We're a place as a people at
a at a position in Scripture where Paul is culminating his
argument. He's bring it to a close. He's
showing the outcome of all of these things that he's taught
us and the power of God manifested in the lives of God's people. And just listen, as Paul writes
these words, listen to these words, look carefully at how
you walk. Not as unwise, but as wise, making
the best use of the time for the days are evil. Therefore,
do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is
and do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be
filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in hymns and psalms
and spiritual songs. Singing and making medley to
the Lord with your heart. Giving thanks always and for
everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ. Submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Now there's a lot that I want to deal with and specifically
today I'm going to look at two things specifically that Paul
has now just exploded out of his argument. He's saying that
those who are filled with the Spirit of God. Find their joy
in Christ and also in the body. As we joyfully exalt Christ together
with one another. And then as we looked at just
a few weeks ago, that the result of the filling of the Spirit
of God is indeed a worship, a thanksgiving, a praise, is a holy affection
toward the church, and it is an equipping of the church. It's
how you want to be equipped. As Paul has said, that Christ has given to the church. He gave gifts to man. He gave
the teachers and the evangelists and the preachers. in order to
equip the saints for the work of ministry. Friends, then the
work of ministry comes out of the filling of the Holy Spirit.
Here's the point. Paul is not just saying, do this
and do that and do this. Nowhere in the New Testament
do you see that kind of stuff, except where Paul says, here's some
good advice. Do this. It's usually, this is what you
will be doing if you are filled with the Spirit of God and are
actually a child of God. So these are the things that
the apostles teach us. I like to look at it more as instruction.
I like to look at it as exclamation. The apostles, yes, they teach
instruction. Yes, they have didactics. They
say this is what you should do. This is what you should not do.
But it is not so that we have a list of what we should and
shouldn't do. There is no motivation for that in the Word of God,
in the New Testament. It is not there for us to know
that which is not to be done and that which is to be done.
Now, we gleaned that from it. But the motivation of the apostles
was to show the work of God in the lives of the church. to show
that which is evident in the true church. And so what we'll see here is
that the filling of the Spirit is the quintessential, absolute
power in the life of every Christian that in turn empowers the church
as a whole, the Spirit of God and the filling of that Spirit
of Him. And in each of us and incorporately
as a body, alone, God alone effects the works that he has prepared
beforehand that we should walk in them. This is this is what
God is showing us, what Paul is showing us about what God
has done and is doing in the church today. So it's going to
be real easy. It'd be real easy right now as
where some people would say, well, that's not exposition.
You're going to deal with a topic. I mean, what in the world is
Paul talking about? Look carefully how you walk.
What do you mean? How should we walk? Not as unwise,
but as wise. So let's talk about walking wisely.
Is that not what Paul is teaching? But how is walking wisely done? It's the outcome of what God
is doing. And so today when we see that
the filling of the Spirit actually does something, the reason I
wanted to go to Psalm 50 is it kept coming up in some cross-references
this week. as I'm looking at the issue of
thankfulness. Because see here it says, do
not get drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit. And
the outcome of that verse 19 in Ephesians 5 is addressing
one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing
and making melody to the Lord with your hearts. Then giving thanks always and
for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ. submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
That's next week. And then, oh, whoa, then we get to verse 22. And so often that's an abused
place, but we'll leave that for next week. But what is Paul really showing
us here? Paul is saying, and this is what I believe, because
now what he does is that he begins to show the picture of the gospel
He's developed it. He's shown what God has done,
who we once were, now who we are. And then the outcome of
that, which we are or who we are because of whose we are,
is then shown and laid out for us and painted on a palette for
us to see. And then we compare and contrast
and we look and we say, okay, am I here or am I there? Where
do I stand? So we're forever through this. working out our
salvation with fear and trembling, coming bow before the throne
of grace, knowing that our only hope is in Christ alone, and
it is faith alone in Christ and His righteousness and His obedience,
His active and His passive obedience, knowing that without Christ that
we have a hopelessness to look forward to. There is no desire
to be righteous. There is no new birth. There
is no regeneration. There is no drawing to God. There is no
walking as a people. That's why the Church of America
has so for so long now, for almost 100 years, had to play with people. Because when you pray with people,
nobody really cares, they want you to play with them. Had to
placate to what we call the quote felt needs. And then when those felt needs
are met, we've got to find another one. And we've got to meet that
one, and we've got to find another one. And we've got to meet that
one, and we've got to find another one. But see, what the New Testament
shows is that the church is not so much as to be doing so much
to become the people of God, but as the people of God, they
should be the people of God. And the people of God worship
together, and grow together, and learn together, and teach
one another. They carry each other's burdens. They pray for
one another. They rebuke one another. They
encourage one another. What does it say in Hebrews?
