State of the Church 2025

Covenant Baptist Church

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All right, this morning we are at the end of 2024, and so it's right and it's good for us as a church to spend some time reflecting today on all the things that God has done, but also looking forward into a new year, 2025.

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And asking the question, God, what are you going to do in our church? God, what do you have in mind?

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Lord, we want to know so that we can be obedient, so we can walk in the path, in the mission that you have for this church.

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And just to spend a little time reflecting, this has been a huge year for us.

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I don't know if you remember, we did this last year at the beginning of 2024, at the end of 2023,

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I can't remember which one, but we sat up here, Josh and I did, and we talked about this is how we feel like God is calling us to move forward.

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And here's our plan, we have a plan, it's a three -step plan, and it begins with us putting up a map.

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Now, that was a very challenging thing, even to put up the map, but we finally got it up there, thank you, Kelsey. And then we started putting pins on that map and began to pray for areas of Northwest Arkansas and say,

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God, where do you want to send us, where do you want us to go? We want you to kind of drive, be in the driver's seat here.

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We're not telling you where we're going to go, we want to hear from you, we want to know where you want us to plant another church.

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If that's your will, if that's your desire, make it happen, God. I love the coloring sheet this morning that says, it's

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Psalm 127 .1, unless the Lord builds the house, those that labor, labor in vain.

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And from the very beginning, from Kristen and I being in Washington, in the

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Seattle area, being obedient to a call to come here, that verse has just seemed to be something that we've clung to and hung on to.

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God, unless you do this, it's not going to happen. God, unless you do this, we're just going to be statistically one of those church plant failures.

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God, we don't know anybody, we don't even know where you want us to plant.

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And slowly, step by step, His providence has paved the way, He's shown us where to go.

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And here we are, here we are, in a beautiful church here in East Springdale, and a great partnership

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Josh and I have together. And then you, one of the things

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I've said before, and I'll say it again, one of the things that we prayed as we were in Seattle before we even started to come down here was,

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God, who are the people? Who are the people that you're going to gather together?

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God, we can't even imagine what their faces look like. And now as I look out to you,

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I see the faces, faces only He could see at that time we were praying for you, and He has done it.

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He has done it. Now in this last year, we set out that three -step, three -phase plan, we started with the map and praying for it, and then we moved in, what was it,

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August, to go to phase two of let's gather some people together who are thinking about going and planting somewhere.

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And we think it's going to be over there somewhere, not really knowing even where it was going to be.

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And so we started meeting with a core group of people, and we started dreaming, we started praying,

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God, where are you going to plant, where will we meet? Show us the way, show us the way.

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And I remember somebody, I can't remember who it was, saying, well, can't you just rent a place and then that'll be the place that you're going to go?

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And it's like, yeah, we could, we could go to some strip mall, we could find a space and we could rent it, it would be expensive, but we would know, and we'd say, this is where we're going to plant.

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But instead we waited, we waited, and God has provided us a beautiful church building, very similar to this, really.

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Even looking at the pictures last night, the pendants in the middle of the room, they're different pendants, but they have these pendants in this room, and it's all white on the inside with wood floors.

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And I'm like, we couldn't have planned this, we couldn't have chosen this, and yet God made it available to us, and so we're excited about meeting there on South Barrington at the historic

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Thomas Lakeview Church. And it is really,

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I can't wait, I can't wait. Now, so amazing things that God has done, and now we're on the eve, on the verge of planting a new church, something that we only a year ago could only dream about.

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Now, Josh did a podcast this week, which I thought was very good, and I would encourage you to go listen to his podcast, it's called

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Active Faith in 2025, and in that podcast, he lined out some things that we should be faithful to do as Christian people, as Christian men and women in 2025, and they're basic things, they're basic things.

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It's like, we should be committed to going to church, we should be committed to fellowshipping and being among God's people, pretty basic, right?

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We should be in God's Word, we should be reading God's Word together throughout the year, and then we should be in prayer as well.

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And as I think about those three things, I think, yes, that should be where we...

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That should be the baseline for where we are, and my hope this morning is to use that as a jumping -off place and to really encourage us even further in being aggressively on mission in 2025.

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Now, this morning over there, we have some... Our reading plan is typed up. Man of little faith,

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I only printed 30 of these, so if they're all gone, then I can email you this, or I can bring some next week.

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They're right over there. Kristen sent out an email this week just letting you know, if you want to do it online and download the app, you can do that.

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We did have some technical difficulties, so she may be sending out, or she will be sending out a new email this week to help you with that, for those of you who've tried to sign on and had some problems.

