It's a good day to worship and
sing about the grace of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ. And
I'm reminded of Paul. As he says of these Gentile believers,
I did not come to you in power or eloquence, I'm paraphrasing.
But I came to you almost unable to speak or stand. Stammering,
weakness. As Paul teaches, believers of
Corinth that, as we know, had a lot of issues. He wasn't asking
them to be perfect, he wasn't asking them to put a mold on
to look as though they were different than who they were, he was he
was teaching them that the way they were living did not look. Like those whom God had created. But yet there was a fleshly remnant,
this undergirded undercurrent rather of sin that continued
to weave itself through the people of God. And he was saying, look,
I don't want to change your behavior. I want you to expose the true
change of your heart. Now, where can I go with this
today? Paul has never, nor has the apostles,
nor is the gospel itself in any way established a people who
walk in eloquence and professionalism and perfection in ministry. It's the exact opposite. It's
the exact opposite. It's the exact reason sometimes
music gets in the way of worship. Environment gets in the way of
worship. It's too hot. It's too cold. Oh, we better
get that air fixed. We might lose people. And they may die of a heat stroke.
But you won't lose people who are in love with Christ. You
may lose people who physically would be dangerous to be there,
but we're not going to explore every argument. You get the point. But we have this really, I would
say, mistaken, broken reality that's not a reality at all.
We think being the people of God is about walking in such
a way that we're to look the part even when we're not the
part. What are you saying? You're saying we ought to just
sin? No. Scripture teaches that we shouldn't sin. Matter of fact,
John is first to say, I write these things that you may not
sin, but if you sin, you have an advocate of the Father, Jesus
Christ, the righteous, who is our propitiation and not ours
alone, but the propitiation of the whole world. And so when
we see the understanding of the gospel, which is the gospel is
good news, what it means. is that God, in his infinite
mercy, in his infinite love, in his infinite wisdom, has created
a people for himself, by his glory, through the means of his
grace, through the blood and death and life and resurrection
of Jesus Christ. That Christ became man so that
he could suffer as a man for the sins of men. And the rebirth is not a decisive
act, but rather a massively powerful, supernatural, uncommon thing
that God does in the life of the people who hear the gospel.
The gospel must be heard in order for the word to be heard. And
the Spirit of God must move through that word in order for the hearing
to be hearing. Romans 10, 17. Faith doesn't
come through any other means but Jesus. And the power of God
through the gospel, Romans one sixteen is is enough for salvation,
most certainly. But then also it's enough, as
we see in Peter's writing, for godly living. And so as I'm as
I'm here today, there's a lot of places that we could go, there's
a lot of avenues that we could go down, and if I wanted to really
preach Pragmatism today, I can get a list of things at the top
of my head of how each of us, especially in this fellowship,
we could work on some areas in our lives that we can mold in
our communication, in our inferences, in our assumptions, our presumptions,
our attitudes, our apathy. I mean, we can just and I've
been preaching long enough. I can come up with alliteration
right off the top of my head. Sell those things for ten dollars
a month or something. Sermon, SadSermon.com But I want to share with you
a little bit of my journaling this week, because it was my turn to put something
in the spotlight on the back page of the paper this week,
and I've had good responses to it. But what I did is I just
just shared my heart that as Grace Truth Church exists in
a community, that community is top of mind for them. And the
communities that you live in is top of mind for you as a Christian,
the place where you are. And you might say, well, it's
not really what it should be. We don't live for ourselves.
Our life is not ours. It never was and it never will
be again. If we are in Christ Jesus, we do not live for ourselves.
It is not our life. I hate to tell you, but I've
been reading a lot of the martyrs in the last few weeks. So I think
what I might do is just seal it off and just read Radical
next weekend and just throw myself into a fire. You know how that
works. You don't know David Platt's
Radical. It's a very challenging book. It's a very frightening
book from pastoral perspective, but it's very accurately challenging. So when you read the martyrs,
and I shared some of that last week with you, when you read
about the people of God, even those who recanted their faith
under fire. As one gentleman, they set it
ablaze and his beard began to burn and it burned slowly. And in the last He said, I recant,
I recant, I give it up, I don't believe this. They put out the
fire of his beard, tended to his wounds and put him in prison.
