1. "With the rolling back of the stone and the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the false curse was reversed and the power of death was defeated and sin's scepter was broken."

2. "Expressive individualism, certain that authenticity begins with knowing ourselves. And virtue consists in being true to whatever our desires are. Any salvation is seen as fundamentally working on our own attitudes, cultivating self-acceptance until it blossoms into pride. The idea that our souls' desires themselves could be wrong is an unthinkable thought in a world without God."

3. "The newness of our life, the resurrected life, should show itself in the newness of our works."

4. "One thing will be quite clear, I think: the fact that if there are no good works, then you must conclude that there is no new life. Not because our good works save us. No, God saves us by His grace through faith, not our works, but that faith which alone saves us only saves us. Only faith saves us, only in Christ. That faith alone is never alone."

5. "So far from God being a mere projection of our thoughts, the truth is that we are actually a creation of His. That is what He's been about in making us and in making us again in Christ."

6. "Do you realize by our salvation we have achieved nothing? We've received everything. We have become witnesses to God's goodness."

7. "Some of you may congratulate yourself that you made it out to church this fine morning, but there is no way you can congratulate yourself that you're saved. If you think that you can, then that's probably good evidence that you're not."

8. "Faith is a confident trust in Christ. It's a complete relying on Him. Like many of you are relying on the chairs that you're sitting in right now, just completely relaxing yourself into that chair. That's the kind of trust we're called to have entirely in Christ, trusting Him completely. It's an empty hand filled by the extended grip of God's grace in Christ."

9. "There's something in us that wants to pick religion up and use it as an extension of our own ability, our own praiseworthy actions to fulfill our duties. But the religion of the Bible is relentlessly opposed to that."

10. "Any idea of self-salvation was buried in that sepulcher, and only God's grace came out. The long closed jaws of death were pried open. The claims of Eden's debt were paid, and the power of its curse broken as the first tomb was emptied. The real revolution had begun."

Observation Questions

1. According to Ephesians 2:1-3, what was the spiritual condition of the Ephesians before God intervened, and what three influences were they following in that state?

2. In Ephesians 2:4-5, what two attributes of God does Paul highlight as the basis for God's action toward us, and what did God do for us "even when we were dead in our trespasses"?

3. What three things does Ephesians 2:6 say God has done for believers in relation to Christ, and where does it say believers are now seated?

4. According to Ephesians 2:7, what is God's purpose in saving us, and when will this purpose be displayed?

5. In Ephesians 2:8-9, what three things does Paul say salvation is NOT a result of, and what does he say it IS?

6. According to Ephesians 2:10, what are believers called, what were they created in Christ Jesus for, and when did God prepare these things?

Interpretation Questions

1. Paul describes believers as having been "dead in trespasses and sins" (v. 1) before using the phrase "made us alive together with Christ" (v. 5). How does the sermon's illustration of crossing the Anacostia River while dead help explain why salvation cannot be accomplished through human effort?

2. The sermon emphasizes that "faith alone saves, but faith is never alone." How do verses 8-10 hold together the truth that we are saved by grace through faith (not works) with the truth that we are created for good works? What is the relationship between these two realities?

3. Paul uses the phrase "by grace you have been saved" twice in this passage (verses 5 and 8). Why might Paul repeat this phrase, and what does this repetition reveal about his central concern for the Ephesian believers?

4. Verse 10 says that God "prepared beforehand" the good works we should walk in. How does this connect to Ephesians 1:4, which says God "chose us in Him before the foundation of the world"? What does this tell us about the scope of God's saving plan?

5. The sermon states that the resurrection was God's "thunderclap" that broke His silence and answered the longing question of whether God would let "falsehood and wickedness rule." How does Christ's resurrection validate the message of grace that Paul proclaims in Ephesians 2:1-10?

Application Questions

1. Paul says we once "walked following the course of this world" (v. 2), which the sermon connects to modern "expressive individualism" that assumes "virtue consists in being true to whatever our desires are." In what specific areas of your life are you most tempted to follow the course of this world rather than walk in the good works God prepared for you?

