Please remain standing for a word of prayer. Father, this morning we come before you because of the finished work of Calvary. We thank you for the lamb who was slain, the one who is our savior, who is now also our shepherd. The Lord, my shepherd, leads me. He's all that we need. We thank you, Father, for the fullness of the salvation that he provides, and for the richness of the life we have because of him. We pray this morning as we are taught by your word, and as we listen to your word preached this morning, that our hearts will be stirred to follow our shepherd without wavering, without faltering, without doubt, for he leads and leads well. We pray for your blessing upon us this morning as we listen to your word, grant us listening ears, obedient hearts, a true walk, that as we walk in this world amongst those who are unsaved, that we may reflect the work of Christ in their lives. We pray for your blessing upon us, in the Savior's name, and for his sake alone, amen. Please be seated. A warm welcome to all of you. We will give you a more formal and hopefully warmer welcome when we do the preaching service. But I do want to welcome you all this morning to Living a Bible Church as we continue in our study on the supremacy of Christ in the postmodern world, our only hope. We started the study last week. It's a We have spent several weeks in this course, in this study, and our desire is to see how we can find ourselves to be faithful, to be encouraged, and to remain committed in a world in which we find ourselves as aliens and strangers. This is not our home. There's a song my father used to sing. This world is not our home, we just are passing through. If heaven's not my home, then Lord, what will I do? So heaven is our home, but we have been left in this world by our Savior, and we remind ourselves last week, and we'll do so again this morning, that we're not here by accident, we are here because he has left us here. And so we started our study on, our only hope, the supremacy of Christ in the postmodern world. And I'll just give a very quick recap of a few points we touched on last week so that we don't leave ourselves kind of coming in and just dangling. Last week we reminded ourselves that it's easy to grow discouraged, even Christians do. We grow discouraged because we find ourselves in a world that is hostile, a world that's opposed to Christianity. Hostility means war. The world is at war with the gospel. And while we may not feel like we are at war, we are soldiers of the cross. And so we are in a hostile world that doesn't welcome what we believe, it doesn't welcome what we preach, but we preach it nonetheless. We live it nonetheless. We live in a world that's adversarial. Both our working environments and our school environments are adversarial. There is an agenda afoot to try and drive us into a worldview that we do not subscribe to, that of a woke worldview, of conforming to what this world sees as acceptable. and required on their terms. We also find ourselves in a threatening world, a world in which we find ourselves threatened when we try and present the gospel. Evangelism is not something that is received willingly and easily by those to whom we preach the gospel. There is a level of religiosity, there's a level of churchgoing that And the surface seems to be that they are amenable, amenable to receiving the gospel, but when we get down to the nitty gritty, they resist it, because their hearts are darkened, until such time as God pours in faith, and they come to him with repentance, finding eternal life. So we are discouraged, and we can be discouraged, as we find ourselves in a hostile, adversarial, and threatening world. And we remind ourselves that Christians are not immune to discouragement. We are not immune to discouragement, and we need to bear in mind that when we face discouragement, and when we kind of wish we were not in this world, we have to remind ourselves of John chapter 17, the prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ, when he says, I've given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they're not of the world, just as I'm not of the world. Then he says this to his father in his prayer, So we are here because Christ wants us to be here. We need to find how we can be relevant, biblically speaking, in a world that is hostile, adversarial, and threatening. We spoke about discouragement, we tried to identify what discouragement is and we said it is not disappointment merely. Disappointment is a common thing in everyday life. Disappointment is nothing more than finding that our expectations have not been met or not met to our satisfaction. It's not depression, discouragement is more than disappointment, but not as much as depression. Depression is defined as a loss of hope, a loss of hope, being hopeless, being without hope, which is why the next step after depression, if it is not checked, as far as the world is concerned, is suicide, and that is rampant, and that's on the rise. I made a comment that we should not be depressed as Christians, because we do have a hope. So discouragement fits in somewhere between those two, more than disappointment. less in depression, but it is still something that is real in our lives. And discouragement is allowing the circumstances to determine how we feel about any given situation. We are driven very often by our feelings, and we don't always feel that we are in a good place. And I'm using that term as the world use it, because they're always in a good place or a good space or a good something, or not in a good place or a good space or a good something. We need to be consistent in our walk. But sometimes that walk is through a valley, and sometimes it's on a mountain