All right, today is the fifth in a six-part series on the subject of traditional Reformed worship, which is the label given to the kind of worship that we practice here at Monroe Presbyterian Church. And our aim in this Sunday School class, the whole series, is for us to grow in our appreciation of that worship, the worship that we practice from Lord's Day to Lord's Day. There are, thus far, two main things that I have pointed out about Traditional Reform Worship that I think are essential to see and to grasp, if you are to appreciate the value of Traditional Reform Worship. The first thing that I pointed out is that, really in a unique way, Traditional Reform Worship, that is the worship that we have received from our Reformed Fathers in the Reformed Church is uniquely according to Scripture. That was the clear primary goal of the Reformed Church when it set about to reform the worship of the Church, was to devise a form of worship that was according to Scripture. And as we looked at that idea, we saw that the Reformed Church Started not only with the idea that the Bible was the the Word of God and and inerrant but they also began with the the recognition of something called the regulative principle of worship, which is that scripture itself regulates what our worship is and should be. And specifically, that means that we are to bring to God in worship everything that he commands us in scripture, and we are not to bring with it anything that he does not command us. Among the various church traditions, the Reformed Church is unique in recognizing that principle and seeking to be faithful to it throughout. So it's for that reason that if you're a person who is concerned to worship according to Scripture, you should recognize that you have something truly valuable in the traditional Reformed worship that we have received from our Reformed fathers. We looked at the considerable effort that they went into devising this form of worship, studying not only scripture, but also the example of the patristic church as sort of a window into the apostolic practice, and then also how they sought to incorporate the theology of the cross into their worship services. So that was the first point. The second thing that we pointed out then is that traditional Reformed worship is also self-consciously scripture-filled. Scripture is the content of our worship, and that is on purpose. And so in a traditional Reformed worship service, God is revealed unto His people as He reveals Himself to us in Scripture. And God's people respond to that revelation with the response of God's people in Scripture. And so, in this way, we are truly seeking to be faithful to Scripture, not only in the form of our worship, but also in its content as we meet with God. So if you look at a traditional reform worship service, you not only have lots of reading of Scripture in the course of the service, you also have expository sermons that are focused on explaining the meaning of what has been read, and then you also have Scripture-filled hymns and Scripture-filled prayers. So it's just a feast, a full diet of the Word of God in a traditional Reformed worship service. And we pointed out, as we talked about that, that this was really critical to the ministry of Reformed Church in forging in the Christian people what we recognize as a Reformed piety. and we lamented the absence of that in the evangelical church today. So that's the second thing to appreciate about traditional Reformed worship, is that it is Scripture-filled. And so then last week we opened up the PCA directory of worship, and one of the things that we saw there is that when the Reformed church sought to devise a worship that was according to Scripture and Scripture-filled, what they ended up with was not a fixed form, not a single form of worship which all the Reformed churches were bound to adhere to, but rather what they came to were principles, principles by which forms of worship were to be developed. And so we studied those principles in the PCA Directory of Worship. All right, so that brings us to where we are today then. which is this, all right, so we appreciate that traditional reform worship is according to scripture, we appreciate that it is scripture filled, we've looked at the principles, but ultimately we as a local church have to settle upon some form, which is to say a particular order of worship. So where did we get the order of worship that we are using now, and why did we choose it? Well, before I answer that question, as I was thinking about the worship at Monroe Presbyterian Church late last year, I sort of asked myself this question. I looked at our orders of worship. I said, what are these based on? Where did they come from? Well, they were based on this, I decided. They were based on my grasp of these principles that we're talking about, the principles of traditional Reformed worship. Based on my understanding of those principles, I sought to devise a form of worship for our church. They were also based upon my personal experience In other churches that I've been a part of, who I thought practice traditional reform worship, that's not a lot of churches, it's just a handful of them. Particularly the influence of Chapel Woods Presbyterian Church, where we worship for so long, was important in my own ideas about these things. And then our orders of worship were also shaped by some practical concerns that I had. For example, because we're kind of spread out geographically, one of the things that we don't have is we don't have a weekly prayer meeting. And so I wanted to introduce some intercessory prayers, so I put it in the evening service. And all that was fine. But as I was studying Reformed worship, both in Calvin's Institutes and some other things that I was reading, I came to this conclusion, which is that if you were to make a chart, let's say a bar graph, And on one side you had a bar representing my grasp of the principles of traditional reform worship and my experience and my practical