Discipleship (part 1)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Father in heaven, and we thank you this morning that you are a good and loving God who has

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Given us so many gifts and even as we think about Christmas Father we think about all the things that the world is celebrating.

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Lord. I just pray that you'd keep us focused on you and The work that you've done on behalf of your people father

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I pray that you would bless our time this morning as we look at your church and specifically Discipleship How we out of view it?

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And its place in the body of Christ and father. I pray that you'd bless our time in Christ's name.

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Amen Well, yes Yes Yeah, daddy was saying that she saw something on TV about The dangers of these reverse mortgages.

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I have to say, you know just as an aside one of the saddest things I've noticed over the last couple years is

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People that I thought were pretty good actors or whatever and now they're You know,

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I remember one of them played JFK and one of my favorite TV movies, you know, and now he's up there hawking these

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Well gold, but I mean you see these guys doing reverse mortgages and stuff like that and you go, what is this? Well just for a second.

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What is reverse mortgage or reverse mortgage is I basically own my house where I have a lot of equity in it and I'm going to burn through it.

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I'm gonna borrow that money instead of making payments on it. I'm going to burn through it and wind up With somebody else owning my home and and you know, they say it's safe.

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It's effective It's all this other stuff and in fact one guy ran for president Doing those commercials there.

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He was a senator from Tennessee. Not the name of the names But it's just it is so wrong, you know instead of thinking but this is perfectly worldly Instead of thinking how should

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I be? Helping the the work of the ministry, how should

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I be providing for those who don't have anything? This is all about how can I squeeze everything out of my life now spend it all now and leave nothing when

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I? leave except for maybe some bills, so Thank you.

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Dottie. I it is it is dangerous. I think it's Unbiblical and it's upside down.

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It's just the wrong way of looking at things, you know, how can I get? How can I go out on a high that's the that's the idea?

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Anyway, we've been talking about the church You know the overarching question should you love the church?

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I I just I so chafe against this idea that somehow churches are and You know, obviously

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I have a little bit of a bias in the thing, but you know, the churches are interchangeable You know, it's like you can go to want one

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YMCA or you can go to another one you can go to one Supermarket or another one one gas station or another one, of course

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I prefer the ones that are full service and I think that's how we like our churches to full service

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Somebody to park my car somebody, you know do all the nice things for me We just have a wrong view of what the church is how it should operate and so I really started this

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Series because I want us to think about the church not just Bethlehem Bible Church But the Universal Church and think about it rightly and think about our place in it

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Kind of our membership the whole the whole thing so we've been talking about the nine marks that Mark Dever put out in booklet form some time ago and We recently did

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About half a million weeks on church discipline or at least that's what it seemed like and now we're at discipleship

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Discipleship now, why would you think that discipleship would be an important feature of a biblical church?

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Maturing the Saints right Brian if you don't have church discipleship eventually church is gonna die

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If we view we mentioned discipleship basically as being the concept of life on life

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Replicating You know one Saint pressing their life kind of on another so that as much as they possibly can they're

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Replicating that life into a younger or a newer Saints and if you'd fail to do that, then what you wind up with literally is a dying church a

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Church where you know, eventually you look around you go. That's funny. Where'd all the kids go? Well, that's funny, where did all the adults go, you know, and now it's just the six of us on Medicare and Well, I mean, that's what happens, right?

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Yeah, talking about reverse mortgages and you know, which which one of us got the better deal

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But part of that is you know, and I there are churches like that And there are churches in New England like that and I think in part it comes from not just not understanding

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What the church ought to be but not understanding really what a Christian ought to be The idea of you know

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Christianity as an island You know, it's It's been said us for and no more, you know, some churches are like that.

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Well, I think some Christians are like that, too I'm saved. I don't want to necessarily tell anybody about that I don't want to evangelize anybody and you know what when it comes to my life

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I just assume not have any expectations placed on me And I certainly wouldn't want anyone else coming in and kind of crowding my style

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Tell me what to do, and I certainly don't want to tell anyone else what to do I think

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I just described about 90 % of evangelicals in this country. Let's open the

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Bible to Titus chapter 2 verses 2 to 6 and we read this last week But I think it's a good place to start and you know, especially

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I love the first two words of this passage So I'm gonna read this Titus chapter 2 verses 2 to 6 older men.

