Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Children of the Promise

[audio unclear] there’s suffering in the world. And I’ve lived at COTP for almost five years and in Haiti for almost six. So obviously I love what I do and I love getting to live there and be there, but I would love it so much more if a place like COTP didn’t have to exist. Our vision is to see a Christian home and family for every Haitian child. And our main goal in doing that is to care for our children and to, we take in children who are very sick. And [audio unclear] a child is born into a healthy family, the parent gets education throughout the whole pregnancy, they’re given healthy food and nutrients or vitamins and things like that to help them bring in a healthy child, and then they’re in the second stage of the program for the first three months of the child’s life just so we can help them bring that child up. Then we have our formula and our Mamba programs, which are new, they’re for children who are malnourished and they may not have been in our prenatal program before. Our formula program is for babies who aren’t able to live with their mothers for a variety of different reasons. It’s just so they can get the milk that they need. And then our Mamba program is for malnourished children. There’s little packets of peanut butter. Mamba is peanut butter in Creole. And there are little packets of peanut butter filled with nutrients and they’re made and produced in Haiti. They’re able to be given to children depending on what their goal weight is and how old they are, that determines how many packets they need to eat. But they only need that for all of their nutrients. Until they meet their goal weight, they’re just able to eat that and that will help them. It’s pretty much foolproof unless there’s another underlying medical condition. And in both these programs, the families come every other week, we’re able to check up on the children, see that, make sure they’re gaining weight and that they’re the ones that are eating the food we give them. And the caregivers are able to get education, to hopefully prevent the children from being back in the same condition. When these programs don’t work out, we admit the kids to our short-term programs. And then, hopefully, usually it’s around about three months’ time. And then we’re able to reunite them with their families once they’re healthy again. And then they’re entered into our formula program to continue to monitor their care after they’re back home. And it’s always a great day when we’re able to gather together and sing and pray over these children and these families before we send them home because we know that they’re able to stay with their families. If you go forward a couple of slides, there’s two children on one of the slides. Peter Lee lived with us in 2016. He gained seven pounds in less than two months and with the help of a feeding tube and we were able to help him get surgery for a G-tube and then train his family how to feed him through the G-tube so he was able to be reunited with his family. And then he comes and gets special formula that he’s able to get through the G-tube. And then Chris Manya was a preemie baby. She was only 2.8 pounds when she first came and weighed 6.3 pounds two months later when she was a healthy weight that she was able to thrive at home. But we can’t always reunite children. Sometimes children come to us abandoned from local hospitals or other where. Sometimes the family or friends who are caring for them, they just, they can’t do it anymore. And then sometimes we have a couple of different attempts where we try and reunite them with their families and it’s just not working out. So when that happens, we seek adoption for the child. And we’ve moved from an institutional style of caring for children, like you would think of a typical orphanage, into child homes. And each of our child homes has no more than eight kids in each home. And there’s a house parent or house parents in the homes to give consistent care for the children. And sometimes, I mean, because I’ve seen this progress throughout the time, sometimes it’s hard to think about how different our care is. But not very long ago, I was talking to someone, and they were asking me which kind of something my kids liked. And I was like, I don’t even know, because sometimes they look at it and they say, I don’t like it. I don’t want it before they even try it. And I mean, if you’ve worked with children, you know that that’s not uncommon. But it used to be uncommon for our children. And just the fact that I can complain about them not wanting to eat the food that I give them because they don’t feel the need to eat. Just those kind of things are really great. And like when I first moved into the Life House, they were given like huge bowls of food and the nannies would give them, like the nanny’s goal was basically to get them to eat as fast as they can. And they