Who Are We? // Who Are We As A Church? (Dan Pettersen)

As a body of Believers and just corporally worship you to sing,

those words toward to put our minds off the things of this

world and on, you are so awesome.

Lord that we can do that high above, the heavens are but

everything else that we think of you are worthy of our praise and

honor and so we as we come to this time now is then brings the

word that he's prepared. We pray that you bless as words.

And probably that you would speak through them and speak to

him will be asked, we pray for the kids programs and teachers

and them bless them to as they learn and get taught more of

you, we just pray for them Lord in the teachers.

Well Jesus name, amen. Good morning.

Hey, so we're carrying on in our Series this week.

We had a bit of a break. Last week we carry on in our

series called, who are we? And I've really enjoyed that

series the series so far. So we've been looking at who are

we as Christians and you know, what is the Christian?

What does that look like? How does it sort of play out in

our lives? And then we've been going

through, we've just finished going through the book of First

Peter was first. Peter tells us that very sort of

practical sensors in it. If you're Christian, what are,

you know? What does that mean?

How do you, how do you live your life?

And I've got so much out of that.

It's been really exciting and lots of really good feedback

from from people about the different messages that that

have we've had as part of this series.

And so I've learned a lot through that.

We are going to continue the series today and we're going to

be looking at who are we as a church, right?

Who are we, as a church? And before we get into that, I

just want to share with you a couple of statements that I

often hear from Chris. And people regarding people

being part of a church, right? So here's a few, his is the

first one. I've been hurt by Church by

people in a church and that's very common.

It's a very real experience for some people.

Yeah. We'll come back and have a look

at these, a bit later. This one, I'm too busy.

I'm just too busy, and I use this one myself.

When I first left home, you know, it's just really busy and

it's like, oh, I'm just too busy to sort of be a part of church.

This one I do Church Rogue, all right.

Are you know, I just stayed home and I'll watch online or on, you

know, just me and my family get-together or whatever.

I just study for myself. And this one, this is a real

common one here, this again, this week.

Somebody said this to me, I don't believe in organized

religion. I don't believe in organized

religion. So maybe you've heard one of

these statements before, if you hear somebody say something like

that before. Yeah, lots of nods there.

Maybe you've used one of these statements before, like I have

right in the past. And so this morning, what I want

to do is we kind of want to look at three things as we look at

this idea of who are we as a church?

So these are three things we can look at this morning.

First of all, what is a church? What do we mean?

When we say that right? We call ourselves hook, annoy

Bible Church. But what does that actually

mean, right? Second thing is, what does a

church do? What's its function?

Well, what's our, what's our purpose?

What are our goals? What are we, what are we meant

to be doing? And then the third thing is, how

does that Working practice. How do we put this into play?

What are my responsibilities as, as part of a church family.

But before we look at any of that, there's probably an even

more important question, which is this one, why do we care?

All right, you know, what do we care?

What does it matter, what a church is or does.

And the reason we care is because of this verse in, this

is kind of our key passage this morning is from Ephesians,

Ephesians 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3, and verse 21. So there's the verse to him be

glory in the church. Use that word in there.

That's a Greek word in and it can be translated in, or

through, or by right. Either of those is valid

translation. So, so to him, be glory in the

church office, or through the church and through Christ Jesus

throughout all generations, forever and ever, amen?

Okay, so we need to Define some terms here, right?

This is kind of important, if you, if somebody's using a term

one way. And somebody else's hearing,

Different thing, you know, it makes a can cause problems.

I've told some of the story before but it kind of

illustrates it. Well, when I first we lived in

Scotland for a while we were doing church planting over there

and I lived in Scotland just a couple of weeks and this kid

came and knocked on the door and he said sorry we kicked out

football over your fence and I'll just wondering if if I

could just run through your garden and get the get my ball,

right? So As a kiwi in my head, I'm

imagining just some feet. Just going tramping through the

flowers and the vegetables and and crunching them all up.

Because to me a garden is an area that you have fenced off,

right to put your flowers and then you all your veggies or

stuff like that. Fortunately, because that's what

I think of right when I think of a garden.

