2018 12/16 Romans 12:1-2 What Are We Doing Here? New Building Dedication

What Are We Doing Here? (Rom 12:1-2) December 16, 2018 I see no one put up a clock in back. Strategic blunder! It’s a great day, isn’t it? We’ve come to celebrate this miracle of God’s grace and to dedicate this building. But while we call it a church, it’s not the church. We’re the church, we believers. This is the church building. We cannot dedicate the one without dedicating the other. But how? Well, here’s how Solomon did it. First – he prayed. And we could well join part of that prayer from I Kings 8:27-29: “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that [we] have built! 28 Yet have regard to the prayer of your servants and to [our] plea, O Lord my God, listening to the cry and to the prayer that we pray before you this day, 29 that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you have said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may listen to the prayer that we offer toward this place. [May it glorify you alone. Amen]. But Solomon didn’t stop at prayer! I Kings 8:62-63: “Then the king, and all Israel with him, offered sacrifice before the Lord. 63) Solomon offered as peace offerings to the Lord 22,000 oxen and 120,000 sheep. So the king and all the people of Israel dedicated the house of the Lord.” To dedicate this spectacular new temple, Israel offered a stunning sacrifice. Now we’re not going to kill any animals this morning. But how about a NT sacrifice: Rom 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” The finest way to dedicate this building is by giving ourselves as living sacrifices dedicated to using this gift as God intends! Perhaps you heard of the guy whose wife said, “Honey, I’ve bought you an unusual Xmas gift this year.” He said, “Really! What is it?” She said, “A cemetery plot.” He agreed it was unusual, but thanked her anyway. Next year she had no gift so he asked why. She replied, “Well, you didn’t use the one I bought you last year.” Gifts are to be used! We’ve been given an amazing gift. But it’s not just to admire; it’s to be used. So why are we here? Let’s consider 6 ways we can dedicate ourselves to using this gift as God intends. I. Hear God’s Word – This core function of a church used to be assumed, but no longer. Too often we’re here to entertain, share opinions or dialogue. The World Council of Churches, noting declining attendance, says, “The World must set the agenda for the church.” But if the world sets the agenda, what can we offer to address the human condition that they cannot? The question isn’t, what do we want to hear? The question is, what do we need to hear? Ans: A word from God. A secular writer in New Yorker magazine agrees: “The preacher, today looks out on public opinion, trying to find out what the public would like to hear.  Then he tries his best to duplicate that, and bring his product to a marketplace where others are doing the same.  The public, turning to our church culture for help, discovers there nothing but its own reflection.” What a tragedy! But do you see that without the Word, we’ve nothing to offer that people can’t get, better packaged, somewhere else. Does your doc say, “Okay, what would you like me to tell you? Was the music okay? How about the coffee?” No. We go to hear what we need to hear, not what we want to hear. So, this building must be dedicated not to meeting felt needs, but to addressing real needs. For that, we need the Word. It is the Word that inspires saving faith. Rom 10:17: “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ.” It is the Word that grows us: John 17:17: “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” It is the Word that cleanses us: “Your Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against you.” The cry of our day is “Be relevant.” Simone Weil said, “To be always relevant, you have to say things which are eternal.” That’s the Word. Human wisdom has a limited shelf-life. The science and psychology books change every generation. Only Jesus can say, Mt 24:35: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” God’s Word will always be relevant because He is always relevant. At the dedication after rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem we are told in Neh 8:1: “And all the people gathered as one man . . . and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book.” Bring the book. My opinions, your opinions, the opinions of any person are irrelevant. Only the Book is relevant. Martin Luther said: The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold on me. The Bible is not antique, or modern. It is eternal.” It’s alive! Carl Armerding, president of GTS guested at Moody Church one day. Later he overheard one lady, “Well, I don’t think he was such a great preacher. All he did was explain the Bible.” She didn’t mean it as a compliment; I say, put it on my tombstone. John MacArthur says, “I have one purpose -- to make the voice of God audible.” I pray no pastor in this building will ever have any other goal; that no congregation will ever settle for less. “Bring the book; we have come to hear a word from God. So, bring the book!” II. Declare God’s Worth – Worship -- to declare God’s worth. Psa 100:4: “Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his name!” Worship gets the focus off us and onto God! We need that renewed focus constantly. Worship is more than a couple of praise songs. We miss the point when we arrive Sunday morning bleary-eyed, greet a couple of friends, then mentally dare the worship leader and pastor to entertain us enough to get us back next week. Our one goal: “what can I get out of it?” And we’ve missed the whole point! Annie Dillard says, “Xns, outside of the Catacombs, are not sufficiently aware of conditions.  Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so casually invoke?” She says we play with TNT without knowing it. “It is madness to wear ladies’ velvet hats to church; we should be wearing crash helmets.  Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.” Worship is to be in the presence of God and alive to the presence of God who is a consuming fire of holiness! He is the audience, not us. And He is not to be trifled with, but feared, heard, loved, obeyed and enjoyed.   Worship is multi-faceted. Singing, yes. But also repentance, prayer and obedience. Lu 19:46: “My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers.” Let’s make this a house of prayer, repentance and renewal. And let’s obey! Jas 1:22: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” Lot more to worship than singing, right? Worship refreshes the soul. Lloyd-Jones said: “Our supreme need, our only need, is to know God, the living God, and the power of his might. We need nothing else. Forget everything else. We need to realize the presence of the living God amongst us.” This is why we come – to receive a renewed sense of God’s greatness; and a refreshed spirit of cleansing. We’re here to worship! III. Proclaim God’s Way – What way? Jesus! The way of deliverance from the sin and guilt that have defined the human condition ever since the Fall of Adam. He failed one simple test and found “The wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). From that time to this, every person has been born under a death sentence bc, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). So, how could God remain holy, yet deliver a fallen race? His profound answer was to send His own Son, who qualified by His sinless life to pay in His death the penalty for the sin of all who would believe. That’s good news. II Cor 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” That’s what the cross is all about. What God demands, God supplies. That is pure, unadulterated love. My grandmother’s diary was filled with the fear of prairie fires. They were terrifying. There was no escape – except for what one man showed his daughter one day as they spotted a fire headed their way. The father quickly started his own fire right where they were, burning a large patch of grass. As the huge fire neared, he moved his daughter to the burned area. The oncoming flames were still terrifying, but Dad assured his little girl, “The flames can’t get to us. We are standing where the fire has already been.” That’s the cross, Beloved. During three hours of noonday darkness, as Jesus hung on that cross, the fires of God’s judgment burned hot against His own Son as He bore our sins. But all who go there find the fire has already burned. It is the only place of safety; the only place of forgiveness and deliverance. It’s not what we can do, but what He’s already done! That’s why there’s just one way. No one else died for sins – not Buddha, not Mohammad, not Joseph Smith, not Zoroaster, not Vishnu or L. Ron Hubbard, not anyone. Only Jesus. But salvation is a gift. You can’t merit it or buy it, only accept it. Eph 2:8-9: “For by grace you have been saved thru faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9) not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” Titus 3:5: “He saved us, not bc of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.” The Reformers had it right. It is sola gratia thru sola fide in solus Christus – by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone. That’s God’s way; by the shed blood of His own Son; and there is no other way. Heb 9:22b: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” That message offends many today. God used Al Mohler in the early 90’s to turn Southern Sem around. But at his first class there in the mid-70’s he heard one young lady explain she was taking the class “to learn more about Jesus Christ and his shed blood.” The professor exploded: “There will be no more bloody cross religion in this classroom. That is not tolerated. It is beneath dignity and self-respect to believe in a God who had to kill in order to forgive.” Well, if that’s true, you have to throw out the Bible for it is red from cover to cover with animal sacrifices, all pointing to the only one that counted: Rom 6:10: “For the death [Jesus] died he died to sin, once for all.” And God raised Him to prove it all true. Without that, all we’ve left to offer is good advice. Mankind does not need more pop psychology; mankind needs a Savior – Jesus, who is the one and only way to the Father. That’s our message. IV. Love God’s Worshipers – Jesus says: Jn 13:34-35: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. 35) By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” We are to do life together! -- praying for each other, forbearing, visiting, phoning encouragement. We not only hurt ourselves, but Jesus as well when we don’t love one another. A SS teacher asked his young adults to draw a pix of someone they disliked or had a conflict with. One drew a guy who had stolen his girlfriend. Another drew her drunken father. No one had a problem thinking of someone. End of class, they turned in the pictures. Next week they found all their pictures hanging on the wall. Darts were provided to throw at the person they so despised – to get out their anger. Soon mangled faces lined the wall. Then the teacher began to remove the pictures one by one. As they came down, a hush filled the room. Behind each pix was a picture of Jesus, His image marred by holes and jagged marks covering His face. No lecture was needed to make the point. We can’t hurt one another without hurting Him. Let us love as He did. V. Embrace God’s Ways – Learning that God is lovingly sovereign is tough. I wanted healing; I got loss. I wanted a friend; I got betrayed. I wanted a new boss; I got worse than the old one. Now what? Now believe this: Isa 55:8-9: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. 