You Shall Bless The Lord

So this morning we're going to be continuing our study of Deuteronomy chapter 8. This will be the last sermon on this passage for a little while. I will not be preaching the next three weeks. I will be out of town the next, me and my family will be out of town the next two weeks. I will be back in three Sundays, but we'll have gotten back just the day before. So Eric will be preaching twice and then Timothy while I'm gone. So we're going to be away from Deuteronomy for a little while. We'll come back to it. But anyway, this is sort of part two of last week's sermon. Last week, we saw how God sustained Israel through the wilderness. Remember, he said that their feet didn't swell and their clothes didn't wear out, but also that he tested them. He made them hungry and he humbled them. And the purpose of that was to prepare them to trust him as they entered the promised land. It was a season of scarcity that they went through in the wilderness. They didn't have homes. They didn't have regular food. They didn't have an abundance of food. They had just what they needed.

To survive. But their life wasn't always going to be that way. They were going to go into a land of abundance. And so God was teaching them by testing to trust him and to obey him, whether they had a bunch or whether they had just enough. And you can put it in other words by saying they were being tested to see if they would be faithful with a little. So that when they were given much, They would have the habit or the trajectory of being faithful with much. And so our passage this morning is the other side of that coin. Last week it was focused on the scarcity, trusting God. And this week it's going to be focused on abundance. And in both circumstances, God's people, we, are still called to obey him. And so as we study this passage, my hope is that God will help us to see the blessings that he's poured out in our lives, just as he did for the Israelites, and that he would help us to praise him and not to take it for granted or forget him.

Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord from Deuteronomy 8, verses 6-10. A land where you will eat without scarcity, in which you will not lack anything. A land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So, this passage begins, as I said, with the refrain of obedience to the Lord. This is the staple of the Christian life. obedience to God in every circumstance. It's incredible to me how in my own heart, how easily I can make excuses for why I can't or why I didn't. And sometimes if I get more frustrated, why I shouldn't have to. Obey God, that is.

And I trust that you are like me, that this is a temptation that you face, that as you consider your own lives, you see the ways in which you fall short and the ways in which this is where we should be, but this is where we are. And the reason there's a gap is not because of God, but because of you. And so we're tempted to ignore or to make excuses or to blame shift. And really what's going on in that circumstance is that Satan is tempting us. And he has so many ways of tempting us to turn us away from God. He uses our work or stress at work. He uses our health or sickness. He uses our finances. He uses our kids. He uses our marriage. He uses our parents. He uses our politics and society. He uses all kinds of things to just keep us constantly flitting about, paying attention, wondering, worrying, being frustrated. And I want you to see those things, though they arise in all of our lives at various points, I do want you to see them as both real and needing to be

dealt with or acknowledged, and also a distraction, okay? They do serve a dual purpose. God means to teach us to bear up under these things, and Satan means to turn us out of God's way by these things. And so Moses exhorts the people to keep the commandments of the Lord their God, to walk in his ways and to fear him. It's an interesting thing to kids. who are coming of age. This passage, I don't know that I mentioned it last week, but what's going on right now between wandering in the wilderness and coming into the promised land is sort of a coming of age. It's moving from being a child to being an adult, from having governors to having freedom. Which one is easier? I think when you're young, you think being an adult is easier because adults have freedom. They can do whatever they want.

They can eat whatever they want. They can spend their time however they want. They just can do, they don't need to ask anybody anything, except their bosses for time off. But I think that when we have lived as adults for a while, we realized that there were blessings of our childhood that we didn't see as blessings when we were going through them. We just saw them as restraints and constraints and keeping us from those good things that we wanted and deserved. What I want to tell you is you will grow up. You will grow up. And you will get the freedom that you want. What I want you to know also, what I want you to know about that freedom is it is a blessing from God. But it does come with responsibilities, many of which children don't understand. And it's okay that children don't understand the burdens and the responsibilities and the costs that their parents bear.

