Hot Topics 1: Hurt in the Church

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Matthew 23:1-36

N:

Welcome

Welcome in the room and online.

Thanks to band and choir.

Acknowledge Israel trip and confess that the church is probably going to get sick of hearing about it, and that what I got to see kind of permeated a lot of my biblical thinking, giving me some fresh perspective that I didn’t previously have.

Thank Joe, Trevor, and Rich for filling in.

Talk about the mask mandate and the Post-COVID Reintegration Plan. I mentioned some of the things this document brings up in my video last week. There are copies on the table as you leave the sanctuary if you’d like to grab one. Thanks to Mark Burton for preparing this for us.

We also have another major world event going on: the war between Russia and Ukraine. One thing that I was reminded of during my time in Israel is that events like this are so huge and so complex and so multi-faceted that it’s risky to define them from only one vantage point. I’m willing to take that risk in this case. Russian President Vladimir Putin has violated the political sanctity of a sovereign nation without just cause, what appears to be a power grab for the Russian government. But what can we do here?

First, we can trust. God is not surprised by this, and we can trust that God is going to use it for His good and just ends. We need not give in to fear here in the U.S. God is still sovereign and completely in control, even though it may neither look nor feel like it. He is trustworthy!

Second, we can pray. Pray for the people of Ukraine. Pray for their protection and strength. Pray for provision and safety. Pray for the cessation of hostilities and for the preservation of life on both sides. Pray for President Zelenskyy as he leads the Ukrainians. Pray for the Russian military, that they would lay down their arms and return to their homeland. Pray for President Putin, that he would see reason and withdraw Russian troops. Pray for the Russian people who are protesting this war at great personal risk. Pray for President Biden and for our national response, as well as for other world leaders, asking for wisdom and clear direction.

We’re going to pray before we go any further this morning.

PRAY

And finally, we can advocate and give as we have opportunity. Make your voice heard on social media that you stand with Ukraine. Give if you are able to do so to help those who are being displaced by this atrocity. You can give through the SBC collaboration between the International Mission Board and the North American Mission Board, called Send Relief. You can go to sendrelief.org and be a part of bringing help and hope to families suffering in this crisis. That QR code will take you directly there.

Announcements

Evangelism Conference starts tomorrow at 4:30 pm at Sandia Baptist Church on Constitution. There will be great preaching, music, and teaching through breakout sessions. I’m not sure if online registration is still open at bcnm.com, but that’s ok. You can register at the door. The conference is Monday night and basically all day on Tuesday into Tuesday night.

Week of Prayer for North American Missions. March 6-12. Sign up for a slot for our day of prayer, Wednesday, March 9. We’ll have I think 13 hours of prayer here at the building, starting at 6:30 am.

Men’s Breakfast on March 12 at 8:00 am in FLC. Men, a quick challenge to you: several said to Joe after our last breakfast that we need to “advertise these more so that more men will come.” I agree. However, ads don’t get men to breakfast. Other men do. Your invitation is the best advertisement the men you know could have for coming and engaging in building relationships with other men. Take ownership and invite, and plan to be here yourself on March 12.

Opening

Today, we’re starting a five-week series that we’re calling “Hot Topics.” These are five topics that people inside the church and outside the church ask about, even if we don’t always ask them out loud. Each week will be a different topic, but I do want to give everyone a heads up that we will be looking at the topic of abortion on March 13, two weeks from today. While there won’t be any images that would be disturbing for young children, some of the language might be, because I plan on being very clear on what abortion is.

But this morning, we are going to address the question: “If Christians really love Jesus, why is there so much hurt in the church?” Before we go to the Scriptures, I want to make one point. Much of the hurt in the church is hurt that we all bring with us. All of us are carrying baggage of hurt and pain around, and we bring it with us into the church body. I think that we all get this point of the question. Just about no one comes into the church body unscathed by life. Honestly, this should be the best place to bring it if we want to receive help and comfort, support and healing. But unfortunately, that’s often not the case. Broken people come into the church full of broken people, and sometimes even more brokenness ensues. So the perspective I’m taking on this question is really more, “Why are people so often hurt by the church?” And to consider this question, we’re going to look at Matthew 23:1-36. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Holy Word as we read verses 1-12 of Matthew 23.

