In this sermon, the speaker shares a personal story about leading a man to Christ after he had been involved in a motorcycle accident. The speaker emphasizes the importance of getting right with Jesus and dealing with sin as the first step in one's life. The sermon also discusses the benefits of understanding the cause and effect sequences in scripture and how it can bring blessings to churches. The speaker concludes by highlighting the need to dig deeper and address the root causes of problems rather than just treating surface symptoms.

Well, good morning. I'd like to start off today by reading Psalms 97. The clouds out there and the handiwork of your hand, we see you in the creation. And Father, we thank you that in Jesus Christ that we have all things that we need. We thank you that we can be glad. We can rejoice. We give you thanks at the remembrance of your holiness. We thank you that at Calvary you said it was finished. Everything in regards to us was finished. All our needs were met in Christ Jesus. And we pray if there'd be some today that might be listening that don't really know Jesus in the sense that he is their Lord, that he has died on the cross for their sins, and he has set them free. We pray for them that they'd understand that just being religious is not good enough. We pray that you'd bring them to the point of repentance. And that also, Father, as we listen, that you'd bring us to a point of repentance of anything in our life that doesn't please you, that we would not be offensive of you and of your ways. Thank you, Father, for the tremendous privilege to have life in Jesus. Your word tells us, he that has the Son has life. And so we'd ask that today Jesus would be seen, and that our ears would be opened to hear, that our eyes could see, that you'd anoint our tongues to speak. He said that if any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God. And we ask you for wisdom. We don't want to be like Israel, Father. You said, who is blind but my servant? Who can't hear but my servant? Who's deaf? And we don't want to be blind and deaf as your servants. We want to see and hear. And Lord, we just thank you and praise you now for this time. We pray that you'd set captives free, that our lives could be a radiant testimony, both in whatever we do, in word or deed, that everything we do would radiate the presence of Christ, even down to the details of how we dress and our mannerism, that it all reflect the character and the love of Jesus. We thank you now, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I'm glad to be back with you. Had a tremendous morning this morning. Got up about five o'clock and just went out for about 30 minutes and sat on the steps, watching God make a new day for us. The clouds out in the west building up and the lightning flashing, and then the sun coming up to put a beautiful array of color on that morning set. And then to think that this day we can move about in the Spirit of God. In him we live and move and have our being, the Apostles said. You know, I think many times we live in Christ, but do we really move? But as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God, Paul said in Romans. Many claim to be sons of God, but they don't move by the Spirit of God. They move by the flesh of God. And one of the things that we've been going over the last few weeks is how God has been bringing the church, many churches are coming back to God broken and asking him to build the church, rebuild their church, and confessing to him the ways of man that has infiltrated their lives and their churches. And we've been sharing with you the testimony of how one church, broken before God, realized that they had been doing so many things their way, the ways of man, and they come up with 26 things that God had showed them. And I've shared with you several times how this just excited me, is many of these same things God has showed me and continuing to show me things that where we have the ways of man. And I wanted to pick up on, we're getting down to close to the end of this, there's just about four areas left. And a few weeks ago, a couple or three weeks back, I was talking with a good friend of mine and we was talking about communion. And this is one of the areas that God showed this church about how they were doing things wrong in the area of communion. And I don't plan on getting into all the details of communion and how you should do and everything like that. But we want to learn and listen to the Spirit on what is the spirit of communion. You know, this church said that we had occasional self-examination. They said that their church normally held a communion service about once a month. And however often you want to have communion, you can do that. Well, when my friend and I, we were talking about that, I went back home and my wife and I, we did a study on communion, just going over it again. And it seemed like they did it pretty often. From what I could see in the scripture, maybe God can speak to you about this, but there was a reason for communion. But they said that they sometimes emphasize judging their selves, but more often it was just a ceremony that was routinely carried out, and they said this, without the scope or depth of self-examination which God requires. And that's one of the reasons that the Lord gave us communion, so that we would have a continual checking and examining of ourselves and our churches. And I guess one of the dangers is that it can just become a routine thing, no matter how often you do it. If you do it every three months or one month, the Lord didn't give us any specific guidelines, I don't think, on this. He just said as often as you do this, and do this in remembrance of me. But they said that as they examined themselves in this area as a church, God convicted them that they did it many times without self-examination. And they said that a further problem in their church was that they largely ignored or rejected God's law as necessary for their operation. God's word was not really considered seriously. And, you know, Paul explained that he would not have