It's just a real privilege to be back with my dear brothers and sisters at Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in Jackson, Georgia. One of the things we talked about in our adult Bible study was the fact that we live in a day when the old things are being left behind, not just in the culture but in the church. People say, you go to a church that has a confession? I mean, how irrelevant is that? It's old and it's written down. It's doubly irrelevant. Well, the deal is, that that's the way the culture has gone. But one of the reasons why the culture has gone the way it is, is because the American churches have been swirling the drain for the better part of 30, 40 years. What do I mean by that? Well, for example, if you lose the gospel, then how are people going to hear the gospel that's the only way to be saved? Romans chapter one, the apostle Paul says, I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it, it, this gospel is the power of God into salvation to all who believe, whether you're Jew or Greek or whatever. And if you lose the gospel, then what are people going to have to be saved by? In the same way if pastors don't teach the word of God as a faithful basis and regularly open up the word of God so people understand it and connect it, how are they going to grow in grace? And so as the churches have swirled around the drain, Excuse me, so I have the culture, so I have issues in the culture. When I lived in Fayette County for 31 years, one of the things we observed, we did a study, informal study albeit, but we looked at the 110 churches with 110,000 people in Fayette County. There's a church for every 1,000 people. And we said, OK, how many of these churches would claim to be evangelical in some way, Bible-believing, gospel-believing churches? How many of them would claim that? We said, well, maybe 20, 25 out of the 110, OK? How many of these 25 churches would teach The Gospel. How many of these churches would teach that sinners are saved by looking to Christ who says, I will take my sins upon yourself, and you'll be pardoned for your sins, and my righteousness will be given to you as your dress to wear for eternity. You will have Christ's righteousness. 2 Corinthians 5.21, For God made him who knew no sin. Who's that? Christ. Christ who knew no sin. God made him who knew no sin to become sin. Well, when did God the Father make God the Son to become sin? On the cross. Jesus became kind of sin incarnate. All the sins of all the believers for all time were put on Christ. For God made him who knew no sin to become sin. That, I went to American public schools, and I know what that means. It's introducing a purpose clause. And Paul says, we, me Paul, I'm a Jew, I'm a former Jew who's become a Christian. You Corinthians are former Gentiles. We believing sinners might become the righteousness of God in Him. For God made Him who knew no sin to become sin, that we believing sinners might become the righteousness of God in Him. Now, for some people, that's just a fairy tale. That's not true. I'm sorry you would think that way, but it is the gospel. There is no other way a person could be saved. Your sins are counted to Christ. Christ's righteousness is given to you. If you lose that, you don't have any hope. You can spend your whole life trying to fix up your life. You ain't gonna make it. It's not good English, but you get my drift. You're not gonna make it, and you're gonna be miserable in the process. Christ supernaturally changes people's lives. Now, I'm not a when in doubt, cast it out, or some kind of super supernaturalist that everything's supernatural. I don't pray for the IRS to go away, for example, or something like that. But thank you. I do believe that there is a God who is greater than us who works supernaturally to change people's lives. And everyone here who's a real believer can testify, well, I used to be this way, but God changed me. I experienced what the Bible calls the new birth. I was supernaturally changed and I've become a different person. New desires, new interests, new longings, new hates, new things I despise. I'm not yet what I want to be, but thank God I'm not who I used to be." And every believer says, Amen. That's the gospel. My sins put on Christ, and His righteousness given as a gift. The New Testament makes a big deal. Christ died for our sins, and His righteousness is given to believing sinners as their robes, their dress, their standing before God. Your performance is not Christianity. Christ is Christianity. Christ is a gift given to believers. All that Christ is, is given to you. And if you think your performance is Christianity, you have not yet grasped the gospel. It has not yet grasped you. Jesus Christ is your standing before God, if you're a believer. Whether you had a good day or a bad day, Christ is your standing before God. Now, most churches today, if they preach even part of the gospel, say, well, Christ died for your sins. End of story. And as far as it goes, that's good. But, what is my standing before God? I don't feel like praying today. I had a crummy day. I had a fight with my wife. I argued with my parents. I did this, I did that. I don't think God wants to hear from me today. Your performance is not your standing before God. Jesus Christ is your standing before God. You go, well I can't believe that. Well, bow your head, put your hand over your mouth and say, this is what God's Word says, so what I think is not the marker of what's true, it's what God says is true. If he says it's true, it's true, even though you don't feel it. God made him who knew no sin to become sin, that we believing sinners might become the righteousness of God in him. It's not a fairy tale, it's the gospel. Now, that has been lost in much of Christendom. In fact, the doctrine of God has been lost by many in Christendom. People in seminaries today are tinkering with the doctrine of God. It's being preached in different churches. God himself is being tinkered with. The gospel is being tinkered with. And so what's happened is the diminished Christianity has less salt and light in the culture. As a result, we hear the gurgling sound of the culture swirling the drain in our lifetime. Read Romans chapter 1. That is where America is at the bottom of Romans chapter 1. Now, this is not going to be a message of cultural analysis. It's not going to be a message of all the things that are wrong with the church. But I did want to begin by saying we need to keep the gospel clear. And I love 2 Corinthians 5.21. There's lots of other verses in the New Testament. For by one offering, God has perfected for all times those who are being made holy. Hebrews 10.14. I'm