehow God spares Judah Ben-Hur, brings him back but he is so seething with hatred at Messala, he can't stand him, he's filled with bitterness and rage over the history and what has happened, And then when he finds out that his mother and his sister have leprosy, and it's Messala's fault, it just goes off the charts. Messala ends up dying in a chariot race, but the hatred doesn't go away. It's like a heat seeking missile, he's just looking for something, and he hates Rome, he hates the world, he hates everything, but he meets Jesus as He's on his way to dying on the cross. He actually watches Him die in the movie. And he had met Jesus earlier, Jesus had given him some water when He was on His way to the slave galley. Now, he sees Him dying, and he hears Him say those words "Father forgive them, they don't know what they're doing", and the blood flows down, and in the movie it was very powerful. And then he comes back, he's just a different man. And he said, "When I heard Him say those words, I felt Him reach down and take the sword out of my hand. That's What happens when Jesus makes you a new man or a new woman. He Just reaches down and takes the sword right out of your hand and you are one with somebody that you, in every other way would be an enemy with. That's the power here. And so Christ has done that, and it says in the text, he's done it by destroying “the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” Well, this was the last issue in the text. There were laws, there was a circumcision regulation, there were dietary regulations. Jesus, we are told here, has abolished it. Look at verse 15, he talks about the “barrier of the dividing wall of hostility,” verse 15, "By abolishing in His flesh the law with its commandments and regulations.” He abolished them. Hebrews 8:13 says that in Jesus, “in His blood, there's a new covenant and by calling this covenant new, He has made the old one obsolete.” So the old covenant is abolished. That's the text. It's obsolete. That's Hebrews 8:13. We now no longer are at any spiritual disadvantage uncircumcised we don't have to keep the ceremonial regulations, the dietary regulations. That “barrier, that dividing wall” has been removed. That horizontal barrier has been removed because the vertical one has been removed. When Jesus died on the cross, the curtain in the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and now “we have access to the Father by one Spirit,” so Jews and Gentiles who have come to faith in Christ, are perfectly one in Him. They just need to act like it, they need to live out that oneness. Now, we're going to talk next week about how hard that is and more of those aspects. I would say that this text is the most powerful one that I know at getting at the root of racism and bitterness and division. We'll talk more about that next week. A few other applications, then we'll be done. Application First, as Gentile Christians. Let's just stand amazed at what He has done. Just do what Paul says. “Remember how it was for you,” formally remember what you were remember the journey that God has taken you from remember how you used to be an outsider, and now you're in. Now, you're inside. Now, you're loved. Keep that in mind and rejoice. If you like, Jesus, Thank You, go home and sing it. Find another song then sing that one. Just praise Him and thank Him. Secondly, Verse 18 says that “we now both Jews and Gentiles in Christ have free access to God through the Holy Spirit.” Take advantage of it. Come close to God. He has brought you near positionally, now come close in prayer, Bring your problems to Him, “Let us draw near to God, having a sincere heart and pure assurance of faith, as it says in Hebrews 10. Thirdly, and I've already mentioned this and I'll say it again. Meditate much on the condition of people who are not yet converted. Think about the fact that they're “without hope and without God in the world,” have mercy on them. Last week I challenged the home fellowships to have each member identify five people that they know to be lost, that you're praying for by name. Okay, so I'm ready. Home Fellowship, I've got my names alright, I was busy this week meeting people, but let’s just let's reach out, let's get names of lost people and let's pray for them. And if perhaps you have a chance like Ben and some others of sharing the Gospel and reaching out, let's be bold, let's share. And then finally, let's meditate on our supernatural unity, in Christ. We're going to talk much more about it next week, but this is the only answer there is for the kind of racial tensions and divisions there are in our country and in the world. Let's meditate on it, let's Get Ready. So I'd urge you just read this text over in light of some of the difficulties that we've been having, even in our nation and around the world and see the answer there. Close with me in prayer. Prayer Father, we thank you for the truth of the Gospel. We thank you O Lord that apart from Christ we had no salvation but now we, who are once far away have been, “brought near through the blood of Christ.” Lord I pray that there wouldn't be a single person here that would leave this place unconverted, today. I pray that they would trust in Christ for the forgiveness of their sins and find in Jesus, the salvation that they need. And Lord, I pray for all of us who have already found forgiveness and unity and hope in Christ, that we would be filled with thanksgiving and that we would be filled with boldness to take the Gospel to those who are “without hope and without God in the world.” In Jesus' name, amen.

Critical Aspects of the Local Church Well, it's an incredible gift of God's grace and providence that today is New Member Sunday, and that we have the opportunity to read over again our church covenant, and there's a line in it that has been on my heart and has been growing in my mind since the very first time that we read the church covenant together, when I came here almost 14 years ago. And that is the statement, "We will watch over one another in brotherly love." I thought much about that, and I believe it to be the centerpiece of my calling as an elder, as an under-shepherd under Christ, to do precisely that. But this is something in the church covenant that we're promising to do, all of us, for one another. It's not specifically set aside for the elders of the church to do, although it very much is their work and the focus of their work, but it's something that we are promising in our covenant to do for one another. But what does it mean? What does it mean to watch over one another in brotherly love? If you look at the things that follow it in the covenant, how it talks about caring for the sick and the needy, and avoiding backbiting and tattling and other aspects, I think there are many churches that might not esteem the Word of God properly, that do that kind of good man, or type things. Caring for the elderly, caring for the sick, visiting the sick, bringing meals to people, they do those kinds of things. But I think that the statement in the church covenant specifically has to do with spiritual shepherding of souls. And the premise behind it is... And just moving away from the covenant now to our text... The premise behind it is that just because you make an outward profession of faith in Christ, doesn't mean you're genuinely regenerate. Just because you make that outward profession of faith in Christ and you assemble together with the local church doesn't mean that you're saved." We understand that there has to be more than that profession. And we are in a section of scripture now which bears down on that and makes that clearer than almost any other passage in the New Testament. What does it mean for us to shepherd each other spiritually? What does it mean for us to look over one another's souls? Now, this is not a new concept for us in Hebrews, we've seen it many times. We know that the context of the whole book of Hebrews is of Jewish professors of faith in Christ, those who had made a profession, an outward verbal commitment to Christ, who had even testified to it by water baptism, but who are under intense pressure by the surrounding, I think, Jewish community to give up their faith in Christ and go back to Old Covenant Judaism, go back to what was safe and comfortable. In our text, we're going to see also a pressure just from the world, in general, to just go to a secular, godless kind of life. Either way, to turn away or drift away or fall away from Christ is the danger that we all face everyday. And so the author to Hebrews has been dealing with this topic of apostasy, this danger of drifting away from Christ, of turning away from Christ. And we already saw that earlier in Hebrews 3, "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God, but encourage one another daily, as long as it is called 'Today,' so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." We have come to share in Christ, if we hold firmly to the end the confidence we had at first. So that brings us right to Hebrews 12, where what's laid in front of us right at the beginning is a race to be run, as we saw a few weeks ago, "Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders, and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with endurance the race marked out before us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith." And so, we have this race to run and we have to have endurance for it. This latter stage of the book of Hebrews is very much... The author is really bearing down on this issue of endurance, perseverance in the Christian life. And, in this case, it's in the context of Christian community, that we are together going to help each other. And so, in Hebrews 12:1, we have this race that we are to run, a race of holiness, a race of endurance in the face of persecution and opposition. And then, last week, we saw how the Father helps us in that race by disciplining us, when needed, for our sins, for our transgressions. And so we are told on to endure hardship as discipline. And so there's again that issue of endurance, of staying under it and letting that discipline have its work. And all of us needs it, because we have a Roman 7 struggle with sin, the very thing that we hate, we do. And the very thing that we would do, that we yearn to do, we do not do. So we struggle with the flesh, all of us struggles. And so the Lord disciplines us, he says, so that we may share in his holiness. "No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore... " We're in our text now, that's the context. I. Strengthen Your Weak Members for the Race (vs. 12-13) "Therefore, strengthen those feeble arms and those weak knees. Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed." And so we have this command. Now, it's not clear whether the individual is being addressed, or whether the community, the church, let's take it both ways. These verses speak an individual word to us to not grow weary and get discouraged in the Christian race. And that as you see yourself drooping and sagging in the Christian life, spiritually, you see your hands hanging down, is literally what it says here. Your knees are buckling, you're getting discouraged in the Christian life, then strengthen yourself in the Lord, be strong in the Lord and his mighty power. Go back again to God's word and strengthen and renew yourself in Christ. Strengthen your own feeble arms and weak knees. And that's, I think, completely valid. The text being quoted here, the author is constantly quoting Old Testament text, even if you're not sure that he is, he probably is. And it's just a river of scripture coming all the time. The Word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. He's just constantly quoting the Old Testament to us. This is Isaiah 35. And the context in Isaiah 35 is of the judgment that God is going to bring on Judah, in Jerusalem. He's going to bring a judgment by the Gentiles. But in due time, in Isaiah 35, he's going to restore the nation, and he's going to make the desert bloom like the Garden of Eden, and therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and your weak knees. God is going to restore you, he's going to establish you, really, is a picture of final salvation, that beautiful flowering of our relationship with each other and with God. And so don't get discouraged as you're being chastised by God, don't get discouraged as you're going through hard times because of sin, because God is going to establish and make you strong, firm, and steadfast. But I don't think that the individual focus is primarily right here. I think he's really talking to the whole church. And he's really asking us to develop a horizontal eye toward the brother and sister in Christ, strengthen each other's feeble hands and weak knees. Look around you. Notice and see what's happening in the lives, spiritually, around you. And it takes a special discernment. It's really, in some sense, not hard to see, although sometimes it can be, but not hard to see if somebody's physically ill, maybe their pallor is a bit off, they've got beads of sweat on their forehead, or some symptoms. Doctors in our midst are better at it than we might be. Harder to do spiritually, though, to see if someone's sick or weak spiritually, you really have to know and be known there, and be in those close relationships one with another. And so I do think that the Lord is speaking to us, as a congregation, to notice what's going on with each other spiritually. And I think there you just have to have relationships with people, you have to spend time together. So tonight, when you go to Home Fellowship, I don't mind, there's nothing wrong with some chit-chat or talking about the weather, or current events, that's fine, that's normal. We do that. But don't let it stay there. Go deeper. Go deeper, talk to each other, ask each other real, genuine questions. How is it going with you spiritually? How is your soul? Are you healthy spiritually? Do you feel like you're thriving or are you weakened? Are you struggling? How can I help you? How can I strengthen your hands that are hanging down? How can I lift you up? The image here in the word strengthen is of building something back up that's been cast down. I get the image, biblically, of Nehemiah going to Jerusalem, and the wall's just rubble, just a pile of rubble. And he's going to have to take and just restore that wall out of, more or less, the same building materials. And to some degree that's what you're doing, in a loving way, with a brother or sister in Christ. They're just... They feel like... Spiritually, like they're rubble. And they're just down, and you just want to build them back up. And so I think that's what the Lord is commanding on us, commanding us to do, that we would strengthen those feeble arms and the weak knees, and it says make level paths for your feet. The word paths here is of a cart that leaves tracks. And so, you can imagine, back in those days, that there's just these cartwheels that you're going, and it leaves a track in terms of where you're living and where you're going. It has to do with the direction and the flow of your life. And he says make level paths for your feet. This is, again, another quotation. This one from Proverbs 4:25-27. There the proverb says, "Let your eyes look straight ahead of you. Fix your gaze directly before you. Make level paths for your feet. Take only ways that are firm and do not swerve to the right or to the left. Keep your eyes from evil." So it's just a total focus, just go straight ahead, do not turn to the left or to the right. Now, you know I love Bunyan's 'Pilgrim's Progress', and there's just such truth in that allegory of the Christian life, and it just presents the Christian life as a journey, from that initial justification at the cross all the way to the celestial city, which is heaven. And there's a journey to be traveled. But one of the basic rules of the road, so to speak, in 'Pilgrim's Progress', is you've got to stay on the highway, stay on the road, don't get off it ever. And there's one section of the story that teaches us very, very clearly, they're on that way leading to the celestial city, the straight and narrow way, but it's gotten very difficult. There's a climb involved, and it's steep, and it seems to be filled with rubble, and they notice, right