Buried Treasure

Hello, and welcome to the Salt Church Podcast. Thank you for tuning in to this week's message. Join us as we explore God's Word, providing practical teaching for day-to-day living. The message you are about to hear was recorded live at our Sunday morning worship experience. If you would like to learn more about Salt Church, please visit us at saltchurch.

org. We hope that you are encouraged by today's message. Amen. So today I'm going to deal with something really that God's impressed on my heart. It's based in 2 Corinthians 4, 6, and 7.

You'll go ahead there. But before I start, just to set us up here, Pablo Escobar is a very interesting person. If you don't know much about him, he was a drug lord in the 80s and early 90s. And at one time, he was the 7th wealthiest person in the world, 7th wealthiest person in the world, according to Forbes magazine. He was worth about $30 billion at the time, which would be equivalent to about $50 or $60 billion a day.

I mean, he had mad money. I mean, money was just coming in. In fact, in one week, in one week, he would bring in an estimated $420 million. $420 million a week. Could you imagine just that coming in?

What do you do with all that money? I mean, there can't be enough houses to buy. There can't be enough private islands for millennials to go and have a fire festival at. There can't be enough money to be able to do that. So what do you do?

Well, according to his brother, who wrote a book about him and their organization, is that he would put them in foreign accounts. And a lot of those foreign accounts, he just spread them all across in these foreign accounts. And he was so paranoid about his money that he would give no one else the accounts. So when Pablo was killed in the early 90s, a lot of those accounts are still out there frozen somewhere with millions of dollars in them. Nobody knows how to get access to them, how to touch them, or where they are.

Not only that, there weren't enough foreign accounts to be able to put all that money in, especially if you're in the drug trade, which we're not praising the drug trade. Hey, just track with me a little bit. I'm going to get there. He was an awful person. He murdered probably 7,000 people or more.

Just a terrible person. But what do you do with all the money? Well, they simply started putting it in the ground. They put it in the ground. They would put them in these big containers, you know, and just simply bury all this money in the ground.

These millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars all across Colombia, Mexico, all these different places. And his brother said in his book that they would literally have to write off about 10%, 10% of the money because the rats would eat it. So there's millions of dollars just in rats, rats, you know, as rat food, basically. So much money, so much money. And in fact, to bundle the money that they were putting in the barrels and putting in the ground, just the rubber bands alone cost about $2,500 a year.

Just rubber bands. That tells you how much money was going on here. I mean, this guy was ridiculously wealthy and ridiculous. And years later, a farmer was planting a field in Colombia on a plantation he just purchased. And as they were excavating the ground, they came across something in the ground.

Doop! You know, they hit the ground and they pulled up, pulled out a worth of $600 million. $600 million. Now, Pablo Escobar has put money in so many places. In fact, they found money as far as Mexico, even as far as Miami.

They found money that belonged to Pablo. And so there's money literally in places, even today, that no one knows about. Just hidden away. Just money somewhere. And the government was only able to grab like $8 million of his wealth at the time.

You know, they were able to shoot him and kill him and capture him or what have you. So you can imagine. Now, I want you, the reason for this, I want you to just imagine for a moment a farmer. This very story of a farmer in a field digging in the ground and coming across a great treasure. A great treasure.

A buried treasure. The title of my message today is Buried Treasure. Buried Treasure. And this is exactly what Paul was thinking. In fact, Jesus talked a little bit about treasure.

He talked about, you know, a treasure being in a field. In the Gospels, he was sharing a parable. He says, the kingdom of heaven is like a jewel buried in a field where someone finds it and they go run and purchase, you know, use every bit, try to raise as much money and sell everything they have to try to purchase that field. That buried treasure. The kingdom of heaven is like that.

But Paul understood this even for us personally as a church. So if you'll turn with me in 2 Corinthians 4, 6, and 7. If you're following your notes, you have a note card in there. If you want to just follow your notes and write that down. Here it is.

For it is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. In the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word.

Lord, we thank you that your spirit is here. You're speaking to our hearts. You're opening our minds. You're opening us up to the knowledge of who you are. And I pray that you would enlighten us that some truth would be spoken today to change and purify us more towards you and who you are and your glory and your good pleasure in your name.

Amen. Amen. So, the church in God's eyes is like a place full of buried treasure. It's like a place full of buried treasure. We've got these two analogies of the church.

