South Run Baptist Church

Don't Judge Me

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest | Lead Pastor

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Sermon Transcript

Date: October 25, 2026

Sermon Title: Don’t Judge Me

Passage:‍ ‍Matthew 7:1-5

Preacher: Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest - Lead Pastor

Sermon Summary:

Pastor Eric explores Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 7:1–12, explaining the difference between judgmentalism, which comes from pride and condemnation, and discernment, which begins with self-examination and seeks to help others through love, humility, and grace. He challenges us to examine our own hearts before correcting others, avoid assuming their motives, and treat people with the same mercy and compassion that God extends to us.

Sermon Transcript:

Good morning. So if you haven't been around here for a while, you may not know that everybody is tired of this series that we're in and we're slowly winding it down, actually. We're coming to the end of something that we've been in for a very long time, which is Actually, I hope you're not tired. I think this is some of the most important stuff I've probably ever preached on, which is that Jesus teaches us how to live a life and that he offers us two ways in life. And that the one way is the broad way. It's the easy way. It's like our human nature and we're just naturally bent toward going down that broad path. And we have to reorient our hearts and we have to intentionally walk this other path. And it is narrow, right? It is difficult to do sometimes. And the whole judging thing that we're going to talk about today is case in point. I think the broad way is to be judgmental and it's to live out of this place of judgment. The harder path in life is the one where we offer grace and where we look to the best of others, and we try to live the life as Jesus teaches us to live it. So this is what we're doing today. Before we get into it, I do want to pray over the word and the message and over you. So let's bow our heads. Father in heaven, we have gathered today to be in your presence. We have gathered, maybe for many reasons, Some of us out of habit or obligation, but some of us because we're desperate. We're desperate for something from you, something transcendent breaking into the ordinariness of our lives. My prayer this morning is whatever the reasons are that has gathered these today in your sanctuary, Lord, that you do break through. that you show them that you are at work in the world at large, but specifically in their lives today, right now, as these words are being spoken. And so, Lord, speak. We are listening. Amen. So every now and again, I come across these nuggets that really jazz me up because I had never seen it before. I didn't know they existed. And so this week is one of these where I found out that there is this, well, there's essentially these Jewish writings called the Talmud, okay, that could start in about the 1st century AD. I know, I got nerdy quick. First century AD, right? And then they get written for a while, and it's essentially the rabbis. These are the Pharisees, mind you. We have the Pharisees literature. I don't know if you know that. And they write down, the rabbis from the Pharisees, they start writing down their reflections on scripture. And one of these collections is called the Talmud. And I found one that many believe dates back to the 1st or 2nd century AD. So like about the time of Jesus and right after. And I'm going to read to you what it says. It's going to sound very similar to what Jesus says, but maybe with a few twists, okay? So it goes like this. It is taught in a barata that Rabbi Tarfan says the following. I would be surprised if there is anyone in this generation who can receive correction. So the rabbi says, I would be surprised if there's anyone who can receive correction. Why? Because if the one correcting says to him, remove the splinter from your eyes, that is, rid yourself of a minor infraction. The other says back to him, remove the beam between your eyes, which is to say you have committed far more severe sins. So this is the first rabbi. This is, again, first, second century AD. same exact imagery. There's like a speck, and then there's a beam in the eyes of these people, the splinter in the beam. But it goes on, and then it says, Rabbi Eleazer, Ben Azariah, says, I would be surprised if there is anyone in this generation who knows how to rebuke correctly without embarrassing the person he is rebuking. Here's what we got. In this very ancient Jewish piece of literature, by the way, Jesus, our Jewish rabbi who we are all following, is in this same way. They are using the same ideas and the same metaphor of the beam and the speck, but they are using it slightly differently. And they're using it a little like my title is, which is Don't judge me. That's the first one. If somebody comes and says, hey, you've got something in your eye, your immediate response is, you've got a beam in your eye, right? And you can see the defenses going up there. So this is 1 problem. The person can't receive correction. But then the other problem is what gets named next, which is that somebody can't correct another person without completely embarrassing them. In a way, this is actually what Jesus is doing, only he's then expanding upon it. And so this sermon and this passage, it is about how to correct others well. And it is also about how to receive correction well. But it is more than that, because Jesus being Jesus the prophet is often provocative. And he says things that are bold and it seems black and white until you kind of dig down a few layers and you realize, well, did he mean what he said? And so he starts off and he says, don't judge, right? Very simply, don't judge. Just don't do it. But then you have to ask yourself, you got to peel back the layers. Well, does he really mean don't judge in any scenario? And what exactly is that like? Let's go ahead and read the passage again. I'm actually going to read a little bit longer. I hope you have your scripture in front of you. I want to keep reading because there are a few things right after this passage. that tie together the passage that we're in. I will focus primarily on one through 5 for the sake of the sermon, but the rest of it is pertinent. So here again, Matthew chapter 7, we are at this point nearing the end of the Sermon on the Mount, if you know your Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus says the following, Judge not that you not be judged, for with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck in your brother's eye but do not notice the log in your own? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out of your eye when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. He goes on and he says, don't give dogs what is holy and do not throw your pearls before pigs lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. I need you to keep the pigs and the dogs in your head. Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives. and the one who seeks finds, and the one who knocks, it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, we'll give him a stone. Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a serpent. If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, well, how much more will your good heavenly Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? And then the passage, and maybe all of the Sermon on the Mount gets tied up in one final verse, verse 12. Whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. Jesus begins the passage by saying, judge not lest ye be judged. You've probably heard this before, judge not lest ye be judged. I remember when I was moving to Alabama, it must have been in 2013, on my way down there, I stopped in to see my childhood pastor. I hadn't seen him for years and years and years. I don't really keep up with him, and I hadn't at that point either, but he was living in Alabama, and so I thought I would go visit his church. I would hear him preach, and then I even got to eat with him after the service. The sermon was excellent. He was preaching from Romans. He's a gifted orator, and I always thought this as a child, and it was nice to hear him as basically a grown adult at that point. But we ate lunch together afterward. And he hadn't maybe completely kept up with me. Like he didn't really know who I was. And he kind of knew me as a kid, but he didn't really know my path thereafter. And so when he was talking to me at the table, he asked, what do you do and what's your role? And I said, oh, well, I just finished my PhD in biblical studies at Baylor, and I'm actually going to teach at this college down in Marion, Alabama. He immediately, you could almost see it on his face, got very scared. And he said, oh, no, I bet you were just picking apart my sermon and you were finding all the things wrong with the sermon. And I said to him, no, I've learned, judge not lest ye be judged. because whatever measure you judge will be measured back against you, right? And I've done enough public speaking and I've done enough teaching to know that I don't want people picking apart my sermons and I'm certainly, because of this, not going to do that to my childhood pastor. And so I told him, no, you are in safe territory here. I thought what you said was excellent and it was a joy to be with you, right? But I think we get the idea of not judging out of fear or out of maybe generosity that we too don't want to be judged in the same way, which ties, of course, to that verse 12, the end of it all, the thing that ties the whole of it together, which is we want to treat others like we would expect them to treat us. And so if we don't want someone to be judging us, then we probably should not be doing that to them. Jesus keeps going here, and in verses 3 to 5, we get the real meat of what he's trying to do. And it's this parable that I, again, find fascinating. It connects directly with these rabbis who are talking about correction and rebuking. And I think Jesus is also trying to say something about that. And so you'll notice in verse 3, it goes like this. He says, why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but you do not notice the log that is in your own eye? The see and the noticing are of vital importance here. In some ways, all of this is actually one big metaphor on vision. We all are blind in some fashion, and we need the great physician to make us see again. But one layer deeper is that one person doesn't notice, is the word here, The Greek behind this is catanoia, which means to perceive or to even study. It's to take time to look, in this case, inward. And it's to ask your own self, like, what's in my eyes right now? What's in my heart? It's introspection is what it is. And Jesus is warning us and he's teaching us that it's actually pretty easy to see the specs in other people's eyes. I'm sure we've all played the armchair quarterback and we yell at the TV screen, right, as that quarterback inevitably makes that stupid pass. And why did he do that? He should have run it this way. But it's a whole lot harder when you are the quarterback on the field and you're the one who's having to make the calls and to do the thing. And in that case, sometimes you make mistakes and you do get specks in your eye. And so what Jesus is saying here is he's saying, before you go noticing what is wrong with somebody else, what you need to do first is turn that gaze inward to do some introspection, to look and to ask yourself, well, do I have anything in my life that has caused me to have a log in my own eye. And Jesus is going to tell you there is definitely something. And until you realize what that is, well, you are not really fit to correct somebody else. I think this part of the story in verses 3 to 5, it's about a few things. It's about right judgment, It's about how to correct another person. It's about human nature and properly seeing ourselves in order that we can help someone thereafter. And until we see ourselves properly, you're actually more likely to do some damage in pulling the speck out of the other person's eye than you are to really help them. One of the questions I think Jesus is asking in this passage is who is able to correct another person? I would say like Jesus isn't actually stopping you from doing the correcting. The person with the speck in their eye probably wants that speck out of their eye. They don't want it there. They should. anyway. But the question is, who is able? Who is able to help that person? I do think Jesus offers a real answer here. He says in verse 3 and following, why do you see the speck that is in your brother's eye, but do not notice the log in your own? Or how can you say to your brother, let me take the speck out when there is a log in your own, you hypocrite? First, take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother's eye. I think there's a real life lesson here. And I think it connects directly actually with what those two rabbis were saying in the 1st and 2nd century AD. What those rabbis were saying is that People are not able to receive correction easily. And surely you've been there. But also people are not good at giving correction. And they typically embarrass someone else when they do. And what I think Jesus is offering here is a third way. And the third way goes like this. Until you've wrestled with your demons that live within you, And what I mean is those failures and flaws that are deep down in and that have hurt others and hurt yourself until you found a way to recognize those deep flaws, the logs that are sitting in your life and begun to remove them. Well, once that happens, you are now a different kind of person. Once those logs are gone, you've wrestled yourself to the ground and you realize that you are who Jesus says you are here. You might be, in fact, this person in verse 11, the person who is evil in the words of Jesus, but the evil person able to give good gifts to their own kids. And once you realize the rot that has been sitting in here, and then you've allowed Jesus to do something to it, then you have a certain amount of humility and a graciousness, because the grace has been shown to you by Jesus your Savior. And then you are able to approach others, not from a place of condemnation, saying, you should do this, looking down upon them, but looking them eye to eye as a peer, as another sinner just like you are, wanting to help them because somebody has helped you. When Jesus says do not judge, I actually don't think he means like all judgment is off the table, which means that we must understand what judging is and is not. Because let's be clear, just a few verses after he says, do not judge, he goes into the dogs and the pigs, right? And he's clearly making judgment calls about the kinds of people who are fit to receive a holy message. Who are the dogs? Who are the pigs? Whatever it is, we know this much. Jesus has to make a judgment call in order to name that for what it is. In other places, Jesus will clearly say and wants you to say too, certain things are good and certain things are evil. And we should cling to the good and we should hate the evil, right? And so he's reminding us that there are judgment calls to be made in life. In fact, many. And so what it means to not judge is not those kinds of things. He's also not saying like we shouldn't rightly judge things. So if you were to turn to like Luke chapter 7, there's this really nice passage with the sinful woman. And she comes into the Pharisee's house. Jesus is in there. And Jesus tells a story to the Pharisee. His name's Simon. And he He tells a story about debt. And he then asks Simon, like, hey, do you understand this? And Simon kind of repeats it back to him. And Jesus says, you have rightly judged, same word here, rightly judged. In this case, Jesus is affirming the judgment that this man has. But he's then using it to turn the tables on him. to make him realize that he has decent judgment in his head, but terrible judgment in his heart. Because he's looking at this sinful woman in a way that Jesus is not. And he is casting her aside as someone who is lesser while Jesus is embracing her and bringing her in and trying to restore her back to health. And so while saying, Simon, you've rightly judged in this one case. He is simultaneously saying you have wrongly judged within your heart. Lastly, I'd say that not judging, it cannot mean a lack of righteous anger. We see Jesus making these kinds of judgment calls pretty regularly, almost always with the religious elite, almost always with those who are supposed to be leading the flocks and they're not doing what they should do and instead they are placing burdens on the people they should be lifting up. And so Jesus in Matthew 23, if you want some homework for after the service, has a series of woes and he is just like going after these Pharisees. Woe to you, are whitewashed tombs. Outside you look great, but inside you are deaf. Jesus is clearly making some judgment calls in that place. And sometimes he will invite us to do something similar. So then what does it mean? I think it means something like this. When Jesus tells us not to judge others, he does not want us condemning others. He does not want us to play the role of God. He is not wanting us to demean the worth of another person or to pretend like we know the standing that they have before the Almighty. Those are all God's jobs. These are not my job and it's not your job. And it's also not the job of you or me to judge the heart or the motivation of a person. We can't do that. This is God's job. God can do that. And so when Jesus tells us, do not judge lest you be judged with the same measure, right? He is telling us to avoid doing those kinds of things. So this got me thinking. There are certain things that we should do, and we'll call those discernment. And there are things we should not do, and we'll call those judgmentalism. And what does discernment look like and what does judgmentalism look like? I think it looks like this. In our hearts, discernment feels like humility and it comes from a place of love, a love for the other person. When we are correcting them is because we love them and we want the best for them. Parents, you probably know this with your children. When you correct them, you want what is best for them. And so you're teaching them a better way. But judgmentalism, well, that usually stems from a place of pride and ego and self-concern. Discernment, well, it starts, as Jesus teaches us, with introspection, the catanoia. Mind you, catanoia is closely related to another word called metanoia. Some of you may remember this one as repentance. Catanoia is the internal looking of oneself, and metanoia, repentance, is what then happens after you've properly understood yourself. And so discernment starts with this introspection, but judgmentalism starts with the wrong of the other person and the desire to fix it. Discernment knows the limits of what we can know, that we only get external observations of what other people are doing. And so we should assume the benefit of the doubt for the other person. But judgmentalism We know enough to convict the person and that is good enough. And it assumes motives and heart conditions below that you just can't know. Discernment, discernment still corrects other people. It's willing to go to somebody, but you do it privately in a way that does not embarrass them, but in a way that demonstrates honor and dignity for this person. that is loving and trying to pull them out of wherever they're in. Judgmentalism, sometimes this happens publicly and that gets messy. But oftentimes it happens behind the scenes. And rather than going to the person, you might actually talk to a bunch of other people except for that person. Discernment has certain desires. Somebody who discerns or is living out of discernment, they desire the healing and the restoration of the other person. What is best for that person and for the community as a whole. While the person who lives out of judgmentalism desires vindication. They want their pound of flesh. They may even want to harm the other person. And lastly, discernment. understands that the measure of the way you should judge another person starts with grace. And it starts with the possibility of a hopeful reuniting with that person. Somebody living out of judgmentalism understands the full weight of the law and the desire to place that upon them. Throughout this series, I've tried to occasionally bring in technology and how our technologies are changing us and shaping us in spiritual ways and trying to get you to understand that phone in your pocket, it's not just value neutral, it's doing something to you. And so if you're on social media every single day, hours a day, and what are you doing while you're on there? You're not just scrolling, but you're often doing what? You're liking or you're disapproving. or you are angry, or you are laughing, right? And in each of these cases, you're making little judgments. It's like this machine is teaching us to judge one another. My guess is you're not doing that judgment from a place of love or care. You likely don't even know this person. Instead, you are standing back and you are doing all of the things that appear on the judgmentalism list. You're probably acting out of pride or self-concern. Maybe you want the other person to be harmed in some way or at least vindicated. And so you might leave a note below and make a comment, right? The point is simple. These devices that sit in our pockets, they change us. And they have the chance, I think a pretty good chance, of making us more judgmental, not less. What one should do with a sermon like this is in some ways very simple. I do believe that Jesus teaches us to start with introspection. Before you go confronting someone, you should pause, look inward, ask yourself, what am I really looking for in this encounter? Am I trying to get my pound of flesh or am I really loving this person? and trying to make some kind of loving correction in their life. You should start with curiosity, not assuming the motive or the heart of that person, but instead asking, I saw you do this. I'm wondering why. What happened? What's going on underneath? Now they might expose to you that, yeah, there was some real heart problems, but at this point, now you have a voice in their life. You should definitely stay away from judging others' motives. And if you won't say whatever it is you want to say to their face, well, you should definitely not say that at all. To conclude, it's worth noting this, that Jesus teaches us not to judge. But he is the great judge at the end of history. And one day we will stand before the judge, and he has just told us what that judgment looks like, and how we judge others in this life is the measure he's going to use against us. But I have really good news. The judge who will judge us is deeply merciful. He is all-loving. He wants the best for you. He is offering His grace to you at every single moment, but He's drawing you into it in a way that you are supposed to look just like Him and treat the world around you just like He treats you. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Lord Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit, for this morning as we have gathered We understand who you are, the great judge, who loves us enough to send Jesus Christ as our Lord and our Savior, to die on a cross, to rescue us from our sin and death, to be raised on the third day, to defeat death and sin forever, and to invite us into abundant and eternal life. God, may we accept that gift, that grace. But Lord, may we be changed by it. May we be people who are not judgmental, but who have discerned them. May we be people who look at others the way you look at them, seeking what is best for them. Lord, in all this, we're grateful give you thanks, we give you praise, and we give you our lives this morning. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrist, Pastor | October 18, 2026

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

Listening online? Let us know.

Sermon Transcript

Date: October 18, 2026

Sermon Title: Don’t Worry, Be Happy

Passage: Luke 12:22–34

Preacher: Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest - Lead Pastor

Transcript Summary: Jesus teaches that worry and anxiety can keep us from experiencing the abundant life God offers. We are called to surrender the illusion of control, trust in our Heavenly Father’s care, and seek His kingdom above all else.

Transcript

We have been on a journey together for quite some time, on a very long journey, sometimes on the narrow road, sometimes on the wide road. The goal, of course, is to be on the narrow one, but many of us find our way over to that wide road from time to time. If you don't know what I'm talking about, it's the way Jesus teaches us to live a life. And there are ways to live a life that lead to abundance and to happiness and to joy in this life and into the next. And then there are ways to live a life that leads to death and to destruction in this life and the next.

This morning we're talking about worry and anxiety. And nobody needs to tell you, not even Jesus, that a life of worry and anxiety is a road to death and destruction. It steals the joy from you. And as much as don't worry, be happy is a cavalier way of saying, just deal with your life's problems, I don't think this is what Jesus is calling us to exactly.

But he is encouraging us not to be anxious and not to worry. And he's reminding us that there is a better way, and it is a narrow way, and it's actually a hard way, some of us more than others. But this morning I want to talk about how to do that and what it looks like. And so I hope you will pay attention to see the ways in which Jesus is calling us into the fullness of life.

As I was getting ready for this morning, there is a man that I came across. I didn't know him, and I'm going to guess you don't either. His name is Paul Kingsnorth. He was a longtime environmentalist and a self-described pagan.

But that was many years ago. He has since become an Orthodox Christian. And in 2021, he wrote a beautiful essay for a magazine called First Things. And it's called The Cross and the Machine, in which he tells of his own conversion.

And in the essay, he has this quote that's on the screen up here. He says, as we see the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit, of choosing power over humility, over choosing separation over communion, the stakes become clearer each day. The choices between surrender and rebellion, the choices between sacrifice and conquest, each of these by the way could be its own Broad way, narrow way, sermon, surrender, rebellion, sacrifice, conquest, death of the self, or triumph of the will. And the options he gives us are between the cross and what he calls the machine.

We have always been offered the same choice, he says. The gate is straight and the way is narrow, and maybe we will always fail to walk it. But is there any other road that leads home? The answer, of course, is no, there is not.

And what he calls the machine here is another way of talking about the broad way, the fallenness of the world, the fallenness of you and of me. The machine is another name for what we call the flesh, what we call our ego. It's societal sin. It's our sin nature living deep down in.

It's a churning of everything wrong with the world as it is. And as he says, and as Jesus will tell us, the only other option is the cross. That we must die to ourself and we must live to Christ because that is the only way home. For most of this year, we've been talking about transformation, and we've been talking about the narrow road that leads to abundant life, the wide road that leads to death.

And one of the deep ironies of our Christian faith is that the road that leads to life is a road that has to have a cross on it. Meanwhile, the road that leads to death is the road that is you avoiding everything that might get you to the cross. It is only in relinquishing your life that you find it, but by trying to salvage it, you lose it. I believe it was Jesus who said this first.

Let us pray together. Heavenly Father, as we come to study your word, As we open our hearts and our minds to what you have to teach us today, Lord, we bring to you our worry. We each have it. Every last one of us has something right now that we can name immediately that we are in fact worried about, our anxiety.

And Lord, you teach us to cast our cares upon you. And so we come this morning trying to do just that. Help us have faith. Help us have the kind of faith that brings to you everything.

In Christ's name we pray, amen. If this sermon is one thing, it's a sermon on dependence. It's a sermon on learning how to depend on God for just about anything and everything. But it's also a sermon about the illusions that you and I carry, Namely, the illusion that we're actually in control of our own life.

And I think Jesus is trying to tell you, are not in control of your own life. And this is one of these things that must be pinned to the cross. Because it's also a sermon about the cross. The cross as the only way home.

