Undivided: Doctrine

[SPEAKER_00]: well we are back in the undivided series talking about the buckets of belief and if this is your first week you are going to want to go back and watch the previous messages.

[SPEAKER_00]: in this series because there is some important context you'll need to know.

[SPEAKER_00]: Today's message is going to be a little bit more hetty.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a little bit more academic, but it's going to be all about doctrine and doctrine is good.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's important.

[SPEAKER_00]: It probably impacts your life and our church and all of our fellowship together more than we often think about and realize.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to start by talking about this little thing right here.

[SPEAKER_00]: This, I don't know if anybody remembers what this is.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is called a USB drive or a jump drive or a thumb drive.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you had one of these at one point?

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of us did.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you haven't touched it in a long time?

[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a lot of us this I had to dig this up because I didn't even remember where it was and thankfully I found it I relied on this thing every day in college.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually getting to be a long time ago now But I used this to transfer files because it was way faster than any of the networks we had at the time You know before we had fast internet and fast Wi-Fi and all that stuff

[SPEAKER_00]: It was way quicker to just plug this into your computer, load it up with stuff and then transfer it to where you needed to go.

[SPEAKER_00]: I used this to transfer files to the school printers that I could print off projects and reports and those sorts of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: So these were really, really essential back in the day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I remember one time I saw that there was a new one that had just been developed that was like 10 times bigger than the one I had.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was awesome.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was brand new was from a trusted brand and it was on sale.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I bought it, took a little while for it to arrive, because you didn't have the fast shipping back then.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I finally got it, I was so excited.

[SPEAKER_00]: I ripped open the package.

[SPEAKER_00]: It looks great.

[SPEAKER_00]: Had all the right things on it, I plugged it in.

[SPEAKER_00]: I loaded up some of my files just a few.

[SPEAKER_00]: Got about my business and went about life for a couple of weeks until I tried to load something on there and it wouldn't go.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, that's strange.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this is supposed to last me for the next five, 10 years of my life.

[SPEAKER_00]: I shouldn't have to get a new one.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, it won't let me load anything else.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I checked the properties.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's still plenty of room left.

[SPEAKER_00]: A little bit of digging, and I finally figured out what was going on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had received a counterfeit drive.

[SPEAKER_00]: The thing was fake.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was made to look just like the real thing, but there were little signs, and I could look into it and find out that this was actually not manufactured by the company that I thought it was, but it was being sold on the same page as the right device, and the company doing it was just hoping that you wouldn't notice or not notice in time.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was a sad day.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I did eventually get my money back, but it's still felt achy, like betrayal.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wasted my time.

[SPEAKER_00]: I thought I lost a lot of money on it, which, especially at that time, was a whole lot of money to lose.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it just felt like they lied to me.

[SPEAKER_00]: How could they?

[SPEAKER_00]: You know, in today's day and age, there's a new technology that is making it harder than ever to tell what is real from what is fake.

[SPEAKER_00]: Anybody know what I'm talking about?

[SPEAKER_00]: AI, everybody knows artificial intelligence.

[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes the consequences can be pretty significant.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can get scammed, you can actually people can get hurt by not knowing what is real and what is fake.

[SPEAKER_00]: So as a little test and a little bit of a game, I want to play something called

[SPEAKER_00]: is it AI or is it real?

[SPEAKER_00]: AI or real life?

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to give you two images and I want you to tell me which one is the counterfeit, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: So here's the first example.

[SPEAKER_00]: Look at your screen and tell me is A or be the counterfeit.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of these is a real photo.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of these is completely 100% AI generated.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which one do you think is the counterfeit?

[SPEAKER_00]: If you think it is A, raise your hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: If that's the counterfeit.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, if you think it is B, that's the counterfeit raise your hand.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, about evenly split.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here's the answer.

[SPEAKER_00]: The actual counterfeit completely created by AI is A.

[SPEAKER_00]: A is the fake.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's put another one up on the screen.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which one's real, which one is the counterfeit?

[SPEAKER_00]: I will tell you the early service did pretty well on this one, so I have high hopes for you guys.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you think the A is the counterfeit?

[SPEAKER_00]: Raise your hand if A is the counterfeit, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you think that B is the counterfeit?

[SPEAKER_00]: Raise your hand if it's B.

[SPEAKER_00]: B definitely got a lot more hands, but I am sorry to say that you're right, it is B.

[SPEAKER_00]: B is the counterfeit good job.

[SPEAKER_00]: Congratulations.

[SPEAKER_00]: One more, one more, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: which is now the early service didn't do well on this one.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just giving you the inside track there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Is A the counterfeit or is B the counterfeit?

[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you think the A is the counterfeit image?

[SPEAKER_00]: Raise your hand if A is the counterfeit image, okay?

[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you think that B is the counterfeit image?

[SPEAKER_00]: B is okay, evenly split, again, as far as I can tell.

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the answer I know you're dying to know is B.

[SPEAKER_00]: B is the counterfeit.

[SPEAKER_00]: A is the real image.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just love hearing all the gasps out there because it tells me you really were confused at what could be real and what could.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's be honest, the stakes of this were pretty low.

