Final pledge read after Lord's Supper, is not included here.
Immanuel Sermon Audio
Treasuring
an outline this morning in the bulletin if you like to follow along there. I hope that when you think about a manual Baptist church it is not just a structure or a building in your mind. I hope that when you think about a manual Baptist church it's not just an activity or just another organization or something akin to a support group or a civic group, but I hope that when you think about a manual Baptist church on some level you feel like this is your home, you feel like this is your family. And I think for that to be true in your life and in my life we really have to understand and be clear about why we are here and what we're doing here and what it actually means to be a church member. And so we're going to wrap up this series this morning, but so far we've spent five weeks talking about what does it mean to be part of a church, what does it mean to be part of this church. We've talked about being a functioning church member, somebody who uses your gifts and your abilities for the good of this church and for the glory of God. We've talked about being a praying church member, who should you pray for and how should you pray. We've talked about it's more than just the sick list and those who are not feeling well, there's so much more to it than that. We talked about being a deferring church member, somebody who refuses to let your personal preferences control and rule your church experience and then on the flip side of that we talked about being a unifying church member, somebody who guards your mouth and your heart so that you don't cause division in your church. Last week we talked about being a leading church member, what that looks like for leading your kids, what that looks like for leading your grandkids. If you don't have kids or grandkids or you don't have them here, what that looks like for leading the next generation at a manual Baptist church. And this morning is sort of the capstone, it's the culmination of all of these things. We're going to talk about what does it mean to be a treasuring church member. What does it mean to treasure your membership at, since we're here this morning, a manual Baptist church. I want to put a picture up on the screen. This picture is two of my all time favorite people. That is Mimi and Joe and they live in Amarillo and that is my mom's parents and these pictures were taken at my sister's wedding and we danced and we're Baptists and it was okay. So it was fun. But there they were dancing and great people. And when I think about Mimi and Joe, one of the first things that comes into my mind is golf. They love to play golf. They absolutely love to play golf. And as they've gotten a little bit older, they're not able to play as much as they like, but they play golf any time the course is open and any time they can get out there, the first ones to show up, they love it. And as long as I can remember in Amarillo, they've had a membership at the municipal courses. And so how that works in Amarillo, there's three or four municipal courses and you pay the city, write them a check once a year and then you can go as much as you want to any of the municipal courses in town and play golf. And so they've always done that and always made sure they got their senior discount. They know how to pinch pennies. And then a couple years ago they realized, my grandma started crunching the numbers and she said, "It's actually cheaper if we join the country club than if we pay the money to pay the city for this municipal golf membership." And so they joined La Paloma Country Club in Amarillo. And I know that you don't know my grandparents, but you can look at them and you can sort of make a judgment based on their age and their generation. And I told you they love to play golf. What do you think would happen if they went out to La Paloma this week and they show up early and they're ready to play golf and they play a nice round of golf and they get done. They're ready to eat a hamburger and the waitress at the clubhouse restaurant meets them at the front of the restaurant and says, "Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Lomis, we're glad you're here today. Hey, yeah, we had a nice round and we're ready to eat a hamburger." Great. We're glad you're here to eat. Just make your way on back to the kitchen and you'll find the ground beef back there and you know where the grill is. Just make yourself at home. If you need, you can't find anything, let me know. Just go back there and grill it up. What do you think my grandparents would say if they wake up Monday morning, they go out to play golf and they get out to La Paloma and the course has been bulldozed, links golf course bulldozed and replaced with soccer fields. And there's the club manager. He meets him in the parking lot. "Mr. and Mrs. Lomis, we're so glad you're here. We're not doing golf anymore. We're doing soccer. We want you to sign up for a team. You want to play men's only or you want to play co-ed, which one can I put you down for? But if they're out in the middle of a round Monday morning and they cross onto the back nine and they're about to finish up and they get buzzed over the loudspeaker." And the manager there at the club says, "Mr. and Mrs. Lomis, we need you to come in. We need you to please clean some golf carts. We're out. We've got a bunch of dirty ones. We need you to come in, spray them down, wipe them down, clean them up, get them ready for the next guys going out." My grandparents hear any of that. What's going to happen? They're going back to the municipal membership. They're going to the country club, Amarillo country club. They're going somewhere else. They're not going to pay their dues so that they can get privileges and benefits and then have those sort of expectations placed on top of them. It's insanity. No one would do that. I wouldn't do it. You wouldn't do it. My grandparents won't do it. Here's the tragedy. That's fine for country clubs. That exact mentality has