SPEAKER_00: As I think about this church and the history, by the way, have you gone to the corridor and seen the pictures, the photographs of the history of this church, the buildings?
SPEAKER_00: What a great reminder of God's faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: There's a story of God met us in every one of those buildings and led us and took us from one building to the next to this building.
SPEAKER_00: To think about the history, I think of uh I think of the man who had the vision from God to start this church.
SPEAKER_00: He's sitting right there in the second row, Robert Morrison, and he had a birthday yesterday.
SPEAKER_00: Robert, we're so glad that God gave you a vision for the need for a Presbyterian Reformed Gospel Centered Church in Alexandria.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look this morning in 1 Corinthians chapter 11.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be thinking about the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: Going to preach on the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: But first let's read in Paul's epistle, his letter to the Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you know about the Corinthian church, there were a lot of gifts, evidently a lot of gifted people, a diverse body of Christ, a church that the Apostle Paul ministered in great ways to, but they had problems, like every church.
SPEAKER_00: There's no perfect church.
SPEAKER_00: You're not still looking for the perfect church, are you?
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: We're sinners saved by grace, just like you.
SPEAKER_00: But let's hear how God addresses congregations like Corinth and Alexandria and others.
SPEAKER_00: Hear the word of God.
SPEAKER_00: But in the following instructions, I do not commend you.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you come together, it's not for the better, but for the worse.
SPEAKER_00: For in the first place, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you.
SPEAKER_00: And I believe in part.
SPEAKER_00: For there must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.
SPEAKER_00: When you come together, it is not the Lord's Supper that you eat.
SPEAKER_00: For in eating, each one of you goes ahead with his own meal.
SPEAKER_00: One goes hungry, another gets drunk.
SPEAKER_00: What?
SPEAKER_00: Do you not have houses to eat and drink in?
SPEAKER_00: Or do you despise the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?
SPEAKER_00: What shall I say to you?
SPEAKER_00: Shall I commend you in this?
SPEAKER_00: No, I will not.
SPEAKER_00: For I receive from the Lord what I also deliver to you.
SPEAKER_00: That the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: Whoever therefore 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.
SPEAKER_00: Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup.
SPEAKER_00: For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.
SPEAKER_00: That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
SPEAKER_00: But if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged.
SPEAKER_00: But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
SPEAKER_00: So then, my brothers, when you come together to eat, wait for one another.
SPEAKER_00: If anyone is hungry, let them eat at home.
SPEAKER_00: So that when you come together, it will not be for judgment.
SPEAKER_00: About the other things, I will give directions when I come.
SPEAKER_00: This is the reading of God's holy word.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, how we need the power of God's Spirit to make the word of God come alive.
SPEAKER_00: Let's ask Him.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we do thank you.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, bought by His blood, purchased by His atoning death, that you would include us, that you would invite us into your church.
SPEAKER_00: We will never get over, we will never stop thanking you.
SPEAKER_00: But Lord, now even as we read these important instructions from the Apostle Paul, may we not get stuck in anything else, may we not be distracted.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, if we're not engaged, engage us by your Spirit to teach us, to grow us, to train us in godliness and righteousness, to be open to receive whatever it is, Spirit of God, that you would have to give us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: This morning, as I said, we ponder the sacrament of the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: What a joyous Sabbath day this is to be able to install, ordain officers, and feed at the Lord's table, to be fed by God.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're going to look at the context for this passage.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at the meaning of this supper.
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, we're going to think about our response.
SPEAKER_00: The context for this passage, the church at Corinth.
SPEAKER_00: The early church started special fellowship meals that came to be called love feast.
SPEAKER_00: Now, many of us are not familiar with this.
SPEAKER_00: This is not necessarily our practice, but it was the practice of many of the churches in the early church.
SPEAKER_00: And you understand that there were no buildings like this in the early church in the first decades for sure, probably centuries.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have big church buildings that people got together in.
SPEAKER_00: That came later in Christendom.
SPEAKER_00: They met in people's homes, houses.
SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes the person with the larger house that could accommodate more people.
SPEAKER_00: But there weren't likely groups of 500 meeting together.
SPEAKER_00: They were maybe large covenant fellowship groups.
SPEAKER_00: It would vary from house to house.
SPEAKER_00: Probably in some there were 10, perhaps in some there were maybe 40, maybe 50.
SPEAKER_00: And they got close to each other and they met together frequently.
SPEAKER_00: And before celebrating the Lord's Supper, they had this practice of having what we might call a church potluck today.