[SPEAKER_00]: But sometimes the stakes and counterfits can be pretty high.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can get scammed, we can get hurt, we can, there are all sorts of bad things that can happen if we don't recognize the real from the fake.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the same thing is actually true when it comes to our spiritual beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we have counterfeit spiritual beliefs that we hold on to, sometimes it can send us down a really bad path.

[SPEAKER_00]: counterfeit spiritual teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people call these false doctrines.

[SPEAKER_00]: They seem like the real thing that may have a lot of the right words in them, but if they aren't actually from God, they could actually be taking us down a pretty bad direction.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Bible warned just about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Many, many times, false teachings.

[SPEAKER_00]: Jesus criticized some of the Jewish leaders for this.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, their worship is a farce.

[SPEAKER_00]: for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: So there you have counterfeit teachings that the religious leaders are sharing as if they come from God.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're faking it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's Paul in Roman 16.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, watch out for people who cause divisions and upset people's faith by teaching things contrary to what you have been taught.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's false teachings, stay away from them.

[SPEAKER_00]: And he said that if we grow and mature in our faith, this is what will happen in Ephesians 4.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says, then we will no longer be like immature children.

[SPEAKER_00]: We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the counterfeit teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: We will not be influenced when people try to trick us, with lies so clever they sound like the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: He gave this instruction to Timothy.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, when I left for Macedonia, I urged you to stay there in Ephesus and stop those whose teaching is contrary to the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so obviously,

[SPEAKER_00]: God makes a point over and over in His Word, and this is just a small selection.

[SPEAKER_00]: To tell us, you need to watch out for false spiritual teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: You need to be careful about false teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, one of the things we have to learn how to do, and one of the things that the buckets of belief from our undivided series teach us to do is identify what false teaching or different teaching is worth correcting.

[SPEAKER_00]: So if I were to ask you, which is better, if you had to choose chocolate or vanilla ice cream, how many of you would say chocolate?

[SPEAKER_00]: Raise your hand if chocolate ice cream, you believe it's better.

[SPEAKER_00]: How many of you believe vanilla ice cream is better?

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, now there are several married couples who did not answer the same way.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that could be a problem.

[SPEAKER_00]: except that it's just ice cream.

[SPEAKER_00]: You have differing beliefs, but they're not beliefs that are worth correcting.

[SPEAKER_00]: I hope it's not that big of a deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes in marriage, it feels like a big deal, but trust me, it's not.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are other things like that, even when it comes to our spiritual beliefs, where we have different opinions and views on them, that are contrary to each other, but we just agree to say, you know what, this is not consequential enough to where we need to correct each other on this.

[SPEAKER_00]: One example,

[SPEAKER_00]: in our church has to do with the millennial kingdom, the thousand year reign of Christ, is there going to be a literal thousand year reign of Christ or is that symbolic in some way representative of something else?

[SPEAKER_00]: And we as a church have a position that we can agree to disagree on that and we don't take a stand.

[SPEAKER_00]: on that one where another.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, a few years ago, our association actually did have a statement in our statement of faith on that and we took it out in 2019 because we all decided all 1600 churches and leaders in the evangelical free church of America, that is not something that we need to divide over.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to happen in the future.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not a teaching that we need to correct here.

[SPEAKER_00]: So some different beliefs can be dangerous and some are not that big of a deal.

[SPEAKER_00]: The preferences, the things that go on our preference bucket, we can agree to disagree on those.

[SPEAKER_00]: The convictions that we have personally, we can be gracious and kind and even defer to each other's convictions on those.

[SPEAKER_00]: but some beliefs, especially when we get to the doctrine and the dogma buckets, if we go down the wrong path, they can actually make a really big difference.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about the dogma bucket already, but just as a refresher, these are the gospel essentials, the most important things that are necessary for us to be saved and be a part of God's family, that God is the creator.

[SPEAKER_00]: that he made everything, including people and he gave people the ability to follow or disobey him.

[SPEAKER_00]: People disobeyed, they brought sin into the world, into humanity and God sent Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Son of God, to die for our sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: But Jesus came back to life, so that His sacrifice would pay for our sins.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as a risen Savior, He would represent us before God and give us His righteousness.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we can have peace with God only by trusting in Jesus Christ for our salvation.

[SPEAKER_00]: of his family.

[SPEAKER_00]: Those are the core truths that make up the gospel essentials that go into our dogma bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: But there are more beliefs than that that are really important.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're not must believe for salvation important, but they are really important.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the consequences of getting those beliefs that we're going to say are in the doctrine bucket wrong can sometimes be pretty significant.

[SPEAKER_00]: If our lives are like a building, then the beliefs that go in our doctrine book it are kind of like the frame, and in a lot more ways than we often realize, and I'll explain that later.

[SPEAKER_00]: If the frame is weakened, if it is made with fake studs that fall apart, if it's made with foam instead of wood or steel, then the building is not going to be strong, and that's in danger.

[SPEAKER_00]: If our lives are like a journey, then our doctrinal beliefs are like a compass.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if we are just a little bit off in our direction, if our compass is malfunctioning, over time, that can lead to being off the path by a long ways, even though we started with only a minor deviation.

