B.L.E.S.S. - Part 4: Serve

0:00 Today's message is entitled, Serve. I'm glad to see you this morning. Y'all are the truly saved. Go ahead, look at your neighbor and say, you're sure enough saved. You are truly born again. And I'm glad to see you this morning. I want to thank Pastor James Meats for covering for me last week. I was in Indianapolis preaching last week, and it was minus two degrees. When I woke up that morning, I said, what am I doing here?

0:42 But I'm glad to be back here today. Amen. Thank you. And thank the Lord for him sharing last week. I want to pick up with what I've been teaching on, on this whole matter of winning the loss to Jesus, helping people get in right relationship. And let me just review for a few moments what we've covered for the last several weeks. We started off looking at John 15 where Jesus gave us the instructions for us to be rooted and grounded in him. He is divine and we are the branches. And he said if we are truly connected to him as divine, we will bear fruit. As a matter of fact, the scripture says we will bear much fruit. Somebody say much fruit. It will bear much fruit, more fruit.

1:35 And bearing fruit, among other things, means you're winning others to the kingdom of God. You're helping people come into a personal relationship with God. And I know that everybody in here knows somebody who doesn't have a personal relationship with God, with Christ. Amen. How many of you, your life is different since you have made a connection with Jesus Christ? Your life has changed. and there's no doubt, no question about it. It means everything in the world to have a walk with Jesus, to have him order your steps and direct your path and answer your prayers and work miracles on your behalf and rebuke the hand of the enemy. Y'all know the devil wants to try to frustrate you, defeat you, but having Jesus in your life makes all the difference in the world.

2:28 So we want to bear much fruit. And so we took a look at John 15 and that challenge from him. And then I began to teach and to talk with you and teach you about who are we to help win to the Lord. And I went through the Francis list. Francis, every letter stands for somebody in your life who you should be reaching out to. The F in Francis stands for friends. The R stands for relatives. The A stands for acquaintances. The N stands for your neighbors. The C in Francis stands for your coworkers or classmates for young kids. The E stands for your enemies. And the S in Francis stands for your strangers. And I ask you to make a list. Did y'all make a list? Thank both of y'all for saying amen to that right there. We want to make a list of people. And matter of fact, we want to see God bring people into a vibrant relationship with him. Amen.

3:23 And I hope you made that list. Amen. Amen. and we talked about and went through over 80% of Christians, people who are in this country, over 80% don't go to anybody's church, not connected with any relationship with the Lord and we want to help them meet Jesus because I don't know if you know it or not, but Jesus is on his way back. Amen.

3:50 So we went through the, we went through the, gave you the Francis list. And now I'm going and walking through steps, actions that you can and should take to help win somebody to the Lord. And we're using the acronym of bless, B-L-E-S-S. Somebody say, you want to bless somebody. Look at your neighbor and say, I want to bless somebody. Every letter in the word blessed stands for and signifies what those steps are. How do I win somebody that I really love and care about? How do I get them saved? How do I get them in a walk with God? What steps should I take? The B in blessed stands for. The first thing you'd want to do is beseech God for them. You want to pray and talk to God and intercede for them and pray for them. Put them on your prayer list. Beseech God.

4:42 Talk to the Lord on their behalf. Amen. To ask God to open their eyes and help them see the relationship that they should have. The L in BLESS stands for listen. People are frustrated because nobody cares about them. And I think one of the better ways you can really show somebody that you care about them is listen to their drama. Y'all are a little slow here today. I see it's cold. I know it's cold.

5:16 Listen to the pain of their life, the drama. Listen, you don't have to give a solution. You don't have to have an answer. You don't have to keep running your mouth. I had to resist myself from saying anything more along those lines, but listen to them. The E in bless stands for engage. Engage in their world. Engage with them. Find out what's of interest to them. Engage with them. Go and attend some of their affairs. Engage with them. Go and show them that you are caring about what they care about and you want to be engaged in their life and in their world. Take the time and go and do something for them. Then the first S in bless, I'm coming to a close with this profound series. Y'all supposed to say amen right there, but that's okay.

