I want to begin this morning by apologizing. I have not been the pastor I ought to have been for many years in many ways. I’ve often been depressed, or at the very least discouraged because of a variety of factors, and I allowed that to affect my focus in the church. So I want to say that I’m sorry, and to ask for your forgiveness.

I also want to begin this morning by telling you that I’m extremely refreshed and excited. I’m hopeful about what God’s going to do in the life of our church in the coming years, and even in the coming months and weeks.

One goal that I had for myself during my sabbatical was to read 2 books per week, for a total of 14 books over the last 7 weeks, which I carefully selected in order to help me to dwell on prayer, preaching, and living the Christian life. Well, I ended up reading 18 books over the last 7 weeks, plus the 66 books of the Bible if we’re counting those as well. And out of all the things I read, one of the most impactful statements I read outside of the Bible itself was written by Mark Dever in this book, Preaching the Cross. He wrote:

Ministers must remember that the churches they lead are not theirs, regardless of how long they have been there. The entire church is the Lord’s church, and God has entrusted his servants with the message of the crucified Messiah. -Mark Dever, Preaching the Cross

That’s good stuff. It reminds of why we even come together at all: who we are and what we’re to do. We’re the Lord’s church, and we’re here to preach the Lord’s gospel. And when we stray from this very simple understanding of church, we stray from God’s purpose for us as a church.

It’s good to take ownership of your church. God wants me to see this as my church, and for you to see this as your church if this is where you attend, so that we don’t hop from church to church and think that it’s ok to shop around and be just barely committed to many churches. We ought to have a loyalty to our church family, because we are a family.

And yet, God’s convicted me lately to see that the church does not belong to me, and it doesn’t belong to you. It’s God’s church, established on the fact of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection. And this is actually extremely good news, because it means that when we belong to a church, we don’t just belong to a country club, or even to a close knit group of friends; we belong to the royal priesthood that God established to reveal Himself to all the world. And that’s much bigger and better than anything we could construct in this place.

I’m reminded of this video in which a pastor described what he did to someone he met on a plane.

Basically, being here, in church, as the church, is a much bigger deal than we usually consider. And, of course, this is something that we read in God’s word as well. Acts 20. Please turn there with me.

The situation in this passage of Scripture was that the apostle Paul was passing by the cities of Miletus and Ephesus, but couldn’t stay long because he wanted to minister in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Pentecost was a major day in Jewish life, being the beginning of the Festival of Weeks, one of the three major Jewish Festivals commanded in the Hebrew Scriptures. So being in Jerusalem that day would not only be a great celebration of his own faith, but it would also be a great opportunity for Paul to preach the gospel of Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews, to the Jews.

But being that he loved the church in Ephesus so much, since he himself helped to establish the church there, Paul just couldn’t be so close to them and not greet them. He didn’t want to just pass by without saying hello. So we read in Acts 20, starting in verse 17:

Now from Miletus, he sent to Ephesus and summoned the elders of the church. When they came to him, he said to them, “You know, from the first day I set foot in Asia, how I was with you the whole time, serving the Lord with all humility, with tears, and during the trials that came to me through the plots of the Jews. You know that I did not hesitate to proclaim anything to you that was profitable and to teach you publicly and from house to house. I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus. (Acts 20:17-21)

This is our task as a church of believers as well. We’re to preach the gospel, pointing us all and everyone around us to repent and place our faith in Jesus. So let’s pray that we would be faithful to do that.

Father, thank You that You invite us into Your family and into Your kingdom. Help us as Your church to go about Your business, telling the whole world about Jesus. In Jesus’s name we pray, Amen.

I was recently going through some things that I wrote when I was a teenager. Some of the things I found were hilarious. I wrote this letter to a girl I kind of liked.

It says, “Sara, I’m not much of a – ahh, much better, I grabbed a new pen. Anyway, as I was saying, I’m not much of a writer. For some reason I just felt like writing right now. So how are you? … I better go to sleep, I have church in the morning. Love, Chris”

As you can tell, some of the information has been redacted. But from what’s visible, I think it’s clear that I was a flirtatious, kind of weird kid who thought that church was important. I love the cloud stationary. Fun fact, I also wrote the notes to my very first sermon on that same stationary.

Anyway, I also found this one journal entry from about the same time in my life.

I wrote, “Tonight during our group devotion, we went around the circle and told one another why we respect them…I almost cried laying here. I don’t even know I’m writing this, I guess I just want to remember when I’m old that I used to be very insecure about my relationships. Sunday night’s sermon was about ‘Approval Addiction.’ I think that still applies to me…I think writing this has helped me a little.”

