Christ the Center

When I was a boy, my grandfather had a picture of a sailing ship on his living room wall. I used to sit and stare at that picture—at the ship, at its masts and riggings and waves. Then I discovered something interesting—If I tried, I could make the picture disappear. All I had to to was to look at the picture, but not look at it—to look at the wall around the picture. If I did not concentrate on the picture, after a while, the picture would seem to disappear. The more I stared at the wall, the less I noticed the picture, until It no longer appeared to me. It disappeared before my very eyes.

Something like that happens in church. We have a very focused faith. It centers on Jesus Christ as the Son of God—specifically on his death and resurrection. Everything centers on the Cross.

But an interesting thing happens to us who follow the cross. If our attention is moved ever so slightly to the right or left, and we only catch sight of the cross through the corner of our eye, the cross can disappear, just like that picture on the wall. The center of the faith, the Gospel becomes unimportant to us. We take it for granted and lose sight of it. When that happens, Christianity becomes distorted until it is barely recognizable.

I have noticed something among some people who have grown up in ARP churches. They doubt their salvation. They wonder if they are good enough to go to heaven. Anyone who grew up in a Presbyterian church ought to have no doubts about their salvation—after all, we believe that salvation comes by grace through the croas, and we preach the Cross.Even so, there a re great people who weekly stare at the Cross in church and do not see it.

The fault is not so much in the pew as in the pulpit. Preachers get bored with preaching the same old message. Like everyone else, we ask ourselves "yes, but what about this. . . ?" and turn away from preaching the Christ and the cross, and towards mmeritorious but peripheral issues, such as the Ten Commandments, civic responsibility, or psychological health. As we try to explain the world around the cross, we can miss the cross altogether.

I have a tendency focus on a clever novelty instead of on the eternal, central truth of the faith. That's a problem I hope to correct that this Easter season. For the next six weeks, we are going to focus our attention on Christ, who He is, what He did, and how He died for us.

John wrote his Gospelr everyone else had finished. He read the others, and I'm sure appreciated them. But he noticed something that seemed incomplete about them. Althought they all dealt with Jesus death and resurrection in detail, John felt it was possible to read all three of them and not notice that the cross was central. They included a lot of other material as well. So, John wrote a Gospel account that focused from start to finish on the diety and atonement of Christ.

Merrill Tenney wrote on the Gospel of John and called it Jesus on Trial. He (correctly, I think) sees a pattern in this Gospel. The theme verse is taken from John 20::31 "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. John had one purpose in mind, to present the cross.

In John 1, he presents His opening arguments. Then, he brings out a series of witnesses and evidences proving Jesus as God's son and our Lord and Savior. In John 13-17, Jesus himself gives a lenthy speech, telling who He is and how He relates to oursalvation, and where we go from ther. Then comet ethe capstone of the argument, the deagth and resurrection of Jesus.

John begins the Gospel with a brazen calim of diety.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

We all know that the ideas and writing of the Old Testament was influenced by the Old Testament. But what we often don't say so much is how much it was also influenced by the ideas of its time. The words and ideas of the New Testament were also heavily influenced by Greek philosophy, which was widely read and absorbed by the rabbis and thnking fo their dai. In particular, the idea of Plato. This passage contains ideas that go back directly to Plato.

Plato believed in God as a being of pure thought. Everything that exists sprang out of his mind. As God's thought went out from him, they took material form. The farther these thoughts went from God, the more corrupt they became.

But Platonists believed that it was possible for God to have a pure thought that would go out into the world and not be corrupted. This thougth would be a messenger and representative ofhte pure gGodliness, and would be a light to all around it. They called this thought Logos, the Word.

Jesus began in the mind of God as a pure expression of him. In the Phillips translation of this passage, he renders this first verse S"in the beginning, God expressed Himself."

Now, an d age old question is this—is there truth outside the Gospel? Did Buddha get anything right? Did Mohammed? Did Marx? And the answer is yes—all people have some truth, because we all began as thoughts in the mind of God. We are all expressions of Him. But we are not the Logos, the pure thought. We are corrupt and pale imitations of Him. Jesus is the pure and complete expression of God. That's why john says

"And the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.'

