The following sermon is by John MacArthur, pastor, author, and Bible teacher with Grace

to You.

If you've never contacted Grace to You, we want to send you a free booklet by John that

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And now unleashing God's truth one verse at a time.

Here's Grace to You, Bible teacher John MacArthur.

We're taking a little bit of a journey back to talk about some of the things that were critical,

that the Lord taught me when I first came to Grace Church many years ago.

This church is what it is, far from perfect, far from everything we ought to be.

But this church is what it is because of certain biblical convictions that the Lord pressed upon my heart very early

and He has sustained those convictions through this half a century that we've been together.

They have to do with three things really.

One is the character of the pastor, what the Lord expected of me.

And we looked at a portion of Scripture last week that was very, very foundational in my understanding of the role that I would play.

A second, very important foundational reality was the character of the church or the life of the church.

What should a church be?

Why is Grace Church what it is today?

And where is the pattern for this? And how did we ever get here?

That's so very, very important.

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