Darryn Scheske
It is time for the Word of God. I have the absolute privilege, the honor to introduce someone who needs no introduction. First Baptist Church, you have an incredible pastor, but you already knew that. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I didn’t even get to say the good part yet. I just said, you have an incredible pastor. But I am so fortunate of all the people who get to call him pastor. And there are many countless around the world and countless across this nation, as our president, I’m fortunate to be one of those to call you pastor. And you’ve been my pastor for more than 20 years, and I’m so grateful to God to see your wisdom, your generosity, and your humility. And you have marked my life. And we love you. We love you, we love you. And we love you. Stretch out your hand. Father, in the name of Jesus says, the man of God comes to preach. Let your Word be in his ear. Let your hand be upon his shoulder. Be a light in his mind. And may what you have for him to say tonight reach our open and receptive hearts and we give you praise In Jesus’ name. Amen and amen. Will you put your hands together for the incomparable, the one and only Pastor John K. Jenkins Sr.
Pastor John K. Jenkins Sr.
Hey, what’s up? How y’all doing? Amen. Father, thank you for the privilege of being in your house with your people. And I pray that you take these next few moments and speak to us, Lord. Let our hearts be where you want us to be. Let our direction for our lives be in the place you want us to be. And I pray in the name of the Lord that you put a hedge of protection around this place and allow your truth to prevail and your name to be proclaimed that the saints be edified and strengthened in the name of the Lord. We thank you for keeping us, bringing us together and let your name get all of the glory. And everybody says amen. Before you sit down, hug somebody. Say, I’m glad you’re here.
Let me thank you all for being here tonight. Thank you for coming to the Conference. Thank you for being here in this service tonight. On behalf of my wife of 46 years, please stand up, baby. Stand up please so people can see you. On behalf of our church leaders, the members of the First Baptist Church of Glenarden, and we welcome all of our guests from wherever you’ve come. We are glad that you’re here tonight.
I honor our board chair, Pastor Darryn Scheske from Indianapolis, Indiana for leading us. God bless you, pastor, to our board of overseers. I don’t know how many of them are here. I want to acknowledge Tim Ponzani. Tim, this is Tim right here. Ponzani. Stand up Tim. He’s our chief of staff at the office down in Florida. Pastor Michael Henderson, Bishop Michael Henderson, I’m not sure where he’s sitting at. Stand up, this is our National Ministries Director. Appreciate you brother to Ivan, his brother. There’s Ivan, he’s over our International Ministry, so we’re glad to have him. Rodney Williams, Rodney, there he is. He’s our Chief financial Officer. He takes care of the money. He does a great job and Brother Kent stand up real quick. He is our fundraiser. He helps us raise money to be able to take care of everything.
On this role, there are nine men. There are 10 all together, one’s not here, but this movement is run by and managed and goes down to the fields and ministering to people, other regional presidents. They do all the work. They coach pastors and mentor pastors and resource pastors and love on pastors and listen to pastors and help churches. Nine of ’em are here today. And I want them to stand. I want y’all to see these men right here.
One of our regional presidents is not here. He had a health challenge. He’s our northwest person and we want to just take a moment and pray for Nate Hettinga. Father, I pray for Nate right now as he prepares for his surgery. We pray that you let your power keep him safe and bring him through his surgery safe and secure. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Thank you brothers, I appreciate it. You know, it’s hard. Lemme tell you about these guys, I try to get them to sit together, but they don’t like to sit together because they like to be out in the audience with the people that they bring and serve and they on their own decided to bless me by sitting together tonight. And I want you to know, I appreciate it brothers. Thank y’all very, very much. I’m very, very grateful. I want to thank our past presidents. They’ve done a great job. Jerry Sheveland and his wife Dee and Scott Ridout and his wife Lisa. They are great men of God and their wives are greater women of God to hang out with those guys, I appreciate them.
We invited 250 global workers and their families to come. I want the global workers who work all over the world to stand up. I want y’all to see that our global workers are here. These are the people who are taking the gospel to places that you don’t want to go and you don’t want to live, but they go and live among the people and love on those people and teach those people and share the gospel with those people. And we want them to know you are not alone in the work that you’re doing.
