Today's scripture reading is from the book of Luke, chapter 22, verses 13-34, and you can find it on page 10-44 in your Bible underneath the seat in front of you. When the hour came, Jesus and His apostles were climbed at the table, and He said to them, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. After taking the cup, He gave thanks and said, take this and divide it among you. Before I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And He took the bread, giving thanks for it, and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, this is my body given for you, do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, after the supper, He took the cup, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. But the hand of Him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. The Son of man will go as it has been decreed, but woe to the man who betrays him. They began to question among themselves, which of them it might be who would do this? Also dispute arose among them as to which of them was considered to be the greatest. Jesus said to them, the kings of the Gentiles lorded over them, and those who exercise authority over them called themselves benefactors. But you are not to be like that, instead the greatest among you should be like the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves. For who is greater, the one who is at the table, or the one who serves? It is not the one, is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves. You are those who have stood by me in trials, and I confer on you, and I confer on you a kingdom, just as my father conferred on one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table, and my kingdom, and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Simon, Simon, Satan has asked you to sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail, and when you have turned back, strengthened your brothers, but you replied, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death. Jesus answered, I tell you, Peter, before the rooster occurs today, you will deny me three times. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks, Danny. Good morning, people is falling. Well, as you heard, Mike and Susie are in Tallahassee, so that's awesome. Can't wait to see some pictures of that little baby. Let me first give a quick announcement. If you look in your worship guide, there is a number of announcements, but one that we really would like you to consider doing is adopting a college student. We do this program where families from our church will kind of hang out with and kind of give a home away from home to some of our UCF students to help them in their journey. So do that if you can, and you can sign up for that in the registration flap of the bulletin. Okay, well, here we go. We're continuing our dare to be a disciple series that Mike began a number of weeks ago. We've been going through the nine marks of a transformed life. If you want to see all nine, they're listed in the discussion guide, in the worship guide. And we've been going through Mike's been teaching and preaching about the different marks and what they mean. This week we are looking at mark number six. And that is that a transformed person fulfills his or her church membership vows. Okay, and there's a couple things that describe that number one, they live as a faithful follower of Christ throughout the week. Support UPC and its worship and work to the best of their ability. Submit to the government and discipline of the church. Let's be honest, that's huge, right there. I think we could do an entire sermon series and actually I hope we do some time an entire sermon series on what it means to fulfill the membership role or to fulfill your membership vows. That's where we're going, because basically, what does it mean to support UPC and its worship and work? What does it mean to submit to the government and discipline of the church? That's a lot there and I can't unpack all that in 30 minutes, but what I can do, or 25, I think it was a little early. Anyway, what I can do is give you a really good reason for wanting to know and understand that. Okay, that's what we're going to be doing. First, so if we're talking about church membership, I want to talk about some statistics that frightened, that are disturbing, that I hope to disturb you to a little bit too. Did you know that established churches grew by 0% in this last decade? Did you know that church membership nationwide declined by 9.5%? Did you know that no county in America has a greater percentage of church persons today than a decade ago? This one makes me sick. Half of all churches last year did not add one new member through conversion growth. There are 72 churches lost each week, 24 churches gained or planted, but that's a net loss of 48 churches each week. North America is the only continent where Christianity is not growing. Wow, right? Well, we could propose any number of reasons of why things are this way, but this morning is my intention to show you from scripture something that I think American Christians have lost or perhaps some of them don't know, and it's important. It's critical. So here it is, the local church plays a vital role in God's plan of redemption. Therefore, we must understand and teach others that a commitment to Christ includes a commitment to a local church. Say that last part again, a commitment to Christ includes a commitment to a local church. Now, I'm going to prove this to you this morning by basically taking you through four questions and letting scripture give you the answers. But see, here's the thing, if we're going to understand why church membership and fulfilling membership vows is so important, we got to understand why God established the church or ordained the church, if we're going to understand that, there's some other things we need to understand. So let's back way up and ask a big fat question like this. Why did God create the world? Why did God create? Okay. He didn't have to. He wasn't obligated to, but there's a reason and as we look in scripture, we find it. It's actually very simple and very profound at the same time. Here it is. God created the world for his own glory. God created the world for his own glory, and it's so important that we understand this. Look at verses 15 and 16. This doesn't speak