so Good morning. Welcome to Greenville ARP Church. We're very happy to have you joining us for our morning worship service. I want to extend that welcome to those of you who are joining us via our live stream option and those who are in our fellowship hall. It's good to have you here with us. Turn to pages five and six. I'm going to highlight a couple of announcements. First thing is not included in our announcements, but I'd remind you to fill out our connect cards in this little black binder on one side or the other of your pew. And what this does is it allows our shepherding elders to stay connected with our members, but it's also a valuable resource for us to connect with visitors. So if you're a visitor, you'd like to get some information from the church, then please give us your contact information and we'll be happy to reach out to you. On page five, just a reminder about our Wednesday night activities. If you are planning to join us for our meal, then make sure you've signed up on the Sign Up Genius that was circulated on Friday. If you're a visitor or you haven't yet received the Sign Up Genius, call up to the church office and we can get you signed up. But I'd encourage you to do that Monday if you can. Page six, there's a number of announcements here. I'm just gonna highlight two and they are, just preparatory to get some dates on your calendar and in front of your mind. Our Vacation Bible School for 2025 will be June 15th to 19th. So if you have children or friends or family members that you think would like to attend, please begin to let them know. And also it's a great opportunity for you to volunteer some of your time and energy and gifts to the church. So if you are interested in helping out with VBS, then contact Rebecca Harkins. Lastly, second to the last from the bottom, our 2025 Fellowship Retreat will be held on May 2nd to the 4th, and that's at Bonn-Clarkin Conference Center. A number of you have been to it. It's a great opportunity to dig deeper in terms of relationships and fellowship with members of the church. You're in the beautiful mountains of North Carolina. What more can you ask for? And you have an opportunity to enjoy beautiful fellowship with members of the church. Our theme for our adult time will be Christ, Proverbs and You. So we're gonna be looking at the book of Proverbs and strongly encourage you to join us for that. Those are all the announcements I have. Let us turn our attention to the worship of our God. God calls us into his presence for worship using Psalm 66. Make a joyful noise to God, all the earth. Sing the glory of his name. Give to him glorious praise. All the earth worships you. Let us pray. Almighty God and everlasting Father, we gather and assemble this morning as your children, those whom you have called and elected before the foundations of the world, those who at a point in time in history, you opened our blind eyes that we might behold the glory of Christ, our Savior, and embrace him by faith. We thank you for the adoption that we have received. We are your Children. You are our God bound an eternal covenant to one another. We come before you and thank you for the gift of your son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He has cleansed us from all of our sins. He has given us new life through his resurrection from the dead. We owe all to him. And we are ever grateful to him for the saving blessings that he has poured out on us. We pray to you as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We pray for your Holy Spirit to join us, meet with us, be present with us today, to open our eyes, to see things in your word that maybe to this point in our spiritual growth and development we haven't seen. Illuminate our minds, Holy Spirit, we ask and pray. Draw us to Christ. Feed us as we participate in the word, but also in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper later in our service. We come to you and we pray as Christ taught us with the following words. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. You'll please take your hymn books, turn to hymn number 374, we will join together in singing. All hail the power of Jesus' name. O hail the pow'r of Jesus, with heav'nly joys first reborn! Ring forth the royal diadem, He was chosen great, He ransomed from the fall. Hail Him who saved you by His grace, And crowned Him Lord of all! Hail Him who saved you by His grace, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? To give all majesty a smile, and crown him Lord of all. To give all majesty a smile, and crown him Lord of all. and proudly at his feet they fall, we'll join thee Amen. Please be seated. As we continue in our worship, I invite you to take a moment with me. This is our practice here. We'll confess our own private sins silently before the Lord for a few moments, and then we'll gather together with that confession of sin found in your bulletin. So let's pray to our God now. Now would you join me together in prayer? Merciful God, in your gracious presence we confess our sin and the sin of this world. Although Christ is among us as our peace, we are a people divided against ourselves as we cling to the values of a broken world. The fears and jealousies that and turn them into pawns of oppression. Lord have mercy upon us, heal and forgive us, set us free to serve you in the world as agents of your reckoning. Having confessed our sin before God, it's good and right for us now to hear His voice, to hear from His Word, the assurance of His love and pardon unto us. We find these good words in the prophet Ezekiel, the 36th chapter. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean. From all your uncleanness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, And a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Beloved, believe in that good news now and forevermore. Through Christ alone my hope is found. He is my light, my strength, my song. solid ground. Climbed through the fiercest drought and storm. The heights of love, the depths of peace, when fears are stilled with shining seas. My comforter, my all in all, here in the world of In Christ alone, who took on flesh, fullness of God in helpless way, this gift of love and righteousness, stolen by the ones He came to save, Jesus died, the wrath of God was satisfied. For every sin on him was laid, here in the death of Christ I live. There in the ground his body lay, light of the world, my God. Christ has lost his grip on me, for I am his, and he is mine. He is bought with the precious blood of Christ. No guilt in life, no fear in death, Jesus, that's my destiny. No more of faith, no seam of man, can ever hold me from His hand. Here in the power of Christ I stand. Amen, indeed. I invite you to stand with us so we get the great privilege of affirming our faith. We sang just a few moments ago that with yonder sacred throne we at his feet may fall and join the everlasting song. Well, this is a part of that everlasting song that we get to participate in this morning. So I ask you, Christian, in whom do you believe? I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, Praise ye the glory of the Lord. Praise the Lord, the Son, the Holy Ghost. Amen. Please be seated. Let's go again to our God together in prayer. Lord, our God, we come to you this morning where you only have the words of eternal life. And so as we come to you, God, we seek to hear your word. We seek to hear the voice of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, would you help us? Would you unstop our ears and open our eyes and soften our hearts? Even as we prepare, O Lord, to sit at the feet of Jesus, to sit under the preaching of your Word, to hear it read, O Lord, we pray that your Spirit would move in a mighty way and that you would help us. Father, we come to you in that way because we're a needy people. We sit on this side of the veil, on this side of glory, We still exist in this world and in a state of sin and misery. But we thank you, O Lord. We praise your name with joy and thanksgiving in our heart that you have not left us in that estate wherein we were created, O God, that we have fallen into because of our own sin and unrighteousness. You came in the Lord Jesus Christ. You reached down from heaven to earth. You condescended yourself even and were made low, taking on the form of a servant. Not counting equality with God, a thing to be held on to. Lord, you have come to be made like us in every way. to sympathize with our weaknesses, to know what it means to be human. And yet you are without sin. You are perfect, O Lord. Spotless, matchless. O God, you are full of righteousness. And so as we come to you, we're thankful that you not only know all things, but you know us. You know the inward recesses of our hearts. You know our weaknesses and how we need help. And so we come to you, Father, and we pray that you would again remember us, that you would hear our prayers. Oh, Lord, we think of those particularly in the life of our own church who are in the midst of need and affliction. Lord, we think of those who are ailing bodily, those who are in need of healing and restoration and strength and vigor. Lord, we think of those who are grieving the death of loved ones. We pray for these, Lord. We pray for Alan Avra, for Maurice and Martha Beckham, for Billy Brady and Cynthia Cook, for Deb Culbertson, for Kim Gamble, for Allison Greer, for Hannah Gill, for Hogan Harrison, Anne Huckabee, Robert David Junker, for Teresa Lewis and Paul Presley, Nell Renew, for Jeff Sartain, for Tanya Shoffner, Lord, we continue to pray for the Gill family and the Vickery family that you would comfort them, especially drawing near to them, helping them to feel and to know your love and your peace. Lord, we pray also for those in our midst who are suffering the affliction of loneliness, who are grieved in their heart and feel isolated, who feel depressed and downtrodden. Lord, may they take heart in the good company of the psalmist, who can say, why are you cast down, O my soul? Hope now in God, for we will again praise you, O Lord, even when we have not the words on our lips to pray or to praise you. When our hearts are dull and unmoved, O Lord, we thank you for Christ, the great psalm singer, who sings for us, who prays for us even now in the midst of our worship. God, we pray especially for Your Spirit to move as it has already been prayed that You would warm us and soften us and move us to see the glories and the excellencies of our God to come and to worship You. Lord, we pray for those even beyond our midst We continue to pray for our sister congregations here in this town. We pray for Devonshire Road and for Village. Lord, we pray for these churches, that you would bless the ministry of their pulpits even now, that you would uphold Jay and Andrew as they preach, that you would move powerfully, that men and women and children would be encouraged in their faith, just as we will be encouraged in a few moments from Todd. Lord, we pray for those congregations that you would bless the marriages and families represented, that you would move in the ministries and programs of their churches just as you would move in ours. We ask humbly, O God, as your Spirit moves in our midst this morning, that you would, like a great and mighty rushing wind, overflow our bounds. that our cup would runneth over, that we would be a blessing in our workplaces, in our extended families, O Lord, in our neighborhoods, that you would place within us the courage of Christ, that you would place on our lips the word of Christ, that you would warm us with the heart of Christ, that we would be about the business of testifying to the goodness and the truth and the beauty of our Christ. And oh