The Discipleship of the Body

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from the audio and may contain small errors.

Well, welcome. My name is Pastor Drew, and I'm glad that you guys are here. And if this is your first time visiting with us, we are excited that you're here. We know it's a bit of a trek to jump into a new church atmosphere with a bunch of people that you don't know. And so from the bottom of my heart, let me say I'm glad that you're here. If you want to start a conversation with us, and you want to kind of just get to know a little bit more about what we're about, You can use the communication or the connection card in the C-FAC that should be in front of you. You can fill that out, and when the offering plates come by, you can drop it in there. And if you don't have enough time, you can always come and give it to me afterward or give it to one of our deacons.

So we have a few announcements today that I wanted to tell you about. We are having a Life Group sign up, so you're gonna be hearing a little bit more about life groups, even just in the coming weeks and months, even a little bit later today, as we're kind of going through Scripture today. And if you're interested in a life group, you want to sign up, then it's immediately out those doors and to my left and your right, and there's the start table. The start table is where everything is. So if you're wondering where the sign up is for that thing that you want to sign up for, it's at the start table. Okay, also we have a life group banquet that is gonna be on Wednesday, May 19th, and that is for people that are already in a life group now. And so our life groups run from January to May and then we take June off, and then they run from July to November, and then we take December off so we don't meet.

So we have a banquet at the end of both of those times to kind of celebrate what we're done And there's, you know, usually there's a lot of fun. There's some surprises. And so we have the bank that's going to be in the fellowship hall, Wednesday, May 19th, six o'clock. And so if you're interested, you know, I'm kind of using all of the inside phrases like life groups and even connect groups. You can read up on what those are in our worship guide. And so on the right side, as you're looking, you can see kind of what the steps are. You can read about gospel course and just kind of it's just a way to see a little bit more about what we are about. And of course, I would be remiss if I did not say Happy Mother's Day to all of you in here that are mothers. I know that my mother, who is in Louisiana this morning, my mother was a great influence on me. And I don't call her as much as I should.

Every child should say that. I don't call you as much as I should, Because you probably don't. You probably don't call them as much as you should. And so for those of you who are mothers, and we appreciate you. We know that especially these last couple of years have been a little weird. Home life, work life has all been a bit discombobulated. And so we're really thankful, probably even more thankful than previous years, like your role is highlighted. And so we're going to have a special kind of thing for you after the service on the way out. And so, yeah, so we'll coordinate that at the end. But I just wanted to say, first of all, having Mother's Day. And yes, I did get something for my wife on behalf of my children. So yes, my wife is celebrated as a mother. And so, yes, we're excited that you guys are here. We're going to move into our time of offering. And so when we do, our deacons are going to be coming on either side on the opposite,

on the outside, excuse me, not coming down the middle. And so if you would like to put something in that plate, you can either pass it down or you can kind of walk it down. Either way, that would be great. So let me pray for us, and then we'll keep on with our worship service, Jesus. We thank you so much for this morning. We pray that as we give, that you would help us to understand that we are giving to you, that we are giving back to you what you have so graciously blessed us with. I pray that we would give to you with a cheerful heart. That's your name that we've given. Thank you, Dan. We are going to be in 1 Corinthians 8 this morning, or 1 Corinthians 8-1. We're going to be kind of moving at a pretty good clip, 1 Corinthians 8, 9, and 10 today. I can remember being a teenager in Driver's Ed. I don't know if you remember Driver's Ed, but it was very tedious. It was very boring for me. We didn't even get to watch the cool videos.

It was just somebody lecturing us. And most of it was boring. It was a couple of days, or maybe a couple weeks even. But there was one question and answer period that kind of made me sit up straight and get to the edge of my seat. Got my attention. And it's because I thought the answer was obvious. It was a question that I thought was a layup. I thought it was an easy one, but I got it completely wrong.

