your holiness, your beauty, your righteousness, for all that you are this morning, God, and for what you've done. We praise you and glorify your name. And it's in your Son's name, Jesus, that I pray. Amen. Well, good morning to you all. As most of you know, Tyler and Shanti, I said it wrong a couple of times this week. I said, you know Tyler had the baby, right? I was like, oh, no, no, no. You know Shanti has had Tyler's baby, right? So it's like, he doesn't get that much credit. So yes, they had their baby, little Callie Jo, got to see them this week, and a beautiful little girl. They're doing well, and so what we've done, as most of you know, have given him a couple of weeks off in order to attend to his family, care for them, and so in trying to consider what we would do for the Sunday school while he was out for the next couple of weeks, we talked about revisiting the core value series, and it was at the beginning of We see it's 2019-17, was it 2016, that we did a six-month core value series and wanted to start to work that in with the church and just kind of giving us focus. And I'll explain a little bit about why even core values. We're not going to do six months again. We're going to do probably three weeks of Sunday schools and this just to give a broad overview. And the thing about vision and core values is if you teach it and then you leave it behind, it tends to just diminish and in the end of the day doesn't have a real impact. And so coming back to the vision, the mission, And so that's why we're doing that this morning. So I'm calling this Core Values 2.0. And you'll see, and you see this frequently, you'll see this on signs around here, you'll see this on the TV screens. The three big ones are love God, build a church, and reach the world. So what I'm gonna try to do over the next three weeks is just cover each of those points with their sub points as we look at this together. I'm gonna go back to really the issue of why core values. Core values are something that I just as an individual, but my personality type for years and years, I just thought were silly, the idea of core values or mission statements or things like that. My whole philosophy was, look, we're gonna read the Bible and I'm gonna pray and every Sunday I'm gonna show up and we're gonna figure out, I'm gonna go to the next text and we're just going to see what the Lord does. And a number of ways we still want to do that. I still do that with my preaching of just what is the next text? Let's work our way through the word. Together, we want that to be a milestone. Really, that's the thing that we do around here more than anything is looking at scripture section by section, verse by verse. But I came to appreciate core values just as I understood more about leadership and about myself and my own strengths and weaknesses. And so let me give you just kind of a quick summary of why even core values. So you're either in a job or function or personality that you think, oh yeah, core values are important. It's important to know what you're trying to do, what you're trying to accomplish. Or you're like I was for, all of my life until a few years ago and say, what do you mean? We're just gonna be biblical or we're just going to obey the Lord or we're just going to do that. So for those of you who are not yet sympathetic to it, I get it, I totally understand it. Let me try to convey to you why core values even. First of all, to prayerfully set the vision or goals as to what we are pursuing as a church. And it's easy to say, we're just gonna obey the whole Bible, but then it gets down to the question of, What does that mean? What are our core values? You know, we want all of the biblical values to be our values. But what are the core things? What are the things that we're going to give most attention to? Because I found with my personality type that I can move my attention from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing and end up not giving attention to any particular thing. And so it's to prayerfully set the vision or goals to what we're pursuing as a church. Like, what are the the things we're going to make most important and kind of a hierarchy or pyramid of what's important. Secondly, to prayerfully plan how we're going to pursue that vision. And it is to prayerfully plan that, to ask the Lord, what do you want us to do and how do you want us to do it? We wanna do, in the words of Francis Schaeffer, God's work in God's way. So it's not just we figure out what we're supposed to do and then by any means necessary, But we're prayerfully asking the Lord, how do you want us to do this at this season of the life of our church with the gifts that we have, etc. So to plan, because I believe the Lord says a lot in his word about not only obeying him, but the way that we obey him and not just waiting on him, but waiting on him as we pursue him. The number three here to seek to unify and direct our church. Just to for so we were on the same page. We know what we're working toward We know that the values that are most central and core to us to unify us To get us together working together to know why we're doing the things that we're doing to unify the ministries of the church and To even ask the question with children's ministry, women's ministry, outreach ministry, how does it connect to the things that we've agreed together are central to everything that we do. These core values of love God, build the church, reach the world. And if a particular ministry doesn't fit well into that, then we're going to say it's a good thing, but it's just not something that's at the heart of what we're trying to accomplish. Number four, to humbly evaluate the progress and stay on track. And so to have something to go back to to say, okay, how are we doing? How are we