Before I pray the prayer of illumination, as it's called in the bulletin, I would like to thank you for your prayers for us. I understand from talking to some of you folks that you have prayed for us with some regularity on Wednesday nights, and we deeply appreciate it. almost brought tears to my eyes the other night when someone told me that, and I really appreciate it. And I don't take such things for granted. So if words mean anything, thank you very much for both of us for your prayers for us, because we certainly need them. Let's pray and ask the Lord to be with us in a very personal way. Our Father and our God, best of fathers, would you come among your people this evening and send your Holy Spirit We are a needy people, not because we're any worse than anybody else, but we've seen enough of our remaining sin to grieve us. And we know that sin can clog our heart and our mind. And if you don't work, two and two will be five, two and two will be 87, but it will never be four because Sin will clog the workings of the Word of God, and we need the illumination of the Holy Spirit. Turn the lights on in our hearts and our minds. Lord, for those who are outside of Christ, make the truth compelling to them. For those who are believers already, would you encourage them greatly? We ask these things solely for the honor and glory of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. If you please turn your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 4, You see the title of this message in the bulletin, and what we're going to be looking at is what does God expect of you over the course of your life? You know, when I was a sophomore in high school, I just wanted to be a junior. I didn't really have real long goals. But as you get a little older, get out in the world, you want to see things happen in your life. What do you want to see happen in your life? What do you want to see accomplished? And even a better question is, what do you hope to accomplish in the Lord? What do you think the Lord wants of you over the course of your life? This passage in 1 Corinthians 4, Paul's gonna be helping us to deal with that. So let's read God's word and see what he says. 1 Corinthians 4 1-5. Let a man so consider us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, or on top of that, it is required in stewards that one be found faithful. But with me it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you. or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself, for I know of nothing against myself, yet I am not justified by this. But he who judges me is the Lord. Therefore, judge nothing before the time until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the counsels of the hearts. Then each one's praise will come from God. It's always important when looking in the Bible to understand the context. There's a saying I like to repeat, a text without a context becomes a pretext. What does that mean? Sounds clever, what does that mean? The Bible says there is no God. Categorically states there is no God. If you're sitting here today and believe yourself to be an atheist, you go, see, I told you. It says in the Bible there's no God. Now the context will give some illumination. It says in Psalm 14 and a couple other places, the fool says in his heart, There is no God. So context does make a difference, doesn't it? So what's the context of our text here? Paul's writing to his high-maintenance child. Sometimes in large families, you'll have one child who uses up more of your time and energy than others. We sometimes call them high-maintenance children. And don't look around at your kids and start nudging them, okay? We want to keep this civil. There's a good commentary on 1 Corinthians called 20 Problems That Almost Killed a Church, because Paul had to address 20 things to the Corinthian church. How would you like an apostle to sit down with you and say, here's 20 areas of your life that need to shape up? I mean, I would be overwhelmed. But Paul is addressing, in the first three chapters, just the beginning of some of the problems. For example, people were dividing up in cliques. You know, we really like to hear Paul preach. Uh-uh, we like to hear Apollos preach. And then the more spiritual people said, we just like Christ. Okay, well, you had people dividing up into little subgroups over their personalities. And then there was the concerns of the wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of God. Well, you know, some of these things these people tell us, these so-called apostles, they don't really jive with what we hear in the culture. You know, what's going on here? I don't understand some of the things these apostles tell us. And so Paul has to rebuke them and say the wisdom of the world is nothing. And in fact, the things the world values are not important to God. And then he has to remind them that, you know, apart from the Holy Spirit's help, you're not going to get this. The things of the Spirit of God are foolishness to the natural mind, to the mind unaided by the supernatural grace of God. And that's why I said in my prayer, for the unbeliever, even reading the Bible, two and two will prove to be four, five, excuse me, or 87, but it will never be four because remaining sin twists a person's mind and they can't get it unless the Holy Spirit helps them. So he has to remind them that the things of the spirit of God are foolishness and they require supernatural revelation, supernatural insight, supernatural grace. So that's the context leading up to chapter four. And in chapter four, he's gonna talk to them about how would you evaluate