known sin except by the law, because they said that because they were not judging themselves properly, they were experiencing what the Scripture says in 1 Corinthians 11 30, and if you want to turn there you can. But Paul said, for this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. Many times we have sickness in our churches, and sickly, and maybe some die, and we don't realize that there's a spiritual cause of this. You know, God said that we should be careful that he will not be mocked. And I wonder many times if we have just mocked him by going through the ceremony of just having communion, but yet while we have sin in our life. And what God wants is a regular self-examination. And this church, as they began to go before God and look at the word, they saw that in order for believers to maintain godliness and holiness in their church, that they had to have regular periods of self-examination. As Paul said, for if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. And what a sad thing it is that the world can slowly creep into our life, or into our church, because we will not judge ourselves. And thus, if we will not judge ourselves, God has to judge us. And I believe many of our churches, many of our lives, Ichabod could be the title over our church. It's the testimony of our life. The glory of God has departed. And what we're trying to do is we're trying to do the next thing that God convicted them of. They want quick results. We want quick fixes. And we got all these programs trying to build up our church to try to get the glory back. No, my friend, it's the presence of God that brings the glory. And without the presence of God, there is no glory. There's just the glory of man. You know, God provided in His law that, and in His word, that this communion table had a purpose in the church. The early Christians met daily for the breaking of bread, Acts 2 46, it says in there. And you know, that was a practice that was consistent with the command, where Paul said in Hebrews 3 13, that we are to exhort one another daily, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Sin is deceitful. It will deceive me. And I've learned that I have to be careful and continually be open with my spirit to receive, to receive rebuke and exhortation. And this is the way we're to be with one another, open to receive. There may be an area in our life that God has just not brought enough light on it, yet where we see that we're deceived. And if we think that we have got it all together and we've got all the answers, then we're proud. And the church is not a place of proud people, or it's not supposed to be. It's a place of humble people, where we humble ourself before the Lord, that He may exalt us and lift us up in due time. And one of the things that we must have, if we're to walk with God in fellowship, and if we are to walk in the fellowship one another, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we'll have fellowship one another. But we need to have a clear conscience. And so, as we have these frequent and regular times of self-examination, and we take communion, it's a time of self-examination. Before we partake, we should examine ourselves so we won't be judged, and so we can remember the Lord. And He did this for a purpose, to keep us clean, to keep us pure. So before we remember the Lord's table, before we partake, we need to understand that God has some things He wants us to do. He wants us to examine our hearts. You know, yesterday morning, I got up early again. I was up early, and I went out in the living room, and I was just laying there on the couch. And God just began to roll through my mind all these verses on being offensive. Being offensive, and the Spirit was just saying, what about me? Are you offensive to me? And the ways, and He was just bringing out illustrations, and He showed me something that's how I'd had a bad attitude about something earlier in the week that had happened. And God had showed me how that was offensive to Him, because He was doing it. He was orchestrating it. And many times, we are offensive, get offensive at people, because they maybe don't do a job the way we think that they should, or they don't do something right the way that we think they should do it, or they offend us or something, and we get touchy. Matter of fact, I spent yesterday morning going over this subject of being offensive to one another, and being offensive to God. You know, the crowds, when Jesus was leading them along, and talking to them about the bread of life, that He was the manna that had come down from heaven, when He took them into the area that they would have to learn to live off of Him, that He would be their life, and He shared a deep spiritual truth of the cross, in a way that was offensive to them, that did not have ears to hear. And so what He was doing, He was parting the waters, so to say, He was parting the crowd. And the scripture said in John 666, from that time, many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him. You see, when God's ways, when God's ways bring us to the point of the cross, we will have to humble ourself, and receive from Him what He wants to give us, or we will make a choice, and we will get defensive against God. You know, when God gives you a vision by His Spirit, through His Word, Oswald Chambers had shared about this, of what He wants, and your mind, and your soul thrilled to it, but He said, if you do not walk in the light of that vision, you will sink, you will sink into servitude to a point of view, which our Lord never had. Those crowds, those crowds that turned away from Jesus, at that point, in any time someone turns away from Jesus, you're turning back to darkness. We have to keep facing Jesus all the time, to walk in the light, but they turned back into darkness. Here they had this great light, but then His ways was offensive to Him, and I'm wondering if in the church today, if God's ways many times are not offensive to us, and then we will go on and walk in darkness, and if you walk in darkness, then you just go deeper into confusion. But God's truth