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[0:00] If you've got a Bible, you can go to the New Testament book of Romans, in Romans chapter 12.! We're going to read the first 13 verses there.

[0:10] The Apostle Paul writes, and he says, verse 1 of chapter 12, he says, Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God.

[0:40] This is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is, His good, pleasing and perfect will.

[0:56] For by the grace given me, I say to every one of you, do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you.

[1:10] For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.

[1:22] We have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith. If it is serving, then serve. If it is teaching, then teach.

[1:34] If it is to encourage, then give encouragement. If it is giving, then give generously. If it is to lead, do it diligently. If it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. Love must be sincere.

[1:47] Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor serving the Lord.

[2:00] Be joyful in hope. Patient in affliction. Faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

[2:13] This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Let's ask for God's help as we study together this morning. Father, your word is truth, and we would ask for a great mercy this morning, and that is that you would speak this truth into our hearts, that we wouldn't just engage in some sort of intellectual exercise where we now know a little bit more about the Bible, but that the Bible would be that living word that pierces our soul, tells us who you are, tells us who we are, and tells us how to know and love you and be in relationship with you.

[2:46] Lord, let us see Jesus. Let us see his love and be changed by it. This is all a work of your spirit, and so we ask for his help. For Christ's sake. Amen.

[2:57] So as you would have heard last week, we're doing a little micro series, a three-week series on the values of the Union Chapel. These are three values we sort of come back to every two years or so.

[3:11] And so for many of you sitting here, if you've been here for longer than two years, hopefully you're going, I know this stuff. I could probably preach half of the sermon for you because I'm a good person who just takes note of what we're doing and teaching at the church.

[3:23] For some of you maybe newer than that, you're going, okay, this is new. This is interesting. This is who the Union Chapel is. These values help to shape us. They're not necessarily our doctrinal statements. If you want to know what it is that we believe, you can go get the Westminster Confession of Faith, and that tells you what we believe.

[3:38] But it helps us give a bit of a shape to how we're trying to live out those beliefs in our specific context here in the city. Last week we looked at the first one, and that is that we're gospel-centered.

[3:49] This week we look at the next one, the second one, that we're community-based. You can go on our website. You can read the more detailed version of these there. But that is our second value, that we aspire to be a church that is community-based.

[4:05] Now, you say, well, what exactly do you mean by that? That word community can be very, very broad. I mean this. When you believe in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God has reconciled you back to himself through the finished work of Jesus, you've repented of your sin, you've placed your faith in him to do that thing, when you believe that, not only is there this vertical relationship that is established between you and God, but there is now a horizontal relationship that is established between you and between other Christians.

[4:36] So Christianity is a little bit like a very marked advert. And only those of us older know what very marked adverts are, because now this is a store, and I don't think anyone watches adverts on television anymore.

[4:49] But Christianity is like a very marked advert. Believe in Jesus, and you get peace with God. But wait, there's more. You get put into a new relationship with other Christians.

[5:02] You get that alongside. It's this horizontal relationship now has come because of the vertical relationship. The horizontal has come because of the vertical. And the concrete expression of that horizontal relationship is what I want to speak about this morning.

[5:19] What does that actually look like, to say we now have this horizontal relationship with other Christians? The Bible uses several metaphors to describe the relationship between different believers.

[5:29] But there's one metaphor that the Apostle Paul likes a lot, that he seems to come back to over and over again, and that is he calls the church a body. People who, although diverse, are inseparately bound to each other because of what Christ has done.

[5:44] Three places actually in the New Testament where he gives special attention to this idea of the body. It's in Romans 12, where we just read. It's in 1 Corinthians 12, and it's in Ephesians 4. And we're actually going to jump a little bit between those three passages, but Romans 12 will probably be the sort of anchor passage in that.

[6:02] I want you to see four things. I know sometimes I only have two points, so four, you're going to be like, how long is this going to be? Don't worry, we'll get through that. But four things. The call of the body, the glue of the body, the task of the body, and the tools of the body.

[6:20] So the call, the glue, the task, and the tools of the body. Here's the first one, the call of the body. For Paul, this gospel word that he's preached about, and actually that whole first section up to Romans 12 is really him expounding on the riches of the gospel.

