Matthew 16, 18. Jesus says to Peter, and I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. All right, we're in week 13. What is a Reformed Baptist? Okay, Providence Baptist Church, Reformed Baptist Church. What does that mean? We've been working through this. Again, this is week 13, so what does that mean? We're like three months into this. And Jesus says here, in essence, His mission is to build His church. I've said this, this is the fourth week of when we're just talking about the church, but I've said this time and time again that the church is greatly undervalued by even people who profess to be Christians. It's treated cavalierly, it's treated as optionally, Even when the church is treated as important, she's not structured rightly. She's mismanaged. So many things that are inappropriate. But we need to remember that our Lord Jesus Christ came to build His church. He came to rescue His bride. He came to fulfill all righteousness, born of Mary, truly God, truly man, keeping the law, Okay, because you and I didn't have a righteous, the only people, I'll remind you again, the only people that get into heaven are those with a perfect record. Problem, you ain't got one. The only way you can get a perfect record is by faith in Jesus Christ because he has earned it for his people and then he has suffered under the wrath of God on the cross, suffering the penalty due for our law breaking, dying, being laid in a tomb, rising again from the dead. We must trust that message. If we trust that message, then we are part of the church and we seek to invest our lives, not just being part of the universal church, but where that universal church is manifest, which is visible local churches. So we've been doing four part outline here. Principle, polity, purpose, practice. Last week I broke it up into questions. So who is the church? That's the principle. We already covered. How is the church structured? That's the polity. Covered. Why does the church exist? That's the purpose. Covered. Tonight, what does the church do? That's the practice. Okay, that's the practice. So, six points. The practice of the church, point number one, assembly. Okay, Hebrews 10, 24 and 25. What does the church do? Well, one of the things the church does is assembles. So Hebrews 10, 24 and 25, and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together. not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more, as you see the day drawing near." Okay, it seems so obvious, but it needs to be stated. What does the church do? One of the things that it does is it regularly assembles. More than that, It regularly assembles for public worship on the Lord's day. We talked about that just a minute ago in our catechism with the kids. But Acts 20 verse 7 says this, On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread, Paul talked with him, intending to depart on the next day, and he prolonged his speech until midnight. Comment. I know I preach long sermons. But I ain't ever preached till midnight. Okay? Yeah, they didn't have no planes to land. Once you get up in the air, how can you get back down? And he actually killed a man. Yeah. So he brought him back to life too. But I've never killed anybody in preaching that I am aware of now. But the point in the text is that they gather together on the first day of the week. Now, I don't think it's required. that a local church has to have a morning and an evening service. But they do have to gather on Sunday. Now, we hold the evening more loosely here, but tightly to the day itself, because Sunday is the Lord's And if I just give a small defense, I'm not running down churches that don't do an evening service, but if I can give a small defense of why Pastor Jacob and I have, we've had discussions, why we've stuck with it, why would we want to meet less? I want to be around you people. Why would we want to have less preaching, less singing, less praying? Again, this is not throwing churches under the bus, I'm just giving you the positive reasons why we have an evening service. We think it's important. But the point is, the church assembles on the Lord's day. What does the church do? One of the things it gathers, and I'm trying to push back here on this idea of, I don't go to church, I am the church. You've had people tell you that. And you might just be like, Whoa, that's profound. Yeah, wow. But if you just put your mind to it for a second, you realize, oh, you actually can't be the church unless you assemble. Right? Benjamin Keats says this, the church and her public worship is the nearest resemblance to heaven. That's a beautiful statement. We're gonna talk about corporate worship when we come back in this series. Next week I'm gonna talk about the incarnation, but this, we're gonna come back to the series after the first year. We'll talk about corporate worship. But the truth is, the idea, you can't be the church without assembling the church. And when we get together, it's the nearest thing to heaven on earth. This is not just getting together with a few folks over coffee. Well, here I actually talked to a lady in the barbershop not that long ago, and she actually got rich. She was an older lady, and I don't know why I'm telling you this, but she got really uncomfortably close to me. I don't know, like it's kind of like the social norms of how close you stand to someone. It's like she broke those. And it kind of made me uncomfortable. She's like, really? Like, I'm not going to do it to money because it'd make both of us really uncomfortable. But she was like right