Confessing Our Faith Together

If we could just embrace it, everything would be alright.

All the fear would melt in the face of this love.

All the regret would be silenced in the face of this love.

All the anxiety would lay down and die before the face of this love.

There is such a love, such a love.

And you've tasted it once or twice.

And you'll taste it again.

And when you taste it, it is

It just changes everything because you realize, that's what's real.

That's the truth.

The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church.

May the Spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.

We're talking about confessing our faith together, and by confessing, I don't mean saying what you've done wrong.

What I mean is declaring.

Publicly what you believe.

That's the kind of confession we're talking about.

Con declaring publicly what you believe.

And you say, well, why is this final psalm sermon having to do with confessing our faith together?

It doesn't quite make sense.

Well, remember that most of the psalms were written to be read or prayed or sung in a congregation.

Most of the psalms are written for communal singing.

So these are communal texts.

It's

Yes, use them in your prayer closet, sitting down by yourself.

That's great.

But they were meant for saying all together.

And what that means is that a number of the psalms function as public communal confessions of what we together believe about God, what we believe God has done, and who we believe

God to be.

And so that's what I want to look at as we're wrapping up the Psalm series today and then moving into the series about.

Confessing our faith together, I want to look with you at how the Psalms do that for us.

As we're reading through the Psalms together, as Caleb has us reading the Psalms typically throughout our worship service, how do these inspired poems function as confessions

together of our faith in Jesus Christ?

So we're going to look at why confessing our faith together matters, what

A particular example of that confession from the Psalms would look like, and then how we can continue to confess our faith together as a church.

That's what we'll be looking at this morning.

But let me pray for us as we move into these things.

Father, we thank you that um through technical issues and through hiccups and plans, you are working.

You are never surprised, you're never confused.

And so, Lord, we just lift again this whole time to you, our hearts, our minds, this service.

And Lord, the reason we're here is not to have a clean and smooth presentation or an event.

We're here to hear from you.

We're here to receive from you, and we're here to cry out to you and be filled up again by you.

And so as we come, Lord, I pray that you'd give me grace to be faithful to your word and to what your will is in it.

I pray for the Spirit to give me words and phrases and emphases that will serve this people.

And I pray, Lord, that this congregation would be given the grace to receive what is needful and to be built up.

into Christ.

That is why we do everything we do, that we all together might grow up into Christ, being made like him, treasuring him, being becoming Christ in this world together.

So Lord, by your grace may you work this today.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So first, let's start by asking why we confess our faith together.

Isn't it enough that I believe it myself?

Why confession together?

And the simplest answer would be because God inspires psalms that do that.

God inspires psalms that call us together as a congregation, as a people, to confess altogether what we believe about Him.

So it must be God's will that this do that this happens.

I'm not going to read these for you, but they're in your bullet, you're in your notes, and I'll recount them here.

Psalms like Psalm 78, Psalm 105, 106, 114, 132, 135, and many others.

In each of these, God is putting words in the mouth of his people together that they would say, You are like this, you do this, you have done this.

And it is God's will.

We know that through the inspired, because he inspired it.

It's God's will that God's people would speak of him together, not just by themselves, that we would speak what we believe of him together.

How many psalms say, you created the heavens and the earth?

And you might think, well, we know he created it.

We don't need to say it.

Apparently we do.

Apparently, together we need to say, and I need to hear you saying, you created the heavens and the earth.

We need that.

So it is God's will that his people should regularly confess together what he has done and who he is.

And let's look then at four benefits.

Before we look at a specific example of this, I just want to run with you through four benefits of confessing our faith together.

The first one, already alluded to it here, when we say together, when we all of us say, God has done this, God has done this.

We are also saying God is like this.

God's like this.

This is his name.

This is his character.

And that is critical because the name of God, the character of God, the identity of God, that lies at the heart of who we are as a people.

If you think about that, we, the people that we are, the church, the people of God, we are who we are because God is.

