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Two Powerful Words: My Church
A sermon my Dr. James Flamming
Pastor, First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, January 22, 2006
I
am convinced that this year can be one of the most fulfilling and gratifying and
growth-producing years in the history of our church. I believe the Lord will be
with us each step of the way. I believe the Lord will be our cheerleader as we
walk into this new year. Insofar as our role, our part, is there are three
basic commitments which we will need to celebrate, that we will need to put into
action. The first one is a commitment to Jesus Christ as our Lord. And the
second one, a commitment to the church, and the third, a commitment to our
calling.
Lloyd Douglas, best-selling author of another generation, described a visit he
had with a music teacher for many, many years. He had retired from the
University but often went back to give lessons. Lloyd greeted the veteran music
teacher with this question: “Well, Professor, what’s the good news for today?”
And without any hesitation, he walked over and he took a tuning fork, then a
soft mallet, and he hit it.
And
he said, “That, my friend, is the musical note “A.” He listened until it had
completely lost its sound and then he said, “You know, that is “A” today, it was
the note “A” yesterday, it will be the note “A” next week, and a thousand years
from now it will be “A.” “In our kind of world,” he said, “there needs to be
something that is always constant. And that’s the good news for today!”
I
believe spiritually speaking you might even say it’s the note “C.” There are
three basics that have been there since Jesus was here. They are so constant
they are repetitive, but if you ever lose your way, you know they’re still going
to be there. The note “C” says commitment to Christ, commitment to His church,
and commitment to use the gifts that He has given to us and called us to use.
Now, there is one thing that can often wind up being lacking. I want you to
turn please to Matthew, the sixteenth chapter. Matthew 16 – this is a
conversation Jesus had with his disciples on retreat. It is a text you have
heard many times, but I turn to it again today because it encloses that middle
“C” note, which is always there and always will be. Jesus had gone to Caesarea
Philippi, taking his disciples for a retreat, asked them who He was and who
others said He was. And then he says in v.15, “But what about you? Who do you
say that I am?” And Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the
Living God.” And Jesus gave him a blessing, “Blessed are you son of Jonah, for
this was not revealed to you by man but by my father who is in Heaven. And I
tell you, you are Peter.” Peter is the word for rock. “You are Peter and on
this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
And I will give you the keys to the kingdom. What you bind on earth will be
bound in Heaven, and loose on earth be loosed in heaven. This is the word of
the Lord.” Look at the verse that says, “Upon this rock, I will build my
church.” Wonder if there are any other two letters in the English language
which have more power than “my.” “My,” you see is the bonding word - the power
word – the ownership word – “my” home, “my” mother, “my” father, “my” brothers
and sisters, “my” workplace, “my” school. It is the very opposite of “them.”
And if you ever hear children in a family … (Now, I know yours don’t ever argue,
but if you were listening to the neighbors’ children and they were arguing –
let’s say they were in the sand box. It’s in the warm time. And one of them
says, “That’s my shovel.” And the other one says, “Isn’t either.” “Yes it
is.” “No it isn’t.”
What are they arguing about? Ownership! What is theirs? You are in the
playroom and the children are discussing, “Whose toy is what?” It used to be
this way when our sons were small about who sat where at the table. Now they
are all the same chairs and it’s the same table, and it’s the same food. What’s
going on here? What’s going on here is that as human beings we make something
personal and vital and essential when we put “my” in front of it. We’ve bought
into it. It’s ownership, it’s bonding, it’s ours. “My” school.
Jesus comes now to His disciples and for the first time, he’s going to talk
about the church. No, he doesn’t talk about it in theological terms; he doesn’t
talk about it in general terms; he doesn’t link it to the Old Testament uh
synagogue. He doesn’t give them … you know what he does? He puts the word “my”
in front of it. Upon this rock, I will build “my” church. He claims it. He
claims you. He claims me. With all of our flaws, with all of our weaknesses.
