Worldly Churches - Part 1 (James 4:1-3)

Well, good morning, glad you're here this morning. Let's open with a word of prayer. Our God and our Father, we come into your presence this morning corporately to submit our hearts to the Word of God.

We pray, our Father, that your Spirit would do his marvelous and mysterious work within us as we hear the Word, that we would respond in faith to what we hear, and that you, in that mysterious way through your Spirit, would cause us to grow in the likeness of Christ.

It is our heart's desire to show forth our family likeness. And so we pray for that end this morning, in Jesus' name, amen. All right, open your Bibles to the fourth chapter of James, James chapter 4.

And this morning's lesson is entitled, Worldly Churches. James chapter 4, Worldly Churches. So let's begin with a question. When you hear the word worldliness, what thoughts come across your mind? What thoughts come to your mind when you hear the word worldliness?

If you are a recovering fundamentalist, it might be something like this. Perhaps the notions of playing cards and rolling dice remind you of a prior illustrations of worldliness. The idea that games of chance would be considered very worldly, and still in some circles, and certainly for many of us, perhaps in our past.

Maybe the slogan, I don't drink, smoke, or chew, or go with girls that do, would also remind you of your past with worldliness and fundamentalism. Or maybe it's shopping on Sundays. Maybe that's what you would, thoughts would come to your mind when you're talking about worldliness in the church, the whole idea that you would shop on a Sunday.

That's worldly, or at least was at one time. Or ladies wearing makeup. Ladies wearing makeup, that's a sign of worldliness for sure. Or how about this, when the church you were part of stopped their Sunday evening service and their midweek Wednesday prayer meeting.

Maybe that was the place where the church became worldly for you. Or maybe it's listening to rock and roll music. That's worldliness. Or worse yet, introducing drums into the morning worship service. There's worldliness for you.

Maybe it's the various and changing dress codes pertaining to men's suits, and ties, and ladies slacks. Ladies and slacks, oh my goodness, that's worldly. Perhaps it's watching smutty movies without the use of vidangel.

That's worldliness for sure. We can laugh a little bit at some of these outdated cultural conceptions, but the fact remains that worldliness is real and is a very serious threat to the life and health of a local church.

It is a real thing, and it is a very serious threat. Beyond that, it is not a new phenomenon. It's not just merely a 20th century or 21st century phenomenon. In fact, it is not strictly related to entertainment choices.

Although often within conservative evangelicalism, that's where it's typically thought of and defined, is within the whole entertainment realm. James is writing here about 20 years after the birth of the church to Jewish believers, and he is addressing the issue of worldliness.

Take a look at verse 4, where he says, Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. So clearly, worldliness is very much on his mind, and he has some very strong and very straightforward language for us this morning with regard to the whole topic of worldliness in the church.

Now, let's define it to begin with. Let's define worldliness to start with. And so this will be our working definition. Worldliness is fundamentally adopting as our own the values and interests of a world in rebellion against its creator.

I'll repeat it for you.

Worldliness is fundamentally adopting as its own the values and interests of a world in rebellion against its creator. So for the believer, it's to adopt the values and interests of the unsaved world.

That is worldliness. In this section of the book of James, he is going to confront the worldliness of factionalism and disunity among the people of God. He's going to address this particular demonstration or illustration or examples of worldliness, factionalism, and disunity.

Now, actually, we are in the midst of a context, and it begins back in chapter three, where he begins his exposure and corrective to this problem by first confronting the would-be teachers of the church.

Remember this from some weeks ago, verse one. Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we will incur a stricter.

Judgment.

This leads in his teaching onto the dangers of the tongue and the inability of the people to control their tongues. And that should, of course, drive us to inhumility to the foot of the cross of Christ, right?

Verse two and following, for we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man able to bridle the whole body as well. Now, if we put the bits into the mouths of horses so that they will obey us, we direct their entire body as well.

Look at the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rutter wherever the pilot desires. So also the tongue is a small part of the body, yet it boasts of great things.

See how great a forest is set aflame by such a fire. And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity. The tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body and is set on fire the course of our life and is set on fire by hell.

