Sunday, July 9, 2023 AM

All right, good morning everyone. Come on in, have a seat and we will get started this morning just with a few announcements as we get going. Come back tonight for our evening service at 5 .30. That's in the fellowship hall at the regular time.

And then Wednesday, we'll have our meal together at 5 .45 and then 6 .30 prayer for everyone after the meal. Looking ahead to this Saturday, the Everyday Faithfulness Conference for the Prune to Bloom Women's Ministry.

It's gonna be here at the church. That starts at 9 a .m. and goes until 4 p .m. Haley did just let me know after church on Wednesday night, if there are any men around after church that can help kind of move tables and chairs to prepare for that conference on Saturday, just stay for 10 or 15 minutes and we'll get the fellowship hall all set up for that together.

Many hands make light work there. So we'd appreciate your help that way. Also, end of the month, July 30th. That's gonna be a Sunday. We're gonna have a fellowship out at Dwight and Jill Smoot's home.

Kind of a summer gathering for the whole church together. Be sure and bring lawn chairs. They're gonna provide hot dogs and buns and things like that, but if you could bring a side dish to kind of round out the meals and share that with everybody, that would be great.

All right, any other announcements? Okay, our fighter verse for this morning comes from the book of Philippians 4, verse eight. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

It's a good verse to meditate on this week. We're gonna prepare our hearts for worship quietly now and at the conclusion of that, Dwight will come and open us this morning.

Father, what a blessing it is to be able to call you Father. Abba, in a personal relationship with you, you have brought us to yourself through your son, the Lord Jesus, our Savior. How blessed we are to know you.

How blessed we are to know your presence, to know that you are here among us by your spirit, and you have brought us together in fellowship, and we are in Christ. What a blessing to know there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death.

Father, we have recently celebrated our independence and our freedom as a nation, but we come together here this morning to celebrate our dependence on you and our freedom in your son, the Lord Jesus.

We are free from the penalty of sin and death. How blessed we are. How blessed we are. May our worship this morning be pleasing in your sight. In Jesus' name, amen.

Good morning. Would you stand with me as we read our call to worship? Psalm 89, verses 30 through 34. Would you read with me the word of the Lord? If his children forsake my law and do not walk according to my rules, if they violate my statutes and do not keep my commandments, then I will punish their transgression with a rod, their iniquity with stripes, but I will not remove from him my steadfast love or be false to my faithfulness.

I will not violate my covenant or alter the word that went forth from my lips. Our Psalm of response is 89E in your Psalms for worship. It's 89E and we'll do verses 16, 17, and 18. Our hymns this morning will be Alleluia 215 in your hymnal and we'll go straight into the church's one foundation and that's 277.

So 215 and be ready for 277.

Your Bibles this morning and I hope you do.

Open them to the book of Isaiah chapter 49. We're filling in for Dylan Hamilton this morning. He's a little bit under the weather so you might be in prayer for him and their family this morning. We'll start in chapter 49 verse 14 and read through verse 21 but Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me and my Lord has forgotten me.

Can a woman forget her nursing child and not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands. Your walls are continually before me.

Your sons shall make haste, your destroyers and those who laid you waste shall go away from you. Lift up your eyes, look around and see. All these gather together and come to you. As I live, says the Lord, you shall surely clothe yourselves with them all as an ornament and bind them on you as a bride does.

For your waste and desolate places and the land of your destruction will even now be too small for all the inhabitants. And those who swallowed you up will be far away. The children you will have after you have lost the others will say again in your ears, the place is too small for me.

Give me a place where I may dwell. Then you will say in your heart, who has begotten these for me since I have lost my children and am desolate, a captive and wandering to and fro, and who has brought these up?

There I was, left alone, but these, where were they? Would you pray with me? Our gracious and merciful Heavenly Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for your faithfulness in the face of your people's unfaithfulness, how amazing it is that though we experience the consequences of our rebellion and you maintain your justice and your righteousness and yet you continue to pour out your mercy that your promises might not return void.

Father, as we worship this morning, help us to come before you with humble hearts as we read your word, that we might bow before it and obey everything that you give to us. We do all this in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, amen.

You may be seated.

