Unless God Builds His Church

Okay, speaking of Disney, I want to talk about Robin Hood. Okay. Did anyone, like, say, like, oh, man, Robin Hood. One of the best, One of the best ones, right? 1973, this movie came out. And so, yeah, all of us probably know this. I have tried to get my kids to watch this a bunch and they're just not interested. I don't know why. It's like, this is like the coolest stinking movie ever. Has all the things, right? It's got action and revenge and romance and all this stuff, right? It's really cool. Anyways, all analogies break down, okay? So I'm going to say things like, wait a second, is Peter representing Robin Hood? Is Robin Hood reserving Jesus or what's happening? It's okay. It's okay. They all break down, okay? So don't put too much stock into it. But my hope, my goal, honestly, like my goal, my prayer this week was that next time you see anything Robin Hood related or you see the film or just Robin Hood, it doesn't have to be the cartoon that you go, man, God's going to build this church. That's like the goal, okay? And so that's what we're going to be looking at. So today's sermon, unless God builds his church, we're going to be looking at Acts chapter six and walking through one through seven. We're going to get a little bit more context in that. But I have that word there. Church, unless God builds his church. And that last week, as we were looking at the story of people giving to the church and people lying to the church, that that was the first time that word church is used. And so in Acts, chapter two and four, both times we have the phrase that all believers were in one heart and mind, and among them there was no one in need. Right? There's this unity that they believe in Jesus. That's what makes up the church. But the word church, how many times can I use that word in one sentence? Is used two times. In the passage we looked at last week, that great fear fell upon the church and all who heard that word is used two times. It just means assembly. That's really all it means, is gathered together that this body of believers could move to a different building. We could move to a space. And as hard and as sad as whatever that might feel like, we're still a church. That doesn't affect us, Right. It might affect our ease of transport or where we can park or how we can walk here. Sure. But the church is the same. The church is the bride of Christ. It has nothing to do with these four walls that we meet in. And so I use this phrase that unless God build his church, a lot of you probably don't know him. But John Neal, he's one of our administrative pastors. We do this location model thing where there's three, almost four, Paul's going to be launching here pretty soon at four of these churches that are connected. And one of them, one of the big key pieces, is a pastor by the name of John Neal. And when he pr. When we're behind the scenes and we're like, doing work. You know what I mean? Like, we're like, hey, we gotta organize this thing. We need to talk about budgets. We gotta talk about whatever it is he will pray. This passage from Psalm 127:1 2. Unless the Lord builds his house, those who build it labor in vain. Here we are, we're meeting behind the scenes. We're trying to get the work done. We're trying to get things organized. But unless God's building this, we are. We are wasting our time. We're laboring in vain. And I just put on here the rest of that verse and then verse two. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil. For he gives to his beloved sleep the way that I would hope to desire to protect my wife and my bride. We get to look to God to do that. That he's going to build his house, he's going to build his church, he's going to protect his church. And we get to look to God in that way. So let's jump into this. There's handouts in the back by the coffee. If you didn't get one, just simple outline like usual. And then the passage and then the discussion questions for your small group throughout the week or today whenever you meet. Point one. Peter arrested again. Here we go. Right? He doesn't learn his lesson like usual. And it says when they had brought them, that is. So now, the Pharisees, the way we're going through Acts right now, I know we normally kind of walk through line by line, verse by verse. Acts is just a huge book, and we would take years to walk through the book of Acts. So we're kind of going thought by thought, major thought by thought. So we're skipping something here in the middle a little bit. So if you want to read that, go ahead and read that. And so just a little bit of context. There's these Pharisees, this council of people who just told Peter, do not preach about Jesus or we're gonna kill you. And they're like, well, we can't kill you because we're Jews, but we'll beat you. So they beat him, and then they get sent off and they go to jail, and then they get rescued from jail. And now here they are again. So the council now brings them the apostles and Peter, and they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, saying, we strictly charged you, past tense. We just did this. We just charged you not to teach in his name. Yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man. They won't even say the name Jesus. Have you noticed? Then you filled Jerusalem with his name and this