Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Let's all find your seats.
Please take your song books.
Go to hymn number 449.
We'll begin this evening.
Hymn number 449.
Dwelling in Beulah Land.
Hymn number 449.
Once you've found your place,
let's sing it out of that verse.
Far away the noise of strife
upon my ears falling.
Hymn number 449.
Let's sing it out of that verse.
Once you've found your place,
let's sing it out of that verse.
Far away the noise of strife
upon my ears falling.
Let's sing it out of that verse.
Hymn number 449.
Once you've found your place,
let's sing it out of that verse.
Far away the noise of strife
upon my ears falling.
Let's sing it out of that verse.
Hymn number 449.
Once you've found your place,
let's sing it out of that verse.
Far away the noise of strife
upon my ears falling.
Let's sing it out of that verse.
Hymn number 449.
Once you've found your place,
let's sing it out of that verse.
Far away the noise of strife
upon my ears falling.
Let's sing it out of that verse.
Hymn number 449.
Once you've found your place,
let's sing it out of that verse.
Far away the noise of strife
upon my ears falling.
Into the land,
far below the storm,
on down upon the world is beating.
Sons of men in battle,
won't the enemy withstand?
Safe and high within
the castle of God's word retreating.
Nothing that can reach me
is new to the land.
I'm living on the mountain
underneath the cloudless sky.
Praise God!
I'm drinking at the fountain
that never shall run dry.
Oh yes, I'm feasting
on banana
from a mountiful supply
for I am dwelling
in new Holland.
Let the stormy breezes blow
their pride,
yet not alarming.
I am safely sheltered here
protected by God's hand.
Here the sun is always shining,
here there's not yet harmony.
I am safe forever
in new Holland.
I'm living on the mountain
underneath the cloudless sky.
Praise God!
I'm drinking at the fountain
that never shall run dry.
Oh yes, I'm feasting
on banana
from a mountiful supply
for I am dwelling
in new Holland.
Here you hear the words of God
I see in contemplation.
Hearing out his blessed voice
I see the way he bled.
Dwelling in the spirit here
I've learned of old salvation.
Gladly will I dare him
in new Holland.
I'm living on the mountain
underneath the cloudless sky.
Praise God!
I'm drinking at the fountain
that never shall run dry.
Oh yes, I'm feasting
on banana
from a mountiful supply
for I am dwelling
in new Holland.
Amen.
Okay, well, you know, I think God's still working here.
And even though you may have heard, you know, this isn't some brand new doctrine that you're
going to hear tonight, if I thank God for that.
Right?
You're not going to get something that's just whereas past ab Ephesians coming up with this
stuff.
Right.
But if you know, if you're here with the right heart, the Bible plays all of us, you know,
there's things that are taught and I'm hoping that something that I said tonight will be
a blessing to you.
And I'm going to be teaching out of this chapter primarily, 1 Corinthians 12, it's going to
be kind of a Bible study, we're going to hit some other places as well.
But I just want to preach on the church and hopefully maybe challenge you and edify you
as church members individually.
So every single one of you as a church member to understand your importance here in the
local church and the individual responsibility and importance that you have in your service
to the Lord.
So let's dig in here.
I'm going to start, I know we just read the entire chapter, let's look down there, verse
number seven, where it talks about spiritual gifts that God gives out, but I want to point
out something here in verse number seven, the Bible says, but the manifestation of the
Spirit is given to every man to profit with all.
God give you gifts, he gives you talents, he gives everybody different skills that you
can use for the kingdom of God and for his glory.
And everybody has something, if you're sitting here thinking like, well, you didn't give
me anything.
But God has, God has given everybody something with which you can serve God with.
Now he's distributed to different people, the Bible says as he will, so the way that
God wants to distribute gifts out to people, that's what he's done.
But the purpose of it is for you to profit with all.
It's not to just put it aside or like Bible talks about with the gospel, the light of
the gospel, just to put it under a bushel or put the candlestick and hide it.
It's to be used, it's to be made known, it's to be put into action.
And while, yes, Faithful Word Baptist Church is probably the greatest church in the world,
it's one of the greatest churches.
I mean, it's hard for me to say that because I pass to another church, which I think is
the greatest church in the world.
But when I come here, you know, I'm going to tell you that this is the best.
It's one of the greatest churches in the world, right?
It's an awesome church.
It's an awesome place to be.
And there's so many things being done here.
And it's really encouraging seeing all the great soul winning numbers and all the projects
and programs and things that are going on.
I can look around at the walls and I see the focus on the work getting done.
But there's always, I think, room for improvement.
And one of the things that I like focusing on because I do this with myself, so I bring
it forward in my preaching and in my service is challenges.
I love getting, making challenges and encouraging people, try to push people to just do a little
bit more and to just always be re-analyzing where you're at in your Christian life and
your spiritual walk, because it'd be so easy to start sliding back.
You want to make sure you catch yourself to be able to move forward.
So hopefully, if nothing else, this sermon will get you to reconsider and think about
where you're at this evening and in your life with your service to God, because God has
given you some gift to profit the kingdom of God with.
I want to put down there to verse number 12.
The Bible says, for as the body is one and hath many members and all the members of that
one body being many are one body, so also is Christ.
For by one spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles,
whether we bond or free, and have been all made to drink into one spirit.
For the body is not one member but many.
If the foot shall say, because I am not the hand, I am not of the body, is it therefore
not of the body?
And it goes on and on about the eye and the hearing.
Verse 18 says, but now hath God set the members, every one of them, in the body as it hath
pleased him.