peak. And with those rise and falls in our walk with Christ, we have times to rejoice because everything just seems to be so rosy. And sometimes things are dark and difficult and comes at us in a way which we wish it hadn't. We still need to rejoice. we still need to be thankful, we still need to be contented. So with having said all of that, we then embarked on trying to look at what are the biblical responses to discouragement, and we identified at least two last week. There's a biblical response, number one, we overcome discouragement by relying on the word of God. We have to flee to God's word for help at times of discouragement. When we are discouraged, the last thing we want to do is read God's word, and the last thing we want to do is we want to pray. And I think often why that is the case is because we are scared we're going to find revealed from God's word and through prayer that we are from the cause of our own discouragement. And so we try and avoid that. That may be one of the reasons why we don't do that. There may be others. But discouragement should drive us to rely on the word of God. It often leaves us bitter. and without desire to pray or read a scripture, but we should. Psalm 119, verse 49 and 50 says this, remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life. When we are in the midst of affliction and discomfort, we draw our comfort and our hope from the word of God. That is what we need to rely on. It's the only real, stable, sure means of helping us out of discouragement. It doesn't change. So it's approach to our needs is always the same. In the world, you'll find that there's a changing antidote for everything you can present. And it changes with time, it changes with people, it changes with the proponents. God's word remains sure, steadfast, immovable. And as we face the vagaries of life, if we come to the stability of God's word, we can find ourselves being reassured, being given comfort, and being given hope. We also saw response number two, to overcome discouragement was by choosing joy. It's the hardest thing to do, to be joyful in the midst of discouragement. And yet that is exactly what we are required to do. Joy and rejoicing have to be independent of our circumstances. What does that mean? Joy and rejoicing have to be independent of our circumstances. What that means is that no matter what your circumstance is, that should not drive your joy. You're not only joyful because things are good, you're joyful when things are bad. Because it's through those things in life that we realize that we have a God who is there for us. Remember that God has, and we've gone through this as we've gone through James, that God brings trials into our life. And very often we think the discouragement is only from the evil one, but discouragement can also come because we haven't come to grips with the fact we're going through a trial in our lives, whereby God is refining us. He could be chastising us, he could be disciplining us, he could be leading us to a difficult time, but as we come out of that trial, and as we get beyond our discouragement because of the trial, we see God's hand in refining us, in sanctifying us. So we need to be very careful when we look at discouragement as only the onslaught of the evil one. It could be that we just haven't seen, we haven't seen clear that maybe God's hand take us to a difficult time. and sustaining us during the difficult time and bringing us through the difficult time so that He can make us more like His Son as we grow more and more in His image. Joy and rejoicing does not imply that you do not experience sorrow or pain or unpleasant circumstances. Even in the midst of the most horrendous circumstance that will drive you to discouragement and despair, we need to rejoice. An example we took was from Acts chapter 16, where Paul and Silas are in a Philippian jail, in the inner jail, in the deepest, darkest most horrible pit of the jail. They've been brutalized, they've been beaten, they've been tortured, they are bleeding from their face, from their hands, from their back, they've been beaten with canes, with stripes. And in the midst of what would drive most men to despair, they are singing. They're singing hymns, they're singing praises, they're singing psalms, and because of that singing in the midst of a trial, God uses that very situation to bring a jailer to salvation. So these are the things that we need to look at when we're going through discouragement. God's word. Find joy in our life. But I think about what has only happened now. Think of how we have come to where we are. It was because of the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that we are what we are. That alone should fill us with joy, no matter what the circumstance may be. So this morning we're gonna look at another two of these responses as we work to the end of this first section. This is part two of the first lesson in this series. So, biblical response number three, we overcome discouragement by walking by faith. So how do we invariably define faith? Answer, what is faith? Yes, can you give me a biblical reference for a definition of faith? How many? I'm hearing mumbling. Yes, and it says? Absolutely. And we just quoted from the ESV. Faith is assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Have you thought of that? That faith is having assurance, being sure of something that is hoped for. And Paul says that when we hope for something, it's not for something that we have, it's something that we don't have. So faith gives us the ability to be sure in something which we don't yet have, but something which is a promise. And not only that, we have conviction of something we have never seen. And remember