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See that's that's me I'm okay with that Once you get to be a grandfather, it's okay that you're getting old.

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So it's alright Chapter 2 verses 2 to 6 older men are to be temperate dignified sensible sound in faith in love in perseverance

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Older women likewise are to be reverent in their behavior Not malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine teaching what is good

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That they may encourage the young women to love their husbands to love their children to be sensible pure workers at home kind Being subject to their own husbands that the

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Word of God may not be dishonored Likewise urge the young men to be sensible now first Let's just let's just look at this idea of what older men are to be.

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I Want to ask you it this way what on that list would kind of set these older men apart from being elders or deacons

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Why why aren't they elders or deacons? because they don't teach

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I Mean it's not listed they could teach but it's not listed there that they do so we'd have to presume that they don't anything else

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What do you look at that? Doesn't that look like a list of a deacon? Why do you suppose that they're not deacons? we have to presume that they're not because There would be a way for him to talk about them being deacons.

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Why do you think that maybe they're not deacons? I'm gonna give you one big clue if deacons are to be what two deacons do they serve

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If you're an older man, just speaking as an older Look, it gets every day.

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It gets a little harder to get up move around Older men, you know in those days just think about it the physical labor that was involved the fact that they didn't have medicine

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So I got I bet You know by the time you were Forty something you were pretty much done

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It was an easy life We wouldn't expect the older men to be running around the church doing a lot of you know,

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I'll Never forget the the days of coming into the church and hearing some kind of rustling up on the roof and going

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What is that? You know, do we have critters up there or something? And going out there and it's

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Fred Tebow up on the and I'm going what do you Fred? What do you do? I was pretty relieved when

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Fred finally stopped doing that I Go that's a young man's game. I don't even want to be up there, you know and Fred but It's just I think it's just harder.

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But you know when you read that list temperance having to do maybe with Could be alcohol, but I think overall it's just talking about a lifestyle effect.

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Maybe else I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself Or maybe I didn't cut and pasting that stuff. But the idea being that you don't think of This older man, this is not

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Archie Bunker. This is not a hothead. This is not somebody who's rash This is not somebody who's running off to get a reverse mortgage

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That's just gonna be my theme for the day to be dignified

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You know, I just had this image popping in my head I don't know why I've mentioned it before but and he wasn't really a hero of mine

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But I think of Otis from the Emmy Andy Griffith show. That's not somebody who would be dignified Somebody who lets himself in as drunk, you know, it spends the night in the jail.

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That's that's not we're sensible I mean one of the things that comes with being older and I don't want to get

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Too emotional here, but I remember the first time that I was permitted to Care for one of my grandchildren alone

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January January was I don't know three four months. I don't know how old she was and Kristen and Janet were going out and you know,

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I got to to watch her and they said, you know, can you handle it? and I said I Think so, you know, and I've got all the emergency numbers, you know

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Listen and January, of course naturally, what does she do? Oh she just started trying just screaming her head off, you know and So I I put her in the dog crate and let the dogs.

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No No, I didn't do that. That's silly

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No, but I just remember I'll probably never forget this I remember just holding her and just kind of, you know pattern on the back or whatever and I just thought

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You know, I just remember the difference between me as a dad and me as a grandpa me as a dad.

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It was like I Wasn't mad at her, but I'd be like, well, how do I get this baby to stop crying?

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This baby needs to stop crying. I'll jump up and down. I'll make faces I'll do whatever I have to do.

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This baby needs to stop crying and as a grandfather I was just kind of patting her on the back and going that's okay. That's okay.