Some of you may even right now feel the same way. Maybe you’ve always longed for close friends, but have always felt like an outsider, even while surrounded by people who ought to love you. I want you to know that you’re not alone. Most people have felt this way from time to time, and obviously I’ve often felt that way, too, and not just when I was an insecure teenager. Even now, as I preach, a part of me thinks, “I hope they like me.”

Thom Rainer, former President of Lifeway Bookstores, often conducted studies of thousands of people to see how we might effectively minister to our culture. And they actually found that most people in America long to have a close relationship with God.

According to one study, 89% of Americans desired to have a strong spiritual foundation for their lives, 81% say they want to provide a stronger spiritual leadership for their kids, and 82% believe that the Bible should be their moral compass in life. People are hungry to hear the gospel! As Jesus said, “The fields are white for harvest!”

Thom Rainer wrote in his book, Simple Life:

We have spent thousands of hours in past studies listening to those who are not in church. Most of them are not antichurch. Most of them don’t harbor resentment toward Christians in the church. But when these unchurched people decide to visit a church, they often have to summon great courage to walk into a place where they know few, if any, people. And they often tell us that they feel excluded and on the outside (“not a part of the club,” one person said matter-of-factly). It looks like a lot of people may be looking to return to church. I hope we Christians don’t run them away. -Thom Rainer, Simple Life

And yet, the wonderful thing about the gospel is that we’re all liked. “For God so loved the world that He sent His one and only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” We’re all invited.

When Paul was in Ephesus, establishing the first church there, he went from house to house, teaching the gospel to everyone who would let them in the door, letting everyone know that they were all invited. That God loved them. That because Jesus died for them, even though we’re all sinners, God invites us to repent, changing our mind about our sin, and place in our faith in Jesus to be saved.

You see, the reason we often feel alienated from God and one another is because of our sin. When we sin against God, disobeying His commands, it leads to loneliness and separation from God. But I want you to know that no matter how long you’ve been having these feelings, God loves you, and He’ll never ever stop loving you, and He’ll always invite you into His family, because He made a plan from the very beginning to welcome you back.

Paul continues. Verse 22.

“And now I am on my way to Jerusalem, compelled by the Spirit, not knowing what I will encounter there, except that in every town the Holy Spirit warns me that chains and afflictions are waiting for me. But I consider my life of no value to myself; my purpose is to finish my course and the ministry I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of God’s grace. (Acts 20:22-24)

Make a note of that: that Paul didn’t consider his own life of value. Let’s keep going, and be sure to observe who Paul says the church belongs to, and especially why it belongs to Him. Verse 25.

“And now I know that none of you, among whom I went about preaching the kingdom, will ever see me again. Therefore I declare to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of all of you, because I did not avoid declaring to you the whole plan of God. Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as overseers, to shepherd the church of God, which he purchased with his own blood. (Acts 20:25-28)

Did you catch that? Paul gave the Ephesian church this title: the church of God. But he wasn’t just saying that that their church alone was the church of God, because he gave the church in Corinth the same title at the beginning of both of his letters to them:

To the church of God at Corinth… (1 Corinthians 1:2a)

And he told the Galatians this:

For you have heard about my former way of life in Judaism: I intensely persecuted God’s church and tried to destroy it. (Galatians 1:13)

So what Paul is telling us, and every Christian church, is that the church belongs not to the pastors, or even to the people, but to God. And at the end of verse 28, he tells us why we belong to God: “which he purchased with his own blood.”

Church is not just a fun place to sing some fun songs, have fun connecting with your friends, and hear a fun, inspiring message. We are a people redeemed by Jesus’s blood. Because of our sin, we had no right to approach God in His holiness, righteousness, and wrath. But Jesus paid for our sins with His own blood when He died on the cross, so that though our sins were as scarlet, He washed them white as snow.

I used to love the tv show hosted by Drew Carrey called, “Whose Line Is It, Anyway?” Any of you see that show? The show was all about improvising lines in comedy skits, making it up as they went along. And the show was often hilarious, because no one, not even the actors, knew what would happen next.

Now, that makes for a great tv show, but a horrible way to do church. And yet, I think this is how many churches operate. Members sometimes argue with one another about what they think the church should do, or there’s conflict from personalities clashing with another, and it all stems from the misunderstanding of who owns the church, and a disagreement about what the church ought to be. But when we recognize that it’s God’s church, we start to be a bit more humble about what we want, and more eager to see what God wants.

