Him We Proclaim - [Colossians 1:28]

What verse do you want put on your tombstone? Maybe it's Romans chapter 8, verse 31, if God is for us, who could be against us?

Maybe it's John 3, verse 16. The world has a life verse, judge not lest you be judged.

They're very familiar with Matthew 7. But what about you? What's your life verse? It's interesting, as a church, we have a life verse.

Did you know that? For Bethlehem Bible Church, we have a life verse and the elders are all looking at me now, saying, what is that verse?

Every single Sunday, you'll see our bulletin has a verse at the top of it. For the last 10 to 15 years,

Colossians chapter 1, verse 28 has been printed for a reason. Let's take our

Bibles and turn to Colossians chapter 1, verses 28 and 29, to be reminded, especially this time of the season and this particular season of the church,

Bethlehem Bible Church, why do we exist? Why are we on earth? What's the purpose of a local church?

What's her responsibility as she ministers underneath the Lord Christ Jesus? And so this morning, we're gonna look at Colossians chapter 1, verses 28 and 29.

And it's going to be a good reminder. What is the church on the earth for?

That is, why do we exist? Who do we proclaim? And how do we proclaim?

Very easy, very basic. A little boy ran up to me this morning and said, pastor, what are you gonna preach on today?

And I said, we're going back to the basics. I said, even Navy SEALs need to be reminded this is how you shoot a gun.

And that little boy looked at me like, okay, ready? Colossians chapter 1, verse 28 and 29 reads, and we proclaim him, or him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

For this I toil, struggling, Paul said, with all his energy, that he powerfully works within me.

Let's look this morning at three essentials of a Christ -honoring church from Colossians chapter 1.

Now to set us up a little bit, to kind of parachute us into Colossae and the world there, it's a very fascinating book.

People were coming along to the Christians there and they were devaluing the work of Christ.

Jesus might be fine, but he's not the best. Jesus is good, but he's not supreme.

Jesus is okay maybe for your salvation to some extreme, to some limit rather, but maybe not for your sanctification.

And that's the way it always goes. Teachers come in and say it's Christ plus or Christ minus.

And in the sovereignty of God, where was Paul? The church at Colossae is getting attacked and where do you think

God would have Paul placed? Well, Paul was far from Colossae. He was in jail in Rome.

And so how could God care for the church there? So Epaphras was charged with spiritual care for Colossians church and he had a message to bring back from Paul to the church at Colossae.

And that is Christ is all you need. Now here's the good thing for us as a church, whether we meet here, whether we meet in West Boylston, whether we meet in the catacombs, whether we meet other catacombs in Worcester, whether we meet in gymnasiums, public schools, underneath a tent, these verses here give us the marching orders.

Why do we exist? Whom do we proclaim? And how do we go about doing that?

And so these verses, I regularly come back to to say, all right, the world of evangelicalism and modern

Christianity is always searching for something new and big and the latest and the biggest fad and how to draw people in.

And Paul brings us right back to the issue, faithfulness, faithfulness.

Three essentials for a Christ honoring church. The first essential is this, the church must remember her purpose or her goal.

Why does she exist? If I ask you this question, why do we exist as a church?

What would you say? Would you say we need to grow? Do we need to get more assets?

It's kind of like the Christianity of the world, ABCs, assets, buildings, and cash.

Well, one thing's for sure, if you have the wrong goal in mind, you're going to hit the wrong target. Paul, I love

Paul, gives the clear goal. And do you see it in Colossians 1, 28.

Warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom that we may present everyone, and here's the answer, why do churches exist?

That we may present everyone mature in Christ.

What are we aiming for? What's our mission statement? What's our vision? Numbers, buildings, cash?

No, right here he says for maturity. Why do we exist? What moves the elders of Bethlehem Bible Church?

We want you to grow. We want you to be mature. I could ask you another question.

Who decides what the goal is? Well, maybe it's a vocal minority.

