Good morning. Once again, I'd ask you to take your Bibles and turn to the book of Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12. My plan is at such point in the sermon, I find a place to depart from the sermon and move directly into our observance of the Lord's Supper. I will do that, and I may let you know, I may not, but just follow along with us, and we will worship in this way together. Hebrews chapter 12, and I'm going to read just the first three verses, and then we will pray, and then we will start our message. Hebrews 12.1 says, Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, Let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you will not grow weary and that you will not lose heart." Let's pray. Father, we are grateful to You once again for Your Word. We thank You, Father, for those who have gathered here this morning to worship. We thank You, Father, that You have given us both the freedom and the time and the desire to be here. We thank You, Father, that as Your Word has been and always will be central to our worship, we pray again this morning that You would help us to focus our thoughts on what You have said to us, that Your Spirit will teach us and lead us into truth that we need. that You would busily and graciously correct our wrong thinking, where we have wrong thinking, that You would encourage us where our hearts are stirred as we understand and as we relish and love and cherish the truth that we know. I pray, Father, that You would stir repentance in our hearts against sin that we may even now harbor against You. God, I pray that you would send your words of correction and building and strengthening in our lives. We pray, Father, that you would help us to see your truth. We pray that you would help us as we set our minds to be fixed on you, to see you, and Lord, what that really means to look to you. As we look off of the things of the world and off of our sin and the good things that vie for our attention, Lord, help us to know what it is to look away from those things and to be firmly fixed in our vision upon the Lord Jesus Christ. I pray, Father, that you would help us as we set our minds to consider Him, to consider what He endured, the hostility and the hatred and the warfare and the anger against His righteousness and His holiness and even, yes, His love for the people upon the cross for whom He died. Lord, help us to understand these things and help us to grow in how we approach You and how we live in You and how we honor You in what we say and in what we do and how we live in our relationships together. Lord, we want you to be front and center here. We want you to be brought high in our estimation. We want to see your glory this morning because of who you are. Lord, we love you. I thank you for each soul that's here. I ask these blessings for each one. And I ask your preserving grace for those that are away from us for various reasons. Keep them. Lord, grant them the awareness of your presence with them in this moment, whether they be working or whatever. But Lord, most of all, we pray that as we look at your word together and as we observe and remember your suffering on the cross, that you would receive glory and honor and praise and worship, because we know that you alone are worthy of these things. So I pray what your word says, that we would diminish, that our estimation of ourselves would fade, and that our estimation and our knowledge and our love of you would grow and increase. You must increase and we must decrease. May that be true of us this morning. Lord, we love you and we thank you again and we pray all this in Christ's name. Amen. I want to begin the message with a quote from Amy Carmichael. She is or was an Irish missionary to the country of India. in the latter part of the 19th century and the earliest part of the 20th century. And I believe she wrote these words while meditating on this very passage where he says, consider him who endured such hostility. This is what she wrote. She said, the best training for a Christian is to learn to accept everything as it comes. And she has in mind the suffering that is anticipated here as we commit to follow Christ, and the discipline that comes through the Father, and the correction of our sin, and all that, and probably a lot more. The best training is for us to accept everything as it comes, as from Him whom our soul loves. She went on to say, the tests are always unexpected things, not great things that can be written up, but the common little rubs of life. She called them silly little nothings, things you are ashamed of minding at all or paying attention to is what she means. Yet, she said, these tests can knock a strong man over and lay him very low. And I like the way that she states that. They seem to be trifling things, the tests that come, the difficulties that arise in our soul. Unexpected things, not great things necessarily, but common little rubs of life. And of course she is talking about the context here of God's correction in our life and the suffering that we endure as we commit to follow Christ, because no man who commits to follow Christ will escape suffering in this life. We've spent a great deal of time over the past week saying that, in fact, God brings suffering into our lives. He causes, I'll say it that way, suffering in our lives so that we increasingly