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[ Silence ] [MUSIC - "HURRUK, YOU'RE MY EVERYTHING"] (SINGING) Hurruk, you're my everything. Always waiting for thee, my King.

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♪ Oh Thou who made the grace ♪ ♪ Everywhere ♪ ♪ Oh Lord ♪ ♪ You're my everything ♪

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♪ Everything ♪ ♪ Oh Lord, you're my everything ♪ ♪ Praise, praise it for thee my king ♪ ♪ Oh, thou who hearest every prayer ♪

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♪ You're my every need ♪ ♪ Every leaf ♪ ♪ I say you are ♪ ♪ You are ♪

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♪ You are my light ♪ ♪ You are my light ♪ ♪ That shines ♪ ♪ You are ♪

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♪ That shines ♪ ♪ Down in this ♪ ♪ You are my help, you are my help ♪ ♪ You're there, you're there in times of trouble ♪

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♪ Where should I be if not before ♪ If not but for your mercy, O Lord, You're my everything. ♪ For you are my light ♪

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♪ Oh my light ♪ ♪ That shines in the darkness ♪ ♪ You are my help ♪ ♪ You were there in times of trouble ♪

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♪ You would have been ♪ ♪ If not for your mercy ♪ ♪ Oh Lord, you are my help ♪ [Music]

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[MUSIC] ♪ For me ♪ ♪ I have been ♪ ♪ Deep breath waiting ♪

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♪ For you ♪ ♪ I have been ♪ ♪ Deep breath waiting ♪ ♪ For you ♪

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♪ I am breathing ♪ ♪ Praise the lady ♪ ♪ For me ♪ ♪ I am breathing ♪

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♪ Praise the lady ♪ ♪ For me ♪ ♪ I am breathing ♪ ♪ You are everything ♪

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♪ Oh Lord, you are everything ♪ ♪ Oh Lord, you are everything ♪ [MUSIC] The morning message is based on two passages of scripture.

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The first, to which I call your prayerful attention, is 1 Corinthians, the first chapter and the 11th verse. 1 Corinthians, the first chapter, the 11th verse, which Paul states, "It has been declared unto me of you,

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my brethren, by them which are of the household of clove, that there are contingents among you." And I want to focus in that passage on the household of clove. The second passage of scripture is found in Acts the 16th chapter and the 33rd verse,

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Acts 16, 33. He took them the same hour of the night and washed their stripes and was baptized, he and all his household. The household of Cloe and

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the household of the jailer. Paul indicates that he has received his information concerning conditions

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in the Corinthian church from the household of Clove. The fact that this household is mentioned is of some significance. Not only is it the channel through which Paul

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has received his information. It tells us something of the prominence of this particular woman. She's singled out.

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Her name is called. We don't know a great deal about her, but she must have been a woman of some prominence in the church globe.

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We don't know whether or not she was a widow, whether she was just a wife who was more active in the church than her husband. We only know that she is in the church

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and that it is through this channel that Paul receives his information. I have heard through the household of Clove. Now, it is recognized by biblical scholars,

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in fact, by the Bible itself, that there had been quite a bit of correspondence between the Corinthian church and the apostle Paul. In fact, when we read 1 Corinthians,

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Paul speaks of having written another epistle, which means that 1 Corinthians is not the first letter, rather idiot, the second letter. We really don't know how many letters

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that may have been written. So why is it so important that we should lift it up today? I think it is because it gives us certain insights into the life and conduct

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early Christians as well as the condition of the Corinthian Church. I just imagine, doesn't hurt to use your imagination sometimes, that Paul has received a letter prior to the time of this particular letter that we are considering this morning and it possibly went something like this

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Dear Paul, our church is in a terrible condition It is going down, down, down. The church attendance has suffered a great decline. You can throw a rock through the church and not hear anybody on Sunday morning.

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Beacons are not present. Sunday school enrollment has suffered a tremendous decline. and discipleship training, attendance has dropped radically.

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The preacher is not enthusiastic in his preaching. And it just appears on Sunday morning, Paul, that the church is dead. The members of the congregation are fussing and fighting with one another about who is

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the greatest preacher we've had. They're looking back to the past. Some are praising you, Paul, and others are praising Peter, while some others are praising Apollos.

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And Paul is just in a mess. We need you back here to help us. Tell us what to do. signed members of the Corinthian Church.

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Well, we're deeply indebted to the family of Clow for having demonstrated their concern for the welfare of the church. The church is a significant presence in the neighborhood and in society. Because the church is, like these others that I've mentioned, made up of families.