[6:37] But this gospel word, when it's believed, it creates a gospel community. When you repent and you believe in the good news of Jesus, God's spirit comes and he dwells in you. You are baptized into the spirit, and as a result, you straight away enter into a spiritual community of people who have also been baptized into that one spirit.

[6:59] So Paul puts it this way, for example. This is in 1 Corinthians 12, verse 13. He says, To make it a little bit clearer, listen to what he says in Ephesians 4, verses 4 to 6.

[7:22] He says, There is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all.

[7:36] And then he's even got the same idea in Romans 12, although there it's much shorter and more abridged. Romans 12, verse 5. In Christ, we, though many, form one body. So if you're in Christ, if you're a believer in Jesus Christ, because you believe the gospel, God's spirit has come into you, made you alive, and you also now have this new spiritual community.

[7:59] You have one, you get the other. It's a package deal. Now here's what Paul says you should do with this spiritual reality.

[8:10] In Ephesians 4, 3, he says, Make every effort to keep the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace. Make every effort to keep the unity of this spiritual reality.

[8:21] So the Christian who is sitting next to you right now is spiritually united to you. You're going to spend eternity with them in glorious community.

[8:32] I know some of you are looking at, is that really going to be glorious if it's this person who's with me? But yes, it's going to be glorious for eternity. Paul is saying, don't wait.

[8:44] Don't wait for eternity. Start living it out now. Make an effort. You can't just sit back and rest on the reality of the spiritual truth.

[8:55] You actually have to practice it in real life. Make it a tangible, functional, real, living, breathing thing. So for example, I have a marriage certificate that says I'm married to my wife, Robin.

[9:08] I have two birth certificates that say that Genevieve is my daughter and a Christian is my child. So status-wise, theologically, legally, as far as social convention goes, we're a family.

[9:24] Okay? By any reasonable definition, we are a family. But if I lived in Seapoint, where I've always wanted to live, if Robin lived in Stellenbosch, where she's always wanted to live, if Genevieve lived in New York so she could be on Broadway, and if Christian lived in London so he could play for Arsenal, and if we never ever spoke to each other, ever, or communicated with each other, you would say, well, that's one incredibly dysfunctional family.

[9:57] You have the status of a family, but really, are you family? Are you really family? Paul says, take the spiritual status that you have as a united body and turn that into a tangible reality of people sharing their lives together.

[10:18] Make every effort. That is what we are called to do. That is the call of the body, according to Ephesians 4. If the Union Chapel, if this church is to value being community-based, then there has to be a living, breathing, flesh-and-blood, life-on-life community here that demonstrates that the spiritual community actually exists.

[10:42] Now, the fact that we need to make every single effort, and the text literally says, exert oneself. The fact that we need to make every effort suggests this is not an easy thing to do.

[10:53] It's a difficult thing to do. And so we need glue. We need good glue that keeps the body together. The spiritual status of the body, that is indestructible.

[11:04] Nobody can break that because that's the work of God. Nobody can break the spiritual status of the body, but because human sinfulness comes along, because of our flesh, that flesh-and-blood body on the ground is often very fragile.

[11:18] And it's prone to come apart sometimes, and so we need really, really good glue. So here's the second thing, the glue of the body. If you go to that passage that we read from there, Romans 12, most of Paul's discussion about the body is actually in verses 4 through to verse 8, but on either side of that section, that discussion of the body, he has these two bookends that are critical to the flourishing of the community that he's speaking about.

[11:44] So in verse 3, at the front end, he says, That's the first bookend.

[12:02] The other bookend comes in verse 9 where he says these words, Love must be sincere. So have sober assessment of yourself. One hand.

[12:14] Love with sincerity on the other. Those are the bookends. Those are the glue that we need. You have those two things in your community, and you have a community that sticks together.

[12:26] So think about this. Sober judgment of yourself. Don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather with sober assessment of yourself. How do you assess yourself? Paul tells us, Well, assess yourself in accordance with the faith God has distributed to you.

[12:41] Now, that can be a very confusing verse because in the surface reading, it looks like Paul is saying this. And this is what I thought for a long time, but it looks like Paul is saying, God gives each person a certain amount of faith.

[12:54] And if you've got a lot of faith, well, then you'll be like super humble and sober-minded. If you've got a little bit of faith, then you'll just be a little bit humble and a little bit sober-minded.