[SPEAKER_00]: If our lives are like a community of believers, then our doctrinal beliefs are what help us to stay connected and united in harmony without having a lot of judgment and division in the family of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: to know if we have true doctrinal beliefs or counterfeit doctrine that could lead us astray.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's equally important to think carefully about what goes into that doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because a lot of the division that happens in churches happens when someone takes a preference or a conviction and they treat it like doctrine or dogma when it doesn't belong there.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's take some time this morning and talk about the doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're a notes person, I'm going to go ahead and give you the outline right now.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you can write down these four S words that we're going to use to talk about our doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first one is actually before I go to the four S words.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you the definition for the doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are beliefs that a church or a group of Christians consider sound biblical teaching and essential for unity and fellowship in that group.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so it could be a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: It could be a parent church organization.

[SPEAKER_00]: but a group of Christians comes together and says this is our doctrinal statement.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is what goes in our doctrine bucket, the things that we hold to and believe.

[SPEAKER_00]: The we think are important for anyone who is a member, a leader, someone who's going to influence in this organization.

[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to know this is what we stand on.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some doctrine buckets for some organizations are churches are bigger and some are a little bit smaller.

[SPEAKER_00]: We'll talk about ours today with four words.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first one is source.

[SPEAKER_00]: then stewards, then substance, then service.

[SPEAKER_00]: For S words, being a pastor, I've got to make them all start with the same letter.

[SPEAKER_00]: That we're going to walk through today to understand our doctrine book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want you to know those four words because it's going to help you retain all of this as we go.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let's start by talking about the source.

[SPEAKER_00]: The source of our doctrine is scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where we get our teaching from.

[SPEAKER_00]: Second Timothy 3 says, all scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's where the doctrine comes in it teaches us.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is true?

[SPEAKER_00]: And to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: It corrects us when we are wrong and it teaches us to do what is right.

[SPEAKER_00]: God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our ultimate source for teaching is in the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was inspired by God.

[SPEAKER_00]: It helps us know the things he wants us to know so we can do the things that he wants us to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: One challenge though, with that source is, okay, it's over 2000 years old.

[SPEAKER_00]: It spans a great time length of different authors.

[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of time is elapsed between now and then.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there is an amount of passing on the truth that has to happen.

[SPEAKER_00]: And an amount of interpretation that has to happen for us to know today in our context, how does God want us to live?

[SPEAKER_00]: What does that mean for us today?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there are stewards.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a source which is scripture, but there are also stewards in these are the church leaders.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are two steward, the sound teaching that's oftentimes how the Bible talks about doctrine as sound or healthy teaching that gets passed on to the church and to subsequent generations.

[SPEAKER_00]: Ephesians chapter four talks about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says, now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: The apostles, the prophets, the evangelists and the pastors and teachers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their responsibility is to equip God's people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God's Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then get this.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then we will no longer be like immature children.

[SPEAKER_00]: We won't be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the counterfeit doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.

[SPEAKER_00]: So the model that got established for sound teaching, for doctrine in his church, was for the church leaders that he lists their ineffisions to be responsible to pass on and train people so they can recognize the counterfeit teaching when they are presented with it.

[SPEAKER_00]: Paul told Timothy and second Timothy.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's sound teaching, healthy teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: You learned from me, a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit who lives within us carefully, guard the precious truth that has been entrusted to you.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said this to Titus when he was explaining how to select elders in the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, he must have a strong belief in the trustworthy message he was taught.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then he will be able to encourage others with wholesome teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: Again, that's the phrase for doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's sound or healthy teaching, that's the doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And show those who oppose it where they are wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: When Paul told Timothy how to select elders, he said, make sure they're able to teach.

[SPEAKER_00]: That didn't mean that they had to be able to get up in front of a group like this and teach in this kind of a setting.

[SPEAKER_00]: What that means is they have to know the doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have to understand the doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have to be able to communicate the doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And maybe that's in a large setting, maybe that's in a small setting.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's one on one, but they have to be able to teach the sound teachings, the doctrine that gets passed on through the church leaders.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the church leaders are not only to pass on the teachings, they're also supposed to give direction to people when it comes to teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: Hebrews 13 says this.

[SPEAKER_00]: obey your spiritual leaders, and do what they say.

[SPEAKER_00]: Their work is to watch over your souls, and they are accountable to God, give them reason to do this with joy and not with sorrow.

[SPEAKER_00]: Something we often miss in churches today in this day and age is the spiritual authority that God places in church leaders over the flock.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is a great responsibility that they have.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there is a spiritual authority there that we sometimes miss.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now some churches take this too far and they add all sorts of things to that authority and they abuse that authority and that's a church to get out of.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also wrong to ignore the spiritual authority that is in the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is one of the main reasons we have elders.

[SPEAKER_00]: The elders in the church help to oversee and safeguard and protect the truth that has been passed on to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: Elders in our church help oversee all sorts of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Finance and HR and operational things, all sorts of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: But they also in one of their main functions is to safeguard the teaching of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: To make sure that our doctrine bucket is solid and good.

[SPEAKER_00]: and then even and how we apply it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I want to give you some examples of this because sometimes it just it just seems like this is so vague and hard to understand that if unless you've worked in this space yourself, you may not know what we're talking about.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let me give you some really practical examples.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why I'm particularly a couple of years ago, there was a new law that was put up for

[SPEAKER_00]: And Amendment 3 was designed to make elective abortion procedure access widespread again across the state.

