Well, would you open your Bibles with me to Romans chapter 13, as we continue to make our way through Paul's letter to the Romans. We're actually going to begin in chapter 12. I'll read verses 1 and 2, and then we will go to 13 and read verses 1 through 7. Would you stand with me as a sign of reverence for the reading of God's inspired and errant and infallible Word? This is the very Word of God, 1 Romans chapter 12, verses 1 through 2, and then chapter 13. I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. And then Romans chapter 13, Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore, one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this, you also pay taxes. For the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. Thus ends the reading of God's word. The grass withers and its flower fades, but the word of our Lord endures forever. Amen. You may be seated. Well, since it's been a few weeks since we've been in Romans, I thought it good to give you a brief reminder, which is why I read chapter 12, verses one and two, because chapter 12 marks this significant shift in the letter to the Romans. You'll remember that for 11 chapters, Paul has been laying out the doctrines of grace, those things that we are to believe about what God has done in the gospel. But in chapter 12, there is a shift from indicatives to imperatives, from belief to behavior, from the description of who we are in Christ to how we ought to live in Christ. And he appeals to us on the basis of all of those mercies that he has been laying out. And he says, therefore, I appeal to you based upon the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. That is, the appropriate response to the sacrifice of our Savior is that we should offer up our own lives as a sacrifice to Him. And as Paul conceives of this, he says that we do this principally in two ways. On the one hand, we do this as we resist being conformed to the patterns and practices of this world, but we also do it as we are transformed by the renewal of our minds. And as he goes on in chapter 13, he begins to flesh this out. Particularly how this resisting the world and this transformation of our minds, how this impacts all of our various relationships as Christians. How it impacts our relationships with the Lord Himself, right? As we offer ourselves a living sacrifice to Him. It transforms the way that we think about our own relationship with ourself as we develop a sober self-image, that we think not more highly of ourselves than we ought, but that we have that mind of Christ. It impacts the way that we think about our living in the communion of the saints, and so he uses this language of one another, a shorthand for Christian community. The last time we were together, we saw the way that this transformed thinking affects the way that we think about and live in relationship to our enemies. And now today, we see how this transformed mind transforms the way we think about our earthly governments. Those who make laws and enforce them. Those whom our fathers in the faith would have called the civil magistrate. but we often simply refer to as the government or the state. And so today we are really considering how it is that as Christians, as those who are renewed in the spirit of our minds, how we relate to the state, how we relate to that civil sphere that God has placed over us. And as we do so, it's probably good that I orient you a little bit to the historical context in which this letter was written. It was written just prior to or at the very beginning of the reign of Nero. Now, at this point, many of the Jews had already been exiled from Rome. You might remember that that was how Paul ended up meeting Priscilla and Aquila, because they had been sent out of Rome because they were Jews. And the reason that all the Jews were sent from Rome was, as Tacitus tells us, over a controversy about a man named Crestus, whom most scholars believe to be a reference to Christ. And so at the time, when Romans did not distinguish between Jews and Christians, Christianity was just a sect of Judaism. there was already this disturbance over this man named Crestus. And so Paul is writing to a group of people who live where there is already tension with the civil government. And by the time this letter was then circulating, the emperor Nero had come into the heights not only of his power, but of his immoral indulgence. Sometimes we look around the world and around the sort of things that are going on, and we think, how could things ever have been as bad as this? They certainly were in the Roman Empire. Nero, by all accounts, was a grossly depraved man. He not only married a slave boy whom he castrated and named Sporus, but he also gave himself in marriage to a man in his entourage. I say he gave himself in marriage because Nero actually wore a veil in this ceremony, assuming the role of the wife in this relationship. So when we hear in our day of politicians and world leaders engaging in gross and grotesque sexual perversions, when we think of things like the Epstein list and all of these things, These are not new. There are, in many ways, we are living in something of a neurotic age, a society which seeks to normalize lascivious behavior. We need only think of pride parades that line our streets or, you know, drag queens reading lewd literature in public libraries. And yet, while our society is in some ways very narrowish, there are other ways in which it is clearly not. We who have been blessed to live in the United States, in historical perspective, have lived virtually free of tyrannical rule and religious persecution. And that historical perspective is important. Because while as citizens we often complain about the excesses and the abuses of this political party or that political party, we by and large part have been spared any real systemic religious persecution and tyranny. That is not so in many parts of the world. And it certainly was not so for the Roman Christians to whom Paul was writing this letter. Nero, in addition to being grossly depraved in his moral behavior, was nothing short of demonically despotic when it came to his persecution of Christians. You may have heard of accounts of the ways in which Christians were pitted against wild beasts in the Colosseum, or the way that Nero dipped Christians in tar and burned them on stakes to light up his gardens, or the way that he blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome. These horrific things. And so think of all of that, hold it in your mind, and now imagine how these words of Paul would fall upon these Christians. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. They are servants and ministers of God. They are owed taxes and revenue and respect and honor. Honor? Respect? How do you respect such a man? How do you respect such a government? And I also want to point out that Paul is writing this to Christians. He's not writing this to the Roman governors or to the civil authorities. He's not writing a treatise on judicial law here or even about principles of government, though we might be able to extract some from it. He's writing to instruct Christians how they ought to think about the authorities that God has put in place over them and how they ought to live in relationship to them. And let me just encourage you that if these spirit-inspired gospel principles worked in Rome, they will certainly work in our republic. In fact, these gospel principles will work in any place and in any time, under any government, whether it be a monarchy, an oligarchy, an aristocracy, or even socialism, or communism, as Christians submit themselves to what God's word says here, God will bless their efforts to submit to him. And so these things are just as relevant for us in this moment in history as they were for the Roman Christians to whom Paul originally wrote. And so as we think about these things, I want to help sort of guide your thinking in three ways. First, as we consider what Paul says here about the authority of the state, the authority of the state. Secondly, we're going to consider what he says about the avenging of the state, the avenging of the state. And finally, we'll consider our attitude toward this state, its authority, its avenging, and our attitude. I want you to notice, as we consider the authority of the state, that Paul begins with this command that has universal application. Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. And in giving the command, he immediately also gives us the reasons why. Why? Because the civil magistrate has received its authority from God. The civil authorities have their authority from God. And just so that we don't miss the point or try to finagle our way out of it, he doubles down on it. In fact, he repeats it in three ways. He begins with that general assertion, for there is no authority except from God. You can see how someone might try to argue against that to raise the objection. Well, that might be true of some governments, that might be true of good governments, but certainly not this tyrannical government that I'm living under. But then Paul cuts the legs out from under that objection as he says, and those governments that exist have been instituted by God. If a government exists, at any time, in any place, irrespective of whether or not you think it should exist, or whether you think it's rightly existing, rightly coming to power, if it exists, it's been instituted by God. Now, to be instituted by God does not mean that it always functions as God intends. But that does not negate the legitimacy of the institution, just as a dysfunctional marriage does not negate the legitimacy of the institution of marriage, or a dysfunctional family does not negate the legitimacy of the family. And if we were to limit it in this way to only good governments, as some have tried to do, I ask you, what would be the point? When and where has such a government existed in the history of the world? The whole point is that God has determined to use even evil things to advance his good purposes and to create a space and a sort of stage upon which the history of redemption might play out. And so having established the point, he then draws out the consequence. Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed. If you resist these authorities that God has established, you are resisting what God has appointed. And I think the inverse of that is true as well. When you submit to these authorities that God has appointed, you are submitting to God. I think it may be part of the reason that we are tempted to rebel against authority, to complain, to grumble, because in large part, we're just not happy with the providence that God has appointed for us. But then I would ask you to think of Jesus. Think of the way that Jesus affirmed and obeyed the principle that Paul is laying out here. This is not 1st Paul's principle, this is Jesus' principle. Think of our Savior as he submitted himself not only to the Sanhedrin and to Herod, but to Pilate. Was Pilate governing righteously? No, he was abusing his authority. He was preparing to condemn an innocent man to death, a man that he believed and judged to be innocent, as he says. What evil has he done? And yet he would send Jesus to his death. What did Jesus say to him? Do you remember? He says, you would have no authority over me if it were not given you from above. You see, Jesus is affirming that in submitting Himself to this earthly ruler, He is really submitting Himself to God who has given authority to this man. And so he's submitting himself to the providence of his father. This was not at all outside of his father's control, not outside of his father's good providence. In fact, this, the greatest evil in the history of mankind, God