What Makes A Good Church
By Bobby Blakey on January 27, 2025
Romans 15:4-6
AUDIO
What Makes A Good Church
By Bobby Blakey on January 27, 2025
Romans 15:4-6
Go ahead, grab a seat. What makes a good church? That's the question I want us to think about together here this morning. Is it the taste of the coffee? Is that what makes it a good church? Is it as simple as good churches have donuts and bad churches do not? I know a lot of people, they actually come to church for their kids. That's something that brings a lot of people to church. How's the kids’ ministry at the church? I know there are people who end up coming to church because of their concern for their teenagers and they want them to get plugged in to a youth group that's alive. I think one of the main criteria people use to decide if they're going to go to a church or not, is the music. Do you like the music? How does the music sound to you? Is it your style? That's something a lot of people are using. And a lot of people are like, what about the building of the church? What about the location? Do I feel like it's a nice place when I go there? Is there an easy parking space to find, right? Which is not very good for our church. We're being honest, right? What about the pastors of the church? Like, which is another not good question for us, because we just had five pastors, then we sent two of them out. That means now we have three pastors. Like, yeah, what about those guys? I think people have so many kinds of superficial questions looking at the humans of the church. I think the question we should all be asking about what makes a good church is, what is God doing at that church? Is God on the move at the church? Is God there among the people? Are the people really into the worship of God? Are they opening up the Word of God? Are they actually seeking the work of God? Give me a beat down church in a building with people who can't sing well and a guy who's not the best preacher, but as long as God's there among the people I'm in. Can I get an amen from anybody on that?
Let's go to Ephesians 3. I just want to help you see what should be our expectations about our church in 2025. We're doing this study called Oikonomics, and we're going to Ephesians 3. Just a passage I want to start with, to set the tone for our time together, is Ephesians 3:20-21. Oikonomics is the study of how Jesus builds his house. How does Jesus build his people that are the church that he died for on the cross, the people bought with the blood of Jesus. What is Jesus doing with those people? And here, in Ephesians 3, it talks about all the blessings. Every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is for those who are in Christ. If God has made you alive in Christ, if you were once far off and now you've been brought near in Christ. And it's saying all these great things. And it climaxes with this. Ephesians 3:20, “Now to Him who is…” What does it say he is? He is “able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” See there will always be human limitations, if you're looking at the church, but there should be godly expectations that he is able to do even more exceedingly abundantly, beyond what we're asking or thinking. And where is he going to do that with his power that's working in us, in the church, in Christ Jesus.
So, we want to be a church where God is on the move. And we're going to see how that happens in Romans, chapter 15, verses 4 to 6. So that's our real text. If everybody could turn there with me, we're going to see three means that God uses to really build the church. If you were here last week, it was exciting, our first week after we sent out the team to Long Beach, and we started this study of how we don't come to church to please ourselves. We come to build up the other people around us. We come to church the same way that Jesus came for us. And this was a very exciting week. There were a lot of people here at fellowship groups, talking during the week, hey, I want to step up. I want to be a builder. I want to do what God's calling me to do. Very encouraging week, but now these verses are going to help us see it's not just about what we're doing at church, but what is God doing? So out of respect for God's word, I want to invite everybody to stand up as I read Romans 15:4-6. Please follow along as I read because this is the Word of God about the work that God's going to do here among us. Romans 15, verse 4.
For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the reading of God's word. Please go ahead and have your seat. There is a handout in your bulletin. If you want to take some notes and write down three ways that God is going to work here among us; you can see we've got a point to go along with each of the three verses we just read. So, Look at verse 4 with me, where the first word is “For”. So it's coming off of what was just said in verse 3. And what we looked at last week here in verse 3 was that Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, and then there's a quote here from Psalm 69:9. So the motivation of why you should come to church, not to please yourself, but to build other people up is, hey, remember how Jesus came for us? Did Jesus come to serve himself, or did he come to serve us? And then we go back to Psalm 69, which shows how Jesus was willing to take the reproaches that people were giving towards God. He was willing to die on the cross for God, and he was willing to die on the cross for us, to save us from our sin. Do you remember what Jesus did for you? Well, if he came for us that way, we should come to church for other people the same way Jesus came for us. But see, Paul, he uses the Scripture to make his point. And so, now he says, “For whatever was written in former days, was written for us, for our instruction,” for our teaching. And then he says these two words here, that through endurance and through encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope. So, it's like he takes this moment where he brings up a Scripture to make his point, and then he now makes a comment about the Scriptures. Now, if you've been paying attention as we've been going through the book of Romans, and some of you have maybe been here for all 80 sermons, this is our 80th time we've opened up the Romans together at church on a Sunday morning. He has quoted a lot of Scripture in the book of Romans.