a real sinner, so I need real knowledge of forgiveness and salvation. For by one offering, Christ on the cross, God is perfected for all time. I have his righteousness, as amazing as that is, I have his righteousness credited to me. For by one offering, God is perfected for all time, those who are being made holy. And that's my current work. I was hired as the Dean of Students at the seminary in Texas. They hired my wife Cindy to be assistant. They said, we'd like you to work on your husband's sanctification. They docked her pay after a while because it wasn't working. You know, she is the greatest thing that's happened to me besides becoming a Christian. And together we are pursuing Christ in our old age. And what I wanted to look at you with in the Word of God today is, what does this great God who justifies, who declares righteous in His sight, who pardons all their sins, what does He require of believers? Am I going to have a long list of do's and don'ts? Well, let's look at 1 Corinthians chapter 4. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, Paul's letter to his high-maintenance child. Paul wrote many letters in the New Testament to different churches, and the Corinthian church was his high-maintenance child. In fact, there's a commentary written on 1 Corinthians that's pretty good. It's called, 20 Problems That Almost Killed the Church. Paul had to address 20 problems in the Corinthian church. Wow. You say, that sounds like my sanctification. If I could just get these 20 areas cleaned up, I'd really be doing better. But in chapter four, Paul's dealing with a problem about what does God require in a spiritual leader? Because the first couple of chapters, he's having to rebuke them. You've heard me use the phrase, I'm sure your pastors use the phrase, teachers use this phrase, a text without a context becomes a pretext, and you go, oh, that sounds clever. What does that mean? I can take anything out of its context and make it what it's not. The Bible says, and I'll show you the verse, there is no God. You can go, yeah, I knew it. The Bible even says it, there is no God. Psalm 14 says there is no God, just perfectly clear and plain. Now, that's the text. What's the context? The context says the fool has said in his heart there is no God. Oh, well that makes that verse look different. The text looks different when I put it in context. A text without a context becomes a pretext. You can make it say anything. Cut one sentence out of a newspaper article and say that's what the article said, whereas the whole article went somewhere else. Well, Paul's dealing in the first three chapters of Corinthians with their boneheaded way of thinking, which is like much of American church today, that what we're looking for is great men, wonderful men, exciting, dynamic, powerful personalities, and the division in the church in Corinth based on personalities. I'm of Paul. I'm of Peter. I'm of Christ." And they had these different groups in the church battling over personalities. And then there was the wisdom of the world versus the wisdom of God. Paul says, you know, if the world was so smart, it would have seen who Christ was. But they didn't see who Christ was because they're blind. They're spiritually deaf, they're spiritually dumb, their heart is dead, and so 2 in 2 is 5, 2 in 2 is 87, but 2 in 2 is never 4 in their way of thinking, because unless the Spirit of God helps you, remaining sin in your life will twist and skew, reveal truth. It can say it in plain language. But you go, uh, and then you'll bend it or twist it. God has to give you grace. So he talks about the problems that the Corinthians were struggling with, and then he gets to chapter 4, and he says, okay, if we're talking about true leadership, and I've got some things to say to you, and I'm an apostle, which you would think would make me a leader, but he said, what is required of a leader? Chapter 4, verse 1. I'm reading out of the ESV, the English Standard Version, but pretty much all the versions read the same. This is how one should regard us as apostles, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, or in addition, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. Many versions say 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, or I'm not aware of anything against myself, but I'm not thereby acquitted It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the day, before the time, before the Lord comes who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive his commendation from God. We're going to unpack this in a minute, but I wanted to ask you, okay, we've looked at a little bit of the context and we read a text of scripture, five verses out of 1 Corinthians. What measurements does the world use when it wants to say, this person is really worthy of honor and glory? What are the standards of success of honor and glory in our culture around us? And there's many, as many as we have idols of the heart, I suppose. a big one in America, wouldn't you say that it's safe to say that money is an important thing? You've seen the bumper sticker, whoever dies with the most toys wins. Now if you pulled up to church today in a Rolls Royce, most of us would think he's probably more financially successful than I am. If you have a bigger house, a more expensive wardrobe, more lavish jewelry, take expensive vacations at exotic locales, the world would say, wow, they have arrived, they are successful. Interestingly, Christ is impressed by none of these because that's not his standard of evaluation. Others in the culture would say, I want to have power and authority. I want people to do what I say. The truly successful person is the boss. Who has the final say-so on the issues around here? Power and authority lead business empires. They run nations. They call armies to war. They establish sweeping policies for nations. They determine the destinies of nations. It was interesting that John Calvin commented on this in one of his commentaries. He said, you know, the king sitting on his throne and back in the kitchen the scullery maid who cleans his kitchen, they both harbor a kingdom in their hearts. We all want to be big shots in our own way. Christ is not impressed by any of these things because that's not his standard for evaluation or judgment. Neither money nor power nor authority are going to get you kudos with the Lord. How about fame and popularity? Other people might say, well, I don't want money and I don't want power, but I want everybody to like me or everybody to know who I am. By definition, popularity means that everybody knows you, hopefully they love you, and they want to spend time with you. Being seen on