Apparently there's a rumor around that I spit because nobody sits in the first three rows except my wife who knows that's only a rumor. So I'm not sure who's spreading that rumor, but it's not true. This morning I would like to preach to you from 1 Corinthians chapter 4, the first five verses, if you'd take a minute. Open your Bibles, we'll look there. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 1 through 5. In your bulletin it says, faithful God, faithful people. the goal and the glory of simply being faithful. Okay, I'm gonna be reading from the New King James, 1 Corinthians 4, 1 through 5. Let a man so consider us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, or in addition, it is required in servants that one is found faithful. But with me it's a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I know of nothing against myself, but I am not justified or acquitted 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 heart. Hearts, plural, excuse me. Then each one's praise will come from God. There's a helpful commentary for laymen on 1 Corinthians. It's entitled 20 Problems That Almost Killed a Church. Oh, thanks. 20 problems that almost killed the church. There are 20 problems that Paul has to deal with in the Corinthian church. In one of them, well, actually in the first three chapters, there's already a couple. They mistake personalities for God's calling and they start dividing up into groups over someone, some like to hear and be ministered to by Peter, some by Paul, some by Apollos, and the really spiritual say, well, we just like Christ to minister to us. There's problems about worldly wisdom, other things. In chapter four, He says those who are called to be ministers of the gospel, those who are called to serve the Lord's people, the number one prerequisite is that they be found faithful. Now in our culture, that's not probably where we would go. Our culture values many other things, and many Christians think more culturally at times than they do biblically until their minds have been renewed. And what they think is, well, I want a pastor, I want a spiritual leader who's, and then they fill in a cultural blank. And so I'm gonna go over four things that the culture says we're really looking for in a good leader. Well, In our culture, and not just, I suppose, a leader, but it says in this text that it's required of a steward. I should have stopped and said it's not just spiritual leaders, but everybody in this room is a steward if you're a dad. A husband, you're a steward. If you're a wife, you're a steward. You have a stewardship. You have your family. If you're a kid, you're called to do certain things. You're called to be a student. Later, you'll be an adult. You'll have to do something with your life. God has given you things. He's given you gifts and abilities. He'll give you things later on. You're a steward of those things. A steward is somebody who's been given a responsibility, who will later be called to account, okay, what did you do with what I gave you? And he says, the number one thing that you're going to be held accountable for is, were you faithful with what I gave you? Were you faithful with what I gave you? In our culture, it doesn't really make a difference if you're faithful, if you look at politicians, look at people who are famous in our culture. The question is, do you have a lot of money? You know, if you drove this morning and pulled up in a Rolls Royce, people, you think you're a much more important, certainly a much more glorious person than somebody who rode a Schwinn or, you know, a bicycle. In other words, you can't be a great person and not be rich. That's just not true. God isn't impressed by money. He doesn't say, well done, rich and prosperous servant. Others would say, well, you know, the people who really are impressive in this culture, the people I look up to, are people who have power and authority, people who have might. The truly successful person is the boss. I mean, I'm just a peon. I'm just a member of the family. I'm not the head of the family. I'm not the boss. The bigger the house, excuse me, the truly successful person is the one who has power and authority and credentials. You can go to Christian conferences. And the question there is how many degrees does this man have behind his name? And does he have a lot of credibility? We want to be the boss because we know that people with clout, they rule countries, they run businesses. They rule empires. They cause armies to go to war. And Christ isn't impressed that these people have the power to do these things, this kind of authority. He doesn't say, well done, powerful and impressive servant. John Calvin was right when he said, from the king who sits on his throne to the scullery maid who cleans his kitchen. A scullery maid is an old-fashioned word for somebody who cleans a kitchen. From the king on his throne to the scullery maid who cleans his kitchen, each of them harbor a kingdom in their heart. We all want to be boss of somebody, something, big time. I knew people when I lived in Atlanta for many years. Some people said, well, I just want to be the biggest, greatest person in Atlanta. Others said, well, no, I want Georgia. Others wanted the