Introducing Our New Sermon Series: "Guiding Lights: A Biblical Look at the Core Values of RBF"

Redeemer Bible Fellowship

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take a few minutes to introduce the sermon series that we're starting this morning that we're going to be in for the next three weeks.

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I've called this series Guiding Lights. Guiding Lights, a biblical look at the core values of Redeemer Bible Fellowship.

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I think I said this last week, but this is a series I've wanted to do really since our church began. And just every time

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I tried to do it, like I had this series planned out at least three or four times, every time something happened, which kind of took a little more precedence, and it just didn't feel like the right time to do that.

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Well, finally, the time has come. And as we begin this series,

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I want to begin on a note of thankfulness. I thank the Lord for what he's done in the few short years here at Redeemer since, as some of you know our story, we had to end up essentially replanting the church in 2020.

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That's when we became Redeemer Bible Fellowship, and God has been gracious to us. A body has formed around three really important things that I think you need in every church.

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The centrality of Christ and him crucified. I think we've grown in that as a body, and that's always been something that characterizes us.

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Christ is at the center of what we do. Related to that, the goodness of the gospel I think has become more and more evident among us.

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We're a very gospel -centered church, and I'm thankful for that. And we're a church that believes in the sufficiency of Scripture.

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You know, I thank God that in all the years that we've been here, with all the challenges that we've had, one thing we've never disagreed on, we've had the occasional individual, but by and large, as a church, one thing we've never disagreed on is that this book is

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God speaking to us as his people. And that if this book is God speaking to us as his people, then it is sufficient for what he's called us to be, and what he's called us to do.

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And so I thank the Lord because a body has generally formed around those convictions. Yes, we've grown in some areas, and we've come to understand those convictions with more clarity, but those basics have always been there.

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I'm not sure if you quite recognize this, we are essentially closing in on our fifth year as a church. And as a body that's closing out its fifth year,

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I give a lot of thought to questions that impact the life of our body. It's one of the unmistakable things about leadership.

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You spend a lot of your time thinking about what's happening in the body. And in particular,

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I think of three questions, literally every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, depending on what's happening.

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And these three questions will sound a little bit familiar. I think about the question of our identity as a church.

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Who is this thing that we pop on screen, we've got signs either side of me, we've got sign outside that says it.

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When we say redeem a Bible fellowship, just who is that? One question

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I like to ask, as some of you know, I worked in marketing for years. One question we always used to ask a client when they would come in and want us to represent them was, what makes your product better than any other products out there?

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Or that's how I used to ask the question. Then one of my managers said, no, you want to ask the question, what makes your product unique compared to every other products out there?

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And I think there's an element to which that's true about churches as well. Why does our church exist and no other ones?

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That's a question I think about a lot. So there's a question of identity. There's a question of purpose.

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Why is redeem a Bible fellowship here? What are the distinctive things we believe and the distinctive things we do that make us who we are?

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So I think about our identity as a church, our purpose as a church. I think honestly about our destiny as a church.

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What is the end goal? What do we want to see? You know, we all recognize this in life that you should set goals and obviously we set goals, recognizing

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God is sovereign and whatever plans we make are subject to him. But it's a good question to ask. What is the end goal?

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What kind of church do we want to be? Like I said,

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I think about these questions a lot. And if I'm honest, I'm pretty confident about the answers

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I have to those questions. In fact, if you know me, you know that if there's one word I'm always skeptical about is the word confidence.

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In fact, I can almost say that it's not a word I'm a big fan of half the time. But when it comes to those questions of who is this church, why are we here and what's our end goal?

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I'm actually pretty confident in the answers that I have as the pastor here at Redeemer and the confidence

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I have about the identity, the purpose and the destiny of our church. I have that confidence because I have confidence in God and his word.

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You see those three questions I asked all three of those questions, the Bible answers those questions.

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I'm thankful that I don't have to try and figure it out. You should be thankful. I'm not trying to figure it out.

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Thankfully, the Bible answer those questions, not just for Redeemer Bible fellowship, but for any church, if that church will only listen to it.

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I mean, we can get cute and try to make up answers and, uh, or watch what other people do while that works.

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So why don't we copy them? Or we can think back to what I was in this church and this church did this. And I really like that, but we can do all of that or, or we can let

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God speak. We can let him tell us what should be the central values of a church.

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Now I imagine that for some of you, you may think, well, Kofi, you're the pastor.

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Those aren't those your problems to think about? I mean, yeah, of course you think about that.

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That's your job. Well, yes, it kind of is my job to think about those sorts of things.

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It's part of being a good shepherd, but I happen to think that if you call this your church home, and if you believe in what we're doing, which

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I guess you must, because you're here, if all that is true, then you should probably know why we do what we do.

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Oh, and why we don't do some other things that other people do. That's the point of this series.

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I want to take three weeks, look at three passages from God's word that I think will help us to understand who we are, why we do what we do, and what the ultimate goal is.

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One last thing, and I'll be done with my little introduction here. Wednesday nights are going to be really important for this series, because this is where we're going to be able to talk through some of this.

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I'm going to say a lot of things, and I'm not really going to take time to either defend them or explain them a whole lot.

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So, Wednesday nights provides a good time for us. Those of you who come on Wednesdays, you know what we do. We usually talk about the message, and it gives us opportunity to ask questions, think through some of the application of some of this.

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So, I'm going to encourage you that if you are able to make it on Wednesday nights, please do. All right, enough introduction.