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But reading through the Bible together, I remember, Kristen and I in 2020, we started doing it together, and it's been four years.

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I'm embarking on year five of reading through the Bible for the fifth time. Now, I, of course, had read through it many times before that, but each year, to be able to do that and to have them strung together, it's not because it's easy.

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I haven't found it to be easy, but what I've found is that I lack discipline in my life, and so this helps me, right?

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And maybe it'll help you to also be in community with people, having that accountability. I fell behind last year quite a bit, but then was able to catch up and finish the

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Bible. So I want to encourage you, if you've never read through the Bible, man, 2025, this could be the year that you join with us and you read through the whole

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Bible with us. And there are some parts, I gotta say, that are more difficult to get through.

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First Chronicles 1, that is just a schlog. Some of the genealogies, really, really boring.

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But to be able to finish and to say, man, I went from cover to cover, and then to do it again, and to do it again, and to do it again, and to see what

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God does. There is an inconsistency within our church when we gather together and we say that we believe in the inerrancy, in the infallibility, in the inspiration of Scripture, and yet it's unimportant to us in how we treat it, because we get too busy.

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Again, I don't think it's a problem of us not loving it. I think we're just undisciplined, and we just need to have some discipline to do that.

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And then the benefits that come are so great. So, where am I gonna go from...listen

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to Josh's podcast. I think it's a really good jumping place for us to think about 2025. Last time

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I preached, there was a verse that I kind of brought from memory, and it wasn't in my notes, but I'm gonna use that verse to kind of build on these basics and start our discussion today.

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And then I'll talk about it, and then I'll let Josh kind of synthesize some other thoughts that he has.

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So today is kind of like a tag -team sermon, a little bit of luce libre, in the ring.

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So first you get me, and then I'll tag Josh in just a little bit. That verse is 1

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Colossians. It's just Colossians. I don't know why that's in my notes. I'm gonna be going to 1

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Corinthians or 2 Corinthians in just a bit. But Colossians 1 .28, which says,

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Him we proclaim, warning every man and teaching every man with all wisdom, in order that we may present every man complete or mature in Christ.

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And this is Paul speaking to the Colossians, and what he's unrolling and what he's rolling out is his mission.

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This is the thing that drives him. This is the thing that gets him up in the morning, is that he is going to proclaim

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Christ, and he's going to focus on every man, presenting them to be complete in Christ.

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If we look at...he says he does this with all wisdom. If we go to 1

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Corinthians 1 .18, it says, For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God, for it is written,

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I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart. Where is the one who is wise?

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Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world?

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For since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased

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God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

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For the Jews demand a sign, the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the

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Jews and folly to the Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.

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For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.

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So when Paul says that he's going to proclaim his message in all wisdom, it's not the wisdom of this age.

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It is not the wisdom of men, it is not the opinion of man. It's the word of the cross, it's the message of the atoning sacrifice and purchase of our salvation.

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And you will find that in no other place, and you'll find that in no other place than in the word of God, which

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Paul proclaimed and which we still proclaim every Sunday. So he is proclaiming, him we proclaim.

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This is Paul's message, it's Christ. Now he doesn't just kind of reductionistically say,

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I'm just going to preach just the gospel. He's talking from cover to cover, the complete wisdom of God.

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And how is he doing it? What is his method? His method is, I'm going to warn every man, I'm going to teach every man.

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It's interesting how he uses these two activities, warning, because that's what the word of God does when it comes crashing into our lives.

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It brings conflict, right? As the truth of God comes into our life, as it's preached, as it's proclaimed into our life, as it's brought to bear in our life, it should make us look at our lives and say, oh, something's wrong.

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Something's wrong. There's an adjustment that needs to be made. And because the Holy Spirit works in hand in hand with the word of God, he often brings conviction to our hearts and shows us where we need correction.

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The word of God is a correcting tool, but it's more than that. It does more than just correcting.

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It teaches us, and it teaches us a new way of living, something that's not kind of a default to our nature.

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It's God's way, and we need to learn it. So Paul's message is he's proclaiming

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Christ. His method is to bring exhortation to crash into our lives and to warn us.

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And then to teach us a new way. He does that with all wisdom, right? In order that, and here's

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Paul's view of the future, right? As a minister of the gospel, he has a view of the future that he's gonna be called into an account one day, and he says, so that, so that I might present every man complete in Christ.

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And there's the goal. There's the goal. It's what I said when I preached last time. That's the goal of discipleship.

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It's not just getting through a book study that you've done together. It's reaching that place of completeness.

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The word in the Greek is telos, and that word telos talks about the function of why something was created, of reaching that.