landed in our churches. And I'm not saying you individually or this way, but I'm just talking about church in the United States of America. We think of it like we think a country club. We think, "I pay my dues. I deserve certain privileges. And maybe for you, the dues are a check that you put in the offering box on your way in or your way out of worship. Maybe you think of that as your dues." Maybe you think of your dues as service in the church. Maybe you've taught a Sunday school class or you've been involved in children's ministry or youth ministry for decades and you say, "Man, I have paid my dues. I have done my duty at this church." Maybe you just feel like showing up is paying your dues. I'm here. You have worship. I'm here. You have Sunday school. I'm here. You have a fellowship. I'll show up. You get together for that. I'm a part. I'm participating. I'm in. I'm paying my dues. But here's what happens in the United States of America. We are so consumeristic. We feel like in the church, if we pay our dues, we're entitled to certain things. We're entitled to music and programs and activities and schedules and calendars that fit us. We expect that. And we don't expect to necessarily do a lot of heavy lifting around this place. We've paid our dues and we pay other people to do some of that heavy lifting. Don't expect me to do that heavy lifting. And then what happens in the United States is when we feel like we're not getting our dues worth, our money's worth, our service worth, it's not suiting us exactly right. We say what? I'll just go down the street. There's someone down the street that I'll just go and be a part of them. That's the exact opposite of the video we just watched. You don't get to do that in a God-honoring world. You don't get to do that with your family. Your family is your family and you stick together through thick and thin. And what I want you to understand is that your church is your family and you stick together through thick and thin and you don't need to look at it as something that you're paying dues to get benefits and privileges, but you look at it as something that you treasure. Church membership ought to be something that you treasure. And we're going to build this morning from very basic truths up to some hard to wrap your mind around truths, but we're going to give you four passages from the Bible, four biblical truths that help you understand what does it mean for me to be a treasuring church member, someone who treasures the fact that I get to be part of a manual Baptist church. So take your Bible out, find the book of Ephesians in the New Testament, Ephesians chapter 2. The first thing I want you to see from Ephesians is that salvation is a gift, and we've got to nail this down. We've got to be clear. We've got to understand this. Salvation is a gift. Paul says this in Ephesians 2, verse 8 and 9. He says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one may boast." And I want you to look at that little phrase at the end of verse 8 where it says, "It is the gift of God." Bible scholars debate this verse a little bit, and they talk about the word "it" and the word "gift," and they ask this question, "What is it? What is the gift?" And some people look at this and they say, "Well, the gift is grace." And some people look at this and say, "No, the gift is faith." That's what the "it" is, "it" and "gift" is talking about faith. Some people look at it and say, "No," the whole thing is talking about salvation. This is how you're saved, saved through faith. Salvation is the "it." It's the gift. Can I let you in on a secret? The answer is yes. The salvation, the grace, the faith, all of it is a gift from God. It is not something that you work for, it is not something that you earn, it's not something that you merit or reach a certain status and now you deserve it. It is all. The salvation, the grace, the faith, all of it is a gift from God to you. You've got to drill that into your mind and I have to drill that in your mind. You know why? We're hardwired because of sin. When we show up on this earth, we feel like and we think and we believe in the depths of who we are that we have to do something to achieve our spiritual goals. Everyone thinks this. It doesn't matter what country you live in, it doesn't matter what religion you're a part of. We show up in default mode for us is, "I need to do something to achieve X, Y, and Z my spiritual goals." And so the Muslim man or woman says, "I'm trying to do more good than bad so that at the end of the day, the scale tips, even if it's just a little bit, I just need it to tip in my favor if I just do more good than bad." And the Hindu person says what, drastically, completely different religion, but he says, "Look, I need to live a certain way now so that I can escape this cycle of reincarnation. I don't want to be born over and over and over again forever. I want to be part of the eternal, the infinite, and so I need to live a certain way now so that I can work my way up this ladder and I can be done with this cycle of rebirth." Different goal, same strategy. I need to do some stuff. What does the Buddhist say? The Buddhist wants to be part of the nothing, right? The Hindu says you want to be like a drop being absorbed into the ocean, whatever that means. The Buddhist says you want to be like a candle that just gets blown out. That sounds exciting. I just want to be this candle that gets blown out into nothing. How do you become that candle that gets blown out? Who's going to blow you out? Well, you have to follow the eightfold path. You have to do one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. You do these things and then you get to be that candle, but you've got to do it. What about the animistic peoples, pagan peoples? Some people may say they're primitive peoples who believe in demons and spirits and powers behind every bush and they're offering all sorts of sacrifices and crazy stuff that we think is ridiculous. It's the exact same thing. They have spiritual goals out there. They