"Thanksgiving Day Service" Thanksgiving Morning Worship Service

Singing for thankfulness.

I'm thankful for you guys leading us this morning.

I want to spend uh next 20 minutes or so not so much preaching a uh a sermon from a passage, but kind of sharing uh some notes I made about why I'm thankful for the church.

I was with uh a couple families the other night and we went around the table talking about what we give uh what we give thanks for.

And you know, everybody gave thanks for everything from their I'm thankful for my family, I'm thankful for my for my cat, I'm thankful for my friends.

And uh one of my kids said, I'm thankful for the church, and somebody whispered in my ear, Pastor's kid.

But it struck me that I am thankful for the church, and not just because I am professionally thankful for it, but because I'm spiritually thankful for it.

And the church is such a central part of my life, and I hope it is of yours as well.

And so I want you to just kind of take your minds for a second and think about why you're thankful for the church.

You could come up with your own ten reasons, um, but I have I have mine and I want to share them with you this morning.

Well, the first reason I'm thankful for the church is that the church is the only institution Jesus said he would build.

Jesus had said, had promised that he would build his church.

He didn't promise that he would build your family, he didn't promise that he would build your country, he didn't promise that he would build your fiefdom or your empire, your uh position at work.

In fact, oftentimes he promises the others.

Nations rise and kingdoms fall.

Uh children rebel, families are afraid, our health comes and goes.

And yet the Lord promised he would build his church.

It's a unique promise in the pages of scripture.

You find it in Matthew 16, verse 18, where Jesus says, I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.

Matthew 16:18

And remember, that's the confession where Jesus had asked his disciples, who do people say that I am?

And he got every kind of answer imaginable.

John the Baptist, Elijah back from the dead.

Uh but Peter said, You're the Christ, you're the Messiah.

That means the sent one from God, the Son of God Himself.

And Jesus says, Your flesh and blood didn't reveal that to you, Peter, but my Father in heaven, of course, the Father reveals spiritual truth to the Holy Spirit.

It's a Trinitarian testimony.

The Father draws people to the Son through the Holy Spirit, and it is that confession that Christ builds his church upon.

I will build my church, Jesus says.

This is the first reference in the New Testament of the church.

The first reference in the Bible of the church is this right here.

Uh, when Jesus uses that phrase, it had not been used before.

It's not a word used in the Old Testament, it's not a word used in the New Testament until Matthew 16.

And Jesus declares, I'm going to build it.

It's something new that I am going to build.

Remember when Jesus says this, he's walking to Jerusalem, he's going to be crucified.

He keeps telling his disciples he's going to be killed and taken away from them.

And yet he's going to build something that won't begin until after he's taken out of the world.

That's the crazy thing about this kind of promise.

Jesus says, I'm going to die, I'm going to rise.

He even tells before he's crucified, I'm going to go away and send you the Holy Spirit, which will be better for you than if I was here.

So you can argue with Jesus about that all you want.

You're like, I would side with you, Jesus.

I'd rather have you here.

But he says, No, it's better, I'm sending the Spirit, but with him gone and the Spirit here, he says, I will build my church.

It's a radical promise, it's a unique promise in the pages of Scripture.

And it's one that Jesus gives.

He's, by the way, in that passage, he says it's not only going to build it, but he's going to bless it.

He's not just going to build something that he doesn't like, he's going to build his bride.

He's going to build it, he's going to love it, he's going to show it favor because it is his.

We are, we belong to him.

So he's going to build it, he's going to bless it.

Second reason I'm thankful for the church is it's a gathering place for true worshipers.

It's a gathering place for true worshipers.

True worshipers are drawn to the church.

This is where those who worship God in spirit and truth gather.

You know, it used to be common, less so now, but I used to meet people all the time that said they said they were Christians, and they're asking, where do they go to church?

It's always my second question.

You know, I've asked somebody that are a believer, and they say, Yes, my follow-up question is immediately, where do you go to church?

And while I've run into this less so now, it used to be very common where the person would tell me, Oh, I don't, I don't go to church.

And I always respond the same way with fake shock.

Like, I thought you said you were a Christian.

Like, no, no, I am a Christian, I just don't go to church.

I just met a unicorn.

The Bible says nothing of a Christian who doesn't go to church.

