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“Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.” 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

The Christians of Thessalonica were growing in grace and in love, but bad theology was holding them back. It was bad eschatology, wrong views of the end times.  Many thought that the Day of the Lord had already passed, and that may have led to idleness among Christians.

Paul, in our context, is encouraging them to stand firm, to grow in grace. and in service, and to have hope for the future. What Paul says to minister grace to fellow believers can equally be said of the Lord’s Supper.

What is the basis of this hope for the future?

God the Father and God the Son have loved us. The Love of God is always on display among the people of God. We have been loved from before the foundation of the earth.  Jesus has given us the full and final demonstration of his love on the cross.  “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21

I love the personal pronouns in the text.  Our Lord Jesus Christ, God our Father. Jesus and God are not distant abstract concerts, they are personal realities, they are family.  They belong to us.

And they have given us eternal comfort and good hope.  I have needed comfort from others in the past and received it. But it soon fades.  But here is eternal comfort, a good hope that need not diminish. It comes to us by grace, unmerited favor.  It is the self-generated love of God that will never change.

That love now comforts us, and establishes us – strengthens us in every good work and word. We can speak and do good. Grace relieves, comforts, accepts, and motivates. His love transforms us from sinners to saints, from idle to active, from forlorn to hope-filled. From sad to eternally happy.

How does this happen? By revisiting the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord at the Communion table.  This unshakable love of God fully demonstrated on the cross, fills us with joy and peace in believing.

If that is your hope, come to the table. If you have no faith, no love from God or for God, do not come to this table. Instead, Come to Christ, by faith and repentance.

Prayer

We ask, O Lord our God, that others would know, that all would know, the blessings of this table.  That they would know Christ and the power of his resurrection.  May even your people be renewed in the marvelous love of God in Christ Jesus. Speak to us through this meal. Speak peace and hope to us.  Comfort our hearts and strengthen us in every good word and work.  We ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Remember this as we come to the table together.

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us – for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” – so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles.” Galatians 3:13-14

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Come for all things are now ready.

Teacher Ed Payne led us in a discussion of the many implications of the Cross Work of Jesus Christ.  Our next meeting will be on January 24, 2022.  We discussed our method of serving communion both at the church also bringing a communion service to elderly members.  Changes may be coming in the next year.  We began to discuss next year’s budget which will begin in April of 2022. We did approve refiling our complaint against an action of our presbytery requiring our session to rescind a prior decision to the Standing Judicial Commission. Our previous complaint, it was ruled, was filed too soon. It was shared that all nine ministry teams have leaders and that a training session was completed. We received a summary of the work of the Deacons, the Trellis, and the Fellowship Teams.  Next month the session will meet with the leaders of the Missions Team.  Our church has successfully changed banks from Fifth Third to Queensborough.  The Trellis Team will oversee a review of all past church policy positions in the next year. We prayed for several needs in the congregation.  We left encouraged by the fellowship at the last fellowship meal and the attendance and joy at the Christmas Cantata.  We also discussed officer nominations for the coming year.

Communion Meditation 

I have heard it said; that from the time we exit the womb, we are searching for another one.

The womb; a place of safety, shelter.  A place of belonging, security.  The womb, a place of unity and community – mother and child are physically united.

In a fallen world we are looking for that place of security, community, belonging.

We are looking to return to Eden.  The place where we belong. We are looking for home.  The place where we can walk with God in the cool of the day.  But because of our sin, the way home has been barred to us by the flaming sword of the angels.

The blood and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ has opened the way home.  We can return to Eden, the place where we belong.  We can know security, community, belonging, safety. 

We can return home; home to the family dinner table.

Communion means many things; but it at least means this.  We, as prodigal sons and daughters, are welcomed home. 

We are washed, we are cleansed, we are forgiven.  But also, we are united to Christ and so we are united to one another.  We are all one in Christ Jesus.  We belong and are accepted.  We have found our community; our people; our friends and companions in Christ.

We come to this table in faith, and we come together as the people of God.

If these are not your people if you do not see Jesus and love him.  If you do not believe in the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ, this table is not for you.  I warn you to stay away. Do not despise holy things for there will be a heavy price to pay.

