1689 London Baptist Confession (part 65)

First of all, it's the Lord Jesus Christ Church, and secondly, R .C. is no longer the pastor. But the church down in Florida that he used to pastor, and now it's

Burke Parsons who pastors it, but anyway, it's much more formal. I mean, they actually kind of walk.

Somebody will hold the scriptures up, and they walk it through the church, and everybody stands up, and we don't do that kind of thing.

So there are different ways that people do things. There can be different music styles, and certainly we are more traditional in that sense than many.

We don't have, you know, the rockin' band, and Charlie's not jumping up in the air and doing extended guitar riffs.

There we go. What's that? Perhaps he, yeah,

Charlie's not as young as he used to be, so there is that. Church discipline.

Church discipline is done not by some far -off authority, but it's done here locally.

We also have various church rules. We have a church constitution. We have different things that we do here.

So we've talked about church, and now let's talk about what the communion of saints is, the local church, and then there's the church universal.

The confession says this. All saints that are united to Jesus Christ their head by his spirit and faith, although they are not made thereby one person with him, have fellowship in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory.

And being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other's gifts and graces and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, in an orderly way, as do conduce their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man.

I'm pretty sure I had to look up conduce, and then I forgot to put down the definition of it, so we'll skip over that for the moment.

But when I started thinking about the fellowship of the saints or the communion of the saints,

I thought about this, the verse of the church's one foundation, verse 4.

It says this. Yet she on earth hath union, talking about the church universal, with God the three in one, and mystic sweet communion with those whose rest is one.

Now, who would that be? Somebody asked me once, you know, does that mean, by the way, that we have mystic sweet communion with dead saints?

And what does that mean? Does that mean that we should pray to them?

Is that what the song is about? No, that's not what the song is about. What the song means is just that there's a sense in which we are one with those whose rest is one, those who are already in heaven.

O happy ones and holy, Lord, give us grace that we, like them, the meek and lowly, on high may dwell with thee.

The communion of the saints, those whose rest is one. Well, it's a universal communion, right?

We have communion, we have bonds, we have, we could even say familial bonds, familial in the spiritual sense, bonds with every believer around the world.

Now, how do we have a bond with them? Well, Sproul said it this way.

He says, the communion of saints describes our relationship with Christ and our relationship with each other.

There are not many relationships as important in our lives as those two. Well, I mean, if you can tell me of a relationship more important to you than the relationship you have with Christ, we need to talk after the

Sunday school. But after your relationship with the

Lord, after your relationship maybe with your spouse, the relationship you have with the brothers and sisters that you have in Christ is vital.

It's very important. Now, let's, well, in fact, he says, he goes on to say this,

Sproul does, the communion of the saints describes, okay, oh, okay, sorry,

I'm lost here. Because we are united with Christ and we are thus obligated to love what he loves, the church universal, which is to say all believers everywhere, because of that, because we're united with him, we are obligated to love the church universal, every believer across the world.

Why is it that when, I mean, it was interesting when we had Evan here last week and he talked a little bit about China and some of the things that are going on there.

I don't know how many were here last week. Did he talk about it much in Sunday school? Some of the things that are going on over there, they have these reeducation camps.

They're basically like concentration camps where they're taking Muslims and Christians and people of almost every religion and teaching them with various physical disciplines.

In other words, they're torturing them to get them to recant their faith. And there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in these camps.

We don't talk about it very much. Why don't we talk about it very much in the media? Why do you think that is?

It's not very PC because China is good.

China is where we butter our bread, so to speak. We need China financially. So who wants to talk about a few hundred thousand people out of, after all, they've got more than a billion people.

What's a few hundred thousand or a few million? It's not very popular to talk about it.

There are Christians in Nigeria whose churches are getting destroyed, who are being murdered.

There are Christians in England who are being jailed. In India, who are being murdered, persecuted, muzzled.

What's our response to that, emotionally speaking, viscerally speaking? How do we respond to that kind of thing?