television. You know, they sell products as seen on TV. It may be a crummy product, but it was seen on TV, so it may be something. Or being in the movies, or you have your own YouTube video. Or you're in the front of some magazine. That makes you a significant person. Some people even do obnoxious things. Some people do criminal things. Some people do evil things just to be noticed and become famous for a moment. Christ is not impressed by any of these things because that's not how he judges or evaluates. I'll deal with the fourth and final one that's real popular in the church. Doing something big. If you do something big, the last active shooter on a campus killed five people. I'm gonna kill 20 people. I'm gonna be bigger. Having the biggest church, having the biggest budget, having the biggest TV ratings, doing something in a big way is somehow an American idol. If it's small, it's insignificant, it's unimportant. It has to be big. Movie attendance numbers, gross corporate sales, having the biggest contract. Can a baseball player really make $400 million? Can you spend $400 million in your lifetime? But it's big, so he must be a great person. Christ doesn't measure by bigness. I once met with a group of pastors in churches that shared some of the same convictions you do, but they stopped advancing, they stopped reforming, they stopped bringing their churches into conformity with the Word of God because they didn't want to touch any doctrines that might make their churches smaller. Because the doctrine of bigness, you know, the Trinity, the deity of Christ, and being big, those are the three main doctrines of many people's Christianity. Christ doesn't measure by bigness. The mafia is big, Mormons are big, JWs are big, none of them are of God. Christ is not measured by bigness. So I'm going to say to you from this passage here, the Apostle Paul said, it's required of people who've been called stewards that they be found faithful or trustworthy. Now, what's a steward? Everybody in this room is a steward. A steward is somebody who's been entrusted with some responsibility, and one day you'll have to give an account for it. The master entrusted this to you, do what you're supposed to do with it, and then he'll check on you later to see, did you do that? I gave you this job, I gave you this responsibility, did you do this? It's required of stewards, it's required of people who've been given responsibility that they prove faithful or trustworthy. What does trustworthy mean? Worthy of my trust. I gave you something to do and I can trust you to do it. Or I gave them something to do, who knows if they're going to do it. Why is faithfulness a distinctly Christian mark of leadership that God honors and would say, this is good leadership. I think there's three reasons I can bring up today why faithfulness is a distinctly Christian mark. First of all, it's the family likeness of God and his people. God wants his children to be like him. No parent in this room says, I'd like my kids to be really different from me and my wife. You think, well, me and my wife have accomplished some things. There's values that we hold, and I would like our children to be like us in certain things. I know, yes, we've not arrived, and still things we're working on. I don't want my kids to be like this or this, but I would generally like them to hold to our values. Well, what values, what character traits would God want for those who are like him? Well, the first one is faithfulness because that's what God is like. If God's not faithful, then all bets are off. What do I mean? Well, think about it. The Bible says you're saved by looking to Christ for your salvation. As I said, trusting that He died in your place and that God the Father really did account to you Christ's righteousness. The Bible says that. Is that true? But you forget to have an invite out. That wasn't true. He was just conning you. The whole thing's a big con. God's not faithful. He tricked you. You ever look up the phrases in the Bible, those who trust in God or those who trust in Christ will never be ashamed? You know what it's in the context of? Judgment Day, you trusted in Christ, you find out that you're cast out to hell by the angels because this thing is all a bunch of baloney and Christ isn't really the Savior. The Bible says you will never be ashamed, you'll never be confounded, you'll never be made to look like a stupid fool because you trusted in Christ. Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone is your standing before God for now and forever. Listen to what Moses says about God in Deuteronomy chapter 7. For you are a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for himself. You are a special treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth. The Lord, the covenant God, did not set his love on you, nor choose you because you were more in number than other people. In other words, I didn't go eeny, meeny, miny, whoa, here's a big country. No, he didn't save you because you were more numerous than other people, for you were the least of all peoples. I mean, he just started with Abraham, one guy. But because the Lord, the covenant God, 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, the king of Egypt. Therefore know that the Lord your God, He is God. He is the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations. God can be dependent upon us. If I can't depend on God to be faithful, why bother to be a Christian? Why bother to believe anything He says if He's not as good as His word? And we have His word. If he's not as good as his word, I can't trust him. God's covenant faithfulness. In fact, in the book of Hebrews it says, and God says many times in the Bible, anything to be true has to be verified by two witnesses. That's why in a court of law, American law is based on English common law, and English common law is based in large part on biblical law, you can't convict someone on just one person testifying. If it's he said, she said, or he said, he said, you can't testify. But if there's two people saying the same thing, that's verified as a fact. God says, I solemnly promise to fulfill all my promises to you. Well, how do we know that's true? There needs to be two witnesses. Then I'll swear an oath. I will cease to be God if I don't fulfill everything I've said to you. Because there's no higher witness than God himself. So he says, I've made a promise to you, and I have pledged an oath. May I cease to be God, so to speak, before I won't come through on this. God's our faithful God. Book after book, biblical writer after biblical writer, chronicles the faithfulness of God to His chosen people. They would be repeatedly