A Proper Examination Process

Mr. Stetter, the sermonette, is a perfect introduction to what I want to talk about here this morning. He talked about removing the leavening from our homes, and we're all going to start thinking about that. It's just a few weeks away, and the women will be more involved than that, unfortunately, than the men, because sometimes we, as men, can let the sort of the Passover sneak up on us. Oh yeah, we deliver the car, or maybe our office, or whatever, but we're not involved in it as much as the women are.

And as we approach this time, something that comes into our mind along the way is that we are told that we are to examine ourselves. In fact, the removing of the leavening is a symbol of self-examination. If we just remove the physical leavening from our homes, and we don't do the self-examination, we really not accomplish what the day is all about, or all the days of the spring, holy days, because the physical is supposed to teach us the spiritual. So we examine, we look for all this physical leavening, but we're also to be examining ourselves.

Now, what does it mean to examine ourselves before the Passover? Because it is a command, and it's something we must do. In fact, not to do it can be a very serious issue in our spiritual lives. So this is a very, very important, and I can't stress how important this is, part of this whole spring holy day season. Sometimes when we talk to especially people who have been in the church, second and third generation, we have four generations, in some cases, of people who have been in the church, we do the rituals, but we really don't do the spiritual aspects of it.

Sometimes some of the greatest spiritual danger is to be in the church for a long, long time. And you continue to do the physical things. But if you don't learn the spiritual from it, it's just rituals. They're just rituals. How do we examine ourselves? What does that mean? What criterion should we use? Or, is examining ourselves, okay, I just have to find out how much sin I still have, so I have to go into the Passover depressed, dejected, feel like God doesn't want me anymore? Is that the purpose?

What is the purpose of the examination? Well, to understand that, we have to look at the passage where we are told to examine ourselves, and we have to look at it, too, to its original people, what this meant to the Corinthians as they were told.

And then we'll look at some of the criteria, if you will, that Paul sets us up, and then we can go into some very broad criteria. I'm not going to give you 40 things to examine yourself with. I'm just going to give three very basic concepts. But how do we get there? Well, let's go to 1 Corinthians 11 and look at where we start, the beginning of the story here. 1 Corinthians 11. We all know that the Chord's Church was a very troubled and dysfunctional church.

They had lots of problems, lots of sin. And here they were actually having the vision taking place in the church. There was a finding going on inside of the church concerning the Passover. How they observed the Passover was dividing the people into different factions.

As we'll read, not only factions over what people believe were religious aspects of the Passover, but it was actually drawing lines between rich and poor. So we have forming within the church these factions between people who have money and people who don't have money. So let's begin in verse 23.

First Corinthians 11 is a big thought process that Paul goes through. Let's start in the middle of it here, because now he's getting into this subject here. Let's start in verse 18. For first of all, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it.

So they were being divided. They were fighting. They were in little groups. And then he's going to tell where this division is taking place. Of course, if you read through 1 Corinthians, you find out there were all kinds of divisions in this church. They were fighting over anything. Anything you could come up with, they were fighting over. This was just the nature of that congregation. For there must also be factions among you that those who are approved may be recognized among you.

He said, you know, through all this fighting, we're going to find out really who is dedicated to God and who isn't. Through all this fighting, we're going to find out who is going to live their lives in accordance with God and who doesn't.

Then, verse 20, he's going to give us the very specific issues that he's talking about here. Therefore, when you come together in one place, it is not to eat the Lord's Supper. So he says, you're not coming together to eat the Lord's Supper. And the Lord's Supper now is a common term that's used for taking of the bread and the wine. And sometimes people will call the Passover service the Lord's Supper. But here, he says, don't call it the Lord's Supper. So they were coming together, and we'll read through this, we'll see, at the Passover ceremony. And they ate a meal as part of the Passover ceremony. Just like if you went to the Jewish world today on the Passover, their Passover ceremony is a meal. They eat a complete meal on that night. So they were getting together, coming together as a church, but they were eating this meal as part of their observance.

Verse 21, he says, for in eating, each one takes its own supper ahead of others, and one is hungry and other is drunk. So they were coming together, and, you know, some people were eating, others were standing around talking, some people were waiting to prepare their food, other people were already eating. Some people were actually getting drunk. So this is absolute mayhem.