a person? How would you evaluate your life? He's talking about himself as an apostle. You go, I'm not an apostle. So I can just doze off during this message. Well, I think that'd be superficial because although he says in verse 2, it's required of stewards that one be found faithful. And you go, well, I'm not an apostle. That's true. But I would think virtually every person in this room is a steward of something or someone. For example, if you're a man, if you're a husband, Your wife is your stewardship, something entrusted to you by God. You have to give an account on Judgment Day. What did you do with the wife I gave you? Are you Ephesians 5 husband? If you're a wife, well, I gave you a husband that you're to minister to. I gave you children. And if you're a mother, and so there's a stewardship. You go, hey, I'm just single. You have your own life as a Christian. You have your stewardship before God. You probably have responsibilities at your work or if you're in school, and that's a stewardship that God's entrusted to you. What are you doing with it? Are you burying it in the ground, or are you really doing something with what he's entrusted to you? And I could go on and on. You could say, well, I'm in eighth grade. I'm a sophomore in high school. Well, school's your stewardship. Being a Christian kid, if you're a professing Christian, is a stewardship. If you're a senior citizen like I am, you kind of go, well, you know, I just have a bumper with a sticker that says I'm spending my children's inheritance or something responsible like that. That's probably not the best stewardship I could think of. You have a stewardship that God's given you with your life and the end of your life. God didn't give you years of not encumbered by a regular job in order to squander it on yourself, but he expects you to invest whatever's left of your life in the responsibilities he's entrusted to you. Your spouse, if they're still alive, your children, your grandchildren, your community, your church, we all have responsibilities. So you have a stewardship and God says it's required of stewards that they be found faithful. And I'm going to begin this evaluation by what does the world think is a measure of your success? Let's fast forward X number of years and you're ready to pass on, to die, to check out. How would your life be evaluated? What would God think of your life? What measure would he use? Now, you can think, well, I've been reading ahead and you've already talked about being faithful a couple of times, so I get that's the point. But in light of the world you and I live in, the world that's always wooing you, the world that's always doing an Obi-Wan on you, these aren't your droids. These aren't your values. There are other things more important. Let me just list the things that the world thinks is important and ask you, how much has it infected your thinking? For example, the lost world around you says, money is the most important thing. The bumper sticker says very clearly, whoever dies with the most toys wins. I'm always a little bit suspicious of people who put their most profound thoughts on their bumper. But anyway, is that really true? Is it really true that if you drove to church tonight in a Rolls Royce, I hope nobody did for the sake of my illustration, but I doubt it. Okay. If you drove to church tonight in a Rolls Royce, obviously, Obviously, more successful and a better person than people who peddled their schwinn here tonight. The bigger your house, the more expensive your wardrobe, the more lavish your jewelry, the more expensive vacations you take at exotic locales, are all signs that the world interprets as, you've made it, you're a success, you should be happy with yourself, you're a great person. But Christ would say he's impressed with none of these things. You will not hear him say on Judgment Day, well done, rich and prosperous person. Other people in the culture say, I live for power and authority. People do what I say. I like having power. I like wielding power. The truly successful person is the boss. And so these kind of people head for that. That's their goal. They want to be large and in charge. Power and authority lead business empires, run nations, call armies to war, establish sweeping policies, and determine the destinies of whole peoples. But you're thinking, yeah, that's these egomaniacs we see out in the culture. Well, that's not true. It goes just down to the local level, to the personal level. As John Calvin observed one time, from the king who's sitting on his throne to the scullery maid who's cleaning his kitchen, each of us harbors a kingdom in our heart. We want to be boss of something somewhere. Christ isn't impressed by these things from what we see in Scripture. They're not his standard of judgment. He will not say to you on Judgment Day, Well done, powerful boss. Others in the culture say, well, I'm not into money and I'm not into power, but I do want to be famous and popular. Everybody knows me and thinks I'm great. So by definition, popularity means that everybody knows who you are. They love you and they would like to have time with you. You have 1,200 likes on your Facebook page. Everyone follows you on Twitter. You're obviously a very significant person. Have you been seen on television or in the movies? Do you have your own YouTube video? Are you in the front of some magazine? In our culture, that makes you a significant person. And sadly, carrying it even farther, there are some people who will go to lengths to do obnoxious things, vile things, wicked things, criminal things, just to be noticed, just