God's House

All right. Man, what a good sound. Love this every Sunday. What a good thing. What a good thing that our church is so relationally connected and we just enjoy doing this so much. Man, thank y’all so much for being here. And I got a lot of gain. Y’all mind turning my gain down just a hair? I’d hate to blow away Pete here on the front row. I feel like Marty McFly tuning up that first drum set in Back to the Future and it blows all the windows out.

All right. Man, well, hey, good morning to everybody. And yeah, if you’re a guest with us, I just want to reiterate and circle back. We have a lot of great things going on right now. So for real, put your name on that tear-off connect card and drop it in one of the plates here up at the front or get it to somebody else. And more than happy to reach out to you this week and get you connected with some of the stuff going on.

I also want to circle back to the men’s dinner last night. I was talking with Becca this morning, just kind of marveling at how it all came together. And I think conservatively, we tallied how many man hours and woman hours it took to decorate, to prepare, to cook, to clean up. And some of the cleanup still has to happen. It’s still set up in the fellowship hall. So if you want to see gator hide, is that the word? Hide skin? I’m showing that I’m not from here and that’s totally fine. I embrace that. Y’all have embraced me. I’m cool with that.

All right. That’s all I got to get at certain, at certain point, I’d be taken down. So more hours will be added to this. Conservatively, we had 75 plus hours gone into that night. And I just, seriously, I’m blown away. So man, if you were here, you got to see it. If you weren’t here, you missed out. If you’re a lady, I’m sorry. So, but something that I’m, the thing I’m most blown away by, it’s not all the preparation. It’s not how delicious the food was, or even how well Tyler spoke, but he did a great job. It was, amen. It was the power of personal invitation.

So I’m standing at the door. The thing that I’ve got to contribute to a moment like that is my extroversion. So I’m standing at the door and I’m greeting guys coming in. I’m saying, hey, I’m Jeremy, what’s your name? And how, how’d you hear about this? Surprisingly, not a single one of them said, hey, I was perusing local church websites and I came across yours. And, you know, I just kind of stumbled in. None of them said, hey, I got this real cool inviter card and somebody gave it to me and that’s why I’m here. Every single one of them said, I’m here because somebody invited me. And man, I just, I’m blown away. I know it to be true. And I got to see it to be true again last night. When we personally go out of our way and say, hey, come join me in something. That’s when folks started coming and joining.

So seriously, for everybody that invited somebody, I want to say thank you. You may be here this morning because you got invited and you came last night. And I want to say, welcome back. This could be a great spot for you to hang out for however long you’re going to hang out with us.

So anyways, let’s dive now into what I have for us this morning. You know, I want to take us back to 1885. There’s this couple named Sarah and William. They move from New Haven, Connecticut over to San Jose, California for Sarah’s health. A year later, they buy a 45-acre ranch with a two-story eight-room farmhouse. This couple, Sarah and William, they were deeply interested in architecture. They wanted to update this farmhouse. Thus began a 38-year project to continuously renovate and reconstruct this house.

The couple hired an architect, fired that architect, hired another architect, fired another architect, and decided to oversee this construction project themselves. The result of all of that was that this house ended up a bit maze-like and a bit sprawling. It’s got a picture of it for you right there. They would, the reason they would hire and fire is because if things weren’t built to their exact specifications or they had the cash, if they didn’t like the product, they would just tear it down and say, “Let’s start over,” including a seven-story tower that was built, torn down, and rebuilt 16 times. That’s some cash. This resulted in a maze of oddities such as doorways that open up into thin air, a 40-step staircase that only rises 10 feet, spiderweb-designed stained glass windows, an indoor garden, an elevator, and a final product of 160 rooms, 2,000 doors, 10,000 windows, 47 staircases, 47 fireplaces, 13 bathrooms, and six kitchens in this farmhouse. You can go visit this. It’s at 525 South Winchester Boulevard. If you recognize that name, this is the Winchester Mystery House. This is the namesake is the rifle company, Sarah and William Winchester. William Winchester, he founded this company, the rifle that won the West. You may have heard that before.

There’s a bunch of speculation about why Sarah would keep this construction project going on and on and on. What we know is that the house is fun to visit but would be terrible to live in. It had no clear purpose. It’s not truly livable. It cost an incredible fortune to renovate it, to build it, to fix it, and to adjust it. All that work and money and nobody lives there anymore.