that there's much that we have not seen in this life, and yet, despite that, we remain convinced that the one in whom we have placed our faith is the only one who's able to provide for our needs, no matter what they are. In fact, the Net Bible states Hebrews 11, verse one, in this way. Now, faith is being sure of what we hope for, Being convinced of what we do not see. It's a little bit more modern language, I think, the way we understand better. Being sure and certain about unseen realities. The hope we hope for and the things we haven't seen are actually realities, just not seen by the natural eye. And so if we want to perhaps take all of that and put faith into a definition that is easy to grasp, one of it could be that faith is unwavering confidence in God. Faith is unwavering confidence in God. And that tells us two things, something about ourselves and something about our faith. About our faith, it's where we have placed our faith. Our faith is in God. It's not in faith itself. It's only one kind of faith that works, the kind of faith that is directed towards God. We do not have faith in faith. That is a blind faith. We don't have faith in faith itself. Our faith is in God. We have faith in Him who's able to provide for all our needs. And that confidence we have in God needs to be unwavering. And that is something that we need to consistently pray that God grants us, that the boldness to face things head on, The ability not to buckle under pressure from outside, whether it be from the world, whether it be at the trials, that we remain unwavering in our confidence, so much so that when we look back, we can see it was God who carried us through. We can't stand in our own strength, we know this, but we need to indeed place our confidence in God in a way which reflects that our relation with Him is one that is real, it's permanent, and it's totally dependent on Him. So what about misplaced faith? How often have we misplaced our faith? Can you think of something, something in the scriptures where we see a very vivid account of misplaced faith? Misplaced faith is a dangerous thing. So turn with me to Matthew chapter 26. You all know this account, and it's gonna come to your mind very quickly, Matthew 26. misplaced faith frequently results in discouragement. Just looking for the section I'm looking for. And when they sung a hymn, that's verse 30, verse 30 of Matthew 26. And when they sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, you will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I'm raised up, I will go before you to Galilee. Now listen to faith, misplaced faith speaking. Listen to faith that's trusting in itself. Peter answered, though they all fall away because of you, I will never fall away. Jesus said to him, truly I tell you this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. Peter said to him, even if I must die with you, I will not deny you. This is unwavering faith. This is faith that is so strong that Peter makes claims that in any other circumstance you say, wow, this is commendable, but we know the outcome. Peter doesn't know the outcome at this time. And all the disciples said the same. We often blame Peter for this unwavering claim to allegiance to Christ. because he remains faithful to his master. All the disciples did the same. In John's gospel, immediately after this section, John chapter 14, the Lord says, and the Lord knows that this faith is gonna be shown to be misplaced. The Lord says, let not your hearts be troubled. He believed in God, believe also in me. And the Lord speaks words of encouragement to a group of men that's about to desert him to the last man. Look at verse 69 of Matthew chapter 26. Verse 69. This is after Peter had made the claim, and now Jesus has been arrested, and listen to this man's words now, who has claimed so blatantly to remain faithful up to death. Verse 69, now Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a servant girl came up to him and said, you also were with Jesus the Galilean, but he denied it before them all, saying, I do not know what you mean. And when he went out to the entrance, another servant girl saw him and she said to the bystanders, this man was with Jesus of Nazareth. And again he denied it with an oath. I do not know the man. After a little while, the bystanders came up and said to Peter, certainly you too are one of them. For your accent betrays you. Then he began to invoke a curse on himself and to sweat. I do not know the man. And immediately the rooster crowed. And Peter, remember the saying of Jesus, before the rooster crows, and you will deny me three times. And finally, it hits home, the discouragement, the despair hits home to Peter in a way which came at him like a ton of bricks. And he went out and wept bitterly. So misplaced faith, no matter even if you think it's directed in the right direction, if it's not true faith, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in God based on a biblical foundation, that misplaced faith can bring you into huge discouragement. Peter fell. Peter trusted himself. He thought that he was able to withstand to the end. But he was met with his own unfilled expectation. We become discouraged when life doesn't meet our expectations. That's when we become discouraged. We get discouraged when others don't meet our expectation. We're very good at that. We become discouraged when we don't meet our expectations. That happened to Peter. We expect that we can do anything or everything, and it doesn't happen, and we become discouraged. We become discouraged even when we think that God hasn't met our expectations. This is a extremely serious situation to be in, when we're not discouraged, but to cloud our minds so much