And that was a long time ago. I don't remember the exact wording, but I'll try to do my best. I believe the question was something like, what is the most important thing to remember while driving? What is the most important thing to remember while driving? And it had multiple choice, so it's even easier. It wasn't essay or anything. I still got it wrong. And I chose always obeying the law, right? I was like, come on, this is obvious. What's the most important thing? Well, you need to obey the law, right? But that was actually the wrong answer. The right answer on that question was, the most important thing to remember while driving is the safety of everyone else on the road.

And I thought, wow, I got that completely wrong. I thought I had to just handle myself. Right, like I thought if I knew the rules and said, and did it all the right way, that was the most important thing to remember, but it wasn't, it was the safety of everybody else on the road. And it kind of made sense, and it stuck with me all these years later, you know, ten years later. And it has... Look, that wasn't that funny. To earn my driver's license, I needed to see not only how I should drive. To get my driver's license, I needed to see how everyone should drive. I need to... In other words, to put it better, I needed to see how everyone drove together and how I fit in on that. And it makes sense. You know, you come up to a four-way stop, you need to know who's supposed to go, not just what you're supposed to do. It's different. And I think this is a really good way to think about church.

So often we think about following Jesus in very personal terms as a personal prescription. What am I going to go and do differently today to follow Jesus? And while that is not incorrect, it does change the way that we can, change the way that we think about it. So we expect sermons to be aimed at individual actions or to talk about those things. Yet when you read much of Scripture, it is focused on not just individual actions, but interactions. It's focused on church life generally. It's focused on a plurality of people. Much of following Jesus then has to do with the body. So we've been talking about the church. We've been talking about the body. This is the name of our series is The Body. And this is why it has been so different to talk about what we should be as a church, as opposed to personal prescriptions, personal individual actions. Particularly last week when we were going through the witness of the body.

When you're talking about how a church works together to guard the witness, you know, it can get a little weird. It's a little strange. I actually joked with a visitor from last week. I was on the phone with him and I'm like, yeah, hey, excommunication on your first Sunday. Cool. A friend of mine joked over lunch, like, hey, I guess nobody was joining the church that day, huh? That's, you know, it's funny, but it's also, it highlights that it's weird. It's strange to think about our church having to, having to, needing to, being commanded to do something together. And really, that's the only way that we can do it is together.

And so when you, when you look at the Bible through the lens of what we should be doing together, it takes adjustment. It's not normal. It's definitely not American. It's not what we're used to. It's jarring. And so I want to invite you into that perspective. And for this, in the next couple of weeks, as we continue to talk about the church in our series, The Body, how does the Bible, this is your question, how does the Bible teach us to work together? How does the Bible teach us to work together? So we're going to explore that deeply. When we do, we find that even as we are considering our whole church, it also has to do with our personal life. So I know I'm kind of speaking out of both sides of my mouth right now, but when you explore what the Bible talks about, a whole church needing to do, you're also talking about what people in that church need to do.

You were talking about corporate action, but you're also talking about individual action. In other words, what the Bible says about the body, it says about individuals too. And we saw this, we look at what we already discussed, we talked about that we're only the body because Jesus has called us. Only the body because Jesus has called us. But this calling is always personal. Right? That it is only that Jesus' body is united and diverse, but it all comes down to personal decisions to cooperate, to be united, even though we're diverse. We talked about last week or two weeks ago, we talked about how Jesus' body is loving. But there is no such thing as impersonal love. You can't talk about a whole church body being loving, but they're not being loving actions between two people. And then yesterday, uh, yesterday, last Sunday, we were talking about how Jesus' body has a witness in this world, but that witness is made up of all

of our personal witnesses. And not that we are perfect, but that we call each other out and restore one another when we are not living a life of obedience. And so today I want to invite you, let's hold both perspectives, how the body works together and what that teaches us as individuals. And so today we're going to be looking at our text in 1 Corinthians 8, we're going to be, like I said, eight through 10. And today we're going to be looking at the discipleship of the body, the discipleship of the body. And we're going to start in 1 Corinthians 8:1. And it begins with a bit of an odd subject. 1 Corinthians 8:1, it says, now concerning food offered to idols, we know that all of us possess knowledge and this knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Okay, so we open in 1 Corinthians 8 talking about food offered to idols. Okay, this is a bit strange. We have no context for this. There's not some equivalent. I can dig up in American culture.