I want to contrast that with something else. There’s another place that likely you have been to. It’s on Sullivan’s Island, which is the northern entrance of the Charleston Harbor. Construction on this house began in 1960 and was finished in two years. Now, this house is a little different though. It’s constructed of a steel frame with an aluminum alloy skin and it’s shaped as a triangle. It stands 140 feet tall and it’s built that way to withstand wind speeds up to 125 miles per hour. Y’all might recognize this is what’s called the Charleston Light. It’s a famous lighthouse over on Sullivan’s Island. You can go there after lunch today and you go check it out for yourself.

It was originally first lit in 1962. We got a picture of that too. They’ll show up for you. It was first lit in 1962. It had an illumination power of 1.2 million candelas, which could be seen over 26 nautical miles. That’s astronomical. That was lowered from the original power of 28 million candelas, which means it was so bright and so dazzling that it no longer was a beacon to guide people into the harbor. It was actually a distraction. People couldn’t see where they were going in the dark because it was so stinking bright.

This house is incredible. There’s a lot of things that could be. There’s a lot of things it doesn’t have, but it was built to fulfill one purpose. It was singular in its aim. It is focused in its construction and it fulfills that job beautifully. See, there was another solution to the nighttime nautical problem. So this house’s need is not as great as those days back in the 60s and 70s and 80s, but its ongoing presence on Sullivan’s Island is a testament to something. It’s a testament to the fact that if you were a sailor at sea coming in at nighttime, you needed some hope. You needed directions. If the storm was real bad, you needed salvation. And that lighthouse would show you where to go.

Why do I bring that up? It’s because God has made the church to be a house. He’s made the church to be a house, one with an intentional design and purpose. And that’s the focus of this series that I am jumping into for the next two months called Blueprint. We will look at God’s blueprint for His house, the church. We’re going to look at the structure of the church. We’re going to look at the mission of the church. That’s going to be the next few months for us.

So all that to do, I’m going to pray for us and we will jump into our passage for the morning. If you will pray with me.

Lord, thank You for today. God, I’m struck by the grandeur of the Winchester Mystery House. God, I’m also struck by the focus of the Charleston light. And Lord, I pray, God, as You continue to grow us, God, not just numerically, which is a lot of fun, but Lord, mostly quantitatively, who we are. God, I pray that we would look more like that lighthouse. God, we’d be focused, we’d be singular, we’d be unified, we would be intentional. Lord, I pray ultimately that Sauldam Baptist Church would be a beacon of hope and rest, blessed and salvation for people in our community. God, I pray for the low country. Lord, that what happens here this morning would be felt and be seen in the lives of people that are far from here, God, spiritually and distance-wise. But, Lord, for This morning, for the next few minutes, I’m asking that you get a hold of me. Lord, that you would guide my words, that you would protect me. Lord, that whatever’s not true, Lord, it wouldn’t land in the minds and the hearts of folks here. But, God, whatever it is, that you would start to change our church. You would confirm things, starting with me. God, you would adjust me. And, if necessary, you would adjust the church. Lord, we do love you, and it’s in your name I pray. Amen.

Well, hey, if there’s one thing I want you to take away from today, if there’s one truth, one foundation, one statement, it’s this. The local church is God’s house. If you have your Bibles, I want you to open them up or turn them on to 1 Timothy 3. 1 Timothy 3. The scripture will be on the screens, but it’s a lot better in your hands and in your laps. Okay? 1 Timothy 3. I’m reading verses 14 through 16. I’ll give you a minute to get there.

1 Timothy 3, 14 through 16 reads this way. I write these things to you, hoping to come to you soon. But if I should be delayed, I’ve written so that you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth. And most certainly, the mystery of godliness is great. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory.

And here we have it. This is the foundational passage for our next few months as we are journeying through what is God’s blueprint for His house. This is our passage that we’re going to kind of root things to. And this is what’s guiding us for this morning. But as we read this passage, we step into something. We’re stepping into a relationship. There’s obviously a writer and there’s a recipient. The writer says, I, and he’s talking to somebody and says, you. So who is I and who is you? That takes us to Acts. The book of Acts explains a little bit more about who the I and the you are.