If these are your people, and Jesus is your savior and friend.  Come to the table. Find the womb that you have been looking for. Come, and welcome to Jesus Christ.

September 21, 2021

We began our meeting together with a meal in celebration of Ted Kuhn’s birthday.  We passed around a Westminster Photo Directory from 30 years ago. Three of our elders were in that book.  They are elders!!  Carla and Sharon attended our meeting and gave their input. Bryan led a devotion one the 3 R’s – Ruin, Redemption, and Restoration. We approved a new and improved Ministry Team Structure.  We are now recruiting Ministry Team Leaders and will eventually search for Ministry Team Members and other helpers.  Look for more information in the next few months.  Five special offerings were approved for the next year.  Two each for Debt Reduction and Missions, and one for Mercy.  We approved 5 elders and men from our church to fill the pulpit in the next year.  The Network of Prayer was discussed and commitments to prayer for our homes and neighborhoods were made.  A prayer map of the Augusta area will be up soon. On October 31, Laura Dekle will visit us from Engaging Disabilities Ministry.  We will also have a Reformation Day Celebration at the church that night.  No fellowship meal or prayer meeting that day.  Home Groups were discussed and preparations will be made to launch them in the next 3 or 4 months.  Our library Room is nearing completion.  A separate AV room is also in the works.  New pamphlets are available in the Narthex. The respect that our elders have for the church and for each other and the joy that they have in serving the bride of Christ is very evident and it is truly a blessing.

Ted Kuhn opened our meeting with a devotion from Acts 20 and Paul’s meeting at Miletus with the elders from Ephesus.  We have scheduled our next meeting for June 15 at 5:30pm. An update our our Walk Thru the Bible Seminar on July 24 was given by Pastor Mark. Fellowship Team has scheduled a Church Picnic, a baby shower, and a Game night and will continue to arraign future luncheons, dinners, service projects, topical studies, and testimonies. We will expand the responsibilities of the Administration Team to include staff communication, and new ministry development.  They may even change their name to the Trellis Team.  Ask them why.  On June 10 the elders will gather to discuss a vision for stewardship and missions for Westminster.  The “Awakened, not Woke” conference was discussed as well as a possible discussion group on current issues from a Christian Worldview and what we can practically do about impacting our communities. We would like to begin our Home Group ministry again.  We debated when and how to begin them.  More information will follow.  Our new website is up and running (wpcmartinez.org). We are in the process of changing banks from Fifth Third to Queensborough.  The process should be completed by July. We have 3 facility use agreements for the fall.  We will be hosting a Classical Conversations chapter through Followers in Fellowship, Veritas Academy for the 28th year, and the American Academy for the English Martial Arts.  We are looking forward to a post-Covid expansion of fellowship and ministry.  May God bless us and we trust in Him.

Martin Luther said that the Lord’s Supper is nothing less than the gospel.

You must believe the gospel to be welcomed at this table. If you do not trust in Christ, if you have not tasted of the blessings of the age to come, do not come to this table.

The Gospel is the triumphant declaration of what God has done in history through Jesus Christ. The gospel is the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the Son of God.

The Gospel is a history lesson that saves.  

God has ushered in a new age in redemptive history.  We are in “the last days” (Hebrews 1:1-2), or “the end of the ages” have come upon us (1 Corinthians 10:11).

Heaven has come to earth through Jesus Christ. Eternity has broken into time. We have a foretaste of heaven. A glimpse of glory at the Table of the Lord.

A new creation has already begun. Jesus was the first man to enter the new creation (1 Corinthians 15:20; 35-39). All who trust in Christ participate in this new age. We do not have spiritual bodies but we do share in the power of his resurrection and taste the powers of the age to come (Ephesians 1:18-20).

To be saved means to be delivered from this present evil age and transferred into a new age of life, righteousness, and joy.

The gospel is the good news that God has acted in history to establish a new world and that the blessings and privileges of that world are available to all who will repent and believe.

If that is you, come. Your faith in Jesus Christ, and trust in the gospel is your invitation to come to dine with Christ at this table. 

Adapted from Blessed are the Hungry, p. 147-150.

