For a long while now, the people of God have gathered together, begun their day, and begun their time of worship with these words:
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord with all of your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children and you shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise.”
So please let us all rise and sing together and worship our Lord with hymn number 143, “This is My Father’s World.”
[Music]
So [Music] you [Music]
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank you and glorify you on this beautiful day. Grace is what we ask, grace is what you have given to us, and grace is what we thank you for. Your grace and your mercy that you’ve shown upon us through our lives and here in this place. We welcome you into our presence, into our midst, as you have welcomed us into yours and into your kingdom in your son. And we pray, Amen.
You may be seated.
The psalmist writes as we lead into our time for confession:
“Answer me when I call, O God of my righteousness; you have given me relief when I was in distress. Be gracious to me and hear my prayer.”
Please join me as we pray together our unison prayer of confession:
“Lord our God, the Three in One, you crafted us in your image to be united together as you are united as one. But we are a divided people. We divide and create separations as individuals rather than joining together to find understanding. We divide over the things which do not matter but unite around trivialities. We do not separate ourselves from unity with the world when we are called to be in the world but not of the world. Rescue us, we pray. Heal us and join us together in a greater unity. Let us be united in you, together in Christ. Bind us together as your people, as a congregation gathered together in your holy name. Let us grow in faith, love, compassion, and charity with each other, for each other. Unite us so that we can serve you and do your will to reach the lost and those around us whom you will call to yourself through us. Make us whole, make us one as you are one. Heavenly Father, we pray this in the name of your son Jesus, by the power of your Holy Spirit. We believe that you will do all this according to your promise. Amen.”
Please take a few moments to offer your own silent prayers and confessions.
[Music]
The psalmist continues saying and praying:
“You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound. In peace, I will both lie down and sleep — for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.”
And this is the good news of the Gospel: Jesus is the one who has given us relief. Jesus is the one who allows us to be safe because in him we have the forgiveness of sins. Amen.
[Music]
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the good gifts you have given to us. We ask that you bless the gifts that we return to you. May they be used and brought to your service so that people may know you and that we may worship you, glorify you, and honor you in all that we do and all that we are. In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
You may be seated for our second hymn, number 225, “Come, Christians, Join to Sing.”
[Music]
And if the kids would come on down, it’s time for a children’s lesson.
So I got a couple of questions for you guys. How many of y’all have brothers or sisters? Raise a hand.
Okay, looks like all of y’all. That’s good! Yeah, I don’t. I’m an only child, so you guys got something better than I do in a sense.
You don’t think having a brother and sister is a good thing? Or you don’t think that’s a good thing that I don’t have any brothers and sisters?
There may come a time when you will, but you know our family is important. They are there to help us, to guide us, to guard us.
Because how many of you guys think you can do everything on your own, by yourselves, all the time?
You do? Okay, you’re going to be my helper. You just volunteered. Come sit up here. Okay, you can come sit on this.
Okay, all three of you come on up. I’m a visual kind of person as well. Now, I’m going to give each of you guys a pencil.
Okay, there’s one for you, one for you, and one for you. Now, is a pencil very strong?
No? Yes?
Do you think you can break that pencil?
Don’t beat it, sit down, and then try that.
Okay, oh, there we got one! All right.
[Music]
Okay, all right, so yes, one pencil is easily broken.
Now, for those of you He-Man types who’ve managed to break one pencil, I’m only going to use one in this case because I will run out.
But you think you can break the two?
Yeah, two pencils are also easily broken.
Now, with the two, was that harder or easier than just the one?
Um, it was easier.
It was easier than the one.
[Music]
Okay, well now, I am going to flame it.
No, no, no! Go ahead and have a seat. Okay, now hold the three like that and try and break those.
I’m telling them to blame them! Is it hard?
Okay, now there’s a point.
Yeah, I know it’s fun to break pencils.
Yeah, so first off, let me go ahead and collect the pieces, just so that I don’t get Miss Sonia upset at me for making a mess down here.
It is splintery, and we don’t want anybody to get hurt, so I’ll take those pieces. Thank you; I am sorry for that. We’ll get that taken care of here in just a few minutes.
We’re not going to break any more pencils right now.
No, you can leave the rest behind me.
So it was easy to break one.
Yeah, it was kind of easy to break. Still doable, but it was harder.
Yeah, generally to break two pencils at one time, but three was very difficult.
