Psalm 103

So good morning.

If I have not uh met you yet, my name is Andrew Hendrick, and I have the privilege of serving the Orchard as the worship pastor.

So if you would go ahead and turn in your Bibles to Psalm 103, we're going to continue our series in the Psalms today.

If you weren't here last week, uh we got to hear from Cody Hale, by the way, our new senior pastor.

It's awesome.

We got to hire him finally.

Um, but as you'll find out later in the service, he's in the transition period of selling his house and all those things.

So now today you're stuck with me instead of Cody.

Sorry.

Uh but if you haven't heard uh the sermon from last week, it was absolutely phenomenal.

Cody preached from 1 Peter chapter 5, talking about just the the roles of what an elder of the church is supposed to be.

1 Peter 5 · chapter mention

Talking about what we are not only supposed to do, but how we are supposed to think, how we're supposed to act.

And Cody, on behalf of the orchard elders, he made four promises.

And uh and I'm just gonna read to you what he said last week.

This is from the plurality of the elders at the orchard.

The promises are this that we will lead you by grace, not by guilt.

We will see you as family, not statistics.

We will follow Jesus, not just our plans, and that we will shepherd you, not push or force you.

And one of Cody's subpoints is that we will never shy away from teaching the full spectrum of God's word from cover to cover, never dodge any difficult text.

I don't know about you, church, but this gets me fired up for the next season at the orchard.

I'm excited.

So today we're gonna spend some time in Psalm 103.

It's a 22-verse Psalm, so we're not gonna spend time on every single individual verse, but what we're gonna do is we're gonna kind of break it down in chunks.

So if you would stand and we're gonna read God's word together.

Again, we're gonna be in Psalm 103.

This is what it says.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.

Bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

The Lord works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed.

He made known his ways to Moses, his acts to the people of Israel.

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

He will not always chide, he will not always keep his anger forever, he does not deal with us according to our sins.

Praise the Lord for that, nor repay us according to our iniquities, for as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

For he knows our frame.

He remembers that we are dust.

As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it and it's gone, and its place knows it no more.

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant, and remember to do his commandments.

The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.

Bless the Lord, oh you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word.

Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers, who do his will.

Bless the Lord all his works in all places of his dominion.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.

Amen.

You can have a seat.

So one of the things that I did this week is I went back and listened, and again, I'm gonna tell you, you need to go back and listen to Cody's sermon from last week.

It was awesome.

But I went back and as I was listening to his sermon, uh, it just some things really hit me, really dawned on me.

And I went back even a couple of weeks prior to when James Allison, our discipleship pastor, preached about community and about community groups.

And what does it mean to have biblical community?

And I and then I found myself going back even a few more weeks to June 29th when I preached last on Psalm 130.

Let me tell you what really hit me.

I don't know how we have done this, but we have once again hired another 39-year-old that looks 20 years younger than me.

I don't understand this.

James looks like he's 25.

Cody probably looks around the same age.

I don't want to say how old I look because I might offend some of you, but I just can't understand how in the world this happened.

So, Cody, if you're watching online, now everybody knows how old you are.

All three of us are gonna turn 40 next year.

So, yay, there's there's that.

So I love how this uh this psalm starts off.

Like many other psalms, David starts off this psalm by giving us a declaration, something for us to do, right?

To bless the Lord.

We hear several other psalms say, Praise the Lord, bless the Lord, uh, extol his greatness.

We just have all of these things that happen in the Psalms that is an action.

And he starts this off with a charge for us to bless the Lord.

Now we hear this all over Scripture.

Bless the Lord, bless the Lord, bless the Lord.

But you know, I have a feeling that we really don't know what bless the Lord actually means.

It's kind of one of those churchy language things that we hear on Sunday mornings, we sing on Sunday mornings, we might hear others say it, oh, we're gonna bless the Lord today, but the reality is we don't really fully understand what that means.

Why is that?

Because I think we often confuse the word bless with praise.

Here's the the hard thing, and y'all y'all know me by now.