I don't know about you guys, but when I read about it, I get upset. Why? I don't know these people.

It's because I recognize the kinship that we have with them.

They're human beings, yes, but they're also Christians. And they're being persecuted for their faith.

Sproul says, Our identity is not swallowed up in the identity of Christ so that we become gods.

In other words, we're not absorbed into him. Rather, we enter into the blessed condition of intense personal fellowship with God.

That is what communion means, being with him, not being absorbed in him. So we have that.

Our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world have that. And because we have that, we have this communion, this fellowship.

Now, what does it mean when the confession says that we are united with Christ in his sufferings?

Let's look at 2 Timothy 2, verses 11 and 12. 2

Timothy 2, verses 11 and 12. And it says, The saying is trustworthy, for if we have died with him, we will also live with him.

If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will also deny us.

So we're united with Christ, and that means that we live with him.

We have died with him. We must endure with him.

We must endure the sufferings of this life. We must have died with him. What does it mean to die with Christ?

What does it mean when the scripture talks about dying with Christ? Do we literally die with Christ?

In what sense do we die with him? Our wants and desires are basically submerged to obedience to him.

We die to ourselves, right? If we're not willing to endure, as it says there in 2

Timothy, which means to maintain a belief or course of action in the face of opposition, to stand one's ground, to hold out, then what?

Scripture says he will deny us. In other words, if we deny him before men, then he will deny us before the

Father. Now, is that a condition of our salvation? In other words, you can be saved, but then if you deny him, you're unsaved.

What do you think about that? Why not? Can you think of a biblical example of somebody who denied him and then he was saved?

Yeah, okay, that's easy. Peter. Okay, which says?

Remains faithful. Okay, good. If we are faithless, he remains faithful, right?

If we fail, which we do, that's one of the problems, and Mike's kind of been on this little warpath about the mixing of gospel and law.

Why? Because if we set it up so that the gospel is our obedience, then what happens?

We fail, right? And so then as we fail, I tell you the five ways to improve your

Christian life. You go home and you say, well, this week I failed on four of the five, or maybe I failed on 4 .8

of the five. So what does that mean? I'm not a Christian. I'm defeated.

Well, maybe I'm struggling, but if I am faithless, he is faithful.

I don't lose my salvation. I should examine myself. I should try to figure out why

I'm not doing these things. Yeah, I mean, let's talk about people that we have seen over the last five, ten years, what have you, just say,

I no longer believe, right? What's that guy's name? He even spoke out here at some fancy schmancy conference.

Charlie remembers this guy. Brian McLaren, right?

He was all the rage for a while. And, you know, now if you read what he's writing, basically he's like, well, you know,

I'm not a Christian anymore. Or he's so redefined Christianity that it's unrecognizable as Christianity.

It sounds just like being a, how can I put this nicely? A liberal political party.

Yeah, I mean, there's no difference. And there's no hint of actual historical or biblical

Christianity in it. Now, as believers, we don't merely say that we love

Christ. We count the cost and we live for him. Does that, again, mean perfectly? No, because when we are faithless, he remains faithful.

What is then this union with Christ actually? Simply said, it is the application of Christ's accomplished redemption for the elect in space and time.

It is Christ's accomplished redemption for the elect in space and time.

In other words, he has actually completed purchasing us in space and time.

R .L. Dabney wrote this. He says, when made one with his redeeming head, that is to say the

Lord Jesus Christ, then all the communicable graces of that head begin to transfer themselves to him.

Communicable graces, communicable attributes, communicable good things.

Those things that can be transferred, those things that are in Christ that we can also have begin to be transferred to us.

What does that mean? That's sanctification. Thus, we find that each kind of benefit, which makes up redemption, is, in different parts of the scripture, deduced from this union as their source.

Justification, spiritual strength, life, resurrection of the body, good works, prayer and praise, sanctification, perseverance, etc.

What's he saying? He's saying that every good thing in you is a result of what?

Your union with Christ. Why are we justified?

Why do we possess spiritual strength? Why do we have spiritual life, etc.? Because we are in Christ, we have union with Christ.

I think Pastor Bob spoke about that a few weeks ago. The whole process of salvation from beginning to end is the realization of our union with Christ.

A .H. Strong defines union with Christ as a union of life in which the union of the human spirit, while then most truly possessing its own individuality and personal distinctness, is interpenetrated and energized by the

Spirit of Christ. In other words, you stay the same, but you are changed by the Spirit of Christ.

You don't literally become a different person. You are transformed by the

Spirit of Christ. And you are made indissolvably one with Him.

And so becomes a member and partaker of that regenerated, believing, and justified humanity of which

He is the head. In other words, you become part of the communion of saints. Louis Burckhoff wrote this.

He says that it is that intimate, vital, and spiritual union between Christ and His people, in virtue of which

He is the source of their life and strength, of their blessedness and salvation.

Let's look at Ephesians 2, verses 18 to 22.

Ephesians 2, 18 to 22. Again, that intimate, vital, and spiritual union between Christ and His people, in virtue of which

He is the source of their life and strength, of their blessedness and salvation.

Ephesians 2, verses 18 and 22. For through Him, we both have access in one spirit to the

Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but 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. I think if you look at verses 21 and 22, you see this.

Well, 20 through 22. You see the fact that we're talking about the church universal, which is 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. And then, you, individually. In Him, you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God the

Holy Spirit. So, the Trinity is indwelling, as it were, the church and you.

Does it work in both? Building, sanctifying, making you more

Christ -like, but also building the church. We are a dwelling place.

Watch to be quiet here. We are a dwelling place for God by the power of the

Holy Spirit, but only because we are in Christ. Our union with Christ is the foundation of our relationship with other believers.

It is because we are in Christ that we have this sort of universal brotherhood and sisterhood.

This gigantic family that spans the globe. People that we've never met.

Janet and I were passing by this morning as we drove in. There's a construction site in Holden.

And, you know, all along the construction site, I mean, they really haven't done all that much.

They're going to be, I guess, custom homes. And the signs out front say that it's by the

Xenos Construction Company. Anybody know what

Xenos is? Foreign. And I thought, well, that's interesting.

I don't know what they're trying to say. They only hire foreigners to work on the houses. I don't know what they're trying to say.

This house built by foreigners. I don't know. But that's the name of the construction company. And that's the word here when we think about strangers, foreigners, outsiders,

Xenos, right? Well, is there such a thing as a stranger in the body of Christ?

When you meet somebody for the very first time, and they're actually a Christian, do you think,

I don't really know about this person. I don't really know if I like them or whatever. And I'm going to tell you,

I don't know, there might be experiences like that. But I'm just going to say, wherever you go in the world, as soon as you walk into a body of like -minded believers, there's just a sense that you have arrived at a different home.

You're at home. You're with people who love Christ. And if you're with other people who love

Christ, there's an inexplicable bond. Well, it's explicable, but it's only explicable by Scripture and the fact that you are all in Christ.

And it becomes evident the moment that you meet and you start talking and you find that you have the most important thing in common, which is that you love the

Lord Jesus. Now, by virtue of the fact that we are in Christ, there are certain things that are true of us.

We must, for example, serve one another. And the Confession says that. It says, being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other's gifts and graces.

And listen to this, and are obliged to the performance of such duties. Now, we've talked about this a little bit, but it's important as we just think about the communion of the saints.

We think about this truth about being in Christ, in the universal body of Christ. And the

Confession says that we have communion in each other's gifts and graces. What do you suppose that means?

That we have communion in each other's gifts and graces. That your gift, does it belong to you?

You know, if you have received a spiritual gift from the Holy Spirit, does it belong to you? It's meant to be shared.

It's part of, you know, unlike when you're a kid and you got your Christmas presents and you open them up and all of a sudden, you know, your brother or sister walks up and wants to, like, play with them and you're like, get your grubby mitts off my presents.

It's not the same kind of deal. There's a communion in each other's gifts and graces and are obliged to the performance of such duties.

And I don't think this can be said enough, even though I seem to say it a lot. If you have a spiritual gift, the

Confession says that you are obliged to the performance of such duties. Now, why do you suppose that this would be apropos for them to put in the section about the communion of the saints?

When he's talking or when they're talking about us being in Christ, why talk about spiritual gifts?

Why talk about that with regard to the communion of the saints? We're one body.

And the gifts are given so that we can serve each other and,

Erickson, okay, perform like a body would. We have spiritual gifts for the mutual application of the body and for the building up of the body of saints, right?

And the body only functions properly when everybody exercises his or her gifts.

I don't know how many of you, how many of you have ever had an injury, have an injury now?

You know, let's say, let's say your right elbow is hurt. How much fun would it be to try to do push -ups?

Not a whole lot. When each part of the body is working properly, then you can exercise, get stronger.

And it's the same with the body of Christ. When the body is functioning properly, as it should, when people are thinking more highly of each other than they do of themselves, when they are putting themselves out and exercising their gifts as they ought to, then the body grows.

Ultimately, we do this out of love, right, for love for one another. But the Confession says we are obliged to do so.

Is there a contradiction between being obliged to do so and doing out of love?

I don't think so. We have, you know, the love chapter between, you know, everybody knows the love chapter.

What they don't understand, 1 Corinthians 13, is between 1 Corinthians 12 and 14, they don't understand that part.

But it's all about spiritual gifts. R .C. Sproul says this, he says,

The Apostle Paul admonishes the Corinthian congregation about their abuse of the gifts of the

Spirit. It is in the middle of this that he tells us how the body of Christ is supposed to look.

Let's, well, I'll just read 1 Corinthians 13, 1. Familiar, but he says,

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

Right. And what does he mean there? What he means is that even if I'm, if I have whatever gift.

And I'm exercising it out of a sense of something other than love, then

I am useless. I am a distraction. I am a detriment to the body of Christ.

I need to be exercising it in love. In other words, for the good of other believers. Paul is not in 1

Corinthians 13. He's not describing love in the abstract. He is telling us how love looks in the midst of a community that has been gifted by God.

The purposes of our gifts or the purpose of our gifts and our graces is to benefit everyone in the body of Christ.

And if you think about it this way, can someone, you know, can Pastor Mike, he was even talking about it yesterday morning.

The men were here preaching and I'll just kind of show you what he did.

He goes, when I get done preaching, he says, what I don't do is kind of close my

Bible or, you know, close my iPad. And then turn it as I'm going down, just kind of like this, you know, like I just did a great job.

Good for me. Why? Why shouldn't he ever think like that?

I can give you several reasons. Yeah, I mean, anytime you just want to go like this. Well, then your focus was wrong in the first place.

And, you know, whatever you think you did, you probably didn't do. On the other hand, you know, there are times when you just basically trust me where you want to slink off the pulpit, you know.

Or, you know, there have been times where I was just like halfway through a sermon. I'm like feeling underneath, just wondering if there's a trap door.

But it's not. Where did Steve go? It's not about us.

Right. It's about the Holy Spirit working through flawed men to communicate the truth about Christ and about us and about what

Christ has done for us. So any kind of look at me moment would be wrong.

And no matter what your gift is, you know, there can never be a time where you're so satisfied with your own performance where you just want to go like this.

Because the truth is, right, even no matter how gifted you are, if you're not empowered by the spirit, if you're not gifted by the spirit, then you wouldn't be any good anyway.

And, you know, when it comes to preaching or teaching or anything else, you could always think to yourself, well, could

I have studied more? Could I have said something better? Could I have, you know, connected with somebody at a little bit more efficient level?

There's always something to improve. You can never really say, you know, that's it.