see His power, His grace, His beauty, His purpose, His plan, and we lose our attraction and our attention and our focus on this earth. Because this is not our final resting place. This is not where it all ends for us. We have a home in heaven if we've trusted Christ to save us. We have a preparation made for us that does not find its finality here, but it finds it in heaven. It's there where Christ is. It's where our dear Savior is, the one who went to the cross for us and secured salvation. He's there, and this is not all there is. So, a great blessing of God's grace in bringing suffering into our life is that He makes it count for something. All men encounter suffering, the lost and the saved. But for us, suffering is preparing us. Suffering is grace to us, because it allows us to identify most fully with Christ, but it also shapes our life into His image. It makes us more and more like Him. That's the context in what she's writing and what she has in her mind. But the thing that struck out to me in this quote, and the reason I wanted to use it this morning, is actually in the first part of what she says. She says, the best training for a Christian is to learn to accepting everything as it comes, as from Him, whom our soul loves. That's the part that I wanted to bring out. Suffering means something, and it has its cost, yes, but it means something in eternity for the kingdom, because it comes from Him whom our soul loves. And there is a real sense that as we're talking about fixing our eyes on Jesus, and considering Him, and enduring hostility and all that we've been talking about, there's a real sense, as we set our minds to do these things, to fix our eyes on Jesus, to see Him in fullness for who He is, and to see ourselves in Him, that that love that we have for Him, that love of God, supersedes the suffering that comes against us, but it also supersedes our love for the world. How do we fix our eyes on Jesus? How do we consider Him? What would that look like in our life? Well, in part, it would look like recognizing that we have been gifted a gift of grace of a love for Him that supersedes everything that we encounter in this life. And I'm not saying that our hearts don't, at times, long for the things of the earth. We know that's true. I'm not saying that we don't at times have desires for the things of the earth, and some of them are not necessarily bad, but our affection, finally and fully, our love is rooted and grounded and find its fullest expression when it is centered and focused on the person of Jesus Christ and His work on the cross and His resurrection. I'm saying in short what many have said over the years. that our souls are not satisfied. The human soul cannot be satisfied until it finds its final resting place, both here and in eternity, in Jesus Christ by faith. Because we were created for Him. We were created to know Him. We were created to worship Him. We were created to see His glory. We were created to be with Him in eternity. And sin, the great evil of humanity, has set all of that a wreck. Paul says the creation itself is groaning, waiting for redemption. And part of the activity of human life is human souls churning in their desire to find satisfaction in the world with the things of the world in their sin when only Christ will satisfy. So I love it when she says, we accept all things that come as coming from Him whom our soul loves. And isn't that true of you who have walked with the Lord, that as you stop and set the things around you aside and focus your attention on Christ and just meditate on His life and His teachings and His death, is that not true that our hearts just well up in overwhelm us? It is. We're reminded of all that it took to save us, all that He saved us from, and our souls, our hearts are moved with love for Him. Verse 3 says that a part and portion of fixing our eyes on Jesus is considering Him who has endured such hostility. And I know we're kind of, in a way, saying many of the same things that we've said, but I want to focus on that phrase, considering Him, this morning. It, like the word fixing our eyes on Jesus, is an imperative in the grammar It is a command, in other words. We're not just to consider, well, maybe if you think about it, think about Jesus. No, we are commanded to consider Him. The very thing our soul needs to persevere in faith, we are commanded to do. Consider Jesus. God loves us that much. It is an imperative. It's a compound word that means to think again. It implies reasoned and thorough, reflective consideration, not a glance, not just a slight remembrance. I think that's one of the reasons why the Lord's Supper ought to be of great importance to us. It is a privilege for us to share it together, to worship our Lord around it, because it is a reminder. It is a remembrance. a memorial supper calling to our minds and our hearts what Christ did for us on the cross as we partake and as we think, because we can't partake and think unless we consider Jesus. Why is it wine that symbolizes His blood? Why is it bread that symbolizes His body? Because He was torn asunder for us and shed His blood on our behalf. Considering Him involves meditation, spending our time, resources, and money in this pursuit, thinking about Him again. It is nothing short of a command to meditate on the greatness of the person and work