Y'all know that I don't really get into the action of pulling punches, so I'm not gonna start now.

The hard truth is that we can absolutely come in here every Sunday morning and praise the Lord.

We can sing his praises, we can read his word, we can tell others of how awesome he is, and yet all at the same time fail to bless the Lord.

This is the way that Jesus put it.

He quoted Matt Isaiah 29 in Matthew 15, and he said this to the Pharisees.

Man, he he beat up on the Pharisees pretty good.

He said, You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you when he said, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.

In vain do they worship me, teaching as the doctrines, the commandments of men.

Church, we have to realize that just simply the act of praising God with our mouths does not mean that we're blessing the Lord in our hearts.

Look, anyone can tell of God's works.

Any one of you could get sit up here, come up here and read this sermon to the rest of the church and not be blessing the Lord.

Any one of you, any one of us could stand up here and read the scripture and not be blessing the Lord.

It has to come from heart.

That's why David said at the beginning of the Psalm, all that is within me, it has to be our heart-level blessing to the Lord.

And sometimes we just don't really know what that means.

And so that's where we're gonna kind of spend the focus today is understanding, because the psalm starts with bless the Lord, and it ends with bless the Lord.

So we're gonna take this psalm apart kind of in four sections, and we're gonna look at what it actually means to bless the Lord.

So the first concept is this when we are truly satisfied in the Lord, we bless him.

I'm gonna say it again.

When we are truly satisfied in the Lord, we bless him.

In the first five verses that are leading to this, this is what David wrote: Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me.

Bless his holy name, bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good, so that your youth is renewed like the eagles.

Now, this concept, the world has majorly skewed and misconstrued the whole concept of being satisfied.

According to the world, sometimes our satisfaction is found in food.

Maybe a little too much for me.

Sometimes in things, sometimes in money, sometimes in people, sometimes in intimacy, sometimes in traveling.

I could keep going and say what all the things that this world says should satisfy us.

But the world standard for satisfaction is a moving target, and it always will be.

Why?

Because the world's satisfaction is based on temporary circumstances just being better than they were five minutes ago.

Are you hungry and you're gonna be satisfied with food?

Are you poor and you're gonna be satisfied with more money?

Are you feeling stuck at work and you're gonna be satisfied with a new job or maybe a vacation?

You see, every time something is wrong in our lives or is unsatisfactory according to the world, the world throws a different temptation of temporary satisfaction at us.

Every time.

No wonder we can never be truly content.

Every time you eat, guess what?

You get hungry again.

It's mind-blowing, right?

You never knew that.

Or if you're like me, every time you eat, you're hungry, like within 30 minutes.

Every time you have money, you spend it.

And are now I needed more money.

Every time you go on vacation, guess what?

That means you got to return to the real world at the end of the week.

Being satisfied in the Lord is not about him giving you what you want and bettering your temporary circumstances.

It is about realizing that you were dead in your trespasses and sins, with no hope, no future but death awaited you.

Yet he in full forgiveness has healed you, saved you, loved you, redeemed you, renewed you, and crowned you with steadfast love and mercy.

You see, in verse 3, when David mentioned healing all of our diseases, we can't necessarily take that at face value.

What's so remarkable about the passage that we read from Matthew a second ago is right after Jesus said that to the Pharisees, he was saying that to them, and he and he turns around to the crowd and he says, Hey, come here, come a little closer.

This is what he said in verse 10.

And he called the people to him and he said, Hear and understand.

It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth, this is what defiles a person.

Then the disciples came to him and said, Do you not know that the Pharisees were offended when they heard the saying?

As if Jesus didn't know that.

Come on, his own disciples were saying, Hey, you made some people mad.

Jesus, like, I know, I did it on purpose.

And he answered, Every plant that my heavenly father has not planted will be rooted up.

Leave them alone.

They're blind guides.

And if the blind lead the blind, they'll both fall into a pit.

But then Peter said to him, and I love this, I feel like I'm so similar to Peter, not in the good ways, but in the really stubborn ways and the lack of understanding ways.