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You just cry It was okay Why because I'm older now and I look at it and I go, you know what a day's coming when a little

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January is gonna be Humongous and you know, she's gonna be five whatever and you know, weigh whatever she weighs

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She's not gonna come sit on my lap She's not gonna be crying and it's just gonna be a whole different Aspect of life and I'm like, well as long as I get to Hold her and she wants to cry she can just cry away

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It doesn't bother me at all. And the difference is I've got the maturity now to deal with it.

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I've got that sensibility now to deal with it. I Want a whole different place in life.

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I'd like to say that I'm smarter than I was. I don't know if that's true or not But I know that some wisdom has been beaten into me over the years

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You learn that's part of getting older and what that the whole focus here of what

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Paul's saying is that Older people older Saints seasoned

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Saints as Peggy likes to call them should be discarded

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No, no there to be honored there to be Revered there to be looked up to why because they do have

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Kind of the lessons of life. I think it's it's kind of funny now to listen to some

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You know younger people say things and I just go well, I don't never work Well, how do you know that?

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Well, cuz I used to think the same thing. That's never gonna work And look at that list a little bit more sound and faith and Then notice there's just a comma in love and perseverance.

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These are Men who have been through spiritual battles Who've been tested and haven't thrown in the towel

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Then look at what it says about the women there in verse 3 Older women likewise are to be reverent and their behavior not malicious gossips

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Now that's an interesting thing to put up there first Why do you suppose that is why

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I think we know I Said it before Maybe in different ways

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But it's no accident that you know Whatever magazine National Enquirer fill -in -the -blank all those kind of magazines market to women why because women want to know the

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The scoop the gossip What's going on in other people's lives and it's not a good thing.

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And you know as women get older in Christ One would hope that they would put these things further and further away from them

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Then he says not enslaved to much wine You know not tipping the old moonshine like grandma and that Beverly Hillbillies.

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I Don't know where all these 60 shows references are coming from today But look at that teaching.

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What is good now? What do you suppose Paul means by what is good? I think we could just keep reading and see what he means by what is good

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That they may encourage the young women to love their husbands to love their children

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To be sensible pure workers at home kind being subject to their own husbands

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That the Word of God may not be dishonored Listen, these are all things

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What would I say to? Young men I'd say look you need to provide for your family.

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You need to protect your family You need to do all these things I'm going to tell you that you need to do the things that men need to do biblically and Then what are young or older women to do for younger women there to tell them to do all the things that the

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Bible tells Them to do That's what we would call Discipleship now

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I've I've told this story before I There was a young couple.

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They were looking to get married and they came up to Janet and I Grace community church, and they want us disciple them for marriage now.

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We were pretty new Christians I think we've been Christians four or five years and I remember my response was

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I Looked at there were some people in our fellowship group in our Sunday school class who've been married for I think it was just about 50 years and I said and the man was

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Exceedingly wise I mean the kind of guy you know you ask him a question Then what do you suppose came right back to you a proverb?

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Always well, you know the Bible says did it and I'm just like that's wisdom though, right?

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If you've got a problem, what do you want? I want to hear what the Bible says about it and he was just like a walking

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Bible Just tell me you know what I need to do in this situation, and I go that's the man that you want to disciple you

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He goes yeah, but and he listed like a couple of different theological concerns, and I said

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I'll tell you what if I get to the point where I have loved my wife for 50 years and and I have some theological views that are a little quirky or a little different I still hope that somebody will say well

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I don't believe everything that Steve believes But I think I could learn how to love my wife from him and that's exactly what you know if you're going to have somebody walk you through the process of Marital counseling or something like that you want somebody who's been there if somebody who's done that and that's this whole idea

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Two young guys I would say that two young guys could be in in a

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Relationship where they they memorize scripture they encourage each other or whatever, but it's not going to be a true discipleship relationship because Well, why because their peers it's peer -to -peer

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In fact if we were to explore the whole idea of a disciple. What is a disciple? What does it mean to be a disciple period?

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It's learning. It's a learner Student is another you know that would be an English term for it right.