would take food from other children and just through knowing consistently that they’re going to have the food. And I mean, they did get all the food that they needed before, but just that they know that it’s coming. And they’re given toddler-sized portions, and then they’re able to ask for seconds. And so they’re able to decide when they’re full. And just things like that that we have made a lot of progress on. And they know when they’re going to eat each day. They know when it’s bedtime, when it’s different things like that. And there was a semi-schedule before, but the nannies would change every day. It was basically when the nannies decided things would happen. But now they keep the same schedule every day because the house parent is there and consistently saying what happens when. And just now we’re able to keep up on their clothes. Like my girls especially, they love picking out their own clothes and choosing to change their shoes 17 times a day, like which kind of shoes they want to wear. Which is really annoying, but it’s really great that they know that those are theirs and they have those options and choices. Everything we do with the children in homes is to help prepare them for their forever families. And it’s just, it’s a blessing, sometimes a hard blessing, but it’s a blessing every single day just to be able to do that, to help these children begin to heal before they’re able to go to their forever families. And it’s just, another great thing is medical care that we’re able to keep up on by being smaller houses. We’re also not having widespread things happen when one house gets sick. That doesn’t mean every single house gets sick and every single child gets sick on the compound. We’re able to give the children the individual attention that they need. One example of this is, it’s a rare but a great example. This past year, one of the kids in my care, his name was Kevin, he got really sick about a little over a year ago, and he required a lot of round-the-clock care. And because of how our child homes are set up, he didn’t have to leave our house. He was able to stay with the other kids. He did move into my bedroom, but we were able to give him the care. And it was a hard eight months, but he was able to get consistent care for the last eight months of his life. And I’m so grateful to know that Kevin was cared for well during that time. In our past, he would have just, he would have passed through different caregivers when they had time to care for him. And he was able to stay in the home where he knows. I also have the privilege of overseeing our therapy program for our kids with special needs. And with the help of a lot of people, it has grown from pretty much nothing when I first went there, to just recently, our summer schedule has 30 kids receiving therapy each week. They get two to four sessions. So collectively, it’s 104 sessions a week. And we have two people dedicated to doing that. And related, that one thing on the horizon that I’m really excited about is our outpatient program for kids with special needs. In Haiti, kids with special needs, anyone with special needs, is looked down on in Haiti. And a lot of times, they’re just left in their homes because their families are afraid to take them out. And so by having this, we hope we can give them support in each other, that they know that there’s other people in their situations, but we’re also able to help them connect with their child through therapy, massage, and play. We’re also going to have education classes and a devotion and a time of worship, and we’ll end it with food and fellowship, so they can get the food and they can help work with their children to get the right food that they need. And so we have big dreams for that, but that’s the first phase that we hope to start in the next few months. So with all of this, I encourage you not to take what I’ve told you and just forget about it. Maybe COTP isn’t where you are supposed to be involved, but just find where you’re supposed to be involved in what that means. At COTP, there’s lots of ways you can get involved. We love prayers. We couldn’t do what we do without prayers and encouragement from people. You are able to sponsor a child and then you receive bi-monthly updates and photos of the kids. You can choose to adopt or advocate for our children to be adopted. Share a story, [audio unclear] and we’ve been wanting a thousand dollars to buy a new motor, a motorcycle for our yard guys, which they’ve spent a thousand dollars in paying for a motorcycle taxi to do things. They’ve already spent that in 2017. So we’re hoping by getting a motorcycle we can save money in the long run. But yeah, so pray about it, think about it, how you can get involved in COTP or in some other organization that’s doing more than you can do by yourself. Again, thanks for letting me come and share. Feel free to find me after the service and ask more questions or anything.