Mark Dever also wrote in this book:

Why does the postal service exist? What do we pay mailmen to do? Do we pay them to write letters to us and put them in our mailboxes? No. We pay them to deliver faithfully the message of someone else. The mailman has been entrusted with other people’s messages to us. The same is true with ministers and their ministries. We are not to invent the message but to faithfully deliver God’s message to his people. That is our calling, which means that we are called as ministers only insofar as we present God’s message to his people. It is God who owns the church, and it is by his Word that he creates his people. -Mark Dever, Preaching the Cross

Now, in writing these things, Mark was primarily writing to pastors, but I would say this applies to every church member as well. When we gather, we don’t gather to go about our business, to see what we can gain from attending, as if church is all about us. We gather to go about God’s business. We gather to love God and love His people. And that ought to affect everything we do here. We ought to come to serve and encourage others. We ought to teach in such a way as to speak God’s word faithfully to each other, pointing people to Jesus. We ought to make church less about what we want to see at church, and more about what God wants to see at church.

That means being committed to come, even when you don’t feel like it. That means seeking to serve in church rather than just be served. That means going out of our way to make sure everyone else feels loved and welcome, considering others as more significant than yourself. Because church isn’t a have-it-your-way kind of establishment. It’s God’s church in which we’re to worship God in a way that pleases Him.

Paul then said a few more things to the Ephesian elders before leaving them, and after he finished speaking with them, it says this starting in verse 36:

After he said this, he knelt down and prayed with all of them. There were many tears shed by everyone. They embraced Paul and kissed him, grieving most of all over his statement that they would never see his face again. And they accompanied him to the ship. (Act 20:36-38)

Paul loved the Ephesians, and the Ephesians loved him. They were sad that Paul couldn’t stay with them longer, but they were even more committed to what God wanted. So even though they grieved about it, they accompanied Paul to the ship, and saw him off to his next ministry appointment.

Did you know that growing churches are also shrinking churches? It’s true. As a church reaches people with the gospel, we also disciple one another and train one another so that some of us would see God’s call on their lives to go and become pastors and missionaries in other places. It would be an incredibly unfaithful thing for us to hoard all of our members and all of the people we disciple over the years. Instead, faithful churches are sending churches, in which we send out even the most mature believers among us to preach the gospel all over the world.

I love how many kids we have on Wednesday nights right now. It’s been awesome. We often have more children on Wednesday evenings than everyone else combined. Have you noticed that? Abby comes home just about every Wednesday night and says how awesome it was to see the kids learning about Jesus and singing loud for Jesus and even dancing for Jesus. Recently she even texted me before church was even over and said, “We’re having a dance party!” Here’s the video she shared with me:

That’s awesome! But there’s a temptation in all of this for us to say, “God, I pray that all of these kids would stay in our church all of their lives.” No! We want to train them up, disciple them, so that we can also send some of them out to the mission field.

Now, not everyone is called to be a pastor or a missionary, but we ought to at least seek not our will for our children, but God’s. And we’re all called to be missionaries at the very least in our home towns, seeking to reach people with the gospel.

But as believers in this church, are we more concerned about what we want, or about what God wants? Are we more committed to what makes us happy in the church, or more committed to do what makes God happy, even if those things make us sad for a time?

Now, here’s the thing. This only makes sense in light of why the church is God’s. If church only exists so that believers have a good time singing songs and being inspired, then we ought to be able to do whatever we want to make church a feel-good place. But that’s not why we’re a church. We’re a church because of what Paul said: we’ve been purchased by the blood of Jesus.

Church doesn’t exist to make you feel good, although if you understand the message of the gospel, it will certainly give you hope and joy. Church doesn’t exist to be a place of gathering with your friends, although it certainly unites us as a family. But those aren’t the reasons we’re a church. We’re a church because Jesus purchased us with His blood. We were by nature dead in our sins, enemies of God, and on the road to be disciplined in hell, but God, in His infinite mercy, came down in the form of a man, Jesus, and paid the price for our sin. So we’re no longer our own; we’re His. We’ve been called out from this world in order to be God’s people. That’s what “church” means. It means “ones who are called out.” We’re called out of our old previous lives, and into the lives that God’s called us to. So we don’t go to church; we are the church. And if you take that seriously, and every believer should, it means that we don’t get to determine the course for our own lives, or the substance of our church services, as if it’s all about what we want. No, we belong to God, so we have the privilege and responsibility to do what He’s called us to do.

