Making Sense of Church | The Body - Sam Gibson

Get a folks John Tyson here. Hope you're doing well. Hey, I wanted to take a moment just to address those of you who listen to our podcast Thank you so much this past year for walking alongside us as a church and for listening in on what God is doing It really has been an incredible year for us as a church. I Really don't think we've ever had a year like this. I've been here for over 20 years And what God's doing right now is really remarkable. We are seeing a spiritual openness in New York That everybody I know in New York across the city says they've never witnessed since they've lived here. This is incredible The amount of prayer that's happening here friendships relationships. It's just wild And so for those of you who are listening in and you've been praying for us and cheering us on as a church I didn't want to take a moment just to say thank you We feel it. We're so encouraged by not just your Listening in but the support that you give us we are really really grateful Also wanted to give you a chance if what's happening in our church is something really meaningful for you For you to partner with us You know at the end of the year we do a living the liturgy Campaign and in some sense it's just our attempt to ask God what does he have for the future and to rally around that both with prayer and resources to live into the future. We think God's got for us This next season is really definitive because As a church right now you're probably aware of this we do have a ton of God-given momentum right now And we do not want to just keep that for ourselves. I remember in the early days of being here thinking If God ever really blesses us I want to be one of those churches that turns outward and seeks to serve the city not just serve itself And we've done small attempts at that over the years But this really is a paradigm shift in our church's identity and mission to turn outward and care about what God Wants to do when the city is a whole so it's our heart to become a Resourceing church to become one of those pillar churches that blesses the city beyond its own borders If you'd love to be a part of what that is you can go to church.mlc/give You can read about our new efforts to launch a new gathering in the Upper Resort of Manhattan our efforts to serve the marginalized in our city and give towards justice initiatives and To help resource pastors We've got something beautiful happening with four dot NYC It's remarkable. There's a lot there you can go on there. You can read about that and we just would encourage you To pray about joining us in what God is doing here in New York We get the sense that a window is opening God's doing something special and we want the resources to rush in and take a hold of what God's doing in our midst So thanks for listening great for for you church.mwc/give Now let's get back to the podcast Our Teaching text first Corinthians chapter 12 verses 12 through 27 So at the word of the Lord says it says for just as the body is one and has many members and All the members of the body though many are one body so it is with Christ For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body Jews or Greeks slaves are free and all were made to drink of one spirit For the body does not consist of one member but of many If the foot should say because I'm not a hand I do not belong to the body That would not make it any less a part of the body and if the ears should say because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body that would not make it any less a part of the body If the whole body were an eye where would be the sense of hearing If the whole body were an ear where would be the sense of smell But as it is God arranged the members in the body each one of them as he chose If all were single member Where would the body be As it is there are many parts yet one body That I cannot say to the hand I have no need of you Nor again the head to the feet I have no need of you On the contrary the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable And on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestowed the greater honor and on our un-presentable parts are treated with greater modesty Which are more presentable parts do not require But God has so composed the body giving greater honor to the part that lacked it that there may be no division in the body But that the members may have the same care for one another if one member suffers all suffer together If one member is honored all rejoice together Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. This is the word of the Lord You guys could take a seat Good morning folks. I feel very loved and seen If you didn't notice that teaching text was the wrong translation Pastor John prefers the in IV I prefer the ESV but the team just auto assume put it in ESV I'll summon myself and using the in IV which is a lesser translation I'm John's not here. He can repent of his sins later Just pick it's all good as long as I read the message Folks to have a message before my name is Sam I serve our senior leadership team here at Church of the City I'm going to be a part of what we call movements here as a church Which is what God is doing the Holy Spirit is doing in and through our city with pray NYC foreign YC and Out in about in the Western world and just want to encourage you I think it's so important right now to pay attention to the testimony that is on your lips The season the body of Christ has changed changed significantly over the last 18 months Our church for Pastor John for last 20 years has been beating the drum about contending for revival and awakening Many of times our church we will quote something from God and Dave Kinneman That was from the book Faith for exiles and basically this book was written after a long Christian research study was done That was talking about the decline of Christianity and the Western church