Amen. Well, years ago, early in our history, we had a nice couple that joined us, Bob and Barb Keck. And Bob and Barb moved away to Delaware, and today they are back. They are now from Bonita Springs and sitting with us here, Bob and Barb. Welcome home and there were their friends Sarah appreciate y'all being here We are turning the page on our sermon topics, and I think it's appropriate at this point to reaffirm our vision and our values and incidentally You may have noticed that I haven't been in the pulpit preaching for a while yesterday I sat down at my desk and I was wondering if I would still remember how to do this. So I hope you deal with me gracefully here as I lead us here today. But I think it's important for us to reaffirm our vision and our values. You know, a lot of businesses go through strategic planning sessions every year. We have a fellow in our Church is a CEO of a larger corporation and they came up with a strategic plan and a vision statement and they put it in a frame and they asked everybody in the company to sign that vision statement to own it as it were as their own. And so they did. And today that is throughout the building they have copies of that vision statement with everybody's signature around that, who have owned that. And so I think it's an important thing for us as well as a church to maintain our sense of direction. Some of the players may have changed slightly, but I don't think that you're going to see too many changes at the church. And the reason for this is our vision and our values as a church remain the same. Ginny and Joe, probably watching this morning. Hi, Ginny and Joe. They moved to South Carolina to fulfill a high calling, which was to help their grandchildren. I'm going to ask Jim, can you turn this down just a smidgen? I have a little ringing that's going on here. Take it. Yeah, there. That's better. Thank you very much. But Ginny and Joe have moved to South Carolina. We appreciated their work with us. They so, so much advanced our ministry here. We appreciate them and wish them the best in South Carolina. Rachel joins the pastoral staff as the Director of Women's Ministries. She was the lowly coordinator of Women's Ministry, but has now vaulted to the high position of Director of Women's Ministry. It's not an altogether new position. She's been doing much of what she will be doing. But now, as a full-timer, there will be some expanded roles for her. But this is in support of our vision, who we are, and what we want to be as a church, our values. those characteristics that mark us as a church. Greg Poland is going to have a more pronounced role here at Bay in a teaching and preaching capacity. I hope I'm not either speaking out of turn or speaking incorrectly. I'm sure he will correct me if I am. But you know this latest thing monkey pox that is making the news and is apparently so dread a As it turns out, the World Health Organization has asked Greg to lead our nation's response to the monkeypox. So, he is a leader in his field, but he is going to be expanding his role here at Bay in his teaching and preaching. Patrick and I have pulled the L switcheroo, and my role becomes more mentor and support for Patrick's role. which is now as the leader of this Bay organization. Your leadership, the elders, when the idea of succession came up, you know they first breathed the word succession, the elders, about seven years ago. And they noticed that I was not getting younger. And they said, seven years ago, that they would like for us to begin thinking about succession. I have to tell you, I probably suffered from a mild depression after that, with all candor. And I had a friend who I've been through thick and thin with, and I called him up, and I said, I want to come talk to you. He said, OK. So I went to where he was, and I said, I think I got a little depression going on here. And he said, well, tell me what's going on in your life. And so I began talking to him and telling him my story and what's happening at the church and in my life. And he said to me, after about two hours, he said, do you know how many times you've told me that you were 61 years old? And I said, no. And he said, a lot. He said, you know, I've been one year older than you ever since I first knew you 40 years ago. Do you think I don't know that?" And what he told me was, he said, you know, you're treating this like it's a death sentence and it's not. He said, you, as long as I've known you, you've been a fighter and up to your eyeballs and things that are going on around you, you need to stay that way. And so it kind of gave me a new perspective on what my ministry would continue to be, that even a succession doesn't mean a cessation. And so, anyway, here we are. And the organization has had some minor changes, but when the elders came up with the idea of succession, they said that if we're going to get another person in, then the first thing we need to do is affirm who we are. We want somebody in here following John who will be intentionally supportive of who we are as a church. And for that to happen, we need to revisit our vision and values and make sure that we're very clear on that. And so we did, and with a few minor variations, nothing substantive, we reaffirmed our vision and values that have been in place since the first time we met 17 years ago. And this we have written up for us in our bulletin. and the statement that we have in our bulletin is there every week and because of that we often overlook it and it becomes white noise. But over the next several months we, Patrick and I, and probably occasionally Greg, want to take it apart and affirm it with you because our anchor as a church is not Patrick And it's not me, and it's not Rachel, and it's not Greg, and it's not Gordon and Carol or any other staff member or any elder. Our anchor as a church is Jesus