SPEAKER_00: Welcome more.
SPEAKER_00: Good afternoon, I should say, everyone.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark, one of the leaders here at the church.
SPEAKER_00: It's great to have you here if you're new or visiting.
SPEAKER_00: As we continue in our series in the book of Colossians, please keep that passage open in front of you as we look at it together and we pray as we consider God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we ask that you would quiet our minds and still our hearts and focus our attention on the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: May we see Him for who He is.
SPEAKER_00: In these words, may we marvel again at what He has done for us and may we be stealed and encouraged in our faith because of it.
SPEAKER_00: Change us from one degree of glory to another.
SPEAKER_00: Make us more like Christ.
SPEAKER_00: By the power of your Holy Spirit, we ask it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: In the work The Pilgrim's Progress, which is written by John Bunyan uh a few hundred years ago, uh Bunyan maps out the Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: The main protagonist, in fact, is called Christian, and he is journeying on his way to the heavenly city.
SPEAKER_00: And on his journey, he experiences uh the kinds of things, temptations and trials, encouragements and discouragements that any Christian faces in their journey.
SPEAKER_00: And there comes a section in the book where Christian is taken captive, and he is taken captive by a giant called despair and locked away in the dungeons of Doubting Castle.
SPEAKER_00: There he languishes, tormented by his doubts, starved of hope.
SPEAKER_00: I imagine that I am not alone in this room to be someone who has wrestled with doubts.
SPEAKER_00: We find ourselves trapped by the lies that we believe, lies that we believe about ourselves, lies that we believe about God.
SPEAKER_00: Does he love me?
SPEAKER_00: How could he love me?
SPEAKER_00: Am I really forgiven?
SPEAKER_00: The guilt of past sin lurks in the dark places of our hearts, ready to make themselves known and to remind us of those events and choices that we deeply regret.
SPEAKER_00: In this place, God seems very distant.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps he feels like a father who used to be so close, but who's gone away now, such that you can barely remember what he looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Christian is locked in the dungeon of doubt and castle, tormented by thoughts like this.
SPEAKER_00: Those thoughts that so often come to us.
SPEAKER_00: How is it that he escapes?
SPEAKER_00: How is it that he would be free from castle doubt?
SPEAKER_00: Well, in the novel, he discovers that actually he's been in possession of the key all along.
SPEAKER_00: It was hidden next to his heart.
SPEAKER_00: And the key was called promise, and it unlocked the door to doubt and set him free.
SPEAKER_00: In this passage, the rosy red, Paul points out a number of things that take us captive, that shake our faith, our confidence in the gospel, our confidence in who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And then he assures us in different ways of how it is that the gospel unlocks those doors that capture us and set us free.
SPEAKER_00: Paul begins in verse 8 of the reading, that very first phrase, Paul says, See to it that no one takes you captive.
SPEAKER_00: Even that's worth reflecting on for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: The inference being there are things that want to capture you, and that you have the resources as a Christian and both the prerogative, as in you should do it, to fight against those things.
SPEAKER_00: See to it that no one takes you captive.
SPEAKER_00: Do not be a willing victim that is captured by the things that would beset you.
SPEAKER_00: Those doubts, those lies.
SPEAKER_00: Do not go willingly into that dungeon.
SPEAKER_00: Fight, Christian.
SPEAKER_00: In this passage, I think there are three main things that we need to fight against.
SPEAKER_00: Three main things that seek to take us captive.
SPEAKER_00: First is lies, second is guilt, and the third is legalism.
SPEAKER_00: Legalism is lumped there or associated there towards the end of the passage also with mysticism.
SPEAKER_00: So we'll look a little bit at both of those.
SPEAKER_00: So often people's faith.
SPEAKER_00: Haven't you seen people walk away from the faith?
SPEAKER_00: Because of one of these things, because they've believed lies about God.
SPEAKER_00: God can't really be close to me, God can't really love me.
SPEAKER_00: Or they feel crushed under the weight of guilt and they can't bear it anymore.
SPEAKER_00: They can't find the joy in their salvation.
SPEAKER_00: And so they walk away from it.
SPEAKER_00: Or those who try as they might try to earn God's favor.
