The Church Gathered

And our Redeemer. Father, without You, there is no salvation.! Without You, there is no church.

! Amen. Awesome, Graham. Thanks for leading us, brother.

And choir, good job singing, guys. Praise the Lord. As Shelby said earlier, my name is Taylor D. Roberto, and I am here from Spurgeon College.

And let me say, before I get going, I've been to a lot of youth stuff. I've spoken at some youth stuff in my days, okay? And I've only been here a few hours. But I just want to tell you guys, from my vantage point, what a special thing you have here.

Just the quality of this worship, the teaching we got earlier. I'm really pumped to be with y'all. This is a great experience, and I'm excited to be a part of it with you all. I want to start our time with a...

I'll tell you my title. My title of my session is The Church Gathered, okay? That was the title of my session. And I want to start our time with a little bit of a brain melter, okay? A brain teaser here.

So, let's start this. How many of y'all, high schoolers, how many of y'all are working right now? You have a job. How many of y'all work fast food? That was my first job. Okay, just a few of y'all.

Wow, okay. Any of those folks in fast food, do y'all work at Brahms? Is one of you working at Brahms? You are at Brahms. Let's go. You're my hero. So, we don't have Brahms in Kansas City.

And I was talking to Parker earlier, and I was like, I need to get Brahms while I'm here. That's exciting. Okay, here's my fast food brain melter. Okay, kind of a riddle, and we'll see what the room thinks.

I'm going to pull you guys. Okay, so imagine you work at Brahms. I don't know if this is how it is, Brahms, but the fast food restaurant I worked at in high school, the french fries came in this big old bag in the freezer. Okay, so they're just like frozen.

You take them out. You dump a whole bag in the fryer. You throw them down. They come out. They're crispy. They're hot. They're golden. Okay, so here's the brain teaser. You think about what you think about this, and I'll pull the room here.

So if I take that bag of frozen french fries, frozen potatoes out of the freezer, okay, and I don't put them in the fryer and fry them in the oil and bring them back up so they're hot and crispy.

I keep them frozen in the bag. Can you still call that thing in the bag a french fry? Okay, so think. Think about your answer. I'm going to pull the room. We'll see what you think. Don't change your answer when other people raise their hands.

Here we go, okay. So raise your hands. How many of y'all think I don't put it in the oil, I don't put it down in the fryer, I just leave it frozen in the bag? You can still call that thing in the bag a french fry.

Raise your hand if you think so. Okay, let's go. Okay, so then the rest of the room. Who thinks no, you cannot call that thing a french fry that's in the bag? So a little less. So, okay, we can argue about that point later.

Here's what I think. Here's the point of my illustration. I don't think you can call that thing a french fry, okay, if you don't put it in the oil. I don't know what it is. I think it's like just a frozen potato stick or something.

But it's not fried if you don't put it down in the oil, okay? Here's why I bring it up. Here's why I bring it up before we get into too much chaos here. Here's why I bring it up. When I first heard the title of this session, this is no shade on Parker or anyone else that put the sessions together.

When I heard the title of my session, The Church Gathered, I thought, hmm, that name is almost kind of silly to me, okay? It's almost like saying the french fry fried, okay?

The french fry fried. And it's like, yeah. Well, of course, dude. If you don't put that frozen potato stick in the fryer, it's not fried. It's not a french fry. It's just, I don't know what you call it.

The church gathered. Here's what the word church means. It means assembly. It means gathering. That's what the New Testament word, ecclesia, means.

So if you don't have a gathering, okay, you actually don't have a church. Now, you can have a gathering of people, and that doesn't necessarily make it a church. Like, I could throw my shoe in the fryer at Brahms, right, and put it down and bring it back out.

That doesn't make it a french fry. But at its very base level, a church is a gathering. And here's the truth. Here's the amazing thing. Almost 2,000 years ago, Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday morning, and every single week since that first Easter morning, starting in Jerusalem and now going out to all of the globe, Christians have gathered themselves together every single week without fail, central to God's mission to bringing people from every tribe, tongue, and nation into his family is what we do when we gather on Sunday morning.

