The Pillar of Service

[00:00:00] Usually it's our practice as a church to study through a large section of the Bible, even a book of the Bible on Sunday mornings. We've taken a little break from that to start the year. And we're looking at this, what we're calling the pillars of community church. But really this, where that comes from is this idea that as a church, we believe, you know, it's, we're elder led church, but we believe as elders that, that we really are following the direction of our lead pastor, our lead shepherd, Jesus.

And, uh, we're under shepherds to him. We seek to be faithful. And so we spend time really trying to study his word and to try to say, Hey God, where, what are you calling us to? Um, a number of years ago we got together and we, based on a study of God's word, we formulated a mission statement that we'd kind of sums up what we feel that God has called us to be as a church in our community, our mission is to know Christ, his life changing power, and to make him known and all that that means.

That kind of sums up a lot of ideas. Uh, but we felt there was a need to express that more deeply and so we've spent time, we developed a [00:01:00] list of core values and, and it's a longer statement where it really talks about these are the things that are distinct that we feel that God has called us to as a church.

And, and they're developed in a way that they actually, um, they shape what the decisions we make. We hold ourselves accountable as we seek to be faithful to each one of them. And what we've done is we've taken these core values and we kind of condensed them down to these seven pillars of the church foundational ideas that we feel that God has called us to be as a church.

And you heard them listed just a moment ago in the video, you know, they are as a church. We feel that we want to be a people where we worship together, we pray, we fellowship, we testify, we disciple, we forgive and we serve. And we're looking at these in the series, one of these each week and looking at a scripture.

And we're saying, okay, this is what God has called us to do. This is what it looks like. Even to define this more, you know, part of the great commandment is to love our God with all our heart and soul and strength and might to love our neighbors herself. And, and as this taking the [00:02:00] example of this pillar of service.

You know, as an expression of our love for God, God has called us to work for the benefit of God's global kingdom and his church using the talents and abilities that God has given us. But God's also called us to serve loving other people. And that means that we work to care for the physical, financial and emotional needs of our fellow disciples.

And then also to those in our local area to guide them to the fulfillment of their deeper spiritual need. And so, so we're going to look at this pillar of service this week. And, and I'm going to focus primarily on the book of Nehemiah. And now for those that might know the book of Nehemiah, it's a long book.

We're not going to read the whole thing to start the service. Uh, you know, I'm going to just kind of sum up kind of the big themes of Nehemiah. Uh, but it's, it's the, if you want to turn in your Bibles, the Bible in front of you there, it's on page 398 to 409. But before I begin, let me open in a word of prayer.

Father, I thank you for the privilege that we do have to come together this morning, father, to worship you, to enjoy your presence. Father, now dive into your word. Thank you [00:03:00] for the things that you continue to teach me. And father, I pray that your spirit would speak through me. And in spite of me, father, you help each one of us to have hearts that are open to hear what you have for us father, that we would respond to your call in our own personal lives.

I pray your blessing in Jesus name. Amen. Now for some of us, we look at Nehemiah and we say, well, it's not a book that we most of us study a whole lot. Some might be familiar with the story of Nehemiah. Some might be sitting there saying, I didn't know there was a book of Nehemiah in the Bible. And, uh, so, so I feel like I need to start by giving an overview of the book.

And then we're going to, from that overview, take a couple of main ideas, key principles that I think are taught there. And so if we start with the overview, the overview is kind of seeing even the context of the book and the context was one of seemingly impossible challenges. Now, I'm going to go a little different here.

I'm going to go historical. Okay. So, so we got to look at the historical context. And, uh, I'm going to start all the way back in ancient biblical [00:04:00] history in 586 BC. That's when the Babylonians attacked Jerusalem, completely destroyed Jerusalem, knocked down the walls, knocked down the temple, took the whole population.

Back to Babylon as captives, then at 539 BC, the Persian empire conquered the Babylonian empire and all the Jews who had been under Babylon suddenly found themselves under a new empire. But the Persian king was more benevolent and at 538, he issued a decree allowing the Jews to return back to their homeland.

And as a result, some 50, 000 Jews left Persia to go back to Jerusalem to try to rebuild not only the city, but more importantly for them, the temple. And that was important because their whole worship of God was centered around the idea of the promised land and specifically the temple. That's where, that's where God's presence was for them.