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What are the Disciples often called Jesus teacher why Because that's the relationship they had it wasn't like buddy -buddy

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It was student teacher, and I don't care how old you get what happens when you're around your old teachers

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It's kind of like all of a sudden You know you're locked you're locked up in student mode It's dr.

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So and so it's mr.. So and so it's mrs. So and so I mean I couldn't even my grade school teachers if they were to walk in the room right now

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I don't think I'd be going. Oh, hi. You know Don or hi, whatever their first name

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That's just that's just not how you think of them They're on a whole nother level I I Mean they're on the same level, but you know in life.

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You just had different relationships with them And that's the idea of discipleship Let's turn to Matthew 28 and if I could get somebody to read verses 16 to 20 these are very familiar

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Passage or verses, but they're good to read Matthew 28 16 to 20

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Bruce Okay now this is an old question and most of you should know this, but what's the emphasis of that passage?

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Making disciples and notice what else he says he says to do what teaching them so here

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We are we have the discipleship you know the disciple teacher Relationship and somebody might say well, you know

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Jesus just told the Apostles to do that It's not really for us today

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There are a few problems with that among those would be God the

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Father gave Jesus all authority does he still have it? Yes, and if the disciples or the

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Apostles were to make disciples Was that it? There were to just make disciples, and then that process was to end the whole point of discipleship is

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I? Teach you everything that I know I imprint my life on you so to speak

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I mean, I don't mean literally and then what do you do say? Thank you? Thus ends the process

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Discipleship has reached its conclusion because I am a disciple What's that?

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Yeah, exactly you can say the Christian life is a marathon which is true, but that really doesn't get to the point here

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It really is a relay race, right? What does Paul say? These things you've heard from me in the presence of others.

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You know these things you are to give to other faithful men It is it is a deposit to be guarded some deposits.

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We hand it off. It is to go from generation to generation And that's what this discipleship idea this that's what this discipleship language is meant to encourage

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Now listen to what Simon Kistemacher says here He says just what is meant by making disciples

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It is not exactly the same as make converts though the latter is surely implied the term make disciples places somewhat more stress on the fact that the mind as well as the heart and the will must be one for God a

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Disciple is a pupil a learner. It is necessary that sinners learn about their own lost condition his plan of redemption

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His love his law, etc. This however is not enough true discipleship implies much more

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Mere mental understanding does not yet make one a disciple. It is part of the picture

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But only a part the truth must or the truth learned and this is the highlight here must be

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Practiced It must be appropriated by heart mind and will so that one remains or abides in the truth.

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Only that is Only then is one truly Christ disciple What he's trying to say is you can know things

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Intellectually, but what makes you a disciple is when you Do them when you implement them when you practice them now, it's interesting

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Jesus spent a lot of time. In fact just in John 3 After he gets done with Nicodemus the next passage that I'm going to be preaching

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He goes off and he is described as baptizing. I don't want to give away too much but it's an

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Indeterminate amount of time that he's in the wilderness with them. And what do you suppose was going on? It's not there in The verses we're not told exactly what was going on, but I'm pretty sure that they didn't do this

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Get up in the morning have breakfast sit around in silence You know, maybe go gather some more firewood have lunch.

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I Teaching going on and we don't have all that recorded for us. What we know though is

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Jesus was In one very real sense imprinting himself on his disciples on the

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Apostles preparing them teaching them For the things that we're going to be coming up and that's what this idea is

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Now it's hard to kind of have a discipleship relationship like that right now, right? I can't say well, you know

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I'm gonna take 11 guys, we're gonna go out in the wilderness for a Month or something like that.

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We just couldn't do that besides that Wind up getting tics and I don't like tics

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But that's that's the picture.

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That's the idea Listen to what Turner says here. He says the disciples central responsibility is to reproduce themselves

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The other tasks in the Great Commission going baptizing teaching Describe how disciples are made a disciple is literally one who follows an itinerant master as have

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Jesus disciples, but Jesus would soon depart from this world and Discipleship will would then take on a more metaphorical meaning following Jesus will entail understanding and obeying his teaching so that's what we do when we disciple somebody as we want to I Mean in one sense, it's gonna sound bad.