For every species of beasts and birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea is tamed and has been tamed by the human race, but no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil and full of deadly poison.

With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men who have been made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way.

Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh. Last week we took up the topic of wisdom, you'll remember.

And the wisdom that we all assume exists when we open our mouths to speak. Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. We were taught last week by James that it is our deeds that reveal the source of our.

Wisdom.

Worldly wisdom produces discord and all kinds of evil among the people of God. Where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder in every kind of evil thing. Yet godly wisdom, which is peace-loving, produces righteousness.

Verses 17 and 18. But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering, without hypocrisy, and the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

In other words, peace-loving people in a church will sow a harvest that will result in a God honoring righteousness. In contrast, James says that the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of.

God.

You remember that back from chapter 1 and verse 20. So this morning, here we are. We're beginning chapter 4, and the discussion of worldliness in the church is just a continuation, really, of what we have been looking at in chapter 3 over these last weeks.

And so it is in particular this morning, as we look at the first three verses of chapter 4, that I want to see with you an identification of the characteristics of a worldly church. So, three marks of a worldly church.

That's the big idea this morning. Verses 1 through 3. Three marks of a worldly church. Chapter 4, verse 1. What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members?

You lust and do not have. So you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain. So you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

Three marks of the worldly church. First, worldly churches are quarrelsome. The first mark is that worldly churches are quarrelsome. Verses 1 and 2. What is the source of the quarrels and conflicts among you?

Notice here that James is attacking this problem head on, and he's asking them to consider the source of the chronic problems that they are experiencing within these local fellowships. Notice as well that the quarrels and conflicts are plural, meaning that there are lots of them.

All kinds of quarrels, all kinds of conflicts that are happening in these churches. And so James says this is a chronic problem and it needs to be addressed. And the two words that he uses here to describe the situation are really interesting words.

They're very strong words. Talk about that in a moment. And so is the construction of the sentence in its original Greek. It would be more literally something like this. From where the quarrels, from where the conflicts.

The quarrels and conflicts are there. From where do they come? Where do they come? This word quarrels, translated in English as quarrels. Polemos is the Greek word and it has a meaning of war. War or battle or strife.

War, battle, strife. And it speaks about a protracted state of hostility. The idea of a protracted state of hostility, like a war goes on for lengthy periods of time. Conflicts, makei, speaks of a fight or a contention or a dispute or a controversy.

It's more the idea of something that just breaks out in a particular event. A sudden outburst of the hostility. You might think of it about this way. That the word translated quarrels speaks about a cold war.

And the conflict speaks about the idea when the cold war goes hot over a particular issue or for a period of time. This particular combination of words was used in the cultures of that day to refer to political or national conflicts.

So the physical realm of warfare. And also figuratively to things like feuds or conflicts or even open hostility. Between individuals and groups of people. So this is what the words are talking about.

It's not just like a disagreement. This is a war. This is intense. So we put these words together. They refer, I believe, to the factional bickering and personal animosities within local churches. That lead to ecclesiastical strife.

That bring about the ecclesiastical strife within a church. Sometimes these problems sort of smolder under the surface. Kind of like a forest fire. It goes under the pine needle, the bed of the pine needles.

And sort of smolders there a while. Until eventually something provides enough oxygen or whatever. And it breaks out into an open fire. Perhaps it's the people's tongues. Where he speaks in chapter 3 about the tongue, right?

And he uses the analogy.

It's like a spark starting a fire.

So it's probably, yes, the tongue that causes this cold war. That's smoldering under the surface of a church. To erupt into this blaze.

People's tongues scorch others.

Now, this kind of terminology is not only for that day. We use it ourselves. We're in an interesting election, national election cycle, right? And so these same kinds of words are used today within political discourse.

People talk about destroying our political enemies. They'll talk about waging an advertising war. They'll talk about air cover and ground attack. And they'll use all these kinds of descriptive words to speak about politics in our own day.

And the reason is, I think it's because it's inherent among sinful men who are seeking positions of leadership and authority to think and act in violent ways.