You see, the I is a guy named Paul. Paul is a traveling missionary apostle. He is saved radically by Jesus in Acts chapter 9. And then instead of going to imprison and persecute and hate Christians, God saves him. And he starts to spread the faith that he was trying to squash. So in Acts chapter 16, Paul is on one of these trips and he meets a young man named Timothy. Acts 16 verses 1 through 5. This will be on the screens. It says, Paul went on to Derbe and to Lystra, where there is a disciple named Timothy, the son of a believing Jewish woman. But his father was Greek. The brothers and the sisters at Lystra and Iconium spoke highly of him. Paul wanted Timothy to go with them. So he took him. He circumcised him because of the Jews who were in those places. Since they all knew that his father was a Greek. And as they traveled through the towns, they delivered the decisions reached by the apostles and elders at Jerusalem for the people to observe. So the churches were strengthened in faith and grew daily in numbers.

You see, Paul, he’s this traveling missionary type just starting up churches in all these cities he’s going to. And he meets this young guy named Timothy. And says, Timothy would be great at helping me do this thing. So he says, Timothy, why don’t you come with me? Why don’t you accompany me? Be a help to me. Let’s do this thing together. So Timothy starts going with them. Eventually, Paul leaves Timothy in Ephesus. Ephesus is where they plant one of these churches. And that takes us to the book of 1 Timothy. There’s multiple letters that Paul writes to this young protege in the faith. And this is one of them.

In 1 Timothy chapter 1, it says this. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the command of God our Savior and of Christ Jesus our hope. To Timothy, my true son in the faith. Grace, mercy, peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord. As I urged you when I went to Macedonia, remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine. And then you jump down to verse 18. Timothy, my son, I’m giving you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies previously made about you. So that by recalling them, You may fight the good fight. This is an incredibly deep relationship between a guy named Paul and his son in the faith, Timothy. Paul would entrust Timothy with some incredibly difficult ministry assignments. He would send Timothy to the Corinthians where there was people having lawsuits against each other. There was a man in a sexual relationship with his mother-in-law there. There was tons of division over who the real leader of the church was. And Paul sends Timothy into that hornet’s nest of a church situation. Paul leaves Timothy in Ephesus to set something straight to say, “Hey, there should be no false teachers here. This is how the church ought to be ran.” And he sends this letter then to Timothy. And he’s saying, “I wish I could be there with you. I want to come to you soon. In case I get delayed, here’s this letter instead. It’s not me, but it’s my words, buddy. Hang in there. Fight the good fight. Keep going. Keep pressing. Keep at it, buddy.” That’s Paul to Timothy.

In chapter 2, Paul instructs Timothy about church conduct, men and women. He, in chapter 3, instructs Timothy about church leaders. And here at the end of chapter 3, Paul makes an incredible claim about the church’s nature. I’m going to say it again. The local church is God’s house. Which for us in 2024, we take for granted. We really do. We automatically assume this is the house of God. If you are like me, you grew up with that sort of language in your family vocabulary. If you didn’t grow up in church, I hope that you don’t miss the incredible mystery of the fact that God, the God of the universe, dwells with us. But for us to get the full impact of that statement, we’ve got to go backwards a little bit. You see, in verse 15, Paul says these things. He says, “I’ve written so that you’ll know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s house.” We’ve got to figure out what is God’s house.

The house of God is something that begins back in the Old Testament. It begins in the Old Testament. It started with a tent called the tabernacle. It became a building called the temple. And we looked at the temple a couple weeks ago. But here in verse 15, Paul says three things that reflect the original purpose of the temple. He calls it God’s household, the church. He says the church of the living God. And he says the pillar and the foundation of the truth. There’s three things. You see, the local church is a picture of God’s home in heaven. It’s a picture of God’s home in heaven. Sorry, the temple. I’m sorry. The temple is a picture of God’s home in heaven. If you were to go back to the first five books of your Bible where God is instructing Moses on how to build the tabernacle, or you go to some of the history of David and Solomon where God is telling them how to build the temple, you would see that nature themes and nature images were physically built into the tabernacle and the temple. Images of fruit of animals would be put all around, which would make you think about the Garden of Eden where God first dwelled with people. But not only that, the temple was incredible in its splendor and in its majesty and its glory. Everything is overlaid with gold. There’s precious gemstones everywhere. It looks magnificent. And that makes you think ahead to the book of Revelation where the temple is described with streets of gold and walls of pearl. Am I ringing a bell for anybody?

