As we get started tonight, we'll do a reading from Psalm 133. If you want to turn there, Psalm 133. We're going to start a new teaching series tonight on cultivating covenant community. And we're gonna be looking at the one another commands of scripture. How do we relate to one another in the body of Christ? And so it's gonna be a very practical study. Now tonight's gonna be more of an introductory lesson about the nature of the church and the covenantal context of our community. that lays the groundwork for more practical lessons that will follow later. So this will be the most theological night, probably, but it's important that we cover this introductory material first. But especially just thinking about how do we treat one another in the body of Christ, and especially thinking about Christ's Presbyterian Church, what does it mean to be fully involved in the life the community life here in the church. So as you know, there's just a lot, if you just thought of the top of your head, there are a lot of one another commands. Love one another, forgive one another, bear one another's burdens, welcome one another. Those are the kind of commands that we'll be looking at in this study. So different from what we've done before, but variety is good. There's a lot of variety in God's word. So turn to Psalm 133 and let's start. with a reading there and we'll pray and we'll jump right into this. Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity. It is like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down on the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord has commanded the blessing, life forevermore. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we thank you that we belong to the body of Christ. Christ is the only king and head of the church. And we thank you that we are in union with him. And through our union with him, we are also in union with one another. And we pray that you would help us to understand better the nature of your church as a covenant community, that you would also help us to understand better the communion of the saints and what is entailed in that beautiful reality. May your Holy Spirit help us to have understanding tonight as we study this important topic, and we pray that you would inscribe these truths on our hearts so that we might practice them in our lives. We thank you for the local church here at Christ Prez. And we pray that the things that we study, the commands of how we're to treat one another in the body of Christ would not just be head knowledge for us, but it would inform and inspire the way we relate to one another. We pray that you would meet with us through your word and through the discussion later this evening. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. So three main points tonight, very simple points but very important ones for us to help us have the context for understanding the one another commands of the Bible. First, we're going to be talking about how the church is essential. It's essential part of Christianity for you to belong to the church. Almost all Christians would say, you know, believing in Christ is essential, all Christians that you meet on the street anyway, but also it's important to belong to the church and be involved in that community. We're talking about that. The second point we'll be looking at is that the church is a covenant community. We don't just say that because we're Presbyterians and we like the buzzword covenant, but there's significance to the fact that we are a covenant community as a church. And then thirdly, we'll be looking at how the church is a spiritual communion of the saints, and what is the significance behind that. And all of this will be like the theological groundwork for the one another commands. And you'll see, as we go through those in later studies, how this reality of what the church is will show us how we're supposed to relate to one another in covenant community. If you really think about the title, Cultivating Covenant Community, that can be misleading, potentially, because covenant community is not something that we create. It is not an ideal to which we are aspiring, but rather it's a reality that exists, and we participate in it. And so there is a reality that we are in union with Christ. Therefore, we are in union with other believers. And therefore, there is a spiritual communion. And how do we live in a way that's consistent with that reality by grace? And so let's start with just thinking about how the church is essential. Obviously, one of the things that comes to mind is Matthew 16. Remember where Jesus has said to his disciples, who do people say that I am? Of course, they rehearse to him. the different possibilities that people were saying at that time. You know, some said he was John the Baptist resurrected, some said Jeremiah, one of the prophets. But Jesus then said, who do you say that I am? Which is the most important question of all, right? Who is Jesus? And Peter said, what? You are the Christ. You are the Son of the Living God. And And Jesus said, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And he went on to say, after Peter confessed Christ, to say, and you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my, what, church, my ecclesia, my assembly, my community. And so you see just there in that Matthew 16 passage that there's an inseparable relationship between Peter's confession of faith in Christ and the church. Those things aren't