Orderly Church Meetings - Christopher G. Brenyo

Ascension Presbyterian Church Longwood

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This is God's holy and infallible word, 1 Corinthians 14, beginning at verse 26.

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How is it then, brethren, whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation?

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Let all things be done for edification. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two or at the most three, each in turn, and let one interpret.

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But if there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in church, and let him speak to himself and to God.

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Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge. But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent.

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For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn, and all may be encouraged.

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And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.

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For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints.

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May the Lord be pleased to bless the reading, the hearing, and the understanding of his word.

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Please pray with me. O Lord, we come to you with humility, and yet with thanksgiving and boldness, because you have conveyed us to Mount Zion, to the city of the living

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God. We thank you that you've adopted us as sons, that you've welcomed us into your family, and we have a high standing as joint heirs with Christ.

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We thank you for the salvation that you have procured for us, Lord, and even more so that you have purpose to unite yourself to us, to become one with us, that we might be your bride, that you might be our divine husband.

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O Lord, I pray that we would take full advantage of the many benefits you have supplied for us today, and the ordinary means of grace to provide your church, that we would have full benefit of them.

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O Lord, I pray that you would give clarity and distinction to the preaching and hearing of your word.

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We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated.

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His orderly, his creation attests to his precision and to the elegance of his design.

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Consider the human body, that very small cellular level at conception, how that conception begins to grow and develop into a person, a fully functioning, separate human being in the womb of his or her mother.

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Think about all of the things that happen in the development of that baby until it is born.

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And think about that small child after it's born, how it's perfectly equipped to live in this world, and it will grow and prosper and mature and become an adult, and repeat the cycle of conception and reproduction in the future as the

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Lord blesses. Think about our cells and how each cell has a world of activity going on within it.

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Think about your metabolism, how you somehow eat food, and it's translated into strength and energy in your body.

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Think about how your eye sees things because of the presence of light, and it's connected to the brain in such a way that your brain understands and knows what it sees, is able to comprehend and think about that which it visualizes.

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Everything in the created order screams of the orderliness and the creative power of God.

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In our own bodies we see the magnificence of this display.

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We have miles of blood vessels and all of these organs packed into this compact space, and all of it works so flawlessly.

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Today in our text Paul warns against a body life that isn't functioning properly.

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He's calling them back to that created order of seamless elegance, where everything works as it should to the building up of the body.

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Let's look at our text again in verse 26. The question that is posed is a challenge to the practice at Corinth.

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The things that the people are doing in Corinth in the corporate assembly are contradictory to the building up of the body.

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We've been talking about this for a long time now in 1 Corinthians. The prescription that's been given is a total change of perspective in the life of the body of the church at Corinth.

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I don't want to say this in a way that sounds condescending, but there are church denominations and individual congregations that have attempted to build their structure in liturgy off of these verses in 1

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Corinthians 14. And the problem with that is Paul is rebuking the practice that's listed.

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So we have to be careful in the reading of Scripture not to twist it for our own purposes and ends.

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Paul is not prescribing that we do what the Corinthian church did. And in fact he's saying the

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Corinthian pattern is out of round, out of balance, out of step with all the other churches.

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There's one thing I want you to get in this message, the big idea, the thesis of the message is this.

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Orderliness in the worship of God tends toward edification.

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Chaotic disorder denigrates it. Orderliness in worship tends toward edification.

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Chaotic disorder denigrates it. And in some cases sadly even destroys the body.

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So what's Paul doing here? He's actually regulating the use of the gifts in the corporate assembly.

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He's moved now, we've been talking about the what of tongue speaking and prophesying and all these differences, all these different gifts, but now he moves to the how.

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He says if these gifts are used, this is the way they are to be used.

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And the purpose of this is to be for the building up of the body. By implication the interrogatory question, how is it then brethren?

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The other evidence in the life of the church of Corinth, their practice was not building up the body.

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Their practice was destroying the body. Now in way of application when we get to the end, once you start thinking about it now, what is in us individually as families that is bringing the church down?