Converge focuses on start strengthening and sending churches. And there are some leaders here today who they focus on starting church planting. They focus on strengthening churches and they focus on sending missionaries. One of those persons just recently passed who was over our strengthening church segment, Bruce Hopler suddenly and while working on this Conference, suddenly passed and we want to take a moment and love on his wife, there will be a memorial service celebrating his life on Friday at two o’clock after the Conference is over, Thursday. What did I say? Friday? It’s the end of the week. I’m just trying to hurry up and get there. It’s Thursday at the end of the conference and we wanna pray for his family and keep him and his family in our prayers. I’m grateful to have one of my dear friends with us from The Bahamas who just retired from his own reformation that he started some years ago. Let me let you meet Bishop Neil Ellis from The Bahamas.
Finally, can y’all help me thank First Baptist for sharing me with Converge? I want to thank Pastor Scheske for the great message he gave this morning. It was fantastic. Priscilla Shirer, they were wonderful. Amen. All right, grab your Bibles. I’m gonna preach for about 10 minutes. I better stop lying. It’s gonna be longer than 10 minutes. Open your Bibles to Psalm 133. Stand with me for just a moment while I read the Word if you don’t mind.
Father, anoint me to be your mouthpiece, your conduit, that I might proclaim your truth under your power, under your anointing. Let your name get all of the glory and all of the praise, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Psalm 133 says, behold, let me tell you what that means in the hood. Sure enough. Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron running down on the edge of his garments. It is like the dew of Herman, descending upon the mountains of Zion. For there, the Lord commanded the blessing. Life forevermore. I want to talk to you for a few moments about the principle, the power and the promise of unity. You can be seated.
The principle, the power, and the promise of unity. This little small three verse Psalm reveals one of the most powerful, amazing principles in all of scripture. It’s extraordinary, when people apply it to their lives, extraordinary things happen. As a matter of fact, the Bible teaches us we can learn about the ways of God through observing things in nature. And I want you to take a moment before I hit deep down. I want you to look at this video I want to show you for just a moment. I’m gonna talk to you about it for just a few moments. So let’s watch this video real quick for just a moment. It’s a video of a buffalo. He gets disconnected from it’s herd and he gets attacked by some lions. Y’all can go ahead and play the video, any minute now, just as soon as you get it together.
So they’re separated from the herd and they see these lions that come after them. They end up capturing a baby buffalo, unfortunately in the water also attacking this baby buffalo is a alligator. And now they are fighting over this baby buffalo, the lions and the alligators. But after a period of time, the lions are successful in pulling the baby buffalo out of the water. But there is something coming to its rescue. Notice, it’s not a single buffalo, it’s a herd of buffaloes. And they make up in their mind though they’re afraid and they’re very timid, but at some point, they get their guts up and they’re able to go over and deliver the baby buffalo from the lions.
They have their strength not in individuals. They get their strength, not by operating alone, but they get their strength by operating collectively. Look at that. And ultimately, I want you to see that eventually they get their guts up and they deliver the baby buffalo and they rebuke the lions. And in just a few moments, it’s no longer the buffaloes running away. But in just a few moments, you are going to see the buffaloes chasing the lions out of the camps.
I’m trying to get the church to understand if we just get together and work together and serve together and pray together and build together, we can beat the devil. I forgot we got guests in the house, almost said something. We can win, we can be victorious. We can conquer the world. We can do great things if we could just operate together.
Just a few days ago, the New York Knicks. There’s one in every crowd. They did something remarkable. They won 13 straight games in the playoffs against the best of the best, 13 straight games. Then they lost one and then they won the championship because of a man named Jalen Brunson.
Jalen Brunson said in one of his post-game interviews after they won the championship, he said, and people, they noted that before the season started, he sacrificed, listen to this, $113 million of his salary. He cut off $113 million to help the Knicks put away money to bring other people to play on the team. It wasn’t just any players. There were players who played with him in college and he said, I wanna play with them on my team ’cause I know they know how to play in a unified way. I wish I could get some amen right there somewhere in the camp. And he sacrificed that money and they came and joined the team and they won the championship. Remarkable. In some games, they were 30 points behind. I remember watching the game they had, they were 29 points in the hole, but they came back and by the end of the game, they won the game. Hey, guess what? We might be behind in some areas, but if we get on the same page, if we operate in the same manner, if we put our minds together and our hearts together, we can win and defeat the enemy. Can I get a amen right there?