Our next hymn will be out of the hymns, Modern and Ancient, the Little Black Book, 95, O Church, Arise. And then we'll go into To You Alone from the same hymnal, 124.

We'll shout out to those in your age again Father, we thank you for this day.

We thank you for gathering us here, that we may rejoice in your truth. We may put our attention upon your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior, our King. Thank you for the way you keep your promises. We thank you for the way you answer our prayers.

We thank you for the way that you look upon our situations with more understanding and care, provision and concern we can possibly fathom. Who are we that you would be mindful of us? And yet you have set your love upon us entirely of your grace.

And so we pray this morning as those who have been called out to us and brought together, that you would help us to respond well to your word, to your truth. God, I ask that you would, by your Holy Spirit, do a work in our lives that what we see in your word, that this would also be seen in our lives.

That what you declare to us by your Holy Spirit concerning your Son, that we would give a hearty amen to. Well, this is your work, Lord. We ask that you would do it. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.

The Church’s Identity in Christ

I invite you to open your Bibles and turn with me to Acts chapter nine. Acts chapter nine and verse 31. I was looking forward to preaching this verse. A couple of weeks ago, I was reading through and was very encouraged by the manner in which all the various blessings and graces evident amongst the church were brought together here in a single verse.

And the title of this morning's sermon is something of a grammatical meaning. A grammatical theological pun, which I enjoy. You may not. The church is churches. The church is singular possessive, church is plural nominative.

So what is this? We want to see how it is that there is one church in Christ and yet there are many churches in Christ. And to see what he is doing here in the book of Acts, Acts 9 .31, how is he building his church?

What are the acts of the risen Lord Jesus that we can rejoice in here in this passage? Well, let's take a look. I invite you to stand with me and I'm going to read God's holy word, Acts 9 .31. Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee and Samaria had peace and were edified and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You may be seated. This is an encouraging verse, especially when you think about what had just happened, what had just been occurring in the life of the church and why it is that they're all over the place.

Why is the church not just there in Jerusalem? Why are they in Judea and in Galilee and in Samaria and just, you know, all over the place? There had been a major persecution. Going back as far as chapter five, we see the apostles were arrested and beaten for the name of Christ.

We see that there was a deacon in the church, Stephen, who was bold in preaching Christ, opposed by the synagogue of the Hellenists, among whom was one Saul of Tarsus. And a major persecution broke out against the church and they scattered.

Some of them stayed in Jerusalem and others fled. And Saul of Tarsus hated Christians so much that he pursued them with letters authorizing his persecution. But you know, though it looked like the flock was scattering, Jesus is a good shepherd.

We have a good shepherd. And it wasn't so much that the flock was scattering as the, well, he's also the vine dresser, isn't he? And the new wine was bursting forth from the old wineskin. And Christ was sending forth his good news, the gospel of the kingdom, just as he commanded his disciples to do, to be his witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria, and the uttermost parts of the earth.

Nonetheless, Saul of Tarsus was hot on their heels. What's a good shepherd to do? Well, Jesus Christ is the kind of good shepherd that turns a pursuing wolf into a protecting sheepdog. And he does that by a mighty miracle in the life of Saul of Tarsus, where once he hated Christ and hated Christians, now he is the servant of Christ, the bond slave of Jesus Christ, eager to serve and minister and love his fellow brethren, brothers and sisters in Christ, and eager to proclaim the good news of Jesus and defend it in front of those who would try to deny it.

What a good shepherd we have in our savior, Jesus Christ, who can do that kind of miracle. When I read Acts 9 .31, it's so encouraging to see what goes on in the church here with that as the background, how much peril there had been in the life of the church, how difficult it had been.

But now look what Jesus does and look at the prosperity of his church. As a student of theology and a student of church history, when I think of the church, I often think in terms of controversies. Controversies, so many different controversies in church history, arguments about what does the Bible really say?

How are we truly to follow Christ in this world? What are we really supposed to look like? Everything from the controversies of the early centuries in the church to the Reformation down to today. Controversies in church splits between this denomination and that denomination, and why are they different?

These are things that I have to know and often think about. And then, of course, there's the conflicts within the local church, where there can be folks who are not at peace with one another in the local church.

