The following message is by pastor John Piper.

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The scripture text for today's sermon is Colaions 3, 12 to 17. Colaians 3, 12 to 17.

Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, humility,

meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against

another forgiving each other as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

And above all these, put on love,

which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts to which indeed you were called in one body and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all

wisdom, singing songs and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed,

do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.

Father, I pray that you would work this sermon in me, that it would come true in me, and also in the pastoral staff and in the elders.

And I pray that it would come true for the members, the Covenant members of Bethlehem

and all who hear my voice. That's a huge request that the relational culture described in those

verses that Jonathan just read would happen in us in new dimensions beyond what we thought were possible.

So whatever kind of dying it requires,

let us die. Grant that we would be this text. In Jesus, in Jesus, name, I pray.

Amen.

This is the third and final message in this little series on the relationship between baptism and church membership.

It arose out of a desire, the series did, out of a desire to help us forward as a church in

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