And Peter said, even after he'd been walking with Jesus, he said, Well, explain this parable to us.

And Jesus, you know, I can only imagine in that moment, Jesus' humanity, like, Peter, I've explained it to you 18,000 times.

But he he didn't.

He graciously explained it again.

He said, Do you not, are you also still without understanding?

Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and is expelled, but what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart.

This is what defiles a person.

But notice he didn't end there.

He's not just talking about speech.

He goes on in verse 19.

He says, For out of the heart comes evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false false witness, and slander.

These are what defile a person.

You think about the word defile, it means to make something impure or to poison it.

That's what defile means.

When you think about what Jesus came to do and that he came to purify us and heal us from our iniquities, you really start to get a picture of what it took from his perspective to heal a defiled human race.

To purify people who continually subject themselves and cast themselves into all sorts of manners of impurities and poison, yet he loved us even still.

And he still came and he still went to the cross.

You see, the diseases that he heals us from sometimes can be physical.

Maybe you can be healed from the flu or cancer or whatever it is that ails you.

He can absolutely do that, and guess what?

He does.

But we can't leave it there.

We can't put a period at the end of that sentence and say that it's only physical diseases that he heals us from.

It goes so much further than that.

The iniquities he forgave were forgiven with his blood spilled.

He didn't die to heal us from the flu.

He died to heal us from sin.

The distemper of human depravity and our own selfishness is what he was beaten for.

The pit that we dug and threw ourselves into because of the poison of sin is the pit that he redeemed us from.

When we get to that place and we realize that he has freed us from the death that we were owed, and healed us from the disease of sin and redeemed us from the depth of our fall, we can then fall on our face before him and truly be satisfied in him for who he is and what he's done for us.

That is how we begin to bless the Lord.

That's the first concept.

The second is this when we abide in his correction, we bless him.

I'll say it again.

When we abide in his correction, we bless him.

This one kind of hurts.

In reality, none of us like correction.

None of us like punishment, none of us like discipline.

How many of you, by a show of hands, would knowingly mess something up in your workplace or in your school or whatever, like totally fail and go into your boss's office and be waiting for him the next day when he comes, like, man, this is gonna be such a great day.

I royally screwed up yesterday, and he is going to absolutely fire me.

He might sue me.

I might actually go to jail because I messed up so bad.

This is gonna be awesome.

I really want this discipline.

None of us in here would do that.

If you said yes to that question, you really need to come see me afterwards.

The problem is that we think punishment and discipline are the same thing.

They are not.

They are not the same.

Punishment, in its definition and nature, is from the heart of wrath.

Punishment is meant to instill dominance.

It's meant for retribution.

It's meant for vengeance, and it's meant to carry out a penalty.

Punishment, though, is never meant for the good of those it is carried out on.

That's punishment.

It's meant for their destruction.

Discipline, however, is from the heart of grace.

And it's correction and training and loving and strong rebuke, otherwise known as chastisement or chide.

And it's always meant for the good of the one who stepped off and messed up.

Discipline is never meant for vengeance or retribution.

Maybe some of you have experienced punishment in your life when you should have experienced discipline.

Maybe when you were a child.

Maybe in your marriage you've received punishment when discipline should have been administered instead.

I'm sorry if that happened to you.

Things like, see, you screwed up again.

I knew you would.

You always do this to me.

Gosh, I just wish you were like a different person.

Then I would actually be happy.

Don't do that because it makes me look bad.

See, that's verbal human punishment.

That is not from the Lord.

That is sin.

If you've experienced that in your life, I'm sorry.

If you are administering that currently in your life, stop it.

Because that's punishment, not discipline.

But don't be fooled into thinking that discipline is always easy.

Sometimes, at least for people like me, that kind little gentle box of discipline, you know, it's nicely wrapped with a little bow on top.

Maybe, like, you know, the bitter is the chocolate inside that comes with it.

It's like, ah, here's some discipline for you.

Just do better next time.

You'll be all right.

Maybe that works for you.

Praise God if it does.