2. The sermon challenges us to consider our daily work—whether in an office, at home, or in a classroom—as the good works God ordained from eternity past for His glory. How might viewing your Monday-through-Saturday responsibilities through this lens change how you approach them this week?

3. Paul says salvation is "not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (v. 9). The sermon notes that "if you think you can congratulate yourself that you're saved, that's probably good evidence that you're not." Where do you find yourself subtly taking credit for your spiritual standing or looking down on others who seem less spiritually mature?

4. The sermon describes saving faith as "an empty hand filled by the extended grip of God's grace"—like completely relaxing into a chair and trusting it to hold you. In what area of your life are you struggling to fully rest in Christ rather than relying on your own efforts to secure God's favor or acceptance?

5. Paul says we are God's "workmanship" (v. 10), and the sermon emphasizes that "we are what God is doing." How should this truth shape the way you view yourself and other believers in your church community, especially those who are difficult to love or whose contributions seem less visible?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Romans 6:1-14 — This passage, recommended in the sermon for Easter discussion, explains how believers have died to sin and been raised with Christ to walk in newness of life, reinforcing the connection between grace and transformed living.

2. James 2:14-26 — Also recommended by the sermon, this passage addresses the relationship between faith and works, demonstrating that genuine saving faith will inevitably produce visible evidence in good deeds.

3. Galatians 2:15-21 — This passage parallels Paul's teaching in Ephesians 2 about justification by faith rather than works of the law, showing that this was a consistent and central theme in Paul's gospel proclamation.

4. Romans 3:21-31 — Referenced in the sermon, this passage explains how boasting is excluded because righteousness comes through faith in Christ, not through the law, and establishes that all have sinned and fall short of God's glory.

5. Titus 2:11-14 — Cited in the sermon, this passage describes how God's grace teaches us to live godly lives and how Christ gave Himself to purify a people zealous for good works, connecting grace and holy living.

Sermon Main Topics

I. God Breaks His Silence Through Christ's Resurrection

II. Because You're Saved, You'll Work

III. Your Works Won't Save You

IV. The Lord's Supper as a Celebration of Grace

Detailed Sermon Outline

• Past: predestination, regeneration, justification, adoption
• Present: ongoing sanctification from sin's power
• Future: deliverance from coming judgment

The passage of Isaiah that Rebecca just read for us asks the Lord, Will youl keep silent?

And once, since God is never kept silent, He's caused Himself to be testified to everywhere and to everyone, revealing Himself in nature. Psalm 19:1, the heavens declare the glory of God.

Beyond that, to His chosen people, God specially revealed Himself. We see in Exodus 3 in the burning bush, God speaking to Moses. And Jesus said that the Scriptures of the Old Testament spoke about Him.

And yet, by the time of Jesus' earthly ministry, opinions were sharply divided about whether God had ended His long silence, the long drought of by sending John the Baptist, and then immediately after him, Jesus of Nazareth.

For more than three years, it seems the people wrestled, wondering if God was still keeping silence, or if this was God finally breaking His centuries-long silence.

Jesus' 30 years of life seemed to be preparation for the three years of public ministry that the gospels recount.

And in those years, early events of His baptism and temptation, His teaching and His miracles all seemed to be preparation for that last week that began with Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the back of a donkey, being greeted by tumultuous crowds as their likely liberator from Rome, enjoying a groundswell of popularity and excitement.

But as our own city knows so well, Populism and power are uneasy partners, each naturally suspicious of the other. And the well-paid temple priests felt attacked by Jesus and threatened. They had every motive to end the popular speculations about this man. And as God's strange providence would have it, they found just the opportunity by means of one of Jesus' own disciples. Informing on Him.

By this point it seems the national leaders had decided to do away with Jesus, even if necessary by means of false accusation and false testimony against Him. They simply needed the opportunity, the occasion, to take Him away from the rest of crowds. And now Judas had given them this opportunity. He offered to lead them to Jesus just outside of the city walls, away from all the crowds in the dead of night.

Many of us thought about the happenings on that Friday from John 19. As night before last we listened to the chapter followed by Bobby's meditation. It culminated in Jesus' conviction and in His crucifixion, in which Jesus Himself said from the cross, It is finished.

