And what it says about the officers of the Church establishing certain orders or rules or regulations in the Church of Christ for the edification of the body. And I'd like to read at 1 Corinthians 14, verse 26 to the end, 1 Corinthians 12 through 14 are chapters in which the Apostle Paul is discussing spiritual gifts. That famous chapter 13 on love actually comes in the context of a discussion of spiritual gifts and actually the troubles in Corinth surrounding their use of spiritual gifts. And in chapter 14, the apostle's speaking about tongue speaking and prophesying, and he's noting that there's a certain disorder in the church in Corinth in their worship services, and it's not good for them or for the glory of God. And so he's calling them to a biblical peace. based on God. And so we're picking it up at 1 Corinthians 14 verse 26. The apostle says, How is it then, brethren, whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation? Let all things be done for edification. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be two or at the most three, each in turn, and let one interpret. But if there is no interpreter, let him keep silent in church and let him speak to himself and to God. Let two or three prophets speak and let the others judge. But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent. For you can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged. And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets. For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak, but they are to be submissive, as the law also says. And if they want to learn something, let them ask their own husbands at home, for it is shameful for women to speak in church. Or did the word of God come originally from you? Or was it you only that it reached? If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord. But if anyone is ignorant, let him be ignorant. Therefore, brethren, desire earnestly to prophesy and do not forbid to speak with tongues. Let all things be done decently. and in order. God's Word. I invite you to take out the Forms and Prayers book and to turn into the Belgian Confession, page 188. Page 188 in the little book in front of you. We've been going through a number of articles here about the church, and we considered the government of the church in Article 30 about office bearers being appointed, and last time how they're to be elected and so forth, and now Article 32, page 188, the order and discipline of the church. We confess this on the basis of scripture. We also believe that although it is useful and good for those who govern the churches to establish and set up a certain order among themselves for maintaining the body of the church, They ought always to guard against deviating from what Christ, our only master, has ordained for us. Therefore, we reject all human innovations and all laws imposed on us in our worship of God, which bind and force our consciences in any way. So we accept only what is proper to maintain harmony and unity and to keep all in obedience to God. To that end, excommunication with all that involves according to the word of God is required. Let's ask for God's help in prayer. Father in heaven, we do pray that your spirit of order and peace would reign in our hearts even through his word tonight. Grant us, Lord, to understand what you desire for your church and for the grace in the hearts to apply that. In Jesus' name we pray that your word be preached truthfully, Lord. Amen. Congregation of Christ, our God is a God of order. That's who he is. That's his design. He's a God of peace. As you look around the world, that's clear in so many different ways. When you look at the seasons of the year, the order of them, when you look at creation, when you look at the way our bodies are formed and so forth, God, is a God of order that's good for us as His creature and it brings glory to His name. And it's obvious that order is necessary, right? If you sent kids off to a school and you discovered that the classroom was a complete mess, total disarray, you'd be upset because you would figure your kids aren't learning anything in school if it's so disordered, right? If there's a business or a company you might go to work for and nobody knows what's going on, you become very frustrated very quickly because you feel like your efforts are not able to be directed in any way that's beneficial. Or if you turn on college football and they've paused all the rules for the day, and any player can do whatever he wants at any time. You might have fun for a few minutes watching it, but you would certainly get tired of it. It would be worthless. There's no rules. It doesn't mean anything. In our families, too, everyone is well-served and love rules when there are rules, when there's some kind of regulation. And so Christian parents are to order the home in a certain way. And that's not just because parents finally want to be in control. They were kids one day, but now they're the parents, so now they want to call the shots. But no, they're to regulate the home for the good of all the members, for the glory of Christ, of course, but then for the well-being of each member of the family. And when we come to the church, it's something similar to that. The Lord Jesus wants his church to have a kind of order that is beneficial for the members so that they can all be built up and can serve in the body in a way that's meaningful. He wants his house to be a house of peace. One reformed commentator on the Belgic reminds us that when John Calvin came to Geneva, Remember, John Calvin ends up being commanded by Pharaoh, William Pharaoh, to stay in Geneva. Calvin was on his way to go study off on his own, and Pharaoh said, no, we need your help in Geneva. They were trying to reform the city. And when Calvin came there, it was a mess, a