Go back to Romans 3, and you can kind of see it, depending on how your Bible is printed. Sometimes they kind of put the quotes from scripture in a way that's kind of centered there. So, if you look back at chapter 3, there was a big old chunk where he used the Scripture to prove to us that not one of us is good, not one of us will be justified by keeping the works of the law. And then if you go over to Romans 9, you'll notice a lot of indented phrases there, a lot of centered quotes, because in chapter 9, he started to get into how God chooses us. God chooses to save his to call his people Israel. God chooses to call us to be his people. And then in Romans 10, how do we respond with our faith in God? And then Romans 11, if you look at that chapter, there are a lot of quotations, because he's getting into the Jews and God's plan for them, versus the Gentiles, who are now being grafted in like an olive tree. And so, he's really been using the Scripture like he expects the saints in Rome to know the Scripture, and he's been using it to make his point. So, when he makes his point here in Romans 15, as we're now moving towards the end of Romans, he says, hey, let me just make a comment, for whatever was written was written for our instruction. Now, when Paul is writing to the saints in Rome, they don't have leather-bound Bibles like you and I do. Or some of you are on your iPad right now, or some of you, even you have an app on your phone, where you’ve got the whole Bible right there. No, he's writing this letter and he's sending it to the saints in Rome. It's not a published work yet. It's not spread around. Everybody doesn't have it; they don't have the New Testament. So, whenever you're reading the New Testament, the Bible that's written in Greek in the first century after the time of Jesus, when they say, “Scriptures,” what Scriptures are they talking about, everybody? What we would call today the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures; the law, the prophets and the writings, they were already published. They were already spread around. They were already collected on scrolls and in libraries in different places. Jesus referred to the writings of the scriptures in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms throughout his ministry. So, when it says “whatever was written in the former days was written for our instruction,” he is saying that the Old Testament is written for who, everybody? Us! Okay. Are you ready to embrace that? Because that's not what a lot of Christians think. A lot of Christians, they think the Old Testament's old. They think it was written to Israel back in the day. They ain't darkening the door of the Old Testament. They ain't trying to figure it out. They aren't teaching it to their kids. They've kind of said, I'm just going to focus on the part written to me, which is the New Testament, the part written in Greek. Problem with that kind of thinking is the guys who wrote it in Greek, when they say the Scriptures are written for us, they're talking about what we call the Old Testament. I just need everybody to think this through with me. Abraham never read Genesis. Is everybody tracking with me on that? Like Genesis wasn't written so Abraham could be like, yep, that's what happened. True story. Abraham's already dead when Genesis is written. In fact, everybody in Genesis dies by the end of the book and isn't around by the time of Moses later on when he's writing it. So, it wasn't written for the people back then, specifically, Paul's saying to the saints in Rome, Jews and Gentiles, believers in the new covenant of Jesus, people who know the gospel and are not ashamed of it. Hey, all of that Scripture, it was written for our teaching, for our instruction.
And so do you really embrace the whole Bible? If you're taking notes, write down 2 Timothy 3:16-17. It's a very important verse for our church. We believe that all scripture is breathed out by God, that all scripture is profitable for teaching, that we can learn something from any book of the Bible. In fact, we believe that the scripture is sufficient to equip us for all the good works that God wants us to do in our life. We really believe that this whole collection of books, from cover to cover, is the inspired Word of God. And we think that we should teach it; we should study it; we should read it. And if we really do, we will get to know who God is himself. Okay? Jesus said, search the Scriptures for they testify of who? They testify of me, Jesus said on the road to Emmaus. Jesus revealed what the prophets had prophesied about him, and the hearts of the disciples burned. All he had was the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and he could preach the gospel to his disciples. So, I want to encourage you to consider what Paul's saying. Look at look at verse 4. “Whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction” so we could be taught. And then here's what the Scripture will give you, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. In the Scriptures are endurance and encouragement so that you would have hope. This is what everybody here needs. If you have faith in Jesus, you need to keep going in that faith. You need to have the Lord come alongside of you to encourage you in your faith. And you need to get off the roller coaster of your own emotions. You need to get off the roller coaster of the highs and lows of current events. And you need to have hope that you know who God is. You know what God's going to do. Your future is one hundred percent sure. And because you have that hope, you're going to keep going and you're going to be encouraged. And where do you get all of that from? The Scriptures? Some of you are burnt out, some of you are tired, some of you are weak, and you're considering giving up. And in here is exactly what you need. What is your attitude towards the Scriptures? Are you ready to be taught? Are you ready to go and talk about it with other people. Are you ready to read it yourself? Like this was finals week at my house with one of my children, who's a high schooler here. I don't know if anybody else had finals week, right? We got a chemistry final. Can you imagine my teenager coming up to me and saying, “you know, I'm not really feeling the connection with chemistry. I'm just not sure how it's relating to my life. You know, they want me to know the whole periodic table of elements, and honestly, magnesium, I just don't see it in my future right now. It just, it just doesn't speak to me,” right? Can you imagine if my child's like, you know, I think I can pass the class, even if I bomb this final. I think it's going to be okay. I'm not going to study. Parents. How would you respond to that, if your child had that attitude about chemistry, why do we have a higher standard for our high school students about chemistry than we do about studying the Word of God? A lot of people take studying the things we learn in high school more seriously than they take learning the Word of God.
Go with me to James, chapter 5. Look at how James talks about it in his letter that he writes of wisdom to the Jews. He says this in in James 5:10, if you can look at this with me, he makes a comment about the Scripture, how the Scripture was written before and how helpful it can be for the people that he's writing to. And he says here in James 5:10 “As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord.” So, he wants them to be patient. He wants them to wait for the Lord. He's coming. The judge is standing at the door. The judge is going to come and make everything right. Be patient. Don't give up. Endure to the end. Keep going. Be encouraged. Don't lose heart. He's trying to get the people to have hope and go forward to the future. And if you want to have hope, what should you think of? Remember the prophets. Remember what they spoke in the name of the Lord. Remember the things that were written. And then look what he says about it. Verse 11. “Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast,” same word as endurance in Romans 15, those who kept going to the end. They endured, they persevered. We consider them blessed. In fact, you have heard of the steadfastness of Job? Have you heard the story of Job? Do you know how he endured such terrible trials, but did he curse God and die? No, even though he had a really hard time, what did he say at the end of it? “Before, I just heard of you, but now I see you.” I know you. And was he blessed at the end of all of his trials? Consider Job's endurance, and then it says this, look at this, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. So, see how he says, go back to the Prophets. Remember the stories maybe you got taught as a kid, or maybe you're starting to pick up on them. Remember even the story of Job. But what do you see even beyond the prophets, what do you see? Even beyond the characters and the stories, you see who God is. You see his purpose. You see that God always has a plan for his people. He always has something for them to hope for, a sure expectation of what he's going to do for them.