On one hand, we have the structure, and then we have the soil. We see that through Scripture. We have the house, and then we have the land. We have the building, and we have the ground, right? We have the structure, and we have the ground.

We have these living stones that we're called, these living stones, but in the same breath, he calls us earthen vessels. This is what Paul calls us, earthen vessels. We are his home made out of earth. We are God's home. The church is his home.

The people that come together, we build a home that holds the power of God. We are his vessels, these objects of dirt, these objects of mud that are pulled together. And biologically, this is true. We are dust, right? We are dust.

We are made out of earth. And, you know, we use the term ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. And, in fact, Genesis 2-7 says this. He says, God says this, and the Lord, or the writer of Genesis says this, And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, right?

So, of all of creation, and man began... A living being. So, in all of creation, of all of creation, we see throughout Scripture, you know, He speaks things into existence, right? He separates the bodies of water. He separates the waters.

He creates things. He creates by His mouth. But I want you to imagine for a minute, Him leaning. And I wonder what the angels would have thought, you know, as they were gathered around. Because Job says they rejoiced.

You know, they were there when He created the earth. They were rejoicing, and it was just magnificent, right? Like, oh God, we celebrate you. Look what you've done. The beauty of your nature.

But I imagine as He created everything, and then the very last thing that He created, He actually got down on the ground. He started making and molding something. And they're like, what are you doing? Get off the ground. You're God.

You're holy. But He formed something. And then He breathed breath into these piles of dirt. Because here's a God, when God looked at the angels, angels would question it. God said, I don't see piles of dirt.

I see houses for my glory. I see a home for my breath. I see something. This is the magno opus of my creation. This is the crown jewel of my creation.

That's what I see when I create man, when I create this being out of the dust of earth. And that's why Jesus says this in Matthew 18, 20. And this isn't individually. This isn't individually. This is corporately.

In fact, Paul was talking corporately when he talked through this scripture. In fact, and Jesus says it like this, for two or three are gathered in His name, I will be there also, right? In the midst of them. That's why we gather. That's why we do things.

That's why we come together. Because as a church, as we gather together in the presence of God, as people with different treasures, we all come together. And God manifests His glory among the church by building us up together. Because we are earthen vessels transformed into living stones. We host the glory.

We host the transcendence of God in us. And the point isn't the package. That's what he's getting to here. The point isn't the package. We are just dirt.

We are just mud, right? We go back to dust. But the point isn't the package. It's what's inside the package. It's not the candy bar inside the wrapper.

It's the nut inside the outer shell. It's the straw. It's not the straw. It's the drink that kind of flows through the straw, right? It's not the straw itself.

And it's the conduit of that we are just the straws, right? We are the conduit of what's going on. We are the pipeline we are, so to speak. And, you know, and when a house is built, nobody sits around and talks about their new house and says, check out my new pipeline here. You know, look under the house.

Look at this pipe. Like, that's the best PVC in town, right? They don't do that, right? You don't do that. Does it, does it, does water flow through it?

No, but it's cool, you know? So, so it's not, the point is not, not the pipe. The point is what flows through the pipe. The vet, what flows through the vessel. So it's, it's not about us.

It's never been about us. It's never, ever been about us. It's always been about God and what God does and the power that happens through us. But we are dirt with God's power. We are dirt with God's commission on our lives.

We are set apart. We are holy dirt, amen? And we are called out in, in this. And, and, and we are, we have this buried treasure deep down in us, but not just individually. Although this is, can be practically applied to, to, this can be applied to individuals.

Paul specifically meant it for the church as a whole. He meant it for the church as a whole. When we look at the scripture, and I want us to reflect on the scripture for a minute. And this earthen vessels, when Paul said, used the term earthen vessels, he intentionally used it. He could have used any word out there for earthen vessels, for pots, for clay, for all these different things that, that are translated.

Jars of clay. He could have used anything, but he used a specific term in the original Greek that means pot shard. We are pot shards. We are pieces of broken pot. We are, we are, we are just, this, this is who we are.

And, and, and when he used that word earthen vessels, when he used that word jars of clay or however you want to translate that, the people in that day knew full well what he meant because people had pot shards in their house all the time because writing utensils were very hard to come by, very expensive. So what would people do when they would break their pots? Well, they would collect pot shards and they'd write on the, on the shards. So they understood full well, okay, I'm a shard. I'm a pot shard.

