Transcript

I read in the paper that the census workers are going to be in the Shoals area, I guess over the next few days. And that reminded me of a humorous story I read where a census worker was at the door of a certain main, and uh, asking those questions. You know, some of them make sense, some of them do not. He came to the question he asked the man, what is your church preference, and without batting an eye, the man replied, red brick. That is humorous, but how shallow the understanding is today about what the church is, what the church ought to be doing.

Turn with me to Philippians chapter 1, as we continue our study, verse by verse, chapter by chapter through this wonderful New Testament book. If you are visiting with us today, we just go straight through the books of the Bible. We have Philippians on Sunday morning, I John on Sunday night, just seeing what God has put there for us. And we know that Paul is particularly fond of this church. The church at Philippi. Paul believes that this is a good church. And I want to give you three aspects of a good church today. Three aspects of a good church. Now this does not mean that we are covering all that makes up a good church, but these three things will definitely be present if a church is a good church. And I have simply entitled the message, “A Good Church.”

Read with me, verses 1 through 5, Philippians 1:1-5. “Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, including the overseers and deacons: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all, in view of your participation in the gospel from the first day until now.”

Now the first thing I want us to glean from the text this morning about a good church is that a good church understand the parody in the church. A good church understands the parody in the church. The word parody simply means equal, or the state of being equal. A good church knows that everyone is equal, in their relationship to God and in their importance to God. We are all equal. Now we have different roles, different responsibilities, within the church body, God calls some to be leaders, some he calls to do other things, but that is not what we are talking about. A good church recognizes that regardless whether your role and responsibility in the church is esteemed by man or not, you have an equal audience with God the Father. We stand in equality, parody before our Lord. No one can be closer to God than anyone else. My friend, today you are as close to God as you want to be. Jesus Christ made the ground level at the cross, and a good church understands this.

I believe Paul is pointing this out with three phrases, look at the first phrase in verse 1. He says, “Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Christ Jesus.” Now Paul of course holds the office of apostle, and what I call the associate apostle is Timothy. Paul always had a team of folks who work with him as his staff, I would call that a ministerial staff. But here Timothy is so involved with the apostle Paul in the founding and in the building up of this church, Paul includes his name in the salutation. But the key thought here is when Paul says, Paul and Timothy, bond servants of Christ Jesus. Now this word bond servant is the word that would be used for the fellows in the bottom of a slave ship that were required to do the rowing. That’s where Paul says he is. Paul says, I want you to know there is parody in the church, we are all equal, we are all servants of God. Even though I hold the office of an apostle, and we do not have apostolic authority any longer in the church, but in this day an apostle could go in any church in any area and he was in charge. He was God’s man. But even though Paul used that authority when necessary, he said, listen, I am just a servant of God just like you are. There is parody, equality in the church. When he says he is a bond servant he means that he has been bought with a price. He is completely dependent upon the Master for everything, and he owes undivided allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ.

But friend, being the servant of Jesus Christ is not like laboring under some cruel, impersonable task master. I mean, being the slave of Christ is a wonderful joy. Paul expresses this with gladness in his heart, because there is great freedom being the servant of Christ. Now the world says you want to be free, and let it all hang out. If it feels good, do it. That’s the way you get free. That’s a lie, that is bondage. You get involved in the lust of the flesh and in the bondage of sin and the stronghold of iniquity will have you. You want to be free, die to yourself, become the servant of Christ. And you are free. But I believe the main issue here was Paul was showing, yes, I have my position of authority as apostle, but I am just a bond servant, like everyone else. The parody of the church, we are all equal in our importance to the Lord, and in our relationship to the Lord.