And so there are things in your life that need to die and that need to go away so that true life and abundance can in fact be born and reborn within you. Which is all to say this is a sermon about faith. It's a sermon about walking the life of faith. It's a sermon about trusting God with every last piece of who you are.

And when we worry or we have anxiety, It means that there are these pieces of us that we are still trying to hold on to or that we think we can if we just grip hard enough. And my hope today is that by the end of this sermon, you have released something, even just a little bit. But as I started or in the prayer, I said, we each carry anxiety in this room with us here and right now. And I believe that.

And I'm going to guess that you each can immediately think of something. So I want you to stop thinking of that thing for a second. And I want you to zip back in time. Go back a few years and try to find something that you were anxious about for a time and that is no longer causing you any anxiety.

Take that trip with me. I'll give you one that I thought of. When Ezra was very little, and in fact, all of our kids were very little, We used to put them in a sleep sack every night. The sleep sack, if you don't have one, is one of these head to toe sacks so that you then zip it up and there's room for the arms to do this, but the legs don't come out.

And then you lay your baby into the crib and it kind of keeps them comforted and warm, this kind of thing. And I had this thought that I think Ezra is going to get to college and we'll still be zipping him up at night every night and laying him in the crib and having to tend to every last need of his and the worry that comes with being a parent of a young child. And there's all these concerns, right, that are wrapped up in the sleep sack. And then he actually went to college and as far as I know, he's doing just fine.

doesn't call as much as I'd like him to. No, he's doing quite well. He doesn't need me to tuck him in at night. He's off with friends and taking very much care of himself and whatever anxieties I had 18 years ago are long gone, right?

But they were still real. It's just with a kind of a broader view of your life and of what's coming. some of what you're carrying this morning will inevitably be gone, maybe by tomorrow, maybe by next week, maybe it'll take five years, maybe 25 years. But the anxieties will change, won't they?

And something new will take its place. And so the question that I'm kind of asking you this morning is, what is it and where will it be in five years? And But the real deep question, the one that's like way underneath, is do you trust God enough with that thing right now to say, God has seen me through to this point, and I trust that he's gonna see me through to that next end point as well. There is a poem that I came across again as I was kind of prepping for this.

one's by a famous poet named W. H. Auden. He wrote one called The Age of Anxiety.

It's a good one, worth your time. And he says in it this, he says, the noble despair of the poets, yet the noble despair of a poet is nothing of the sort. It is silly to refuse the tasks of our time. Here he means that you and I each, we come to a certain place in life.

And the task hits us, and we often shrink back from it. And we refuse to engage whatever that thing is in your life right now. Maybe it is a new job that you're supposed to embrace and move into, or maybe it's the retirement that you need to lean into, or maybe it's having a child, or maybe it's the test that's coming up. And rather than leading into this, we often have anxiety, and refuse the task of the moment.

And overlooking our lives, we cry, oh, miserable, wicked me, how interesting I am. And here's what he's doing in this passage. He's saying that you and I, in our anxiety, we often have this tendency not to look out to where God is and what God is doing and to look back at what God has done in my life, but instead to turn inward and to say, oh, miserable me, what's going to happen? My life is so, as he says, as interesting.

But then come the really great lines. because it's in these trials and tests and moments of life where we need to show up most that he says, and I think he's echoing Jesus here, that we would rather be ruined than change. We would rather take the wide road that is easy and to just kind of slouch through life than to embrace the narrow road and to do the hard thing and to actually change. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and to let our illusions die.

One of the greatest illusions in life, as I've said already, is that you are in control of it. All it takes is a midnight phone call from somebody telling you that something is deeply wrong to realize I don't have nearly as much control over this life as I thought I did. And all the clinging and the grabbing at it, well ultimately, what will it come to? Tomorrow, or in a week, or in a year, or in 10 years?

Let's open our scriptures to our passage this morning where Jesus is teaching us what it means to live this kind of life and read from the Gospel of Luke chapter 12 starting in verse 22. Luke 12, 22 goes like this. He said to his disciples, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.

Jesus is aiming at some pretty fundamental things here, is he not? You see, you and I don't necessarily worry too much about the things that we eat or wear, except maybe to say that We like fine foods and we like to dress in our Calvin Klein jeans. And we're concerned that other people might look at our attire and think, oh, he's not dressed nice enough or she's slovenly or something. I don't know, something like this.

But what Jesus is talking about is much more basic. It's Maslow's hierarchy is what he's aiming at. Do you have any food at all? Do you have any clothing to put on your body to keep you warm when the temperatures get unseasonably cold very quickly outside?

And he is saying something very difficult, which is what Jesus likes to do. He likes to say hard things. And he says, do not worry about these things. For life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.

Before we get too far, I should probably say that there are different kinds of anxieties and worries in life, and some are definitely worth your time worrying about. You see, if you walk outside and you're walking in the woods and a big snake with fangs and venom in them comes across your path, you should probably worry about that. And you should step back and you should not keep going. And the worry or fear or anxiety in that moment might just actually save your life if you head in the right direction.

Or maybe there's other worries or fears that come across your plate. And you should probably lean in them and even through them. To give you an example from my own life, when I was living in Alabama, there was a time that came where A friend called me and said, Eric, you need to go talk to the president of the university that you are at because I think he might fire you in the next two days. He thinks you've done something that you have not done, and I know that you've not done this, but he is very concerned.

Naturally, I began to worry. I had severe anxiety over this. The anxiety could have crippled me to the point where I did nothing, but instead I chose to actually do something. And I immediately picked up the phone and I sent off an e-mail and I began to set up a meeting that very day with the president of the university to say to him, listen, I don't know what you've heard and who you've heard it from, but I assure you, I assure you, this was not me and you have nothing to worry about.

I have done nothing here. And so he looks at me and he says, Eric, I am so glad that you walked in today because this week was going to end very differently for you. And he indeed believed me and we moved on and I stayed for a couple more years before I came to this lovely church. And it was one of these moments where you meet the fear of the moment or the anxiety And it's not that you should just not worry.

It's that you should do something with the worry. You should move forward with it. And you should, in fact, try to find ways to resolve the conflict that is sitting there. I wonder, in fact, if this is in part what Auden had in mind by we'd rather be ruined than changed.

Because changing is hard. Doing the right thing can be hard. And sometimes it's just easier to live in our dread and our ruin. Jesus continues in verse 24.

He says this, he says, consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap. They have neither storehouses nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life?

If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? He moves from the animals then to the plants and the lilies. And he says, consider the lilies and how they grow. They don't toil or spin, and yet I tell you, even Solomon in all of his glory was in arrayed like one of those.

But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the fields today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith? And here Jesus gets personal. He really says to his disciples, and he says, the nub of it all, which is, I need more faith from you. I need trust.

I need you to trust me. But more than that, he would say, I need you to trust the Heavenly Father, that he is going to provide for you, and that this too shall pass. And if you understand and you break the illusions that you are in control and you understand who is actually in control and you give your life over to the God of the universe who is in control of all the things, then you can trust that your life too will work out as it is planned to. As I, again, was preparing for this sermon, I came across one of my favorite authors is G.K.

Chesterton, and he has a book on St. Francis of Assisi in which he tells a story about Francis going into a cave, and he comes out of it, this is, of course, almost nonsense, it is nonsensical, which is the purpose, but he comes out walking on his hands And he's walking on his hands, and he's seeing the world upside down. And he sees the world upside down as a place where the buildings are hanging from the skies, and the trees are hanging from the skies. And in our world, the cars and the trucks, and it's all hanging from the God's perspective, which Francis realizes is the right side up.

that it is God who indeed has control over all these things. And if we just simply can trust that in his control he will care for us and he will tend to us, this is what Jesus is saying in these passages. And so he continues, And he says, do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink. Don't be worried about all these things.

For all the nations of the world seek after them, and your Father knows that you need them. And so instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Now, this is not to say he will leave you high and dry, and you won't be clothed in life, and you won't get the food you need. It's to say those things are secondary to seeking the ways of the kingdom and that God has control over all those things.

And if we just simply, simply follow the kingdom way, I say simply, the narrow way is rarely simple. But if we can follow that way, well then all of these other things indeed get added. This week I did something interesting that I want to report to you. I kept a very minimal anxiety journal.

I knew I was preaching on this topic and so I thought, well every day I'll just kind of think through like what had me nervous on Monday and what had me nervous on Tuesday and on Wednesday. And now here I am at the end of the week and I'm thinking back on the things that really occupied my mind on these days and not many of them really mattered all that much. And most of them, I will say to you, had to do with yesterday's big trunk or treat, right? As you can imagine, when we have 650 people arriving at our property, that is anxiety producing.

And yet here I am the day after, and that is already in the rear view. And you give it a few more weeks, and we'll all be moving on to something else. But it wasn't just that. I had to come to pull together a Sunday school lesson, and now this sermon that I'm in the middle of, and I'm thinking to myself, well, how?

can it all get done in one week, right? And yet here I am, and after the service is over, I'll go home and take a long nap. I will feel much better after it all. Then I will get up tomorrow morning and We'll do it all over again.

There's another week sitting in front of me. And so I think back to the anxieties of this week. And this is a luxury of being a pastor who gets to talk about these things. I get to ask myself the real question, which is, did I trust God enough in that moment?

I know I'm preaching this sermon. I'm gonna have to talk to the people. I'm gonna have to tell them, like, did I trust God enough in that moment? And my answer is yes and no, right?

Sometimes it gets the best of you. And then other times I set it in this big view and I think, you know what, God is in control and what comes will come. And it's going to be okay. And tomorrow will be a new day and next week will be a new week.

And next year is going to be a new year. To finish up our passage, verse 32 and following goes like this. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. I love this.

The Father that is given to us on Jesus' own lips is a good Father. who takes pleasure in giving you all the things that you need in this life. Sometimes that includes the challenges that force us to grow. But often it's the good things of life, the things that bring us joy and hope.

It is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. So sell your possessions and give them to the needy, provide yourselves with money bags that don't grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. And so the question this morning is ultimately, where is your heart? Where have you placed your trust?

Who are you hoping in? I want to end with a confession. I've given you a few quotes this morning and they all came from the same place. This summer I went to a concert and I saw a band called Mumford and Sons with my friend Ross here and our daughters.

And one of the songs they sing has stuck with me for quite some time, actually. And it's one of these that sounded almost too poetic to not be. And so I looked into it and it turns out it is. And it actually weaves through it the themes that I've already given you.

The song is called Conversation with My Son. And in it, The author writes the following, we are all tumblers and beggars. This is a line from G.K. Chesterton's St.

Francis Assisi biography in which we are tumbling upside down, looking at this upside down world, and we are indeed beggars. And he said, the songwriter says, your mother and I will show you, my son, how to live a life that is full of being the tumblr and beggar. He says, we are gangsters and angels, and is that not true of all of us? We are the worst of beings and the best of beings.

Darling, come and see. The cross or the machine. It's always the same choice. The best I ever met, and here he is definitely referring to Jesus, had nothing and then gave that all away.

We'd rather be ruined than change. and we would rather die in our dread. And so here's his message to you and another W. H.

Auden line. Love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart. This is a sermon on dependence, learning to walk on your hands to see the world right side up. It is a sermon on illusions, letting the cross do its work, dying to the illusion that we are in control and giving over our very selves to God.

And it is a sermon about the cross, because this is indeed the only way home and the only way to fullness of life. Which lastly is all to say that this is a sermon about faith and trust. And it's why Jesus zings the disciples with the line that says, oh, you of little faith, because he wants them, I want you to grow in your faith, to grow dependence, to learn to see the world from God's kingdom perspective, to shatter the illusions of control and to trust and to have faith in God's ability to control the outcomes, the grand outcomes of your life. and to believe that He is enough.

And because He is enough, you become enough when you center yourself in His will. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, His Son, and Holy Spirit, Lord, we have each brought in our anxieties this morning. And they often overshadow the things that we do.

And they make us smaller. And they make us live lives that are indeed lives that lead to destruction. But God, you desire a better way, a way of fullness of life, a way in which we cast everything upon you, and we entrust our very lives to you. And so Lord, this morning, we bring it all.

We bring it all to the altar and to the cross. And we say once again, Lord, you are our Lord. We believe you, we serve you, and we give to you all the things that are dragging us down, both our worries and anxieties, but also our sins and our failures. And Lord, we trust that you are enough.

So this morning, Lord, release us from that. In Christ's name we pray, Amen.

FULLNESS: The Fullness of Christ in Me

Rev. Dr. .Ken Pruitt, Guest Pastor | October 12, 2026

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Sermon Transcript

FULLNESS: The Fullness of Christ in Me

Dr. Rev. Ken Pruitt - Guest Pastor

Sunday, October 11, 2026

And all God's people said, I am so honored to be with you, South Run Baptist Church. Thank you for your commitment to Jesus, the love you show me and my family each time I'm here. And praise team, musicians, vocalists, thank you so much for how you're bringing honor to Jesus. In this time of worship, my dear friend Eric, man, I love you. I praise God for you. And thank you for entrusting the preaching of the word to to that which God, I believe, desires to do in this moment. I'm honored to be with you, and I invite you to join me where the scripture takes us today to Colossians chapter 1. I'll be reading from chapter 1, verses 18 through 20. Colossians chapter 1, verses 18 through 20. And he, Christ, is the head of the body of the church. He is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have supremacy. For God was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in Christ, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven. Did you hear that, church? God in Christ has a desire to reconcile all things to himself. Can you say all things with me? All things. In the Greek that means all things. He's desired to reconcile all things to himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. Father in heaven, I thank you for the reading of your word. Thank you for the hearts that are receiving. and for your spirit who will instruct us. Father, I certainly desire that the words of man not be understood or any attempt of interpretation of your scripture. But Father, may your Holy Spirit quicken our hearts to hear your word. And we commit this moment to you in Jesus' name. And together we said, amen. Again, so honored to be with you. If you were to look at the screen of my cell phone, you would see a lot of apps. but you'd also see a lot of unused apps. And I'll tell you why. It's this simple phrase, add-ons. A lot of my apps no longer function because I refuse to pay for add-ons. You know what I'm talking about. The app looks promising until it tells you it is not. And I placed this 360 app on my phone recently because we all enjoy keeping up with ourselves and our household. And I wanted to advance a little bit, Eric, so I hit a button. I pushed the button and the app said, oh, no, you don't. You need an add-on. And so the app started pushing my buttons. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. spirit of refusing add-ons is remarkably similar to why Paul wrote this letter to the church of Colossae in 62 AD. This congregation was very young. They'd been founded not by Paul, but by one of the young men he had discipled, Epaphras. Paul writes to the church because something dangerous was afoot. There was in their century a problem with add-ons. Although the church in Colossae, the recipient of the letter of Colossians, had placed their trust in Jesus and was following the Christ and was committed to His words, there were voices from without speaking within the church, encouraging that there must be something added to the gospel. Paul said, oh no you don't. And the Holy Spirit raised him up to write this letter that is transferable as a part of God's holy inspired word into our lives today. These voices encourage the church at Colossae to add to their faith in Jesus philosophy, spiritual experiences, even the rites and rituals of the Hebraic tradition. And Paul writes to refute this, to remind them that in Jesus you have all you need. God's salvation for you stands perfect and complete exclusively, not in part, but exclusively in Jesus. And yet these voices continue to say something must be added. This is why in the second chapter of Colossians, you'll hear Paul say, see to it that no one take you captive with hollow philosophies. See to it, Paul would write, that no one deceive you with hollow philosophies that will bring in man's truth in an attempt to combine with the gospel to present something that is most assuredly not the gospel. This happens today, does it not? If we spend just a moment in some form of a media platform, we will see that there are truths that attempt to delude and to mix in with the Christian faith. This is happening in the 1st century. This was a young congregation, so Paul was quite concerned that some might buy into this early development of what is now known as Gnosticism, meaning that there are special revelations that can only come from God, not through Jesus, because matter is evil. Only spiritual things are holy. And so the incarnate God in Christ was dismissed, and many other heresies came out of this moment in history. Paul wrote to them about the fullness of Jesus. In fact, you and I can understand Paul's heart behind this letter by looking at something he prayed in chapter 1, verse 9. In that verse, Paul wrote and literally prayed, we continue to ask God to fill you with a knowledge of His will. What is that knowledge of the will of God that would keep you and me from being pulled into deceptive voices of vain philosophies and other teachings that are against the gospel. What is this full knowledge of the will of God? This is a bit more transcendent. In fact, it is way more transcendent than how you and I might think of knowing the will of God. We at times will seek God's will for where we will attend college or what career may be ours or who we will marry. Those are the big life episodes wherein we will sometimes say, God, I want to know your will. That's not at all the categories from which Paul says, oh, I pray, church of Colossae, that you will be filled with the knowledge of God's will. Here the idea of God's will is much more transcendent. And to better understand this, it's always important to allow the whole of the scripture to be our commentary for one specific scripture. And there is a partnering verse here that will help you and me to understand why of all the things Paul could have prayed for this church that was being hit by heresies, why Paul would pray, oh, that you would have full knowledge of the will of God. What is that will of God referenced here? Well, a partnering passage in Ephesians chapter 1, verse 9 and 10, Paul writes that the mystery of God's will, he has the word mystery there, the mystery of God's will has been revealed, and then Paul names it, that all things will be brought under one head, Jesus Christ. So when Paul prays for the Colossian church that they would be full of the knowledge of God's will, He's praying that they would have a deep, a full, a complete understanding of all that God has accomplished for them through Jesus. Paul writes, I pray that you'll be filled with understanding what God has done for you in Christ. Now immediately, you and I, especially those of us who've been in church since the day we were able to take our first breath, will quickly say, well, Ken, I know the gospel. I've heard the gospel. I could reiterate the gospel. So why would I need to know more, have the full knowledge of a gospel that I've already heard all my life? Well, your question, if that would be your question, makes the apostle Paul's point. And it makes the teaching of the Holy Spirit's point here very clear. Paul is not saying that you would have a recognition of the gospel so that you can recite it. Paul is not saying that you have some cerebral understanding of the gospel. Paul writes that you would have a full knowledge and experience that you would truly know the fullness and the essence of Jesus. Here lies more than simply an idea or a truth that we hear about and try to respond to. This is looking at Jesus and seeing him for the fullness of who he is so that our lives are responding to him. There is a formula of this, knowing the truth and responding as far back as Psalm chapter 89. In that Psalm, the Psalmist said, God, please teach me your ways so that I may respond to your faithfulness. Paul writes in that same formulae to the Colossian church, oh that you may know the fullness of Christ so that your lives will respond to who he is in all of his glory, in the vastness of who he is as the reigning King of Kings and as the one who died to redeem us. And so Paul does this for a specific purpose, to lead Colossians away from those deceptive philosophies. And how does Paul do that? By focusing upon the Christ. Last week as we were together in God's Word, I shared with you as many as five marks of the true essence of Jesus brought out here so that we might more fully understand the Christ and not give in to those dangerous add-ons. And what did we discover? We discovered that Jesus is indeed the exact image of God, that He is supreme over all realms, and that He's head of the church. But we pick up with that 4th mark in verse 18. He is the firstborn from among the dead. Of all of these amazing and powerful demonstrations of the true identity of Jesus, we hear The scripture pronounced powerfully, he's the firstborn from among the dead. He has power over dead. If there was any question that the heresies would bring to the minds of the Colossians, those questions should have been erased. dismiss completely learning that Jesus has actually conquered everything that would separate us from God, including the grave, including death. He is the firstborn from the dead. Now, if you and I were to walk our way through the scriptures together, we would discover in that chronological reading as many as 9 to 10 stories about people being raised from the dead. Yet each one gives the narrative of their life resurrection being followed by immediately dying again. They were resurrected because of sin or some injurious thing, and yet they would be resurrected to die again. Only one has been resurrected never to die, and his name is Jesus. That's why he is held here in all of scripture as the firstborn among the dead. This is why Revelation chapter 1, verse 18 announces clearly that he holds the keys of death and the grave. You know, someone holds the keys, they're pretty much in charge, so we think. That was the vernacular and that was the intimation of Paul's words and of the words in Revelation. He holds the keys. He controls, he has defeated death and the grave. But also look at a final mark here, emphasizing the greatness of Christ so that we look to Him and are not swayed to the need for an add-on. That we look to Christ so that we're not saying it's Jesus plus. ceremony. It's Jesus plus special revelation. It's Jesus plus ascetic behavior of denying my body certain pleasures. Or it's Jesus plus man-made ceremonies or rudimentary principles that will eventually trap us in darkness. No, it's Jesus only. And Paul concludes this amazing hymn-like paragraph from the scriptures describing the essence of Jesus in its fullness And he ends by these very powerful words in verse 19 and 20. For it was God who was pleased to have all of his fullness dwell in him. Focus on verse 19. We will find reason why these verses are so important to push away false beliefs both then and now. For God was pleased to have all the fullness dwell in him and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven. This is Paul's language, things on earth in heaven, not referencing our home heaven, but referencing every possible part of the created existence, the heavens and the earth, all things. There's nothing here that will not be touched by the power of Jesus giving us the opportunity through our faith in Him to be reconciled to God. And all of this, is done because Jesus has made peace through his blood shed on the cross. Absolute in redemption. That's our Jesus. There's nothing missing. Only in Christ can mankind truly know God. This is Paul's message. It seems simple to you and me. We've heard this The entire existence of our life, at least some of us have, and yet here it becomes so profound in the face of our tendencies to welcome add-ons to our faith. And Paul writes, it's only in Christ. It was that great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, perhaps you've heard his name quoted once or twice before, who said this when asked if he had a creed. And Spurgeon said, If I'm asked if I have a creed, the answer is I have but one, and it's Jesus Christ. And then Spurgeon went on to elaborate because he is the sum and substance of the gospel. He is all theology. And he is the incarnation of every precious truth. This becomes the heart of what Paul desired that the church at Colossae see, the fullness of the Christ. And then in this first chapter of this amazing letter, Paul gently but very pastorally carries the Colossians' attention from fullness in Christ to that great application, fullness in Christ in me. What does it look like for you and I to live in the reality of the fullness of Christ in me? We pick up at verse 21. Once you were alienated from God and you were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you, he meaning God, has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you wholly in his sight without blemish and free from accusation. Paul seems to bring into the idea of how you and I are complete in Christ and the fullness of Christ dwells in us through the Spirit, first by pointing to the past. He will in a moment point to the present and the future. But he points to the past, and I believe the focus here can be clearly in the past on the crucifixion. Notice what Paul writes here. Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior, this enmity from the very beginning when sin entered this earth, can only become something that is removed because of Jesus. We know this. We know that Romans chapter 5 talks about the first Adam and sin comes in, but then compares Christ like a second Adam, not fully a man, but fully God and fully man, bringing in our salvation completely to remove the curse of sin. And Paul wrote, you were alienated from God. You were enemies in your mind, but But he's reconciled you how? Through Christ, physical body, through death. Therein lies the past tense of Paul's emphasis upon the completeness of our salvation. The past, Christ was crucified. Why would Paul add in body? Why would he mention the physical here because the heresies, particular the beginning seeds of what would become full-blown Gnosticism, held high the perfect holiness of what is spiritual, but denied that God would redeem anything physical or material. And so Paul argues that beautifully and conclusively God in Christ went to the cross to redeem us. Church, I ask you, Do you not desire that it would be your testimony in mine to be like that of Paul's when in Romans chapter 6 verse 6, in Galatians chapter 5 verse 24, in Galatians chapter 6 verse 14, Paul over and over again said, I am crucified with Christ. He articulated that in Galatians chapter 2 and verse 20. Each of those verses have something powerful in common along with the word crucified. It is the tense of the word. The grammarian in Greek would call it the aorist. It is the completed action never to be acted upon again. Paul wrote, I'm crucified with Christ. I laid my old self down and I have been raised to a new life. in Christ and I fear that today in the church at large, many are struggling to let go of the identity of a sinful past because in our minds we think we must do something. that will give us a true essence of God's being pleased with us when scripture says it is impossible for us to do that without the grace of the cross. But I fear many people are held in the clutches of that guilt where we do not feel good enough. And Paul writes, we have been crucified. That's been done in the past. What Christ did on the cross and then through the empty grave and now ascended on high, is enough. It's complete for you to be fully redeemed. This is the fullness of Christ in us. But look at the present tense. Paul writes, but now he has reconciled you. You've been brought together with him. This is present tense. The actual tense in that verse is now you are reconciled through Christ to God. Second Corinthians 5, In verse 19, that announces God in Christ reconciling the world to himself. And then future tense, from the crucifixion to reconciliation to this powerful statement, God presenting us. Do you see that? How powerful God presenting us. Free from accusation, without blemish. This is the future reference of salvation that Paul articulates here, that on that day you'll be presented to God without blemish. He's made us right with Jesus. through the death and resurrection. He's reconciled us in the present. He's making us right. And He makes us right eternally for the future as He presents us wholly before God. And on that day that our breathing stops here and our eyes awaken there, we will be presented perfect, fully as Christ has died to make us perfect. And this becomes a powerful recognition of how you and I live on these truths of the fullness of Christ in me. The fullness of Christ, the image of God, supreme over all spheres, head of the church, the fullness of Christ, in all of the glory of God, being absolute in redemption, the fullness of Christ in me. He died on the cross that I might say I'm counted as crucified with Him. He's reconciled me to God now. Nothing can break that, and He's presenting me holy and blameless when I stand with Him. in heaven what a beautiful picture of the fullness of Christ and the fullness of Christ in you and me there was a young man in 16th century Germany who wrestled significantly with the idea of being pleasing to God He read the scriptures but would see phrases like the righteousness of God as only punitive, interpreting that God's righteousness is actually that which punishes the sinner. And this young man felt the guilt as a sinner. So he attempted many acts of what he would call acts toward righteousness. He prayed relentlessly. He confessed rigorously. He fasted severely, even to the point of fainting, with a desire to somehow taste what it's like to be right with God. But nothing worked. This young man, over many series of prayer and before the scripture, saw that phrase, the righteous will live by faith. And his life became changed. He confessed Jesus as his Lord. And you have probably guessed who this young man in 16th century Germany is, Martin Luther. And this is what he said, this is actually what he wrote looking back on his conversion. It was like walking through a gate into paradise where I'm truly free in Christ. So today, from the bottom of my heart, I ask, can you say of your place with Jesus that you feel free, like you have walked through a gate and you're free in Christ to know who He is and to know who you are and what He's done for you. so that you can have a life that is free to worship, not perfect, but free to worship, free to live for Him, free to have a desire to honor Him and to fulfill what He directs us to do as we follow after Him. Oh, I pray that you will have that freedom. And I pray that in just a moment as we come to the table of observing what our Savior has done, that when you allow the observance of the Lord's table to affect your sight and your senses and your taste, as you partake of the bread and the cup, would you allow the amazing truth of Jesus to wash over you? And I desire to do the same so that we leave this place knowing full well that we are going to respond to Jesus for who He is. and for who he is in us as we desire to live for him. Amen, church. Would you pray with me? Father in heaven, thank you for your word speaking to our hearts. And now, Father, as we come to your table, we do so, Father, not tritely, not out of routine or habit. Oh, Father, forbid that we would come simply because this is just another step, but oh, Father, may we come anticipating a renewed sense of who you are and what you've accomplished as we live for you Father we pray this we offer this in the precious name of Jesus our Lord and together we said amen

