You're listening to a sermon recorded at Providence Community Church, Truth and Beauty in Community. If you are in the Kansas City area, please consider joining us in person next Sunday. We meet in Lenexa, Kansas at 10 a.m. every Lord's Day. Until then, we pray that as you open your Bibles, the Lord will open your heart to receive His Word. This is the moment where I reveal that I don't ever preach live, it's always lip-synced. And they play the wrong track this time, and I got busted. Kids, you're dismissed. If I didn't say that, I was a little taken aback.
And Exodus 20.15 is our text today. Exodus 20.15 simply says, Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not steal.
Now, we're at a certain point in the Decalogue, in the Ten Commandments, where a good question to ask, we haven't asked yet, is, what do we make of the relative agreement that we find across all cultures on these subjects of murder, theft, adultery, so on and so forth? You understand what I'm asking? I'm asking, why is it that we could go to really any time, any place, any culture, and for the most part, with the exception of some freak societies, for the most part, everybody would find these five commandments to be agreeable. And we would probably find more unity on the appropriateness of these commandments than we might find on almost anything else. What's going on here? Well, Thomas Aquinas was a great theologian when it came to kind of looking at the Aristotelian concepts of nature and logic and sort of processing Aristotle through sort of a, what does the Bible say, kind of a lens. Aquinas was therefore big on natural law. And I would agree with him when he said that the Ten Commandments are the things which the reason, the natural reason of every man of its own accord at once judges not be done. We would look at the violations included from commandment number 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 and say as a reasonable human being, no particular faith alignment, we would say that natural law, the way things are ordered, tell us that these things are wrong. So again, I'm answering the question, why is it that we would find essentially unilateral agreement on these principles across all cultures with obvious exceptions and so forth? And it is because I believe that what we see in the Ten Commandments is simply the revelation of the way things are. This is simply just the outline of natural law. You see, the world is ordered in particular ways, and we readily acknowledge that when it comes to the physical laws that govern the universe. But I think that really forever, most people have believed that the law was, the world was also governed by particular moral laws. And these are simply the way things are meant to work, the way life is meant to go.
You know, Dorothy Sayers was this incredibly impressive intellectual around C.S. Lewis' time. And I share this probably once a year with you. I think it's just key. She talked about this idea that there are two kinds of laws. And the one kind of law she calls the law of the stop sign. The law of the stop sign is when man, in whatever civil, you know, kind of organization they might find themselves in, realizes that they need to write a law to change behavior of some kind. The thing about the law of the stop sign is, is that you can always revoke it, you could change it, you could modify it, and most importantly, to our point, you can break it. You can break the law of the stop sign. But then she says there's a second kind of law, and that is the law of the fire. In contrast, she writes, laws, fire laws, are inherent laws of nature that are discovered rather than created. These laws, like gravity and inertia, cannot be altered by human intervention. And attempts to defy them will inevitably result in consequences. You can break the law of the stop sign and face no consequences. But if you attempt to break a natural law, you will simply break yourself against it. That's what Dorothy Sayers was getting at.
And so if we're going to observe this sort of universal agreement of the nature of the Ten Commandments, we have to have an explanation for why. And the most common historic explanation has been that there is, in fact, a natural order, a natural law to the universe. Just as the law of gravity is a real thing, so are these moral laws. And what you find across all time and civilizations and so forth is simply the discovery or the noticing of the way the world is meant to run. And one of the greatest examples of that is the commandment that we're looking at today, which is, thou shalt not steal. All you need to know about this and its natural origin is, all you need to do is just have someone steal from you. And you'll know immediately something's wrong. Something isn't right right now. These laws are just the way that they are. Now, one of the things that we see in this sort of Aquinas perspective is that what we ought to do is we ought to read both books. We talked about that last week. Francis Bacon said that God wrote two books. He wrote The Natural World and then he wrote the Bible. We need to get better at reading both books. And one of the things that we'll do when we read both books well, we look at the way that the world actually runs, is we will order our lives as rational beings in coherence to and harmony with the way the world was built to run. Right? So that's really what's happening when we look at these Ten Commandments is we're ordering ourselves according to the way the world is actually built. Now, when it comes to ordering ourselves, we have three kinds of ways of interacting with truth. And that is applying it to ourselves, applying it to our interactions with others, and applying it to God. So today we're going to talk about this commandment, thou shalt not steal, and we're going to simply talk about three areas. Number one, stealing from yourself. Number two, stealing from others. And number three, stealing from God.
