Whoo. Remember your leaders.
You can't even make that up, okay? Don't remember your leaders is what it should say this morning. Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. So here we are told to recognize and follow godly leadership, of which that was not an example that you should follow to when you're about ready to preach, leave the sanctuary anyway. You know, that's so funny because you'll probably never forget portions of this sermon because of that leadership shown to be legitimate by faithfulness to the word of God and godly conduct is who we should follow. Now, we all understand that leaders don't have to be perfect, save one. Amen.
Praise God for that. But they should be able to show and demonstrate with their life that the power of Jesus is real. Also fair, okay? Because we're going to see our leaders be transformed by the spirit of God. We're going to see that in their life.
And so we need to consider the outcomes as they live their life of faith and basically follow their leadership. Like first seven teaches. So right now, in this moment in our church's history, we are endeavoring to find more leaders. 14 of the men that go to this church are going through this book called finding Faithful Elders and Deacons by Sabiti Anabuile. I wish that was my name.
That would be so cool. Isn't that fun to say? Sabiti Ana Buile. Anyway, this book comes highly recommended by Pastor Larry Dorman, who is my pastor and an apostle over this church. Speaking of church leadership, by the way, apostles function like non local leaders to kind of, you know, sometimes, you know, even in a company or in a family, you need somebody coming from the outside to just kind of share with you some things.
That's essentially what non local leaders do. And, you know, of the many years I've been pastoring this church, I have relied on Pastor Larry only about 14 billion times. And when I call him up, I basically say this help.
And I tell him the problem and he fixes it. So anyway, there is non local leadership. There is local leadership taught in the scripture to have a group of men whom lead us. And if the scriptures teach us that men should lead, it stands to reason that they also teach us what type of men should lead. And so we are going to read through just shortly.
This is a little thing that I gave all 14 men that are going to go through this book. And there are three major passages that discuss church eldership. And I know this isn't, like, super impactful to your lives, and, you know, but it is good for us to understand what kind of people are going to lead the body of Christ that you attend. Fair enough. Okay, so this is the kind of men.
They won't be perfect, but these are the kind of men. In first Timothy, chapter three, we have that right. Here is a trustworthy saying. If anyone sets his heart on being an elder, he desires a noble task. Now, the elder must be above reproach.
The husband of but one wife. Excuse me, temperate, self controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent, but gentle, not quarrelsome. Not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God's church?
He must not be a recent convert, or he may become conceited and fall under the same judgment as the devil. He must also have a good reputation with outsiders so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil's traps. How many of you know that? All of us. The devil sets traps for all of us.
Right? But also for leadership, maybe even more so. Okay, so, Titus, one six nine says this. An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an elder is entrusted with God's work, he must be blameless.
Not overbearing, not quick tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not pursuing dishonest gain. Rather, he must be hospitable, one who loves what is good, who is self controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined. He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message, as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it. And finally, one, Peter three. Be shepherds of God's flock.
That is under your care, serving as elders, not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be. Not greedy for money, but eager to serve, not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. Okay, so we have a foundational thing that is important for us to see here in the reading of those three scriptures that are most responsible to give you the character qualities of the men who should be leading a church. We tiptoe into that just a little bit. We're not going to really tiptoe.
I'm going to go dive all in the Bible teaches that eldership is only for males. It's not a popular message, but it certainly is a biblical one. And I don't want to teach extensively on this. You know what can be a pretty big debate about women in ministry, because. Amen.
Women are in ministry. Yeah, amen. Completely and totally in ministry, but with quotes like, he desires a noble task. The husband of but one wife and a man. Okay.
I believe there is no biblical debate on the issue of female elders. It is super clear that governing church leadership, elder pastor team, is for men and men only. And it's important for us to remember that we do not set the rules at Ward community church, but we do follow them. And I believe that's a fair thing to say. So hopefully, that's all that's required to put this supposed debate to bed, because what is equally, if not more important, okay, is the character of the man whom is called to lead the body of Christ.
So, in Hebrews, the writer says this. Imitate their faith. All right? Which puts a pretty big responsibility on these men. Fair enough.