I just won the championship because you haven't won anything. We serve, as it were, because we want to honor the

Lord and because we love one another. That's why we do it. Now back to the confession.

It says, saints by profession are bound to maintain and holy fellowship.

That's how they used to say it. A holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God and in performing such other spiritual services as tend to their mutual education.

As also in relieving each other in outward things, according to their several abilities and necessities, which communion, according to the rule of the gospel, though especially to be exercised by them in the relation wherein,

I mean, this sounds like legalese and we'll explain it all here in a minute, wherein they stand, whether in families or churches, yet as God offereth opportunity, is to be extended to all the household of faith, even all those who in every place call upon the name of the

Lord Jesus. Nevertheless, their communion, one with another as saints, doth not take away or infringe the title or property, or I'm sorry, or propriety, which each man hath in goods and possessions.

Now that sounded like a lot of legalese, I think, you know, not an attorney spokesman.

Yeah, that's right. We are to maintain fellowship, to worship God, to serve one another and to mutually edify one another.

And that's a pretty good description of what a church should be about. Sproul says, we can't hate someone for whom

Christ died. Is that true?

Why is that true? Okay, because John says so. I mean, to just get a couple of bigger issues out of the way before I go back to this, you know, if someone says they don't like church and therefore, you know, they stay home and read their

Bible. Well, they don't like church. Well, Christ said what? I will build my church. Ephesians tells us that Christ died for the church.

I don't like church. I don't know what that means other than you don't like something that Jesus Christ, whom you say is your

Lord and master, died for. Similarly, if we say that we hate someone for whom

Christ died, our brother or sister in Christ, you have a problem with John because we can't hate the brothers.

We love the brothers. That's a sign that we are saved, right? Now, we can be irritated or offended by them.

And certainly, can we, and I'll use the word hate unadvisedly, can we hate what believers do?

I think so because God hates it. God hates sin, right? We can be irritated or offended by them or we can offend them and have altercations, but please not in the parking lot.

But there is a limit to that hostility beyond which we can't go without at the same time denying

Christ. I mean, what does the

Bible say about when you have an issue with somebody who's in Christ as well as you?

You go to them, right? It says you shouldn't even worship without trying to resolve those things.

Leave your offering and go be reconciled to them. And it's interesting, too, because the confession is really against well ahead of its time, but also against the church growth movement.

It says a holy fellowship, and it must be based on believers, not seekers.

Why not? Can you have a holy fellowship, a church striving to be holy in which you just take seekers?

That's your whole goal is to make seekers comfortable in your church? No. We are to be generous with one another, the confession says, and that's what all the legalese was about, and relieving each other in outward things according to their several abilities.

Now, this gets right down to what James talks about. If you see your brother or sister in need and you don't help them, what does that say?

Of course, these days that's applied to everybody. I don't know that that's right.

I mean, would it be a good thing to give something to an unbeliever? In many situations.

I mean, I'm not one who believes that if I see someone that I know is a drunk or a drug addict,

I'm not going to give them money. I might give them food. I might give them a coat. I might give them clothing.

But if I give them money, am I helping them or not? I don't think I'm helping them. But what the confession is talking about is believers, and it says relieving each other in outward things according to their several abilities.

In other words, if you have the ability to help someone with a need, you ought to do it.

Can you imagine seeing a brother and sister in need, knowing that you could help and yet refusing to do so?

I mean, there could be a reason for it again. There could be something where you thought, okay,

I want to help this person. I know this person needs help, but they also need help in a bigger picture.

For example, they need some financial assistance and I can provide it. But the reason they need financial assistance isn't because, well, let me put it this way.

It's because they're irresponsible with their money. So I want to help them and I will, but part of that help has to be brother, sister.

Can we talk about how you spend your money? I love the fact that you like model trains, but if you can't afford to eat, you can't afford model trains, et cetera, whatever it is.

