5 Marks of Steadfastness at HBC in 5 Years
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5 Marks of Steadfastness at HBC in 5 Years
2 Thessalonians chapter 3, verses 1 to 5. It to me is amazing where we are right now in this letter, as it corresponds to my life in the sense of this is around the time I came five years ago, and I was reflecting on that this week. God's kindness and our family coming back around this week, five years ago, sometime around like the 20th, we boomeranged back from the 818 of Los Angeles to the 828 of Hickory. Because your two fine cities are so similar. There's really no change at all. But I was studying this while thinking about my first five years as the preaching pastor here, and as I was studying the text and just seeing what Paul is doing here in this final exhortation of Second Thessalonians one that not a lot of people would probably have high in their list of a place in the Bible they go to understand what a steadfast church is like. But as I read this and saw its truth, I couldn't help but think of what I've seen in you. How this text, though the truth is in the words in the Bible. It's lived out amongst Hickory Bible Church and I was just so encouraged by that. Simultaneously, I just so happened to have a guy reach out to me. New to town here. Um, took a church and we were having lunch. And he though he's five years my younger, he's already actually pastored two churches as a preaching pastor or senior pastor, if you want to call it that, for five years each. And, you know, that actually is more common than one guy being at a place for a really long time. I was looking into the research of LifeWay. They did a survey in 2021 of 1500 evangelical pastors and found that, um, the average tenure of a senior pastor, um, is five years. And, um, I was thinking, well, here I am, by the way. I'm not going anywhere. Somebody, as far as I know, uh, after first service did come up and he said, I sat waiting the entire time, you know, because you always want to save it for the end. I was like, no. So he's like, just tell the people this isn't setting up for something else. But as that guy and I were talking, I was thinking about, well, he's done two, five year stints and and then if 50% of pastors being interviewed, you know, 50% of them have been somewhere five years or less and even 50% of them, they were they've been there other places multiple times. What I'm getting to do right now, five years in, is is somewhat unique. It also made me think, is it any different in the world? Is it just that a senior pastor would have this? And I found a study from Harvard Law School that the Tenure rate of CEOs of the best of the best 500 large cap companies traded on the US stock exchange. The median tenure is 39% will be there less than five years, which kind of blew me away because you're talking to these, you know, fortune 500 companies and all the research they do, all the interviews they do to find the person to lead them ahead. 39% will last five years or less, and 13% will be there less than a year. And so whether a CEO or pastor can be over quickly. But as I studied our passage today, I was encouraged in putting statistics aside. Just saying, do I see the same things that were true about this good church that we've talked about now since January? First Thessalonians? A good church, second Thessalonians, a growing church. Do I see the same characteristics when we talk about the Word of God is to be that mirror to us. James one says that we look into and I was just studying it this week, going, God, you have given me. You have allowed me, privileged me to be a pastor of a church that looks like this church. And I don't take that for granted at all. The same qualities of steadfastness that Paul rejoiced in in these believers. I rejoice in in you. And so I titled this message Five Marks of Steadfastness that Hickory Bible Church in five years. I know that it's about a church back then, but it's also true of you now, and God gets all the praise for that. So let's read this text together. This kind of closing exhortation before Paul gives them one final admonishment about working. He has this five verseencouragement to them, and we see five marks of steadfastness there. Follow along as I read Second Thessalonians three 1 to 5 Finally, brothers and sisters, pray for us that the word of the Lord will spread rapidly and be glorified just as it did also with you, and that we will be rescued from perverse and evil men. For not all have faith, but the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. We have confidence in the Lord concerning you that you are doing, andwill continue to do what we command. May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the steadfastness of Christ. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever. I often quote that Isaiah 40, verse eight before each sermon, and it actually was the passage, the first passage I preached when I came back in the fall of 2019. Isaiah 40, verses 1 to 8. Because I was coming back and asking myself the question, what is a preacher to do? And that was the title of that sermon then. What's a preacher to do? And it's answered very clearly in Isaiah 40. Right out of the gate. Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. That word for comfort is a word for strengthening. And it's the pastor's primary calling as a shepherd to the Lord Jesus Christ's sheep, to strengthen them, to do everything he can within his power to feed them and lead them to grow stronger in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. Bottom line. And so that was where we started five years ago. And we talked about how in that passage, that it was foreshadowing the arrival of John the Baptist, who would quote these very lines. And he would he would clear the way of the Lord in the wilderness. He would make smooth a way for the Messiah to come for the glory of the Lord to be revealed. Verse five, and all flesh will see it together, In the mouth of the Lord is spoken, calling out, and the prophet answers, what shall I call out? What shall I tell God's people? All flesh is like grass, and its loveliness like the flower of the field. It's passing. The flower is going to fade. The grass is going to wither. When the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are like grass. But there is one thing that will stand, and it's the Word of God. And when I got back, I said, this is I did not, um, make myself go through the pain of listening to that sermon. I just went to my notes and I found the section where I talked about my vision, and I said, you may wonder what my vision for this church is. Here it is. I look out and I see a field of withering grass and fading flowers. No offense. None taken in 60 years. Most of us won't remain. But one thing will the Word of God. The preacher will change. The people will change. The Word of God will stand. So that's my vision for this church. That's what it's going to be. I have no idea of anything else that will happen to this place, except that this church will stand as we faithfully preach and teach the Word of God, and that will endure even when we are gone. Five years later, I still stand by that claim. What is more encouraging to me than anything is I do see a field of healthy and alive flowers and grass, as this week my heart was overjoyed to to read through second Thessalonians three 1 to 5 and see these five marks of steadfastness in the church that caused Paul great joy to write them this letter and close this letter out with this exhortation. So let's start with Mark number one, what he saw in them and what I see in you. Mark number one, the benchmark of a faithful church is that the word has spread.
God's word has run ahead. You see that in verse one when he says, brothers and sisters, pray for us of all the things. What does Paul want them to pray for? That the word of the Lord will spread rapidly. The Word of God speeding up and spreading out. That's the pastor's greatest joy because it doesn't just go out from him. It goes to the people who take it out. You build up the body. You strengthen the body. You edify the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. So it doesn't terminate on me or on you. And when we talk about God being faithful to a church and the Word of God being spread, we can't move past prayer as in the mark of a faithful church that you can decide by. The thing you can hear Here is whether or not they are preaching and teaching, but what you can't see. But by the power of the word going forth, what you know is there is prayer. Because prayer is what precedes the power of that word. Do you see that there? He's asking Paul the apostle is saying to these brothers and sisters, my request is that you pray for us. The wordhas been going forth in power. We saw that in first Thessalonians chapter one where he said, you received the word of God and much affliction. And then it didn't stop with you. It went out to Achaea and Macedonia, and everywhere you went, it went. He used this word that we get echo from. It echoed out. It resounded out from you. But he's saying, don't be fooled to think it was about me, or it was about you. It was about that you prayed. So keep praying. Any preacher knows that this is true, that the power is in prayer that precedes any preaching, any teaching, any evangelizing. C.h. Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, 19th century pastor of New Park Street Chapel in London, eventually to be called Metropolitan Tabernacle. I mean, one of the first megachurches, if you want to call it that. In the 1800s, 5000 members reached thousands more millions, perhaps in the pamphlets that were sent out, his sermons being written down by people listening and then printed and sent around the world. And most people just thought the power of this came from the preacher. It came from the preaching. I mean, come on, we're talking about the Prince of Preachers. One time on a Sunday, a group of young pastors enthralled by Spurgeon wanted to visit his large church and hear him preach, and afterwards he showed them the sanctuary. He was most eager to take them to what he called the boiler room. And these young, impressionable men were not eager at all to go and see it. Why would you going to be hot? You've just seen the Prince of Preachers, you've just heard the preaching. What could be learned from a boiler room? They declined, he insisted, and he led them to the basement. And there they saw hundreds of members praying. And this, Spurgeon said, smiling, is my boiler room. When asked the secret of his ministry, he always repliedthe same thing. My people pray for me. He might have been the Prince of Preachers, but they were the people of prayer. And that's the explanation for his ministry. And that's the explanation for anything we see around here. I know personally the power of your prayers for me from day one. I didn't plan on coming back when I left in 2016. Nothing personal. I had it on my heart while I was gone to get prepared to go play in a church back in Pittsburgh, and I was moving in that direction. It was May 2019. John Crick invited me to come and preach to the young adults at a retreat out in Black Mountain, and I never turned two things down. Preaching and Black Mountain drip-o-later coffee shop. Beautiful spot. So I come back and I lined it up that as I was preparing to go church plant, that I would meet with the elders here and talk about what partnership would look like. And they were eager to do that. I didn't expect anything other than that. And I was May in 2019 on that way. They didn't even mention me coming back here, but they were still praying for a senior pastor here. I had actually turned down the job twice before that, so why would they continue to ask? But they were praying, and I don't know if they were praying for me to change my mind. But long story long. One evening in July of that summer. So just 2 or 3 months later, there was a prayer meeting over in the Ryle Room across the way, and