Christ as your Savior and Lord. And you say, yes. And that man says, on your confession of faith, I now baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. And they put you down into the water and bring you back up again. Two simple statements. In total, they add up to the same number of letters. I do is three letters, and yes is three letters. And yet they're life-changing statements. They mark a radical difference. But how often do we make some of those great life-changing pronouncements in some form of ignorance, only to discover later on that there is so much more to it, and there's so much more in those words than we even thought possible, like the words, I do. And then you discover about a year later, there's a lot more to marriage than just wedding ceremonies and flowers and rings and bridesmaids and all that other stuff. And there is so much more packed into those little words. I do, or I will, than we ever thought possible. How often do we say one thing and our lives say something entirely different? Well, this morning and next week and maybe even the week after, I want to unpack as much as I can from the meaning of one word from this text. And you can already guess what the word is. You are the Christ. What does he mean by that incredibly powerful, simple word, Christ? I want to unpack also, because it's so tightly linked to it, what does it mean to call him the Christ? What does it mean for us to call ourselves Christians? Same root word, same basic idea, and same basic meaning, and they're tied together. And I want us to think very hard this week and next week, and maybe even the week after, about what it means to call ourselves a Christian. They're linked together. So I want to set before you got your note sheet in the little outline in the folder there. And I'll give you four things. And they're over the two weeks or three weeks. Number one, Jesus is the Christ, the anointed of God. Number two, Jesus is the Christ, the anointed prophet of God. Number three, Jesus is the Christ, the anointed high priest of God. And number four, Jesus is the Christ, the anointed king of kings. Two of those today, the first two. One of those next week. I had the incredible benefit this last semester of doing Christology in one class and the book of Hebrews in another class. And if you know anything about Christology and Hebrews, they marry together unbelievably well. And I went from one class to another just kind of in a whirlwind of learning all this stuff. I kind of knew some of it before, but not all of it. And part of me wants to just spend well, an hour unpacking 26 hours of lectures and about 200-300 hours of study into all of what that means. Because it's so rich and it's so good and it's stuff that we as believers need to chew on and get down to understand the Lord Jesus better and understand how it is that we live this life more pleasing to him. Well, the situation in front of us is fairly simple. They're walking along the road. Jesus turns around. In those days, it was customary for the master to walk at the head of the group, and the rest of the disciples to kind of follow behind him. So I'm wondering, as he walked along, he sort of turned around and stopped, and they all kind of gathered around as he stood there, and he asked them the questions. Who do people say that I am? Elijah, one of the prophets, maybe John the Baptist, risen from the dead. And they're offering different questions. And in the Greek text, it doesn't pick up in my NSB, and I added a word there. If you were watching closely, you would have noticed I said it. He says, but you, now that's not in the NSB, but it's actually in the Greek. But you, who do you say that I am? And he puts that question to us. And just like I said last week, as disciples of Jesus Christ, as readers of the book, we put ourselves into the sandals of the disciples. And when Jesus puts out a question like that, we are compelled with them to answer the question. And Peter, as usual, opens his mouth and answers on behalf of the disciples. Now we know from the book of Matthew that Jesus adds some information about his answer. Here it just simply says, Peter said, you are the Christ. And Jesus came back in the book of Matthew and says, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father in heaven. So it was something that he was given by God. But we're not told that here, but we know from the other gospels that it happened. What does that mean? You are the Christ. It literally means you are the anointed of God. Now, we have to understand a little bit of the Old Testament background and the practice there. And what it does is, and we'll look at it, is it sets us up to understand better what Peter was saying and the great wealth of meaning and importance of that simple statement for all of us. The idea and practice of anointing comes from the Old Testament. And being the anointed was the mark of an office. For example, Aaron was the high priest of the Levitical priesthood, and he was anointed with the holy anointing oil. They came out and they put all these beautiful embroidered robes on him, and they had stones on the shoulders and stones all down his breast piece, and he had like a pocket where there was two stones, the urim and the thummim for making decisions, and he had this beautiful crown and turban on his head, and they took this fragrant oil, the special mixture and blend of oil and spices that would have been very heavily perfumed. And they poured it on his head. And the Bible describes how it ran down his turban and down his beard and onto his clothes and down onto the ground or the floor beneath him. And everywhere that Aaron walked. Who here likes