SPEAKER_00: And so what they end up doing is they shipwreck their faith on the rocks of pride.
SPEAKER_00: Or they're crushed because they find that it is too hard and they fail too frequently.
SPEAKER_00: How could you not be captured by those things?
SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't it be great to go away feeling like you had resources to fight against being captured by those sorts of things?
SPEAKER_00: I think that'd be quite important, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: Paul says that these things are kidnappers, that they are out for your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Fight against them.
SPEAKER_00: He gives you the tools to fight.
SPEAKER_00: First thing that we'll look at is lies.
SPEAKER_00: Fight against the lies that you believe.
SPEAKER_00: I think there are a number of lies in verses uh 8, 9, and 10.
SPEAKER_00: But the first of those lies is really the chief of them all.
SPEAKER_00: The chief lie that any person will believe that will cause them to doubt the goodness of God, that will cause them to walk away from the gospel, is that Jesus isn't enough for you.
SPEAKER_00: The chief lie that you will believe is that Jesus isn't enough.
SPEAKER_00: That you lack something because you do not have whatever.
SPEAKER_00: It's a constant temptation, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's a constant temptation for me.
SPEAKER_00: We say implicitly, or we model in our life, Jesus is fine, right?
SPEAKER_00: Love Jesus, but I really want that.
SPEAKER_00: I love that.
SPEAKER_00: I need that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the thing that's actually going to make me feel fulfilled.
SPEAKER_00: What you're saying at that point, you're believing the lie that in Jesus you lack something good.
SPEAKER_00: Paul wants to encourage us.
SPEAKER_00: He wants to encourage us with the truth that in Jesus we lack no good thing.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: For in him, that's Jesus, for in him the whole fullness of deity, that's godness, all that it is to mean God be God, dwells bodily.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus lacks nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is fully God, the perfect image-bearer.
SPEAKER_00: All of the perfections that it means to be God are in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The omniscient powerfulness of God is in Jesus, his all-knowingness.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't lack in love, he doesn't lack in wisdom, he doesn't lack in generosity, he doesn't lack in compassion, he doesn't lack in mercy, he doesn't lack in power.
SPEAKER_00: He is fully God.
SPEAKER_00: And if that wasn't astonishing enough, he goes on to say in verse ten, and you have been filled in him.
SPEAKER_00: Here is the logic.
SPEAKER_00: All that it means to be God is in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And we are in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And from that fullness we have been filled.
SPEAKER_00: Brother, sister, you lack no good thing if you are trusting in him.
SPEAKER_00: Another lie that we believe is the lie that we don't belong.
SPEAKER_00: That we don't belong in here in God's family, we don't have a sense of home.
SPEAKER_00: But verse 11, believe it or not, gives us hope to that end.
SPEAKER_00: I say, believe it or not, because you look down at verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: What does verse 11 talk about?
SPEAKER_00: It talks about circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: In him you've been circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, and nothing thrills your Sunday afternoon without some good chat about circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: How does that help us to think about our sense of belonging?
SPEAKER_00: Well, you need to understand what circumcision was.
SPEAKER_00: Circumcision in the Old Testament was a way of marking out who was in the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: If you were circumcised in your flesh, you were part of that people.
SPEAKER_00: It was a sign that God had set his promises on you.
SPEAKER_00: That he would be with us always in a similar but more gloriously full way.
SPEAKER_00: Christ marks out his people, his new people, by circumcising not their flesh, but their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: He removes their body of flesh.
SPEAKER_00: That is, he takes away their sin.
SPEAKER_00: The result is that you are part of the family of God.
SPEAKER_00: You are part of this new community.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has marked you out.
SPEAKER_00: This is your home.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
SPEAKER_00: By faith, God is your God.
SPEAKER_00: You are his people.
SPEAKER_00: He is yours, and you are his.
SPEAKER_00: Your home.
SPEAKER_00: Then Paul goes on in verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: And in a in a in essence, what he is saying here is saying, How do you know that this is true?
SPEAKER_00: How do you know that it's true that God really has marked you out?
SPEAKER_00: And Paul, in a sense, says, Do you remember how wet you were?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember how wet you were at your baptism?