The temple is a picture of God’s home in heaven. But the temple is also the presence of God on earth. God told His people that He would dwell physically and locally in the temple. Think about that. The God of the universe. The one that started everything. The one that rules everything. The one that created everything. The one that is guiding everything. And the one for whom everything exists said, “I will live in a particular place with a particular people.” So He would dwell in this temple. But the temple also was the place of God’s expanding blessing from His people to others. The temple would be this ground zero of God’s goodness meant for the outsiders. He told His people, “I have called or I have blessed you so that you will be a blessing to others.” And as the people would dwell with God, as they would love God, as they would worship God, as they would honor God, He would bless them so that they would bless others. The temple would be this center point from which God’s blessing for the world would flow. That’s the temple. So as we come back to this passage, just in verse 15, we see those three things. We see Paul says the church is God’s house, which would mean it’s where God lives. The church is meant to reflect the home of God in heaven. Didn’t Jesus in the Lord’s prayer say that we ought to pray, Lord, make Your will happen on earth as it is in heaven. The local church is the place that ought to reflect heaven the most. The local church is God’s house, but it’s also the church of the living God, which means His presence is supposed to dwell here. And as He lives here, we become alive in Him. We are not just a group of people that get to listen to songs be sung or get to listen to sermons be preached or financially fueled via our tithes and offerings. We are a group of people that have been made alive by God because He is life. But the church, too, Paul says, is the pillar and foundation of the truth. As we build upon God’s word, as we cherish it, His blessing will go from us to others. As we protect this book, as we live by this, as we love this, as we, as Becca said, love God’s word with our hearts and our minds. God will bless us in that and bless our community for that. Amen.

So I want to connect something here. Paul is calling the local church God’s house. That’s only possible because of what Jesus has done for us. We, so far, up until last week, spent 2024 looking at Jesus and His kingdom. We spent a couple months examining how Christ is the King sent by God to establish a kingdom here on earth. And that kingdom that Jesus started produces local churches as it advances in communities which would be little expressions of heaven on earth. That’s what churches are supposed to be, which means that Sauldam Baptist Church is both a sign of God’s kingdom here and a tool for God to expand that kingdom elsewhere. We are a sign of something here and a tool to go further. That’s who we are.

So the building, then, is not God’s house. We, we the people, the members and the family of Sauldam Baptist Church, we are God’s house. When Paul was writing to Timothy, writing to the believers in Rome, writing to the Corinthians, they did not have church buildings to meet in. They’re meeting in homes. They’re meeting in business places of believers or hospitable non-believers. So when he says God’s household, he can’t be referring to buildings because they didn’t have buildings. Now we want to be a good steward of this one. And God has placed us in an incredible spot. A place beside a road that’s become a main thoroughfare for West, West Ashley. A place of our city that is seeing more and more people come and move here. I love this building. But this building, it is where God’s house meets. It is not the totality of God’s house. And we experience this, right? Home is where the heart is. Home is where your family is. You could be at home, outside your home, if you’re with people that represent home. And it’s a similar way. Christ came to establish a kingdom that would produce little homes of God. And that’s who we are. We, the people of Sauldam Baptist Church, we are the house of God. And we are designed for a specific purpose.

I want you to think back to the Charleston light. A source of hope. A source of life. A source of rest. A source of blessing. A source of salvation. That’s what God’s made us for. He has made us to have life and to have purpose and to give those things to others. So, the local church, I hope you see it, is God’s house. And it would make sense then that God’s house is ruled by God’s word. That is what the mystery of godliness in verse 16 is all about. I’m going to read it again. Read it in your Bibles. Most certainly, the mystery of godliness is great. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, preached among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory. Who’s this about? Jesus, this is the easiest answer in church, right? Who is this about? Jesus, that’s right. This is about Jesus and His ministry. His earthly ministry and His heavenly ministry. The one that finished at the empty tomb and the One that is still going through us. Verses 1 through 3 clearly teach, or sorry, the first three points clearly teach about what He did. He came in the flesh. He was attested to by the Spirit. And He was seen by angels. Amen and amen.