All the while, the parents are trying to figure out how to prepare their kids to bear those sorts of responsibilities and costs when that time comes. And that's what's going on in last week's passage and this passage, is God is preparing his children who've wandered. I mean, if you read this passage and we're like, oh, brooks of water, and there's water, and there's hills, and there's wheat and barley. I mean, who even eats barley? Unless we make beer with it. I mean, who knows what barley is? And I don't even like figs. And pomegranates are not worth the work, you know? And olive oil and honey, you know? But if you had eaten manna your entire life, do you know how wonderful this sounds to them? I mean, whatever you can think of as like the best food, whatever you would just salivate over and look forward to, that is what they're being told they're about to receive. Their freedom is coming.

Their blessing of God is upon them. And with that comes the responsibility to continue to serve God. When you were without, you tend to ask God for the things that you see as necessities. But when you have an abundance, they can serve as a distraction to you. How to get it, how to keep it. Therefore, you shall keep the commandment of the Lord your God to walk in his ways and to fear him. Whether you have a little bit and whether you're a child or whether you have a bunch and you're an adult. We ought to be serving God and obeying him in every circumstance. Think for a minute what the anticipation would have been like for the Israelites. If you were to read this passage and the one that came before it, I took you through the wilderness, I tempted you, I allowed you to be tempted, I tested you, I humbled you, I gave you manna, but I let you be hungry, but I gave you clothes that didn't wear out and feet that didn't swell, but now...

You're coming into this wonderful land. How hard would it be to pay attention to obeying God with all of this good stuff coming? Think of kids as Christmas and it comes. Maybe not your kids, but maybe society, maybe your kids. But the anticipation of the good thing, my birthday's coming, my good thing's coming, I'm gonna get what I want. Are those pleasant kids? They're not always pleasant kids. You'll find as a Christian that You want to give good gifts to your children. Using Christmas as an example, you want to give good gifts to your children. Not just on Christmas, but in life, you want to give them good gifts. But you also recognize that as you give them good gifts, those good gifts become really big distractions to them. Some of you might keep the presents out from under the tree until the night before. Some of you might put them out weeks in advance and then guard them.

so they don't go over and pick them up and shake them and peel the corners and look and tell each other, well, I saw mom bring that into the house when you weren't around. I know what's in that box. You hear them fight about and argue and come up with a very elaborate system that serves them and no one else about who gets to open their presents first. Blessings can be a real distraction from obedience. And that's what Israel is facing here is a big distraction, a potentially big distraction. This good land full of water and fountains and springs as opposed to the wilderness and the hard ground and the desert sort of area they've been in. Green, lush, fruitful, enjoyable land. So they're to remember the Lord to keep his commandments and to walk in his ways. And that's a good exhortation to us. You parents, as your kids get older and you're not...

teaching them basic life skills as they leave your house, as your kids have grandkids, your grandkids. What do you want for those kids? I'm sure there's tons. We have lists. I have lists. My wife and I, we have long lists of what we want for our kids. But at the top of that list, the top of your parents' list was that you would serve God and that you wouldn't let life grow up around you and choke out your love for Jesus Christ and your obedience to him. That's what you want for your kids. That's what you pray for them. I mean, you want them to have a good job and you want them to have a good house. You want them to have a good spouse. You want them to be blessed with kids. You want a lot of good things for them. But if you had to give, if they were to go without something, what you wouldn't want them to go without is the Lord Jesus Christ. You wouldn't want them to go without a desire to serve him. If they had to lose their job, you'd rather that than them lose their faith.