But to people in Scotland, that's not what they think of,

right? So if you look up, the word

Garden in the dictionary, the original meaning of the word

Garden was a fenced-off area. That's all it means, right?

That's why zoos were originally called Zoological Gardens,

right? Because all the animals are

fenced off. This means a fenced-off area.

But when we, when we think of Garden, right?

We think of yeah, flowers and veggies and all that, right?

But in Scotland, when they think of garden, they just think of

your yard. So he's just he's just saying

can I walk through your yard and get my ball Right?

So luckily I'd read enough, you know, British books to kind of

know that, that's what he was talking about.

Otherwise I would have gone, no, right, yeah.

So you see, we got to have the same definition of terms, right?

To be able to understand what's going on.

I've got another good example like that.

I had a friend from the southern us and he moved to New Zealand

and he said where he grew up. They used to have the short

grain that they used to feed to the dairy cows, and it was

called Milo. All right?

And he would go around to people's houses in New Zealand.

They say, would you like a cup of Milo?

It's a nah, I'm good. Thanks.

Yeah, I think I was I think I'll be fine.

Right? Definition of terms, right?

Can be important. So we so we need to find Define

a few, a few terms here. So the first one I want to

Define is this one Glory. So the Greek word here is doxa

in. It can be translated in a number

of different ways depending on on context.

But one of its core meanings is this idea of Splendor or

brightness like a bright light. And so think of it as like

shining a spotlight on somebody we've sort of talked about this

before right. But if you imagine if it was all

dark. Yeah, we had an old sort of

blacked out and then we turn on a big Spotlight and and it just

went boom call today for, right? And so Dave's just lit up.

Well, what happened? We'd all go.

Mmm, well what Steve done? Is he getting an award or

wouldn't you know what's happening here, right?

And what are we looking right? If you turn the spotlight on on

somebody, that's kind of what this word gives an idea of when

we give glory to something, it's like turning the spotlight on

it. So that you notice it, you see

there to him, be glory through the church, right?

In the church. All right, so the spotlight gets

turned on God through the church.

People notice him. So, are you getting the sense

that church is very, very important.

All right. It's very, very important to go

because that's that's how God, you know, the spot like it's

turned on God and people notice God for the church.

That make sense so far. Yeah.

Okay. So what is the church right?

That's got to be the next next one to Define.

And so the Greek word here, Is the word Ecclesia?

Ecclesia Ecclesia. That literally translates as

called out ones, right? Called out ones.

Now, that doesn't kind of mean a whole lot to us.

But basically what it what it means is it's a congregation or

an assembly of people called together for a specific purpose.

I, that's that's what the the word means.

Now it's usually translated Church in the Bible but not

always, right x19 gets. Gets really interesting in Acts

19. What happened in the city of

Ephesus? It was all these Tradesmen.

There, most of the people in the city of Ephesus worship the

Goddess Diana. And there was these Tradesmen in

Ephesus, and they made all these little kind of statues of Diana

and trinkets about Diana worship and all that kind of stuff.

And, as Christianity started to spread through the city of

Ephesus business, kind of Tanked right?

For these Tradesmen and they were unhappy about that.

And so there was this huge kind of protest.

And it seems, there was this big congregational Ecclesia of

protesters in the town square and so the town Clark he's

pictured there, right? He gets up in front of everybody

and they were very angry, right? And they mobs, kind of seething,

and he says to them, he says, look, if you have a problem, the

courts are open go down there. The thing can be sorted out in a

legal assembly, right? And he that's the word.

Ecclesia, right illegal assembly.

He says, but what you're doing here is dangerous, right?

This is an illegal assembly and you know, the Romans didn't

didn't take kindly to things that weren't sanctioned like

that, just people kind of getting together in a mob.

And then it says he disses. He dismissed the assembly,

right? Dismissed, the Ecclesia.

He said, okay, well, you go right so you can see the idea

here, right? Ecclesia is the word.

That's usually translated as church.

