Endeavor 1: A God-Sized Endeavor
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Genesis 37:1-11
N: Laser pointer, Giveaway examples
Welcome
Welcome
Welcome to Family Worship with Eastern Hills Baptist Church, and the kickoff Sunday of our Endeavor series and campaign! I’m Bill Connors, and I’m so excited to be a part of this church family during this time! I believe that God has been working in amazing ways in our church family and will do incredible things in and through our church family in the coming weeks, and my prayer is that each of us will be completely engaged in what God doing in our midst. We’re going to worship together, pray together, celebrate together, and do life together through this series, and we’re going to watch with anticipation to see what God does in the life of EHBC.
If you’re joining us for the first time today, whether you are in the room or online, you are here on a great day! We’d love the opportunity to get to know you a little more, so if you’re here in person, please take some time to fill out the communication card that is in the back of the pew in front of you. You can come and give those directly to me at the close of the service, or you can put them in the offering plates by the doors as you leave after our benediction. If you’re online or you’d just rather do a digital communication card, you can text the word WELCOME to 5053392004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our digital card. Either way, thanks for being here on this exciting morning!
Announcements
Announcements
Lots of work and planning has gone into this campaign, and I would like to say thanks to those who have served on the Master Planning Team led by Tim Allen, the Auxano planning team, and the Endeavor communication team led by Krystal Ward, prayer team led by Kerry Vivian, and events team lead by Deanna Chadwick. Our hope and prayer is that over the next several weeks, we will all catch the vision of what God is doing with EHBC through Endeavor, and to supplement our Sunday morning services, we have several other things that will take place during the campaign, as we look forward to our commitment Sunday on November 13.
40 Days of Prayer info - week 1 of devos available today, rack card for reference day by day
On our social media feeds every morning #ehbcabq
Most of our Sunday morning Bible study classes are doing a companion study that we’ve created that goes along with our Endeavor theme. If you haven’t been involved in a Sunday morning Bible study class, this would be a great time to get plugged into one.
Endeavor to Worship this Thursday night at 6:30 pm
Mission New Mexico Offering ($13,311)
Opening
Opening
For today and the following four Sundays, we are going to be surveying the life of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Joseph’s life was one long endeavor that God orchestrated for His own glory and as the means of preserving and preparing the nation of Israel for the plans that He had in store for them. In Joseph, we see the power of God on display in the life of one who trusted and followed Him in faith. The overarching point of our studies for the next five messages will be to see what God can do in such a life completely committed to Him, and then to consider our faith, our obedience, and our willingness to be used by God for such a task as what lies before us. So let’s dive in by standing together as we are able to, as we look at our focal passage this morning together:
1 Jacob lived in the land where his father had stayed, the land of Canaan. 2 These are the family records of Jacob. At seventeen years of age, Joseph tended sheep with his brothers. The young man was working with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives, and he brought a bad report about them to their father. 3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a long-sleeved robe for him. 4 When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not bring themselves to speak peaceably to him. 5 Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. 6 He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: 7 There we were, binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.” 8 “Are you really going to reign over us?” his brothers asked him. “Are you really going to rule us?” So they hated him even more because of his dream and what he had said. 9 Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. “Look,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10 He told his father and brothers, and his father rebuked him. “What kind of dream is this that you have had?” he said. “Am I and your mother and your brothers really going to come and bow down to the ground before you?” 11 His brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.
PRAYER (FBC Bosque Farms, Pastor Brian Mull)
Have you ever undertaken something that you would call an “endeavor?” Think about that question for a moment. What sorts of things qualify as an endeavor in your mind? Maybe it’s a road trip. Perhaps a business venture or an educational goal. Marriage is a kind of an endeavor, as is raising a family.
I’ve participated in all of these types of endeavors in my life. Many of you have as well.
Some of them are simple, point a to point b affairs. Last October, my family journeyed to Pittsburgh to watch the Steelers play. It was an endeavor, this simple kind: Get to Pittsburgh, get to the game, get home (obviously it was slightly more complicated than that, but you get what I’m saying).
