(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Alright, so we started off here in Hebrews chapter 10 this morning, and the part of the passage we're going to focus in on starts there in verse number 24, and I reference this verse periodically from time to time, and this passage particularly when it comes to church attendance, and that's exactly what I'm going to be preaching on again this morning, and you know, this subject is, I believe, extremely important, and one of the things I hope I don't sound too much like a broken record when you come to church or when you hear different things preached, but it is very needful for us, and this has been my experience just being in church and going to church for over a decade, or for years and years and years and years, you know, just seeing people come and go, seeing people come and go. Now, thank God, our church is just a little over two years old, and we have people in here that have been here from the very first service, and people have been very faithful and continue to be faithful, and other people have joined a little bit later and are real faithful to church, but every single time I preach a sermon on, you know, church attendance and things like that, I always say, hey, you know, look around, because in a few years I guarantee there's going to be people who aren't here that you would probably never guess would ever drop out of church. Now, let me say this, too. It doesn't bother me if someone leaves our church to go to another church and serve God somewhere else. The problem comes in is when you just get out of church. People just don't go to church. If you're going to a church, you think it's a better fit, you think it's a better church or whatever, it's what you can do, maybe there's other things that are keeping you from coming here specifically to this church, whatever. That's not what I'm going to be preaching about at all this morning is necessarily me, per se, and let me add this, too, because one of the things that we see with what I've seen with people is that oftentimes there's people that just seem to be like, man, you're die hard, you're never going to go anywhere. You know, people who've been instrumental even in our church have just kind of faded away, and we're going to look at a lot of passages this morning, and hopefully people who may be listening online, but more importantly, for you guys that are here this morning, I hope this can make some kind of an impact on you to understand, really understand the importance just of being in church in general. When I started this church two years ago, I don't know what everyone's expectations were. You know, maybe some people had a real high expectation, and I didn't live up to that expectation. If I didn't do that, sorry, but I don't know what you'd expect. You know, we started this church here specifically because I already had known of and talked with a bunch of people who are from this area, and they know there's no churches out here that are really going forth and really interested in winning souls and really knocking on doors and doing the work and taking hard stands on biblical truths, especially on moral truths that are just found very clearly in Scripture and that things that seem to be watered down, and that was one of the reasons why I chose to start a church here, right? Now, I'm not claiming to be the best preacher, you know, the most interesting person or whatever, but you know what? That shouldn't matter at all. As far as reasons to go to church, how interesting your preacher is, is not, you know, you got to look at, is the person qualified? Is the church, you know, are we doing a good work? Are we doing a good job? Is this what we're doing? Is it got the right doctrine? You got the right salvation? And, you know, that's what should be most important to you. And unfortunately, with some people, and there's lots of different reasons when people get out of church, so I'm not just broad brushing every single person who's ever come here and doesn't come here anymore or anything like that. Believe me, don't take it that way, please. But you get, you know, there's a lot of excitement, just kind of like when you first get saved. I don't know about you, but for me, when I first got saved, I was real excited and, you know, wanted to tell everybody about it, and it was something that was real personal and impactful. Obviously, your salvation, you know, hey man, I put my trust in Jesus. I'm saved. This is great. This is good news. I told my friends, and they're just like, what are you talking about? I kind of thought I was crazy, you know, and tell my family about it. But then, after a while, that excitement just generally seems to fade. And it's kind of like that with everything, right? I mean, you get married, everything's great, like man, we just got married, you go on a honeymoon, you're having all this fun, and you're learning each other, and you're living together and everything else. And then, after a while, you know what? It fades. That excitement level fades. The honeymoon's over, right? And the title of my sermon this morning is When the Excitement Fades. You know, so even coming to church, you know, you get involved, like man, church, I've never been to church like this before. This is great. People are all involved. There's all this stuff going on, and it's real exciting, and you get plugged in, and you can be doing a lot of work, but after a while, that excitement is going to fade. And what we need to understand about the Christian life and about your walk with God is that you need to be faithful to the Lord and faithful to the house of God when it's exciting and when it's not exciting. It's something that you need to make the decision on, just like your marriage, right? When you make a vow and say, you know what? This is for life until death do us part, that you're serious about that vow. You're serious about that marriage, and you're going to say, I will not divorce my spouse. It's not an option, right? I've gone into this, and you know what? That's why you say for better and for worse, because there's going to be good times. There's going to be bad times. It's going to be real exciting and joyful, and there's going to be times where it's not so fun. But either way, we're going to stick through this. You've got to look at church as like a marriage where you're going to go into it going, hey, I'm going to serve the Lord. And again, look, if there's a church that gets apostate and this turns real bad and turns sour, got some false, you know, get out of that church, but go to a different church, right? You have to marry yourself to one particular church, but decide and say, I will be in a church in God's house, wherever that may be in God's house, where he would have me to be in a place where he's going to add me as a member to be a more functional Christian and to do the things that God has established church for. And when we look down here at Hebrews 10, look at verse number 24, the Bible reads, and let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good work. So one of the jobs as you as a Christian, what we ought to be doing in general with each other is considering each other, thinking about one another. You know, you come to church, the church ought to be a church family. If your brothers and sisters in Christ, you are a family. We