that all we do is lash out, play the victim, blame everyone else, including God, if things don't go our way. Lord, the woman that you gave me, it's her fault, not mine. Don't blame me, blame her. Yeah, so Elizabeth's in touch with our teacher this morning. We act as though we live in the cause and effect world and that things are supposed to turn out in a certain way, just the way we planned. We believe that if you continue to do A, eventually it will result in B. But life doesn't work that way. We are no different to Peter. We place our faith in things that are unable to provide the outcomes we desire. Take something as simple as employment. How often I've been discouraged because of the work we do or don't do. We work for a company for years and we believe that our job is secure up till retirement and then retrenchment comes in. And we find people are passed over and kept employed while we are retrenched and we can't figure out why because we are a better worker, we be more honest, more faithful, more committed, more skilled and we find that others are left to earn while we are retrenched and we become discouraged. And many people leave the employment like that. What about those of you who are trying to find a job? And you believe you have the most stunning CV in the world. How can anybody not want to have me on his team? And yet, interview after interview, we turn down, we become discouraged. That happens, and people do drastic things. What about those who have gone into retirement only to find that they had plans and then everything's turned upside down by COVID? And now things don't look as easy as it did three, four years ago. And so all of us face levels of discouragement because of circumstances out of our control. And it's easy to be discouraged when things do not go our way. It's easy to fall into the trap of pity and wallowing in what we think we do not deserve. Romans 8, verse 28. Let me read a few quickly. Romans chapter 8, verse 2. I think we need to read this to encourage ourselves as we look at discouragement and the realities in our lives, or could be in our lives, if we allow it to become the dominating factor. Romans chapter 8. And again, I know you know these verses, but I want to read it so that it drives home into our hearts. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. It's hard to think of that when things are not working to what you think should be for your good. It's hard to grab this verse we read, and it fills us with warmth and with assurance. But when you are facing things that don't seem to be going your way, that's the time to read this verse. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified. And I've read it to the end, just to drive this point home, that if you are without Christ, then you don't have the hope that we have. If you have not been saved, if you have not been redeemed, if you have not been But look on the side of God and what we're saying this morning is meaningless in your life no matter how fervently you try and apply it. Because you do not know God in whom you can place your faith. You do not have the resources that he has given to his people to be sustained at times of difficulty. You don't have that because you're not one of his. And so even right in the middle of this teaching program, This teaching lesson, we want to reach out to you who are unsafe and warn you of the danger of remaining unsaved when you face God's wrath, but invite you to respond to the gospel so that this can become a reality in your life. And so that the discouragement in this world that you face day by day may not be you by yourself, but can be you in the hands of the shepherd who leads you. Romans chapter eight is a tremendous verse for us when we are going through times of discouragement. We should not let discouragement choke our faith. There are too many things in place for our benefit to keep us who belong to God, to keep us from wallowing in discouragement and despondency. We have the scripture, Romans 15, four, you can go there, and this is the reference. We have the love of Christ. We've just read that in Romans chapter eight. And we have faith, Hebrews chapter 11, verse one. We have all of these things so that we don't have to wallow in despondency and discouragement. We should not allow ourselves to be ruled by our circumstances. We need to live by faith. Failing to live by faith is failing to have an unwavering confidence in God who can meet all your needs. Not necessarily the way you want it to be met, but God can and will meet all your needs for he provides for us. Any questions? All right, I'm gonna go to the next few slides. There are a few to go through, and I will try and keep us on time today. So, biblical response number four, we overcome discouragement by embracing fellowship. You may think, wow, okay, fine, that is fitting. And I think it is really very essential to fighting off discouragement. The late J. Dwight Pentecost says this about discouragement. Discouragement is principally self-occupation. We become discouraged because we're focused inwardly. We become discouraged because we have made the circle around our little life the world. And we become discouraged because things don't happen in this world the way we want it to happen. We become self-occupied. And self-occupation is the driving principle behind discouragement. We look at ourselves and we have self-pity and we are victims and we cry and we moan our situation. Never realizing that there are many others who are going through the same or even worse. And even more than that, many going through similar circumstances that don't have Christ as their shepherd. So we need to move away from self-occupation and be Christ-centered. This