cesspool of sin. One historian writes, That the Genevan people, they loved being entertained and there was recklessness and revelries and gambling and drunkenness and adultery and blasphemy. Prostitution was sanctioned by the state. The people were ignorant. The priest had taken no pains to instruct them and it set them a bad example. It was a mess. And yet, as the word began to be preached in Geneva and the Reformation took root, the church became ordered, the people were taught, and that order extended out into their lives so that the reformer John Knox could come to say of Geneva some 25 years later that it's the most perfect school of Christ that ever was on earth since the days of the apostles. The chaos in the city was overturned. And that was a result of the order that came into the church. Tonight we want to look at this order. We want to say that Christ maintains a well-ordered church for the glory of his name and for the good of his people. And I'd set before you three points tonight. First of all, the importance of order. Secondly, the protection of liberty. And thirdly, the necessity of discipline. First of all, the importance of order. There's a verse there at the end of 1 Corinthians 14 that is inscribed in the preface to a lot of reformed church orders. A church order is a little booklet of rules that all the churches of our federation have together embraced and said we'll operate as churches together under these rules. And in the preface is 1 Corinthians 1440, let all things be done decently and in order. As I mentioned, these words of the Apostle in 1 Corinthians 14, they come in the context of a worship situation in Corinth that was disorganized. And there were people talking on top of each other, apparently. Everyone wanted to prophesy. Everyone wanted to speak in tongues. Everyone wanted to do their thing. And they're apparently running on top of each other, trampling one another. And people are not being edified. They can't hear what's going on. And you know how it is in these kinds of situations, that it's often the stronger and the more dominant personalities then that begin to press to the front, and it's the weaker personalities that feel injured and become embittered and causes a great breakdown of unity in Christ's church. And so for the good of the creation, for the glory of Christ, the apostle says, let all things be done decently and in order. Not by everyone's whims and desires, not by everyone forcing himself this way and that, not by some kind of rampant individualism, me, my way, I want to do this now. But let the peace of Christ rule in the church. Because, verse 33, God is not the author of confusion, but of peace. Who is the author of confusion? That's the devil, isn't it? He loves to disrupt. He loves to disorder. Satan loves to break apart marriages, break apart homes, break apart churches. This is his business. This is his calling card. Satan is the sower of discord and confusion in all the good will that God has made. God is not a God of confusion. You look at how God made the world. Wonderful ordering of the universe, right? As the Lord separates the waters above from the waters below, as God had separated the light from the darkness, as he separated the dry land from the oceans, God was ordering, as he made plants and animals to reproduce after their kind. There's an ordering in the world that God has made. And Satan comes into that good creation of God to turn it upside down. I mean, even the order right in the garden of God creating the man first to be head of the home, and a wife to stand beside him, and then to rule over creation together. In the moment of sin, it's the animal, the serpent, who tells the woman what to do, and she tells her husband what to do, and the whole order is overturned. But God comes back to the garden and sets it straight. Adam, where are you? Adam, I pointed you. All things should be done decently and in good order, Paul says. Paul's not some kind of neat freak here who can't stand to have anything out of place. This isn't his personality here. He's speaking on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the reason is, at the end of verse 26, let all things be done for edification. To edify, boys and girls, means to build up. Let all things be done for building up. And the apostle is saying that the way you're worshiping in Corinth, it's not building people up. I mean, it's exalting self. You're getting a thrill out of it, but you're not in love building up your brother and sister. So the Lord wants life to be organized also in his church. When you look at the Apostle Paul's instructions to Titus and Timothy, he called them to a kind of ordering of the church. In Titus 1 verse 5, Paul says, this is why I left you in Crete, that you might set in order the things that are lacking and appoint elders in every town as I directed you. And then he gives them qualifications for the eldership office. And to Timothy, Paul gave Timothy a lot of instructions about the church and appointing office bearers and so forth, and then he said, I write to you that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. He reminds Timothy that it's God's house. It's Christ's church. He's the master. And I'm telling you how things ought to go in God's house. And so it's clear that the government of the church was not a matter of human invention. You've already considered that back under Article 30 about the offices of minister, elder, and deacon, that the Lord has appointed these for his church. And then we looked at how those office bearers were to be elected in Article 31. But now Article 32 talks about a kind of order that these office bearers are to ensure within the life of the church. And Article 32 begins by saying, we also believe that although it is useful and good for those who