SPEAKER_00: As certainly as you were wet at your baptism is how certain you can be that Christ has made you his and that you are part of his community.
SPEAKER_00: He points them back to their baptism.
SPEAKER_00: As certainly as you were washed with water, so by faith Christ has taken your sin and made you his.
SPEAKER_00: But in verse 12, he's saying more than that.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith, in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead, you were buried with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus died, you died.
SPEAKER_00: When he was sealed in the tomb, you were sealed in the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: When he was raised on the third day of the newness of life, you were raised with him.
SPEAKER_00: Not to sound like a police officer, but where were you on Good Friday, 33 AD?
SPEAKER_00: Where were you on the night in question?
SPEAKER_00: Because we have this image in our minds that the cross is a thing that's happening over there.
SPEAKER_00: Behold the man upon the cross, my sin upon his shoulders, ashamed to hear my walking voice call out among the scoffers.
SPEAKER_00: But what Paul is saying here is that you're there.
SPEAKER_00: You're in Jesus as he dies by faith, joined to him, inextricably linked to him.
SPEAKER_00: When he died, you died.
SPEAKER_00: When he went to the grave, you were buried.
SPEAKER_00: And when he rose to newness of life, incorruptible, imperishable, you were raised in him.
SPEAKER_00: What hope that gives you?
SPEAKER_00: What resources for unlocking those doors of doubt and despair?
SPEAKER_00: That you are inseparable from the risen Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Is God close to you?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: You are in Him.
SPEAKER_00: Where you go, He goes.
SPEAKER_00: Everything else is a lie.
SPEAKER_00: Are you alone?
SPEAKER_00: In Christ, God has made you part of his new community.
SPEAKER_00: Everything else is a lie.
SPEAKER_00: Are you loved?
SPEAKER_00: Christ has died to take your sin and give you new life.
SPEAKER_00: Everything else is a lie.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you fight against the lies that beset your soul when all the lights are out and you lie there in the darkness?
SPEAKER_00: Don't be taken captive.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that will take us captive is guilt.
SPEAKER_00: Is that a familiar thing?
SPEAKER_00: Or does that just mean?
SPEAKER_00: Guilt entraps us.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you find it gnawing at you?
SPEAKER_00: That's why people, especially in Ireland, have rejected religion.
SPEAKER_00: That's all religion seems to do is just make you feel bad.
SPEAKER_00: And so people walk away.
SPEAKER_00: Guilt is a kidnapper.
SPEAKER_00: But more than that, Paul shows us that guilt is something that is wielded by our enemies.
SPEAKER_00: He refers to things like verse 8 according to the elemental spirits.
SPEAKER_00: The term elemental spirits comes up again in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: We're told that Jesus is the uh head in verse 10 of all rule and authority.
SPEAKER_00: And we read in verse 15 that Christ has disarmed the rulers and authorities.
SPEAKER_00: These are ancient ways of talking about those forces beyond our sight of vision that would array themselves against us.
SPEAKER_00: We are in a spiritual battle.
SPEAKER_00: I do not say that to disturb or upset.
SPEAKER_00: I say that because we are not mere rationalists.
SPEAKER_00: We are supernaturalists.
SPEAKER_00: There are things beyond what we can see.
SPEAKER_00: And we are in a spiritual battle.
SPEAKER_00: What is our enemy's greatest weapon against you?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_00: What is our enemy's greatest weapon against you?
SPEAKER_00: It's your own sin.
SPEAKER_00: You see, the word Satan means accuser.
SPEAKER_00: Satan is a great prosecutorial lawyer.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what the really disturbing thing about the fact that he uses your sin against you?
SPEAKER_00: It's that you actually did it.
SPEAKER_00: That you're actually on the hook.
SPEAKER_00: You see, you can imagine for a second the great celestial courtroom.
SPEAKER_00: And God the holy judge is there at the bench.
SPEAKER_00: Satan is the lawyer for the prosecution, and you stand in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: And Satan reads out the rap sheet.
SPEAKER_00: Says, Mark is charged with this and this and this and this.
SPEAKER_00: It's just four things.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe longer for you.