Christ, who will be the leader of this church long after we're gone. So I want us to look together at our bulletins and review our vision and value, and then I have a few remarks concerning that today. The statement of faith that you have on the inside back cover of your bulletin says, a community loving and worshiping God, loving and serving our neighbor. A vision statement is what you want people to see when they look at your organization. That's what the vision statement does. So the vision what we want to see people what we want to have people see when they looked at us is a loving community that loves and serves and worships God and loves and serves our neighbor. In a previous iteration we said Bay Presbyterian Church is a community of believers given to the worship of Almighty God. We'll be expanding on that somewhat. But then the next statements, so the question to ask after you read a vision statement, whenever you read a vision statement, is how? So if you read a vision statement, you say, okay, that's the vision statement. How do we get there? Well, by accomplishing the mission. And so we have a mission statement, which is the how to the vision statement. by teaching the good news of Jesus Christ, encouraging people in their faith, and equipping them to go into the world to meet spiritual and physical needs, which is our mission as a church. I suppose, in some ways, this is similar to a great many other churches. There are nuances. Some churches are more nuanced towards outreach. Some churches are more nuanced towards nurturing. And neither one is right or wrong, but it's a matter of intentionally pursuing where you have staked out your area to be. And for us, we see it as teaching the good news of Jesus Christ. We're a teaching church. We encourage people in their faith. We are a mentoring church. and we equip them to go into the world to meet spiritual and physical needs. We're an equipping church and that's how we see ourselves. And then we get down to a more granular level as we look through our beliefs. And here are a list of our beliefs which we will be unpacking in weeks to come. Our chief goal in life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever in the 17th century, a group of 125 Puritans, separatists if you will, were called together by Oliver Cromwell and the Westminster Parliament and they were asked to set forth a statement of beliefs. What is it that we believe as a church or as a as a community, as a larger community. I don't really want to say a denomination. I wouldn't call it a denomination, but as a group of believers. And they came out with, for the very first thing, the very first thing they said with regard to what our faith should be, they said, they asked the question, what is the chief end of man? And their answer was our man's chief and our chief goal or end in life is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. This is pretty granular, but it is a statement of mission. We want to glorify God in what we do, in who we are, and we want to enjoy God forever. Now, some people say, well, how can you have Puritans who want to enjoy anything? Well, you'd be surprised at the Puritans. and how joyful they were. Okay, second point. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh, the same in substance with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, equal in power and in glory. Philosophers call that the ontology, the beingness of God. That it is Trinitarian, we are Trinitarian, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the same in power, equal in power and glory. And then the next, I read this in a B.B. Warfield article. B.B. Warfield was a great Princeton theologian. And B.B. Warfield was asked what the greatest moral value in life was. And B.B. Warfield, I thought it was very good. B.B. Warfield said, the greatest moral value in this life is the worship of God, our creator. No higher good. than the worship of God our Creator. Next, Jesus lived, died, and bodily rose from the grave, returned to heaven, and will come again. That is a principle that we all subscribe to here among your leadership at the church. God is sovereign. He is the king. He is the final authority. He is the ruler over all of life. The Bible is God's Word. Every time Rachel stands up here and reads the scripture passage, she says, this is the Word of God. We believe that the Bible is the Word of God. We don't believe that the Bible contains the Word of God. We believe the Bible is the Word of God. A love letter to his people. The Bible is infallible and has everything needed for faith and life. We could say a lot about that. I'm already way over where I intended to be at this point. But this is important. Heaven is a free gift. It cannot be earned or deserved. As soon as we try to earn or deserve heaven, we try to put God in our debt. We think this is the wrong place to be putting God. So we believe that heaven is a free gift, that it cannot be earned, it cannot be deserved. Jesus bore his people's sin and the punishment that they deserve. I'll have more to say about that today. Faith in Jesus' work on our behalf and faith alone gets us to heaven. Faith stands alone as the vehicle that God uses to get his people to heaven. And today what I'd like to do for the next several minutes is talk about the first phrase of our vision, who we are as a church, a community loving and worshiping God, an earlier iteration, a Presbyterian church is a community of believers. You are part of this community of believers. First thing I want to say is I want to talk about the community paradigm, the community paradigm now as we approach this there is in your bulletin a Something we don't usually have and that is an additional page for Relevant scriptures, and I'd like for you to pull that out because we're going to be taking a look at some of those But look at those relevant Scriptures and along with that comes my apology because I'm not sure I was consistent in the translations that I used So what I read might be slightly different than what is in your bulletin. Bear with me. I think you'll be able to follow it. I don't think it's so outrageously different. A community, the community paradigm. When we talk about a paradigm, P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M, which seems like a lousy spelling for the word, paradigm, it is a descriptive model or a pattern for something. And the model for community we find in John chapter 17, among other places. Let's read that. You follow along as I read John 17, 1 through 5. Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people. that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before. The world began. The scripture is remarkable for a number of reasons and to plumb the depths would take more time than we had this morning. So I'm just going to deal it a glancing blow. What I want to say about that first is that community provides support. Community provides support. So, Jesus prayed this prayer in John 17. And this was it for Jesus. You may recall that at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry, in fact, his ministry was only three days old. Now, how do we know it was only three days old? Because of what we read in John chapter 2, verse 1. We're going to talk about that wedding at Cana for for just a moment. And in John chapter 2 verse 1 it begins by saying, on the third day. So we infer from that properly that this was the third day from the beginning of his ministry. And on that third day Jesus happened to be at a wedding. And at the reception they ran out of wine. It was a catering problem. Jesus mother asked him to fix it and Jesus explains to her that while this didn't fit his timeline He would help and so in John chapter 2 in verse 4 Jesus among other things says My time has not yet come My time has not yet come Three days into his ministry, my time has not yet come. But here, in John chapter 17, we're at the end of Jesus' ministry. And he begins his prayer to his father by saying, Father, the time has come. In John chapter 2, my time has not yet come. In John chapter 17, the time has come. This is it. This is zero hour. This is the reason why Jesus came into the world. Among all the other things they did, none of which were not unimportant, but everything that Jesus was doing was driving him to this one place at this time. This is zero hour. And Jesus knew exactly what was in store for him. In the next 18 hours, he would be betrayed. He would be denied, arguably, by his closest companion. He would be deprived of sleep. He would suffer the ignominy of a kangaroo court. He would be scourged, which is to say the flesh would be torn off his torso. He would be beaten beyond recognition, and he would be crucified for everyone to see. And all of that would be a walk in the park. compared to the very worst of it, Jesus would descend into hell. That was the price of your forgiveness and mine. Redeemed is the name of a song lyric that we just sang a few minutes ago. And the Greek word for redeemed is the word exaggerado. It's a great word. I love it. If you look at the doors on either side of you, you'll see above them a red sign that says, exit. X means out. Let me tell you a real quick story that has nothing to do with anything. This is free. So early on when we had this building, the fire marshal came in and they said, we need to put panic hardware on those doors over there. And I said, I don't understand that. And they said, well, you know, if there's a fire, you want panic hardware there so people can get out. I said, well, it looks like they can just get out now. I mean, you push the door, it goes open. And they said, no. And so I called a hardware store and said, what would it be to retrofit these doors with panic hardware? And they said, $5,000. Well, $5,000 is a lot of money, but back then, it was everything. We would have had to mortgage the building in order to do that. And then another fire marshal came to follow up 30 days later. And he said, OK, what else you got? And I said, well, they want us to put PanaCard. I didn't do it. I didn't spend the money. I'm very tight. But they told me I had to put PanaCard where in those doors. And he said, what for? And I said, well, he said, if people need to get out, they need to be able to push right through the door. He said, well, I don't need to do that. He says, you see, there's a little place up there just to the left of the E. And there's a little triangle there that points that way. They said, if you just punch that out, you're good. I said, all right, you come back. The other guy can stay away. But that is the way out. It's the exit it is to go out. And the agora was the marketplace. It was an open-air marketplace, a little bit like our farmer's market that we enjoy over here. You could buy anything you want over at the agora. It is the marketplace. Some people have agoraphobia. It is fear of open spaces. Well, the agora was the open-air market. And if you were ex-agorazo, that means that you were purchased out of. You exchange the goods or services for currency in order to buy it out of the Agora. Jesus bought us out. He redeemed us. He exaggerated us out of the predicament, which is the eternal consequences of sin. which is hell, and Jesus knew at the moment of his prayer in John 17 that he was about to pay for your sin and for mine, to redeem us, to buy us out of our predicament. But the ultimate penalty had the ultimate price, hell. And the enormity of this burden was such that it drove Jesus to his knees. It staggered him. Matthew chapter 26 verses 38 and 39, it's on your sheet there. Then he said to them, this is when Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had gone there