gives us light, and light gives us the ability to see. And so if we don't, we'll, you know, many of us have opinions and ideas that we think is God's opinion. We think this is God's idea, but it's our own. Or maybe we've entertained a thought, we've not taken a thought captive, and it's something that Satan has put into our mind. We have all these religions, all kinds of religions, and denominations or abominations, if you want to call them that, that are based on man. Doctrines of demons we've accepted into our lives, because we will not base our life and our churches and our doctrines according to truth. And it's a very delicate area that we have to continually re-examine our lives, and this is why Peter, he said, he put them in remembrance of these things, not that they didn't know them, but that they would not forget to put these things into practice in their life. And, you know, disobedience to God's Word, if we are disobedient to what God has showed us, will bring confusion into our life, and will bring us to a point where many times we think that we're doing what God wants us to do, when actually we're doing what the enemy wants us to do. Disobedience, Chambers said, Oswald Chambers, disobedience in mind to the heavenly vision will make you a slave to points of view that are alien to Jesus Christ. Do not look at someone else and say, well, if he can have those views and prosper, why cannot I? You have to walk in the light of the vision that has been given to you, and not compare yourself with others or judge them. That is between them and God. You know, our churches today, many times there's no freedom in our church when there's a judgmental spirit in there. And this critical spirit that we can have is not from God. We set ourselves up as God's to judge others, and when we get into this area of being offensive, we need to especially emphasize the need, I believe, in our churches for each believer to forgive those who have offended them, to ask for forgiveness of all those whom he has offended. If you've been offended by somebody else and it's really offended you and it bothers you, you need to go to Matthew 18 and look at what God says. You go tell them, brother, this was offensive, and tell them however, you know, you can do it in the most gracious way you can. Now, they may be offended that you told them. Then you really get into an interesting situation, which one of you is going to humble yourself and be submissive and keep a good spirit. But to offend God is a deadly and a dangerous thing. If we're going to walk in the light, we can't walk with God and keep offending him. So when we find a point of view that, as Oswald Chambers said this, when you find a point of view in which you have been delighting, clashes with the heavenly vision, and you debate, certain things will begin to develop in you. Now listen, he said this, a sense of property and a sense of personal right. Have your rights been violated? Have you felt like that somebody has violated your rights? Well, that was how I had a bad attitude developing in my spirit earlier this week. I felt like one of my rights had been violated, and God began to talk to me and ask me about this. He said, who's controlling things? And I said, well, you are, Lord. He said, what about your attitude about this change in something that's going about? He says, you're feeling a little bit ruffled up a little bit in your spirit. And I said, yes, Lord. He says, who's in control? And I said, you are, Lord. And I had to confess my sin to the Lord about that. And you know one of the things about it? My wife knows when I'm ruffled, my children know when I'm ruffled, and those around you are going to know when you are in the flesh, which is where we're going. Now, this sense of property, as Chambers calls it, a sense of personal right, things of which Jesus Christ has really not, he's not given you permission to be so possessive maybe of a thing that you have or of your right. Actually, at the cross, we give up all of our rights. We give them to Jesus. So a communion service is a time. It's a time of re-evaluating our opinions, re-evaluating our rights, and looking and seeing if we're really walking with the Lord. And going on in this area, and just maybe making a side two service before a communion service. And even lean over and talk to a child and make sure, especially if the child is young, make sure his heart is clean. That's not meaning the child is perfect. Children are many times, I believe, a lot better than we are because they have a pure heart in the sense that they are not contaminated with a lot of the ways in the world. But the father is responsible for his family in this area. And, you know, actually there's another area that was related to this area that this church had come up with. And they said this, as God had told them things about their church, they said that they would treat surface symptoms. They said, we did not like to think in terms of cause and effect sequences. Thus, we thought problems just happen to some people and not to others. You know, some people just happen to be sick. And things like this. And they said, we pictured God as a loving benefactor who winked at our mistakes and was tolerant of all our weaknesses. When serious emotional breakdowns occurred, we sent these believers to train secular counselors whose repeated and costly sessions treated surface issues and did not get down to root causes. And then they said, we discovered these counselors many times balanced guilt with blame and taught believers to be independent of God-given authorities so that they can cope with life on their own. I was talking with a young man the other night and he was broken. Eight years ago, he had been hit by a drunk while he was on his motorcycle and just busted him all up. And finally, eight years later, the other night, I had the privilege of leading him to Christ as he, God finally had him completely broken. And as I shared with him that the first step in his life, because his marriage now was going to pieces, I said the first step, the very first thing is you've