fulfilling the vision as we've prayerfully considered this? How are we loving God, building the church, reaching the world? How are we doing these areas? Where are the areas that we're strong? Where are the areas that we're weak? And what are the areas that need to be developed? To just help us to track, to know, You know, you set out these vision, the goals, and at the end of the day, asking the question, like, how are we doing with this? And where would the Lord have us pray and grow? Then number five, to clearly communicate the purpose to those who are considering becoming a part of what we are doing. And so somebody comes along, they're visiting the church and they say, okay, so what is y'all's plan? What is y'all's vision? And I got asked that for years. And I felt very spiritual when I said, well, we're going to love God. We're going to love one another. We're going to see where he leads us. And it sounds very spiritual and very dependent. But it was another way. And this is part of, again, my personality. It's a way of saying nothing. It's a way of saying, I'm not planning to do anything. I'm going to just show up and see what happens. So it's an opportunity to communicate. So when somebody says, what is the plan? What is the vision of the church? What are you trying to do? Big picture is we want to love God, build the church, and reach the world. And we want to love God in these particular ways. We want to build the church in these particular ways, and we can reach the world. And if it doesn't fit their agenda, what they think are biblical core values, then they can move on and find a place that they would resonate with. Or they might hear that and go, oh, yes, that's what I think is important. I want to be a part of what your mission and what the body is pursuing here. All right, so those are just some reasons for core values of looking at them, of thinking about them, and returning to them occasionally. Now, when I taught this core value series, it caused a bit of disruption and difficulty And some of it is just was I think some of it was fear based of, oh, no, this is a new direction for the church or we're changing or we're becoming seeker sensitive or Stephen has adopted some new business model to try to build the church, things like that. So one of the illustrations I used to try to illustrate, that's what you do with illustrations, is to say, no, no, no, we're not changing the picture. It's not we've been RBC Nashville for this number of years. Stephen's now discontent or he's found some new thing and we're changing as a church and we're going to move in this direction rather than this direction. So it's not like the beach picture that now we're casting a new vision. So when you think of core values or the things that are being taught here, they're not changes in one sense to something different. It's not a new direction. It's not something different than what we've been doing. And that was one of the comforting things getting through the six months with a number of folks who were like, I was just holding my breath. Like, where are we headed with this? What are we going to do? got finished and folks were like, oh, well, we've always believed these things. Why is this such a big deal? It's like, okay, there's a big accomplishment with that, yes. So it's not the change, but it's clarification. So you'll see with these two pictures, it's the same picture clarified. It's not new direction. We haven't, as I look around in the last couple of years, it's not like there's vastly new things that have been done. It's like, oh, we never did that, now we do this. No, it's just taking the things that have always been our values, what we've taken from scripture, where we started 21 years ago and just said, let's be more intentional, let's be more clarifying, let's be more directive with this. So it has to do with clarity, focus, and intentionality, not changes, new direction, indifference. So that's what we try to lay out in the core values. So here's the big picture. Some of you will remember them well, I trust. The big three, love God, build the church, reach the world. This is what we'll cover in the first week. Love God by pursuing God in word and prayer, by worshiping God corporately and personally. And you've got those other ones there that we'll be covering over the next couple of weeks. So let's jump in. Originally, just this sub point by itself took two messages, and it has to do with pursuing God in the word. And I just want to give Obviously, covering what I covered in six months and three weeks means it's going to be a big picture overview. As a matter of fact, if I had it to do over again, I think I would have done that series in six weeks rather than six months. In hindsight, for a number of different factors, I think I would have done it during the Sunday school, and I think that doing it in six weeks rather than six months could have been helpful as far as an introduction. So this is obviously a high-level overview. Love God by pursuing God in the Word. And what I laid out and what I mean by the Word has primarily to do with three categories, and I think all three categories are really important. So we ask the question, what is meant in the Bible by this terminology of the Word? And I think there are at least three things that the Bible talks about itself, about being the Word. The first is the entirety of the scriptures, pursuing God by pursuing him in the Word of God. By Word of God, I mean Genesis through Revelation. It is the infallible, inerrant Word of God. It is the Holy Scriptures. And we see passages like 2 Timothy. You can turn here if you wish. In 2 Timothy 3, we'll look at a number of these passages up close or somewhat up close. In 2 Timothy 3, the classic passage on the inspiration of Scripture, verses 