6:13 That's all right. Y'all slow. The first S, which is today, we're going to talk about today, is the first S stands for serve. Amen. Somebody say serve. Serve. You serve them. This is such an important deal. Now I want to walk through some scriptures, a couple of scriptures with you because I want to challenge you to find a need of someone that you care about and serve that need. Yeah, I knew there was going to be some tension on that point right there because we don't really like to serve other people. We like to be served, but we don't like to serve. It takes a special kind of person who can take their eyes off of their drama and say, let me be concerned about your drama.

7:10 And is there something about your drama that I could do something about? Serve. So let's look at Matthew chapter 23. I got a couple of verses here that I just want to read real quickly. Matthew chapter 23, and I'm going to read verses 11 and 12. Here's Jesus talking. Listen to what he says in verse 11 and 12. He says, but he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. I love that. Stop, pause right there. Here's what Jesus, if you want to be great in my kingdom, this is a different kind of a lifestyle when you are in the kingdom of God. And Jesus says, if you want to be great in my kingdom, you have to learn to be a servant. And whoever, verse 12, exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. I love this passage because God says, listen, when you learn to have a servant mentality, when you learn to have a servant mindset, God says that requires you to humble yourself.

8:07 And when you humble yourself, God says, I will exalt you. I love this passage. I love, jot this verse down when you get a chat. I'm not going to turn to a reader, but jot down James 4.6. James 4.6 says, God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. When you humble yourself, God smears you with grace. That's what that means. God puts his grace upon you. And grace means that God gives you the power and the ability and the desire to be what you're supposed to be, do what you're supposed to do and don't want to do what you're supposed to do. Somebody ought to say, I need some grace in my life. Amen. I know I need grace because I don't always want to do what I'm supposed to do. I don't always want to be what I'm supposed to be, but I need grace. Somebody say, I need grace. I need grace. I need God to smear me.

8:58 God says, if you humble yourself, I like James 4.6. He says, God gives more grace. That's what James 4.6 says. He gives more grace. He resists the proud and gives grace to the humble. Here's what another translation says. God opposes the plans of the proud. When you're proud and arrogant and you think the world revolves around you, God opposes that. That's why you can't get nothing going on. You've been trying to get your life to achieve some things and get some places and you can't get there because you're arrogant. and you think the world revolves around you, go ahead and look at your neighbor and say, this world ain't about you, ain't about you. Look at the person on the other side, you neither. Tell her it ain't about you neither.

9:46 This world is about advancing God's kingdom. That's what this world is about, achieving God's goal. Your life ought to be about achieving the things that God has assigned for us to do. And everybody, they can't receive that. but God gives more grace. I love that right there. When you humble yourself, when you recognize that without him, I am absolutely nothing. Without God, I'm a jacked up joker. Without the power of the presence of God in my life, I'm going downhill. But all I realize, I need him. I need him. I need him every day. I need him to wake me up in the morning. I need him to give me the activities of my limbs. I need him to orchestrate. I need God and I need his grace.

10:36 I need him grace, grace, the power and the ability to be what I'm supposed to be and do what I'm supposed to do. I need grace. I need grace. I need grace to be a good husband. I need grace to listen. I'm about to get myself in some trouble. Let me roll on to the next thing. I need grace to be a good father.

11:08 I need grace. I need grace to be a good pastor. For me to be a good pastor, I need grace. Yeah, because church folks can get on your last nerves. I need the all I need Every hour I need thee. Especially when these church folks get on my nerves. Oh, bless me now, my Savior.

11:56 I come to thee. Yeah, we can be great. Be a good pastor. I need grace to be a good father to my kids, a good grandfather to my kids. Because my kids have done enough stuff in my life for me to have taken them out. I think I told y'all, my daughter told me one time when she got her license, Sarah, when she got her license and she, I said, take your brother, your little brother Joshua to football practice. And she said, why can't you take him? I need the, oh, I need the. I was about to take her out.

12:51 I was about to end it right there. It was going to be over. I needed the Lord the day I found my son, more called Joshua by name, but he was climbing in the window in the middle of the night. Here he come climbing in the window at two or three in the morning.

13:15 I need... He's still here. Thank God he's still alive. I need the grace of God. Thanks be to God, he gave him grace and delivered him and set him free. Humility, it says in this verse, God exalts.