SPEAKER_00: And they would bring food, they would bring drink, they would sit around the tables and talk about their lives of the week.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, well, wait a minute, what I'm hearing about what's going on in your times together is not good.
SPEAKER_00: What I hear, I must speak to, because it's not right in the eyes of God.
SPEAKER_00: What was going on?
SPEAKER_00: These gatherings that were supposedly focused on their oneness in Christ served also to celebrate their unity in Christ at the Lord's table, the one Savior who died for them all.
SPEAKER_00: In the church of Corinth, as they were following this early tradition of these love feasts, however, they had turned the meals into something very different.
SPEAKER_00: They were leading them to sins like gluttony.
SPEAKER_00: Gluttony is one of those sins that it's almost laughed at in our day and time, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: When was the last time you or anybody you know confessed the sin of gluttony?
SPEAKER_00: Just eating more than you needed to eat.
SPEAKER_00: Eating too much.
SPEAKER_00: Eating to satisfy an emotional need.
SPEAKER_00: We don't, we kind of soft pedal that sin, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: But gluttony is a sin.
SPEAKER_00: Drunkenness is certainly a sin.
SPEAKER_00: Drinking too much alcohol.
SPEAKER_00: And when the meal was associated with holy communion, it became blasphemous to the Lord of the Supper.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, Paul says to them, each one of you goes ahead with his own needs.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, let me paraphrase what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are getting to the love feast early, and you're just kind of preoccupied with the food or the wine.
SPEAKER_00: And you're not really understanding, you're not paying attention to what this is really about.
SPEAKER_00: You're losing understanding and attention to the very purpose for your being there.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe one application we talk about at APC with our covenant fellowship groups.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that the purpose of your covenant fellowship group is not simply for fellowship?
SPEAKER_00: Pastor Josh reminds us of this all the time.
SPEAKER_00: It's good to have fellowship when you get to your CFT.
SPEAKER_00: It's maybe good to have food and to have prayer.
SPEAKER_00: But let's just say it one more time.
SPEAKER_00: The purpose of our gatherings of covenant fellowship groups is for nothing less than spiritual transformation.
SPEAKER_00: We're not there simply to study the Bible and learn something new.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: We're not there just to see our friends.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: We're there to be have our hearts touched by the grace of God, the word of God, the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a beautiful thing when we experience that.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says to the Corinthians, each one of you goes ahead with their own agenda.
SPEAKER_00: It revealed how self-centered these followers of Christ had become without realizing what they were doing.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know when we get caught up with this stuff, we rarely, barely ever see it?
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00: It's true.
SPEAKER_00: What is that about our human hearts that we oftentimes are the last ones to see what's really going on in our hearts?
SPEAKER_00: Have you noticed that?
SPEAKER_00: What is that?
SPEAKER_00: That's the power of self-deception.
SPEAKER_00: That's the power of a self-focused life.
SPEAKER_00: Just to see what I want to see.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know we do that?
SPEAKER_00: And by God's grace, we need to repent of that.
SPEAKER_00: Just to put our glasses on to see what we want to see, to not see what we should see sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: That's really what Paul's saying.
SPEAKER_00: He addresses their disobedience.
SPEAKER_00: He says, you're not even really sharing your food with each other.
SPEAKER_00: That sounds pretty bizarre.
SPEAKER_00: A church potluck.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's kind of a weird picture, right?
SPEAKER_00: A church potluck.
SPEAKER_00: Picture a church potluck and all the food's laid out on the counter and people are kind of elbowing to get to the front of the line.
SPEAKER_00: To get the good stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, come on.
SPEAKER_00: What are you doing?
SPEAKER_00: Some people are getting there early and they're starting to drink the alcohol.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them are actually a little buzzed by the time they get to the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, stop it.
SPEAKER_00: Take care of your own physical needs at home before you gather together.
SPEAKER_00: Because when you gather together, it's imperative that you're focused on what is truly important so that you're not deceived.
SPEAKER_00: In their pride, they did not even see the ways that they were pulling apart from each other.
SPEAKER_00: That's the nature of the self-centered life.
SPEAKER_00: To focus so much on you that you don't really understand your impact on those around you.
SPEAKER_00: You're so honed in on your own world that you're not really seeing what's going on around you in the lives of the people, even that love you.
SPEAKER_00: I have no doubt that the people that gathered in these homes, remember, we're not talking about hundreds of people.
SPEAKER_00: At best, we're talking about dozens of people.
SPEAKER_00: They knew each other.
SPEAKER_00: And yet they were stepping on top of each other.
SPEAKER_00: We're stepping over each other.
