Faith, Function, and the Father's House (Bob Marshall) | 5/17/2026

Good morning. Will you join me in prayer?

Father, we thank you for this opportunity to share Your word,

and I pray that you open our hearts and our minds, Your

Spirit, and pray that He would be able to speak to us

unfiltered, that His Word would penetrate our hearts and our

mind, and that You would do a deeper work in US today.

Father, help us to desire to be more like you and help us Lord

to see ourselves as you see us. In Jesus name we pray and all

God's people said Amen. Well, I've heard it said from a

lot of people that all religion leads to God.

And if that were true, that means that there really is no

different than any religions. If we all lead to God, then we

all basically have the same end result and we're good to go.

But as Christians we struggle with that for good reason.

I mean, Jesus said I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father, but through me.

The writer of the Hebrews tells us that Jesus is superior in

every way. The Bible tells us that He's our

Creator, our intercessor, and our Savior.

So what do we do when somebody says our religions are the same?

Now I will say this, that most religions, including some forms

of Christianity which I do not think are credible, the goal is

to be good enough to make ourselves ready.

That mean religion is basically man's effort to reach out to

God. What makes Christianity

different? It's the only faith that says

I'm dysfunctional, I'm a Sinner, I'm broken, and I can't put it

together without help. Every other faith in the world,

including some forms of Christianity, it's you can do

it. And I'm telling you this

morning, without God in our lives, we cannot.

Now, I had the distinct privilege as a young pastor

because I started at 20, right? Yeah, I started at 20.

My mind is not working super good today.

So you can pray for me. And my wife will be more than

happy to fix me if I go off into the weeds.

What was I talking about, Ed? What was I talking about?

All right, Well, that's a pretty safe place, isn't it?

Christianity is the only faith where God reaches down and

surrounds us and helps us. Now I get when we tell the world

that Christianity is the only way I get it sounds arrogant

doesn't it? It sounds like who does this guy

think he is? But the but the problem is what

do I do with the words of Jesus? I am the way and the truth and

the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me.

I mean, Jesus said that. Jesus said that.

So what? What do I do with that?

Where does that leave me? I mean, it's really not me

saying that Jesus is the only way.

It's Jesus saying he's the only way.

And this is the other thing that you'll notice in most religions

or faiths, they like to consider Jesus a good man.

I personally don't think that that's a possibility.

Who did Jesus say he was, Son of God?

What else did he say about himself?

He's the way that he that he lives for the Father and the

Father lives in him. I mean, he told us in so many

ways that he is God. So if he's not who he says he

was, if he's not God, then he is a liar.

Are liars good men? No way.

And so we need to take a look at that now.

I also wanted to take a look at John 17 one through 5.

I'm going to ask you to read it with me because Jesus is pretty

clear, or John is pretty clear. Well, as clear as John gets,

let's put it that way. He's pretty clear about what

eternal life is. So let's read it.

When Jesus had spoken these words, read with me, he lifted

up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hours come glorify

your Son, that the Son may glorify you, since you have

given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to

all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that

they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you

have sent. I glorified you on earth, having

accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory

that I had with you before the world existed.

All right, Jesus is saying some pretty key things here.

Can we go back to 1? He and one he's saying, well,

here he sounds like a lawyer. I don't know about you, but when

somebody says I'm come to glorify you, you glorify me.

And by the time you're all done with this whole thing, I'm a

little confused. It's like when I read legal

papers. And so I, I think John had to be

a lawyer because he writes this kind of confused way all the

time. So let's go to two.

And John says that Jesus has been given authority over all

flesh. Think about that.

And Jesus is the one who will give eternal life to us.

So for you and me, Jesus is it. He's the judge, He's the jury.

He's the boss and all of the authority has been given to him.

And we know that because Jesus created.

Jesus created the heavens and the earth.

He was the agent of creation. He, and as the Scripture says,

he has always been. He's always existed.

He was here long before any of us were, for sure.

And so we need to depend on that.

Now, let's take a look at Romans because if we recognize that

we're only saved through faith and that we're saved so that we

can eternal life as a we get to know God, I want you to think

about that. I know that they're, well, I

don't know, but I assume that there are people here who voted

for our president three Times Now.

Do any of us really know him? Know about him?

We know the facts about his life.

We see enough of him on TV to know what we do and don't like.

It's OK to say Amen. Nobody's going to shoot you.

But we really don't know him. And here's what Jesus is trying

to tell us. They are giving us the privilege

of knowing God the Father, the Son.

Through the guidance and under the leadership of the Holy

Spirit, we get to know the living God, we get to see His

goodness, we get to see his love, we get to see his grace.

