Christ’s Gift to the Church

blessing over the preaching of his word, Lord God, your word is true, your word is right and righteous.

We pray, God, that your word would edify us to know what is the incomprehensible riches of your grace towards us, and the gifts that you have given your church to edify it, to build it up, for Lord God, you are indeed building something, and we are part of that edifice that you are indeed bringing together from every nation, tribe, language, and tongue for the praise and glory of the one true and triune

God, Father, Son, and Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Our main verses will be in verses 11 to 13 from the reading this morning and from Ephesians 4.

Notice what God says. The Apostle Paul says in verse 11, by means of the inspiration of the

Spirit, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and teachers.

Now where does this idea come from of God providing for his church these individuals?

Well, we have to understand that the context, as we've been going through the book of Ephesians, is that God is in the midst of building something.

God is building for himself an edifice, a people of every tribe, nation, and tongue.

God is building for himself the church. Now how do we know this? Well, Jesus Christ, the

God man, the one who is fully man and fully God, who came into the earth in the fullness of time, born of the

Virgin, lived a life that you could not live, died the death that we deserve, was raised again on the third day, he said these words to the

Apostle Peter in Matthew 18. He says, you are Peter, and on this rock

I will build my what? Temple, no, church, say it again. He will build his?

Church. Church. And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And he is indeed building a temple as well, is he not? The church being not a building made with hands nor out of wood, hay, or stubble, but instead that God is building his church, his people from every language, tribe, and nation, you being living stones of that great edifice that God is making, that this is indeed

God's grand plan for the ages to bring all of humanity under the proper lordship of Jesus.

So it doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, doesn't matter what your ancestry is, what the color of your skin is, but indeed that God loves you, desires you, and is bringing you together under his family, under his fold, under the proper lordship of King Jesus, amen?

Amen. And in the midst of God doing this grand work of bringing all people together, fulfilling the mystery of the gospel, the good news of Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, that in this good news,

God is accomplishing something great. He's building something. You see, God is a great builder.

The Bible says in Hebrews 4 that every house has a builder, but he who built all things is

God. Evidence of this is everywhere. You see a building, you assume there was an engineer and a builder and a team of people who put this edifice together.

And the same is true when we see the cosmos, is it not? When we see the works of God's hands, we marvel like the psalmist did in Psalm chapter eight when the psalmist would look up to heaven and says, what is man that you would be mindful of him?

The son of man that you would even care for him? As he looked at the grandeur of the heavens, as he looked at the grandeur of the stars, he saw that God is the one who is indeed the sovereign and proper creator of all things.

And although the universe is big, and although the universe can be scary, God made you in his image and God loves you.

He cares for you. He fashioned you. Which is why in this church, we take seriously issues of life.

And we gather together even this week, celebrating the fact that life will go on in this nation, that children will be saved as a result of this decision.

That doesn't mean that there isn't more work to be done. Hearts need to be changed.

Because we know what we saw from the Supreme Court this week isn't going to change anyone's heart.

The President of the United States cannot change your heart. The Supreme Court can't change your heart.

It's barely even doing a good job of changing people's minds let alone change the heart. The only one who can change the heart is the

Lord God. It's Christ. And when you come to this knowledge of Christ and what he's building and what he's inviting you into, it changes everything.

This is why we see in verse 11 of Ephesians 4, Paul, after going at great lengths to describe what

God is building, chapter two he describes after grace you've been saved, he talks about this great temple that he's building made up of all nations.

He then goes on to describe the administration of this new people that Christ is bringing together.

He then now gives us the offices or the gifts in which he is building this edifice in verse 11.

He says, and he, this is Christ, our ascended savior, he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers.

I want you to write this if you're following along in today's insert from the bulletin. Christ's gift to the church were the apostles and prophets who according to Ephesians chapter two, if you can turn there real quick in Ephesians chapter two, notice what it says in reference to the edifice that God is building, chapter two of Ephesians, verse 19 says, so then you are no longer strangers and aliens, referring to the

Gentiles who were once alienated from God. It says, but now you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone in whom the whole structure being joined together grows into a holy temple in the

Lord. In him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the

Spirit. And so that God has given his people apostles and prophets and these are the foundation of the church, you can write that in there as well, who are the foundation of the church, but Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.

So we're not talking about an office that is able to continue on into this day, we're talking about a foundational office, a foundational work and every generation, we don't lay a new foundation, we are building on the foundation that Christ has already laid through his apostles and through his prophets, amen?