What? Do you not have houses to eat and drink in? Or do you despise the Church of God and shame those who have nothing? So there's other people who are showing up, maybe the poor people, they didn't have much food, and those people were waiting around hoping someone would offer some food to them. So they're just waiting around, where people are laughing and talking and eating, and there's a big sort of party going on. But some people weren't eating anything, because no one's offering them anything. What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you in this? I do not praise you. For I receive from the Lord. Now, there's 23's important, because now we know what this Lord's Supper was. It's the Passover. He goes back and says, let's go back to the basic teaching about the Passover. For I receive from the Lord that which I delivered to you, to you, that the Lord Jesus of the same night in which He was betrayed took bread. So He goes back to what Jesus calls the Passover. So if we go back to the Gospels, we see Jesus said, this is the Passover. So they're observing the Passover. He goes back and says, let's go back to that basic teaching. So this tells us the time frame of when this was happening. Verse 24, though when He had given thanks, He broke the bread and gave it. He said, Take eat, this is my body, which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me. The same manner, He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of Me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. The purpose of them getting together on that night was not to have this big potluck meal, where some people were getting drunk, some people were gorging themselves, and some poor people weren't even getting anything to eat. The purpose was to, as it says, proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. This was supposed to be very solemn. You don't proclaim somebody's death this way, especially the death of Jesus Christ. So they were to come together to commemorate the death of Jesus Christ. The manner in which this was being done was totally unacceptable. They were coming into the Passover with attitudes and approaches that was totally unacceptable to God in the way this was going to be done. So He brings us back to a central idea. We do this. We take this bread. We drink this wine to commemorate the body, blood, death of Jesus Christ.

Now verse 27, Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Understand the gravity of that statement. This is a very, very serious statement. To take the bread and the wine in an unworthy manner, you are guilty of the death of Jesus Christ. In other words, the reality of that broken body and that blood being given to you as a substitute is not being given to us. So that's real important. I mean, look at what He says.

Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Now I want to stress, He says, I'm worthy of the manner. And you say, well, I've examined myself and I found out I'm not worthy of the blood of Jesus Christ. I guess I shouldn't take the Passover. He didn't say, if you come and you are unworthy. Every one of us is unworthy of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. But it's an unworthy manner. The way the attitude in which they were approaching this was not bringing them close to God through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. It was doing the opposite. It was driving them apart. And as the people of God are driven away from God by our own actions, as Christ is not seen as our Savior, our Master, the Head of the Church, the High Priest, the Sioux-Covin King. You know what happens? We break into factions. Factions within the Church is always the symbol of a lack of submission and understanding, or as Paul says, the discerning of the body of Christ. So I can discerning the body of Christ. So, verse 28, this leads us up to the verse that we wanted to read, but let him in, examine himself, and so let him eat to the bread and drink of the cup. He says, don't not do it. He says, but examine yourself first so that you're doing this in a worthy manner. So he said, stop the big meal. Stop the party. Stop all this arguing. Stop the rich people having a nice meal and the poor people not eating anything. Stop all this. Stop people getting drunk. Just stop it. Come together. Take the bread and the wine to commemorate the death of Jesus Christ. Be sober. Be understanding of what's going on. Examine yourself first. Then come and do it. The purpose of the examination is to keep us from doing it. It's to give us a desire and motivation to do it. It is to give us a desire and motivation to do it. Verse 29 is very important. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. Judgment. Judgment from who? Judgment from God. So, okay, examine myself. Well, what am I supposed to do? We're not getting together on the Passover and have a big meal and party. We're very serious that night. We're very somber that night. We don't spend a lot of time laughing and joking. We come in and we're set at an end on this is about Jesus Christ. This is about His death. So we have to examine ourselves beforehand. Well, we'll come back here to 1 Corinthians. I would have jumped ahead to 2 Corinthians because Paul is very concerned about this idea of examining yourself in both 1 and 2 Corinthians. So let's go to 2 Corinthians 13. 2 Corinthians 13. Verse 5. Paul says, Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. So we are to examine ourselves to see whether we're in the faith. He doesn't say, examine yourself to see how exactly you're keeping the rituals. The rituals are important, but this has to go beyond that. Are we in the faith in our relationship with God? You know, in the faith is more than just trusting in God. The faith means the whole religion. But you see, the before faith. That's an important word. The faith, our entire belief system, our religion before God, examine to see if we really are following the true religion.