So I'm going to church is an assembly or a congregation Of

people called together for a specific purpose and which

obviously Flows In nicely to the next question, which is what is

the purpose of a church, right? What does it choose to do?

What's it for kind of what's the point of it?

So for that, what we do is we're going to go to the words of

Jesus in Matthew 28, if you want to turn their this is well-known

passage that we commonly refer to as the Great Commission and

this is where Jesus kind of outlines in Broad terms his

mission plan. For his for his churches.

And so let's look at what he says will start in Matthew 28

verse number 16. This is this Now the eleven

disciples went to Galilee to the mountain, which Jesus had

directed them, and when they saw him, they worshiped him, but

some doubted, and Jesus came, and he said to them all

authority in heaven and on Earth has been given to me.

Go. Therefore so he's saying look, I

have complete Authority. Some translations will translate

that word is power right now. Complete power here, complete

Authority and because of that I'm delegating to you, right?

I want you to do something and it says, go there for now.

The word go. There it is.

Plural. He's some some translations if

you got it. Like King James, it'll say, go,

ye therefore, right? So it's like y'all go, right?

He's addressing them as a group, all of you go and do what and

Make Disciples of all Nations, will come back and have a look

at these, in a second, baptizing them in the name of the father,

and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you

and behold. I Am With You Always even to the

End of the Age, okay? So let's just sort of break that

down a little bit, right? Make disciples once them to make

disciples and we talked about that role when we talk about

what is a Christian and we said, you know, that words not really

well, defined in scripture with the word that is well, defined

as disciple, and a disciple is someone who says, what would you

do in this situation? Right?

Because, because what you do, that's that's what I'll do.

If If you are in the situation, what decision would you make?

Because that's the decision that that all make Webster's

Dictionary. I looked this up this week.

This is quite an interesting, one Webster's Dictionary.

Definition of disciple is this one who accepts and assists in

spreading the doctrines of another.

Oh that's pretty cool definition is it?

So Jesus is with a carry on with the mission, right?

And the first part of that is to evangelize right, evangelize?

Right. Make disciples, right?

Tell them the good news that, you know, we're as soon as we've

all done bad stuff, we all fall short, right?

Not only will fall short of God's standard, we fall short of

Air. Instead it's Toby, right?

We just fall short. We can't we can't be good

enough, right? That's kind of the bad news, but

the good news is that Jesus Christ died right?

To pay the punishment, that should have been ours for that

falling short for that Disobedience of God.

And then he rose again. That's pretty good news because

that means that he's paid the price for us.

Forgiveness, is on offer. We can say go to God and say,

hey, sorry, God, I'm really sorry.

I've fallen short, I've done these things and God will

forgive us. Right.

We can have a relationship with God.

That is amazingly good news, right?

So that's the first part of what we're to do, right?

Make this, I will share that good news get other people, you

know, excited about that good news.

So that's the first bit that's kind of the evangelize.

But then he goes on to say, baptizing them in the name of

the father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

So the second part of the the mission, if you like heirs to

the church family, Is to baptize those people that we have

evangelized. And we do that with the full

authority of the godhead in the name, or in the authority of the

Father, the Son, the holy spirit.

So remember we talked about that because we had a baptism service

about a month ago, me and it was awesome and we talked a little

bit about this. Right?

What is baptism, right? It's a picture of the death

burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, right?

It's saying you can watch my life.

From now on, I'm going to I'm going to the best of my ability.

I'm going to serve him. I'm going to use my life to

serve him. So baptism is kind of you know,

getting people to the point where they go, I'm going to

dedicate my life to this thing. You can watch my life from this

point on because Jesus Christ went to the wall.

For me, it just makes sense that I would do this and so

evangelize and then get people to the point where they're

going. Yeah, I'm all in on this

baptized and then the third bit says, teaching them to observe

all the things that I have commanded you Why is that?

Well, because without Jesus teachings, will argue and will

fight over procedures and methods, and, and all of that,

and will fail to reach our mission objectives.