Who he is.

His name is at the center of our identity as a people.

So it's important for us to declare that name together.

And again, when I say name, I'm not meaning you know, just afraid like Lord or or God or even Yahweh.

By name, what we mean is his character, his identity, who he is.

Let me give you an example of this.

This is from the New Testament, but I think this applies to what we're going to look at today in the Psalms.

In his final prayer, Jesus in John 17, 11, says this: praying to God.

This is the will of God expressed to God through God.

So this is important.

He says, This I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you, Holy Father.

Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one even as we are one.

Keep

Them in your name, which you have given me, so that they can be one even as we are one.

So here in this passage, the name of God is the truth around which his people are formed.

Keep them in your name.

The name of God is the truth that unites them together as a people.

We have this God, and so we're one people.

The name of God is the name that keeps them from falling away.

We're holding on to this name, and so we're not dragged away into the left or the right.

So here in this passage, Jesus says the name of God, who he is, is something that forms his people, unites his people, and keeps his people.

Forms his people, unites his people, and keeps his people.

And yes, that's Jesus talking in the New Testament, but what I'm arguing is that that principle can be applied.

To the confessions we find in the Psalms, because in the Psalms, as or whenever we confess together, as we are saying, this is who God is, this is the God we serve, this is the God

we worship.

We're proclaiming his name.

And in doing that, we're being formed, we're being united, we're being kept together.

So that's the first thing.

And it leads then into the second.

First, confessing together declares who God is.

Second, confessing together forms us as a people.

It forms us as a people.

So think about the solar system.

It's just a bunch of dust and rocks and gases, space debris, but with the sun at the center of it, it is formed into a system.

It's formed into a solar system.

Of course, that's by God's word, but if we're just looking at the physics of it, this thing.

Is formed by this gravitational weight at the center.

The solar system is what it is because the sun is there.

Similarly, God's people, we're just a bunch of scattered human debris, just a bunch of living dust.

But the but the name of God in Christ forms us into a people.

Because he is who he is, the gravity of his name gathers us and forms us.

And now look.

We're a people.

We're a community.

We're a body.

Why?

Because of the name of God at the center.

And confessing the truth about him is how we feel that gravity and are pulled in.

I mean, if we just have, we all have this unstated idea of who God is, we never talk about it.

We're going to start scattering.

We're going to be all over the place.

But as we confess who he is, as the Psalms call us to do, we're being formed as a particular kind of people.

So that's the first thing.

The psalms, or just confessing our faith together out loud as a people, forms us, forms us into a particular kind of people.

The second thing, it forms us, it also unites us.

It unites us together.

Confessing our faith together unites us into a people.

Why are we all here today?

We're here.

Because we believe the same thing, or approximately the same thing, about who God is.

We're united because of who He is.

When you look around you, you don't see strangers and people from different demographics and different financial brackets and different ages and generations.

You see brothers and sisters united together.

Why?

Because of who God is.

Because of

The one God that we together worship, the one God made known in Jesus Christ.

You are my brothers and sisters.

We are in union together, so much closer than a blood brother or sister who doesn't know Christ.

We are united together because of this name, because of this name.

The same thing with the solar system, right?

The gravity of the sun not only forms the solar system, but by forming it,

It unites it.

And you can say, that's the solar system.

That's a unit.

So too, the gravity of God's name confessed in the church doesn't just form us as a church, but it binds us together.

If you begin saying something else about who God is, you break from unity.

If I came up here and said, there is God is not Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, God is

Only one, and sometimes he presents himself as the son, and sometimes he presents himself as the father, and these are different masks that he wears.

I would have broken unity with you because I'm confessing something about God that isn't what we confess.

So what we say about who he is, or if I were to stand up here and say, Jesus is a good teacher who didn't die, but he he just he just disappeared, or Jesus died, but he didn't

raise, the idea of Jesus continues in the world today.