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And as go the family, so goes the church, so goes the school, and so goes our society. What makes family? Paul concludes that the problem is rooted in the family. The family is a unit and the true family is not divided by factions.

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The family is one. The family is solid. The family is together. So the family is not a household in which the members play the blame game.

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Parents blame each other, blame the children, blame the school, blame the teachers, the is blame the principal, and the principal blames the superintendent, and the superintendent blames the school board.

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On and on it goes. But the family is not divided, the true family, into factions. So the family does not play the blame game. It's interesting to note that after Paul addresses the church, he says to them, "Grace be unto

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you." In other words, acceptance. Accept one another. To the church of God at Corinth, To them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, grace be unto you. It's interesting that after addressing them, the first word he uses here is grace, which

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means acceptance. And I suppose that if Paul were writing to any of our churches today, he would still say acceptance. So because one of the most critical problems facing us as family, as facing us as institutions,

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has to do with acceptance. Accepting one another. of marriage is failing is acceptance. Problems in the school, acceptance. Problems in the community, acceptance. Problems in our nation, acceptance, accepting one another. And the

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The problems in our world, my beloved, have to do with acceptance. And so Paul says to them, "Grace be unto you, acceptance." The arms of Jesus Christ are long enough and wide enough to embrace us all. So as we focus on the family in this message, let us look at what was happening to the church

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and Correa and Paul's recipe for that church was grace, acceptance. So we are family as church. We are family. We are all baptized in Christ. This is what Paul said to the Corinthian church and that is what is true of the church today. We are equal. We are brothers and sisters. we are not rulers and slaves I say accept one another grace be unto you

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writes the Apostle and the next word from Paul to the congregation is peace not peace as the world gives it but the peace of God peace peace listen again to his pastoral counsel grace be unto you and peace from God our Father which is given you from the Lord Jesus Christ so the family of God is the family that

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marches under the banner of Jesus Christ it is a family that accepts each one each one accepts the other they are called to be saints and to accept one another and live in peace this is Paul's recipe this is his word of advice this is his counsel to the Corinthian congregation so our first task is to

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evangelize and this sometimes is our last concern. Church is to evangelize the world. The church is to go forth. It's easy to stand behind the pulpit or to sit in the pew and fail to carry out what God wants us to do. That is to evangelize so it starts with the family family the basic unit in society to

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evangelize if our church is to grow and develop in the way God wants it to be we must become more evangelistic I remember many years ago I had a minister who was assisting me in the pulpit. He was around 90 years old, very active. He'd pray beautiful prayers and he was there when I got there. We worked together for some time and he came

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up to me one day and said to me he wanted me to deliver the eulogy for his wife. I said eulogy for your wife? Where is your wife? I hadn't seen a wife. And what church did she belong to? He said, "Rev, she didn't belong to a church." Here was a a man preaching the gospel, staying and married and staying with a wife over a period of years

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to my knowledge and still she had not accepted Jesus Christ. And I did deliver her eulogy but it taught me a lesson that I have never forgotten because so often I see even in the church people come to church and come to church and come to church and hear the gospel and never accept Jesus Christ and we don't

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say anything to them we don't even know that they don't know Christ and so it must begin with the family the family the family that basic social institution if we are to evangelize the world go ye and preach the gospel to every creature it must begin with the family and you know brothers and sisters

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so many of us are too satisfied with things just as they are we're having problems with children wanting to engage in Bible drill can you imagine that parents saying well she can do it if she wants to is that the way the early church started out? No, the household of clothes was wrapped up in what was

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happening in the church and and that household was the means that was used to communicate with Paul when the church was in trouble. Evangelism was the order of the day they were restless until they went forth to spread the gospel in every nook and corner so the family the family the family family must meet the souls we

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have a church bus and some people have cars in their garage and want the church to come and pick them up and bring them to church when we should be going out to pick somebody else up and bring them to the church and it didn't matter is not how good the preaching may be, matter than how marvelous the choir may sing, and how

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we may give liberally if we fail to exercise the spirit of evangelism we are failing to be the church God called us to be. Well, the family of Clove. I just looked at this family and I thank God for the family and the long ago for having

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the zeal and the prayerful concern to contact Paul, to be a channel through whom Paul was contacted concerning the nature of the church. So the household of Cloe, that household, that family, those families related to that household as the case may be, were concerned about promoting the gospel of Jesus Christ and they were

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deeply concerned about what happened to the church. So we've got to begin with the family. The family of Cloe was inside the church. This was the family inside the church in the early days of the Christian faith and they were making contacts and now I want to consider a family that was outside the church.