Some endeavors are lifelong adventures that demand our energy, attention, and focus for years, decades even. Marriage stands out in this regard to me. Melanie and I have been married for nearly 32 years, and sometimes it feels as if we’ve just started this journey in a way, while at other times the journey seems so long that I can hardly remember my world from before she was in it.
You see, an endeavor is defined in Webster’s 1828 Dictionary as: an effort; an attempt; an exertion of physical strength, or the intellectual powers, towards the attainment of an object.
However, you can also endeavor to do something, as a verb. So logically, you endeavor while in the midst of an endeavor.
So the theme for our capital funds campaign is the word “ENDEAVOR,” and we mean it in both senses. We are to endeavor to be the people that God has called us to be in His strength and in the power of His Spirit in the name of Christ, and we are on an endeavor to seek His face, His will, His direction, and His purpose for this church family.
Yes, this is partially a campaign to raise funds for the upgrade and upkeep of our building, and to plan for the future of our facility. We need to fix a roof and upgrade our lighting and replace our furnaces and upgrade our electrical system. However, it would be so easy to just focus on the financial part of this campaign. But the real issue here isn’t the funds: It’s the endeavor that God has planned for Eastern Hills Baptist Church, and our role in it. It’s a discovery of where God has us right now, where He wants to take us, and what He wants to do in and through us in the future.
And as we look at Joseph’s journey of faith, we will together embark on our own journey. But the thing that we need to remember throughout this endeavor is that the central character, the central figure, the central actor in the drama of Joseph’s life wasn’t Joseph—it was God. And what do we see God do?
1: God prepares God-sized endeavors for His people.
1: God prepares God-sized endeavors for His people.
Before we actually get to Joseph’s life, we need to look back a ways in his family’s journey. We have to look all the way back at his great-grandfather’s life. Who was Joseph’s great-grandfather? It was none other than Abraham. Even before Joseph’s grandfather Isaac was born, God appeared to Abraham and informed him of what was coming for the yet-to-be-formed nation of Israel, as well as the plan that God had for solving the problem that would come from it:
13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know this for certain: Your offspring will be resident aliens for four hundred years in a land that does not belong to them and will be enslaved and oppressed. 14 However, I will judge the nation they serve, and afterward they will go out with many possessions. 15 But you will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation they will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”
Notice what God said: “Know this for certain...” There is no question about whether this was going to take place. God had established that it was going to be, and so it would come to pass. Certainly Abraham didn’t know how it would come to pass, or even when it would do so. But God declared that it would, so Abraham believed it.
Isaiah would later write of the plans of the Lord:
24 The Lord of Armies has sworn: As I have purposed, so it will be; as I have planned it, so it will happen.
27 The Lord of Armies himself has planned it; therefore, who can stand in its way? It is his hand that is outstretched, so who can turn it back?
When God says that He is going to do something, we can rest assured that He is going to do it.
But in Abraham’s case, was this just any promise? Is it a promise that Abraham could have made come to pass? No! Why not? Because it was a plan that would cover hundreds of years, and many generations of people, as well as people that Abraham didn’t have any control or authority over: the Egyptians.
God knew that Abraham’s descendants would end up in Egypt, and he knew why. He knew how long they would be there. He knew what would happen to them while they were there. He knew what would happen when they finally left that country, and He planned for Abraham’s offspring to return to the land that Abraham was living in when this promise was originally made:
8 And to you and your future offspring I will give the land where you are residing—all the land of Canaan—as a permanent possession, and I will be their God.”
This was a God-sized endeavor! Joseph was still a couple of generations away from being born when this promise was made, and nearly 400 years would pass between Israel’s arrival in Egypt and their exit from it. Certainly Joseph couldn’t have had anything to do with the planning of this future. Even Abraham couldn’t manufacture the situation that would result in the fulfillment of this promise from God. The fact is that this was a God-sized endeavor that God had to prepare for His people well ahead of time.
