Ephesians 5:14

I have your Bibles turned with me to Ephesians

chapter 5 and we will begin by picking up

where we left off starting in verse 14 and we

will read through verse 17.

God's word says, "For this reason it says, 'Aw

ake, sleeper, and arise from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you. Therefore, be

careful how you walk, not as unwise men, but

as wise, making the most of your time, because

the days are evil. So then, do not be foolish,

but understand what the will of the Lord is.'"

Now the Bible characterizes in many places

people who are the opposite of wise as fools.

John MacArthur says, "Everyone born into this

world comes in with a terminal state of congen

ital foolishness, otherwise known as the sin

nature."

Proverbs chapter 22 and verse 15 says, "This

foolishness is bound up in the heart of a

child."

You've ever had children or grandchildren or

been around little kids, you know this to be

true.

Very clear then that we are born into a state

of foolishness. We know this from Scripture

right

here and we know this from experience. Now

when you first hear the word fool,

what's the first thing that comes to your mind

? You tend to think about somebody who

does irresponsible things or says

irresponsible words. I think of Esther that

used to call

Fred Samford, "You old fool." But the Bible

defines a fool differently than what first

comes to our

minds. The Bible basically overall defines a

fool as someone who exists apart from God.

It defines a wise person as someone who lives

in accordance with God's divine principles.

That's how Scripture defines the foolish and

the wise. So keep that in mind as we're going

through

this. That means that man is born then, as we

know, he's born into this world as it ascended

about him, separated from God, and that's why

we say he is born a fool. He's born in a

situation,

all of us, where God's wisdom is absent. Both

the Psalms and the Proverbs have a lot to say

about the characteristics of foolishness. And

you know Psalm 14-1, the fool has said in his

heart,

"There is no God." And that doesn't

necessarily mean that this is only

intellectual, even though the

fool may know in his mind that there is any

God, because he's got common sense. He can

look around

and see all the complexity that's around us

through creation. He may realize that there is

some supreme being, but he lives his life as

if there is not. And that's why it says next

in Psalm

14-1, "They are corrupt. They have committed

abominable deeds." Knowing there is a God,

but living like there is not is what you could

sort of call a practical atheism, if you will.

You live life how you want to live. You give

no real thought towards God, or what he thinks

about

you living in his world that he created,

because this is my Father's world, no matter

whether you

believe that or not. In fact, you can't even

naturally understand the things of God if you

're

in a state of unbelief in him. I often quote 1

Corinthians 2-14, and we should quote it often

,

"But a natural man that someone who has not

bowed the knee to Jesus Christ in salvation

does not accept the things of the Spirit of

God for their what? Foolishness to him." And

look at

this, he cannot understand them. "For a fool,"

as defined by Scripture, "foolishness is

wisdom,

and wisdom is foolishness." It's turned around

. So the first characteristic of a fool is that

in

a practical way, he denies God with how he

lives his life. God has no binding force upon

him.

The law of God does not bind the conscience of

a fool. He could really care less about God's

law.

I know I could care less about God's law back

before I came to Christ. I didn't think about

it.

He lives life apart from God. No thought

toward God. He just is totally living for self

. Now,

keeping that in mind, a second characteristic

is interesting. No person can live without a

God.

What do I mean by that? Well, it isn't a

question of do you worship.

It is only a question of whom do you worship?

Everybody bows somewhere, some way, somehow.

And since man naturally suppresses the truth

about the true God, as Romans 1 says to us,

he will inevitably substitute the true God and

bring in a false God. And there are many ways

of doing that, maybe a God of false religion.

Or, as I say often, the most popular God in

America,

for sure, is a God that people make up in

their own minds. They design him. And

conveniently,

he operates exactly the way they want him to.

A God in America, because of our Christian

beginning,

is usually made up with parts of the God of

the Bible, but the parts that people don't

like,

they leave him out, thereby not making him the

true God of the Bible. Or, if you claim to be

an atheist, you just worship yourself. You are

the master of your faith. You are the captain

of your ship, all which reminds us of Proverbs

12.15. The way of a fool is right in his own

eyes.

He becomes the one who determines truth and

error. He becomes the one who articulates his

own way of

living that he has decided. He is the one who

decides what's right and wrong. He often talks

about

my truth, as if truth can ever be multiple

choice. Truth, by its very definition, is

singular in its

nature. Two plus flu is never five, and it's

never six. It's always four, right? Or, he

talks about

my God, as if God can be multiple choice. And

as a result of all that, you know what he will

inevitably do? He will inevitably mock sin.