[SPEAKER_00]: We as a church have long held that elective abortion procedures, the termination of human life in the womb were not medically necessary when not the result of a miscarriage anything like that, but just an elective abortive procedure is as a matter of doctrine for us wrong.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's the, it's the, it's the taking of an innocent human life and we believe that it's unbiblical and that shouldn't happen and that's why we we support crisis pregnancy centers and and we from time to time will talk about pro life issues and we'll have fundraisers to support those kinds of effort.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that has long been a part of our doctrine as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: When amendment three was proposed, I started to hear from a number of people in our church that were confused about it because of things that they had heard from other people or read online.

[SPEAKER_00]: And as I looked into it, I realized that a tremendous amount of money was being spent to confuse and even mislead and deceive people with Christian values in the thinking that amendment three was actually a good and positive thing that people with Christian values should vote for.

[SPEAKER_00]: I had people in this very room tell me about why it was a good thing and why all Christians should support it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'm serious two years ago.

[SPEAKER_00]: So I went to our elders and to our pastors.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, I think this contradicts our doctrine, this contradicts our teaching, on life, on being created in the image of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: What we have held about a board of procedures for a long time that are, again, not the, not the ones after miscarriage, but the elective abortions.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so I think maybe we need to correct this in our elders and our pastors' unanimous the agreed.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we talked about what would the messaging be and we talked about some of the nuances of that and we actually spent a tremendous amount of time discussing this issue and then going before the church and saying, okay, here's where we are at on this particular issue with amendment 3.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's the way it's supposed to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: The elders and the pastors safeguard the teaching of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when we identify something that is counter-fitting, that is counter to our doctrine, then we will teach about that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we want to make sure that we have sound biblical teaching about those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, some people were confused when we did this, and that's worth talking about a little bit, because it will even help us to understand the doctrine bucket a little bit better.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some people thought, well, the church should never talk about politics, and that's a political issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I would disagree.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have no limitation on talking about politics.

[SPEAKER_00]: The issue is not as a political issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: The issue is a doctrinal issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Does it go against our beliefs and it absolutely did?

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we did not talk about it because it was political.

[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about it because it was doctrinal.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it was impacting our church.

[SPEAKER_00]: The false teaching was impacting influence in the people in our church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now we can't speak on every political issue and we have no intention of doing that.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not our main purpose.

[SPEAKER_00]: If we were to try to do that, we would have to spend any enormous amount of time researching and sharing all the facts and explaining the nuances and making sure that we're all working from the same dictionaries because we all bring different perspectives and have different understandings of what the words mean and we're listening to different news sources.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's just not as simple as some people think for the church to speak into lots of political issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: You're listening to people who do that for a living.

[SPEAKER_00]: Many of them have research teams that go out and bring them all the information.

[SPEAKER_00]: And perhaps most importantly, they all have audiences of people who have already coalesced around a particular political perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: The thing that unites their audience is that they already largely agree with the general political perspective of that person who is talking.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is not how church is work.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are not all gathered here because we all have the same basic political perspective.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's not what unites us.

[SPEAKER_00]: We've already talked about this.

[SPEAKER_00]: We are united around the dogma of the gospel.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we are united around the teaching of our doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: We did not come here because we all share exactly the same political views on a whole lot of different issues.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that is not something that we can just easily speak to, especially in a worship service.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's why we don't talk about a lot of political issues, but where they come into play with doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And where they affect our church when it comes to matters of doctrine, then that is when we tend to speak to those as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so for instance, a few years ago,

[SPEAKER_00]: When our country was experiencing a lot of unrest over justice issues and it became clear that there was some unbiblical teaching that was being promoted and even using the Bible in ways that were misinterpreting scripture to promote a certain perspective on justice, we talked with the elders, we talked with the pastors, we made sure that we were aligned on what was sound teaching in the church and then we went through a series called Justice and the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: a little while after that, gender and sexuality issues started to become a major thing in our country.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so our elders and our pastors had a lot of conversation about this, and we were aligned and united in what we wanted to present.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we had a series called Created to Connect God's Design for Intimacy and Gender.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so those are instances where

[SPEAKER_00]: what the Bible talks about worked in our church, the elders and our pastors together, we worked together to make sure that there was sound, wholesome teaching in our church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, there's another reason why people got confused going back to the earlier thing of why we talked about amendment 3.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's because some people thought, well, this is a conviction issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's a conviction issue, not a doctrinal or a dogma issue, because it's not directly in our statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this gives me the opportunity now to clarify, okay, what goes in that doctrine book?

[SPEAKER_00]: Is it just the things that are in our statement of faith?

[SPEAKER_00]: And the answer to that is,

[SPEAKER_00]: It is God's responsibility given to the church leadership to determine what goes into the doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: To safeguard that sound teaching, which means they have to decide together, church leaders, have to decide seeking God's wisdom and the guidance of his spirit, what is in and what is out and what goes in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now in our church that doesn't mean that people who disagree on doctrine have to leave, but it does mean that they should respect the decision of the church leaders.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it means that if someone's gonna be in membership here, they have to affirm the doctrinal positions of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: If someone is gonna be in a leadership here, they have to affirm the doctrinal positions of the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: If a church is leaders, however, start putting things into the doctrine bucket that don't belong there, and you see more and more things getting added that you go, I don't think that's something the Bible puts in that bucket for us, then maybe it's time to re-valuate whether you go to that church.