alongside the highway, a very smooth and comfortable meadow with lots of soft grass for their feet. And the only thing they need to do, because it, more or less, runs along the same way, is they just have to jump the fence, and just go along there for a while, and then they can easily jump back in the future. Bad mistake. Even as you're reading it... If you've never read it, it's like, uh-oh, don't do it. They jump the fence, they go into By-path Meadow, and they do not notice that, little by little by little, it's diverting from the straight and narrow way. They didn't notice it. It was comfortable to them, they made a choice for personal ease and comfort, but it led them gradually slowly away from the straight and narrow, and they got lost. And night came, and a storm came, and they couldn't find their way back. And suddenly, the next morning, Giant Despair sees them, arrested them for trespassing on his property, and threw them in Doubting Castle, and pressed on them over the next number of days to commit suicide. And they got more and more desperate. In my opinion, it was the worst trial that Christian ever faced, and it all started so innocently. You just make a choice for personal ease. A choice, a little... Little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and things just get a little bit easier for you spiritually, and next thing you know, you don't know where you are. And so, the author says to make level paths for your feet. Stay on the straight and narrow. Don't make your life difficult by getting off of the path, that's what he's saying here. And do that for each other. If you sense there's a brother or sister wandering, you say, "You know, I think you're off the path. How can I help you get back on? How can I help you get back going again with the people of God, and with the Lord? What can I do?" And so that's what he is saying here. So the lame may not be disabled, but rather, heal. The idea is of a limb put out of socket or out of joint, it's out of socket, it's out of the place where it needs to be. And so it's painful sometimes to put it back in the socket, but it's got to be back in there. So it's speaking, I think, of a member of the Body of Christ that's not settled in where he or she needs to be. And we are to be spiritual physicians. And though it may be somewhat painful to get it back in the socket, that's what has to happen. So that's the image that the author gives here. We are to watch over one another in brotherly love, dear friends, we are to be engaged with each other, spiritually, we are to care about what's happening spiritually, in each other's lives. That's a healthy church. In the next verse, he talks about a pursuit. Part of the shepherding that we have for one another, and part of the love that we have for one another is to make sure that we are at peace with one another. II. Pursue Peace with Everyone (vs. 14) It says, in the NIV, "Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord." And so the Greek word here is pursue or hunt peace. As it says in another Psalm and in 1 Peter, seek peace and pursue it. Our God is a God of peace, amen. Isn't it glorious? Since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and because we have peace vertically with God, we have peace with brothers and sisters in Christ too. And we are in a relationship of peace with each other, as we are in a relationship with peace with God. And yet, for all of that, the world, the flesh, and the devil constantly assault the bonds of peace between Christian brothers and sisters. It's constantly under attack. All the time our pride, our selfishness, our anger, our sin seeks to sever the bonds of love that we have with one another. And so this could be referring to the peaceful relationship that we should have with any other human being, anybody, it doesn't matter whether they're Christian on non-Christian, and that's a valid New Testament theme, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with all men, that's Romans 12. And so whatever you can do to get along with your co-workers or your non-Christian neighbors or others, do it. But I don't think that's what the author is talking about here. I think what he's talking about here is intramural peace, peace within the church, seek peace and pursue it. There are many verses in the New Testament that teach this. It says in Ephesians 4 in verse 2, "Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace." Think about in Philippians, where, in chapter 2, Paul says, "If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but, in humility, consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interest, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus," Who also had, of complete humility. And so why does he say this? Because they're human beings. The Philippian church was healthy, it was fruitful, God blessed that church and they were a blessing to him. Things were generally good, it wasn't like the Corinthian Church or the Galician church, where there were so many significant problems, but yet, for all of that, the Philippian church, there was still some divisions and problems. In chapter 4, in Philippians 4, you have these two ladies, Euodia and Syntyche, and they are not getting along. And Paul is grieved by this, he said these ladies have helped me in my ministry, both of them have. God's at work in their lives, but they just don't seem to like each other. They don't seem to be able to get along. And so, he pleads with this other person, some translate it true companion or loyal yokefellow, this other individual, will you please help these two ladies to get along? Just like he says, in Corinthians, "I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought." So there's many verses that talk about this. So this must be a big problem in the Christian life, friends. Galatians 5 says, "If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out, or you will be destroyed by one another." And that's... He goes right from that to talking about the acts of the flesh, and many of those acts of the flesh dissensions, factions, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, that's acid poured on the bonds of love that we have with one another. III. Pursue Holiness... Or You Won’t See God (vs. 14) And so, therefore, as we're watching over one another in brotherly love, we have to seek peace and pursue it. Practically, what does it mean? It means don't harbor any resentment against one another, forgive as the Lord has forgiven you. And it means, in Romans 14, don't flaunt your freedoms in front of others, just because you can eat meat sacrificed to idols, if your brother or sister can't, you're violating their conscience, to do it right in front of them. Don't do it then. Do everything that leads to peace and to mutual edification, Paul explains in Romans 14. And so many, many verses teach this, and so we, at FBC, we need to be zealous concerning this, we need to be sure that we are pursuing peace with one another, and doing whatever it takes to keep that unity and that piece. Now, the second part of the verse, you're not getting today. I know it's in your outline, but you're not getting it today. I'll tell you, next week, why you're not getting it today. I'll tell you a little right now. I consider Hebrews 12:14 one of the single most important verses in the whole book of Hebrews. I consider Hebrews 12:14 to be one of the single most important verses in the Bible, so it's not going to be a sub-part of this sermon, it can't be. I'll tell you more next week, but what does it teach? What it teaches is that you are to pursue or to seek after, to energetically drive after a holiness that, if you don't have that holiness, you will not see the Lord. It's a verse that can be very confusing to some people, because it seems to teach justification by works, when it doesn't. And so, next week, I want to work on it in depth with you, to show you what is this holiness that we are to pursue, why is it that, without it, we will not see the Lord. We're going to talk about that next week, but it's really at the center of this text, so I want to mention it. The yearning, the drive for personal holiness is really the center of this whole wheel, it's the desire that each member of the church be conformed to Christ. That's the race that we're running with endurance, and that's what we're trying to do as we shepherd one another. IV. Oversee Yourselves in the Grace of Salvation (vs. 15-16) And so, moving from that, we are called on, therefore, to oversee ourselves in areas of personal holiness. So, we're somewhat hindered by me not stopping and doing 12:14 right now, but just defer it to next week, because all of the things that follow in this section talk about personal holiness issues. "See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness." See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral or is godless like Esau. These are matters of personal holiness, and this is really the centerpiece of the shepherding that we do for one another. And now, I've held back from you, until now, this marvelous verb in verse 15, NIV just gives, see to it. But it's... Episcopal is the Greek word, and I don't usually like pronouncing Greek words, accept that I want you to see the significance of it. It's from which the Episcopalian denomination gets its name, but it really is translated, usually overseers, overseers, Episcopos, to oversee. It's almost a literal translation, to stand over and watch. And so, obviously the elders, the overseers in the church are to do these kinds of things, but they're not addressed directly here, except as members of the congregation. This is something we're supposed to do for one another. This is your watch over one another in brotherly love verse, this is it, Hebrews 12:15. So, watch over one another so that no one misses the grace of God. Do you see? We're going to shepherd one another. We are going to look over one another and be sure concerning this issue. See That No One Misses the Grace of God Now, what does it mean then? What is the author talking about here? See to it or shepherd one another so that no one misses the grace of God. This is a very, very important issue, what is the grace of God here, and what does it mean to miss it? Well, I believe the grace of God is everything the book's been unfolding about the work of Jesus Christ in our lives, it is the priestly ministry of Christ where he offered his own blood as a sacrificial atonement for us. As our high priest, he pleads on our behalf, at the right hand of God. This is the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ, how God sent his son, who is the radiance of God's glory, and the exact representation of his being, sent him into the world, the God man who lived a sinless life, did all of these miracles, signs, and wonders to identify himself as God's son, but primarily came to obey God's law perfectly, and then to give his life as a ransom for many, whose blood was shed on the cross for the forgiveness of sins, and who was raised from the dead on the third day. And by faith in Jesus Christ, all of our sins can be forgiven. This is the grace of God in Jesus, this is the gospel, the good news of Christ that we've been unfolding all these many months in the Book of Hebrews. It's enough to get sinners like you and me to heaven, amen? Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more, and this is the grace of God in Christ. And if I can just pause and say, every week, we pray and we yearn that unbelievers would be here and have an opportunity to hear this, and hear it. If you know yourself to be outside of Christ, let me speak to your heart right now. Don't miss the grace of God. The word here means to lack it, to come short of it, to lack the grace of God. And so, I'm pleading with you that you would not lack the grace of God. And you might wonder how can I receive it? All you have to do is look to Christ with the eyes of faith. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, not might be saved, will be saved. All you have to do is call on Jesus, even in your heart, and say, "I'm a sinner, I've broken God's laws, I violated his commands, and I have no hope. Apart from Christ, I'm lost." This is the grace of God here in verse 15. Now we are told to see to it that none of us come short of that grace. So what I think it means is what I said at the beginning of the message, making an outward simple profession of faith in Christ is no certain proof to the outside world that you are genuinely born again. We can't know your hearts, so we're supposed to shepherd one another, we're supposed to be involved in each other's lives, and be sure that everyone has genuinely come to a saving knowledge of Christ. We're not making simple, childish assumptions here. Now, I know that there can be a harsh way of doing this, we're not advocating that at all. There is something called the judgement of charity, we accept one another. Somebody comes to me and tells me they're a believer in Christ. I believe it, for what it's worth, my belief, I mean. If they want to become a member of this church, we ask some more questions, lots of them, but we know that the asking of those questions, they can be answered. Laura said, "I knew all the right Jesus answers." That's not enough. What actually is enough is a new creation, amen? A transformation of the heart by the spirit, see to it that no one misses that grace of God, that there's actual evidence of regeneration. See That No Bitter Root Grows Up And he goes on from there to say that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. What is this bitter root? Well, I know what bitterness is. Bitterness is something that's wretched in your mouth. I remember, when I went on my first mission trip, we talked about this before. I had to take an anti-malarial medicine called Chloroquine. The quine part, I think, is related to quinine. It is as bitter as anything I've ever put in my mouth, and, to boot, it was incredibly water-soluble, so as soon as I put it on my tongue, it immediately started to melt. So I got to experience the bitterness. So what I would do is I would kind of suck all of the moisture out of my mouth, get my tongue as absolutely dry as possible, get the drink ready, put the thing on my tongue and just wash it down immediately. And it usually worked, except one time, it got caught between my molar and a cheek there, and just melted, 100%. Two hours later, I'm still tasting quinine, oh, is it bitter. So, in scripture, bitterness has to do with sin, and it has to do with something that you want to spit out of your mouth. But this is called a bitter root. So the idea here is of something that's hidden, a bitterness that's hidden. Now, there are two great possibilities for this. One of them, I think, is it may just be the issue of unforgiveness in the Christian body, that a bitter root could be a broken relationship in which someone is going through the motions of forgiveness, but hasn't really forgiven. And so there is a bitter root, and that interpretation is, I think, supported, in one sense, from Ephesians 4:31-32. And there it says, "Get rid of all bitterness, rage, and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as, in Christ, God forgave you." So it links bitterness to forgiveness, and I think that's important. An application for us, a practical application is clear, do you, are you harboring any bitterness against a brother and sister in Christ here, for any reason? Something that they have done to you, something they've said, something they didn't do or didn't say. Sometimes those sins of omission can be just as fostering of bitterness as... You went through it a certain time in your life, you went through some illness or a surgery, and you had thought that people would do this and that, and they didn't, and then you feel unloved, you feel unwelcomed. Friends, we need to do better at those kinds of things, but just providentially, from time to time, you may find yourself, at least in one relationship, wondering about someone, because of something they didn't do. And some bitterness can creep in, and it can be very poisonous. Or it could be something more severe, something that actually was done. And bitterness is submerged anger, it's down below the surface, and at some point, it's going to come up. So I think that's a possible interpretation, but I don't think that's actually what the author is talking about here. Actually, he's quoting Old Testament scripture again. Here, he's quoting Deuteronomy 29:18. And in Deuteronomy 29, Moses... God talking to Israel through Moses, as they're just about to enter the promised land, and he is saying that when you go in there, you're going to be surrounded by a bunch of pagans, and they're going to have sensual, wicked religions that are going to be very alluring to your flesh. Deuteronomy 29:16-18, "You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. 