here in my face. And she was like, well, you know, I visit some friends on Sunday and that's the church, isn't it? And I was like, well, no, ma'am, it's not the church. This is formal public worship of God by his people, rightly assembled under proper leadership, worshiping God like he's instructed us to in the word. It's really a terrible way to treat the church and say, we'll squeeze that in if we can. That's not what the church is. So what does the church do? Assembly, obvious. Number two, centrality. Tom Hicks, the Bible teaches and Reformed Baptists believe that the local church is the center of the life of the believer. The local church is the hub. Everything else is the spokes, right? It's the hub, it's central. Now, certainly I'll start here first. This has to do with the previous point, assembly. So listen to me very carefully, and some of you guys, teenagers, I know it's different, and maybe you're just like a Wednesday night person or whatever, but just let me teach for just a moment. Sunday is the feast day, if you will, for the Christian. In a sense, we could look at it this way. God has given each of his churches 52 holidays. How many holidays you get? God's given us 52. Well, I mean, can there be a Sunday that there's 50 or a year that there's 53? Maybe. Anyway, but he's at least given us 52 holidays every year. That's Sunday, the Christian Sabbath, the Lord's Day. So I'm just gonna encourage you, and adults, you need to listen to this too. Our week ought to be organized around and revolve around Sunday. Now I'm not on some sort of campaign like in Walmart, but I'll tell you this. I will not buy a calendar, which I don't really buy calendars anyway, but I will not buy a calendar that has the week starting on Monday, right? I just won't do that. Like I'm not saying that you're a terrible person if you do that, right? But I'm just saying I refuse. Because the week starts on Sunday. And even I'm guilty of this too. Sunday's not even the weekend technically. I know we say weekend and I get it, but it's not really. It's the first day of the week. And the reason we should keep that in our mind is because we start our week this way and everything should flow. From that it's central. OK, and I get it. I'm a pastor and you're going to say, well, you just have to do that. But let me say this. When we plan anything as a family, it always revolves around Sunday. Always anything that we plan. Are you going to do something Saturday? We always think, well, what time will we be back? OK, you're going to travel. You're going out of town, which we don't get to do that too often. But if we do, what's Sunday going to look like? Or if we're out somewhere vacationing, we pick a place. We go to church. Why? Because The church is central to our lives. OK, our week ought to revolve around Sunday. But what happens is if we're not careful and the church is not central, then we cram Sunday into our week and you can cram Sunday into your week only so long until something gives and then something else takes its place. But this is our corporate meeting with God. This is where he meets. Listen to this. He meets with his church. who is gathered rightly in a special way that is different than our individual meetings and family worship meetings. This is not to despise your individual meetings with God. This is not to despise family worship. Both are vital to being a godly man or woman. But it is to emphasize the centrality of corporate worship. Does it make sense? Stop thinking of Sunday as another thing on your to-do list and start seeing all of your to-do list as flowing out of what Sunday looks like, right? Does that make sense? Don't make Sunday revolve around your schedule. Make your schedule revolve around Sunday. It's central. However, when we say the centrality of the church, there's something else to keep in mind. Go to Ephesians 4. I'm not just talking about Sunday. Ephesians 4 mentions this and I think it's important. Ephesians 4 verse 15. Ephesians 4 15 rather speaking the truth in love where to grow up in every way into him who is the head into Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. So there's this idea here in the text that the that the local church is like a living organism. It's it's a living body. And in order for that to work properly, we don't just mean Sundays, but we mean life together in the church. It is our mutual life together as brothers and sisters that cause us, encourage us to grow in the faith. Again, Sunday's the hub, but the spokes are important too, right? If you have a will, you can say the central part's the hub, but if you don't got the spokes, that's a problem, isn't it? We live life together. I would argue this is covenantal membership. We're in covenant with one another, where we love one another, we care for one another, we build one another up, we provide for one another, we watch over one another. Again, Benjamin Keech, he's a 17th century Baptist, 1600s. A true church's beauty and glory consists in that all the stones are not only united by the Spirit and faith of the operation of God to Christ the foundation, but also to one another in sincere love and affection. You know what that means? This is missing in a lot of places. Those aren't just the people you go to church with. This is how a lot of people organize their life. I've got my work friends. I've got my family. I've got my sports family. You know, we use that kind of language. I've got my sports family, my work family, my family family, and I have my church family. And then everything