Christ's Headship and the Body of Christ

Ask you to turn with me to the epistle of the Ephesians chapter four. Book of Ephesians chapter four. The apostle Paul in particular is is difficult to to choose which verse you wanna start in because so many of his his thoughts and and arguments are lengthy and connect so well together. But I'd to begin in chapter four verse 11 and read through to verse 16. Ephesians four verse 11. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. So we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, that we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the slight of men and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things, which is the head, even Christ. From whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. This morning, I'd like to consider two teachings that I believe are represented here in these verses, and they are absolutely finding to be critical and necessary for the Christian. And that is the doctrine of the headship of Christ and the doctrine of the church as the body of Christ. Both of these I find represented in these verses and I'd like to explore them this morning. I'll just give brief comments and some of the introductory thoughts leading up particularly verses fifteen and sixteen. The Apostle Paul begins here by saying that there were a number of gifts given to the church, particularly in the early church. He gives these number of appointed offices, apostles. These were those that Jesus Christ directly and specifically called out. It was a very select group of 12 men, although the apostle Paul said he was one of them as well as though as one who was born out of due time. He came later on, of course, when he was struck down on the road to Damascus. Um, but there were a couple of requisites. Christ called them directly, and they also all saw the risen Lord and interacted with the resurrected Jesus. And of course, Jesus had in some sense ascended before the Apostle Paul had his experience when Damascus rode. But multiple times in scripture, it actually mentions that Jesus himself, they're on the road to Damascus, struck him down and it was Jesus that spoke with him. And there were other times I believe that Jesus talked talked directly and taught the apostle Paul all of the things and the revelation and the visions that he saw that enabled him to, um, be such a a great minister and an apostle in the in the New Testament, writing two thirds of the New Testament. So that was one, the apostles. Uh, the prophets, there were those who saw visions and saw the Lord's, um, visions and and his will of things that were to come. And evangelists, these were those who the apostles would actually send out to evangelize directly. They weren't really associated with a local body. They would just kind of go out and and preach the gospel. And I submit to you, all three of those roles actually, I I believe ended after a short period after the the kind of inception of the early church. We no longer have there are groups today of Christians who still will call men apostles or that people can become new apostles. And I don't find that to be possible in accordance with scripture. I believe the apostles were just that group, just that initial group. And similarly, these other gifts here, prophets and evangelists, the gift of prophecy in some sense is still around, but I think that really just means in the New Testament, a wisdom and an application of the word of God is is usually how that works today. If if someone it might be called the gift of prophecy, but they're not really a prophet. If you think of the old testament prophets, it's not the same thing. I mean, even evangelists, I don't really think are around anymore. Pastors and teachers, believe, are the only true role here that's left, which is to say that if there is a minister of the gospel, he is linked, he is bound to a local body. And that's really how that works. And pastors note here that he uses the word and here, pastors and teachers are not separate. Pastors must be able to teach. Aptitude is one of the requirements. But I believe here there's a teaching that's not only relevant to gospel ministry, but to each and every one of us. The Lord has given each one of us gifts in the spirit, whether your gifts might be giving, service, just being able to encourage people around you. All of these gifts I submit to you are of of great benefit in our lives, but I think the teaching here is that where we ought to start trying to use our gifts is here in the church. We ought to look for ways that we can take the gifts the Lord has given us and try to pour them out in the service of the church for the furtherance of the cause of God and truth for his kingdom. Note here in verse 14, he says that we henceforth be no more children. He's talked about all of this is for the edification of the body of Christ. These are things to build up the church, the body of Christ. And the reason is that we might be no more children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive. I think this was relevant by Paul writing this, it was relevant to this church here at Ephesus. It's relevant today. There are philosophies of men. There are men out in the world who would seek to toss about children of God. There is an adversary, the devil, who it's his sole intent is to steal the joy and the peace of the people of God. And if if we let him do that, he will be thrilled to do so. He wants to take the things that