1 How amiable are thy tabernacles, O LORD of hosts!
2 My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the courts of the LORD: my heart and my flesh crieth out for the living God.
3 Yea, the sparrow hath found an house, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, even thine altars, O LORD of hosts, my King, and my God.
4 Blessed are they that dwell in thy house: they will be still praising thee. Selah.
Introduction
It has been my custom for a good many years when I start a new year as the pastor of the church to bring a message about the church and its ministry. So you’ll understand if I’m a little more personal than I usually am.
Several years ago a pastor sat in his study on a Saturday afternoon preparing for Sunday’s message. He heard someone walking around in the church and he stepped out in the hall to find out who it was and discovered that it was one of the deacons. He asked if he could help him and the deacon said, “No, Pastor, I often come to the church on Saturday just to walk around or to sit and meditate. Pastor, you see, I love this church. I love every brick in the walls. I love the mortar in the joints. I love the plaster on the walls. I love my church.”
When he said that, he was agreeing with the psalmist who said in Psalm 84, “How amiable are thy tabernacles, oh Lord of hosts!” And those are my sentiments concerning Green Acres Baptist Church.
[1]A little over five years ago I had never even heard that there was such a place as Green Acres. I was sitting in my study in the First Baptist Church in San Marcos one day and the president of the San Marcos Baptist Academy dropped by to visit. He was a member of our congregation and he said, “I’ve been talking to some of the men in the Dallas office and they tell me that you are being considered as the pastor of Green Acres Baptist Church.” Well, since I knew nothing about the church, that didn’t impress me at all. With a shrug of my shoulders I said, “That sounds fine with me,” and I went on about my work. I had never seen the church. I had never seen a member of the pulpit committee that I knew about. I had never talked with them on the phone. They might as well have been members of the CIA so far as I was concerned.
A few weeks after that I was in a revival meeting in one of my former pastorates in Taylor and I received a telephone call from Mr. Leo Chesley, the chairman of the committee. He asked if Cathy and I would meet the committee at the Stagecoach Inn in Salado to talk. We had a delightful meeting and they invited me to visit Tyler, to look over the church, to talk with the staff, and to give some consideration to coming to serve with you—or at least to preach in view of a call. There was only one problem. I had been talking with a church in Hunstsville, Alabama. They had been visiting us for a long time and had asked me to visit in their church, and I had agreed to do so. I didn’t think it would be exactly right if I visited in Tyler before I went to Alabama to look around. But Brother Leo Chesley had a way of being insistent at times and he felt like I ought to come and visit Tyler before I went to Alabama. He felt it might influence my thinking some. So at his insistence we came to Tyler. Following that we went to Alabama to visit with the church and talk with them. Well, it didn’t take long in Alabama to decide that we didn’t want to go there. I had no inclination from the Lord that that was where I belonged.
And so Brother Leo and the committee invited us to come back here and preach to the church. With some reluctance I agreed to come.
On the Friday before I came, I received a telephone call and the fellow on the other end said, “This is John Kurt, and I’m the editor of the Baptist Standard, and I understand that you are going to Tyler to preach at the Green Acres Baptist Church. And I just want to know if you are going to accept it.”
I said, “Well, John you know I’m not sure that they are going to call me. They may not like me, and if they call me I’m not at all sure that I will accept the call. So I just really can’t tell you anything.” So I came to Green Acres and preached and we had a good time of fellowship and worship. I went back home and Brother Leo called me and told me the vote of the church.
Early the next morning I received another telephone call from John Hurt and he said, “I want to know if you have accepted.” I said, “Well, no, John, I haven’t.” He said, “Please tell me, what in the world do you want? The vote was 400 and something to four, so what are you waiting on?” By the way, I never have found out who those four are, and they are probably a different four or forty now than there were then. But I told him, “I just don’t know what I am going to do. I am praying and earnestly seeking God’s will.”
I was so very happy in San Marcos. We loved the people. When you are a pastor, the roots grow deeply and quickly. You see people saved, you baptize them, you marry their children, you bury their loved ones, and it isn’t long until your hearts and lives are bound together. You have gone through so many meaningful experiences together. We really did love that place and saw some potential in the church, so it was a difficult time as I tried to discern God’s will concerning a move. I had promised Green Acres that I would let them know by the next weekend. But the next weekend rolled around and I simply had not reached a decision. I did not know. I could not get any sense of direction from the Lord.