of Jesus on the cross, not merely the physical horror of the crucifixion, but what happened in the crucifixion, that He was crushed for us. He didn't just die on the cross and was laid in a tomb and was raised from the dead, but His work on the cross, His suffering there was effectual for us. The book of Isaiah chapter 53 tells us that when Christ died on the cross, it was the Father crushing His own Son for the payment of our sin. We heard some of that this morning in our Bible study time. that the Father crushed His Son. He sent His Son to die on the cross to pay the penalty for our sin that it may be removed from us, and that God would be pleased and appeased, and His wrath would be turned away. And in great part, that's what the Lord's Supper symbolizes. that in going to the cross, Jesus drank that cup of the wrath of God against sin. The Scripture tells us that. He drank that cup and He took upon Himself the sins of His people. and He bore them in all of their wickedness and evil so that they could be removed from us, so that we could be forgiven from them, so that we could share in life with Him, having a home in eternity and so much more abundant life and on and on and on. So it's appropriate and it's good and it's right and it is spiritually nourishing for us to be commanded to consider Jesus and the hostility that came against Him from sinners. Maybe I said it last week, but I'll say it again. Many of the sinners that He died for, the sinners that He died for included you and I, didn't it? We were those who had such great hostility against him. We were those whose minds and affections and our desires and our plans and our purposes were arrayed against him until he broke through our rebellion. and He imparted spiritual life and vitality where there was only spiritual death and separation and darkness. He overcame our rebellion, and He made us friends, sons and daughters, lovers of God, those who would yield our very lives to Him in all things. That is true Christianity, and we'll look at some of that here in a moment. I'm reminded when we are told to consider Jesus, of the words of Jesus in John's Gospel, chapter 14. If you want to turn there, I want to read six verses. John's Gospel, chapter 14. And there's a lot that can be said from these verses, but I just want to point out really the last verse, but we'll start in verse 1. He says, do not let your heart be troubled. He says, believe in God, believe also in Me. And he says this in the context of the very nearness of His suffering, the crucifixion. He is promising the Spirit, He is preparing them for the spectacle of seeing Him on the cross and the events that followed. He is preparing them for their worlds to be turned upside down, and He says, do not let your heart be troubled. I can just imagine those disciples who heard those words in person. as they began to contemplate that and to think about, what is He saying here? And in the next several days, actually seeing the One who they had been convinced is the Messiah, the One who was to come, now going to the cross, and the confusion And the Scripture says that upon His death and His crucifixion, they all left Him. They ran. Peter denied Him and cussed Him. They all left. And here's Jesus faithfully preparing them by saying, don't let your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. And He implies very forcefully, I have come from the Father. And all that you see Me do in these next days is the Father's purpose. So have faith." And then he adds this in verse 2, "...in my Father's house are many dwelling places. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you." In other words, in these many dwelling places, in my Father's house, in His presence, you will be there. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also, and you know the way where I am going." And even ourselves read that and hear that and may think, well, you had me until that last one. I don't know where you're going. And the disciples were in the same state. They said, Thomas said, Lord, we do not know where you're going. How do we know the way? And Jesus said to him, I am the way, I am the truth and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through me. When we are commanded to consider Jesus, we are commanded to consider this in part. that there is no other way to the Father. There is no other way of salvation. There is no other way of forgiveness. There is no other way of life. There is no other way of truth. There is no other way to satisfaction. No other way to forgiveness, no other way to pardon, no other way to eternal life, except in the person of Jesus Christ and in this sacrificial offering of himself on the cross in our place. No way. He had to endure the hostility of sinners. He had to face the wrath of the Father against sin on the cross. Had to be done. If it had not been done, not a one of us could be saved. None of us. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. And what we see, both in the cross, and in that awful spectacle of crucifixion, as well as what we read of Him in His teaching and in His life, His holiness, His righteousness, His defeat of temptation in the wilderness by the Word of God, what we see of that is the way that He's showing us. Yes, an example to us, and Hebrews 12, one through three, makes Jesus to be the example, the ultimate example of faith. This is what real faith is, endurance, trusting, believing, holding fast to God. But we also see in his life, that He is that way, that opening, that doorway, entrance into right relations with the Father. He is the narrow way. The broad road that leads to destruction is around us everywhere and all men are on it unless they are called off of that highway to destruction and into the narrow way, entering in through His suffering, through the cross. What we see in being commanded to consider Jesus is this, in part, there's more that could be said. We see Jesus keeping His eyes fixed on the Father, doing His will. Go read through John's Gospel this afternoon or this week. and make note of every time that Jesus says, I only do what I see my Father doing. I only say what He says. I only go where He goes. I only do what He sent me to do. That's my mission. That's my goal. That's what I'm doing. And I will not waver to the left or the right. And then consider Jesus as the way. And in some sense, this is what true faith is. Fixed on Christ, not wavering. But not trusting in our efforts, trusting in what He did on the cross. Jesus keeps His eyes fixed on the Father. He remains separated from the world to the Father's will. And we as Christians are called out of the world, separated from the world, to be given to the Father for His purpose. We see Jesus keeping the law. We see Jesus demonstrating His inherent righteousness on every turn. We see Him teaching truth. We see Him teaching wisdom. And all the elements of salvation that are necessary for us to be saved All the elements that we ourselves do not possess, Jesus has. Jesus is. And when He went to the cross, maybe I said this last week, I think I'm still catching up from my trip. My body is racing and trying to find my mind, I guess, I don't know. When Jesus says He is the way, He is declaring His unique position as fully God and fully man, as the only one possessing in Himself all that is necessary for us to be saved, but also as a human, fully God in human flesh, He is securing for us in His perfection as the way. He is securing for us all that is necessary for salvation, not for Himself, but for you and I and all who will believe. This securing of salvation is not that He adds more to Himself, but that He demonstrates that all that is necessary already belongs to Him. And what is all that's necessary? It's His perfection. It's His life. It's His suffering. It's His death. It's all that He's done. By grace, with no mixture of our efforts, no attention to our works, I picture Jesus walking through His life, gathering to Himself the elements of salvation in His hands, so that we would know that we must come empty-handed to Jesus with none of our own righteousness. turning from our own righteousness, turning from any notion of our own goodness, that we see ourselves by His Holy Spirit as destitute of life, destitute of righteousness, hopeless, helpless. Christ has it all in His hands. He has earned it all in a sense. He secures it all for us. and His life, His human life, His human existence was the living demonstration of the glory of His righteousness. So that it was seen by all nations and all people and all tribes and all tongues that in the man Jesus Christ, the fullness of God would be put on display so that we could sense our need of Him, see His suffering and know that it was for us, and turn and follow Him. We would repent of our sins. When Jesus stepped on the scene, His first words were, repent and believe the gospel, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel. And maybe there's one here this morning who has struggled with that, that you know there is a deep-seated need in your heart that you cannot admit because you've tried. You know that there's a deep-seated necessity in you that you cannot fulfill. What is needed? You know that there is something missing. What is it? It's perfection. It's Jesus. So when Jesus steps on into the scene of history and commands all men everywhere to repent. He is saying, turn from your works, turn from your efforts, turn from your righteousness, turn from your supposed goodness. Lay them all down. Empty your hands and turn. Change your mind. Change your course. Come and follow Me. Believe upon Me. Believe on the suffering and the work of the cross. and be saved. In this way, Jesus is the way. The cross was Christ enduring the cross as enduring the wrath of God over sin. And my friends, He endured the cross because you and I can't. There's not a one of us who can face the wrath and the judgment of God against sin and live. So Christ did. That's why he says, look to me and live. Turn from your sin and look to me. Trust me. I've done all the work. I've done everything that must be done. Jesus faced the Father's wrath because we could not Jesus defeats His enemies, which are our enemies, because only He can. The world, the flesh, and the devil, the enemies of God, and in the flesh, our lustful desires, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the pride of life, the longing for possessions and things, the longing for experiences, the lust of the flesh, the desire to feel something and sense something, and the boastful pride of life that says, I really am okay in myself. I've got all I need. All of those things are enemies of ours, enemies of Christ, and