And what the Bible's doing here is it's bringing up the, oh, it's got my, I'm like, where's
my cup?
It's got my name on it right here.
It's not something that was left up here by someone else.
The Bible's using an analogy here of using a physical human body to describe the church.
Just as a body has many members, you've got a nose, you've got ears, you've got a tongue,
you've got all these different parts of your body that make up one whole body, so is the
church.
The church has many members within it that make up one whole body.
Of course, Christ is the head of the church.
Christ is the one that's the brain center that ultimately is handing down all the directives,
everything that needs to be done within the church comes from the word of God, it comes
from Jesus Christ.
He's the ultimate authority.
He's in charge of the local church.
That's in charge of the body.
And then, of course, you've got pastors and, you know, maybe some deacons and some other
people, ministers within the church.
And then ultimately, though, every single individual person, every member has a function
and has a function that God would have for you to do.
And let that sink in.
Maybe you just come to church.
Maybe you've just been, maybe you're newly coming to this church.
Maybe you've been coming here for a while, but you still, all you do is you come to church
and you come to church faithfully.
Maybe you come every service, you're here on a Wednesday night tonight.
Maybe you come to all three church services during the week.
And that's great and you should keep doing that.
But what I want you to think about tonight is, well, what's my function, though?
How do I benefit Faithful Word Baptist Church as a church?
Because don't just think because your rear end is sitting in a seat that you're being
a benefit to the overall church.
Now, you are benefiting yourself, for sure.
Because you're being ministered to.
You're going to be ministered to the word of God and you should be being edified by
other people around you.
Look, that is part of the reason for church, it's a big part of the reason for coming
to church, is to be edified by others, is to provoke one another unto love and to good
works as it says in Hebrews chapter 10.
We need that.
But we also need churches that have members.
And when you start thinking about it this way, like 1 Corinthians 12, 18 says, look,
God has set you as a member of this church.
He has put you as that finger, as that ear, as that nose, to serve a function, to serve
a purpose so that the body can be whole and complete and be able to move forward doing
the maximum amount of work for the Lord.
Everybody has a purpose.
Everybody does.
From the young to the old, everybody has something that God would have for you to do and to perform
even within this church.
Now, I've been out of this church for a long time.
Where's Brother Segura at?
But I can, people, because a lot of times, here's the problem that most people have.
Well, I don't know what to do.
Right?
I mean, that's common.
I don't know what to do.
But here's the thing.
I guarantee you, there's a lot of work that goes on here, because I know how much work's
going on, and we have a third of the people, right?
There's a lot of work that goes into the ministry and into all the different things that go
on.
All you have to do is ask.
Ask one of the staff here.
Ask somebody, hey, what can I do to help and start thinking about some of the things that
you're good at.
And here's the thing.
anything, really, to be able to push a vacuum and do some of the most simple things, even
just doing the cleaning.
But there's so many different things, and I'm not saying, like, I found my perfect gift
from God.
It's pushing a vacuum.
I don't know.
I mean, maybe he did make you really good at it.
I'm not that great at it, so I'm going to claim that that wasn't a gift that was given
to me.
We need to start getting the mindset of thinking, hey, God has placed me here, and he's placed
me here for a reason, and it's because he wants you to be a member of this church.
He wants you to be a fully functioning member of this church.
And I didn't really say what the title of my sermon is, but the title of my sermon tonight
is Vestigial Church Members.
Vestigial Church Members.
If you don't know what that word means, you hear it commonly among the evolutionists in
this world, and it's commonly used as a vestigial appendage or a vestigial body part or a vestigial
system.
It's something that evolutionists will teach is, yeah, as we evolve from all these different
lower forms of creatures, things have changed, and our body has changed and been adapted
and modified to where now you're left with some remnants that just really don't serve
a purpose anymore.
So some scientists today will even tell you, or at least they used to, I think they're
changing their mind on this, but they'll say, maybe you've heard, oh, yeah, the appendix
is just useless.
You don't really need that.
Anyone heard that before?
Yeah, I mean, it's out there.
I think they're finally starting to realize that, no, actually it might serve a purpose.
Yeah, it does, because God created you to have an appendix for a very good reason.
Just because you don't know what that reason is doesn't mean there's no reason, right?
And many other things they'll try to say is, oh, that's, but they call that vestigial,
meaning it's really kind of useless in the body.
It's this appendage that's there, but it's not really doing anything for you.
And they'll say the same thing about wisdom teeth and all these other things.
That's a bunch of nonsense, but we're talking about a body here, right?
The church is a body.
You don't want to be this vestigial appendage that's this body part that seems to just have
no use or no value here.
Now, look, you all do have value, so don't take that the wrong way, because every individual,
every human being in God's eyes has value.
You have very much value, very valuable, but when it comes to performing a function within
the church, you need to start thinking about what can I do?
And there's so many ways to be a blessing, even just in keeping up with relationships
with people, with praying for people, with helping out in various ways, even amongst
church members and being able to work with people.
You can't just rely on just the pastor or just the staff members to kind of just make
sure everything is being done.
I mean, for example, someone might fall ill, get sick within the church or be in a hospital
or do these other things.
Yeah, I think it's great for staff or for the pastor to come and show up and pray and
be a blessing on those people, but there's no reason why you can't do that either, right?
And these are the types of things with a healthy church that really is a church family and
really is a functioning body, we're going to care about each other.
Not only is it one body, but we're also brothers and sisters in Christ, so it's a family as
well, and a godly family is one that loves and cares for one another.