But holy smokes, I am really stubborn and really stupid often, and that does not work for me.

So often I need a little bit of a stronger word of discipline.

The reality is sometimes, whether children, friends, family, spouses, doesn't matter who, when they need to be pulled away from the danger, then we have to do that with some strength, with some vigor, with some hard truth sometimes.

If someone's barreling toward a massive sin in their life that could destroy them and their families, that's not the moment to just say, hey, you should probably do better.

That's the moment to grab them and say, Stop! Don't do this.

You're gonna die.

This is dangerous.

This is going to hurt you.

Pull them away from it.

But don't leave it there.

Say, hey, we're gonna do this together.

I know you were barreling towards this sin and this destruction, but I'm gonna pull you away from it and I'm gonna show you what Jesus has showed me.

There is a better way.

And I'm gonna walk with you arm in arm, and we're gonna do it together.

That is discipline and not punishment.

You see, discipline sometimes hurts.

But it's always good for the one who receives it, and it is never meant for retribution.

You know how we know that?

Hebrews 2.2.

It said that the retribution that we were owed was paid in full.

It was paid in full.

By who?

Jesus.

Notice this.

Jesus wasn't disciplined, Jesus was punished.

You see, the punishment was meant for destruction.

It was meant for wrath.

It was meant for vengeance.

God the Father carried out his wrath, his vengeance, his destruction on Jesus when we should have been the ones to receive it.

And he did this knowing what Jesus would go through.

Jesus subjected himself to the Father's wrath so we would not have to.

Jesus received the punishment that we were due in order so that we could be disciplined by the Father by loving and kind discipline and sanctification throughout our lives.

That's what Jesus did.

Verses 8 through 13 clearly say this.

The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.

And this is the beauty of this passage right here.

Why?

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him.

As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

He doesn't repay us for our iniquities, because guess what?

They're gone.

They died on the cross with Jesus.

But you know, Jesus at the right time, at the perfect time, he stepped in front of the Father's righteous wrath and willingly took the beating and punishment that was supposed to be ours.

And the Father carried it out because he loves us.

Because of Christ, that punishment due to us has turned into that loving discipline for our benefit, for our sanctification, for our growth in righteousness, for our pursuit of Christ-likeness.

The Father had compassion on us because he chose us to be his sons and daughters when he didn't have to, and when we didn't deserve it.

Our disease was one that we were born into, and he knew that.

And that's why the blood of the Lamb, because of it, he cast our sins as far as the East is from the West.

They are gone, they're done, they're destroyed.

We are redeemed, we are made pure, we are made spotless and righteous, and we have no more record of wrong in Christ.

That's how the Father, that's how his love meets us in those moments that the devil creates.

In and starts trying to remind us of our past failures and the guilt that we felt.

He starts trying to distract us with things.

You know what?

He's right.

You're going, did Andrew just agree with the devil?

Yeah, I did.

Because we're not strong enough.

We did fail.

We are easily distracted.

He's right.

Why do you think he attacks us?

Because he knows he can.

You see that concept.

It's defeated by the empty tomb.

We can agree that we have all failed and fallen short of the glory of God, right?

We can all agree that we've done stupid things in our lives, right?

We can all agree that none of us in this room are perfect.

We can all agree that none of us deserved anything but death and alienation from God.

See, we don't have to fear that anymore.

Because it's gone.

And that word fear, it's a funny word, isn't it?

It's all over scripture.

All over scripture, both in Hebrew and in Greek.

And it might seem like sometimes it means different things in different contexts.

Well, it's because it does.

There's different aspects of fear, all written in the Hebrew portion and the Greek portion.

And in this context, what David is talking about when he says those who fear God, he's not talking about terror.

He's not talking about being afraid.

He's talking about standing in awe of a holy God, realizing how small we are compared.

And saying, Wow, praise God for who he is and what he's done.

That's the fear that he's talking about.

See, the fear that we know in this day and age is terror and the feeling of being afraid.

That's the fear that we were not given a spirit of, church.