Southeast. Probably others wanted the whole country. And Christ is not impressed by any of those things. He doesn't say, well done, impressive, and powerful person. Our culture super values fame and popularity. It's interesting. We have people on television and et cetera who are known for being on television. They're celebrities. They don't actually do anything. We just see their face a lot on television. They're celebrities. By definition, popularity means that everybody knows you, they love you, and they want to have time with you. You have 1,200 likes on your Facebook. You have thousands on your Twitter. And God says, I don't really care about that. He doesn't say, well done, famous and popular servant. Being seen on television or in the movies, being on a YouTube video, on the front of some magazine, makes you a significant person in this culture. It's immaterial to the Lord. And some people will even do obnoxious things, even criminal things, to become famous, to become well-known, just to be noticed. I've seen, I used to work with students for 10 years before I went into the pastoral ministry, and I saw kids who would do destructive things just to get attention. They would do things they knew where they were wrong, just so somebody would pay attention to them. Christ is not impressed by fame or popularity or notoriety. He says it's required of a steward that he be found faithful. And finally, the last wrong thing our culture values is if you do something really big. I mean, this is America. We're a nation the size of a continent. And so things have to be big. Do something in a big way as a uniquely American idol. Well, for example, that must be a good movie because millions of people want to see it. It's the biggest grossing movie of all time. I signed the biggest contract of anybody in my sport. It has to be really big to be appreciated. Christ is not impressed by bigness. He doesn't look at how big something is. He doesn't say, well done, Mr. Big, who does everything in a big way. So you're saying, okay, so we've knocked down those four. Why does he require faithfulness? Why is he looking for faithfulness? Why will you be evaluated on the basis of your faithfulness? Three reasons. First of all, because God himself is faithful and faithfulness is the family likeness. Every family has a certain sense of, doesn't she look like her mom or doesn't she look like her dad and her mom or some kind of thing like that? There's a family likeness, a resemblance. Well, people who are the Lord's people would have the Lord's values and would have the Lord's character and our God is a faithful God and that's why he wants his people to be faithful people. In the book of Deuteronomy, there's a long passage which I'll recite for you, and you can look it up later. But Moses, who preaches this sermon, Deuteronomy is a really long sermon like the book of Hebrews. But in there, he talks about how our God is a faithful God. You can depend on him. You can trust him. He doesn't do things with his fingers crossed. He's not a trickster. He doesn't play jokes on you. 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 were more in number than other people, for you were the least of all peoples. See, how many people did the Lord start with? He started with one, Abraham. So it's not like he said, I'm gonna pick a billion people in China because I'm into bigness. He goes, no, I have my own purposes and I'm taking just this one man and later became a people. God didn't choose them because they were big, but because the Lord loves you and because he would keep the oath which he swore to your forefathers. The Lord has brought you out of Egypt with a mighty hand and regimed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Therefore know that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations. He's faithful. The reason why you and I can still have sanity in a crazy world is that the one anchor for our soul is the sovereign and faithful God who is faithful to his word, faithful to his promises, faithful to his own character. If you think back and look over the Bible, the Bible is a record of God's faithfulness, even though the Bible is also a sad record of his people's unfaithfulness. You know, we'd like to think that we're paragons of virtue and, you know, the Lord's really lucky to have me on his team. Well, not really. That's not my record. And if we knew your life record, you'd say the same as me. We are not the most faithful people. We have disobeyed. We have let him down. We have grieved him. But the Bible is a record of God's faithfulness to his people. If you're a believer, he's faithful to you, even though you and I are not the most faithful people. God promised fallen Adam and Eve that the seed of the woman would someday conquer the serpent and win the battle of salvation. Did that happen? Yes. Book after book, biblical writer after biblical writer chronicled the faithfulness of God to his chosen people. They would be repeatedly tested and prove unfaithful, but not their God. That's true. Think of the different books of the Old Testament. God would give them something to do and they would not really do it. We like to read the Psalms because it repeatedly reminds us about God's faithfulness. No