All right, well please open your Bibles to 1 Timothy, and I'll be reading from 1 Timothy chapter four, verses one through five. But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with gratitude. For it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer.

Well, we're through the holiday season. And in this country, I often feel like the calendar belongs to us, belongs to us Christians. And what I mean by that is as the world celebrates some of the holidays in an outward way, we know the inward meaning of these things and we know it and we celebrate it. So Thanksgiving, remember that. It's a Christian holiday, and we're the ones actually with thankful hearts to the Lord. They're thankful in Christ. Christmas, and the reason for the season, of course, is the child that was born in the mandarin, so of all the other stuff that's going on. At Christmas, we know the true and celebrate the true meaning of Christmas.

Well, what about New Year's, New Year's Day? Is there a Christian way to celebrate the new year? and I think there is, I think there is. Revelation 21 five says, the one who sits on the throne says, behold, I am making all things new. That's what Christ does. He makes all things new, including the Christian life of service to him and obedience to him. It's new, it's new every year, so to speak. In fact, it's new every morning. His mercies are new every morning. The Bible says, though youths grow tired and weary and vigorous young men stumble badly yet, those who wait for the Lord gain new strength. They mount up with wings like eagles. They run and don't get tired. They walk and do not become weary. Isaiah 40 verse 30 and 31.

So let me ask you, does your Christian life Your life of obedience need to be made new, need to be renewed this year. In John chapter four, verse 14, this is the Lord talking to the woman at the well and he talks to her about the water that she's offering and everybody who drinks it is gonna thirst again. But he says, whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst. But the water that I will give them will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life. like a renewable source that you never run out, you never thirst again because you have this water of life that the Lord has given you. And so you might say in your Christian life, you might become weary, say, you know, I'm not feeling that fountain of life that never runs out and causes me to never thirst again. And if so, you need to be made new. You need to be made new and Christ does that and offer that.

So we're back to 1 Timothy. We're picking up right where we left off before James gave us a great Christmas series and then he also gave us a challenge for the new year to not only be reading but to be studying God's word and getting the benefits of that. But I think this passage is good for the first Sunday. of the year because in its own way, it puts its finger on what makes the Christian life new, what makes the Christian life alive, what makes the Christian life like a fountain that never stops flowing and that overflows in that way. And that thing that it puts its finger on is thinking of God as you serve him according to Christ and according to the gospel. And you're thinking of God in that way because the Holy Spirit has taught your heart that that's the way God thinks about you. He thinks about you according to the gospel. He thinks about you according to what Christ has done for you. And if you're thinking of God in that way, you're gonna find your service to God and your obedience to God to be new. to be alive, to be something that doesn't cause you to grow weary, but cause you to mount up with wings like eagles, as the prophet tells us.

In this passage that I just read this morning, Paul warns against a false spirituality. And it's subtle. because you can fall into this false spirituality or begin to fall into it, begin to fall into something that's very much like this false spirituality and not know it. This false spirituality has a lot of the same efforts, a lot of the same busyness as the true spirituality, but it's dead inside and it's deadening and it's exhausting. And this is where this church in Ephesus, the strategic church, went wrong. They were led into this false spirituality by bad leaders who, you remember, they wanted to be teachers of the law. And so the gospel that should have been at the heart of their service to God, it was kind of subtly and slowly pushed to the side. And what Christ had done for them, the gospel itself, was pushed to the side and they began to put, instead of the gospel, the law at the heart of their ministry. And so remember in chapter one, Paul, reminded them of the real gospel. He put it into a nutshell. It's a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's the real gospel, and then he illustrated it with his life as well. Or later in the book, and this is what we had last time we were here, Paul talked about the mystery of godliness, the secret of godliness. It's in chapter three, verse 16, and it's Christ. He gives kind of a poem. It's all things that Christ has done for us. The mystery of godliness is the person of Christ himself. When we get to the next passage, after this one, Timothy, Paul says, in contrast to the false spirituality, is to train himself in true godliness and to be an example of godly living, the kind that comes from Christ, the kind that comes from the gospel, and that's the way in which he was to be a testimony to the church in Ephesus.