to have fame for a moment. They're 15 minutes in the spotlight. Christ is not impressed by any of these things. He doesn't say, well done, famous and popular person. And the last one, I think, is also applicable to churches. This is America. It's a big country. It's a continent. You know, a successful person does things in a big way. Do something in a big, big way. That's our American Idol. Movie attendance numbers. You don't want to have a movie that only 18 people want to see. You want to have a movie that 18 million people want to see. What's your gross corporate sales like? Did you sign the biggest contract of anybody else in your field? to these people's way of thinking, it's not significant if it's not big. Christ doesn't measure success by that. He will not say to you on Judgment Day, well done, Mr. Big or Miss Big. So these are the values of the culture, and they're always wooing you. You say, no, I'm a Christian. I'm committed. Well, unless you live in a hermetically sealed little bubble, you're being influenced by the culture all the time. And if you went home and examined some of your values, you might be discovering that these things have crept in and become part of how you think. What will I be evaluated by? At the end of my life, if I don't have these things, could I still be happy with the person I am? If these things aren't true, could I still be happy with the things that I am? If Christ doesn't value these things, why does he value faithfulness? And so my second point is we're going to look at why does he value faithfulness? We're going to come back to that a little bit because to a lot of people, faithfulness is really vanilla. It's really small. It's really like for old people or people who don't have any goals in life. So they just sit around being faithful. And we'll see that's not at all what we're talking about. And some of you may have a jaundice attitude toward faithfulness. The first reason why God wants you to be faithful, because it's the family characteristic of God. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are faithful. And like in any family, the heads of the family want you to be like them. They want God's people to be faithful. In the First Testament, in the book of Deuteronomy, when Moses is rehearsing all that God's done for his people, in chapter 7, he gives them a crash course on what he's done with them, and he tells them a profound fact about himself. Deuteronomy 7, verses 6 through 9. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself, a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you are more in number than any other people. What did God, who did God begin with to begin Israel? One person, Abraham. If you're into numbers, you're already thinking this isn't going to go very far. The Lord didn't set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people. For you were the least of all peoples. but because the Lord loves you and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your fathers. The Lord has brought you out of Egypt with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Therefore, check this, know that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments. He says, you're here today. You're not living in Egypt in bondage. You're a numerous people. God began with one. God's protected you. He's maintained you. He's brought you here. Why? Because he's a faithful God. He's faithful to his covenant. He's faithful to his oath. You're here as a testimony to his faithfulness. The Old Testament is the inspired record of God's covenant faithfulness to his chosen people, though they were hardly ever faithful. As I read church history, and I'm on the fourth volume of a church history right now, and it's like, how did Christianity ever make it? I mean, any group that's been run by knaves, fools, and income poops for 2,000 years, it's amazing that we ever got here. But that's what, who else does the Lord have to work with? I mean, there's only sinners, broken people. God promised Adam and Eve that the seed of the woman would conquer the serpent and win the battle of salvation. So as you march from book to book in the Old Covenant, the Old Testament, as you march from writer to writer, what do they chronicle? They tell you about an unfaithful people and a faithful God who will not let the faithlessness of his people ruin what he's said he will do. So it's not surprising by the time we get to the book of Lamentations, And we just sang it, sung it, we just did. Okay, Lamentations 3, through the Lord's mercies, we are not consumed because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness. Israel would have never made it if God hadn't been faithful to his covenant promises to them. That's what God's revealed in the Old Covenant, in the Old Testament. What happens when we get to the New Testament? You know, there's a talk about a Messiah. There's talk about a servant of the High King of Heaven who's going to come and redeem a people, who's going to be the seed of the woman. And he comes. It's none other than God the Son. He fulfills over 300 Old Testament prophecies. He fulfills, faithfully, over 300 Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Messiah. He would be faithful even to the place of dying on a Roman cross, but he prays the night before in John 17.4. Father, I glorified you on the earth. I finished the work you gave me to do. There's nothing left to do. The cross is right here. It's functionally done. Christ was faithful not only to live a perfect life, train 12 men, one of whom would betray him, but then he would go to the cross, even the gory Roman