Maybe it's a democratic majority. Maybe Barna, maybe some pragmatists, church history, denominations.

But here we have the scripture. Paul tells us exactly why we exist. Maturity, we want you to grow.

We want you to mature. By the way, just quickly think for a second if you have children. What's your goal for your children?

To always keep them as toddlers. I almost said always keep them in diapers, but we are visitors today after all.

You want your children to grow. You want your children to mature. That's what you're after. And for Paul, it's the same thing, that every person may be complete in Christ.

And if you have a goal of maturity, then everything that the church does funnels towards that particular goal.

What's the goal of Bethlehem Bible Church? To praise the Lord Jesus Christ by having you grow.

I mean, if the goal is more people, then we have a different strategy. But if the goal is maturity, then that drives everything else.

And what neat language we see here from Paul. Look at verse 28, that we may present every man complete in Christ, that Paul, along with Epaphras, along with every

New Testament elder and pastor, may present, to show, to offer.

This is the language of Hannah. She presents to the Lord her son. This is the language of Ephesians 5, that Jesus might present to himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and blameless.

This is the kind of language of presentation, a formal presentation. You know these words, don't you, from Romans 12.

I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God.

There's gonna be a day, a judgment day, we call it the bimasit, that there will be a final accounting.

And we want to present, we as elders, we as pastors, we want to present you as mature, perfect, complete.

And isn't it fascinating, do you notice in verse 28, how many times does the text say everyone, or every man?

Three times. Every man, every man, every man, everyone, everyone, everyone.

The church is not just after, well, you know what, we want a few special elite people to be growing.

We want a few kind of the top rung people to be mature. That's what was happening with some of this false teaching going along in Asia and in Europe.

There's kind of the Gnosticism where we're in the know and nobody else is.

Behind closed doors for some but not for everyone. And for Paul, if you're a

Christian, he wants you to grow, that you might be mature. Not just the elders, not just the deacons.

The goal for everyone in Christ's church is maturity. Now some of you have different translations and that word there, complete, could be translated complete, mature, or perfect.

So what does it really mean? Well, here's the background from the Old Testament. The background of the

Old Testament in terms of using this word in the Septuagint, in the Greek version of the

Old Testament, it's having someone who's totally devoted to God.

That's the idea. And of course, mature people would do that. But I probably think that mature is too weak of a word and perfect is too strong for a word.

And what Paul is after is you are so fired up, so sold out, so motivated to serve the

Lord with single -minded devotion that there can be no blame found in your life. It's use of a heart that is fully tuned toward God.

Listen to Solomon in 1 Kings 8. Let your heart therefore be holy, that's with a

W, holy, true to the Lord our God, walking in his statutes and keeping his commandments as at this day.

It's used of a man or a woman who's bound himself fully and completely to the Lord Christ Jesus.

To grow, to be mature, is to be one who's fully devoted to the Lord. Don't pastors want that?

Shouldn't a church want that? Don't you want that of your fellow believers here? To see them hot for the

Lord Jesus Christ, a desire, a fervency, an urge, and just a settled attitude where I want to be fully devoted.

Before I was a Christian, I was fully devoted to the things of the world and to Satan and the system and his schemes.

But now God has done all kinds of things to me included in that is regeneration.

He's given me a new heart and new affections and now I want to be fired up for the Lord. By the way, when you meet people like that, what goes through your mind?

Ever meet a Christian that's really fired up and enthusiastic? I mean, I guess one approach is, oh, you know what, they're just a new

Christian. They'll get over it real soon and they'll be boring and they'll stay like me one day. Or when you're around those people, they're new

Christians, or maybe they've just taken a step of obedience and they've been baptized and you think, those people,

I want to be around. By the way, coming back from the Shepherd's Conference, 4 ,500 people there.

Amazing to just be around all those folks singing and talking about the things of the Lord. I mean, it motivates, it fires you up.

You just want to get swept along in the current of, I want to be sold out for the Lord. If you go to Colossians chapter four, verse 12, the same word is used there.