only He could defeat them. And part of His sanctifying work in us is that He is convincing us and defeating those enemies in us. Desires for the flesh and possessions and all that as enemies of Christ and enemies of ours as well. And I want to briefly say a couple of things here. When we consider Jesus this way as Christians, there is something wonderful that happens to us, and it is something that is dependent upon the work that He's done in us. So I'm going to have you turn to John's Gospel, chapter 17. Maybe if you're still there, just turn a page over. So, returning to the original thought that we take everything that comes at us as coming from Him who our soul loves, and why do we love Him? because of this, because He has taken on Himself all that must be done, because He's finished that work, and He merely requires us to trust Him and follow Him to be saved. But then we come to another reason that I want to mention in verse 24 of John's Gospel, chapter 17, This is Jesus praying for His disciples, as we know, as we are aware. Jesus prays for His disciples, and the context seems to show that He's praying for the original twelve, but by extension, He's praying for us as well. This is what He says. He says, Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am. I mean, just consider that Jesus, the eternal Son of Glory, praying, saying, it's my desire that these whom you have given to me be with me where I am. What an awesome thought coming from the mind and the mouth of Jesus. I want these who are mine to be with me. If you could think of giving the greatest gift you could ever give to someone you love, it would be a mere nothing compared to what Jesus just said about us. He says, my desire is to give them the greatest thing I could ever give them, is me. the one thing that will satisfy the human soul. And to do that, he prays this. He says, that they may be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory, which you have given me. For you loved me before the foundation of the world, that they would see my glory." And in part, the whole of the gospel can be boiled down to that very prayer. I want these whom you have given to me to see my glory. To be overwhelmed with a sense of who I am. Not just that I'm going to go to the cross for them, but in my very person. It's God in the flesh coming and yielding himself so that we could be free from the wickedness and darkness of our sin. What greater love is there than that? But for that to happen, he says, they must see my glory. They must see the beauty of who I am, what would drive God to do this very thing. and that God would even approach us at all. A holy God approaching men and women who are steeped and rooted and stained in their sin. God who would not have to do that very thing, yet He does because He wants us to see His glory. And when He opens our eyes to see His glory, He opens our eyes to see who we really are and who He really is in the depth of His love. And this is true if you turn to 2 Corinthians 3.18. 2 Corinthians 3.18. Why is it so important that we see His glory? Why does Jesus pray that? Why doesn't He just say that He'd have the stamina to save, to go to the cross? Why doesn't He just say that, just help me to make it through and do this work and then save these people? He says, I want them to see my glory. Well, here's partly why in chapter 3, verse 18. He says, "...we all with unveiled face, we Christians, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." According to this verse, according to Paul, we are becoming more and more like Jesus. How? By beholding His glory, by seeing Him for all that He is. Do you see that? By seeing Him for all that He is and the magnificence of His righteousness, the perfection of His life. the love that He shows for us, the miracles, the teaching, all of that. As we behold His glory, as we consider Jesus, as we look to Him and keep our eyes focused on Him for endurance and perseverance, He is transforming us into His image. And it's written in such a way that as we see His glory, as we consider who He is, then we are a little bit more transformed. And life happens, and we go on, and we focus our eyes on Jesus, and we get into the Word, and we read, and we pray, and we ask Him for direction, and to teach us, and to forgive us where we sin. And what happens? We behold His glory again a little bit more, and we see Him more, and we are a little bit more transformed. We are changed again. 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 4, or rather verse 6, says this in contrasting the blinded minds of the Jews and the unbelievers, and with those who have in fact seen His glory, Verse six says, for God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. How do we see his glory? Well, the Father, God, the Spirit speaks life into us, enabling us to see who Jesus is and the infinite weightiness of who he is. And he calls it shining the light of the glory of God in the face, in the person, in the human body of Christ and in his suffering. What we don't often see when we think about these glorious things, and when we think about fixing our eyes on Jesus and considering Him, what we often don't think about, but what we often feel, is that there's a transaction, there's a change, like Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4, there's a change that happens