What Makes Faith Real?

1. 0:01 that's one of the great hymns of the faith the whole gospel in that one song when, thank you guys when I was a kid growing up in Indiana and as I told some of you before I'm a military brat so we lived in a number of places I spent about six years living in south central Indiana a wonderful little town called Columbus look it up sometime online it's well known for its architecture don't do it right now please but one day a circus came to our town and my mother asked if I wanted to go to it must have been maybe eight or nine at the time and I said did not want to go why not and I said I don't like clowns now this is long before Stephen King wrote It long before God created the internet and YouTube where all the memes of these freaks who like to dress up like clowns and stand on the edge of wooded areas near parks and playgrounds to scare kids it was long before that I just didn't like clowns and my mother said well why not what's the problem with clowns now remember I'm eight or nine years old okay but my answer was something like this because clowns have these big painted on smiles and she said well what's the problem with that I said well if they have these big smiles painted on whatever's underneath that is not a smile I don't want some strange person wearing strange makeup and costume strange colored hair who's faking a smile I don't want that person near me so no thank you I don't want to be anywhere near a circus with clowns now fast forward about 30 years living here in Miami at that time Heidi and I had three kids Barnum and Bailey came to town and begrudgingly I took my kids to the circus and I want you to know it was wonderful and the clowns were great so any clowns out there I want you to know we're okay all right we're okay now and there's a real art to clowning that if you do it well it's a great thing to behold such was my thinking as a child but you know there is something in all of this we just have an aversion to the phony the artificial the fake there's a good reason for that reading from the Sermon on the Mount again this morning a series we've titled Jesus Said What?
2. 2:27 because he goes against the culture so often so as Pastor James likes to have us do if you would please stand as you're able as I read to you from Matthew 6 chapter 6 verses 16 through 18 this is Jesus speaking he says and when you fast do not look gloomy like the hypocrites for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others truly I say to you they have received their reward but when you fast anoint your head wash your face that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your father who is in secret and your father who sees in secret will reward you this is the word of the Lord thanks be to God please be seated again and would you join me as we pray heavenly father again this morning as we look into these words from your word quoting from the Messiah himself as he preached to that crowd on the hillside in Galilee 2,000 years ago lord my prayer is that you would take these words and that you would not that you bring them alive to us this word is alive it's active and living it's sharper than any two-edged sword that you bring us alive to your word lord take these words from the pages of the book inscribe them on the tablets of our hearts and use these words to mold us and shape us more and more in conformity with your son the living word Jesus in whose name I pray amen amen well Jesus is continuing this message this is the greatest sermon ever preached and throughout the sermon what he's done over and over again is he says keep it real he's eschewing the phony and the artificial and the fake he says keep it real and this morning the subject in question here before the house is fasting intentionally going without food for a period of time for spiritual purposes for the purposes of a more intense spiritual time of reflection and so forth and because our focus for the service this morning is and should be this table our sacramental meal I want to make just a few applications of this passage that I think would be appropriate for us today as he likes to do Jesus is taking on the conventional wisdom you have heard it said and he'll say something that the religious leaders the conventional wisdom of the time says they're there to do and then he'll say but I say and he turns whatever it is on its head and throughout the course of the sermon he says they told you to do these things that are on the surface that are external I'm telling you keep it real take it inside to your hearts and make it real and he's using this morning the tried and true old compare and contrast rubric most of us had to do that in high school compare and contrast the universe give three examples 25 words or less those kind of things Jesus says compare and contrast his first contrast is external religiosity versus internal authenticity there's external religiosity and then there's internal authenticity when you fast he says don't look gloomy like the hypocrites they've received their reward Charles Haddon Spurgeon was the greatest preacher in England in the 19th century he's still considered a prince of preachers we read his sermons today like devotional material he told his students his preaching students he said when you speak on heaven there should be a gleam in your eye and a glow about your countenance when you speak on hell your normal face will be just fine well here Jesus says don't