about it directly, but it helps us see something here. Jesus says, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you, I will not eat it again until it finds fulfillment in the kingdom of God. And I love that. You know, I love that he was eager. He couldn't wait to teach these guys this stuff because he knew, he knew that everything that's happening is part of fulfillment. It's all going to the same place. Everything is part of God's grand purpose, his huge purpose in glorifying himself. And so that's what we need to realize here. If we're going to understand church membership, the first thing we got to understand is that God created the world for his own glory. John Piper puts it this way. He says, the ultimate foundation for our passion to see God glorified is God's own passion to be glorified. If that's God's goal, it must be our goal. So, wait, hold on. Is that true? Okay? Is it true that God's purpose for creating was his own glory? Let's let Scripture do the talking. I would point you to the Lord's prayer to start. Think about it. It's in Matthew 6, you know it. A lot of us haven't memorized. Just that first petition. Think about what Jesus taught us to pray. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name. You ever thought about that? You know, what does hallowed mean? It means made holy, it means sanctified, it means glorified. Jesus was teaching his disciples that when they pray to their Father, they should be asking God, glorify yourself in this place. Hallowed be your name. Look at Psalm 869. It says, all the nations you have made will come and worship before you, O Lord, they will bring glory to your name. Look at Romans 15, 8 and 9. It talks about confirming the promises that were made to the patriarch so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy. Here's a couple more verses. You can jot a couple of them down if you want. What you're going to find is that as you read through Scripture, it becomes abundantly clear that God's purpose for creating the world is his glory. One of my professors always says this and I love it. God loves to manifest in his presence and pour out his power on those who will dare to align their purposes with his. Yeah. I love that. So how do we, how do we do that? If we understand that God's purpose for glorifying or God's purpose for the world is his glory, how do we align our purposes with his? Well, we got to understand how God glorifies himself in the world. So that's question number two. How is God glorifying himself in the world? Here's the answer. God glorifies himself by bringing his kingdom. I don't know if you noticed, but look at verse 18, for example, Jesus says, for I tell you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes. And it's, he actually mentions the word kingdom four times, four times in this short little passage. And the, here's the thing. This is ours, this is just hours before he's arrested, taken into custody and eventually crucified. And all he can talk about with his guys is the kingdom. And in fact, Jesus talked about the kingdom all the time. If you read through the book of Luke, you'll find over 30 times the phrase kingdom of God. And from the New Testament, we understand that the kingdom of God has come and is coming at the same time. And the thing is, you can tell where it is. I'm sure a lot of you know who Alexander the Great is, you ever heard of him? He's a, he was a king, he was a conqueror. I think his picture should probably be next to the word conqueror in the dictionary if it's not already. I mean, this guy just totally conquered so much of his area of the world. In fact, he only ran for 13 years. He had inherited a kingdom, a smaller kingdom from his father Philip. And then he just expanded that thing from Greece into this massive, massive area. He conquered places like Syria and Egypt and Mesopotamia and Persia and a bunch of things. I can't pronounce. And he even conquered King Darius the third, the Persian king Persian, the Persian empire had conquered a lot and he kind of took that too. In fact, he marched his army across 22,000 miles of land in that area of the world. That's like going back and forth across the United States eight times. Okay, so this is huge. And here, but here's the thing. One of the things that historians always mention about Alexander the Great is the fact that when he would conquer an area, he would, what the historians have called, to Hellenize it. He would make it like where he was from. People would have to learn the language. The people would have to accept the culture. And basically, to put it simply, you could tell where Alexander's kingdom had come because Alexander's will was done there. Alexander was a bad king, he's a bad man, did a lot of bad things. But he happens to be a good example of the way that our good king is expanding his kingdom. Think about the Lord's prayer again. Our father, who is in heaven, how it would be your name. What does he say then? Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. This little book is the Jesus story book Bible. And it's pretty cool. It's a bunch of Bible stories that are written for children. And we read this to Noah on occasion. Sometimes I just read it to myself. But either way, it's really cool. It's not a literal translation by any means, OK? There is a part where in the story of David and Goliath tells the Israelites that he's going to eat them on toast. And so you got to be careful on the interpretation. But Sally Lloyd Jones is the author. And this is what she says paraphrasing something from Matthew 13. One day, Jesus was telling people about God's kingdom. God's kingdom is wherever God is king. Jesus told them. It's wherever God is in charge. It's where he fills your heart up with his forever happiness. And you stop running away from him and you love him. And she's right. God's kingdom is wherever God is king. Your kingdom come. Your will be done. If you're following Christ, it's because the kingdom has come in your heart. And we have so many families that are following Christ together here. And it's because the kingdom has come in those families. And we as a church body, a family, the kingdom has come to UPC. So that's good news for us and the whole world, actually. So we're seeing this now. It's developing. We've got God's purpose for the