And why is that?

Because it's almost axiomatic that if you're a worshiper of the Lord, you're drawn to the place where people worship.

Um it's it's a kind of a circular argument.

Uh you worship the Lord, and so you worship the Lord in the place where people worship the Lord.

It's just axiomatic.

Worshipers of the Lord are gravitate towards each other.

Now, in fairness, almost all those people I've met that have had that conversation with have been at Starbucks.

So I don't know what it is about Starbucks that draws Christians without the church.

It's right across the street, you know.

Again, I think that's declined now in our society because the cost of associated with Christ is high, higher now than maybe it was 10 years ago.

And so now those that claim Christ are more likely to truly fellowship with God's people, to have a love for God's people.

Anyway, it's the place where true worshipers gather.

And you see this in a lot of passages, but one of them would be Philippians 3, where Paul says, We're the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh.

Even his Turner Fraser on circumcision, the trust in the flesh has been stripped away.

And what's left is a worshiping God in spirit and truth.

We don't put confidence in the deeds of the flesh, we put confidence in a circumcised heart, a heart that has been made new by God.

We worship God by his spirit, and we glory in Christ Jesus.

The church is the place where gathering of believers happens every week, and where people have fellowship with one another.

Number three, I'm thankful for the church because Jesus purchased it with his own blood.

He purchased it with his own blood.

Peter says he purchased it with something uh more precious than silver and gold and costly material, but with the we've been purchased with the precious blood of Christ.

The church is Jesus' in a doublefold way.

And that's the language Peter uses as well.

We belong to Jesus in a twofold way, a doublefold way.

First, we belong to Jesus because he built the church.

It's his church.

It belongs to him because he is the architect, he is the cornerstone, he sent his spirit that draws people to it, and so it belongs to him because he's actually the one building it.

But the second reason it belongs to him is because he purchased it.

It's not merely that he builds it, but also he purchased it.

You know, somebody could build a house in your front yard and it doesn't make it their house.

It's still in your front yard.

In order for it to truly be their house, they not only have to build it, they'd have to purchase the property as well.

And that's what Jesus does.

He purchases the property upon which he builds the church.

And I don't mean the physical property.

Jesus didn't purchase Braddock and Backlick, although our church does have the deed for it.

We can back it up, I promise.

It's not just that Jesus purchased the property, but he purchases each individual who belongs to the church.

Every believer in the church is a brick and is built into the church.

That's the language of 1 Corinthians 12.

We're all bricks put into the body of Christ.

We're bricks in the building.

A brick just sitting on the ground is misplaced.

It's just out, it's out of nowhere.

A brick is only doing its thing when it's built into its building.

So Jesus doesn't just build us as bricks in a building, but he builds us by purchasing us.

And he purchases us with his own blood.

You see this in lots of passages, but one that comes to mind is Acts 20, verse 28.

Acts 20:28

This is where Paul is giving his farewell address to the Ephesian elders.

Paul had ministered with the Ephesians for a period of time.

He poured out his life with them, and now he's going to leave them and he's warning them.

He says, Wolves are going to rise up, they're going to scatter the flock of God.

And so, you elders of the church, pay attention to yourself and to the flock.

Because the Holy Spirit made you overseers.

So why should elders care for the flock?

Because God tells them to, because Paul tells them to, because they're shepherds and the flock is sheep.

But lots of reasons.

But this is the reason Paul gives.

It's the church of God which he obtains with his own blood.

The word redemption in the New Testament is a word that's borrowed from the slave market.

If a person was a slave, they could be auctioned off or sold off.

And there was this thing that people would do is they would buy slaves and give them their freedom.

And there was a Greek word for that.

That's the word the New Testament picks up and uses for redemption.

We were slaves to sin.

Jesus purchases us and frees us, and he frees us by putting us into the church.

We have freedom in Christ because we're purchased by his blood.

The purchase of his blood places us into the church.

Into the church.

And purchased with his blood.

I mean, that's just that's talking about the cross.

That we are sinners and Christ was sinless.

That Jesus, though God became man and led a sinless life, and at the end of his life, he was crucified.

He was murdered by the Jews, condemned by the Romans, but ultimately the blow that killed him was God's own justice striking him for our sin.