So if your Christian life needs to be made new again in this new year, I trust this message, this morning's message, is for you, is God's message for you this morning. So this morning I want to look at three characteristics of the false spirituality. That's in verses one to three. And then one characteristic of the true spirituality, and that's in verses three through five. Three characteristics of the false spirituality, and the false spirituality is... Legalism, that's the word you could use for it. It's a way of serving God where the gospel is not at the center. Christ is not at the center. It's pushed to the side and there's no newness in this way of serving God. The true spirituality, the gospel's at the center, making it new, making it fresh, making it alive in that way. So three characteristics of the false spirituality. And the first is this. that the Spirit warns about it. The Spirit warns about this false spirituality, verse four. But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times, some will fall away from the faith. And then he starts to explain how they're gonna fall away from the faith.

This subtle false spirituality, serving God without the pure gospel at the center of your service, is so important It's so dangerous that the spirit has taken the trouble to warn you about it. And he's done it explicitly. In other words, he's done it in words. Not just giving a impression when it comes, like something is wrong. I don't know quite what. No, he's given you words. And he's warned, and that's what it says here. The spirit says explicitly, meaning with words, that in the later time, some will fall away from the faith. He says that this kind of falling away from the faith is gonna come in, my translation says later times. Literally, it's gonna come in the last days. In the last days, some will fall away from the faith in this way. 

And this testimony of the Spirit about the last days is all over scripture. the scripture testifies that the last days are going to be characterized increasingly by a false church that will not only exist in the last days, but will thrive in the last days. And it wasn't always like that. When the church first started in Jerusalem, 3,000 souls were saved. People were baptized into the church and they existed for a time. They were growing there in the church. There was just one church in the city. There wasn't a false church that went by the name of Christ in some way, but actually wasn't a real church. But it didn't take long until there was. a false church. So you'd have the true church and then you'd have a lot of different substitutes multiplying in that way. And scripture prophesied of that. 

So the Lord himself taught, see to it that no one misleads you, for many will come in my name and mislead many. Or he said, many false prophets will come and mislead many. Second Timothy chapter three and verse one says, but realize this, that in the last days, difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, and it mentions a whole bunch of other sins. And then it says, holding to a form of godliness, although they've denied its power. So they're outwardly godly, they hold to a form of godliness, they appear godly on the outside, but inwardly they're just as sinful, if not more, than everyone else. And Paul says that the last days are gonna be increasingly characterized by that. 

Verse 13 of that same chapter, he says, evil men and imposters will proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. And they're not just evil, but they're pretending they're not. They're imposters, and so that characterizes the time. 

In fact, Paul himself. prophesied about this false church, or the spirit prophesied through him about this specific church that he's writing to here in Timothy Acts chapter 20 and verse 29 when he was speaking to the elders. He says, I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. And from among your own selves, men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them. 

And so these were wolves, actually wolves in sheep's clothing, They were gonna come speaking perverse things to the flock, like things that look good on the outside, but actually hid a deadness on the inside and something that would lead them astray. So this characterizes the last days, this false church, this false spirituality, the danger of this false spirituality. 

I don't know what you think of when you hear the word last days. Maybe you think of the years right before the coming of Christ or the time that the book of Revelation talks about before Christ's return and you could speak of the last days in that way. But scripture more or less speaks of the last days as the whole time between the first and the second coming of Christ. 

So Hebrews 1, 1 and 2, God spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many portions and in many ways, but in these last days, he's spoken to us in his son. So we're living in the last days, and it's a time between the first and the second coming of Christ. And in the arrival of the false teachers in Ephesus, with their false spirituality, Paul saw evidence that the last days had come. 

This is what the Spirit was talking about when he explicitly warned about this way of apostatizing, of turning from the faith while still naming the name of Christ, while still seeming to be a Christian. 

in history many times over, this has happened, that the revival of truth or the discovery of truth is accompanied by an explosion of error that goes alongside of it. I think in some ways it might even be happening in our own time as well, that some catch the excitement and the zeal of the discovery of the actual truth without actually catching the truth. And so they put all that zeal and excitement into an error. Instead, I'm thinking of the Reformation time, and there was actually a lot of heresies and errors that were spun off of that true discovery of the truth. 

