Let's turn in our Bibles to Genesis chapter 3 and then 2 Thessalonians chapter 2. Genesis chapter 3, let's stand to hear the word read. The first seven verses, a reminder of the agency of Satan, the beginning of human history. Now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, as God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden. God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die. Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. For God knows that in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. And the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings. Now we turn in the New Testament to 2 Thessalonians. We read of the agency of Satan in the present day and how that will be evident particularly in the very last of the last days. We'll begin at verse 1. We'll read the first 12 verses. Now brethren concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him, we ask you not to be soon shaken in mind or troubled either by spirit or word or by letter as if from us as though the day of Christ had come. Let no one deceive you by any means, for that day will not come unless the falling away comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or that is worshiped, so that he sits as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you, I told you these things? And now you know what is restraining that He may be revealed in His own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. When the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan. with all power signs and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie, that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness." This is the Word of the Living God. We turn in the Word to 2 Thessalonians. Again, to the same passage we looked at last week, but today with a focus on verses 9-12. 9-12. And with the title, Resisting Satan's Deceptions. You know that I was in Oklahoma last fall at a small Bible conference, preaching at a small Bible conference Bartlesville. And on Saturday afternoon, I think it was Saturday afternoon or maybe it was Friday afternoon, Friday afternoon I went for a walk along the river that runs through the town on this nice paved walking path. And as I was walking I realized that the place I was getting into looked a little more, more and more remote and less and less safe. And just as I was thinking that, I came around, abandoned the path, and I met a man standing in the middle of the path who promptly informed me that he was the son, lost son, of Queen Elizabeth. And he stopped me from going any further. And he wanted to tell me all about his unique life. He had most of his worldly goods with him, a wheelchair, which he was also pushing down the court. And he went on to inform me that secret government activities were preventing him from getting back to his mother. You can't help but have pity on somebody in that kind of distress. I offered to get him help, take him to the church, see if there was to be somebody who might not be able to help him in his clear confusion and distress. He didn't want help. Matter of fact, he went on to tell me that he had killed people with his bare hands and that he was perhaps thinking of doing the same to himself. A broken, diluted shell of a man. A tragic, lonely figure. Now, why was he there? I don't know. I don't know the reasons or the causes. Whether it was some long ago mental breakdown or, as is sometimes the case, whether this was in some way The result of the trajectory of a long life lived in rebellion against God. And so there he was, completely disconnected from reality as it is. And this tragic figure illustrates something that the scripture says is a spiritual reality. that many people walking around today are completely disconnected from actual reality, things as they are. Spiritual realities. And that there can be a very real danger of profound inward spiritual delusion. which can occur while we are still on the outside looking much more respectable, perhaps, than the man I met along the river in Oklahoma. But the reality is that spiritual delusion, even with outward respectability, is every bit as pitiable and dangerous a condition as those who we outwardly and immediately see to be so confused. There is a possibility of living in God's world, to be made in His image, even to hear the Gospel, to read your Bible, to sit under the preaching of the Word, and to be under Satan's influence, to be self-deluded. and ultimately to reject it all. This theme in reality runs through this text. And I want to dig a little deeper into that sobering theme. The theme of the strong delusion. Here in 2 Thessalonians 2. A little bit of review from the last week. And we're going to look at the following. The deceiver and his agent in history. The first stage into the descent into delusion. or deception, and then the second stage in the descent into delusion or deception. The deceiver and his agent, the first stage of descent into spiritual delusion that we read about in this chapter, and then the second stage, which is deeply sobering. And we're going to look at this here from the Word of God, and Lord willing, learn from it. So, a little bit of a review. Chapter 2, there's a problem in Thessalonica. Paul had clearly taught, particularly in