My sermon this morning is on self-examination. And to kind of my passage I'm going to use to guide our study is found in Haggai, which is not a book we often read from. It's sandwiched between Zephaniah and Zechariah, so it's a little hard to find. It's only a couple pages. I'm having trouble myself. So there's some outlines there as we go through this. So if you would turn to Haggai chapter one. As you turn there, I'm actually gonna read just to begin our study from Hebrews four. Hebrews four verse nine says, remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God, for he that enter into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works as God did from his. Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. So one of the labors that we ought to be doing on a regular basis is self-examination. Now one of the aspects of my jobs is I do some proofreading. I have to, there are certain sections of the book that I have to examine very carefully before we mail these things. And of course my company has entire departments and all they do is scrutinize in detail these books that we're going to mail. When we do our taxes, some of you don't do your own, but when you do your taxes, Gary knows you got to scrutinize every little number, make sure that it's right. So, that's just something we examine and re-examine very carefully. Oftentimes, in our jobs, you'll hear, oh, I like this employee because he's very detail-oriented. We want to be detailed oriented. We need to be very attentive to our product so that we mail or send out or whatever it is a quality product. Well, so it is that we ought to be in our Christian walk. We ought to be detail oriented when it comes to self-examination. So here we are with Haggai 1. And let me give you a little background. Haggai shared this prophecy that he had received somewhere around 16 to 18 years after the return of the Jews to Judah. And the work of the rebuilding of the temple had begun, but then it was stopped, and presumably about when they finished the foundations. It was stopped because of the Samaritans. But then when Haggai and Zechariah, God used them to spurn them on to rebuilding it, And there was a change in the Persian Gulf, the Persian government under King Darius where God awakened, and on that time God awakened the people to begin working the temple again. So that's the context and why Haggai wrote this. So let us read the whole of the first chapter. In the second year of Darius the King, in the sixth month, in the first day of the month, came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet unto Zerubbabel, the son of Shelteel, governor of Judah, and to Joshua, the son of Joseph, the high priest, saying, thus speaketh the Lord of Hosein. This people say the time has not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. Then came the word of the Lord by Haggai the prophet, saying, Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your sealed houses, or your roofed, your sealing houses? And this house, meaning my house, is laying waste? Now therefore, thus saying the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways. You have sown much, and bring in little. You eat, but you have not enough. You drink, but you're not filled with drink. You clothe you, but there is none warm. And he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put into the bag with holes. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, consider your ways. Go up to the mountain, and bring wood, and build a house, and I will take pleasure in it, and I will be glorified, saith the Lord. You looked for much, and lo, it came to little. When you brought it home, I did blow upon it. Why, saith the Lord of hosts, because of mine house that is waste, and ye run every man unto his own house. Therefore the heaven over you has stayed from dew, and the earth has stayed from her fruit. And I called for a drought upon the land, and upon the mountains, and upon the corn, and upon the new wine, and upon the oil, and upon that which the ground bringeth forth, upon men and cattle, and upon all the labor of the hands. Then Zerubbabel, the son of Shelteel, and Joshua, the son of Josedek, the high priest, with all the remnant of the people, obeyed the voice of the Lord their God, and the words of Haggai the prophet, as the Lord their God had sent them. And the people did fear before the Lord. Then spake Haggai, the Lord's messenger, in the Lord's message unto the people, saying, I am with you, saith the Lord. And the Lord stirred up the spirit of Zerubbabel, the son of Shelteel, governor of Judah, and the spirit of Joshua, the son of Josedic, the high priest, and the spirit of all the remnant of the people. And they came and did work in the house of the Lord of hosts, their God. So I want to begin by, as we go through this, I'm going to be obviously bringing other passages in. So if you have a bookmark or something to keep you there, I suggest being able to go back to it, because we'll be going to a couple other passages, but we'll return to this at various points. So the first thing I want to look at, and I think this is pretty well known, is we have a duty to self-examination. Notice in this passage the command, consider your ways. That's twice repeated, once in verse 5 and the other in 7. But also, in a different form, it's the same idea as in chapter 2 and verses 15 and 18. So, you know, when the Lord speaks once, it's important, of course, but when he says it twice, it's very doubly important. So our duty is to examine ourselves. Because if we fail to do this, we are bound to suffer relapse, to backslide, to become distant with the Lord. Rarely do we just remain static. We either are moving forward or we could be backsliding. So in order to move forward, we really should very consistently consider our ways. So what are we exhorted to do? What do we need? How do we look forward? And just in the considerative ways. Consider has the idea of give careful thought. And the word is translated inspect in one place or to search in another place or to ponder in the Old Testament. Inspect, search, ponder. Those are the thoughts of consider. Most of us, I think, we've homeschooled and if you've done any kind of biology, sometimes you go out and you see this little bug, you know, this little black thing and you want to capture it and you stick it under the microscope. It looks okay from a distance, but you look at that under a microscope and it looks really ugly. Have you seen these bugs and they're just the ugliest things? Well, from a human eye, you know, it looks normal, but you see it under a microscope and it really, you see the horribleness of it. Well, isn't that the way we ought to look at our sin in our lives and examine ourselves? We need to examine ourselves with a microscope. Then it says, Consider our ways. So consider, what is it? Our ways. It doesn't mean our state in life. We don't consider our looks, or our stature. It says our ways. Well obviously that means our life and our service to the Lord. We should examine not only our public life about how man sees us, that is important, but more importantly, what's our private life as God sees it? So we should check up on our relationships, about our prayer life. How do we make the use of money, for example? What's our concern for others? The list is endless, or nearly endless. So the next thing it says is consider your ways, not someone else's. We have a tendency to see what's wrong in everybody else. But this says, consider your ways. Apply what is God, we shouldn't apply what God is saying to others, but apply it to ourselves. Then in 2 Corinthians 13, five, very well-known passage, examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves? How that Jesus Christ is in you? Accept ye be reprobates? So here's another command to examine ourselves. So very plainly, the scripture gives us many places that we have a duty. So what are the reasons? Why should we do this? Well, obviously, we just hit the first one. God commands it. As I said, he says it twice, and he says, thus saith the Lord. That's emphasis that you need to consider what I'm saying here. And also there's some examples like in Isaiah 1 and Ezekiel 12 where God specifically says that he's bringing judgment because the people doth not consider is how it's worded. So there are examples and consequences if we don't. But also godly wisdom demands it. In Proverbs 1.5 it says, a wise man will hear and will increase learning and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels. So when a wise man hears and listens and gains wise counsel and understanding, what is he doing? He's going to be examining his life. He's going to self-examine. And that word of attain, attain wise counsel, means achieve something, succeed in achieving something. In this case, he's achieving, succeeding in achieving wise counsel. But a big reason that I want to kind of focus on, a little bit more than kind of the obvious reasons, is that there are several places in the scripture where it talks about self-deception. Of course, what goes right with that is pride. So, we're going to turn back to Haggai, but let's turn to Galatians 6. I'm going to start with verse 7 and then go back. In verse 7 it says, be not deceived. And that's, of course, easy for us to do. We can be deceived by others, but we can also be deceiving ourselves. And we'll get a little more in a bit. Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that also he shall reap. And then verse two to four says, bear one another burden, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if a man think himself to be something, And Matthew Henry calls this self-flattery. I like that word, self-flattery. If a man think himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself. We can't bear another one's burdens and fulfill the law of Christ. That's virtually, that is impossible if we yield to our selfishness of our flesh or our lingering sin. The lack of self-examination or faulty self-examination leads to self-deception and that is an obstacle to walking by the spirit. You can see here, we often conclude that we're superior to others. In verse three, if we think we're something when we're really nothing, that's implying that we often think that we're superior to others. Self-flattery believes that we're not like those sinners and it keeps us from maybe helping others because we don't want to get our hands dirty. But the son said, the son, though equal to God, said he made himself nothing. He emptied himself and took the form of a servant. Then another reason, our sinful condition requires self-examination. If I ask everybody here, do you exhibit the fruits of the spirit, not of the flesh? I think we'd all have to agree, well, at least not to the degree that we're called to. And therefore, we need to consider our ways. Then in 1 Corinthians 3.18, It says, let no man deceive himself. There's that self-deceit idea again. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, a fool as the unbelievers define it, that he may be wise. And a lot of, you'll see if you study 1 Corinthians, there's a lot of this idea of godly wisdom versus worldly wisdom. And we don't gain that if we are self-deceived. We need to gain godly wisdom, but the impediment to that if we have self-flattery. And how do we become self-deceived? Well, that's easy, pride. It's pretty much just one word. We become self-deceived because of pride in our life. You don't need to turn here. Matthew 7 reads in verse 22 and 23, many will say, this is an example, you see, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out devils? In thy name done many wonderful works? What do you see here? You see their pride. It's pride. They're self-deceived. They think they're doing the right thing, but the pride is blinding their eyes. But then in verse 23, Jesus said, then I will profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from me, ye that work iniquity. So here Jesus confronts self-deception. And it isn't true every one of us here today has some measure of self-deception. But God has prescribed self-examination as a preservative against false hope and false faith, as we see here in this Matthew passage. So what are the goals, or what are the results that we're looking for in self-examination? Well, the first one I think is obvious, and that's repentance. Psalm 119, 59 and 60, which I'll come back to a couple times, The psalmist says, I thought on my ways. So here is the result. You're commanded to, what do you do? I think I'm on my ways. I thought on my ways, and then what? I turned, and that's repentance, the idea of turning, repentance. I turned my feet unto thy testimonies. Then when we're invited to the Lord's Supper, it says, let a man examine himself, so let him eat that bread and drink of that cup. So there's a presumption, there's an assumption here that when a man examines himself before he goes to the Lord's Supper, he examines himself and he feels the weight of his sin and he mourns over them. But then he's allowed to come to the table because he treasures our Savior's grace. A grace that's greater than all our sins. And that's a goal. A goal is for us to feel the weight of our sins, mourn over them, and then turn to Christ. It says, examine yourself first, and then you can come to the table. Now go back to the Haggai passage. Hopefully you can turn there quickly. You'll see a couple other results. If we do perform self-examination. There's a couple goals here. Look at verse 13. Verse 13, Then spake Haggai the Lord's message unto the people, saying, I am with you. So that's a goal or that's a result that God's presence will be with us in a stronger way if we perform the self-examination and then, of course, there's action that needs to follow. And then in verse 14, the Lord stirred up the spirit of, and it mentions these men and then the remnant of the people. So there's a renewed experience of God's power and how we need that stirring up and how we need the experience that in Acts 3 it talks about the people stirred up. And that is another result and goal of self-examination, that you will be stirred up. But another one is, not really in this passage, but some other ones I'd like to mention is it does bring us to a knowledge of our true state. For unbelievers, if they do that kind of biblical self-examination, they're going to see I'm not one of God's children. I'm not one of his. But for those who are, it really can lead to assurance of salvation. You can say, well, yeah, there are tests in scripture and I can test to see if I am one of those, examine my life. And David can say then things like, the Lord is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God and my strength. David can't do that if he doesn't examine himself and see, am I in the faith? Paul can say, I know whom I have believed. And he loved me and gave himself for me. And John can say with fellow believers, we know we have passed from death to life. How do you know that? Part of that is self-examination. But it's true that a mature Christian will grow in wisdom and grace and understanding. All of us, at least most of us, will stand in front of a mirror in the morning and brush our hair and check our clothes and make sure we look okay. And that's a surface thing. We need to look deeper. Psalm 51, or maybe it's Psalm 15, I don't remember, but it talks about the inner man or the inner being. And that's what we need to do. We need to examine our inner being. Can we get ready in the morning and look at ourselves in the mirror and not get puffed up or the opposite? God, I'm losing my hair like this. I could get depressed. But in our spiritual lives, we need to look deeper than that, right? Not just our image that we see. We need to look deeper. We need to know ourselves. Is our spiritual life characterized by love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, you know, the fruits of the spirit? Or are they absent or some of those are weaker than others? We should have a healthy desire to examine our life in the light of those things. The only thing that really can be harmed by biblical self-examination is the unbeliever, the counterfeit, a pharisaic religion, self-righteousness, or those who put our faith in something else. But we want to spot those tendencies in our life, right? We want to see where might I be heading in that direction. The only one who's going to lose permanent peace is the unbeliever, but for the rest of us, it's going to awaken us. It would be good if the person who is an unbeliever would become uncomfortable, because it would lead them to hopefully repent. Think about when Jesus awakened the religion of Nicodemus by telling him he had to be born again, because he thought he was a gay, or the rich man who thought he was, I'm fine, I obeyed all these commandments since my youth, I'm good, but Jesus confronted him and said, examine yourself, you have an idol of possessions. And he went away sad. So let us be resolute in taking every gospel message, every sermon we hear to the exercise of self-examination. And not have a tendency, like in sermons we say, oh, I'm criticizing this, I'm criticizing that, this