That was the first time that had ever happened in my life. I had prayed and no clear direction had come from God. So I asked if I could have another week to think and to pray and ask the church to think and pray and they gave it to me. It just so happened that that week I was to be in Abilene for camp. Tom Moseley, who had served at Green Acres and was at that time in the First Baptist Church of Abilene, came out to the camp and visited with me about the church and we prayed together. And I was still trying to decide what God wanted me to do.
Finally at the end of the week I came to the conclusion and said, “Lord, it looks like this is the reasonable and sensible thing to do. I have been in San Marcos for six years. I have probably taken the church as far as I can take it, so for my own sake and maybe for the sake of the church, I need to move on. It just makes sense to me that I ought to go. If I am not to use my brain in making decisions, then I don’t know to what end you gave me a brain. So I am going to go unless you put up a roadblock that even a blind man could see, because that is what I am today.”
I returned home from the camp with the resolution that unless God put up a roadblock I was going to come. I got home and there was a telephone call waiting for me on my desk. It was the president of the local savings and loan, and he wanted to talk with me in person. I went to see him and he asked me where I stood in my decision, so I told him. He asked, “Well, what would it take to get you to stay?”
He wasn’t asking because I was such a great preacher. It was just because San Marcos would have a hard time finding another one. They didn’t want to go through that process. I know how all of that works. I said, “Bob, it’s not anything—it is just God’s will.” He said, “Suppose we built you a new house. Would you stay?” I said, “No, that has nothing to do with it. It is a matter of God’s will and if you’ll pray with me and for me that is the most that you can do.”
I thought about it for long time and I determined that that was not a roadblock from God. And so I accepted the call to come to Green Acres five years ago to be your pastor.
Now from the very beginning you have been as gracious, loving, and helpful as you could possibly be. But in those first few months I was here physically, but my heart was still there in San Marcos. I was probably the loneliest and most homesick preacher that ever walked into Tyler. There were times when I just wept out of homesickness. Those of you who are new in this community—who moved here from some other place and you sometimes want to sit in the corner and cry—just go right ahead. It will help. I’ve been there before. And it wasn’t helped any by the fact that my friends in San Marcos knew what I hard time I’d had in making this decision. Two or three of them called every week for several months to ask, “Why don’t you come on back home where you belong?” That made it hard to pray intelligently and to keep my mind on business.
Finally, I decided that I was going back to San Marcos. The chairman of the pulpit committee there was my very best friend. He still is one of the dearest friends that I have anywhere. We had been like brothers while I was there. So one Wednesday evening I picked up the phone to call him, but I couldn’t reach him. I couldn’t find him at home. I couldn’t find him at work. I couldn’t find him at church. I couldn’t find him anywhere. I suppose that I called him 10 or 12 times between Wednesday afternoon and Wednesday night, and I couldn’t reach him. “Well, it isn’t a life and death matter,” I thought. “I will call him tomorrow.”
Early the next day, I picked up the phone and called him. And I said, “Ronnie, if you folks will still have me, I am going to come back to San Marcos.” And he said, “Oh, Paul, the committee met last night and has invited another preacher to come to our church in view of a call.”
I hung the phone up and I said, “Lord, there is the roadblock. Not in front of me to keep me from going, but behind me to keep me from going back because I made the right decision through prayer and the prayers of your people in the beginning. And since that time, we have felt at home in Tyler. My love and my devotion to this church and to you has grown beyond anything that I have ever experienced in my life. I just want you to know that it is a joy, thrill, and a pleasure to be here in this fellowship. And I can say with the psalmist of old, ‘How lovely is thy church, oh God.’”
I would hope that same spirit and attitude would be in your heart for this church and for the people of God who meet and worship here. When I think about the church that I love, there are two or three things that come to my mind. I love the building of the church. I love the people of the church. I love the staff of the church, but most of all I love Christ, who is the head of the church. As you think about your love for the church, and as you think of the words of the psalmist who said, “How lovely is thy church, oh God,” I hope that you would share my feelings in loving the building, the people, the staff, and Christ—the head of the church.
1. Love the church building. As we think of loving the church, I would hope that you could love the building of the church. Now all of us understand that the church is not a building and that the church is the people. The English word church comes from the Greek word ekklesia, which actually means “an assembly, or a group of called-out people.” You know that the Greek cities were democratic, and if some major decision was to be made in the city, the mayor would send out a notice to all the citizens of that community telling them of the time, the place, and the importance of a town meeting. Naturally, at any one time not every citizen of the community would come, but many of them would assemble in a town meeting. That people who came together were the called-out ones. They had heard the mayor’s call, they had answered that call, and they had assembled themselves together to form the town hall meeting. When the writers of the New Testament looked for a word to describe the church of Jesus Christ, they picked that word ekklesia to describe those who had heard and had answered the call of God to become his children. They had responded to the call of Jesus Christ to invite him into their hearts and lives. In response to that call, they had become a part of the family of God and the assembly of God’s people. That is what a church is.