Many that day of Jesus' friends and His opponents understood that the crucifixion had finished Jesus. Any idea that He was the Messiah had been literally put to death. Forever it might seem. Is that it? Would we be shut up forever in sin and injustice, in hatred and strife, stewing in a mess of transgressions and trespasses against God's law forever, unanswered, uncorrected, unpunished?

Friday passed. The body was laid in the tomb.

Saturday passed.

And so the third day Sunday began as the disciples lived in the echoing silence of Christ's death.

When God ended His silence that first Easter morning by raising Jesus Christ from the dead. He was answering Isaiah's question and the longing questions of millions of others. Would God remain silent? Would He forever let falsehood and wickedness rule? With the rolling back of the stone and the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the false curse was reversed and the power of death was defeated and sin's scepter was broken.

God was speaking hope to his creation, healing and deliverance to the people. The Jewish leader Paul exemplified this change. The risen Christ appeared to Paul, who was an early opponent of the followers of Jesus, and converted him, even as he was on a mission of persecution against Christians in Syria. God changed his heart from hate for Christ to love for Him. Through Paul's next 30 years, God's Spirit spoke again and again, as Paul wrote to young churches, some of which he himself had helped to plant and instructed them on what it was that God really wants of them and how it is that they could really please God.

For so many years, Paul was much like modern Americans: loud and confident. Psalm 10 talks about the wicked boasting of the desires of his soul. That sounds like people today. Expressive individualism, certain that authenticity begins with knowing ourselves. And virtue consists in being true to whatever our desires are.

Any salvation is seen as fundamentally working on our own attitudes, cultivating self-acceptance until it blossoms into pride.

The idea that our souls' desires themselves Could be wrong is an unthinkable thought in a world without God.

Paul had been loud and confident, not of his financial wealth, but of his moral wealth. He knew himself to be a faithful and diligent law-keeper. He had never worshiped an idol. He was mighty in Scripture memory. He called himself a Jew and relished God's favor of his people in ancient days.

They had been the people that God had selected to receive His law, and Paul had spent his life studying that law and trying to obey that law, and teaching God's law to others so that they could do the same. Outwardly, according to appearances, Paul was a righteous man, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. An Israelite of the Israelites, a receiver of the divinely ordained ethnic superiority. His account of good works was full. How is it then Paul ever came to write these words in Ephesians chapter 2?

Let's look at these first 10 verses that we've been studying.

In Ephesians chapter 2. And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing.

It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Listen again to these Last three verses: For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Two simple statements this glorious morning.

We'll consider each briefly. One, because you're saved, you'll work.

Because you're saved, you'll work.

Number two, your works won't save you. Your works won't save you. I pray that as we study this brief passage, God's silence in your own heart, will break, and you will hear Him clearly speaking to you of His grace in Christ and His plan for your life. Let's dive in here.

First, because you're saved, you'll work. Sometimes, you know, in order to highlight God's grace, Christians can make it seem like good works and Christian faith are entirely unrelated. But that's not true at all. We should do good. That's clear from this last phrase about good works there in verse 10.

Do you see that phrase? That we should walk in them. That them is referring to the good works just before.

Up in verse 2, Paul had mentioned that these Ephesians, when they were dead in their sins and transgressions, walked following the course of this world. Now in Christ, God's ancient choice of us to be holy and blameless erupts into our lives. Our holiness and blamelessness are perfectly in Christ as far as our status before God goes, but that same holiness is also being worked out in us as part of the new birth that we've experienced. We're now being made holy in our own lives, our own loves and actions. It's the kind of life that Paul's going to write about for the second half of Ephesians.

That's what chapters 4, 5, and 6 are about that we hope to come to a little bit later this year. So for example, chapter 4 verse 1, Walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you've been called. Or 5:2, Walk in love. Or 5:8, Walk as children of the light. And down in 5:15 we're exhorted to walk wisely and make the best use of the time.

Not like we were doing when we were following the course of this age, of this world. Not like the Gentiles were doing, as Paul warns in chapter 4:17. The newness of our life, the resurrected life, should show itself in the newness of our works. If you want to think more about this, a great Easter lunch discussion today would be to read two chapters of the New Testament about this resurrected life that we have now in Christ. Read James 2 and read Romans 6.