SPEAKER_00: And the problem is I'm actually guilty of them.
SPEAKER_00: And so what Satan does, he says, God, you are holy and just, you cannot look upon sin.
SPEAKER_00: You are pure and righteous, and Mark stands justly condemned.
SPEAKER_00: So I have a real problem, and so do you.
SPEAKER_00: Your rapture hasn't been made up, it's actually true.
SPEAKER_00: So how do we walk free from that courtroom?
SPEAKER_00: Paul tells us.
SPEAKER_00: In verse, end of verse 13, we're told that Jesus has forgiven our trespasses.
SPEAKER_00: Then he tells us how it is that he's forgiven our trespasses.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 14, by canceling the record of death, that's our rapture, that stood against us with its legal demands, demands for condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him.
SPEAKER_00: When it says that Jesus disarmed our enemies, what weapon is he taking away from them?
SPEAKER_00: Do not think of pitchforks or guns.
SPEAKER_00: The weapon that Satan wields against you is your own sin.
SPEAKER_00: Lay out on the on the docket sheet.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus takes it from that prosecutorial accuser and he rips it up.
SPEAKER_00: He dies for it.
SPEAKER_00: He nails it to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: He pays it in full.
SPEAKER_00: And so the case is thrown out.
SPEAKER_00: You are declared innocent because he is paid for your sin.
SPEAKER_00: And so those spiritual powers are not something to be feared.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has made a public mockery of them.
SPEAKER_00: He has put them, second half of verse 15, to open shame.
SPEAKER_00: This is the ancient image of a Roman warrior coming back from battle, you know, a great centurion, a Roman leader, coming back into Rome, banners unfurled, and he's there on his white horse.
SPEAKER_00: And who's coming behind him?
SPEAKER_00: All of his captives, all of the people that he's defeated, and they're being mocked by everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: And for Jesus, that's Satan, our enemies.
SPEAKER_00: This is not to say that we no longer feel guilty.
SPEAKER_00: There are times when guilt is used to chasten us.
SPEAKER_00: There's Holy Spirit given guilt.
SPEAKER_00: It's a sign of a sensitive conscience, in fact.
SPEAKER_00: If you're sitting there, you're sitting there and you're indulging in that habitual sin.
SPEAKER_00: The thing that you should be really worried about is the point when you no longer feel guilty about it at all.
SPEAKER_00: Guilt can be used to driven up to drive us back to God, our God who is our Father, who stands with open arms, who longs to receive us with abundant forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what Paul is talking about here.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul is talking about here is the experience that we have as Christians of those things in the past.
SPEAKER_00: Those choices, decisions, actions.
SPEAKER_00: That we know have been forgiven in our more rational, objective moments.
SPEAKER_00: We know that Jesus has paid the price for those.
SPEAKER_00: We know that we've been forgiven, and yet the accuser still tries to come again and go, Yeah, but don't you remember what you did?
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe that you did that, and that you call yourself a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: What a hypocrite.
SPEAKER_00: At those points, we have a great answer.
SPEAKER_00: It is not to be remorseless, it is not to be arrogant or proud, but to humbly acknowledge that our debt has been paid.
SPEAKER_00: I have no other answer.
SPEAKER_00: I need no other plea.
SPEAKER_00: It is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me.
SPEAKER_00: That is your response to that besetting guilt.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, we can find ourselves captured by legalism.
SPEAKER_00: Or captured by comparing ourselves to people who have greater spiritual experiences than us.
SPEAKER_00: Thinking firstly of legalism, you know, the perception of Christianity by many people is that it is a moral straitjacket, weighs you down, kills your innovation, stifles your freedom and self-expression.
SPEAKER_00: And for sure, I mean, depending on where you grew up, you might have even met some Christians like that.
SPEAKER_00: You know those Christians who you may have encountered who say things like, you cannot be a Christian if you fill in the blank.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be a Christian if you, what's the, you know, we'll play kind of family fortunes, you know, what's the what's the top answer?
SPEAKER_00: Drink alcohol.
SPEAKER_00: Ding ding ding ding ding, right?
SPEAKER_00: People have different views on that.