Epaphras prays for this very thing. What a great prayer. Epaphras, who is one of your number, a bond slave of Jesus Christ, sends you his greetings.

What does he do? Always laboring earnestly for you in his prayers that you may stand perfect, complete, mature, wholly devoted and fully assured in all the will of God.

People, friends, who are motivated and maturing and sold out for the

Lord, slowly, imperceptibly sometimes, begin to resemble their

Savior. 2 Corinthians 3, 18, and we all with unveiled face beholding the glory of the

Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

And the thing about mature Christians, as they look more and more like their Savior Christ Jesus, they evangelize more, they're more excited about the good news, they are better servers, they sing better, they confront more, they encourage more, the one another's go on and on and on.

Flip over to Ephesians if you would, and I want you to see that the book of Colossians and Ephesians are really kind of sister books, and Paul says the same thing to the churches around Ephesus in Ephesians chapter four.

Why does Bethlehem Bible Church exist? Well, we want Christ Jesus to be praised by you growing, your growth, your maturity, your devotion to the

Lord, whether it's in this place, in our old place, or any other place. It's what we're after, we're not after numbers and attention.

The growth that we want is your personal growth. Are you into church growth?

Pastor Mike and the elders, yes, your growth. Because that's what a church is all about, the maturation of the saints.

Look at Ephesians 4 .12, I just wanted you to see the mirror kind of language there. Ephesians 4 .12,

why does God give these great gifts of apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers?

Verse 12, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ.

Why does God grant spiritual gifts to the church? So that the church might grow.

I don't probably go to the gym as often as I should, but when I go there, I see bodybuilders.

I'm not much of a bodybuilder, I'm just trying to keep what I've got. But there are bodybuilders there, and they want to grow and they want to be stronger.

That's the exact kind of language here. How does the body of Christ grow? How does it mature? We want the saints to be equipped for the work of service.

By the way, when Paul talks about equipping the saints, verse 12, in Ephesians, it means to restore.

Ever buy an old truck, 1970 K5 Blazer, and then you restore it.

That's the language here. The building up of the body, to restore the body.

What a great figure of speech that the Christian in a local church would mature.

Verse 13 of Ephesians four, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the

Son of God, to a mature man, a mature person, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.

So what's the goal of the church? Church growth? Yes, if it's the growth of the individual

Christian. If the goal is we want to make church relevant, then you've got to construct the local church's function for that very thing.

If the church's goal is entertainment, then you've got to put together things that entertain the folks.

Spurgeon said in an article that he wrote called Feeding Sheep or Amusing Goats, said the devil has seldom done a cleverer thing than hinting to the church that part of their mission is to provide entertainment for the people with a view to winning them.

From speaking out as the Puritans did, the church has gradually toned down her testimony, then winked at and excused the frivolities of the day.

Then she tolerated them in her borders. Now she has adopted them under the plea of reaching the masses.

Spurgeon goes on, quoting Paul, he gave some apostles and some prophets and some pastors, teachers. Where do entertainers come in?

The Holy Spirit is silent concerning them. Where the prophets persecuted because they amused the people are because they refused.

The concert has no martyr role. We are sugar candy.

No, said Spurgeon, we are salt, something that the world will spit out, not swallow.

Jesus pitied sinners, sighed and wept over them, but never sought to amuse them.

And so what's the goal of Bethlehem Bible Church? We want you to grow. We want you to be fired up. We want you to be wholly devoted to the

Lord Jesus Christ. Well, how do you go about that?

With that goal in mind to have the right purpose, then how do you actually grow?

What would be the mechanics of that growth which leads us to the second essential truth for a

Christ honoring church? You've got to have the right target, that is maturation, spiritual development and maturity, but you've also got to preach the right person and that is the

Lord Jesus Christ. Let's go back to Colossians 1, please. Colossians 1.

Colossians 1 tells us the object of our faith that must be, who must be exalted.