God, even now as we continue in our worship, I pray that you would especially conform us more and more into the image of our dear Savior. That you would enable us more and more to die into our sin and to live in His righteousness. And that you would help us, oh God, as we feed on your word and as we feed on Christ. We ask this in His mighty and precious name. Amen. Amen. I love you. From the living Church of Jesus, from the Lamb that with Him anew comes to live for all eternity. Turn to Acts chapter 2. This section of the New Testament records the day of Pentecost and the first sermon, Christian sermon spoken by the apostle Peter to a largely predominantly Jewish audience. Peter has some pretty hard things to say to that audience. We're going to pick up with the last verse of his sermon in verse 36, and we'll read through to the end of the chapter. Peter says, let the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him, that is Jesus, the one that they crucified, both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and they said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, repent, And be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off. Everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself. And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized and they were added that day about 3000 souls. And here's the text we'll be considering. And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of bread and the prayers and all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles and all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day, those who were being saved. Let's pray. Our Lord and our God, we thank you for your word here, recorded by your servant, Luke. We pray that as we meditate and reflect on this, that your spirit would give us guidance and would apply this word to our hearts, We would see the beauty and the purity and the innocence of the early church as recorded in these verses. And we would seek to mold our church around that ideal model. We pray that your Holy Spirit would guide us in this process, would lead us, that your Holy Spirit would empower us to be the people you would have us to be, to be the church that you would have us to be. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. Last week, I introduced us to our ministry theme for 2025, which is growing together. We looked at Ephesians chapter four, verses 15 and 16. And from that text, we learned that the church grows when every member is active in the life of the church, when every member is performing and doing the things that they are called to do. It's much like the body. Paul describes it much like the body. If some of the body decides it wants to take the month off, that's a problem because the whole body works in unison and together. And that's the heart of what the elders want for this congregation. That's why we chose this theme. We want every member to be contributing to the life of the body as they are able to do so. And why is that? How does Paul describe it in Ephesians 4, 15 and 16? Well, he tells us that our individual growth, and we all want to grow as Christians, right? We want to become closer to Christ and walk more worthy of our high calling in the gospel. But the way Paul presents it in that text is that we grow in proportion to the body, to the whole. Individually, we need others, we need other members of the church to aid us, to assist us in that growth process, much like the human body grows in proportion to the whole. Today, we're going to look at the first progress report, we may call it that, progress report of the New Testament Church. It's a little snapshot of church life in the early Christian era. John Calvin, one of the great leaders of the Protestant Reformation, says that this text, Acts 2, 42 to 47, is a lively picture of the true church. It is the model church. To my left and to your right is this beautiful baby grand piano. David Coleman played beautifully for us in Christ Alone. At least two times a year, it needs to be tuned. Fluctuations in temperature and humidity make the wood expand and contract. And it is also that expanding and contracting of the wood causes the piano chords to, it affects them, their strength or their tension that is on them. And this causes notes over time to go a little bit flat and it alters the sound. Tuning the piano ensures that each string plays its appropriate sound. Similarly, the church gets out of tune. The stressors, the wear and tear of life, the influence of whatever culture we are affected by at a particular given time in church history, the pressures of the devil, the failure of our sinful nature, selfish agendas, et cetera, cause the church to get out of tune. So Acts 2 42 to 47 is like a tuning for us. It puts us back into the right spiritual note that we as a church need to be playing. Let's look at this text. First thing I want you to notice is the culture of the early church. Every time I read this, and I've preached on this text a number of times, emphasizing various parts of it, but I'm struck by the opening verse. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, fellowship, breaking bread, and prayers. They devoted themselves to a certain course of action, to a certain number of activities in their worship of God. This term devoted, the Greek means to be steadfast and single-minded in fidelity to a certain course of action. Steadfast, single-minded focus in a particular pattern of behavior or course of action. Can you think of something that either you are devoted to or you have been devoted to in the past? I think we all can think of something. Maybe it's learning a skill. Maybe you are devoted to playing the guitar or the piano or some other type of musical instrument and you took care You were diligent, you were devoted and committed to learning that skill. Maybe it was baking or sewing. Maybe it was some kind of an athletic event or sport that you wanted to become good at. I think there's two powerful motives that produce devotion. And one is fear. We can be devoted out of the motivation of dread or fear of something. Supposedly one of the most fear-inducing, anxiety-causing things is public speaking. You have to get used to that as a pastor. But how often, let's say you're a middle school or high school or college age student, and you're preparing a presentation that you know you're gonna have to give in front of the whole class. And you really focus in and you're devoted to studying and preparing. And if you dug down into the deeper motive, you would find out that your reason for that is you are fearful of failing. of just making a mess and getting all of your facts confused and mumbling and having your classmates laugh at you. Fear of failure can lead to intense devotion. What if you have a health problem? You go to your doctor and he tells you this is what you need to be doing to get better. And you are devoted to that course of action. Why? Out of fear of what the consequences of this health problem may potentially cause. Maybe it's a legalistic approach to religion. I'm going to be at church. I'm going to be involved in my church because I'm scared if I don't, God is going to bring judgment upon me. That was very real for this Jewish community that Peter is speaking to. The fear of God's judgment can lead to a rigid adherence to rules and regulations. Ever felt that way in your Christian life? Ever find yourself doing things because you fear God may be angry with you? But there's a second motivation, a better motivation, and that's love. What better embodies the definition of devotion, single-minded dedication and focus to a certain course of action in those early months and years of a romantic relationship? Now, let me be clear, that hasn't worn off for me yet. Just avoiding getting into any trouble when I get home. It's gone on forever, it's just getting better. But you know those early stages of love. Man, you're devoted to texting, you're devoted to saying kind things to the girl or the boy. Love causes devotion. And I think that that's what's motivating them in Acts chapter 42 to 47. You see, these early disciples of Christ had a radical encounter with a loving and merciful God. Look back at verse 36, 37, and 38. See, the Jews were very committed to the covenant Lord of the Old Testament. And what Peter tells them in this sermon is, hey, you know the God that you so highly esteem, the covenant Lord, who gave the law on Sinai, who delivered you out of Egypt? Let me tell you who he is. It's that guy, that man, Jesus, who, by the way, you murdered, you crucified. What would you do or how would you respond if you heard that your God, who you claim to be so committed to, so in love with, who you wanted to worship, you said, crucify him, crucify him. You put him to death. That's what Peter is saying in verse 36, let the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him, that's Jesus, both Lord and Christ, the covenant God. This Jesus whom you crucified. And what is their response? Oh my goodness, what have we done? Is there any hope for us now? We've committed the biggest sin you could possibly commit. They were cut to the heart. What shall we do, they ask, and Peter says, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the forgiveness of your sins. This Jesus, who you crucified, actually gave up his life for you. to cover you with His grace and with His love, to remove from you the cloud of divine judgment and wrath, so that you could enter into this beautiful, loving relationship with the triune God. Have you experienced this? Do you know what it means to have your sins forgiven? A church that is fulfilling its spiritual responsibilities with, as they're described here, with glad and generous hearts, praising God, is not a church that is devoted based on the motivation of fear. It's a church that's devoted based on the motivation of love. So I want that to set the tone, the culture of this church. They were enraptured and overwhelmed because of the experience of gospel goodness poured out on them. And that's what leads them to do the things that they do. So they are devoted. But what are they devoted to? And this brings us to our second point and really to the driving point of our 2025 ministry theme. What are they devoted to? What are they given to? What does a spirit-filled, apostolic-led church commit itself to? Well, we're presenting a model for you to guide you and to encourage you and to challenge you a little bit. We're calling it the one plus one plus one model. And we aim to encourage and to challenge every member to be involved in three things. Worship, which is what you're doing here. That's plus one, that's one. Plus being involved in the life of the church, in some type of a community relationship building aspect of your Christianity. And then third, your third plus one, is that you are actively serving through volunteering of your time and skills to the life of the church. You're contributing. Basically this, you're invested. We want every member to be invested in this church. Why? Because Christ loves you. He died for you. He died for all of us collectively. May that be our motive. So what are they devoted to? Well, the first thing in our one plus one plus one model is worship. Verse 42, we read, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayers. Sounds a lot like what we're doing. The teaching is apostolic teaching. It's founded upon the word of God. We're in fellowship together. It's an in-person activity. where we are assembled together. We are going to break bread, the Lord's Supper. We pray together. We sing together. What Luke is observing in the church is a commitment to worship. Worship is a grateful and joyful