Examine Yourself!

 

 Read 2 Corinthians 13

So Paul continues his weakness, strength, and grace is enough vein through the end. He said he would like to have a good visit when he came and not have to wield a heavy hand.

I’m coming and will give it to you with both barrels (anachronistic metaphors now?), but I would prefer that we just rejoice in reunion with believers who are all peddling as fast as they can. That would be the optimal.

C’mon guys, get it together before I come.

How could this church with multitudes of problems get ready?  The same way that we should. We should examine ourselves, Paul noted in the context of the faith that you so desire to live, examine yourselves.

Let’s do the drill. What is faith? (Hebrews 11:1)

It’s the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. So, are we living in the faith? Are we living by faith or by sight?

This is a look yourself in the mirror question. How much am trusting God? So I say that I trust him, but won’t take one step beyond my comfort zone without a complete understanding of what’s happening? Is that living by faith?

But if we want to make something tangible out of these letters, our direction is to test ourselves.

Test yourselves. What’s the metric? Faith.

How can I test myself? What tools do I have? You know this one. The Word of God is sharper than and double-edged sword. It divides soul and spirit, joints, and marrow. It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. (Hebrews 4:12)

How do I know which scriptures to read? This is the no-brainer of no-brainers.  (2 Timothy 3:16-17)

 All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

All scripture is God breathed. You can intentionally cherry-pick some scriptures for manipulative purposes and come up with some really absurd stuff, but you can’t search the scriptures asking God’s Spirit to guide you and go wrong. It’s all good counsel and correction and it promises to equip us.

God’s word has efficacy. It does not return void. It does its work. It accomplishes its purpose.

So today’s message is to examine yourself. That’s a piece of cake. We are getting out early today. Nothing to this, well, except that whole part about self-examination.

We can look at others all day and not get worn out finding fault. When we look at ourselves, we quickly grow tired of the exercise.

There is posting the Bible verse and liking the Christian memes, and there is putting the words of our Lord into practice and measuring how we did.

C’mon. You know the secret handshake. We talk the talk and make a show when we walk the walk for a couple of minutes a day, but really, who wants to do this work?

Who really wants to examine themselves?

Do you remember my journey through discipleship, discipline, and passion?  We are motivated to get started at something, let’s go with pleasing the Lord. But we have to take on the yoke of our rabbi, put his words into practice, and in this pick up your cross daily discipline, develop passion.

For what? Bringing glory to God. This should be a big part of our lives.

If we want to bring glory to God as an unchanged creature—the old creation,if you will—we are spitting in the wind.

The new creation demands a new self. We must remove the old self by examination. We must come to a place where we say, “That’s not me.”

“That’s not Christ living in me.”

I think “That dog don’t hunt” will work too.

Is there evil in the world? Yes. Unequivocally, yes.

Do we put on the full armor of God? Absolutely, yes.

Are we engaged in never-ending battles with evil? Probably not. We have battles with evil. We are equipped in the name of Jesus, but most of the time, we battle with our human nature and our own understanding.

Paul challenged the Corinthians to examine themselves. Are you truly living by faith, or does your old sinful nature still govern you? Does your own understanding get in the way of trusting God more?

Paul said that he would sort out the troublemakers and hard cases when he got there, but he would just as soon show up for good fellowship and celebration with the other saints who were peddling as fast as they could to bring glory to God.

Paul has been steering these believers away from the compare and contrast game of who is your favorite apostle. Paul has been prompting these believers to give up the competitive nature of what they are doing, following this teacher or that, and start doing the things that bring glory to God.

Judging, coveting, picking, and choosing might be good stuff at the state fair, but it is not a plan to take the gospel to the world. What is?

Share the good news and concurrently examine ourselves and grow in God’s grace.

I remember that song… Know him and make him known.

To make some real gains, you don’t need extra sermons. You need more self-examination time.

To grow using God’s strength in our weakness, we don’t need Wheaties; we need eyes to see our weaknesses.

To improve ourselves, we don’t need to hone our optics on others. We need to address the plank in our own eyes.

To continue in discipleship is to pick up the cross of self-examination daily and make the adjustments.

To grow in God’s grace, we examine ourselves with the word of God, and we do not require a second opinion. Accountability partners are great, but the word of God alone is sufficient counsel.

Self-examination should be daily, and self-examination and cleansing should be weekly or monthly. More than the daily once-over, we should schedule ourselves for a heart, soul, mind, and strength examination.

The word of God will do this for us, and we need not rely on another’s human interpretation to apply the word of God to our lives. Confessing to one another is good, but that’s for another day. For now, it’s just you and the word of God.

Recovering addicts who use the Twelve Steps come across a step that no human, sober or inebriated, wants to undergo. I think it is the fourth step. Conduct a searching and fearless moral inventory.

Ask yourself the questions that everyone is afraid to ask and have the courage to discover the answer. Only in knowing ourselves so well can we become new again. We have to find all of the junk, the trash, the dung that we let live in ourselves before we can get rid of it.

I say today, that I don’t think anyone can conduct such a searching and fearless inventory without the Spirit of God illuminating God’s word. But when we find our weaknesses, we connect to God’s strength.

It’s all theoretical until we examine ourselves. The scriptures sound solid in theory, but self-examination requires us to put them into practice.

Self Examination is recurring and also prompted by certain things in the life of the church body. The Lord’s Supper is one of those things. Remember Paul’s words from his first letter to this church. (1 Corinthians 11)

Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.  But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord, that we may not be condemned with the world.

Paul is telling us that this moment of self-examination is like Jesus washing our feet. Didn’t see it coming but it was the last thing to be done. The body was clean. Only the feet needed to be cleaned, and Jesus did the work of the lowest servant.

If you have been keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus, pressing on towards this goal of bringing glory to God’s name, and confessing to God on a regular basis, this only takes a moment.

But if you avoid self-examination throughout the day or week, this moment can become awkward.  Whether it is relief or time for a Rolaid, we should all take the opportunity to give up anything and everything that stands before us and coming to the Lord’s Table in celebration.

Remember the words, My grace is enough for you.

The victory is already won. Our weaknesses are venues for God’s strength to be displayed in us. Now, let’s examine ourselves so this whole weakness and strength thing moves from the theoretical to the abundant life category.

Examine yourself. The dividends are divine.

Amen.