Ascension Presbyterian Lord's Day Worship

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corporate worship of our God. Please stand and hear God call you to worship through his word.
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Blessed are you, Lord God of Israel, our Father forever and ever.
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Yours, O Lord is the greatness, the power and the glory, the victory and the majesty for all that is in heaven and in earth is yours.
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Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head over all.
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Both riches and honor come from you and you reign over all and over all.
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In your hand is the power and might. In your hand is to make great and to give strength to all.
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Now, therefore, our God, we thank you and praise your glorious name.
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Let us pray. O Lord, you are the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise
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God. You are the blessed and only sovereign, the king of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no name has seen or can see.
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To you be the honor and eternal dominion. We bless the
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God and father of our Lord, Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
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We praise the glory of your grace that chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
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We thank you that in love you predestined us to his to adoption, his sons through Jesus Christ.
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We rejoice that we have been sealed in Christ with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance.
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We worship and adore you, father, son, and Holy Spirit. Open the eyes of our hearts, that we may know the hope of your calling, the riches of the glory of our inheritance and the surpassing greatness of your power toward us in Jesus Christ.
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All of this you have brought about in Christ when you raised him from the dead and seated him at your right hand in the heavenly places, receive our worship and our praise to the glory of your grace.
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And we ask this in Christ's name. Amen. Please kneel as you are able for the corporate confession of sin.
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Let us join together in confessing our sins. Savior, help me for I am slow to learn and prone to forget.
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I am pained by my graceless heart, my prayerless days, my poverty of love, my sloth in the heavenly race, my sullied conscience, my wasted hours, and my unspent opportunities.
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I am blind while the light shines around me. Take the scales from my eyes, the rising dust from my heart.
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Please stand and receive these words of assurance of pardon. He himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we having died the sins might live for righteousness, by whose stripes you are healed.
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My brothers and sisters in Christ rejoice for those who are in Christ, their sins are forgiven.
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Amen. Please take up the Trinity hymnal and open to him to 90.
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Hail the day that sees him rise him to 90. Please take up the insert and find the one that is labeled 71 a for our psalm of the week.
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In you Oh Lord, I put my trust, the tune which we will use is sweet.
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Oh, how sweet. Sweet hour of prayer. What was it? How sweet and awesome is the place for Psalm 71.
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In you Oh Lord, I put my trust. Please remain standing for the reading of God's word from Genesis chapter three.
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Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, has
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God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden,
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God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die.
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For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
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So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.
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She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sowed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings.
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And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the
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Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, where are you?
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So he said, I heard your voice in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.
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And he said, who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you that you should not eat?
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Then the man said, the woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I ate.
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And the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you have done? The woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.
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So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than all cattle and more than every beast of the field.
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On your belly you shall go and you shall eat dust all days of your life. And I will put eminency between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.
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He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel. So the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception.
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In pain, you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband and he shall rule over you.
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Then to Adam, he said, because you have heeded the voice of your wife and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you saying you shall not eat of it.
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Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil, you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles, it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the herb of the field.
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In the sweat of your face, you shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken. For dust you are into dust, you shall return.
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And Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. Also for Adam and his wife, the
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Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. Then the Lord God said, Behold, the man has become like one of us to no good and evil.
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And now lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken.
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So he drove out the man and he placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.
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This is the word of the Lord. Let us continue our worship by joining our voices together and confessing our common
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Christian faith in the singing of the Apostles Creed. Please take up the insert once more and find the one that is labeled 529
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A, see the conqueror mounts and triumph. Our brother DJ led us through a practice pass through a couple of these verses.
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We're going to sing all of the A side and then flip over and then sing all of the
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B. Brother any comments or encouragement before we get started. See the conqueror mounts and triumph.
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Amen. Please now make preparations for the prayers of the people and seeing the multitudes.
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Jesus went up on a mountain and when he was seated, his disciples came to him.
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Then he opened his mouth and taught them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be filled.
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Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see
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God. Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall be called sons of God.
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Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
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Blessed are you when they revile and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely.
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For my sake, finding ourselves in agreement with all these things.
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We join our voices together and say, amen. Please stand and take up the psalm insert one again and find what has number 235A.
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Oh, t 'was a joyful sound to hear. Our psalm of the month from Psalm 122.
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Amen. Please open your
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Bibles with me to the book of Genesis. We'll be taking a look at two sections of the book of Genesis.
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The first one from Genesis 1, verse 26 through 28.
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And then we will look at Genesis 2, verses 1 through 3. Genesis 1, chapter 1, verses 26 and 28 through 28.