So, as a church, family part, 3 of the, the mission is

stabilized, right? So, so let's just kind of review

that right, evangelize baptized stabilized.

That's kind of the overall plan. That's what we're about, right?

That's that's the purpose. And it says that Jesus said,

he's with us always. Right.

Jesus Christ. Leaves each church as a team.

We're not, we're not left on our own.

So that's our overall mission goals but that all kind of

sounds a little bit kind of clinical and logical very

logical. So, here's the question though,

how do we know when we're achieving those goals?

How do we know when we're getting it right?

What are our key performance indicators.

If you like movies, some people have those in their job is to

have those at a job. I was at every year they would

have these key performance indicators and they would say

these are Things we want to see by this time next year, all this

time in two years time or whatever.

And so how do we know if we're getting this, right?

Well, fortunately Jesus answer that question for us.

If you flip back to Matthew chapter 22 and verse number 36.

Matthew 22 · chapter mention

Matthew 22. 36, the guy says teacher, which is the great

commandment in the law, which is the greatest.

What he's asking. There is what's the most

important commandment, right? Because I think in the Old

Testament, or there's like 613 laws or something like that, and

he's saying, I love all these laws and stuff that we have to

follow, which is the most important one.

This number 37, and he said to him, Jesus said to him, you

shall love the Lord. Your God with all your heart,

with all your soul with all your mind.

This is the first and this is the great and first commandment.

And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as

yourself on these two Commandments depend all the law

and the prophets, right? So all of the other laws and

everything, the prophets talked about really hang off these two.

These two precepts, right? These two commandments.

So love the Lord with everything you've got.

The heart and soul of mine. Love the law with everything you

got and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.

And this is where all these other sort of precepts, like

love and grace, and mercy and forgiveness, and compassion and

all those things come into play for those two things to happen

there, right? So, our overall mission is this,

right? And we should probably say this

out loud, right? Let's go.

Evangelize baptized stabilize, right?

So that's that's kind of the overall plan.

But and how do we know We getting it, right?

I've kind of try to put this down in a sentence try and make

it a bit easier, right? The measurable Benchmark of a

disciple in a practical sense is that they'll be worshipping,

God, and they'll be loving and serving others.

So make sense. Yep.

That's a, that's the measurable Benchmark, right?

So this leads us to kind of our last question, which is this.

How does this work in practice? Like as an individual.

What's my part to part to play in?

All this in being part of a church family, right?

So First Corinthians 12, this is sort of a whole chapter on this

and we're not we're not going to go into in detail but all

describes a church family is like a body, and Jesus Christ is

its head and all of the people in it are like body parts,

right? They're all kind of different

but they all have important parts to play, right?

They all do different things but but together they carry out.

What what God wants carried out, right?

Evangelize baptize stabilized. because, you know, you have

gifts and talents and abilities and and experiences that are

specific to you You know things, I don't know.

You can do things. I don't, I can't do you.

You, you've experienced things, I haven't experienced you've,

you know, people and you can relate to people that I that I

would struggle to to relate to right.

You mix in different circles and and we're all like that, right?

But together as a body, we have this massive impact.

That's one of the reasons. God God works through churches,

why churches are God's means of doing his work right away.

God does business in the world today is through through local

churches. How does that kind of work,

right? So you know, if you think, okay

for me as a person, you know, I kind of get that I'm part of I'm

kind of a part of this sort of body and you know, I've got my

stuff and I can kind of add that to the group.

But in a practical sense that you do even drilling down more.

What do I do? How do I, how do I make that

work? Okay, so during your Christian

Life you really should kind of grow through three, kind of

broad. Ages and they kind of roughly

match up with the stages that we go through in life, you know.

Growing physically. First John talks about that,

right. Which is childhood, right?

Youth, and adulthood you basically go through those kind

of three, three phases. So, the first stage is the

childhood stage, right? And this is about observing and

learning. And this is, you know, primarily

true. If you're if you're new

Christian, right? If you're feeling new to this

and you go, okay, what's my next step?

What I what I do here, right. Serving and learning.

