Ephesians 5:21

And verse 21, and yes, it may seem that we are

stuck here

in verse 21, but this is such an important

section

that we are going to get into that I wanna lay

one more layer of foundation before we get

into this next

set of verses.

Now, ladies, you're gonna be first starting in

verse 22,

but don't fret, right behind you will be the

phallus,

and they get it worse as you will see starting

in verse 25.

So everybody is going to get a good round

socking of conviction in the verses ahead,

but just for context, let's just start reading

,

I guess one more time, verses 18 to 21,

just to put us back to where we were last time

we were here beginning in verse 18,

and do not get drunk with wine, for that is

dissipation,

but be filled with the spirit,

speaking to one another in psalms and hymns

and spiritual songs, singing and making melody

with your heart to the Lord, always giving

thanks

for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus

Christ,

who God even the Father, and be subject to one

another

in the fear of Christ.

Now, last time we were in this text, we said,

that the foundation of all Christian family

success

and marriage blessing all starts in that text

that I just read, there's no gimmicks,

there's no self-help books that we need here.

Before we talk about the wives in verse 22

and the husbands in verse 25 and the children

in chapter six,

there is a necessary foundation that must be

laid

for all those relationships,

and that foundation is you must be spirit

filled,

number one, singing, and remember we made

application,

joyful, saying thanks and submissive to one

another,

subject to one another, that's the four points

of verse 18 to 21 that we just read.

And if you remember, we drilled down last time

into the subject of necessary mutual

submission

to one another that has to be there

that we find there in verse 21, look at it in

verse 21,

and be subject, it's also translated,

submit, same meaning, same word,

to one another in the fear of Christ.

Remember I told you this, that's all

Christians,

towards all other Christians.

That's both other Christians in your natural

family

and other Christians in the family of God.

We are to be submissive to one another.

And when you combine that with being spirit

filled,

joyful, and always giving thanks and all

things,

you then have the necessary spiritual

foundation laid

for all of these Christian family

relationships

that we're fixing to study in this text,

husband's wives, parents, children.

The necessary building blocks for a solid

marriage

contain the main idea behind mutual submission

to one another.

And what does that remember?

Pursuing the needs of others rather than your

own

or looking at the needs of others

as more important than your own.

And that most goes for your spouse.

Remember, selflessness from both spouses is

the key.

And we're gonna get into all of that in the

days ahead

or Sundays ahead.

Having that mutual submission that cares about

the other

from both people.

And in addition, two people, individually who

are living

their lives first and foremost for the glory

of God.

And then both spouses together understanding

and living out the main purpose of the

Christian life

together in their marriage.

And that is to bring glory to God

and to enjoy him forever.

You see where I'm at?

And marriage is the place where you most live

out your Christianity, right?

Think about it.

Because of being together all the time

under every conceivable kind of circumstance

and every trial and difficulty, the home,

your marriage is the truest test of your

spiritual life.

It really doesn't have anything to do at all

with man-centered techniques and therapy

and human marital advice.

It has everything to do with your relationship

with God

and together your relationship with God.

When both spouses have that in order again,

listen carefully, marriage will not be perfect

because both are battling daily their flesh,

but I promise you it will be the best that it

can be

on this earth, this side of heaven.

So again, that makes the family, the home,

the most significant place where you live out

your faith

and that statement should convict everybody in

here

'cause at the house is where it gets real,

right?

I bet you all of you have heard Christie say

at one time or another, boy,

if you could see a video camera at our house,

huh?

Because that's where it gets real.

That's where life is lived out

in the most rubber meet the road kind of way.

And if we're gonna have any real success

with God's way of being married,

it all has to start with that spiritual

foundation

that verses 18 to 21 that we just read are

teaching us.

Apart from that, I'm telling you,

there's gonna be trouble in the marriage.

There's gonna be conflict.

And the reason for why I'm placing such an

emphasis

on this is because this is where it all begins

.

This is really where it all succeeds

and this is where it all breaks down.