Christ has done, and rather than have God's children resting in the promises of Christ, he wants us to fret and to be afraid and to live in fear. And part of what the church is designed to do is to, you know, when we each begin our Christian journey, maybe it's soon after we're born again, maybe we've been born again for a while, but but perhaps we join the church later. Whatever the case may be, we start off as spiritual babies, if you will. And it's through the study of the word and the the fellowship of the saints, the teaching of the gospel that we spiritually grow up. And that's a good thing because children, it's not hard to convince children of things. You can tell them there's a rainbow behind a a Not a rainbow, a unicorn behind a bush. And there's a good chance that a young child would be like, are you serious? 's a unicorn over there. It's not hard to convince children of things. It's not hard to scare children and to deceive them of of monsters in the closet and such things. That can be true of us in a spiritual sense. And I I ask you to really try to look at your spirit and your life and and see, do I you know, maybe it's we we pay too close attention to the news and every day we're just living in this anxiety about each and every news story that comes on. Well, those news channels like to do that because it gets people to keep watching. They like to fill us with fear. And if they can keep us on our toes at all times, we have to stay tuned in. That's how they make their money. They like to do that. I believe Satan's behind, uh, that intent as well. And so it's through this maturation, this growing up in the faith that we can truly understand the promises of God, how sure our salvation is and not be blown around. We'll be like the If you remember the apostles in the in the ship during the storm and Jesus is sleeping in the back and they're terrified of the winds and the waves. But perhaps you can imagine if they had had a little more time with Christ or maybe if they were in a second storm after that event, they'd be a little bit less scared, right? Once you have the experience of Christ in the ship and he's able to stand up and steady the winds and the waves, with that experience comes a steadfastness, an easiness, a lightness that you just trust in God. And so it's harder to blow us around and when we're rooted and grounded in the truth and in the doctrines of Christ, these various ideas of men that come up and try to confuse us, they don't work. We're able to say that doesn't agree with the word of God, so I won't listen to you. Verse 15, he says, but speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ. Christ is the head of the church. And before we examine this, I believe it's important. I'll take just a bit of time to kind of understand what is meant by the word church because it's used a couple different ways in Scripture. Um, there is a sense in which there is a we usually call it the church triumphant, is what it's called. And that is that when Christ comes back the second time in all of his glory and splendor and takes his whole family back, The word church itself simply means an assembly that is called out. You'll even find that term applying to things in the Old Testament, speaking of Israel and them being called out as an assembly. And so there at the at the resurrection, the whole as it will as as it's considered the church of God is the whole family of God. He will not lose a single one. Every single child is considered in that triumphant body, in that triumphant church. Everyone will receive the glorification of God and go home with him. That is a there is a usage of the word church in that in that context. But probably the predominant usage is to consider the manifestation of the kingdom of God here in this world and in our lifetime. And that word of church specifically refers to local bodies of believers. There is not a You know, we call ourselves primitive baptist because we share the the like faith, the articles of faith, the belief set of the people who we call ourselves primitive baptist. We share that group, so we've labeled ourselves that way. But we don't have any kind of overseeing board. There's no one who's saying the Primitive Baptists have changed our position on this. There's no one who overrules that denomination. There are denominations of Christianity that work like that and it's caused a lot of strife, particularly in recent times if you follow any of that. That that's not, I believe, the design that God gave to the church. He's given the design that local bodies operate as a local body. They they are independent. They have their own pastor they call a pastor, and he serves them as an under shepherd. And of course, their ultimate authority is the scriptures and to their head, the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's kind of the consideration we'll take this morning of the local body of the church. But speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things which is the head, even Christ. I'd like to consider kind of quickly this morning, I ask you to listen quickly as we go through three different ways that I see the headship of Christ over the church. And I rejoice in each one of these. I believe they're so impactful for our understanding of Christ. The first can be found in Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five. This is one of the clearest arguments of the apostle Paul. There's so much insight and truth into the way salvation works in this chapter. I invite you to read the whole thing, perhaps after services in your own study. But just for now, I'd like to read just a handful of verses. I'll grab verse twelve first. So Romans chapter five verse 12 says, wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, And so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. I need to chase a small rabbit here very quickly and especially for the young people in our congregation. The teachings of our modern day of the theory of evolution are not compatible with the word of God. You I don't believe that as a Christian even, you can have any form of belief in that theory. And I I say belief because it's an unproved theory. We don't know how life can come from inanimate objects and so it takes a leap of faith to understand not faith in a godly sense, just just kind of this blind belief in that theory. But I submit to you that this very verse is an argument that will refute from from a biblical standpoint, the the teachings of evolution that are just rampant throughout our society and has really, I believe, overthrown the faith of some. Because if Satan can get us to doubt the book of Genesis, to doubt the fall of man, these very initial things, there's a lot of doctrine in those initial those initial chapters. There's people who would even Christians who will try to say, yes, but we can we can kind of sweep those under the rug. Those were you know, figurative. Those were metaphors. And there's a couple of reasons why that doesn't work. First of all, Adam can't serve as a kind of metaphor for the process of man coming to be because he's listed as having specific children in the lineage of Christ in Luke chapter three. It tracks his lineage all the way back to the man Adam. And I don't think metaphors can have children. I don't think that makes sense. He's a real man. He really did was created by God of the dust. God breathed into him a living soul, and they really did eat of the fruit. And they did, um, receive in that day the curse of death. And that that's what's under consideration in this verse. Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin. It was the sin of Adam and Eve that made death as a concept enter into the earth. It was not here before. And so you can't have this process of millions of years of natural selection and dying and mutations of genes and all this kind of thing that relies on death. Death over and over and over again. So that's not possible here. It's not compatible with the idea that it was Adam and Eve's sin and transgression that brought death to pass. That was the curse of their sin. And, know, I've often explained it as God told them in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And we know that, of course, when they ate of that fruit, they didn't just keel over and die. And I usually will explain that in the in the following way. I'll say that was not a natural death, it was a spiritual death. But I need to be perhaps a little more careful with my wording there because natural death was the result of that sin, it just didn't happen immediately. They would not have died. The tree of life was there in the garden, they would have lived forever. I don't know how to answer the question of what would have happened if they never fell. I don't know what happens in that timeline, but I know that they would not have died. That's what the word of God teaches. They had the tree of life there, and they would have continue to just eat off of that forever. There was no death in the Garden Of Eden before the fall. And so, though they did not eat of the fruit and die on the spot, there was a spiritual death and it led to their natural death. Adam and Eve are dead and gone. It led to their natural death which would not have happened. That's a brief rabbit. Let me get back on point. So wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned. You notice that not only Adam and Eve have have perished, every single human being has similarly died because that all are sinners. All of the children that Adam and Eve had, all of their children, the way down to you and me, unfortunately, received this sin nature. And that that's the reason why, uh, all of us do, um, unless the Lord Jesus Christ comes back. Um, death will come for us because we are sinners in a natural sense. Let me now read verses 17 through 19. For if by one man's offense, death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as by the offensive one judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. There is a teaching here, a doctrine of, we call the concept federal headship. It really just means covenant headship. It just means representation. When Adam sinned, all of those who were in Adam, all of his children, of those who came from him, were under the similar curse. And there's a beautiful parallel here to the salvation of Jesus Christ, that when Jesus Christ fulfilled the law in the perfect righteousness of God, When he fulfilled every jot and tittle of the Old Testament law, he didn't come to say the law doesn't matter. He came to fulfill imperfection and completeness. The entire law, all of the family of God under him that are in Christ and placed in Christ from the foundation of the world receive that same state, that same relation, the the relation of righteousness, that status of righteousness, they get the same blessing in Christ as a parallel to how all of us were cursed in Adam. He is the second Adam, it's called, a quickening spirit. There's a beautiful teaching there and I've often made this point, but it's correct note of doctrine, we did not choose Adam to be our personal sinner. We never made that choice, there was never an it was never offered to us, I wouldn't have taken it with you. If he said, will you just accept Adam's sin and you'll be cursed? No, I would not have accepted that. But similarly, uh, we weren't asked. He we were represented in him. He had the, um, representation of all of his progeny, but in like fashion, praise the Lord Jesus Christ, is not offered to us because I submit to you in our depravity, before the Lord intervenes and would change our spirit in our depravity, we would even reject that. We would reject the salvation of God if it was offered to us because we would hate God. And so if we do not, if you find in your heart that you do not hate God and you have a love for God, know that he has purchased you and that his righteousness which he fulfilled has been applied to you. Praise the Lord. We'll be judged on that, on Christ's work and not our own. Our sins and our transgressions are blotted out. So that's the first element of headship when we look at the Lord Jesus Christ. The second one, sounds kinda funny to say it this way, but for the sake of considering headship, he's the political head or the government head. And we have a handy word for that, it's called a king. He is the king of the church. Let's go back to the book of Ephesians. Chapter one. Christ is the king. As we flip through, I'll remind you that it was of incredible importance. In the Old Testament, it was a a through thread that it kind of narrowed down the scheme of salvation. God first told Eve, there at the fall, said, of the seed of woman would come and bruise the head of the serpent. That's really the first kind of gospel hint we get in the scriptures. You narrow it down, you see all the pictures of the Paschal lamb and the Passover and all of these types of things. But one of the preeminent and most important things was that God had promised to David that ones from his loins should not fail to sit on the throne forever. God would establish the throne of David, and that became a messianic promise. They called the Messiah, the son of David. So he was to fulfill the promise that, uh, and he came of course of the line of David, but that's on the kingly line that the Lord Jesus Christ would come. Read here with me in Ephesians chapter one verses 19 through 23. And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And hath put all things under his feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, which is the body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. I've mentioned this to you before and it rings true and I rejoice in it that when we look at the systems of government we have today, there's various we have a democracy and republic and all of the constitutional republic and all these various different forms of government. The best one, I submit to you still, is a just and good monarchy. When you have a good man, a perfect man in our case, the Lord Jesus Christ sitting on the throne, that is the best form of government you can have. It's a perfect executive branch of of enforcing the law, of carrying out his judgments. The son of David sits on the throne to judge and he judges perfectly. Um, and also his laws are perfect and complete. He governs with complete authority. All things are under his feet, and he has been given to be the head over all things to the church. This is actually another interesting thing to note because the Jews who have continued in the Jewish faith and have rejected Christ as the Messiah and say that he he he was not the the true Messiah. It's actually interesting that they're going to have I I don't understand how they reconcile this because it is of necessity within their religion that he is of the line of David. And after 8070, when the Romans came in and destroyed all of Jerusalem, leveled it to the ground, the records of the bloodlines of those people were lost. And so I don't know even today, don't know how they would how they how they could see a way through that somehow they could still prove that one would come of the line of David. It has to be Christ. He's the only answer there to fulfill that and he fulfills all of the Old Testament prophecies there. So he is the king. He reigns in his righteousness. He rules sovereignly over all things. He is the king of the church. And in like fashion, as a good king does, he cares for the people. The Lord cares for the church. He cares for our well-being. Kings also in the Old Testament, the reason why the Israelites originally wanted a king, we've seen in the in the study of first and second Samuel, kings were really for fighting, organizing, and winning wars. That's why they had them. They would lead them out into battle. And the Israelites would always see these great kings of the other nations and say, oh, look at their victories, they're doing so well. Of course, turning from the fact that the Lord had previously and their theocracy been the one who would lead them, direct them in battle and tell him, I've won the field for you. They turned from that and they said, we want a man. We want one of our own to rise up and to lead us into wars. But oh, how perfectly Christ has fulfilled even that role on behalf of the church. He has overcome death, hell, and the grave for us and reigns over them today, we can rest in that victory. The third way, so we've already looked at the federal headship that we were represented by Christ. In his fulfillment of the righteousness of the law, we have been the beneficiaries in that great transaction that has been applied to us. He has been the He is the king over the church, as the political head. And finally, He's in some sense a head of the household or the head of His bride, the church. Still staying in the book of Ephesians. Look over with me to Ephesians chapter five. Ephesians chapter five verses 23 to 27. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church. There it is. And he is the savior of the body. Therefore, as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church and gave himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word. Christ is the the head of the church in a marital relationship, in the sense that he has the greatest, eternal, unfailing love in a covenant sense. He has bound himself to the church in love, the same way a man and woman bind themselves in the covenant of marriage and say till death do us part, well Christ liveth ever. And because of him and his victory for us, we will live ever with him. He has bound himself in love to us before the foundation of the world. And it's why it's for this love that he came and suffered the death he suffered to purchase us, to redeem his bride. That's a theme in the Old Testament. Remember the story of Ruth. You see Boaz who so nobly redeemed the household of Naomi in purchasing Ruth to be his bride. You see the prophet Hosea with the story of Gomer. He was called to go and take a harlot to be his wife. And she even goes and turns from him and returns to her sinful ways. And he goes and redeems her again. This picture of the fact that Christ loved us even when we were yet sinners, even when we turn from him. His love for us is steadfast. His love is the thing that has perfected us in Christ. And so Christ is the loving husband of the church and for that love he gave himself for the church. And so, uh, we're told as as Christ has given himself for the church, we ought to lay down our lives for one another. Uh, we ought to have that same kind of love for our brothers and sisters and it is the greatest form of love that a man would give down would would lay down his life for his friend. So with these three aspects in which Christ is the head of the church, federal head, the king, the political head, and the head of the household, the head of the bride, our husband. Now, I'd like to consider back in our text verse 16. Ephesians chapter four verses 16 or verse 16, singular. From whom, speaking of Christ, the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working and the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love. Now, just pause for a moment and and just kind of rest in the fact that Christ is our head. You know about how the body works. Every part of the body, in some sense, gets its orders through the nerves from the head. I want to be connected to Christ. I want him to lead, guide, and direct us as a church. I don't want to choose, um, the leadership of men without God. I don't want to, um, as the Israelites did, set up someone over us who would say, yes, God's ways are are one thing, but I have this other new theory. Let's try this instead. No, I want to submit to his headship. I want to submit to his leadership in all things. It is in this picture, this glorious picture of the doctrine of the body growing up into the head, there's a couple of things we can glean from that. And it's it's in this verse. Look at this. The whole body is fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supply. The thing that bonds us together ought to be the bonds of love and the common faith of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ. That binds us together. Because if we love one another, which is in a sense obedience to the faith, God if we love God, he's told us to love one another. And if we have that love flowing from breast to breast, that's not a one way street. In the church, we ought to have two directional love. I'm loving you and you're loving me. One brother is loving someone else and they're loving them back. And so that in a sense knits together this body of the church. In the bonds of love and in the shared faith, we hold things common. We love one another. We care for one another. In consideration of this, the Apostle Paul in first Corinthians chapter 12, he mentions all the different parts of the body. He says, maybe some person serves the role in the church of as the hand, and someone else serves as the foot. And kinda humorously, he says, the hand can't look at the foot and go, well, because I'm not the foot, I'm not even in the body. That doesn't make sense. Maybe for some reason you think the foot has a more noble role, but each person has their part. And we can't make it without, uh, we can't go limbless. We don't wanna lose limbs here in the church. Um, I believe that this is critical and kind of counter cultural in our day. There is a notion of the importance of of church membership. I don't exactly know how this happens, but I know that when you join a church, when you, you know, pledge yourself in among their number, there's something spiritual to that. There is not just a it's not just kind of going through the motions. It's not the same as when you join the rec league for a baseball team, um, and you just kinda see each other for practice. Church church is not just a, you know, like a baseball practice. This is a every single day commit commitment bound together in this love that we're going to yoke up together. We're going to walk through this life together. We're going to support one another. We're going to seek to encourage each other. When one when one of us falls down weak, when one of us is weak in the faith, when one of us suffers a loss, suffers something, takes a hit, the other should surround them. Um, you know, I would be in a a bad straight if I got an itch behind my ear and I had no arms. That would be a bad place. What what do you do? Thank goodness we have arms, so you can scratch the when there's problems in the body, if you step on a thorn, your feet is not a very good thing to get the thorn out of itself. You need the parts of the body to to help one another. Maybe there's a pain point and the other parts of the body can help. It's a beautiful picture there that we ought to be knit together in that love and that care for one another. It's compacted by that which every joint supplies. So you know, if we have some kind of spiritual arthritis and joints start losing their, you know, joints start losing their strength, and it's going to hurt the body. If parts of the body, you know, have committed themselves to the church and kind of just ghost and disappear and are not here, I submit that that's a part of the body that we need, that has a role to play and that's missing. And we we miss them dearly. It's not something to to judge and to look down on and say, oh, you know, look at you. But we ought to sincerely desire that when we meet together, the body's here. And so I think if we're able, we ought to not forsaking the assembling of yourselves together as the manner of some is. The Lord tells us it's good when the body of our local church meets. We ought to meet, we ought to come if we can. Of course, that's we don't need to get legalistic about it. There's there's times when when we we can't come for some illness and any other kind of reason. But the Lord has designed it that we would be in one another's lives. When if we don't, if you know, perhaps even you can take the example of maybe if one of us if we get here right or a little bit after church starts and we leave a little bit before church ends, we don't know what's going on in each other's lives. We don't talk to one another. And so when one part of the body is hurting, it's as if that nerve is cut off, we don't know. They might be going through something that we have no idea of because we can't bear with them. We can't weep with them when they weep, we can't rejoice with them when they rejoice. We need to know one another, we need to have that care for one another. Even outside of just Sundays on a regular basis, we ought to have that fellowship. Let me let me finish out this verse and I'm go somewhere else. According to the effectual working in the measure of every part. So he's saying there's something in us that takes effect. It's moving us, it's working, And it's causing us to, um, to play this very role that we've we've looked at, to care for one another, to serve whatever our role is in the church. And I ask you if you if you feel that you just kind of come here and, um, maybe just come here to submit to you, we don't we shouldn't come to church only to be fed. It's it is a beautiful thing that the gospel is is the manna of God. We pray for it. We pray the Lord would feed us. But I submit that you have something when you come here to give as well. In a spiritual sense, you have something to give. Whether it's your singing of praise, that's a giving of something. When you're you're singing, you are teaching and admonishing one another with songs and hymns and spiritual songs. You are testifying, I believe this, and that encourages those around you. We each have something that we I believe by God, we have a commandment to come and give and to use our gifts for the furtherance of the church. And it maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself. Notice here the bond is still in love. So by doing this, we are increasing the body, we're building ourselves up, we're becoming more mature so that so that we're not tossed around with every wind of doctrine. We grow up, we are strengthened in the faith. Let me go over to Acts chapter two very briefly. Is on the day of Pentecost. Acts chapter two, starting in verse 38. Acts chapter two verse 38, Peter has just essentially finished preaching to them the gifts of the spirit have been poured out. Says, then Peter said unto them, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. This is not the new birth, this is that special blessing that was poured out on the church. If anyone has a desire to repent and be baptized, of course, the Holy Spirit is in them. This was a special blessing of the Holy Ghost. Verse 39, for the promise is unto you and to your children and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did he testify and exhort saying, save yourselves from this untoward generation. Then they that gladly received his word were baptized. In the same day, there were added unto them about 3,000 souls. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. Notice this comma separated list here. They continued steadfastly in three things, the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, comma, breaking of bread, and prayers. You'll note that there's seems to be a kind of joining of two things there. The apostles' doctrine and fellowship is considered as one unit in this list. When the when the apostles came and they they preached, so many times Paul will say, you knew what manner of man I was amongst you. The apostle Paul was so, of course, he was a humble man because of the lord had long suffered him to persecute the church, and he he knew that but by the grace of god, he he would deserve condemnation and wrath. And so he was always humble to that. But note that, imagine if the apostle Paul, after he'd written all the epistles, came to preach one Sunday or came to preach at a meeting we had. There would be and at least in my mind, I'd be like, I'm going to to really tune in here. This is an apostle. He's he's written two thirds of the New Testament. He has founded churches. The Lord used him mightily. Um, but in the beginning of the book of Romans, when he says, I I long to come unto you at the church of Rome, he says, there's a specific phrase that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me. That's the phrasing he uses, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith, both of you and me. Paul, are you saying that if you came here to Camp Creek on a Friday night worship service that you'd be looking to receive encouragement from me sitting in the pew? Are you saying that, Paul? And he's saying, yes. I'll tell you, I haven't been speaking long, but the most encouraging thing when you're speaking is not when you're saying something new and fancy. It's when you're saying the old same thing that you know everyone believes. Just repeating the same truth that you know would be on the shadow of a doubt. Everyone already knows and they already believe it. The apostle Paul says, I may be comforted together with you. It encourages our faith when you just come here and retell the same old story. It's the same reason why when you grew up in the faith, you never graduate. It's our whole life journey. You might read this bible 50 times through in your lifetime, and you still have something to learn and something to give. We never graduate, but praise the Lord for those the members of our congregation who are a little bit more seasoned and have weathered the storms of life, and have been there. They've they've had the experiences, they've been through the hardships, And they can tell the young ones who perhaps have more energy and they're just going through it for the first time and everything's new to them. They can say, watch out. There's pitfalls here, but oh there's joy. There's joy in this life to be had. So here, um, in closing, these two beautiful doctrines, the doctrine of the headship of Christ. Christ in the same way, we each have a part of the body. The body is connected to each other, but in the same sense, if you think of our nervous system, each part has a direct link to the head too. That's the thing that really unites us as well. It's the each part, it's not, you know, the the unit of a like, perhaps a family, a church built up of individuals and of families. You know, when you have a family, not to kinda over spiritualize or go too deep into this metaphor, but it's kinda like a hand. You know, perhaps you have the the mother and the father and all the little fingers or the kids. They kind of have their nutrients through the hand, if you will. So there are parts that rely on other parts more more than just perhaps a normal part of the body. Children, of course, receive much spiritual teaching by their parents and admonishment and encouragement by their parents as they're brought up. But even each child has Christ within them, the hope of glory. And so each one of us, we can encourage to go to Christ, look for his leadership. And I would hope that, you know, perhaps there's there's even within a family that I would hope one day if as Tommy grows up that if I'm doing something that he finds isn't in accordance with the word of God that he would say, you know, dad, I see that differently and that we'd be open to hear from one another in ways that we can grow and learn together. There's not a single voice that is able to be ignored because Christ is in each of us. But there's not a single voice that has that doesn't have a purpose, doesn't have a worth, doesn't have a reason to be there here in the spiritual body. And so I'm just I'm thankful that we have this institution that's built up in the way it is. I see so many churches today that are struggling and that are I think it's a cultural issue. I think there's a lot of factors that go into it. But I really think that if we get two these two things right, we are well on our way to continuing to grow up, to continuing to walk forward as a body, and to grow into Christ our head. If we see Christ as king, Christ as lord, he's the one we we submit to, he's the one that we live our lives for, all things are from him and to him and for his name. It's for him that the obedience of faith ought to be rendered. It's for the glory of Christ. And second, not only that we love the Lord our God with all our soul, with all our mind, all of our spirit, all of our strength, but that we love one another. We love our neighbor as ourself. I thank you for your attention this morning. And if there's anyone who would like to walk with us and to yoke up with us in the body, uh, at this time, the doors of the church are open for the reception of members as we stand and sing some song. 45. Number

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