He came as a man and did everything necessary for our salvation. He really did. He did everything necessary to secure a place for us with God. Because here’s the thing. God made you to dwell with. God’s original design is that we would be in a garden state, ruling the world for His glory in perfect harmony and unity with Himself. That was His design for us. But unfortunately, those first people, Adam and Eve, went against God’s design. And they invited sin into the home. And sin is the squatter that will never leave. Sin never pays rent. Sin destroys. Sin tears things apart. And when it comes to the home of God, sin gets down to the very foundations and the crevices and disrupts and destroys and tears apart.

So God, protecting His people, evicts them out of the garden. Because not only was sin in the garden, but there was a tree. And if they ate the fruit of the tree of life, they would live in sin forever. And God said, “I need to protect them from them, which means I need to get them out of here.” He evicts them out of their home. And He says, “One day, one day I’m going to send a man and he’s going to bring you back to me because he’s going to destroy sin. I promise. It’s coming. Hold on. But until then, cling to my word.”

So God has these temporary homes with people. I’ve already gone through them. They’re called the tabernacle and the temple. His Spirit would temporarily reside on people, but His Spirit would never dwell with people. God would temporarily live amongst people, but He would never for all time forever live with them because there’s still this issue. There’s still this barrier between God and man. So man had to come and tabernacle among us. That’s what John 1 describes Jesus as. It says the Word dwelt among us. And that word for dwelt is tabernacle. Literally, the Word came and pitched His tent here. And He said, “I’m not going anywhere. New guys on the block. Here I am. Here we are.”

So God comes and lives among us. And He walks and He lives and He breathes and He eats and He sleeps and He befriends and He converses and He goes through difficult situations. And He does everything necessary for us. You see, you and I, we were meant to live in perfect harmony and obedience to God. But because of our sin, we never can. We never can. So God came and did it for us. He came and lived the life in your place you were designed to live. And because of sin, you are supposed to die a death of God’s wrath on you. Christ took that too. And we call that Easter baby. Because Christ died on Good Friday. He really did die. Make no bones about it. Christ really did die. He didn’t pass out on the cross. He wasn’t swapped with somebody else on the cross. No, He didn’t fool anybody on the cross. He said, “It is finished. I’ve absorbed the wrath,” and He breathed His last.

And they laid that body in the tomb, and everybody is distraught and destroyed over it because Christ died. And those ladies, they go to take care of that body on Easter Sunday, and what happens? There’s nobody in the tomb. It’s because Christ had risen, and He had defeated death and sin for you so that the Holy Spirit could come and live inside of you. Your heart can have a permanent resident named God because Christ came and was destroyed for your sin, offering you life, peace, joy, offering those things to you. If you would just embrace them, if you would just allow Him in, if you would just open the door of your heart and say, “God, please come in. I’m making a wreck of this place. If you could come in and not just straighten things out, but actually take over ownership, here’s the deed. You’ve already paid the mortgage. Here it is.”

So God came in the man, Jesus Christ, and He did everything necessary for us to have life, even making it so that God can live with you. And He still ministers in this world through you, gives you purpose, so that you would go and preach Him among the nations, that Jesus will be believed in the world because He was taken up in glory. And one day He will come back and He will reclaim totally what is His, which is everything. There’s not a single thing in this universe that is outside the dominion and the possession of Jesus Christ, the Lord and the Savior. And He will come back one day to reclaim what is His.

So we have a purpose. Now before Jesus, God’s salvation was this gradually unfolding mystery. But now we see without a veil, we see with clear eyes, we see with all truth that Christ is the crescendo of history and the core of the Bible. He is the center of everything.

Take this promise. All scripture leads to, reports about, reflects on, or applies the life and the ministry of Jesus Christ. You look at the sacrificial system of the Old Testament as something that leads to Jesus and points out your need for a holy substitute. You look at the book of Ephesians and how God has made a way for God and man to be reconciled and for man and man to be reconciled because of what Christ has done. The book of Revelation that talks about one day how Christ will come back and finish what He started. All of the Bible has this crimson thread through it, as other preachers have said. And that thread’s name is Jesus Christ. You can read your entire Bible and say, “How does this relate to or teach about Jesus?” and there will always be an answer.

Christ is the core. All scripture then will be extremely good for us. In fact, this is how the Bible speaks about the Bible. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, it says, “All scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work.”