was using, and was using the civil government. I think we would do well to remember that. even when our earthly governments are engaged in evil things, when they are failing to live up to their calling of approving what is good and punishing what is evil, that God is still on His throne. And our responsibility as Christians is to submit ourselves to God's authority by submitting ourselves to the authorities that He has established. Now, I've spoken in very absolute kind of terms here because that's the way that this comes. And I want it to land on us. But having said that, I don't think that Paul is actually speaking in absolute terms. Some have tried to read it this way. In fact, many have based upon this command in Romans 13, the so-called doctrine of the divine right of kings. Many governments of the past have attempted to take this passage and to wield it over their citizens like a club. You see, God says, you must submit to me in everything. Therefore, you Christians, unconditionally bow the knee, do what I say. At any insubordination or criticism, I am justified in punishing. But that is not true. God is the final authority. If and when the state commands things which are contrary to God's law, things which God expressly forbids, or things which God says we must do, then we must obey God rather than man. This principle comes out so clearly in the book of Acts. You remember when the Sanhedrin are forbidding the apostles from preaching the gospel, that is their response. We must obey God rather than man. When the civil magistrate, if the civil magistrate commands what God expressly forbids or forbids what God expressly commands, then Christians do have a duty to disobey the civil government in order to obey God. And we have many clear examples of that in Scripture. In addition to the apostolic preaching of the gospel, we might think of the Hebrew midwives. We might think of those when Pharaoh ordered them to kill all of those newborn baby boys that they refused. Why? The Bible says because the midwives feared God. And so they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the male children live. There are times when our fear of the Lord and obedience to his commands must trump the commands of the state. Or we might think of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, when Nebuchadnezzar commanded that everyone should bow down and worship his image, even at the threat of death in the fiery furnace. And they refused. Why? because God had forbidden the worship of idols. And how did they answer the king? Our God, whom we serve, is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. God is greater than you, and he will deliver us. But they go on. But even if he doesn't, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up. And you might remember how it appeared, at least for a moment, that God wasn't going to deliver them, as they were thrown into the fiery furnace. And yet God, in the end, would. You see, in all of these examples, the resistance comes not just when we're commanded to do something that we don't want to do, like paying higher taxes or pulling a building permit or driving a certain speed, but when we are commanded to do something that is a direct violation of the law of God. All of those other things, even things which we are uncomfortable with, and even things which we might not be in the best interests of our nation, if they do not expressly violate God's law, then we are to subject ourselves to the authorities that God has placed over us. Why has God done this? Why has he determined to establish this state and then to use the state, even to use corrupt governments? That brings us to our next point, from considering the authority of the state to considering the avenging of the state. If Paul begins by affirming the state's authority in three ways, now he affirms the state's service in three ways. For he is God's servant for your good. He is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoers. And the authorities are ministers of God. It's fascinating, the language that Paul uses. At least it's fascinating to me. that he calls them servants and ministers. That is, literally in Greek, deacons and liturgists. The same word that he uses of the deacons who provide for the well-being of the spiritual well-being and the physical needs of the saints within the church. That is the same word that he uses to describe these servants of the civil sphere. They are to promote good conduct and punish evil conduct. Notice that the good and evil is not the good and evil of the rulers, but the good and evil behavior of their citizens. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who's in authority? That is to say, if you don't want to live in fear of them, then do what is good, and you'll receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. As Christians, we are called to be good citizens, to be the best of citizens. And we should be more concerned, frankly, about our own behavior and our own conduct in the world than we are about the conduct of our civil rulers. Sometimes we have our priorities backwards. We are far more concerned about the conduct of our leaders than we are about our own. It's not to say that we shouldn't be concerned about their behavior, we're right to be. But if we ourselves are not living in honorable ways, if we are not serving the city where God has placed us, if we are not, as Paul says in 1 Timothy, living peaceful and quiet lives that are godly and dignified in every way, then we should probably not be barking at our rulers for not doing the same. And more than that, if we are doing wrong, then we better be afraid. For if you do wrong, be afraid, for He does not bear the sword in vain. He is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer. God has given the state the authority to wield the sword to exact civil punishments. He did