18 Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the LORD our God to go and worship the gods of those nations; make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison." That's what the author's quoting. And so, the issue here really has to do with the way we relate to the world, worldliness, idolatry. And the things that flow right from this statement support what it is I'm saying. See to it that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. This is an individual who, outwardly, you thought was a Christian, but in their heart, they're not. Well, if they're not a Christian, then what are they living for? That No One is Sexually Immoral or Godless Well, this world. They're living for the things of this world, they're living for the gods of the Canaanites, they've gone after that stuff, but it's secretly... It's why it's a root, you don't see it. And so, what the author is doing is saying when this kind of person is exposed, get rid of it. See to it that there is no such root among you, because it will defile many. I think this is really dealing with the issue of church discipline on serious sins, because he goes on from here, "See that no one is sexually immoral or is godless." One translation... I think a better translation is it talks about fornication, the sin of fornication, see that there is no fornicator among you. Fornication is sexual relations between unmarried people, as distinguished between adultery, where one... At least one of the partners is married. So the sin of fornication is highlighted here. Back in the ancient Greek world, at that time, it was thought to be a light thing, not a serious issue, really, unless a pregnancy resulted. Even among Jews of that time, they thought as long as you do it with a non-Jew, you're fine. The attitude is very loose. It was the Gospel of Jesus Christ that shone the light into this dark area of the human heart, which has been a weakness ever since Adam and Eve fell in the garden, ever since their eyes were opened and they realized that they were naked and they couldn't handle that kind of disclosure, and God definitely agreed because he made coverings for them out of animal skin. In effect, our souls... John Bunyan, another allegory, 'The Holy War', likens the individual human soul to a walled city, a walled fortress, he calls it Mansoul. And, basically, in effect, if you notice all of the enemy running to a certain place in the wall and focusing all of their attention there, you can be sure they have discerned a weakness in your defenses. Well, do you not see Satan putting a ton of effort toward the sexual side? We are assaulted every day by sexual temptation, every day, males and females alike, assaulted with it. It's impossible to be in this world and not be assaulted with it, but it's getting worse, through the media, through the movies, through the internet, even through smartphones, through the mall, through... All kinds of things, images can flow into your mind and heart and defile you and draw you away. Many other verses talk about the sin of adultery, this talks about the sin of fornication. Young people can think it's no big deal to be together sexually. Well, it is a big deal. It's a devastating sin. And so the author is commanding us to be sexually pure. Not only that, but in connection with 1 Corinthians 5, if there's anyone exposed who isn't sexually pure, we are told very plainly, in 1 Corinthians 5, to expel the wicked man from among you. And the mentality is the same, although the image is different, here, it's a bitter root that grows up and defiles many, there it's yeast that spreads and defiles many, but the answer is the same in both cases, get rid of it. Now, you may say, "Is there no mercy? Is there no forgiveness? Is there no grace?" Of course there's grace. We already talked about it. See to it that no one misses the grace of God. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. Most interpreters of 1 and 2 Corinthians say that this very same sexually-immoral individual later repented and was brought back into sweet fellowship with that church, and Paul commanded them to welcome this one back because he has been brokenhearted, and sought forgiveness, and is genuinely repentant. But without dealing with the sin, the Church cannot maintain its holiness and its purity. And so he warns, see to it that no one is sexually immoral, or, he says, is godless. V. A Picture of Apostasy: The Godlessness of Esau (vs. 16-17) And, in doing this, he brings in this example of Esau, this godless man "who, for a single meal, sold his inheritance rights as his oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He could bring about no change of mind, though he sought the blessing with tears." So here, we have this example, this central biblical example of the godless man. The word translated godless here is the word profane, to profane, let's say, a holy place. You could imagine someone going into a shrine, a sanctified place, and just taking some spray paint and just spraying graffiti, all of it, that's the image of profaning something. But this was a profane man, and Esau is the quintessential anti-example of what the author to Hebrews wants us all to be. For chapters now, the author to Hebrews has been highlighting faith, and living for another world, living for a glorious and beautiful world that is yet to come. And he said, "Remember those earlier days when you first received the light? When you stood your ground in a great contest in the face of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You sympathized with those in prison, and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property because you knew that you had better and lasting possessions" And then, in chapter 11, he talks about faith being the "the assurance of things hoped for, conviction of things not seen." And that, by faith, we yearn for the reward that God alone can give. And in 11:13-16, he talks about people who consider themselves aliens and strangers in this world, just passing through, who weren't looking for any permanent dwelling place here, they were looking ahead to a city with foundations whose architect and builder is God. And so God is not ashamed to be called their God for he has prepared a city for them, and they're living for that future city, living by faith, like Moses, who didn't hold on to a comfortable pleasure-filled life in Egypt, but gave it away so that he could suffer with the people of God. These are people who wandered around in deserts and caves and holes in the ground, they were persecuted, mistreated, men of whom the world was not worthy, the scripture says. That's what the author's been celebrating. But now you have Esau, what's he like? What does he live for? It says, in Philippians 3, there's a kind of person whose God is their stomach, that's Esau. You remember what happened in Genesis 25, he comes in from the field, and he's famished, he's hungry. His God is calling to him, "Esau, Esau, time for a sacrifice." He's hungry, stomach's growling. And there is Jacob, twisty, crafty Jacob, and he's making some stew, real mama's boy, I guess, and he's just cooking, and he's a good cook. And Esau is hungry and he sees the stew and he smells the aroma, his stomach grows even more, and he says, "Quick, give me some of that stew." And what does Jacob say? "First sell me your birthright." Then comes the fateful statement, "I'm about to die. What good is my birthright to me?" "Swear to me first," said Jacob. So he swore, he served the meal, included bread, so that was good, so he had the stew and the bread. He sat down and he ate the whole thing, and it says, very plainly, coldly, "He ate and drank, and then got up and left, so Esau despised his birthright." What would you sell Jesus for? What would you trade... What earthly thing would you trade your place in heaven for? What good is my birthright to me? And so, for a single meal now... Not a year's worth of meals, wasn't worth that much, just one meal, the author really stresses this, a single meal, he sold his birthright as firstborn son. If you look later, in the next text, not next week, but the next text, he talks about the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven. That's you, friends. Brothers and sisters, you are part of the church of the firstborn. What is your inheritance worth to you? Esau was godless. He lived for this world. The world is constantly clamoring for your attention and saying, "Live for me. Live for a good meal, live for good sexual encounter, live for a beautiful spouse, a nice home, a good paying job, a degree from a prestigious institution, accolades of the world, a nice vacation, just the stuff of this life, live for that. The other stuff isn't worth anything. It isn't," so they say. "You can't taste it, you can't see it, you can't hold it. Is it even real? A bird in the hand's worth two in the bush. I'm not going to live for pie in the sky, by and by. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to take the bird in the hand right now, it makes me happy." Do you realize how much we are assaulted with that mentality everyday? Every temptation that comes and panders to your lusts and panders to your flesh is the spirit of Esau all over again. It's a devastating thing. So it was just an instant, it came on him in an instant. In an instant, he sold his birthright, but it was confirmed over decades of unrepentance, because the final act of that drama didn't come until Isaac was laying in his deathbed, and he wanted to just have one more meal to share with his son, and then give him his patriarchal blessing, the blessing of heaven, and then die. So he went out to hunt, Esau did, and he came back, but by the time he got back, the patriarchal blessing was gone. He had maybe 50, 60 years to repent of selling his birthright, never did. There was no God in him, he never thought about God. And afterward, when it was gone, he sought the blessing, he did not seek the God who gives the blessing. You can easily misunderstand this text. Some of the translations give us a sense that Esau was seeking repentance, and he couldn't find it. I don't understand that. How do you seek repentance and not find it? I think the NIV does a good job of translating. He's really trying to change Isaac's mind, it's his father's change of mind. He said, "Bless me-me too, my father!" And he cried and wept bitterly. That's what the author is talking about here. So he's trying to change his earthly father's mind, he's not thinking about God, because, in his mind, there's no room for God, he's not thinking about him at all. Don't misunderstand. Jesus said, "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away." And so, therefore, "Ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened." VI. Applications So you say, "Well, how do I apply this? What do I do with this? Well, simply put, be warned about the spirit of Esau, it's worldliness. Do not exchange your place at Jesus's table for a single meal or a whole series of meals. Don't live for earthly things. And if you say, "Well, how do I engage the world? How do I use the things of the world, but not be enslaved by them? Well, get involved in a good church. And FBC, let's be a good church. Let's help each other, let's ask real questions, how are you doing with the things of the world? Are you enslaved by anything? Is there anything you're living for that you think has too hard a grip on your life? Is it computer games? Is it movies? Is it hobbies? Is it a person, a relationship? What is it? Let's help each other with this. But this Esau, there was no redeeming him, he was rejected by his earthly father, and had been rejected before eternity began by his heavenly Father, who he... Was not his father, because Jacob I loved, and Esau I hated. Esau is the quintessential reprobate, and just, in space and time, lived it out, a life of worldliness. Dear friends, God is calling us, in this text, to be a genuine Christian community that shepherds one another, watches over one another in brotherly love, cares intimately about each other's spiritual wellbeing. Read over this text, pursue peace with one another, strengthen those feeble arms and weak knees, pray for each other, help each other run. Sometimes you have to prop somebody up for a few miles along this arduous road. Do it. Build deep relationships with each other. Close with me in prayer.

Introduction So you hear in my prayer, I have a simple goal, and my goal is to beguile your hearts and entice your hearts with the greatness and the marvelous nature of Jesus Christ. That you would be weaned from the things of this world and that you would be stoked up in your affections for Christ, that's my goal, my desire. And I really am gonna just focus on one verse, verse 42. You heard the sermon I preached last week on the wicked tenants. We've already been through that. And if you didn't hear it, I'd encourage you to go on the internet and you can listen to it there. But I really just wanna zero in on verse 42. Some of the most glorious building projects all over the world have been done in stone. When you think about the Great Wall of China, which I personally have had the privilege of walking on, what an extraordinary engineering achievement it is, built in stone. I've never seen the Great Pyramid of Cheops there in Egypt, this pyramid, again, built of stone. I think about the cathedrals in Europe, Notre Dame and Chartres and other places in Europe that are built sometimes over 100 years with stone that's quarried out and shaped and fit together almost like a jigsaw puzzle, and soars to heights of close to 400 feet, the spires going up with flying buttresses and glorious stained glass, and a testimony of people's commitment to worship God. Or the mountain fortress of Machu Picchu in South America. These are incredible building structures in stone, but then, none of them compare to the building structure that God is building: The church of Jesus Christ. And each one of you, if you're a child of God, you are called in 1 Peter chapter 2, living stones that in some mysterious way, quarried out from Satan's dark kingdom, and you've been brought over into the kingdom of the Beloved Son and you've been set in place as living stones in this glorious church structure that's rising up. And today, with one verse, I want to talk about the most important stone in the whole structure: Jesus Christ. He is the stone the builders rejected, who has become the capstone. The Lord has done this and it is marvelous in our eyes. And so, my goal is that it'd be more marvelous in your eyes when I get done than it is right now. The greatness of Jesus Christ, the greatness of the work of God in Christ, that's what I want you to focus on today. Now, let's set this in context, this one statement. Jesus is in the final week of his life, He's already entered Jerusalem, it's the week of Passover. There are more than a quarter, probably more than a quarter of a million worshippers there flooding the small city of Jerusalem, ready to offer sacrifice and take part in the Passover. Jesus has already been celebrated as he rode on a donkey and he entered the gates of Jerusalem as the coming King. And they're expecting a kingdom to come immediately, that it would be right with that triumphal entry that Jesus would bring in the kingdom of the Messiah, the messianic reign. And so, they call out “Hosanna,” but not one of them really understands what Christ is there to do. His enemies greet him, they meet him and they begin to spar with him in Matthew 21, and he's beginning to have conflicts with them openly there, and those conflicts will result, ultimately, in his own condemnation and death. And so he