So we need to have that service-minded attitude and the mindset that's going to say, hey,
I might not know exactly what God would have me to do specifically with my life, but if
you look to the word of God and try your best to do and act on the word of God, it's
going to become apparent even without you really realizing it, because while there are
many different functions and things that people can do and members within the body, it's still
all going to be according to God's will, which we have right here.
So I don't like speaking too mysteriously about the will of God, because the will of
God is ultimately found in His word, and we put these words into practice, and when
you put the words into practice, that's when you're going to start to see hopefully the
gift that God has given you.
But you need to start putting into practice, you need to start doing and having actions
and not just in showing up.
Now there's a couple of things I wanted to mention here, too, because when you're thinking
about what you can do and what you need to do, you don't have to just get too focused
on any one type or any one thing or even any one person or type of person.
There are so many different personality types in the scripture, and as the Bible is saying,
hey, look, there's different body parts.
You know, you have a nose for smelling, you have an ear for ear.
They're completely different from each other, but they're all really valuable.
And likewise, in scripture, we have so many different examples of people in the Bible
that have served God tremendously with their lives, but they're not always lifted up or
even that well-known.
Think about it this way.
You know, Jesus Christ had 12 disciples, right, on His earthly ministry here, on His earth,
that He specifically chose for the job of being His disciples.
And you hear, you know, we have a list of the names in the gospels.
In Luke 6, it gives us a list.
The Bible says Simon, who He also named Peter, Andrew, his brother, James and John.
You're familiar with those because you hear about them quite a bit, right, in the stories
of the gospels.
But then you've got Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, and Thomas, unfortunately,
we kind of all know for one specific story in the scripture, right?
But he's known as what?
Doubting Thomas, which isn't the best way to be known.
But let me ask you this, though.
Do you really think that Thomas, the only thing he had done in all of his ministry was
just to doubt Jesus at that one moment?
It's like, no, of course not.
He was out when he was sent out to and to and preaching the gospel.
And when the disciples came back, and they're like, even the unclean spirits are listening
to us and are obeying, being cast out and things like that, and they were all part of
that ministry doing all these great works, but we just don't really hear about it.
You don't really see it in the Bible.
Some people have more, if you call it an elevated position, or at least a position where it's
more famous.
There's more fame to it in the sense that we know their names.
But there's so many others that you really don't know specifically what they did.
But I tell you what, their service had a great impact nonetheless.
And that's the first point when it comes to, what can I do to serve?
You don't have to all just focus on the one job of like, well, you already have a pastor
who's kind of at the lead and at the front and behind the camera and the one who's usually
going to be out and getting all the publicity and kind of the big face to the church.
You don't have to have that position in order to have a huge impact on the ministry as
a church and to be part of the body.
It's not all just one part.
The church here, as you all I think very well know, isn't just Pastor Anderson.
He's not the church.
The church is all of you.
It's everybody here.
All the people comprise this church.
And that's why when people who see sound bites, you know, hear these little clips, if they
ever actually come and visit the church, their impression is going to be much different than
the few bites that they hear that are controversial, that are inflammatory or whatever, actually
coming here.
And that's different when they meet Pastor Anderson in person, face to face, and have
a conversation with him, as well as just coming and being part of this church.
You know, the media wants to spin it as like, oh, this is some hate group.
As if you were to, if someone were to walk in here and everyone's just like angry and
grittin' their teeth and just like, man, who are we going to hate today, right?
That's the way the media would like to paint this church as is just this super bunch of
hate mongers and just how can we repackage hate so we could just hate, hate, hate, and
hate some more.
But that's not what you get when you come into this church at all, right?
Like it's so far from characteristic of the church being called a hate group because this
is an extremely loving group of people that actually has sincere belief in the Bible,
cares about the things of God and the goodness of God and the mercy of God and the love of
God to go out and help other people and help each other and do things for the Lord.
That's what, you know, what this church is about.
But back to my point, though, you know, there's so many different, there's 12 apostles and
disciples that follow Jesus.
You don't know that much about all of them, yet they all were there putting in a great
work.
They also came from varied backgrounds, right?
The people who served God, just a few examples.
Obviously we know the easy ones are the fishermen, Peter, James, John.
We know that they left their work, their worldly work to go and follow Jesus.
We know that there was a publican that was one of the disciples.
We know Luke was a physician, right?
So he's a doctor.
We know that there was Paul, the apostle Paul and Barnabas were making tents.
So people working with their hands, blue collar jobs, other jobs, maybe more educated
jobs.
And the apostle Paul not only was a tent maker, but he also grew up as a Pharisee, well educated,
you know, getting that type of learning in his life.
Whereas the fishermen, when people were, you know, when the Pharisees were looking at them,
like these are unlearned men.
These are ignorant people.
They don't, they didn't go to school.
They didn't go to seminary.
They shouldn't know any of this stuff, but they marveled because they saw the great wisdom
that they had and how they were able to speak.
And it's because they had been with Jesus.
So you got the varied education, varied backgrounds, different type of people, different types
of jobs.
You've got someone like John the Baptist who's wearing his leather girdle and wearing camel
hair and eating locusts and honey right out in the wilderness.
I mean, the guy's just out there doing his thing, the survivalist, right?
He's out there and serving the Lord greatly.
And the Bible says that among men that are born of women, there's not risen a greater
than John the Baptist.
I mean, he served the Lord tremendously.
You also have people in the Bible like Elijah, but then compare Elijah to Elisha and you
look at some of the miracles and the ways that they serve, they both serve God just
fantastically, right?
And amazingly, we read about them, awesome stories, great faith, many great miracles
performed through the power of God by both these men.
