Mt. Rose OPC

Today’s sermon was written by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), a respected Welsh evangelical minister who preached at Westminster Chapel in London from 1939 to 1968. Known for his deep Bible teaching in the Reformed tradition, he delivered long series on books like Romans, Ephesians, and John. His sermons, available in audio and book form, continue to influence many evangelical leaders today. This message is read for us by Elder Joe Horvath, carrying on Dr. Lloyd-Jones’s commitment to biblical truth.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus 3:1-12. Exodus 3, 1 through 12, this is the inerrant and the infallible word of God. 

“Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. And he said, here I am. Then he said, Do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.

I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh. that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? He said, but I will be with you. And this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” 

Keep your place there and turn to 2 Timothy 1:8-12 for our New Testament reading. We’ll go back to Exodus after we hear from 1st Timothy. 1st Timothy 1 verses 8-12. I’m sorry, 2nd Timothy. 2nd Timothy 1, 8-12 is our New Testament reading.

“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do.

But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.” 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

We’ve all had days in our lives that started out in a very ordinary way, and then something unexpected happened. Something took place that was completely unanticipated, but it’s something that ended up changing our lives forever. Maybe for you, as you think back on days like that, maybe it was something wonderful. Perhaps you can remember the day when you first met your now husband or wife.

Or maybe you can remember the day when you first found out that you were expecting a baby. Or maybe you’ve had days where the unexpected event was not wonderful at all, but something very grievous, and yet it was still just as life-changing Perhaps you suddenly lost a loved one and although the day started out as an ordinary day, suddenly your life has been turned inside out. And so whatever that may be, we’ve all had days like that. You wake up that morning expecting just another Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever day it is, and then all of a sudden your life is turned upside down.

And in our passage this morning, that is the kind of day that Moses had. That is what happens to Moses here. His day started out as just another ordinary day in Midian, tending the sheep. But then he saw a most unusual sight. He saw a bush that was burning, and the fire just kept burning and burning and burning, and the bush was not consumed. And that’s led to a most extraordinary encounter with God. And Moses’ life from that day on was not only changed and his life took a completely different direction, not only that, but this became a pivotal point in the history of God’s working out salvation for his people.

At the beginning of this passage, Moses is living in the land of Midian. And if you remember, he is there because he had to flee from Egypt. Pharaoh wanted to kill him. He was a fugitive because he had killed an Egyptian slave master. While he was a Midian, he married into a shepherding family. His father-in-law was Jethro, the priest of Midian, but he also kept sheep. And so, for those long years of Midian, we know from other scriptures that Moses was there for 40 years, but for those four decades of Midian, Moses was a shepherd, humbly tending the sheep of his father-in-law Jethro.

Now Moses already knew that somehow God had some special task for him. That was already impressed upon him by the events that had taken place earlier in his life. He knew somehow that God had appointed him to be the leader of Israel. Perhaps he even knew that he would be the one who would bring Israel out from their bondage under Pharaoh. But now he had been in Midian for so long, surely he began to wonder about that. Surely he began to wonder, perhaps God had not given up on him after these 40 years. Maybe in the meantime, God had found a better person to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.

After all, Moses was now an old man. He was 80 years old. And instead of leading the people of Israel, instead of preparing an army to take on the Egyptians, he’s out in this faraway place in the wilderness, Midian, tending sheep, following the flock day after day. But then Moses had one of those days in which everything changed, in which his life was turned upside down. In verse one, we read that one day, Moses was leading his father-in-law’s sheep, and in verse one, it tells us that he was, or he led them to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

Moses had no idea what was happening, but as he was leading the sheep, he was being led. He was being led by the Lord, and he was being led to this specific place, to Horeb, Horeb is called here the Mountain of God this is the same mountain that the Bible calls elsewhere Mount Sinai and of course we’ll read a lot about Mount Sinai as we go on in Exodus Mount Sinai is the place where the Lord descended from heaven where he gave his law to the people of Israel with thunder and darkness and terror and all of that that’s the same mountain so here Moses is at Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai And as he walked about the mountain, a very unusual, really an amazing sight caught his eyes.

He saw a bush on fire, but the bush didn’t burn up. It just kept burning and burning and burning. And because this was such an extraordinary thing, so unusual, Moses did the most natural thing in the world, and that is he walked closer to get a better look, to see this strange thing. And that’s when Moses heard a voice calling to him from out of the bush. The voice was God’s and the message that God had for Moses was this, I am calling you Moses to lead my people out of Egypt. And so this passage is God’s call or his commission to Moses to be the one who would lead the people of Israel out from under Pharaoh out of Egypt.

And today we’ll take a closer look at the details of this passage. And as we do so, as we consider this encounter that Moses has with the Lord, I want you to think about your own calling from God. Because as a believer in Jesus Christ, God has called you. We read from 2 Timothy about how God has called us with a holy calling. You too have been called by the Lord. You have been called to belong to Jesus Christ, to salvation in Christ, but He has also called you to serve Him, to be His servant, just as Moses is called here to be the servant of the Lord.

Now I’m guessing your calling didn’t come in quite the same dramatic fashion. I don’t think any of you have told me about a burning bush experience like Moses had, but nevertheless, it is the same God, it is the same living Lord that called out to Moses from this burning bush that calls you to Christ for salvation and to be his servants. And as we consider this passage then, in Moses’ calling, there are three truths about God’s call upon you and me that we can learn from this passage. First of all, you are called into the presence of a holy God. Secondly, you are called into the fellowship of a loving God. And thirdly, you are called into the service of a sovereign God. So those will be our three lessons this morning. 

First of all, you are called into the presence of a holy God. Well, let’s begin as we look at this passage by considering this bizarre sight that Moses saw in the wilderness, the burning bush that didn’t burn. It didn’t burn up. As you know from scripture, fire is symbolic of God, of His nature, of His character. God is even called a consuming fire. A fire represents the intense, the blazing majesty of God, His holiness.

It also represents the fact that God is light. So fire is both heat and light. God is holy. He is truth. Fire symbolizes this dangerous holiness or righteousness of God, just as everything that the flame touches, it consumes. So in the same way, the holiness of God, all that comes into contact with it that is not pure, is consumed by that righteousness, that inherent holiness that belongs to God. and the fact that this fire does not burn out represents something about the nature of God and that is that God alone unlike any of us unlike anything in his creation God as the creator he is in himself perfectly self-sufficient and self-sustaining God possesses all life, all power, all energy.

In himself he is the fountainhead of all existence. He exists in himself in a way that none of us do. Fire, of course, depends upon oxygen and fuel to keep burning but here’s a fire that kept burning on its own. The bush was not supplying the fuel but it just kept burning and burning of itself and that represents this nature of God that in himself he is all-sufficient. He is able in himself to possess life and to exist and so that is one attribute of God that is represented here in this burning bush. And I believe that there’s even more in this burning bush that tells us about God.