In fact, who is God? Our God is compassionate. Our God is merciful. Our God is saying to generation after generation, hear me. Listen to me. Turn to me that you may live. I see your sin and you should be judged. I will forgive you if you will just hear me and turn to me and come to me. Now, if you don't listen to me, judgment is coming, but I'll give you another time. I'll send another prophet. I'll warn you again to hear me, turn to me. God wants to forgive people. God wants people to hear what he's saying, so that they will turn to him in repentance, so he can offer them forgiveness, so that they can know him. But if you don't listen to him, you're not going to get away with it, by no means, where he clears the guilty, and their stories of judgment and their stories of salvation. And you begin to see through all of the stories and all of the characters, as you go from book to book to book, you see one constant character who is defining the whole story. And you realize God is the constant of my life. The steadfast love of the Lord, it endures forever. His mercies, they are new every morning. Great is his faithfulness. I can have hope because I know God. Can I get an amen from anybody? Like this is what happens if you read the Bible. You don't just read a bunch of stories of people, places and things, you get to know who God is. That's what James is saying, yeah, go back to the prophets. Go back to Job. But even beyond all that, don't just relate to Job, look at God. He's compassionate. He's merciful.
Do you know God? See if you really read the Scriptures like you want to know God, you will find the endurance to keep going. You will find encouragement, because God will be right there with you, and you will have hope. Today could be a rough day. You may not be feeling well today, but I know who my God is, and he has a plan for me, and my future is secure because God loves me, and nothing will ever separate me from the love of my God. See, this happens to me a lot here at the church. This happened to me the other night. Somebody here at the church, trying to be kind, they say, wow, you just have so much energy. That's what they say to me, like, I'm just the Energizer Bunny around here. You know, Energizer Bobby, just go, go, go. It's like what people say to me all the time, you like, like, I just have energy I'm sipping on at home or something. I don't know what they think it's like, like, there's just energy bound up within me. This lady said that to me the other day, and I thought, wow, you weren't there when I woke up this morning. There was no energy to be found. You know, I do not have some source of energy within me. Here's what I firmly believe, and I seek to practice every day of my life when I wake up, and some days when I wake up, I'm already tired. I don't know if anybody else can relate to that, but I'm already ready for the day to be over, and we're just getting started, right? Here's what I believe. I believe that if I get my eyeballs in this book, and I don't look anywhere else until I see God. I turn my eyes from worthless things, and I ask God to revive my soul. I ask God to open my eyes that I can see the wondrous things that come from your law. And guess what? Our God, do you not know? Have you not heard that our God is the everlasting God? And even young people get tired. Even strong people grow weary. But our God, those who wait on him, he will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. That's what happens through the Scriptures. There's not just what you need for survival. There is a revival waiting for you, if you will study and dig into the book. It's right there. God gave us all the endurance, all the encouragement, all the hope we're ever going to need. It's all here. He reveals himself. And so, I wonder what your attitude is when you feel tired, do you act like I need to go to the Word of God to find life? Or when you go to the Word of God, you're like, ah, I'm not really feeling it. I'm not really seeing it. And you then withdraw from the Scripture. The moment you withdraw from the Scripture, where is life going to come from? Where's the endurance and the encouragement and the hope that you're going to need?
See, when there's a challenge, and it is challenging to understand some of the Scriptures. I mean, these are ancient documents, written in foreign languages, written in cultures that don't even exist today anymore, at a time in world history where people thought much differently than we do today. There's a whole lot of context you’ve got to wrap your mind around to understand what's going on sometimes in the book of Jeremiah. So do you act like, well, I'm just not going to read that, and I'll go read my favorite verse again. Or do you act like, wow, I’ve got to figure this out. I’ve got to dig. I’ve got to dig in. I’ve got to study. I’ve got to get taught about this. I’ve got to find a Study Bible I can read. Or I’ve got to go talk to my friends at church and ask them what they're getting out of this chapter, because it's hard for me to see. Do you like, no, it's in there, and I’ve got to learn it. I’ve got to be taught it. Or are you like, I don't know? And then you just kind of move on. What's your personal attitude toward the Scripture? That's what I'm asking you here.
Go back to Romans 15. Let's remind ourselves of the context of what's going on. Because in the context here, like in back in verse 1, he said, there are strong and there are weak. There are people who are strong in their faith and then there are people who are weak in their faith. So, when he's writing to the saints in Rome, he's very aware that not all of them are thinking the same thing. And, in fact, he's already made it very clear, there are Jews there and there are Gentiles there, so people coming from really different backgrounds. But then in chapter 14, he got very specific of how this is playing out, that some people, they're still going by the Jewish law, and they're thinking, we can't eat that food. It's unclean. Or we’ve got to keep the Sabbath, or we’ve got to keep the Feast. We’ve got to keep these certain days. Whereas, other people stronger in their faith in Christ, they're like, no, Jesus declared all foods clean. No. We don't have to keep the Sabbath anymore, because we don't have to go and be Jews. We can be Gentiles, and we can believe in Jesus, in the New Covenant. And so, hey, people are having different thoughts. And so how are so many people from so many different backgrounds, with so many different opinions about how they should live their lives. How are all of those people going to get on the same page? He says, hey, guess what? Whatever was written in the former, it was written for our teaching, and this is how we're all going to come together. The way we're all going to get on the same page is we're all going to get on the same page in God's Word. This is written for our teaching, and so you’ve got to get in the Scriptures. You’ve got to be taught, is what Paul's trying to say to everybody. There's going to be this unifying effect.