separate things. Being a confessor of faith in Christ as the Son of the Living God is intimately tied to this reality called the Church of the Living God, and it's Christ's Church. Now, in our day, people struggle with the idea of church. They struggle with a corporate reality of the Christian faith. There are different reasons for that. One reason would be individualism. So a lot of people today just think of themselves as individualist. It's really about my hopes, my dreams, my desires, what do I want to be. A lot of people don't think about themselves as part of a corporate reality. In America, we really value rugged individualism, right? Personal choice, personality, expression, and so on. And so because of that individualistic mentality that's in our culture, a lot of people don't see the importance of truly belonging to the community in the way that is envisioned in Scripture, because they're so individualistic. Another thing that we run against when it comes to the church being essential is consumerism. We live in a very capitalistic society. We're constantly being sold things, whether you're scrolling on social media, there are advertisements, you're driving down the highway, there's advertisements on the side of the road, there's billboards. Even people will ring your doorbell and they'll try to sell you something at your house. We live in a very consumeristic society. We're able to buy what we want or what we need and go and get those kinds of things. And that filters over into the way people think about church. You even hear people say, what, I'm going church shopping. I'm going to go find the church that meets my needs. So you see the individualism, my needs, my desires, what I want, which would fulfill me, and then the kind of idea that churches need to be pandering to that sort of thing. And I found that this consumeristic mentality is found pretty much among all kinds of people, even people who profess very conservative theology. It will surprise you sometimes. They come into the church, they sound biblically sound, but then you realize they're really relating to the church as a consumer. What are the programs for my children? What are the things that are gonna meet my needs? And that's something that can undermine the way the church is set up, because it's not primarily about our felt needs. Ed Welch, in his book, When People are Big and God is Small, says this about that mentality. He says, when needs rather than sin are seen as our primary problem, not only is our self-understanding affected, but the gospel is changed. You see these churches, they're ministering to felt needs rather than presenting Jesus as a savior from sin. The essence of imaging God as image bearers of God is to rejoice in God's presence, to love him above all else, and to live for his glory, not our own. The most basic question of human existence becomes, how can I bring glory to God? Not, how will God meet my psychological longings? The differences create very different tugs on our hearts. One constantly pulls us towards God, that is, how can I glorify God? The other pulls us inward into ourselves, what kind of church will meet my needs and make me happy? To look to Christ to meet our psychological needs is to Christianize our lust. Self-serving needs are not meant to be satisfied, they're meant to be put to death. And so there's this individualism, this narcissism. This selfishness, this consumer mentality that sometimes makes it hard for people to understand why church is so essential, right? Because all of those things have to die at the door, so to speak, in the body of Christ. Now there are some legitimate types of things that we can think about why people sometimes don't see the church as essential. It is essential, but sometimes a legitimate struggle people might have is they might have personal hurt. If you've lived in the church for any amount of time, if you've been going to church for any amount of time, someone has said something that offends you. Maybe someone has deeply wounded you. Maybe someone has embarrassed you or not treated you right. We all have stories like that. But sometimes people have some of the most profound wounds, deep wounds from church context, things that happen on Sunday morning, things that happen maybe just outside of Sunday morning, but with other people from church. And that wound causes them to forsake the assembly of the saints. Now, that doesn't justify that, but it helps explain why some people might feel the need to distance from the church. There can be some deep personal hurt that is involved. And yet, what does Jesus say? He says, I will build my church. And this is good for us. He came to save us, but he also came to bring us into community. Ed Clowney says this, the good news of Christ's coming includes the good news of what he came to do, to join us to himself and to join us to one another as his body, the new people of God. And so part of the good news is not just me and Jesus, but it's me and Jesus with the bride on his arm, the church. It's with the body of Christ, I am part of a new community, a new family. It's not just me and Jesus, it's me united to Jesus, but also united to all those who are so united to Jesus. That's part of what it means to be a Christian as well. So of course we believe that he's the son of the living God, but we also recognize that he's established this community that is so essential for our life in this world. Secondly, let's look