Okay, let's shift gears, and we're continuing in what we began at the beginning to call the membership class, and we realize people are thinking, well, I'm already a member, I really don't need to hear that. Actually, the design that Mike and I had was really to sort of bring the whole church sort of back to the level set, to recenter on every category of church life that we felt was beneficial, that It forms the structure of biblical church life. So we've started calling it now Biblical Foundations for Church Life, Joined and Knit Together, or Joined and Knit Together, but anyway, it's about being joined and knit together in the church. So we really do want to bring everybody together. around these matters, and we really do pray that the sessions will help to focus us, galvanize us, you know, give us a greater sense of calling, you know, in our church here locally. I'd like you to open your Bibles to Psalm 133. Psalm 133. Psalm 133, verse 1. And I chose this passage just as an opening point because the focus of our time this afternoon is the relational fabric of a church, the culture of a church. And Psalm 133, verse 1, really speaks beautifully of it. Behold how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is like the precious oil upon the head running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on the edge of his garments. It's like the dew of Hermon descending upon the mountains of Zion, for there the Lord commanded the blessing. Life forevermore." So it's a picture of life forevermore among the saints The unity is something that just spreads out and beautifies everything around it. That's the design for God's church. Somebody said that a unity is the perfume of the church. And you can kind of see that, you know, it's like precious oil on the head. You could also say it's like lubrication. The unity of the saints is like lubrication for a church. Without it, you really can't go forward. You grind to a stop. And so, unity, you know, lubricates the friction of relationships and can cause...that can cause grinding at times. And so, this matter of unity is really preserved in many commands in the Bible. We have a church covenant that explains what that oil is and how we can continue with it. And our church covenant defines the way that we relate with one another in the church. How we conceive of our life together in the meetings, it speaks of how we relate with one another, how we deal with one another's failures, how we deal with one another when somebody sins against us. It defines a whole range of things. And a church covenant is a promise and it summarizes what we believe the Bible says about how churches should relate to one another. Charles DeWeese, a historian, writes this about a church covenant. A church covenant is a series of written pledges based on the Bible which church members voluntarily make to God and to one another regarding their basic moral and spiritual commitments and the practice of their faith. So, you know, we're going to walk through this covenant And, you know, when people, you know, become formal members of our church, we ask them to embrace a covenant with one another so that we're not just freewheeling it, we're not just doing whatever we want in this church, but that our life together is defined not by our own passions, but it's defined by the Word of God. You know, the church covenant isn't the Bible, but it speaks about the Bible. And so, you know, our church covenant is a very important piece of the culture of our church. And, of course, it's a covenant that's made by baptized Christians. And the helpful nature of covenants is manifold. First of all, it sets the culture of a church. Anybody coming in can know, here's the kind of culture we want to be created here in this place. And I've said this many times, you know, publicly in my preaching, that there's no sweeter culture that exists in any institution, any company, any family, than what is called for in the Bible. The Bible really paints a picture of the most beautiful culture that you can ever experience. Companies don't even get close to it. Covenants also not only set the culture, they also have the effect of rebuilding a culture. All of us come with a certain culture of our hearts and, you know, a covenant can help a person rebuild their relational fabric of the way that they relate with people. And they also call for a commitment. So I want to walk through the various paragraphs of our church covenant and make some comments along the way. And so I think we have some on this PowerPoint up here. The first clause is really characterized by the word love. This should be the premier mark of the culture of a church. And our covenant reads like this, we will work and pray for the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and by the aid of the Holy Spirit to walk together in Christian love." Now, these words are very important. All of them are helpful, and these passages of Scripture really define them. But notice the words, work and pray. Building a culture actually requires work, and it implies that there's something to be built, or it also might mean that something needs to be repaired. Sometimes you're building a culture in a church, sometimes you're trying to repair culture of a church. And let me just say, the culture of the church is always under repair. But in order to...this work, this thing that we fight for, it takes talking, it takes forbearing, and it really...it helps if you end up with a group of people who are unwilling to say, I'm done. I'm done with you. Because there's work and there's prayer. A church life always challenges love at some point. And, you know, one of the nice things about being in a church for a long time is that people get to know you. One of the not nice things about being in a church for a long time is that people get to know you. And you have an opportunity to offend them, and they you. So it's good, but it's good to be around for a long time so that sin