The sermon titled 'Joined and Knit Together' by Paul Carrington explores the importance of interdependence within the family at church. It emphasizes the practical elements of living out this interdependence on a day-to-day basis. The sermon highlights the significance of face-to-face relationships in the church and challenges the idea of online church. It discusses the observance of the Lord's Day as a holy day of spiritual rejuvenation for the whole family. The sermon also examines the biblical perspective on family integration in church and argues against age-segregated subgroups. Overall, the sermon aims to emphasize the centrality of Christ in building the church and the importance of unity and love among believers.

Well, good afternoon. This afternoon we're going to continue our study on the family at church that Robert began, I think, going into it last week and then Scott the week before. Actually, I was listening to Robert's message. I wasn't here last weekend, but had the opportunity to take download of it. And one of the things that jumped out to me as he was talking was this concept of the tour guide, if you remember, and the whole trip that they made to Williamsburg and the different things that they were able to see and experience and when they were out of their depth in certain areas to be able to have someone who is an expert to explain it and also the the touching on of the importance of doctrine and how important that is not just for the so-called theologian or the pastor, but for every single individual, every single family.

And so chapters one to five of this book kind of really lay the foundation, the principle of the family at church. And today, for the next few minutes, we wanna talk about really the real practical elements. How does this kind of work out in a day-to-day basis? And to help us, I just wanna read a few verses from 1 Corinthians chapter 12 that is mentioned in the book and really captures some of these chapters or days that we're going to be looking at, days six to ten. It says, but now indeed there are many members yet one body And the eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you.

Nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you. No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary." And so he's talking about how we relate one with the other. And when I was going through these chapters, you know, I was brought in mind of an analogy that Ian Murray used. He wrote a book called Evangelicalism Divided And at the very end of the book, he draws this beautiful, beautiful illustration for us. And he's talking primarily about the temple and how Solomon ordered that the temple would have been built back in the day.

And one of the verses that he talks about is in 1 Kings and it says, And the temple, when it was being built, was built with stone finished at the quarry, so that no hammer or chisel or any iron tool was heard in the temple while it was being built." What a curious, strange thing that is. All the work was done off-site so that when all the stones were brought to the temple site, there was no sound of chisel, no dust flying or anything like that. And the point he was making is that in the building of the temple, all the stones are prepared before, just like in the building up of those that will inherit eternity, all the work is being done in the quarry that is the church. In fact, each of us are kind of dug out of the quarry, aren't we? Right, Remember the rock from which you've been hewn, this raw material.

And in the same way that the stone was prepared, it was honed, it was polished, all the rough edges were cut off. Some maybe had to have double work put on them, or whatever the case may be, depending on the condition. In the same way that happened at the quarry site, God is doing the same thing in the church. And so as we think about one another, as we think about relating with one another, it's somewhat helpful to think like that when we rub up against each other, when we frustrate each other, when I don't act the way you think I should act, and vice versa, all of these different exchanges that take place. And so, in the same way, here we are at Hope Baptist Church, the local quarry, we're being chiseled, sawn, edges are being taken off and being made ready for that temple site that we we spent so much time looking at in Revelation chapter 21.

And one of the things that really dawned on me as I'm going through these these first chapters is really really the centrality of what Christ is doing. When he said, I will build my church. This wasn't a side issue that he's after, something that's an add on to the mission of God. But the very reason that he came, he says, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not overcome it or prevail against it. And so with this kind of elevated view of the church before us and what the Lord is doing, I really want to get into these chapters.

So, day six is entitled, Joined and Knit Together. And if you've read it, the core thought of this day is really interdependence as opposed to independence. And so, one of the lines that Scott wrote, which I thought was very helpful, speaking about your family, he says, "'It's health, the family's health, "'is dependent upon God-ordained support systems. "'Your family needs much more "'than your family can provide.'" And so to think about that, in the day that we're living in, we're really living in a day of rampant independence, aren't we? And a day of increasingly transient relationships.

And even Christians oftentimes are subject to this kind of frailty where, you know what, I can just move on and our relationships can be held very loosely. But that's kind of the opposite of the way that Christ designed the church, where we're to be devoted to one another and to really deeply love one another. And it's important to note that even as human beings, aside from even being Christians, human beings are really created for one another to be dependent. I was reading a study this past week of the Center for Disease Control, CDC. After insisting that people be locked up for a few years, all of a sudden came out with a study saying this frantic report talking about this epidemic of loneliness.

Well, go figure after having everyone kind of locked up. And God's Word not only recognizes man's need for interdependence right from the beginning, but He actually commands it in his word, and it's for our good. I love what Spurgeon said in this little quip. He says, a Christian is not meant to be a solitary being. That's how God has created us, to be joined and knit together.