No need for us to continue to lay foundations when one has already been set. Our job is simply to continue to build on this foundation, the edifice of the almighty sovereign

God. And so when we look at scripture, we know that this is not a continuation or what is often referred to as the fivefold ministries of the church, this is indeed a ministry of the church, but this is a foundational ministry of the church, distinct from some of the others that we're going to examine.

Now, what does the word apostle mean? When we talk about apostles, we understand that the Greek word for apostle just simply means a sent one, a sent one, someone who is sent out, particularly in the context of the

New Testament, we're talking about the original 12, and then you have Judas who was taken out,

Matthias was put in his place, but then God called another apostle who was the apostle

Paul. And Paul was like one who refers to himself as one born untimely. And Paul was to be an apostle, a sent one to the nations to reach the nations with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And then the prophets, of course, are those who declare the word of God, those who declare a particular word from God, who have divine inspiration, who bring forth the oracles of almighty

God. God has indeed brought forth this gift to the church, and this is a foundational gift, giving us both the prophets of the

Old Testament and even New Testament prophets to bring forward this good news of Jesus Christ.

Now, we see in Ephesians 4, verse 11, some more titles that I think we need to identify.

The next one is the evangelist and the shepherds. The evangelist and the shepherds.

I want you, if you can, in the next bullet point, the evangelist, or an evangelist is one who preaches or declares the word of God, or declares the good news.

I want you to write that in there. An evangelist is the one who preaches, or you could say declares the good news.

And so anyone who preaches, anyone who declares the gospel, whose life and mission and focus is on declaring the gospel, the oracle of God, that person is an evangelist.

Maybe you know one. Maybe you are one. An evangelist is one who declares the word of God.

Before you today is your preacher, your pastor, who is evangelizing, who is declaring the good news of Christ onto you.

We also do this work of evangelism when we go knocking on doors in our community. This is an evangelistic work.

We do evangelism and the evangelist going forward when we gather on Saturday for the food line and the food ministry.

And we have this microphone system set up now so we can preach and evangelize to our neighbors so they may hear the life -saving gospel of Jesus Christ.

An evangelist is one who declares, preaches God's good news.

Now this is a work that continues even till this day. We still have need of evangelists.

We still have need of people to come and declare the good news of Jesus Christ to all people, tribes, and nations.

And so this continues. But we also see that there are those who are called shepherds. Scripture again says in Ephesians chapter four, verse 11, and he gave the apostles, prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers.

Now which is, what are the shepherds? Or who are the shepherds? The shepherds are pastors.

That's what the word pastor means. Pastor is a English word which simply means to shepherd or a shepherd.

And so we are shepherds or elders is another biblical term that the apostle

Paul uses in the New Testament to refer to pastors or shepherds.

Elders, pastors, shepherds, these are one and the same.

And these are individuals whom Christ has given to the church to watch over his flock, to protect it, to love it, to guide it, and to teach it the word of God.

Pastors are pretty important. They're pretty special. I'd go so far to say that pastors are

God's gift to the church. So when you look at the three pastors that you have here, remember, we're

God's gift to you. Not in the way that we wanna rub it into you or say, oh, now you've gotta follow us because we're

God's gift to you. It's not in the way in which we lord it over you. You are as much a gift to us as we are a gift to you.

Christ has given the church shepherds, shepherds who care for the flock, who love the flock, who are here to protect it.

One of our jobs as pastors is to protect you from false doctrine, to protect you from false ideologies and the concepts of this world that it may throw at you.

And one of the things that makes me sad as a pastor is when we fail to properly shepherd and protect our people.

And I've seen this in my own ministry where I failed to properly protect my people from sound, from unsound doctrine.

I'll give you an example. With the whole controversy of abortion that's going on in this nation, there are those who have been under my shepherding over the years who have deviated from the faith, who have deviated and agree and now hold to a more liberal theology, if we can even call it that, and who would say that these things are okay, that killing children is totally acceptable, that having a liberal view of God or of the

Bible, that God is just kind of a space daddy who's up there and he loves you and you can do whatever you want and all things are permissible.

Now, it's not because I taught them these things, I taught against these things, but it's always sad when a person who, a pastor, invests time, effort, love, sound doctrine and teaching, turns away from the faith into the doctrines of demons and devils, doctrines of this world that would try to usurp the authority and the word of Almighty God.