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What is not contributing to the health and building up of the body? We should be very eager to diagnose our own symptoms and to look at ourselves.

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Are we contributing to a problem? Are we building up the church?

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What's interesting here, there's kind of a cycle that's been happening in the Corinthian letter. We keep kind of retouching on these same themes, kind of through different avenues, but similar messages keep bleeding through the text here to the church at Corinth, and by extension in the power of the spirit to us.

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How is it then brethren? Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation.

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Well the first thing that I think we do when we read this text is we skip over that first phrase in the second sentence of 26.

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Whenever you come together. Coming together in the corporate assembly is a special time.

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This is now entirely lost on this modern generation.

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We have very little regard for the corporate gathering of God's people.

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It doesn't hold the sway on our lives like it once did to other

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Christians. We have no regard for the Sabbath day. We have no concern about our membership and status as part of the body of Christ.

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And so I don't take this phrase, whenever you come together, lightly.

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Because when we come together, something special happens. There is a divine intrusion into our crazy lives.

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It only happens in the corporate assembly of God's people. You cannot capture this by yourself.

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You cannot be on your knees and have this. This only happens in the assembly of God's people.

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So when we come together, it better be for the glorification of Christ. It better be for the worship of the one

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Triune God. That better be the reason we come together. It also should be for our benefit secondarily.

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We should be built up in the faith when we take advantage of and enjoy the means of God's grace.

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I think we should rush off whenever you come together. There's something special about the gathering of God's people.

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And like many things in life, it's really tied to your investment in it.

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You can't see it. You don't have eyes to see or ears to hear if you don't appreciate it.

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It's like going to look at the world's greatest paintings and having no appreciation or concept of their beauty or the skill that was required to paint them.

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Whenever you come together, each of you has a song. Now, I think it's interesting that one of the problems of the

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Corinthian situation is there is an individualistic mentality. They were seeking spiritual gifts, as I've said now at least a dozen times.

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They're seeking spiritual gifts for their self -fulfillment and self -exaltation.

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If there be any giftedness in the ministry of the church, it needs to go upward and outward, directed to give glory to God and to build up the people.

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There really is no room in the church for the exaltation of individuals for their gifts.

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To be critical again of our time, people go to churches now.

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They go to hear preachers. That's actually an abomination.

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They divert their worship of the one triune God and replace it with the esteem and exaltation of men.

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If I preach good sermons, we should be led to the cross.

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We should be led to see more of Jesus. There shouldn't be anything that's directed to exalt the preacher.

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The preacher is the messenger, the one who says and points the way like John the

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Baptist. Let's look to Christ. He's the great one.

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Our liturgy has the sermon in the middle, and it's big, and it's important, and it's central, but it's caught up in the context of Christ -centeredness.

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You don't come just to hear a sermon. It's connected to all these other elements that draw us closer and closer and closer to Christ.

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So the saints at Corinth, definitely true in other churches. Hope it's not true in us.

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There was an individualistic mindset. Each of you has a psalm. Each of you has a teaching.

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Each has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. And then he says this very imperative, very direct statement, let all things be done for edification.

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Why? Why does he make that statement there? He says, each of you has a psalm, each of you has a teaching, each of you has a tongue, each of you has a revelation.

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You guys are so spiritually gifted, but the church is not getting built up.

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Your thinking about these things is wrongheaded. Let's turn to the book of Ephesians again.

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A couple of weeks ago I referenced this. I'd like us to be reminded of Ephesians 4. Why is there gifting in the church?

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Begin reading in verse 4. There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called in one hope of your calling.

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One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in you all.

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But to each one of us, grace was given according to the measure of Christ's gift.

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Therefore, he says, when he ascended on high, he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men.

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Now, this he ascended, what does it mean? But that he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth.

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He who descended is also the one who ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.

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Now listen again. One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

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Very non -individualistic. The body. The body coming together.

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The body having this identity. He gave he himself, verse 11, gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.