What an immense responsibility! And yet, it’s also an immense joy. Because being purchased by the blood of Jesus means that all of your sins are forgiven, and that God is your perfect Father who loves you.

As I began my sabbatical 7 weeks ago, on the very first day, I read two things in the first chapter of this book, “Christ-Centered Kids Ministry.” In telling the story about the Apollo 13 mission, how several astronauts faced almost certain death in outer space, the writer talks about how they were able to work through all of the problems that they faced because they adopted this motto: “Failure is not an option.” We need to have this attitude, because it’s true. Since this is God’s church, failure is not an option. God has called us to serve Him, and He’s promised that He will build His Church.

The second thing I read goes along with the first, and it’s the statement, “All hands on deck.” God wants all of us to be involved in His church. We’ve all been purchased by the blood of Jesus. There are no spectators in God’s church. We’re all called to serve Him.

God calls us to rejoice in Jesus by being active members of His church, in which we worship, and serve, and fellowship, and die to ourselves so that we might live in Him by the power of the Holy Spirit in us.

You see, our devotion to the church should not just be a convictional devotion. We shouldn’t just think “I need to go to church because that’s what I’m supposed to do.” We ought to be here because we love being here, because we love each other, because we need each other, and because we see God working here, in His church. So when you invite people to church and they say “I can be a Christian and worship at home,” our response should be, “You must never have been to our church. You’d want to come to ours, because God is there in an awesome way.”

In just a moment, we’re going to have an invitation, and it’s going to be unlike any invitation that I’ve ever given at this church.

Some of you here today may wish that you felt like you belonged somewhere, anywhere. Maybe you’ve even gone to bars late at night, just longing for a someone to talk to, who will accept you as you are. I want you to know that we love that you’re here this morning, and you’re welcome back, but not even coming to a church will fill that hole that you feel in your heart. What you need is Jesus. The reason that church is so great is because God is here, among us, and even in our hearts by grace through faith in Jesus. So my invitation to you this morning isn’t to join the church, but to place your faith in Jesus. And if you’ll do that, then God will forgive you of all of your sin, and God will always be with you as your loving Father. We’re going to sing a song in just a moment, and I invite you to just come forward, out of your seat, and talk with me during that song. I’d love to show you how to trust Jesus so that you would know that He forgives you of your sin, and to know that He’ll always be with you, even during your loneliest times.

Others of you this morning already know Jesus as your savior, but you’ve still felt like an outsider in life, maybe even when in the church. Maybe the church has let you down in that way, whether our church or another church you’ve been to in the past, so you’ve come to resent the church. Let me personally say to you right now, we’re sorry. I think I speak for everyone in saying that was never our intention. Church ought to be a place where we all feel loved, and welcome, and that we belong, not where we would feel more alienated and isolated. The reality is, God’s still working on us. We are, after all, His church, sinners saved only by grace.

Mark Dever wrote this in another book:

The gospel of Jesus Christ is not about me experiencing immediate joy with my friends; it is about my everlasting joy in God, and it leads me into a local church with people as sinful and as inconvenient to love as I am. – Mark Dever, Proclaiming a Cross-Centered Theology

And so I also want to encourage you that if you’ve placed your faith in Jesus, then you are a part of His church, and you do belong. We’re not always the best at showing it, so I simply ask you to forgive us. I invite you this morning to let go of any resentment that you have toward the church, and to forgive, just as you’ve been forgiven. If that’s you, I invite you to pray, God, help me to forgive Your church. Help me to know how much You love me, and how You’ve invited me into Your family, and help me to love Your family, just as You love me. If that’s what you need to do this morning, I invite you to come, and I’ll pray that with you.

Or, finally, on the flip side, maybe you know that you’re the one that’s messed up in this area. You’ve accidentally, or even intentionally, hurt others and made them feel like they weren’t welcome in God’s church. And it’s been eating you up, and you just know you need to apologize to that person. So I want to extend an invitation to all of us this morning as well, to commit to loving others just as God has loved us. Commit to assuring that everyone who comes to worship with us knows that they are loved and welcome. Commit to inviting your neighbor to come to hear the message of Jesus. Commit to being aware of the needs and feelings of others. In short, commit to loving your neighbor as yourself. If that’s the commitment you need to make this morning, I invite you to come and pray.

So whether to receive Jesus as your savior, or to experience the healing of restored relationships, or to commit to loving as you’ve been loved, I invite you to come.