concerns. And then on the other side, you had the grasp of those same principles by the collective body of our Reformed fathers and their collective experiences and their practical concerns. On the bar graph, mine would be like that. And their collective experience and wisdom and grasp would be like this. You understand what I'm saying? So, what was I to do as I realized this? I aspire, along with Joel, as the elders of this church, to be a Reformed church here in Monroe in our time, a church that teaches Reformed theology, practices Reformed worship. and promotes reformed piety. And I decided that the best thing that we could do was not to use the orders of worship that I had devised based on my grasp of these principles and my experiences in reformed churches, but rather we should adopt orders of worship that were devised by others. by our Reformed fathers, the historic Reformed orders of worship, believing that they must be, perhaps even in ways that I cannot grasp and appreciate at this point, superior to my own. It seemed to me that that was only wise. This is one of the things that is taught in the wisdom literature of the Bible, which is that you should humble yourselves and be willing to listen and to receive the wisdom of those who truly are wiser than you are, and that's certainly the position in which I found myself. So that's what I did then, as I went and I was looking for recognizing that there is no fixed form, there's no single liturgy that represents the practice of traditional reform worship. But I went looking for one that was, you know, that was well known, that was respected over the course of many centuries. And that's where the work of Terry Johnson came in for me. This is a man who lives in our own time. He's the pastor of Independent Presbyterian Church down in Savannah. This is his passion, is traditional reform worship, and he has studied this subject thoroughly and written a book called Leading in Worship in which he recommends two orders of worship, one for morning service and one for the evening service, which are based upon historic traditional Reformed worship orders of worship. And so that's pretty much what we did was we just adopted the orders of worship from that particular book, believing that that would be a step in the right direction as we claim to be a Reformed Presbyterian Church and we aspire to be one. So, that's what I want to look at today, then, are these two orders of worship that we are now using, beginning, I think, at the beginning of this year, in 2016. These are the orders of worship that you have in your hands today, or the ones that we're going to be using today. And this is what Terry Johnson says about these two orders of worship. He says, both services represent an effort to promote distinctively reformed and Presbyterian worship services, while maintaining elements from our Catholic heritage, which were used by the early church, approved by the reformers, and are consistent with the principle that worship should be according to scripture. Thus, the Gloria Patri, Apostles' Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and doxology are recommended. Using the Ten Commandments, a corporate confession of sin, metrical psalmody, free prayers, and expository preaching gives a worship service a distinctly apostolic and Reformed character." So those are the goals according to Terry Johnson, and he commends these two orders of worship as as being uh... a successful uh... achieving of those particular goals uh... so as we as we look at these uh... orders of worship and we compare them to the old orders of worship that we used or maybe other orders of worship that you'll come into contact with which churches that you think of as being traditional reform worship services there's one uh... one thing i think that that you need to to grasp traditional reform worship was was devised in the sixteenth century john calvin was the leader uh... in that effort uh... and calvin in addition to studying scripture and uh... and uh... theology that was emerging during the protestant reformation also went back and studied the patristic era the writings of uh... the church fathers from the first few centuries of the church again uh... believing that that was uh... a window into apostolic practice concerning how God was to be worshipped. Calvin's liturgy then, or his forms as we call them, were adopted by the Reformed Church both on the continent, that is the Dutch Reformed Church and the German Reformed Church and the Swiss Reformed Church, and then also was influential in the English and Scottish Reformed Churches. And so these are kind of running parallel with what Calvin devised. In the 17th century, however, the English Puritans and the Covenanters in Scotland found themselves in this bitter contest with the Episcopalians in the Church of England. and the Episcopalians were leaning back towards Roman Catholic practices in some ways that made the Puritans and the Scots uncomfortable. And in sort of reacting to the controversies of the time, we see around the 17th century that the the english and scottish reform churches began uh... eliminating uh... anything that uh... the sort of smacks of uh... of the liturgy uh... and formalism of the uh... of the anglican church at the time and more and more they begin to associate that with roman catholicism and they begin to purge it, gloria patria, the doxology, these things are being eliminated uh... and you wind up with what what becomes a really bare bones, simple form of worship that almost seems to despise as unspiritual anything that smacks of formality or ceremony or even aesthetic beauty. And so this is not the case in the Continental Reformed churches, however. They continue to use Calvin's forms throughout. In the 19th century, then, the heirs of the English Scott tradition in America underwent a sort of, which is the Presbyterian churches in America, underwent a sort of revival in which they recovered their interest in the original form