And when they took the written confession to him to recant his
faith, he said, I've done a horrible thing. Light the fire. And they burned him. He wouldn't confess to that which
he in fear confessed. It reminds me of Peter. who was
a zealous man to the point where he's about to kill somebody through
murder to keep them from arresting Jesus. Self-sufficient. We looked
at Matthew 16 last week about the idolatry of salvation experience
in America. About how people put their hope
in their hope rather than their hope in the one who gives hope
or who is hope. About how when so many times
we purvey this twisted reality of some gospel that, you know,
you're born again because you did something. Have you believed
in Christ? Have you trusted in Christ? By
faith, have you received the grace of God through Christ? And if you are a believer sitting
here today, your hope is not in what you've done, but in Christ. It's not in the gospel that you
believed as your belief, but it's in the gospel who is Jesus.
We don't put faith in our faith. But even in Matthew 16, as we
saw last week, the Pharisees demanded signs. They saw what
Jesus could do. They knew the word that He preached
was true, but they refused. They could not imagine this was
the man that was their Messiah. So in their hardness of heart
and in their blindness of their eyes, the God of the world blinded
them to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel. 2 Corinthians
chapter 4. John chapter 12. Even after Jesus
raised Lazarus from the dead, And they put provision in the
flesh. And I've been trying to understand the flesh. It's not
a hobby and it's not this long driven pursuit that keeps me
up at night, but it does occupy a lot of my mind. How is it that
people can think the way they think? How is it that we even
as born again believers sometimes come to the wall of opposition
with our faith and we have a crisis? And we believe something for
so long And we hold to it so strongly, all of a sudden we're
willing to throw it away because we have a small doubt. Because
we think if there's any doubt, it must not be true. Well, that article that I wrote
was about how I believe that we, as the church, should work
together with other congregations, as the church, to pray for our
city and our communities, to pray for our leaders, to pray
for poverty, to pray for racism, to pray for hatred, to pray for
God to send the gospel through the church to save lost lives
so that the world that we live in, at least temporarily, will
be a Christ-centered world. But that's not even the endgame,
is it? The endgame is that God would save more and more and
more out of the depths of hell, out of the depths of darkness,
as he snatches them through the hearing of the gospel and the
preaching of the gospel into eternal life, into the kingdom
of light, who is the kingdom of Jesus. But I'll be straight with you,
I don't believe, even myself, I'm not preaching at you, I'm
talking with you. I don't believe any of us individually,
have the deal we need to have. And I believe there's more idols
in our lives than we ever want to understand that are there.
But I will tell you one thing that the scripture makes absolutely
clear. Jesus Christ promised suffering for his church. And
if you are not suffering for the cause of Christ, it may be
that you're not found in him. There is no cakewalk. There is
no cupcake recipe for living a fancy life, sipping sweet tea
and lemonade and having pound cake and crumpets on the front
porch, for those of you who are a little English. You may have those moments, but
that's not what life is about. So as I share these things, as
I have a lot of positive, positive response, people catch me in
town, text me. But something that bothered me
in these positive responses is that they took it as though I
was through this encouragement, this exhortation. They said,
well, we agree with you. It's about time you started calling
out these other churches. Who's calling out any church?
I said, we, I, myself and y'all, you know, we need to be about
the father's business. We need to be about not the community. Separating than they were doing
the church or worse, we think the community needs this or the
church will just do it. And if we want the community involved,
we'll just try to get the church into this. How about the church
be the community? And it disheartens me because
I don't want people to think that my passion for the gospel
and for unity is a is a is a is a discord. There's a misharmony. I want them to understand that
is the power of God and in the hearts of his people when they
hear his word and they stand together, he triumphantly overcomes
he who is in the world. My faith. So I thought about
this and I asked this question when the request to pray. For the Lord to grow and expand
the glory of his gospel among a people goes forth. It doesn't
always include a rebuke or internal animosity from the one who asked
for prayer. Assuming and concluding what
has not been said is a result of what I would call an untrusting,
unloving and murderous heart. And see, that's a rebuke, but
that's a journal entry. That internally, become slanderous while bearing
a false witness in the soul, which will ultimately spew from
one's mouth or hands. What's I mean by that? It's odd
to me that people who are professing to be in Christ hear good news
and then they get bitter because of it. I thought to myself, well,
maybe there's there's sort of a. Something going on, we know
what's going on, the enemy of God hates you. The enemy of God
hates me. In the name of God, the devil
wants to stir and come after us at any cost. And a lot of
times we forget that temptation is not just temptation to walk
back into lucidiousness or blasphemy or debauchery. It's a temptation
to be personally affected by everything. It's about me. Well, this doesn't suit my needs.