14 through 17. Paul writes to Timothy, "'Bid us for you continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you've learned it and from how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings.'" And so here on parchments or scrolls that Tyler has taught us about, that through hundreds and thousands of years, God not only inspired scripture, but preserved his word in what we now have as our Bible. And so he calls it here, the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through Jesus Christ, Christ Jesus. Then he calls it all scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, correction, training, and righteousness. that the man of God may become competent or complete, equipped for every good work. So when we talk about pursuing God in the word, we're talking about being biblicists. We're talking about reading the Bible, hearing the Bible, learning the Bible, memorizing the Bible. So Genesis to Revelation, we're saying you can't pursue God like a Buddhist or like a transcendental meditationist and just kind of have communion with God. To know God, we need to have him reveal himself to us. He needs to tell us about himself because the finite can't understand the infinite unless the infinite chooses to reveal himself. And so that's why we want to be biblical people. That's why scriptures, we want to sing them. We want to pray them. We want to read them. We want to learn about them. We need to understand them to contextualize them and understanding the background. And so pursuing God in the word means pursuing him through the Bible. And then also 2 Timothy 4.2, therefore preach the word, be ready in season, out of season, reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching, for the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching. So pursuing God in the word at this most fundamental level means pursuing him through scriptures, Genesis through Revelation. And then secondly here, we mean pursuing him in the word through the gospel. Sometimes the Bible itself uses the word of God or the word to more narrowly mean not the entire scriptures, but within that, the gospel itself. And this is important because we need to pursue God, not just from the text of scripture, but pursue him through the gospel, through the good news of Jesus Christ. And a couple of examples we see here, first of all, in Ephesians chapter one, verse 13 and Ephesians one, verse 13. We read this in him that is in Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation and believed in him, you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. So here, the word of truth, the word is specifically the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's possible to read scriptures, to be an academic in scriptures, to know the Bible and even memorize large chunks of the Bible, pursuing God in that way. But we can't have a pursuit of God without Jesus Christ specifically and the good news of the gospel. And we'll talk more about that in the next slide, but it has to do with pursuing God through the means of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, that he came as mediator, as reconciler, as sacrifice, as the one who came to make and not just tell us the way, but to be the way, the truth, and the life through the good news of Jesus Christ. And then Colossians 1 verse 15, Colossians 1.15, Paul writes, he is the image of the, that doesn't look right. 1.5, thank you, that's it. Colossians 1.5, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of this you have heard before in the word of the truth, the gospel. And so to make the point, all of scriptures pursuing God in all of scriptures, more narrowly pursuing him through scriptures because of the good news of the gospel itself. But then moving kind of to the third tier, sometimes the Bible refers to Jesus as the word of God, specifically the person of Jesus Christ, not just the news of Jesus and not just the biblical story, but specifically through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so two examples of that in John one, one in the beginning was the word. It's the Word of God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So specifically, Jesus is the Word. And I'll make a point here why this is so important to have all three of these tiers. And then 1 John 1.1, a passage that we looked at at the men's retreat last weekend, The things which you have, which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen it with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. Here, it's not all of scripture. And here it's not specifically the good news of the gospels. Here is specifically Jesus. He is the word of life. He is the incarnate word of life. And so what we're saying by this is we want to be a people of the whole of scripture, Genesis to Revelation. We want to be more particularly people of the good news of the gospel. And then most particularly through a relationship with Jesus Christ. And all of this are important. Let me tell you a couple of reasons why. One is, for instance, theological liberalism that came earlier in the last century. put a heavy emphasis on this top one, of Jesus being the Word of God. And it put such a heavy emphasis on that, it degraded the place of the inspiration of Scripture. So Scripture is a book that tells us about the Word, but the Bible isn't the Word itself, to which we want to say, no, that's just not true. And they would point out to John 1.1, they would point out to 1 John 1.1, and they would say, no, you see here, The Bible is clear that Jesus is the word. So as long as you believe in Jesus, you don't have to believe in the inspiration of scripture. And we say, well, it's not either or or somebody says, no, it's just the good news of Jesus. That's the word you need to believe. You don't need to believe