It's central to what it means to be the church. And as we walk through several texts tonight, my hope is to show you in the New Testament what God tells the church to do when we gather and how those things God calls us to do in the Word, how they strengthen our relationships together as Christians, how that marks us off from the rest of the world, and how it strengthens our faith and our individual walks with Jesus when we do the things God has called us to do when we gather.

Okay? So here's our main point for this evening's session. The church gathers to declare and display the gospel. The church gathers to declare and display the gospel.

And when we look at that main point, you'll notice everything the church does, here's what I'm putting before you tonight. Everything the church does when we gather together on Sunday, on the Lord's Day, is meant to point to the gospel, the good news that God sent His Son into this cursed world to live a perfect life under the law, to die on the cross for sinners, to rise from the dead, to ascend to God's right hand where right now He rules over all the nations and one day He will return again to finish the job and we'll be with Him forever and ever.

That's the good news and every single thing the church does when we get together on Sunday is meant to declare that, so that's things we do with our words, right? Or display that good news of Jesus, things we do with our actions.

And as we walk through our text tonight, I'm going to spend less time, I'm going to spend some time, but less time talking about the ways the church gathered declares the gospel with our words and that's not because those aren't as important, but that's because you've already talked about several of those things.

You've had a session on preaching, you've had a session from Graham today on singing, we'll hit on those again, but what I'll spend the most of our time tonight on is how the church gathered displays the gospel and specifically when we get there, what we're going to hit on are the two specific, precise ways that our Lord Jesus called and commanded the church to display the good news when we gather together and those are going to be baptism and the Lord's Supper.

We're going to talk about those. In everything the church does, we're about the gospel. Briefly then, let's start with how we declare the gospel. The church gathers to declare the gospel.

We speak it with our words and I've got three specific ways the New Testament calls the church gathered to declare the gospel. Number one, the church declares the gospel through preaching.

And again, you've already had a full session on this. I'm not going to spend a ton of time here, but it's worth repeating to us. The church is called to declare the gospel to the listening world when we gather together through preaching.

And just one quick verse on this. This comes from 2 Timothy chapter 4. This is the last letter that Paul wrote before he died. He knew his death was on his doorstep.

And these are the last several paragraphs that he's writing to his ministry protege Timothy. These are really important words. And he is about to die. He knows it. He has just a few paragraphs left.

And here's what he says to Timothy, who's a leader of the church in Ephesus. He says, I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead and by his appearing and his kingdom.

That's a pretty intense stage he just set. I charge you before Jesus and the elect angels in heaven watching. Here's what he charges Timothy to do. Preach the word.

Be ready in season and out of season. Reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching. So again, you guys know from your own experience the churches you guys are coming from, the teaching you've already had, that faithful preaching from the scripture, book by book, verse by verse, week by week as the church gathers together on Sundays.

That's the engine room of the church. It makes everything else we're called to as the church move forward. So this is our first way the church together declares the gospel is by the ministry coming out of the pulpits at our church in our preaching.

Secondly, and this was our last session, a whole session, the church declares the gospel through singing. And again, let me just encourage you guys and affirm you guys.

I am blessed by worshiping with you guys here. Graham leading us and us as this gathered group of Christians singing. It blesses me. It blesses the Lord.

So I don't need to spend too much time here, but let's just consider this verse again that Graham brought up. So we know that in all the church does, we're to be declaring or displaying the gospel.

It's all about that word of God's grace and salvation. And again, here in Colossians 3, Paul is saying, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. And one of the central ways that the Lord calls the church to let that word get deep down in our hearts is through our singing.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

A year ago, I got to go visit some partner missionaries we have from our church that are in South Asia. They're in the most densely populated Muslim area of the world.

There's more Muslims in their area of the globe than anywhere else. And I didn't really know this until I got on the ground. I hadn't thought about it much or hadn't really been taught this. But in Islamic societies and Muslim societies, there's just not a lot of music.

There's actually some teaching of Muhammad in one of the hadiths about how music can be used by Satan and this sort of thing. So there's just not a very musical culture. And even being there with little churches that they meet on Sunday but they can't meet like us out in public to worship with them and see the joy and hear them singing the word even in a language I couldn't understand and to see that light of the gospel in those churches set against the dark background of the people around them who never sing.