Whenever we try to explain God we fail. We cannot explain who He is. We can only explain what He is not. He is, as St. John nof the Cross said, the "cloud of unknowing". The only wafy we can grasp who God is is to see him modeled in human flesh. When we see God mperfectly modeled in a man, we understand better His true nature. That's what Jesus is. The trud God modeled in human form.

Jesus is also co-creator with God. \

 

He was with God in the beginning.Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.

Here John gets deep, very deep. John says that in heaven, when God began to express himself, the universe was made. That portion of Him that expresses himself—his "mouth" in the metaphorical sense, was what made all things. He spoke them into existence.

That's what Jesus is, her is the "mouth" of God. As Jesus expressed God in heaven, so Jesus expresses God on earth, so that every word Jesus said was an utterance of God Himself. He still has the power to create or destroy with a word.

We see this reflected in the Bible in the miracle stories. Jesus spoke and people wer healed, demons left, and on at least one occasion, a storm lifeter. This is possible, because Jesus was God. He was the mouth of God expressing Himself on earth.

 

He is the enlightener

4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness,

but the darkness has not understood it.

 

 

 

What does John tell us about Him?

First, He is the expression of God

 

Third, he is the enlightenement from God.

John uses a second metaphor to explain this—light.

People who study education tell us there are three ways people learn. We learn by doing, by hearing, and by seeing it demonstrated..Jesus was the word, and we usually think of that as the spoken word, but for many people a spoken word is just not enough. We need to see an example of it. So Jesus came, not just as a prophet, speaking God's words, but as an example of what it was supposed to look like to be following God. He came to give us a way of life.

His example and his leadership is what gives us light. Without Him, we would never know our way out of the darkness and ignorance of this world. We see Jesus' way lif, and now we know how we should live.

He is our flashlight, showing us the way.

For Christmas, someone gave me a Garmin. It is a little machine that shows me when I drive my car where I need to be going. Not only does it show me, but it tells me. It is an imitation of life, though. It is easily confused if it doesn't recognize something. Jesus is even better than that. He is alive, and leads us by lifht.

So God sent a pure expression to earth—a Logos. He is the same creative power that mae heaven and earth. He is God on earth. He is the enlightener of eeyeron who will listen to him.

 

Then John said something that was very important to people of his day.

 

6 There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. 8 He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. 9 The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

 

Just as John drew on the contemporary understanding that came from the Greeks, he also drew on the contemporary understanding of the Jews. Most people believed by this time that John the Baptist was a prophet. So naturally, they compared anyone who came afterwareds to Him and his teaching. John says that John the Baptist pointed to the light, but Jesus was the lifht.

Jesus is not just interested in the Jew. He's also interested in the Greek, the Africacan, and the American. He is not interested just in the good, but the sinners John called to repentance. This ligfht that came is a universal light. Everyone responds to Him when He is lifted up.

 

Then in verses 10=14, John summarizes what he has just said.

10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God. 14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

 

What do you need to do to be saved?. Somple. Believe in the light. If you can't believe that Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the life, just trust his name. See what happens whne you belive on his name. If you do, you have the opportunity to find yourselve a child of God.

The Scandal of Missions

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go 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 obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matt 28:18-20

Missions are the greatest scandal in the church during the past two thousand years. The scandal is that we have done so little.. For most of the two thousand years, missions were largely ignored.

Jesus placed a high priority on missions.

In the days after Jesus' resurrection, when He met with the disciples, he said two things that echo down the ages. First he said,

"Go into all the world, and make disciples of all nations."(Matt. 28:18) We call that the Great Commission.

Jesus was so passionate about the calling for us to be missionaries that he made it a condition upon His return. "The Gospel must be preached to all nations, nad then the end will come." (Matt 24:14) He is saying "I won't come back, until you do what I asked."

Then right after that, Jesus said "You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and in the uttermost parts of the world." (Acts 1:8) Again, it's unequivocal. We are to be out there winning people all over the place, even to the edges of the globe.

The church started out well--or so we've been told. But in truth, those who went forward only made up a small number of the early believers. Most disciples and even apostles only ventured out of their comfort areas rarely.