is why this is about Christ and discouragement. We need to be Christ-centered in our discouragement so that we do not become, do not wallow in that despondency. Fellowship is a critical thing because the opposite is extremely dangerous. Even the world knows that. Even the unsaved knows that. Isolation is not a good thing. The medical news of today put out an article and it was about stress of being isolated and what problems it can cause both mentally and physically. And according to the author of a particular article, she wrote this, that isolation, and we've gone through isolation, so this is not academic. We've gone through two years of lockdown. We've gone through being isolated and remote from other people. We've gone through times where we couldn't go out and instead we stayed locked into a place. That kind of environment leads to anxiety and stress, amongst other things. Depression and hopelessness, anger, irritability, hostility. It leads to things like paranoia, social withdrawal, and self-harm or suicide. Research indicates that living alone has both an adverse effect on both your health and your mental well-being because people need people. People need people. And we cannot do without people. What does Genesis 2, verse 18 say? Amen, brother. You say, well, how does that fit into fellowship? Well, think about it. At this point in time, God is speaking about the entire population of the world. One man. This one man is the entire population of the world, and he's alone. God says it's not good for man to be alone. Now we know that this is the base for which we teach on marriage, but it is also on a basis for partnership. And so what God does is he doubles the entire population of the universe, of the world. Well, probably the universe too. He doubles the entire population of the world by making this man receive a wife. And so, when God said it was not good for man to dwell alone, to be alone, he gave man a helper fit for him. Because we need people. People need people. And Adam realized this because he saw that animals have partners. He couldn't figure out why he doesn't have one. And God eventually gives him a partner. People need people. Fellowship includes several interactions. First of all, that's relational. We have relationships. In the New Testament, believers can have fellowship and share together. We can have a relationship with each other, because first of all, we have a relationship with Christ and share Him in communion. Remember, that is the first one with whom we have a relationship, so we can have one, so we can have a relationship with each other. 1 John 1.3, that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. John writing to those who he considers to be his children. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that your joy may be complete. Completeness of joy is found in true fellowship. True fellowship with Christ and true fellowship with each other. Secondly, fellowship also includes partnership. Partnership is something that we continue engaging with in the Christian life. In Philippians chapter one, verse five, Paul reminds the church that we have a partnership in the gospel from the first day until then. So it's a partnership that is also a component of fellowship. And finally, in this particular talk today, there may be more we can unpack, but today we unpack this first one, companionship. And again, companionship, we go back to Genesis 2 verse 18, for that was one of the very first companionship relations that God put into place. In the Christian community, companionship includes communicating on a spiritual level through a mutual sharing of the things of Christ, the Word, the filling of the Holy Spirit, and the ministries and gifts of the various members of the body of Christ. Those are the outlets that we have and the resource we go to to keep us focused on the reality of the life we're living. We don't become discouraged and despondent when we engage with God's word in the way we are intended to do. If we are immersed in the Word of God, even when difficult times come, whether it's physical sickness or mental issues or other things, God's Word remains our foundation, our bastion, our support. We be filled with the Holy Spirit, all of us, and it's He who empowers us to live a life that would be impossible to live by our own strength, in a hostile, adversarial world, a world that is at war with us. And the ministries of the gifts is how we then express fellowship to each other. It's as we exercise the gifts that we have that the church is edified. That is why when we bring someone or we affirm someone's membership, we make them accountable to you and you accountable to them and we're responsible for each other so that as we share the gifts that God has given us. We not only have a fellowship, which we call sometimes a group of people, but we have fellowship, a sharing of things given to us by God for the benefit of his church. And what was the most explicit example of this fellowship? Acts chapter 2, 42, we know that. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and the fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers. And all came upon every soul and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all the believers together had all things in common. That is an important point for fellowship because that very first church, to them fellowship was not just a time to get together and socialize. It was a means for them to survive every single day. every single moment, because remember that this is the first of the Christians, the first people to turn to Jesus Christ out of the nation of Israel. These were Jews who turned to Jesus Christ, and some of them would have been proselytes who were in Jerusalem trying to be Jews. But because of their turn to Jesus Christ, this group in Acts chapter 2, they were They were ostracized by the community. They were disowned by their families. They were treated with contempt by all around them because they become a cult who followed the way. And so as far as the Jews were concerned, in the Jewish community, they had every reason to be discouraged. But they found comfort in community. And the comfort they found to deal with the discouragement that they had was to be in fellowship. And they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching. They devoted themselves to breaking of bread. They devoted themselves to prayers. And they devoted themselves. to fellowship, and you just kind of rock up, have a cup of tea, have a piece of matzo, have a glass of diluted wine, and go home. And you kind of just come there and say, well, it's cool to be here tonight. They were devoted to this because their very life depended on it, and I want to submit that our spiritual well-being is dependent on how true our fellowship is to each other. Fellowship is not something that we can just overlook. It is something that is central to dealing with discouragement. God has created us to be dependent on people, dependent on Him and on one another. No man is an island. None of us has the ability to go it alone. Many try. And to some of us, it comes easy. And I speak to myself here. To some of us, it's easy to be self-dependent. It's easy to be man alone. It's easy to do things your way for the reasons you want to do it. And sometimes we abuse the skills God's given us to be used to the betterment of all by using it purely for ourselves. And so I know what it means to want to go it alone. But none of us truly has an ability to go it alone, especially in the Church of Jesus Christ. We need the communion or companionship of one another. Spiritual fellowship, both on the vertical and horizontal planes, are absolute necessities. That's not easy to grasp, but we need to because of the negative impact society has on traditional culture and traditional church life. I'm going to refer to three things quickly in another slide because of time, but I will explain exactly what I am going to get to. Those three terms on the board, relativism, privatization, individualism, looks like things you don't want to deal with. And how does that tie in with discouragement and being in Christ and is it relevant to the church? Well, forget the terms or look at the terms and we'll try and see how they impact us. They do impact the church because of what they are in the world. Relativism is something which we are very aware of. It's been taken up with our own opinions. It's when we say things like, I have a right to my own opinion. How often have you heard that? This is my opinion, you cannot tell me what to do. Believe it or not, it happens in the church. And it's the first step to breaking down fellowship, which could lead to discouragement. Have you ever heard someone say, well, that's your view of adverse? I have my own opinion. You believe that, but maybe there's something else, and sometimes it's on some very serious portion of God's Word, where we actually say, well, you have your opinion, I have my opinion, let's agree to differ. That is the first step in degradation of fellowship. Secondly, we see there's a word privatization, which we always think about in a business sense, but there's an individual sense we think it can be applied to. That is when we say, I have a right to my own business. When I say that, that means I have a secular life and I have a church life. I'm happy to share my church life with you, but my secular life is my own. Stay out of my business. Don't tell me what I should do when I'm not here. And so now, relativism, our own opinions, has driven us to having our own space, our own business, rather. And so as we progress on that road, we get to the point of individualism, which is a theory that's rife today in the world, in the post-modern world. And what that says is that I have a right to my own space, stay out of my space. Now, the danger of this is real in the church when it comes to our fellowship, because we have been assimilated into an environment where this is made easy by technology. It says I can make it on my own. There are no checks and balances. There's no idea of iron sharpening iron. There's no accountability. There's no corporate responsibility. I am on my own. This is my opinion. This is my business. This is my space. Stay out of it. This is ultimate selfishness. It's made worse by technology when we have isolated entertainment, right? COVID has taught us this. We can live by ourselves and we don't have to go out by our front door. We can entertain ourselves by ourselves. We can work without going out of the front door. We can work, in fact, we walk from a bedroom to the lounge in the pajamas and we're in our office, right? Many of you have done that. Many of you are still doing that. Some have gone back to work. Thank you, Elon. It's we have isolated entertainment. We don't need other people. We can entertain ourselves by ourselves because of what we have. We don't have to go to work. We've isolated shopping. We don't shop. We pick up the phone. We go on the web and we pick and pay delivers and checkers delivers and they all deliver and take-away delivers. We don't go out. Shopping used to be one of the ways we were mixed with the community. We were able to give a tract or have a word of the gospel. We don't do that. And it's isolation from community. We have become isolated in such a way in the secular world, which has made an image into our lives, that it sometimes can be seen in the church. It is the