perfume? Some of the ladies just smiled. Oh, Rick likes perfume too, we'll go with that. I was at somewhere the other day and this person walked by, I can't remember if it was a guy or a girl, and they were wearing some kind of fragrance. You know how some fragrances are subtle and light and they're nice. Some fragrances are more like a brick wall. Well, this one was like a brick wall. It was so strong, I almost wanted to bend around the person I walked by. Aaron would have walked back into the temple tabernacle enclosure, not temple tabernacle, and everywhere he walked, the wafting aroma would have carried and you would have been able to smell him coming and the smell of that sweet incense of laced oil, the mixture would have been all over him and would have exuded everywhere he goes. And what we have in that is an incredible picture, illustration of what it means to have a person who is filled with the Holy Spirit and the impact, the influence of that Holy Spirit makes on everybody around them. Aaron was anointed with the oil. Saul and David, the first two kings, were anointed by Samuel in front of their families, and later before the whole nation. That public anointing, the pouring of oil, marked them and qualified them and made them recognizable, this is the man that governs and rules for God. He was anointed with the holy anointing oil. The Old Testament prophets, Micah and Ezekiel and Isaiah, and some of those spoke about being filled with the spirit and having the spirit of the Lord come upon them for their ministry. Isaiah, you remembered, spoke in prophecy about the Lord Jesus. He said, the spirit of the Lord has anointed me to preach the gospel and do all these things. And Jesus walks into the synagogue on the morning after his temptation, I believe it is, and he sits down and he reads that scripture and he says, today, This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. What's he saying? I have the anointing of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the high priest, sorry, was to be a spirit filled man of God. The king was to be a spirit filled man of God. The prophet who spoke and preached the message of God to the people of God was to be a spirit filled man of God. The anointing with the oil is an external physical symbol of what should always be an internal positive reality. But listen, the external dousing with the oil without the internal presence of the Holy Spirit is absolutely pointless. It's a symbol with no reality behind it. Saul the king, he was anointed to be the king. Occasionally the spirit of God came upon him and the Bible describes how he lay on the ground naked and prophesied. And they had a little proverb, it's Saul too among the prophets as they watched him doing this. But later in his life, we know from Saul's disobedience that the spirit of God was taken from him, and he went half mad. And they used to bring David to play the sweet songs on his version of a guitar, I guess, a zither or a lyre. And he would play these songs, and the peace from God would come over him. At the end of his days, he wound up committing spiritism and other kinds of occult activity, because the spirit of God had left him. Why do you think David prayed? Take not thy Holy Spirit from me, because he knew what it was to be in that or see it from Saul's life to be one who has lost the Spirit of God. So the dowsing on the outside was only an external picture of an internal reality. Now, here in our text, Peter says to him, you are the Christ. The word Christos, it's a Greek word used to translate the Hebrew from Messiah into Greek, which is Christos. It means the anointed one. He is not merely one of many anointed. He is the one. Peter says, you are the Christ. And by doing that, he indicates the qualitativeness of Jesus state as the anointed of God. All of the men could be anointed of God. That was so, but only as fallen sinners redeemed by the grace of God. But Jesus alone is God. He is the perfect God, man, man and God perfectly joined together what they call the hypostatic union inextricably tied together without either nature invading or involving the other one. But they're tied together, and Jesus is the anointed of God. It was the mark of all his qualifications to save his people. Now, saving his people required three basic roles, and we've already talked about them. The priest, the prophet, and the king. And in the Old Testament, those highly significant roles were accompanied with an anointing showing their significance as intermediary roles between God and his people. The prophet, he was anointed to be the representative God to the people. He was to speak to God to the... Sorry, he was to speak for God to the people. He was to reveal the word of God to the people. What's the Bible say in Hebrews chapter one? In time past, in various ways, God spoke to the fathers in the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us. And the word there, it shouldn't be by or in. It's more like spoken to us, son. It's like, say, I speak English. God spoke the son to us. So Jesus was the full and complete revelation of God. Everything we want to know and see about God was all there given to us in the person of Christ. He was the great prophet speaking to his people. The high priest was anointed to be the representative of the people to God. You remember the scene outside the tabernacle, the man who had sinned would come along and he'd have his rope and his little cough on the end of the rope and the cough would be all perfect. And he would come up to the priest and he would lay his hands on the head of that animal and he would confess his sins, take a knife and pull the head of the animal up and he would