response to God's glory and grace. It is our gift of adoration and praise to our Creator, our Savior, and our Lord. I want you to notice a couple of things about this community. Verse 43, in the midst of the signs and the wonders that were being done. And we would argue that that was done primarily through the apostles. It was limited in scope. And it was meant to authenticate the message that they were teaching for people down through history. Just like Pentecost is a one-time event. We don't have Pentecost happening on a Sunday to Sunday basis. So too, we don't have the same expression of these gifts. But there's a principle at work. They were in awe because those signs and wonders signified the presence of God with this community. The spirit enables us to sense the presence of God with us now in the year 2025. Worship should be an act of awe and reverence. but it also should be marked with joy. They received their, in verses 46 and 47, we read that they received their food with glad and generous hearts and they were praising God. So you can have both things together. You can have awe and reverence and joy and gratitude. And it's that mix that you see in the early church here. The apostolic teaching, fellowship, sacraments, and prayer were the means of grace, the spiritual instruments that God uses to channel grace to unite us to Christ and to lavish upon us all of his benefits. We want that and we need that in order to grow together. Think of an ivy if you're in ICU or in a situation where you are pretty significantly ill. You have an IV and it provides nutrients and medication to your body. It channels it into your bloodstream. When in a sense the Holy Spirit is channeling into our souls through the preaching of the word, the reading of the word, prayer, sacraments, Christ and all of his benefits. That's why they were devoted to these things. They wanted more of Christ. Worship is central to the life of the Christian community and to the life of a faithful church. So I want to encourage you and even challenge you. Let me just ask you, are you like these early followers of Christ? Are you devoted to worship? And if you're saying, I could be more so, then seek the gospel. It's that love of Christ and that awareness of what he's done for you that will motivate you more than anything. That's the one. The second plus one. is that they were devoted to spiritual community. In verses 44 and 46, we're told that they were together. And they were together in worship, but also in each other's homes, in these small gatherings, where they engaged socially. They had spiritual community with one another. The key principle here is that God designs us to flourish in close community with other Christians. And the elders therefore encourage and challenge you to get connected with what we're calling an affinity group. And that means a smaller community within the wider life of the church. That could be a Sunday school class, a men's Bible study on Wednesday or Friday morning, a women's Bible study, I mean, on Thursdays and Sundays, or a women's circle, a small group. Get connected. Do you have friends within this congregation? People who you can share things with, spiritually speaking, struggles, times when you need prayer. That's really healthy and good. That's something that we want to see cultivated in our fellowship. We wanna be a group of Christians who are journeying together in Christ. J.I. Packer, a British theologian, wrote the book, Knowing God, the classic Christian work. Towards the end of the book, in some concluding remarks, he says this. It is only as one gives oneself in human relationships, in relationships that go sometimes right and sometimes wrong, as all relationships do, that experiential knowledge of God becomes real and deep. And that's what this early church experienced. They worshiped together, but then they lived life together in little pockets of Christian community within that 3,000 people that were worshiping together in the early life of the church. We wanna see that. And if you're lacking that, come talk to me or Phil or Pastor Griffin or one of our elders. We wanna help you find that in your church experience. And then the last thing, we see that they devoted themselves to voluntary service. In verse 45, they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they receive food with glad and generous hearts." There's a lot we could say here about this principle of selling their possessions and giving to those who have need. But I want to distill a larger principle from that. The focus here in verse 45 is on material provisions, but it does provide this key principle. They sacrificially gave of something that they possessed for the good of others. And what we're asking is, you have gifts, you have time, you have energy, you have resources. How are you using them for the benefit of this body? We need those things. We need everyone performing their various part so that we collectively can grow. We must contribute our gifts of time and energy and resources just like in the human body as I mentioned in the earlier part of the sermon. We are mutually dependent on one another. So we challenge you. And we encourage you, are you devoted to this? Are you devoted to worship? To plugging in and developing and deepening spiritual community in the life of the church? And to giving back to the life of the church from your time and energy and resources as a contribution to aid in our collective growth? The apostolic church, the spirit-filled and led church, it appears in Acts 2, 42 to 47, is devoted to these things. And we wanna be devoted to them as well. So in a couple of weeks, maybe a little longer than that, maybe a month, the staff is putting together a pamphlet that's going to provide opportunities, ways that you can plug in to develop community, ways that you can volunteer of your time