things like the virgin birth. You don't need to believe things like Mount Sinai or the flood or creation. You just need to believe the gospel to be saved, to which we say, no, it's not either or it's the whole of scripture. Properly understood, it is particularly the message of the gospel and it is the person of Jesus. So what does that mean? So it means that when we pursue God, the word of God, the scriptures are going to be foundational to absolutely everything we do. what we say, what we preach, what we memorize, what we sing, that the Word of God, Genesis to Revelation, is absolutely foundational. And the very first passage that I preached on August 2nd, 1998, was that Second Timothy passage of all scripture is God-breathed. And that's always been a foundation and always will be a foundation of our church. But we can believe the word. But Jesus himself says you search the scriptures because you think you have life in them. But these are they that testify of me. So we can become biblical specialists and not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. So we want to pursue him. In the scriptures, yes, particularly in the gospel is how we're reconciled to God. But it's for the purpose of pursuing God through the mediator in a personal communal relationship with Jesus Christ himself. His spirit dwells in us. He is our mediator. And so it's not just becoming academic, reformed Christians who know the Bible well and put it in its proper systematic theology. but particularly we're pursuing him through the person of Jesus and having a relationship with him. So the fight I'm fighting for is not an either or, it's all of these three things together. So that's what we mean by pursuing God in the word. So here's kind of the summary vision of this particular point. We are a people who are pursuing God by hearing his scriptures, Believing his gospel and living in relationship with his son. We need all three of those to saturate every part of our lives. And note here, by hearing the scriptures, or yes, by hearing the scriptures, this includes all modes of input. This includes reading the Bible, includes hearing the Bible, either spoken to us or hearing it read to us through Bible apps or recordings. It means singing the Bible. It means memorizing the Bible. However best we can get the Bible input into us, into the word of God through a relationship with Jesus Christ. OK, so that is by pursuing God in the word. The second component of pursuing God in that first sub point is pursuing God in prayer, pursuing God in prayer. And here I kind of laid it out, like asking the question, why do we even have a right to pray? According to the scriptures, how can we have access to God? Well, it's because of the certain rights that we have who have believed the gospel and who have entered into a relationship with Jesus that we have these rights. First of all, we have a right to prayer because we have been reconciled to the father through the gospel, though we were at one time rebellious. He we were under his wrath. We were children of wrath, as Paul says in Ephesians, as the rest that we were born into this world as broken relationship with God. Because of the gospel, because of Jesus, we have now been reconciled to the Father. We are the prodigal sons who have come home and have been embraced by the Father. And so we can say, I have a right to pray. It's a privilege, it's a responsibility, it's a duty, but even foundational to that, I have a right to have access to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. Hebrews talks a lot about this. that we have a new and living way through his flesh, the veil that is his flesh. We have an advocate with the father and we have right access to the God of heaven through the gospel, through Jesus Christ, so that we have the right to pray to him. And then second, adoption through the son. We've not only been reconciled to the father as judge, but we have received the same rights that Jesus has to ask his father for things. And we looked at this at the men's retreat last week. John 17 says that I want them to know that as you have loved me, so you have loved them. And to say that when I get into Jesus Christ, I have as much access to the father as he does, that I have every right to the father because I'm adopted as a first born son because of Jesus. And therefore, I have as an heir of Christ and a co-heir with Christ Jesus, an heir of God, co-heir with Christ Jesus. I now have been adopted and I'm not a second born third. We have the adoption, which is the first born right of adoption. because we are in union with Jesus. And so I have the right to pray as much as Jesus does because of Jesus, not because of me, not because of my works, not because of what I've done. I have the ability to access him. I have the ability to pray things in his name. And that's what he says. Whatever you ask in my name. And so I have the authority and right of privilege through the gospel to approach him even as Jesus Christ approaches him. And then finally here, I have this because of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. So I have a right to access to the Father because of the adoption that I've received through Jesus Christ, his son. And not only that, I've been sealed with the Holy Spirit. You and I have been indwelt by the Holy Spirit. And Romans talks about that even when we don't know what to pray exactly, the spirit himself yearns within us and longs within us. And even we're not able to pray the words that we want to pray, the spirit who is in us earnestly longing, prays to the father even without us, but yet through us. And so by the indwelling of the spirit, I have access, we have access to God. And so we want to use that to pursue God because of the rights that we have as his children, adopted