world is his glory. And God glorifies himself in the world by bringing his kingdom. And that leads us to our third question. How is God bringing the kingdom to the world? Here's the answer. God brings his kingdom to the world through the church. I want you to look at verses 24 through 30. You notice Jesus is talking to his apostles about the authority that they are given. And he's explaining to them that you're not to use this authority like the Gentile kings do it. They lord it over people. Oh, no, no. You are to be servants. And I want you to see something here, but look at verse 26, but actually listen, because the NIV translates a phrase as the one who rules, and that's okay, but the English standard version and a newer American standard Bible are better. Here's verse 26 in those Bibles. But Jesus says, but not so with you, rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader as the one who serves. So how are they to do that? How does this group of apostles lead and how do they mobilize and how they get people organized and how they get things working so this kingdom can go, can expand? It's the church. It's the institutional church. It's Matthew 16, 18. Jesus looks at Peter and he says, you are Peter and I tell you, upon this rock, I will build my church. Was there anything else, Jesus? Yes. Of hell will not overcome it. Amen. Okay, look at Ephesians 1, verse 22, Paul talks about God placed all things under Jesus' feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church. Ephesians 3, 10, God's intent was that now through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known. And don't make the mistake of equating church with all Christians everywhere. Okay, that happens sometimes. Jesus is talking about the institutional church. Look at this quote from Wayne Mac, he wrote a book called, to be or not to be a church member. He says the word church is used 110 times in the New Testament and it is instructive to note that 93 of those are clear references to a local church. We may conclude from this large number of references that the Bible has quite a lot to say about the importance of local church. So here's how I explain it to those guys over there a lot. It's the church big C is broken up primarily into little churches, okay, UPCs, spirit of joys, woodberry Presbyterians, the churches, the local churches, okay, so what is a local church? That's we need to understand that too. Local church is a body of believers that are led, served and led by ordained leaders. Look at a verse like Acts 14, 23, it says this, Paul and Barnabas appointed elders for them in each church and with prayer and fasting committed them to the Lord in whom they had put their trust. First Timothy 5, 17 says the elders direct the affairs of the church, Hebrews 13, 17, obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account, obey them so that their work may be a joy, not a burden for that would be of no advantage to you. So do you see how Jesus has set his church up? He has called and ordained people to be leaders, to oversee congregations and those leaders are here to equip you and empower you to do what God has calling us to do. And they have a number of roles but there are three things that mark a church apart from every other organization or institution in the world and that is the preaching and teaching of the Word of God and the proper administration of the sacraments which is baptism and the Lord's Supper and the exercise of church discipline. This is the church that Jesus is talking about here. And it's all right here in this passage actually if you look at what you're going to see is that in this passage Jesus is teaching, there's the Word, he's teaching them to administer the Lord's Supper, there's a sacrament and he's telling them that they're not to abuse their authority, that's church discipline, they are to lead as servants. You see God is bringing his kingdom to the earth through all the local churches of the world and you could even look at it this way that the more churches are planted and growing, the more kingdom is flowing through there. Now it's not the only way that the kingdom comes but it's the primary way. Let me tell you a little bit about a company I used to work for. Some of you know that I used to work for Best Buy and Best Buy is actually a pretty impressive company. If you look at them, there've been the number one electronics retailer in America for a long long time and they have hundreds of stores, if not over a thousand, they have 155,000 employees. They have 31 million customers, they make billions of dollars good for you Best Buy but here's the thing. Do you know how Best Buy started? I'll tell you because I've been indoctrinated once you work there, you know this. There's a guy named Dick Schultz and he had a music store called The Sound of Music and he sold CDs and he sold record players, not CDs back then, record players and maybe some hay tracks. I don't know, there's a way it's back. But anyway, one day this tornado came through and just destroyed his store. He lost basically everything except for some of the merchandise that he had elsewhere. What he did is he ended up thinking, well I'm just done, what am I going to do? So he rents a warehouse and puts all the boxes in view on shelves. Recognize that. And so anyway, he has this tornado sale and all these people come and they're taking their box and they're buying it and then he ends up selling so much stuff that he thinks maybe he'll do that again and he orders more merchandise and pretty soon he has some investors and they start Best Buy in one store in Burnsville, Minnesota. And then they built another store and then another and then another and so on and so forth to the point where like I said, I think they have close to a thousand stores. You see, Jesus has done more than more for us than we could ever understand but we can't miss the fact that even that although he is our savior, his death paid for our sin, his righteousness is credited to our account through faith, he also came to train and send out church planters. If you don't understand that, that Paul was a church planner, Peter was a church planner, the book of Acts is these missionary journeys of churches being planted. That's why there's letters to the church in Ephesus, to the church in Colossi, to the church in Thessalonica. That's why. Okay? And if you don't understand that, then Romans 15, 23 is a weird verse because Paul says this. He says, but now there is no more place for me to work in these regions.