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These are the words of God. Then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness.
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Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
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So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them.
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Then God blessed them, and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.
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Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.
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Now chapter 2, verses 1 through 3. Thus the heavens and the earth and all the host of them were finished.
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And on the seventh day, God ended his work, which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which he had done.
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Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it, he rested from all his work, which
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God had created and made. Let us pray.
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Almighty and eternal and merciful God, whose word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path, open and illuminate our minds that we may purely and perfectly understand your word, that our lives may be conformed to what we have rightly understood, and then in nothing, we may be displeasing to your majesty, and we ask all of this through the name of Jesus Christ our
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Lord, amen. You may be seated. Well, as we are endeavoring to rebuild a
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Christian culture and to conquer the world for Christ and to establish the covenant parish model here in Longwood, we must recognize that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but spiritual and powerful to the pulling down of strongholds and powers and principalities.
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And these spiritual weapons take many forms. For example, getting married and staying married, having children in the context of marriage and having many children and raising them to the glory of God and loving and serving one another.
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And one of the other weapons of our warfare is work.
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Today, we are going to consider the biblical doctrine of work.
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Work has fallen on hard times in our culture these days. In many circles, work has become a bad word.
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Many think that the idea of having to work at all is wicked. This is especially true in the non -Christian world.
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They see work as a burden, the result of greedy capitalists, the byproduct of some systemic cause like racism or white supremacy.
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These people are incredulous that we have to work for things such as food, clothing, shelter, or medical care.
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They consider these to be the necessities of life and are therefore human rights and should be guaranteed and given to us by the government without work somehow.
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But it is not only in the non -Christian circles that we see work has fallen on hard times.
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We even see a negative view of work within the Christian culture, within Christian circles, within the church.
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Many say that work is a byproduct of the fall, that it is part of the curse to which
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God has placed on man due to his sin, rather than seeing for what it rightly is, something given by God to man before the fall, although it is impacted by the fall.
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So as we come to discuss and consider this theme of work, I think the first question that might come to our mind, what is work?
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We can say work is good and necessary and created by God for his people, and that is true.
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But biblically speaking, work is the means by which man implements or executes the dominion mandate.
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When God calls man to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth, this will take work.
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Work is the assignment by God to man to make the created order the garden.
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We are told in Genesis 2 that God planted a garden in Eden and then proceeded to tell man to make the rest of creation like the garden.
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Dominion taking is done by work, all kinds of work, various kinds of work intersecting and supporting other kinds of work to extend dominion.
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But we ought not to think of dominion taking as an exclusively Christian thing.
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God set dominion in the hearts of man when he created them, and we see the enemies of God taking dominion all around us.
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We see the Muslims taking dominion. We see the Chinese communists taking dominion.
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We see the secular humanists taking dominion. They are all working and toiling and laboring to take dominion day by day, year by year.
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We would all agree that that is an ungodly dominion. Ungodly dominion is where it is by man and for man.
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Godly dominion is a dominion commanded by God and for God based on the promises of God and all for God's glory.
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And just as there is godly dominion and ungodly dominion, there is godly work and ungodly work.
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Godly work is always future oriented. It is dominion oriented for the glory of God.
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We don't go about our work just for the present. We don't go to work just to meet our basic needs.
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No, rather we work for the beneficial impact on future generations, for our families, for our
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Christian communities, and for our neighbors. The Bible talks about planting seeds.
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When we plant something today, it is with the expectation and a promise of a future benefit.
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We plant a seed in order that a tree or a plant will grow and produce fruit.
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There is a hopeful expectation of the harvest and there is fruit in its season.
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This may call to mind what we read in Psalm one some time ago. In one three, we read this.
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And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, he being the righteous man that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf also shall not wither and whatever he does shall prosper.
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The godly man thinks for the future. He is planting for the future.
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He is working for the future and all that he plants and all that he plans. He is looking forward to a harvest that will benefit many.
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And this is true obviously with planting food, but it's also true in other endeavors.
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It is true when building a business or establishing a school or working within a community and spreading the gospel.
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There is a hopeful expectation of reaping a harvest, trusting in God.
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We can see this in first Corinthians 15, 58. Paul writes this, therefore my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the
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Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain. The key here is abounding in the work of the
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Lord, doing what he has given us to do, remembering that we were created in Christ Jesus for good works,
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God's works. And this dominion oriented work is building a
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Christian civilization. As we reflect on the verses which we have read from Genesis chapter one, which we call the dominion mandate, it has another name, the cultural mandate.
