We will in just a moment celebrate the ordinance of the Lord's Supper. The table is where the church comes. The congregation may have people in it that are not members of the church. It may even at times in the congregation have people that are not even in the Lord. But the church gathers at the table. This is where we come. This is the place that's been delivered to us. This is the place that express the Lord's coming or the Lord's death till his coming. So not only does it express the fact that the Lord has died for us, but that the Lord is coming again for us. The table is also the place of discipline because at this table, we are commanded that those that are not in the Lord or those that are in sin, that we should not even eat with them. And surely some people say, well, that's fellowship. And it may be so fellowship, but if it applies to fellowship, how much more would it apply here to this place? We do this once a quarter. Some people think we ought to do it every service. Often people do it once a month. The Bible really doesn't teach us how often we should come to the table, but it does teach us that we should come to the table, but that we should come to the table worthily. This table is in this church. This is our table. In the sense that is the table that the Lord has called us to. It is his supper. We don't own it. Nor do we qualify it or distinguish it by our qualities that we would put upon it. No, it's the Lord's table. It's the Lord's supper. It is that which He has given to us, which makes it ours, but it's His. And He is the one that should limit or delimit or invite to it. It's not ours to do that. I've heard people in the past say, you know, it's the Lord's table and that we shouldn't, you know, exclude or whatever. But it is not our table. If it is the Lord's table, then it is the Lord who will invite. And so here we shall come to this table as brothers and sisters in Christ. We shall come before the Lord. It's one of the most sacred things that we do. Now Baptists, we're not obviously high church. And even some of those people that are not high church are higher than our church. There is no formal liturgy that we have, liturgy that is order of worshiping. Though there is a practical liturgy that we have, we basically do the same thing each and every Sunday. We pray and we read the scripture and we sing hymns and psalms and spiritual songs. We give and receive an offering and we celebrate the ordinances. The perpetual ordinance that we celebrate is obviously the Lord's Supper. The ordinance that we celebrate when the Lord saves people and brings them into the church is the ordinance of baptism. So in these ordinances, we attend, we worship. It is a liturgy. And then we preach, and then we have a song at the end, and a prayer at the end. But we don't have a formal liturgy. We, as Baptists, are more open to being moved by the Spirit at any moment in the service to do what we would do. We are fluid and flexible in our service. We don't give any extraordinary, like Roman Catholicism, any extraordinary unction or extraordinary spirituality to any particular thing. We don't think that the cup becomes the blood and that the bread becomes the body of Christ. like Lutherans that believe, well, it doesn't actually become, but it comes alongside it and lays with it. We're more in the, you know, in the historic Baptist understanding that it's symbolic. It symbolizes what the Bible says to us. But yet I said all that to say, it is a holy moment. It is one of the most sacred things that we do. And we are warned in the word of God that we do not come to this table unworthily. Now you'll notice that that's an adverb. Unworthy is the adjective. We are made worthy in Christ. But even at that, we should give attention to the way we live, because we don't want to come to the table unworthily. We surely want to hold it in great honor, and we want to treat it in a sacred manner. For indeed, it is the presentation of the gospel, and indeed, it expresses to the world our love for God, for Christ, and for each other. The Apostle Paul writes to the, and this is one of my most favorite two chapters in all the Bible in 2 Thessalonians, but in 2 Thessalonians 1, verse one says, Paul and Silvanus and Timotheus, unto the church of the Thessalonians, in God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. So you'll notice here, it is the Lord's church, it is the Father's church, but he also says it's the church of the Thessalonians. So here this morning, he would say to us, the application of this is that this is the church of Bethlehem, our church. Baptists have always understood and we have raised high the idea of the church being local and it's visible, as opposed to the universal and invisible church. Now that doesn't mean that we as Baptists have never understood that there's a church beyond this church, obviously. And all the churches together, the true churches of God are this church, you see. And we do understand in the sense that that's invisible because there may be some people who are visibly in the church that are not spiritually in the church. So in that sense, we would give a nod to the idea of invisibleness. But what Baptists have always, always supported, what Baptists have always presented What is very important to us, what we have always maintained is this, that if you claim to be