That as long as it's called today, we should encourage one another.
We should always be thinking how we should stir one another
up to good works. Not forsaking the gathering together,
as some are accustomed to doing. But we should always, as much
as possible, be together to stir one another up to good works.
And friends, maintaining joy, as we saw last week in Romans
5, I think is the ultimate work of God. And you might ask yourself, well,
what's the outcome of that? Well, Paul is showing us right
here. The outcome of fulfilling satisfaction in Jesus Christ
is not belief. It's not faith. Those things
are actively expressed because of the joy. But joy is the utmost because
joy by definition means that one is satisfied with the fullness
of what they have and who they are and where they stand. And
so, how do you know if you're joyful? This is what Paul is
showing us here today. You know you're joyful if you
have a song in your heart. Don't think that it's a song
that you go around singing like the one that's stuck in your
head that you wish you hadn't heard that morning. Consider the attitude
of your soul in that there is an elation and an exaltation
constantly and continually, no matter what's in front of you
or around you or behind you or on top of you or under you, that
is always joyful in Christ. And you say, I hear you, but
how do I know? Well, here's the answer. Giving
thanks. Giving thanks to things. In all things, I mean, giving thanks always
and in all things. If you want to test to see if
you have the fullness of joy, then you will be giving thanks
for all things at all times in all ways. Now turn to Psalm 50. It's going to blow your mind. It's
going to blow your mind. I've read this psalm a bunch,
but not recently. And just this morning, I caught
myself. Just listen to it. The mighty One, God the Lord,
speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to
its setting. Out of Zion, the perfection of
beauty, God shines forth. Now, see, I think that's what
Paul is writing to the Ephesians about. Out of the glorious grace
of God in Christ Jesus, Ephesians 3.10, the manifold beauty of
God from Zion shines. That's what I think is happening
here. Paul is saying that the people
of God shine forth the reflective beauty of God in Christ visible
image of God's fullness in His glory. Verse 3, Our God comes. He does not keep silent. Before
Him is a devouring fire. Around Him a mighty tempest. He calls to the heavens above
and to the earth that He may judge His people. Gather to me
my faithful ones who made a covenant with me by my sacrifice." The
heavens declare His righteousness, for God Himself is judge. Here,
O my people, and I will speak, O Israel, I will testify against
you. I am God, your God. Not for your sacrifices do I
rebuke you. Your burnt offerings are continually
before me. I will not accept a bull from
your house or goats from your folds. So what God is saying
to His children there is it's not your religion that I have
a problem with. It's not your morality that I have a problem
with. It's not the fact that you're not practicing that which
I've commanded of you. But I will not accept those things
which you do in the name of religion. I will not accept those things
that you do in the name of worship. I refuse them. Look at where
God stands. Calling out the people of his
own possession, and he calls them out to bring them before
him that he might judge them. And now he's speaking against
them. Verse 10. I do not accept, verse
9, I do not accept a bull or a goat, for every beast of the
forest is mine. The cattle on a thousand hills,
I know All the birds of the hills and all that moves in the field
is mine. Oftentimes we feel like we have
done something in our faith to expressively do something for
God. There is nothing we can do for
God, nor is there anything we can give to God that's not already
His. It's like going into one's house
And it's time to exchange gifts. And you look on their shelf and
see the nice little knickknack and you go, here you go. I give
you this thing that you bought last week. Isn't that nice of
me? If you're two. It's cute, if
you're 42, it's weird. But yet we in our faith feel
like sometimes we're doing something for God and that in the response
of our doing, that God somehow should be thankful. Maybe that's what's happening
here with Israel. Then God goes in verse 12. He
says, If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and
its fullness are mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls?
