6/11/23 Romans 12:9-16 “Building a New Church!”

09 Jun 6/11/23 Romans 12:9-16 “Building a New Church!”

6/11/23   Romans 12:9-16          “Building a New Church!”

I think that this is a very exciting time for people of the Methodist Church as you are gathering yourselves to begin the journey of making a new church.  I know that most people don’t look at the forming of the Global Methodist Church like this but I don’t think that type of thinking is really correct.  When you leave the United Methodist to become Global Methodist, you are in effect creating a new church even though you may be meeting in the old buildings.  You may be asking yourselves, “What will be so different?”  One of the main differences is that you will now be worshiping God and not the church.  The Bible will become your main focus, as it should be, and not some social construct.  When you begin to worship God at home and in church, some great things will begin to happen.  It will be no different than when a person first comes to know Jesus.  After you confess and ask Jesus to live in your heart, you become a totally different person.  Great things will happen for that person and great things will happen for your church.  Today, we are looking at some of the writings of Paul to the church in Rome.  If you didn’t know, Paul was one of the greatest church planters that has ever lived.  His writings and advice are always spot on!  I use his sermon techniques just about every week.  I know that I can never write a sermon but I know that Paul sure knows how.  Today, we are going to look at the concept of love and how we show it.  Whether this applies to you as a person or a church, you need this as a building block for life, for your church.

Wade Hughes tells the story of a great king of long ago and far away.  This is a story of love and the king wanted to show his people how much he loved them.   So, he decided to pay for a great feast for his kingdom.  He decided to have a great meal and invite every family.  The king would provide all the meat, all the vegetables, all the desserts …everything, the king would provide all, but the wine.  The king asked every family to bring one bottle of their best wine.  He would see that there was a several thousand-gallon vat for all to pour in their bottle of wine.  What a feast this would be! The King wanted to honor his people.  One poor farmer decided, he would slip in his bottle of nothing but water, no wine.  How would the king ever know his selfishness?  His one bottle of water mixed with thousands of bottles of wine would never be known.  The King would never know? The taste would still be good.  So, the poor farmer climbed the stairs to the top of the vat and while no one was looking, he poured in his bottle of wine, I mean his bottle of water in with the thousands of other wine bottles.  No one saw him. He had fooled every one there.  He laughed, he got away cheap!  He sat down at the kings table ready for the feast.  The king was so proud, he honored his precious people.  He filled his plate with delicious food.  The King picked up his Royal Gold Chalice.  The king placed his chalice under the spout of the huge vat of wine.  The king looked into his chalice, and to his surprise … it was clear, pure water.  Seems everybody in the kingdom thought their little bottle of water would not matter in the huge vat of wine.

This story made me think of you people who are starting a new church.  Some of you may think of this as leaving the old denomination.  But that is negative thinking.  Being more positive, you are starting to build a brand-new church.  The great part of all this is that everything has been provided for you.  All you have to do is get in and drive this brand-new vehicle.  You do this by inviting everyone you see to come to this rare church in the area that worships Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone.  I hope you are advertising in any and every way possible.  If you do this right, you will need a new building to hold all the people.  We don’t have to talk about all the terrible things the old church believed in.  I know one thing; they sure didn’t believe in the Bible because they tried to change it at every turn.  But we don’t have to worry about that garbage anymore.  Therefore, we are going to talk about what the Scripture really says.  Today, we are going to talk about love.  We are going to talk about love in the way that your new church should have for its building blocks.

We begin by finding ways to express our love to one another and to our neighbors.  One of the most obvious ways to show our love to another is by hating evil.  Now, in just this one sentence, I have said what many if not most pastors refuse to talk about.  I was told in school that we should never use the word hate in a sermon because people just don’t feel good about that.  Well, in our world today, someone had better do a little talking about hate because it is all around us and threatens to swallow every one of us.

I’m just going to touch on this very lightly but that doesn’t mean that we should take this lightly at all.  As I said, there is hate everywhere.  Democrats hate Republicans and Republicans hate Democrats.  There is no in-between anymore.  Leftists hate people on the right like myself so much that they have resorted to violence to keep my mouth shut.  If you dare to disagree with anything the left says, which I do, then you are hated.  I really get sick of people hating me because I stand up for Jesus.  However, no matter what they threaten me with, I will stand by Jesus all the way.  I will hate evil for what it is and stick up for all the good in the world, like you folks I’m talking to today.

The other part of this that I’m not suppose to mention according to my former instructors, is evil.  A friend of mine recently went to a church of a similar denomination where they talked the whole sermon about love.  Don’t get me wrong here.  Love is fine.  We need love.  But we also need to know that there is evil out there trying to destroy love at every turn.  That is because many of the things in our world that we consider love are not actually love.  One of the biggest areas of this is in what I see as infatuation.  Infatuation isn’t love.  It is just a temporary yearning for some thing or someone.  The evil one will try anything to stop me from loving each and everyone of you and trying to help you in any way I can.  I want your church to grow.  I want all churches that are Christ centered to grow in every way.  I don’t want churches that are centered on our society and social issues to grow at all.  As a matter of fact, you should be out there advertising your new church because it is probably one of the very few churches in the area who love Jesus and preach the Gospel.  So, we show our love for others by hating what is evil and everything that evil stands for.