Matthew 23:1–12 CSB

1 Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to his disciples: 2 “The scribes and the Pharisees are seated in the chair of Moses. 3 Therefore do whatever they tell you, and observe it. But don’t do what they do, because they don’t practice what they teach. 4 They tie up heavy loads that are hard to carry and put them on people’s shoulders, but they themselves aren’t willing to lift a finger to move them. 5 They do everything to be seen by others: They enlarge their phylacteries and lengthen their tassels. 6 They love the place of honor at banquets, the front seats in the synagogues, 7 greetings in the marketplaces, and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by people. 8 “But you are not to be called ‘Rabbi,’ because you have one Teacher, and you are all brothers and sisters. 9 Do not call anyone on earth your father, because you have one Father, who is in heaven. 10 You are not to be called instructors either, because you have one Instructor, the Messiah. 11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

BRIEF PRAYER

The fact is this: put two or more broken people together in an enclosed space for long enough, and trouble is going to start. We all know this. Kids, students: if you have siblings, you’ve had trouble with them. If you have classmates, you’ve had trouble with them. And your parents, you’ve had trouble with them. Adults: Do you have a job where you’re ever around other people? Trouble. Do you have friends? Trouble. Are you married? Trouble. Do you have kids? Trouble.

We make choices, and those choices have results. The result of some of the choices that we make is trouble, and with trouble comes hurt. The life of the church family isn’t any different in this regard, even though it really should be. As I said before, we all come into the church in different states of broken, dragging along a weight of pain and hurt that we’ve picked up along the way, attitudes and perspectives that don’t line up with Scripture, and a bunch of self-focus and pride. These things are a recipe for trouble in the church. Jesus said in John 13 that His disciples are to love each other as He has loved us, and that the world will know that we belong to Him by how well we do so. So I suppose we could simplify the answer to the question of “why” so many people are hurt by the church by saying that it’s because we don’t live out the love for one another that we’ve been commanded to live, whether that means by expecting or demanding our way and getting hurt when we don’t get it, or by acting in a way that’s unbecoming of a follower of Jesus toward a brother or sister in the faith. Perhaps over-simplified, but I think a fair “broad-brush” way to look at it. Basically, we’re hypocrites. We acknowledge that we should live this way, and then we fail to do it, while expecting the rest of the church to do so successfully.

This is what Jesus was addressing with the religious leaders in our focal passage this morning. For the sake of today’s message, we’re going to lump the Pharisees (who were a very conservative group of kind of “working class” Jews), and the scribes (experts on the Law who were probably mostly Sadducees, the liberal kind of “ruling class” of Jews at the time), into the single term “religious leaders” for most of what I say this morning. I’ll make sure to specify when I’m only speaking about one group of them.

So to set up the context of what we see in this passage, Jesus has just been having a rather public conflict with the religious leaders at the Temple during the last week before His crucifixion. This conflict starts back in Matthew 21, and there are several conversations that Jesus has with various religious groups. Finally at the end of Matthew 22, Jesus turns the tables and asks the Pharisees a question that they can’t answer, and no one wants to debate with Him any more.

So Jesus turns to the “crowds and His disciples,” and for the next 9 verses He speaks about the reality of the religious leaders’ motives, attitudes, and actions.

Jesus doesn’t deny their position as teachers according to the Law, and in fact, He says to follow what they teach, assuming it comports with correct teaching of Torah. But He says not to follow their lived example, because they are hypocrites. Jesus says that they don’t practice what they preach. They don’t have any care of helping people follow their teaching. They do all they can do to look good to others, not to serve or delight God. They are all about the show, not about their relationship with Him. They want fancy seats, fancy greetings, and fancy titles, and all the recognition that comes with those.

Doug Ghormley shared about this idea last Sunday night when he spoke at Pastor’s Bible Study, and so I want to ask a question: Are the Pharisees the “bad guys?” We see them that way, don’t we? All the self-importance and self-righteousness, and their hatred for Jesus and His mission...

Would it surprise you to learn that many of the Jews saw the religious leaders, and the Pharisees in particular, as the cultural heroes of the day? Would it surprise you that many Jews still do? The Pharisees especially were the ones who were most passionate about defending the Jewish way of life. When Jerusalem was destroyed and the Temple burned in 70 AD, it was the practice and perspective of the Pharisees that became kind of the standard for Jewish faith and life. I had a conversation in Israel with a man who went to great lengths to defend the Pharisees against any guilt in the death of Jesus. He still to this day sees them as heroes.

But as Christians, we believe the testimony of the New Testament, and we know that they sought to silence Jesus, and in fact, it was kind of the one thing that the Pharisees and Sadducees could really agree on: getting rid of Jesus (John 11:47). So we see them in that kind of light. And we look down on them and judge them and kind of see them as “less than,” right? But wait… is it possible that we are more like them than we care to acknowledge?

Would it shock you to know that, in many ways, we’re the same? The Barna Research Group did a study in 2013 on Christlikeness vs. Pharisaic attitudes and actions (“Christians: More Like Jesus or Pharisees?”). The research found that in the most general evaluation of the data, just 14% of people who claim to follow Christ actually have Christ-like attitudes that present themselves in Christ-like actions. Look around the room. There’s like 300 people here, so like 42 would would fit this category. Another 14% took actions that were Christ-like, but carried attitudes that were mostly Pharisaic. 21% of people who claimed to follow Jesus seemed to have attitudes that were Christ-like, but acted in ways that made them look more like Pharisees. If you’re doing the math in your head, you know that this means that 51% of people polled who claimed to follow Jesus didn’t really look or think like Jesus. They looked and thought more like the Pharisees. That’s over half. Comparatively, that’s like 153 people this morning being more like the Pharisees than like Jesus.

Verses 11 and 12 are the hinge, the answer: they tell us how we are to live as followers of Jesus.

Matthew 23:11–12 CSB

11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

Want to be the most important? Serve others. Want to be exalted? Humble yourself. Obviously, it doesn’t work to serve others in order to be considered the greatest, because that’s not humble. And faking humility is really just pride. So Jesus calls us to true service and true humility: thinking and acting like Him:

Matthew 20:25–28 CSB

25 Jesus called them over and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those in high positions act as tyrants over them. 26 It must not be like that among you. On the contrary, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, 27 and whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave; 28 just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Back in our focal passage in Matthew 23, Jesus then announced seven “woes” against the religious leaders of the day. The word “woe” in Greek is actually an onomatopoeia (a word that is a sound, like “bang” or “splash”). The Greek “woe” is a little more disgusted sounding: “ouai,” (“ooweh”) and it’s an expression of horror, distress, fear, or pain. These “woes” are pronouncements of coming difficulties for them because of their wrong attitudes and actions. The “woes” kind of naturally pair up by topic, with a final one that kind of brings the rest together. We’re going to take those and consider how they might apply to us, and how we might be causing hurt through similar actions. So our points today will be a series of questions for us to ask ourselves, and because of time this morning, I’m going to try to go fairly quickly.

1) Do we present a false Gospel?

The first two woes that Jesus pronounced on the religious leaders have to do with them being obstacles to saving faith, instead of what they should have been: those who lead people into right relationship with God. They did this in two ways: by manipulating either the Gospel itself or those who hear the Gospel, and by making disciples of themselves instead of disciples of God.

Manipulation the Gospel or its hearers.

Matthew 23:13 CSB

13 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you don’t go in, and you don’t allow those entering to go in.

Jesus opened His ministry with a declaration of the coming near of the Kingdom of God in Mark 1:

Mark 1:15 CSB

15 “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!”

The Kingdom has come near. Repent. Believe the Gospel (literally, the “good news”). Jesus told the people to surrender to the Kingdom of God, turning from their own little kingdoms, and to believe in Him.

The religious leaders didn’t believe that Jesus is the Messiah. They didn’t want other people to believe that Jesus is the Messiah. Most Jewish people still don’t. So the religious leaders clung to their ideas of how to please God. They clung to their legalism, and told everyone else that they had to do the same. Also, there was a societal or social cost to pay for looking too deeply into the claims of Jesus. Nicodemus, who came to Jesus in John 3, stood up for Jesus to the Pharisees, and they insulted him for it in John 7:52. Many Jewish people still cling to their legalism, and following Jesus can still be very costly in Jewish culture.