This doesn't suit my desires. You know what that sounds like?
Did Jesus do that? Oh, Father! You know, I just
stepped out of the glory of all eternity into this wretched body,
and this just doesn't suit me. I need to be a little taller.
I wish my hair was a little more curly. I wish I had some designer
tunics. I wish I'd not been forced to
live in Nazareth. You know, nothing good comes
from Nazareth. You know that right, God. Why the cross? Why not just a good tail kicking?
Get some burglars to come in and beat me up real good and
that'll be enough. You know, put a couple of bruises,
maybe I'll get a laceration. But that's just absurd. It's not because it's what we
do. And I would suggest to you that
an inference apart from evidence or argument, it plants a bitter
root of deceit inside of our hearts. What does this have to
do with the Lord's Table? It has everything to do with
the Lord's Table. Because what happens when that
little bit of root of deceit comes up is it places us at odds with
each other. In this fellowship and in fellowships
abroad, even with the enemies of the world, when we infer,
when we point in our hearts to negative things that aren't necessarily
true, or even if they are true, when we're not obedient to the
command of Christ to pray for our enemies and lay down our
lives for them, we have been deceived. We've been deceived. And we don't have to water down
the gospel. We don't have to change the message at all. We
never want to take the cross and defame it. But did Jesus not die for his
enemies? Did Jesus not cry from the cross
to forgive them? Did Jesus not cry over Israel
because of their unbelief, though it was prophesied they could
not believe, because of their hard hearts? Did Jesus not say
to the Jews, Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your presence.
And then, quote Isaiah 6, you're going to preach and hear, but
you can't see and you can't perceive. Because if you did, I'd heal
you, but I'm not. I'm going to cut you down until
there's only a tenth left. You know what? There's grace in that.
I'm going to mow you down, but not completely. I call this the heart of Saul.
The heart of Saul who, by the oracles of God, appointed David,
this ruddy young shepherd boy who wasn't even in the court
to be picked as king, and God chose him. And he lived in the king's house.
And the reason he lived in the king's house is because God allowed
the devil to torment Saul so that Saul would have need of
comfort that only David could give him. But Saul was jealous of David. David was Saul's enemy in his
own mind, and yet David had many opportunities to kill Saul, but
he didn't. Sometimes I think it's also about
the heart of Jonah. Is it when we've been given the
grace of God to proclaim, we rather see God's judgment. Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter
11. I want to read verses 17 through
33, and I'm going to focus on verses 28 through 29. First Corinthians, chapter 11,
verse. 17. But in the following instructions,
I do not commend you. You see what's happening. In
chapter 11, he commends them. And in chapter eleven, verse
seventeen, he does not come in here. He goes, I do not commend
you because when you come together. It is not for the better, but
for the worse. For in the first place, when
you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions
among you and I believe in part for there must be factions among
you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.
What's that mean? In other words, don't don't be surprised there
are factions. Because it proves who is and
who is not in Christ. People who are continually divisive
without repentance, without a desire to reconcile, don't have the
reconciliation of the gospel. That's what Paul's arguing there.
So he's not saying let's eliminate all division, because division
sometimes cleanses out the chaff. But we're not God to know who
are chaff. So with everything, as long as it is up to us, as
far as it is up to us, we try to reconcile. Verse 20, When
you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat.
For in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One
goes hungry, another one gets drunk. What? Do you see how Paul
put that in verse 22? Do you have an exclamation point
at the end of your what? What? Do you not have houses
to eat in or drink in? Or do you despise the church
of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say
to you? Shall I commend you in this?
No, I will not. For I received from the Lord
what I also delivered to you. You see what he's saying? I speak
the words of God and you have them already. that the Lord Jesus,
on the night when He's betrayed, took the bread, and when He had
given thanks, He broke it, and He said, This is My body, which
is for you. Do this in remembrance of Me. In the same way, also, He took
the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant
in My blood. Do this often as you drink it
in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until
he comes. Whoever, therefore, verse 27,
eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy
manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.