Another phrase points this out. Look at the second phrase of verse 1. “To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi.” Now he is talking about all the believers there in the church at Philippi, and he calls them saints. To all the saints. Do you know what the word saints means? It means holy ones. To all the holy ones. Now I didn’t just mean a few people that the church hierarchy had set apart, and, and, and ordained or ushered into sainthood. It means all the saints, every member of the church is a holy one. In Acts chapter 9:13, all believers are referred to as saints. Or holy ones. My friend, you are not holy in and of yourself, you are not holy because of your merit, you are not holy because of your work, you are not holy because of you efforts, or your determination, or an act of the will. What does he say? Holy in Christ Jesus. That’s the key. You are holy by virtue of your union with Christ. That’s why we are holy. You see right now, in the heavenlies, the Bible says Jesus is seated at the right hand of the Father. And the Bible says, we are seated in Christ in the heavenly places. The Bible speaks over and over and over about you and I being in Christ. Now Christ is in us down here in the here and now, but also we are in Christ. And in that sense, I am in Christ in the heavenlies and God looks upon me in the holiness of Christ. Now, my practice is not holy, but my position is holy. I am just down here laboring under the power of the spirit of God waiting until my practice catches up with my true position. My friend, you are holy ones in the truest sense. You are not just a sinner saved by grace, you are a saint of God in Christ. The moment you are saved, you are in Christ, Christ is in you, and from that moment on, from God’s perspective, you are a holy one? A saint of God.

Well, the book of Romans adds some insight on this. In Romans 8:30, the Bible says, and whom he predestined, these he also called. And whom he called, these he justified, and these he justified, he also glorified. Now the interesting thing is that the verbs in that verse are in the past tense. It means friend, you are already justified, you are not working and laboring and hoping and keeping law and maybe some day, some how, some way, you will be good enough to be justified. No. God says, you are justified, past tense. And more than that, he says you are glorified. It is so certain God can write it as if it is already done. Now I am looking at you very closely this morning. I don’t see anybody out there glorified to me. Some of you look petrified. Not glorified. And I know you may think the same about me. Stupefied, whatever. But not glorified. But my friend, you are looking at me in the practice and in the practical, you’ve got to look at me in my position in Christ, and you will see I am already glorified. This old flesh is just waiting until it gets purged away and I get my new body, and then I will have the glory in my practice that I now already have in my position in Christ. My friend, we are saints in Christ. You know what he is saying, it doesn’t matter if you are an apostles, or an associate apostle like Paul and Timothy, it doesn’t matter if you are just another church member, the ground is level at the cross. There is equality, parody in the church. My friend, it does not matter what your role and what your responsibility, or what spiritual gifts God has given you, you are just as important to Christ, your relationship to Christ can be just as real, as it is to the pastor of the church, and it ought to be. There is equality in the church. And a good church understands that parody in the church.

But he gives a third phrase that also points out the parody in the church. The last phrase he says, including the overseers and deacons. Overseers and deacons. Now I am going to slip away form the theme of my message and deal with these two offices in the church because we do things quite a bit different from the traditional Baptist way when it comes to church leadership. I did not say we did things unbiblical, I said we did things different from the traditional Baptist way when it comes to church membership. Now you have two offices mentioned here. And this is the only time when Paul is addressing a church that he mentions these two offices. The office of overseer, the office of deacon. Now let me say this, after thorough study, and I mean many, many, many hours of study, studying great Baptists and other conservative evangelical scholars who hold to the inerrancy of scripture like we hold, I’ve come to the conclusion that God has given us a lot of flexibility in how we structure and organize church leadership. And I can prove that by letting you look at all of these scholars and see that they have varying opinions about how to structure and organize church leadership. Now the Bible gives very stringent qualifications, character qualities of godliness, that must be present if you are going to be in church leadership, but God gives seemingly lots of flexibility about how you organize and structure church leadership. Does that make sense. In other words, God puts the emphasis on godliness. And if you have godly men in leadership the structure and organization will take care of itself. Now here is what we’ve done traditionally I think so often as Baptists, we’ve put the emphasis on its got to be this way, they’ve got to be called this, its got to be run this way, because we’ve always done it that way before. And then we loose the emphasis on the godly character qualities that I Timothy 3 and Titus 1 insist upon.