And that is this, that this revelation that God saw, this appearance of the Lord that Moses encountered in this burning bush, that this was really an appearance of the Son of God. of the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. Notice how in verse 2 it says, it is the angel of the Lord who appears to Moses in the flame. But later in the passage, in verse 6, the angel of the Lord, he calls himself God. He says, I am the God of your father. And in verse 7, it is the Lord. the Lord himself who speaks to Moses.

And so here God reveals himself to Moses on the one hand as someone who is distinct from God, the angel of the Lord, and yet at the same time he reveals himself to Moses as the one who is himself God. He is the Lord. And for this reason the church has long taught and believed that This is not just a theophany, that is, an appearance of God to Moses, but what we have here in this passage is a Christophany, that this is an appearance of the pre-incarnate Son of God. That God the Son, who would take on flesh, who became man in Jesus Christ, before that He appeared here in the burning bush to Moses.

So this is none other than Christ, who made Himself known to Moses in the burning bush. Now, when the Lord saw that Moses drew near to the bush to see what this remarkable sight was all about, he called out to Moses from the midst of the flame. He said, Moses, Moses. And Moses answered the voice he heard. He said, Here I am. Moses knew that this was the voice of the Almighty. And so he presented himself to God as his obedient servant, as his willing servant, “here I am. Here I am, Lord. I am ready to hear your call, to obey your call. I am ready to do your will.” 

And the first thing that the Lord says in response to Moses’ presenting himself, here I am, is not what we might have expected. We might have expected the Lord to say, good, you are my willing servants. Now come nearer, come closer that I may declare to you what I will have you to do. But what the Lord says to Moses in verse five is, do not come near. Moses, stop. Don’t come any closer. Stop right where you are. And the reason why Moses gave this command, or why the Lord gave this command, was for Moses’ own good.

Because Moses had come into the presence of God. And God is, above all else, a God who is holy. He is holy. And this searing holiness, this overwhelming, overpowering holiness of God would have consumed Moses in an instant if he had come one step closer. And so he stopped in his tracks. The Lord commanded Moses to take off his sandals because he said, the place on which you are standing is holy ground. Was it right for Moses to wear his sandals in the presence of the Lord? He had to be barefoot. And then God said to him in verse six, he says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Perhaps after all these years, Moses had begun to wonder, not only had the Lord maybe forgotten him, no longer was going to use him, but perhaps the Lord had forgotten his promises to the people of Israel, those covenant promises that he had made to Abraham and to his descendants to be their God and they would be his people. After 40 years, perhaps God had forsaken Israel, but no, the Lord is reminding Moses here that he is still the God of his people. He is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of his father.

He has not forgotten his covenant promises. And as we’ll see, the Lord is about to act on those promises because he has seen the suffering and heard the cries of the people of Israel. But notice how Moses responds to what God says to him. Although these are words of encouragement and hope, it says in verse six that after the Lord said these words to Moses, Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at God. Out of the terror that he felt, the dread that he felt of being in the presence of Almighty God, the Holy One, after hearing the majestic voice of the Lord speak to him from this burning bush, Moses hides his face and that’s exactly what you and I would have done had we been in the place of Moses at the burning bush. We too would have hid our faces in terror before the presence of Almighty God. And that’s because of the holiness of God.

Throughout the scriptures whenever God appears to man, when he makes himself known to man in some sort of appearance or vision, almost always the response on the part of the one to whom God reveals himself is a response of terror, fear, dread. And you know the the classic example of this that is given to us by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6 when he is in the temple he beholds the glory of the Lord he beholds the Lord himself filling the temple with his glory and he cries out woe is me for I am lost for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King the Lord of hosts.

 Well, what is it about the holiness of God? What is it about this character of God, the nature of God, that He is infinitely holy? What is it that fills us with such dread? That whenever He appears to someone, it overwhelms them with fear and terror, this holiness. What is it about that? Why did Moses hide his face? Why did he shrink back in fear? Well, first of all, the holiness of God refers to the fact that God is absolutely distinct. He is absolutely separate from all His creation. He is something, or He is one who transcends all that He has created. He is no part of His creation whatsoever. He is wholly distinct from us and from all that He has made. The words of our confession put it this way, He is a most and that in itself is enough to fill us with fear because when we come into the presence of the one who is transcendence, who is infinite in holiness, who is not part of this creation whatsoever, instinctively that fills us with dread because we are creatures. We are creatures in the face or before the face of our creator. So this other worldliness of God, this absolute transcendence of God, this is something that overwhelms us.

The infinite power, the majesty, the authority of God, this is a frightful thing. But the holiness of God also refers to His absolute righteousness and His moral purity. He is not only holy in the sense that He is distinct from us as the creator, as a most pure spirit, but he is holy in the sense that he is perfectly pure, infinitely righteous. There is not even a shadow of sin or impurity with God. Habakkuk says that he has purer eyes than to behold evil. He cannot look at wrong. And this also is why the holiness of God is a terrifying thing for us, because we are not only creatures, but we are also sinners.

And just as Isaiah felt, so surely Moses felt that he too was undone by being in the presence of this holy God, because he too was a man who was unclean. And we would feel the same way if we were in Moses’ place here. And not only this dreadful absolute transcendence and majesty of God would overwhelm us but the fact that He is infinitely righteous, infinitely pure, and we are not. This too would cause us to hide our face before Him. 

And this points to the great dilemma that faces all of us as sinners. This is the question. This is the most important question that each one of us face as those whom God has made and yet we have rebelled against him and that is this, how can I, how can I a sinner, one who is not pure, one who is not righteous, how can I be in the presence of this holy God and not be destroyed? Well the answer of course is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. that God has provided the way for us to come into his presence that he has given us his son that Jesus, when he died, that curse of death upon the cross, he took upon himself our guilt. He absorbed into himself that wrath that would naturally come upon us for our sin and guilt. And he has taken away our sins. So in Christ, we can come before God. That is the good news of the gospel, that we can have that righteousness of Christ as our own, our sins forgiven. So even with boldness, we can come into the presence of almighty God. Yes, he is still God. There is nothing less about him in his majesty and glory. And yet because of Christ, we can come to him knowing that he receives us. He accepts us. He loves us in Christ. We can even call him Father, Abba Father. 