And then our key text, twenty eight, twenty nine, let a person
examine himself then and so eat of the bread and drink of the
cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats
and drinks judgment on himself. That is why many of you are weak
and ill and some have died. But if we judged ourselves truly,
we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the
Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along
with the world. So then, my brothers, when you
come together to eat, wait for one another. If anyone's hungry,
let him eat at home so that when you come together, it will not
be for judgment about the other things I will give directions
when I come. Now, see what's happening here? It's too much. What I want to focus on is let
a man examine himself in. And so eat of the bread and drink
of the cup for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning
the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. Well, how do you
how do you get that? What is that? And I've got some
grace, grace friends and exponential grace friends that like to say
that that doesn't that just doesn't really apply at all to the church.
These are my unbelievers drinking. Because Romans 8 says what? For
therefore thou, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
And that's true. But it's not just a conditional
statement with an effect, cause-effect. If you eat in unworthy manner,
you're going to be judged. But I think it's both ends. If you
are a child of God and you eat and partake at the Lord's table
in an unworthy manner, you will be judged. You won't be condemned
in that judgment, for Christ has taken that judgment away,
propitiated. Satisfy the wrath of God against
you. He's paid for your death. But in the same way, if I go
out and decide I'm going to rob a bank, I may not go to hell
for it, but I will go to prison. And therefore, there will be
some judgment in that regard. Paul says many of you are sick
and dead because you came to the Lord's table in an unworthy
manner. See, that's how serious and uncommon the Lord's table
is. It wasn't special bread. We don't
believe in mutation. I'm just going to call it what
it is. We don't believe in that turning into body and turning
into blood. We're not cannibals. It's in remembrance. And what's
happening here is, like in verse 17, I did not commend you because
when you came together, it was not for the better, but for worse. Have you ever felt like that
coming to worship? Have you ever felt like that going to a brother
and sister's home? This isn't going to be good for me. This
isn't going to be good for us. Well, let me give you some thoughts
as we prepare our hearts as to what Paul is really teaching
here. One is that these people's lives, their personal lives,
was a mess. They were living in sin, a lot
of them. They were doing things that were ungodly. They had public
sin and private sin. And they looked at church gatherings
as something that they were doing for themselves. I love my church. Now see? See how that works?
I was on staff at the church for over five years, and I had
a woman sit down in a meeting with me because of some animosity
toward one of our staff members who happened to be on my staff. And because she had been at the
church a year and a half before I was as a founding member, she
didn't look at me as a family, but a hireling. And it didn't
come out. It didn't come out. Always causing
contention. And then finally, one day, in tears, she looks
at me and the group of elders. She says, I love this church
more than you ever will. This is my church. To which I respond to them, I'm
not a part of it. That's how it looks. If the ground shook
beneath us today, And within a hundred miles there wasn't
a building standing, who would your church be next week? And what would it do? We preached a series out of Titus
some months ago, and one of those sermons was entitled, The Church
Has a Face. Who is your church? Not where. Not what do they do, but what
do you do? What are you engaged in? With
whom? Who are the people of God that you fellowship with? Their
personal lives was in a mess. And because of that, when they
brought that mess to public worship, their public worship was a mess.
Their public worship reflected their personal lives. Their public
expression of the gospel and their heart's desires was easily
seen when they came together. You have to understand, the Lord's
table that we take of is just a small little piece of something
with a small little swig of something. But at the Lord's table of the
day that he was arrested, it was the Passover meal and he
broke the bread and he passed it. Most likely, for those of
you who understand what a Seder is, he probably did the whole
meal. And then at the end, he passed the cup and that was the
wine, alcoholic wine. He says, when you eat of this
bread, every time you eat of it, remember of me. When you
drink of this cup, remember of me. Well, the church got into
a habit not of just tending to each other's needs, and they
ate together a lot. What does it say in Acts chapter two? And
they gathered together daily. and gave themselves over to the
apostles teaching and to the instruction and to worship and
to singing and to the breaking of bread. What do you think that
means? They observed the death, the burial and the resurrection
of Jesus Christ and the shedding of his blood for the remission
of sins. That's what the church does when it gets together. That's
what preaching does. That's what worship is. That's
what the Lord's table is all about. But the church grew so
fast. How are you going to feed 3000
people? You have 40 people today, no, 120 people today and 3,120
people tomorrow. Church growth at its finest.