cut the throat of the animal and the priest would catch the blood underneath in a bowl and the blood would be taken and sprinkle on the altar and they would cut that animal up. And what the priest was doing is he was representing that man to God. So as the prophet represents God to man, so the priest represents man to God. The king is a bit different again. He was anointed to show that he was to lead and rule the people of God as God's representative man. In the Old Testament, there's an interesting little dynamic going on. God often dealt with and judged the people on the basis of how that king was living. So a wicked king brought the whole nation to sin, and a godly king, in a sense, brought the whole nation to righteousness, and God would deal with the people often on the basis of how that king was living, either righteous or godly. Remember, Peter says in verse 29, you are the Christ. Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit, and we can see that anointing in his life. Now, just a little side note, I'm going to go through a lot of texts of scripture and a lot of points. I'm going to go through it fairly quickly. I don't want you to think I'm very smart, because most of you already know that, so don't worry about it. But for those of you who don't know it, I'll tell you right now, I use some dictionary articles off my computer to pull all these little texts together. It would take me probably a month to go through and figure all these things out and line them all up. I'm not that smart. I don't have that much time. So I don't want to take credit where it's not due for me to take it. That's how I came up with it, all right? Mark chapter 1, verses 9 and 10, at Jesus' baptism, He was filled with the Holy Spirit who descended in the form of a dove and alighted upon Him, landed on Him. Prior to that, He is always God. There is a heretical idea out there that says that Jesus only became God at His baptism when the Holy Spirit came on Him. No, it's not right. It's heresy. Jesus always was God, but the Spirit of God came on Him at that moment. In Luke chapter 4 and verse 1, after Jesus' baptism, the Bible says that he was led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. Actually, the word can be rendered driven. So he was a man, the God-man, who is in complete and total submission to the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of God drove him into the wilderness to be tempted. In Luke 4 and verse 14, after his temptation, Jesus returned to Galilee, the Bible says, in the power of the Holy Spirit. He was led, he was filled, he was in submission to the Holy Spirit. John 1, verses 35 to 41, you know that scene? John the Baptist on the shores of the Jordan River, he's baptizing people, and all of a sudden, Jesus comes along, walking along the beach, and what does John say? Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. A few verses later, the disciples are there again, and Jesus comes walking along again, and John says something a bit different. He says, this one is the Christ. And the disciples who are with John get out from behind John, they go over and they start following Jesus. And wherever Jesus goes, they're walking behind him. The disciples were following Jesus because he had been identified as the Christ, the anointed of God. In Mark 1 24, the demons testify. I know who you are. You are the holy one of Israel. And Jesus makes him be silent. And what they're saying in their testimony is you are one who is marked by the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life. Even more than that, you are God. And that's why Jesus tells him to be quiet. He doesn't want to accept an unclean testimony from those demons. In Mark, I'm sorry, Matthew 26 in verse 63, the whole end of Jesus' life all comes to this major culminating point, and they're standing there and all the Sanhedrin's all gathered around, and Jesus in the middle, and they're all looking at him, and finally the high priest says, I adjure you, which means, it's like saying, on pain of death, you will tell me the truth. Tell us, are you the Christ, the son of the blessed one? And Jesus looks at him and says, it is as you say. It's the closest thing in all the gospels to an outright full on declaration by Jesus. I am God. He's shown it. He's displayed it. He's put it forward in all kinds of different ways. But as far as a spoken statement, that's the closest thing to it. And what he's saying is, I am the anointed of God, the son of the blessed one. I am the son of God filled with the spirit of God. Jesus is the Christ. We see that evidence all through scripture, particularly looking for evidence of this, look through Luke's gospel. And then as you read into Acts, the same idea of the spirits of God's influence and filling and power and presence flows right out of Luke and all the way through the book of Acts and the early believers. Speaking of them, The early church fully recognized who Jesus was. In 1 Corinthians 1.23, the early church preached Jesus as the Christ, the anointed of God, the one full of the Holy Spirit. In 1 John 5 and verse 1, this is the closest thing to a kind of a confessional statement about the Christ. It says this, whoever believes Jesus is the Christ is born of God. What's he saying? You believe that Jesus is the anointed one of God, full of the Holy Spirit. You believe that in full reality, then you are born of God. You are a believer. You are saved. Now, having said all of that, what kind of personal application are we going to draw from that? Listen, what did Jesus ask them? Who do you say? Who do people say that I am? Mouth. What is a testimony of your mouth, your words, and your lips