in the church, you must be in a church as much as possible. Now, there might be some circumstances where you couldn't be because there's not a church to be found. And that doesn't mean that there's not any churches there. You may be in an area where there are tons of churches, but not any true church. And it'd be very difficult, very difficult, you see, for you to find such a church. But yet there's a yearning desire. And sometime I've been in places where I had to just kind of look over some things in order to be at, just like last Sunday, there were some things that I would never have done. And some things, just to be honest with you, I was very uncomfortable that they're doing, but I had such an urge to be with the people of God that I overlooked some of these things, you see. But you can't. You can't join a church, you can't be a member, you can't get in and fellowship with them if they're those things that you know are not right. You have to try to find a church that's right. And not everything that glitters is gold. But it is our church. Verse two says, So grace and peace comes together. From God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. So in two verses we have God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ mentioned in both verses. Grace comes from them and peace. He's the prince of peace. It doesn't mean he just brings peace, but he rules peace. And here's the verse that I want us to look at. We are bound. to give or to thank God. We're bound. I mean, it is incumbent upon us to do this. There is a binding of our spirit to do this. We are bound to thank God always for you. Brethren, as it is meat, so it's right. It's the old English word It's meat, it's right, it's proper to thank God for you because that your faith groweth exceedingly. You'll notice it doesn't say your numbers. It doesn't say your budget, but it says your faith, a growing faith. I think that's the problem with many, many churches. There are people that claim faith, but it's not a growing faith. In fact, you can't even find evidence of their faith outside of the fact that they just come and sit in a pew and sing some songs and live their life. But a growing faith, because that your faith groweth exceedingly. And the charity, now this is agape, this is love. A wonderful translation of the word charity or the word agape with the word, English word charity, because agape is a giving love. Agape does not look for value in the object, but it brings value to the object and therefore it's charity. And we must live with each other charitably. Your faith groweth exceedingly. And the charity or the love of every one of you, every one of you all, some people said that Paul must have been a Southerner, you all, toward each other aboundeth. So this charity, every one of you, all toward each other aboundeth, so that we ourselves glory in you, in the churches of God, for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations But ye endure, you see, and if you live in this world, the world, the flesh and the devil are our enemy. If you live in this world as a faithful man, as a faithful woman, as a faithful child, as a faithful father, as a faithful mother, You're going to have persecutions. There are going to be people that misrepresent you. And the reason they will is because they refuse to be what a Christian should be. And when they see an example of what a Christian is, they become angry. And we make up things like, well, don't judge me. Jesus said to the Pharisees, it's your own life that judges you. You know, it's as, you know, one of the lines in property of Jesus by Bob Dylan, you know, go ahead and talk about him because he makes you doubt because he's denied himself of things you can't live without. And that's what it is. It's jealousy. It's backbiting. It's anger. It's pride. They want to be accepted in any way they want to live. And they have misunderstood and misdefined Christianity. As if Christianity, as if following and loving Christ is indeed being incurably nice to everyone, no matter how they're living. That's not love. There's people going to hell and they come and sit under a preacher that speaks unto them smooth things. When he should be shouting in their ear, fire, fire, escape the wrath to come. So that we ourselves glory in you and the churches of God for your patience and faith and all your persecutions and tribulations. And if you live in this world, you shall have trouble, you shall have tribulation, but rejoice. For the Lord says, I've overcome the world. Which is a manifest token. These persecutions and tribulations They are a manifest token, a visible token of the righteous judgment of God, that ye may be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which ye also suffer, seeing it is a righteous thing when God or with God to recompense tribulation to them that trouble you. And to you who are troubled, rest with us when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his holy angels and flaming fire taking vengeance on them. that know not the God or that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power when he shall come to be glorified in his saints and to be admired in all them that believe because our testimony among you was believed in that day. So we left out the parentheses it'd be to be glorified in his saints and to be admired and all them that believe