So your priority should to be there.

Concentrate on learning and being taught the word of God to

learn how to be the man or woman of God.

That know, God wants you to be. Just kind of learning to grow.

This is a from First Peter chapter 2.

1 Peter 2 · chapter mention

We looked at this simple weeks ago and he says this So get rid

of all malicious behavior in deceit, don't just pretend to be

good. Be done with the piracy in

jealousy and backstabbing you must crave, pure spiritual milk

so that you can grow into the fullness of your salvation cry

out for this nourishment, as a baby cries for milk, now that

you've had a taste of the Lord's kindness.

Yeah. Once you get a taste of it,

right? You just want to know more, you

want to learn, you want to grow. And that's that's an important

first, first stage. Yeah.

So if that's you If you're new to this, your job is to learn

and to grow, right? Observe and learn and and find

out more about Christ. How do you do that, right?

The obvious way is get into your Bible, get into it as much as

you can. But come along, we have lots of

different Ministries in four different age groups, where we

come together in groups and learn to do that and obviously

on Sunday morning worship. We also, you know, we're

learning now. We're going through the Bible.

So we have lots of ways to help you do that.

And so that would be be my encouragement, right?

The second second stage. Go through, is kind of The youth

stage and kind of roughly equivalent to the use, you stage

of life and this is participating in helping, right?

So in time you naturally should grow to the point where you can

take on some basic functions through the already established

Ministries that we have now church, right?

The different things that we that we do to try and help

evangelize baptized and stabilize.

Jesus said this to the disciples, he said come be my

disciples and I'll show you how to fish for people.

Yeah, that's from Matthew. 24 is 19.

This Reverend James one. Quite interesting James 1 verse

James 1:22

22. He said remember, it is a mrs.

To obey not just to Listen to If you don't obey.

You're only fooling yourself for use.

If you just listen, you don't obey.

It's like looking at your face in a mirror but doing nothing to

improve your appearance, your appearance.

You see yourself walk away and forget what you look like.

So you know it's really important to learn and to grow

and all the time in God's word and figuring out.

What does God want? How does this work?

What does Jesus look like? How can I be more like him if

I'm his disciple? How can I make decisions?

Like he would make and go through all that stuff?

But you can't just read it, right?

Because James says, looked at its the Bible's like a mirror.

It lets you see yourself how you really are, right?

And it should start to change you and you should start putting

some stuff into practice to make make the changes that need to be

made. He said, yeah, it's like looking

at yourself in the mirror. If, you know, if you got up this

morning, you looked in the mirror and your hair was all

over the place. You know, had a big zit on one

side of your Is and and you think, oh man, I missed a bit

when I was shaving you know all this sort of stuff and you and I

will and just walked off. That's kind of what was the

point of looking in the mirror? You look in the mirror and go,

okay, I need to fix that. I need to come here or whatever,

and that's what he's saying. If you're reading the Bible and

then you're not doing it, you just reading it.

It's like looking in the mirror and then not making any change.

So we need to, as we learn and observe, we're going to start

putting the stuff into practice. Somebody asked me to see other

day, I was at a at a past. Has breakfast.

And the guy said, I do you have a doctorate and I said, no, no

no, I don't and he said, well are you working on one?

And I said, no, no, I'm not right now.

And he said, well, why not? I said, I'm already educated far

beyond my level of obedience. I need to put into practice, you

know, the stuff that I that I know, right?

And you know, maybe one day, who knows, but what God has in store

but, you know, you just, we need to put into practice the stuff

we know, right? So that's that's kind of the

second phase. And so maybe that's you.

Maybe that's where you're at, you go.

Yeah I know a lot of stuff now been in this game, a little

while. I need to start getting involved

in doing some stuff and then the last stage obviously is the

adult stage which is teaching and leading.

So, as your growth continues, right?

You should reach this point where you can begin to help

other people in the same way that you've been helped.

This is Paul to Timothy. He said, Paul says to Timothy

said you've heard me Teach many things that have been been

confirmed by many reliable Witnesses.

