Philippians 3: Just One Thing

Notes
Transcript

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B: Phil 1:27-30
N:

Welcome

Again, good morning and welcome to Family Worship with the Eastern Hills family!
I always look forward to the days that we take the Lord’s Supper together as a church family, and we’ll be doing that near the end of service today. If you’re visiting with us for the first time today, I hope that you’ve already discovered that Eastern Hills is loving, friendly, supportive, and encouraging church body. We invite you, if you are a guest with us today, to fill out a communication card, which you’ll find in the back of the pew in front of you. Then you can drop that in the offering boxes by the doors on your way out after service, or you can bring them down to me at the front following our benediction at the end, as I would love to meet you and give you a small gift to thank you for your visit with us today. If you’re online, and visiting with us today, feel free to head over to our website ehbc.org, and fill out the communication card on the “I’m New” page. Whether you’re here in the room or online, we just want to be able to send you a note thanking you for your visit today, and to see if we can pray for you or minister to you in some way.
Every week our praise band, Worship 4:24, comes well prepared to lead us in musical praise and worship. They practice together twice every week so that they can bring their very best to both us and to the Lord on Sunday mornings. So I want to say thank you, Worship 4:24, for your dedication and faithfulness to this church family!

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Opening

We’re in our third of 10 weeks that we will spend in the book of Philippians. Just so you all know, the whole time in our Daniel series earlier in the year, we had invitation cards that you could take and use to invite people you meet to come and check out Eastern Hills. It had been so long that we were in Daniel, that I completely forgot about getting invite cards made for Philippians. Well, I got them made and they are spread out around the foyer and crosscourts for you to take and use. Sorry I forgot about those! We’ll be in Philippians until the second Sunday of November, so invite folks to come and walk through this epistle.
Last week, we saw in verses 12-26 of chapter 1 that God can use our difficult situations, our selfish motivations, and even both of life’s destinations—life and death—to bring glory and praise to Himself, as Paul said that his imprisonment for the sake of the Gospel was actually advancing the Gospel in Rome.
This morning, we will be looking at chapter 1 verses 27-30 as our focal passage. So let’s stand as we are able in honor of the reading of God’s holy Word, and turn in our Bibles or Bible apps to Philippians 1. Beginning in verse 27, the Scriptures state:
Philippians 1:27–30 CSB
27 Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel, 28 not being frightened in any way by your opponents. This is a sign of destruction for them, but of your salvation—and this is from God. 29 For it has been granted to you on Christ’s behalf not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, 30 since you are engaged in the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I have.
PRAYER (Trinity Bible Church in Dallas)
I have always liked Billy Crystal. I think he’s hilarious. His voices and impressions are great. His movie characters are usually very witty, quick with something funny to say even in awkward situations. One such movie is City Slickers. In it, Billy plays a character named Mitch Robbins: a 39-year-old married man who works selling ad time for a radio station, and is entering into a mid-life crisis—struggling to find meaning and purpose in his life, thinking that what he has is all there is. He’s lost, both spiritually and emotionally. He and his two best friends (both of them having crises of their own) take an annual trip to do something together—usually something somewhat dangerous, like running with the bulls in Pamplona.
This year, they decide they are going to come to New Mexico to do kind of a “Wild West” adult camp, driving a cattle herd from wherever they are in New Mexico up into Colorado. Along the way, Mitch and the lead cowboy Curly (played by the late Jack Palance) have to go off on their own to find a stray. While they are riding, they have a conversation about a core concern: the secret of life. I’m not going to play the clip because there’s some language in it. But their discussion goes like this:
Curly: “Do you know what the secret of life is?”
Mitch: “No, what?”
“This.” (he holds up one finger)
“Your finger?”
“One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else [doesn’t] mean [anything.”]
“That’s great, but… what’s the one thing?”
“That’s what you’ve got to figure out.”
It’s right at the end there that Curly misses the mark a little bit. He basically tells Mitch to figure out the one thing that is most important in his life, and then everything else will fall into place. However, what Curly says is relativistic—it assumes that everyone has a different “one thing.”
But Paul says something different in our focal passage today. He tells the church at Philippi, and by extension, the church at Eastern Hills, what that “one thing” should be.
And he tells us that one thing in the beginning of verse 27:
Philippians 1:27a (CSB)
27a Just one thing: As citizens of heaven, live your life worthy of the gospel of Christ.
“Just one thing.” Sounds simple, right? Just one thing. But that one thing encompasses all of life for the Christian—our calling and our challenges, our community and our conflicts, and where we begin this morning: our confession and our conduct.