Now, one thing that happened when we did the construction project for this auditorium… Is anybody thankful for this auditorium that God provided for us here in Huntington Beach? Because this used to be a remote control car race track. Does everybody know that this whole section was a massive pile of dirt? Do you guys know that this is like the dirt section right here, like stinking cockroach infested dirt is what was left behind here. Okay? And so, then this whole construction project, it took a long time, if anybody remembers. And I would come in here, and there are like these different groups doing construction, and here's like the all these subcontractors, and here's our project manager, and here's like the electrical subcontractor and his guys. Here's the fire alarm guys over here, and I don't know if you've ever been on a construction site, or what your familiarity with that is. I went to Bible college and went to a couple of seminaries. Never had a class about construction projects, right? So, I'm thankful that we had some brothers in Christ that really helped us out here at the church. So, I wander into construction. Shinsei like a complete noob, and I've got the hard hat on. I'm like a tourist coming in, right? And, man, these guys start saying things you don't normally hear at church, if you know what I mean, right? The electrical guys and the fire alarm guys, they've got beef, and they're both pointing fingers at each other. And this guy, Darren, he's trying to break it up, but this is not going well, and a mistake has been made, and it's coming out of somebody's budget. And people like, the voices are raised, the temperatures are raised. I'm like, how can I make peace in this situation? And then this thing happens where, all of a sudden, they're like, well, we're going to have to go back to the plans. And they unroll these architectural plans like some kind of ancient scroll, and they open them up, and all these dudes, they get around the table, and they're like, well, whatever this plan says, that's the authority, that's what's supposed to happen. And so, they get into the blueprints, and it's like, well, whatever this says, one of you did it right, one of you did it wrong, we're going to go with the plans. And I'm watching this happen, and I'm thinking if Christians at church treated the Scriptures with as much authority as these guys are treating these plans, our church would be an amazing place to be a part of. We could solve so many conflicts. We could answer so many questions. If people are like, well, I don't know. I think this. I don't know. I think this. What if we just unroll the plans and see what God says about it. See, that's what he's saying here.
Let's get that down for point number one: we want to “Stick with God's blueprints.” We want to stick with God's blueprints. We don't need to find a new way to do church. We don't need to do DIY church. We don't need to go figure it out for yourself. We want to do our lives and our lives together as a church. We want to do what God says. Okay, that's our whole goal here at Compass Bible Church. And the goal is, when you're hearing a sermon like this, I'm not coming and giving you my message, alright, I'm not. I'm not sitting at home thinking, what'll really get them laughing at the 11 o'clock service this week? I'm not sitting at home thinking, what would really be relevant based on the roller coaster of current events right now. How's everybody going to be feeling on Sunday? And how can I speak to their feelings? I'm not thinking these things. I'm thinking, what does Romans 15:4-6 say? And how can I get out of the way so God can give his message to his people. That's the goal. And then let's all go talk about it. And let's not go talk about what maybe the pastor said. Let's go talk about what God said in Romans 15:4-6. And then we can all get on the same page. In fact, let's not even just talk about this one passage. Let's read through passages together and talk about those. Let's stick with what God says in his Word. God's Word is hundred percent capable of being the building of this church. The blueprints are all right there. We’ve just got to follow it. As the Word goes out, the church grows up. That's what we believe. That's what we've seen here. And so, we’ve got to stick with God's plans.
Now go to the next verse. Look at Romans 15:5, because it's what's interesting is, after he says this about the endurance and encouragement of the Scriptures that are going to give us hope, notice, then he says, “May the God of endurance and encouragement.” So that kind of proves what we were just saying in the scriptures, there's endurance and encouragement. But now he's going to start praying like straight to God. And what does God have? Endurance and encouragement. So, that kind of just shows that the whole point of knowing the Scriptures isn't just to be Bible nerds. No, the point of knowing the Scriptures is you want to know God himself. That's why we're so excited about the Bible around here, because we have a zeal to know God and to give him glory. And so, this idea of you need to keep going in endurance, and you need to be encouraged, and all of this is fueled because you have hope, this has been a theme that he's been building in Romans.
Go back to Romans 5. I just want to review, because this is our 80th time opening up Romans together over years. You might have forgotten some things that we already learned, or maybe you weren't even here when we learned them. So, let me just review to bring them fresh to your mind, or maybe to introduce you to them for the first time. But in Romans, chapter 5, we're starting to talk about the peace we have with God because we've been justified by faith. So, the whole first part of Romans is you can't do it. It doesn't matter how hard you try; you will not be justified. God will not declare you righteous by the works of the law. So, the only way to be righteous is you have to believe, not in what you've done, but you have to believe in what Jesus has done when he died on the cross and rose again. And when you put your faith, and you stop trying to do it yourself, and you trust in what Jesus has done, God declares you righteous on the basis of your faith. And now you're in this relationship where you have peace and joy and hope. And so, look at what it says here, and I'm in Romans 5:3-5. “Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” And so, you don't need, hey, you can rejoice even in sufferings. You don't have to just ride the highs and lows. And every time you get to a low, every time life gets hard, every time it's tough, you're just down. No, you can rejoice even when you're down, because God is going to give you endurance. And as you grow in endurance, you grow in your character, you remain steadfast in the trials. It increases your faith. And what do you get? You get this hope, and this hope is not like, I hope it doesn't rain today or I hope it works out tomorrow. This hope, it's not just optimism. No, we call it hope to miss this is hundred percent certain confidence that I know who God is and he's going to do what he promised. I already know the end of the story. I'm going to be there with him in glory. I'm going to see Jesus face to face, and I will be transformed to be like him. I know that's going to happen, and because I have that hope, I can endure through the hard times, and even if I'm suffering, I can rejoice. See, so Paul's trying to teach us, you've got faith. Great. Let's talk about how you need to continue, how you need to endure. Let's talk about that hope.
Go over to Romans 8. You'll see this same idea in chapter 8. What an encouraging chapter about the confidence, the assurance that we can have, that God loves us. We're not going to be judged; we're going to be welcomed to be with him in glory. And here, in Romans 8, he's talking about how the creation is groaning. In Romans 8:23, “Not only is the creation groaning for the new creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons.” This is Romans 8:23, the end of it, the redemption of our bodies. Someday we're going to get a new body. We have that hope. We have that confident expectation. Verse 24 “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Or you could translate patience there, what? Endurance. I'm going to keep going today because I have confidence in what's going to happen in the end. I'm going to be in his glory. I'm going to get a new body. I'm going to see the new heavens and the new earth. And because I know I'm going to be there, I'm going to keep going right now. I endure because I have hope. Go to Romans 12:12. This is a verse that really encouraged a lot of people here at the church. Romans 12:12, we did it last year in a sermon. Always attitudes. A lot of people were really encouraged by these simple phrases here. Rejoice in hope. Consider what is certain in your future, and let it give you joy now. “Rejoice in hope. Be patient in tribulation.” Again, the idea of endurance, hupomone, keep enduring. Bear under the pressure of the hard times when you're burdened. When life is heavy, don't stop. Keep going, persevere, endure through the tribulation, and be constant in prayer and keep knowing that God, he will enable you to keep going. He will encourage you and come alongside of you, because you have hope. You know him.