Teach these great truths to trustworthy people who are able

to pass them on to others. Pour into other people's lives,

the way that people have poured into yours.

Teach them to stuff that you've been taught, you know, make

disciples, right? One of the things that a

disciple does is make disciples. Yeah, there should be this this

pattern going on, right. So so pour into other people's

lives and connect with them the way that that's been done for

you now, important to say here, be patient. write this process

takes both time and effort and then I want to look at this

passage because this gets really important.

This is something that the writer of Hebrews said, he says

this to him, be glory in the church, right.

Let's go through that again. Just quickly, write to him be

glory in the church and in Christ Jesus unto all

generations forever and ever. Amen.

Right. But then writer of Hebrews, says

this, right? Let us not give up meeting

together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us

encourage. Judge one another and all the

more as you see the day approaching.

So, don't give up gathering together, right?

That's what a church is, right? It's an assembly.

It's a congregation. Don't give up doing that because

you need the encouragement living.

The Christian Life is tough sometimes, right?

It's not easy. And you do other people's

encouragement but even more importantly, they need yours.

They need your encouragement and so we don't want to get slack on

this and he says, look, it's only going to get tougher from

high. It's just Make sure you make

sure you don't, you know, make sure you sort of prioritize this

a little bit, not a little bit, just make sure you prioritize

it. Okay, so let's just sort of

finish up and look at those statements that we looked at it

initially and Connie. Go back to those.

Yeah, look, I don't go to church because I've been hurt by people

in church in the past. Now, this is a very real

experience for some people and some of those hurts are quite

serious, right? So, I'm not downplaying that.

And anyway, you may have story like, That.

But I do kind of want to say this, right?

So when, when I was a teenager, my dad was a soldier and he was

stationed overseas in Australia for a few years and we lived in

Australia and I got beaten up one time by a group of people

from a particular ethnic group right now.

I'm not going to tell you which group it was, but whatever, one

you're thinking of, it's not that one and so.

But what if I said? Look, those are bad people.

I am never going to deal with those people.

Again, what would we call that Yeah, that's racism.

Right? That's racism.

It's this is kind of the same, isn't it?

You know, I was treated very badly.

I was hurt by people in the church in the past it's kind of

the same thing to say. So all of those all of the other

churches are that way. Everybody's like that.

Yeah it's kind of the same idea and like I say I'm not I'm not

playing down the the hurts, you know, there are some.

There are some genuinely bad things that have been done in

churches. But you can kind of see how this

is kind of equivalent. To racism.

Isn't it in a sense? Yeah, the same kind of, basic

idea. Okay, so what about this one?

I'm too busy. Like so I've used that one.

My seed, myself in the past, this is just about priorities,

is that? So am I, who I say, I am, if I'm

serious. And I think say, I really want

to, I want people to see God. I want people to connect with

God. I want the spotlight turned on

God. How does this bottle?

I get turn on God through his tutors glory to beat.

Him through the church. So it's just about just about

priorities. There's also this right now,

actually, believe that. Well, let's just go to the next

next one. I do Church Rogue, right?

And this is really common, this has become more common because

of covid, lockdowns, and things like that, you know, people

were, you know, we weren't able to assemble together and then

when we were some people are just kind of stayed behind,

right? And I get this quite a lot.

Now, I, you know, just stay at home and I just watch online or

just me and my family just Our own thing.

Or I just study by myself, that kind of stuff church is an

assembly or a gathering of Believers, it's a gathering to

worship. And so if we don't do that,

there's a fullness that we're missing out on.

We're just missing out this, this something about it, I just

gathering together to worship together with a bunch of people

you know, when we're just standing at the front there this

morning and we exalt the have everybody was singing and

there's just something about that a when you were together

with it with a group of people. All that that you're missing out

on. There's also this right?

You might end up a bit weird. All right, this is from

Proverbs, 18:1 says, whoever isolates himself seeks his own

desire right so you can become a bit self-centered.

