As you have already been reminded,
this is no ordinary Lord's Day in the life and ministry of the
Trinity Church. We've announced for several weeks
the fact that this Lord's Day would find us occupied with some
of the critical issues which presently are before us as a
congregation at this particular period in our history as a congregation
committed to obedience to the Word of God. And perhaps at no
point will the unique nature of this day be more evident than
what happens in the next hour. For generally, as our ordinary
course of ministry, we would be found tracing out a given
theme or passage or subject in the Word of God. We would be
examining texts of Scripture very carefully as to their God-intended
meaning. Having opened up the meaning
of the text, those texts would be applied to us in the various
areas of our life as individuals and as the people of God. But
that will not be our pattern this morning or this evening
because the unique nature of the concerns of this day dictates
not only a different structure to our service, which has been
obvious to all of you who frequent this place as a place of worship
but also in the point of emphasis in the study of the Word of God
itself. We will be occupied primarily
with a look at the past, an analysis of the present, and a brief projection
of the future concerning the Trinity Church. Now, why are
we doing this? Well, let me answer that question
briefly. First of all, negatively, we
are not doing this to promote ourselves. The Apostle said in
2 Corinthians 4 and verse 5, We preach not ourselves, but
Christ Jesus is Lord in ourselves, your slaves for Jesus' sake. One of the greatest compliments
of the right kind ever paid to me and to this congregation came
some time ago when someone wrote saying, I've listened, and I
believe he said, to several hundred of the Trinity pulpit tapes,
but he said, I feel I know so little about you as an individual
and about the church in terms of its history. Well, that was
a wonderful compliment, that there was that little of human
personality or of attention to the church. And so our purpose
this morning is certainly not to promote ourselves, nor is
it to glorify ourselves. God says in Isaiah 42 and verse
8, Jehovah is my name, my glory I will not give to another, neither
my praise to graven images. And we have no desire to engage
in blatant idolatry in this place this morning. It would be nothing
less than an open prostitution of the nature of Christian worship.
And so I have no desire to promote ourselves as a church, nor to
glorify ourselves, nor, thirdly, to congratulate ourselves. Our
history is a history of sin, a history of failure, a history
of stumbling. And if there is anything of any
worth, it is because God has proven Himself to be a God of
grace. So that when we read in 1 Corinthians 4, 7, what hast
thou that thou didst not receive, our reflex response is, Lord,
nothing that's worth anything. Anything that's worth anything
is received. Well, if our goal then is not
to promote ourselves, to glorify ourselves, or to congratulate
ourselves, what justification can there be for taking the time
that is normally given to careful exposition and application of
the Word of God to engage in a historical survey of a bunch
of sinners? Well, my purpose is first of
all that we may together magnify God for His mercy to us. You
remember the Apostle Paul said in Romans 15, verses 5 and 6,
these words that have very cogent application to us today, Now
the God of patience and comfort grant you to be of the same mind
one with another, according to Christ Jesus, that ye may with
one accord and one mouth glorify the God and Father, of our Lord
Jesus Christ. And the great purpose for engaging
in the kind of things that we will engage in today is that
we may together magnify God for His grace and mercy to us as
a people. But then secondly, we're engaging
in these things today that we may together understand our corporate
identity and responsibilities. In Ephesians 5, 17, the Apostle
says, Be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
In other words, it is the responsibility not only of individual Christians,
but of the Church, to have a clear consciousness of the will of
God. And in a very real sense, that
consciousness will be determined by an understanding of our identity
as a people of God. What is it that God has made
us? And as we understand the answer
to that question, we shall more fully understand the answer to
the question, what does our God require and demand of us? So then, my purpose in covering
this ground is that we may together glorify God for His mercy, that
we may together understand our corporate identity and responsibilities,
and thirdly, that we may together commit ourselves with renewed
zeal to the fulfillment of our stewardship. The Apostle writes
to the Philippian church and exhorts them that if there is
any consolation in Christ, that they be of the same mind, that
nothing be done through strife or faction. In other words, he
was concerned that the church would be of one heart and soul
in the fulfillment of its God-given purposes. And it is my concern
and the concern of your elders and of your deacons that there
may at this critical point in our history be a renewed commitment
to our God-given tasks, and that will not be realized unless there
is a common consciousness of what God has done for us as the
people of God. Well, having set the field of
why we're doing what we are doing, now let's proceed to the doing
of it. And what I shall do is, first of all, set before you
a compendium of the past. Having done that, we shall then
stand and sing a hymn of praise that I trust will express our
loving and joyful response to God for what He has done for
us as a people. Then we'll be seated and have
points two and three. in our consideration this morning,
which will be comprised of an analysis of the present and a
projection of the future. First of all, then, a compendium
of the past. Now, some of you say, there you
go, Pastor Martin, using big words when you could use little
ones. Well, not really. And if I use big words, I usually
explain And compendium is the best word to describe what I
propose to do. A compendium is a summary containing
the essential information in brief form. So we are not having
a mere review of the past. We'd be here long after one o'clock
and only would have begun that review. But I have spent hours
to discipline my own understanding of that past to constitute this
review a compendium, and I will therefore stick much more closely
to my notes than I normally do, because at any given point, if
I allow myself the luxury of tearing myself away from them,
out of the storehouse of knowing many, many more things that I
believe would be edifying if shared, will not get through
what I hope to get through, and therefore not realize our goals. So you forgive me if I stick
more to my notes. I hope this will not be tedious,
but unto your edification. A compendium of the past. Now sixteen and a half years
of history condensed into a half an hour is no little task, or
to condense sixteen and a half years of history. A few weeks
ago you heard from this pulpit that history is the transcript
of God's decree. History is the transcript of
God's decree. That the providence of God is
the visible commentary of the secret purposes of God. And I'm
assuming that in the giving forth of this history, that behind
everything that has transpired, the ultimate cause is the gracious
design of a sovereign God. But our attention will not be
upon that fact, but upon the transcript. What is it that God
has revealed of His decrees as He has dealt with us as a congregation? And as I labored at trying to
come up with some kind of a teaching device that would hold the material
together, I thought very naturally of the analogy of conception,
gestation, birth, infancy, adolescence and maturity. And so I'm going
to use that basic framework as we look back now at this compendium
of the past. Let's consider first of all the
conception of the Trinity Church. And that conception occurred
in the spring of 1962. That sounds like ancient history
for some of you. When God brought together a discouraged,
disillusioned congregation of some 40 to 60 people and a young
itinerant preacher who had a home base in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Now let me tell you a little
bit about these two factors which, when brought together, resulted
under the blessing of God in the conception of the Trinity
Church. First of all, a word about that
congregation. It was identified with an evangelical
denomination which, among many things that could be said in
a very positive way, has as one of its more negative characteristics
a history of short pastoral residence. I believe it averages about three
years that its pastors are resident in the various congregations.
Now, within the space of a year, this particular congregation
had been bereft of two pastors. One man had been there, I believe,
about eight years, and there was a church fuss, and he left,
and there was a major exodus, and then another man came, and
he left in eleven months. simply because the people got
tired of a diet of charts from the book of the Revelation week
after week, and when he'd gone through his charts, he had nothing
more to say. Now this particular congregation
was therefore in a state of discouragement, of great despondency, and some
even bordering on cynicism, saying, is this all Christianity can
do? Bring people to fusses that result
in churches splitting? and then having ministers who
do not feed the flock of God. Well, that in a very, very short
compass is a description of the congregation. Now, a word about
the preacher. He was at this time involved
in a traveling ministry of evangelism and Bible teaching. He had been
engaged in this kind of ministry for about five years. And while
he was waiting for his next series of meetings in eastern Pennsylvania,
He was working for a fellow preacher friend about 30 miles from here.
And that preacher friend had started an independent gospel
testimony, and the church had bought retreat grounds of a Catholic
organization which had on it not only a house and a chapel,
but a barn. And they were making that barn
into a youth center. And there was a large concrete
bullpen that was going to be made into the bathroom facilities. But the problem was, there was
years of hardened manure all over that bullpen that needed
to be removed before they could put in the plumbing. And this
particular preacher asked this young preacher who had two weeks
between meetings if he'd like to earn a little money, and he
said yes. So for $15 a day, he was soaking and removing manure
from a bullpen in order honorably to provide for his family. Well,
when one of those weekends of the two weeks came, the preacher
who was starting the work 30 miles from here said to the young
preacher, my home church up there in northern Jersey is without
a pastor. They've gone through some real
problems, and they sometimes have trouble getting pulpit supplies.
If they don't have a supply for the next weekend, will you go
and preach to them? I said, well, gladly. Oh, you know who the
young preacher is now. So I'll no longer remain anonymous. I
slipped. That's what happens when I don't
stick to my notes. So in April of 1962, this preacher made his
way to this church in Essex County to preach on the Lord's Day.
And as he prayed about what he should preach, he reasoned this
way. Well, if the church has gone through these kinds of trials,
it's probably because it's in the condition that he had seen
many churches were in, in traveling around the country for five years.
Bereft of any clear teaching on the nature of what a real
Christian is, bereft of any solid teaching on the nature of the
church, the kingship of Christ over his people. And I reasoned
this way. If Jesus says, as you would that
others should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them, what
would I want some visiting preacher to say if I was going to come
in and pastor that church? And so I decided what I would
do is preach in the morning from Luke 14 verses 25 to 33 on what
is a real Christian. If they're not straight on that,
they won't be straight on anything. And then in the evening on this
question, why should the head of the church give you people
a pastor? And I figured I'm going to be there for one day. The
worst they can do is not give me my traveling expenses. And
so I dumped everything on them in one day, triggering I dump
my load and go back to the bullpen and then on to my meetings. Well,
in a very strange and wonderful way, That day in April 1962,
the Trinity Church was conceived. For at the conclusion of the
evening meeting, there was a hastily called meeting of the official
board, which was constituted of elders and deacons. And subsequent
to that hastily called meeting, before I could make my way back
to the place where I was staying and go back to scraping manure
in the morning, An overture was put forth, would I consider coming
for a week of meetings in the month of June and then stay through
June, July, and August as stated supply for the pulpit until I
went back into the itinerant ministry in September? Well,
I did not immediately respond to that overture, but after prayerfully
considering it and other factors that are marvelous tokens of
providence that I must simply pass over, In June of 1962, I
came with my wife and my 18-month-old son, and that was the extent
of our family then, to a sparsely furnished parsonage with bits
and pieces of different kinds of furniture, ostensibly to preach
for a week of meetings, to supply the pulpit for the summer, and
then to go on my way. Well, after a couple of weeks,
the official board began to put forth some overtures with respect
to whether or not I would consider staying on as pastor. And I discouraged
those overtures. I said, you want to court a while
more before we start throwing wedding rings around and giving
proposals. And so several more weeks passed,
after which I consented to the consideration of becoming their
pastor. Well, again, passing over much
that is indicative of the goodwill of God, there was the decision
made to call me as pastor in the month of July, and then in
1962, in the fall, all of my belongings were moved with my
family to this area and the Trinity Church was indeed conceived. All right, now then we move very
quickly to the period of gestation. And gestation is the period of
development in the womb prior to birth. The Trinity Church
was not born yet. There was conception, but there
had to be a period of gestation. As surely as there is a period
from From conception to birth in human experience, so often
when God is giving birth to a church, this is also true. Now, during
this period of gestation, several issues began to come into very
sharp focus. First of all, the issue of the
nature and fruits of true conversion. The first systematic preaching
through any large section of the Word of God in which I engaged
with the congregation was the book of 1 John, dealing with
the birthmarks of a true Christian. If we say, but we do not, we
lie. Hereby do we know if, and those
passages began to be very real to us as a congregation, It was
at that time that I first preached through the parable of the sower,
which opens up so clearly the nature of a true and saving response
to the gospel in contrast to a mere apparent or surface response
to the gospel. It was during this period of
gestation that we saw from the Sermon on the Mount, the next
major expository exercise in which we engaged as a congregation,
we saw the abiding validity of the law of God, the unity of
the Old and the New Testaments, the spirituality of true discipleship,
the great concerns of the heart. These things began to be burning
issues to us. And I shall never forget the
thrill that came when one of the deacons came to me and said,
Pastor, I think I'm beginning to see why the denomination that
we're a part of emphasizes the second work of grace. It's because
they do not understand the nature of the first. And different ones
began to see that and to appreciate the magnitude and the efficacy
of God's work of regeneration. The third area that began to
come into focus was the regulative authority of Scripture in the
areas of worship and methodology and church government and church
life. I brought with me out of the
itinerant ministry many trappings of a past that was encumbered
with many traditions of men. And one by one, those traditions
began to come under the scrutiny of the Word of God in my own
life and in the life of the congregation. And there was a humorous but
helpful little teaching device that came to the fore many times. When we would begin to do something
and one of the men would say, but pastor, we never did that
before, or we've always done it this way. I would smile and
say, oh, we've all become Roman Catholics. When did that happen?
Oh, what do you mean? We're not Catholics? I said,
we're not? You're bringing forward as a
reason for doing something or not doing it, tradition. That's Roman Catholic theology,
that we have the Bible and tradition. to give us light in the path
of doctrine and duty. Oh, well, I wasn't thinking of
it that way, Pastor. I said, all right, let's begin
to think that way. And the mentality began to develop in the congregation
in that period of gestation that we had no right to say we believe
in the plenary, verbal inspiration of Scripture, and then willfully
put on blinders to many sections of the Word of God. that we had
to bring all of life under the scrutiny of this book, no matter
how painful that process might be. And so a key issue came into
very sharp focus in that period of gestation while we were still,
as it were, the embryo before coming to birth in our present
identity. And that issue was simply stated
in these words, and it was common verbal coinage amongst us. Wherever
the hand of Scripture leads us, we must follow. Then in this
further period of gestation, several other issues began to
be clear. The nature of God's grace in
salvation, a series of sermons that has been a great help to
many people from the testimony that has come to us, fourteen
or seventeen sermons on the sovereignty of God. Those sermons were preached
fifteen years ago. It was in this period of gestation
that the church began to appreciate that if salvation is so mighty
a work, old Adam isn't up to it on his own. And it is God
who must do this work, and if he does it, he does it on purpose.
And that purpose is eternal. And we were led then into those
wonderful biblical truths that now seem so obvious to us in
such chapters as John 6 and John 17 and Ephesians 1 and Romans
8 and 9, the glorious truths of salvation by grace, grace
with its taproots in election, grace with its sending of the
sun to redeem his people, grace that quickens and brings us to
life, grace that, having put us in the way, will keep us to
the end. And then, in that further period
of gestation, another issue began to be very plain to us, the nature
and necessity of biblical church order. The church had not Up
till then, engaged in serious discipline and watch-care over
its members, there had not been much attention to the nature
of true and God-honoring worship. And so certain things began to
drop out of our worship. Certain things began to be included,
not because we had a tradition to which we were conforming,
but because the pressure of the Word of God was upon us. And
then in the whole matter of having a consistent witness, we began
to feel uncomfortable that one thing was being preached from
the pulpit, but another thing was being preached by the missionaries
whom we were supporting. And various members of the congregation
began to come to the elders and say, how can this be? We're preaching
and establishing this from the pulpit, but we're tearing it
down out there on the mission field. And there was that growing
awareness that there was this tension between the direction
that the scripture was leading us and the framework within which
we were operating. Now, at the same time, the denomination
of which we were a part was in the process of adopting, for
the first time in its history, a formal doctrinal platform,
an eleven-point doctrinal statement which would be binding on all
its churches and its ministers. Well, then it became increasingly
clear to me and to the more discerning members of the church that we
as a people of God and the denomination were moving in opposite directions. I spoke to the denominational
authorities about this tension, not wanting to be unethical,
even in the interest of truth, and they assured me there was
no problem, that I could just gloss over the areas of difference,
and I did not feel comfortable with it. Well, you see, the period
of gestation was now coming to the period of birth pains. And
I want to read, very briefly, from a statement that went out
shortly after the birth of the Trinity Church that gives you,
as it were, an intimate acquaintance with those birth pains. In the
fall of 1966, several wonderful doors of ministerial opportunity
were opened to me personally. Two rather large and influential
churches were seeking my services as a pastor, and the leaders
of a well-known Bible school in Canada were asking me to consider
affiliation with them. Knowing that it would be evil
to forsake a congregation, I felt it would be a greater evil for
me to cause any kind of division or church split. In December
of 1966, I informed the district superintendent of the denomination
that I would be terminating my relationship with the denomination
and subsequently with the church in this area, and that I would
like an opportunity to explain to him and to the district committee
the reasons for this decision. Well, the man met with me in
January of 1967, at which time I explained my reasons for desiring
to leave the denomination and, with reluctance, the church in
this area with which I was identified. When the board met on the second
Monday of January 1967, its regular monthly board meeting, I explained
briefly why I was submitting my resignation. They requested
that I leave the room. Thirty-five minutes later, they
called me back and informed me that they had drafted a statement
to the effect that they were willing to follow the whole counsel
of God's truth, even if it meant severing their relationship with
the denomination. The board members then asked
me if their feeling was any reflection of the general feeling of the
congregation, would I consider remaining on as their under-shepherd,
even if it meant we had to leave the buildings and property and
begin to meet elsewhere. In the light of what I conceived
to be the scriptural principles governing the call of man of
God to an assembly of God's people, I felt I could do no other than
to say that I would remain with the flock of God that called
me by a unanimous call if it was their mind to retain me as
their pastor. At that time I made known that
there were other doors of ministry open, but that the thing that
would determine my decision was not the largeness of potential
ministry, but the clear conviction of the call of God to His people. And at the risk of some who have
come perhaps to carp, I'll give you some fuel with which to carp.
That decision was no easy decision to make. And I can remember the
Tuesday morning when on my face before God, the issue was settled. I knew that if the congregation
were to retain me in the eyes of the denomination, I'd be called
underhanded, I'd be called a church splitter, and I would go for
many years without accusation. hung around my neck. Furthermore,
there were considerations of a personal nature. The church
that was very interested in calling me had just built a 750-seat
auditorium, perfect for our needs right now. They had a daily radio
broadcast. They offered to give me an adequate
salary to purchase my own house, to help me with the down payment,
to put a credit card in my pocket to which I would assign all of
my gas bills and never have to pay another nickel for gas. It
was a wonderful opportunity spiritually, economically, monetarily, in
all of those things. But I can say to the praise of
God that when those men said, if our thinking reflects the
congregation, will you stay? There was no question as to what
my duty was and what my course of action would be. And then
the issue was wrestled through in terms of what will this mean,
where will my family have a roof over its head, and all of the
rest, and those issues were settled. And then in the good providence
of God, several weeks later at a specially called congregational
meeting, the members and adherents of that church voted by a vote
of 60 to 2. with seven abstentions to continue
to recognize me as their pastor and to be willing to do whatever
had to be done to continue as a Church of Jesus Christ. And
so, in a real sense, from conception way back in the spring of 1962
through four and a half years of gestation on January 24, 1967,
the Trinity Church was born, with no building, having
left what would now be worth about a half a million dollars
in land and property, no parsonage, no savings, no meeting place,
but with a burning conviction, and I don't know what else to
call it but that, a burning conviction of the need to see formed in
this area an assembly where the crown rights of Jesus would be
acknowledged a framework where obedience to Christ was possible,
where his word could be preached and obeyed without the pressure
of man-made traditions. It was that conviction, born
in the heart of a teaching elder and implanted in the hearts of
a few discerning men and the rank and file of about 50 or
60 people, that resulted under the blessing of God in the birth
of this congregation. Now having looked briefly at
the conception, the period of gestation, the birth, what were
the marks of the infancy of the Trinity Church? What were the
predominant characteristics of the Trinity Church in its infancy? Well, I want to say before I
point you in that direction that no one gave us a manual This
is a manual of what an ideal Reformed Baptist Church ought
to be. For one thing, the words Reformed
and Baptist would have been talking in tongues to most of us. Those are terms that many of
you hear and use and they convey something, but to us they would
have conveyed virtually nothing at that time. There was that
conviction that everything needful for life and godliness was in
the Scriptures. and that the Spirit of God had
implanted in our hearts a desire to be obedient to the Word, but
then we were led by the hand of God along a path that we never
saw clearly marked out. And what I've done in the past
two weeks is I've taken all the official church records that
go way back to 67, every board meeting, every congregational
meeting, and I've read it carefully, read all that material carefully.
And I've tried to glean those outstanding characteristics that
come through again and again and again in that chronicle of
God's dealings with us. And I'll merely touch on each
of them briefly and give you an illustration or two. What
were then the marks of the infancy? If you take a picture of yourself
when you were a child, you say, well, I had chubby cheeks, or
I had puffy eyes, or I had the floppy ears. Well, what were
the marks of this assembly in its infancy? Well, number one,
the centrality of systematic exposition and application of
the scriptures as the backbone of the church and its total life. the centrality of systematic
exposition and application of the Word of God as the structural
backbone for everything else. It was in that first year after
the birth of the Trinity Church that 1 Thessalonians was examined
verse by verse right through in the mornings. In the evening,
Psalm 51 was preached through. Furthermore, it was in that first
year that twenty messages on the nature of the Church were
given to the congregation. And the predominant emphasis
in our corporate visible life was this centrality of the systematic
exposition and application, and I dare not omit that second word,
exposition and application of the Word of God as the structural
backbone of all of our life. Then secondly, another mark of
our infancy was a vision and commitment to missionary outreach
and concern. The first steering committee
meeting notes record four items of business. And you know what
one of the four was? that we shall tie our total income
from the outset and give it to missionary concerns beyond the
local church and then three such concerns are named in the first
steering committee notes. from the beginning and then as
you read through the record again and again something like this
will occur. It was noted that our total income
has been increased X number of dollars per month. It was decided
that the tithe of that amount should go to this particular
missionary project and then the record of appeals that came from
various parts of the world in terms of temporal as well as
spiritual need and from the very outset this vision of our involvement
with the people of God beyond the confines of our own assembly.
In the first year of our existence, before we had a building, had
a building fund or anything, we used a church in Denville
to commission one of our members who had graduated from seminary
to go out and start a work out in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. So
in a sense, it was a thing that would be unheard of in the physical
realm, that a year-old child had a baby. And we were privileged
to be a part of the work of God that has begun and by the grace
of God remains to this day in Hazleton. Well, there was a third
characteristic in our infancy. It was this. Tangible efforts
to reach our own community with the gospel. The church records
indicate that before a building was even mentioned in any of
the discussion that is recorded in the notes, Schemes were set
afoot to bring the gospel of the grace of God to our own Jerusalem. Before we had the building on
Runnymede Road, systematic visitation of the area around the Jefferson
School was done by men who had a peculiar gift for this type
of ministry. And so there were efforts to
reach our own community. Fourthly, there were practical
diaconal services rendered to our own people. The record sets
forth standing involvement with some of our number who, because
of unusual illness, needed constant supplemental income out of the
treasury of the church. Now this kind of thing, you see,
is never made known publicly. It's not discreet and proper
to do so. But in saying what were the characteristics
of the assembly, I underscore this because it shows how utterly
unfounded is the accusation sometimes made. Well, that's just a preaching
center. There's no body life, a term
which I utterly despise. There's no involvement with one
another. From the very inception, there
is the record of the most practical kind of involvement. When someone
was laid off, the record shows that X amount of dollars was
given to so-and-so because he was laid off. And needs of the
people of God in a tangible way were responded to by the people
of God. Then there was a fourth mark
of our infancy. And it's what I'm calling the
cultivation of fellowship with like-minded churches. I shall
read this brief letter that came to us from Pastor Chantry, directed
to Mr. Dixon, dated March 10, 1967. The baby was just two months
old here. It's a great pleasure to send this check to Trinity
Church. A few days ago, we didn't know
the name of your assembly, so we made the check out to you
personally, knowing you'd be willing to deposit this amount
in your church's account. So it tells us two things, that
they had confidence in Mr. Dixon's integrity, making the
check out to him, and that we didn't even have a name yet.
We had life and existence, but no name. We've often thanked
God for your fellowship in the gospel. Your ministry to us,
especially through your pastor, is deeply appreciated. Our people
have expressed a sincere desire to become acquainted with other
members of your church, and many suggest ways that this might
be done. Our church stands with you in prayer and are ready to
assist you as God shall enable us. We're encouraged by your
clear stand for Bible doctrine and your example of vital piety. May our Lord use you as vessels
to pour out of his spirit in the Caldwell area. Your brethren
in Christ at Carlisle. And so that fellowship with that
assembly and others of like mind was a fellowship, again, that
we did not program. It was not imposed upon us by
some denominational structure. It was the result of the good
hand of our God upon us in grace. And then a sixth area that marked
our state of infancy, serious concern for church order and
church discipline. Much of the record indicates
a careful, prayerful, painstaking process of drafting a constitution,
a standard for membership, the delineation of the functions
of elders and deacons, how they shall be recognized. And it was
in that first year that we had our first painful experience
of corrective discipline. And some of us can remember how
utterly unfit we felt for that. We'd been in churches, some of
us, for thousand years and had never witnessed the case of loving,
firm, biblical discipline. What a tragedy. But it was our
tragic experience. And God began to lead us again,
not because we had a tradition inherited, but we saw this in
the Word of God. And though we did it tremblingly
and fearfully, and much of it no doubt awkwardly, there was
the conviction, how can we claim to be subjects of King Jesus? and put our hand over Matthew
18 as though it doesn't exist. Put our hand over 1 Corinthians
5 as though it doesn't exist. Put our hand over 2 Thessalonians
2 as though it doesn't exist. We said no. Though everything
in us recoils, we must be obedient. And some of us can relive that
pain and get the joy and the knowledge that the Lord would
smile upon our faltering efforts to be obedient to Him. Well,
then there was a seventh mark of our state of infancy. It was
what I'm calling the vision for an involvement in preparing men
for the ministry. Again, the records show before
we had a building, or anything in the records says we were concerned
about getting a building, we were taking on young men at various
stages of development and giving them what we called an apprenticeship
relationship. where they could live and work
and labor amongst us and assess their gifts and graces, there
was this concern that if we do indeed believe that what God
has done is scriptural, then we must not be selfish. We must
have a vision that in other places throughout the world there be
not a reproduction of Trinity Church, no, but that there be
the implementation of biblical principles. in these places where
the word of God was needed. And so that vision began to develop
very early and find tangible expressions. And then the eighth
area that marked us in our infancy was the beginnings of the tape
ministry. It's amusing to read such remarks
as these, and I quote now from the steering committee meetings
of October 11, 1967. It was agreed to purchase 50
1,200 foot tapes and 12 1,800 foot tapes. And that was a big
item of business that had to go into the official record.
Or we read from the board meeting notes of October 1970, quote,
it was requested that the board investigate the matter of setting
up a cassette purchasing library to increase the outreach of this
ministry. Or the annual report for 1971
reads as follows. This past year, about 200 tapes
were sold, with two to eight messages on each tape. Approximately
400 tapes were sent from the lending library. And then this
cryptic remark, we envision that God is going to do even greater
things through tapes in the future. But you see here again, no one
sat down at the drawing board and said, in 1979 we anticipate,
or 1978, 35,000 to 40,000 tapes to 60 countries and all that.
No, no, no, no. God was just nudging us along
in our infant state as we sought to be obedient to the principles
of His Word. And then the final area that
marked us in our infancy was the wider ministry of the Church
through one of its teaching elders. It's a very significant thing
that it was two months after the birth of the Trinity Church
and the price that was paid by its pastor and its people that
the first significant door of opportunity to preach to groups
of preachers was given to one of its teaching elders. It was
three months later that the ministry at the Lester Ministers Conference
that has opened up such a door of Catholic spirit for all of
us as a Church. It was those early months after
the birth of the Church that the ministry of the Church in
this wider way through one of its teaching elders began to
be given as a stewardship from the Lord. Now I repeat as I close
this all too brief survey, this compendium of the past, that
these were not things that we placed on the drawing board and
then fabricated, but with the conviction that Christ was head
and the word was sufficient and the only rule of faith and practice,
seeking to walk in light as light was given. failing and sinning
and balking and hedging. And in spite of all our weaknesses
and failures, God was molding, as it were, this assembly in
its infancy. And these things were the predominant
characteristics. And what can we say in the face
of this? Well, some of us who have been privileged to be part
of this history from its beginning, we can only say in the language
of 1 Samuel 7 and verse 12, hitherto, hath the Lord helped us. Now let us move from this compendium
of the past to a brief, or I should say a more brief, analysis of
the present. And here again I want to qualify
what I will say. Everything that is said under
this heading of an analysis of the present I trust is said with
the painful awareness of my own sin and failure in our sin as
a body of God's people. With the consciousness that we've
not yet attained, none of us can say we've arrived, we have
not arrived as a church. I would say what is said with
the confession, clear confession and acknowledgement that we are
not the only true church, either in this community in this state,
in this nation, or in the world. You heard me pray this morning
and often pray in this place for every true church that meets
at this time, in this community, and throughout the world. And
it pains me that in spite of making that clear qualification,
there'll be some who go out with a disaffected spirit and say,
clearly talk like they're the only people who got the truth.
My friend, we have no such silly notion, none whatsoever. nor
do we feel we've attained, nor do we feel we're indispensable.
God could let a bomb drop here this morning and blast Trinity
Church in terms of its constituents off the face of the earth, and
it wouldn't cause a twitch in the purposes of King Jesus. We
have no sense of perfection, we have no sense of exclusiveness,
and we have no sense of indispensability. We do and ought to have a conscious
sense of identity and of mission. If we don't, hold up! Let's disperse
and go elsewhere. There's an awful lot of time
and energy and money funnels through this thing. This entity
called the Trinity Baptist Church, and if there is no identity and
is no mission, And for the sake of sheer stewardship of time
and money, let's disband. And so fully conscious of failure
and sin, fully and unreservedly confessing that we are not the
only church, and that we are not indispensable, yet there
is an identity that God has given to us. And we who call this our
church home ought to understand that identity, and to the extent
that it is scripturally framed, we ought to be intelligently
informed as to the nature of that identity and wholeheartedly
committed to the cause of that identity. Well then, what are
we as a church? What are our features in this,
our state of adolescence? May I be safe in saying we've
at least moved out of infancy into pre-adolescence anyway? If we're not a teen, maybe we're
pre-teens. God alone knows where we are.
But let me underscore in six areas our identity. Number one,
in our corporate worship. In our corporate worship, we
are a body of God's people committed to the fundamental axiom that
God desires and will receive from His people only that worship
which He requires. Now, do you hear me? Are those
more than words? In our corporate worship, we
as a people are identified by this very deep conviction that
we dare not bring to God in worship anything that He has not required.
1 Peter 2.5 says we are built together to be a spiritual house,
to be a spiritual priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices
to God acceptable through Christ. And it is God who designates
those sacrifices. Therefore, there is both simplicity
and seriousness in our worship. Why is our worship in our corporate
life structured the way it is? Well, granted, there are incidentals
as to time, tombs, and certain elements of what we would call
the rubric of our worship that are conditioned by culture, and
properly so. But in terms of the essential
elements, why is it that in our worship prayer is central? Why is it that the singing of
psalms and of theologically correct hymns is the only medium of expressing
our gratitude to God. Why is it that preaching is central? Why do we not have the other
trappings that so often characterize public worship in evangelical
churches? It is because of a conviction
that we dare not present to God in worship anything but that
which He requires. And that is no little part of
our identity. For we live in a day when people
have assumed that if you're sincere and earnest, you can bring whatever
you think God would like in His worship. But God calls that will-worship. And He says in the language of
the prophet, Who hath required this at your hands? And if God
were to thunder in the midst of our singing a psalm this morning
and say, Who hath required this at your hands? We could say,
Lord, thou hast. You have said that we are to
praise you with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs. You have
said, Come before your presence with singing. Enter into your
gates with thanksgiving and into your courts with praise. And
if He said, Who's required this corporate prayer? For the needs
of the church and the needs of the world and the spread of the
gospel, we could say, Lord, You have. For You've said in 1 Timothy
2, I will that prayers, intercessions, supplication, giving of thanks
be made for all men. And it's a wonderful thing to
worship in the confidence that we bring to God that which He
requires and that which He will graciously receive through Christ.
So you see, there is, in the first place, this identity of
our corporate worship with respect to the whole matter of our worship
being simple, our worship being serious. But then, secondly,
in our preaching and teaching, our identity is to be understood
in terms of our view of teaching and preaching. We are committed
to an attempt Notice, I said an attempt, to obey the apostolic
injunction to preach the Word, to follow the pattern of the
apostles in declaring the whole counsel of God. We believe that
God meant what He said when He said, Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceeded from the mouth of God.
We believe, 2 Timothy 3.16, that all Scripture is God breathed
and is profitable. This is why the Bible is read
in systematic order, Lord's Day morning, Lord's Day evening.
This is why there is consecutive teaching in the Sunday school
and in the church services. This is why we are concerned
as a pillar and ground of the truth, 1 Timothy 3, that truth
proclaimed and expounded and applied be central to our life. If we are sanctified by the truth,
then truth must be central to our corporate life. So with respect
to content, manner, and goal, we have an identity in the area
of preaching and teaching. Content, we seek to be true to
the whole of Scripture. And when the Scripture teaches
hard things with regard to the mysteries of divine sovereignty,
we don't push them under the rug and say, well, that's for
theologians, that confuses people, that upsets them, I believe it,
but we won't preach it. In preaching through Ephesians,
when we come to verse 3 of chapter 1, He blessed us with all spiritual
blessings in Christ. We point to Christ as the fountainhead
of all blessing, and we do not have any reservation in declaring
Christ is all. But when we come to verse 4 and
the first of those blessings is described, even as He chose
us in Him, I do not sneak onto the pulpit and whisper there,
He chose us in Him. Now let's get on to verse 6. If it is declared with open face
and full voice, He blessed us in Christ, it will be declared
with equal openness of face and vigor of voice, even as He chose
us in Him. And so, as to content we seek
to preach, The things that even are hard things. And then when
we come to those passages that say, how shall we call on him
whom they have not heard? How shall we hear without a preacher?
We don't stick our head under the pulpit and say evangelism
is not necessary. God will save his elect somehow. No, we're not hypers. We believe
evangelism is essential. that without preaching men will
not be saved. And so we're not embarrassed
if the text warrants election in the morning and evangelism
in the evening, or in the same breath. We're not going to be
wiser than God. So in the content of our preaching
there is an effort, an effort to be honest with the Word of
God as it's given to us. Then in the manner, it's serious. Now, we don't believe that humor
was born in hell. God gave us the capacity to laugh.
And therefore, we do not believe that humor is sinful and should
never be found in the worship or ministry of the Word. But
the overall climate of our handling of the Word of God is not carnal
jocularity. It's serious. Why? Because the
Scripture says, to this man will I look even to him who trembles
at my word. And so we're serious about the
Bible. When this pulpit is occupied by an officially recognized teacher
or preacher, Bibles are open on laps and you're told again
and again, don't believe it unless you see it with your own eyes
in the book. But if you see it there, you better believe it.
As to the manner, serious. The manner, systematic. God didn't
just take all his thoughts and put them together like hash and
dump them in a book. His thoughts come to us in trains of thought,
in connections of thought, and therefore the manner of teaching
is not only serious, but systematic. You're taken through the thread
of a writer's argument. You're taken through the connection
of God's truth. And then the end is holiness
of life. That's why the truth is always
applied. We don't leave it hanging up here as something lovely to
look at, and as it goes by you admire it. Isn't that lovely?
Look at that. Isn't that beautiful? The truth that you're looking
at suddenly turns at you and develops barbs. And then it comes
and it takes hold of you where you are, where you live, what
you do and don't do on your dates. What you do and don't do in the
living room. What you do and don't do with your money and
your savings account. Why? Because the end for which
God gave His truth was the perfecting of His people in holiness. And
so the manner of the teaching and preaching here is serious,
systematic. The end, holiness of life, so
it's applied. Well, then there's a third area
of our identity as a people of God in our worship. We bring
to God only that which he requires. In our teaching and preaching,
content, manner, and end, we've covered. Thirdly, in our shared
life as the people of God, we believe that as a body of God's
people, we are to minister one to another in word and deed.
And so we seek to care for one another, exhort one another,
to rejoice and to weep together. And the tangible evidences of
that abound amongst us. One of the things that is so
encouraging to me when visitors come who know very little amongst
us, and I have occasion to talk to them afterwards, is to say,
I've never seen anything like that. The people just hang around
after being in a service for an hour and a half. They're not
ready to go home. They hang around until they're
kicked out of the building. And I usually have to be the
kicker. An evidence that there is this
delight in one another. Often as elders, when we've sought
to follow through on someone who appears to have been delinquent,
they will say, well, you know, I've already had three or four
calls from different people in the church asking where I was.
The concern for one another. And in this shared life as the
people of God, the testimony that one of our sisters gave
a few weeks ago, that in a time of need, food was there. Care
was provided, again, not in some artificially structured way that
makes people go around saying, we are really living body life,
look at us. Not doing our alms to be seen
of men, but in secret ministering to one another. And then even
when that shared life demands corrective discipline, the sober
times we've had when we've had to excommunicate people. the
sober times when we've had to place people under censure, but
the conviction that a little leaven leavens the whole lump,
and if we love the people of God and love one another, we
dare not allow that leaven to go unchecked. And sad to say,
in our day, this aspect of our shared life is rare, though it
ought not to be. But then there's a fourth area
in which our identity is to be understood, and it's in terms
of our government. A group this size would be chaos,
or would be chaotic, if every man did that which is right in
his own eyes. We are not a democracy. Some
of you still don't understand that, yet you're beginning to.
We are a monarchy. Christ is the head. His will
is set forth in His Word. And that monarchical rule of
Christ is administered through inferior magistrates called bishops,
elders, overseers, pastors, teachers, whom the congregation sets over
them by their common suffrage, and they become the instruments
through which the rule of Christ is exercised in his people. And so the Scripture says in
Hebrews 13, 17, Obey them that have the rule over you. It doesn't
say obey him, the Lord. Obey them that have the rule
over you, and in your obedience to them insofar as they rule
by Scripture, for they are bound to the mandate of the King. They
can't set up their own rules. They have no legislative power
whatsoever. It is purely administrative. It is purely executive. They
must execute the laws of the King. That's why in Hebrews 13.7
it says, Remember them that are over you, who spake unto you
the word of the Lord. And we believe that a church
ordered by the word of God in its government will have a plurality
of such elders, bishops, overseers, pastors, teachers. And then it
will have deacons who, in conjunction with the oversight of the elders,
will care for the temporal needs in an official way, so that a
properly organized church can be addressed as the Church of
Philippi. Paul writes to the church and
says, the saints at Philippi, with the bishops, the overseers,
and the deacons. And by the grace of God, We this
day have reaped the fruit of God's graciousness in giving
us scripturally qualified men to rule amongst us. And I want
to say, because we have visitors amongst us, two things very simply
and pointedly. We as a church are convinced
that God has revealed how the church is to be governed by elders.
And who those elders are to be? They are to be mature, proven,
male members of the congregation. And as long as some of us are
alive and have our Bibles before us and have any respect for King
Jesus, there will be no female elders or deacons in this assembly. Are you bunch of chauvinist pigs?
No. We're trying to be humble, obedient servants of Christ.
And the Word of God is plain in 1 Corinthians 14 and in 1
Timothy 2 and in many other portions implicitly, those explicitly,
not only who is to rule, how we are to be ruled, but who.
And we are committed to that. Thank God for the many Phoebes
amongst us who, like the Phoebe who was a servant of the church
at Sancreia, served Christ in this place in ways known only
to God. And we welcome a thousand Phoebes. but not as elders, not as bishops,
not as teachers in the mixed assembly. Well, then there is
a fifth aspect of our identity in this period of our adolescence,
and it's what I'm calling our outreach to the world. The task
of the Church is clear, according to Matthew 28, we're to make
disciples of all the nations. Acts 1A, by the enablement of
the Spirit, there is to be concurrent witness in our Jerusalem, Judea,
Samaria, and to the uttermost part of the earth. And God has
given us some measure of identity in this outreach. At home, there
is the energetic witness of each member in his own world of friends
and neighbors and relatives. There are the programmed ministries
in the two missions, in Newark, the overbook hospital ministry,
the flea market outreach, the periodic house-to-house evangelism,
hospital visitation. These things, again, you see,
are not matters that we are simply doing to maintain respect or
respectability. It is born of a conviction that
we have a responsibility. We are debtors, in the language
of Romans 1.14, to take the gospel to others. And therefore at home
there is this outreach, and then abroad, those whom God has taken
from us, the Blazes planting a church in East London, the
Ritters having planted a church and having developed a literature
ministry in Sweden, the Underhills in a church planting ministry
in Kenya, and then men in churches in the States who have gone from
us to establish works. that now glorify God. Well, these,
I say, are evidences of our identity and outreach. And then the final
area, it's our outreach to the Church at large. And here I've
sought to be very careful in my wording. These previous five
things ought to be true of any church that claims to be scriptural.
But then God, in His sovereignty, at times gives individual churches
the privilege of having a larger sphere of ministry to a larger
segment of the body of Christ. You remember in the book of Acts,
the church at Antioch became a strategic church in terms of
ministry to the Gentile world. It wasn't because Antioch was
a good church and God somehow gave them this privilege because
they earned it. No, no. It was sheer sovereignty
and grace operating in terms of wisdom and by other means
that set upon that church to have a peculiar mission And all
we can do is stand and say, Lord, we don't know the reason for
it. It certainly doesn't lie in us. But you've given us this
responsibility of outreach to the church at large, so that
this morning there are pockets of influence around the entire
world. Now, notice I didn't say in the
whole world. But in every major segment of
the globe this morning, the impact of the ministry of this assembly
is being felt. How? Well, obviously the great
means has been the tape library. Now, from a very modest beginning
in someone's little, well, like a little big, like a big closet
in a very little, little, little room in the home of one of our
members, to the basement of the parsonage, to now the ministry
that employs two men full-time and one part-time, with tapes
going out thirty-five to forty thousand to fifty to sixty countries,
Something we never envisioned. Groups of missionaries, national
pastors, churches and churchless Christians and pastors who need
to be fed, little branch libraries influencing national churches
in the Philippines, in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, in Great Britain,
over in Japan, literally around the world. God has been pleased
to grant us this influence through the tapes. Then the influence
through the Trinity Ministerial Academy. a facet of church life
involving formal ministerial training, two full-time instructors,
three part-time teachers, and what is the vision of the academy?
Well, certainly not to turn inward upon ourselves. We couldn't use
that many preachers, even if we wanted them. But it's the
burning conviction that men need to be disciplined and formed
in a context that at least represents a viable demonstration of Biblical
principles, not stuck off, isolated from the reality of church life
in the sterile climate of the seminary structure as it's normally
found, but to learn intensely in the context of a living church. And then not only is there that
influence in the academy with the students who are there, but
in a wonderful way, the lessons given are now going out There's
a pocket of men in the north of Scotland who have an academy
lesson every Saturday morning, spring and fall, for a period
of 10 to 12 weeks. There's a missionary holed up
in his hot little home in Pakistan who has a 10 to 12 hours a week
of academy instruction. And I could go on describing
these things. where God has been pleased to
give us an influence around the world with key people who in
turn are influencing hundreds and no doubt some of them eventually
thousands. Then the third conduit of this
wider influence to the church is the conference ministry that
God has been pleased to entrust to me. And it's interesting in
reading the church records how that from the very beginning
when these requests began to come in, they were laid before
the steering committee and then the combined board and then the
elders. And there was that conviction
that the church had an obligation and privilege to share this ministry. And how gracious God has been
to give us the privilege of encouraging, guiding, and helping many of
His servants in many parts of the world in this coming year.
That privilege will be given again with a two-week ministry
in England and Ireland and then in Australia later on in the
year. And we're conscious that God
has granted this to us graciously. And then a fourth way we've been
able to influence the Church at large has been the scattering
of our members. In Acts 8, 4, God scattered them
by persecution. Well, God scatters them from
us by economics often. Young couples begin to have their
families and can't hack it in this high-priced area, and God
takes them somewhere else. And then those of us who come
to Wednesday night prayer meeting, you know the story. The letters
come back, and the encouragement God is able to bring to others
as they share the things God has taught them here. Well, I
suggest, dear people, that this, in an all-too-brief form, is
something of a description of our identity, our corporate worship,
our preaching and teaching, our shared life, our government,
our outreach to the world, our ministry to the body of Christ.
Now, in the five minutes that remain, what are the prospects
for the future? Well, as I address myself to
this subject, I am conscious that I don't know what a day
may bring forth. None of us knows what God may purpose in grace
or judgment. In the light of the Word of God,
which is the rule for our conduct, what we ought to do becomes the
measure of our obedience, not what God may do. What we ought
to do. Some of us are committed heart
and soul right down to the last cell of our beings to maintain,
to intensify, and to multiply the ministries that God has given
to us as they've been outlined in these past minutes. Now, few
churches know more clearly than we do that the church, in its
essence, is not to be identified with brick and mortar. We've
been in existence twelve years, and for five of those years we've
met in school buildings. So I think we know something
of that great reality that the church is the people of God,
not brick and mortar. But, and I've probably been guilty
of this, in underscoring that principle, Perhaps we've not
come to grips with the reality of the fact that though the church
is not brick and mortar, the church is not a group of disembodied
spirits. And you will never hear me refer
to a church building as the house of God. But it is a house to
house the house of God. You see? The house of God is
His people, Ephesians 2. We are building together to be
an habitation of God. But as His habitation, we have
got flesh and blood. And the house of God, the people
of God, need a roof over them. And they need walls around them.
And preferably some walls to separate them for certain activities,
so that they can teach intelligently and clearly and carry on their
various functions. And as God has been pleased to
bring us together in this vast metropolitan area, We are convinced
that if we are to maintain, to intensify and multiply the stewardship
of opportunity and gift that God has given, we must have a
suitable house, a suitable dwelling place, one that is suitable to
the cultural context in which we meet and adequate for our
numbers. If we lived in a tropical climate
where people were housed in a thatched roof hut, then we'd have the
nicest thatched roof hut that you could have in which to meet,
and we'd be happy. But we don't live in a tropical
climate, nor are we ministering to aborigines. And if God has
put us in this area to minister to this area, not only to lengthen
our cords, but to strengthen our states, then we must have
an adequate house in which to accomplish those things. If we're
to fulfill the teaching mandate, there have got to be more adequate
teaching facilities. If we're to increase our ministries
in terms of other tremendous opportunities from the training
of our children, to the instruction of men and pastors. If we're
to have a greater penetration into this area, if we're to have
any cohesive social interaction, we must have a base for that
interaction, a base for that teaching, a base for that greater
ministry. And so my closing word of challenge
to you is, if you share the vision of what God has made us to be
as a church, And if you desire to be a part of that which we
believe God is going to do with us in the coming days as He leads
us into this building program, not to give us an architectural
ghetto in which we can huddle together away from that wicked
world. No, no. But a building that will
become the basis, may I say it, a sounding board for the gospel
that we love, an incubator of babes in Christ, a wonderful
household of shared life and fellowship and ministry, a training
center, a boot camp for soldiers of Jesus Christ, then I urge
you to come back tonight. If that's your vision, if you
share that concern, you'll be with us. Because tonight what
I propose to do is to expound from the scriptures, and tonight
we will be in exposition, the principles of the Word of God
that ought to guide us at this time if we're committed to that
vision. And following that scriptural presentation, Mr. Spence, Chairman
of the Deacons, will then lay before you the opportunity you
will have prayerfully to reflect upon that which you may be able
to do. You'll be given a sheet of paper
that won't have your name on it before or after. And you're
going to be asked not to do anything tonight, but to go to your own
closets, to go to your own places of family where you have family
powwows and prayerfully consider that which God would have you
to do. And then over the next two weeks, just to pass in those
statements of intention, no signature, no commitment, just an expression
of that which before God you are prepared to do, God enabling
you. You say, Pastor Martin, that
just doesn't make sense psychologically. You don't fill people's mind
with a sense of what God has done and a challenge. That's
not good salesmanship. Don't you know that when you
get the client interested, you get them to sign on the dotted
line? My friends, we don't operate by the principles of Madison
Avenue. We operate by the principles of the Word of God. And the principles
of the Word of God are that every man as he purposeth in his heart. And that takes time to get your
heart sorted out. They don't operate by the pressure
of psychological manipulation, brainwashing, no. So some of
you who perhaps even began to draw back a little bit, you said,
uh-oh, I know where he's going now, he's drawing us in, then
he's going to set the hook. No, no, my friend, we have no
hooks to set. I say that seriously, we have no hooks to set. If Almighty
God will not descend upon human hearts and give the grace of
joyful giving so that that building will be razed, the building will
not be razed. For if it's razed by carnal means,
they that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.
It'll be nothing but a house for carnal activity. But if it's
razed because the Holy Ghost works in hearts, the same Holy
Ghost will be present with the people of God who gather. And
I hope the Lord lets me be around to see what's going to happen
then. I believe we stand on the threshold of a whole new dimension
of ministry that will honor Christ, will gather in His sheep, will
batter down some of the bastions of evil and wickedness, drive
out the error, and establish truth in the earth in our generation. I have no messianic complex.
As I say, God could drop a bomb on us tomorrow and His work would
go on. I trust you with me have a sense of identity, a sense
of history. Hitherto hath the Lord helped
us, and in the language of the psalmist, this God who has hitherto
helped us will be our God forever and ever, and He will be our
guide even unto death. Oh, does your heart sense something
of the glory of the prospects of what the days ahead may hold? If so, you'll be with us tonight,
will you? and we'll examine the scriptures
and then be given an opportunity prayerfully to consider what
the Lord would have us do. Well, let's pray. Thank you for
your patience. I hope this has not been tedious.
Let's commit our thoughts to God and then we'll sing a final
hymn of praise as we close this morning. O our gracious God,
we render thanks to You for all that You have done. We confess
ourselves to be, at best, sinful men and women who deserve nothing
of Your mercies. Yet we think of what You have
done for us and with us, and we can only confess with a sense
of shame that we've been so dull and yet with a sense of gratitude
that you have been so gracious, how good you've been. Seal to
our hearts the things we've considered today, and may your name be praised
as the ultimate end of our meditation together, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay.