2026_09_06_Dispensationalism

We've been doing a series on the topic of dispensationalism. It's a big word, but it's a word that's been kind of, it's not a word that many people are familiar with, it is a Bible word, but I've noticed in the last year or so in kind of mainstream culture that word has been used usually in a negative fashion.

There have people been speaking kind of negative things regarding dispensationalism. Dispensationalism is a kind of a framework, a way to view or understand the Bible, a way to interpret the Bible that has been kind of formed over the last couple hundred years.

And there's nothing specific in dispensationalism that's new the last 200 years, but just kind of the formation of a systematic way of interpreting the Bible in that way it is new.

But the reason it has been looked at negatively is because the dispensational view of Scripture sees a future for the nation of Israel and sees them as still having a special place in God's plan.

And to a lot of people, that makes them upset because they don't like the idea that Israel is in some kind of way special to God.

There are people that have a lot of ideas about the nation of Israel, that they are a huge negative impact in the world. And, you know, people can debate about that.

Every nation is different. Every nation has good things and bad things and some more bad than good and some maybe more good than bad. I think in general we see mostly bad and then to some degree good.

But regardless, there is a lot of antagonism towards Israel today. And because dispensationalism views these people, Israel, as a people of God that is the apple of God's eye and still has, God still views them as beloved in some kind of way.

That makes people upset with this view of dispensationalism in interpreting the Bible. But dispensationalism is important not just because the view of Israel today and how we view them, but it's important because dispensationalism makes important distinctions between things in the Bible.

One of the things that we've talked about is you have the nation of Israel and then you have a new group of people, the body of Christ, which is how we represent ourselves, how God represents us in the Bible.

We are not Israel. We are the body of Christ, which, by the way, includes both Gentiles and Jews. The memory verse for last week is regarding becoming a workman that needs not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

That's from 2 Timothy 2.15. And so as we study the Bible, as we look to the scriptures, it's important to rightly divide, to make proper distinctions.

What applies to me and what might apply to somebody else? I can still learn from those things that were written to other people, but I need to make the distinction in what is applicable to me and what is applicable to a different group.

Today, what we're going to focus on when it comes to distinction is the whole idea of worship, of how we worship God.

There is a phrase, when it comes to all of the types and styles and denominations of churches that you find today, people have grouped churches into two categories.

And there's different ways of grouping, but this is just one way of grouping. One is called high church and the other is called low church. Has anybody ever heard those terms? High church is a church that has a lot of ceremony and formalism and liturgy, a lot of ritual in them.

You have proper or ornate or how do I put it, a formal attire. Sometimes you have incense and candles and a lot of these types of things.

That is called high church, a lot of formalism. The kinds of churches that might be considered high church. And by the way, this is a spectrum. So you have one that might be on the very far end of high church and then become less and less so until you get to low church.

But examples of high church would be the Orthodox Church, the Catholic Church, Lutherans, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians. And so you might ask the question, well, what makes a church a high church versus a low church?

A low church would be one that has a lot less formalism. The attire is less formal, at least in a religious sense. People might still wear suits and ties, but not the clerical collars and robes and things like that.

But what you'll find if you observe and you look at the doctrine or the approach to Scripture and whether a church is high church or low church, the low church tends to be more dispensational in their approach to Scripture.

They make a bigger contrast or distinction between Israel and the church today. Whereas those that are high church that have a lot of these formal parts of their service, their church service, tend to unify the church today and Israel from the past, make them more the same.

And so that's why this is important, how we understand the Bible and what we do with these different groups of people, these different eras of the Bible will impact our worship, how we practice our faith.

What I'm going to start out doing is, look, take a tour of Israel's worship from the Old Testament, looking at the law of Moses and a few other things, just a quick tour of what their worship consisted of, what it looked like.

And then we're going to compare that in the New Testament to some of the things that Paul teaches about our worship today in the age of grace. I'm going to go through, I'm going to reference some passages.

I'm not going to pause very much, but we're going to kind of go quickly through these Old Testament things. A lot of them you'll probably be familiar with, so we won't necessarily quote specific verses.

But we're just going to be a quick tour here. The first thing to look at is the place of worship for Israel. In Deuteronomy chapter 12, verse 13, it says this in the law, from the law of Moses.

Take heed to yourself that you do not offer your burnt offerings in every place that you see, but only in the place which the Lord chooses.

As part of Israel's worship, there was these sacrifices, these offerings to the Lord, animal sacrifices and other kinds of offerings made to the Lord.

But as part of the law, it was required that they didn't just do that anywhere. You don't just go out into your backyard or your front yard or your local civic hall or whatever and offer these sacrifices.

There was a specific place that God would choose to be revealed later on. In Exodus chapter 25, verse 8, this is what God says through Moses.

Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. So God intended that the Jewish people would make him a sanctuary.

That word sanctuary literally means a holy place, a place that is set apart, special for God, for him to dwell, for God to dwell, for him to live in.

And so ultimately, what God reveals is that there will be a tabernacle, which would eventually become a permanent temple, and that would be the place that God would dwell.

And eventually, the final resting place of that tabernacle, or ultimately the temple, would be a specific location. And that location was Jerusalem.

And Jerusalem became not just any city, it became called what? The holy city of God. A special city. Because that is where the temple was.

That is where God's presence dwelt. And then further, for Jewish worship, you had a special people. People who were part of serving in this temple.

It was the Levite people, the tribe of Levi. They made up the priesthood in the Jewish temple. They would take turns. There would be a high priest from among the tribe of Levi, and specifically from the lineage of Aaron.

And their job was to represent the people to God, and God to the people. They were to act as somewhat of a middleman between God and the people.

Another part of their job was to serve in the tabernacle. You don't need to turn there right now, but if you want to write this down and look later, in Numbers chapter 4, there's all kinds of descriptions of this Levite people and their priesthood duties, and it's constantly called their service.

Their temple service. They were to serve in the temple. These priests had a special uniform, formal attire, that they were given.

In Exodus chapter 28, it's described this way, By the way, Aaron was the high priest, for glory and for beauty.

So you shall speak to all who are gifted artisans, whom I have filled with the spirit of wisdom, that they make Aaron's garments to consecrate them, that he may minister to me as a priest. So with this priest, when he is ministering, he has a special garment that he is to wear.

And these garments which they shall make, a breastplate, an ephod, a robe, a skillfully woven tunic, a turban, and a sash. So they shall make holy garments for Aaron, your brother, and his sons, that he may minister to me as priest.

Also, as part of the implements of worship, there was all kinds of furniture and other implements. You see, when you read about the tabernacle and the future temple, there was gold and silver and bronze and ornate stones in various places.

There was furniture like tables and a lampstand. There was curtains and cords. There were various vessels, many various vessels for water rituals.

There was altars for burning incense. And they even had, among all these things, King David later installed singers to come into the temple to sing 24 hours a day.

A choir of sorts. Then, one of the big and most primary and prominent pieces of furniture was an altar.

A place in which to burn these animal sacrifices as an offering to the Lord. All of these things were things that are material.

Things that are fleshly. Ceremony. Ritual. Things of the flesh. Now, as I've described all of these things, and there's a lot more detail we could get into, but that kind of paints a broad picture.

Does any of those things sound in any way familiar to any of the worship practices that we find today? You know, I think many churches will import some of those Jewish religious practices into their church services.

And what I found, just to kind of reiterate, is that a lot of times, the churches that tend to have a more dispensational approach to Scripture have less of those things imported, while as those who take a different approach, more of a unified approach to Israel and the church today, have more of those kinds of imports of Israel's practices in their worship.

Now, I'm going to look at some of these specific things. And just a little warning. So, there will be some criticism here of some various denominations and Christian groups.

But, just FYI, I'll also come back around and criticize also some of the denominations that are more like ours, and even the non-denominations like us.

But the first thing we can think about when it comes to high church are the Catholic and the Orthodox churches. You actually have an actual priesthood. People who are actually called priests, just like the Levite priests.

And in the Catholic church, and I'm less familiar with the Orthodox church, those priests, their purpose and role is to represent the people to God.

And God to the people. To be a somewhat of a middleman. If you want to have your sins forgiven, what do you do? Do you go directly to God? Actually, you're supposed to go to the priest.

Confess your sins to the priest. And he will represent you to God. God. Similar to the way that it was in Israel. You have vestments, clerical robes, clerical collars.

You know, in the Catholic church, and I'm less familiar again with the Orthodox church, but when you go to the very top with the Pope, the vestments, the garb is quite ornate.

You've got the big hat, you've got all kinds of, you know, different robes, and, you know, even, what do you call that thing? Kind of a rod or a staff or something like that. All of these things that come with that job.

And then you go down to the bishops, and it's still ornate, but not quite as much. And then when you get down to the priests, it tends to just be the robes and the clerical collars, at least from what I've observed.

But in a lot of ways, it's not the same, right? There's not the breastplate that you see with the Jewish priests, but still very, very much similar in a lot of ways.

Also, you have things like candles and incense in those church services. You have things like holy water, just like you had water in those basins in the temple or in the tabernacle.

And you also have buildings that are quite ornate, that are filled with things covered in gold and silver, with ornaments all around.

Very reminiscent of what you would find with the Jewish temple. And then you get to, in the Protestant world, you have Anglicans and Episcopalians, Lutherans and Presbyterians, and they drop some of the things that you might find in a Catholic or Orthodox church, but still keep many of these things.

Well, what about the low church? What about churches that might be more like ours? Churches like a Baptist church, or maybe a Pentecostal church, or a non-denominational church.

It's easy to criticize others that are very different from us, but I think if we take a close look, we can see some other kinds of imports from the Jewish system into our church services today.

For many churches, they call the room that they gather in what? A sanctuary. A sanctuary? A sanctuary means a holy place, a place set apart unto God.

Is that what this is? For some people, they call their church building, some people will call it, well, we're going to the Lord's house. There are some, even the Baptist churches, that will call their church a temple.

Have you ever heard the Baptist temple? Or out in Brooklyn, they have a church called the Brooklyn Tabernacle. That's the name of their church, very much aligning to Jewish practice of worship.

At the front of many churches, many churches, even the cool, hip, modern ones, will call the front of the church what? The altar.

And they'll invite people up for an altar call to come and pray at the front of the church. Altar, something from Jewish worship. You have, when you collect money at a church, what do we call it?

Tithes and offerings. Did you know that that word offerings is never used in the New Testament, at least in the epistles of Paul, related to giving money?

An offering was something that you gave as an animal sacrifice, or sometimes maybe a wine offering, or a drink offering, or some other kind of thing like that. But we don't pour wine, or we don't stuff, you know, bloody animals into our offering box, right?

That's where we put money. But we call it an offering, right? Because it is an import from the Jewish system into our worship today. And you know what?

Even what we call, what we are doing this morning, many places, we call it a worship service. We are here for a worship service.

We have a 1015 worship service. Where does that terminology come from? Well, we're here to worship. And as part of that, there is a service.

Now, a lot of times we think about service as just like a meeting. But that's actually not where that term comes from. That term service harkens back to the priestly service in the temple, where the priests would serve in the temple.

And so, the question is, is what we're doing here this morning, is this what we are prescribed to do? Is this what our worship is? Is to once a week, come to a certain house, a certain location, and to worship God, and to give God some kind of service on those special days, and in that special location.

Is that what we're supposed to do? Well, let's look at what Paul says. As we've talked about before, the Bible tells us very specifically that God created a new people for himself.

He had a plan for Israel, and continues to have a plan, but that plan has been put on hold, because Israel rejected their Messiah. And so, for this period of time called the dispensation of the grace of God, Paul calls it a mystery.

God is working with a new group of people. A new group of people, mostly made up of Gentiles. But he says this in Ephesians chapter 2, starting in verse 14.

For he himself, talking about Jesus, is our peace, who has made both, he's talking about Jew and Gentile, one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation.

There was a wall separating Jews and Gentiles, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace.

God has made one new man, a new people group, that is made up of Jew and Gentile. And that middle wall of separation, that separated the two, has been taken out of the way.

And what is that wall? The ordinances, the regulations, all those instructions for temple worship, and the furniture, and the vestments, the garb.

All those things have been taken out of the way, so that God can create one new man from the two. And so for us, as the body of Christ, importing types of worship or means of worship from the Jewish system into ours can be, and is, counterproductive.

Because we are a different people with a different mission and a different way of worshiping God. And here is what Paul says about how we ought to worship.

Well, let me start with this. Back when during, when Jesus was having his ministry on the earth, his three years of ministry, he stopped to take a break in a town called Samaria.

In a town called Samaria. And in Samaria were the Samaritans. And they were people who were part Jewish but had intermarried with the Gentiles, which they were not supposed to do. And as he was talking to this woman, she realized that this man is some kind of a prophet.

And she asked him a question. She's like, this guy is definitely from God and I have this pressing question. And she said, our people say that we should worship on our mountain here in Samaria.

But you Jews, you say that the only place that you're allowed to worship is in Jerusalem at the temple. What do you say, Jesus? And here is his response.

In John chapter 4. Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain or in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship for salvation is of the Jews.

But the hour is coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship him.

God is spirit and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. He told her straight up, you guys are wrong. The Jews, we know what we're doing because it's in the scriptures.

Moses gave it to us. He told us exactly where we're to worship. There was a chosen place. It's not Samaria. It's Jerusalem and it's at the temple. But, he said, there's a day coming when things will change.

There's a day coming in which people will not worship in a specific location but they will worship God in a different way in spirit and in truth. For Israel, this was the way that God told them to worship.

Not to worship in spirit, not yet anyway, but to worship in this fleshly, material, ritualistic, ceremonial type of way.

But that day, did it ever come? Well, Paul later says, this is in Philippians chapter 3, he's warning the Philippians about being influenced by Jews who want them to follow their way of doing things.

And so, he says in Philippians chapter 3, this is verse 2, beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation. That's a, that's a word to describe these Jews who mutilate their bodies through circumcision.

Paul's a Jew himself. He says in other places he loves the Jewish people but he's saying, hey, listen, for you, you are a new people. You are not that people. Don't, don't allow them to intimidate you or try to influence you to follow something that was given to them but not to you.

Here's what he says in verse 3, for we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit. We rejoice in Christ Jesus and we have no confidence in the flesh.

Things that are fleshly, things that are natural, things that are material, things that are ritualistic. That's not what we put our confidence in. We worship God in the spirit.

We don't do, we don't focus on ceremony, we don't focus on ritual, we don't focus on things of the flesh but instead we walk with God.

That's what our worship is. In Romans chapter 8 verse 1, Paul says, Paul says this regarding the body of Christ, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.

That's this new group. That's how they're described. It's those who are in Christ Jesus. That's the body of Christ. Who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit.

That's how you describe the church, the body of Christ. Those who do not walk according to the flesh but those who walk according to the spirit. What about location?

Is there a specific location that we as the body of Christ ought to worship? Well, remember what was special about the location in Israel?

That's where God himself dwelt. Now, we read later on, I can't remember if it was King David or one of the kings, I think it was Solomon, I think it was Solomon, that said very specifically, we know and we understand that God is not limited to the house, this temple that we've built for him but at the same time, this is what God himself said.

This is the house where I will dwell and so that's where God's presence lived. Does God's presence only live in houses today?

Well, what does Paul say? In 1 Corinthians 6, 19, do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you? 1 Corinthians 3, 16, do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?

Ephesians 2, 22, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. So God, or Paul, gives two examples, one of individuals, your individual body and the other of this group of people, this new body of Christ.

And he says in both cases, both individually and corporately, we as believers, we are the temple of God. We are where God's presence lives.

Not a tabernacle, not a temple, not in the Lord's house, not in a room called a sanctuary. God's home is in us.

We are the temple of God. And so, even though the Jews made special prayers in Jerusalem and in the temple, and we even see with Daniel, remember, Daniel was part of the captivity that was taken away into Babylon.

And remember, when Daniel would pray, he would open up his window toward where? Toward Jerusalem, towards where the temple was, or used to be. And he would make his prayers in that direction because it was a special place.

But, when Paul tells Timothy, talks to him about prayer, he says this, 1 Timothy 2.8, I desire, therefore, that the men pray everywhere. Pray everywhere.

Anywhere and everywhere. We can pray wherever we want to. You know, I've seen this, I don't know if you've seen this in movies, this kind of comes up a lot as a plot point.

You'll see some kind of man or maybe it's a woman and having all kinds of struggles in his or her life and it's raining and it's dark and they finally decide that they need to come to God.

And what do they do? They see off in the distance there's a church and a steeple and maybe some stained glass and they walk inside and they go inside and they kneel down or sit down at the front row right there at the altar and that's the place where they can talk to God.

And it's a beautiful picture and all that. But do they need to do that? Is that required in some kind of way? Yet, we as a church corporately have in a lot of ways painted a picture of this is where you go to talk to God because of the language that we use.

But we can talk to God anywhere. There is no special place of prayer. What about our implements of worship? The way that we worship God, the things that we might use.

Like I said, we use this word worship service and so people get the idea that well, you know, if you want to worship God you got to go on Sunday morning at 1015 to that, you know, building down on Group Road and, you know, that's where you go to worship God and to serve in some kind of religious way.

Is that true? Here's what Paul, Paul actually speaks to our service and he makes a reference to how it compares to the Jewish temple service.

Romans 12.1 Romans 12.1 says this, I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God or because of the mercies of God that you present your bodies as living sacrifices.

Holy, acceptable to God which is your reasonable service. That word service right there is the Greek word is the only time Paul ever uses that word and it's the exact word used of the Jewish priesthood and their service in the temple.

You see, we do have a service today but it's not the same, it doesn't look the same as what those Levite priests did. What Paul is saying here is that we have a way of worshiping God, a way of offering some kind of religious service and it has nothing to do with candles or incense or water basins or altars.

it has to do with how we live our lives every single day. By the mercies of God that you present your bodies as a living sacrifice.

We're not sacrificing animals dead on an altar anymore like the Jews were but we are offering up our whole life in worship to God.

And so what is it that we are doing this morning? Is this something that is uniquely a worship or a service to God?

It's not. What we're doing this morning is important, it's good but it is not in any way uniquely a worship of the Lord.

It's no more different than what you will do on Monday morning. Paul says this in Colossians 3 23 and whatever you do, do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men.

In 1 Corinthians 10 31 he says this, whatever you do, do all for the glory of God. So whatever we're doing you know later this afternoon or on Monday morning, whether we're pumping septic tanks or cutting grass or trimming trees or bussing tables or or filing our annual reports and our spreadsheets or sewing clothes or changing diapers or washing dishes or folding laundry or writing another essay or completing another math assignment or babysitting your little brother, all of these things are our worship and our service to God.

And it's no less important than what we're doing here this morning. all of these things are our worship when we do it as unto the Lord.

And that is how we ought to do every single thing in our life as unto the Lord. Some people might ask, well if we don't come here to worship, well then why go to church at all?

Why meet every Sunday? Well, we come here to learn, to fellowship, to connect, to encourage one another, to serve one another. But what we don't come here to do is to worship or at least in some kind of unique way.

Not in a way that's different from anything else we do in our lives. And so we need to remember that. In a lot of ways it's just easier to just think about well I'm going to have this part of my life relegated to the worship of God.

I'm going to check off that box, I'm going to go there on that Sunday morning, I'm going to do all the things that they tell me to do and then my worship will be done and I'm going to go home and live the rest of my life.

That's not how the Christian life works. Our entire life, every moment of every day is a life of worship and service unto God. And that's how we need to live our lives unto Him.

Every day. I'm going to go ahead, I'm going to finish off kind of the message here. We're going to pray and then we're going to transition to the Lord's Supper.

And there's kind of a tie in here because this kind of looks like a ritual and well in some ways it is. In some ways it's turned into way more of a ritual and a ceremony than really it should be.

And we'll talk about that in a second. But let's go ahead and close in a word of prayer. And after I pray I'll have the elders come up. Father, thank you so much for what you have done in us.

You have made us, your temple, our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Your presence is with us every single day wherever we go. We thank you for that.

We pray that you would help us to learn and understand how we ought to serve and worship you in everything that we do. In the menial things, in the big things, in the small decisions, in the big decisions, in our interactions with people, day in and day out.

Help us to live and serve you. Thank you for all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so I'll invite the elders to come up.

We'll kind of prepare here. Isabella, I think she already went out. She's paying attention. The first thing I'd like to do, just to prepare us, again, we talked about the Benevolence Fund.

We'll take that at the very end. Don't let me forget. But, and I guess we already talked about kind of what it's for, so I won't repeat myself. But just, if we do have visitors, I'm not sure if we have any visitors today, but we don't expect our visitors to give to this by any means.

So don't feel compelled to do so. But just some instructions, if anybody's new here. The way that we do this is we're going to pass out these elements, the juice and the bread.

We'll pass them out separately one at a time, but go ahead and as we pass them out, just hold on to them and we'll take them all together at the same time. Who's this for? Anybody who's trusted in Christ.

And you don't have to belong to our church, you don't have to, you know, be baptized in our church or anything like that. If you're trusting in Jesus Christ, by all means, you're part of the family of God, the same family that we're a part of.

And so we'd love for you to join us in that way. When it comes to age, children, some people have different, you know, preferences or views on whether their children would partake.

We just leave that up to the parents. So if any parents would like their children to join with them in remembering the Lord, by all means, you're welcome to do so. The other thing, and this is where it becomes really important, is why are we doing this?

Why are we taking these elements? Because there are many churches that have turned it into something that is not. Here's what Jesus said. He said, do this in remembrance of me.

And Paul repeats the same thing. Do this in remembrance of me. This is a ceremony of sorts. It is a ritual of sorts, something that we practice, a tradition.

tradition, but it's something we do as a memorial, to remember what Jesus did for us. There are churches in all kinds of denominations, not just Catholic.

I think a lot of times we just think about, well, the Catholic church makes something more of it. But even Protestant churches a lot of times do the same thing. And a lot of times they'll call it a sacrament or a means of grace.

In some kind of way saying that by taking these elements, you are somehow adding more of God's grace to your life. For a lot of people, they think, well, the more I do this, the higher my chances of making it into heaven.

And that is a lie. Taking these elements do not get you into heaven, do not increase your chances of getting into heaven. You know what gets you into heaven?

Is trusting in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that's it. And here's what Paul says. He gives a warning about these kinds of teachings where you say, oh, well, you got to do this.

And, you know, kind of like the Jews did. You do this ritual or this ceremony and, well, you know, it'll make it, you know, kind of grease the skids on, you know, getting you into heaven. Going back to what Paul said to the Colossians.

Colossians 2, he said, Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.

And you are complete in him. If you have put your faith and trust in Jesus Christ, you are complete. It's done. The work is finished. He's the head of all principality and power.

And he goes on and on and on and he finally finishes up saying, And he has taken out of the way, excuse me, he has forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

All those things, all those regulations, taken out of the way. And we are complete in him. So, let's keep that in mind this morning. We're remembering what Jesus did to do a finished, complete work.

We're not adding to it. We're just remembering. So, we'll do this right now. By the way, as we're passing that out, just kind of another thing to keep in mind.

I think this is a common thing you might hear in churches. When Paul was talking about this practice that Christians do, and this was happening in the Corinthian church, there was all kinds of weird things that they were doing.

They were like getting drunk on the wine that they were drinking. And people were not eating at home and coming to church just to have a nice big meal.

And there was all kinds of shenanigans and weird things that were going on with there. So, Paul kind of gave a warning. He says, hey, when you guys come to do this, you know, don't do these weird things.

And so, people have taken that warning and they've turned it into, well, before you are allowed to take this remembrance, to take these tokens of remembrance, you have to make sure that you're kind of doing okay in your Christian life, that you don't have any sins in your life that you're dealing with.

And that is completely and totally false. Because what we're doing here is we're remembering what Jesus did for us.

We're not supposed to be thinking about our sins, except that our sins were done away with. They were forgiven. And so, whatever's going on in your life, you know, and hopefully as Christians, we're doing well, we're serving the Lord.

But even if you're not, this is a remembrance that regardless, Jesus covered it all. He wiped out our sins. He has washed them all away.

So, this is Paul's instruction from 1 Corinthians. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread.

And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, take, eat. This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Let's remember what the Lord did for us.

Thanks, Ron. There's actually another part to this remembrance.

It's not just remembering what Christ did. One of the things that Paul says in the same passage is that when we eat this bread and when we drink this cup, he says this, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

We're looking back, but we're also looking to the future. Expectantly waiting till Jesus comes and takes us home where he completes the work.

And, you know, we've already talked about, well, the work is complete. Well, yeah, the forgiveness is complete. But do you know what's left? These bodies that decay and get old and get achy and get disease.

When Jesus returns, he's going to complete the work by giving us a new body, a new resurrection body, one that is like his, that will never suffer pain or death again.

all because of the body broken for us and the blood that he shed on our behalf. All right.

So we'll finish up Paul's instructions. In the same manner, he also took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.

Let's remember the Lord. Amen. Are you glad that God created a new group of people?

That he brought in the Gentiles as a beloved people along with the Jewish people? He didn't have to. Did you know that? He didn't have to do it. But because of his great love, he grafted us in and made us his special people.

So let's go ahead and finish. Oh, wait. Thank you. We're going to go ahead and pass around this plate for the benevolence offering. And it should just take a second.

But once the plate has gone around, if you'd stand up on your feet, we're going to sing a song. It's in your hymnal, if you don't know it, number 349. But the song is, Oh, how he loves you and me.

I think many of us know it. But in your hymnal, it's number 349. All right.

Let's sing together. Oh, how he loves you and me. Oh, how he loves you and me.

He gave his life. What more could he give? Oh, how he loves you.

Oh, how he loves me. Oh, how he loves you and me. Amen.

All right. Thanks, everybody. Have a wonderful day. Don't forget, worship and serve the Lord every single day. And by the way,