That's what the Bible says in Proverbs 14.9,

look at it, fools mock at sin. He makes his

own rules, and he wants to just justify his

behavior.

God has implanted in every person the

knowledge of who he is and written his law on

every heart. He

knows right and wrong, and lots of folks want

to make sure they're going to be all right in

the

end. They know they're going to die, and so

they eliminate sin with its consequences. Like

,

I've told you the story before, of the man who

tried to convince me when the Lord was drawing

me to himself. "Hell's not in the Bible," he

said, "just as plain as I'm sitting here

talking to you."

And I said, "Oh, no, man. At least with my

Catholic upbringing, I knew that. Definitely a

hell out

there, buddy." But as R.C. Sproul says, a

psychiatrist once told him, "When you boil it

all down,

the number one problem this psychiatrist said

that he encounters when he deals with people

in

therapy is treating their guilt. What does the

lost man do without Christ with his guilt?"

R.C. has got a great sermon on that. One

method is to deny there even is such a thing

as sin,

because you can't tolerate your guilt or you

make your own definitions of sin apart from

Scripture.

Another issue the fool has is the dramatic

effect that he has on other people,

because when he talks, he's always just sp

outing out his own opinions of the way things

are.

He's never the truth of God that's coming out

of his mouth. Proverbs 15-2 says,

"The tongue of the wise makes knowledge

acceptable, but the mouth of fools spouts fo

lly."

When a fool regurgitates his man-centered

opinions about life and everything in it,

it's all foolishness. Is not the world full of

the opinions of fools? A man can get pregnant.

That is the opinion of a fool. Hell is not

real. The Bible is not infallible. You can go

down the

list. Now to sum this up, you know Proverbs 1-

7 well. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning

of knowledge." Wisdom, King James says. Fools.

There it is. Despise wisdom and instruction.

That is the heart of the matter right there.

Wisdom in Proverbs again means living by

divine

standards, which also means by necessity

accepting divine truth from God's Word. But a

fool hates

that, rejects that, despises that. I used to

do that. Proverbs 10-21 says, "The lips of the

righteous

feed many, but fools die for lack of

understanding." You see how many? How often

this term is used.

"The idea there being sound teaching benefits

many, but the fool starves himself to death

spiritually through his lack of wise teaching

." So what could be done about this? Well,

wisdom

is available to everybody. Solomon says in Ecc

lesiastes 9-1, "For I have taken all this

to my heart and explained it that righteous

men, wise men, and their deeds are in the

hands of God.

In every generation of man, God reaches out

his hand and offers to take men out of a

kingdom of

fools and into the kingdom of the wise and the

only means, the only way through which God

does this,

naturally born fool like myself, coming to

Christ on his terms of repentance and faith."

That's the mean that God uses. Paul told

Timothy in 2 Timothy 3-15, "And that from

childhood

you have known the sacred writings," that's

the scripture, "which are able to give you the

wisdom

that leads to salvation through faith," which

is in Christ Jesus Christ. That's the key.

Right there. Wisdom is found in scriptural

truth, which teaches and brings about

salvation. It's the

saving act that God uses to bring about wisdom

in a person's life. When you become a

Christian,

when God invades your life, when he draws you

to himself, when he does the miracle of

regeneration,

making you spiritually alive, and he grants

you the gifts of repentance and faith, guess

what?

In a beginning measure, hold on to that phrase

, in a beginning measure, instantly you become

wise.

Instantly you have a measure of wisdom. When

you became a Christian, you stopped being a

fool,

as the Bible defines fool, and you became one

of God's wise children. Now,

wisdom is not just head knowledge. It's not

just intellectual knowledge. Now, listen

carefully.

It includes that, but there is a big

difference between bare intellectual knowledge

and biblical

wisdom. Let me tell you something. You can

have the IQ of Elon Musk, and you can know

a whole lot of things, and at the same time

have zero wisdom, as defined by Scripture.

Now, it's interesting that wisdom and the

understanding of the Greeks was thought of

as only intellectual knowledge in the sense of

sophistry, the spinning of theories that

really

had no real practical application to life.

Their philosophers were the intellectuals of

the day,

but the Hebrew mind was different. The Hebrew

mind never thought of wisdom as that. The

Hebrew

mind thought of wisdom in terms of behavior,

action. And when you became a Christian, it's

not just

a change in theory. It's not just a change in

intellectual knowledge. Though it is that,

make no mistake, it definitely is a change in

what you know, but it's even more a change

in how you live with what you now know. In

your natural condition, you didn't know God.