Now think about this; you guys are each like a pencil.
Yeah, this is like you, and the second one is like your brothers and/or your sisters, you know, or three if you’ve got multiples, because I think we’ve got a group of all three right here.
And when you work together and help each other, you are stronger.
It is better for you to have somebody to help and to work with than it is to be by yourself.
And having three, we often think of that third as being God, as being Jesus.
Anything that we need is possible.
You know that Jesus will always be there to strengthen us, to guard us, and to bind us together.
So let’s go ahead and take a moment to pray, and then you guys can go down to Kids on Worship.
All right, Jesus, we thank you for the gifts of our families, for brothers and sisters, for friends, for people who help us be strengthened and hold together.
That you are the one who binds us, who glues us together, keeps us stuck but ultimately makes us stronger because everything we do with you and in you is something that is going to be strong and is going to last.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
Please join me in a word of prayer.
Father God, we come into your presence with thanksgiving.
We come to you because you have called us here.
We come because you ask us to join you and to meet you in this place, and because you want to be in a relationship with us.
You want us to be in a relationship with you, to bring our cares and concerns to you.
We pray for those who are absent from us this morning.
We pray for their safety and their well-being, for those who are traveling, those who are feeling poorly this morning.
And we give praises for those who have returned after a long absence.
We thank you for healings.
We thank you that you know that they desire to be reunited with us and that they have been allowed to and are able to be reunited here in this place in your body.
We pray for the people of this town.
There are many folks who are hurting, that they are struggling, whether it’s with emotional issues, financial issues, or other different kinds of social concerns.
Grant us wisdom and the means to live out your word and your way to help those in need, that we can help us when we are in need.
We pray for our police officers, for our firemen, for the people who work in the ambulances, in the hospitals, in the emergency rooms.
They have been given a very difficult job.
It is a stressful vocation.
It is demanding physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
We pray for them that you would bind up their hearts, that you would give them the strength to persevere every day as they go about their work because they are working for you.
Even those who don’t acknowledge you, they are still your agents being used to bring forth healing to protect others.
Let them all have the opportunity to see your light and come to know you and recognize that you are Lord as they minister to others and see Christ in them.
And let those who believe and those to whom they work and minister for let them see Christ in them.
Let us see Jesus in all of our steps, our comings and goings, everywhere we look.
Let us see him and see how he is working in this world, in our lives, and the lives of our community.
We pray this in the name of the one who taught us to pray by praying:
Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Our first scripture this morning picks up where we left off last week with a little bit of a as we saw last time and going on into Genesis chapter 2.
Please follow along on the screens because that will be a little bit easier this morning than trying to follow along in your Bibles, because we’re going to skip a little bit just to shorten things a little bit this morning.
So beginning back in Genesis chapter 1, verse 27:
“So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him; male and female, he created them.”
When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground.
And a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground.
Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed.
And out of the ground, the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food.
The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.”
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Now out of the ground, the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them.
And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.
The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field.
But for Adam, there was not found a helper fit for him.
So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept, took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.
And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.
Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.”
From there we turn to the Gospel of John, chapter 17, the words of Jesus:
“When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.
And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.
And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.
Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.
For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me.
I am praying for them.
I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.
All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.
And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.
Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me.
I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost, except the son of destruction that the scripture might be fulfilled.
But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world.
I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world just as I am not of the world.
Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.
And for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.
I do not ask for these only but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.
I have made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.”
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Sovereign Lord, we thank you that your Son Jesus, in his life doing all the work that you sent him to do, took the time to pray for us, each one of us here and now.
We thank you for this. We thank you for your word.
Let us now hear what you have to say to us, and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable and pleasing in your sight, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him; male and female, he created them.
What does it mean for us to be created in the image of God? Our possession of the imago Dei, the image of God, being made like God in the fashion of God in his likeness is foundational to who we are as human beings and critical to our understanding of what it means to be conformed to the image of Christ through our sanctification by the Holy Spirit.
The apostles Paul and Peter both tell us to not be conformed to the ways of the world, not to conform to our old sinful ways, the way we have been due to the fall, because of sin, which is not how we were made or created to be.
But to instead be restored to God’s intention for us through the finished work of Christ.
Because we have been changed.
Now we’re not yet to Genesis 3 — that’s next week — and we’ve not yet heard about the first sin and its consequences.
But when Moses wrote, “In the image of God he created him,” he was writing about our original intended condition of being very good, the way we were before we messed things up.
Fortunately, even though our sins have marred, ruined, damaged, injured, broken, and done great violence to the imago Dei within us and others, it has never been removed from us or destroyed.
A water-damaged painting is still a painting.
Now, fallen sinful folks like we are, we are still made in the image of God.
But what does it mean to be an image?
The Hebrew word here translated as image is ‘selam,’ and this is a different word than used for idols used in pagan worship. The given sense of the word is that of an accurate representation of the original or model possessing the same kind of attributes, being similar to the original but not an exact copy.
And particularly here as having the same spiritual, intellectual, and moral likeness to God but not a physical likeness, because God is spirit.
“Selam,” image, means a facsimile, a copy like the original but not the original.
It is representative of it, like a print of Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” which you might buy for 20 or 30 dollars at the store, good enough to hang on your wall or maybe put into a nice picture frame, but it is clearly not the master’s work.
The psalmist uses this word ‘selem’ twice in Psalm 39 and in 73.
“Surely a man goes about as a shadow and like a dream when one awakes. O Lord, when you rouse yourself, you despise them as phantoms,” likening and using “selem,” the image, to shadow and phantom, being similar, representative, and related to but lesser than the original.
I can’t help but think of Peter Pan’s shadow and its likeness.
So because we have been created and made in the image of God, we are endowed by our creator with attributes similar to his but not exactly the same as his, like his but to a much lesser degree.
We have been given dominion and authority over creation to rule over it for God, as God would will it.
But we do not possess the power or authority to have created it in the first place.
We have power, but only God is omnipotent, all-powerful.
We are here, right here in this sanctuary, in this place, present, but only God is omnipresent in all places and at all times.
We have knowledge and understanding, but only God is omniscient, knowing all things.
God is infinite while we are finite.
God is limitless while we are limited.
God is the creator while we are the created.
We are like God but not God, representative of God, but we are still not God.
Now, the attribute of God that we reflect, being made in his image, that we’ll focus on this morning, is his relational nature and our need for human relationships.
After God made man, God planted a garden.
Then he placed man into the garden to work it and keep it, meaning that man was to tend, nurture, help, and protect the garden.
Then the Lord said, “It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
Last week, though, we heard God say six times that during the week of creation that it was very good.
But now God says it is not good — not good because something was missing.
It was not yet very good because Adam was alone, without any companionship like him.
And this helper must be someone very special.
The word here is “ezer” (e-z-e-r), and aside from here, it is often used for God himself and for the people of Israel’s many historical, social, or political allies.
Not that these allies were much help, and it is not to be assumed that an ezer is either greater or lesser than the one being helped.
Instead, it’s our need for an ezer that emphasizes the insufficiency within us — within the one being helped when left on our own.
So after God had paraded all the animals before Adam and let him name them, there was not found a helper, an ezer, fit for him.
Being fit for him means to complement the one who completes him, filling in his gaps, picking up his slack.
So God made woman to be Adam’s ezer, his complement and equal — neither greater nor lesser, like him but different.
Together, having been formed from Adam’s rib, they, man and woman, make a singular whole.
So God created man in his own image.
In the image of God, he created him; male and female, he created them.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
There was evening, there was morning, the sixth day.
God said it was not good for Adam to be alone because the Lord God himself is not alone within the Godhead.
Adam needed to be in relationship with other creatures like him, other people.
Because within the Trinity, the Lord God is in a relationship: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
The sixth century creed named for Saint Athanasius tries to explain this relationship for us, saying:
“The Father was neither made nor created nor begotten; the Son was neither made nor created but was alone begotten of the Father; the Spirit was neither made nor created but is proceeding from the Father and the Son.
And in this Trinity, no one is before or after, greater or less than the other, but all three persons are in themselves co-eternal and co-equal.”
So we must worship the Trinity in unity, and the one God in three persons.
As all three persons within the Trinity are co-equal, so too are all people, male and female, one race.
All people are created to be equal, and just as we observe the different actions and works of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit within Scripture and out there in the world around us, so too will each man and woman differ in our functions and actions in life and in the ministry of the church.
Like God, we are made to live and work together in community, in relationships.
The poet John Dunn expressed this idea so well in a popular verse, writing:
“No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.”
See, the Lord God is in a relationship and in a community within Himself among all three persons.
Therefore, we were created to reflect that as a people, as His creation.
Because we are still made in the image of God, even when damaged and imperfect, we are not meant to be alone.
We need to be in relationships with others, our friends and family, husbands and wives, members within a believing congregation.
Other people are a gift to us, and we should be a gift to them.
But the rule today in our modern culture is disunity instead of community.
Our great enemy, Satan, and the sinful nature within us constantly work to divide us one from another, to divide and keep us separated from God, from Jesus, and his church.
So we must remain diligent and intentional about all of our relationships.
The apostle Peter wrote:
“Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”
And how do lions hunt?
Lions, like wolves, will chase the herd, the group, the community upon which they pray until they can separate one animal or person from the rest, remove them from the safety of their common defense, and then they will pounce and go on the attack.
Koheleth, the teacher Solomon, wrote in Ecclesiastes, “And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two might withstand him; a three-fold cord or three pencils are not quickly broken.”
There is safety and security when we are united together with others, united to the whole and not separate or alone.
And this togetherness and unity in relationships applies to both our lives in the world and in our spiritual lives.
Because the good news is we have a great hope and helper—not just because we have each other but because we have Jesus Christ, who is the one uniting us together.
He unites us to himself and into the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Now the Gospel of John, as a whole, is the most clear trinitarian book of the Bible, and in it we just see descriptions of the relationships between and the differing works of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And nowhere is this understanding more clear than across the upper room discourse of John chapters 13 through 17.
With Jesus discussing his imminent return to the Father and his future sending of the Holy Spirit to be our paraclete, our comforter, helper, and advocate to the disciples from himself and from the Father.
This unity and equality between God the Father and God the Son is repeatedly emphasized within our passage.
More so, Jesus prays for our unity, the unity of all believers, that we will be united in and with him and the Father; now and in heaven and in the world to come.
He prays that we will be united together in love and fellowship one to another as believers in him.
During this final Passover meal with his closest friends and disciples, Jesus has continued to teach them, revealing the truth of who he is in the most clear terms.
Philip asked, “Show us the Father,” to which Jesus replied, “If you’ve seen me, then you’ve seen the Father.”
And just immediately before our passage, the disciples finally started to truly understand him, saying, “Now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech,” to which Jesus responded, “Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come when you will be scattered, each to his own home and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.”
Continuing and concluding here with the point and purpose for our passage today:
“I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace.”
See, the unity and community that Jesus has with the Father and the Holy Spirit is our source of peace.
Peace—the true peace, shalom—is not the absence of conflict or of safety and freedom from fear but is, in its purest form, both simple and complex.
Shalom is wholeness, completeness; having a sense of harmony with each other and the divine, to whom we are united by the Holy Spirit.
Shalom is an attribute of God that we as his image also reflect, participate in, possess and enjoy.
Shalom is why it was not good for man to be alone.
We cannot experience shalom alone.
Now we often find it easy to focus on the many differences on our many differences, to allow them to divide us, to believe we have nothing in common with each other, whether it be our politics and other preferences or our different church denominations and other social groups.
We forget or ignore the greatest and most important commonality that we have as Christians: greater than the imago Dei, which we share with all people.
We forget that we are united in Christ with God, us and all believers in the Lord Yahweh, Jesus, all of the elect saints of the church back to Adam and Eve and forward to our children’s children until Christ returns and consummates his kingdom on earth.
Whatever Jesus prays for, we can be sure is answered, and is answered with a resounding yes.
In this prayer, he prays for himself, for his eternal glory — not for his sake but for ours — so that he might glorify his heavenly Father by his work on the cross and that we may join him glorifying our heavenly Father in obedience and worship as the Lord’s beloved, the adopted children of his sovereign will and choice.
Jesus prays for his disciples—for their faith and belief in him, for their faithfulness, offering thanksgiving for their past faithfulness and asking the Father for perseverance in their future, for their sanctification in and by the truth, which in who is Christ, that they be consecrated, made holy, by Christ’s consecration by, through, and in his holiness.
He prays that their joy will be his joy—the joy which God has in his people, in y’all, in his creation.
The joy that comes from the truth and not the despair which comes from the lies of the world.
Jesus prays for us, for all believers, his elect who were and are yet to come, that we would be blessed and believe in Christ by the hearing of the words of the apostles, of the words of the faithful disciples who came before us, through the passing on and down of his truth, which sanctifies us—that we will be glorified with him and those who came before us so that we may glorify the Lord forever, that we will experience his joy and enjoy him forever.
That we know that we are loved.
As the Father loves the Son, so too He loves us because we are united together with him as children of God.
Jesus prays that the love we receive from him is used and shown to others among us, in here and to those beyond us, there in the world.
He prays that by our loving others in our many relationships, that by our loving everyone, the world will know Christ is in us and we are in him — to know that the reason for our loving others is because Christ first loved us.
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.
Yes, they will know we are Christians by our love.
Without others, without one another, who can we love?
How can we love?
It is not good for man to be alone.
We need somebody like us to love.
We need someone like us to be loved by.
We need our ezra, and we need to be someone else’s ezer.
The Lord made us for relationships and to be in community.
He desires for us all to be in relationship with him and each other.
This is why God the Son, Jesus Christ, took on flesh, was born, lived, died, rose again, and ascended into heaven to restore us and bring us back into a right relationship with our Father.
As his children.
But to all who did receive Jesus, who believed in Christ’s name, Jesus gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood nor the will of the flesh nor the will of man but of God.
The Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit love one another, and the Lord loves you.
We are made to love others and be loved by others.
By loving others, we express the love the Lord has for us, and so doing, we express our love for Jesus.
Now, coming out of the season of COVID, when many of us have felt isolated or alone, many of us have unintentionally become islands.
But now it is time for us all to rejoin the mainland.
We have plenty of opportunities within our local community and in this congregation for us all to start to regather.
The Rotary Club is meeting again. Thank you, Mr. Davis, for inviting me. Friends are safely gathering together again for meals and restaurants.
Many community clubhouses are reopening for activities and hosting events.
Here we have been supporting People Helping People for a while now.
Perhaps some of us could do more than just bring groceries to church.
Perhaps some of you might want to deliver them to the mission downtown and then spend time visiting with folks.
The coffee hour following worship service is returning next week, and we need volunteers to sign up and provide the treats and serve during this time of fellowship.
It’s a great opportunity for different people to partner up and help each other and work together to lighten the load.
Many hands make light work.
We have the rummage sale coming up next month, and we still need people to help set things up, tear things down, and work the sale itself.
Everything we do, remember, with this rummage sale is a help for our local ministry.
This sale is not about raising money for the church; all the proceeds, I’m given to understand, go out to help others. Right, Mr. Anne?
Then we have our fellowship meals, which are resuming here in July.
Another reason to celebrate, and we’ll have more information and details about that coming soon.
Then, as we start living together and working together again in Christian fellowship and love, we can resume our discipleship in the faith, teaching and learning from one another, supporting and encouraging one another in our daily walks with Christ.
Joy in the Morning had been meeting on Tuesdays, but that’s on pause, and we’ll resume in the fall.
We’ve had the Sunday morning study going on back in the chapel there; I think that’s where it was, going through the apostle Paul’s letters, which is also currently on pause.
As Ms. Ashley mentioned, we have our new study group starting next month.
We decided to call ourselves the Spirit Seekers, and it’s meant for folks in our twenties, thirties, and maybe some in our forties, too.
So come see Carrie, Troyer, Ashley, or myself for more information if you’re interested.
Everybody’s invited; we’re really not discriminating on age, and then soon I plan on starting a midweek Bible study open to everyone here at the church.
We just need to decide on a time to start.
I need to know when y’all will come, and I’m sure that as time goes on, we will have even more opportunities.
So remember, you are made in the image of God.
You are made for this—made for building and strengthening our relationships in a God-honoring way for his glory and Christ’s kingdom.
We have a lot of work to do, and we cannot do it alone.
But the good news is the Lord has given us ezers to help, and he has made us to be ezers ourselves because he is our true ezer.
So go help and be helped.
Live together in community.
Strengthen your bonds of fellowship and faithful discipleship.
Develop your relationships in shalom and love.
You are made in God’s image.
You represent him.
Represent Christ to those around you.
Help them come into a greater relationship with you and our heavenly Father.
Introduce them to our relational Lord.
Amen.
Please stand as we affirm our faith with the words of the Apostles’ Creed:
“I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descended to hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
From thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.”
Our closing hymn is number 429, “They’ll Know We Are Christians.”
[Music]
So [Music]
And as you leave this place, leave together, say hi to people, and as you go, may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God our Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you now and always. Amen.
Go in peace.
[Music]