is just kind of like, you know, you take leave, whatever. But you just see people in the churches. Those are just one section of my life. Well, I would encourage this. I think it's biblical. Again, maybe you think I'm crazy. I am a little bit crazy. I am crazy. I understand that. But my life, sometimes to the consternation of my family sometimes, we have to work things out, but literally my whole life revolves around the church. Now, I'm not saying that we can't have friends and activities outside the church. Amen. I hope you do. I'm just saying the older I get, the more I go all in, I just end up having less time for other things. I'm not saying those other things are bad. I'm not saying that there's nothing I want to do outside the church. I'm not saying that. I love doing things, OK? There's no issue with that. But a number of years ago, for me, I just stopped holding the church at arm's length and said, look, I'm going to go all in. I'm going to schedule everything around this group of people. And Stephanie knows, like, look, I'm going to just tell you this. And she could say this, and you could talk to her, and you can ask her to verify. Sometimes that's to frustration, right? Like, well, I'm going to go, and I'm going to be a part of this, Someone else shows up, right? I hope that someone else is there. And there's been a lot of times I've done stuff and no one's been there. I get it. But that's not me complaining. That's me just saying, look, this is what I'm going to do. I don't know what else to do, right? That's worn me down sometimes. It's been hard on me. But I'm just telling you, that's what I'm committed to. Now, I'm not saying you can't do other things. Do them. Do them to the glory of God. So don't misunderstand me. Enjoy them. Don't feel guilty about having a life outside the church. I'm not. Please don't misunderstand me. But I am coming back to this point and tell you that as you do other things in the world, you can't have two central things in your life. Does that make sense? There's gotta be, something's gotta be the hub by which your life and your family's life revolves around. And I know this very spiritual person will say, yeah, my hub's Jesus. Amen. It better be Christ. Amen, okay? But you understand that Christ has saved you to be part of his what? His body. Imagine, imagine, well, this is probably, I don't know. I'm thinking this off the top of my head. Maybe borderline silly, but what if Stephanie said, I like you, Quatro, I don't like your body. What? That wouldn't be cool, right? Well, you say, like, I like you, Jesus, I don't like your body. But in the sense that I love you, Jesus, I just don't love your bride. That doesn't make any sense. You can't do that. You understand? OK, so you say, well, Jesus is central to my life. Well, amen. If he's central to your life, then that means his body will be his church. Okay? And so, the point I'm trying to say is, what is your priority? If the church is just one of many priorities in your life, then it's not ultimately going to be central. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. Okay. So, assembly centrality. Number three, exclusivity. What is the practice of the church? Well, one practice of the church is exclusivity in the sense of separation. By separation, I mean three things. Number one, separation from unbelievers. Let me read some verses so you understand what I mean by this. 1 Corinthians 5, 9-11, Paul says, in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people not at all meaning the sexually immoral of the world or the greedy and swindlers or idolaters since then you would need to go out of the world but now I'm writing to you to not associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed or is an idolater reviler drunkard or swindler not even to eat with such a one Acts 5, 12-14. Now many signs and wonders were regularly done among the people by the hands of the apostles and they were all together in Solomon's portico. None of the rest dared join them, but the people held them in high esteem, and more than ever, believers were added to the Lord. Multitudes of both men and women. Okay, here's what I mean. By separation from unbelievers, I mean it is the practice of the church, it is the duty of the church to have a very clear, unapologetic line of demarcation between who is in and who is out. You say, well, I don't see church membership in the Bible. OK, if by that you mean I don't see a verse that says thou shalt be a church member, I grant it to you. There's not a verse that says thou shalt be a church member. But clearly in both of these texts and in many more, we see that We have to have the duty, it is the duty of the church to mark out, here are the members, here are the believers, here are the Christians, and they are distinct from the non-members, those who are not recognized as believers. Does that make sense? This doesn't mean that we don't have unbelievers in the church as far as visiting. It doesn't mean we don't invite unbelievers. In fact, I'm just going to say this. There are some of you, you need to do a better job of making unbelieving friends from our community. Your life is wrapped up in the church, and you don't have any friends who are unbelievers in Perryville. Well, you need to do a better job at that. But it does mean there is a clear line of separation between what a believer is and an unbeliever is. It's understood clearly what membership is. Okay? This also involves church discipline. John Owen says, It is the duty of the church, enjoined unto