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And this is why you were created, is that you might be complete in Christ. So that becomes

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Paul's goal. And why did I, why did I, it could even go even further where he says, and with,

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I just strive to do this with all the striving that I can. He is totally motivated.

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And it's not just a message that he's preaching. It's not just, it's not just the preaching from a pulpit, but it's actually how he lives.

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It is part of, it's every part of who he is. In fact, Paul, more than others, suffered for the gospel.

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In fact, if we go to 2 Corinthians 11, 24, he says, five times

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I received at the hands of the Jews 40 lashes, less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned.

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Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and a day, I was adrift at sea on frequent journeys in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from the

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Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at the sea, danger from false brothers, in toil and hardship through many sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure.

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And apart from other things, there's the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all of the churches.

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Who is weak and I'm not weak. Who is made to fall and I'm not indignant. Just think, this is,

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Paul is like, he's lost so much to do the job.

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I think about what it's cost me and my family and I go, man, it doesn't even compare to this.

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Doesn't even compare to this. But Paul would say, it's all worth it. It's all worth it.

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And so, again, preaching, proclaiming Christ, not just in our words, but in every aspect of our life.

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My question is for us, as we look at Paul, is can we somehow capture this intensity?

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Can we somehow get this aggressive with God's call on our lives?

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Who he's called us to be as Covenant Baptist Church or Grace Covenant.

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And I believe that Paul did this through his preaching, but he also discipled men. Titus and Timothy are great examples of this.

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If we go to 1 Timothy, he calls Timothy his true child in the faith. He says this, he says,

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I charge you, I entrust you, Timothy, my child. He says later, he says, be trained in the words of the faith and of the good doctrine that you have followed.

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Paul was in Timothy's life. Now, why do

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I describe Paul in this passage in a state of the church message?

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Well, I want, well, three things. First, you should know this. You should know that Josh and I feel the same calling that Paul does.

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We want to imitate Paul in this. We want to double down in our role as shepherds, which means we want to disciple you.

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We want to train you up in the faith, and not just sanctification, we want you to prepare you for the work of ministry.

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That's what Paul says in Ephesians 4 .12, that we should prepare you, we should train you up in the work of the ministry.

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We're realizing in this mission of planting churches that the bottleneck in the process is training up mature believers who are ready to be sent out.

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And if God continues to give us grace in this area, if He continues, and I have every confidence that He is going to, this is going to be our difficult work, which requires stubborn patience and a deep commitment to a really clunky and not efficient process called discipleship.

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The second reason, besides you just knowing that, that that's the burning desire that we have as your pastors, the second is that we call you into that work.

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First, because you should know you are that work that we are going to be doing, which means you can either avail yourself to that or you can resist that.

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And my plea to you this morning is that you would avail yourself to that, that you would give yourself into this work as well.

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That God would allow us as your shepherds to come alongside you, to help you mature in your faith, because for both of us, as teachers of the

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Word, we feel the pressure. There is a stiffer judgment for us, and there's going to be a day that we are called into account, and we want to stand there beside you and present you mature in Christ, church.

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That's our hope, that's our desire. But it's just like the gym. You know, sometimes you have a gym membership, whether it's through work or somebody gives it to you as a gift.

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If you never use it, there's no benefit to you. So I'm calling you to that.

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But also the third reason that we call you into that work is because this is also not just something

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Paul is saying, hey, look what I do, but he's saying, imitate me. He's saying, you guys should come along and you should do this as well.

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Men, for you in your families, to be able to disciple your children and your wife in the

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Lord is what you're called to do. If we go back to the Old Testament, look at Deuteronomy 6, that is what you're called to do as men, and we want to equip you to do that, okay?

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Women, you should look at your husband and you should say, he needs to do this so that he can teach me, so that he can disciple me, so he can disciple our children.

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Kids, you should look at your parents, you should look at your father and say, man, I want my father to be discipled so that he can train me up in the

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Lord. So that's my exhortation for us as we move forward in 2025, is that we would continue to be faithful in doing the work of the ministry, which is equipping you.

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And when I say we, it's Josh and I certainly, but it's also you as well, men. I want you to feel the call to that this morning and go, you know what, that's me too.

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I need to be that aggressive that I would be able to train and present my family as complete in Christ someday.

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And I think that that's essential for where God is bringing us in 2025. Like I said, should

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He give us the grace to plant another church? I think the hard part for us is to have mature men and women who are ready to be sent out.

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So with that, I'm going to turn it over to, I'm going to tag Josh, turn it over to him so that we can hear where he's going to, what you're going to do with that.

