Encouraging Sermon on God's Sovereignty

So, I'm not going to talk for too long, but all I want to do is encourage. So awesome when you can preach an encouraging sermon. Of course, all the Word of God is life, but my goal for the couple of minutes that I have is just to fill you all up with encouragement.

How many know encouragement in the world, encouragement in the church are two different things? You know, you think about trying to encourage somebody in the world that's maybe telling them some nice things about themselves, and then that kind of gets you encouraged.

Biblical Encouragement Versus Worldly Encouragement

In the spiritual realm, in the church, of course, in the scriptures, encouragement is completely different. It's about to encourage, it's about to put courage into you. And how many know, it's so funny that the world does this, if you look inside of self, you look at self as your source of encouragement, your own resources, your own capabilities or capacity.

I don't know about you, but I don't get too encouraged, because I look at me and I say, man, I can't do that much. I'm just, I'm a worm. But if you look to God and your eyes are focused vertically upon him, his capabilities, his unchanging qualities, his character, then you can't not be encouraged.

When we go through times when we need to be encouraged, and everybody does, we need to focus upon the Lord, who he is, what he can do. And that will fill us with the courage that he wants us to have, the courage that we need, and the encouragement and the joyful, rejoicing spirit that's about the work of the ministry in whatever capacity that is.

I was a church planner for about five years. I planted a church in City on a Hill called, no, in San Diego, called City on a Hill Church in 2009, and it was awesome. We were wonderful. We didn't grow too big, but God did amazing things through that.

I remember praying for about 10 years before that for my dad to come to know the Lord, and I would just every day be praying, Lord, I just pray that he comes, and you save him by your grace and mercy, and he's inside of the household of faith, and reading the word of God, and worshiping, and during that time, God saved him, God saved my brother, God saved my sister.

It was so funny, if you knew Des before God, my sister Desi before Regenerator, I remember in Bible studies when she would come, she would really get up in my face and tell me that she would never tell anybody that abortion is sin, that she would never tell anybody that homosexuality is sin, but God has so radically saved her now, she's on the front lines of the abortion ministry.

Church Planting, Family Salvation, and God’s Saving Work

So all through that, God was doing wonderful things, refining our character, and I'm so thankful about that time of being a church planner, but how many know church planning is tough? It's hard. It's the most important thing on the earth to do.

The most important people upon the earth doing the most important thing upon the earth are those who are planting churches, right? If we're going to go about fulfilling the Great Commission, which we're going to get into, and proclaiming the Gospel, and being about evangelism, the most important thing that we can do is plant churches.

We need to own that. The church is the light of the world. The Bible says everybody's sitting in darkness, and it's only through the people of God as they preach the word of God, and cooperate and function as the body of Christ, does the light go out.

It has the exclusive message on the planet that saves anyone. It's the most worthwhile and internally important and impactful endeavor that we could ever.

Do.

The church of Jesus Christ is what God is building. The church of Jesus Christ is the only thing that God is truly, solely blessing, and it's worth it. It's worth it, right? It's worth the blood, sweat, toil, death, possibly.

It's worth it because this is what God is doing on the earth, and nothing can thwart His purposes. Everything that is done is going to have not only ramifications here upon the planet, but it's going to have eternal ramifications all throughout eternity.

But like I said, it's tough. It's difficult. I remember when I first planted the church in the conferences that I was going to, it was very romanticized. They didn't really get down to the nit and gritty about how difficult church planting truly is.

But if you go to 2 Corinthians 3, 6 -9, the Apostle Paul gives us a little snapshot of what ministry 101 truly is, 2 Corinthians 6, 3 -10, 2 Corinthians 6, 3 -10. He says this, we put no obstacle in anyone's way so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God, we commend ourselves in every way by great endurance in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech in the power of God, with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for.

The left.

Through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise, we are treated as imposters and yet are true, as unknown and yet well-known, as dying and behold, we live, as punished and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, such an important aspect of that, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing everything.

That's what ministry is. That's what life is in the Christian life. It's not easy. It's something that is difficult. It's something that takes tenacity and endurance and faith and a stick to it spirit.

Is it rejoicing? Of course, but we don't want to sugarcoat it, right? We don't want to represent it in some type of light.

Why?

Because we won't be ready for that difficulty.

Right?

A church plant, I mean, we should dedicate, if you're going to go plant a church, you should dedicate, I think, no less than 100 years of your life into it, right? It takes everything or nothing. Is it wonderful?

Yes.

Do we see God move in miraculous ways?

Yes.

But it can be difficult. And what I want to do is kind of share with you just two important points, not a lot, just two important points that I wish somebody would have shared with me when I was planting, because I know it's going to be extremely helpful and it's something that I learned down the road.

God Alone Produces Salvation and Sanctification

Look at, this is the first point. Listen to this clearly. You, we as Christians are not called, we're not qualified, we are not able in any capacity to produce results. That is not our calling, to produce results.

Did you know that?