of Reformed worship. And so at this particular point in the American Presbyterian churches, you start to get the reintroduction of things like the Lord's Prayer, the doxology, the Gloria Patri, the reading of the Ten Commandments, those sorts of things. And so it comes again more in parallel with the Continental practice while some reformed churches continued with the more bare-bones form. So all that is to say, in Terry Johnson's orders of worship, which are the orders of worship that we have adopted, we are falling more in line with the original forms of Calvin, the reformed churches prior to the 17th century, and then the American Presbyterian churches after this sort of revival in the middle of the 19th century. So as you're trying to wrestle with what is traditional reform worship and you see these differences, according to Terry Johnson, that's kind of the story of how those differences developed. Any questions or comments at this point? Alright, so as we look at these orders of worship, I don't have time to go through every aspect of these and every element of worship, so there's just a few things that I want to point out about them as we seek to grow in our appreciation for what's here. The first thing that I think is that traditional reform worship and uh... and and uh... historic orders of worship uh... understood or uh... an idea upon which they were based which name may not be understood by christians today uh... is that a worship service which is conducted by the church on the lord's day uh... is public corporate worship not private individual worship. What we're saying here is not that Reformed churches don't care about private individual worship, they only care about public corporate worship. That's not what we're saying. If you study the Reformed church, as we as we have in the last few weeks you you recognize that there is uh... there's a do appreciation for for both uh... there's an important place for public corporate worship in the life of the people of god and there is an unequally important place for private individual worship in the life of the people of god uh... the only thing we're saying here is they're not the same thing And they ought not to be confused. There's a place in our life for for both Private individual worship takes place largely in your in your home It's it's what you do when you get up in the morning to to read the Bible and to pray It's what you do is a as a family when you gather Whatever time you gather during the day to open up the Bible together and to and to pray. This is a This is your private, individual worship of God, and it's critical to a healthy spiritual life and part of what we owe unto God in the worship with which we worship in this world. But what goes on on the Lord's Day when the Church, holds a worship service. This is the summoning of God's people in the opening up of the doors of the church to hold what is, in fact, a public corporate worship service. This is a worship service which is not private, but which is conducted before the watching world. And anybody is welcome to enter in and to behold it and to consider the things that are going on there. And this is not primarily about the worship or the experience of the individual before God, but is a particularly a coming together of the Christian people as a body, that's what the word corporate means, as a body to offer up corporate worship together and with joined hearts and joined minds and joined voices to worship God. This is something which I think is a point of confusion in the evangelical church today, and I'll give you an example. I knew a young woman one time who was a very zealous young Christian, and she was very much into to contemporary worship services. So the church where she worshipped, they used the contemporary praise choruses and there was the hand raising and the swaying. You've seen all this. And so this is what she was into and she really loved this worship. And as I was talking to her about it at one point, she said to me that that in the midst of the worship service, that she intentionally closed her eyes and tried to forget about the other people who were around her. So for her, the goal of the experience in the worship service was to enter into what amounted to a private individual worship experience with God. So much so that she needed to shut out of her mind the other people who are around her in the room. Now to the Reformed Church, historically anyways, that makes no sense at all. That's a complete misunderstanding of what's going on in the corporate worship service. What we recognize about this young lady and a lot of evangelical Christians today is, they see the worship service as a sort of show which exists in order that they might come into this show, this atmosphere, and the other people around them are all part of the show, part of what sets the mood, in order that in the midst of that they might have a private individual worship experience. And we reject that idea entirely. There is a place for private individual worship. But this is not it. This is a corporate public worship service. And so the worship of God that is taking place there should be self-consciously corporate and public. Does that make sense? Do you understand what I'm saying? So we see in our worship services all sorts of obviously public corporate activities, such as the standing together and the sitting together. We do that as a body. It's not everybody standing up. You know, you stand up when you feel like standing up, and you stand up when you feel like standing up. We all stand up together, right? Because we're standing up to appear as one people before God. The emphasis in a traditional reform worship is on corporate or congregational singing. Not one individual singing a solo for the entertainment of the others. There may be a place for that as a sort of accent in a traditional reform worship. But the overwhelming emphasis is upon the singing of God's people together. It's there in the prayers. There may be