Kerwin Baptist Church Daily Broadcast

Welcome to the Kerwin Baptist Church broadcast today. Our personal I believe that getting to serve God is a privilege, and I might have sounded a bit, I told my wife, I got in the car, I said, isn't it amazing I always plan this really nice message.

I plan this nice, friendly, everybody smiling, leaving happy, and I said something happens when I get in that pulpit, I don't know what it is, I get passionate about something and that might come across like I'm trying to be hard, I said it's so important to me, but I don't know about you, but I believe that you and I, it should be a privilege for us to be at a church, especially to be at this church, to get to serve God with our lives. That's the ministry that we have been given. Notice, if you will, chapter four, verse one, therefore seeing we have this ministry. Today I wanna deal with this particular portion of scripture, not the ministry we've been given, but secondly, the message that we have been given. You see, this ministry is something that you and I oughta be privileged to partake in, but as we partake in the ministry that God has called us to do and opened up doors for us to serve him, whatever area of our lives, whatever vocation you're in, as we serve and minister, you and I have to keep in mind that there is a particular message that God has asked us to give. It's not a good message or one of many good messages. It is the particular message that God has said, I want you to spread. God doesn't want just anything coming out of our mouths. If you and I are representing him, and if we're gonna say it's not us, it's Christ, well, if we're representing Christ, then we gotta make sure that the message is based solely on Christ. And I want you to know, if you will, in verse five, notice this, number one this morning, I want you to see the subject of the message. By the way, nothing will go right or do right or be right if we don't get the subject right. Notice this, for we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus, the Lord.

It's interesting, it's kind of a negative and a positive, and in English language, there's some fancy terms we give for that. I'm not gonna impress you with that today. But you'll notice that we're told immediately, this is what is not to be the subject of your message. And this is what is to be the subject of your message. This is not what you're supposed to preach. This is what you're supposed to preach. This is what is not to be the priority.

This is what is to be the priority. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus, our Lord. Christ Jesus, our Lord. This word preach in this verse means to herald or to proclaim. So it doesn't mean you gotta be behind a pulpit and you gotta be the pastor of the church to pay attention to what is said here.

It's all of us. It is as we go out and we minister, as the first verses told us, as we have ministry, we are to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is to be the subject.

Now, listen to me, I want you to get this this morning. I believe oftentimes he is simply a part of the message. But he is to be the priority of the message.

Are y'all with me this morning? Oftentimes he's just part of what we share. He is supposed to be the entirety of what we share. Oftentimes we mention Christ a little bit and then we talk about all our education and what we think and how we feel and how we perceive things to be and what we think about a subject and what we're told here is that as we minister, the message is to have one subject and that one subject is to be Christ Jesus our Lord.

That's right. That's to be the subject. Let me remind you that at this church our goal and I'm sure you could scrutinize everything on any ministry and nothing's gonna be always like it ought to be but everything that takes place here in youth ministry, bus ministry, Awanas, Upwards, all those things, the subject of that should be Christ.

That should be the priority and you say, well, let me ask you this. We have community days, preacher. Well, how does Christ get the priority of that?

Oh, I'll easily tell you. Every person that comes gets the gospel. Second, every person that comes, some of them, this is the first time they've been on a church property in years. Third, you would be surprised how many people when they have a tragedy or a trial in their life that they'll contact that church that reached out to them. Also, I can't tell you how many people were around our church people that got to talk about the things of God. We have people sitting right here in this building that have joined our church because of our community day. You see, everything that we do here has a motive and it's to somehow give people an opportunity to come to or hear about Christ. We are not a social network here. This is not a social club. And I don't agree with the church becoming where everybody wants to hang out and I think you ought to hang out at church, don't get me wrong, but I think the reason we come to church should be centered on Christ, not the entertainment of man.

There's a difference there. So he's to be the subject. Number two, I want you to see the servant of the message. Look at verse five. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves your servants. May I tell you this that, and if you can hear me out, the subject of the message is only as effective as the servant represents it.

Look at me. If Jesus is gonna be the subject and we're gonna represent him, look at me, if we're not servants to people, then they're not gonna think a whole bunch about our subject. If we don't represent Christ well, then they're not gonna care about the Christ we tell them about. We can get up here and preach all day long about Christ, but when you go into the community, if we're not servants to people, if we don't portray ourselves as servants, and by the way, that's what we're to be. We're to be servants. We're to serve Christ first and foremost. And when you serve Christ, you'll find yourself serving others because that's what Christ did. He was our example. He said likewise do ye, and he is who we are to follow and Jesus, as we mentioned last week, sacrificially gave himself a sacrifice to us. He sacrificed to us. We are to sacrifice to others.

Look at me, dear friends. If we are the servants we should be, then they'll be begging to hear more about the subject that we discuss. They'll see there's something different in them. They're not centered on their self.

They're centered on others. The servant of the message, ourselves, your servants. You say well preacher, what do I get out of that?

Well that brings me to the third thing. I want you to see the stimulant of the message. What is it that stimulates us to minister and to give this message? What is it that motivates us to serve?

Notice if you will, verse five. For we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. We do it for Jesus, not for anybody else. You know what motivates us?

To give the message out and to minister to others. You say well they'll just run all over us and they'll just step all over us. They don't appreciate one thing we do. We didn't do it so they would appreciate it. We did it because of what Jesus has done for us.

Let me tell you something, I don't care if we have a big community today, give away stuff. I don't care and people don't ever thank us one bit, complain about the whole thing. We didn't do it for them. We did it for Christ. And look at me, I believe you and I ought to love people but I want you to listen to me closely. Even if we didn't love people, Christ loves those people. And if we're serving Christ, we're gonna reach them even if not that we love them, it's because Christ loves them. It's all about him. It's not ourselves, but Christ.

The stimulant of the message. You see, I think you and I gotta realize that this whole thing that we do, this Christian life, this is of him, through him, and for him. It is for Jesus' sake. By the way, when you and I determine and have gotten this whole issue settled, that we are doing this for Christ, that will stimulate you to serve. I'm doing it for Jesus.

I'm doing it for his sake. I want you to notice number four, I want you to see the sovereign of the message. Now this is where I thought it really got interesting. You'll notice in verse five, we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord, that's the subject, and ourselves, your servants, that's the servant of the message, for Jesus' sake. That's the stimulant of the message. All right, but look at verse six. Now we bring God into the mix. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Let me tell you something really interesting if you enjoy studying the scripture. You'll find all through the Bible that somehow, some way, just about everywhere, you find God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In verse five, we find about Christ. In verse six, we find about God. And you'll find in verse seven in just a minute, we find the Holy Spirit being mentioned.

I don't care where you look and how you look, when you find one, you find the other. Thank God we serve God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, God the Father made us, God the Son died for us and literally paved redemption. He saved us, and God the Holy Spirit indwells us. They all have a ministry, they're all the same person, and everything we do, we do for them because we love them. I wanna challenge you here at this ministry, you're gonna get real discouraged, real discouraged. If there's any part of what you do, you're doing it for people.

And I know what I'm talking about. You'll find yourself so discouraged that you just don't know what to do. You don't wanna talk to anybody, see anybody. You don't even hardly wanna go to church. You don't wanna open up your Bible and read. And somehow in those moments, you've got to get settled in your heart that I am doing this for Jesus. Because he loved me, I love him.

And I'm doing it for him. I want you to notice the sovereign or the message in verse six. First, we see God the creator. For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness.

That means this, there was nothing, and the Bible says in the beginning, God created. He made light to shine out of the darkness. He put the firmament, he hung the planets, he hung the stars, he made our solar system, he made the entire universe, he created the water and the mountains and the flowers and everything that we see. He is the creator, and we need not forget that.

Amen. I want you to notice his sovereignty. Not only is he the creator, but second, God is the initiator.

Notice this, for God who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness hath shined in our hearts. That means this, look at me, I want you to get this. For anything ever to happen, somebody has to start it. Somebody has to initiate it. Now I've got a wonderful wife, and I'm thankful that God brought her into my life and all these things, but somebody had to start that.

Somebody had to initiate it. And there was a young man that went to our Christian school, and we had our Christian school here that went to my wife's church, and he knew her and he knew me. He went on missions trips with us, and just he kept telling me, hey, there's this girl at our church you need to meet. There's this girl, she's a good Christian girl, you need to ask her out, you need to meet her. And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, threw away the T-shirt.

It doesn't work out. Lord, I've told you about this lady at our church, she doesn't go here now, that set me up with a girl one time, and I didn't just go with her, so she had a friend that was coming, and they were gonna pick me up, and we were gonna go to some church function, whatever, and I was at that church house, and this girl got out of the car to come up, and I'm gonna tell you something, I've never seen a skirt so short in my entire life. Here I am at the church house, coming to pick up the youth pastor, everybody driving by. And I thought, dear Lord. So I got in that car real quick, no I didn't. I got out and told her, I said, I have a church function, I'll just meet you there.

And so I met them there, and it was bad. I said, I'm not getting set up again, ever, ever again. So you being judgmental?

No, I'm not being judgmental, but when you're the youth pastor, I think you've got a testimony to uphold. You do. And I thought, no, he said, well, you need to, you need to, you need to. So here we have this scenario. Here's maybe a good girl, maybe not a good girl. Here I am trying to serve God.

But for us to ever get married, and for God's will to have ever been done, somebody had to initiate it. And so guess what I did? I called her on the phone.

I started the ball running. And when I called, it was about eight o'clock at night, and her sister, who is here in our church, also answered and said, well, she's in bed. Who goes to bed at eight o'clock at night?