FULLNESS: Knowing Christ Deeply, Living Christ Daily. Part 1

Rev. Dr. Ken Pruitt - Guest Pastor

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Sermon Transcript

FULLNESS: Knowing Christ Deeply, Living Christ Daily, Part 1

Rev. Dr. Ken Pruitt, Guess Pastor

. . . statement. No, the gospel is not another dying myth. It's not just another story. It's the story from where all other stories find their meaning. That statement encapsuled the conversion experience of this young man. And on that evening He asked Jesus to become his Lord and his Savior. And the impact of this young man is still felt today. His name is, of course, C.S. Lewis. And his friend who encouraged him is certainly none other than J.R.R. Tolkien. I love this story of Lewis's conversion. And later in his life, Lewis wrote a summary of that night. I'd like to share this summary with you. Lewis said, I now believe in the Christian faith, not only because I can see it, but because by it I can see everything. Lewis testified that Jesus Christ had filled his life. He had become full of the meaning and message of the gospel. This reminds us of a phrase that Pastor Paul Tripp used once, being compartmentalized in our faith. Lewis decided no longer to compartmentalize, but to see Jesus Christ as Lord of all and to see His fullness alive in all of our existence. So I ask you today to consider our response to Jesus. Many of us come to this place of worship from different locales and maybe even different spiritual postures. We come to this place with different experiences. But there's one question that would drive us all together. How are we responding at this very moment in our daily lives to Jesus? Do we tend to compartmentalize? Pastor Paul Tripp said that at times we treat our Christian faith like drawers. in our house we have different drawers. We have drawers for socks and we have drawers for towels and drawers for utensils. And sometimes in our faith maybe it feels as if we have different drawers and that Jesus and the truth of the gospel has just but one drawer to occupy in our life. Lewis would say note, it is vital that we receive the fullness of Christ in our lives and then walk in that fullness. Well, that's the message of the whole of Scripture of the New Testament and of this small letter that we know as Colossians, written by the Apostle Paul, that 1st century pastor and church planter who ministered indelibly in the lives of many brand new churches in the 1st century, particularly in Asia Minor, and Colossae being one of these congregations to whom Paul wrote a letter around 62 AD. And the purpose of his letter was to remind them, Jesus is all you need. He's sufficient. And Paul began through this letter expounding upon this idea of the fullness of Christ. I'd like to walk into this letter with you for just a moment to experience the first of two messages I'll share with you. And in this part one of knowing Christ deeply and living Christ daily. Can we focus for a moment on the fullness of Christ in us? And then we'll focus on the fullness of Christ next week in the church. As we open up the book of Colossians, I'd like to remind you of the theme of Colossians that we find in the opening two verses. In Colossians chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, before we move into the verses that were read for us, we notice a greeting that Paul shared that sets the tone for the remainder of the letter. Paul wrote in Colossians chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, he identified himself, by the will of God and Timothy our brother, to God's holy people. And Paul presented two identifications here built upon the fullness of Christ. Paul said, I'm apostle of Jesus by the will of God. And then he addressed the church as being the holy people of God. I don't know if you've ever seen yourself as holy, but if you were among the Colossian congregation, you would be addressed aptly, even as you should be today, as a holy people. You may say, and Pastor Ken, that's far from what I would think of myself. Well, Paul addressed the entire church. transferable even to you and to me today that you're a holy people. But Paul also identified himself in that same light by saying, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ. Why are these two identifiers so important for understanding this entire letter and for understanding the fullness of Christ in us and in the church? When Paul said, I'm an apostle of Jesus Christ, he added, by the will of God, Anytime Paul uses the phrase will of God, he's referencing not just God having a will for our lives per se for a career or some type of broader guidance. Paul uses the phrase will of God to reference what God is up to in our lives by giving us Jesus. to redeem us and save us and set us in a right relationship with God Almighty. That becomes for the message of the gospel, the will of God. So Paul writes, I'm an apostle by the will of God. He didn't mean that by the sake of his career or calling, but because of what God had done in his life through Jesus. So I stand here today to say I'm a messenger of God by the will of God. I'm leading a seminary by the will of God. I'm a father and a husband by the will of God. But not because these are choices only that have filtered into my life, but this is because of what God has done to redeem and to fulfill his purposes through a relationship with Jesus. Paul then identified the Colossian church as being the saints. You holy people, the saints of God, meaning set apart. You are set apart because of what Jesus has accomplished in you. And so when Paul gave this greeting, he was off and running in this amazing small letter to remind the church that all that we are, all that we do is built upon the fullness of Jesus at work in our lives. Then Paul does something unique. He offers a prayer that we see in chapter 1, verse 9 and 10. Paul said, I pray and ask that God would fill you What did he ask God to fill the church with? Listen to this, the knowledge of the will of God. Paul writes, I pray that you'll understand not just that God's will is real for those of us who preach and lead and plant churches, but God's will is real for you in Christ Jesus. God is doing something in you, which is why Paul prayed in chapter 1, verse 9 and 10, that you would have the fullness of the knowledge of the will of God. Over in chapter 2, I add this because this is vital for this word fullness. Paul gave some exhortation in chapter 2, verse 9 and 10, when he said, oh, I pray that in Christ you are brought to fullness. That the fullness of Christ made known in bodily form, meaning that God sent Christ to us, He lived, died, and rose again, and ascended, and he's ruling and reigning on high. Paul writes, I pray that the fullness of Christ becomes your fullness. This word fullness, although out Colossians from the Greek term pleroma, actually indicates to be complete. So what Paul is saying in all these verses is not too different from what C.S. Lewis said of his conversion. Jesus has filled my life. All that I am and all that I think and do and the lens through which I look at everything is Jesus. This was Paul's message and this was his exhortation to the Colossian church to walk in the fullness of Christ, to know him deeply and to follow him daily. Paul then continues writing and he comes to an abrupt halt at verse 15 and this is where we pause for an application today. In verse 15, it's as if Paul stopped for a moment. Paul is likely writing from a Roman prison, so he's likely dictating to what you and I would call an emanuensis, a secretary. We know this to be reality because at the end of the letter, Paul says, I took the pen and wrote this closing myself. But here Paul seems to pause, he may have put up his hand to the one that was writing down what he was speaking to this church he'd never visited, but his dear friend Epaphras, whom Paul had discipled, had actually been a part of the church's founding. And Epaphras had traveled the 800 miles from Colossae to Rome where Paul was in prison and had given him a report of the new Christians in Colossae, which encouraged Paul to write these words. And I can almost see Paul lifting his hand, telling the one writing his thoughts to stop for a moment. Because in verse 15 all the way through verse 20, it's as if the entire tone of the letter ceases for this one paragraph. Some of your older translations use an indention here to show that there's likely some form of hymnody happening here. It's as if there is a hymn-like presentation. Wright comments that yes, this is actually a hymn, but it's not apart from Paul's writing. There is evidences of Paul's writing all through this great section of verses about the person of Jesus. So for just a moment, having looked at the backdrop of Colossae and this word fullness that will appear all through the letter and having understood that Paul is concerned about a brand new church that's just been founded, And a church that was inundated by all types of heretical teachings that had begun to attempt to undo the foundation of the gospel. Paul prayed, oh that you'd be filled with the knowledge of God's will. Paul exhorted that the fullness of Christ would dwell in you. But between those two statements about the fullness of Christ, Paul presents Jesus. He presents Jesus. I'm here this morning. for no other purpose than to present to you Jesus. If there are questions in your life about some event or some season, if there are fears and concerns and unknowns, I'm just here to present Jesus to you. If you're tired and frustrated and overwhelmed, perhaps confused and maybe even a little apathetic about faith, I'm just here to present Jesus. If you are inundated through the media and all types of social interlocutors who are out there attempting to have a conversation with you and maybe even to present to you some type of delusion of what is truth, I'm just here to present Jesus. Because when we truly look at the Christ, We understand him in his fullness. How can we not but surrender all that we are to him so that we can live in that very same fullness? So as we move into verse 15 and as time comes to a close, I just want to share 5 identifying markers. of Jesus. The theologian would say 5 marks of pure Christology. But since none of us are in the posture of a theologian this morning, I like the simple phrase. These are five identifying marks of Jesus. Yet the hymn is full of pure Christological emphases that will truly be transformative. So listen to verse 15. The Son, meaning Jesus, is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. The first identifying mark, Jesus is the exact image of God. You may say, well, can we know this? is the meaning of Christmas. This is the incarnation. But do you understand from this verse, there is an overwhelming flood of theology that comes from the scriptures that presents Jesus as the perfect representation of God and the highest manifestation. Paul wrote, Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. Paul, a former Pharisee, understood that the Old Testament law prohibited that there would be any image set up to represent God. So when Paul says that Jesus becomes the exact image, Paul actually articulates that it is Jesus who is the full perfect expression. Jesus becomes the sum total of God. Like Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3 articulates, Jesus is the exact representation. You need to look no further to understand God than the perfect love of Jesus. Christ himself said in John 14, verse 9, if you have seen me, you have seen who? The Father. Jesus is the perfect demonstration of God. Why is this important? Because there were heresies circling about the Colossae church that was tempting the Colossian Christians to add something to the gospel. Are you with me, church? There were influences that would cause these new Christians in Colossae to add to the gospel a practice of Judaism so that my ceremonialism and my legal response to the law must be added to the gospel for me to be acceptable to God. There was another temptation to add asceticism to the gospel. These are the strange heresies. that were trying to pollute the church, to which Paul writes this letter and argues. And asceticism would be not like Judaism, you must do this, but asceticism would declare, you must stop doing this. And so the ascetics were tempting the Colossae Christians to realize that their only true approach to God would involve those restrictions, bodily and otherwise, that would indicate that they are holy and right with God. Paul says, no, Jesus is the full demonstration of God and the highest manifestation. He has brought to you complete salvation. You need no other. You need to look for no add-on. But all our culture produces add-ons to the gospel just as quickly as you and I can boot up our Facebook page or some other public media that allows the culture to sit down with us and to bring influence. Paul said, Jesus is the fullness of God. You need no other. It's as if Paul was saying, I'm not asking you to make Jesus #1 in your life so that there might be a #2 and three. Paul was saying to the Colossian Christians, Jesus is everything, not just #1. He's everything. The highest manifestation becomes evident when Paul said he's the He's the exact image of God and he's the firstborn over all creation. This phrase firstborn I must explain to you because it does not mean that Jesus was created. Jesus has always existed. Is that a shock to you? The scripture teaches he's always existed. But to call him the firstborn in this great hymnody of pure teaching of Jesus indicates not that there was some chronology that made him evidenced here and others followed, no, it indicates the highest manifestation from the Greek word protocols, which means first. There's no other, first in high honor, first in allegiance, first in the pureness of God demonstrated to men. There is no other Jesus is the exact representation of God. When our middle daughter was very young, she picked up a crystal figurine that had an image of Jesus right in the middle of that crystal rock, a picture of Jesus on the cross. Friends of us had traveled and they found this in a shop and had brought it to us. And if you picked up that crystal rock and turned it a certain way, you could see Jesus appear. But you had to tilt it just right. And you had to work with it until it became manifested as a picture of Jesus. Our middle daughter picked it up one day and she was very young and she began turning it. She's turning it and saying to me, dad, where's Jesus? As if he's no longer inside this rock. Where is he? Sweetie, keep looking. She turned it and she finally said, I see him. I see all of him. Because you see, if you didn't turn this figurine just right, you'd only see a glimpse. But her phrase, dad, I finally see all of him. resonates with perfect clarity what Paul's doing here, that the Colossian church would see all of Jesus, not just a glimpse, not just a drawer in one's life to say, well, I'll pull this drawer open and think about Jesus whenever it becomes appropriate. Paul said he's God. He's over all things. He's firstborn, meaning he's first place. Look at this second identifying mark. He is supreme over all realms. Verse 16 and 17. For in him all things were created, heaven and earth, thrones, powers, rulers and authorities. They've all been created. Are you ready for this trifecta of an explanation of Jesus? They've all been created in him, through him, and for him. In him can mean in the locality of the Greek language, a sphere, a place, meaning that Jesus rules and reigns as Lord over all of this. All things are made, principalities, powers, darknesses in Him, meaning unto Him, meaning under His Lordship. My father used to say, not rather quickly, but sincerely and often, if Jesus is not Lord of all in your life, He's not Lord at all in your life. Because Paul's describing Jesus here as all things being under his rule and ring, all things are in him. The Greek would have it the sphere, the location. All things are in him, all things are through him. We know that Jesus as the Son, a member of the Trinity, has that expression of being creator. John chapter 1, verse 3, in him all things were created. What do you mean by all things? If anything has been created, it was created through him and in him and by him and for him. That's the message of John chapter 1 verse 3 and the message here. All things are in him through him and for him, for his glory. Jesus is supreme over all realms. Look at the third identifying marker. Jesus is head of the church. He is head of the church. We're going to stop here today and let this become the A place where we sit down to apply, what does this mean for me? Hear this phrase. Paul writes, he is the head of the body, the church. You see, the heresies that surrounded the church at Colossae were influenced by early forms of what later became known as Gnosticism. You don't have to worry about that term, other than it identifies a belief that something material was evil and that Jesus could not have been incarnate. And so God had to reveal through angelology and other mystical, inspirational experiences, God had to reveal himself that way. And Paul wrote, the scripture indicates, no, God has revealed himself perfectly in Christ. Jesus is supreme over all realms, which will send a message to the Gnostics that that Gnosticism is wrong. These heresies are wrong because Jesus is Lord over all spaces. He's Lord over all. But then Paul adds, he's head of the church. Well, if he's already said Jesus is over all spheres, that would include the church, why would Paul have to add the church? Simply because the gospel not only disarms the dangerous heresies that circle about, The gospel also proves that there's only one way to the Father. There's only one faith that will bring you to the Father, and that's through Jesus. He's the head of the church. This indicates that he is head of the church in authority and majesty. I pastored before coming to lead the seminary for over 31 years. In those 31 years, you know how many days I acted as head of the church? Hopefully none. Hopefully none. Do you know how many days in those 31 years I was head of the church? None. None. Do you know how many elders I met in 31 years that were head of the church? None. Do you know how many deacons and church founders and church planters that I met that are head of the church? The sum total would be none. Because there's only one head. His name is Jesus. Paul said he's the head of the church. There are others here you can see, but I focus on these three for our time this morning. He's the image of God. He's supreme over all realms. He's head of the church. Why would Paul emphasize this so much? Because later in this chapter, Paul would write, that you were once separated from God in your sins. You were alienated. But because of what Jesus did on the cross, absolute redemption, because of what Jesus did, you've been brought to God. You're no longer enemies to God. You've been brought to Him. You've been given new life. If your faith is in Christ, you have been given adoption as sons and daughters of God. You belong to Him, to God, because of what Jesus has done. And Paul, led by the Holy Spirit, emphasized these truths to a very young church that had become inundated with dangerous heresies because Paul, in the Spirit, knew what you and I discovered today. If we can see all of who Jesus is, if we can see all of him, has my daughter turned that little crystal rock If we can look at the truth to say, I see the fullness of Jesus, then our lives can respond to that fullness. And we are walking in the fullness of Christ in us because Paul would say in chapter 2, verse 9 and 10, and you have the fullness of Christ through the Holy Spirit. All that Jesus is, He's He's accomplished that in you. So church, today, those of you who your faith is in Jesus, I want you to know you have the fullness of Christ. He's working in you. He's alive in you. This is why Paul said, I am an apostle by the will of God. Jesus is alive and at work in you. So I encourage you to join me in walking in the fullness of Christ by knowing him more deeply according to these truths and living for him daily. When Queen Victoria of England reigned as Empress of India, the Maharaja of Punjab was a little boy. To show his allegiance, he sent her a magnificent diamond. This diamond he sent Queen Victoria became one of the crown jewels of England and it was safely kept in the Tower of London. When the Maharaja of Punjab grew up to become a man, some two decades later, he went to London to pay his respects to the Queen. When he arrived, the young man went into the Queen's chambers and he asked in shock to the Queen if he could see the diamond. Can you bring the diamond that I gave to you a long time ago when I was a little boy? So she Motion for her attendance and the diamond was brought to the Indian prince. Everyone was stone silent because it seemed as if the prince had a change of heart. He took the diamond, he knelt on one knee in front of the queen. And he said, Queen, when I gave this diamond to you a long time ago, I was but a boy and I really didn't know what I was doing and I didn't know you. But now I really know you. So when the fullness of knowing what I'm doing, I kneel again and I give you the diamond again in full heart, in full strength, realizing that what I do is in response to your majesty. I think sometimes we can become so busy being good church people and good religious people then maybe we lose glimpse of seeing the fullness of Jesus and responding to him. I'm not sure when you bowed your knee and said, Jesus, I invite you into my life as Lord and Savior. Could have been recently, maybe it was a couple of decades ago. But is it possible that at times we need to see Jesus in his fullness so that we can return to the devotion of giving our life to Jesus. Maybe, maybe for some, scales have come off and we've matured in our faith. And maybe now we need to say, Jesus, I know I'm yours, but in the fullness of understanding you and knowing what I'm doing, Jesus, I just, I say, Jesus, I'm yours. Use me as you desire. Perhaps that's a prayer that God may be leading you to pray. Jesus, I know I belong to you, but I just want to say I'm yours because I see you more fully for who you are. Church, I pray that you and I together will know Christ deeply and we will certainly live Christ daily. Amen. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this moment we have not just to have heard your word and to have been led in beautiful worship, but Father, now to respond to you, to understand that God, you gave us all when you gave us Jesus, and there is nothing more that we need for our salvation to be complete. And so Father, you've made it complete, and perhaps at times we've lost sight of this. May we return to you having been reminded of your fullness in Christ, and may we return to say, God, I'm yours. Father, we know that if we've trusted you and we're saved, that has no expiration date. But Father, sometimes we lose sight of who you are and the fullness, the beauty of our salvation through Jesus. And maybe we need to pick up that truth of Jesus and look until we can say, I see all of Christ. And how much more I need to say, Jesus, I'm yours. Jesus, I'm yours. May this be our prayer. And we offer this in Jesus' name. And together we said, Amen. Would you.