How did it happen? Peter preached the gospel. And
the Spirit of God struck their hearts, cut their soul. Hebrews
4, 12, for the Word of God is living and breathing and sharper
than the two-edged sword. It cuts flesh and bone and marrow
and conscience, soul. And the gospel cut them, and
they were cut. And he said, what must we do to be saved? And he
says, repent and believe the gospel that I preach to you. So they just had to get together
and the meal then wasn't meal for them to fill up. But there
were some people who had nothing and they were poor and they were
destitute. And some of the others who would
bring the food along, I brought food, I'm getting my plate and
they'd dip a plate. And they'd eat while those poor
people would starve sitting over in this aisle right here waiting
because they dared not stand up, they weren't that proud.
And when it was time for them to come, everybody had eaten
everything to the point where even what food was left, the
wine was gone and they were drunk. Because of the way their hearts
were, they were unworthy to take the Lord's table. Paul says,
you who have a home with food in it, just eat the small portion
to remember the Lord and let the people who have nothing eat
the food for sustenance after they remember the Lord. What they did in that is they
made a mockery of the cross. They made a mockery of the cross
because of their factions, because of their actions and because
of their false worship. They defame the cross of Jesus
Christ by taking the table as a meal to be enjoyed and filled
up. They defame the cross of Christ
by taking the table, the Lord's table, in drunkenness. Paul says
to be filled with the Spirit of God, do not get drunk upon
wine. Why? Because you've not control of
your thoughts. How does the Spirit of God compel
you and take captive your thoughts and your affections when you're
inebriated? It doesn't. He doesn't. Your flesh overpowers. And they defame the cross by
taking the Lord's table in greed. rather than living their lives
as a sacrifice to the less fortunate. Here's what I call all this.
They made the they made their worship, not just the Lord's
table, but the whole of their worship, a social gathering. And I would tell you that for
the most of my life, I looked at church as social. Over spirit. Spiritual things happen, but
for the most part, no matter how bad the sermon was, no matter
how loud the music was, no matter how hot it might have been or
how bored you might have been, you at least had some good friends
there. I'm not saying it's bad. We should have good friends there.
But that was sort of the nature of things. Let's just get good
friends. And I would suggest to you, Church,
that anything in corporate worship that becomes a social party,
there's no need to call that. It becomes commonplace. Anything
that becomes commonplace, let's just take this, because you're
all going to start thinking about other things. Anything that becomes
commonplace in worship is broken. And let me say this, it's dirty.
It's dirty. When we worship God, if it's
common and normal, commonplace, it's dirty. Our hearts are dirty.
Our worship is defamed. It's not truth. It's not in spirit. We're not honoring the Father
who saved us. We're just going through the motions. How is that? Why would it be
dirty for us to sort of have a commonplace worship? Well,
because it puts an emphasis on the flesh. It's what we call
in the mission circles, felt needs. You know when there's
a time for felt needs? When there's needs to be met.
You know, when those needs are not to be met, corporate worship
time. Because sometimes we don't feel
the need to worship God, we just need to. Sometimes we don't feel
the need to be fed the word, we just need it. Do not labor
for the food that perishes, but labor for the bread that endures
to eternal life. Oh, give us this bread always.
I am the bread that come from heaven to give life to all men.
What must we do to be doing the work of God? Jesus says, this
is the work of God that you believe on Jesus Christ, the Son, whom
he has sent. It puts emphasis on the flesh,
what we need, what we want, what we're thinking, what we're feeling,
how we're going to overcome it. Make no provision for the flesh.
Get behind me, Satan, Jesus told Peter of Jesus. He had a plan
and he had the zeal to effect it. You don't have to die. You don't have to go down there.
We got you. We can get enough people behind you that we can
take Rome out. We can put ourselves back in
the right place and you can live with us and we can have a great
kingdom. And this is just minutes after the Spirit of God, through
Peter's mouth, said, you are the Son, the Christ. And now he says, the devil speaks
to him, you don't have to die. We don't make provision for the
flesh. We don't put an emphasis on the flesh in our worship.
