State of the Church 2021 | Douglas Wilson

the text this morning is second corinthians chapter 10 starting at verse 3 these are the words of god for though we walk in the flesh we do not war after the flesh for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through god to the pulling down of strongholds casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of god and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of christ our gracious god and father we thank you for your the kindness that you've shown to us in allowing us to gather like this before you i pray you'd receive our worship i pray that you would teach and instruct us by means of your holy spirit who's present here with us i pray that you do this because we ask in jesus name amen so this is a state of the church message for the year 2021 i thought i'd get the message for the state of the church out of the way before the year happens so in these annual state of the church messages we sometimes address our local circumstances i sometimes address circumstances that have to do with us as a particular congregation at other times the message has addressed the national condition this year it is i believe necessary to do both of them together as the situations and circumstances are unusually intertwined we are living in a time of great uncertainty and turmoil and in such times men turn naturally to their gods when there is a crisis when there is a calamity men turn to their gods they cry out to their gods whether their gods are the true and living god or false gods idols in the case of many americans jack secularists all in other words there are committed secularists there are the secularists who understand secularism and who built the secular system but then there are people who are just devotees of secularism they just picked up what they picked up when they went through the government school system and they just that's their default assumption but they're not serious about it because the the only thing they're serious about really is their own uh their own purpose is their own plan so we we might call them jack secularists well they have started to resort to their long neglected temples only to find that their gods have all toppled over like they gone they are therefore governed by fear and anxiety both right and left whether it's the right wing or the left wing or people who are in the muddled middle we are living in a generation that is characterized by fear and anger as christians we are not in their position as we are servants of the god who cannot topple and so whatever we do we must not in any way copy or imitate the devotees of these wobbly gods now we want to make sure that when you are distinguishing what you're doing and what unbelievers are doing what you're doing and what nominal believers are doing you have to realize that we live in this world and so consequently there will be things that you have ten toes just like they do you breathe air just like they do there will be things that you do but you're not trusting in them the same way that they're trusting in them you might have that activity in common and and i'll give illustrations as we go through this now let's consider the text second corinthians 10 says we do not we walk in the flesh we do not war after the flesh although we have been born again although we are now new creatures in christ and although we are citizens of the heavenly jerusalem we nevertheless still have physical bodies that we walk around in we are still material beings before you were converted before you prayed a prayer calling on god someone could walk up unto you and tap you on the shoulder and after you had prayed and called on christ they could walk up and tap you on the same shoulder and you would have the same shirt on you you're the same person physically so even though we are new creations in christ we are still material physical beings just like we were before we remain embodied beings look at your hands they're material solid before conversion after conversion you've got your flesh and bone and paul says this paul acknowledges this for though we walk in the flesh all right we although we are still in the body we are still material just like the non-believers are we don't think the way they do we don't conduct our warfare the way they do so we walk around in the flesh we have bodies but we do not conduct our warfare that way we wage war but we do not wage war according to the flesh verse three we wage war but what we're doing is far more potent than what they have there's a stark difference between having a body and living in accordance with the flesh you uh jesus in the days of his flesh jesus had a body the incarnation is a celebration of the fact that jesus took on an actual physical human body but he was not in the flesh in the pauline sense in the flesh being in the flesh in paul's thinking is to be living in accordance with the flesh even though he uses the phrase although we walk in the flesh there he's meaning uh we are embodied but we don't think like fleshly beings we don't live according to the flesh that way so there's a stark difference between having a body and living in accordance with the flesh the former does not necessitate the latter they are not interchangeable the fact that you have a physical body doesn't mean that you get to think like a carnal being a carnal christian paul says that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but how he then contrasts them is revelatory so he says our weapons are not carnal but the contrast is really uh striking his first comparison is not carnal over against spiritual in first corinthians 3 he compares carnal versus spiritual i couldn't address you as spiritual men but as carnal men so he he gives that contrast of carnal versus spiritual elsewhere but here he says our weapons are not carnal but rather mighty he says our our weapons are not carnal but rather mighty verse four carnal weapons are not strong enough to do what needs to be done we need looking at our culture looking at our political system looking at the way everybody functions we need a house cleaning and we need a house cleaning badly but carnal weapons are not mighty enough to do it they're not strong enough to do it so some christians say well we have spiritual weapons meaning and they mean by