little thing, I didn't like that little, well, that's not really, we should focus on what can I get out of that sermon that I need to examine in my own life. There are many Christians who deplore self-examination, even in clear command to do so. And some tend to minimize our part by saying, just look to Jesus, that's all you need to do, just look to Jesus. But no, we have a duty to be holy just as I am holy, it says in 1 Peter 1. And this requires examining our thoughts, our words, our deeds, our motives. And there are men who deplore self-examination because it might lead to kind of depression, bad things. And I'm going to talk about that in a little bit. But it might actually reveal their true unregenerate state. So what are the things we should check for? Well, some of these I'm just going to list. I'm not going to support them. I think that some of them are kind of obvious. But sins of commission, what have I done that has been wrong? But sins of omission, what am I not doing that I should be doing? And in all this, we should examine that in everything we do, we should have godly motives to alter the glory of God. That's our motive. We should make sure we're faithfully doing God's will as we understand it. And always look for pride. You know, pride is the source of all contention. That's contention horizontally, but it's contention vertically. Now, I think you're probably still in Haggai. If you're not, please turn there again. There's a couple others that, things we should check for that are clear in this passage. So look at verse two. Thus speaketh the Lord. The people say, the time's not come, the time that the Lord's house should be built. Well, I'm lumping that into slothfulness and procrastination. So here the foundations of the temple are there, and because of no fault of their own, they were prevented by the Who am I thinking? They were preventative to continuing the work. But when that hindrance was removed, they built their own houses first. They think, their thought was, oh, there's plenty of time. There's no hurry to do this. But how often do we speak that? Where we have our priorities right. There's no urgency, for example, about a prayer life or witnessing. Or, I'm gonna have victory over the sin later. That's slothfulness and procrastination. If we start thinking that, we need to consider our ways. Then look in verse four. The Lord says, is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your sealed or roofed houses while this house lies waste? Kind of the same idea, but, but they were self-focused. So this verse I'm lumping in being self-focused first and having the wrong priorities. The people were paying more attention to their own houses to what God had commanded them to build God's house. We do that today, right? We don't put into practice the truth of Matthew 6.31 that says, therefore take no thought saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we be clothed? We need to have our priorities right. And apparently, it was obvious that they were thinking much on the things about what we should eat, what should we drink. And I would assert that's what their mind was toward. So they were looking for self-pleasure and their own homes before the priority of getting God's house built. So is this a problem in our lives? Do we have our priorities right? And then there's a few verses where you can see complacency. Verse 6, 9, and 11 is where I'm getting that from. So verse 6, them that turned back from the low, oops, sorry, that's not it. You have so much and bring little. You eat, but you have not enough. You drink, but you're not filled. So there was some complacency. They were kind of satisfied with things how they were, but not completely. In verse nine, it says, he looked for much, but it came to little. And he says, why? Because of mine house's waste. But the Lord says, I did blow upon it. He had some chastisement for them, and it took a while for them to recognize that. So God's chastening hand is upon them because they were complacent. Do you feel God's chasing a hand on you because there are times you are complacent? If we get slack spiritually, God may at times chasing us by lowering our material circumstances. We see that in nine. You look for much and you came to little. So that is a consequence of our priorities being wrong. So those are just some of the reasons and some Some of the things we should look for as we perform our self-examination. But how should we approach, what should be our approach when we do self-examination? What characteristics ought we to have as we think about our ways? Well, back to our Haggai passage, using that as our guide, the first thing we'll see is in verse 7 it says, You know, just literally the idea of consider your ways is literally set your heart upon your ways. And so the first one is we need to do it wholeheartedly. Set your heart, consider, you need to set your heart upon your ways. So wholeheartedly. And then verse 8, there's a couple of motives I've listed. One is, I will take pleasure in it. So the Lord will take pleasure in it if we do self-examination and then that leads to doing God's will. So the first is, it brings pleasure to God. But the second is, I will be glorified. So there's a couple of motives. So we should, as we do this, we should have the right motive. It's not just, oh, I need to do this because it's an exercise I'm commanded to do. No. We need to have a motive that we need to do this because it will be pleasing to God and it brings God glory. But then we should have that as a view to obedience. What is the result when the people did turn and examine their ways in verse 12? It says, the people obeyed the voice of the Lord their God and the words of Haggai