cross, Jesus was faithful to what God had called him to do. And in fact, for those of you who are sitting here and you're not sure if you're in Christ or you know you're not in Christ, one of the ways that you can tell where your heart's at is, do you believe Jesus lies to people? I'm serious, do you believe Jesus lies to people? He says, oh man, I don't mean that, you're stupid. Do you think Jesus is that way? Do you think he's some kind of cosmic trickster? If he says, those who come to me, I will not cast out, You go, well, I don't know. I want to come to Christ. I don't know if he'll really do it. Your whole basis of Christianity is on the faithfulness of God as revealed in the history of Israel, the history of the church, in the word of God, in the words of Christ. Is he faithful to what he says he will do? If you come to him, he says, I love to save sinners. I know you're a sinner. There's nobody else. Most people don't get it. Most people don't think they're a sinner. But if you think, I'm a sinner, I can't possibly be saved, I've done too much stuff that nobody else knows about. Christ does, he's omniscient. The Father does, he's omniscient. The Spirit does, he's omniscient. He doesn't lie, he's faithful to his promises. Come unto me, all of you who are weary and heavy burdened by your sins, and I will give you rest. Is that either true or it's not? Is he faithful to that promise or not? Christ accomplished his work and went to heaven and the Father and the Son sent God the Holy Spirit. You and I could have been standing at the foot of the cross and we could have watched Christ die and we could have walked away. That's too bad for the guy. And it never would have impacted us because only supernatural change given by God the Holy Spirit changes the human heart. Suffering yourself, seeing someone else suffer doesn't change the human heart. People in hell don't repent. They don't. There cannot be any more suffering than that. They never repent. Only God giving you supernatural grace enables you to repent. And so God sends the Holy Spirit so that you would get it, so that you would care, so that you would see your need of salvation, so you would want to be saved, so you could see what Jesus accomplished. So God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit are working faithfully. There is no one who Christ died for on the cross who will be missing on that final day because God the Holy Spirit will see to it that everyone makes it. Everyone comes to the Son. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. They're each faithful. God is faithful. So he says, that's who I am. I've called you to be my child. That's what I would like you to be. And so the second reason you should be faithful and see that as your goal is pretty straightforward because God says so. Our Father says so. Verse two, it's required of a steward that he or she be found faithful. So understanding what responsibilities, what stewardship God has entrusted to you, you don't own everything. Everything you've ever had has been on loan from God. And one day he will require your stewardship. So what are you doing with it? He says, well, letting you know that faithfulness is the standard that I'm looking for. It's what I require. I'm telling you straight forward. Now, the trick is, what does it mean to be faithful? Faithfulness means that you do what you're appointed to do when you're appointed to do it, regardless of fanfare or acclaim, doing it in season and out of season, when men are watching and when no one but God sees what you're doing. Faithfulness means that you do not change your job description because you don't like parts of it. You don't cheat on your time sheet. You do exactly what the master put you in place to do. Faithfulness means you don't run away when it becomes hard or difficult, and times will. But you stay in the game, you stay in the battle, and you see things through to the end. Faithfulness means you do not submit your own will as a substitute for God's will or your own wisdom, thinking, well, if God was just clued in with my two cents, he'd do things differently. Think of King Saul in the Old Testament. God gave him a pretty clear, one, two, three, this is what you're supposed to do. So Samuel the prophet comes back to Saul and says, So how did it go? Great. Well, that doesn't really sound great because I can hear some sounds of things that shouldn't be happening. What's the lowing of the cattle and of the sheep and goats? Well, you know, I did save some stuff and Agag, I thought I could use him for something else later. And basically Samuel just confronts Saul for just setting aside what God clearly said to do his own will. And then Samuel tells him, to obey is better than sacrifice. To heed God is better than the fat of sacrificial rams. God doesn't want my two cents. He doesn't want me changing the job description. He says, can you do what I've asked you to do? No ifs, ands, or buts. Can you just do this? If God's omniscient, and he is, He's omnipotent, and he is. He doesn't need my wisdom to change things. He doesn't need me altering plans. The question is, can I do what he's laid out for me to do? Can I obey God? Period. Luke 16.10, he who is faithful in little things shall be faithful also in much. But he was unfaithful in little things shall be unfaithful also in much. We need to begin with whatever little things we're interested. Sometimes people grouse, well, I'm not Mr. Big like I'd like to be. I'm not in charge of this or that. Well, let me ask you, are you faithful in little things that might lead you to be moved up higher? Because