So I just have to explain it. So it is rather interesting. The Apostle Paul is writing to the church. And remember, in the city of Corinth, this is like Vegas. What stays in, what happens in happens in Corinth stays in Corinth. Okay. There were lots of temples to false gods and idols. Okay, lots of idol temples. And one way that you would worship an idol is that you would bring an animal in on like on a leash, you would bring the animal in, you would kill the animal on the altar, and then you would cook it on the altar. Okay, that was a normal idol worship practice in the first century in Corinth. Okay. That's a lot of how you worship was actually killing animal and cooking that animal on the altar. It's actually not that different than how God prescribed Israel to make sacrifices. Okay. So they're cooking on, on that. So then idle meat. So then we'll just call it idle

meat because it's faster, but that, that idle meat, that cooked meat was still very good. And so So the temple priests would have their share of that idol meat, but they couldn't eat it all. There was too much food. So the majority of that food that was sacrificed to an idol, that cooked food, that perfectly fine cooked food was sold on the open market, and it was usually marked as idol meat. So if you can imagine going to Albertsons or Tom Tom or Walmart, wherever you go, and there's the meat section, right? And maybe it was such a prominent thing, they would have the big sign in Walmart, like, this is idle meat, okay? And it's all the meat is stamped, okay? This is meat that's already been cooked that was sacrificed to an idle, okay? Big sign. In other words, you're going to know in this day and culture which meat was offered to an idol in which meat was not. But this raised a huge question in the

Corinthian church, is it okay to eat idol meat? Is it okay to eat my idol meat? There was sharp disagreement, okay? But there was also another deeper issue that was involved in idol meat, and I want to explore both today quickly. And so what Paul is doing there in verse one, he's digging into this and he's contrasting knowledge and love. So he says, this knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. So in other words, he's talking, he's referencing what they're telling him. Yeah, there you go. On all of us possess knowledge, he's quoting the Corinthian church back to them. Okay. And then when he said this knowledge, he's talking about what they're talking about with knowledge. He's saying, okay, you're telling me you've got knowledge. All of us possess knowledge. But he begins to make a good contrast between, okay, you know things, that's great. But love builds up.

Love does something different. And he contrasts those. And he speaks to knowledge first in 8.4. So skip a couple of verses. 1 Corinthians 8:4, it says, therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, same issue. we know that an idol has no real existence and that there is no God but one. Okay, so again, you see the quote, the quotations there, he's quoting the church back to them. And with idol meat, he's saying, yes, your knowledge tells you that all of this is not real. So some in the church had done the math and their math was Idols aren't real and there's only one true God. In other words, we're not really sacrificing this to anybody all this I don't eat that stamped as I don't eat is no different than meat. That's not stamped as I don't mean Okay So in other words, there were people in the church that were saying look I can go to Walmart and pick up a pack of idle

meat From the market and I don't care. I don't care if it's idle meat or not besides. It's 15 cents cheaper, okay It's cheaper. I'm gonna buy it and it doesn't make a difference because idols aren't real Right, that's there. You can hear their their argument here. Okay idols aren't real. So it doesn't matter The whole thing is made up and that is true. Their knowledge was correct So in other words, Paul's not saying, no, no, no, that meat is really stained. Don't eat that meat. That's not what he's saying. He's saying you're correct. Your knowledge is correct, but there was something else. Paul's responding, he says, this knowledge, it does, it gives you the right to eat idol meat. That is true. And then, but in verse seven, we get a big however, however, however, not all possess this knowledge. What knowledge is he talking about? What I just explained. The knowledge that

this idol needs is that the whole thing is made up. Not all of you possess this knowledge, but some through former association with idols eat food as really offered to an idol, and their conscience being weak is defiled. So what Paul is saying very gently is, oh, you know that the whole thing's a hoax. Okay, cool. But there's more people in your church family than you.

