Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Hebrews 10:1-10 — Advent and Voluntarism

Sermon scripture today is Hebrews 10, verses 1 to 10, and our topic is advent and voluntarism. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Hebrews 10, verses 1 to 10.

“For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered since the worshippers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sin?

But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, ‘Sacrifice and offerings you have not desired, but a body have you prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.’ Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, oh God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’

When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings’—these are offered according to the law. Then he added, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will.’ He does away with the first in order to establish the second, and by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. Thank you, Father, that we live this side of the glorious manifestation of the truth of which the Old Testament laws of worship pointed. We thank you, Father, for the advent of Jesus Christ and the forever change that it brought to our world. Bless us, Lord God, as we consider his advent this season. Bless us, Father, that we also might see ourselves as coming to those in need, those who need encouragement, those who need the good news of the gospel preached to them.

May we, Lord God, understand his advent that we may be his continuing advent in the world. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

So we’ll be talking this Advent season about several aspects of the advent of Jesus Christ, and the first one I wanted to focus on is voluntarism. Now I have to distinguish—that’s a term that’s used in specific special sorts of ways in philosophy and theology—but I’m using it more in a general sense where voluntarism is, as a dictionary would put it, an action, any action based on non-coercion.

So that’s kind of the first definition of what voluntarism is, and that’s the sense in which I’ll be using it. There are, and I’ve mentioned this in the past, but there are theological systems and philosophical systems known as voluntarism. These stress the will in some way or other. And so voluntarism always talks about the will as opposed to coercion. But generally it can be seen then as like the most important thing in humanity is your will. And so, for instance, Arminianism is kind of a voluntaristic system because it emphasizes the will of the individual as opposed to God’s love of his particular people.

Voluntarism theologically in the Middle Ages exalted the will of God above all of his other attributes. And so, as we’ve tried to stress the last few weeks off and on throughout the sermons, that’s a really big mistake and it’s probably contributed to the fact that humanity now in our day and age has taken that concept and gone wild with seeing fulfillment as the exercise of our will being made in the image of God. So our will becomes everything as opposed to what we’re willing to do, what is it that we’re choosing to do? It’s our choice that becomes predominant. And so the will of God is not really in the scriptures seen as the primary attribute of God. Rather, as we talked about last week, it seems the scriptures want us to focus on his love. And that’s a big difference.

So I’m not talking about voluntarism in some of these other philosophical or theological frameworks that say the will is everything and it’s above everything else. I’m rather using the term, you know, pretty simply just to talk about the idea of volunteering to do particular things. And so in this particular advent talk, I want to talk about Jesus Christ sort of volunteering to do the will of the Father and to come to earth for our sake.

Now again, there’s another caveat I want to put on this. We’re talking about one aspect of what Christ did. Certainly Christ made it clear that he came to submit to the will of the Father. So you know, there is that aspect to it. But I don’t want to ultimatize Jesus’s free choice to become incarnate and to go to the cross for our sins. But I do want to say that’s an important aspect of what the scriptures teach. And I do want to see in that our identity as to who we are.

So we as Christians are like little Christs, right? To some extent we’re little anointed ones—prophets, priests, and kings. We are manifestations of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we find our meaning and identity in who he is. We’re united to him. And so to understand who we are, we have to think about who he is. And so our voluntary actions—and I’m going to talk specifically today in terms of the local church—but our voluntary actions in anything is connected up to the voluntary actions of the Lord Jesus Christ, his coming, his delighting to do the will of the Father, his volunteering, so to speak, to come to earth for us.

So I’ve got five simple observations on your outlines today.

**The first is that voluntary service flows from our life in the great volunteer**—we can say the Lord Jesus Christ. And again, I’m not ultimatizing that—certainly Jesus talks about his submission—but that’s who he is, and as a result, that’s who we are.

The text today has a lot of very interesting things to say. Of course, any text in the scriptures does. This particular text in Hebrews 10 is found toward the end of the center section—I believe the fourth and central section of the book of Hebrews—that describes Jesus as a high priest of good things to come. And this text talks about that actually in verse one. I think the entire section, the middle of Hebrews, is about this. But we read here, “Since the law was but a shadow of the good things to come.” And so it’s going to talk about Jesus in opposition to the shadow, not in opposition but as fulfillment of the shadow that the law had.