at the church as a covenant community. So we see why it's essential, right? We know so many tacks on it being essential. You have Christians who say, well, I believe in Jesus, but organized religion's not for me. You have people who say, well, I believe in Jesus, but I don't want to go to church. You know, you even saw during COVID, how quickly churches were to close down, you know, sometimes seen as a non-essential thing. But we know that it's essential. The Bible teaches us it's essential. Many of us who, when we went through COVID, we felt that longing to be in community with others. And so let's develop that more. What do we mean when we say the church is is a covenant community. Well, this is very important because when we use that word covenant, sometimes we just throw that word out there and we don't all define it the same way. But what a covenant is, is essentially God's way of relating to people. Whenever God relates to people, and starting in Genesis, going all the way to Revelation, all of his relationships to his people are covenantal. And essentially, he establishes a relationship with people where he binds himself to the people. The covenant has the idea of binding. He binds himself to the people, and he makes promises of blessing, and he warns of curses if the conditions of the covenant aren't met. And so we know in the Bible, we talk about two major covenants. There's the covenant of works with Adam before the fall. And then God reveals a covenant of grace after the fall. And that's what the rest of the story of the Bible is about. So Adam sins against God, right? And we sin in Adam. He represented the whole human race. He broke what we call the covenant of works. And then there's sin and misery and death and all kinds of problems in the world because in Adam's fall, we all sinned, right? But God reveals another covenant after that. Of course, he had it in his mind from all eternity, we know that. And that is that there's gonna be another Adam. There's gonna be someone to fulfill that broken covenant of works, and that's going to be the seed of the woman, right? Genesis 3.15, in the garden, God says that from this seed of the woman, he's gonna crush the serpent's head. And so the rest of the Bible, as Sinclair Ferguson says, is basically a footnote on Genesis 3.15. Who is the seed is going to come and crush the serpent's head. And so from Genesis 315 throughout the rest of the Bible, we have one unfolding plan of salvation, one covenant story of redemption. It's all one book, one story of redemption. And so God actually begins, to understand this properly, God begins forming a covenant people in the Old Testament. Let me say this again because it's very important we understand this. God began forming a covenant people in the Old Testament. So this is one of the areas where our Presbyterian theology, Reformed theology, we would just say biblical theology, is different from what's known as dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is a kind of theology that's very popular. You'll hear it preached on the radio today. A lot of your evangelical friends, who are our brothers in Christ we love, but they hold to dispensationalism, they believe the church started when? Pentecost. Pentecost was the church's birthday. Pentecost was when the church was born, they would say. We don't believe that. We believe the church actually begins not at Pentecost, but with Abraham. in the Old Testament because God had made a promise that through the seed of the woman there would come this one who would crush the head of the serpent. He called Abraham to be his covenant partner and he promises that what from Abraham's line is going to be this serpent crusher who's going to bless all the nations of the earth. And so the covenant that God makes with Abraham is a salvific covenant. It is a covenant of grace. And he forms a people starting with Abraham in Genesis 17, where he says what? I will be God to you. I will be your God, and you will be my people, and I will be your God throughout your generations as an everlasting covenant. And he marks off that people with the sign of circumcision. Abraham is circumcised after he believes all of the males in his household are circumcised, even infant males on the eighth day. This is the people of God. This is his covenant people. And so when you go through the Bible, then, when you get into the book of Exodus, that people has multiplied. You know, if you follow through Genesis, because of Joseph, they end up going to Joseph for grain in Egypt. And so the people multiply in Egypt. Eventually, a pharaoh arises who doesn't know Joseph. He enslaves the people. And the people are enslaved for 400 years. And then God is going to rescue them. And in Exodus 2, It says this, it's very important to understand the continuity of all this. Exodus 2 and verse 23, he says, during those days, the king of Egypt died and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God, and now notice these verses, very important. And God heard their groaning. And God remembered what? He remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel and He knew. Now that's significant because it shows you that the Exodus was rooted in God's gracious dealings with Abraham. It was rooted in the covenant of grace that He made with Abraham. And when he rescued his people from slavery in Egypt, he was keeping that covenant promise that he made in Genesis 17. And then when he brings the people, ends up bringing them out of slavery in Egypt in Exodus 19, he brings them to Mount Sinai because he's going to give them the law. Not as a covenant of works, that was already broken back in Genesis 1 and 2, but as a guide for how his redeemed people are supposed to live. But when he brings them to Sinai to give them the law, look what he says in Exodus 19 verse 4. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians. them, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore," so there's a redemption first, now therefore, on the basis of that redemption, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be what? You shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me," note these phrases, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation." These are the words that you're to speak to the people of Israel. Note those phrases, kingdom of priests and a holy nation, because that speaks of the people of God. A kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And so, as this develops in the law, and we're skipping over a lot of verses, but just so you get the idea here, in Leviticus chapter 26, You see one of many examples that could be given of this concept of God and his people. Leviticus 26 and verse 12, it says, and I will walk among you and will be your God and you shall be my people. You hear the echo of the covenant with Abraham? I'll be God to you and to your offspring after you. Throughout their generations is an everlasting covenant. Talking about now the blessings of obedience in the covenant, he says, I will be God to you and you will be my people. And so there's God and not just one individual, right? There's God and a people, a corporate entity, a community. And then we see the significance of this covenantal relationship One more place just to, you're going to see continuity here in a second, but in Deuteronomy 29, in verses 10 through 15, we see how God addresses this covenant people. Deuteronomy 29 in verse 10, he says, you are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God, the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, Now so notice, everybody's there, right? All of those who've been marked off as the people of God, regardless of social standing, regardless of age, regardless of gender, they're all part of this. Verse 12, so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is making with you today, that he may establish you today as what? His people. This is the concept. He may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob. And now notice this, these two verses, very important. It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant. but with whoever is standing with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not with us today." Who's that? Future generations. It's an intergenerational covenant. It's a covenant with a corporate people. It's a covenant that respects the solidarity of the family. It's a covenant of grace that God is making with his people in the Old Testament. So the idea of a community, the idea of a covenant people of God was established in the Old Testament. And we get into the New Testament, what happens is not something brand new, the sense that God's starting over, that was plan A and here's plan B, but rather what we get in the New Testament is the church in continuity with that people. the church and spiritual continuity with that Old Testament people. So look at 1 Peter 2 and you'll see how the New Testament ties these things together. 1 Peter 2, Peter is writing to Christians and he says this, 1 Peter 2 verse 9. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." Now notice in verse 9, chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, people for his own possession, all of those terms that Peter is using were used in the Old Testament for what group? Israel, for the people of God in the Old Testament. Peter is now applying those same terms to whom? To Christians. Why? Because there's continuity. Because the church is the continuation of true Israel. It didn't fall out of the sky. It wasn't born on the day of Pentecost. It was renewed, you might say, on the day of Pentecost. But it was not born, it did not start on the day of Pentecost. But this church is in spiritual continuity with the community that came before. Let's look at another passage, and this will hopefully become increasingly clear to you. Ephesians chapter 2. In Ephesians 2. In verse 11, Paul is talking in this context about the oneness of Jews and Gentiles in Christ, that Jews who believe in Jesus as the Son of God, Gentiles who believe in Jesus as the Son of God are part of one new man, one body, the church. but it's important to see the details of the way he says it, right, or you'll miss the theology that's packed into it. Ephesians 2 and verse 11, he says, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh So these are Greek-speaking, Gentile-speaking people in what's now modern-day Turkey, in the city of Ephesus. You Gentiles, these are Christian Gentiles, you Gentiles, at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision, because they were Gentiles, called the uncircumcision, in quotes, by what is the circumcision, the Jew, ethnic Jew, which is made in the flesh by hands. At one time, you Gentiles in the flesh were called that. Remember that at that time, verse 12, you were separated from Christ. He's the Jewish Messiah, right? He came from the line of David. He's a descendant of Abraham. You