this that we are we're not going to do it at all we're not going to do any we're not going to attempt anything at all no paul is wanting something else to happen he says we have weapons that are mighty enough to do this carnal weapons are not strong enough to do what needs to be done which is to cast down imaginations hallucinations every lofty proud thought that politicians and statesmen and lords of the earth might think that they have the right to possess and paul wants to bring every thought captive to the obedience of christ verse 5. now in order for modern rioters to topple the statues of confederate generals from a century or so ago all they need are some cables and a winch that's what they need in order to topple those sorts of statues they need cables and a winch and people who uh whose gods are wobbly who are standing by not sure what to do how do we stop them i want to stop them but why george washington really you know thomas and jefferson really visit the washington monument while you can right but in order we're up against something much much bigger we're up against something much bigger than that they can do what they do with cables in a winch in order to topple principalities and powers you need something more you need something more far more much greater so what paul has in mind here is not the kind of echo chamber not the kind of echo chamber rhetoric that you can see on hyper partisan political websites watch so and so drop a bomb on old what's-his-face click here to watch senator tax it own the libs why did i call the conservative one senator tax it well because they're all senator tax it paul is not talking about casting down devilish imaginations in his head right there's there's a difference between getting a political club or a political party or a group of people together and then you just say things that everybody agrees with and everybody applauds paul is not talking about that he is talking about actually bringing the intellectual world to heal bringing them to an actual obedience to the lord jesus so we are not trying to win the applause of any tiny fawning clack or the approval of a small mystery religion or the blessing of our own choir in our own church what paul is up against what paul wants to do is he's got his eye on the roman empire he's looking at the roman empire and he says that thing is run by principalities and powers and i want them all to come down all of them every imagination every thought that sets itself up against the obedience to christ it all has to go and we are in a similar situation we are in a a place where secular man has declared himself has has issued a declaration of independence from god and we are discovering that when you declare your independence from god all the wheels come off just like pharaoh's chariots so what are we going to do well first let me talk about a little bit more about the uncertainty that surrounds us and the uncertainty that we are not to participate we are not to participate in emotionally in the year 2020 just in the course of one year americans bought a record high 17 million guns all right this last this last year has been a great one for for gun manufacturing this was on top of all the guns that were already owned which is somewhere between 350 and 400 million guns 350 400 million guns that's what we already had and we bought another 17 million and i'm taking care to subtract my four for every 100 americans there are about 120 guns for every 100 americans that are about 120 guns and then if you go out there in order to buy some nine millimeter ammo good luck the shelves reserved for nine millimeter ammo look like the shelves for milk and bread in a socialist country they are empty it's all bought up so what's that what's that observation doing in the sermon i agree with all of it but what's it doing in a sermon i only bring it up to note two things two things the first is to point to the high levels of uncertainty in the general population and we're talking about extremely high levels of uncertainty those people out there should be ripe for hearing a sure word from the church a word of traction for slippery times we need to deliver a word of traction a sure word in a separate slippery place a word of light in a dark place we need to make a point of speaking that word why isn't the church at large speaking a certain word for such uncertain times we are living in uncertain times and one of the reasons the church at large is not speaking a certain word into uncertain times is that the church is as caught up in the uncertainty as everybody else because we have bought into many of the lies that are circulated after the sack of rome when the barbarians came down out of northern europe and and did a number on rome which was supposedly the eternal city right so rome is supposedly supposedly the eternal city and the barbarians came down and sacked it when that happened there was a great deal of uncertainty it rocked the roman empire and as with the roman christians there's been some confusion in our allegiances so remember what had happened the the christian church had been persecuted for two three centuries constantine converts first there's an edict of toleration and then constantine converts and the and the christian faith is made the religion of the empire the official religion of the empire and a lot of christians thought oh we're in fat city now right this is look at us go look let's go and then barbarians come down and sack the place well that revealed some stuff that revealed that a number of christians had put their that weren't thinking they weren't thinking in christian categories so there's and there was confusion in their allegiances they too closely identified a particular state system with the kingdom of god the roman empire was not the kingdom of god it was good that constantine converted it was good that constantine stopped the pagan sacrifices it was good that rome stopped persecuting christians that was all good but that doesn't transform a secular set up into the kingdom of god it's not it's not the same thing so addressing that confusion the confusion that many christians had is why augustine sought to encourage them all with his magisterial book the city of god and we need to be reminded in a similar way the city of god and the city of man