one person who's leading in the prayers, but it's the understanding that everyone bows their head and we're praying together. And we even have in our evening service a corporate confession of sin that's printed in the bulletin. So we hear the voices of all God's people joining together to pray the same prayer. Why? Because it's a corporate offering of that prayer of confession to God. We have corporate readings of what amounts to the confession of our faith, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, these sorts of things. We are saying, it's not one person with a microphone getting up in front of everybody and giving their testimony. It's all the people of God together joined in confessing their faith in the same words at the same time. And in receiving the Lord's Supper, we don't all take The elements of the Lord's Supper, you know, as it, the Spirit moves us individually, so we're all taking in at different times, but we all wait and we hold it together, and then when we say the words of Christ's institution, then we receive the elements as the body of Christ, okay? That's what I'm pointing out here in our traditional worship service, the emphasis upon the corporate. Now, the other thing that's part of this is the public part of it, right? Why do we say the Apostles' Creed? you know, over and over and over again. Why do we say the Lord's Prayer over and over again? Why are we doing this? Why are we confessing our sins out loud? The reason is that we as the Christian people are gathering in this public assembly before the world, before anyone who would come and listen and anyone who would come and see, and we are publicly, before the world, declaring what it is that we believe as the Christian people. what it is that the scriptures teach. We are publicly declaring our own sins before God. We are publicly expressing before the world the things that we come to God and ask for when we gather in this meeting with Him. uh... and so and so this is the reason for uh... for some of the things that are going on this worship services that we understand it not as a as a private meeting of of god's people but a public meeting and paul expresses that concern uh... in first corinthians fourteen we talked about the person who walks into the worship service and what do they see and what do they hear on that is to be uh... concern of ours uh... i think it's particularly uh... important I guess I guess every all these things are important but but one of the things that I think has struck me and and a lot of a number of others as we have adopted these new order of worships is is how right it feels, how powerful it is in our evening worship service that we stand together and read the Ten Commandments. We do that every week. Now that is for our own benefit, it's for our own edification to remind us of what God's law is, but it is also a public declaration of the Church that this is the law of God, that this is the law that God has given unto us. And so So that's something of what's going on in that particular practice. The other thing that you see in traditional Reform worship, and it's something that Terry Johnson really hammers. which is this idea of the Lectio Continua readings of Scripture. That is, that in the public worship services of the Church, from Lord's Day to Lord's Day, we read through entire books of the Bible. We read every verse of every chapter from beginning to end. And part of what, you know, why are we doing that? Don't you people have Bibles at home? Can't you read your Bibles at home? Certainly you can, but part of what we're doing in the worship of God is that we are creating a public forum in which people will come and hear over the course of week after week the Word of God as it's given to us in Scripture. You assume too much if you assume that people are reading their Bibles, and so the Church takes this responsibility upon itself to read through entire books of the Bible. So that's why you have long Scripture readings in traditional Reformed services and ones that go from the beginning to end. rather than a little here and a little there according to whatever topic we want to speak to on a particular Sunday. This is actually a man named Hughes Old. makes this comment, he says, in such a way that the whole message of the sacred writing is presented in an orderly fashion over a series of weeks or months. Zurich, Basel, Strasbourg, and Geneva all adopted the Lectio Continua at an early date in the Reformation, and it is unquestionably one of the most clear restorations of the form of worship of the early church. Okay, so these are some of the concerns that explain the practices that we find in these particular orders of worship. This distinction between public and corporate rather than private individual. Any questions or comments on that? Okay, very good. The second thing I want to point out is is that we see in traditional Reformed worship and these historic orders of worship that there is concern for both the objective and the subjective aspects of God's worship. Objective is that which is outside of you, and subject is that which is going on inside of you. There is a definite concern in the Reformed Church to bring to God that worship which objectively honors Him. So, this is the reason why the Church puts considerable effort into framing creeds and confessions and sermons and prayers which clearly and faithfully articulate the truth as we have received it in the Bible. It matters what we say. It matters that when we come to God with a prayer, or when we come to God with a hymn, or when we come to God with a sermon, that these things be objectively sound, that they be the truths, the praise, which God himself has revealed in Scripture and says, bring to me, bring this to me. Okay, so for me to to enter in as a leader in worship to to enter into the worship Without giving any forethought as to what I'm going to say and to just just just go into the service and you know And hope that I say something right and