govern the churches to establish and set up a certain order among themselves for maintaining the body of the church, there's in those opening words a kind of recognition that not every detail of the life of the church is explicitly written out in the scriptures. There are many commands, and there are a multitude of principles, but not every detail about how it has to go in the church is expressly, explicitly written out, spelled out in scripture. For instance, we're not told in the Bible how many worship services to have on the Lord's Day or what time they're to be at. We're not told whether we should have a nursery for the children. We're not told if there should be refreshments afterwards. We're not told the precise order of all the elements of our worship service, what the order of worship should be. There's things that the Bible hasn't explicitly laid out. And in our fellowship with other churches, we aren't told precisely how many delegates should be sent to a classes meeting, or how often a synod should meet, or what the process of transferring memberships should entail. There are details that come by reflecting upon the scriptures, seeking to apply the scriptures But details that the officers of Christ's church will have to work out. That's why we can hold up a church order from one reformed denomination next to a church order for another reformed denomination. There could be some differences, because not every detail is prescribed in scripture. There is some latitude, given the different background, the different history, the different local situations, and so forth. But there must be some rules. Belgium Article 32 is again taking aim in two directions, as it often is. The Roman Catholic, which they've left, and the Anabaptists, who are breaking far off in the midst of this Reformation. And the Roman Catholic was the authoritarian that wanted to lay down rules, all kinds of rules, man-made rules, and to bind the people. And the historians say the Anabaptists were kind of going the other way. We don't need any rules. Be led by the spirit kind of mentality. The Reformers in our confession have tried to steer a middle path here between these two heirs. Without any discipline or structure in the church, then it becomes a confused and disordered and unhelpful place. Because we're sinners, right? And because we're sinners, We naturally feel that we want it to be our own way, and we believe that we're right. You know, it's helpful in a house to have manners, right? To have certain rules by which the life of the other is protected. But it's also helpful for the same reason to have rules in the church. Our churches, the United Reformed Churches, have adopted a common church order. Additionally, each congregation has to come up with some certain rules about who can write checks and disperse the church's money, who can have a wedding in the church building, all kinds of particulars that come to mind. And the officers have some calling in regard to this. They have a responsibility to ensure the well-being of the church and that the Lord is honored in His house. Their work could be compared in some ways to parents in a home. Parents have the direct command from God to honor the Lord's Day, so they must see the Lord's Days honored in their family. But then what that takes in terms of precise detail is worked out by the parents, isn't it? How shall we apply the fourth commandment to our family, to our home? It's not a matter in the church of a small group of men imposing their preferences on the congregation. And so office bearers always have to be aware of that, right, and be wary of that. That it never just becomes, you know, what do we like? And since we're the office bearers, we get to do whatever we like. But always this great sense of it's Christ's church, and we are to serve his people. What edifies them? What builds them up? We say in the Belgic, therefore, We accept only what is proper to maintain harmony and unity and to keep all in obedience to God. We only want to do what's good and useful for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so our confession, I think, is quite biblical here. The apostle is distressed for what's going on in Corinth because of what he'd written in chapter 13 about love, that love doesn't seek its own way. Love doesn't press itself forward. bears with each other, love seeks to build up the other, and so that's what the Apostle Paul seeks here. Love for God, love for neighbor. To see that everyone is nourished, that everyone is instructed, that everyone is edified in worship, that everyone has a calling and a place to serve in the church. That's the calling. It's a wonderful thing here, brothers and sisters, if you ask, where's the gospel in this? The gospel in this is that Christ has saved us from ourselves. And he saved us from the chaos of Satan. We are brought by God's word to acknowledge that the me first, my way, my desire, most important, is what's naturally in us. But it's the grace of the Lord Jesus that comes and reorders our hearts and reorders our lives. He caused us to confess our selfishness. And he brings us low, as we read in Ephesians 5 this morning, for the law, right? That he caused us to submit to one another out of reverence for the Lord. There is still in all of us a anti-authoritarian bent, right? We sometimes like to be contrarians just because we don't want anyone telling us what to do. We take pleasure at time in complaining against any rule or any authority. But in the church of Jesus Christ, we're not supposed to do that. We're supposed to pray, Lord, help our office bearers to lead and to guide your flock in a way that's helpful. Help them to institute rules that truly honor you and serve the good of the body. And even when we realize something could be done in a better way, then