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What that really we're kind of conforming them into our image, right

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But another way of looking it is as I follow Jesus I want you to follow and then to what excel me

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If you're in a discipleship relationship, you shouldn't just go that the person that you're discipling. You shouldn't just say well, you know someday

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I hope you can almost be as good as me or whatever that means, you know What you want to do is you want to teach them what you know, and the the the things that you've learned

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Through the scripture through life and everything else and then what you want them to do is to excel still more you want them to be greater than Than you, you know, not that you think

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I'm great and I want to pass that greatness on to somebody But you know what? I mean you want them to exceed you. That's the goal

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Thoughts or questions about it so far Bruce. That's a good question.

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You know, what is it that keeps us? From kind of looking having role models,

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I guess is the the old term. What is it that prevents us from looking at?

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older men in the congregation like that or the elders or Deacons or why is it that we don't so to speak?

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Put people on a pedestal a little bit more than we do and I think the answers are of several

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But other does anybody have any thoughts Charlie, I think that's definitely true

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People are prideful and they don't want to think well somebody might know more than me or they might be more Godly than me but and it really is kind of a sense

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It really does get back to pride because it's this sense that I have to find something lacking in me

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Which would mean I'd have to be introspective enough to get to that point and a lot of people lack that capacity for self introspection because we're taught at least in the public schools and whatnot that We're as good as anybody

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I mean, there's nothing wrong with me. There's a problem. It's with you pal So I think that's a problem and I think really it goes back to my childhood and the way

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You know people viewed me no It but it goes I think it goes back to my childhood in this sense in the 60s because we're you know basically, it's it's

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To put anybody up on a pedestal is to dethrone yourself true But I think it's also just kind of that whole fighting against authority.

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I Fight authority authority always wins, but we don't like authority, you know as a culture. We've become very

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Contrarian, yeah,

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I mean and I was kind of Euphemistically speaking there. Yeah, and and I think that's right, but I it gets back to what you were saying before because in order to view people as Maybe being further along in their sanctification in some areas then

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I would have to actually be looking for Good and other people and I don't think that's something that we readily do

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You know, especially when we're talking about elders pastors, and I'm not you know

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Asking for people to think of me more highly than they ought to And I think that the tendency is for a number of people not all people certainly but for a number of people to try to find fault

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You know, I wish Pastor Mike was more like this. I wish pastor Steve was more like that. I wish

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Pradeep was more fill -in -the -blank And the truth is none of us are going to be perfect we're all we all have different strengths and weaknesses

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But I think the the goal should be To look at people and think to them think to yourself not what is their weakest point not what is their least point?

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But where are they strong where I'm weak? What areas in my life could

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I sort of shore up? And and again,

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I just think there's a real lack of Introspection. In fact, I would go this far that a lot of people come in week in and week out and I'm not after anybody

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Come in week in and week out say oh, that was a nice message But didn't really apply to me in fact pastor

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Mike and I were talking this week about message he did Concerning What was the last message he did?

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Oh What's that? Yeah, that was the one the six

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W's and About wisdom. How about you know how to make decisions?

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And you know what almost the universal response was to that What do you think the almost universal response that was

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I know somebody who needs to hear that message They make terrible decisions So as I was listening,

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I was just thinking about all the people in my life that just make bad decisions I was convicted of the

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Holy Spirit About all these people who are just really blowing it When we come in our thought our prayer our hope when we come in is that God would change us?

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By his message, you know, I I hope nobody prays this Lord I hope that you would just change other people today as they hear your word

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But I think sometimes that's kind of the response do

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We you know the deacons elders Pastors have flaws. Yep, and if you focus on those you're not gonna be a very happy person

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So I I do think those are impediments But I think the bigger issue is what you said before pride the presumption and you know

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It's also kind of the American way, right? I talked about it solo bootstraps. Uh, you know,

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I could do it on my own There's no one better at living the Christian life than me myself and I and that's just you know

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Where I'm gonna put my focus. I really have to focus on myself right now I I'd really like to see the

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Apostle Paul write that sometime, you know Timothy I'd really like to help you out setting up this church at Ephesus Titus your church and Creed all that other stuff

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But I just need a little me time. What'd he say?

