Welcome to the Liberty Baptist Sermon Archives.
The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist
Church in Easton, MA. You can find out more about us
or contact us at my libertybaptist.org or just look
us up on Facebook. And now we hope that this
message from God's Word will be a blessing to you.
As I was saying, you know what, I wasn't sure exactly how to
proceed because we were in the middle.
We hadn't quite gotten to the middle of a message last week,
but then had to stop the message where it was.
And so I was just trying to seek the Lord's wisdom on what to do.
And really, I feel the best way for us to proceed this evening
is to go ahead and, well, start back from the beginning.
Because I don't know really how much anyone remembers from the
sermon last week or where we were.
And so I've gone over it again and kind of made some changes
here or there. But at the same time, I think
that we need to start back from where were if you were, if you
were here rather last week. And you say some of this sounds
familiar. Well, praise the Lord, you
remember some of it from last week.
But at the same time, I do think it's best for us to just start
right back from where we were, which is in First Corinthians
chapter #3 and in saying that for first Timothy chapter 3,
verse 15 says, But if I tarry long that thou mayest know how
thou oughtest to behave thyself in the House of God, which is
the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the
truth. And there are many places in the
Bible where church is called the House of God, isn't it?
In fact, we are reminded that this is not our house.
This is not Rivero's house. This is not your house.
This is God's house. And it's good for us to remember
that once in a while because it helps us to know how to behave
ourselves within the house. And well, we know that in life,
when you're in someone's house, you follow those people's rules,
don't you? If the the kind of family that
wants you to take your shoes off when you go in the house, you
make sure you have the socks on that don't have holes and you
take your shoes off when you go to their house.
You know, if you go to someone's house and you know they want to
serve you a meal and you say, well, can we bring something and
say, no, please don't bring anything.
We have everything provided, you know, well, this is their house.
And so I'm going to follow their rules because this is what they
desire. Well, here in God's house, we
can't do anything but what well, God wants us to do.
We behave ourselves in a way that God would desire us to
behave ourselves. And that's one of the reasons we
call this God's house. Well, in our text tonight, we
see something that is a reminder that in some ways is even more
powerful than simply calling this the House of God.
And certainly, again, that is a biblical term to call this
church the House of God. But we're given a reminder of
what's really at stake when we come to church.
We're given a reminder of why church is really so important
when we look at our text because we're going to find that not
only could we literally call the church the House of God, but we
can also call it this as well, the temple of God.
Now we don't often call our church a temple, do we?
In fact, that we don't say that we're going to temple on Sunday.
We say we're going to church. We there are churches that used
to be called Baptist Temple. We mentioned last week that
there was Holbrook Baptist Temple that is now Lighthouse
Baptist Church. I interned in Missouri years ago
at a church called Holden Baptist Temple, a town, 2000
people. But we could call this tonight
Liberty Baptist Temple and still be biblical.
And there's a reason why that term is so important.
There's a reason why that term is good for us to understand and
use. And there's a reason that it
shows us why what we do here is so vitally important and why
being in the temple of God, why being in the House of God, why
being in church is so important. It really all comes from 2
verses. So as we continue our study of
First Corinthians chapter 3, we're to read verses 16 and 17.
And it says this, Know ye not that ye are the temple of God,
God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.
If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.
For the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.
Now as we get into our message this evening, and we'll see
first of all, tonight as we if you have your prayer bulletin,
you can write this down on the back of your prayer bulletin.
First of all, we see the privilege of church, the
privilege of church. Now, just to go back and
reiterate something that we talked about last week.
You might have a little bit of confusion here.
You say, pastor, I thought when we talk about the temple of God
is specifically in First Corinthians, isn't that talking
about our bodies being the temple of God?
But you're saying that in this verse, it's actually talking
about the church being the temple of God.
And my answer to you is that's absolutely correct, that the
Word of God does refer to our bodies as being the temple of
God. But at the same time, I believe
the context here in First Corinthians chapter #3 very
clearly is talking about us assembling together, us being a
local church, that in this assembly that we comprise the
very temple of God. And the way that I want to kind
of show you that is keep your space there, but go just a
couple pages over to 1st Corinthians chapter #6.
So turn to 1st Corinthians chapter #6 and verse #19.
Now you may very likely be familiar with these verses.