I mean, sometimes it's not quite that bad, but some of the things that people spend money on and then they can't afford heating oil or food or what have you, it's kind of sad.

And also talking about the community of saints, we comfort one another, relieve each other in outward things according to our several abilities.

Well, part of that is that we comfort one another. I've always been impressed by the way the folks at Bethlehem Bible Church come out to funerals sometimes for people that they don't know.

Why? Because Romans 12, 15 says, Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

We ought to comfort one another, bear one another's buildings or burdens.

You know, either way, a building can be a burden. If you were at the meeting the other night, you know exactly what

I'm talking about. But even so, our forebears are the authors of the

Confession of Faith. We're not communists. I want to assure you of that this morning when they were talking about, you know, helping one another with our external issues.

Listen what they say. Nevertheless, their communion one with another as saints does not take away,

I'm putting it in modern English, does not take away or infringe the right that they have over their own property and possessions.

Our stuff is our stuff kind of. But we hold it in stewardship, right?

It's a gift from the Lord. Everything that we have is a gift from the Lord. But we don't hold it in a communal sense in which we all bring everything that we own and bring it to the church.

We're not living in that phase of the church right now. But it is a stewardship.

Let's look at First Timothy, chapter three, verses four and five.

These are the qualifications for an elder in verses one through seven of First Timothy.

But I want to kind of zoom in on verses four and five. He, talking about an elder, must manage his own household well, with all dignity, keeping his children submissive.

For if someone does not know how to manage his own household, how will he care for God's church?

Now that word household is the one from which we would draw, I believe it's economy.

But it's this whole idea of everything that the Lord has given you, whether it be financial or whether it be children, whatever it is, everything that's under your dominion, so to speak, you must manage well.

And if you don't know how to manage it well, how will you care for God's church? If you can't handle your own economy, if you can't handle your own budget, then you shouldn't be in charge of the church's budget.

And the point here is just this, that when we think about the communion of saints, when we think about how we do possess our property, we don't own it as a gift from the

Lord, we're responsible for how we distribute it. We're responsible for how we manage it.

We're responsible for even how we share it with other people. There's a stewardship issue there, and we must be good stewards of what the

Lord has given us. Any questions or comments about the communion of the saints, either the universal communion or the local communion?

Corey, famous for generosity. I mean, I like that. I think it's true. It's one of the ways that we can exhibit love, right?

Jesus said, this is how we'll be known by other people, that we have love for one another, and this is certainly one of the ways that we can do that.

Other thoughts or questions about the communion of the saints? Barry?

Yeah, I mean, if we're faithful with little, the

Lord can then entrust us with more if we're not. I mean, it's an amazing thing when we see people with, you see this fairly frequently, the rise and fall of these people, the rich and famous.

Well, how does this happen? I mean, I find myself all the time wondering, how does somebody who made 30, 40, 50 million dollars or whatever playing sports, how did they wind up broke and on skid row?

How does that happen? Well, if you're a bad steward, you can do just about anything, right?

I saw here, was it a week or two ago, a basketball star sued one of his agents because there's a million dollars missing.

And I'm like, well. And there have been a lot of those cases over the years where you trust somebody to take care of things for you, and all of a sudden, the money's missing.

How do these things happen? Well, if you make 10 million dollars a year and you spend 11 million dollars a year, sooner or later, things aren't going to be so good for you.

And people spend a lot more than, you know, one million dollars a year more than they make.

Being rich doesn't solve all your problems. It solves one, you know, that of wishing that you could be rich.

But there's never enough, right? There's never enough. Other thoughts about the communion of the saints, either large or small?

It is an amazing thing, Sharon, that you bring up because in spite of the fact that we have more ability to communicate, we as a society have more ability to communicate than we've ever had before, right?

We do less of it, less of it face -to -face anyway. It's amazing to me that people will spend a lot of time on Facebook, but they can't talk to anybody.

I wonder sometimes if we're going to, you know, I remember when I was, you know, way back when, when

I was young, and, you know, just getting the kind of courage up to ask a girl out, right?