and energy to the service of the church. So we're gonna get that in your hands, hard copies, so that you can start to prayerfully consider how you can get more involved and embrace this one plus one plus one model of ministry. Let's pray. Our Father and our God, we come to you and we thank you for this snapshot in Acts 2, 42 to 47 of the early church. We pray, Lord, that you would help us to become like it and to model it ourselves in our church life. And I pray, Lord, that we would be motivated by love to devote ourselves to faithful attendance in worship, to connecting as a spiritual community of believers, to encourage and build each other up, and to give of our talents and our gifts and our time and our energy to the betterment of this body. Lead us in this journey, we pray. Help us to see fruit from our labors in the course of this year. We pray that it ultimately would draw us closer to you and draw you closer to us, we pray in Christ's name, amen. The Lord's Supper is a means of grace. God has given this sacrament to bless the church. As one pastor put it, it is the delivery system that God instituted to bring grace, that is spiritual power, spiritual change, spiritual help, spiritual fortitude, spiritual blessing to needy souls on earth. We are given bread and wine as signs and seals that represent Christ and his benefits. The bread represents Christ's body broken for our sins. The cup represents Christ's blood. In our physical bodies, we take food and drink to nourish and sustain physical life. So too in this sacrament by the work of the Holy Spirit through faith, we receive Christ to nourish and strengthen our souls. Christ is not physically present in the bread and the wine. He remains seated at the right hand of his father in heaven. No transformation of the elements occur. However, these signs do point us to heaven where Christ is seated at the right hand of the father. Although not physically present, Christ is indeed spiritually present through the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit in this sacrament. So let me ask you, Are you carrying the guilt and shame of your sin? Well, come to this sacrament. Come to Jesus, the one who promises to carry your sin to the cross and make full atonement for it. Do you feel distant from God, unworthy of being in his holy presence? Again, come to Jesus, the one who gives you access into the holy of holies. Is your faith weak? Are you troubled with doubts? It's not a time to run away from the sacrament, it's a time to run towards it. Come to Jesus seeking strength and protection from the devil's deceits. Remember it is his mighty works and not your weak faith that brings salvation. So look to him. Come to Jesus and find in Him all spiritual blessings that you need for life in fellowship with God. Charles Wesley, in his well-known hymn, O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing, expresses this so poignantly and well. Jesus, the name that charms our fears, that bids our sorrows cease, to his music in the sinner's ears, to his life and health and peace. The elders encourage and invite all believers and all members of this congregation to come and to participate in this meal. And the greater you feel your need, the greater you feel your spiritual lack and unworthiness, the more you should come because that need and that lack, those doubts are ultimately fulfilled and met in Christ. If you do not profess belief in Jesus Christ, you haven't repented of your sins fled to Christ for forgiveness through his atoning work on his cross. And we ask that you look at the back pages of our bulletin. There are some prayers that you can pray. You can speak to myself or Pastor Phil after the service, we'd love to talk to you. We ask that you refrain from participating in this meal. This is for believers and their Savior. I'm gonna read the words of institution from 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Paul writes, but I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way also, he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we thank you for instituting this sacrament, a sacrament that is for the good of your people, a sacrament that points us to Jesus Christ, that focuses our spiritual nourishment on him as the only source And we pray that we would, by faith, feed well on Christ today, that our souls would be full and rejoicing as we depart this church service. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. some instructions about the distribution of the elements. The elders will come and give the bread. You are free to go ahead and take that now immediately. You can eat the bread. Dan Eller will be providing the gluten-free option. So if you need gluten-free, just raise your hand as he works his way down the center aisle. The element of the cup, the juice, if you will please hold that, we're going to participate in that together as an expression of our unity at the end of the communion service. Oh. Amen. Amen. Good. and an you Amen. you Christian, this cup represents the blood of Christ, the blood of the new covenant shed for you. Take and drink. Let us pray together. Almighty God, only you could accomplish things such as this. that you would feed your people with so little, filling us to the point of overflowing in your Holy Spirit, not just because of the small morsel of bread or tiny cup of juice, but oh God, through the power of your Spirit, with Christ and all his benefits, You have filled our souls. And so help us now in the power of your spirit to feed upon the Lord Jesus, not only in this moment, not only in this hour, but throughout our week and throughout our life, that we might live all of life to your glory before your very face. We thank you, we love you, oh God. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's conclude our worship as we stand and sing together hymn 196.