According to Paul, what do you do for a Christ honoring church? You have the right aim and you preach the right person.

And interestingly, he loads it in a way that grammatically we might not expect in Colossians 1 .28,

him we proclaim. Now some translations might say we proclaim him.

I think ESV is best here. Colossians 1 .28, him we proclaim.

Okay, so how do you get a church to grow? Four spiritual laws, 40 days of purpose, 12 steps, 10 promises.

For Paul, it is the proclamation of Christ Jesus. How do you grow?

The proclamation of the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, Christ Jesus.

And Paul, along with his cohorts, did that, we proclaim him. Paul and Timothy and Epaphras, different than the false teachers of Colossae.

They proclaimed all kinds of inside Gnostic kind of, this is a special way.

It might be Jesus, but it's Jesus plus. It might be Jesus, but it might be a little less than Jesus. But Paul said, for you to grow, you need to be presented with the person and the work of Christ Jesus.

Him we proclaim. And for Paul, it never stops.

When's a good time to stop preaching about Jesus? It's a present tense verb. We continually, we ongoingly, is that a word?

We habitually preach Christ Jesus. That's just what we do. We proclaim him. We proclaim him as Messiah, as advocate, as mediator, as captain of our salvation.

That's what we do. You grow when you're continually presented the word of God, which focuses on, which highlights the person and work of Christ Jesus.

Donald Gray Barnhouse said, what would happen if Satan were to take over a city?

If Satan were to take over Lancaster, what would happen? Here's what

Barnhouse said would happen. All the bars would close. No alcohol would be sold.

There would be happy marriages, well -behaved children, no crime, and everybody would be in church on Sunday where Christ isn't preached.

The thing about a maturing congregation, they love to hear about Jesus. And you can tell as the congregation matures more and more and more, we wanna hear about the

Lord and Savior. We wanna hear about the Alpha and Omega. Show us Jesus from the Gospels where who preached like him, who talked like him, who healed like him, who is like the

Lord our God? No wonder Luther said we always preach him, the true

God and man. This may seem like a limited and monotonous subject, likely to soon be exhausted, but we are never at the end of it or him.

Why? Because once you have been saved and you've been taken out of the kingdom of darkness and placed into the kingdom of light, once you've been a person who's thought, you know what,

I rightly am condemned for my sin. Yet based on the work of Christ Jesus, I now stand acceptable because I've been justified.

When you understand that, can you ever stop hearing about the Lord Jesus Christ? Does it ever become boring for you to rehearse the object of your faith, the one who died on a cross 2 ,000 years for you?

You never get tired of that. It just goes over in your mind, over and over saying to yourself, can you imagine

I was that prodigal son and the father rolled up his robe and ran out and instead of killing the fatted calf for me, he kills his son for me in my place as a substitute and he washes all my sins and the father loved me so much, that's what happened.

The son in love as well, that's what happened. And so please tell me about Jesus Christ. No wonder the lady went to Spurgeon and said,

Mr. Spurgeon, if Christ does love me like that, demonstrated at Calvary, he'll never hear the last of it.

And that's why Christians, a maturing Christian doesn't want to hear anything but Jesus Christ. And so Paul says, here's how you grow, we proclaim him.

He says in 2 Corinthians chapter four, we proclaim not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord.

And by the way, Paul practices what he preaches. Look at Colossians chapter one. Does Paul in fact in Galatians, in Ephesians, in Philippians and now in Colossians, does he do that very thing?

Of course he does. Just a quick glance through the epistles and you'll see he just cannot stop talking about the

Lord Jesus Christ. He's got one string on his proverbial guitar.

Look at Colossians 115, talking about Jesus. He is the image of the invisible

God, the firstborn of all creation. The exact likeness of God, the exact copy of God, image of God, and he has preeminence in position.

He is top ranked. He existed before creation, verse 16, for by him,

Jesus Christ, all things were created. All things, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him.