figure that you know, even if I I mess it up We don't say it very well And we don't say it very accurately that you know, as long as we feel it in our hearts, then then it's fine. It's good we reject that That idea is part of the regulative principle of worship that we are to we are to bring to god in obedience that which he commands us to to bring so um, so for example In the in the bible the disciples of jesus come to him say lord. How should we pray? And he says when you pray say this And he gives the Lord's Prayer. So in our worship services every week, as part of our prayer of invocation, we join our voices together and we bring the Lord's Prayer. Why? Have we forgotten it from last week? No. Is it necessary to say it over and over and over again? We do it because this is what Jesus said to do. Okay, so hopefully we're we're praying this prayer in our private prayer But now corporately and publicly before the world we bring our Lord's Prayer unto him and this is our offering of of worship Okay, we as it has given in to us Objectively it matters We also have the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creeds that have been used in Christian churches since the 3rd century and approved for use by all the Reformed liturgies. So these are accurate articulations of Trinitarian theology, our belief as Christians, which have been approved by the Church, and we're joining our voices together, and we're offering that to God. Because this is the truth, as we have received it from the Lord. And we want to be careful about how we say that. We also have the doxology, for example, is a Trinitarian inscription of praise that played an important part in combating Arianism and popularizing the doctrine of the Trinity. It was known in its present form by the end of the 4th century. So we're adopting these things as accepted by the churches, designed by the churches for this use, and we're offering them to God as our own confessions of faith. Now that's the objective aspect. But we also recognize that the subjective is important too. If we just bring the Apostles' Creed, but We have no feelings toward God one way or another, as we say it. If it's not an expression of our faith subjectively experienced in the soul, then it's just an empty form. So there is an emphasis upon the subjective as well. And so the Reformed Church teaches that the members of the Church are responsible to, it's necessary for us, before we come into corporate worship, to enter into private individual worship, to prepare ourselves, to fit our souls. to enter into the presence of God and offer the Apostles' Creed with love and faith, or whatever it is that we are offering that particular week. So both are important, the objective and the subjective, and that's where you get these You get in these orders of worship a place for both printed prayers and printed creeds and these sort of things that have been designed by the church, carefully formulated that we would say them together. But you also get a place for extemporaneous prayers and the call for the people to prepare themselves and to truly join in with their hearts and their souls in these things. Any questions or comments about that? Just to add the comment in regards to prayers and forms of prayers, I think it was helpful in another Sunday school lesson that was pointed out that the Lord's Prayer is a prayer that should be used in daily prayer, because give us this day our daily bread. That was something that was important for me to learn. I certainly knew that Jesus had told us this is how we ought to pray, but connecting that with a daily prayer I think helps overcome aversion to people's concern for ritualism, that type of thing. All right, so the last thing then that I want to point out, in addition to the distinction between public, corporate, and private individual worship, and then concern for the objective and subjective, is that in a traditional reform worship service, and in both of these orders of worship, we're understanding that what we're now entering into is a meeting between God and His people. We said that last week when we looked at the directories of worship. And so one of the things to appreciate about these orders of worship as you look at them is that there is a sort of pattern here. And the pattern is that God instigates the worship by speaking to us, and speaking to us, revealing himself unto us. And so we stand, or we sit, and we listen, and we receive God's word. And then when we have received God's Word, then it's our turn. And we, together as a people, respond unto God with some sort of appropriate response to what He said, by prayer or by praise, usually. So, for example, if you look at the morning worship service, it starts out with the preparation for worship. So the prelude, the silent prayer, the pastor's welcome, these are just preparation. The worship service doesn't actually start formally until the call to worship. So God himself institutes the meeting. He calls it to order, so to speak. And he does it by a passage in scripture in which he does, in his word, call his people to come and worship him. We're not just picking random passages out of the Bible for these calls to worship. These are, in fact, calls to worship in which God is calling his people to worship. And we're receiving that as he's calling us to worship. Now, then we respond. to the hall to worship with an opening hymn of praise, a prayer in which we ask God to come and to bless us with his presence in this meeting, and we continue to respond with the Lord's Prayer and the Apostles' Creed and the Gloria Patri. This response to God's Word then goes into the pastoral prayer, the hymn of our faith, the collection so forth and so on, until we get then to God's turn to speak again, which is in the scripture reading from the Old and the New Testaments, and that word is exposited. The preaching of the word is also considered to be God by His minister speaking to His people, and then we'll respond again with prayer, so