man's blood upon us. And Peter and the apostles answered, we must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as leader and savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given us the things to obey him. And when they. These religious leaders heard this, they were enraged and wanted to kill them. Okay, so just a little bit of context as we are moving forward in the story that God protects his church from external conflict. Again, his bride. Someone's coming after this young bride in the early church, and God says, no, I'm going to protect this. And so we're going to see this. But a Pharisee of the council named Gamaliel. I'm not saying that. Right. I know I'm not. We're going to hear his name again. In Acts, chapter 22, it actually says that Paul, like the Paul of Tarsus, was a pupil of this guy, learned underneath him, and was a teacher of the law, held in honor by the people, that he was remembered by late generations as, quote, and the embodiment of pure Pharisaism on this side of the cross. When we hear Pharisee, we think, ooh, evil, bad guy. You're not good. No, no. In this context, he was someone who said, I want to be pure and upright, that I want to obey all the laws that were required of the Levites and the priests. And I want all of Israel to obey these really strict laws and get back to holiness and purity. Because if we do, then maybe God will send his Messiah. That the reason why God hadn't sent his Messiah yet was Because Israel was living in a way that was not pleasing to him and that was the desire of the Pharisees. He was one of the leaders of this. Says this, that quote, when Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder died, the glory of the Torah ceased as the first five books of the Bible. It says about him that when he died, the glory of the Torah ceased. And purity and separate, separate, separate, separate, separateness, separateness, died. I talk for a living. Don't worry about that. Right? So it's a big. He's a big deal, okay? He's. He's important. And so then he stands up and he says, hey, get them out of here. Get the apostles out and let me talk to you for a minute. He says to the men of Israel, he's talking to this group of religious leaders, take care that what you are about to do with these men. For before these days, Thudius rose up claiming to be somebody. And a number of men, about 400 joined him. And he was killed. And all who followed him were dispersed and came to nothing after him. Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census and drew away some of the people after him. He too perished, and all who followed him were scattered. So in this present case, I tell you, keep away from these men and let them alone. For if this is. For if this plan is an undertaking, if the undertaking is of man, it will fail. But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them. You might even be found opposing God or just some wisdom here, like man, this thing is happening, this uprising. No, no, just let it be. Because if it really is from God, you will not have any power to overthrow it. And what we know from the rest of the story, from understanding the Gospels and the power of Jesus Christ, is that the kingdom of darkness cannot withstand the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And we, the church, the gathered, the assembled, are called in to go into that kingdom of darkness and trash the joint together in unity. So God protects his church from external, right? Hey, this is going to rise up. This is going to shut down. No, no, if it's of God, it's going to happen. If God wants it to happen, it will happen. And then we see that God protects his church from internal conflict. This is where we get to our main text from this morning. Acts, chapter 61 7. It says now in those days, the disciples were increasing in numberhood. Robin Hood is gathering his merry men, right? They see, holy cow, look at this guy. He's raising money and he's distributing it to the poor. We want to be part of that. Although in the, in the cartoon, there's no merry men. It's just, just Little John, Little John rounding through the forest. That's all there is, right? There's no merry men, but he's got merry men. They're growing in number. A complaint. There are going to be a lot of that this morning. Just so you know, the complaint by the Hellenists rose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution. What's going on? It's the Sheriff of Nottingham, right? This abuse of power, right again. The Sheriff here, he's supposed to protect and serve. He's supposed to care for his people that are under his charge and he does. Now the Sheriff Nottingham purposefully, like, abuses his power and his position to protect and serve. And I don't think it seems very clear that's not the case in this situation. The apostles seem like negligence, not necessarily gross abuse of power. But what's going on here? This should never happen. This should never happen. You should never see me or anyone in the church or any position of leadership in the church show some kind of favoritism for one group at the neglect of another. And as you look at the text of these Hellenistic Jews, they're all ethnically Jewish, but there were people who came into the city that spoke Greek and there were people who lived there who spoke Hebrew. And so