We have all experienced his forgiveness because He's there

and He's real and these are His qualities.

And so now we are being asked, I haven't read Romans yet, have I?

OK, thank you. I'm, I'm finding that doing 2

services is just a little confusing.

You try to say, well did I say that yet or not or if or when

so. But I want you to see that this

whole thing of eternal life is God's gift to us.

God didn't come here to condemn us.

He did not come here to send us to hell.

That's not his purpose. Now He will let us go there.

Make no mistake, He will allow us to go there.

But His heart's desire is that we come to Him and allow Him to

work in our lives. So if you have this faith, what

does it look like? What's next?

Well, let's take a look at Romans 12/1 and two.

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God,

to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and

acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the

renewal of your mind and that by testing, you may discern what is

the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

All right, what Paul is saying, and I think he's a little

clearer, he's saying we need to say to God, my life, it's yours,

it's yours. Whatever you want me to do,

whatever you ask me to do, my answer is yes.

Now, can we be honest? It's not always that easy, is

it? Sometimes we grapple with the

Lord wants me to do this. Well, I'm not so sure.

Have, have you, have you been there or am I the only one?

You know, we, we grapple with that, we struggle with that.

And yet, and yet we know some things.

And this is where the whole transformation comes in.

We're transformed by the renewing of our what mind, our

minds as natural people is I have to take care of myself.

I have to provide. If I can't do it, well, I just

have to find a way to do it. I don't have a choice.

I mean, this is what I have to do.

Isn't that human life? It's the way it goes.

But Paul says we need to be transformed in our thinking.

We need to tell ourselves things like God really does love us.

God really does have the power to help me overcome the

obstacles of my life. God does want me to be a more

loving, grace, giving, Christ like individual and if he wants

that, then he's going to give me the power and the help I need to

accomplish that. These are things that we need to

tell ourselves because as human beings, we're like Moses.

I can't do that. Are you kidding me?

You're asking me to do what God? And frankly, I don't get too

upset with Moses. I mean, would you volunteer to

lead those people? Not me.

You got to be crazy. And so I personally am forgiven

Moses a break. You OK with that?

And maybe that's because if Moses gets a break, maybe I will

too. Because no matter, No matter how

close to God you are and how smart you are, you still make

mistakes. There's still times when you,

there's a lot of times when you second guess yourself.

You may have done the right thing, but by the time the

devil's done with you, you're not so sure.

And so we need to work on this transforming our mind.

Now let's kind of practically talk about this for a few

minutes. How are you going to transform

your mind? Well, one, you need to expose it

to God's Word. You just do.

If somehow you think your Bible's going to stay closed and

you're going to grow spiritually, well, I would think

about that again and again and again until you change your

mind. You've got to be in the word.

There's no, there's no replacing that.

And I want to tell you why David said that.

The human heart is deceitful above all things.

Who can understand it? How many times have you deceived

yourself? It's OK, not that bad, not a big

deal. We can move on again.

Am I the only one that's ever had that problem?

So, so we need to, we need to really think about ourselves

honestly. And Jesus has got some some

things for us to to focus on. So let's take a look at 12,

three through 8. I think it is.

For by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, not

to think himself more highly than he ought to think, but to

think with sober judgment, each according to the major faith

that God is assigned. For as in one body we have many

members and the members do not all have the same function.

So we, though many are one body in Christ and individually

members of one another, having the gifts that differ according

to the grace given to us. Let us use them if prophecy and

proportion to our faith, if service in our serving.

The one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in

his exhortation. And that's kind of a preaching

thing. It's more of an encouragement,

the one who contributes, and generosity, the one who leads

with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness.

Yeah. I mean, how many of us want to

lead? It's been such a tough week this

week. I don't know how I'm going to

make it. I mean, doesn't that just

inspire you? Well, it's been so hard.

The devil's been on me all day long.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

No, that's not what we want. Leadership.

All I got to do is listen to the Evening News to get depressed.

I don't need my pastor to do it to me.

And our pastor doesn't. He's awesome.

He's a good teacher. So here Paul, our Paul is saying

that as Christians, we need to start with humility.

Don't consider yourself better than somebody else.

You might be smarter. You might be more gifted.

That doesn't make us better. And those whom God has given

much, he requires a lot too. And I don't think that's just

for us. I think that's finding ways to

be a blessing to others around us.

But we start off with humility. It's one of the first traits we

need because it's like, like when I said I when I was a young

pastor, people would tell me they hadn't sinned in over 20

years. OK, now here's my question.