He says, and since I've been longing for many years to see you, I plan to do so when I go to Spain. So basically, he's saying to the Romans, I'm done here, my work is done here, I'm off to Spain. And if we think that the kingdom comes through, the preaching of the Word of God alone and people coming to Christ, that's not quite right because it comes through the planting of churches. And that's what he meant when he said there's nothing more for me to do here. He's not saying that everybody had become Christian, I guarantee you that wasn't the case. But he's saying is, I have planted enough churches in this area of the world that I can go to Spain now and plant some there because Paul understood that the kingdom is coming and it comes through more and more churches being planted. Okay? Speaking of churches being planted, I can't tell you how excited I am that Mike and Brad Jankowski are going, well, Mike Osborne and Brad Jankowski are going to be going to Japan. And they're going to be going and helping at a church planting institute in Japan where 400 missionaries and church planners are going to come and learn and study and grow and be able to plant churches all over Japan. And they have 75 kids that are coming. So let me please put a little plug in here. There's in your worship guide, there's this blue thing. If you could look at this and see if you'd be able to donate any items before 10 a.m. Tomorrow morning, Lynn Jankowski told me that if you were able to even give somebody in the back, I think we've got some envelopes there at the welcomes desk, if you can even give them a couple bucks, somebody gave 20 bucks. We just need to raise some money so that they have snacks for these kids. Okay? Don't think of it as, oh, buy some snacks for some kids. Think of it, oh, we're going to take part in the coming of the kingdom to Japan. So do that if you can, that'd be awesome. So God's purpose for the world is his glory and he's glorifying himself in the world by bringing his kingdom to earth and he's bringing his kingdom to earth primarily through local churches everywhere. And so there's one more question. How does the church succeed? Ultimately, how do we, how do we fulfill our membership bounds? And the answer, you guessed it, it's the gospel. But look at this. Look at verse 33, Peter says to Jesus, Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death. And Jesus, knowing Peter better than Peter knew himself, prediction verse 34, that no, that's not going to happen. Peter, you're actually going to deny me three times. But if you think about this, Peter's like kind of making a vow. He's saying, Jesus, I'm with you, man, I will die with you, I will go to prison with you and then just hours later, that was not the case. Interesting. Sad. But for the fact that if you read on, we get into the book of Acts and it's not, it's just in chapter two, all of a sudden, Peter's preaching the sermon. He's standing up in front of probably the same people that he denied Christ in front of before. And he's shouting, fellow Jews and all who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you. Listen carefully to what I say. And he goes on to talk about Jesus being the son of God and being resurrected and the spirit being poured out. Now how there's little paranoid Peter go to being powerful preaching Peter. It's the gospel, baby. That's what it is. It's the gospel because the gospel is power, okay? The gospel is what empowers us to do the things that God calls us to do. This is why Paul says in Romans 116, I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the power of God unto salvation for everyone who believes. And in Colossians 1 verse 6, he said that the gospel, this gospel all over the world is producing fruit and growing the gospel, the gospel. This is why we're always pounding the gospel into your heads and our own. And it's good news. It's good news that even though we're messed up people and we deserve serious punishment from God, our merciful and gracious God sent his son, his one and only son, to live this perfect life and die the sinner's death and hand us all this righteousness and take away our filth and sin. Paul says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. What is salvation? It's freedom. It's freedom. It's freedom from the penalty of sin. It's freedom from the power that sin has over us. It's freedom from the very presence of sin eventually when Jesus comes back with the rest of the kingdom. So if you haven't put your faith in Christ, do that. To one of us today, there'll be people at the crosses and the windows for prayer, go there and do that. And then if you haven't become a member of our church, will you do that? Will you go through the process? We've got a membership weekend coming up. I think Seth will mention it. Do that. Let's do this. Be a member of this church and then fulfill those membership boughs and let's watch this kingdom come. God is glorifying himself in the world by advancing his kingdom through the church by the power of the gospel. I want you to think of UPC as your kingdom outpost. Not a church that you go to, but a power source that you go from so that you can take part in the nations coming to glorify God. That you can take part in God's kingdom coming because God's kingdom is wherever God is king. It's wherever God is in charge. It's where he fills your heart up with his forever happiness. And you stop running away and you love him. Let's pray. Holy and gracious and heavenly Father, we just humbly bow before you acknowledging that you are good, Lord, and you are the only one deserving of glory. So help us to have that be our sole purpose in life that we would glorify you in our entire being. Bless this church, bless the work of this church, bless the members of this church, bless those that are considering membership, Lord, let us fight hard for your kingdom to come, give us power through your gospel, and help us to watch our city be transformed right before our very eyes for your glory and for the nations that they would be glad. We pray in Jesus' name and for his sake, amen.