this morning? I think everybody in the room who's a believer would say, I have no problem in saying that Jesus is the Christ. I'm happy to declare that from the biggest microphone on the highest mountain. Let me ask another question. What does your life say? Who is Jesus by the testimony of your life? Truly believe in a biblical sense is not merely what you say. To truly believe in a biblical sense is the testimony of your life, your actions, your habits, your reactions, and so on. How do you know what a man truly believes? Examine his actions and his habits, and you will discover very quickly what he truly believes. It's one thing to stand up here in a pulpit and a Bible and all of you there. and make great declarations. Not hard at all. But what does my life say? What is the testimony of your lifestyle this morning? Do your actions, your habits, your words in silent, profound, undeniable witness declare the same thing as your words do? Excuse me. Jesus is the Christ. We are called Christians, little Christ, Christ's people. We are the little anointed ones. That's what that means. So when you say, I am a Christian, you are claiming I am just like Christ. I am anointed with the Holy Spirit just like he is. It means the same thing. Just as surely as our Savior is filled with the Holy Spirit, so also are we to be. Just as Jesus was led by the Holy Spirit, so we are to be led and to live by the Holy Spirit. Romans 8, Galatians 5, they say the same thing in much more unpacked terminology. We are to live our lives in the power and the filling of the Holy Spirit. Jesus, sorry, just as Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit, so we are to be filled with the Holy Spirit. Ephesians 5.18, what's it say? Do not be drunk with wine wherein is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit. That's what the Bible says. Just as Jesus was anointed by the Holy Spirit, so we also are to have an anointing from the Holy Spirit. 1 John 2.20 talks about the, now if you have a King James Bible, you'll pick it up right away, the unction. Who's ever heard of that word, the unction of the Holy Spirit? One person, a few people putting their hand up, yeah. I used to hear it a lot when I was a young kid, but now I use NASB, they don't have the word unction in there. But you know what? This is a side note, okay? The old men, the old believers, the old preachers, used to talk about the unction of the Holy Spirit on their ministry, the anointing of the Spirit of God. I have a great interest in the real understanding of what it means to live to be filled with the Holy Spirit. I read the old men, John Owen, Spurgeon, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, the Puritans, those guys, great old guys, and they spoke of these things in much stronger language than we modern-day, conservative, evangelical, straight-laced people do. and sad. Listen, they did not in any way, shape or mean, shape or way mean a disorderly, chaotic craziness in mind. They had nothing like that in mind. These men were godly, serious, dignified men who believed and spoke of the Holy Spirit falling on men and women, and great things happening. I'm not talking about ecstatic weirdnesses, but great Holy Spirit revival things happened. Real revival that doesn't fade after a few hours, a few days, or a few weeks. Real revival where whole communities are radically changed. I hear stories about the Great Awakening in America, and some of the ones over in England, when preachers would walk through. And where there used to be darkened houses at five in the morning, they said, you walk through these little villages, and every house was a light on. and you could see them in the house, bent over their Bibles, reading and studying early in the morning before they went off to the fields and the factories and so on. Whole communities changed where pubs and brothels went out of business because the customers were all busy in church with their Bibles. Revivals that changed areas radically and long lasting. We hear about revivals going through towns and ministries of tent meetings and so on. And so many hundreds come to know the Lord. At the end of that, three weeks later, the churches haven't grown by one single person. That's not a revival. That's just emotional build up, lift up. I'm talking about these men were interested in real Holy Spirit driven revival. They believed it came through two things. The anointing of the Holy Spirit that produced great preaching and great prayer. And that's why I believe so strongly in both of those two things. Great preaching and great prayer. How are we going to see revival? A program? A big fancy banner? Something like that? No. Real revival comes through great preaching. and great dedication to prayer. That's a side note, I know, but listen, listen. The Christian life is to be one that is marked by the presence of the Holy Spirit. In John 16, verse 8, the Christian is one who is convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit and led to repentance. In John 14, verse 26, the Christian is one who is taught the truth by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God. In Ephesians 1.13, the Christian is one who is sealed by the Holy Spirit. It marks and identifies us as Christians, anointed ones, like a branding mark that identifies us to all that we belong to Christ, like a wedding ring. that I wear around that marks everybody. I belong to Heather. I belong to somebody else. The presence of the Spirit of God in us is to mark us out as belonging to somebody else. In Galatians 5, the Christian is one who bears the fruit, the outworking of the Holy Spirit's presence in his life. His life bears evidence of the