Build the Church Ep #1
by Sam Hodum
April 6, 2022 · Cornerstone Apostolic Church (Chattanooga, TN)
Kind: teaching
Scripture: Matthew 28, Genesis 11, Zephaniah 3:9, Acts 2, Acts 6:2-6, Ephesians 4:11-16

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/sam-hodum--build-the-church-ep-1
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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it is a task to build the church right so when we we talk about the church do we mean by physical building right so if you're if you're learning a new language context is maybe one of the hardest things to pick up on uh because a word may have multiple meanings same thing with church i see you ricardo church we talk about church as a church building or as the church body which is the mother of us all it's the bride of christ but when we talk about building the church this month we'll talk about the local congregation of believers that's us the the this is a group of people of like-minded faith that gather together and love god now there's so much to that because in order to build that church building or church work is an endless task to be done for the rest of our lives it is church work is different church work may be the only enterprise where the investors are the owners they are also the customers they are the employees and they are the product unlock manufacturing we do not load a machine with the same materials each day and get the same widgets back where there is much to be said for processes and things like that that's that's super important and we'll go into that they do not guarantee a disciple was made right we've all been in church uh decently long enough to see someone come in and someone go out and they're not a finished product in fact i've i've seen people that's been in church for 50 years and they're still not a finished product there is the the finishing of the product is left up to god himself he is the final inspector on that we can never know that and that is a it's a weird thing to to look at to know um you don't see the end result and sometimes that's a hard con connection to make of i'm not really seeing what accomplishing what what i'm accomplishing and so we find we find different areas that we get i don't uh we get reinforcement from i don't i cannot remember the exact word for that positive reinforcement from to where that encourages us it keeps us going on and keeps us doing things but it is never done every every human being is different has different needs and responds differently to our efforts human beings they are as mysterious and wonderful and frustrating as anything in creation in church work the product is never completed it never it's never finished it's an ongoing process the success is not determined by a moment or by an event it doesn't just stop when someone gets a hold holy ghost doesn't just stop when someone gets baptized in jesus name that's actually kind of the start it is a growth it goes from faith to faith from glory to glory grow here a little there a little it is a lifelong process and to complicate it there is a relentless invisible enemy who has made it his business to undo our progress while we cultivate while we uh plant in water he sows the seeds of weeds just just to just throw a monkey wrench in our plans there all this is skinned in cultural trappings of ministry technology ministry methods worship styles these are tools which things have had which people have strongly held opinions about i know right in worship styles some people think if it ain't southern gospel you ain't gonna you ain't gonna make it right it's a style it's a or if it's you know if it's this if it's this way some people believe they can't even worship the southern gospel it has to be the most modern song out there right that those those are opinions they're because they're tools or methods that is church work what is the purpose of that why why do we come together each week why would we take time out of our busy schedules out of our life couldn't we work another 12 hours in a day couldn't we do something else and have more productivity to it but it's not the church the purpose of the church is once again it's not a building it's it it is the overall arching body of christ but i want to be careful there because it's super easy for us to look at the church down the road and be like man they got it going on or to look at the church down the road and be like man they ain't got it going on right that's that's not our that's not our territory it's not our responsibility our responsibility is here this is where god has placed us this is what god has called for us to to work it is our it is our responsibility to edify or to build up one another it is our job to do that and and this a church isn't once again it is not the end goal right heaven's the end go the tool or the church is merely the tool to help us get there it is a it's a focal point in in in any uh in any relationship there has to be a focal point of a sit-down time it may be a date time it may be some play time with kids it may it may be just some just sitting in silence but there has to be a focal time in order for a relationship to continue and to grow there has to be a focus put on it and if this so this we gather together to focus our minds on christ but in that we build one another either through either through the you know the works of ministry through get through preaching teaching prophesying all these those things work in and not one person can do it because when a disciple or when a future disciple walks in the door so to speak into this focal point and they they may never per se walk in here all right but when they come in contact with the body or the church one person may can pull them to christ may may can but it's a lot right i remember when when we had to move that piano right back there uh i might could move that thing if i took a sledge hammer to it and busted it all to pieces and then moved it one piece at a time it's too heavy we had probably six six seven eight guys gathered around and we could just barely get it up and just barely move it without breaking it without breaking ourselves right the most important task in the world is not is not to to build a nation it's the most important task in the world is not to build a a the next great war machine it is to save a soul it is to make a disciple that doesn't happen on accident it has to be done on purpose i don't think anyone's going to accidentally just stumble into heaven