The text this morning is from 2 Corinthians chapter 10, starting in verse 7 through the end of the chapter. These are the words of God. Do ye look on things after the outward appearance? If any man trust to himself that he is Christ's, let him of himself think this again, that as he is Christ's, even so are we Christ's.
For though I should boast somewhat more of our authority, which the Lord hath given us for edification and not for your destruction, I should not be ashamed. that I may not seem as I would terrify you by letters, for his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible. Let such a one think this, that such as we are in word by letters when we are absent, such will we be also indeed when we are present. For we dare not make ourselves of the number or compare ourselves with some that commend themselves, but they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves among themselves are not wise.
But we will not boast of things without our measure, but according to the measure of the rule which God hath distributed to us, a measure to reach even unto you. For we stretch not ourselves beyond our measure, as though we reached not unto you. For we are come as far as you also in preaching the gospel of Christ. Not boasting of things without our measure, that is, of other men's labors, but having hope, when your faith is increased, that we shall be enlarged by you according to our rule abundantly, to preach the gospel in the regions beyond you, and not to boast in another man's line of things made ready to our hand. But he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
For not he that commendeth himself is approved, but whom the Lord commendeth. Our gracious God and Father, we thank you for this word. We thank you for this passage. We thank you for the experience that Paul had that enabled him to write this and how your spirit inspired him to do so.
And I pray that that same spirit would be here present with us today, applying this word that he inspired. to our hearts and lives. And we thank you in Jesus'name. Amen.
So as we continue through 2 Corinthians, we are coming up on the section, or we've entered the section, where Paul is going to collide with the false apostles who have caused such difficulties at Corinth. And we have a sharp contrast established between the true apostle Paul and the false apostles that he was combating. And the fundamental difference between Paul and these false apostles is that he was surrendered to a standard that arose outside the world.
He was surrendered to a standard that came from outside the world. And they were submitted to a standard that arose from within themselves, that arose from within the world. So he is submitting to something transcendent, and they are... submitting to something that is down here with us. And when I use a word like standard, I'm referring both to law and gospel.
Law and gospel both. What is the standard for evaluating appropriate behavior? Well, that has to be a standard, a law from outside the world.
And what is the standard for telling men how they might be saved? Well, that has to come from outside the world also. If we are...
To know what is right, we can't know what is right from within the system. We cannot generate our own system of ethics. We cannot give an accounting of right and wrong if it begins and ends with us. So we cannot be the source of the standard.
And if we violate whatever standard we have, and we fall short of whatever standard it is we have, we cannot be saved by anything that arises from within. We cannot save ourselves any more than we could stand in a bucket and carry ourselves upstairs. You can't do it.
It is not a possibility for a sinful person trapped in this world to lift himself out of this world. So the law, the standard, has to come from outside the world, and the gospel has to come from outside the world. And Paul was submitted to that transcendental standard that came from outside the world and submitted to that transcendental gospel that came from outside the world. So both law and gospel, in order to be law and gospel, have to be extra nos, as the theologians say.
It has to be from outside of us. It's got to come from outside of us. We do not have the material within ourselves to generate an ethical standard. We can recognize one, but we cannot generate one from within ourselves, and we cannot generate a plan of salvation from within ourselves.
It has to come extra nos. So, Let's look at this passage. Paul is preparing to mount an attack on these apostles of superficiality, these dazzlers, in verse 7. And he's already begun, but we're going to really get into it in the next chapter, in chapter 11. And he is going to collide with them.
He's just coming after them full tilt. And he's gearing up for that now. If any of these men think that they belong to Christ, Paul says, he also does, verse 7. Are they Christians?
Well, so am I. We're even. Paul is gearing up for some ironical boasting in the next chapter, and here he says that if he were to boast of his authority, he would not be ashamed.
Now it's abundantly plain in this section that he's reluctant to boast. He has to be maneuvered by their misbehavior into boasting. He doesn't like boasting, but when you get him to the point and it comes time for boasting, he's not ashamed.
In other words, if it comes down to it, he said, if you want to compare the fruit of your life to the fruit of my life, I'm not going to be embarrassed. I'm reluctant to go there because I just don't like to look like that kind of guy. But if it comes down to it, we're going to compare the fruit of your life to the fruit of my life, and I'm not going to be ashamed. And the reason for this is that he had an authority, Paul had an authority, that gave and did not grab. So Paul had a giving authority, not a grabbing authority.