In fact, my assignment, this is what God has spoken to me and made very clear to me that it’s his desire to bring unity to the body of Christ, to be on one accord. Stop thinking of reasons why you can’t and you won’t and stop being selfish. The thing about Jalen Brunson, let me calm down, I’m getting kind of excited here for a second. The thing about Jalen Brunson is he demonstrated that he wasn’t going to be selfish. And I hate to tell you what too many of our churches do around this nation is focus on what they want as opposed to what God wants.
David wrote this little 133rd Psalm at a time when it’s believed that he knew and he recognized how beautiful it was that Israel nation was coming back together. They had been divided for over 200 years. They had been separated and divided, but God brought the nation back together and they were unified. And he wrote these words, behold, how beautiful it is, how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. Not being disconnected, not being on separate pages, not doing your own thing. And it is the call and the desire of God to see us function in unity. It’s been the downfall of a lot of people, a lot of nations, a lot of cultures, a lot of marriages, a lot of churches have been divided because people just couldn’t get on the same page. So many have failed. Our homes have been divided and businesses have failed because people have not functioned in unity. Look at your neighbor and say, I hope you ain’t the person to cause disunity. Tell him on the other side, I hope you’re not the cause to bring disunity.
Can I tell you that God has blessed the First Baptist Church of Glenarden because we function in unity. When we go into our elders meeting, we shut the door, we talk. It might get smoky in there sometimes, but when we come out, we’re all on the same page.
Now, let me read a verse to you, deacons. Pastors, you might wanna make note of this verse right here. This is a verse written in Joshua chapter one. You don’t have to turn to it, you’re gonna remember it once I tell it to you. Verse 18, Joshua, who now has taken over from Moses and now is the leader and the people are making a declaration to Moses, I mean to Joshua. And they say in verse 18, whoever rebels against your command and does not heed your words in all that you command him, he shall be put to death. I like that kind of verse right there. Every pastor need a deacon like that that’s going to quote that verse right there.
God has shown us great grace in our church. He has breathed on us. He has anointed us. He’s given his favor ’cause we operate in unity, we operate on the same page. We’re headed in the same direction. Unity doesn’t mean you have to play the same instrument, but whatever instrument you have, you all have to play the same song. Amen. You might be on different instruments, but you gotta be in the same key. Come on, somebody say amen. And all I’m trying to do is make an appeal to everybody and tell you today, if we just give God an opportunity to try, we can do some great things. The scriptures says how beautiful it is, how wonderful, how good and pleasant it is if brothers dwell, hang out, live together in unity. And then he used a comparison. He says, he says, he says, he gives us a comparison. He said, it is like, twice he says, it is like. He says, it is like, I like this. He said, it is like the precious oil upon the head running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron running down on the edge of his garment. I like that verse right there. He said, that’s what it is like, that is in fact what unity is like. And I said, well, I don’t understand what he is saying. Here’s what he is saying. He said, unity is like God doing something extraordinary. What’s extraordinary about verse two, what’s extraordinary is that God put some oil on Aaron’s head. I know that don’t mean anything to you, but let me break that down to you.
Aaron was the first high priest. Aaron was the one who was anointed to preach. He was Moses’ brother, but he was the first priest. And when they anointed him as high priest, they put the oil on his head and it rolled down through his beard and it got on his garment and it kept flowing. It kept flowing down to the edge of his garment. What is special about that is when I looked at this, I said, how did Aaron get to be the high priest? Aaron is a jacked up joker. It was Aaron who when Moses who went up into the mountain to meet with God. Are y’all with me? Did I say the wrong name? Y’all started hollering at me. I thought I had messed up and said the wrong thing.