Following Jesus can be very costly in our culture also, but we tend to shy away from being clear about that when we’re telling someone about Jesus. So in our own way, we manipulate those who hear the Gospel as well. Think about how many different concepts of the Gospel there are. There’s the prosperity gospel, that says that if you believe in Jesus, God will make you happy, healthy, and wealthy. There’s the social gospel, which says that Jesus’ primary mission was to make society better. There’s the works-based gospel, which says that we earn God’s favor by doing good things. But none of these are the true Gospel—the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Jesus didn’t come to make us happy, healthy, and wealthy. He came to give us true joy, yes… but that’s complete peace with God even when we aren’t happy or healthy or wealthy. Truly, He came to kill our perspective of those being the most important things, so we could see Him as most important. Jesus didn’t come primarily to make society better. Sure, we believe that if everyone lived by Christian principles society would be better off, but Jesus came really to make dead people alive again through faith, to be His hands and feet in the world. And Jesus didn’t come to tell us how to earn God’s favor. He came to provide it for us, because we could never earn it on our own. The truth is that Jesus, the Son of God, died in our place for our sins, so that we could be made right with God through faith in Him. And He defeated death so that those who belong to Him will live forever with Him. And it’s offered for free, but will cost you everything, because it’s not just getting anti-hell insurance. It’s trusting Jesus for your now and your forever as both your Savior and your Lord.

We hurt people when we manipulate the Gospel, because we lead them to believe something that isn’t true, and if we trust in something that not true, it will always let us down eventually. How could it not? So let us not manipulate or water down the Gospel, but present it honestly and clearly, because what someone is saved with is usually what they are saved to. This is why the next woe for the religious leaders is a problem:

Making disciples of us instead of disciples of Jesus.

They cared more about having people follow them than they cared about having people follow God. And they were really diligent in this. Look at this next woe:

Matthew 23:15 CSB

15 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to make one convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a child of hell as you are!

They traveled great distances to get one person to convert to their way of thinking, but in so doing, led them astray to something that doesn’t save. They were making disciples of themselves, instead of making disciples of God.

We sometimes act as if someone can only be saved if they look like us or think like us or act like us, instead of like Christ. Don’t get me wrong: as long as we are following Christ, we should want people to follow us as far as that goes, as Paul even said in 1 Cor. 11:1. But that doesn’t mean that they have to look exactly like us. We don’t 100% agree with every Christian everywhere. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t brothers and sisters in Christ. Are there truly saved Christians who aren’t Southern Baptist? Absolutely. Are there lost people who are Southern Baptist? Yep. The point, friends, is that we call people to faith in Jesus through the Scriptures, not to anything or anyone else, because only Christ can draw people into the Kingdom. Earlier in 1 Corinthians, Paul argued this way:

1 Corinthians 1:13 CSB

13 Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in Paul’s name?

He’s being rhetorical. The answer is “no.” When we lift ourselves up instead of Jesus, we bring hurt and pain in the church, because we will always let people down. Jesus never will.

2) Do we live by the world instead of by faith?

The third and fourth woes both point to practices of the religious leaders that focused on worldly perspectives. The third condemned creating excuses to justify sin, and the fourth condemned false piety.

Creating excuses to justify sin.

The religious leaders had created a means of making promises that sounded powerful and meaningful, but which really was a smokescreen for being able to make promises that they never had any intention of keeping. Notice:

Matthew 23:16–22 CSB

16 “Woe to you, blind guides, who say, ‘Whoever takes an oath by the temple, it means nothing. But whoever takes an oath by the gold of the temple is bound by his oath.’ 17 Blind fools! For which is greater, the gold or the temple that sanctified the gold? 18 Also, ‘Whoever takes an oath by the altar, it means nothing; but whoever takes an oath by the gift that is on it is bound by his oath.’ 19 Blind people! For which is greater, the gift or the altar that sanctifies the gift? 20 Therefore, the one who takes an oath by the altar takes an oath by it and by everything on it. 21 The one who takes an oath by the temple takes an oath by it and by him who dwells in it. 22 And the one who takes an oath by heaven takes an oath by God’s throne and by him who sits on it.