can bubble to the surface and we deal with it in a Christian way. And so that, you know, we have a church where we're willing to build bridges, that you build your part of the bridge. You know, the Bible says, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. That means that you've got to build part of the bridge. You can't just wait around for the bridge to get built. you know, church people can fall into ditches and, you know, the the personalities and the politics of churches often causes viruses to spread in churches. And, you know, elders always have to keep lookout for the viruses. There are going to be viruses that take hold in people's hearts. What you don't want those viruses to do is to spread very far. You want there to be a way to kill the virus, and that's really killed by the work of the Holy Spirit. through the Word of God, and it is really primarily dealt with by having a church that really is focused on the glory of Jesus Christ. If we cared most about the glory of Jesus Christ, we would care a lot less about our offenses. So, you know, there are these over 50 one-anothers in the Bible, that help us to understand how this love is preserved. There's so many love-preserving influences that God gives us in His Word, and they sweetly inoculate the church when they're there. It's such a blessing. And you find these in the Gospels, you find them in Paul's letters, and you also find them in the other writings of the other writers in the New Testament. I'm just gonna give you a couple representative ones. First in the Gospels, in Mark 9.50, be at peace with one another. In John 13.34, love one another. That's the Gospels. In Paul's letters, there are many. In Romans 12.10, be devoted to one another in brotherly love. live in harmony with one another, Romans 12, 16. Romans 14, 13, stop passing judgment on one another. Romans 15, 4, instruct one another. In Galatians and Ephesians, there are some really remarkable ones. In Galatians 6, 2, bear one another's burdens. In Galatians 5.15, if you keep on biting and devouring one another, you will be destroyed by one another. In Philippians and Colossians, in Philippians 2.3, in humility consider others better than yourselves. In Colossians 3.13, forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. And there are many others. For example, in James, do not slander one another. In James 5.9, do not grumble against one another. In 1 Peter 3.8, live in harmony with one another. In 1 Peter 5, 8, 15, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another. So love is the premier manifestation of the glory of Jesus Christ in the church. And there are so many ways that God has given us to preserve love. And if love is going haywire in your heart, go back to God and His commands and obey His commands and forgive one another. and be tender-hearted and compassionate toward one another. Recognize that people are on a journey, and they're actually on God's journey, and every one of their days has been determined, and it's written in a book. So don't get too worried about it, okay? So, love is the first, cultural sort of mandate in our church. And the next I'm going to identify is evangelism. And I'm really just working through the basic structure of our church covenant. We will seek the salvation of our kindred, acquaintances, and strangers who have not repented for saving faith in Christ, to be in prayer for the spiritual awakening of the lost in our community, and to be a faithful witness of the gospel, both here and to the remotest part of the earth. This has to do with the mentality of a church. Churches can have an ingrown, inward mentality. They don't care about anybody else, and they just want to have a nice little fellowship. But that's really not what God designed the culture of a church to be. It's an open culture. where the lost are being evangelized and people are brought in to hear the Word of God, to receive the care that he has in his church. And notice the word seek. This is perhaps so easily left out, seeking the salvation of our kindred and our acquaintances and strangers. We probably leave out strangers more than anything. The Bible actually calls us to entertain strangers. If you're afraid to have strangers in your house, just remember there's actually a command to seek out strangers. And now there are probably some people you don't want to have in your house, but the inclination of our hearts should be to trust Him, that He's going to protect us and take care of us. And then the next clause speaks of church life. And we read these words, we will strive for the advancement of this church in knowledge, holiness, and comfort, to promote its prosperity and spirituality, to sustain its worship, ordinances, discipline, and doctrines, and to submit to its leaders as they are faithful to Christ. So this has to do with an inclination of your life toward the church, that you're inclining your life toward the ordinances and the prosperity of the church, you're giving your treasures to the church, you're coming to celebrate the Lord's Supper, you're coming to hear the preaching, and you're growing in the doctrines. You know, this has to do with the advancement of church life, to make it a strong church. There are two parts that are spoken of here. One is just on the positive side, on just the support of it, and then it speaks about submitting to its leaders as they're faithful to Christ. So, you know, here's one of the issues about church life is that you have leaders. That's a problem, because leaders think things up. They pray and they design a discipleship agenda for the church. And they cry out to God and they ask this question, how do we most sweetly bless a church, this church? What do they need? What kind of teaching do they need? What kind of experiences? What kind of songs do they need? What do they need? And so God puts it in the hands of elders to design that church life. So, you know, we as elders, we're very jealous about the