And so as Israel comes into this land, they need to keep their eye on the ball. They need to remember the Lord who's given them all of these things, that they didn't earn them, they didn't deserve them, that they don't get to keep them by their own might, but that they're to remember God. So the question comes to you and me, how do you remember God? When you eat your meals, do you pray and thank God for the food that you have? I trust that most, if not all of you do. Are your kids always thankful for the food? Are you always thankful for the food? Should you be? It's a really simple example. Are you thankful for the food? Are you thankful for the work that goes into preparing the food? Or do you need to read the story of the little red hen? All the parents laughed and all the kids. How many of your kids come up and say, what's for dinner and when's dinner? I'm hungry.

and they were outside running around and playing, and they come in to let you know they have a need, and then you're like, it's not ready yet, and then they're gone, and you're like, but there's all this. Are you thankful, not just for the end product, but for the work that goes into it? Those of you who have, you know, maybe it's not your night to do dinner, are you thankful for the people who didn't play outside so that they could, so you could have dinner, set the table? You see, gratitude, there's a lot to be thankful for, but we don't think in terms of, of all of the things and all the work and all the care and all the love that went into providing for us, we just received the good thing like it fell down out of heaven, except it's way better than manna. The way you eat at the table, just as an outworking or an example of it, communicates gratitude or ingratitude. Whether you, like, it's almost like when you say, at least in my house, we're gonna pray, it's almost like, runners on your marks.

And then you pray, and you say amen, and it's like, go! Because all the arms go, you know, to the whatever. And we're constantly fighting this stuff back in our house. And the reason is because that's not a grateful attitude. That's a greedy attitude, right? And I have to trust that my kids and my table aren't the only places where this happens. If you're grateful, if you're thankful, it will be worked out in your manners. your consideration of other people, particularly those who worked hard to serve the meal. You see, gratitude isn't just something you feel inside and you go, yeah, I'm really thankful, but I'm also really hungry. Israel was about to receive a great blessing, an abundance, a land where you will eat without scarcity. That's like a teenage boy's dream. And it is God who gives us these good things. And it is our danger to miss all of the...

all of his mercy to us and giving it to us none of us have ever had to eat manna none of us have ever had to eat like flavorless gruel not that that's what manna was but like if if you want to know just like just eat oatmeal for a month morning noon and night and you don't get to put all your stuff in it just a little bit not enough to really do it any good no peanut butter no butter No big spoons of brown sugar or white sugar and fruit and nuts. And I don't know what else you guys put in your oatmeal. And not the instant stuff either. Just eat it for a month. It's just a little bit of something. And then get a nice meal at the end of it. And then have manners while you eat it. It'll help your budget. It'll help your gratitude. It'll help your thankfulness. But none of us want to do that. We're all like, yeah, it's so funny.

She would suggest that we would go without such abundance. But Israel really had gone without abundance. For 40 years, some of them had only ever known manna. And they were about to not just get a little bit of blessing, but a whole land full of it. And so the temptation to forget God and to forget that manna was immense. Do any of you have grandparents or great-grandparents that grew up in the Depression? What were they like? I didn't know my grandparents that grew up in the Depression. What were your grandparents who grew up in the Depression like? Miserly. Conservative, I think is the... Yes? Yeah. Five-cent tips, there you go. Yeah. What would you say? Made use of everything, never got rid of anything. Levi? Yeah? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Levi said, wash the used aluminum foil. Do you know, some of you who know Mike Bowles, like my dad, that that's actually one of the things he noticed and made him fall in love with his wife. He was over at her house before they were married or really dating. And they, you know, she's, they're in their 60s. So they're not, they're not, their children, their parents went through the depression, you know. And he was over there for dinner and they had taken the aluminum foil off of a dish and they took it over to the sink and they washed it up, dried it, folded it, and put it back in the drawer. And he goes.

That's, we speak the same language. Is there anyone here, anyone here who saves their aluminum foil? Marianne does. There we go. You don't wash it and dry it though. My point is, why do the children of the depression live that way? It's because they learned what it was to go without. They knew what it was like to have. and to be thankful and see the utility of every little bit they had. And they were thankful for it. We're so far away from that in our society. And if you go home and start saying, I think the pastor said we have to start saving our aluminum foil and washing our Ziploc bags. I don't care if you do that or not. That's not holiness. Praising God for what you have, that's holiness.