So now the story of Nehemiah picks up some 90 years later, 446, 90 years after that first group had left Persia to go back to the promised land. [00:05:00] Nehemiah was a Jew who had not gone back to the promised land. He was living in the capital of Persia. Again, that's the dominant, still the dominant empire at the time.

And he wasn't a prophet or a priest or some religious, religious, religious professional. He was the cupbearer for the king. His job was basically to taste the food and taste the wine and make sure it wasn't poisoned. Kind of a high risk job, but that was his job. And the theme of the book is the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

And again, as I mentioned, Jerusalem was important to the Jewish people, not only because it was their capital city, but it was because that's where the temple was. And so the rebuilding of Jerusalem wasn't just a political issue, it wasn't just even, you know, kind of building a city, it was about meeting a spiritual need.

Building a place, a safe place for God's people to unite. And to worship God. Now, in the beginning of the book, the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed for 141 years. And then the first chapter of Nehemiah, Nehemiah's brother, and some friends come [00:06:00] from, from Jerusalem to Persia. And, uh, and Nehemiah asked them to tell him what's going on in Jerusalem.

And they tell him that the city walls are still destroyed. There's incredible opposition. People are living under persecution. Uh, you know, that Pete, there's incredible, you know, um, incredibly difficult circumstances. And Nehemiah's response to this is overwhelming, and he weeps before God, he prays, and we're told that he prayed for four months, and during those four months, I, you know, at first it might have been, God, you need to fix this, and, but then over time he started to pray a little differently.

God, what do you want me to do? And in that four months, he sensed that God led him to say, okay, you're the guy that I want to step up and take the lead in fixing this. Now, remember, he's not some powerful guy. He's not a religious leader. He's not a politician. He's the cupbearer for the King. He's the guy that's there to make sure that the King isn't poisoned.

You know, you get, he dies first. And, um, and yet in spite of that, he realizes, okay, be asked the [00:07:00] cupbearer. I know the king personally, and he decided that God was calling him to use that position to make an incredibly audacious, audacious request. He goes to the king and he asked the king to reverse 13 years of political policy.

For 13 years, they, the policy you couldn't rebuild, uh, through the walls. He said, I want you to not only reverse that, but, but then he asked the king, make, give me a promotion and make me governor of the city. He asked the king to buy him a house. He asked the king to underwrite the whole project of rebuilding the walls of the city of Jerusalem.

And incredibly the king agrees. I mean, this is a miracle and this is an, is such an incredible ask. And yet the king agrees. Now, you look at that and you say, what in the world does that have to do with us in our time? I think even when we look at this, there's an incredible miracle. Do you think that God still works miracles in our day?

See, I think sometimes we can face the seemingly impossible, but at times I think we don't see God [00:08:00] do miracles because we assume he won't. And we don't ask. As James says, we have not because we ask not, but, but Nehemiah prayed and God does this amazing thing. The king gives him everything that he asks for.

And so he heads out to Jerusalem with the king's blessing. And then when he arrives in Jerusalem in chapter two, what he finds is that the people are incredibly discouraged and he challenges them to step forward. And the whole book then is about how Nehemiah led this discouraged group of people through all kinds of opposition, all kinds of threats, all kinds of violent opposition against them.

And he, and he, and he leads them to rebuild the city walls. So we read in Nehemiah six, So the wall was finished on the 25th day in the full, uh, in the month of Elul and 52 days. So the wall was done in 52 days. Now that's amazing. We're going to see even more of that as we just reflect on that. So then after the building of the wall, the second half of the book tells us about how he led the people back to Jerusalem to not only rebuild the city, but to [00:09:00] rebuild the culture.

You know, to re renew their commitment to God's word and to live out his values now, that's the overview But as we look at that overview I want to see a couple themes and the first theme is that we need to see God's perspective on the problem Now think about the people's perspective on the problem in Nehemiah's day It had been 140 years since Jerusalem had been destroyed.

It had been 90 years since a large group of Jews had returned. And for 90 years, they've made numerous efforts to try to rebuild the walls, to rebuild the city. And for 90 years, they failed miserably. For after 90 years, there was almost nothing to show for their efforts. And the people were discouraged.

They had all but given up hope and they were discouraged to the utmost degree. And then in chapter two, when we read the Nehemiah, Nehemiah gets to Jerusalem, what he does is he quietly walks around. He kind of assesses the situation, not only what the city looks like, where the people are at. And then we read in verse 17, he calls the [00:10:00] people together and look at what he tells them.