matter how fickle, fickle means hot today, cold tomorrow. No matter how fickle men may be, no matter how precarious it is to live in a fallen world, God Almighty is faithful. He is the one you can count on, and he's the only one you can count on. The weeping prophet Jeremiah is in exile, and he can write Lamentations chapter three. The nation of Israel is destroyed. He's tempted to think, well, is this it for Israel? Are we just going down the drain of history? Are we like some other banana republic that disappeared and nobody ever heard of it again? Lamentations chapter three, verse 22 and 23. Though through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed because his compassion does not fail. His compassions are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. Why doesn't Jeremiah totally give into despair? Because even though he sees his nation go into captivity, even though he sees all these people carted off, living in another land, kids learning a new language, a new culture, God will ultimately fulfill his promises. In the New Testament, do we see God the Son being any less faithful than God the Father? The Old Testament contains over 300 prophecies that Christ will fulfill in His coming, and Christ fulfilled every one of those prophecies as the Messiah. Was He faithful even unto the death on the cross? Yes. even if it's hard in His humanity, even though it's impossible, even though He prays in the Garden of Gethsemane. Father, if in my humanity I forgot Plan B, I would really be open to hearing it right now. But there is no Plan B, and I'm willing to go to the cross. Jesus could pray on the night before his betrayal, Father, I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work you gave me to do. Now, the resurrection was a foregone conclusion and the Father Spirit would accomplish that. But everything Christ was to fulfill, he had fulfilled. He would go to the cross. Jesus was and is still today faithful. He hasn't changed. Is God the Holy Spirit faithful? Is there somebody who Christ died for on the cross that's not going to be coming to Christ? Is there somebody who Christ died for on the cross, one of God's elect people who the Spirit is not going to regenerate and bring to Christ? No. Every one of God's people will be there. Your pastor testified that he wasn't looking for the Lord, the Lord called him to himself. I was just a lost 21-year-old college student when the Lord saved me. I wasn't looking for the Lord. I wasn't depressed. I wasn't sad. I wasn't suicidal. I wasn't a drunk yet, or an alcoholic, or a druggie, or a whole lot of things I might have been. I was worse than all the things. I was simply lost. Without God, without hope, and in the world, Ephesians 2.20 says. God is faithful, and so because He is faithful, when He saves a person, when He saves a group of people, He said, now I'm calling you to be like your Heavenly Father. I want you to be faithful. A second reason why faithfulness is so important to him is because, frankly, because he says so. He says, I want you to be faithful. What did we just read? It's required of a steward that he be found faithful, that she be found faithful. I'm not asking you to be 10 other things, creative, innovative, powerful, big, rich, all these other things. I want you to be faithful. Now that begs the question, what does it mean for an individual believer to be faithful? Well, faithfulness means you did what you were appointed to do, what you were asked to do, 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 part of it. Well, that's hard. Have you ever heard yourself saying as a believer, well, that can't be God's will. That would be really hard. I heard myself say that as a young Christian. That's embarrassing. Well, but it's true. There are things we don't want to do because they're unpleasant. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do them. It just means we need to be faithful and grit our teeth and do them if necessary. You don't cheat on your timesheet. You do exactly what your master puts you there to do. Faithfulness means you do not run away and hide when problems come, and they will, but that you stay in the game, stay in the battle, and see things through to the end. Faithfulness means you do not substitute your will or your wisdom for the will and wisdom of God. Rather than substitute what you think, God says, I would appreciate it if you would just do what you were told. The great rub of Christians, the great irony, the great temptation of Christians down through history is, I think I have a better idea. God says this, I know, but I think because I'm a believer and I'm creative and I have a mind, God would be more glorified, maybe even more pleased if I did this alternative thing. 