They never lift their voices to the one who created them. It was an amazing gospel witness. The church declares the gospel when we sing glorious gospel truths to each other in the gathered assembly on the Lord's day.

And then third, here's the third way we declare the gospel with our words when we gather as God's people. The church declares the gospel through speaking. Through speaking.

So we already said, okay, 2 Timothy chapter 4, preachers, pastors, elders, they have a ministry of the word. It's actually like the tip of the spear special thing about being a pastor is that you teach.

You guard sound doctrine. You encourage Christians with the truth. You teach. So pastors have a ministry of the word when Christians gather together. But here in Ephesians chapter 4, Paul talks about how, yes, the Lord Jesus gives pastors and leaders to the church to teach and guard sound doctrine.

But the reason that ministry happens in the pulpit is so that every Christian can speak that gospel truth to each other. So here in Ephesians chapter 4, a few verses before the one on the screen, Paul says those pastors and teachers are given to the church so that the church won't be fooled by false teachings about Jesus.

We won't be swayed when the world tells us lies about who God is. And instead of being fooled by false teaching, here's what Christians are supposed to do when they're together.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, that means every Christian, the whole body, joined and held together by every joint, that means every member of your local church is meant to do this.

when each part is working properly, it makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

So yes, your pastors who brought you here and are back home in your church, they have a ministry of the word that they are called to. And it's authoritative and it's important leadership and protection for you and your local church.

But every single one of us Christians, every man and woman who belongs to Jesus Christ, we all have a ministry of the word that we are called to give to one another.

We're supposed to speak this gospel truth to each other in love when we gather to encourage each other, to stir each other up, to love and good works, to care for each other when we're wounded, to rebuke and exhort each other when we're caught in sin.

Every Christian, the whole church, displays, I'm sorry, declares the gospel by speaking it to each other. So, just to summarize, here's what we've seen.

From the pulpit, where the pastor's preaching, to the pews, where the whole church is singing glorious truths of the gospel, to the parking lot, where we're just talking to each other and our normal conversation is filled with gospel truths, the whole church is called to declare the gospel.

And y'all, this is what sets us apart from the world, that we have this good news of salvation, that sinners can be redeemed, not because of their own good works, but because of Jesus' good works.

So when we gather at our churches on Sunday morning, we should hear the gospel. It should be declared all throughout the church. But secondly, and here's where we'll spend maybe more of our time here this evening, the church gathers to display the gospel, to display the gospel.

Yes, when you gather with your local church on Sunday morning, the gospel should be heard in our preaching, in our praying, in our singing, in our conversation, our speaking with one another.

But also, as we walk through the New Testament, we see what the Lord Jesus commanded for his church, we see what the apostles and the other New Testament authors commanded for the church, we see that the gospel isn't just supposed to be heard on Sunday morning, it's supposed to be seen on Sunday morning when we gather together.

And specifically, the Lord Jesus gave us two special acts, two signs, two seals, two symbols.

Some Christian traditions, they like to call them sacraments, and that's okay, some Baptists used to call them sacraments, but that language can be kind of hairy sometimes, so we like to use the word ordinances, okay, because Jesus ordained them.

But they're these two special acts of remembrance that in a special way display the gospel. They tell the gospel story when we partake in them, and those are baptism and the Lord's Supper.

And when we take part in those two ordinances, baptism and the Lord's Supper, that display the gospel, our faith is strengthened. We are strengthened by the Holy Spirit.

Number two, we're set apart from the world, okay? These two signs and seals, baptism and the Lord's Supper, they demonstrate to the world who belongs to Jesus.

Who are his people? It's the people that bear these two signs that he gave to us, baptism and the Lord's Supper. And when we partake in baptism and the Lord's Supper the way the Bible tells us to, it makes our whole church holier and healthier happier and happier in Jesus.

So these are really important signs and seals, displays of the gospel that the Lord Jesus gave us. And here's the truth. Here's the truth.

I'm going to give us a noogie as Baptists, okay? Sometimes we downplay these to our own harm. Okay? But if you look through the history of the church, it's word and it's ordinance in the gathered church and that's how we take in the gospel week after week, okay?