And then he goes on and he says, Test yourselves. That's very interesting. He says, I'll take a test. Examine yourself and take a test. Now, how do you take a test? A test means you have to have something to compare to. In other words, there are right answers. If you're taking a test, you know whether your answer is right or wrong because there's a criterion that you go to, and that criterion tells you whether you're right or wrong. Ah, okay. I have to see if I'm in the faith and I have to take a test. So, what we're going to have a handout is the 100 correct answers.

Then you've got to make up the questions. So, as you leave today, stop by the information table and get the 100 correct answers. And now that we can do this, you can examine yourself and take a test. That's not what he says. Test yourself and then he gives us the criteria. Here's the criteria for examination at this time as we prepare for the Passover.

Do you not know yourselves? Don't you know who you are? The truth is, most people don't know themselves. Most people have a false idea of who they are. And usually we have a very false idea that's based in our own vanity. Most people really don't know who they are. He says, know yourselves. Here's the criteria. That Jesus Christ is in you? It's a question. Can't you look at yourself and see Jesus Christ in you? You examine yourself. Here's the test. What's the answer? The answer is Jesus Christ. Oh my! That's a huge answer, isn't it?

It'd be easier to say, I can just prove Christmas. Okay. The answer is, don't keep Easter. Now I have the answer. What's the question? The criteria here even goes beyond that. Are we? Is that Jesus Christ is in you? Now look at the rest of the sentence. Unless indeed you are disqualified. There's a judgment issue on Christians at the Passover. Now, if we examine ourselves, we don't have to fear that. Remember what we read in 1 Corinthians 11. The judgment is because you don't examine yourself.

And you take the bread and wine in an unworthy manner. You're doing it in an unworthy way. So we look here, you can be disqualified. We can walk out of the Passover service and not have our relationship any closer to God, any more profound than it was before we walked in. This is an important issue. But many of us have done it for so many years. Oh yeah, the Passover is coming up.

Got us around some lightning. You know, maybe we probably should study the Bible. I'll go back and read the book of Exodus. Get ready for the days on the bread. But the command is to examine ourselves. And what's the criteria? The criteria is Jesus Christ in you. Is Jesus Christ in us? Christ said the Father and I will come and abide in you. That literally means we will live in you. Is Jesus Christ living in us?

Now, at this point we can say, Ah, boy, I might as well just give this up. He didn't say, examine yourself and see if you are worthy. It said, examine yourself so you can do this in a worthy manner. If we go through this examination process, we're going to find we don't measure up to Jesus Christ in an awful lot of ways. And it will drive us and motivate us to want that forgiveness, to want that application of His sacrifice, and to want us to become Christlike.

We have to go away from the Passover feeling that God has cleansed us again and being rededicated to becoming Christlike. We have to go to the Passover and come out of it, or should, believing that God has washed us, that we are forgiven, renewed in our forgiveness, humbled before God, and dedicated, dedicated to becoming Christlike. And then, of course, all the days of the love of bread, what are we doing? We're not celebrating just the removal of sin.

We're celebrating what? Taking in Christ. The risen Christ. It's still a symbol of His body, but it's the risen Christ. We're taking in. We're growing. It's all about moving forward. It's all about becoming something. In fact, that's what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5. Let's go to 2 Corinthians 5. 2 Corinthians 5. Verse 17. Now, it's interesting when Christ talks about being in us. There's no more profoundly personal relationship to say, well, somebody's inside my head. Someone's in me. Well, it also talks about us being in Him.

The same thing is said about the Father. Through the Holy Spirit. When we receive the Spirit, that is the mind of God. The mind of God comes into us, and we are sharing His mind, and He's sharing our mind. Which must make Him awfully uncomfortable, but... I mean, we're a pretty bad place to live sometimes, aren't we?

But God's living in here, inside of us. And it says, therefore, if anyone is in Christ, we read He's in us, now we're in Him. He is a new creation. Old things have passed away, and behold, all things have become new. God's Spirit gives us the power to become new. If, during the Passover examination, we find that we're not becoming new, that the old person is still not only very much alive, but we are controlled by the old person. The old sins, the old habits, the old faults, the old wrong ways of thinking, the old jealousies and envies, the old hatreds, the old selfishness.