I think that's true.

Unless they are moderated by the Spirit of God, then that is for sure that they will act out in very violent ways. I am in the third volume of a wonderful three-volume history of the world. I commend it to you.

The author's name is Susan Wise Bauer. And they are thick. They're somewhere north of 800 pages each, approaching 1 ,000 in the first volume. Excellent. She's excellent. But one of the things that stands out to me, having finished the first two and, you know, third of the way into the third, is this.

That violence and leadership transitions go hand in hand historically. And not just among the pagans. True of the pagans, for sure. When a new regime comes in, they immediately round up and kill all the male relatives of the prior regime.

But guess what? Even when the world was Christianized after Constantine, the same thing happened over and over and over again among the Christian kings. Violence is very much a part of the transition of power.

Why? Because it's deep inside us. It's very deep inside us. And it is a default switch when we want something. And in this case, we want power. We want authority. And it is being denied to us in some form or fashion.

Unless the Spirit of God is at work, then we too will act in violent ways. Now, the extent, back to James, the extent of the hostilities that is revealed here is actually shocking. It's really shocking.

James says, verse 2, they're murdering each other. You see it? You lust and do not have, so you commit murder.

They are fighting.

They're quarreling. Again, that word translated waging war. They're waging war within the church. Now, does James actually mean that Christians were killing each other at church business meetings? Is that what he is saying?

I, as a young believer, have witnessed some pretty rough business meetings. My earlier orientation among the Baptists was, yeah, I've been to some pretty rough.

Business meetings.

Shouting, angry words were very much common. There was a particular church that Carol and I were part of many, many decades ago now where before the business meeting, and they had lots of them, before the business meeting, they would all pray that the Lord's will would be done.

And I'd only been a believer now for a couple of years, but I remember listening to this prayer that the Lord's will be done, and then the meeting would begin, and ultimately the issue would be decided by a 51 majority rule.

And I remember thinking, even at that moment in time, that is really strange that the will of God can be so divided among people who all just prayed for it in this fashion. But I remember one meeting stands out in particular.

There was a particularly long and late fight about the starting salary for a part-time youth pastor, how much he was going to be paid. And after several hours of wrangling over that, the argument spread to the amount of money being spent on office supplies.

And in particular, the purchase of a box of pencils. And was it necessary? Sometime after 11 o 'clock at night, it finally ended with the 51 majority rule. And I went home and I thought, what have I just witnessed?

Crazy.

It actually reminds me of the church marquee sign. Some churches have those sign things out front where you can change the letters and put up the sermon title and things like that. It reminds me of the one that read, today's sermon, what is hell like?

And then under the sermon title were the words, church business meeting tonight. Yeah, I think that's right.

Yeah.

Church business meetings can get out of control. They can get out of control. I personally know of a church in Southern California that the church business meeting got so far out of control that the police had to be called to restore order and prevent violence at a church business meeting.

But I've never heard, I have to say this, I've never heard of people murdering each other. I've never heard of that. So I think here it's probably best to see James's reference to the inner sin of hatred motivated by envy, which is the source of the outward act of murder.

I think that's probably what he's talking about. Again, he is highly influenced by his older brother. So here are the older brother's words in Matthew chapter 5 and verses 21 and 22. You have heard that the ancients were told you shall not commit murder and whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.

But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court and whoever shall say to his brother good for nothing. I've heard worse than that. You shall be guilty before the Supreme Court and whoever shall say you fool shall be guilty enough to go into the fiery hell.

Or John in 1 John 3 15, everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in them. So actual murder? Probably not. But certainly all of the inner fuel necessary for Torah up that way.

You know, quarreling churches are evangelism killers. You do know that, right? A quarreling church is an evangelism killer for the church. Churches that have an atmosphere of quarreling and conflict, they give off an aroma of hell, really.

And there's a certain smell of sulfur in the air that visitors pick up on quickly and they want no part of it. Again, a personal anecdote, but many, many years ago, many decades ago, when Carol and I and our family first moved to Southern California from Texas, we visited this large Baptist church in town.