These are great verse. I can't wait to get to these.
You're in our study several months from now.
I think this will be good, but look at what it says First
Corinthians 619 What know ye not that your body is the temple of
the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have of God, and ye
are not your own, for ye are bought with the price.
Therefore, glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which
are gods. I believe right here in this
text, it is showing us that yes, your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost. Now, why is that important?
Well, it's important because when we use the word temple, the
word temple literally means a dwelling place.
That's what it means. That's why when you were to go
to the Old Testament, you found that the temple that was built
by Solomon, that temple was a location where God had dwelled,
not that God didn't dwell other places.
We know God is omnipresent. We know He's everywhere, but God
had deemed himself to be able to be there in front of the people
of Israel. There in that temple.
It was called the temple. It was the dwelling place of
God. The ark of the Covenant was
there, the physical representation of God.
It was the temple. It's where God dwelled.
If you just want to put it in his most basic terms, the temple
is where God dwelt. Well, let me ask you, are you
saved this evening? All right, So make sure you're
awake. All right, that's good.
If you're saved this evening, guess what the Holy Spirit we
just covered this Sunday morning, He dwells within you
The moment you got saved. I mean, the second you got
saved, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of God.
He's the earnest of your inheritance.
He's the down payment of eternity in heaven that lives
within you this day. If you know Jesus Christ your
Savior, meaning what? That you are a temple of God in
the sense that your body is the temple of which God resides,
that you have God himself living in you.
And again, I mentioned on Sunday, I'll mention again
tonight, we can't get over that. We can't allow ourselves to get
to the place where it's commonplace that the Holy Spirit
lives within us, that the God of all creation lives within us.
So we are the temple of the living God.
But yet I would also submit to you that in First Corinthians
chapter #3 we also see that it calls the body of the church the
temple as well. Now I gave you a little bit of a
tutorial last week, but I actually have a visual for this
week. When we look at our King James
bottle. You ever hear people say this?
You know, you can't read that old King James bottle.
There's these and thou's and ye yees and all these things.
And, and listen, I understand that that can sometimes be a
little bit of a hardship, but it's not quite as difficult as
often times people make it out to be.
And understanding what thee and thou and ye and you are in the
word of God helps you to make sure that you're reading the
Bible, you're reading it in context.
You're making sure you're understanding who certain things
are written to. Well, what we see is the word
the and thou is singular. You know where you find a lot of
these and thous in epistles like first and Second Timothy and
Titus. Now, why would that be?
Because Paul is talking to one man.
He's talking to one man specifically.
And that one man, Timothy, or that one man Titus, he is going
to tell them the things that they need to do.
There's going to be a lot of these and now's there.
Now, how do you remember this? And we saw this last week.
We saw that at that letter T, What's there's one line on top,
isn't there? That one line on the top of the
letter T reminds you that it is a singular word.
It is a singular in the sense that it's talking to one person.
The word ye and you is plural. And we see that because, well,
look, there's two lines on top, isn't remember I remember I said
this last week that we could do this, but we can't do this, this
or this, right? OK, but this, there's two lines,
right? Those two lines remind us that
it is plural. Now go back to verse #19 it says
what? Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Ghost, which is in you, which you have
of God, and ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price.
Therefore God glorify God in your body, in your spirit, which
are gods. Those words, those ye words.
There are telling us that he is talking in the plural and he
said, well pastor, I thought you said this was talking about our
body, right. He is giving a command to the
church plural that they are to take care of their bodies in a
way that is honoring to God in the singular.
It would be as if me saying you as a church, you ought to pray
you as a church you ought to, I'm talking corporately to
everybody, but I'm talking to you singularly.
And so he's saying, hey, you church, listen up, take care of
your bodies. By the way, we're not just
talking about bodies like hey, make sure you eat right.
Make sure you exercise. Remember, bodily exercise
profits little. We love that Bible verse, don't
we? But we do know this, listen,
that you got to take care of yourself spiritually because
therefore glorify God in your body, in your spirit, which are
gods, meaning this you don't belong to yourself.
That you have been bought with a price.
And so he is telling all of them, listen, glorify God in
your body. Now go back to first Corinthians
chapter #3 and we'll stay here. The context of that is, hey, you
all, you take care of yourself spiritually because God dwells
within you. Now, all chapter of chapter #3
and I know not everyone was here for all of chapter 3.