are not the same thing the city of god and the city of men are not the same thing now of course god assigns us to live in the status quo remember we have material bodies we live in the status quo but he also requires us not to be spiritually invested in the status quo we need to be we need to have earthly allegiances and and family allegiances those are all right but they've got to be stacked and ordered with our allegiance to god and his christ first and foremost jesus said if you don't love him more than you love father mother wife sister brother you cannot be his disciple jesus insists that our our allegiance be to him ultimately now the second reason to bring in gun ownership is to use it for an illustration simply to point out that unfortunately the sons of this world are shrewder than the children of light as jesus mentions in luke 16 8. in this in one respect they are shrewder than we are the worldlings do look to their resources all right they they see something bad happening and they say what what possible resources could i i get you know guns and toilet paper so you go out and you gather up whatever resources you think you might need so they do look to their resources and they make a point to stock up on whatever those resources are they at least know that they're supposed to do something and many christians don't know that they're supposed to do something many christians don't look at their resources they don't anticipate the costs of spiritual warfare and so they don't stock up on anything they just go on the way they normally do and maybe they do the same sort of thing that the non-believers do so what i want to do is is imitate the apostle paul in this oftentimes the apostle paul will lay down a number of doctrinal issues in the first part of his letters and then he'll give us a a cluster of ethical exhortations at the end sort of rapid fire ethical exhortations at the end and they all tie together if you were paying attention the first part of his letters they all tie together but it sometimes seems like a like a box full of random things i'm going to do something very similar if you're concerned about the spiritual state of our nation you ought to be all right if you think that we're in a crisis mode that is true all right we are in crisis mode if that concern has affected you to the point of wanting to prepare yourself and wanting to prepare your family in order to protect your family spiritually then you are thinking wisely you are thinking as you ought to think but what can you do what kind of spiritual nine millimeter ammo can you stockpile right and if you go shopping for spiritual nine millimeter ammo they're not out all right there are things that many christians don't want to go by that would involve too much thinking but they but they're not out they're not going to run low what sorts of things should you concentrate on we don't know what is going to happen in 2021 but i do know that if you start laying up the following things and by this i mean dedicating yourself to them to the pursuit of them you will be far better prepared for whatever comes regardless of what comes if you do these things it doesn't it doesn't matter trump biden economic prosperity economic catastrophe if you're doing these things you're preparing yourself the way you ought to prepare yourself so i want to run through a collection of uh exhortations that all tie together but they might seem initially random number one worship hebrews 12 28 wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved let us have grace whereby we may serve and the word there should could be rendered worship whereby we may worship god acceptably with reverence and godly fear this is the central thing we assemble week after week we want to worship god and we want to do so reverently and we want to do so with godly fear there is such a thing as unacceptable worship and there's such a thing as acceptable worship we want to come into the presence of god and worship him acceptably we don't want our offering rejected as keynes was we want our offering accepted the way abel's was always the central thing is to worship god appear before him assemble with your family before him every lord's day unless providentially hindered and if the bone's sticking out feel free to go to the er instead of worship but you need to be making a point you need you need to be making a priority on worship god summons us to appear before him to renew covenant every first day of the week that's the day the lord jesus rose from the dead and we are reminding ourselves and we're reminding the world that we are serving another king the king the lord jesus and so consequently worship is absolutely essential it's the most important thing you do it's the most important thing you do all week everything else that you do that has a great deal of importance should flow out of the fact that you've appeared before god and you have worshiped him think every every seven days god gives you an opportunity to build something new every seven days god gives you the the opportunity to build something new and every lord's day he gives you the opportunity to pour the foundation for that thing you're going to build so ever the first day of the week you pour the foundation and then for six days after you build on it and then you get to do it again and then you get to do it again that's how the kingdom of god is takes shape in the world we are called to worship the lord from the rising of the sun to the setting of the sun all over the world god's people should gather and worship him number one worship number two honesty about sin honesty about sin he that covereth his sins shall not prosper it says in proverbs but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy be honest with god about what's going on in your head be honest with god about what's going on in your heart be honest with god about the things you may have hidden away and never actually done or those things that you've actually done if you are not right with god you're going to have real troubles in the course of all these larger and also very real troubles so be brutally honest with yourself here when we kneel before god at this worship service and we confess our sins that's not just emotion that's not just the motions we're going through that's not let's