Text: various

Target audience: All

My purpose for this message: To reiterate that the purpose of the new building is to perpetuate the mission: promoting Jesus Christ.

Delivered: March 14, 2010

 

What’s the Campaign all About?

 

Pray.

We have an elders retreat next weekend so pray for Pastor Brandon as he brings the Word of God.  And for Pastor Andy who will be preaching the following week.  And then Easter!

Today’s the final message on “Growing for God’s Glory”.  We’ve been having a conversation about growing our facilities, and God growing us.  Let me review the plan of our expansion effort before I dive into my topic—which has changed over the last couple of days. 

 

1. Project: 11 acres, all paid for; construct ministry center to triple our auditorium capacity, increase our lobby 5 times, quadruple our nursery space, put all of our kids in one building, provide a gym, more than one toilet/100 people…
2. Money: $3 ¾ million cost, trimmed $400,000 to work with $3 ¼ projected budget; looking to raise $1 ¾ million (+ $400,000 would enable us to complete the entire project!) over the next 3 years.  Gifts need to be over and above what you’re currently giving to God’s work (unless you temporarily redirect donations from other ministries).  Give monthly, or quarterly, or annually, or in one lump sum. 
3. Timeline
1. March 21: An advanced commitment pledges in
2. March 26: CC kickoff celebration when all invited to help
3. April 11: All pledges in
4. Jan. 2012: end of our promise to let farmer farm land
5. Spring-fall: Dig out
6. April, 2013: All money in & project completed.
4. Your role:
1. Give.

                                                    i.     Financial stewardship: … As we place more and more of our resources at the Lord’s disposal, we fully expect Him to repeatedly prove: “You can’t outgive me!”  (Keystone Church vision)

                                                  ii.     Give what you sense God’s leading you to give

                                                 iii.     Children & teens participate

                                                 iv.     Not equal giving, equal sacrifice.

                                                   v.     No giving, still family

                                                 vi.     No judgment

2. PRAY!
3. Stand by to watch God’s blessing

That’s the plan.  But why the plan; why do this at all?  Why design a bigger building and ask you to cinch your belts so we can build it?  The answer to that question is the same as the answer to this one, “Why does any church even exist?”: to applaud, worship, and commend Jesus Christ to mankind. 

We do not build to have a nice place for a wedding—or reception.  We do not build so we can have a place to play basketball.  We do not build to enhance our prestige or simply because it’s the thing a church does as it grows.  We do not build so we have a stage large enough to do a production or because this building is unattractive. 

We build with the prayerful intent that we can use what’s constructed as a tool to promote Jesus Christ—giving generously to Christ’s work.  The work goes two directions: one, it’s aimed at a world which does not know him, and two, aimed at each other—those who do know him; who have been redeemed by the Savior (more on that from Pastor Brandon next week). 

So let’s spend the remaining minutes reviewing the gospel—which is, the good news about Jesus Christ.  READ 1 Corinthians 15:3-4.  First importance.  In his book The Cross-Centered Life, C.J. Mahaney writes to Christians,

If there is anything in life that we should be passionate about, it’s the gospel.  And I don’t mean passionate only about sharing it with others.  I mean passionate about thinking about it, dwelling on it, rejoicing in it, allowing it to color the way we look at the world.  Only one thing can be of first importance to each of us.  And only the gospel ought to be.

(Promote A Gospel Primer by Milton Vincent; 53 pages)

First importance; why is that?  Why does what we will celebrate in 3 weeks matter more than finding a new job, matter more than tensions in our marriage, matter more than the way our chemistry grade tanked after that “D” on the exam?  Why does it matter more than your latest hobby, your career aspirations or even your romance?  First, because the effects of the gospel last forever, and the effects of all those other things, don’t.  Second, because everything I just mentioned is poised to be affected by the gospel in your life.

 

1.     The problem: sin is universal and all stand condemned before God.

For His perfect garden God created a perfect man, a perfect woman.  He pronounced it all “good”; so, all perfect.  Some blame what happened next on a tree in the middle of the garden: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  But for sin, it could have stood for a thousand years without being a problem.