There's more people in your church family than you. That's great that you know things. That's great that the whole thing is a hoax and that you're well aware of that and that you know your rights. You can just pick up a pack of idle meat from Walmart and you're good to go. It's 15 cents cheaper right here. But you're not the only one in your church. This is a relational issue. These people do not have knowledge. The people that are different than you, they don't have your knowledge. In fact, they are less mature than you, likely. They have weak consciences. In other words, they don't have a discerning mind. They can't tell the difference between a nuanced thing that is right for a person to do, even though There are some elements that are questionable.

So what you have, what you have is that people are getting hurt by your knowledge. And it really, it creates two groups and we'll call them the educated and the weak. And I'm using quotes because Paul does not find the ones who have knowledge to be very educated, but he calls the ones that don't have that education, the weak. Okay, a weaker brother, weak conscience. So educated and the weak, the educated know their rights and they know that they're free to eat. Idle need. The weak, however, are suffering because of what it says in seven, former association with idols. Remember, this goes a little deeper, so let's keep going. Look at verse eight. And in verse eight, your Bible will not have quotes on there, but I believe that Paul, again, is quoting the Corinthian church. He seems to be quoting the educated right here. It says, food will not commend us to God.

We are no worse off if we do not eat and no better off if we do. This is the exact line of reasoning that the educated, that the people who knew their rights, it's the exact line of reasoning that they were using. They're saying, hey, food's food. Food's not something that's gonna commit us to the Lord. We're not better off if we don't eat. not better off if we do, we're not worse off if we eat. What verse eight says, I can't get it right.

What they're saying is, well, we eat doesn't matter. It's of no significance. However, Paul's response in the next verse, verse nine, it says, but take care that this right of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. So in other words, yes, you know, You're aware that's great, proud of you, but you need to remember that your knowledge, your knowledge, it doesn't stop with you.

It affects the entire church, especially those that are weaker, especially those who haven't been following Jesus for very long, which in this church was a significant amount of people. He says it's a stumbling block to them in verse nine. It says it's a stumbling block and then in 10 and 11, he gives an example. Okay. So if it's a stumbling block, verse 10, it says, for anyone sees you, sees you who have knowledge, eating in an idol's temple, will he not be encouraged if his conscience is weak to eat food offered to idols? And so by your knowledge, he gives an example. eat food offered to idols. And so by your knowledge, this weak person is destroyed, the brother for whom Christ died." Again, again, it's worth saying the educated here had accurate knowledge. They had good theology. However, even though they had the right to eat idol meat without sinning, they were using their rights and their knowledge selfishly.

They were using their knowledge and their rights selfishly. You had essentially in a Corinthian church where there were weak and they were educated. You had this dividing line where they educated, were off doing whatever they wanted to do without really considering what it was going to look like or what kind of impression it was going to make on a significant number of people in their church. They weren't, in other words, they weren't discipling their weaker brothers and sisters. They weren't teaching them. They weren't investing in them. They weren't spending time with them. They were simply in all of their knowledge and with all their rights, they were strolling into an idol's temple and eating meat and having no problem with it. They were strutting almost, if you can imagine, into the idol temple, just be like, all this is made up. I don't care. I don't worship this idol, but I'm definitely

getting that meat for 15 cents cheaper. Maybe even cheaper if they could buy it right off the priest. Okay. It appeared to the weak. When the person who was weaker would see that person walking into an idol temple and eating that meat, it looked exactly like that person was worshiping an idol. And that, as you may imagine, would be completely devastating. It would be completely devastating. I don't think I need to list them, but there are certain places where if you would see me or a deacon in our church or a charter member, you would see them walking into a place like that, there would be no good reason. There'd be no good reason for me to be there. There'd be no good reason for David of church to be there. And if you would see a pastor of a church or a deacon in a church, if you would see them walking into a place where you know nothing good is happening there, it would disturb you.