and indwelt by his spirit, we have the rights and privileges to approach him. Now, here we come to the ingredients of prayer. I almost call this like the components or the elements of prayer. But here are the ingredients of prayer. We will be very familiar with this from the men's retreat last week. First of all, of adoration, of adoration. It is simply acknowledging God and praising God for who he is, recognizing him that the fact that he is God, acknowledging him and adoring him for the fact that he is eternal. acknowledging him and praising him in prayer for the fact that he is in and of himself wise and all powerful and just and love and righteousness. This has to do with the attributes of God, of who God has revealed himself to be. The fact that he is Trinitarian, the fact that he is sovereign, the fact that he is in control, the fact that he is himself God, a huge part of prayer should just be this venting of praise to who God is without asking him things, without supplicating from him things, without confessing our sins or identifying who we are, but simply a unidirectional praising of him for who he is. And if we're not doing that in some part of our times of prayer, then we're essentially just coming to God and always asking him for things. We're just always coming to him and saying, hey, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me, give me. I want you to do this. I want you to do this. Rather than saying I apart from anything you do or give to me, I'm just going to worship you. I'm going to acknowledge who you are. That is a huge ingredient to proper prayer. And then there's a second component. Once we've seen God for who he is, is acknowledging that we have fallen short that to whom much is given, much is required, to acknowledge that we are those who are confessing our sins and our failures, that we've broken his law, that we have sinned against him in word and thought and in deed, that we are those who are coming before him as those who naturally don't have a right to come to him. And so we are confessing our sins to him. And then there's this third category where we do thank him for his gifts. We do thank him for who he is and what he has done. We thank him for the good health that we have, for the food that we have, for good relationships, for his creation, for the enjoyment of music, for the enjoyment of food. The fact that our taste buds work is amazing. So here we're thanking him for the riches of the glory of what we have through the gospel. We are thanking him for converting us, we're thanking him for the hope of heaven, we're thanking him for the richness of the word of God, we're thanking him for the church, we're thanking him for all of these things. I would recommend to us that those first three acts are the things that orient our souls to be really true worshipers and thinking rightly about God and about who he is. So that when we come to this fourth category, which is where most of us, R.C. Sproul makes this point quite a bit, that it be something like, you know, scat, S-C-A-T, that we tend to maybe put supplication at the top, and then confession, and then, you know, maybe some adoration or thanksgiving, but those things get really little attention compared to how we should pray. And I think R.C. Sproul is correct, The bulk of our prayer should be adoration and confession and worship and thanksgiving, so that when we come to pray, we are rightly oriented to who God is and we have come in worship. When our prayer time is unstructured, when our prayer time is just always, and don't get me wrong, there will be times that we can say nothing but help me. There will be times that we are saying nothing but I am desperately in need of you. I need you to act. Some of the Psalms are that way, where it's just full of supplication and desperation. But as a regular diet and habit of prayer, we need to be men and women who are pursuing Him for his own sake and confessing our sins and thanking him. So those are the four ingredients in prayer. It was an encouragement. I heard that one of the community groups actually used the structure. We saw fruitfulness from this in the last week's men's retreat and seeing the fruitfulness of that. And then I believe one of the community, not believe, I know one of the community groups actually used that as a framework for praying this week. So before you knock it, try it. and give yourself to that and see how that goes. So the ingredients of prayer. And then third, the times of prayer, really that we pray in two major categories of time. One is just moment by moment, moment by moment, just an ongoing relational presence with God where We might just be driving down the road and we see a beautiful rainbow or we see a sunset and we just, our heart just ignites with gratitude for God and showing us that. Or we take a first bite of a good soup and we just think, oh man, it's amazing that everything doesn't taste the same, that I have taste buds, that I'm able to do these things. So it's that moment by moment of just being overwhelmed with, I know I've sinned and I'm coming to him now. There's abundant mercy and thanksgiving in the image of the prodigal father running to the son. That's God's disposition toward me, and I'm just thankful for that. So it's that moment by moment throughout the day, wonderful opportunities that Paul talks about in 1 Thessalonians and 2 Timothy, about praying without ceasing, praying for one another, praying at all times, always giving thanks at all times for you. And then what Jesus expresses in John 11, 42, where he says to the father, I know that you've heard me, I know that you always hear me. And so we want to cultivate that Coram Deo, that always being in the presence of God, of always seeking to worship, of always seeking time with him to