i mean i i know i know a bunch of people's gonna accidentally not oops right it may not be accidentally but you you get you get the gist of what i'm saying there it's a lot easier it's the straight and narrow and other ways wide so it in order to to move that i need somebody i need somebody's help but i also need some tools because i remember when we moved that piano from the church after the tornado i remember we moved it we had all like tried and we've got it like 10 foot and we were like all right we're done we called some piano guys and they come in two older guys i mean like they were just like all right they ain't no way you're moving this guys we don't know they show up they just kind of just mosey on in there just kind of but they had the tools for the job before i knew what was happening they had the thing up on the side and loaded in a trailer and i was like how did they do that i just spent 10 years trying to get the thing loaded but that that's what each of us bring to the table is as we come together we're we're more than just people together we're a tool to help someone make it to heaven if we try and carry someone ourselves to heaven if we try hey i'm gonna you're gonna you're going with me buddy and and sometimes that happens okay now i have i have uh i have one time i had a church man route and i one kid he was just being lazy and wasn't getting up so i drug him out of the house by his feet now it was it was his parents were there and they thought it was hilarious so and he got up and he went to church with him but that can only happen once or twice maybe before he's like wait a minute why is why am i being drug out right you can't literally do that all the time but each one of us can make a connect point and and and and each department and we'll we'll talk about these teams all throughout the rest of the month but all of this is done to make a disciple but the church is not just to make disciples i i do have to say that because the purpose of the church is to make disciples and then to mature disciples into ministers not not preachers not teachers though those are a natural product but not but to people that serve and i may be preaching to the choir tonight but allow me to preach to the choir so to speak in in matthew 28 god gave us this this great commission he said go into all the world make disciples teaching them baptizing them go but guess what we can't all just go if we all go then no one's here if we all go to the different part then the people in chattanooga will be like wait a minute who's going to teach me so we work together it's it's a figurative and literal but a figurative meaning of go we got to find somebody but we can't save the world on our own this it would be just as hard as any one of us trying to move a piano back there by ourselves we cannot save the world on our own we are called to do this but we need tools in order to do it we must have the tools in genesis 11 there was there was a people he said now now the whole earth had one language and the same words and this is these people built they started the famous tower of babel and god looked at him they said we're gonna we're one mind we're one accord we're gonna build this this tower of babel we're going to build it to the heavens and god said they're going to do it and they're going to do whatever they want to because they're unified so he confused their language and they lost all structure all unity they lost it and they did not accomplish what they were going to accomplish so that right there tells me how important structure and unity are if if someone can build whatever they can imagine they just the earth had just been destroyed basically populations had just been wiped clean and these guys were building back this was almost a build back better program sorry uh but god god had in his mind he'd given them a commission but their structure was so impressive and their unity was so impressive but they lost it in zephaniah in zephaniah 3 and 9 he says for at the time i would change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech that all of them may call on the name of the lord and serve him with one accord now at the time of of the tower of babel human nature took over people spread forever for ever far corners of the earth they spread from here to yon spoke different languages and had different purposes in their heart that's why there's wars people have different purposes in their heart that's why there's fights that's why there's feuds that's why there's disagreements everyone has a different purpose but in zephaniah it talks about god was was giving this prophecy to zephaniah of i will bring a pure speech so that they may call on the name of the lord and serve him with one accord this was a unifying moment of a part of if when you receive the holy ghost what was that like do you remember what it was like to feel your to to feel that nature that human nature shed and commune 101 with god almighty the spirit wasn't just on you it was in you it was moving you it was uniting you with almighty god and that purpose that is that that pure worship that pure praise that pure mode of motivation that pure destination is what brings us together we can have i work in i work in a a company that has structure from here to on all right 10 000 employees and you know so many much more thousand supporting employees and and all that but it ain't gonna lick a spirit right and it can be stifling so so that structure is there and they get and it gets done what it needs to get done but that's it and we see we can we can see and i'm not going to pick on any one church or any anything but i know we've all seen it at different times we've seen a church with a structure that was dead right because and and if i may here be take a little liberty the the law brings death it'll kill the letter kills but the spirit gives light now i've seen this and i'm sure you have i've seen churches see that and go the opposite direction you know well here this this type of church or these churches they have the most structure in the world you can't you know blow your nose without doing this and and and if you do someone else is going to hand you a tissue or yeah like a committee's going to come over and and help you with that right and and that that may be to the extreme but then i've also seen the extreme of well we're just going to let the lord do what the lord's going to do that's that and we're going to let the spirit lead and and i'll get there because