God did this often in the pages of Scripture: He prepared God-sized things for His people to do well before it came time to do them:
Just as God planned the nation of Israel coming to Egypt under Joseph, He planned their leaving Egypt under Moses.
God planned the toppling of the walls of Jericho as the taking of the Promised Land commenced in God-sized way that Joshua couldn’t have anticipated.
God planned for the defeat of the entire Midianite army in a God-sized way in Gideon’s time: only 300 men were chosen to attack.
David was anointed as the future king of Israel by God’s instruction, even though David was just a shepherd boy at the time, and it was during David’s reign that the promise made the Abraham in Genesis 17 was finally realized.
God planned all of this and so much more. The point isn’t the people. The point is the fact that God knew ahead of time what was necessary for His will to be realized, and He took action to prepare those plans for His people. And God isn’t done preparing God-sized endeavors for His people to participate in.
Consider His planning in Ephesians 2:10
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
Many of you likely have little idea of the history of Eastern Hills Baptist Church. Nearly 60 years ago, God called a group of families out of Hermosa Baptist Church (which no longer exists), and planted those families together as Hermosa Baptist Mission, which would soon become Eastern Hills Baptist Church.
I want to show you something. Here is a map of the far northeast heights in 1960. The red circle shows where EHBC currently meets. It’s dirt in 1960. Juan Tabo Blvd existed (as I believe a dirt road) to the east, but that’s it. It was basically nothing but desert from the corner of Morris and Candelaria to the mountains. You can see from the dotted lines that some things were planned, but hadn’t been started yet. Here’s the same map from 9 years later, in 1969. You can see that things have started growing, and that the first part of our building—what’s now the gym and oldest educational part—were built. But it was still dirt from here to Juan Tabo. The city of Albuquerque has grown up around EHBC.
God placed this church body here with a God-sized endeavor: to be a beacon of hope and to reach the lost in the then-being-formed northeast heights. Here’s what we need to realize today, though: that God-sized endeavor hasn’t changed. Do we believe that God still has God-sized plans for Eastern Hills Baptist Church, and that He is doing a work to prepare the next stage of our endeavor in Him? Yes we do!
He’s preparing us.
2: God prepares His people for God-sized endeavors.
2: God prepares His people for God-sized endeavors.
While God prepares God-sized endeavors for His people, it makes sense that He would also be about the business of preparing His people for those God-sized endeavors. This is what happened in the life of Joseph. God was going to use Him for God-sized things, and He would prepare Joseph for those things. But first, He would take some steps to set the stage for what needed to happen, including showing Joseph how this plan would end.
I’m going to draw from our focal passage during this point, but I’m not going to reread the whole thing as I go.
Joseph was the 11th son born to Jacob (who was also called Israel). He was also the firstborn son of the only woman that Jacob ever intended to marry: his wife Rachel. Rachel had two sons: Joseph and Benjamin. Jacob apparently didn’t really learn anything about the problems that family favoritism can cause from his parents, Rebekah and Isaac, and it is apparent that Joseph had a very privileged position: at only 17, he had the authority (perhaps more gumption than authority) to bring a bad report about his older brothers, and he was clearly the favorite because he was given what we ordinarily refer to as the coat of many colors, or was “richly ornamented.” This special treatment set Joseph apart as the next in line to lead the family, even though he was not the eldest son. So his brothers hated him.
So Joseph had two dreams, each of which has basically the same interpretation:
6 He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: 7 There we were, binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.”
9 Then he had another dream and told it to his brothers. “Look,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” 10 He told his father and brothers, and his father rebuked him. “What kind of dream is this that you have had?” he said. “Am I and your mother and your brothers really going to come and bow down to the ground before you?”