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For the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.

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Till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

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That we should no longer be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the trickery of men and the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things into him who is the head,

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Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which every part does its share causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

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The church is a body.

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It's a body that is to be built up and strengthened in the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Let's go back to 1 Corinthians 14. Let all things be done for edification.

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The last sentence in verse 26. Let all things be done for the building up of the body.

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It's not happening now. If anyone speaks in a tongue, verse 27, let there be two or the most three, each in turn and let one interpret.

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But if there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in church and let him speak to himself and to God.

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Let two or three prophets speak and let the others judge. But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent.

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I wonder how often our worship is aimless. I want you to take out your copy of the liturgy.

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I want you to take a look at a couple of things. What you may not recognize is, with some exception, nearly every week, there is a gigantic coherence to all of the elements of the worship.

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It's not randomized stuff. When we walk into the assembly here, the reason we shift from frivolity and fellowship and laughing to sobriety is we are coming into the presence of a holy

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God. This connection you're going to see is very much connected to our text.

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The Corinthians were coming to their assembly to exalt themselves. We sometimes come to the assembly not to exalt ourselves, but to be aimless, to not be engaged.

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So when we come into this building, we say, oh, this is just a wood building. It's got this old architecture.

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It's got a violation of the second commandment behind me. So all kinds of different things. But this is the place where we assemble to worship as God's people.

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And there is a promise which we do not value as a people.

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There is a promise that he will meet us here when we assemble in his name.

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The king of glory, the creator of heaven and earth, says, I want to have time with you.

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I want to fellowship with you. I want to have communion with you there in that old wooden church on Church Street.

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That's not how we view it. Church is what we do on Sunday. We take it or leave it, really.

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It doesn't do a lot for me. We come into his presence and we are immediately confronted with his holiness and our sinfulness.

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And so we have to do. We were just called to Mount Zion from Hebrews.

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It's when we're called to climb God's holy mountain and to commune with him there.

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So we've got a problem. We're sinners. Is the confession of sin required for our salvation?

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No. Are our sins forgiven before we start? Yes. But we confess because we acknowledge our desperate need for Christ and his great provision of himself.

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So we are delighted to come. Are you delighted to come into his assembly to say, to be called to worship?

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I don't know. I don't know why we do that. Well, there's a reason. We go through these motions.

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We are called into the very presence of God and himself. And you can't have this by yourself. You have to trust me and believe me.

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You can't have this by yourself. It only happens with God's people. It's corporate first and blessing individually second.

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So we're called to worship. We pray that God would be present with us, that he would bless us through the service, that he would attend our prayers, that he would be with us, that the spirit would energize the worship.

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And then we fall on our faces, symbolically, on our knees and confess our sin.

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And we go deep into our sin there. We read those words. We don't just recite them in that liturgy.

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We read them and we express our heart's grief over the ways in which we have violated his law and fail to love him as we are.

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But most weeks we read through the words. We confess our sin.

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We get to look at ourselves. We begin to despair, maybe in a moment. And I say it just that moment.

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Please stand. Upon standing, I tell you that in Jesus Christ, you wretched sinner, your sins are forgiven.

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And now because of this, now in a place of the capacity for worship, because I realize who

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God is, I realize who I am. And now I have the ability to sing praises to him in a meaningful and thoughtful way.

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And so we sing. We read the scripture. We confess our faith again.

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And we sing again. And because of the grace of God, we have an audience with him.

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We have the prayers of the people, a tremendous part of the liturgy, not just the preacher, the professionals, the people of God praying to him.

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And we have the preaching of the word. We give him glory and the glory of God's tree.

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And then we climb Mount Zion in this prayer of thanksgiving and lift our hearts up to heaven where Christ is.

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And he says, come have a feast at my table. And so we come with feasting and rejoicing.

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And he gives us his actual blessing. Benediction is the real blessing of God.

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Then we go out commissioning the work that we have to do. We go in peace.