Our sin was given to him, so he suffered and died, burying the eternal wrath of God for our sin.

That's what it means, that he purchased us.

He paid the fine for us, he went to jail for us.

But of course, our sin is not a fine or it's not jail time.

Our sin demands hell.

But Jesus took on the penalty of hell for us.

All the infinite wrath of God, he endured in his own body.

That's the payment.

So he looks at us and says, I want to purchase this person.

This person is a slave to sin.

I want to buy him.

How much does he cost?

The answer is he has sinned against the holy and living God.

He must pay with his very soul.

He'll pay with the punitive wrath of God where he will suffer forever for his sin.

And Jesus says, I'll pay that.

Now, how can he pay an infinite cost?

Well, because he's an infinite person.

Because he's sinless.

He can pay an infinite price because he's an infinite person, he's sinless, and so he purchases us with his own blood.

That's why I'm thankful for the church.

Jesus paid for it.

Jesus bought it.

The closing date has passed.

The closing date happened on that resurrection Sunday where Jesus resurrected from the dead on Easter Sunday so many years ago.

That's when the church closed in that sense.

The deed was signed, it was ratified, it was notarized.

Jesus now owns the church because he purchased it with his own blood.

The fourth reason I'm thankful for the church is it's the earthly expression of a heavenly reality.

And this again is unique in the world.

The church is built as a copy or as a model of a heavenly reality.

And there's imagery of this in the Old Testament as well.

The Old Testament tabernacle was built off of a model of things in heaven.

That doesn't mean that Moses saw it in heaven, but God described it to him in such a way with very express commands that Moses built the tabernacle in the wilderness, and that represented something of a heavenly reality.

But that was a shadow, even, and believers couldn't even go into the tabernacle.

They couldn't go into the Holy Holies, only the high priest and him, but once a year.

New Testament is fundamentally different than that.

The New Testament is not a building copied off of heaven, but it is a spiritual reality.

It's a reflection of a spiritual truth that is in heaven.

I remember going on a tour of a Mormon temple once.

There was a special dispensation where Gentiles were allowed to go.

We had to wear the booties and the hairnet and gloves.

So no, this is what they told us anyway, no Gentile DNA would contaminate anything.

And we we scooted our way through the tabernacle, and they were very through their own tabernacle, their own version of the Holy of Holies, and they were very gracious and kind and accommodating and evangelistic.

I have nothing negative to say about the experience at all, except that the centerpiece of this is this celestial room that is supposed to be a model of what was in heaven.

And it did, it's got a lot of mirrors, a lot of crystal, a lot of shining.

I mean, they made it as good as a human being could make a copy of heaven physically.

I I don't have any suggestions on how to improve it.

But still, you left and you're like, not really.

That's not really what heaven's gonna look like.

Like, that's not, I hope not.

Like I was in there for 15 minutes and it kind of ran its course.

When the church, and the Bible describes the church as a copy of heaven, it's not speaking of mirrors and crystal and some kind of earthly presence, it's speaking of an earthly reflection of an eternal spiritual reality.

That we have fellowship with God in heaven forever and ever.

And that fellowship is modeled here on earth in the church.

In the church.

The church is the model of an eternal spiritual reality that exists forever and ever and ever.

Several verses could I point to you about this, but Jesus' second teaching on the church is what comes to mind.

I said earlier, Matthew 16, 16 was his first teaching on the church.

Uh, but Matthew 18, 18 is his second.

And there Jesus says, speaking of even church discipline is the context of this, the church will put people out, the elders of the church will put people out, the congregation will say, This person is no longer part of our church because of their unrepentant sin.

We dismiss them from fellowship.

And then Jesus says this when you do that, whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven.

Whatever you loose on earth when you forgive the person for their sins is loosed in heaven.

Now, you could fall into an ocean of truth about this verse, and we don't have time on Thanksgiving morning to cover it.

I just want to draw out one little facet from this truth, from this verse.

That there's something real that's happening in the church that is reflecting a heavenly reality.

When a person is not repenting from their sins and they are put out of the church, Jesus says that is reflecting what is already true in heaven.

There's a somber reality to this.

Don't confuse cause and effect.

It's not because the congregation votes to put somebody out, that the angels vote to put them out.

