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.