When you're by yourself, and you can also end up, you know, you

end up in a situation where you kind of major on minors and

minor or major surgery, right? You make a big deal out of

things that really aren't that important.

And then things that are important.

You kind of play down a little bit and you kind of miss out,

you can become a bit self-centered and says, he

breaks out against all sound judgment.

So you just kind of start making strange decisions, right?

When you don't have somebody else around you other believers

to challenge you and go. Hey, what about this verse?

What about this, right? And be inspired by other

Christians around you and all that kind of stuff.

So it's not the same thing. You can become self-centered,

you start to make some weird decisions and then this one, I

get this a lot. I just had it again this week

talking to someone in a coffee shop.

I don't believe in organized, religion.

And so the conversation I had said, well, what is disorganized

religion? Look like it's like a just turn

up when you think might be a good time, you know.

I don't know. You know, we'll just pick up,

pick up versatran. Damn everybody, because we're,

you know, we haven't put any time and said, studying this out

and praying and seeing where God's League us.

Yeah, I don't know. You God was very, very organized

about the way he said up, worship, right in the way where

he did things. And so it's kind of a weird

thing. Anyway, had this good

discussion. It was a really good discussion.

And in the end, the lady said to me.

Yeah, yeah, I guess I'm just kind of using that as an excuse,

just like, yeah, in the end, it comes down to this, right?

This is what Jesus said to his disciples.

In John chapter 12. Obviously for this is a new

John 12 · chapter mention

commandment. I give to you that you love one.

Another just as I have loved you you're also to love one another.

By this, all people will know that you are my disciples.

If you have love one for another, right?

I'll follow those in yellow there.

You see how many times he's reiterating the same point,

right? When the Bible says, something

more than once, it's important. When it says it, lots of times,

it's really important because this is what we're about.

This is what we're about, we are a gathering of Believers whose

job, it is to evangelize to baptize, and to stabilize so

that the spotlight gets turned on God and people see Him.

And they know where his followers, by the way that we

treat each other that we love and we care for one another.

That's what people notice, that's kind of the Crux of who

we are. So, if you, if you, you know

what is it, you forget 80% of what you heard within 72 hours

and like, 95% of it within a week or something like that, if

you can, just remember this evangelized baptized stabilized,

right? That's the Crux of things,

right? What we're about but also

people. I know where Jesus disciples if

we have love one for another. That's that's the kind of the

glue that that keeps the whole thing together yet make sense.

Yeah. Hopefully it was helpful.

It's good. Really good for me to go through

this again and just kind of remind yourself a.

It it's just it's an awesome thing that we have here and

we're going to me just all the different elements that are

playing into this evangelize baptized stabilize, and then

that can love and care that people have for each other.

There is something about it. There's suggest something That's

very magnetic and attractive. Isn't there about when you see

God's people doing what God's design them to do?

Recall? All right, let's pray in that

I'll hand back to Great. Hey father, we we do come before

you standing in or an exulting new lord lord.

It's incredible to see what you're doing in the world it but

it's it's incredible to actually be a part of it here in Oconee

Bible Church and Lord thank you for all the incredible exciting

things that are going on. Things that are happening.

Thank you for the Ministries that are that are really just

connecting people with you. Louis, we really do want to turn

the spotlight on you and give you glory Lord.

We don't always get it right there.

Are things that we mess up. There are things where we just

get procedures wrong. There are things where we just

get our own pride and ego and whatever gets in the way and we

don't love each other. Like you loved us sometimes and

we just ask for forgiveness for that.

And we also just make us that you make us aware of when we

were areas. And in times, when we're getting

it wrong, both as a both, as a as an assembly as a

congregation. But also as individuals Lord, we

just pray that little step up and play our part Lord.

And we, and we do just thank you for.

Yeah, this thing that is Christianity, that just goes Way

Beyond, you know, back in the past beyond the book begins of

our lives in both directions and that we get to to be a part of

what you're doing. Thank you for your Loving You

Grace to us. Thank you.

This morning in Jesus name. Loving You Grace to us.

Thank you. This morning in Jesus name.