[SPEAKER_00]: But still, those are the leaders of that church, and their job, biblically, is to safeguard what goes in the bucket and to teach it and pass it on faithfully.

[SPEAKER_00]: They have to determine what is that sound teaching and how we interpret the word of God.

[SPEAKER_00]: Which, by the way, includes the dogma.

[SPEAKER_00]: So let me show you on the screen that the buckets of belief again, because I want you to see, these are very intentionally placed.

[SPEAKER_00]: The dogma is inside the doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so dogma is part of the doctrine, but not all the doctrine is dogma.

[SPEAKER_00]: And the same thing goes for convictions and preferences.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we talk about dogma, that is part of our doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, but also there's a subset of our doctrine that is the gospel essentials and then there's the doctrine which is some broader things that we'll talk about in a little bit.

[SPEAKER_00]: In some churches, the doctrine bucket is a whole lot bigger.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there are lots of extra things that church leaders put in there which may or may not belong.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes those can be deal breakers.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes those are things we just agreed to live with and we have a difference of opinion on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I've been in churches that had in their doctrine bucket issues on alcohol, issues on dancing, issues on playing cards, issues on movies, all sorts of different things.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not to mention lots of different beliefs about baptism and community in those sorts of things.

[SPEAKER_00]: and churches that put some very specific details in their doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have served on staff in a church where there was one particular issue that was in the doctrine bucket, then got removed, then got added again.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I had to live through that whole experience, disagreeing with the church about how they handled that.

[SPEAKER_00]: But to me, that was not a deal breaker issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: That particular issue that they were wrestling with, I was willing to submit to, I was not the authority.

[SPEAKER_00]: I was willing to submit to the church authority because to me that was not a deal breaker and they put something in the doctrine bucket that I didn't think should be there.

[SPEAKER_00]: We talked about it.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, I disagreed.

[SPEAKER_00]: They said, tough.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're putting in the doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then a little while later we had a conversation and they said, you know what, you're probably right.

[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't belong and they were pulling it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: I said, fantastic.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then a year and a half later, they said, by the way, it's back in.

[SPEAKER_00]: Little bit frustrating, yeah.

[SPEAKER_00]: But you know what, at the end of the day, it wasn't a deal breaker issue for me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was not a dogma issue.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was just a thing that they put in their doctrine bucket that I didn't think belonged.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you know what?

[SPEAKER_00]: We are gonna submit to the leaders of this church, even if we're not 100% aligned on what should be there.

[SPEAKER_00]: And for that church, that was not a deal breaker issue either that I had to agree with them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I just couldn't teach or lead counter to what the church believed.

[SPEAKER_00]: So that's a little clarity around what goes in our doctrine book.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I want us to understand that the source is scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I also want us to understand that there is a God-given role for church leaders and being stewards of how that scripture is interpreted and applied as doctrine for the local church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is why different churches have different doctrine buckets.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that's okay.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went to seminary with guys who said, it's crazy that we have all these different churches with all these different beliefs.

[SPEAKER_00]: And when I graduate from here, I'm gonna go unite them all together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Good luck.

[SPEAKER_00]: But at least you haven't served in a lot of churches yet.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because honestly, this is just how God set up the structure.

[SPEAKER_00]: There is local leadership involved in the churches where decisions have to be made about what gets considered as doctrine, what gets passed on as sound teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: In an ideal world, it would all be the same.

[SPEAKER_00]: When we get to heaven, I think God's gonna reveal it all to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there may be a few things where we say, oh, wow, we actually were missing something that should have been in our doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: And there's going to be a bunch of other churches that are like, oh wow, we had something our doctrine bucket that probably shouldn't have been in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: Personally, I think we've got it right.

[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think we've already arrived.

[SPEAKER_00]: But I'm open to the possibility, you know, that God will teach us a few things.

[SPEAKER_00]: And then we'll know for sure.

[SPEAKER_00]: But this is the method that God put in place.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's a source, there are stewards, and now there's our substance.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is the substance of our doctrine bucket, our doctrinal positions?

[SPEAKER_00]: What do we teach in this church?

[SPEAKER_00]: You can find most of it on the beliefs page of our website.

[SPEAKER_00]: We put that out there so that people who are evaluating our church can know, okay, what are the core things this church believes in?

[SPEAKER_00]: Perhaps just as importantly are some of the things that we don't put in our doctrine bucket that maybe a lot of churches do and we choose not to divide over those things.

[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things you'll see on our beliefs page is our vision for our church.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is something that our elders have authorized as where we want to go as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this shapes everything we do in more ways than you probably realize.

[SPEAKER_00]: It says that we see ourselves as a growing community, passionate about worshiping God, reaching the lost, growing spiritually, praying continually, deepening community and developing leaders who continue those pursuits in every area of life.

[SPEAKER_00]: You may not know this, but our elders, and our staff have developed a really incredible system of going back and forth using these six things as our framework to identify whether or not the things we're spending time and resources

[SPEAKER_00]: and every year we reassess and we establish goals and we trace them back to those six things and we make sure that what we are doing as a church aligns with this vision that is part of our doctrinal bucket for us as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing you'll see on our beliefs page is our distinctive values.

[SPEAKER_00]: These are some of the things that might set us apart from other churches in the way we emphasize them.

[SPEAKER_00]: I won't go through in detail, but the six values our Jesus is the difference.