He's talking to the church corporately.
He says this, you are carnal. He says this, you are weak.
He says you are fleshly. You're doing the things that you
want to do instead of doing the things that you ought to do.
He says, I want to talk to you like you're mature Christians,
but I can't. I want to give you strong meat.
I want to give you a porterhouse steak, but all I can give you is
milk because that's all you spiritually can handle.
And so he talks about them constantly, constantly as a
group all throughout the chapter.
And then we get to verse #16 and he says, know ye not that ye are
the temple of God? In the context here, don't you
know you all are the temple of God?
And there's no mention about a body.
There's no mention about an individual.
It's all corporate. You all are the temple of God
and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you.
So what does that mean to us tonight?
Well, the privilege of the church for us this evening is
this, that we as a body of believers are the temple of God
and that the Spirit of God dwells within us tonight.
Yes, the Spirit dwells within each of us as believers, yes,
but also he dwells within us corporately.
Listen, whatever the count is for the attendance tonight,
Dave, I know made the count. I'm not asking you for it right
now, I'll check it later. But I do know this.
We could rightly count one more. Why?
Because the Lords amongst us tonight.
Then that ought to make us excited, that ought to make us
thrilled that when we come here this evening that the Lord is
amongst us. And this idea isn't just
something that's supported here, it's support in other Bible
texts as well. Ephesians chapter 2.
Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone in whom all
the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy
temple in the Lord, in whom you have builded together for
inhabitation of God through the Spirit. 1st Corinthians 2 or
rather first Peter chapter 2 verse 5, ye also as lively
stones are built up into a spiritual house, a holy
priesthood to OfferUp sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus
Christ. You know, this is not an Old
Testament temple. We don't have to offer
sacrifices in the Old Testament way anymore.
Why? Because Jesus Christ is our
sacrifice. He is the one perfect sacrifice
for our sin. And thank God for that.
But I will tell you this, this evening in the New Testament
time that we live in here, First Corinthians chapter #3 we see
this, that when we come together, listen, it says that
we are the temple of God and the Spirit dwells with us.
And it's interesting that Paul says this, know ye not?
And he starts that phrase kind of like saying, don't you know
this already? Shouldn't you know that the
Lord's already amongst you? Shouldn't you know that He wants
to work within your midst? And again, He's pointing out
their spiritual immaturity that it talks about in verse #1 But
he says you are the temple of God, the temple meaning the
dwelling place. And you could even go back to
the Tabernacle, which was different in form but not in
function. In the Tabernacle, that movable
temple, if you will, that move from place to place throughout
the wilderness, and then from place to place in the promised
land until the temple was built. But that's where the presence of
God was. It was the dwelling place.
Again, not that God only existed in that place, He's omnipresent,
but God chose this as his dwelling place for man to
recognize and for man to honor. The Tabernacle, the temple, it
was the place where God dwelt. It was a place that was special.
It was a place that was different.
Listen, you didn't act in the temple like you did in your
home. You didn't act in the temple
like you did in the market. No, no, you understood that the
temple was special. You understood that the temple
was different. And again, I'm not drawing
drawing an equivalent to our church and the Old Testament
temple. But I will tell you this, that
the Lord dwells amongst us here tonight, and that makes this
church a special place. And that makes God's churches
that preach the word of God a special place because the Lord
dwells among them and dwells among us as well.
And the fact that this is the God's temple reminds us that
God's presence is literally with us.
The Spirit of God dwells in you. Now listen, I've already alluded
to this, but does God dwell everywhere?
Yeah. Could I even put it this way?
Does God's is God within? Let me make sure I make sure I'm
reading this to make sure I'm saying this the way that I want
to say it. Is God at an Islamic mosque in
the sense that can they keep him out from being everywhere?
No. Is he in it?
He is not. Is there anywhere where God is
not allowed to be? If he is not allowed to be a
certain place, then, well, he's not God.
But is he working in the Islamic mosque?
No. Is he at work in the Hindu
temple? Is he at work in the false
practitioners or the false gospel?
No. What it says here is that He is
in US, He's dwelleth in you, meaning this, that He is
promising us and empowering an intimate relationship, that He
wants to work with us. You know he's at the Islamic
mosque. You know what he's doing?