Now, with that in mind, let me tell you some things that I believe and that the consensus of the men that I’ve studied believe is true, about overseers in the church. Number one, that each church in the New Testament had a plurality of overseers. A plurality of overseers. In other words, they had many people who functioned as pastors. I say many, and I am not saying by this that I believe or they believe, one elder or one overseer is heresy, just that the New Testament example shows that they were more, most likely, several el… elders for every church. Here is some verses that you may want to jot down. Acts 14:23. Acts 15:4. Acts 15:22. Acts 20:17. James 5:14. And in those five passages the Bible explicitly speaks of elders in the plural for the church in the singular, a singular church, a plurality of elders, overseers, pastors, same title for all three. Alright. And then at least it is implied in our text, where this letter is written to the church at Philippi, but he says here in verse 1, to the overseers in the plural. Now folks, it is not a matter of being Baptist or not as to whether or not you view we only have one elder, or we have a plurality of elders. This is just something that the Bible has left flexibility on and openness in. But anyway, most of the scholars agree, and I agree the New Testament model is a plurality of overseers.

Now the second thing. I mentioned this a while ago. Godly character, not skill, ability or talent is the criterion for the overseer of the church. Or overseers, plural of the church. Godly character. Not whether a fellow is slick or sharp or influential or dynamic or has charisma, God says, look at it I Timothy 3 sometimes, or Titus 1, God puts the whole emphasis on their godly character. Not on their human efforts, talents or abilities. The third thing that I would conclude about overseers that the word overseer, episcopos(?) which also can be translated bishop. I think if you have got a King James Bible, it calls, it translates it bishop, those are the same things. Sometimes it is translated overseer, sometimes it is translated bishop. But that word, episcopos(?) for overseer or bishop the word presterios(?) for elder and the word pomean(?) for pastor are three titles for the same person. It is not that they are suppose to be some bishop out here who oversees several churches, which, which a lot of ecclesiastical church systems used, I don’t think that is supported at all in scripture. It is not that then the elder is somebody else, and the pastor is somebody else, in the New Testament,these are used interchangeably. You know what God was saying? God was saying, the title is not the deal. God was saying, the title is not important, the godly character is what is important.

I believe when God wanted to emphasize the rule and the authority of the person in leadership, he called him episcopos(?) bishop. Because that emphasizes rule and authority. When God wanted to emphasize the dignity and the esteem of the office he used the world elder, because we are suppose to respect our elder and that word came down in the church to mean that one that we esteemed and we respect. And when he wanted to emphasize the genuine care and concern a leader should lead with he used pormean(?) pastor. But of the terms, elder is used the most, bishop or overseer is used second most, and pastor only appears one time in Ephesians 4:11, and there it is a compound word, it is connected with teacher. Which means he is a pastor whose job is teaching. Now, I don’t know how we as church in protestant life and evangelical churches came to just use the word pastor when it is the least used term for the leader of the church, I don’t know that, but we have. And I don’t have any problem with that. That is fine. If you want to call me pastor, or if you want to call me just about whatever you want to call me is fine with me. But uh, anyway, those terms are used interchangeably. Now, we do have some specifics about the role of the overseer, and I’ll just mention these. In scriptures, first of all the overseers determined the church policy. Acts 15:22. Secondly they oversaw the church, Acts 20:28. Thirdly, they ordained others, I Timothy 4:14. Next, they ruled preached and taught, I Timothy 5:17. Also, they were to exhort and refute, Titus 1:9. And then I believe the most important of all, they were to lead by example, They were to live out the Christian life, they were teaching others to live, I Peter 5:13. Now, even though I did not look up the passage, I Timothy 3 and Titus 1 gives and extensive and strict list of godly character traits that are essential, they are required if a person is going to be a leader or in the office of overseer in the church. But the Bible gives much flexibility about how many overseers you have, and how you structure or organize the leadership body or the leadership team of the church.

Now, we have taken the text, studied it very closely, and we’ve come up with a leadership system, and I want to explain that to you for a few minutes. Some of you are new to our church or, are, are perhaps don’t understand what we are doing anyway, and uh, the problem is, most Baptist churches, I understand what they are doing, and that’s what bothers me. And you know what I am talking about. They are not getting anything much done. They are running around in confusion and division and party spirit, this group has got this group, and this group is rallying this group, and this staff member has got this group, and this staff member communicates with that group, and they all rally together and get their forces together for the monthly business meeting. Now I am going to tell you, you can’t find me a thimble full of scripture to support most of that that is going on. Now, here is what I believe God has led us to do here and for several years it has been highly effective. First of all, we’ve developed a body of leaders that we call the pastor’s council. And in following I Timothy chapter 3, here is how we got those men and here is basically what they do. First of all, these men were nominated by the church body based on scriptural qualifications. I preached eight messages on those strict qualifications for church leadership, and then I asked you to nominate men you felt confident, qualified for this position of leadership. And after you gave those nominations, then I interviewed these men, that is the second thing, they were interviewed and they, the top twelve men that I interviewed said that they felt that God has set them apart to function as an overseer, to work under the senior pastor. And so we set them apart as a body of leaders in the church or overseers. Thirdly, this body is a non rotating body of men.