If we're still driven by that, then we're supposed to examine ourselves and go before God on the Passover, begging, renewed forgiveness, and renewed life. We cannot simply walk, sleepwalk through all this. God's Spirit is power.

It's love. It's His mind. It's who He is. That comes into us. It must produce something. If it's not producing something, then we need to examine ourselves, lest we become disqualified. So it's this. The Passover is supposed to be very encouraging, but it also has an element of warning to it. An element of warning. This is the power of the great God. This is the sacrifice.

You talk about love. This is the extent of love of God, torture and death for us. And then He says, but don't you dare take that lightly. It's one thing to receive God's grace. It's another thing to take God's grace and take it lightly. Don't you dare take it lightly. There's the point. That's the self-examination. How dare we take that lightly? When God's done all this for us, how dare we take it lightly? Let's go back now to 1 Corinthians, where we started.

1 Corinthians, we read through verse 29. This is chapter 11 again. Let's read verse 29 again. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body, not understanding the enormity of what the sacrifice really is. And at once a year, we come together on the very night that He went through this, and we commemorate that death, and we share it with Him.

Because He's alive today. He was resurrected. We share this experience with Him. How dare us do that in an unworthy manner? How dare us come to the Passover, not prepared, not having thought it through, just going through our lives? This is another thing we have to do. Oh, yeah, Passover's coming up. What is that?

Oh, man, I forgot. I bought tickets to a Spurs game that night. So we have to be very careful about this, because this reminds us, this reminds us, as I said, every year at this time of year, I say, we're going back to ground zero. So what Passover does, it takes us back to ground zero. This is where it all starts. Verse 29, verse 30, For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep.

He said, you know what? There are lots of weak people in the church, spiritually weak. There's people that are sick, that God's not healing them. There's even people that have died, because they don't understand this, because they keep the Passover in an unworthy manner, and God's not involved in their lives. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. He said, if we would just do this examination, and we would come to the Passover and keep it in a worthy manner, understanding our need for it, understanding God's forgiveness and what He has given to us, and so grateful, and so humble, and so willing, He said, then you wouldn't have these problems in life.

Then you wouldn't have these problems in life. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, this is verse 32, that we may not be condemned with the world. He said, so God doesn't want to continue with the world, you have His Spirit. So guess what's going to happen?

We keep the Passover in a wrong spirit. We keep the Passover in an unworthy manner, and He says, then you will be punished. I will be punished, as God forces us into the right attitude. Because this is all about attitude. It's not about whether you sinned through the last year, between the last Passover. It's Passover because every one of us has. So it's not like, oh, I've got to examine myself to see how much I've sinned.

You know, Paul didn't say, so make a list. You know, the test of 2 Corinthians is to make a test, and along with the test, make a list of all your sins. This is how we come here. It's the manner in which we do it. Coming before a righteous God, knowing that without Him we are unrighteous. Without Him we're unrighteous.

Without that sacrifice there is no hope. Without His resurrection, which the rest of the days of the 11 bread symbolize, there is no hope. There's no way out of this. And we come with that kind of humility, that kind of concentration. And I guarantee you, between now and then, Satan's going to do everything he can to keep you and I from concentrating on that. He's already started. He's already started. He's going to do everything he can so that we fumble in, stumble into the Passover service, upset, distraught, saying, oh, I wish I would have prepared for this.

I feel like I'm going in in an unworthy manner. Now, if you stumble into the Passover service, saying, I examined myself, and my Lord, I'm not worthy to be here, you're okay. If you walk in there saying, well, I've examined myself, oh, Lord, I'm not worthy to be here, but I'm here because you say to be here, you're okay. When you stumble in saying, oh, well, it's not that big deal, you know, and you're the same man you were, you're the same woman you were 20 years ago, then you're doing it in an unworthy manner.

So we need to examine ourselves. As we examine ourselves, let's finish through here the rest of this chapter. Verse 33 is very interesting. Therefore, my brother, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. He says, even when you come together for a meal, or when you come together to take the bread and wine, make sure everybody's there, which is very important.

This shows that in the New Testament, the keeping of the Passover was a communal experience. This is a long, good one. Wait till everybody's there. Don't say, oh, we're here a half hour early, we'll just do our... We'll just keep the bread and wine now. People come later, you know, they can do it then. Now, that's why we try to start this service, by the way, on time. We have a commitment to be there. But you could see this was just confusion.