there's a good way to talk to the office bearers that seeks not to disrupt and disunify, but that seeks to bring greater unity. Liberty, as we're going to talk about next, doesn't mean license to do whatever we want. But the good news here, tonight is that the Lord Jesus holds us all together by his spirit in peace. Let's look at, secondly, the protection of liberty, the protection of liberty. We've seen that it's necessary and beneficial for the office bearers to establish certain rules for the conduct of the church, but there is a great danger, and the great danger is to impose upon God's people rules that bind consciences unnecessarily or wrongly and are a tyranny than to God's people. You notice that in that opening paragraph it says, we believe that it's useful, although it's useful and good for those who govern the churches to establish and set up a certain order among themselves for maintaining the body of the church, that always to guard against deviating from what Christ, our only master, has ordained for us. And therefore, we reject all human innovations and all laws imposed on us in our worship of God, which bind and force our consciences in any way. Our spiritual parents were reacting to the tyranny of the Roman church, which laid upon their worship things that the Bible did not command, things like penance or confessing sins to a priest, or believing that in the Lord's Supper Christ is physically present, or praying to the saints, and all these kinds of things heaped upon God's people, a people who are called by God to come to worship, but they come to worship and they're tyrannized by these man-made doctrines. And so our Belgic here is reminding us that though the office bearers have a calling to set up certain rules, they must be very, very careful that they do not impinge upon the consciences of God's people by demanding they do things that the Bible does not require of them. Christ is the master of the house, and office bearers are but stewards of the house. Remember in Luke chapter 12, Jesus talks about being ready as servants for the master's return. And he comes back from the wedding and he opens and he knocks at the door and so forth. And then Peter says to him, Lord, do you speak this parable only to us or to all people? And then the Lord says, who then is that faithful and wise steward whom his master will make rule over his household to give them their portion of food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. But if that servant says in his heart, my master is delaying his coming, begins to beat the servants and eat and drink and get drunk, then the master will come when he doesn't expect it and bring judgment. The Lord seems to be saying to the apostles and by extension to all church office bearers that the master is coming back to his house. He wants to find his servants. dealing well with the servants of the house, being good stewards of the Lord's house. There have been times, haven't there, when office bearers have engaged in pastoral abuse, pastoral abuse. If you look at the history of the church, if you look at what our Reformed parents wrote about what was going on in their days, church offices were sold by men. Men neglected their office and took the money for serving in that office. Men imposed upon people just their own desires for their own advantage. This was all pastoral abuse. We have to be aware of that. Every rule needs to be based upon Christ's Word. Every rule needs to be in harmony with Scripture. Even if there's not express command in Scripture, is it in harmony with the Word of Christ Jesus? And towards that end, then, we have to, as office bearers, seek to be students of the Word. It's not enough, you know, in office bearers and making rules for the church to say, well, this is what I think we ought to do. This is what I like to do. This is what my wife likes. It has to be, what does Christ say? What does his word say? What are the principles of scripture here that would apply? The office bearers are not free to implement their rules, but what is good according to Christ's word. Again, the Roman Catholic Church especially imposed rules in worship that bound consciences. And the Apostle Paul was very upset about this kind of thing. He said to the Galatians who had come to know righteousness in Christ, then he said to the Galatians in chapter 4 verse 9, but now that you know God or rather are known by God, how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable principles? Do you wish to be enslaved to them all over again? Galatians, we're turning back to circumcision and things, or similar to the Colossians, Colossians 2, therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink. Or with regard to a religious festival, a new moon celebration, or Sabbath day, these are a shadow of the things that were to come, but the reality, however, is found in Christ. These are illustrations, examples of in the New Testament church, particularly with regard to the gospel, that they had received the gospel, free grace in Christ, everything we need is in Christ, and then they started going back. False teachers came and said, you need to do some of these other things, you need to be circumcised, you need to have a certain dietary code, you need to do these other things. Paul says, what are you doing? You're losing your liberty and your freedom and your joy in Jesus by coming under a yoke again. Don't do that. So we want to guard between what Christ commands and between also maybe what he permits. One example in terms of worship in our church order, is the article about worship services. It says that the elders shall call the congregation together for worship on Sunday. And then it says they may call the congregation for worship on other days, like Christmas, or Ascension Day, or New Year's