Well, good morning. Hopefully most of you recognize that scene. If you haven't seen that movie before, it's a great kind of key point in the movie of The Lord of the Rings where several people gather around this young Frodo Baggins who has to do a pretty impossible task and hopefully that sets the tone for this morning. My name is David Mitchell, welcome, and I am so encouraged that I have to introduce myself to a significant number of people that are in front of me today. My wife, Debbie, my son, Justin, and my daughter, Caitlin, who you just heard from, and I, we're living in Richfield since 2006, and in January of 2013, moved to England so that I could serve World Vision. in Europe, and I'm coming back here, and there's just so many new faces. So, as Bilbo Baggins actually said in this movie, and you'll have to forgive the humor, he says, I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. So, not that that's my genuine feeling, but I just had to say it, because I thought it was so appropriate. Next slide, if you could, Keith. This is a picture, and I'm gonna be in the way. I'm figuring that out very quickly. This is a picture of my daughter, Caitlin. I'm embarrassing her already. So this is Caitlin in front of the door of St. Edward's Church, which is still on the wall up in the Cotswolds in England. And this happens to be, according to rumors and speculation, as you can see, this door that's flanked by these two huge trees. But this is one of the doors that was inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien as he wrote The Lord of the Rings. And when you look at it, it kind of looks like a a hobbit door or a dwarf door or something like that. But to me, we had such a wonderful experience. It was life-changing, much of which I don't think we will fully realize until a few years from now when we can look back and see how it has changed us. But I think I speak for the four of us when I say that we've all come back a little different. You know, when you relocate, which I know many of you have even just recently, obviously we've all relocated, but those of you that have done so recently, I don't know about you, but there are things that you expect you're going to be surprised by when you move. And then there are some things that you assume won't surprise you, and usually it's the latter list that ends up surprising you significantly. There's things that I was sort of bracing for when we moved over to England, and then there was just some small things that I wasn't expecting would be a challenge, and they were. Scripture encourages us in our shared faith to connect with one another, encourages us to fellowship with one another. Can I just be transparent with you and tell you that I really struggled with that when I was over in England? I was comfortable here in Ridgefield. Ritual Baptist Church was our home. This is where I sang. This is where we engaged in Sunday school. This is where I met with the guys and went to Yankee games. We enjoyed small groups together. Children were baptized here. And to me, going to the churches that we were at, which were wonderful churches, but for me, I just had this real challenge and it felt too different. It felt too new. I could hardly understand some of them. You would imagine the English language is a bit of a challenge. But just on top of everything else in our lives, it just felt too much for me to really lean in. And I knew we weren't gonna be there for a long time. So I found myself sort of just leaning back and saying, you know, I'll be here, but I just don't feel in my heart that I'm inclined to connect. And the Lord really has been working on that with me, and I think it's kind of funny that Chuck said, hey, why don't you come and talk about connecting the church? So there's God's sense of humor wrapping me in. We had a really good pastor that was there, his name was James, and James was talking to Debbie and I about whether or not we would consider being members of the church. And my first reaction was, we're not gonna be here for very long. And he said to us, he said, whether you're here for six months, or whether you're here for six years, your membership, it's not about your signature and a connection. It's about a covenant between you and me, being God, that you're going to be a part of this fellowship. And it's a covenant between you and your fellow brethren. You're going to commit to us, and then we're going to commit to you. We're going to be able to lean into you and fellowship with you. And you're going to really bloom where you're planted, to use the phrase. That to me is probably one of the most important things that I learned, or lessons that I learned when I was there, is really being connected and fellowshipping wherever we're at. Wherever we're at physically, wherever we're at geographically in our walk. So that moves me to our next slide, and that's sort of our theme this morning, which is connect, or made for each other. A common theme throughout scripture is God's use of rather ordinary people, who in their faith do extraordinary things. Have you noticed that? Sometimes they're considered foolish by others, but it's part of God's design. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 27 says, but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. And in many cases, scripture also shows us in that foolishness, in a foolishness of our faith, as fools for Christ, what man has done for one another. And I think it's important that we think about how those intertwine. So to illustrate this, I'm gonna share with you a few stories in scripture that come to mind for me as I was reflecting on this idea of how we need to be connected to one another. For the first story, we're actually gonna look at three different accounts of the same event. This is of Jesus healing the paralytic. If you have a copy of scriptures, if you have your Bible in the pews, open it up to page 963. It's Matthew 9, verses one and two. Matthew 9 verses 1 and 2 should be page 963 in your Bible. It's always interesting to explore a passage or a story, or in the case of the Gospels, an eyewitness account of what has happened because if you notice that each writer presents something in a slightly different perspective. You can read one account, and Matthew says, well, this is how I saw it from this angle. And Luke says, well, the same thing happened, but I sort of saw this piece. And then Mark says something. To me, it's like an automobile accident. If you've got three witnesses, one person is actually behind the vehicles, one person is standing on the side of the road next to the vehicles, and then there's maybe a driver in the oncoming car. That's three descriptions of the very same event. And so when there's commonality in the testimonies about the three different events, that strengthens the account of what took place. And so I kind of stand up and take notice a bit more when I notice that the Gospels are all speaking very similar language on the same thing that happens. So in this case, we have three different authors describing the same event. They're varying degrees of detail in each of their story, but certain elements are written exactly the same way. So, Matthew 9, verse 1-2, actually, it might even be in the next slide if you haven't got a Bible in front of you. Yes, it is. So, here's what Matthew says. Jesus stepped into a boat, crossed over, and came into his own town. Some men brought to him a paralyzed man lying on a mat. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the man, take heart, son, your sins are forgiven. Okay, that's what Matthew describes. Now let's take a look at the book of Luke. So if you slide over a little bit in your Bible to page 1019, 1019, it's Luke chapter five, verses 18 through 20. And I think that's the next slide up here. Luke 5, 18 through 20 says, same story. Some men came carrying a paralyzed man on a mat and tried to take him into the house to lay him before Jesus. When they could not find a way to do this because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and lowered him on his mat through the tiles into the middle of the crowd right in front of Jesus. When Jesus saw their faith, he said, friend, your sins are forgiven. Okay, that's Luke. Finally, we're gonna actually go backwards. We're gonna go back to Mark. So slide back the other direction. I'm gonna do this all morning, by the way. So have your hands warmed up. We're gonna fly through. So page 991 in your Pew Bible, Mark chapter two, verses one through five. And again, I think it's on the next slide. Here we go. So Mark chapter two, one through five. Mark writes a few days later when Jesus again entered Capernaum, the people gathered that he had come home, heard that he had come home, excuse me. They gathered in such large numbers that there was no room left, not even outside the door, and he preached the word to them. Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man carried by four of them. Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, Son, your sins are forgiven. So let's pick this apart a little bit. And I spoke about this probably three or four years ago. So if this comes up to mind, it's because I've got some new thoughts around it. So bear with me. So anyway, so Jesus is entering Capernaum. He's coming home. Scripture says that he has entered it again. which was a very big deal. And so there's this house, it doesn't say who's home, but it says that a very large number of people were crowded into the house to hear him speak. and in large numbers. So it's packed. People are shoulder to shoulder. People are sitting on the floor. There's no room to sit. There's no room to stand. This must have been a big event. Now, I'm going to embellish just slightly and make some assumptions. I'm going to assume that if it's that big of a deal and it's that crowded, that there probably isn't a whole lot of room around the front door. There's probably not a whole lot of room around the windows where you could lean in and listen to Jesus speak. My guess is the house is surrounded two or three or four people deep just to try to hear Jesus's voice and hear Jesus's messages. So it must have been a really big deal. Let's shift our focus a bit though to the supporting cast in this story. So we have learned that there are these four men and the four men were carrying this paralyzed man. Who are these four guys? It doesn't say much about who they were. But again, I'm gonna assume that they must have understood the paralyzed man's story. Maybe they were related to him, maybe they were just his neighbors. But here they are carrying this paralyzed man towards this house so that they can get to Jesus. So can you just imagine it for a moment? Just kind of visualize the house in your mind. If you've been to the, I haven't been to the Middle East, but if you can imagine a kind of a home in Capernaum, on a dirt road, and there's a house there, and people are just gathered around the house. So they come to the house, and you can imagine these four guys, you know, with the paralyzed man, they said, wow, this is really crowded, right? I mean, how are we gonna get, how are we gonna get our friend here closer to Jesus? They didn't want to impose, maybe, you know, they thought, well, it might be too uncomfortable, it might be too much effort to try to excuse the people out of the way to get them to the front. These four men had to get this man closer. They believed that this was the time and that this was the place that Jesus was going to heal and heal their friend. So what was their plan? Can you imagine them sort of talking to one another, sort of on the side of the house? They said, well, you know, we could, we could try to get