got to get right with Jesus. And you've got to deal with your sin. And we went through the gospel and then he was broken and he received Christ as his Savior. And it was really neat. He came back the next night. We were down at the McDonald County Fair down there for the last three nights and just sharing the gospel with people. Had a little booth there with child evangelism fellowship. And it was really neat to have him come back the next night and had my wife there. And she just, she made a comment to him, boy, your eyes are bright. You're all lit up. And this man said, I went home and I read all that stuff you gave me. And we're trying to, we need to get him a Bible. But his life had come to the point to where it, it was broke, he was broken. You know, I, it's amazing as human beings, how many times we can resist God. I believe some of us can go 20, 30, 40, 50 years and just keep resisting God. And we put on an air in our church of spirituality and we just treat surface symptoms. And, and God taught this church in order for them to have lasting fruit in their church. They would have to deal with root problems and get people to understand and minister to them that they had to deal with the root of bitterness in their life or the root of greed or the root of moral impurity. And when these root problems are resolved, you know what happens? The ground that has been given to Satan is regained and false conclusions. These strongholds that Satan has built in our souls, these things can be torn down and replaced now with biblical principles and with truth. You know, Paul said for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Why is it that our church that has all of the teachings of the word of God, we're not pulling down the strongholds of Satan in the lives of our people. We're just playing games many times. And he says the word of God, we cast, we're to casting, cast down these imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God. Many times we do not even recognize, we do not recognize ideas and philosophies and thoughts that exalt Satan and not God. These things that exalt itself against the knowledge of God and we're to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. I spent some time, I think it was last week, about an hour and a half with a man I've counseled with many times in another state. And he called me and I knew something's going on. God had began to put him on my mind for a couple days. And so when he called me up, I had a chance to lead him to a point to see where he was entertaining thoughts that God was not giving him about himself. And Satan had him down. He's just like a wrassler. You know, Satan, he just had him pinned down. And one of the areas that Satan likes to build into your life or into a church is this thing of thinking that there's no hope. It's hopeless. My friend, let me tell you, there is no problem that Jesus Christ can't help you with. But if you won't believe that that he can help you, then there's nothing he's going to do for you. You know, Jesus didn't do many, many miracles and many mighty works in some places because they would not believe. But those that believed, received. And that's the name of our game is we believe and receive. Our game is called life. And it's called Jesus is our life. And it's really not a game. It's a reality. And we believe and we receive. Those that will not believe will not receive. If we will not believe the blessing of God's word, the promises, according as his divine nature given unto us, you know, you go to Peter, these precious promises, the promises will feed us. If we will not believe it and get in the word and read it and believe it, we won't grow. And if we will not believe God's exhortations and his commands and his warnings to us about his judging us, then we'll receive those too. So this church began to train their people to treat, not just to treat the surface problems, but dig down and see what's the root, what's causing this thing? Why does this brother always have to come back and confess the same sin over and over and over? And so they said they teach this scriptural cause and effect sequences so that believers could have an appreciation for the wisdom of God's word and the practical benefits would be seen in their lives and God begin to bring blessing in their churches. Well, listen, I'm going to be closing down here. These two things of treating surface symptoms and having an occasional self-examination and having our communion services, these things go together. They fit together. Well, Heavenly Father, as we've been sharing some of these truths, I just pray that these have been a blessing to the folks and that you administer to them. I pray for you to bless their lives and to bless their churches as they follow your word. We pray for souls to be saved. Oh, you're so interested in the loss. And if we're not interested in the loss, then we really don't love you because your word tells us that you love the world so much that you gave your only begotten son that whosoever would believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. And you have committed unto us the word of reconciliation, and you want actually our lives to be the life of Christ, Jesus, living his life through us. Thank you for the tremendous privilege, Father, of knowing you, and I pray that if there's someone today that hasn't received Jesus, that even right now they just bow before you or as they're driving down the road, even they can just pull over and just say, God, I'm a sinner. I have been the Lord of my life, and I just turn it all over to you. I receive Jesus as my Savior and Jesus as my Lord. And Father, I just pray for your blessing now on the folks. Thank you, Father, in Jesus' name. Well, until next time, I just trust that God will continue to lead you and guide you and that you'll let him lead you. And remember this, you have more confidence and faith in God's ability to lead you than in your ability to follow. You have great confidence in God's ability. Until next time, you just stick with Jesus. May he continue to bless you, my friend.