Go over to Romans 15, and you'll see where we're going, even next week. If you come back next week, we're going to get to this line in Romans 15:13, another quick prayer. And we're going to see this as we come to the end of Romans, Paul starts praying even while he's writing the letter to the saints in Rome. He's praying for them. And he says, in Romans 15:13, “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.” One of the reasons we can confidently say Paul wrote this letter is he wanted the people that were believers in Rome, he wanted them to know that they would be with God in glory, and they're so sure that they're going to be there that it helps them keep going today, even if they don't feel good. Even if it's hard times right now, they're going to keep going because they have hope. Are you one of those people? Are you a person who has hope? Do you keep going when it's hard? Do you stay in. When you feel like giving up and losing heart, guess where that hope is available to you every day of your life? The hope can be found in Scriptures, and the God of endurance and encouragement, he can give it to you.
So, notice now when we go back to verse 5, kind of after that review, we see that he prays for it. He prays that the God who has this endurance so we can keep going, the God who has this encouragement, who will come alongside of us and help us by his Holy Spirit, that God, he needs to grant you. He says, “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you,” may he give it to you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ, Jesus. So, he's been trying to get them to love one another, to stop judging one another, to really, if you're strong, bear with those who are weak. Hey, don't come to please yourself. Build these others up. He's been telling us really, going all the way back to Romans 12, where he started telling us what we should do as living sacrifices if we want to have our minds right and our minds renewed, and we want to do God's will, well then here, do this. Don't do this. Do this. Ever since chapter 12, he's been telling us how to live the Christian life, and he's even mentioned a lot of things like, hey, love one another. Love one another, genuinely love your neighbor as yourself. Hey, hey, make sure you're not motivated by your own selfish interest, but you're really here for others. He's given us a lot of practical things to do so we can interact with each other here at church, but he almost knows like that's not enough. You can't just tell the people at church what to do. Look what he says in verse 5, God's got to “grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus.” God has to unite you together that together you may, with one voice, glorify the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, like he's been teaching us. Here's how to think about each other, here's how to treat one another. Oh, but God, may God grant you the unity, the one mindedness, that you're really going to need. So, see how, even when Paul looks at all the people and he says, you should do this, and you should do that, does he think church is going to happen just based on what the people do? No, God needs to give it to you. God needs to grant it in his grace.
Let's get this down for number two: We want to “Ask for God's good hand.” We want to ask for God's good hand. God has to be the one who does it, even how we treat one another. We need God to grant us a one mindedness, a like mind here, so we can really come together with one voice for his glory, like yes, we should love one another, but we need God to grant us that love. That's what Paul is praying for here. So, it's very insightful that Paul doesn't just think if I tell them what to do at church, it'll all work out. He thinks God needs to do the work, and he asks for God to give it to them, to grant it to them. I remember, I was right down here at Fantastic Café, having this fantastic burrito one day, and a guy from this church right over here on Westminster and Bolsa Chica, a guy, oh, at this church, he said, “You must be tempted to have a lot of pride with all that's happening at our church.” I remember he said that to me, and I was like, I put the burrito down, and I looked at him, and I said, “Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense if I thought I was the one doing anything at this church.” And I began to take him back. Look, I was in the living room before I even moved here to Huntington Beach, where I used to live, and there were like 10 of us. We didn't have coffee that tasted like anything. We didn't have donuts; we didn't have a building. We didn't have a plan for worship, or kids’ ministry. You know what we had? We had a prayer that God would do something, and we asked him to do it, and we believed that he was able to do it, and we asked that his good hand would be upon us, just like it's been on his people, from generation to generation. If you could just be with us as we go to Huntington Beach and from just all we had was a hope and a prayer, and we asked God to do it. And let me tell you that anybody who was there from the beginning and praying before anything happened, God is able to do so much more than what we were asking or thinking. Anybody who's been there from the beginning, they don't think I did it. It's quite clear to all of us that God is the one doing the good, and if anything good is happening, God is the one who's doing it. Can I get an amen from anybody on that? That's how it works at church. We don't need a bunch of people taking God's glory like they're doing something at church. If something good is happening, then God is on the move, and what we can do is ask God to be good to us, to be gracious to us, to give to us, even when it comes to unity, even when it comes to how we treat one another. Oh, God, please let us live in harmony with one another. Unite us together like we need your help, even to get along with each other here at the church.
Go to Matthew, chapter 7. I want to turn to what Jesus says about asking God, because I'm not sure everybody here believes this anymore. I don't know what people think when they come to church these days, because I think people, when they come to church, they literally think, well, I wonder what the pastor's plan for the service is, or I wonder what the worship leader has planned for the service? Like people are the ones doing the church, when really I think we should all be praying and asking God, what are you going to do at the service this weekend? Like we're expecting that God has to do something. Church cannot be done just by humans, so we will always reach the limitations, but God is able to do much more than all that we ask or think in the church by his power working in us. And so, the question is, what are you asking God to do at our church in 2025? One thing that James taught us about prayer is, “we have not because we ask not.” How many of you prayed before you came to this service today, asking God to do something? We have not, because we ask not. Another thing James teaches us is, we might ask, but we ask wrongly, because we ask that we would spend it on our pleasures. We ask for our own selfish interests. We're not praying like, God, what would be consistent with your name, with your character? What would you do? We're not like, God, you said you would do it here, and because you promised it, I'm now asking you to do it, do your will that you've revealed to us right here.