But Elijah, if you kind of look at a lot of the things that he's known for and what he's
done, he's the one who's taunting the Baal worshipers, right?
And he is great.
He's also the one that was sitting on top of the mountain and he's just calling fire
down on these soldiers that are coming to bring him to the king.
Whereas when you look at Elisha, he's a different guy, a different personality and different
types of miracles.
And you can kind of look at both of them as extremely different people.
Elisha served Elijah.
He was there and ministered to Elijah and was kind of his disciple and the one who's
learning under his ministry.
But they both ended up doing these awesome things for God, but they both did it in very
different ways.
Now, not so different completely, like obviously they're both just serving the Lord and getting
the truth out there, but the way that people do it oftentimes is very different.
Keep your place in 1 Corinthians 12 because we'll be staying there most of the night,
but if you want to turn to Amos chapter 7, we're going to see a little story even about
Amos.
The Bible says that Amos was a herdman.
I mean, he's kind of minding his own business.
He has this faith.
He believes in the Lord, but he's doing his work just out in the field, kind of minding
his business.
And then he has this understanding and his calling from the Lord to preach.
And he doesn't ignore that.
He doesn't let that pass him by.
He acts on it.
Look at verse number 12 in Amos chapter 7.
The Bible says,
Also Amaziah said unto Amos, O thou seer, go, flee thee away into the land of Judah,
and there eat bread, and prophesy there.
But prophesy not again any more at Bethel, for it is the king's chapel, and it is the
king's court.
Then answered Amos, and said to Amaziah, I was no prophet, neither was I a prophet's
son, but I was an herdman and a gatherer of sycamore fruit.
And the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said unto me, go, prophesy unto
my people Israel.
So you're saying, look, I'm not this prophet.
I wasn't a prophet's son.
I wasn't born into this.
This isn't the direction I was seeing with my life.
But you know what?
When God told me to go and prophesy, I went.
And here's where he told me to go, and this is the message he told me to preach, and now
you're telling me, oh, yeah, get out of here.
Just go preach that somewhere else.
We don't want to hear that here.
And he's like, sorry.
This is what God told me to preach.
I'm going to preach here whether you like it or not.
Verse number 16 says,
So he's saying, this is what you're telling me.
You're telling me don't prophesy this here.
You're telling me don't preach against the house of Isaac, against Israel, right?
And Israel's the people of God, right?
But they needed to be preached against because they were in grievous sin.
And they needed to hear the word of God more than anything.
And America's in grievous sin today and needs to hear the word of the Lord.
And you know what?
You shouldn't care if someone comes and tells you, oh, yeah, yeah, you can't preach that
here.
Really?
Because God said I can.
And when people try to drive you out of places, oh, no, you're not allowed to be here, and
you can't preach that here, you say, yes, I can.
Yes, I have the authority.
God's the one who called me to go and preach.
Because if you're out there preaching the word of God and preaching the Bible, preaching
the gospel, you have been commissioned by the Lord to do that work.
And His authority supersedes the property manager.
It supersedes the Tempe city council or Chandler police or whoever wants to tell you that you
can't preach the gospel no matter who it is, no matter what man authority is trying to
tell you that.
Look, God's the one who said to go out and preach the gospel to every creature.
Jesus Christ commissioned that Himself.
So now as a result, here's what He says.
He says, now hear the word, the word of the Lord.
You're saying not to do this.
Look at verse 17.
Therefore, thus saith the Lord, thy wife shall be in harlot in the city, and thy sons and
thy daughters shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line, and thou
shalt die in a polluted land, and Israel shall surely go into captivity forth of his land.
He doubles down.
I mean, He's still preaching the truth, but I mean, does this sound like He's holding
back when He's saying that your wife is going to be a harlot?
Your wife's going to be a whore.
If there was ever a time to like maybe do some self-censorship as people are telling
you to get out of here, we don't want to hear what you have to say, that would be the time
where He might tone things down a little bit.
But it's obviously not toned down.
Why?
Because the Lord sent me, and I have a job to do.
Because the Lord said unto me, go, prophesy unto my people Israel.
That's why.
Because He has more respect unto the command from the Lord than He does to anyone else,
than He does to even following His herd and gathering sycamore fruit and everything else
that He was doing before, when He saw, hey, I have this job to do, He was willing to part
with everything else to do this job.
And that's part of being in ministry in general.
Now, God's not calling everybody necessarily just quits their jobs completely to do something
else.
That's not everybody's path and everybody's walk.
Amos certainly was called to do this job and to perform this mission, as Jonah was.
Jonah was told to go and preach to Nineveh and look through the various prophets and
preachers that have been called to do different things.
And they vary.
But what matters ultimately is what's in your heart.
What matters is, are you going to respond to that call?
What matters is, are you going to be like the Jonah who's going to say, no, I'm going
to go this way, and we see what happens to him being swallowed up by a whale and vomited
out three days later?
Or we see Amos, who then has the boldness to actually preach the whole counsel of God
in the face of people that don't like what they're hearing.
But he's doing it anyways because God told him to do it.
When you look at different people who serve God, obviously there's different pastors,
different personalities.
You know, we could see that in the Bible, but even also today.
You've got many different people that they speak different.
You might relate to some people more than others.
Their style is different.
But they can all serve God.
They have different gifts, right?
Some people are much more dynamic.
Some people are really good at telling jokes.
I'm not one of those people, unfortunately.
I wish I were a little bit better at that.
But there's other people that can do things differently.
