*Title:* The Heart's Work — Pastor Kyle Baldwin, April 11, 2026

Before we take communion, we are told to prepare our hearts — but what does that actually mean? In this Communion Sabbath sermon, Pastor Kyle Baldwin refuses to let the answer stay vague. Preparing the heart, he says, is real work, and it has two parts that cannot be separated: coming to God honestly, and being made right with the people in our own lives. The first part begins with confession — not a general admission that “nobody's perfect,” but naming our own choices without the excuses we layer over our consciences. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The catch, John adds in the very next verse, is that claiming we have not sinned makes God a liar. Honesty is the doorway: “I made this choice and I am responsible for the decision that I made.” Drop the excuses, and God will forgive and cleanse.

The second part is harder to hear. If we want forgiveness from God, we must be able to forgive the people in our lives — and “nothing can justify an unforgiving spirit.” Pastor Baldwin presses John's words in 1 John 4: we cannot say we love God while withholding mercy from a brother or sister we have seen. Forgiveness, he insists, is not a feeling that arrives on schedule and not a switch we flip; old wounds fester like an untreated cut, and we do not have the capacity apart from God to truly forgive. The healing does not come from the people who hurt us — it comes from God, who promised, “I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds” (Jeremiah 30:17). And when we do forgive, something opens up in us: we suddenly see our own sinfulness clearly, because forgiving others reminds us of the far greater debt we owe our heavenly Father.

David and Saul make the point concrete. Hunted and hiding in a cave, David had Saul within his grasp and his men urging vengeance — yet he would not stretch out his hand against the Lord's anointed (1 Samuel 24:6–7). David is a man after God's own heart, Pastor Baldwin says, precisely because at moments like this he communicated the heart of God: he knew he had done worse to God than Saul had done to him. The sermon closes at the communion table itself — the ordinance of humility first, then the emblems — with communion framed as a wedding anniversary for the vows made at baptism: a promise kept, a heart given. “I want my heart to be given to you.” God's grace is still available, and His forgiveness is still here.

*Key texts:* 1 John 1:9–10; Matthew 6:15; 1 John 4:20–21; Jeremiah 30:17; 1 Samuel 24:6–7; 2 Samuel 1:23, 27; Luke 23:34; Psalm 103:12 · *Also referenced:* Ellen G. White, on preparing the heart for communion and the unforgiving spirit

*Watch:* https://youtu.be/p7LR3ywCn4g · *Listen:* https://cloud-1de12d.becdn.net/media/original/a2e8f8e33d1c2dcc26c239c1532b8c57.mp3