it by the Lord Jesus Christ, and necessary unto its glory, its own honor and edification, to reject scandalous offenders out of its communion. So the church has a responsibility not only to not let unbelievers join, if they're unbelievers, but also if someone demonstrates that they're an unbeliever by scandalous, unrepentant sin, it is the responsibility of the church to put them out of the church. Now, this is not a problem for us, I don't think, because we've been dealing with this for years now. But if it's your first time hearing stuff like this, you're like, whoa, that sounds heavy. That sounds judgmental. I've never heard of a church like that before. Well, listen to me. This is the church according to the scriptures. It's not a country club. It's not a PTO organization. We're just like, we'll take everybody. There's a clear line between who's in, who's out. Nehemiah Cox, again, another 17th century Baptist. He says, it is a matter of great importance that the gates of the Lord's house, the goings out and comings in thereof, be well looked to. If members be not received with due caution, our number may be increased, but not our joy. And if any be impulsively and without just cause ejected, the scandal and inconvenience will be as great." He's saying you need to mind who comes in and you need to mind how they go out. All right, number two. So we're talking about exclusivity. First, separation from unbelievers. Secondly, separation from the world. 1 John 2, 15-17, Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Okay, this is not leaving the world and running to the hills and living in a commune, okay? But it is, the church has to have a separation from the ideas, influence, and applause of the world. Our goals and plans and thoughts are not the world's. When you step into a Christian home, there ought to be a difference in what we do. Y'all do family worship? Wow. In what we watch, in what we don't watch, okay? But the local church as well, distinct from the world. Our worship is not worldly. A lot of churches do this backwards. Let's make our service as worldly as we can to make the world feel comfortable. But when the church tries to look like the world to win the world, the opposite happens. They don't win the world, the world wins them. You understand? We have to have a separation. And I'm just gonna tell you, in your hearts and in your minds, and this is one of the hardest things to do, Not a single one of you, myself included, want anyone to think that you're uncool, they don't like you, you're weird. You don't want that, okay? You don't want that. And I don't either. But you just have to have a resolve to say, look, I'm not going to be applauded by the world. I'm just going to be disliked by the world. So be it. I'm not going to intentionally be ornery, but I'm going to stand for truth and I'm going to let the chips fall. I don't know if you're allowed to say that. You want to let the chips fall as they may. And I'm going to be a Christian. OK, I'm going to be separated from the world when we gather on Sunday morning, it ought to feel a little weird. At least to people wrapped up in the world, they ought to think it's weird. It may even feel a bit weird to us simply because the other six days of the week were so inundated with the world. But in here, we're distinct from the world. I mean, we're always distinct from the world, but our worship is distinct. It's not worldly. Our walk is not worldly. We're in the world, not of the world. Thirdly, separation from the state. What does a world reformed Baptist believe? Well, these are three things about exclusivity. What we mean by this is that the state and the church are both institutions ordained by God, but they are not ever to be one in the same. The church and the state must remain distinct. Now, don't buy into the liberal agenda that God can't be in the government. That's dumb. First of all, it's unbiblical. Secondly, it's not even constitutional. It's not the intent of our Constitution. I want God in the government, don't you? You want godly people in the government or ungodly? I want godly people, okay? A government that acknowledges Christ as king, amen. A government that sees the one true God. But the government is not the church and the church is not the government. So the government cannot tell the church how she must worship, how she must do her membership, when she can meet. And then we also need to add this the church is not the government in the sense that if there's a crime in the church Who's responsible for? justice in the crime Church or government Government who's responsible for sin. So if a crimes committed More often. I mean most likely would have to be a sin, right? I don't see how it couldn't be who deals with the sin The church deals with the sin Who deals with the crime? The government, these are distinct institutions, okay? So assembly, centrality, exclusivity, man, I'm trying to push along. Number four, maturity. What is the practice of the church? What does the church do? Fourthly, it matures. Ephesians 4.15. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head and to Christ. What does the church do? One thing she does is she grows. And by growth, we mean she matures in Christ. You can read Hebrews 5, 12, and 14 on your own time. But let me say this. In the world that I grew up in, in the kind of churches that I was around, mostly, but not exclusively, SPC churches, it was amazing to see basically decades of stagnation. Basically, you never in your life grew past the things that you learned in Sunday school. You knew about Noah's Ark, you knew about David and Goliath, you knew about these things, the high points maybe, I don't know, but maybe not even the high points, but you just knew these certain things, and then you could exist for decades in the church and never grow. This is not right. Okay? This is not the design. It is the design of God that His churches would grow. Okay? Growth and maturity. Holiness. Doctrine. Love for Christ. Evangelism. Because the church is living. And living things grow. And if you're not growing, there is either very serious health issues, or you're not alive. So it's God's design that churches would grow. This happens by constant exposure to the Word of God, through the preaching and teaching of the Word of God. It happens life on life, iron sharpening iron, encouragement, prayer, admonishment. Listen to this, confrontation at times from members to one another. And let me say this to you, you're never going to grow unless you're challenged. You are never going to grow unless you're challenged. That means challenged from the Word of God. That means challenged by relationships. I'll just give you a quick example. In weightlifting, in weightlifting, if I say every day, you teenagers, you guys know this, you boys particularly, I think maybe some of you girls, you lift too. You know this, if you just go and say, every day, here's what I'm gonna do to lift. I'm gonna do the bar, which is 45 pounds. I'm gonna do that 10 times and I'm gonna be done. I'm gonna do that every day of my life. So you go and you do it 10 times, you're done. 10 times, you're done. Do it every day. You gonna get stronger that way? Yeah, I mean, minimally, right? Minimally. I mean, you'll get stronger maybe the first week or two, you get a little bit stronger, because you've gone from nothing to that, but then you're not gonna get stronger. Why? Your muscles need to be challenged. They need to be torn down, not like a tear, but you know. They need to be broken down. You need to add weight. You need to do some things where you fail. You need to try to lift sometimes, and it doesn't go all the way. And you've got to get help and spot, and you go back up. Why? That's how your muscles are going to get bigger. That's God's design. Let me tell you, there's a lot of truth to that spiritually. You need to be challenged. from the word of God you need to have brothers or sisters if I wanted to be like real punchy I'd say you need to have brothers or sisters in your face right saying hey you know what that's not right that's not okay or encouragement a brother or sister patting you on the back like this is the right way you can do it do it I mean but but if we don't have this kind of challenge in our life um we're not going to grow and I'm going to tell you that's hard And I think that's why a lot of churches don't grow, because if you say hard things, and if you try to live life in that way, some people are just like, we're out. And that happens. Okay? Another aspect of maturity I'd say is that we want to grow numerically, not just physically, but numerically. So we're intentional in evangelism. As we talked about last time, evangelism is not gimmickry. It's explicitly communicating the gospel. OK, we cannot accept a lesser definition than communicating the gospel. There's a lot of things you can do that are nice, but evangelism is sharing explicitly the gospel. And let me say this one last thing and then I'm going to get through no matter what. One last thing on this point. we have to have a church that has a room say so we're talking about maturity we have to have a church that has a room for immaturity you say well that sounds kind of weird let me explain what i mean by that again let's do weight lifting all right my It's probably not this anymore, but a year ago. I got for a bench. I got 315 pounds all right Let's say me and gunner working out, and I say gunner when you can lift 315 pounds you can come work out with me Well, that's going to take gunner 50 years But listen, but please listen. I'm just teasing with him. He and I worked out. It was good. But listen to me, really. What would that be like if I said, hey, man, whenever you reach my level, then we'll start working out? Well, guess what? What would that be? How's he supposed to do that? Unless I work with him. All right now be careful, especially in a church like this where I think we prize doctrine We prize the way that we raise our children. We prize our worship. We prize the way we think about politics Like we're really strong in so many areas and what you really better be careful of if if someone comes in and they don't think yet Like us, they don't walk like us. They don't necessarily look like us. They're a little bit different They hadn't got all these things figured out yet. And we say well you can't what you just can't be here No. Because you didn't have all these things figured out, did you? Not the moment you were saved? So someone says, I'm not sure if I understand the sovereignty of God and salvation. What do you want them to do? You want them to go to a different church until they can get mature and then come here? No. In so far as that, yeah, you teach them. In so far as they are true believers, now I'm not saying unbelievers, but if they're a true believer, We say, you join this church, right? And we'll teach you. Well, I don't know about the role of Israel in the end times, or I don't know about amillennialism, or I don't know about homeschool, or I don't know about whatever, whatever thing, you