He said, you see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision. Now, when he says, do you see the trouble that we're in? Do you see drusoms and runes? He wasn't telling them something they didn't know.

It's not like they heard him and they stepped back and they're like, you know, I didn't notice it. The walls are under. Oh yeah, this is terrible. How did that happen? They knew that he wasn't informing them about anything. What he was doing is he was reminding them of God's perspective of the problem. And we see that especially with the next words.

He continues. And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good. And also the word that the king had spoken to me and they said, let us rise up and build. And so they strengthened their hands for the good work. So basically he's coming to them and he's saying, this is what the problem is.

But remember, this is God's city. This is a place that God intends to declare his glory and the current [00:11:00] destruction, the things that you see around us, this isn't the way that it should be. And he's saying, okay, God has already led this upon me and God has begun this blessing and the King said that the King has given us, you know, all these resources.

It's. But the problem was that the people living there had become so comfortable with the situation That they didn't notice it anymore. They didn't it didn't really bother them They they couldn't see that there was an alternative future. And again now you might be wondering well, that's an interesting historical story But what does it have to do with us with my life with our world?

And here's what we need to realize I think in a lot of ways God's message for us is the same as it was in him for Nehemiah's people in his day See just as the people in Nehemiah's day became used to spiritual defeat You So they couldn't even see an alternative future. In the same way, I think it is possible that we can get so used to the spiritual defeat and moral decline around us, and we see it as the norm.

It's not what we want, but it's kind of what we expect. You know, we can so caught, caught up in what it seems to [00:12:00] be the reality of the 21st century. The opposition we face, the spiritual moral decline that we're kind of almost comfortable with it. It's almost what we expect. And we're not shocked in a sense, but we don't realize, okay, God wants something different for the church.

See, I want to tell you, I believe that God wants something better. I, I look at scripture and I see when it talks about Matthew 16, you know, that God's calls us as the church, you know, so I'm going to establish the church and the gates of hell won't be able to stand against it. I believe that God still does miracles.

I believe that God still wants to see lives transformed and, and cultures transformed. Marriage is saved. I, and I don't want to settle for anything less than God's best. And I think that's what Nehemiah was telling the people of his day. And it's still the message that God has for us. You see, but Nehemiah doesn't just stop, stop with that divine perspective, the problem, but he calls people to action again, going back to verse [00:13:00] 17, come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.

And he says, okay, well, you know, this is the wrong situation and God's called me to do this. And we need to step out. And again, I really believe that in the same way that God calls us out, he calls us to be an influence in our culture. But you believe that? Well, the question is, how will God do that? And some of that is we need to not only have to see the problem, we need to see the perspective of the possible.

What does God want? Again, think of Nehemiah's perspective, of the people of Nehemiah's day. The walls of Jerusalem had been in ruins for 141 years. And he comes and he says, we can change that. I mean, that would be like us focusing on something that happened back 141 years ago would be 1884. That's the year that Grover Cleveland got elected for the first time.

It's the year the Washington Monument was dedicated. Or for 90 years, the Jewish people had been trying [00:14:00] to rebuild the walls for 90 years. Nothing had happened. They'd failed miserably. And it's like us coming back and saying 90 years ago, that's, that's 1935 in the middle of the great depression. Well, we've been trying to do this.

We've failed all this time, but God wants to do it. So the people in Nehemiah's day were discouraged. They had given up and they'd accepted this destroyed Jerusalem. Why? Because they can might be looking at it's all the ideas there, but it's a dream. It can never really happen. And then comes Nehemiah, he wasn't a priest, he wasn't a prophet, he wasn't a great religious leader, he was a normal guy.

But after months of prayer, he was able to see things from God's perspective. And he was able to see, yes, there's great opposition, but he was like any great hero of the Bible, focused not on the opposition, but on the incredible power of God, that God was greater than any opposition we may face. It wasn't just that he was an optimist.

It wasn't, you know, sometimes you get the optimism and it's like, Oh, we could do this and we don't see the problems. If you read the book, he saw the problems. He was [00:15:00] totally aware of the opposition. He was totally aware of that, but as he saw the strength and the organization of the opposition, he knew with great confidence that God was greater than any opposition that they may face.

And here's what I think we need to see in the same way. It's a sad fact as we can look at it and you can say, man, what has happened to our country? And it seems like we're in a moral and spiritual decline and we have over time, you know, that fewer people are attending church, especially post COVID. I mean, at church attendance has really taken a big dip and morally, you know, things that the Bible says is wrong, that That we all knew was wrong in our culture suddenly now are being celebrated.

And it's easy to look at this and to feel that culture has gone too far. The forces against us are too great. And, and we can talk about revival, but it's a dream, but is it something we actually could believe would ever happen? And I want to tell you, if we look at the direction of the country, if we look at all the forces that seemingly oppose us, it would be easy [00:16:00] to kind of talk the talk, but in practice we kind of retreat and we just hold on until Jesus comes back because we're convinced that the powers against us are greater than we are.

But we need to look at Nehemiah's example. And learn that we, if we focus on the opposition, we'll be overwhelmed, but we need to instead look at the overwhelming power of God. And if we do that, we will learn to have the confidence of Romans 8. If we, what shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Yes, there's a lot against us, but God is for us and then we will see that yes There's opposition that seemingly far stronger than we are But I love the promise of 1st John 4 when it says little children, you know speaking Okay, humbly understand we don't have this power You are from God and have overcome them for he who is in you is greater than he is in the world Yes, seemingly the world is greater than us But he who is in us is greater.

See, my friends, this is a message that is repeated countless times throughout the [00:17:00] Bible. Old and New Testament. One place in the New Testament that I love that is, that defines us, it's part of our mission, is in Matthew 28, the Great Commission. It's the defining challenge that God gives us in the foundation of the church.

Right before Jesus ascended into heaven, Jesus gave his followers the Great Commission. His commission to us as believers of how he wanted to us to invest our lives and look what he says, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.

And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age. Notice he doesn't say, go reach the world. How does he start it? All authority has been given, and heaven and earth has been given to me, and now I'm giving you that authority. And in that authority, go. And then what is the promise? Go make disciples of all nations.[00:18:00]

And, and what you're, you're not just stretch your ass, no, go change the culture so that disciples of all nations, so you change the world and think about it. Do you think the early disciples faced seemingly overwhelming opposition? Yeah. I mean, the early church in Acts chapter two, there were 120 people.

There were 120 in a culture that was so hostile to Jesus and his message. They had just killed Jesus publicly. And now God calls this little group and says, now go. What gave them the courage to do that? They saw the overwhelming opposition, but they were overwhelmed by the power of God. They had seen the resurrected Jesus and they're saying that resurrection Jesus who defeated death, sin and death.

Now he's given us that authority. He says, now go. And based on that, they said, okay, we're going to let God use us. And 120 people went out and God has used them to change the world. [00:19:00] Now, I want to admit at times like you, I can be discouraged by the moral and spiritual opposition in a sense that, that our walls of our nation seem to lie in ruin.

But we've got to look at that and say, are we discouraged by what is against us? Are we encouraged by what is for us? What do we pray for? Are we really praying for God to come and work? And, and even in that, we've got to realize that part of the prayer that God wants us to pray is not just, God bring revival and I'm going to sit back and watch.

If again, you look at Nehemiah 1, that's how he started to pray. But then where he went from that to say, okay, God, how do you want to use me? God, what do you want me to do here? And that, that really leads to the second big theme that you see in Nehemiah. And that is, that God has a plan, and we need not only a vision for the problem, and for the, um, you know, for his, for what he can do, but also for the process of how he does that.

And how does God work? What is God's plan? The process in which God works is [00:20:00] consistent throughout the Old and New Testament. And the principle is this, God has chosen to accomplish his mission through his people. God could supernaturally make things happen, then and now, but he doesn't do that. He chooses to use his people to accomplish his mission.

So I say, even in Nehemiah's day, God could have sent a tornado through Jerusalem and rebuilt the walls in a miraculous way, but that's not what he chose to do. He called his people to be faithful, and then he used their faithfulness to accomplish the miraculous. In the same way today, when we pray for something like revival, God uses his people to accomplish that.

And then usually God doesn't just use the one really gifted person or, you know, he's not going to build the church because you got this really gifted pastor. When God works, it's usually because you have a bunch of people, the whole church, each one doing their part, each one in a sense serving. It's, it's each person does what God has called them to do their part.

Think, think about this whole idea [00:21:00] of building the wall. Go back to Nehemiah. The wall that they were setting out to build was an incredible task. The wall was set out in, was between 10 or 15 to 20 feet high, three to four feet wide, two and a half miles long. Huge. And beyond that, it included several gates.