And notice, by the way, that what he talks about then are laws of worship. It’s worth a side comment to remind ourselves that when we speak of the law, we typically will think about the law of the moral law, the Ten Commandments, the statutes and judgments, the case laws of Exodus 20-23. But the bulk of the giving of the law at Sinai is instead laws relating to worship. It’s laws relating to worship. How often would you use the term “law” in that way? Or if you read the word “law,” for instance, in our text today, was that what you were thinking? “The law was but a shadow of the good things to come.” What did you think about when I said “law”?

Well, we don’t think of worship first, do we? That’s not good. I mean, it means that we’re kind of more focused, I think, on personal morality and politics as opposed to our approach to God. But for the writer of this sermon to the Hebrews, whoever he was, to him, the word “law” meant primarily, first and foremost, the law of worship. That’s interesting. And this law of worship is a shadow of good things to come.

So, you know, kind of the big theme going on in this section and actually throughout Hebrews is the old system was insufficient to do particular things for us. Right? So if the law could do this, sacrifices would have ceased. If the sacrifices would have cleansed your conscience from sin, then it only would have had to been done once. But the text goes on to say that they had to be done over and over and over again. And so the idea is, of course, that he’s contrasting what’s happening in the New Testament with the coming of Christ and his once-for-all act on the cross and in his resurrection to the Old Testament system.

So these are good things to come, and this is the context for the statements by Christ that he came to do the will of the Father. He came voluntarily—we can say—to produce this. So the central act in human history, the great turning point that’s being focused on in the scriptures or in the New Testament and here at the center of Hebrews, is related to the Lord Jesus Christ coming voluntarily, joyfully, to do the will of the Father.

Now we read in verse five, “Consequently when Christ came into the world he said, ‘Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. In burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.’” So he lists four specific terms which we’ll talk about later here at the communion table. But he says at the center of those—got two terms—”a body you prepared.” Two terms. And so, you know, kind of the focal point of what’s happening is the Old Testament laws of worship prefigured the coming of the one who would have a body prepared for him. Now that means he’s at the center of the whole thing. And he gives meaning to these four particular designations.

The next verse says, “Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come to do your will, oh God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.’” All right, so here it is. Here’s Jesus, who’s saying, “I have come to do your will.” So here’s Jesus, the volunteer, we can say, doing the service that would affect your salvation, the cleansing of your conscience from sin, the ultimate turning point in the history of the universe. He says, “Behold, I have come to do the will of the Father.”

Now, this is a citation from Psalm 40. And Psalm 40 doesn’t say, “You’ve prepared a body for me.” Psalm 40 in the Septuagint says that, and that’s what’s being quoted here. But in the Hebrew manuscript, in your Bible, if you turn to Psalm 40, what you would see is it says that “you’ve opened my ears” or “you’ve dug out my ears. I can hear.” And so the idea is the psalmist is saying that God has opened his ears.

Now, what’s that got to do with preparing a body? Well, everything. Hearing the word of God is a part for the whole. It doesn’t just mean intellectually hearing. To have one’s ear opened means to hear the word of God and to voluntarily agree to do the will of God that he has told you to do. So the ear and hearing is capable of serving as the part for the whole in terms of your body and what you do. And in Psalm 40, while it pointed to Jesus in its original manifestation—of course, it’s actually a psalm of David—and so it’s talking about a human person like you or I who have our ears opened to do the will of God.

So ultimately it’s talking about the preparation of a body for Christ and him coming. “Behold I’ve come to do your will.” But what it does by way of analogy—and not just analogy actually—is it gives meaning to what the psalmist says. He voluntarily does the will of God as well because he is ultimately connected to the one who has the body prepared and then says in response to that, “Behold I have come to do your will.”

After this, in verse 8, he goes back to these designations. “When he said above, ‘You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices, offerings, burnt offerings, and sin offerings’—these are offered according to the law. Then he added, ‘Behold I have come to do your will.’ He does away with the first in order to establish the second, and by that will,” it says in verse 10, “and by that will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”

So here, while the will is not the ultimate attribute of God, here the will is stressed. “By that will.” What will? Well, Jesus says he’s come to do the will of the Father. But Jesus also has willed to come to do that will. And so when it says that by that will our sins have been purged, our consciences have been made clean, we can rest definitively in the work of Jesus Christ—it says that the basis for that is the voluntary, non-coercive obedience of Jesus to do the will of the Father.