And if one expression of that is that you want to be a little more conservative with the things you've got at home, that's fine. What I really care about is that you not forget God, but that you praise him for what he's given to you because no one in this room has lived through a season like manna. We just haven't. Maybe our grandparents have, but they're so far removed from us that those are just warm, fuzzy stories about how it used to be. But Israel is moving from how it used to be to a whole new thing. And their work is to not forget God, but to keep his commandments and to walk in his ways, to see that his provision in the wilderness and his abundance in the land, both were meant to draw the people near to him, not lead them astray. I think abundance is a greater temptation than poverty as regards relating to the Lord.

And so the question has to be asked, if it's such a temptation to us, why does God give us abundance? I don't know. Why do you give your kids Christmas gifts and birthday presents? Remember I described how they behave around those events and it's not always pleasant or fun. They're not always grateful. They don't behave how you want at the dinner table around the Christmas time. So why do you give them good things? Why don't you just feed them oatmeal for a month? Because someone would look down on you if you didn't. You'd be weird if you didn't get, right? No, it's because you love them and you want to give them good gifts. And in giving them good gifts, you want them to learn how to receive them with gratitude, right? That's actually what you're trying to teach them. And that's the exact same thing that God's trying to teach his people here. Don't forget me. I've given you these things. Don't forget me. Don't forget what I've done for you. And so you and I need to learn this lesson. We need to keep learning this lesson.

If we are without something that we want, we ought to bless God. If we're like the Israelites in the wilderness, if you're in a season like that right now where you're feeling in an area, we don't have what we need, you ought to bless God and thank him for it, the season that you're in and for what you do have, for your feet not swelling and for your shirts not wearing out. I promise you there are things like that in your life, even in the midst of trial. On the other side, if you have an abundance, first you have to look to see it, not take it for granted.

But once you've recognized it and seen it, you ought to praise God for it. That's what our passage tells us to do. When you've eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless the Lord your God. The title of our sermon is, You Shall Bless the Lord Your God. As we see his provision in our lives, not that everything is perfect, not that everything is finished, not that everything is as it should be, but there are good things that we have in abundance. We ought to praise God for them. Do you know how much more work it was going to be for the Israelites to live in the land versus wandering in the wilderness? I mean, packing up and having tents and that type of stuff, it's a lot of work. But all of your food, it just falls right down out of heaven for you every day. What do vineyards and fig trees and pomegranates and all these things require of them? And olive trees and honey. A whole lot of work. A whole lot of new work. What's that? Bee stings, yes.

Yes, bee stings. Plenty of temptation to grumble and complain about the good stuff that you have. But it's wrong. It's wrong to complain about the good things that God gives you, even if it's not all set in stone just exactly how it should be or will be one day. And even if that comes with work and with bee stings, we should praise God for his blessings in our lives. And so you really do, as a Christian, have to look for the blessings in God's life, in your life. You might look at the blessings here. and say, do I have all of these things? And I would say, yes, you do, but not in the exact same way. Meaning, I'm saying to you with full confidence in what I'm saying, you have an abundance of blessing in your life. Every one of you does. None of us has any right to say, I don't have any good things from God. Even the unbeliever has good things from God for a season.

and fails when he doesn't praise God for those good things. And so we who are his people have no place to stand and say, well, I don't have what I need. I don't have the good stuff. The people around me do. The people who came before me do. I hope the people who come after me will, but I don't. There's no place for us to stand and to say that or to believe that. That is sin. It's blindness. And so along with God's blessings come work and the reality of... living in a sinful world still. But this land that they were entering into wasn't meant to be heaven, but to be a foreshadowing of heaven. They didn't live in imperfection, and neither do we. So in that sense, we don't have what this passage points toward, but neither did they. And so I'm asking, do you have the blessings of God in your life? This land was meant to be for them a sort of holding tank.