to engage him relationally. But sometimes that is identified as all that we really need to grow and to grow spiritually. But there's a second category of what I'm calling focused or intentional prayer. This is a time where it's intentional, purposeful, intensified engagement with God. And for some people, it's a fear. It's like, well, if I do that, it's going to become formal. It's going to be dead. It's just going to be, you know, contrived to that kind of thing. But what we find is the Bible doesn't pit these two against one another. But there are times, for instance, in Psalm 5.3, in the morning you will hear my voice. I will order my prayers before you, David says. And the word that's used there for ordering is the same word that's used for the Levites who took their pieces of wood and ordered it on the altar and laid it out. And they had to cut the wood. They had to make it the right size. They ordered it. They lit it on fire. It has to do with ordering and intentionality. In Matthew chapter six, verse nine, nine to 13, which is a parallel to an account in Luke where they asked him the question, teach us to pray. And he doesn't say, well, you just got to kind of feel it, you know. Lord, teach us to pray, it says, after he had prayed. They said to him, teach us to pray. And he doesn't say, well, you just got to kind of get yourself stirred up and got to really feel the Lord. And and then just whatever comes out. He says, no, when you pray, pray this way, saying our father who's in heaven, hallowed be your name. And and for decades, centuries, for millennia now, the church has recognized like that's a structure of prayer, of approaching him, of adoring him. of asking him for our daily bread, of asking for forgiveness of sins, that Jesus doesn't say just wing it, he just say, there are times in prayer that it is structured and it's oriented in this similar way to ACTS. And then in Luke chapter 11, verse one, again, that's the chapter where the apostles, it says, when he had finished praying, well, wait a minute, was Jesus ever finished praying? Well, he would have always had communion with God, but yet Luke identifies Jesus had an intense time of prayer, and there was a time where he finished praying, where he was no longer intensely doing that. So the son who always has fellowship with the Father, the son who is always in communion with God, still himself had identifiable times of prayer where they said, Back off. He's out there praying. He's going over there praying. Let's leave him alone. Let's be quiet. And then when he finishes, they said, hey, Lord, teach us to pray. And he said, well, when you pray, pray in this way. And so we're wanting to cultivate and pursue God both by cultivating a life of prayer before God moment by moment in relationship with God. But also saying, OK, how's it going with times of prayer? Not because we're legalists, not because we think that that's somehow going to merit salvation or merit favor with God, but because. The Bible has as it as an example, Jesus Christ himself modeled that for us. Paul himself models that for us when he says, pray without ceasing. And at the same time, he says, I always thank God for you. And I pray these specific things. It probably indicates like a good Jew had been raised, that there were portions and times and seasons of prayer. So because of the rites we have to pray, because of these ingredients of prayer, of adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication, we want to cultivate and pursue God by being a people of prayer, both in intensified times, intentional times, as well as these moment-by-moment times. Which brings us then more briefly to the second sub-point under love God. So we wanna be people of the word and the way I've described it, people of prayer, but then here also by loving God, by worshiping God. Well, what does it mean to worship? Well, in summary, it means to express God's worthship with our hearts, mouths, ears, that is our entire bodies. It is worship is to engage with God and amidst God's people in some cases, we'll see here, of worshiping God as the one who's all worthy. He is the one who is grand. He is the one who is supreme. He is the one who is infinite. He is the one who is worthy of everything that we have and everything that we are. And so worship means time spent conveying to God his worth ship. primarily to the Lord himself. So we want to love God by pursuing him in word and prayer, but also by expressing his worth and worthship. We do this corporately, for instance, in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 18. And here, when we talk about corporately, that means in the public gathering, as we gather together, includes on Sundays. What we do here is we are gathering primarily to express the worth ship of God. We are coming together and saying God is so worthy that we're willing to give him one day a week. I mean, we want to give him every day, but one entire day to gather together. And what we're doing is we're coming into his temple. We're coming into his presence. as a corporate gathered body to express his great worth, whether I get anything out of it or not, God is worthy of our worship. He is, by definition, worthy of worship. So in 1 Corinthians 11, verse 18, Paul says this. Let's go back to verse 17. In the following instructions, he writes to the Corinthians, I do not commend you because when you come together, it is not for the better, but for the worse. Imagine that coming to church and leaving worse. And it being actually better not to meet together than to meet together, I mean, you know, you know, things are rough at church when you get together and you leave and you're all worse off than when you came. It's supposed to be the opposite. Verse 18, for in the first place, when you come