At this time, before we read from scripture, let us read the form for the administration of the Lord's Supper, the form, the section that deals with examination. Found on page 91 in the back of the Psalter, page 91. I read beginning in the second column on page 91, the section on the true examination of ourselves consists of these three parts. First, that each, everyone, consider by himself his sins and the curse due to him for them, to the end that he may abhor and humble himself before God, considering that the wrath of God against sin is so great that rather than it should go unpunished, he hath punished the same in his beloved Son, Jesus Christ, with the bitter and shameful death of the cross. Secondly, that everyone examine his own heart whether he doth believe this faithful promise of God, that all his sins are forgiven him only for the sake of the passion and death of Jesus Christ, and that the perfect righteousness of Christ is imputed and freely given him as his own, yea, so perfectly as if he had satisfied in his own person for all his sins and fulfilled all righteousness. Thirdly, that everyone examined his own conscience, whether he purposeth henceforth to show true thankfulness to God in his whole life and to walk uprightly before him. as also whether he hath laid aside unfaintedly all enmity, hatred, and envy, and doth firmly resolve henceforward to walk in true love and peace with his neighbor. All those then who are thus disposed, God will certainly receive in mercy, and count them worthy partakers of the table of his Son, Jesus Christ. On the contrary, those who do not feel this testimony in their hearts eat and drink judgment to themselves. Therefore, we also, according to the command of Christ and the Apostle Paul, admonish all those who are defiled with the following sins to keep themselves from the table of the Lord, and declare to them that they have no part in the kingdom of Christ, such as all idolaters, all those who invoke deceased saints, angels, or other creatures, all those who worship images, all enchanters, diviners, charmers, and those who confide in such enchantments, all despisers of God and of his word and of the holy sacraments, all blasphemers, all those who are given to raise discord, sex, and mutiny in church or state, all perjured persons, all those who are disobedient to their parents and superiors, all murderers, contentious persons, and those who live in hatred and envy against their neighbors, all adulterers, whoremongers, drunkards, thieves, usurers, robbers, gamesters, covetous, and all who lead offensive lives. All these, while they continue in such sin, shall abstain from this meat which Christ hath ordained only for the faithful, lest their judgment and condemnation be made the heavier. But this is not designed, dearly beloved brethren and sisters in the Lord, to deject the contrite hearts of the faithful, as if none might come to the supper of the Lord but those who are without sin. For we do not come to this supper to testify thereby that we are perfect and righteous in ourselves, but on the contrary, considering that we seek our life out of ourselves in Jesus Christ, we acknowledge that we lie in the midst of death, Therefore, notwithstanding, we feel many infirmities and miseries in ourselves, as namely, that we have not perfect faith, and that we do not give ourselves to serve God with that zeal as we are bound, but have daily to strive with the weakness of our faith and the evil lusts of our flesh. Yet, since we are by the grace of the Holy Spirit sorry for these weaknesses, and earnestly desire us to fight against our unbelief and to live according to all the commandments of God. Therefore, we rest assured that no sin or infirmity which still remaineth against our will in us can hinder us from being received of God in mercy and from being made worthy partakers of this heavenly meat and drink. So far we read the form for the Lord's Supper. We turn now to Lamentations chapter three. Lamentations chapter three. We read beginning at verse 22, and read through verse 50. Lamentations chapter three, beginning at verse 22. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. "'The Lord is my portion, saith my soul, "'therefore will I hope in Him. "'The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, "'to the soul that seeketh Him. "'It is good that a man should both hope "'and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. "'It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth, He sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him. He is filled full with reproach. For the Lord will not cast off forever, but though he cause grief, Yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men, to crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth, to turn aside the right of a man before the face of the Most High, to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass when the Lord commandeth it not, out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good. Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins? 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. We have transgressed and have rebelled. Thou has not pardoned. Thou has covered with anger and persecuted us. Thou has slain, thou has not pitied. Thou has covered thyself with a cloud that our prayer should not pass through. Thou hast made us as the offscouring and refuse in the midst of the people. All our enemies have opened their mouths against us. Fear and a snare is come upon us, desolation and destruction. Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people. Mine eye trickleth down and ceaseth not without any intermission till the Lord look down and behold from heaven. So far we read God's holy word. The text for the sermon is verse 40, Lamentations 3 verse 40. Let us search and try our ways and turn again to the Lord. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the text is an exhortation from one believer to other believers. Let us search, let us try our ways, and let us turn again to the Lord. Sometimes when someone says something that let us do this or that, it's a mere suggestion. If a friend asks another friend, well, what should we do? And the other one says, let's go swimming. Well, that's just a suggestion. But when a teacher says to the class, let us put away our books. It's time for a test. That's not a suggestion. That is a command. The text, obviously, is not a suggestion. It is, in fact, the nature of a command. Jeremiah, inspired by the Holy Spirit, really gives three exhortations. Let us search, first of all. Let us try our ways. And thirdly, let us turn again to the Lord. These are commands from one who is including himself. Let us, I and you together, let us do this activity. I must search and you must search. Let us together do this search. And now it is not merely Jeremiah as a believer, but Jeremiah as a prophet of the Lord who comes to God's people, to Israel and to us with these exhortations. Why does he say these things? Well, obviously he saw the need for this. But more importantly, God sees the need for these exhortations. The Lord had struck Judah with a terrible blow. The city of Jerusalem had been taken by the armies of Babylon and had been laid waste. The walls were toppled. The king's palace had been thoroughly plundered and burned the temple with all of its gold, stripped and demolished. It was no more. Babylon's armies had killed thousands of God's people and taken the rest of them except for a handful of the poor. taken all the rest of them into captivity. Only Jeremiah and a few of the people of Israel were left. That's the reason for this book. Lamentations. Children, the word lamentations means weeping. Jeremiah is weeping as he looks over Jerusalem and sees the destruction of God's beautiful city. But Jeremiah knows it's not merely that an enemy, a powerful enemy has come and done these terrible things to Jerusalem. The Lord is clearly behind this, and that's plain from the previous verses. Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not? Nebuchadnezzar could command, but if the Lord has not commanded it, it would never have happened. Out of the mouth of the Most High proceedeth not evil and good, that is not sin, evil, but evil against his church, the destruction of Israel, of the city of Jerusalem. And then verse 39, wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins. That's why all this had come upon them, because of their sin, they would not repent. would not return to the Lord. They walked in disobedience. They had forsaken God and had worshipped idols. The Word of God is addressed, therefore, to Israel. Let us be searching our ways. Let us be trying our ways. Let us turn again unto the Lord. But this Word of God is addressed to us, to all God's people through the ages. Do you agree that you need to examine your ways? Maybe you think, really, another self-examination? Why is that necessary? I've done this many times and nothing's changed in my life and I'm not living in some great immorality that I need to repent of and turn away from it. And yet, consider the verse that started the reading tonight. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions fail not. The reality is that we must never ever take the attitude of being self-satisfied and thinking my life is quite good enough. I don't need to search my ways. I don't need to turn anymore unto the Lord. A couple of other verses in the Bible should drive that home. Consider, for example, Proverbs 21 verse 2. Proverbs 21 verse 2 says, every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord pondereth the heart. And we can look at our life and say, yeah, this seems like the right thing. It seems like I'm doing the right thing. But the Lord ponders our heart. And then Jeremiah 17, 9 talks about that heart. Jeremiah 17 verse 9 says, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Examination is necessary. And it's good. God knows it. And so he exhorts us once again, search, try, and turn unto the Lord. We examine this text then under the theme, A Thorough Examination of Our Ways. A Thorough Examination of Our Ways. Notice in the first place what it requires. Secondly, unto what purpose? And that of course is turning. And then finally, with what result? a thorough examination of our ways. First of all, what does this require? What are we to examine? The word, the text speaks of our ways. We must search and try our ways. The word way is a very broad concept. It includes a tremendous amount It means not only that we must look at the sins that we've committed that would be obvious to anybody in the world that we have committed a horrible sin, nor is this to be limited to the things that we do or say or even our thoughts, but the word way is the whole of our life. It's our existence. Because when you have the idea of a way, you have a figure of speech there, a pathway. And when you walk down a certain pathway, you are headed in a certain direction. You've chosen this path because you are aiming for something. So you're headed in that direction for that destination. Examine your ways, the way that you are walking. with everything that