I know that all man has fallen, broken, dysfunctional.

Would we agree with that? All man, all mankind has sinned.

So if a man is going to go a day without sin, and I do think I'm

just going to say this, I do think it's possible.

I probably said that once already, but the issue is

there's no way I can go without sin without the help and grace

of God. So it's not I did this or I

haven't sinned. It's the Lord has worked with me

and he's helping me clean up my act.

He's helping me get it together. He's helping me improve.

He's helping me see areas where I need help.

And every one of us, every one of us needs help because Paul

also goes on to tell us that we are part of a body.

We belong to each other, we're connected to each other.

We need each other. We need that encouragement.

We need some people have the gifts to to think through

problems. Every church has got problems

they need to think through. Some people are really good at

communication. Some people are excellent

teachers. There are people like Dale who

are just faithful, Faithful works his butt off behind the

scenes. They're people like Ed.

Ed, I'm trying to figure out what you do.

I think, I think, I think you basically just are.

And you're an encouragement to all of us.

Perseverance, faithfulness. I don't know about you, but I

need those kind of examples in my life because I need the Lord

to remind me. You know, Bob, there's ways you

could be more like Ed and maybe a little some cut some of the

edges off of you. I need you.

We need each other and in the body of Christ, you need people

who can teach, you need people who can encourage, you need

people who can lead. And and it's and it's OK not to

have somebody else's gift. You know, one of the saddest,

saddest things for me is when somebody thinks they're a leader

and it's not really their bag. You know, anybody like that and

they want to lead. They want to lead so bad.

And the problem is, is when you say no, boy, they can make you

feel like the meanest dog in town.

But you know what's meaner? To allow somebody to do

something that they don't have the gifts for.

And that not only hurts them, it hurts the church.

Now, just just so you know, in 45 years of ministry, I probably

didn't say no more than a handful of times.

I don't think that's where you get your frequent flyer miles.

Because everybody in the body has place.

And we need to cherish. We need to cherish everybody in

this place. All right?

So we focus on humility. We focus on understanding that

we need each other. Those are keys.

Those are just keys. We need God to guide us first

and foremost. We need His wisdom and His

strength. Now we want to talk about

another section of Scripture. And then I think I'm going to

close out. I'm beginning to realize that

this service starts at 10:30, but we're usually done at 12,

right, Dale? Well, I'm not going for 25 more

minutes. All God's people said.

Amen. All right, now that we've got

that out of the way, let's talk about.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's talk about 9 through 13.

Would you read this one with me? Well, we'll be able to read it

in a second. You know, we don't give those

guys enough credit at all because, because here's the

deal. You know, when the the sound

guys are doing their job, when nobody notices.

And we do notice this stuff, but that stuff is just normal, and

it's part of being human. So I want to thank you up on top

for everything you've done today.

I thank you for responding to me at the last minute.

I mean, I came in here with 15 minutes to go, and they did all

this for me. So you blame me.

Things don't go right. Not them.

All right. Would you read this with me?

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil.

Hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly

affection, Outdo one another in showing honor.

Do not be slothful and zealed, but fervent in spirit.

Serve the Lord, rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be

constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the

Saints and seek to show hospitality.

All right, can we go back to the first verse of this section?

Let love be genuine. This is one place where we need

to be real. But I've been pastored long

enough and I've been in places where they were the wannabes,

the pretenders, you know, not really understanding.

And I'm going to tell you that in some churches, love is not

genuine. It's pasty, it's fake, it's not

real. Now, they're different

personalities and we all love different ways.

So sometimes we just need to give grace to people.

You know, if you've noticed around here, I love to pick on

the kids. Well, everybody's going to see

pics on everybody. Oh my Gods.

People said get it out of your system, OK?

I love little kids. Always have hope.

Hope that I always do. I'm watching my dad.

He's 94 now, and he's not always so excited about little kids.

He used to be. He used to be all right.

We want to love what is genuine. We want to be real.

And I think that's one of the key things is people today need

to see the church be real. That doesn't mean we pretend

that we're holy. If you're holy, you don't need

to tell somebody you are. They're going to notice it.

And if you're unholy, you don't need to tell them that either

because they'll pick that up pretty fast.

And one of the things that I've noticed in my years of ministry,

I think when I started, we focused an awful lot on

behavior. You do this, you don't do that.

There were certain words, if you said you were going to hell

straight away, I'm not, I'm not going to repeat them because you

might be some of you who still feel that way.

But we've come, we've come to learn that, you know, swearing

the Scripture talks about is taking the Lord's name in vain.

Don't do that. That's not a wise thing to do.