1 Samuel chapter 15, the prophet Samuel rebukes Saul who disobeyed Remember, Saul was told to do all these things, and Saul said, well, I'm not going to do this because there's good things. I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do this. But I'm going to do these other things. And Samuel says to Saul, to obey is better than sacrifice. To do what you're told to do is better than going to church and taking the Lord's Supper. To heed God is better than the fat of sacrificial rams. for rebellion, refusing to do all that God asked him to do but substituting his own will, for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness is just like iniquity and idolatry. God doesn't want me to substitute. He doesn't want me to be stubborn and dig my heels in. He wants me to do what He asked me to do. He knows everything, so it's not like I'm going to out-think Him with some clever idea. He says, I'm not looking for people who are clever. I'm looking for people who can do what they're asked to do. Can you obey? Can I be dependent upon to do what I've been entrusted to do without changing anything? Luke 16.10, the person who is faithful in little things will be faithful also in much, but he who is unfaithful in little things shall be unfaithful also in much. I used to know guys when I was younger and played competitive sports that, I'm not a guy who's big on practice, I just show up on game day. And that's baloney is the technical word for that. If you're not willing to practice and do those things, you're not going to prove yourself on game day. In other words, if you're not faithful to do these little things, why should I entrust something bigger to you? God doesn't evaluate his servants by the size of what's entrusted to them. Have you ever thought about that? But by your faithfulness to the task. Let's take two people. Let's take your pastor and Billy Graham, just two Christian leaders. Okay. Now, let's say that one is entrusted with so many gifts and one's entrusted with so many gifts, but let's say Billy Graham was 75% faithful to the gifts that had been entrusted to him. And let's say your pastor is 85% faithful to the gifts entrusted to him. Maybe God hasn't entrusted the same size of gifts to your pastor and to Billy Graham, but God will grade them not on what was entrusted to them, but how faithful they were with what was entrusted to them. Do you see the point? A faithful servant doesn't have his own agenda, but 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 or she knows that Christ's honor or glory is attached to the work. You're a Christian, and you do this kind of shoddy work. You profess to be a Christian, and you don't do any better than this. When I lived in Indianapolis before, back in the olden days in the last century, we moved to Atlanta from Indianapolis. But a man in our church who became a friend was the radio station manager for the then, I think, only Christian radio station in Atlanta. And he moved from Tucson, came to Indianapolis. And he was appalled at the station and the way that it ran. Now in the old days, and boys and girls you'll have to take this by faith, there were round plastic things called records and they would lay them down on the thing and they would put a needle on it and sound would come out. You've seen records, you know what records are. Well the thing about a record is if you don't start it just at the right place you can kind of hear it start up. where somebody takes the needle off the record sloppy. That's how it sounded when they did music. Shows didn't start on time. They didn't end on time. It was a mess. So after a couple of weeks of watching this, he called a staff meeting and explained what they were called to do. And one of the people raised his hand and said, well, boss, you don't expect this to be like a secular station where they do it for money. We're just doing it for the Lord. Meaning we can throw crud out there, and that's fine because it's just a Christian radio station, and people don't expect any better. The Lord does. He's the audience, not the people listening on their radios. The Lord is the audience. Who am I doing this for? If we're tempted to think it's only the prestigious and most public jobs that the Lord wants us to work hard at, that's not true either. The question is not what is the job itself, But who is the job for? Two quick illustrations. During World War II, if you know much about World War II, there was a man named Dwight Eisenhower who was one of the last five-star generals and he was in charge of the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. He was a great general and later became president of the United States. There was a man who drove his jeep. If you would have asked him after the war, what did you do? I drove a jeep. Really? That was your contribution to fighting the Nazis? You drove a jeep? Well, I drove a jeep for Dwight Eisenhower. Oh, it wasn't simply what he did, but who he did it for that gave nobility and importance to what he did. Another good illustration, and this woman even wrote a book about it, she was a secretary to Winston Churchill, who was the leader of the British, who kept the British Empire going while the rest of Europe was floundering. In 1939, all of Europe had capitulated to the Nazis, except for England. And Winston Churchill kept their head above water and kept them going. Now, after the war, this person was asked, what did you do during the war? Almost everybody in Britain was enlisted to keep the Nazis from invading. And she said, well, I was a secretary. Really? Is that very significant? Is that very important? Well, I was the secretary for Winston Churchill. I took notes for him. I took shorthand for him. The question