they're saying, hey, we have a church service in Greek and we have a church service in Hebrew. We're all Jewish ethnicity, ethnically. But I can't understand them. They can't understand we're struggling to communicate with one another. And something's going on where these widows, these Jews over here, are not getting the care that the Hebrew Jews were getting. Okay? That's kind of what's going on. There's some different views on that. But from the common view of the commentaries I read, that was most likely what was going on. But this shouldn't happen. There shouldn't be one people group neglected over another based on ethnicity or anything, gender, race, all that stuff. Why Jesus? Like, because Jesus is our example. He doesn't show us partiality, right? The Bible, we looked at this last week that when I was sinning, like in the process of sinning, it says that when I was an enemy of God, an enemy of God that he dies for me. Right? An enemy of God doesn't just mean passive, right? Like, oh, I don't. Yeah, that God thing. Yeah, I don't really care about it. I don't really have an opinion. One way or another, an enemy of God is, I'm going to do everything I can to stop you and to destroy you. And God says, yeah, you, you, you, you, you. You want to destroy me, Let me die for you. That way of thinking and of applying the gospel to our life, it enables us to treat anyone who calls Hope home or Jesus their Lord, impartially, because we have been to be free, to no longer go back and be impartial, which is our natural inclination. We're set free from that one commentary. Just to give a little bit more context. Probably the isolation that resulted when these people became Christians made these sources less accessible to them. So these Grecian widows, like I mentioned, or Hellenistic. Right. There's a Greek influence. Widows were particularly needy as they were not native Judeans and did not have relatives to care for them. A lot of older couples came to die in Jerusalem, so they would be buried there. So you got these couples that they're Jewish, but they speak Greek. They come to Jerusalem to die and they're saying, hey, but they're not being cared for, they're not being taken care of. And there's a problem there. Okay. And it kind of reminded me, as I was reading this of maybe the partiality that Robin Hood shows to this widow in the story. He is a predator. She is prey. Hmm. Why is Robin Hood so excited to give extra money to this widow? See those little bunnies get fat. That's why. Just saying. Just gotta read between the lines a little bit. Seems like a good guy. You think you know a guy. Okay, sorry. It was over a practical insurer. This is FF Bruce here. Not over a matter of theological importance. That disagreement became acute as daily allocations were made to poorer members of the community from the common fund to which the wealthier members had contributed their property. Complaints began to arise that one group was being favored at the expense of the other. Widows naturally formed a considerable proportion of the poor members of the church. And the Hellenistic widows, or Grecian, whatever you want to call them, there were said to be at a disadvantage in the comparison with the Hebrew widows, perhaps because the distribution of the charity was at the hand of the Hebrews. So there's something going on. The money's coming in, we talked, we've looked at this last couple of weeks that people are selling property. They're giving it, they're laying it at the apostles feet. We looked at Ananias and Sapphira last week who lie about that. But the money is handed over and saying hey now, something's going on. And so that leads into, I think, some very real lessons that we can glean from this today. And one is that we can complain without grumbling. It's really interesting because you do, you know, you do the double click thing and whatever software you got and it's the same word, this idea of complaint. It says that there was a complaint that they brought, that the widows brought to the apostles. And yet that's one of the only examples in the Bible where that word complain is used in a positive way. Usually it's then translated in a negative way as grumbling or murmuring. Complaining, right. There's a difference between bringing a complaint to God or to the authority and complaining and grumbling and murmuring. Grumbling and murmuring. They sound like onomatopoeias, don't they? Right? Grumble, grumble. It's just what it sounds like. And that's what's happening. So. But there's a way in which we can complain and bring a complaint without grumbling. We see this in negative ways all throughout the Bible. I'm just going to highlight a few. In Exodus 16, 7, 8, this passage highlights the Israelites complaints about the situation and Moses leadership. Hey, we're going to complain about God's called individual. That's not me. You can complain about me. I'm not Moses, okay? My name's Brian, not that guy. And so. But with God responding by providing them with manna and quail and Moses stating that their grumbling is not against him, but against the Lord, like you are grumbling against the God who just set you free from Egypt. In Numbers 11:1, this verse describes the people complaining about their food and Lord's anger being kindled, being stirred up because of their complaints. Since the New Testament, this passage instructs believers to do everything without complaining or arguing. This is like law paid New Testament church. You need to care for one another without complaining or arguing. Peter, the guy we're talking about uses the same thing, use the same language, same exact word. This verse encourages believers to be hospitable to one another without grumbling. First Corinthians we see a passage again that warns against grumbling as just like the Israelites did in the wilderness and were destroyed. In James 5. 