For many years there were no church buildings. You know of course that Jesus built no buildings. In fact he was oftentimes not even welcomed in the religious buildings of his day so he preached in the marketplace, on the side of the hill, and on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Wherever he could find people, Jesus preached there.
The early apostles had no buildings. They met in rented halls. Sometimes they met by the riverbank. Sometimes they met in synagogues. They met wherever and whenever they could in people’s homes, and they turned their world upside down. It was several hundred years after the beginning of the Christian movement before they ever had formal, official church houses. Even after they had houses, for a long period of time they were not effective in the worship of God.
Men like John Wesley and George Whitfield were thrown out of the churches in their days, but that was no real tragedy because no one was attending. They went out into the fields, the streets, the factories, and into the people’s homes. There they started the great revival movement that swept England and the United States in those early days of our history. Church buildings are not essential and we most certainly could get by and carry on the work of God without a church building at all. But they are important and they contribute something to our work for God.
It is in a church building that you most often meet God in worship. It is in a building that people respond to accept Jesus as their Savior. It is in a building that people are baptized. It is in a building that your children come and pledge their vows of fidelity and love to one another. And it is oftentimes in the church building that we hold a service before burying your loved ones. With so many important things taking place in a building like this, the building has to become important to us.
[2]I hope your love for the building of the church can grow. I’m persuaded that the church building ought to be the most beautiful house in town, as beautiful as the house that you live in. David expressed that feeling when he lived in a lovely palace made out of stone and cedar. He said to God on one occasion, “It’s not right that I should live in a house like this while you dwell in tents.” It was in his heart and it is in mine to build a beautiful house of worship—probably the most beautiful building that has ever been built on the face of earth. And that’s the spirit and the attitude that ought to be in the hearts of God’s people when they say, “How lovely is thy church, oh God.”
2. Love the church people. But more than just loving the building of the church, we ought to love the people of the church, because you know that is what the church is. It’s people. Not bricks and mortar or stone and wood, but people. It’s real live people, and many of them are hurting, lonely, and are in need of love. I think about the young man who came to our church some time ago. He said to me, “I went through a divorce and I felt separated from every one of my friends and my church. For four long months I worshipped by myself out by the lake. I kept thinking, ‘Somebody in the church will reach out to me. Somebody will come to me and love me. They’ll put their arm around me and encourage me and help me.’ But no one came, and I was so hurt and so disappointed that it has been difficult for me to find another church and get back active in God’s service.”
As he told me about that sad experience I thought, “What is the church supposed to be? If the church is nothing more than a group of people listening to a man make a speech, they could find that on the radio or in some service club.” But the church is more than just as an audience listening to a speaker. The church is a fellowship of God’s people who love and care for one another. If the church is to be what God intends it to be, and if we are the church, we must be that kind of loving, caring fellowship where we reach out to other people.
[3]Jesus said on one occasion, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:35). He did not say, “Men shall know that you are my disciples because you all believe exactly the same thing.” He did not say, “Men shall know that you are my disciples because you are in church every time the doors are opened.” Nor did he say, “Men shall know that you are my disciples because you tithe and you give regularly to the program of the church.” No, but he did say that we would be known as his disciples because of our love for one another. Above all things, the church ought to be a loving place, and I would hope that you could grow in your love for the people of the church.
John Lanoue once told me about traveling through Tennessee or Kentucky, where he passed through a little town. He said, “I could almost read the spiritual history of that town by the names of the churches that I passed along on the road. I came to the city limits and I saw a sign that said, ‘The Harmony Baptist Church.’ Then I drove on down the road a little ways, and I saw another sign and it said, ‘The New Harmony Baptist Church.’ I got the idea that maybe there hadn’t been too much harmony in that old one, so they had split and started the New Harmony Baptist Church. And as if that wasn’t enough, I went on down the road a few more miles and there was another church and the sign said, ‘The Peaceful Harmony Baptist Church.’”
When there is not the harmony, peace, or love that there ought to be, there is not the victory, power, and progress that there ought to be.