here's the thing we we use that because we're spirit-filled church we believe in the holy ghost moving us we believe in him shaking us and we believe in him changing our lives but there's biblical precedence all right in in acts chapter 2 guess what god poured out his spirit he added to the church like thousands and then hundreds daily but guess what that was after jesus had already come and gone he spent three and a half years not just going around healing people he spent three and a half years making disciples he spent three and a half years building structure he spent three and a half years putting knowledge into some people taking fishermen and turning them into preachers and turning them into apostles you see when the when the day of pentecost came they were there were 11 apostles left and 109 other people they're 120 in the upper room but that was what jesus had spent three and a half years for when he got that structure there he poured out his spirit they were prepared for it but then they weren't because they didn't he didn't just send the spirit because the spirit without direction doesn't it it will change a life but it will leave a life wondering what just happened i've seen i've seen it time and again i've seen people praying for people get the holy ghost they didn't know what in the world just hit them and they walk out and they still live their life the same way because there was no foundation there was just a spirit moving on them now i believe that's awesome and i believe that's amazing and that's wild and that's that's incredible because they'll always have that seed planted in them and i think it'll draw them back but it's got to drawn back to somewhere right they got to have some sort of structure to be able to be taught to be able to learn it we spend however however much of our life we were in a i we were lauren and i were in a line the other day a line and everybody was just fine i mean it was 500 people in the line and everybody was just fine with it they were you know it was moving okay do you know how how much of your elementary school years are spent teaching you to be standing the line a lot it takes a lot because human nature is to talk and have disorder that and and if you think human nature is to stand in the line then just hang out with a bunch of kids right or go go to a country that doesn't have that type of structure in their teaching and it's very it's prevalent in their society it's evident that structure is it it's the backbone that the spirit clings to that the spirit works through now when we get to acts chapter 6 that the revival had actually outgrew the structure that god had had spent that three and a half years building in in acts chapter 6 verse 2 the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples and said it is not right for us to give up preaching the word of god to serve tables there was there was issues people needed food they needed this they needed that okay and these guys had done that these were the 12 guys or the 11 guys plus the one that came on later i don't know how he got the free pass he didn't have to go through all that but those these were the these were the guys that had handed out the the the the bread and fishes to the 5 000 into the 4 000 and then collected it back up they knew what it was like to to just go do they knew and then they saw that it wasn't getting done anymore and so they said bring us they said therefore brothers pick out from among you seven good men uh seven men of good repute full of the spirit and of wisdom who we will point to this duty but we will devout ourselves or devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word and what they said pleased the whole gathering and they chose stephen a man full of faith and of the holy spirit and philip and prochorus and niconar and timmin and parminius and nicholas across out of antioch and they set before the apostles and they prayed and laid their hands on them you see these guys the the apostles the greatest the the greatest preachers the the guys that jesus chose to be the foundation of the church they couldn't do it all there were thousands and then hundreds and then thousands and then hundreds coming to christ and they could not do it all they could not make disciples out of everyone they could not take care of the daily administrations they could not do all those things even though they had been trained it was now their turn to train and when that happened now and when those guys stephen stephen and philip in particular we have record of when they put their hands to work god changed their ministry they were disciples they were followers of christ and they were full of the holy ghost but it wasn't until they started serving tables that we start seeing that they're preaching the word that they're that they're changing lives that they're given testimonies that then stephen becomes a martyr that later then brings about one of the greatest soul winners of all time and then in chapter eight we see philip he's over in samaria just hanging out and like calls in revival because he's just serving he's just ministering to people not preaching to him all the way and and then he starts as he's doing that he starts telling them about jesus and he starts giving giving out food he starts helping in needs and then all of a sudden they're hearing because their needs are being met they're being taken care of and now they can listen to the word of god when they hear this revival just breaks out and so peter and john are like man maybe maybe we should go over there and so they leave jerusalem go over to samaria and the spirit hadn't fallen they'd been bad philip had been baptized he'd been doing what he knew to do and so then peter and john just start laying hands on them they start receiving the holy ghost and then philip not not peter or john were moved was not peter john philip was translated into now i don't i don't see a an instance of uh thank you sir i appreciate it i don't see an instance of peter and john being translated like that but it was philip he was translated out into the desert and there's this guy or into the wilderness there's this guy just going along man what do i know about this how can i how can i understand this and then like it's kind of like you're riding along an uber with somebody i guess and they like trying to talk to you like hey what hey what where'd you come from so he's got he's like let me explain this to you and then this guy's from ethiopia and he