I would have broken unity because that's not what we believe.

We're united by what we believe in.

How do we know what we believe?

Just we just assume it, we confess it together.

That's what the Psalms.

That's why over and over again in the Psalms, it says, You're the God who brought us out of Egypt.

You're the God who did this.

And you think the the Israelites would have said, Well, we know that.

We don't need to say that again.

And God says, You need to keep saying that.

You need to keep saying that.

We need to keep saying God became man and died.

And was buried and was raised and ascended and is returning.

We need to keep saying that together because that binds us, forms us as a people, unites us as a people, and then fourth, keeps us as a people.

It keeps us as a people.

Again, returning to this example of the sun.

The sun forms the solar system, unites all that scattered debris as one system, and the gravity of the sun keeps us.

The system together.

Why hasn't Mars shot out into the, you know, the regions beyond our ability to see?

Because Mars is held by the gravity of the sun.

Same with the Earth, same with the asteroids, same with everything.

The sun keeps the planets from wandering off into unknown regions.

Similarly, confessing together, saying together what we believe about God.

Who we believe him to be, that forms us, unites us, but it keeps us together.

Because you come here, imagine if you're in Israel, uh someone from Israel coming to the temple, singing the Psalms, and again you say, You are the God who brought us out of

Egypt.

That keeps you.

That keeps you from saying, Maybe Baal did this, you know, maybe it was maybe Ashtaroth, maybe maybe, maybe I should dr go off into these other gods.

No, saying these things together keeps you.

You're hearing yourself say it and you're remembering, I believe that.

You're hearing your brother and sister say it and you're remembering, we believe that.

We believe that.

So confessing together who God is and what he has done supremely in Christ keeps us orbiting the center and prevents us from wandering off into these strange edge cases,

these fringe beliefs.

You find someone who's not in.

Communion with a church who's not in this pattern of life that God has established.

And you'll often find they've wandered off into these strange fringe things.

It's all about the book of Enoch.

It's all about demonic assault and warfare.

It's all about this particular date and when it's going to happen.

It's all there's legitimate things to say about those things, but it's not all about those things.

And

Confessing the truth together binds us in the center and keeps us from wandering into these fringe places where out there everything makes sense to you, but you've forgotten

I'm not even, I'm not even in orbit anymore.

So confessing keeps us together.

Just what Jesus said in John 17, 11.

Again, he says, Holy Father, keep them, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, unified.

Even as we are one.

So, how are we kept in this name?

One of the ways is by confessing this name, saying it, saying what we believe over and over and over again whenever we gather together as his people.

So, for all these reasons, then, because it first of all, because it's God's will, we see it in the Psalms, He's given us communal confessions concerning who he is.

So it's his will.

But secondly, it declares who he is.

It forms us as a people.

It unites us as a people.

It keeps us as a people.

For all these reasons, we ought to be confessing our faith together, saying together what we believe.

Now, having said this, let's look at one example in the Psalms.

So, as I said, there's many places you can go in the Psalms where, hey, this is functioning as a public confession of what we believe.

Many different places.

One is

That is particularly clear, particularly fitted for reading together in a congregation, and I find quite poignant is Psalm 136.

So if you can, turn with me to Psalm 136.

We're also going to read it and have it on the screen here.

if you could bring up the first slide, uh, Avery, of this, of this reading that we're going to be doing here.

Psalm 136.

So this is a longer Psalm.

It's it's 26 verses.

but what I want us to do is read this together in an approximation of how it would have been read in its original context, where someone reads that first line, I'll read what's

white, you read what's yellow, and and and you don't have to learn much here because it's the same thing over and over and over and over and over again, 26 times.

But that means, doesn't it?

God says, My people need to know.

My steadfast love endures forever.

Some people out there, maybe right now, all of us at some time, we are forgetting his steadfast love is enduring, even now.

Even now.

And that is so critical that he says, I want my people to publicly confess 26 times in a row, my steadfast love continues forever.