forth and so on. So you can follow it throughout the service. This is sort of the idea of what's taking place. God speaks to us by his word, and we respond as the Bible teaches us to respond. There is also, I would point out, in this meeting between God and His people, an intentional gospel logic. That is, part of what the gospel is, is how God has shown us that we can come to Him. And so, as we come to God in the worship service, we want to come to Him in the way in which He has taught us that we can come to Him. And that is through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So you notice in both the morning and the evening services, there are, after the preparation for worship, there are three sections which are in the bold print. There is first the adoration of God. So as God calls us to worship, It's like we're entering into His courts, we're entering into His presence, and we do so with praise, because that's what the Bible tells us to do. So we're praising God, we're praising Him in our hymns, we're praising Him in our prayers, we're praising Him in our confessions of faith, so forth and so on. So that's how the meeting begins. Then, in the second part of the worship service, we understand that now it's time, if we hope to really enter into intimate communion with God according to the gospel, we need to confess our sins. So we, together, join together our hearts and we confess our sins unto God. And after the confession of sin, you'll hear in the pastoral prayer that there is an assurance pardon, some declaration of God's forgiving us according to the gospel. And we take some time in which we draw nearer and ask for the things that we need. And in all this, we are now partaking in the means of grace, prayer, and then the word, and then the sacraments. And what we're receiving in the means of grace by God's blessing is Christ, receiving Christ for our salvation. That's what this particular section is about. And then at the end is a response and a blessing, a response to what we have received in this time of prayer and in the word and in the sacraments, our closing hymn, and then God's blessing upon us in the benediction, and then a final response as the meeting comes to a close. So you see there a gospel logic in the service itself. And that is intentional and we put it in bold print in both of these services to emphasize that that is the flow. Any questions or comments on that? All right. I want to take a minute to look at the evening service here. Some of you regularly attend the evening service, some do not, so you may not have had the opportunity to look at this before. The morning order of worship was largely from this era. It was the order of worship that was commonly adopted by the American Presbyterian churches. in the 19th century, but the evening worship service is earlier. It's what's called the Savoy Liturgy. It goes back to the 17th century, and its primary architect was Richard Baxter, if you're familiar with him. It's not exactly the Savoy Liturgy, but it's based on it. So the worship service opens in the same way, call to worship, opening hymn, Prayer of invocation and then we add the doxology there, but then under the confession of sin and means of grace there is this fairly quick walk through the basics of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So it starts with the congregation standing together and reading the Law of God. And in reading the Law of God, we see what the standard is, right? We see what it is that is required of us as human beings, if we are to present ourselves righteous in the sight of God. That brings conviction of sin. Then there is the reading of a verse or two from Scripture, which is a warning about the human condition, which speaks to us about our fallenness and about our sin, and recognizes that that we are all sinners and that it's dangerous to be a sinner. Then there's the reading of a verse or two from scripture that reminds us of the way of salvation, that speaks of Jesus Christ as the Savior of sinners, and that we can be saved from our sins through faith in Him. Then we confess our sins together in the corporate confession of sin that's printed in the bulletin. Then at the end of our confession, There's a reading of a verse or two in which God assures us of his forgiveness on the basis of the gospel. And then following that, there's another reading of a verse or two in which those who have been forgiven, those who have been saved from the guilt of their sins by Christ, are then exhorted in faith to walk in obedience. That's just a step-by-step walk through the gospel. And every week we see those same steps, but we use different passages from Scripture just to show you it's all over the place, right? This is the basic theme. This is how it works. This is how we are saved. This is how we can enter into the presence of God and worship Him. And then we follow with an affirmation of faith according to the official confession of the church, which is sort of for the sake of teaching. But anyways, that's that that's that gospel logic again. There's the overall gospel logic of the service, but then there's this little section that The Baxter and some others devised just to kind of reiterate these things to God's people week after week after week after week after week to emphasize the the most important things So I Think my time is up. I would encourage you to You know, as you think about these ideas, to pay attention to these orders of worship today and in the coming weeks, and think about these things, think about these different aspects. And if you have any insights, any observations, or you have any questions for me, I'd be more than happy to talk to you about them. But I just want you to appreciate, in a deeper way, you know, why we adopted these particular orders of worship and what's going on in them, and try to avoid some of the confusion that might come of thinking wrongly about what it is that we're seeking to do here. Alright, let's close with prayer.