Or do I drink the blood of goats? What does God want? Verse 14. Offer to God a sacrifice
of thanksgiving. And perform your vows to the
Most High. And call upon Me in the day of trouble. And I will
deliver you and you shall glorify Me." Why does God give us anything? Why did God give us Christ? Why did God give us faith and
grace and belief? So that we might glorify Him. That we might display, Ephesians
3.10, there we are again, His manifold wisdom to the rulers
and powers and principalities of the heavenly places. which
in several months you'll see are also in chapter 6 of this
letter to Ephesians. God does all that He does and
gives all that He does because in the giving, the people that
receive who are His glorify Him and thank Him. Why? Because He
alone is worthy. In Revelation 4, We see the words of John as he
pens that which he has been shown through the Spirit of God. Revelation 5, verse 11, And then I looked and
I heard around the throne and the living creatures and the
elders the voice of many angels. numbering myriads of myriads
and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is
the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and
might and honor and glory and blessing. And I heard every creature
in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and
all that is in them saying to him who sits on the throne and
to the Lamb, be blessing and honor and glory and might forever
and ever. And the four living creatures
said, Amen, and the elders fell down and worshipped. Holy, holy,
holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.
Worthy are you, O Lord. And God's received glory and
honor and power for you created all things and by your will they
existed and were created. Friends, by the will of God,
the church exists for His glory and for the gratitude of His
people. God is worthy to be worshiped. How is it that we worship God? Well, we could deal an entire
ten years of dealing with what the text teaches us about worship
and start to systematize it and lay it out with little lists
and things that we could come to and start to accomplish in
our lives and say, oh, we're worshiping God and we do this
and we worship God. How about we just worship God
by our very existence with the overflow of joy that results
in absolute gratitude and thanksgiving in everything all the time? How? You don't understand. See, the world looks at it in
the wrong way. And I'm going to go back to Psalm
50 in a minute because God's about to speak to the wicked.
Verse 16, it blew me away. But the world looks at it this
way. And it's always interesting to me that around Thanksgiving,
it's funny that we call it that in this country, but around Thanksgiving
you see these new ad campaigns that have been going for several
years, that they'll have celebrities Athletes, actors, politicians,
you name it. People that are esteemed and
honored and worshipped in our world and in our culture. And
they come and they say, be thankful, be thankful, be thankful, be
thankful. And they fade it in, black and white, you know. And
you see it and it's always about be thankful, be thankful. You
have a family, be thankful. And I always in my mind, every
time I see it, I ask myself, to whom? You can't just be joyful and
just be thankful. There has to be an object of
that joy. There has to be an object of
that gratitude. Are you thankful for the water? Thank you, water, that you're
water. I'm so joyful that I have water. Yes, be joyful that you
have water, be thankful that you have water, but someone has
to receive the joy and the gratitude. And that is God. That is God. Thank You, God, that I have this
water. Thank You for the water. By Your Word of Your power, You
hold the molecules of this water together. And what is contained
in this bottle could annihilate the cosmos. The energy of the molecular structure
of the most minuscule particle of one of these Hydrogen and
oxygen compounds could flatten the world. Thank you God that
you made it into water and not fire. For before my God
is a consuming fire and a tempest. For those of you who have been
with us on Tuesdays, you know a month or so back and I had
that epiphany about my sandwich. And about how we, when you start
to really, I don't know, sometimes the Spirit of God just really
puts you in a mood to be grateful and you start to consider the
fact that God has given you even the most minuscule thing. And
then that thing becomes so close to being an idol, it's not even
funny. I want to worship that that God has given me. Sentimentalism
will kill us. It'll destroy us, especially
when we become sentimental with that which God has given us that
is temporal, when we miss the point of the eternal worship
that's due Him. We are to gratefully show gratitude
to God and not gratify our own ideals and hungers. Because even
the bread that we eat and the water that we drink, it is not
so that we might continue in our own way, but it is that we
might be reminded of that which God has done on our behalf, not
because we should have been saved, but because God in His mercy
wanted to save us. But the world says, just be thankful.
Just have a good attitude. Your attitude determines your
altitude. If you think about it, it'll
happen. If you've got a positive mental
attitude about it, life will be good for you. What if you
happily go locally down the road, skip it along and get hit by
a truck? Well, I didn't see that coming.
Well, you had a bad attitude about it. Somewhere deep in your
conscious, there was probably this animosity toward the road
that you just walked down and you didn't even know it and so
you got hit by a truck. That negative energy sucked that
drunk driver right over you. But this is the foundation of
most of the metaphysical and philosophical self-help books
of the world. Well, you know what you don't
have because you don't have enough faith, they say. And all the
while, everybody in the world is trying to use God as a genie
in the bottle. Let's rub Him hard enough and fast enough and
long enough and He'll say, quit! What do you want? I'll give you
that if you want to be satisfied with that." That's not what God...
Jesus says, I'll give you that. You ask for it, I'll give it
to you, but you'd be satisfied in me because this is temporal.
Lazarus was raised from the dead to die again. I'm sure he didn't mind. I'm sure none of us who have
been healed of disease and sickness have minded. Thank you God for
just a little bit more time. Thank You, God, for healing me.