It would have set you. You would need at least a conversation, if not a whole week to kind of calm down from the whole thing just to talk it through. And again, there's probably not good reason. So when the weak see the educated walking into an idol's temple, it floors them. It devastates them. They don't even know what to do with it. And this is a big deal. So like the church in Corinth, our church also has educated and weak. Okay. Now, I'm not, we're not going to be raising hands today on which side you think you're on. Okay. We're not trying to cause division. However, in our church, just like in any church, we have people that are more seasoned, more mature, and then we have people that are less mature. We have people that need a different kind of care than others. And that's normal. Okay. That's a normal thing in a church. We have those in our

church who have full rights, full knowledge, excuse me, of their rights. They take part in things that maybe somebody who is not as mature, maybe they would find it questionable. Maybe they would at least ask a few qualifier questions. Right. However, it's part of that mature person's person's journey. They know, in other words, they know they're not sinning by engaging in this behavior. They're free to do it. They have the knowledge, they're fine. But if somebody who's weaker would see them, it would not be okay. I will give two examples, two modern examples. One totally expected and the other a little different. I'll use two examples, drinking alcohol and then binge watching. We'll pick Netflix, okay? So binge watching Netflix and drinking alcohol. Let me just be real clear, just no mincing words. Drinking alcohol is not a sin. I wasn't waiting for an amen,

but I was just putting the punctuation. Drinking alcohol is not a sin, okay? However, when a weaker brother or sister comes out of alcoholism themselves or a home that was completely wrecked by alcoholism, like mine was, personally, my dad is recovering alcoholic. When you see a Christian drinking alcohol and you have a weak conscience, you've just come into Christianity, you just started following Christ, But your only exposure to consuming alcohol is just worldliness and debauchery and wrecking families and all of that. You are going to have a tough time seeing somebody drink alcohol. You just are. You just are. The answer to that isn't necessarily, and we'll get to this in a second, we'll see it. The answer to that isn't necessarily for the mature Christian to just stop drinking alcohol because that doesn't really ever help people. What helps people is to understand where drinking alcohol is, how it fits, and why some people

choose to do it and some people do not. So I'll move on to my second example. We'll get to that in a second. Second example would be binge watching Netflix. Binge watching Netflix is not a sin. That's as controversial a statement. It's not a sin. Now we're competing. Okay. That's just for sure. However, there are some less mature Christians, some people that have weak consciences that associate TV or maybe even streaming videos with worldliness, with complete sin and debauchery, and there's nothing good on that TV. You laugh, but I've actually had a conversation like that, where somebody was saying, like, hey, I don't have a TV in my home, and I think anybody that does is totally under the spell of the world. Okay. Okay. Cool. That is quite the conviction you have, and that's fine. However, binge watching is not a sin, but when you get a less mature Christian that

sees that in this very kind of dogmatic black and white, if you have a TV in your home, you're under the spell of the world, they're going to have a tough time whenever you, they say, oh, how's it going? Oh, I mean, I just finished, uh, you know, parks and rec for the third time, uh, this weekend, you know, just binge watched it all weekend. Oh, so good. Watch it with my kids. They are growing more horrified every sentence you utter. Okay. They have no place for that. They don't understand where that is at all. Okay. Now again, the answer isn't for you to stop binge watching parts and rec. Although when you've seen it twice, do you really need to see it the third time? Do you really need to binge watch? It's confusing. It's confusing for that immature Christian to understand what maturity is supposed to look like whenever you mature Christian are well within your rights and you're not explaining yourself at all.