With all of our ups and with all of our downs, with the times we slip and fall
and struggle and then the times He raises us up. What He’s talking about is
that He wants to bond with His church. That happened with Simon Peter early in
the text when Jesus said, “Who do you say that I am?” “You.” And Simon Peter
said, “You are the Christ. That’s what I say. You are the Christ, the Son of
the living God.” Later on, in another passage, he will say as he falls to his
knees at the feet of Jesus, “My Lord and my God.” “My, My.”
Let
me ask you a question. I know you know enough to become a member of this
congregation or another church, but the question is, “Have you ever put “My” in
front of it?” Have you ever said, “I want this congregation to be ‘my’
church?” “And I want the Lord Jesus to be “my” Saviour.” The power of “my.”
Well, suppose you would make it your church. And you would say, “I want this
congregation and this people to be “mine.” How would you do that? Well, the
first thing you would do is to begin to participate. To participate in
worship, in small group, you would not stay aloof and away from it. The
quickest way to put “my” in front of something is to claim it, to become part of
it, to own it. You know the difference between street people and most of you.
You own something! So that you can say “This is my address, this is my house,
this is my car. These are my friends.” We have a group every Saturday that goes
out to minister to the street people. There are three places in town where they
stay. The one thing that is common and many of them you just … it is
heartbreaking, there is no “my” there. If you would make “my” church yours,
there’s got to be some participation and some ownership on your part in behalf
of others. Some time ago, Gallop pollsters went door to door asking this
question, “Did you go to church in the last seven days?” Substantially more
answered “yes” than all of the statistics would reveal were true. And the
pollsters were confused. Martin Marty, historian up in Chicago, worked out a
tongue-in-cheek paraphrase of possible answer to the confusion. “What they
really meant,” he said, “was well … well… I really wasn’t there in person but my
intentions were good, and I intended to be there. So put me down as a ‘yes.’
Yes I did.” Well, let me ask you a question. Is your participation in your
church one of your holy habits? Is it negotiable? Do you have to get up every
Sunday morning and negotiate in your head whether you are coming? What Jesus is
asking is for you to make the church he called “my” church - for you to call it
“my” church. For this, there can be no negotiation. The Bible says that it is
required that believers be faithful. The Bible also says that the just shall
live by their faithfulness. Let’s look at faithfulness for a minute. If your
car would start one out of our times, would you consider it a faithful car? And
if your television worked 60% of the time, would you go over, pat it on the head
and say, “Oh, you are a faithful television set.” If your laptop worked 65% of
the time, would you rejoice to take it to school? If your water heater should
greet you with warm water only four days out of the seven, wouldn’t you just
rejoice and say, Whoopee! NO! And if you attend church once or twice a month,
I ask you, is that faithfulness? You see, the spiritual life you neglect may be
your own. I saw once a wonderful film presentation put together by a
photographer at National Geographic and in the immensely and immaculately
put-together photographs that he had taken, he would say again and again,
“People ask me how do you get such magnificent photographs?” And his answer
was, “You put yourself in the place of greatest potential.” If you want a
living, breathing, working relationship with God, put yourself in the place of
greatest potential. You are going to find that in the church. Whatever
denomination that church is. You are going to find it with God’s people and
bonded with God’s people.
Let
me talk just a little bit about giving. Jesus said, “Where your treasure is,
there will your heart be also.” Where your treasure is, that’s where your mind
is. I believe that we give for two reasons. First, we give because Christ
asked us to. And we give for His sake. Because He loves His world, in order to
help, it often takes our support. But the second reason is I believe because
here in our congregation I have watched it week after week after week after week
for all of these years, I believe our church does more with one dollar than any
place I know. And I like to see my money work and it does. If you were to ask
me, alright, tell me how much to give, I can’t tell you that. You and God got
to work that out. And Jesus said, “It needs to be between you and the Lord.”
But the New Testament does give us some guidelines. It said make it
proportional to the direction and the amount God has blessed you with. If you’ve
had the kind of year that is just full of blessings, that says one thing. If
you have been out of work and all the rest… it says do it in proportion to the
amount that you have been blessed. But do it proportionately. The proportion
that the Bible shoots at is 10%. It’s the tithe it is called. And if I were to
ask right now for those who have proven the tithe in their lives – that ten
percent – and ask you to stand and give a testimony, let me tell you something.