And that runs against the grain of so much that you learn out there in the Christian world, because unfortunately what we like to do is take the standards of the flesh, the standards of the world, and kind of integrate them into the Christian life.

And that just wreaks havoc on anything, because you think, man, I don't see things happening. I don't see it the way that I was supposed to see it or the way that I envisioned it. And you can become very discouraged because you think that you must now produce within yourself the results that only God can produce.

Can we save a soul?

No, Jonah 9, sorry, Jonah 2, 9 says, salvation is of the Lord. He is the author of salvation. We cannot save anyone. But if you try to save anyone, you're in trouble, right? What about sanctification?

Is it our job to sanctify people? That word means to become more and more like Christ. It's talking about the lifelong spiritual progression of maturity, no, we can't even.

Do that.

Do we facilitate these things? Absolutely, we do. We're a part of the process, but we are not the author of the results of this process,.

Right?

We can't even sanctify people. In John chapter 17, 17, 17, Jesus praises the father, father, sanctify them in the truth. Salvation and sanctification is all the work of the father. We are not, we're not called to do that.

There's so much pressure in our lives, especially as church planners, as spiritual leaders and workers to, to produce, you know, we look at church like a business that we have to have a certain number of people or we have to have a certain amount of money or be in some certain, you know, level of success that is absolutely outside of anything in the scriptures.

We are not a business. We are not professionals. We don't, we're not supposed to meet some bottom end, you know, deadline or quota. That's the way, you know, I went to church, a lot of church planning conferences before I planted the church.

Like I said, it's amazing because a lot of people say, you know, it's not about numbers, but then you listen to these guys that were speaking and they say, hey, how many, how many churches does your church run?

You know, my church runs. You see what I mean? You get that, that is so proud and that is not, absolutely no way that the church is supposed to work.

Why?

Because all the glory, all the boasting is to go to one and that's God alone for it,.

Right?

But what do we, what do we like to do? We like to, we want to absorb that in ourselves. We want to compete with one another. That is the biggest fight in life. One of the biggest fights of the Christian life is reflecting all the glory to God, not assuming it for ourselves.

Well, we can do that in the Christian church, especially as church planners by, by thinking that it's up to us.

It's not.

It's all for him. He's the one that does it. If we try, if we say, you know what, I don't like the way things are looking, this is not happening based upon my own timetable. I'm going to go out and just do it myself.

You know what we do well as when we try to be God, we gather the tares in. When God sovereignly saves his elect, he gathers the wheat in. So we don't want to do that. And it's such a, such a restful type of understanding because we could just do what God has called us to do, rest in his will, knowing that all of his deeds are righteous.

All that he does is good. And I can sit down and rest only doing that, which he has called me to do. You know, it's, it's wonderful when people start coming to the fellowship. It's wonderful when God saves, it was amazing to see a lot of my own family members say that I'm not telling you that that's what we want to see.

We want to see the, we want to see God's sons and daughters come in here. We want to see people mature into the giftings and callings that in calling that God has given them. But we can also, and this is so important.

This is so important for me to read as I was going through this. We can rejoice in the tough years. We can rejoice in those things because God is working out everything for our good, right? Even through affliction, even through trial, even through the beginning when it's, it's, it's nothing but difficult.

We can rejoice in that. Go to first Peter one, one through seven, first Peter one, one through seven says this Peter and apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles, the dispersion and Pontius Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreign knowledge of God, the father and the sanctification of the spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you.

Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great mercy for he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading kept in heaven for you, who by God's power and being guarded through faith and for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time, listen in this, you rejoice though now for a little while of necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in what praise and glory and honor in the revelation of Jesus Christ.

That just goes to show you, it's good through the good times, it's good to see people saved, it's good to see the church grow numerically, but we can rejoice, the Bible says to rejoice in all things, we can rejoice through this because God is working into us a faith that is to be purified.

So there can be rejoicing in all of it, we have to understand that and let our minds go there when our minds want to take us out and say, if I only could see this or if only this were happening, then I could be content with what God has called me to do.

No, we can actually be content in all things, regardless if it's good or bad or whatever. It's so absolutely important. So our job is not to produce results, don't get trapped into that, that only leads to discouragement and futility, because you can't do it.

But our job number two is just to be faithful. That's the job of the Christian, it's so simple. Our job, what God has called us to do, is to be faithful to His commands. What does that mean? It's just to be obedient.

It's to do what He has commanded and called us to do the best that we can for His glory and in His strength. We're part of the process of it, He causes it, but all we're supposed to do is be successful.

A truly successful Christian church, a truly successful Christian is just a simple servant and someone who's simply obedient to the commands of Scripture, living out the life of Christ. That's what God has called you to do.

And this works in every single aspect of life, as a husband, you're called to be a faithful husband. As a wife, you're called to be a faithful wife. As parents, we're called to be faithful to the Scriptures.