Or the time when the English Puritans were in charge in England, and they actually ended up putting in place a freedom of conscience that people would be able to worship. as they saw fit, and it unleashed a whole bunch of wild things at the time. It didn't end well at that time, but it was also a time when the truth really flourished. All the Puritan books that you read are sermons that were preached in that time, often in London itself, but it spawned a bunch of false things as well. 

And I think the New Testament time was a little bit like that. The gospel went out into the world. There was an excitement to it, there was a newness, there was a power, but it also bred a lot of counterfeits. including this one, that the Holy Spirit warns about, and a false spirituality, including the kind that took root in Ephesus, the specific flavor of this false spirituality that took root in Ephesus as well. 

So the first characteristic of the false spirituality is the Spirit is warning about it. He's warning you about it. today, because it's actually a danger to you, this false spirituality. And so Paul says the spirit is warning about this false spirituality. 

The second characteristic, second characteristic, its source is demonic. Its source is demonic. Back to our passage. Spirit explicitly says, in the later times, some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons. So its source is spirits that are deceitful and its doctrines of demons is where it comes from. 

Now, humans were involved. in promoting and teaching this false spirituality. That's where they got it from. It's from human beings that were false teachers in Ephesus, but ultimately the source of it wasn't human.

And you might ask, where do Satan and his demons focus their attack? You might ask that about today. Where did Satan and his demons, where does the battle rage the fiercest today? And you might think of maybe the transgender ideology that's really prevalent now in our time. It's taught in our schools with great zeal. You might say, well, that's the tip of the spear of Satan's work. That's what he's most focused on right now. And it is part of Satan's work, and it ought to be opposed. 

Everything is connected, including everything that Satan does, but it's actually not the place where Satan's battle, the battle that Satan is waging, rages the fiercest. It's not the focus of his attention. What he's really interested in establishing is a false spirituality, a kind of so-called Christian living that's divorced from Christ and the gospel. if he could accomplish that, if he could establish that in the world, that would be his best work of all. That would be his most important work and most ingenious work, his most diabolical work, where there'd be an outward shell of Christianity. maybe some of the duties of Christianity imposed, and you try to meet some of them, but no kernel to it, no power to it, no newness in it, no fountain of life. 

So that people would try it for a while and wear out, and say, well, I've tried it, and there's nothing to it. Don't talk to me about it, because I already know what it is. I've already done that. And so this is what Satan is seeking to establish. He's seeking to establish this, and it comes from demons. It is the center of his work. 

That's why when it talks about the battle that wages in spiritual places and the armor of God, they're all elements of the gospel. It's the helmet of salvation. It's the breastplate of righteousness. It's the faith, the shield of faith that corresponds to the gospel that quenches all of Satan's fiery darts, because he's shooting them all at you, and he's shooting them all at the gospel itself. So this is the focus of Satan's attack. It's the focus of his attack on you as well. He has all kinds of ways in which he attacks you. This is the central one, is to try to try to convince you of this false spirituality that Paul is warning about here. 

So the first characteristic of this false spirituality, the spirit warns about it explicitly. The second is its source is demonic. The third is it centers on a substitute morality. This is the telltale sign of it. It centers on a substitute morality. And so it describes this. It's this way of apostatizing that the spirit is warning about and that Satan is seeking to promote. 

I'll start in verse one again. The Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron. Men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods. This is a way of apostatizing by means of hypocrisy of liars. And Paul describes those who fall into this false spirituality as deceiving and being deceived. So they're lying to themselves as well as lying to others. being deceived to whatever degree, but it's a hypocrisy, and it always involves lying. It involves a false conscience. They're seared in their own consciences with a branding iron. We'll come back to that. But the conscience in this false spirituality, instead of resting on faith in what Christ has done for you, it rests on works. It rests on works. And so the works that it rests on are not the works of God's perfect law, but a different version of these. If you're gonna rest on works, you can't rest on that, because the perfect law of God requires perfection. And so the trick to this false spirituality is to twist the law of God. So you can rest in works that maybe you might be able to do. So it's a different version of the law, a man-made version, a lesser version, a target you can hit. 

that twist God's law into a new shape, and it mentions the shape here. They forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, things that God did not require. Those are man-made laws. And there's always some sort of man-made law, not necessarily this one, but this is always the way with this false spirituality. 