So we're going to read through this as a confession of our faith together.

And then I'll just say a few things about this particular conversation.

Example.

So I'll read the white, you read the yellow after me.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.

Give thanks to the God of gods.

Give thanks to the Lord of Lords.

To him who alone does great wonders.

To him who by under his understanding made the heavens.

To him who spread out the earth above the waters.

To him who made the great lights.

The sun to rule over the day.

The moon and stars to rule over the night.

Now, before I continue on to this, you're saying it more times.

I want you to feel every time God is telling me to say this again.

God is telling me his steadfast love endures forever.

I want you to hear him saying that to you as you are saying it together.

To him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt.

And brought Israel out from among them.

With a strong hand and an outstretched arm.

To him who divided the Red Sea in two.

And made Israel pass through the midst of it.

But overthrew Pharaoh and his host in the Red Sea.

To him who led his people through the wilderness.

To him who struck down great kings.

And killed mighty kings.

Sihon, King of the Amorites.

And Og, King of Bashan.

And gave their land as a heritage.

A heritage to Israel, his servant.

It is he who remembered us in our low estate.

And rescued us from our foes.

He who gives food to all flesh.

Give thanks to the God of heaven.

What does the Lord want you to take from today?

His steadfast love endures forever.

As you go into this week and you're facing what you're facing, and you think, This, this is this is hard, this is bad, this is difficult.

God, through his Holy Spirit, just said to you through the mouths of your brothers and sisters 26 times, My steadfast love endures forever.

Remember that.

Remember that.

Remember that.

We confess that together.

Now, just briefly, let's look at three parts of this confession.

So, this is a confession of faith that God gives to his people.

First thing that we can see in this is it's broken into two parts concerning what God does and why he does it.

What he does is in that first part I was reading.

Why he does it was in the part you read.

So what he's doing, why he's doing.

Let's look at the what part first.

What?

He's doing.

What do we see in this in this confession of faith?

What God does falls into two categories.

He creates the cosmos and he creates his people.

He creates the cosmos and he creates his people.

So you could see that it started with to him who made the great lights, to him who made the sun and the moon, to him who performed great wonders and made the heavens.

So it's saying God created everything.

He created the cosmos.

And like I said at the beginning, we know that.

But how often together do we say it?

And what would it mean to say together, my God, who owns me, who claims me, who covers me, made everything.

He made everything.

The sun is his, so the sun's mine.

I'm an heir of the sun.

The moon is his, the stars are his, the trees are his, the mountains are his, the air is his.

Our God made everything.

He he wants his people to confess that together.

So he created the cosmos, but then it also moves into this thing about him creating his people.

And the psalmist brings these two together.

The first part from verses four to nine is about creating the cosmos.

The second part from verses 10 to 22 is about creating his people.

It goes straight from he made the sun and the moon in verses eight and nine to he struck down the firstborn of Egypt and brought his people out.

So he creates the cosmos from chaos, and he creates his people from their slavery, from their death in Egypt.

And it's saying, God, our God, whose steadfast love can uh endures forever, he is the God who created all things and who created us, who created a place and created a people.

That's the idea here.

The whole cosmos is by this psalm.

Made a context for God's people to dwell in.

God created this place so that He could fill it with His people, and the whole thing would then become a context of covenant fellowship with Himself.

That's what reality is.

Reality is a context or a matrix or a location wherein covenant fellowship between God and man can happen.

That's why anything exists.

That's why anything exists.

So

What this text is teaching us to confess together, the cosmos is like a wedding site chosen specifically for its beauty, for its qualities, for what it has.

The cosmos is the wedding site.

The people are like the bride that God creates and brings into that wedding site.

And then Yahweh himself enters that cosmos, enters that creation.

And binds that people to himself as his chosen and beloved ones.

That's what's being laid out here.

That's the vision of reality.

God's teaching his people to confess here.

