Thank you, Dave. Thank you, worship team. Good morning, everyone. Good to see you all. What you think about church really, really matters. I wanna tell you why what you as an individual, what you think about church matters. It's because of something that the Lord said. Take a look on the screen. He said this. His purpose, God's purpose, was that now, meaning in this age that we're living in right now, Through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known. Just let that, read it over on your own, and let that, just the weight of it sit on your mind and heart for a minute. The creator of the entire universe is making his message and his mission known to the inhabitants of planet Earth through a church, a group of people who put their faith in his son. Everything that's in the mind of God, he's chosen to make it known to you. So, back to what I said at the very beginning. What you think about church really, really matters. what you think the mission of a church is, what you think the purpose of the church is, and here's the most important part for today, what you think your part in the church is. You realize that Jesus said over and over again that the way that he will judge your life about whether or not it was used for what he gave it to you for, as a born again person. He will measure the worth of your life by what you did with the gifts he gave you to build up his church. Church really matters. And what you think about the church really matters. So let me ask you a personal question. Don't answer out loud, just think about it. With that introduction, how important do you think church life ought to be in the grand scheme of the life of a follower of Jesus? How important? Where on the list of priorities should it be? Like you got work life, and you got home life, and you got going out for entertainment. How important should church life be? Well, the way to answer that question is to just ask, how important was it to him? Where on his list of priorities was the church? So if you're a follower of Christ, you say, I'm a Christian follower of Christ, that means you're training your thoughts and the desires of your heart to match the priorities of your master. That's what it means to call him Lord, right? Everybody here, if you're a Christian, you say, Jesus is my Lord and Savior. You call him Lord, means he's your master. You're training your thoughts and your heart desires to match the priorities of your king. So how important is his bride to him? And the answer is, that important. Important enough to be tortured to save her. I wanna remind you of something really clear that Christians often make a mistake about. The top priority of Jesus is not you. I'm glad you're laughing. A lot of Christians mistakenly think they are the apple of his eye. You are not. You know who is? His father. If he gets that backwards, then his priorities were way out of whack. God is first in the mind of Jesus. But his father sent him here to save his bride. He left the riches of heaven and entered the wreckage of earthly humanity to save and beautify his bride. And so his priorities are right in line. And I don't know about you, but I just want to make my priorities match his. And so this morning, I wanna ask you a question as we look at 1 Thessalonians. How important is church life supposed to be? John Stott, I've been reading a lot of John Stott as I go through 1 Thessalonians. He wrote a lot about these two books. He wrote something, a question that I wanted to present to you this morning. Here's how he put it. He says, if the church is central to God's purpose, which I just showed you it was in that verse, as seen in both history and the gospel, It must surely also be central to our lives, right? That just makes sense. He says, how could we take lightly what God takes so seriously? How dare we push to the circumference, like if you think of your whole life as a plate, how could we possibly push church life off to the edges and anything else to the center? That's what he's saying there. Doesn't that just make sense? I read that this week and I thought, Stott, I'm gonna show that to my church. That's a great question. How central should the activities of church be in your life? If at the end of your life, Jesus isn't gonna come to you and say, come here, I wanna check your 401k. I wanna check and see how much stock you invested in. I wanna check and see how many soccer games you went to. No, he's gonna say, I gave you a certain amount of gifts, gave you a certain amount of time, certain amount of energy, certain amount of money, and I expected it to be used for whatever is going to last for eternity. What did you do with the priorities I gave you? So this morning, we're gonna be looking closely at Paul's final instructions to this church in Thessalonica. We've been going through it verse by verse, and we've reached almost the end. It's gonna take us a few more weeks to get to the very, very end. But we're nearing this plain infer landing. And as we look at it, it becomes very, very clear how essential church life is supposed to be in the life of a believer. We're gonna look specifically at how to love some people that you meet in church that may be hard to love. I'm sure you've never met anybody who was hard to love in church, because they just don't exist, right? You should have laughed way louder than that. Because church is a group of sinners who are coming in and are in the process of being made to look like Jesus. So of course it's gonna get hard once in a while. Well, Paul isolates a few groups of people that are difficult sometimes. And we're gonna talk about that. But before we do, I wanna tell you a decision that I've made about 2026. Because I just want to align my priorities, bring into alignment the priorities of my mind and my