Everybody did what they wanted to. Hey, at our table, we're taking the bread now. Anybody want to show up? Come to our table, we'll take the bread now. Well, we're on the wine over here. Verse 34, but if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home. Don't come to eat a meal or the Passover, unless you come together for judgment. So here we have the context of which this examination is to take place, and we have Paul himself explaining. You know, so far we've been a person of the 2nd Corinthians explaining what he means.

So we say, okay, we have to examine ourselves to see if we are in Christ. Now, if I examine myself in the light of Jesus Christ, I'm pretty much a failure in one way. In another way, we're not. That's the thing. If we examine ourselves in Jesus Christ, we are, yes, we see where we don't measure up yet, but we see the opposite, too.

We're supposed to see where God has worked in our lives, what God has done, the changes that have taken place, the miracles He has done for us. We should see those things. If we don't, we have to go to God and say, you need to show me where you are in my life. Because many times God's doing it, we just don't see it.

Other times, He's not doing it. We're being punished. He's not in our lives. We're not growing. We're not going where we're supposed to be. And that's why we're supposed to examine ourselves. At the end of it, you always come to the conclusion, I need God's mercy. That comes at the end of every examination. But that doesn't have to be negative, because God has already given it to you. You get to go to God and say, thank you for giving me the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and I am here to, what, receive it? You've already received it. You go there to celebrate it, to commemorate it.

I guess not celebrate, that's the part of your fun. You go there to commemorate it. You go there to commemorate His death, to say, yes, that was applied to me already in my life. When you go to the Passover, you're commemorating something that already took place and was already given to you, and that should give us encouragement. That should give us... take some of the weight of the life of the stresses off of us. Yes, you're imperfect, and it's already been applied to you. And you're commemorating what you've already received. And you look at yourself and say, Christ is in me.

Many times, though, before the Passover, we can look at ourselves and say, Christ is in me, but I have not been responding. Christ is in me, but I have not been responding. I need to respond more. So then, what criteria do we use? In its self-examination, what criteria do we use to say, I must respond more to God? And I must, in this response, be like Jesus Christ, because He's in me.

You know, the Father's in us, too. But when He says specifically, Christ, there's a reason for that. It's always because Christ gives us the example. How do you follow God? Okay, here's God in the flesh. You can see that. So when He talks about Christ being in, especially Paul and us being in Christ, He's always zeroing this in on, okay, here's the example.

Here you have something concrete to work with. And I would give you three very broad but important concepts. Attitudes that we need to explore to see if Christ is in us. Now, you can look at your life and say, wow, over the last year, I've had a real problem with anger. You know, Christ is in me strongly. I'm not submitting. He's there. I'm not submitting to God's Spirit. You know, you say, well, God's Spirit's in me.

This is Christ's in me, and the Father's in me. In a way, remember, the Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, and that is the power of the mind and love of God. Christ in us means we look like Christ. We act like Him.

It's His thoughts that come into us. It's His...we see what God is supposed to be like as a human being, and that's what we're striving to do, become like God as a human being. A very corrupt, incomplete human being, but that's what we're trying to do with His help. So let's look at three ways. We can examine ourselves, and looking at, are we in Christ? First one, and I'm going to put these in a question. So you can write the question down, and as you write the question down, as you do your self-examination, who I'll be treating now in the Passover, ask yourself these questions. Get on your knees and ask this question of God.

Say, God, am I doing this? First one, are you intensely responsive to God as your Father? Are you intensely responsive to God as your Father? I said most of us don't know ourselves. Paul said, do you know yourselves? We don't.

Here's what most people do. Most people live in a bubble. I call it a bubble. It's like we're all walking around in bubbles. We call it our space. And our brains and our minds function within that space. And we go through life with very little actual interaction with our environment. Most people have no idea what impact they have on other people.

We don't know what impact we have on others. We just walk through life in our bubble, trapped in our own minds, usually trapped in our own emotions. Everything is about how I feel. You're walking through life just feeling. And as you go through life feeling, you're living in this bubble, and you're just emeshed in your thoughts, totally emeshed in your thoughts, living in life in this bubble. And we're all a bunch of bubbles bumping up against each other. You get the image here?