These false apostles were working the system. They came in and they were taking big payments. They were receiving honor. They were receiving accolades. They were in it for the return.
And Paul said, I'm not in it for the return. I'm here to give myself away. I want to imitate the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus came into this world to give himself away.
And everyone that would be a Christian leader following after him, has to imitate that and give himself away in like manner. That's verse 8. So Paul's authority is a giving authority, not a grabbing authority. The point, verse 9, was not to be a literary terrorist. He's here referring to the charge that he, Paul, writes a hot letter while his pulpit presence was weak and his eloquence is well beneath the standard, verse 10. So this is what the false apostles said. He's not polished.
He's not sleek. He's not sophisticated. He doesn't have the appropriate letters after his name the way we do.
And so we think he is a deficient apostle. We think he's not up to standard. And Paul says, well, as I indicated last week, he's saying in effect, don't make me come down there.
Don't make me deal with this because, he says, in his next visit, the letter and the behavior is going to match, verse 11. So I've written a severe letter. And I don't want the visit to be a severe visit. I really don't want that because I love you all dearly.
But the next time I come, if it's necessary, the letter and the actions in person are going to match. Now Paul has a standard, as I've already alluded to, Paul has a standard outside himself. And he compares this to what the false apostles are doing.
Those who measure their yardstick with another yardstick are not wise. How long is this yardstick? Well, let me grab a yardstick and see.
And you hold up the two yardsticks against one another. Or, even worse, they are not wise who measure the yardstick by holding it up to a mirror. How long is this yardstick? Well, let me see. And you hold it up to the mirror.
Well, it's as long as the yardstick. Those who measure themselves by themselves are not wise. Those who compare, and notice how this is the standard arising from within. So those who compare themselves to themselves are not wise. It's foolishness.
So... My yardstick is as long as a yardstick is. My sense of ethics is as long as my sense of ethics tells me it ought to be.
I am going to measure myself by myself. And Paul says that is folly. Don't measure yourself by yourself.
Paul says in verse 13, that he uses the measure granted by God to him and to the Corinthians as well. Paul is using a measurement from outside. This is what was given. This is what was revealed. This measuring, this standard, this law, this gospel, everything that I use to evaluate my behavior comes from outside.
And Paul is not getting outside his lane by dealing with the Corinthians because he reminds them he was the one who had first shared the gospel with them. Verse 14, Paul had planted the Corinthian church. This was his turf.
It was his territory. And Paul refuses to encroach on another man's ministry. In other words, if he goes into another place where another man had founded the church, he would respect that person's presence and authority, and he would be deferential.
He doesn't want to encroach on another man's ministry. But of course, he's open to mutual edification. He's happy to receive help from churches that he didn't plant, but he doesn't want to presume too much.
when he comes to a church he didn't plant. But Corinth, he did plant that one. He did plant the church at Corinth, so I'm not out of line, he said, to talk to you this way.
And, of course, verse 16, he's certainly open to having the Corinthians help him in the task of preaching the gospel in regions beyond them, as he goes beyond Achaia in order to plant churches in fresh territory, in new territory. He's open to them helping him with that. And then in verse 17, He gets to sort of the apex of his argument, the one who glories should do so in the Lord. The one who glories should glory in the Lord.
And as we're going to see in a moment, it's a whole lot easier said than done. Everybody can say, yeah, all the glory goes to God. But saying all the glory goes to God and getting the job done is quite a separate challenge. But that's verse 17. Self-congratulation establishes nothing.
Remember, if you measure yourself by yourself, that's not wise. And so self-congratulation establishes nothing. Only God's commendation counts for anything. Verse 18. Now, here's the problem of hypocrisy. And this is a problem that arises every moment of this life.
There's no way, basically in glory, after the resurrection of the dead, you can write that off. You can stop worrying about hypocrisy. But not until then.
Because it's a constant. Constant pressure. Now, we live in a subjective age, and so many people are not ashamed to say out loud that their standard is provided by the guidance of their own heart. In other words, this is part of the secular catechism.
If somebody wins another Super Bowl ring, or somebody wins a gold medal in the Olympics, and the reporter says, how did you do it? And the person answers, they respond with the catechism that they've been taught, which is, well, you just have to believe in yourself. How many movies have you seen where that's the message at the end, that's the moral at the end of the movie? You just have to believe in yourself. You have to lift yourself up.