is answering his opponents here. He's answering his critics. And he's doing more than that as he tells this parable that you heard read for you this morning. As he tells this parable, the parable of the wicked tenants, he's really tracing out the whole history of the Jews, and their tendency to reject the messengers that God sends and even worse, to not bring forth that harvest of righteousness that God intended in planting that vineyard. And so, the details of the parable are familiar to us. There's a landowner who plants a vineyard and he gives it everything it needs for a full harvest, fully supplies it with everything needed. Then he rents it out to some tenant farmers, and goes away on a distant journey. After a period of time, at the right time, he sends messengers back to get his share of the harvest, it's harvest time. But the wicked tenants seize the messengers and they beat them and they kill them, stone them. And he sends more messengers, and the tenants treat them the same way, and this goes on. And last of all, he sends his son saying, “They'll respect my son.” But as you heard read already, when the tenants saw the son, they saw an opportunity to do the very thing they've been wanting all along: They wanna take control of the vineyard. They want it for themselves. They don't wanna submit to any authority. They want the full harvest for themselves. And so, they seize the son. They say, “Here's the heir. Let's take him, and kill him, and take his inheritance, the vineyard.” And so, they take the son and they throw him out of the vineyard and they kill him. So that's the parable. And it's the culmination of Israel's history of rebellion against God. From the time of the Exodus through the time of the exile, the Jews consistently rejected the messengers that God sent, and the men that God sent to lead them, one after the other. God gave them the laws of Moses, he gave them a covenant, a conditional covenant, and they were supposed to obey those laws, but they didn't. And so, God would send messengers and call on them to obey the laws, to give them his harvest of righteousness, but they inevitably mistreated these prophets. These prophets, they preached and they prayed and they warned, and they cried and they bled and they died one after another. And finally, the time had come in the fullness of time for God to send his only begotten Son. This is the culmination of Israel's history of rebellion: The rejection of the Son, Jesus Christ. And to explain this very thing, Jesus quotes an ancient Psalm, a Psalm that was maybe 1,000 years, a little less than 1,000 years old. Psalm 118, “The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” We're gonna spend our whole time today focused on this one verse to try to understand it. The Stone the Builders Rejected Architectural Image So let's start with the first phrase: “The stone the builders rejected.” We have here an architectural image, an idea of a grand and glorious building being erected, erected in stone. Massive buildings in Jesus' day, as we already mentioned, were constructed in stone. Herod's temple, the temple complex where they would come to worship, it was a massive structure, a complex made of stone. And in Mark 13:1, when the disciples saw all of these incredible buildings made of stone, they said, to Jesus, “Look, Teacher! what massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” So these stones have been quarried and shaped and fit together in a perfect way, an incredible structure. So it's an architectural image made of stone. The Builders The builders that Jesus refers to here have to be the Jewish leaders. They are the leaders of the Jewish nation, religiously. They are the chief priest, the scribes, the elders of the people, the Pharisees, the leaders, the Sanhedrin. These are the builders. The Stone the Builders Rejected So Jesus says, “The stone the builders rejected.” There's a single stone that he has in mind, and the builders reject this stone. And this is, as I said, the culmination of a long pattern, a settled pattern, a history of the rejection of the messengers of God by the people of God. All you have to do is just trace in your mind back in history, the ones that God raises up. You can start with the conflict between Jacob and Esau, and how Esau hated his brother, Jacob, and really made him flee, wanted to kill him. Even though Jacob was the one that the promise would be fulfilled through, ultimately. And then, Jacob's son, Joseph, was rejected by his brothers. They hated him. They could not speak a kind word to him because of his dreams and I guess his attitude, and the fact that he was preferred by his father, Jacob. But Joseph was the very one that God had ordained for their deliverance as a family. Because of his position in Egypt, he was able to set aside grain, and they were able to survive a terrible famine. And so, they rejected this very one that God had raised up to be their deliverance. And then there's Moses. God sent Moses to bring the people out of Egypt, out of bondage, but the Jews rejected Moses. Again and again, they rejected him. From the very beginning, two Israelites who were fighting rejected Moses saying, “Who made you ruler and judge over us?” They didn't realize that Moses was the very one that God had appointed to deliver them from bondage to Egypt. But even after he had done so, during the time of that great rebellion when the spies came back and they did not choose to enter the Promised Land to believe God, they talked of stoning Moses and going back, choosing another leader and going back to slavery in Egypt. They rejected Moses. Then there was David. There was not one of David's family, the family of Jesse, who thought that Samuel was there to anoint David. He was the little kid out in the field with the sheep. Not even his own father, Jesse, thought that he was worth even mentioning. He was rejected. Everyone thought it was gonna be Eliab, the firstborn, who was so tall and regal-looking. And the Lord told Samuel, “Do not consider him just because of his appearance for I have rejected him. He's not going to be king. A man looks at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.” Well, David was rejected by his own family. And as a matter of fact, when he goes there to bring some food, and his brothers are going to fight the Philistines, but nobody wants to fight because there's Goliath coming out day after day to challenge the armies of the people of God, and no one has the courage to come and confront this man who's speaking blasphemies against the God of Israel. He comes and shows up with some food from the father, Jesse, and they just tear into him. And they insult him and they lay him low. They don't know that he's about to deliver them and all of that sorry army with them by his courage. He is the very one that God had appointed to be their deliverer. Did King Saul recognize that he was the anointed successor? Did he accept that, say, “When I finish my time, I'm gonna hand it over to this God's man”? No. Instead, he hunts him down and he chases him down and he wants to kill him. And he did everything he could to kill David; he did not accept him. And even after David had been in power as a king for years and years, his own son, Absalom, rejected him and wanted to murder him and take his place. And many of Israel followed Absalom at that time. But of all these categories of people, probably no one was as clearly rejected as the prophets. God sent the prophets one after the other. And “the tenants,” it says, “seized the servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them in the same way.” Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, speaks to the Sanhedrin, this very body that's about to condemn Jesus to death. After Jesus' death and resurrection, ascension, there's Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, and he traces out all of this history. I'm just giving you, really, Stephen's sermon is what I'm giving you so far, is that Israel has always rejected the messengers of God, always. And so, Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit, says, “You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears. You're just like your fathers. You always resist the Holy Spirit. Was there ever a prophet your fathers did not kill? And now, you have betrayed and killed the righteous one, Jesus.” Jesus himself said this before Stephen's sermon. In Matthew 23, he said, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and you decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our forefathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.” And so,” said Jesus, “you testify against yourselves that you're the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your fathers.” What does he mean by that? “Kill me. It's what you do.” And that's what they did. And he said, “I'm gonna send you prophets and righteous men and teachers. And some of them, you will murder, and some of them, you will stone. You're gonna treat them the same way you treated the prophets before. It's always the same.” Now, the question is why. Why do they reject the prophets? Why do they reject the messengers that God sends? Well, I think there's a little story from the Old Testament that really illustrates why they rejected, rejected, rejected, over and over. I don't know if you remember the wicked king Ahab, and Ahab wants to go on a military venture of questionable outcome. He's gonna go fight and try to defeat Ramoth-Gilead, where the Arameans are powerful. He's gonna go out and fight against Ramoth-Gilead. And so, he's there with his friends, one of the more mysterious friendships in the Bible, godly king Jehoshaphat from the kingdom of Judah. So these two kings are there, and there are all these evil prophets of Baal and all these weird prophets, and they're all prophesying that he's going to succeed, King Ahab is going to succeed. “Go and be victorious!” “Go ahead!” And so, his ego's getting all pumped up. Jehoshaphat asked the question, he said, “Isn't there a prophet of the Lord here that we can inquire of? Don't you have one left?” [chuckle] He saw through all of that as the nothing it was. You remember what Ahab said? He said, “There is one man, Micaiah, son of Imlah. He's a prophet of the Lord, but I hate him because he never says anything good about me; only bad.” Oh, that's a very telling statement, isn't it? “He only says bad things about me all the time. I wanna hear good things.” So Isaiah, the prophet, takes the whole attitude and puts it together for us in Isaiah 30:9-11. This is what Isaiah said; he was a prophet, he also was persecuted. Tradition says he was sawn in two, he was put in a log and they sawed through his body while he was in a log. Unbelievable. But Isaiah said in chapter 30 verse 9 through 11: “These are rebellious people, deceitful children, children unwilling to listen to the Lord's instruction. They say to the seers, ‘See no more visions!’ And to the prophets, ‘Give us no more visions of what is right! Tell us pleasant things, prophesy illusions. Leave this way, get off this path, and stop confronting us with the Holy One of Israel.’” End quote. Well, there it is, friends. The prophets told the truth: The people were sinful. They needed to repent or die. And so, God sent these prophets to tell them the truth and they didn't wanna hear it. And so in the end, they generally tended to murder them because they wanted to hear pleasant things from God. But though this pattern of rejecting the messengers of God is well-established as I've done so far in this message, it comes to its fullest fruition in this: The rejection of the only begotten Son of God. God sent his Son into the world and they did not receive him. The stone the builders rejected, it's not Jacob, it's not Joseph, it's not Moses, it's not David, it's not any of the prophets. It's the only begotten Son of God, it's Jesus that they rejected. He is the stone, this is the Christ. And this rejection is astonishing when you consider the quality of Jesus Christ, what kind of man He was. Now, God searches the hearts of every man. Psalm 7:9, it says, “Oh, righteous God who searches minds and hearts.” He's searching your mind and heart right now. He knows what you're thinking about; I don't, but he does. He searches your mind and heart. He knows what's in your mind. And the testimony of God right before the flood in Genesis 6:5, it says that, “Every inclination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil all the time.” That's what brought the flood on. But sadly, this similar testimony is given in Genesis 8 after the flood, “Even though in every inclination of his heart is evil from birth.” That's in Genesis 8, after the flood. Jeremiah says, “The heart is deceitful and wicked beyond all understanding.” So that's our hearts. But what about Jesus? Here is the one man in all history whose heart is filled with the light of God. It is pure, it is holy. Every inclination of his heart is only good all the time, the only pure man that ever lived. He's the only one that perfectly fulfilled the two great commandments: To love the Lord your God with all of your heart, and to love your neighbor as yourself. He's the only one that ever did it. This is the quality of the man that they hated. All of his words were helpful and true and beneficial, all of them, even the convicting ones. And all of his healing miracles brought a river of grace and mercy and blessing to the people of Israel. The lame walked, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the dead were raised to life and the good news was preached to the poor, a river of blessing coming from Jesus' life. His demeanor, just as a man, what kind of person was he? He was gentle and tender-hearted. He wasn't a yeller or a screamer or a rabble-rouser out in the streets. That wasn't what he was like. Children felt comfortable sitting on his lap. He would touch them gently and pray for them. That's the kind of man that he was. And at one point, after a bunch of miracles, in Mark 7:37, the people were just overwhelmed, they're just overwhelmed with amazement of Jesus. And they said of him this: “He has done everything well.” How could they hate somebody like this? How could they hate and reject a man like this? But they did. The builders rejected him. These leaders of the Jews, they assessed Christ, they evaluated him and they rejected him. “No, not this man, give us Barabbas,” they said later. But it was already in their hearts. They had rejected Jesus. They were offended at his freedom from the tradition of the elders. He didn't wash his hands the way they did. You know, they had everybody under control on that hand washing thing. Jesus didn't do it. I'm not saying he wasn't hygienic, I'm just saying he didn't follow the traditions of the elders. And they hated his freedom from that. They were offended at how freely and powerfully he healed on the Sabbath. Despite their teachings, he went ahead and clearly healed and it frustrated them. They were disdainful of the fact that he came from Nazareth in Galilee. They said to Nicodemus in John 7:52, “Look into it, and you'll find that no prophet ever comes out of Galilee.” [chuckle] Of course. They missed Isaiah chapter 9, when it talks about a light shining in Galilee. They didn't see that scripture, but they were convinced that no prophet could ever come from there. And secretly, in their hearts, they were jealous of Jesus. Pilate even could see that, that it was out of jealousy that they'd handed Jesus over. He had a sway over the crowds. They listened to everything he said. He could do anything, he could do miracles. They couldn't do that. They, I think, were incredibly frustrated by his healings, because they knew he was from the Devil, but here, he's doing these healings. They couldn't put it together. So they hated him. I think though, especially, you wanna know why? Especially they hated him, because he told them the truth about themselves. He said, generally, in his preaching in the sermon of the mount, “Unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and teachers of the law, you will by no means enter into the kingdom of Heaven.” And later in Matthew, He's gonna give them the seven woes. “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” He calls them whitewashed tombs. He