9, this first warns against grumbling against one another. And yet there are so many examples, especially in the Psalms where they're called Psalms of Lament. I remember it was like probably nine years ago, before we even started this church. I preached at Trinity City Church down the street here for Brian Lehrer. It was over the summer. And I remember the name of that sermon was An Honest Prayer. Why I remember this, I don't know. I don't remember. I remember what I preached on last week. I don't remember the title of it. Bonus points. What was the title? Anyone remember? Who cares, right? But for some reason, I remember the title, right? An Honest Prayer. And I went through. I don't remember what psalm it was. I remember what the text was, but there's a lot of them. And looking at then King David in Psalm 142, he's living in a cave. He's being hunted like a dog. And it says in verse one, with my voice, I cry out to the Lord. With my voice, I plead for mercy to the Lord. I pour out my complaint before him. I tell my trouble before him. This is good. You can bring your complaints, you can bring your issues and your problems to God, but in a way that says God. I don't get it. I don't understand why you're doing it, but I know you can fix this. I know you have fixed this in the past. I know you are able, fully able to fix this, and you are able to do something. If I don't come with that contrite heart, then it turns into grumbling and murmuring. And when you read a lot of these lament psalms, David. And Even in Psalm 147, he ends it with, yeah, you're my God, you're my refuge, you're my strength. Right? I'm really struggling with you right now, but I know that when push comes to shove, I'm trusting and I'm leaning in you again by one of these commentaries. Almost certainly the Grecian widows were not deliberately discriminated against the cause. The problem was the increase in the number of disciples. In an active and expanding movement, it's possible for less prominent people to not be noticed. But that is still wrong. That when you have a valid point, bring it up. I hope you don't feel any, any, Any animosity, that if there's something that you're really struggling with, to bring it up to the leadership, that we. We want to be united, we want to be on the same page. And so that leads then to God organizing his church. So we see in this text the next couple verses, verse two, and I'm gonna skip verse three and go to four. That we hear then the apostles then saying this, and the 12 summoned the full number of the disciples. That's the church. He summons everybody and says, it's not right that we should give up preaching the word of God, but we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word. Some people read this text and go, okay, the apostles here are saying that they're doing kind of the spiritual work. And it's really important for the, the preachers and the apostles here to take the mantle on that. And the lesser work of the material needs than anyone can do that. You don't have to be a pastor to do that. I completely disagree with that. Because there are a lot of other places in the New Testament that don't make this divide, that talk about specifically in Ephesians, chapter four, that we have this phrase, so Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers what to equip his people for the works of service. Okay, well, that seems to fit. Or it seems like a physical thing or a material thing so that the body of Christ may be built up. That is a very spiritual thing until we all reach unity in the faith. That's very spiritual and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. That pastors here, these pastors and teachers that I've been called, I've been equipped to equip you to do the work of the ministry. But I'm also in that it's not like, hey, I'm a pastor, so I don't have to, like, do stuff. I just give you opportunities to do it. And I can sit around on the sidelines. Not at all. That's not how this works. We need to be devoted to both the Word and prayer and the work of the ministry in these ways. Because I can't do this by myself, you know that I can't do all the work of the ministry. Any pastor, no pastor can do all the work of the ministry. When they do, they end up hurting somebody or burning themselves out in that. And so I'm thankful for so many of you that serve in so many different capacities that I not only can't do, I'm just like, not good at it. So thank you. We see here, though, this phrase, it was not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve. This is interesting here because that word there served tables a lot of times. And as I was reading this, a lot of people just immediately took this to the establishment of the office of deacon. It's the same word that we have, deacon. And yet