One of the most frustrating things in the world is for a church to grow to a decent size, and we are done past, we are already past a decent size, we would be considered a very large church now, we have averaged four out of five Sundays well over 900 in Sunday school. And God is blessing. And what happens when you have a, a strict committee structure where all the leadership comes out of committees, and it is a rotating committee, people come on the committee, it takes two to three years to learn what the church is doing, and about the time they learn the finance, learn the personal policy, learn what is going on, they rotate off, and you get new guys on that is just starting. And I want to tell you incredibly frustrating. You can’t show me one shred of evidence that your key leadership ought to be a rotating leadership. It is not in the New Testament. The point was, make sure they have godly qualifications, let those men lead, support them as they lead, let them learn what to do and support them as they go on. There is not another system in the world where you would require people to keep jumping out of leadership that could go on for God. Man, if I’ve got somebody who is good and who is godly and who knows how to lead something, I don’t want to rotate him off, I want him to go for God. I want him to keep on for God. It is a non-rotating body. Also, about the pastor’s council, they hold the senior pastor accountable for major decisions. Now before I became your pastor and I’ll support it, our other pastor ruled with authority, and the Bible tells that the pastor ought to rule with authority. But I felt like there ought to be a little more accountability. We were just getting too big. So, we organized this body and every major decision that i make and lead the church to partake of has been prayed through, now by eleven men that you have said are the godliest men in the church. And I believe that is a wise structure of accountability. It prevents bringing every little tiny issue to the church floor, every little tiny issue being splashed around, thought about, everybody giving their opinion, and you end up getting bogged down and bottlenecked up, and the church doesn’t go on or do anything. But this way the church can advance, there is proper accountability, and we bring major decisions to the church and ask for your affirmation after they have been prayed through by myself and eleven members of the pastor’s council. Also these men are responsible specifically to overseer church finances, personnel and long range planning under the senior pastor’s leadership.

Now, using the flexibility for organization and structure, we’ve come up with this system,. And I believe it is very wise, I believe it is a very biblical and I know that God has blessed it. And I thank God for these men. Because before we do anything, we meet every Tuesday morning at 6 a.m., and we sit around a table, and we have to quote verses that we have memorized that week, we have to respond on how many quiet times we had that week, we share who we have witnessed to that week, and we have a season of prayer. As a matter of fact, we spend very little time in the “business of the church”. We are too busy trying to walk with God. But that is the way it ought to be. That is the way the priorities ought to land. Now, of course, in addition to the pastor’s council, we have a ministerial staff. And our ministerial staff functions, maybe a little bit differently than most churches, but not differently than most long term successful churches. First of all, the ministerial staff is selected by the senior pastor. That is one thing I insisted upon,, which our former pastor had, and that is that the staff is mine and mine alone. That builds unity and oneness, if you have got staff, you say, well this staff can answer out here to this committee or answer out here to the church body, you have a formula for division and frustration in the church. There ought to be a clear line of authority. And every staff member that is selected by the senior pastor, I bring to the church for affirmation, of course. Secondly, each staff member functions under a job description written by the senior pastor. A person may come on staff and the church is growing, there is different needs, I may have to change job, job descriptions, and give them different responsibilities from time to time, and we exercise that freedom. Nobody on our staff including myself can pull out their union card and say, listen, God called me to do that. No, God called us all to be servants, if it needs to be done, we do it. Alright. Thirdly our ministerial staff, it, can be dismissed by the senior pastor with the affirmation of the pastor’s council. Praise the Lord, I’ve, I, beg our guys to stay, every time I think they might be looking at another church, but there could come a time when a church outgrows a staff’s ability to keep up with it, or, or, or there might be a problem of some kind. And we have proper accountability, but basically that is the senior pastor’s decision. Now in a technical sense, some of the ministerial staff would be called an overseer or elder or a pastor. Uh, but, but they are structured differently than we structure our pastor’s council.