Read James 2 and read Romans 6 and then discuss with others what you see there. One thing will be quite clear, I think, the fact that if there are no good works, then you must conclude that there is no new life.

Not because our good works save us. No, God saves us by His grace through faith, not our works, but that faith which alone saves us, it only saves us. Only faith saves us, only in Christ. That faith alone is never alone. That faith is always accompanied by works.

Swelling gratitude for God's life-giving love overflows into a love which shapes our own character and stands as an evidence of God's love in us. And then naturally our actions display God's own love and concerns. God loves what is good. And if we're really His, as we grow in understanding, we will too.

Why exactly should we do good?

Because God cares about what we do. He has made specific works for us to do. Did you notice that there in verse 10? Created in Christ Jesus for good works. Again, these good works are the result, not the cause of our salvation.

But God has always been concerned that His people be holy. He was concerned about that in Isaiah's day. Paul wrote to Titus describing Jesus as the One who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. He told Titus to teach God's people to be careful to devote themselves to good works. Paul certainly showed this zeal for the Corinthian church.

And remember that Jesus Himself had taught His own disciples not to be mere hearers of the Word, but to be doers also. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them, Jesus said. And notice what may be the most surprising part of this topic. It's that third phrase in verse 10, which God prepared beforehand. What is that talking about?

Well, that's what we've mentioned before. If you look over in chapter 1, verse 4, you'll see even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. So God not only prepared beforehand His people to save, Paul uses the same word in Romans 9:23 about those He shows mercy on, He prepared beforehand.

But here he's using it about the works that we do. What kind of works? Friends, it's whatever God has you doing right now. Even if they seem insignificant. You've heard the illustration before.

You ask the man what he was doing. He says, I'm putting a brick in a wall. You ask another man who's doing the exact same thing, what he's doing. He says, oh, I'm building a building. You ask another man doing the same work.

He says, what are you doing? He says, I'm building a cathedral for the glory of God. All doing the same actions. Friend, you may be going to work on Monday remotely or in the office. You may be caring for your kids or teaching a class.

But the question for you, if the thing you're doing is in and of itself good, why are you doing it? Are you doing it as that work which God has ordained for you to do from eternity past for His purposes and His glory? This concern fits with what Jesus taught His disciples, By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be My disciples. That's the fruit of holiness in the way you love and care for others. Paul wrote to Timothy about messages like this one that you're listening to right now.

And he encouraged Timothy to preach so that he said, Christians might be complete, equipped for every good work. Part of what I am to do in this time. Is to not try to turn you all into preachers, but trying to help the preaching be equipping to you for what God has called you to do every day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. That's why we gather. That's why we study God's Word.

Jesus wants a people for His own possession, not just on Sunday mornings, but a people who are typified as being zealous for good works. His plan from eternity past was that we be transformed. We are really what he's after, because in all this God cares about us. He has made us and remade us in Christ Jesus. Look at the very beginning of verse 10.

For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus. I wonder if you've thought of it like that before. We recognized up in chapter 1, verse 18, that we are his inheritance.

Here we see that we are his workmanship. We are what God is doing. So far as God, from being a mere projection of our thoughts, the truth is that we are actually a creation of His.

That is what He's been about in making us and in making us again in Christ. It's all His work. And that's why we thank Him and praise Him as we do. He has called us to Himself. Why else would we be here right now out in the middle of this field?

His church is His work. We participate in it, but it is God Himself who has made us His people and brought us together in this fellowship. This church is ultimately not my work or the elders' work. It's not ultimately the work of the deacons or the congregation as a whole. It is the work of God.

We are His workmanship. Thank Him, Christian, for the new loves that you know that are good and pleasing to Him, that you're instructed and encouraged in here, and that I trust you live out and enjoy each day of the week. Our good works are pleasing to God because we are His workmanship. Well, that's the most important thing Paul hears to say here about the issue of works. That because you're saved, you will work.

