• • • Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 14:26-33 – What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. 27 If any speak in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn, and let someone interpret. 28 But if there is no one to interpret, let each of them keep silent in church and speak to himself and to God. 29 Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said. 30 If a revelation is made to another sitting there, let the first be silent. 31 For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged, 32 and the spirits of prophets are subject to prophets. 33 For God is not a God of confusion but of peace. From <https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+cor+14&version=ESV>

Take me back

To the place that feels like home

To the people I can depend on

To the faith that’s in my bones

Take me back

To a preacher and a verse

Where they’ve seen me at my worst

To the love I had at first

Oh, I want to go to church

• • • WELCOME: To Central Church of Christ, not a place, but a people called out to Show God’s Love, Tell God’s Story, Be God’s Family. Today we begin a new sermon series called, Take Me Back.  It’s inspired by a desire from the elders to reexamine early Christianity, what the disciples after Jesus did, how they gathered, worshipped, and encouraged each other. It’s a desire to Take Us Back to Church

Read from Alexander Campbell, 1830,

Wow, Alexander Campbell called the guys supplying content in the MH, “distinguished men of liberal minds.” Then he wrote that this publication is to give the whole family religious news and such a variety of content that it is to “interest the young and inquisitive.”  pg 2

Remember page 3, the analogy of the age of Sunlight, which at times is still obscured by clouds and fogs.  Remember my purpose to help people see the Sunlight. 

Pg 4 – “The took the points off the arrows of truth, and blunted the sword of the Spirit, so that the enemies of the truth could not be conquered.”

Pg 5 – “We expect no new Sun, no new revelation of the Spirit, no other than the same gospel and the same religioun, only that it shall be disinterred from the rubbish of the dark ages, and made to assume its former simplicity, sublimity, and majesty.”

Pg 5 – “Light is certainly increasing – charity enlarging the circle of its activities – the mountains of discord diminishing, and the deep valleys which separated Christians, are filling up.  But much is to be done before all flesh shall enjoy the salvation of God.  If all who love the Lord and the salvation of men, would unite their energies and bury the tomahawk of party conflicts, no seer could predict how rapid would be the march and how extensive the triumphs of the gospel.”

1 Corinthians 14:12 – “So with yourselves, since you are eager for manifestations of the Spirit, strive to excel in building up the church.”

What then, brothers? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. 14:26

  26b: “Let all things be done for building up.”

• 1 Thessalonians 5:11: “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing.”
• Romans 15:2-3: “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself.”
• Matthew 20:28: “Even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus did not seek what was beneficial to himself, but what was beneficial to others.