As you think about those things, you know, we realize that that is not to be the defining mark of Christians. Jesus said, by this, all men will know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for one another.

And this love defined not by anybody's estimation, but Christ's himself, in that he said, a new commandment I give to you, that as I have loved you, so you ought to love one another. And only he could say that.

And indeed, because of who he is and what he has done, indeed, that is a new commandment. That we should love one another as Christ has loved us. And so we know what we're called to, we know the signifying mark is to be our love for one another in view of Christ.

But as we think about the various controversies throughout church history, which still have an impact today, and the splits between this denomination over here and this one over here, and even the conflicts that can come up within a church, well, who is sufficient for these things?

To bring peace, to reconcile, to not killing truth in the streets for the sake of peace, but truly, true reconciliation, bringing us together in the truth. Only one who is sufficient for those things is our good shepherd, Jesus.

We have a good and wise shepherd, and we see that, we've seen ample evidence of that in the passages leading up to Acts 9 .31. In that sense, Acts 9 .31 is a bit of a summary of all that Christ has been doing, how it is that he is shepherding and building his church, and we need to pay attention to the components in this verse but it's also a segue, not just a summary, because this is, from this platform, all that's yet to come in the life of the church.

It's being launched from this point. We're supposed to look here at the acts of the risen Lord Jesus Christ as he promised, so he is doing. He said, based on Peter's confession of him as the Christ, the son of the living God, Jesus said upon that rock, upon the rock of the gospel, his identity, who he is and what he does, that he would build his church upon the rock, and the gates of Hades would not prevail against it.

So we're looking at Christ building his church, and Christ is a wise man, the wisest of all, and so he builds his house upon the rock, which is indeed himself. He is the cornerstone. So I want us to look at seven different aspects of the church's churches in verse 31.

And the first simply is their identity, their identity. When we read this, some of your translations are gonna say, then the church, throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, had peace and was edified, singular.

Walking in the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. Maybe it says they, maybe it says it. Church was multiplied. And there's one textual tradition that has it in the singular. The one I'm reading in the majority text has it in the plural.

But you know, they're both right. They're both right, you know? There is one church, and it is the body of Christ. And each church is the body of Christ. And so we recognize the identity. These are people, these are people who are called out from among other people and gathered to one another.

But the calling out and the gathering in has to do with one person, and that is our Savior, Jesus. We gather to him, for him. One of the great questions about, that plagued the days of the Reformation was what makes a church?

What makes a proper church? What makes a correct church? Because after all, if Martin Luther or Zwingli or Knox or others were gonna say, or John Calvin was gonna say, well, we're not going to recognize the legitimacy of the Pope in Rome, let alone anyone else within that system of false teaching.

And we're going to gather together, and we're going to be a church, and we're going to worship Christ, and do things the way we think that the Bible teaches. Well, is that a church? What makes a church?

Roman Catholic Church said you can't have a church unless you are part of the church. You have to have our approval, otherwise you're not a real church. And the definition that the Reformers settled on was that a church is wherever the gospel is being preached and the sacraments being rightly observed.

Wherever the gospel was being preached and the sacraments rightly observed. Meaning Christ must be preached, who he is in all of his glory as our savior and as our sovereign. Christ must be preached, what he has accomplished in his work, what he is doing now, what he is soon to do.

And not only that, not only must the word of God be rightly preached, as Christ preached from all the scriptures, but the sacraments must be rightly observed. Meaning that only those who are in Christ, alive in Christ, bought by his blood, found in him by faith, only they should be participating in communion, sharing together at the Lord's table.

And only those who are in Christ should be baptized. And there was a big argument about that, between Paedo-Baptists and Credo-Baptists. But the idea was we have to be identified by Jesus, this way, that way, every which way.

The idea was that to understand what a church is, you have to know who Christ is. There is a clear identity that is built in him. And we've seen already in the book of Acts, from chapter five all the way to here, that there was a distinction.

The church knew who they were. People around them knew who the church was. Saul of Tarsus' persecution was effective because everybody could identify who the Christians were. They were that distinct. They were that different.

They were that set apart. And so consider their identity. Who are we to our Lord? Who are we to our Lord? As we consider the communion that we share once a month here, as we take of the bread and the cup, we're saying something about that we are those for whom Christ died.