the prophet. So we should, as we do our self-examination, it should be with a view toward obedience. And then verse 12, it ends there, it says, the people did fear before the Lord. So we do this in the fear of God, a respect of the power of God. So those are some of the characteristics we should do as found in Haggai, but then there's other ones in other passages. So one I'm going to term cooperatively. What does that mean? That means God should be present with you. You should ask God to be with you when you do your self-examination. And one of the best examples of this or passages on this is Psalm 139. It says, this is David, the psalm is attributed to David. So assuming it's David, it says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. So he's praying that God will search him and know his heart and try him and know his thoughts. But I think it's obvious that David is hoping that God will help him see his own true heart and he will know his own thoughts. And then verse 24, see if there's any wicked way in me and lead me. So there's another goal, another result, that God will lead you. Search me, O God, know my heart, try me, know my thoughts, and see if any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. So that's what I mean by cooperatively with God's help. And we need to do it honestly. In 1 John 1.8, it says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. There's self-deceit, and the truth is not in us. So we need to be very honest and see, yeah, well, I fall very, very short in this area. And of course, we need to do this thoughtfully, but also urgently. We read Psalm 119, verse 59 before, I'm gonna read 60 with it. I thought on my ways and turned my feet unto thy testimonies. I made haste and delayed not to keep thy commandments. So there's thoughtfulness in the first verse there, but there's urgency. There's I made haste and delayed not. Again, that's in Psalm 119, 59, and 60. And then we need to do it willingly and with sincerity. And we're going to read a passage in a minute that talks about soberly, that's sincerely. But Lamentations 3 in verse 40 says, let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord. Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens. So you see the willingness and the sincerity of the people then to consider their ways. And of course we should do this prayerfully. So there's a prayer in Psalm 26. It's a prayer of David in Psalm 26. And we already read one where he says, search me. And then in Psalm 26, it says, examine me, O Lord, and prove me. Try my reins and my heart. So there's just another example. So as we do self-examination, those are the characteristics we ought to have. And of course, it's all done in light of scripture, light of God's word. Now, there are some dangers in self-examination, and the one first that's very easy to do is we can focus on ourselves too much. We must not lose focus on Christ. We have the command to examine ourselves, but sometimes that's a healthy thing to do, and it's difficult, and it's somewhat dangerous. None of us want to be indifferent to our sin. We want to seek it out, all right? But if we do it to a degree that we become self-absorbed and not Christ-absorbed, we're undermining our faith. And I love this quote from Charles Spurgeon. He said, any practice that detracts from faith is an evil practice, but especially that kind of self-examination which would take us away from the cross, and then our feet proceed in a wrong direction. So we're about to start this study called Behold Our God. And that's going to be a very intense focus on God's attributes and His preeminence, His preeminent attributes. We're talking about beholding ourselves, knowing ourselves. And so we don't want to dwell too much on ourselves and lose the preeminent focus on Christ. We are commanded to do both. So finding that balance is what we're after. So let us seek that balance. We need to examine ourselves as we're commanded to do, but we can't lose our primary focus on Christ. So if you get discouraged, and we'll talk about this a little bit, there's psalms that are really helpful. I'm going to read Psalm 103. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. So there's the idea of self-examination. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgiveth all thy iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth my life from destruction. So that's self-examination is not tended towards self-destruction. Who crowneth thee with lovingkindness and tender mercies. So we can, one of the dangers is we can lose focus on Christ, but we can also judge ourselves falsely. or too harshly. For example, an area that this is common is when we look at our gifts. So we might think, oh, my gift is more inferior or less important than the gifts of others. And we might think, I can't really help believers like this other person. It's easy for us to examine our gifts in light of others and think that we should have those same gifts or think that our gifts are less important. Well, some gifts are more visible. So we need to accept the gifts that we're given and be content with serving God with the gifts we have. Sometimes when we compare ourselves to somebody else, self-doubt comes in and that can be a danger in self-examination that you see the bad stuff in your life and you start having self-doubt and that's leading to self-focus. We are to be sober and that comes from Galatians 6 where we have sober self-assessment. And we need to evaluate ourselves against scripture, that we don't think more highly than we ought, but at the same time, not too lowly as well. Romans 12.3 says, for I say through the grace given to me that every man that is among you, not to think himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, seriously, according as God has dealt to every man the measure of faith. There he's saying, don't think too highly of yourself. But then he balances that with the next three verses. He's going to say, you know, don't think too highly of yourselves, but you have gifts. Don't forget that you do have gifts. And that's the balance. So let me read 4, 5, and 6. I'm in Romans 12. For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and everyone members of one another, having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us." And then he continues. So you see that balance. You see, yeah, examine yourself, make sure you're not thinking too highly of yourselves, but don't go the other direction. You have gifts. You see that balance in that passage. And then it says, soberly. Think soberly. And then nobody wakes up in the morning and says, you know, I think I'm going to perform some self-evaluation today. So you think, OK, I'm good over here, a little tweaking over here, more here, here. I should be good. I'm good there. No, that's, you know, we need to think seriously. Take some time. But self-examination shouldn't throw buckets of water on us, like throwing out the fires of our faith. No, it can be a fuel. We can see that God is working in us, and we can move forward with confidence knowing that He that began a good work in us will bring it to completion. So our main focus needs to be on our Lord Jesus Christ, who is our great prophet, our priest and king. He can save us. So if we start focusing too much on ourselves, we get into that danger. And another thing to think of, there are several areas in scripture where we're warned of self-deception and urged to examine ourselves, but then it's followed right after that by words of grace. We just read one, but turn to 2 Corinthians 13. I wanna just see an example of this. Again, this is an example of how we're warned about self-deception, but then it's balanced with very gracious words and uplifting words. So 2 Corinthians 13, beginning, I'm not going to read, I'm going to kind of skip verses. Verse 5, there's the command. Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith. Prove your own selves, knowing not your own selves. So there's knowing God, behold your God, but know yourself, behold yourself. Know ye not your own selves, that Christ is in you, unless or except ye be reprobates. He's in you unless you're a reprobate person. So there's a goal, knowing ourselves. Therefore I write, jump to verse 10. Therefore I write these things, being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification and not to destruction. So, yes, we're supposed to examine ourselves and be serious about it, but it's not going to lead to destruction. It should lead to edification. As we see the sin in our lives, we repent of it and we just thank God for bringing us out of those things and have him lead us out of those things that we're weak in. And then verse 11, finally, brethren, farewell, be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace, and the God of love and peace shall be with you. And then in 14, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and community of the Holy Ghost be with you all. So you see, God's desire is that every one of these Christians of Corinth will receive blessing of community with God, and that comes partly by self-examination. So edification and not destruction. So there's ditches on both sides, right? There's one ditch where you presume that everything's okay, you're full of self-flattery, you're complacent, and self-examination is an appointed means of delivering us from those errors. But there's the other ditch where it leads to despair. And God's not going to use his warnings and chastisements through self-examination to drive us to despair. That's what Satan wants us to do. Satan's going to try to make us think of every sin that we've done over the years and then drive us to despair and terrible regrets, perhaps, and just bring us down. He's going to, Satan's going to attempt to bring us to our minds, those forgotten things, remind us of all our follies and offenses we've done in all those days. If we do that, we could become paralyzed, thinking we can't be good witnesses for Christ. You can just see the overmelding sin in your life. You're like, I'm so terrible. How can I witness to my brother here? But remember, we're not under condemnation. What was the second hymn we sang? What was the number on that? You're going to need to find your list. Yeah. What was the number of that? Yeah, 203. If you read the last verse, it's, last verse says, I don't know if you picked this up when you, if you think about the words when you're singing like we ought to, you know, no condemnation now I dread. Jesus and all in him is mine, alive in him and my living head, clothed in righteous divine, bold I approach the eternal throne and claim the crown through Christ my own. So you can see there's that idea. You can't have self-examination and lead to self-despair. Remember that we're not under that condemnation that Satan wants us to believe. So just remember that Christ is with us, and we can avoid both of those pitfalls. Now, there's a good example of this in Revelations. You don't need to turn there, I'm not gonna read much here. But we see Christ speaking to the seven churches of Asia, and he says examine them. He's exhorting them to examine themselves as a body. And there are things that are wrong, and most of them anyway, but he begins them all with a word of praise to them. He commends each of these churches, but then we see that he tells them to examine themselves, but the idea is he wants them to strengthen themselves where they see those areas of weakness. So as you go through and see the letters, write this to the different churches. That's the idea. Examine yourselves, but he commends them first. He's trying to keep that balance so they don't get demoralized. So I hope as we've gone through this so far, you've seen that the gospel brings balance to our examination. It brings pardon to our examination. 