You know, so the engineering to be able to open the gates, to let people in, to close it and had to be strong enough to attack and resist an attack is an enormous project. And it was so overwhelming that that had been broken down for 141 years, 90 years, people had been trying to do that. But in spite of all the effort in 90 years, nothing had been done because it was seemingly far bigger than any person could do.

But Nehemiah 2 and 3 tells us the secret of what happened. You know what they did? They divided the job down so that each person was given a small, small part of the wall. The whole wall was an overwhelming thought. But when it was broken down and said, you've got this small part, it was a part that each person could handle.

You know, I'm reminded [00:22:00] of the conventional wisdom, you know, when people talk about overwhelming problems, you know, have you ever heard this? Well, it's like eating an elephant. You know, how do you eat an elephant? What's the answer, right? One bite at a time. We've heard that. And a part of that is, you know, this, it's just, you know, we get big problem, break it into pieces and there's wisdom into that, but there's also limitation.

And let me stick with the illustration of the elephant and kind of show the limitation. I, for a number of years, I lived in, um, in West Palm beach, Florida, and I'm just a short distance from where I actually live. Just a couple of miles from where we live. There's this place called lion country safari.

And it was kind of like this drive in zoo. And, uh, and so you would drive through and they'd have all kinds of, you know, of, of, of animals and you drive your car up and they would, you know, the animals would walk up and kind of look at you and it was kind of different thing. Um, now if you ever had an elephant walk up to the car, you'd realize how big they were.

And, and it would remind you, you don't want to go through there in a really small car because it could be kind of overwhelming. I mean, I wish you could see this picture up [00:23:00] close, um, because you could see the pictures, the faces of the people that are in that car, kind of like saying, We thought this was a good idea.

You know, who chose this car? You know, I mean, there's, there's kind of panic there. You know, we don't really want them that close. What should we, you know, you could think, you know, what are we doing? Should we drive off? Should we honk? And maybe it scares them away. Maybe we should just wait and sit them out.

And cause it can't get worse than this. Right. Oh, it could get worse. You know, it could get, it could get a lot worse. And, and, uh, now you look at that and you say, what's the point of just here? Here's the whole idea. When you look at this elephant, this thing is enormous. And I want to tell you, if you tell me, how do you eat the elephant one bite at a time?

I'm never getting that thing down. That's way more than I could ever eat. And, and so how do you eat an elephant? I'll tell you how to eat an elephant. You get a whole bunch of people and you have a feast and you say, okay, everybody, everybody take a little piece, because if everybody takes a little piece, that's the only way we're going to ever take something [00:24:00] that big down.

And some projects are too big for me, no matter how small bites I try to break it down to, but these great projects, if I'm joined by a whole group of people and we all start taking bites, suddenly that elephant that seems huge to us individually, Becomes an accomplishable goal. That's the whole point of the story of Nehemiah.

They took this overwhelming elephant of a problem, something that overwhelmed everyone. And he said, okay, everybody's given responsibility for a part of the wall. Basically your house, that part in front of you, you know, that couple of feet in front of you, you do that. Don't beat nearby. I basically told him, don't worry about the wall.

Just worry about the piece that you have to do. And everyone had to be faithful to their part. The plan only worked if everyone did their part. And when everyone did their part, this enormous project that freaked everyone out that they couldn't even begin to start for 90 years was done in less than two months.

My friends, the same principle is true for us. God's trying to teach us something. [00:25:00] Trying to build a church, man, it's an enormous thing. Trying to reach a city, trying to change a culture. And how do we do that? That can be seem overwhelming. It's more than we could dream. It's, it's the elephant that, you know, it's going to sit on us.

But the key is that God hasn't called you to build the church or to reach the culture. He's only called you to do your part of the wall. You see in the new Testament, the new Testament teaches the same idea. It talks about when it reaching our community, it doesn't, you know, it's not a, you know, the individual, but it talks about the body of Christ.

It talks about spiritual gifts that all of us have spiritual gifts. All of us have been called and equipped to serve the church in some way. And so when we understand this, not only Nehemiah, but in the New Testament, we've got to realize. The question isn't if God has called you to do something. It isn't if God has called you to be a part of his work.

The answer to that actually is kind of obvious. You know, you're part of the body of Christ. You've been given a spiritual gift, you know. God has called each [00:26:00] one of us to do something. The question isn't if. The question is what part of the wall God has called you to work on. What part of his ministry has God called you to do?