But let's turn now to the other main idea that we see addressed here, at least for some DC types, this might be the harder one to understand. It's simply this. So this is number two. Your works, as important as they are, won't save you. Your works, as important as they are, won't save you.

You can't boast. That's the point Paul is making there in the second phrase in verse 9. Look down at verse 9 and you'll find that second phrase.

So that no one may boast. Do you realize by our salvation we have achieved nothing?

We've received everything. We have become witnesses to God's goodness. Again, if you look up in the first three verses of chapter 2, you can see that we had no hope. None. None at all.

Friends, you see the river right over there. There it is, the Anacostia River, the eastern branch of the Potomac, as it's been called. I wonder how many of us could swim from this bank to the other? Might want to, but I wonder how many of us could do it? You know, I don't know how strong the current is.

I don't know what kind of shape everybody's in. But I wonder who could get across that. But now, how about this change in the question. What if you were weaker, weaker than you are? Do you think then you can get across it?

What if you didn't even really want to get across it? You had no desire to get across it. Then could you get across it?

Friend, what if you were dead?

That's the moral position God found us in. That's what Ephesians 2:1-3 has told us.

Paul has said, that's the situation that God found us in. Some of you may congratulate yourself that you made it out to church this fine morning, but there is no way you can congratulate yourself that you're saved. If you think that you can, then that's probably good evidence that you're not. Paul rehearses this argument again in Romans 3, that we have nothing to boast in. Then what becomes of our boasting?

It is excluded. Why is it excluded? Boasting is excluded because you haven't saved your yourself. Look at that second phrase in verse 8, and this is not your own doing. And then Paul really repeats the idea in verse 9, Not a result of works.

Okay, so our good works are important, but they won't save us. As Paul wrote to the church in Rome, For by the works of the law no human being will be justified in God's sight. Paul goes on in Romans 4 and uses examples of some of the most illustrious figures in the Old Testament. Abraham, David, of what they did.

And none of them were justified, were saved, as a result of their works, but only because of their faith in God and His promises. As Paul wrote to the churches in Galatia, We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. Because by the works of the Law no one will be justified. The way of saving ourselves by our own works was permanently closed to our first parents and all of us subsequently because of their sin and ours. For more on this, read Galatians 3.

In writing later to Timothy, the pastor of the Ephesian church, Paul said that God had saved us not because of our works, but because of His own purposes and grace, which is exactly what he wrote here to the congregation as a whole. For God has saved you by His grace. You see that first phrase in verse 8, For by grace you have been saved through faith. The first two-thirds of that are exactly what he said in verse 5. He's literally repeating himself for emphasis for these Ephesian believers.

By grace you've been saved. The three big words for us to note here in this first part of verse 8 to make sure we understand our grace saved and faith. Grace, saved and faith. The salvation is by God's grace alone. Grace, that's one of Paul's main messages.

He uses this word grace more than 100 times in his letters. This grace is the kindness of God that we were thinking about last week in verse 7 that God intends to show and to exhibit and to display through the way He deals with us.

Grace is by its nature unearned, unmerited favor. Understanding this is really the source of so many of the songs that we sing. His mercy is more. We'll conclude today about singing about grace greater than our sins. That's the first of these three words.

Second one, to be saved. To be saved, that means to be given a new life. Sins forgiven, the death of verses 1 to 3, and the enslavement to sin ended. In the Bible we read of salvation having aspects in the past, in the present, in the future. Salvation in the future is considering that coming day when the storm of God's judgment finally breaks and will be delivered from condemnation and even the very presence of sin.

Salvation is also present in that its ongoing process of sanctification as we are being rescued from sin's power even today. Salvation is also in the past as we see how Christ's sacrificial death and wonderful resurrection saved us from the penalty of sin. So if we're saved here today it is because of actions God has taken towards us in the past, predestining us as we were thinking of in chapter one, regenerating us, justifying us, adopting us.

Salvation is the complete package of these aspects: past, present, and future. If you have one part of it, you have every part of it. It's rooted in the past event, it continues in the present, and is assured for the future. Salvation is something that Christians normally can be assured of. Part of the joy of knowing God is knowing that you know God, knowing that you know His love and forgiveness and acceptance.