The things that are mentioned here, forbidding marriage and abstaining from foods, when I first hear that, it reminds me of the Roman Catholic Church. Their priests are celibate, take a vow of celibacy, and that's considered the highest spirituality. Some of the priests of the past have been involved in prostitution, but they won't participate in marriage because they can be absolved from the sin of prostitution in that way, but they would not wanna tarnish their spirituality with the state of marriage. So I think of the Roman Catholic Church forbidding marriage, abstaining from certain kinds of food, but I don't wanna single them out too much. 

This is what spiritually worn out people do. They build some kind of structure of spirituality, of man-made laws to take refuge in it, to keep God at bay, to keep God at arm's length by resting in this. And it's exhausting. That's why the Lord says, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden. and I will give you rest." 

The Pharisees were great at doing this and the Lord condemned them. And they're a great example of what the human heart does. So Mark chapter seven. The Lord said this to the Pharisees, Mark 7 and verse 9. He was saying to them, you are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. For Moses said, honor your father and mother, and he who speaks evil of father and mother is to be put to death. But you say, if a man says to his father or mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban, that is to say given to God, you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus invalidating the word of God. by your tradition, which you have handed down, and you do many things such as these." 

He gives one example that they did. The law says, honor your father and mother. That's what God requires. They had a man-made spirituality with a different law, with a loophole. If you dedicate your possessions to God, then it's actually a sin. for you to support and honor your father and mother with it. And the Lord condemned them for this and said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. This is what you do, many things such as these. And the heart, the human heart produces these false moralities. The human heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. Who can know it? 

So you can do this with, what the false teachers in Ephesus were doing this with marriage. Their higher spirituality was to abstain from marriage and to abstain from certain foods. But you can do this with anything. You can create a man-made morality and then justify yourself with it. You can do this even with good things. You can say, I'm an angry person, but at least I go to church once a week. And in fact, I go to Sunday school. I show up at Sunday school, so I must be doing better than most people because I go to church in that way.

What happens to your conscience when it rests on that? When it rests on something you've made up? It's not gonna be the perfect law of God. You're not gonna say, I've totally kept everything that God has actually commanded. It's gonna be something you choose. And what happens to your conscience when it rests on that instead of faith in Christ and his grace to sinners? Well, your conscience becomes seared. it becomes cauterized, and there's a great description of it in this passage.

By means of the hypocrisy of liars, these men who are teaching this false spirituality and promoting it are seared in their own consciences with a branding iron, who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from food. Their conscience, which should bother them, not for being married and for eating certain foods, but for being angry. That's the example that I just gave of that. It becomes deadened, becomes numb, becomes cauterized, becomes seared, becomes like skin when it's burned, and it loses all the feeling in it. It's not eradicated completely, but it's like this seared skin, a seared conscience. You might be able to feel pressure on burned skin, but it's not going to be sensitive to the touch in that way. And that's what happens to the conscience.

It's the gospel, actually, that gives you a good conscience. And Paul talked about, in chapter 1, the good conscience that those who have made shipwreck of their faith have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith because they've rejected it. Or the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience. and a sincere faith. And so the gospel itself, when you believe in it, when you trust in it, when you make that the center of your service to the Lord, gives you a tender conscience so that when you disobey the word of God, when your conscience tells you and shows you and convicts you that you're an angry person or whatever the sin is, you draw near to Christ. You feel it and you draw near to Christ and you receive forgiveness and cleansing from Him.

So this is the way to identify this false spirituality. It always goes with a substitute morality. He gives some examples. We don't know quite how these worked, but it's forbidding marriage here and abstaining from certain foods and it's deadening to the conscience. So this is the false spirituality and the characteristics of it. The spirit warns against it. Satan advances it, it's actually the center of Satan's work, and then how to identify it. It's always this substitute morality and this substitute conscience. So, three characteristics of a false spirituality.