I don't know if the 14 men who are possibly not all of them will become elders, but a few of them will. I don't know if they've felt that weight yet, but it is a weight that we do have, that we bear. So these 14 men, we're going through that book that I had mentioned. Myself and Sam Reardon are the only two elders on our board as of right now. Son Chagabay, he dropped off this last summer, but he's going to go through the book with us.
He has an open invitation to come back. And much like I needed a sabbatical, this very well could be a sabbatical for son. You know, we just don't know yet. God does, but we don't. And so there's no issue.
There's, you know, with. Between son and I or anything like that. But it's myself, Sam Raredon. These are the 14 men that are going through this book. Myself, Sam Raridan's son, Chagabay, Jared Eastfold, Sean Hammer, Ryan Helvorson, Ben Blease, Darren Mel, Doug Steinmetz, Elijah McKinney, Kevin Olson, Randy Brinteson, Thomas Kakigisic, and Tim Daniels.
Maybe some of those names are a surprise to you. Maybe you're thinking, wow, that seems reasonable. I don't know. I don't know what you're thinking, but those are the 14 men, or I should say twelve. Mendez.
Some of which will be on the elder team shortly. And so we believe that is the holy spirit that's going to choose those men. And so we're tentatively thinking that we might have an elder team of maybe five. We don't know, five ish. I don't know.
For several years we have functioned with three. Now we're down to two, but we want to bring that to five, we think so we want the Holy Spirit to give us complete and total guidance, but at the same time we want these men. When it says men who desire eldership or to be an overseer desire a noble task. There needs to be desire out of their own heart. But you guys need to weigh in too for that fact.
If there's anything about those 14 men that you know that we don't tell us about it. Maybe go to them first, get it squared away, maybe not. We don't know. We're not clairvoyant. We know God is and we're going to try to listen to his voice.
But guess what? We don't hear God perfectly all the time, every time, do you? Not even elders and deacons and pastors do either. So we're going to use this book and we're going to use this book and I'm excited about it. So we're going to get through it.
So our tentative plan is to go through that book for, I don't know, eight to twelve weeks, then do some praying and then some discussing. And hopefully we will have more leaders to help shepherd the load here very shortly. Verse eight. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. So on the heels of the writer of Hebrews talking about human leadership, he jumps to the leader of all leaders.
You know him as the king of kings. That's right. So human church leadership, this is important, needs to always remember that they are leaders, but they're under leaders. Make sense?
Or said, like others have heard before, under shepherds, you've heard that saying before. In fact, I'm pretty sensitive to calling myself a shepherd. I rarely do unless I forget, but I'm always saying, under shepherd, I'm an under shepherd. So the real leader of any church in the world is God, specifically the Holy Spirit, because he ain't dead. Amen.
He's alive. So church leaders follow his teachings to the best of their ability, humbly relying on him in the areas where the Bible doesn't explicitly and dogmatically teach. So when the Bible is a little unclear, we have to hear. I just totally made that up. Whoa, I'm a rapper.
Where the Bible is unclear, we have to hear. And so we have to listen to his voice because the real leader of the church is God himself. He really is. But for an example of how elder teams listen to the Holy Spirit, I want to use the re roofing, residing and replacing of windows of this church building as an example. The Bible does not teach when world community church should re roof or reside the church.
Amen. It doesn't teach that gives some guidelines, but it doesn't teach that it's going to be the fall of 2024, the spring of 2025, or the summer of 2030. It just doesn't teach that. So what do we elders have to do? Listen?
Yes. We just have to listen for the Holy Spirit because he still doesn't want to weigh in on that situation. Fair enough. Okay. The same is true for all of your lives.
There are things that you go through that the Bible is just. It doesn't speak to explicitly or dogmatically. So what then do you do? You cannot just go to your church leadership, I'll tell you that. You can go to your church, but you can't just go, you got to go to him.
What does the Holy Spirit say in that situation? And if you need help discerning that voice, of course, we're brothers and sisters. We're going to help each other. So it's true for our lives. But God communicates to us through his word and his spirit.