that is included. And the fact that the text uses the plural here, let us search and try our ways, reminds us of the fact that we have many different compartments, so to speak, of our life that compose the whole of our existence. We have a way in our family. husband and wife living together in a certain pathway with their children if the Lord gives them children. There's a certain pathway that children walk and that covenant youth walk. Their way is different from their grandparents' way of living in the home. There is a way in the church, a way of worshiping God, a way of living with each other in our daily life as members of the congregation. Examine that way. There is a way in our daily vocation. Going off to work, living in the home, laboring, working as a mother in the home, or going off to school, there is a certain way that we walk day by day. There is a way that relates to the world, how we interact with the world and whether we're living the antithesis or walking along with them. Examine your way, how you are living in the world. And there's a way as a citizen of the country, underneath the government that we have and the laws and a citizen even of the world. What is your way in life? search these ways. The word search is a very strong word. Search diligently. Seek something diligently. The word is used in the book of Proverbs when we are exhorted to seek wisdom. Seek wisdom. Search for her as for hid treasure. Now that gives you an idea that this is not a mere Quick glance at something, but it is a digging for something, searching. As servants of Joseph were sent after his brothers after they had left Egypt with corn, and they made a diligent search for the cup of Joseph until they found it in the sack. of Benjamin. They made a diligent search. That's the word used in the text. It means to hunt for something until you find it, until you discover it. It takes diligence. God used this word, in fact, when he said, I will search Jerusalem with candles And the purpose of that was to find every last wicked person and to punish that person. And you have the idea of a man going about with a candle down every street, into every home, into the closets, into every room, searching with candles. Search your ways. Search. and then try. Search for them and then try. To try is to examine carefully and to evaluate something. God uses this word in Deuteronomy chapter 13 when he says, if you hear of iniquity in Israel, when you go into the land of Canaan, you hear about some iniquity. Then Deuteronomy 13, verse 14 says, And if it be truth and the thing certain that such abomination is wrought among you, then thou shalt surely smite the inhabitants of that city with the edge of the sword. God says in Jeremiah chapter 17, I, the Lord, search the heart. I try the reins. And this is the word used in Psalm 139, which we will sing later, where the psalmist says, search me, O God, and try and know my heart. Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and see if there be any wicked way in me. Show me any wickedness in my heart. This is a thorough search. We will not be satisfied with a mere external look at our life and come to the table and say, well, I haven't broken any major laws in the country. The elders have not called me about any sin, so everything is fine in my life. That's not the kind of searching and trying that must be done. Search and then evaluate. You think of a man, think of an old man, a well-to-do man who has really lost track of all that he owns, and he says, I want you, he hires some people to, I want you to search out everything I own. Look through my house, look through my bank accounts, look at my safety deposit, look at all my possessions, gather all that I own, list them all here, so you've searched them all out, and now evaluate them. What's the value of these things? What can be tossed away? And what's of tremendous value in all the things that I own? Search and try. So how do we do that? How do we do that? To search them out. To search out your ways. You might say, really, do I need to do that? I know what my life is like. I have a regular routine. I get up and I do this, I do that. This is my life. There isn't anything major or hidden about my life. And yet the reality is that we do a lot of things by habit without really thinking them through. Why? Why am I doing this? Where is this path headed? Is this the direction that it ought to be going? Search. Search and try is what God tells us to do in our families as a father. How am I living with my wife? How am I treating her? In love, respect, honor? How am I raising my children? Am I instructing them? What message am I leaving my children? As a wife, how am I living with my husband? Am I honoring my husband? or maybe usurping some of His authority. Am I giving myself to my family? Am I busy instructing the children that God has given? As a child, what are my activities like? How am I spending my time? What's the point of my life? What direction is it headed? As a child, as a young person, how am I living in my home with my siblings? Where's my life going? As a worker, how am I working? Working only to please men, working hard when they're around, and then lazy and dishonest the rest of the time? How am I interacting with fellow employees? Is my light shining? Do they know even that I'm a Christian? Can they see that in what I say and how I live and what I'm talking about on Monday morning? As they're talking about their carousing and their parties, what am I talking about? Search my way. Evaluate my ways. My recreation. What is it? How much