And then let me give you, as we shift gears, one characteristic of the true spirituality. And Paul's gonna shift gears and start talking about not how, what the Spirit's warning against, but the way things ought to be, the true spirituality. And the characteristic that he mentions is gratitude, gratitude. And he begins by how it shows itself in a small thing, in the last thing that he mentioned, food. But before we get there to the gratitude, let me speak of, Other characteristics, I'm just gonna give you one characteristic of the true spirituality, or Paul actually does this morning, but there's many characteristics of this true spirituality, and they only come from the gospel itself. The characteristics, not just gratitude, it's love, it's joy, it's peace, it's all the things that come from the fruit of the Spirit. So have you ever thought this, Wouldn't it be nice if there was a quick index that would tell you at a glance who is spiritually mature? Who's spiritually serious? Who's pleasing to the Lord? Just a simple... It's kind of like an abbreviation for the Christian life, and you could see it at a glance for another person or even for yourself that you could see. That's what these are for this false spirituality, this forbidding marriage and abstaining from foods. It's just a quick index. Well, this person must be spiritual because he's taken a vow of celibacy. or this person must be spiritual because he doesn't eat certain foods. And that's quite obvious. And so these are all ways to have sort of a handle on spirituality. Well, you don't have to wonder if there's one thing that can be sort of an abbreviation for a spiritually mature person or someone who's really serious about following the Lord, because there already is one that the Lord has given. It's love. It's love. Love is the mark of a true Christian. Love is the mark of a mature Christian. And it's love of a certain kind. It's love of a certain kind. John chapter 13 and verse 34 says that the Lord Jesus says, a new commandment I give to you. He's making it simple, just one thing. A new commandment I give to you that you love one another. And it's a certain kind of love, even as I have loved you, as he's about to go to the cross for undeserving sinners, that you also love one another. By this, all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love one for another. The characteristic of true spirituality is the love that's seen only in the gospel. It's seen only in the gospel. It's the love that Christ has for sinners. It's the kind of love that touches the leper, not because the leper's better, or because you can see that the leper is getting better, but it touches the leper in the midst of his leprosy. And that's the way the grace of God works as well. It's given to unworthy sinners. So that's the way in which we're to love one another. We're to have a love for those who are not worthy. And it's something that can only come from the gospel. And it's kind of the first thing that comes from the gospel. It's only seen in the gospel and it's only empowered by those who are believing in the gospel as well. A good indicator of whether you have this love, whether this love is the center of your spirituality, is does the love that you have for others reach outside the church? Or is it only for those who are within? who are easier to love, or should be, because the transformation has already begun in us. So this is one indicator of whether we're loving, even loving one another, with that kind of love, the love that comes from the gospel itself. The church in Ephesus had lost sight of a love that reached beyond its doors, that reached out to the unworthy and to the lost. They had lost sight of that kind of love when they lost sight of the gospel. And so that was one thing that Timothy was to restore. In fact, it's the first thing he was to restore. First of all, make sure that your prayers reach outside of the church. So it's a love, it extends out. to the unworthy out of the church, and that's maybe a good way for it to be seen, but it doesn't just operate outside the church. That's the way a husband is to love his wife as well. Husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her. It's how we're to love one another as well. A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you. Only the gospel equips you to have that kind of love. Not even the law itself, the perfect law. You could read it and know about it and understand it and not come across that kind of love. A love that is given to those who don't deserve it. A love that is given to the unworthy and that's why it's called the New Commandment. So the only way that you can love others like that outside the church or inside the church, or your spouses, because you know in your heart that that's how God loves you. And it's the same with the joy of the Christian life, same with peace in the Christian life, it's the same with gratitude. It all comes from the gospel. So I've given you one example there that Paul did not give. But let me give you the one that he did, and it's gratitude. It's not love. It's gratitude here. And he's just been talking about the false spirituality, the kind of spirituality with no life in it, with no newness in it, with no gospel at the center. And the last word that he mentioned was food. And it was part of this substitute morality, is it abstains from certain foods. He's going to contrast it now with the true spirituality that's alive, that's new, that has the gospel at its center. And he's going to point out that the true spirituality involves gratitude, even gratitude for food. And then he's going to expand it from there. It's not only gratitude for food, but it's a whole world. of gratitude that opens up for everything that God has created. So as he shifts gears from the kind of spirituality, this false spirituality