1 John 1.9 says, if we confess ourselves, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. The gospel brings perception. We're able to perceive now those areas where we need to turn into a new and more Christ-like, Christ-conforming direction. And the gospel also brings power to our self-examination. So just some brief suggestions. Let me start by saying John wrote this in 1 John 5, I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life. So what was he writing? He said, I write these things. What are these things? Is it that they'll make a decision? Is it that they'll be baptized? No, he gives them a series of tests. For example, he says, by keeping God's commandments, they know they're God's people. By loving the brethren, they know that they're passed from death to life. He says it's in overcoming temptation that we know we've been born again. So he's speaking to their consciences about having a true relationship with Jesus. So self-examination should be followed by action, and that action is repentance, and then following God's words more fully, more willingly, more fully. So there are some obvious tests that we're given. One is fruits of the spirit. Do we have joy, love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, self-control? There's a list that we should look and look at that. Where am I weak? Where do I need to improve? That's a challenge we're given. The Sermon on the Mount is another one. Do we have a Pharisee-like religion in our lives? We have a duty to examine ourselves where we may have some Pharisaic elements or tendencies. So those are kind of two that are obvious. And we have to estimate our own sin or examine our own sin and mortify that. Declare war on it as we've been preached to recently about warfare. We need to take war against the sin in our life. Take it seriously. But now I'm gonna do something that's a little less obvious. Turn to 1 Corinthians 6. So we're so familiar with the fruits of the spirit. Compare myself to this list and where do I fall short? Well, there's other lists that might not quite be so obvious. Maybe it is to some of you. But 1 Corinthians 6 verse 9 says, Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived. So there's self-deception. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, or covetous, or drunkards, or revilers, or extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of God. So there's a negative list. And then there's another one very similar in Galatians 5, if you turn there. Galatians 5 and verse 19. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envies, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like, meaning there's more. Things like this, of the which I tell you before, as I've told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. All right, question is, when you read this, we often attribute those characteristics to those who are outside Christ. But when you read this, do you ever apply those to yourself in your current state, at least in part? We tend to see those attributes in others, but don't we have a measure of some of these in our own lives? You know, look at these lists again and see if any of these apply to you, at least in some small measure. Yeah, we're not going to be defined by these negative characteristics, or we at least shouldn't if we're one of God's children. But do I have some measure of envy in my life? Do I contain within me some measure of wrath, or do I cause strife, or harbor some form of idolatry in my life? Because, you know, it's easy for me at times to put God aside and focus on this too much. So these negative lists, not quite so obvious as the fruits of the spirit and things like that, but they're lists that can still help us. Am I tending to any of these in an area of my life? And then, of course, we have the Ten Commandments. You know, each one of those we can examine in detail. For example, does my heart tend to turn toward covetousness? Or how easy it is for me to turn to idolatry, even if it's momentarily? Do I replace God with something else? So each of the Ten Commandments is another list that we're given. So those are just some simple things. So I have in conclusion, You know, we have difficulties in our life. It's hard to, it says we're told to pray constantly and that's a hard thing that's difficult. Repentance can sometimes be difficult. Mortifying sin in our life can be sometimes difficult and challenging. Witnessing can be sometimes difficult and humbling and doing it earnestly can be challenging. Being content in whatever state we're in, that can be difficult. Submitting to God in everything, that's challenging. Loving your neighbor as yourself, loving your enemy, forgiving people 70 times 7, all these things are difficult. Self-examination is just another difficulty. It's just simply another difficulty. It's difficult because we have to examine the inner man. Our heart is deep, and that's where eternity comes into our hearts. So we can deceive ourselves. And since we're self-deceived, it's difficult to see where am I self-deceived? It's difficult. We like a life of ease. So it does take time and energy. But there's that character in the book of Proverbs several times, the sluggard, right? So in our hearts, do we have sluggard lives? And you know, it's a difficult thing for the world to see you as a fool. But you're wise in God's