Another way to show love for others is by honoring them.  I’m not talking about doing an awards show for someone but it can be an awards show on a small basis.  I know that many people do this right but when was the last time you honored your spouse?  It really doesn’t take a lot of effort to tell them that they did a good job at this or that.  Far too often, I hear the silence of never having a compliment.  This goes for anyone you know.  Children need honoring more than anything else.  Of course, they also need guidance but the last thing they need is to be left alone to deal with the woes of this world.

A couple of weeks ago, we had the misfortune to have to attend a couple of funerals for a beloved friend and another relative.  These were both wonderful people and people said many nice things about them.  But why do you have to wait for a funeral to say nice things.  Why don’t you begin today and say something nice to every person around you.  Get in the habit of saying nice things and, of course, meaning them.

Two quick church stories and I will move on.  There was once a lay leader in a church and they decided to have a remodel project.  It was tough going because not 100% of the people wanted it.  This man did all he could and finally the project was done.  However, the people who didn’t want the project were extremely mean to this man and he finally had to leave for another church.  How sad!  There was once a pastor who died unexpectedly.  At his funeral, you would think that he walked on water as the people seemed to love him so much.  It was a great tribute and honor to this man.  However, when he was still alive very few people complimented him or helped him or really did much of anything for him.  Even with all these tributes after his death, he died a lonely and almost broken pastor.  People, go the extra mile for your pastor because this is not a very easy job.

The next way we love people is to show some zeal.  Now I know that there are a lot of people out there who really show no zeal or emotion about their jobs.  I have worked at many jobs in my lifetime, including 25 years at the Post Office.  There were many people who were pretty much just miserable to work with.  Their attitude was ‘just get me to retirement!’  Every once in a while, someone would come along who had a positive attitude and they were an absolute joy to be around.

There have been many studies that show that people who have a little zeal for life and work will do far better than those who don’t.  Personally, I don’t want to be negative.  I want to be positive.  F.B. Meyer once had a firewood factory where he employed prisoners to do the work.  I seemed that very little was being done so he fired everyone and bought himself a shiny circular saw to do the work.  He got more done in one hour than all his employees could do in a day.  So, he decided to have a little conversation with the saw as it was a talking saw.  Anyway, he asked the saw, “How can you turn out so much work?  Are you sharper than the saws my men were using?”   “No.”   “Is your blade shinier?”   “No.”  “What then?  Better oil or lubrication against the wood?”  The talking saw’s answer was, “I think there is a stronger driving power behind me. Something is working through me with a new force.”

You folks are starting a brand-new church.  Oh, you still have the old building but the church is new.  It is Bible based.  It will be prayer based.  It will be everything that a church should be and more.  This is a very exciting time.  You need to work on your zeal so that you can attract new people and people who are fed up with how their church has gone with the ways of society instead of God.  Advertise with excitement.  Talk with excitement.  Do everything with excitement because you have the very maker of the universe helping you and being your best friend.  Just like the saw is powered by electricity, you are powered by God and the Holy Spirit.  With that kind of power, there should be nothing that will slow you down.

The last part of showing love that we are going to talk about today is sharing with others.  I would guess that most of us are pretty good at sharing some of the better things in life.  But I also know this.  Most of you do a very poor job of tithing.  Here you are in the midst of starting a new church and you don’t have many who tithe.  Remember, if you want something then you have to give something.  It’s just like our worship hour.  If you want to get something out of worship, then you have to put something into worship, first.

There was a man once, who died in Nevada and they didn’t find his body for nearly a month as he had lived alone.  They found that he only had about $200 in the bank.  The house was old and they needed to take it down.  He had no family so the officials at the scene discovered that he had boxes of gold bars and coins.  The total value was about $7 million.  No one had any clue that he had been worth this much.  They also found that he had over $165,000 in stocks and another $12,000 in cash hidden in his home.  He had no relatives or friends so this money was never used or shared with others.  When you think about this, what an absolute waste of money and time by this old miser.  He never got to enjoy the immense satisfaction of sharing with others.

These are the ways that Paul tells us to show love.  Notice that he never talks about feeling love like in the service I mentioned earlier.  The leftist people will try to crucify me for saying that.  According to them, you have to feel love or there is no love.  I disagree.  You have to first show your love to family, friends, and neighbors.  When you start to use these 4 points of showing love, then you will soon have a lot of feeling love in return.  But if you just feel love to everyone, then you will come away empty.

You folks are starting a new church.  You are not leaving an old denomination.  You are but that should not be your focus.  This is one of the few churches in the area where people can come and hear the Gospel message, pure and simple.  You should be excited that you are finally free from the yoke of the devil.  It sure would be nice if you could grow by 100 people by Christmas.  But it won’t happen if you just do nothing.  Jesus Christ showed us the way by traveling to the people to preach.

You need to do this also through word of mouth, advertising and modeling your new church and theology.  Go out today and begin by hating what is evil, honoring others, showing zeal and sharing with others.  You have the best message that the world can ever have in the message of Jesus Christ.  Go and share it with all.  I’m going to begin by honoring our Lord.  Thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.