I'm a pot shard. I'm a part of this process. Also, uh, another thing that we can, we can get from this is, is the term pot wasn't necessarily like just any pot. It, and, and, and our interpretation of it or in, in practical everyday language would be like having a rubber made tub that we hold our food in. And we, we know, you know, the rubber made tub or a Tupperware tub or whatever it is that you use, the Tupperware that you put in, you, you put the food in.

It's not really about the Tupperware, right? It's about the food. When we wake up on, on Friday morning after Thanksgiving and we're excited about pulling out, we're not saying, whoa, that's a nice Tupperware dish, right? We're going in it and we're getting that good food out of it that we saved from the night before, right? Or the day before.

It's not really about the Tupperware. It's about what's in it. And when he was speaking to these people, they were thinking, wow, it's not really about us, is it? It's not really about what's on the outside, is it? So I don't have to think of myself a certain way on the outside because I know it's the power of God that works within me.

It's not, it's not the container. It's what's within the container. So that's how we come to. So, so when we come together and we, as a church, we are pot shards that connect together. And if a shard is missing, as any bowl or any pot or any information, anything, as they come together, if one of those are missing, then what happens?

It leaks. There's something missing. There's an important part that everybody plays. Everyone has a treasure, an earthen, they're earthen vessels with these buried treasures inside of us that God is using in the house. He's using in the church.

He's pulling them together. There are gifts. There are all these things that people that, that are, that God is working in the people and we pull them together and it forms a beautiful unit that holds the glory of God. Everyone has their place. They're, they're a shard that you're, you're a shard.

And, and, and when we, so when we pray together, when we, when we come together, as we did a minute ago and we pray together, if there's somebody missing, it's important that, that, that, that they're, we're all together in prayer because God really moves and manifests himself through prayer. If we're, if we're fasting at the beginning of the year for our church and our ministry, every year we do a fast and we come together, if somebody's missing, if someone's not a part of that, it's a, it's a, it's a missing piece. And, and, uh, we want to be a full pot. We want to be a full container, a full earthen vessel. We are pot shards.

So what am I saying today is be the shard, be the shard. When we come together, when we give faithfully to the church, we're giving together, when we're, when we're sacrificing together, we're doing all these things, we are shards. And when those shards come together and they form a perfect pot, it's amazing how God begins to move and how God begins to shift things in our lives and through our ministry to do things that we could never even guess, think, or imagine. When we come together, we are pot shards. Be a shard.

And when you get that revelation, when you figure out that you are more than just dust, that you are containers of something powerful, you are containers of God's presence, of God's glory in the face of Jesus, who is the personification of. Who God is, that you have God, you have Jesus Christ inside of you. It changes everything and there's a few things I want to mention today that it will change. It will change the way you speak. It will change the way you speak about the church.

It will change the way you speak about your church and your ministry. When you see yourselves, when you see all of us as pot shards, it changes the way we speak. See, it's interesting how people love to talk about the church, especially those who are in the church, right? I put up a red flag real quick when someone comes to church for the first time and the first thing, first conversation is, oh, I went to this church and they didn't have this, they didn't have that, or they didn't do this, or something happened. I'm like, you know, I'm like, ho, ho, ho, you know, that's cool and everything, but we're not here to do that.

We're not here to do that because they are God's, they are a part of God's house. We are all a part of God's house. We're all part of the bigger picture. We do not, we do not throw rocks at other churches. We do not talk about other churches.

In fact, we partner together with other churches. We do things with other churches. I spend good time with and company with other pastors of other churches here. We pray together. We seek God together.

We're in this together and we don't speak badly about other churches. churches. And on the other hand, you know, you hear things and people talk while they left our church, you know, and it's that. Well, you know what? That's, that's cool.

That's okay. I realized that this isn't a place for everybody. This isn't a church for everyone, but we don't speak badly about our church because I love my church. And when somebody speaks badly about my church or any other church, they're speaking about the bride of Christ. How does God see the church?

He sees it as a bride, a bride of Christ. He's his bride, his beautiful bride. I celebrated my 12 year anniversary a couple of weeks ago. And, uh, thank you. Thank you.