want to control the forces around them and they think, "I need to do something to control the spiritual world around me. The Muslim. I've got to do. The Hindu. I've got to do. The animist. I've got to do." What a tragedy that so many people who call themselves Christians just get in line with this nonsense, "I've got to do. I've got to do. I've got to do." And Paul says right here, "Listen, for by grace you have been saved through faith and it is not your own doing. It's the gift of God. It is not the result of works so that no one may boast." Here's what the Bible says. If you go back up a few verses to Ephesians 2, 1, the Bible says you have done quite enough. You've sinned. You've fallen short of God's glory. You've separated yourself from a relationship with God and there's nothing more you can do to fix it. You've done enough. And what needs to be done is not done by you but it's done by Jesus Christ on the cross. When He lives a life of perfect obedience and He dies the death of a sinner for you in your place, taking your punishment, taking the wrath of God that should have fallen on you so that you can be brought back into a relationship with God. And Paul says all of that what Jesus did is applied to your life by God's grace through your faith in Jesus and all of it. The salvation, what Jesus did, the faith, the grace, all of it from beginning to end is a gift that God gives you. You don't get it because you've done anything but sin. Salvation is a gift. You've got to nail that down. If you miss that, you will never understand what it means to be part of a church ever. Let's build on that idea. Look with me at Matthew 20 and the idea I want you to see in Matthew 20 is this. Jesus saves sinners and He transforms sinners. Matthew 20. This is Jesus talking to His disciples to the Twelve Apostles and they've been arguing about who's the greatest, who's going to be in charge, who's going to be the boss. In Matthew 20, look at verse 26, 27 and 28, Jesus says, "It's not going to be this way among you. Whoever would be great among you must be your servant. Whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many." In Matthew 20, verse 28 is the equivalent to what we've been talking about in the Gospel of Luke, Luke 19, 10. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. Matthew 20, 28, the parallel. The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many. I have come to serve you, to give my life as a ransom, as a payment for yours. And here's the deal fellas, Jesus talking to His buddies. Because I've done that, not only am I going to save you, that's what I came to do, but I'm going to transform you and I'm going to change you and you're not going to think like the world thinks and you're not going to treat each other like the world treats each other and you're not going to act like the world acts. Listen, the greatest is going to be the least. The most important is going to be the servant. Jesus is saying, "Yes, I came to save you but also came to transform you." Again, can I just tell you that we don't show up with this mentality of service? We show up with a mentality of it's all about me. And can I tell you just from my observation, I haven't observed as much life as some of you have and I've observed more life than some of you have. But here's my observation about who thinks life is all about them. Are you ready? Toddlers. It's all about them. Hard school kids. It's all about them. Teenagers. It's all about them. Young adults. It's all about them. I'm running out of stage. Take a little step. Growing adults, middle aged adults, and one last step, I got room for one more. Senior citizens. There's two things that's all about them. That's us. And it's funny to watch some of you when I picked on some of those other groups. Uh-huh. Toddlers. They're the worst. Teenagers. They're the worst. And then all the young people, when I'm down there, mm-hmm, yeah. Those old people, they're the worst. We are the worst because we think it's all about us. Here's the good news of the gospel of Jesus. Are you ready? Jesus came to save you from hell. And he did that by not coming to be served, but coming to serve and to give his life as a ransom for yours. Here's the next part of the good news. Jesus also came to save you from yourself and from your selfishness and from a small inwardly focused life that is all about you. He came to free you from that so that you could understand that's not greatness. This is being the servant, being first means being last. Jesus came to save sinners and he also came to transform sinners. Now here's the next idea. Flip back a page to Matthew 16. I want you to understand that church membership is a privilege. It's not a right. It's a privilege being a part of a church is a privilege. Look what Jesus said in Matthew 16, Jesus and his disciples are talking and he wants to know who do you guys think that I am and Peter speaks up. You know the passage. Peter says you're the Christ, you're the Son of the living God. Jesus says, yes, you're right. God has revealed this to you. And look what we read in Matthew 16, 18. I tell you you were Peter and on this rock I, it's red letters, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. You guys are smart people looking at verse 18, who is going to build the church? Jesus. John Peter, he's a foundation, the apostles are the foundation, the apostles and the prophets, the foundation. Jesus says I am going to build it and who owns it? I will build what's the next pronoun? My church, Jesus speaking, I'm going to build it and it belongs to me. It's not yours. It's not this generations. It's not the founding members. It's not the new members. It is not your church and I know I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth. On the one side I told you at the beginning, I want you to feel like this is your church, your home, your family, but I also want you to understand it's not yours. You don't own it. Jesus owns it and flip over to the book of Acts, an amazing verse in Acts 20 that explains