Do you see? So in Jesus Christ, I think the text from Hebrews tells us that Jesus Christ is the one who is the great volunteer, who has come to do the will of the Father and who wills to come in the incarnation. His advent affects the salvation of his people. So voluntary service—our voluntary service—flows from our life in the great volunteer, which is the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Now it’s interesting, kind of connecting up these two concepts again, when we read that God has prepared a body for Christ. This word “prepared” is interesting. It’s used 13 times in the New Testament, and on a couple of the occasions it talks about the men who would be Jesus’s disciples sitting around mending, preparing nets. So it sort of means to weave together in its most literal sense. And so God has prepared a body for Jesus. He’s brought this body together. He’s kind of woven or prepared this body. But there are several other verses I think that are instructive to us for the purposes of my talk today at least where this word “prepared” is used in other particular ways.

For instance, in Matthew 21:16, Jesus says, “Out of the mouth of babes and nursing infants, you have prepared praise.” So God has kind of created, woven together, praise out of the mouths of children. Okay? So the preparation now that’s spoken of about Jesus in chapter 10 of Hebrews is now talked about in terms of the praise of his people.

Luke 6:40 says, “A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone who is perfectly trained will be like his teacher.” And that word “perfectly” is the same word—knit together, prepared. And so again, we’re like our teacher. God has prepared a body for him that he uses to do the will of the Father. And Jesus is going about training us as disciples, preparing us, that we might use our bodies, that our ears might be open, to voluntarily serve God. To voluntarily serve God.

1 Corinthians 1: “I plead with you, brethren, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ that you all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be perfectly joined together”—perfectly, same word.

So the preparation of the body of Jesus, which of course refers to his incarnation in Hebrews 10, we can sort of see beyond that. Jesus is preparing his body, the church, by bringing her into unity together. So this term “prepared a body” has a lot of freight that the New Testament uses to talk about the disciples, those who praise him, and their perfection as a body. They’re being woven together as the body of Christ.

So preparing a body for Jesus is ultimately the act that provides our salvation. But then that preparation is carried out, so to speak, as Jesus prepares us as a community to bring us into unity, to praise him, and to be trained as his disciples.

2 Corinthians 13 says, “Finally, brethren, farewell. Be complete.” He urges us to be prepared, right, in the same way that God prepared a body for Christ.

Galatians 6:1: “If a man is overtaken in a trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one.” It’s the same word—perfect him, prepare him, bring wholeness, knit together, put the net back together. And so to restore is this same word.

1 Thessalonians 3: “Night and day, he says he was praying exceedingly that we may see your face and perfect what is lacking in your faith.” So Paul says his purpose in desiring to see the saints was this preparation of them, this continuing perfecting of their faith.

I could go on, but the point is, you know, we have this connection between Jesus and his people. Once for all, God prepared a body for Christ. Actually, there is one other verse I should read. Hebrews 11:3: “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. The worlds were framed, created by the word of God.” Same word—”framed.” The preparation of the body of Jesus. If we look at a simple use of that term in other passages in scripture, is related to us—is the body of Christ—but it’s also related to the new creation.

I mean, it talks about the old creation, that the world was framed. And then Jesus’s body is essentially seen to be a new creation. And this is a common theme throughout the New Testament. But even in the use of this little word, “you prepared a body for me,” we see this connection, and we see it in light of the new creation that we are in the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay.

So the basic point is here that while God has prepared this body and while Jesus has prepared us and is perfecting us, Jesus says his response to that is, “I’ve come to do your will.” He volunteers to do the service of God. And our response to the wonderful truths of this connection to our preparation is that we should, in like manner—like Jesus—be volunteers, non-coercively stepping up to do ministry work for the Lord Jesus Christ. Okay.