Your Faith Has Saved You

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrist, Pastor { September 27, 2026

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Sermon Transcript

Your Faith Has Saved You

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor

I hope you'll stick around as we pack together for the community that is around us. As I was watching that video, it strikes me that what we're doing downstairs in just a few minutes is a wonderful extension of what I want to say today, which is that, maybe in brief, that Jesus cares about our bodies as much as he cares about our souls. He cares about this world as we see it and experience it, as he does about wherever we end up in the next life. And too often, Christianity, and I am guilty of this myself, we focus so much on what's to come that we fail to see that the here and now is actually where heaven and hell begin. And so unless we can take care of the bodies in front of us, our own included, I do wonder how we are prepared to enter into the next life. Let's pray and we'll jump into what I'm trying to say here. Heavenly Father, we come this morning expecting you to be present and speaking, to be active in the world that is around us and the world that is inside each of us. Lord, our minds can race, our hearts can thump, anxiety can get the best of us. Thinking about what tomorrow might bring can get us all wrapped up around the axle. But Lord, today, in this second, we ask that you set those aside, that you breathe your breath of peace into us and that you speak to us the truth that you have for us this morning. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. The sermon takes place in three parts. I've tried to give you the three parts on the bulletin at the bottom of your, at the bullets, at the bottom of the bulletin. Part one is kind of stating to you the problem that often exists. And then part two is maybe showing you the path forward and where I see a solution to this problem. And then three, as often is who cares, is the question that I'll pose. Like, what does it mean for us today? The question at hand is, what do Jesus miracles have to do with the crucifixion and the resurrection? I don't know if you've ever thought about this question, but Jesus spends his whole life doing all kinds of things. He lives in earthly existence, just like you and I do. And then he has at least three years of a ministry where he's going about doing what? He's healing people of their diseases. He's casting out demons. In today's story, he he power came out of him to heal the bleeding woman. There was a girl who had died and he raised from the dead again. But then he goes to the cross and he forgives us of our sins. And I don't know if you feel this way, but sometimes it feels like those two things are worlds apart. And what is his healing of all the bodies in the first part of his life have anything to do with what he does on the cross? Have you asked this question? Have you wondered this? Has this ever come into your mind at some point that these two things feel a little unrelated? I heard a speaker a number of years ago. His name is NT Wright and there's a quotation from him at the bottom of the bulletin. He's a famous biblical scholar. And he was talking at a conference that I was at. And he named this ever so clearly. He said that too often in American Christianity, we split these two things up. And truth be told, we actually mostly just focus on the cross and maybe the resurrection, though mostly the cross and the forgiveness of sins. And then the hope that we have at some future point in heaven someday. But then we don't always know what to do with those miracles that he did. And they just kind of become a sign that, well, maybe maybe Jesus is just like proving he really is God. And so he's done all the signs to prove that he's God. And therefore, the cross is real. I suggest to you actually that's maybe an anemic or small view of what Jesus is doing in his earthly ministry. And he's showing us a much, much better way. But the problem doesn't seep in recently. It's actually an older problem. It actually if you were to read the Apostles Creed, right, it goes like this. It says, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. And I believe in Jesus Christ. And then what does it say about Jesus? It says he's God's son. He's our Lord. He's conceived by the Holy Spirit. And he's born of the Virgin Mary. And then it skips over all the life of Jesus. And it says he suffered under Pontius Pilate. He was crucified, dead and buried. Right. And so even the Apostles Creed jumps from his birth, which seems really important, and then the suffering and death, which is obviously very important, doesn't really give us some theology or an understanding of why it all mattered at all. I think there's help on the way, though. So the first place I turn you to is Matthew, Chapter eight, verses 16 to 17. We read the following. That evening they brought to him many who were possessed by demons, and he cast out the spirits with a word. And then he cures all the sick. And this was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah. He took our infirmities and bore our diseases. Here, Jesus is quoting from Isaiah 53 for which is often called the suffering servant passage. If you've been with us on a good Friday, there's a good chance you've heard this passage multiple times. It's a famous one. And it's a really important one, because in Isaiah, we get this foreshadowing of the kind of Savior we should expect. It's the kind of Savior who dies that we might live, who suffers. But very specifically here, he bears our infirmities and our weaknesses or diseases. I know we often just immediately kind of translate that into he bears our sins, and he does. Like this is mission critical. Like I'm not trying to lower this. I'm trying to explain to you that salvation might be a little bigger than we've thought it is. And so Isaiah tells us and Matthew echoes that there's something about Jesus bearing the infirmities and the diseases of us. And this is part of what he's doing on the cross. The quote from NT Wright goes like this. Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of God's new project. Not to snatch people away from the earth into heaven, but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. The project that God has embarked on from the day Adam and Eve were ushered out of the Garden of Eden is not to one day create this place off in the sky somewhere that we all fly up to by and by. It's to redeem and restore the creation that is, which is to say that your lives matter here and now in deep and profound ways. Your bodies matter here and now. The trauma that sits in your mind, it matters. And God is desirous to heal it all. But we also know that we live in a fallen world. It's become almost cliche to say we are living in a fallen world, but it is true. And so the difficulty of living in this life is a real one. And while I would wish to you that all of our infirmities can be whisked away today, before you leave, just come on up and I'll pray over you. And you'll walk out a healed person. I can't make that promise to you today, but I do hope to show you some other things. Part two of the sermon is about the many faces of salvation that we find in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke's Gospel, he uses four times the same phrase, and it says, Your faith has blanked you. Now, the most obvious translation is to just simply say your faith has saved you. This is what the Greek says every one of these times. Sozo is the Greek word. Your faith has saved you. And if you've been around the church at all, and if you've read Paul's letters, and if you've just simply had conversations with Christians, you know that faith and salvation, they go hand in hand, don't they? Faith, salvation. But in a few of the translations of these words, we actually don't get salvation as the word. And in fact, we saw it today when I read to you the ESV. But ESV isn't alone. It's actually most translations. The Greek is up here on the screen in case you want to learn Greek someday. It says, Your faith has sasoken se, has saved you. Sozo is the root word here. Let's go ahead and read Luke eight again, and I'll show you where it pops on the on the scene. Now, when Jesus returned, the crowd welcomed him for they were all waiting for him. And there came a man named Jairus, who was a ruler of a synagogue. And he fell at Jesus feet and implored him to come out of his house. For he had this only daughter about 12 years of age, and she was dying. As Jesus went, the people pressed around him. And there was a woman who had a discharge of blood for 12 years. And though she had spent all her living on physicians, she could not be healed by anyone. She came upon him and touched the fringe of his garment. And immediately, her discharge of blood ceased. And Jesus said, Who was it that touched me? And when they all denied it, Peter said, Master, there's a bunch of people around you. They're all pressing in on you. And Jesus said, No, somebody has touched me, for I perceive that power has gone out from me. And when the woman saw that she was not hidden, she came trembling and fell down before him. And she declared in the presence of all the people why she had touched him and how she had been immediately healed. And then Jesus said to her daughter, Your faith and here's the line has saved you. At least that's what the Greek says there. Daughter, your faith has made you well go in peace. Your faith has made you well. Indeed, her faith has made her well. It is what has healed her. She came to the Savior. She touched the garment and power flowed out of him. Whatever that means exactly, I'm not sure, but it sounds awesome. And I wish I were there to see it. And flows into her and she's healed. Or as Luke says, she is saved, but doesn't actually stop there because then there's the next two lines. And it says, while he was still speaking, someone from the ruler's house came and said, Your daughter is dead. Do not trouble the teacher anymore. But Jesus on hearing this answered him and said, Do not fear, only believe, and she will be saved. Sozo is the word sitting here. But of course, the ESV and probably most of your translations, maybe all of your translations out there say she will be well. She will be well. So what is going on? What is happening in this passage? I first want to offer a shameless plug. You should come to Wednesday nights at six thirty. We're talking about how to study the Bible. We're spending about an hour together. Half of that is spent in some study. And then we break out into sessions with the men in one room and the women and another. It's a good time. And we talk about these kinds of things. On this Wednesday, we're going to talk about translations, in fact. And so if you've ever wondered what are the differences between the translations, how do the translations work? Where they all come from? Are they connected to one another? The answer is yes. Well, you should come on Wednesday. This last talked about the contexts in which you should read your scripture. We talked about like the the the really near context, like the paragraph that sits around it. Maybe it's the chapter around it. Maybe it's the book that it comes from, the linguistic, the historical. There's lots of context to read scripture in. I want to start in this passage by showing you a little bit of how this might work. There is the immediate context of this passage. We'll say Luke eight as a whole. It uses the word sozo four different times. Back in verse 12, there's this cryptic passage where Jesus is kind of prophesying. I think it's Isaiah he's quoting from that they may not believe and be saved. Here's sozo again. They may not believe in faith, by the way, faith and salvation again, hand in hand here. Or first thirty six. There's this demon possessed man and it says that he was saved or made well. And then there's daughter. Your faith has saved you as we saw in verse forty eight or again in verse fifty that if she believes or if the father believes Jairus, then she will be saved or made well. And so you can see in this path in this chapter rather the theme of salvation is running pretty hot. And it seems to be ever present. But if we kind of scan out just a little beyond that to maybe the book level, then what we find in the book level is this exact phrase. Hey, Pistis Sue, so can say those five words used the exact same way for separate times in one book. You cannot tell me that there's not something tying all of that together. But there's not a tradition that Jesus hasn't said this to the disciples again and again and again. And what is he saying to them again and again? It is that your faith has saved you. I mean, that's the literalist translation. And so Luke seven fifty back a chapter. This is actually how your ESV or your translations are going to translate it. She comes to him and she she wipes his feet and and she's crying. Meanwhile, the Pharisees are all scandalized by the fact that this woman's in there and he looks at her and he says, your faith has saved you. But then we get to the chapter we're in and there's the bleeding woman. And the choice of translation here is that your faith has has made you well, which might make you think that this is not somehow part of the salvation that Jesus is bringing to this earth. I would say that you'd be wrong if you thought that or there's in Luke 17, the Samaritan leper. And there's all the lepers who go and then there's this one who comes back and to that one who comes back. Jesus looks and he's like, where where'd all the others go? Why didn't the other nine come back? And then Jesus says to the leper, your faith has again saved you or made you well. Or again, one last one, the blind man in Luke 18, where we see much the same thing. If we pan out one more layer to Luke's other writing this time, it's not his gospel, but the Book of Acts, which was also written by Luke. We find something very interesting in Chapter four. In fact, I love that Dave read this this morning. We hadn't planned this, but here it is in Chapter four, verses nine and twelve. You see two very different uses of this word or seemingly different. If we are questioned today because of a good deed, maybe the context of this is Peter's on trial. He has done a good deed. He's healed a lame man. And now the tribunal is upset with him. And how could he do that? Why? Why? Why has he done this? And so he says, if we're questioned today because of this good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked now how this man has been sozo, how he has been saved or healed. And then just a few verses later, it says there is no salvation. Same words, sozo in no one else. No other name under heaven by which we must be sozo saved or healed or however you want to put it. What I'd suggest to you is that an ancient context in a biblical context pulls together this immaterial salvation and a material salvation in a way that you and I might feel uncomfortable with. Or or maybe we've gotten too comfortable pulling these two things apart as if the only thing that matters are the souls that go off to heaven and not the bodies that we inhabit in the here and now. And I think we see this throughout Luke's writings. He teaches us that faith and salvation are not only interdependent, salvation is a little bigger than we think it is. One more pulling out. This time, let's bring Paul into the picture. We all know Paul likes to talk about faith and salvation. So, for example, in Ephesians 2, 8, by grace, you have been saved through faith. All right, this is Paul, classic Paul. In fact, you've been saved through faith or in Romans 1 16, another passage that's very famous. I am not ashamed of the gospel. It's the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith. Again, faith and salvation. But now the kicker and the one that we often miss comes from Romans, Chapter eight. It's a passage you've certainly heard before, but maybe after today, you'll read it slightly differently. Romans 8 23 and 24 goes like this. Not only the creation, but we ourselves, although I would add the creation to the stuff of Earth. Who have the first fruits of the spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope, we were saved.

We were saved. Paul holds out this hope that the creation itself is in groaning and is in need of a savior. That our bodies are in need of salvation.

Part three. What is on offer this morning? What is it that Jesus is offering to you? There is a prosperity version of this offer, and it simply says that if you go to Jesus, if you pray hard enough, if you just believe enough, or maybe you know what? If your tithe is big enough, well, we are going to find ourselves completely healed and great, just like the bleeding woman or like Jairus and his daughter. You too can be saved in this fashion. I don't want to make you that promise this morning because it's not always what is on offer. What is on offer is nothing less than the person of Jesus himself. And the person of Jesus is standing before you and saying to you, have faith, believe, trust me, follow me.

And so I don't come making empty promises. I do not stand here to tell you that if you pray to Jesus, your cancer is just going to magically go away. Or that your marriage is going to be fully restored, or that your PTSD will go away immediately. Like the bleeding woman who grabbed the hem of Jesus' garment or the desperate dad who did everything he could to find Jesus, the one he knew who could save his daughter. But I would say this. We shouldn't underestimate the power of Jesus. Miracles can and do happen, not just back then, but still today.

When miracles happen, they almost always happen with some sense of faith and trust that it is Jesus who is doing it. Truth be told, if you can't see it as a miracle, then you're probably not walking with faith. And so maybe it requires the faith and the trust to even see the miracle at all for what it is. A miracle.

I might not even need to ask, but I will. This morning, what is it for you that is crippling you? What is it that you would immediately bring to God if you could? And if you could wave that magic wand and say, take this away, what would that be?

Like I said, I probably don't know what that is. Like I said, I probably don't need to ask, but my guess is you were already thinking it.

I got choked up as I was reading the scripture because I was thinking about the bleeding woman who had been laboring for 12 years under this pain that she had. And how hard that must have been and the relief she must have felt in the moment. The power went out of Jesus and into her.

And then I got doubly choked up when it was clear in the scripture that there was a dad in the world who existed at some point who lost his daughter. And he was desperate to find Jesus, and it felt like all was lost.

My guess is you can find yourself on the pages of scripture in the people that Jesus reaches out to and who reach out to him. And they are looking for answers because we all are. We're all looking for some kind of answer in this life. The answers don't always get answered the way we want them, and so I want to be careful here to say that we can reach out and sometimes what we get back. Is that God's will is enough.

God's will is enough.

Jesus teaches us this himself. The days before he's crucified, he's in the garden the night before he's in the garden and he's praying and he's saying God take this away. I don't want this at all. And then he says, but your will be done. Your will be done. How many of us would say, God, I don't want this at all. And then he says, but your will be done. Your will be done. How many of us would say, God, I don't want this, whatever it is at all. I don't want this.

But we must follow it up with your will be done. It's not just Jesus who teaches us this. It's Paul himself too. Paul, he has the thorn. He's walking around. He says, Look, I don't I pray for this thing all the time. I want this rid of me. But what happens? Jesus says to him, like almost in a vision, maybe like that. What I offer to you is enough. And Paul says that actually I've learned in my weakness that I am strong.

And so this morning, what is on offer to you? What is on offer to you is nothing less. Than the creator of the world is on your side. When we look at Jesus healing the bodies of the the girl who was 12 and the woman who was bleeding for 12 years, we see the face of God who desires that we all be made whole, that this world be made whole.

But we live in a fallen world. Things are broken.

So what is on offer is that Jesus is enough that we follow him. And that we do things like packing lunches for people in our community who need it because we can help feed them and we can help sustain those bodies because it turns out Jesus cares about them deeply. And so should we. Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, this morning as we have gathered together, I firmly believe that you are looking at your children in this place and you are saying, I love you. I love you. And I want what is best for you. And I want you to trust me. So, God, we reach back out and we say, Lord, we do trust you. Help us when we don't trust you enough. Help us keep walking in the trials and may we rejoice when things are going well. And for those who are around us, may we rejoice with those who are rejoicing and and weep with those who are weeping, as we just read in Romans 12. Lord, for the ones who are indeed hurting right now, my heart breaks. It is difficult walking through the valley of the shadow of death. It feels like the world is caving in. And so, Lord, surround that person. Surround them with people who can weep with them, but who can also lead them out of the valley, who can walk with them in this time. Hold them upright until a better day arrives, where they are once again walking with head held high, knowing that you brought them through that valley.

Father, we give you thanks. You are a good God. And when we look into the eyes of Jesus, we see a God who loves us dearly. And for that, we give you thanks. In Christ's name we pray. Amen.

