Bible Verse for Sunday Service January 05, 2025
Psalm 86:12
I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name forever..
Announcements:
On January 19th, right after church, we will have a potluck dinner, and after that the annual meeting. We will approve the budget, elect officers, and discuss the kitchen and bathroom remodeling plans.
Nominations for Church Officers are on the foyer table. Our deacons serve as the nominating committee, and their nominations for church offices are on the foyer table. You can make other nominations up to a week before the meeting. If you wish to to make a nomination, you can add a name to the list. Be sure to check with Pastor first, and also check with the person you wish to nominate.
After two weeks of Christmas and New Year’s break, the ladies Bible study, and AWANA will get back to their weekly schedule.
We encourage everyone to read through the Bible in a year. Schedules for that are on the back table, a variety of plans.
Sermon:
Today, Pastor Jim continued preparing us for a new pastor by preaching on Matthew 16:13-19 in a sermon he titled “Christ’s Connection to the Church.” We should have an appreciation for the Church from Christ’s perspective, that it is His church, and pastors work in the church with an appreciation for who He is, their guardianship of the church until he returns. Pastor explored this connection between Christ and the church in four points.
In considering this connection, Pastor first looked at the connection between the church and Christ’s person through these verses. Christ asked the disciples who people thought he was, and got a variety of incorrect answers. This illustrates that at the time of work on Earth, many people had incorrect ideas about him. But, Christ’s question, his second question to them garnered the correct answer, identified Him correctly as the Son of God. Having this starting point greatly eases our quest to see the connection between the church and Christ.
Put simply, the church is Christ’s possession. He purchased it with His blood as Paul told the Ephesian elders in Acts. So even if Pastor’s may speak of “my church.” That is not correct. It is Christ’s church. We see this too in what Jesus says to Peter after his confession that Jesus is God. Jesus credited that to God’s divine revelation to him to understand the truth about Jesus.
Next to review was the relationship between the Church and Christ’s program. Here some understanding of the Greek used in the Gospel is important. Christ had a play on words in responding to Peter’s confession of faith in Him. Peter’s name is a the Greek name for a small rock, a pebble. In addressing Peter, Christ used the Greek word for boulder or big rock, which also sounds like Peter’s name. Christ is telling Peter that on his confession of faith, He will build His church. He makes clear that the building is His work. Moreover, it is an ongoing work. Christ will build His church until He returns for her.
Lastly, Pastor asked us to consider the church and our privilege. The church continually invites the lost to believe in the one that God sent, His Son Jesus. Necessarily, this involves instructing in the truth. In other words, the church is continually binding and loosing by declaring God’s truth to all. So instead of conforming to the world, the realm of Satan, the church continually declares the truth of God’s word. With this in in mind, let us have a clear eyed understanding of what Jesus says in these verses and appreciate Him.
Accessing the Service, Bulletin and Sermon Outline:
Here are the pages from the bulletin, click on the images below to see them full size:
If you would like to have the sermon outline, you can download it here, a pdf file.
If you would like a link to this service you can find it here. Perhaps you would like to share it with your friends. You could also share that link on social media, if you use any of the providers. We use Rumble, a safe alternative to Google’s YouTube.