in us. as we see His glory and as we're transformed into His image, as He shines the light of Christ in our faces and in our souls. What is that? Well, if Christ prayed that His glory would be revealed to us, that we would behold Him and see His glory, that transaction is, in part, that our, I'll say it this way and explain it, our glory as human beings fades. We lose ourselves. Jesus said, if any man would take up his cross and follow me, he will be saved. If any man would gain his life, he must lose his life for my sake. He's not an existentialist. He's not a nihilist saying that life is worthless. You might as well just lose your life. That's what the world believes. That's what the world teaches. When Jesus says that you must take up your cross and follow me, you must die to yourself, the very thing we need. Die to your desires. Die to your passions. Die to those sins that wage war against your soul. Die to sexual immorality. Die to drunkenness. Die to whatever it may be. Those are words of life, come and follow me. When he says that if a man would gain his life, he must lose his life. He's saying the same thing. In essence, you must lose your attraction and desire for this world. And part of what the work of salvation is, is God himself helping you lose your attraction for the world. That's where the suffering comes in oftentimes. Because in suffering, He forces us. In disciplining us, He forces us to get our eyes off of ourself, even in the midst of trying to do it ourself. I'm trying to be better, God. I'm trying to do it. I'm trying, I'm trying. And finally, we say, I can't. I need you. I'll look to you again. and we lose our glory. It fades. And when I say mankind has glory, I do not mean at all anything in terms of the glory of God, the glory of Christ, who is infinitely holy and glorious simply in the fact that He is God, always has been, always will be. He is inherently glorious. No one gave that to Him. No one could take it from Him. No one slipped Him something that said, hey, look at God, He's cool, He's great, He's magnificent. No, He's always been glorious, always been radiant in His glory, always been sovereign in all that He does. But the Scripture tells us that mankind was created, Moses said in Genesis, very good. And then if you turn back to the book of Hebrews, Chapter 2, Hebrews 2, look at verse 5. And he's contrasting the eternal nature of Christ and His glory with humanity. And he says in verse 5, He, that is God, did not subject to angels the world to come. The world hasn't been handed over to angels to be in submission to. concerning which we are speaking, but one has testified somewhere saying, What is man that you remember him? Why do you pay attention to man? Or what is the son of man that you are concerned about him? You have made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned humanity with glory and honor. He tells us man was created glorious. not equal to the animals, not animals in themselves, but created as those who are co-regents with God, crowned with glory and honor, And He appointed mankind over the works of His hands. And you've put all things in subjection under His feet, under man's feet. That's pretty glorious, isn't it? But it's not an inherent glorious glory. It's a given glory. It's an assigned glory. And that glory is, in fact, what has been broken, stained, tarred, marred, however you want to describe it, when Adam and Eve sinned. and plunged all of creation into darkness and turmoil. It was that glory that was tarnished and broken and became abused and used by humanity to do everything in the world except worship God. So when Christ opens our eyes, when He calls us in regeneration to follow after Him, to forsake our sin, when He enables us to desire Him and love Him in regeneration, when that happens to us, It is a sort of restoration of that original glory, but not in fullness. And we begin the process of sanctification over the course of our life, where He washes us, He cleanses us, He severs our affections again for this earth, all by calling us to look to Christ and to be transformed, to be changed. And we look to Him again, and we're changed. And we turn to Him again, and we remember His death and the resurrection, and we're changed. We pour over His Word, and our hearts and our minds lock on to Scripture that His Spirit brings to our mind and teaches us, and we are transformed into His glory. In order to see His glory, we must take our eyes off of our glory. Isaiah 40 verse 6 says, A voice says, Call out! Then He answered, What shall I call out? All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever. Psalm 39 verse 4 says, Lord, make me to know my end. What is the extent of my days? Let me know how transient I am. Behold, you've made my days as hen breaths, and my lifetime is nothing in your sight. Surely every man at his best is a mere breath. Surely every man walks about as a phantom. Surely they make an uproar for nothing. He amasses riches and does not know who will gather them. That's what man is in sin. The whole world around us, apart from Christ, is crying out and saying, in essence, look at me. I've made it. I've escaped the suffering of the world. I've escaped the necessity of yielding to a God that's all old school, old stuff. We don't need that anymore. We are, in essence, the world is saying