Now God did not just bring Moses near to him, just to overpower him with the sense of his holiness but the Lord revealed himself to Moses in this way because this was part of God’s training, part of his preparation for Moses to prepare him to be the man who would lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. Before Moses could go out and serve the Lord first he had to experience this holiness of God. When Moses beheld the glory of God in all of his perfections and majesty and holiness although it filled him with fear it had a transformative effect on him and we know that it had a transformative effect on him because the scripture tells us that when we behold the glory of the Lord and you and I we behold the glory of the Lord by faith in the face of Jesus Christ, but when we do so, when we look to Christ by faith and see there the majesty, the greatness, the holiness of God revealed in His Son Jesus Christ, it transforms us. It has a transformative effect so that we are changed by that. 

2 Corinthians 3:18 says, we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, that is, as we behold the glory of the Lord in the face of Christ. And so this was part of Moses’s preparation by the Lord. He had to come into the presence of a holy God before he would serve him in the way that the Lord had appointed him to serve. And it was not only transformative for Moses, but this knowledge of the majesty of God, the weightiness of God, the glory of God. This is what would enable Moses to carry out the ministry that the Lord called him to carry out as his servant. 

Remember, who is Moses going to confront? Who is Moses going to come before in Egypt? He’s going to come before Pharaoh. the king of Egypt, perhaps the most powerful man in all the world, a man of authority and power and majesty who could destroy whomever he will. And if Moses did not remember that the God he served, the God who called him, the God who was his, if he did not remember that this God was infinitely more mighty, more majestic, more powerful than Pharaoh, He could not have come before Pharaoh. He could not have stood before him. 

And there’s a great truth here for you and me, and that is this. The people who have come to know, people who have come to know the holiness of God, who have felt, by faith in Christ, that weight of his glory, his greatness, who have been impressed by the splendor and the majesty of God, those people become great servants of the Lord. That was true for Isaiah. It was only after he was nearly undone in the temple by this appearance of the Lord in all of his glory that Isaiah would go out then to be the great prophet to preach the words that God gave him to speak to the people of Israel.

The same was true for Peter before Peter could serve Jesus as one of his great apostles, his great servants. Peter first himself had to be undone in the presence of the righteous man, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the history of the church, the same was true for Martin Luther. the path that led Luther to truly understand with his heart and to truly love the gospel of free grace in Jesus Christ, the gospel of justification by faith alone. That path took him first through this understanding of the righteousness of Christ, even a fear of Christ and his righteousness.

And the same is true for every servant of Christ who faithfully does God’s will in this world. To be faithful to Christ in this world must begin with a genuine encounter with God and His holiness. And what this means is a deep conviction of the majesty, the glory of God as revealed in Christ, a deep conviction of our own utter sinfulness and unworthiness before this God. But it also means a profound wonder and joy at the grace of God, a joy of knowing that you are forgiven, that by the blood of Christ shed for you, you are covered with the holiness of Christ. And so no one who thinks little of the glory, the holiness, the greatness of God will do much good for Christ in this world. But it’s the one who has been most impressed, the one who has been most convicted of the greatness of the God who calls us to himself. It is that one who does the most good for Christ in the world. And so as a Christian, like Moses, you are called into the presence of a holy God. 

Secondly, you are called into the fellowship of a loving God. At this point in our passage that we’re considering, or actually at this point anytime when An angel of God or the Lord himself appears to someone in the scriptures and that person is shrinking back in fear and dread and being in the presence of this divine majesty.

This is the point at which the angel of the Lord always says to that person, do not fear, do not be afraid. Now, the Lord doesn’t say that to Moses, but he says basically what is the equivalent of that. He says in effect, Moses, I am for you. I am for your people. I have seen their affliction. I have heard their cry. I know their suffering, and I have come to save them. Moses, I have compassion on my people. I love them, and I am about to deliver them as I have promised. And so Moses was not only given a revelation here at the burning bush of the unspeakable majesty of God and his holiness, which caused him to hide his face in fear, but he is also given a revelation of the marvelous depths of the divine love and compassion that God has for his people.

And if the splendor of God’s glory left him hiding his face in fear, then the words of God’s love, his care, must have melted the heart of Moses. This God, he sees his people in distress. He hears their prayers. He cares for his people. He loves his people. He is a holy God at the same time, he is a merciful compassionate Savior and this same wonderful combination of this of the character of God that he is one at the same time of God before whom we come with reverence and awe, a God who is a consuming fire, holy, majestic, but a God who is compassionate, merciful, and gracious, a God of love.

The same combination that we see here at the burning bush as God reveals himself to Moses was displayed, and was manifested most perfectly at the cross of Jesus Christ. Because first of all, the death of Jesus shows us like nothing else can show us that He hangs there, not only suffering the indignity, the torture that he received at the hands of men, but even more so, receiving in himself the wrath of God. God having turned his face against him, pouring out the judgment that is due to you and me for our sins. When we see Jesus hanging on the cross, what we must see there is what God thinks of our sin. This is what God thinks of our sin. We take it so lightly, but God does not. This is what your sin and my sin deserve. But at the same time, when we behold Jesus on the cross, we see not only a revelation of the holiness of God and what he must do against sin, but we see a revelation of the indescribable grace and love of God. Because Jesus suffered for us. Jesus was a sacrifice. because God gave him up for us so that we would be set free from that condemnation. And so what an amazing revelation of God’s love for you and me and Jesus Christ.

Just as he had compassion on the Israelites and their bondage to Pharaoh, God has had mercy, he has had compassion on us in our bondage to sin and death. He has given us a son that we might be saved through him. and God continues to have compassion on you. Just as God saw the suffering of his people and heard their cries at this time, when Moses stood before the burning bush, so today the same God, he has a heart of compassion, mercy towards his people. He hears your cries. He sees your suffering. God cares. And just as it must have seemed to the Israelites, after all these years in bondage, century after century, living under the heavy hand of Pharaoh, suffering all of the cruel ways in which he afflicted the people of Israel, it must have seemed to them that God did not care for them, that he had forsaken them, abandoned them to this cruel tyrant.

Where was God? Did he not see? Did he not hear? No, God heard. He saw. But in the same way, you go through affliction, you suffer, and sometimes it seems interminable. It never stops. It keeps going. It is relentless. And you begin to ask, is God there? Does He hear my cries? Does He see my suffering? Does He care? Has He forsaken me? And the answer is no, He has not. He does see you. He does hear your cries to Him. He has compassion, He sees your affliction, and He will save. He will show forth His mercy, His grace in His way and in His timing, not in ours.

But He will bring deliverance to you one way or the other from all that afflicts you in this world. One day, in one way or the other, it could be by bringing you to glory. but he will save you from the affliction of this world. Because he is merciful, he is compassionate, he is a God of love, and so as one who belongs to Christ, you have been called into the fellowship of a loving God. 