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If you'll turn your Bibles to Titus chapter one, that's where I'm going to park it this morning. I think it's an amazing thing.

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I'm a, I'm a lot of things, but I'm not an administrator and I'm not an organizer. And so I really had no idea what

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Bart was going to say. And like, frankly, I just trust him enough to where I really didn't care what he was going to say.

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Like I was going to be surprised and happy about it. And I think he's likewise. I think what's going to be interesting for you to hear is the cohesion and the like -mindedness.

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And we didn't have to plan that because we've had so many conversations and so much time dreaming about the day that was going to come.

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And we approach it with a lot of excitement and I approach it as a, as a bittersweet sweet thing is, you know, as our, our partnership takes on a different dimension where, you know, he's going to be a fellow pastor across town and we hope that someday that there's, you know, we've, we've said that dream of hopefully someday that there's, there's churches that gather together to sing songs and that, you know, there's, there's elders that are helping each other across the community.

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And I think that that's the vision that Paul saw in Titus. And I love Titus because it's such a rough and tumble book and it's so intensely practical.

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And I think if you were to, to get the, the personality of Paul, you really see it in Titus that there's a job to be done and there's a no nonsense way that this job is going to be done.

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Before I do that, I think it's, it's easy for me to forget to lay, to lay our purpose before you in really black and white terms.

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And this, first of all, if you've, if you've not been around church enough to know every church does not get to decide what their mission is.

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Christ has given us the mission of the church. We don't get to decide what it is. The mission of the church is to go to the nations, to baptize them in the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit, and to teach them all that Christ has commanded them.

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So you see that there's a law and gospel in the great commission. And so that means that as the church, that we're to disciple our people who are here to teach them what

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God has commanded them so that they would go and live that life. Because we know, as the Lord said in John 14, 15, that if you love him, you will obey his commandments.

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And to obey the commandments, you have to know the commandments. And our heart in regeneration is tuned to love

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God's commandments. That's where the law and gospel mingle together, not in salvation, but in sanctification.

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And so for us, we don't get to decide what the great commission is. We don't get to decide what our mission is. But what we do get to do is to simplify and to lay before our people, what are we trying to accomplish here?

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What is the great commission about? And we see a few points, and we broke it down. It's on our website.

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And it's what our front facing, like if you look at what is Covenant Baptist Church about, you're going to see this really quickly.

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Number one, the preaching of the word expositionally and fearlessly. So we do not dilute the word of God.

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And I know because I've talked to several of you guys that there is a hunger to be in Mark. You know, we've been out of our first Samuel for about six weeks now.

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And it really, I can feel that pressure, right? And that's a good thing because that's what we do here.

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It's core to the mission that we're going to go through books, that we're going to do it without diluting, and we go where the word of God takes us.

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Simple as that. The second thing that we see is that we are to disciple one another and cultivate evangelism and courage to be ambassadors for Christ, making our appeals on behalf of our king.

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We are not to be afraid of men. We are to proclaim the good news of Christ. And that means that man is lost and dying, that we are rebel sinners, and that we need

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Jesus. That we are on a pathway to destruction, but that Christ has made peace between God and man through his death on the cross and his resurrection.

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And we preach that unapologetically, and we want to disciple you to preach that fearlessly.

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And I hear stories throughout the year, and I'll just name it, I know, I know what's going on at UPS right now.

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And I'm so excited by it. You know, I'm excited by men of zeal who are going into the place where young men are throwing boxes and working with their backs, and they're preaching the good news in there.

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And we're starting to see a harvest, and I think we're going to continue to see a harvest as we empower our people to go out where they are and to make disciples.

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Number three, the mission gives us a responsibility to pray, that we pray for courage, we pray for peace, we pray for urgency to live holy lives that show our reverence and gratitude to God.

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There will be no holy living without prayer, and there will be no growth of the church without prayer, and there will be no making of disciples without prayer.

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It's the first thing we should do. It's something we should do with our children. It's something we should do with our spouse.

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It's something we should do alone. We should do it in the car. We should do it at lunch, at work. We should be on our knees, and we should do it together.

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And that's been a core building block of this church, is that we pray together. And we invite you to do that.

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Every Sunday at 930, we meet together and we pray, and I want you to come.

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Number four, the mission has us loving one another by living as a community who speaks truthfully, meets the needs of one another, and urges one another to righteous living.

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We do not live the Christian life in a vacuum individually. We live it with each other. And that means that we have to fear

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God more than fearing man, and we tell one another the truth. That means we encourage, but we also exhort and rebuke, and we have hard conversations, and we love each other enough to know that we can have brotherly conversations that do not destroy the relationship.