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There is a call here to build a Christian civilization. We are not called to build something for ourselves, something like we may have seen in the
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Tower of Babel project and all of the Tower of Babel projects that have followed, that glorify man, that put man at the center.
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No, our culture is under God, for God, to the glory of God.
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And our dominion that we seek is not our dominion, but his and its future oriented.
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There is a special note here to parents. We know that this dominion call in Genesis one is a call to civilization work.
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And he has given us a call to be fruitful and multiply. And that is included in taking dominion and building a civilization.
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But it is also a call to have children. In Ephesians six,
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Paul is writing to the predominantly Gentile church in Ephesus.
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And he writes this in chapter, verse four of chapter six. And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the
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Lord. The word translated training is the word padeia, which means enculturation.
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Paul's command here is a restatement of what we read in Genesis to be fruitful and multiply.
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He is telling us that the tools of our civilization building are our children and our grandchildren.
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From where we stand now, looking at the ruins of the old Christendom, and as we endeavor to build a new
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Christendom, we will plant our seeds and we will water and labor in our work.
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And we will do so in the expectation of reaping a great harvest. Sadly, we see another type of work that is often being engaged in the
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Christian community. It is an ungodly work. It is not a work that is future oriented.
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Ungodly work is not dominion oriented. Ungodly work is not civilization building, but ungodly work is that work which is focused on the here and now.
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It is the kind of work that is looking just to survive. People go to work, they make money to pay the bills, they have a job, and they are just shuffling along, living for today.
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And that doesn't mean that each and every one of us hasn't experienced that in our daily lives, where we have seasons in our lives, where we have tough times, we might say.
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This is not talking about that. This is talking about engaging in this kind of work for this and this only, to get by.
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There's no engagement in civilization building. We have to be honest.
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We have been sold a lie in the church. We have been told that working in this world is not what
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Christians are supposed to do. This world belongs to the prince of this world, the prince of the power of the air, we are told.
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That investing and building and laboring in this world will only benefit the kingdom of man.
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That the kingdom of God is spiritual and has nothing to do with this world.
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And after all, don't you know, it's all going to burn up anyway? We have been hoodwinked by false theology.
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Theologies that appeal to our laziness and our self -gratification.
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We have been given theologies to present a bad view of the future. Theologies that encourage living for today.
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A practical eat and drink for tomorrow. We will be caught up in the rapture.
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This view has caused much mischief in the Christian world. Not only does it result in the failure to enter into godly work, but it is encouraging people to live for the present with no thought of the consequence to the future.
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And this present oriented living breeds recklessness, irresponsibility, immorality, indebtedness, or in short, poor stewardship.
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Actions have consequences. This view in the Christian church has been going on for over a century.
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And we can see the fruits of it in our day. The disintegration of the family, the disintegration of the church, the disintegration of the culture.
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Lewdness is commonplace. The sexually deviant are heralded as heroes.
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The family man is derided and driven from the marketplace. This is ungodly work.
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We need to recover the godly, future oriented, dominion taking work.
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The work to which we were created in Christ Jesus to perform. Naturally, this leads to another question.
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Why should we work? Well, first, we work because we are created in the image of God.
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In Genesis 1, 26, we read, then God said, let us make man in our image after our likeness, let him have dominion.
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We work because God works. God is a worker and we are made in his image.
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God is a creator and he created work. And not only did he create all that there is, he sustains it and he upholds the entire universe through his work.
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God works in the governing of the created order. God worked with Christ in redemption, saving us from our sins.
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God the Holy Spirit is even now working in our sanctification. In short, as one man said, we are never more like God than when we are working and we are never less like God when we are lazy.
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When we work, we emulate our Lord and Savior, our elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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In John 5, 17, Jesus said, my father works and I work.
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And we are commanded to emulate our Lord and Savior, to put on the Lord Jesus Christ and our
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Lord works. The Christian loves the fact that he is created in the image of God and therefore he should love to work.
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He recognizes that that is what he was created for. He seeks to hear the well done, good and faithful servant at the end of his days and endeavors to have the promise of Proverbs 22, 29 applied to him.
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Do you see a man who excels in his work? He shall stand before kings.
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The Christian man rejoices in his work, or at least he should because he remembers that we are never more like God than when we are working and never less like God than when we are lazy.
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Laziness is the antithesis of godliness. Remember what we read in Proverbs 18, 9.
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He who is slothful in his work is a brother to him who is a great destroyer.
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Rather than building and emulating our Lord, the laziness of man destroys.