Now for sake of analogy of a checks and balances and accountability in this leadership system, you could picture it this way. The pastor’s council is something like the legislative branch of government, like the house of representatives, and the Senate. Thank God they function than our does in the United States, but they are something like that. And then the pastor is something like the president, and just as the president has his own staff to carry out the vision he has and the direction he has, I call it ministerial staff. So see there is a line of counsel, an accountability and fellowship with the ministerial staff, and then there is a line of accountability and counsel with the pastor’s council which God raised up out of the body of the church. Now I think that is a beautiful system of checks and balances, we bring major decisions to the church for affirmation, but I believe if you will study the New Testament and be honest about it, you will find that is a very biblical structure for leadership. Now, sure there are always things, and you can lay this out and you can critique it, but I’ll lay out your system and let me critique yours.

Oh, we also saw deacons here, we don’t want to leave those fellows out. It says overseers, and deacons. What about the deacons in the church. The word deacon means servant. In the original usage of the Greek word it means waiting on tables. So when we have a meal, our deacons wait on tables. We want to be biblical don’t we. Literally that is all it meant. Now again, we’ve made something lofty out of this name deacon. Folks, it is just the original Greek word that meant servant. We shouldn’t call it the deacon body, we should call it the servant body. That would be translating the word. Instead of transliterating it over. The deacon is the qualified servant for the church. The deacon is the white blood cells of the church. The deacon is busy out there looking for servant things that need to be accomplished so the body of Christ can go forward in health and go forward fulfilling the great commission without hindrance. Our deacons here have two main responsibilities. Number one, take care of hurting people, sick people, shut ins and congregational care needs, and number two, they chair and organize any committees that we need to get jobs done that are hindering the church. We might need the committee, we’ve got a nursery committee and one of our deacons heads that up. I don’t care who he gets on the committee, I care that the job is done. And we are not going to get in here in some silly business meeting and debate all night about who is on the committee. They are God’s deacon, God has raised them up, we’ll point them in a direction and say, get it done. I don’t even go to deacon meetings, hardly ever. Ohhhh. You are suppose to go to listen folk,s if I’ve got to spend my time in training and fellowshipping and encouraging the deacons, I don’t need. Now don’t take that as arrogant, Acts chapter 5, what did the pastors of the churches do? They said, listen, we’ve got a problem, the widows in the church aren’t getting fed their food. So, what, what, did the apostles do, the preachers do. They said, listen, raise up some spirit filled men, I believe those were deacons, they will take care of serving the food, we will get back to praying and preparing sermons and preaching. It is not profitable for us to leave the ministry of the word in prayer to go wait on tables. What was John’s point? If I’ve got to come out here and keep it going, I don’t need these men. You understand the formula there. Deacons are qualified servants for the church. And boy, God has given us some good ones. It might be a couple of them good for nothing, but we’ve got some good ones. I still hadn’t figured out what some of them are doing.

But anyway, then you might ask this. well, brother Jeff, if the Bible does seem to emphasize a plurality of leadership, overseers, is there room for there being one single special leader in the church. Well, I think definitely there is, and I think that it is actually encouraged in scripture. And, and, in this sense, he is a leader among equals. God raises up often a leader among equals. And this church has followed that concept. We believe that God raises up one senior pastor who is the pastor teacher, and he is the leader among the other overseers. For example, think about the Godhead. Now you have God the Father and God the Son. There are co-equal God. But what did Jesus say. Jesus said, I didn’t come to do my will, but the will of my Father. There is aline of authority, a line of, a chain of command there. So, we see that both equal but one was the leader as they functioned in their redemptive work. Think about the prophets of the Old Testaments. We had many, many prophets, but also there was a key prophet, who stood above the others as God’s key leader. we have Isaiah, we have Elijah, you can go on and on and on through the Old Testament, major and minor prophets, seeing that God does raise up one leader. Take the twelve disciples that Jesus appointed. Every time the twelve disciples are recorded in the Bible, they are recorded in three subgroups of four. And each time you see those three subgroups of four, there is one man listed first in each subgroup. Now the other men are listed in different order,but there is one man listed first for each subgroup. Peter, is always mentioned first in the first subgroup, Philipp is always mentioned first in the second, James is always mentioned first in the third subgroup. I believe that it is showing that Christ had an organized structure for the equal apostles. Alright. And then you also have Peter who comes forth as a spokesman for the 12. Think about the early church. When the early church began they had many apostles, and started appointing many elders. But there is always one that God used as a special leader. You have Peter immediately when the book of Acts begins, later you have James coming to the surface, and later on in the Gentile churches you have Paul. So all I am saying is, yes there is a place for what we call today a senior pastor.