No, the cause is they're unwilling to turn from their sin and embrace the gospel.

The effect is that they're no longer part of the church in earth or in heaven.

The cause is a person repents from their sin and gives their life to Christ and wants to follow Christ in fellowship with other believers.

The effect is that they have been born again on earth and in heaven.

That's what Matthew 18, 18 is teaching.

Or to say it differently, I'm thankful for the church because it's an earthly reflection of a heavenly reality.

Fifthly, I'm thankful for the church because it will ultimately win.

It will ultimately win.

Every year, without fail, either Christianity today or Newsweek or time, I think they're on like a three-year cycle rotation, writes an article about how unless the church does this, it will die out in the next, I don't know, five minutes or something.

Have you noticed that every year?

It's usually around Easter time, is when it comes out.

Unless the church does this, unless the church plays better music, unless pastors stop wearing ties, unless pastors start wearing ties, unless pastors receive the LGBTQ world, unless pastors take a stand against this political party or in favor of that, unless they do this, the church will die in the next five minutes.

Go.

And you can't help but roll your eyes at those kind of articles for no other reason that you know how it ends.

The church is going to end glorified with God in heaven.

Jesus says this back to Matthew 16.

Now in the second part of verse 18.

Not only earlier we looked at the first half of the verse, you are Peter, and upon this rock, I'll build my church, but the second half of the verse, the gates of hell won't prevail against it.

Much less whatever culturally ebbs and flows at any moment in a society.

If the gates of hell aren't going to win, magazines aren't going to win.

If the gates of hell aren't going to win, an election is not going to shut down the church.

Burning churches to the ground, as we talked about earlier in India, is not going to stop the church from growing.

No, the church will ultimately be triumphant even over the powers of hell.

And that's teaching, by the way, both universally and locally.

Local churches will close, of course, and open, and cultures change and local church buildings get burned down.

But God's bride will be present all over the world in any form, and God's bride always gathers together.

God's bride will always seed and gather together.

And so we know the universal church, of course, will win.

But because the universal church wins, the local churches themselves will win.

Not that any one congregation will be open forever, of course not.

But that the bride of Christ will ultimately be victorious in every geographic expression of it.

Number six, the church is the proclaimer and the protector of the truth.

That's why I'm thankful for it.

The church is the proclaimer and the protector of the truth.

It is the organization that God has left in the world, that He's built in the world, sealed with His Spirit, and He built it and sealed it and purchased it for the purpose of proclaiming truth to the world.

That's what happens in the church.

Truth is proclaimed.

The Bible is open and truth is proclaimed.

It's the only place in the world you can go to find out what God says about different things.

To find out the truth of God, what it takes to be saved, what true doctrine is.

The book of Jude describes the church as contending for the faith.

Paul says the church has got doctrine's been handed down from one generation to the other.

The church possesses doctrine, defends doctrine, and explains, expounds doctrine.

Luther called church God's mouthpiece.

That it's just, it's, and he called it the church itself, a word house.

It's a house that makes words.

And he didn't mean that in a derogatory way, he meant it in a good way.

The church produces words because it's the proclaimer of the truth.

1 Timothy 3.15.

Paul says he's writing the book of 1 Timothy so that you know how you ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and the buttress of the truth.

I went on a hike yesterday in the Shenandoah Mountains, and we uh came across some rock features, what the sign said, and these granite pillars that the sign says these granite pillars are holding up the side of the mountain.

And you can look at these granite pillars, and they're you see what is keeping the whole Shenandoah Mountains from shifting over and falling on the ray or wherever it would fall on.

I don't know, but there's these marble or granite pillars that hold it up.

That's what the church is.

The church is the pillar and the buttress of the truth.

It is, in the sense, holding up the word of God as the word of God holds up the church.

It's reciprocal.

The church is the proclaimer and the protector, the pillar and the buttress of the truth, and so you can be thankful for the church.

Number seven, I'm thankful for the church because it is the realm of spiritual fellowship.

It's the realm of spiritual fellowship.

Earlier I said it's the place where true believers gather.

But true believers don't just gather like the magnet draws us in, like a light draws flies.

True believers gather for the edification that takes place, for the mutual encouragement that happens, for the spiritual fellowship that happens.