told the truth and they hated him for it. Now, they should have repented. They should have said, “Yes, I am a whitewashed tomb. On the outside I look good, but on the inside, I'm full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. Oh God, make me clean.” And he would have done it. But instead, they hardened their hearts and dug in their heels and they would not listen to him. Christ’s Rejection Predicted And so, in the parable, the tenants seized the Son, threw him outside of the vineyard and they killed him. The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. Now, God had predicted that this would happen, not just here in Psalm 1:18, which by the way is quoted five times in the New Testament. It is an important prediction. But even more clearly, I think in Isaiah Chapter 53, there the prophet spoke very plainly about the Messiah, the servant of the Lord, who would be rejected by his own people. And so, Isaiah 53 begins with this question, “Lord, who has believed our message?” They're not believing. “Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, and yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” Christ’s Rejection Complete Now Jesus' repulsiveness comes to its maximum point on the cross when he is bleeding and dying. He is ultimately repulsive to the Jews. This can't be the King of the Jews, but it was. And so they hated him for it, though, this rejection was predicted. Now his rejection was complete. They took him out of the vineyard and threw him out. They threw him out of the vineyard. It was outside of the camp that they put all the refuse, you know? It says in Hebrews 13, that the blood of bulls and goats, the sacrifice is brought into the most holy place as an offering for sin, “but the bodies are burned outside the camp.” And so, Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his blood. So let us also join him outside the camp, bearing the reproach he bore. He was thrown out, rejected completely. You know, the law of Moses said, “You should make a place,” speaking to the nation of Israel, probably two million strong. “Make a place outside the camp, where you may go and relieve yourselves, lest I see and be disgusted, and turn away from you.” That's where the refuse goes. That's where the outcast and the lepers go, and Jesus was completely rejected by his own people. The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone. For me, though, the most significant rejection of Christ wasn't by any of these human beings. It was really by God. In some mysterious, infinitely mysterious, way, God rejected Jesus too. Now this is not what this Psalm is talking about, but we should acknowledge it, because Jesus himself acknowledged it up on the cross, didn't he? Didn't He cry out, saying, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And so, in some infinitely mysterious way, God himself rejected Jesus. And it's the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3 that tells us why and how it worked. Jesus, our sin bearer, took all of our nasty, wicked guilty sin on himself, and then God poured out his wrath. He made Jesus a curse. And so, it says in Galatians 3:13, “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who's hung on a tree.’” This, dear friends, is the stone the builders rejected. The most acceptable, the most beautiful, the purest man in history became the most rejected. Has Become the Capstone The Exaltation of Christ Secondly, He has become the capstone. The stone that the builders rejected has become the capstone. This, dear friends, is the exaltation of Christ. He is exalted in this passage. He is made glorious, and who can measure that infinite journey that Jesus traveled from the pit, as it were, of hell on the cross, rejected under the wrath of God, to on the third day, being raised to life in a glorious resurrection body. And after a 40-day instruction period with the church, ascending through the atmosphere, higher and higher, until a cloud hides Jesus from their sight. And then the book of Hebrews takes over and tells us that he traveled through the heavenly realms, to the right hand of Almighty God, and sat down there at the place of ultimate honor in heaven. How can you measure the infinitude of that journey as he goes from ultimate rejection to ultimate exaltation? Says in Ephesians 1, “God raised Christ from the dead, and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power, and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the Church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” That's how exalted this rejected stone is, that's how glorious he is. Cornerstone or Capstone? Either Way... Now, we have to deal with a little detail here. You may be asking, “is it capstone or is it cornerstone?” You may not, but it's my job, first, to get you to ask, “Is it capstone or is it cornerstone?” Which is it? Is he the cornerstone or is he the capstone? Frankly, the Hebrew goes either way. It's the “head of the corner,” that's what it says, and it's really hard to tell. And that's why these English translations always give you a footnote. They choose one and they give you the footnote on the other one, because nobody really knows. You know the ultimate answer is, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I'll give you another verse. Okay. Jesus said in Revelation, “I am the Alpha and the Omega. The first and the last, the beginning in the end. I'm everything.” Cornerstone: Indispensable and Uniting And so, the cornerstone is that first foundational stone you lay and it's gotta be put in just the right position, and just right orientation, and it needs to get all the other stones started in the right direction or the whole thing's worthless. It's gotta be just right. It's a foundation stone on which everything is based. And so it says in Ephesians 2 in verse 20 and 21, that the church of Jesus Christ is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him, the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord.” So there, Jesus is the cornerstone and you know how you see in some of these old stone buildings, there's this polished, beautiful stone with a date on it and inscription and all that. That's a ceremonial stone, but it's also a vital stone, the first one. Capstone: Infinitely Lofty and Majestic Or is he the capstone? Think about an arch, and there's the keystone in the middle and it holds all the weight pressing in on that keystone. Anybody here from Pennsylvania? It's the Keystone State, they tell us. You got the northern colonies and the southern colonies and there's Pennsylvania, in the middle, as the keystone holding the whole thing together. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's what they claim for themselves. I'm not saying it isn't true, but all I'm saying is that this architectural image, and it holds the weight and distributes the weight and it's just the keystone in the entire arch. And generally, it would be decorated, maybe made beautiful with some carvings or some other things, it's a vital stone. The Soaring Majesty of Christ Now, which is Jesus? Hey, whatever gives him the most glory, that's what he is. He's the beginning, he's the last. He is everything. He is the Alpha and the Omega. In any case the one who was rejected has become infinitely lofty and majestic. And so, how wrong were the buildings to reject him? The soaring majesty of Christ, the very one that the builders rejected as worthless, the equivalent of dung to be set outside the camp, he has become the most important stone in the entire edifice. The builders rejected him, but God exalted him. The Lord Has Done This The Sovereign Plan of God: Both Sides That brings us to the third. “The Lord has done this,” it says. This is the direct work of Almighty God. It's something God has done. The Lord has done this. The sovereign plan of God, and I say it is sovereign, it is the plan of God on both sides of the equation. The stone the builders rejected, that's the first half, has become the capstone, now that's the second half. The Lord has done both of them, both of them. Now, what do you mean? Well, I say that God, in his sovereign plan, ordained that the Jews would reject their own Messiah. He set it about, it was their destiny to do so. I do not shrink back from this language because this is the very language that the Apostle Peter uses in 1 Peter 2, quoting this exact same text. In 1 Peter 2, he's saying, now this stone, to you who believe, is glorious, “but to those who do not believe, ‘the stone the builders rejected has become the capstone,’ and ‘a stone that causes them to stumble and a rock that makes them fall.’ They stumble because they disobey the message - which is also what they were destined for.” Now, I don't know if I can persuade you how they can be destined to reject their own Messiah, and God still condemn them for it, and he can. Those depths, I don't know that I have enough brain power to plumb, but I know that this is what the Bible teaches. God's was the plan and theirs was the sin, but God did this. He set apart Christ as his very own, and had him born into the context of Israel, and ordained that Israel would reject him. The stone the builders rejected. The Lord has done this. Now, they said the exact same thing in Acts chapter 4, when after Jesus had been crucified, third day rose again, ascended into heaven, sends forth the Holy Spirit of God. Pentecost comes. The church explodes out of the streets of Jerusalem, 3,000 people come to faith in Christ. The Church is just moving. At that point, the Sanhedrin gets involved. Peter and John do a healing. They give Peter and John a warning not to preach or teach at all in the name of Jesus. They do some more healings, they bring in all the apostles, and they warn them again not to preach or teach at all in the name of Jesus, and they beat them. They are rejecting Christ and his messengers. And in the middle of all of that, they have a prayer meeting. Peter and John go back, and they have this prayer meeting, and they gather the church together and they talk about the threats and all that. And this is what they prayed. “Indeed, Herod and Pontius Pilate,” this is Acts 4:27-28, “Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and with the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did,” listen. “They did what your power and will had determined beforehand should happen.” That is my faith, friends. That's the faith of the Bible, that God does this, the rejection, and the Lord also does, dear friends, the exaltation. The exaltation. Only God Can Exalt Christ God willed that the church of Jesus Christ be built only by His sovereign power. It's not by the plans and schemes of religious leaders. They were the ones that rejected Him. Not by the plans and schemes of political and military leaders like Pontius Pilate or the emperor Caesar. They were the very ones that persecuted the church for two centuries, after the death of Christ, three centuries. Not by the philosophies of men, for the philosophers of Mars Hill in Athens scorned the message of the resurrection, and mocked it. Not by any of these things, not by power, not by might, but by my spirit, says the Lord. So, the elders of this church, ministerial staff, we can make all the plans we want. Unless the Lord builds this house, we will labor in vain. Amen? We need the Lord at work at First Baptist Church. We need him to exalt Christ in our midst. I asked, and I prayed this morning, I said, “Lord, exalt Christ through this sermon. Make him appear glorious and majestic.” Because my words aren't enough. Only the Lord can build this church. It Is Marvelous in our Eyes Fourth part. “The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” There are four key figures in this quote; the stone, and that's Christ, the builders who rejected the stone, those are the Jewish religious leaders. The Lord has done this, that is God, the Father. And it is marvelous in our eyes, that's you and me, dear friends. We are the audience of this grand and glorious sovereign plan of God. We get to watch it. We get to look and see what God has done. And it is sweetly marvelous in my eyes. Oh how delightful it is. Wonder and Be Amazed! Wonder and be amazed. The point of all of this is worship, that your hearts would be moved from stone cold hardness to sweet affection for Christ, and loyalty to him, and love for him. That you will spend eternity gazing at the stone that the builders rejected. Spending Eternity Gazing at this Marvel And he will have enough in his infinite person, and his great achievements, to call forth from you a river of praise for all eternity. And not just you, but people from all over the world will be doing. We're gonna be on our faces, dear friends. We're gonna be falling down before Jesus' glory, and we are going to be praising and offering worship to him for all eternity. Warnings, Exhortations, and Encouragements Marvel in the Glory and Attractiveness of Christ How can we conclude? How can we apply this? Well, I wanna begin by just urging you to marvel at the glories of Jesus. “The Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” Is it marvelous to you? Do you see his appeal, his attractiveness? Earlier, we sang one of my favorite hymns. “Jesus, I am resting, resting.” It was Hudson Taylor's favorite hymn. And he was in the midst of a terrible trial in China, and suffering and there was no let up in sight, and he was humming this very hymn. “Jesus, I am resting, resting.” And somebody was insulted. “How can you hum and whistle during this time, when all this is going on?” He said, “It's precisely because all this is going on that I wanna rest in Jesus.” “Jesus, I am resting, resting, in the joy of what thou art. ... I am finding out the greatness of thy loving heart.” Are you finding out how great is his love for you? “Thou has bid me gaze upon thee and thy beauty fills my soul. For by the transforming power, thou has made me whole.” I can scarcely go over these words without tears coming to my eyes, because I think about the greatness of Jesus' love for me, a sinner. And that he has transformed me and made me whole. I was broken. I was dead in transgressions and sins and now I'm alive. And now I love Jesus and I love God the Father. “Simply trusting thee, Lord Jesus, I behold thee as thou art, And thy love, so pure, so changeless, satisfies my heart; satisfies its deepest longings, meets, supplies its every need. Compasses me around with blessings.” This is love. “Thine is love indeed.” Jesus satisfies, dear friends. Whatever idols you're playing with right now, they don't. And if you're a Christian, you know it better than you used to know it. There is no idol that can satisfy your heart. Jesus can satisfy. Is this stone the builders rejected marvelous in your eyes? Is he marvelous seven days a week? Is he marvelous when you're toying with sin? Is he marvelous all the time? It's the essence of the exaltation of Jesus as the stone is the worship he receives from grateful sinners all over the world. Come to him. Look to him. I'm speaking even to Christians. You may have been a Christian for four or five decades. Come again to Jesus and gaze at him and let him satisfy your deepest longings. Don't run after sin. Don't run after the world. Don't run after power or money or sex or anything else. Run after Jesus and let him satisfy you. Warning to the Unbeliever Secondly, I must give, tenderly, a warning to the unbeliever. I don't know your spiritual state, I can't see by your faces. I see that there's some guests here today. I welcome you. I'm glad you're here, but can I give you a tender warning not to reject Christ like they did? Look at verse 44, right in the text. “He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but the one on whom it falls will be crushed.” Now, I thought about this, and I said, “What would I rather? Would I rather be broken in pieces or crushed?” Answer is, neither one. I don't wanna fall on Jesus. And I think, by that, it means like the authority figures seize him to arrest Him, lay hands on him to stop him. That's what his enemies were about to do. They were going to arrest Jesus, kind of fall upon him and seize him. And he says, if you do that, you will be broken to pieces. And it's going on today. Even though Jesus is up at the right hand of God, there