He's working against them and they're false gospel.
Oh, he's at the Hindu temple, but he's working against them.
Why? Because He wants to draw all men
unto him, the only true God, not the false gods that are out
there. No, I know some of you get
worried for a second or thought I was trying to trick you.
No, no, I'm not trying to trick you.
I'm not sure, but I'm saying this.
Listen, you think the Muslims can kick God out of any space?
I don't give them that much power and neither should you.
Do you think any false religion can kick God out?
Or any atheist that says God's not welcome here?
Do you think God says, well, I guess, I guess I better leave
this space. Not my God, not the God of the
Bible, but is God working in them and through them?
No, no, God's working in opposition to them.
Why? To try to bring them to him.
But God is with us tonight, and he's not just here in the sense
that he's everywhere. He's in this room to intimately
work in this space. This is why this is so
important. When the Bible is opened, people
can get saved. And if it was up to me and my
bumbling ways, nobody would come here.
Nothing would work, nothing would grow.
In fact, I probably could push people away from the gospel.
But listen, it's the Spirit that changes lives and it's the
Spirit that's amongst us. And we have the privilege of
being in a place where, where God wants to work.
And listen, I think sometimes we get down on ourselves like,
well, you know, we're, this is a metal building.
It's a rented facility. Well, we're a small church and
all the things that that maybe you've said before, and I've
said them before too, and times of discouragement or times of
not think, well, well, what can we do around here?
Well, we don't have much. We can't even park people around
here the way we want to park people.
We can't even fit people in here.
Sometimes the way we want to fit people.
There are churches, they have hundreds and hundreds that are
preaching false gospels and look at us and you can get a little
bit discouraged about it. But listen, do you realize that
when you walk into this building that the Spirit of God dwells
amongst us, that we don't have to hold our heads down and say,
well, what could happen around here?
Somebody's life could change. What could happen around here
the the next great revival could take place.
That comes from what happens here.
We think, well, that really can't happen.
Well, listen, we were just talking about this before
service. I don't know that there is a
worldwide revival left in us anymore.
I don't know this, but I know this.
There can be revivals for individuals and lives and that
people can get saved and the Lord's hand hasn't.
Listen, as long as the Lord hasn't returned yet, there's
time and God can work in this building and people can raise
their hands and people can get saved and things can change.
Why? Because of us?
No, I mean, in spite of us, but because of him and he's here.
Well, you know, I go to a small church and maybe you've said
that to somebody for that. You're already apologizing
before they come. Like the guy that said once,
well, that's the colt in the trailer.
You know, it's, it's like, listen, it's not a trailer, all
right? And it's funny that I took
offense to that part and not the cult part because we're not a
cult either. But you know what I'm saying?
But it's like the, this is not a trailer.
You can't pick it up and hitch it and go anywhere.
Listen, the Spirit of God's with us and the power that is
available to us is unbelievable. Listen, whatever you think the
big churches have, unless I'm not against big churches, as
long as they preach, right? Thank the Lord when churches
grow and they preach right? But there are some that aren't
preaching, right? And that's why they grow.
Listen, we don't have to look sorry for ourselves.
We don't, you know, what do you have to offer in your church?
Well, we got singing. We have preaching.
Well, tell me about your programs.
We have kids programs on Sunday morning.
What else? We have singing.
Did I mention the same part? And we have preaching and we
kind of get down on ourselves a little bit, kind of like, well,
who are we or what do we have? We are the temple of God, and
there's power. There's power not because of us,
but because of Him. And the early Church understood
this. They expected things to happen.
And listen, I understand that that there were miracles that
took place during that time because God was still was still
in the process of authenticating the speakers who were preaching
because there was no completed word of God.
The 66 books that we have here, like there was there wasn't that
in the book of Acts. And so God was authenticating
some of those preachers through miracles.
I understand that. But listen, although God may not
work in that same visible way that we would see during those
times, God still very much at work today.
You say, pastor, did miracle cease?
I didn't say miracle ceased. God's doing miracles today.
Look at this, someone gets saved.
That's a miracle. If someone we pray for here on
Wednesday night comes and walks down the aisle on Sunday or
catches me at the door and says I need to get saved, they bow
their head and trust Christ, that's a miracle.