that he's warning against to the true spirituality, the contrast that he's gonna give is he's not only gonna say, well, in the true spirituality, marriage is permitted and you can eat whatever you want. That would be a shorter passage. That would be a shorter sermon if that's all that he had in mind. No, he's gonna say in the true spirituality, you eat with a gratitude towards God. that only the gospel can instill in you. And then he's gonna expand that, not just to food, but to everything that you encounter as well. But let's start where he starts, with food, with talking about food here. And so he says, these are men who forbid marriage and advocate abstaining from foods, which God has created to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. Maybe you are eating healthier food. A lot of people are. I am. I'm trying to. I am. I am eating, succeeding in eating healthier food. But eating healthier food is good, but it's only part of the picture. We're not machines. We're not just bodies only, but we are body, soul, and spirit. And so the way that God intended for the food that he created to be eaten is with gratitude towards him. If you wanna get the full good out of the food that you're eating, you need to eat it that way. You need to eat it the way that he intended. And it'll benefit you body, soul, and spirit. It'll benefit you as a whole person. God created foods not to be fodder for a false spirituality so you can build something and convince yourself that you're right with God or following Him because you've set up some way of abstaining from food. No, He's created foods to be enjoyed and He's created foods to be enjoyed with gratefulness to Him. This is why we pray before we eat. It's not just something that Christians have made up or your parents made up or something like this. The Lord Jesus prayed before He ate. You can read that in scripture and He's taught that to us. We pray and give thanks for the food. not just as a mantra, not just as a superstition, but the point is to express real thankfulness for your food that comes from God. And I've mentioned this table prayer. It's one that my family has done that I have really enjoyed. And it's, we thank thee, Lord, for Jesus Christ. For the blood he shed, we thank thee for his risen life and for our daily bread. That's a great prayer. You can sing it. But it illustrates how true thankfulness, it has to start with Christ, has to start with the gospel, and then it works to the food. The only way you can be thankful for your food truly thankful for your food and use it as God intended it to be used is if your thankfulness starts with the gospel. Thanking the Lord for Jesus Christ and for the blood that he shed for you and for his risen life and then you can thank him for the daily bread as well. If your thankfulness to God doesn't start with the gospel, you won't be thankful for anything else. And that's why it says in this passage, God created foods to be gratefully shared in by those who believe and know the truth. They believe and know the truth of the gospel. They know what God is like through the gospel. And so when they eat food, they're thankful to him because he is a giver in that way. And then it says, everything created by God is good and nothing to be rejected if it is to be received with gratitude for it is sanctified by means of the word of God. and prayer, and he's expanding it to all things, not just food here, but this would be true of food as well. It's sanctified to your use by the word of God, and I think that especially refers to the gospel, which tells you what God is like, and by prayer, by the prayer of thanksgiving as well. So this set shows you just this simple example of eating and being thankful for food. It shows you what a world of difference the gospel makes when you're serving Christ in light of the gospel versus not in light of the gospel. For unbelievers, even eating is sin. They eat, they use God, they use food for what it isn't intended for. It's intended to be eaten with gratitude. or getting married, the other example that he uses here. When they take a wife or a husband, it's done sinfully. But for believers, eating is an offering to God. When you eat with gratitude in your heart, it's an offering to God that actually pleases him and receives a reward as well. Titus chapter one says this. To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure, but both their mind and their conscience are defiled and they are worthless for any good deed. And so the gospel, as you are grateful to God through the gospel, it opens up a world of gratitude for you. It's not only true of food that is to be created by a good God to be gratefully shared in, but it's everything that is created by God. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is to be received with gratitude. And he's not talking, of course, about sinful things here when he talks about nothing is to be rejected if it's to be received with gratitude, but he's talking about everything that God created, not just food, but the animals, the sun, the moon, the fields, the trees, all of God's creation. is good and it's to be received by him with gratitude. Not only everything that he created, but everything that happens in his creation as well is to be received with gratitude. The only way you can live this kind of life and serve him with this kind of gratitude is by understanding the gospel. Understanding the gospel and putting that at the center of your relationship with God and of your service to God as well. You hear at this church, Some of the slogans of the Reformation, sola fide, sola gratia, meaning salvation is by faith alone, not according to works that you do for God, but by trusting in what God has done for you. And that's a distinctive of the Reformation. Or salvation is by grace alone, not according to