death of fellowship. This is why I strongly discourage too many online church meetings. I see the benefit, make no mistake about that. I see the benefit of being able to meet when everything is going against us. I understand it clearly. But I'm very concerned that becomes a way of life for the church. And so we meet only on the screen. And you're nothing more to me than the brightness of my screen. Or the background I have put around your head. And so we become avatars in the lives of our Christian brothers and sisters. Online churches is unbiblical. We need to be meeting like this. And you know that we have made an effort to do this even when others did not. Because fellowship is important. It's one of the ways to prevent despondency, discouragement, and despair. Church fellowship is the atmosphere in which we serve, in which we grow, and in which we worship. And when I speak about these things, I'm not saying that these things will definitely lead to discouragement in every case in the life of everybody in the church. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm trying to point out to you today and for the rest of this series is that when someone is in that pit of discouragement and they don't have fellowship, they're on their own. and it may get worse. But when they are amongst us, when we are amongst each other, we see each other's demeanor. We see a changed facial expression. We see a sense of moroseness, a sense of sorrow, and we intervene and we ask a question. So within the fellowship, others recognize your level of discouragement and despondency and they reach out. And then reaching out is why fellowship is essential to negating discouragement. It's only in the family of Jesus Christ and within this body that we share things in common and that we understand each other's sorrow and suffering and that we're able to direct you to the correct solution, not to some Oprah Winfrey check thing. It's a long way to go. So fellowship counteracts discouragement. in several ways. A community with whom you can share concerns that could lead to discouragement, fellowship will negate that. Fellowship discourages, fellowship counteracts discouragement by being a community that will recognize that you're going through a difficult time and is able to provide spiritual and practical support in times of need. So I'm going to review this very quickly where we have been this past few weeks. We have said that we overcome discouragement by relying on the Word of God. We overcome discouragement by choosing joy. No matter how hard it is to choose it, we choose rejoice. Paul says rejoice. We overcome discouragement by walking by faith. We know we walk by faith and not by sight. We walk in a life that is led by the spirit of God, that is founded on the work of Jesus Christ, and that is informed by what we gain from God's word as we delve into his word so that we can not only live by faith, joyfully, but walk faithfully. We overcome discouragement by embracing fellowship. And I want to encourage us to do that, to think deeply about these things as we walk through a life which is becoming more and more unbearable. We are definitely feeling like around pigs in a square hole, we don't fit here. If you fit here comfortably, I will seriously ask you to consider what the traction of this world is. If you find anything that is attractive that keeps you wanting to stay here, I think it's time to recheck your list of priorities in Christ. We pray that he may come soon, we hope he comes soon, but we don't know when that's gonna be. But until then, we are left behind. He has left us behind. He's told his father, don't take them out. Leave them there. And as we live in this world, in full fellowship with each other, displaying the love of Christ to each other, the world will see that what we have is not only worth having, it's worth dying for. And maybe then we will take up, pique this kind of assurance, not in ourselves, but in Christ, knowing that he's the one who has gone through deep discouragement. He was the one who has suffered at every level, tempered in every point as we are, but without sin. But he never, ever caved in. And if you think that he did not go through deep depths of discouragement, he wept over Jerusalem. He wept at the grave of a friend. His sweat turned to drops of blood as he prayed to his father facing the cross. He knew deep depths of discouragement, of sorrow, but he wasn't discouraged in the way that we do and give up. He was merely, in deep sorrow, realizing that in this world, we are all exposed to the things that take place with all men. We haven't been exhaustive. We haven't certainly covered everything, but this is a good starting point to deal with discouragement. We have three minutes to, four minutes to, are there any questions? One question. Andrew. Yeah. Yes. we have to get to know Christ, we choose Christ, and we focus on the gospel. Because some people, I know from counseling people, if they don't have a right view of God and the gospel, they can choose joy, they can choose to be happy, but it's short-lived, and it runs out, and it burns stuff out, and they can't understand why, and they don't have the joy anymore, because the focus is not Christ, That's the word. But we also are commanded by Paul to rejoice. That is an imperative. So while we have the fruit of the Spirit as a gift of joy, we also are instructed to rejoice. So we have both sides of the coin which we have to embrace in our lives. Yes, that enables us, absolutely. Absolutely. So the point you touched on is that the world does not have joy. They look for happiness. Why worry? Be happy. If you're only happy, please worry. Thank you very much. We have two minutes for a quick