Now, when it comes to stealing from yourself, that is not a category I would have had in my mind at all. One of the things I love so much about reading, like this 17th century literature and all that, is that, you know, the self-esteem thing wasn't a thing. They were not reacting to it or embracing it. They had a very reasonable perspective of self. They shunned self-humility. They didn't feel like they needed to tear themselves down to gain entrance into some level of social acceptability. They were confident without being cocky. And one of the ways that they manifested this as they processed God's truth was they were able to ask, like, how do I violate this or that command against myself? Something that some people would be in a hurry to think of. They love to think about themselves. And some of us would be very uncomfortable thinking that way. We first saw this when we looked at the command not to murder. Do you remember that? And surprisingly, in all of these puritanical literature, we found all of these discussions of how you can hurt yourself and how you should not hurt yourself and how you should not murder yourself. And sure enough, when we go to the Eighth Commandment and we talk about this idea of stealing, these old people, these ancient men who studied the word and meditated on it day and night, were able to see that there is actually, like, a personal way that you can steal from yourself. And I want to present that to you today.
6 · The Westminster Larger Catechism's comprehensive list of violations of the Eighth Commandment includes not only theft from others but also self-theft through wastefulness
In the Westminster Larger Catechism, it's a little bit long, but let me just read the way that they describe the Eighth Commandment. The sins forbidden in the Eighth Commandment, besides the neglect of the duties required, are theft, robbery, man-stealing, receiving anything that is stolen, fraudulent dealing, false weights and measures, removing landmarks, injustice, and unfaithfulness in contracts between a man and man, or in matters of trust, oppression, extortion, usury, bribery, vexatious lawsuits, unjust enclosures, and depopulations, engrossing commodities to enhance the price, unlawful callings, and all other unjust or sinful ways of taking or withholding from our neighbor what belongs to him, or of enriching ourselves, covetousness, inordinate prizing and affection for worldly goods, distrustful and distracting cares and studies in getting, keeping, and using them, envying at the prosperity of others. And then it ends with this conversation about stealing from ourselves. As likewise, idleness, prodigality, wasteful gaming, and all other ways whereby we'd unduly prejudice our own outward estate and defraud ourselves of the due use and comfort of that estate which God has given us. I understand that's a mouthful. But essentially, when you ask the Puritans, how do I violate the Eighth Commandment, what are the ways in which I could violate the Eighth Commandment? One would be, you're making your own life harder than it needs to be. Specifically, this category essentially would be something like this. Buying things you don't need, not taking care of the stuff you already have. Again, on the Eighth Commandment, John Calvin wrote, We must render to every man his due. In substance, then, the commandment forbids us to long after other men's goods, and accordingly requires every man to exert himself honestly in preserving his own. You have to take care of your stuff. Otherwise, you're stealing from yourself. And the primary expression of all of this comes down to just this idea of wastefulness. This is how the Puritans described stealing from yourself most consistently, is that you're just being wasteful. And the main category for the Puritans of waste would be idleness or laziness. That is the wasting of your life, the wasting of your time. Listen to what Thomas Watson says about this idea. He says, He is a thief to himself by idleness when he misspends his time. He who spends his hours in pleasure and vanity robs himself of that precious time which God has given him.
7 · Two Proverbs passages establish that laziness is morally equivalent to theft and that lack of self-control leaves one vulnerable to losing what God has given
In Proverbs 18.9, we read, Whoever is slack in his work is a brother to him who destroys. Another way that we've maybe heard this verse is, The sluggard is a companion of him who steals or him who destroys. In other words, when you're lazy, you're very similar to someone who is intentionally stealing something. Proverbs 25.28 says, A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. What does that mean? Well, walls were used to guard a city from invaders who would steal the stuff in the city. And if we don't learn to get our hustle on and manage our time and live in industrious frugality, if we don't learn these simple virtues that had been passed on for generations, we really are stealing from ourselves. By our lack of self-control, we're tearing down the walls and inviting all sorts of other things to come in and take from us.