And then that leads into the thing that's repeated over and over and over again.

That helps you see why it's being repeated.

His steadfast love endures forever.

His steadfast love endures forever.

He creates a cosmos and a people and brings them together for fellowship.

And he does it why?

Because his steadfast love endures forever.

Steadfast love.

Your translation may or may not say that.

The Hebrew word is chesed.

And what it means is essentially covenant commitment or merciful faithfulness.

It's essentially Yahweh's unswerving commitment to do precisely what he says he will do and be precisely what he says he will be.

It's God saying, I will do what I've said, I will be whom I've said.

Or you might summarize it this way.

Steadfast love is Yahweh's invincible purpose to be the only and all-satisfying God of those in covenant with him, and his purpose for those in covenant with him to be his

wholly devoted and wholly satisfied people.

The shorthand, we get it in the all throughout scripture: I will be your God, you will be my people.

I will be the God who satisfies you, your only God.

and you will be a people utterly satisfied in me.

God, that is his steadfast love.

His steadfast love is his commitment to do and to be everything for his people.

And this text says, everything God does flows from that.

There's logic here.

There's logic when it says, To him who made the great lights, for his steadfast love endures forever.

That's a logical statement.

That means the stars are

Exist because God loves his people.

God created the stars because he loves his people forever.

God created the sun and moon because his steadfast love endures forever.

Science can say whatever it wants, and much of its statements are legitimate about how stars work and how they function and how they're formed.

Great.

But that's just the material.

The reason the stars are there is because God loves his wayward people.

That's why they're there.

That's why the universe is here, for his steadfast love endures forever.

God created the universe to satisfy a people in himself.

God created the sun and the moon and the stars because his steadfast love endures forever.

He drew Israel out of Egypt and planted them in the land to satisfy a people for himself.

All that he does is anchored in love for his covenant people.

That transforms our vision of reality.

If if we get that, everything around us is made for relationship with God.

Everything around us, everything that exists.

And that's what this psalm is calling us to confess together.

But then we need to take one further step because we're able to say the steadfast love of the Lord that underlies everything in reality, that steadfast love becomes.

flesh in Jesus Christ.

That's this further step we're able to make.

That's where this is going for toward.

Every psalm is like a pyramid without its capstone.

And the capstone that's placed on it and finishes the whole thing is Christ.

And so this this public confession of faith in Christ or in in who God is is calling us ultimately to see Jesus Christ.

Here.

So think about it this way: Yahweh's unswerving commitment to bring his people through everything that could separate them from himself, to unite them to himself, to give

himself to them as their all, this commitment of God, which he's working out all through the Old Testament, that commitment is embodied, that commitment of God that drives through

the Old Testament.

Is made flesh in the slain and risen Jesus Christ.

When Christ is hanging on the cross, pouring out his life in agony, there in the flesh is the drive of Yahweh's soul, the steadfast love of Yahweh that has led him to create

everything and sustain his people and bring his people and keep his people and have mercy on his people.

All he's been doing through history and the love that's run under all of it is here made a body.

in Jesus Christ on the cross, such that God can say, That is who I am.

That is who I am.

God Himself binding his life to ours, taking our mortal flesh, receiving the crown of our curse, bearing in himself our sin, descending into the exile of our condemned death.

That is his steadfast love.

That the cross is his steadfast love.

And then

Rising from that death, rising up again, ascending into the glory of the new creation, carrying the corpse bride of his people up with him out of death and bringing her to life,

carrying her up out of death and damnation, sin and sorrow and shame, and making her his own, satisfying her with himself, that is his steadfast love.

That is his steadfast love.

The crucified and risen Jesus is the steadfast love of God.

So when this psalm calls us to confess together over and over and over again, for his steadfast love endures forever, for his steadfast love endures forever, we, as the as the

people of Christ, can truly say the answer, what what is being said here is for he is who we know him to be in Christ.

For he is the one revealed at the cross.