tick that box somebody read a book uh somebody who put the liturgy together read a book and so we have to do that you know we're going to kneel before god no kneel really confess your sins genuinely be honest with god truly be brutally honest with yourself imagine your heart imagine your heart to be the living room where the holy spirit of god has come to dwell and remember that the word holy is part of his name holy he's the holy spirit of god and that's how christ dwells in you when we say that jesus is in your heart when god comes into your heart to to dwell with you and christ is in you he is in you by means of his spirit his spirit has come to dwell in you picture your heart as the living room and then imagine your thought life as you acting the part of a decorator all right the holy spirit's in the living room of your heart and you want to decorate it for him and so you're walking around in the living room hanging pictures on the wall for him to dwell with and those pictures are your thoughts those pictures are your thoughts and so you think oh what the holy spirit must want is a little porn what the holy spirit should want is a little envy the holy spirit wants over here above the buffet let's let's give him a picture of you snapping at the kids or the side long envy envious glance don't decorate your home like that the holy spirit you are the children of god you're the holy saints you're you're god's people don't decorate your house like that don't decorate your heart like that be and and when you find yourself when you've slipped when you've fallen confess your sin be honest with him and take the picture down all right take it down and get on your knees confess your sin be honest with god about your sin we're not going to be able to get we're not going to be able to cry out to the lord and ask him to deal with oh lord deal with their sin what their their sin over there is doing bad things to our country while you leave our sin alone no reformation and revival starts with you reformation and revival starts at home judgment begins with the household of god we're told so honesty about sin number three marriage live joyfully in ecclesiastes that says live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity which he hath given thee unto the son all the days of thy vanity for that is thy portion in this life and in thy labor which thou takest under the sun ecclesiastes 9 9 in other words love your wife with holy abandon love her like you don't care what the egalitarians think lover like you don't care what the world says about marriage they say that what you're doing that's kind of an impressive institution and you say well watch me go i'm going to continue to love my wife for the holy abandon and you need to do the same and then wives you need to return the honor and respect that the scripture lays out to your husbands husbands love your wives as christ loved the church and gave himself up for her so the husband is the head of the wife but remember the head of the wife if you're if you're the head of your wife that's not mr bossypants that's not that's not mr boss man the head of the wife if you're if you're the head of your wife the way christ is the head of the church remember there's a crown of thorns involved that's what headship looks like all right and you are to you are not supposed to be what the the soft egalitarian world calls uh a servant leader as though you uh lead by serving all right you serve by leading right you don't we have it so backwards we have we need to get these things straightened out you are to serve your wife and to serve your family by being a man by being a husband growing a backbone you need to be someone who serves your family by leading them protecting them guarding them providing for them next music psalm 22 3 but thou art holy oh thou that inhabits the pro the praises of israel our god the god we worship inhabits our praises he inhabits our praises all the psalms that we have are the arsenal and the hymnal of god the psalms that we sing are our songs that god wrote and gave it gave to us to sing and he inhabits them as we offer them up to him we are going into battle and the battle requires a soundtrack make the psalms the soundtrack of your warfare this means learning them get the app join the choir the psalms will be the vocabulary of the real resistance in over 2 000 years of church history the psalms have been the vocabulary of the church's resistance to every form of tyranny the their god's songbook and everything is addressed in the psalter you're going to find yourself singing things if you've got a pop evangelical background and you start learning the psalms you're going to find yourself singing things you never sang before in your life and you're going to realize in hard times how fitting these psalms are so you might say well i'm not you know i'm not all that musical i can't carry a tune with a forklift well they wouldn't let me in the choir yes but you need to try at least three times you need you need to give yourself you might say i'm not that musical well the church is musical the church needs to understand that music is an essential part of what we're doing it's not an add-on extra music is part of an essential part of the resistance next hospitality and community hospitality and community not only do we live in disordered and confused times we live in fragmented times we live in times when a lot of people um eat all their dinners over the sink and they're on the on their just came in or on their way out in in romans 12 verses 12 and 13 it says rejoicing in hope patient and tribulation continuing instant in prayer distributing to the necessity of saints given to hospitality given to hospitality notice the fact notice how the fact of tribulation does not negate the need for hospitality he says earlier patient and tribulation patient and tribulation and then in the next breath he says given to hospitality you might say well if i'm in the middle of a tribulation why would i have people over well there's a difference between hospitality and entertaining entertaining is fine but we're talking about hospitality there's nothing entertaining is not a sin it's but it is a sin to substitute entertaining for hospitality notice how this tribulation doesn't negate the need for it it's an ongoing