eyes. So let us not be sluggards. Let us examine everything. Man just likes to examine everything. In the heavens, they've got huge microscopes out in space looking as deep as they can. Then they've got microscopes, you know. We examine everything in such detail. We need to do the same in our life, in our faith, in the light of God's word. In J.C. Ryle's book, Practical Religion, which is a good companion book to the Holiness, which I haven't read that whole thing. I need to go back and read those. But the first paper in Practical Religion is on self-examination. It's titled Self-Inquiry. And he uses Acts 16.36 as the text. And that's when Paul's talking to Barnabas. He says, let us go back and visit the brothers in all the towns where we preach the word of God and see how they're doing. So he's going to be examining themselves with the hope that they have done their own homework, their own self-examination. They started out well. Are they examining themselves to see whether they're still in the faith and doing well? Another good example is in Matthew 26. So Jesus is in the upper room and he's with his little band of followers and he says, one of you will betray me. He's not saying some bitter and malicious enemy outside the circle is going to betray me. He doesn't say one of the soldiers, not somebody who's unconverted from the mass of people. He says one of you is going to betray me. Now when the disciples heard this, they became alarmed. And it hit them right between the eyes. And I think it's obvious that they immediately thought about themselves and their shortcomings because they said, is it I, Lord? So here is a moment of self-examination in the disciples. How easy and human nature it would have been for them to say, is it him? Or is it him? Or is it maybe him? That's not what they did. With all their faults, they took an honest and humble response to the question. And each of them apparently felt not quite certain he might not be that traitor. So here is a moment of self-examination, and very sorrowfully they say, is it I, Lord? We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We all have roots of sin that give us the mark of a traitor in us. We know too little of ourselves to be sure that we couldn't fall into some hidden sin more deeply that would open a gap between us and Christ. So the question for us, is it I, Lord? Self-inspection must lead to self-correction. But yet our remaining sin and failures and mistakes are not to be brooded over or lamented so deeply that we're down in the wrong path. They need to be conquered. So we have a simple confession. we must go on to amend our lives so that we're not dull in our witness and we need to be humble before the cross and confess our sins and say, is it I, Lord? There's a man named John Bishop who was a reformed pastor Today, he's still living. And he wrote this story about Alexander White. Anybody know who that was? He was a theologian in Scotland in the 1800s, early 1900s. And this is a story between Alexander White and a friend of his named James Wilson, who both of them were from the Free Reform Church of Scotland. And that's where we came from. Before we were here, we were part of the Free Reform Church of Scotland. I'm going to quote this story by John Bishop. So quote, he says, some traveling evangelists came to Edinburgh, so we just saw about Edinburgh in the series here. Some traveling evangelists came to Edinburgh to hold a mission and fell to criticizing the ministers of the town. A man who was present called the next day on a white, Alexander White, and said, I went to hear the evangelists last night, and you know what they said? They said that Wilson, his friend, was not a converted man. Well, White leaped from his chair in anger and said, those rascals, he said. But the man continued. That's not all he said. He also said, you weren't a converted man either. And the man thought, oh boy, you know, White's going to be even more angry. But he was wrong. White stopped in his tracks. All the fire went out of him. And sinking into a chair, he put his hands in his face. For a minute, he didn't speak. Then he looked up and said to his friend, his visitor, leave me, friend, leave me. I must examine my heart. And that's the end of the quote. So we see self-examination action. He instantly recognized the pride that was in him that might lead somebody to believe that he wasn't a converted man. And so he wanted to very seriously examine himself. And then to close, James 1, 21 through 25, I just want to read that. Wherefore, lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness. Receive with meekness the engrafted word which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man beholding his natural face in the glass. For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. but whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, we come today and we are very sorrowful for the sin that is in us. Help us. and be with us as we do examine our lives and look at those areas where we are short, where we need to be strengthened in weak areas. But help us not to fall into despair. But remember that we are under no condemnation because of what you have done. And help us put our trust not in what we have done, what you have done. So help us to Obey the command that you've given us to examine ourselves and see what sin is in us. Try us so that we may see where our hearts are and where we need to turn from the negative characteristics that we see in others. We tend to see in others. Help them to see those trouble areas in our own lives. So we thank you for your word and especially thank you for the work that Christ has done in us. And in all this, we pray in the name of your Son, Jesus. Amen.