The Center of All Things

Good morning Church!

Announcements:

Any youth going on the “Catching Fire” retreat we’re having a get-together with the other churches at the park in Watertown today at 1:00 PM. See Keshia or I for more details!

We will be having our Harvest Festival here at the church on 10/29 at 4:30. There is a sign-up sheet in the foyer for all of those who want to bring soups, chilies, or desserts. We are having a bond-fire, hayride, and also a message from God.

We have also decided to team up with Lighthouse Christian Camp this winter for their Christmas Missions Project. We will be taking up unwrapped Christmas presents for boys, girls, and even adults. These gifts will all be placed in their gymnasium with price tags. The kids are given so much monopoly money to buy gifts when they arrive, but so much of their money has to be spent on someone else within their family. They are given large trash bags to go around and collect/or buy, the gifts that they want. The kids are also fed in the fellowship hall and then also read the Christmas story by local pastors while there.

All donations are due by Sunday, November 13th. See flyer in foyer for gift ideas.

They also welcome volunteers to help with the children during these events as well, so please let me know if you are interested in serving during this Christmas Missions Project.

The “Community Thanksgiving Service” will be held here at Dowelltown this year. We know that many are preparing meals for Thanksgiving dinner, so we will be having the service on Tuesday evening, November 22nd at 7 pm.

Praise Reports:

Prayer Requests:

Mrs. Dorothy Duggin

October is breast cancer awareness.

those affected by the hurricane.

Jennifer has breast cancer

Darryl Counts has bladder cancer

Harvey/Hale family

Terry’s sister Lucy

Tithes

Children’s Church

Doxology:

This is my Bible. It is God’s Holy Word. It is a lamp unto my feet, a light unto my path, and I will hide its words within my heart that I might not sin against God! Amen!!!

Open Bibles To: Acts 2 / Psalm 96

Since January of this year, we have been walking through a series we titled “Building T.E.M.P.O.”.

TEMPO is an acronym, to where each letter stands for a different function of the Church, which comes from Acts 2. We have used Acts 2:41-47 as a springboard to lead us through this series. I want to start back there this morning, as we are transitioning to the final two letters of our acronym.

We started with the last letter, “O”, which stood for oneness. We then moved to the letter P, and we talked about “Praise & Prayer”. After that, we moved to the first letter of the acronym, which is “T”, and we looked at the topic of “Teaching & Discipleship”.

Finally, we have made it to the last two letters that we need to cover, which is the “E” and the “M”.

“E” stands for Evangelism & “M” stands for Missions.

We are going to discuss both of these letters together as they both live and breathe off of one another.

You can have evangelism without doing missions, but biblical missions always includes evangelism.

For that reason, we will cover both of these topics together for the rest of the year.

Today, we are going to look at a passage of scripture that I think will transition us beautifully into from discipleship to evangelism/mission.

Context

Acts 2:44–45 NKJV

44 Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, 45 and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need.

Notice that the ideas of missions and evangelism are ingrained into the very heart of the Church. 3,000 souls are saved on the day of Pentecost, and the natural outflow was to sell whatever they had an abundance of so that they could bless others and tell them of Jesus.

They divided those goods among those who had need. In the process, those people were told about Jesus Christ. The result was that, “And the Lord added to the church daily those who were being saved.”

One day Jesus is questioned by a respected teacher of the law. “Which commandment is the greatest of all?” he said. Jesus responded:

Matthew 22:37–40 NKJV

37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

The two greatest commandments in all of scripture are interwoven by the very nature of God Himself. Both commandments are the same in action. We are to love. The difference between the two is the object of that love. The first and foremost is to love God with every fiber of our being. The second is to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves.

These two commandments are both seen modeled in the early church.

They met daily in the temple. (They loved God)

They sold whatever they had in abundance and distributed those goods to those in need. (They loved their neighbor)

This is a beautiful picture of how a local church is to spread the Gospel of Christ, and how it is to reach the ends of the earth.

Read Psalm 96.

Psalm 96 calls God’s people to the task of bearing witness to all peoples and nations of the earth. It is a song about global worship.

It is no coincidence that Psalm 96:11 is at the exact center of the Bible. The very heart of God’s Word points to Jesus Christ, the honor He deserves, and command to tell the whole world who He is.

Content

The Majesty of Christ

In these 13 short verses, God is mentioned directly 26 times. There is no mistake what the major theme of this passage is. It is to give God glory. It is to honor Him and lift Him up.

He is greatly to be praised - v. 4 (To proclaim Hallelujah)

Worship the LORD - v. 9 (to bow down and kiss the hand)

Bless His name - v. 2 (to give praise)

Declare His glory - v. 3

This passage of scripture speaks very clearly that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior deserves to be honored above all.

I want us to take a minute and learn what this word honor literally means in the biblical sense, and then I want to show you how many times we are told to give Him honor in this passage.

Honor - to be weighty; to be heavy.

In Bible times, there was no currency. They had silver and gold, but they did not have coinage per say. The way they would pay for something was by weighing out their silver and gold. They would pay by so many shekels or talents.

A shekel weighed about 1/3 of an ounce. A talent was the largest measure of weight and it would have equalled about 75 pounds. They operated off of weight.

The higher the value something was, the more weight it had.

Those who did not have silver and gold, would trade animals or crops to get what they needed. An ox, being a very heavy animal, was worth much more than a chicken, which was very light.

To give God honor and Glory, which it tells us to do here in the text (v. 3, 6, 7), means that He is the weightiest of all. He has more glory than any other. He has more value than any other. Therefore, He deserves to be given more honor, or weight.

I want you to follow with me through this text and see how many times we are told to give God glory and honor:

Declare His glory - v. 3

He is to be feared - v. 4

Honor and majesty are before Him - 6

Give to the Lord glory - 7

Give to the Lord the glory due His name - 8

Beauty of holiness - v. 9

The Lord reigns - v. 10

7 times in this passage we are told to give God glory and honor. We are told to give Him weight; to give Him value.

It goes a step farther than to just tell us to give Him glory, but it actually goes as far as to tell us why:

“But the Lord made the heavens” - vv. 4-5

“The Lord reigns” - v. 10

Proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day - v. 2

The Mission of His Church

How do we give God all of this glory and honor that is due His name? Let’s look:

Come into His presence - v. 8

Bring an offering

Conform to His will - v. 9

Tremble before Him - v. 9

To tremble means to shake because of hard labor. It is to be weary from hard work. We must work hard for the Lord, so that we might be conformed to His image and live in His will.

Declare His glory - All the nations (15 times)(starts and ends)

Speak - vv. 2, 3, 10

Show (Sing - 3 times) - vv. 1-2

The Message of His Coming

v. 10

v. 13

Commitment