if you're not doing the little things you're already assigned to do, why would anybody give you something bigger? God doesn't evaluate us by the size of what's entrusted to us, but our faithfulness to the task. And that's another American confusion that pops up. We think, well, I just have modest things I'm entrusted and modest gifts and I'm not anybody important. And so the temptation is just to coast or not take your responsibility seriously. It's not what the amount of what's been entrusted to you. The question is, how faithful are you with it? Let's say in Judgment Day, you and Billy Graham or you and Martin Lloyd-Jones or you and Martin Luther are all in line together and you go, Well, I don't think this is going to go well. I mean, I'll probably be in fourth in line. But let's just say for the sake of arbitration that though they had greater gifts than you do, they were 75% faithful with those gifts and accomplishing the things they did. And you with thinking seemingly smaller gifts were 85% faithful. God will evaluate you higher. Because it's not just what's entrusted to you, but how faithful were you to do it. And your 85%, in case your math is slow, your 85% aces out the 75% that they were putting in. It's not the size or seeming important of what's entrusted to us, but our faithfulness to it. Now both Testaments reveal that faithfulness can be rare. Proverbs 20 verse six laments, many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but who can find a faithful man? Paul, in telling the Philippians about sending Timothy to them, says something indirectly. He says, for I have no one like-minded who will sincerely care for your state, for all seek their own. not the things of Christ Jesus. Timothy was a person who you could assign him to be working with the Philippian church and he would be concerned with the Philippian church. He wouldn't have his own agenda. He wouldn't be trying to have a newspaper interviews to proclaim how great he was. He was a person who could just be faithful to take care of you, a faithful under shepherd. A faithful servant doesn't have his own agenda, but he lives to fulfill the agenda assigned by his master, the Lord Jesus. The faithful servant does his master's will to the very best of his ability, for he knows that Christ's honor or glory is attached to the stewardship. Great illustration. Years ago, when I was living in Indianapolis the first time, back in the 70s, I became friends with the man who was head of the Christian radio station for Indianapolis in central Indiana. And he had just moved from Tucson to take over the leadership of the station in Indianapolis, a bigger market. And he told me that he had a problem in the Tucson station because he said, now some of you will have to take this by faith, but there used to be these black round vinyl things called records and they'd lay them down and then a needle would go and they'd go around and sounds would come out and little dogs listened to it over here by the speaker. Okay, well, the shows never started on time. Of course, that means they don't end on time. And with the start of a new song, you could hear the, in other words, they couldn't start a song clean and crisp. It was just shoddy. So he called a staff meeting and he just kind of said, guys, this is not right. And so he explained what he wanted done. And some guy in the back raised his hand and said, sir, this is a Christian radio station. We just do it for the Lord. We don't do it for money like other stations. Oh, I see. In other words, Christ says you can just throw any kind of junk together, and that's acceptable, but if you're doing it for money, you better step up and do a great job. How telling is that of our attitude toward the Lord Jesus, that I would do a shoddier job for him than I would do if I was getting paid for it? If we're tempted to think that it's only the prestigious or most public jobs that are to be coveted, the most humongous stewardship, Two great illustrations. During World War II, in Europe, it was 1939 to 1945. For the states, it was December of 41 to August of 45. What happened during World War II? Well, you can read the history books, but there's two famous people who came out of World War II, Winston Churchill in Great Britain and Dwight Eisenhower in the United States. Winston Churchill had a secretary, if you would have asked her after the war. What did you do during the war? Did you serve in the Women's Air Force or did you serve in the Home Guard? No, I was the secretary. You were a secretary, really? The whole fate of the Western world is hinging on winning this war and that's the best you had to offer? Well, I was the secretary for Winston Churchill. I took down his shorthand for him. Oh, who you serve. kind of changes the impact of what the job is. You're serving the greatest man Britain had to offer, so to speak, in the war. That changes the importance of what you did, though the job in and of itself didn't seem mighty or significant, but you're assisting someone else. Dwight Eisenhower was a five-star general. He was in charge of the European theater of the war, and there was a man who, Drove a jeep during World War II. And if you ask him after the war, so what did you do to win the war? I drove a jeep, a nice Willis jeep. Really? Really? That's all you, didn't you shoot your gun? No, I really never had to. I just drove a jeep. But it turns out he drove the jeep for Dwight Eisenhower. Oh. Oh, well that kind of changes the importance of what you did. You wouldn't want to crash the jeep or roll it over or whip Dwight Eisenhower out of it with a bad turn. I