meeting. We want everybody there. We want everybody there. And so, you know, we've designed a church structure where we gather together on the Sabbath day. We want it to be a day of delight. We want to provide preaching and the Lord's Supper and fellowship. Don't you love our meals on Sunday afternoons? And then we also want to really focus the various households of both single people and others on the Word of God. So the men meet on Monday morning. We want every man there. Why do we want every man there? We're gonna study the passage that we're gonna preach on the next week. And we want those young men and old men to go home and communicate the things that are in that passage to their families. So that when their children come in or their wives come in, kind of been grounded. They know what this passage is about because we sat in there and we discussed it. And then we're going to send out a message. either Tuesday or Wednesday. I usually write it, whoever's preaching writes it. And we're gonna give a thumbnail sketch of that passage of scripture. We really want people to read that and help them kind of move towards Sunday. We meet on Wednesday night to pray. We wanna pray about what's gonna be preached on. We wanna pray about the needs of the body and various things that are going on. And then we come together on Sunday. And we have women's mentoring meets once a month. And you know, this is the basic discipleship structure that your elders believe is the most beneficial thing. And we just, hey, we're very grateful for the participation that we have in this church. And while we are thankful, we would also say, excel still more. So that's church life. Church life should be the center of your life. and then everything else fits in around it. That's our view of the Church of Jesus Christ. It's the only institution that Jesus established. It's really an important institution. And then the next clause focuses primarily on giving. And the words read like this. We will contribute cheerfully and regularly to the support of the ministry, the expenses of the church, the relief of the poor, and the spread of the gospel through all the nations. So a church should be a giving church, and every person should ask, am I giving? At minimum, I think we would say we should ask, am I tithing? Is tithing for today? You figure that out. My view is you probably shouldn't be dropping below that. But I'm not here to make a biblical case for or not for that subject. But we know this, that giving should be done cheerfully and it should be sacrificially performed. And then gathering. We will not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, nor neglect to pray for ourselves and others, nor avoid the meetings of the church. It's easy to overschedule church life, and your elders right now think that the church doesn't need more schedule. We don't need to add to the schedule of the church. We think we're doing enough, and we don't want this church schedule to be so heavy that people can't get involved in it. And we want it to be concentrated so that we assemble ourselves together. It's really good to have everybody on the same page, to hear the same things. And these things happen during our gathered meetings. These are the required critical elements of all the other kind of meetings that you can conceive of. Meeting for preaching and prayer and the celebration of the Lord's Supper, those are just foundational. And then let's talk about family life. We will also maintain family and private devotions to educate our children in the Christian faith and demonstrate the love of Christ in all our household relationships. All of our families are in process of reforming and sweetening, but God has, I think, all of us in a place in history where there's a tremendous need for the reformation of the family according to biblical patterns. It's really critical. Churches that neglect this do it to their own peril. And so we really pray that you would have mighty families that are filled with the word of God, filled with the happiness of Jesus Christ, filled with all those good things. You know, a family, like Matthew Henry said, is like a little church. It's not the church, but it's like a little church. And a lot of the things you do in the church, you do in your family too. You pray, you read the word of God, you worship, there's discipline, there's all kinds of activities. You know, we have so many young families here and all I wanna say is just pour it out now, pour it out. Make that family a little piece of heaven. Make it the sweetest place on the planet. And then when you come to church, the church is gonna be a little bit like that sweetest place on the planet. Your family's out of control and not filled with the word of God, you're gonna have a church that's not quite so much fun. So, family life. And you know, hey, are you conducting family worship regularly? You know, are you memorizing the word of God together in your family? Are you praying in your family? Those are really, really important things. They sound so simple, but they're really critical. If you've fallen off, get back on the track. Get back on track. Fill your world with the word of God. And then let's talk about care for one another in this next clause. We will watch over one another in brotherly love, to remember one another in prayer, to aid one another in sickness and distress, to walk circumspectly in the world, to be just in our dealings, faithful in our engagements, and exemplary in our deportment. So this has to do with the way that we think about each other. We're here to watch over one another and pray for one another and to aid one another. Notice the word sickness and distress. At any given time, you're gonna have several people in a church who are in sickness or they're in distress. Thank the Lord that that happens when you're in a family and there are resources and there are prayers. If you're sick or if you're in distress, please let the elders know. We