advertise that you're fasting by looking gloomy and glum so everybody knows how spiritual you are he says keep it real and that's one of the revolutionary things about what he says to this crowd then and what he says to us today as well let me just do a quick it'll have to be a quick overview of what the great faiths of the world are all about because they all say basically the same thing with one exception every major faith system and I'm not an expert on all religions by any means but I have a working knowledge of most of them all the other great religions or faith systems of the world they tell you basically do this do these good things avoid these bad things and at the end of your life when you stand before whatever God you believe in then you hope and you pray that that God or gods or goddesses you pray and hope that the deity that you that you believe in will give you a passing grade and you can go on to whatever eternal reward your religion promises you do these good things don't do these bad things and hope that at the end of the at the end of your life that you pass you get a passing grade all the great faiths say that basically Judaism says that Islam says that Buddhism is not really a theistic religion so you put that on the side Hinduism has karmas basically the same at its core there's one great exception and that's the gospel of Jesus Christ we've got our do's and don'ts there's 10 of them in Exodus 20 and there's 613 more after that thank God we're not bound to all those grace rules we've got our do's and our don'ts and we hope you'll abide by them but it doesn't matter how many good things you do in this life or how many bad things you avoid or how many bad things you atone for by works of penance the gospel is quite clear no matter what you do in the final analysis you will not measure up to a holy God he is holy and perfect and you never will be so on your own merits we fail that's the bad news the good news is God takes the equation turns it completely around 180 degrees and says you are lost and there's nothing you can do about it but praise God I have done it for you and he sent his son Jesus to live that perfect life to achieve all the righteousness we did not could not never will if we had thousand lifetimes we would never attain the righteousness that Jesus Christ attained in his one lifetime attained all perfection all righteousness for us and then gave his life as the atoning sacrifice to payment for our sins so God says to us you're lost and there's nothing you can do about it but praise God I have done it for you in sending my son Jesus to be the one to lead you out of your hopeless situation the pit a man fell into a pit and couldn't get himself out a subjective person came along and said I feel for you down there an objective person walked by and said it's logical that someone would fall into this pit a Pharisee said only bad people fall into pits a mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit a news reporter wanted the exclusive story for the pit an IRS agent asked if he was paying taxes on his pit an evolutionist said you are a rejected mutant destined to be removed from the gene pool and you are being naturally selected out so that you will not produce any more pit falling offspring a self-pitying person said you haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit a fire and brimstone preacher shouted you deserve your pit a Christian scientist offered as you are being a spiritual until you are begins on the start last sentence The pit is just in your mind.
3. 10:01 A psychologist observed, your mother and father are to blame for you being in that pit. A self-esteem therapist said, believe in yourself and you can get out of that pit. An optimist said, things could be worse. A pessimist said, things will get worse.
4. 10:17 Jesus, seeing the man, took him by the hand and lifted him out of his pit. And that's the gospel. Whatever pit you've managed to get yourself into, and we all know we have them, the message of the Bible, the message of our church, the message of this preacher is that there is a way out of the pit.
5. 10:40 There's one way and only one way. And it's by taking the nail-scarred hands of the one who loved you enough to die for you and give you a way out of the pit and to be made right in God's sight. And that's the way and the only way there is to be made right and be lifted out of our pit.
6. 10:57 Now, let's just take a moment here. What's the deal with fasting here? What's the purpose of it? Well, believe me, as Jesus is preaching to that crowd on the Galilean hillside, weight loss is not the main focus. Most of those people were struggling to survive, not worry about losing a few pounds.
7. 11:15 That's more of a modern problem for us, right? Under the Mosaic law, the Jews were only required to fast on Yom Kippur. But during the exiles, the various exiles that they had endured, they had instituted several more fasts just to remind the people of Israel who they were, that that exile was not where they belonged, that they were strangers in a strange land.
8. 11:38 And notice here that Jesus doesn't frown upon fasting. He doesn't look down upon it. He says, when you fast, assuming that they will, he assumes his disciples will fast. He says, but when you do, be sure that you do it in a way that expresses genuine humility and repentance for your sins, not spiritual pride, not look at me, look how spiritual I am, that I'm fasting today.