You know, you, I'm sure you've had this experience, but you can meet people at church that you have more in common with than people you may have known your whole life because you have Christ in common with them.

The fact that you have Christ in common with somebody draws you together and you have a rich fellowship because you're thinking in the same kind of terms between the glories of Jesus and the sinfulness of sin, uh the desire to be sanctified, the desire to be used by God, the desire to reach the lost, the desire to put sin to death in your own life and to see the gospel go forward in the world.

Like those big worldview categories every single believer has in common.

The most immature believer and the most mature saint have those big global categories in common.

You want to put sin to death and you want to be used by God to reach the world.

Every believer has that.

And that structures so much of our life and our thought and how we raise our families and all of that.

And that's rich fellowship takes place in that context, where you're excited to be with other believers because you enjoy that fellowship.

It motivates you to grow in godliness.

And you have that in the church.

That's the place where it is lived out in the Church of the Living God.

Hebrews 10 says, Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works.

By the way, in the context of Hebrews 10, it says, gather together.

Don't stop gathering together.

Keep the church meeting together so you can press each other on towards love and good works.

And Paul says in Hebrews 10, don't neglect the assembly as some are in the habit of doing.

And they start to drift away.

A person that doesn't grow on fellowship is setting, is sowing the seeds for apostasy.

Number eight, the church is the home for the means of grace.

And by the means of grace, what I mean, what I mean by the means of grace is that it's the way God encourages Christians.

See, God has means by which Christians are encouraged and by which they grow.

My plant grows when you water it.

That's the means of grace to my plant.

It means water and sunlight.

My plant is a low maintenance plant.

Those are the two things it likes in life: water and sunlight.

Christians also have means of grace.

Those means of grace come through the church.

It comes through the preaching of the word.

You hear a sermon on Sundays and it strengthens your faith.

It comes from singing songs.

You sing songs with other believers and your own heart is encouraged.

It comes through baptism, seeing other believers baptized.

It comes through communion, being reminded regularly of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

It comes through giving, where you're sharing your resources with those in need and for the equipping of the church to remind yourself that something bigger is in the world than even your own family and your own home.

All those are means of grace.

Those means sanctify you.

And they're impossible to encounter outside of the church.

You can podcast sermons all you want.

It's not the same thing as listening to somebody with their Bible open, preaching God's word to a body that person's a part of, and that people know each other, and they're all mutually accountable to one another.

It's just categorically different than live streaming a sermon for sure.

It's the means of grace.

Now, and of course, in Catholicism, they use the phrase means of grace to speak of the sacraments, that you receive grace that prepares you for justification through the sacraments in the Catholic world.

That's not what we mean at all.

We don't mean that.

What we mean is that in light of our already justified self, that we've already given our life to Christ, we've confessed our sins, we put our faith in Christ, we are now justified.

Our sins are forgiven.

God leaves us in this world to grow in godliness.

We don't receive grace in order to continue our justification.

We receive grace for sanctification in light of the fact we've already been forgiven, have already been justified by God through faith alone, in Christ alone, to the glory of God alone, in light of those things, we now receive ongoing, nurturing grace, grace that grows us.

And it only comes through the church.

It really does only come through the church.

That kind of sanctifying congregational grace.

That's number eight.

It's the home of the means of grace.

It's the eighth reason I'm thankful for the church.

Here's a verse about that, Ephesians 4.11.

He gave apostles, prophets, and evangelists, and shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.

That word building up, some translations go edify, edification.

The word edification is the word we get edifice from it.

It's just a word for building something.

That Jesus builds his church through the gathered congregation and the ministry of the elders in the congregation.

They build the church in grace.

And so I'm thankful for the church for that reason.

Number nine, ninth reason I'm thankful for the church is it is the environment where strong spiritual leadership develops.

The church is the tree that grows elders.

The next generation of pastors and elders and missionaries are grown in the church.

That's where elders are developed.

You can't grow an elder outside of the church.

Elders don't grow in trees in my front yard.

Missionaries don't grow in trees in your front yard.

Missionaries and pastors aren't even grown in seminaries.

Graduating seminary doesn't make somebody a pastor or a missionary.

That kind of growth happens in the context of the church.

I'm thankful for seminaries because seminaries equip the person whom God is calling to ministry.