and the summarization of all that Study was basically this statement says barring a move of God and Radical discipleship of the next generation The Western church has reached a state of irreversible decline If you've been a part of our community before you've heard us say that What's so amazing is that statement is not true anymore? Like we were in a literal 40-year cliff dive of Christianity in America and Christianity in the West just plummeting numbers And if you look at the data now there's actually the cliff dive is over in this an inflection point up It's amazing and it's important to know the season you're in because you need to match the season with the season now There's still a long way to go you know, it's like guys the cliff. I was over But I just encourage you to just pay attention to what story you're telling I'm gonna have the opportunity to be around with other churches in the city and it's amazing what God is doing the body of Christ in our city It's not attributed to a size a method a Denomination so I just want you to know God is moving in our midst Do not get too familiar with what God is doing around us It's amazing now today I have the assignment to conclude our series on making sense of the church And can we just be honest making sense of the church is really hard It's amazing I've been in pastoral ministry for 15 years and It's really shocking to me how there's not much like para church organization hurt I rarely in lingering times almost like man, I got FCA hurt Even like other clubs it's like nobody's got fraternity sorority hurt Might need to announce that that's a different sermon You know no one's like you know, I got 4/8 hurt. Sorry from the South. That's probably doesn't exist up here If we're being honest, I mean I can just be kind of confusing making sense of the church And that's been our desire in this series and If you know me I'm a very kind person Pretty silly until bad jokes as you've already seen But today I have a hard word for us And I pray that you would hear this word With the Father's heart I think we have a hard time Making sense of the church because in all honesty we have a hard time making sense of the hard words are sometimes in scripture So if you're not from our church, I kind of give you a pass like you can send this to your pastor later This is kind of a family conversation, but it's one that I think we need to have if we were gonna walk and the fullness and wholeness That's all for to us With that being said let me pray for us. I'll sleep now Father, we just thank you this morning for the access we've been given to you through Christ Jesus, we thank you for your broken body. Thank you for your shed blood. We thank you that you are the head of your church. And so right now we just invite the Holy Spirit to connect us to the head once again. Lord, we invite your voice that sounds like the sound of many Russian waters to fill the room. Lord, we pray you with silence every voice that is not your voice in this place. Lord, we just pray that right now there would be an invitation to lean in. Lord, I just pray anywhere where shame condemnation could sit up, we just rebuke that and renounce that. Lord, today we just invite invitation, conviction, comfort into the room. Lord, right now I just pray that you would empty me of me. Lord, I am not trying to come in eloquent words or wisdom denying the cross of His power. Lord, I just ask that Christ and Christ crucified would be on full display in this place. And Jesus, then we pray. Amen. So in concluding this series, I want to put before you a little bit of a quote. This is from one of my favorite writers, a name, A. W. Tojir, he says this. Has it ever occurred to you that 100 pianos all tuned to the same fork or automatically attuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So 100 worshipers meeting together, each looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other, that they could possibly be, or they'd become unity conscious, and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. My argument to you today is going to be that we need to reset the standard inside the church. Trying to make sense of church apart from making sense of Jesus is just never going to happen. Trying to get unified around horizontal strategies or systems is never going to work outside of the standard being set which is Christ Jesus. And what's interesting is we often expect other people to bow to that standard, but yet the real invitation today is, are we bowing to that standard? So my goal today is to talk briefly about what is the body, what defiles the body, and then what restores the body. What is the body? Folks, I just want to say this, I think I kind of mentioned this, but making sense of the church is pretty confusing. Like so far in this series, so just think about tomorrow. I want you to go and explain what the body is to the people you work with. So so far in this series, we've covered the church as a flock, the churches abroad, the churches of family, the church of citizens, the churches of the temple, the churches of priests, the churches of an army, my favorite, churches of city on the hill, church as the new humanity, and then today we're talking about church as the body. So just, I would invite you to have, just think about what that conversation looks like. I said, what is church? Well, we're a body, we're a priest, we're a temple. You know, I just want to, I just need to acknowledge it. This is, there's a profound mystery to what we're talking about. One of the challenges I think we have in the West, you'll see is our desire to pursue certainty in intellectual matters. When in all reality, you have to embrace the mystery of the body, not just the intellectual functionality of it. The Apostle Paul, in this letter to the Corinthian church, which I'll beg and implore you guys to read, 'cause one of the things you're trained in teaching God's word is that you need to teach the tone and the context of the text. And the entirety of this text is a correction to the church. It is to a divided church and to a divided people. And he says this, in 1 Corinthians chapter two, bleeding into chapter three, he says, "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him." And he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but himself is to be judged by no one. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ. But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people to flesh, as infants in Christ, bunch of babies. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you're not ready for it. And even now you're not yet ready. For you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? So my goal today is folks, I don't wanna talk to you about the fleshly nature of the church being the body. I wanna talk to you about the spiritual nature of this happening. You've all heard sermons about the churches of body. You know, it's like, look at your neighbor, say your nail bow. You know? The body of Christ shouldn't compare, they should compliment. It's like you guys are smart. But the reality is like we have the right thoughts of what it should be like. We might even have the right words of what it should be like, but if we're being honest, our hearts are pretty far from the experience in that reality. I also just wanna demystify this idea of like the perfect community. I mean, I've been passing inside of a church for about 15 years and I love the church. Sincerely, I love the broad, I love churches, I love church leaders, I love anywhere the people of God are gathering together to worship and to the name of Jesus, I'm for it. I don't care what method, what model it is, where Jesus Christ is lower than the word is preached, I'm about that life. So one, I just wanna you to, if you would deconstruct your idea of this perfect idea of what church is supposed to be. Because the two church quickly had the act six division. And we're not even too far from Jesus and it's homework would invite you to read first Corinthians. Because Paul is just going at division, among division, among division, is a massive letter of correction. It was Dieter Bonheyev that said, Christian community is not an ideal we must realize. It is rather a reality created by God in Christ and which we must participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone. The more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it. He who loves his dream of Christian community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of that community. Look around the room. No one in this room can sustain the weight of you worshiping them in this room. Someone in this room is gonna disappoint you. I mean, probably me. Our idealism, we have these expectations. You're talking about a marriage and relationships like, you know, the idea of unspoken expectations. Now all of us have this unspoken ideal of the church. I just wanna say, it actually prevents us from experiencing the beauty of the church. Out of chance to be a piece 'cause arrow who pastors and queens, which will notice is now leading his church. And he wrote the book, "Emotionally Healthy Spirituality." Fantastic book, highly recommend it. And he was telling the story about their journey to plant the church. And they've been working at the college ministry. And when they're feeling this called a plant of church, he's like, man, I don't wanna do that. Like, I don't know about making disciples. I don't wanna lead a church. I don't wanna make disciples. I don't wanna deal, this is what he said. I don't wanna deal with the drama inside the church. He said, but you know what I've realized? There is no discipleship apart from the drama. It's real easy for me to be some college kids hero that he meets with once a week, versus when I have to enter in and do life on life with people and address areas of emptiness in my own life. I love the church, but we do just have to acknowledge it. If the church is a body, if we're just saying about us in human function, we're really not doing too well. Like we just have a really, I'm so hopeful, I'm a nice guy. A lot of faith, what God is doing this hour, but realistically, I best case scenario we're on life support. Cancer is eating our body. Coleness, we're basically just dismembered. I mean, you can see this in a macro level, we're divided, dysfunctional, disconnected. Right now, there's an estimated 50,000 different denominations in the Protestant movement. That's up from 2000 in the early 1900s. It's wild how quickly we can disassociate from one another over simple things. quickly we fragment. If I were to summarize as simple as I can, we have to embrace this reality that he speaks about that we are one body, many members. All the members of the body, though many, make up one. Now what this practically means for you and I and this is what I want to lovingly just kind of put in front of us is what you do in secret impacts what we do in public. Your personal walk with God impacts our corporate experience with God. Full candor I have had the hardest time preparing to preach this message because every time I wanted to get to like my thoughts and what I wanted about it, all the Holy Spirit kept doing was calling out a fence I was carrying in my heart. I probably put a not exaggeration at least 30 hours of prayer into this thing and I wish it was like me getting great ram of statements from God. I want to talk to you about that wound you are carrying from five years ago. I want to talk to you about the fence you are holding up over a decision that was made that you disagree with. I am not coming to you with some high and lofty place heart at you right now. I am coming to you from a very empty and very low place and said all of this has done is just made me like examine my own heart and my own life in a real significant way. What is the body? I am the body and you are the body. We are the body. And I would love to talk about church, you need all that stuff but folks we got to get it reconciled in here before we can think about getting reconciled out there. So that means let's talk about what defiles the body. What compromises us. What makes us sick? Number one sexual morality. Say nothing and what I am going to say in condemnation but just in a loving way like the way you date, the way you treat people of the opposite sex, you are walking in holiness matters and it impacts other people. I think we have allowed the Western individualism to make its way inside of the church and so we will gather and we think what I do with my body really does not matter and it actually does. I want to say this just statistically in this room right now one in at least one in three or one in four people have been sexually abused. You have experienced the defilement this has done to you. That is what you know if you have been abused or someone is taking advantage of you it is not your fault. But often one of the hardest traumas to get over that people feel is when something has committed sexual sin against them and the sin and uncleanness they feel because of that. Intellectually they know it. They see counselors and therapists about it but yet there is something spiritual. There is some spiritual defilement that crept into that space. Your secret life impacts our corporate life. My secret life impacts our corporate life. Next division of disunity. Hate to tell you this words matter. If you were to evaluate your words over the last six months speaking about the body of Christ what would that audit reveal? Your words are either going to be a brick to build or a hammer to tear down. And this matters for other churches. I am not saying what people have done is write anything like that. I am not saying people are getting it perfect but in the day I will hold an account for the words that I use. Because Ephesians talks about he is torn down the dividing wall of hostility yet we spend so much time building it back up with our own words. Next up false teaching. Just past orally just a note here folks. If you are the concern I have here is that less than about false teaching and more about fragmented teaching. I think it is so easy right now just to find your favorite tick tock Instagram preacher. Follow me at samgipson.nwc. Come on cue our code back here. Often we basically will find teaching we like. The Apostle Paul speaks about this itchy ears. Folks I am this way too. If I could just one of the best things I am just so concerned about the body of Christ being susceptible to deception because we actually don't know the word. Don't find your favorite teachers know the word of God. You need to know the word, eat the word, consume the word. One of our distinctives in discipleship is radical daily pursuit feasting on the word of God. Like if you have not read the Bible cover to cover you are susceptible to deception. If you are not consistently immersing yourself in the word of God you are susceptible to deception. All of us are. Here is the problem the nature being deceived is we don't know we are being deceived. Next up unforgiveness and bitterness. Full candor I think this is the one I had to sit on the most. I am the guy. I have this forgiveness practice I teach all the time. I was just getting ready for this. I felt like the Holy Spirit was going into the canyons of my heart. I am just pulling out every gross thing that I was holding on to. The book of Hebrews talks about be cautious not to set up a root of bitterness that defiles many. You guys do understand and again I am not saying in any way shape or form what happened is right, excusing behavior. I just want to invite you to look at the cross Christ crucify who he took your record of wrongs nailed to the cross. He took your offenses and now to the cross and yet our entitlement to hold on to personal offenses and looking at the cross. Next up neglect. Neglecting one another. Neglecting parts we don't like. Neglecting people that aren't like us. I need you to help form Christ in me and you need me. My wife Lee and could have tested this. This is probably I struggle this too. She jokes all the time that I should just move out into the middle of the woods, start my own monastery, be a desert father. It's like if I just be in a room, pray and fast, you know, it would be great. It can be honest. That actually doesn't reveal how godly I am. It reveals how ungodly I am. That I have a hard time transferring what is I know about God and walking in daily relationships with people. That actually isn't a son of how godly I am. It's an actually son of how ungodly I am and how much I need people to form Christ in me. Because it's you that helps me reveal deficits that are in me. We need each other. We can't neglect the meeting together. I need to hear your song. I need to know your story. There's something you have to offer in this space. Last on this list, there's a lot more. All of the scripture to back it up is wordliness and idolatry. He wants to say wordly to someone. I mean, he speaks about this. I wish I could speak to you as a spiritual people but you're in the flesh. Like we're trying to take spiritual matters and just like imputed when we're to have a worldly appetite all the time. Idolatry is not necessarily bad. It's just good things in the wrong place. They end the first John 4. He says little children, the were vitals. It's so easy for me to put a good thing in the wrong place. So recapping this list, sexual morality, division, disunity, false teaching, unforgiveness and bitterness, neglect, worldliness and idolatry. Man, aren't you glad you came to church today? But the reality is this, folks, I think we've gotten away. because we've seen the compromise in the church collectively. We've seen the compromise in church leaders, for we are honest. And we will look at the compromise out there and the compromise in them and allow that to be the excuse of compromise in us. When in reality, if we are all supposed to drink from one spirit, when I take that, it's tainted for everybody. If poison is put into water, it's not like, "Well, this isn't a one drop of poison." It's actually defiling the whole. When the father who sees was done in secret, he rewards was done in secret. Also, I think we have consequences for what's done in secret. Say this to put no shame over you, but just an invitation today of like, "Can we just be honest about where we are? Maybe the reason the church isn't healthy is because we're bringing some bad stuff to the room." Can we just own our degree of agency we have in this? Like I'm honest, I'm sorry for defiling our church care and unforgiveness in my heart. I'm sorry for defiling our church because I wanted to collect the great parts of the body sometimes. I just want to be alone nicely then. I'm sorry for defiling the church the way I've used my words in private sometimes. Because what I think I did, that no one else sees, I think actually impacts us more than I care to admit. Say this with somebody, what defiles it. Well, good news is, there are things that can restore it. Now move these quickly and spend a lot of time on a last point. Number one is just beholding Jesus. Folks, the church is about Jesus. It's about him holding his central place, his place of preeminence. We want him enthroned in the earth, he's got to be enthroned in us first. Like if you're looking to gather around like common interests or hobbies, go join a country club. Go play cards somewhere, I don't know. I'm not cool, I don't know anything that's popular these days. Like this is not a social club where we find people of like mind and like hobbies and like interest. We find a redeemed people forgiven who've received mercy, honoring and elevating the name of Jesus. The central figure, the only figure, that's all that actually matters. Francis Chan says the church is God's plan. Not for our entertainment, not for our comfort, not to be a social club, but to be a group of people committed to loving God and each other. Sacrificing deeply, bearing each other's burdens, pursuing Jesus together and reaching the world. Unity is not something we can manufacture, it is the fruit of people who are all obsessed with the same person. Jesus. Next up, love and humility. You know what brings restoration and healing when you encounter love. When you encounter people who consider others needs more than their own. Now this is a love that we all receive, we know this. You don't manufacture it, you don't muster it up. So Holy Spirit's role to shed the Father's love abroad in our hearts and minds. Like some of us, we know intellectually we should love people, but in reality our hearts are so far from being able to do that. And that's a good thing because that gap exposes my need for him. You know after this passage, 1 Corinthians 12, he goes on to give the famous love chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. And I love how he concludes in chapter 12, he says, "Still I will show you a more excellent way." If you're growing in spiritual knowledge, practice, discipline, doing all the Jesus stuff you should be doing, but you are not growing in love for those who are sitting around you, you're doing it wrong. Sound teaching. Don't just look for teaching you like, find teaching that corrects you. The Word of God is intended to pierce, intended to cut, not just comfort. It does bring lots of comfort in my life. I found more comfort in the correction of God than anything else in my life. Forgiveness and reconciliation. When you can release a spirit of offense, recognizing that spirit of offense has been released against you. Next one, honor. It was something we really struggle with because it's been misused in some church context, but just honoring and recognizing the value that other people bring. The space they occupy. This is one of the things that really define the early church in such a significant way where people with lowest status and highest status can be esteemed, but they all had the same degree of honor and medicine. And last but certainly not least is wholehearted devotion. Wholehearted devotion. So many six, my favorite Psalms, has landed in 11, says, "Teach us your ways, O Lord, that we may walk in your truth. Unite our hearts to fear names so we can thank you with our whole heart." Wholeheartedness matters because we're offering all of ourselves to Him. So often we let a root of bitterness or something kind of just be held back, versus offering the fullness of who we are. I'm going to read that and it got very confrontation for me because I was like, he receives it, he washes it, makes it new, but I'm walking in carrying a defiled heart, frustrated, angry bitterness. This is what I'm bringing to Him. If I could just say very simply what defiles the body and what restores the body, I do. You do. We do. And you want to make the decision and we need to make the decision that what I do will either defile or what I do will bring restoration. And in the spiritual realm it might not ever be made manifest in a public way, but the way you pray for a loved one another like that actually does something in the spiritual realm. What defiles, what restores, I do, you do, we do. And I think we've got to take this with a higher degree of sincerity. Like this probably is the way where the individual of the West can actually help us a bit. Where your life with God impacts other people's life with God, your what would Jesus impact other people's lives with Jesus. And if I could just bring us, I mentioned this, I talked about at the top of what restores the body, but holding Jesus, I just want to talk about the source, the source. First Corinthians 12, 12 and 13. For just as the body is one has many members and all the members of the body, though many are one, so it is with Christ. For in one spirit we're all baptized into one body. Jews, or Greeks, slaves, or free. And all were made to drink of one spirit. There's a well we're drinking from. The well of the spirit. Our need of the Holy Spirit to unites, to refresh us, to renew us. I think we've just allowed the pool of the world, other spirits to defile what it is we're drinking from. Can fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring. I mean, this is used all throughout scripture. If we talk about the Holy Spirit, two things happen. One, you get freaked out. Two, you get too excited. One, don't freak out. Two, calm down. The Holy Spirit's primary role is to reveal Jesus. His primary assignment. We need the Holy Spirit to reveal Jesus to us. We need the Holy Spirit to remind us of what he is taught. Like he is not representing himself, he is representing the Son who also is representing the Father. Second Corinthians 3, 16, 18 says, "When one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed." Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. If I were to say what the body of Christ should be doing, I'll think it is this verse. Turning away from the world, turning away from our preferences, turning away from our flesh, and turning to the Lord. Turning the veil removed, O for a baptism of honesty. We love to mask our pain, hide our pain, cover up, conceal, but may there's such a kindness we just turn to the Lord and we just say, "Here I am." It says, "Now the Lord is the Spirit." Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. If you look in the original language, the best translation of this would be, "Now the Spirit is Lord." Because you ever noticed how you're in an atmosphere like a little crazy, holy spirit encounter place. I love those places. I'm there all the time. When the Spirit of the Lord is there's freedom. I'm like, "Yar so bound, it's not even funny." Have the right language, but yet there's something missing because it's not just the Lord as a spirit. Here's what I'm saying about this, because it's not just about the centrality of Jesus. It's about the centrality of Jesus and us aligning under the Lordship of Jesus. And under the Lordship of Jesus every area matters. Under the Lordship of Jesus, what I do with my body matters. What I do with my words matter. What I do with bitterness and forgiveness matters. I don't know if you recognize this, you signed up to follow Jesus, it's surrendering your life. It's receiving Him as a Savior and as a Lord. And just want to lovingly just kind of say, folks, I think it's time for us to take the Lordship of Jesus a bit more serious. And in that place we can unveil our face. There's freedom found in knowing it's not my performance, it's not my behavior. It's knowing the price he paid. This is not a trial harder to do more. This is about recognize who he is. Recognize what's on offer. With all unveiled faces beholding the glory of Lord, I've been transformed into the same image. From one degree of glory to another. Oh, to be in a space. So I worship always feels so powerful. So I lingering always feels so powerful because just for a moment we are lifting up the name of Jesus. So he inhabits the praise of his people. And for the moment of time we're not looking to the left or to the right, we're not trying to be like somebody, we're not trying to compare ourselves against somebody. We're just beholding the beauty, the majesty, the magnificence of the Son. Folks, it's time to get our eyes as a body back on Jesus the head, the central figure. It's time to recognize that what one parts of the body does impacts other parts of the body. Has it ever occurred to you that 100 pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? Christ and Christ crucified is the standard. What I'm going to do is invite the Holy Spirit to come and just create a moment to wait upon the Lord. Come Holy Spirit, fill this room. Come Holy Spirit, if you would open your hands, close your eyes, don't think about anybody, this is a which each one must individually bow. Remember you are in the space to invite you to say come Holy Spirit, if you're willing and able, search me, know me, reveal any way of offense in me, leave me into the way ever lasting. I can't wait to see what I can do. Acts 319 says, repent then and turn to God, that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. I just believe today there's a window of refreshment over the room, but it's us being willing to be honest. Maybe you feel dry and you're walking with the Lord and I'll just ask how fresh as repentance been on your lips. There with your heads bowed and your eyes closed, what I'm getting ready to invite us to do might seem unfamiliar to you, but it's a very normative practice throughout church history. It's a public confession of sin. And what I want to invite us to do is I'll start, I'll lead the way. All you're going to simply do is not for any type of recognition, but it's just our acknowledgement of the need of the blood of Jesus, the recognition of the cross. You'll just simply where you are out loud. Say, Lord Jesus, I confess blank. And if you hear someone around you, if we hear someone around you, our response will be the blood of Jesus cleanses you. It's okay if multiple voices start speaking at the same time. I just want to invite you. This is not a place of trying to show off. It's just us acknowledging our need for the Lord. And if you feel the Lord pressing or propping on something, it can just be the simple statement that Lord Jesus I confess, sexual morality. Lord Jesus I confess bitterness. And then we as a collective congregation will respond with the blood of Jesus cleanses you. I want to invite you as probably as be a few at first, but courage is courageous. And so here I'll start. Lord Jesus, I confess to harboring bitterness and unforgiveness towards people in this congregation in my heart.