have one heavenly father, and we ought to be able to share each other's burdens and concerns and be considering and thoughtful of each other so that we could provoke each other unto love and to good works, to do good, to do right, to be an encouragement, because when you're out in the world, by and large, you're going to be exposed to all kinds of stuff and all kinds of sin and wickedness and just the thought process of the world and the ways of the world are going to try to steer you away from the Lord and into sin. But when you come to church, you ought to have a group of people that cares about each other, you consider each other, and you're going to provoke each other unto love and good works. You know what? Hey, it's great. It's so easy in our flesh to get lazy, isn't it? When you're all by yourself, when you're all, oh, man, you're just kind of, well, I'm just going to rest. Well, I'm just going to relax. Well, I'm just going to do this. I'm just going to do that and just kind of end up not doing anything real productive. But what happens when you get someone else around you that's like, all right, man, even just at home, just think about it. You may be kind of lazy and those of you that might be married and then your spouse is getting up and they're getting things done and they're moving. It's like, that's going to rub off and provoke you to like, man, what am I doing just sitting around doing this? They're doing all the work. I better get up and start doing so. And then you get going to write and you actually get things done. Well, church is similar, right? When, when you've got people, it's like, Hey, we've got so many going on this afternoon. What's going on? What have you been doing this week? We've been, you know, people are going out for each of the gospel. That's encouraging. It's edifying and it's going to provoke other people to want to get involved too. And that's just this part of the reasons why we come here. Look at verse 25 though. It says, after verse 24, again, let's consider one another to provoke unto love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as a manner of some is. So some people, they first stand up forsaking the assembly. And that's what church is, by the way, it's an assembly. It's not a building. It's not this strip mall. It's not this, you know, the place that we're sitting in right now, this place, the building, you know, the carpet, the chairs, that's not church. The church is the people. It's the assembly. It's assembling of believers together. We are the church. And some people forsake that assembling for whatever reason. And again, I mean, you could have a million different reasons not to come to church, but the Bible isn't clearly instructing us here not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together as a manner of some is, but exhorting one another. You need to be encouraging other people. See oftentimes when people get out of church, it's a very selfish reason. It's well, I this and I that, you're not thinking about, well, what about everybody else? What about the people that you have influence of? What about the people that you could exhort? What about the people that you can help? Are you thinking about them? Are you thinking about who is in church that might need some help that might be going through a rough patch in their life? You don't even know when you don't show up. How are you going to be an exhortation and a help and a benefit unto them and provoke them unto love and the good works, exhorting one another. Look at this, and so much the more as you see the day approaching, what day is that? It's the day of Christ. As we get closer to the return of Jesus Christ, the times and the conditions are going to get worse and worse and worse. And things are getting more wicked, more sinful, more apostate, which means we need church more and more and more. We need to be there to support each other more and more as we get into darker days ahead. We need this even more. And then when we continue reading here, it continues on to say this. That word for is a conjunction, conjuncting the previous statements with this one. For if we sin willfully, after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries. And I say this, it is a sin to forsake the assembling of yourselves together. Together with believers as an assembly in a church for the purpose of serving the Lord. And I know this mindset of people that say, well, we have church in my house, and I have church with my friends, and I do this, and they keep calling things church that are not church. And they'll use verses like, well, we're two or three together together, my name there, my midst. Okay, but it doesn't say it's church. You can be gathered with two or three people and be talking about Jesus and other Spirit-filled believers, and Jesus can be there with you, but it doesn't make it church. Church is an assembly of believers. And the Bible lays out, I'm not going to get into all of that, but you can read the requirements in Titus and 1 Timothy. You could see that God has ordained offices for bishops and deacons, and that He put them in place for a specific reason. It's for the church. Jesus Christ died for the church. It's not just, oh, I mean, look, you could have church in a house. I had church in a house before, but it was still church. It was a specific time, a specific place, and people were all assembling and gathering together. It wasn't just me and my family at home praying before a meal and me giving a little bit of wisdom from the Bible. Okay, that's not church. Something that we should do. I do it every day, but that's not church. We're having church right now. We're all gathered together, and the Bible says sinning willfully. You know, obviously, when you sin willfully, you better expect some serious consequences from the Lord. Just because you're saved doesn't mean you don't get any consequences for sin. You're a child of God. Yeah, you're never going to be unborn from the family. You always have your salvation, of course, but being a child of God, you've got a Heavenly Father that's going to chastise every son that he receives. And when you sin willfully and you know better, and you say, no, I know that I should be going to church, and now you have no excuse. You say, well, I've never read Hebrews 10 before. You just did today. Right? And Hebrews 10 says not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together, and now you know that. And if you just do that and say, you know what, no, I don't have time for church. I'm not going to go to church. I've got other things going on. Well, now you're sinning willfully. You've heard the truth. You see the truth, and now you're not doing it. Turn to Luke chapter 9. I think one of the most common reasons why people get out of church, there's multiple reasons. Like I said, I'm not going to go through all of them. Sometimes it's a result of sin. Sometimes people just kind of get themselves wrapped up in sin, and then they feel guilty about coming to church, and they kind of don't want to go because they know they're in sin and whatever. And to that, I would say, you know, get right. Now, depending on the sin, right, like if you're committing some sin, like 1 Corinthians 5, you're a drunkard or fornicator or something like that, get that right and repent. I mean, don't cling to your sin and