a place for God's people to go and to dwell and to receive the blessings of God until such time as he welcomed them into his presence. And we have a similar holding tank. Though we live in a fallen world, though things are imperfect, though we and the people around us are sinful and fail in many ways, we are members of God's family. We live in his house, and he gives to all of us what we need in abundance. And so that's true of you and that's true of me right now. What is our promised land? That's a good question, isn't it? What is the corollary between their land and these promises and these blessings and our lives today? Is America the promised land? Nope, sure isn't. Never has been actually, never will be. Is the land that's spoken of geographically in this passage still that promised land that we should aspire and attain to?

go back to and think, oh, look at the blessings. No. That land, as I've said, was a holding tank for them to learn to walk in God's ways until he called them home. Our holding tank is the church. God pours out his blessings on us through his people, through the church. It's a crazy thing to say in our day and age because nobody thinks of the church that way. We think of it sort of as a place you go and you... You sit and listen and you say hi, and maybe they give your kids some good moral teaching, perhaps. And then you go away. But we don't think of it. Maybe we do. Maybe some of us do. But the church at large in America doesn't think of it as a family, as a household of faith, as a place you turn when you need help, when you need encouragement, a place that you bless when you have an abundance. We don't think of it in those terms. We should.

When we have questions, when we have needs, when we're down, when we don't know what to do, when we're worried, when we're sick, the church is the place we ought to turn to for support, for help, for encouragement, for provision. That is what the church is supposed to be. When we don't have the things that we need, it doesn't mean that God has ordained that we have to go without them. He then gives us his church and has given us his church and his people to bring our requests to and say, hey, I don't have this thing. We don't know what to do here. We don't know how to...

work our way through this. Can you help us? Will you help us? Point us in the right direction. Tell us where to go. Recalibrate our way of thinking and our priorities. If we need to repent, please tell us where and how. Show us. The church really ought to be a land flowing with milk and honey, with pomegranates and fig trees and olive oils and honey and copper and iron and all of those sorts of land blessings, all of those sorts of treasures, all of those sorts of good things. ought to exist amongst us and for the benefit of us. And so if you have those things and you see someone in need, it's not good enough to say, I hope it goes well. It's incumbent upon you to provide the thing that you have that they need. That's actually what you're supposed to do. And I'll go further and say, if you do that, it won't only be a blessing to you or to them, it will be a blessing to you.

After all, Jesus told us it's better to give than to receive. And so we ought to be a people who read this passage and say, God has given me particular blessings, us an abundance of blessings, and we ought to share them with each other as anyone has need. So you should ask yourself, what do I bring to the table? What gifts has God given me? What resources has God given me? And who is the beneficiary of them? If your family is the only beneficiary of your gifts, you're failing. They ought to be the beneficiaries of your gifts, but not the only ones. And so the church ought to be a blessing like this to us. There are many other blessings that you could give thanks to God for. Your marriage is a blessing. Is it perfect? Nope. Would you do it again if you could? If you could go back and say, now in all I know, would I sign up for this again? Yes.

Children, we're told explicitly in Scripture, are a blessing. They're also a ton of work and they make you irritated and frustrated and they make you worry and they give you gray hair or white hair or no hair. They cause conflict in the marriage. They cost money. They keep you from doing things. And they're a blessing. Do you thank God for your children when they're not doing the right thing? Are they only a blessing when they do the right thing? Do you only appreciate them and love them when they do the right thing? Your job, your home, your vehicles, your health, these are all blessings from God. And you wouldn't have any of these good things if it hadn't come to you from the hand of God. And that really is the lesson you have to learn because none of us lived through a season like the Depression where we actually couldn't go get what we wanted. But it hasn't always been the way it is for us, for mankind or even for Americans, where you just can go and choose and be discriminating and have tastes and preferences and care where your food was grown and how it was grown.