tribulation it's the kind of tribulation that requires the the apostle to say you need to be patient patient in tribulation and in this context we still need to be given to hospitality there will be a temptation to hole up and it's a temptation there will be a temptation in hard times it's a temptation to just run the ground hole up and say okay i'm going to wait till i'm going to hunker down wait till it's all over it's a temptation when preppers become loners the problem is that they're not prepping in any way that really matters you prep by being knit together with your people you prep by loving one another you don't prep by becoming a hermit so you need to be a closely knit people and that means that you all need to know what the inside of one another's homes look like you need to be knit together you need to be close you need to be inviting people over you need to be go be going when you're invited be given to hospitality and be given to hospitality in the midst of a tribulation that you have to be patient in next christian education and ye fathers provoke not your children to wrath but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the lord bring your children up in the pidea of the lord this is a critical component in what we've been up to here for decades now it was the neglect of this that has been one of the driving engines of our culture's current travails whenever you see a grown-up holding up a placard with some nonsense on it you know the free chocolate milk for everybody kind of thing know that it is pretty likely that he graduated from some god-forsaken institution all right all those people who are wrecking everything we're educated somewhere and and what will it matter i mean what does it matter it's one school's the same the same as another and we're discovering all of a sudden to our dismay that it matters quite a bit it matters quite a bit you can't bring up a generation in a godless way and not be confronted at the end with a godless generation you can't plant morning glory and then harvest barley it doesn't work that way we have been planting godlessness in our educational system for a long time and the crop is coming in and we don't like the crop so christian education redouble triple your efforts to to focus on christian education the next um and and each one of these could be its own um message right debt free the rich ruleth over the poor and the borrower is servant to the lender proverbs 22 7. your central encumbrance as paul says in romans 13 oh no man anything except the dead of love your central encumbrance should be the encumbrance of love do not take this as the councils of perfectionism as though we got dave ramsey and injected him with steroids and said okay i'm not talking that way but i don't take it as the councils of perfectionism but you should be seeking to minimize the handles that others might grab in order to steer or manipulate you you need to you need to be thinking practically what sorts of pinch points might be brought to bear on on me and on my household and one of the things that you should want to do is to get as free of those sorts of encumbrances as you can obviously a lot that needs to be unpacked there next joviality cheerfulness and laughter then he said in nehemiah 8 10 then he said unto them go your way eat the fat and drink the sweet and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared for this day is holy unto our lord neither be ye sorry for the joy of the lord is your strength now in nehemiah they had a lot of work to do they had a lot of enemies they had a lot of enemies outside the city they had a lot a lot of work to do on the walls everything was in disarray nehemiah was up against it worse than we are but nehemiah was up against it worse than we are and he told them eat the fat drink the sweet rejoice why why should you rejoice because the joy of the lord is your strength remember paul says that our weapons our non-carnal weapons are mighty the thing that's mighty in this is joy our weapons are not carnal but being joyful are mighty we are to fight but not like thugs and churls we are to fight but know that that if this is the case it is a fight we were born for if we are called to fight if god has assigned this fight to us then we were born for this fight so stop feeling sorry for your grandchildren oh look at the mess of a world we're giving them yeah that might be good for jokes sorry about that kids but stop feeling sorry for them why would we why would we bring up a generation of dragon fighters and then wish for no dragons doesn't make sense you if you if if you believe the word of god and if you have been giving your your kids and your grandkids a christian education then this is what it's for so yes this is a version of cheer up it's far more dangerous than you think yes it is so cheer up family dinners sabbath family dinners sabbath and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when they walk us by the way when they'll lie us down when they'll rise us up deuteronomy 6 7 church is where your instruction is packed for you church is where your instruction is packed for you the family table is where it is unpacked right we pack things we pack things for you we bundle them up we give them to you at the family table unpack them talk about them pick them up look at the other side engage with one another we pack them you unpack them make sure you dedicate the necessary time for the unpacking sit down and eat together as families and then remember hospitality have other people over as you do it next study read study to show yourself approved it's uh paul says in second timothy 2 15 a workman that needeth not to be ashamed rightly dividing the word of truth first read the word if you have a bible reading regimen that is more rigorous than the bible reading challenge then please carry on if you're have at it uh god bless you but if you're the kind of christian whose bible reading is limited to a plaque of the 23rd psalm that you have in your entryway then dust off your bible and get with the program we need to be bible readers we need to be taking it in we need to be taking it in like nobody's business one preacher famously said maben spurgeon there's enough dust on some christians bibles to write damnation with your finger whoa they preached differently