heart with Jesus, you may or may not know, but each year, we've been separating our year into two theological themes. We cut up our year into two halves. In 2025, here's what we did. The first half of 2025, January through June, we looked at the theology of family. What does God say about the role of a husband? What does God say about the role of a wife, about children, about what family is supposed to be? Because we just want to do what God says, right? Oh, that was terrible, right? Okay, good. Then in July through December, we're nearing the end of this. We've been studying eschatology, the study of the last things. And as Peyton said, we have one more seminar left in that. So you'll wanna come next Saturday over to the Life Center. We're gonna be talking about the eternal state. So for 2026, I've decided, because church is such a high priority to Jesus, the first thing we're gonna study in 2026 for the first half is, excuse me, ecclesiology. Everybody say ecclesiology. Ekklesia is the Greek word for church. Ekklesiology, the study of what's the church, what's it for, what's the mission, why is it here, what are we supposed to be doing? Are we the same thing as a soup kitchen? What are we? What are we supposed to be doing? What are we doing when we're the church at home? Because remember, that's where the first church is. What do we do when all the little home churches come together for corporate worship? What is a church? So we're gonna do that. for the first half of the year. And I have one book that each of our life groups are going to be reading together. And listen, I know I can't mandate anything, but I wish I could mandate you to read this book. Ashley and I, we were asked to co-lead a group about 17 years ago through this book, Building Up One Another. There was about 75 young adults between the ages of 21 and 31 when we were in that category. We co-led a group through this book. To this day, it's the best book. Easy to read. Children could understand this. But it's saturated with scripture. and it's saturated with the real experiences of Gene Getz. This is what we're going to be taking the first part of 2026 reading together. If you're not in a life group, get in a life group. You're going to read this book and you're going to discuss it and you're going to love it, I promise you. We'll help you understand what church is supposed to be. Second half of the year, the complement to what is church, we're going to do the theology of worship. Specifically, corporate worship. Do you ever ask, why do we do church like this? Why do we come in? Why does some guy get up and talk? Why do we sing a couple of songs? Why do we start with a psalm? Why is there stuff passed around? Did we just invent this? Or is this coming from something in the New Testament? Why do Americans do church the way that we do it, and are we doing it right? A theology of worship, we're gonna dig deep into what worship actually is. We're gonna stick straight with the Bible. Anybody interested? Then come to these seminars for the second half of 2026. So, before we go any further and get back into Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, I'd like to ask you to pray with me. Would you bow your heads? Father in heaven, I pray that you would open the eyes of our heart because we want to see you. I pray for the people that are here that are new to you. I pray that you would help them to see wondrous things. I pray for the people here who have been walking with you for 50, 60, 70 years, that they too would see new and wondrous things about you. For the person here who's excited to be here and the person here who can't stand that they're here. Lord, I pray that you would humble all of us. Help us remember that you are God and we are not. Help us to sit under your authority, I pray in Jesus' name, amen. So as I explained last Sunday, we're in this last section of 1 Thessalonians, and Paul is giving these quick, rapid-fire instructions for how they're supposed to do church life. And last Sunday, I kinda set the foundation. He described church as like a family, but he also used some of the shepherd and sheep analogy. So the church is overseen by a group of shepherds called elders, pastors, overseers. The New Testament uses many different labels for it. The church is overseen by shepherds and the people that attend the church are called sheep. And so the sheep have a certain kind of attitude that Paul expected them to have and the shepherds have certain actions or activities they're supposed to be doing. And when that kind of thing happens, you know what it brings to a church? Peace. You want to see a church that really has the evidence of the Holy Spirit? You have elders and pastors who are actually doing what the Scriptures tell them to do. And they're doing it with humility, not exercising oversight out of trying to lord it over people, but just wanting to be humble servants. And then you have people who have the right attitude, who say, I want to submit to the elders who are over me, because I know I don't know it all. And so that's the way that Paul started out the end of this letter. Now today, he's going to continue talking about church life by explaining these three categories of, listen to my phrasing here, Some immature sheep, and I say immature because you recognize the Christian life is a gradual progress toward maturity in Christ, right? There are always some people who are, how many of you have new babies? I have a brand new baby. Are they ready to lead a family yet? No, they're immature, they have to grow up. Well, the same thing when you're born again. You don't become a Christian and suddenly you know everything. You have to relearn how to walk like Christ. Well, when you have some people in your church who are of the immature persuasion, you have to know, as a church, how do you respond to those people? That's what Paul talks about. As we look at these, it's only two verses. We're gonna look at these three groups in three different categories. I invite you now to turn to your Bibles. If you don't have one, there's one in front of you. If you don't own a Bible, that's yours to take home with you. 1 Thessalonians 5, 14 through 15. It'll be on the screen if you wanna follow along there. Just two verses. Paul continues like this. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idol Encourage the faint-hearted. Help the weak. Be patient with them all. See that no one repays anyone evil for evil. But always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. I've entitled this small little portion of Paul's letter to the Thessalonians, The Weak We Keep. We don't discard them or throw them out. We keep them because the chief shepherd keeps them. Let me explain a little bit about how we're gonna chop this up. There are three categories, as I told you. Take a look on the screen. I'm gonna show you piece by piece what my study Bible looks like so that you can learn how to do this on your own. Here are the three categories that Paul isolates here. The idol, the faint-hearted, and the weak. Those are three different groups that are in every local church. This isn't just the Thessalonians. This is every local church. The idle, the faint-hearted, and the weak. And if you notice, he gives three ways that you're supposed to respond in kind to these three groups. Take a look. Admonish one group, encourage the other group, and help this other group. And then he gives this general command for the disposition you're supposed to have with these three groups. Down at the bottom there, take a look. With all three groups, the way I want your face to look, the posture of your heart, The way that your mind is supposed to approach them is a long suffering. Just as God, you expect him to have for you, he expects you to have for these three groups. I try my best to make the scriptures as plain as I can, so I've assigned three different labels that will help us to really understand what God was expecting of the Thessalonians and what God is expecting of the Beachavians this morning. Okay, here are the three labels that I see here, and I'm gonna explain to you how I arrived at these. First, the wayward who stray. I see that in the first group. Second, the worried who tremble. They're gonna be in every church. And third, the weak who struggle. Now, my job is to defend to you how I see that. in this text. Now, keep a look on this screen for me, everybody in the church, look at the screen. The wayward, the worried, and the weak. Sometimes you'll meet those people in the lobby, and sometimes you'll meet those people in the mirror. And if you haven't encountered one of those people in the mirror, mark my words, if you follow Jesus long enough, it's coming. You will be one or all of those people. And so, there's a specific way that Jesus expects us to respond to these three categories, and it's the same way you expect him to respond when you come to him and you say, Lord, I'm the wayward. I'm the weak one. I'm the perpetually worried one. If when you pray those things, you expect a certain response from him, we have to show that we will respond that way when people come in. You with me? And so here are the three ways he expects us to respond. To admonish the wayward with wisdom, to encourage the worried with gentleness, and support the weak with patience. The main lesson that Paul had for this church 2,000 years ago is the same lesson God has for us 2,000 years later. Here it is on the screen if you want to snap a photo of it. Because Christ keeps every sheep. He doesn't just discard the ones that are weak or worried. He keeps them. Therefore, we will patiently admonish the wayward, encourage the worried, and support the weak. I want to take those three commands that were given here, and I want to chop them up one at a time. You all with me? Command number one. We patiently, there's the key word there, patiently, long-suffering, admonish the wayward. Take a look back at verse 14a, just the first part of it. And we urge you, brothers, admonish, remember that word from last week? If you weren't here, I'm gonna cover it again. Admonish the idle. Be patient with them all. And now you should start asking, well, if it says idle, why did Pastor Luke rename it the wayward? Where does he get off doing that? I gotta show you. Why I did that? This is just an English translation. This isn't the Greek. Can I take you, listen, I don't wanna bore you with a whole bunch of academic stuff, but I need to take you into the classroom here for a little while. Will you go there with me? Okay, I'm a little curious, to be honest with you, as to why the English Standard, which is what I preach out of, I love this translation, I'm curious as to why they translated this idol. They're one of the only translations that does this. I think I know why, but let me show you what the simple word actually means. Take a look on the screen. Here it is in the Greek, and it means unruly or out of line. That's all it means. If you were to just take the word out of context and say, what does this word mean? It is translated directly in every context, unruly, out of line. Think about a group of people or a group of sheep standing in line. The one Paul has in mind here is the one that goes like this. Nope. I don't stand in lines. That's why the majority of translations, English translations, look how this word is translated in the majority. It's found as unruly, irresponsible, disorderly. Some of your translations today may have that word. The Amplified translation, it takes all of these different nuances and it tries to stick