[4]I read with great interest some time ago a statement by Gene Shue, who was once the coach of the 76ers basketball team. The 76ers were probably the greatest assortment of individual talent ever to be put together on one basketball team. They were the finest players money could buy and everyone fully expected that they would walk away with the league title. That was until they came up against Portland, an inferior team that outplayed them consistently. Even though the 76ers had the greater individual talent, they lost. Somebody asked Gene Shue, “Did you have a morale problem?” He replied, “No, this team hasn’t got time for that. They are too busy not talking to each other or fighting among themselves.”
If you ever get to the place in a church where people are too busy not talking to one another and too busy fighting with one another, then you can be dead sure of one thing: there will be no real victory won for Jesus Christ. [5]I hope we can always love not only the building of the church, but especially the people of the church.
3. Love the church staff. Then I hope that you can love the staff of the church. We have a great staff. How grateful to God I am for the men [6]who work and serve with me and with you. There are very few business, schools, institutions, teams, or churches that rise above their leadership. It doesn’t matter how fine a product a company may have, how wonderful the school buildings may be, or even how fine the church may be. If the leadership isn’t strong, then there will be very little progress.
John Wooden, the outstanding former basketball coach at UCLA, said that no one can win without talent, but not everyone can win with talent. He was saying that talent is essential in a business, in a school, and in a church. But talent in itself is not enough. There must be leadership matched with that talent if progress is going to be made.
And I tell you that the men [7]who serve with me on our staff, in case you don’t know it, are some winners. We not only have talent in this church, we’ve got leaders who can give guidance and direction. I thank God for them, and I want you to be thankful for them as well.
Andrew Carnegie, the great business tycoon, was asked on one occasion the secret of his success. He said, “I can give it to you in two words: my men. You can take away everything else I have. Take away all of my money. Take away all of my buildings. Take away this organization. Take away my factories, but leave me my men and I will build it back again.”
And that’s the way it is in a church. It’s hard to be a leader. If you are the head of a group you can never be sure whether they are chasing you or following you. If you are too far in front, you may lose them. And if you are too close, they may be nipping at your heels. That’s why the great baseball pitcher Satchel Paige said, “Don’t ever look back. Somebody may be gaining on you.”
It’s hard to be a leader, but every organization needs one. God never intended that the church be run by a committee. Somebody told me yesterday that a camel is a race horse put together by a committee. The only two times I can remember in the Bible where decisions were made exclusively by committees resulted in a mess. Remember the time they sent the spies out to investigate the Promised Land, and 10 out of the 12 came back and said, “It is a fool’s venture to try it”? They ended up wandering around in the wilderness for forty years until every last one of them died. They should have listened to their leader when he said, “Let’s go.”
[8]The other time was when the apostles got together seemingly on their own and they elected somebody to take the place of Judas. We never hear about that man again from that day forward, because God intended for the apostle Paul to take Judas’ place.
Committees are valuable when they supplement leadership, but not when they usurp leadership. I am grateful that God has blessed us with a wonderful staff, and when I say, “I love the church,” I mean I love this building, I love you people, and I love the staff whom God has given to us. I hope you love them also.
4. Love Jesus—the head of the church. But more than that, not only do I love the building and the people and the staff, I love Christ who is the head of the church. Christ is all things to all men. To the dead, he is the life. To the lost, he is the way. To the blind, he is the light. To the hungry, he is the bread. To the thirsty, he is the water. To the bewildered, he is the good shepherd. To the sick, he is the great physician. And to those who are troubled and distressed, he is the Father’s advocate. As S. D. Gordon said, “Jesus was God spelling himself out in language humanity could understand.”
Jesus bears a special relationship to the church because he is the foundation. He said, “Upon this rock I will build my church.” And more than just the foundation, he is the head of the Church. Paul the apostle said, “Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church” (Ephesians 5:22-23). Christ is also the Savior of the church. When he died on the cross, he died so that we might have life everlasting. He died that we might be his bride and be a part of his body.
A wealthy man drove by the church one day with a friend. He stopped, rolled down the window, stuck his arm out, and pointed at the church and he said, “That’s my church.” His friend said, “Oh, that’s nice. Do you belong to that church?” The man replied, “No, it belongs to me.” We sometimes forget the church is not yours individually, even if you have been at one since the beginning. Nor is it ours collectively. No matter how much we put into it, it is Christ’s exclusively.
We must ever and always remember that Christ is the head of the church, and as we remember that Christ is the head of it, our love for him becomes supreme. So with the psalmist I want to say, “How beautiful and lovely is thy church, oh God, and I thank you for it.” The scriptures say that Jesus loved the church and gave himself for it—may that be true in your life and in mine as well.
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