And so, so that's what God has called us to do. And to say, okay, God, where have you called me to serve? Now, even in that, I know that there might be some that are still kind of struggling with some objections and, but I don't have anything to offer. And, and you don't know my background and man, I failed in so many ways in the past and God could never use me.

Well, here's why I want to come back and see not only look at God's call and how he's called us to do this, but with God's call also to see what the Bible teaches about his provision. You see, because the Bible is clear that not only does God call each one of us to be a part of the ministry of his church, but he also uniquely equips us with the ability to do what he's called us to.

In fact, if we look in the book of first Corinthians and first Corinthians 12, Paul uses the imagery of the church as a human body. And then he says, the church is like the body of [00:27:00] Christ. So in verse 12, he says, just as the body is one and has many members, and so all the members of the body, so though many are one, so it is with Christ.

And so uses this spot, this picture of the body of Jesus Christ. And just as the physical body is made by many diverse parts, and each is vital to the human being to function. So the church is made up of all kinds of different people with diverse abilities. And each one is vital. And so we even look at this and sometimes people say, well, I don't really have a visible gift and I can't really do much.

And well, you know, when you look at what the Bible says, I mean, if we look at, I mean, if this is a gross idea, but if we were to take the human body and take all the parts out and kind of lay them out here. You don't want to envision that, but, um, no physical illustrations today. Um, you know, but, but if you had that, you know, here, you've got the heart, you got the veins, you got an eye, you got an ear, you got a foot, you got, you know, you got bones, you got all these things that seemingly are so radically different and they each do something different, but yet they [00:28:00] all work together and they're all essential to the functioning of, of the body.

And that's the same idea here. Now we may look at that and say, well, I'm not that significant. Is there any part of a human body that is unnecessary? And the parts that we tend to take for granted are actually really important. Look what it says just about this idea in Nehemiah. Okay. So in Nehemiah three, if you had your Bibles and you look at Nehemiah three and you start to read it, it's going to be really tempting to overlook it because it's basically just a listing of names of 200 names.

And you think, man, how boring, how irrelevant, you know, it's, but it's actually teaching something really significant, something beautiful. You know what it is? It's, it's a listing of the names that had various, all these people that had a part of building the wall. It's God's listing of the heroes of the book.

See, these were people that were seemingly nobodies, but they were willing to give themselves to the task. And God ordained that they would be listed in the Bible because in God's mind, these [00:29:00] were all heroes to be celebrated. And their mind, they may have looked at it and said, mama, nobody, I have no special gifts, but God called them and they were faithful and they contributed to a great cause.

And God not only noticed their contribution, He celebrated it by causing their names to be listed in the Bible. So 2, 500 years from now, later, we're still reading them. We're still talking about them. See, that's how God works. And you might be thinking, I don't really have much to offer. I don't really have And what you need to realize is that God calls each one to be faithful.

And if we're faithful, then God will, you know, God's going to write your name down. He's going to celebrate your faithfulness. See, the problem is that sometimes we may look at that and say it's not that significant. But the Bible celebrates each person's role as significant and as vital. We often will think, what's the more visible gifts?

Well they're the ones that are more, you know, the preacher, the teacher, the worship leader, the elder. And here's what you need to realize. When the Bible speaks about these things, it [00:30:00] actually says that they aren't the most important. I'm not the most important person in the church. Look what it says in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 about this.

It says, on those parts of the body that we think are less honorable, we bestow the greater honor, and the unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it. And here's what that's really saying.

I as a pastor receive some honor, some recognition, people notice what I do. If you are equally faithful in what you do, and as I am, God gives greater honor, greater importance, greater celebration to your faithfulness than to mine. Some of you have heard me share this before, but it's just a basic idea too.

On a Sunday morning, who's more important, you or me? Whose ministry is more significant? And you might think, Oh, you're the pastor. Everybody's listening to you. I'd argue that it may be you. And let me clearly just simply illustrate this, [00:31:00] right? I, you know, I remember back several years ago, I had a friend of ours, uh, that came and visited the church.

I didn't know they were, they would left a church and they came and visited. And afterwards I talked to him and said, Oh, we enjoyed the message. We enjoyed the worship. You know, but we came in and nobody talked to us and we're really looking for a community and we're going to, we're going to go to another church.

Now I could have done it. I, you know, they seem to be very positive about the message about the upfront people, but they're like, we didn't connect here because there's nobody that talked to us. Now, I want to tell you on the other hand, and I hear this all the time. I hear somebody will walk in and if they're greeted at the front door and people really talk to them, if they've got kids and somebody walks them to where the children's ministry is, and then they feel really comfortable about where they leave their kids.

And as they walk in here, other people are talking to them and they're really, you know, they get coffee and and they're really feel welcomed. They're in, you know, Hey, we've got this, you know, this community groups, they're invited to somewhere I could, I could just totally blow out on the message. And they're going to probably walk out of here and say, that's the kind of church I feel comfortable [00:32:00] with.

Who's more important, you or me. And here's what you need to realize that every one of us is vital. And just because. I get noticed doesn't mean that your impact of your ministry is any more important than mine. It's actually maybe more important. And God has called each one of us to do something and each one is vital.

And each one is, we're not only called to do it, but God has equipped us to do it with what the Bible refers to as spiritual gifts. And he said, for some of us, we are familiar with the terminology and some aren't, and it's a spiritual gift. Well, the spiritual gift simply put is, is it's the Holy spirit.

When we accept Christ, God gives us the Holy spirit that lives in us. Yes. And the Holy Spirit not only sets us right with God, but he actually gives us something of his power, a unique ability. And, and through that, God wants to work so his spirit works in us to accomplish his ministry. To every believer, you have a spiritual gift.

That's, it talks about that again in 1 Corinthians. To each one is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common good. [00:33:00] You have the manifestation, God making his power known through you for the common good. And for some, it may be, you know, publicly speaking, it may be something that's very visible.

For others, it may, man, God has just given you the ability to love people, to care for kids, to, you know, to welcome people or, or to, you know, care for their facility. It may be, it may be a host of different things and each one is vital. Now, some people would say, yeah, but maybe he's done that, but he could never use me because my past, because I, you know, I don't deserve to be used.

God, why would God choose to use me? Well, here's what I want you to see when the Bible speaks about this, it always speaks about God using people as a result of grace. We're called and gifted by God's grace. So a lot of times when you think of God's grace, we think in terms of, well, I deserve to be, you know, because my sins, I deserve God's punishment.

But because of grace, Jesus died for me and, and, and because of my faith, Jesus forgives me of my sins and he doesn't give me the bad things that I deserve. We, we tend to think of grace [00:34:00] in negative terms. What God doesn't give us. But here's what I want you to see. That's true, but that's only part of the story.

He not only gives us grace and that he doesn't give us what we don't deserve. He also gives us what we don't deserve. He also empowers us and uses us. He not only removes our sins, But he gives us gifts we don't naturally have and he says okay I want to use you not because of who you are but because of grace look what it says in Romans So we talking about the body so we are many are one body in Christ and individually members of one another Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us.

Let us use them You have gifts by grace and you might sit there and say, well, God could never use me. Okay. What's greater, your failure, your pastor, God's grace. I got yours, your failures, your weakness too much for God's grace. Or you're saying, Oh no, God could never. No. The fact of the matter is God takes glory in using the most, you know, unlikely of people.

I mean, I got doesn't use me because I [00:35:00] deserve it because I have anything special and this is a miracle that he's choosing to use me. And we need to realize that God chooses to use us as grace. Now, now there's one other point that people would say, okay, so it's just about turning and twisting arms. Is it, do we need to sign people up and jobs filled?

And no, here's the last thing I want to encourage you. When we talk about these are spiritual gifts of God's grace. Sometimes when you think of this, it's almost like, well, well, God gives you this grace so that he can use you. And, and we almost think of gifts in the term, I mean, okay, Valentine's Day, we just had Valentine's Day.

Many of the husbands, hopefully we remembered some kind of gift, right? Um, now hopefully we didn't have any husbands that do the worst kind of gifts, are the gifts that are kind of selfish motive. It's kind of like, I really want to see more Guardians games this year. I will get her Guardians tickets. Here, here's Valentine's gift.

Here's Guardians game. You don't like baseball, but we can be together, you know, kind of like, and every once in a while, we're dumb enough to do that as men, right? Now, [00:36:00] sometimes people think spiritual gifts are kind of God doing that. Well, God gave you this gift because he wants you to serve him. He gave you this gift because it's all about him.

No, God is the greatest giver, the greatest lover, the greatest, most generous father of all time. And here's what I want you to realize. The Bible teaches that when he gives gifts, they're not only for us to serve him, but they're also for our good. They're also for our own growth. That there are things that when we understand the whole idea of a spiritual gift is a spirit working in us and through us.