And it takes maturity to really understand not just his word, but especially his spirit. It takes some good biblical knowledge to understand. If you want to discern God's voice, you got to understand his character. If you want to understand his character, you got to understand his word. Those two things go hand in hand.
So there's this communicative relationship between a being and us. It's not just an intellectual relationship with the book. Amen. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. And that fact, I think, makes it very easy for us to see consistency of history.
We just see him. When we study church history, we see Jesus hand on Martin Luther tacking the 95 thesis. Right? He was a catholic priest who didn't even really ever become a Lutheran. Lutheranism came after him, you know, but he was a catholic priest that saw the church doing something that it shouldn't be doing and he did something about it.
It's the hands of God on that man. So we see this consistency of history, and very easily because we can see this consistency of history of Jesus never changing. Right. We can also follow him as a map, so to speak, or follow a person to say it better. And he will always be the leader of his church, you know, understanding the Bible and discerning his spirit.
So part of that encouragement, I think, makes it easier to combat what happens in our culture when it gets less biblical.
Is our culture at all getting less biblical? Like in 1940, 1950, the golden era of leave it to beaver, and we didn't have Homer Simpson corrupting everybody. Like, I'm not trying to dog on homer Simpson, but whatever. That's not a really good family dynamic, but leave it to Beaver was. And so, you know, we basically started great as a nation.
You know, we started because of the gospel. And what happened in, in England about, you know, the king saying, basically, I'm the man. You know, you need to, like, basically worship me. And they were like, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to go across the Atlantic Ocean, start this new country.
It's basically gotten progressively worse up and down since the beginning. I think that's a fair thing to say. So when our culture changes, we still need to be guided by this book, his spirit. True enough. So we should rarely, if ever, expect something completely new, like it were from a new Jesus.
God is doing a new thing. Sometimes people will say, and I think that he clearly can do a new thing, but he's not going to violate his word by doing a new thing. So we have to be careful with that sometimes, you know, today, like by show of hands, how many people will occasionally watch another sermon besides the one you get on Sunday morning? Just raise them high, real high so everybody can see. Great.
Continue to do that. Keep doing that. We need more of a diet of the body of Christ, not just from what we read or not just from what you listen to me, but other people. So that's a great thing that happens to. But there's a not so great thing that happens in the midst of that is when offense happens in somebody's heart at a local church.
And then christians start to have only online church. That's dangerous. And they only look to the, quote, online leadership of which they have no relationship with. There's no give and take. There's no ironing, sharpening iron or less, I should say, to be honest, there's less of that.
Which leads us to verse nine. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods which are of no value to those who eat them. So in a day and age when the Internet brings so much information to our fingertips, we christians need to keep some of that just at our fingertips and not in our hearts and minds. Right.
We just need to be like, yeah, right. Because we can google everything, for goodness sake. We have so much information, and we have tons of information on a whole bunch of teachings out there, too, of which I believe the Bible describes many of those as, quote, strange teachings. Things like the hebrew roots movement. Please don't get sucked into that, okay?
The hebrew roots movement is essentially, we still have to do some Old Testament stuff. Well, some of that is true because the ten commandments are in the Old Testament, but a lot of that old Testament stuff with the hebrew roots movement is wonky and bad. Don't get sucked in. Other things like christian nationalism.
Well, those christian nationalists, they just want Jesus to be the president. I don't know anybody who's ever said that, by the way. But christian nationalism has this, you know, almost the audacity to believe that Jesus was american.
Right. It's just. It's a strange thing. Or one of my favorite whipping boys, the prosperity gospel. Well, the gospel does make you prosper, but when you put money in front of the gospel, it turns into the prosperity gospel.
And God wants all of his people to be healthy, wealthy, and wise. If you're not healthy, wealthy and wise, then somehow you're not a good christian. Rubbish. That's a strange teaching. Movements like transgenderism in the church, women, senior pastors, or homosexual, quote, ministers of the gospel.
No. Can you imagine somebody starting a group, adulterous ministers of the gospel?