We have been given to the Son by the Father. And he died for us upon the cross and was raised the third day. And he has given us his Holy Spirit that we would not be orphans but in communion with him.

We are those for whom Christ died and was raised. Our names are upon his heart and upon his hands. That as we hold to these gospel truths, that Christ is our Savior. He is holding onto us. Who are we to our Lord?

What a vital question to begin with to understand the identity of the church. Was he reading in verse 31, the churches or do we read the church? Either one is correct. Who is the church? The church is not the building.

The church is not the institution. The church is not the membership role. The church is the bride of Christ for whom he has shed his blood. Who are we to our Lord? How does he consider us? How does he look upon us?

Isn't that the starting point for us? As we consider that defining mark of who we are, by this all men will know that you are my disciples, by the love that you have for one another, that we would love one another as Christ has loved us.

So here we begin. Who are we to our Lord? And if we will see how Christ has loved us, then we will know how we are to love one another. A second question about our identity. For this is the church and the churches throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria.

Who are we to each other? Who are we to each other? Well, first and foremost, we begin with where we're at. As children do. I look out and I see brothers and sisters in Christ. Those for whom Christ has died.

I see those who are members here at Sunnyside Baptist Church, who have agreed together to live together according to our church covenant. An expression of what the Bible has to say about how we love one another and care for one another and embrace one another.

Who are we to one another? By the blessing of the Holy Spirit, we are sons and daughters of God. And that's why we're brothers and sisters. We're not brothers and sisters in the sense that we have necessarily a genetic connection.

Not brothers and sisters because we have a regional connection or a cultural connection. But we have, our connection is through our elder brother, Christ, who has laid down his life for us. And by the spirit that he gives to us, we cry, Abba, Father.

We have the same father. We have the same elder brother. Who are we to one another? Brothers and sisters. And in the local church, those who have promised. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. Not like Cain, who was of the evil one.

Yes, I am my sister's keeper. And who are we to the world? For I ask that one more thing. Who are we to each other, not just as local members, but everywhere else? I'll talk about the internationality of the church in a moment.

But just keep in mind, keep in mind, that the church is far larger than you can fathom. And we have so many brothers and sisters that in this life, in this side of heaven, we're not gonna meet. But let's keep that in mind, the body of Christ.

The glory of Christ in his body, as those for whom he has died. The third question is, who are we to the world? You see, we begin, please watch the importance of this priority. We must begin with who are we to our Lord?

Without Jesus, we're nothing. Without him dying upon the cross for us, without him saving us, we don't have an identity. We don't have a church at all. So we have to begin there. That's the most important question that we have to ask as the church.

Who are we to our Lord? Then we see who we are to one another. And only then do we ask who are we to the world. You see how important it is to have that trajectory lined up? If we begin by asking who are we to the world, we might be very obsessed with what we think the world wants us to be.

We might have some idea in our head about what the world should want the church to be. And then we might try to live up to that ideal, but that will not serve the world, that we should be man-fearers.

Who are we to the world? When we ask who we are to our Lord, we thought of communion. When we say who are we to the world, we might think of our baptism. I am owned lock, stock, and barrel by God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

This I have declared by my baptism. Amen. Not my name, but His name. Not my name anywhere, His name all over me. Every which way you should look at my life, you should see property of, owned by, defined by, directed according to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, led by my mediator, my King, Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ.

Now, each church is of the church. Each church is of the church. We all get our identity in Christ. Now, if we had the opportunity to all get up one Sunday morning and go visit a different church, I know that you've visited other churches, you've been members of different churches throughout your life.

Say, well, you know, it's different over there. Yes. Yes. You know, it's the same over there. Yes. Praise be to God. The things that should be the same are the things that, well, they're the things that matter before who we are to the Lord, that matter in light of who He is, who we are to one another.

Those things should be the same. Oh, the place is gonna be a little bit different, the culture could be a little bit different, the hymns, the music are gonna be a little bit different, the way that they order their worship service is gonna be a little bit different.

Yeah, there's gonna be some differences, different people, different personalities, different giftings, different ministries and opportunities, but you know, we all get our identity in Christ. He defines us.