wasn't what you're doing, but whom you're serving. You can wipe runny noses to the glory of God. You can change diapers for Christ. You can sweep the floor. You can do all kinds of menial things because you're doing it for Christ. I'm serving the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. So, first thing I said was God wants us to be faithful because that's His character. He's been faithful to us in calling us and sending Christ for us, et cetera. But then he says, I want you to be faithful. I'm stating it out loud. The thing I'm gonna evaluate you on judgment day is not how much did you do, how much money did you make, how much this or that. The question was, were you faithful to what I entrusted to you? And the third reason why this is so important is because it's the basis upon which we'll be judged on judgment day. What we read in chapter 4 verses 1 through 5, Paul says, you know, at the end of the day, I don't care what you think about me. What? And I don't even get myself off the hook. I'm not aware of anything. My conscience is clear, but that's not the final criteria. God is the one who will judge each one of us, and he will determine our reward. I don't live and die with what you think of me, Paul says. And that's very hard for every one of us in this room. We say, well, teenagers have a problem with peer pressure. And you don't? You don't maybe think twice when you come into a group of people and you look around, well, maybe this kind of group, I shouldn't be this way or do this or say this. We are all afflicted with that disease. And if Christ is the highest authority and the one at the end of the day, you want his smile and his approval, then you say, you know, I don't care what these other human beings think. I care what my savior thinks. And so I want his smile. If you frown at me or call me a name, well, comes with the territory, but I have Christ's smile. And you can live with Christ's smile, but you can't live with his frown and have men's smile. As a leader, for example, you're constantly second-guessed, whether you're a father, a mother, a pastor, some responsibility at work. You're constantly second-guessed and subject to wrong judgments and evaluations. Why did they do that? Why are my parents so stupid? Other thoughts that people have had. We cannot determine our course of duty by wetting our finger. Oh, this is the way the wind's blowing. This is what's popular. I'm gonna do this. Faithful leadership is not a popularity contest. It's doing your job unto the Lord. We must know our job and do it faithfully under Christ and leave final evaluation in his hands. Well, certain people didn't like what I did. Certain people frowned at what I did. But at the end of the day, if you have the Lord's smile, you can live with that. God so wants us to be faithful that one of the fruit of the Spirit is faithfulness. When Paul tells the Galatians, he says, now God has given you supernatural ability to have a Christ-like spirit. And the fruit of the Spirit is, and he lists nine things, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, and self-control. Faithfulness is a gift the Holy Spirit gives to those who are believers. In Proverbs 28.20 it says, a faithful man will abound with blessings. God promises blessings if we're faithful. He doesn't say I'm promising blessings if you do what every Tom, Dick, and Harry ask you to do, but if you do what I ask you to do, if you're faithful, I will give you blessings. And then he said in verse five, then each man's praise will come from God. Don't you want to hear on judgment day, well done, good and faithful servant? You have been faithful over a little and I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. Now, at the last of my time, we're gonna look at what faithfulness is not. Two main points here. Faithfulness is not doing something great or spectacular. And Christians have not been helped the last 20 years because some Christian leaders have held out ideas of what it means to be a really good Christian that aren't biblical. Several years ago, there was a book that went around. It was very popular in the South. I take it in the Midwest it was too. It was called Radical. Anybody ever read the book Radical? OK. You're not serving as a missionary overseas. You're not living in a terrible part of the city where you wouldn't want to live normally. And that must mean you've given in to the American dream and you're just culturally compromised. That was the gist of the message. And not only do people who read the book get beat up, but pastors use that book to beat all kinds of people over the head with for a decade. The tragedy of the book was that the whole premise is wrong. There is not a single command in the New Testament for believers to become missionaries, and all believers should become missionaries, and if you don't, you're compromising with the culture and you're a cop-out. There's no New Testament commands for believers to move to a bad part of town and risk your family to show that you really love Jesus. There just aren't. This person ramped up his own personality and put it on top of everyone else. What the New Testament very clearly calls believers to be is to be faithful to whatever specific calling you have. And any pastor would just say, I'll drop dead with happiness if this happens. But imagine if every man in the church was faithful to be the head of his home, faithful to love his wife, faithful to love his kids, faithful at work, faithful as a churchman, faithful in civic affairs. Whoa, how much farther the game would be advanced. We want faithful husbands and faithful wives, faithful singles, faithful kids, faithful teens. faithful workers, faithful employers, faithful citizens, etc. We do not need men and women who are trying really hard to be radical, cutting edge. Had a lady in my church in Atlanta and she got a hold of some material by a women's ministry and she was going to reach her county for Christ. And she abdicated her responsibilities in her home. She wasn't a particularly faithful wife and wasn't a particularly faithful mother. And her kids ended up not so good and her marriage was very strained. And she didn't see her county reach for Christ. But she was off like Don Quixote tilting at windmills and not being faithful to what God had called her to do. One of my heroes is somebody you've never heard about. His name was Richard Lodi. How many of you have heard of Richard Lodi? Obviously, none of you have. He's an obscure reference in the biography of Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones. Richard Lodi grew up in the early part of the 20th century. Before there were horses, there were horse-drawn carts, and every city had an occupation that was called a street sweeper. What does the street sweeper do? Well, every place you have a crossing, horses would sometimes leave a deposit. And so your job was to go out there and shovel and sweep and make sure that the crossings were clear so people wouldn't duck up their boots. Ooh. Never a prestigious job. Never it's like, oh, if I can just be a street sweeper, well, if I can just do that, then I'll be happy. I mean, that was a totally uncool job. It's like hanging in the back of a garbage truck today. Would you brag? Yeah, my dad, he hangs in the back of a garbage truck. It's not a job that people would normally cling to. But this man, that's what he did for a living. He had a little simple apartment opened up onto the street. You open the window and there's the sidewalk. He had one table, one chair, a bed, and above the fireplace were pictures of himself in his BC days when he was a drunk, a picture of him when he came to know the Lord, and a picture of him spiffed up at church. Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones took his men to historical places where they could see this God had done a revival here a hundred years ago This is what God did here And so Dick Lodi went and there was a man named William Williams whose hymns are in your hymn book and William Williams besides being a hymn writer was a great preacher and pastor and he had seen revival and So they learned about it on the bus ride home Dick Lodi said William Williams was the best William Williams he could be for Christ and And if he was an American, he would have said, and I'm going to be the next William Williams. Well, actually, he wasn't. He was named Richard Dick Lodi. But he was a better man than I would have been because he said, William Williams was the best William Williams he could be. I'm going to be the best Dick Lodi that I can be. I'm not William Williams. God hasn't called me to be him or do what he did. But God's called me to be the best that I can be. On my blog site, I do have a blog, and it's a really great one because I don't contribute to it. I just glean from around the universe and put things on there. But one man put something on there that was the top thing. I went from 50 to 1,500 in one day. What was that about? Well, he wrote how Ephesians killed my radical Christianity. He hadn't read the book, didn't know the man who wrote the book, but he was studying and teaching the book of Ephesians. And the book of Ephesians is just being a faithful garden variety Christian. Dads and moms, kids, employers, employees, be a faithful Christian. Do the things that Ephesians talks about. There's nothing in there about being radical and how that became so popular. To be a faithful Christian is as radical as God wants you to be. And a second example of a red herring. You know what a red herring phrase means? It means if you're following a scent, if you're a hound dog following a scent, and someone drags a dead fish in front of you, you're going to go off and follow the smell of the dead fish. You're not going to follow the scent you're after. And in 1995, I attended a pastor's conference in another city. pastored by a famous Calvinistic Baptist pastor. There are 300 pastors at this conference, and this host pastor was giving the message one day before lunch on Martin Luther. It was a pretty good message until he got to the end. You know, Martin Luther, besides knowing his native German, knew Greek and Hebrew and Latin, and once he was converted, he wrote something significant every two weeks or so for the rest of his life. But then the pastor said, and you, and he didn't say lazy bums, but he might have, you need to go get your doctorate. You need to learn Greek and Hebrew and Latin. You need to