That is what we need to set our minds to. You think about what the early church did, right, what would they do? They would just be faithful to the commands, the Great Commission, right, and they commanded to go into all the world and preach the gospel.

They would be faithful, and what would God do? He would add to the church. He would cause the growth in recognition of their faithfulness to His commands. What do we like to do? We want it to be now, we're microwave people, right?

We want to see results immediately, so we will try to make it happen, and it never works. It never works. We've tried that all throughout the Christian church, and every single error, this happens, but this is something that we have to get away from.

Our job is to be faithful. First Corinthians 4 .2 says, what is required of all stewards or servants is to be found.

Faithful.

We want to hear on that day, well done, good and faithful servant, you did what I commanded you to do. What we like to do is we like to turn to other authorities, and we like to construct other authorities and be submitted to that, but in that, God will not bless it.

It's not something that we can do and expect the Lord to bless anything. God blesses us and expands us and grows us as we are faithful to His word, faithful to evangelize. We water, we sow, First Corinthians chapter 3 says, but God causes the growth.

Our job is to sow and sow and water and water until we're dead. He gets all the glory, right? But there's not going to be a harvest if we don't sow and water. We have to water. We have to sow. We are a part of that process, but we're not the one that causes anything to grow, just as we can only plant the seed in the ground, water the seed, plant the seed in the soil, water the seed.

We can't make a plant grow. We cannot produce the results. We have to be faithful to God, playing our role and trust Him with the results all to His praise and all to His glory. When it comes to evangelism on the island, we have to do what God has called us to do boldly here.

It was kind of crazy being out open air preaching a couple days ago and just lifting up the name of Jesus. I mean, I wasn't too close to the people around there, but I was really confronted by a woman and she said, you know what?

We're out here to have fun. You're just this is not the way you do this. You know, you're abusing the children, which was crazy. You just need to go away. This is kawaii. This is not what we do here. You know what that really is?

It's a it's a spirit here that we cannot allow to deter us from doing what God has commanded us to do. We can't do it. Ohana. There's a lot of great about Ohana, about family, about loving family, about hospitality and in that type of philosophical system of Ohana, there are a lot of good qualities.

But we cannot let Ohana, which really has become an idol upon this island, keep us from boldly proclaiming Jesus Christ to these lost people going to hell. We can't do it. I was kind of thinking about kawaii.

Kawaii is like a cruise ship. So think if you're on this cruise ship, you know, going cruise ship on a river and you're going down this river and nobody knew that there was a waterfall at the end of the river and you're going up to tell everybody, hey, we're about to fall off a waterfall.

And they said, hey, we're on a cruise ship, bro. This is all about just having a good time. This is all about just, you know, let us be you. You do what you do, but don't impose what you're you're saying upon us.

You see, could we do that in that situation? No, regardless of the fact that they wanted their peace and quiet and entertainment and relaxation, that cannot keep us from going directly to them and saying, no, if you don't if you don't, if you don't repent, you're going to you're going to eternally die, right?

It's so important. We cannot let the spirit of Ohana or this this idol of Ohana become the authority that we submit to. How do we do that? We say, if only I could gain the permission of kawaii in its residence.

If only I could make enough relationships first and gain their permission to tell them about Jesus Christ, then that will be the right thing. You know what happens? You are not faithful to the commands of scripture.

You've made another authority system that you're that you're faithful to. No, God has not called us to produce results. God has not called us to do what only he can do in his sovereign will and choice.

God has called us to be faithful. There's a good sermon and I'm almost done here. It's called The Theology of Sleep. I'd really encourage you to look it up on YouTube, but it's in that chapter in the Book of Mark where it says the farmer plants the seed, waters the seed and he goes to sleep.

He sleeps and he trusts the fact that it's going to grow based upon God's good time and.

God's good will.

So encourage yourself, be encouraged regardless of what happens, regardless of what God is going to do, is going to do. So let's fix our minds on the role that he's called us to and not be diverted into some activity that we simply can never do.

That'll wear us out.

Right.

Faithful Evangelism and Bold Witness in a Hostile Culture

Let me go ahead and pray. Father, I thank you for this time that I could spend before my brothers and sisters. I thank you for this, this church that you've planted here, this wonderful thing that you're doing in Kapaa.

Lord, I, Lord, through all of what I said, we do pray for souls. We want you to save your sons and your daughters on this island. We want you to do that. We would ask you to do that, Lord Jesus, bring them to yourself and bring them to this fellowship.

Lord, I pray for Pastor Claudie and Shelly, Christian and Esther and everybody else. I pray that you would encourage them, strengthen them, protect them, Lord. Let them be always rejoicing in any type of thing that you're doing, good or bad or difficult or easy, whatever it may be.

We can always rejoice because we know always that you're working for our good, that your purposes will never be thwarted. Lord, your church is going to become even more increasingly powerful, not only in this world, Lord, but we know on this island, we won't rest.

We won't stop until once again, this island is completely under your feet, under your dominion. But we'd ask that you'd help us. It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Amen. Amen.