say, oh, I'm committing this sin, so I'm going to get out of church because, you know, the point of putting away that wicked person from among you is for repentance, so that person gets right. So if you're already knowing you're in one of those sins and it's obvious to you and you're sinning willfully, get out of that sin. Don't think you're solving the problem by getting out of church. Solve the problem by repenting of the sin and staying in church. The church is going to help you. But even if it's not one of those major sins that the Bible is talking about, just completely separating from people, still sometimes people feel guilty as they should about sinning, and then will allow that to get them out. But I'll tell you what, that is the wrong move to make because, yeah, you may not feel as guilty anymore, but then you're just going to continue in sin. And when you know it's a sin, why do you want to keep doing it, right? I mean, the church is here to help you, to encourage you, so that if you do slip, if you do stumble, if you are starting to backslide, that we can help provoke you unto love and good works and to help you get back up and to stop sliding back and come back this way because you have people here that care about you and love you and don't want to see you going back. So the worst thing for you to do in any instance is to get out of church, where you've got a support group, you've got people here to help you to continue to move forward and not succumb to the lusts of the flesh. So sin is one reason. Another reason, though, oftentimes is that people just end up getting distracted. There's other things start coming up and they start making other plans or other priorities, and the intention isn't to get out of church, but you start allowing different things to just come into your life and take up the time that you normally would have set aside for church to do something else. And it may start with something a little bit more extreme or may start with some sickness or something that kind of gets you out of the habit or out of the routine and then can lead into a whole host of just different things. And then people just slowly find out like, oh, wow, I haven't been to church in a few months or whatever. And that happens too. I've seen that a lot. Look at Luke chapter 9, verse number 57. The Bible reads, And it came to pass that as they went in the way, a certain man said unto him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. Now the rest of this passage we're going to read, this is all talking about people who want to follow the Lord. So this is talking about disciples of Jesus Christ. The disciples are people who are actually following. And just real briefly, you know, this is not talking about people who want to be saved, work salvation crowd like to turn to passages like this and claim it's talking about a person's salvation, so you have to use works. This isn't talking about being saved. This is talking about being a disciple or follower of Jesus Christ. You know that you could receive the free gift of eternal life just by putting your trust and your faith in Jesus Christ to save you and believing on him. That's all it takes. And that doesn't require a certain action to start obeying God's law in order to receive that gift. That is not part of the deal. It's not a contract where you're agreeing to do a bunch of work in order to be saved. And you say, well, now I'm going to start following the law so that I can make sure that I'm saved. If you're believing in that, you're trusting in works. Salvation is a free gift. It's given to you freely. It's bought and paid for by the blood of Jesus Christ where he died on the cross and rose again. That gift is offered. Once you accept that gift, you are saved forever regardless of any works that you do thereafter. Now, obviously, when God does everything for you and he gives you a great gift, you ought to be thankful. You ought to do whatever you can to show your gratitude for God loving you and saving your soul. That is normal and that is right. And of course that's what you should do. But if a person doesn't do those things because they still have the sinful flesh, which by the way, we all have, post-conversion you still have a sinful flesh. And don't tell me that you don't sin because the truth's not in you according to 1 John 1. You're deceiving yourself if you say you have no sin. We all have sin. We all still have the flesh. It is possible for a person to get saved to receive a free gift because their trust is 100% in Jesus as their savior, to save their soul, and yet for that person to not be a follower of Jesus because they're not doing the work that Jesus did. If you're going to be a follower of Jesus Christ, that means you're going to be doing like he did. And he's going to explain here to these people who say, hey, I want to follow Jesus. I want to follow you, Jesus. Well, what's he going to tell them? Is he going to tell them it's easy to follow me? No, he's going to tell them it's hard to follow me. It's easy to be saved. It's easy to receive a free gift. It's hard to do work. It's hard to obey the commandments. It's hard to do the work that Jesus did. So we've got a guy here. His heart is right. He's saying, Lord, I want to follow you wherever you go. I want to be with you. I want to do this. But Jesus warns him to count the cost. And the reason why I'm going to this passage is so that you can be warned. You say, you know what? I don't want to forsake this thing together. I want to come to church. Well, there's going to be more to it than that. Make sure that you understand everything that's going in. Now, it is one thing you can just show up to a church that really doesn't require that much out of you. I mean, all it's going to really require is for you to drag your rear end out of bed, get into church like once a week or whatever, and show up. And that really, I mean, if that's too difficult for you, then you've got some serious priority problems in your life and ought to really consider what God did for you. If you can't even fit that into your schedule, especially when you have churches like ours, we offer three different service times that you can come to. We've got a Sunday morning at 10 30. We've got a Sunday afternoon at four. We've got Wednesday night at seven. We've got to buy. I mean, there's just, there's different opportunities. What's your schedule? Do you work nights? We'll come to the morning. You work morning, go to the night. You know, I mean, there's different opportunities to make it to church, but look at what Jesus' response is here. And this person wants to follow in verse number 58. And Jesus said unto him, foxes have holes and birds of the Arab nest, but the son of man hath not were to lay his head. So he's saying, you know, even these animals, they have homes, right? They've got their nest. They've got their dent. He's like, I don't even know where I'm going to stay tonight. I'm going out and working and it's not going to be comfortable because I don't have a place to sleep. I don't know where I'm going to lay my head. So if you're going to follow me, great. This is, do you think Jesus didn't want people to follow him? Of course you want people to follow him. He wants people to do what's right. He wants people to follow his example, but he's just letting them know in advance, Hey, before