As I suggested in one of my messages, one of the problems is knowing what to give. I believe the Lord has already laid upon my heart where he wants us to give tomorrow night. Several times Brother Bob Willie has referred to a message that he heard me give in Bristol. The name of the message is the Christian that God uses. And the Lord Willie, unless he leaves otherwise, that will be the message that I'd like to give tomorrow night. In fact, I'm going to ask our brother to maybe cut a song out. I don't know why, but the clock always seems to get ahead of my message for some reason. So maybe tomorrow night we can start even singing a few minutes early and cut a song out because there are a number of things I'd like to share with you. And then for tomorrow morning I've narrowed it down to two. I can't give but one, but I'll give one of the two. We'll either talk about the incident recorded in Acts chapter eight where Philip went out to preach to the Ethiopian unit. Are we going to make a study kind of a continuation of what we had this morning except for use only perhaps the King James? We're going to study what we have been admonished or commanded to do daily in the Bible. Now one of those two will be given tomorrow morning and tomorrow night. The Christian that God uses And then Lord willing, we'll be leaving about eight-thirty Saturday morning to go down to Orlando to visit some unsaved relatives, try to be a testimony to them, and then go on down to West Palm Beach where we'll be speaking Sunday, and then I have two days off. What do you know about that? And I've already decided what I'm going to do. I'm going to study. Or I might play a game of golf. I used to play golf, played a game about five years ago, World War I remember. So you can really tell I don't have the bug. I did it one time. I really did. I got the golf bug, and the first thing I knew, I was chasing that little white ball around a course there in Columbia where they let preachers play for free, two and three and four times a week. And any of you who know anything about golf know that you can't play even nine holes less than two and a half, three hours. So the Lord spoke to me about it and said, Listen, Shockley, this golf's taking too much of your time, and I said, That's right. And so I kind of just laid my clubs aside. In fact, I couldn't even tell you right now where my golf clubs are. I was afraid of the house somewhere, but I just don't have time. That's all it is to it. I do like tennis. I've wanted to play tennis all week long, and now that it's Thursday night, somebody will probably tell me, yes, I'd like to play with you, and they can tell me even where our code is, but it's too late now, because I've got some things already planned for tomorrow afternoon that I've got to do. In fact, I've had a wonderful electric typewriter all week long, and I've been so busy All I've had time to do is write my wife two or three notes and that's it. And I had big plans. I was going to re-outline fifteen or twenty messages, you know, while I was there. Well, I'm glad I'm the kind that not getting to do what you'd like to do doesn't hurt you. You know, Paul was like that. Paul prayed and planned for Rome for many years. And he didn't get to go. until very very late in life but you know i'm certainly glad paul didn't get to go to rome when he wanted to go aren't you if paul had had his way and if paul had gone to rome when he wanted to go we wouldn't have the greatest theological treatise on the gospel of jesus christ available today the book of romans now tonight in order for you to appreciate what I'm going to say. It's going to be necessary for me to take maybe, and I hope I can do it in five minutes, and give a word of testimony. I'm going to speak tonight on what I believe is the New Testament church. And I want to say this, that the outline that I'm going to use is not shockless use. It's an outline that is contained in a little booklet that I'm going to tell you about. It's a close of the message. And this little booklet written by our dear friend and brother, the late brother Alfred Gibbs, goes much, much more into detail about what is involved in a New Testament church than I'll have time to give in the thirty minutes that I have tonight. But I believe what was in this book, fifteen years before I ever found it, I was born and reared in north-central Georgia, twenty miles south of Athens, Georgia, the home of the University of Georgia. My mother and father were Christians, but that's it. They were very churchy and very religious. But when they were teenagers, a Methodist evangelist had come to the little town where they lived and preached the gospel, and both of them had really trusted Christ. And after I was saved and brought some good literature into the home and we began to read and study the Word together, they began to grow, even though they were getting on up in years then. But they did know the Lord. But I never really heard the