A couple of other quick references here: John 10:17 and 18. “For this reason, the Father loves me because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. He says, ‘No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord.’” There it is. He voluntarily lays down his life. No one takes it from me. I voluntarily lay it down of my own accord. And so Jesus is the great volunteer. We could say—not ultimatizing that above the will of the Father or any other theological truths that the scriptures teach. But this is a truth that they teach—that Jesus Christ voluntarily lays down his life.

In Isaiah 6:8 and 9, we just heard this read from earlier. The text goes on to say, “I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am, send me.’”

Sometimes when we use this call to confession from Isaiah 6 and then the assurance of forgiveness from Isaiah 6, when we get into this portion of the service, at times we’ve read these couple of verses. Because the whole point of your being acknowledging your sinfulness and being assured of the forgiveness of your sins is so that you can say, “Here am I, send me.” God says, “Who’s here? I have work to be done,” and we’re supposed to raise our hand and say, “Here am I, send me.” It’s not just so that we can, you know, sit comfortably resting. It is that, but the proper response to that great gospel truth that Hebrews 10 tells us—that all that the law couldn’t do, all that the law prefigured, all that the old creation couldn’t accomplish—Jesus did in his work on the cross as our great high priest, as the offering itself, and as the temple itself for that matter.

Great news. But our response to it is, “Here I am, send me.”

Ultimately, Isaiah 6 is talking about Jesus. I think ultimately, you know, God tells him that you go and tell the people—well, they’ll listen but they won’t hear. You know, you’ll speak in ways that they won’t be able to understand. And Jesus explicitly cites that of himself in the gospel accounts. So clearly Jesus is the one who ultimately says, “Here I am, send me,” and he comes. And so advent is Jesus volunteering, “Here am I, send me,” and he comes to do the will of the Father.

And by application to us, then, if that’s the God we serve, if that’s the Lord that we love, if that’s the one we’re responding to, if that’s the one in whom our life is hidden, if that’s really our meaning and purpose, if that’s our identity—Jesus Christ—then surely we would want to be those who say, “Here am I, send me.”

Now, I should say at this point that I know most of you do that. Well, all of you do that in different ways. Okay? So I’m not, you know, I am. But this is why we should do it. And this is why, if you’re not doing specific voluntary service—and I’m speaking today particularly for the body of Christ—I want you to consider it. It really flows out of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

And of course, we could go to Philippians 2. “Have this attitude in yourself which was also in him who came to serve, who voluntarily comes to serve.” And that’s given as our example as well.

Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand for us.” So this is our very existence. Okay, so that’s number one. Voluntary service is really founded in our identity, our union with the great volunteer.

**Two, voluntary service is empowered by our particular spiritual giftedness.**

Only one verse here, very simple point, but I want to draw you back if you were here earlier this year when we were talking about spiritual gifts. We talked about that for several weeks. And here, I think in your outline, I call it spiritual giftedness to help us remember that those aren’t some sort of list of gifts that’s exhaustive or you know, different lists of different stuff. The whole point is God has prepared you individually with particular giftedness for ministry.

And so, if God—and of course, the context for all this when we talked about it was the body. The body is the manifestation of Christ, and it has different aspects, different organs of the body, different body parts that do particular different things. Now, since you know that the scriptures tell you have some sort of spiritual giftedness, that’s the grace of God to you to be ministered, as the grace of God to one another. Then this implies a voluntary service utilizing the gift, right?

As I said last week, a gift brings with it the idea of stewarding the gift, using it the way God wants us to use it. 1 Peter 4:10 says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” So you have a gift. And are you using it? Now I know a lot of you are, but that’s the question. Voluntary service is implied and flows out as a proper stewardship response to the giftedness that God has given to you.

**Three, voluntary service is hard but sanctifying.**

I don’t want to oversell this. It’s a delightful thing to do, but it’s difficult. I spent almost two hours yesterday working on a particular situation among some people here at RCC that arose because people were trying to serve God here. You know, when you get involved in service at the local church, what it means is you’re going to be serving people and you’re going to be serving alongside of people. And what that means is trouble. Right? Because people are people. You know, we’re being sanctified. We’ve been definitively sanctified. God’s working it out. But we sin. Not only do we sin—even if you don’t sin—you’re finite. You’re going to have misunderstandings, miscommunication. That stuff’s going to happen.