this in Genesis 4 as He establishes the state with Cain. but especially in Genesis chapter eight with the nohide laws. And it is through the state that God, it's one of the means that God uses to preserve the civil order. It's one of his common grace establishments by which the world becomes a stage in which the redemptive order might be carried out. This is a good thing. God has built into the fabric of our earthly societies a restraint on evil. Think of our friends in Haiti right now and the things that are going on there where the government has been overthrown. And everyone is just subject to the whims and the rule of the gangs. Would you rather live in a society with a corrupt government which maintains some semblance of order or a society in complete upheaval, anarchy, where all restraints have been removed. And when the state exercises the sword justly, it does so as the avenger of God. That is to say that the state is the minister of God in this, that it is not just the wrath of the ruler that comes into play, but it is the wrath of God. And what Paul says here is clearly meant to make us think of what he said earlier in chapter 12. Remember, there he was addressing Christians and how we're responding to those who do evil against us. And he said, repay no one evil for evil. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God. For it's written, vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord. And now in chapter 13, we learn at least one of the ways in which God takes out His vengeance, and He repays, in which He exercises justice, and that is through the state, as they are the avengers who carry out His wrath. They are the ones who take that principle which is forbidden to us, don't repay evil for evil, and they repay evil for evil. They take that principle of lex talionis, of retributive justice, of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and they wield it as ministers on God's behalf. Indeed, they wield it as ministers on the behalf of Christ, the incarnate Son of God, who now rules from that throne in heaven, who's been glorified and ascended, to whom all authority in heaven on earth has been given. And I think that we need to recognize that there is great freedom in this for us. Peter, as we read in our reading of the law today, says, live as people who are free. And because you're free, you can honor the emperor. You can honor the governments. We are free because in leaving vengeance to Christ and leaving vengeance to those whom he has appointed to carry it out, we are free to be ministers of his mercy. So Paul says, if your enemy's hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink and overcome evil with good. That is our duty as Christians. that we might be agents and ministers of his mercy in our private lives. It doesn't mean that Christians can't occupy positions in the civil government, of course they can, and then in their official capacity, they wield the sword. But in our lives as private Christians, we are to be agents of God's mercy. Finally, let's consider our attitude towards the state. Paul says here, therefore, one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience. That is to say that we don't submit to the state just in order to avoid punishment, just in order to avoid God's wrath ministered through their hand. Rather, we submit to the state because we wish to be in submission to God. It's not the state that's the Lord of the conscience. God alone is Lord of the conscience, and He's left it free from the commandments of men. And yet, Paul says here, for conscience's sake. Because our conscience is held captive to the Lord. And He calls us to be in subjection, and so we gladly subject ourselves to Him. And that means that sometimes we must do things that we otherwise would not want to do. So he goes on, because of this you pay your taxes. Anyone enjoy paying taxes? For the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them. Taxes, to whom taxes are owed. Revenue, to whom revenue is owed. Respect, to whom respect is owed. Honor, to whom honor is owed. In addition to the protection that civil governments offer, they are to provide their citizens with certain services through the collection of taxes. They are the ones that God says He's appointed to attend to this very thing. Now, there's probably good reason that Paul brings up taxes and revenue, because this was a particularly hot topic among the Jews, about whether or not they should lawfully pay taxes to Caesar. You might remember that that question comes up with Jesus as the Herodians and the Pharisees get together and try to entrap Jesus in this. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? The Herodians are loyalists, right? And so they want to trap Jesus if he says, no, it's not lawful to pay taxes to Caesar. Well, they've got it. The Pharisees hate the Romans, and they don't think they should pay taxes to Caesar. And so if Jesus says, yes, we should, well, they think they've got it. And you know, Jesus dodges that. by simply asking for the coin and saying, whose image is this? It's Caesar's. Then render to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to the Lord and to God what is God's, right? You bear the image of God. The coin bared the image of Caesar. You are to render your life back to God. It was, in fact, the resentment of Roman rule and taxation, which would ultimately lead to the Jewish revolt and the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. It was a tax revolt. And so in bringing up taxes, right, we think this is a hot topic in our day. It was way more of a hot topic in their day. This was a big deal. And Paul does not want Christians to get caught up in this. He wants them, as conscientious citizens, to pay their taxes. And in addition to their taxes, to do what may even seem like more profoundly difficult. To give honor and respect to