That is not the kind of girl I want to marry. She probably wanted to read a book for an hour, and then went to bed at eight or something. Man, I'm wanting to have some fun.

You know, reading the Bible and praying is what I'm talking about. I mean, how boring. Eight o'clock at night, what in the world? My wife found out the next day.

There's a lot of reasons for that, by the way. She found out the next day. She goes, you didn't wake me up? And so it was about a week or two later, and I called. And we talked a little bit. What? You weren't asleep? To what?

You were in your bed. All right. We have a very unique relationship in our family. Anybody else want to talk about the situation today?

Anybody else got something they want to put into the? Plus God, I'm telling the story. It'll be the way I say it was. Anyhow, I'll let them fight about it later. All I know is that she didn't get to come to the phone. And I called back two weeks later, and I talked to my wife, and bless her heart, she's as sweet as can be, but she just was not a conversationalist. And I'm gonna tell you something.

I could not tell you how far and how much my wife has come out of herself to try to be friendly to people. And I'm telling you, my wife was shy. And I got on the phone, and it was like one word answers. I was trying to think of things to say. So then when I called her back the second time, I literally, y'all joke, I made a list of things to talk about. Why, and why am I embarrassing my entire family for this?

Why? Because I'm letting you know that I had to initiate. And when you initiate, then somebody has to respond.

That's the way life is. And I want you to know that when God created you and me, he initiated. And when God loved us so much that he sent his only son, he initiated. And I want you to understand that not only did God create, but he initiated. He's the one that gave you the chance.

He's the one that's contacted you. And it is up to us to respond. And if we don't respond, don't blame him for it. Everyone must say, how could a loving God, how could he send people to hell?

Let me ask you something. How could a sane person not respond to a loving God that bought redemption for them? It's not his fault, it's our fault. God creator, God the initiator. But I want you to notice this, God the illuminator.

This is great. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of the darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. God the illuminator. That means this, that somehow God created and then God initiated. But you and I, because of our sin, we just are not able to understand. So God has to illuminate us. God has to give us the ability to understand his word.

That is why it is our job to get the gospel to people. Guess what the Holy Spirit of God does? He begins to draw folks to God.

That is the illumination. He begins to shine the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. Doesn't make sense to unsave man. But when unsaved man hears the gospel, God begins to draw them to himself. God the illuminator. By the way, you are only, if you're here this morning and you're saved, you're only here saved because God loved you enough to draw you.

And thank God you responded. If you're here this morning, maybe you've never been saved, maybe you don't know a lot about a church, maybe you've been to church your whole life, and when you hear a preacher preach and they preach about salvation, different things, there's just something, you get uncomfortable, that is the Holy Spirit drawing you, illuminating you, letting you know about the knowledge of the glory of God. I want you to notice, fifthly this morning, I want you to see the savior of the message. Notice if you would at the end of verse six, in the face of Jesus Christ.

So listen, you gotta get this. God created, God initiated, God illuminated, and you see that all in the face of Jesus Christ. You say, preacher, what do you mean? That means this, we know that Jesus left heaven, came to earth, died on the cross for our sins. That means this, that everything about Jesus while he was here on earth pointed to God the father. That means this, that everything about Jesus gave glory to God the father. That means everything about Jesus brought glory to God the father. Everything about the knowledge of the glory of God is seen in the face of Jesus Christ. Everywhere Christ went, now you gotta get this, use your brains, everywhere Christ went, he glorified the father.

You believe that? So now you and I have this ministry, and we are to spread the message. That means this, everything about God the father was seen in God the son. Everything in us, people should see God the son.

You don't get it, I can tell you don't get it. Look, while Jesus was on earth, everything pointed to God the father. With you and I on earth, everything we do should point to Jesus. Everything Jesus did pointed to the father. Now we're in Christ, so everything we do ought to point to Jesus, and when it points to Jesus, Jesus points to the father. It all ends up at the father. It all glorifies God. That's our job. That's why if we don't give the right message, and we don't have the right subject, it'll never give glory to God.

I better move on, I don't think you're getting it. Number six, I want you to see lastly the spirit of the message. We see the sovereign of the message in verse six, the savior of the message in verse six at the end, and I want you to see the spirit of the message representing the Holy Spirit of God. Look at verse seven.

I love this. But we have this treasure in earthen vessel. What are we talking about here? We're talking about something that literally resides inside of our soul. You and I are the earthen vessels.

You got that? We're vessels, we're here on earth. We're the earthen vessels, and we have this treasure in earthen vessels. Number one under this, I want you to see the vessel of the spirit.

Earthen vessel. We have this treasure in earthen vessel. That means this, that literally Christ lives in us. We are the vessel that houses the Holy Spirit of God.