time am I spending on that? What's important in my life? What am I reading? As a member of the congregation, what's my way here? Is this a congregation that I love to serve that I'm looking for a way? How can I serve other members of this congregation? Do I love to come and worship here in this congregation? What is my way here? in the church? What about my money? How am I spending it? Am I a good steward of the things that God has given to me? Are my possessions so important that that's my life, seeking the things of this world? Or are they only a means that I can use to serve God? What's my life like? What's my way like with regard to my possessions? Look at my ways, my responsibilities before God, in the family, as a member of the church. What are my ways? Get to the heart of it. A mere external show, looking at the outside, what everybody else sees, that will not benefit you and me. We need to search, search, dig into the ways of our life and then evaluate those ways. To examine them means to take stock what's important in our life, to evaluate. To do that, you understand, we're going to have to use the Word of God. The law of God is the first clear revelation. This is the righteous standard that God sets before us. As we said at the beginning, Proverbs warns us The way of every man seems right in his own eyes. So if I'm just going to evaluate my life by my standards, I will say it looks fine. Nothing to change here. We can justify anything that we want to. This just feels right. Or what's wrong with it? Or well, yeah, but so and so look at what that person is doing. and then justify what we are doing. But there is a standard. God's Word is a standard of what's right and what is wrong. This is what we must use to shine a light upon our life from the Word of God and then use that as a standard of right and wrong. And then remember that the Word of God requires perfection. Not that we be just a dad who does some good things in the family, but that we are perfect. That we give perfect wisdom, a perfect example, The Word of God is not satisfied with a good effort. It requires perfection of us as fathers, as mothers, as children, as church members, what we're doing with our time, what we're doing with our money. The Word of God demands perfection, absolute perfection. It sets before us principles, of course, that should be the guiding principles of our life. Love God with all your being. Love your neighbor as you love yourself. That gives you the motive. Why am I doing this? Is it because I love God? Evaluate your ways. Is this my motive? The glory of God, is that the goal that I have for this activity in my life? How do our ways measure up to the Scripture? That's what we must do. Search, gather them together, look at them, evaluate them on the basis of Scripture and say, what does the Bible say about my life? Evaluate the direction. Is it toward God? Is that what we're aiming for? A pathway is always going somewhere. There's a direction to a pathway. Is it toward God or toward sin? What's the purpose? What do we want to accomplish with this activity or that in our life? This is what the text is calling us to do. A thorough examination of our ways. And the purpose is to see where we need to turn. That's exactly what the text says is going to happen here. Let us search and try our ways and then turn. Turn again unto the Lord. Jeremiah assumes that that will be the result of our searching our ways and trying them, evaluating them, that we will need to turn. He assumes, or rather better, he knows that. He's lived in Israel his whole life. He's been a prophet in Israel and all of his life as a prophet. He has beheld the horrible wickedness, the idolatry of Israel. He rebuked them for their idolatry. He rebuked them for their adultery and their lies and their stealing, their violation of every commandment, the Sabbath days that were wasted. He called them. He warned them. He told them to repent, put away your idols, worship God with a true heart, not with a outward show. He knows. But he knows not only Israel. He knows himself. Keep that in mind. Let us search. Let us try. Let us turn. Jeremiah doesn't say, you people need to search, you people need to try, you people need to turn, because he knows his own heart. He knows his own life. Using the New Testament language, he would say with the Apostle Paul, I am the chief of sinners. What of us? Will we need to turn? Can we assume that if we do a thorough examination of our ways in this week that we, in fact, will arrive at the same conclusion, I need to turn? Are there sins against which you have been warned and you have not forsaken them? Do we not have our idols? Do we not have the idols of materialism, of pride? Is it not so that every single commandment, when we went through the law and the Heidelberg Catechism, that every single one of the commandments accused us and said, you only have a small beginning. of the new obedience? Earthly mindedness, the sin of wasting our time, the sin of pursuing the world's entertainment, is that not a besetting sin? As a seminary professor, we warned the students When you go into a congregation, you will see sin and you will preach. Faithful minister will preach about sin and condemn sin and warn people and call people to repentance. But do not expect that after you have dealt with this sin and clearly set out with the sinfulness of it and now they must turn aside from it that now that sin is going to disappear it will not and it will not disappear because we all have a sinful nature and that sinful nature will be with us till