them all in there. Look at the way the Amplified renders this. We earnestly urge you, believers, admonish those who are out of line. And you say, what does that mean? The undisciplined, the unruly, the disorderly. So now you should say, well, if that's what it means, unruly, why does the ESV say idle? I think I can tell you why. In the second letter, which we're gonna start in a few weeks, 2 Thessalonians, Paul brings up this group again. And he uses the same root word to describe what was happening in this little local body of believers. And he says, listen, I'm gonna just get raw with you. He says there are a bunch of freeloaders in here who are refusing to work. They're literally not going to work because they know that some people in the church will take care of their needs. Like look, there's a benevolence fund in there and it's for people who are out of work. So I'm just gonna stay out of work and the church will take care of me. Paul's dealing with that in this church. He addresses it in the second letter, and he's like, look, if you won't work, you're not gonna eat. If a man won't work, let him not eat. And so many people, including the ESV translators, they say, we think that's what he's talking about in the first letter, so we're gonna translate this as the idol, those who are lazy freeloaders. But there's a much broader application. And the broader application is this. Paul is describing sheep, who are in his sheep pen, his flock, in any local church, who say, I see what the shepherds wanna do, but I don't care. I'll do what I want. It's the unruly, that's what the word means, the undisciplined, the ones who are constantly stepping out of line and making it difficult for the church to move. And so what does Paul say to do with these unruly people? He says, admonish them with patience. If you were here last week, then you'll remember, admonish simply means, it doesn't mean this. There may be a little bit of this when parents admonish their children, but admonish means, if you were here last week, to put truth into someone's mind. Okay? To admonish means to take a mind that is straying from the truth, saying, look, I know what the Bible says, but I don't care. It's old and outdated. This is what the world does now. It's for somebody to say, look, I want to bring you back in line with the truth because I love you and I don't want to see you steer your life into a pit. Sheep, don't go that way. There's wolves over there and you're going to get eaten. Admonishment says, come back in line with what the truth says. Nobody explained this better in the whole New Testament than James. James said this, look at the screen, don't blink, this is so important. James says, my brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth, think of a sheep, A sheep just starts to wander away. Sheep, don't go, what's gonna happen? That's the image he has in mind. One of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back. Consider this, James says, whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save his soul from death. and cover over a multitude of sins. Now he's not talking about an unbeliever there, he's talking about a believer, a sheep, someone who's in the church, a Christian, a born again person, who's wandering slowly, drifting away from the fold. They're slowly distancing themselves. When the church is getting together to do things, they're always separating themselves, never wanting to be apart. coming to church less and less. Man, I haven't seen you in so long. You can notice the distance. He's saying, look, when you start to notice somebody who's wandering from the fold and also wandering from the shepherd's voice, when you say to him, look, this is just what Jesus says, and they're like, He says, look, when you help someone come back and say, I'm gonna admonish you, not because I know better than you, but because I love you, please don't go this way. He's saying, you might save that person from death. Go back to the sheep illustration, okay? If it was sheep and they're all together, I'm not gonna do that again, that was your only time. They're all together, and one of them starts to go their own way. The sheep would all get together and say, there's wolves out there. Come back where you know the truth is. Don't go that way. There's predators. You could fall off a cliff or get caught in a thicket. This is where the safety is. Well, in a flock of believers, because he's not talking about them losing their salvation, he's saying, look, if you let someone stray from the truth, there's fruit that ends up in that. could end up in a drunken car wreck, or a drug overdose, or a destroyed marriage. You don't want someone, it says you'll save their soul from death. Because someone who wanders from the truth and goes their own way, they're gonna end up steering their life off a cliff. James is saying, if you love them, you'll admonish them. Someone who steers them back in line with the truth, that's, in my life, I've had lots of people who call themselves friends. I've only had a handful in my entire life who admonished me when I was doing something stupid. Those friends actually loved me. The others who just said, ah, don't worry about it. A real friend, I'm a guy, I'm gonna talk like a guy, a good buddy of mine will punch me in my face if he thinks I'm gonna ruin my marriage. He'll say, I won't let you ruin your marriage. That's love. That's what James is saying. A good, loving family member will say, I love you too much to let you wander from the truth. That's what James is saying. That's what Paul is saying. And so, here's what I wanna do. For each one of these commands that Paul gives, I wanna use verse 15 to help us learn how to apply this principle practically, first in your own homes. Because that's where the church