go out, and he would just kind of beat them over the head for five minutes, and all the great things they needed to do. And I'm sitting there going, I don't remember, is there a second, is there a lot of Martin Luthers in church history? Kind of only remember one, actually. But he made it seem like every one of these men should have been Martin Luther, and they should feel guilty if they weren't. So afterwards there was lunch and we had tables. for eight, and that was my first and last conference there, but I sat there quietly, and next to the plates, you know, you had your cup and your plate and your silverware and a napkin and a little cat of nine tails, a little, you could whip yourself. No, it didn't have those really, but if he had, it would have been perfect because it's like, guys sat there at lunch and they flagellated themselves, oh, I'm not Martin Luther, and I don't even, and the pastor had said, look, I want to be like Martin Luther. I want to be cutting edge. I want to push the envelope. One man said, I'm from Keokuk, Iowa and I don't even know what pushing the envelope means. So this went around for, I finished my lunch and I said, took a deep breath and I said, guys, your pastor, I believe, was seriously in error. This is my first conference, I'm not Mr. Big here, but I think if you look at the Bible, what he said was not true. This is a direct quote, and I had friends of mine who were there and they said it is. This man said, I don't want to pastor some rinky-dink Reformed Baptist church, some confessional church where people greet you at the door and frisk you to make sure you dot your I's and cross your T's. What good would that be? I want to pastor a big church so I can influence more people for Christ. And I want to be creative, I want to be innovative, and I really want to push the envelope. I said, guys, do you want creative and innovative written on your tombstone? Don't you normally leave that for the heterodox and the heretics? I mean, faithful people don't want, he pushed the envelope and was off the beam. Faithful isn't that easy. And we don't want to be creative. We don't want to be innovative. The hard job is to be faithful. The hard job is to be faithful. And that leads me into my last point. Faithfulness, the second what faithfulness is not. Faithfulness is not easy. It's not vanilla. It's not milk toast or for old fogeys. What do I mean by that? If you talk to a bunch of young men in their 20s, and they hear this message, they go, man, that's so obviously easy. I want to be a world beater. I want to reach the wall for Christ. I want to reach Indianapolis. I want to do these things. I'm sorry? Amen. Oh, OK. OK, so there's one man who is there. OK. So being faithful sounds like, Well, yeah, you're an old guy, you've got gray hair, so that sounds like a goal you would have. Somebody who's too tired or too old to do much of anything else. But that would be dead wrong. I remember when I was in my 20s, and I worked for a parachurch ministry, they used to tell people things like, what's the biggest position you can have so you can impact more people for Christ? And so for young men in their 20s and 30s, our ego glands got really big, and our ambitions got really big. And well, probably First Baptist downtown, or megachurch somewhere. That would be appropriate for me. That's not what the Lord's thinking. That whole mentality is dead wrong. Because one of the problems of young men, which was true of me and is true of you young men, is you do not know the pitfalls, the swamps, the snares, and the things that are waiting for you. You do not know how dangerous things really are and the things you have to face yet in your life. As a child who was born a couple years after World War II, I like to watch documentaries and movies about World War II and how we fought the Nazis and the Japanese fascists and how we won World War II. But one of the things you'll notice, and you can even see it in the wars since then, Vietnam and the Middle East wars, guys go off to war. We're going to wipe the floor with those people. We're macho. We're going to do all these things. We're going to kill them. We're going to do all these things. And then you see the men when they come back. I made it. I didn't get killed. I didn't lose all my limbs. I'm not totally wacko. My PTSD isn't out of control. It's much more difficult than they thought it was going to be. And despite all the glory that they thought was attached to doing this, it was much harder than they thought it was going to be. The goal isn't simply to go up like a rocket for Jesus, because you know what happened to rockets after they go up a lot? They come down like a rock. The goal is to go on faithfully year, after year, after year. We've been married five years, great. Be faithful for 10 years, and 15 years, and 20 years, and keep going. By God's grace, my wife and I have been married 49 years. Back in the day in Indiana, you could be married when you were 10, so we were very mature, we got married, anyway. And all kinds of things can happen to you. All kinds of things can happen to your marriage. All kinds of things can happen to your spiritual life. You have to walk faithfully with Christ all these years. In 2001, I