the focus of prayer that night was for the preaching pastor. Who would it be? Well, that same night I had written that week, I had been thinking about knowing the need was still here and knowing there was also a need where I wanted to go. I had actually written two different emails to the elders here, one saying, I would love to come back and be the preaching pastor if you would have me. I know I've said no already a couple of times and I wrote another one saying, no, I can't do it, I'm on my way. And I sat there with that. And then that night, that same night, you guys prayed. I woke up at 3 a.m., couldn't sleep. And just asked the Lord. Give me direction. And he finally brought me to a point of changing my heart, changing my mind and in faith. Coming back here saying no to one thing, saying yes to another. Both would have been in faith, but I wouldn't have come if it weren't for prayer. I'm positive of that. Why did I say that? Because the other two times. Search committees, Meetings, all that stuff. None of it worked. Maybe he was teaching this church something. He was certainly teaching me something. The only explanation for the change of heart was prayer. You people praying God waking me up to pray. In responding the next day and sending the first email, not the second. When prayer paves the way, what ultimately moves ahead is the gospel. So it's not really about whether or not I came back. God was going to provide somebody to preach here. He always has. That's one of the wonderful things about the legacy of this place, that anybody that's been here for a few decades always reminds me, Adam, no matter what season this church has been through, what they've gone through, the one thing that's never changed is he's always had somebody here that was going to be faithful to the Word of God. The message was always going to keep going. And we see it now, don't we? When it says the word will spread rapidly, that's a word for it runs ahead. It's a picture of an athlete and we see it running ahead here. We see it now as we move to this campus in 2014, I think, and our prayer was to be a city on a hill. Some of you remember that idea. And what that meant was that the crossroads of 321 and 70, that people down south in Lincolnton or up to Lenoir, we even have some people that make the drive down from Boone out west to Valdez, or out east to Statesville, that the word would spread rapidly. And how does it spread? It spreads through you. You tell people, you invite people, and it spread far beyond that. It's gone to the ends of the earth. It's in Uganda, it's in Romania, it's it's in Mexico, it's Haiti, it's Nepal. We have a young couple here going to Nepal in a few weeks, just testing out to see. Would the Lord call them there? The word spreads rapidly. It goes faster and farther than we could ever make it go using our own man made ideas programs. No, it's you build the people up. You encourage them in the faith and then they want to do something with it. They can't sit on it. Now there is something else to be highlighted here. It's not just that the word of the Lord spreads rapidly in a steadfast church. It's glorified. Well, what does that mean? Well, it's a word for it's honored. The reward of the runner is to get to the finish line and win. And so what's Paul saying here? He's saying we've not just seen it go out. We've seen it transform that that message, that word of the Lord that's gone out into all these different directions is changing lives. It's saving lives. It's being glorified and the transformation of the life. And then that that person who is now a new creature in Christ, a new creation, lives a life worthy of the gospel. The gospel is being adorned by good works. That's what Paul is saying there, that the message is matching up with the lifestyle, that our life is matching, our doctrine that we're about God's Word spreading rapidly, and God's saints living righteously. And I see that in you. That's why the people you invite actually take you up on it, because they see your life and it proves it. Who would be interested in going to a church of a neighbor who's a terrible neighbor, who's a rude customer at a restaurant, who's a poor coworker who shows up late, who leaves early, who cuts corners, who gossips behind people's back. You think they're going to want to come to church with you, but you invite them and they come. Why? Because your life is glorifying to God as they see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven. And when you get the courage to invite, they may be not interested in the truth, but they at least believe your life. And that's how it should be. That's what it was in Thessalonica. And that's what true. What's true with you. Now, if this is happening, if the word of the Lord is spreading rapidly and being glorified as it did there. Look what happens next in verse two. The next mark is that there's going to be oppositionand the leaders will stand firm. The next mark of a steadfast church is it's being led by people who stand firm, leaders that endure. He says, pray for us that we Paul, Silas, Timothy, some of the other leaders that joined them in the ministry in Thessalonica, that we will be rescued from perverse and evil men, for not all have faith. He wants prayer not just for the preaching, but for the persecution. But he's not asking to be able to fight these perverse and evil men, to stand toe to toe with them, or to run from them. He just says, hey, when the time comes for us to be rescued, that God would be faithful and show up. Similar to the prayer Jesus has in Matthew 6:13, deliver us from evil. It's the same word or the prayer Jesus prayed in John 17:15. I do not ask you to take them out of the world to run from it, but to keep them in it and keep them from the evil one. I mean, that's what's true about our lives. Otherwise we get saved and we'd go up. But he leaves us here for the mission to move forward, and he knows how much we can handle, whether it's opposition from without or from within.