the day we die and that sinful nature is powerful it's strong it's pulling us and it's encouraging us in the ways of transgression It will always be something to fight against. This is a congregation made up of sinners. Elect sinners, justified sinners, redeemed in the blood of Jesus Christ. You have the Holy Spirit. But we are all still sinners. Not merely what we do, that's what we are. We are sinners. And Jeremiah knew the same. This was true of Israel. They would need to turn, and that's true of this congregation. We need to turn unto the Lord. Every sin is a departure, you see. Every single sin is a turning away from God towards sin. And there is, therefore, this constant need to evaluate our life and then turn back. Turn back. Turn away from sin. God demands this. Every single day of our life, He says to you and to me, Put away that sin. Turn away from that. Turn unto me. Live unto me. Let no one think that we may come to God and come to the table of the Lord with unrepentant sin. We must search. We must try. We must not have the idea, well, my life is my business. That's the way things are in America. Why are you poking your nose into my business? Leave it alone. None of your business. My life is my own. But that's not the Bible. We must turn away from sin, and that means repenting. Sorrowing for sin, seeing the horribleness of it, that it's not merely a sin against others, though it may be terrible against others, but it's always a sin against God. It's always an offense against Him. That sin, a terrible offense against the God who not only has created us, but our Father in heaven who loves us, and we sin against Him. To see that we are guilty, to see that we are worthy of being cast away from Him, of being cast into hell. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. And then after repentance, it's a vow. I will, with all of my heart, try to forsake every evil way. No pet sins may be covered up and left unturned. Nothing may be conveniently left out and say, well, most of my life is okay. Search your ways. Let us search our ways. Every sin that we see, as we examine ourselves, must be rooted out. Whether we love that sin or whether we hate that sin, it must be rooted out of our life. That's our goal. Turning away from sin, repenting, hating it, and then turning unto the Lord. To turn to the Lord means simply to face Him. Face Him. to set our life, to set our mind, to set our goals toward Him and not to the things that our flesh desires. It includes many things. If you face God, it means you trust Him. You trust Him. He is my Father for Jesus' sake. I trust Him. I love Him with my whole heart. I seek Him. I worship Him. I sing His praises. I pray to Him alone. And I delight in that. Essentially what we're seeking is fellowship with God. We delight in fellowship with God. Understand that it isn't that our turning away from sin and turning to God has somehow earned anything. That's not why we have fellowship with God. We have fellowship with God only because of Jesus Christ, because he earned that, because he gives us the right to have fellowship with him. But we seek that. We delight in that. That's what God calls us to do. As a wife that departs from her husband and is called, come back. Come back to your husband. Seek fellowship with him. Enjoy love and fellowship with your husband again. God says, come back to me. Enjoy life, fellowship with God. The text emphasizes that this cannot be a halfway measure. This must be a complete turning. When the text says, turn again to the Lord, it means even as far as a complete turning unto the Lord is the idea of the text. Beloved, you know that. You know what your relationship is with God. Whether it's close, intimate, Whether you really enjoy singing praises to Him, reading His Word, calling upon Him in prayer, or whether those are things that are mere formalities, we all know that. Just as we know it, if you think of somebody in the congregation, immediately within your own mind, There is a feeling of joy and warmth and a delight to be with that person, or there is a coolness toward that person where you don't really enjoy being in that person's presence. Well, what is it with God? Warmth? Love? Desire to be with him? Or a coolness? Let us turn unto the Lord. with all our hearts, with all our thoughts, with all our lives. The Lord's Supper is a time for that. It's a time when we come together, when we sit down at the table of the Lord and we fellowship with God. That's what this is about. And that's why we're called to turn to Him again. The Catechism speaks of a daily conversion, a daily turning. That's what this text is about too. Daily turning from sin unto the Lord. Turn again. But will He receive us? When we turn away from Him constantly, turn toward sin, toward the world, toward materialism, toward our own glory, and then have to be turned back again, will He receive us? And the implication of the text is He most definitely will receive us. That's implied even by the fact that Jeremiah would call Israel so horribly chastened by the Lord. The fact that he would call them back to the Lord implies, and he will receive you. But that is sealed by the fact that he says, turn again to the Lord. All capital letters. Turn again to Jehovah. There's our confidence. Jehovah is the I Am, the God that changes not. Malachi, God, through the prophet Malachi, would exactly say that. I am the Lord, Jehovah. I change not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. He does not change. He has loved us from all eternity. That cannot change. Though he may chasten, as he has the people of Israel so severely, his love never changes. Absolutely not. The love that a father has for a child does not change, even though that child has walked far away, though there is a terrible punishment that is necessary even, the love does not change. God's love is abiding. God loves us yesterday and today and forever. A beautiful expression of that is He says through Isaiah, can a woman forget her sucking child? And then he says, well, that could happen. That could actually happen, that a mother would forget her own infant baby, but I will never forget you. He promises. Over and again, he promises. The Bible knows that we have a hesitancy of coming back to God when we have sinned so often against Him. And so the Bible has promise after promise after promise. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Or seek ye the Lord, call ye upon Him, Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thought, and return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy and abundantly pardon. Turn again. Let us turn again. And now keep in mind that anyone who turns unto the Lord has been turned by God to him. Jeremiah says that in Jeremiah 31 18. Turn thou me and I shall be turned. God works that sorrow of heart. God works that desire. God turns us unto him and we just live out of that. So when we have been turned by God and we are facing him, you can be absolutely sure he will receive us. He sees His work in us turning unto Him and He delights in His own work. You don't have to be in any way hesitant. And we know that, of course, because God has ordained salvation from all the sin that so easily besets us, that attractiveness of sin. He has determined to save us from it and from the power of sin through Jesus Christ. Because God cannot abide with sin. He cannot. He hates the workers of iniquity. Then unholy man will not have mercy, but wrath will come upon that man. And therefore God had to take away our sins, take them off from us and put them on Jesus Christ and have Jesus pay for those sins so that they are removed from our account. Jesus did that. He took our guilt. He took the punishment of our sin. And then he deliberately, rather he took away all our deliberate sins, our times when we chose to walk in iniquity. He took away our sin of a lack of zeal for God and for holy things. He took away our spiritual laziness. He took away our refusing to walk in obedience as parents, as children. as members of the church, and he paid for that. Then, not only did he remove the guilt, but he fulfilled the righteous obedience by a deliberate walk, keeping every commandment in our place so that he earned a righteousness by which we can stand before God. His righteousness. That's the only hope for a sinner. That's the only hope of Israel. Israel had to look ahead in hope of the promise of a Messiah. We can look back and say, there it is. There's the work of Jesus. He did pay for my sins. He did earn a righteousness for me. And then we know That's why God will receive us. He will. Every time. Beautiful promises come on to me all ye that labor and are heavy laden. I will give you rest. Draw near unto me. And I will draw near. Unto you. The promise of the Psalmist in Psalm 32 when he languished under the heavy hand of God when he did not confess his sins, but as soon as he confessed them, thou forgavest me. That's our experience, isn't it? When we confess those sins, God forgives. Every time. I'm thankful that we can approach the Lord's Supper that way. not with fear and trembling. Oh, if there are sins which we love and will not depart from, if we examine our life superficially and come to the table of the Lord loaded with all kinds of guilt, we eat and drink judgment to ourselves. That's a terrible thing. But come, searching trying, turning as Jesus commands. Take, he says, eat, this is my body broken for you. This is my cup, drink ye all of it. The cup, the blood of the New Testament for the remission of sins, he assures us. You are welcome. at this table. So hear the Word of God, search diligently, try our ways, and turn again unto the Lord. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we thank Thee for the exhortation and for the assurance and for the work of the Holy Spirit that applies such a word to our hearts. Lord, it is painful for us to see our own lives, and most difficult to turn away from our own sins. But turn thou us, and we shall be turned. We thank thee for the great, glorious salvation that is ours in Jesus. In whose name we pray, amen. We sing of our desire for God to examine us in Psalter number 383. In stanza five, search me, O God, my heart discern. Try me, my inmost thought to learn. And lead me, if in sin I stray, to choose the everlasting way. We sang all the stanzas, 383. Thy wisdom, Lord, and right shall be. I give my maker thankful praise, whose wondrous ♪ To thee be I was brought ♪ ♪ My life is seen in thy cross ♪ ♪ My life in all its perfect plan ♪ ♪ What order am I in? ♪ More precious are to me than gold, my views of them infinity. Away with you! ♪ From me thy sinners turn away ♪ ♪ Facing the depths of ink divine ♪ ♪ I come, God's help, and peace has come ♪ Climbing high in those clouds to learn, And in the air can sail I spray, To choose the air Praise ye the Lord, ye hosts of old, in yonder heav'nly high. Then blast the Lord, ye saints below, who in this place The Lord bless thee and keep thee. The Lord make his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee. The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee. and give thee peace. Amen.