Christian fellowship, then, is an expression of both love and humility. It springs from a desire to bring benefit to others coupled with a sense of personal weakness and need. It has a double motive: the wish to help and the wish to be helped, the wish to edify and the wish to be edified. It is that corporate seeking by Christian people to know God better through sharing with each other what individually they have learned already. We seek to do others good, and we seek that others will do us good. 

We can therefore say three things about fellowship. First, it is a means of grace period through fellowship and in fellowship one’s own soul is refreshed and fed by the effort to communicate one’s knowledge of divine things, to come and pray for others, and to receive from God through them.

Second, fellowship is a test of life. Fellowship means opening one’s heart to one’s fellow Christians. The person who is free to eschew pretense and concealment about himself when talking to his fellow believers is the one who is being open and honest in his daily dealings with God. He is the one who is walking in the light, as John puts it in the first chapter of his first letter (if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, one John one verse seven. If we are not walking in the light we do not have fellowship with one another. If we are not letting the light of God shine full on our whole life, we shall never have free fellowship with others because we shall be unwilling to open up to them. After all, why would we willing to tell them the shameful secrets of our hearts when we are not prepared to open up to God and let him deal with these things? Those who will not walk in the light with God will never walk in light with their brethren.

Third. Fellowship is a gift of God. The new English Bible translates Paul’s blessing in second Corinthians 13:14 like this: “May the grace of God the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” The kind of fellowship of which I am speaking, which has as its motive love to our brothers in Christ as an expression of our love to the Lord, and which involves real openness with each other and real reliance on each other – that kind of fellowship comes only as God’s gift in and through the Holy Spirit. It is only where the Holy Spirit has been given, where we are spiritually alive to God and anxious to grow in grace ourselves and help others to do the same, that such fellowship will be a possibility.  It is only as the spirit enables us that we shall actually be able to practice it.

JI Packer

Many men today struggle with maintaining male friendships. This claim doesn’t need to be argued. We know it. I personally have a sporadic friendship track record. Particularly in my early years of ministry, my lack of male friendships was actually inhibiting the full expression of my humanity. I still have a long way to go.

But I’m learning. It has become more clear to me that Jesus and his disciples were genuine friends (John 15:15). They spent time sharing deeply of themselves. And even before Jesus had disciples, before he created the world, he was a friend to the Father and the Spirit. By being a friend we show forth the image of God. So how can men succeed in the old-fashioned but desperately needed art of friendship? Here are eight suggestions.

1. Distinguish Loving Your Neighbor from Being a Friend

God’s children must love all their neighbors, including the hateful ones. But doing so doesn’t mean we have friends. Friends share more than resources and respect. Friends share themselves. They embrace Paul’s call to “be open” (2 Cor. 6:13). They practice fellowship and communion (2 Cor. 6:14), cultivating a common life with shared physical presence, emotional openness, and spiritual understanding.

Being a good neighbor is non-negotiable, but friendship goes beyond the call of neighborliness.

2. Don’t Depend Solely on Your Wife for Friendship

Your wife can be your best friend, but she can’t be your only friend. If you depend on your wife for friendship, you will stunt yourself and stifle her. You’ll end up expecting her to fulfill your need for shared life—a need God intends to be met by a community. Marital discourse can stagnate without fresh insights gained through close same-sex friendships.

3. Be Emotional

John Calvin observed that the Psalms animate “all the griefs, sorrows, fears, doubts, hopes, cares, perplexities, in short, all the . . . emotions” that convulse our minds. Beautiful, right? Yet men often resist emotional friendships.

David wept over the impending separation between himself and his friend (1 Sam. 20:41–42). At Lazarus’s tomb Jesus sobbed, among other reasons, because he loved his friend (John 11:35–36). The Ephesian elders fell on Paul’s neck and kissed him as he departed (Acts 20:37).

The notion that men should restrain emotion is character-stunting folly.

4. Define Your Friendship with Words

The best friendships have a quasi-covenantal character, for covenants define relationships. David and Jonathan solemnized the terms of their friendship (1 Sam. 18:3; 20:8; 23:14–18). You might be surprised what happens when you articulate with your friends what your friendship means.