You denied God. You put yourself up as the God

of your life in some measure. You mocked the

idea

of sin in God's eternal judgment. You went

around spewing out your own opinions. I've

told you often

about me and my dad in the backyard, where the

house where he now lives before either one of

us

came to Christ. And we're commenting on how we

thought God was. And you remember that book,

Dad?

Joseph Campbell's myth book. And we were just

spouting off foolishness about God. We didn't

know anything about God. And we didn't even

realize it. We were putting ourselves up as

the authority

on who God is and the purpose of life, the

meaning of life, everything else. And it's

really incredible.

The extent to which when you become a

Christian, when you give in to Christ's King

and his Lordship,

immediately you know God. You know who he is

in truth. You take yourself off the throne.

That's part of the process of repentance and

faith. You take yourself off the throne.

You worship only him. You confess sin. You don

't mock sin. When you speak, you speak

the truth of God as derived from his word

alone. It's a massive difference. Massive. Now

,

in my own mind, it is absolutely debatable and

probably true that I entered into the ministry

too soon, if I look back and think back. But

the truth is this, in the plan of God,

just four years after becoming a Christian, I

found myself being an associate pastor in a

Baptist church. Now, God has his ways, right?

Who am I to say? But I kid you not, and it's

hard for

me to explain this to you, that I'm still

shocked to this very day that I'm a pastor. I

can't explain

that to you enough. And there really is, in a

beginning sense, this instant wisdom that

becomes

ours when we come to Christ. I'm going to say

more about that later, but go back to our text

for

today. What is Paul essentially saying? He's

saying, "You used to be a fool, but now you've

been made

wise in Christ. And for Christ's sake, walk,

live as wise." Remember, when Paul uses that

word

walk, it's the pattern of living is what he

means when he says walk. Look at verse 15.

"Therefore be careful how you walk, how you

live. Not there's a negative as unwise men."

Here comes

the positive, but as wise. Same message we've

been getting since we started chapter 4. "This

is

who you are. Now, this is how you are to live

." It's just another element of the worthy walk

. Where

did that start? Chapter 4 verse 1. "Remember,

therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore

you

to walk, live in a manner worthy of the

calling with which you have been called." And

he's been

teaching us what that looks like ever since

that verse. And he's going to continue to do

that all

the way to the end of this epistle. Now, let's

get into the particulars of verse 15. Paul

says,

"Therefore be careful how you walk, not as un

wise men, but as wise." The wise person knows

these principles that God has given for living

. And he's saying, "You know these things,

so live by them." And notice we start with a "

therefore." So was that me? We got to figure

out what it's there for. And that takes us

back to the previous verse that we left off in

last

time we were here in Ephesians, verse 14,

which says, "Awake, sleeper, and arise from

the dead,

and Christ will shine on you." Remember, that

's an invitation that Paul is giving to come to

saving

faith in Christ. And so now in verse 15, Paul

is saying, "If you are one who has come alive

from

the dead, if you are one who is now in the

light and not in the darkness, then live, walk

wisely."

In other words, based on what salvation did

for you, because you are saved, not by words,

but because of grace, walk in wisdom. Walking

in wisdom is a part of the works that you do

now that you have been saved, not in order to

be saved. Keep that in your thinking. And you

might

think, well, man, when you're first saved, you

don't know very much. How can you walk in

wisdom?

Well, as I said earlier, there's most

definitely what I would call

a real beginning measure of wisdom that is

yours immediately when you come to Christ. Let

me give

you an example. Immediately, you have a true

understanding of the gospel that has been

given

to you through the power of the Holy Spirit.

You can't believe in the gospel without

understanding

it, right? You have to understand it in order

to believe it. In fact, you can't be saved

apart

from a true understanding of the gospel. And

it's more than just head knowledge of the

gospel

facts. Remember, the devils believe and they

tremble. It most certainly has to include the

head

knowledge, but when you believe the gospel and

you believe it with saving faith that God

grants you,

that's far, far different than just bare

intellectual knowledge of the gospel facts.

So you start off, think about it, right off

the bat, the Christian life, knowing who you

are

as a sinner before God, knowing who Christ is,

what Christ accomplished on the cross,

and the only saving response to that being

repentance and faith. There just can't be a

greater starting of a measure of wisdom than

that. That's the most important information in

the

universe and all of the human experience is

the gospel. In fact, 1 Corinthians chapter 1

verse

30, Paul says, "But by his doing you are in

Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God

and

righteousness and sanctification and

redemption." All four of those things became

ours instantly.