The Long Journey from the Head to the Heart

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | September 13, 2026

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Sermon Transcript

The Long Journey from the Head to the Heart

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor

. . . are few. And so for this last season of Church Life, we've been talking about these two different paths, right? There's this one way to live a life in which you find yourself down roads of destruction that you should never have walked down. And then there are ways of living a life that lead to real life. And Jesus warns us, he says, the way to life is not easy, It's narrow. It's probably going to cause you some difficulty at times. This isn't to say it's the easy road at all. If anything, the other Rd. is the easy one. But it is a road that leads to life. And so I've been talking about different ways that this gets played out and different topics. This sermon is A little bit like if you've ever watched a television show where you're watching these characters unfold over a span of time, and then the storyteller goes back in time, right? And the storyteller starts to tell you about the roots of the character. I remember the first time I maybe encountered this completely was the show Lost. They tell you about the various characters, Jack and Kate and a guy named John Locke. And then you're like 3, four, five seasons into it. And then you're finding out about John Locke as a little kid or something and like what happened to his life. Or if you've read good books, maybe, I'm blanking on this, Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, right? He does this well. He gives you not just like the world therein, but he builds the world out. This sermon's a little like that, where we've been focused on what Jesus offers these two ways in Matthew 7. But truth be told, Jesus is not making this up whole cloth. He's actually pointing to the passage that Dave just read for us back from Deuteronomy chapter 30. And it's worth knowing this because there's actually a whole history of this that's sitting in your Bible that predates anything that Jesus says or does. And it's worth knowing what's really happening in these scriptures. And so today my hope is to kind of walk you through a few of them to show you what Jesus is pulling on and then to show you that Jesus' intent is to actually fill all of that out and to make a way where before there had not been a way. Let's begin with prayer. God our Heavenly Father, we thank you. for sending your Son Jesus Christ to die on a cross for our sins, to cleanse us from our iniquity, that we might have new life. We thank you for raising him from the dead, that he might defeat death once and for all, and offer true life, eternal life for all of us. And Lord, we thank you for sending your Holy Spirit. And we ask right now, here and now, that you send your spirit into this place, that Lord, you speak through my words to the hearts of those listening, that they might know what you are trying to tell them this morning. We pray this in Christ's holy name, amen. So if I were to ask you what is Jesus' famous sermon, you would probably say, the Sermon on the Mount. Is there another one? It's kind of the only one that I am aware of that maybe gets a title, like the sermon something or other, right? If you were to go home today and want to read the Sermon on the Mount, you would go to Matthew chapter 5 through 7. It's long. It's 3 whole chapters long, right? And in Matthew 5 through 7, If I were to ask a follow-up question, like what's the text Jesus is preaching his sermon from, what would you say to that? No, nothing? Okay. Yeah, that's fine. Because here's the truth, right? I would say it this way. He's preaching from the whole of the law. And he's teaching us how to read the whole of the law, which is to say the first five books of the Bible, Genesis and Exodus and Leviticus and Numbers and Deuteronomy. This is where you find the Torah. Another word for law, by the way, frankly, a translation I would prefer is instruction. These are instructions on how to live a life. both communally, for Israel as a whole, like how Israel as a whole is supposed to live a life, and then for the Israelite himself or herself, or for you, yourself, like how you're to live a life. These are the instructions. And so Jesus is kind of flipping through the instruction manual, and he's then preaching through this sermon of chapter 5 and then 6 and then 7, and he gets to the end of seven, and then he delivers the line that I just read earlier about the two different ways. perhaps not surprisingly, he's doing precisely what Moses did. You see, Moses delivers the law, and he gives us things, the memorable ones like the Ten Commandments, right? And then he gives all these other little laws, and if this happens, well then do that, and if this happens, well then do that, and you shouldn't do this over here, and you should definitely do this over here, and then he gets to the end of it all. In Deuteronomy 30, is kind of the capstone of it. And then he says, he's kind of looking back on all the commandments. And in brief, he says, look, I've laid before you two options. The one option leads to life and the other option leads to death, which is precisely what Jesus does, right? He says, I've preached my sermon, my most famous one, the Sermon on the Mount, and I get to the end of it all and I'm offering you two things. There's the one way that leads to life, and there's the one way that leads to death. So let's take a look at Deuteronomy 30. We'll start in verse 15, though. Deuteronomy 30, starting in verse 15, and we'll see what Moses says. Because this again is filling out this backstory that predates what Jesus is doing a few thousand years later. And so in verse 15, he says, see, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil. And if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I command you today. And then he explains like how to obey these commandments. There's 3 parts to it. So if you obey these commandments by one, loving the Lord your God, two, by walking in His ways, and three, by keeping His commandments and His statutes and His rules, well then you shall live and multiply. It's interesting to me, and I think it should be to you, that what Moses gives us here is, here's how to obey the commands. And he doesn't get around to actually telling you to obey the commands until.3. He starts with, you obey the commands by, right here, loving in your heart, loving the right thing, namely the Lord your God. And then the next part is you move from loving to doing the thing, to like walking in his ways. And then finally third, When you're doing that, you are finally keeping the commandments and the statutes and the rules and the instructions and all the things that Moses just laid out in the first five books of your Bible. And if you do those, well, that leads to life. This sounds a lot like what Jesus says, doesn't it? Like you should do these things. And Jesus knows, and frankly, Moses knows, and I'm gonna guess you all know too, that actually doing the thing is a whole lot harder than it seems. It's a whole lot harder. We'll finish up the passage here starting in verse 17. If your hearts turn away, and you will not hear, but you're drawn away to worship the other gods and you serve them, well, I declare to you today that you shall surely perish. You shall not live long in the land that you're going over the Jordan to enter and possess. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today. I have set before you again two options, life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life, that you and your offspring, your kids and their kids and their kids. they might live, loving the Lord your God, and here they are again, by the way, loving the Lord your God, obeying His voice and holding fast to Him, for He is your life, He is your length of days, that you may dwell in the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give to them. Now I'll say, if I'm preaching a sermon like Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount, this is a great text to draw from because it's stirring, right? He's putting before you, like, are you going to choose the way to life or are you going to choose the way that leads to death? And then he gives us some ways to actually do this. But what Moses knows And what Jesus definitely knows and what you probably know too is that knowing the thing that you should do and having it sitting here in your heart to do it, two very different things. They say that the 18 inches from your head to your heart is the longest journey you can possibly take. To get something that you know to be true Down inside here, this is a lifetime of a journey. Turns out that knowing the law and doing the law are two entirely different life tasks. If I were to ask you right now, should you lie to your neighbor or your kids or to your pastor? You would most certainly say, of course not. I'm not going to do that. And if I were to say, should you steal from your workplace? should you take things from there? And no. Who's going to do that? Why would I do that? Should you defraud people out of their money? No. I'm not going to steal from somebody. Should you cheat on your spouse? No. way. Should you beat up your little brother, right? No, I shouldn't do that. But somehow the knowing of it is very different from the doing it. And you find yourself in places and doing things that you thought, I shouldn't be doing this. How did I get here? Why? am I here? And for some of you, it's why am I here again? And then again. And then again. You've probably met the doctor who dispenses all the advice and tells you, well, you shouldn't drink and you shouldn't smoke. And then you walk outside after your appointment and there's the doctor smoking away, right? Or I like to I know some ethicists who have PhDs in ethics, and I like to say that these are some of the most clever people knowing how to get around ethics and doing all the wrong things because in their mind they can make the mental gymnastics. Or maybe the lawyers who know all the rules, right? They know the laws, But do they keep them? That's a different thing. And here again, it's this length from the head down into the heart that we're trying to examine this morning. And it's the problem that Moses poses. Moses poses. And Jesus poses and I'm posing to you. What did Moses expect though? If we just back up a few verses to the beginning of what we were reading this morning. Starting in verse 11, Deuteronomy 30, 11, he says this. He says, the commandment that I'm commanding you today, it's not too hard. These are his words, not mine. This commandment, these set of laws, it's not too hard for you. And it's not far off. It's not in heaven up there somewhere that you should say, who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it? And neither is it beyond the sea. It's not like way out there somewhere that you've got to say, who's going to go over the sea to find these commands and to tell us what it is to do? He says, no, it's none of that. The word is very near to you. It is in fact, it's in your very mouth, and it might even be in your heart, so that you can do it. And so Moses is clearly expecting these people, the Israelites, and frankly us, to do the right things. And he's saying it's not too hard. But if you know the Israelite story, What happens to these folks? Well, you just fast forward a few books and you get to the prophets and what is happening to them is the exact thing that's foreshadowed here at the end of Deuteronomy, which is that they are being ushered out of this promised land into a place called Babylon. And they're told very clearly why, which is that they weren't capable and they didn't keep the Mosaic law. They did all things that they shouldn't have done. And there's a people group that did things that they shouldn't have done. And now, well, now they're being ushered out of the promised land, the land of the living, and they are in exile. And this brings us to two more passages that connect deeply with what is happening both here and what Jesus will pick up on later. The first is Ezekiel, chapter 36, 26, and 27. Here, the Israelites are in this foreign land where they can't get back. It seems the promises have been broken. It seems the covenant between them and Yahweh is toast. And yet, God's not done with them. And he says the following. He says, I'll give you a new heart, and I will put this new spirit within you, and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh, and I'll give you a new heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. And he's basically saying here, a time will come when I will show you how to get this law in here. So it's not just up here in your head, but it's made its way into your heart somehow. And it appears that there's some sort of movement of the spirit that is involved in all of this. Well, then there's this other prophet, Jeremiah, speaking about the same time. Israel is in exile. They're in Babylon. And he too comes saying some promises about what's to come. And in verse 31, 31 and 33, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. This won't be like the old covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. The very covenant, by the way, I was talking about in Deuteronomy chapter 30. And so Jeremiah is saying, it's not going to be like that one. That one was in stone. That one mostly lived up here in their heads, if it lived anywhere at all, but it never made its way down into their heart. And so he says, I've got to make a new covenant. And Jeremiah promises that God is making a new covenant. By the way, if you don't know, maybe you're new to all of this or maybe I just need to teach a little better, but we're going to take communion momentarily. We're going to use these exact words, so pay attention to what's happening here. And Jesus from that upper room is going to say to his disciples in the moment he's handing the bread and the cup to them, he's going to say, this is the new covenant in my blood. And he's using Jeremiah 31. He's directly echoing it. And he's saying, what's happening right now in this upper room? This is the new covenant. And this is where All of these promises back in your Old Testament are finally coming to fruition. Back to Jeremiah 31, 33 now, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people. And so the problem back in Jeremiah's day is we need to know how to put the law in our hearts. This is the same problem today. I don't want you to think that you get scot-free out of here without somehow getting it inside of you. I know plenty of people who go by the name Christian and they got all the right things up here, but none of the right things sitting here and the way they live their life is not shaped by the law or by Christ or by anything connected to either of those. The big question for the day is, how does one get the law out there to in here? I want to point you to another passage in Scripture. By the way, if you want, you can just write these down and really dig into them later. But for now, I'll just keep burning through them. This is New Testament this time. This is Romans chapter 10. It's a very famous passage. You've probably heard it before, but if not, we'll certainly read it together. And I want you to notice that Paul here is quoting directly from our passage. He is quoting directly Deuteronomy chapter 30. And he says this, Moses writes, about the righteousness based on the law. That the person who does the commandments will live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says, and here's the quote from Deuteronomy 30, don't say in your heart, who will ascend into heaven? You remember this part of Deuteronomy 30? You can go back and read it again. But then Paul adds what's in the parentheses here. He says, that is to bring Christ down. And then he goes on, he says, who will descend into the abyss? This is the way Moses had written it was who will go out to the seas or beyond the seas, right? And then Paul says, that is to bring Christ up from the dead. But what does it say? And here's still Moses, right? The word is near you. It's in your mouth and in your heart. And this is Precisely. I mean, he's quoting directly from Deuteronomy chapter 30. But he's doing something very unique and you need to know precisely what he's doing. Do you see what he's done? When Moses is talking, Moses is talking about the law. Who will go up to the heavens and find the law up there to teach us how to live a life, right? Who will instruct us on the way we should live? And Moses says, you don't need to go up there. I'm giving it to you right now. And Moses says, you don't need to go over the seas to find the law and to bring it back because I'm telling you right now it's been given to you. But that's not what Paul does. Paul substitutes out the law for Christ. It's A radical move. You have to believe the Jews hearing this might be a little scandalized, But if they've been around the church for a few years, they will know Paul makes this kind of move on a regular basis. He reads his Old Testament and he sees Jesus on these pages. And specifically, he sees Jesus where the law is sitting. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 5, the very beginning of his most famous sermon, he says, I have not come to abolish the law, I have come to fulfill it. I've come to fill it out. And then Paul tells us what this looks like. He's telling us that if you want to know how to live a life and what it means to live abundant life and what it means to have eternal life and the way we were designed to be in this world, well then look no further than the person of Jesus. Paul has a very interesting take on the law generally speaking. But what he definitely does is he says, look at Jesus because Jesus fills out how this law was always meant to work. And if you want to know how this law was always supposed to bring you life, well then just simply do the kinds of things Jesus does. Paul doesn't stop here though. You see, Paul keeps going with this Deuteronomy passage and says something, again, very interesting and now this time very familiar to some of you. Verse 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. But the scripture says everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame. We're still left with the question, how does one get the law from their head into their heart? And there are two ways I would want to offer you. One is far more important than the other way. The one way is God. This is an act of grace, a gift that God gives to you. And the other way is your part, the part you play in all of this. And both of these are really important. So what Paul is doing in this passage and what Jesus is teaching us is that in order to have this gift of the Spirit, And to get the law and the person of Jesus into your heart, it requires an act of grace on the part of God. And that we must confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord. And we must believe in our hearts that He has been raised from the dead. And if we do these things, then yes, we will be saved. Which is to say that the movement from the head down into the heart has begun. But then there's also the part that you play. And this is the part where you have to step in and you have to step up and you have to do the things that the law commands of you and that Jesus desires from you. And so if you want to get that 18 inches from the head down into the heart, what we're really saying is that you've got to make the faith that you have really real. It's got to mean something. It can't just stand out here somewhere. It's got to pierce your heart. This is not something I can do for you. I can teach you about it. I can speak to you, hopefully inspire you. But at the end of the day, this is a you thing. And you've got to want it. You've got to desire it. You've got to, use the scriptural term, you've got to love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. In just a few seconds, we're going to take communion. The external and the internal are miles apart, and there will be people in the room who take the same bread and cup and they are taking it as an external act, a rote thing that you've done hundreds of times and let's go ahead and get this done so we can head off to lunch and all will be well. And then there are some of you who want to make it really real. who want to actually experience the body and the blood of Christ, who want to take communion because you want to encounter the living God. My prayer for you this morning is that you're in that second camp, is that you are doing what you need to be doing to get God in here. Quick word of warning, Some of you will say to me in private moments, God, or Eric, I've been trying this thing. Maybe you're praying, God, I've been trying this thing where I want to know you're in here and sometimes I just don't know. And I would say to you if you told me this, I get this. And I'm sorry that it doesn't feel real just yet. But I would encourage you to keep showing up. and to show up in this place and to show up reading your scripture, show up reading or praying to God and meeting with others who have a spiritual life that has clearly transformed them in some way and asked them, what was it like for you? What is it like for you? What is it like to follow Jesus for real along the way? And I assure you, over time, the small steps and acts of faith that you participate in will begin to seep its way down into the very core of who you are. Before you know it, you are being transformed and you are being changed into the Christ-like person that you were always meant to be. When we take the bread and the cup, we say, this is the body of Christ and it's broken for you. And this is the blood of Christ and it is shed for you. And this is for the forgiveness of your sins. We do ask for one more step. You and me, that is. And it's the Pentecost step. Pentecost is the day where the Spirit comes down. Because the tradition says that Jesus was raised from the dead and ascends to the Father and is seated at the right hand of God. And that's great and all, but we want the Spirit. We want something closer. We want God here with us. And so the promise is not just that Jesus is far off, but He sends His Spirit with us, to live in us, to participate in our transformation. So this is my prayer for you and for me this morning. Let us pray together. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as we gather around your table this morning, we ask for clean hearts and clean hands because we come with hard hearts and dirty hands. We know that we need you. We know that we have failed you and ourselves and the ones we love. But God, we know that forgiveness is available at this table. We know that you welcome us home with the open arms of the Father with his prodigal son. And so this morning, we come running. We come running back to you, God. But we also ask for a movement of the Spirit so that as we take these elements, or meet us in this place, meet me, meet each person who will walk up and will receive the body of Christ broken for them, the blood of Christ shed for them. Meet them, Lord. And when we eat and drink together, Lord, we will celebrate together what you have done. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. If my communion service would come forward, we will begin. We have some new folks here with us today. The way we take communion goes like this. We come forward down the center aisle and there will be two stations. One will have, well, Each person will have a bread and a cup and you'll simply put your hands out and they will give you the body of Christ, which is broken for you. And then you'll grab the cup. Now if you need gluten-free or if you want a wafer that's not been touched by one of their hands, we have those where the cups are located as well. But then you'll take that back to your seats. We will take communion together as one body. While you're waiting in the pew with the bread and the cup in your hands, I would encourage you to do some reflecting, some praying, and see if we can't make this really real this morning. On the night he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread, he gave thanks, he broke it. The body of Christ broke it for you. And he took the cup And he said, this is the new covenant in my blood for the forgiveness of your sins. Please come forward the table is open.