in that day. And that's the end of the sentence. We're bound to give thanks, brethren, for you. Because we see your faith. We see you growing. And we see that this persecution and tribulation doesn't cause you to back off from what is right and holy and good. Though it'd be much easier to go the other direction. So, here we are. in this covenant that we have agreed with each other, having been led. See, it's not that what we have done, you see. It's not that we're better. It's not that we're smarter. It's not that we're more noble. No, we've been led as we believe by the Spirit of God. And some people say, well, as we believe, that seems to be a little doubtful there. No, it's not doubtful, but I'll tell you what it is. It's humility. It's humbling. It's always examining ourselves. We believe, you see, we've been led as we believe by the Spirit of God. To receive the Lord, the Spirit of God has led us to receive the Lord Jesus Christ. The Spirit has come. He's come to us prior to our belief and led us to this belief. Hallelujah, what a Savior. And on the profession of our faith. So you see, you will profess the Lord. What hits the heart comes into the life. What hits the heart flows out of the mouth. Now we heard a testimony of a Somali woman that said that they had to whisper the name of Jesus. They had to speak it in whispers lest they be persecuted and killed. But you know what was interesting? That they still confessed him even though it was in whispers. And we who will not be persecuted at all, I mean, not by the government, not by laws, not by imprisonment, We won't say a word. No, if it's in your life, it'll come from your mouth, this profession of our faith, and we've seen it in each other. And we've been baptized, biblically baptized, as a believer in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, a Trinitarian formula. For you are not a Christian if you do not understand it is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit that saved you. The father loved you, the son died for you, the spirit made application to you. And that's what we do in baptism. You see, we show that we enter into the baptismal waters, even as Christ did. We were, you know, and we know this, we know this. If we were buried with him in baptism, we shall be raised with him to newness of life. It is the symbol of what's already happened, the symbol of the reality that's already been in our life. For indeed, we were baptized by the Spirit into Christ and he raised us to newness of life. And that's what we show in this ordinance. And I'm not ashamed to be called a Baptist because that's what we confirm. We do now in the presence of God. We're calling God to bear witness and to everyone in this assembly to bear witness most solemnly and joyfully. We know it's a solemn thing, but it's a joyful thing. To enter into covenant, an agreement. What is a covenant? A covenant is an agreement between two or more persons, you see. An agreement. Not one side forcing another side, but two sides coming together in agreement. And to covenant with one another as one body in Christ. We're not many bodies, we're one body. We make up one body here. We're not divided, we're one, we're united, you see. And what unites us? Well, the spirit, this truth, this gospel. And so that being true, we engage, so we make promises to one another. And to make this promise and to not do the best you can, though we're all sinful and we fail, but not to do the best you can to fulfill this promise This covenant, this agreement makes you a liar and a sinner. Therefore, knowing that we need the Holy Spirit by the aid of the Spirit, by the aid of the Holy Spirit that we call upon every day and many moments of the day to walk together in Christian love. Here it is, it's love. It's not just love, but it's love as defined by Christ. It is Christian, it is love that is defined by this gospel. And we're going to strive for the advancement of this church. We're going to promote it. We're going to say, here's what you should do. Here's where you should come. We worship God. And that's not to say we're the only ones that worship God, but that's to say, I don't know what the other ones are doing, but whatever the other ones are doing, what is that to us? We will worship God, and we can be confident in saying to someone, come, if you want to worship God, come to this place. This is who we worship, you see. We don't worship each other. In fact, I've told people, I said, you know, there's some people that have left our church, and some of them have left our church because of the worship service, and they said, well, What is it about the worship service? I said, because we're not worshiping them. We're worshiping God. And that should be what we promote this church. We shouldn't promote this church with programs and plans of men and purposes of men, but we should promote this church because of the proclamation that comes forth from this holy desk, Sunday in and Sunday out, drawing men to Christ and teaching the people of God how they should live in this world to the glory of their God, exegeting the word and making application to your hearts. And so we're going to strive for the advancement of the church in knowledge. Now, if we're striving for the advancement of the church in knowledge, that means you're going to have to learn some things. I know some