Now, we begin there. That's the most important thing. When we read in the text, then the churches, or then the church, we're talking about those who have been called out, ecclesia, and gathered together, ecclesia.

They've been called out and gathered together all according to the name of Jesus Christ. We must know the identity of the church, and this informs their internationality. Notice we've got churches throughout, throughout all over the place.

Judea is not just Jerusalem, not just the villages surrounding Jerusalem, but all throughout Judea, all throughout Galilee. Jesus spent the majority of his ministry, think of all the names of the towns that Jesus ministered to there in Galilee.

And look at this, churches all throughout Samaria, all throughout Samaria. As we looked at chapter eight, how the gospel came to Samaria. You know, these are different nations. I didn't say they're different political entities, they're just different nations.

Nations are made along many lines that God has sovereignly drawn. And these churches are gonna be different. You go to a Judean church, you may hear a lot of Aramaic. Maybe if you have a lot of converted priests in that church, you're gonna hear some just straight up Hebrew.

You go over to Galilee, and you're probably gonna hear some Greek. Maybe they're reading the Greek translation of the Old Testament instead of the Aramaic or the Hebrew. Languages are gonna be different.

The costumes are gonna be a little bit different. And look at all these, there's churches throughout. And there's probably a church per town at least, but think about Jerusalem. Oh, the Sanhedrin hates these guys.

Just hates their guts. And there's thousands of them, thousands of Christians. And they're probably not all at this point grouping up in Solomon's Porch right now because they're under fire. How many different homes throughout Jerusalem are just chock full of saints rejoicing in the truth of the gospel?

And in the villages and in the towns throughout Galilee and Samaria, there a church, here a church. Now it's important, let's read this verse. There is a joy in that one church in that village in Samaria, isn't there?

And there's a joy in the fact that the church is all over the place at the same time. There's a joy in both of those things, isn't there? We need to have a sense of that scope as well as a commitment to our own church family.

I think of our brother Mitch Tillman, a missionary whom we support and I've known for many, many years. And the work that he inherited from his father in doing missionary work in Mongolia. He talked about the difficulty of getting out to the Gobi Desert.

These tribes who live in one of the most remote places in all of planet Earth. Places that are so suffused with paganism that it's about the same type of engagement that you would find of the tribes in the deepest, darkest jungles of Africa.

There they worship the spirits. There they worship demons. If a mother gives birth to twins, they suffocate one of them in ash. Pagan, hopeless, dark place. And then the gospel goes forth and Jesus advances.

And then he begins to do miracle after miracle as Mongolian after Mongolian comes to faith in Jesus Christ. A hospital is built in the Gobi Desert. Villages are found in the Gobi Desert. I remember Mitch told me one time that they had made it all the way out to a very remote village, just a few yurts.

And there they proclaimed the gospel and people came to faith in Christ. They left them with what they could. And they couldn't get back there for over five years. Couldn't get back, it was too remote.

Mitch told me, he said, one day we finally got back there and after five years we showed up and there they were on a Sunday, all together in a yurt, reading the Bible together, praying and singing. Praise be to God.

And if we're thinking about the internationality of the church, it's that kind of scope that we need to be thinking about in giving praise to Christ. I know it's fashionable today to exude a certain type of virtue, the virtue of demographics, in which you don't really have a holy church unless you look like the population breakdown of the world or the population breakdown of the United States.

But the scripture rejoices in how God loves the tribes and gave his son to the world so that men, women, and children of all the world without distinction would be brought into the kingdom. And that is a true joy.

And we rejoice that we have brothers and sisters in Christ that can't speak our language and we can't speak theirs. And maybe on a mission trip or passing by, we would only see them very briefly. But we don't have to turn the local church into the whole church to rejoice in the internationality of the church.

The Church’s Peace and Communion

Thirdly, I want you to see their interaction. Notice that the churches throughout all of Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace. They had peace. Now, why were they having peace? Well, for one thing, Saul of Tarsus was on their side now.

And, of course, that's gonna foster some peace when the main persecutor of the church, with all his legal prowess and religious zeal, is no longer persecuting you but helping you. So they were having peace because of that.

But notice how this is put. The churches throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace. It's an ongoing thing in the original language. They were having peace. It's an ongoing thing. That was characteristic of how things were going for them at this point in time.