Flash forward five or six hundred years. Under persecution, the church made tremendous strides. They converted the Roman Empire, but they did not have the time or the boldness to finish the job.. When the Seventh Century rolled around, a highly aggressive competitor to Christianity, Islam, had begun in Arabia. Islam nearly wiped out Christianity. If the Arabs had been converted, they would not have happened. If they church had been bolder, they might have been converted.

You would think that the church would want to win those souls back from Islam, but they didn't. Instead, five hundred years later, the "Christian" nations tried to take back the Holy Land by force The Crusades were a disaster. During this time a few men had a vision to reach the heathen. St. Francis was one of them. He toured Muslim nations preaching the Gospel and was warmly received. But for the most part, Christians were more interested in sending the unsaved to hell than winning them to heaven. But what if St. Francis had had an army of devout monks, the size of the army of bloodthirsty knights? History would have been different. The power that defeated the Roman Empire failed to defeat the Muslims, for one reason, it was never unleashed. Christians were too preoccupied with themselves to care about people on the other side of the world. As a result, people on the other side of the world cared nothing for us, or our God.

Let's go on another three hundred years. A spiritual awakening hit Europe. The Protestant Revolution begins. Calvin taught the Protestant that every believer is a priest, every believer is a missionary. Even so, no sooner did the Protestant Revolution begin than the church found itself embroiled in doctrinal bickering and political intrigue. This time of spiritual awakening that fell on much of Europe had no impact on the rest of the world. How different this was from the old days. If the Protestant Reformers had the passion of Paul, they would have said. "You Calvinists can take Africa. You Lutherans can take South America. You Anglicans and Baptists can divide the Orient." They didn't. They bickered instead over their own home turf.

The modern missionary movement, sad to say was born only about two hundred years ago. That was when people suddenly realized that there was a whole world out there, and that they needed to be evangelized. How is it possible that this never occurred to so few. They sensed a call to missions.

Today, the missionary movement is not a matter of Americans and Europeans sending missionaries to foreign lands, but foreign lands are sending missionaries elsewhere. But it is still not large enough or strong enough to finish the job, because we are not doing our part.

That's a scandal.

To many people, the days of the great missionary movements are over. The internet, broadcast radio and television, and world travel make many people say there is no need for it. People can find the gospel wherever they go.

But Christianity cannot be taught. It must be caught.

The human heart is endlessly deceitful. We are forever making up excuses for our actions, attempting to justify ourselves. We rarely face up to the real reasons we do what we do. Missions is a good example of this. We say that we don't support missions because we don't have the time, we haven't been called, because our financial resources are small. The real reason we don't is because we don't know those people. We don't want to leave our comfort zones.

In the book of Acts, we see modeled three ways the Gospel spreads.

The first is local evangelism. This is one neighbor telling another neighbor. This falls on the local churches. We have been given the solemn task of being foot soldiers of the front lines oof sharing the Gospel. We do it face to face, mouth to ear. It is our mouth that will tell it to our neighbor's ear.

The second is church planting. This is what we are doing in Indian Land. One of the interesting things we notice when we study Paul' missionary journeys is that often when Paul returned to visit an area where he planted churches, there were more churches there than when he left. That's because the people in the churches, especially the elders, looked at the map and, without money or resources from anyone else, went out and started churches where they're are no churches. We know of one church, Ephesus, which planted six others in nearby towns. Every new church plant will reach outside the circles of friendship of the people around.

The third kind of evangelism is what Paul did--missionary evangelism. Supported by other churches, Paul set out to plant the Gospel in places he had never seen. All people deserved a chance to meet Christ, whether they are Greek, Roman, Jewish, oriental, or African.

Think about the Ebola virus. Ebola is a terrible disease, perhaps the deadliest in the world. So why aren't we all dead from Ebola? Because the health department of every nation knows the danger of Ebola. If Ebola starts up, they quarantine until the Ebola virus dies with its victims. To Satan, evangelism his Ebola. Whenever Christians start to evangelize, he isolates us. He makes sure that no one comes or goes from the church. Satan knows if he can't stop the Gospel, then he must work to contain it. The first thing Satan does when he sets off to render a church powerless is to put a stop to interest in missions. If he isolates a Christian community to itself for any time at all, then it will forget what it is there for, and stop trying to evangelize.