So, you know, I don’t want to oversell this. When you get involved, and you know, I know this last year a number of you have gone through particular bumpings of heads and trials and tribulations, and you think, “What’s the point? I’m just volunteering anyway. Forget this stuff. Why am I doing this?” But, you know, I think what’s significant about this is: What are we trying to accomplish? Or no, what is God accomplishing through Christian service? Okay.

So, you know, we need sound in the sanctuary. So part of the volunteers who do that, what they’re trying to accomplish is good sound, and that’s important. But God’s plan is a little broader. And what God wants us to do is to grow in grace, to be sanctified. And the way God normally does that is through other people. Right?

Proverbs 27:17 says, “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.” When we get involved in these difficulties because of communication problems, missed expectations, lots of different reasons—and sin can get right in there as well—well, what’s happening as a result of that, if we respond to things biblically over time, is we’re sanctifying ourselves. We’re sharpening each other. And so Christian service has as maybe its intended consequence—from God’s perspective—not so much the thing we’re doing, even, but the sanctification that it’s producing in our lives and in the lives of those that we have relationship with.

And if this is true—that Christian service is this iron sharpening iron—and if this is common, and you know it’s common, then that means when it happens, it’s sort of like—I there’s a marriage book I haven’t read. I think it’s called “What Did You Expect,” right? Or “What were you expecting?” Something like this. You know, what did you expect when you were going to work with folks here at RCC? You should expect some problems, okay? There’s joys, good. You get along. Actually, it’s one of the best ways of developing friendships at the church as well. You work with people, you become friends with them. But it’s a source of tension as well.

But what did you expect? That’s what God does, right? We went over and over this from Ephesians—that you know, the purpose of marriage is the sanctification of each other. And that happens with difficulties, trials, misunderstandings, the revelation of your sin. Your sin’s going to come out. You know, if you try to haul up, and maybe you can hide it, but you get in community, you start doing things, certain aspects of your character that need improvement will start to manifest themselves. But that’s okay, right?

When that happens, you don’t so much think, “Oh, what a lousy church” or “what a lousy set of guys to work with” or “what’s the point.” No, you think, “Okay, so this is God’s agenda. I’ve got the agenda of getting the candles lit or whatever it is. And that’s good. That’s part of God’s agenda. But the bigger part is Jesus is preparing his body. Jesus is perfecting his people. And he does that through iron sharpening iron. He does that sanctification process through a little closeness to each other that begins to reveal difficulties, shortcomings, and at times even sin.”

Isaiah 41 says this, “The coastlands have seen and are afraid. The ends of the earth tremble. They have drawn near and come. Everyone helps his neighbor and says to his brother, ‘Be strong.’” Now, these verses are about, “Look, the coastlines are doing this, but you Israel aren’t doing this.” So this is pointed out as something you should be doing. “Everyone says to his neighbor, ‘Be strong.’ The craftsman strengthens the goldsmith, and he who smooths with the hammer, him who strikes the anvil, saying of the soldering, ‘It is good.’ And they strengthen it with nails so that it cannot be moved.”

So the point is everybody’s strengthening each other in their particular tasks as it related to other tasks in the community. And that’s seen as a good thing. That’s good. That’s what God wants. So while it’s difficult and painful, it brings tremendous blessing when we, you know, work the program in a particularly Christian fashion. When difficulties come up, to use it as an opportunity for growth.

Even if all you do is suffer and you don’t get to the growth part, 1 Peter 2 says, “What credit is it when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, there is a gracious—this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you as an example so that you might follow in his steps.”

So even if your working in Christian service at the church and volunteering for service ends up with you suffering righteously, praise God, you’ve been called to that, right? Worst case, right? You can’t work it out with somebody and you’re just suffering and it’s no fun. But you know what? You can enter into the sufferings of Christ, and God says that’s what you’ve actually been called to do.

Colossians 3 says, “Put on as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, as you also must forgive. And above all these things, put on love.”

And so the way to do that—it’s easy to have those things in the abstract. But when we volunteer for ministry in the context of the church or anything else, when I’m speaking today of the body of Christ, these are times that we can exercise those particular fruits of the Spirit and have them grow and develop in the context of who we are.