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Well, this is the first reason to which we work because we are created in the image of God.
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The second reason we work is so that we may understand rest. The writer of the book of Hebrews reminds us that there remains a
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Sabbath rest for the people of God. This is the rest that the Christian has to look forward to at the consummation of the kingdom on that glorious day when the
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Lord Jesus Christ returns and we sit down in the marriage feast of the lamb.
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In this, the writer tells us that we will enter into God's rest and that we may rest from our works as God has rested from his.
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But that is in the future. It is not yet, but like so many things with the unfolding of the kingdom, there is an already and not yet.
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That future rest in the presence of God is in the future, but we have another kind of rest today.
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And the better to understand that rest, we must understand the relationship between work and rest.
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We have the command of the Sabbath articulated for us in Exodus 20, where we read, "'Remember the
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Sabbath day and keep it holy. "'Six days you shall labor and do all your work, "'but the seventh day is the
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Sabbath to the Lord your God. "'In it you shall do no work, you nor your son, "'nor your daughter, nor your male servant, "'nor your female servant, nor your cattle, "'nor your stranger who is within your gates.
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"'For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, "'the sea and all that is in them "'and rested on the seventh day.
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"'Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it. Incidentally, as we endeavor to enable and build a new
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Christendom, there will come a time when all commerce will cease on the Lord's day.
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Even those who are unbelievers, why? Because we have this command, neither you nor your son, et cetera, nor the stranger.
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Who is within your great gates. The unbelievers should not work either, for they too need a day of rest.
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In these verses, we have two commands, one to work and the other to rest.
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In a sense, we can't even understand the concept of rest if we do not work. We are to work hard for six days out of seven and rest one day out of seven.
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Rest is defined in the context of work. But what does it mean to rest?
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Well, we've already talked a little bit about what godly work is, that work of dominion building and culture building, the work of our labors, investing in and planting the future.
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But what does rest look like? On that one day of rest, we lay aside all of our common employments and recreations.
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First, it is a spiritual rest. It is a day when we engage in the worship of God.
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When we come together for public worship and renew our covenant with God.
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Where we give thanks to him for the blessings to which he has given us. And we rest in trust in his providential care.
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It involves physical rest and that the whole day. We lay aside our regular employments and that includes thinking about work, talking about work, and everything that has to do with our common employment.
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The only work which we are required to maintain on this day, we would sum up of works of necessity or works of charity.
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All other work is to be laid aside. We also lay aside our normal recreations, which we may enjoy legitimately on other days, but not on the
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Lord's day. And this is where some people engage in a discussion of the things that we can and cannot do when it comes to recreation.
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And when we do that, we get off into a rabbit trail of do's and don'ts. I do not plan to do that today.
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But we should remember this, that it is meant to be a day of rest.
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Dominion taking is hard work. We should rest our souls, rest our minds, and rest our bodies for that work.
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And it includes resting from certain recreations. We must remember what our
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Lord said in Mark 2, 27. The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the
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Sabbath. And that Sabbath is for rest. I think that rest in the modern
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Christian community also has fallen on hard times. The busyness of our life has caused us to work almost seven days out of seven.
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This may explain why much of our dominion taking is lame, halting, pathetic, unrealized and unfulfilled because we're simply worn out from all of our work and our recreation.
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Without a day of rest, we cannot work. If we do not have our rest, we will be unable to work.
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And if we don't work, we cannot rest. We cannot get caught up in the fallacy if one is good, two is better when we seek to add more rest days than what
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God has mandated. This is seen in our culture in the weekend mentality.
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We live for the weekend. We must go with what
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God has commanded. Rest one day in seven, work six out of seven.
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And on those six days, we are to work hard. I would like to mention something that's fairly controversial.
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And that is, you will notice that there is no mention of retirement here.
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Retirement may not be bad if one means stopping one form of work to take up another.
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But if one means with retirement, stopping work to take up the pursuit of pleasures, that is antithetical to the work that God has given men to do.
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This is an attempt, perhaps, to enter into his rest ahead of schedule.
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We must remember that we never read an Abraham retire. In fact, we do read about how
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Abraham marries Keturah after Sarah dies and has six more sons.
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We don't know much more beyond that, but it sounds an awful lot like dominion taking. Stopping work is not good for men.
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If you retire from one job, that is good, but keep working, keep investing in the future.
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Grandfathers and grandmothers, aunts and uncles, older men and older women have a lot to offer, the shaping of future generations through their grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and the younger men and the younger women in the church.