really is, in your home. And then when we come together, it's a bunch of little churches coming together, right? So if we can make this work in our individual homes, in our families, that little flock, soon it'll start to happen in this bigger flock. That just makes sense, right? So look at verse 15. It gives us the principle for how to apply this. In verse 15 it says, see that no one repays anyone evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to everyone. So there's a way to respond to these wayward sheep that the world would do. Well, forget them. If they're going this way, we don't need them. Just discard them. Cancel them. That's the way the world responds. Christians don't do that. We say, look, there's probably gonna be a time when I start straying from the truth and I sure hope someone comes looking for me. Remember, Jesus left the 99 to go looking for the one. We're supposed to do the same thing. So let me give you a practical application from when there's somebody who is a wayward Christian wandering from the truth. Here it is. When the wayward wound you, First, don't retaliate. Don't return evil for evil. Restore them with gentle correction. Listen to me. Gentle correction is the good that you owe them. Do not return evil for evil. Bless when you're cursed. Remember when Jesus said that? The good that you owe to someone who's wandering away and distancing themselves from the truth, you owe them correction, the same that you would expect from Jesus when you're wandering from the truth. If you can apply this in your home, we'll start to see it happening in our local church, and that's how churches become healthy. Friends, there's a second command that Paul says to this church in Thessalonica, command number two. We patiently encourage the worried, a second group of sheep that we need to talk about here. The worried. Look at verse 14b. And we urge you, brothers, encourage the fainthearted. You ever seen those fainting goats? Whenever Ashley and I are bored, sometimes we'll put those on YouTube. They just crack me up. Encourage the fainthearted. Be patient with them all. Okay, let's go back into the classroom for just a little bit. That word, fainthearted, here it is on the screen. Look at all the different translations. King James renders it feebleminded. That's a good translation. CSV, that's the one my daughter uses, discouraged. NLT, timid. And you say, well, which one is it? And the answer is, all of them. When you're translating from another language, any language, like my wife and I used to teach martial arts. Sometimes there isn't a, we taught Korean martial arts. Sometimes there isn't a Korean word that was equivalent to our English word and vice versa. Same thing with Greek. Sometimes there isn't a word that encompasses it all, so we do our best. But showing these helps to really capture what Paul's talking about here. When he's talking about those who are worried, he's talking about those who are constantly worrisome, constantly fearful. This isn't somebody who is worried when a crisis happens. That's not what he's describing here. He's talking about someone who is perpetually worried. Someone who can never turn the worry button off. That their knee-jerk reaction to everything is, but what if? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that because what if? What if? What if? That's the person that Paul has in mind there. And he explains to them that our job is to worry, or is to encourage them. I want to explain something to you that I've noticed in my life that you've probably noticed too. Psychologists have written boatloads of books on this subject. Because human beings are so good at copying one another, especially when we get into groups, if you've read any books about groupthink or any history of how humanity has caused any kind of movement whatsoever, good movements or bad movements, it's because human beings imitate one another for the good and for the bad. So when you have somebody who is naturally predisposed to courage, and they're in a group, often that person who is predisposed to courage will inspire the others to follow their lead. But the flip side is also true. Often, worriers worry very loudly. And when they get into a group, and a worrier has a lot of influence in that group, somebody who the group looks to, when that person is worried, often the group will follow their lead, and the whole group will become worried. Well, if she thinks it's not a good idea, we should probably all not think it's a good idea. That's just the way the human beings are wired. There was an occasion where the Apostle Paul dealt with this. As a matter of fact, many occasions in the Book of Acts, and I want to fill you in on just one of them. The Apostle Paul was in Jerusalem, and he was beaten so badly that they left him there for dead. As a matter of fact, the way the Scriptures are written, it indicates that they thought he was dead. He wasn't moving. So he's laying there in the middle of the streets, And they come and they take him back to the house to get cleaned up and healed and let him rest there for a while. Well, a couple chapters later, he's in the house of Philip. And he's just been rescued from near death. And he's sitting there with Philip and a prophet named Agabus comes in. And Agabus tells him, here's what the Holy Spirit says. If you go back to Jerusalem, they're gonna bind you. And he took his belt and he showed Paul exactly how he was gonna be bound. And so Paul says, thank you, when do I leave? And they start weeping and begging him, don't go, you almost died the last time. The whole group starts worrying, what's gonna happen? You're gonna lose your life, this is irresponsible, don't go. Look how Paul responds. Paul says to them, he answered, what are you doing? What are you