Day. They shall call the congregation on Sundays. They may call the congregation on other days. That's a recognition. Our spiritual parents were burdened with all these extra holy days, and they said, no, the Bible doesn't demand that. And now we've come to say, well, we have the liberty to worship on those days and recognize the great redemptive appointments of history, but we're not commanded to. So one congregation may choose to gather for Christmas. Another one may choose not to gather for Christmas. In one congregation, the pastor may preach a kind of Advent series, as we often do, and other congregations may choose not to. There's nothing demanded in Scripture that you have to set apart December to sing Christmas songs or to have an Advent series. The Bible doesn't require that, but there's a freedom within scripture to recognize these things. So we want to distinguish. We don't want our consciences unnecessarily bound. In Lord's Day 35 of the Catechism, as it talks about the second commandment about worship, it says that we may not worship God in any other way than he's commanded in his word. This is why reformed worship has been rather simple. Because the elements given to us for worship service in the Bible are pretty simple. God speaks to us in his word and the sacraments and we respond with prayers and songs and offerings. And so reformed churches have historically been very low to bring into the worship service something not commanded in scripture because they don't want to bind the consciences of God's people to worship in a way God hasn't commanded. If the elders must call the people to worship, that's a command. We must come and worship. But then the elders may not lay upon God's people things to do in worship that the Bible doesn't command. That would bind their conscience wrongly. So as you can see in the Belgica, Our forefathers are saying very clearly, remember the Belgica is written as, at least partly as an apology, as a defense of the reformed churches and saying, we reject all human inventions, all human innovations and laws imposed on us in our worship, which bind and force our consciences. We're only gonna be bound by the word of God. Because only by the word of God, Can we be sure that what we're doing pleases Him, and therefore only by the Word of God can we act in faith? How can we offer this worship to God if we're not sure that God wants it? And the worship God wants is revealed in His Word. So there was a lot at stake, especially in the area of worship. There's a liberty to God's people, and Christ protects that liberty. And that's good news for us, isn't it? As we look at our lives, as we look at the church, as we look at worship, we can always go back to the Word and say, what is Christ commanded? To be sure, there's things that are not explicitly commanded, that we yield to. The elders say we're going to worship at this time, and then we come, because that's the time and point when we're all going to be together. We can't each decide what hour we're going to come and worship at. That wouldn't work. But in terms of the elements of our worship, we look at what the word has, that we may be sure this is the worship that pleases God. Well, then finally, the Belgic comes to the issue of church discipline. In that last paragraph, to that end, excommunication with all that it involves, according to the word of God, is required. So we've seen the importance of order, the protection of liberty, and then finally the necessity of discipline. Again, there's some liberty here about discipline in terms of the precise steps of discipline, right? Our church has laid out some precise steps about how discipline proceeds. There's even a necessity before moving from one step to another at one point in there to have to go to classes and explain what's going on so that there's some protection for the person under discipline, that the elders are not mishandling the situation. The precise steps one uses might vary because they're not expressly commanded in Scripture, but what is expressly commanded in Scripture is discipline. 1 Corinthians 5, Matthew 18 requires the church to bring discipline upon the life that is consistently impenitent, the one who will not repent and will not repent and will not repent. There must be a formal discipline that ends, finally, in excommunication. But we should recognize from the outset that there's a real sense in which we're all under discipline. We're all disciples of Jesus. We're all being discipled and disciplined by Him. There's a personal discipline, right? We hear God's Word in preaching, we read the Word at home, and we say to ourselves, no, that has to go. Lord, forgive me. Take that away. And we try to be conformed to the word. And there's a mutual discipline. We are our brother's keeper. And so we say to each other, now, is that the right way to do that? Wouldn't this be better? We help each other along. And we submit to that, to one another in that, that we might be built up together. And there's an overseeing discipline of our office bearers, this pulpit tonight in every service is under the discipline of the eldership, that if something from the pulpit is preached that is not biblical, then the elders have to take that into account and deal with that. But there's also this discipline of excommunication, when one is violating not simply some regulation or rule, but the clear express command of Christ, and refuses to turn, and refuses to turn. And this discipline towards excommunication must take place for three reasons, especially, highest level, for the glory of Jesus Christ. because it's not right for somebody to wear the name of Christ and say, I'm a Christian, and then live in a way that's hostile to Christ and misrepresents Christ, then Jesus' name is drug through the mud. Discipline also