Well, brothers and sisters, may it not be of any one of us that we would fall and deviate from the faith, from the truth, and the reality is as things in our culture become more polarized, as the lines become more drawn and more distinguishable, there will be those who profess to know

Christ, who profess to be Christians, who will stand, unfortunately, on that great day and stand with the lies of this world and follow the principalities and powers of this present darkness instead of standing on the word of God.

Church, the part of being a pastor that is not fun and that is sometimes controversial, that is sometimes not easy to do, is to warn you when the wolves are coming.

And brothers and sisters, let me tell you, the wolves are coming. Guard yourself and your most holy and precious faith.

Be of one mind and one spirit to say that we will stand on the foundation of the apostles, the prophets, we will stand on the foundation of Christ, we will stand on the side of the reformers, we will stand on the side of Augustine, of Whitefield, of Edwards, we will stand on the foundation of Spurgeon, we will stand on the foundation of God's word and we'll declare both now, yesterday, today, and tomorrow that the gospel and the gospel alone is the power of God unto salvation, amen?

That's our call. That's what God is building and that is Christ's gift to the church is this message of the gospel to bring forth reconciliation to the whole world.

And we will not deviate from that message. We will not deviate from the doctrines of grace, we will not deviate from our foundational beliefs and doctrines, regardless of what the world says, regardless of what the world brings at us and throws at us, we will continue to be steadfast, unshakable, unmovable in the work of the

Lord and so be pleasing to him on that great day when every Christian and every man, woman, and child would have to give an account to him.

For the Bible says that all humans, all those who have breath of life in them will stand before him to give an account.

May it be said of us that we stood on the foundation of the gospel. So therefore, shepherds are pastors, elders who watch over the flock, who are also responsible for teaching.

You can write this in there in the teaching this morning. Also responsible for teaching. We see that in Ephesians 4 .11.

These individuals, shepherds and teachers, both can be interchangeable, but only one in particular has the authority to both shepherd and to teach, that being pastors, elders.

Now there are those who are able to also teach who are not necessarily in a position of an elder or a shepherd.

As shepherds, or more appropriately, under -shepherds, for Christ alone is our true grand shepherd, we have the ability to also call qualified individuals from amongst the church to bring forward good and sound teaching.

We see this even in our Sunday school, where it's not just pastors or elders who take the lead in teaching, but others as well who are mature and have the gift of teaching.

And in this way, God is building together something marvelous, something beautiful, something magnificent, and it's this.

This is what God is building. Look what it says in verse 12. All these reasons, all the things that we just went over, apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers are for this purpose, to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

That's you. That's you, beloved. That's you, dear Christian. You are a saint of the most high

God. Now what does that word saint mean? The word saint means a holy one, someone who's been set apart, someone who's been sanctified.

Now does that mean as Christians that we never sin, that we're not still sinners and we don't still contend with the old man?

Well, certainly not. We still sin. When we say that we're saints, it's not to the exclusion of the truth that we still wrestle with sin.

When the Bible calls us saints, it is to declare how God views you, how

God has called you, justified you, and if God has justified you, he is sanctifying you, and if he is sanctifying you, he will then glorify you.

It is the promise of God for every single one of us. Now that term saint is not to distinguish us necessarily in the way that some think.

Some think, well, I'm a saint, and so that's to distinguish me from all the wretched sinners in the world, and so look at all those sinners out there in the world.

You know, in the church, we're all saints, we're all, we've all got it together. Is that right? Is that the right mentality we ought to have when we compare the church with the world and say, well, we've got it all together, we've got it all figured out, but those people out there, boy, they're lost and degenerate and unregenerated, and they're just a lost cause.

Well, friends, can I tell you? There was that one point in my life where I was a lost cause. There was a point in my life where I never thought, never wanted, never even was on my radar to become a follower of Jesus Christ, to be a

Christian. If one told me before that I would become a Christian, I would have considered suicide over being a

Christian, but friends, it's the grace of God. It's God's grace, as we just sang these words of amazing grace.

It's amazing grace that draws us in. It's amazing grace that transforms us. It's amazing grace that gives us spiritual life and power to be a saint, to be set apart, not so that we can judge others and say, look how wrong you are, look how bad you have it, look how you just don't get it.