1: [Living worthy of the Gospel includes our] Confession & Conduct

We’re going to walk through this passage this morning considering just the beginnings of what Paul means by this exhortation. This instruction actually is the theme which defines not just the passage we’re looking at today, but all the way through verse 18 of chapter 2.
But before we dive in to our looking at this passage and Paul’s meaning, the fact is that Paul’s admonition for the Philippians to live a life worthy of the Gospel implies something: it implies that they actually believe the Gospel In the first place.
The message of the Gospel begins with the love of God. He made us, and He loves us. He wants to be in a loving relationship with us. Unfortunately, we reject that invitation from our Lord and maker. We want to do things our way, and so we rebel against God. This rebellion is called sin, and according to Scripture, our sin separates us from God and deserves the punishment of death. And we’re all guilty of it.
But again, because God loves us, he has provided the way for us to be set free from the penalty, power, and punishment that our sins deserve. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came and lived the sinless life that we could never live. Then He died on the cross, taking the penalty for sin — God’s wrath — on our behalf, bearing the punishment for sin — death — in His body, so we can be released from sin’s power. He died so that we can be forgiven, and the Bible tells us that He rose from the grave so that we can live eternally with Him because of His victory over death. Only those who are united to Christ through belief are saved. Trust in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning, even right now.
And while that is the message of the Gospel, and the Gospel is definitely not less than that, there is an ongoing aspect to the Gospel. Instead of it only being the door to salvation, it’s not merely a one-and-done thing. Yes, we are justified with God at that moment of belief and surrender, but as Paul suggests here in chapter 1 of Philippians, we are to “live a life worthy of the Gospel.” There is a present, ongoing aspect of our salvation being “worked out” right now (which we will see in a couple weeks as we look at verses 12-18 of chapter 2). Joe mentioned this present tense aspect yesterday at Men’s Breakfast. And beyond that, there is a future sense of the work of the Gospel as well—when we finally arrive as the “citizens of heaven” that we truly are because of Christ. This is why Paul could say in Romans 1:
Romans 1:16–17 CSB
16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. 17 For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.
So it is through the power of God in the Gospel that we have been saved from the penalty of sin, through the power of God in the Gospel that we continue to be saved from the power of sin, and through the power of God in the Gospel that we ultimately will be saved from the very presence of sin and receive the eternal inheritance promised in the Scriptures. This is the confession that we make when we say that “Jesus is Lord.” He is Lord of our now, our tomorrow, and our forever.
So Paul tells us that the “one thing” for the Christian is that our lives should match up with what we claim to believe. The reality of our confession that we make that Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior should be evident in our lives, and not just because we come to the same building with a bunch of other people who claim the same thing once or twice a week.
He says that this should be because of our heavenly “citizenship.” Paul usually used the word for “walk” to describe the manner of one’s life. But in this passage, the term that he uses actually is a citizenship term, based on the Greek root for city, polis (we still use this: for example, Metropolis literally means, “Mother City”). And remember what I said a couple of weeks ago about how Philippi prided itself on being the most “Rome-like” of Roman cities at the time? The citizens of Philippi lived there, yes, but they knew they were citizens of somewhere else more important—the metropolis of Rome.
Paul actually uses their understanding of the idea of citizenship to help them (and us) understand what we are called to if we are in Christ. Later in this same letter, he makes it completely clear:
Philippians 3:20 CSB
20 Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
We’re not merely citizens of some earthly kingdom or nation. We are citizens of heaven, with the Lord as our King. So our call to citizenship is a higher call, a heavenly call. We’ve changed neighborhoods of residence.
Colossians 1:13 CSB
13 He has rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.
But we currently reside as foreigners in a hostile territory in rebellion called the world, ambassadors from God with the mission of calling those rebels to lay down their arms in belief and surrender, as it says in 2 Corinthians 5:20-21, which we used as our benediction passage last week.
We need to understand, church, that our confession is not just our declaration of agreement with a set of facts. We aren’t just to give mental assent to the details of the Gospel, but we are to actually trust in what Jesus has done, being surrendered to Him, and living that surrender out in our lives.
Scripture is clear that it matters how we live, if we claim to be citizens of heaven. Paul here is putting those two things together: our confession and our conduct. If we claim to follow Jesus, but do nothing that Jesus did or would have done, can we really trust that we follow Him at all? Look at how James said it:
James 2:18–23 CSB
18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without works, and I will show you faith by my works. 19 You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe—and they shudder. 20 Senseless person! Are you willing to learn that faith without works is useless? 21 Wasn’t Abraham our father justified by works in offering Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active together with his works, and by works, faith was made complete, 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness, and he was called God’s friend.
It’s not that Abraham’s actions made him righteous. It’s that his confession of his belief in God was proven true because of the conduct that followed it. Larry Miller, my predecessor as pastor here at Eastern Hills and my mentor in ministry, always defined belief this way:
Belief is faith which acts.
—Larry Miller
He might not have come up with that definition, but he’s who I heard it from, so to me, it’s his definition.
Brothers and sisters, with the understanding that we aren’t going to be perfect this side of heaven, Paul’s admonition for us to live our lives worthy of the Gospel of Christ demands that we examine our lives: Is our conduct in line with our confession? Are our convictions the convictions of Scripture? Do our actions and choices reflect an ongoing growth in and pursuit of God and His righteousness? Are we walking in submission to God and His commands?
If we cannot answer these questions in the affirmative, then the reality is that we should have no confidence that we actually belong to Jesus, because our faith is shown through what we do. And if right now, you’re convicted of the fact that you don’t belong to Christ, there’s only one right thing to do—listen to the call of the Holy Spirit on your life right now, believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, trusting in what He has done for your salvation, and surrender to Him as Lord. It’s only in Him that you can find, understand, and do Paul’s “one thing.”
And then, decide that you’re going to make that decision public, because we’re not called to “closet Christianity”—instead, we are called to this living out of our heavenly citizenship in the community of faith and in the context of the world around us—even if it means that we are brought into conflict, which brings us to our second point:

2: [Living worthy of the Gospel includes our] Community & Conflicts

The church isn’t some private cloister of holy people who huddle together in the warmth of our own personal piety. And to be completely frank, our Christian faith isn’t to be a private thing. We have the blessing of being saved into a community of other believers—people who share our love for God, our filling of the Spirit, and our reliance upon the hope of Christ. But beyond that, the church is to play an active role in the community. I’m not merely referring to this particular neighborhood (which we should be active in), but remember that the church isn’t the building or the event, even though we say it that way in English: “I’m going to the church” (building) or, “I’m going to church” (event). The church is us! Without the people, this beautiful place is just wood, brick, mortar, and stucco. Without the people, there would be no event to come TO. We—the church—each live in a neighborhood, and shop at stores, and work at jobs, and have friends and family members. If we do this one thing, then it will necessarily be played out in public. And it will almost certainly bring us into conflict. This is what Paul wrote about next:
Philippians 1:27–28 (CSB)
27b Then, whether I come and see you or am absent, I will hear about you that you are standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the gospel, 28 not being frightened in any way by your opponents. This is a sign of destruction for them, but of your salvation—and this is from God.
He says to the church at Philippi that if they do this one thing—if they live their lives worthy of the Gospel of Christ—then whether he later gets the chance to come and see them or not (as he ended our passage last week), he will hear about it. People will see and hear, and eventually, the report would get back to Paul. And Paul describes what he will hear if they do this one thing: That the church is standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending for the faith of the Gospel, and is not frightened by their opponents in any way.
For context, when Paul said that he desired to hear that the church was “standing firm in one spirit, in one accord, contending together for the faith of the Gospel,” he was using a mixed metaphor in the Greek—one that would have made a lot of sense to Roman citizens who had once been Roman legionaries (Philippi was primarily settled by former legionaries in 42 BC, and retained that distinction in Paul’s time).
“Standing firm” is a military term—much of the strength of the Roman army came from their unified stand as one in battle. One such formation was actually called the testudo (or “tortoise”), where they interlocked or overlapped their shields in order to protect all of them from projectiles. It only worked if they stood firm together. He used the same term in his admonition to the church at Corinth:
1 Corinthians 16:13 CSB
13 Be alert, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong.
The term Paul used for “contending together” came from the realm of team athletics, which were immensely popular in ancient Roman cities. The use of this metaphor reflected Paul’s concern that the church be unified as they faced conflicts.
Paul did something similar with Timothy in his second letter to his protege, using the mixed metaphors of the military and athletics:
2 Timothy 2:3–5 CSB
3 Share in suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. 4 No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in the concerns of civilian life; he seeks to please the commanding officer. 5 Also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.
But whereas Paul’s use of these types of metaphors with Timothy were to him as an individual, his use of them with the Philippians was to them as a whole, as a community, as a church. In fact, Paul tells the church to stand firm “in one spirit, in one accord (literally, as one “soul” or as one “man”). He was calling the church to unity inside (in one spirit—either the Holy Spirit or in their personal spirit, doesn’t matter, the results are the same) and out.