SPEAKER_00: You know that can still happen today.
SPEAKER_00: That's not just something for 20 centuries ago.
SPEAKER_00: There was bickering among them, there was arguing in their midst.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, I hear that there are divisions among you.
SPEAKER_00: He uses the word from which we get our English word, schisms.
SPEAKER_00: The body is breaking down because of pride, because of selfishness.
SPEAKER_00: People are so absorbed in their own world and their own needs.
SPEAKER_00: And how about today, their own opinions?
SPEAKER_00: Opinions that are so strong that are not central to the doctrine, to the central doctrines of the gospel that they divide.
SPEAKER_00: Split.
SPEAKER_00: Churches split.
SPEAKER_00: Christians split and divide over things that are not of primary value.
SPEAKER_00: Secondary things.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want to stand before Jesus one day and have to explain why you split over secondary matters, trust me.
SPEAKER_00: You don't.
SPEAKER_00: I don't.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things that we talked about this weekend at the retreat that came up time and again was the precious gift of unity that God has given this church from the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: And it's not that we haven't had hard things to deal with, trust me.
SPEAKER_00: The precious gift of how the unity has been preserved in this body over the years.
SPEAKER_00: So precious.
SPEAKER_00: One of the most fearful things in the church is division, a sign of sure spiritual sickness.
SPEAKER_00: Paul takes this on.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to take this on.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: We can't ignore this.
SPEAKER_00: Secondly, what's the real meaning of the Lord's Supper here?
SPEAKER_00: And he tells us, let's go back to those verses that we're familiar with, verses 23 to 26.
SPEAKER_00: For I received from the Lord what I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread.
SPEAKER_00: And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
SPEAKER_00: Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: One Bible commentator put it like this, these verses in this context.
SPEAKER_00: These verses are like a diamond dropped in a muddy road.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever seen it like that before?
SPEAKER_00: In this context?
SPEAKER_00: Like a diamond that was dropped in a muddy road.
SPEAKER_00: One of the most beautiful passages in the Word of God is given in the middle of a strong rebuke of selfish, carnal living.
SPEAKER_00: Of Christians! He's addressing Christians, followers of Christ, whose focus was more on themselves than the Lord of the sacrament.
SPEAKER_00: What the Apostle Paul is doing here, what we must do this morning, he's taking us back to the cross in the midst of the mess.
SPEAKER_00: It's always a good place to go, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus in this sacrament, the Lord's Supper, he's reminding us there's really three aspects of the Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: Looking back, do this in remembrance of me engraved on this table.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever forget what I did for you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever forget what I did to save you.
SPEAKER_00: To make you a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: To receive the love of God.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever forget that.
SPEAKER_00: We look back at what he did.
SPEAKER_00: We look within.
SPEAKER_00: So I say examine yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I say examine yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Examine your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Examine your behavior.
SPEAKER_00: Examine your motives.
SPEAKER_00: Examine your life.
SPEAKER_00: And look forward.
SPEAKER_00: What does he say?
SPEAKER_00: Keep doing this until the Lord's return.
SPEAKER_00: Until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: Don't stop proclaiming his death.
SPEAKER_00: Don't stop proclaiming life in Christ until he returns.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking back when we come to this table.
SPEAKER_00: We look back, we look within.
SPEAKER_00: And we look forward.
SPEAKER_00: One day we're going to be gathered around the marriage feast, the supper of the Lamb in glory.
SPEAKER_00: That day there's going to be no elbowing.
SPEAKER_00: That day there's not going to be any pride.
SPEAKER_00: There's not going to be any racism.
SPEAKER_00: There's not going to be any putting down of other people whose opinions are different than yours.
SPEAKER_00: It's going to be a beautiful feast.
SPEAKER_00: And you're going to be really glad you're there.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, I want you to start preparing for that now.
SPEAKER_00: In this world, in this body of Christ, now.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, the meaning of this supper is beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, this is my body.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't just give you his blessings.
SPEAKER_00: He could have done that from heaven.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't just give you his presence spiritually by faith.
SPEAKER_00: He did that in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: He said, this is my body.
SPEAKER_00: A body not unlike yours.
SPEAKER_00: He said, but the purpose for my body is for my body to be broken.
SPEAKER_00: My body to be crucified on a cross.
SPEAKER_00: So that one day you will sit at the feast with me.
SPEAKER_00: This is my body, which is.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody remember those next two words?
SPEAKER_00: Which is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Because I was sharing with the officers this weekend staff.
SPEAKER_00: I I was repairing this text all week and I just got stuck on those two words.