know, that people are thinking about and we're talking about and all these things. It's like, okay, we're gonna have room here, not only have differences of opinion, but we're also gonna have room here that we can challenge and encourage and help one another. Does that make sense? So, okay, last two, we're gonna get done before, by 7.30, important. Assembly, centrality, exclusivity, maturity, fifthly, camaraderie. I'm not gonna read from our confession, it's on your sheet, but this is chapter 26, paragraphs 14 and 15, you can read those, but the point is, Reformed Baptists believe in the duty and necessity of churches working together with churches. Okay, this is how we fulfill the mandate of the Great Commission. The Great Commission is not just given to Providence Baptist Church, otherwise we'd fail. It's given to all churches. So we seek to strengthen, invest in, and plant healthy churches, and often this is gonna be carried out with other churches that we are in fellowship with. Now in terms of practically working together, you need to have doctrinal alignment, You want providential alignment, so you think of specific region, specific target area. That's why I've moved away from the idea of the cooperative program. We're here in Perryville, there's a church in Maine, we're both just giving to the same fund, but we don't really even know each other exists. That's not really, I think, the spirit of cooperating together. So like for us, we work closely, specifically we work closely with By the Word Baptist Church, with Trinity Baptist Church, Trinity and Port Arthur by the word and in Hazel. I've met with these brothers today. We did zoom meeting. They've been here, some of us have been there, so we've got kind of those relationships, and we have some relationships with local churches around. But each church is autonomous, but it doesn't mean we don't work together, even in formal alliances. Dr. James Renahan says this, we seriously misunderstand Baptist polity in the 17th century if we overlook the importance of association in the thinking of these men and their churches. Independence did not in any way hinder formal church union. They understood that Christ has called his churches to mutual relations and ministry, not isolationism. So if you think, well, we're a Reformed Baptist church, that means we're alone and we don't work with anybody. Wrong. Now, there's different levels, by the way. So, for example, if someone, I have a low bar here, if someone just gets the gospel right, well, I'm willing to partner in evangelism, right? I mean, most likely they understand the gospel and its implications. Well, we'll go pass out tracts together, preach Christ together, perhaps, but. then there's gonna have to be a greater sense of unity if we're gonna plant a church. So these people get the gospel right, but they think about the church different. Well, how are we ever gonna partner together to plant a church? We're just gonna always be in conflict. So the level of relationship is gonna depend on unity and doctrine, practice, all that. Okay, sixth. Assembly, centrality, exclusivity, maturity, camaraderie. Hey, these all end in a Y. Okay, number six, victory. Habakkuk 2.14 says this, For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The church is going to win. So the way I take this is it's not a hope that every government, every nation is going to come under Christian cultural influence. I don't even take it as it's the hope of true Christianity being the majority of people on earth, but I take it as the hope of the final victory of the church, that Jesus is going to have a bride from among the nations, the whole world, and when he returns, we'll reign with him, we'll live in eternal Victory. So that means right now we press onward in our duties and the things that we've discussed tonight and the things that we've discussed previous weeks about the church, the mission of the church, the preaching of the gospel, investing in and helping and planning healthy churches. We press on towards victory in all these things. This is not a guarantee that every single local church that exists today is still going to exist when Jesus comes back. Local churches, frankly, at times are like people. They serve their purpose. They have a certain age of life and then they're gone. I'm going to tell you what's worse. The worst thing is not a church dying. The worst thing is for Jesus to remove the candlestick. But the. Organization. Could do continue to exist. OK. Because sometimes churches are lost to apostasy. Sometimes this is a reality. Churches are lost to persecution. But the overarching point remains, every local church is marching right now toward the victory that is promised to all the saints in Christ Jesus. So I would deny a guaranteed cultural dominance, but I would promote true gospel advancement and historic fruitfulness among all the nations, okay? The church is gonna have victory. Now we went over that really, really fast, drinking from a fire hydrant, We've spent four weeks now on the Reformed Baptist understanding of the church. I don't know if it's helped you at all, I hope that it has, but you need to understand is that the church, for most of us in this room, the church is way more important, way more beautiful, way more central than we really give it credit for, okay? This is not churchianity, it's Christianity. But you don't understand historic Christianity, biblical Christianity, if you don't understand what God is doing in, by, for, with, any other prepositions, the local church.