Friends, we all, to some degree, don't get it, and so we need to extend mercy, grace, love, kindness, because God isn't building for himself an edifice of Pharisees.

He's building for himself an edifice of sinners saved by grace.

So never forget, from what you've been saved, where you once were, and now where you are heading towards, which is glory,

God is changing our trajectory of life from hell to heaven, from sin to holiness, from depravity to transformation.

God is doing all these things and more through the gospel, through Christ in you.

Therefore, this work that we are to partake in is to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

You are a saint, God is calling you to do the work of a saint, which is the work of ministry.

Now here's something for us all to get excited about, because as Christians, we don't just come to church, hear a message, and then go home from the week.

There's work to be done, we come here on Sunday, on the Lord's Day, on the Shabbat, to recognize, to receive, be empowered for the work that lies ahead of us,

Monday through Saturday. There's work to be done, and there's a ministry that you are to fulfill.

The ministry isn't simply for the clergy, isn't simply for the pastor, the elders, the teachers, the prophets, the apostles.

The work is for you and for me, to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the triune

God, and teaching them the obedience, even the obedience of the nations. This is the work that God has called all of us to.

You are included in this work. Therefore, the work that we do as pastors, as shepherds, as teachers, is to equip you, give you what you need, give you the tools, the resources, the knowledge, the power from on high through the

Spirit, to fulfill your Christian ministry. Therefore, all this is for the reason, in verse 12, for building up the body of Christ.

For building up the body of Christ. I want you to follow along in this teaching.

These gifts are for three ends. The gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers are for three ends, are accomplishing three things.

Number one is to equip the saints. It's to equip you, give you, again, the tools necessary to live out your

Christian faith. Number two, for the work of ministry.

There's a ministry that you've been called to. Now, what does it mean to have a ministry or to be a part of a ministry?

It simply means to minister. Ministry comes from the word to minister, and to minister means to communicate the truths and the loving kindness of God.

So we have a ministry to do. Now, you say, well, where's my ministry, pastor? I don't know where my ministry is.

Is it in children's church? Is it in, you know, am I called to be a pastor? Am I called to be a missionary?

What's my ministry? And the reality is, is your ministry is where you are now. If you work for Google, Google's your ministry.

That's your mission field. If you work at a school, that's your ministry. That's your mission field.

If you work as a janitor, that's your work. That's your mission field. Wherever you are, wherever you may find yourself, wherever you may be, that is your mission field.

Therefore, minister in the mission field that sovereign God has put you in.

Sometimes even as mothers say, well, I'm just home. I'm with my kids.

Where's my ministry? Those children are your ministry. That's your ministry.

So every Christian has a ministry. Every Christian has a part in building up this edifice and bringing together the kingdom of God.

And this last point, the last end, is for building up the body of Christ.

So these three ends are again to equip the saints. Number two, we're equipping them for the work of the ministry.

And we're building up the body of Christ. So equip, ministry, and building.

These are the things that God is accomplishing through those whom he has ordained in Ephesians 4 .11

to be prophets, apostles, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers, for the equipping of the people of God so that we may be able to do every good work for the glory of God and the expansion of his kingdom.

How good is that? Now, we see in the last part of today's text this morning, in Ephesians 4, in verse 13, it says, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the

Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Much to unpack in that verse. But notice how it begins. Until we all attain to the unity.

Unity. Notice the world. Is the world united?

No. Doesn't it feel like in the country that we live in today? I was watching a video,

I think, of someone, a commentator, talking about the

Roe v. Wade decision. And they said, it's time for us to change the name of this country from the

United States to the divided states. And I thought, you know what?

It's kind of true, isn't it? We've never lived in modern times since the Civil War in more divided times.

More polarized times. And it's not just this country. This is not an

American phenomenon. This is something we are seeing in almost every developed nation on the earth.

We're seeing it in the UK. We're seeing it in places in Europe. We're seeing it in the polarization in Asia.

The battle lines are being drawn, folks. The world is divided. What is

God calling his people to? Not to a politics of division. Not to a spiritual life of division.

But instead, Christ is calling his people to unity. To unity.

Now, what does unity look like practically in the context of God's people? Does it mean that we all have to agree on every doctrinal issue out there?

No. Does that mean, however, that we do agree on the things that are essential?

So can we, for instance, walk shoulder to shoulder with a Latter -day Saint who would say that Jesus Christ is the spirit brother of Lucifer?