My point to all of this is you don't have to focus on one person or one type and say,
well, that's how you serve God, so I need to be like that.
Does that make sense?
You don't have to have that one mold because there's not just one mold.
God might have placed you as an ear, and you're looking at the nose going, like, I need to
be like that nose.
And God's going, no, you're not a nose.
That's not what I have you here for.
You're an ear.
Do some hearing, right?
And obviously, it's very illustrative, but when it comes to serving the Lord, everyone's
got their different skill, their different jobs, different talents.
Let's go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
With all that in mind and the different types of personalities, different types of people,
when it comes to the service of the Lord, and man, this popped into my mind, I hate
this phrase, but it's somewhat applicable.
People say you just got to do you, like you do you.
I hate that phrase.
But you do have to serve the Lord as yourself, the way that He created you with the gifts
that He's given you, right?
Obviously, though, too, the other thing to consider is maybe God has given you gifts
that you're not aware of because you haven't really tried doing anything with it.
You might very well have a very good aptitude or talent in learning languages, for example,
but you've never even tried, you've never even attempted to learn another language.
You say, well, what does that have to do with anything?
Well, you have a pretty large population of people who speak Spanish only in this area,
as I know very well.
That's one of the things that caused me to re just dig up all the learning that I had
done in Spanish to be able to preach the gospel to more people.
There's plenty of people out there like that, and maybe God has gifted you with that and
He wants you to use that talent or use that ability.
Maybe you know enough to even be able to teach other people how to learn things.
It's another possibility.
You may be apt to teach in other ways.
Obviously, the person who is the pastor needs to be apt to teach, but there's other opportunities
to teach outside of being the pastor teaching from the pulpit, especially within the larger
church.
You've got a lot of people here and lots of great skills that could be very useful for
the ministry where you can actually be teaching other people.
Now, let's keep reading here in verse number 22, excuse me, 1 Corinthians 12, the Bible
says, nay, much more of those members of the body which seem to be more feeble are necessary.
And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, upon these we bestow
more abundant honor and our uncommly parts have more abundant comeliness.
For our comelry parts have no need, but God had tempered the body together, having given
more abundant honor to that part which lacked.
And what this is just talking about is sometimes the parts of the body that seem a little bit
more appealing to the eye have not much use at all, whereas some parts that don't quite
look as good have a much better function, right?
You could think of looks like the hair on top of our head doesn't really have some great
function in the body overall.
And some people are going, amen, brother, that like don't have hardly any hair, right?
Like, yeah, this is worthless, we don't need that.
But it's also something that people are going to be looking at going, well, that's really
beautiful, that's really attractive, oh, look at that person, they have all this great hair.
But no one's going like looking at someone's organs or internal areas going like, oh, wow,
that's so beautiful.
No one even knows what they look like.
They're not that good to look upon, but they're extremely important for our health, right?
So again, not getting caught up in the flashy part of the ministry or the part that everyone's
going to see, or even pat you on the back for, or where people are over here, maybe
in front of everyone else, getting the attention.
It's not all about that.
It's about how are you going to serve the Lord from your heart with what He's given
you.
Verse number 25 says that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members
should have the same care one for another.
And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it, or one member be honored,
all the members rejoice with it.
And this is what a healthy body will do overall.
When one part of the body is experiencing pain or having a difficult time, the rest
of the body is going to want to bring that member back up to full functionality, right?
To be thriving again.
When you have a problem in your body, you have an earache, you have a toothache, you
have some other problem, it kind of impacts your whole body and your whole thinking and
everything else can be drawn away as a result.
And then your hands are going to kick into action to start doing things to help that
part of the body that is need.
Well, it should be the same way within the church, right?
And again, you ought to be looking out one for another.
And if you say, hey, you know, the person who comes in two minutes after church starts
and bolts out the door every service as soon as the service is over, it's going to be
pretty hard to be keeping up with, well, how are people doing within the church?
How would you even know if there's another member that's suffering somewhere or that's
rejoicing over something?
You have no idea if you're not spending time with the other members of this body.
It is vital for the church health, for the health of the body to get to know one another,
to be unified as a body, to do this great work and to understand and to get to know
people enough.
Now, you may not know every single person or be best friends with everybody in a church,
especially as it gets bigger and bigger.
I understand that.
And you know, there may be some disparity between your big toe and like the top of your
ear or something where they're just physically distant from each other and not always able
to help one another.
But you need to try and you need to put forth the effort to be thinking about and caring
for one another.
As I already mentioned, I quoted Hebrews 10.24, but this is one of my favorite passages.
I love it so much because it just illustrates the importance of church two ways.
One, it says, let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works, which
is extremely important, provoking one another, being there to encourage and to help people
to do good things, to do the good works, to be a functioning member, because a functioning
member is doing something, right?
So the other body members are going to be helping provoke others to keep up the good
work, to keep doing, to keep doing what's right, to keep serving the Lord in whatever
capacity that may be.
And you say, well, I don't even know how to do this or how to do that.
You can help teach and train people as well.
Discipleship.
And then it says in verse 25, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the
manner of some is, but exhorting one another and so much the more as you see the day approaching.
And of course, we continue to see the day approaching, the day of Christ is coming upon
us fast, which means we need more church, not less.
It means you need more edifying, not less.
It means you need to be among other believers more and get to know people more and be involved
in the sense of knowing how things are going with people, good and bad, rejoice with the
people that are rejoicing and mourn and weep with the people who are weeping and be able
to help and comfort those that need help.