The dream of the sheaves of grain had Joseph’s rise up, and all of his brothers’ sheaves bowed to it. The dream of the stars and the sun and the moon had not only the 11 stars (his brothers) bowing to him, but the sun (his father) and the moon (likely his adopted mother, Bilhah, Rachel’s servant) as well.
The focal passage doesn’t clearly say that God was the giver of the dreams. However, Joseph says this about dreams generally later (40:8, 41:16, 41:25, 41:28). So it is likely that he saw these dreams in that light. It does seem that Jacob takes the dreams as prophetic, even though it doesn’t seem that he thinks they are necessarily of God (he chastises Joseph for having them, but keeps them in mind… v11). Certainly his brothers don’t see them as coming from God.
When Joseph revealed these dreams to his brothers and his father, his brothers don’t take them exactly well. In fact, “They hated him even more...” This doesn’t sound like a situation that’s going to bring about God-sized purposes. But God had a plan. However, Joseph needed to go to Egypt to make the plan a reality. So God called Joseph to be a part of that plan, even though Joseph didn’t realize it at the time. The dreams revealed the future of Joseph’s life, but Joseph wasn’t quite ready for the full realization of the plan. He had some work to do, some preparation of his character. But that preparation would take place, and we will see Joseph fulfill God’s purposes for his life.
God prepares His people for His purposes. Ephesians 2:10 again:
10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.
God is at work preparing Eastern Hills Baptist Church for the God-sized endeavor that He has before us. As I already said, there are kind of two parts to this endeavor. The first part that God is preparing us for is the missional part. Eastern Hills is in a period of growth right now. I see and hear so much excitement about what God is doing in this church family. We are seeing new families come to be a part of this body, and we are seeing a movement of God to prepare us to better connect with new families in the future.
God led us to create and refine our online presence at the start of COVID, and we’re committed to continuing that ministry which still reaches across the country and even the world each week. We are connected and active with Kennedy Middle School through our partnership with Shine. God is developing our men’s ministry, our women’s ministry, our senior adult ministry, our student ministry and our children’s ministry. We are looking beyond the walls of our building and beyond the walls of our homes to connect with and minister to people in our neighborhoods, because the pandemic has opened new doors of opportunity to connect with and minister to those around us in new ways. This is what our “neighboring moments” are going to be about. God is getting us ready!
Second, God has been preparing us financially. In Joseph’s story, God knew the famine was coming, and that Joseph needed to be in place before it got there. For several years before the pandemic, we saved money through budget surpluses. We voted to take action on the heating and cooling of this building well before the pandemic hit. Then from that, God led us to start thinking about what was next for our facility and about what problems might be coming in the future, just before the pandemic hit. Throughout the pandemic, our giving as a church was the strongest it has ever been, and continues to be so.
For the last 21 months, multiple teams of church members have been engaged in vision finding and direction setting meetings with our architect Joe Simons, and then worked with Clint at Auxano to further refine and define that vision, helping us to be ready for what’s starting today. Yes, we need to raise funds to pay for the needs of our building if it is going to support us, but we believe that God is preparing us for that endeavor as well, and that He will bring it to fruition in His timing. This brings us to our last point this morning:
3: God completes God-sized endeavors through His God-prepared people.
3: God completes God-sized endeavors through His God-prepared people.
When all of this is said and done, it is not be us who will be completing this endeavor. It is God. We cannot complete God-sized things on our own. We can only do God-sized things in the power and purpose of Almighty God. We don’t do God’s work for God… we do God’s work with God. In the study Experiencing God, Henry Blackaby wrote this:
“When God invites you to join Him in His work, He has a God-sized assignment for you. You will realize that you cannot do it on your own. If God doesn’t help you, you will fail. This is the crisis point where many decide not to follow what they sense God is leading them to do.”
—Henry Blackaby, Experiencing God
The question is not whether we are capable to fulfill the calling of ENDEAVOR. We certainly are not. The question is also not whether God is capable of doing so. He certainly is. The question is whether or not we will come together to trust God’s power, plan, and provision enough to walk in faith as He leads us into the future.