2 Timothy 1 7, Paul urged Timothy to remember that he was not given a spirit of that kind of fear, of terror, and of being afraid.

He was given a spirit of power and love and discipline, sound mind.

It's incredible because Paul was reminding Timothy that every one of those moments that he experienced the correction of the Lord, it was for his good.

He didn't have to live in fear anymore of his past.

And neither do you.

Third concept is this when we spend time with the Lord, we bless him.

I'll say it again.

When we spend time with the Lord, we bless him.

I did some research this week that led to some results that really kind of haunted me, and it still haunts me right now.

And here's what I found.

5.5 billion people on the planet are connected to some kind of device that is on the internet.

Out of the 8 billion people on the planet, 5.5 at minimum are connected to some kind of device that has internet connection.

Today, today alone, the 24-hour period that we have today, when you do the math and you do the numbers collectively, the average is around six and a half hours a day spent on a device.

And when you do the math, four million years worth of time will happen today on a device collectively over the 5.5 billion people on the planet.

Four million years, not days, not hours, years.

I'll put it in a little bit more of a simpler term.

Today, in a 24-hour period, we have 1.5 hours that we are not either working, sleeping, or staring at a device.

And we say we don't have time.

Y'all, we are failing.

What kind of life do we have when the majority of our time outside of sleeping and working is spent on a device?

Can you truly see God's creation from staring at a screen's interpretation of it?

Can you truly read God's word on your device without being distracted every five seconds from some kind of notification?

Or how about the thousand temptations that are in the palm of your hand every time you pick up your phone attached to the internet?

Can you truly solely and only focus on God's word when you're staring at that?

Can you truly spend time with other believers if you're never actually present with them in the moment because you're obsessively thinking about the next thing?

Can you be a good friend, husband, wife, father, mother, coworker, and if every moment of basic community interaction is you being rushed to answer the next message?

Can you truly experience God's natural revelation through his creation?

If you never actually feel the wind that causes those goosebumps on your arms, step in a cool creek on a hot day and feel the rush of water?

Hear and experience the sound of crashing waves on the beach?

Smell the aroma of a flower that just makes the world stop for just a second?

And maybe even see the mountaintops covered in snow that just scream out, Creator God.

Can you do all that if the majority of your time is spent elsewhere?

Can you do that if the majority of your time is spent either sleeping, working, or staring at a screen?

I don't know about you, but I don't think I can.

People, it's time to put our screens down and experience God's goodness the way that He intended it to, and experience the community and fellowship of believers together without being stuck.

When I was talking with Cody this week about this sermon, he sent me a John Piper quote, and this one hurts.

He said, one of the greatest uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the last day that prayerlessness was not from a lack of time.

That's John Piper.

You know when he wrote that?

2009.

That was five years after Facebook came out.

It was three years after Twitter came out, and it was one year before Instagram came out.

Look where we are.

Why do I say all this?

To highlight what David said in this psalm.

Our days are limited.

Every single person in here has a number to their days.

We are not promised tomorrow.

We are not promised the next hour.

We're not promised the next minute.

We're not promised the next breath that we will have.

That is God's timing and not ours.

What are we doing with our time?

In verse 14, this is what David said, for he knows our frame.

He remembers that we are dust as for man.

His days are like grass.

He flourishes like a flower of the field.

For the wind passes over it and it's gone.

His place knows it no more.

But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, those who stand in awe of him, and his righteousness to children's children.

It's really time to reevaluate what we're spending our time on, church.

Are we spending our time on creating generation after generation of disciples and our children?

Are we teaching our children to the beauty of God's commandments and his mighty acts?

Husbands, are we loving our wives as Christ loves the church?

Wives, are we loving Christ as the church is supposed to abide in Christ?

Are we loving our husbands in the same way that the church is supposed to abide in Christ?

Sometimes, church, we have to ask the hard questions and really to get to the core of our true nature.

In that mindset, I want to shift to the final concept.

You know what scripture says about scripture?

A lot of things.

But God's word in Hebrews 4.12 says this: for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.