Thank You, God, that Your glory is displayed in my healing. But
if You don't heal me, thank You, God, that Your glory is displayed
in my weakness. Oftentimes, we contemplate prayer.
And Tuesday night, I would pray that most of you, if not all
of you, if you're not providentially hindered, to please be here Tuesday.
We're going to have a time of prayer. Brother Zeke is going
to lead in a time of corporate prayer, talking about prayer
and praying. And it will be the first of many
to see a lot more prayer among Grace Truth Church than we've
ever seen. And the centerpiece of all prayer is gratitude, thankfulness. Just the fact that God can listen
to my lips in Christ is glorious. Psalm 50. So we must glorify God, we must
give a sacrifice of thanksgiving. And in verse 16 of Psalm 50,
Asaph pens these words as God speaks. But to the wicked, God
says, what right have you to recite my statutes? When I heard
that, when I read that, I thought to myself. We're not even we don't even
have the right to read the Word of God out loud. We don't have
the right to take a covenant with God on our lips. God grants
that. You see how thanksgiving all
of a sudden becomes a little bit more real? And that which we take for granted
as an entitlement. But God has to love me. He's
loving. You know what? God's right. And God is good.
And God is love. God defines love. Love doesn't
define God. Our culture and what we say is
love cannot define God. For God is love. So if our view
of love is not what God is, then we're wrong. And God is love and God is good
and God is just and God is light, John says. And if God is light,
then He's always good and He's always right. And if God is good
and God is light and God is just and He's always right, then God
is not just or good or right to let me off from the judgment
that I deserve. So He had to take that judgment
that I deserve and He had to satisfy it someplace, somehow. And a finite human with an infinite
soul or with an eternal soul from creation cannot pay for
sin against an infinite God with a finite existence. Only an infinitely eternal forever
judgment will satisfy sinning against an eternal forever God. And so God became man and dwelt
among us. And we have seen His glory. The
fullness of God. And Jesus Christ fully, as a
human being, fulfilled all the requirements of God on man. And then He willfully subjected
Himself to the Father's will, not the will of man, to the Father's
will, and was put on a cross and was destroyed. And He said it is finished. We don't have the right to Jesus. We don't have the right to the
atonement. We don't have a right to the gospel. And friends, the
gospel is not just the story of Jesus. It's the good news
of His redemption. The gospel is not believing.
The gospel is behold. What rights do you have to recite
my statutes or take my covenant on your lips? For you hate discipline
and you cast my words behind you. If you see a thief, you're
pleased with him and you keep company with adulterers. You
give your mouth free reign for evil and your tongue frames deceit.
You sit and speak against your brother. You slander your own
mother's son. Now, I think about those and
I look back at what Paul had written. But you once were alienated,
far off, dead in your trespasses, but now have been made alive
in Christ. You see, what God is showing
us here in the Psalms is exactly what Paul has shown us in the
letter to the Ephesians. Those things that God is showing
there, slander and lie and deceit and greed and maliciousness and
immorality and debauchery. This is who we once were. But
we are no longer in those things and walking those ways, for we
have been set apart and pulled out of the domain of darkness.
And we no longer even have a footing in darkness, but we stand on
the righteous light of Jesus Christ. Verse 21 of Psalm 50. These things
you have done, and I have been silent, says the Lord God. You
thought I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and I lay
the charge before you. And then in verse 22, he says,
mark this. Write it down. Take a note. Don't
forget it. Mark this then. You who forget
God. lest I tear you apart, and there
be none to deliver." Do you see that? That's what shook me worse
than anything. Because what the psalmist now
is showing is that God is saying, mark My words, you who have forgotten
Me, and do not thank Me. Do you see that? That's what
the whole thing is about. in their sacrifices, but they
had hate in their heart and all these things. And the opposite
of all that is gratitude and graciousness and thankfulness. Mark this, then you forget God,
lest I tear you apart and there be none to deliver. Our God is a consuming fire. But verse 23 says, the one who
offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me. To one who orders his way rightly,
I will show the salvation of God. Friends, I'm going to tell
you how foolish we are to go so quickly
over verse 20 of Ephesians 5. How foolish we are to belittle
thanksgiving when we take it as just a mealtime. Thank you,
God, for the food today. Amen. If that's how you pray, that's
not a problem. I'm just saying that that's where we take it.