it's Not a verb, which I don't want to get, like, super nerdy. But that's not the point of this text. So it's translated. Then serve tables. That's what a deacon means. I'm not going to get into it, but there's a reason why we don't have office of deacon here at Hope, because so many of you serve. You already are deacons. You are serving tables and setting things up and tearing things down, literally and metaphorically, to serve the church. And you are deacons. We just don't have necessarily an office of that. That's not what's going on here. One commentary said this would be better translated almoners. I was like, what is that? I literally had to Google it. And then once I googled it, I was like, oh, I know what that means. Right. Distribute the alms, right? So money, money is coming in. The apostles saying, hey, we need your alms. We need to care for everyone in need around us. And then the money and the resources keep coming in. The church is growing. And then the widows then show up and say, hey, you got the alms, now we need the alms. Right? And then we can say, alms, Alms for the poor. Along with. Along with Mr. Fox. Robin Hood is his name. Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty. But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. I don't want to just skip over this, that these, these seven men, that was a Jewish thing and still a good idea that when you have some kind of committee, seven just odd number and all these different things, it was just what they were used to. And that's what they did. It seems like of good repute. But then it says of full of the spirit. And I want to just pass over that because in the Old Testament, only prophets, priests and kings were anointed with oil. And then the Spirit of God would come and dwell in them, and the Spirit sometimes would. Would leave that individual. And here on this side of the cross, you have then God's spirit saying, oh, no, no, I can indwell, and I will indwell anyone who calls Jesus Lord. It's not a small thing. Angela and I have been watching the House of David. Anyone been watching that in prime? It's actually really good. There's a lot of different relationships between especially David and Saul that are. It's like, yeah, that's. I've always, in my mind's eye, read it and Pictured it that way. So it's really cool. But being anointed by the prophet is a really big deal, right? Because this is God choosing this individual. And his spirit is going to descend on you and he's going to empower you to do the work. That's no longer what's happening. This is now anyone and everyone who calls Jesus their king. This is a really big deal. And then it says they went forward and they did what they said. What they said, please. The whole gathering, right? So the whole. It's very Baptist, right? You've got this, like, congregation, the whole people choosing from amongst them. These seven individuals, it says that. And they're gonna be Greek, right? So they're Hellenistic Jews. Or just like an actual convert from a different people group. It says they chose Stephen, who is just being introduced here. You're gonna hear a lot about him next week. A man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit and Philip and Prochorus and Nicornor and Timon and Paremaenaeus and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch. And they sat before the apostles and they prayed and they laid their hands on them. So this is what we do, right? When we. When we talk about, like, hey, we're going to talk about an elder. We're choosing from amongst ourselves, I might recommend. But then you are deciding. And once it's decided as a congregation, then we're going to lay hands on those individuals and present them. It's what we do because of some of these stories and precedences that were commanded by, even later on by the Apostle Paul. And so here we have this representation in leadership that these Greeks are put into a position. And there's this word, though, that's really interesting. As I was studying this week, it says that they chose Stephen. And I was just kind of curious, how did they do the choosing or did they cast about what is going on? And they're like, that word doesn't really mean chose or choose that. The literal interpretation of that is to look out for. And then the commentaries were like, But I don't know what any of that means. It was like, man, that seems like a really cool word or phrase. But they looked out for Stephen. They looked out for these other individuals. And when you hear that phrase, look out for, there's one of two ways you can hear it. One is be on the lookout for someone already doing this work. Be on the lookout. These people are already taking. Trying to get this money from the church and distribute it to people in need. Or they have a heart and A passion for this people group, and they're already doing this. That's one way. And another way is like actually look out because they're gonna do it. Don't get in their way. Right. They're doing the work of the ministry. They're coming through. And I think maybe a takeaway in our context, our situation is, are you someone that people are looking out for either one of those ways? Right. Are you involved enough to be known or to be seen that if there was a need for someone to help out with something, would you even be considered? Are you already doing that work and it might not be your thing? And I'm not trying to put any condemnation or shame on anybody, but just, are people noticing you? Are you. Are you? Or are you thinking, oh, I can do that better? When that thought comes in your mind, good, please let me know and we can get you involved. All right? That's just kind of how we do things. So there also then is in this text, this passage does bring up kind of organizational structure. And I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on this, but there was a book written a while back by Colin. Can't read my handwriting. Marshall and Tony Payne, and they wrote this book called the Trellis and the Vine. It was funny when I was looking at that, someone was like, can anyone summarize the book? Trellis and the Vine. It's like the trellis and the vine. Like, that's the summary of the book in the sense that you have a trellis and a vine. This is my backyard, right when we moved in, we hadn't. It's very overgrown and it's gross and everything. All that stuff, weeds everywhere. Doesn't look like that. I mean, it will in a few weeks, but you know what I mean, right now it's beautiful. No, but you go back there and you've got this vine. I don't know what the name of that plant does. Anyone know Clematis. What is it? Clematis. Clematis. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's absolutely gorgeous. And that's why I took a picture of it. I'm not like someone who just takes pictures of flowers, but it was really beautiful. And the whole idea behind trellis and the vine is that a vine needs a trellis to grow. And then if you over and only focus on the vine and organic growth and there's nothing to support it and to structure it, then the plant dies. If you have this beautiful trellis. But then you clear out all the. All the things which we did, right? We didn't know what was going on. My mom came over and just starts ripping everything out. And then it's taken years for this plant to finally grow back. But hey, we got this beautiful trellis thing. But I got no vines growing on it, right? You gotta have a balance here. And so there is that. And I will say that I really do believe that Hope Community Church is a really good church to work for in so many different ways. It's organic in a lot of ways that a lot of times we use the phrase that it feels like we're building the plane while we're flying it. Like we're learning as we go along. Even with this location model thing, Paul is gonna be set up with things like what's called a trellis team. Patrick and Lindsey are part of that. And we're gonna have a meeting coming up. Pretty. We just started that. We've only had two of those meetings, right? Maybe three. Two, sure. And we only had a few of those. It hasn't even been a full year that we've been doing that. Paul gets to start that way. That's a great thing, right? We've got now trellis to support growth in that way. That's a fantastic, fantastic thing. At our last trellis meeting with Lindsay and Patrick and then Pastor John Neal and then Olivia Deselcamp with. She just does our hr, she talked about this thing called misconduct reporting. It's not a. I don't think it's a public thing yet. So hopefully I don't get in trouble with HR for talking about misconduct. I don't know. But I did want to read this though. This is just the beginning to phrase this. Basically the idea is sometimes I might be unapproachable, right? You might feel uncomfortable talking to me about something. There are other ways to bring things up that maybe it's a governance team, maybe it's our senior pastor, maybe it's hr. How do I. If I've got a problem with hr, how do I talk to HR about it? Right? So this is kind of the idea. And in this document that we have, which is just beautiful. I got done with that meeting. I immediately emailed Olivia and John. I just said, thank you for doing this. I hate that we have to have a document like this. But I'm so thankful that when somebody feels like they're being neglected or not heard or they're hurt, that they have a way to talk about this that's safe. As Hope Community Church desires to create a safe and gospel centered community where all involved are pursuing, becoming fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ. We uphold and encourage grievances to be handled according to God's word. First approaching that individual to work through the issue if possible, and then bringing in others as appropriate. This policy is to be provided a pathway of reporting for those impacted that ensures clarity and safety for all involved. Excuse me. So this is still in the works, but just wanted to let you know, this is something that we're working on. That's. That's the trellis side of things, right? And then we get to be the vine and to grow. And then Luke gives a progress report. We're going to see Luke do this several times throughout the book of Acts. Kind of a standalone verse, like, hey, all this stuff happened, and then here's here was the result. And he does that here in verse seven. And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem. And a great many of priests became obedient to the faith. Like even. Even these priests that were devoted Jews are going, wow, Jesus is the Messiah. He was the Messiah. He can forgive me of my sins. It's a really. A really big