Now I am saying all of that to say this. I just thought you needed to be informed and aware of how we function and how we do it and this is a good place, because this is the only place where overseers and deacons are mentioned together in the salutation of the beginning of a book of the Bible like this. Now, but more important than that, we are looking at the parody of the church. What is Paul saying, Paul is saying, you’ve got overseers and deacons, then you’ve got all the saints in the church, but there are also apostles, which we do not have any more, but there are apostles. But Paul is saying, it doesn’t matter, if you are an apostles, we are just bond slaves, if you are just a regular church member, you are a holy one of God, are you may be an overseer or a deacon, it doesn’t matter. Different roles, different responsibilities, but all have equal access to God, equal importance to God and an equal relationship to God. The equality or parody of the church. And a good church understands that the man out here who may think all he can do is help sweep the floor after church is just as vital and important as the pastor that stands in the pulpit. We have different roles but there is parody in the church.

Well, the second thing a good church will understand is the priority of the church. Look at it in verse 5. The priority of the church. And I’ll be more brief on these last two points. He says, in view of your participation in the gospel form the first day until now. Now before that he says, man, you make me joyous. I rejoice in you, I remember you in my prayers, but then he says, you know why. Because you understand the priority of the church. My friend, the priority of the church is the Christ of the gospel and the gospel of Christ. That is the priority of the church. H e said, boy, I love the church at Philippi, they know that the main thing is to participate in the spreading of the gospel. And that was their priority. My friend, our priority is not the needs of man, but our priority is man’s need which is Jesus. The world may say yes, but man today is like this. Man is different today, his needs are different today, the church must understand those needs and meet those needs, hogwash, slop and bologna, three Greek words that comes to my mind. Listen my friend, I am not worried about psychoanalyzing this culture, and listening to the social engineers, about what needs to be done, I am to preach Christ. Give them Christ, keep Christ central, the gospel of Christ, that meets the need of man.

I want you to now the church at Philippi understood the priority of the church sharing the Christ of the gospels and preaching the gospel of Christ. My friend, we believe that man is sinfully depraved and cannot save himself. We believe that man dies once, and after he dies he faces judgement. We believe there is a literal, actual burning hell where lost souls are separated from God, for all eternity, but we also believe that Jesus came born of the virgin Mary, lived a sinless life and we also believe that he hung on Calvary’s cross being a substitutionary atonement, dying a vicarious death, taking the full blow of sin, the actual curse and condemnation of my sin, exhausted the sting of sin in my place on the cross, buried lit…. literally in the grave, rose on the third day form the grave, went up and sat down at the right hand of the Father, and will say, whosoever will call upon him. My friend, we believe that. That is the priority of the church. It matters not what the world says, it matters not what the skeptic says, it matters not what the professors in our field, in our seminaries, in our college who have become liberal say, my friend, the priority is the gospel of Christ. Keep it central. My friend, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. We ought to keep it simple, say it often and make it burn. We ought to make a great commotion over the great commission. The priority of the church is the gospel and if you are not here to be a part of the gospel, you have missed the meaning of being a church member. All you are is sitting and stale and petrified and dead. My friend, it ought to be in your heart, God I may not can go door to door, I amy not can be a flaming evangelist, but I can love one of my friends at work and help get them to Christ. You’ve missed the meaning of being a Christian and a church member if you know the priority of the church. It is the Christ of the gospels, and the gospel of Christ. We’ll never back up, we’ll never apologize, as long as I have a tongue flapping in my mouth I want it to be Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