We're just bubbles walking around. People with bubbles. We bump against each other once in a while and say, what's your problem? Stay out of my way. And we just go through life in these little bubbles. And many times, even God isn't in the bubble with us. Well, we think He's not. He's there, but we don't know Him. Because He did us, if we receive His Spirit.

Look at John 8. This is what I mean by being responsible. What we're going to do now is we're just going to look at some examples from Jesus' life to make these three points. What did He teach us? If I'm in Christ, then Christ is in me. What is my approach to life? Oh, thou shalt not steal. Okay, we can do that. That's good. But I'm talking about attitudes here. Because if we have these attitudes, we'll be keeping the law, believe me. But we zero it on the wall sometimes without looking at the attitudes. So we can keep the letter of the law and still not be in Christ.

As far as we'll keep the letter of the law, it's still not being in Christ. You can't keep the Spirit on the wall, though. John 8. John 8. Verse 28.

Notice the last part of the sentence. For I always do those things that please Him. We can gauge how Christ-like we are by gauging how much of what we do every day of our lives is done because we want to please God. Or we just did our bubbles. We were just rolling along in our bubbles. We roll into church in our bubbles. We say hi to everybody, and we roll back. We go back living in our bubbles. You never leave it. Jesus said, Everything I do is to please the Father. So He gives us an example. If we are Christ-like, these measurements, they examine ourselves. He said, okay, we need criteria. This is real criteria. How much of my time, my effort, my life is absolutely spent trying to please God? That's a tough one. I fall short of it every time I ask it. Every. Time. Every time. I never ask myself that question. In all honesty, you may be able to say, Yes! I've spent the last year just pouring out my whole life, pleasing God. No, I haven't. But it has to be asked. How Christ-like are we? We just roll into our bubbles. Look at Luke 5. Luke 5 verse 16. Speaking of Christ, Jesus, He says, So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed. If you go through the new text, or all through the Gospels, you'll find on occasions Jesus got into a boat and went out into the middle of a lake to be alone with God. You'll find that when He fasted for 40 days, He didn't do that while living in Jerusalem. He went out into the Judean wilderness, which even at that time was incredibly desolate. In other words, to stay connected to the Father, to please the Father, there were times He stripped Himself of everything, on purpose, to be connected to God. Before now, or between now and the Passover, I encourage all of you to have a wilderness experience. I don't mean you have to all go out to West Texas and camp for 40 days, but you don't have time anyways before the Passover. What I'm saying is, is take some time between now and Passover. Take a day, strip your life of everything, and fast, which is a type of wilderness experience, and fast, and ask these questions of God and of yourself. Do I spend my life pleasing you, and if I don't, show me how?

Show me how! Take your Bible and go to the wilderness. Now that wilderness may be your kitchen table, but turn off the television, and turn off the radio, and turn off the computer, and turn off your telephone. Oh, I can't do that! He was like, I don't have time, you know. I have my wife, I have my husband, I have my kids, I have my job. I can't miss... I mean, man, I'll miss all in order if I do that.

I can't do these things. The bottom line is, you're telling God those things are more important than pleasing Him, and if that is your approach, you will take the Passover in an unworthy manner. If we tell God, I don't have time for you... Oh, wait a minute, wasn't the Passover 8 o'clock? Okay, I can make that. You're doing it in an unworthy manner, that's the whole point! Am I spending my life pleasing God? Sometimes you have to go out into the wilderness to find the answer to that. Sometimes you have to go to the wilderness. Fast, pray, in the Bible, no distractions.

You know, that can be very uncomfortable. There's times I've done that where I get so nervous and bored, because I'm used to all this input. It takes a while to be able just to concentrate, because there's all this input coming in all the time. And we need to do that. Jesus did that on a regular basis. And the result was He said, Everything I do is to please my Father. John 5, 30. Are you intensely responsive to God as your Father? I'm going to spend some time between now and the days of Unleavened Bread, between now and the Passover, asking that question of myself.

In fact, I prepared this sermon for myself. Every once in a while, I just do one for me. I'm going to do some personal study on this, and I'll give it to the rest of you when I'm done with it. But this was just for me. John 5, 30. I can't of myself do nothing. That's Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the eternal Word, who was with God and was God and gave up His godly privileges to come to this earth.

And here He is on earth, and He says, I can't do anything as human being by myself. I can't do anything. It's impossible. As I hear I judge and my judgment is righteous, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me. I'm just trying to please God.