them closer to the window. Then someone says, the roof. We could climb on the roof. Is that a common thing? It's not common today, but maybe it was common back then. It doesn't seem practical to me. Climbing onto a stranger's roof, ripping away tiles and mud to see what's going on, that may have been common, but I don't think so. I'm going to make a guess that that was the case. So can you imagine being in this room? So here we are, let's say this is the house and it's packed and Jesus is up preaching his word and all of a sudden you sort of hear these footsteps on the roof, right? Now remember, we still hear that there were teachers of the law that were there, right? That's discussed immediately in the following verses. So you have teachers, you have prominent people that are in the room. Then everyone starts looking up. You know, the ceiling starts kind of, you kind of look up here and see the ceiling, the tile gets sort of removed. Maybe a piece of tile kind of falls on someone's head. Everyone's, Jesus stops, everyone stops and is looking up. And then all of a sudden you see the sky opening on the roof and it's probably one of the guys is kind of down looking like this. Are we good? No, we need a bigger hole. So they're tearing more of the tile. Can you see this? So then they finally get enough space in the roof. And then imagine lowering this guy down. Just think practically about what it's, they probably had some ropes. The guy's probably going like this, probably easily falling off the mat. But they finally lower him down so he's right in front of the man. That's how badly they wanted to see it. And that's how much they believe. And Jesus noticed that. Did you pick that up in the three verses? One of the main commonalities of the three verses was that Jesus saw their faith. It wasn't just Jesus seeing the faith of the paralyzed man. Jesus saw the faith of the four men that helped him get close to him. That's the one phrase that's consistent in these accounts. It's the compassion that they had on the paralytic that changed the man's life and it compelled Jesus and his reaction to respond. That's a great sort of supporting cast story, isn't it? The role of people in your life, the role of yourself in other people's lives, especially in faith and how important it is and how Christ notices that and heals because of that. He's pleased. There's another short story in Exodus that illustrates men coming together for their faith in God, and Caitlin mentioned it. Next slide here, you can go to, if you're looking in your Bible, you still have it, go to page 71. It's Exodus 17, verses eight through 12. And it says, Moses said to Joshua, choose some of four men, go out to fight the Amalekites. Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with a staff in my hands. Joshua fights the Amalekites as Moses has ordered. As long as Moses holds up his hands, the Israelites were winning. But whenever he lowers his hands, the Amalekites are winning. When Moses' hands grew tired, they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it. Then Aaron and her held his hands up, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady until sunset." Moses can't do this alone, right? I mean, don't you think that God knew what Moses' strength was at this point? Moses is not a young guy at this point in scripture, right? But Moses has a covenant and makes a deal, you know, says to Moses, as long as your hands are held up. And Moses is thinking, I can't hold my hands up for that long. You know, this is a long battle. And God knows that. And God understands that. So what does he do? He calls Aaron and her and their hearts are moved. And in their faith, they come alongside and they lift up Moses hands. That's the illustration that we're able to lift each other up in faith, able to participate in God's miracle, and that's who we're designed to be in each other's lives, especially as fellow believers. Let's turn to the Old Testament again, or stay in the Old Testament, and open up 1 Samuel 23, verses 15 through 18, which is page 286 in your Pew Bible. page 286, 1 Samuel 23, 15 through 18 says this. While David was at Horesh in the desert of Ziph, he learned that Saul had come out to take his life. And Saul's son, Jonathan, went to David at Horesh and helped him find strength in God. Don't be afraid, he said. My father Saul will not lay a hand on you. You will be king over Israel and I will be second to you. Even my father Saul knows this. The two of them then made a covenant before God. Then Jonathan went home, but David remained at Horesh. So we learn about Jonathan. Jonathan, as you know, is the son of King Saul who is pursuing David. And instead of helping his father find David to kill him, Jonathan understands that God has chosen a man other than himself to occupy his father's throne. And I love what Jonathan does. He comes to David in his time of trouble and he does two key things. First one is he reminds David of God's plan. You know, so Jonathan comes equipped not only to be with David but also to remind him, remind him of his faith in God. He assures him and Jonathan's faith encourages David in this time of need. The second thing Jonathan does I think is really interesting is he, and I think it says, Yeah, so the two of them made a covenant before the Lord. So the covenant, definition of the covenant is defined as a sacred agreement between God and his people. So God sets specific conditions and then he promises to bless us as we obey those conditions. So Jonathan renews this covenant relationship with David in the faith, again, in God, and then reassures him that I will be here for you in the name of the Lord. It's a great example of a man coming to another in a time of need and leaning in and connecting, and not just being with him, but reminding him, reminding him of God's faith. Proverbs 27, 17 