believe, I went to the Evangelical Theological Society meeting. This is where people from all the different Christian colleges and seminaries get together, and you have to have at least two advanced degrees. You can't just have a master's. You have to have two masters or a doctorate to vote, but you can attend, so I attended. And one of the speakers was a man you've never heard of named Royce Greenler. Professor Greenler taught at a seminary in Boston. He had been involved as a younger man in a Christian college in Ohio and had gone off the beam into heresy and was there for several years. And he and his best friend were in it together and they're writing articles and writing books and we're cool. And God, by his grace, opened his eyes to how he was teaching heresy. And he repented, and God brought him out of that. And in his repentance, he wrote against what he used to embrace. But his best friend never did. His best friend lost his marriage. His best friend lost his salvation. His best friend lost everything because he stayed in that. Now, as this man shared his testimony, He said at the end, I am 73 years old. I'm not thinking about my next book. I'm not seeing that my next commitment is to stand before the throne of God and give an account of my life. And I want to be found faithful. And it was so stunning. And I thought, wow, there'll be a lot of guys up front talking to him afterwards. And I stood at the back and watched. And nobody went up and shook his hand. Nobody went and said, thanks. That was really important. That was really needful. They treated him like, I don't know what, but they didn't treat him with greater respect and admiration. So I went up and little old me said, sir, thank you. I agree with 100% of what you said. I'm learning those lessons. Thank you so much. Being faithful means running your race and fulfilling your stewardship right up to the end of your life. I have a pastor friend I used to know who at the age of 70 was excommunicated from his church. His ability to preach was removed, his credentials were removed. He was excommunicated for unrepentant sin that had been going on for a number of years. At the age of 70, If you read Pilgrim's Progress, it's a scary part at the end of part one where Christian sees a man who doesn't have to cross the river of death. He takes a rope out. He's rode by ignorance and presumption. And he goes across, and the angels do greet him. They grab him by the arms and legs. They open a door on the side of a hill, and the fumes of hell come out, and they cast him in. They close the door, and Christian goes, I saw at the very gates of heaven there was a road. There was an open door to hell. And that was scary. This man ran that race until he was 70. Actually, for many years before that, he stopped and was finally caught when he was 70. Do we need to hear about more leaders who end poorly and ruin their ministry and sully the name of Christ? So I challenge you today. Make pleasing Christ and being faithful your goal. Now, you're thinking one thing. and I'm not a perfect husband, I'm not a perfect wife, I'm not a perfect kid, I'm not a perfect employee or employer, whatever. Duh, none of us are. The Bible doesn't call you to be perfect. If you were perfect, you wouldn't need to save her, would you? So what happens when you as a parent, or a child, or an employer, or an employee, blow it, you do something wrong? I've totally failed, I have to quit. That's not the biblical response. We read the verse at the top of one of the hymns. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Parents, your kids will learn more about the Christian life by you confessing the sins that they see you do to them. If you get mad at their mother and say something unkind, you need to confess to her and ask her forgiveness, and you need to tell your kids who just observed that. Kids, if you do something ungodly, unbiblical, you need to confess it if you did it against another person, because you confess sin and the Spirit's committed. I've had to confess sins to my whole congregation before, because I said something that was unseemly. Well, you need to say the same thing. If you never confess your sins to your kids, they're going to think, who do they think they're fooling? I can see their weaknesses. I can see their sins. And they'll respect you more even though pride says, no, don't do it, they won't respect you. You gotta keep up appearances. Well, that's a fool's errand. Be real, be faithful. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. My goal. for myself is to hear the Lord say, well done, good and faithful servant. Enter into the joy of your master, the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world. And I want that for each of you too. Let's pray. Father in heaven, would you take my stammerings and would you make them helpful to the saints here today? For those who are still outside of Christ, would you bring them to Christ and show them their sins and how Christ came to die for sinners just like them? would today be a very special day in their lives, because you brought them to Christ. Glorify yourself with the rest of this service, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen. Well, we certainly praise