A Sermon on Forgiveness

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | September 6, 2026

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Sermon Transcript

A Sermon on Forgiveness

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor

Good morning everybody. A couple of things before we get started. I know Clint already said it, but I am personally so pleased to have Erin Ovenshire as our new admin. She has been wonderful to work with already, and I look forward to good things there. I just wanted to make sure everybody knew and to welcome her in this role. Second, though, so one of my new favorite things these last few weeks has been the number of children in our worship service. I don't know if you feel this way too, but I definitely do. And I also want those parents to feel very comfortable having their children in the worship service. This is something that at South Run Baptist Church, we prize. We hold this as very important. I don't say this enough, so this is part of what I'm doing right now, which is we have intentionality behind having the kids in here. There are many churches you could attend where you ship the kids off and they're gonna be somewhere else for the whole time that you're here. And by kids, I mean like even up through like junior high or something. We've learned, but studies say Having your kids in here, like seeing what the adults do, watching your parents worship, this is very, very important for their spiritual development. And so this is why we want the children in here. With that said, we also want you to feel comfortable taking your kid out if you need to. And so if at any point you need to, we have a room downstairs. I think it's the Birch room, whatever the middle room is down there. where the TV's on with me on it, and you can participate in the service down there if that's what you need at any point. So feel free to utilize that. All right, let's get started here. Please bow your heads in prayer. God, our Father in heaven, your name is holy, and we seek your holy name this morning. God, I ask that you speak your words through your humble servant this morning, that those who are in attendance and those who are listening, whether online or at some future point, will hear you. They will hear you speaking to them loud and clear. Lord, this morning you know what we're talking about. We are talking about forgiveness. And Lord, we are the recipients of your boundless forgiveness. And so we begin with thanks, but we also now open our ears to what you wish to say to us. In Christ's name we pray, amen. We're talking about forgiveness, but we're also kind of the macro level. We're talking about the two ways. There's the narrow way and there's the wide way, and the wide way leads to destruction. And Jesus is trying to get us to walk down that narrow Rd. right? Which is to say it's a harder Rd. to walk and it requires some intention behind it. And it means that we have to pay attention to what we are doing and should not be. And some of those things we're not doing, but we should be. And so this morning, we have a wonderful test case in forgiveness. Forgiveness. This is certainly something that we've all been on both sides of the coin for. We've needed to forgive somebody, but we've also needed to be forgiven by somebody. But I wanna begin with a question that I asked our deacon ordinands on this last Wednesday. We had a deacon ordination meeting, council, where we brought in the two gentlemen who were being tried and tested, and it was grueling, and we really put it to them. They did pass, so next week we will be voting on our deacons, which will now include Brian Sands and Dan Ovanshire. We're very happy to have them on that slate, and you'll get to vote on them along with two others next week. But the question I asked was, what is the gospel, right? What is the gospel? Somewhat simple question. And I would hope that each of you, if you've been around the church for a while and if you confess Christ as Lord, you would have some kind of answer to this. What is the gospel? So I want to offer to you kind of a version in brief of how I think about this. It starts at the beginning of the creation, which is to say that in the beginning, God created all things good. In fact, he finishes it all and says, this is very good. But we know it doesn't stay there for too long. And there's the fall, Genesis 3 happens, and Genesis 4, they're kicked out of the garden. And then we're living in this world. And if you look around, you see what? You would currently see three hurricanes are sitting in the Pacific Ocean. Something is broken with the world itself, literally. There's a flood in Nepal that led to over 1000 deaths. There's all kinds of illnesses that are just waiting to infect each and every one of us. But it doesn't stop with the brokenness in the world, does it? then kind of seeps into us, you and me, or maybe there's other people, right? the sin sickness that covers humanity. And we are all people who do things that we shouldn't do and we don't do the things that we should do. And then when we're really honest, we look inside and we realize that it's sitting in here. And if you think back through your past, you realize, you know what, there are things that I regret There are things that I need forgiveness for, and I'm reaching out to a God that I need forgiveness from. And so then the gospel is God looking down and saying, I'm going to do something about the state of the world. And to do something, well, he sends Jesus, the Son of God, into the world, And Jesus dies on a cross, as we say, every single second Sunday of the month when we take communion, for the forgiveness of your sins, to make things right again. And then he is raised on the third day, defeating death and offering eternal hope into the future. This is what's happening. And so then the macro story says that what God is doing is he's taking the very good thing that had been broken and he's putting it back to rights again. This is good news. And it's the hope that we all hold on to. At the very center of all of it is a God who loves us so much that he keeps coming after us offering forgiveness when we don't deserve it. Offering forgiveness when we don't deserve it. Which then gets to what Paul says to us about forgiveness at large. He says, for example, actually, sorry, slide one, I had this on here. So what is the gospel? It's the good news that God has chosen forgiveness and mercy instead of punishment. He has chosen reconciliation instead of walking away, and he has chosen restoration instead of pushing us out. And here's what Paul, the move Paul makes in Ephesians 4.32. He says, forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. And so this morning, as we're talking about the need to forgive one another, we should be reminded that the gospel story is the frame to it all. And as Paul says, God forgave you. And how did he do this? In Christ, in the story that I just told you, on the cross, through his death and through his resurrection, you have been forgiven. And so we too are to what? We're to take that same model and we are to apply it, everybody around us. forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. Now the goal of forgiveness with both God and man is restoration. If the story of scripture from front to back is a story of restoration, well then that's what we're doing in our relationships when we forgive as well. We're seeking to restore. to make all things new. Now I should say very clearly that this does not mean consequences don't matter. They matter deeply. And so if you are seeking forgiveness from somebody, you must be ready to acknowledge that there is going to be a fallout to whatever it is that you have done in this life. And so consequences matter. There's a famous theologian from the mid-1900s named Bonhoeffer, and he had this famous book in which he talks about cheap grace, cheap grace. And I would offer you, there's something that is kind of a corollary to this, which is cheap forgiveness. Cheap forgiveness wants the benefits of forgiveness without the cost. Costly forgiveness is the willingness to do what it takes by the person who needs forgiveness to be reconciled. And so if you have harmed somebody and you are seeking their forgiveness and you are seeking to be made right again with them, you must recognize that there are consequences and there are costs to whatever it is that you've done. And we'll talk more about that momentarily. I've put a few things at the bottom of your bulletin. Some bullet points that I'm hoping you walk away with after the sermon, if you don't walk away with anything else. And here's one. Forgiveness restores you and reconciliation restores the relationship. Forgiveness restores actually the one who is doing the forgiving. It's the one, when you forgive, like you have been made whole, there's kind of a weird logic to this. And then reconciliation is when the relationship has been made whole again. Now I confess, I've kind of teased two things apart that may not be obvious just from the kind of a flat reading of scripture, but I do think this is really important for you to know that there are two sides to this. And sometimes forgiveness is all that's possible because whatever that other party they're doing, they may not want reconciliation. But in the ideal world, both parties are involved, and that's when reconciliation actually happens. But for the time being, I kind of want you to piece these out and keep them separated one from the other. Forgiveness or restoration and reconciliation are two different things, and it's important for you to hold them apart from one another. But in the best case scenario, both happen. With that then, let's turn to our scripture for today, which is Matthew chapter 18, verses 21 and 22. Matthew 18, 21 and 22 goes like this. Then Peter came up and said to him, Lord, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him as many as seven times? And Jesus said, I do not say to you 7, but 77 times. Now the observant among you will immediately say, wait, I thought it was 70 times 7. We could dig into the Greek here and we could look at precisely what's there. And even if we did that, here's what you would find, that we actually don't know what the answer is. It might be 70 times 7, which would be what, 490? Or it might be 77. But the truth is, neither matter, because that's not what Jesus is saying, is he? He's not asking you to count up how many times you forgive, and then once you reach 77, done. No, he's saying forgiveness should be ever ready. This is something that as followers of Christ, that narrow way, like at any moment when somebody calls on us to be forgiven, like really be forgiven, we are willing and ready to offer that to them. The passage today is followed by a parable, which we won't read together, but I'll just simply tell you what's in it. It applies directly to the gospel story that I gave you up front and it goes like this. There's a master and he has a servant and the servant owes him the equivalent of $4 billion, a billion with a B. This is like the math works out this way. And the servant comes and is pleading with the master. He says, please just let me go. He was about to sell, the master was going to sell the servant into to slavery. And he said, please, I can't. And the master had mercy on him and said, you know what? I'm actually, I'm going to forgive the debt, $4 billion, and I'm going to let you go. As the servant left, he found somebody else who actually owed him some money to the tune of about $6,000, which, That's A lot. Like $6,000. Somebody owes me $6,000. You better believe I'm going to want that money back. But if I've just been forgiven $4 billion, you know, I think I might be generous. I would hope. But this servant was not. This servant instead, he went after the guy who owed him $6,000. And then when he couldn't pay, what did he do? Well, he sold him into debtors prison. Well, when the master found out, he said, how could you do this? You are wicked. Do you not know how merciful, how forgiving I have been to you? And then you turn around and with this debt, sure, it's some money, but it's nothing what you've been forgiven already, right? Hopefully you can see the comparison to the gospel itself. God has offered each and every one of us forgiveness in abundance. And so when he calls on us to forgive others, to forgive our neighbors, to forgive those who have done something wrong to us, our friends, our spouses, our kids, or whoever, we should be ready at any moment to say yes. But there are some parameters. And this is worth our time because oftentimes forgiveness turns into that cheap forgiveness. And I don't want it to do that this morning, and I don't want to leave you with the wrong impression about how forgiveness works. And so if you're in the Matthew 18, I just encourage you to back up just ever so slightly because the forgiveness stuff doesn't start there. It actually starts in 1815. And here's what Jesus says here. He says, if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. And if he listens to you, have gained your brother. The scenario is a simple one. Somebody has done something wrong to you and you go to them and you say, you've done this wrong thing to me. And you're coming with open arms and you're saying, I would like to forgive you. I just need you to own what you've done. And if they say yes, well, then you've got your brother back. Reconciliation has happened, right? Luke actually. gets a little more pointed here. There's a version of this same saying that happens in Luke's gospel. If you return there at some future point, if you want to, it'd be in chapter 17, verses 3 to 4, go like this. If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. And if he sins against you seven times in the day and turns to you seven times, I say, repent. Or saying, I repent, you must forgive him. Here's what I want you to know about this passage. Some of us are really good at rebuking others. Others of us are really good at forgiving others. But in my experience, very few are good at both. I want us all to be people who are good at both. rebuking or bringing to someone else, here's what you've done wrong to me. None of this passive aggressive stuff. Just be honest and straightforward and say, you've hurt me. I need you to apologize. Here's what's wrong. And then when that person actually does, and when they own the problem that sits between you and that person, then you forgive them and you make things right. This is the ideal, right? That you're doing both the rebuking and then the forgiving when it happens. Which is another way of saying that in every scenario where forgiveness is involved, there's always two parties. If you were to come to me in pastoral counseling or something and you would say, Eric, I need to talk to you about forgiveness, my immediate question, well, which one are you? the one who needs forgiveness or are you the one forgiving somebody else? Because the conversation is going to look a little different depending on what side of the ledger you're sitting on. So we'll start with the one who's in need of forgiveness. Maybe this is you this morning. The first thing I would say to you in that counseling session would be to own your sin, no matter how big or small it is. Own whatever it is you've done wrong. And maybe you don't even want to call it sin. Maybe it's like, you're thinking it's this thing. But I need you to own it and to say, you know what, I really did that. And then you need to recognize the consequences that happen and flow out of whatever that thing is that you've done. And depending on the severity of the thing you've done, you might expect that some trust has been lost and must be restored with that person. And that again, depending on the severity of it all, it might take a while. It might take years or even decades to restore some of the trust that is lost. Once you're ready for it, I would then encourage you to apologize to the other person. But in my household, we have a way of apologizing that isn't just merely saying, I'm sorry, and then you move on. I would call that cheap forgiveness, and that's what we're trying to avoid this morning. Instead, we have a fourfold model of what apologies look like. includes, I am sorry. It was wrong because in the future I will. And then will you forgive me? Now, parents, you can take this and use it for your kids. That'd be great. But parents, I would encourage you to use it for one another as well. And it goes like this. I am sorry for. And this is when you actually name the thing that you did and you own it. and you say it out loud so that the other person knows what you've done wrong, and they know that it was wrong. And then you say it was wrong because, and here's where you get to explain to the person that you now understand why it was wrong. And you've put yourself into their shoes, and you show them or explain to them what it must have been like for them to be on that side of it all. And then in the future I will. And here is what you should have done instead. It's more than just next time I won't do X, Y, or Z. Next time I just won't get angry with you. It's in this moment that you get to demonstrate that you understand why you did the thing that you did. And so maybe you came home from work and you were just in a rage because somebody at work had offended you, and then you come home and you take it out on your spouse. when you apologize, you say, in the future, if I know I'm in this mood, I'm just going to tell you right up front, and then I'm going to encourage you to maybe avoid me for a short time, and I'm going to go cool off, and then I'm going to make sure that I'm a good man or a good woman so that you have the spouse that you deserve in that moment. And then finally, once you've really explored what went wrong, then you're in a place to say, will you forgive me? Let us make things right. And hopefully, prayerfully, you're with a spouse or maybe it's a friend or maybe it's, again, your kids or whoever it is. This works with anybody. Hopefully they will say, yes, I forgive you. Now the flip side of the coin is the party that needs to forgive. Jesus tells us 70 times 7. If someone seeks your forgiveness, you need to be ready to forgive. This is the way to life. Life abundant is living with a heart ready to forgive at any moment. Again, remember Ephesians 4, forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you. Remember, There was the billion dollars and there's the thousands of dollars and the ledgers are very, very different. And I would also encourage you to remember that forgiveness, it restores you. First and foremost, to withhold forgiveness is an affront to the way God operates in this world. And therefore, It is an affront to our truest nature as children of God. If we were made in God's image, and I believe with all my heart that we were, and God is a God who forgives again and again and again, then if we want to live into our truest nature, we must be people who forgive. But if you want a more selfish reason for why you should forgive, it goes like this. It's good for you. To forgive somebody else, it feels good to just let it go. In fact, there's a famous saying that holding on to anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. It's not going to happen. And so you must stop drinking the poison and you must forgive the other person and let it go. Now there is a deep struggle that happens if you've been hurt. And the struggle is, do I trust this person again? There are the memories that I have of when they wronged me. There's the fear that they're going to do it again. And so again, depending on the severity of what has happened between the two parties, I just want to affirm that sometimes is going to happen. And that's okay. And it doesn't mean that there's something wrong with you and your ability to forgive someone. It is a reminder that trust It's not a guarantee in a relationship, and it must be earned and it must be kept. But the question left then is when do you choose reconciliation and when is it okay not to? I've said that these are two different things, forgiveness and reconciliation. And the goal is reconciliation. Two parties coming back together. This is what God does with us. God is, we are rather, estranged from God, but God seeks us out because God wants to be with us. This is the truest form of forgiveness. But there are times in life where reconciliation may not be possible, because it does depend on both parties participating. But there's also this. There is the example of abuse in a relationship. And so if you've ever been a part of an abusive relationship, whether physical abuse, emotional abuse, or otherwise, you know that there is a gap that sits between forgiveness and reconciliation better than anybody else knows this, or at least you should. And so I would want to talk to you and to say, forgive. but not too quickly. To return to Luke, if your brother sins, rebuke him. And if he repents, forgive him. You must first learn to rebuke. It is possible that if this abusive relationship you've been in has gone on for too long, you're probably pretty good at the forgiveness side but maybe need to learn some things about rebuking, holding someone accountable for their actions, to build boundaries and to tell someone that they can no longer do this to you. And if they do, there are clear consequences for it. But the other thing that needs to happen is that the abuser must learn to repent. Repentance is actually a big word. It's more than just, baby, I'm never gonna do that again. It's actually walking the walk. It is not cheap forgiveness, like Bonhoeffer warns of cheap grace. True repentance in relationship is the same as it is with God. When we truly repent, it means we turn around and we start walking in a different direction, not just by words, but in our actions. We no longer do what we used to do. We take necessary steps, radical steps, to stop doing the old and to start doing the new. So if the abuser is showing no signs that they are taking steps in the opposite direction, well they aren't getting help from a counselor, or they haven't changed their behavior in some fashion, then repentance has not really begun. Repentance hasn't really begun and reconciliation should be off the table until they are ready to truly repent. If you keep reconciling with someone who refuses true repentance, you are not righteously walking as Jesus teaches us to. You are simply putting yourself in harm's way. And if I were in the room with you, giving you counsel, I would say you need to walk away until true repentance is part of what is happening in that reconciliation. So how to seek reconciliation, how to offer forgiveness, a very quick word to our married couples in the room, but everybody else can listen in because I think this applies to everyone. Empathy is mission critical. Empathy. It's the ability to see the world as somebody else sees the world, to put yourself into their shoes. If you're going to apologize to someone, you need to understand what it is that they're experiencing and feeling in the world. And as they walk through the world, they see it a certain way. And you need to be able to say it and to name it. Because if they're going to understand that you get it, or they're gonna need to know that indeed, you see it and you're able to say it and you're able to speak it out loud. I came across this wonderful quote this week by a guy named Oswald Chambers. He wrote the devotional that, I don't know, everybody in my generation seemed to grow up on. And he says this, spiritual maturity is going from being thin-skinned and hard-hearted to thick-skinned and tender-hearted. I loved this. There's so much wisdom in this. Too many of us Christians who have been in the church for way too long are too thin-skinned and way too hard-hearted. And when it comes to our relationships, we're too thin-skinned and we're too hard-hearted. We're too quick to judge and not quick enough to forgive. But the maturest ones among us are what? They are the thick-skinned ones, and they can see why someone might behave the way they do. And they don't take it personally always. Sometimes they do if they should, but they don't always take it personally because they have this thick skin needed to be a mature person. But more than that, they are tender-hearted, looking out for all the opportunities to make things right in the world, to breathe life into the world, into other people, and to reconcile at every possible opportunity. We are to be people who are thick-skinned and tenderhearted. Back to the gospel. The world was created very good, but we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But God so loved the world that He gave His only Son to atone for the sins of the world and to make all the wrong things right. He forgave you and me 70 times 7 times. The billions of dollars that you and I, oh God, have all been wiped away. So let us heed Paul's advice together. Forgive because in Christ Jesus, God has forgiven you. Let us pray. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in this place right now, are a group of your children. We're a messy bunch, often harming others and being harmed by others, sinning and having sins committed against us. And so Lord, we need a few things about forgiveness. And so Jesus, we look to you. We look to you to offer us the billions of dollars of wiped debt that we've needed. But we also look to you to show us the way to life, the way that you have already paved for us. You've made abundantly clear on the cross, Lord, the kind of God you are, a God who forgives. And Jesus, you even say, forgive them, and they don't even know what they're doing. Jesus this morning, teach us to be more and more like you, our king, the one who rules on high right now, the one we say that we serve, the one we say that we love, the rabbi that we say that we follow, God make us more like you. We pray all of this in Christ's holy name, amen.

Lust

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | August 30, 2026

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Sermon Transcript

Dr. Eric J Glchrest, Pastor

It's good to be with you this morning. I come bringing an exciting sermon to you.