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That is a work well worth doing, and it is much needed. Well, that is the second reason why we work.
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The third, we work because that is what we are called to do.
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The word calling has come to mean something different and specific in the church today.
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First, let's throw out. Christians are the called out ones.
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The Greek word that is often translated, church, is the word ekklesia, which comes from a combination of the prefix ek, which means out of or from, and kaleo, which means to call.
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We have been called out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light. We have been called out of the kingdom of Satan and into the kingdom of our glorious God.
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But we have been called to a purpose, and that purpose includes and means work.
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You may remember those 10 glorious verses that open the second chapter of the book of Ephesians, where we read about our life in Adam, what we were before the
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Lord converted us. But then that section ends on verse 10, that we were created in Christ Jesus for good works.
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We are called to those good works. Calling today is somehow treated as some sort of a mystery.
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We say, well, it's hard to define. There's some mystery to it. We just can't lay our finger exactly what it means.
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Really, it's not quite as mysterious as many make it sound. A calling is akin to something like a function.
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We are called to particular functions, and we will have many callings in our lives.
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People will be called to be husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, pastors and deacons.
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And one of those callings is where we will apply ourselves to provide support for ourselves and our family.
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God uniquely equips each and every one of us for a particular calling or more likely callings.
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And this may change in different seasons of your life. And all working together for dominion.
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In Judges 13, we read this. Manoah, the father of Samson says to our
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Lord, now let your words come to pass. What will be the boy's rule of life and what will be his work?
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God uniquely gifted and prepared Samson for the work to which he had prepared for Samson to do.
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And the very same thing is true with each and every one of us. God is equipping us for our particular calling, several of them.
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Well, how do we evaluate our calling? How do we know what God is uniquely equipping us for to do?
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Well, evaluate what you like and what you don't like. Things that you are good at, things that you are gifted in, your talents, your strengths, your weaknesses, your gifts and graces.
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Talk to your parents, your grandparents, your Christian friends and people in the church.
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Consider the principle in God's words, God's word. And they help you evaluate what
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God has called you to do in your life. And do this periodically.
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What you wanted to be when you were eight years old is probably not what you're doing today.
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Many of us who went to college earned a degree, a BA or a BS, and we're not working anywhere close to the field that our degree is in.
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Things will change throughout life. And we also must be willing to do whatever it is that God has called us to do.
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And as you're considering these things, there may come a point where you will have to act in faith.
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We cannot enter into something, which we say in my line of work, as an analysis paralysis.
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You're going to have to say something like this. Lord, I'm going in this direction, following this course, and if you don't want me to, get me out of it.
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And trust in the Lord. Today, we use the term calling in the church to refer to a call to full -time
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Christian service. And generally, when we say that, we mean one thing and one thing only, the ministry.
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And that's it. But every calling that God equips each and every one of us for is a call to full -time
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Christian service. That could be as a software developer, a real estate agent, a caterer, a teacher, or whatever
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God has gifted you for. And whatever you do, you are engaged in full -time
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Christian service. If you do it faithfully, if you do it well, if you do it excellently.
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It is good for a man to know when he goes to work that he is doing what he is created to do.
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Nothing will be more encouraging to him. Nothing will motivate him more. And nothing will give him the strength to carry on when days get tough, and they will get tough, and to see it through.
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No matter what the field of endeavor. And also, there is nothing more discouraging,
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I believe, than to go through life with no sense of purpose at all. No sense of calling.
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Not knowing why we're doing the things that we do with no assurance that we are doing what
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God has assigned us to do. Yes, I know that God is sovereign. And that there's nothing surprising him.
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And if we're at a job that we don't understand, why we're doing it, it is not a surprise to God.
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But he may be leading you to the very thing to which he has called you to do.
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And he's equipped us to perform that calling. There's another special note to parents and grandparents here.
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We must pay strict attention to our children. I don't mean just watching them as they run around the house to make sure they don't knock the plant over or something.
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Should do that. But look at what they like, what they dislike, what they're good at, what they're not good at, where they have a tendency and a talent for, and all the other things that we noted.
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We were put here to guide them in these processes as they think about what the calling is on their lives.
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And we have to pay this extra close attention to avoid what we see far too often in the
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Christian culture today, where we have young adults going about doing things that they don't know why they're doing it.
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They go to college and seek degrees and things, they're not really sure why. They have no sense of calling.
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They know that they're supposed to do something, so they go and do it. Let that not be true among us.
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Well, fourthly, we work in order to secure a blessing, and that includes money.