Secondly, I think that it's dirty because it feeds hunger, physical
hunger and fleshly hunger, pride. What's that look like? I believe it can be summed up
in this. I believe that this type of attitude, this type of
heart gives an opportunity for what I call self-glory. We sang
the song last week, I will glory in my Redeemer. And I played
on that a little bit and said most of the time we like to glory
in our redemption, not our Redeemer. To the praise of His glory is
grace, Paul says in Ephesians. But the grace of God isn't that
our redemption? Yeah, but it's God. Jesus is the grace of God. Jesus is the mercy seat where
God meets man. How do we have opportunity for
self-glory? Well, when we sing. I've been
part of churches that had top-notch praise teams, people that we've
hired from all over the country to come and bring them in and
sing, man, top-notch musicians. You ever had so many people wanting
to play in a praise bench, you had to have auditions? It's there.
I'm not saying that's a bad thing. You don't want, you know, Billy
Bob out there beating his tin can. Why not? See how consumeristic we've made
our worship? And I believe in excellence. I may not give it, but I believe
in it. An opportunity for self-glory is singing. We have an opportunity
for self-glory when we come together in our clothing. How we dress,
how much time do we spend? We all do it. We have to. We
have a culturally sensitive thing that we need to always make sure
we got nothing wiggling in our teeth and that the glass doesn't
break when we look into the mirror. And at least there's not a overcoming
odor to the point of making people pass out when we go into the
presence. So there is some sense in that the way we look is important
to our culture. But friends, some of us make
it the ultimate. And we're more concerned with
exactly how we look and how people are going to perceive how we
look. Well, you know what's really amazing to me? If we worship
in spirit and truth, we're not even going to see each other
much because I'm going to be looking at Christ. And I'll tell you that Christ
was not much to look at. The Scripture teaches that. The Scripture
also teaches that on his road to Calvary, he wasn't even recognizable
as a human being. We have an opportunity for self-glory
in our holiness. We like to put our hands on those who are less
fortunate. We like to put our hands on those who are sinning.
We like to put our hands on those who are struggling or addicted
or having problems. We go, oh, we're just praying
for you. You know, one day God will put you in the place where
I am. Or maybe it's a freaky Friday. You might switch. Be
careful. That's self-glory. Feeling like
we're pumped up? I mean, Scripture even teaches,
those who are spiritual, go and correct your brother, but be
careful lest you fall into temptation yourself. It gives an opportunity for self-glory
with our will. I've known people before, no
one that you know or around here that had specific cars that they
drove just to church. And they'd uncover them and Blow
the dust off and drive them to church. They also drove those
cars to their special athletic events. So we have a lot of opportunity
for self-glory. Friends, there's nothing common or cultural about
worship, about the study of God's word, about remembering the blood
and the body of Jesus Christ. It's anti-culture. It goes against
the grain of what's normative. A bloody Jesus. God becoming
a human being to save a rebellious humanity. God sending a son. And then that triune God is really
just one God. Three persons. Coexistent. That's not normal. People talk
like that and they put you in little white rooms and little
white jackets. Little white flowers to look at. But yet, that's what
we do. We come here together to worship
that God. And His name is Jesus Christ.
There's nothing common or normal about it. It's not cultural.
We think that Christianity is culturally acceptable in America.
It is not. Even among churchgoing people, the true church is sort
of broken, even inside a congregation. You know what I'm talking about.
You ever been in a church and after Seven, eight years, you
look around and you go, am I the only Christian in here? And there's
some pride in that, probably. But you're so busy about everything,
you can't remember the last time you prayed. You start talking
to other people and they're the same way. We just become robots.
We're broken. And then we start saying, we
need to get on our face. Oh, look at those crazy. There's
ten people out of a hundred over here. They're just coming together
all the time, learning to grow and to pray. Those are the zealous.
No, those are the normal Christians. Those are the normal Christians
who put their Bible in prominent places and have to dig around
and find them because they don't know exactly where they left
it the night before. See how easily you can fall down
the slide of morality though right now? The behavior modification,
if I'm not careful, everybody's going, OK, I'm going to resolve.