It was Aaron, this was funny to me. When Aaron, when Moses hadn’t come back down, the people said, we don’t know what happened to Moses. I don’t know what to deal with Moses. So we we need to do something different. And so Aaron called them to gather their gold and they put their gold and heated it up. And here’s what Aaron said. Oh, slow down pastor, just slow down, they took the gold and made a calf and they sang to the calf and worshiped and danced around the calf is what they did. And then when Moses came down out of the meeting with God, this is funny. Moses said, what in the world has happened? What’s going on here? Aaron said, the people brought their gold and they put it in the fire and this calf came out. What? What’s amazing that what God is saying to me when I looked at Aaron’s background and his history and what he’s done, God says, I can even use anybody, even if they made a mistake and made the wrong choices and made bad decisions. I can even use Aaron and I want somebody to know, I don’t care what you’ve done, how low you have fallen, how nasty your sin, God can use you! Go ahead and look at your neighbor and high five ’em. Tell ’em God can use you. In spite of your behavior, in spite of your heart, in spite of where you’ve been. I’m thanking God, I got some oil on me. I have missed the mark, but I got some oil on me. I have said some bad things, went some wrong places, but I got some oil on me. Somebody ought to shout and think and say you might not feel it right now, but your oil is coming. It’s about to run down from your head through your beard. It’s about to run down over your garments and to the edges of your garments. Say it is like the oil, the precious oil that runs down the beard of Aaron. But hold up, I’m almost finished. I just wanted somebody to say, take my time.
He says one other thing that’s powerful, he says it is like, this is another it is like, he said, this oil is like, it’s such a powerful thing. It is like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion. That’s an amazing point too. What’s amazing about that, pastor? I’m glad you asked. Dew is formed from a process. It is the result. It becomes dew when the temperature of the air and the vapor is close, pretty close to the temperature of the ground. When the two temperatures are within five degrees, then you can have some dew form. And dew is helpful to the plants and to the environment. It’s a helpful thing and it’s amazing to me that he says, this unity is so powerful. It’s like the dew from Hermon. Now the thing about Hermon is Hermon is in the highest point of Palestine and it is a series of mountains in Palestine. And Zion is 125 miles from Mount Hermon. And the scripture says David wrote that. He said, now unity is like, is just like the dew that fell from Mount Hermon and made its way to Zion. But now in normal circumstances, dew is not going to travel from Mount Hermon to Zion except for when God is in the picture.
I told the global workers the other day, I want you to not feel alone by yourself. The anointing that generates from Converge in the United States, that special grace and unity will flow from the US to whatever nation, whatever city, whatever place you are, you got the same favor on you that Converge has on us. Can I get a amen right there from somebody? It will feed you, it will benefit you, it will help you, it will bless you. Never feel like you’re by yourself. Where are the global workers again, I’m telling you again, I’m trying to stand up where y’all at? Where is the global workers again? I need to see you all again. I want you to know you’re not by yourself. We are with you. The unity will ride with you wherever you go. We are with you.
It is running down and so I close this message. I hope I’m not over-passing my time. The scripture says it is like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion. And then it says this in the text, for there the Lord commanded the blessing. Where is there? There is not Hermon, not Zion. There is where there’s unity. Wherever there is unity, God commands a blessing. You know what I like about that? When God commands something, can’t no devil in hell stop it from happening. No weapon formed can come against you, there, the Lord commands a blessing, there, where there’s unity there, when we operate on one accord, there, God opens up the windows of heaven that nothing can stop it. Where that’s where there is, there, the Lord commands, hold up, blessing and what is that blessing? Life forevermore. Ooh, life. Here’s what life is. Life is when God gives you a purpose for living. Life is when you’re excited about doing the will of God for your life. Life is when you see God opening up doors and answering your prayers. Here’s what life like for me. When God does stuff for me and I haven’t even asked him yet, that’s what I’m talking about, life. Somebody say life. If you know what I’m talking about, somebody high-five your neighbor and say, I want that kind of life.
I like living this kind of life. I like living this kind of life where God answers prayers that I haven’t even asked him. I like this kind of life where God is blessing not only me, but my children. I like this kind of life where God is protecting me. I like this kind of life. I like living this kind of life! Life forever more. It goes on and on and on. Praise the Lord. Well, I’m bringing my plane in for a landing. I’m done. I’m finished. I’m thankful for the promise from God of what he said he would do. My appeal to us if we could just operate in unity, let’s see what God might do.