When a marriage is restored because of what happens in the
House of God, that's a miracle. When a family comes and heals,
that's a miracle. When when, when people drop
awful sinful lifestyles and end up following Christ, that's a
miracle. That's a miracle.
And that happens in this building.
That happens in this room. Listen, you can't afford to miss
it. You can't afford to not be a
part of what God's doing. Well, yes, you're saying that
because you're the pastor. You're saying that because you
think, you know that everything revolves around your church.
No, no, I'm saying that because everything revolves around him.
And if we want to see change in our lives and we want to see
change in our cities and we want to see change in our nation,
listen, it's got to start in the House of God.
It has to start with us believing that God can do
something in the temple of God. That's not just the House of
God, but He is with us. Man, it's awesome that God put
us here. He placed us here.
We first Corinthians 12, we'll get there like in a couple years
or so, I don't know. But First Corinthians 12, he
fitly framed us together. He put us together to do the
work. He's called us a bunch of
nobodies, but in Jesus Christ that we're somebody because of
who he is. That's a privilege.
And that's the privilege that we have.
Oh yeah, right there. The privilege of the church.
But in saying that, with that privilege comes a lot of
responsibility. We love the privilege, but the
privilege does bring responsibility upon us.
And that's the next verse. And so as we look at that, we
see the protection of the church as well.
Look at verse #17 if God is a holy God, then his temple is to
be holy as well. Be holy because I am holy.
Well, pastor, I just don't believe.
You know, once you get saved, it's important that you live a
holy life. You know, I could see how you
could arrive at that conclusion if you discarded the whole
Bible. But there's no way by reading
the Bible you can come to that conclusion.
Because if we're the temple of the Holy Ghost, well then we
need to be clean, not perfect. But when we do sin, you know,
faithful and justice, He forgive us our sins that cleanse us from
all righteous. We confess it before the Lord.
We get it right. But look at what it says in
verse #17 if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God
destroy. For the temple of God is holy.
Which temple you are. He says this.
I want to remind you who you are.
You're the temple of God. You need to be holy.
And God takes that holiness seriously.
Listen, if I could put it this way, we're not to drag mud into
his house. Say, oh, pastor, so you just
expect everybody that goes to church should be perfect.
And if I expected that, then we'd all have to leave,
including your pastor. Listen, this is not a museum for
Saints. It's a hospital for sinners.
You need to be able to come here when you're running low.
You need to be able to come here when you're running on empty.
You need to be able to come here when you're not right with God.
But why do you come? So that you have the purpose of
getting right with God. You know, we want everyone to
come because we want them to get right with God.
But we do realize that once we are, once we know Jesus Christ
as our Savior, listen, church works a lot better when we're
all right with God. It would do us a lot of good,
myself included. Instead of wait until the
invitation to confess what's not right with the Lord, maybe we
should confess it before we get to church to make sure we're
right. And if we're not?
So you say, well, pastor, if I'm not right, I should stay home.
No, we want you to be here. But we love you enough to tell
you we want you to be right with God.
We're not going to sugarcoat the word of God to try to make you
feel better. We're also not going to kick you
when you're down, but we will tell you this, We'll tell you
this, that getting right with God is the best thing that you
can do for your life, whatever your situation is.
Why? Because this is a holy place.
And again, I want to be so careful in how I present this
because I want people to know that whatever situation you're
in, in life, if you're down, you're discouraged, you're
hurting, you're in sin, you need to be in the House of God
because this is where change happens.
God wants you to be here. Please don't mistake what I'm
saying, but I'm also saying this, maybe we shouldn't be so
casual with that which God is called holy, that maybe we
shouldn't be so casual within ourselves of that which God
calls holy, and that this is a special and a sacred place.
This Church of Corinth, listen, they were a mess.
We've only seen a little bit of it so far.
We know the fractions. We know fighting.
It's only going to get worse. We're going to find out in
chapter 5 some of the lewd and despicable things that are
happening. And it just keeps going on and
getting worse as the chapter as the book goes along.
But you know what's interesting to me, as bad as this church
was, he didn't say that you should be the temple of God.
He said you are the temple of God.
He reminded them of their calling.
He reminded them of who they were in him.
And so please don't misunderstand me.
You know, we want to make sure that everyone comes to the House
of God and gets what they need from the Lord.