So let's look. The church gathers to display the gospel and let's look first now how the church displays the gospel through baptism. And here we'll be in Romans chapter 6.

So let's jump in. Romans chapter 6. It's on the screen. Here's what Paul says in verse 1. He says, What shall we say then?

Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? So pause there for a second. We are jumping into the middle of a letter right here in Romans chapter 6.

So let me just catch you up real quick on what came right before it in Romans chapter 5. Here's what Paul did in Romans chapter 5. He declared the gospel. Romans chapter 5 Paul gives this really short but sharp summary of the hope we have in the gospel.

And he says, Hey, you know what humanity's number one problem is? Sin. And since our father Adam disobeyed God's law, sin and death have spread to all people.

Like a cancer. A spiritual and physical cancer. The whole creation is under sin's dominion. But good news in Romans 5 he tells us we can have peace with God.

That's the language he uses when we have faith in Jesus Christ. He tells us very sharply in Romans 5 that sinners can be made right with God. Our relationship can be restored with the Father.

Not because of good works we've done but because of good works that Jesus has done. So that's what he does in Romans 5. And now we get to Romans 6 he's just declared the gospel and in Romans 6 verse 1 here's what Paul does.

He puts on like a mask and he starts acting like someone who's not a Christian who hears what he just said in Romans 5 and kind of pushes back. Okay? So Romans 6 verse 1 here's what he says.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? So he's acting like someone hears well Paul you just said you know we all sin and we all do bad things and so if God will just forgive our sin because Jesus was righteous and perfect then why don't we just go on sinning so that you know God's grace will be displayed even more.

Maybe we should do that. Let's just sin more since God is so forgiving. And here's the misunderstanding of someone that says something like that. They misunderstand. They think God's grace grace is only his pardon of our sin.

It's only forgiving our sin. But God's grace isn't just pardon for sin it's power to fight sin. It's the Holy Spirit living in us to defeat our sin and Paul's going to explain that but here's what's really important about Romans 6.

Romans 5 he declared the gospel very clearly. Now he has this objection objection and he's going to push back to that objection by talking about baptism.

Okay. So maybe you've never thought of that like someone's pushing back against Christianity or the gospel and you're like how should I respond to them? I'll talk to them about what baptism means.

That'll show them then I'll teach them about the gospel but here's the thing baptism displays the truth of the gospel and so Paul goes to it. So here's his response to the person who says well should we just keep going sinning?

Verse 2 he says by no means how can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. Okay and we'll pause there for now. So here's what here's what Paul is saying.

He's responding to that person who has a misunderstanding of God's grace in the gospel. He goes to baptism and here's the truth that baptism teaches us. Okay so baptism we go under the water.

Okay right many of us I would assume most of us we go under the water we come back out. Okay the imagery he's teaching us of baptism is going down into the grave that's what Jesus did and then coming back up out of the grave at the end of verse 4 we'll get there but Paul is teaching us that baptism is a picture of the gospel and it shows us that the gospel is not this here's not what the gospel is the gospel is not you're a pretty good person and you sin sometimes but if you try pretty hard and you do really good and you don't do the really bad stuff that really icks you out or gets you in real bad trouble and your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds then you'll probably get to heaven that is not the gospel everything I just said right there we can do in our natural power we can do it in our own strength we can try to be a pretty good person but what baptism shows us in its imagery is that something radical happens to a person when they believe in the Lord

Jesus Paul says a radical transformation takes place he says a death takes place the old tailor when I believed in Jesus died and so this sign and seal of baptism pictures that and it says hey just how in the gospel something supernatural happened Jesus died and then he rose from the grave so when you believe in Jesus and you're united to him what belongs to him now belongs to you and what belongs to you now belongs to him and first what belongs to you is his death you die with Jesus when you trust in him and baptism pictures that when you go down in the water you are dying with Christ and sin no longer has dominion over you and also Christ's death is your death guess what praise be to

God Christ's resurrection is your resurrection look again at verse four we were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father we too might walk in the newness of life what the picture of baptism in Romans chapter 6 is showing us what it's declaring and displaying to us is that the biblical gospel is good news about a supernatural thing God did in history with Jesus and it's picturing the supernatural work God does to us when we trust in Jesus it's a display of the gospel so here's just some practical payoffs then that's what Romans 6 is telling us how it displays the gospel but here's some practical payoffs number one this may seem pretty basic but it's important to say baptism isn't for everyone okay baptism isn't for everyone baptism is a gospel symbol it displays the good news of