The Lord will be there for us. They were. He was there for Paul. Paul never ran from a fight. He stood firm in it because he knew that when the time came, he needed to be rescued. God would show up and he would show up and deliver from perverse and evil men. Who is he talking about here? Well, if you go back to where this church started in Acts 17, it actually wasn't these pagan gentiles running them out of town. It was religious Jews. It was people that should have known and recognized the truth, seen that there is hope in the gospel of Jesus Christ. But 1705 says, the Jews became jealous, formed a mob, set the city in an uproar. These are the. These are the wicked and perverse men. He's speaking of and he's saying, why are they perverse? And that word perverse? We know what that means. When you pervert something, you twist it. You take a good thing and make it a bad thing. Well. What's that? That's when people pervert the gospel. When they want to say, oh, no, no. What were they saying? What were those Jews have been saying about Paul? You can't listen to this guy. He's proclaiming a Messiah that he'll forgive your sins. You don't need to keep the law. You can just live however you want to live. But we're the righteous ones by the way of the law. And Paul says, no, it's not that way at all. The gospel is all of grace. You're justified by faith. You stand in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, or you don't stand at all. And so how perverse is it for religious people to come in and say, that's not the truth, that's a lie. You need to do it on your own. So that's the opposition that Paul was facing in verse two, and the mark of a steadfast church is when you have leaders that stand firm in truth. I mean, when I look back at five years here, one area I am certain your prayers have showed up for me and for our elders is that the fourth man always showed up in the fire. You remember that when we preached Daniel chapter three? That was the lesson. No matter what you're going through, the fourth man will show up and he's done it for us as the leaders here in this church. There hasn't been a fight we've been through in the last five years or beyond that, that at some point we didn't look around and realize, just what does God want from us, from His Word? Get on our knees and pray and see the Lord show up. See him. Keep us first. Stand firm with us. He was faithful. He's been faithful. So I've seen the power of your prayers from the beginning for me coming back. And all throughout. I hear it when you send me an email. The most common line in it is always, pastor, we're praying for you. Not just praying for verse one. The preaching to spread and be glorified, but that we would be rescued. We would be protected. We would stand. We wouldn't compromise. We wouldn't step back. We wouldn't step down. But when the time comes that we need to, we would step up. And that work never ceases for a leader in a church. You never can stop being on guard for the truth. Galatians 2:4 warns of false brothers who are secretly brought in to spy out our liberty, which we have in Jesus Christ, to bring us back into bondage. Do you know that's the greatest threat is for the gospel to be twisted? It's the greatest threat in your life in a church that you might trust somebody, a leader, a teacher, and they start to take you away from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Jesus Christ and trusting in him alone, and try to put you on a path to something else. Some new things. Some new age thingor some old thing. Go back to works. Go back to the law. Go back to customs. Go back to traditions. What did we learn last week in verse 15? We hold firm to the tradition, the teaching only taught by apostolic authority, bound in the Word of God. Anything else? We lay it aside. So that's the work of a leader in a church to protect the flock from wolves dressed up as sheep. Antagonists of the gospel, running after us, trying to trip us up, unfaithful. But verse three, the Lord is faithful. And so the third point isn't just that leaders will stand firm. Mark number three of a steadfast church is the church stands firm. God's people stand. That's what Paul is encouraging and exhorting these thesebelievers in Thessalonica, the Lord is faithful. You may see opposition all around you. We read of it in chapter one. Those people that are afflicting them in verse six. He promises them coming relief in the return of Jesus. But in the meantime, before you see him face