his last letter we know, but also in his face-to-face preaching to this church, that the Lord Jesus Christ himself was coming on the clouds from glory, a visible bodily return to take his people safely home to himself. That he had gone, to use the words of our Savior, to his father's house in which are many mansions. He's preparing a place for us and that he will return one day. There will be the resurrection of the living, the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of the living and the dead, and then the final destinies of heaven and hell determined for all those who have ever lived. All sin and sorrow and sighing and tears will be put away, Satan and his kingdom will be destroyed, and God and his people will enjoy blessedness, fellowship, and communion in a new heavens and a new earth forever. This is coming. Some thought that they somehow had missed it. Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus and our gathering together to Him, we ask you not to be shaken in mind as if this day had already come. Some were being shaken to believe that they had missed it. And Paul's answer to this possible significant error comprises the rest of verses 1 through 12. He says there will be a complex of events that will lead up to and are directly connected to the second coming that you need to keep an eye out for. And he talks about first a general rebellion, verse three, a falling away, a spiritual malaise, a hardening. And many have thought that this refers in the first place, and I think there is good reason in the first place, to the people of God who are falling away amongst those who profess the name of Christ, or a dramatic weakening of the visible church. Calvin calls this a reminder that there will be a treacherous departure from God. Those who said God is ours and for us, and then a leaving Him. And then others would argue that there's a principle of rebellion more broadly articulated here. And I think if we get through the whole text, there's something to this, which we also see, for example, in Psalm 2, where the nations, the peoples, the nations, the kings, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and His anointed, that there is this wholesale rebellion of all of humanity against God, both church and state, as it were. The second event he talks about is the appearance of a man of sin and a son of perdition. The son of perdition is a title that refers to his ultimate end, he'll be condemned. The man of sin here, or lawlessness, refers to his function as the chief and primary agent in the world on behalf of Satan and his kingdom, a human figure who is described here as the man of sin or the man of lawlessness. And there's two ideas in the scriptures concerning this. We have here an articulation of what we could first call the Antichrist principle in the scriptures. where John writes, many antichrists have come, but he also writes that the antichrist, the spirit of antichrist is now and existing and present in the world, that there is this simmering warfare, spiritual warfare. And this is part of thinking about reality as it is, that there's this simmering spiritual warfare, Christ on the throne and his church against Satan and the dark kingdom and his representatives. And we talked about last week, those who have risen up in world history, as specific individuals, and this is where we have to be very careful not to be too speculative in our theology, but there is an emphasis here in the text on a specific individual, which I think is connected with the time just before the second coming of Jesus Christ. Again, this is a bit of review. An antichrist with a competitive, competing parousia appearance, verse nine. A false Christ who will promise wonders and signs and healing and salvation while putting his stamp of approval on lawlessness and unrighteousness. In other words, you can have salvation, but you don't need to repent. The man of sin. Of lawlessness. Again, in history, some have tried to identify this particular person. Nero or the Pope. There's some truth in individual figures rising up in world history, again talking about this last week, who embody this Antichrist principle and it's clear in their actions, in their pronouncements, in their declarations, in their hatred of Christ, in their purporting to stand and speak in His name. But again, many antichrists have come. The spirit of antichrist is alive in the present age and there will be, the scriptures appear to teach one, the little horn of Daniel 7 for example, a significant individual near the end, the very end, who will exalt himself against Christ and his church. Now what's key about this person as we move into the last verses, 9 to 12, is that he is in league with Satan. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan. He is Satan's, as it were, chief agent in the promulgation of apostasy, rebellion, and unrighteousness. Again, I said some danger about speculating who he might be. Again, Calvin, in commenting on 2 Thessalonians 2, pointed to the Pope. He also pointed to Muhammad. and the rise of Islam as perversions, both as perversions of Christianity. Again, the Bible tells us enough that this principle is alive now to warn, to watch, and be ready, and to be careful that we are not deceived. Again, to sum this all up, the final man of sin will embody in human history the ongoing larger Antichrist principle that runs through history A principle that we need to be on guard against in great spiritual warfare. Now what I want to do is study today is particularly the matter of delusion and deception involved with the Antichrist principle and the coming of the Son of Man. There's warnings in the text. Let no one deceive you, verse 3, by any means. Again, verse 9. The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan with all power, signs, and lying wonders. He will be a liar, you will be a deceiver, verse 10, and with all unrighteous deception. Now if there's going to be this apostasy, falling away, rebellion, And if much of that is centered around a prophecy of falling away from Christ, that the visible church will see apostasy in her history, how is it that professing Christians would or could fall for such deception or humanity in general? to be hardened in it. Well, I want to look at the two stages here in the text of the descent into deception that are set before us here. The first stage that we have is the agreement with the subtle deceptions of Satan himself. The figure behind the curtain, verse nine, as it were, The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan. Satan here will be at work with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and unrighteous, verse 10, deceptions. Well, who is Satan? You need to be reminded of this. The Bible teaches him to be a real individual created by God, a prince among the angels in the original creation. having fallen and led the first rebellion in heaven, and then taking with him," the book of Revelation seems to indicate a third of the angels. And so he, the chief fallen angel, and the rest of the fallen angels, we call demons now. Creatures. Spiritual creatures created by God originally to be ministers of God, servants of God, to reflect His glory and to do His will. The ones who were created, for example, when the angel came to the shepherds to reflect and communicate the resplendency of the glory of God and in heaven to worship Him around His throne, cry, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty. But there's been a great rebellion, and the kingdom of darkness now is led by the chief fallen angel, Satan. And his modus operandi, his MO in history, is always to deceive. He's a deceiver. Jesus said to the Pharisees, you are of your father, the devil, who has been a liar from the beginning. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul warns the church at Corinth about the lying and deceitful ministry of Satan himself. He reminds them that, and he says, I fear lest somehow, and he's warning them against Satan's deception and apostasy in their day. Lest I fear somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds may be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For the church at Corinth, Paul saw the active, present active activity of Satan in deception, traced all the way back to the garden, and Adam and Eve in the first great deception. 1 Timothy 2 and verse 14, we have another similar warning. Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived fell into transgression. And there there's a reminder that the agency of Satan was for deception. In Revelation 12 and verse 9, Satan is the ancient serpent. Satan is the great deceiver. We're reminded of him and that there will come an end to his deceiving of the nations. Revelation chapter 20, there's gonna be a time where he's gonna be set free again for deception, then finally deception will be brought to a final end at his final judgment. But there's an even characterization of his work throughout human history from Genesis chapter three that we read just a few minutes ago, all the way to the very end where he will be actively seeking to deceive The people of God in particular. Spiritual, intelligent attacks on your faith in Jesus Christ. And there's a great war then between Christ, this seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And this war primarily looks like this in history. At its heart is the matter of truth and error. Of what is right and what is counterfeit. Christ speaks. Whether He spoke in Eden, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. Whether He speaks in the written Word, living and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword. Or He speaks to you right now in preaching. Jesus Christ speaks in history. And He is the way, the truth, and the life. And you are receiving the truth as it is in Jesus. Satan's primary mode of warfare is deceptively simple. It's to undermine that truth every day, all day, wherever he can. He counters the Word. Has God indeed said that you shall surely die? You shall not surely die. He is the contradictor of the Word of God. He is the twister of the Word of God. He is the, Matthew chapter 13, Jesus said, He's the one that when you're listening to preaching, He is actively working like the birds of the air for the seed that fell by the wayside to have that Word taken out of your heart before it has any effect. He opposes the Word of God. He twists the Word of God. He wants you to consider the Bible to be nothing, preaching to be laborious, the truth as it is in Jesus to be just a historical curio, or worse than that, something you can just leave behind. It doesn't matter. What is this great apostasy then? Verse 10. The apostasy that we read about, beginning in verse 3, The lying, verse 9, the unrighteous deception among those who perish, verse 10, is this, that they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. So what's happening here is Paul is envisioning this satanic activity in human history connected with the Antichrist principle as his continual war against you grabbing hold of laying up in your heart and practicing in your life everything that is taught in the Word of God. The apostasy then is to know two things. Apostasy comes in two stages then. Here, it comes to know the truth, to have the truth, but not receive the love of the truth. Why? You know what the Bible says about Jesus, His kingdom, His glory, His power, His cross, His resurrection, and what it means to live for Him. Then you hear Satan's counter-suggestion that it doesn't matter or it didn't happen. And to apostatize is to hear number one, and then the deception number two, and then number three is to reject the truth as it is in Jesus. To consciously, to actively acquiesce to the deceiver. for your heart to grow cold, as Jesus says in Matthew 24. To not just not receive the truth, but to not love it. To embrace Jesus Christ with heart, soul, mind, and strength. And Satan is always, and he's still working at this today. How does he do it? But one of his most profound ways, and there's a line that runs through this text, is by corrupting true religion or creating false religion. Any and all perversions of Christianity have a satanic origin. The reformers again understood The work of the papacy in destroying the true gospel to be, they thought, even the original Westminster Confession of Faith, though I think this is going too far, thought that the Pope was the Antichrist, the Antichrist, the one and only Antichrist in history. However, he did claim to speak for God. And he still does. And Rome holds to a false gospel, and it's a perversion of the truth. It's dangerous. It's a satanic deception. You take Islam, I said a moment ago, Calvin said that this text reminds us that Muhammad took the Turks away from Christianity. That's what he writes in his commentary. And Islam is a religion that borrows heavily from the scriptures, even from the gospels. We profess Jesus to be a prophet, but denies the cross and the resurrection and the deity of Jesus Christ and hundreds of other things, but it is a perversion. A satanic deception which has captured up, I think, over a billion people on the planet. One billion people. Modern day cults, think of Mormonism. Many competitors who seem to offer a man named Jesus Christ for salvation, but when you ask them who they're speaking of, it's not the Jesus of the Bible, it's a corruption. Has God indeed said? No, he has not said, is what Satan is saying. but it offers all the outward trappings of religion. How about the health and wealth and signs and wonders movement in our day? Or liberalism, sadly including very much today what we could call neo-evangelicalism, concerned more with social justice and other political causes than it is the plain preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, the God-man. It's another gospel. It's what we used to call liberation theology coming around again. And don't think that these deceptions that were immune in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church are in napalm churches from these deceptions. Think of the movement in the last 10 years to normalize same-sex relationships in the church. Think of the denomination that we came from, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, embracing these things with open arms. Eighty years later, after the division between the OPC and the PCUSA, think of these things creeping even into NAPARC churches, and some of you have read about things that have happened concerning a ReVoice conference a year and a half ago. Confusion about gender, gender identity, human sexuality, roles of men and women in the church, as God indeed said. The old deceptions come around again and again and again. Satan seeks to pervert true religion and turn it to nothing. We need to stand on the Word of God for the truth as it is in Jesus. Or be deceived. The second way Satan will seek to get you off course is personally. You'll be challenged in your own faith. The Word says, divine creation, God, by the Word of His power in the space of six days, He made everything all very good. The world says, no, there is not a God who does such things. It just happened by chance. And you young people who are going to be headed into colleges and keep studying, you're going to come face to face with this. And you need to say, no, it's a satanic deception. Again, back to the issue of gender. But there are two genders with roles. The world says it doesn't matter. The Bible says it does. God created the male and female. And don't think this can't come into a conservative reformed church. I was speaking with someone very close to me who's an elder in a reformed church. A young person in the congregation decided to come out. And you wouldn't believe how many young people in the congregation on Instagram hit like. Thumbs up. It's fine. It's not fine. It's against the Word of God. It's a deception. It's a temptation. God says no. He says to live a holy, pure life. No extramarital sexual activity. The world says yes. The Word says Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by Me. The world says you can't say that anymore. Every one of these things is satanic deception. And He wants you to join in the great apostasy. And switch your allegiance from Christ to the world. and to leave His church. What's the antidote? To know the Word, to pray. It's not enough just to know people who know, but to take up and read the Word of God and pray for the Spirit of God to teach you by the Word and to hold fast the truth. Cultivate a spiritual situational awareness. Thomas Brooks wrote this, he said, Beloved in our dear Lord Jesus Christ, there are four prime things that need to be first studied and known in the Christian life. Christ himself, the scriptures, your own heart, and Satan's devices. His particular modes and methods of deception. so that you can stand against them. Charles Hodge, we are engaged in a conflict in which the higher powers of the universe are involved and we need to be aware. Jonathan Edwards, we stand against personal demonic intelligences. It's not popular to say in our scientific age, but it's true. The biblical view of reality is that there are things beyond the senses, God who is invisible, human souls which are immaterial, heaven and other realm, angels and Satan and demons, and a war of deception for your soul and parents, your children's souls. Repeated reality in Scripture is the kingdom of darkness. It has a prince, Satan, it has foot soldiers, and its goal is to propagate rebellion and to suppress the truth. And He is working overtime. He's working overtime in your homes, and families, and marriages, and on the streets, and the things you watch, and the things you listen to, to worm in His message, as God indeed said. Don't be deceived. Don't take pleasure in unrighteousness. Don't turn away from the truth. Don't believe the lie. Stand on the word. Now there's a second stage here. The second stage is sobering. For those who decide willfully, ditch the Bible, follow Satan's deceptions. I cannot overestimate the spiritual danger of this decision because it invites the wrath of God. The second stage is the active judgment of God on the first stage. I hope you catch that. The second stage of being in a state of delusion, spiritual darkness, is the active judgment of God on the decision to turn your back on the Word and listen to Satan. Therefore, the text says, for this reason God will send them a strong delusion that they should believe the lie. I mentioned this briefly last week, but think about Genesis 3 and the aftermath. What happens? Fall. Temptation. Sin. Judgment. And the judgment is to be cast out from the favorable presence of God. God responds by withdrawing His special presence, sending Adam and Eve out of the Sanctuary of Eden into the world, guarding the way to the Tree of Life with the flaming sword. Same principle in the text here in verse 11. God will send them a strong delusion. There's an Old Testament text which is sobering to read. The call of Isaiah, we think of Isaiah, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, you saw the glory of God from the throne. Someone has to go and preach. Who's it going to be? To Israel. Who will go for us? Whom shall I send? And send the Lord from the throne. And Isaiah said, here I am, send me. And then God said, here's your mission. Isaiah, here's your mission. Say this to the people. Keep hearing, don't understand. Keep on seeing, but do not perceive. Make the heart of these people dull, and their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and return and be healed. Following Satan's deceptions invites the judgment of God, and God turning away from His people. This same text is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, in the Gospel of Mark, in the Gospel of Luke, in Paul's letter to the Romans, and in the Acts of the Apostles. First six books of the New Testament, same passage repeated. Jesus says it when he's teaching about parables. He's asked, why do you speak in parables? Because there are some. The same who he said, you are of your father, the devil, who I am judging, so that they will not hear. because they want to follow Satan. God is going to say to some at the end of the age, I called you, and I called you, and I called you, and you chose to listen to the deceiver. You never came. And in my judgment, I let you keep going. If you want to reject Christ, prefer any false teacher to be your spiritual guide. This is the result of continued rebellion against God. Romans 1, Paul says it in very plain terms. That when those who know the truth, who know of the glory of God, turn away, And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind. To do those things which are not fitting to pursue unrighteousness. The second stage is sobering. It's the active judgment of God against unbelief. Some applications. I can't help but think in our cultural moment that there's a lot of strong delusion going on. A few months ago, the High Court of the United Kingdom heard a case where a transgender man apparently gave birth, and I'm always confused trying to follow this logic, but a woman who would like to be called a man gave birth and was fighting to be recognized as a father on the birth certificate, not the mother. Ordinary common sense would tell you that this is a delusion not much different than what I ran into on the path in Oklahoma. Why? It's a rebellion against everything God has said, everything God has created and made to be beautiful. And it's saying, you have not said this, and I do not like the way you made me. It's a grand rebellion. Parents, instruct your children. Prepare them for the onslaught of the evil one in our evil day. And pray. Pray. John Owen talks about how to deal with the spirit of Antichrist in the present day, in his day. He looked at many people going back to Roman Catholicism. He said we should be earnestly in prayer, pleading with God to keep us. Another application, the mortal danger of habitual sin. The text tells us here that if you want to start down the road of saying, I will take Satan's word over God's word, that it's the most dangerous road you can go down. Very dangerous. God says A, and you say, I'm gonna do B, and I'm just gonna keep doing it. This can happen to a true believer. It can. We all have things that we still struggle with, but you need to know that God wants you to be in the way of daily repentance. True believers will struggle with sin, but we will know its danger. There's an urgency, not only to be grounded on the Word, to receive what it says is true concerning Jesus Christ, But with that, an urgency to say, Lord, make the very pattern of my life, my words, my thoughts, my actions, in conformity to that word for your glory. And not continue in habitual sin, which can lead to apostasy. It's a dangerous place. Again, Owen said, no one who is in habitual sin, even though he be a believer, should feel safe. Now with all that being said, we have a Savior who is Christ the Lord. These real spiritual warnings in 2 Thessalonians chapter 2 are not to diminish in any way the power and glory and victory and wonder of the cross of Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, what they should do for the believer is exalt all those things. In Colossians chapter 1 Paul reminds us that at the cross Jesus put all of his enemies to open shame, triumphing over them in it. His sermon is not meant to make you tremble in fear at the power of Satan without a hope in the greater redeeming power of Jesus Christ. If it was doing that, if it does that, it's not a gospel sermon. It's rather to put before you the reality of spiritual warfare. And the pressing demands of Satan that you turn from the Word and be deceived. And know and understand what he's doing. We know his devices, Paul wrote to the Corinthians. And say no. I have a Savior who is Christ the Lord. He is the way, the truth, and the life. He died. He rose again. He reigns at the right hand of the Father. He will destroy the lawless one, making him the son of perdition one day. He will destroy the devil and all of his fallen angels. And I will follow him. And that was really Paul's point in writing this passage. Don't be deceived. You haven't missed the coming victory of Jesus Christ. You haven't missed the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to Him. But between here and there, be watchful, be sober, be vigilant. The devil goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist Him firm in your faith in Christ. Let's pray. Lord God, as we think of ultimate spiritual realities of spiritual warfare, of the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of light, power, and glory that belongs to our Savior Jesus. Lord, we pray for these things. For a submission to what Your Word says about spiritual realities. for a watchful awareness of the deceptions of Satan and the spirit of Antichrist at work in every age. Lord, for a careful, conscious, and intelligent studying of Your Word and holding to its truths in the face of Satan's attacks, denials, counterfeits, and onslaughts. Lord, for a new awe and wonder at your victory over sin, death, Satan, and all the kingdom of darkness at the cross and in the resurrection. And that we would have a new sense of awe and wonder at our salvation. That we have been saved from sin, saved from our enemies. We pray for grace then to walk as children of light. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Let's stand and sing Trinity Hymnal number 575, Soldiers of Christ Arise. Let's stand. Amen. Please be seated. We come now to the table of our Lord Jesus Christ. Reading from 1 Corinthians 11, these words of institution. This reading reminds us, it's not our invention, but it is by the appointment of Jesus Christ Himself that we're here. For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread. And when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, Take, eat, this is My body which is broken for you, this do in remembrance of Me. In the same manner, He also took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in My blood, this do 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 till He comes. Our Savior Jesus Christ established this supper for our good. Because of His great love towards us and because He knew from His own experience what it's like to walk the way of the cross in a fallen world surrounded by enemies. In it, He promises to feed you. This week in our family worship, we were reading about David and Goliath and how David was the errand boy. At least at the beginning of the story, his job was to bring the cheese and the bread for his brothers who were not actually fighting in the battle, but at the edge of the battle, His job was to keep part of the army fed. You know the old saying that an army marches on its stomach. Without food, we would all perish and die. We wouldn't make it very far. We could fast for a while, but we need food for life. We need drink for life. Now you need food and drink for spiritual life. And our Savior Jesus knows more poignantly and deeply the reality of the present spiritual warfare you are in than you can understand. If you're suffering today, He knows you're suffering more deeply than you know it, and He's experienced more suffering. If you're sad today, He's experienced sadness and more sadness than you will ever experience. If you're facing Satan's temptations, He faced Satan's temptations and onslaughts all through His ministry at a level unique in human history. And in all those things, He continued in the way of the cross and He overcame them by a quiet, obedient life consecrated to the Father. Offered finally in that last great act of obedience going to the cross that the world may know that I love the Father he said and Then declaring at the end it is finished What was finished The work of atonement propitiation Bearing our sins on the cross fully completely past present and future What was finished, the offering up of himself, a perfect consecrated life to God. None of you have ever lived a perfect life. And God requires a perfect life to get to heaven. Perfect. Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart. A perfect life was lived. And as you're united to Christ by faith, your sins to his account, his righteousness to his account, his perfect life overlaid over your sinful life. What else was finished? He shattered, he destroyed the works of the devil, John writes in 1 John, the whole dark kingdom. And he has, as we have come to him by faith and by the work of the Spirit, loosed us from our chains to Satan and made us bondservants of Jesus Christ. And then what has He called us to do? He called us, keep running the race. Keep following Me. Endure to the end. Run to receive the crown of life. Press toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Go, run, follow, serve all the way to the end. But He knows that you're still in this world, this cursed world and this life. And so again this morning, what is he doing? He's spreading before you a feast for the journey. The feast is in the signs of broken bread and a cup of wine, which point to his finished work. No blood, no lamb, no sacrifice. Symbols pointing to a completed work. No altar, no mass, but rather here a remembrance of a once and for all finished work. Over this supper are the words, it is finished. And here again he offers himself in these symbols for your spiritual sustenance because without him you can do nothing, with God all things are possible. And particularly this morning in the great spiritual battle of the ages, he offers himself for your sustaining, so that you, united to the victorious one, would make it to the end. So he's here to feed you, at his table, with himself. So as you take the bread and drink the cup, You are to think on Jesus, your hearts and minds by the Spirit to be lifted up to the Lord, Jesus at the right hand of the Father, but also reminded that in this he comes near to us. Gently, the good shepherd of the sheep in green pastures feeds his flock. Now you can imagine that if all of this is true and you're here this morning, and you don't love him, or you have a secret double life of sin that you have no interest in repenting of, you're going right back, that it would be a high offense against a good Savior to come and not repent, which is why Paul says it would be to eat and drink condemnation to yourself. Come repentant. Come believing. Come trusting. Come hoping in the One who offered Himself first for you. Come discerning the Lord's body. Come believing that here God draws near. Come near for profit and blessing only by faith in Jesus Christ, with Christ as our mediator. Let's pray. Lord, You are our merciful God and Father, and as we come to this table, we come believing that You have ordained this covenant meal, this sacrament, as a remembrance of the one sacrifice of Christ. Help us, we pray, to remember well. More than that, You have appointed it as a means of grace in which we not only remember and believe, but You visit us with salvation. You feed us with the finest of wheat. You communicate Your goodness to us in the Word made visible. We pray for grace to resist Satan's devices, to come by faith, and to feed on Christ by faith, and be strengthened for our journey and for the good fight. We praise You that indeed over this table are the words, it is finished. Lord, we pray that you would encourage us and feed us again in Christ. We ask for your Holy Spirit's help. We pray as sinners conscious of our neediness. And we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.