Well, we chuckle because that's ridiculous, but it is less ridiculous for homosexual ministers of the gospel. You know, that's a pill that some in the church has swallowed. But the Bible is clear on the issue, all right? It's even clear on things that are not overtly theological, like some of these strange teachings that aren't just completely theology, like the flat earth movement.
Nope. Or evolution.
That's big evolution. Did you know that? Evolution. I'm going to talk a little bit about evolution, a little bit more about evolution. It's a recent strange teaching.
Like, we don't see it as really recent, but as far as origins of the universe or teachings in general, it's only a few decades old evolution. So I just want to camp out here for a bit because I did some research on evolution. It's only been around in mass for like a few decades, in fact. This is crazy. But in crazy awesome, I should clarify.
In 1967, Tennessee's state legislature revoked the Butler act, which was an act that actually prohibited the teaching of human evolution in public schools. Can you imagine that it's illegal for you to teach about evolution? You know, in Tennessee before 1967, right? Because in 1925, they instituted the Butler act. You can't teach evolution.
So what is that? For 42 years in Tennessee, at least, you couldn't teach the strange teaching of evolution, right? But now that strange teaching isn't so strange because it's almost prolific, except for those who take science seriously and not ignorantly.
Louis Pasteur, the founder at the bottom of microbiology, immunology. Every scientist in the world understands this guy's work. A little knowledge of science makes you an atheist. In depth knowledge of science makes you a believer in God.
Many scientists have that as their testimony. The interesting thing about evolution is it never gets into really deep science. It's all surface level, yet is prolific in our culture. And it helps me to know, as somebody who's on the school board in our community, it helps me to note that the entire state of Tennessee actually outlawed evolution. And mind you, 17 of our 50 states teach intelligent design right alongside evolution, 17 of them, of which Minnesota is not one of them.
But our district can. Do you know why? Because the school board controls the curriculum of the district. All it's going to take is one or two more school board members who believe as I do, and we can start teaching intelligent design in this community.
Election is coming.
So let's get back to Hebrews verse nine B. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods which are of no value to those who eat them. Ceremonial foods? What is that?
This is even worse than me saying, I don't believe the Bible teaches that females can be pastors. This is a hundred times more offensive to that first century church than what I just said about female leadership. A hundred times. Okay. This is a super big, like, shot across the bow, right?
In my opinion, for the writer of Hebrews to mention. And so even though biblically it's not a debate, he tries to put this debate to bed. And we don't have this cultural debate with ceremonial foods. Anybody ever eat foods ceremonial at Lee at some way on how you relate to goddesse? No.
No, not at all. Actually, we don't have that in our culture. We have some other things that the first century church didn't struggle in their culture. And so the hebrew writer here, he doesn't shy away from this incredibly controversial, or I wouldn't even say it's not a controversial subject. What it is.
It was a subject very hard for the culture to accept because I don't think we understand how completely and totally cataclysmic shift it was for them to go be. To be like, you mean we don't have to kill this sheep, we don't have to kill this pigeon, we don't have to kill this ram for our sins? What, we've been doing this for thousands of years, and you say some nut job that just got killed by the Romans, he paid for all that? No, I don't believe it. In fact, you are deviating.
You're deviating from the Torah. No, they were not. And it took the culture some time to actually make that shift. So much time that a couple thousand years later, we don't even think about it. We have no clue about the ceremonial stuff that they had to go through or food that they had to eat.
And so just like those laws back in that day were not debatable because Jesus's death did away with them, they were still somehow debated. Okay? It's very similar to women preachers today. They're just not debatable. Bible is super clear, but somehow it's still debated.
Okay, so this shot across the bow here should give all of us the courage to be able to say, man, he. He didn't back away from what the culture would find very hard to believe or very hard to accept. He didn't do that. And then in verse eleven, in chapter 13, he directly draws attention to what Jesus did in order to prove that ceremonial foods were of no value, just like Timothy and Titus and Peter did when I read them earlier about male leadership. Now, we don't struggle with believing what Jesus did to do away with ceremonial food.
We don't do that. You know, we just. So we don't struggle. But they really struggled with this. And so I'm out of my notes here, but I want us to see that it's very important for us to realize that the writer of Hebrews had to have significant amount of courage to write that.