Jesus that Jesus went down into the tomb and he rose up again defeating sin and hell and death and Satan and because it is a gospel symbol that displays the gospel to a watching world baptism is reserved for gospel people people who have received the good news of Jesus people who have repented of their sins and trusted in Jesus Christ and have the Holy Spirit working and walking in them so that they too can walk in the newness of life they can put sin to death sin no longer has dominion over them because they are actually united to Jesus so baptism then marks off the church from the world it is the dividing line physically speaking between the church and the world first John chapter five says the whole world lies under the power of the evil one but when your church the leaders of your church and your church when they admit you or someone else to baptism that church is declaring this one who's going under the water and coming up this one has been plucked out from the world this one is no longer under

Satan's dominion and sin's dominion this one belongs to Jesus so some payoffs for you and me when we think about our local church and our walks as Christians and baptism number one I would assume in this room most of us are baptized just what I know about the camp and what you had to do to get here maybe not all of y'all are baptized some of you in this room and maybe some of y'all some of your friends in baptized yet they might not be baptized yet and this might sound weird to hear from the preacher at church camp that might be a good thing okay watch out you didn't think that was going to happen that might be a good thing and here's why I say might that might be a good thing because you're at a church that cares about this sacred and holy symbol that displays the gospel and if you don't know where you're at or your friend doesn't know where they're at with

Jesus your church doesn't know exactly where you're at with Jesus they might be guarding you your church might be guarding you from being deceived from thinking that the waters of baptism are just sort of like magic like if you just go down and you have no faith in Jesus or no repentance or you might not be baptized your friend in your youth group might be baptized your sibling someone may not be baptized and that might be a bad thing because that may be born out of fear that might be born out of laziness like not taking the sacred call that Jesus has given for his disciples to be baptized and so if that's you or there's a friend at!

that you're thinking of right now that's in your youth group or a sibling or someone that you believe has trusted in the Lord Jesus and needs to make that public and be brought into God's family publicly then I'd encourage you talk to them counsel them encourage them push them that direction and for those of us in the room who have been baptized okay here's a practical takeaway for us here from Romans chapter six when we think about how the church gathered displays the gospel through baptism I would encourage you let your baptism and let the baptisms of other people you see on a Sunday morning at your church let it strengthen your faith the way Paul tells you in Romans six that baptism is supposed to strengthen your faith here's how it's supposed to strengthen your faith okay when you meet temptations when you feel fatigued and your flesh and the world and the enemy is pushing against you and calling you to compromise and to sin and to fail the

Lord in whatever way okay or when you're tempted to think silly things like verse one here well you know God's gracious and so I can sin that's okay Paul tells Christians in Romans 6 when you're in the heat of temptation like that look back to your baptism and let it the way it displays the gospel to you remind you of God's amazing work in your life no Satan no flesh I'm not going to sin I'm dead to sin I died with Christ I died to the world no I don't have to do this thing that I'm just being tugged toward my old man is calling me toward you know why I'm dead and I have risen with Christ and I by the power of the spirit can walk in the newness of life and you and I every Sunday at our local church might not witness a baptism but every time we do

Christian you should take that moment and rejoice with that new brother and sister and let that moment remind you of God's supernatural work in your life baptism displays the gospel and it marks off the church from the world but there's a second ordinance that the Lord Jesus gave us the church displays the gospel through baptism and secondly the church displays the gospel through the Lord's supper so here's an interesting fact an interesting thing in the gospels okay here's here's how Jesus starts his public ministry he goes and gets baptized that's how he starts it he goes to John the Baptist and he's baptized and he sets the pattern for his disciples to follow and then you go through the gospels and at the very end of his ministry right before he goes to the cross on good

Friday on Thursday night the last minutes he has with his disciples at the end of his ministry he sits down with them at a meal a Passover meal and during that meal he took the bread and he took the cup and he instituted the second ordinance the second way that the church displays the gospel when we gather together and tonight we've just got one short passage here that teaches us how the Lord's Supper displays the gospel here's Paul writing to the church in Corinth just a few decades after Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper and here's what he says to them he repeats Jesus words for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night he was betrayed took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood!