We've taken gratitude to the Holy God and all that He's given
us to that. Let's just say a little quick
blessing. Thank you. Appreciate it, guy. You're doing
good. Keep up the good work. This is a God who. Should. Should have. Torn us to pieces. That there be nothing to redeem.
But because of his great love with which he loved us, Peter
says he caused us to be born again to a living hope. Did you
see that? That God is the causal agent
and the acting influence that causes regeneration. How dare
we come to God and say, God, I came. Aren't you glad? And we go to God and say, God,
You came. And I'm so glad. You came to me. You reached down
and You rescued me. You took my sin and placed it
on Your Son and paid my debt. You did that and I thank You. And by grace, You saved me. Through faith, You gave me as
a gift that I might not boast before You, but that forever
I might Praise you through thanksgiving. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, God, for the brethren. Thank you, God, for the Word.
Thank you, God, for the affection. Thank you, God, for your grace.
Thank you, God, for understanding. Heard D.A. Carson say yesterday
that faith is not believing the facts, but faith is given by
God that you may see them as true. Powerful stuff. So we give thanks. We give thanks
always. and for everything. The world
likes to just say, be thankful. But the Scripture says, sing
a melody of praise in your heart to God and be thankful to God
always and for everything. For what? Everything. When? All the time. How? Thank Him for everything. Blessed be the name of the Lord. I always before I really knew
that it came from Job's writing or from the writing of in reference
to Job, the book of Job. We used to sing this song back
in our contemporary churches. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Blessed be the name. Blessed be your name when the
road is marked with suffering. You remember that song? Blessed
be your name who gives and takes away. You give and you take away.
You give and you take away. See, Job said that. He got the news of God. As the author of the death of
his children through the agent Lucifer. Job hears of this and
he said, the Lord gives and the Lord takes blessed be the name
of the Lord. See, that's worship, that's worship,
and you go, how? It's not in me to be thankful
with what I'm going through. It's not in me to be thankful
with everything that I have before me. It's not in me to be thankful
with the depth of my heart and mind and all that I say to myself
and the darkness that I cannot get away from in the midst of
light. How am I to say, thank you God? Do not be drunk with wine. For that
is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit of God. The Spirit
of God is given to us by His grace, and it is our satisfier. Christ said that I send the Spirit
that it may recall all things, all things that I have said to
your mind, He told the apostles. How did He know that? The Spirit
of God. And He probably asked Paul, of the Spirit of God. I will
send a comforter to you when you're being arrested and when
your families are being beheaded and when your sister is burned
on a pole to light the streets. I'll send a comforter to you.
It is the Holy Spirit and He is going to be there that your
joy may be full, that you might thank the Father for that suffering. As Paul says to the Philippian
church, he says, yes, and I will rejoice for I know that through
your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this
will turn out for my deliverance. So how do we rejoice? But the question is, do you want
joy? Do you want true, eternal joy?
Do you want to have true thanksgiving in your heart? Or do you want
God to effect something else that will give you the joy you
seek? Or is Christ your joy? And if He's your joy and it's
waning, then the Word of God will equip you to have the grace
to remember that which God has done for you and is actively
doing for you in Christ Jesus. Well, what am I to be thankful
for? Well, if you don't know how to thank God in your suffering, Then thank God for this doxology. Blessed be the God and the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. Even, and here's
some, as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love, He predestined
us for adoption as sons through Christ Jesus, according to the
purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace. In Him we have redemption through
His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the
riches of His grace which He lavished upon us in all wisdom
and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according
to His purpose which He set forth in Christ as a plan for fullness
to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth.
In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according
to the purpose of Him who works all things. works all things
according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were first
to hope in Christ, to the praise of His glory in Him, you also
when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation,
and believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit, which is
the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of
it, to the praise of His glory. So I just counted twelve. Let's go there. Twelve reasons to be thankful. What if it doesn't work? What
if I go to the Word of God and it doesn't fill me with His Spirit? Then pray. Before you go and
after you're there and while you're in it, you pray, God,
fill me with Your Spirit. Fill me with Your joy. Why is
our joy usually waning? Because we failed to see the
gratitude or the gratefulness. We failed to exhibit gratefulness
in our heart because that which we are wanting to leave us has
become bigger than the God who redeemed us. And I look at Psalm 51 and you
might say, well, that's really bad because that's a prayer of
repentance out of murder and deceit and adultery and everything
else. And so what? What does Psalm
50 say? When you see a thief, you're
glad. You sit among the adulterers. Oftentimes, I believe the reason
our joy and our thanksgiving is so far away from our lips
and our heart and mind is because we have fallen into the sin of
apathy or unbelief or poor disciplines or the love of the world. And
friends, if we are there and we are not running in repentance
away from those things, there's a warning in Scripture that teaches
us that we are indeed in danger. You see people with zeal and
you go, I want that. No, you don't. You don't want
that or you'd have that. Pursue Christ. Repent and pursue
Christ. Run after Him. As the woman came up behind Him,
O Master, Teacher, please heal my child. Heal my child. Jesus ignored her that He might
teach the disciples something. They ignored her and they came
to Him and said, Teacher, send her away. She's bothering us.