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He said, you know, I'm poured out. What was he saying? He said he exhausted himself in Working for the

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Lord, but also in infusing his life into these men I mean imagine if we could go back to the metaphor of You know the

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Christian life being a relay race You know the baton gets handed off and the guys running along and he goes, you know what?

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I Just need a little little meantime a little downtime. I'm just gonna hold on to this thing for a while, you know, just hang on And that's really what we're saying

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What I have is important, but it's not important enough for me to pass on to the next person now

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Let's look at 2nd Timothy chapter 2 verse 2 and I already kind of referred to it

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I'll just read it and The things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses these entrust a faithful men who will be able to teach others

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Also, that's in a nutshell. That's what it that's what it is. But again,

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I think discipleship Has to go a step further it's not just the teaching but teaching has to exist

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One of the things I really like about the Stuart Scott book an exemplary husband One of the things

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I really like about it is the first I don't know hundred or so pages are what?

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How to be a better husband? It's it's the gospel It's a bunch of truth that you need to you know, just have

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Filling your mind and then there's you know, okay now that you know this truth, how do you live it out?

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Knowing the truth is important and it is important that we pass it from generation to generation but the other important thing is living it out and It's the house sometimes that really where the ball gets dropped where the baton gets dropped as it were

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I mean I have to tell you something. I I spent a good deal of my Life, you know watching people fight

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Married couples fight especially whether it was Married couples who were under my charge, you know, they they were deputy sheriffs and they worked for me and they had their own marital strifes or whether I went to somebody's house in the midst of a

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Disturbance or even when I was in the military and I was an MP I'll never forget the best thing and I would tell people this when

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I was on the sheriff's department the best thing about being MP is we went to a domestic violence call

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They always ended well Because somebody was always going You know, that was hey, well you're going with me.

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What do you mean? Click click? Universal Code of Military Justice. I love that thing. You know, we never got the callbacks on those

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Because it was just done but I don't understand why people would want to live like that It's beyond my capacity to reason

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I don't understand You know husband and wife arguing and yelling and I I don't get that That's just not no that is not to say that my wife never gets upset when they know

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That's not to say that you know that everything is blissful and harmonious all the time It just means that there's just a certain level that I'm not going to go to and I I just By the grace of God, I won't do that and I guess as I got saved and as I learned more it helped me even more

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Because as I would think well This is what I'd like to say now or this is what I'd like to do now

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And I'm just like, okay, I'm not going to do that. Why? because I know that what I'm thinking is not going to please the

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Lord and that's kind of It it's it's something again.

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I think that we grow in That we develop in but it's something that can be passed on How so?

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Let's go back to the marital counseling paradigm here Somebody's getting ready to get married.

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What how do I tell them how to handle disputes in their home? How do

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I do that somebody Might get married by someone who's never been married before I would find that kind of curious

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But the one thing you would not want to do is get pre -marital counseling from somebody who's never been married before Why because he doesn't know what he's talking about.

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He might know what the Bible says and that's true I think that's right. But when it comes to the practicality of Well, what do

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I do when she does this? Well, how do I know that I'm in trouble? Well when there's been silence for a few days

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I've gotten to the point now where it doesn't take me a few days to realize you know, what? Of course, you know in the old days where and I'm not

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After my wife at all, but you know it because my stomach issues and everything else She really doesn't cook that often for me anymore because it keeps me up at night

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But you know when I was before I was saved and I was a bad husband sometimes, you know Go to the dinner table and I'm like, well, where's dinner?

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Oh You know somebody's in trouble and I think that's me, you know There are things that you learn along the way, you know

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Somebody's in trouble. Okay, I might be in trouble now But there there are practical things that we learn that we need to hand on hand off to the next generation now, let's

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Here's a question. Do you have a responsibility? I think we've covered this but let me just ask it again Just kind of a precedent.