You're not investing in people. You're not teaching the youngers. You're not doing anything. You're not. All you're doing is strutting ahead in your own rights, just like the educated were strutting into the idle temple and eating meat. You are just taking your rights and you know your rights. You can quote chapter and verse on what you're allowed to do and not allowed to do. You've You've got all the permission in the world. I can't condemn you. Scripture can't condemn you, right? However, are you using those rights selfishly or better? Are you using those rights to invest in other people, to love them, to grow them? It's not about drinking or not drinking. It's about making disciples. It's not about binge watching and I binge watching. about making disciples. This is the discipleship of the body. This is why we call, that's why I titled the sermon today, because it doesn't have to do with what you're, what you're permitted to do.

This isn't about license, the issue in Corinth. The issue in Corinth, and it's been, it's been stated several different times, a lot of commentators will say this, it could have been easily addressed for the Apostle Paul to just say, stop it, to the educated, right? Hey, don't go into an idol temple and eat meat there. Stop it. Just kind of wag the finger, right? But it goes much deeper than that.

It much deeper. It wouldn't have been resolved if he had just told him to stop it. It goes deeper into freedom, knowledge, and love. And so Paul gets to the root of it by going one level deeper in 1 Corinthians 9. And what he does is it's masterful. He turns the issue on himself. He looks at his own freedom. In fact, chapter nine, verse one begins with, am I not free?

It's a great line. He says, am I not free? And he continues on this thought for a while. We pick it up in verses six and seven. 1 Corinthians 9, six and seven, and it's on your screen also. It says, or remember, he's talking about his rights. He says, or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living, who serves as a soldier at his own expense, who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit, or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk. Paul is making the strong statement, I have the freedom, the right, to earn money as an apostle. That's the point he's making. I have the right to earn money as an apostle. But here's where he differs from the educated. 15, so skip down to 15, 1 Corinthians 9, 15, but I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing these things to secure any such provision. In other words, keep your money, for I would rather die than have anyone deprive me of

my ground for boasting. What Paul is doing here is he is limiting his own freedoms that he knows he has for the benefit of other people. And then skip on to verse 18. Verse 19, verse 18, what then is my reward? That in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. Translation, I could be charging you money for what I'm doing for you. And I'm not asking for that money now, I'm actually telling you why I'm not making use of the right that I have. So it's odd because in the first half of 1 Corinthians 9, Paul makes the argument that ministers should be paid. In the second half of 1 Corinthians 9, he says why he's not going to use that right. He had to establish it as a right first. Then he had to say, but I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to, I'm not going to dance on my own rights because I want it to be a benefit

to the weaker brothers. Paul is turning the issue on himself and saying, I'm telling you to do with your rights exactly what I'm doing with my own. I have the right to do it. Paul is calling on the educated. Limit your freedom in Christ to eat idle meat. Limit it so that you can benefit the entire church, particularly the week. In In any church, in our church, any church, it looks like this, that growing as a Christian happens when we use our knowledge in love. And I'm not even putting only in there. I'm not even saying growing as a Christian only happens when we use our knowledge in love. The only way we grow as a church, the only way we grow individually is that we take our knowledge and we use it to other people's benefit. And I'm going to look at both. I want to look at growing as a church. I want to look at growing individually. It really does boil down to this question.

What are you going to do with your knowledge? All of you have knowledge. Okay. All of you have knowledge. You have theology, good, bad, or indifferent. different. You're a theologian. Okay. You make sense of the world through spiritual knowledge. Okay. You understand it. Whether you actually, whether you claim Christ or not, you make sense of the world through spiritual realities. But for those of us who are mature in in Christ, what are you doing with that knowledge? Do you just, do you just know it?

You kind of just walk in it. This is my right. I can do, I can do this. Nobody can tell me that I can't do this. I can do this. I know I can do this. Are you just content to walk in it or are you going to take the time to invest in another person's maturity? Are you going to take the time to one-on-one with somebody? or you're going to take the time to be in a life group with them and invest in someone else's maturity. And let me just be super practical right now. If you are over 50, you owe it to your church to invest in someone. And if you are not over 50, you owe it to your church to make yourself available for the investment. to ask for the investment. You owe it to your church.

