In his sermon 'How to Conduct Yourself in the Household of God,' Scott Brown explores the principles of church life and worship. He emphasizes the importance of conducting oneself according to biblical guidelines, highlighting the sufficiency of Scripture as the foundation for church conduct and worship. The sermon discusses various metaphors for the church, such as a family, nation, and body, emphasizing its role as a living organism that requires cultivation and adherence to God's ways. Brown stresses the importance of humility and aligning personal desires with God's design for the church. He outlines three approaches to worship: the creative, normative, and regulative principles, advocating for the regulative principle where only biblically commanded practices are followed. The sermon provides five ways to experience God's ordinary means of grace: resting in Scripture's sufficiency, being regulated by God, drawing near to Him, humbling oneself before His holiness, and reconsidering personal wish dreams for the church. Brown concludes by urging believers to focus on God's word and let go of personal expectations, fostering a genuine Christian community.

Please open your Bibles to 1 Timothy 3 and find verse 15. This is the holy and true, all-sufficient, sweeter-than-honey word of God. 1 Timothy 3 and then verse 15. I'll just read verse 15. I write so that you will know how you ought to conduct yourself in the household of God Which is the Church of the Living God?

The pillar and support of the truth Let's pray Father we're so thankful that you have made a church, that you have created your body in the world, and I pray that you would help us all to learn how to walk in a manner worthy of the salvation by which we've been called. That you would help us to know how to walk in this local church, not on our own way, but in your ways. That you would deliver us from our ways and bring us into your ways which are always pleasant ways. Pray you'd bless these people today and I pray that you would protect all of our hearts and my heart from any error. Amen.

Please be seated. So we're continuing our series on local church life. A series we're calling the Church The Body of Christ. If you're here you'll remember that we started with the soaring love of Jesus Christ toward his church. It's really important that you understand how Christ loved his church, so that you could walk in his ways, so that we can love the church the way that Jesus Christ loved the church.

I asked, do you love the church the way Jesus did after itemizing maybe a dozen ways he loved his church. Then we turned to how true believers love the church as well in Acts 2, 42, where the church steadfastly devoted themselves to the Apostles doctrine, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to the prayers. And then we moved on from there and we talked about the the various metaphors of the church. There are probably 50 of them at least in the Bible. We just covered a few of them.

We talked about how the church is like a family. It's a household. That it's like a nation. It bears qualities of a nation. It has its own laws.

It has its own boundaries. It has its own culture as Nations have we talked about the church as a building That it's composed of living stones that are connected to one another they're living stones What's that we talked about that We talked about the church as a body where each part of the body is interdependent on other parts of the body. We examined a prayer for a local church. And it was Ephesians 3, 14 through 21, that Paul prays for this local church in Ephesus that they would be strengthened with might through the inner man. That Christ would dwell in their hearts through faith and they might just be filled up with the knowledge of the love of God.

I was so glad for the way you led us in singing today because it just helped me be even more filled up with the knowledge of the love of God. Thank you, Trent. But we also have paused for a while to talk about whether you are in the body, because there are some who are in the body and there are some who are not in the body. The body of Christ is an exclusive community. It's not an inclusive community.

It's only composed of those who believe and follow the Lord Jesus Christ. So we've spent some extended time talking about this question, are you in the body? Do you have assurance of salvation? So we paused on these matters of assurance of salvation. And frankly, the work of pastors in a church is to do the work of an evangelist.

It's critical that pastors help people understand whether they're part of the body or not. So we spent quite a bit of time on that. Our focus has been, of course, on the sufficiency of Scripture, the doctrine of sola scriptura. And because the Bible makes it clear that the church ought to operate in a particular way You know the activities of the church matter what the elders of the church do matter what the deacons of the church do matter What the members of the church do matter and so we've been trying to deal with these things according to the doctrine of the church. In coming weeks we'll deal with the discipline of the church and membership in the church then we'll return to the book of Revelation where we'll see the exaltation of the church picking up where we left off in chapter 20.

So I can't wait to get back to Revelation 20 after having had a long exposition of the book of Revelation. But as we come to the last section of the book of Revelation you'll see the church in all her glory. It's really an extension of this whole series on the church. Why are we doing this? We're doing this because we have lots of people who grew up in this church.