It was the place to be. And we got there on that first Sunday. And evidently, not evidently, truthfully, the pastor had been forced out by the deacons the week before. And the congregation, it was a large congregation, many, many hundreds.

It was clear to somebody walking in who knew nothing about what was going on that there was two churches now meeting in the same building and glaring at each other. It was a mess. We didn't go back, needless to say.

It was just not the place we wanted to establish our family in that kind of a setting.

Why?

Because quarreling churches are evangelism killers, evangelism killers. All right, one more just an anecdote, just to drive it home. 10 years, at least 10 years later, after that particular situation, I was having breakfast one morning by myself at a local place and I overheard a couple of people talking in the booth next to me.

They were still talking about that church and how toxic it was. 10 years later, the church didn't exist anymore. There had been a merger and it had been completely overdone and renamed and it was on to its second pastor.

And yet they still in their mind, that was that toxic place. So this kind of toxicity contained the reputation of a church for decades and limit its evangelistic appeal. So worldly churches, they are first quarrelsome, quarrelsome.

Secondly, worldly churches are carnal. Worldly churches are carnal. James opens up this whole section by asking this question, right? What is the source of the hostilities within the church? And he answers it by locating them in a hedonistic spirit that is waging war inside of the members themselves.

They wage war in our members, he says. You see at the end of verse one, in other words, the seat of our desire. The war is being raged at the level of our desires. Notice the word pleasures. You see, it is not the source your pleasures that wage war.

On the inside, hedonis is the Greek word. We get the English word hedonism from that. And it's the idea of sensual pleasure or gratification or desire or lust. And in the context here, I think the strong desire of the self-love is in a clamoring for recognition within the congregation.

That is the source of the pleasure that is driving them. They want to be recognized, whoever these are, want to be recognized as leaders among the people of God. And James says, notice that they are lusting and envious.

Verse two, right? You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain. So they lust and they are envious. Or they are envious rather. It's the verbal form of the noun for jealousy.

All right, the verbal form of the noun that's used for jealousy. It's used in this letter in verses 14 and 16 for jealousy. Speaks of a hot or an intense kind of feeling. So they're frustrated. These people are frustrated and they're frustrated because their passions are going unfulfilled.

Three times that's what he says. Their desires are being unfulfilled. You do not have because you do not ask. You do not have, beginning of verse two, so you commit murder. You ask and do not receive, verse three.

So three times he says that their desires are being frustrated. What they want is not happening for them. And so simply put, they respond in the flesh to this frustration. And the reason it's simple is because they're carnal, they're earthly, and demonic in these kinds of responses.

Verse 15, chapter 3, right? The wisdom which is not that which comes down from above is earthly, natural, and demonic. So there's a demonic response to this kind of frustration. And that shouldn't be so hard to understand.

I mean, what was Satan's original transgression? Wasn't it a frustration of a desire for a higher place? James is talking here about unspiritual people lusting after leadership and power among the people of God.

That's what he's talking about. This is the source of church conflict. And beloved, we shouldn't kid ourselves. We should not kid ourselves. It is not because we are engaged in a noble fight for the truth that we get drawn into contentions within a church.

We shouldn't kid ourselves in that. It is often because of our own unmet desires, or our lusts, or our passions for power, influence, outcomes that cause us, like soldiers planning a military campaign, they drive us to the use of our mouths in the service ultimately of the devil.

You've heard me say it here before. I'll say it many times, I'm sure. And that is people embody their ministry, their ambitions become baptized, and then it becomes a matter of truth. Churches split because holy wars within the church break out.

And a holy war is something in which people see their own cause as so aligned with the will of God that the possibility of compromise becomes akin to apostasy and thus impossible. And so the church is hardened within the congregation, factions hardened into their places, and it will even separate family members.

I certainly know of more than one occasion of family members themselves who have been separated because they found up on opposite sides of a church split, and they no longer can talk to one another. They become hardened in all of this.

In fact, the feuding parties would rather kill the church than see the other side win. They would often rather kill the church than see the other side win. And I can't help it, but it does remind me in 1 Kings 3 when Solomon's first test for wisdom comes.

You remember this with the two women. And the king says, verse 25, divide the living child in two and give half to the one and half to the other. Then the woman whose child was the living one spoke to the king for she was deeply stirred over her son.

And she said, oh my Lord, give her the living child and by no means kill him. But the other said, he shall neither be mine nor yours.

Divide him.

All too often within a church conflict that gets to the place of a split. That's exactly what happens. People would rather kill it than somehow find a compromise and keep it healthy. Jim Berg in his very fine book, Changed Into His Image, a book I would commend to you, Changed Into His Image, Jim Berg, B-E-R-G.

He says, there are just two choices on the shelf, pleasing God or pleasing self. And that is so very true. Churches seldom split over theology, seldom. They typically split over raw politics, raw politics.

Behind the issue that supposedly causes the split is the struggle for who's in charge, who is in charge. By the way, this again, shouldn't surprise any of us. What is the source of the conflict within our marriages?

Hmm?

Is it not our own frustrated desire to be the one who makes the decision to be in charge?

Yeah, all too often, all too often.

Worldly churches are quarrelsome. Second, worldly churches are carnal. Third, worldly churches are prayerless. Worldly churches are prayerless churches. Verses two and three. You lust and do not have, so you commit murder.

You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.

James gives us two reasons here, two reasons why the readers, his readers, right, this first century gatherings, two reasons why they have been frustrated in their attempts to satisfy their desire. Their desire for what?

Their desire for leadership, their desire for authority, their desire for being well thought of by others within the local congregation. They are frustrated by it. James gives us two reasons, and both of those reasons have to do with a lack of biblical prayer.

There are two ways that James identifies in which they are not praying in a biblical way, and both of these then leads to their frustration. Each of the reasons probably refers to a different group. It was probably a different group.

Both, they're both angling for influence within the congregation. They're both frustrated. They're both responding in the flesh to these things, and their prayer's life, if I can call it that, is not biblical, but it's not biblical in two different ways.

So first, the first group, I think in the greater context here of this letter, the first group desires recognition as leaders in the church, and I would take you all the way back again to chapter three and verse one, okay?

Otherwise, that verse, by the way, just stands out as a weird verse in the middle of a larger context. If it is not talking about the angling and the desire for leadership and recognition and authority in the church, then verse one doesn't make a whole lot of sense, okay?

That's your context. They're desiring to be leaders, but that requires wisdom, and that is a commodity that is in very short supply among this particular group of people. Very short supply.

Why?

Why is it in short supply? And the reason is, is because verse two, chapter four, they have failed to ask for it. It's not what he says. You do not have because you do not ask. Be reminded of chapter one in verse five.

If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. Leaders need to be people who demonstrate a biblical wisdom. This group clearly doesn't, and they're frustrated that they don't have the status that they long for because there is no demonstration of wisdom for them.

Why is there no demonstration of biblical wisdom within them? The answer is simple, because they're not asking for it. They're operating here entirely in the flesh. Instead of turning to God as the giver of every good and perfect gift, chapter one, verse 17, they're attempting to satisfy their desires through their own efforts.

They're politicking, trying to elevate themselves through all of these worldly ways. We talked about that last week in the whole discussion of wisdom, right? Jesus' words in John 15, five, apart from me, you can do nothing.

Apart from me, you can do nothing. You will not find yourself as an influencer, if I can use that, not in the way it's being used today, but in a more appropriate way, among the people of God. In other words, if you want to be seen as one who possesses divine wisdom and is a place where somebody would go to seek advice or counsel or whatever, you're looking for that, and it's a good and noble thing, right?

First Timothy three, if any man aspires to the office of elder, it's a good thing he desires to do so. This is a good thing, provided it's motivated in the right way.

You have to pray.

And if you try to find this without searching for the wisdom of God, you will be frustrated and you will resort to undivisible means to get it. As one commentator said, instead of wrestling with God, they wrangle bitterly with man.