are still people trying to lay hands on Jesus to stop him. It could be presidents of countries who are making decisions that are ungodly. It could be political leaders that are doing it. It could be all, it could be in this country to the ends of the earth. It could be tyrants in Africa or in South America or in Asia, that are openly opposing the Gospel, but they're trying to lay hands on Jesus through his people. “Saul, Saul, Why do you persecute me?” “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, the one you're persecuting.” They're trying to lay hands on Jesus. He said, he's giving them a warning. “Be warned, you rulers of the earth. Don't try to lay hands on me because if you do, you'll be broken to pieces.” Alright. Well, what about the one on whom he falls will be crushed? Well, the word literally, in the Greek, means ground to powder. You get a picture of like a millstone, grinding something until it's just a dust. That's what the Greek word means. And I just, in my mind, I go back to Daniel chapter 2, when King Nebuchadnezzar, the most powerful man on earth, had a dream. And in that dream, he saw a statue. And the statue had a head of gold, and chest and arms of silver, and belly and thighs of bronze, and legs of iron, and feet partly iron, partly clay. And while he was watching, a stone was cut out, but not by human hands. And that stone flew through the space, I guess, and came and struck that statue on its feet of clay, and smashed it. And then the gold and the silver, and the bronze, and the iron and the clay, all of it were smashed to pieces and became like dust on the threshing floor. Then a wind blew it all away and there was not a trace left. The interpretation is clear. It's a transfer of power from one government leader to the next, from the Babylonians to the Middle Persians, to the Greeks, to the Romans, to whatever followed the Romans. Someday, there's gonna be the stone that's gonna come and it's gonna smash it all, and it will all be gone, blown away without a trace. He on whom it falls will be crushed. If the time of the coming of Christ, you are his enemy, you will be crushed. Speaking of the second coming of Christ and judgement day, when he comes to set up a kingdom that will last forever and ever, Oh, how sweetly glorious it will be, to be in a right relationship with Christ when he comes again. But if you're not, he is a dreadful enemy. “He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but the one on whom it falls will be crushed.” Come to Christ then. Come to him and trust in him, and be not his enemy, but be his beloved son or daughter. Encouragement to the Oppressed A couple of more words of encouragement and I'll be done. If you're going through a hard time, if you're oppressed, if you're feeling rejected, you're going through things, there is no one who knows how you feel like Jesus. Your rejection is as nothing compared to his, but he is compassionate. He knows what it's like to be tempted, just as you are. Come to Him. Let him refresh you and renew you. Let him tell you how it turned out for him. He's doing fine. He's at the right hand of God. He is eternally happy and blessed, and so will you be in him. Dispel the shadows of discouragement and doubt and rejection by looking to Christ and realizing that if you're in him, you'll be just fine. And if I can urge you, just as believers in Christ, worship this stone. May he be marvelous in your sight. If he's not so marvelous to you today, if you can't wait for the sermon to be over, if you can't wait to go do some other thing, beware of idols and see if the stone is as marvelous in your sight as it should be. And if not, then repent, really. And say, “Lord, take the idols from me. I wanna see you, I wanna be melted by you. I want you to satisfy my deepest longings again, like you used to.” Bringing Forth the Fruit of the Kingdom And then finally, if I can urge you to just as the bent of this whole passage is, bring forth the fruit of the kingdom, both within the walls of this church through the kingdom. It is just helping others in their walk with Christ. Encourage them. Lift each other's burdens. Pray for each other. Love each other. Don't be strangers to each other. Get involved in ministry here, get involved in Home Fellowship, Bible for Life class. Find out how people are doing. Shoulder their burdens and pray for them. Bring forth fruit within the walls of this church. And then let's go out into the streets. Let's go to 27701, right around here. Let's do this mission trip. Thursday evening prayer, Friday, serving in various ways. Saturday, a cook out, and reaching out. Let's see if we can save someone by the power of the gospel. See if we can reach out and be useful to God. The stone the builders rejected, well, he's up in heaven now. He's at the right hand of Almighty God, and he will be glorified for all eternity for what he did. Close with me in prayer.

I. Introduction We are looking this morning at Colossians 1:24-29: Elements of a Fruitful Ministry. I love history. I do. I especially love colorful figures from history, and I think there are few as colorful from the old American West as the snake oil salesmen. I am talking about individuals that would go from town to town in interestingly colored carts and wagons and set up shop in each place. They would have fascinating, bizarre remedies to cure whatever ailed you. If you bought their little vials of substances and oils and other remedies, and you took them they might do you some good. You might feel better, you might feel worse or you might feel the same. The snake oil salesman certainly made a good living, and often they would go to the next town, and you would probably never see them again, at least not that particular one. Another one might come in six months. Every week, thereabouts, I get things in the mail that teach me how to grow this church, from church growth experts that tell me what I need to do to make this church a success. Success in a box: All you have to do is send your $139.95 (or whatever the amount it is) and it comes right out of the box and it will make this local church a success. Don't you want to? I want to be a success. Would you like to be a success? I would like this church to be a success. You may wonder what the two of those illustrations have to do with each other, the snake oil salesmen and these experts, and their various remedies to cure what ails you. I think you can see the connection. I would rather hear from someone who can tell me the truth. How can we grow this church to be everything that God wants it to be? In the context of Colossians chapter one, I want to understand what kind of ministry will glorify Christ as He has been revealed in this chapter. Think about that. What kind of Christ have we seen? He is the image of the invisible God. He is the firstborn over all creation. By His Word, the Heavens and the Earth came to be, and have their being to this very moment. This is the glory of Christ. We learned last week that He is the one who shed His blood on the cross. It is by that blood shed on the cross that every man, woman, and child who will ever stand before God, blameless and unafraid, holy in His presence, will be escorted into the very presence of almighty God to live forever and ever. It is by the blood shed by Jesus on the cross that all of that will happen. It is by His blood that the world, the universe, will be reconciled to God. Now, what kind of ministry is worthy of that? That is the question in front of us today. And the Apostle Paul, as he does so frequently, presents himself and his own ministry as an example for us to follow. He describes to the Colossians the nature of his ministry. He describes what it is like and what he does. And he does this, not to boast in himself, but in effect, to say, "Follow me as I follow Christ. This is the kind of ministry that is going to build the church. This is it." And so this morning, we're going to look at a pattern for fruitful ministry. I'm not saying that these eight elements that I find here in Colossians 1:24-29 exhaust the depths of everything that could be said about the elements of a fruitful ministry. And I am not even saying that they exhaust Colossians 1:24-29. But I think these eight things are helpful for me as a pastor, and to all of us as Christians who have a ministry (and that should be all of us) that we would look at these things and say, "Oh, God, work this in me." I was very convicted by this passage of Scripture, specifically in the area of tireless labor for Christ. That is very convicting for me. And I want you to be convicted as well. I want God to work in your heart. I want God to work in your heart and to use Paul's example. And so as we look at the pattern of ministry here in Colossians 1:24-29 there are eight elements: Stewardship, joy and suffering, full proclamation of the Word of God, but with a focus on Christ in the midst of that full proclamation, a shepherding, nurturing heart, teaching and admonishing with all wisdom, and a clear focus on maturity in Christ and Christ-likeness. We're looking to see Christ formed in individuals, and then that aspect of laboring in the Lord by His power. These eight elements we are going to look at today. Now, I want to just take a moment because Andy Winn is not here and I just want to talk about him. Okay? Is that all right? He usually sits right over there. You’ll notice he is not here; he is on vacation. And I know this is being taped, so he can listen to it later. But when I come to Colossians 1:29, for the rest of my life, I am going to remember Andy Winn. We needed a youth pastor, and we were interviewing, and Andy had been doing fruitful ministry here. He was almost done at Southeastern and so he was presented as a candidate, and I thought he was a good candidate. I wanted to ask him about it and talk to him, so we sat down, and the two of us talked together. And I asked him, I said, "Andy, what, in your mind, are the keys or the elements of a fruitful, successful youth ministry?" Without blinking an eye, without hesitating, he said this, "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, in order that we might present everyone perfect in Christ." He got the job. That was it. First of all, he had it memorized. That was really good for me, all right? He chose the right verse, and he has been doing that kind of ministry in our midst ever since, for seven plus years, and I think that is just a sweet thing. And so, if you see him, encourage him, because that is the kind of man that he has been in our midst. But this isn't just Andy Winn's verse; this is my verse too, and the verse of anyone who wants to be faithful in ministry, and I just thought that story would be encouraging to you. I'll never forget it. These are elements, not just of a fruitful or successful youth ministry, but of any ministry. As you hear these eight elements, don’t just think 'apostle,' and don't just think 'pastor,' or 'youth pastor.' Think 'yourself.' Because I believe that God has entrusted to each one of us a ministry, for which we are going to be held accountable, and these same elements will be helpful for all of us. Let's look at the first one and that is a perspective of stewardship. A stewardship perspective. II. Stewardship Perspective (verses 23, 25) In Verse 23, Paul speaks in the Gospel. He said, "This is the Gospel that you heard and that has been proclaimed to every creature under Heaven, and of which I, Paul, have become a servant." A servant. And then in Verse 25, he says, "Of the church, I became a servant [or a minister], according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the Word of God fully known." Paul considered his ministry a stewardship to himself. It was something entrusted to him by Christ. Now, a steward is a servant who manages someone else's property, someone else's possessions, and seeks to manage them in a way that would honor the master, and be pleasing to the master. That is what a good steward does anyway. And Paul sought to be that kind of a servant, or a steward. A minister or a servant is like a table waiter. That is the word used here. And the idea there of being a table waiter, is that you are not the chef. You are not the chef, you are not the cook and you have no business getting involved in what is on the plate. It is your job, successfully, to take it from the master chef and present it unadulterated at the table. And that is the way Paul saw himself when it came to the ministry of the Word, and I see myself that way too. It is not for me to mess with the doctrines, or to rearrange them, or to change the Word of God, but rather to present the Word of God in its fullness. Paul saw himself as a servant and as a steward. He believed that Christ had entrusted this ministry to him. Now, he says in 1 Corinthians 9:16 and 17, "For if I preach the Gospel, I have nothing to boast of, for I am under compulsion; for woe is me, if I do not preach the Gospel. For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward; but if against my will, I have a stewardship that has been entrusted to me." He says again in 1 Corinthians 4:1 and 2, "So then, men ought to regard us as servants of Christ and as those who have been entrusted with the secret things of God. Now, it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful.” Brothers and sisters, have you been given a trust? Has a ministry been entrusted to you? I would argue from Scripture, that every Christian must have a ministry. Every Christian must put forth labor and effort by the power of the Spirit to build the church of Jesus Christ. What is your ministry? If nothing is popping into your mind, may the Lord awaken within you a yearning for an identifiable pattern of ministry in this local church, so that Christ might be glorified. But if you have a ministry, you are a steward of that ministry; it has been entrusted to you, and someday, you are going to have to give Christ an account of what you did with it. And so the first idea here of a fruitful or a successful ministry, is to consider that it has been entrusted to you by Jesus Christ Himself. For it says in 2 Corinthians 5:9 and 10, "So we make it our goal to please Him, whether we are at home in the body or away from it. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad." We have to give Him an account, and then, from Him, we will receive our rewards. III. Sustaining Joy (verse 24) Secondly, we see the issue of sustaining joy. In Verse 24, Paul says, "Now, I rejoice in what was suffered for you.” This is the commitment of the Apostle Paul. Paul had a commitment to joy in the ministry. What good is a ministry done by a miserable person? Think about that. Just picture it in your mind: "I'm a teacher." "What do you teach?" "I'm a teacher of the Word of God." You know, like Eeyore? Have you ever met an Eeyore kind of person? I'm not against Eeyore. I'm just saying, there must be a joy, a visible joy in ministry. And Paul says, "I rejoice." There is a commitment to joy and it is a realistic joy. He didn't have his eyes shut. He says in 2 Corinthians 6:10, "sorrowful, but always rejoicing." We are sorrowful because the more you get into ministry the more you are facing the wreck that sin leaves in people's lives, and it is really sad. It is really sad, so you sorrow, you weep. Jesus was a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering, and yet, He died for the joy set before Him. And so we have got to be buoyed up by joy in ministry all the time. Just about all of the book of Philippians is given to addressing this issue of joy, the attitude of joy. "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice." Joy is the only proper response, I believe, to the greatness of the hope that Christ has won for us. Our future inheritance, brothers and sisters, in the new Heaven and the new Earth. Oh, how rich we are in Christ. How rich is our future and how great should be our joy. You ought to feed on that joy every single day. Now, I believe that joy is an indicator of spiritual health, and that a lack of joy is an indicator of spiritual sickness, or a problem. It is similar to a canary in a coal mine. Back in the olden days, before we had the kind of technology that we have today, miners would take a canary, and put it in a little cage, and bring it down with them into the coal mines. The reason they would do this, is not because they were lonely, and wanted a pet. The reason they did this, is because the canaries were very sensitive to the presence of methane gas or carbon monoxide. Especially carbon monoxide, it is odorless and colorless. And so, if you were a coal miner and you were down there, you would just learn to talk to your bird, and listen to its singing and watch it as you worked. And if the bird was doing well, then you were fine. But if the bird started to look woozy and started to sway on its perch, you would know you needed to get out of there. You probably ought to take the bird with you. It would be just out of love for God's creation, but you need to get out. That canary in the coal mine was a sensitive early warning system for difficulties, invisible difficulties, and so also is joy in the Christian life. It is sensitive, it is delicate, isn't it? Are you characterized by consistent Christian joy? And I do not think anybody, honestly, is going to say that. You catch me at every moment, 168 hours a week, well, minus the sleep time...but anyway-I would guess I'm joyful in sleeping. But if that is your only time of joy, you've got problems. Do people characterize you as a basically joyful person, connected to the joy of the Gospel or not? I think joy is a great early warning sign. You look at what Paul wrote in Galatians, as they were drinking in bad doctrine and legalism, and all that. He asked them in Galatians 4, "what has happened to all your joy?" That is a big problem and when you do not have joy in the Christian life, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:7, speaking of financial giving, he says, "God loves a cheerful giver." He doesn't just love a giver, friends. He loves a cheerful giver. He does not accept gifts given with irritability and given out of compulsion with a grumpy attitude. Well, and that is not just about financial giving, it is any giving you do to the Lord, any aspect of your ministry, you need to do it cheerfully, you need to do it with joy. Any spiritual gift ministry, teaching with joy, giving with joy, praying with joy, serving with joy, and hospitality with joy. It says in 1 Peter 4: 9, "Offer hospitality without grumbling." Many of you are going to open your homes tonight to home fellowships. I just want to say thank you for your sacrifice. It is going to be hard work. You're going to work this afternoon to get your house clean. Or maybe your house is always beautiful and clean. Maybe I'm showing something of myself I don't need to show right now. We do have to labor to get our house looking that good. But that is hard work. It says, "Without grumbling." Instead, we do it joyfully. Your ministry has to be done with joy. Now, Satan, I believe, attacks joy all the time, constantly sending joy thieves after you. Pride is a joy thief, isn't it? "I don't deserve what I'm getting. Don't they notice and don't they see all the good things I'm doing?" Pretty soon, your joy is gone. Or, "I don't deserve the trial I'm going through, the suffering I'm going through in my life. I don't deserve it." Pride is a joy thief. Selfishness is a joy thief. So also is a guilty conscience. A guilty conscience is a terrible joy thief. It's hard to be joyful, if you've got a guilty conscience. Unbelief is a joy thief, not trusting the promises of God. False doctrine and legalism are joy thieves, just understanding grace wrongly. The greatest joy thief of all is sin, wouldn't you say? If you are not joyful in Christ, that is probably because you've sinned and you need to confess something to God. All of the ministry we do, we need to do with joy. And it is a commitment that we make, isn't it? We are going to make a commitment. We're going to rejoice in the Lord. We're going to be like Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail. We're going to sing, and praise, and worship. Paul and Silas, beaten publicly without a trial, put in stocks in the inner cell, a dark, nasty place, and they fill it with joyful singing to God. And do you know what God did? He sent an earthquake, and He shook the place, and the result was the Philippian jailer and his family coming to faith in Christ in the middle of the night. Does that happen if Paul and Silas are not joyful in their trial? I tell you, it doesn't. I’m saying God doesn't send that earthquake and I'm saying that Philippian jailer doesn't get saved that night, if they hadn't responded joyfully in the midst of their trial. He pulls them out trembling and says, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?" He wants to know. I tell you, joy in evangelism and joy in ministry is so attractive; it's so engaging. IV. Embracing Suffering (verse 24) Thirdly, embracing suffering. You might think, the two of them, how do they go together? How do you go from joy to suffering, one after the other? But Paul openly embraces it, he says, "Now, I rejoice in what was suffered for you and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of His body, which is the church." Now, this is a fascinating verse. Fascinating; there are lot of things in this verse. First of all, I think that many translations have a different approach. It's more like, Paul is rejoicing in his own sufferings for the Colossians and he fills up in his body what is lacking. But I actually don’t think that is what the Greek says. I think the NIV has it right, in this case. Because Paul says, "I rejoice in what was suffered for you." He's never been to the Colossae. He doesn't know them personally. He hasn't suffered anything personally for them. Now, he's lived a lifestyle of suffering and we'll get to that in a moment, but not for them. I think what is going on here is, he is saying, "I rejoice in the principle of suffering in what happened, what Epaphras, perhaps, or other servants have done to plant the church there in your community. I rejoice in it. I rejoice in what was suffered for you." That's a bigger issue, isn't it? What does it take to plant a church in a city like Colossae? What does it take to bring a single person to Christ? What does it take for us to finish the ministry God has entrusted to us? What does it take for us here at First Baptist Durham to reach out to this Triangle community with the Gospel? What does it take for those of you that are preparing for cross-cultural, unreached people group ministry? What is it going to take for you to bring your people group to Christ? I tell you, it's suffering, and without suffering, it will not happen. Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains by itself a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." There is no progress made in the Kingdom of Heaven without sacrifice, without suffering. And so what Paul is saying here is, "I rejoice in the suffering that happened to bring you about. I rejoice in that." I think it is one of the most glorious things to consider, that we are part of a royal family of brothers and sisters in the Lord, who did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Revelation 12:11 says, "They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." But they were willing, in the Roman era, to have their blood poured out in the sands of the Colosseum, to see the Roman Empire basically be converted. These are faceless, nameless people to us, but God knows each one of them. And Paul would say, "I rejoice in what was suffered to do that." Tertullian said, "The blood of martyrs is seed for the church.” I rejoice in that. I embrace it as a principle. It is the way Jesus saved our souls. I rejoice in the principle of suffering. Jesus saved us by suffering and he set not just our atonement up, but the pattern by which the atonement would spread to the ends of the Earth. Polycarp, burned at the stake, said, "86 years, I've served Him, and He's never done me wrong. How can I betray my King, who saved me?" Glorious statements, one after the other. Adoniram Judson buries two wives and a daughter in an effort to take the Gospel to Burma. Even today, there are brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering and dying. You would not believe all of the incredible things that are happening in Iran. You hear about Iran, politically. You hear about Iran, in terms of the threat they are to world peace, in terms of atomic weapons, nuclear weapons, but below all of this, the church is exploding, people are coming to faith in Christ. It's an awesome thing, but they are doing so, sometimes, at the price of their own lives. Paul would say, "I rejoice in what was suffered for you." We don't know those stories. Someday, we'll learn them though, when we are in Heaven and it's testimony time, and we are freed from time constraints, and we are freed from pride and selfishness. Notice that Paul is not rejoicing in his own suffering for the Colossian church. He is rejoicing in what Epaphras suffered, free from selfishness. It doesn't matter who did the suffering, that person is my brother or my sister in Christ. I rejoice in it. We will delight in those stories. We will delight in hearing about a brother or sister in Christ during the time of the bubonic plague, the Black Death, who took his or her life into their hands to bring nursing and the Gospel into a specific area. They were willing to die and maybe did die of the Black Plague, but they led some people to Christ before it happened. We'll rejoice in those stories and delight in them. We're part of that royal heritage. But Paul goes deeper here. He actually gives us a theology of suffering. He says, "I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regards of the afflictions of Christ for the sake of His body, which is the church." This is very deep. It's a bit mysterious. What does Paul mean when he says, "I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking, in regard to the afflictions of Christ?" What could possibly be lacking in the suffering of Christ? Well, there are some things we can just reject, some ideas we can just get rid of here. Look back a few verses to verse 19 and 20. It says of Christ, "God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Him, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether things on Earth or things in Heaven, by making peace through His blood, shed on the cross." Is there anything lacking in that, brothers and sisters? Anything at all? When Jesus says in John 19, after receiving the drink and knowing that all was fulfilled, when He said, "It is finished," and then he pillowed His head down on His chest, and gave up His Spirit and died, was there anything lacking in the afflictions of Christ at that moment? I tell you, no. It's a perfect work of atonement. But let's take what John Murray said in his great book "Redemption Accomplished and Applied," to understand this. There was suffering for Christ to get redemption accomplished, but then there is suffering for us to get it applied. Do you see? Jesus did His work. He ascended to Heaven. He sends forth His Spirit and He says, "I will give you power, and you will be my witnesses to the ends of the Earth, and you will suffer to do it. You need to take up your cross to do it." "And I fill up," Paul says, "In my flesh what's still lacking, in regard to Christ's afflictions." They are still Christ's afflictions. Now, how are they Christ's afflictions? Well, you remember Saul of Tarsus, breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples? He got letters from the synagogue leaders, and the high priest, and the officials, so that he could go to the synagogues in Damascus, and arrest any there who belonged to Christ. And on the way, he got knocked to the ground by the blinding, resurrected Christ, the light, the glory of Christ. And do you remember what Jesus said to him? "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” “When you drag off men and women, and throw them in prison, I feel it. You're hurting me." When your hand hurts, it sends a signal to the brain. When your foot hurts, the brain knows about it immediately. And so also, all of the sufferings of Christians, the martyrs and the witnesses, all of that suffering is Christ's afflictions. And Paul says, "I'm filling them up in my body." Is there a call on you, in that regard? Are you called to suffer at all to advance the Gospel of Jesus? Are you suffering to advance the Gospel of Christ? V. Full Proclamation (verse 25) Fourth, full proclamation. In verse 25, Paul says, "I have become its servant [a servant of the Gospel] by the commission God gave me, to present to you the Word of God in its fullness." Verse 28 says, "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ." The essence or the center, practically speaking, of Paul's ministry, was the proclamation of the Word of God. The proclamation, the teaching and the preaching of the Word of God. That was the center of what he did. Preaching was the center of God's plan for the salvation of the world. Now, the snake oil salesmen in the 21st century are telling us that preaching's day is over: "It's finished. We're in a different era now, of communication, and we need to compete with the computer graphics that are done with movies, and with all of the stuff that's done for ad campaigns, and everything that is done on the internet, and all of the ways that we're communicating now. We need to come up into that. Preaching is done. The simple communication of the Word of God through preaching is finished." It will never be finished. It will never be finished, because God has ordained the simplicity of the preaching of the Gospel, as the way that He will work. Now, I'm not saying that we can't be more sensational, more spectacular, that we can't entertain better, that we can't send people off with a bigger bang. We can do all of that, but that is not how the church will be built, not that way. And so we proclaim. "I am to present the Word of God in its fullness," Paul says. That was his calling. And so he says to the elders in the Church at Ephesus, in Acts 20, he says, "You know that I have not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you, but have taught you publicly and from house to house." He was there for three years, ministering to those people every day. And he said, "I didn't shrink back from proclaiming anything that would be helpful to you. I taught you publicly from house to house." Verse 27 of Acts 20, he says, "I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole counsel of God.” “All that was in God's mind to communicate to you, I preached that. I taught that to you." As a matter of fact, Paul yearned to hit the finish line having accomplished all of it, whatever God had entrusted to him. Again, Acts 20, he says in verse 24, "I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me-the task of testifying to the Gospel of God's grace." He knew what he was about, and that was the clear proclamation, the teaching of the Word of God; that is what it was about. Now, the church is the steward of this ministry. And therefore, it is not just the pastor, but there are teachers who teach the Word of God in its fullness, and they need to be faithful to it. This church, First Baptist Church, must be fully committed to this kind of an expositional ministry, if we're going to continue to be healthy. We need to hear the Word of God in its fullness. Amen? If the Lord were to take me tomorrow, get somebody else who will do it. You have to have this kind of clear teaching of the Word of God in its fullness, not shrinking back from anything in the Word, but just saying what it says, if you want to grow. And so also, the teachers in Bible for Life, and Acts, and Home Fellowship, teach the Word of God in its fullness. It is essential to the Great Commission. You know that, don't you? "Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit," and what? "Teaching them to obey... " What's the next word? "Everything I have taught you." That is the Word of God in its fullness. Tell it. What do I need to do, Lord? All of it. I don't just want part of it. Tell me all of my responsibilities. I want to be faithful to the whole counsel of God. Too often these days we fall into pragmatism. The snake oil salesmen are telling you, "This is what works. We've got this little thing," and they're measuring it by human techniques. No, the Word of