We made it 12 years. Amen. And, uh, when we got married, um, if you'll throw the picture up there, here's her at, uh, on our wedding day. I could, I, I, I was in that picture and I cut myself out. So, so you could just focus on the bride.

It's one of my favorite pictures from our wedding day. And, and, uh, you've probably heard it said, and it was said to me that, uh, when you see that bride come down the aisle, take a mental picture because you'll remember that for the rest. You'll remember that for the rest of your life. No, no, no, no, no, that's not true. Because it was, it was just, you know, when she came down the aisle and, and I saw her and, and, uh, it just, my heart leaped and I knew that, wow, somebody who wants to spend the rest, Oh, look at that.

I just, I can't even speak right now, you know, as she's coming down the aisle and, and, and, uh, that's how God sees us. And you know, what's interesting about a wedding garment, a wedding garment is the most forgiving garment. Now, not that Miranda needed a forgiving garment. She looked, she would have looked good in, in just a skirt, you know, walking up the aisle, you know, that day. He said, I mean, it was perfect.

You know, she, she was perfect and she still is perfect. She's my bride. She still is perfect. Perfect in every way. Um, but, um, but it's the most forgiving garment.

In fact, uh, I heard one pastor say even Dennis Robin looked good in a, in a wedding, wedding garment, you know? So, I mean, think about that. He really did. He was all, he was in good shape and, you know, had that wedding garment on. If y'all remember that back in, in the nineties, I believe when he started cross-dressing a little bit, it was kind of an interesting time.

But he even looked good in a wedding garment. And, and the interesting thing about a wedding garment is, is, is, is that it always, it always hides any imperfections. Because as the bride walks into the room, as the bride walks, everybody stands up, all attention is on her. And the purpose of the garment is to bring and draw the attention to her. All the glitter, all the white, all the laciness, all the beauty, all the makeup, all the hairdo, all the things that you go through to look perfect for that wedding.

So that all the attention is focused on them. And, and, and, and that's how God does for us. That's what God does for us. He gives us a wedding garment. It's like a wedding garment.

All the attention is on this. He covers up all the dust, all the dirt, and all the mud. And, and he says this about the church. This is my bride. This is my beauty.

Look at them. I love them. I love my church. There she is. And all of her glory and all of her glitter.

And I know they're messed up. I know they have a lot of issues, but I love them anyway. They're beautiful. And I want to, to be with them. I want to walk with them.

I want to live within them. I want to be a part of them. I want to work. And there's no plan B. There was only a plan A.

And that's my beautiful bride, the church of Jesus Christ. And that's who we are. We are shards that are placed together, all messed up, all muddy, all, all gross. Whatever you want to say. But God sees us as a bride.

And I bet the angels were like, are you kidding me, God? Are you kidding me? Man, we could do, you know, we were, we were made a little higher than the angels, but, but, uh, but we're, we're so, you know, we're so messed up. And I'm sure they were looking like dust, dirt, dirty people, you know, dirty people, dirty church. Come on, God, we can do better than that.

You build us better than that. You made us better than that. And I could just see God looking at them and says, no, watch your mouth. Don't you say a thing. That's my bride.

That's my beauty. That's my treasure. That's my glory. And I chose them. And they are my church.

And I love them. I made them in my own image. So when we speak negatively about the church, we're speaking negatively about Christ's bride. We need to see the church in God's eyes. We need to understand the importance and the love and the, and that God wants to work through the church and wants to be with the church and wants to, for his glory and his good pleasure.

He's, he's working through the church. His spirit is working and doing things and unimaginable things to our world. He's saving our world. He's preserving our world through the church. And we should not speak negatively of it.

We should speak positively of it. And I'm so thankful for the church. I'm so thankful for my church. Amen. I'm so thankful I'm a part of you guys and, and, and, and able to work and, and, and, uh, just grow and be a part of this and be blessed by this, be blessed by this ministry.

As, as messed up people as we are, the glory of God is so much greater when I see God moving and I see God changing lives. And I see, hear the stories of how God blessed you and you and you in different ways and, and how he's, he's, he's, he's blessing your family and how he's blessing your finances and how, how, um, people are coming to know Christ. He's changing and transforming their lives completely where they see things completely different. How God's using, using the church. I just, it's a joy for me to be a part of that.