It's not my Jesus. You see, true unity is shared when you have the same and shared

Jesus. When you have the same Father of all, the same faith, the same

Lord, the same baptism, the same faith. That is what brings us to a place of commonality and unity.

But within the body of Christ, there is great diversity. What always amazes me is that when we are trying to do works of ministry with other churches, the ones that we do the most ministry with are people like the

Presbyterians. And we're Baptists. And we can hang out with Presbys. And we can get along with them and work together with them shoulder to shoulder to accomplish the work of the ministry.

Do we agree on everything? No. You see, unity doesn't necessarily mean uniformity on all things.

There's charity that can be held amongst us as brothers and sisters in Christ. But we have to also draw the lines because truth is, by its nature, divisive.

Truth has to deal with what is reality and with what is false or fiction.

And so we are not like those postmodernists who say that truth is relative. Because if you ask them, is truth relative, they'll say yes, and then the next follow -up question should be, are you absolutely sure?

And from which case, just with that response, you've broken down their entire system.

You see, truth is true. And we cannot continue in unity unless we agree on the foundational truth of who we are, who

Christ is, and what the kingdom of God looks like. So brothers and sisters, we can have great unity in the most precious faith that we have.

We can walk shoulder to shoulder with people, even who are different from us, who look different from us, talk different from us, and maybe even have some doctrinal differences with us that are not in the essential category.

And we can make much, and we can do much for the kingdom of God. But at the same time, notice what

Paul continues to say as he refers to the spirit of unity that he wants us to attain. He says, until we attain to the unity of the faith, so that's foundational, the faith, and of the knowledge of the

Son of God. These are things that bring true unity. These are things which bring

Christ much joy, is when people fellowship together under the banner of his truth.

Notice the unity that we see even within our own congregation. Many people groups, nation, languages, skin tones represented in this small church.

And we truly, I believe, when we gather together and we call each other brother and sister, we mean it, we mean it.

Unlike the world, what they wanna see first is is there a

D or an R at the beginning of your name? Did you vote for this person or that person?

Do you believe this or that in regard to the culture wars? And the reality is this, as Christians, the only thing that matters is if there's a

C in front of our name, and that is for Christ. Are you of Christ?

Are you in Christ? And if you are, it doesn't matter if you're male or female, it doesn't matter. If you're white or black, it doesn't matter.

If you're Asian or Hispanic, but all people from all nations are represented at the family of God.

How incredible is that, that we can look at each other and say, brother and sister, we are the family of God.

How beautiful is that truth, that unity that we can attain through faith in Jesus Christ so that we can become the stature of mature manhood.

You see, God is not simply after a unity based on soft doctrine, but he's looking for a unity that is rooted in maturity and referring to the maturity of the doctrine of the scriptures, to the mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

Now, this is why doctrine matters. This is why teaching and preaching is so important, because when you are a

Christian and you get saved and you've tasted salvation, at that moment of salvation, the

Bible says you've now been transferred from death to life, and this is now that you are born again, but when you're born again, you start off as a baby, as a babe in Christ.

Peter says that you are to be fed with spiritual milk so that the spiritual babies can be nourished and grow and have maturity, but you don't just stay sipping on milk all day.

You don't just stay in a place of immaturity spiritually, but it is our call and our duty to then go into the deep things, even the deep things of God, even the deep things of God.

That means that we mature in our knowledge of Christ. We grow in our knowledge of Christ.

I think that's the model of our church, isn't it? A deeper knowledge of Christ so you can grow into maturity and not just know these things, intellectually, but that these things that you now know and have received to be true change you from the inside out.

It changes you. Truth and encountering Jesus will not leave you unchanged, will not leave you unaffected.

When you encounter the King of kings, the King of glory, it will change you.

Now, that change may seem subtle at first, but then overall in the tenure of your life, you'll see that your life has progressively become more and more like Jesus.

So the goal at the end of human history is that when humanity looks in the mirror, they no longer see

Adam as your representative, but instead they see Christ, and that is the hope of glory, that we become like him, and that one day we shall see him, and when we see him, we shall be like him, change and transform like and unto his glorified, resurrected body.

We will share in his glory, which is why it says in the end of verse 13, where Paul says the following, to the measure of the stature of Christ, the fullness of Christ.

That is what God is transforming us. That is what God is working in us. That is what God is working in you, beloved.