They were having peace. They had peace, in other words, between their churches. And they had peace within their churches. And both of those are a grace from God. Both of those are a grace from God. Peace between churches is a precious thing, that we can gather here on a regular basis and commit to one another and love one another and follow Christ together in our church covenant.

Oh, it's a blessed thing. And, oh, there's another church, a sister church, and they're doing the same thing. And we can rejoice with them when they rejoice, and we can weep with them when they weep. I know you have friends and family who are part of other churches.

And I know that you rejoice when you hear good news from that body. And I know it breaks your heart when you hear that there's some problem. I know on Wednesday nights, we will pray for prayer requests that started at another church, because we want to help bear that burden as well and pray.

That's having peace, isn't it? You see, peace is more than the absence of conflict. Irenae in the Greek, shalom in the Hebrew, this biblical peace is more than a ceasefire. It's not just the absence of conflict, it is the presence of communion.

And our communion together by the Holy Spirit is indeed in Christ. Let us have peace with other churches. Let us seek for their good. Let us comfort them. Let us promote to our brothers and sisters and other churches that which we know will bring peace in their church.

And that is the exaltation of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let that be our best foot forward. How much more in our own church? How much the more in our own church where the majority of our opportunity to love fellow believers is seen?

That we would do more than try to avoid conflict. Peace is more than the absence of conflict, it is the presence of communion. And what communion can we have? What communion can we have? Shiloh brings shalom.

It's only him, he's the only one who can bring us together to love one another. When we see each other in light of who he is and what he has done for us. When we see how much he loves us and what he went through for us.

How he reigns over us and consider all the promises he has made concerning us. What does peace look like between one another? Well, it looks like communion. There is the peace that we have with God. There is the peace that we have with one another.

When we gather together, as we communicate with one another throughout the week, the peace that we can even feel in our own households. You can tell the difference when you walk into a household that is full of peace.

It's not about the decor. It's not about the number of people there. It's not about the location of the house. You can walk into a household and know that peace is there. May that be true for you. May that be true here.

May that be true of our house. This property we hold in common that we take care of and we meet in. Shalom, peace looks like faith and hope and love between churches and church members. That's what it looks like.

Faith, hope and love between churches and church members. Now, we don't give two happy thumbs up to just any church because there's some really whacked out places calling themselves churches. We don't slaughter truth in the streets for the sake of peace.

The peace, true communion, not just the absence of conflict, but real communion, real relationships is along the lines of the Christian virtues of faith and hope and love. Faith, the shape of our Christian lives.

What do we believe about Christ? And how do we come to know who Christ is? What is the basis of our authority? What's the standard by which we are understanding what the truth is? We have to be in agreement there.

Churches of like faith can be at peace. Not that we agree on every single last detail, but the shape of our faith needs to be the same. The hope needs to be the same. What is our hope? What are we looking forward to?

What do we think really matters ultimately over the long haul and in the long term? Can we agree on that? There are some churches that are hopeless. Hard to have communion. There are some churches that have an entirely wrong kind of hope.

Hard to have communion. But Christ will unite us if we have his hope and love. Yet we have to understand that love is not affirmation. Love is not affirmation. It is not something where we're just simply saying, oh, I approve of you and I think you're great.

Jesus made fun of that kind of stuff in Matthew 5. Love is a righteous and sacrificial devotion. By this we know, love, that Christ laid down his life for the brethren, so also we ought to lay down our lives.

1 John 3, 16. It's a righteous and sacrificial devotion. I'm gonna be for you, for your benefit, in the right way, even if it costs me. That's what love is. We can do that between churches. How much more between church members here?

Let our peace be made known through our faith and hope and love towards one another. That we would rejoice in the truths of the gospel. We would rejoice in the truths of Christ. Rejoice in what God has given to us in the word as our standard.

And we would have the same hope. My hope for you is the same as my hope for the whole church. I don't think that what you need is some technique. I don't think that what you need is some plan. I don't think that what you need is some new way of doing things or a new opportunity.

I don't think that's what you need. I think you need Jesus. Because he's an all day, every way savior. That's who I think you need. That's what I think the church needs. And that's what we have to remind each other of.