And you want to make sure that your language, I mean, when your

language is so vulgar, you can turn a marine's face red.

You've crossed some lines here. But we need to remember that the

measure of all of this is our heart.

You may do things that are unsavory, but do you love

people? Do you love people?

Do you really love people? And you're not going to say or

want to do anything that's going to hurt them?

Not intentionally. So we need to let love be

genuine. What's the next part of that

line? I lost my screen.

Oh, we need to have this thing now.

Go back love. One of the one more.

Go to 11. There we go.

We, we need to hang on to what's good.

We need to not be slothful in zeal.

I'm finding as a retiree that it's pretty easy to be slothful.

Can I admit that, you know, before I retired, I said, well,

I'm not going to have any problem.

You know, all my friends would say, man, I don't know.

However, phone time to go to work, I do.

But but I will admit that that was by design.

You know, as a pastor, my life was going 150 miles an hour.

I didn't want my retirement to be that way too.

Want to slow down a little bit? But I may stretch into that

slothful zone every once in a while.

So, Ed, you need to kick me in the butt.

Get going. So we need to be fervent.

We need to be excited about what God wants to do innocent through

us. We need to serve the Lord with

some enthusiasm that, well, you know, I'm doing this for the

Lord. I'm suffering for Jesus, OK?

Doesn't inspire me, does it, you, James?

No, we see we need to be in the business of inspiring people.

This is what I love about Barnabas.

Barnabas took a look at this guy by the name of Mark, whom Paul

said I'm not trusting him again. He's not going with me.

And Barnabas said, I think this guy got some purpose.

I think there's something that we can do this productive here.

Barnabas saw the nugget of gold. Paul just saw the problem.

If you had people like that in your life, all they do is see

the problem. Here's the deal, here's the

deal. It's true of you, it's true of

me. It's true of everybody in this

room. Everyone of us have strengths,

and we have weaknesses. You want to make sure that your

weaknesses aren't sinful, because sinful weaknesses can

undo your life. You don't want to do that.

And we need to make sure that our weaknesses aren't crippling

our positives. But when I was young, they

taught us, they always taught us this.

Turn your weaknesses into strengths.

OK, so what's happening to my strengths while I'm spending all

my time working on my weakness? What do you think?

Think anything happened to them? You got to develop what you're

good at. God made you good at something

for a reason. Now I know we spend a lot of

time looking at people and we wished, I wished I was more like

so and so. I remember as a young man, as a

young pastor, I was going to Spring Arbor for pastors classes

and I rode with a guy who was about then, he was about my age

now. And I just really impressed with

this guy. And I asked him one day, I said,

how, how do I get to be as spiritual as you are?

He said, well it's easy. I've been a Christian for 45

plus years and I was obedient to the Lord.

And so over those years, being obedient to the Lord, I grew.

If you want to walk with the Lord 45 years and be obedient,

you'll probably get there too, you know, and, and that's what

makes sense because we have this idea that I'm going to be

spiritual. I'm going to flip a switch and

I'm going to go from here to here right now.

It'd be great if it worked that way, but is there anybody here

who'd say it does work that way? It's never worked that way for

me. In fact, I'm, I'm pretty

convinced that if I'm going to grow, I'm going to choose the

hardest way there is. I think it's a brain damage

thing. But we need to be committed to

grow. But we need to understand that

what we're entering into is a relationship.

And so our growth is a process. And the other thing we deal with

is human beings. It's not like being a banker or

an engineer. If I'm an engineer or a

scientist or a finance guy, I have a a formula that everything

fits into boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

And it works. Human beings, what works on me

isn't probably going to work on James or on Paul or on Gary or

on Ed, because we're different and God made us to be different.

And that's OK, because if you're going to compare yourself to

somebody, compare yourself to Jesus.

Not not to beat yourself up, but to keep yourself humble, you

don't want it. We don't want to compare to each

other because what Paul Freeman's called to be and do is

completely different than what he's called me to do and what he

called Ed to do and what he called Dale to do and Brad to

do. And we need to allow for that

freedom. We have to allow for that

freedom when it comes to personal convictions.

You know what I'm saying? You might be a person who has a

weakness for alcohol, so you need to stay away from it.

That doesn't mean that everybody else has to.

They may not have that weakness. They may have a weakness with

watching the wrong stuff on TV or the Internet, or they may

have a weakness with how they spend money.

And This is why we need to give each other room to be who God

made us to be. Now there's a couple more

things. Can we get back to the

Scripture? I think we're on 10 or 11 now.

12 and 12. OK, rejoice.