Greg Tyler and I are going to say a word of prayer over Tori and I’m sorry it’s the Life House, I said the Faith I think. But Tori spoke just hit on it briefly about Kevin. Kevin passed away right after we were there. And as a mom who’s said goodbye to one of her own children, Tori was his mother. So I know she’s grieving. She’s going through that process right now. So let’s pray for her and keep her in your prayers. And let’s just go to prayer for COTP right now. Thank you. Father God, we just want to lift up Children of the Promise right now. It has such a special place in my own heart. God, I pray that You would bless these children, Lord. I pray for the ones who have health issues right now, God, that You would heal them, Lord, that they would get the medical attention that they need, Lord. And Children of the Promise is so good about reaching out to the community and I pray blessings over them. I pray that You would bless them financially, Lord. God, I pray that You would speak to our hearts, Lord, of how You want us to continue to be a part of this ministry, Lord, that’s so far-reaching, Lord. And I pray for all of the houseparents, Lord, who every day need strength and encouragement, Lord, because it’s a 24-hour-a-day job, Lord, for them. And it’s a ministry, Lord. And they love these children so much. And so I pray that You would strengthen them most of all spiritually, Lord. And God, I want to lift up Tori right now, God, who grieves, Lord. And I just pray that You would heal her, God, through Your love, that You would comfort her and put Your loving arms around her when she misses him, Lord, and remind her that he is in Your care and he’s healthy now, Lord. And I just pray, God, for her, over her children who live in the Life House, God, and give her strength daily, Lord, and love these children through her and all the other workers, God. And we just pray Your blessings on Children of the Promise in Jesus’ name. Heavenly Father, Lord, we praise You and thank You for Tori, for her father driving her here today, Lord, that she can come and express to us how we can be of help to Children of the Promise, Lord. And I ask that we would reach into our heart and see what You, God, want us to do as individuals and as a body of believers, Lord. I praise You for Tori and for all the leadership and the nannies and everybody that works at Children of the Promise and the dedication that there is in that community to the children is impeccable in my mind, that they glorify You for each child, each set of triplets that comes to Children of the Promise gets taken care of, Lord, no matter how big they are, how many children they get taken care of. And I just thank You for people like Tori that pour their heart out for these children, for the people of Haiti and for Children of the Promise and how they support Haiti in so many different ways. A country that’s considered a fourth-world country and it’s a light in the middle of the road is Children of the Promise and we praise You for that. We thank You for Your grace and mercy and we ask for protection for Tori as she travels back sometime in the next little bit back to COTP and we love You so much, Lord, we thank You for Your grace and mercy and Your everlasting life. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, Amen.

John 1: Grace and Truth

Good morning. Appreciate Tori’s work, Children of the Promise’s work, all the work God’s doing around the world, amen? So we’re going to get into the Word soon. Then we’re going to have the Lord’s Supper. I want to talk a little bit about the Supper. But before I do that, I’d like to pray a little bit. We have Friend Day coming up and we’ve got a lot of guests coming. We’ve had two prayer meetings this month. The upper room was moved to the, was it the second Wednesday? Or first Wednesday? Second Wednesday. Second Wednesday because we have the youth camp, right? And we all know they need prayer, no I’m kidding. So we got together, we gathered and we prayed for camp and thus far for three reports, I’m going to, for a different report, that three young people came to Christ at camp. The beautiful thing about it is that they are young people in our community. Young people, not the pagans in the public school. Christian kids coming to Christ. This is important because I believe we have more kids and maybe even some adults who still need to come to Christ. It’s got to go from here to here, right? So I believe that, of course, is a response to the much prayer we’ve been sending up to heaven to see souls saved. And I believe that if we pray, God hears. You know, Jesus said in John 14, if you pray in My name, I will do it. Well, in His name includes many things, but one of the things that means is according to His will. Now, if there’s one thing we can pray, knowing it’s His will, is that people come to Christ. We don’t know who, but we do know that God desires men and women, children to come to saving faith in Jesus, right? So this is a prayer we can pray in faith. So we had the prayer meeting, we’re seeing results. We had another prayer meeting. We’ve had good turnouts of both prayer meetings. And I encourage you guys, whenever we hold a prayer meeting, come and pray. It’s awesome. The Lord is present. The prayer is powerful. We’re seeing answers. So I’d like to spend a little time in prayer today for next week. We should have some guests here. Many people are inviting friends on Friend Day. And we want our friends to feel welcome. We want them to experience the love of Christ here. And if they don’t know the Lord when they come, we’d like them to leave knowing the Lord. Having met Him that day, amen. So you are welcome to come and pray. We’re going to pray for those who don’t know Christ to come to Him and then we’re going to get into the Word. I’ll open. Father, we thank You that You have privileged us with the good news. And I thank You, Lord, that the message we have is just wonderful, wonderful, wonderful to tell people about Your great grace, love, mercy, Your gift of forgiveness, eternal life, of knowing You. Lord, I pray for those in my neighborhood who we want to come next week. We pray, Lord, that Your Holy Spirit would be wooing them and drawing them. We pray that You be opening their hearts to the truth, mainly the truth, which is Jesus Christ, that they would come to know Him as Savior and Lord. We pray this for Your glory, Jesus. God is good, amen.