whether it was fair trade or all that type of stuff. That's really just, we are so far down the line of like, you get to be picky about stuff. It really does kill our gratitude. Our passage ends by saying, when you have eaten and are satisfied, you shall bless God. Bless the Lord your God for the good land which he has given to you. And so you ought to make it a habit to count your blessings, to revel in them, to enjoy them, and to thank God for them. What do you thank God for regularly? Heartfelt. We all have our rote prayers, and then we hear our kids praying our rote prayers, and we're like, oh, it doesn't sound sincere when they say it. And then we have to wonder, is it sincere when I say it? Sincerity doesn't come from having new words every mealtime. Sincerity comes from the heart. It comes from being actually thankful for what you've received. It comes from a knowledge that you don't have to have what it is that you have.

I remember we had a brother in the church years ago, and his prayers used to irritate me, if I can say as much, because he would pray for a long time, and he would be thankful for things that were so common. It kind of drove me nuts. I was like, yes, and we are thankful, but can we eat? We're just being thankful for our food right now. And he was a blessing to me because his prayers, regularly disciplined me. They slowed me down and they made me go, yeah, I do have that. Okay, yeah, mm-hmm. I suppose I should thank God for it at some point. It was convicting to me. What do you thank God for? I'm afraid many of our prayers when we bring them to God are, and prayer is one of the principal ways we thank God directly for his blessings in our lives.

I think we're more inclined to pray and to bring our requests and our needs and our worries and our fears to God. And that's appropriate to do. I'm not saying it's not. But we ought to bring our gratitude to him as well and regularly. And so what are you thankful for? Are any of us thankful for anything? So what are you thankful for? It's a real question. What I mean to say is this passage says when you've eaten and satisfied, then you ought to bless God. And so I'm asking you to bless God. Actually, now, what are you thankful for? You don't have to raise your hand. You can just say it. Okay. Your job. Job, kids, church, your country. What'd you say? Yeah. Do you all love your jobs? You who are thankful for your jobs? Do you mothers love your jobs? Mary doesn't. Not always. Not every time. It's your fault, Griffin. And Oakland. But she is thankful.

She's just not good at it. She's not good at being thankful or good at doing it. And she's just like the rest of us. What else are you thankful for? I know we're reformed. You're not supposed to do this, but seriously, the sun, you're thankful for the sun. Last week, 105 degree heat index. Did anybody say, thank you? Yes. Some of you were like, I can't wait till it gets cold. And some of you were like, I can't, I hate it when it's cold. And it's like, are you ever happy with the weather? Like, okay, but. I understand you're reformed, you're stuffy, and you're like supposed to just be thankful in your heart. But that's not what they're commanded to do. Eat and be satisfied and bless the Lord who's given you these things. So what are you blessing God for? What are you thankful for? Are any of you kids thankful for your parents? Yeah. What? Not enough. Are any of you Abusaras thankful for your miserable dad who's grumpy all the time?

I don't know what you all think of me and what you might think I'm like as a husband or a father, but my wife and kids could tell you probably a different story about what I'm actually like to live with and be around. And they would not, I don't think, say I'm a particularly grateful or thankful or exuberant man. I'm not just thankful for my wife and for my kids and for you guys. I'm thankful that you guys put up with me. And nobody puts up with me as much as my wife and my kids. And I am one to have to be put up with sometimes. Timothy's had to put up with me a little bit. I am thankful, but I don't tend to express it. Some of you guys know where I came from and you know what my life was like, but I really didn't, I didn't come from the church and I didn't come from a happy place and I didn't come from a home with a mom and a dad. I didn't come from a place with siblings and I didn't come from a place with money.