God is what will build the church from inside out. It will grow numerically and it will also grow into the image of Christ this way. And yet, for all of that, there is a focus to the preaching: the focus is on Christ. Yes, he preached the whole counsel of God. Yes, it was the Word of God in its fullness. But you know who the Word of God in its fullness is? It is Christ. VI. Christ-Focus: “Christ in You, the Hope of Glory” (verse 26-27) And so in the end, we need to teach the 66 books of the Bible. Yes, we need the stuff in Leviticus, but we need to find Christ in Leviticus. Amen? We need to know where He is in all of those offerings, and all of those washings, and all that cleanness and uncleanness. We need to know where Christ is in all of it. We proclaim Christ. Look what it says in verses 26, 27 and on. It says, "The mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. We proclaim Him." Yes, there is a breadth to a healthy preaching and teaching ministry in a local church, but there is a laser-like focus on Christ in all of it. We proclaim Him. And why? Because it is Christ in us, the hope of glory, and how mysterious is that, friends? This infinite God, this image of the invisible God, the one by whose word the cosmos existed and have their being, this one can live within our own hearts. He can dwell within us by faith. We proclaim Him and the unveiling of a great mystery that Gentiles, we Gentiles, can actually be sharers together with the Jews in one great, new people called Christians. One new man, focused on Christ, trusting in Christ, forgiven. We are new creations, aren't we? And a new creation existing with Christ in our hearts. Oh, is that an awesome thing, that by Christ, the triune God would actually live within a human heart, would live within us. We are the temple of the living God. And it speaks there of the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do you realize how wealthy you are? You may be a poor student. You may be struggling to make ends meet. You may be having trouble paying your bills. There may be some hidden aspects to your financial struggles that nobody knows about. God knows. But if you're a Christian, you are infinitely wealthy. The immense riches that are yours, Christ in you, the hope of glory. Do you know what that means? That you will see glory, you will see it with your own eyes. You will see God in the face and not be consumed. You will see the new Heaven and the new Earth; you will see it with your own eyes. You will walk the perfect streets and you will see things you can't even describe. I couldn't describe them. You will see glory, but more than that, you will be glory. And if you are not, you can't be there. You will be glorious. God will make you glorious. Christ in you is the hope of all of that, the hope of glory, and that's what we proclaim. We proclaim Him. Now, what does that mean, "We proclaim Him?" Well, you know Spurgeon’s story when he was teaching young pastors about preaching? (And I keep this in front of me frequently.) He told the story of an old pastor who listened to a young man preaching one of his first sermons and the young man said, "How did you like it?" And he said, "I didn't like it at all." “Well, why don't you tell the truth?” But you need people that will tell you the truth. The young man said, "Well, why didn't you like it?" He said, "There wasn't any Christ in it." He said, "But I didn't find Christ in the passage." And he said, "Don't you know, my boy, that in every town, and village, and hamlet in England, there's a road that leads to London? Find it." In every text, there's a road that leads to Christ, find it. He said, "But what if Christ isn't even mentioned in the text? What if he's not there?" He said, "Then go over a hedge or ditch, but find Him. Get to Christ." Now, friends, there'll be no point in me preaching a sermon like this, talking about ministry, about Jesus in general, and forget that there may be some that are here today, brought by the providence of God, who are not Christians yet. You are listening to me now in a Christ-less state; you are not ready for judgment day. The wrath of God is on you now, and if you were to die, you would know what that meant immediately. You are not ready to give an account for every careless word spoken and you are not ready for death. But you can be. It is this simple: You don't have to do any great good works. You just have to hear what I'm saying now, and believe that God sent His Son, and His Son shed His blood on the cross, and by that, the wrath of God can be fully atoned for, fully appeased, for anyone who simply trusts in Christ. Do you hear what I'm saying? Do you believe it? That God didn't leave Him dead on the cross, but He raised Him from the dead on the third day? And that if you believe all of that, you will be saved? Trust in Him now. I believe that every week God brings someone into this place who is not saved. Trust in Him. "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone." VII. A Shepherding Heart (verse 28) And this brings us to a shepherding heart. "Admonishing, teaching everyone with all wisdom." God has done a wonderful work in this church in the last two years, in raising up the beginnings of a really wonderful counseling ministry. My yearning and my prayer, I've prayed a lot about this in the last two weeks, is that God would lead us to continue to grow, and that God would raise up more laborers for this abundant harvest field. Do you know how messed up non-Christian's lives are because of sin and how much they need the truth of the Word of God? Even Christians struggle with being messed up because of sin. And we need to hear the Word of God too, don't we? God has raised up a wonderful counseling ministry. We had Randy Patten in the summer; he's the President of NANC, National Association of Nouthetic Counseling. The word 'nouthetic,' comes from a Greek word 'noutheteos,' right in our text here today. "We proclaim Him, admonishing." Now, it was Jay Adams in Competent to Counsel, who taught us what this nouthetic counseling is. Basically, what it is, is taking the Word of God, and going to an individual who is struggling with sin, and warning, and admonishing, and working with him, so that they give up the sin, repent, and come to a healthy relationship with Christ. And it is done gently, it is done with humility. It is done taking the log out of your eye first. It is done with a recognition that the roles could be reversed in two or three months, but it needs to be done. And so Paul says, "This is a shepherding ministry." We care about what's going on. We admonish with all wisdom, not in a coarse, crude, prideful, harsh way. How do you take something out of somebody's eye? Do you want somebody to take something out of your eye? There's a twitch mechanism. You have to come gently and you need to have built some trust. When I touch my little baby's face she doesn't flinch, she just knows. But if somebody she didn't know comes, she is going to pull back, and so there's a way to do it. But this is a shepherding ministry. "We proclaim Him, admonishing and also teaching everyone with all wisdom." The teaching aspect of the ministry, every precept, every little block of truth; you've heard a lot of them already today, not just in my sermon, but in Bible for Life. And every true statement, every true doctrine is like a brick of truth that God uses to erect a whole lavish city of truth inside your heart. It takes time, but this teaching ministry builds up a worldview of truth, out of which you will live your life. And that's a shepherding ministry that must continue. "We proclaim Him, admonishing." Dealing with people and their sin truthfully and teaching everyone with all wisdom, as they need it. VIII. A Clear Goal: Maturity in Christ (verse 28) And the clear goal of all of this is in verse 28, "So that we may present everyone perfect in Christ." Perfect in Christ. Now, I don't believe in perfectionism. Perfectionism is basically the idea that you can be sinless and perfect in this age, in this present age. I don't think it's true. I know it's not true. Romans 7 speaks of a deep and bitter struggle with sin, and we will not be perfect in this world. But we can walk in the light as He is in the light and at the same time the blood of Christ cleanses us in an ongoing way from all sin. But the goal here is, we're not satisfied with where we are. How many of you are satisfied? Don't raise your hands, but are you satisfied with where you are at in your Christian growth? You've arrived? You're done? Well, this isn't a good church for you, because we're all about the journey here, the infinite journey, the one you haven't reached yet. And what that means, is that you will not arrive at perfect Christ-likeness in this life. So the goal of ministry, the goal of this kind of a ministry, is to present everyone perfect in Christ. The idea is that, if you have a ministry, you are presenting your workmanship to God, saying, "This is what I did." And so you're presenting, in effect, people, and saying, "We want to present people perfect in Christ, and we're going to pray, and we're going to cry, and teach, and admonish, and we're going to do all of these things toward this end, that you might be perfect in Christ, and we're not going to stop until that happens." But only Christ will finish it. You know that. He is the only one that can. He is the only one that can glorify us, and so that's the completion of our ministry, but we labor toward it. And along the way, as we aim for perfection, we're going to hit maturity. Spiritually mature men and women, and they will be like rocks, like pillars, on which God builds an ongoing work. And so that's our goal. There's a focus, a clear goal. IX. Sustainable Labor with Christ (verse 29) Finally, Verse 29, "To this end, I labor, struggling with all His energy, that so powerfully works in me." I was thinking about the martyrs, the blood of martyrs, a seed for the church, thinking about suffering, reading martyrs stories and all that, and it seems somewhat removed from my life. Now, I think it is wonderful that God has brought to us, and continues to bring to us, people who have a missionary call. And they're going to follow and obey that call, and I may be talking to someone, a young man or a young woman, or maybe older and you may end up being slaughtered for Christ. You may die as a martyr for Jesus. It's possible. It doesn't happen a lot, but it is possible. It is good to know the theology of that kind of suffering, and know how Paul rejoices in it, and how God will honor it, and how it is a glorious thing to not love your life so much as to shrink from death. But I think most of us American Christians are called to a different kind of suffering of two types: Suffering for personal holiness and suffering to labor in Gospel ministry. Despite all the inducements to a self-serving, entertainment-soaked, selfish, lazy way of life, that we would, instead of that labor for Christ and for His Kingdom. Labor like Paul. Look what he says, "To this end, I labor." 'Kopiao,' it means to work to the point of exhaustion. Struggling is 'agónizomai,' like in agony, wrestling against an opponent, "With all His energy, which so powerfully works in me." I think the reason we hold back from pouring ourselves out in labor, is we are afraid. We are afraid that there will not be a sustainable, renewable energy source to keep us going. We don't want to be exhausted. And that's so sad because people who lose that fear, and just go for it, find the power of Christ in them, like Paul did in him. "We proclaim Him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, in order that we might present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all His energy, which so powerfully works in me." Just look at the sun today. Just look at it. Now, there is a renewable, sustainable energy source for you. We're looking for one. I don't know how long petroleum's going to last, but there's the sun. I'm not talking here about solar energy. I'm just talking about the sun as an example of what God can do. Do you realize that, if you took the gross national product of the United States of America, (we heard this on a tape or a DVD, speaking about the greatness of God in the cosmos) if you took the gross national product of the United States of America and invested it completely in energy production for the next 100,000 years, it would be less than the energy put out by the sun in one second. Are you telling me God can't keep you going for the next 40 to 50 years of faithful service to Christ? He can. Test Him. Try it. Look at what the Apostle Paul did, hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger. I think his schedule was like this: When he was working as a tent maker, during the day, he preached to unbelievers. In the evening, he ministered to Christians, teaching them, and preparing them. In the late night, he sewed tents to support he and his fellow workers. That was his life. And so he speaks frequently about his work. He says in Acts 20, "You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work, we must help the weak." 1 Corinthians 4:12, "We work hard with our own hands." 1 Thessalonians 2:9, "Surely, you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship; We worked night and day, in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the Gospel of God to you." But here we are. We coddle ourselves, we comfort ourselves, and we entertain ourselves. We don't work hard for Christ. Now the quickest thing to do is to go find some solution ourselves and bring it to Christ. That's not it. Go to Christ and say, "This is who I am. This is the way I'm really living. I actually don't have a ministry, or if I do, I'm not really laboring at it to the point of exhaustion. I'm not really focused on ministry. I don't have a ministry. I'm not really laboring at it the way Paul did. Forgive me, Lord. And then work within me the kind of energy it will take to get my priorities straight, and to start living the kind of life you want me to live." I've already done that. I'm going to keep doing it. Paul challenges me. And I feel like, "Oh, how sweet it will be when, five years from now, people say, 'You know, I don't know what it was, maybe around the time of Colossians, some other time, God worked in me and he gave me a ministry. And over the last five years, I've really felt poured out in that ministry. And look at the fruit.' " And I don't know what it's going to be. Evangelistic fruit? Wonderful. Let's see it happen. But it could be all kinds of spiritual gift ministries. This is the labor that Paul, that God is calling us to. X. Applications By way of application, can you begin just by praying that this kind of eightfold ministry would happen here at this church? Pray for me, that I would be this kind of a pastor. Pray for Andy Winn, for Eric. Pray also for our spiritual leaders, who are not vocational ministers, but are called to ministry, that they would minister like this. Keep going. Pray for yourself, that you would minister like this. Pray that God would give you a ministry, an identifiable, clear ministry, and that you would labor in it like this. Pray that God would raise up fruit in your life. Concerning suffering, you may be going through some great suffering right now, just know that there's a purpose in it. Know that there's no suffering that happens, that's not coming to you, except through the hands of God. And just know that God is, in effect, putting you on display. Suffer with great joy. And I want to finish with joy. Canary in the coal mine, what an image. How's your joy? Is it where it needs to be? And if it's not, go to the Lord this afternoon in prayer, and say, "Lord, what is the joy thief in my life?" Maybe it's that you don't have a ministry and you're not serving Christ. You've tasted the world, and it's not satisfying to you, and you're not happy. It's because you've built your house on sand-or just a wing of your house anyway. Let God crush that wing, and get back to building on Christ, and on His words. Maybe there is sin in your life. Confess it to Him. Confess it. Let Him work in you. He is a gracious God. This is the kind of ministry, not only that God wants to work through you, but He wants to work to you. Let Him do it.