guess maybe driving a jeep for the most important person in the U.S. military in Europe would be important. It's not just what you do but who you're doing it for. Can we say less who served the king of king and lord of lords? So, the first reason I said we should be faithful is because, That's who our God is. The second reason we should be faithful is because he tells you, I want you to be faithful. I want you to do what I've asked you to do, whatever that is, according to my word. And we can't play dumb and say, well, I really don't know what he wants me to do. Let's see, if you're a husband, you could master Ephesians chapter five and be in Ephesians five, or Colossians three, husband, or if you're a wife, same passages. If you're a kid, you can be a Philippian, excuse me, a Ephesians six, a child, or you can be a, Colossians 3, child unto the Lord and unto your parents, and faithful church member, and on and on it goes. There's lots in scripture about what he wants you to do. The third reason why God, well, we should seek faithfulness more than anything else is because God just said in the passage we read, this is the criteria by which I'm going to evaluate your life. whether or not your name was in lights, whether or not you never got to drove your Rolls Royce, whether or not you were ever a Mr. Big or Miss Famous. The question is, were you faithful? I'm going to evaluate you by faithfulness. It's required of a steward that he be found faithful. Then Paul says, you know, I don't care what you think of me. It's not because Paul was cocky and full of himself. He says, I don't even evaluate myself. He says, now my conscience is clear. I'm not aware of anything, but that doesn't excuse me because Paul could write about remaining sin. He says, the one who's going to examine me is the Lord. And so on judgment day, all of our hearts will be exposed and all of what we've done will be in the open. He says, it's the Lord who's going to evaluate us and our praise will come from him if we've been faithful. God so wants you to be faithful that the fruit of the Spirit includes faithfulness. God, the Holy Spirit, gives faithfulness to his people. Galatians 5, 22 and 23. He lists a single cluster of fruit. He doesn't say fruits. He says fruit. A single cluster of fruit with nine things hanging on it. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control. You aren't naturally that faithful, so I'm giving you the Holy Spirit, the faithful spirit who does all that he is supposed to be and all that he's supposed to do, and I'm giving him to you to enable you to be what you're not. I give you the Holy Spirit. And both testaments encourage faithfulness. Proverbs 28 20. A faithful man will abound in blessings. He doesn't say a perfect man. He doesn't say a perfect woman. He doesn't say a perfect kid. He says a faithful man, a faithful person. We'll get back to what faithfulness means and what it doesn't mean. And each one's praise will come from God. I want to make it to the end. I don't want to mess up. I want to get there. I want to honor Christ with whatever's left of my life. And I believe if you're a believer, I'm just repeating aloud what you're thinking in your heart. I want to get there. I want to finish well. I want to not in any way dishonor the Lord. I want to hear him say, well done, good and faithful servant. You've been faithful over a little and I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. To conclude, now Jonathan said I could go to 7.30, but most of you are planning to leave earlier than that, so I'll move along here. Let's dial down the focus a little more acutely on what does faithfulness to the Lord really mean. First, I want to make it clear, because this is such a problem in the Christian subculture, faithfulness does not mean doing something spectacular. For example, Several years ago, early in this 21st century, a book came out entitled Radical. It swept through this Christian subculture. Every campus ministry in the South, the kids were required to read it, every preacher in the South preached it probably to his congregation. The main premise of the book is that to be a real Christian and to show you're not culturally compromised is you need to quit your job and move to a part of town you really wouldn't want to live in, or to a foreign country which you really wouldn't want to take your family to, and that'll show you've not given in to the American dream. And that's what it means to be a successful Christian. And I know pastors who beat their people over the head with that. I know one pastor who so beat his people over their heads with that, that when he saw that he was wrong, part of his repentance involved him quitting his job and taking a job working in a bank just to live like regular people do, to remind himself of what their lives are like, so he wouldn't manipulate people like he had done. And the tragedy of the book was its whole premise was wrong. There's no commandments in the New Testament that say you must be radical. All the exhortations and encouragements in the New Testament are simply be faithful to what I've asked you to do. I'm not asking you to do way up here. I'm just asking you to be faithful right here. What the New Testament clearly calls believers to be is faithful. Faithful men. Faithful women. Faithful singles. Faithful husbands. Faithful wives. Faithful fathers. Faithful mothers. Faithful teens. Faithful workers. Faithful employers. Faithful citizens. Faithful churchmen. And on and on it goes. We don't need men and women trying to be radical, cutting edge, pushing the envelope. We need Christians