Thirdly, and finally, you are called into the service of a sovereign God. We saw how Moses was terrified at the realization that he was in the presence of this holy Lord in the burning bush, but what the Lord said to him in verse 10 must have been as equally terrifying to Moses because Moses says to him in verse 10, come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt. And Moses says, I am ready. When can I pack my bags? When can I go? I can’t wait to meet Pharaoh. No, he says, who am I? Who am I? Oh Lord, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. 

Now some commentators have said that Moses was being humble here. And of course we know from, um, the Scriptures that Moses was the most humble person in the world but I believe that there is not just humility here at work but that on the part of Moses there is some genuine fear and trepidation and not unblameable but out of a lack of faith, out of unbelief he’s fearful to do what God commands him to do here. In other words, his faith falters. To him, God was demanding the impossible. Me? Lord, you want me to go back to Egypt? I’m a fugitive. I’m wanted for murder. Remember, I was the guy whom the Israelites rejected when I tried to help them. You want me to go to Pharaoh, the most powerful man on earth? A man who is not a nice individual? You want me to go to this Pharaoh? I have been tending sheep here in the desert for 40 years. I’m 80 years old. I’m way past the age of retirement. You want me, oh Lord, to go to Pharaoh?

But notice what the Lord says. He doesn’t rebuke Moses for his fear, his lack of faith, his failure to trust in God, but the Lord gives Moses the greatest possible encouragement here. He says to him in verse 12, but I will be with you. I will be with you. If you have a friend who confides in you that he has been given some impossible task, something that he does not feel qualified for, or she is just not ready to do, how would you encourage that person, that friend? You would say to them, you can do this. I know you can do it. You’ve got brains, you’ve got talent. I’ve seen you do things that I have perfect confidence in your abilities to do this job. That’s not what God says to Moses. He doesn’t say, come on Moses, you can do it. You’ve got a great education. You’re smart, you’re experienced. I know you have it in you to lead my people out of Egypt. No, the Lord doesn’t say that at all. He says, I will be with you. I will be with you. And that’s all that Moses needed to know. The presence of the Lord would go with him.

Matthew Henry says this, “God’s presence puts an honor upon the worthless, wisdom and strength into the weak and foolish, makes the greatest difficulties dwindle to nothing, and is enough to answer all objections.” How is God calling you to serve him in a way that seems impossible.? That you feel like you just can’t do it. It’s not in you. Perhaps it’s some matter of service that he’s calling you to engage in. Perhaps it’s a matter of obedience. You know what the right thing to do is, but you’re afraid because it seems so hard. No matter how daunting, no matter how impossible it seems, your hope is not what’s in you, your inherent abilities or courage or talents, but that promise that the Lord made to Moses, he makes to you as well, that I will be with you.

And he doesn’t call you to anything in any form of service or any matter of obedience in which he does not also promise to be with you in that, to sustain you, to give you grace, to enable you to do what he calls you to do. Maybe you’re afraid of the future. Maybe it’s something like the next level of school. I remember when I was growing up that that was a fearful thing, going to high school. Or maybe it’s a new job. You’re just not sure if you’re going to be able to do that. Or perhaps it’s simply a difficult conversation. A hard conversation you know you’ve got to have with somebody. You’ve got to confront them with something or tell them something you know that will be hard to talk about. Maybe it’s because you’re afraid to say no to your friends. Oh, you want to please others. You want to go along and yet you know that you can’t go along with that. Well, whatever way in which God calls you to obey Him or to serve Him in this world, the task can seem impossible. In this promise that the Lord makes to Moses to be with him, this helps resolve something in this passage that at first may seem a little confusing or perplexing, even maybe paradoxical, because first in verse eight, the Lord declares this. He says, “I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land”. 

And so God promises that he will deliver his people. But then in verse 10, he says to Moses, come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt. So who is it that is going to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt? Is it the Lord, or is it Moses, whom the Lord will send?

And of course, the answer is, it is God. It is God and His sovereign power who will deliver His people out of Egypt. But He would do it through his servants. He would use Moses as his instrument in order to accomplish what he alone can do. And so God would receive rightfully all the glory, all the credit, all the praise for the Israelites’ redemption from Egypt, and yet he would accomplish that through this man Moses. A man who was very imperfect, like you and me, very weak. A man whose faith falters, and yet God would use him to accomplish his purposes.

And that is the way in which God works in the world as he carries out his work of salvation through the church, through his people. God uses weak and even sinful people like you and me to be his instruments to accomplish his sovereign will. And this ought to be an encouragement to us. because we feel in ourselves our own inadequacies, our weaknesses, but no matter what weaknesses you may feel that you have or think that you have, no matter how inadequate you think you are, no matter how old you may be or how young you may be or how limited you may be in some way, no matter the fact of how you have failed God in the past, No matter all of that, as a Christian, God, He has called you to serve Him in some way.

And He, through that service, He will accomplish His sovereign purposes in your life and in the lives of others through your service to Him. We can put it this way. God does not need you. God did not need Moses. He wasn’t depending on Moses to free his people from Egypt. God does not depend upon you. He doesn’t even need you. But he uses you. It is his will to use you. To do what he has willed to do for the salvation of his people, for the good of his people. And so you are called into the service of a sovereign God.

Well, as we’ll see, Moses goes on to serve the Lord faithfully. He becomes one of the greatest saints that we have in the Old Testament. I don’t need to remind us that we are no Moses. Moses was one of the great ones. But Moses would have given anything to trade places with you and me. Moses was given this extraordinary revelation at the burning bush. A bush that kept burning, the voice of God, God in the fire, appearing to him. But as wonderful as that revelation that God made to Moses in the wilderness was, it pales in comparison to the revelation that God has given to you and me in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the image of the invisible God. In Him the fullness of the deity indwells bodily. He is the Word who was with God and who was God who became flesh. To behold the face of Christ is to behold the face of God. And Moses, he did not see that. Not in the fullness that we have seen it with the coming of Christ into the world. And it is through this gospel of Jesus Christ. It is through the gospel, this good news that Christ has come into the world for our salvation. It is through that that God is calling you to himself.

To have an even greater knowledge than Moses had of the Son of God and therefore of God. To have a greater understanding, a greater knowledge of the Savior who has accomplished not just a salvation from slavery and in Egypt, but a salvation from eternal death and judgment. Have you heard the call of God to you in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Have you heard and have you answered that call? Believe in Christ, repent of your sin, turn to Him, commit your life to serving Him, to worshiping Him, And that is how you answer the call of God today.

Let’s pray.

The post A Holy Calling appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Isaiah 25:6-9, and this is the infallible and inerrant word of God. 

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined, And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever. And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord. We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. 

And now let’s turn to the New Testament. Mark 15:40 through chapter 16:8. And this is our sermon text this morning as well. Mark 15:40 through 16:8. 