All of us are necessary for this entire endeavor to come to fruition. God is calling not just a few of us, but His whole church body at Eastern Hills to be a part of what He’s doing. He’s been preparing the plan for His people, and He’s been preparing His people for the plan. And He wants us to experience Him as we join Him in the work He has prepared for us.
God had a plan for Joseph. Joseph had to go into Egypt to prepare the way for Israel to be saved from the famine. And while He may have gone into the pit and the slavers’ caravan without much say in the matter, by the time he could look back on God’s plan and provision over the years of his time in Egypt, he saw it in a completely differently light.
Speaking to his brothers, who had sold him into slavery and who had now fulfilled Joseph’s dream by bowing down to him as second-in-command of Egypt, Joseph said this:
19 But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20 You planned evil against me; God planned it for good to bring about the present result—the survival of many people. 21 Therefore don’t be afraid. I will take care of you and your children.” And he comforted them and spoke kindly to them.
Joseph was completely sold out to the plan that God had for his life, and he saw it as God’s hand at work: even the bad parts. And there’s a deeper picture here as well: the picture of the Gospel. Essentially, Joseph had to “die” in order for life to be saved. In this way, Joseph is a type of Christ. Just as his “death” provided rescue for the people of Israel, Jesus’ death provides an even better rescue, available to all.
See, we have a much bigger problem than a famine. Our problem is sin. God made us to be in relationship with Him, but we rebel against Him by our sin: rejecting God’s desires and plans for our lives. And we can never be good enough to correct that relationship, because we’d have to be perfect. The Bible tells us that the wages of sin, what we “earn” for sinning, is death—eternal death, being separated from God forever. So Jesus, God the Son in the flesh, took our place in wrath, dying in a cross for our sins, so that we could be forgiven. When we give up: surrendering our lives to Him, turning from our sinfulness and trusting in what He has done to save us, then we are set free from sin, given a new birth into eternal life, and are made right with God again.
Only God could have done that. The Gospel is the ultimate God-sized endeavor, because in it the power and the righteousness of God are revealed so that we can be saved and live a life of faith and trust in Him forever.
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.
And Eastern Hills family, this is the message that we’ve been given to share with our community. This is why God put us here. This is why we’re still here today. This is why we endeavor, as Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 4:
10 For this reason we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.
To “labor and strive” is to endeavor. We exist to connect people to Jesus and to each other, because Jesus is our living hope, and not just ours, but for all who would come to Him in faith. Because Jesus is Lord of all, and because we hope in Him, He can use us to accomplish His purposes. And He can use us to do even more than we can ask or think:
20 Now to him who is able to do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us—21 to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Closing
Closing
So we embark on this endeavor together, for God’s glory, for our blessing, and for His eternal purposes. We together ask the Lord to continue the work that He has already started in us to prepare us for the future of this church and the Kingdom plans that He has in store for us. Commit yourself first to the Lord, that He would have His way in your life through this campaign. Commit yourself to prayer, being diligent in it throughout this campaign so that we might know God’s plans clearly. And commit yourself to this church family, asking Him to bind us together in one mind, heart, and spirit as we seek His will and plans for us. God has been preparing us for this endeavor.
And this morning, I want to also call on those of you hearing this, whether in the room or online, those of you who have never surrendered to Jesus Christ in faith, trusting in what He has done for your salvation. I implore you: give up and trust in Jesus! God loves you and has a plan for your life, but He will not force Himself on you. Stop trying to do life your own way, and believe in Jesus.
Church membership
Offering
PRAYER
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
ERLC Table in the foyer
Early voting is open, so make use of your privilege as American citizens
Bible reading (Ps 105)
Pastor’s Study tonight
Prayer meeting Wednesday
Instructions for guests
Endeavor giveaways
tape measures
40 day devotionals, week 1; rack cards for daily reference
Benediction
Benediction
10 For this reason we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.