who will push all that hyper-propaganda aside and simply pray for grace to be faithful to what God's given them to do. I know a woman in suburban Atlanta who she got involved with the women's ministry and she was going to reach this whole county of a couple hundred thousand for Christ. How many of you believe that she did it? Let the tape show that nobody raised their hand. How many of you believe that her family was seriously impaired during all the time she was giving to something God had not called her to do? In the biography of Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, which some of you have read or would be encouraged to read, he shares the story of his first pastorate in a little town in Wales. Wales functions for Great Britain like Appalachia does for America. It's not the cool place to be from the prestigious place. But God likes to work in unusual places. And God brought a revival to this little town in Wales. And there was a man that went on the trips that Dr. Lloyd-Jones would take them out and say, did you know there was a revival in this community 100 years ago, 200 years ago? This is what God did here. And people would be blown away because they didn't know anything about that. He took them to a place where the Welsh evangelist William Williams preached and wrote hymns and had a fantastic ministry. And the men were so encouraged and just thankful for what God had done in the past. Because, you know, if God did it before and he's not gotten any older or tired, he could still do it again. That's how reading church history in the right way can encourage you. So here's a man on the bus coming home. He's one of my heroes. His name was Richard Lodi, Dick Lodi. What was Dick's claim to fame? He was a crossing sweeper. You go, what in the world is that? Well, before cars were universal, what did people ride on? Horses, what do horses tend to leave in the road? Reminders. And when the reminders are at a crossing, somebody's need to clean that mess up. So Dick Lody had the prestigious job of cleaning up horse manure in the road. He was a poor man. He was a Christian. He wasn't anywhere a fool, but that was the place he had. Coming home in the bus, he told Dr. Lloyd-Jones, he said, William Williams was the best William Williams he could be. And if you're an American, you go, and I'm going to be the best William Williams I could be because that's how Americans think. But that's not the grace that God gave Dick Lodey. William Williams was the best William Williams he could be. And I want to be the best Dick Lodey that I can be. I'm not him, but I can be the best of me. And he's my hero because he didn't reach for the stars. He reached for being faithful. You can ask your pastors. Would they be thankful if everybody in this church, if none of you were spectacular, but you were all faithful? They'd go, I think we've died and gone to heaven. You know, that would be so wonderful. I read an article by a pastor, and he wrote an article entitled, How Ephesians Killed My Radical Urge. And he was a pastor in West Virginia, and he was preaching through Ephesians. And he had never read the book Radical. He said he doesn't know the man, but he'd heard some rumors about it. And he said, in reading Ephesians, which is kind of a circular letter in the early church, there's no exhortations to be spectacular, to be great, to be super. Be a husband, be a father, be a wife, be a mother, be a Christian kid, be a Christian employer, be a Christian employee, be a Christian citizen. Just do what God's asked you to do, where he's planted you. The second negative example is in 1995, I attended a conference here in the Midwest hosted by a famous Calvinistic Baptist pastor. And I went to hear Ian Murray, the head of the Banner of Truth, who was the guest speaker. And on the first day, we had a really bad start. The host pastor gave a message on Martin Luther. You all have heard of Martin Luther. By the way, how many Martin Luthers have there been? Has that been a common name in church history? I can only remember one, but I don't know everything. Anyway, he exhorted the, he gave a biography of Martin Luther. And at the end, he chastised the men because Martin Luther had his master divinity. Martin Luther had his doctorate. Martin Luther, of course, knew German. But he also knew Latin and Hebrew and Greek and perhaps French. And he wrote something significant every two weeks of his life, the rest of his life. And what are you slackers doing for God out there anyway? That's functionally how it came across. And I knew it. It was predictable. And lunch is right after that. So we sit around tables of eight off of this cafeteria, and we have the place settings. You know, you have your plate, and a fork, and a knife, and a spoon, and a glass, and a little cat of nine tails right here. You can pick it up and flagellate yourself during lunch. I mean, it was predictable. And what did they talk about? He said, well, the pastor said he didn't want to be just average, and he wanted to push the envelope, and he wanted to be creative. He wanted to be innovative. And he said, one guy said, I'm from Keokuk, Iowa, and I don't even know what push the envelope means, which was new a phrase in 95. And so predictably, these guys were beating themselves up that they weren't Martin Luther. And that was my first and my last conference there, but I waited till everybody got through talking, and then I said, gentlemen, this is my first conference, and I'm just attending here, but it seems to me the whole premise of this last message, the application was wrong. As I remember, there's only