presence, the power, and the submission he has to the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 13 and 14, The Christian is one who exercises the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Listen, not for the glorification of the believer himself. Anyone that uses those gifts to draw attention to themselves is prideful and his effectiveness in ministry is almost nullified. They use their gift to rob God of glory. Listen, God gave us those spiritual gifts for the edification, the building up of other believers, but for the preaching and also for the preaching of the gospel to unbelievers. In 1st John 5 1, he says, Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. He is a Christian. Who do you say this morning that Jesus is? What is your life say? Are you living your life who is one who is anointed and filled with the Holy Spirit? Are you living your life as one whose every thought, word, deed, and action is governed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life? And I won't even hesitate to say, I don't see it in my life. The reality is that the sin creeps into our lives and begins to grieve the influence and hinder the influence of the Spirit of God in my life. And I can't live the way that I should. It will happen all through our Christian lives. But what do we do about it? We let it take root, let it fester, let it become a great problem. So all we are is walking around and very prideful people talking about how great we are. What a horror show. What a sham. We're men and women who are filled with the Spirit of God and we take care of and we deal with those things that grieve the Spirit of God and hinder His working in our lives. We deal with them. We put away that sin. We confess and seek forgiveness from the living God because of those things. We have been sealed with the Holy Spirit as the enabling, empowering presence of God in us. If you truly believe that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus is God's son, your savior, then plead with him to help you see what is going on in your life that needs to be dealt with. And for some of us, that's a conversation you need to have not with me, not with your wife or your husband or your kids or your mom and dad, but you with God one on one face to face, humbling yourself and tearing down those walls that are built up Seek God's mercy and his forgiveness. Allow the Spirit of God to work in your life and bring about repentance and restoration. Jesus is the Christ, the anointed of God. The next point is lengthy, and so I'm somewhat inclined to let it just stop there and take our time, and we're gonna take some time in communion. But before I do that, What I wanna do, I wanna take and just show you a few things in the book of Mark. Take your Bibles and flip back to the book of Mark in chapter one. Notice how Mark begins the book, the very first verse. He says this, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God, and he starts there. And he works all his way from Mark chapter 1, and he unpacks and explains and displays in miracle after miracle and teaching after teaching, and he shows them Jesus is the Christ. We saw last week in Mark chapter 8 how he said, don't you see? Don't you get it? Don't you understand? And then there's a parable of the man who was born blind, or a blind man in Bethsaida. And they bring him to Jesus, and he spits on his eyes and lays his hand in the man's eyes. And he says, do you see anything? And he's looking up saying, I see men, but I see them like trees walking around. And it's a mark to show us that his vision was slowly clearing. He didn't have full vision right away. And it was an illustration, like I said last week, of the disciples' hearts and their slowness to believe. And now you land this passage here. And he asked them again, who do you say that I am? And they give him this an answer. And we know it's because of the spirit of God's influence in those disciples life that that answer comes. And from this point onwards, you see right away in verse 31, he begins to tell them about his suffering and his death. Now that they've sort of got that handle on what it means, even though Peter didn't get it fully, he thought the Christ, the son of the living God and all that meant more than just It meant nothing to do with the death. It meant ruling and reigning and power, wiping out the Romans, reestablishing David's throne, all of that stuff together. He didn't get it yet. But Jesus now begins to unpack repeatedly from Mark chapter 8 all the way to Mark chapter 16, the reality of his suffering and his death. And finally, he hits Mark chapter 16. We know the story of Jesus' suffering and his crucifixion. I want to read in verse 33 to verse 41. Well-known passage. You know the story. When the sixth hour came, darkness fell over the whole land until the ninth hour. This is Mark 15, verse 34. At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani, which is translated, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And when some of the bystanders heard it, they began saying, behold, he is calling for Elijah. And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave him a drink and said, let us see whether Elijah will come down to take him down. And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last, and the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. And when the centurion who was standing right in front of him saw the way he breathed his last, he said, truly, this man was the Son of God. You see what Mark does? In the very beginning of the gospel, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, he hits Mark. What does Mark say? You are the Christ. He goes all the