Look Forward to Your Self - Examination

Sometimes, when God gives us correction, or direction, or instruction, He gives us a little love-tat. This little, boop, hey, trying to get your attention here. And sometimes, He gives us both barrels at the same time. And I guess that's what He did today, because the sermon is just going to pick up where the sermonette left off. So buckle up! No, I'm just kidding.

But it's actually more instruction than it is correction this year. It's more encouraging than it is depressing. You know, we oftentimes face the Days of Unleavened Bread and the Passover Season with dread. We do! We've been in the church for almost 50 years. I've experienced this myself. Each year, before taking the Passover and the symbols of the bread and the wine, we're asked to examine ourselves. Notice what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11. And notice why we often face the Days of Unleavened Bread and Passover with dread.

We do! You've heard what I'm going to tell you today in this sermon. You have heard this before. I have listened to past sermons, and I know you've heard this before. But we need to be reminded of this periodically. Not every year, but every so often. Because we forget why we do what we do. And we drift back into our old habits of dreading the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread.

But there needs to come a time in your spiritual development, in your spiritual maturity, when you no longer dread this examining of yourself, but you actually look forward to it, to the point where you are encouraged to jump into it. How can that be when we read things like this? 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 26. 1 Corinthians 11 and 26 will read through verse 29, if you're taking notes. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Make sure my phone is silenced here. Of course it's not. There we go. Verse 27, Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup to the Lord in an unworthy manner. Okay, we're already starting to get nervous, and we do every single time we read this. And for good reason. I mean, there is cause to be a little, you know, uptight when we read this.

It wasn't intended to give us a little love tap on the shoulder. This is a boot in the rear. It really is. Whoever drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and the blood of the Lord. We are not to take this season lightly. We are not to approach the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread in a ho-hum kind of way. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat the bread and drink the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body.

We read this every year before Passover, and every year we feel a little uneasy. And yet God planned this from the beginning. Why did God plan an annual checkup Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread? There is a serious and somberness side to the Passover season, but there is a very positive outcome also. Why does God plan this for us each year? And we often make the mistake of thinking that God wants us to be down on ourselves, to put ourselves down.

Is that the purpose of examining yourself? Are you supposed to look at yourself and say, I am worthless, I am meaningless, I don't like myself? I tell you, it is not the reason. And if you do that, you're actually wasting your Christian walk.

Because you're not on the path that God wants you to be on. Self-loathing is not self-examination. Self-loathing is not self-examination. It's like trying to save yourself by punishing yourself. You are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, not by yourself. So don't loathe yourself when God loves you. Why did God plan this for us each year?

God's plans do not include children who loathe themselves. His plans are much more positive than that. Let's look at what God plans for you. He planned the Days of Unleavened Bread, and it's part of His plan for you. What is His plan for you and me? Jeremiah, let's go back to the Old Testament. This plan has been in place from the beginning, and it has not changed. And it is the purpose for the Days of Unleavened Bread, and it is the purpose for examining yourself.

Let's get this in mind so that we take it seriously and do what we're supposed to do. Okay, Jeremiah 29, verse 11. Very encouraging. Let's read this from the New Living. Jeremiah 29, verse 11. I usually use the New Living or the NIV or some conversational modern language when it's not a doctrinal issue. When it's more along the lines of a Christian living issue, then I'm going to use something more conversational. When we get into doctrine, we've got to be very careful. So we go back to King James.

We go back to the original Greek and original Hebrew as much as we can as well, not just trusting even the King James. Because it has itself, as I have, and Mr. Ken Thompson has instructed the speakers in our speaker seminars to watch all translations. They all make mistakes. They all have their bias.

Why do we use a translation like the New Living translation? Because it's more like the way we speak today so that we can get it. Jeremiah 29 and verse 11, for I know the plans that I have for you. He's got plans. He's made plans from the beginning. Says the Lord, they are plans for good and not disaster. Yes! To give you a future and a hope. Why did God plan Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread and examining ourselves every year to give us a future and hope?

Self-loathing doesn't produce that. Self-examination, as we're going to dive into in just a minute, really, really does. Don't worry. You're going to take self-examination very seriously. You're just not going to loathe yourself at the end. You're going to take responsibility for your own actions, thoughts, and heart. But you're not going to loathe yourself at the end because of this.

God has a plan for you, and it is for your good, not for your disaster. It is so that you have a future and a hope. And that is awesome. And that is what the Days of Unleavened Bread and the Passover are all about. And we should not approach the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread with self-loathing. Faith and repentance are not self-loathing. Putting yourself down, if you think it through, is actually trying to save yourself through some kind of punishment, or what people call penance, or payment.

You can't afford the payment, brethren. You don't have enough. And I'm not putting you down. I'm trying to encourage you. But face the facts. Your life and everything you're worth is not enough to pay the penalty. So adding loathing to the equation, self-hatred, does not benefit you during the Days of Unleavened Bread. And yet we do this. We approach self-examination, and when we see our own faults, and we're all a little bit different, so I'm not going to even try to explore why we do this.

But we tend to try to fix it ourselves, almost, by loathing ourselves, which actually interrupts the repentance process. And we're going to talk about repentance after self-examination when we get into the Days of Unleavened Bread. And if you loathe yourself, you're not repenting, because there is a difference. The Apostle Paul talks about a difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. And we tend to approach the Days of Unleavened Bread, and when we read things like, examine yourself that you are worthy, and we put our head down and we go, Oh, I'm not worthy. Well, Paul didn't say you were worthy. You're not worthy. I'm not worthy.

He said, in a worthy manner, you don't have to be worthy because you're not, and I'm not. That's the grace part of salvation, the part we didn't earn, the part that's a gift of God. Of course we're not worthy. Don't worry about that part. Why do we examine ourselves every year? Why do we go through this every year? Well, we know why it's not. It's not to beat ourselves up. So why is it?

God planned this season as an annual diagnostic tool. It's a diagnostic tool. Think about it. It's a way to bear our own responsibility and to take our calling seriously.

We maintain things in our life, and we get that, and we don't get depressed about it. You know, you maintain your car. You change the oil and the fluids, and you fix little things if the timing is off or if it's not working correctly. And if you don't do that, the car stops working. So you do maintenance on the car. And you don't loathe your car when you do maintenance on it. Do you? You diagnose a problem, you fix a problem before it becomes a bigger problem, and your car lasts longer.

If you ignore your health and you don't exercise and you don't eat right, you don't examine yourself, then your health breaks down. And you might even die before your time. Maintenance is required. Nobody loathes themselves by exercising or taking a nice supplement that they've been diligent to research or to, you know, be on a good diet. You don't loathe yourself when you do that. It's maintenance. If you regularly clean your house, then dirt and articles of clothing and trash and other things will start to build up. You won't even be able to move around your own dwelling. But just a little regular maintenance. Regularly putting things back where they go. Cleaning this, cleaning that, just a little at a time, you've got a great place to live, no matter how big or small it is. It just requires a little regular maintenance. And if you examine your car and you find something wrong, you fix it. Yeah? And if you examine your health and you find something wrong, you fix it to the best of your ability. And if you examine your house and you find something out of place, you fix it.

And if you examine your spiritual life and you see something you didn't see before, now you can go to God and together you can fix it. And that's not a bad thing. And that's not a loathing thing. That's an awesome thing. That's actually something to look forward to. Look forward to examining yourself. So you can find out what to fix.

Make sense? God planned it. And He told us from the very beginning that His plans are for our good, not our destruction. So Passover every year, year after year, examining ourselves that we take the cup in a worthy manner is a good thing. It's not a good thing. It's a great thing. It's a diagnostic tool. It's an awesome thing.

It leads to peace, eternal life, getting along with not some people but everybody. Wow! You look at it from that perspective and examining yourself is an encouraging thing for me to crush to do. But I am not naive. I have human nature also. The converted man who says he doesn't have human nature is not an honest man. And I know my human nature in me, just like in Adam, when Adam was accused in the Garden of Eden, did you eat the tree I told you not to eat? It wasn't my fault. It wasn't me. Don't look at me. Don't examine me. Don't diagnose me. I'm going to pass that blame on to somebody else. It was my wife.

Some people say that there's a woman to blame. But I know. Right? Then what did Eve do? What? Don't listen to him. It wasn't my fault. It was a snake. Oh, sure, a talking snake now. Yeah, that's what we do, human nature. We don't want to examine ourselves. We should. You should come to a point in your Christian walk. Would you actually love to examine yourself? Okay, what's wrong with me? What do I need to fix? How can I get closer to the character of Jesus Christ and God?

God has planned for us to examine our spiritual walk with Him regularly. Why? Well, it's certainly not so that we loathe ourselves for a short period of time and then we go and have a great meal at the night to be much observed. That is not the purpose. What's wrong is to find out what's missing and what's wrong. God plans for us to be fulfilled and happy and filled with hope. He puts a load on us, however. In order to get us to that point, He never said it was going to be easy. Don't dread hard work. Hard work pays off, brethren. And Christianity is hard work. Galatians 6 and 5 will read more of this passage later, but He says, For each one shall bear his own load. You bear your load and I bear mine. I'm sorry if I've offended any of you this past year, and I honestly am. And I know I have. Because you have told me so. Many of you. I'll say something in a sermon, and I'll hear about it five or six times a week. How could you say that? Well, I meant this. Well, it didn't come across that way. Well, you know what? I own that, don't I? What about you? Do you own your mistakes? Do you bear your own load, brethren? You know what? Examining yourself is a good thing, but it's not an easy thing. You have to bear a load. It's kind of heavy. You've got to do some hard work. Hard work pays off. James chapter 1 verse 3. New King James, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work. Why? That you may be perfect. The whole reason why you have to patiently work through your problems is to become a mature Christian, a mature man or woman. That selfish human nature, which we're going to talk about in a little bit of detail in a way you may not have considered before, that human nature becomes less selfish and more loving, more giving.

Let patience have its perfect work. That you may be perfect, complete and lacking nothing. Why do we examine ourselves to fix what is wrong or missing? Not to loathe ourselves. It's a good thing. I'm not putting a pretty little bow on a garbage sack. Examining yourself is actually a wonderful thing. Something we should dive into, not hesitate. Because every time we do, I just hate myself. And we tend to do that in human nature. Once we finally do give in to God, we're still a carnal being. We have God's Spirit working in us, but there's a war going on inside us. And our carnal nature turns to self-punishment instead of just trusting God to help us out of the mess that we're in. So God gives us tests and trials, but He's trying to get us ready for eternal life. To see if we're ready. The point of self-examination is a process for each of us to make sure that we're faithfully carrying out a commitment that we made to God and Jesus Christ when we were baptized. And baptism is the occasion when you made that commitment to accept the death of Jesus Christ for a substitution for your own execution. And I tell you, brethren, if you did that, you made a good deal. You got the better end of that deal. God gave you the gift of His Holy Spirit at that time, and your commitment included an obligation to walk in newness of life.

Romans 6, verse 1. Paul asked this question. When I go through baptismal counseling, I usually ask people to read Romans 6, 7, and 8 because it's about our commitment that we make to God. That we take it seriously, but every year at the Passover we stop and we remember the commitment that we made. And we ask ourselves, how am I doing? Is that hidden man that Mr. Henderson talked about rearing his ugly head and leading my life the one that I promised would go away? Is it still there? Or am I a little bit closer to the image that Jesus Christ is, where I could literally, literally lay down my life for my brethren, not in one fell swoop heroic act? That would be hard also. But every day, as Paul said, being a living sacrifice, giving every day, giving of yourself every day, putting other people in front of you every day more and more and more. What shall we say then? Romans 6, verse 1. Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Some people say, oh, it doesn't matter what I do on the Sabbath.

God's a grace, merciful, loving God.

Yeah, but you're walking all over it. You're taking the cup in an unworthy manner.

He's also faithful and steadfast and true. Are you? Are you?

Shall we sin that grace may abound? Certainly not. How shall we, who died to sin, live any longer in it? And that's really the question that we ask ourselves when we're examining ourselves. It's a heavy load. You know, I get that.

But it's worth it. This is a great diagnostic tool.

Or do you not know that as many of us who were baptized into Christ were baptized into His death? We said, my life, I lay it down for you. I no longer own it. I no longer call the shots. I now belong to Jesus Christ. You said that when you were baptized.

Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death. And baptism, when you go into that water, it symbolizes a burial. It's interesting that it's water. It also washes you. The symbolism is huge. The primary symbolism of baptism, though, is death going down and burial being submerged. That's why we don't sprinkle.

One of my favorite movies, I'm embarrassed to say because it's so silly. It's funny. It's Nacho Libre.

Where this monk wants to become a wrestler. And he has a partner in this wrestling fiasco that he does. Who doesn't believe in God? He can't believe he's not baptized. So one day when this atheistic friend is eating a salad in the locker room, he brings a little bowl up to him, sneaks up behind him, slams his face into the bowl, baptizes him. Now they can have a holy wrestling union. That's not baptism. Baptism symbolizes death. That's why we submerge. So that you actually get the symbolism. My life is no longer mine. I just laid it down. And when you come up out of that water, you come up through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Symbolically only. It's a ceremony. It's a symbol. But you come up renewed, without guilt, but not your own. You no longer belong to yourself. You made a commitment.

Therefore we were buried with him, verse 4, through the baptism of death, that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. Even so, we also should walk in newness of life.

And so we get baptized, and we do the ceremony of the laying on of hands, which is again just symbolic. God's Holy Spirit does not come through the minister's fingers. It comes directly from God. It's a symbol of setting you apart. That's what laying on of hands does. It says, this one is special.

When we anoint, we ask, God, set this person apart as special for this blessing.

Same thing when someone is baptized. When we ask for the blessing of little children, we ask not for them to be saved eternally, but to be protected in this physical life. So what do we do? Lay our hands on that child, on their head, and ask that child to be set apart as special.

So, you're set apart as special. Now what? Well, you're supposed to go out and walk in newness of life. Then what do we do? We sin over and over and over again. And so God has this plan in place, these Holy Days, where we have to stop and have an object lesson every year, where we examine ourselves and do a diagnostic.

This passage summarizes the elements that we need to consider when we examine ourselves. Unless we deceive ourselves about true repentance, whether sincere or insincere at the time of baptism, we're not asking God to rebaptize us. This is actually a progress report. That's what self-examination is. Am I making progress, or am I taking the cup in an unworthy manner? I don't have time to go through that into today's sermon, but we need to talk about that parable, about those who were invited to the wedding, and then the man was kicked out of the wedding, because he didn't put on a wedding garment. He didn't take the calling seriously. That's one of the passages where many are called and few are chosen, and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This is a serious matter.

So how can we practically talk about self-examination? What do you actually examine?

Let's get down to some details, so we have actually a practical roadmap to examine ourselves.

So that it is actually productive and not self-loathing. That we actually look forward to it. We dive into it, and we don't hesitate and shy away from it. There are three basic areas in your life.

If you want to paint it with a broad brush, which I'm going to in this sermon, there are three basic areas that you need to check up and make sure you're on the right track.

Those three areas are your actions, your thoughts, and even deeper your motives or your heart. Three areas. What you do or say, what you think, and going even deeper, why you do it, say it, or think it. Our actions are the easiest to look at. Our actions are often times our reactions to situations or other people. The things that we do, those are the easiest to see because you commit a sin. If you commit the sin over and over, that's pretty easy to examine. Okay, yeah, I do that one, and I need to overcome that. Examining your actions is not difficult. Well, it's hard to admit sometimes because we do have that. It's not my fault trigger in our carnal nature that we have to overcome. And that even applies to our actions and our words.

But it's usually something that you either do to yourself or to somebody else or with somebody else, and that is the easiest category to examine. Your actions, what you do or say. The second part is a little harder. We don't want to face it, and that's our thoughts. Somehow we think that we can think evil but word it correctly, and that it's not evil, hogwash. God's listening to our thoughts. It's so easy to justify yourself. It's so easy for me to justify myself. It's easy!

You say something to somebody and they get offended, and that's not exactly what I said. And we know! We know it's what we meant! They know it's what we meant!

Because we were what? Thinking it! Sometimes they're wrong and they don't know what we meant. Sometimes they're right.

Our thoughts, what we think, is important to God because it is who we are. We're going to go farther than just our thoughts in just a moment, but let's stay in our thoughts for a minute. Let's go to Isaiah 55. Our thoughts are important.

There's something that motivates our thoughts and actions that we'll get to, but Isaiah 55, notice it's not just our actions. And brethren, I know you know this, but I'm going through this systematically so that we know what to examine. That we have a practical template to go before the Passover, before the Days of Unleavened Bread. We know what we're supposed to look at. We'll even get into some symptoms in a little bit. Some symptoms that will indicate that our actions and words, our thoughts and our motives are off.

So what things do you examine yourself in? Thoughts. Isaiah 55 and verse 8. God says, For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways. Interesting ways is like actions. It's related to actions, but it's really more in the Hebrew. That word seems to be more about your moral character.

My moral character is not like yours, God says.

My habits are very different from yours, He says. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.

Scientists believe that to their best possible educated guess, the universe is 14 billion light years across. And that figure could be wrong, could be old.

14 billion. I believe that figure is from the earth to the outer edge. So it could be 14 billion in all directions, I'm not sure. But I can't even calculate that.

I can't even imagine that. I can barely imagine 10 miles, because I know if I walked 10 miles I would be a puddle of goo.

Right? 14 billion light years. How high is God above us? How high are His thoughts and His moral character above ours? He is an awesome God. And we are His children. And we are on a path to eternal life to become just like Daddy. And He loves us. And He's helping us along the way. And He gives us this little plan. It says, every year, even more than once a year, but at least once a year, you're going to join my church, because I'm going to call you and put you there, and you're going to be instructed to examine yourself. Not to loathe yourself, but to realize your thoughts are not His thoughts, but they're supposed to be. You're not called to stay the way you are. A lot of people say, come as you are. Yeah, yeah, right. But don't stay that way.

Become like Him. Matthew 5, verse 21, the very famous Sermon on the Mount.

It's like Jesus Christ's manifesto, why He was on the earth.

And He said to you in Matthew 5, verse 21, you have heard it said, you shall not murder. And that's the action. And that's the action, and that's the easy one to see.

You commit adultery, murder, you steal, you cheat, you see it, you repent. Easy. It's not that simple. Whoever murders will be in danger of judgment. Verse 22, but I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without cause will be in danger of judgment. Now that's your thinking.

So what do you examine? Not just the action, but also the thinking that caused the action. Because first you think it, then you do it.

You don't want a forest fire? Don't like the match. Remember Smokey the Bear?

Only you can prevent sin.

Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and you remember that your brother has something against you. Not that you have something against him or her.

But you owe them. You go make it right. Leave your gift before the altar. Don't come to God after cheating your brethren. And then say, oh, I love you God and I love you Jesus and here's my present to you. That's a a sketch in their nostrils. Leave your gift before the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother and then come give your gift.

Two things that we can examine fairly easily, I would say, are our actions, including our words, and our thoughts.

The one thing that's harder to see is our motive and our heart. It's not within human nature to self-examine the heart. We are opposed to doing that. We want to blame somebody else and we all do it from the time of Adam and Eve all the way to you and me. King David, and I'm going to go through this a lot more during the Days of Unleavened Bread also, but we're going to touch on it right now. King David had that human nature disease that Adam and Eve had and he tried to cover his sin. You remember? He gets bored. He doesn't want to go into war anymore. He's tired of fighting. He's fought all his life under King Saul. Then he gets kicked out of Israel and he fights for the Philistines. Then Saul gets deposed and comes back and becomes the king. And what does he do as king for all of those years? War. War after war after war. He conquered a lot. He accomplished a lot, but he was tired. He said, you know what? I'm going to sit back. Do I have you go conquer whoever it was, the Moabites or wherever they went?

And one night he sees Bathsheba bathing on the roof and he calls her up. He's the king. He can do that. Commits adultery with her and lo and behold, she's pregnant.

Does he immediately write Psalm 51, the repentance? No. He does what we do. What Adam and Eve did. He tries to cover it up. Human nature doesn't like to look at the heart. And even David, a man after God's own heart, tried to cover it up. Take encouragement by that.

If you feel ashamed of yourself sometimes, okay, you've got right to feel ashamed of yourself sometimes. But just know you're not alone. Poor King David, I'm thankful for him because his sins are out there for everybody to read. So that we can see, hey, I'm like that too. But you get to do it from the safety of the privacy of your own Bible. And you can examine yourself because he put it out there publicly. And he calls Uriah in, her husband, and tries to make it so that it looks like he's the father of the child, but he was too loyal. Wouldn't do it. So David gets him killed. Again, trying to cover it up. Now he can legally marry the woman, and it doesn't look like he did anything bad. Finally, Nathan, the prophet, comes to him and tells him the story of the lamb, the rich man who has a big flock of lambs, and the poor man who just has one lamb that he loves.

And the rich man has a visitor, and he throws a banquet, so he takes the poor man's lamb. Instead of taking one from his huge flock, David gets really angry at the guy and says, that man should be put to death. And Nathan says, you are that man. And brethren, I tell you, we are that man. And then David wrote Psalm 51.

And notice him examine himself. This is a great example of self-examination. After Nathan comes and hits him right between the eyes, God's Spirit kicked in. He yielded to God's Spirit finally. He put that false man that Dr. Henderson was talking about this morning away, and he allowed God's Spirit to work in him and listen to the self-examination. He says in Psalm 51 and verse 3. We're not going to go through this entire psalm. There are some parts I'm going to say for the Days of Unleavened Bread, but in verse 3, he says, For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sins are always before me. Does that mean he loathes himself because his sins are always before him? No. I believe that's a bit of a Hebrew idiom. Read this in the New Living Translation. He says, verse 3, I recognize my rebellion, it haunts me day and night. In other words, this particular sin he had not repented of, and it was bugging him. It didn't mean that after he repented, he didn't believe God would really forgive him, so he had to punish himself and loathe himself the rest of his life. That's not what he was saying in verse 3. He was saying, I haven't repented of this yet, and it is really getting to me. I acknowledge my sin. Brethren, we have to acknowledge that we're wrong. But how wrong? Where does David go with this? Watch this. You have to own your own sins, not just your actions and your thoughts, but you have to go further. Notice verse 5, back to the New King James.

You may not have noticed this before. But King David wasn't saying that his mother was an adulteress, and therefore the blame that is on him was actually somebody else's fault. He wasn't saying that at all. That's not what he meant by this verse.

Let's read verse 5 from the New Living Translation. For I was born a sinner. How can that be? He was a baby. Didn't even have a chance to do anything yet. He wasn't talking about his actions or his thoughts. Brethren, he was talking about his heart.

You and I are born with human nature. And David knew that about himself. He saw it. He wasn't loathing himself. He was simply recognizing the fact that he was selfish from birth. Let's read that entire verse. Human nature is in us from birth, actually prior to birth. This is a strong passage. It's one that a lot of people do not want to accept. But it is so liberating when you do. I'll explain that. For I was born a sinner. Yes, from the moment my mother conceived me. First of all, that answers the question, in the womb, are you a person? You betcha!

From when? Conception. And what happens at conception? A human being is created. Begotten would be a more accurate term. Creation happened back in Genesis 1.1.

A human being is begotten, is started, is begun. Created is the wrong word there. If you want to be technical about it. And that human being, from the moment we are conceived, is missing something, is incomplete. And from the moment that you and I are conceived, we are in desperate need of God. David wasn't loathing himself. He was repenting. And in doing so, he had to examine himself and realize, I am not good. Jesus said, no man is good. That's what David is saying here. He wasn't saying his mother was an adulteress. He was saying his nature was corrupt.

Selfish. Not loving. The love of God. The character of God. And he said, my thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways, my moral character, are not your ways. We are born this way.

Why is that liberating? Because if you don't know it, you're not going to do anything about it. It's as soon as you can see it, you can start asking God to fill in the gaps and move forward. Just like diagnosing a problem with your car, or diagnosing a problem with your health, or diagnosing the mess in your house. As soon as you can see it, it can be fixed. If you ignore it, it'll only get worse. That's why these days are wonderful. King David was not picking on babies.

The innocent. He was saying, I am corrupt. I see that in me. I've always been corrupt. I've always been. He couldn't remember a time when he wasn't that way. He knew he was conceived that way. And so were you and I. So are you. Think about it.

You were born missing something. King David was talking about his heart. So it's more than just our actions and our words. It's even more than what we think. The conversation that goes on in our own head. It really gets down to who or what we really are.

And when we realize that, we can go above and beyond what we really are. What an awesome thing! It's not a bad thing at all! Facing reality is not bad.

You think when the doctor says, well, you have cancer.

You know what? Some people would rather not know. I'm not one of those. I'd rather do something about it. Even if the cancer won. I would rather go down fighting than just ignore it.

Facing reality is liberating. David took responsibility for his own actions, his own thoughts, and yes, his own motives, his heart. Because he was the one responsible to do something about it. He wasn't saying it was my fault I was born. We don't say it's my fault I was born. Woe is me. We say it's my life. I'm the only one who can do anything about it. And I need help. I'm going to go to God to get that help. David took responsibility. If you don't take responsibility for yourself, brethren, if I don't take responsibility for myself, nobody else will. Bear your own load, Paul said in Galatians. King David was bearing his own load.

And wow! Did he ever bear it, didn't he? I mean, he really got down to it. He said, and you know what? Not only do I see my sins, I've been this way from conception. I've got to do something about this. That's how you examine yourself.

Why? So we can kick ourselves in the shins and pull our hair and say, I hate myself? No! So we can fix it. Just like maintaining your car or your health or your dwelling, you need to maintain your spiritual growth. This is something to be looked forward to, not dreaded. And brethren, you've heard this before, and you forget. And I'm asking you today, once again, to keep this in mind going forward. Look forward to the days of Unleavened Bread. Look forward to examining yourself. Passover is a time to reflect on our progress and look to the future. It's not a time to wallow in the past. I don't have time to go through all of the indicators that we are not examining ourselves or not living in sin, but it's okay. I gave it to you last year, and it is within your databanks to know. Essentially, if you're having conflict with other people, it's a great indicator that you personally are sinning. If you have conflict with other people, it's a great indicator you have a problem. It doesn't mean that everything that everybody does to you is your fault. It doesn't mean that. But if you end up being the one who's offended, that's your character, not theirs. Paul explains that in 2 Corinthians. You can go to last year's self-examined sermon for that. This is a time to reflect on the progress we've made and the progress yet to be made. And that is a good thing, not a bad thing. That's an encouraging thing. Nobody gets discouraged because my car has to be fixed, so I hate cars. Well, you might do that because it costs a lot. But you don't blame the car. It's just expected. You have a car, something's going to go wrong. You've got to fix it. You've got to maintain it. Same thing with your spiritual life. Same thing. Something's going to go wrong with your health. It's going to fix it.

Your house is going to get messy. Clean it. One little part at a time. Regularly, and you've got a great place to live. Your spiritual life is very similar. Regularly examine yourself, your actions, your thoughts. Yeah, you know what? Get down to your motive, who and what you are. Because God has a plan for you, and it is an awesome plan. Action is required on the part of every Christian. We are to examine how well we're doing according to God's will, and correct the compromises that we're still making with this world. We desire to be in God's kingdom. We desire to live forever with no more pain and no more sorrow. But God puts a bit of a load on us to get there. It's not more than we can handle, but He expects us to bear that load. Let's go back to Galatians 6, where we were. I said it was 5 earlier, but it's 6. We read this before. We read Galatians 6 and verse 5. Let's go back to verse 3. Get the context of that. For if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Paul is saying the same thing that King David said when he repented in Psalm 51.

If you think that you're something, if you think that you're not really missing God in your life, that you're all that, all by yourself, you're fooling yourself. Let each one examine his own work, and then he will have self-loathing. No, it doesn't say that. It says the opposite. It says, let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing. It's awesome. It's not a time of year to dread. It's a time of year to run to, run towards, dive into it, and do it wholeheartedly.

Rejoicing in himself alone and not in another, for each one shall bear his own load. Examining yourself is not about looking back and wallowing in self-pity about the past. Self-pity is sorrow of the world. It never solved anything. The Days of Unleavened Bread actually are supposed to lift us up. To give us a boost, to make us stop on our tracks and loathe ourselves, actually goes against the purpose of the Days of Unleavened Bread. Examining yourself before Passover is about taking the sacrifice of Jesus Christ seriously. Taking stock in where you are now and honestly looking at yourself to see if you are in the faith. Look where you need to grow in order to pass the test that God gives you. Ask yourself if you truly respect God. Ask if you live more in this dark world than you live in his light. And ask it of yourself.

You can't move forward without it. Your car will get gummed up and stopped. Your body will get gummed up and stopped. Your house will get clogged up and you can't navigate through it if you don't maintain it. And the same goes for your spiritual life. It's a good thing. It's an encouraging thing. It gets us through the next year with growth, with improvement, with more inner peace. Wouldn't you love to have that?

The Kingdom of God is not here yet, but it is being built inside of you. If you have God's Holy Spirit, and that peace that will be in the Kingdom of God should eventually be in your heart, in your head. When you see troubled times, you should be the person who can calmly help other people through it. Not the one who's anxious and panicked.

Because you have inner peace. Because the Kingdom of God is being built inside of you. Examine yourself. Do your regular maintenance. And let that peace come in. Let it be instilled in you, built up in you, one spiritual brick at a time.

Those are the basic areas to look at. Look at your actions, your thoughts, and go deep inside. And look at your heart, your very existence, your being, your motives.

We look forward to the Kingdom of God, as it says in Revelation 21, verse 4, God will wipe away every tear. I love that verse. My favorite verse in the Bible is actually two verses, not one.

And I'm not split between two opinions, because it's actually the same exact opinion. Romans 8, 28, For all things work together for good, to those who love God and are called according to his purpose. And then, Revelation 21 and verse 4, is the fulfillment of Romans 8, 28. It's not all things will work together for good, it's all things have worked together for good. And now God has wiped away every tear. Oh, we look forward to that day. In order for there to be you and I in that Kingdom, God's church, his firstfruits, have to pass through self-examination regularly. We stop and examine ourselves. And then we present ourselves once again, and we ask God for him to examine us.

It doesn't just stop with self-examination. Passover is not only about self-examination. But we actually turn this examination over to God once we've done our own. And in Psalm 26, verse 1, we do this trusting the outcome. We go to God and we present ourselves to God, and we ask him to examine us, not in dread or fear. But we go to God and we ask him to examine us, trusting that he has a plan. And that plan is for our good, for our future, and for our hope. And we trust that when we go to him. And in Psalm 26, verse 1, in Psalm of David, he says, In trust vindicate me, O Lord, for I have walked in my integrity, and I have trusted in the Lord. And I shall not slip. And he makes that commitment again. He recommits himself. And he says, Examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Try my mind and my heart. Yeah, okay, he's committed to God, but he knows he's not done. And so he says, God, take a look at me. But he does it in confidence, not in dread.

And he says, For your loving kindness that has said is before my eyes, and I have walked in your truth. He absolutely trusts that God intends good for him. We have to absolutely trust that God intends good for us. And then we rush. We run towards self-examination and asking God to examine us. We do not shy back from it, and we do not loathe ourselves. But we move forward. Psalm 139, verses 23 and 24, David asks God, Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties, and see if there is any wicked way in me. That word, way, is moral character. If I have any wicked moral character in me, search me out. What absolute trust in God are we supposed to have? That he doesn't hate us and loathe us, and he's ready to whip us. He's ready to fix us and make us like him, where his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. His moral character is higher, higher than heaven is above the earth. That's how high it is.

And we go before him with absolute trust and confidence, and we say, verse 24, See if there's any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. And that, brethren, is our hope. Why do we examine ourselves? Because we trust. Jesus Christ and God the Father loved us individually, not just as a group, but you. So much that he died, and all he asks in return, is that we bear our load, and walk the walk all the way into his peace.