They're just trying to tell me to get done.

Rejoice and hope. Be patient in tribulation.

Be constant in prayer. Now that is an awesome formula,

but it's pretty lofty, don't you think?

Rejoice and hope. This is a good thing.

Why are you hopeful? Why do you put your confidence

in God? How have you seen Him work?

When's the last time you took time as a family and just talked

about these are the things God's been doing for us?

Isn't that cool? I mean, those things are

important. Be patient.

In Tribulation, we need to understand that sometimes our

journey takes us down paths that are challenging, to say the

least. Here's where my faith kicks in.

I believe that everything that happens to me is for a purpose.

I choose to believe that there's nothing that happens to me that

is caught God off guard. And because of those two things,

I believe that everything He allows to happen to me, He can

use as a building block in my life if I will allow him to My

that my. My belief in those areas has LED

me down some dark paths, but I'm not so sure they haven't been

good paths. I remember it's been 10-11 years

now since I ruptured both of my quads.

I went from walking to not walking in about 10 seconds.

And I was in the hospital for a month to the hospital and

nursing home. And I've I've tried to make my

wife promise that she'll shoot me before she sends me back to

the nursing home. That's not something I get

excited about, but I'm telling you the lessons I learned while

I was in that state, the things that God spoke to me about

because He had me on my back and I couldn't do anything else.

I wouldn't give those lessons back for anything.

Now I'm in no hurry to do it again, but I'm thankful for the

things that the Lord taught me through that challenge and

through that difficulty. Be constant in prayer.

Do you really know where your help comes from?

Yeah, but how sure are we of that?

I mean, when we get into trouble, when something happens,

what do we do? I mean, I know when we're

driving down the road and we think we're going to get next

and go, oh, God, save me, You know, almost always then that

kind of a thing. But what do we do when we're

faced with moral choices? What do we do when we have to

make business decisions? What do we do when we have to

make decisions at home? Are these things we pray about?

Are these things we say? God?

I need your input on this because that's important.

Because when we do that, we're saying He is my Lord.

And that's the whole point today.

The whole point is, is we need to be people who realize that

we're not going to heaven because we're good little

people. We're going to heaven because we

put our faith and confidence in Christ.

And because we've done that, we're going to allow Him to use

us words and all. We're going to let him use this.

We're going to let him enable us to use things that we may or may

not know. I'm going to tell you before,

I'm not so sure. Today's a good example.

But before I became felt the call to preach when I got up in

a speech class, I mumbled all over myself, couldn't give a

talk to save my life. And then the Lord called me and

that seemed to change today. It seems to come back.

But that's OK. I'm old.

We'll excuse it for that. So can I ask you a question?

Do you just wake up one day and say today's the day I'm going to

be transformed? How do you get there?

Time and and you have to make some decisions.

You have to make a decision that I need God in my life, I need

the Spirit. I need to commit myself to

something outside of myself, and God here I am.

Have you done that? Have you done that?

I mean, there are a lot of people that know about God.

They know about Jesus, but somehow they're missing that

deeper connection. And I want to say to you, don't

miss it. There are people in this

sanctuary right now, and I'm not going to name everybody because

I'm going to screw it up and miss half of them.

But there are people here that you could talk to you about your

faith who would be happy to talk to you about your faith.

You say, oh, I don't want to do it.

I don't want to bother. You know, here's the deal.

Somebody comes to you and they want to talk about faith and

you've got to leave. Make an appointment with him

before you go and make sure you contact and get back to him.

We need to ask. We're, we're supposed to be part

of a body. So that means we can ask

questions of each other. We can ask favors of each other.

We can ask for help. It's OK.

This is supposed to be the one place where we can be ourselves.

I'm not sure it is all the time, but it's the one place where we

should be able to be ourselves. So have you asked God to

transform you? Are you asking Him to renew your

thinking? Are you giving Him opportunity

to do that? Feel free to reach out.

There are people here that want to talk to you and we would love

to pray with you. If you want to come forward, we

would pray with you too. But most of you probably, if

you're not a Christian yet, you just, you need a conversation.

You might not be ready to make a commitment yet.

So we're ready to talk. We're willing to talk.

Let's stand together, Father, we are your people.

We are called by your name. We are here to represent you and

Lord, we admit that we're not always good representation.

And Lord, we ask for your forgiveness for that.

And we ask, Lord, that you will inspire us to commit ourselves

fully to you, that we will accept the gifts and the rules

that you have for us and that we'll use them for your glory.

Lord, speak to us, speak to our hearts, draw us close to you.

In Jesus name we pray. And all God's people said Amen.