He was changing thousands of years of how people related to God. Like, well, he had already. It had already been changed by Jesus, but that change took some time, right? So the writer of Hebrews had courage. Much like, you know, I could give a sermon on the dangers of cannibalism, and all you guys would be like, thank you, but nobody's a cannibal here.
You probably don't have to teach us against that. But if I was amongst the cannibalistic cultures of the jungles of Amazon, I bet you they'd have something to say about that. They probably want to eat me so my whole point is you have to have courage in order to say some of the things that the Bible says. Fair enough. There's an importance, and courage is necessary to influence churches and culture, and we have to actually speak what it is.
It speaks, says humbly, lovingly, and with courage. And so I believe humbly and with love and with courage. The writer of Hebrews did this, and this is the most like, in your face thing. Okay. Verse eleven.
The high priest carries the blood of animals into the most holy place as a sin offering. But the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make people holy through his own blood. Verbal punch in the face. What?
That's blasphemy. I could see people in their culture saying that. Let us then go to him outside the camp bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come through Jesus. Therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess his name.
And do not forget to do good and to share with others. For with such sacrifices, God is pleased. So God is no longer pleased with animal sacrifice. Yet for thousands of years, that's how they related to God. And it's easy for us to get that.
But in the culture, it was very hard, hard, hard, hard teaching. And there are tons of hard teachings that the Bible shares that we need to have the courage enough to. To share, that we should declare. And it really reminded me this week, as I was just preparing, in Hebrews 13, I came across this verse, and don't bring this up until I ask you to, please. Okay?
So in revelation 21. Don't bring it up. Okay? We clearly see a list, a litany of sins, like things that we would clearly see. That's bad.
That's bad, that's bad. That bad? Don't bring it up, please. Unbelieving, vile murderers, sexually immoral, magic arts idolaters and liars. We clearly see that's all bad.
Amen. Right? All of that is bad. All right? We can see that those who practice those things should end up, as it says, in a lake of burning fire.
Okay, yikes. Now bring it up. What's the first one that I didn't mention?
What?
What, you mean I have to, like, stand up for your words sometimes, Jesus.
Yeah.
I hate confrontation, though. I just hate it.
Okay. The Bible doesn't say you have to like it, but it does say it shouldn't be cowardly.
Courage is needed by followers of Christ in every time period and in every geographic location, there will always be a segment of that particular culture or community that is going to be hostile against the Bible, which means we have to. Then what? Oh, we better not talk about it. We better not say a word. We just need to go along to get along.
Don't want to stir the pot or anything. Just love people. No. No courage is needed. The fruit of lips that confess his name.
Verse 15. Our culture needs all of us to have lips that confess his name. All of us all week long to have lips that confess his name. Not just believe his principles, not just pray over our meals in lunch. Somehow thinking that that's going to be this great evangelistic escapade for somebody to then one day ask you, why do you pray?
How many times has that happened to you? Probably zero.
God is saying, I need you to have courageous. But we get too nervous, don't we? We do. Good lord, even I do. And I get paid to do this stuff, but I get nervous.
Yet the scripture says over and over again so many things like, for I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes. Let's go forth from here today with great courage for this community. As we hear the or they hear the fruit of our lips that confess his name. We have to be about that. I'm not saying you can't talk about the Vikings.
Praise God. 50. Come on.
But if all you talk about is the Vikings with your buddies, something's wrong. And what do you ladies do? I don't know. Scrapbooking. I'm sorry.
I know what you guys do. You pray for your husband. That's all you guys do. For you single ladies, I got hope for you. It's going to happen.
Let's go forth from here with great courage. And so this is what I'm endeavoring to say. Who could you tell about Jesus? The fruit of your lips this week? Everybody got a name?
Who doesn't have a name, raise your hand. You don't have a name? Got a name now? Okay, who else doesn't have a name? Good.
Somebody shout out a name to me. Jason. I didn't have to be Tim. Somebody from here shout out a name.
I know it's the overflow room.
I just asked if anybody doesn't have a name, raise your hand. None of you raise your hand. Somebody shout out a name that are you going to tell? Neil. Jason and Neil Balcony.