doing weeping and breaking my heart? I'm ready not only to be imprisoned, but even to die in Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. Since he wouldn't be persuaded, we ceased and we said, Let the will of the Lord be done. All the sheep in that house were filled with fear and worry, and they were trying to persuade him not to go. And the Apostle Paul said, let me demonstrate for you, all of you, including Philip, what it looks like when you have faith. Listen, it's a lot easier to just stay in the safety of the sheep pen, but God calls Christians to go out to the world and to bring the lost sheep in. Our mission is to go where it's dangerous. I would love nothing more than to see missionaries come out from this church and go into some very hard, unreached people groups that are still out there on planet Earth, to risk their lives for the cause of Christ like the Apostle Paul did. Are you one of those? I would certainly hate it if some of us held you back from following God's call. Warriors are everywhere in scripture. Old Testament and New Testament. From Joshua to Moses, They're everywhere, from the apostles, the disciples who wouldn't get out of the boat because they were afraid, to Peter who started the sink because he was afraid, they're everywhere. But I wanna tell you something, when we find them in the scriptures, God doesn't shame them, he strengthens them. He first admonishes them, oh you of little faith, why did you doubt? And then he encourages them to have strength, put steel in their spines, because the Christian life is gonna mean risk. It's gonna mean a hard life. What do you think would happen to a little local church if suddenly everyone started to worry? Well, what if, what if, what if we do this and it doesn't work? What if we invest here and it doesn't work? That church, little by little, will start to accomplish a giant goose egg for the kingdom of God. They'll never take a risk with their lives. They'll never take a risk with their money. They'll never take a risk with their resources. They'll decide to play it safe and they will accomplish Nothing. And so Paul says, when you have a group of warriors, you need to encourage them. And so I want to show you exactly how to encourage them. First, as before, verse 15 gives us our application. We don't want to repay evil for evil. We want to do good instead of repaying evil for evil. And so when warriors come, and they feel like a weight, and sometimes, let's just be honest, if there's a church, I've seen this, you may have seen it too, where there's a lot of people who just wanna do for the kingdom of God, and they wanna get stuff done for the kingdom of God. You might have a group of worriers, and you feel like, man, you're just holding us back. There's so much we could do. Those worriers can start to feel like a burden on you, like a weight. It can feel that way. Let me give you an example of what it is that we're supposed to do in response. When a worrier weighs you down, respond by demonstrating faith over fear. Demonstrating, just like the Apostle Paul did. It means you're gonna need to hold their hand. Step by step and show them, look, I'm not expecting you maybe to have the same amount of courage that the Lord has given me, but I wanna help you to take one step out of the boat. If you're in a marriage, and one of you has greater courage than the other one, you might say, honey, it's not okay for us to just sit and play it safe all of our life and do nothing for the kingdom of God. Let's take one small step of faith and we can build from there. We take warriors by the hand and we encourage them, just like the apostle Paul says, to grow in their faith and not stay a baby sheep their entire lives, but to grow up into the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. So friends, when we have warriors among us, I think Paul in Acts 21 gives us a good example. Look, I love you, but God has called me to a mission. Why are you weeping and breaking my heart? Come with me to Jerusalem, and let's do as much as we can for the kingdom of God. There's a third category that Paul wants us to look at here, and a third command. We patiently support the weak. The weak. Verse 14-C, the last part. We urge you, brothers, help the weak and be patient with them all. I hope you've enjoyed the little academic portions of the sermon. If not, well, you're going to hate the next part because I'm going to do it again. You should ask, weak what? They can't lift more than 50 pounds. What does he mean by weak? Weak how? That's how you study the Bible. Weak, in what sense? They can't move the couch when the church is doing that? What do you mean by weak? Well, here's what the word means. The word means morally fragile. If you go home, look it up in Strong's Concordance, and you'll see this is the way that it's used in every single context. morally fragile. It means spiritually weak. It means that when temptation comes their way, they are often very weak and are easy to fall into temptation. That's why the Amplified translates it like this. It says, we earnestly urge you, brothers, help the spiritually weak. Someone who is spiritually weak cannot bear the burden often on their own of really strong temptation when Satan is just throwing it at them rapid fire. And so those of us who have a greater propensity to withstand temptation, and I've met a lot of Christians who just don't fall into temptation very often. That's a gift. And God has given you that strength, not so that you can look at the weak and say, I can't believe how fragile you are. Instead, Paul is saying, no, no, no, no, no. God gave you that strength so that you can help them to endure the temptation. That's why Paul speaks like this in another place, Romans 15. We who are strong, again, it means not like