you start following me, just understand it's not going to be very comfortable. And when you follow Jesus in this life, it is not going to be comfortable. If it is, you're probably not following him very closely. If they call the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more they have his household. If you consider yourself a Christian, if you consider yourself, well, I follow Jesus and you have zero problems in your life from anybody, from anywhere, you may want to consider and look, I mean, are you better than Jesus? Because they called, people were calling Jesus the devil. And the Bible says how much more they have his own household. If you are truly following and living and, and, and doing what the Bible has laid out for you, you will have enemies and you will face persecution. But I was gay and all that will live godly in Christ. Jesus shall suffer persecution and all that will live godly. You want to live godly in Christ. Jesus shall suffer persecution. It's not you might suffer persecution. You shall. If you never have persecution, I'm not saying you have to have persecution every day of your life, but I'm saying is if you never have persecution, then you need to analyze your walk with God. Because it's probably not right. Jesus did everything right. Look at the persecution he faced. You think if Jesus were alive today, that he wouldn't face persecution? Of course he would. And I say alive today, I mean, walking around physically on this earth. Obviously, he's alive. I'm not, you know, I'm just waiting for that to be taken out of context somewhere, right? In internet land. Verse number 59. And he said unto another, Follow me, but he said, Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father. Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. So here, Jesus is calling someone and saying, Hey, follow me. Hey, I've got work for you to do. Follow me. I need you to preach the kingdom of God. He's saying, Well, wait, hold on. First, let me suffer me to first go and bury my father. Now, I know the way this is written. You may be like confused like, Well, what's wrong with you? If his dad just died, why can't you go bury his father? He's not talking about like, his dad literally just died, and he's trying to bury him like that moment. He's talking about his dad is older, and we'll just just wait until my dad dies and I could bury him. Then I'll start doing the work for you. This is the attitude that he's talking about here. He says, Let the dead bury the dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God. Jesus is saying, Look, I've got work for you to do. I'm calling you to do a job. Don't just put it off. For these reasons, he says, verse 61. Let's keep reading here. He says, and another also said, Lord, I will follow thee. But let me first go bid them farewell, which are at home at my house, verse 62. And Jesus said unto him, No man having put his hand to the plow and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. And one of the things that we see with people getting out of church is just a lot of distractions that, you know, hey, God's calling you to do a work, but you're just putting it off and basically saying, Well, let me do this and this and this and this and this first and putting other things before Jesus instead of heeding what Jesus is saying to do and putting that as a priority. I mean, imagine you personally being face to face with Jesus Christ and Jesus tells you to do something. Would you have the nerve to tell Jesus to his face? Well, okay, well, hold on a second, Jesus, because I have to go and take care of this and do that. Or would you fall on your knees and go, Yes, sir, you know, I'll, whatever you want me to do, I'm going to do because you have the priority of my life because you're my Savior. You're my God and my Savior. I mean, think about that. Obviously, if you're standing face to face, nobody's gonna say, Well, no, hold on. I mean, they did hear these people who I would probably didn't realize who they're talking to. I mean, that's my guess, right? They probably didn't even know who they're talking to. So it's like, Oh, yeah, he's just a just he's just he's just another prophet or he's just some other man of God that's that's helped me to do this stuff. So that's okay. I'm just gonna blow it off. And you could say that, you know, Pastor Burzins said, you know, wants us to go out and preach the gospel and everything else. And yeah, whatever. Yeah, when if it's just me, then it's not that big of a deal. But you got to ask, Am I preaching God's Word? Is it really my authority and my in my charge? Or is it the Bible's? Is it God's? Because that's where it matters. You may hear it out of my voice. And I'm not saying like, I'm some special God, man, that just telling you everything from God. What I'm saying is, if I'm preaching God's Word, and you can see that in the Holy Bible, you can see that for yourself, then put the proper authority where it lies with God's Word. If I tell you something, it's my opinion. And yeah, that's those are just my words. And you know, choose to do with that whatever you will. But if we're looking at the Holy Bible, and we're reading, and I'm preaching, literally just what God said, then give that the proper authority as if Jesus Christ were standing here face to face. Turn to go to James chapter four, along similar lines, you know, everyone gets plans and everyone wants to do well, I'm going to do this and this and this, and then I'll get right with God. And then I'll get in church and then you know, once I get all this stuff established, once I get this job, once I get this house, once I move here once I do, and everyone's got all these plans. You know what often happens when people make all these plans, they never come to fruition. And then all the time that you're just well, I'm gonna I'm gonna get right with God, I'm gonna get into church, I'm gonna start doing this, but it needs to be after whatever. When you just start downplaying the importance of what God's saying to do, you're gonna keep doing that. And there's no reason to think otherwise, like, why wouldn't you? James chapter four, verse number 13. The Bible reads, Go to now ye that say, today or tomorrow, we will go into such a city and continue there a year and buy and sell and get gain. So if people talk about their plans, yeah, we're gonna go here today or tomorrow, you know, one of these days, we're gonna go out and we're gonna go into the city and we're gonna be there for a year and we're gonna do all this stuff and we're gonna make some money. Verse 14 says, whereas you know not what shall be on tomorrow. So you don't even know what tomorrow is gonna bring. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. And that verse right there is extremely powerful and something that we always need to remember. Look, our life here is short. And when you start saying, I'm gonna get right with God and I'm gonna do this and once I do this, then I'm gonna start winning. So once I do this, then I'm really gonna be faithful at church. Look, your life is short. You don't even know how long you're here. And in the grand scheme of things, it's just like a vapor. You're here today, gone tomorrow. You have such a short time. Make the best use of it that you can right now. Get right with God right now. Get in church right now. Don't put it off. Don't put off the things that God would have you to do for some future date and say, well, once I do this, everything's gonna be great. Just do it now. Get right now. You don't know how much time you have. For that you ought to say, if the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. Putting the Lord's will first. Recognizing the Lord's will first. Instead of being so proud and arrogant to just say, well, I'm just gonna do this and these are all my plans. How about you recognize God first and say, well, if it's God's will, I'll do these things. And if you have that mindset already and you're concerned about God's will, then guess what? You will be making the choices to be right with God when you're concerned about what is His will. What does He want? If the Lord will, we shall live and do this or that. But now ye rejoice in your boastings. You're bragging about things you haven't even done yet. You've got all these great plans and you're just rejoicing Him. He says, all such rejoicing is evil. Verse 17 is key. Therefore to Him that knoweth to do good and doeth it not, to Him it is sin. You know you're supposed to be doing right. You know you're supposed to be doing good. You know you're supposed to be following God's law. You know you're supposed to be doing these things and you don't do it. It's a sin. You know you're supposed to be going to church. You know you're supposed to be reading your Bible. You know you're supposed to be praying and you're not doing it. It's sin. It's sin. You know you're supposed to be telling other people the good news and preaching the gospel to every creature. You know you're supposed to be doing it, but you're not doing it. It's sin. It's sin. And sorry if you came in here, sorry, not sorry, if you came in here expecting just to get a pat on the back. Now look, we're supposed to be exhorting one another, right? You say, that's what church is for. We're supposed to provoke other into love and the good works. I'm provoking you. It may not be the way you expected to be provoked, but I'm provoking you on the love and the good works. I want you to do good. I want you to do right. And you know, sometimes we need to hear things that don't sit as well with us because you need to get stirred up and motivated to do something. If you came into church and every single time you got a pat on the back, attaboy, attaboy, attaboy, but you're not really doing anything for the Lord, how is that going to help you? How is that going to help you do the Lord's will? Flip back if you would to Haggai in the Old Testament, Haggai chapter one in the Minor Prophets, Haggai, the book of Haggai chapter number one. I want to make sure people are aware of this as well. Oftentimes, people want to get things in order, in home, at their house, with other things, with their family, with all this other stuff, and just put church and the things of God on the back burner. And they just put it off. And they say, well, I just need, I want to buy a property here and I want to do this and I want to get all set up. And then once I get all of this stuff, we will be settled and now we'll be ready to start coming to church faithfully. What makes you think God is going to bless you in doing that? We have specific examples in the book of Haggai of people not being blessed when they had that very mindset. You will not be blessed by doing this as a child of God. The world does all kinds of different things. I'm not talking to the unsaved here. I'm talking to the saved. I'm talking about children to children of God here, that God has a will for your life. And guess what? God's will for your life really isn't going to be that much different than anyone else's, any other child of God's. God's will is laid out for us in Scripture overall. I mean, there may be a few nuanced things that may be a little bit different for your place or whatever that He has specifically for you. But in general, God wants you to obey Him and do His commandments and live righteously. That's God's will for everybody. Haggai, chapter number one, look at verse number two. The Bible reads, Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. Now, this is during the time of the captivity. Just to get the context, the children of Israel were taken captive into Babylon, and God wanted to bring them back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple, for the rebuilding of the temple. I just want to get that out there so you understand the whole context, but this can very easily be applied to, because when you look at the attitude of the people, and knowing what God's will is, we started off in Hebrews chapter 10, showing that, you know, there's some that will forsake the assembling of themselves together. So we know that, and we saw the consequences of that too, sinning willfully, that it is a sin not to be in church, and not to be in the Lord's house. And here we have people have an attitude saying, Well, the time's not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. It's not time for church. We've got other things going on. Let's see God's reaction to this mindset. In verse number five, the Bible reads, Now therefore, thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways. Consider your ways. Consider what you're doing. Consider everything that's happened. Consider your ways. Verse six, ye have sown much, and bring in little. He said, Haven't you noticed when you go out in the fields, and you've got all this seed, and you're sowing and sowing, and you're working real hard in your field? Haven't you noticed you're not really bringing back very much? Haven't you noticed it hasn't been blessed? Ye eat, but ye have not enough. Verse six, ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink. Ye clothe you, but there is none warm. And he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes. God can take the work that you're doing that you think, Well, no, if I just get enough money, if I just get situated, if I just get this house, and I just need to add this, and I need to be doing this work at home, and I need to do all this other stuff before I could come and worry about God's house. God can make it so that you never achieve those goals that you think you're so close to getting. If I just made a little bit more money, if I just did this extra little project at home, if I just did this, once I get that done, then I'm going to come. God is just going to keep on, because God doesn't want to be put in the back seat. God doesn't want to be put in second place. He demands you to put Him at the front. That's why God gets the first fruits of your increase. That's why God should get the first of your time. That's why when you wake up, you wake up in prayer and hearing from God's Word. That's why everything that you do in my house before we eat, we thank God for the food. We do that in church, too, because we give Him thanks first, because He deserves it first. He deserves the recognition and the glory and the honor first, and nothing else should be coming between us and Him first. It doesn't mean you can't do other things. It doesn't mean you can't do projects at home. It doesn't mean you can't plow a field and do the other stuff. Put God first. Put Him first, because when you don't, you won't be blessed for it. You could see, I'm not going to turn there, but in Malachi, he's saying, you've