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Do you have a responsibility to pass on what you've learned to others? Listen, what Warren Wearsby says says the ministry is

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Not something we get for ourselves and keep to ourselves We are stewards of the spiritual treasure.

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God has given us It is our responsibility to guard the deposit and then invest in the lives of others

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They in turn are to share the word with the next generation of believers now if that's true of the gospel and It is true of the gospel.

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Isn't true of other things too. Isn't it true the daily life?

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Issues that we all struggle with ought we not to help one another through those things. I Think the answer is obviously yes

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Now, yeah, Charlie Or Lane. Sorry. I saw the hand. I thought it was

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Charlie kind of doing is I've got my arm around Elaine and you know Yeah, it is true, right?

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today's time Clocks are not really quite the same and And you know the distances involved and everything else,

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I mean, it's one thing to say I'd like to disciple, you know disciple I'll just say

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Joey for the sake of argument Because you know, how Matt can Joey get at me married my daughter

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But you know when they live an hour or so away and Joey's got you know One and a half jobs where he's doing all this kind of stuff and I've got what

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I do and everything Well, it really becomes difficult time wise to manage that sort of thing

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So, what do you do in that kind of situation? thoughts any two -minute thoughts because Carmen okay via the phone.

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Yeah pretty and can

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I say one thing we'll just kind of we will pick it up here next week, but What I've discovered over the last few years, you know something that pastor

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Mike said to me once and I Kind of thought that doesn't really apply to me. He used to say

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Email is an imperfect form of communication It's totally an imperfect form of communication

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Because we don't get to see the other person's face We don't hear the tone of their voice you know somebody could write an email to you and it could be basically a plea and Unless you hear them say it you'd never figure it out

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You know with the words that are some people don't express themselves so well in an email and You know, so sometimes somebody will write me or an email and I'll go, you know it

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I'll write I might write something back like, you know, is this urgent because I'm not really sure But it might be and one of the things about getting together face to face is there's no escaping that There's no, you know, there's no kind of Misunder it's it's harder to misunderstand.

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It's very easy to misunderstand email Bob. Go ahead that that's an excellent point

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We need to close there. But you know, one of the things and Bob brought this up one of the things we could do to kind of Help us with this time deficit that most of us struggle with is to slow down do less

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That there are there are a lot of things that we feel are I see that hand there are a lot of things that we Fill up our calendar with and you know, some of those things we can cut down.

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Yes Pastor Dave. All right.

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That was an assist for Pastor Dave That's exactly right,

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I mean Two things that Dave said and I'll just summarize real quickly because we're gonna have carolers here in a minute

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Informal time, you know, and basically what I think Dave was trying to say is you can get somebody to help you paint your fence

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I like that idea, you know, it's It doesn't have to be a formal

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Doesn't have to be a formal setting you could be doing something and still passing on Spiritual truth, you know while you guys are doing something that isn't necessarily spiritual or necessarily spent reading a book or something like that That that life -on -life

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Experience can be beneficial and the other thing he said that I think is really important and it's kind of where we started out today

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Talking about valuing the people who've been there done that and you know If you go into a church and one of the reasons why we've never gone to rap music on Sunday morning or you know shredding guitar solos is

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Because it's valuable to have a variety of people here. You don't want everybody to be 20 and 30

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You'd like to have some people who are you know? 8 and 10 20 and 30 40 and 50 60 70 80 and 90, you know, you want to have the whole

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Gamut you want to span the spectrum why because there are things that we can learn From every age of life and we need to we need to be

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Focused on that but we need a closing prayer and we'll pick this up next week father We just thank you for your word.

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Thank you for the body of Christ. Thank you for your church father. I just would pray for each one here as we consider this season of the year where the world is so busy and So focused on things that don't ultimately matter

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Lord I just pray that you would cause us to think about Christ for The church that he bought and how we ought to love one another and be focused on The grace that you have granted each one of us in Christ Jesus.