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And men, you understand this, that the relationships that you hold dearest in your life are the relationships that have gone through rocky times, because that fire refines and it burns the dross off, and what we see is the love that we have for one another through being able to walk through everything together.

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That's what makes family so strong, is that we live life together and we see everything. Everything.

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Number five, the mission has us to fearlessly engage culture, to spread the word of Christ so that through our words, many might hear and be convicted of sin, so that they would repent and become disciples.

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And here at Covenant Baptist Church, those are the things that every church should be doing. That's not specific to us. That's what the

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Great Commission has. That's it kind of broken out and more atomized in a sense, where we go point by point.

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But at Covenant Baptist Church, and I should say this right now, it's my thing to be a little bit strident.

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Let me just say, I'm not being passive aggressive. What I want to do is I want to present a positive vision, and so I'm not talking about anybody else.

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I'm talking about us. Okay? And at Covenant Baptist Church, our vision is not to build big buildings and to amass as many people in here as we can and to amass as much money as we can.

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Our vision and how we see the Christian life being born out is we look back, and what we want to do is not disparage our brothers who are in bigger churches who have resources who can do things that we can't, but we have kind of a guerrilla warfare mindset where what we want to do is we want to take our towns corner by corner with small parish type churches where we have elders that go out and they group together with a core group of believers and people come because they are hearing the gospel proclaimed, and that builds relationships that are intermingled like this.

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Because when churches scale to a certain size, this can't happen anymore. So for us, that's not our vision.

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Our vision is to be a church that becomes a replicating church. We desire to train and develop qualified men into eldership so that we can joyfully commission and support new churches, emphasizing

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Northwest Arkansas first, but eventually extending the vision to the ends of the earth. We believe this to be the pattern of the

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New Testament apostolic churches who appointed elders and went from city to city starting new churches.

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We have to be a church that's faithful to God's word, intense in prayer and discipleship, and dedicated to the mission of discipling the nations.

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We believe firmly that the church is the primary method by which God has and will continue to build his kingdom.

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And that brings us to Titus. Look, I could go 50 minutes on this one. I won't.

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All right? I've got a short amount of time, but I want to read these critical verses in Titus 1, but I need to give you a little bit of context.

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The context is that Titus is being sent to the barbaric island of Crete in the

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Mediterranean, and this is a rough place. We would see later that Paul says that the

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Cretans are lazy, gluttonous liars. They're beasts. And he says this saying is true.

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Now does that mean every single Cretan? No, but we don't get lost in the jumble. This is an island that has a bunch of rough people who are making arguments and destroying families and are fighting against the gospel of Christ.

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And so Paul sends Titus to this island with a mandate. And this mandate is to go from town to town and to appoint elders so that they would put everything in order.

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Let's pick it up in verse 5. For this reason I left you in Crete that you would set in order what remains and appoint elders in every city as I directed you.

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Namely, if any man is beyond reproach, the husband of one wife having faithful children who are not accused of dissipation or rebellious.

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For the overseer must be beyond reproach as God's steward, not self -willed, not quick -tempered, not addicted to wine, not pugnacious, not fond of dishonest gain, but hospitable, loving what is good, sensible, righteous, holy, self -controlled, holding fast to the faithful word, which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be able to both exhort in sound doctrine and to reprove those who contradict.

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So let's take this passage and let's see what was Paul seeing. Paul was seeing an island that had a bunch of Christians in it who were out of order.

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And because these sheep were out of order, because they did not have a shepherd, they were being blown around by the winds of doctrine from evil men who were coming in and trying to disrupt families.

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And so Paul's solution to the problem in Crete was to send Titus out to raise up elders who met these qualifications in every city on the island.

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There needed to be a lot of elders. A lot of elders. And Paul had relentlessly, zealously, ferociously, single -mindedly trained up men for this purpose.

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And so Titus is kind of a lieutenant of Paul who's going to Crete, and Paul has entrusted

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Titus with this job. And this is a hard job. Imagine going into these cities, and the consequences of failure are high, as sheep are devoured by wolves.

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But Titus is entrusted. And so we see a landscape in Northwest Arkansas today of waning cultural

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Christianity that is awash in a sea of churches. And there are

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Christians aplenty in Northwest Arkansas. And there are a lot of good churches in Northwest Arkansas.

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But there are a lot of sheep that are exposed to wolves in Northwest Arkansas, and there are a lot of lazy, gluttonous, lying, beastly pastors in Northwest Arkansas.

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And what we see is the need, the need to put things in order.