For this reason, missions and church planting are very important to the church. Many of the communities where revival starts will eventually be isolated by the enemy. The greatest strategy we can do is while we are reaching our communities, assist those who are seeking to plant communities here and oversees. Every missionary is like one of Samson's foxes with burning torches tied to their tail. They leave a trail of fire behind them, all through the world.

So what can we do to help?

1. First, support missionaries through prayers and finances. We are fortunate to have Clinton and Diane Dix with us in this congregation. Clinton's impact in Brazil and Africa is considerable. He is strengthening a church that is exploding. He has been a blessing beyond measure to them.

Would it hurt us to seek to improve our individual giving and the giving of our church to Clinton and Diane Dix. If not them, then how about some other missionaries? What if we each pledged an additional ten dollars a month to support missionaries on the field?

I know what you are thinking. In these tough economic times, how can we possibly support all the good works that are needed. You can't. But you can do one or two. We as a church can't support many things, but we can do something.

Churches tell their people to give sacrificially. Shouldn't we be giving sacrificially as well. Paul wrote in Philippians about this little church in Fhilippi. It had just started. On his second journey, when he traveled down to Asia, most of the churches who had supported him could not. But this little church, no doubt suffering financially, contributed money to them. They did it, Paul says, not because they had do, or were ever even expected to, but because they wanted to. They delighted in it.

You don't have to give to missions. You get to give to missions. You get to put some of yourselves into the worldwide evangelism of souls.

2. Then, we can take an interest in missions. Read up on missions in the prayer lines or the individual mailings. Go online and read about missionaries on the ARP website. Get informed. Maybe you would like to take a short term mission trip to one of our fields, to see what missionary work it really like.

3. We can directly support the missionary effort by reaching out to the internationals in our area. A woman in one of my early churches was from South Africa. She had a passion for missions. She wanted to turn our church lawn into a cricket field, to attract a growing Indian and Pakistani population so she could share the Gospel with them. She lit up whenever she saw internationals, because she knew that tis was an opportunity to share Christ.

4. We can support online efforts to spread the Gospel. The internet is still in its infancy. No one knows how influential it will be in the future, but ever day, it seems to grow in power and impact. Whenever possible we Christians need to be part of this new world. It gives us an opportunity to speak around the world to people in every country. I was delighted to learn a few years ago that my sermons were being read in Pakistan. Today it is possible not only for us to go to the world, but for the world to come to us.

Who Sits in Jesus' Chair?