It's a joy for me to be a part of that. It drives, it, it really does change the way we speak about the church. And it also does this, it, it will, it will drive how you sacrifice for the church. When you think about the church in the, in the eyes of Jesus Christ, the glory of God, that it's not about us, we're just earth and vessels and God is working through us and it's about his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. If it's about him, we see the church as a place we can make huge sacrifices for the glory of God.

And when you build a house, you know that there's going to be some sacrifice that takes place. When you buy a house, you know, there's going to be some sacrifice that you're going to have to put a down payment on the house. You're going to have to save some money. You're going to have to cut back on eating and, and spending because you see the bigger picture. You're going to build a house.

There's going to be. There's something more there in the future. There's a bigger picture. So we're willing to sacrifice for the things that we believe in and we have a heart for and we're pushing towards. And not only through our regular tithes, sometimes in giving, which is a responsibility for us in the church, sometimes God may ask us to give radically.

Radically give some kind of spontaneous radical giving because we love the church so much and so many of you have done that at times. You've given radically and your generosity and how you serve the church and how you serve people through the church. But that God would speak to our hearts as we are blessed to give and do some spontaneous generosity through our church and be a part of the mission of the church. Why? Because we are always hoping and looking at what the bigger picture, not just the now, but the legacy we will bring into the house.

Amen. The people that we will reach past this, the building that we will have, that we will be able to serve our community even more. The people that are not yet here in this house, the kids and the grandkids that are coming, even the futures after we've gone from this world, you know, that at Salt Church will be able to do and minister to. We are the foundation. We are the building blocks.

We are the living stones. We are the vessels in which God works through. So we are willing to sacrifice for the house. We are always aiming at what we cannot see. That's the purpose.

We always aim at what we cannot see. If we can't, that's the purpose of vision. When we see a vision, when we see a church like ours, a church that reaches people with the life-giving message of Jesus in every way possible, that we do this, our mission can change. Our methods can change, but the gospel never changes because we are interested in reaching more people. We are interested in seeing more life change.

We see the bigger picture, the things that God can place in the church and move in the church and situate the church in a way that it can reach those who are far from God and those who are even impossible to reach. The magnitude of the places that other churches we can support and plant and the magnitude of the international scope where we can reach more people internationally, we can do more churches, build more orphanages, help those who are lost, help the orphans and the widows. All the things that we can do as a church is a bigger picture. It's not just a now. It will change the way we see the future, the bigger picture, when in the bigger context, it always makes more sense, and it will change how we handle setbacks.

Number three, it will change how we handle setbacks because even in the church, there are setbacks. Good Lord, we've experienced a lot of setbacks in our church over and over again. Setbacks. You know, he could have instructed the church to be China, you know, vessels of China and vessels of ceramic or vessels of wood, but he chose earthen vessels. He chose earthen.

He chose clay and dirty people do dirty things. And sometimes there's even evil setbacks in the church. There's disagreement. There's disunity. There's things like that that happen.

There's always setbacks. And a church, and I love how Diedrich Bonhoeffer said this. He says, a church is a place where our dreams are shattered. And that is a good thing. Because all of us come into church, and this is the reason why we have setbacks.

It's because there's expectations that we place on church, right? We come in with a church full of earthen vessels, a church full of shards with buried treasure, but we're still earthen vessels. We're still mud. We're still dirt. We're still dirty people.

And things happen. And sometimes we come in, and whether it's realistic or not, sometimes we are affected by the way we are treated, you know, by somebody in the church. Or how we expected to advance through the rank quicker, or somebody to notice us a little more, or whatever it might have been. We get hurt. And sometimes it's just simply the style of song or the delivery of the message, or whatever it might be, or how methods are changing.

And let me just say this. Our opinion is in kind of methodology and songs and the way to church. Our opinion is usually formed by the way we feel like is most appropriate in a service is usually formed by what we experienced when we were in the church, right? So in the 1980s, I came to the Lord, and we were singing, you know, singing on an organ and doing all that. And, you know, yeah, as the deer, Pat, yeah, as the deer and all that, a beautiful song.

I love that song, man. We need to do that song, Alec. That would be an awesome song. But, yeah, he said that's okay. He said that's okay.