together as an ecclesia, as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and I believe it in part. And so the worseness of it is that there were divisions in the church. But here we have an example from the New Testament where they were gathering together as a local church for betterment, for worship, for prayer, for prophesying, And so as that develops in the New Testament, we see that that's on the first day of the week. It is the gathering on the Lord's Day. And our primary function and role as we come together is not to get what I need or because I feel good about coming to worship or I'm not coming just to have my needs scratched. I'm coming to worship even contrary to how I feel, because God is worthy. I'm coming. not because of how I feel, but despite how I feel. Now, if I feel it coming in, all the better, but God is worthy of worship and worthy of gathering together as a church to say, even though I don't feel like it, even though my mind isn't here, even though lots of things are distracting me, even though I have other things to do, God is worthy of my worship. And so there's that corporate worship. And here we draw on the biblical themes of the people of God. You by yourself are not the people of God. Hey, Tracy, you're the people of God. No, you're one of the people of God. Seth, you're not the people. You're not the bride. You are not the body. We are together. And so all of these corporate gathering terminologies when it comes to what we do and how we function, So in regards to the people, we are citizens together of a holy nation. We are bricks and blocks of the temple of God. There's another sense Paul uses us individually as the temple, but here he also uses it as a corporate, particularly Peter uses it that way. Priesthood, you're not a priesthood by yourself, we are a priesthood together. You're not a family all by yourself, you're a family with other family members. You're not an army of one all by yourself, despite what the ads say. We are an army, army by definition. Rambo is not an army, whatever the new movie titles might say. But army, it's a person working together with others. And there's also this idea of the judgment seat. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. That is a corporate gathering. We all, each of us must meet together at the judgment seat of Christ. So this is what's happening in corporate worship. We're gathering together because we are showing that God has a people. We are coming together to incarnate the holy nation. We are coming together to solidify and make objectively viewable the temple of God. You are the temple. This isn't the temple. Little United Methodist Church down the street here. That's not the temple. Cornerstone building is not the temple. You are the temple of God made objectively viewable in your gathering together. You are gathered together as the priesthood. You are gathered together as the family. This is the family having a meeting in the presence of the father to acknowledge him. We are an army fighting together. We are at the judgment seat in worship. We are hearing the word of God. We are being revealed by the word of God where our consciences are being laid bare so that we can have a judgment here from the word. rather than being surprised by the judgment at the last day, having not heard his word or listened or obeyed his word. So this is a corporate gathering. So we're going to pursue God by gathering together with corporate worship. And this is where the Lord's Day is an eschatological symbol. You know what you're doing by coming on this day, the Lord's Day and gathering together, you are saying, I believe God created the world. in a way that you can't say any other way, because it's on the seventh day that he rested, that he glorified himself, that he looked at his creation. The reason for a seven day worship is rooted in creation, as expressed in Genesis one and two. So you're saying, I believe God created the world, I believe that God owns me and I believe that God is coming again through the person of Jesus. By gathering together here, you're saying, I believe that Jesus is coming again. This is the way by regularly coming together that one day from the north, south, east and west, he will in the eschaton call his people by the trumpet call. And you're saying by coming here, I believe there's a resurrection. I believe there is a judgment seat. I believe we will all stand before the word of God, the scriptures, the gospel and Jesus. I'm coming together saying I believe in these things. And so the Lord's Day is an eschatological symbol. We use a lot of symbols. Baptism is a symbol that we got to see through Kyla's baptism a couple of weeks ago. The Lord's Supper is a symbol. You're sitting your rear ends in these seats together is a symbol of the last day of the eschaton, of the judgment seat of Christ. It is the presence and in the presence and the spirit of God. So what are we going to do as a church? Corporate worship is always going to be a big deal to us. It's we're not going to pursue discipleship or diminished preaching. We're saying that the corporate gathering is an eschatological symbol. And despite what we do in community groups and despite what we do in discipleship, the corporate gathering on the Lord's Day is always going to be a big deal to us. All right. So we're going to worship him corporately and then worshiping him personally in Romans 12, verse one, which I think is the watershed text here in Romans chapter 12. In verse one, after this great conclusion to the first 11 chapters of Romans of justification by faith and God's plan for the people of Israel and the engraftedness of the Gentiles and all that takes place in Romans, he then turns to his first command other than consider yourself that he does earlier in chapter