Matthew 25:31-46 When Christians celebrate the “The Last Supper”, we are aware that It was not really “the last supper.” It was the last supper with Jesus, but it was not the last supper for the disciplesHere’s a question to ponder. When they met together again, who sat in Jesus' chair? Who took the place of honor? There must have been some lively discussions about it. It Is no small question. If anyone sat in that chair, they would be taking the place of honor, Before Jesus’ death, the disciples argued over who would sit at His right or at His left, but no one thought to take his place at the banquet. Nobody. Some think that Peter took the place of honor next to Jesus. The Catholic church has for years believed that it was Peter. Through him the bishops of Rometraced their leadership in the church. Protestants argue that the place of honor falls to Paul—not Peter. Neither Peter or John or James, would ever consider themselves e deserving of that place of honor. Nevertheless, Protestants give the place of honor to preachers, teachers, and elders, while Catholics give it to priests, monks, and nuns. Other people have also tried to sit in Jesus’ chair. Kings and popes thougthth they should have authority. Wars have been fought, murders committed for the chair. How much strife there has been, because the chair! But God will not share His honor with anyone--anyone but the ones He chooses! The chair of Jesus' is not vacant. God has given that honor in the church to specific people. No one has the right to claim the honor that Jesus gavet to someone else. He gave that place away the week before the Last Supper—in Matthew 25:31-46. In one of his last speeches, he said there would come a time when God would divide the earth between those who follow Him and those who do not—the “hseep” and the “goats.”. This division will be made according to who we honor in His absence. If honor Christ, we should honor those who represent Him. God judges us not on the Ten Commandments, or whether or not we go to church, but on how we honor those. This will determine the righteous and the unrighteous. This division will be the basis for future reward or punishment. Our eternity depends upon it. Do I have your attention yet? Who are these people? These are the ones in 34-40—the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, the prisoner, the naked, and the strangers. God’s criteria for judgment will be how we treat the poor, sick, imprisoned, and stranger. This passage is the Great Priority. We start to love our neighbor by loving those with the greatest need—the most neglected, the most avoided, and the neediest. The culture of Jesus’ day believed the opposite. Kings and priests were honored. Beggares were avoided. You might throw a beggar a coin, but you would never invite him to your home. If you ignore the king, you could lose your head. If you helped a beggar, he might mug you. Our culture agrees with their culture. Reach the leaders and you get the followers. Pay attention to the powerful, and they’ll build your church. Ignore them, and you lose their influence. But if we ignore the poor, we lose our souls. Cater to the wealthy, win the world, but lose our place in the kingdom. These are not our priorities—but they are Jesus’. He expects us to put first those whom He put first—the poor, the sick, the prisoner, and the stranger. 1. The poor. The purpose of the church is to meet spiritual hunger. But the physical hunger is our responsibility as well. The church has an obligation to Christg to fill their bellies and reach their hearts. Poverty breeds all kinds of problems. The problems of poverty are made worse when we realize that everyone avoids the poor except other poor. The only way to lift people out of poverty is to touch them. The biggest problem with charity and welfare is not that the poor get too dependent on it, but we do. We think that someone else will solve the problems of the poor so that we don’t have to think about them. Are they worthy? Probably not. But neither are we. The only reason we have eternal life is charity—undeserved and unearned blessings. The next time we criticize someone else for wanting charity, we had ourselves—where would we be without it? 2. The sick. Being sick is an undignified experience. You’re forced to wear revealing. You are poked, prodded and sampled almost to death. Sometimes, being in the hospital will make you feel worse than the disease. The visitation of the sick used to be discouraged. Every visitor brings a risk of infection. The risks of infection are offset by the encouragement that visitors brings. Jesus said that visiting the sick was important. Medical science is only not beginning to catch up with Him. This is even more true of shut-ins Many live alone, or almost alone. There are times when a misses the mere feel of a human touch. We who share in God’s