Instead of wrestling with God, they wrangle bitterly with man. Verse three, you ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasure. So the second group, the first group doesn't even pray at all.

They left God out of the equation. This group, the second group of individuals here, they have not abandoned prayer. They still do pray, but they've lost the sight of the purpose and the promise of biblical prayer itself.

They're attempting now to wield prayer like the rubbing of a magic lamp to get the genie to give them what they want. They're asking, they're asking, but they're asking in the wrong way with the wrong motives.

You do not receive because you ask with wrong motives. Kakos is the Greek. I remember this is one of the first Greek words I learned. I learned it because when I was a child, the use of the word kaka was considered a pretty bad word to say.

And I always thought it was a really bad word until I found out what it meant in the Greek. And then I thought, oh, okay, it means bad or evil. That's what the word actually means. And so these people are asking, but they're asking with kaka motives.

Okay, evil motives, bad motives. And what are their evil motives? That they may consume, you see it, that they may consume what they've been asking for on their own pleasures. This word consume, it's the same, it's the same Greek word that she was over in Luke chapter 15 and verse 14 of the prodigal son.

What did he do with his inheritance that he received early? He consumed it on himself. And they are here, they want this recognition.

Why?

So that they might consume it for their own pleasures. Again, hedone, same word. Okay, their own hedonistic pleasures. That's what they want. Essentially, they're asking God to install them in leadership and have the rest of the congregation see them as leaders and teachers and wise people.

When the fact of the matter is, is their lives are a disaster. They're not role models of godliness and wisdom. And they are not ones that other believers should follow or would want to follow, but they still have this passion for it.

And they are asking. So what kind of prayer does God answer, right? These are two illustrations. One is prayerlessness. The other is a self-focused prayer on elevating ourselves for our own personal purposes.

What kind of prayer does God answer with regard to those who are seeking or holding leadership among the people of God? What kind of prayer? Can James answer that for us? I think he can. I think he can.

I think that the prayers that God hears and God answers are actually back in verse 17 of chapter three. Earnest prayers for purity, for a peace-loving disposition, for a gentleness, for a willingness to yield to others, for a merciful attitude towards believers and unbelievers, to be impartial in one's judgments, and to be sincere.

I think those are the kinds of prayers and requests that God hears, that God honors, and that God grants among those who are in leadership among the people of God or those who desire leadership. If it's a good thing for one to desire the leadership of an elder, it's a good thing to desire other lesser roles, other roles of lesser responsibility, lesser commitment and obligation.

It's good for that too.

What should we pray for? We should pray that we'd be peacemakers. Peacemakers. Whose lives bring forth the fruit of righteousness. That will be the prayer that God will be delighted to answer for every one of us if we will but make it.

So, quarrelsome churches. I said it last week. I'll say it again this, probably again next. I am very grateful for this congregation, for this fellowship. I'm very grateful for the peace, the harmony that exists here.

It is not without its problems.

Why?

Because it's filled with sinners. Filled with sinners. As soon as I got here, there's guaranteed to be one. But we are blessed. We are blessed with a unity and a peacefulness and a leadership that is not clamoring after authority and power.

God forbid. God forbid that that spirit take root among us.

And it's essential that every one of us keep a guard on this. That we don't feed what lies in the hearts of all of us. Given enough provocation.

May God protect us.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for this church. It is a church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a church for which he has died and purchased through his own shed blood. A precious blood without value. One that cannot be valued.

The very blood of the Son of God. And every month when we celebrate the Lord's table together, we proclaim the reality of our union in Christ. I thank you for that. I thank you for the reality that it provides opportunity for us to be reflective.

That there would be no unresolved hostility. Within our own heart and between us. That you put within your children both a desire and the ability in the spirit to humble our own hearts and to live at peace with all men.

Father, may you continue to shield and protect this fellowship. As we hear the word, even this morning, I pray for our brother who will bring it in our pastor's absence. And may you grant him the ability to make it plain and clear for us.

That we would grow in the likeness of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.