And these false teachers around Colossae would run around and say, by the way, we worship angels and Jesus is only just an angel.

He's not anything but an angel. Paul says, I'm gonna proclaim to you Christ Jesus. He made everything, including every angel.

Verse 17, Paul proclaims Christ and he, Jesus Christ, is before all things and in him all things hold together.

And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent.

So stop there and just think for a second. Do you teach Sunday school? Do you teach your kids the

Bible? Do you like to evangelize? What's your goal with your

Sunday school class? I hope that you want them to be saved and if they are, for them to mature, but this is not just the marching order for the pastor.

This is marching orders for you. Him we proclaim, right?

When you say, I have a Sunday school and I've got a bunch of kids and they just can't sit up straight and they have their elbows on the table and they are rude and they don't mind their manners and they don't respect the teacher.

Friends, I want kids to obey, but I want something more than obedience to me and good manners.

Remember, good mannered children isn't our goal. Our goal is mature in Christ and I want to preach to them

Christ Jesus, the Lord. When you put your little Sunday school curriculum together, dare to be a

Daniel. I think you need to impose this verse over that. We proclaim him,

Christ Jesus. And Paul does, verse 19 of Colossians 1. He just goes on, for in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, and making peace by the blood of his cross.

Doesn't Paul proclaim him? Chapter two, he does the same thing. Look at verse 14. And by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, thus he,

Jesus, set aside, nailing it to the cross, he disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.

We proclaim him. What's the goal of the church? Devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ and maturity.

How do you get to that goal? You preach the word and as you preach the word, you show people who

Christ Jesus is. And as you look to Christ Jesus with the eyes of faith, you are transformed, 2

Corinthians says, from one level of glory to the next. When you begin to think about Jesus as my representative, he had to be fully manned to die in my place.

And he's my substitute. He died at Calvary where I should have died, but he died in my place.

I wanna hear about that Savior. In my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood.

Hallelujah, what a Savior. How do you get a church to mature? You show them the

Savior week in and week out. Spurgeon, when

I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin. But when I found

God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast to think that I could have ever rebelled against one who loved me so and sought my good.

And so you say to yourself, well, why should Jesus Christ be preached to me? I'm already a Christian. That's the reason.

That's the reason because preaching Christ sanctifies Christians as well. For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

That's Paul in 1 Corinthians. I feel the tug of ministry that says to me, of course, wrongly, be creative.

Come up with new things. Ingenuity. Creativity is good.

Marketing. But all that I am commanded to do is say here is

Christ Jesus. In the book of Colossians, Paul calls

Christ the Son of God, the Redeemer, the image of God, the Lord of creation, the head of the church, the reconciler of the universe, the fullness of the

Godhead, supreme authority over all, the essence of the mystery of God, the conqueror of evil, enthroned at the right hand of God.

No wonder Paul was saying, so don't let people come alongside and take you captive. Look at Colossians chapter 2, verse 8.

If Jesus is the one we proclaim, there are going to be enemies who come alongside and what do they do?

They try to take you captive by philosophy, empty deceit, human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world and not according to Christ.

Friends, if you'd like to grow, you need to often and regularly contemplate

Christ Jesus. David Wells described people who don't preach

Christ this way. The problem of Christ missing as the focal point in church today is not like the abduction of a child who is happily playing at home one minute and then is no longer to be found the next.

No one has abducted Christ in this sense. The disappearance is closer to what happens in homes where children are ignored and to all intents and purposes abandoned.

They remain in the home but they have no place in the family. So it is with Christ in the church.

He remains over the edges of evangelical life but has been dislodged from the center.

Can Jesus Christ be preached about too much in a local church? Can you hear about Him too much?

By the way, we know the answer is no and by the way, just fast forward to heaven and what's in the center of heaven.

What will you be doing in heaven for all the ages, for all the eons of time? You will be with the angels and with the elders and with all the redeemed of the lamb singing worthy is the lamb to be praised.