Without this foundation in your marriage,

I'm telling you, you are headed for trouble.

And if you only have one person in the

marriage

with this foundation, that's rough.

And if both do not,

then marriage is miserable or can be very

miserable.

At least with one, you have some hope.

And again, the sin of selfishness

is at the root of most conflicts in marriage

and the workplace and anywhere.

When people don't get their way.

Mining needs are not being met, right?

When personal pride and personal self-fulfill

ment

are the prime motivators in one or both

parties

in the marriage relationship,

I'm telling you, conflict is sure to come.

And this is just as true, folks, in Christian

marriages.

And why is that?

It's because we are all so influenced

by the fallen world that we live in

as well as our own struggles in the flesh.

We can fall into the exact same type of

problems.

With the current rate of divorce and the

dysfunction

that exists in families,

conflict is a word that is almost synonymous

with the words marriage and family today.

We hear constantly about married men

who are oppressive and insensitive

and chauvinistic, who are abusive and selfish

and uncaring toward their wives.

And then on the other hand,

we hear about married women who are overbe

aring

and nagging and complaining

and never in any way shape or form wanting to

submit

to their own husbands.

In fact, it's just the opposite,

wanting to run the show at the house.

Well, why is this?

Well, the general answer,

the quick answer of course is one little word

with three letters, sin, right?

And I think it will be very instructive

for us to go back to the beginning

to see how all this started.

And that brings us all the way back to Genesis

chapter three.

After the disastrous fall in the garden,

when God goes through pronouncing those curses

upon man

after the fall in verse 16,

he comes to the curse upon the woman.

And since we're starting with the ladies,

that's where we're gonna start here.

Look at what it says to the woman, he said,

"I will greatly multiply your pain in child

birth.

In pain, you will bring forth children."

Now, is that true 99% of the time?

No, that's true 100% of the time.

And there's a reason for that, this curse.

Yet, your desire will be for your husband

and he will rule over you.

Now, as a result of the fall,

the curse came upon the whole human race,

which dramatically altered the original design

of God.

Before sin entered into the picture,

there was a perfect union between Adam and Eve

,

no conflict at all between them ever.

But when sin came into the picture,

along with it came chaos and conflict,

which remains with us to this day.

In fact, there were several aspects of this

curse

and those who consider the fall in the garden

just a metaphor that didn't actually really

happen,

they cannot escape the fact of all these

aspects,

perfectly describe our experience as human

beings.

It's not a coincidence.

Number one, as a result of sin,

there was a separation between God and man.

Man was thrown out of the garden

and the natural, free and full communion

that man had with God was at that moment ended

.

And that's how we all come into this world now

as a result of the curse, naturally separated

from God.

There was also a separation between man and

nature.

No longer would nature yield up its bounty so

freely

to man without any effort on his part.

Now he had to go, the Bible says,

by the sweat of his brow, till the soil

and work very hard to get what once came so

freely.

And then thirdly, the curse brought about

a separation between man and woman.

And the key part of the curse

that I wanna bring your attention to today

is at the end of verse 16 in this curse upon

the woman.

Look at it again.

Yet your desire will be for your husband

and he will rule over you.

Here is where the problem began.

First look at this husband part at the end of

verse 16.

This is saying, woman, he will rule over you.

The word for rule here means reign.

It's a word of sovereignty.

So the curse said to the woman

that man as a result of the curse,

woman is going to dominate you.

And then look what it says right before this

in verse 16 to the woman.

Yet your desire will be for your husband.

Now what in the world does that mean?

Does that mean that she will desire him

physically?

I don't think that's a curse.

I mean, it certainly wasn't before the fall.

It was already true

that they desired one another physically

before the fall.

And it's also not that she would desire him

as protector and provider.

I mean, that too already existed

from the very beginning.

She was designed to compliment him

as he was in authority.

She was designed as the weaker vessel, but

naturally,

naturally for her, it was a delight for her

to have her husband care

and protect her before the fall.

She loved the role that God gave her.

So all of that already existed.

And it's not part of the curse.