We're not praying things that are consistent with God's character or God's revealed will. We're just saying, God, do this because I want it. Well, if you're asking God because you want it, well, it says that's not how prayer works. You don't expect that prayer to be answered because you're just asking for your own pleasures. You're asking for your own selfish interest. It's not motivated by God's glory and his name being known by more people, and his will being done on earth as it is in heaven. But Jesus seems to think, and he wants you to think it, too, that if you go and ask God for the things that are about the glory of God, the things that are consistent with the Word of God, if you go and ask God to do it, God is going to do it. If you ask him, he will give it to you. Look at how Jesus says it in Matthew, chapter 7, verse 7. Look at what Jesus says. He says it three times, and then he says it in two different ways, “Ask and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock and it will be open to you. For everyone who asks, receives, and the one who seeks, finds and to the one who knocks, it will be” what everybody? Okay. Now that sounds really different, maybe, than what you think. I hear people say, prayer is just a spiritual discipline for our good, it's not really doing anything for God. Well, then why is God telling us to ask him and then he will do it? Have you ever heard this one? Well, there are three answers that God will give, yes, no, or maybe. Have you heard somebody say that? Yes, no, or wait; yes, no or not yet. Have you heard anything like that before? Somebody needs to tell Jesus that, because that's not what he's saying here. Jesus is saying, ask, and it will be granted. It will be given. God, in all of his grace, cares about his glory. He cares about doing what he said. He cares about his people in the church. That's why he sent his Son, Jesus, to die for them. Ask God to act, and he's going to do it; it will be given to you. That's how Jesus taught us to pray. Maybe not the way we're praying today, but definitely what Jesus was saying. In fact, he wants to give this analogy to help us understand. Look at verse 9. “Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you, then, who are evil,” who are motivated by selfish interest. “If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him.” Let me just talk to the parents here in the room. When your kids ask you for something, do you want to give it to them? What's the answer to that question? Right? I mean, I'm a bleeding-heart dad up here. It's becoming clear to everybody, right? Somebody called me a lightweight after the last service, I deserve it. I just sent my son off to college, just like an hour away, and I'm over here crying, and people are like, get used to it, man, wait, wait till he leaves the country. You know, people are just slapping me around a little bit like, suck it up, you know. Well, hey, good news is that I loved I was so blessed when God gave me a son. It was so awesome to be a dad to a son that I asked the Lord, and he gave me another son, and he still lives at my house, right? And so, I am just enjoying every possible moment I can, just leeching off of every little boyness. This kid still got in him right where I get to be his dad, and he's my boy. And he comes to me the other night. I don't have anything going on. My schedule is clear. It's wide open. And he says, Dad, we should go do this. Now. What do you think I say to my boy after I'm broken-hearted about one son leaving, the son I've got left is like, Dad, I know what we could do now. I'm so selfish in and of myself, apart from Christ that I could even maybe say, no, kid, leave me alone, right? But not even an evil person like me, when my son says, Dad, we should do this, I'm like, you're right. We should do that. In fact, after we should do that, we should go here and do this, and then we should go over here and buy this, and then after that, we should get ice cream. Are you with me? Let's get in the car right now. And we're taking off and having the time of our lives. And if I'm an evil, selfish person, and I want to do more than what my kid's asking me for, how is your Father, who loves you perfectly, how much more does he want to do than what you're asking him for? Do you believe that? Do you believe that if you ask God, grant us at this church a like mindedness, based on your Scripture, grant us at this church a unity, that we would come together? God get all the people over their disagreements and over their personal preferences, and over all the backgrounds that we come from, get us all on the same page so people can see that this is not a church run by people, but this is a church where you are here with us. If we all ask God to do that, is he going to give it to us? Let me just tell you, as somebody who's been here from the beginning, he's going to do way more than what you're thinking right now. That's how he works. That's how he operates. And we're doing church so much in a superficial way. What can humans do? Kind of a way that we've kind of lost the plot, and we should all be asking whatever's going to happen next at our church, it's going to be because God's good hand is upon us, and he gives it to us. And the reason he's going to give it to us is because we're his kids, and we're asking our Father to do it, and he'll be pleased to do it. In fact, he's not going to just take you there. He'll take you there, too, and he'll take you even beyond that. That's how God really is, and we are limiting God with our lack of faith. We have not because we ask not. Or we're so focused on God, do this for me that we're missing the picture of what God's really able to do, what he really wants to do. What are you asking God to do that's worthy of his name? What are you asking God to do that's consistent with what he's promised he's going to do? We’ve got to get together, and we’ve got to say, God, will you grant us? You can keep us going. You can encourage us. We need you to grant us. And then go back to Romans 15 and look specifically at what he's praying for here, because he's praying for something that he's been talking about for all of chapter 14, the Jews and the Gentiles, the strong and the weak, the different backgrounds, the different ways that their faith is, got them thinking different things. How are all these people going to unite together as one body, as one church? Well, God's got to grant it to them. Look what he prays. “May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus. If we're all in Christ, then let's all be like minded in Christ.” That's the idea, kind of here, of this idea of living in harmony, that we could have one mindset, the mindset of Jesus, where we all come here, not for ourselves, but we come here the same way Jesus came for us. And then look what he says in verse 6. Key word here that “together you may, with one voice, glorify the God and Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ.” Together. Now, when we hear one voice, when we read that at our church today, one voice, the first thing that might come to our mind is when we all sing a song together. Now I don't think that's what Paul meant when he wrote to the Romans. He wasn't talking about one voice when we sing songs. Now let's just talk about that for a second, because it’s awesome when we all sing songs together with one voice to glorify God. Through psalms, hymns and spiritual songs, we can actually encourage one another and speak to one another. And it's awesome for me to be able to hear people sing here at church. I mean, that's our musical strategy here at our church, is we don't want just a bunch of people singing at us. We want the whole church to sing. Let God's people sing to him together. That's the whole goal. And let me just tell you, it sounds better if you sit closer to the front. Okay, I'm just speaking the truth right now. I see some of you in the back. I see that's your seat. You claim it every week. I understand it's sacred to you. But if you want to hear more people sing. Come closer to the front. You get more of you. It's awesome. Like when you get to be up here and you get to hear all the people singing, it's great. I mean, I would encourage you stay and sing the song after the service. Don't walk out when the sermon is done, we're still worshiping. We're still here with God. But that's not really what this is about. This is talking about a togetherness where God unites people together for the purpose of his glory that God brings. This is beyond common interests. This is beyond do we like each other? This is beyond we kind of all have the same background. This is like God is bringing together people in a supernatural way, because we're all really here for him, and that we assemble in the name of Jesus together.