When we believe. Now, keep that in your

thought and think of this. From there,

from the starting point, you go on in your

life, in your Christian life, to grow in

wisdom, right?

Ever increasing in your knowledge of the Word

of God. Colossians 2-3, "In Christ are hidden

all the

treasures of wisdom and knowledge." And so we

spend our whole Christian lives mining the

infinite

depths of that treasure. In fact, that's the

only way you can grow in wisdom and knowledge.

You have

to be mining the depths of God's Word through

your reading of it, through your study of it.

So we start the Christian life with this

incredible measure of beginning wisdom. We're

no longer fools.

We're now wise. And on that basis, verse 15,

Paul is saying, "Walk as wise. Live it out."

That's the point. And part of walking wise is

studying God's Word to increase in knowledge

and wisdom all the rest of the days of our

short lives here on earth. In fact, there

should be an

increasing wisdom if you're a Christian that

produces increasing godliness in your life.

Remember, the fear of the Lord is the

beginning of wisdom, but there's so much more

to learn. In fact,

as you start your study of God's Word, look at

what James 1-5 says, "But if any of you lacks

wisdom,

let him ask of God who gives to all generously

and without reproach, and it will be given to

him."

So as you sit down with your Bible, ask God to

help you understand it better with wisdom. And

this verse says, "He will give it, and he won

't hold anything back from you. He will give it

generously and without reproach." Another way

to get it is to sit under preaching that is

grounded

in biblical truths and sound doctrine and

biblical wisdom. Learn from those that God has

given,

the gifts of preaching and teaching. One of

the great things about the internet,

I was telling Roger Dale earlier, at your

fingertips, you have the finest expositors

of the Bible in the world, endless sermons to

listen to. So as we walk in this new pattern

of living, notice next, verse 15, "Therefore

be careful how you walk." The word for careful

in

the King James is circumspectly. That means

accurately, exactly, carefully. As we walk in

this new pattern of living, as we walk in a

fallen world, filled with fallen people. So

for us,

we have to be careful as we live out the

Christian life. We have to be, we have to be

very alert as

to what is going on in our world. We're not

tiptoeing through the tulips in this world. We

're

walking through a minefield in this present

world system that God allows, for now, Satan,

to run,

but only to the extent that God allows. So

there's limits, of course, to what he can do,

but we've all experienced, for God's purpose,

he sure does allow our adversary a lot of le

ech,

does he not? Reminds me of a week before last.

I was on delivery in Brobridge,

and I was way back up in the back swamp, and I

had a delivery of just a couple of

five-quart containers of oil to make to this

man and his personal residence.

And I go down this little narrow road, and

there's this. The smallest,

never seen tiny houses on one of the tables.

Well, this was long before tiny houses,

the tiny house was a metal little house. I

swear I could probably almost touch both the

walls,

okay, with my hands like this, and just junk

all in the yard, just a mess. Nobody was

outside,

but I saw the address on the mailbox. So I

pulled up, and immediately, the biggest bull

dog

that, sitting up his head was probably right

here, he was gray in color, his head was about

that big

around. He comes barreling out from nowhere,

he's barking, going nuts. Now, oftentimes,

what I will do is, I will just get out of the

truck, and normally, most of the time,

the dog's back down. You can often tell a dog,

if a dog starts wagging his tail, and you do a

little whistle or something, you know, he's

probably not going to bite you, but at this

moment,

this dog came up to the truck, and he came out

, and then he stopped barking,

and something told me, "I'm gonna get out of

the truck today," and here comes the man out

of the

house, and he comes over to the truck, and the

dog's right there, and the man's walking up to

the window, and I said, "Hey man, what about

that dog?" He said, "Oh man, that dog bit me

four times

last week, and I had to have surgery on my

finger." I said, "Really? I'm sure glad I didn

't get out

of the truck." He said, "Yeah." And so, if I

had just jumped out of that truck, like I

normally do,

at the minimum, I would have been in the

hospital, but God, in his graciousness,

put it on my mind, instead of just getting out

the truck, I was careful. I noticed the dog

was

probably maybe a dog that would probably bite

me and do worse damage. I was careful, and

that's

what Paul is calling us to, as we live in this

fallen world, to be careful how you walk, to

be

careful to walk as wise as what he is saying.