[13:07] But God apportions faith accordingly, and you just kind of deal with what you get. I don't think that's what it means. In the original language of the text, it literally reads that God has distributed to each of us a measure of faith, or perhaps even the measure of faith.

[13:26] So there's a really, really smart New Testament professor by the name of Doug Moo who wrote a big, fat commentary on Romans. I actually got a chance to do an intensive class on Romans with him many years ago. But Doug Moo says that word measure that you see there in the text is not being used like the word measure in measuring out a cup of baking flour for a cake, but rather measure in terms of a standard.

[13:54] Like when that incredibly foolish boy tries to date your daughter, and you stare him down one day, and you say, how do you possibly think you can measure up to my girl?

[14:08] That's how the word measure is being used there. There's a standard according to which we need to soberly assess ourselves. And he tells us what it is.

[14:19] He says it's the standard of faith. Up until this point in the book of Romans, Paul has used faith to refer to simple trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. That's the standard we measure ourselves up against.

[14:31] The measure of the Christian is not how smart you are, or how emotionally intelligent you are, or how enthusiastic you are, or how hardworking you are.

[14:41] The measure of the Christian is the same for every single one of us. Do you have faith in the substitutionary work of Jesus on the cross saving you from sin and death? That's the measure of faith.

[14:52] The way that you're supposed to think about yourself in sober judgment, like Paul says, is not on the basis of anything that you do or anything that you contribute to this whole equation, but on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done.

[15:05] His work is the measure of faith. Maybe you've heard this quote, well you would have if you've been here for a period of time, you've probably heard this quote before, but you're probably not sure where it comes from.

[15:18] It comes from a man by the name of Jack Miller, who was a prominent Presbyterian minister in the second half of the 20th century. He said this, and many others have used it since and popularized it, but he said, you're more sinful and flawed in yourself than you ever dared believe, yet at the very same time you are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than you ever dared hope.

[15:41] Think about that. You are so sinful that Christ had to die to save you, yet because of his death you are now so incredibly loved and cherished by God.

[16:00] Now do you see why measuring yourself against that standard of faith would actually give you such healthy, sober judgment of who you are? Because you'd be full with humility on the one hand, because you didn't earn your salvation.

[16:18] You didn't get into Jesus' good books because you were such an upstanding citizen, such a moral specimen that we were all looking at you and saying, oh wow, you should really be a Christian. Look how good you are. You weren't.

[16:29] You needed to be dragged into the kingdom, kicking and screaming. That's got to make you humble. Jesus had to die to get you in. So rip any sense of superiority out from underneath you.

[16:43] But at the same time then, you don't need to feel deeply inferior in relation to those around you. Those who appear to achieve more than you or look better than you or be smarter than you.

[16:58] Because Christ stood in your place. Your place. He's given you his record. He's justified you before his father. He's accepted you into his family.

[17:10] And so you don't need to feel inferior. You don't need to feel lesser or weaker. Now do you see how holding those two things brings such sober balance to your view of self?

[17:23] Humility without shame. Self-deprecation without being lesser. Assess yourself in sober judgment according to that measure of faith.

[17:33] But then on the other end, the other book end, Paul says love with sincerity. Literally love without hypocrisy.

[17:45] Love without a mask on. If we define love as I hope we would as something more than just sort of warm fuzzies towards another person but rather as a sort of self-giving of yourself, a deep self-giving of yourself for another person, deep commitment to think and to act favorably towards another person, then I think it might be easy to see why you can be tempted to love with insincere love.

[18:10] Love with a mask on. Because you can be tempted to do loving things for a person, serve them, say affirming things to them, but that can all be your sort of outer posture without your heart truly loving them.

[18:29] And you might say, well why would a person do that? Well to get things from other people. So you can outwardly love people to get something, to get their favor. You can outwardly love people in order to get acclaim from others.

[18:41] Look how much, how loving this person is to his wife. You can outwardly love people in order to feel better about yourself. I must be a good person because look how I love my children. At essence, those are all really selfish reasons.

[18:56] All of those at one level are examples of insincere love. because you're not really giving of yourself without your own self-interest being served in return. You're giving to get.

[19:08] If I love you, I'll love you if I'm getting something from this giving that I'm doing. And a love that is built on getting, a love that only loves when there's a possibility of receiving, that is the love of the mask.