13:50 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. What I love about this passage is that God says, I'm going to do something for you when you humble yourself. I'm going to do the spectacular thing for you. So, that's being in the part of the kingdom. Being great in God's kingdom requires humility, but it also… And in order to have that humility, it leads you to a place of being a servant to others. Amen. Now, go to Matthew chapter 25. Let me read this real quick. Matthew chapter 25, beginning at verse 31. Let me read this real quick, and I'm almost finished already. Take a time.

14:38 Verse 31 of Matthew 25. When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the holy angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate them one from another has a shepherd divides his sheep from the goats.

15:05 Oh, I love that right there. And he will set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then the king will say to those on his right hand, come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Let me read that again. The king will say to those on his right hand, come you blessed of my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world for I was hungry and you gave me food I was thirsty and you gave me drink I was a stranger you took me in I was naked and you clothed me I was sick and you visited me I was in prison and you came to me then the righteous will answer him saying Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and take you in or naked and clothe you? Or when did we see you sick or in prison and come to you? Verse 40, and the king will answer and say to them, assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren. You did it to me. Oh, that's powerful. Jesus says, I'm coming back to establish my kingdom on this planet. I'm going to establish my kingdom, and I'm going to set you to the side, and you will be blessed. You will inherit with everything that goes along with a part of being a part of his kingdom. And they will say to the king, they will ask the question, how did I get here? And he said, because I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty. You gave me drink. I was a stranger. You took me in. I was naked. You clothed me. I was sick. You visited me. I was in prison and you came to me. When? He said, when you did it until the least of these.

17:02 All of us have some least of these people in our lives. All of us, he has somebody who does not consider significant or important or who are the least. And the call of God is for us to serve them. mom so Thank all five of y'all for that rousing amen.

17:34 Our church has won a lot of people to Jesus. And one of the ways we've won them to the Lord is we have many people in this church who have served others. Yeah. Y'all can bring that board out now real quick. Let me talk for a moment about what happened when I became the pastor in 1989. of this church.

18:13 And I did something in 1989 during the church's annual revival that had not been done prior to. Normally during the revival, we have five different preachers, five different choirs singing. We jump and shout, have church. We have church. We have church. The preachers would come in and preach And we'd say to the preacher What did he preach about? I don't know what he preached about But we sure had church And I decided in 1990, rather than doing the traditional five-night revival where nobody remembered the message that the preacher preached to do something different. And I invited a mentor of mine, Dr. Harold E. Tramiel, who was the pastor of the Mount Jesuit Baptist Church, to come in, and he taught us something called Church Alive.

19:14 Amen. Some of y'all, probably most of y'all don't know about that because y'all weren't here. But that was in 1990, November of 1990. and he taught us during that time that the role and the responsibility of ministry was the member's responsibility and not just the pastor's.

19:39 Can I tell you something? If a church grows, it's not because of the pastor. A shepherd can't make sheep. Only sheep make sheep. Thank you. He taught us that the role and responsibility of doing ministry was the responsibility of the members. And he gave an illustration that I've been preaching ever since. Every time I get an opportunity to talk to pastors and talk to churches, this is one of the things I teach him because he asked us a question. He started off with a question. I hope this is going to work right. Let me see if I got it. Hey, it's working. He took a, made a big circle and divided that circle into a pie. And he said, name the problems of the world, of the community. And we just have a few here, teen pregnancy, poverty, crime, single parent household, those drugs, you can slice this pie up into 100 slices.

20:52 So we, he drew a big circle and sliced the pie up, and we named all the problems in Glen Arden. We talked about all of the drama in Glen Arden. We listed the things that's going on in Glen Arden. And so we named all of the issues of what's going on. And then he said this.

21:13 He asked us, what are the auxiliaries in the church? So we named the ushers. You know, that's different from an usher. Those are ushers. We named the choirs. We had eight choirs. We talked about the auxiliaries. We had the Good Samaritan Mint Club. We had the Willing Workers Club. We had just all kind of auxiliaries. South Carolina Club. If you came from South Carolina, you've been to South Carolina Club.

21:42 And all we did, some of y'all don't know, this is the history. of the First Baptist Church of Glenard. Some of y'all don't know this. And all they did was had anniversaries. We had the Willing Workers anniversary. So the announcements would be, this afternoon at 3.30, the Willing Workers would be having their 50th anniversary.