This is the mindset, and this is the mindset that I continue to strive to have, and I believe
every believer is this goes to the heart of Christianity and being a disciple or follower
of Jesus Christ is to have the same mindset that Jesus Christ had in Matthew chapter 20,
verse number 26.
The Bible reads, but it shall not be so among you, but whosoever will be great among you,
let him be your minister.
Is Jesus Christ explaining, what does it mean to be a great Christian?
Right?
When the disciples were talking about to say, who's going to be the greatest?
Who is just working hard?
Who's achieving the most?
How is it that you're going to be considered the greatest Christian, the greatest follower
of Christ?
Well, he says, you want to be great, then let him be your minister and whosoever will
be chief among you, let him be your servant, even as the son of man.
So who is he using as the example himself?
Jesus Christ is the example of who to follow, of how to be a great Christian.
It makes sense.
How close can you follow Christ?
He gave us the example.
Even as the son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life
for ransom for many.
So did Jesus Christ come to this earth so that everybody could serve him?
No, it's the exact opposite.
He's saying, the son of man came to serve others, to help other people.
He came to heal.
He preached the gospel.
He came to seek and to save that which was lost.
It was nonstop work for other people.
And it's a mindset that we ought to have in church, not what can this church do for
me, but what can I do for this church?
Because the church represents this ministry of reaching people.
Yes, a big focus is on the lost, reaching the lost with the gospel, but the ministry
isn't just about the lost.
It's about the saved too.
It's about helping people who are children of God to improve and to grow and to do more
to serve the Lord that you can ultimately reach even more people and to love and care
for those people, your brothers and sisters in Christ.
We're almost done.
Let's go to Titus chapter two.
As I mentioned before, as a believer or part of a family, we're brothers and sisters in
Christ.
Church member, you're part of the body, so you're a member of that body and we don't
want to be these vestigial appendages.
We don't want to be something that's here, especially like a remnant of something that
once was.
Maybe you were on fire for serving the Lord.
Maybe you had great purpose in doing a lot of great works for the Lord and now you're
just not really doing much of anything.
Rekindle that desire to serve God and think about it.
To me, my opinion, my view, don't do it for yourself.
Don't think about serving God in terms of you.
If that works for you and you're serving the Lord, then great, more power to you.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to get rewards.
I think that's a good motivating factor, so I'm not condemning you for that.
The way that I see things, I tend to thrive when I can think about, well, I may not want
to do this, but it's really important for everybody else.
When you have a mindset on others and the value that you can bring and the way that
you can help other people, for me that really helps to keep me going, especially during
a time where it may be kind of hard or you don't really want to do it or you may feel
kind of weary.
When you have a mindset of your thinking about somebody else and know this is really important,
you probably know what I'm talking about with going to work or working really hard.
You have to go the extra mile sometimes to support your family and just make sure everybody
has what they need.
If that means you're going to take a second job or that means you're going to stay up
real late and get up really early and do it, you're going to do it.
Why?
Because you care about your family.
You care about your loved ones.
That's pretty easy to understand.
Apply that to the church, to your brothers and sisters in Christ, to your heavenly
father and serving him and doing the work of the ministry and loving the lost and loving
the saved brethren and saying, well, hey, what can I do to help other people?
What can I do to help out?
And that's the mindset that Christ has.
I'm not here to be ministered to.
Hey, being ministered to is great, though, right?
And it's great when people can edify you, encourage you, and I love being encouraged
and every time I come here, I get a lot of encouragement.
Even just, you know, being amongst the brethren is a great encouragement for me.
And I think we need that, but that's not the point.
My purpose coming here wasn't just so that I could receive everything and you all can
minister to me and I could get a cup with my name on it.
That wasn't the purpose.
My purpose was to try to help at least one person here, if not many more.
And as I said at the beginning, you know, I prayed a lot and I don't know.
I don't know if anything here, if you're like, Pastor Burns, we know all this already, then
great, keep it up.
But if something here that you're seeing in the scripture, let it sink in.
And these are not, shouldn't be new truths to you.
It's good to revisit them and say, you know what, no, I need to kind of refocus things.
I might've let things slip and get a little bit out of focus.
Now let's, yes, that's right.
Let's get back to doing this and let's get in.
Maybe I've fallen just into a routine and there's nothing wrong with routines.
Routines are good.
Routines of going to church and going soul-winding in your Bible and doing these things.
You got to have the routines, but maybe it's just become too much of a routine to where
your heart's not even really in it anymore.
Get the minister's mindset back and think of the value and the importance that serving
the Lord really has, because it's not about yourself.
Ultimately, it's about others.
I mentioned before, guys, the purpose for you, old, young, you know, every walk of life,
people have, God will have a job for you.
We're just going to look at a couple of examples.
Titus chapter two, verse number one, the Bible says, but speak thou the things which
become sound doctrine, that the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith and
charity in patience.
The aged women, likewise, that they be in behavior has become holiness, not false accusers,
not given too much wine, teachers of good things, that they may teach the young women
to be sober, to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, keepers
at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.
These are just a couple of examples, and they were specifically written to older people,
older men, older women, hey, here are some things that you should focus on, that you
should do, that God has for you to do.
And I love that he talks about the women here being teachers.
Not that they're supposed to come up here behind the pulpit and teach the whole congregation,
but they have a job to teach younger women, hey, the aged women have been around for a
long time, they've been through things, they're going to be able to understand the mindset
of the younger woman and the struggles that they go through and to be able to help them
to do what they're supposed to be doing, like loving their husbands and loving their children
and how to keep everything in order.
And that is a job that you can do, if you're an aged woman, to be able to do these things.
1 Timothy 5, again, it talks about here, and there's no particular reason, these are just
a couple of verses that popped into my mind that are dedicated towards specific groups
of people, and it brings up a widow in 1 Timothy 5, and it talks about the type of a widow
that the church would care for, that the church would take in and support in the event
that that widow doesn't have any family to take care of them.
But this is the criteria that a widow ought to have if the church is going to care for
this person.
Look at the list of things that are kind of the requirements here for a church to care
for a widow.
Verse number 9, the Bible says, Let not a widow be taken into the number under three
score years old, having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good works,
if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saint's
feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good
work.
Now, these are all great things that are not restricted to widows, right?
And in fact, she wasn't a widow when she was doing these things, which is why now you're
going to take care of her.
But even some of these things, it's not even just for women to do when you look at it like
good works.
Yeah, everyone should have that.
Well reported of.
This is someone who is known to have good works.
This is someone who brought up children.
This is someone who lodged strangers being hospitable.
These are all ways of being a good church member, right?
The church is going to take care of you.
Why?
Because you took care of the church.
by lodging strangers, by washing the saint's feet, by relieving the afflicted, being there
for people who are going through the hard times, being involved with other people in
a very helpful way, diligently following every good work.
Don't just sit back and let everyone else do the work.
Don't be one of those people that boasts of all the great things your church does when
you don't do anything.
Right?
Hey, it's great.
You have a great church here and there's a reason that you can say, hey, there's a lot
of great things for the Lord being done here.
Praise God for that.
And that is good.
But instead of just praising the Lord for the good things being done here, why don't
you be a part of that?
There's always things to do.
Don't take the easy excuse of saying, well, no one told me what to do, or no one said
that I can do this, so I'm not going to do anything.
Take more initiative than that, because it's not always going to be explicitly told you
that, hey, there's something that you can do.
So ask and start doing.
And sometimes, and I'll tell you this from experience, sometimes people are so busy with
a lot of other things going on, it's kind of too hard to even make, like, let's say
10 people, 20 people came up and said, hey, I want to help.
That might be a little overwhelming all at once.
You're like, man, I heard this sermon.
I want to get more involved and I want to do something.
And that's great.
But don't just let it stop and say, well, I mean, I asked and that was it and nothing
ever came of it, so I'm just going to keep going back to not really doing anything.
No, don't let it die out.
Don't let it fizzle out.
You may need to even talk to people more than once, right?
If you're really zealous and you have a good heart, you want to serve, but you honestly
don't know how, talk to people about that and get other people's opinion about that.
Talk to, like I said, the staff here or even just other brothers of Christ, people that
you know have wisdom, right?
Seek out people that you know, know their Bible really well.
The Bible says in Acts chapter six, we're almost done, Acts chapter six, we're going
to see what happened in the early church.
As they grew and multiplied tremendously in the early church, in the early book of Acts,
there are thousands of people being saved, which is really exciting, all kinds of things
going on, but as a result of that now, there's people being added to the church and the needs
and the workload is just increasing and increasing.
So they had this issue.
Verse number one of Acts chapter six reads, and in those days when the number of the disciples
was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews because their
widows were neglected in the daily ministration.
That's the daily ministration, the ministering to these widows.
The Greeks are saying, hey, you're taking care of the Hebrew women, but not our women,
basically, right?
They're saying, you know, things aren't really being, they're not being properly cared for
and as a result of the multiplication, as a result of this great growth, right?
But the daily ministration is daily work.
Ministry sounds great, that's what it is, but it really is work.
There's a lot of work to be done and the problem at this time was there wasn't enough workers
to do the work of the church because there's so much more work that could be done and so
much more help that could be given, but not enough people that were there to work.
And what's interesting about this, you know, the disciples meet about this.
Verse number two says, then the 12 called the multitude of the disciples unto them.
They had a lot of disciples.
There's a lot of people serving Christ, following Christ, that were there to serve the Lord,
but they called this great multitude of disciples and said it is not reason that we should leave
the word of God and serve tables.
So he said it doesn't make sense that we should be running around and dealing with all these
daily tasks because we have other things that we need to do as these members of the church
that God has put in this position.
This isn't our function.
We need to have other members covering this job, this part of the work of the body.
And he says in verse three, wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest
report full of the Holy Ghost in wisdom whom we may appoint over this business.
So there already have people who are full of the Holy Ghost in wisdom, but they just
weren't placed in any particular job function within the church.
But they were there.
They existed.
And they were able to find seven of them apparently pretty quickly.
It seems like they found these men relatively quickly.
But also, I like the fact that they're looking for people, they're not just looking for anybody
like this random person that just showed up.
No, they found people who were full of the Holy Ghost in wisdom to do even some of the
smaller tasks.
Why would you need someone full of the Holy Ghost in wisdom?
Because they're serving the Lord.
And no job is too small or unimportant.
It's all important.
Taking care of those widows was important.
You want to have the best people serving at the end of the day.
But we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.
And look, that job is also important.
The job of the apostles, they say we're continually just focused on the ministry of the word,
preaching and teaching the word of God and praying and seriously invested in the prayer.
That was extremely important to say we can't take away from this work to do this other
job.
And as the church grows and as there's more needs and other things that need to be filled,
think about, hey, maybe I can step in here so that the main thrust and the main focus
of the things that we all value to be kind of the utmost important can continue going
without being hindered, without being hampered by other distractions and other things that
need to be done.
Because we're going to make sure that the people who are doing that job can stay focused
on that job.
And we're actually going to do the job without adding more drama and complaining and other
reasons to focus now on this.
If you're going to be a help, be a help.
Don't be, I'm here to help and then just complain and cause problems and drama and
everything else and go, oh, yeah, well, this person, you know, I don't even know.
I don't have a good example in my mind right now.
I said I was going to work on this section of the sanctuary and this other person came
in and they started straightening up the chairs, but I set out, you know, and start bringing
these problems before, you know, it's like, look, you're here to not have, bring extra
drama and problems.
Just get that job done, right?
Be humble.
Let's keep reading here.
I'm almost done.
Verse five, and the saying pleased the whole multitude and they chose Stephen, a man full
of faith and of the Holy Ghost and Philip and Prochorus and Nicanor and Timon and Parmenas
and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch.
These names also, some of these names you never hear again.
You see them once here, but these are men that were full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom
that they chose.
I'm sure they serve the Lord tremendously with their lives.
That's the one mention you get of them.
You may not get much recognition or mention in front of everyone when you serve the Lord,
but that shouldn't be why you do it anyways, right?
And the church is going to thrive and the body thrives when the members can all just
do their job and do the best job and be willing to serve without getting any of the spotlight
and attention, but that's how the most work will get done.
And notice this, verse number seven, or verse number six, whom they set before the apostles
and when they had prayed and they laid their hands on them and the word of God increased
and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly.
So they added more workers to the ministry, people who are going to fill this need.
There's more things that need to be done and what happened as a result?
Even more increase.
The word of God increased tremendously and the disciples multiplied.
It worked.
Adding more workers, the body grew and grew in a very healthy way.
Last place we're going to look is James chapter one, kind of sum it all up.
My prayer is that there be people in church tonight that would come to this conclusion
as James 1 22 says, but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving your own selves.
For if any be hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like unto a man beholding his natural
face in a glass.
For he beholdeth himself and goeth his way and straightway forgetteth what manner of
man he was.
I don't want you hearing what's being taught tonight and seeing from the word of God the
importance of being a valuable church member in the sense of I'm going to work.
I'm going to see what I can do to help.
I'm going to help in ministries, maybe even talk about starting some other ministries,
prison ministries, widow ministries, ways of reaching and helping people even just within
the church.
What can we do to support some of the families or the elderly people or whoever in the church?
What can I do to help and to be a strengthening of the body?
Don't hear these things and think, man, that's a great idea and then not put it into action.
If you agree with this message, if you say yes, I need to do this and in fact I'm kind
of one of those people where I think I haven't really been giving much, I haven't been ministering
much, I haven't been giving of myself or of my time to help other people very much and
you decide, look, I want to do that.
Be a doer of the word and not a hearer only.
Don't let it pass you by.
The Bible says this, but whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth
therein, he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed
in his deed.
And I guarantee you this, you will always be blessed, always be blessed, when you become
actually part of a ministry and serve other people.
The Bible says it's more blessed to give than it is to receive and having that heart of
a minister, of a servant to help other people is a blessing in itself.
I bring this up from time to time, there's been many times, the most simple example is
soul winning.
It's so easy, many people go soul winning.
You go out soul winning on the days where you don't feel like going, you didn't even
want to go out, you kind of have a bad attitude, but you know I've never once regretted ever
in my entire life going out soul winning.
Like after I've done it, never been a regret, never one time.
And if I've ever had a bad attitude at the beginning, I did not have that bad attitude
at the end.
And that turned out to be a blessing for me as a minister, but that's not why I went out,
I went out in some of those cases because I just had to do it, out of routine, out of
habit, out of something where I said I just have to do this.
Not always with the best intention, but you know what, you leave with a better heart and
a better spirit, a better attitude.
And the same way with putting this ministry work into action, hey, that man will be blessed
in his deed.
You're going to be blessed in that work.
If any man among you seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth
his own heart, this man's religion is vain.
But look at verse number 27 there, James 1, 27.
The pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction and to keep himself unspotted from the world.
Other people first, but you know what, keep yourself unspotted from the world also.
They're both extremely important, but notice it puts, hey, visit the fatherless and widows
in their affliction.
Go out and help other people.
And hey, don't forget about yourself.
Make sure you're not slipping into sin.
Keep yourself unspotted from the world, but focus on others.
The good thing about a sermon like this, like I said from the beginning, you know, some
of it's hard to think, hey, what can I preach?
This is applicable to everybody.
When I preach, especially sermons like this, I preach to myself as much as everybody else
because I'm a Christian just like you in the sense that I, you know, I have my ups
and downs and I want to, I want to do more.
And I'll tell you what though, one of the things I've loved, I've always loved about
this church is the spirit and the attitude that it has, but I don't, and I don't ever
want to see that, that fail or fade away.
And it hasn't, but this is how we're going to keep that, this great church going and
the great spirit and the great work and the great ministry is by you getting involved.
Me?
Yes, you.
Let's bow our heads to that word of prayer.
Dear Heavenly Father, Lord, thank you so much for this church.
Thank you for Faith Ward Baptist Church, for Pastor Anderson and for all the great people
that are here tonight and those that aren't here tonight, dear Lord, I pray to please
strengthen this church and help them to grow stronger, that this body would be working
at full capacity, Lord, and can continue to do more, to bring glory and honor unto your
name and to bring a loss unto Christ.
God, please, please bless this ministry and we thank you so much for all that you've done
for us.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
If you need the hymnal for number 155, doxology, we'll sing it twice.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Him all creatures here below.
Praise Him above the heavenly low.
Praise God, your Son, and your Son,
Praise God, your Son,