people, and there have been people that I know even in this church, they wanted to know some things. They didn't have a very good upbringing, though they were brought up in church, they knew nothing. They had no understanding of the gospel, no understanding of the Bible. I remember this one particular woman She had come from another church, and she'd come to our church, and she was very happy to be here, and she was in my office, and we were talking, and we were looking up some passages of Scripture, and she had to go to the front, she had to come to the table of contents and find what page in her Bible a certain book was on, and had been in church all, knew nothing of it. Oh, and she so wanted to know. but she was unwilling to learn. Give yourself to this knowledge. Memorize these scriptures. I know that there are some churches that they do a catechism question a month, and they teach the catechism to the congregation. But not only in knowledge, because knowledge puffs up, But in holiness, how are you living in this world? Holiness means two things. Number one, it means to be separate, to be separate from the rest of this world. We live in the world, but we're not of the world. And it means also to be pure. We don't talk about these things that are impure, mundane, common, vulgar. things, but holiness and comfort to advance the church in comforting one another. You see the word conformable into this, to comfort each other, to come together, to bear one another's burdens, to weep with them that weep and rejoice with them that rejoice and to promote The church is prosperity and spirituality. It's always both, you see. It's always practical and spiritual. Spiritual without practical, you see. Some people are so heavenly minded, they're no worldly good. But then there's some people that are so worldly that they have no understanding of heaven. It's both. It's prosperity. and spirituality, and we're going to come and worship. I mean, don't you think that if you're a member of a church that it would be indeed understandable? Wouldn't it be agreeable that someone would worship? How can you be a member of the church and not worship with the church? How can you not, how can you run to another place for the worship and claim to be a member of a church where you're not worshiping? It is the worship that brings you into the church. It is this ordinance. But I've had people that say, well, I'm not gonna worship with the church, but I still want to be a member of the church. I mean, that's saying, you know, I want to be a circle, but I'm going to stay square. No, you sustain its worship. That should go without saying, right? If you're able to be here, I realize that there are circumstances where you can't get into it. But you see, there's really no reason now for anyone not to worship with us as we are streaming the worship. And almost everyone has these devices. They watch almost everything else on them. The ordinances. Show up to the ordinance of baptism. Show up to the ordinance of the supper. The discipline. Demand that the church be disciplined. Discipline is not so much an action as it is an atmosphere. I mean, you have to, when you raise children, you have to have a disciplined atmosphere. That doesn't mean you have to beat them every day. Not to beat these children every day. In fact, I would contend that if you really gave them what they needed when you had to resort to corporal punishment, when you had to use the rod as God teaches us, if you do it right, you wouldn't have to do it much. But the disciplined atmosphere must be all day, every day. And that's what it should be here. But how are you going to discipline if you don't even know who's a member? You must discipline. We have promised that we would sustain the discipline of the church. First of all, that we would be disciplined in our own lives. Second of all, that if we needed to be disciplined by a loving, godly, holy, leading church, that we would submit to the discipline of it. And that no matter how distasteful it may be, that we would indeed be a part of disciplining those who have not fulfilled and who have grossly disobeyed and grossly violated their covenant obligation and the doctrines of the church. This is the truth. You come to the preaching, the teaching, the doctrines, and you have to agree with the doctrines or how can you be in the church? And I've said to you many, many times what comes across this pulpit on Sunday is the reason that people should be coming to this church. But so many churches, or any church I should say, and so many churches promote everything but this as a reason to come. To contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry. And this is talking about financial giving. to the support of the ministry, to the expenses of the church. Churches have expenses. Churches indeed pay pastors. Churches relieve the poor. I mean, it takes money to do that. And the Lord claims the tithe. I mean, there are those people that are very upset. When I put out my devotions, when I put my devotions out on, Every day, I really get many, many positive comments. The most negative comments that I've ever gotten is when I talk about the tithe. That they're trying to say that I'm stealing your money. I don't want your money. Don't give me your money. Give your money to God. But it takes money. How are we going to help hungry