I just want His desire to be fulfilled. I just want His will to be fulfilled. And He says that I do it. If He wants it, I do it. And I'm so happy He's pleased. That's Christ-like. So a whole lot easier not to steal than say that's all there is to it.

Because if you're doing this, you couldn't steal, could you? You can go and disobey God's law if you have this attitude. I just want to please God. Second point. Second point is brought out in just a case of Luke here. I can sum this whole thing up in one little story. Luke, Chapter 5. So I'll tell you what it is here. Let's look at Luke, Chapter 5. Luke, Chapter 5. Verse 12. And it happened when He, Jesus Christ, was in a certain city. And behold, a man who was full of leprosy, said to Saul Jesus, and he fell on his face and implored him, saying, Lord, if you are willing, can you make me clean?

Now remember, leprosy, especially in those desert areas, leprosy was a horrible disease. There were different kinds of leprosy, but usually your skin, your flesh, your muscle, actually decayed and rotted off until you died and it affected your organs. It was hideous. People reported leper colonies said that nobody else could catch it. If, and you go back to Leviticus, a leper, in just walking through society, had to announce he was coming, so everybody would clear the streets. It was considered unclean to touch a leper.

This was the most rejected... I mean, just to see them would have been hideous, like watching a horror movie. This was the most rejected, undesirable person you could find, rejected by everybody in society, even by the law made unclean. The law of God. Now, but what does God think and feel about that person? There's the real question. The laws were given to keep the z's from being spread. Understand? The laws were given because God didn't love that person.

Oh, well, somebody gets leprosy, God doesn't love them. We've discovered in the Bible that everybody gets the common cold, God doesn't love them. God's love isn't based on what sickness you get while living in Satan's world, is it? So, all those laws were based on protecting people from getting sick. This person comes up, falls down before Jesus, and says, will you heal me? Verse 13, Jesus put out his hand and touched him, saying, I am willing, be cleansed, and immediately the leprosy left him.

He charged him to tell no one, but go and show yourself to the priest to make an offering for your cleansing as a testimony to them, just as Moses could have. He said, now you've got to do what the law says. You've been healed. You have to go do an offering. You want some really amazing about this? Read how many times Jesus healed someone without touching them.

Happens all the time. Just say so, and my servant will be healed. Jesus said, okay, he's healed. Jesus healed all kinds of people and never touched them. It would have been humanly repulsive to touch this person. He touched them.

Which tells us something about Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ loved this person so much, he was willing to do what was repulsive to him physically. This brings us to our second question. Do you have heartfelt commitment to serve others? He did. He does. In fact, what do we commemorate at the Passover? His heartfelt commitment to serve you and me. Yes, Jesus Christ served you and me. The one whom the Father created all things served you and me. If he did not die for us, which was an act of service, the ultimate act of service, you and I have no hope. We are condemned by the law of God and we have no hope. The ultimate act of service. So we ask ourselves, do I have heartfelt commitment to serve others? Is my service based on other people will notice? Other people will know. Is my service based upon... I want people to know the church or see the church. So I only do service when we do some kind of service project. Jesus didn't do service projects. I'm not saying we shouldn't. He did service because it's who He was. It's just who He was. He just did it. He didn't know this man. He just served Him. And you read through the Gospels. You'll find place after place where Jesus simply served somebody because He cared. It's just simple. He didn't ask, are you converted? Of course, nobody on the earth but Him was converted. Do we, do you, have heartfelt commitment to serve others? Boy, that's a big examination question, isn't it? Number three. Number three is brought out in John 4. Our last point here. John 4. Verse 34. It's interesting the way He says this. The idiom would make perfect sense in that day. It's a little strange for us. Jesus said to them, My food, my sustenance, what gives me energy, what propels my life, because if you don't eat food, you die. My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work. Are you dedicated to doing the work of God on earth? Or we just live in our bubble, waiting for Christ to come back, getting through life, surviving, put a good life. But we have no desire to share this with anybody else. No desire to share it with anybody else. It's mine. God gave it to me. I'm in my bubble. Life's okay. Jesus was compelled to share God with people. No, He didn't share it with everybody, by the way. There were people He just didn't share it to. In fact, He told His disciples at one point, Now, I don't want you to go here and here. I want you to go here and here. He even said, Don't take it to these groups of people right now. Later He said to take it to them. But there was a time period. He cut off all groups of people and said, Don't even go to them. There was actually a time He did that with some of His disciples. But He was driven to do the work of God. When it was the time and the place, He shared it with everybody in the right time and the right place. Are you dedicated to doing God's work on this earth? Or is it just something we receive from God and we hold it in and we never let our light shine? We hide out. Well, if we let our light shine, we might get persecuted. Oh, no. If you let your light shine, you will get persecuted. But then Jesus was persecuted. Is Christ in us? Is Christ in us? And we are in Him? Then we must share the work. Mark 8. This is a scripture that has bothered me at times. Mark 8 and verse 38.