All of God’s word gets to dictate all of what we do here. Because if God is building a house, then He’s writing the blueprints. If God is this master builder, then He is the one that gets full say about the design, about if it’s going to be an open layout or if we’re going to put up some walls. Jesus has full design as to the purpose of this place. And if we are faithful to follow His word, He will accomplish His purpose in us.

Isaiah 55 says this about God’s word as well. “Just as the rain and the snow fall from heaven and do not return there without saturating the earth and making it germinate and sprout, providing seed to the sow and food to eat, so my word that comes from my mouth will not return to me empty, but it will accomplish what I please and it will prosper in what I send it to do.”

The church that is built on God’s word, that takes the whole of God’s word, that allows God’s word to saturate that church, will bear fruit. It will be built the way God wants it to be built. And I can promise you, as long as I’m pastor of Sauldam Baptist Church, God’s word will have the loudest voice at our church. It will.

God is building His house in us. He is. You can look around. It’s not just numerical growth that we’ve had. That’s fun. That’s cool. That goes well on a Charleston Baptist Association newsletter. But what I’m marveling at is how the foundation of what Al has started is still bearing fruit as Al was faithful just to open God’s word to you guys. And as I’m just trying to do my best to step into the legacy that Al has already paid forward for me, as I’m just trying to open God’s word and teach it and just believe it, what God is already doing for us.

Y’all, we had 60 plus guys at a men’s gathering last night. My first Sunday we had 60 people. But the cool thing about last night is that a third of those guys don’t call Sauldam Baptist Church home. God is building something here. And we want to let His word be the loudest voice. Amen? His word’s the loudest voice. And if we’re faithful to keep that word as the loudest voice, God’s word will produce God’s ways. It will.

And that’s good because there’s a certain type of conduct in God’s house. Verse 14, I’ll take you back to the original passage. I write these things to you, hoping to come to you soon. But if I should be delayed, I’ve written so that you will know how people ought to conduct themselves in God’s house. I wonder What it was like for Timothy to receive this letter from Paul. Remember, Paul started the church in Ephesus. If I’m Paul, I’m pretty proud. I’ve started that church. I’ve started dozens of other churches throughout the Mediterranean Peninsula. I’m pretty proud. I would be hard pressed to want to find fault with the churches. But Paul even says, even the church that I start needs to be reminded of the ways to act. So Timothy would take this and he would read it before everybody. He would read it at the local church gathering and they’d be like, okay, what do we do with this? Now here’s the deal. Sauldam Baptist is a wonderful church. Even the Ephesians needed to be reminded of Paul’s original intention, which means even us need to be reminded of God’s original intention. We have to be told what to do. Our words, our actions, our behaviors, our desires, and more must constantly be checked and directed by God’s word. But we’ve already seen if God’s word is the loudest voice, then it will bear fruit in us. It will. God will have His way with us and He will continue to build something special here like He already has. But this is all about internal affairs. What about who we are supposed to be to the community? I want to take you back to the Charleston light. An incredible lighthouse that could have been a lot of things that was built with a lot of focus and singular drive meant really to accomplish one thing. You know, Sauldam Baptist has a rich history of being like that Charleston light. I want to take you through some of the high points of it.

Back in 1841 there’s this group of believers that founded St. Paul’s Parish Baptist Church. This church that met on Beach Hill Road over near like southern or the south of Summerville. And they met there for a few years and after founding they began multiplying. The years of 1841 to 1861 saw Sauldam, well became Sauldam Baptist Church, St. Paul’s Parish Baptist Church, they planted four other congregations in that 20-year time span. Four times they took their members and their money and they said, “Hey, go do this somewhere else. Go do it in Stono. Go do it in Ravenel. Go do it on John’s Island. Go do it near Hopewell.” And that’s what they did. For 20 years they would multiply, which didn’t mean that they ceased being who they were. It just meant that they were able to help produce them elsewhere. As they were a sign of God’s kingdom advancing, they got to be a tool of God’s kingdom advancing too. So there was founding, there was multiplying, then there was moving. 1861 they move to County Line Road. Originally they’re meeting across the street. We all know the incredible story of how they had to move that church with logs in the middle of the night across the road over here. 1861, they move over here, and then they begin building and rebuilding. Some of us know the story of how the church built what at that time would have been an incredible sanctuary on this plot. Weeks, weeks after they finished paying, it was burnt, burnt to the ground. After building, they had to do it all over again. But God blessed them in it, and they rebuilt. So what’s next? It’s not that incredible things haven’t happened since then, but what’s next? I want to zoom out a little bit from County Line Road, and I want to think about the Lowcountry.