those whom God has placed in authority. And so I go back to that question that I began with. How do you respect Nero? How do you honor him? Or, you know, just fill in the blank. Insert your least favorite political person. That person that you just disagree with all of their policies. And you think they are, you know, running this train into a wall. How do you respect them? How do you honor them? How do you obey this command? Peter tells us, in agreement with Paul, that we are to do this. Be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme or to governors sent by him to punish those who do evil, and to praise those who do good, honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor. How do you do that? How do we respect and honor dishonorable people? Pastor Charles stole a little bit of my thunder already here. By giving you the answer, you begin by honoring the office. by recognizing that the position that they are in is a position of authority that God has appointed and that God has given to them. We can honor a person's position and give them the respect that is due their office, even though we may be in fundamental disagreement with their policies. We not only can do that, but we are called to do it. Secondly, we can honor them by obeying their laws. Again, we don't even need to agree with the laws or think that they are in the best interests of our society, of our nation. As long as they are not calling us to expressly break the law of God, we can submit to them. We can do so without constant fussing and complaining. We can honor and respect our officers in our speech. You might remember how Paul inadvertently spoke harshly of the high priest, and he was confronted about it. He whitewashed him. And what did he do? He apologized. He humbled himself. He quoted from the scriptures, you shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people. I'm sorry, I did not know he was the high priest. How many times and how quick are we to slander and malign and defame our leaders? Whether that's in personal conversation or in social media. Remember, I was attending a football game a couple of years ago and there was a group of students behind us who were pretty rowdy. One of them wearing a Christian t-shirt and started a chant, let's go Brandon. If you don't understand what that means, I'll leave you to look it up. But I thought in the moment, how sad that here he's wearing this witness wear purporting to be a Christian and yet leading the entire stadium in this chant that is completely dishonoring his president, whatever he thinks of it. It's not to say those things aren't funny in their own way, but we need to guard our mouths and be careful about the way that we speak of our leaders because we seek to honor the Lord. A fourth way we can honor and respect them is by praying for them. May I just ask you, how often do you pray for your leaders? Well, maybe this administration, but how about the previous administration? Do you pray for them? Paul is explicit about this. He says, I urge that supplications and prayers and intercessions and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and for those who are in high positions. And as we pray for them, one of the things we are to pray for them is so that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life that is godly and dignified in every way. We pray not only for them, but we pray about us in relationship to them. He urges this because this is what we are called to do. Though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not fleshly, but they have divine power to destroy strongholds. Or think of Ephesians 6, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Or as Jesus said to Pilate, my kingdom is not of this world. If my servants were of this world, then my servants would have been fighting that I might not be delivered over to you. Jesus is saying, I am not a threat to you. My servants are not a threat to you. My kingdom is not of this world. They don't pick up the sword. Well, Peter did pick up the sword in the garden. He wasn't very good with it, apparently. He was a hacker. You're supposed to use the pointy end. But Jesus is clear. Peter, put away your sword. The kingdom of God does not advance by the tip of the sword. It advances by the gospel of God's grace. And in His wisdom, He has put the sword into the hands of the state, which leaves us free from avenging ourselves so that we might be ministers of the gospel and of His grace. that we might proclaim the message of what Christ has done, of how he has even modeled the appropriate behavior and response to the civil government as he was entrusting himself to the providence of his Father. You know, it's an interesting thing when you read the apologetic works of the early church, like the first apology of Justin Martyr, which was addressed to the emperor, by the way. And he's addressing these various criticisms that have been raised against Christians. But one of the ways that he argues, I think one of the principal ways that he argues in all of these arguments is by appealing to how good of citizens the Christians are. that they are the best of Roman citizens. They pay their taxes. They don't stir up trouble. They honor the emperor. They work hard for the good of the city. And they do this all while being terribly persecuted by the very government that they are trying to submit to. I do wonder if such a work could be written today. Could such a thing be said about our church? I pray that it could. That we could be called the very best of earthly citizens because we know that we have a heavenly citizenship. Because we know that we belong to that city that is above. Because we entrust ourselves to a faithful creator who judges righteously and we leave vengeance to him. That would only be said of us if our minds are renewed and transformed by the Gospel. That recognizes that