For he is the one who hung on the tree and is now raised up to the throne.

So we can say, Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for he is the one who died and rose again.

Give thanks to the God of gods, for he is the one who died and rose again.

Give thanks to the Lord of Lords, for he is the one we know at the cross.

To him who does a great wonders, to him who by understanding made the heavens, for he is the one who died and rose again.

Underneath this Psalm ultimately is Christ at every point.

At every point.

So what Psalm 136 teaches us to confess ultimately that all of reality exists because God is the one we meet in Jesus Christ.

The character, the goodness, the holiness, the beauty of who God is in Jesus lies beneath everything.

Everything.

If if if you dig down into this reality, you will find, if you dig deep enough, you will find Jesus Christ.

You will find the beauty, the goodness, the love, the peace of Christ.

It's just like if you're in a desert and it's it's hard and it's broken and it's hot and there's rocks that pierce your feet.

This isn't life-giving, but dig down, dig down deep enough under this.

There's water running.

Under this, there's life.

And so what this psalm is teaching us to confess together, Christian, is that the deepest reality, the truest reality, is Jesus Christ.

And that's not a throwaway statement.

That's not a simple Sunday school, well, it's all about Jesus, right?

No, it means beauty beyond your imagining.

It means that love so deep that if we could just

Embrace it, everything would be all right.

All the fear would melt in the face of this love.

All the regret would be silenced in the face of this love.

All the anxiety would lay down and die before the face of this love.

There is such a love, such a love.

And you've tasted it once or twice, and you'll taste it again.

And when you taste it, it is, it just changes everything because you realize,

That's what's real.

That's the truth.

Those moments when tears leap to your eyes for gladness.

Those moments when peace settles in, and even though you're in the midst of the hardship, you say, It's all right.

It's okay.

I'm held.

Those moments where Christ actually appears to you as enough, those are not the exception, the fleeting little exceptions.

Those are the reality.

It's like when you're looking up at the sky and it's cloudy and there's one or two little points of blue.

It's not that there's little pieces of blue floating around in this world of clouds.

It's that the clouds are this ephemeral passing thing, and everything's blue.

The whole sky is blue.

So those little tastes of peace, of beauty, of hope, of Christ.

That's not the exception.

Oh boy, that was nice, but back to the grind of.

Pain and death and loss.

No, that's the reality.

Christ is the reality.

For his steadfast love endures forever.

That's what's under everything.

And so that's what this psalm is teaching us to confess together.

Give thanks to him.

Give thanks to the God of gods.

Give thanks to the Lord of Lords.

Perhaps you can't thank him for the event right now.

That's okay.

You can can you can thank him that in it, under it, through it, over it, his steadfast love endures forever.

The risen Jesus Christ assures us of this.

Because Christ is risen.

If I if Christ wasn't risen, I am a liar.

I'm a snake oil salesman up here, selling you cheap hope.

But if Christ is risen, this is real.

This is real.

And we can say,

All the time, in the midst of everything, your steadfast love endures forever.

Your steadfast love endures forever.

You are who you are in Christ, and joy is set before me.

So, Christian, in closing then, let's confess this reality together as a church.

I want us to read, we're not gonna read the whole thing again, but I want us to read a section of this again.

And as you do, I want you to hear the voice of Jesus Himself in the voice of your brother and sister.

The voice, your own voice and the voice around you.

I want you to hear.

Because when I'm talking, filter it.

It's just a human talking.

When we're reading scripture, listen.

It's God talking.

And so I want you to hear as you repeat these things, Jesus saying to you, my steadfast love endures forever.

Right now, right now.

My steadfast love endures forever.

Let's confess these things together.

We're just going to read the beginning and then the very end of Psalm thirty-six, but let's say this together as a church.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.

Give thanks to the God of gods.

Give thanks to the Lord of Lords.

It is he who remembered us and remembers us in our lowest state.

And rescued us from our foes.