He is changing you from the inside out to be more and more like Jesus Christ. That doesn't mean that there won't be setbacks.

That doesn't mean that there won't be seasons of great discouragement in life. It doesn't mean that this will be a perfect, smooth road.

This is more like a twisty and whiny road that may have dead ends, that may have great times of difficulty.

You may even get a flat tire on this road called sanctification, but I promise you this, not because of what

I promised, but because of what he's promised, that you will come home to glory, that at the end of our existence as mere humans, and when we see him who is divine, we shall become like him, and he will change our natures, and he will give us, as he's given us a new heart, he will one day, on that final day, grant us not only a new heart, but a new nature and resurrected bodies, no longer under the fall of corruption, no longer under the effects of sin, but we shall be glorified, likened unto our

Lord Jesus Christ. What a hope we have. Therefore, we should make it our aim, brothers and sisters, to maintain the unity of the faith, to walk in this most precious, holy calling.

And if you didn't catch the last part of the teaching for the writing and the insert, Christ's gift to the church will result in the unity of faith to the mature stature of the fullness of Christ.

God will accomplish this and more. And he's doing this work through the gifts that he's given the church, namely the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds, and the teachers.

He is bringing forth unity and bringing forth maturity to the full stature of the fullness of Christ.

This is God's call for you and to you, that you mature, that you grow in grace and favor and knowledge of the

Lord Jesus Christ, and that you stay steadfast on this road that leads to life.

Do not deviate from it as the culture will continue to shift away from a biblical and moral basis.

We will see much more depravity, much more enmity with the world. But know this, that if your desire is to have friendship with the world, if you want the world to love you, then you are not a

Christian. Just this past weekend, we've garnered some media attention at our church, and someone left a review on our

Google page called us knuckle -dragging Neanderthals wanting to lead us back to the

Middle Ages. I thought that was a pretty ingenious way of throwing an insult at us. I mean, we are a 1689 church, after all.

Knuckle -dragging Neanderthals. And the response was, thank you for blessing us with your comment, and Matthew 511 was an appropriate text to give to them, which says, blessed are you when you are persecuted, and when people speak all kinds of evils against you on my account.

It's a blessing to be counted worthy, to be a knuckle -dragging

Neanderthal for the kingdom of God, amen? And if you wanna become a knuckle -dragging

Neanderthal, here's all that you gotta do. The Bible says you must repent of your sins, trust in Jesus, call upon him for salvation.

And the Bible says that God will give in you a new heart. Remove that heart of stone, that heart that desires sin and the world, and to be pleased and to be liked by the world, and he'll give you a new heart, a heart that desires

Christ above the pleasures and approval of this world.

For the Bible says this, that the world and its passions and its desires are fading away, they're passing away, but he who does the will of God abideth forever.

You can abide forever if you trust in Jesus today. May that be your aim, may that be your cause.

Join us as we preach, teach, and make known this glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

Let me pray. Sovereign, beautiful savior, we thank you,

Lord, that you are indeed building your church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

We thank you, Lord, for the privilege that is ours to be called by your name, to be called children of God, that regardless of what the world throws at us, we know that we have in ourselves a firm foundation, the foundation set by our savior himself, who has given to the church apostles, prophets, shepherds, evangelists, and teachers for the edification, for the building up of the body of Christ, even the church of Jesus Christ.

We thank you, Lord, for being so good and merciful to us that we can be counted worthy of this kingdom, not worthy because anything intrinsically in us that we can produce good, but because of the spiritual life that you breathe into us, just as you breathe into Adam, breath of life you breathe into us, the breath of spiritual life, bringing us into a right -standing relationship with you through faith and repentance in Jesus Christ.

Lord God, may you grant us favor as we continue in endeavor to do this work of ministry, that we would be unshakable, unchanged, unfaded by the world and its attacks against us, and that we would meet the attacks of this world with grace, love, and truth, that though the world has seen the truth, they neither recognize it nor do they follow it, but you have brought forth your truth in the incarnation of your son,

Jesus Christ, and you've brought truth through the gifts that this Christ has given to his church, and you have brought truth through your word, which is implanted in our hearts through faith.

Lord God, bless us and keep us. Bless our time together as we continue our fellowship, our worship, and as we enter into the solemn time of worship through the

Lord's table. May you be glorified in all these things and more, in Jesus' name, amen.