They've just kind of seen us do it. And I want them to know why we do it. I want them to know what we do and why we do it, not just that we do it. So also I pray that as the Lord Jesus was always going about doing good that this would do good for everybody in this church. So I really you know I've thought a lot about how how we function in the church and of course, that's really one of the great responsibilities of pastors is to try to try to consider the the culture of the church, the doctrine of the church.

But I was reading Psalm 52 this morning, and this is what I so pray would happen to all of us, what happened to David when he said, but I'm like a green tree in the house of my God. I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. I will praise you forever. And in the presence of your saints, I will wait on your name, for it is good. So I really do pray that anybody who's part of this church, they would be like a green tree in the house of their God, growing, full of life, bearing fruit, experiencing the joy of the Lord, you know, being bathed in his mercies and his truth.

Well, the truth is though, all of us have wishes and dreams about the church, what it is, how it functions, and how we relate to the church, how people should treat us in the church. And we have expectations, we have our own approaches, we have baggage, actually all of us do, we have opinions. But I think what I'm here to say this morning is that only God is worthy to regulate our worship worship is the primary way that God loves our souls and the gathered people of God is an expression of God's desire to bless the souls of his people and to convert the souls of the unredeemed. But today I wanna really bring us into this matter of the sufficiency of Scripture, that we would be a people who just rest on Scripture alone in everything about how we think about this church, what we do, how we do it, how we relate with one another. It's so important because the worship of God is the primary way that God loves your soul.

It's the primary way that God builds up your life. It's through the worship of God in the gathered saints. So we've talked a lot about what churches should do with the preaching of the Word and the fellowship and the breaking of the bread and prayers. We try to limit ourselves to those things because those are the things that are prescribed by God and The question you know that we are always confronted with our is a Are my dreams and wishes for the church the same as God's. It's really important that we're aligned over God on all these things.

And so we have this text before us in 1 Timothy 3, 15. I write so that you will know how to conduct yourself in the household of God. And I just want us all to be so carefully considering how do I conduct myself in the household of God? How do I conduct myself in this local church? Those are really important questions.

I want to talk about five ways to experience God's ordinary means of grace in the church. But I want to remind us too that the essence of Christianity is humility. The reason the reason a person becomes a Christian is that they say, oh Lord my ways are not good. Your ways are pleasant ways. The Christian is a humble person.

The Christian is the person who doesn't want his ways anymore. He only wants God and his ways. That's the spirit of humility is to want God. For God to be the ruler of your thinking and everything that you do, isn't that such a struggle though? Oh my.

But humble people, they look to God in the midst of every situation. So I wanna give these five ways to experience God's ordinary means of grace. And the first is to rest in the sufficiency of Scripture. To rest in the sufficiency of Scripture. Scripture is sufficient.

What does that mean? Hey, you know, your children need to know this word sufficient Because I say it all the time. The pastors here use that word, scripture's sufficient all the time. What does it mean? Well, it means that scripture is all you need.

It's all you need to get through life. It's all you need to get through childhood and adulthood and old age. It's all you need to get through your work. It's all you need to get through your work. It's all you need to get through your marriage or whatever you're encountering whatever trial It's scripture is all you need rest your hope there Now What is What is the sufficiency of scripture?

It's the sufficiency of God. To embrace the sufficiency of scripture is to embrace the sufficiency of God for your whole life. It's the same thing as the sufficiency of Christ that is the sufficiency of scripture. So we want to be a church that only needs God, that desires the ministry of the Word, to feed on the Word of God. Next year I'm doing a conference called the Chief End of Man.

By the way, the Chief End of Man is not creativity. The Chief End of Man is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. Let me paraphrase Martin Luther. Lord, don't send me visions. Lord, don't send me dreams.

Don't send me angels. I am content with one gift, the Scriptures. They supply all that is necessary for life. That's the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture But the church is always vulnerable From two directions the thoughts and inclinations of our own hearts and the pressures of the culture. This is sort of the crossfire of the kingdom of God.

Jeremiah 10 13 makes it very clear that the cultures are always on the prowl to devour the church. He says, hear the word of the Lord in Jeremiah 10, one through three. Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Israel. Do not learn the ways of the Gentiles. That's a protective principle.