And when we let the Holy Spirit work through us to ministrate other people, you know what happens? He also works in us. He actually grows us. He blesses us. And so I'll come and I'll say, man, I want to encourage you to serve. It's not just because we have these needs that need to be met. The first issue is because I want to see you grow.

I want you to experience the joy of God's work in your [00:37:00] life. I want you to feel his pleasure. I want to see, this is for your good. Look what it says in Ephesians 4. It talks about this idea. You know, it says, Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.

How do we grow into every way? How do we become that? Look what it continues to say. From whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint With which it is equipped when each part is working properly. It makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. How do we grow? How do we become mature?

How do we become strong? As each part does its work, as each part says, okay, I'm part of the body of Christ. As each part says, okay, I'm doing my part of the wall. My friends, what I want you to see is it's not just, okay, this is what we're trying to encourage you because we have needs. It's. First and foremost, God wants to work through you because that's also the way that he's going to work in you.

First and foremost as a pastor, I'm not trying to fill jobs or anything like that. I'm saying, man, I want to see you enjoy [00:38:00] God's presence. I want to see you grow to maturity. I want to, I want to see you thrive in your walk. But you know what part of that means is it means, Okay, God, what part of the wall do you want me to be in?

What part of the body do you want me to serve? Now here's practically you say, what do I do? Some of you are serving in ministry and that's wonderful. And I encourage you to, to continue to be faithful and hopefully you experience a blessing. And if you're in a ministry and it's like, man, I hate doing what I'm doing.

You're probably in the wrong ministry. You know, you don't, you don't sign up and you're, you know, you're, you can free to be changed things. How do we help you find the right thing? There's some that you may be, man, you've done it in the past, but maybe you got burned out or maybe in a COVID happened or, you know, you've changed churches.

Here's what I want to encourage you. God is calling each one of us to be a part. I want to see God do amazing things, but it's each one of us seek to be faithful. God What's my part of the wall? I want to see God work in us so that he grows us to maturity. But it's it's each one of us be faithful. God, where do you want to use me?

And so you may be here and I [00:39:00] want to encourage you to take step to take that step of faith and say okay God Where do you want me to serve? For some, it may be brand new. And so I have no idea when here's where I want to encourage. How do you know where God has called you to serve? Well, start serving. You know, if you sit back, it's the old idea.

God only, you know, you think of a car and you try to turn the steering wheel. You have no idea which way it's turned until you put a little gas on, put a little gas, and then you can start to, you know, Oh, that's what way the wheel is going. It's somewhat true in our own life as well. You know, serve where you're at.

Okay, God, what is something that I, that I have an interest on? What's an interest? You know, what's something I can feel I could do? And then you try, and if God blesses that, that's the right area. If you feel like, no, I think I want to do that. Well, then how do we help you find the right area? But start, start somewhere.

And for some, just a practical thing. If we actually, if you go out in a lobby this morning, you can see on the right side of the lobby, there's a, there's a new board that we have out there. It's a service opportunity board. And some of our ministry leaders have put out there, like here's specific service [00:40:00] opportunities, places that, you know, and you're not like signed up.

If you do this, you're forever. Come and give it a try. And it can be as diverse as everything from serving in our tech ministry to, you know, Caring for a facility and there are things that are not on there, you know I was talking to somebody even today I said man We need people to help write things so we can write and communicate stuff to the you know To papers and communication and every I mean we have so many things that we need Help with and and you might say I have this gift.

I don't and whatever you have is what god has provided And you may have a heart for something that's not even on there. Well, let us know. You know, it may be that you just start by looking out there and saying, let me try this. And you put, you take one of those cards, you fill it out, put it in there, give it a try.

Or you might call me or one of the staff members and you say, well, you know, here's what I'm thinking. Let us help you give it a try. But in that, I think that and believe that that's how God is going to work. That's how God is going to, to do some amazing things, to do things that, that seem beyond our ability to dream as each one does its part.[00:41:00]

It's not only he's going to do amazing things within the context of the church, but even in our own individual lives, as we sense his presence working through us. And as a result, we feel the blessing of him working in us as well. If you have a question about the message, community church, or Jesus Christ, send us a text to 330.

You can learn more about our events and community groups at ccpl. life slash connect. There you can also send in a prayer request. We would love to pray for you. Have a blessed Lord's Day, and we'll see you on Sunday.