But Adam and Eve sinned, and …sin entered the world through one man—and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned…  (Romans 5:12).  I want you to feel how universal this is.  Unless Jesus comes back for His saints in your lifetime, you will one day die; me too.  Statistically, 100 out of 100 of us will die.  In doing so our sin is proven.  Since everyone dies, and death is the exclusive punishment for sin, we can conclude we’re all sinners.

Yet people inside and out of the church continually downplay just how devastating this situation is. 

·       I’m not really a bad person; I know people a lot worse

·       I can see that God would judge, like, a murderer, or a drug dealer, but the rest of us are just regular people doing the best we can; God knows that

·       Yeah, I don’t need to repent because I know God is loving and gracious

·       I try hard to do everything right so God will take that into account.

Think again.  Your final breath will be proof that God is correct when He labels you, me, all of us “sinners” worthy of the full measure of His wrath.  As for trying to do everything right …all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; (Isaiah 64:6).

No matter how good, without Christ, we are God’s enemy.  We might not see it because we’re like a sprinter whose times keep improving, but he never wins a race.  He thinks his running has merit but the judges don’t; so he never gets the trophy.

We are objects of God’s wrath; we are sinners and God doesn’t grade on a curve.  And what’s even worse, apart from Christ we are powerless to do anything about it.  That’s as true for the young woman raised in a Christian home who hasn’t “done anything bad” as it is for the hooker on the corner of Green St. and Southeast Avenue in Lancaster.

Absorbing this is not pleasant, but until you do, the gospel will remain ho-hum to you.  Until you view yourself as the chief of sinners—instead of a “not-as-bad” sinner, you will see Christ as someone who improves you, not someone who rescues you from swift and certain destruction.  As Thomas Watson wrote, ’Til sin be bitter, Christ will not be sweet.

 

2.     The solution: Jesus Christ

READ Hebrews 11:6.  …without faith it is impossible to please God…  This was why the Pharisees kept stepping into Jesus’ line of fire.  They were trying, oh so hard.  But when the standard is either perfection or faith—and you keep trying for perfection, the only possible outcome is failure.

READ Romans 9:30-33.

Some people really don’t care that they’re on the outs with God—or don’t believe it.  But for the person who realizes the sin problem and is trying to patch things up with God, Jesus Christ can either be a welcome sight or a stumbling stone.  If you are dedicated to good living and impressing God, Jesus can seem like an unnecessary impediment—a rock of offence.   I can do this myself, thank you very much.  Or—as many Christians and professing Christians do, fool yourself into thinking that Jesus can augment or supplement your own efforts—He’s kind of like the icing on the cake.

Without Jesus there’s no cake at all.  The person who’s tried all of that self-effort and failed—or who is painfully aware of just how deep of a hole she’s dug for herself before God, finds Jesus Christ a welcome sight.  The one who trusts in him will never be put to shame.  

Jesus is not just a nice guy, an interesting teacher, and He didn’t just come to make for some interesting literature: He is the GodMan who came to bear my sins by dying in my place.  To bear the sins of all who will turn to him in faith and repentance (Acts 20:21).

So shouldn’t we do what is right and good?  Yes, as the response to God’s complete cleansing and forgiveness in Jesus, not to somehow complete or supplement His work.  God saved us thoroughly by His grace—through our faith—to dispatch us to do good works; in other words, they are the effect of being saved, not the cause.  And it is by Jesus’ work—not ours, that God saves and secures.

So the message Keystone Church offers to the world and to each other? Jesus Christ.  You see that in our mission: To love Jesus Christ and spur others toward the life in Him.

 

Concl:

In my favorite movie Tears of the Sun, Navy Lt. Waters and his team of SEALs halo into Nigeria in the middle of a coup.  Their mission is to rescue several Catholic missionaries and an American doctor who are in danger from rebels who have already assassinated the president and his family.

The missionaries choose to stay with the people they serve and of course, die with them.  But the SEALs are able to save the doctor and about 70 Nigerians they hadn’t planned on saving.  Unfortunately, 4 men die and 3 are wounded in the process.

Every mission has its danger and its costs and God’s is no different.  We may not spill the blood our brothers and sisters are spilling in some places around the world, but if our mission is the gospel, it will continue to exact a toll along the way.  But Jesus Christ is worth it!