9) For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Sometimes God’s ways are easy, but often they are incredibly painful. That’s when we must trust Him to see the future we cannot see. Gen 42:21 tells us Joseph begged for relief when his brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt. They did it anyway. And it got worse. The boss’s wife got him thrown into prison to spite him for refusing her advances. Where was God? Joseph knew – later telling his brothers in Gen 50:20: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.” Thru those trials, God positioned Joseph to save his family, including Judah’s messianic line. God has the big picture we can’t see. When Patty used to cross-stitch, the backside was chaos – multi-colored thread going every which way with no discernible pattern. Total chaos. Like life as we see it now. But turn it over – and there’s the beautiful picture, carefully planned out. What looks chaotic now will look fantastic then. Seeing the big pix, we’ll agree God was right. Jim Boice announced to his congregation in May, 2000 that he had liver cancer. Then he said, “Should you pray for a miracle? If you want. My general impression is the God who is able to do miracles – and He certainly can – is also able to keep you from getting the problem in the first place. God is in charge. [Things like this] are not accidents. It’s not as if God forgot what was going on, and something slipped by. God is not only in charge; God is also good. Everything He does is good. Would you change what God allows? If you’d change it, you’d make it worse. It wouldn’t be as good.” Eight weeks later, Dr. Boice died, still embracing God’s ways. He knew that now “we walk by faith, not by sight” (II Cor 5:7). “but then face to face” (I Cor 13:12). When faith turns to sight we’ll see, God was right every single time. As Spurgeon said, “When you cannot trace his hand, you must learn to trust his heart.” So, let us dedicate ourselves to embrace God’s ways. VI. Reach God’s World – This building isn’t to veg in; it’s a launch pad to reach the world. Jesus’ Great Commission still holds: Mt 28:19: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” Gotta leave the building to do that – some to our neighborhood, others to far-flung places. Some to full-time ministry. Others as witnesses in secular careers. But all called. This building is an incubator to equip us to share the good news Conc – Did you notice – it’s all about God. It’s not about us. Church is not about us; life is not about us. It’s all about God and the sooner we know the better life will be. Why do are we here? We are here, like Isa, to “see the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.” That’s why. All else falls out from that. A. B. Simpson captured it in song: “Once it was the blessing, now it is the Lord; / Once it was the feeling, now it is His Word; / Once His gift I wanted, now the Giver own; / Once I sought for healing, now Himself alone. // Once ‘twas painful trying, now 'tis perfect trust; / Once a half salvation, now the uttermost! / Once ‘twas ceaseless holding, now He holds me fast; / Once ‘twas constant drifting, and now my anchor’s cast.” Why are we here? To get a new lease on life – by getting a new lease on Him. That’s TRUTH TO LIVE BY. Let’s pray. Response of Dedication (Responsive reading – Pastor Dave and Lynn and Leslie Fagerberg) Response of Dedication Pastor: But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. [James 1:22] Congregation: We hereby dedicate ourselves to hearing and obeying God’s Word. Pastor: God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. [John 4:24] Congregation: We hereby dedicate ourselves to declare God’s Worth in heartfelt worship. Pastor: This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. [John 15:12] Congregation: We hereby dedicate ourselves to love God’s worshipers. Pastor: The Lord is righteous in all his ways and kind in all his works. [Psa 145:117] Congregation: We hereby dedicate ourselves to embrace all God’s ways. Pastor: You will be my witnesses . . . to the end of the earth. [Acts 1:8] Congregation: We hereby dedicate ourselves to reach God’s world. Pastor: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. [Psa 127:1] Congregation: We hereby dedicate this building to God’s glory and ourselves to God’s service. Amen! Prayer of Dedication – Jon McNeff Song – “Great is Thy Faithfulness” Benediction – Pastor Dave (I Kings 8:56-61) 56 “Blessed be [you] Lord who has given rest to your people Israel, according to all that [you] promised. Not one word has failed of all [your] good promise 57 The Lord our God be with us, as he was with our fathers. May he not leave us or forsake us, 58 that he may incline our hearts to him, to walk in all his ways and to keep his commandments, his statutes, and his rules, which he commanded our fathers. 59 Let these words of mine, with which we have pleaded before the Lord, be near to the Lord our God day and night, and may he maintain the cause of his servant and the cause of his people Israel, as each day requires, 60 that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God; there is no other. 61 Let [our hearts] therefore be wholly true to the Lord our God, walking in [your] statutes and keeping [your] commandments, as at this day.” Did you notice – it’s all about God. It’s not about us. Church is not about us; life is not about us. It’s all about God and the sooner we know that and the more clearly we declare that the more fruitful we will be. We must always preach a big God. A discerning pastor was once asked, “Would you advise young Xns to do something for the Lord?” He replied, “No, I would not advise them to do something for the Lord. I would advise them to do everything for the Lord.” Sounds like Paul. I Cor 10:31: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Do it for Him – every thought, word and deed. We’ve so much to live for – a great God, a great Savior, a great message, a great future – and now, a great new building. May it always be a storehouse of Truth to Live By for His glory. Only one life ‘twill soon be past; only what’s done for Christ will last. Let’s not waste God’s gift and let’s not waste our lives. Let’s pray