In this, we catch a glimpse of something that was concerning to Paul, which he must have heard from Epaphroditus, the messenger who had brought the Philippians’ gift to Paul in prison—that there was a problem with the unity of the church. One of the overarching themes of this letter is unity, particularly in this section through 2:18. But we see the issue a little more clearly later in the letter:
Philippians 4:2–3 CSB
2 I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to agree in the Lord. 3 Yes, I also ask you, true partner, to help these women who have contended for the gospel at my side, along with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the book of life.
We’ll cover this in more detail when we get there, but there were apparently a couple of ladies in the church who were in some kind of disagreement (though apparently not a moral or theological one, so it must have been a practical dispute). This disagreement threatened the unity of the church, and Paul urges them to come to some agreement about it.
If we are going to work together as a body, as a family, as an army, as a team, we need to pursue unity in the church. Not uniformity, but unity. We have the same goal: the faith of the Gospel (v. 27). Our goal as a church should be to strive together so that the Gospel is proclaimed, known, believed, taught, and encouraged. The Gospel is what binds us together. The hope of Christ should be on our minds, in our hearts, and be declared by our mouths—to those in the world and to one another. We should talk about Jesus regularly when we speak to one another. We should praise the Lord together for His incredible love, we should pray together because of our unity in Christ, we should remember together what the Lord has done for us, which we will do here in a bit with the Lord’s Supper.
And as we do this together, we will find that God strengthens us and emboldens us together, so that we would not be frightened in any way by our opponents, which is what Paul said to the church at Philippi. Paul called on them to not be afraid of their opponents—those who he will allude to in verses 18-19 of chapter 3, which we will look at in a few weeks.
Fear is a powerful weapon of the enemy. For example, think about the level of fear that we faced during COVID. Mel and I were talking about this earlier this week. And she asked me if I regret any of the decisions that I made during COVID. And while I didn’t make them completely on my own, I was the leader. And I will say that at the beginning of the pandemic, the choice to shut down for a time was made out of love, because we didn’t know what we were dealing with. I wish I could say that all of the decisions I made during the pandemic were devoid of fear, but I can’t say that. Years later, and I still look back on that time and question myself sometimes. This is something that I’m still growing in.
Paul gives us the answer to facing fear in conflicts. Due to our heavenly citizenship, we have no reason to be afraid of anyone. God is the only One worthy of our fear:
Psalm 76:7 CSB
7 And you—you are to be feared. When you are angry, who can stand before you?
Matthew 10:28 CSB
28 Don’t fear those who kill the body but are not able to kill the soul; rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.
But we know that God loves us because we are His children, so we who are in Christ need not be terrified. And in fact, Paul told the Philippians that their being unafraid would be a sign—a double sign, in fact—a sign showing their opponents that due to the strength of the church’s relationship with the Lord, while the enemies of God are doomed to destruction (as we just saw in Matthew), the church would ultimately be delivered, one way or another. This is a perspective that Paul held in his own life as we saw last week in verse 21:
Philippians 1:21 CSB
21 For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.
So let us go forward unafraid of our opponents, church, living lives worthy of the Gospel as we walk in humble acceptance of the situation into which God brings us in the calling to suffer for Him, and the challenges that we face as we do so. Our last point:

3: [Living worthy of the Gospel includes our] Calling & Challenges

The reality of the Christian life is that in many ways it runs counter to what the world thinks life should be like. The world would say to live for yourself—your own priorities and desires. The Gospel says to die to yourself and live for God. The world would say to grab all you can out of life. The Gospel says that greater love has no one than to lay down his life for his friends. The world would say that personal comfort is of extreme importance. The Gospel says that suffering for Jesus’s sake is a grace from God and a blessing:
Philippians 1:29–30 CSB
29 For it has been granted to you on Christ’s behalf not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, 30 since you are engaged in the same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I have.
Paul tells the Philippians that their calling to not just believe in Jesus, but to suffer for Him as well, has been granted to them as a gift of God’s grace. This doesn’t mean that Paul sees suffering itself as a good thing. But he does say that it is something that the godly can expect. Jesus said that those who would follow after Him should expect the same thing—that being His disciples meant rejection, suffering, and death:
Mark 8:34 CSB
34 Calling the crowd along with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone wants to follow after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus even said that suffering because of Him was a blessing:
Matthew 5:10–11 CSB
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for the kingdom of heaven is theirs. 11 “You are blessed when they insult you and persecute you and falsely say every kind of evil against you because of me.
And the early church lived this out. After the apostles were arrested and flogged, they came out not in despair, but in rejoicing:
Acts 5:41 CSB
41 Then they went out from the presence of the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to be treated shamefully on behalf of the Name.
So, church, in some ways we are called to suffering. Jesus suffered, and we are called to follow Him, so suffering for the sake of Christ is a part of what we should expect if we are in Him and living our lives worthy of the Gospel. I think that Peter said it most clearly:
1 Peter 2:21 CSB
21 For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.
But as Paul wrote to the Philippians, suffering for the name of Jesus can actually be a means of God’s grace in our lives, because God can and does use our suffering for the sake of the Gospel to mature us in our faith. In his commentary on Philippians, Richard R. Melick, Jr. says this:
“Suffering confirms Christians’ faith, brings them into closer contact with the Lord, and provides a vehicle for making commitment real and tangible. It is one thing to accept suffering and resign oneself to it. It is another to realize the privileges that come through it.”
—Richard R. Melick, Jr., New American Commentary Series: Philippians, Colossians, Philemon
The Philippian church was engaged in the “same struggle” that Paul was—contending for the advance of the Gospel of Christ. And we are called to engage in that same struggle in our context. It will almost certainly not make us popular, wealthy, or powerful in the world’s definitions of those terms. Instead, we can expect to be reviled, ridiculed, and rejected if we live our lives worthy of the Gospel of Christ, because doing so will mean that we live out the love of God, which means that we stand in love for what is true and best for human flourishing, not what is culturally acceptable and constantly changing.
It may mean that we have to stand up for things that the world resists, like the traditional definition of marriage based on God’s design of one man and one woman together for life, and sex being meant for that context alone. It may mean that we have to stand against things that the world supports, like abortion or modern transgender ideology. These things might seem like political issues. And I suppose they are. But before that, they are moral issues—issues about God’s declaration of what is true and right and good. This is just one of the challenges that we are faced with as we seek to live lives worthy of the Gospel.