8 · The pastor introduces the Puritan work ethic as an act of worship, grounded in recognizing the eternal significance of every moment
What we're really talking about here, just as an aside, and we need to talk about this more seriously at some point forward, is what is known as the Protestant work ethic, but should be more explicitly called the Puritan work ethic. For them, industriousness was an act of worship. It all boiled down to them seeing people or seeing time the way that C.S. Lewis saw people. I'm going to read this quote from Lewis to you because it's one of those that I'd love to keep in the forefront of your mind. Lewis said, It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you've now met, if at all only in a nightmare. He continues, There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals with whom we joke, work with, marry, snub, and exploit. Immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.
9 · The pastor draws a parallel between Lewis's view of people as immortals and the Puritan view of time as eternally significant
Lewis is just telling us there, you've never met an ordinary person. People are unique. They're immortal. They're special. And what Lewis thought of people, the Puritans thought of us with time. The Puritan motto would be this. There are no unimportant moments. There are no unimportant moments. Every moment of every day is pregnant with possibility. They sought to live with a kind of sober-minded happiness as they looked at each minute and tried to do something like what Kipling describes, is to fill every minute with 60 seconds run. They were frugal people. They were industrious people. They were typically wealthy people. They were typically intellectual people. They were quite sensuous in their marriage beds and so on and so forth. But a lot of what came down to the civilization we now live in came down to people who looked at a minute as a treasure and looked at each minute as a treasure and didn't look at their calendar and say there is dead time, time to waste, time to spend. No, they counted every minute. And in that way, they did not steal from themselves.
10 · The pastor summarizes the first major section on stealing from oneself and pivots to the second section on stealing from others
So that's one idea. In order to not steal from ourselves, we have to watch waste, waste of all kinds. We take care of the things we've been given. We don't need to go excessively above and beyond that which we currently have. And more importantly, we need to be super careful with our time. So how do we avoid stealing from others?
11 · The pastor transitions to theft against others by introducing the biblical pattern of God judging theft
Well, this is obviously probably the thing you would think if you saw Exodus 20, 15, is about stealing from others. And man, I want you to see that this is wrong because, as Lewis said, there are no ordinary people. There are only people created in God's image whom God has bequeathed, given various things that are not yours and eyes to touch. You know, I was listening to a sermon from our sister church up in Sioux Falls. They're going through the book of Judges right now. And the sermon was on the story of Gideon. I thought you might get a kick out of this because I'd never heard this. And it's pretty cool. The preacher was giving sort of comparisons between Moses and Gideon and showing how similar they were. They're both sort of hiding from the problem. God approaches both of them with a specific call to deliver his people from a great injustice. And he essentially uses both Moses and Gideon to bring great judgment on a people who were doing what? Stealing. Stealing. In the Gideon passage, it says the following in Judges 6.6. This is the situation that God saw. This is the situation that God chose to raise up Gideon to judge. For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the east would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land as far as Gaza and leave no sustenance in Israel, no sheep or ox or donkey. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents, and they would come like locusts in number. Both they and their camels could not be counted, so that they laid waste the land as they came in. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian, and the people of Israel cried out to help from the Lord.
12 · The pastor emphasizes God's intense hatred of theft in all its forms
So the image is this. It's literally every harvest time, you know, all spring, all summer, the Israelites are working their land. A harvest comes in. The Midianites notice the harvest and just swarm in, sitting on their land, consuming all their goods and starving the people of Israel. Just theft 101. And God sees this, and he is absolutely disgusted by it. I think this is an important moment. I want us to understand, maybe more than anything else, just how much God hates theft. And no act of theft is too small for God to be quite upset about. In Proverbs 11.1, it says that God abhors, one of the strongest words you can get, abhors a dishonest scale. God abhors a dishonest scale. He abhors a dishonest trade. Proverbs 23.10, Do not move an ancient landmark or enter the fields of the fatherless, for their Redeemer is strong, and he will plead their cause against you. God isn't playing. He feels anger toward theft. He feels anger in particular to a kind of theft that Abraham Lincoln described as getting your bread from the sweat of other men's faces. He said that in a second inaugural.