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes okay so the imagery of the Lord's supper is easy enough to understand how it displays the gospel Jesus said it himself here's the bread this is my body here's the cup this is my blood so the bread is Jesus body broken on the cross for us the cup is Jesus body I'm sorry his blood spilt and shed on the cross for sinners and no matter how your church does the Lord's supper whether you do it every week or you do it once a month or you do it once a quarter anyone here church do it every week let's just see anybody the weekly club let's go I'm in that club okay so how often you do it doesn't matter okay however often you do it and however you do it mechanically whether you get up and you walk and there's a table with the bread and the cup and you go back to your seat or whether you got like

Deacon Dennis who walks around with the tray and the little cuppies okay whatever you got mechanics wise don't freak out too much about is clear in his words what are we doing in that moment no matter how we do it mechanically when we take the bread and we take the cup we are remembering Jesus on the cross and Paul says as often as you do it however often you do it when you take the bread and drink the cup you proclaim there's a way in which that action displays the Lord's death until he comes so there's a backward looking element we're remembering the cross we're just meditating on Jesus dying for us and there's a sense in which we're looking forward and we're longing and we're waiting for that last day when

Jesus comes again and he says we're going to feast with him face to face so it may go without saying Paul doesn't say it explicitly here but you put the puzzle pieces together of 1st Corinthians and the New Testament again just like baptism okay baptism displayed the gospel it tells the gospel story and it demonstrates who belongs to Jesus!

the Lord does the same thing okay it displays the gospel and it demonstrates who belongs to Jesus just like baptism this gospel symbol is just for gospel people so it is with the Lord supper the Lord supper is only for those who belong to Jesus who have repented and trusted in him and specifically it's only for those people who have already gone through the waters of baptism and become a member of his church and it's important for us to recognize the reason Paul is actually writing to the Corinthians right here in 1st Corinthians 11 we're not going to read the whole passage!

the reason Paul is even writing to the Corinthians about the Lord Supper in 1st Corinthians 11 is because they are screwing it up really really bad the Lord Supper is this display of the gospel it's a moment of remembrance of Jesus blood it's meant to display the gospel to the world it's meant to demonstrate who belongs to Jesus it's supposed to be this moment of unity and holiness and remembrance of the death of Jesus but in the church in Corinth number one when they did the Lord's Supper they would actually have an actual meal they were eating when they did it so side note reason number 346 why Baptists are the most biblical Christians because we do potlucks a lot and the church in Corinth was potlucking it I think every Sunday it seems like that's what they were doing okay so they were having a full meal but in the middle of that meal they would have a moment where they had the bread and the cup and they would remember the

Lord's death but here was the problem the rich people in the church they were going hungry and so what was meant to be this moment in their life as a church together where they displayed the gospel and they demonstrated their unity as God's people it became this moment that was supposed to be for God's glory and this sacred moment it became a moment about their own selfishness and their own gain and it was actually a moment of division for the church and so Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11 hey the reason some of you guys are getting sick and dying it's because of the way you're dishonoring the Lord's Supper so Paul was deadly serious God is disciplining you because you are not treating this sacred!

sign with the honor it's due so some practical takeaways for us then okay unlike the church in Corinth that was dishonoring disrespecting this moment that Jesus had instituted for his church to display the gospel and to mark them off from the world we should come to the Lord's Supper both with a sense of humility and weight okay this is a sacred holy moment God calls his church to to display the gospel and with a sense of joy and wonder and expectation we remember the Lord's Jesus death and we're filled with weight that the son of God would die for us and we recognize the king of kings has called me to his table and he tells me to proclaim his death until he comes when we're going to feast face to face so it's a moment of joy there's one quote