takes christ back to ethiopia and there's some the otis christian churches in ethiopia or in that region to this day because of one man and it wasn't because he was the apostle it wasn't because he was he was the most anointed it was simply because he put his hands to work he started doing he started building the church that was we'll talk about we'll talk about all the different departments how that all correlates and then how we can how we can maybe be the most efficient in it but until until we realize that i'm the church that you're the church and that when i start doing something gotta open doors we won't see revival but i want to see in my day i want to prepare myself in such a way that that revival is poured out like i've never seen and but here here's the thing when god pours it out i want to be able to at least handle some of it because if if god pours out 5 000 souls on us are we going to be able to handle it are we mentally emotionally spiritually physically going to be able to handle that obviously not in this building but how how would we take having a thousand people at a service and we don't know but three of them how would we handle that how would we handle having five services on a sunday and we only know personally know a few of those people in there would god be any less real would we still be able to make a disciple are we able to to still love god and love people with all their hearts even if we don't know the person that those are those are things that i don't i don't know the answer to but i think those are things that we need to dig our ditches for there was in the old testament there's a story the prophet there was this this this army was trapped down in the valley there was no water and the prophet told him to dig some ditches dig some ditches well there's there's no water dig some ditches it's not gonna rain dig some ditches you see what they didn't know was water was on the way and when it got there they had water in it and it caused their enemies to go it confused the enemies and all that because it god worked a miracle but if they'd never dug the ditches and never prepared and never built the structure then the water would have came and it would have went i don't i i do wonder this how many times have we seen revival come and go right the spirit's like the wind you don't know where it comes from and you don't know where it goes but man i want to make sure i have a sail up to catch some of it but how much have we seen come and go and we weren't able to grab it that's that's what building the church is about to make sure that my heart my mind my spirit my abilities my whatever it is and it's different for every person that i'm to the point of where i can minister to and be ministered to that i'm to the point of where i can make a disciple and be a disciple i can i'm to the point to where i can work together with someone i don't even know and we're working not because we're we're fast friends but because we've got a common goal in ephesians chapter 4 and then 11-16 this this scripture paul he's talking he's talking to him and he talks about the body and we'll get into we'll get into that a little bit more this week but or this this month and it says and he gave the apostles the prophets the evangelists the shepherds the teachers and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry who's he equipping saints to do what to minister to serve the the hierarchy of needs you guys is it pavlov's hierarchy of needs uh in school i know teachers are trained in barlow marlo's hierarchy of needs teachers i know you guys are trained on this you can't teach a kid if they're hungry can you because you they're they're not going to be still their instincts are kicking in you can't and and i look at just purely from the because from the uh clinical side of it and behavioral side of you if you don't have a home then what is someone saying i'm going to pray for you do right i've got bigger problems to worry about right now but that's what ministering's about i know we can't buy everyone a home no we can't well yeah i wish we could but i don't i don't know if that's what we're supposed to do but i think we are supposed to minister to needs paul said i became all things to all men that i might by all means or save some i tried everything i could i gave everything i have some things i didn't have just to save some i didn't save all of them some that that's the crux of what it is to build the church not pastor's job it's ours we have to minister we have to see a need for a need we have to did you guys watch robots y'all know yeah i know i robots i is a weird movie from when i watched when i was a kid but man see a need for a need i have got that one stuck in my head like from because it was so it's so true and we all do it in different we we see different needs right i mean i look at seth i say he needs a lot but his wife thinks he's pretty so we all have different needs if you would would you stand with me let's as as we go through this month let's build the body this is uh this right here we can we can prepare or we can look for revival all we want but until we're prepared for it it won't make a difference we may just feel it come and go but i want revival to terry i would like to to live in the excess and the overflow of what god has in store if you don't mind let's pray and we'll be dismissed jesus we love you we thank you so much for your goodness so much for your mercy lord you've been so good and so kind to us god i ask you lord to help each and every one of us god to to give of ourselves to to minister and be ministered to god to serve and to love and to grow lord so that we me we can grow into the maturity of christ lord ask you lord to help us god to put a passion and a burden deep down within us lord to to pour out of ourselves lord so that you'll pour more into us god to to let the flow of revival god and to let the spirit of revival to overcome us god because we put our hands to work ministering to the needs that we see god ministering to the souls and in the lives of chattanooga god i ask you lord to help us god open our eyes lord help us to see what you see in chattanooga god help us lord to see what you see in our neighbor and our friend god help us to love them the way you love them god and lord anoint our hands to minister the way you would minister to heal to set free god to encourage to give hope god help us lord to do those things in jesus name we pray amen you're dismissed in jesus name