But what your desire will be

for your husband means here in Genesis 3.16,

is that her desire now after the fall

would be to control the man.

That was not the original desire to dominate

the man.

Now that word for desire to prove this to you

is the same original Hebrew word

that's found over in Genesis 4.7.

And I want to show you this.

This word means to control, to master.

Genesis 4.7, middle of the verse,

you remember the story of Cain and Abel.

Cain slew his brother and murdered him.

And God is talking to Cain here.

And he says, "And if you do not do well,

sin is crouching at the door and it's desire."

See that word?

Same word is for you, but you must master it.

Same word there for desire,

meaning sin wanted to dominate Cain.

It wanted to rule him.

It wanted to force him to do certain things.

So part of the curse is that the woman

no longer willingly, eagerly, naturally

welcomes her role as being submissive to her

husband.

Now there's something in her.

After the fall that wants to control the man,

now her natural desire is to usurp the

authority

that her husband has been given by God.

And that is exactly what Eve did when she sin

ned.

When she was tempted by Satan,

the first thing she should have done

was gone to her husband and sought his wisdom.

And Satan knew that and that's why he isolated

her

and got her by herself and deceived her.

She got out of order.

She acted independently.

And outside of the loving submission

that should have been as a part of her

commitment

to her husband as a result,

she led the whole human race into sin

and we've been paying the price ever since.

In her sin, she exercised authority over the

man

and took things into her own hands.

And part of the curse now for all time after

that

is the innate depravity in all women that

seeks control.

And don't forget, who was held most

accountable

for this?

Not her.

She was not.

It was Adam.

Why was Adam?

If she was the one who did it,

why was Adam held most accountable

because of his role of authority

that God had designed to be in the position

of authority over her?

Go read Genesis three after Eve sinned

and they're hiding themselves in the garden.

Remember?

And God called out not to Eve.

Go read your Bible.

Call to the man.

Where are you?

He wasn't talking about geography.

He knew where he was geographically.

Where are you, Adam?

Now that you've disobeyed.

So Adam was held most responsible because of

his role.

This is why there's always,

does any of this sound familiar to you for one

thing?

But this is why there's always been a women's

liberation

movement or at least the reality

in the natural heart of every woman.

And that's why there's always been male chau

vinism

in the natural heart of every man as a result

of the curse.

We're born with this.

And it's always gonna be this way until the

king returns.

The natural depravity that every person is

born with

as a result of the fall reveals itself

in women seeking to rule

and men seeking to dominate and suppress.

Women as a result of the fall are not willing

naturally

to submit and follow God's design for marriage

but rather wanna exercise their individualism

and man as a result of the fall wants to abuse

his God given role of authority in a way

that is oppressive and sinfully dominating

over the woman.

That is the way we all are naturally wired

when we come into this world.

And thus the battle of the sexes began

with the fall in Genesis chapter three

and then children come into the family

and enter into this ring of the boxing match

between the husband and the wife.

And that's not the best place for the kids to

be.

Both sides selfishly fighting for their own

turf

and dysfunction in the family abounds.

And so a huge question has to be

how can a marriage survive this kind of

conflict

which is produced by our natural desires

as a result of the fall?

How can a marriage work?

And how can children find any peace

in this kind of environment?

And we've already answered that question

by two people who have come to faith in Christ

on his terms of Bible repentance and saving

faith

having been totally changed and transformed

by regeneration who are spirit filled, joyful,

thankful

and mutually submissive to one another.

In other words, two genuine Christians getting

married

are two lost people who started out lost like

me and Christie

and became Christians later in their marriage.

However, you got to get there

and God does that differently for everyone

but it's the two together.

That's the most optimum.

60 years ago, many more people in our country

stayed married until death rather than divor

cing.

I mean, Papa would go live in the shed if he

had to

but he just wouldn't get a divorce.

And now that was mainly because from our

nation's founding

up and through the 1960s, Christianity

had such an influence upon our society

that that just became the standard way of

conduct.

You just don't get a divorce.