So, go with me to the book of Acts, and I want to show you how this word “together” is used with the church as it began in the book of Acts. I just want to give you four examples. What does he mean when he's praying that they would be together? The first ones in Acts, chapter 1, verse 14, and this is right after Jesus ascended into heaven. And then it's right before he's going to send the Holy Spirit to come on the day of Pentecost. So, Jesus has gone up, but the Holy Spirit has not come down. And so what do you find them doing here in Acts1:14, in the waiting room, in this upper room, what are they doing? Look what it says. “All these with one accord…” here, they have the same mind, the same purpose. “All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.”
See, do you see how the church began? The church began with, well, Jesus told us that we would be as witnesses. Jesus said that he would send the Spirit, the Helper, the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit. And so, what are we doing? We're expecting God to act, and we're asking him to do it. We're all together, spending a lot of time asking God to send his spirit to us, make us the witnesses. They know what they've been told, and now they're asking for it to happen. They're praying with one voice together. Go over to Acts 2, because in chapter 2, the Holy Spirit does come, and Peter preaches the first sermon filled with the Spirit, you killed Jesus, but God raised Him up from the dead. And people are cut to the heart, and they say, what shall we do? And what's the first thing that Peter tells them to do? He says, Repent. You guys need to believe in the name of Jesus. You need to get baptized. And how many people get saved on the first day of the church? Three thousand souls. The first church in Jerusalem, it was a mega church from day one, and it describes the church in Acts 2:42, “They devoted themselves…” They lingered, they tarried in the teaching. They wanted to hear the Word of God and the fellowship. They wanted to share the life of Jesus and talk about the teaching together to the breaking of bread and prayers there. What is God going to do? We're asking him to do it. We're expecting God to do the church. And then look for look at Acts 2:46. “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts.” Go over to Acts, chapter 4. They start to get persecuted because they're raising a ruckus. They're filling the streets of Jerusalem with the name of Jesus. So, the same Council of Jewish religious leaders that had Jesus crucified now brings before them Peter and John and says, you’ve got to stop talking about Jesus. You guys are telling way too many people about Jesus. You're filling the city of Jerusalem with the name of Jesus. You need to stop and cease and desist right now. And what does Peter say? We learned he's submissive to them. Hey, you guys can decide what to do with us. But he also says, we're going to keep talking about Jesus. We are here to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. And so, they threaten them as to what's going to happen if they keep talking about Jesus. So, what do they do after they've been threatened? And to turn the volume of Jesus down, they go and have a prayer meeting. Look at Acts 4:23. It says, “When they were released, they went to their friends and they reported the threats.” Hey, here's what they said was going to happen, “what the chief priests and elders had said to them, and when they heard it,” now, this is everybody. When they heard it, “they lifted their voices out together to God.” Wow, they're threatening that we got to stop talking about Jesus. What are we going to do? Well, let's go ask God. Let's go pray to God about it. Let's all go together before God. And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, let me just read this prayer in Acts 4:24-30. “And when they heard it, they lifted their voices together to God and said, “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them, 25 who through the mouth of our father David, your servant, said by the Holy Spirit, ‘Why did the Gentiles rage, and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers were gathered together, against the Lord and against his Anointed’— for truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with…” what, everybody? The “boldness” that they asked God to grant them is exactly what God gave them. These guys were not public speakers. These guys were not trained orators. These guys had not been to seminary or sermon preparation classes. These guys were fishermen. Peter, the main spokesperson here, denied Jesus three times when Jesus was on trial; Peter wasn't even in the trial. He was just lying about knowing Jesus outside the trial. But now this guy, filled with the Spirit in answer to prayer, you can't shut this guy up, because he asked God for boldness, and God granted it to him. See when God's on the move, it's going to happen. That's what needs to happen at church.
Point number three, let's get it down like this: We need to be “Together for God's glory.” Together for God's glory. And this is something, yeah, we've been learning things we can do towards one another. But really this is just like, we’ve got to pray that God would grant us like mindedness, that God would get us all together so that it would become clear that in our church, we're not just looking to pastors, we're not just looking to worship leaders, we're not just looking to youth ministry and kids’ ministry, or looking to each other when we come to church. What makes our church good is God is here, and he is on the move in the midst of his people. And we want to see what God's going to do when we get together. We want to see how God's going to answer our prayers, because we believe that God is able to do even more than we ask him for.