Closing

In our confession and our conduct, our community and our conflicts, and in our calling and our challenges, we are to look to Jesus as our example, following in His steps as we grow in holiness through God’s sanctifying work as we travel the road to glory. We don’t have to guess at our “one thing,” because it’s already been defined for us in Scripture. We are to live our lives worthy of the Gospel of Christ. And if we are doing that, everything else will fall into the place that God has planned for it in our lives. What a peace that we can find in life if we have this one thing straight.
If you’ve never trusted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, never believed the Gospel, then your “one thing” is like Mitch’s in City Slickers: it’s something that you’ve got to figure out. Jesus died so that you can be saved, and then He will define your “one thing.”
Church membership
Baptism
Prayer
Giving
kids will come in
PRAYER

Lord’s Supper

I would like to invite the ordained men who have been asked to serve the Supper this morning to come down, please.
AS THEY COME:
We will now take the Lord’s Supper together as a time of family remembrance of what Christ has done for us by His blood—reflecting on our confession and our conduct, our community and our conflicts, our calling and our challenges. Paul’s challenge to the church to live “worthy” of the Gospel in Philippians 1:27 translates the Greek word axios as “worthy.” There is a counterpart to that word in Paul’s admonition about taking the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:27:
1 Corinthians 11:27 CSB
27 So, then, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sin against the body and blood of the Lord.
To eat the bread and drink the cup in an “unworthy” manner is to do so anaxios—”without worthiness.” This is why Paul says to the church regarding the Supper:
1 Corinthians 11:28–33 CSB
28 Let a person examine himself; in this way let him eat the bread and drink from the cup. 29 For whoever eats and drinks without recognizing the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. 30 This is why many are sick and ill among you, and many have fallen asleep. 31 If we were properly judging ourselves, we would not be judged, 32 but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned with the world. 33 Therefore, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, welcome one another.
If you don’t belong to God through faith in Christ, please do not take the Supper. This time of memorial and worship is an acknowledgment of what Christ has done for YOU by His blood. If you do not believe, the Supper isn’t for you. This is not to offend or exclude, but it is for the sanctity of the ordinance, and for your protection as well, according to Scripture. We love you, and I would be glad to explain this to you more fully following the service.
If you are a guest this morning, but you have already surrendered your life to Christ in faith, then you are a visiting family member, and we gladly welcome you to join with us in the Supper.
This passage tells us to examine ourselves before taking the Supper—to see if we really belong to Christ, to reflect on our relationship with Him, to confess our sins to Him as His Holy Spirit reveals them to us as we pray. Take a moment now to ask the Spirit to reveal your sins—the ways that you live in a manner unworthy of the Gospel—and to convict your heart of those things, calling you to repentance. Respond in prayer to the Lord as He does so.
Paul also wrote in 1 Corinthians 11:
1 Corinthians 11:23–26 CSB
23 For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
Distribute the bread to the deacons.
Scripture says that Jesus gave thanks for the bread when He broke it.
Pray over the bread.
The Scripture records that Jesus said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me.”
Distribute the cup to the deacons.
Pray over the cup.
The Scripture records that Jesus said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.”
Thank you, deacons, for your humble and faithful service to this church family. Rather than sending you back, I’m going to make my closing announcements now, and then we will be dismissed.

Closing Remarks

Bible reading (Ezra 9-10; Ps. 79)
Pastor’s Study tonight
Prayer Meeting
Instructions for guests

Benediction

Ephesians 5:15–17 CSB
15 Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise—16 making the most of the time, because the days are evil. 17 So don’t be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.
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