That's what our society at the time expected

out of people.

That doesn't mean there was any less conflict

in marriages.

They just hated one another's guts

and lived in the same house.

Because of our natural falling condition,

there always has been and always will be

until Jesus returns this conflict,

especially in marriages where there is no

Christ.

So all of those things are the root causes

for the issues that exist in marriage

right up to this very day.

And who wants to argue

that what I just said is not the way it is?

Anybody up for that debate?

Now I don't see nobody raising their hands.

So let's go back to Ephesians five.

And again, here in our texts

is the only real solution to conflict in

marriage

because this is a spiritual issue.

And that's the way that it has to be dealt

with.

Only the power of the Holy Spirit

can reverse the curse in the home.

Even again, if there's just one believer

and the other is not, there's some hope.

But it's at the optimum level

where both spouses are walking in the spirit

and again, even because of our daily battle

with the flesh is not perfect,

but it's the best that it can be.

I have to repeat that.

Now remember, we're still just continuing

to lay a foundation here in preparation

for our study of this whole text concerning

the family.

And there's one more layer I wanna add to this

foundation

before we close out for today.

Expository preaching includes, very

importantly,

the historical setting of the time period

in which the text was written.

Very important.

So before we wrap this up,

it's gonna be instructive for us to consider

the kind of world that Paul was writing to

at the time when Ephesians was first written

down by him in pen.

Because for sure, here's what the argument

always comes up in our day.

Well, this, I mean, why submit to your

husbands?

I mean, that's ancient history, dude.

That doesn't comprehend the kind of world

that we live in.

I mean, we're modern people.

This is modern times.

And look, they did live in a different time

with different perspectives for sure.

That's why it's good to understand

the historical perspective.

And what will probably surprise you today

is the parallels that exist

between our time and that time.

And let's start first with the Jews

in the church at Ephesus.

Now remember, Ephesians was a circular letter

that not only went to the church in Ephesus,

but to all the churches around in Asia Minor.

The people who were Jewish in the church

needed to understand the New Testament

biblical view

of marriage and hence the texts we have before

us.

That's why he's writing about this.

The Jews had a very low view of women.

And it didn't come from the Bible.

In fact, remember that by the time of Jesus

and Paul,

a whole lot of Judaism didn't come from the

Bible.

As you know, by the time of the first century,

they had long developed a lot of their own

long developed

apostate religions with many laws and rules

and ideas

that they added to the Old Testament scripture

.

And part of that was a very low view of women.

In fact, there were Jewish prayers prayed

by Jewish men every single morning of their

lives.

And there is one line in that prayer

that demonstrates their attitude.

Look, Liz knows what it is.

This is what they prayed every single day.

God, I thank you that you have not made me

a Gentile, a slave, or a woman.

They prayed that every day.

They thought of women as lower on the human

level

than man, a woman was an object to them, not a

person.

A woman had no legal rights.

A woman could not bring anything into a court

of law.

I don't even think about it.

She was in the absolute power of her husband

to do with her whatever he wanted, whenever he

wanted.

And by the time of the New Testament among the

Jews,

divorce had become tragically easy and common.

And they supported it from a passage in the

Old Testament

because of course they were very serious

about attention to the Mosaic law.

Look in Deuteronomy 24, verse one.

It says, "When a man takes a wife and marries

her

and it happens that she finds no favor in his

eyes

because he has found some indecency in her

and he writes her a certificate of divorce

and puts it in her hands and sends her out

from his house."

Stop right there.

Read no further.

Now there's context.

If you keep reading, but these Jews stopped

the presses

right there where I stopped.

If your wife loses favor in your eyes

and you find some indecency in her,

other translations say uncleanness,

you can write her a divorce and send her right

out of the house.

Nevermind the fact there's a whole lot more to

that passage

that you can go read for yourself in context.

I don't have time to go through it,

go read it for yourself, but that was it.

Mind indecency and you're free to divorce her,

send her packing.

So then the question became,

what is meant by indecency?