He who gives food to all flesh is

Give thanks to the God of heaven.

Amen.

That's true, Christian.

What we've confessed together here, that's true.

That's true.

In the crucified and risen Jesus, these words are true.

And my prayer for us all is that no matter what we're walking through right now, or when we come to it, when we come into the valley, that these words we've confessed together

today would form us, unite us, and keep us together as a people.

And that we would know.

The the unimaginable love of God in Christ, into which every Christian is going to be plunged.

And just like when you're caked in dirt and you jump into the water and it all just melts off, you are going to be plunged into this love and all the fear and sin and brokenness

and anxiety and confusion and regret that is just clinging.

Is going to be dissolved away.

And that love is the deepest truth.

Confess this together.

What a hope we have.

Now, these words we've been confessing today are inspired by the Holy Spirit.

It's in Scripture.

Next week, what we're going to do is move to consider a confession that, though not inspired by God, is nevertheless anchored in Scripture and has been.

One of the central forming, uniting, and keeping forces in the church for the last 2,000 years.

And I'm talking about the Nicene Creed.

So the Nicene Creed, we'll talk about this next week, it is an ancient Christian expression of faith rooted in the text, as we'll see, but it is a way for us to express

together what we believe so that we might be formed, united, and

And preserved as a people.

So we're going to take two weeks to look at that creed and to look at its scriptural underpinnings and to look at the way that it declares for us and helps us to declare who

our triune God is and what He has done.

And in doing so, how it forms us, how it unites us, and how it keeps us.

Now, what we have the opportunity to do right now is to make a confession of faith together.

As we come to this table, because Paul tells us in First Corinthians that when we take this bread and when we drink this cup, we are proclaiming something.

This isn't just an eating, this is a proclamation.

He says, You're proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes.

That's what we are about to make a confession together.

We're about to proclaim our faith together.

When you come up here and take part in these elements, what you will be declaring, what we together will be declaring is Jesus Christ is our Lord.

He truly died.

And by implication of that death, he truly was buried.

As it says according to Scripture.

And if he's returning, Paul says, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Well, if he's coming, that means not only did he die and was buried, he was raised.

You're proclaiming that.

As you take these, you're saying he truly died, he is truly buried, he was truly raised, he's ascended into heaven, he's reigning from the throne, and he is coming.

He is coming again as Savior and Judge.

This is our confession that we're going to be making.

This is our creed, you might say.

This is our faith.

And this, right here, these witnesses.

These God-ordained witnesses to the broken body and the spilled blood of the risen Jesus Christ.

This is the steadfast love that runs like a river under the barren wilderness of this broken world.

This, this is the steadfast love that will finally define you and all of your experience.

This is the steadfast love that endures forever.

So praise God.

Let me pray for us.

And then we'll come to the table together.

Father, we thank you that we are you are not a solitary God.

You live eternally in the communion of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

And you do not create a solitary people.

You create a people who is together, a community.

And you call us to say things together.

So, Father, I pray that increasingly we would be a church, whether it's formally during the service or whether it's informally as we meet together.

We would be a people who speak what we believe to one another, who declare you and your good works to one another, who speak the truth in love, and so build one another up into

Christ.

And we praise you, Father, for Jesus Christ.

Lord, as Paul prayed, so I pray.

Would you strengthen us all together by the Holy Spirit so that we might comprehend.

What is the length and the breadth and the height and the depth and to know the love of Jesus Christ so that we might be filled with all the fullness of God?

Father, may the love of Jesus not just be a thing we say, but may it be felt in its absolutely world-making implications that we have such a Savior and nothing can separate

us from His love.

Lord, help us to know this.

To confess this, to rejoice in this, and to endure because your steadfast love endures forever.

We pray all these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for listening to this message from Kingstree Church in Sabina, Ohio.

To see more of the beauty of God and the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10 a.m.

or visit our website at Kingstreechurch.org.