There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, the younger, and of Joseph, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him. And there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead.

And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid. When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene married the mother of James and Salome, bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.

And they were saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb? And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back. It was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, do not be alarmed. You see Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee.

There you will see him just as he told you. And they went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Today, of course, we are celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. But before there could be a resurrection, Jesus had to die. And our passage this morning begins with the death of Jesus, not the actual Crucifixion itself, Mark describes that for us in the verses before our passage, but in the immediate aftermath of his death, and particularly, he describes for us what we must assume was a profound sense of regret, not regret, but sorrow, pain, grief, on the part of those who knew Jesus, who loved Him, they felt as we feel at the death of a loved one, sadness, grief, loss.

Mark tells us about the group of women who had followed and served Jesus during His earthly ministry, and they loved Jesus. They loved Him as their teacher, their rabbi, their Lord, One of the women was Mary Magdalene. Jesus had rescued her from the awful oppression of seven evil spirits. Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, we can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. This is actually Mary, the mother of Jesus. And she too, of course, loved Jesus. She loved Jesus as a son. And these women, they did not just hear about the death of Jesus secondhands, but they watched him die.

And they watched him die, not just a natural death, passing from life to death on a bed in a hospital, but they watched him die the most horrific death imaginable, death by crucifixion on a Roman cross – torture he suffered, the humiliation of the cross, the profound injustice of all of it. All of this would have only compounded the intensity of the grief, sorrow, the pain that filled the hearts of these faithful women. But what could they do? What could they do but grieve? It was all over. Jesus was dead. They saw with their very eyes his lifeless body hanging on the cross.

Death leaves us feeling so helpless and hopeless, at least in terms of bringing someone back from the dead. There’s nothing we can do. They are gone forever, seemingly, from our world, from our lives. But in the wake of death, at least we can care for the body of the deceased. We can honor the memory of our loved one with a memorial service, a funeral. These things, of course, don’t take away the grief that we feel, the pain, the loss, but they do give us some way to deal with the reality of death, to bring some sense of closure, and to help us prepare for what is the unavoidable truth, fact that life must go on even after we lose a loved one life must go on and that is what the followers of Jesus are doing here in this passage they knew that there was nothing they could do to bring him back he was gone, he was dead but at least they could care for the body at least they could give Jesus, a decent and honorable burial.

They could put his body to rest and hopefully that may bring some bit of comfort to their anguished souls. And the fact was that as horrific, as unjust as his crucifixion was, it was all over now and life would have to go on somehow. And this is how the story of the resurrection of Jesus begins. It begins in a very ordinary way. People doing what people do, what they can do to somehow deal with the death of one whom they loved and adored, whom they will miss so much. But of course, what these followers of Jesus did not know is that God was about to turn their world upside down.

And life for these followers of Jesus would not just  “go on”, but their lives would never be the same again. And indeed, this world would never be the same again. So as we look at this passage of the resurrection of Jesus, we’ll consider three lessons. First of all, how the followers of Jesus dealt with the body of Christ. Secondly, the wonder of the empty tomb in chapter 16. And thirdly, what all of this means for us, our resurrection life in Christ. So first of all, the followers and how they dealt with the death of Jesus.

So in this passage, it’s very characteristic of Mark. He’ll tell us about one thing, then he’ll move on to tell us about another thing, and then he’ll go back to that original thing that he was describing for us. So here, he first talks about the women, how they watched from a distance, Jesus being crucified, then he tells us about Joseph of Arimathea and what he does, and then he goes back to tell us what the women do in the aftermath of the death of Jesus. And so we’ll first take a look at Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea.

We meet him in verse 43. Mark tells us that he was not just a member, but a respected member of the council. And the Council, this was the Sanhedrin. This was the ruling body of the Jews, the Jewish people, the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Sadducees, the chief priests and so on, these religious leaders. And it was this council or Sanhedrin that had condemned Jesus and sent him off to be crucified and Joseph was a member of that body and yet we know from the Gospel of Luke that Joseph did not approve. He did not consent to their actions; he was against what they did to Jesus. We also know that he actually believed that Jesus was the Messiah he believed in Christ. In verse 43, Mark tells us that he was looking for the kingdom of God.

And Joseph demonstrated his faithfulness to Jesus by asking Pilate for the body after Jesus died. And this was not an easy thing for anyone to do. Mark tells us in verse 43, he took courage. He took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Remember, Jesus had just been executed by Pilate as an enemy of the state. And by asking for the body, Joseph is putting himself at risk that in the eyes of Pilate, he might be associated with this rebel, this enemy. Then Pilate grants Joseph his request, which probably indicates that Pilate probably didn’t really believe that this was a rebel or an enemy of the state.

But he grants Joseph his request. And so Joseph can begin the process of taking care of the body of Jesus. And there wasn’t much time to do that. Jesus was crucified on a Friday, what Mark calls in verse 22, the day of preparation. And so when the sun set that Friday evening, the Sabbath day would begin and of course, the Sabbath day was the day in which the Jews did no ordinary work, and that included even the work of taking care of a body, preparing the body for burial. And so there was not much time for Joseph to do what he could do in order to prepare Jesus, his body, for burial.

And so there was just a few hours, but in that short time, Joseph bought a burial cloth, which Mark calls a linen shroud, Joseph took down the body, probably he cleaned the body, and then he wrapped the body of Jesus in the linen shroud, and then he laid him in the tomb, and then he rolled the stone in front of the mouth of the tomb. And this whole process was hurried, but at least it was a respectful, a decent burial. And no doubt it gave Joseph a little bit of comfort knowing that at least the body of Jesus would not undergo any further humiliation and disgrace.

At least the body was resting in its grave. And now the women who also were grieving and mourning as Joseph no doubt was. They were doing what they could do to deal with the death of Jesus. As soon as the Sabbath was over, which would be Saturday evening at sundown, the Sabbath officially ended, the women went out and they bought spices in order to anoint the body of Jesus so that when the daylight came, when the sun rose on the first day of the week, they could be at the tomb to properly anoint the body of Jesus for his burial.

The spices were probably some kind of oil or ointment, and they used spices to anoint a dead body, not in order to embalm it, as the Egyptians did, to keep it from decaying, but they did it for a very practical reason, because the decomposing flesh would put off such a terrible odor. The spices would help mask that odor. Now, so far as we read this in Mark, there’s really nothing too extraordinary about what Mark has told us here. Joseph, the women, they’re simply doing what they had to do, what they could do to give Jesus a decent and honorable burial.