Well, the strict rabbis,

most famously represented by a rabbi named

Shamai

said it refers to adultery

and that's all that it refers to in nothing

else.

But liberal rabbis said it refers to

absolutely anything.

And the vagueness they said is intended by God

to allow you to just fill in the blank

as to what indecency was.

Well, that's pretty convenient for the man,

right?

The famous rabbi Hillel held to this view

and this is what Hillel said that it meant.

A man could divorce his wife if she spoiled

his dinner.

He could divorce her if she spilled his dinner

because a spilled dinner is a spoiled dinner.

This is true.

He could divorce her if she put too much salt

on the dinner.

He could divorce her if she walked out in

public

with her head uncovered.

He could divorce her if she talked

with other men in the streets.

How about this one?

He could divorce her if she talked bad

about her mother-in-law.

And he even could divorce her

if she argued with him about anything.

And I could keep going, but you get the

picture.

Now, you just guess which one of those views

was most popular with the Jewish men.

Shema had very few followers.

Hillel had so many followers that divorce

had become extremely rampant

in the Jewish culture of Jesus' day.

Women were discarded all over the place

and they were always left with absolutely

nothing.

All a man had to do was hand her a bill of

divorce

and all it took was to get a rabbi, a man,

to write it in the presence of two other

witnesses,

two men, because we gotta follow the law,

and then there might be a little cash involved

with that deal, and then pow, it's done.

That was it.

Monetarily, the only thing required from the

man

was the return of the dowry.

You remember us going over that?

That's the bride price that the bride's family

would pay to the groom's family.

And it was a done deal.

You wanna divorce your wife?

No problem, go see the rabbi, do your

paperwork.

Now, there were different levels of views

during Jewish history, but I'm telling you,

at the time Paul wrote this, and in Jesus' day

,

this was the dominant view in Jewish culture.

And so the whole institution of marriage

was completely threatened, and at this time,

prostitution was rampant in Jesus' day,

even amongst the Jews.

Now, let's look at the Greeks,

because there were Gentile believers

in the church at Ephesus, as well as Jewish

believers

in the church at Ephesus, and all those

churches,

they were similar, but they didn't have them

old Testament difficulties and technicalities

to worry about.

They didn't have to misinterpret any verses

to justify what they were doing with the women

.

They just lived in total disregard

for any kind of marital fidelity whatsoever.

In fact, prostitution was an essential part of

Greek life.

Remember, we studied this.

Their religions were filled with prostitutes.

Remember what they would do

in their religious ceremonies in their temples

?

They would commune with the gods through dr

unkenness

and through communing with the temple prostit

utes.

That's what they did on a regular basis.

One famous Greek orator said this,

we have courtesans for the sake of pleasure,

we have concubines for the sake of daily cohab

itation,

and we have wives for the purpose

of having children legitimately

and having a faithful caretaker for our

household affairs.

That's how they all did.

And that says about all you need to know

about how it was for the wives in Greek

culture.

You have the babies pay the bills, take care

of the house.

That's your deal.

The Greek man found his pleasure

and even his friendship outside of the

marriage.

And they didn't even have a legal procedure

for divorce.

You just put 'em out if you got tired of it.

And these leftist feminist women

complain about their situation today.

Try going back to those days and being a woman

and see how you like it.

And my point in pointing out the historical

perspective here

is to get you to understand

as Paul is laying down these principles

that we're learning here in Ephesians,

he's really running head on

into this kind of culture that I just

described to you

in this particular period of time.

And that is also why as Paul writes to the

early church

in all of his letters,

he emphasizes the sin of fornication,

sex outside of marriage so often.

And you're like, man, he's always talking

about that.

Well, because this is what he was dealing with

in the culture.

The issue of sexual sin comes up again and

again

in the epistles because the world of his day

was so dominated by those things.

And it's the same way in our culture today,

isn't it?

That's very similar.

It's hard to remember that when you read Paul

's letters,

how common all this was.

Married women were uneducated.

They were used for keeping house and having

children.

Slavery was also rampant.