in the 19th century yeah yes and things weren't chaotic well well they second read a book read be in the word be steeped in the word man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of god but also read a book get informed stay informed read books which is far better for your emotional equilibrium than chasing rumors on the internet okay read a book study give yourself to a disciplined pursuit of understanding what is going on then work every man's work shall be made manifest for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is first corinthians 3 13. paul's illustration there is the foundation is christ jesus and some people build wood hay and stubble on it and burns up in the day of fire others build with costly stones and that sort of thing and he's talking in context he's talking about the work of ministry but it's a principle that all the people of god can imitate from their ministers dedicate yourself to things that matter doing things that matter and let your metric for this be the scriptures and not the soft feminism of contemporary evangelicalism work on things that matter and let the bible be the thing that tells you what matters and what doesn't then stories stories tell your children of it and let your children tell their children and their children another generation joel 1 3. now joel here is talking about a cautionary tale joel is saying this was a really bad thing this was a terrible calamity that happened it was a it was a horrible tribulation with raisins in it right and and joel was saying tell your kids about it make sure that this word gets passed down but it's not just cautionary tales it's great inspirational tales as well all the stories tell all the stories and while you're at it live out some stories that will be worth the telling live like someone that someone might want to talk about later give something to your children so they can have something to pass on to their children and no please know that there's far more than this the world is a big place but there's certainly not less than this this this is a starting point and the first item worship of god the father in the name of jesus christ in the power of the holy spirit is the box that will hold all these bullets together it is the safe where you keep them but you don't just keep them hidden away these are gathered up to be used these are gathered up so that you might know what to do when the time comes where you have to do choose and do something our father and gracious god we thank you for your kindness to us we thank you for your word we thank you for the opportunity to meditate on these things i pray that you give us courage and understanding and wisdom and i pray that as we as we go through this coming year i pray that we'd be your servants servants who who live before you with joy and exuberance and faith and courage and we pray that you would give us this because we ask in the name of jesus and he is the one who taught us to pray saying occasionally we are asked whether we fence the table at christ church the answer is yes but for those who ask it can sometimes appear that the answer is no so i want to explain why we fence the table here at christ church the way we do first off you may have noticed that there's a paragraph in the bulletin at the bottom of the third page entitled may i come to the lord's table so that is our standing invitation and fencing it basically says that everyone is welcome to partake of this meal with us even visitors so long as they are baptized under the authority of the church professing faith in christ alone and not under church discipline second we really do want to emphasize that this is the lord's table it's not our christ church table or the crec table or a reformed table it is the table of jesus he always presides here he is at the head of the table every week so we want to mimic his invitation and any warnings he gives everyone that jesus welcomes we want to welcome it seems to us in the historic practice of fencing the table the emphasis has frequently been heavy on the warnings and light on the welcome it is true that jesus warned the disciples the lord's supper that one would betray him and paul certainly warned the corinthians that they were playing with fire but the striking thing is that in either case were the offenders actually forbidden from coming in fact all the indications are that judas took the lord's supper and then satan entered him so what we have wanted to emphasize here is the invitation come this is not because we do not believe in church discipline we do and from time to time individual members are suspended temporarily from the lord's supper and occasionally when a member refuses to repent of long standing high-handed sin they are excommunicated and barred from the table until they repent and the elders of christ church do take that responsibility seriously but this is also why we do not believe that you should decide for yourself whether to take the lord's supper or not from week to week if you're baptized then you should come unless the elders say otherwise and if you're not yet baptized we invite you to be baptized first and then come and partake with us jesus is the good shepherd who knows his sheep the best our job is to welcome you to him and so we do and we do so gladly knowing that he will deal with you perfectly as your perfect father so lay down your sins and come he will comfort your hearts he will forgive all your sins and he will strengthen you for the journey so come come and welcome to jesus christ jesus is king of this world he is sovereign lord of all and he has assigned you this moment as you heard this morning you were made for this he brought you into this world at this time with these challenges in this place in your family in this town in this land he assigned you this and he didn't assign you this so that you would fail he assigned you this so that you would succeed so that you would bring great glory to his name so go in faith and receive his blessing as you go the grace of our lord jesus christ the love of god the father and the communion of god the holy spirit be with you all and remain in your hearts always and amen

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Length: 42min 26sec (2546 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 05 2021