You have to dig down deep in your heart and believe in yourself. That is something that the scripture regards as just idiotic. It's foolish.
Proverbs 28, 26 says, He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool. He who trusteth in his own heart is a fool. But whoso walketh wisely, he shall be delivered. The person who walks wisely is the person who looks for standard from outside. The person who trusts in his own wisdom, in his own heart, in the depths of his own being, that person is walking foolishly.
But there are wheels within wheels. There are circles within circles. And how come?
Well, there are two kinds of fools. Well, that's limiting. There are at least two kinds of basic fools. There are those who trust in their own hearts, and they say out loud that this is what they're in fact doing.
So when the Olympian says, you just have to believe in yourself, and that's how I won this race, or you just have to believe in yourself, and that's how I had this great musical performance, I believed in myself. They say out loud, they answer in accordance with the secular catechism, I believed in myself. And that, in such a case, the folly is out in the middle of the table. It's just right there. But the second kind of fool is the person who trusts in his own subjective understanding, but he clothes it in the more orthodox language of objective truth.
In other words, the world operates that way outside the church, but inside the church, when that mentality is making inroads in the church, when it's encroaching into the church, when it's seeping into the church, there are many Christians who start to think and respond that way, in substance, the way they do outside the church, but... They're saddled with all this orthodox language. They can't say, well, I did it myself and God didn't help.
You're not allowed to say that in church, unless you're in a Pelagian church. You just say, oh, you have to give glory to God, right? We know that. Everybody has to give glory to God. But is it possible to have the heart of someone outside with the language of someone inside?
Well, sure. We can see that in the parable that Jesus told about the conceited. Pharisee who went down to the temple to pray.
Notice that in this is in Luke 18 notice that Jesus spoke the parable aiming it directly at those who trusted in themselves. That's Luke 18 9. He's aiming at those who trust in themselves. But he's talking about a Pharisee.
He's talking about a conservative covenant-keeping Jew who is submitted to the scriptures ostensibly and is worshiping in the temple. But he's trusting in himself. Notice the language of the Pharisee.
The language that the Pharisee used was good, solid, reformed stuff. It was good, solid, reformed stuff. God, I thank thee that I'm not as other men are.
That's verse 11, Luke 18, 11. God, I thank thee, soli deo gloria. What's wrong with that? Lord, I thank thee that I'm not like other men.
Now, everybody here who was converted out of a life of sin or crime or decadence or whatever, everybody here. who's grateful for their salvation, is grateful that God has made a distinction between the way you are now and the way you were. So what the Pharisee says, there's nothing wrong with what the Pharisee says on paper. There's nothing wrong with the language per se.
God, I thank thee, good Calvinist. Lord, all the credit, Lord, all the credit for me being so wonderful goes to you and only to you. You've probably been to Christian concerts where the musician gets a standing ovation, everybody thinks it's wonderful, and they know they've got to do, oh, they soak it up.
It feeds the ego, but they've got to do something like, glory to God, glory to God. And everything boils down to whether that's believable or not. Now, I'm not disparaging the external emotion, even if it's not believable. The external deference that we show, is the sort of deference that Herod should have shown when he gave that speech and the people cried out, the voice of a God, not of a man. And because Herod didn't give glory to God, he was struck by worms and eaten by the worms and died.
So there's that. So you might say, well, is it sufficient? Can I buy God off just by the external gesture?
No, the heart matters, but the external gesture matters too. As one person once said that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue. Hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.
But something is still off. And then we have to, there's turtles all the way down, right? You have to be aware.
How many of us have read that parable and gone home thanking God that we're not like that Pharisee? Now, in this passage, the passage that we're considering, Paul was genuinely submitting. the whole thing to God. When we pray, we should talk like we mean it.
When we pray, we should say, God, I mean this. I'm just you, just me, you and me alone. I'm off by myself out here in the woods, just with you. And I really want to mean this. And I would ask you to break me down so that I really do mean it.
That's Lord, as the psalmist says, search me and try me and see if there is any wicked way in me. See if I'm really, am I kidding myself here? Am I lying to myself? Because it's going to be really easy to do so. It is perilously easy to be like that Pharisee.