I'm glad you're here today. If you are new to South Run Baptist Church, I first want to say welcome. We are so pleased that you have chosen to join us this morning. I believe you're here for a reason. I do believe that God has brought you to this place at this time because he has something for you. I believe this of all of us gathered together here. But you should know you've come on a unique Sunday because we've been working through, well, actually, I was thinking about this. We're kind of like a set of Russian nesting dolls this year. So the broad theme is transformation. We've been kind of working on that all year long. And then we've been on this two ways journey where there's these two ways that Jesus offers us abundant life, but he says it's the narrow way, right? And so it requires some adeptness at traversing that narrow way. And then he talks about the broad way, which leads to destruction. And on the broad way, it appears that this is in many ways the easy way. This is the path of least resistance. And so we've been, the nesting doll has been on that path of least resistance. And to do that, we've been talking about the seven deadly sins, right? And so here we are, we're at the 7th of seven. And so if you've come for the first time this morning, you've come on a Sunday in which we are talking about lust. Before we get there, this is a test for those of you who have been with us the whole journey to see if you can name the other six. And if you can't, well, then we're going to start it all over again and we'll do it together. So say them with me and I'll parrot them back to you. What would one of them be? Enri. Gluttony, wrath and sloth, greed, I think we said anger, and vanity, somebody said. I think we got them. Those are the six, leaving us today's message on lust. Part of what we've been trying to do with all of them is also tie together how our technologies the phones in our pockets, the computers that we all sit behind every day, they shape us and they form us and they misshape us and they malform us into beings we were never intended to be. And so my hope through this whole time together actually has been to demonstrate to you that the object in your pocket is not value neutral, that it is having an effect on you in one way or another. And I can really think of no better example than this morning's topic. And so we will talk about some sensitive issues. I've tried to do so in a fashion that is sensitive to all of the various ears this morning, but do know that this is what we're talking about. Let's begin with prayer. God our Father in heaven, you look down at your children and you want what is good for us. You want what is best. You want us to live lives filled with life and abundance and all that is good. And God, yet sometimes we choose the lesser way and we find ourselves going down paths we were never intended to go down, being shaped into people we were never intended to be. And this morning, Lord, speak to us. Speak to our hearts. Speak to our marriages and our families, that we might live lives according to your word, but according to the grain of the universe that you have created, the good universe, the one we intend to live in, the kingdom of God. I pray this in Christ's holy name, amen. You should have gotten a handout when you came in, at least the adults in the room. Yeah, I'll take it, just to wave it around. At some point in the sermon, we will get to this. And this may end up being the most practical sermon I could possibly give to you where there's an actual handout that you can take home with you to give you some resources for how to walk this way well. The Bible has a lot to say about sex. If you've ever read the Bible in full cover to cover, you might be surprised about what you find there. And now that I think about it, I should probably use this as a pitch when I try to get you to read the Bible more often because sex sells and it's filled with it. even has a whole book devoted to it. Did you know this? It's called the Song of Solomon. who himself had 1000 wives and concubines and apparently knew something about the matter. If you think it's a prudish book or that its authors would clutch their pearls at the smallest innuendo, well, you've simply not read close enough. But if you're new to the Bible reading thing and you thought this way, you would be forgiven. Because often this is how we Christians approach the topic, sheepishly in whispers And I confess it's how I often approach this topic, especially from the pulpit. I get nervous and frankly a little weird about it, which is why I'm writing this sermon out rather than trying to go off script. It'll keep me from blushing, hopefully. If the Bible is okay with this topic, then we probably should be too. So I'm going to speak frankly about the matter while recognizing that our congregation has members of all ages listening right now. Parents, you shouldn't feel on edge for what is about to happen, but know that it might spark some interesting conversations around the lunch table that I think you're ready for. And in fact, I encourage these conversations. It's a hope that I have for all of us to be a little more open and in dialogue with one another about this matter. But that said, if at any point you feel the need to take a bathroom break with your child, please go right ahead. I won't be offended. In the beginning, God created the Garden of Eden. And he said to that first couple, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. And I know of only one way to be fruitful and to multiply. There's also the matter of Genesis 2, 24, in which God tells the first couple while they're still enjoying the safety of the garden, that when the two are joined together, they become one flesh. Two bodies united into one body. Sounds like a description of the topic we're talking about today. which means to me that God creates it as part of the good creation. It is something that is beautiful, is certainly enjoyable, and I would even say it is spiritual. Two becoming one is a mystery. But don't take my word. It's what Paul says in Ephesians 5 when he compares marriage to our union with Christ. And he also raises the two becoming one mystery as a warning to the Corinthian people in 1 Corinthians 6, who are uniting themselves with temple prostitutes. And Jesus raises the two becoming one mystery as a way to affirm marriage and to limit divorce. Which is all to say, that Genesis and Jesus and Paul, they talk about two becoming one flesh as something to happen within the marriage covenant. The covenant binds two people together by law and by custom, and it requires that the two people remain together in sickness and in health and richer and poorer till death do us part. And why? because it is only this kind of union that makes it safe to practice the deep magic we call sex. There are two ways to preach a sermon about sin, one that I would call an Old Testament sermon and the other a New Testament sermon. The difference is subtle but important. The Old Testament sermon relies on the law. It tells you where the boundaries are. are external to you. For example, an Old Testament sermon tells you the rules to keep and then you simply keep them. Don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't break the Sabbath and so on. An Old Testament sermon on adultery would stick to the basics. Don't have sex outside of marriage and you're good to go. But A New Testament sermon, the kind that Jesus would give, drives us deeper to the heart of the matter. which is always a matter of the heart. Jesus is helping us fulfill the Old Testament promise that Jeremiah 31, 33 expresses when he says, I will put my law within them and I will write the law on their hearts and I will be their God and they will be my people. Jesus is trying to write the law on our hearts and to do that, You must look below the surface, which is what Jesus is doing in his most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5. Please turn there now and we'll read verses 27 to 30. You have heard it said, you shall not commit adultery, but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. And if your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away, for it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell. Now some people want to read their Bible with a precise literalism that demands that every last passage be understood with no nuance. But let's all hope that Jesus is here using hyperbole. Pulling out your eye or cutting off your hand is a bold move. But I'll say in all of my years of church life, and I've had many, I've met a lot of people with a lust problem. but I've never met a single person wearing an eye patch. Here's what Jesus is saying in brief if you ask me. The root of the external act of adultery happens in your heart well before it happens when you walk into a bedroom. If you are to be a kingdom follower, living life abundant, then you will need to get radical in your attempts to root out the heart condition because the alternative is a road that leads to Gehenna, a place that elsewhere is said to be filled with weeping and gnashing of teeth. If you've ever known someone whose partner has cheated on them or who has been sexually assaulted or abused, or someone who has lost a spouse or a job or ministry because of this sin, then you know that the weeping And the anxious grinding of the teeth isn't just waiting on the other side. It starts in the here and the now. How many lives have been broken by this sin? How many marriages and families have been shattered by it? So let's talk about what's in the heart. When I was a kid, Before the internet existed in my house and well before the iPhone had the internet in everyone's pocket, I remember my mom telling me that I shouldn't look at dirty magazines. When my neighbor, Sam Weissman, came outside with his dad's Playboys, I ran inside because I did not want to disappoint my mom. And then later, about a year later, we were digging in a forested area at my friend's house. His name was Brian. And we dug up a stash of more magazines. And once again, I ran away back home because I did not want to disappoint my mom because I wanted to be a good boy. This was a different age and a time when temptation didn't follow you everywhere you went. The magazines stood waiting in a forest for years. But the screens that you take everywhere are constantly offering temptation. The internet made *********** readily available, cheap and easy to find. The smartphone, it made it available everywhere you went. The algorithm and social media learned who you are and began to feed you whatever it takes for you to spend more and more time on your device. If you're a boy or a young man, the girls too, the algorithm knows, and it knows that lust is a powerful drug, and so it is ready to feed you images again and again before you finally say yes. The magazines no longer stay put. They follow you home and everywhere else you go. Let's start with some statistics. Common Sense Media surveyed teens between 13 and 17 years old in 2023 and here's what they found. 73% have watched *********** online, 54% saw it by age 13, 15% by age 10 or younger. The average age of first exposure is 12 and 58% first encountered it accidentally. That's just the kids, the adults in the room. Barna and Pure Desire did a survey in 2024. Here's what they found. 54% of practicing Christians reported viewing **** compared to 68% of non-Christians. Among pastors, 67% report a personal history and then nearly one in five of those currently struggle. of practicing Christians view it weekly. 75% of Christian men and 40% of Christian women report viewing occasionally. And 62% of Christians agree a person can regularly view *********** and live a sexually healthy life only four points below the general public. Jesus says that lust is part of the broad Rd. that leads to Gehenna. But 62% of Christians seem to disagree. The statistics bear out something very important here. Lust and *********** is something that doesn't just go away when you get older. We must all learn to fight this battle, no matter the age. Running from the magazines weren't the end of my personal history. So for me, I know I need to stay vigilant about this. In my house, we talk about these things openly. We have rules and protocols that I want to share with you around our technology. If you were here for a Sunday morning Bible study, we've talked through some of these and you should have received a sheet of paper, adults, as you walked in that hopefully will guide you through some of what I'm going to say that we went a little deeper this morning in Sunday school. I think of lust a little bit like I think about the weeds in my yard. As long as there's a plan and a strategy that is actively keeping the weeds at bay, the yard is going to look great. But as soon as that stops, the yard goes untended. And then once you start looking for it, you start to see more and more weeds popping up here and there until eventually you look out and you realize there's weeds everywhere. And you wonder how'd that happen? If you're a child, it might happen like this. You're simply playing a video game and up pops an ad with a voluptuous woman in something that can't really be called clothing, encouraging you to visit her website. Or maybe you're simply on a website like me, Bible Gateway, preparing a sermon on lust when up pops an underwear ad. Yes, this did happen. Or you're on X or Instagram and they begin to put pictures and products on your screen that you're not really seeking out. But the more it shows up, the more you're interested and the more you click and then the rabbit hole goes deeper and deeper and deeper. And so what does one do in this situation? You should think of yourself and your marriage and your family in the middle of a castle, and your job is to protect it at all cost. You will want to put up high walls, thick walls, a big moat around all of it. And so I want to offer you some very practical advice in two parts. Part one is how to build the walls, and part 2 is what to do if your castle has been sieged. So the protection piece. The first thing I'd want to say here is that you cannot wait on the technology industry to keep you safe or to keep your kids safe. They will not build this wall for you. In fact, they are selling a drug and they are hoping that you get hooked and that your kids get hooked. You may have heard it before. There are only two industries that call their customers users, illegal drugs and big tech. Therefore, you must get radical and take matters into your own hands. Number 2, start with locking down your devices. There are computers and there are phones and there are iPads and whatever else you have in your house. Each will be a little different, but parents especially, both for yourself and for your kids, learn how to limit their screen time. Learn how to manage their content. Learn how to use what the tech companies actually do give you at their disposal to limit what is coming through those big walls that you're trying to create. Number 3, your computers are a little harder to lock down. And so in my house, we pay for something called covenant eyes. We pay $200 a year for this. It might sound like a lot of money. I think it sounds like a very little amount of money for the peace of mind that it gives me, knowing that I'm offering protection, another wall for my kids and my family to feel safe within. Whatever you choose, I would encourage you to once again get radical. Don't just find yourself floating down the broad Rd. just because everyone else seems to. Instead, you have to take matters into your own hands. Number 4, there is the matter of your internet or your routers. And you can try to create as high a wall and a moat as you can. And one tool in the toolbox is using your internet provider to block certain sites or to even automatically turn off at certain times of day. Let's say 1 A.m. There's no good reason for somebody to be on the internet at that point. Number 5, know that with all your best efforts, there will always be workarounds that you haven't thought of, which gets to the most important thing that I can give you. Have a good relationship. with loved ones, with your kids, especially spouses with each other. Have open, honest dialogue. Reduce the shame. It is the shame that drives you into the closet and into the darkness. And the only way out is to get rid of some of that shame and to be willing to talk about it. And so make this a regular conversation in your house. The more you do it, the less awkward it gets. Men talk to your sons. Women talk to your daughters. Have these conversations with your kids. And please, spouses have them with each other. The easiest rule, no devices in the bedrooms. If you're wondering, what's the one quick win that could come out of here as to how I manage my own household and what the kids can do and can't, This is probably the easiest thing that you could make happen right now. But what happens if the army has already sieged the castle and you're in the middle of a fight that you're losing and you are struggling and you can't seem to find your way out? Well, that's the backside of the sheet that I've given you. I've got 4 steps for you. Step one, step out of the darkness and into the light. It will have control over you until you tell someone who is safe and importantly, someone who will force you to do something about it. Men, I want to offer you this morning that I am safe and I will help you do something about it. I have heard stories from young boys to very old men and nothing will shock me, I assure you. Step 2, depending on your situation, and the level of your problem, you should probably find a group to meet with. There are lots of groups dedicated to helping people break their addictions, some in person and some online. Two groups I'm aware of and I know meet locally are called Pure Desire and Celebrate Recovery. I would start there if you're just simply looking. Number 3, develop a strategy and know where the weak points are in your defense. Share these with an accountability partner. For example, maybe you're on a work trip. We'll have your spouse keep you honest when you come home. Late nights or certain times of day. We'll just know when that is and don't be alone during that time. Maybe it's a certain device. Go ahead and ditch that. Is alcohol involved? It might be time to address that problem too. And know that stress will always cause you to do things you might not do when you're not in stress. So manage that. Fourth and finally, replace the bad habit with good habits. More exercise, a new hobby, intentional time with your family. We had this conversation, as I said, this morning with the Sunday morning Bible study. And it was brought in that we should certainly infuse all of these steps with a healthy spiritual life that loves God with all our hearts and souls and minds and strength and our neighbors as ourselves and our spouses as ourselves. But sometimes we maybe keep praying to God and we say, oh, help me with this and help me with this and it never seems to go anywhere. That's what this roadmap is for. It has helped you if you've been there again and again and again and again. One final word I would want to give is to the spouses in the room, because the part I haven't yet addressed is that lust and adultery is not a victimless crime. There is often a spouse or a family that feel the effects of this betrayal. If that is you, know that God sees you too. And you too need help and you need encouragement. And the steps for what you should do are not the same as the above. They are similar. It involves talking to someone. Maybe it's finding a group. Some of the groups offer spouses groups as well. And so if the person who has hurt you needs to build their defenses, I would encourage you to build some of your own as well. Build walls and boundaries that they should not break in order to keep yourself from being hurt again and again. And develop lines that cannot be crossed and communicate those clearly and what would happen if they do get crossed. And finally, do things that will fill your soul as well. In the beginning, God created all things good. And this includes sex. But it is a powerful force. And a desire for it sits deep within us. And we live in a dangerous world where the temptations are everywhere. So let me encourage you to protect it. Keep it safe. Build the walls of a covenant marriage around it. Put them up high. Build a moat around it so that you keep temptation at bay. Talk to your spouses. Talk to your kids. Have these conversations regularly. Help is available. Victory is available. In the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, let us pray. Father in heaven, Jesus, King Jesus, who sits on the throne, who has power over all the universe, Holy Spirit who has been sent to us to live in us, to dwell in us, to cleanse us from the inside out, empower us this morning, convict us of where we need changes, Give us the path forward. Show us how we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds and to take on the mind of Christ and to live as you would have us live, O Lord. May we walk that narrow way, the hard way, but a way that leads to life abundant because Lord, we know that other way leads to the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. God, this morning, no doubt if the statistics bear out, some people hearing my voice right now, whether in person, online, or on a podcast into the future, they are wrestling. They are wrestling with something that has sat hidden for way too long. It is time to take the thing that existed in the darkness Bring it out into the light. Because God, you have a better way. You have a way that is filled with joy and freedom. So Lord, this warning, convict of sin, but also convince us that you are powerful enough to heal. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.

Sloth

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | August 23, 2026

Check out the weekly sermon here or on our SRBC podcast on Apple Podcast and Spotify. While you’re at it, check us out on Facebook and Instagram too.

Like what you hear? We’d love to know.

At South Run, we read every message personally. Whether you have a question, want to share how God is moving in your life, or are thinking about visiting in person, this is the place to start. If you click the link below, Pastor Eric will personally reach out to you.

Listening online? Let us know.

Sermon Transcript

Transcript

Pastor Eric J. Gilchrest

Good morning. It's great to be back with you. I've missed you.

I wasn't here on Sunday, last Sunday that is. I was dropping Ezra off at college, which was an incredibly emotional, powerful experience. And then I had been out of town on sabbatical for a time, but I'm promising you I'm here for a while. Does anyone else hear that? It's the sound of... Oh, it is. Yeah. It's the 250th. There's like flyovers happening. I was going to say, I never hear, you know, anything quite like that. Yeah, we'll let the airplanes kind of die down a second. They'll be done in a moment, hopefully, unless it keeps going for a time. Yeah, just turn me up. Thank you. All right. Where were we? Where we were for the last month is we are talking about the way, which is the name for the earliest Christians. They were called the way. They were the ones who followed Jesus appropriately. And then we were also talking about the fact that there are these two ways that Jesus talks about. One way that leads to destruction. And this is the path that We've been talking about the seven deadly sins for. It is the path we're talking about today. It is the path in which we lead lesser lives, and we lead lives that are not intended to be led by God. Today we're talking about sloth, and this is, as it says, following the wrong way home. There's a lot of city stuff in the picture if you're looking at this, and there's a lot of hubbub and there's a lot of movement, and you might be thinking that's not very slothful. But actually, it kind of is. If you were in the Sunday morning Bible study, what we learned is that there are two faces to sloth, actually. The one that is the slow creature from Zootopia, who's amiable and enjoyable to be with, but is is so slow that it's infuriating, right? And they don't do much. But the other face of sloth actually is the person who's so busy and is distracting himself or herself with all these other things in life, and they're not attending to the one thing that they should be attending to. Our lives are actually filled with these sorts of slothful moments where we distract ourselves quite easily and we escape into our devices and we lead lives that are in constant distraction and not attending to the one thing that we should be doing. So Jesus talks about this road that leads to destruction. And this morning we're going to talk about sloth in that way. But he does talk about a road that leads to fullness of life, abundant life. And all year I've been trying to get you to realize there is abundant life waiting for each and every one of you. And this is in fact what God wants for you. Jesus wants this for you. It's the promise. It's frankly the great promise of Christianity. It's what Jesus teaches us, and he shows us the way. He walks the path before we ever do. And so when I got captivated earlier in this year by what I take to be a very simple idea, and the longer I sit with it, the more powerful it gets. And the idea is very simple, that Jesus lived a life showing us how to live a life. And if we just simply model ourselves after the life of Jesus, if we do the things Jesus does, if we speak like he speaks, if we walk like he walks, if we do what he does, then we too can have abundant life. So this morning, before we jump into sloth and we talk about what this means and what it doesn't mean, let us begin with prayer. Heavenly Father, We come this morning and we lift our hearts to you. We slow down in an appropriate way as you call us to every 7th day taking a Sabbath, a rest from the busy work of life, but not to be lazy, but to fall back in love with you, to be open to what you have to say to us and how you're directing our lives and where you're trying to move us to, the ways in which you are trying to grow us and the ways in which you have kingdom plans for each and every one of us. May we attend to you this morning. In Christ's name we pray, amen. I want to begin with an analogy from marriage. If you are not married, hopefully you can grasp what is happening here. This analogy takes place on the 2nd anniversary of a marriage when a couple is past the honeymoon phase and the 2nd anniversary happens and the husband forgets that it's the anniversary. And the wife is now deeply frustrated with her new husband and lashes out and says, how could you forget? James down the street, he took his wife to the Bahamas. You didn't even remember that it was our anniversary. You are a terrible husband. How dare you? And she storms off to the other side of the room. The husband, feeling very defensive and stonewalling, He just kind of turns in on himself and he walks to the other side of the room and he says, doesn't she know? I work so hard for this family, 80 hours a week. I am just, the pressure is so great. And so what? I forget one day, right? And he begins to get defensive. And so the couple is on each side of the room and And they both know that they love each other, right? This is why they married. They both know that they love each other. But the love requires sacrifice. And it requires the both of them to do the one thing that in this moment they're not sure they really want to do, which is to walk back to the center of the room and figure some things out. And to try to understand the other person and where they're coming from. And so what do they do? Hopefully they do what you don't do. They actually stay on the other sides of the room and they nurse their grievances and they choose sloth over love. And they choose to not reconcile. Instead, of choosing to die to self and to choose to try to work it out and love one another. If you've been married, then you know that building a relationship is not easy. What it really requires of this couple is to not exactly just figure it out in that moment. It actually requires figuring it out over a lifetime what the other person needs and what makes them happy and what makes them tick and what you need and where you need to stand up for your own self. And relationships require work and they require growth and they require you to talk about it and to do some hard things and to dig in together. Maybe on occasion going to a counselor or somebody who can help you grow together. And so a good relationship It doesn't just come together in that moment and all is well. It requires day in, day out, doing the hard thing. But if you don't want to do the hard thing, we call this sloth. Sloth is the willful rejection of growing into the person that God wants you to be. It is the willful rejection of growing into the person that God wants you to be. The marriage is just an analogy. It's an earthly analogy that should then be understood in terms of the spiritual realm, that God desires a relationship with you. And this God wants something from you, and he wants you to grow. And he wants you to be a bigger person, as we talked about again in Sunday school. He wants you to be magnanimous, which is to say big sold. But it's going to require work. And it's going to require some pain, maybe some late nights, some early mornings. Sometimes it requires eating some crow and saying, I'm sorry, and man, I really messed up. And coming to God and saying, please forgive me. It requires doing some soul searching. And it requires understanding what is it that God has called me into this life for? Why am I on this planet at all? And how can I serve the kingdom of God? Sloth is one of these sins that requires us to think about what sin is. Most of the time, someone might tell you, well, it means don't kill anybody. Check, not done that. Don't commit adultery, check, right? Don't steal, right? Okay, And you can think of all these things that you're not supposed to do. Sloth doesn't work this way. It requires actually the opposite. Sloth is what you don't do. It's the sin of not doing. It's the sin of not showing up when you should show up. It's the sin of knowing, I really should go do, I should really call this person, I should really go say I'm sorry to my wife and then not doing it. That, is the sin of sloth. The Book of Common Prayer has lots of prayers in it. one of which you might be familiar with. The prayer goes like this. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought and word and deed by what we have done. And these are all the things that you've done. And it's a moment and opportunity of confession, right? To say, I've thought these things and I've said these things and I've done these things and God, I'm sorry for those. But the prayer continues and it says, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. And it's that. That's the sloth. That is what you're also saying. God, I am sorry that I didn't show up in this way. And then it goes on and says, we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. Often, the not loving others and not loving God with our whole hearts is just as much about what you leave undone as it does what you actually do. And the prayer ends, we are truly sorry and we humbly repent. This year is a year of transformation. If you've been here since January 1st, we gave out bracelets and it says transformed on them and we read from Romans 12, 2, and it says, be transformed, right, and take on the mind of Christ. And this whole year, my hope has been that you have been engaging in thoughts and words and deeds that are in fact transforming you. We even had a marriage conference where we came together and the hope is maybe we can transform some marriages. And we've talked about doing hard things. Sloth is enemy number one against transformation. It is week two of the transformation process where you say to yourself, you know what? I'm going to be the guy who wakes up at 5.30 in the morning and I go to the gym and I'm going to start each day with a good workout. And then by week two might be generous, right? A few days later, you're thinking to yourself, boy, It is early. I think I'm going to stay in bed this morning. That's the physical forms of sloth coming at you. But there are spiritual forms of this too. It is where you say to yourself, I'm going to be a guy who prays regularly. Or I'm going to be the guy or woman who comes to church every Sunday. That's who I want to be because that's important to me. prioritize this. I'm going to be the dad who shows up for his son's or daughter's stuff, right? And spiritual sloth can creep in and we shrink back from how it is that God is trying to form us and to shape us. In this year of transformation, we began with Romans 12, 2, and I would ask that right now you open your Bible to that chapter. Because interestingly, our passage for today comes from this very chapter, Romans chapter 12. As you're turning there, I'll go ahead and start reading from verse 1. The passage today is from verse 9, but we'll get there. Paul says, mind you, while you're turning there, Chapters 1 through 11 are what often get called orthodoxy. This is Paul teaching you how to think right. These are the things that matter and how we are to understand what Jesus did on the cross and what his resurrection means from a kind of cognitive viewpoint. 12 and after is orthopraxy. This is the life you are to live in light of all of those things from chapter 1 to 11. And so this is what Paul says here. I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies, your very lives, as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. And then the passage for the year, do not be conformed to this. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Be transformed. These are lofty ideas, aren't they? And if you've been trying this for the last eight months, you realize lofty ideas turn out to be really hard when you're doing it for a while. And the process of real transformation takes some time. And it takes some energy. And sometimes it's just easier to forget about it and to give up. In fact, this whole living sacrifice thing from verse one, every day, a living sacrifice, you're telling me I've got to put myself back on that altar day after day after day? Eric, that's a lot to ask. I would say to you, it's not me who's asking for it. Paul is, but this is the life of faith. He goes on, and in verses 3 to 8, he calls us all together and he kind of reminds us of what it means to be the body of Christ together. And he says, we each play a part in this body and we each have things to do. And being a living sacrifice means playing my part in the body of Christ that is the church, both the capital C church and the lowercase C church, the church worldwide and the church local. And he says, for by grace given to me, I say to everyone among you, don't think of yourself more highly than you ought, but to think with sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not have all the same function. So we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to our faith, if service in our serving, the one who teaches in his teaching, the one who exhorts in his exhortation, the one who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal, the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness. What does all that mean? I just say it like this. To be a living sacrifice means giving back to the body of Christ. If you're a deacon, be a good deacon. If you're a Sunday school teacher, be a good Sunday school teacher. If you're making meals on a Wednesday night, make great meals on a Wednesday night. But find some way to give, to be plugged in, to do something. Because that is part of what it means to be part of the kingdom and to do the things of the church. But he goes on, and this is our passage for the day. He says, let your love be genuine and hate or abhor what is evil. Love what is good, hate what is evil. It's really that simple. And hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. one another in the showing of honor. And then here it is, right? How I landed here at all. Do not be slothful in zeal, but be fervent in the spirit. Now let me just kind of back up one second. There's 2 ideas sitting here. Don't be slothful in your zeal, but be fervent in the spirit. The slothful in zeal, these are two words we don't really use ever, sloth and zeal, right? This means don't let your passion wane, but instead be fervent, another word we don't use a lot, but it really means boiling over. But be somebody who is alive in the spirit, and the spirit is boiling within them. And what Paul is calling us to in this in some ways is perhaps quite simple. He's saying that when you became a believer and you said yes to Jesus and maybe you walked down an aisle or at a camp you gave your life or you prayed, yes, Lord, yes, Lord, I will be your servant. There's probably some kind of fire burning within you in this moment. What he's saying is, don't let this fire die. Don't let it die. Instead, let it boil up. Because it's the boiling of the passion that then is very useful to the world that is around you. But if the passion that is in your heart, and all of these deadly sins, by the way, are heart issues, they're malfunctions of the heart. And if that heart is, it's lost its passion, then I don't know what's going to happen next. There is this ancient word that gets used for sloth. It's a nice fancy word. You can use it with your friends to impress them. It's called acedia, A-C-E-D-I-A, acedia. And it means, well, the word a means not, and cedia means care. It means you don't care. It means your heart isn't in it. means you've lost passion for the thing. If I could take you back for a minute to the couple standing on the other sides of the room. There's a real danger that might creep in if that couple doesn't figure out a way to get back to the center of the room. The real danger is that in year 20, when they are celebrating the 20th anniversary, and they no longer really celebrate much of anything, and they kind of, maybe they even sleep in separate rooms, and they've no longer come back to the middle. They have acedia. They no longer care. And the worst thing that could happen is that wife stops yelling at the husband to say, why didn't we celebrate our 20th anniversary? Because she no longer cares. And the husband no longer gets defensive and he no longer needs to protect himself because he too no longer cares. This is what sloth is. It's the stopping of caring. I coach soccer sometimes, although in the fall here I'm hanging up my coach's hat for a minute. I hope to again someday. But if you've ever worked with kids, you know what I'm about to say to be true, which is I can deal with kids, of course, the ones who care deeply and are really passionate about things. And then I can deal with kids who are passionately negative about something and they have some skin in the game and yet it's not working and they get upset about it, right? What I can't deal with is the kid who says, I don't care. That is a lack of love, if nothing else. If they say, Whatever. Okay, sure. Fine. Fine in my book is a four-letter word. It starts with the letter F. The reason being is it means that there is no passion. There is no love. There is only a cedia, a not caring. Sloth. is the willful rejection of growing into the person God wants you to be. For a lot of us, this happens because we stop caring. Sloth has a bodily form and it has a spiritual form. It's easy to see the spiritual form if we kind of first look at the bodily form. I mentioned last week we took Ezra down to Blacksburg and we dropped him off and it was a very emotional experience. I've never really had that kind of emotional experience before where I was deeply sad for myself and deeply happy for him because I know he's entering this window of life that is awesome. College is so much fun. There's so much growth that happens. And to be honest, there are days where I miss working with college students because of that window of time that is so cool. Yesterday, it hit me. Ezra wasn't there to mow the lawn for me. I had gotten out of the habit of mowing lawns It's been a few years, six years, my wife tells me. And I looked outside and my lawn was very full. And I thought, well, he's not here to do it. And Lizzie's, well, I don't know, I could try to train her. And Ezra's, Ashra's a little too young and looks like it's on me. I didn't want to do it. the sloth in me was saying, just stay inside, the air conditioning is comfortable. Maybe you could find another high school student out there somewhere and start paying that student. But I tried to, I overcame it and you'd be proud of me. I went out there and I mowed my lawn for the first time in six years. And it was fine. But sloth creeps in, a variety of ways. When we stop doing something over and over again and we offload it, right? And maybe it is like a physical thing, like mowing the lawn. But as I've already said, there are these other ways in which we become spiritually sloth. It's possible that like as parents, you were raising your kids in the house and And you knew, what, it's important that I teach this child like some things. And so I'm going to teach them how to pray. And I'm going to teach them to maybe read their scriptures. I'm going to teach them a few things about the life of the spirit. And then, they grow up and they leave the house. And well, now you don't have anyone to teach. And perhaps some of those muscles, for some of you older folks in the crowd, have begun to atrophy some. What I'd ask of you is to not let sloth jump in there. In fact, now's the time more than ever. There are people in this church who need you. They need your years of wisdom. They need what you've learned over a lifetime, and they need the food that you are able to feed them. Sloth can present itself in the body, but frankly, it's the spiritual sloth that is most dangerous. What should we do about sloth? With just very quick, I've got 5 steps I want you to take and then I'll pray and we can go home. But the five steps go like this. One, wake up. Wake up to the ways in which you've allowed a smaller life to creep into your life. in which God has called you into something bigger, but you've said no again and again. Or maybe it's like a sin that is sitting in your life right now, and you've just kind of grown accustomed to it, and you've allowed it to sit there, and at some point you say, I should probably work on this. I shouldn't let this just keep rotting inside of me. That is sloth on top of whatever that other sin might be. And so wake up, Number 2 would then be to rekindle that passion. So if Paul says in Romans 12, don't let sloth steal your zeal, but boil in the spirit, I'd encourage you to find that passion again. What was it that made you come alive? Or maybe it is in the workplace. what makes you come alive in life generally speaking? When I talk to young people and they ask, what should I do with my life? I often point them to, well, when you do something that makes you feel like invigorated, what is that thing? Because likely that is your gift to the world somewhere in there. And so what's that passion that is inside of you and how can you be using that for the kingdom? Number 3 would be to raise necessity. Raise necessity, which means somehow you've got to take this thing that God is trying to do in you and you've got to make it a necessary part of life where you are uncompromising about it, where you say, you know what, I'm going to do this no matter what. I'm going to drop all these other things and I'm going to do the one thing that actually matters. And then four would be to find accountability. Tell somebody, tell me, tell your friend, tell your mom, tell whoever and say, hold me accountable. This is my one thing. This is where God's growing me. I know it's going to be hard. I'm going to wake up at 5.30 one morning and not want to do it. And I need you to hold me accountable to it. And #5, just stay in the game. One foot in front of the other. In January, we started the year with transformation. My hope is some of you made some commitments. Some of you thought, you know what? I really do this year. I want to work on this. And over time, maybe you drifted. And this is the sermon that's ringing the bell to say, wake up and get back on track and do one thing, 1 foot in front of the other, in front of the other. Because sloth is coming for us And it's trying to steal our lives from us. And those screens that you keep looking at, they're taking your time and they're taking your attention. And that's part of what we need to put down in order to live the lives that God is calling us into. Let us pray. God our Father in heaven, we come this morning with confessions. Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought and word and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. And so, Lord, we are truly sorry and we humbly repent. God, it is our desire this morning to live lives that are magnanimous that are big-souled, in which we are challenged by what you are calling us into. We are ready to take the next step of faith. And it's going to require some sacrifice. It's going to require being a living sacrifice if the transformation is going to happen. And so, Lord, I know my part. I'm saying yes this morning. And I know there are people in this congregation who are saying yes too. Let us find some accountability. Let us find some necessity. Let us fix our eyes on you, the perfecter of our faith. We thank you. In Christ's name we pray, amen.