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And so in our very small, seemingly insignificant part of the world, it's been my fondest dream that this church, in its old, old building with creaky floors that would roll a ball from front to back because of the tilt, that the baptistery might fall through, don't be worried, all of this,

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I thought, wouldn't it be incredible, wouldn't it be incredible if this small church, with its meager resources, was to be the mother of dozens of churches in Northwest Arkansas?

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That's the fiery vision that I have, and it's the vision, it's the thing that drives me.

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And I think about it this way, I told Alana and Brady, I think over a year ago, as we were sitting at dinner, and I said, my thing is

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I read the parable of the dishonest manager, it's come into several of my sermons, and Jesus says something that has haunted me for years, he said, the sons of earth are shrewd, but the sons of light are often not shrewd.

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Use your wealth to build up heavenly friends. And the walking orders to me are to pour out my life for something that matters, for something that matters, for something that my children are going to be able to enjoy, for something that my grandchildren are going to be able to enjoy, and something that is a preserving agent in my community, in my town, that I've spent my whole adult life working in.

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I love this city, and I love its people, and I see that they are lost, and I see that there is a need for order.

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And so for us, what does it mean to set things in order? It means first that we don't make enemies of the good guys who are here, right?

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We are in agreement with and partners with, either explicitly or implicitly, with every church who preaches the true gospel, even if we disagree on philosophies, methods, or emphasis.

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They're our friends, and we're for them. We don't want their destruction, we don't feel good when they fall apart, even when we disagree strongly, we pray for them.

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And where there is more disagreement, there should be more prayer, that we would be united in brotherhood, even if we have to go our separate ways.

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We see a growing trend in our area, and across the country, of Christians who seek more serious -minded churches in the face of the loss of cultural

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Christian comforts. True believers have a need to hear the word preached without diluting.

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There's a need for that, there's a hunger, and it brings people who are not Calvinists into Reformed churches. And it brings people who are

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Dispensationalists into Covenantal churches, because there are things that are more important than the secondary and tertiary doctrines.

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What's more important is that we're brothers. What's more important is that we have a desire to work with Christians of a simple faith.

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What's more important is that there's a vision to evangelize the lost and to grow the kingdom, and we have eternity, once we know, to talk about who was right and who was wrong on these secondary and tertiary issues.

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And we're going to be fine with it. It's going to be okay. So there's much to set in order. We need men to set this in order, and those men have to have character.

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That's what Paul is telling Titus. Look at the...we can bind them together. I can't go through every one of them.

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I have before. But what does this man look like? Well, first of all, you should notice that this man should look like every

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Christian man. He should. And so elders are not super -Christians. They're not varsity.

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They've not ascended to a higher level, to where we walk on a more glorious plane than the mere congregants.

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That's not the way it works. But instead, an elder is a man who's been found to maturely walk in these character traits such that he should be imitated.

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Such that to know him more and to see his life more, you're going to see some warts. But what you should really see is strong, hard character.

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And I would invite you, as I'm about to enter a perilous part of ministry for myself here, as Bart leaves, and for a time, hopefully it's not a long time,

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I'm going to be a sole elder in a church, and it's not ideal, but what's important is that you have to be able to look in and see what's going on here.

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And so my house has to be open, and my life has to be open, and I have to be able to say, come examine me as you want to imitate my spiritual life.

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That's what it is to be an elder. And so you should know me. And if I start getting cagey, you just understand something's being hidden.

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And we need to dig deeper. That's the way it works. And a good elder is going to give his congregants that hammer, because it's a two -edged sword, right?

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If I say that you need to imitate me, then you need to know what I'm doing. You need to know what I'm like.

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And if you have doubts, you need to start asking people who have known me for a long time. And I am a sinful man, for sure.

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And you're going to see warts, and you're going to see some of my particular proclivities that come out. I can be pugnacious, for sure.

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I can be pugilistic. I like to fight sometimes. But I will tell you that I think by God's grace over the long haul that God has built all through his grace and through his sanctifying work, he has built strong character with deep roots.

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And I do hold fast to the faithful word, and I pray that I would always hold fast to the faithful word. So we need to have men of character, and we need to have discernment to mark out the bad guys, because they're going to come in.

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And they're especially dangerous when they're elder -seeking bad guys, because most of the worst guys in the church are elders.

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You understand that, right? The worst people in the church are pastors. They can do far more damage than any individual sheep can do.

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They can do far, far more damage than the small group leader can do. The elder has a position of authority, and people follow him.

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And so it's important that we have discernment. Elders can be particularly prone to living for their bellies, amassing prestige, thinking that it's all about them, thinking that people are coming to hear them, and coasting through life on their sermonizing.

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They often like to quote things like, don't muzzle the oxen. But they forget the next part of that verse, which is, while he's treading out the grain.

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Yes, elders should be taken care of by their congregation, but elders should be working so hard that they almost want to fall down at the end of the day.

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The spiritual call is hard, and it's a kingly duty. And so men, as I start to grab you and start to think, what are we going to do in 2025?

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Let me appeal to your toughness in your character, that we need elders here, and we need elders who are going to leave the comfort of this place and go out and take risks.

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And without risk, we're not men. Manliness is based on understanding that failure can happen, and stepping out anyway, and trusting the

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Lord. Abraham left his home, and he went to an uncultivated pagan land as a sojourner with a bunch of enemies in the land, and he trusted

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God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Abraham was not Superman. Abraham believed what

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God told him, and he stepped out in faith. And we remember his name today because of what he did. What we're going to be tempted to do is we're going to be tempted to see the speed at which

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Covenant Baptist has grown. It's incredible, and it creates its own potential problems, right?

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What do we do if we don't have elders and there's 150? I don't know.

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We're not going multi -service, and we're not going to build a second story. We don't own the building, okay?

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And we can't build a building, we can't do that in this market, so we'll try to figure it out. But what we have to understand is that there's going to be a relief here, okay?

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So what we're going to do, Grace Covenant is going to start. The people who are among us are going to go plant this church, and there is going to be an exhilaration and a sense of relief in us here.

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And we should feel that way because the vision has taken a step. And some would say the vision has been accomplished, but it has not been accomplished.

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And we can so easily fall into the trap of wealth and ease of thinking that we've accomplished the mission and the vision, and so now we can just do church and enjoy each other forever.

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Friends, we are going to enjoy each other forever, but that forever is not going to be in this building for the rest of our natural lives.

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For some of us, it might be, but not for all of us, because there is going to be a call to go.

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So we have to avoid the complacency and pride. And I'm going to give us some marching orders, and I'm going longer than Bart, I knew it was going to happen.

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I'm sorry he wins today. Here we go. Marching orders for 2025. And I'm going to take this straight from Titus 2.

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We have to avoid complacency and pride, and that answer for us is that we all have jobs to do.

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Here it is, 2 through 8. Older men are to be temperate, dignified, sensible, sound in faith, love, and perseverance.

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Older women, likewise, to be reverent in their behavior, not malicious gossips, not enslaved to much wine, teaching what is good, so that they may instruct the young women in sensibility, to love their own husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, pure, workers at home, kind, being subject to their own husbands, so that the word of God will not be slandered.

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Likewise, urge the younger men to be sensible. In all things, show yourself to be a model of good works, with purity and doctrine dignified, sound in word, which is irreproachable, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.

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If what we hope is going to happen here is going to happen, there will be a host of people who say bad things about us.

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And then we turn to 1 Peter 2 and 3, and what we have to understand is that when they say bad things about us, it has to be reviling for reviling's sake, not reviling because there's truth in it.

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We have to live holy lives. And their reviling has to be based on their dislike of Christ, not their dislike of our bad behavior.

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That's really important for us. And so what do we do? We have four groups of people that Paul sees as we're putting things in order.

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We bring an elder. He's approved. He's going to go there. He's going to disciple men to become approved like he is.

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And then there's four groups that he lists out. First, older men. We have neglected them in the church.

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Or the older men have dominated the church and not given way to younger men. This is what we see in America today.

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Older men are to invest in younger men. We see that. It's to pay it on, to make your legacy last.

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And the way they do that is older men have flexibility with time, and they have income. They do.

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You don't have a house full of little babies, and so you have some flexibility. And usually you have a little bit more income.

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And so what should you do? You should invest in younger men with that flexibility and with that time. And you should keep a watch on your own life so that you would remain dignified and full of gravitas.

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When an older man walks into the room, he should be dignified such that all the foolishness stops when he walks in.

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It should be like the principal walking into your first grade classroom and everybody gets quiet because he's in here and he has a weight to him.

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That's what I envision for older men. They should keep watch on their life. And our final message to older men in this church is we need you.

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We desperately need you. The message to older women, the first part's similar.

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Older women, find a younger woman to invest in. Find a younger woman to teach. Teach her about motherhood, about the difficulties that come along with that, about being a spouse, about the rhythms of life.

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It's not always going to be this way. It's going to change. There are tremendous changes in parenting a three -year -old and parenting a nine -year -old.

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Huge changes. And mothers who have been there before can instruct our younger women to encourage them and to teach them so that they would be better at it, so that we would grow in the family.

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And this creates an environment of qualified men and women. You understand this. This creates the seedbed for how

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God builds godly character. Then he gives a warning to older women. Do not have a lying, gossiping tongue.

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You will be predisposed to that. You will want to gossip. You will want to take power over for yourself.

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And you will want to be given to whine because you feel like you've accomplished the job and now it's time to sit back and be merry and live life.

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We never get to do that. Do you understand that? We never get to do that in a Christian life. We never get to kick back, enjoy all the grain stored in our barns and do nothing.

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That is an American lie. And it's not true. We have to avoid it. Older women, we need you.

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Our younger mothers and younger women need you. They need your wisdom. And it comes best from you.

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We've neglected this in the church. We've neglected older women and we've cast them aside and it's to our great peril and that's where we see the terrible behavior and the terrible fruits of ignoring what

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God has for us. Young women, it's tough for you, especially in our culture, but for young women, you're to be about your home.

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You're to love your children and your husband and you're supposed to spend your time there. That's the main legacy that you have at this point in your life.

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Do not give in to the covetousness of gaining value through ungodly means. Do not be trashy, be pure.

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What you take in at home when you're doing your work, make it pure. Don't watch the trashy

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TV. Don't read the soapy books that are of no intellectual value, but sharpen your mind, women.

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Sharpen your mind. Be ready. Push ahead. Engage intellectually because you are the primary force of teaching our children academically.

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And my hat's off to you and I love the way I see it being done, but we need to get better and we need you.

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Young men, this is my passion and you know this. It comes out often, so I'll have to rein myself in.

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Young men, be sensible. Be sensible. And the pathway to being sensible is simply to look to the examples that have come before you.

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Watch them. And man, there's a vision I see. There's a vision I see, young men.

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If you will be pliable and teachable, what we can have is a generation of young men who have strength and wisdom.

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And that is a very, very dangerous force. When young men have the strength and the vitality of their youth and their aggressiveness and their desire to build things and their desire to go out and conquer, and when that's tempered with wisdom and listening to the older men that are pouring in around them, then we have the force that God uses to grow kingdoms, to grow nations, and to grow the church.

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And we have neglected this for far too long. And I think we sit in the position we are because we have ostracized young men and we called them stupid and we've called them immoral and we've neglected them to go for the suburban middle -aged housewife.

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And my burning desire is to disciple young men. We need you. None of this happens without all four.

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Hold me to this. Elders, we have to look like that.

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If I'm, you know, I straddle the line, I think. Older and younger men, I have a little bit of strength, not like I used to, and I have a little bit of wisdom, not like I hopefully will have in 20 years.

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But we've got to hold each other to this. And so here's where we're going, 2025.

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We're going to do a few things, okay? One of the things that we're going to do here is if we want to start elders, look,

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I know Cooper's going to ask me, there's a time clock, like this plant has happened, and I know that there's a time

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Cooper's going to ask me, hey, what's going on with elders? Here's my answer. As we laid a map up, and we still have a map up, and we pray about the next plant after this, what we have to do is we have to be training men to be approved workers.

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And so what I'm going to do is I'm targeting March, is that I'm going to start training young men and older men and any man who wants to come and how to preach.

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We're going to get together and we're going to learn how to preach together, and we're all going to sharpen the saw. For me, it's going to be good for me.

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It's repetition, and it helps me to hear other perspectives and to teach men how to handle the word of God.

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So we're going to do that. We're going to, at some point in 2025, we're going to teach classes here over the 1689 confession, and we're going to really drill down into what we believe here.

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What are the core doctrines of this church, and what do we believe? And finally, I'm going to call on us to be leaders in every sphere and every area.

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The mission of this church is not merely to raise up deacons and elders. We are also to have men that lead in every sphere of life.

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Every man has to lead in his household, but men need to be leaders at work, and women need to be encouragers, and women need to be people who are making the raw materials that come in better and beautiful.

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I would live in a cinder block house if it was just me, and I live in a home because of my wife. And much foolishness is avoided from my mouth because of the encouraging aspect of my wife.

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Women are given to us for our good, and she is wisdom. So we should listen, and that is the goal.

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We're going to do stuff, and if it fails, it fails, and we reassess.

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But if it succeeds, and if God uses it, then I pray that at this time next year that we're going to see men who are approved to preach that are ready, that want to take that step of leadership.

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And we have women who are ordering that household and getting better at the craft and are encouragers and who are binding together because much of the social fabric of this church comes from our women that are so bonded together and so knitted together, and I love to see it.

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It's an encouraging thing to see. So that's what I've got for us, and I pray that God would bless this.