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Money should not be the primary consideration when determining our calling.
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If we do, we will be, well, we will find ourselves in many mistakes.
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We will find ourselves compromising in some areas, and perhaps we will find ourselves entering into that ungodly work cycle.
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As mentioned, one of our callings in life will be the primary calling where we make money.
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Making money, having wealth, is something that is much understood in the church today.
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At a high level, there are two ditches. On the one side is the pietistic ditch.
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On the other side is the prosperity gospel, not to oversimplify, but the pietist will tell you that wealth is bad.
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They may even say that money is the root of all evil. They may tell you that God does not bless with material blessings, and they may even say the true
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Christian is one that is spiritually -minded only. And they will say that having wealth or prosperity is loving the world, brother.
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Well, the other side of the ditch is the prosperity gospel. The proponents or advocates of the prosperity gospel will say that the only measure of God's favor in your life is material blessings, and that if you just have enough faith, you will be fabulously wealthy.
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Well, we have to say that the Bible doesn't support either of these particular views when it comes to money and or wealth.
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But what does the Bible say about wealth and profits, P -R -O -F -I -T -S, profits?
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Well, first of all, God honors hard work. In Proverbs 3, 9, we read, 3, 9, and 10, honor the
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Lord with your possessions and with the firstfruits of your increase, so your barns will be filled with plenty and your vats may overflow with new wine.
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God promises to give hardworking Christians prosperity for their hard work.
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And when he does grant you prosperity, honor the Lord from your firstfruits.
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Actually, when we read these verses, it sounds like it's almost the opposite, isn't it? Honor the
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Lord with your firstfruits, and then you will have prosperity. Well, it can work either way.
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Our Lord is extremely generous. Number two, the Bible says greed, envy, covetousness, and dissatisfaction are bad.
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In Titus, I'm sorry, in 1 Timothy 6, 10, we read this, for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith and their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
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It is the love of money, avarice, or greed that is the root of all kinds of evil. The love of money manifests itself in many ways.
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And we've noted greed is obvious one, but also envy, covetousness, and dissatisfaction.
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Living for money and making it, that is money, the God of your life is a sin.
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Remember the rich young ruler, when he came to the Lord and said, Lord, tell me what
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I must do to inherit eternal life. Our Lord responds, keep the commandments.
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And then he mentions the commandments in the second table of the law. Do not steal, do not commit adultery, and so forth.
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At this point, the rich young ruler says, I have kept these all from my youth. And nearly every time you hear a sermon on that, the pastor will say, and we know he really didn't.
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But that's not what our Lord says. Our Lord realized that he was guilty of breaking the first table of law, not the second.
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Because the rich young ruler was making money his God. He was an idolater, he was not worshiping
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God at all. For when Jesus said, sell all you have and come and follow me, he went away sad.
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Number three, the Bible says stealing of all kinds is prohibited.
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In Ephesians 4, 28, we read this, let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give to those who are in need.
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What does Paul mean by steal here? Well, he does mean what we might think of stealing, pickpocketing, holding somebody up or breaking and entering.
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Certainly that would be in mind here, in view here. But Paul is also talking about people living off the work of somebody else, living off somebody else's work in hard exertion when you don't have to.
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You may be perfectly healthy and able to work, but you don't, you're willing to let somebody else provide for you.
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You may do it because you're lazy. I think that's a problem that males have, men.
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I think the number one sin that we're most tempted to is laziness, not to do stuff. But you may do this because you were told it is more spiritual not to work.
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I think that's what we see here in 2 Thessalonians as an example. Paul was dealing with a situation there where some were not working because they believed that the second coming had already happened.
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And they were entering into their rest. That was a spiritual reason that they had.
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But Paul strongly encouraged that those who would not work should not even eat.
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We read this in 2 Thessalonians 3 .10. For even when we were with you, we give you this command.
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If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busy bodies.
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Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and earn their own living.
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We may be engaged in that more traditional style of stealing but far more are we engaged in the other kind, living off the work of others.
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And we may not even be aware that we're doing it. But if we are engaged in that type of stealing, we must stop.
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But rather as Paul says, work with our own hands and to work quietly and earn our living.
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So why do we make money? Well, I'll give you three reasons. And this is not in the order of importance.
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First and foremost, to support your family. And this doesn't just mean your immediate family.
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There are times when you will have to support your extended family, your parents, your brothers and sisters, cousins.