The idea here is that someone could make an oath by something they had no real claim on, such as the temple, the altar, or heaven, and since they could not claim any ownership of it, then the oath was actually meaningless. Basically, they were creating loopholes so that they could make lofty-sounding promises, “I swear by God’s holy temple...” that they then felt no problem reneging on. In essence, they created excuses to justify lying. The problem is that they were manufacturing ways to make sin “acceptable,” instead of seeing all sin as an offense against God Himself.

We do this as well. Maybe not with “BIG” sins like murder and theft. But we do it all the time with what we deem to be “little” ones: things like anger, slander, gossip, gluttony, pride, selfishness, arrogance. “Everyone does it,” we say. So what? Does that make it right? And when we justify our sin instead of crucifying it, hurt in the church is sure to follow. Instead, we should see all of our sin for exactly what it is: repulsive to God, and we should repent of it.

Focusing on minutiae instead of what’s most important.

The fourth woe is kind of the other side of the coin. The religious leaders were really focused on keeping the tiniest letter of the law, even to the point of tithing the spices and herbs that they grew in their gardens:

Matthew 23:23–24 CSB

23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These things should have been done without neglecting the others. 24 Blind guides! You strain out a gnat, but gulp down a camel!

Jesus doesn’t actually condemn the tithe here. On the contrary, he upholds it as something that the faithful should do. But what He says is that there are “more important matters of the law” that the religious leaders were neglecting to do while they carefully kept the requirement of the tithe. When He compares their actions to the gnat and the camel, realize that both the gnat and the camel are unclean for the Jewish people to eat (Lev. 11 recently in our church reading). But obviously, the camel is a clearer violation: you aren’t going to accidentally swallow a camel. They were so worried about the small, they failed in the big.

In saying that they were to do the “more important matters” of justice, mercy, and faithfulness, He is echoing Micah 6:8:

Micah 6:8 CSB

8 Mankind, he has told each of you what is good and what it is the Lord requires of you: to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.

Brothers and sisters, we are called to give ourselves, not merely to give of our money. And if we think that giving somehow absolves us from serving God by serving others, we’re just wrong. We’re each called to do both from a place of gratitude and worship. And even worse, if we see the church body as a place where we pay our dues and can then demand to receive services for that payment, we’re missing the importance of the body, and we are not being just, faithful, or humble. And when we lack those things, hurt is going be found in the church. Not only that, but there will also not be the work of the church outside the walls. If we’re so focused on the minutiae that is easy instead of the serving that is hard, we’ll never reach out and minister in truly practical ways. We won’t be Jesus’ hands and feet, bringing the hope of Christ to the world through our service.

3) Do we care more about the outside than the inside?

The fifth and sixth woes are both very similar in meaning and application, so I’m not going to separate them. In both woes, Jesus condemns the religious leaders’ focus on outer appearances instead of inner holiness and life.

Matthew 23:25–28 CSB

25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup, so that the outside of it may also become clean. 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of impurity. 28 In the same way, on the outside you seem righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.

Obviously, Jesus isn’t referring to literal cups and dishes, but to the religious leaders’ hearts. Can the cup and dish really be filled with greed and self-indulgence? They worked so hard to look good on the outside, when the inside was tainted and dirty with sin. The image of tombs is similar: the outside is all done up and pretty, but we know what’s on the inside of a tomb: dead things. Their stalwart religious observance was a cover-up for their spiritual deadness.

This is one of the things that makes me most sad about the state of the church today (not just Eastern Hills). We’re brothers and sisters in Christ, people who know that we are all imperfect and saved only by grace, and so should be the best at extending grace and love to one another. But instead of us coming to each other in our difficulties and trials, instead of confessing our sin to each other so that we might be prayed for, helped, and healed (James 5:16), we put on our masks and pretend that everything is just fine, and instead of doing life together, we find ourselves remarkably alone in the middle of a crowd. We go through the motions so no one knows what’s really happening on the inside, and because of the hurt we know the church is capable of inflicting on her own members, we keep up the appearances and don’t really let anyone in. And then we wonder why we don’t feel connected. It’s because we’re not. We should love one another with the same kind of love that God loves us with: a lavish, forgiving, supporting, and enduring love. When we don’t, we find hurt in the church.

4) Are we self-deceived?

The final woe that Jesus pronounces on the religious leaders is that they have built themselves up in their own minds and hearts to be better than they actually are. They are self-deceived. Notice what Jesus says:

Matthew 23:29–36 CSB

29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, 30 and you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we wouldn’t have taken part with them in shedding the prophets’ blood.’ 31 So you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your ancestors’ sins! 33 “Snakes! Brood of vipers! How can you escape being condemned to hell? 34 This is why I am sending you prophets, sages, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. 35 So all the righteous blood shed on the earth will be charged to you, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. 36 Truly I tell you, all these things will come on this generation.

The religious leaders paid homage to the prophets who had come before, and they shook their heads and said that they certainly wouldn’t have killed them had they been around at the time. But Jesus says that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree: They had already literally plotted to kill Jesus, even as they tried to say they were nothing like their ancestors. So Jesus says that they are going to prove just how like their ancestors they really are. Then, He will send prophets, sages, and scribes to them, and they will treat them just as badly. When He speaks of the blood of Abel and of Zechariah, these are the first and last murders recorded in the OT (don’t forget that Chronicles is last book in the Jewish Scriptures). And when we look at the book of Acts, who are the biggest problem in the expansion of the Gospel for the first half of the book? The Jewish religious leaders.

This final woe kind of connects all the others together as far as we are concerned, because when we present a false Gospel, when we live by the world instead of by faith, when we care more about the outside than the inside, we deceive ourselves into thinking that our religious observance is a replacement for humbly walking with God. And it really connects to us, because isn’t this what we’re doing when we look at the religious leaders in condemnation, reviling them for all of these things that we ourselves do?

But sadly, we don’t just take this condemning position with the people who have been dead and gone for nearly 2000 years. We take the same position with the people that we sit next to in this building, and the people who come to this fellowship looking for something different than what the world has on offer. They come looking for hope, for connection, for relationship, for family. And what they and we should find here in the body is not a new source for pain and heartache, but the most gracious, patient, and forgiving people, humble servants of God, of each other, and of the lost.

Matthew 9:12–13 CSB

12 Now when he heard this, he said, “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. 13 Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice. For I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

Closing

So how do we avoid causing hurt in the church? We avoid it by being the people that God has called us to be, instead of being religious hypocrites. We repent of our self-righteousness, our arrogance, our pride, our selfishness, and our superiority. We love one another the way that we have been loved by Christ—lavishly, sacrificially, sincerely. We decide right now that these people are our brothers and sisters, and that we want God’s very best for each of them, and we commit to praying for this body and to being willing and available to joyfully serve as God calls. In short, we follow Paul’s instructions in Romans, which we will read as our benediction.

And today, I call to you who are listening, but who have never surrendered your life to Christ in faith. Repent and believe the good news. Trust in what Christ has done for your salvation and be forgiven of your sin. Call out to Jesus as your Savior and Lord. And if that’s you, please let us know so we can celebrate with you and help you on this journey.

Joining the church.

Giving during invitation.

PRAYER

Closing Remarks

Bible reading plan: Leviticus 21 today. We’ll finish Leviticus next Saturday, and then start the next 30 Psalms: 61-90, which will take us into April. You can download the plan for March from our website on the What’s Happening page.

Pastor’s Bible Study tonight. We will talk about when and how I’m going to share about my Israel trip.

Instructions for guests

Benediction

Romans 12:9–18 CSB

9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Detest evil; cling to what is good. 10 Love one another deeply as brothers and sisters. Take the lead in honoring one another. 11 Do not lack diligence in zeal; be fervent in the Spirit; serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope; be patient in affliction; be persistent in prayer. 13 Share with the saints in their needs; pursue hospitality. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud; instead, associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own estimation. 17 Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Give careful thought to do what is honorable in everyone’s eyes. 18 If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.