13 · The pastor identifies 'man-stealing' (the Westminster Catechism's term for slavery and forced labor) as the form of theft that most provokes God's anger
Getting your bread from the sweat of other men's faces. Essentially, what was covered in the Westminster Catechism as man-stealing. God is especially angry at that. And I want to mention that because Lincoln, actually, in the second inaugural, said this. As he was hoping that this whole thing would come to an end with the Civil War, but he did understand that this act of man-stealing had greatly angered the Lord.
14 · Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address is quoted at length to show his theological understanding that the Civil War was divine judgment for the sin of slavery—a form of theft so egregious that God required blood payment for blood shed
And he says, Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman's 250 years of unrequited toil be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn from the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, and so still must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
15 · The pastor introduces the concept of 'legal theft'—human attempts to redefine natural law and make forms of stealing legally permissible
Include that because I want you to see, first of all, how much God is angered by theft. And secondly, I want to introduce this category of theft that is essentially legal theft. That is essentially man's attempt to change the unchangeable laws of God and make various means of stealing from others legal, which is in fact the case of what slavery was in America. It was a disavowal of God's law and a rewriting of human law to match the desires of the individuals in charge. And this greatly displeases the Lord at multiple levels, mostly because what you're doing is you're saying, God, you didn't do it right. I know better. When you steal from someone, what you're doing is you're saying, God, you have not distributed correctly. You have made a mistake in the distribution system that you have exercised. Calvin writes, For we must consider that what each individual possesses has not fallen to him by chance, but by the distribution of the sovereign Lord of all, that no one can pervert his means to bad purposes without committing a fraud on a divine dispensation. Why is God so upset at theft? Well, because it's you telling him that his ordering, his distribution of goods, his distribution of gifts was unwise or unjust and that you know better.
16 · The pastor transitions to identifying a contemporary form of legal theft similar to slavery, setting up a provocative application
Now, theft comes in all kinds of forms and all of it essentially is a rejection of the divine dispensation. But I thought maybe we'd draw attention to one area of theft that is actually quite legal and quite similar to slavery.
17 · The pastor applies the principle of legal theft to progressive taxation and wealth redistribution, arguing that using democratic means to seize the property of others is a form of theft comparable to slavery—it's taking what doesn't belong to you by changing the law rather than respecting natural law
And this will be potentially a relatively hot take. Benjamin Franklin wrote, When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. It's an interesting quote. When people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. So what I'd like to suggest to you is that the founders, if you want to look up more of this, you can read Madison's Federalist No. 10, but they were very concerned about mob rule democracy. Specifically, they were very concerned that a whole bunch of have nots would team up and legally vote for the seizure of property of the haves. Right. And so I would just want to say, like, why would I be against taxing the rich? Am I, is it because I'm a billionaire? No. I would be against unfairly singling out taxing the rich for the same reason I'm against slavery. Simple, simple idea. That's their stuff. That's not my stuff.
18 · The pastor acknowledges the human tendency to rationalize theft even while affirming the commandment's universality, then transitions to the third major section: stealing from God
So one of the things I want to point out is that actually, as much as we agree on the simplicity and the universality of these common ideas of thou shalt not steal, our hearts are always looking for ways to redefine the terms and work it into our favor. So that's a little bit about stealing from others. Now let's talk about stealing from God.
19 · The pastor introduces the most obvious form of stealing from God: lack of generosity
Well, the most obvious application here has to do with generosity. Jesus says, if you've done it unto the least of these, you've done it unto me. If you've not done it to the least of these, you've not done it unto me. The most common issue in the Bible related to stealing from God has to do with a person who has chosen not to be generous. In Luke 12, Jesus tells the parable, A land of a rich man produced plentifully. And he thought to himself, what shall I do? For I have nowhere to store my crops. And he said, I will do this. I will tear down my barns and build larger ones. And there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, be merry. But God said to him, fool, this night your soul is required of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be? So it is, Jesus says, the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
20 · The pastor addresses potential suspicion that he's preaching on generosity to enrich himself, offering to have a personal conversation about his own giving to establish his credibility and clear conscience on this matter
Now, I just want to be super clear about something. I am just kind of, how should I say this in a non-arrogant way? There may be pastors out there who would talk about generosity with a motive of enriching themselves and so on and so forth. If you are concerned about that, I'd love to sit down with you and have a cup of coffee. And I'll just get detailed about what I've given to the Lord. And then you can talk about what you've given to the Lord. And we can see who's more motivated by money. So I don't feel any encumbrances in this area. It would just be illogical to feel any guilt over someone else's misbehavior when, at least in this area, my conscience is really, really clean.
21 · The pastor asserts that meaningful generosity is a natural law requirement for accumulating meaningful wealth—not as religious obligation but as a description of how reality works
I'm just letting you know that if your basic plan to accumulate meaningful wealth does not include meaningful generosity, your plan will fail. I'm just letting you know that that's a natural law. It's just a part of the deal. If you seek to acquire meaningful wealth, that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm just letting you know how to do it. It needs to include meaningful generosity. And if you have some reason as to be suspicious about giving to me, I'm not even asking that or giving to the church, I'm not asking that. What I'm actually asking for you to do is just to give. And I'm asking you to do that for you. It's important. Proverbs 13.22 says, Job 27.16 says of this kind of man, Though he heap up silver like dust and pile up clothing like clay, he may pile it up, but the righteous will wear it, and the innocent will divide the silver. Proverbs 28.8, Whoever multiplies his wealth by interest and profit gathers it for him who is generous to the poor. So again, as C.S. Lewis once said, I don't believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I'm afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. Again, any plan to accumulate meaningful wealth that does not include meaningful generosity is a plan destined to fail. I can't tell you how. I can just tell you it will.
22 · The pastor invokes Dorothy Sayers' earlier framework to classify generosity as a natural law (law of the fire), not a human convention (law of the stop sign)
Now let me be clear. This, again, is not a law of a stop sign kind of thing. If it were that, I wouldn't be talking about it. This is more of the law of the fire kind of thing. And if you want to try to break it, you just need to be prepared to break yourself against it. It's pretty simple.
23 · The pastor broadens the concept of stealing from God beyond financial generosity to encompass the totality of our lives
Well, moving on from that kind of ground-level concept of generosity to God, I think that we should zoom out and talk about this more broadly. Because the reality is, is that we owe God our lives. He is our creator, our sustainer, and our redeemer. Our lives are not our own. If we are in Christ, we've been bought with a price. Our lives belong to God, and so do our bodies, and so do our brains, and so do our time, and our talent, and our treasures.
24 · The pastor introduces Paul's three rhetorical questions from 1 Corinthians as a diagnostic tool for exposing pride and ingratitude—the root sins underlying all forms of stealing from God
So what I want to do as we wrap up is actually just ask you three questions that Paul very cleverly issued to the Corinthians, who were honestly being very full of themselves. Pride is the root of this sin as well. And Paul gave three penetrating rhetorical questions that I think could be helpful as we try to grow in our generosity to God.
25 · Paul's three questions from 1 Corinthians 4:7 expose the fundamental dishonesty of pride: everything we have is received from God, so boasting as if we earned it independently is 'glory stealing'—taking credit that belongs to God
And the first one is this. This is from 1 Corinthians 4-7. Who sees anything different in you? Who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? What do you have that you did not receive? And then if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? As if you earned it? These three rhetorical questions are meant to devastate prideful stinginess at every level. Especially the various forms of what I would call glory stealing that we commit against God.
26 · The pastor answers Paul's rhetorical questions by pointing to the fundamental facts of human creatureliness: we didn't create ourselves, we don't sustain ourselves, and we won't choose when to die
Here's the answer to these three rhetorical questions. You did not choose to be born. And you will almost certainly have no choice over when you die. You are not the creator, nor are you the sustainer. Of any energy you've used over the past X number of years. To accumulate. To live life. Your whole life, my friend, is a product of divine activity.
27 · The pastor addresses the tension between human effort and divine grace
So that even if you were to devote yourself with diligent hard work and say, I have what I have because I worked for it, and I absolutely believe you that you did. I absolutely believe that that's very likely that you did work very hard. Were you conscious of the heartbeats that drove that moment? Were you conscious? Were you able to give yourself breath? Were you able to give yourself life as you worked very hard? See, again, the biblical perspective isn't like super false humility where I claim that, oh, I don't deserve any of this. Like, I didn't do anything for any of this. Biblical perspective is more reasonable than that. Paul says it quite clearly in 1 Corinthians 15. I worked harder than any of them. He worked hard. Though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
28 · The pastor makes the climactic theological claim that all sin is fundamentally theft—the hijacking of God's good creation for our own purposes
The truth is, is that in a very fundamental way, all the sins we commit are actually just acts of theft. Because they all involve the rewiring, the hijacking of the stuff God made for our own purposes. Fundamentally, all sin is theft. And what I find so refreshing, going back to this idea of like, these are kind of universal ideas, guys, is just two random novels I've read in the past have passages about this. And, by the way, both of these are good novels. Definitely not for the squeamish, though. So the first one is from a novel written not that long ago. At least it doesn't feel like it was. Which means it's probably 20 years. In The Kite Runner, and I can't remember the author's name, but he writes this. There is only one sin. Only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft. When you kill a man, you steal a life. When you steal his wife's right to a husband, you rob his children of a father. When you lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. And there is no more wretched act than stealing. Many years previously, in the 80s, Stephen King wrote what is probably his best novel, called The Stand. And he has the same section. He writes, The father of sin was theft. Every one of the Ten Commandments boiled down to, thou shalt not steal. Murder was the theft of a life. Adultery, the theft of a wife. Covetousness, the secret, slinking theft that took place in the cave of the heart. Blasphemy was the theft of God's name, swiped from the house of the Lord, and sent out to walk the streets like a strutting whore. They're right. All sin is fundamentally theft.
29 · The pastor presents the gospel as the answer to humanity's fundamental sin of theft
Now, what do we do with that? Here's why I think the cross is remarkable. Is the cross, oh my goodness, the cross is this remarkable answer to theft. What is God's answer to a world that has broken itself repeatedly against this law? What is God's answer to a world that has broken itself by taking what it did not belong? What's God's answer to that? God's cure for our great wrongful taking is a great merciful giving. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. That whosoever perishes, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life. The great cure for the great sin of taking is God's great act of giving in love his only begotten son.
30 · The crucifixion scene becomes an illustration of the sermon's central truth: all humans are thieves, and the question is whether we will be the repentant thief who seeks Christ's mercy or the unrepentant thief who clings to pride unto death
It is no coincidence, my friends, that Jesus is crucified between two thieves. For at the end of the day, that is what every human being is. The only question that remains in the picture of Jesus between two thieves is what thief will we be? Will we be the unrepentant one? Will we be clinging to his pride all the way to death? Or we'll be the other one who says, Remember me. Represent me. Forgive me.
31 · The pastor transitions to the Lord's Supper, framing communion as the weekly celebration that even an 'obscure verse' about stealing leads inevitably to the gospel
So now we get to the table. this opportunity that is presented to us every week to celebrate the multi-faceted goodness of God's gospel and here we see yet again by no means an artificial landing point that even in this obscure verse Exodus 20 15 about stealing when we press into what the Bible actually teaches we see that the answer yet again is the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power of God unto salvation so I want to invite you today if you are a follower of Jesus Christ I want to invite you to just soberly come to this table and thank God that by his grace he has given you the faith to be the repentant thief rather than the unrepentant one and if you don't know Christ I'll just leave that image before you and let you consider what you make of it and pray for you as I partake at the table as well
32 · The words of institution from 1 Corinthians 11 are read, establishing the theological foundation for the Lord's Supper as proclamation of Christ's death
Paul writes in first Corinthians 11 for I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread and when he'd given thanks he broke it and said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me for as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes
33 · The pastor prays before communion, asking God to give the congregation eyes to see how the gospel answers the problem of theft and waste, and to celebrate that salvation is by grace alone
father God we pray for this time that you would fill our hearts full of faith to see how your gospel indeed is the answer to this broken broken problem of stealing what doesn't belong to us and wasting what you've given we come Lord as people who are eager to celebrate that our only hope for eternity is grace and not works and father we pray that you would fill our hearts full of faith as we partake and see that the Lord is good amen