Celebrating Faith: Identity, Community, and God's Promises

1. "In baptism, God promises by grace alone through faith to forgive our sins, to adopt us into the body of Christ, the church. To send his Holy Spirit daily to renew and cleanse us, and to resurrect us to eternal life, like we just sang. We believe that it is God who does the work of regeneration in each person. Yet, we are also to respond to that work that he does in us because of Paul's words and also Jesus. In our tradition, that sign and seal was placed on them as babies, and their parents brought them to do this. But this is their act. And as they profess with their... In their mouth, they believe in their hearts the saving work that God has done by grace through faith, and it has come to them." [16:43] (46 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


2. "By publicly professing and affirming what Jesus has done and is doing in your hearts, by making this public profession, you are not only believing what God says in his word, but you are also putting it into action. By doing so, you agree with Paul that Jesus was the one who created man. will not let you be put to shame. You are also agreeing with Jesus' brothers. James, when he says and wrote in James 2 .14, What good is it, dear brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith, but you do not show it in your actions? Can that kind of faith save anyone? Today, you are taking action along with your belief. This profession is publicly acknowledging the saving work of God in you through the Holy Spirit." [18:39] (41 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


3. "Be assured that as you declare your faith, God will continue to be faithful to strengthen you and to renew you by the Holy Spirit, that you may grow in grace and knowledge and may keep this covenant faithfully all of your days. Larry, would you pray for us? We're going to pray one more time together as a congregation. So Jesus taught his disciples to pray a prayer. And this is a prayer that we pray together corporately, also as ourselves as well, as we may not know exactly what to pray. Larry is an eloquent person for prayer and it is amazing that some of us have this gift. But some of us struggle. But you can always pray this prayer." [22:29] (93 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


4. "We live in a broken world. you got it now there we go all right so we live in a broken world we know that things aren't as they are supposed to be but nehemiah as we've been walking through we see how he worked through the broken world to give a glimpse of the kingdom of god rebuilding the walls of faith and also his community today we come up to chapter 7 in our walk through nehemiah and uh it's 73 chapter 73 verses we're just going to plow through just kidding we're not going to go all through 73 um there's a lot of list of names that we will say and read through some of it together but if you wanted to turn in your bibles to um page 449 in our our pew bibles here and if your bible at home or downstairs um to nehemiah 7 and we'll read a little bit about that little bit until we get to the list of names and then we'll skip over the list of names and come back because i think nehemiah has something really good for us and it just so happens that it is amazing again how god works that what we're learning through nehemiah really really dictates and kind of goes along with our profession of faith today." [36:55] (76 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


5. "Walls by themselves will not keep us totally safe. It is these also guards of good faith people. See, godly structures and procedures help, keep security and also should help spur growth in our faith communities. That's why when we have professions of faith, it isn't just random talking that we do up there. We have a liturgy that we do to kind of guide us. When we bring new people into the fold of our church, we take them, if they haven't already been in our fold, learning through the years about who we are as a family, we actually have a class or a procedure to share. What we believe about God, what we believe about Jesus, the Holy Spirit, all these things, because people come from all over. Remember, these people were in captivity in Babylon and may have forgotten what was going on or what the Israelites really believed, because as we go out into the world, there are competing belief systems. So we need to set up structures, policies, and procedures in the church to help us, keep us theologically and also procedurally correct." [43:28] (78 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


6. "Belonging is confirmed through recognition and accountability. So we move on from that first step, but then in verse 4, Nehemiah kind of goes into this thing where, hey, the walls have been built, we've got leaders in place, but then we need to find out who's here. We need to know that we are all from Israel or that we can't have outsiders per se. We want people coming and investigating Christ, but we also, when we have communion together, we have people that we share. Hey, if you are not a Christ follower, yeah, you may not be part of this church, but if you're not a Christ follower, this communion is not for you. This communion actually is for those who follow Jesus, and that's special. We need to protect us. Some churches go as far as having closed communion. If we can't prove that you are part of the family in our own kind of own assessment, we will not let you share communion with us. That's how important some churches view this." [48:34] (62 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


7. "Your belonging needs, you need to understand, your spiritual identity is not what you do. It's who you are and whose you are. So as we gather today, we look at 1 Peter and Nehemiah here. But 1 Peter says this, but you are a chosen people. Chosen. You didn't choose it. You were chosen. A royal priesthood. A nation. A people belonging to God that you may declare the praises of him, who called you out of darkness into this wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you receive mercy. See, as children of God, we share a familial relationship with him, Jesus, and with each other. Just this morning, I was talking with Cindy DeFries before church, and we were just talking, and she said this question. What do people do that are not part of a church? How do they find support? And I'm sure they do, but a lot find despair." [54:45] (78 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)


8. "We get as followers the kingdom of god everyone is a participant and i've shared that before but we need to realize that this belonging is more than just deceiving it is also giving and the 70 it said that some of the heads of work in first corinthians paul says that we are god's fellow workers also the responsibilities together to use our gifts to contribute and hopefully lord willing grow the kingdom see in nehemiah 7 how structures where nehemiah put things in place how structures where nehemiah put things in place the belonging and identity nehemiah showed through this list of names and the responsibilities they all come together to form a strong and secure zion which they were as the church goes we need to understand that we want people to belong not because of what they've done but whose they are and once we get to that place of knowing who we are we're going to have to wouldn't just take people out of we use the gifts and ability god has given us for the good of the kingdom in itsants people from death to life people fro death to life that's what we celebrate today that's what we celebrate today that's what we celebrate every day but especially today that's what we celebrate every day but especially today it is amazing that this miracle happens it is amazing that this miracle happens I would dare say and I don't want to speak for you ladies but I would say that you're like again I didn't do enough right I mean like I had faith in what God held to me i don't do enough and that's the the thing that we get a lot is i need to work i need to do more but the reality is you can rest in whose you are and work out of that so working in the kingdom of god is not a burden but a blessing to us and others." [55:37] (147 seconds) (Download raw clip | Download cropped clip)