You know what happens when we spend time in God's word?

Our intentions of our hearts are exposed not only before us, not only before the Lord, but before one another.

And that's where we can have biblical community.

When we spend time in God's word, we are able to walk with one another and say, brother, sister, I've noticed this about you.

Let me help you in walking in the steps of repentance.

Because I was once there too.

I have failed just like you.

And let me show you a better way.

The fourth and final concept is when we remember, keep, and delight in the Lord's commandments, we bless him.

Jesus said, If you love me, you'll keep my commandments.

Psalm 119.

No, I'm not going to read the whole thing.

It's 176 verses long.

Sorry.

But I'm just going to read the final eight verses of it.

The psalmist is asking for help in this moment.

He said, Let my cry come before you, O Lord.

Give me understanding according to your word.

Let my plea come before you.

Deliver me according to your word.

My lips will pour forth your praise, for you teach me your statutes.

My tongue will sing of your word, for all your commandments are right.

Let your hand be ready to help me, for I have chosen your precepts.

Here's where he gets into the difference between praise and blessing, because he's talked about praise.

Now he's going to talk about heart blessing to the Lord.

I long for salvation, O Lord.

Your law is my delight.

Let my soul live and praise you.

Let your rules help me.

I have gone astray like a lost sheep.

Seek your servant, for I do not forget your commandments.

The scriptures are clear.

When we consider the charge, we are graciously called to remember and keep the Lord's commandments.

When we don't, not only do we sin, but we also fail to bless the Lord.

Adam and Eve disobeyed the precepts of the Lord in the garden, causing the fall of the human race, plunging us into an inherited sinful nature, only overcome by the perfect life, the sacrificial death, and the glorious resurrection of Jesus, the Son of God.

Y'all, we get the aspect here that God is really serious about sin.

And he's also really serious about how much he loves you.

In John 15, Jesus said it.

He said that keeping his commandments, being ministers of the gospel, not only hearing, but doing his word and obeying his word is how we now love Jesus.

And it's how we abide in him, and it's how we bless him.

Back in the second verse of the psalm, David told us to not forget the Lord's benefits.

He told us in verse 7 that the Lord has made known his ways to us, and that is through his word.

And these in these final verses, listen to what David wrote after he said, Who will receive the Lord's steadfast love?

Those who fear him, those who stand in awe of him.

He said, And also to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments.

The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.

Bless the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word.

Bless the Lord, all his hosts, all his ministers who do his will.

Bless the Lord all his works and all his places of dominion.

Bless the Lord, O my soul.

Church family, may we never be a church who will shy away from holding one another accountable to God's word and spurring one another on to good works.

May we never be a church who only hears God's word when we come here on Sundays and then forget what it sounds like every time that we get on Monday.

Because James chapter 2 made it clear: don't be just hearers of God's word, be doers of God's word.

James 2 · chapter mention

May we never be a church who neglects spending time with our Father.

May we never be a church who fails to abide in the correction of Jesus.

May we never be a church who runs to the world for satisfaction instead of Jesus.

So how do we bless the Lord?

We bless the Lord when we're satisfied in him, when we abide in his correction, when we spend time with him, and when we obey his commandments.

It's all the time.

No matter the season that you're in, you've been called to bless the Lord.

No matter the highs, no matter the lows, no matter the valley that you might be walking in, we are still called to bless the Lord.

That comes from everything who we are.

It comes from within.

So I want to ask you this before we close.

In what ways are you currently satisfied in the Lord?

And in what ways are you not?

The only way you gain anything out of these questions is to be honest.

How are you actively abiding in Christ?

And in what ways are you not?

Are you actually spending time with the Lord?

If not, what must you do?

There's that hearing and doing piece, right?

You hear it.

So now what do you have to do?

And are you keeping the Lord's commandments?

If not, what must you do?

Church, may we always be a church and a community of believers who truly abides in Christ, but also has that fellowship with one another that spur one another on to good works in Christ.

Let's bless the Lord by everything that we do and everything that comes from within.

Amen.

Let's pray.