robbed me in tithes and in offerings, and he says, look, if you don't believe me, and I'm paraphrasing, if you don't believe me, just test it and see if God will open up the windows of heaven and pour out a blessing upon you. He's saying, look, just trust me and do this. Just put me first. Just do it. I don't care if you think you don't have enough money to do this or whatever. He's like, just do it, and I'll bless you for it, because when you don't, He's going to blow on the work that you're doing, as we see here. He's going to make it so that you're earning all this money, but it's just like, where did it all go? At the same point, see, man, there's so many things. I don't want to get off on so many other distractions, but you notice when the children of Israel had the manna in the wilderness, they had enough for every single person. Whatever they're eating was, they had enough. It was sufficient. When you're serving the Lord, no matter how much money you're making, it's going to be enough. It's amazing how that works. I've been in various positions personally just in my own life, especially while I've been in church and serving God and doing these other things. Whether it be making a good amount of money or not making very much money at all and being in different situations, you know what? I have been fine through all of it. And you know what? There's always stress. It doesn't matter how much money you're making. It seems like there's always stress about money. There's always bills. There's always something going on. Always. And that's fine. We've got to learn to just let that go because it's always going to be there and you don't need to worry so much about, oh man, and putting that priority on the money. Because God will get you through wherever you're at if you're putting Him first. That's why the Bible says, seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you. All these things, He's talking about your food and your clothing and stuff like that. He said, you know what? I'll take care of that. Just put me first. Continuing on here, verse 7, thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Go up to the mountain and bring wood and build the house. And I will take pleasure in it and I will be glorified, saith the Lord. Ye looked for much and lo, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why, saith the Lord of hosts, because of mine house that is waste. And ye run every man unto his own house. God's trying to build His house. God wants His house built. And how do we build God's house here? This isn't talking about wood framing and building a building. When we talk about His house here in our church, we're building it with people. There's work involved to do that. It's not going to build itself. God's going to build the house, but He's only going to build it if we're actually doing the work that we need to be doing. And the work that we need to be doing is going out and reaching the lost with the gospel of Jesus Christ and getting them baptized and making disciples. Getting people taught and trained in the ways of the Lord. That's our job. It's about other people and helping other people get right with God, helping other people receive salvation, helping other people get sent out of their homes, helping other people live right so that they can be blessed of God, too. That's our job. That's our work. And when you start putting all of that aside because, well, I've got my own stuff and I've got my own deal at house and I... God's not going to bless your work. But when you say, you know what? It's important. We're going to build God's house first and we're going to worry about that and that's going to be the focus. Then all the other things that you might want to get... You know what? That will be blessed. You say, but I'm not going to be able to spend as much time on it. It doesn't matter if God's blessing it. You can get a lot more done in a little amount of time if God's blessing it. And I can't explain that to you physically in a physical sense of like how that happens, but it happens. And we're going to see... I mean, God's word says it happens for one. I've experienced it firsthand. I know that it happens. You're going to get help out of places you didn't think you'd ever get help from. You're going to get deals on things. Things are going to come... Like, whatever, right? It'll happen. It'll work itself out. Put the things of God first. Haggai chapter 1, jump down to verse number 12, the Bible says, Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, and Joshua, the son of Josadec, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent him, and the people did fear before the Lord. Then spake Haggai the Lord's messenger and the Lord's message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the Lord. What a great message, huh? So they listen, they hear, they receive, and then God's going, I'm with you. How great is that? Verse 14, and the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Josadec, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people, and they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts their God. So that's a, you know, a great victory, a great success. You see the preaching there of Haggai from the Word of God actually took root in people's hearts, and they ended up doing this great work, and they ended up building the temple again. Flip over to chapter 2. So that's awesome. And that's what we want to see done here. And again, you know, it's sad when people don't come back and friends, and I'm talking about people who are good people, people who are saved, you know, they end up getting out of church for whatever the reason, but I don't want that to happen to you. Would to God that you can stay in a good church, hopefully our church, but you know what? In a good church. It's not going to hurt my feelings when people go to other churches, but go to church and go to a good church and go to a church that's doing the work of God. Look at verse number 3 of chapter 2. Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory, and how do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? So basically he's saying, you know, how many of you people saw the first temple? Because that first temple was glorious, right? I mean, that was under the direction of Solomon, and they built it, and it was all ornate and everything else, but then the second temple building wasn't quite as fancy, right? I mean, basically it didn't have all the bells and whistles that the first temple had, and what happens is, and it says, is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? When you start comparing these different houses, it could actually bring you down, if you have the wrong attitude, right? If you look at it for the wrong reasons. You know, people can say, can walk in here and go, oh, you're in a strip mall. Oh, you've got these bland lights and these plastic chairs and, you know, whatever. The church I went to had this and this and this, and just as they're going over these other things that ultimately don't really matter, and you start comparing it, and it can give you a bad attitude. Verse number four, God's trying to encourage them and say, look, do you remember that old temple? How it was great, and this is like nothing, but look what God says, yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, saith the