I don't even think guys do that anymore. I think it's like, you know, send her a text.

You want to get something to eat, you know? And that constitutes, you know, mustering up great courage.

I think people, there's certainly a certain skill set or mindset that's gone now.

And, you know, it also goes to, it should set us apart in terms of just being able to communicate with others and I think reach out to the community.

I just think it's bizarre. And I think as time goes on, we're going to see more and more people. I mean, you see this all the time.

People walking around like this and they're literally walking around and you just go, how is it that they're not getting injured, you know, falling into things or getting hit by cars or whatever?

And I'm just like, this is just a way of life. And it hurts my neck to do that.

Thankfully, I can't do that all the time. But, yeah, I think that's a real problem.

And something that, you know, I'm actually kind of thankful that none of my grandkids yet have an iPad or an iPhone or anything like that.

And I hope that continues for quite a while because I like not seeing them like this all the time. This is good.

Yes? It's a good question.

I mean, I guess there's a, I mean, the truism is you want to know what your spiritual gift is, what do you do?

Take a test. Well, or, you know, my favorite way is to just go to Pastor Mike and ask for the laying out of hands where he will discern what your, just ask him for that.

He's good at that. Pastor Steve said, yeah.

What is the church's role? I think the church's role really is to affirm, you know, your giftedness.

So if, you know, for example, let's just take Corey since he's laughing the loudest.

Yeah. Take somebody like Corey and, you know, you give him the opportunities to teach and you see how he does and you go, you know what,

Corey? We can affirm you have the gift of teaching. Other gifts are, you know, if it's the gift of helps or serving or something like that.

I mean, basically, you just do it and, you know, unless somebody says, you know what, you're a real train wreck when you serve.

Appreciate your service. Can you just wait out there, you know, which is probably what they say to me.

Steve, you're in the way. Okay. So it's all a matter of, you know, you exercise your gift and basically the church, what is the church's role?

I think it's just to affirm that. But good question. Corey? I want to say provide opportunities.

Okay, that's it. Yeah, provide opportunities. Sure, we want to do that. But I don't want to make it sound like it's up to me, like, hey,

I see a need, I would like to go to church. Right, and that's definitely true. You know, here's the worst service, and we probably need to close.

Here's the worst service you could do is just sit at home and, like, dream up new ministries for other people to do.

That is not a service. That is not a good one. And if you go to, in fact,

I would encourage you to go to Pastor Mike with that. He'd go, you know what he's going to say to you? Sure, sure. That's a great idea.

Why don't you take it up? So, yeah,

I think the hard part, and we experience this all the time. In fact, we still need a person or two to serve tonight during the service, you know, just to do the child care.

But, yeah, we want to provide those opportunities. But on the other hand, and this is a truism, and those of you who serve and those of you who have asked people to help in various ministries know this is true.

If I send out a BBC announce, the number of responses I will get is a trickle, you know.

If we stand out in the hallway and say, hey, could you help, or would you sign up, the response is a lot better.

Why is that? You know, it's what we call the glom on ministry. I put the glom on people, and then they serve.

You need, you know, it's just a matter of people need to look at the opportunities that are there, the needs of the church, and just say, you know what,

I can do that. Maybe that's not what I want to do, but I can do that, so why not? And a lot of times that's what we do, right?

We just go, somebody has to do it, why not me? Anyway, we need to pray. Father, we thank you for the church.

We thank you that you are building it. We thank you that just knowing that there are believers around the world who are being persecuted for their faith, even tortured for their faith and being told to recant, to believe either in atheism or some other religion or face death or torture or the death of loved ones.

Father, we pray for their relief. Pray that you would keep them steadfast, that they would not even experience the shame of denying you, even though they can't separate themselves from your love.

Lord, we pray that the persecution in various parts of the world would decrease.

Father, we thank you that we live in a country where we are still free to gather together and worship.