9. 12:03 Not just paying lip service, not just going through the motions, but genuine, honest humility and repentance. It's nothing new. Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah in the 8th century BC, referring to the Assyrian exile, he has the people of Israel.
10. 12:19 Isaiah 58 verses 3 through 4. Why have we fasted? They're crying out to God. Why have we fasted and you see it not? Why have we humbled ourselves and you take no knowledge of it? God answers, behold, in the day of your fast, you seek your own pleasure and oppress all your workers.
11. 12:39 Behold, you fast only to quarrel and to fight and to hit with a wicked fist. Fasting like yours this day will not make your voice to be heard on high. And then Jesus echoes that same thing in Mark chapter 7, verses 6 and 7.
12. 12:54 And he, that's Jesus, said to them, to the Pharisees, well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, this people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. In vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.
13. 13:12 And in Jesus' time, the Pharisees fasted two or three times a week, sometimes even more. But unfortunately, even for them, the religious leaders, it's just lip service. It's just going through the motion. It's just calling attention to themselves. Look how spiritual we are with long robes, long beards, and longer faces wanting people to notice how very spiritual they were.
14. 13:36 God has an aversion to the phony and the artificial and the fake. That's where we get it, because we're made in his image. Now, as you know, I'm big on the local church. I have dedicated my life to working for the local church.
15. 13:53 And I believe in the local church. I believe in membership. I believe in active engagement, regular engagement with the local church. I am for the local church. The kingdom of God only advances two ways. We plant new churches. We make existing churches bigger. I'm for all the parachurch organizations that we support.
16. 14:11 Logoi and Youth for Christ and Inner Varsity and Habitat and so many others. I'm for those parachurch ministries. But their jobs are to do a ministry that maybe the local church can't do and to reach out to people the local church isn't reaching or can't reach and to bring them into a local church.
17. 14:30 That's how it works. So I'm all for the local church. But you can be here every Sunday morning. You can attend every Bible study. You can memorize scripture and pray lengthy, pretty prayers and just be going through the motion, paying lip service to God.
18. 14:49 I've seen it before and I've been guilty of it before. Howard Hendricks. I think this is the second week in a row I've quoted the late, great professor Howard Hendricks. He says, it is much safer to vaccinate someone with a mild case of Christianity so as to prevent them from catching the real disease.
19. 15:07 That mild case, that's that external going through the motions. That's what's happening with these hypocrites. And that is the word that Jesus uses here. It's the Greek word hypocrite. And Jesus says, have nothing to do with their so-called religion.
20. 15:24 It's phony and it stinks and it gives non-believers an excuse to reject Christianity as if they needed any more ammunition. These hypocrites, they give it all, they give them all the ammunition they need. And we've all seen it. Politicians who are devout members of whichever church they say they belong to.
21. 15:44 And yet they will fight like cornered wolverines to protect every form of abortion from the moment of conception to the moment of natural birth and even beyond. Politicians who proclaim to be devout members of whichever faith.
22. 16:00 And yet they will tell you with a straight face that women can become men. Men can become women. Not only that, men can get pregnant and have babies. As if we're stupid enough to fall for that. We've seen it in the church where church leaders, preachers, evangelists, well-known speakers who travel around the world who proclaim a highly moralistic gospel, do these good things, don't do these bad things, and God will bless you.
23. 16:30 Then we find out they're engaging in the very same things they tell you to avoid. And it stinks to high heaven and stinks in God's nostrils too. We are revulsed by the phony and artificial and the fake. Think about what it does, how it offends our holy God when he sees his so-called people acting that way.
24. 16:49 Galatians 6-7, do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever one sows, that he will also reap. But now fasting, is there a purpose for it today? Has it just gone its, has it served its purpose?
25. 17:04 No. There's still a purpose for fasting. A New Testament professor by the name of William Barclay gives these five benefits to fasting above and beyond the spiritual benefits thereof. He says there's, first of all, there's the value of self-discipline, that you deny yourself. Secondly, he says there's a release from slavery to habit, that you don't have to eat a meal at a certain time every day.
26. 17:26 Thirdly, he says there's a preservation of the ability to do without things. We rarely do without anything in our culture unless we willingly choose to do so, right? Fourth is the positive value for health. There is a benefit to fasting from time to time.
27. 17:41 I'm not a nutritionist. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but you can find out. And fifth, there's the enhancement of our appreciation of things. You know if you've ever fasted, even if it's just for 24 hours, that next bite of food tastes so good. That next drink of water goes down so well.
28. 17:59 Jesus himself fasted. Jesus went on a 40-day fast at a crucial point at the very beginning of his ministry. He felt the need to get away and to focus on his mission that he had from his father. If Jesus was helped by a period of fasting, I dare say it will do us good as well.
29. 18:22 Now I can't tell you how often to fast or how long. Consult your doctors if you need to, but it is a good thing every now and then, just so we know that that food doesn't own us. And so often I think we feel like it does. And it's one way to help focus our attention more intensely on whatever situation it is we're praying about, whatever question we're wrestling with.
30. 18:45 Fasting is a way of saying, Father, I am very, very serious about this. And so serious I'm giving up, giving up food for a period of time so I can focus on what you have to say to me. And when you do that, every time your stomach growls, let that be a reminder to pray and seek God.
31. 19:04 And whatever the issue is you're wrestling with, whatever question you're holding out before the Lord. Jesus says, keep it real. Keep it real. If you do it for the right reasons, don't do it for show. Don't do it so people will notice how spiritual you are.
32. 19:19 Do it with humility. Do it with true repentance of your sins and do it for a period of time so that you can engage with God more intensely. So first, compare and contrast. There's external religiosity versus internal authenticity. Secondly, there's outward obedience versus inward devotion.
33. 19:37 Outward obedience versus inward devotion. This is closely related to the first one. It's not quite the same. The first compare and contrast talks about our relationship with God himself. This one talks about how it manifests in our lives, how we put it into practice in our lives, how we strive to love the Lord our God with our heart, soul, mind, and love.
34. 19:59 the strength of our neighbors as ourselves, or how we don't, how it plays out in our lives from day to day. Listen, we can be completely fastidious about pursuing the spiritual disciplines, you know, Bible study, prayer, corporate worship, tithing, being in fellowship with other Christians.
35. 20:17 We can be fastidiously obedient about those things, and so we're just as empty as a gun barrel spiritually. We can do it not because we love God, love our neighbors, but we can do it out of obligation, we can do it out of guilt, we can do it out of a sense of showing off for others.
36. 20:36 That doesn't happen so much anymore, but it used to, especially in places like the deep south and the midwest, and that's what the hypocrites, that's what these Pharisees and these religious leaders, that's what they're doing. They're wearing their religion on their faces and their sleeves and their robes to show everybody how truly spiritual they were, fasting and praying these long prayers.
37. 20:56 Now, as I mentioned to many of you before, I am a recovering psychology major. Don't hold that against me. And my program was in a secular university. It was largely behavioral, and I did learn a few useful things there. Let me just share one with you.
38. 21:12 It'll sound a little involved, but it's really not too hard to understand. The difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic or external motivation and intrinsic or internal motivation. And I heard a great illustration of it.
39. 21:28 Let me just pass it on to you quickly. Old man lived by himself in a big house with a corner lot and a big yard, neighborhood full of kids. And one day the boys in the neighborhood decided that yard really needs to be played in. So they gathered in the old man's yard and started to play in roughhouse in his yard.
40. 21:44 And he really didn't like it. He didn't want them there. But rather than doing the stereotypical old man, get off my lawn bit, because he knew that would only encourage him to do it all the more, he took a different approach. Now, this is many years ago.
41. 21:59 So I mentioned the monetary amounts. They don't mean much to us today, but they did back then. He went out to his yard and he said, boys, I just want you to know, I'm kind of lonely here in this house. And I really love seeing all you boys out here playing in my yard. I really appreciate you coming to play in my yard.
42. 22:15 In fact, I like to give each one of you a quarter. So he came all in a quarter. And again, back then that was worth something. And the kids thought, great, we're playing in the man's yard. He pays us. Next day they came back. He went out and said, welcome back, boys. Listen, I gave you all my quarters yesterday.
43. 22:31 So today I've got dimes. Let me give you each a dime. Thanks for coming to play. So they took the dimes and went about their way. Next day they came back. He went out and said, boys, I'm running low on change. All I've got today are nickels. So here's a nickel for each of you.
44. 22:46 Thanks for coming to play. Fourth day they came back and he came out and said, boys, I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm all out of change. So I don't have anything to give you for the day. Well, you can predict what happened. They jumped on him and beat him silly. No, they didn't do that. The next day they didn't come back.
45. 23:04 What had happened? He took an intrinsic motivation. They just liked playing in his yard. He made it extrinsic. He paid them for it. And when that dried up, their motivation to come back dried up as well. We can do that spiritually. We can come to the Lord for intrinsic reasons.
46. 23:22 We get forgiven, release of guilt, removal of shame. We get a worldwide network of brothers and sisters. We get to hang out with a cool bunch of people like Christ Church. We get eternal life forever. And after a while, things maybe get a little rough and that intrinsic motivation dries up.
47. 23:42 It can become all extrinsic. My best seminary professor is still a good friend to stay, Richard Pratt, warned the seminary students. All of us were there because we're going to various ministries. He said, guys, let me tell you, if you make your faith your job, you're liable to lose one of them.
48. 23:58 You can take that extrinsic motivation, that intrinsic motivation and make it extrinsic. And then it's pretty easy to kill. So what's our motivation as we aspire to follow Jesus? Is it intrinsic? We follow him because we love him.
49. 24:14 We appreciate what he's done for us. We're so grateful for the way he's given his life for us, that he's paid the price for our sins and set us free. We want to spend the rest of our life saying thank you to him. Or has it become extrinsic?
50. 24:30 We do it because, well, it's just what we're supposed to do. It's what others expect of us. I would guess that most of us, maybe all of us, we're probably a mixture of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. In this life, that's probably what we all will be. But we want to move more and more and more into that intrinsic motivation of just doing what we do out of love for God, not obligation, not guilt or anything like that.
51. 24:56 So we go to him and we ask him to do for us that inner transformative work in our lives that only he can do. And we wait and we watch and we work and we pray. Well, he transforms us more and more into the image of his son, Jesus.
52. 25:12 So Jesus says, compare and contrast, there's external religiosity versus internal authenticity. There's outward obedience versus intrinsic devotion. Then there's the apparent versus the real. These hypocrites, the religious leaders, he's talking about, Jesus is talking about here, they clean up really nicely.
53. 25:31 They look really spiritual on the outside. And Jesus said, but on the inside, they're basically full of venom. They look down on other people. The word Pharisee means separated one, separated from the masses. They didn't want to have anything to do with the common folks.
54. 25:48 They saw themselves way above it. When people came to Jesus, they came one of two ways. If they came to him humble and broken, good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Master, what must I do to follow you? When they came to him humbly and broken, Jesus was very gentle with them.
55. 26:07 He treated them very graciously. When they came to Jesus, arrogant, full of themselves. These religious leaders who were schooled in the finest forms of education, the rabbinical schools, and they were going to teach this country bumpkin from Nazareth, what's what?
56. 26:25 When they came to him full of themselves, he was not gentle and mild with them. He was in their faces, calling them a brood of vipers and sons of the dogs who murdered the prophets. When they find a convert, they make him twice as fit for hell as they are themselves.
57. 26:43 He was not gentle and mild with the people who came to him full of themselves. It matters how we come to Jesus. Are we coming to him in real humility or only in apparent, the phony, the artificial, and the fake? The Queen Mary, when it was commissioned in 1936, was the largest passenger ship the world had ever seen and served faithfully for many decades, including through one world war.
58. 27:08 When it was finally decommissioned in 1967, they took it out to Long Beach, California, made a floating museum out of it. When they did that, they realized they had to do some refurbishing and some retrofitting of this huge ship.
59. 27:23 And so they set about cleaning and renovating the entire ship. And when they took the enormous, massive smokestacks off, these smokestacks that were originally made of three-quarter inch steel, when they lifted them off and set them down on the dock to be refurbished, they all crumbled into fragments of rusted paint.
60. 27:46 Because all that was left of the smokestacks after all those years was layer after layer after layer of paint. It was all cosmetic. Some of us can relate. Over the years, we've gotten good at faking it.
61. 28:02 We've added layers of religiosity. We've got the apparent spirituality going on, the appearance of spirituality. But inside, it's pretty hollow and pretty artificial. There's the apparent versus the real.
62. 28:18 And then just very quickly, the last one, because I need to touch on this. There's that false superiority versus genuine humility. And that's what I'm talking about with Jesus and how he deals with people. If we come to him full of ourselves, he will not deal with us because, just like my aversion to clowns because I knew they weren't real, God has a strong aversion to the phony and the artificial and the fake.
63. 28:42 And he will not deal with us that way. We're going to come to Jesus. We've got to come to him straight and strong and honest because he will not deal with the artificial in any other way. Spiritual pride is toxic waste to the human soul. I have a friend, a committed Christian, but he has told me before, he's not a part of this church, he's told me before that he will not go to church Christmas and Easter.
64. 29:07 And I say, why? He said, because that's when all the amateurs come out. That's the amateur hour of church and I'm not going to do it. I'm there the other 50 weeks out of the year. And I said to him, I hope gently, but I'm not sure how to do this. I said, dude, don't you understand?
65. 29:24 In God's eyes, we're all amateurs. In God's eyes, I don't care if you're the most spiritual person that ever lived to the most shallow, vapid Christian that ever lived. The difference between the most spiritual and the least spiritual in God's eyes is about the square root of that.
66. 29:42 We're all amateurs in God's sight. We're all children in God's sight. Where do this spiritual pride and arrogance come from? I know it can be tempting when you compare yourself to other Christians, but God will not have it. He will not have it.
67. 29:58 Now I want to give you a quote. C.S. Lewis. You know if I don't give you a quote from C.S. Lewis, you get your money back on Sunday mornings. We can do that, right guys? It's a favorite quote of mine, and I've given it to you before, but I think it's so right on. C.S. Lewis, one of the most brilliant minds of the last century, the greatest Christian writer and apologist of the last century.
68. 30:17 His Mere Christianity was the second most popular, second best-selling book in the 20th, Christian book in the 20th century, second only to the Bible, influenced countless thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of people. C.S. Lewis did not want to be a Christian.
69. 30:33 He put his intellect above the gospel, his intellect above God, and he did not want to become a Christian. God finally wore him down, and he wrote this. C.S. Lewis writes, when I first became a Christian about 14 years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own by retiring to my rooms and reading theology.
70. 30:54 I wouldn't go to the churches and the gospel halls. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music, but as I went on, I saw the merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off.
71. 31:14 I realized that the hymns, which really were just sixth-rate music, were nevertheless being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew. And then you realize that you aren't fit to clean those boots.
72. 31:32 It gets you out of your solitary conceit. Jesus says there's external religiosity versus internal authenticity. There's outward appearance versus inward devotion. Outward obedience versus inward devotion.
73. 31:49 There's the apparent versus the real. And there's false superiority versus genuine humility. And Jesus says, choose the way of the genuine. Eschew the phony and the artificial and the fake. God won't have it. If you're going to follow him, we've got to keep it real.
74. 32:05 It's ironic this morning that our passage focuses on fasting, when the main focus of our service is the table and this meal, our covenantal meal with our covenant keeping God. There's the fasting, there's the artificial, there's the phony, there's the fake, and then there's real food, real sustenance for our soul.
75. 32:25 So as we conclude this message this morning and transition into our service of communion, would you join me as we pray? Our Lord and our God, we thank you that with you, we can keep it real.
76. 32:40 That we don't have to put on an act for you. We don't have to wear a mask for you. You know us down to the very fiber of our being, down to our very DNA. Lord, you created us in your image and you called us to be your own and you've loved us with an everlasting love.
77. 32:58 So much so that you sent your son to die in our place and to pay the price our sins deserve and then to rise again from the dead that we might do the same. So as we gather now around this table, the table of the Lord, we ask that you would meet us in a real way here in these basic elements of unleavened bread and the fruit of the grape, that you would nourish our souls.
78. 33:20 And I ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Let me ask the other elders if they'll come and join me around the table. I'll give you just a few words of explanation as to what we're doing here today. This is the table of the Lord. It's Jesus' table.
79. 33:36 It's not mine. It's not this church's. It's not this denomination. This table is Jesus' table. And he invites those who know him as Lord to participate in this covenantal meal along with him. So in just a moment, we're going to take these basic elements of matzo, unleavened bread, and grape juice.
80. 33:56 We're going to distribute it to everybody. And they will represent the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. They do not become anything other than unleavened bread and grape juice. Jesus died on the cross. He stretched out his arms. He gave up his spirit to the Father.
81. 34:11 And he said, it is finished. And his sacrifice was once for all, for all those who will. So as we distribute these elements to you, they don't become anything other than that. But as we take them, we are reminded of the sacrifice that he made for us when his body was broken and his blood was poured out, all for sinners to be forgiven by our Heavenly Father.
82. 34:33 And so it was that on the night before he was to be betrayed, Jesus took unleavened bread. And as part of a Passover Seder, where the men expected him to talk about the sacrificial lamb, he took bread and he broke it.
83. 34:49 And he said, this bread, this is my body, which is broken for you. Eat this as often as you will in remembrance of me. And then afterwards, after he had done that, he took the cup.
84. 35:06 And whereas they expected that fourth cup to be the cup of blessing, a normal Passover Seder, a tradition of 1400 years at that point, he took that cup and he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
85. 35:26 Drink this as often as you will in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread, you drink in this cup, you remember my first coming and you look ahead to the time I will come again and we'll share this meal in the kingdom of heaven.
86. 35:41 And so now I ask the elders that they'll take these, these basic elements of unleavened bread and matzo and have them up here. We'll invite you to come forward up the center aisles and take these elements as you come by. One word of explanation before we do that.
87. 35:57 There are just a couple of kinds of people who should not participate in this. If you don't know Jesus is Lord, you've never come to a point where by faith you've received the payment he made on the cross for your sins, then this is not for you. Jesus says this is for his people and we don't want anybody here to do anything that would be dishonest or inauthentic as to who you are and where you are in your spiritual journey at this point.
88. 36:22 We're glad you're here. And if you don't know Jesus is Lord, if you get with one of us after the service, we'd love to tell you how you could know him too. Maybe next time we do this, you can join us as well. The other kind of person who shouldn't participate in this meal is the person who, you've become a Christian maybe years ago, maybe decades ago, and you have received the payment Christ made on the cross for you.
89. 36:43 But you know right now you're living a life of knowing willful rebellion against God and you have absolutely no intention of changing, then we'd encourage you to pass by. Let these elements pass by and just stay where you're seated and no one will appoint you or make you feel self-conscious.
90. 37:00 Just stay where you are and we'll be glad to get with you after the service as well if you'd like to talk. If you're not ambulatory enough to come up to the front, one of the elders will come to you where you sit. All right. So would you pray with me? Heavenly Father, we ask that you would set apart these common elements for this most uncommon purpose.
91. 37:19 They would feed and nourish our souls as we feed on Christ. If we ask you to do this in his name. Amen. Now if you will just come out to the center aisle, come up and pass this way and see the elements from the elders.

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