work and honor Christ through honoring those He loves ought to let ourselves be used to help those in need. When are visits most important? W the lfewest people go. Most people rush to help A church that makes a priority of visiting the sick and the shut-in will eventually bless the whole congregation. We will all be sick sometimes. We will all grow old. When we honor the sick and shut-in, we set up honor for ourselves. That honor will come back to us. 3. The prisoner. No kind of ministry means more to the Lord than prison ministry. Yet many churches neglect prisons, because they get nothing out of it. It does not build churches. Yet nowhere are people more open to receiving the Gospel than in prison. There are many kinds of prisons, and not all o them physical. Mental illness is a kind of prison. Those who are locked up in anxiety and depression are in a prison of sorts. 4. The stranger. Who is the stranger, if not those who are apart from the Lord? How can a church who is seeking to fulfill the Great Commission not be sensitive to the spiritual strangers? We should do everything in our power to make them welcome among us. Many churches suffer from what I used to call the “Aunt Effie” syndrome. Did you have an “Aunt Effie” in your family? She was that maiden aunt who was always getting offended. Whenever “Aunt Effie” came to visit, we all had to be on our best behavior. No one wanted her to get mad, because she stayed mad forever. When my cousins visited, who I love to play with, no one ever made any preparations. No one worried that if you played (for example) old time music on the radio, that the kids would get offended. But everyone knew that if you played loud rock music, “Aunt Effie” would be offended. She was family, so we had to be nice. In churches, we often give an unusual amount of concern to the most offendable. We bend over backwards to make sure that the people who have always come, and always will come are not offended. But Jesus suggests that the ones we should be worried about offending are the strangers. We should make sure that we make the newcomer feel at home. New families should be our focus, when it comes to ministry in the church. Do newcomers feel at home? Do they have a place to stay? Are they making friends? Do they understand our music and our customs? These are the questions we need to ask, not just whether or not the people we have, and will always have, are comfortable. A good host bends over backwards for his guests. A good church makes the newcomer feel at home. Our country is a great country. The reason it is a great country is not because of how we treat our leaders. In fact, one could argue that our country’s skepticism about its leaders is one of our best traits. No, the thing that has made this country great is how we have treated the weak. One of the great symbols of our country is the Statue of Liberty. There is a poem written by Emma Lazarus inscribed on its base. The last words of the poem go like this. “Give me your tired, your poor Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore Send these, the homeless, tempest-lost to me I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Our country grew on an invitation. It was an invitation to the world, not for the strongest, but for the weakest. We said we would take the weakest and make them strong. No time in our nations history has giving to bhe poor been more needed. With growing uniemployment and expanding poverty, the church has more need than ever t meet the need. No country in the country has agreater need for it Forbes Magazine said that Lancaster County, SC is the most susceptile county in the whole country to recession. No community in the country feels it worse. Ours is the poorest community in the county—with a per captia income of barely over $10,000, and an unemploynment rate near %20. Our little community is not in recession—it is in depression. So what are we to do about it> We must respond however we can. We must use all at our disposal to ease the burden of poverty. Jesus Christ makes that same invitation to us. He promises to take the weakest of humanity and make them His. He took us in, not because we were good people, but because He was a good savior. He saved us, because He loved the weak, the sick, the prisoner, and the stranger. If you think you deserve to be in church, you don’t. If you think you don’t deserve it, you do. When we get to heaven, who will be there? No one will be allowed in the Kingdom but these people, those who realize that as poor as a beggar is, we are not better in our hearts. As blind as the blind man, so we were; as imprisoned as the prisoner, so was our souls our sin and our folly, and as lost as the stranger, so we were without Christ. Who sits in Jesus" chair? the poor and the hungry and the prisoner, and the stranger. Wherever they are, Jesus will be