I want to share with you from a pastor and author from about 150 years ago named J.C. Ryle and he just summarizes I think greatly what Christians gain when we take the Lord's Supper seriously and when we come to it with faith so let's read Ryle's quote here here's what he says he's talking about a man who comes in repentance and expectation to the Lord's table when the church gathers he says in eating the bread and drinking that cup such a man will have his repentance deepened and his faith increased and his knowledge enlarged and his habit of holy living strengthened he will realize more of the real presence of Christ in his heart eating that bread by faith he will feel closer communion with the body of Christ drinking that cup by faith he will feel closer communion with the blood of

Christ he will see more clearly what Christ is to him and what he is to Christ when we gather as the church we display the gospel in the Lord's supper we should take the bread and the cup with joy because the king of kings has invited us to his table and just a few other practical notes here on the Lord's supper when we're thinking about how the Lord uses this ordinance in the life of the church number one know that the Lord's supper is an evangelistic moment okay it can be used for evangelism so I had y'all raise your hands earlier how often your church does it we had at least one church it seems like does it every week we do it every week at north side we're not saying that's prescribed in the Bible or exactly what you should do but here's one great payoff for doing it every week and this would still be the!

no matter how often we're going to take the Lord's Supper and it is a moment for the pastor to say hey if you are a Christian in this room if you've repented and believed and if you've been baptized then come and take this meal because this is a meal the Lord Jesus gave for his people but if that's not you and then in that moment I or the other pastor we share the gospel we say the bread and the cup aren't magic but they point to Jesus who you need so take Jesus today pray to him so when you think about your friends perhaps at school or sports or something like that you invite them to church and the Lord's supper is happening that day you know they're not a Christian maybe they go to church sometimes you know they're not baptized whatever it may be that's a great moment actually for evangelism and secondly in the life of the church we said the

Lord's supper it displays the gospel and it demonstrates who belongs to Jesus Paul is very clear in 1 Corinthians 11 the passage we're just in that when we treat the Lord's supper with dishonor and disrespect and there's sin infesting our lives in the lives of our church then we should take stock and take a moment and slow down it can also be a moment in the life of the church to purify the church and so here's an example in the life of our local church again the supper takes a pretty central part in our worship every week and guys there was a brother in our church he was struggling with sin and we're walking with him and there was one day where a member who wasn't even a pastor it was a church member but he came up to me who was discipling this member in our church and said hey so and so we were walking through things and I don't know he's saying these things out the gospel he's kind of denying the gospel that

Jesus even gives him the power to fight his sin I'm just where friends here's what we've seen tonight so we've walked through these texts okay we've seen Sunday by Sunday week by week the church is called together for Hebrews 10 it tells us let us not forsake the gathering of ourselves together which is the habit of some every Sunday since the Lord Jesus rose from the dead the church around the globe has gathered and we gather to declare and display the gospel when we go to church when we gather as

God's people we are to have the gospel heard in the pulpit the pew the parking lot and we are to have the gospel seen in baptism and the Lord's supper and it's those two things the gospel preached from our mouths and the gospel displayed in the ordinances it marks us off from the rest of the world it's what makes a moment and then we'll respond to God's word my prayer for you is that you have the sense walking away from the session whether you are in seventh grade or you're 17 years old or you're looking ahead in life when you're 70 every Christian every member of the body has a part to play in declaring the gospel week by week as we sing as we pray as we speak the truth and love and every Christian has a part in displaying the gospel as we take part in baptism in the

Lord's supper so it's my hope as you go back to your churches as we leave church camp this week you're equipped a little more from these passages to see these beautiful pieces of our gathering for what they are and that you'll engage and treasure these things God has given you Father we praise you for the gospel that in a world of sin and curse and death there is good news for sinners and I pray for every church that's represented here God that as they gather on the Lord's day week by week that the weak and the weary!

the wounded and the wicked just lost and lonely sinners who come in their doors they would recognize this people belongs to a different kingdom they are not of this world and I pray God that the gospel would be so clear in how it's heard and how it's seen as these churches gather throughout Oklahoma God I pray for the individual brothers and sisters in this room the students that are here that you would strengthen their faith as they hear the word as they sing the word as they speak the word to one another and I pray their faith would be strengthened as they see the word in baptism and the Lord's supper and that they would treasure these signs you've given your church they would treasure the privilege they have to be a part of Christ's body to be called out from the world out of darkness and into light we pray Lord all these things for your glory in