True friends also speak well to and about each other. And remember, your friendship also hinges on how you speak of your friends behind their backs. Jonathan stayed true when friendship to David was a kiss of death (19:4). Blaise Pascal once said that if men knew what their friends said about them, there would be few friends in the world. Be among the few.

5. Practice Celebration

Good friends know how to enjoy life. It’s no accident that God’s coming kingdom is described as a party (Rev. 19:9; cf. John 2:1–11). Celebrating life is a revolt against hoarding by those who know God’s grace is present, not just future. It’s been said that “modern man . . . always keeps on believing that the real thing is going to happen tomorrow.” Celebration reminds friends that the real thing is happening now.

6. Don’t Always Do Something

Kent Hughes acknowledges that “men’s friendships typically center around activities, while women’s revolve around sharing.” Men commonly view friendships “as acquaintances made along the way, rather than as relationships.” As a consequence, he notes, male friendships “rarely approach the depth of disclosure a woman commonly has with many other women.”

Undistracted face-to-face time removes the safety net of the activity and invites sharing. We must resist the urge to protect ourselves from a slow-paced, potentially awkward encounter that might actually move our friendship to a deeper level.

7. Include Jesus

I moved to California by myself at 19. Attempting to escape a destructive web of bad choices, I resolved that new friends must be people who would help me walk with God. And good friendships were one of the ways God restored me from backsliding. But even these friendships often lacked spiritual deliberateness. The night before I moved back across the country, my best friend remarked, “We’ve never prayed together.” We had rarely, if ever, talked about godliness. How is that Christian friendship?

Real men don’t hide their faith. . . . They talk with other men about Jesus as a mutual friend. Real men don’t hide their faith. They don’t dance around spiritual matters. They are genuinely vocal about their only comfort in life and in death. They talk with other men about Jesus as a mutual friend.

8. Be Energized by the Gospel

On their own, rules cannot make us godlier people or better friends. The gospel alone—the perfect atoning work of God’s Son—is the power of God unto salvation (Rom. 1:16). And yet as the Belgic Confession reminds us, God’s moral law “regulate[s] our life in all honorableness to the glory of God, according to his will” (Art. 25).

As we practice the laws of friendship, energized by the friendship of Christ, the better we will both know him and learn from him how to live as friends WILLIAM BOEKESTEIN

So how can the local church help comfort and heal those who are hiding, covered in their shame?

First, we need to be communities where the gospel is preached. Not just from the pulpit, but in our small groups and mentoring relationships, around the dinner table, and over coffee. And that gospel must address our shame. Jesus not only justifies us; He also washes us clean and clothes us in His righteousness. This is hinted at in God’s clothing of Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:21), but it’s fulfilled in Christ, in whom we’ve been arrayed “with the robe of righteousness” (Isa. 61:10). The message of the gospel is not less than forgiveness; it is more. Christ removes our shame and gives us His righteousness.

Second, we need to model accepting each other in Christ. Healing shame doesn’t require public disclosure on a Sunday morning, but it does entail revealing our shame to people who will bear our pain with us in love. “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Cor. 12:26). When we come out of hiding and discover that others don’t reject us, we begin to believe that God in Christ doesn’t reject us either.

Third, unlike the world’s response, our response to shame isn’t to become brazen. The ashamed need to repent. But to do so, they need help distinguishing the causes of their shame. Shame is complex and distorting. We blame ourselves for what others did to us, and excuse ourselves for how we responded. This is “worldly sorrow that leads to death” (2 Cor. 7:10–11). Hope for the ashamed is found as responsibility is placed where it belongs, and that will often require the clear-eyed perspective of others. As we help people see the difference between their own sin and others’ sin against them, godly sorrow and repentance can begin their gracious work in us.

Finally, our churches should be places where shame is redeemed rather than denied. In 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, Paul gives a list of shameful sins that believers should not tolerate in themselves. But then he goes on to declare in v. 11, “And such were some of you.” The ashamed look around at church and don’t see anyone like them. But through public testimonies, transparent relationships, caring small groups, and even wise sermon illustrations, the ashamed discover that they are in the company of redeemed sinners. When that happens, hope is conveyed that Paul’s next sentence could be true of them as well. “But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

Michael Lawrence