very clearly why Jesus owns the church. In Acts 20 Paul is giving instructions to the pastors in Ephesus and they're talking before they separate and look what Paul tells them in Acts 20 verse 28, I think a church membership is a privilege, Acts 20, 28. Pay careful attention to yourselves, talking to the leaders of this church, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, all the church in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers or pastors or elders. So pay attention to yourself, pay attention to the flock. The Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood. That's why it's his. He bought it. He shed his blood on the cross to buy the church. It belongs to him. It's not mine. It's not the elders. It's not the deacons. It's not the founding members. It's not any of you. Jesus owns it and him letting you be part of his church is a privilege. You don't deserve to be part of it. Salvation is a gift. You've done nothing to earn that. Now that you've received this gift, he's in the process of changing you and transforming you, and he has given you the privilege of being part of his church. When you get that backwards, when you don't get that at all, church becomes turned in on you. You begin to think, I'm here for me. I'm here so that I can hear a good sermon. I'm here so that I can see my friends. I'm here for me. It's all about me. It's not all about you. Everything here is a privilege that God has extended to you. The last thing I want you to see is this, and this is the one that really makes my head spin a little bit. Back in the book of Ephesians, chapter 3, Ephesians 3, Paul tells us in this two or three verses here that God is making his wisdom known through the church, and this is a big deal when you read what Paul has to say. Ephesians 3, start with me in verse 7. Paul says, "If this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift." There it is. The idea of a gift. "I was made a minister of the gospel according to the gift of God's grace, which was given to me by the working of his power." To me, Paul, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, again he's thinking about a gift, this gift was given to me. Grace was given to me to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. That's what God has called me to do, to take the gospel to the Gentiles, to those who were formerly excluded from God's covenant community, and to say, "Because of what Jesus has done, the way has been made open for you to come and to be a part." It's a gift that I get to do this. It's a gift of God's grace that I get to do this. Verse 9, "I'm to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things." There's a mystery in God the Creator, and this mystery has been perplexing people and confusing people since all the way from the beginning. This God who created all things has only been dealing with this one ethnic group of people, the Jewish people, and there's a mystery in this because he keeps telling these Jewish people that one day the Gentiles will come in. One day the Gentiles will come, but we don't understand it. It's a mystery. And Paul says, "My job is to take this grace, this gift that God has given me, to go preach to these Gentiles and to explain the mystery." And here's the mystery that through the church, verse 10, through the church, Jew, Gentile, all those in Christ, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God is now being made known to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. You can go look at Ephesians 6. When Paul talks about rulers and authorities, he's talking about God's enemies in the spiritual places. Satan in the demons is what he's talking about. This blows my mind. Paul says, "In eternity past, God had a plan to make his wisdom known to his enemies, to make his wisdom known to Satan in the demons." And it's been a mystery. We haven't understood exactly what he's doing, but now that Jesus has come, we understand. And through the church that you and I are privileged to be a part of, through the church, God is making his wisdom known to his enemies. When you are part of the church of Jesus Christ, you become part of God's plan from eternity past to show his wisdom to his enemies. If that's not cool, I don't know what cool is. From eternity past, you get to be part of the plan to proclaim the wisdom of God to his enemies. You say, "Well, what do we have to do? How do we proclaim the wisdom?" You just be the church. You just come. You just serve. You just do all the things that we've been talking about. When you are a part of the church, God is making his wisdom known to his enemies through you. God makes his wisdom known through the church. I wonder about some of us, and I wonder how you normally think about church. I wonder for some of you if it's a habit. It's just a habit. We just do it every week. I don't really know why we do it. Some weeks I don't really want to do it, but it's just a habit. We have the habit of going. I wonder if for some of you it's an obligation. You feel guilty if you don't come. You feel like, "Well, I guess I'm supposed to be there. I guess I have to be there." I wonder if for some of you if it's just a lack of options. Let's be honest, there's not a lot going on most places Sunday mornings. What else am I going to do? The games aren't on yet, days just getting, I guess we could just go, we've got nothing else to do. I don't know why you come to church, or how you think about church, or what your first thought is when you think about church, but here's what Paul is saying. It is such a privilege to be part of the church. You're part of God's plan from eternity past to make his wisdom known to his enemies, and to declare to those who have rebelled against him and hardened their hearts against him, "I'm right, and you made a stupid decision in turning against me, and here I'm going to show it to you through the church, and it declares God's wisdom to his enemies." It was somewhat up like this. What does it mean to be a treasuring church member? It means regularly