In his sermon titled 'How God Prepares Us to Meet Him,' Scott Brown explores the theme of self-examination in the context of the Lord's Supper, emphasizing the dual focus on Christ's grace and personal introspection. Brown cites 1 Corinthians 11, highlighting the biblical call to examine oneself before partaking in the Lord's Supper to avoid taking it in an 'unworthy manner.' The sermon elaborates on the broader concept of judgment, presenting both self-judgment and divine judgment as crucial aspects of the Christian life. Brown discusses the progression of understanding the Lord's Supper over time, noting that early experiences may involve self-condemnation, but mature understanding embraces the grace that comes with being in Christ. He references various biblical passages that illuminate judgment, including Revelation 20 and 2 Corinthians 5, underscoring the future judgment believers will face and the preparation needed. The sermon stresses that while God's judgment is perfect, Christians are given opportunities to judge themselves, even if imperfectly, as a way to learn righteous judgment. Brown encourages believers to embrace this process, viewing it as a means to experience God's grace and to prepare for the final judgment, where all grievances will be reconciled and set right. The sermon concludes with a call to examine oneself in light of the gospel, avoiding both morbid self-examination and self-flattery, and to partake in the Lord's Supper with a heart aligned with God's truth and grace.

The Lord is very kind to us to have us in a hopefully a deep consideration of the course of our lives where we've been and where we're going and with that help and it was such a help to consider these things. Mike, thank you. With that we enter into a time which includes a consideration of our lives and that's the Lord's Supper. So as we turn to the Lord's Supper, we're really balancing, you know, two things, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and examining ourselves. Because in the Lord's Supper, we're called to examine ourselves.

And I'd like to talk about that for a moment as we prepare ourselves for the Lord's Supper. So if you could open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 11, where we find this call to examine ourselves in the Lord's Supper. And after the Lord's Supper is described, then there is a number of admonitions. And so in verse 27, he says, Whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, so let him eat the bread and drink the cup.

For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world. So This is a call to examine ourselves, to judge ourselves.

This is a legitimate entering into the judgment of the trajectory of our lives, where we've been and where we're going and all of that kinds of things. And so we enter into a world where God, he brings us into a way of living where we're looking at our lives and we're examining and we're judging ourselves. We're doing life the way that the Lord has commanded us to do. When Jesus said, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, he was telling us that he has lots to teach us and one of the things he teaches us is how to judge, that we ought to judge ourselves and then how to do it and what the context of that judgment should be. And of course, in this is the context of the cross of Jesus Christ.

But the Lord Jesus teaches his people how to judge. That's one thing I want to lay down here. He instructs his children that they must judge. And the Lord's Supper brings us into judgment so that we would learn as life goes on how to judge rightly. I mean, if you've experienced the celebration of the Lord's Supper for any time, you know that you've maybe progressed in time about how you have experienced it.

You know, some people go through a period of experiencing the Lord's Supper in kind of a morbid self-hatred, and they go through that phase often, often neglecting the good news of Jesus Christ that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So we go through phases in our judging ourselves in the Lord's Supper. My guess is the way if you've been a Christian for any length of time you're thinking differently about it than you did you know when you first started. We know that the Word of God judges, we know that the church judges and church discipline, And then there's the final judgment. There's much in the Bible that teaches us about judgment.

We need to learn about judgment. And so in Revelation chapter 20 verse 11 you have a picture of the great white throne of judgment And we find that the dead, the great, and the small stand before God and books are opened. It's the book of life. And then the dead are judged according to their works by the things which were written in the book. In other words, there are things, everything in your life has been written in a book.

Everything you've done, everything you've thought, and your status before God, it's written in a book. That book is going to be open because there's a judgment that is coming. And then There's also the judgment seat of Jesus Christ, which the apostle Paul speaks about in 2 Corinthians, chapter 5. And Paul there to the Corinthian church, he speaks of the fact that while they had been judging themselves in the Lord's Supper, there's going to be a day when the Lord Jesus Christ himself is going to judge the believer. And so he says, make it your aim to be well pleasing to him.

Why? For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ." But he's given us many times of judgment. We read the Word of God, it judges us. We're with our brothers, they often appeal to us and admonish us, and we have received the judgment of the Lord. We see the chastisement of God, which is kind of a judgment in this life, and we receive the judgment that comes from preaching and all kinds of things like that.

But everything that we have done will be judged. We are being prepared, even in the Lord's Supper, to face the judgment of Jesus Christ. We are learning about judgment along the way, and God puts us on this trajectory of learning what righteous judgment is. But We do that by judging ourselves, and He gives us this opportunity, even imperfectly, as we judge ourselves. Isn't that amazing?

Even though we're children and very uninsightful, He gives us the job to examine ourselves. That's what He's doing today. He's giving it to you. Now, he's given you his word to help you judge yourself. He's given you his spirit because the spirit also does convict of sin.

So there are All these different ways that God has given us and the Lord's Supper is one of those ways. But it's striking to me that he gives imperfect, self-serving, proud human beings who are Christians the ability to, the opportunity to judge themselves. Isn't that amazing? Wouldn't you think it would just be better to get somebody who had the right story on your life rather than yourself? You know, we're so self-flattering.

We take the things that we do and we put different words on them that really are just self-congratulatory. But that God has done that. So he's doing that this morning. As self-congratulatory and proud as you are, God is saying, judge yourself. It's remarkable that he would do that.

And so we will be judged by our deeds. Now, is this a welcome moment now? Is this a welcome moment? Or is it a loathsome moment to judge yourself, to examine yourself? Well here's why I ask that question.

What will it be like when we face the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ? Will it be a loathsome moment or not? And We know that we will give account in Romans 14, 11, and 12. Everyone will give an account before God. Paul says to the Romans, every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess to God and then each will give an account of himself to God.

Now, when we meet before the judgment seat of Christ, something is going to happen. You're going to meet every person you've ever offended. You're going to meet every person who's wronged you in the Church of Jesus Christ, at the judgment seat of Christ. You're going to meet, you're going to see the people that you've had disagreements with, theological, practical, lifestyle disagreements, you're going to meet them, you're going to meet them. And Jesus Christ is going to judge everything.

And he's going to put right every disagreement you ever had. He's going to put to right every offense that has ever taken place in your life. He's going to show you every way you've sinned against others, and he's going to show those who sinned against you how they have sinned against you. And all of these things will be revealed, and we will meet one another before the Lord Jesus Christ. And What will we think?

Will it be a loathsome moment? And I want to submit to you that if you're a Christian, it won't be a loathsome moment. You'll be so glad that everything had been set right. And you'll be so glad for the heaven that God has for you and the humiliation that was required for you to enter into heaven. You will be so glad for the humiliation, for the trade of glory and all the tears wiped from your eyes.

So how will you face the judgment? How will it be for you? Will it be a lo-so moment? And I just want to submit that Because the grievances are reconciled, because the wrongs have been righted, it won't be a grievous moment. We've already been told, by the way, that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

None. There is no condemnation. When you face the judgment, it won't be the judgment of condemnation. It will be the judgment of the perfect judge, so beautifully and helpfully setting everything right and you will love what He will do. You will love it because you want Him.

You want heaven. By the way, that's what it means to be a Christian is that you want Him. Like if you think about heaven and you say, I don't want to go there, you can't be a Christian. If you say, I can't imagine giving thanks to God and glorifying Him and being so happy in Him. I can't imagine that.

Well, it may mean that you don't want that. You don't want to praise Him. So heaven won't be very good for people like that. They won't want to be there. But the ones who love him and they love his appearing, they will want to be there so badly that the exposure of their sins will be the sweetest thing they've ever known.

Now, one of the things that God is doing with us, He's training us to see the sweetness of our exposure. And so this morning, he's doing that. He wants you to examine yourself. He wants you to be exposed before God. Why?

So that you see the sweetness of his grace and his mercy. So that you see in your heart that your desire to turn away from your sin and to love what is good and to love Him. And so He's training you to love His appearing. He's training you to love so much the fact that there is therefore now no condemnation who is in Christ Jesus. He's already told us about this.

He said, who will bring a charge against God's elect? Who? That is what you're facing at the judgment seat of Jesus Christ. And when he judges all the things that you've done, all the people that you've offended and who've offended you, who've stolen from you, who you've stolen from, whom you've lied to, who've lied to you, when he does all of that, he will be teaching us what righteous judgment is. Now here's why I think that's true.

If you read the passages of scripture that speak about the judgment of the seed of Christ and the great white throne judgment, what you learn is that there are two things going on. And when do those things happen? Well, there are some things that aren't perfectly clear from scripture, but it seems to me, and there are, there are, you know, there are some different streams of thinking about this, but what seems to me is that the wicked are judged at the great white throne of judgment and the devil and all of his angels and all those who have not loved Jesus are thrown into the lake of fire. And the Church of Jesus Christ is brought before their Lord and He'll set everything right. And he'll set everything right.

And then the Bible seems to make it clear that his people, the church, will judge angels, and they'll also judge the wicked. How will they do that? How will they do that? And I just want to submit to you that there is a way that they could do that and that is that they've been by their personal experience with their own sin they have been taught by Jesus himself what is justice and what is mercy and how do you handle judgment because they have just been judged with righteous judgment. And in the Lord Jesus Christ and His mercy coming and judging His people, He's teaching them what is righteousness and mercy and judgment and grace.

He's teaching them what law and grace are and how they fit together, and he's instructing his children and he's preparing them to judge the angels. They wouldn't be qualified to do that except by the Word of God itself. But God gives many different opportunities for us to judge ourselves and the Lord's Supper is one of those ways And he has brought us to that moment now where we'll examine ourselves and maybe we'll see how we really have, like has just been preached, that we really have loved this world and we've resisted the ways of God in our lives. And we've wanted something so new when God has provided everything we need for life and godliness. And that he really is the only one that we need.

And so with that I want us to enter into a time of examination. Be careful that it's not a morbid self-examination. Be careful that it's not a morbid self-examination. Be careful that it's not a self-flattering self-examination because there are always dangers in self-examination. And the greatest danger is created because we're sinners and we see through a glass darkly.

And in our dark hearts, our sinful hearts, we want to see through a glass darkly, and we don't want our sins exposed. But let's cry out to God that he would give us righteous judgment, that this morning he would teach us again how good and right it is to judge in the right context. And the right context is in the truth of the Word of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, who is our Savior, who has sacrificed Himself for our sins, and His righteousness, His robes of righteousness, have been draped around us at the Supper. However, if your heart is hard and unrepentant or bitter or you're unreconciled so far as it depends on you, then refrain. If you still find yourself wanting and loving that sin that you've held onto, then don't take the Lord's Supper until that's resolved in your heart, and then take the Lord's Supper.

So the Lord Jesus Christ, of course, initiated the Lord's Supper. So, the Lord Jesus Christ initiated the Lord's Supper. Let's pray and give thanks for the bread. Father, we thank you for giving your Son for our sins. We thank you that you are the righteous judge, that we are in good hands in your judgment.

Lord, our hearts easily fear your judgment, your penetrating eyes that see the truth about everything. But we also know that we need that because we do see through a glass darkly. So Lord, come and judge your people in righteousness and mercy. Come and bring your judgment and grace. Come and bring your truth and love.

Come and bring your grace and truth here into this place as we examine ourselves. But we thank you that you would call us to examine and then you would hand us bread. Amen.