Let's start on verse 34 because I think the context here is very important, too. I wasn't going to read all of it, but let's just read it. What He had called the people to Himself with His disciples also, He said to them, Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.

For whoever desires to save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for My sake and the Gospels will save it. See, not just his sake. For the sake of the Gospel. It's not just the sake of Jesus Christ. It is for the message itself. You live the message.

People can't help but see you and say, There's power in that person. There's something different in that person. They may hate you for it, but you can't hide it. It comes out because it's who you are. You know, Jesus couldn't hide Himself. He looked just like any other Jew of the day. He walked through a crowd. You wouldn't know who He was until He started talking. He said, Well, He's a little different.

He couldn't help it. You know, we're not getting on our soap boxes and trying to convert the world. It's not your job, it's not my job. It's not in our jobs. But we are to reflect Christ. It's supposed to reflect Him. And we're supposed to be willing to give up everything, not just for Christ as the person, but for the message to share with other people, knowing that most people were rejected. But that's not the point, is it? That's not the point.

For what will the prophet abandon? Verse 36, if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? Verse 38 is the one that really bothers me. Whoever is ashamed of me, how many times have we been ashamed? Oh, well, you know, I don't want my neighbors to think I'm crazy.

I don't want my coworkers to think I'm crazy, so I'll just go in and go to the Christmas parties and exchange gifts and do some care. They will think I'm crazy. We don't want them to think... They want to see me as a good person, not as a crazy person. And really, we're ashamed. We're actually ashamed of it. He says, for whoever is ashamed of me, in my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him, the Son of Man, also will be ashamed when he comes in his glory of his fathers with the holy angels.

I can imagine Christ comes back and you get to meet Him, and He looks at you and He says, Well, Gary, you know what? I'm really ashamed of you. I don't want to hear that. I really don't want to hear that. I'm really ashamed of you. I'm not ashamed you were of me, but I'm ashamed of you. Boy, that boy. Do you want to hear that? We give everything up for Him because He gave up everything for us, because God's not going to do that.

And then we share the message. About God, about the Father, about Christ, about the Kingdom, about the Ten Commandments, about the Holy Days. We share that. Once again, not going outside to proselyte. Don't do that. That'll mess your life up. There's no need to bring unnecessary persecution on you. But our lives reflect it. And if you reflect it, I guarantee you there will come a time in your life where you will give it to somebody else. If you're reflecting it, somebody's going to come up and say, What's that reflection?

Somebody's going to come and ask you sooner or later, and we're supposed to give it. We're supposed to give it. So even this, am I dedicated to doing God's work on earth? It's not just supporting the Church's ability to do that. It's what you do every day in your life. It's true. Our tithes and offerings allow us to print magazines to go on television. You know how meaningless that is if God calls somebody and they come into our congregation that doesn't reflect the truth?

It's just people talking or people writing. God calls somebody and they need to come to some place where people reflect the truth. They are Christlike. Not perfect, but we're trying. We're headed in the right direction. For the coming weeks before the Passover, all of us need to examine ourselves to see if Christ is in us. I really do recommend that you have a wilderness experience, that you spend some time fasting in the Word of God, praying, asking God to help you.

And you have three questions to ask yourself. Am I intensely responsive to God as my Father? Do I have heartfelt commitment to serve others? And am I dedicated to doing God's work on earth? Because, you see, these are all three aspects of the nature of Jesus Christ. Are we in Him? And is He in us? Go through this time and go through this preparation, this examination, and God will give you a profound spiritual experience with the Passover and the Days of Love and Bread.

And you will fulfill what Paul said was the problem of the Corinthian church. It won't be our problem, because we will discern the Lord's Body.