way to the end. He finishes the statement off. This man is the Son of God. And the whole book is given to unpack and explain Jesus as the anointed of God, the Son of God, the one who came to save us from our sin, to save us from the wrath of God, which is to come. And even though Peter had some understanding, some idea of who Jesus was that moment, standing there on the roadway. And he could say, you are the Christ. It isn't until they stand there at the bottom of a cross and look up to see Jesus that they'll fully understand who he is. The centurion can stand there and look up and say, this man, there's nothing like this man. You know the story of the two robbers staying there on either side, not staying there, crucified there. The way the Bible describes the scene, you put all the different accounts of the gospels together, you see, first of all, they're both accusing him. They're both railing against him. Now, you understand, I think I've told you before, but in order to speak on the cross, because of the way the nails worked in the hands and the feet and the paralysis it caused in the arms and the upper chest muscles, in order to breathe out, what you had to do was put your feet and push down the nails in your feet and lift up on your arms to relieve the tension so the muscles in your chest could actually push the air out. So every time they use their voices to rail against the Son of God, they had to push down and say, who do you think you are kind of thing? Set us free to stuff like that. And they're shouting, they're using all their energy and excruciating pain, and they're directing the full weight of their anger and their frustration and their outrage at Jesus and Jesus in the middle. One of the things that Jesus says, We know one of them was, he looked down and he saw them and he said, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they're doing. And I can see the centurion looking up and hearing those kind of words. And he pushed down the nails and the hands and feet to get air and to be able to speak again. And he said to the woman, behold your son. And to John, behold your mother. He took care of his mother on the cross and he sunk back down again in terrible pain. In order to breathe, it would be a constant writhing motion up and down and up and down on the cross in order to be able to breathe. And what they basically did was they died by suffocation. While they could breathe in, they could not breathe out. And they just simply expired that way. And the centurion at the bottom of the cross, surrounded by blood and all the massive crucifixionists standing there looking up at him. And Jesus does not respond like the other ones. And one of them finally, I think the truth kind of sunk through his head as he's watching Jesus. And finally he looks at him and he says to his friend, what are you doing? We are justly condemned. We stand here, we hang here, sorry, on a cross. We're suffering and dying for our sin. But this man, he probably didn't point, but this man has done nothing wrong. And then he turned toward Jesus and he said, Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom. The effect, the power of Jesus' silent suffering, his gracious words, on the cross bearing unspeakable agony. Never mind the fact of all those people standing on the bottom of the cross, railing and accusing him and shouting insults at him and mocking him as he hung there in the worst possible place. The influence, the impact of that moment was so great that the thief on the cross looked across at him. Lord, remember me. And we don't understand it much because we don't get the language, but the words, Lord, remember me, more than just mindful. It actually means, Lord, deliver me when you come into your kingdom. Set me free. And Jesus, again, pushes down on his nails and his hands and feet and looks over at the other thief and says, today, I promise you, you will be with me in paradise. And every single one of us are like that thief on the cross. We are suffering, we will suffer justly for our sins. But when we cry out to Jesus for forgiveness, we cry out to him, Lord, deliver me. When you come into your kingdom, we will know the promise of the Lord Jesus who said, today you will be with me in paradise. We come into this place every Sunday morning. and we sit around, we sing the songs, and we pray the prayers, and we listen to a boring sermon, and we read the scriptures, and we wonder what's it all about. If it's just a ritual, go home. Sorry. If you're just doing it because you come every week and you haven't got anything better to do, please go home. You look at me and think, how dare I say that? That's all it is to us. Go home. You missed the point. We come here to worship a God. We come to remember somebody who suffered unspeakable agony for me and for you. We come here to remember somebody who was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke words of truth. We come here to remember somebody who gave himself as a sacrifice for our sin. We come here to remember somebody who is risen and filled again, and he is with the Father in heaven. We come here to remember one who is the King of kings and Lord of lords. We come here to remember Jesus. But let me ask you again, who do you say that Jesus is? Now let me ask you the other half of the question again. What does your life say about who Jesus is? How do your responses and your words bend? Think back over your week. What have your responses and your words been like this week? Have they betrayed the presence of the Holy Spirit or have they betrayed the mark of the flesh that rules and controls your life? And I'm not asking just you, I'm asking me too. I come here to