You can go to a lot of churches and get psychology and sociology and feel good and warmed up and sermonettes and whatever else you want, but my friend, we’ve got to keep it anchored on Christ. On Christ. Listen to me. We are entering into an age, where those of us who believe this book keep it centered on Jesus, are going to become more and more the weirdos, the crazies, the screwballs, the crack pots and the problem in society. I like to watch some of these talk shows where they, where these guys sit around and talk about politics and stuff. I have to keep me a basket of paperwads to throw at the television sometimes, just to vent my frustration. But I can’t believe, now we are beginning to see that it is acceptable to be economically conservative, yet very liberal in your moral beliefs. For a long time we were fortunate, for a long time evangelical conservative Christians controlled the platform of the Republican party when it came to moral issues. We controlled it, our people wrote it. But now there is starting to be a separation. And pretty soon the moral values of the Republican party and their platform are going to be as perverse and corrupt as they have been in the democratic platform. Brother Jeff, I don’t like that. Well, it doesn’t matter if you like it or not. It is still the truth. I mean, the moral wording in the platform of the democratic platform came out of Sodom and Gomorrah. And we can, that’s, let’s jus stick our heads in the sand and act like it is not true, my friend, it is true. But the point I am making is this, it doesn’t matter what they say, how they scoff, how they ridicule us, how they laugh at us, I mean, every time you turn on the radio, turn on the television, they are going to tell you you are a nut, we must stay with the priority of the church. The Christ of the gospels and the gospel of Christ. Paul said, man, this is a good church. They understand the parody in the church. They understand the priority of the church, and then lastly, they bring pleasure to the overseer of the church. Pleasure to the overseer of the church.

I am not saying your goal in any way should be to bring me pleasure. But I am saying a good church is a pleasurable thing to oversee. For God’s man. That’s what Paul is saying, look at how he expresses this, in verses 3 and 4. “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you.” I’ve told you before how often I get calls from pastors,a nd it breaks my heart. Pastors calling and saying, church has asked me to resign. What did you do. Didn’t do nothing. You commit any moral failure? No. You teaching doctrinal heresy, no. They just think I am too young, they just think this, they just think that. You know most pastors that I know would love one day of their lives that they could live and not have to think about their church, because there is divisions, there, there is strife, there is power plays going on, that is not the way it was at the church at Philippi. Paul says, man, every time I think about you, verse 3, I, I have joy in my heart. Boy, what a sweet testimony. Verse 4. “Always offering prayer with joy in my every prayer for you all.” Paul was a southerner, he said you all there. Alright I want you, I want you to turn to Hebrews chapter 13 real quick. Hebrews chapter 13. Look at verse 17. The writer of Hebrews says, Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who would give an account. Let them do this with joy and not with grief, for this would be unprofitable for you. Now what is he saying? He is saying, man a church that loves God and lives for God, they are a joy to pastor. And that is what Paul says about the church at Philippi. Man, you are a joy, a joy to pastor. The Bible says, if a church functions in such a way that the pastor leaves with grief in his heart over what is going on in a church, it is unprofitable for the church members. In other words, they are the ones who are hurting themselves.

Now i want you to turn back to Philippians to a couple of verses, in Philippians chapter 4, verse 18. Notice how Paul’s attitude was about this church. Philippians 4:18. “But I have received everything in full and have an abundance; I am amply supplied.” He said, man, I’ve got every need met. Now why is that? Having received from Epaphroditus what you have sent, a fragrant aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well-pleasing to God. And, and the New Testament records on many occasions, the church at Philippi sent a monetary gift to support the ministry of the apostle Paul. In Paul’s estimation you were a good church when you gave generously of your treasure to the work of the ministry. See, some of you would not have liked to have had Paul as your pastor. Because he says if you are godly and good and spiritual, it reflects in where you give your money. Paul says man, I love you, you are my joy because you have supported me, in the ministry of sharing the gospel. And then Philippians 4, verse 1. “Therefore my beloved brethren whom I log to see, my joy and my crown.” Paul says the church of Philippi is my joy and my crown. One of the folks who taught at our staff, at our singles retreat said that his wife will say to him, don’t tell me you love me, tell me why you love me. Does that ring a bell ladies. Don’t tell me you love me, tell me why you love me.