Don't learn the ways of the Gentiles. Learn the ways of Jesus Christ. Saturate your mind there. In Deuteronomy 18-7, God warns the people not to follow the footsteps of the culture of Canaan You know the people of Israel were going to go into the land of Canaan and they were warned over and over again Do not live like the Canaanites. He's he says in Deuteronomy 18 7 You shall not learn to follow those nations.

Don't follow those nations. They're going off a cliff just like those pigs did in the Gospels. In Deuteronomy 28 and 9, God tells his people what he's doing with them And he uses that word walk that he uses over and over again in the Bible He says the Lord will establish you as a holy people to himself. That's means they're different. They're different different people just as he has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, then all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord and they shall be afraid of you.

Why? Because you don't walk like they do and they're afraid of you because of it. There's never been a time in my lifetime where the thought leaders in the world culture are afraid of the church. They want to squelch the church. They're afraid of the church because of what the church says.

It's very threatening to them. It's threatening to their very worldview. In Proverbs 30, verses five and six, we get the foundation of this, and that is that every word of God is pure. He is a shield to those who put their trust in him. Do not add to his words lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.

So scripture is sufficient. Rest in the sufficiency of scripture from this day forward and your whole life long. Charles Spurgeon was preaching on Hebrews 412, which says, you know, the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword. Here's what he says about the Scriptures. Why, the book has wrestled with me, the book has smitten me, the book has comforted me, the book has smiled on me, the book has frowned on me, the book has clasped me, the book has warmed me, the book weeps with me, the book sings with me, The book whispers to me and it preaches to me it maps my way and holds up all my goings Then he says it was to me The young man's best companion and it still is my morning and evening chaplain.

Praise the Lord for the word of God. How many times has the word of God rescued you from your pity party, from your anger, from your greed, from your lust? How many times? It's countless. How many times has the Word of God lifted your soul?

Well guess what, it happened to me this morning at about eight o'clock. I was so thankful. And then it happened again where these people in this church were starting to pray and then these songs and it was just How many times? It's such a blessing to know God and they have his word The second way The second way to experience God's means of grace is to be regulated by God, regulated by God. It's one thing to believe that scripture is sufficient.

It's another thing that it regulates you. There are many people today who believe scripture is inerrant, but they don't believe it's sufficient, they don't believe it's regulative in their life. That's called non-Christianity. To be regulated by God, though, is your highest good. To be regulated by God is your highest good.

It's the best thing that can ever happen to you. You wanna be regulated by your own emotions? Try that. You wanna be regulated by all the people around you? Try that, you've probably tried that.

Be regulated by what people think about you. All your fears about friends and parents and your reputation, but To be regulated by God is your highest good. It's your greatest stability. And we have talked from time to time about the regulative principle of worship. But this verse in 1 Timothy 3.15, that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself.

In other words, God wants to regulate how you walk in the church of God. And notice, it's the church, it's the house of God, it's the church of the living God, and it's a pillar and ground of the truth. But the truth is we're always happiest when we're regulated by God. We're mostly unhappy when we're regulated by all kinds of other things. Calvin said, there's nothing more sacred and holy than the truth that embraces both God's glory and man's salvation.

So heavy a responsibility rests on a pastor who has been entrusted with the safe keeping of this priceless treasure. This matter of the authoritative regulation of God is the most important thing in anybody's life. Now, when we talk about the way that we worship together, there are different approaches. The three most common approaches toward the worship of God are these. First, I'm just gonna call it the creative principle.

We can worship any way we wish. Any way that works, any way that meets felt needs. That's the creative principle of worship. Or then there's the normative principle of worship. Whatever is not explicitly forbidden in Scripture is permitted.

So if there's no command against it, you can do it. You can parachute into your preaching. You can ride a motorcycle down the aisle. You can attract attention to do all kinds of things. You can have dramas and movie clips and antics.

And you can have comedians, you know, in worship. I knew of a guy one time who left his church and his explanation was, wow, it was so cool. They had a big ball that everybody bounced around, you know, the crowd, you know, before we, while we were singing, it was just so cool. That's, that is the normative principle. Well, there's no command that you can't bounce a big red ball around your church.

Well, that's the normative principle. And frankly, if you believe in the normative principle, you'll end up believing in almost anything, because all you have to do is have a really creative leader, and he can make up all kinds of stuff for the church to do. And the church will do whatever it wants to do. That's the normative principle. That's actually the primary approach to worship in the evangelical church.

And then there is thirdly the regulative principle. Whatever is not commanded in Scripture in worship is forbidden. So if you embrace the regular principle, you only do what is commanded. Because there really are two choices. You can do what is commanded or you can do whatever you want to do, pretty much.

So we embrace this matter of the regulative principle. Our confession speaks of it. You're familiar with James and Fawcett and Brown commentators. That's a great commentator. It was the first commentary I got when I was young.

But John Fawcett, one of the authors, he says this, no acts of worship can properly be called holy, but such as the Almighty has enjoined. No man nor any body of men have any authority to invent rites and ceremonies of worship, to change the ordinances which he has established, or to invent new ones is unlawful. The divine word is the only safe directory. He says, it's not what we might think is decent or proper, but what our master has authorized. He says nothing bears the stamp of holiness, but what God has ordained.

That's the regular principle of worship. Now G.I. Williamson, he summed it up by this, he said, what is commanded is right, what is not commanded is wrong. That's the view we attempt to operate by here. And there are many places that you can go in scripture to see this principle in Exodus 25.40.

There's this principle that God made patterns of worship not to be broken, and see to it that you make them according to the pattern which was shown to you on the mountain." In Deuteronomy 4 2 we're told not to add or subtract from the commandments of God. Jesus made it clear that the church is always subject to the traditions of men. He says, you make the commandment of God of no effect. You nullify the commandment of God for the sake of your tradition. You're just doing your traditions and as a result you nullify the commandment of God.

He says you nicely set aside the commandments of God for the sake of your traditions. But then he says these people draw near to me with their mouth, but they and they honor me with their lips But their heart is far from me in vain. They worship me teaching as doctrines the commandments of men The Lord gives a very strong warning for changing our patterns from His to our own by adding and subtracting in Revelation 22, 18 to 21. We'll get to that when we get back to Revelation. But there are many examples in scripture where you find people stepping outside the commands of God for worship.

In Leviticus 10, one through three, you have Nadab and Abihu offering strange fire, what God did not command. They did what God didn't command. That was the problem. In Genesis four, you have Cain and Abel offering their sacrifices Cain was offering sacrifices outside the scope of God's command In number 16 you have Korah and Dathan and Nebuchadnezzar, in 1st Samuel 13 you have Saul making an offering when he was a king, but he had no agency to do that because he was not a priest. Only the priests were allowed to do that.

He stepped out of line. In 2 Chronicles 26, 16 through 29 you have a similar thing. King Uzziah goes into the temple. He's not allowed to go into that area of the temple and 80 priests try to bring him back. He gets leprosy because he was breaking the commandments of God.

In 2 Chronicles 28, three through five, King Ahaz usurps the role again of what was only given to priests. Here's what the Baptist confession says in chapter 22, but The acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imagination and devices of men, nor of the suggestions of Satan under any visible representations, or any other way not prescribed in the holy scriptures. That's why John Knox said, inventions from the brain of man in the worship of God are idolatry. You know, there's really a remarkable example of worshiping God in a way that he didn't command. That's in the scene of the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 34 They said this is your God.

Oh Israel that brought you out of the land of Egypt and then Aaron when he saw it he built an altar before it and Aaron made a proclamation that day. He said tomorrow is a feast to the Lord Yahweh and they rose early the next day offered burnt offerings they brought peace offerings and the people sat down to eat and they and drink and they rose up to play. Well Aaron says tomorrow is the feast of the Lord, Yahweh. What he was saying you can worship God, you can still worship God by adding a golden calf. Yahweh is still, you're you're worshiping Yahweh through this other image.

That's why in Deuteronomy 9 16 when Moses is recounting this he says, you turned aside quickly from the way which the Lord commanded you and their error was was twofold first of all they did not do what God commanded second they did what the Lord did not command they added something that the Lord didn't command. And that really is the essence of the breaking of the regular principle of worship that we embrace. In Deuteronomy 12, two through eight, Moses confronts the people for doing what was right in their own eyes. He says, you shall not at all do what you are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes. So the true worship of God takes place in the heart of the believer who desires to be under Christ's lordship using his ways and his methods, not the ways of the Egyptians like they did at the base of Mount Sinai.

So this is how you ought to conduct yourself in the household of God. Third way, the third way to enjoy God's means of grace, to experience God's means of grace is to draw near to God. To draw near to God. This is what we ought to do when we come into this place, is to draw near to God. We're drawing near to God.

It's a very sober thing to do such a thing. The writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 10 19 says that we do it in a certain way. Therefore brethren having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus by a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil, his flesh, having a high priest over the house of God. Let us draw near. That's the words.

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. So to draw near is the heart of this matter, to draw near to God. When we worship, we draw near to God. You know, we live in a world of so much distraction. I read yesterday that the majority of Americans check their phones 344 times a day.

That's once every four minutes. Maybe that's not you. It certainly is not you this morning. I doubt seriously that happened here. Praise the Lord.

Because we're here to draw near to God. We're not here to check our phones. We're here to draw near to God to have that kind of focus. This language is all over the book of Hebrews, 416. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

It's good to come to the worship of God in time of need. A lot of times people when they're in time of need, they stay away from the church. That's the biggest mistake. Come to the church when you're in time of need. That's a better way.

Hebrews 7, 25. Therefore he is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. In Hebrews 10 19, therefore having boldness to enter the holiness by the blood of Jesus. Now we can't draw near to God because of our sin. That's the problem.

There's a barrier. The only way to draw near to God is to receive the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ and then you can enter in with a clear conscience. Yes, you can be conflicted about your life. Yes, you can be concerned that you're not as holy as you want to be, but you enter with a clear conscience because Jesus is the one who has cleansed your conscience through his sacrificial, atoning death on the cross. So you can draw near.

You can walk in with your head up. You can draw near because of the blood of Christ. And then The fourth, the fourth way, humble yourself before a holy God. Humble yourself before a holy God. Worship is drawing near to a holy God.

People tend to take worship very lightly. They go to the bathroom in the middle of the services, they actually let their children do the same thing. When our kids were growing up, you had to go to the bathroom before you came to church because we weren't gonna let you out. Amen. Ha ha ha ha ha.

But it's, you know, you come before a holy God. You shouldn't be walking around, hanging around, checking this and that. Habakkuk 2.19, but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let all the earth keep silence before him. You know, when we come into this place, there ought to be a sense of awe that we're coming before a holy God.

You know, people just so easily kind of saunter in and things like, you're coming to meet with the Holy God. The word worship in Greek, I'll just quote from a lexicon, to express in attitude or gesture one's complete dependence on or submission to a high authority figure to fall down and worship to do obeisance to prostrate oneself before, to do reverence to, to welcome respectively, respectfully. That's what the word worship means. And so we come together to worship. Here's my advice.

Hey, you know, there are several large families in this church. They come early. They're sitting here 15 minutes early. Some of you who don't have many kids, you come in late. You should quit doing that.

You should be here ready. You know, often, you know, when the first song is sung, there's about half of you here. I don't think that's good. So I'm just here to weigh in and say, we need to stop doing that. Be here on time.

Be here to humble yourself before a holy God. I guarantee you, if some great dignitary were here, or some person that you really appreciated were here, you'd be here on time. The Lord is in his holy temple. You know, we covered some of these remarkable scenes in Revelation about the living creatures worshiping God. They're just completely enthralled with God.

They're saying, holy, holy, holy. They can't get enough of God. They cannot believe how wonderful He is. You know, this is why God told Moses, take out sandals off of your feet the place where you stand is holy ground. I hope that a sermon like this could just help recover a little bit of that here in this church It's such a blessing to be on the on the edge of your seat Hungering for God.

That's the best place you can be in life You know remember in in Revelation 1 17 when we were going through there when When John sees the Lord, he's he fall and he fell at his feet like a dead man. He was so amazed at the beauty and the glory, the purity, the perfection, the truth of Jesus Christ. He was just so stunned. And I think this means that we should walk thoughtfully and humbly in the worship of God. Ecclesiastes five, one through seven speaks of this.

I'll just read verse one. Walk prudently when you go into the house of God. In other words, walk carefully. Don't just walk in, walk carefully. You're on a mission to be with God.

He says, and draw near to hear, draw near to hear rather than to give the sacrifice of fools, for they do not know that they do evil. Not casually. Thoughtfully. Vulnerably. Avoiding distractions.

This is how you ought to conduct yourself in the household of God. You know, I guess I'm really here to say, rest in the ordinary means of grace. Be like a green tree in the house of your God. Get your eyes fixed on God. Get your eyes fixed on his word.

Let God's word lead your life. Let God's word lead your emotions. Let God's word lead everything in your life. Rest in these ordinary means of grace. And then finally, reconsider your wish dream for the church.

Reconsider your wish dream for the church. This is really an appeal to walk in the church God's way, not our own way, not to make up our own version of the church. I was really reminded of this a while back rereading a book I read probably 40 years ago, A Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And he tells us in that book, in a certain section, that We come to the church with our own wish dreams for the church. And we come looking for what we want.

We come looking for what we like, not necessarily what Jesus Christ has prescribed. Here's what he says, one who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He's looking for some extraordinary social experience which he has not found elsewhere. He is bringing muddled and impure desires into the Christian brotherhood. He actually says that, you know, coming into the church with your own wish dream, he says it threatens the church.

He says, just at this point, brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at the root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood. One of the most remarkable things about this is he says, the quicker you get over this, the better for everybody. He says, the sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community, the better for both. The community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, which insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community sooner or later it will collapse every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He's really saying You've got to shatter your wish dream for the church and take up God's design for the church.

He talks about the problem in the human heart is that we love our wish dream of the church more than we love Christ's design. That's what it boils down to. He says, he who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community of itself, the community itself, becomes a destroyer of the community. Even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial Get this God hates visionary dreaming You know the life coaches don't usually say things like that to you, do they? God hates visionary dreaming.

It makes the dreamer proud and pretentious. The man who fashions a visionary ideal of community demands that it be realized by God, by others, and by himself. He enters the community of Christians with his demands, sets up his own law, and judges the brethren and God himself accordingly. And then he just, he says, only God can create the community. It's the word of God that creates the community, not our wish dream of the community.

He talks about making demands, and demanders are not thankful. He says, we enter into that common life, not as demanders, but as thankful recipients. We thank God for what He has done for us. We thank God for giving us brethren who live by His call, by His forgiveness, and by His promise. We do not complain of what God does not give us.

We rather thank God for what he does give us daily. That's a wonderful rule of life, by the way, to be satisfied with what God has given you. He says, when you do that, you become an accuser of the congregation. Bonhoeffer says, let him rather accuse himself for his unbelief. Let him pray to God for help.

He talks about always feeling the spiritual pulse, you doing that with yourself and always trying to feel the spiritual pulse of everybody else around you. He says, that's a huge mistake. Get your focus on God. Get your focus on God's word. He says, the word of God alone is binding.

In the community of the Spirit, the word of God alone rules. So, let the wish dream die, and let the sufficiency of Scripture rule. I think that's the heart of what I wanted to try to communicate to us today. The church really is like a living organism. The Bible describes the members of the church like branches in a vine.

And when you have a living organism, you need cultivation and fertilization and you need water and you need air and you need pruning. Because the church is like a branch in a vine. And it's the worship of God that makes those branches bear fruit. It makes those branches like a green olive tree in the house of their God, trusting in God's mercy forever. Well, I wanna close with this that really struck me.

Just the day before John Owen died in 1683, he dictated a letter, it was his last letter, he said, I am going to him whom my soul has loved. When I read that, I thought of the church and how God loves the soul of the sinner through the ordinary means of grace. He wrote, he has loved me with an everlasting love, which is the whole ground of my consolation. Well, I pray that the whole ground of my consolation and yours would be one thing. God, God in his all-sufficient word, God in his worship, before God in humility, Obeying God in the church.

Would you pray with me? Lord, Lord we do thank you for your word, how kind you are to give us such a testimony to guide our hearts. Pray that you would just continue to teach us how we ought to conduct ourselves in your house in the Church of the Living God. Amen.