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Last week we said we need to grow up. This week we need to take that maturity and appreciate the good gifts of God's means of grace in the church and take full advantage of it.

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It's orderly. It's structured. It starts at the beginning. We pray dozens of times sometimes in this.

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The gospel happens about six times in every service. We hear the gospel.

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We see the gospel of Christ. And we ask for his blessing and we're assured of receiving it at the end.

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The Corinthians didn't have that. They were chaotic and disorderly.

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But there's a danger for us to have the forms without the engagement or the heart investment.

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So there's another problem that could happen for us and we could be in a rote and robotic way going through the motions.

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So today I hope you'll see just a little bit more corporate gathering of God's people.

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Something else that should happen as a gathering, as a body, there should be encouragement.

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There should be comfort. When you hear the words of the assurance of pardon, you should breathe a big sigh of relief and you should be comforted.

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You should be encouraged. Your sins are forgiven in Christ. That should excite you.

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You know nothing of God's holiness or your wretchedness if you don't appreciate the forgiveness of sins.

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And it seems that the church at Corinth was not building up. They were in some ways tearing down because of their selfishness.

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And they were not concerned with the body understanding, for example, in the area of tongues.

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They weren't careful that the tongue speaker would be interpreted so that the body would be blessed.

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He was just put on display as the super talented tongues guy and everybody could look up to him.

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But no one derived any benefit from his ministry. All these things have to be done for edification.

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The use of gifts don't override common sense and reason.

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The gifts should be used in an orderly and ultimately a body -serving fashion.

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How often is the body served by coming to the rock concert, which is a cheap imitation of the world?

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When you go to some real musicians, don't go to some church. They can't play music like the rock stars can.

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You might as well go to a rock concert. Church is not a concert.

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It is a participatory event for the life of every

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Christian. Part of what Paul is railing against here in Corinth is some people are left out of that participation.

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Because they will have these super gifts that some of these gifted saints had.

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They weren't encouraged. They weren't built up. They weren't instructed in the faith.

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So Paul rebukes them. He says in verse 31, For you can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged.

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You should take something from the sermon, from the message, from the teaching and study hour, and you should have something to chew on.

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The idea of meditation is like cattle chewing the cud. You ever watch...

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I hate eating sounds too. It's hard to watch and hard to listen to.

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A cow grinding on the grass. They chomp on it and they twist their jaws around it and they slop it around in their mouth.

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That's what we should do with the Word of God. We don't read it surface level.

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We read it intently. We desire to look deeply into it. And we take it and we think about it and meditate upon it for the rest of the day.

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Or on into the week. The church of Corinth was missing out on some of these important things.

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And I fear the church here in Longwood and all the faithful churches trying to preach

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Christ's gospel faithfully. We are in danger of missing the point of worship.

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Now it follows that the God of creation who orders the cells in our bodies, that he would care and that we should be fastidious about his right worship on Sunday as the corporate body.

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So the verse 32. The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.

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And one of the things that's important about this concept here, and I think Henry said it well when he said that effectively what this means is this.

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Common sense and reason aren't thrown out the door when we come to worship.

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God is a God of logic and order. If some guy breaks through the door right now and says he's the one true prophet of God.

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He stands on the pew and he shouts a bunch of stuff. We should stop and we should listen. We should listen to him.

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Maybe he is the prophet of God that we should listen to. But I can tell you one thing. It was very disorderly for him to burst through the door.

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Common sense and reason says so. He should just burst through the door that way. Maybe should have given me a call ahead of time.

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Hey, I'm the prophet of God. I'd like to speak to your church today. And we should listen to him.

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But if he utters things that are contradictory to the word of God, into reason and clear common sense speaking,

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I'm going to grab him by the seat of his pants and throw him on his face out into the pavement out there.

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That's what I'm going to do with him. Because he's coming in to disrupt our assembly.

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It's not decent. It's disorderly. We don't know where he comes from. We don't know his background.

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Is he an ordained minister? We don't know. That's the kind of stuff that's happening at the

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Church of Corinth. The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.

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We can't say, I had an out -of -mind, out -of -body spiritual moment.

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And I spoke some things I shouldn't have. It was crazy. But I pray that you'll give me another chance. No, we can't do that.

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Because the worship of God's people is too precious for that. Let's look at verse 33.

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Why do we have to have orderly church meetings? Why does the body of Christ need to function like a well -functioning human body?

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For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.

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I don't know about you, but I look out onto the landscape of modern evangelicalism.

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I look at the TV preachers. Confusion. Craziness. Insanity.

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God is not the author. God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.

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Doesn't it follow that the worship of God's people would be orderly?

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Filled with peace. Filled with building up. Filled with encouragement.

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Lacking confusion. Instead, possessing clarity. Isn't that the way the worship of God should be?

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So each of us should hunger and long for that kind of experience.

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Built on the truth of God's word, we come together on the Lord's day.

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We should hunger for that. And if your belly is not growling for that, there's a disease in the body.

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Because we should long for heaven. We should long to have communion with God and each other.

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And so we have to ask the Lord today. Lord, grant us this righteous and holy desire that we would worship you in spirit and in truth in a manner you have prescribed.

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There's something else. The last phrase of verse 33 is very important as well.

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It's on par with when you come together, probably overlooked in this section.

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I've pastored three churches since I was first called to ministry.

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The second church became the third church. I don't know how to count that. But the first two churches, the church where I interned at, were autonomous churches.

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They were elder -led, which I believe would be biblical. But they were independent churches.

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I think the church at Corinth viewed itself in that way.

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They were just their own church. They did what they wanted to do. This section speaks volumes about our form of church government and our identification with other churches.

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If I do something crazy in the doctrine of this church, I will be yanked out of the pulpit, never to see it again.

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I can't, like Mark Driscoll, pop up in Phoenix and start over. I wouldn't be allowed to do that. That's not how it would work.

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There's something here. If we're doing something that's completely out of balance with what the other churches are doing, we're teaching you the

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Westminster standards before we meet for worship so that you might discern what a biblical church should look like and the doctrine it should hold to.

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You should be able to speak to the elders of deviations from the true doctrine of the church.

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You should have the equipping to do that. We want to be a pure church. That's why we have doctrinal standards.

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That's why we have a confession of faith. That's why we have two catechisms. What was happening in Corinth was different than all the pattern of all the churches.

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They were doing something that was unique. Paul says you can't do something that's out of the pattern of the other churches.

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We want to be here at Ascension a Westminster confessional church.

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So what do we do now? God demands orderly church meetings, and there's some things that are required for that to happen.

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The conclusion of the matter may be answering the question, what should we do?

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The church is subscribed to a body of doctrine, and we should too.

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It's not a spiritual free -for -all in the house of God. Orderly worship, first point of application, orderly worship and conduct reflects first the character of God and the image of God in man.

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So at the heart of this question, the reason I used the body analogy in the beginning, the reason we talked about the body throughout, is

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I want to see us in light of us being the body of Christ and the way in which

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God created us as his people, the relationship that the creature has with the creator.

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Orderly worship and conduct reflects the character of God and the image of God in us, and this should be the pattern for all

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Christians. Sorry, I'm picking on evangelicalism today.

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I'm sorry. This is such an abomination, it's so accepted as a practice.

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It's a nightmare scenario. If you go into a seeker -sensitive church today, the honored guest is pagan who hates

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God. That's the honored guest. That's the one who's honored at the church.

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And everything is done to accommodate and make them feel happy and welcome there.

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The honored guest at the corporate assembly of God's people is

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God himself. All of our energy is to be directed to him.

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It's all upside down and flipped upside down. It's jacked up so bad.

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We're not here to see our friends. That's a side benefit. We're not here for the fellowship meal.

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That's a wonderful side benefit. We're here to commune with our

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God, with his people. And we want all the pagans to come into our doors.

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We want them to hear the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. We want them to repent and believe that they might join us, but they're on the outside looking in.