And of course, the slave girls were also used

for one purpose, by the man.

And listen, I promise you,

I'm giving you the very tamest version here

of everything that was happening back then,

especially with those Greeks.

Then you go over Rome.

They just took things to a whole 'nother level

.

There were just no boundaries

when it came to immorality in Rome.

I mean, when you read Roman history,

I have a book at my house,

history of the Roman emperors.

Wow, insane craziness.

They even had a rise of feminism in Roman

culture.

I think the ladies must have just got enough

of it

at some point and some of the ladies quit

having babies.

And they built up their physical strength

'cause they wanted to compete with the men.

And they didn't wanna be at home.

They wanted to dominate and boy,

they started diving into law and politics

and they wanted to be defiant.

And so they started charging into areas

where only men up until that time had been

allowed to go.

The Roman writers say they took delight in fe

ats of strength

and one Roman writer criticizing the women,

who he wrote, joined in men's hunts with spear

in hand

and breast exposed as they took to pig

sticking.

I mean, these ladies were wild.

And this time period was wild.

I'm trying to get you to see, man,

unhappy marriages in Paul's day

to which he's writing these instructions

of God's way of marriage were just innumerable

.

But you really think about it.

It sounds a whole lot of familiar

to what we have today, doesn't it?

With the wildness of, I mean,

think about the way TV used to be

compared to the way TV is now.

You just think about that alone, right?

And so it's this kind of background

really similar to our society that Paul writes

and look,

he is not going to say anything in these

verses

that's anywhere close

to what most of the people believe in his day.

In fact, here in Ephesians and really all of

his letters,

he's calling upon men and women to live a kind

of life

that was absolutely the opposite

of what they had been involved in.

And in preaching these exact same texts today,

which is so fascinating to me,

that Paul wrote to the church in his day,

guess what?

We are doing the same thing right here in our

church today

in this church and many churches that's just

like ours

that are striving to follow God's way

according to God's word.

And that's why, why submit to your own

husbands

sounds so crazy to the modern ear.

That's counter-cultural.

You're not going to agree

with what I preached to you out of this text

if you do not have an internal commitment

by way of saving faith to the glory of God,

to live for the glory of God.

If you have not been redeemed and have a

desire

to strive to live in obedience to the word of

God,

you are not going to be interested at all

in maintaining these biblical standards

that I'm fixing to preach in the Sundays ahead

because they're just as counter-cultural today

as they were counter-cultural in Paul's time.

Nothing has changed on that.

It's important to realize that what we have

going on today

is a whole bunch of selfish individuals

wanting to do whatever they wanna do.

That's the culture we live in.

And right now at this point in our nation's

history,

again, the cultural restraints that we have

had

in our society after having been founded

by people who were biblical Christians,

those restraints are gone.

The church has steadily been losing its

influence.

It's had upon this society for the last 60

years or so.

So those restraints now are more off

than they've ever been.

And is the reality not clear to see?

41% of all marriages, first marriages end in

divorce,

like I said last time.

Second marriages, 60 to 70% end in divorce.

We are the first nation in the history of the

world

to change legally the definition of marriage

away from God's definition of marriage,

one man, one woman for life.

First nation in the history of the world do

that.

And how does that work out for us?

Well, I can tell you that the transgender

madness

is a result of that.

It's a byproduct of that.

What I'm wanting you to understand

before we get into this text, church,

is that God has a totally different plan

and design for the marriage and family

than the world has.

Completely different, sounds completely wild

to people outside of the church.

And it can basically be characterized as this,

an authority and submission plan.

That's what we're gonna get into.

Again, there is an equal submission

between two Christian married people,

just as there is equal submission

between all Christian people, but also,

God has designed in marriage,

there is someone responsible to lead

and someone responsible to follow.

Is that too hard to understand as an order?

It has nothing to do with anybody being

inferior.

It has nothing to do at all

with the woman being inferior to the man.

Therefore, she is to submit.

It has everything to do with God design

harmony

within the marriage relationship.