This evil world system that we're living in,

it demands, as Christians, that we walk

carefully, exactly, accurately, and that is

precisely

what Jesus meant when he said in Matthew 7, 14

, "For the gate is small, and the way

is narrow that leads to life, and there are

few that find it." Few. The wise Christian is

the

careful Christian. He follows the Lord with

great care, charting his course according to

the

principles designed by God, just like these

principles that we're learning here today.

The NIV, which I rarely quote and sometimes

call the never-inspired version, but it does

have a

good translation here, says, "Be very careful

how you live. You have the wisdom. You have

spiritual

life. You're in the light." Live that way,

Paul says. In a similar way, he starts off

Philippians

127 with, "Only conduct yourselves in a manner

worthy of the gospel. Your walk, your pattern

of

living should match your position as being in

Christ." Folks, we are too wise and too

accountable

before God to walk like fools, but when we sin

and we fail, you know what we do at that

moment?

We play the fool. We act like fools. We act

like the fools we once were.

That's why daily confession and

acknowledgement of sin and asking temporal

forgiveness of sin,

as you realize they're all forgiven in Christ,

which is rooted and grounded in a judicial

positional forgiveness of Christ, that's why

it's so necessary for us to keep short

accounts with God in our prayer time daily.

Preach the gospel to yourself daily, necessary

ingredients for us to walk carefully and

wisely in this world. Titus 3-3 reminds us,

"For we also once were foolish ourselves,

disobedient, deceived, enslaved to various

lust

and pleasures." Man, that was me before Christ

, enslaved to various lust and pleasures. That

's

all that I was living for, living for worldly

pleasures. That's how a fool lives. But Paul's

saying by God's sovereign grace and because of

his grace alone, that's not us anymore.

The very next verses in Titus 3-4 and 5 say

this, "But when the kindness of God our Savior

in his love for mankind appeared, he saved us

not on the basis of deeds which we have done

in

righteousness, but according to his mercy by

the washing of regeneration and renewing by

the Holy

Spirit." And that's because regeneration

produces this tremendous change in our nature

as we go

from being spiritually dead to being

spiritually alive. We were once foolish and

then this miracle

happened and everything changed. Our desires

changed. Our want-to's changed. And once that

change has happened, changes happened, we read

Paul in verse 15. Again, be careful how you

walk,

not as unwise men like we did before, but as

wise. And when you read that, Christian, you

read that,

you understand it and you say, "That's what I

want to do. I do want to live that way."

We're not forced into it. We don't do it out

of fear that God will strike us down if we don

't

live that way. We learn this teaching right

here in the Bible about Christian living and

we freely

and really and truly want nothing more than to

live this way. And as I said before, that's

not

it's not natural to want to live like this. It

's supernatural. God does this in us.

Only the already wise want to live carefully

and wisely according to Scripture in the mind

field

of this fallen world. That's why Paul says

again in verse 15, "Be careful how you walk,

not as unwise men, but as wise." Guess what?

You already walked. You already lived as an un

wise

person. You already walked as a fool. How did

that work out for you? How did that work?

Man, when life was left up to me alone, what a

chaotic, dysfunctional, sinful, dumpster fire

of a life I made for myself. It was pathetic.

I was a far above average fool. I promise you,

but God changed all that. It wasn't me. I didn

't pull myself up by my bootstraps and make

this

happen. God did it. Galatians 2.20, "Now I

have been crucified with Christ and it is no

longer I who

live but Christ lives in me and the faith

which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith

in the Son

of God who loved me and gave himself up for me

." Incredible sovereign grace. Unmerited favor

that God shows to his people in making us wise

. So, the big question for you is,

have you been made wise by God through

believing in the person who worked with the

Lord Jesus Christ

through Bible repentance and saving faith? Let

me tell you something. This table right here

in front

of us is designed and ordained by God only for

the wise, only. The unwise, the fools that all

of us

once were that have not surrendered to the

Lordship of Christ and saving faith, they're

excluded from

this table. They have no right to come and

partake of these elements that point these

elements to

who saved us and what he did to save us, to

make us wise. And if you're not wise as

defined by

God's word, I'm telling you you better think

twice about coming to this table because this

is God's

business. And you don't need to read too far

at all in the very first chapter of Genesis

itself,

the first book of the Bible, to learn how

serious God is about his business.