Give me a name.
Oh, yeah, I'm looking at you four, five people. Give me a name? Kyle. Now, this section. What?
Brittany. Right on. Here's what I'm suggesting. We will all have many, many hours over this upcoming week to allow the fruit of our lips to tell somebody about Jesus. So we all come next Sunday with just a 62nd to two minute testimony on how that went, I wouldn't have to prepare a message.
Sweet. I could go paddle boarding more often. Listen, kind of serious now. If we did that, that sermon would probably be even better than Tim's sermon of two weeks ago. And for those of you who don't know, I think that's the best sermon I've ever heard.
But imagine if you just sat where you were at and we passed the microphone. Because watch this. We are not responsible for the harvest. That's his job. We are only responsible for the courage.
Wow. Half of you guys aren't even going to be here next Sunday. Now, I know how that works.
I do want to provide some time for that next week, honestly. So text me or call me or something. Or if you know for sure you're going to do it this week and you want to have somebody keep you accountable. If you're going to tell me here today, because now you're going to be like, oh, it's Thursday, and I haven't told Jim Bob what to do or, you know, and whatever, just do that. You know that you need encouragement sometimes.
And sometimes accountability is the encouragement that you need. Fair enough. Okay. So it'd be awesome if next week we had a longer service because I'll prepare a normal message. We got time yet today?
Okay. But we also had maybe a dozen. How about a dozen people? Anybody want to raise their hand, say they're going to be one of those people. You don't have to get up here.
I see you, Pastor Darren. He's all eager. Pick me, pick me, pick me.
Can you have courage this week? Can there be a dozen people that raise their hand this morning?
1234. I'm looking at you guys. I know. Is this terrible? Yeah.
Five. Good. Six. Seven. Dimitri, come on, balcony.
We're up to seven. No, I don't want to be super compelling, but I don't want to compel you because this next verse is going to blow your mind. Okay. And just know this is hard to preach. Okay.
I'm kind of joking about it, but you'll see. Verse 17. Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. Good lord.
How do you preach that? Right? So this is how I'm going to preach it. I'm just going to read this. Okay.
Everybody in here, please use the fruit of your lips to confess his name to someone this week.
Obey me. I don't know. I don't know how to preach that. That's crazy. So anyway, it goes on to say this, okay, obey your leaders and submit to their authority.
They keep watch over you as. As men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. It's just a weird thing, you know? Like, I could definitely see if I'm gonna.
If I'm gonna put myself in this situation as one of your leaders that I am. It would be such a joy, such a joy that it wouldn't. It wasn't just a dozen people or. We got up to seven, I guess. It's not just seven, but it's 17.
Oh, okay, I'll take the mic now. I don't want to come up front, but I can just do it. Sitting like that would be such a joy to me. In fact, I could maybe go so far as to say it's a burden if you don't do it.
I don't know if I could really completely say that, but I guess I just did. So my heart is for you not to obey me. Okay? My heart is for you to obey him. But he tells us all to obey our leadership here.
I can't not preach that. I can't just gloss over that and be like, I'll save that for the next guy. That's an associate pastor message. Message.
Sometimes senior pastors do that. They're like, I ain't gonna touch that. You can do it, though. Associate pastors, like, really?
Good Lord.
I already preached that part.
I preached that. I preached that. Preach that. Okay, we're back to courage, right after the writer of Hebrews talks about the church leaders joy. And then those of us that do follow, I have leaders, too.
I have a weird relationship almost. That's not weird, but it's kind of weird with the elders. Like, I'm kind of supposed to be their leader, but I submit to them, too, kind of thing, you know? So there's that. But right after he talks about this here, he says this in verse 18, pray for us.
So right after he's just like, obey me, he says, pray for us. And here's the key. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. So what? He solicits prayer and then almost weirdly talks about having a clear conscience after he essentially says, obey me.
That's a bit weird. Okay. He talks about having this, but then I thought, well, maybe he's not a person who is directly in leadership over them. And so it doesn't seem as self serving or authoritative. You know, it's just like somebody else.