Again, no matter how terrible and unjust, no matter how awful the death that he died, they had to go about the rituals, the practices of the funeral because life would have to go on. They had to accept that Jesus was dead. And if the Gospel of Mark ended here, this would be no gospel. There would be no good news here. In fact, all of this would be just another sad story of the pain and the grief that fills the hearts of those who lose a loved one. They’re doing what they can do, what they have to do in the wake of death to try to bring some closure, some comfort, And this is the story that has been told over and over and over again throughout all of human history.

The pain of death, the grief of the loss, the mourning, the sorrow experienced by those who are left behind. And of course, the need to deal with it and to prepare to go on living. But praise God, this is so much more than just another story of death and loss and sorrow. Everything changes. Everything changes in the dawning rays of the sun on that first Easter morning. What began with the heartbreaking sadness of the death of Jesus ends with the greatest discovery that has ever been made or that ever will be made, and that is the discovery of the empty tomb.

And that’s the second lesson that we’ll consider from this passage. The Wonder of the Empty Tomb. Mark tells us in verse 3 of chapter 16 that, as the women were on the way to the tomb, they said to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb? Now that was a very good question for the women to ask. Most likely the stone was a large disk carved out of solid rock. It was covering the opening it tells us, and this is also very characteristic of Mark, he loves to give us these little details that add color to his gospel account, but he tells us, it was very large. This stone disk was very large. It was too large for two or three women to move. And apparently in the midst of their grief, as they had set out for the tomb, they realized that they had forgotten about this very important detail. How in the world will they even get into the tomb? But when they arrived to the gravesite, their question was answered because when they looked up at the tomb, the stone had been rolled back. And when the women entered the tomb, what they saw was not the body of Jesus resting as it had been laid there three days ago, but instead they found what Mark calls a young man sitting in the tomb, dressed in a white robe.

Mark calls this person a young man, but there’s no question as to what he really was. His white clothes are the garments of heaven. This was an angel of God. And now the women, standing in the tomb, seeing this strange young man, all dressed in white, they’re beginning to wonder what in the world is going on, and they are terrified. And the angel says this to the women do not be alarmed you seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. He has risen. He is not here. We are so familiar with the truth of the resurrection of Christ we are so familiar with these words, “he has risen”, that we fail to feel the force of these words and the way that the women would have felt these words when they were first announced to them by this angel from heaven.

He has risen. He is not here. Think about what these women have come to do. They came to the tomb to care for the dead body of Jesus, to prepare the body to decompose, to decay, to eventually become nothing but a pile of bones. Essentially, they were going to the funeral of their friend. And what they might have expected to hear from this strange person in the tomb, whatever he was, whoever he was, would be the words that you expect to hear at a funeral. You would expect them to hear something like, “I’m so sorry for your loss”. “He was a good man”. “We’ll all miss him so much”. 

But this angel didn’t show up to a funeral. This angel didn’t come to give words of comfort or consolation to this woman. He was there to declare a message, to proclaim to them good news, that the Lord whom they sought, “He is risen. He is not here. He is alive. He lives”. And all of a sudden, this is no funeral anymore. This is no burial service. This is not just another sad story of the death of a loved one and the survivors coping with it as best they can.

No, this is now the story of the glorious work of God of conquering death forever and ever. This is God doing the impossible of bringing life from the dead, of raising the dead to new resurrection life. This is the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits of all who belong to Christ. We also will be raised up with him. And so when God raised his son Jesus from the dead, he brought about for us an entirely new reality in the face of death. And that is we now have in the face of death, we have the hope, the promise of victory over the grave.

We have now in Christ the death of death, the promise of the hope of resurrection life. And so the empty tomb is not just the good news that God raised Christ from the dead. It is certainly that, but there’s more to it than that. The empty tomb is the good news that whoever comes to Jesus by faith, whoever belongs to him, by trusting in him, whoever believes that he is the Son of God, whoever submits to him as Lord and Savior, that that person also will be raised from death to life. 

John tells us the words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” 

This is our hope. This is your hope in the face of death. And what other hope is there that we could possibly have? There is none. Death conquers all. Death overcomes us. We are helpless and powerless in the face of this great enemy. But Jesus Christ has given us victory over death. There is no other hope except in Christ. And people will try to do something, anything, to try to overcome death. But it is all vain. It is futile. 

There are some people now spending millions of dollars to try to pursue some technologies that somehow will stave off death for them. There are people who make arrangements so that when they die, their bodies will be deep frozen in some crypt somewhere, and with the hopes that medical science someday, somehow, will find a way to bring life to the dead. It’s a desperate hope, if you can even call it a hope. But apart from Christ, what other hope is there? For resurrection life, to conquer death, there is no other hope but in Christ you have a true and a certain hope. 

One day, unless the Lord comes again, one day you and I will also go to our grave. We will meet death, death will come to us. And yet, though we must die in these perishable bodies, God has promised you as a believer in Jesus Christ that he will raise you up in a body that is imperishable and glorified, a body in which you will live forever and ever, a body without sickness, without aging, without deterioration, without dementia, a body in which there will be no cloud of death hanging over you and me as it does in this world. And so as a believer in Jesus Christ, the empty tomb of Jesus is the guarantee that one day the tomb or the grave that your body will occupy will be emptied as well. It too will be an empty tomb. 

When the Lord comes again from heaven, when Jesus comes with the shout of the archangel, the shout of the trumpet, and he calls the dead to life, and he will call you out of your grave, and you will be risen to live body and soul in a new heavens and new earth forever and ever. That is the hope that Christ gives you and me as a result of the empty tomb because he was raised. You too will be raised up with him. And the question that confronts us today is, is this your hope?

Again, every single one of us will face death. What is your hope? Is it the Lord Jesus Christ? That he will give you victory over the grave? And so that is our hope for the world to come, but it’s not as though the resurrection of Christ has nothing to do with us in this life. Quite the opposite. As a believer in Christ, You have been given a life in which the power of the resurrection of Christ is already at work in you. And that’s the third lesson that I want us to consider from this passage.

Our resurrection life in Christ. First of all, the resurrection of Christ means that your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. I once spoke with a woman who had been to Israel. If I remember right, she had been there several times. She was interested in the fact that I was a pastor. I believe she was a Christian, I’m not sure, but her husband spoke Hebrew and she thought it was interesting that I had studied Hebrew in seminary. She was telling me about how great it is to visit Jerusalem and to see the various sites that are described in the Bible.

And she told me that you can see the tomb where Jesus is buried. And I thought, maybe she didn’t mean to say that. Maybe that was just a slip of the tongue on her part, but it really caught my attention. She said, you can see the tomb where Jesus is buried. Not, you can see the tomb where Jesus was buried. And I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. She just slipped. But what a big difference one little word makes. Because if there is some tomb in Jerusalem, if there is some cave somewhere, where the bones of Jesus are still interred, they’re still there, that’s not just some interesting fact, but it changes everything.