Lord, and be strong, O Joshua, son of Josadec, the high priest, and be strong, all you people of the land, saith the Lord, and work, for I am with you, saith the Lord of hosts, according to the word that I covenanted with you, when you came out of Egypt, so my spirit remaineth among you, fear ye not, and then jump down to verse number nine, he concludes here with saying, the glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts, and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts. Don't get so focused on the external things like that. He said, look, if God's with us, who could be against us? If God's with us and he's working with us, then we know that our work's going to be blessed, so these other little things don't matter. Don't worry about comparing our church to some other church or whatever. If God is with us and we're doing the work here, then what else do you need? Don't get your attitude or your heart, you know, these people, they had their hearts still in that old temple. Look, that old temple's gone. Be focused on where you're at right now, and God said he's with you, and you're doing the work of the Lord, and God's gonna say, you know what, I'm gonna bring even more glory into this house. Even though it doesn't have all the glorious ornamentation to it, I'm gonna bring more glory. How's he gonna bring that glory? Because of the work that's gonna be done. That's how. We're not worried about bringing glory with stained glass windows and all the most beautiful artwork and arrangements and everything if you notice. Look, I believe in trying to have a nice, decent place and a place that's gonna be clean and a place that's not just a dump, okay, because we actually care about the work that we're doing, but at the same time, we're not gonna focus all of our efforts and energy into just making a building appear real beautiful on the outside, but we're not really doing anything for the Lord that's worth any value. No, I'd rather have the exact opposite of doing as much as possible for the Lord, and if some of the external structure suffers as a result, so be it, because we're really busy serving God, and I want God to bless us. I want God to be with us, and we'll see. We'll let Him decide where the glory's gonna go. Is it gonna go to the stained glass window, or is it gonna go to people who are actually serving Him and doing the work, because I think I know the answer to that. So if you would, the 1 Corinthians chapter 12. It's the last place I'll have you turn this morning, 1 Corinthians chapter number 12. I'm gonna close on this because this is also extremely important, and I want everyone here to have this understanding. You know, church is important for many different reasons. I preach a lot of sermons on this because it's so critical in our Christian walk. It's so critical to be among other believers. It's so critical to be in church. Once you start finding yourself sliding out of church and getting out, you're gonna inevitably get involved in some other sins that are gonna creep in. It may not be immediate. It's just gonna be this slow progression, because you're gonna end up becoming just a little bit more worldly because you don't have as much godly influence on your life, and maybe when you're coming to church and you're active, you're doing a lot of Bible reading. You're doing a lot of praying. You're showing up for soul winning time. You're doing all this stuff. When you start getting out of church, all of that is gonna fade. I guarantee you all of that stuff is gonna start sliding. You're gonna start having more reasons why you got too busy to read your Bible, but I'm gonna read double the next day, right? And then that doesn't happen. And then it gets a point to, man, I haven't read the Bible. I better get that out and read it at least once tonight. And that's what happens. That's the progression. No one can tell me any different. I've seen it happen too many times, and I see a lot of people understand this already. But what you need to understand also is that with the church, I was kind of going over this at the beginning, it's not just about you. It's also how you can help other people, but every single person in church is really important. If everyone who had been coming faithfully, good people, had stayed with this church, how many more works can we be doing? How much greater can the house be? And that's a fact. I mean, the more people we had that are on fire, that are serving the Lord, that want to serve God, can stick around and stay with us, how much more could we be accomplishing? Because every individual is extremely important, and you may not even realize how important you are. And I hope that at this point in the sermon, everybody can realize your own value and your own importance. And I'm talking from the smallest child to the oldest adult, everybody has an extremely important value. And I can't speak for anyone else, but I can speak for myself that I look for every single person in this church, and I care about all of you, and when you're here, it encourages me. Every single person that shows up to church is an encouragement to me to keep going. Every single person that comes to church, when I'm preparing sermons, when I'm reading my Bible, when I'm praying, I'm thinking about everybody in this church, and I care about you. And when you actually show up, that encourages me tremendously to keep going. Because the work that I'm doing isn't always the easiest job, okay? It's not. So when you being here, just speaking for me personally, is an extreme encouragement to me. And when people who haven't been here for a while, they come back, man, I love seeing those people, it's a greater encouragement to me. And when people even stick around then and keep coming, that is awesome. That is a huge encouragement to me, let alone all of the impact and the influence you have on other people. People look up to other people, even if you don't talk very much. People get encouraged by other people, even if you don't talk that much. It's true, it's a fact, it happens. People just seeing other people, oh man, so-and-so, Mrs. So-and-so goes out soul winning all the time or whatever, and that's an encouragement to me. And you may not even know that you're encouraging someone else in the church. Maybe someone who doesn't go very much, but they're trying to build up the courage, or they're trying to grow and do more, and they see what you're doing. You know, you're encouraging people oftentimes without even realizing it, and without even knowing it. And that is a fact. So don't ever think that, oh, well I can just slip back and no one's going to notice. Look, I notice, I notice. No, I don't always just run after people, okay? If you want to go, go. I mean, I don't want to see you go, but I mean, it's up to you, and people make choices in their life, and I care about you, and I pray for you, and you know, I may reach out to you, but I kind of like being a little bit hands off. I don't want to just meddle in people's business. But don't think it goes unnoticed, because it does, because people care about you, and you're important. Now, we're going to look through 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Look at verse number 18, and then we're going to jump down to verse 24. Verse 18 says, but now hath God set the members, every one of them in the body as