We want to make sure that we don't ever give off the
impression that if someone's struggling with their faith, if
someone's struggling with sin, that they are not welcome in the
House of God. Man, we want you to be here and
we want you to get right with God.
But I also want to say this, that there is a thought process
today of you know what, let's just be like the world so more
people can come to church. And I believe this text shows us
that is the exactly wrong way to reach the World.
Well, listen, you want to reach the World, you got to be like
them. I would submit to you, the Word
of God says that if you want to reach the World, you have to be
different, not like the world. Even as a church, I want to be
careful that we say, well, you know, we just want to make
people feel comfortable. And so we don't really want to
talk about these things and we don't want to cover these
subjects and we don't want to, you know, listen, just whatever,
it's just, you know, whatever. We're just glad people come and
we are glad people come. But I will say this.
Do you know what ought to mark a true New Testament church?
You know, what ought to be the difference?
What really ought to make us to stand out as that?
When people come in these doors, they're more loved here than
they are any other place on earth.
They ought to be more loved with the love of Christ than they are
anywhere. That doesn't mean we don't
preach on sin. That doesn't mean we don't
preach on righteousness. That doesn't mean we conceal the
gospel. No, we do all those things.
But the minute they walk through those doors, they should say,
wow, this is different. This isn't like going to the
gym. This isn't like going to the bar
room. This isn't like going to the
social club. This isn't like going somewhere
else. This, this is different.
What makes it different? The Lord's here and the Lord's
working in these people. If we want to be different,
that's the way we need to be different.
That when someone walks through these doors, they feel the
Spirit of Christ and they feel the Spirit of Christ working
through us to be able to show them Jesus Christ.
The Lord protects his church. I think of the temple, really
the Tabernacle. Nadab and Abaihu offered what
the Bible called strange fire. I believe they were drunken.
There could be many explanations for what it was.
I know this. What they were doing in the
Tabernacle was exactly opposite of what they were called to do
as priests. That is unarguable.
They died. I think of the early Church.
I think of Ananias and Sapphira. They gave an offering and the
fact of the matter was that they did not have trouble because
they withheld part of the offering.
I don't believe they were required to give the entire
amount of the sale of the land to the church.
But what they did in front of the whole church is they lied
about it not just once, but twice.
And the Bible says he lied to the Holy Ghost and what
happened? They died.
Now, I certainly, I'm not saying that any type of consequences
are going to take place in our church or any other church
today. That's not for me to say.
But I will say this, the word of God says this.
There are grave consequences when someone does something to
harm God's church. And I'm not trying to be
cultish. I'm not trying to be weird here.
I'm not saying that that I am some kind of leader that can
never be questioned or can never be talked to.
I certainly hope that you all have been around me enough to
know that I want to have dialogue and I do want to talk
with people and I'm willing to talk with people to disagree
with me. I'm very glad to have all those
things. But I will say this, that God
makes it clear that He protects His church.
Why? Because it's His church.
We don't bring in bad doctrine. We don't bring in our own ideas.
We don't bring in our own thought process.
That includes the pastor. I've said before, if I end up
coming and changing my doctrine from this church, you all have a
responsibility to fire me. Some of you a little excited
about that. Now think about it was expecting
that many amends at that part necessarily, but no, if my
doctrine changes and listen, there are churches where this
happens. I can give you example after
example where the pastor just gets older and he's tired of
fighting. He's tired of of contending for
the faith and just wants to go with the flow because he's just
tired of the whole thing. And just, well, maybe if I just
preach a few flowery messages, everybody will be happy.
You know, listen, we all have a responsibility to say this.
This is God's church and we have to protect it.
And if we don't, God does and he says so right here.
But that brings us to the thought that I really, I want to
mention to you tonight, I really don't want to leave with you
tonight, which is this. And I mentioned a few moments
ago that we should be serious about what God calls sacred man.
I love having fun at church. I do.
If you can't, if you can't smile or laugh at church, I mean, you
got a problem. You know, we ought to be able to
be joyful here, right? I mean, if you can't be joyful
in church, where can you be joyful?
But I will say this, it's a serious place in the sense that
lives change here, your life can change here, my life can change
here. And anytime those doors open,
and anytime the Word of God is open and the Spirit of God moves
amongst us, there's the potential that someone or
someone's life could change, not just for this life, but for
eternity. And that ought to excite us.