SPEAKER_00: If you are if you're TT, God bless you, right?
SPEAKER_00: What I'm saying is people say, if you cannot be a Christian if that's a that's illegal.
SPEAKER_00: It's saying that your faith, your acceptance before God is conditioned on your abstinence, and that's wicked.
SPEAKER_00: Do you see the nuance there?
SPEAKER_00: I hope you do.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be a Christian if you work on a Sunday, if you go to the cinema on the Sabbath, and you swell the guy that grew up in Northern Ireland.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be a Christian if you do not hold to certain traditions and certain laws.
SPEAKER_00: And then there are those who go on and on about their spiritual experiences and make spiritual experiences a marker of true faith.
SPEAKER_00: That's not to disparage spiritual experiences.
SPEAKER_00: If you have them and they improve your love for Jesus, then God bless you.
SPEAKER_00: But do not make them a marker of true faith, do not make them a marker of orthodoxy.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can think in your mind, I haven't had this spiritual experience, and so I cannot be a true Christian.
SPEAKER_00: Paul to all of these things says, no.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 16, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink with regard to festival, new moon, or sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: These are the shadows of things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Let no one disqualify you.
SPEAKER_00: Insisting on asceticism.
SPEAKER_00: That's beating the body, fasting, going living in the desert, or you know, up in Glendalok in a little hut, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's asceticism.
SPEAKER_00: The worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, that's a spiritual experience sort of thing there.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, No, don't be captured by that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't believe the lie that you need to do these things or to have these experiences in order for God to like you more.
SPEAKER_00: That does not mean, however, that we get to live however we want.
SPEAKER_00: What we need to do, by implication, is hold fast to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The problem with the legalist, the problem with the mystic, is that they're not holding fast to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: In Colossae, Colossians, Colossi.
SPEAKER_00: In Colossae, there were people who were coming along and insisting that they obey some Old Testament laws.
SPEAKER_00: That's where you get the reference to food and drink, new moon and sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: You can have your Jesus, but put down the bacon sandwich, right?
SPEAKER_00: Take Saturday off.
SPEAKER_00: That sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do work on the Sabbath.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul is saying, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has fulfilled the law, the Old Testament law, Ten Commandments or the 613 laws that are expounded in those books.
SPEAKER_00: Paul said, no, there are shadows.
SPEAKER_00: They're shadows of the things to come.
SPEAKER_00: The substance belongs to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Christ fulfilled the law.
SPEAKER_00: What do we mean by Christ fulfilled the law?
SPEAKER_00: Well, first, two meanings.
SPEAKER_00: First is it all points to him.
SPEAKER_00: He is the great high priest.
SPEAKER_00: He is the perfect sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: He is the glorious temple.
SPEAKER_00: He is the meeting place of God and man.
SPEAKER_00: He is where heaven and earth overlap, as it were.
SPEAKER_00: And they're all point to him, they're all fulfilled in him.
SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, Christ plays in 10,000 places.
SPEAKER_00: But it also means that Jesus in his earthly life was the perfect law keeper on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: Perfectly righteous.
SPEAKER_00: And so he summarizes the law for us.
SPEAKER_00: He summarizes the law, and how does he do it?
SPEAKER_00: He says that we must perfectly love God and love neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and love your neighbor as yourself, right?
SPEAKER_00: Holding fast to Christ, therefore, is living out of that principle.
SPEAKER_00: Perfect love of God and love of neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: The Old Testament, the Ten Commandments, Ten Commandments, the Ten Commandments apply to you as a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean well, I'm gonna go and go and murder.
SPEAKER_00: My neighbor has a particularly awesome ox that I'm gonna head off and covet.
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, that does not what it means.
SPEAKER_00: No, the law is taken off the backs of Christians and put into our hands as a tool to know what it means to love God and love neighbor.
SPEAKER_00: But if that wasn't enough, Paul, Paul shows us also that these two things of legalism and chasing spiritual experience, they don't work.
SPEAKER_00: Don't work in your spiritual life.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at legalism first, even though it's right down the end.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 23.
SPEAKER_00: He says, they indeed have the appearance of wisdom.