Turn your Bibles to John 1. I’ll have to abbreviate my comments and I’m sure for that you’re very thankful. For the sake of time we’re going to be taking the Lord’s Supper. I was originally thinking today that I wanted to speak on, since it’s the 4th of July weekend, if you will, I wanted to speak on kind of a Christianity in America kind of thing. Take a little historical ride. But the Lord just continued to press on me a word. A word kept on coming to my mind all week. And the word was grace. Over and over and over, the word grace kept on coming to my mind. Grace, grace, grace. And then I realized, well, we’re taking the Lord’s Supper, and then I think I saw the connection. And I’ll bring that a little bit as I proceed. In John 1, John is bearing witness to Jesus, and he says in verse 14, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John bore witness of Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me is preferred before me, for He was before me.’” “And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” I read an interesting, maybe I’ll read it to you on my phone, is that okay? If I read something to you. I’m reading a book on evangelism that Steve Sanders recommended. And in the book he talks about two-tiered Christianity. By two-tiered Christianity he means, when you come to the kingdom, you come in believing in grace, but as you continue to live out your life, you start living by works and law. Any experienced Christian knows the temptation of that, right? He says, not only does it produce two kinds of churches, those that are evangelistic and those that are not, it says, it creates two stages of the Christian faith. We must, stay, the Christian life like a two-stage rocket. The first stage is grace. We’re quick to offer grace to non-Christians and speak of forgiveness of sin, but once someone has embraced the gospel, we move them into stage two, discipleship, or rather our version of discipleship. The second stage is powered by works and pietistic laws. In stage one, the message for non-believers is God loves you unconditionally and stands ready to forgive you of all your sins. The message in stage two is you better work hard practicing spiritual disciplines and proving yourself if you want God to keep loving you. Grace gets us off the ground, but we stay in orbit by our own works. Now, that is a pretty good summary. Now, we might not use the words. I don’t know that many of us who know the Lord would say, you live the Christian life by works. I don’t know that we would say it, but I think we often think it, or maybe even feel it. There’s certainly the temptation. Now, one of the beauties of the Lord’s Supper is that the Supper is a continual reminder of grace, a continual reminder. And apparently the Lord saw fit that we needed this reminder. Because He says actually, as often as you gather, take the Supper. You can make a strong case that the Supper should be taken weekly. We do it monthly for various reasons, but the point is that we’re gathering around a table which invites us to grace. And the Lord knows that we need a reminder and we need a physical reminder of grace.

Grace as God’s Attitude and Our Standing

So let me mention three things about grace very quickly. I will abbreviate. Number one, when we talk about grace, grace is an attitude that God has toward us. And it’s an attitude of favor. It’s an attitude of favor. Now if you’ve heard the classic definition of grace, it’s repeated everywhere in evangelical literature, it says grace is God’s unmerited favor. Unmerited favor. So what does it mean that it’s unmerited? It means we don’t deserve it. That’s the first thing. We don’t deserve what God gives us. Now I don’t know about you but a lot of times I feel like I do deserve things. When things are going rough sometimes I’ll grumble at God. Say, God I’m serving You and I’ve done this and I’m, why did this just happen? Well that’s saying I deserve to be blessed. Is it not? I’m thinking I deserve something. Grace says we don’t deserve anything. You could take it a step farther and say grace means not only do we not deserve anything, we deserve something bad. The Bible tells us that when the good news comes to us, it comes wrapped in the package of the bad news. And the bad news is that we’ve sinned, fallen short of God’s glory, and because of that, we’re alienated from the life of God, and therefore that if we die in that condition, we’ll have a Christless eternity, which Jesus Himself describes as a place of gnashing of teeth, a place of suffering, a place of darkness. Okay? So that’s bad news. The good news is that God will deliver us from that apart from any works that we do. We don’t have to earn forgiveness. We don’t earn God’s love. We don’t earn heaven. We don’t earn anything. So we don’t deserve grace, and we cannot earn grace. Now, this is really important. I know it’s been a long morning already, but I want you to hear this, okay? Because in Christianity, there are various systems in the church. The message is, they’ll say we are saved by grace, but then they tell you, but you only get grace by doing this, this, and this. Now there is a thing called the means of grace, and it’s prayer, it’s the worship, it’s community. In other words, these are channels that God uses to minister His grace to us. But that’s different than what’s being said in many circles of the church, which is that if you take a sacrament or if you observe a certain rule or regulation, then God is gracious to you. In other words, what they’re saying is, in effect, you earn grace. But if you earn grace, guess what? It’s not grace. When you get your paycheck, you don’t thank your boss for paying you. Why? Because you worked for it. [audio unclear] We never articulate that we’re working for God’s favor. We would never say it. I think often we feel it. And often we live that way. But grace means that God has an attitude of favor or blessing. And it places us in what is called a state of grace, a position of favor. It is our standing before God. Quickly Romans 5, if you want to turn there in your Bible. In Romans chapter 5, probably the best book on grace is Romans. And after Paul says that we are justified, which means that we’re forgiven of all of our sins and condemnation is removed and Christ’s righteousness is given to us. We are justified freely in chapter 3 verse 24. “Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” We’re justified freely by His… He could have said we’re justified freely or he could have said we’re justified by grace. He’s laboring the point because if you’re justified by grace, you are justified freely. And if you’re justified freely, it must be by grace. But he’s emphasizing the freeness of grace because we can turn grace into this thing which is given to us based upon performance. In other words, we make grace no grace. Chapter 4, verse 3, “For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’ Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but as debt.” That’s what I just said. When you get paid, you’re not getting grace from your employer. He’s paying a debt that he owes you because you labored for him. “But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works.” The result of Paul’s argument is in chapter 5 verse 1. “Therefore, having been justified,” past tense, if you’re a believer, you are justified, but you have been. It happened at the moment you received Christ, and it continues forever. You have been justified by faith. “We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand.” In which we stand. So the believer now has a standing, if you will, before God. The righteousness of Jesus is given to us, and we are forgiven. We are accepted in the Beloved by the Father. God showers His favor upon us. It is a position that we have before God. So God’s grace is not only His attitude, God’s grace is an action where He blesses us and restores us to favor, meaning He restores us to a place of blessing before Him. So when you think of the face of God, is He smiling or is He frowning? Because if you’re standing in grace, He’s smiling. And yet many of us think of God as frowning. And by not believing in grace as a Christian, then we get into legalism. We get into pietism. We get into the various works things that we do. We feel good if we read our Bible that day or we feel good. Oh, I’m supposed to invite somebody to church. I better do that and I’ll feel good. And as Steve prayed, you know, we’ll just check it off the list because I did that Christian thing I was supposed to do. And in a low-church environment, which is like ours, we don’t have a lot of ritual. We don’t celebrate the sacraments in a high-church way. So we just develop low-church liturgies and low-church laws and low-church legalism. And it happened, why does it happen? Because it’s human nature. It’s human nature to do it. It’s human nature to fall into this legalism thing. The grace of God that saved you on the day that you were saved is the same grace of God that saves you today. The love of God that you received when you were open-hearted to Jesus and you were born again is the same love of God available to you today. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. So why do Christians lose their joy? Why do Christians lose their excitement about sharing the gospel? Because they go from walking in grace to walking in law of some form. That’s why. I remember a story of a guy, I won’t mention his name. You probably wouldn’t know him, but anyway, I don’t want to mention his name. He came to the Lord, his life was transformed. I mean, you could just see the glow, you know? You know the glow? The Holy Spirit changed him. He loved the Word, he’d read the Word all the time. He loved to share the gospel with people. He just saw the transformation that Jesus makes in a person’s life. Well then he decided to go to Bible college. He goes off to Bible college because that’s what many people in his circles were doing and encouraging Christians to do. And as a result of going to Bible college, I saw him a year later and he was unhappy and he was miserable. And although he never really denied the faith, he lost his love for Jesus. He lost his love for souls. He lost the joy of the Lord. It’s because he went into a Christian institution. They talked about how important it is that you have short hair, and that the girls wear a long dress, and that the guys do this, and the girls do this, and people do this, and he didn’t realize he was walking into a Christian culture of legalism. And as a result of that, his conscience got ensnared. And now he didn’t know if God really loved him, if he was accepted, was he good enough, was he doing the right things, was he sharing enough, was he reading enough, was he dressing the right way, was he living the right way. And that’s what legalism does. The Bible tells us the joy of the Lord is your strength. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Well, I don’t know about you, but for me, one of the things that I do on a periodic basis is restore my joy, if you will, and you do it by reflecting, again, on the grace of God, on the love of God, on the mercy of God, on the fact that everything that we have is really a product of God’s favor and blessing, which we do not deserve and we cannot earn. You can’t earn it. Now here’s the other thing I want you to understand. If you can’t earn it, are you listening? Yeah, if you can’t earn it, you can’t unearn it. If you don’t earn it, you can’t unearn it. You hear what I’m saying? Yeah. See, we say we believe in grace, that salvation is free, we don’t earn it, but then we go on and we think, we actually think we lose God’s favor. Because we’re thinking, well, you unearn grace. If it’s grace, you don’t earn it in the beginning and you can’t unearn it later. Why? Because it’s grace. That’s what grace is. Now, there’s something in the human heart that doesn’t like grace. Now, I remember when I got saved. I remember after I got saved, I was like, wow, this is like amazing. And I would share the gospel and then I just assumed everybody would get saved. I just assumed everybody I shared with would just see what I could see. Well, I had forgotten that when people were preaching the gospel to me for over a year, I wasn’t seeing. I wasn’t hearing. I wasn’t getting it. I was just assuming everybody would understand and appreciate Christ. What is it about the human heart that doesn’t want to receive good news? Now if you came up to me and said, you know brother, I love you and I just decided to transfer a bunch of money into your bank account. I would check my bank account. I’m not sure if you’re telling the truth, but I check it just in case. So here God wants to give us the greatest gift of all, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, knowing God is really to know joy and life and peace and all the things that people really hunger for. You say, here we say, it’s free, it’s free. And people say no. What is it about the human heart that would say no? I wouldn’t say no if you want to give me money. You want to give me money? I’ll get a little thing for you and pass it around. I mean, of course, who doesn’t want blessings, right? So what is it about the human heart that we don’t want blessing? We don’t want grace? What do you think it is? Because deep down in our heart, we want to say that we did it. We want to be able to say somehow we contributed to being in heaven. We want to be able to enter the gates of glory with our chests puffed up. I’m here. Moses, Paul, I’m here. It’s true. Now, we never say that, but if you take the time to examine your own heart, it’s true. It’s true. And so we become religious. We become legalistic. And that’s a bad place to be because Paul says in Galatians, to the Galatians who are doing that very thing, mixing works and law, he says, you have fallen from grace. He doesn’t mean that they’re not saved, but he means that they’re not walking in the reality of grace anymore. It’s become religion to them.

Grace as Power, and the Lord’s Supper

And this is where we need to understand my last point, that grace is not only God’s attitude, grace is not only a standing we have, grace is God’s power in our life. Grace is God’s power in our life. When Paul was dealing with an affliction and he prayed, Jesus answered and said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Okay. My grace, he doesn’t mean, when he said my grace, he doesn’t mean the fact that I smile upon you, but the grace is something that Paul experientially walked in and lived. He says, I am what I am by the grace of God. I labored more than all, by the grace of God. Grace made him labor. Grace made him work. Grace made him serve. Grace isn’t just God’s attitude. God’s grace is something that is real in our lives that transforms us. It transforms us. And I don’t mean just because we believe it, I mean the grace of God is real. It’s a real power given to us through the person and work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. So grace works in us. We have grace toward us, we have grace in us, we have grace through us. And the danger of becoming religious is that the grace stops working through us. And then as the church, we no longer really fulfill our function in the world, which is to be a light, to be salt, to be ambassadors, to be witnesses. If our gospel is, be good, be religious, then we don’t have a gospel to preach. [audio unclear] We have no good news to declare. But if our gospel is, you are saved by grace and not by works. That you are justified, freely, by the grace of God in Christ Jesus. Then we have something joyous to declare to the world. Amen? We do. Someone said we do. But it must be real in our lives. It must be real in our lives. And so the Lord gives us the Supper as a demonstration of the open invitation to feed upon Him, an open invitation really to His grace, to all that Jesus has for His people. Now, I know in Corinthians Paul says to the Corinthians to examine themselves before they take the Lord’s Supper, and there were particular sins in that church that he was attempting to get them to deal with. But we need to be very careful of taking that verse and making the Lord’s Supper a gloomy thing. And then we pray and say, okay, am I really worthy to take the Supper? Ha! Anybody worthy to take the Supper? All right, that’s the point. Of course we’re not worthy. Now you might think, oh well, then you’re making light of sin. This has been the objection to grace from Paul on. And if you read Romans what Paul says, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid, or may it never be. No, that’s not what I’m saying. Why? Because grace is a power. And if you walk in grace, you don’t want to sin. If you walk in grace, God cleanses you from sin. If you walk in grace, you start to love holiness. You start to love the Word. You start to love prayer. As you walk in grace, you love the things of God. As a matter of fact, you love God because you realize how much He loves you. We love Him because He first loved us. Amen? Now I’m not saying don’t examine yourself, but God forbid that you come to the conclusion that you can take the Supper because you’re worthy. We who know the Lord Jesus Christ have been wrapped in the robes of His righteousness and that is why we are worthy to take the Supper. Nothing do we contribute to our standing before God. Not a thing. Not a thing the moment you came into the kingdom. Not a thing now and not a thing when you stand before the judgment seat of Jesus. You will not be pleading your works in front of the Lord your Judge. You will not do that. You will not go before God and say, I deserve. We will not do that. So the invitation is open, but there is one qualification, although I don’t like that word. There’s one condition, I’ll use that word, and that is faith. Faith. If you don’t believe in the Lord Jesus, then this is a meaningless ritual for you and there’s no point in taking it. If you truly believe that Jesus Christ is your Savior, if you truly believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross for your sins, was buried and rose from the dead for you, if you truly believe that, truly, then you’re invited to come. If you don’t believe that, there’s no point in taking the elements because they’ll be of no benefit to you, none whatsoever. So do you believe, do you truly believe in Christ as Savior? Which means, do you understand your need to be saved? Do you understand that you’ve sinned? I know we don’t like to talk about sin in our society, but we’ve all sinned. So, if you know you’ve sinned, then you know you need a Savior. Unless you’re trying to somehow work it off yourself, and all I can say is good luck with that. So the invitation from Jesus Christ is to come to Him because He died in your place. He is your provision, if you will, and because He’s borne your sins on the cross, you no longer bear them. That’s the good news. You don’t bear them anymore. God doesn’t look at you through the lens of your transgressions. He looks at you through the lens of the payment of His Son. And when He looks at you, He says, not guilty, because My Son paid the price. And when He rose from the dead, He proved it. He’s alive today. So you ask Jesus Christ to be your Savior. You talk, talk to Him. Lord, I know I’ve sinned, I need to be saved. I understand that You died for my sins. You rose from the dead, You’re alive. Lord save me, be my Savior. And if you do that, He will save you. Let’s stand and pray. Lord we thank You for Your wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, amazing grace. That You smile upon us, that You establish us in a place of favor and acceptance with You by putting us in Your family, that You forgive us our sins, that You welcome us into relationship with You, that You give us life eternal. Lord, I could go on and on about the many blessings that You bestow upon us. We acknowledge they are all of grace. And as we take the elements today in faith, we acknowledge that we’re coming to a throne of grace, a table of grace. And I pray for any here today that may not know You, Lord. They may not have tasted Your grace. I ask that You would just help them understand even now Your gracious attitude toward them. You love them and desire them to come to know You. Lord, to take hold of You by faith. I pray in Your name. Amen.