[19:23] That's the hypocritical love. Paul says, don't do that. Have the opposite. Have sincere love. Love without the mask on. Now, I want you to step back for a moment.

[19:36] Sober assessment of ourselves in light of Christ's finished work, saving work for us, and sincere, unhypocritical love. Put those two things together, mix them up, and they create the sort of mixture that powerfully, powerfully glues a community together.

[19:57] Because there is genuine humility in the midst of all our differences, which we're going to need. No one is trying to one-up the other. And there's genuine love, real, heartfelt concern for the other.

[20:15] Not just loving people as a tool to get something for yourself. I suspect that Satan will have an incredibly difficult time trying to sow discord and disunity and conflict in a community like that.

[20:31] And so that's the sort of glue that we need to cultivate on the ground here at Union if we are to say we value being community-based. That's the glue.

[20:43] Now, here's the third thing. The task of the body. We say, okay, so what does that look like actually practically? What do we actually do then? What is the task of the body?

[20:55] Well, there's two things actually. There are things that we do and there are things that we say. Things that we do and things that we say. Here's the first one. What do we do? Verse 13 of Romans 12.

[21:07] Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality. share your life. Give attention.

[21:19] Share your time. Share your energy. Share your material wealth. Share your home. Share your food. That's how love happens. The word hospitality literally means to show kindness to or love to the outsider.

[21:34] To bring the outsider in. To make the outsider feel like an insider. We tend to think of hospitality particularly in our upper middle class city bowl culture here.

[21:45] We think of hospitality as hosting some sort of dinner party where you put on your absolute best and you schedule it months in advance and you make sure that your apartment looks immaculate. You got out your very best wine.

[21:58] Not your odd bin stuff but your very, very best wine. And then the people come and then you all have this very polite conversation together. But in the Bible hospitality is a lifestyle.

[22:13] It's a life of bringing the outsider onto the inside. Showing kindness to the outsider loving the outsider so that they feel like insiders. They feel like they belong.

[22:24] Like they have a home. A family. Many of us here have grown up in a culture that is predominantly western and individualistic and I would say that even for those of you who maybe come from more traditional African cultures the fact that you swim in western culture here in the city means we have this on us where we prize private space.

[22:47] We prize boundaries. I want to say that I think there is something of a conflict between that culture and biblical hospitality. You're going to find yourself clashing all the time if you're going to hold those up all the time.

[23:01] This is my highest ideals. My private space. Implementing biblical hospitality is going to be a bit of a struggle. It's not easy.

[23:12] It's not easy but it is so very very necessary. So necessary that we do this. Think about it this way. If you're the person that only ever lets people into your life in that sort of scripted control dinner party scheduled months in advance it's possible then that you're participating in that insincere love that we just spoke about that Paul is pushing against.

[23:33] That love with the mask on. You only let people see the part of you that you want them to see. The image that you want to cast for them. But you know that if you're only ever giving out that sort of love you won't be loved well by other people.

[23:48] You won't get to be loved well by everybody else. Because nobody's going to know the real you. They only get to see the mask. They only get to see the image that you project to them.

[24:01] They don't get to see your brokenness. They don't get to see your failures. They don't get to see your weakness. They don't get to see your sin. And if they can't see those things and if you don't allow them to see those things and if you don't live in such a way that people are going to get access to those things then they can never love you well.

[24:20] Never love you well. And so practicing biblical hospitality is going to break you out of that. It's going to push you towards others in love loving them more comprehensively and because they're in your space as you are trying to love them more comprehensively they're going to be able to love you more comprehensively because now they get to see the real you who you actually are without the mask on.

[24:46] Now I know that's not easy. It's exposing yourself. It is exposing your time. It is exposing your energy. It is exposing your material resources. But friends I want to say it's worth it.

[25:00] It's so very very worth it for you and for this body to which you are intrinsically tied. Share your life with others.

[25:13] It's what you do. So that's the doing part here. But we also say something as well Paul says. Here's what you say. In Ephesians 4 verse 15 Paul says this.

[25:26] He says speaking the truth in love we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head that is Christ.