this, it means morally strong, not easy to fall into temptation. We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak. And not to please ourselves, that means the gift of your strength wasn't given just for your benefit. It's given for the weaker sheep that live among you. When you see a sheep who's constantly wandering into places they ought not to go, constantly doing things they know are gonna hurt the whole flock. In your household, when you have a sheep who's constantly got their hand in the cookie jar, when you've told them a hundred times, And you've got another sheep who never puts their hand in the cookie jar. Well, have that stronger sheep help that weaker sheep. That's how the family gets stronger. So it is in a church. Thomas Brooks, one of my favorite old authors in the 1600s, look at what he said. If the strong do not bear with the infirmities of the weak, well, then who will? The world certainly will not. Friends, if the Christian church isn't gonna look at the weak sheep that are among us and say, brother, I am not gonna let you fall, then who is gonna do that? We're supposed to be the ones who do this, to look at those who are weak and constantly falling into temptation and say, I'm gonna help you through this. I'm going to help you to gain strength and to trust the Lord better than you are." And that's Paul's exhortation to this church. Help them, not repaying them evil for evil, sin for sin. Those of us who are strong should always seek to do good. And so here's the response that I want to help you to apply first to your homes and then to this church. When the weak fall again, and they will fall again, and again, and again, don't abandon them. Uphold them with patient support. Here's all I mean by that. Just sit in a slop with them for a while. If you've got a sheep who constantly likes to go in the mud and return to their vomit, like the Proverbs say, sometimes a stronger sheep will say, look, I'm gonna go and sit there with you. I'm not gonna let you stay here alone. I'm gonna help you to restore you back to a place where you ought to be. That's what a stronger brother or sister does. They don't just say, forget her, she wants to go that way, I'll never speak to her again. Friends, we don't do cancel culture in the Christian church. We help the weak. We restore them to the flock, just as you want Jesus to help you when you're the one who's fallen into temptation. All of this is summed up beautifully. The whole sermon I've just delivered to you is summed up beautifully in one little passage in Galatians. Paul wrote this. Brothers, if anyone's caught in any transgression, any sin, you who are spiritual should, say those two words with me. Restore them. That's the goal. Restore them in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, talking to the strong sheep now. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. If anyone thinks he is something, I never fall into temptation. I'm the strong sheep Pastor Luke was talking about today. When he's nothing, he deceives himself. Listen to what this means. The goal of a local church is unity. We're supposed to be demonstrating to the world what not only a family looks like, not only a sheet pen looks like, but what an army looks like. No brother left behind. We will support each other. We'll celebrate victories when things are going well, and we'll sit in the slop together when things are not going well. Bear one another's burdens. He's saying, what I hope you get across here is to be one. One body. One spirit, one Lord, one flesh. And if you're the one here this morning and you think you're the strong one, the warning there is for you. One day, temptation is coming for you that's gonna be too strong. And you're gonna wish that there was some brother or sister in the church who would come looking for you when you've gone astray. So if you're the strong now, help the weak, because one day you'll be the weak and wish there was a strong one coming looking for you. Friends, Jesus was very serious about this, so much so that he decided to give us a symbol, that every time the church was to come together, they would remember exactly what made them one, that every single sheep was once a lost sinner, wandering about through life, in the slop of their sin. And Jesus came looking for them and found you. We have all come together as Christians because we've all been saved from our sin by our Good Shepherd, who loved us enough to bear our burdens and lay down his life for us. And so, What better way, what better sermon to come together around the Lord's table and to remember what our good shepherd has done for us so that we will do for others what he's done for us. I'm gonna call the men forward and as they come forward and the worship team comes to the platform, I'd like to ask you to just pray and ask that we would become a church that would put these things into practice. Would you bow your heads with me? Father in heaven, these three groups are in every church And if we can't identify who it is in our church, maybe that's because we're the ones. We're the sheep that's gone astray. We're the weak one. Maybe we're the one who's proud and arrogant and thinks they know it all. Maybe we're the stubborn one. Lord, I pray that you would open the eyes of our heart, humble us under your word. Prepare our hearts now to take communion together. We want to be one body, one flesh, under one good shepherd who shed his blood for all of us, whose body was broken to restore lost sheep into right relationship with the Father. So Lord, as we remember what Jesus has done, as we partake of these elements, I pray that you would lay upon each person's heart how much we've really been saved from by our good shepherd. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. On a hill.