**Four, voluntary service is an exercise of stewardship of the local church, the body of Christ.**

And I made—I told you I’d be talking about this last week here at the table. When we give thanks for a thing, we commit to steward the thing, right? We give thanks when we break this bread in a few minutes. We give thanks for the body of Christ. And as we grab a hold of that and as we eat together in community, I think the implication of that is we have stewardship requirements for the church. Okay? We’ve received a great blessing—the body of Christ, a body he’s prepared through his own body dying for our sins and then through bringing us together in obedience to his word, carving out our ears, so to speak. It’s a great blessing to be here. It’s a great blessing to be in this particular church, I think, in a church that strives to understand the scriptures and apply it here in the context of formal Lord’s Day worship.

But if that’s a blessing, it’s a blessing you’re supposed to steward. And part of the way you steward the body of Christ is by being a maker, not just a taker, right? You know, certainly there are gifts we receive by our participation in the local church, the local manifestation of the body of Christ. So we’re takers, but we’re also to be makers. We’re supposed to be contributing to this, right? It’s a proper stewardship exercise when we engage in voluntary service to the local church.

Paul says, “This is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that he be found faithful.” Do you see yourself as a steward of this church? Or just as somebody who can, you know, take things from it, and if you don’t like it, then you just leave or you check out mentally or whatever it is, or you just drift and just receive benefits without actually stewarding what’s happening here.

You see, even in your participation in the worship service—and you’re singing right, loudly, singing with joy in your heart—that’s a participation in the stewardship of the body of Christ. And voluntary service, stepping up to do something in the context of the local church, the body of Christ, is a stewardship exercise.

When I said that each one of you has received a gift, “Use it to serve one another as good stewards,” the text went on to say, “of God’s varied grace.” So your giftedness, which in 1 Peter and all the other texts is for use in the body of Christ, in the church—not in some kind of you know, ephemeral connection to Christ, Christianity—but in the church. That giftedness is given for you to use. In these texts, at least in terms of building up the body of Christ. That you can hear me anymore? How we doing guys? There we go. Got to steward that switch, right?

Okay. Okay. So, you know what you’re supposed to do is to steward that gift. And that means to use that gift properly and to exercise it in the context of the body of Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 10:17 says, “Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body. We all partake of the one loaf.” So when you come up to take communion, you’re acknowledging your connection to the body of Christ in this particular church that serves you communion. And what you should be thinking of is your stewardship responsibilities for this particular body.

For this particular body, I have a number of verses we could read, but I think the point’s been made. This is really what we’re called to do—is to be good stewards of the body of Christ.

**However, number five, voluntary service is opposed by consumerism and the desires it creates.**

Okay. So, I’m known for liking Christmas. I’m known for enjoying shopping because well, I enjoy a particular kind of shopping. At Christmas time, we’re thinking about other people, right? And whether we’re online, going to the store, people are in our hearts and in our heads. So I’m not objecting to gift giving. I’m not objecting to Black Friday necessarily. But I think statistics show that the majority of the purchases on Black Friday are for themselves. People are consuming for themselves.

And I think it’s interesting that we have this day of thanksgiving that emphasizes contentment for the gifts of God. And it’s immediately followed by a culture, a business climate that wants to make you not content. For this year’s iPhone or iPad, you got to get the next version. Now, productivity increases happen. I’m not putting down technological upgrades. They have a tremendous—they’re tremendous blessings. But I am saying that the marketing that goes on is intended to create desires in you that really can’t ever be satisfied, and to keep you shopping.

And I am saying that I think that Gray Thursday—the intrusion of the desire to shop, and a lot of it for yourself about stuff, new stuff you want—its intrusion in Gray Thursday, stores opening on Thanksgiving. It seems problematic to me. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I do think that it has an immediate connection to what we’re talking about today.

What do I mean? Well, you know, we think that when we go to the mall and we engage in economic transactions, 95% of the time, to meet our particular needs. We think that when we go shopping and fulfill our desires—or at least attempt to—and they never can be, you always got to keep going back. And when we’re driven by a set of desires that are specifically oriented to us, our individual wants and hopes, we think that can sort of, you know, just be isolated to them all.