tested and proved unfaithful, but not their God. And if you look at the record of your life or mine, God didn't save me because, wow, Steve Martin is so awesome, he is so great and so faithful, I'm so lucky to have him on my team. How many of you believe that would be something that God would say? Let the tape note that nobody raised their hand. Didn't God promise Adam and Eve that the seed of the woman would conquer the serpent and win the battle of salvation? Has he proved faithful to that promise all through the windings and ups and downs of the Old Testament history and into the New Testament through church history? The psalmist writes repeatedly about the faithfulness of God, and no matter how fickle men are, I remember teaching our children, we would say, this is a fickle friend. Fickle, that sounds like pickle. What's a fickle friend? Well, they seem to be your friend, but they may not be your friend tomorrow or the next day. They're not a loyal friend. They're not a faithful friend. They're a fickle friend. God's not fickle, though man is. We sang this morning, Great is Thy Faithfulness. Where is that from in the Bible? The book of Lamentations. The book of Lamentations is a small book of five chapters that comes after the long book of Jeremiah of 55 chapters. And what's Lamentations about? Jeremiah kept saying, God's judging the nation because they've given up their God and they've gone after false gods, and their covenant disloyalty will bring their ruin. And it's a chronicle of the ruin as they go off into captivity. And the book of Lamentations, based on the word lament, I am brokenhearted. I am brokenhearted to see my nation go down the drain and be taken into captivity, many killed, most turned into serfs and slaves. I am brokenhearted at the state of my nation." That's a lament. But what does it say in Lamentations chapter 3, verse 22 and 23? Through the Lord's mercies we are not totally consumed. because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness." If God wasn't faithful to you and me, we wouldn't have made it this far. I became a Christian at just under 21. I'm 71. I know, I probably look only 70. But anyway, the point is, why have I made it all these years? The grace of God, his faithfulness to his covenant, to promises to his son, his faithfulness to his promises to me personally. I'm here because God is faithful. The prophet Hosea was called to marry a woman of adultery or harlotry. It's difficult to tell, but she wasn't the best of wives. His marriage was to be symbolic of God's faithfulness to his bride, Israel, who was perpetually guilty of spiritual adultery. In chapter 11 of Hosea's tortured prophecy, he calls out in faith, the Holy One is faithful. In a world full of unfaithful people at some time or in some place, the only one who's really faithful is the Holy One. He is faithful. Now, does the New Testament change gears? Does God suddenly veer off and become unfaithful? No. The New Testament goes on to record God's complaining and finishing His promises. The New Testament has 300 prophecies about the life of Christ that are fulfilled from the Old Testament. God the Son would be faithful to His calling. I will be faithful even unto death, even unto death on a Roman cross, which is still considered one of the very worst and most gruesome form of torturous death. I'll even become a man. I'll be a servant man, a poor man. I will even go to the Roman cross. God the Son would be faithful to His calling. What did he pray that last night before he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, John 17? Father, I've glorified you in the earth by accomplishing the work that you gave me to do. To paraphrase, I've been faithful. I did what you asked me to do. I didn't do what every Tom, Dick, and Harry asked me to do. I didn't do what my mother wanted me to do, my brothers and sisters. I didn't do what the Jews wanted to do. I didn't do what the Sanhedrin wanted to do. I didn't do what the Romans wanted to do. But I did what you asked me to do. He was just faithful. God the Holy Spirit, has He been faithful to what's revealed about Him? Jesus said, I'm going to send the Holy Spirit and He's going to be in you and He's going to keep you. You're going to make it to glory because the Holy Spirit's going to keep you. He's going to unite you to Christ. Yes, you'll flub up and yes, you'll sin and yes, you'll fall down and skin your knees and sometimes you'll get knocked down. and spit out a bloody tooth because you got kicked in the mouth, and you get up and, why are you here today? You've been through your hard times. I was here long enough to know some of our stories. We've all been through our hard times. Why are we here today? Because our God was faithful. God the Holy Spirit united us to Christ. He's applied the work of Christ to our lives. He keeps us, He keeps us, He keeps us. Our God is faithful. So the first reason why by faithfulness, trustworthiness, so to speak, is a Christian virtue is because that's who our God is. He is faithful. I can count on Him. You know, I know many, if not most of you, I love you, but I know the only one who's absolutely 100% faithful is my God. I know I'm not 100% faithful. I'd like to be. You'd probably have to say the hottest tears you've ever cried since you've been a Christian are for the sins you've committed since you've been a Christian. Why did I do that? Why did I screw up? Why did I sin like that? Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Paul cries out in Romans 7. But his God was faithful to him, has taken him through his hard times and kept him on the path. Another reason we're going to look at now is why God wants us to be faithful, because He tells us to be faithful in His Word. He says so. You go, well, duh, that's just like a command or something. It's not a suggestion, not a hint. We've got nothing better to do. You might try being faithful. In 1 Corinthians 4, 1-5, it's required of a steward that he be found faithful. As I said, everyone in this room, every one of you has some kind of stewardship. You go, I'm a kid. How much stewardship do I have? You have a responsibility to your brothers and sisters, and you have a responsibility to your parents, and you have a responsibility at school if you go to public school or Christian school. You have a responsibility at your school if you go to school at home. You have a responsibility as part of this culture and this nation. You have responsibilities that are part of being where you are. It's required of kid stewards, parent stewards, teenage stewards, single stewards, parent stewards, senior citizen stewards. You have responsibilities and God says, I