reads, as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. And I would even change that a bit. So as iron sharpen iron, so one man can encourage one another. And that's the application that we see here. While I'm on the theme of British authors and writers, C.S. Lewis has a wonderful book called The Four Loves, if you haven't read this before, and there's a really powerful quote in that book that I want to read to you, and it should be on the next slide. C.S. Lewis says, in friendship, we think we have chosen our peers. In reality, a few years difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another, the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting, any of these chances might have kept us apart, and us being one another. Think of someone in your life. But for a Christian, there are strictly, oh, next slide, yeah. For a Christian, there are, strictly speaking, no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, can truly say to every group of Christian friends, you have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another. The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each one of us the beauties of others. Could it be that we at Ridgefield Baptist Church have been brought here specifically to connect with one another? This is the thing that really struck me when I was at the church in England. I thought, there's no accidents here. God brings us into specific intentional relationships with one another. But we can't engage in those relationships until we open up and lean in and make that effort to connect. Next slide, I know that Chuck has been leading this church through what he calls Journey Sundays, and his theme of what God can do at Ridgefield Baptist Church over the next few years. And the kind of the three pillars, I don't know if he calls them pillars or not, but it seems like pillars to me, worship, connect, and serve. And this is really the second pillar that we are focusing on this morning, the idea of connecting or in-reach. Building up one another in the faith, or edification if you will, by exercising spiritual gifts and practicing the one another's in our lives. Connecting with his people. What are the one another's? I don't know if he's talked about that. He mentioned that a little bit last Sunday downstairs. These are the one another's. John 13, 34 says, love one another. Colossians 3, 13 says, bear with and forgive one another. Be compassionate with is Ephesians 432. Be devoted to and honor one another is Romans 1210. Encourage one another, 1 Thessalonians 511. Spur each other on, Hebrews 1014. Submit to and serve one another, Ephesians 521. All of them intentional, very practical understanding of how we are to connect with each other as fellow believers. That's how the church thrives. because we can't do it alone. We're not designed to walk on this earth by ourselves, even in our faith, not by ourselves. We need each other, whether it's this community of church that we define here on a Sunday morning, or whether it's the fellowship of believers that you interact with throughout church, or in your neighborhood, or your family, your friends' lives. That's what connecting is about. God calls us to be in fellowship with one another. What does that look like practically for us at Ridgefield Baptist Church? We have Sunday school downstairs. I think it's at 10 o'clock on Sundays. If you haven't taken a part of it, come on down and hear a little bit extra component of what the word is and how the word speaks to our lives and get to know one another. We have community groups. We have coffee fellowships. There's a great girls' group that my daughter is now involved in. There's Bible studies. There's ladies' nights. There's men's breakfasts. There's retreats. All opportunities for us to connect and engage and get involved in each other's lives and find out how the Lord is working each one of us. I suspect there are people in this room, I certainly know I've had seasons of this, where we're struggling. Where we could use people in our lives. Chuck spoke about that in weeks in the past. Sometimes we don't realize that maybe we are the answer to someone's prayer. Ever thought of it that way? You know, God may, someone may be in a difficult spot in praying that the Lord would be able to provide and surround them and comfort them with peace. Ever thought that maybe a part of the answer to that prayer is us as fellow believers coming alongside of them and encouraging them and comforting them and sharing our peace with them? We can be the answer to each other's prayers if we open up our hearts and allow ourselves to do it. God calls us to connect with each other in the faith. No matter where we are, no matter where we're here for six months, whether you're here for six years, whether you've just arrived, whether you're getting ready to leave, Make today an opportunity where you can connect with each other. Get to know someone. Get to know someone you maybe just shook hands with in the lobby. Get to know them a little bit better and deeper today. It's not just activity, it's getting engaged. I pray that that would be a challenge for you. It certainly is a challenge for me this morning. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, thank you for providing your word to us. Thank you for revealing who you are. Thank you for sharing your commandments, sharing your calling to us through scripture. It's a blueprint for how we need to live our lives, Lord. I pray that we would each be able to make ourselves available, not only just to you, to grow and strengthen us, but to help us to be pliable and open that we can serve one another. Father, we thank you for the cross. We thank you for the promise that you've given us, and we claim that promise this morning. We lift you up and we praise you for the God that you are. In your precious name we pray, amen.