been one Martin Luther in church history, and I can't think of any place in scripture where we're exhorted to become Martin Luther. And what's worse, do you want when your tombstone's chiseled out, He was an innovative pastor. He pushed the envelope. He was innovative and creative. Don't we normally leave that for heterodox men, heretics, the crazies and the loonies out there, the cult leaders? Don't you want chiseled on your tombstone? He was faithful. My brother-in-law was a missionary in Africa and he died of a heart attack prematurely and chiseled on his tombstone. Faithful. That's what I want on my tombstone. If you know your Bible at all, that's what you want on your tombstone. He calls us to be faithful. He doesn't call us to be innovative, creative, and push the envelope. If your pastors start becoming creative and innovative and they're pushing the envelope, they're either trying to raise more money by the envelope or they're going off the rails. I trust because God's given you one faithful pastor after another, his love for this church is extended. When God stops giving pastors, then the day of grace is coming to an end. Who will teach the word of God to our people? Who will teach the word of God to your children and grandchildren? I know Gordon. I know Chuck. I know Jonathan. I know Kim. I know Sal. God's been giving you good men. That's not a small thing. Don't despise it. Moving right along. Final point. For some of you, sounds too easy, it sounds vanilla, it sounds like something that old fogies would get off on, but nobody who has half a brain cell and much energy would really find that as a great goal. And you know, they would be dead wrong, terribly wrong. Young men do not know the perils, the pitfalls, the swamps, the temptations, all the things that are out there waiting for them. You're not there yet, so you've run the race 10 years. So, unless you die tomorrow, you've got years ahead of you probably. Do you know that you're going to be able to face everything that's coming your way? I like to watch movies and documentaries about World War II. I was born soon after World War II, and that's kind of a war I understand and have studied. And one of the things, if you study things about war, is that soldiers get all jacked up to go to war. We're marching to Pretoria. We're marching to Dien Bien Phu, whatever they're marching to. We're going to wipe the floor with these people. And they go off cocky. How did they come home? You talk to any of you who served, I'm just glad I made it. I've got all my limbs. My PTSD isn't too bad. I'm just glad I made it. It was worse than I thought it would be. I got through it. The goal is not simply to go up like a rocket. and then crash like a rock, the goal is to go on faithfully year after year after year after year. You don't give up, you don't fall into disqualifying sin, you don't lose the gospel, and you die with Christ in your heart and on your lips. In 1997, Professor Roy Screenler of Gordon-Conwell Seminary spoke at the Evangelical Theological Society meetings held in Atlanta that year. He had been, as a younger man at a college in Ohio, he'd gotten into some really bad theology and had gone off the deep end with his best friend who also taught theology and philosophy. And they got into heresy. But by the grace of God, Royce Greenler was pulled back. And his friend wouldn't listen to him, kept plunging on in this bad theology. Almost lost his mind, did lose his faith, lost his family. And Royce Greenler was kept from that. And he said, sharing his testimony, he said, I'm 73 years old. I'm not thinking about my next book contract, my next commentary, my next conference. I'm seeing that my next commitment will probably be to stand before the throne of Christ and give an account of my life to him. He just wanted to end faithfully. And I thought, man, he'll be mobbed afterwards. I'll sit back and I wanted to go thank him because it was so motivational. Nobody went up and said boo to him. That wasn't the message that young bucks in the Evangelical Theological Society wanted to hear. We're gangbusters. We're going to go out and do these wonderful things. The idea of being faithful to the end just sounded so vanilla, so blah to them. Do I need to tell you more horror stories about people who fell along the way? Do we need to hear about any more pastors or so-called Christian leaders who fall into sin and make a mess of their lives and their testimony? Again, how much stronger our churches would be if each of us in this room said, Lord, would you help me to be faithful to the things you've given me to do in my life? I'm not this person. I'm not this person. I'm not one of the pastors or deacons. I've been given this. Can I be faithful to do this to the best of my ability? Because I love Christ and this is what he's given me to do. Let me close in simply saying this. I want to make it to heaven. I don't know how soon that will be. I want to hear the Savior say, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the kingdom prepared for you by my father from before the foundation of the world. And I want that for you, each of you. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, would you help us people here in the Midwest of this vast country, in this small church, in small towns by the Mississippi River, would you help us to be faithful? Would we hear you on Judgment Day say, well done, good and faithful servant? Lord, we ask not to be great or famous. We ask not to be rich and popular. We ask to be faithful. O Lord, may you smile upon our request. Make it so. So we pray in Jesus name. Amen.