want you to be faithful with those. Faithfulness means you do what you were appointed to do, what you were put in place to do, what you were asked to do. regardless of fanfare, regardless of acclaim, doing it in season and out of season, when men are watching you, and when no one but God sees what you're doing. Faithfulness means you do not change your job description. I don't want to do that. I'll just rub that out of my job description. Faithfulness means you don't change your job description, you don't cheat in your time sheet. You do exactly what the Master asked you to do. You go, well, God hasn't spoken to me. He hasn't told me what to do. Au contraire. He's told you what he wants you to do. You go, the whole book? No, but there's parts that are relevant to where you're at. Faithfulness means you don't run away and hide when problems come, and they will. Oh, I can't do this. This is hard. I remember saying that to myself as a young Christian. This can't be God's will. This is hard. Duh. Just because it's hard doesn't mean it's not right. World War II was hard, but I don't want to go to war and just let the Nazis and the Japanese take over the world. So you do hard things. Well, we're at a hard time in our life right now. You do the hard things. You don't quit because it's hard. You do it because it's right. You stay in the battle. You see things through to the end. Faithfulness means you don't substitute your own will. or your own wisdom for the wisdom and will of God. Rather than substitute what you think is better, you do what God says. And this is a classic example in the Bible of the first king of Israel, Saul. Saul was given a job description. You're king of the nation. I've given over this nation here to judgment. You're to kill them. You're to kill their king and et cetera, et cetera. Okay, got it. So what King Saul was, he adjusts. Well, if God knew all the details, he probably wouldn't want me to do this and he probably would want me to do this. So Saul adjusted what God told him to do. and he was rejected by God from being king on that day because at the very first major responsibility he was given, he didn't do it. and listen to what the prophet Samuel said to him from God as a rebuke. To obey is better than sacrifice. I don't care if you go to temple and offer sacrifices. I don't care that you go to the temple, to the tabernacle. God wants you to obey. To heed God is better than the fat of sacrificial rams. For rebellion, that means I do what I want to do and not what he wants me to do. Rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is like the sin of iniquity and idolatry. You could probably figure out that if witchcraft is a bad thing, God says, if you're rebellious, you might as well be a witch. Almighty God, who is omniscient, he knows everything, and omnipotent, he has all power, doesn't need me to change his plans, doesn't need me to alter his word, doesn't need me to cut corners with his will. That's what sin is all about. In the Garden of Eden, what was sin all about? God says very simply, you can have all this, it's all yours, you're managing it, you're vice regent to me, but to show my authority, here's one thing I'm saying you may not do. And the devil tempts them and they sin. To change things to put my will above God's will is the essence of sin. The question is, can I be dependent upon to do what I've been entrusted to do without changing anything? Can I obey God? Period. Christendom doesn't need more clever people. It just needs faithful people. And by the way, God doesn't evaluate his servants by the size of what's been entrusted to them. There's the foolish thought that, well, I'm just Joe Small here, and I don't, I hope your name's not on the show, but anyway, my name's Mr. Small, and I'm not a very significant person. That has nothing to do with it. It's not the size of what's been entrusted to you that matters. The question is who gave it to you and what percentage of faithfulness did you have? For example, let's say here's Mr. Big and you're Mr. Small. And Mr. Big's been given all these gifts and all these talents and all these responsibilities. He's Mr. Big and you're Mr. Small and you have small things and small responsibilities and small stature and small fame and fortune. but you're 75, 85% faithful with your small things. And Mr. Big, who's got all this stuff going for him, is only faithful with 50, 60% of his stuff. You will be more highly rewarded by God, not because you were given more, but because you were more faithful with what you were given. To him who has been given much, and so if you, you know, Luke 16.10, he was faithful in little things, will be faithful also in much, but he was unfaithful in little things, will also be unfaithful in much." God says, it's through your percentage of faithfulness, not what I've entrusted to you. As a young Christian, I was important because every young Christian man in the ministry wants to have a Billy Graham kind of ministry and have a downtown voice and have people listen to you by the millions. I have a suburban voice and nobody listens to me and I'm not a great preacher, and so I'd like to be Billy Graham. But he says, why don't you just try being Steve Martin? I'm not asking you to be Billy Graham. There was a man in Martyn Lloyd-Jones' church in Wales who's in volume one of his biography. His name was Richard Lody. He was a retired coal miner, Dick Lody. He had a very small apartment. He had one single bed, one table, one chair, a little gas place where he cooked. He had a mantle with three pictures on the mantle. The mantle had, the first picture was of him drunk, leaning against a lamppost, and he scribbled on it, lost. Then the middle picture was him talking to the pastor, Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones, at a church picnic. Found. The next picture showed him spiffed up with his best Sunday go-to-meet-and-close-on at church. Saved. Now, he was a retired coal miner, probably not of the intellectual intelligentsia of England, not that he was a stupid man, but he wasn't educated. And what he would do in his retirement, in his tiny little pension, is he had to open up his window, push his chair up by the window, and if you've seen the houses in Britain, often they're right on the street, and he would open his window and sit there, and as people walked by, he'd engage them in conversation, trying to witness to them. Really? That's kind of a small-time thing. He did what he could. Dr. Lloyd-Jones took the men of his church to go on a historical outing to see a place where a revival had happened and hundreds of people had come to Christ. It was a great period in British