to face, he's with you in your heart. He's faithful and he will strengthen and protect you from the evil one. Notice Paul upping the ante back in verse two when talking about the threats to the leadership, he and others. It was evil ones, wicked and perverse people. But for everybody in the church, you as a saint, you as a member may not feel targeted by opposition from people like I might because I'm preaching it. But you know what? You have the same target when it comes to the evil one wanting to take you down. So? So it's not like a, oh, you know, we're cool. We don't need prayer. No, we all need prayer because every one of us. Verse three. Part of the church needs strengthened and protected from the evil one, and God is faithful to do it. He's faithful to do it. What do those words mean? Strengthened and protected. Strengthened is just a word of forming a foundation, a groundwork. We went back to that last week, didn't we? We saw that. What do we stand firm on? What's the first thing that we check if we're going to stand firm in verse 13 of chapter two. That we are loved by God, chosen from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the spirit and faith in the truth. You go back to the gospel. That's our firm footing. We just sang it. Jesus is our firm foundation. Nothing exalts Christ more and encourages our hearts more than being brought back to the basics of the gospel. We never get over it. That's where we stand and fight from. And he says, you need to be strengthened by the Lord, remembering the gospel. Fortify that foundation in your life. And then he says he'll protect you. That's another way. God is faithful in your life against evil ones and the evil one. He protects you. This word is used in acts 12 four, when Peter was guarded by four squads of soldiers when Herod threw him in prison. I mean, it's just basically that that word protecting you is a word, a soldier guarding someone who's doing the guarding of our souls, the Lord Jesus Christ. He's protecting your salvation. John 17:12. He prays this while I was with them, the disciples, I was keeping them in your name, father, which you've given me. I guarded them, and not one of them perished, except for the son of perdition, so that Scripture would be fulfilled. I mean, he's praying to the Father, knowing he's knowing what's coming ahead for Peter. Luke 22:31 to 32. Simon, Simon, behold, Satan, the evil one has demanded permission to sift you like we put you through his sieve of suffering, to break you down, cause you to quit. Back off. Recant. That's what Satan has demanded. And he doesn't say, you know, Peter, you're the rock. You're so strong. Look inside yourself and you can fight. That's what we tell people, isn't it? You've got what it takes. It's not what Jesus told Peter. He said he would be too much of a match for you. But I prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And we're thinking. But it did fail, didn't it? Not all the way. He may have been knocked back a little bit, but he wasn't knocked out. He remained. He came back. He came back. As Christ prayed for him. And what Peter just needed to know that Christ's eye was always on him. He was praying for him. He saw him when he walked across after he had denied him. He knew Christ never gave up on me. The Lord is faithful to guard me. And then he says to Peter, in that moment, and once you have turned again, Once you have gotten back up off the mat, go and strengthen your brothers. So he strengthens you and he protects you. Believer. Not just for your own faith, but the faith of the people around you. And I see that in this church, elders and I have a front row seat to all the trials. And there's a lot all theopposition, all the heartaches. But in five years. Far, far more, we see people standing, not falling, and we give praise to who? For? That God. Because he's faithful. He's faithful to keep you. I've seen it for ten years. Some of you for 20 others. 30, 40. The OGs, as I call them, they're almost were coming up on 50 years. Pretty soon they'll tell you time and time again how the Lord has been faithful, not just generally, but they'll have stories. That's why some of us who are newer here, younger in the faith. Need those older mentors and disciplers to tell us the stories of God's faithfulness, not just out there in somebody else's life, but they'll tell you the stories of God's faithfulness in their life. A couple of years ago, fall of 2021, we made a film here 45 Years of God's Faithfulness.
We didn't have that as the working title when we started. All I knew was there was about 6 or 7 couples who were here from 1976 near the beginning, and we said, you know what? We want to capture them. We want to get their story. And so I just said, can you show up on a Friday? I'll interview you. I'll just ask you a couple questions about how you came, how God worked in your life, what you've seen since then. That was the plot. I mean, you could see now why I made it big in LA. It just I really think these things out. But what was awesome to hear is the camera rolled without any of them talking to each other in advance. They all came back to the same story. God is faithful. So we named it 45 Years of God's Faithfulness. And that's what we bank on. That's the firm foundation we stand on here. Is that the flower? Like people, they come and go pastors as well. But the constant is God. Paul saw it. This church. I see it here. All our boast is in him. For that he strengthens. He protects us. And it could lead you to ask the question. Then what are we responsible for? What do we do? Well, it's in verse four. Fourth mark of a steadfast church is they obey, knowing that we have God fighting for us, strengthening us in the inner man, protecting us from outside opposition. Verse four we have confidence in the Lord concerning you. Thessalonians Hickory Bible Church that you are doing and will continue to do what we command when it comes to keeping the commands of God. This church doesn't flinch and neither do you. And it's based on a precedent of the past and a call to excel still more in the future. First Thessalonians four Paul repeats it twice. Verse one. You've received from us instruction as you ought to walk and please God, just as you actually do. He's constantly saying, you're already doing it. Keep doing it. That you excel still more. And then verse ten, we urge you, brothers and sisters, excel still more. What's he saying over here? He's just saying it a different way. Our confidence is in the Lord concerning you. That the evidence, the proof of your salvation, that you are rooted in Christ as your bearing fruit for Christ by your obedience will be known by our fruits. Right? Victory Bible Church we're known by our fruits. Our reputation precedes us. What we do out there is the proof that there's actually a God at work in here. Through the preaching of his word and the power of His spirit and you applying what you learn. It's the fourth mark of a church that obeys. Or a church that's steadfast is that they obey. And we see an example in verse four of Paul of he is commending them to obedience by way of encouragement. And that's that's what good teachers and leaders do. I put a quote in the pulpit curriculum last week from Mark Dever, a pastor in Capitol Hill, where he talks about the need for pastors to encourage, particularly the young ones. He writes this so many times I've seen men, particularly the younger guys, act as if real leadership is shown in correcting others. And that's why young men's sermons are often so cold as they scold. What they haven't figured out is that you can accomplish more by encouragement. There are times to admonish, but 80 to 90% of what you hope to correct can be accomplished through encouragement. If you look back at your life and consider who influenced you the most. You will probably find that it's the people who believed in you. So for the scholars in the room, the quick to rebuke. Think about it a little more encouragement. It goes a long way. And you know that by your own life, your own testimony, that the people that have been there for you. Yeah, they've had a correction to give you, but how much more they've given you encouragement because again, it's not their belief in you. It's their belief in your God. They believe in your Savior. They believe that the spirit is actually in you. They believe that the word can actually changeyou. So it's never really faith in that person. It's faith in the God of that person, the Lord Jesus Christ. So we can go up to people and say what Paul says here. We have confidence in the Lord concerning you. So it protects us too, from being too let down, because our our faith and confidence was never really in that person, but it was in their Lord, it was in their Savior. And if they are in Christ, if you're in Christ today, we can have courage looking at your life no matter where you are. We believe in your God. We believe in your Savior. We believe that he transformed you, saved you and set you apart and has good works prepared for you in advance. And we're not just shining your face on with that. We're telling you the truth about who you are. And if you're going to lead in this church and serve others and disciple others, you have to get that one straight. You believe in their God. You believe in the power of the word. You believe in the power of prayer. And once you've run through all those things, then yeah, maybe it's like, you know, put my arm around. Yeah, I kind of believe in you, too, you know, you're not so bad. But you have all these other reasons to put your faith in people. Because the Lord is faithful. That's the fourth mark. A church that obeys and then the last one that ties it all together. Really, it's the legacy of this church. And that church is that we love. We're people that have been loved and we love out of that love. When he says, May the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God. Isn't that the greatest legacy of a church? Loving God and loving people. It's the great commandment. It's our mission statement here. Fulfill the great commandment and fill the the Great Commission. Going out with making disciples in the force of the Great Commandment. I mean, you could put that as a slogan. You could put it on a t shirt. But