The Body of Christ

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor | August 9, 2026

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Sermon Transcript

The Body of Christ

Dr. Eric J. Gilchrest, Pastor 

. . . thank you, Matthias. It was nice to meet you both. But James, I will miss you. And I am so glad you have spent 10 weeks with us this summer and 10 weeks last summer. And South Bend Baptist will always have a home for you here. Renee, you literally have a home here. And we are so glad that you have been with us these 10 weeks as well. Let's begin with prayer and then we'll get into the sermon. God, thank you for these two young lives, Renee and James, who have offered us 10 weeks of their time and of their talents, the gifts that you have given them. And we thank you for the ministry that they have offered to our kids and our youth, and to the church at large. And so for them, we ask for a blessing over their lives, their future, that you continue to work in them and grow in them, that you plant your spirit deep down in, Lord. And we pray all of this in Christ's name, amen. It's good to be back. Where were we? So I will say I listened to Jim's messages and I thought they were wonderfully profound and kind of this perfect segue into where we've been and what we're doing. Jim, if you were here last week and the weeks prior was talking about, well, you tell me, what was he talking about? The deadly virtues, which is this nice symbiosis of what we were doing before and now are heading back into, which is there's a virtuous life and there's a life of vice. And sometimes, and Jim showed us the way here, these two things weave together and what is a virtue for many becomes a vice if you're not careful. Today we are on a the good path, which is to say the things that we should be doing in this life and Jesus teaching us how to live a life. And being Communion Sunday, I thought it would be a wonderful time to reflect on the practice that we have every month where we gather together and we break the bread and we share the cup. and what is happening in this moment. And so before I left for my sabbatical, I was in the series on the two ways. And the first way is this way that leads to life, and it's abundant life in the here and now, and it's eternal life in the life to come. And then there's a way that leads to destruction. And it's the ways of living that Scripture warns us about, that Jesus warns us about, that leads to death in the here and now, and it can erode your soul, and it can shrink your life down to just about nothing if you're not careful. And the premise of all of this is that I believe, and you should believe, that Jesus is trying to teach us how to live a life. It's a simple idea. It's been around for quite some time. But sometimes I think the church gets so focused on the life to come and maybe how do we punch the ticket for the next life that we often neglect? Like what is Jesus teaching us about the here and now? The premise for me is actually simple, is that life in the here and now is not all that different from life in the life to come. And that if Jesus is teaching us about eternal life in the same breath, he's teaching us about this life, because life is life. And the author of life, Jesus, the Father, they are teaching us what it means to live the life that they designed. They are the author of life, and they're showing us the good way. And if we walk that good way, well, then we have life abundant. And if we don't, then we have destruction. And Jesus does warn us that the way to life is narrow, which is to say it requires intention. It requires a purpose. It's going to bob and weave. And then the life that leads to destruction is wide and it's really easy to kind of get caught up in and to find yourself just moseying down the path of least resistance. If I could put the series into one sentence, it goes like this. If you want to be tutored on living a life by the one through whom all life was created, the one who has the user's manual to life, the author of it all, then you should follow Jesus' words and actions. Or as we said it in the 90s, WWJD. I can already hear one pushback to the whole premise though. And it's probably coming from the back row, the back row Baptists back there. And they would probably say something like, Eric, there are some things that are just Jesus. They're like his domain, and then we're not really called into doing that. And I want to say yes. this is an important critique, or it is an important line that we need to draw, that there are some things that Jesus does and that we are not called into doing, that we can't do. And as the table sits before me, it reminds me of what some of those things are. Jesus saves us from our sins. This is something we cannot do. Jesus makes the new covenant in his blood. The new covenant is not in our blood, and we cannot follow him on that road. It is Jesus who welcomes the world with his arms wide open, and we cannot do that. And so when we come to the table and we break the bread and we say, this is Christ's body, it is broken for you, and this is Christ's blood and is shed for the forgiveness of your sins, we can't do those things. But the longer I have sat with all of this, and the longer we've been walking down these roads together about the good way and the bad way and the narrow way and the wide way, it does occur to me that some of that line might need blurring. There is a line, and I don't believe at all we should cross it. There are those things that are fully Jesus. But I think sometimes we mistake what are fully Jesus and we just simply push that off to him completely and then we don't participate at all. And we need to. Because Jesus himself says things like Matthew 16, 24, pick up your cross and follow me. Or Luke 9, 23 to 24. He said to all, if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For ever would save his life will lose it. Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. And it seems Paul got the memo too. He invites us to have a relationship with the cross That is not all that different from Jesus. It's different enough and there needs to be that line. But we too are invited into the cross. And so in Galatians 2.20, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And so yes, there are some things only Jesus can do. like dying for the sins of the world. But then he turns around and he invites us to mirror even some of that. And I think it goes one layer deeper still. But I first want to tell you a story. As I confessed earlier, I went to another church last week. That church too had a communion service They only do communion 4 * a year, and so the pastor, I guess, takes a moment every quarter to explain what it is that their communion service does. My daughter informed me that I'm a better preacher than he is, and she's an unbiased observer, so I take her at her word. But there was something he said that stuck with me. And it's funny because I actually don't remember much at all of what he said, which gives me grace for you. But he simply said this, is the body of Christ broken for you. I've said it 1000 times. I've said it multiple times today already. He said, this is the body of Christ broken for you. And something in his telling or rendering of that or statement or maybe it was just the Holy Spirit himself came into me and said, the body of Christ, the body of Christ, well, this is the body of Christ too. And Paul will talk about the body of Christ, not just as Christ's body, but as us, the church. And is there a way in which us, the body, should be broken for the world? And the answer I've come to is yes. that we too, our wounds, our hurts and our pains, specifically the ones that he has healed, those are meant for the healing of the nations. If I have one premise in this sermon, and if you're wondering like if somebody asks you, what did the preacher talk about today? It's this, it's that your lives, your wounds, the hurts, the brokenness that sits in your soul right now, that is the very thing that might heal somebody else. In the same way, that when Thomas comes to Jesus, he finds Jesus whole, but with what? With the scars in his hands and the wound on his side. And it is those scars that heal us. And it is the wounding of Jesus, as Isaiah 53 says, that heals the world. And so if we are to walk the Jesus path, It shouldn't be surprising that the very things that have wounded us over lifetime, the things that hopefully, prayerfully, you have allowed Jesus to do the work of healing within you, those are the very things you can take into the world and heal other people with. One of the joys of being on sabbatical is that I got to read some and I finished a book and I commend it to you. I don't always commend books, but this one was a good one. It's called Theo of Golden. Has anyone read this one yet? Theo of Golden. It's an absolutely beautiful book. I promise not to give away the ending. Kendall hasn't finished it yet and I'd be in real trouble if I did give away the ending. Also, I want you to read it. so that I won't say too much. But as I was reading it, felt very Christian without being explicitly Christian. The main figure is named Theo, and he becomes something of a God figure or Christ figure in the story, which shouldn't be surprising given his name is Theo, which is the Greek word for God. But it's not a Christ figure in an unrealistic kind of way. This isn't an allegory as if he is Jesus and he's going around doing Jesus things as Jesus. He's a very human figure. He's just another guy. But we've been talking about transformation all year long and being transformed. And He strikes me as a character who has spent his life being transformed and then taking the gifts of that transformation into the world that is all around him there in Golden, Georgia. And what is necessary for this sermon for you to know is that he is a man who has been deeply wounded, who has been hurt, who has pains of his own and a past. but a past that has been healed and that propels him to do the things that he does and to look people in the eyes and to speak into their souls and into their lives. And so the way the story goes is he walks into this town, Golden, Georgia, and he finds the center of town where there's a shop with art all over the walls. And there's an artist named Asher who has drawn all of these portraits of the people in the town. And Theo, who admires beauty and understands the depth of beauty and art, he sees them for what they are, which is these wonderful works of art. And then he has this idea where he begins to purchase them one by one and bestow them, that's what he calls it, bestow them to the people who are indeed portrait painted or they're drawn. And he sets up a meeting in the center of town with each person, one by one, because he wants to spend time with them. And he gets to know them and he asks them about their lives and they begin to reveal things to him about who they are and where they've come from, their own hurts, their own pain, the places in life where they've been wounded. And then Theo takes time to simply be with them and to help them in the ways that he can, to not worry about the ways that he can't. And then at the end of the meeting, he usually does two things. The one is he bestows this portrait to them. He gives them the portrait of themselves, mind you. And they perhaps see themselves for the very first time in a way that Theo can see them. And the way that he sees them is the second part, which is that just about every single time he says to them, in you I see sainthood. I see something in you that can grow into something great. And often the person will say, not me, I'm no St. and none of them are. But that's not the point. He is able to see into them that they are a child of God, and that they were made to be something more, and that God has good things for them, and he is speaking life into them. It's a beautiful book. As I said, I won't give away too much more. I promise what I've given away already is just simply the premise of the book. But it's worth knowing that all of that can only happen because Theo has some wounds in his life that have been healed for the most part at least, and that he then ministers to those people of Golden out of. There's a prayer from Saint Teresa of Avila that I quite like. It almost feels heretical, but I assure you it's not. She's writing in the 1500s, and she says this. She says, Christ has no body but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which his compassion looks out upon the world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours the hands with which he blesses the world. Christ has no body but yours. What I take her to be saying is nothing less than what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 12. When he looks around the room in Corinth and he says, You're an I. and you're a hand and you're a foot and you're an ear and every part of the body has a purpose here. And Paul finishes up and he says, now you, are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12. But if you were to turn back just one page to 1 Corinthians 11, what you would find is Paul's version of the Lord's Supper, in which he reads the same thing that we're reading in Matthew 26. And it's Jesus saying, this is the body of Christ, and he hands them the bread, right? And this is the blood of Christ shed for the forgiveness of sins, and he hands them the cup. And then just one chapter later, Paul is saying that we're the body of Christ. And so my assumption, and I think it's a good one, is that something in our brokenness, in the ways that we get broken, are then meant to go out and to feed the world, that Christ has no body but ours. We are the hands We are the feet of Christ for a world who needs Christ. Every time we take communion, I tear the bread in half and I say the same words, the body of Christ is broken for you. And so, of course, this is a reference to Christ's body himself. It is the giving of his life, the shedding of his blood for the forgiveness of sins There are certain things that only Jesus can do. The salvation of the world, the restoration of humanity, the making of the new covenant in his blood. These are things that only Jesus can do. But the older I get and the more we've talked about following Jesus on this narrow way, living like Jesus, going left when he says go left, jumping when he says jump, and stopping when he says stop, the more I believe that Jesus is calling us into something far more radical than we've allowed for so that we become like Christ in every way. And when we say the body of Christ broken for you, I think Jesus is calling us, the church, his body, to be broken open for the people who are around us. In conclusion, I do have just a few pieces of advice on how to live this way. The first is, like Jesus, you should not go out of your way to seek the brokenness. Even Jesus was not wishing for it or wanting it. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he stood there saying, take this cup away from me. He didn't want it, but when it came, he submitted to it. The second thing is that because we don't seek it is one thing, but it will come at some point whether you want it to or not. The world will break you in a variety of ways. Sometimes the wounds are from the outside, and sometimes they are self-inflicted. But a wound is a wound. It might look like a spouse who died way too early. or an addiction that ate up years of your life, or the loss of a career that you loved and worked hard for, or a friend who left you when times got tough, or a dad who abused you when you were a child. There are lots of different kinds of wounds in life. But there are two responses to these wounds. One is to make yourself into a victim, which might be the most reasonable thing because it's possible you were a literal victim to a literal crime. Some wounds are of that nature. But just because it's reasonable is not the same as being good. And at some point, you must decide that remaining a victim and letting this wound fester and eat you up from the inside out, well, this is the way that leads to destruction. It is not the Jesus way that leads to life. The power of Christ in you is that healing is possible. The scars may remain just like Jesus' scars, which were touched by Thomas, and then it is out of the wounded place that you, like Jesus, are able to help heal others. It is what Henri Nouwen calls the wounded healer. This person has been healed by the great physician, has the scars to prove it, and then walks out into the world healing others through the very thing that God has healed in them. Perhaps like Theo of Golden. Or perhaps in real life, like the alcoholic who brings others to a place of recovery. Or the widow who helps other widows find healing in a grief share program. Or perhaps in one of the most powerful examples I've seen, there's a woman named, and I'm going to mess this up, Immaculee Ilabagiza. She was a young woman during the Rwandan genocide who watched her entire family and most of her village be killed by Hutu soldiers. But out of that deep dark brokenness. She learned to teach others about forgiveness of all things. Forgiveness. Now the last thing is that there are those in the room who have not been broken in at least any big way. And this is a good and beautiful thing. You do not need to feel ashamed or worry about this. You are likely young or have had a charmed life to this point. And this message is not yet for you, but someday you might need it. And when you do, remember that you too have a choice to make. You can live as someone who is a victim, allowing the world to eat you up from the inside out. Or you can live as a victor through Jesus Christ who heals all things. As I reflected on this message, in the drive over to the church today, I felt like there was one last thing I wanted to say. And I discovered it as I pulled in, and it goes like this. I think this might be the most hopeful message that I've ever preached, and here's why. Whatever darkness has beset you, and I mean whatever, Christ has been there in the darkest night of his soul. That Good Friday, when it seemed like the light of the world was snuffed out, the author of life was snuffed out, and we were left in utter darkness. We know that three days later, he was raised from the dead. And though the scars remain, he is victorious. And he becomes the greatest of the wounded healers who then goes about healing all the world of yes, our sin, yes, our darkness. But it is also a hope that whatever you are going through in this present moment, that God knows, and that God cares, and that God sees, and that there is a light waiting at some point at the end of this tunnel. This is the great Christian message. It is the great hope of the Christian faith. That death does not have the last word, that sin does not have the last word, that evil does not have the last word, but God does. that life wins, that love wins, that God will have the final say. Let's pray together. Jesus, we thank you. We thank you for doing what only you could do, for dying on a cross, for the forgiveness of the sins of the world, for undoing all the curses of this world, for making all the wrong things right, and for setting this world back on a path toward you. We thank you for making a way where there was no way. We thank you for opening up a door of a promise that we can now walk through and find relationship with you. We thank you for your body that was broken. We thank you for the blood that was shed, for the forgiveness of our sins. But none of this is deserved by us. All of it is gift. And so we say thank you this morning. Pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. Friends, we will take communion now. If you've not taken communion with us, this is how we proceed. We, in just a moment, I'll call the servers up front and there will be one on left and one on the right. And You will come and you will put your hands out and someone will look you in the eye and they will grab the piece of bread and they will say to you, this is Christ's body, the body of Christ. It is broken for you. And then you will grab a cup and this is the blood of Christ. It was shed for your forgiveness. It is the new covenant in his blood. You will then take both of those around to the sides and you'll find your way back to your seat. At which point I encourage you to sit with the body and the blood of Christ in your hands and to think about it and to ponder it and to pray and to take this moment with deadly seriousness and to reflect on your life and perhaps where you've fallen short and where you need that forgiveness once again. Spend some time with God. Open yourself up to his word. Open yourself up to what he might be doing in your heart right now. And then when the time comes, we will all gather back together and we will take the elements at the same time. Let us pray one more time. God, on the night in which your son was betrayed, Jesus took the loaf and broke it. He said, this is my body and it's for you. It is for the world. And he took the cup, the new covenant in his blood, and it was shed for the forgiveness of our sins, God. Lord, we proclaim this today, this morning, and we say thank you. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen. My servers, will you come forward, please? Let's pray together. Father in heaven, Christ our Lord who sits on high on the throne and Holy Spirit. God, three in one, we give you thanks and praise for opening up the way to salvation, for offering new life in your body and blood. God, we give you thanks for the gift that is Jesus Christ, in whom we live, in whom we walk, in whom we have our being. Lord, we are so grateful to be here in this moment with you. We pray this in Christ's holy name. Amen.