SPEAKER_00: And it was good.
SPEAKER_00: Early in the week, I just got stuck on those two words.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I can read quickly past those words.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I can think, no, I've got the idea.
SPEAKER_00: I've got the idea, I understand.
SPEAKER_00: I understand.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I feel the Holy Spirit asking me, Tom, do you?
SPEAKER_00: Do you?
SPEAKER_00: Really?
SPEAKER_00: This is my body, which is for you.
SPEAKER_00: When he says you, he's got faces in mind.
SPEAKER_00: He's got names in mind.
SPEAKER_00: He's got people, not just people groups, he's got people with names and faces and histories and sins.
SPEAKER_00: He says, this is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus comes to us, finding us stuck in our mess, finding us stuck in our sins, finding us stuck in our selfishness, saying, in effect, he says, I'm thinking of you.
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing this for you.
SPEAKER_00: Where's your heart in all this?
SPEAKER_00: What does Paul say?
SPEAKER_00: Just a few chapters later in 2 Corinthians chapter 5.
SPEAKER_00: What does Paul have to say about this?
SPEAKER_00: We implore you, implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.
SPEAKER_00: For our sake he made him, God made him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00: God made the one who never knew sin, the one that never committed sin, the one who never ever rebelled against him.
SPEAKER_00: He made him to become a sin offering so that in him, Christ, and through his work, you and I might become the righteousness of God.
SPEAKER_00: This is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's said so many times in so many places in Scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: One of the places that I'm just drawn to often is in Galatians chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Galatians chapter 3, Paul says this as clearly as he says it anywhere else in the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 13.
SPEAKER_00: Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.
SPEAKER_00: For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree.
SPEAKER_00: I haven't been hung on a tree, have you?
SPEAKER_00: And even if we were, it wouldn't help anybody's sin problem.
SPEAKER_00: That was the most obscene, grotesque, shameful experience in Paul's world, in Jesus' own world that day.
SPEAKER_00: That was to put you at the bottom of the bottom of the pool as a social outcast to be taken outside the city, staked to a cross, impaled to a cross.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, how Jesus could have cried out from the.
SPEAKER_00: This is not what he cries out.
SPEAKER_00: He cried out a lot of things on the cross, but he did not say this.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, look, trust me, I'm not here because of my sin.
SPEAKER_00: It's not me.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say that.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say, hey, I don't want you to get the wrong impression of me.
SPEAKER_00: I'm really perfect.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't say that.
SPEAKER_00: He knew why he was there.
SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't for his sin, it was for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: It was for my sin.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I'm putting myself in your place before God so that one day you can be in my place in my righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: That God, when he looks at your sin, he will not see you the sinner.
SPEAKER_00: He will see Jesus Christ, the sin bearer.
SPEAKER_00: He's putting you there.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, praise God Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: The meaning of our Lord's Supper.
SPEAKER_00: Do this in remembrance of me.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about you, Tom.
SPEAKER_00: It's not about you.
SPEAKER_00: He says it's about me.
SPEAKER_00: The paradox.
SPEAKER_00: Yet it is as we see all that Jesus did was for you, it becomes all about him.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that true?
SPEAKER_00: And the more you see that, the more that'll change your life.
SPEAKER_00: The more you see that it was all about what Jesus did for you, it will become more and more in your life all about him and less of you.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the way the gospel works.
SPEAKER_00: This is my body, which is for you.
SPEAKER_00: As you take the elements this morning, don't forget that.
SPEAKER_00: Invite the Holy Spirit in to show you in new ways the beauty of this truth.
SPEAKER_00: That you will drink deeply of the grace of God this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to sing a little bit later.
SPEAKER_00: Words that only a gospel, only a gospel man could understand, or a gospel woman.
SPEAKER_00: In this case it was Isaac Watts.
SPEAKER_00: Alas, and did my Savior bleed?
SPEAKER_00: Did my sovereign die?
SPEAKER_00: Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm?
SPEAKER_00: As I.
SPEAKER_00: That's not very popular language in our culture today, is it?
SPEAKER_00: To see ourselves as worms.
SPEAKER_00: That's below our dignity.
SPEAKER_00: Was it for sins that I had done?
SPEAKER_00: He groaned upon the tree?
SPEAKER_00: Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree.
SPEAKER_00: My God, why would you shed your blood so pure and undefiled to make a sinful one like me your chosen precious child?
SPEAKER_00: Lastly, as we close, our response.
SPEAKER_00: Let a person examine himself then before we eat the bread and drink the cup.