22:06 And they'd have an anniversary. They'd give each other flowers, and we'd have a guest preacher, maybe a concert choir to sing, and then service was over. Then they start planning for the anniversary, for the 51st anniversary for the next year. And that's what all 33 of the auxiliaries we had did, celebrating an anniversary. The choir had an anniversary. Everybody had an anniversary. That's all we did, all these auxiliaries. And then he asked the question, what are these auxiliaries doing to address the needs of the community. do y'all see can y'all tell how the claps are getting lower and lower and lower this was a profound question he was asking what are these auxiliaries doing to serve what are these auxiliaries doing to serve the needs of this community we weren't doing anything it was dead silence that night when he asked a question. It was dead silent. You could hear a pin drop on the carpeted floor.

23:18 Because we weren't doing anything to serve the needs. Matter of fact, out of all of the ministries that was doing anything to serve, there was only one out of the 33 ministries, only one ministry was serving the need. And that was the Sunbeams Choir. And that's because the director of the Sunbeams Choir, Rosie Woodrick. who is still with us today. would take the Sunbeam Choir, for those who don't know, the Sunbeam Choir is the children's choir. She would take the Sunbeam Choir to the nursing home and sing to the nursing home people who live in the family. And that day, our church got changed. Forever.

24:23 because when Dr. Tramiel finished that day that week he taught all week when he finished that week I gave an assignment to every ministry go and find a need in the community to serve And that's what they did. All 33 auxiliaries. First of all, we took the name club off the name of them because they were clubs. The Willing Workers Club, the Good Samaritan Club. They had clubs, and that's what they were, clubs.

25:09 They put ministry. We took the club off what named ministry, and every ministry found a need in the community. As a matter of fact, I told the choir, if y'all can't find a need to serve collectively in the community, we're going to just stop singing. Amen. So when Reverend Trammell came back the following year, 1991, he did Church Alive Part 2. Church Alive Part 2. And he started off on Monday night with the same two pies. But this year when he said, what are the auxiliaries doing to serve the needs of the community? We were ready for him that time. We were ready for him. and the ministry started talking about the places that they had gone. They had gone to nursing homes.

26:02 They had gone to prisons. They had gone to drug places. They had started serving the needs of the community, and it was powerful. They had not only gone to organizations and served those needs, we still do to this day. By the way, we give a report every year at the conclusion of our annual meeting. We give a conclusion. We give a report on all the things that the ministries are doing, and you can go to our website and see it. That's the focus. And I want to re-highlight to our ministries, to our choirs, to our auxiliaries that this is a value of our ministry. This is a cornerstone of what we do while we're doing it. And I'm asking you today, what are you doing to serve the needs of the community? Come on, come on, Pat. And people started standing up telling what they had been doing. And what blessed me that night were the people who stood up and said, my husband died and I had these five kids, but the United Voices Choir came and started cutting my grass.

27:12 And they started bringing us groceries. and the lady stood up and said and now I'm a member of the First Baptist Church of Glenong And when we got through that night, there wasn't a dry eye in the place. Because people had seen how their service to others had made the difference in a person's life. When my wife's, one of my wife's parents died, I can't remember which one, they both passed, but one of them had passed, and Renee Berkley, I don't know if y'all remember, Renee Berkley is the wife of our former youth pastor.

28:15 She came to the door one day with bags of groceries. In other words, she recognized not that we needed food, but we didn't have the time with all that we had, with all the kids, this has been years ago, we had small kids and we were grieving the loss of her parent. She thought enough to go and get groceries so we wouldn't have to go get groceries. I will never forget that for the rest of my life. And my question to you today is can't you find a need in the life of somebody to whom you care about that you can go and serve them? Or is life so much about you and what you want and what your desires are that you don't have time, you don't have energy, you don't have resources, you don't have nothing that you can't take your eyes off of yourself and go bless somebody else, help somebody else, serve somebody else?

29:35 Can't you go cut somebody's grass, bring them some groceries, babysit their kids? Is there something that you might be able to do to make a difference in the life of somebody who you want to see one to the kingdom of God? Can't you do that? That's my challenge to you today.

30:05 You can win somebody to the Lord by just showing that you care by serving. Look at your neighbor, say you can do it. Look on the other side, say yes you can.