SPEAKER_00: It looks good, Paul says, in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you look super spiritual.
SPEAKER_00: If you're, you know, fasting all the time, whipping yourself with a birch.
SPEAKER_00: But look at what Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: They are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.
SPEAKER_00: They look good, but they don't work.
SPEAKER_00: Why don't they work?
SPEAKER_00: Because they are disconnected from Christ, they're not holding fast to the head.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone who has tried to kick their porn habit knows this.
SPEAKER_00: Because you know that you could throw your phone and your iPad and your laptop into a cement mixer.
SPEAKER_00: But if your heart is not captivated by Christ, you Hafner's still gonna get you.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
SPEAKER_00: Neither does spiritual experience, chasing spiritual experience, work.
SPEAKER_00: There's people who are going into detail about visions, they end up being puffed up without reason by a sensuous mind.
SPEAKER_00: They're not holding fast to the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.
SPEAKER_00: See, you stop and you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul's saying here is really quite shocking.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying that you can be so captivated, so obsessed with chasing a spiritual experience that you can miss Jesus altogether.
SPEAKER_00: Again, these people look super spiritual, but they have let go of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Caveat, I am not saying that that is true of everyone who experiences a spiritual experience.
SPEAKER_00: If that is you and that helps you love Jesus, God bless you.
SPEAKER_00: But we can think that it is only at the spiritual mountaintop that we are truly nourished.
SPEAKER_00: That we truly see the face of Jesus, and that's just not true.
SPEAKER_00: Christ is not just with us in the mountaintop when they come, but they're wonderful.
SPEAKER_00: He journeys with us in the valley too.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, where we go, he goes.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine for a second in your mind's eye.
SPEAKER_00: Someone looking out the window, waiting for Jesus to show up.
SPEAKER_00: Looking out the window, they're peering into the darkness, longing for Jesus to come and to eat with them.
SPEAKER_00: They're peering out and they're getting hungrier and hungrier, tirider and tire, more and more hopeless, straining and struggling, wondering when will he show up?
SPEAKER_00: Why has he been gone for so long?
SPEAKER_00: And the camera in your mind's eye pans back.
SPEAKER_00: And you see that Jesus has been sitting at the table the entire time, waiting for the person to turn around and see him.
SPEAKER_00: Christ does not primarily make himself known in the blaze of the spiritual mountaintop.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to us in the ordinary things.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to us in the simple acts of service.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to us in those words of encouragement that bind up our broken hearts.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to us in his word that is living and active, that really does change your heart and change how you think.
SPEAKER_00: He meets us there.
SPEAKER_00: He nourishes us and satisfies us.
SPEAKER_00: He binds us closer one to another.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to us in the ordinary things.
SPEAKER_00: If only we would turn and see him.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to us at this table.
SPEAKER_00: In this meal of bread and wine, simple things, basic things, fundamental things.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it a strange thing that the table of the king is not adorned with golden goblets and sticky treats?
SPEAKER_00: But is a wooden board where bread is given and wine is provided.
SPEAKER_00: There he nourishes us.
SPEAKER_00: And so ask yourself, is that Christ enough for ye?
SPEAKER_00: If so, come and eat.
SPEAKER_00: Has this Christ taken your guilt?
SPEAKER_00: Disarmed your enemy?
SPEAKER_00: If the answer is yes, come and eat.
SPEAKER_00: Do you belong to him?
SPEAKER_00: Are you joined to him by faith?
SPEAKER_00: Are you part of his community?
SPEAKER_00: Has he marked you out?
SPEAKER_00: If so comedy Those who sit there and think how could I be worthy to eat?
SPEAKER_00: It's the wrong question to ask.
SPEAKER_00: What matters is not the strength or clarity of your faith but the object of your faith.
SPEAKER_00: And so as you prepare to come, ask yourself these questions.
SPEAKER_00: Do you love Jesus perfectly?
SPEAKER_00: I can answer that one for you.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Do you love Jesus as much as you should?
SPEAKER_00: I suspect that I can answer that one for you as well.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: But here is the one that only you can answer.
SPEAKER_00: Do you love him at all?
SPEAKER_00: If so.