wanna pray. We want to join in. We want to weep with you when you weep. You know, there are times, you know, there are times when, you know, I find out like a week or two later that somebody went to the hospital. May it never be, okay? We want to know if you're sick. If you're getting rushed to the hospital, I mean, either our hearts or our cars want to go there with you, you know? So that's life in the body. You know, let us know if you're sick or if you're in distress, because we want to pray. And then next, sinful behavior. We want to call one another to holiness in every area of life. We will abstain from gluttony, drunkenness, illicit drugs, materials, entertainments, or practicing things which jeopardize our own or another's faith. You know, this has to do with the pernicious lure of sin. which is always there, perhaps one of the most pernicious and pervasive lure that we're experiencing now is that of pornography. And you know, I typically ask men when I get together with them, when was the last time you looked at pornography? Almost all the time men say, it's been like forever or a long time. I know men lie. They can lie about stuff like that. Brothers, turn away. If you're enwrapped, you know, this is the beginning of your death and losing everything. So, the culture of a church should be one where we're sensitive to turn away from sin and various entrapments, whether they be media, entertainments, or various things like that. There are so many entrapments that the devil uses. He's seeking to devour us. We have an enemy and he wants to destroy us. So let's turn to the next one, sympathy. We will cultivate Christian sympathy in feeling and courtesy in speech. Strive to avoid all scriptural prohibitions such as tattling, backbiting, and unrighteous anger, and refrain from speaking evil of one another, be slow to take an offense, to think the best of one another, and always ready for biblical reconciliation and mindful of the rules of our Savior, to secure it without delay so far as it depends on us. In here, this clause moves from the heart of sympathy, and then it proceeds to the use of the tongue and also the use of the mind, thinking not the best of one another. My experience is that most problems in churches and relationally can be traced to not thinking the best of one another. And it's legendary in life. It's like that at your work. It's like that in your home, and it's also like that in your church. You can have children who don't think the best of one another, and you get pandemonium from it. But here, it's just very clear that we're devoting ourselves to a culture free of backbiting, being slow to take offense, and thinking the best of one another. Those things are so important. What a culture like that. What a sweet culture that creates. And then, discipline. We will, if necessary, submit to biblically defined and regulated church discipline for the purpose of reconciliation with God and man. And we accept that refusing to communicate or to flee is to usurp the power of the church and break this covenant. So if anyone falls into sin, it's right that that the elders would pursue some kind, some classification of discipline. There are lots of different classifications of discipline in a church, all the way from just personal appeal to, you know, gentle appeals, and then stronger appeals, and maybe bringing others in, and maybe telling the whole church. You know, so there's this escalating gradiation of discipline that the Bible gives to the people in his church. And we also know that if someone is sinning grievously, sometimes they don't want to talk to you about it. And our policy is if you won't talk to the elders about that sin, then the problem is just going to get worse. And if you flee, you don't escape it just because you fled, because it's something that needs to be dealt with. And then finally, the last clause has to do with devotion to the church all your life long. We will, when we move from this place, if possible, unite with the church which upholds the essential doctrines defined in the church constitution and where we can carry out the spirit of this covenant. When someone comes a member here, we want them to, with all their hearts, declare themselves to always being a devoted member to a true church when they leave. Now, if someone leaves and they don't become part of a true church, we have reason to doubt that they were ever saved in the first place. So, you know, we pray that the devotion to the Church of Jesus Christ that was experienced here will also be experienced in the next place that you move. God may take you to the ends of the earth. He may move you around a lot. He may move you around a little. But wherever you go, make it your first aim to find a church and get in with the body of Christ. It's a protection. It's an up-building, equipping, center that God has made for his people. And so, you know, we call everyone who becomes a formal member of our church to make these commitments to one another. I always love it when we read the Church Covenant together as a church. It's so helpful and it just brings out what a beautiful thing God has called his people to. There is no culture like the biblical culture of a church. And I pray that God would use each one of us to build that culture right here in this place. Imagine what it would be like if people walk in here and there's a culture like this. What a blessing. Let's pray. Lord, Lord, we thank you for giving us so many beautiful ways to deal with the different experiences that we have in your church. You've covered it all. You've shown us what to do, and we praise you that you have been so kind to give us such a clear vision of the kind of culture that we can have in a church. And I pray, oh Lord, that you would pour your Holy Spirit out upon us and you would give us such a heart within us to love you and obey you and keep all of your commandments for the church of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.