But if we are—and I think we are—liturgical creatures. If the patterns and habits we engage in form us, right, then it presents a real problem. Okay. So we think we’re intellectual creatures. We have beliefs, and that drives our actions. But the reason why God sets up liturgy is because he actually has created us as people whose actions, to some extent, support and drive our beliefs. Our liturgies that we go through, the actions that we engage in, drive, I think, and create desires of our heart.

So when we go to the mall and engage in these—in a—this kind of shopping that I’m talking about that is totally based on yourself and your desires and what you want next—I think that the end result of that is that creates a set of desires and a set of way of looking at the world that becomes very individual and very me-centered. And I think that, if you hook that up to what we’ve been talking about for several, for a year or two here that I’ve been talking about at least in part: that the modern idea is that freedom from any compulsion, right? The idea of making a choice has been isolated from what the choice is, whether it’s good or bad, as an ultimate value. Okay? And so everything becomes about us making choices. That’s what expression, that’s what liberty is seen as—a whole set of abilities for us to choose particular things.

And that’s hooked up—that’s reinforced—that belief, that worldview, by the liturgical action of shopping perpetually and going to the mall. So the point here is that all of that works against voluntary service to the church. All of that works against your even being here, against commitment to any particular church.

What we have in our day and age is a couple of things. One, it’s a loss of commitment. It’s a loss of stewardship, we could say. It’s a consumer approach toward church. If I like it, I’m there. If I don’t like it, I’ll find something else. And so there’s no real commitment. And commitment to a particular wife or husband or activity or church is what drives and gives the opportunity for stewardship. And so, you know, what we’re dealing with is a culture that is creating a whole host of people, particularly our young people, who essentially go church shopping all the time.

Church is just—when you’re shopping, when shopping turns everything into a commodity and your desires into commodities, then what happens is church becomes another commodity. It’s another way for you to get satisfaction, to meet your desire, right? And if this church doesn’t do it, you go to another church. And if that church doesn’t do it, you go to another church. And there are people—lots of people these days—who just sort of drift around every few months from church to church or every year or two.

And usually in those cases, those people are not seeing themselves as stewards in voluntary service in the context of that church. It isn’t there because their whole idea of church is not one of commitment and dedication.

We read in Psalm 37, verse 4: “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” All right, that’s a great verse. I’ve got desires. I want my desires met. Okay, so I can become a Christian. I can delight myself in God and those desires that I have coming into that relationship will be met. That’s not what the verse means, obviously. But it’s important to say what it does mean.

The next verse, which is parallel to that verse, says, “Commit your way to the Lord. Trust in him and he will act. He will bring forth your righteousness as your light and your justice as the noonday.”

The point is that delighting in the Lord—by the way, the word “delight” means to be pliable to, conformable to. So if you delight in the Lord, your desires change. And those are the new desires that the Lord gives you based on your commitment to him. Those are the desires that he’ll give you. It’s not as if, you know, you’re created and your desires are autonomous from your discipleship to the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so the point is delighting yourself in the Lord is in my way being pliable to what the Lord wants you to do, to opening your ear again, committing your way to the Lord. And he’ll give you a new set of desires, or he’ll transform your old desires into ones that are more in the lines of his kingdom, desiring his kingdom. And those desires he indeed promises to give you.

Psalm 21, verses 1 and 2, says, “Oh Lord, in your strength the king rejoices, and in your salvation, how greatly he exalts. You have given him his heart’s desires and have not withheld the request of his lips. For you meet him with rich blessings. You set a crown of gold upon his head. He asked life of you. You gave it to him. Length of days forever and ever.”

When we seek our life in God, then the desires of our hearts are conformed to that, and indeed he gives us the desires of our heart.

So I think that voluntary service in the church is connected up to a proper stewardship of the gifts. But we, in order to do it, we have to reject, fight against the tendencies of our culture which is to see church primarily as a consumer activity and to see if it fits what we want, what we desire for the moment, rather than being pliable to God’s word. It says there is a body of Christ. You’ve been given particular giftedness for that body. You’re to steward those gifts and you’re to participate in the ministry of the church.