We owe it to one another to invest in one another. No one grows spiritually on their own and no one grows spiritually by accident. This is why we have life groups. This is why all life groups are, I mean, look, it's not some awesome church program. Life groups, Christian friendship. I was on the phone with somebody this past week, they had signed up to be in a life group, and after I got through describing it, she just said, oh, I mean, that sounds like Christian friendship. And I said, that's exactly right, it does. That's exactly what it sounds like. It's because that's exactly what it is. It's not some, you know, program full of secret knowledge or anything weird. It's simply investing in each other.

Life groups are available to anyone who's interested in the best way It is one of the best ways to invest in other people. And if you don't believe me, ask Hollis, ask Sharon Harris, ask Carol Upchurch, ask Candace Coffey, ask Cindy Hightower, all of whom, sorry, are over 50. Shout your age. Hey now. Ask Tim Perkins. Ask all these people. Ask them. Ask them how their experience is going. They're all in a life group. They're all over 50. They're all able to invest in. And what they would tell you, probably to a man, what they'd tell you is they feel more invested in than they actually get to invest in other people. I know I'm in a life group with Hollis. Hollis has expressed that to me directly several times.

It is a great way to invest in other people. If you just wanna befriend somebody and not be in a life group with them, fine. Like I'm not, I'm not, I don't care. I want discipleship to happen in our body. The way you and I handle our knowledge today, we'll set the course for our church's life for the next 50 years. The way we handle knowledge, if we are making ourselves available to be invested in, if we are making the time to and care to invest in other people, that is going to change the trajectory of our church for the next 50 years. What you do today, what you do this week, what you do this year is going to matter for decades to come. Like our church is not that big. I don't know if you've noticed that. Okay. Again, not that funny. Um, sorry.

You, you by being here have a disproportionate effect on the future of our church. Like it or not, you're here. You're here. We're here. Okay. And if our church, Lord willing, and the creek don't rise, if our church is, you know, in five years, if we're double the size we are now, then those people will have a smaller percentage in effect in the future of our church, just by the fact that there's more people, okay? But right now, our church membership sits at about 70, 75 people. One person out of 75 can make a huge difference. The Lord can use you to invest in people. I don't care how old you are. The Lord can use you to invest in people and be invested in. That's the only way we grow as a church.

But also, the only way we can do that is to use our knowledge and love. We grow that way as a church. We also grow that way individually. At our church, we talk about sharing ministry. Deacon Daniel Oster preached on it a couple of weeks ago, sharing ministry. Sharing ministry is the idea that we can't make it on our own. That one person's job as a church is not their job. It's something that they are a custodian of. It's something that they serve, a capacity that they serve in. And when we talk about sharing ministry, look, it's really easy for, I'll pick on Shel Coughman cuz she's not here. She's in preschool this morning, okay? Shel Cauffman just said yes to becoming our preschool team leader, and that is worth an amen. Okay, yes. But Shel Cauffman, if she then says, okay, I'm the preschool team leader, now I'm gonna go do everything on my own, she's missed the boat.

She's missed the boat. You have to share ministry. It's messier, takes more time. It's definitely more frustrating. But in the end, it's what the Lord wants. In the end, it's something that as we share, we understand that that joy is multiplied, that burden is lessened, and that people begin to catch a vision for what we could do with preschoolers on a Sunday morning, how we can bless preschool families, what kind of foundations we can give those preschoolers as they grow in the Lord. I mean, what a good thing. But if Shel is trying to do that on her own, man, I mean, she will suffer. She'll be frustrated. people definitely not like you, all of you, because you're, you're the problem. She'll start, she'll start turning on all of you. Um, don't do that to shell.