Sacrificed Alive!

Rom 12:1-8 There are only two options—either man invented God, or God invented man. If man invented God, then He is an idea, nothing more. He is what Karl Marx said he was—an opiate for the masses, a tool to keep people in line while their masters tell them what to do. Or else He exists as a kind of security blanket to keep people happy in hard times. If we invented Him, then serving Him is serving ourselves. All those good things we do for Him are just things we do for ourselves. We are free to do or not do them as we please. But if God invented man—we exist to serve Him. He brought us into this world, and His pleasure takes us out. We are not free to ignore Him. We were created for His glory. Even so, we seem to want it both ways. Man wants to believe in God when he has a need, and ignore Him when He becomes inconvenient. If man invented God, let God serve us. If God invented man, then let us serve Him. All that we have is His already. We are His servants—his stewards. “Stewardship” is a word we for “giving.” But stewardship is much, more. It is to acknowledge that God is our master. Stewardship is living, working , spending, and giving for Him. It is not an act, but a philosophy of life. Sooner or later, all that the Bible tells us comes around to stewardship. Take Romans, for example. The first eight chapters cover familiar territory. We are sinners and cannot save ourselves. Jesus died for our sins. The Holy Spirit comes to live and control our lives. In chapters 9-11, we learn Israel’s place in history, and that God has a special place for the Jews. But there is still a huge, unanswered question as we leave Romans 11. Why? Why did God creates us? God did not create us alone. We are part of an ecological system. Trees have an ecological purpose. So do birds, bees, and even skunks. So what’s our purpose? Why did God create us? God created us to serve Him as stewards of creation. We are His hands upon this earth. That’s what Paul means in Romans 12: 1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is — his good, pleasing and perfect will. God does not consider stewardship an option. Everything I have and do is for His will, not for mine. I am only a success in life only to the degree that I serve Him. How do you measure success? By what you accumulate? How long you live? How many people know your name? None of these things matter at all if have not presented ourselves a living sacrifice to Him. In the Civil War, General MacClelland was a huge success as a general. People loved him. His soldiers loved him. There was only one problem. He did not win battles. He was so bad that Abraham Lincoln once asked him if, since he wasn’t using the army, did he mind if he borrowed it for a while. MacClelland was very good to his troops, but he had the wrong purpose. He forgot that he served his country by actually winning battles. He forgot that the men were not his masters. The nation was. In the same way a man who forgets that he is a steward of God is not a success. He is a failure. Stewardship is having our minds conformed to His will as it says in verse 2. Do not conform to any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing and perfect will. Giving ourselves to God first means of all giving our will to Him. Something similar happens when a soldier enters boot camp. He no longer gets up when he wants to. He no longer thinks for himself. He must bend his will to that of army. He is no longer a civilian, but a soldier, transformed by having his mind changed through discipline, indoctrination, and training. Being transformed by a renewed mind is not something that is exclusively for ministers or missionaries but for all Christians. We surrender our will to God without compromise and without exceptions. If we all did this, money and workers would not be an issue. All who bend their will to God know they are stewards of God’s blessings, not just consumers. Rom 12:3 “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you.” We are surrendered to God to the degree that we have faith. If we question whether God is really God, we will not be willing to put our faith in him. The great tightrope walker Wallenda once walked across Niagara Falls on a cable. The crowd cheered Then he carried a chair across the gorge. Again, they cheered. Then he asked who would get in the chair and go across with him. No one volunteered. They were all for cheering him on. They were all against having faith. If we are truly be stewards, we must truly have faith in His power to carry us. That faith is manifested in many different ways. Paul lists some of those ways. 4-8 “ Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 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. 1. By our speech. “If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.” Most people are big talkers. We yell at the big games. We talk about families. We talk about politics. We talk about our work or golf or scrapbooking. Where are those who will by faith talk about what is really worthwhile? Where are those who will offer their tongues as a sacrifite to God, for the purpose of talking about Him? 2. By our time and effort. If it is serving, let him serve; Other people are good workers. Without these quiet workers, churches could not exist. But why do we work? For whom? Are ww working to maintain an institution, or are we working to further the Kingdom? God is not interested in our efforts, but our hearts. Jesus told the story of some good workers. In Matthew 7 :21-2 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!' Work without an attitude of stewardship attached to is is busywork. Serving God is not the only concern. We must also serve a God we know. Our faith must match our service. If you are a giver, you need to ask yourself why. If you are a worker, you need to ask yourself also why. 3. By our knowledge.”If teaching, let them teach.” The average member in this church knows more about the Bible than all but a handful of people in the country. We do not realize this, because we do not get out among people who know less, but it is true. What are we doing with the knowledge we have? Are we using it for His kingdom? God tdid now give you knowledge to become smarter, but to make others smarter. 4. By encouragement. if it is encouraging, let him encourage; God has strengthened us, so that we can strengthen others. People need more than anything someone who will be a friend. Christians are great about making friends—with each other! Christian friendship is befriending people who need it more than we do. Whenever we encourage others, we are stewards of God’s grace. Whenever you do it to the least of these my brethren, you do it to Him. 5. By generosity. if it is contributing to the needs of others, let him give generously; Tithing is usually suggested as the pattern of Biblical giving. But tithing is just the beginning. God wants our whole lives. There are all kinds of reasons put forth for tithing. But there is one huge reason we do not tithe--Fear. We fear if we give, we will not have enough left to live on. You can never out give God. Paul says that our generosity to others is not based on our sense of duty, but on faith. We must believe that God will take care of us before we will take care of others. Faith is the only thing that will overcome fear. We must believe before we can receive. 6. By leadership. if it is leadership, let him govern diligently. Not everyone is called to be a leader, but many who are called to lead refuse. Leadership is hard work. It is easy for us to make excuses that we cannot lead, or are not called to lead, when really God is practically begging us to lead. If God places a burden on our hearts, then we need to lead. 7. By mercy. if it is showing mercy, let him do it cheerfully. Mercy is the act of caring for other from the heard, whether they are guilty or not. The more guilty a person is, the more they need mercy. We can only give the mercy God has shown us. But is God has shown mercy to us, then how much more we need to show mercy to others. Now, let’s get practical about this, by looking at the value for today. We put God first by Spirit guided stewardship. Here’s my challenge. Look at three gauges in your life to see if you are putting God first. 1. Your checkbook. What’s the first check that comes off your paycheck? Where does giving to God fit in this? 2. Your schedule. When you make your schedule for today, when does time for God fit in. Are you setting aside time each day for worship, and service? 3. Your enthusiasms. What would you rather do with yoru time? Be honest. What hobbies consume you. Where does serving God fit into that for you? All Spiritual gifts really are are a list of your enthusiasms, what brings you joy? Being a living sacrifice hurts at first, but it doesn’t have to forever. It gets better. Then it gets wonderful. When we learn how to be good stewards, we find the joy of serving in the house of the Lord. This week, we’ll get even more practical on stewardship.