were separated from Christ, being uncircumcised Gentiles. You were alienated from the commonwealth of Israel. you were strangers to the covenants of promise, and you had no hope, and you were without God in the world. Pretty bleak description, right? But notice, the whole passage hinges on that was once true. Verse 13 says, but now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off, have been brought near by the blood of Christ. You see what he's saying? Brought near to what? The commonwealth of Israel, the covenants of promise, the hope, having God in the world, being part of this entity that is where God says, I am your God and you are my people. You see, he's talking about these Gentiles not coming into a new community that has no continuity with what has happened before. but rather to become a Christian as a Gentile is to believe in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, and to be grafted in to a community that already existed all the way back to the days of Abraham. Does this make sense? It's very important that we understand this because a lot of people don't, and it really affects your theology. So another place where this comes up is in Romans chapter 11, where Paul is talking about the problem that grieved his soul, and that is Jesus is the Jewish Messiah. Paul's been preaching his heart out to the Jewish people, and yet many of them are not believing. and many of them are perishing because Jesus is the only way to be saved. And Paul is grieving that, and he goes through Romans 9, 10, and 11, are all about that problem. How do you wrap your mind around the fact that Jesus is Jewish Messiah, and yet many of the Jews are perishing. But one of the things that Paul ends up bringing up in Romans 11, verses 17 through 24, is this concept of an olive tree. And the olive tree, I'm going to explain it first and then we'll read it and make more sense, but the olive tree is basically the covenant people of God. And the natural branches in that olive tree are the Jews. And he talks about how the unbelieving Jews have been lopped off of the olive tree. They've been removed from that covenant people of God. And then God has taken Gentiles who believe in Jesus and his wild olive shoots, he calls them, and grafted them into the olive tree. And he's an agricultural metaphor where you graft a branch. You know, it's kind of cool. You stick it on there, tie it up and do your thing and it'll graft into the tree. And Gentiles who believe in Jesus are grafted in. But here's the important thing about that image. It's so important. How many olive trees are there? One. There's not two peoples of God, there's one olive tree. The natural branches, Jews who don't believe in Jesus, have been taken off, Gentiles have been grafted in, and he does say, don't get cocky about those natural branches that are laying on the ground, because God can pick them up and graft them back in. Actually, in Romans 11, I believe, he talks about a future time when he will graft them back in. But notice this language, Romans 11, he says in verse 17. But if some of the branches were broken off and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others and now share a nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant towards the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root supports you. Then you will say, branches were broken off so that I may be grafted in. That is true. They were broken off because of their unbelief. But you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare the natural branches, the Jews who rejected the Messiah, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen, but kindness towards you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise, you too will be cut off. And even if they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in. For God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these natural branches be grafted back into their own olive tree?" Now notice that what he's saying here. There's a covenant people. This isn't just salvation because you can be taken out and taken in, right? The olive tree is not salvation, otherwise we believe you can be lost and saved and lost and saved. It's a covenant people. He's talking about belonging to the covenant people, the community of the redeemed. We know that there's wheat and chaff in that community. There are those who are saved and those who are lost in the visible covenant community, in the olive tree. But the olive tree is the one olive tree that we've been grafted into, which fits with these other images we've seen. One more thing, the future that we're looking forward to is that reality that was promised to Abraham will one day be a reality in the new heavens and new earth. We saw this in our study of Revelation, Revelation 21. where it says there's a new heaven and new earth, holy city, new Jerusalem, that's the church, coming down out of heaven, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying what? Of all the things that it's gonna be saying in the new heavens and new earth is what? Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, plural, his people, and they will be his people, and God himself will be their God. See, that's the storyline of the Bible, not just individual salvation, but being part of the people of God. That's the covenant community we're talking about, bound together to God by covenant bonds. And we see, and this will become relevant later with some of the things we might make in terms of application, all of that familial, all of that intergenerational stuff is still true. because Peter says on the day of Pentecost, it's still true. The promise is for you and for your children, and God's still reaching out to Gentiles, to those who are far off, as many as the Lord our God calls to himself. And that's why we see households baptized in Acts 16, and that's why children of believing parents are called in 1 Corinthians 7, 14, holy even before They're old enough to understand that they're holy. They're set apart. They're part of the people of God, as Israel was a holy nation. And that's why we see Psalms, like Psalm 103, where God says, His righteousness is on children's children, to those who keep His covenant and remember to do His commandments. So the point I'm saying is, God is still the same God, and the covenant community is still a reality. And so that's going to affect. the way we interpret these one-another commands. Who's part of the church? Who's part of the church? Who are the people we are one-anothering? Does it include little covenant children? Does it go all the way up to old fogeys? Does it go through the whole panorama of life, different social statuses, male and female in Christ? Does it include the whole group. It does, as we'll see, and so it really matters to know who are the recipients of the one-anothering, who's to be discipled in the one-anothering, how does the one-anothering look, right? Palmer Robertson says, in its most essential aspect, a covenant is that which binds people together. Think about that. The way that you treat other believers in the body of Christ, if you believe you're bound to them, by covenantal bonds. If you believe you're bound in that sense, that is a big deal. We're bound together. Nothing lies closer to the heart of the biblical concept of the covenant than the imagery of a bond inviolable. Strong language. S.G. de Graaf says, in the covenant, God always draws near to his people as a whole, never just to individuals. Because of the covenant, the entire people rest secure in God's faithfulness. And every individual member of the covenant shares in that rest as a member of the community. So this is what we're talking about, the covenant community, that's the concept. What about the communion of the saints? There's a lot of notes left, but we're gonna be able to get through it. We're not gonna read it all, don't worry. Think about when we affirm the Apostles' Creed. We affirm the Apostles' Creed. All that stuff's really important, right? I believe in God the Father Almighty. I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord. I mean, you think the virgin birth, the substitutionary atonement of Christ, the bodily resurrection. What is one of the things we affirm? I believe in a holy Catholic Church, and I believe in what? The communion of the saints. You know, that's a huge deal if it's in an ecumenical creed like that. That's a lot of things you could have left out, right? But I believe in a holy Catholic Church and a communion of saints. So what is that communion of saints? The Westminster Confession of Faith, Confession of Faith of our church, has a beautiful description that takes all the biblical different thoughts and ideas about communion of the saints and condenses it in these two little sections. Let's just read it together again. We won't get through all this, but I just want to show you this. All saints that are united to Jesus Christ their head by his spirit and by faith have fellowship with him in his graces, sufferings, death, resurrection, and glory. And being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other's gifts and graces. and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, as do conduce to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man. Saints by profession are bound to maintain a holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God, and in performing such other spiritual services as tend to their mutual edification. as also in relieving each other in outward things according to their several abilities and necessities. Which communion as God offereth opportunity is to be extended unto all those who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus. So we won't look up all these references, but just notice one observation. Christians are united to Christ in one another in love. If you're in union with Jesus, you're in union with all Christians everywhere. There's no separation. One of the ways this is often said is, you can't know Jesus without knowing the bride on his arm. Christ and his bride are one, right? He's the head, the church is his body. It's a package deal, right? And that fellowship, you see there in that first John 1, 3 passage, fellowship with us, fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. They're together, they're part of the same thing. Secondly, you see our communion with other Christians involves sharing in one another's gifts and graces. You study 1 Corinthians chapter 12, and you see that we're all baptized by the Spirit into one body, the body of Christ. Whether Jew or Greek, slave or free, it doesn't matter. And by being baptized into the body of Christ, we all have a spiritual gift. No one person has all the gifts. And everybody has a different gift. And the gifts are needed together to build up the body of Christ. And we share in those things. We share in one another's gifts. We benefit from one another's gifts. But