It's OK to resolve, but understand that your passion and your heart
and your affection comes through intimacy. The grace of God is
given to you through His Word, and without the Word of God,
you're going to flounder and flap around like a fish out of
water. So we see what was going on with
these Corinthians. Now, let's look very quickly at the message
of examination. If we take lightly the Lord's
table, we eat and drink judgment. How does that work? What what
is it that we should be evaluating? Well, let's look at a few things.
Just there's many, many, many. But let's just look at a few
based on the context of this scripture. Of the whole of that
verse, 17 to 33. One, we need to understand that
none of us are worthy to take the Lord's table. None of us
are worthy. We've all been saved by grace
through faith. And so if that's the case, none
of us have come to the place where we actually have stood
before God and goes, I can take your table. I can be in your
presence. I can remember your sacrifice. I'm ready. That's number one. If you think
you're worthy, you're unworthy. But that's not exactly what Paul's
talking about. He's talking about outward behaviors, inward affections. And then outward affections.
The reason we're worthy to even come before God is because Christ
is worthy. And by faith in Christ, he makes
us. The scripture says he prepares us for the presence of God. There's
no grace but Christ. Secondly, we bring judgment on
ourselves when we look at the fitness of Christ Let me put this in a positive
way. We should evaluate ourselves
in this way. When we look at the grace of
Christ, do we see it evident in our lives? Do we see ourselves
in a life of sin? Or do we see ourselves in a life
of battle over sin? Do we see ourselves knowing that there's a lot of
stuff that we just do and we're I'm forgiven. So we're just it's
OK. God knows I'm forgiven. It's
cool. And I think that's strange, but friends, there's a lot of
us who at some season of our lives have thought that way by
practice, if not by thought. Finally, look at a couple of
things, evaluate yourself, evaluate ourselves, evaluate ourselves
by asking this, God, show me my heart. We know if there are
things that we continually do to rebel against him. I hate
to use these two phrases, these two words, but it's just it's
normative. We know the sins of commission,
the things that we do in the sense of omission, the things
that we should do that we don't. How about affection? What do
we love most is the Christ. The king, our Lord, is he our
complete treasure? Are there things, biding for
his time, biding for his place? Are there things in our life
that actually are not getting in the way of Christ, but we're
putting in there? We're taking Christ and pushing him to the
back of the cupboard and putting other things that are most important
to us in front of him. Because all the while we know
he's there and we can get him when we need him. That's not
the way our faith works. That's not the way rebirth looks.
That's not the way being worthy to take the table of the Lord
is. Because our relationship with
Jesus Christ, His relationship with us, the Holy Spirit working
in us through the Word, is what keeps us from sin. Are we longing to satisfy the
flesh, or are we satisfied in every bit of our being in Christ? And finally, and most certainly,
and most specifically, We should examine our heart toward other
people, because as Jesus says, they tried to trick him and said,
what is the greatest of all commandments? And Jesus says these words, the
greatest of all commandments is this, to love the Lord God
with all your heart, mind and strength. And I've never met a churchgoer
that wouldn't say, I love, yeah, oh, that's me. But Jesus then
says, out of his mouth, very next breath, but the second of
equal importance is this. Love your neighbor as you love
yourself. For all the laws of the prophets
hinge on these two. So we can't throw our hands in
the air, I love you God, I love you Christ, while we hate the
person standing next to us. It doesn't work. So is there hatred in your heart?
Probably. Let's just be honest, there's
hatred in our hearts sometimes. The question is, if we evaluate
ourselves to take the Lord's table, are we battling that hatred
or are we embracing it? Do we keep it set at the table?
Here's me and Mama and Junior and hate. Let's feed hate. Do we feed it? Do we fend it
off? It doesn't say never have hate.