And the whole purpose of the officers of the church is to equip you for service, not to be servants to you in the sense that you never serve, but to make you better servants. And that the end result of that is your sanctification. It’s growing together with other people in spite of difficulties and troubles. In fact, because of the difficulties and troubles, God matures you through those things. But if you’re church shopping, then what happens at church is just a matter of consumer relationships to you. That when the trouble starts to happen, you’re going to leave. You’re going to leave.

And when you leave, you move away from life. Not that church is your life, but that body of Christ—when you move away from troubles, right? Because you don’t want to put up with them. It’s not what you think church is about. Church is about, you know, just going and consuming and getting all good things. And that’s not fun. When you have trouble with somebody you’re trying to serve with, you move away from life. You move away from your own sanctification.

So there’s a great cultural opposition that the scriptures—I think assert, or the culture rather asserts—against the scriptural admonitions to be voluntary servers of the body of Christ.

Now the application for this is simple. What are you doing here? Are you just a consumer? Are you a taker? Great. So am I. Are we making things here? Are we do we have our shoulder to the wheel? Are we encouraging the other craftsman, so to speak? Are we participating in the service of the church here? Many of you are. Some of you aren’t.

And what I’ve listed at the bottom of your outline is the application. There are several—a number of—particular things. I just came up with this list last night. There’s a number of particular ministries that we need filled. Well, we think we need them filled. We may not. Who knows? But there are opportunities to serve. And I’ve listed a bunch of these potential opportunities.

But at the very top of the list, I put “a need that you see!!” One of the shortest ways to discover what you should be doing in the local church is to know what you’re not satisfied with at the local church. Right? You see a need. You sense a need. God has given that to you. And rather than see who else can do it, sometimes that’s appropriate—maybe it’s something that you should be doing, that you know floats your boat, that’s your desire, is to serve the church, and something that’s not listed on here at all.

So a need that you see, and then beyond that, there’s a whole range of potential volunteer ministries that I’ve listed on your handout today. And that’s the application. That’s what you should be talking about in your community groups. Who’s doing what? Who’s serving what? And maybe we can put it in this broader context—that service is indeed based upon our identity with the Lord Jesus Christ and is actually part of the sanctification and growth in grace and friendships that God has given to us.

In Psalm 110, we read—you know, Psalm 110, the great psalm of victory, right?—we read that “your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power in holy garments. From the womb of the morning, the dew of your youth will be yours.” Your people will offer themselves willingly.

If we want to roll back statism, you know, to the extent that the church recedes, the state succeeds. To the extent that the church succeeds, the state will recede. We can’t be anti-statism and not want to step up and do ministry in the context of the body of Christ, to be a people who willingly serve freely based upon our identity with the Lord Jesus Christ and the particular body he’s placed us in.

Jesus said in Matthew 9:37, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” We face similar times today in the extended body of Christ. The ministry of churches is real, and there’s great opportunities, but increasingly fewer laborers because of the consumer relationship that most people now have with local manifestations of the body of Christ.

You young people that grew up in this church—you have been given tremendous giftedness, tremendous blessings from God. And it, if I might just say something kind of personal, it’s such a disappointment. Not when people leave here. There’s no problem with going to another church for your spiritual well-being. If that’s a place where you can serve, grow, and be sanctified in better, that’s not a problem.

But it is a problem if you’re going to another church and have no cognizance of the implications of things like paedobaptism, a covenantal approach, postmillennialism, the law of God, the significance of the Lord’s day. All these things are, you know, I think tremendous blessings. And to simply place those here—and your desire for a snappier worship service here, I’m using exaggeration for a fact. Wow. And you know, I’m not talking about just this church. That’s what’s going on across the country. Or even a better sermon. You know, there’s a liturgy to this, and the liturgy reflects these basic doctrines of the faith.

And to put that stuff here and these positions of the church here, I just think that’s a very poor swap. And it’s a swap that probably also means you move away from ministry in the local church. And that’s an even worse—has an even worse effect on your soul.

May the Lord God make his people at this church and in other churches throughout our land those who freely volunteer in the day of the Lord Jesus Christ, which has dawned and will never set again.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for today. We thank you, Father, for our placement in the body of Christ. And we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ and his advent showing us that indeed we as well are to be those who say, “Here am I. Send me.” In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.