reminding yourself that church membership is a gift that was bought with the blood of Jesus Christ. Being a part of the church is a gift that God gave you, and it's a gift that Jesus bought that he purchased with his blood. Any of you guys ever been to Arkansas and been to the crater of Diamond State Park? Anybody ever been there? A few of you have been there. You go to this place, and it's a state park called Crater of Diamond State Park, and you go in and you pay a couple of bucks, five, ten bucks, adult fee, kid fee, whatever, and you get in, and they've got a bunch of diamonds in this park. Now they're just not sitting out for the taking, they're in the ground, but you pay admission to the park, and then you can hunt for diamonds, and if you find a diamond while you're there, you get to keep it. There was a new story just a couple of weeks ago about a guy who went an older gentleman, found a two-carat yellow diamond in the park, which that's pretty impressive, but here's a better story. I read about a kid named Michael Detlaff. Michael Detlaff is 12 years old, and he went with his parents on family vacation, and I've never been to the park, but apparently there's a place where you can rent mining equipment, whatever you would use to mine for diamonds at the park. You can rent the stuff, and Michael's dad is in line to rent the stuff, right? He's about to shell out another 10, 20, 30 bucks, whatever to get the stuff for the family, and Michael's walking around the cabin where they're renting the stuff, and he bends down and he picks up a 5.16-carat brown diamond. He says, "Dad, is this a diamond?" That says, "I think we don't need the mining equipment." 5.16-carat, just found it, 5 bucks admission, so he's out 5 bucks, but this is what he gets in exchange. I mean, what a cool story, right? Kid goes on vacation and 12 years old, so he's probably not all that excited about what his parents are dragging him to do, and he's probably trying to act like he doesn't care and sulk, and you know how teenagers are, they're right here in the middle somewhere, and so he's acting like that, thinking it's all about him, and he bends down and picks up this. What a treasure to just pick up off the ground, didn't work for it, didn't earn it, just a treasure that he happened to come across. My guess is that as cool as the story is and as cool as that rock is, he sells it. Don't you think? What was a kid going to do with a rock like that? My money is on, he sells it. He decides when he turns 16, "I need a car," and I would rather have a car than this rock. Or he decides, "I need to go to college, and I need to pay some tuition money," or he decides, "I want to put a down payment on a house," or, "I want to take a vacation," or whatever. My money says the time comes where he takes that treasure and he liquidates it for something else. And I hope you understand that when I say to you, "The church is something to be treasured," I'm not talking about a rock you pick off the ground in Arkansas, right? Depending on your perspective, you can upgrade the rock to something you can really use, something of true value, something of practical value. You're not going to find an upgrade for the church. You're not going to find anything you can trade it in for that you will treasure more when you really understand what it means to be part of a church. And this morning, when we celebrate the Lord's Supper, which we're going to do in just a minute, we are reminding ourselves that being a part of the church is a treasure. I'm going to ask our deacons and our elders to make their way to the back. I'm going to ask our band to come up to the front as we get ready to take the Lord's Supper, and I just want you to listen to me for a second. A lot of the time we take the Lord's Supper and we focus exclusively on the individual aspect of it, right? So this morning, we take the Lord's Supper, we're inviting you, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you've obeyed His command to be baptized, we're inviting you to participate with us. And sometimes when we take the Lord's Supper, we make it all about us in Jesus, and it's very individualistic, and it's all about what Jesus did for me. And there's truth to that. And as you take the bread this morning and as you take the juice, I hope you think about that, and I hope you understand that you do need to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. You do need to trust in Him and receive this gift that God has offered you. But also hope that you reflect on the fact that when we take the Lord's Supper, we do it together. You don't do this on your lunch break on Thursday in the break room all by yourself. That can be you and Jesus, but it's not the Lord's Supper. And when we take the Lord's Supper, one of the things that we're reminding ourselves is that Jesus died not just for me, but for us. He died to purchase the church. He shed His blood to buy us. And so as we take the Lord's Supper this morning, I hope you will reflect on that. Yes, you need to think about your personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but we do this as a church family, and we do this acknowledging that Jesus shed His blood to purchase us. You bow and I'll pray. Father, we love you. We have a privilege to take of the bread and the juice this morning and to think about what you have done on our behalf through Jesus. Father, we are unworthy. Our contribution to this whole thing is sin. And every other good thing that we have is a gift from you. It's a gift that Jesus purchased for us at the cross. And so this morning we want to think individually about our relationship with you, but we also want to think corporately about our relationship with you. Father, be honored as we worship, be honored as we reflect on the body of Jesus that was broken for our sins, be honored as we think about the cup that was poured out, the blood of Christ that was spilled to purchase us. Father, we love you, we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. (gentle music)