They ought to excite us that we're not just here just patting
ourselves on the back and having a good time, but that.
But no, what happens here has real eternal consequences
because the Lord's amongst us. So we should be serious about
the fact that his power makes this place unlike anywhere else
on the planet. There's no place like God's
church. There's no place like it.
We should be serious about our attendance.
Why? Because God's with us, the Bible
says even more so as we see the day approaching.
There's some wonderful articles in the Baptist Times, if you had
an opportunity to grab them, about why it's important that we
have the services that we have because it's so helpful for us
to be able to be here and to grow and to learn.
It's so much more that, listen, we don't need less Bible now.
We need more with what's going on in this world.
You think we need to retreat from where we are as believing.
No, we need more of the Bible, not less.
Be serious about holiness in God's church.
Again, not looking for people to be perfect, not telling you that
if you don't have the unless you have everything figured out, not
to come to church because if that was the case, nobody ever
go to church. But saying this Lord, is my
heart tender enough when I come in the House of God that if you
point out anything to me that's not right that I'll confess it.
That's a good place to start or show me the wicked way within
me. Psalm 51, Just show me the
wicked way. I'll be glad to confess it.
We ought to be serious about supporting His church.
It needs support. The Bible calls on us and our
tithes and offerings. If you're a member of Liberty
Baptist Church, again, not to harp on this, I've mentioned it
before, but God's called us to support this effort so that we
can go and do the things that God has called us to do.
We ought to be serious about bringing other people to it.
I've loved the visitors that we've had now for months.
I would was counting it up in the the book, the record book
that the the guys keep out of the last 16 or 17 weeks, we've
had visitors every week. But I think two or three.
That's great. Let's keep bringing people to
church. Why?
Because it's unlike any other place on earth.
Is the church perfect? Yes.
No, no, wait, no. That wasn't in there.
You know why this church isn't perfect?
One reason I know the pastor. This church isn't perfect.
In fact, if the church was to be perfect, we'd all have to
evacuate. It's not.
I would tell you this. It's special.
And why is it special? The Lord's with us.
Doesn't matter if there's metal. It doesn't matter if it's
rented. It doesn't matter if it's big or
small. Is the Lord here?
Then, man, we're in good shape. I'll leave you with this
presidential airplane, Air Force One.
You know, when we think of Air Force One, we think of that
Boeing jet with the white and the blue, that that's what we
think of when we think of Air Force One.
But technically, that in and of itself is not the only Air Force
One. I don't know if you're aware of
this, but Air Force One is the call sign for whatever airplane
the president happens to be on. So it could be that jet, which
typically it is nowadays, but I was doing a little bit of
research and I saw that back in the 60s, Lyndon Johnson, LBJ, at
times would fly on a prop plane from Austin to his cattle ranch
in Texas. And every time he was in that
little tiny plane, it was called Air Force One.
And I think Air Force One. I don't think of a prop plane.
I think of that jumbo jet where basically everything can take
place in just that one little place in the middle of the sky.
But what makes the place, what makes the plane special, if you
will, is not what the plane was made of, but who was inside the
plane. I look at 800 Washington St.
You know what I see? I see cracks in the concrete.
I see weeds that I can't kill no matter how hard I try.
The entire summer. I see places where water seeps
in at every rainstorm, just about.
I see carpet that probably should have been replaced about
12 years ago. I see classrooms that aren't
everything that I've wanted them to be.
I see a kitchen that has a breaker that goes off every
single time we use the microwave.
But I also see this a special place where God is.
Why? Because of this, because of him,
listen, don't, don't discount the importance of church.
He's here with us. This is not just the House of
God. It is the temple of God, which
is a derivative of the title House of God.
But He dwells in us. He's not just here like he's
everywhere. He's here and he's intimately
and actively working among us. And that ought to thrill every
single one of us and cause us to serve Him.
Thank you for listening to the sermon from the pulpit of
Liberty Baptist Church. If this message was a blessing
to you, or if there's any way we can serve you, please let us
know by contacting us at info@mylibertybaptist.org.
Or you can visit us this Sunday at 800 Washington St. in Easton,
MA. May the Lord bless you as you
grow in His Word.