And so in the local church, God supplies what you need, spiritual brothers and sisters, there's pastors, there's teachers, there's evangelists, people of different backgrounds. You've got rich and poor, young and old, people that have come from not just different countries but different experiences in life. And all that God has somehow put together for a purpose. And so going back to that quarry example that I was sharing with you earlier, Scott asks this question. He says, are there problems in your church?

No problem. And the SLBC, he quotes, the purest churches under heaven are subject to mixture and error. And so if you think about that quarry, the quarry is, it's dusty, it's dangerous, there's all sorts of mess, it's loud. And so we have to think about, well, how can we live together in an environment where this is going to be the tendency? How can we love one another?

Or how can we learn to forgive one another if there aren't offenses? Have you ever thought of that? Lord, help me to be long suffering and patient, and patient, and then when He brings the circumstances that would work that into us. Sometimes we fall short. I know I often do.

And so we need to think about that, that the reason why we're together and we're imperfect and there are infractions is because God is working to cut off those rough edges over time. He says this, in local churches love is challenged. Imperfect people, sinners, mingle together and sometimes sparks fly. Disappointments happen. Objections are registered.

Boredom might creep in. Distrust might grow. Leaders might fail. But your children need to experience all of these things. And if you look at the spirit of our age, really the spirit of our age is just to move on if there's a problem, right?

Just, it's not worth it. I'm just going to find another place to worship where there's people not like this or whatever the case might be until you get there and you realize it wasn't all it was cracked up to be. We're all sinners, even at our best. And so, God's at work. He's chiselling away so that there, when we get to heaven, to the true temple site, there's going to be no sound of the tool there, but it'll all be ready.

But really, this is the reality where the rubber meets the road here in this first day and then he goes on to the second day which kind of builds off of the first day which is face-to-face relationships, face-to-face relationships. That's day seven And I want you guys to try, maybe you children, try this thought experiment for a second with me. Try to imagine in your mind a square circle. See if you can do that. Don't spend the rest of the time thinking about it.

You can try it at home maybe later, but in fact online church is really what he's going to be attacking here. Online church is really a contradiction in terms, right? Online church. It's like homosexual marriage. It's a contradiction in terms.

Where the first word ends up cancelling the second word, just like square circle. It just doesn't work. Online church, it doesn't work. And he goes on to define the idea that the biblical word church or ekklesia means assembly or congregation of people who are gathered together. And so the church by definition is a face-to-face affair.

And he's, I think, hitting on this because of the days that we're living in where people, hey, you know what, I just don't feel like going to church or what have you. And perhaps even increasingly as technology progresses, you can see how that can happen. Imagine a hologram, 3D hologram of Pastor Trent standing up here and preaching, but from home. I mean, That can be something, hey, we could leverage technology and do all sorts of things, but that would absolutely destroy the concept of what a church is. You staying home and worshiping is not the same thing as gathering.

We had that terrible experience. I asked the family, we were reading this this week, and I asked them, I can't remember exactly the question, but what has been your worst church experience? And it was when we were overseas in a foreign country, and you cannot leave your house on Sunday. And so everyone has church on Sunday through this screen. And it was, as much as I tried to make the best of it, it was absolute torture.

Where you're just there and you're trying to hear a sermon, you're singing. Nothing, it's not natural. It's not the way we were created to be. And even after the sermon's done, everyone says hello to each other, two minutes, but it wasn't the same as this face-to-face gathering because God has designed it to be a gathering together and a knitting together. He makes this really strong statement.

There's a lot of strong statements made in this particular day, day seven. He says, if you are not meeting face to face in a local church, then you are not a practicing Christian. That's a strong statement. Unless you have some legitimate reason, you're sick, I mean, obviously, you know, but if it's your pattern to not gather, you're not a Christian, is what he's saying. You are practicing non-Christianity.

And so, I think we know this here, most of us do in this church, that church is more than just listening to a sermon. A sermon is the center point, but it's not the only thing. When we come together, we've done a lot of the things today. We've broken bread together, we've fellowshiped, we've been practicing our faith. You see one person perhaps counseling another.

Some men are reading a book or some of the young men are doing different things with, you know, it's all of this interaction that's going on. He talks about the fact that there's a dozen beneficial forces at work on any given Sunday. And maybe someone's sad or dejected, someone else is happy, but you get to see all these different things when you come to church. Maybe someone's difficult to talk to or hard to engage and you find it difficult, it's so many calories, maybe should I spend time? Maybe it's hard, easier to just kind of do this, but we're called to something more.

And he ends with this, if, understand this, if the church is a sideline for you, it will be most likely the case for your children. And so hopefully you're seeing the flow. Day number six was this whole idea of interdependence that's basic to the church community. And of course, we just looked at the definition of the church, the ecclesia, the called out ones, the gathering together. And then, of course, the way God has designed it with him at the center.

And now, we're going to look at what happens when we do gather on a Sunday. I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord, where you're going to meet your family, the people that you're going to be spending eternity with. And that's what day number eight is, where we talk about the actual day of rest. That's the title of day eight, the day of rest. And the objective of this chapter is to encourage you to make the Lord's Day a holy day of delightful spiritual rejuvenation for the whole family.

And I love how he, in this particular chapter, he almost builds an apologetic for the importance of this day of rest. He asks all sorts of questions. Is this day simply just an Old Testament relic, something that we've kind of just carried over and, you know, just keep because, hey, that's what they did in the Old Testament. Is it legalistic Old Covenant bondage? Is it a day to do whatever you want?

Or is it a day to just give the Lord just an hour or two and then you're done. You can put it behind you and do what you had planned all along." Well, the question is this, or the statement made, if you embrace the observance of the Lord's day the way the Bible prescribes it, you will find yourself nearly alone in the evangelical landscape. Nearly the entirety of mainstream evangelicalism has quit celebrating the Lord's day the way the Bible explains it. And so What is this day that we have here, this day that we're celebrating today? Well, I think some of the things that we can acknowledge, and you can go through the day, it's very, very helpful, day number eight.

But I think that one of the things is that it was instituted in creation. And then it was also detailed in the Ten Commandments. In fact, no other commandment is given as much play as the Fourth Commandment to remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. It explains it more than any of the other commandments. It's very interesting.

And it was to be holy, as I mentioned, it's unlike the other six days. That's what holy means. It's set apart or cut apart. And so it includes both duty and it also includes rest. You know, you can look at even the way that the Lord Himself, when He was here, He upheld the Sabbath and He spent a lot of time correcting the Pharisees' false notions, their legalistic and harmful misuse of the Sabbath.

But He never once discredits its observance. He never says it's abrogated and no one needs to keep it or anything like that. And so the scriptures are very clear. But one of the things that the scriptures are very clear on as well is that the Sabbath is actually good. And Jesus says that in Mark chapter 2 where he says that the Sabbath was made for man.

It was made for our benefit. So why would we press against it? Have you ever thought of that? When you have these debates on the Sabbath and people argue against it. It's like you're arguing against yourself.

God is saying, work six days and rest on this. No, I want to do eight, seven days. Or one of the things he talks about is what happened during the French Revolution, where they tried to make a 10-day week. They were so angry. They had such animus against God that they said let's just try to blow up this whole idea of the week, but of course they tried it for 12 years, and it was an absolute disaster.

Maybe one of the contributing factors that led to the end of the French Revolution. And so one of the things that we always want to do is agree with what God is saying in His Word. The alternative to believing in this day of rest is to ask yourself, and I've asked people this, I asked a pastor this about seven, eight months ago. He was preaching against the Sabbath in terms of observing it and asked if anyone had any questions. So I asked him a question, do you believe there are only nine commandments?

And he kind of smiled. Do you want to teach your children that there are only nine commandments? Is that what we want to do? Or do we want to say that the Sabbath, the day of rest, was abrogated when there's zero biblical references to it being abrogated? Which of the other 10 commandments were abrogated or put away with or done away with.

And so just to keep that in mind that remember the Sabbath day and make sure that your children understand it, but also hopefully come to love it. It's a day that it's a day of delight and that'll be our next day, day number nine. Okay, so we've defined there is a day that the scriptures have assigned for us to worship God, set apart from all the other days. But then how do you go about celebrating that day? And so that's day number nine here.

And you could ask yourself, well, what should I do on a day like this? And I think there's a temptation, a lot of the times we want a list, right? Okay, here are the things you can do, And here are the things that you cannot do on this day. And if you have that list, then you'll at least know the parameters and so on. Especially coming out of a culture, even a Christian culture, that has really done a lot of disservice to the Lord's day.

But I think remembering that it is a day that is made for man is helpful on the one side, and it's a day to give glory and honor and set it apart in terms of our duty towards the Lord himself in worship. And so there's two words that Scott uses to describe this day called delightful celebration. That's a nice way to think about the Lord's Day or the day of rest. He says that the critical factor is how to celebrate...sorry, the critical factor in how to celebrate begins in your mind. How you think about the day makes all the difference.

So do you think about it as a day of delight? Or parents, one of the things that we're tasked with is making sure that the day isn't a drudgery or a bore for our children. We don't want them, quote unquote, sitting like statues. And we definitely don't want our children hoping for the end of the day. When is this gonna all be over?

And I can get back to life. So it's a task. When you think about it, depending on the ages of your children, how do you turn this into a day of delight that is both holy and filled with duty toward God, but is also a day for man? It's something that's a bit of a task to think through on how you're going to do that. And it's not, here again are the checklists and the things just to do.

There are some things not to do, of course, but how do you turn it into the best day of the week? He says this, that there are only a few restrictions mentioned in the Bible. Cease from work, cease from regular activity, cease from idle talk, and cease from doing your own thing. That's it. God gives broad principles that apply broadly.

Consider how you might talk about the really important things. And that can be part of how you institute or bring that into your family, into your home. And so parents, how you regard the day is critical. You know, how is your disposition or your level of enjoyment? There's advice, little tips you can do like preparing the night before.

Well, what will the sermon be about? Today we heard from Acts chapter 1. Well, it might be a good thing to Saturday night so your children are prepared about what's going to be preached to read, what's going to be preached on and discuss it and hopefully just lay a little bit of foundation. You know, you can ask all sorts of things on the day of the, you know, like for example we're gonna break in a little bit, you're gonna go home. You know, you can ask all sorts of things like, what was your favorite song that we sang today?

Or give us one thought that jumped out to you from the sermon. What scripture jumped out to you? Or did you have any good conversations with other people? Those are just different ways you can enjoy the Sabbath. Again, without telling you exactly what to do, he makes about 11 different suggestions on how to spend your time.

You know, obviously, you can talk about the sermon. Don't repreach it. You don't want to take 20, 30 minutes. But you can bring out a few things to water the plant and hopefully... I know when we do this at home, like, I'll just say, hey, you know, what was one thought and just go around.

And every single Sunday we do this, there's like two or three thoughts I totally forgot that someone says. And, yeah, that was an actual really important part of the sermon. And we get to all kind of rehash and hopefully be benefited from that. You can take a walk in God's creation, sing a song, as I mentioned, read a good book with godly principles or talk about the week that we just passed through or the week ahead. There's all sorts of things that we can do to make this a day of delightful celebration.

And so we end here on the on the tenth day, which is the family together in church. And this is really, I think, more of an apologetic for the family integration that churches should embrace. And so just being intentional about being together in church, he asked the question, did age-segregated subgroups come about because we were thinking biblically about it? And of course the answer is no, and he takes a very kind of brief detour into the history of where this kind of segregated church idea came from. Really it was copied from the public education system that began in the 1850s and then of course It really took on speed in the 1950s and this division that took place within the family, even as they came to church.

But how does the Bible describe worship and the family? And there's so many examples, but one of my favorite was taken from the Passover. He mentions this in the book of Exodus, where Moses says, pick out and take lambs for yourselves according to your families. It was designed for the children to learn about bondage and redemption in Egypt. And it shall be when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service?" Right?

You have this lamb that's being sacrificed. It gives us beautiful opportunity to pass on exactly what it is that God has saved you from this bondage and brought you into new life. But it's the whole family that is partaking of this together. And so the question can be asked, where in the New Testament do you see the church separated by age? And I think the conclusion you have to come to is that it's really the invention of godless architects and then we just copied it.

And of course when you go to the New Testament you even find the opposite where when the Lord Jesus, he was there preaching to the 5, 000, it says that, now those who had eaten were about 5, 000 men besides women and children. So a lot of commentators will say there's probably upwards of 15 or even 20, 000 people that were there just all together hearing the word of God as it was spoken by the Lord himself. And so I want to just end with this last line. I think it's such a good line that hopefully encapsulates this day, the family together in church. He says that we need to understand that the meetings in the early church included babies who were cutting teeth and crying, eight-year-old boys who were wired for movement, and budding teenagers.

The children were not in age-graded Sunday schools instead of the meetings of the church. They were taught side by side with adults in the meetings of the church. And so there we have it, the overview here of just remembering what God has done. He's joined, He's knitting us together. We've come to a place where it is like a quarry, where we're gonna get dust thrown up.

There's gonna be loud noises, chisel cuts, and all sorts of things going on in your life and mine, but to embrace those things and then to embrace the day that God has given to us. So let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for this book that we're going through. Lord, we pray that we would be profited by it, that we would be recalibrated by it and helped. Lord, teach us, help us to order our lives and our thinking more in line with your words.

Lord, we do want to walk pleasing in your sight and help us, O Lord, even as we dwell here in this construction site, so to speak, that, Lord, we would learn to live together and love one another with our eyes set to that day when we will be gathered before you as living stones forever and ever. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.