if you don't understand the power of that request in verse five, it's not going to do anything in you. Last thing I wanted to do when I came back five years ago was to be some sloganeering pastor. You know what HBC really needs? We just need some more cliches. Fire up the printing press. Let's make some more shirts. What's grown this church and what's grounded this church and what's kept you and what's protected you and secured you and moved you, is that God has directed your hearts into the greater depth and length and height and breadth of his love. Is that not true? And that's what keeps you standing. When you understand that nothing separates you from the love of God in Christ, that he stood for you. His steadfastness. Verse five. His perseverance, his devotion, his obedience to the father. To persevere for the joy set before him, to go all the way to the cross and stand in your place and take your sin, and go to the grave, and come back again, and rise to the father and see it. Sit at his right hand, and rule and reign from there with all power over all things in heaven and earth. That's Steadfastness is what allows you to stand, and what that reminds you of all that Christ did for you, that you didn't do for him, is how much the Father loves you. A church that loves understands its God who that word for direct. It's a picture of a ship being guided on a straight course. And if there's one thing that's going to keep this church, that church and this church on a straight course is going directly always back to the love of God for you. That's right. You move an inch away from that, you'll land 20 miles away. You'll think there's something else that has to be there for your faith to stand some work you can do some new thing you can learn. Because the gospel is old hat. You'll be lost. I'm not saying you'll lose your salvation, but you won't know which way is up if you don't stay on the course that takes your heart right back to God's heart for you. He loved you and sent His Son to die for you.
And if you're not in Christ today, that's the message we preach. You can call on him right now and be saved. He demonstrated his love in this, that while you were a sinner, Christ died for you. And Jesus Christ came into the world to save only one type of person, sinners, of which I and anyone else in here that's put our faith in him are the worst. And he gave us his life. He gave us his best. He gave us his righteousness. He took away our sin. Do you believe that message? If you think you have any hope outside of the righteousness of Christ, you're lost this morning. You're lost. You've got some other message along the way, and any other message outside of God's love for you in Christ, and you putting all of your faith in him is not going to set your heart on a direct course to the love of God. And if you don't have yourself firmly founded in God's love for you, you won't stand in the steadfastness of Christ. You'll find something else to stand in, and you may think it works for a while until it doesn't. Socall upon Christ and be saved. Cast yourself upon his mercy. He offers you it this morning in himself. Come to me, you who are weary and heavy laden. Whatever course you've been trying to chart. Get back on mine.
I put your sin on my shoulders. I stood where you couldn't stand. I died and rose again. No one else can do that. Do you trust me? Do you believe in me? Call upon him and be saved. For those that have. I hope we've seen in the word this morning. These five marks of a steadfast church, a people dependent in prayer, proclaiming the Word, standing as one, obeying in love. And I think back of five years here, that's as good as a vision that I could ever give you. I don't have any outside of this. You figuredit out by now. I came back and said I didn't have any vision outside of what was going to be in the Word of God, and five years in, I still don't have one. To be a church whose hearts are divinely directed into the depths of God's love and standing firm in Christ. How do you take that sublime thought and turn it into a church growth plan? You want to put that on paper? Your heart being captured, captivated by the love of God for you, believer. You can't sell that. You can't market that. You have to believe it. So maybe church growth and church vision was never actually something we can capture. It's something that captures us. Captivated by his love. Holding fast to his Son. That's how you grow. Can you say amen? Let's pray. We thank you, father, that you make it so clear to your children. You make it so obvious. There is no other way to know you and to be known by you than through your Son. This is eternal life to know you, the Father and Jesus, your Son, whom you sent. And what we know at the heart of his love for us is we are sinners indeed. But we have a Savior who loved us and died for us, and rose again for our justification. And rules and reigns now and will return for our relief and deliverance. We have nothing else to hold to but that no other ground to stand on but the firm foundation we have in you, Christ. And so we stand today. We don't stand perfectly in our own righteousness. We stand perfectly in yours. And you strengthen us in that truth. You protect us with that truth. So we thank you for that. Spirit, Minister, to our hearts now and the application of these truths. Help us to be who this church is in Thessalonica now. We're thankful that we we're not confused about our identity when you've given it to us. Now, just help us to be all who you've already made us in your Son. Strengthen us for that task. We pray. Reach those through us, Lord, that you want to reach. May our our righteous lives match up with our saving proclamation of the gospel. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.