Jesus is on His throne. And that whoever is in power today is only in power because God has granted it to them. And that He uses these various governments for His ends and for His glory. That He takes and turns even evil things and uses them for His glory. Even the most evil thing in all of history. As Peter says, this Jesus who was delivered up according to the definite plan and the foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. The cross was not an accident. It was God's definite plan for the redemption of his people. God was in control, and because God was in control, Jesus was ready to submit himself to the authority of his Father, even when that meant submitting himself to the authority of Pilate. That our minds would be so transformed that we would recognize that God uses the state as an instrument to maintain civil order. and that it is a restraint while the gospel goes forth so that we might be the kind of conscientious citizens who submit for the Lord's sake to every human institution, that we would pay our taxes, that we would pay revenue, that we would pay honor and respect where it is due, that we would be the kind of people who do not use our mouths to curse our leaders, but to pray for them, to pray for the welfare of the city, to act for the welfare of the city. because we know that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, because we know that we are citizens of that heavenly city above, that our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Lord, our God, we thank you that you instruct us in the ways of righteousness and how we might live in this world to the glory of your name, how we might even follow our Savior, who modeled for us how we can submit to the civil government. Lord, help us to fear you rather than man. And when we cannot submit to be ready to submit ourselves to you to offer ourselves as sacrifices even if the time should be called upon us to do so. But Lord, in all of these other ways where we often grumble and complain, Lord, we pray that we would be conscientious citizens and for conscience sake submit to those whom you have placed in authority, recognizing that you have put them there for our good. And Lord, we pray that it might be said of us that we are the best citizens of this earth because we are the very citizens of heaven itself. And so we ask all of these things in Jesus' name, amen. And of course, we put it here in the order of our worship. because the first act that we participate in together then is receiving the Lord's Supper. This meal that speaks of our reconciliation to our Father, but also speaks of the reconciliation that we have with one another, and the fellowship that we have with one another. And we have this, of course, through the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Because that is what this meal signifies. Even though our Savior is on His heavenly throne, He still condescends to give us these sensible signs. Signs by which we can taste and touch and smell and know that He is good. By which we can know that His grace to us is sufficient and enough. That it binds us to Him and it binds us to one another. And so as we participate in this meal, it's a family meal, right? We are pulling up our seats, as it were, to the family table. All those who have been a part of the family of God through their profession of faith, through baptism into his name, who are walking in fellowship with the triune God, you are welcome to come to participate in this meal. but if you do not yet belong to Christ or if you have not yet professed your faith in Him. then let me encourage you to simply let these elements pass you by this day. And yet, as I always give the warning, I also give the promise that even if you let these elements pass you by, don't let Christ pass you by because He promises that whoever calls upon His name will be saved. And if you call upon the name of the Lord, if you entrust yourself to His grace, He will save you. And if you desire to know what it means to walk and to live as His disciple, to be a part of the family of Christ, then let me just encourage you to come and to speak with either myself or to Pastor Charles. We'd love to speak to you about that. But today, even as we come, we are to come in the sincerity of our hearts. Not that we think that we are sinless in any way. This is a meal for sinners. We come as sinners to receive grace. But we come as sinners who are repentant. We come as sinners who are striving. We come as sinners who long to be free of our sin. Who can't wait for that day in glory when we are made never to sin again. If that is your heart and that is your desire, then let me encourage you to come to this meal. But if that is not your heart, and you are delighting in your sin, and you are living in secret sin, if you are living in unconfessed sin, do not come. We are to come in a worthy manner. And a worthy manner means that we are resting and trusting in Christ and repenting of our sin. And so let us ask that the Lord would take these ordinary elements now and set them apart for this holy use. Lord, as we approach your table, we come trusting only in who you are and what you have done on our behalf. that You, through Your own life, death, resurrection, and ascension, have reconciled us to our Father. And in reconciling us to You, You have reconciled us to one another, so that we might be one new man in Christ Jesus. And so, Lord, we thank you for the hope that this meal speaks to us, for the grace of which it is your means. And we pray that even as we taste these elements, as we taste the wine and the bread, Lord, we pray that they would nourish our souls, even as the bread and wine nourish our physical bodies, so that we might be built up in grace. So we ask that you would set apart these ordinary, means for this holy use, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.