Lord, I thank thee that I'm not like other people. But it's going to get more complicated. Oh good, you say.
The possibility of failure. One of the best ways, one of the best metrics to use to tell if you are using a subjective or objective biblical measurement is by whether or not there's any possible scenario where you could receive correction. Is there any setup where you could be told by the Word of God, or by a comment in a sermon, or by a passage in a book that you read, is there any conceivable way that a word could come to you from outside you that would bring you up short and make you realize, oh, this fuss that I've got with my neighbor, or this difficulty that I've got with my family member, or this challenge that I've got with my child, or this tangle that I'm in.
Is there any... possible way that a word could come from outside and bring you to the point where you say, I'm the problem. I'm the problem. All this time, I thought he was the problem.
All this time, I thought the other person was the problem. And it works out that I always think that. Where do quarrels and fights come from among you? Well, James does not say, it's always the other guy. So how good are you?
at removing the beam from your own eye? Matthew 7, 1-5. How good are you at considering yourself, lest you also be tempted?
Galatians 6, 1. How good are you at not judging others with a standard that would also flunk you? That's Romans 2, 1-3. So for this last, the standard that would also flunk all of us, suppose the existence of an invisible recording device that God gives to angels to hang around everybody's neck.
Everybody's got an invisible recording device hung around their neck, and this recording device only records judgments that you level against others. Slow drivers ahead of you, people who took your seat, people who acted selfishly, people who are talking about themselves when you want them to be talking about you. Things like that.
She ought not. I can't believe that he. These people are awful. Did you see what they... That kind of thing.
So those are the only statements that this recording device records. Now suppose God were to distill an ethical code from all of those statements and then judged each person in strict accordance with that standard. Suppose everyone were only to be judged...
by the standard that God distilled from all the assessments we make about other people. That was the only standard. Well, we would all, all of us would be condemned. All of us would be lost forever because God would judge if God were to mark iniquities who could stand, the psalmist says, and if God were to mark iniquities in line with the standard that he generated from our moral assessments of other people, nobody could stand. We would all be in the position of David talking to Nathan the prophet about Bathsheba before David knew that they were talking about Bathsheba.
When David thought they were talking about a poor man and his lamb, he issued a righteous judgment. But then Nathan the prophet, in a great act of courage incidentally, Nathan the prophet said, you are the man. Why is that a great act of courage? Well, David has already killed one man to keep this covered up.
He's already guilty of murder in order to cover up his adultery. And Nathan says, you're the man. And David receives it and he repents. But notice that David has a standard, a functional moral standard, that works if he's talking about somebody else. If I'm talking about somebody else, if I'm talking about the poor guy and his lamb, my ethical system is functional.
But as soon as we're talking about me, David is unusual in that David receives it. David received the rebuke. So, by way of contrast to what these false apostles do, we know that Paul was the real deal. because of statements like this. This is taken from 1 Corinthians.
Paul says, For I know nothing by myself, yet am I not hereby justified. But he that judgeth me is the Lord. Therefore judge nothing before the time, unless the Lord come, and until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts. And then shall every man have praise of God.
So Paul says, I don't have anything on my conscience. I know nothing against myself, but he says, that doesn't justify me. Why? Because the one who judges me is the Lord.
The fact that I know nothing against myself does not vindicate me because my measuring stick does not come from me. I use it tentatively, conscience is a good thing, but it's not a final thing, it's not an absolute thing. Our consciences must be submitted to the Word of God. So Paul says, I don't know anything against myself, but that doesn't justify me. and I'm submitting the whole thing to God, and I want you all to submit the whole thing to God.
He that judges me is the Lord. And then he says to the Corinthians, therefore, judge nothing before the time. Give God room to move.
Give God room to judge in these matters. Now, we must always boast in the Lord, and we must do it with the right attitude. The Pharisee, here's an illustration of the...
Pharisee in the temple and the problem with the secular standard. The secular standard outside is one that can be done well or poorly. Picture it as songs that people sing, all right, or poetry that they write.
Someone can, outside the church, can be singing the wrong song entirely, but be doing a good job with it, all right? They can be competent. They can have craft competence. So Walt Whitman is considered a good poet. Some people don't think that, but...
Lots of people do. He's still in print, right? So Walt Whitman wrote this poem, Song of Myself. Song of Myself.
And let's count him as a competent poet. He is singing the wrong song, and he's hitting his pitch. He's hitting the notes right.
He's singing on key. And then you've got some lame third-rate poet who has the same worldview as Whitman and produces some terrible cauldron of goo. just really bad. And that person is singing the wrong song off key.
So you've got someone singing the wrong song on key and someone who is singing the wrong song off key. And then in the church, You have someone who is singing the right song, and they're hitting their pitch. They're doing it right.
And then you have someone who's singing the right song, like the Pharisee in the temple, but they're singing flat or sharp. There's something off. The words are right, but something's wrong with it.
You see the same thing with the disciples on the road when they were denied a place to stay in the Samaritan village. And the disciples said, Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven and consume them? Well, the disciples...
had a verse. I mean, Elijah did that in the Old Testament. Elijah can let the fire come down and consume you and your 50 and did that a couple of times. And the third captain with the 50 was very, very polite and came to him and said, so the disciples had a verse. And they said, and what did these people do?
They disparaged the Messiah. They disparaged our Lord. And so do you want us to call down fire from heaven? And Jesus turned to them and said, you don't know what spirit you're of. In effect, you're saying good words, but you're singing flat, you're singing sharp, it's off.
You can't just do the right thing technically, you have to be hitting your pitch. So, and you see there's Walt Whitman, and then this crosses all genres. There's Walt Whitman, and then there's Frank Sinatra, who hit his notes, but he did it his way. I did it my way.
And there's something wrong, that worldview is wrong. And then you have someone who, in a talent show somewhere, who butchers that song. Well, that's, it's wrong, and then it's doubly wrong. And then over in the church, it can be right, but still wrong. It's not, it's not enough to do the right thing.
We want to do the right thing the right way. We want to sing God's tune, and we want to hit our notes. So, and then there's, you know, bring it up to the Stones.
They're still playing. Everything they do is in that category. So here is a matter, this whole issue requires true spiritual wisdom. The occasions for boasting in the Lord will arise when people think that you had something to do with it.
And how do you navigate it? When someone says, let's say you do a really good job on the basketball court, or let's say you're performing musically and people compliment you for your musical performance, or let's say... Your kids are well-behaved, and when you tell them to do something, they do it. Let's say they say, yes sir, no ma'am, and that sort of thing.
And then you meet someone whose kids, they've got the same number of kids, but their kids are sort of like orangutans on a sugar rush. And when they're told to do something, nothing changes, nothing alters. And then, let's say this family with the out-of-control kids, they come to you and say, how do you do it? Why is your family so wonderful?
Why is everything so calm? Why is everything so good? Now, how on earth are you going to answer that question?
I thank thee God that I'm not like other men. And you say, well, but you can't lie and say, well, my kids are as bad as yours. You should see them when you're gone. It's not true.
You can't lie. If your kids are obedient, well-behaved, if they're well-disciplined, then you've got to acknowledge... the goodness that God has shown to you, and you've got to acknowledge the good that God has shown to you in a way that affirms, yeah, God really is being good to us.
And you've got to say what the Pharisees said, not the way that he said it. Okay? Now this is another turtles all the way down thing.
Because if you say the right thing, and you manage to not say it the way the Pharisees said it, and you really do give glory to God. And you really, with all your heart, you give glory to God and it comes across, and then you're driving home after that encounter and you get a little proud of how you did. Proud of how humble you were.
Lord, I really nailed it. This is really a complicated thing. So God is being, here's another example, God is being very, very good to us here in what I would call this Moscow project. God has been so kind to us, and there's no way to talk about it, and people ask you questions about it, and there's no way to talk about it without talking about it, right? And we see God's goodness in all the church services that are going on here.
We see His goodness in Logos School. We see His goodness in NSA and Canon Press and all these flourishing ministries. And we've got something going here, and notice that we've got something going here.
We are the recipients of something that's going on here. that I think is really unique for good or ill. If it's terrible, it's uniquely terrible. And if it is good, it's uniquely good. There's something, something, as Buffalo Springfield said many years ago, something happening here.
So what do you, how do you respond to that? And I have to say, whenever I hear people talking about Moscow, like something, the community in Moscow is glorious. I can't hear those words without wincing inside, you know, even if I'm the one that said them, right?
So if I... Because we don't want to be the Pharisee. We don't want to be that Pharisee.
God, I thank thee that this is not like the church I used to go to. Lord, I thank thee that we don't sing songs that we used to sing. Lord, I thank thee.
We don't want to be that guy, right? We don't want to be that guy. Because we must always boast in the Lord.
But we have to look at it from the other direction, the other side as well. We cannot boast in the Lord, saying that he is the one who dwells in the highest heaven, and he does nothing in particular. We can't glorify God in his attributes, because in the Bible, God is the God who acts.
God is the one who undertakes on behalf of his people. God is the one who intervenes, and that's what we're boasting in. But when we know that he has intervened... He's intervened on our behalf.
He's intervened in our lives. He's intervened where we can see, because that's why we're praising God. If God has given some marvelous deliverance to a congregation in China that we never heard of, we don't bring it up, we don't praise God for it, because we don't know anything about it. We know about the goodness of God when God has been good to us.
And you can't talk about God being good to you, good to us, without talking about him being, without recognizing that, in fact... He is being very, very good to us. It is not boasting in the Lord to talk about the attributes of God in a way that is detached from all human history.
God reveals himself in his great and wonderful works. Miriam was not dancing beside the sea because she just finished reading a chapter in a theological tome on the divine aseity. That's not why she was dancing.
She was dancing because Jehovah had bared his strong right arm And Pharaoh's army, in the words of that old folk song, Pharaoh's army got drowned. That's why she was dancing. She was singing and dancing because she could look out on the Red Sea and see the bodies. That's why she was dancing.
Now, is it possible for someone to say, oh, you think you're so hot, you know, standing there on the banks of the Red Sea, having been delivered, are you taking credit for that? Well, no, we can't take credit for it. Is it possible for us to be and have our expression be orthodox and be taking no credit for it on the surface, in the letter of it, but like the Pharisee, in our hearts, trusting in ourselves. God must have delivered us from the Egyptians because we were so wonderful, or because we had faith, or because we followed, we had the good sense to follow Moses, or we had the good sense to put the blood on the doorstep. We were the ones who did this.
Yeah, that's utterly possible, and we need to be guarded against that. We have to guard our own hearts against that. How do you boil this all down? So if you're saying, man, you've tied us up in knots.
What do I do? What am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to say the right thing? Yes, you're supposed to say the right thing. And you're supposed to say the right thing with the right heart.
And then you need to submit it to God saying, God, make sure that I didn't have that little walnut of an ego down inside my heart there where I'm... Down inside that little hard shell of my ego, I was somehow taking credit for it. Paul says elsewhere, what do you have that you did not receive as a gift? And if you received it as a gift, why do you boast as though you did not? Why do you take credit for things that God just gave you?
Why do you think you're superior? Because God gave you the gifts that he gave you. No, no, not at all. So, and then the final thing is this.
When we ask what this external... I've emphasized it's got to come from outside of us. When we ask what this external, outside-of-us objective standard is, we have to immediately correct ourselves. The question is not what the standard is, but rather who the standard is.
And the answer to that question is the Lord Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The central message from Christ is not, go over there and do good deeds and make sure your motives stay right. and I'm going to stand over on the other side of the room and watch.
So it's not Christ over here watching you, and you're over here trying to do good things with your motives not getting all tangled up. The only way your motives are not going to get tangled up is if you're in Christ, following Christ, focused on Christ, looking to Him. If you're following Christ, Jesus says, if anyone wants to follow after me, let him take up his cross, come, follow me.
That's the charge. Follow Jesus. Follow Christ.
And that's what we're doing when we look at... 2 Corinthians chapter 10, because Paul says, imitate me as I imitate Christ. So Christ showed us this way. Christ is the one who spoke the words of God in exactly the way the words of God should have been spoken. And he hit his pitch.
He never sang anything off key. Christ did it perfectly. And the apostle Paul was not infallible. The apostle Paul was not sinless, but the apostle Paul did it well. So Christ did it perfectly.
And the Apostle Paul did it well, following after Christ, well enough for him to invite us to copy him, well enough to imitate us to say, and follow in the Pauline footsteps as Paul is following in Christ's footsteps. So the central message is always, come, follow me. It's a person. And because it's a person, when you are doing little twists and turns where you're trying to get a little credit for yourself, or trying to reserve a little credit for yourself, what you're doing is you're trying to finesse or manipulate a relationship with an omniscient one. Christ is the omniscient Son of God.
He knows all the twists and turns of our heart. He knows how we like to smuggle in credit for ourselves somehow, some way. And we need to abandon all of that.
We need to say, not only do when we take our material possessions, for example, and we surrender them to the Lord, we can either hold them before the Lord like this or like this. If we clench them in our fist, God can still take them, but he breaks our fingers now in order to get at them. We need to do the same thing with our opinions. It's not just our possessions, it's our perspectives, our opinions, our stands. Are you in any kind of tangle with any other brother where it might be your opinions being clutched at like this?
And what you need to do, what you need to say is, well, God, can you open my, can you give me the strength to surrender the whole thing in principle where I lifted up to you, and I'm willing to be humbled. I'm willing to be wrong, and I'm willing to be shown by your spirit that I'm wrong. And you say, well, I'm not sure I'm willing for that.
Well, all right, let's take back a step. Are you willing to be made willing? Are you willing to surrender it in principle?
And if you do, if you do this, then whatever good that God is doing here is going to be perpetuated and advanced, because the only thing that's going to disrupt the grace of God that is being... poured out on us, the only thing that's going to disrupt it is sin. That's the only thing that disrupts anything, is selfishness, self-centeredness, self-absorption, sin.
So you want to surrender, say, Lord, is it me? Lord, am I the one? And this, if we are following after Christ, if we're following hard after Christ, that is an appropriate question to ask.
Our Father in heaven, we thank you for your goodness to us. We thank you for the word that you've given us. We thank you for all the blessings you've poured out on us in our community, in our families.
We thank you for all of that. And I pray, Father, that you would teach us the fundamental lesson of not taking any credit for us ourselves at any level in any way. Father, we lift all this up to you, hoping and praying and trusting you to keep us on the path.
And Father, we would repeat back to you the words that Jesus taught us to pray, saying, It is hard to eat with a stomach full of guilt. and shame. There is the family attempting to sit down to dinner after the father has raked everyone over the coals.
Mom snapped and snipped and bit with a teaching on her tongue that was anything but kindness. The spirit of condemnation has been let loose in the house and now everybody is seated at supper without an appetite. We come to a table now that is just the opposite. The Lord's table is a table of grace. It is not, however, a table of lawlessness.
The frustrated father wants to say, okay, whatever, I was too hard. I just won't say anything anymore. Do whatever you want. But this is a foolish toggling between legalism and lawlessness. And that toggling is the only thing a man can do, apart from the grace of this table.
The goal is not to land somewhere in between legalism and lawlessness. The goal is to land in another world entirely. The world of the new covenant in Christ's blood. In this world of the new covenant, Christ has risen from the dead, and we have died to our sins and risen with him. There is no one to condemn the Lord's elect because Christ has been condemned, and he is our head.
We are his body. At this table, undeserved favor flows to you, and that favor wells up within you like streams of living water. That favor keeps flowing to you. Because the spring which supplies this living water is infinite, eternal, and outside of this world. You who come to drink of this spring are promised that out of your very own heart will flow rivers of living water.
So come receiving grace and go showing grace. Come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ. Our Father, your generosity is on display before us. We taste it and see it. As we come to this cup of the new covenant, fill us and overflow us with your life-giving grace.
For we ask in Jesus'name, and amen. The charge is this, as we just noted, on the night he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus instituted the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. But he also told his disciples that same night that one of them was going to betray him.
And the response of the disciples generally was very, very good. And I think that sets a good example for us. Their response was, Lord, is it I?
Lord, is it I? Am I the one? Am I the one? And so, in this situation, with a group this size, there are doubtless numerous... fusses, tensions, difficulties, represented in families and friendships and all sorts of things out there.
And the thing I want you to do, this is the charge, is over the next three days, three times ask the Lord, is it I? Am I the one? Am I the driver? Is it I? And you might say, I don't want to know.
Well, yeah, therein lies the problem, right? We belong to that foolish school of automotive maintenance. Don't lift the hood if you don't want to know.
Well, we should want to know. If we are the one, we should want to know. Lord, is it I?
Just three times on three successive days where you ask God honestly, am I the one, not the other person? That's a good, honest, godly question to ask. And so, with believing hearts, receive the benediction of your God.
Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God, even the Father, which hath loved us and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace comfort your hearts and establish you in every good word and work and amen