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In 1 Timothy 5 .8, we read this. But if anyone does not provide for his own and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
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Many of us read this verse and we say, he's obviously needs to provide for his wife and kids. True enough. But the context of this verse,
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Paul is talking about a man providing for his mom who has become a widow. Paul says that if you're not working hard enough to provide for your family, your extended family, then you are worse than an unbeliever.
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The King James translates this as an infidel, unfaithful. Paul says a denier of the faith.
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We know there are seasons when this is hard, but this should be our orientation.
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Secondly, we are to work to give those who are in need, the truly poverty stricken, the disadvantaged.
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You may remember constantly the refrain in the Old Testament to support the widows, orphans and strangers.
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They were the weakest. They were the most poverty stricken in the community. The poor,
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Jesus said, you will always have with you. They will need physical and material needs.
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There are truly poor in the community. Many people may have encountered a crisis in their lives and then find themselves, what we might say in our day and age, down on their luck.
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They're in true need. Remember our verse back in Ephesians 4 .28, when it says, let him who stole steal no longer, but rather labor, it says this, that he may have something to give those who are in need.
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We must be prepared to support our family. Yes, but also our friends, our neighbors, our church family and our community.
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This is why we should work to have as much money as we can so that we have money available to provide for those who are in genuine need.
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And then thirdly, the tithe, gifts and offerings.
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This really should be the first reason. For we are commanded to give a 10th of our income, the increase of our income to the work of the church.
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To give you an idea what the increase means is this.
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If I earned $10 ,000 this month, and I was paid out in cash, and as I was walking to deposit it in the bank, and a robber came and stole $2 ,000 from me, and I was left with eight, my increase was eight.
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Well, we have a thief that visits us twice a month, maybe once a month, maybe every week, depending on your job, and steals from us on a regular basis.
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Your command would be to give on the increase. The tithers of America used to be the most influential people in the country.
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Christians used to build hospitals, orphanages, widow's homes, schools, and voluntary associations to help their fellow man.
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But once they stopped, the state stepped in. This was not desirable.
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The civil magistrate has a role, but it is not in education, it is not in healthcare, it is not in caring for widows, it is not in schools.
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It is for the defense of the people, to punish evildoers, and that's it.
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We cannot recover from what the government has taken until we return to being tithers.
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It takes a lot of money to conquer the world for Jesus. It takes money to conquer a logwood for Jesus.
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It takes money and investment to work in the local body. It takes money to support
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Ascension Presbyterian Church. If you are not tithing, if you are afraid to tithe because you feel you will not get by, if you are afraid to tithe because you're afraid you might not be able to pay your bills, or you're not going to tithe because you wanna first take care of supplying for your family, maybe building up a savings account, or your retirement account, or paying off your house, all of things are legitimate.
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Paying your bills is legitimate. Saving for the future is legitimate, we just talked about it. But if you are not tithing in order to do those other things, you are in effect saying,
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I do not trust God. God has promised to meet all of our needs.
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We may remember, we just read here in Proverbs 3 9.
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Honor the Lord with your possessions and with the first fruits of your increase. Why, he says, because then
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I'll give you full barns and full and overflowing wine vats. He will bless you.
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And there are many Christians, myself included, who could tell you about our struggles with tithing early in our
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Christian walk, and how much the Lord has blessed us when we became obedient to his will.
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God promises to bless obedience. And in blessing obedience, he can and will give you the desires of your heart, which includes these things.
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God never ever blesses disobedience. We must always trust in the
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Lord with all of our heart and lean not on our own understanding. All our way is acknowledging him, and he will direct our paths.
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Well, ultimately, we work for the glory of God. The penultimate reason why we work is to glorify
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God, and all that we do in word and deed in the name of the Lord Jesus is to glorify
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God. When we think of our calling, we were gifted by God for a particular calling.
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And when he blesses the work of our hands, what is the outcome of that?
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It should be for us to give glory to God. Well, how do we best glorify
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God in our work? Well, it's not in some airy -fairy way or some hyper -spiritual way that nobody can see.
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No, it is rather providing a service to the community that is well done and much needed.
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When you go and labor in your various jobs, you are to endeavor to be the best, to excel, to look forward to standing before kings, providing a service.
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We mentioned whatever God has gifted you for is a call to Christian service.
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And that naturally implies that you serve. And as we stand here and we look how we will take dominion, and we look at the weapons of our warfare and that weapon, particularly of work, as we seek to rebuild this
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Christian culture, may we be like those that Isaiah speaks of in Isaiah 58, 12, in which we read, and your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt, and you shall raise up the foundation of many generations, and you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to dwell.