See, see? He's making my point here. But usually we form our perceptions about how church should work and how we should do church and based on when we, the experience we had in church, what changed us. And we want to impose those on others. Well, if they experienced it the way I experienced it, then, therefore, they, you know, we're doing it wrong if we're not doing it the way that I do it.

In our minds, the ones that were used to reach us are the ones that should be used to reach everybody else. Why do we act that way? Because, naturally, we're selfish people. Take this with a grain of salt, but we're selfish people. We were selfish, and we like things the way we want.

And we have a culture that's changing radically. And how do we reach more people? How do we think outside the box? See, the bait is never for the fish in the boat. Did you know that?

The bait is for those who are outside the boat. And our ministry and our methods are to focus on those outside the boat. We want to bring more people in the boat. Amen? We want them to know Jesus so we do everything we can possibly.

And sometimes that's thinking different. The gospel never changes. Let me be upfront about that. The gospel, the scripture, the message never changes. Nothing ever changes in that Bible.

We believe in the infallible truth of God in scripture. We hold true to that. But the way we present the gospel, the way we reach more people, the way we do it is significantly important in a post-Christian world, in a post-Christian culture. How do we reach more people? How do we connect with more people?

We need to continually be thinking about that. And it's in the friction of life and the discomfort that we have in the church that's good. It's good for us. This is why Bonhoeffer says this is good for us because it really, in that inertia and all that stuff that we deal with, it forms a power. It forms something God begins to shift and move things inside of us to help us to discover more of what God can do through the church.

Because it's in the conflict. It's in the experience of, oh, the pressure. And, in fact, Paul talks about this in 2 Corinthians 4, 8 and 10 in the same scripture. It says as though we experience every kind of pressure, we're not crushed. At times, we don't know what to do.

But quitting is not an option. Woo! Yowch! Quitting is not an option. We are persecuted by others, but God has not forsaken us.

We may be knocked down, but not out. We continually share in the death of Jesus in our own body so that the resurrection life of Jesus will be revealed through our humanity. Amen. It's in our humanity. It's in the pressure.

It's these earthen vessels. In our humanity, he works a greater purpose, a powerful purpose. We are humans. We are earthen vessels, but the humanity in us says, I'm out. I'm done.

I quit. I'm done with the church. I don't like the church anymore. Get away from me, church. You've insulted me.

You've hurt me. You haven't done it my way, the expectations we have that are unmet, these unmet expectations, and we quit. But God doesn't give us that option. He says you can't quit. If you are a follower of Christ, you have to be all in.

But he's telling us, instead of going somewhere else and getting a little honey in our ears, just stick it out, because he's got something better and something bigger for us, and something powerful. And I believe that about this church. God's going to do some amazing things. And I feel sad for those who, we've released people from our church from time to time, and it's been a good, pleasant release, but sometimes I feel sad for them because they're going to miss out on the goodness of glory of being, of working even in the friction, even in the friction, man. That's where it happens.

That's where the energy comes from. It will change the way we handle setbacks, because the truth is there's gold in the walls and treasure in the ceiling. There's gold, and even though it doesn't look like much, there's gold in the walls and treasure in the ceiling. I remember a story I read a few years ago about a couple who had a leak in their attic, and they went up to their attic to look for the leak, and they walked through this door that they had never been through. It's been locked since they bought the house.

They never went in there. And they found a Caravaggio painting hiding in there that was worth about $136 million. That will fix the leak, yes. And it was all because of a leak. Sometimes there's leaks.

But God gives us leaks and causes the friction so that we can discover the gold, discover the wealth of knowing him and being a part of the church. That's what he has for us. And lastly, it will change the way you see. It will change the way you see the church. When you see it in God's eyes, the bride of Christ, it will change the way you see the church, the way God watches dirt, the way God sees dirt.

Have you ever seen a dirt washer, a dirt watcher, somebody who watches dirt? You guys are like, what are you talking about? That sounds weird. Well, just watch somebody who's excited about building a brand new house. I remember when I was younger and we built our first house.

I was about 11 years old. My dad built his first house. My mom and dad would go over there, you know, every day to see the foundation and see what's going on. And I remember at the very beginning, we'd go over there and we were super excited about those piles of dirt. Super excited.