That's not never be tempted. You're going to have temptation
to hate. The question is, are you leaving it there? Are you
putting off the old man? Are you praying for your enemies? Not in precatory prayers, are
you praying for your enemies, that God would show them mercy,
that they may become your brother? Are you praying for your family? Finally, examine your motives
for taking the Lord's table in the first place. Why do you want
to do it? It's because of the gospel, the
good news that Jesus Christ gave his life that you and I might
live. How does judgment come? Because I believe one who can
flippantly ignore the examination of the Lord, cannot taste the call of Christ's
sacrifice and eat if he's born again. If someone
is born again, he cannot flippantly ignore the examination of the
Spirit. He can't just put it off. There's a heaviness. You know, there's a difference
in joy and happiness. And sometimes we need to have
heaviness in our joy. And when we think of the sacrifice
of Jesus, it's not a laughing matter. It's not something that
we can just go, oh yeah, that's cool, let's move on. Being saved from the judgment
of God is not something that's just so passable that we can
just walk by. Because there's a beauty to the
feast, not just in what it looks back to, but what it looks forward
to and that Christ is crucified and has been raised from the
dead. And we who are in him have died with him and have been raised
to life. And one day there will be a resurrection
unto eternal life where we will eat forever the feast of the
lamb. The beauty of the feast looks
like this. There's a lamb that we typically would eat who bore
our sins. The Lord is that lamb who was
worthy beyond all worth, who was made worthless, who knew
no sin became sin, that we might be the righteousness of God.
The beauty of this feast is that Lamb, who is the Lord, shed his
blood and it ran down for the remission of sin to pay for the
judgment that is due by us toward God. We owe God our judgment. And that sounds backward, doesn't
it? It's due. Recompense. God will see it. And the blood of Christ ran down.
Do you know the picture of the temple? And inside the temple,
in the center of the temple, the Holy of Holies? Where the
high priest would slaughter a lamb and catch the blood. The perfect
lamb. There's a picture of that lamb. He would capture the blood
of that lamb and he would run into the Holy of Holies. And
inside that room was the Ark of the Covenant with the holiness
of God, the Word of God inside. And on top of that, the lid of
this thing with angels and their wings touching at the tip. And
he would take the blood of that lamb where he put his hands on
that lamb as he killed it and said, the sins of these people,
oh God, would you put it on this lamb? And as I shed his blood,
would you would you cleanse them through the shedding of this
blood? And then He would take in there the blood of that Lamb,
representative of the sins of the people, and He would pour
it over that place called the mercy seat where God met man.
And that is who we know as Jesus. Where God meets man. And He pours
out His love, and He pours out His embrace, Because Christ has
drained the Father's wrath by the draining of His blood, and
it was poured out completely upon Him, and the wrath of God
was poured upon Him, and He drank every drop, not one remained. He paid for your sins, church.
And so when we remember what He's done through the bread and
the cup, we are heavy. Never forget that only the holy
stand with God. 1 Corinthians 1 verse 9 says, God
is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of
His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. God is faithful. He's given us
grace. Let's take a moment as we consider
these things and begin by asking yourself, are you in the faith?
Are you in Christ? Have you believed fully and wholly
with all that you have and all that you are in the person of
Christ and His work and His finished atonement? There is no other
way to God. There is no other hope in all
of heaven. There is no other joy in anything in this world.
Everything else passes away but the hope that is found in the
Gospel of Jesus. Father, we are grateful to be
able to just take a moment and pause to examine ourselves and
realize just how far, even as redeemed in our In our flesh,
Lord, we fall far from Your glory. And we long for that day when
we will be like Christ, forever unchangeable, holy, because of
His grace and power through His cross. And Lord, we sit here
as holy people, redeemed, saved, justified before You. Because Jesus broke His body
and shed His blood on our behalf. Father, help us to resolve to
heal those relationships that we've sort of let go. To pray
for those that we find bitterness in our heart toward. Father,
to reflect more on the Gospel than we do on the games. And to be more concerned with
our spiritual faith than we are the food on our table. Thank
you, Lord, that you provide even those small things. Let us remember. In Christ's
name we pray. Amen. Jesus took the bread and he broke
and he said, this is my body which is broken for you. Please
take in remembrance of the body of Jesus Christ. Just remember the blood of Jesus.
Remember that Jesus died for us, His enemies. And He gave Himself, the High
King of Heaven, for the lowly. Drink this in remembrance of
the blood of Jesus, which is the new covenant that seals you
for the day of redemption. In the early church, they sang.
prayed and went out together. Let's pray and then sing and
then go out together. God, thank you for the cross. Thank you for your grace. Father, thank you for planting
the gospel in our hearts so deeply that it affects us in everything,
in every aspect of our lives. Thank you for children who hear
and learn by observation and learn by hearing. Lord, would
your spirit rest in their hearts that they may remember this and
come to faith. And Father, take us out of these
walls as we live our lives for your glory to proclaim the gospel
and bring others into the fold.