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The ancient ruins of Christendom need to be rebuilt. The ancient ruins of the church and family and state all need to be rebuilt.
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This is how we glorify God. Jesus said in Matthew 5, 16, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your
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Father in heaven. It is your light. Yes, it is the reflection of his glorious light.
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It is your good works. Yes, uniquely gifted by God to perform, called by God to do, giving gifts and graces and talents to do it.
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But it is his glory. When we endeavor to engage in godly work, future -oriented, dominion -oriented work, going into what
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God has called us to do, emulating our elder brother, the
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Lord Jesus Christ, and truly reflecting the image of God as we are blessed by it and earn money and serve one another as needed from our prosperity, this is how we glorify
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God. And this is how we will enjoy him forever.
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Let us pray. Our gracious God and Father, we thank you, O Lord, that you have indeed called us from death to life, from darkness to light.
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We thank you, O Lord God, that you have given us a calling in our lives to work and labor in this world, to establish dominion over the created order and establish a
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Christian culture. O Lord God, we thank you that you have called us to this work and we pray that you would give us the strength to do it.
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And we ask all these things and more also in the name of Christ, amen. Well, let us continue our worship through the presentation of our tithes and offerings.
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Please stand and let us pray. Our gracious God and Father, we thank you,
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O Lord, again, that you have prospered our hands at our labor. O Lord God, you have promised and deliver on that promise of blessing us.
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Our cup truly runneth over. And Father, as we have provided a portion of what you have given us back to the service of the church, we pray,
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Lord, for those who will receive these funds, that they would use it wisely and apply it to the work of this local church in this local community.
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We ask all this in the name of Christ, amen. Well, let us glorify our great
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God by the singing of the Gloria Patri. ♪ Glory be to the
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Father and to the Son and to the
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Holy ♪ ♪ As it was in the beginning is now and ever will be.
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♪ The Lord be with you. And also with you. Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the
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Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord. It is right and a good and joyful thing that we should at all times and all places give thanks to you,
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O Holy Lord, Father Almighty, Everlasting God, because you sent your beloved
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Son to redeem us from sin and death and to make us heirs in him of everlasting life, that when he shall come again in power and great triumph to judge the world, we may, without shame or fear, rejoice to behold his appearing.
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Therefore, with angels and archangels and with all the company of heaven, we praise and magnify your glorious name, evermore praising you and singing.
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Amen. Please be seated and let us pray.
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Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who of your tender mercy gave your only
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Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer upon the cross for our redemption, who made there by his one oblation of himself once offered a full and perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, and at institute and in his holy gospel commanded us to continue a perpetual memory of that his precious death until his coming again.
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Hear us, O merciful Father, we beseech you and grant that we receiving these your creatures of bread and wine, according to your
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Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ's holy institution and remembrance of his death and passion may be partakers of his most blessed body and blood.
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And we pray this in Christ's name. Amen. And the night in which our
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Lord was betrayed, he took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples saying, take, eat, this is my body, which is broken for you.
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Likewise, after supper, he took the cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, drink this all of you.
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This is the new covenant in my blood. As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the
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Lord's death until he comes. Therefore, we proclaim the faith. In order to prepare ourselves to approach the table, let us pray together.
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We do not presume to come to this your table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in your manifold and great mercies.
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We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table, but you are the same
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Lord who always shows mercy. Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of your dear son,
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Jesus Christ, and the drink of his blood, that our sinful bodies may be cleaned by his blood and our souls washed through his most precious blood and that we may evermore dwell in him and he in us, amen.
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Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us, the gifts of God for the people of God.
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♪ To stand next to you in shame and scorn ♪ ♪
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For this praise we say to weary and jolly ♪
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Let us make this commitment together. Almighty and everliving
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God, we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food of the most precious body and blood of your son, our savior,
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Jesus Christ, and for assuring us in these holy mysteries that we are living members of the body of your son and heirs of your eternal kingdom.
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O Lord, grant us this other benefit, that you will never allow us to forget these things, but having them imprinted on our hearts, they regrow and increase daily with faith which is at work in every good deed.
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And now father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, to love and serve you as faithful witnesses,
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Christ our Lord. To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit, the honor and glory, now and forever, amen.
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Please stand. ♪ Praise God from whom all blessings flow ♪ ♪
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Praise him, all creatures here ♪ ♪
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Praise him, all heavenly hosts ♪
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Receive now the blessing. Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, the great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete in every good work to do his will, working in you what is well -pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.
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Amen. ♪
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Christ be kind, nice to come for me ♪ ♪