I mean, just, wow, there's going to be a house here. It's going to be a new house in a new neighborhood. And I could just see, I mean, who looks at dirt and says, well, that's how God sees dirt. Because when we looked at that house and when anybody looks at a pile of dirt, it's getting ready to be built. They're not just seeing a pile of dirt.

They're seeing a place where they can raise their kids. They're seeing a place where they can have brunches and evening teas and they can watch their kids grow and they can fellowship with their friends and they can build, you know, just an environment. They see an environment where they can, that they can enjoy a pleasant place of upbringing. They see more. They see grandkids.

They see everything in the future. They see special occasions. They see Christmases. They see Easter's. They see Thanksgivings.

They see all those things, those beauties. They see that. They don't see a dirt, a pile of dirt. They don't see an unpoured foundation. They see, they see house.

And that's what God sees when he sees our church. He sees a house. He sees a big, beautiful, strong structure where his presence can dwell and his presence can work in these earthen vessels for you, for me. So when we think of the church, that way, it changes everything. It changes absolutely everything.

Let's pray, Father, in the name of Jesus. Your bride, Lord. We are your bride. Thank you. You chose us when you could have used any other method, any other way you chose us, God.

And we are so thankful for that. You placed us in a garment. You covered our sin. You placed us beside you. You've lifted us.

You've given us authority, Lord. You've made us your children. You've given us a great inheritance. Not because of anything we had done. We didn't deserve it.

We were piles of dirt. Lord. We are shards, Lord. Pieces of pots. But you didn't see pieces of a pot.

You saw a powerful man and woman of God. God, we're so thankful for that. So today, we just celebrate that. We thank you, God. And as we focus on who the church is and who we are and how God wants to work through our church and what he wants to do even this summer as we move forward in baptisms and fellowship and even in the vacations and everything that goes on, that we would continue to be the church.

And that's why we come together each week. And that's why we do small groups. And that's why we fellowship together. That's why we eat together. That's why we love each other.

That's why we do Bible studies together. That's why we help each other out with our yards together and work on cars together and swim in swimming pools together and all these things that we do, Lord. We do it because we have a togetherness about us that is better than what the world can give us. Because in that, you are there. And you work through us and we are conduits of your power, Lord, of your purpose, of your vision, Lord.

Help us change our perspective, Lord. If we're here today, if anybody's here today, Lord, I pray that if they were waving off or going off or veering off in the wrong direction, Lord Jesus, that you would steer them right back on course so that they can see, so they'll fully see the power and the purpose that you have for them as being a part of the local church, that you would change the way they see, the way they think, the way they know, the way they speak, the way they act, about your bride. In that same spirit, Lord, if there's one here that does not know you, God, with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, I just want to give you an opportunity. If you're with us today, maybe you've been coming here for a while. Maybe this is your first time here.

Maybe you feel like a shard. You feel like a pile of dirt. Can I tell you that God doesn't see you that way? And would you believe me? Because he tells us that.

And today you can make a decision to follow him and he will show you everything he has for you. He will give you something new. He will give you purpose. He will give you a goal. He'll give you strength.

He'll give you... I can't even explain it. But could you, could you make that, if that's you today, if you walked in here and you're like, you know, yeah, it's time. It's time. I've tried it every way I possibly could.

Every situation, every life. I've been going through life for a long time. Some of you is like, I've been doing this for years and there's no other way. I was with a friend of mine yesterday. He was like, you know, I've been doing this for years and I just figured out, tried to do it every other way.

I did, but there was only one way. And I found that right way. Maybe that's you today. If that's you today, I'm not going to embarrass you, but I'd just like to pray for you personally. I'd like to know who you are so I can just pray for you personally.

If you would just gently raise your hand and say, I'm ready to give my life to Christ. I'm ready to, I'm ready to become purposeful. I'm ready for him to change me from the inside out. That's you today. Make a decision for him.

Make that decision. Pray this with me. Those of you, even the whole church, you know, we'll pray this together. Father, we believe that you died on the cross for our sins. We believe that you are the son of God, that you were holy, righteous.

You came to earth to be God with us. You live the perfect life, but you shed your blood on the cross for our sin. And today we can receive that blood over our lives. We can wear the garment, the bride garment today that these earthen vessels are more than just mud. Come and live in our hearts, live in my heart today.

Change me from the inside out. In Jesus' name, amen.