must be engaged, of course, for the one who's sinning, because that person is wandering from the Lord, and they need to be called back lest they perish eternally. They need to be alerted and say, you're walking away from Christ. You're going to face His wrath. I mean, in that sense, church discipline is only a stating of the word of God, the truth of the word. The elders, when they pronounce discipline, are just stating what is already true. They're making it public, right? That the person is already apart from Christ. They've rejected Christ. But notice in Article 32 here that discipline is also for the good of the body. To read those last two paragraphs, it says, so we accept only what is proper to maintain harmony and unity and to keep all in obedience to God. To that end, excommunication. Discipline is also for the good of the body, the good of the church. Paul makes clear in 1 Corinthians 5 that The purity of the church is always at stake. If sin, unrepentant sin, is allowed to sit unchallenged in the body of Christ, it defiles the whole body, it pollutes the whole body, it tempts everyone to sin, and so it has to be cut off. A failure to discipline is not only a failure to love Christ and a failure to love the one who's wandering, it's a failure to love the whole body, the whole church. And so the unity and the harmony and the well-being of the church is preserved through church discipline. You see, if somebody says, I'm going to follow Satan, I'm going to sow discord in the church, or I'm going to go my own way, I'm going to disregard Christ, I'm going to live the life of chaos, and I'm not turning back, then Christ says there's a remedy. cut off from the church, to be declared to be outside the kingdom so that the unity of my people, the health of my people, the peace of my people may be preserved for my glory. In that sense, there's a mercy of the Lord and the tool of discipline because he shows mercy to his people. Always it's to be engaged with great love, with much prayer, with constant seeking. Even when there's an excommunication, we pray for that person, that the Lord would turn them back and deliver them. And he is able. It's always comforting to know there's not just an excommunication form in our little forms and prayers book, but there's a readmission form. There's a joyous day we pray for when the lost sheep is found and brought home. that the angels of heaven may rejoice in all the church of Christ. So we pray for that. But in all these things, Christ, the head of the church, is governing his people for the glory of his name and for their well-being. In all these articles, brothers and sisters, about the church, in all these things we confess, we ought to see the love of Christ for his people. Christ has placed us upon the earth here. He's united us together. He's called us out of the world and called us in a fellowship with himself and therefore also in a fellowship with each other. Christ, the head of the church, doesn't rule from a great distance, oblivious to what's going on here, but he's given us his word. He rules his church through his word. He grants us office bearers to seek to apply that word, to work out this word, and the life of God's people, along with all the saints to whom God gives his wisdom and grace. What can we do in response to this word? We can pray for the church. In a moment we're going to sing Psalm 122, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. We can confess our own sin, can't we? We can seek to recognize more and more by the Spirit all the places where we where we work discord and not unity. We say things that are harmful. We have a spirit that wants to go our own way. We chafe against Christ, the head of the church. And we could pray for the grace to recognize those places and to repent of them and to say, Lord, give me a humble heart that yields to you, Christ, and therefore seeks to serve my brother and sister. We can do that. can labor at these things, and we can give thanks that we're not on our own in the Church of Jesus Christ. Above all, we want our great King to be glorified. You know, the Queen of Sheba came from the ends of the earth to see Solomon, all of his wisdom. And she was amazed at the order of his kingdom. How blessed you servants are to stand before Solomon in light of his wisdom. But don't we want all of our neighbors to say it about the church? What a blessed people you are. What a king you have, the Lord Jesus. As they see in his church, the kind of peace, the kind of unity, the kind of godliness that they can only dream of. May Christ be praised in his church. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we are grateful that Christ does rule his church. And we acknowledge, oh Lord, our weakness and our sin, our frailty, How patient you are and merciful to us as congregation and as office bearers as we often stumble along. But you, Lord, are great and faithful to uphold. We thank you, Lord, for the peace and unity you give us as a congregation and also, Lord, for the pleasure of having a multitude of congregations in which we're united that are trying to live together in service to you. We pray, Lord, you would show us our failures that you would save us as office bearers in congregation from our heirs, that you would glorify yourself in the midst of your people. We pray, Lord, for any who are wandering from your ways, facing the discipline of your church, that you would call them back, Lord, with much grace and power. We pray for our elders that you uphold them as much responsibility falls upon their shoulders for decision-making, for shepherding, for discipline. We pray that you drive away Satan with all of his chaos and disorder and that Jesus Christ would reign supreme in our hearts and in this house. In Jesus' name we ask it. Amen. Let's sing then.