remember the Savior. And the gospel finishes with this great proclamation, truly this man was the son of God. and come to worship. Take your Bibles and just flip over to the book of 1 Corinthians. We read this often, most Sunday mornings. And one of my biggest fears is when we use verses like this for parts of our service on a regular basis, they'll become so familiar that we'll just forget what they really mean. They roll off our tongues. He says, for I receive from the Lord that which I also deliver to you, that the Lord Jesus, in the night in which he was betrayed, he took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. When you see that bread taken and broken apart, remember the Lord Jesus, whose body was given for you, whose flesh and blood was torn and punctured and scarred forever for you. Remember the fact that he is The anointed of God, he is, he has on him. Can you think about it for a sec? The high priest is the highest of all the priests in all of the system. There's thousands of them. The prophet was revered as the greatest of the men of God because they were God's anointed to deliver his message. He was the high priest and he was a prophet. And you know, if that wasn't enough, they gave him one more, which is even better. They said, we'll make you the king of the kings. And he wasn't just born a prince and ascended into his reign as king. He was born the king of kings. And if that wasn't enough, the Bible says in the book of Philippians in chapter two, you remember that great statement of Paul's about the Lord Jesus. I want to read it again. It says there, he emptied himself, taking the form of a bond servant and being made in the likeness of man and being found in appearance as a man. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason, also, God highly exalted him. If it wasn't enough that he would be given the name of the high priest, the prophet, and the king of kings, God has given him a name which is above every other name, that the name of Jesus, every knee will bow of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. That's who we've come to remember. Back in 1 Corinthians again, he says, and when he had given thanks, he broke and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. When you take that piece of bread this morning, I want you to ask yourself, who is Jesus to me? What does my life say about who Jesus is? Before we do that, I want to give you some time to stop and to think and to consider and ask yourself the question, how is my life portraying that testimony? Is it agreeing with it or is it denying it? I want to plead with you also, in the few minutes of silence that we have, that you will take time to ask God for forgiveness of the things that you need to seek forgiveness for. Resolve, in the hardest possible terms, that where you need to put something right with somebody else, go do it. Because every time we allow sin like that to stay in amongst us, we hinder the Spirit of God's moving and working amongst us, and we won't see that revival that we're praying for. We give you some time. Loving Father, we give you thanks again for our Savior. Father, we thank you indeed that he is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Father, we thank you that he lived his life not only as a proclamation of truth, not only as the sacrifice of sin, not only to intercede for us in prayer and rule and reign over us. Father, he lived his life as the God of man, showing us and setting example for how we should live. Father, we pray that by the power of the Spirit of God, that you would convict us of sin. Father, you would deeply, deeply challenge our hearts as to what we do here week by week. Father, if it has become ritual and religion, Father, we plead with you that you would drive it out, that we would come here as an expression of love to worship the living God. Father, we thank you for Jesus. Father, we thank you that he taught us the truth. He taught us in parables. He taught us openly. Father, he taught the people wherever he went. Father, we thank you that he is indeed the sacrifice for sin. Father, we thank you that we can even call you Father this morning because of what Jesus has done. And Father, as we take this loaf of bread, simple, ordinary loaf, Lord, and we break it and we declare afresh the gospel of Jesus Christ, as we take this bread and we eat it, and we remind ourselves, oh God, that it was His flesh and blood that was given for us, His blood that ran down free to wash us clean. Father, we ask you for your blessing and we give you thanks, in Jesus' name, amen. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. Let's eat together, shall we? In the same way, took the cup also after supper, saying, this cup is a new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Let's drink together. Loving Father, it is indeed with quiet hearts that we do proclaim his death this morning. Father, we thank you for the blood that ran free. Father, we thank you for this little cup of juice that reminds us of his blood that was shed for us. Father, we pray again that we would be open to hear what you would have to say to us. Father, we pray for us as a church as we go home this afternoon. When we go through the daily business of the week, that as we do so, oh God, we pray that the Spirit of God would take the words of scripture that we are reading and considering, like the words of the songs that teach us the theology of the Bible, and drive it into our hearts that we would understand and know that, Father, we would have deeper faith and stronger faith and greater faith. Father, we pray for your blessing on KC Bible Church, and we give thanks again in Jesus' name, amen.