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They don't need to be accommodated. They need to be warned. They need to look at us and say, they have communion with God and I don't.

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I'm in desperate trouble. Point me to Jesus. Show me the way of salvation.

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Maybe they're not doing that because we've not shown a distinctive worship. Our absolute devotion wholeheartedly to him.

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True worship of the one and true God. The glory of his character and his attributes should be stimulating our worship.

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Secondly, our worship should be Christ -centered and body -building.

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If one thing has come true, ringing loudly through the text of these last weeks, is that we better be building up the body.

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It has to tend toward edification. Worship should be

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Christ -centered and body -building. It should lead to edification.

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There's something interesting. I'm really sad that I'm an overweight person.

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When I was younger, I was very skinny and very fit. And I didn't have to work hard at it.

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Up until later college years was my first time that I recognized that I didn't have a super metabolism.

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I could eat anything I wanted. And one of the things that I found amazing,

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I've been very faithfully exercising and lifting over the last several months.

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And I had a small, minor injury. When I went back,

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I avoided upper body exercise for a couple weeks because my elbow and shoulder were kind of hurting.

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So I said, I'm going to rest. I was really surprised at how much weaker I was in just two weeks.

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So I wonder what spiritual atrophy is like for us. If we need to be building up our body,

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I wonder what kind of spiritual atrophy happens to us of a couple of careless weeks.

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What does that do to us spiritually and our spiritual health and our ability to serve the body?

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So I think we have to keep short accounts in our body building. We need to be very zealous to stick to our fitness regime, if you will, our plan, our regimen,

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Christ -centered and body building. We have to guard against spiritual atrophy just the way we do physical atrophy.

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I have a question for you. You need to think about this one yourself.

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A lot of times the application is very spoon -fed. How can you promote this kind of body life?

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You need to ask that question. How can you personally and your family promote this kind of body life?

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We also need to take comfort in God's appointed means. He's building

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His church. And the last thing we need is innovation. We don't have to dress up the

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Gospel. There is no packaging or marketing that can compete with the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ we can faithfully proclaim in its purity.

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Not softening it, not dressing it up, not modernizing it, preaching the plain truth of the

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Gospel of Christ. In fact, our attempts at innovation could quench the spirit because of its inherent man -centeredness, resist the urge to innovate when it comes to the worship of God.

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Well, finally, this call to order also, should also cause us to think about the ordering the rest of our lives, our work life, our marriage, family, schooling, education.

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We should set things in order in our own lives. My concluding statement is, summarizing all of this, the body of Christ should reflect the orderliness of our

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God. What do you need to do to bring your house into order?

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What do we need to do to bring the house of God into order? Let's pray together.

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Lord, we know in our sinful state we have a tendency on the one hand toward disorder, to chaos, to a rebellious autonomy.

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And on the other side, Lord, we seek to take control of everything and to act as a sovereign.

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Lord, show us the way in which we are to submit to your sovereignty.

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Help us bring order to the chaos, not that we might control, but as a reflection of our obedience to you, the one who does have control.

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Lord, spare us from the two sides of this sin, controlling on the one side and the other.

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Lord, we pray that you would bless the ministry of life and the working of Ascension Presbyterian.

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Holy Spirit, we need the fullness of your unction and power on display here.

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We need a demonstration of your working and power and your might in the proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

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Lord, energize and be the impetus to true worship that is acceptable in your sight.

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Lord, we sing hymns and we pray prayers in an anemic, unconcerned way, and I pray that you change our hearts and grip us and lay hold of us, that our worship would be pleasing in your sight.

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By extension, we would derive a great deal of satisfaction in building up as a result.

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Lord, I pray that if there be any disorderly way in us when it comes to the way we conduct ourselves and we gather as a people, particularly on the

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Sunday worship service, that you would bring that to our attention and we would change it.

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Lord, I pray that our orderliness, our structure, honoring you and your character, your attributes, proclaiming the gospel of Christ would be pleasing in your sight.