Wow. How could we not minister for God when God lives inside? Notice number two, I want you to see the value of the spirit. The vessel, he says, is in earthen vessel, but notice what he says, for we have this what? Treasure in earthen vessel. It's not just something or someone, it's valuable.

I've said it before, I'll say it again, and I'll say it next week, and the week after that, whatever, you and I have no idea the untapped resource that the Holy Spirit is inside of our lives. It is a treasure. What is a treasure? It's resourceful, it's valuable. If you find a treasure, you don't ever have to worry about anything again. It takes care of all your needs.

Doesn't that sound familiar? But my God shall supply all your needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus. Isn't it amazing how God's word all interconnects? We have a treasure living inside of us. That means this, that he's been so good to us that as we minister and give the message, he meets every need that we have. I want you to notice thirdly the victory of the spirit. Notice this, but we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power, the excellency of the power, that means this, with the Holy Spirit living, this is the victory of the spirit. He not only gives us power, but he gives us excellent power.

I was reading an article, I thought this was interesting. The excellency of the power. This lady was going to church, and I believe it was in Iowa as the story relates, she was going to this church in Iowa and she came up to the pastor and she said, Pastor, I want you to pray that God'll somehow provide me a job. And the pastor said, well, have you gotten fired?

She says, well, no, I really haven't gotten fired, but he said, you've been working there almost 30 years. She said, yeah, and she worked at an umbrella factory and she said that what happened is is because their power grid system, she says that we have plenty of business and we can't fill all the orders. She said, but we have so many machines that make these umbrellas that there's not enough power. We don't have enough power source. And she said machines will cut off different times and so until they're able to get more power, they don't have enough power to run all the machines. And she literally said this, we have more machines than power. Can I tell you something about us? We've got more power than machines.

We got all the power in the world, but nobody willing to work. The excellency of the power, the power of the Holy Spirit never runs out. It never stops. It never sleeps.

It never quits. It's never seen a problem too big. It's never seen a mountain too high. It's never seen a valley it couldn't cross. The power that the Holy Spirit is inside of our lives, it's a treasure and it's excellent power.

It never runs out. I want you to notice this lastly. I want you to see the victor of the Spirit. He's promised us victory, but notice this at the end and this is very, very important.

Get this before we're done. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. There's our theme again. Not ourselves, but Christ. What I'm saying by this is every victory that you and I ever get, God is the victor, not us. God's the one that brought that, not us.

It is of God, not us. There's a man named Dr. Herbert Jackson and he was teaching a seminary missions class and he was telling this testimony and I copied and pasted this out. I thought this was interesting about Dr. Jackson.

I've read a couple other articles by him and I thought this was interesting as we've been trying to build our missions thing. I've been looking up different things and missions and Dr. Herbert Jackson, he talked about as a new missionary, he was assigned a car as he was on the field. He was gonna be there two years serving and he was given a car by the mission board, but the car did not run without a push.

And so being a man that was willing to work whatever after pondering this problem, he kind of came up with a plan. He would go to a school near his home and he got permission to park his car there in the evenings and he would get the kids from that school to come out in the mornings and push his car to get it started. The rest of the day as he made his rounds, he would either park on a hill or leave the engine running and he used this procedure for almost two years. He said, ill health forced me to leave and a new young missionary came to the station and when Dr. Jackson began to explain his arrangement of getting the car started and how he did it throughout the day, this new young missionary began to look at him a little bit puzzled and he said, let me take a look. And he picked up the hood of the car and before Dr. Jackson could finish telling how he kind of makes his rounds to leave the car started so that he wouldn't have to push it a different direction, the new missionary interrupted. He said, why Dr. Jackson, I believe the only trouble is this loose cable on your battery. He gave the cable a twist, stepped into the car, pushed the switch and to Dr. Jackson's astonishment, the engine roared to life. For two years, needless trouble had become routine.

This is what he said. The power was there all the time, only a loose connection kept me from getting that power. Dear friend, I'm here to tell you, the power has been there and is there and will be there all the time.

What you and I often have a problem with is a loose connection. As I close today, I thought this was interesting. Many of you might have watched the Rose Bowl Parade and we always do. I find it's really not that interesting. It's just something you have to watch for a little bit. It's tradition. And you kind of look and it's like a movie you saw when you were eight and you thought it was wonderful and you see it when you're 30 and you're like, man, that's dumb. And you watch the parade and the floats go by and it's like, man, this is about as boring as watching racing. This is ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm picking with you, I'm picking with you. Thank you for listening today. We hope you received a blessing from our broadcast. The Kirtland Baptist Church is located at 4520 Old Hollow Road in Kernersville, North Carolina. You may also contact us by phone at 336-993-5192 or via the web at kirtlandbaptistchurch.com. Enjoy our services live and all our media on our website and church app. Thank you for listening to the Kerwin broadcast today. God bless you. We'll see you in the next episode of The Kirtland Baptist Church.