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So we have some families we need to be addressing that are inside the church then there are families that are outside the church, outside. And so this family That I want to call our attention to outside the church was a family That was made up of a jailer a Roman jailer

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Or no doubt he had He had taken the training provided by the Roman justice system. He'd taken that training He'd taken some courses in criminal justice and all of that and Rome boasted of her system of justice but this jailer

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Was carrying out his duty No, no doubt he He went to the pagan temples that were situated in that city

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but in this particular case there were two preachers who were arrested Paul and Silas they're arrested and not only are they arrested but they are beaten with stripes and with rods their strikes on their bodies, their bodies initiated, their bleeding.

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And then after having been beaten, they are taken to jail. By the jailer they are sent to a cell. And after having been sent to a cell, they're sent to even another one, a prison within the prison. They called it the inner prison.

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And in this inner prison, Paul and Silas are placed. And not only have they been beaten with stripes and rods And placed in the inner prison in addition to that their feet are

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fastened to the stocks And then with all of that having happened to them They sang hymns at midnight

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And the prisoners heard them they were witnessing but all of those things Happening happened to them. They will give they were witnessing to the goodness and the grace of God And so when we whine we complain when our toe aches They were witnessing they were witnessing witnessing to Jesus Christ

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and they witnessed so far but learned that the prisoners heard them and and heaven became disturbed about what was happening to these prisoners and there was an earthquake God acted. Earthquake is we call an earthquake an act of God. We can't control that. An earthquake occurred and shook the foundations of the

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prison and then the prison doors opened and the prisoner, the Roman prison keeper saw saw this happening and he just assumed that with all this happening that these prisoners had gotten out and his life was at stake because if he permitted the escape of those prisoners he had to pay for it with his life and so he took his sword and was about to take his

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life and he heard the voice in the darkness of the night crying out, "Do thyself no harm, We all here and this prisoner keeper, this prison keeper asked a personal and universal question, what must I do to be saved? Many are asking that question today.

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I said in a message just a short time ago that the record is that we have a hundred thousand people in this area alone that have not professed Jesus Christ. A hundred thousand. What must I do?

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ask him the question and it's ours to go forth and proclaim the gospel when he asked this question and Paul and Silas witnessed to them they had made a radical change in their lives and this radical change was that they accepted Paul's direction believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved accept him

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Believe in Him, trust Him. And that's what happened. And they were that night baptized, taken into the church.

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And the thing that I want us to get in there, he, talking about the Roman jailer, Roman jailer he was baptized

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and his household household too many households get baptized and they forget about the other members of the household and sometimes the church becomes too satisfied not reaching out

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to that household he and his household that night became baptized and the wonderful thing about it as you read that passage is that they had a meal here with all this having happened

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before they sat down to a common meal and shared together the joy of being disciples

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of Jesus Christ. There's a new family now. There's the family of Cloe in Corinthians and here's the family of the jailer here in Philippi. Two different families but they have one thing in common

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They are the family of God. Family of God. Oh, we would have a different world if somehow we could recognize how God transcends all of these problems that we talk about. Separation and contentions and factions in the family of God.

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He says to us in his word that I go to prepare a place for you. My father's house has many, many rooms. We're all one family in God. As one family there is this day that we look forward to of sharing in that great banquet

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that he has provided for his people. As we sing now the hymn of invitation, we extend the privilege of the church, and one, you may respond,

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I'm so glad that God is available to supply all of our needs. I need thee every hour. Wherever we are, we need him.

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We trust in him, we reach out to him, in Jesus' name. (piano music) (choir singing) [MUSIC]

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[MUSIC] ♪ And peace of mind ♪ ♪ I need Thee, O I need Thee ♪ ♪ Every hour I need Thee ♪

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♪ For as we now are standing ♪ ♪ Yes, thank God I've come to Thee ♪ ♪ I need Thee every hour ♪ ♪ Save I need Thy tenderness ♪

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♪ Near by ♪ ♪ Temptation moves at first ♪ ♪ It's not ♪ ♪ Now ♪

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♪ I believe ♪ ♪ In you ♪ ♪ I need thee ♪ ♪ Every hour ♪

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♪ I need thee ♪ ♪ Oh, that ♪ ♪ In a voice saying love ♪ ♪ I come ♪

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♪ To thee ♪ ♪ I need the area ♪ ♪ Those holy ones ♪ ♪ Oh may they be ♪

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♪ My last rest time ♪ ♪ I need thee, Lord, I need thee ♪ ♪ Every hour I need thee ♪ ♪ All the rest be thou my Savior ♪

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♪ I come to Thee ♪ ♪ I come to thee ♪ ♪ To me ♪ (upbeat music)

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