But if you are wise according to the Bible's

definition of wise and you have been changed

and you realize the only reason you're wise is

because God did it. If you desire now to

continually

become more and more wise according to God's

principle through the study of his word, then

you know what? You should be wanting to run

down that aisle with joy and thanksgiving for

who Christ

is and what he has done in your life and the

opportunity that he has given his church

for all of human history to be obedient to him

together at one time, corporately in the

family

of God with overflowing thanksgiving. You

should want to be obedient. You should want

nothing more than to partake of his supper,

what symbolizes again what he did to change

you,

what he did to make you wise that none of us

deserve. If you're wise according to the Bible

's

definition, you don't need me to tell you that

any of yourself, you're not worthy to take the

Lord's

supper, but you know any worth that you have

to come and partake of this that demonstrates

the

person and work of Christ for all of the rest

of history. You know that your worthiness is

only in

him, only in him, only in the imputed

righteousness of Christ do you have any

righteousness. Do you

have any value? The only value I have is that

I'm a sinner saved by grace in Christ. All

that we have

when it comes down to it is Christ. That's all

that we have and we do this as always with

great

reverence. That's what we want to do. Lots of

places do it differently,

but reverence. I turn over to 1 Corinthians 11

and I repeat myself

because I find myself needing repetition to

keep all of this together.

We're capable of thinking deeply. It's sad in

this day and age that the culture and the

media

and Hollywood, it forces us into shallow

thinking. We don't think deeply. People don't

read deep books anymore. They want sound bites

and eight-second videos. Just give me what I

need

and let me move on. We have to live in this.

We have to train ourselves to think deeply. We

can

think about multiple things at one time as

Christians. Look here in 1 Corinthians. Now,

in context, Paul is getting on to the church

in Corinth because they were getting wild at

the

Lord's supper. He had to get on to them. They

were not partaking in a manner that they

should.

You can go and read that part for yourself,

but just look at where he comes on to them and

says,

starting in verse 27, "Therefore, whoever eats

the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord

in an unworthy manner shall be guilty of the

body and the blood of the Lord. But a man must

examine himself, and in so doing he is to eat

of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who

eats

and drinks, eats and drinks judgment to

himself. If he does not judge the body rightly

, for this

reason many among you are weak and sick and a

number sleep." As you know, they die. God in

his

seriousness took him out of this world. Now,

he doesn't always do that, but this is an

occasion

where for all of church history, we see a

demonstration of how serious he was. Now,

I want you to think deeply. I don't want you

to hear that and say, "Oh, my goodness.

I don't have no business going to the Lord's

table. Look at this. It's too serious." Think

about what I said last week or what I did. You

can't think like that. You mustn't ever think

like that when you come to the Lord's table.

One at the same time, you must think about

this.

This is a direct commandment that Jesus

commanded his church to do for all of the

rest of human history, so it's important. What

I'm trying to get you to do in reading this

verse,

these verses every time we have the Lord's Su

pper, is to get you to see the seriousness

with what we're doing here. It's to get you to

understand the amount of reverence that we

must

have for actually together, corporately

participating in an act of obedience to the

command of God.

But again, at the same time, as you recognize

that seriousness, as you recognize the gravity

,

the gravitas, the depth of what it is for a

church to celebrate the Lord's Supper together

,

at the same time that you acknowledge that

here, over here, if you're wise,

if God has graced you to be wise through

granting you the gifts of saving faith in

Christ, as I said

earlier, though, yes, you recognize you're a

sinner, saved by grace, but a sinner still.

You

confess your sin. We're going to do that in a

moment. We're going to have a time of the

confession

of our sin. At the same time, you should have

joy. You should have thanksgiving. God saved

me.

He saved me. Why didn't he save my neighbor?

Why me? Why do I get to be wise?

Why do I get to be the recipient of the

substitutionary atoning death? Why is it that

I find myself

as one for whom Christ died, for whom Christ

absorbed all of the wrath that's due to me

upon

Himself on the tree for me? God's grace has

been given to me, and Christ has commanded us

to remember

that reality when we come to the table. And so

, with great joy, as yes, we confess our sin,

yes, we acknowledge our sin, but the greatest

thing about the confession of Christian sin

is that you turn from that and you look to

this table. You look to what this table

represents,

the person and work of Christ, and you see

there at the table, at the cross, all of my

sins have

been forgiven. I am right with God. There is

therefore now no condemnation for them that

are in Christ Jesus. Why? Because Jesus took

all the condemnation. He took every bit of it.

He drank that cup down to the dregs. Right?

And so we come joyfully and thankfully

what Christ has done, and we participate

together, marveling at the gospel of grace,

that God's sovereign grace in our lives. And

we take, as the confession says, that

spiritual

nourishment in what these elements represent.