And she comes and persists and she runs after Christ and says,
Master, please. And He turns to her and says,
Woman, am I to take the bread of the children and give it to
the dogs? And she says, but oh, even the
dogs get the crumbs from their master's table. Without having to deal with that,
she wasn't the dog. She was the daughter. Because when Christ gives us
bread, He doesn't say, here, puppy. He says, here, brother,
sister. God says, you're my son. You're
my daughter. We need to pray and pursue the
Word and pursue righteousness and hold fast to the confession
of our hope and pray the prayer of David when he says these words. Let
me hear joy and gladness and let the bones that you have broken
rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins and
blot out my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O
God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from
Your presence and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore
to me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me with a willing
spirit." In closing, I'll give us this. Listen to these words. It is
for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you
as sons. For what son is there whom the
father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline
in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children
and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly
fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not
much more be subject to the Father's spirits and live? For they disciplined
us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines
us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment,
all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later
it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those have
been trained by friends. Discipline is never punitive.
And it's not always because we need to straighten up. Sometimes
the discipline of God, oftentimes the discipline of God comes when
we're standing straight in the will of God to grow us even deeper
into him. Therefore, lift your drooping
hands, and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths
for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint,
but rather be healed. Strive for peace with everyone,
and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord."
Strive. So, see to it that no one fails
to obtain the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springs
up and causes trouble, that it may become defiled. That no one is sexually immoral
or unholy like Esau, who sold his birthright for a single meal.
For you know that afterward, when he desired to inherit the
blessing, he was rejected, for he found no chance to repent,
though he sought it with tears. For you, for you have not come to what
may be touched. A blazing fire and darkness and
gloom and a tempest that the sound of the trumpet and the
voice whose words made the hearers beg for no further messages be
spoken to them. For they could not endure the
order that was given. If a beast even touches the mountain,
it shall be stoned. Indeed, so terrifying was the
sight that Moses said, I tremble with fear. You've not come to
that mountain. But you have come to Mount Zion
and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the
assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to
God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous
made perfect. And you have come to Jesus, the mediator of a new
covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word
than the blood of Abel. Friends, there is so much to be thankful for. Let's
put it in another list. Let's take the list and put it
in the back of our Bible. What not to be thankful for. And let us realize there's nothing
on it. Nothing. Nothing. You want to have the fullness
of joy? You want to worship God with
all that you are? Thank Him for everything. For He has saved
you in Christ Jesus because of His great mercy and His great
love demonstrated for you. And it is that love and that
mercy in Christ that we now remember through the table. Let's pray. Father, we thank You. Had You not saved any of us,
You are worthy to be thanked, worthy to be praised, worthy
to be honored. You deserve it all. And Father, without Your grace
and power toward us, we would freely reject You and run from
You and despise You. But You have rebirthed us. You
have reborn us. You have satisfied Your judgment
against us in Jesus Christ through His life and through His death
and through His resurrection from the dead. Thank You so much.
Thank You for Your love for us. Thank you for saving us, for
securing us, for redeeming us, for sanctifying us, for justifying
us, for continually growing us into the holiness of Christ and
Father, for sealing us that one day you will ultimately glorify
us in Christ Jesus. Lord, as we humble our hearts
to partake of these elements, Lord, help us to see the reality
of their beauty as a reminder, as a looking back to that which
you've done and forever that we should be thankful for it.
And out of that gratitude comes a life of holy pursuit, a life
of prayer, a zealous affection for one another, and an awesome
and eternally active proclamation of Christ. whether it be in our
text or our Facebook or our tweets or our words or our writing or
our conversations or our music, whatever it might be, God, may
all that we are and do and see and hear, may it all be for Your
glory and to the praise of Your glorious grace. May it always
edify the name of Your Son, Jesus, in whom we stand perfect before
You and by whose authority we pray
to Your holy ears today. In His name we pray. Prepare
us now in Jesus' name, Amen.