[25:39] So if hospitality is what we do then this is what we say. We speak the truth in love. Throughout Paul's letters you will see this over and over again if you try to read through his letters is that he is repeatedly calling on Christians to speak loving words of gospel encouragement and loving words of gospel correction.

[26:00] So there's kind of a positive and a negative aspect to that language. It's not just all affirmation it's also sometimes correction as well but all rooted in the gospel. Spiritual growth spiritual maturity is not a lone ranger experience between you and God.

[26:14] You need this sort of constant loving input from other believers all of the time. Today and we've spoken about this in the past but today there is an increasing growth in what I would call personalized designer spirituality.

[26:28] People wanting to be spiritual but really what they're wanting to do is do that outside of the formal structures of any sort of religious institution. Really tailor and tailor make their spirituality for themselves and mostly by themselves.

[26:42] So I will encounter all sorts of people day to day and maybe you do too who will use words like God or Jesus but when you peel back the layers of their spirituality what it is exactly that they believe and what they participate in underneath you find this personalized designer spirituality and the hallmark of the spirituality is that you the individual build the spirituality according to your tastes your preferences and you embark upon personal practices that will help you get more in touch with your spirituality or some sort of higher power.

[27:19] What you don't do in designer spirituality is have other people speak authoritatively into your life and your spiritual practices and your experiences.

[27:35] Now friends according to the Bible that's not Christianity. Christianity requires a community of people a church really of people lovingly speaking gospel truth to each other both affirmation and correction.

[27:54] This personalized spiritual community this personalized designer spirituality is built upon something of a cultural lie that we're buying into called expressive individualism if you read a writer by the name of Carl Truman he speaks a lot about this I would encourage you to find his stuff and look it up but it's this idea that what you've got to do is you've got to look down deep into yourself look at your feelings look at your desires look at your wants your needs your hopes and your dreams and through realizing a collection of all those sorts of things discover your true identity that's expressive individualism that's the water that we swim in in our culture all the time I think expressive individualism is ultimately a lie and one of the reasons I think it's a lie and there are many reasons one of the reasons I think it's a lie is because it's not really you building your identity your purpose your meaning your spirituality I mean think about it your wants your desires your hopes and your dreams are made up of a collection of influences that come from multiple communities around you that's how you got them in the first place you're influenced by the community that is your family you're influenced by the community that is your friends you're influenced by the community that is social media you're influenced by the community that is your professional community around you there are all of these communal voices around you every single day and they are shaping you forming you and so this is going to sound like really bad

[29:22] English but you is not really you you is a collection an amalgamation of all these other formative communities that you live within around you making you who you are producing those wants and those desires and those hopes and those dreams inside of you the idea that we can somehow extract ourselves from that and get away from other people speaking authoritatively into our life is a lie this doesn't work it's going to happen whether you like it or not what you can do though is you can curate better which communities you allow to speak authoritatively into your life and form all those different desires and hopes and dreams and so following God is your desire if you say well I want to be a Christian I want to follow God I want to walk in holiness if obeying his word is what you want to see in your life then what do you do you surround yourself with a community that speaks his truth into your life you need the body of Christ let me give you just one example of this in the area of sex and biblical ethics biblical sexual ethics living God's way in the area of your sex lives in the city which is always a contentious issue here in the city the biblical sexual ethic that sex is exclusively reserved for a man and a woman within the covenant of a marriage and that all deviations from that are sexual sin that idea is such an alien idea in so much of our culture and our city right now like it's unthinkable for many people even offensive that you would believe that and that you as a community say this is actually what we want to practice and what we believe and what we uphold!

[31:16] now why is it such an alien idea? well because multiple communities around us have influenced us to think of sex as not much more than a biological urge that we should fulfill from time to time provided that there's consent in the involved parties of a certain age beyond that pretty much anything else goes just fulfill that desire if you are a typical young sort of progressive person in our culture in our city that embraces that sexual freedom you think to yourself look I'm not going to be held ransomed by these outdated ideas of sex or conservative religious views of sex I'm not going to let them instruct me on my sex life I want to be free I want to be free to live and express my sexuality how I want to say to your friends you are not free if you think that you are not free because you didn't come up with your current views of sex by yourself you just didn't you didn't sit in a room and go this is what

[32:22] I think sex is for and how it should be used they're not a genuine expression of you those views you had all sorts of communities speak authoritatively into your life and create the picture of sexuality that you have in your head if you're in your 40s then the community of Monica and Rachel and Phoebe and Ross and Chandler and Joey instructed you on how to think about sex if you're in your 30s well then it's the community of Marshall and Lily and Robin and Ted and heaven forbid Bonnie Stinson who instructed you and influenced!