people if we don't have money? How are we going to help homeless people if we don't have money? How are we going to help sick people if we don't have money? How are we going to be able to send to people across the oceans if we don't have money? And from where does the money come? You say, well, it comes out of the wallets of the members. But I would say truly, ultimately it does. But I can tell you where it has to come first. It has to come out of the hearts of the members. And this gospel, we must understand people are dying all over the world. They're dying. And they're going to hell. Does that bother you? Or is there anything about that that causes you problems? We pray for them, but not only do we pray for them, but we give in order that this gospel might go all over this world. And sometimes we give kind of blindly when we give like to the co-operative program, we don't know exactly where it's going, exactly to whom it's going to. And sometimes we give more deliberately when we know exactly where the witness is going or where the money is going in order. Just like when we support African Pastors Conference, we go, we know that we are there preaching the gospel to those who are wayward, lost, and dying. And then we also engage to maintain family and secret devotions. Christianity shouldn't just be a Sunday thing. To religiously educate our children, that means to educate our children in our religion, in the truth, in Christianity. And to seek the salvation of our kindred and acquaintances by the way we live and what we speak. And not to hurt our witness because we're gonna walk circumspectly That means we're going to walk uprightly. We're going to let people examine our walk and see that we, indeed, that our language matches our lives. We're not going to cheat people. We're going to be just in our dealings. We're going to be faithful in our engagements. When we say we'll do something, we'll do it. We're going to be examples in our deportment that in the way we live, follow me because I follow Christ. We're going to do some things. We're going to not do some things. That's doing some things, but we're not, we're not going to tattle. We're going to avoid tattling, running around, speaking against each other as if speaking against them builds us up. We're not going to backbite one another, if you've got something, if you've got some problem, you should come to a person and you should work them out. And you may, even as you speak, you may not be able to work them out completely. You may just have to learn how to disagree disagreeably. Or agreeably, I should say. Don't be disagreeable in your disagreement. And of course we give up our freedom, our Christian freedom to drink because of the problem of alcohol in our society. Baptists have made this stand almost universally from their beginnings. And we're going to be zealous in our efforts to advance the kingdom of our savior. You know what we also have agreed to do? We're going to watch over one another in brotherly love. We're not going to be people that are in other people's business, but from a distance. We're going to watch over and when a word is necessary and when a word can be heard, we will speak it. And we're going to remember one another in prayer. Do you pray for each other? It's a good thing to have a church roster, or to memorize, or to go, you see, you have to be in the worship service to do this, but as you pray, just think about where these people sit. We're people of habit, so we most often sit in the same places, so go up and down the pews, calling the names of your brothers and sisters in Christ. We're gonna come to you when you're sick and when you're in distress. And we're gonna work on this. We're gonna cultivate Christian sympathy, that we can be more sympathetic. I used to be hard-hearted. Nothing would move me to cry. But the older I get and the longer I stay in Christianity, the more I'm touched by the infirmities. the problem of others. I don't want to become a crybaby, but often I have to fight back tears in my prayers, in my preaching, cultivating Christian sympathy and feeling, and I want to be Courteous. I'm going to speak to you with respect. I'm not going to be belligerent. And sometimes being firm is misunderstood. I'm going to be firm. I'm going to be faithful. To your interest. But I'm going to be courteous. And I'm just going to be one of these people that you can't offend. I'm going to be slow to take offense. Always kind of look for a reason. I heard someone say to me one time, says if someone says something, you shouldn't just put it out of hand. You should say, well, why would someone criticize me in that way? Then you must look in your own heart about these things. And if there's something that you have given to them, some offense, then you must be ready to reconcile. I'm ready. Let us reconcile. What do I have to do? And I will do anything to reconcile with you short of denying the truth. And I will remember Matthew 18. Try to keep this thing between us and pray it never breaks out into the church. Go to the brother. If he doesn't hear you, then bring someone with you. If he doesn't hear them, then bring it to the church. Two thirds of that process should be in private. And then if we ever leave this place, we'll find a church just like it. That is the covenant that brings us to this table. Let's pray.