Church I want to tell you something, as your pastor I can say unequivocally, you are a good church. I can say unequivocally, next to my wife and my girls, you are my joy and you are my crown. It is a pleasure to pastor this body of believers. But I just don’t want to tell you I love you, I want to tell you why I love you I have listed six things, I could have listed 16 or 26, but six things that came to my mind as I was meditating that reflect why you are my joy and my crown. N umber one, you let me preach the word, you expect it and you receive it. A pastor called me the other day and said, the church has asked me to resign. I said, why did they ask you to resign. He said, I preached a sermon they didn’t like. He said, brother Jeff, it is plain Bible, I’ll let you listen to it. Boy, that is not the way it is here. If I quit preaching the word plain, I’d lose my job here. That’s a unique situation. Secondly, you are my joy and my crown because you practice very member being a minister. We are just the New Testament model for the church. Every member here is learning and many of you have already got it, that we are here to meet one another’s needs. We are here to be there for each other when there is a crisis. Every member is to be a part of going to the hospital, every member is to be a part of going to the funeral home, every member is, is to be there for counseling, we all minister to each other together. Not not that the staff and the pastor don’t also go when we can, but we are learning the staff and pastor’s job, Ephesians 4:11 is to equip the saints for the work of service. I love you, you are my crown and my joy for that.

Thirdly, you don’t major on the minors. I appreciate that. You know, I’ve never heard anybody discuss around here these things, well, who decided to paint the wall that color. Who decided that was the color of carpet that ought to go in this building. You just don’t fool with that stuff. You know why? Because we have 243 at visitation on Monday night. Friend, you are out there knocking on doors, seeing people saved, you don’t give a rip about the color of the walls and the color of the carpet. Remember the coon dog story. Coon dog is laying around the fire after he had been coon hunting all night, and I mean while those dogs are out there hunting in the night, man, they are in harmony, they are in rhythm, you can hear them barking, arrr, arrr, arrr, going through the woods. I mean, those dogs are in harmony, they are running along, everything is going smooth. But after you get through coon hunting, you know what happens. They lay around the old fire, and those old coon hungers, coon hunters would cook breakfast. Every now and then they would throw a piece of bacon out there and you know what would happen? Those dogs would near kill each other getting to that bacon. You know why? It is not the nature of a coon dog to lay around the fire, it is his nature to run coons. You know why Baptists are having so much trouble and fights and running off preachers? They are laying around the fire instead of out there after souls. It is not the nature of a child of God to lay around the fire. It is to be out there in the woods, winning folks to Jesus. You are my joy and my crown for not majoring on the minors.

Number four, you are my joy and my crown because you hold biblical standards for leadership. There are not strict, they are not legalistic, but we say certain thing got to be in your life if you are going to be a leader here. You know, I don’t hear any negative about that. It is just understood. My friend, listen, we are here for the King of Glory, we are not willing to meet a few minimal standards, my heavens. You are my joy and my crown for that. Number five, because you are generous and giving for the kingdom of God.

People come through here in mission work, you will give 10, 12, 15 thousand dollars, I mean, not even announce. Remember when Onisis Madim, the pastor in Romania was here, man we had budgeted for him, but I, we just felt impressed we ought to give him an offering, you gave, I don’t know, about 12, 13, thousand dollars. I am going to show you the video tape of what you built over there, they are going to start the first Sunday school in eastern Europe, the first one. Soul winning, discipling, Sunday school. And they’ve asked us to come over there and tech them how to do it. Isn’t that exciting, I, I love you for being generous in your giving. And lastly, number six, you are my joy and my crown, because you have made world evangelization a great priority in this church. Our missions giving has gone from somewhere in the 40,000’s to this year be pushing 300,000 when it all comes in. Because you said, world missions is the mandate of the church. So I can say as the pastor of this church, unequivocally you are a good church. Next to my wife and my children, with all my heart, I mean it, you are my joy and my crown. It is a pleasure to pastor this church. Let’s pray together.