If He is the center point of heaven, if He is the centerpiece of heaven, if He is the hub of heaven, then why should

He not be the very same centerpiece in the church? We have to push back when we say every church sermon should be how can

I have a happier marriage? How can I handle my money? How can I like my job? How can I be a better parent?

How can I feel better about myself? Well, the real answer to all those is let me show you who

Jesus is. Remember the Messiah and how He dealt with the lepers? Remember the Messiah and how

He dealt with the woman at the well? Remember the Messiah when He healed the blind? Remember the

Messiah when He said, I forgive you? No wonder Paul said, you better preach the word.

I solemnly charge you in the presence of Christ Jesus. You better preach the word. Tell people about my son.

Well, I know we have some guests today. What they don't know is we usually preach for about 120 minutes on a

Sunday, but I guess they're gonna soon find out. No, it's good for the church to be reminded.

Why do we exist? We want you to mature in Christ. We want you to look like Christ Jesus. How does that happen?

The Spirit of God applying the word of God to your hearts and minds and soul because the word of God preaches

Christ Jesus from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. And with what kind of method should we use for the third essential for a

Christ -honoring church? What's the process? How do we go about it in mechanical, functional ways?

Let's take a look at verse 28 and 29 in the time we have left, which isn't much. This is the right process for a

Christ -honoring church. And you can see all kinds of participles there.

Warning everyone. This is all dependent on proclaiming Christ Jesus.

How do you proclaim Him? With warning, with teaching, and with a lot of struggling and energy.

That's what Paul is trying to say here. You proclaim Christ because you want people to be mature. All people, men, women, children, adults,

Jews, Gentiles, Greeks, slaves, free. We want everyone to grow. We do that by proclaiming

Christ Jesus, and we do it with warning, teaching, and struggling. Sometimes the preaching must include an admonishment.

That's what Paul says in verse 28, right? Admonishing, warning. That's part of shepherding.

I just got back from Israel, and you'll see the Bedouins, and what do they do? They feed the sheep. We're gonna get to that in a second.

But they also warn the sheep and protect the sheep. They shepherd the sheep. They correct behavior.

Paul says, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, and admonish the unruly.

Sometimes you're gonna hear something from the pulpit that seems like an exhortation. Why? Because that's part of the proclamation of Christ Jesus.

That's exactly what Jesus did. Celebrated preacher was once told that he pleased all his hearers during his sermon, and he said, aha, another sermon lost.

Whitefield, it is a poor sermon that gives no offense that makes neither the hearer displeased with himself nor with the preacher.

I mean, that's back to the Luther days. He would tell his young students, you better preach

Christ Jesus in such a way. You better preach the law of God in such a way that it drives them from themselves under the

Savior by the Spirit's power, and that if they hate their sins because of your preaching, are they gonna hate you?

Now, of course, I wanna be liked, but when you talk to people about sin because it's good for their maturity, when you have to discipline your children, this goes right back to how do we train children?

I'm not equating the church to children, but I am saying the same way we mature a church, that is a church admonition and teaching, we do the same with raising children, right?

In the fear and admonition of the Lord. Paul wasn't shrinking from admonition, and on the positive side, verse 28, it also says teaching every man.

Kind of twin truths, aren't they? You admonish, and then you teach. Because Paul wants

Colossians chapter three, the word of Christ to dwell in you richly with all wisdom teaching, and so you've got a goal.

We want you to be mature. We preach Christ, and we preach it in a way that sometimes we admonish, sometimes we teach.

And by the way, when you teach, that means you teach doctrine. Apostles taught doctrine,

Paul taught doctrine, the New Testament church taught doctrine, Jesus preached doctrine. All doctrine is practical, and all practice is doctrine, one man said.

John MacArthur said, listen, that Christian life depends, beloved, upon your knowledge of God. You can base your whole

Christian life and your whole Christian attitude on who you really believe God is. And you do it with wisdom and sweat.