[SPEAKER_00]: Love is a verb.

[SPEAKER_00]: Heaven is big, which, by the way, is a lot of what we're talking about in this series.

[SPEAKER_00]: That heaven is big.

[SPEAKER_00]: There'll be a lot of people there where we disagree on preferences, convictions, and even some doctrines, but we agree on the dogma.

[SPEAKER_00]: Outreach is for everyone, community is core, and leadership is learned.

[SPEAKER_00]: We have some unique points of emphasis that we make on those things at our church, and you can read a brief description of each of those on that beliefs page.

[SPEAKER_00]: You'll also see our theological values there, which some people would call our statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: That statement of faith is something that we adopted as a church, a whole congregation.

[SPEAKER_00]: From the EFCA, the evangelical free church of America, and it has articles on God, the Bible, the human condition, Jesus Christ, the work of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the church, Christian living Christ's return, and our response to any eternal destiny.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, as you know, we're going through a series every year where we will take one of these things, and we'll explore them in more detail together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Along with our vision and our distinctive values and our theological values, we have some position papers, one on human sexuality and one on women in church leadership that are on our beliefs page.

[SPEAKER_00]: But it's also important to know.

[SPEAKER_00]: That page does not make up the grand total of the doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: The doctrine bucket is whatever sound teaching, the church leaders pass on to the church and say, this is what we believe is sound teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so sometimes just gonna look like us stand up here, either myself or another pastor or an elder, and say, and this is what we're teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if at some point that ever goes in the wrong direction, if at some point one of us or or myself says something where an elder goes, I'm not so sure that's sound teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're gonna be called out on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: because that's the way it's supposed to work.

[SPEAKER_00]: We safeguard the sound teaching in the church.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, instead of going through all of the doctrine and great detail, because again, we'll do some of that, especially with our statement of faith over the next nine years.

[SPEAKER_00]: So stick around.

[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, what I want to do is highlight some of the unique things that are in there.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, I want to ask this question because I've been doing this long enough that I know the types of questions I get afterward.

[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so what goes in the doctrine bucket that doesn't go in the dogma bucket?

[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it goes in the doctrine bucket that doesn't go in the conviction bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: Understand, it can be different for different churches, even though we think we found the right combination.

[SPEAKER_00]: understand that some people can have different opinions about this, but within the context of the church, you respect the spiritual leaders of that church, if that makes sense.

[SPEAKER_00]: So here are some of the things that would be in our doctrine bucket, specifically.

[SPEAKER_00]: The an currency of scripture.

[SPEAKER_00]: We believe that the original manuscript, as inspired by God, were perfect and without error.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christians can and do disagree on that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You can believe the gospel without believing that the original manuscripts were perfect and without air.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are other theories about how that all worked out.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for us, for our teachers, for our leaders, for our members, we say our doctrine is the anarency of the original manuscripts that God inspired.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then there's the historical Adam and the Eve.

[SPEAKER_00]: Christians do not all agree, and whether there really was a historical Adam and Eve.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our statement of faith talks about a historical Adam and Eve in a way that allows for some nuance of interpretation, while acknowledging the fact that there were legitimate people Adam and Eve from whom all humanity descended and who brought sin into the world.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's a part of our,

[SPEAKER_00]: doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: And yet there are Christians who would disagree on that because they have different talk about.

[SPEAKER_00]: But for our church, that's a position that we hold that's a position that EFCA holds.

[SPEAKER_00]: And by the way, if you want to read more about that, there's a book called Evangelical Convictions that goes into more detail.

[SPEAKER_00]: There are three particular ways where the EFCA says, there's a historical adamant even here are the three things that they focus on.

[SPEAKER_00]: I won't get into that today, but you can go do that on your own.

[SPEAKER_00]: Baptism is another one.

[SPEAKER_00]: Some churches put more details about baptism into their doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: For instance, I've been a part of a church that all they would ever do is immerse.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's all they would do.

[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I've taught on baptism here before.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I've told you that while the Bible does describe baptism by immersion in every instance,

[SPEAKER_00]: very quickly in the early church, they did not interpret that as being a mandate.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so the earliest church manual from the first century says if there's enough water to immerse baptize, then do that if not poor and if not sprinkle and it kind of gives you this progression.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we actually follow that.

[SPEAKER_00]: You may have seen a baptism here where we had someone who for medical reasons was not able to get into the baptism old pool and be dunked underwater.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so we poured.

[SPEAKER_00]: instead of immersing because we don't have some of those extra rules about baptism in our doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: The Lord's Supper is another example.

[SPEAKER_00]: We don't mandate a lot of specifics about the Lord's Supper.

[SPEAKER_00]: We're okay with practice in some different ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't do that a lot, but we have at times done in different ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: There's also some spiritual belief about the Lord's Supper, what we call communion.

[SPEAKER_00]: The sum church is put in their doctrinal bucket that we intentionally do not.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the evangelical free church, there's something called the significance of silence, which means there are significance to the fact that scripture does not make this thing clear.

[SPEAKER_00]: So when we're talking about the Lord's supper, for instance, one example is that for some people, the elements, the body and the blood or the bread and the juice are representative.

[SPEAKER_00]: They represent the body and blood of Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: They are not literally the body and blood of Jesus and they aren't even spiritually somehow, especially infused with Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: But in some Christian traditions, there is a view that they are more than just representative, that there is within the elements,

[SPEAKER_00]: in some sense, a very real presence of Christ that goes beyond what he would normally be in everything and that is a special significance.

[SPEAKER_00]: In over and under is the phrase that gets used for that.

[SPEAKER_00]: And we don't have a position on that as a church, or in the EFCA.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I am quite certain that there are people in our congregation right now who have both of those perspectives.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's representative or there is some special presence of Christ in the elements.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is one area where we don't put it in our doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a matter of conviction.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can agree to disagree.

[SPEAKER_00]: And let's be honest, it really does not affect the person next to you what you believe as you take the elements.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so that is not something we put in our doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another thing that we don't have in our doctrine bucket that I mentioned earlier pertains to the return of Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our doctrine used to state, we believe in the pre-Malennial return of Christ, which refers to a thousand-year literal millennial kingdom that was the implied view there.

[SPEAKER_00]: That was removed because our association and our church agreed we voted on this as church members a few years ago that we didn't think that belonged in the doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there are people who's conviction is that there will be a literal thousand year reign and there are people who's conviction is that that was somehow representative and it is symbolic and it's not necessarily a literal thousand year reign and both of those perspectives are welcome.

[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I share all those things?

[SPEAKER_00]: Because I want you to have some kind of meat to sink into to know, okay, these are the types of things that go on the doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not unimportant, it's very important.

[SPEAKER_00]: but it's not most important.

[SPEAKER_00]: The dogma is most important.

[SPEAKER_00]: The doctrine is very important.

[SPEAKER_00]: The doctrine is what we unite around as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: I have spent a good amount of time this morning talking about some of the negatives and some of the counterfits or some of the things that we don't put in our doctrine bucket because that gives us clarity to help us understand what it means.

[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes knowing what's not there is as helpful or more helpful than knowing what does it go there.

[SPEAKER_00]: for us in this church.

[SPEAKER_00]: But what I want to do for the last couple of minutes is focus on some positive outcomes of our doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Because our doctrine impacts everything we do here, and even the way we all live in more ways than we probably realize.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is the fourth S, if you're taking notes, it's service.

[SPEAKER_00]: What is the service of our doctrine?

[SPEAKER_00]: What does it do for us?

[SPEAKER_00]: It produces godly living.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here's Paul in 1st Timothy 6.

[SPEAKER_00]: He says some people may contradict our teaching, but these are the wholesome teachings, that's doctrine, of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: These teachings promote a godly life.

[SPEAKER_00]: They're supposed to be an outcome, they're supposed to be an action in our daily lives, because of the sound teaching.

[SPEAKER_00]: Then he says in 2 Timothy 13, hold on to the pattern of wholesome teaching you learned from me, a pattern shaped by the faith and love that you have in Christ Jesus, that pattern of wholesome teaching, which relates to faith and love in Christ Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: Colossians 3 says, let the message about Christ in all its richness, fill your lives, teach, and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives, sing Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs to God with thankful hearts and whatever you do or say.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.

[SPEAKER_00]: And so there is a teaching and a counseling that happens that results.

[SPEAKER_00]: in us doing whatever we do or say as a representative of the Lord Jesus.

[SPEAKER_00]: So having sound doctrine helps us in three major ways.

[SPEAKER_00]: I'll go through these quickly.

[SPEAKER_00]: The first one is having a core doctrinal bucket that we align on.

[SPEAKER_00]: It gives us a steady compass in cultural chaos.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the world, there is this constant shifting that happens around what is true.

[SPEAKER_00]: and what is truth?

[SPEAKER_00]: And it is wonderful to know that we as a family of faith can say, okay, all of those things are worth evaluating, discussing, looking into, but at least I have this collection of things that I can hold tightly to and go, I know this stuff is real, I know this stuff is true.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is what I ground my faith and this is what we collectively agree to ground our faith in together and believe together.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a steady compass in cultural chaos.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's also a common

[SPEAKER_00]: which means that as you talk with another believer, and you find that you have some sort of disagreement, it's great to be able to start with, okay, we agree on our dogma of the gospel, we agree on these doctrinal things.

[SPEAKER_00]: What we're talking about is in the conviction bucket, we're in the preference bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a great common starting point to keep us from having division.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's also, of course, a guide for godly living.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a guide for godly living.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's not always obvious to us.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the doctrine that I went through earlier, all those things, the statement of faith and our vision, and our values, all that stuff, it impacts everything we do here at the church, and it trickles down to have an impact on how you live your lives every day, or at least it should.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went through yesterday, and I tried to think of a bunch of examples of what this looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: I went through our statement of faith, I went through our other aspects of our doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: And here are some of the things that I came up with.

[SPEAKER_00]: Our doctrine impacts how we talk about God here.

[SPEAKER_00]: It impacts the way we view and use the Bible.

[SPEAKER_00]: It impacts the humility that we have toward ourselves and our own sin.

[SPEAKER_00]: It impacts our daily focus on Jesus as the difference in our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: It impacts our trust in Jesus as our only Savior.

[SPEAKER_00]: It impacts our relationship with God through His Spirit and our statement of faith says that He in dwells, illuminates guides, equips, and empowers believers for Christ like living and service.

[SPEAKER_00]: That's all part of our doctrine book.

[SPEAKER_00]: It impacts our unity as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: that agrees on most things or that agrees on the essentials rather than most important things and allows room for disagreement and liberty on the non-essentials.

[SPEAKER_00]: It impacts our emphasis on loving God and everything we do.

[SPEAKER_00]: It talks about caring for each other.

[SPEAKER_00]: It talks about having compassion for people and all sorts of different needs.

[SPEAKER_00]: It talks about our prayer lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: It talks about spiritual warfare.

[SPEAKER_00]: It gives us emphasis on evangelism and discipleship.

[SPEAKER_00]: So all of those things that I just mentioned

[SPEAKER_00]: Do we always obviously trace everything back to the doctrine bucket?

[SPEAKER_00]: No, we don't make it obvious.

[SPEAKER_00]: But so much of what we do, and so much of what you do on a daily basis comes from a consistent, saturated teaching of the sound and wholesome teachings that have been passed on or originated from scripture, stewarded by church leaders and passed on to help us live godly lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: And that is the purpose and the function of our doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: It is not some dusty old list that we all agreed on one time, and now it sits on the shelf so we can get to more applicable things.

[SPEAKER_00]: It impacts all the applicable things.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what's our takeaway from today?

[SPEAKER_00]: It's a very heavy message, it's a lot of information, but I think it's important that we understand or are united around our doctrine bucket as a church.

[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's worth your time this week to read our statement of faith.

[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, you may want to print it out.

[SPEAKER_00]: Put it somewhere where you see it every day.

[SPEAKER_00]: And ask the question, how am I going to live different today because I believe that?

[SPEAKER_00]: How is that statement of faith in particular going to impact or the other aspects of our doctrinal bucket?

[SPEAKER_00]: Going to impact the way I live today.

[SPEAKER_00]: That would be a fantastic application from today.

[SPEAKER_00]: And one application we are going to do right now, which is we are going to practice the Lord's supper, which is part of our doctrine bucket.

[SPEAKER_00]: Not all the methods about it, but the fact that we do it, and we believe this is an ordinance that Christ gave us to remember His sacrifice on the cross.

[SPEAKER_00]: That is also an application of our doctrine.

[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if you'd bow your heads really right now as we pray and prepare to receive the elements together.

[SPEAKER_00]: Heavenly Father, you have given us in your word incredible teaching to live our lives by and we are so blessed God and so thankful that you have explained to us the most important things that we need to be united on and allowed for a lot of freedom and liberty in many other things that that we're we're going to have different views on, different convictions, different preferences.

[SPEAKER_00]: Lord, one thing that we can all agree on, is that you died for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: You gave your life so that we could be forgiven so that we could be free.

[SPEAKER_00]: So you could take our sin away so that you could give us your righteousness and you suffered a death that was so painful and so public with hundreds of witnesses who then passed on the teaching, passed on the message of Christ all the way down two thousand years down to us today.

[SPEAKER_00]: Help us to remember that thread, that connection that we have to what you did for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: help us to remember the teaching that you continue to pour into us through teachers, through leaders, through the stewards who pass this on, not so that we can just learn more, not so that we can have big heads, but so that we can apply it, so that we can live godly lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: But we thank you for your sacrifice.

[SPEAKER_00]: We remember it now as we come before you and do what you told us to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's in the name of Jesus, we pray amen.

[SPEAKER_00]: So this is the Lord's Supper, or often called Communion.

[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're new with us and you're a follower of Jesus, we invite you to participate with us.

[SPEAKER_00]: As the trays are passed, you'll take a stack of two cups.

[SPEAKER_00]: The bottom cup is the bread, the top cup is the juice.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you need a gluten free wafer, it's available in the middle of the tray.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you're not a follower of Jesus, then you can just let the tray pass you by.

[SPEAKER_00]: This is just for those that've given their life to Christ.

[SPEAKER_00]: As we do this, take a moment to confess any sins that you have before God and prepare your hearts to receive what Jesus told us to do.

[SPEAKER_00]: To remember the sacrifice he made for us.

[SPEAKER_00]: And it's want to read a passage that Paul wrote to the Corinthian church where he was explaining this process of taking the Lord's supper and we will start with the bread.

[SPEAKER_00]: He said, for I pass on to you what I received from the Lord himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: On the night when he was betrayed the Lord Jesus took some bread and gave thanks to God for it, then he broke it in pieces and said, this is my body which is given for you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Do this in remembrance of me.

[SPEAKER_00]: and now the cup.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the same way, he took the cup of wine after supper, saying this cup is the new covenant between God and his people, and agreement confirmed with my blood, do this in remembrance of me.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really important for us to remember the things that have been passed on to us, especially the things that come from Jesus himself.

[SPEAKER_00]: you just participated in is the continuation of that doctrine, working itself out.

[SPEAKER_00]: And reminding us of everything that Jesus did for us, He gave His life so that we could be free from sin, so that we could have hope in this life so that we could be part of His family, part of this family, it's a wonderful thing and what keeps it working.

[SPEAKER_00]: And what gives us, in one sense, permission to live in harmony together, is that doctrine, that sound teaching that gets passed on.

[SPEAKER_00]: So be intentional about living it out this week, know it, learn it, and live it out in your daily life.

[SPEAKER_00]: Let's stand and worship the God who died for us.