with James, Peter, and John. He left the disciples back behind him, and he went a little further with James, Peter, and John. And then he said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here. and keep watch. Jesus left his disciples to go deeper into the garden. He says, going a little further, he fell with his face to the ground. He was staggered by the enormity of the burden that he was about to carry, carrying the sin of all his people. Jesus, who was without sin, was now going to become sin. And he says, Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. What cup was he referring to? Isaiah tells us. Isaiah 51-17, rouse yourself, rouse yourself. Arise, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the Lord's hand the cup of His anger, the chalice of reeling, or the chalice of staggering, as some translate it. You have drained to the dregs the cup from which Jesus was asking for relief was the cup of God's anger against sin, which was ours to bear until Jesus took that cup out of our hands and drank it for us. Isaiah 51 verse 22. Thus says your Lord, the Lord, even your God who contends for his people. Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of reeling, the cup of staggering, the chalice of my anger, you will never drink it again." Jesus was on the cross to figuratively speaking drink that chalice of God's wrath at sin. so that never again would his people have to experience the wrath of God against sin. Matthew said, going a little further, Jesus fell with his face to the ground. Jesus was staggered by the prospect of the price he would pay. And knowing this staggering was his fate, the drinking of the cup, Jesus went to the solace, the comfort, the salve of His community. Jesus retreats to the Trinity, and this is what a community does. It provides support, encouragement, and relief. Jesus had that community in its purest form in the Trinity. It was where Jesus often retreated from the cares, the rejection, the weightiness of his task. He would go to a quiet place in the solace of his purest community, the Trinity. Second thing we want to say is the paradigmatic, the purest community is eternal. We'll just touch on this. Briefly, I'd point out that this community to which Jesus appealed is eternal. Jesus affirmed that in a prayer, John 17, 5, and now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. You know, the idea of eternal life is pretty big, but I can deal with that. I can kind of get that a little bit because we'll give little glimpses in the scriptures. of what that eternal life might look like. What I can't get my arms around is the idea of pre-eternity. What was it like for eternity before? Before creation, before there was anybody to begin marking time, before people came to this planet. What is that all about pre-eternity? And yet, God existed as Trinity. And Jesus enjoyed that perfect community, the community of the Trinity. They loved and cared for one another. I have to tell you that there was a book that was out not long ago. It was called The Shack. It was a popular book. It went around. I didn't really care for it. I didn't care for it because I think in some areas I felt like it was blasphemous. But in one sense, I did appreciate it. And that was the love that was expressed between the symbols of the Trinity. They loved one another. And the Holy Trinity, they loved one another from all eternity. Their love was perfect. So Jesus, the eternal son of God, was well known by his eternal community. A community knows its own. And the more a community knows its own, the more effective a community is. One of the things a community does is to give tacit approval to tell us the truth about each other. That's scary. I often get helpful notes on how to operate or what to say or what not to say. I might get some helpful notes from this sermon. Frankly, I'm surprised that week after week you let this preacher, whoever's filling the pulpit here, tell you that you're sinners. I think you let us tell us that because, first of all, you already know it. Second of all, you know that we are too. And third of all, we tell you that we're sinners. It's pretty hard to live with perfection, isn't it? So, every iteration of the community paradigm, the Holy Trinity, every iteration of that, every replication of that, every attempt at building a community, the Trinity is less than perfect. That community is less than perfect and needs occasional course adjustments. That's one of the uncomfortable beauties of marriage. In marriage, you are contractually permitted to tell the truth about your spouse to them. That's one of the reasons why I'm so opposed to the concept of cohabitation. In a non-contractual living agreement, if a partner says something you don't like, you just walk away and you don't have to deal with it. There isn't a penalty for leaving a deeply flawed character alone. Third thing I want to say about a community is that a community's place is a place to share joys and victories. I think we know this intuitively. we certainly live by it and we act as though we do, when we hear a song, when we visit a destination, when we admire some art, when we hear a great sermon, hint, hint, when we have another birthday or celebrate a 73rd anniversary, we don't completely enjoy it until we share it John tells us that in his first general letter, 1 John 1, 1 through 4. It's on your verse sheet there. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked at with our own hands, which we have touched. I'm having trouble reading my handwriting. This we proclaim concerning the word of life. And the life appeared, and we have seen it and testified to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you may have fellowship, read, community, with us. And our fellowship, community, is with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, and we write this to make our joy complete. We write this to make our joy complete. It was great that they experienced Christ, the living Christ, the prophesied Christ, the exact representation, the radiance of the glory of Almighty God. They experienced it, but their joy wasn't complete until they wrote about it. They shared it. They passed it on. How is it that the gospel can have a worldwide audience? How is it that Christianity has moved to every continent on the planet and still exists? No, it thrives under persecution and opposition in part because of the joy that comes from community Thessalonica, we discover from Luke, has a bit of this phenomena. Acts 17 verse 6, And when they could not find them, they dragged Jason, son of some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting, These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also. The community of believers, rapidly expanding as it was, was adding fuel to the bright blaze of the gospel, turning the world upside down. The joy of discovering the gospel. And to pass it on was their joy. The gospel went viral. Well, we have more to say about community, but what is it that we take away today? I've been wanting to say that takeaway line for a long time. I've had several people say, I like it when you say the takeaway. So, for those of you who don't start listening until the takeaway, take it away. Okay. What is our takeaway today? Well, first of all, the more I live and pastor, the more I'm convinced that both in principle and as a practical matter, Christianity is meant to be lived in community with one another. That's why we had Rachel read the passage she did about one-anothering, and that's why the antiphonal service or the antiphonal reading was about one another. While there may be short bursts of time when we retreat from the larger community into a smaller community, even as Jesus would retreat to the wilderness, to the mountains, to pray, to the community paradigm, the Holy Trinity. The normal Christian life is community. Jesus always came down from the mountains or in from the wilderness. Number two, the stronger the ties with one's community, the stronger the support in times of distress and the greater the rejoicing with our joys. Number three, the stronger the ties with one's community, the more effective the community will be into speaking truth into your life and helping you knock off some of those rough edges. Number four, Bay Presbyterian Church is a community of believers given to loving and worshiping the living God. We'll be giving this more attention in the weeks to come. Number five, Jesus took the cup of God's wrath by becoming sin for us on the cross. And he drank to the dregs that cup of wrath so that we might drink the cup of blessing. And so it was. that on the night of his betrayal, our Lord Jesus, having given thanks, took bread and he broke it. And he said, this is my body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. When we celebrate community here, we celebrate what I refer to as an open community, which is, by my definition, if you have put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, if you believe in Jesus' payment of your price on that cross when he became sin for us, then we invite you to participate with us in this family meal. And so, I'm going to ask the elders to come forward. And as we pass the elements, I'd ask you to hold them so that we might take in unison. The bread you hold is pierced because he was pierced through for our transgressions. The bread you hold is striped, because the Bible says with its stripes we are healed. The bread you hold is unleavened, because the Bible says He himself was without sin. Leaven is the biblical symbol for sin. Our Lord Jesus, the bread of life, was without sin, pierced through for our transgressions, and with his stripes we are healed. Take and eat In the same fashion, our Lord Jesus took the cup, the cup of blessing, which we have traded for. And he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this in remembrance of me, for as often as you eat of my body and drink of my blood, you show forth my death until I return. Let's hold the elements again, so we may take in unison. so so Isaiah, the prophet, says, Therefore, hear this, you afflicted one, made drunk but not with wine. This is what your sovereign Lord says. your God who defends his people. See, I have taken out of your hand the cup that makes you stagger. From that cup, the goblet of my wrath, you will never drink again. What do we think about when we hold these elements? We think about our great God who said that we will never, ourselves, drink the cup of God's wrath. Rather, we will, together, drink of God's blessing. The cup of blessing. Moses sprinkled blood on the people and said, this is the blood of the covenant. Jesus said, this is the blood of the new covenant, which is for you. Today, if you know Jesus Christ, if you have asked for the forgiveness of your sins, if you have turned to Him, then this blood of the covenant is for you. Lord Jesus, thank you that you, though staggered, said, nevertheless not my will, but your will be done. Thank you for the blood of the new covenant, which is for us. Drink all of you of it. The Bible says that when the disciples had sung a song, they departed from that upper room. We're going to close the service today as we stand and sing together, Jesus, draw me close. Let the world around me live She's a strong voice, closer, Lord, to my desire to worship and to pray. Let the world around you change the way you walk. And now receive God's benediction, for it is now unto Jesus who is able to keep you from falling. It is now unto Jesus who is able to present you before his glorious presence spotless and with great joy. To the only wise God our Savior be glory, honor and majesty both now and forevermore. Amen. Go in peace.