church history. And the pastor of that church was named William Williams. Some of his hymns are in our hymn book. And this man, Dick Lodey, did not make the mistake that some of us might have made. Because we'd go and we'd hear all about William Williams and the great things he did. And we'd go, I don't know William Williams. And come home kind of muttering under our breath. Dick Lodi came home saying, William Williams was the best William Williams that he could be, and I'm going to be the best Dick Lodi that I can be. And so he faithfully sat there by the window and did what he could in his limited money and his limited life for the rest of his life until he got to glory. It's not the size of what's entrusted to you, it's whether or not you were faithful. In both Testaments, faithfulness is revealed as something that's rare. Solomon says in Proverbs, many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but who can find a faithful man? Paul tells the Philippian church that, you know, I do have one faithful man, I have Timothy. I have no one like-minded who I can sincerely send to you to care for your state, for all seek after their own, not the things of Christ, Jesus. But Timothy is a faithful man. A faithful servant doesn't have his own agenda, but he lives to fulfill the agenda assigned to him by his master, the Lord Jesus. The faithful servant doesn't fulfill anything but what his master asked him to do. And the faithful servant does it to the best of his ability. There's a mistake we can make. While we're under grace, it doesn't make any difference. I can just slop something together and say it's done for Jesus. A friend of mine when I lived in Indianapolis managed radio stations for a Christian radio station consortium, and he was assigned a station in Tucson, Arizona back in the 70s. And he said when he went there, now some of the younger people under 30, 35, you'll have to remember, there used to be these round black things called records, and they had holes in the middle. And they would put these down, and they would put like a needle, and music sound would come out of it. Anyway, when you listen to that radio station, It didn't start on the hour and a half hour. They would kind of go late. And you could hear them kind of start up the record. And it was just crummy. It was sloppy. It was slipshod. So he listened to it for a couple of days and went, wait, wait, wait, let's have a staff meeting. And so he explained what quality looked like and doing things right in that business. And one of the men raised his hand. He said, Mr. Wallace, we're under grace. We're not like secular radio stations. In other words, you can slop something together because it doesn't make a difference if you're doing it for Jesus, but they do it for money and their jobs, so they'd better show up and do a good job. And he said, I'm sorry, you should be doing a better job because you're not serving your pocketbook and you're not serving just the corporation. You're serving Christ. You should be doing your very best. Amen. And if we're tempted to think, well, yeah, but still. I mean, most young women don't say, you know, I can't wait to the day when I can wipe snotty noses and crummy butts and that's my life goal. If I can just do that, I'll be a fulfilled person. And then I've asked women to raise their hand who had that dream. Even if you did dream it, I don't think you did, but nobody would raise their hand on that one. And the culture says, really? I thought you had a brain. You're a wife. You're a mother. You're raising kids. What are you, a fool? Couldn't you do anything better with your life? I mean, how important are these kids? You're just shaping people's lives. You're just being a spiritual mentor to them. You're just assisting your husband in raising your kids in the fear and admonition of the Lord. In World War II, two of the biggest people were General Dwight Eisenhower who managed the U.S. forces in Europe and supervised the whole invasion of Europe on D-Day and that whole thing. 250,000 troops, 5,000 ships, a zillion pieces of armament. You have to manage this whole great huge thing. And Winston Churchill was the moral leader of Great Britain. the spiritual leader of Great Britain, so to speak, and when it came to morale. And basically, England probably would have gone under if it hadn't been for him. If you ask the man, and I've read in a book what the man said, who drove Eisenhower's Jeep, what did you do during World War II? I drove a Jeep. You drove a Jeep? Really? I mean, that's the best you could come up with? Well, you must have been a crummy soldier. I drove a Jeep for General Dwight Eisenhower. I was a very privileged man, and I had a great job. I read, and you may have seen the movie Darkest Hour about Winston Churchill in World War II, but the woman who was his secretary, what did she say? Well, I just took stenography for Winston Churchill. No, I had the privilege. My job was huge. I helped World War II. I helped with the fight for freedom. I was the assistant to Winston Churchill. It's not what the job is, but who is the job to? Who do you serve? You do what you do unto Jesus Christ at the end of the day. Lord, I hope I was faithful to you. I hope you were pleased with my work. Your coworkers may not appreciate it. Why do you always go to this trouble? Why do you work so hard? Why don't you slack off like we do? Why don't you take long lunch breaks, long water cooler breaks? Why do you do what you do? Because I'm not just doing it for a buck. I'm doing it for Jesus Christ. Can we do anything less than for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords than men do for their pocketbooks or their corporations? And the final reason why faithfulness is so important is because it's gonna be the final evaluation made by God about our lives. He says in the text we just read, he says that, Paul says, you know, I don't really live by what people think of me. And there's some people who have that gift. And Paul had a special gift of that as an apostle. But he said, what I think of myself is not determinative either. I'm not aware of anything that condemns my conscience. But what you think of me and what I think of myself are not the final adjudicators. They're not the final givers of judgment. It's what God thinks of me and not until that day will the full revelation of everything that was going on and why everybody did what they did will be brought to the light. Until that time, leave final judgment in God's hands. But God will evaluate our lives by our faithfulness. You know, to be a leader means you're a second guest. It's just by definition. Dad, why do we have to do that? Because