Take a look at verse 29, for this I toil. You just read a little bit about Paul's toil for the church, how he loved the bride of Christ, and what he was willing to do for her, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works in me.

He knew it wasn't just his own work and labor and sweat, it was spirit -energized.

And Paul is even writing this from prison, and I can imagine how Paul is fervently praying in prison for this very thing to happen at Church of Colossae.

He is the one who, it says in 2 Corinthians 11, labored in hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

And it's all according to the power of God. Whether Bethlehem Bible Church is on the street, in a tent, the town hall, the movie theater, at the gym, where our old building is, or here, what's not going to change, although the geographic thing might change.

Our purpose is, our goal is, we want you to grow. That cannot change.

That will not change. We want you to be wholly devoted to the Lord, your God. We want you to love the

Lord, your God, with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. That's what we're after. The Lord will take care of everything else.

We're after your growth, we're after your maturation. And how does a Christian grow? It is directly related to how you see the person and work of Christ, the risen

Savior, in the book. Why do we believe that the scripture is inerrant, infallible, authoritative, sufficient, and proclaims

Christ? Well, lots of reasons, but because Christ saw the Bible that way, and we are going to have reverence for the words of God like Jesus would.

And we're gonna proclaim to you who Jesus is. And we're gonna do that in a way that we teach sometimes, and we admonish sometimes, and it takes a lot of effort.

That's the life verse for the church. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and making everyone with all wisdom, teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

And I would be remiss without saying this. Are you in Christ? Are you in Christ? Are you a

Christian? Are you a believer? Have you been born again?

Have you been made to see that your own goodness isn't goodness at all? Have you been made to see that maybe one of the biggest sins of all time is self -righteousness?

And you're believing in what my friend calls the religion of the bear. The religion of the bear where if a bear is chasing after you, you only have to run faster than your friend.

And that's the religion of America. I will just be a little bit better than that guy on Jerry Springer, and I'm in good shape.

And the second you do that, then it's Romans chapter one and two. When you realize that person isn't that good, you know right and wrong, and you realize,

Paul said, or you should realize, that if you've got enough sense to judge other people's sin, you're sinful too.

So I have good news for you today. How'd you like to be forgiven for all your sin? All your self -righteousness, all your unrighteousness, all your selfishness, all your covetousness, all your greed, all your lying, all your deception, all your lack of love to the

Lord Jesus Christ. Because friends, Jesus Christ, the one we proclaimed, think about it, never sin with word, deed, action.

And if there's anyone who is wholly devoted to the Lord God, the Father, it was the Son. Wholly devoted.

If there's anyone who is perfect, if there's anyone who is mature, if there was anyone who actually proclaimed himself, it was the

Lord Jesus Christ. And I call you to bow your knee today in repentance and faith, and believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ. And by the way, if you're a believer like that, you won't care what kind of building you worship in.

You'll want to worship the object of your faith as you hear him proclaim in song, in prayer, in preaching the

Lord Jesus Christ. Him we proclaim. Father, I thank you for these dear people.

I thank you for this opportunity to meet in this building as well. You are very generous and gracious to Bethlehem Bible Church.

And we, if we are back in the Old Testament, we might set up a rock and say, you have been faithful thus far.

The Lord has been our help thus far. Daddy, what does that rock mean? It means

God's been faithful so far. And we know that you don't change and you'll be faithful in the future.

And so we would ask that you'd give us wisdom. You'd give us a desire to see our friends at Bethlehem Bible Church grow and mature.

You'd give us patience as we don't mature as fast as we want.

That you would give us a desire at Sunday school, at nursery, Bible studies,

IBS classes to talk about Jesus Christ. Who else is there to talk of but Christ Jesus?

And Father, because of that very issue, we're thankful that you'll guard us against moralism. You'll guard us against sheer duty.

We wanna do things because if you have sent your Son to die for us in love, we don't wanna ever hear the end of it.