the law and its principle of deserving, of rewards for worthy recipients, but according to a free gift given to the undeserving and given to unworthy recipients. And so that's the way salvation works. Salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, not just as your ticket to heaven, so that you can punch that card, you can put that in your pocket, and then go on living as before and thinking of God as you did before, except for that one exception of the way in which he saves. No, by understanding salvation, you understand who God is, that he is a free gift giver to the unworthy, that he is a lavish gift giver to the unworthy. And then you have that view of God, at the center of every way in which you serve Him. And so that teaching that is abbreviated in that way with those slogans, sola fide, sola gratia, is at the center of all that we teach here because it's at the center of the obedience to God by which a person pleases Him. The spirit by which we serve God is not a spirit of slavery leaving to fear again, but a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father. And so when you come to salvation in that way, you're able to then receive all things, all of creation itself as a gift from a loving Father's hand and actually have gratitude. So is this how you look at your life every day? Do you receive it? All the things that were created. Everything created by God is good and nothing is to be rejected if it was received with gratitude for it is sanctified by means of the word of God and prayer. You can't have that gratitude unless it's from the true gospel of God. It's from knowing God according to the true gospel of God. That's the only way in which the suspicion that God is not giving you his best can be removed from your heart. The suspicion that God doesn't give freely to you, that he doesn't give lavishly to you, that he gives begrudgingly to you, that he gives according to your deserving and so he doesn't give what is best to you. That's a view of God that first of all isn't true. It's not according to the gospel and it's a view of God that taints all of your service to God and makes it to be dead because it's not done in faith. So the heart of gratitude that comes from the gospel, that comes from seeing God as a free gift giver, not only makes eating food pleasing in its sight, because you're able to have true gratefulness in your heart toward God, but it opens up the whole world to you, a world of gratitude in serving Him. You need this gratitude, not only to use food for what it's created for, but to live any of the Christian life with true spirituality and you can only get it from the gospel. And when you do, the whole world opens up and every moment that you spend in it as your father's good gift to you. If you don't start there with the gospel itself, if you don't stay there thinking of God in that way, you'll end up stuck. you'll end up with no gratitude towards God, towards the creator. You'll end up with some sort of joyless substitute morality and with a seared conscience as well. So this is how important this is, this difference between a false spirituality and a true spirituality. What is the Holy Spirit telling you? What is the Holy Spirit saying? Well, he's warning you. He's warning you about this false spirituality. It's that important. How is Satan attacking you this morning? Well, he may be attacking you in a number of ways, but the center of his attack is not far from this. He wants you to have a kind of serving without the gospel at its center. He wants you to be involved in a kind of a substitute morality. So are you weary in serving the Lord? Spiritually weary in serving the Lord? Do you need to be made new? Do you need for your obedience to the Lord to be made new in this new year? Well, in order to have gratitude, in order to have love, in order to have joy, in order to have peace, in order to have newness, in order to serve the Lord in a way that pleases Him, and receive a reward, you have to perceive God as He is. You have to think of Him as He is. And in order to do that, there's only one way to do it. It's to really open your ears to the gospel. And this is what we're doing at the Lord's Table. It's a wonderful way to do it. at the Lord's table, that his blood was shed for you. That's the message here at the Lord's table, that his body bore your sins on the cross in order that you might be forgiven. And then Christ was risen from the dead in order that his cleansing resurrection power, which does its work in you and he completes it in you, would be for you as well. It's a sign of God's giving to you, not just in that. not just in salvation, but in all of His ways. He's not withholding anything from you. He's giving you His best every moment, in every moment. And so the only response to that, to the truth, is to have a grateful heart towards God and to have a grateful heart as you serve Him. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for our salvation, We thank you for what we're about to observe here at the Lord's table. And it's amazing. It's shocking that Christ's blood was shed for us and not because of anything we've done to deserve it, but surely by your grace and that his body was broken for us. And we thank you that it tells us this. about your character, that you are a free giver to us. We thank you that knowing you as you truly are, knowing you according to the salvation that you have provided, opens up a whole world of serving you with gratitude, with a love that comes only from knowing you through the gospel, and with a service that is continually new. We pray that we might not be strangers to this way of serving you, this way of knowing you. but that we might persist in it and that your Holy Spirit would plant it deeply upon our hearts. And we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.