When Becca and I first met Sauldam Baptist Church last summer, we were captivated by a few things about y’all. We were captivated about a coming 200-year anniversary, captivated by where God has placed this church, captivated by the years of faithfulness of the members to build this into what it is, and captivated about what we believe God is going to do through this church next 20 years, next 200 years, however long God has for us. I believe that as our church continues to be blessed by God and as we continue to rely on Him, that will bear effects in the Lowcountry. I believe that as we continue to be built by God, He will take what happens here and do it elsewhere. In my mind, in my prayers, I’m just constantly praying about Highway 17, going from Charleston to Beaufort. And I’m just wondering, with my Holy Spirit imagination, God, where’s the church that we can help come alive again? God, where’s the community of believers that’s just holding on, just trying to make it to next Sunday, that we’re going to be able to come alongside them, pray for them, and maybe even one day send them a family that can go be their pastor? God, where’s the church that’s just holding on, that just needs a little bit of hope, and we can just come alongside them and say, hey, do you need help paying for something? Hey, do you need help accomplishing an event for you guys to be able to get your name into the community again? What do you need? And we’re going to step into the heritage of the first families that started what became Sauldam Baptist Church, and we’re going to be able to bring new life to other communities as well.

I fully believe that’s what God has for us. I fully believe that what God wants for us in the next 20 years, if we knew about it now, we wouldn’t believe them. I fully believe God has incredible things. So as we go forward, I pray we will continue to be the best that we’ve been in the past, while faithfully pursuing what God wants to do through and in us in a new present.

There’s never been a 2024 before, which means the challenges and the opportunities of the next few years has never been seen by Sauldam Baptist Church. But you know who knows every single one of those things? You know who knows exactly what’s going to happen? You know who knows how all of it’s going to end? It’s not Al. Definitely not me. It’s the Lord. And He’s inviting us into something. He’s saying, hey, I got something really cool for you. Do you want to be part of it?

So here’s how I want to end our service this morning. We’ve done this a few times before. I just want to pray and give a little space for us to pray together. If you want to follow me, all right, you just take your hands and show me your palms. And then you take those and you just put them in your lap. You mind playing something for us for a minute?

There’s two things I want you to pray as your hands are open in a posture of receiving. One, Lord, I want to receive what You have for me personally. God, I believe that You have opportunities for me as a follower. You’ve got challenges for me as a follower. You’ve got a future for me as a follower. And Lord, I receive it. Can You just give me eyes and an openness to understand Your will for my life? And the second thing is, God, what do You want for our church? We know You’re here. We know this is Your house. God, can You help me see what do You have for us?

I’m going to just give you a few moments to pray silently to yourself. And I’ll wrap this up here in a second.

Father, I don’t know. I don’t know what You have for us. God, at least not the particulars. I believe that You’ve given me a vision for this place and a vision for our community. God, I’m not going to pretend to have all the details lined up. God, I want to continue to submit that vision to You. God, I want to continue to believe that You know best, not me. Lord, I confess, I’m doing the best I can. But God, I need to get out of my own way too. Lord, I think that whatever is next for our church is also going to be tied to how well I follow You as a man. So, God, I ask that You help me to stay tethered to You. Lord, that I would step into a season of my life with You that is deeper than anything I’ve ever experienced.

Lord, I pray that same prayer for everybody in our church. Lord, that we would be a group of people that would walk deeply and humbly with You. That You would have Your way with us. That You would mature us. That You would use us, of course. But, God, that we’d be people that we’d be dependent on You. Lord, I confess, I don’t do a great job depending. I’m sorry. Lord, I pray for our church. God, we say it every Sunday. Sauldam Baptist Church is Your church. And You’re here. You’re light. We want to walk with You. God, I beg that what happens here would reverberate and would ripple through our community.

Lord, I want to pray for the churches that are just barely hanging on. Lord, the ones that need hope, that need some rest. And for the people in their community that need to be saved. God, I pray that You Would use us to bless them, please. But, Lord, for today, God, for today, it’s enough that we just sit under Your word, that we just sing. Lord, thank You. Thank You for today. God, we love You.