SPEAKER_00: This meal always brings with it a command, not only to eat and drink, but a command to examine our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: You see, if you take this sacrament without examining your heart, you're actually harming your heart.
SPEAKER_00: If you take it thoughtlessly, if you take it carelessly, if you take it self-absorbed, it will not do you good, it will do you harm.
SPEAKER_00: This is what he says, and we don't always talk about this passage, but that's why we preach on it from time to time.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying some of you are very sick because you're not taking the Lord's Supper in the Spirit of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: What did he say beyond that?
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have actually died.
SPEAKER_00: Now, Christians today get all weirded out by this.
SPEAKER_00: No, that no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think this is still not happening today?
SPEAKER_00: Of course it is.
SPEAKER_00: If it happened in the early church, the only difference is that here we're reading about it because it was in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's still not happening today?
SPEAKER_00: You think people are not eating in an unworthy manner today?
SPEAKER_00: Automatically, well, this is what we do.
SPEAKER_00: We sing songs, we take the cup.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: So let a person examine his heart, her heart.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see your need for the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ?
SPEAKER_00: Do you see that he would die for such a one, a worm, as you, as me?
SPEAKER_00: Have you come here this morning to confess your sin?
SPEAKER_00: We not only come to praise him, we come to confess to him what's getting in the way, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying don't take this cup unless you're perfect.
SPEAKER_00: There's nobody perfect here.
SPEAKER_00: But he is saying, examine your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Invite the Holy Spirit in.
SPEAKER_00: Please reveal to me the finished work of Jesus for me.
SPEAKER_00: May the lights shine brightly on Jesus this morning.
SPEAKER_00: When the lights shine on Jesus, they also shine on the dark places of our own hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Did you know that?
SPEAKER_00: That's just the work, that's the work of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: When the Holy Spirit shines the lights on Jesus Christ, the beauty of his person, the power of his atoning work on the cross, his finished work, we can't help but to see the darkness that still resides within us.
SPEAKER_00: We confess our sins.
SPEAKER_00: It's only because the lights don't shine brightly on Jesus that the lights don't shine in your heart to see your sin.
SPEAKER_00: If the lights are shining on Jesus, the light will shine on the darkness of your sin.
SPEAKER_00: That's just the way it works.
SPEAKER_00: Understandably.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, reveal where our sin is this morning in harming others, in our divisiveness, our pride, our selfishness.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus will be glorified.
SPEAKER_00: And you will be healed in new ways.
SPEAKER_00: We just can't keep on going about our lives, gossiping, criticizing, putting people down, being self-absorbed, and all the other sins.
SPEAKER_00: We just can't keep on doing that if Jesus is really shining the light on our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: We see it and we confess it.
SPEAKER_00: But you cannot do this alone.
SPEAKER_00: Only the Holy Spirit can do this work in your heart this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Only the Holy Spirit can do this work in my heart.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, I simply will not see it.
SPEAKER_00: I will not own it.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we're here to confess our sins.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it's not just about us and Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's also about how our sins wound others that Jesus loves.
SPEAKER_00: Surely the letter from Paul sent to the Corinthians was not only to Jesus for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: When the Spirit is at work in your heart, you don't only go to Jesus for forgiveness, which you do, but you go to other people who you have harmed.
SPEAKER_00: You go to them as well.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Paul is saying in this context.
SPEAKER_00: And only the Spirit will take you.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you'll not move.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you'll just sit back and say, Well, I'm waiting for them.
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you'll sit back and say, Well, you know, wait, I may have had something to do with it, but it's more their fault than mine.
SPEAKER_00: That's not the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: When the lights are on Jesus and the Holy Spirit takes us to Jesus, we do business.
SPEAKER_00: We respond.
SPEAKER_00: We confess, yes, we thank him.
SPEAKER_00: We just sing differently, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: With a free soul.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you sing better when you are being taken into the love of Jesus in a new way?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, friends.
SPEAKER_00: We desperately need to come to Jesus now.
SPEAKER_00: Would you come with me?
SPEAKER_00: Father, we we hear your word.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a challenging word, but it's a helpful cleansing, healing word.
SPEAKER_00: Spirit of God, would you please do your work this morning in our midst?
SPEAKER_00: Would you draw each of us, perhaps some of us for the first time, to the cross for salvation, for forgiveness?
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, but bring us all back to the cross this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Bring us all back to the cross to see anew the power of the atonement.
SPEAKER_00: The power of the blood of Jesus shed for sinners like us.
SPEAKER_00: Grant us, give us grace in our time of need, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.