six. Here in chapter 12, he says, now, Therefore, the conclusion of 11 chapters of Romans is, therefore, I appeal to you brothers by the mercy of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual or your soulish worship. And so here, worship isn't just what you do in your personal devotions or what you do here or what we do when we're feeling spiritual. Here, Paul says your entire everything you do in your body is an act of worship. Everything that you do with your entire humanity. That's why Jesus says the great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. And you never get away from those things. Therefore, everything you do is either an act of blasphemy or an act of worship. Everything you do is an act of worship. When you sit in front of the computer, when you're talking to your spouse, when we're talking to our parents or to our children, when we're in worship at any moment, we are either expressing some degree of worship of God or we are blaspheming him. What have you been doing during the Sunday school? Can I ask you that? Have you been listening attentively to the word of God? Have you been having your heart shaped by the Holy Scriptures? Have you been hearing what God says through his words, there's Stephen Blavin again, I don't have to listen, we can just talk ourselves. Are you blaspheming God in the middle of even our gathering? Are you here saying, I want to hear, I want to learn, I want to grow because God is worthy. God is deserving. So everything we do is an act of worship or an act of blasphemy. There is no sacred secular. There's no spiritual thing and unspiritual thing. It's all spiritual because every single one of us are creating God's image and owe him everything to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice. And so here personally, it's the reality of being redeemed possessions of Christ and living the entirety of life for his glory. So, The summary of the two points or the major point we are as a church, a core value is we're coming here first and foremost by order of priority is to love God. How are we going to do that? What we intentionally want to do in our ministries and our preaching and our worship and our community groups and our retreats is to pursue God through the word and through prayer, through the word, scriptures, gospel, Jesus, and through prayer, corporately, personally, privately, throughout the day, fixed times of prayer, to adore him, to confess our sins to him, to be thankful to him, to give our supplications and our requests to him for ourselves, for others, for the nations, for our leaders, that he might be magnified, that he might pour out his spirit and revival and on and on and on. We are people committed to that. That's a core value. Whatever else we do, we're going to be pursuing that. We'll be cultivating that. And the purpose of that, then, loving God is so that we would worship him corporately as we gather together, primarily on the Lord's Day, but also in other settings, but also to offer my life as a living sacrifice. None of those core values are are up for grabs as optional. It's like, well, we might do that someday. No, those are absolutely core, and everything about building the church and reaching the world has to flow out of that value and those core values. All right, so I've got a few minutes here. I just wanted to see if there were any clarifications or Q&A. We've got about five minutes, and I wanna keep to that time. So let's see if you have any questions or comments about the core values that we've looked at this morning. Yes, Ashley. Excellent addition. Yeah, and for the recording, Ashley was just saying, not confessing only the things that are negative that I've identified, that I've been convicted by, but confessing who I am in Christ and affirming those things. Yeah, really excellent. Yeah, Steve. By living in a redeemed relationship with him Yeah by pursuing him in word and prayer and worshiping him corporately and personally Yeah, I believe so. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah good But it but it has to do with the relationship with God and proper responsiveness to what he's done for us in Christ. Yeah. Thank you, Steve. Yeah. Yeah. Good, good. Awesome, awesome. And that's one of the reasons I built that pyramid, because I didn't want to just pursue him through the word, because by personal experience, that can be very academic and cold and just calculated and systematic. It is the word, studying it, sound doctrine, healthy teaching for the purpose of relationship with God and others. Yeah, it's really helpful. All right, anything else? We got about two minutes. Or you could get an extra two minutes for your break. Okay, so Lord willing, we'll come back next week and look at the second core value, building the church by making maturing disciples, by equipping and serving the body of Christ. And we'll look at that biblically. And I hope this is a helpful, a good reminder just as we think about what's core, what's important for us. All right, let's pray. So Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for Jesus Christ. Thank you for the indwelling Holy Spirit that you have developed and provided for this relationship and that in Christ we have all of the riches and an inheritance in Christ for glory. So thank you for this time together just to reflect and review Sync up and focus on the things that are of most value to us now We pray as we enter into the worship in the next hour that these these things would be fruitful and and manifest in us that it wouldn't be a Focus on ourselves and what we're getting but Lord what we are giving to you Knowing that that as we worship in a way that you created us to do or would you please? enlarge our hearts for you and for one another. We pray in Jesus name, amen.