deal. And again, this is narrative. But there are some ways that principles that we can take away. I think one that we can take away is that any front to unity needs to be dealt with immediately. Just like any kind of. Kind of wound, right? When you feel hurt, you don't just hide it. You gotta let it breathe. You gotta get it out, you gotta heal it, or it's gonna fester and it's gonna get gross. And by dealing with it immediately doesn't mean it's gonna be resolved immediately. Just like if there is a wound, it's not gonna heal itself overnight. It might take time and it might take work. It might not be resolved right away, but it can be worked on. And that might be unity with me. But usually, at least from my experience, it's been with just within the house, right? Of just, hey, I've got an issue with someone who sits over there. And we gotta. I don't know how to deal with it. That's good. Thank you. Let's keep doing that. We are human beings and we sometimes don't like other human beings. So it's good to do that. And then secondly, am I in a position to see a need or to deal with the need? Am I even in a position to even talk about my own needs? Right. Just something to think about. Again, we've talked about this already, but all who had need were Cared for. And the church cannot help if we do not know that there is a need. And if you're knowledgeable, right? Kind of the phrase, see something, say something. I'm not in all of your small groups. I'm not in all of your homes. And if one of you in your small group is really struggling and maybe you can deal with it with your small group, great, do that. But if I don't know, I can't help. Right? So bring that complaint, right? In a good, loving, kind way. Hey, I've seen this person, this group, neglected. Great. How can we work on it? So in application, right? God is going to build his church again. I know it's so dumb, but I hope that every time you see Robin Hood and Maid Marian, right? Robin Hood, it's really cool in this sense. This is over the one time. The analogy actually kind of fits of Jesus, that he's winning and he's going to win, right? That he's going after the heart of his bride. God and Jesus are going after the heart of his church. But Jesus already won the tournament. He already won the tournament, but now he's got to squelch. He's got to destroy Prince John. Is it John? I think so. He's got to do that. Jesus is doing that. He already won the tournament. He already died for our sins on the cross. But someday he's gonna make his enemies his footstool, right? That's what this passage by Hope. Next time you see Robin Hood, you're like, oh, yeah, God's gonna protect his church. Yeah. Yeah, he is. And he will continue to do that. Another one. Just as we take communion, as we come forward, is there any conflict, internal or externally, from in the church or outside, that you need to deal with, you need to talk about, you need to repent of, confront. I just had a old elementary. I got like a lifelong friend. He was in my wedding. I haven't talked to him since my wedding. And he reached out to me and just said, hey, I'm dealing with some conflict. I hurt somebody back in the day. How do I work on this? Right? We need to continue to work on these things and expose and clean those wounds. Do not let them fester. And then finally, let's all be devoted to the word and to prayer and to serving one another, right? Living that lower town life. Let's do this. What does that mean? It means that we want to study the word of God and we want to be known as prayer. There's a couple more copies of that book if anyone's still interested. The praying life, it's so good. And then actually serving one another. So we get to do that together and live that lowertown life together. So as we take communion, this is something we do every week at Lowertown. Just take this element. Yes. I bend my knee to king Jesus, right? Like he has gone after his bride. He has given his life for me. While I was a sinner, while I was an enemy of God, he died for me. And so now I get to take these elements. I get to remember his body that was broken for us, his blood that was shed for us, so that we can be reunited or be united with God the father. So we had the elements up front. There's gluten free option here on my left, your right. If you. If that's a. That's a dietary need. And as we take these, just walk through these. These things, right? God's building his church. Is there any conflict that I need to deal with? And let's do this. Let's live this lowertown life together. And as we take these elements, kind of recommit that in unity with one another. Let me pray. And the worship team's gonna come back up and sing two songs and feel free to pray. Sing along as you take those elements. Let's pray. Heavenly father, thank you again just for our time to gather to be your church this morning. And as we look at this text of the early church that we see that you're at work. You're at work protecting your church. You're at work growing your church. You are involved in seeing your kingdom expanded one soul at a time. And would you help us to be united in our front as we go into the kingdom of darkness and trash the joint? Would you help us to do that together? We love you and we know that you love us, your church. And it's in Christ's name that we pray. Amen.