gospel clearly. But one time in my life before I was a freshman at the University of Georgia, And a man came to the high school where I was going, Madison High School, sixty miles east of Atlanta, and preached the gospel. I didn't know that he was preaching the gospel, I just knew he was preaching. But after I was saved, I realized that this man was preaching the gospel. That's how much I knew about the gospel. My philosophy professor led me to Christ at the University of Georgia, And I began immediately to become more active even than I had been in the Methodist Church. And I began to go to different places with a voluntary religious organization at the university and give my testimony. And eventually I was licensed to preach with two young men who were in the Athens-Everland District. One of them is a very, very well-known, high-ranking Methodist minister right now in the Atlanta District. He was good-looking and handsome and had a way with the women. So he went far. But anyway, the Intavocity Christian Fellowship was getting started at the University of Georgia about this time, and I became active in it. And I felt the Lord needed me to work with Intavocity. I mean, I didn't have any background for this. I didn't have any Bible training. All I knew is what little Dr. Wright had given me. I certainly didn't get any in the church that I went to. And so I felt led of the Lord to go to the Columbia Bible College in Columbia, South Carolina graduate school. And I went over there for one year, and while there, I got all the Bible I could possibly get in one year. Now, there's a story as to why I went there. I really had planned to go back to the University of Georgia and work on my master's under Dr. William H. Reichen, the man who led me to Christ, but A man that wore long suspenders by the name of Eugene Talbot says, we don't need anybody that was born overseas teaching at our universities. So everybody that was born overseas outside of the continent of the United States had to leave the University of Georgia. That's the reason I didn't go back to work on my master's. But anyway, a wonderful man of God who had become interested in me through the influence of Dr. Reiton. said, all right, brother, if you, instead of paying your way back to the University of Georgia, we'll let you go over to the Bible College. And so Dr. Howard A. Kelly wrote me out of check and said, here's your room and boat. And so that's the way I was able to go to the Columbia Bible College for a year. Now, because of my contact with Intervaster Fellowship, I began to correspond with Stacy Woods. the Executive Secretary, General Director. And he came through the Bible College in the spring of nineteen forty-two, which is when I was there. And I got acquainted with him and told him of my burden and concern for student work. And in the meantime, I had taken two small, independent, evangelical, fundamental, Methodist churches near Columbia. And when the Board of Directors of Innovosity met in June, they appointed me to the staff effective, nineteen hundred and forty-two in September. And so in September of nineteen forty-two, I went up to Guelph, Ontario, to the little conference grounds there. And Innovosity was small then. It was just getting started. I think we had about fifteen people on the staff for all of Canada and the United States. Today they have six hundred, I think. But anyway, it was wonderful training and a wonderful experience. And I was to come back and work in the southeast. Now remember, the war was on and gas was racing, and the cars and buses couldn't run over forty miles an hour. And if you wanted to get somewhere by Pullman, you had to make your reservation two and a half or three weeks in advance, and then some captain or colonel or major could come along and bump you just like that. It was really great. But anyway, on Sundays, They said, now we're going to have the worship service at nine-thirty in this little room. And I walked in this little room and there was a little round table there and a loaf of bread and a little glass of wine. And the chairs were all in a circle. And there was a little black book in every one of those chairs. And one of the fellows got up and gave out a hymn. And we all sang without an instrument, you know, I'd never done that before, but it was pretty. And then somebody else got up and talked about the Lord and worshiped the Lord in prayer. And then I remember my friend Paul Beckwith, who I saw just a few weeks ago in Chicago, got up and spoke on the eighty-fourth Psalm. Oh, it was sweet. And the longer it went, the gooder and gooder it got. And I said, man, this is one of you. And I figured, well, now this is just the way we're worshiping here because I'm a Methodist and Beckwith, the Baptist, and Jane Hollingsworth as a Presbyterian, and Woods, they say he's something they call brother, and I don't know what that is. And J.C. to home, he's evangelical in her form and so and so is something else. Well, that's just the way we're meeting because there's no way we could all meet. It'd be like we'd meet back home. I didn't know anybody met like that. But I went to Stacey Woods and I said, Brother Stacey, oh, man, that was a great meeting. He said, you really liked it? I said, yes, sir. He said, well, chocolate, let me tell you something. He said, you know, there are groups of Christians all over the world that meet just like that. I said, you're kidding me. He said, no, I'm not. I said, well, how can I find them? He says, I can tell you about them. See you later. I got split, he said. He didn't say that, but that's where he meant. In other words, I got to go right now. So he told me, he said, there's a man down there in Augusta, Georgia. that just started a little fellowship like this and says that you get in touch with Virgil Hollingsworth. He'll tell you about it. Well, I came back and I was very busy. I had to go back to my churches every two weeks and then go visit the universities in the South in between times and things were pretty busy and I didn't get to meet Brother Hollingsworth until January of And Paul Beckwith came through, and we were going from Columbia to Atlanta to some meetings at Georgia Tech. He said, let's go by Augusta and see my friend Virgil Hollingsworth. I said, well, I've heard a lot about him. I'd like to see him. And the day we got there, they were carrying down the petitions in that house, which later became Bethany Chapel. And Virgil and I struck up a real friendship, and he said, now, Brother Shockley, the next time you are free on a Sunday, I want you to come here and remember the Lord. What did you say? I want you to come in and remember the Lord with us. Oh, you mean like we get up in Ontario? Yeah, that's right, in Ontario. Well, the next fifth Sunday, I was there. He even let me preach the gospel at night. And I can tell you to this day the song that they sang when they opened the meeting. I couldn't sing it. I was too full. I sang the first five words, O Christ, what burdens? bowed my head, my load was laid on thee. And I knew that I'd never be happy until I could meet with people that met simply in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." That was in January of forty-three, or February when I went back to that meeting. From time to time they'd bring in Dr. Pettin-Gill or Dr. Ironside or William R. Newell or somebody like that, and I'd hear about it and I'd get down there some way. down to August. And that's where I got a lot of my teaching. But I continued in this Methodist Church. I stayed within Avastia for a year. And then I wanted to get into the Army Air Force as a chaplain so bad I could taste it. And I did everything that was necessary. I passed the physical, the mental, and everything. And the Southern Methodist Church endorsed me, and they were waiting for me and all like that. But the Lord closed the door. They had enough chaplains right then, and I got tired of waiting, and finally the chief of chaplains for the Fourth Corps era said, Mr. Pugh, if you want to go to Memphis, Tennessee, or wherever it is, where you say you know of a church that wants you to go ahead, and when you ought to come through, you won't have to take them. I went to Memphis, Tennessee to a southern Memphis church. It was without a pastor that had asked me to come, and four weeks after I got there, I got a telegram to report to the chaplain school at Fort Devin's, Massachusetts. I put the telegram in an envelope, sent it back to the man who told me he didn't have to worry about it, so I didn't have to go. But now, in Memphis, Tennessee, the Lord brought me across the path of a man by the name of John J. McGinney. And what Virgil Hollingsworth, Jr., hadn't done, the Lord, through John J. McGinney, did the ballots. And he painted a real black picture to me. He was real smart. He said, Brother Shockley, if you want to meet according to a scriptural pattern, And meet with people who meet in the name of the Lord. He says there's going to be a lot of things that are going to grieve your heart. He said, you're going to see a lot of flesh. You're going to see men jockeying for positions. And told me all these things. He says, but I'll tell you something, you'll see. You won't find a group of people that are trying, honestly, sincerely, to meet any more closely to Scripture than these people. I said, Virgil, I mean, John, that's what I want. And so in September of nineteen forty-six, the Lord led me to resign from the Southern Methodist Church, and we moved back to South Carolina, crossed the river from Augusta, and we were received into fellowship in Bethany Chapel in Augusta. Later we were commended to the Lord's work, to China, to work for the McGee Heaves, but as you know the Lord closed the door. In nineteen forty-nine we moved to Columbia, and we've been there since. And if I had it to do over again, I'd do the same thing a thousand times. I've never regretted it one moment. And so what I'm going to give you tonight, even though the outline is from my brother Alfred P. Gibbs, I believe it with all my heart, body and soul. Now these are characteristics of a real New Testament church. Number one. The New Testament church receives only those into its fellowship which the Lord Jesus has received. The early church knew nothing of having unsaved in its fellowship. Now there are several reasons for that, but one of them is when you became a Christian in the early New Testament church, it might mean your head. It might mean flogging. It might mean whipping. It surely would mean persecution. The early church knew nothing about someone coming up to join the church. Because you don't have to join the church. The Holy Spirit joins you the moment you're saved. Acts two, forty-seven. The Lord added daily. such as should be saved. The Holy Spirit joins us to the body of Christ the moment we are saved. Now, I wish I had time to elaborate on this, but I don't because I've got to give you the other points. If you want to see the details of what I'm talking about, they're available in the little booklet which I have here, Scriptural Principles of Gathering. Number two, the New Testament Church recognizes and teaches the unity of the body of Christ. It recognizes Christ as the true head and the headquarters in heaven. Ephesians five and twenty-three. Ephesians five and twenty-three. Sometimes wish I had brought my old Schofield, so it takes me three seconds to find it in that and takes a little longer than my new Cambridge. Ephesians five, twenty-three, here we are. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, and he is the savior of the body. Colossians one, eighteen. Colossians one, eighteen. And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead. that in all things he might have these three eminence. Galatians three, twenty-eight, that wonderful last part of the verse, I'll quote it, For ye are all one in Christ Jesus. Now the unity of the body of believers to me is one of the sweetest, most precious truths contained in the Word of God. And I've told you what two or three of my pet peeves are, haven't I? I'm going to tell you what another one is. One of my pet peeves is to meet someone who claims to be a Christian but who doesn't love another Christian just because they don't dot their eyes across their teeth the same way they do. Or because they don't go to the same little fellowship they do. And I want to tell you honestly, I've met people in so-called assemblies that do this. But, beloved, my Bible tells me that I am united to my Lord in heaven. And because I'm united to my Lord in heaven, I'm united to every other believer in the world. And no one is going to take from me the joy of loving everybody that loves my Lord. Back when I was a member of that pastor of that Methodist church, I became a associate director of Youth for Christ. And even though they never mentioned that I was a pastor of a church, every Sunday there'd be servicemen there, Navy boys, Air Force men, Army men. They'd end up in that church. on Sunday. And I'd meet them. It'd be one from Boston and one from Chicago and one from St. Louis and one from Los Angeles. And I'd have one of them leading the singing and one of them giving a testimony and maybe helping take the offering and singing in the choir and these stewards would come to me and say, Brother, what denomination is this young man? Sorry, Brother Weiss. I don't know. But he knows the Lord. And that's all that really matters with me. Anybody here from York, Pennsylvania? All right. I was in York, preaching at the Christian Woman Club about nineteen fifty-nine. And the Lord blessed me, anointed me, gave me real joy in my soul, And they had a man there to play the piano so his wife could sing. And he used to teach down at Columbia Bible College. And I just knew him casually. He was there only about a year, I think. But the Lord blessed him to have a good meeting. And after the meeting, he was the first one up. He said, oh, man, that was a good message, Shockley. Thanks a lot. Man, that was wonderful. He says, you're all Baptist, aren't you? I said, Notha, brother, I hate to dishearten you, but I'm not a Baptist. And you know, he disappeared right away. He just couldn't believe that anybody could preach the gospel like that unless they were the Baptist. I've laughed about that. I've thought about it sometimes, just riding down the road in the car, and I've thought about it, and I just laughed out loud. But you know, I've seen that same thing happen all around. I've heard somebody really preaching away on the radio, you know, and some of these close opens, you know, that I meet. They said, hey, you know, he must be in the assembly. Listen, I ain't preaching. I said, yeah, that's right. He's in the assembly all right. He's in the body. He's a member of the body. He's my brother. Praise the Lord. Now you know what, two of my pet peeves are. All right. Got to go here. A clock. I wish somebody pulled that clock down. By the way, that clock's a little slow. A New Testament church recognizes the various gifts of the church of Christ for the edification and the building up of the body of Christ. Ephesians four. Ephesians four. Verse eleven and twelve. And he gave some apostles and some prophets and some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. And the Holy Spirit's so wonderful and I'm glad he used Paul because he explains what he just said. Why did he do it? Here it is. for the perfection of the things, for the work of the ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ. Now, Brother Willie has already mentioned several times and it is very noticeable how the Lord edifies the body through the various gifts of His service. And this is one of the beautiful things about a New Testament family. You see, God blesses one man to be a gospel of. He blesses another man to be a exorbitant. He blesses another man to be a teacher. He blesses another man to have this gift and this gift and this gift and every person has a gift. but every person doesn't have the guilt to get in the pulpit. I don't believe in any man ministry, not so far as the pulpit is concerned. I don't believe everybody in an assembly should take their turn, not in preaching the word, not in teaching. Everybody in an assembly should take their turn, in doing what God has best gifted them to do. Now before I met those who meet in the name of the Lord, I select the Scriptures quite diligently because I began to see these things but to see the amazing thing about it was I didn't know anybody else saw them. I didn't know anybody else practiced them and yet the Holy Spirit was speaking to me. I couldn't talk to the man that led me to Christ about this because he actually was an ordained Baptist minister and he didn't see it. And I knew he didn't so I didn't waste my time. I appreciated the fact that he led me to Christ and that was it. But I searched in the Bible and you know what I couldn't find? I couldn't find anywhere in the Bible where I'd ever spoke about a pastor. It always spoke about pastors, elders. It spoke about an elder in an assembly. But it didn't speak about an elder who was the one ruling elder in the assembly. Didn't find it. You know why? Because it isn't in there. That's why. Now, so there's a reason and a purpose for this, you see. Suppose I was your pastor, see, and I did all the preaching, and I buried the dead, and I married the young, and so forth, and so on. Well, if I was strong on one thing, that's what you'd get. And you'd get it, and you'd get it, and you'd get it. You'd get for sick and tired of it. You wouldn't know what to do, but you wouldn't know what to do about it. The Scripture teaches... that God has given gifts to men, and that in a given assembly, God would use different men in that assembly to edify the body and to build it up. And incidentally, the New Testament church knew absolutely nothing about preaching the gospel in the church. They didn't do that. They preached the gospel out where the people needed the gospel out in the bushes, out in the streets, out in the marketplace. The church was a place for fellowship, for teaching, for instruction, for edification, for building up. And then when people were converted, they came into the church for fellowship. Incidentally, that's one of my pet peeves. Now I don't lay awake at night thinking about my pet peeves, but that's one of the things that kind of bothers me sometimes is the fact that we preach the gospel, preach the gospel, preach the gospel, preach the gospel to people that can give the gospel as good as the man that's preaching it. We need to preach the gospel to the lost and to the unsaved. The New Testament church recognizes that all believers are priests. Dr. Ironside used to have some very wonderful experiences traveling on trains, because he lived back in the days when the trains were really the main means of travel. And he met some sisters and nuns one day on this train, you know, and because he had on a business suit, just like anybody else would have, and he engaged them in conversation, and they asked him what he was. He said he was a prince, and they liked to think. Oh, but you don't have on your clerical car. He says, oh, well, maybe not. He says, but I am closed. And then they asked him, well, can you prove that you're a priest? And so he opened his Bible to Revelation one, six, about having made us kings and priests unto God. Yes, we're all priests unto God. All right? Here's another one. And New Testament church takes no name. but the name Christ has given it. The name is used in the Scripture. What are they? Christians, disciples, saints, brothers. In Acts XI, the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch. Now, let me tell you something. If I use any names to identify a group of believers, other than a name that's used in the Bible. You know what I'm doing? I am dividing the body of Christ. And beloved, the fact that the body of Christ, the visible body of Christ, is divided into so many different groups is a great hindrance to the Church of Jesus Christ. One name, and you're talking about some interesting discussions. I've had some interesting discussions. People, I meet people you know, and they say, well, what denomination are you in? What church are you in? And I tell them that I'm in the body of Christ. Oh, yes, I know that. But what church are you in? And I really give them a fix. I just love, I let them squirm and squirm. Yeah, I know, I know, but what are you in? And I won't tell them anything but my name, rank, and serial number. That's all I'll tell them. I'm a Christian. I said, now, I meet with sometimes the people that are sometimes called little B-R-E-T-H-R-E-N. I said, but if you want to know what I want to be called, I'll tell you right now, it's Christian because that's what I am. I said, I'm not. Oh, you're Plymouth Brother. And I said, no, I'm not. I do not live in Plymouth. Now, if you ever hear that Shockless Hughes moved to Plymouth, Indiana was one in Indiana. You can say, Shockless Hughes is a Plymouth Brother, because that's what I'll be. But I will not be once until I move to a place called Plymouth. Alright? The New Testament Church takes... the Word of God as its final authority for rule and action. No rule book, no prayer books, no discipline, except the Bible. And the fact that those who I met and were associated with back in those early days who met in the name of the Lord seem to love the Word of God and to use it as their source book and as their guidebook is one of the things that attracted me to people who meet as we do. It is their love for the Word of God. Acts, seventeen, eleven. They search the Scriptures daily. Now another thing that attracted me to those who meet in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ is the fact that I never did find anyone preaching modernism or liberalism. in these New Testament assemblies that I've been associated with. And I want to tell you why. Now some of you may not know this, so I'm going to explain it to you. You see, the Lord supplies the needs of his servants who meet in the name of the Lord Jesus by faith. And there's not any board or group of men that pay anybody a salary for preaching in New Testament assembly. Now, suppose you have a man preaching and he stops preaching the word. Well, you know what the Lord would do? The Lord would withhold his support and his blessings. But you see, if I were preaching and someone had guaranteed me a salary, I'd try to please the ones that had guaranteed me the salary. But since the Lord provides my income, who do I have to please? Well, certainly. It's as simple as ABC. The Lord. And that's why you will not find any liberalism or modernism among those who are looking to the Lord to meet their needs. Another thing that attracted me to those who meet in the name of the Lord Jesus is the fact that I found that as best they could possibly do, they did not allow those within their fellowship who had not been born again. by the Spirit of the Living God. Because the Bible very clearly and simply forbade you to have those in a fellowship that are not born again of the Spirit of God. If you want a reference for that, you know it by heart I hope. It's Second Corinthians, chapter six, verses fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen. Don't have time to read it. But it's very clear, very implicit. that we are to have those in the fellowship of the church who know and love the Lord Jesus, who have been born again by His Spirit. Somebody says, oh, but if I go to this church that has unsaved people in it, I can have a good testimony. No, you can't because you are disobeying the Word of God. I wish I had time to go into that more, but I don't, because time's about up. All right? The New Testament Church will observe the two ordinances instituted by our Lord Jesus, baptism and the Lord's Supper. Now from the very first, when I first started preaching the Gospel, I saw in the Scriptures where baptism was to be by immersion, and it was to be after a person had received the Word, after the person had heard the Gospel, after the person had become convicted of their sin, and they had made a choice, and that choice was to trust in Christ and in Him alone. And naturally, in order for a person to hear the Gospel and to be convicted, And to be converted to Christ, they had to be more than an infant. As simple as ABC. Now, I might say this in all love and charity. I do not believe that the fact that a person has not been baptized, the way we think they ought to be baptized, can bar a person from having the privilege of remembering the Lord. because the basis for remembering the Lord, beloved, is that you are a member of His body. But I do believe that in love and in tact, And in graciousness, as we have opportunity, when we meet those who are believers in the Lord Jesus, we should show them as best we can from the Word of God. And we believe that the Bible teaches very clearly and simply that if they've trusted in the Lord, they have to follow the Lord in baptism. Now, I'll give you a little word of personal testimony I left out because it didn't have time a moment ago. I preached the gospel for fifteen years. And I immersed everybody that I ever baptized, but I never had been baptized. And the Lord convicted me of it. And Dr. Brother Harold Harper came through and spent some time in Columbia with us. And two of the brothers, both of whom are now elders in our assembly, and myself got Brother Harold Harper to baptize us one Sunday afternoon in a lake. And it was a wonderful, blessed day. The two ordinances of the church are believers' baptism and, of course, the remembrance of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It's very simple, very clear, and very plain that in the New Testament church, I know someone reminded me of this yesterday, that the Lord Jesus said, as often as you come together, well, there's nothing against that. If you wanted to remember the Lord every time he came together. But I do believe that in the New Testament, as recorded in the Book of Acts, I do believe that on the first day of the week, the Christians came together and remembered the Lord. And so if we want to follow the New Testament pattern, I think that we should follow it. Incidentally, I don't think it's really important whether you remember the Lord in the morning or the night. I suppose for my personal choice, I prefer in the morning. But there are numbers of places now because of a number of reasons are remembering the Lord at night. I don't think it's really important. The thing that is important is that you come together to remember Him. That's the thing that's important. And I do think that I might mention here that the remembrance of the Lord is to be just what that says. A remembrance of the Lord. Not a time for preaching. Not a time for praying. I mean by that. Asking God for things. not at times are giving you a little pet theories. The remembrance of the Lord is to be just that, remembrance of Him. And I believe that we should propel our hearts to remember the Lord as though we prepare for nothing else during the week. You can come to any meeting of the local assembly with empty baskets expecting to receive But when you come to this table on the Lord's day morning, beloved, I say in love, you should come with your baskets full and overflowing to give to Him the praise and the worship and the adoration that is rightfully His. That's one of the main reasons He saved us. That's one of the main reasons He gave us the choice of whether or not to receive Him or reject Him is because He warned us after we had received Him into our lives to give unto Him the praise and the worship and the adoration which He rightly deserves because of who He is. And the wonderful thing about it is You don't have to have stained glass windows. You don't have to have carpet even. You don't even have to have comfortable pews. Only thing you need is a piece of bread and a glass of wine and a Lord. I remember the Lord I remember one day in San Francisco in a hotel we had seventy-two people packed into a room that was made for about five. But it was sweet. I remember once on a tent in Lausanne, Switzerland, I remember the Lord with a thousand believers, and out of the words they were using I probably could recognize five. But I knew who they were talking to and I knew who they were singing to. And it was sweet. I've had some marvelous experiences. Just meeting with the Lord and the only thing you have that was common to any other place you'd ever been was a loaf of bread and the glass of wine and the Lord. I tell you, beloved, if you are one of those that has the privilege of meeting with the Lord's people on the Lord's day, when you get home tonight, get on your knees and say, Lord, I thank you that by your grace and mercy and love, you've allowed me to be born in a land where this is possible and where I've heard about it and where I... because you've been gracious and kind and loving and privileged to meet and to give you just a little bit of the love back that you've showered down upon me. Shall we pray? Our Father and our God, we take so much for granted. Father, there are people in this room tonight that have been gathered with Christians in your name as long as they can remember. And Father, they don't appreciate it. They take it for granted. I fear sometimes, Lord, that in some of the lives of Christians like this, it's just kind of almost a ritual. They just go through the motions. Father, we pray that in a new way tonight, you'd help us to become genuinely excited with the privilege that we have to fellowship with those who know and love the Lord Jesus. We thank you once again for speaking to our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you. Thank you.