I'm mean and ordinary and I just wanted to ruin your day? I mean, no. We have to make decisions. It's not always popular. We can be subject to people's wrong evaluations, to people's wrong criticism. We cannot determine our course of duty by, wait, Okay, we're going to do this. This is where the wind of popular opinion is blowing. If you're a student, if you live by what other people think of you, your life is going to be miserable because you can't please everybody. And it's not just students who struggle with that, but adults struggle with that too. I don't want to be out of place. I don't want to look odd. We must do our job, do it faithfully, and leave final evaluation in Christ's hands. There may be people that you're already judging wrongly, who on judgment day, when everything's fully revealed, you go, oh, now I get why they did what they did, and I was second-guessing them and judging them, because I didn't understand everything that was going on. But Christ knew. We must know our job, do it faithfully unto Christ, and leave evaluation in his hands. Paul says, then each man's praise will come from God. 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. Now let's apply this in the time we have remaining. You go, well, man, you've been beating us over the head with this already. How can you apply it? Well, I hope I wasn't beating you over the head with it, but I think we can actually drill down a little bit closer. Faithfulness is not doing something great or spectacular. Earlier in this century, that sounds hard to say, many moons ago, far, far away in another galaxy, in Alabama, a book was written called Radical. And if you're a real Christian, if you really mean business for God, if you're not caught up in cultural captivity, you are going to live a radical life for God. You need to go to some foreign country and just live your life for Jesus over there. Better still, go to a part of town that you'd be uncomfortable with. They'd probably be uncomfortable with you too. But go there and live an uncomfortable life because it's radical. Many pastors beat their people over the head with the contents of this book. Many Christians beat themselves up after reading the book. The tragedy of the book was that its whole premise is wrong. There is not a single verse in the New Testament that God commands Christians to leave their jobs and become foreign missionaries or cross-town missionaries. Pastors and people called to do those kinds of things may be called to do that, but you're called not to be a pastor or a missionary, 99, 44, 100 percent of you. What the New Testament says very clearly is we are to be faithful to our callings. Are you a faithful man to be a Christian man in this culture? Are you a faithful woman? I haven't gotten to whether you're married, I'm just saying, do you know what it's like to be a Christian man and are you faithful? Are you a faithful husband? Are you a faithful wife? Are you a faithful father? Are you a faithful mother? Are you a faithful kid? I'm not asking you to do anything spectacular, and the Bible doesn't. It asks you to be faithful. We don't need men and women, boys and girls trying to be radical, cutting edge, pushing the envelope. We need Christians who will push away all that hype and propaganda and work at simply being faithful to what their masters ask them to do in the scriptures. I have a blog, it's read by 20 people. I'm seriously, that's a big day, there's 30. And I can plug my own blog, because I didn't write any of it, so it's not plugging myself. But anyway, one day went to 20, 30, 1,000. Whoa, what did I say? And I looked at my thing, and some guy had gotten a hold of it and passed it on to other people, passed it on to other thing. But a pastor in West Virginia wrote an article called, How Ephesians Killed My Radical Urge. And the gist of the book is this, he said, I was studying the book of Ephesians and teaching my people. And the book of Ephesians doesn't say anything about being radical, pushing the envelope, being edgy, doing dramatic things. It just says, why don't you try being faithful? Be a faithful Christian. And husband and wife, father, employer, employee, the whole thing. And he goes, there's nothing here about being radical. And it killed my whole mentality of moving down this road. And it was very helpful, and a lot of people comment on it. Back when I was still here several years ago, some of you read a book entitled God of the Mundane. Remember reading that book? God of the Mundane was a very liberating book because this pastor confessed, I was beating my people up every week with that. He was a pastor in another part of Alabama who was reading his book on radical and beating his people up. They weren't radical until he noticed The people in the New Testament are not called to be radical. They're called to be faithful and bloom where they're planted and do the work that God's assigned you to do. And if he wants to do something big with you, fine, but you're not to aim to be radical or big, you're aimed to be faithful. And he said, I had to repent. In fact, he quit being a pastor for half a dozen years and got a job in a bank so he could live like a normal layman and do normal layman things and teach himself that just being a faithful worker in a bank is a good thing before you go back to being a pastor. In 1995, I attended a pastor's conference in another city led by a famous Calvinistic Baptist pastor who challenged the 300 pastors in attendance before lunch that day in a biographical sketch to be another Martin Luther, get a PhD, learn your Greek, learn Hebrew, learn Latin, write something significant every two weeks of your adult life. The pastor added insult to injury by saying from the pulpit, and other men have verified that I wasn't hearing things, I don't want to pastor some rinky-dink Reformed Baptist church where people reach you at the door and make sure you dotted your I's and crossed your T's. What good would that be? I want to pastor a big church so I can influence more people for Christ. I want to be creative. I want to be innovative. I want to really push the envelope. And the response at lunch was predictable. We had all these tables that sat eight pastors. There was your plate, a napkin, on your left was a fork, on your right was a knife and a fork and a little cat of nine tails so you could whip yourself during lunch. It was really sad, so I sat there and ate my meal quietly. I'm a pastor in Keokuk, Iowa. What do I know? I don't even know what push the envelope means. That was in the early days of that phrase. And they went on and on. I'm thinking, man, I'm just a visitor. This is my first conference. I