Go to Acts 5:12. Here's another reference to this idea of them being together, and I want you to see how this kind of togetherness isn't like they checked in at the 11 o'clock Sunday service. This is a kind of togetherness that is a supernatural work of God bringing people together. And everybody even knew it. Look what it says here in Acts 5:12, “Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon's Portico.” So, Solomon's portico, you’ve got to picture the early church of Jerusalem in your mind, Solomon's portico is a part of the temple, and it's part of the temple right above the southern steps there. So, it kind of has an overcame some of the temple would just be open air, but then this part would have some shade, and this was the part they're gathering in. Day after day they keep coming back to this place. So, picture what it's like to live in Jerusalem at this time every day as work’s wrapping up, thousands of people are in the streets. They wouldn't need parking spaces. Jerusalem, if you ever get to go there, I mean, people can just walk from all over the city straight to the temple. So, you’ve just got people coming from every direction. And so, imagine if you live in Jerusalem, it's like, oh, guess what time it is. Oh, those, those Jesus people. Oh, the people of The Way. Oh, they're all going down to the temple again, and you would just see them streaming past you, and they go to the portico, and they're waiting for one of the apostles to teach, and they know what they're going to do after. They're going to go to each other's homes, and they're going to have a meal together, and they're going to talk about what they just heard in the teaching, and they're going to pray together, like, what's God going to do next? Who is God going to see next? What's God going to teach us next? And look at the effect this begins to have on the entire city of Jerusalem, not just the church, but everybody. Look what it says in Acts 5:13. “None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem.” Like, the people knew those people, they're set apart. They're doing something different, but they had a high regard for them. Verse 14, “And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.” People are just getting saved every day. God's adding people “so that they even carried out the sick into the streets and laid them on cots and mats, that as Peter came by at least his shadow might fall on some of them. The people also gathered from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those afflicted with unclean spirits, and they were all healed.” And when they were praying back in chapter 4, whose hand did they think was going to do the healings and the signs and wonders? Did they think it was Peter's hand, or did they think it was the good hand of God, and God was bringing those people together in such a way that they didn't just know they were together as the church, even the city, even the community, knew they were together as the church. People knew not that they were a building, not that they had a youth ministry, not that they had nice tasting coffee. People knew that God's there with those people, and they respected it, and many people were drawn to it, and many were saved.
What is God going to do with us here in 2025? In fact, I just want to put the Eight Distinctives of Compass Bible Church up here on the screen as we begin this new season. Maybe you've never heard the Eight Distinctives of our church before, or maybe you've known these for many years now, but look at how these Eight Distinctives flow with exactly what we just learned in Romans 15:4-6. What does it start with, God's work in the church? Well, it starts with the Scriptures. The Bible is central. In fact, we showcase expository preaching. What's expository preaching? Well, it's not just me coming up with a sermon from a blank page. It's me starting with the pages that are already written. It's whoever's preaching, giving God's message to God's people, not changing it. Get out of the way of it. Let's just say what God says, and then let's all go and talk about it. The message comes out of the Scripture. And so not only are we doing that kind of preaching, but if we really get in the Scripture, what are we going to know? We're not just going to know the endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures. We're going to know the “God of endurance and encouragement,” and we're going to see a God who's high and lifted up, a God who's holy on his throne in heaven, but a God who's compassionate and merciful and cares about us. And then we're going to be able to speak to other people a real biblical gospel. We're going to be able to say it like God said it, repent. You’ve got to change your life. You’ve got to turn to the Lord. You’ve got to hear God and stop living in your sin. And you’ve got to turn and find a new way in Jesus, Christ. Jesus died for you so you could get out of that sin, so he could save you. Jesus rose from the dead so you could walk in a new way. You need to repent and believe in the good news that Jesus is the Christ who died and rose again. We can tell people the words of salvation, the words of eternal life, because we're getting them straight from the source. And then look. Look what's going to happen. Verse 5, we have a genuine reliance on prayer. Well, once we're doing it, God's way through God's Word, we're going to see that it's God's work and not ours. And so, if God doesn't do it, it's not going to happen. If God's good hands not on it, it won't grow, it won't be alive. He has to do it, so we've got to rely on him. We depend on him, and not apart from Christ. We're not going to do one good thing, so we’ve got to ask God to do it. And then look. Look what the effect is in us. Well, now people are highly committed participants. They want to see what God is going to do. They want to be a part of what God's going to do. In fact, it's not like there's a class of people. Everybody's into it. The leaders, they’ve got to be into it. They've got to be believing and relying upon God. In fact, if we really are all about God and his Word, and we're asking him to act, he's going to get so many of us together. He's going to get so many of us in a like mind that we won't just have one church, we'll have two churches. That's what God's done. That's what God's done. Over the last ten years, we've been blessed to see Romans 15:4-6 play out here. And you know what? We're just getting started. Unless Jesus comes back, I really feel like we're just about to hit our stride here in Huntington Beach. And so, are you ready to see what God's going to do? Are you going to come here next week thinking, well, what's the service about? Are you going to come here praying? God, bring us together. Let it be built on your Word. Let it be you, the one who's doing it. God, we all want you to unite us together so that people can see we're here for one purpose, one voice, your glory. We want your name to be hallowed in Huntington Beach. Let me pray for us right now.
Father in heaven, I just thank you so much for this series we get to do through Romans 15, about how Jesus builds his church right after we sent out our brothers and sisters to Long Beach. And God, we just pray for them as they're having a service right now to get ready for their opening service next Sunday. God, we pray that you would build your church in the city of Long Beach. We pray that Your word would be proclaimed, that the gospel would ring out, that you would save many people, and you would unite your people together. But God, I want to bring us up before you here in Huntington Beach. And God, I just want to take a moment to thank you that when a few of us were praying together and we didn't have anything, we asked you to have your good hand upon us. And God, you've done way more than what we could have asked, way more than what we were thinking. And so, to you be all the glory, honor, and praise for any good thing that's happened at this church. And God, we know that you don't grow weary, you don't get tired. You're the God of endurance and encouragement. You're the God who gives us hope. And when we grow weary, you renew our strength, because you have endless strength. You have eternal grace. You are the everlasting God. And so, what you've done here, you can keep on doing. In fact, you are still, even now, able to do more than what we could ask or what we could think. And so, God, we just want to confess how wrong it is when we limit you and we don't ask. God, I pray that you would put it on all of our hearts to get in the Scripture, God, I pray that you would put it on all of our hearts to pray. I pray that every single one of us who's a part of this church, that we will ask you this week to grant us to live in harmony together in Christ Jesus, that we could all be of one mind and one voice for your glory. God, I pray that you would create an expectation here among us that we can't wait for Sunday at eleven because we want to see what you're going to do. And we believe that you're here in our midst and that you're on the move, and all we have to do is trust in what you say. All we have to do is obey the blueprints you've already given, because you're the one who's going to build this church. Make us the people who believe that. Let us be your people of faith. Let us believe that you are on the move. We pray this in Jesus’ name, Amen.
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