it has pleased them. And in context, again, I'm not going to go through the whole chapter. It's talking about the body of Christ with Jesus Christ being at the head, and the body of Christ is the local church. It's an assembly of believers. It's not this universal church. This is the local church with Christ at the head, and that God builds the church, God brings people together, and God sets members, just like the members of a body, right? Your body member is your body part. So whether it be your fingers, your hand, your elbow, your arm, you know, all the different parts of your body all serve a function and all have their own place within an entire body. And the Bible is relating like a physical body to the way that the church functions and operates. And the church needs people in all different types of areas doing kind of different tasks, but we're all working together with one main goal in mind. And every person serves unique functions and has been placed here by God. God set the members, every one of them in the body as it has pleased him. So if God places you in a body, but then you say, No, I'm not going to be part of that body, that body is missing an important piece that God wanted to have filled. And you are the person for that job, you are that member. Whatever that is, you know, everyone, everything's got a different function, you know, your nose smells your ears, you know, they're, they're all important. One's not better than the other, but they're all needful to work, you know, can people who are blind, get things done and do work? Absolutely. Can people who are deaf, get work done? Yes, they can, they can function, they can get things done. But are they going to do it as much work and have as much output as someone who's fully functional as all their senses and all their abilities, you know, completely intact? No, a fully functioning body is going to be able to do more physically than one that doesn't have all of its functions is fact. I don't care if it's not, you know, if it's insensitive, it's not trying to be insensitive, it's just a fact. And we're relating this to the church so that when you have members and members of this body that just just aren't here, and you know, we can't get as much done. It hurts the whole cause. Verse 24, for our comely parts have no need. But God have tempered the body together having given more abundant honor to that part which lacked that there should be no schism in the body schism is like a breaking or division. God doesn't want a division in the body of like in his own body, right in the church, he doesn't want the church is being split apart and broken up. He says, but that the members should have the same care one for another look at that care of one for another. I think we saw in Hebrews chapter 10, provoke one another unto love and a good works, right, we're caring about other people in the church, because we're all part of the same body. Well, that should have the same goal, and we should have the same unity of faith. That brings us together and ties us together so that when we're all out doing our own little jobs, our own works, that tie into this whole body, we could get a lot of work done. Verse 27. Now ye are the body of Christ, or excuse me, verse 26. I didn't, I didn't read verse 26. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it for one or one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. This is the type of body that I do believe our church has. But we need to remember and keep going forward that hey, when people are suffering would be that's why we have our prayer list. That's why we care about those who they're suffering, you know, some people have different things going on in their life. And we're going to suffer with them. And we're going to pray for them. And we're gonna try to help people out. And then when people rejoice, hey, there's they've been blessed on the heavens and great, we're all going to rejoice with them. We're rejoicing with a with a baby shower because we have a lady in our church who's going to have a baby and that's great. It's a time to rejoice. It's something to be happy about. So we're going to rejoice with those that rejoice. We're going to weep with those that weep. And that's what we're here to do is to be here one for another. Verse 27. Now ye are the body of Christ and members in particular and God has set some in the church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly, teachers after that miracles and gifts of healing, helps governments diversities of tongues are all apostles. And says, No, are all prophets? No. Are all teachers? No. Are all workers of miracles? No. Have all the gifts of healing? No. Do all speak with tongues? No. Do all interpret? No. But covet earnestly the best gifts and yet I show unto you a more excellent way. And of course, First Corinthians 13 continues on that same thought of going all in depth about charity. Charity is that love where you're caring about other people and just having that selfless love towards other people. And it all ties into the church. And there's lots of different things that you can be doing to be helpful as a as part of this body with the main goal and objective in place. And people are doing that and it's awesome. But you you individually are very important. You are. Don't ever think that you are going to, you know, if you just slip away, and just go off and never come back again, that you won't be missed, because you will be missed because God had a place for you. Now, look, if if if it's a different church, and you're joining another body, and you're gonna be a member there, you know what, then serve the Lord to your utmost as a member of that body, then and God bless you for it. Okay. But your impact here, every single one of you is, is very important. And don't lose sight of that. And don't let any other things try to get between you and your service to God. And I mean, definitely don't get into some willful sinning and forsaking the assembling of yourselves together because that's just leads to more and more problems. Let's have a word of prayer. Your Heavenly Father, Lord, we thank you so much for for establishing the church for establishing an assembly and a body of believers. And and you've set up the structure for it. And, Lord, we thank you for this great blessing of being amongst our brothers and sisters to encourage one another. And, you know, sometimes even in families, we don't, we don't always encourage other people the way the way that we should. And but we thank you, I thank you that you've you've spelled it out for us that no, we need to be assembling, we need to be gathering together, we need to be provoking one another and the love and the good works, because we need that from each other. And sometimes we're, you know, we could get so distracted that we just need to be told, hey, you need to be doing this stuff. And you've told us that in your word, I pray to please help us all to take that to heart. And that we would we would put a very strong importance on our church attendance and that we can really focus on being plugged in and doing what you would have us to do so that we can be a blessing to others. And, and maybe not be as selfish in our own lives, but be willing to do more in service for you and and for other people. It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.