don't want to be raining on the parade. But I, you know, me being me, at the end of the time, I said, guys, I'm just, this is my first conference. Can I say something? I think the whole premise of that lecture was wrong. Silence. Nowhere does God call pastors to be innovative, creative, or push the envelope. What do you want written on your tombstone? Pastor Blowhard pushed the envelope and was innovative and creative. Don't we normally leave that for heretics and the heterodox, the liberals and the cults? What you want written on your tombstone is faithful. He was a faithful man. He was a faithful pastor. I don't care if he wasn't flashy. Was he faithful to the word? Was he faithful to his God? Was he faithful to do the things that pastors are supposed to do? By the way, how many Martin Luther's have there been in church history? I seem to remember only one. So exhorting 300 men to be Martin Luther was, to me, ridiculous. It's like saying, your mandate to be is Charles Spurgeon. That little coal miner in Wales named Dick Lody who learned, I'm not William Williams, I'm Dick Lody, but I want to be the best Dick Lody that I can be. So I want to be the best Joe Blow from Kokomo and do the best I can and not worry that I'm not Martin Luther. We don't want to be creative and innovative. And that leads me to my second application. I was talking with my good friend Bob Adams, and we were discussing this subject years ago, and he said, you know, if I had heard this when I was a 25-year-old man, I would have said, man, that's something for old guys, fogies who've got nothing left in the tank. So I'm just trying to be faithful with what I got left. And it's a job description for somebody who's too old and too tired to do much of anything else. And he said, you know, I would have been dead wrong. We would have been fools. Why? If you've ever seen, I watch documentaries on wars because they teach a lot about spiritual warfare, and I was watching documentaries about Vietnam veterans, and some of them were talking about how they went into Vietnam cocky, and I'm with this branch of the service, and we're going to do bad things, and we're going to rule. And then you see them when, I just survived. I got out of there. I kind of had my brain scrambled, but I survived. Why? I didn't know what I had to face. Have you ever seen a jungle you can't see through, and there's little snares, and there's pits, and there's landmines, and there's booby traps? It's hard just to get through. Well, at 25 I realized, all these things. Really? Being faithful is fogiedom? Do you know what you have to face yet? Have you faced all the trials and heartaches and temptations you're ever gonna face? You want to make it through all that stuff. You want to get there. You want to get to heaven. I just want to get there. I don't want to screw up. I don't want to affect my testimony. I don't want to harm my family. I don't want to dishonor my Christ. I want to get there and be faithful. The goal is not to go up like a rocket for Jesus because too many people who went up like rockets for Jesus fell down like rocks. They hit the ground with a thud. You know, if a pastor loses the gospel in his lifetime, he's a failure. If a pastor falls into some disqualifying sin, he's a failure. If I don't die with Christ in my heart and on my lips, I'm a failure. Years ago, I went to the Evangelical Theological Society meetings here in Atlanta, and a professor from a seminary in Boston was speaking, and as a young man, he'd wandered off into false teaching and was involved with called Process Theology. Dr. Royce Greenler, I had read some of his books, and he was to speak this one night, and he gave his testimony. And he said, I went off into Process Theology with my best friend when I was teaching at this college in Ohio, and he said, We went deeper and deeper and deeper, and God woke me up, wait a minute, this isn't orthodox, this isn't healthy, this is sad stuff, and pulled me out of it. My friend lost his Christianity and lost his marriage, and in his case, eventually lost his sanity going into this stuff. He said, God was just so gracious to me. He said, at the time, I'm sure he's passed away now, this has been 10, 15 years ago, he said, I'm 73. I'm not thinking about my next book contract. I'm not thinking about my next big conference. I've got to stand before God as the next big issue in my life, my next big appointment, and give an account to him. And I just want to be found faithful. Running the race, fulfilling your stewardship, right up to the end of your life. Do I need to tell you another horror story of another pastor in old age who fell into sin, who ruined his life? Making pleasing Christ and being faithful my goal, that's what it means to be a faithful Christian. What does Scripture call someone like me to do? Then that's what I'm supposed to do. Oh, this is hard. Well, I still need to do it. I might even grow doing these hard things. What am I called to do at my age? I want to be a faithful Christian man. I want to be a faithful Christian husband to my beloved wife. I want to be a Christian husband to my Christian father and my children, grandfather and my grandchildren, church member at Heritage Baptist Church in Mansfield, where I'm currently a member, a faithful dean of students at the seminary. I want to make it to heaven. I want to hear my Savior say at the end, 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 this for you too. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, you've been so kind and merciful and patient with us. None of us have ever felt the back of your hand. You've never gone off on any one of us. You've been so gracious and patient. Lord, please help us to learn these valuable lessons. Our culture can dupe us, our culture which is always chasing its tail, always destroying those who've run off into it, into thinking that we need to do X, Y, and Z and be famous and splashy or rich or powerful, 10 other things. But you call us to be faithful, faithful to what you've given to us. How did you make us? What did you call us to do? Then that's what I'm to do faithfully unto you. Lord, help us to do that. Help us to disengage from things in the culture that call like siren songs to us to go after this or that. Help us to go after Christ and help us to major in our job description. What a wonderful church it will be when everyone does what Christ has asked them to do. How the culture will be impacted by churches that people are faithful to be what they're called to be by Christ. Lord, may we all make it to the end. May we all hear you say, well done, good and faithful servant. To the honor of Christ I pray. Amen.