And I look back on my life when I was in a teenager and I was in my early 20s, late teens, early 20s, and how stupid and foolish and wicked I was. And to have the life I have now, there's no way it makes any sense. And I don't thank God for it the way I should. It ought not to be that way for us. We ought to be a grateful people. We ought to take the things that God gives to us and bless him for it and to thank him for it and to cultivate it for him. But if you feel entitled, to what you have right now, you'll never be thankful. If all you can see is your burdens, which are real, you'll never be thankful. And so whether you have a lot, whether you have a little, or whether you're going through it right now, whether you're in a season of reprieve, you have things to bless God with. And you will either do it from a happy heart or you won't. And the things that you bless God for,

will be a lot of work for you, and you won't be perfectly faithful, or maybe sometimes even close to faithful in your stewardship and your management of it. You should still bless God for it. You could not have it. Could you even imagine not having it? Imagine how unhappy you'd be then, how difficult life would be without your spouse or without your kids or without some of the lesser blessings, without this church. Who wants to even think of it? Well, then we ought to praise God for it. Shouldn't we? If you're angry, you're frustrated or bitter or fearful, the way you fight those things is by praising God. You don't hunker down and bear through it and hope it passes. You do hope it passes, the difficulties. You hope that God delivers you from them. But the way you fight it in the moment is to thank God for the good things you do have. You see, we've always got these scales going on in our life, and we're always putting stuff on the hard side.

The burdensome, the not right, that needs to be worked on, the broken, the sinful, the heavy side. But we really do need to come over to the other side and point out and put it on the scale, the many good things that God's given to us. Every single day, every single day. How else is that scale ever gonna flip the way it should be to reflect reality, which is that you have more blessings than burdens. You have more blessings than burdens. And as you grow, the blessings will multiply. And as you grow, the burdens will fade away. They really will. Until such time as you come to stand before God and they're all gone. And then it's just blessing and joy and peace and rest and praise for eternity. So don't spend your life telling me what's wrong. There's plenty that's wrong.

in your life, in our country, in your families, with your kids, with your work, all, I know, I know, I know. Tell each other what's good, what God has done for you. That's what we ought to do today at the picnic. We all have our conversations and our worries and our fears, but wouldn't it be a blessing to go away from the picnic knowing, having your heart full of the blessings that you have and that other people have told you about, that they have? It doesn't mean there aren't burdens. I mean, none of us are dumb enough to think that, are we? Oh, he's happy. Their life must be perfect. It is actually a danger. I mean, that is what the danger of social media and curated lives that we try to present to each other is we actually are foolish enough to believe it, but it doesn't make it true. So if you're inclined to believe that if someone says, God's been good to me, that you think that that means that they're like living heaven on earth right now, they're not.

Well, I don't know if they're miserable or not, but they might be. But that doesn't mean there aren't burdens. What it means maybe is that they're handling their burdens by faith, that they're letting the Lord carry their burdens because they can't carry them themselves. All they do is stumble over them and trip over them and grumble and complain about them, skin their knee on them. We ought to be that sort of blessing to one another. You ought to be that sort of blessing at work. When you go to work, when you go to the park, when you go out and live your life, there's no difficulty in finding people who can say what's wrong. The hard thing is to find people who say what's good. And we, who've eaten and have been satisfied, ought to be the sort of people who say what's good. Deal? Let's pray. Father, we do bless you and thank you for the good things you've given to us. We thank you for our spouses. We thank you for our kids. We thank you for this church. We thank you for our parents.

We thank you for our health, that you've given us life and breath. We thank you for the abundance of food you give us. That when we go to picnics and potlucks, we can have anything we want. We know that we have burdens and there are trials in this world and that we are called to persevere through them. But we pray that you'd lift us up out of that weight. Make us light in the Lord and give us joy. Help us to praise you and to speak to our families and to our friends and to one another about the good things you've done and are doing in our lives. Open our eyes wide and help us to see this good land that you've given to us and use it to draw us near to you, not to distract us and take us away, but to call us back to you to praise you. Help us to be an encouragement to one another to this end.

Strengthen us to do your will, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Would the officers please come forward now? I want to read to you now the words of institution from 1 Corinthians chapter 11, the words of institution of the Lord's Supper. The Apostle Paul says, For I received from the Lord that which I delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. In the same way, he took the cup also after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat the bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. 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. And so at the Corinthian church, they were using this meal. And at that time, it was probably more of a meal than bread in a small cup. They were using it to get drunk. They were using it to oppress the poor who didn't have food. They weren't sharing. They weren't grateful. They had many other sins, but they weren't thankful for what God had done for them. And so as you come to this meal, as you're presented with the body, the bread and the cup representing the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, what you're presented with is the solution to your problem. Whatever other problems you've got, this is the solution to your biggest problem, the problem of your sin before a holy God. You can stand your whole life in your own strength, but you won't stand for a second before God in your own strength.

If you're going to stand before God and be welcomed into his heaven to receive his eternal blessings, it'll come to you as a gift through the body broken and the blood shed of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. That's the only way you can come to him. And so that's something to be thankful for. That as we commemorate his death, what we do is testify to the love of God for sinners, for you and for me. And so this meal is for those for whom it is true of. Meaning, this meal is for those who've had their sins washed away by the death of Jesus Christ through faith in him. If you don't have faith in Jesus Christ, you have unfinished business with God. And you ought not to come to this meal. You may not come to this meal until such time as you've made peace with God or God has made peace with you. Otherwise, you're doing as our passage warns us not to do. You're eating and drinking judgment to yourself.

which in other words means you are increasing your guilt before God. It's sinful to partake of this meal if you're not a Christian, okay? It's for those who love Jesus. What does it mean to love Jesus Christ? It means a few simple things, okay? It doesn't mean you have to believe in the Westminster Confession of Faith. It doesn't mean you have to have a particular eschatological position. It doesn't mean you have to be a Presbyterian or you have to be a Baptist. or reformed, what it means is that you know you're a sinner and there's no hope for you apart from Jesus Christ. And because of that fact, you've put your faith in him. That's what it means to be a Christian. One of the first things that we are commanded to do as a result of that is to be baptized, that we would testify to our allegiance and union with Jesus Christ through the waters of baptism. And so if you're a Christian and you've been baptized, you're welcome to this meal.

The only other people that shouldn't come to this meal, so unbelievers shouldn't come to the meal, those who are in rebellion against Jesus Christ. And that rebellion could have been acknowledged by a church, meaning they could have put you under church discipline and said, your life does not agree with. the principles and the teaching of the scripture and you're unwilling to repent, therefore we forbid you from taking this meal. If that's the situation you're in, then we honor that discipline, whether it's the discipline of this body and these elders or whether you're visiting and it's from somewhere else. If a church has told you, you may not partake of the Lord's Supper, then we say first, you should go and be reconciled to them and then come and partake of this meal. Who else should not partake of this meal? Those who have private hidden sin that they're unwilling to repent of.

not all of our sins are known to anyone except God. And what that means is there's the propensity or the danger for us to have hidden sin that we want to keep that way, that we don't want anyone to know about. And the reason we don't want them to know about it is because we don't want to be held to account for it. If that's true of you, then you should not come to this meal. And the reason is that you're living a hypocritical life. You're lying. You're lying to everyone around here, but you're not lying to God. It's sort of like Ananias and Sapphira.

Right? No one there knew what their sin was. But the Lord knew, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, spoke to Peter and said, why are you lying to us? If you have a hidden sin like that, that you're not willing to have exposed and confessed and repented of, then I warn you, don't partake of this meal. Because if you do, you're going to incur greater wrath. And you ought to think about Ananias and Sapphira, who were struck dead in the moment for their lying and their deception. Okay? So this meal is both an incredible blessing and a strength to those who believe, and it's deadly to those who are not. And so come to this meal reverently and soberly, confessing your sins, and come to this meal with joy. Because we would all be without hope if it weren't for what this meal represents, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ broken and shed for the forgiveness of our sins. Let's pray.