we also benefit from their graces, the grace of God in someone's life, the humility he's produced in others, the kindness, the wisdom that others have. All of these gifts are shared in common. They're not given to one person. They're distributed among the saints so that we need each other. And so we need to share in those gifts and graces, which is why one-anothering is so important. Thirdly, our communion with other Christians involves our duty to care for one another spiritually and physically. It's absolutely impossible to be a true disciple of Christ and say, I'm not going to do the one-anothering. I'm not going to be invested in others spiritually, and physically, caring for the needs of the inward man, as the way it's said in the Confession, and the outward man. I mean, you think about all these different instructions in the New Testament, 1 Thessalonians 5.11, encourage one another, and build one another up, just as you're doing. That's a one another, that's not just pastors, or elders, or deacons, that's all of the Christians, one anothering. 1 Thessalonians 5 14, we urge you brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with them all. You see that love and care for others, and we'll see those as we go through. Fourthly, our communion with other Christians includes worship and other spiritual activities. You see there in the language of the Confession, it says, saints by profession are bound, do you hear the covenantal language? They're bound to maintain on holy fellowship and communion in the worship of God. So we gather together, we're bound to gather together for corporate worship. The high point of our week, the Lord's Day, to worship God in spirit and in truth. Hebrews 10 says we're to stir up one another to love and good deeds and not neglect to meet together as is the habit of some. But all the more as the day is drawing near, we're to meet together and encourage one another. Acts 242 we see them devoting themselves to the Apostles teaching and prayer and the breaking of bread and the fellowship, right? There's a community life centered around these activities, the ordinary means of grace, and also the service of the church, the evangelism of the church, the witnessing of the church. They're doing it together. They're doing it as a covenant community. And then fifthly, our communion with other Christians is not sectarian. but includes all those who call on the Lord Jesus. Notice how that's built in the Westminster Confession. Presbyterians, we get a bad rap, sometimes rightfully so, for being very precise in our doctrine and better than other Christians, but notice it's built in there. It says, the end of the section two of chapter 26 there, it says, which communion, as God offereth opportunity, is to be extended to all those who in every place call on the name of the Lord Jesus. what we call the Catholicity of the church, right? It's not sectarian. Ephesians tells us, Ephesians chapter 4, there's actually only one true church. Ephesians chapter 4, says in verse four, there's one body, one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is over all and through all and in all. You hear the repeated word? One. There's one Christ. There's one body of Christ, ultimately, the church. We lament the schisms. We lament the differences. But we recognize that when we're in the presence of other believers in Christ who call on the Lord Jesus Christ, that there is a fellowship, a spiritual fellowship there. 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 2 says, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. We recognize there are some things that are definitional for all Christians to believe, of course, but there is a union with other Christians that transcends the secondary and tertiary issues, that it's for all those who are chosen by the Father, all those who are redeemed by Christ, and all of those who are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Robert Shaw, in his commentary on this section of the Confession of Faith, says, our communion with other Christians is founded union. Union with Christ. We're united to Christ by faith. That's pictured in our baptism. Union with Christ. And then we're also in union with all those who are in Christ. So these are the kinds of realities that are the foundation of these kind of one another commands that we'll be looking at. Let's pray together and then we'll go to our discussion groups. Father in heaven, we thank you for Jesus who has suffered and died for our sins, who was buried and who rose again, and who has built his church not out of scratch, but in continuity with the people of God from the Old Testament. And we thank you that we Gentiles, far removed from those promises, we've been grafted in. And we thank you that through faith in Christ, we are sons of Abraham, and that we have been brought into this community, and that we have communion with all those who are chosen by you, who are redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and who are indwelt by the Spirit. We pray that you would help us to understand this rich theology so that it would empower, inspire, and inform the way we treat one another. And as we embark on this study together, we pray that you would help us to grow in the love that we have for one another and caring for one another as a covenant community. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. So the guys are in 107 and the girls, the ladies are in the parlor.