Help her share ministry with you. Did I mention that we have a service team sign up right at the start table? Okay. Uh, and that, uh, we're four people shy in preschool. So, uh, if you're interested, let me know. But the idea is that we share a ministry. I can remember being around. I was part of a church that was going through a bit of upheaval. They were kind of restarting, really, much like this church was, but on a different scale. There was about 250 people there. And I turned around, and there was this new family sitting right behind us. It was the Padeas. It was Saul and Cherie Padea. And I did not know them, But as soon as I said his name Saul, he corrected me and pronounced it much better than I could. And so immediately we were off to a smashing start. I love being corrected. However, within a few weeks, they had joined a Bible study that we were leading.

We began to invest in them. They began to invest in us. We began to understand that the Lord had brought us together. And today they are at their soul at human Street, the church that we left. And we were visiting with them, I don't know, it must have been six months ago. And they said, really, they paid us the highest compliment I think I've ever been paid. They sat us down, they were just talking about this and we didn't expect this, we were just having dinner at their house. And they said, hey, Drew and Kristie, you guys have ruined this. There's, we can't do, we can't just do church like we were doing before, we have to invest in people. We have to bring people into our lives and do life with them, do, jump in with them like a life group. And man, at first we thought you guys were crazy for doing this, but you kept at it, you kept investing in us. They have grown leaps and bounds.

I might not kill or maim to have them be a part of our body. I might hurt somebody to do it, but maybe not. I don't remember. I love them dearly is what I'm trying to say, however, inelegantly. And there are people that we've invested in and they've invested in us. And just after 10 years, man, that is a sweet relationship. Their daughter's graduating high school and we're gonna go to their party. And it will just be like walking into this orchard this orchard with fully mature trees and fruit just hanging down. I mean, it'll be beautiful just to watch their maturity. Not to just claim that I had everything to do with it or that Christi had everything to do with it, but that we got to be a part. When you share ministry, when you invest in people, that investment's always going to grow because that is how God designed everything to grow. That when we open ourselves up to Him,

when we go to the Lord in transparency, in vulnerability, And we raise our hand and we say, yes, Lord, use me. I'm ready. I'll do whatever you want me to do. Even if it means investing in that person, I kind of don't like. Take my life and let it be consecrated. Lord, to thee. When we, when we say that and mean it, and when we are vulnerable for the Lord, the Lord says, yes, yes, that's what I'm, yes, I will play. Yes, I will use you. You will not be sorry. You will be more busy, but you will not be sorry. Your joy will be multiplied. Your burden will be lessened. You're gonna be sharing ministry. You're gonna be investing in people. They're gonna be investing in you. And you're gonna grow in ways that you never thought you could grow. Look, I wanna encourage you, if you have never, if you have never said to the Lord, if you've never raised your hand to the Lord and said,

Use me. I'll do whatever you want." That's really the first step. That's what it is to follow Jesus. That's your first step toward Him. And so I want to encourage you, we're going to have our time of invitation, and as we sing, Dan and Sadie are going to be leading us, as we sing, I want to encourage you, if there is some business that you need to do, if there's a prayer that you want to share with me, if there's a decision that you want to make in front of our whole church. If you wanna join our church, if you wanna be baptized, if you wanna be saved, if you wanna do that, man, that's what we're here for. We can help you take that next step. So let me pray for us and then we'll stand and sing. Jesus, we love you. We thank you that you are in charge of all of this. We ask for you as you are continuing to move in us grow us that we will respond to what you're doing and that we cooperate with you.

That's in your name we pray. Amen. life more fun than angry. Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will go strange, sleeping in the light of His glory angels. Through death into life everlasting, He passed and we followed Him there, Over us in Your love of dominion. The more that he conquers we are To turn your eyes upon Jesus Look, oh, in his wonderful face The things of earth will grow strangely And the light of his glory His work shall not fail you, He covers Believe Him, the doll will be there Then go to a world that is dying It's perfect salvation to you, God Turn your eyes upon Jesus Look, oh, in his wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of his glory, he grows, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory.