Our Local Family, New Members (Anton Beukes, Henneke Cook, Michal Witt, Katerina Witt) and Communion

Again, one of these things, the printer problem. But I got what I need. Hallelujah. We’re going to have communion in just a moment, but just before that, I want to do something that’s very, very special. When I read in the Book of Acts, after the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came, when the Church really was birthed, the New Testament Church. There’s a passage that says, “And they were added to the Church” and then in Paul’s letters, you will read, ‘They belonged to the Church at…’.
So, I’ve always seen that as a very clear picture of how God helps us organize this side of heaven. That we belong to a local body, we say to a local church, to a local body. You’re my family here. And I want you to walk with me, and if you fight with me, you still walk with me, but we’re family, we stick together. Scriptures talk about building each other up, to encourage one another. And if I don’t know you, if I don’t have much relationship with you, how am I going to do that. But when I fellowship a lot with you, when I worship with you, I get to know you, more and more. I may not always like you, but I’m not going to let go, because I said we’re family. And our desire is to work through every problem for the glory of God.
So, rather than wandering around from Church to Church, we commit to a local church, this is going to be my home, while I live here. It’s a beautiful thing, Amen. I can call on my Church family when I’m sick. We even had some people that ran out of money, called on their Church family, ‘Can you help me pay my bill?’ Don’t do that unless you have to. But it’s because we care one for another.
So, today, I’ll have Pastor Brian come stand with me, I’ll have the awesome privilege of inviting 4 people to join this local Church. Anton Beukes, Michael and Katerina Witt, and Michael, you’re in the back with our little friends, Heidi and Ole. If you haven’t met Heidi and Ole, they are delightful. I’m going to have Pastor Brian stand with me, because he’s also the executive Pastor here and I think this is really beautiful to do this before we have communion.
Henneke, I’m sorry, I forgot, I’m sorry, if you’ll come forward. Henneke Cook, you have the easiest name of everybody. Strech across, so all of you can see them, and after we bring them into this local Church, to be members, of this body, I love that. The Bible talks about, “As a young man marries a virgin, so, my sons and daughters will marry you.” This is like a marriage today. We’re bound together, I love it. Isn’t that beautiful?
I mean it’s so wonderful, oh my goodness, you’re stuck with me through sickness and health, through pain and sorrow, and good days and bad days, we’re stuck together, Hallelujah. Praise the Lord for these 4 wonderful people, and when they go upstairs and invite you at coffee time, please hug their necks, and welcome them into this local body. Amen.
I’m going to read to the 2 men, and Brian you’ll read to the 2 women. And then you can answer, ‘I will, I do’ in your own language. This is a wonderful moment.
Anton Beukes, and Michael Witt, I want to read this pledge that we have together with you today, that says, ‘In as much as the New Testament establishes the role of the local Church, as vital to the life of every believer, represents fellowship and order, within the Christian Community, and while acknowledging the lifestyle imposed upon the followers of our Lord Jesus Christ, as written in the Word of God, is it your desire to become a member of this local Church, to embrace its community, to share its vision, to carefully consider the instruction of its ministry. What would you say? Michael - Yes, Anton – Yes, it is. Stavro, please read it in Greek. The same follows for the two women.
So, by the authority invested in me as the local Pastor, all with me would like to welcome them into this local Church. Yes, yes, we welcome you. Hallelujah, they’re members of this local body now, we walk together. We’ll have Holy Communion now and the children can go after this.

Main Message

It’s been a wonderful day up till now. I will not keep you really long. We would like to take up an offering to the Lord. I would like to thank the worship team, George, and Trudy when she’s here and Lars, oh my goodness, Harry helped us today. Not just today, but for every Sunday that you’re here and Fanis is not here today. Oh, hi Fanis, I didn’t see you.
So, some of you don’t even know but I asked them to be here at 9 o’clock every Sunday morning, you know I thank them for the sacrifice they give to be here. And Cecilia is looking for people who could come and pray come 15 minutes before service to pray, if you could be here by 10 just for 15 minutes for the service and for the week. If you would like to, just let her know. Amen. We can pray for the offering. Stavro, please pray. We want to thank you for giving to the Lord. It is a grand privilege to give to the Lord. And I continue to thank the Lord, whether it was corona virus, if it was economic difficulty, that the Lord has continued to keep this Church alive and I believe I need to say today it’s because he has an assignment for us in this part of the world. Amen.
For Leonardo, Camilla and Idi Jane, we are a Sri Lankan family. Our Dutch, South African, Australian, Greece families, a lot of you. Our Armenian Greek family, German family, Norwegian family, Finland family, China and South Korea, Iran. When I look around, I’m reminded what a beautiful mix we are in this place. Denmark, amen, just so many places. Ghana, Cyprus and I’ll tell you that people are always amazed when they come here that people with so many different cultures that we love to be together.
It’s true, we all have things about our cultures that are very strange to someone else. But it’s wonderful that we can worship together. While we were worshipping this morning and remember that our lives should be living worship and Evy had a similar word and she came and shared it with me. It wasn’t that I will worship, I worship, I worship, we must learn to worship in the good times and the difficult times. I think it goes so well with the Word today and I think I will try and condense it very quickly for you. Because the Lord has spoken to us today.
We all know we live in very strange times. We can see and read on the news, that culture worldwide, is moving away from traditional Christian values. Yes! And Christians, those believe the Bible is the living Word of God, are becoming more and more a minority. And guess what, the Lord told us this would happen. He told us that difficult times would come, that people would fall away from the truth or compromise, and those of us who believe in the Word of God as God’s Word, we’re considered old fashioned, and even sometimes maybe dangerous to culture.
So, I was asking myself the question, ‘How should we fit in to our world today?’ Well, we don’t fit in. We don’t fit in! Our citizenship is not here, it is not here. I think that is step 1. We all to belong somewhere. Today we saw people join a local church, to be part of a family, that will live forever. That’s pretty awesome! Today, you got a taste of joining with not an earthly family, but an eternal family. Because His blood that never fails, it flows in each one of us when we know Him. And guess what? We will live forever. So, we don’t need to fit in here, because guess what? We already fit, we already fit, we have a place, in the Church of the living God, in the Kingdom of Heaven. Hallelujah. So, we don’t retreat either, we do not retreat
We’re looking at the book of 1 Peter, these days. And the very first sermon was that, ‘We are aliens here and foreigners.’ Last week Pastor Brian preached about, ‘Have no fear.’ I want to challenge you this week to read the book of 1 Peter, it’s tiny, really tiny. And it won’t even take you 30 minutes. And with it, you might want to read the book of Daniel in the Old Testament, because these books go together.
We’re going to look today at 1 Peter 3:8-12. Before we read this, I want to remind you, that when you accepted Jesus into your life, you received a new identity. Again, we’ve already said it, we’re God’s people, and the Lord is building us up whether it’s in good days or difficult days, to share the glory of Christ, in a world that is increasingly moving away from God. 1 Peter 3:8-12 Do not forget that Peter is writing to a church here: ‘Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good;
let him seek peace and pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”’
I want for a moment to look at 8-10. Until this point, Peter has been talking very clearly about suffering and in the days in which they live, so, after he said all that, look at what he says, ‘Finally’, OK I’ve told all this, ‘Now this is what I want you to be like’. We don’t even need to read much further than the first line, ‘Be Like minded’, it doesn’t mean that we have all the same thoughts, and in Greek, I believe it’s ‘ομόφρονες’ and we have right there on the screen. It means that we are of one accord, we have the same perspective.
For example, the Bible says, ‘Do not murder’, we’re like minded, we all believe it is a sin to murder. We have the same mind. This is how we are growing and becoming in Christ. It is one body, with many parts, you’re all different. But there is only one head. And where do the thoughts come from? The head. So, all of us as parts in this body, under the head, we are tied in, our very fibers are connected to the head. So, we get our thoughts from Him.
I’m going to use an example. I believe I’m going to be healed, but I have arthritis. Sometimes, my thumb doesn’t work. It wants to do its own thing. It wants to obey a disease. But I’m telling that thumb, that my mind, the head, the head of me, says, ‘I give you healing’. Now, I’m not talking about positive thinking, no, no, no. I’m not denying it, OK, I have arthritis, but my head, the Head which is Jesus, Christ, Hallelujah. And guess what? He doesn’t just tell me; He tells all of you. Why? Because we’re one Body!
So, when the Head tells me to pray, and believe for healing, and I say that to you, your response should not be, well you know, you’re just getting older. Well, you know bodies decay. Well, you know, when you get to heaven, you’ll get a new body. No, no, no, no. The Head is telling us, you already live eternally. All the blessings and promises of God, are what? Yes, and Amen. Hallelujah. So, when I tell you pray for arthritis to leave my body, because the Head says He’s the healer, even if I don’t see it yet, the Head, which is Jesus Christ, yes, keep believing. My promises are, ‘Yes and Amen’. And guess what? If it doesn’t happen here, it will happen there, Amen. There’s not going to be arthritis in heaven.
So, we all need to be like minded. How much simpler can that be? We are to work together. OK I’ve been praying; have you been praying? What is the Head saying to you, and if He hasn’t been saying anything to the other one, pray for agreement to hear what He is saying for us to do Amen? He’s never going to tell me to tell you, well let me back up a little. Evy is going to come to me next week, ‘Pastor Gail, I just need a break, I don’t think I need to come to Church anymore, I could just go worship on the beach all by myself.’ Hello, I would tell her, ‘Evy, let’s pray together’, rather than me correcting her, I would first say, but I would probably correct her, ‘Let’s pray together, and see what the Lord say, what does His word say?’ The word says, ‘Forsake not the assembly of yourselves together’ Amen. And if she wants to be like minded with the head, even if she’s drawn to the beach, she’ll come to Church.
And then look, it says, ‘To be sympathetic.’ Everyone of us fail there, I’m just going to be honest. If you don’t want to admit it, I’ll admit it for you. Sometimes, we just don’t have that sympathy for one another, but it says. It’s here for us to learn, to grow and be that way. That means, I will try to understand you. And the next one, we all know it, we say it all the time, ‘Love one another.’ That means, you don’t call up other people and say bad things about each other. We all fail there too. Because I know we’re all gripe and clean to complain about each other, I know we do. I hope not. But there are times when it’s hard to love one another. We have the Holy Spirit, our great Counselor, that will help us to love the unlovely.
‘Don’t repay evil for evil’. We’re not going to touch on every section, but this is a big one. Then look what he says, ‘If you do not repay evil with evil,’ instead if you bless, you get a blessing. Do not repay evil with evil. If I ever saw a section in the Word that represents the world today, here in this section, is an example of our world today. It’s why we’re having war in the world. Is that not true? You did this to me; you stole what I thought was mine; I’m going to come and attack you. Or, I want that and I will do evil to you. That is the spirit of the world, to repay evil with evil. I’ll get back at you; I’ll get you. I’ll do it to you; I’ll do something worse to you. That is the spirit of the world.
Because look, stated in 9, when something bad happens to you, when something evil comes against you, “bless.” I fail at this Trudy, but I’m going to give an example. I used to not know that I had a temper, and when I first moved to Greece, and there weren’t many cars on the road, and I was a female driver; so, men would see me on the road, this is the truth, Trudy knows it, they’d drive across and try to push me off the road. A woman driving a car! Believe it or not, I even had a man one time get out of his car at a stop light and take a big piece of wood and beat on the car. But Trudy saw me do this; when people would do that, I would roll my window down, ‘God bless you, God bless you, God bless you’. That was another Gail. I’m failing to do that now. And it’s something I have to work at now. Because, if I’m at a stop light, and you pull in front of me, to turn ahead of me, ‘Grrrr, Grrrr’, I want to get past you. I don’t bless you. But I need to, because in any situation, even the little things like that, and it’s a little thing, but guess what, what happens to the little things they get great big, right? I’m looking for that Gail, that when Lars pulls in front of me and tries to pass me, ‘Bless you Lars, Bless you Lars’.
Repay evil with a blessing! Because look what will happen. This is your calling. That’s what it says, “To this you are called”. Body of Christ; Family of God, connected to the head. Does the head ever repay evil for evil? Will He curse instead of bless? No! We are called to bless. And look what it says, “We will inherit a blessing.” I want as many as I can get; I don’t know about you.
I love this passage of Scripture, “We must turn back from evil and do good.” We must seek peace. And pursue, pursue peace? It’s easier sometimes to sit down and justify our actions. Sometimes, when we do nothing, we think we take to being peaceful. But there are times we can close our mouths, that all we’re doing is holding on to an attitude that is not like Jesus. We know that we’d either hurt someone or someone has something against us, and rather than seeking to have peace with that one, we sit down and do nothing, and we think it’s OK. But guess what? Living for Jesus is a life of action. Loving one another, is an action. Being sympathetic, is an action. Having no fear, is an action. Amen.
These things are actions. Being a Christian, bottom line – requires ‘I will follow Jesus.’ You cannot sit down and do nothing. It’s an action. It’s an action. I have decided to follow Jesus, even if no one else follows, but they will. They and me together will follow Jesus. I have to work to love you. The enemy doesn’t want us to see that that’s an action that we do with our lives. But do you know what? Every time I do this; if you’ve hurt me, or I just don’t like you and I don’t see anything good in you to like, if I’ll ask the Lord, help me understand something good in that person.
Let me give you one last example. Most of you know, I have a neighbor, that just doesn’t like me. He spits at me, he curses me, lots of things. He’s just silly and his mother says she doesn’t know why, there’s no reason. I see nothing in him to like. But when I did an action, of talking to the Lord, ‘What is there for me to like this man?’ And He said to me, “He’s a lost soul, and I want you to love him until he loves Me. If you don’t see anything, but I do. I see a redeemed life. I see what he will become when he knows Me.” But I had to take the action of talking to the Head, and do you know what, when I first started praying for him, I didn’t enjoy it. But now, every day there’s times I want to cry for him, how lost he is. Being a Christian is following the Head. And for us to do it together.
Peter wrote this book because the Church there was facing severe persecution. But he said, “Do this and you’ll be blessed.” He wants to bless us. He wants to bless us. How about you? Don’t you want to receive blessings? I’ll take all the blessing He’ll give me. Come on fill me up, let me overflow, Hallelujah.