we're gods ourselves. And yet God's Word stands and it says they are like phantoms. Their lives are a mere breath. And their rebellion, and their hatred, and their hostility rises up against a holy God. And this is going to bring us to the point where we need to turn our focus, not really, but... I want you to turn to Mark's Gospel, chapter 14. And I don't really need to spend a whole lot of time here because I've already mentioned it, as I often find myself doing. Mark chapter 14, and it's in Matthew's Gospel is well when Jesus is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane after the inauguration of the Lord's Supper. We'll read beginning in verse 32, This is after they have left the supper and they have come to Gethsemane. And in verse 32 it says, they came to the place named Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, Jesus did sit here until I have prayed. And he took with him Peter and James and John. And he began to be very distressed and very troubled. And that's something that many writers have seized on, the distress and the trouble and the agony of Jesus. That in these final hours before He goes to the cross, His soul is in literal turmoil. It's that churning. It's that feeling of the beginning of abandonment by the Father. That's what's going on. And we would have to say, yes, I would see why. He said in verse 24, my soul is deeply grieved to the point of death. He tells the disciples, remain here and keep watch. And he went a little beyond them. And he fell to the ground and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass him by. And he was saying, Abba Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. And he came and he found them sleeping and said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep watch for one hour? Keep watching and praying until you may not come that you may not come into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." It just astounds me that Jesus prays, all things are possible for you, remove this cup from me. Remove this cup from me. The cup that we are preparing to drink in a moment, symbolizes, at least in part, the cup that Jesus refers to that was not removed, the cup that the Father did not see fit to take away. It was not in His will. And as we consider Jesus, as we fix our eyes on Him, let this thought not escape us. The cup that He prayed to be removed was not, so that we, as He called us to Himself, so that we, when we turned from our sins, so that we, when we trusted Him, we would escape the contents of that cup that he drank, the cup of the wrath of Almighty God the Father against our sin. Jesus himself, fully human, and in a sense he prays in his humanity, fully God, My soul is in turmoil within me. Why? Because he was facing the last drop of the wrath of God against sin so that we could escape it. And when we come to observe the Lord's Supper, to memorialize the death of our Savior, please remember the cup that he drank. The word that is translated Gethsemane is an Aramaic term actually that means, so wonderfully, an oil press. And here in the garden is where the agony and the suffering of Christ begins. In the oil press, the place where Jesus would go for peace and rejuvenation and quiet and rest, and His disciples would go across Jerusalem, across the Kidron Valley to the Mount of Olives there, is now the scene of His agony. on the eve of His crucifixion. The oil press He endured so that we could escape the crushing and the pressing of judgment. This is why Paul says in 2 Corinthians that we be careful as we come to the observance of the Lord's Supper, to know that there is nothing magical in taking the Lord's Supper. There is nothing that is set apart other than a remembrance and taking and drinking, and there is no washing of sin, there is no removal of sin, there is no forgiveness given, because that would focus our thought on the wine and the bread. But where's our focus to be? On the body and the blood of our Savior. And we memorialize Him, and we remember Him, and He told us, as often as you receive this, remember Me. Remember Me. Turn in your Bibles to Luke's Gospel 22 as we follow the words of Jesus here in the Last Supper. And as you turn there, I'll just simply read what we have said in the past as we try to guard our souls against deception And just to remind us that the Lord's Supper is for Christians alone. It is not for the world. It is not even necessarily for church members. It is for regenerate Christians, those whose hearts and lives have been changed by the Spirit of God. So we say this morning that if you are not trusting Christ to save you, if you've never turned from sin, if you have never confessed Him before men as Savior and as Lord, or if you're not following Him daily in obedience, then we ask that you not partake. It's better not to. It's better not to so that you don't give a false assurance to yourself that I'm okay. We ask that You see this as a testimony before this body that you are continuing to follow Jesus Christ daily. Not perfectly. None of us do that. None of us are super Christians here. We're not coming saying, I've got this down perfectly, but my heart, my mind, my soul is focused on Christ. I am doing my best. I am following Him. I am yielding to Him in everything, in my best efforts. And if you can't say that, then we ask that you not partake.