And then the third of these three words here at the beginning of verse 8, faith. This faith is not mere intellectual assent, but it is a belief and trust in Christ alone and in what He has done for us. Having faith in the Lord in Scripture sometimes is described as calling on Him. It's the one we call out to in trouble. It's the one we rely on.

This faith is a confident trust in Christ. It's a complete relying on Him. Like many of you are relying on the chairs that you're sitting in right now, just completely relaxing yourself into that chair. That's the kind of trust we're called to have entirely in Christ, trusting Him completely. It's an empty hand filled by the extended grip of God's grace in Christ.

So, Is Paul saying, Faith is a gift? Yes. Is he saying, Grace is a gift? Yes. Is he saying, Salvation is a gift?

Yes. Look there at that next phrase, this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God. God stresses here that His grace is free, unconstrained, not required by anything in us. Paul is not saying that God does His part, send Christ, and you do your part, believe. He's saying that the salvation of you or me is as much a matter of the gracious gift of God as the deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt was, as the deliverance of Jonah from the belly of the fish was.

As the resurrection of Lazarus from the grave was. Wherever you go in the Bible, you see this kind of grace of God. I was studying with a number of people the other night, the book of Joshua. And again and again in the book of Joshua, the people are instructed, the people sin, and God punishes them for their sin, and yet He goes on and gives them the land. They start to obey, they sin, He punishes them for the sin, but then He goes ahead and gives them the land.

You understand why Joshua is called Joshua? The name means Yahweh delivers. The Lord delivers. Friends, that's the book of deliverance. That's what the whole book of the Bible is.

This kind of saving through faith comes to us only by the grace of God. It's like Luke records of the Gentiles in Antioch, as many as were appointed to eternal life believed. They believed because of God's grace. This is amazing. Why is this so hard for people to accept?

There's something in us that wants to pick religion up and use it as an extension of our own Our own ability, our own praiseworthy actions fulfill our duties. But the religion of the Bible is relentlessly opposed to that. The God who made the world out of nothing, the God who made you and me, the God against whom we have all sinned, is the God who sent His only Son out of His sheer grace and love. The Son who died for us on the cross as a substitutionary sacrifice in the place of all of us who would turn and trust in Him. And God raised Him from the dead.

And when He raised Him from the dead, He was saying He accepted this sacrifice, and He calls us all to turn and trust in Him to have this faith. Friends, your works won't save you.

Even going to church outside.

Christ's death on the cross as a substitute for us in our sins was a gracious act. That grim day, those watching His death must have echoed the cries of Isaiah only with fresh desperation to the Lord. Will you keep silent? Will you keep silent? Would we be shut up forever, lost in our own sins and injustices and hatreds and strifes, stewing in a mess of our own transgressions and trespasses against God's law forever to be children of wrath?

Friday, all day Saturday. And then Sunday morning came the thunderclap of the resurrection that broke any silence people had thought they had heard from heaven. God's answer came loudly on that Easter morning in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave. As we sang earlier in Charles Wesley's great words, Death in vain forbids him rise. Christ hath opened paradise.

Any idea of self salvation was buried in that sepulcher, and only God's grace came out. The long closed jaws of death were pried open. The claims of Eden's debt were paid, and the power of its curse broken as the first the first tomb was emptied. The real revolution had begun. And so those of us who have that bright Easter hope turn to the Lord's Supper.

What a joy to be able to conclude our time together today with this memorial given to us by Christ Himself. And what a good day to celebrate it together. Too often we may wrongly think of the Lord's Supper as a mournful memorial carried out in muted tones and with a funereal feel. But in truth, it's a kind of memorial which is looking forward, remembering Christ's promise to taste the wine again with us in His kingdom. When it comes, it's the shared memories.

Remember, filled with smiles and expectations before a much anticipated and longed for reunion. It's a meal of coming memories. Every time we celebrate it together, the Lord's Supper is a ray of heaven's dawn appearing in our midst, filling us with hope. Hope and joy. Let's take a few moments now to quietly prepare our own hearts and our hearts together as we silently confess our sins to God, confident of His grace toward us in Christ.