There would be people all over this church that would share with you that even
back when it was seemingly impossible to tithe, they did it. And that God in a
marvelous way has blessed that. They didn’t give because they thought the
blessing would come. They gave because Christ needed, but it has worked out
just like Jesus said. You will get more blessedness by giving than receiving.
The important thing is to do it. Faithfulness in giving.
There is a third word – witness. How long has it been since you invited
somebody to come to church with you? What is the church to be like? Well, you
know in the Old Testament, there was a good deal of similarity between finding
God and hiding behind a rock. And I want you to take your Bible and turn with
me to the book of Psalms. It is right in the middle of your Bible. You can
find it. And Psalm 18, if you have a pew Bible it is page 855, Psalm 18. I am
going to read some of these rock verses. You see in the Old Testament, rocky
sites were places of refuge and many of these were written by David who was on
the run a lot. I read, “I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock
and my fortress. My deliverer. My God is my rock in whom I take refuge.” Turn
over to Psalm 28. This is a prayer. David prays, “To you I call, O Lord, my
rock. Do not turn a deaf ear to me.” Turn over to Psalm 31.
I
am going to start with verse 1. This is a great passage. “In you, O Lord, I
have taken refuge. Let me never be put to shame. Deliver me in your
righteousness. Turn your ear to me. Come quickly to my rescue. Be my rock of
refuge. A strong fortress to save me since you are my rock and my fortress.
For your sake, and for the sake of your name, lead and guide me.” The rock
verses throughout the Old Testament.
Now, let me tell you what Jesus did. Let me tell you, this.. this is
incredible. In the Old Testament, if I’ve ever found the word rock applied to
Israel, or a person, I .. I haven’t found it. Probably it’s there; I haven’t
found it. This is what Jesus did. He said to Simon Peter, “You are going to
become a rock.” It is Jesus sharing what God is doing in His world with us. Let
me put it this way. Jesus is sharing his rockness – that’s my word – with us.
We are to become the kind of security place that other people need. Alvin
Toffler said it in his “FUTURE SHOCK” book that our world needs islands of
stability. That’s what we are called to be. It’s part of our witness. We’re
part of what we are because God has shared rockness with us. And he said, “Go
into all of the world.” Speaking of all of the world, there is a movie
currently showing in Richmond that has the intriguing title, End of the Sphere.
And it is the story of Nate Saint and four friends who went as Missionaries to
Equador and felt called to go to a tribe of people called the Wadoni tribe.
They were some of the most violent people on the face of the earth. Their
religion taught them that any outsider was an enemy. I know some people who
still believe that. And their religion taught them that every other tribe or
any other person was a cannibal and needed to be killed. So when this group of
missionaries went into the forest to seek out the Wadonis, the killed them. End
of story – right? Wrong! You see, Nate’s son, Steve, and the rest of the
missionaries prayed about it and in the midst of their grief, huge grief you can
imagine (there were books written about it), they decided that if they were
going to be followers of Jesus Christ, they would learn how to forgive and
through their forgiveness and love, they would witness. And they did. One of
our columnists here in town calls their forgiveness staggering. But what
happened of that forgiveness and of that witness and of that love? It began very
small but now after all of these decades, that tribe is changed. Transformed.
It’s amazing – you see, some common folks like you and me who were sent out of
funds provided by people like you and me and like their Lord, gave their lives,
something began to work called the transforming power of God and the
transformation is just incredible and amazing. On this day, the Lord Jesus
wants you to put “my” in front of witness. That I am to be a rock for somebody.
Simon Peter, I am going to give you a nickname: Susan, John, Benjamin, Abel.
Steve, I give you a nickname. Rock. And you are to be a living rock in my
world. “My” Christ, “my” church, “my” witness, “my” rock.
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