He is saying to us in his word,

if you want it the best it can be,

here's how to do it, and here's the order

that it needs to go with.

And both need to be at the same time,

saved and doing it this way.

The woman is not to seek to usurp the husband

's authority

and dominate him, and the husband is not to

abuse his authority

by acting harsh and mean

and all out of order with his wife.

It's that simple.

And when God is not, God's design is not

followed

in the home, there is chaos in the home

because of the effects of the curse

that I defined to you at the beginning of the

sermon.

Folks, is the proof of that not very clear to

see

in our society?

Remember, when you boil down every argument,

it always reveals selfishness at one level or

another.

I'm not getting my way.

Who people trying to dominate one another?

It's the curse of Genesis three being played

out

in real time continuously in marriages all

around the world.

And again, the only way to reverse that curse

is for two married people to come to Christ

and both of them striving to live obediently

to God's design for marriage.

And that starts with believing the gospel.

That starts with believing in the person in

work of Christ.

And this Lord supper right here that we're

fixing to take

is a picture of Christ's work upon the tree

in his substitutionary atonement for all

who put their faith and trust in him.

That's what this is a picture.

That's where it has to start in marriage.

It's the only people who are gonna even desire

to follow God's way or those who have been

redeemed by him

and place their saving faith and trust in him.

So let's begin as we always do

and look at 1 Corinthians 11.

And again, we have to get our bearings

straight here.

What is Paul talking about here starting in

verse 27?

Well, the Corinthians were all out of order.

I mean, they were getting wild at the Lord's

Supper.

It was crazy.

You can go read about it for yourself

and Paul is desiring to instruct them, hey,

y'all need to tighten this up.

This is getting wild.

Now, my reading this is not saying to you,

hey, you guys are getting wild with the Lord

Supper.

Y'all need to, that's not my intention when we

read this.

My intention is for you to see the gravitas,

the weightiness of how God views the church

to celebrate the Lord's Supper.

And it's not somber.

And as Derek Thomas said, it's not as like a

dark cloud

comes into the congregation and oh, we're not

worthy.

Of course you're not worthy.

Of course I'm not worthy to take the Lord's Su

pper.

Of course we're not, but we're worthy in

Christ.

And that's the only way we're worthy.

And so with great joy and exuberance,

if you're a believer, you should wanna come

with thanksgiving in your heart

and joy in your heart to take the Lord's Su

pper

because he saved you.

That's the intention.

But you can walk and chew gum at the same time

.

You can have that as a believer on the one

hand

but I don't have the other hand.

Recognize this is reverence I need to be

having.

This is serious stuff.

And let's see how serious it was.

Let's read it together.

Therefore Paul told those Corinthians,

"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."

Again, that means they die.

I mean, if you know, if you act consistently

and long enough as a Christian out of order,

God will take you out.

He'll kill you and bring you home to heaven.

You're saved but you've been out of order too

long

and too consistently out of order.

Says it right there.

Sick, chastisement.

The Lord loves those he chases like a parent

chases a child when they get out of order.

It's the same thing.

So for us, my intention is to get you to see

the seriousness.

And then also as I said earlier, hey,

if you're not a believer, don't come down here

to take this supper because a serious business

,

then you're saying I'm coming anyway

'cause this is what I wanna do or whatever

your reason is.

I don't care what God says.

I don't care that this is for believers only.

You see what I'm saying?

That can be applied here to that scripture as

well.

So let's do this.

Our heads and close our eyes.

There's an old Baptist used to say,

time to do business with the Lord.

What does that mean?

That means we recognize every single day

we battle with our flesh, the world of flesh

and the devil are constantly our struggle.

And so we ask for temporal daily forgiveness

because of the sin that we battle is saved by

grace

but sin are still and while we do that

and we confess those things,

we then turn to Christ and see that in Christ

all of our sins have already been forgiven

and all of his righteousness put on our

account

and we glory in the gospel.

So take a moment with that and then I'm going

to pray

and then invite all of God's people to come

and be served the Lord's Supper.