Seminaries are helpful to confirm somebody's call, but it is the church that grows, the men who will lead the church in the next generation.

That happens in a church.

And I joked earlier at the beginning of our service that you can tell a healthy church by singing men and crying babies.

Amen.

And sometimes those two sound the same.

I'll grant that.

I mean that a little bit jokingly, but what I mean seriously is that you can tell the health of a church by is the church growing up men for pastoral ministry?

Are future pastors being raised in the church?

People are gonna do what is modeled for them.

If you have a church that is not raising up pastors, it's because pastoral and strong elder leadership isn't modeled for the congregation.

So you have college students that are looking at what they want to do in life and looking in the future.

They have never seen pastoral or elder leadership modeled.

They would never be drawn towards it.

You can really see the health of a church by is the church raising up people who esteem the missionary life, who esteem pastoral ministry, who desire to be educated and equipped in a seminary to go into pastoral ministry, who want the affirmation of a church, who want to be a preacher, who want to be a shepherd, they want to disciple and care for those uh younger than them in the faith.

I mean, that is the mark of a strong and healthy church.

I'm so thankful for our church's Emmanuel Bible Church's partnership with the Master Seminary.

We have 19 people being equipped for pastoral ministry at our own seminary here as part of this church.

We're raising up.

We've already had graduates that are now engaged in pastoral ministry, some of them even on some of those students, even on staff at our own church.

This takes work to do to raise up men.

And I love it.

I'm this is I'm telling you why I'm thankful for Mania Bible Church.

This is high on my list.

High on my list.

And I hope you appreciate it as well.

It's something that's so easy to take for granted in a church our size, but believe me, not every church our size is raising up pastors for ministry.

Oftentimes when guys feel called to ministry, they need to get out of the church they're in and find somewhere that will teach them.

That's not the case here.

So I'm so thankful for Emmanuel Bible Church because of our desire to do just that.

You see this in 2 Timothy 2, too.

What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to others, men who will be able to teach others also.

This is Paul's command to raise up the next generation of missionaries and pastors.

And then number 10, it is the launching place.

I'm thankful for the church because it launches people around the world for gospel ministry.

You know, missionaries are not self-appointed.

Missionaries are sent from the church.

Evangelists are equipped by the church.

Baptisms take place at the church.

Converts are discipled in the church, and growth is added to the church.

You follow his prepositions from by at in and to.

That's the way the Great Commission takes place.

Those are the prepositions associated with the Great Commission.

It goes out of the church, it draws people to the church, it grows them up in the church because they're added to the church, they're strengthened by the church, and they're sent out again from the church.

It is certainly cyclical.

Matthew 28, 19.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

There are several other passages that teach the same thing.

Titus 2.11, the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all the world.

This is why we strengthen the church to scatter the good news around the world.

So those are the ten reasons that I am thankful for the church.

You perhaps have your own, but I wanted to share mine with you on this Thanksgiving day.

God, we're grateful for the church.

We're grateful for Emmanuel Bible Church.

I know we have so many visitors with us today from all around the country, from different churches.

Some perhaps who are not even believers.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are people here today that have never heard the church spoken of positively before.

That's not surprising.

The church is your bride, and your bride is not esteemed by our world, of course, because you are not esteemed by our world.

But here, Lord, we love you.

You're our Savior, you are Christ, the uh the Son of the Living God.

And we know through that confession you're building your church.

We're thankful for that.

So I pray for people here today that have that are not believers.

I pray that they would leave with an affection for the church in their hearts and an openness to hearing more about Christ, the Lord of the church.

I pray for those that are believers that uh don't associate with a church, are not happy in a church, or not uh have problems with their own church, I pray that you would use this message to work in their own hearts to give them a spirit of grace towards their church, that you'd help them find a church where they can grow, that you'd help them find a church that they can be thankful for, like we are of our church.

And then for our own believers, our own brothers and sisters in the Lord here at Emmanuel Bible Church.

We're thankful for this church.

We know that churches don't grow in trees.

There's been 60 years of faithful leadership from our elders and pastors.

We are just coming on the end of the train here, Lord.

We're so thankful for those that have gone before us.

We give you thanks for them.

In Jesus' name, amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.