What? We don't know most people. I mean, I don't know about most people, but a lot of people think the apostle Paul wrote Hebrews, but nobody knows for sure. Right. And so this portion of scripture, it does seem kind of self promoting a little bit.
It seems a little bit too authoritative. Right. But it doesn't negate the fact that the Holy Spirit wrote it for us to benefit his glory and our lives. So we're going to finish Hebrews today. By the way, it's the last sermon on Hebrews, at least for now.
Okay. And so I'm going to read 19 through 25, and then I'm going to comment on it. Okay. I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon. May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant, brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will.
And may he work in us what is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. Brothers, I urge you to bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written you only a short letter. I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you.
Greet all your leaders and all God's people. Those from Italy send you their greetings. Grace be with you all. What I think that we need to see here most is in verse 20, the God of peace. Okay, watch this.
He is telling them that the God of peace will equip them with everything good. Now listen, when an all powerful being says he's going to equip you with everything, do you think you will be ill equipped? Absolutely not. Why does he equip us? Why does he want to equip us with everything good.
Right? Is it so that we can live this life of leisure without any responsibility? No. We know for doing his will. This is really where this sermon is going to turn from, like, church leadership to everybody in the room.
Okay? This is very important.
We have the most peace when we are the most in his will.
When we have the courage to let people know about Jesus is when greater peace enters our lives. And I know that it doesn't seem to be true. Right? Because we get so nervous about confessing his name that we chicken out. We're like, I'll pray for you.
Right? Like, that's all we can get. Sometimes we get nervous, right? But when we have the courage to let people know about Jesus is when greater peace enters our lives. But when we have the proper understanding of how powerful that name is, is when we tend to see our nerves become courage.
But we have to see how powerful that name is first. That is the key. When you really believe, when you operate, and when you have been equipped with everything to do his will, do you think you'll chicken out? No, because that would mean then you are not equipped. And that's not the promise of scripture.
God rose a man from the dead, and that's power. And that great shepherd of the sheep, where the sheep equips us with his power, with everything, to do what his will, not ours. Here's the key, I think, to the most impactful thing that you will hear from this pulpit. All right. Those of you that have been nodding off a little bit.
Okay, I'm not going to call you out, but I don't know who you are. Maybe not all of you, I don't know, but pay attention, everybody. Look up here. Just do some jumping jacks. I'm sweaty.
Here's important. Okay, listen. If we lack the equipping to live our lives, pay attention. If we lack the equipping to live our lives, it probably just means we are advancing our will more than his.
He doesn't equip us to live our life or our will. He equips us with everything to live his will. Can the worship team come up, please?
Let's take a step of faith this week, realizing that we've already been equipped to confess his name from our lips. Just walk in that equipping power, identify and allow the power of the word of God to just permeate you. So much so that when you actually walk up to somebody to say something like this, hey, I know I've never talked about this before, but I'd like to tell you about my faith in Jesus, if you don't mind.
That's an okay way to start. It actually should become a natural conversation for us. We should be able to do that. And guess what? We can we.
Absolutely. You've already been equipped to do it.
And so the easiest way to allow the fruit of our lips to tell somebody about the name of Jesus is to just them what Jesus did for us. You don't have to know theology. You don't have to get the four points of the Romans road or calvinistic arminian, you know, exegetical hermeneutics and homiletics from the word of God. I was speaking in tongues there. The english tongue.
But if you actually want to share the gospel with somebody, take out your phone and record this right now. It is this.
One of the unfortunate realities about being human is that we have offended God by just being conceived.
Yeah, I get it. It's not our fault. But we were conceived in sin. Are we conceived? We have sinned at conception.
That's why we need a savior. God didn't want us to be separated from him. It broke his heart. But he sent his son because there. There had to be something that lost blood in order to pay for sin.
If you put your faith in what Jesus did on the cross for that sin, trust him to take you to heaven. When you die, you will go the gospel, something like that. But it's way easier to just tell people what Jesus did for you. Did Jesus do something for you? Yeah, he did.
Why do we stand this morning?
Sing one last song and then I'll close the service.