[33:04] And what did all those people say to us that we brought into our living room through Netflix and whatever what did they say to us every single week as we watched them they basically all said to us sex is a biological urge that needs to be fulfilled and if you go without it for three months then there's something wrong with you that's what they said to us so you might not be an outdated prude you might not be a religious conservative you might think that you're being all self expressive in your sexual freedom but really you're just subscribing to a different set of rules that authoritatively govern your life and your thinking about sex and you did not come up with those rules by yourself!

[33:57] Now if there are all these incredibly powerful cultural communities out there that are informing us forming our views and our practices on so many things so many very important things well then friends we need reinforcement to live God's way in this world and if we are to live God's good way we are going to need communities that reinforce God's good way through speaking loving truth over and above the noise that the culture is speaking you cannot do this by yourself don't be a fool and think you can do this by yourself if you just come to church for a song and a sermon and you don't dive into the communal life of the church then please friend please don't be surprised when your life looks nothing like Jesus Christ the task of the body is to perform tangible acts of love for each other and to speak truthful words of love to each other and we have everything we need to do that we have the tools to do that all three passages have extended treatments on the subject of gifts you'd see that if you go to those three passages we don't have time to dive into all of that but simply to say he's gifted us all in this body he's gifted us all to carry out this task of demonstrating communal love and speaking the truth in love but there's one gift that alone makes it possible to exercise all of these other different gifts that he's given us there's one gift that alone enables us to make every effort to maintain this community there's one gift alone that gives us the ability not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to and there's one gift that empowers us to love with sincerity to have the courage to speak words of love and the humility to receive words of love look at the beginning of

[36:12] Romans 12 verse 6 Paul says we have different gifts according to the grace given to each of us the Greek word for gifts is the word charisma the Greek word for grace is the word charis so the sentence basically reads we have different charisma according to the charis given to each of us what is this charis what is this gift this grace Paul's already told us actually in the book of Romans earlier on in Romans 6 verse 23 he says that the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord it's that gift it's that gift alone that enables us to be actually community based we can't make every effort to build this community until we see him who made every effort to point to the point really of shedding his own blood to create this community we can't with sober assessment think of ourselves or not think of ourselves more highly than we ought until we see him who

[37:33] Paul says being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage rather he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant we can't love each other with deep sincerity with those masks taken completely off until we see him who dies for us completely unmasked Christ is on that cross naked there is nothing hiding his love for us no mask we can't speak the truth and love to each other until we hear the Savior cry out that most loving of truths it is finished your sins are paid for you're forgiven that's the gift that is the gift we have that empowers every other gift that we will use in building this kind of community in being community based so look to that gift receive that gift enjoy that gift and then through that gift become that community make every effort as Paul says to put flesh onto this spiritual reality that has been gifted to us let's pray to that end together our father and our king we want this community it's in many ways it is incredibly attractive and yet as much as we want it conceptually because we want to be part of a family that loves like this and cares like this we know it's so incredibly hard because we're such selfish creatures we know that we don't like to be vulnerable we don't like to have we don't like to set our own preferences aside for the sake of the other we know it will require work from us as your word says it will require every effort and so

[39:55] I pray that we would look to the effort of Christ on the cross on our behalf his saving work to so strengthen us and so empower us that we will start to build this community here that the reality that you have united us to one another won't just be a spiritual truth but it will be a tangible truth experienced by those who worship and fellowship here Lord there are so many people coming here Sunday after Sunday who need that family who need that home we want to be able to give it to them Lord we want to be able to get past our selfishness and our our self absorption and be able to give them that living breathing community so won't you help us to that end we pray and I ask for any person Lord who's never known the gift of God in Christ Jesus who's never known that forgiveness who's never known what it means to be spiritually united to Christ and therefore united to others I pray that you would bring them to salvation this morning that they would repent of their sin and trust in you build your community here we pray we ask this for Christ's sake in his glory Amen

[40:56] Thank you.