It changes everything. If Jesus is still dead, you and I are still under the condemnation of God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”. He goes on to say this, “if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied”. We can put it this way. The death that Jesus died on the cross, the sacrifice he made upon the cross when he bore the wrath of God for our sin, It would have no saving value. It could not redeem us. It would not be anything good for us at all if Jesus remained in the tomb, if he is still dead. because if Christ is still dead, that means he is still under the curse of sin and death. And if Christ is still under the curse of sin and death, it means that we are still under the curse of sin and death. And therefore we would be not only under the judgment of God, the condemnation of God, because we are still in our sins, but we would be the most pathetic people, the most pitiable people in all the world, because we would be worshiping a dead savior.

And what’s more, what we are doing here today, what we do here every Sunday, worshiping God in the name and by faith of his son Jesus Christ, all of this would be a colossal waste of time. This would be a supreme act of folly. If Christ is still in the grave and therefore we are still in our sins, what are we doing here? We might as well be out in the world. It’s a beautiful day out there. We might as well be enjoying that. We might as well be trying to get all of the profit and the pleasure that we can possibly squeeze out of this short life that we have in this world until we die and enter into the judgment of God.

If there is a tomb in Jerusalem in which Jesus is buried, we are without hope. But praise God that Jesus has been raised. He has given the testimony of the truth of the resurrection in his word. His word is true. What the women saw is true. An empty tomb. They heard the words of God from the angel. He is risen. And so when God raised Christ from the dead, he not only demonstrated that he is the victor over death and the grave, but the resurrection of Christ was God’s way of proclaiming to the world, my son has satisfied my justice.

His sacrifice is satisfying to me. It is sufficient to atone for the sins of my people. I am pleased with my son. He bore the sins of my beloved people, and it is over, and life is His, and life belongs to all that I give to Him. And so the resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee that His death was truly a death that takes away our sins forever. And for that reason, then, the empty tomb is the guarantee, along with the crucifixion, that you are forgiven. 

That’s why we rejoice today on Easter Sunday. That’s why we rejoice and give thanks to God every Lord’s Day because both of his crucifixion and resurrection we know that our sins have been taken away from us for all time, for eternity. God counts them against us no more. Now Mark doesn’t tell us all of this in his gospel. However, there is a story of forgiveness here, a beautiful story of God’s mercy and forgiveness. Notice what the angel says to the women in verse 7. He says, “but go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee”. He doesn’t just say, tell his disciples, but the angel goes out of his way to say, tell his disciples and Peter to go and meet him in Galilee. 

The last time that Mark tells us about Peter, it is such a grievous sight that he gives us. Peter is a broken man. He is weeping bitter tears. He has done the very thing he vowed so foolishly that he would not do, he denied knowing Jesus as his Lord. And all he could do was weep. But the angel had a message from Jesus for Peter, from the risen Lord. And the message is not what we might think it would have been, “Go and tell Peter that traitor. Go and tell Peter who denied me, who rejected me in this way. Go and tell him that I am alive and I am coming after him.” That’s what we might expect to hear.

But the message from Jesus was, tell Peter that he too must come to meet me. In other words, Peter, the dark night of your guilt and sin is forgiven. It is over. You are forgiven. I love you. You are my servant. I have a mission for you. Come and meet me in Galilee. Yes, even you, Peter. And in the same way, if your hope is in Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Christ is God’s message to you as well. You are forgiven. Your sin against me, your guilt is taken away. Christ says to you, I love you. You are mine and come meet me. Come to me. You are my servant. I have a mission for you. And so the resurrection is God’s guarantee that our sins are forgiven in Christ. Secondly, the resurrection of Christ means for you today, the power to live a new life, the power to live a resurrection life. There was never a greater display of the almighty power of God than on that first Easter morning when Jesus was raised from the dead. God is infinite in power. And this is a manifestation of the power of God that is perhaps even greater than His power that was displayed in creating all things of nothing.

Imagine a God creating all things from nothing. What kind of power is that? But here is an even greater power, that God can bring life out of death, that He can raise the dead. And if you belong to Christ by faith, then that same divine, almighty resurrection power is at work in you by the same power with which He raised Jesus from the dead. The Spirit of Christ is at work in you to enable you to walk in new life, new obedience, resurrection life. And isn’t this something we so desperately need? We can try to change our habits, we can try to change and reform our lives, but we cannot live by faith, we cannot live in obedience to the Word of God, we cannot enjoy walking with Christ apart from the resurrection power that Christ gives to us by His Spirit. And that’s the power He gives you. 

Romans 8:11, “if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you”. 

And so this resurrection life that Christ gives to you by his almighty spirit, this is a life of overcoming sin, of living to righteousness, dying to sin, growing in obedience, becoming more and more like Jesus himself. You are called to be like Christ, but you cannot apart from the power of the Spirit at work in you, the power by which Jesus was raised from the dead.

And so the empty tomb means not only that your sins are forgiven, but it means you have the Spirit of the risen Christ at work in you to further and further conform you to the image of Jesus, who is the true image of God. Mark ends his gospel with the women fleeing from the tomb. He says that they were seized with trembling and astonishment. They’re too afraid to say anything to anybody. You’ll notice in your English Bibles that verses 9 to the end of chapter 16 that those verses are bracketed off and there’ll be some footnote or explanation saying why.

Most likely this longer ending in Mark was not part of the original gospel that Mark wrote, so that’s why we’re ending the passage on verse 8. But when the passage ends at verse 8, it seems a little strange that the gospel ends that way. It’s not a note of joy and triumphant faith and rejoicing in the resurrection, but the women are terrified. They’re trembling. And whatever else that may mean. Mark is making at least this much clear. The women were totally unprepared for what they encountered in the empty tomb. The sheer magnitude of what they experienced, the angel, the declaration that Jesus had risen from the dead, all of that left them stunned and speechless and terrified.

And one thing is for sure, that after going to the empty tomb, life would never be the same for these women. They went there that morning to make the best of a horrible situation, to cope as best as they could with the profound grief and sorrow that they felt, to deal with the body of their beloved teacher, to anoint his body, give him a decent burial. But they left that morning with the awesome realization that God was doing something in their midst that was more wonderful and magnificent than anything they could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

And the question that I want to leave you and me with is this. Have you been to the empty tomb? And I’m not talking about the actual tomb in Jerusalem. We don’t even know if we know where that is exactly. But have you by faith come to Jesus Christ as the resurrected Son of God, who died for your sin, who was raised to give you eternal life like these women like the disciples after them, and like so millions and millions of people after them, everyone who comes to the empty tomb leaves a different person, a changed person, a person who has now new life and hope in the resurrected Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

The post He Is Risen! appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Exodus 2:1-10 and this is the word of the Lord. “Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son and when she saw that he was a fine child she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the riverbank. And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him.

Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews children. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, go. So the girl went and called the child’s mother.

And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses because, she said, I drew him out of the water.” 

And now let’s turn to Hebrews 1:23-28 for the New Testament reading. Hebrews 11:23-28, but keep your place there in Exodus. So as you know, Hebrews 11 is the hall of fame of faith, a list of all of the saints who walked by faith and who were obedient to the Lord by faith.

And verses 23 through 28 concern Moses and his faith, which really began with his parents. The first part of this is really talking about his parents’ faith. So I’ll read verses 23 through 28. “By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.’

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

When we left off a couple of weeks ago in Exodus, at the end of chapter one, at that point, the people of Israel in Egypt, they were in dire straits. They had grown so numerous that they became a threat to Pharaoh, and so he began a series of steps in order to decimate the population of Israel and we considered those a couple of weeks ago and all of that culminated in Pharaoh’s edict to all the people of Egypt that they were to drown all the Hebrew baby boys that were born to the Israelites and so in that way he would control the population, control the people of Israel, that they could remain his slaves. 

So at the beginning of Chapter 2 here, the circumstances for the people of Israel are very bleak. Pharaoh, the enemy of God’s people, really the enemy of God, he seems to be on the brink here of destroying the nation of Israel. But it’s right now at this time that in the wisdom of God, the perfect wisdom of God, and under his sovereign lordship over the whole world, it was just at that time that the low point, the nadir of the sufferings of the people of Israel, that the Lord acts. When things were at their darkest, when all hope seemed to be lost, God was at work to raise up a man who would bring salvation to his people.

And that’s what this passage is all about. It’s about the birth of Moses, the great leader of Israel, who would lead his people out of Egypt, out of their bondage to Pharaoh, and bring them into freedom. And ultimately, not Moses, of course, but Joshua, would bring them into the promised land. But this is the account of his birth.

I said a few weeks ago that the Exodus is the gospel of the Old Testament. The exodus of Israel out of Egypt this is the great salvation event that the Old Covenant Israelites that they celebrated as the the preeminent act of God in bringing deliverance to them and if the gospel of the New Testament begins with the birth of the Savior Jesus then the gospel of the Old Testament begins with the birth of Moses And as we consider this account of the birth of Moses, we learn some things about the way in which God works out his saving purposes for us in Christ.

And so we’ll take three lessons from this passage about God’s saving work for us. First of all, as we’ll see, salvation is entirely the work of God. Secondly, salvation is deliverance from the judgment of God And thirdly, salvation is yours by faith in God. So those are the three lessons that we’ll take from this passage this morning. First of all, salvation is entirely the work of the Lord, not our work, but God’s work. And one way we can see how that is true from this passage is to consider the condition of the Israelites, the position that they were in.

They were hopeless. As chapter 2 begins, the Israelites are in bondage to Pharaoh, and humanly speaking, they have no hope of deliverance. There is nothing in their situation to make us think that even though they are a numerous people, that they have any real possibility of freeing themselves from the bitter yoke of Pharaoh. They were hopelessly enslaved to the Egyptians. And their bondage here is meant to be for us a picture of the bondage that we are in by nature because of our sin. As sinners, you and I are born into a situation in which, like the Israelites, we are hopelessly enslaved.

But of course, our enslavement is not to some Egyptian taskmasters, but our enslavement is to the sin that indwells in us. that reigns over us apart from the grace of God. Jesus said as much. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits a sin, and that is, of course, everyone, everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin. Now, as slaves to sin, we are willing slaves. We have sold ourselves into slavery, but nevertheless, we are helplessly, hopelessly in bondage One of the reasons why we so often don’t have a greater appreciation, a greater love of the gospel, of the truth, of what God has done for us in Christ, there’s the reason why we don’t appreciate that or understand it as we should is because we don’t truly comprehend just how helpless just how hopeless our condition is as those who are enslaved to sin we choose to sin to be sure but because we are sinful by nature because from the moment we are born our hearts are corrupt We have inherited that original depravity, that corruption from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and for that reason, although we choose to sin, we will always choose to sin.

Again, apart from the grace of God, the only course we will take is to rebel against God, to pursue our own sinful desires, to hate Him, and to flee from Him, and to have nothing to do with Him. that is bondage, that is slavery. It is just as a miserable helpless condition as the Israelites were here in Egypt. Not only are we enslaved to sin, but we are dead in sin. There is no life in us. It is against the background of that truth of what we are apart from Christ, before the grace of God, it’s only then that we can begin to appreciating, to give thanks to God for how marvelous, how wonderful His grace is to us, that He has set us free from that sin, that He has made us alive in Christ.

And this is the sovereign work of God in our salvation. This is the truth that we are saved by God’s work, by His action, by His initiative and power and not by our own, not even by helping God a little bit. It’s not as though God saw that we had stumbled and fell and he lends us a helping hand if we will only reach up to him to grab that hand. You’ve all heard the saying, God helps those who help themselves. That’s actually one of the most popular Bible verses that’s really actually not even in the Bible.

I just read the other day that apparently 75% of Americans believe that that is a Bible verse. God helps those who help themselves. But that is not in the scripture and it’s certainly not true when it comes to our salvation. God doesn’t help those who help themselves because there’s no one who helps themselves to free themselves out of their bondage to sin. Just as a corpse does not help himself to become alive, we cannot help ourselves to free ourselves from this bondage, that God in his sovereign power, looking upon us in mercy and pity, he delivers us from our bondage.

He makes us alive together with Christ. And so that’s one way in which we have a picture here of this truth that for you and me as Christians, salvation, we always need to remember that salvation is the sovereign work of God. But there’s another way in which this passage shows us that salvation is entirely God’s work, and that is the amazing providence of God. This passage just is a wonderful testimony to God’s providence, that is, His rule over all things that take place in all creation. In verses one and two, we read this. “Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.” By the way, we learn later in the Old Testament the names of Moses’ parents. His mother’s name was Jochebed. His father’s name was Amram. And for some reason, Jochebed, Moses’ mother, she was able to keep it a secret that she had given birth to a baby boy for about three months. And so she was able to somehow keep his crying from alerting The Egyptians that there was a child, an infant in this house, possibly a boy that they of course would be commanded to drown. She was able to do this for three months. Probably after that time as babies do, they grow, their cries become louder it became impossible to hide him any longer.

 And so it says in verse 3 that she “took for him a basket made of bulrushes, endowed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.”

A bulrush is apparently a kind of a grassy plant that grows in the water. Another name for it would be a papyrus reed. And the bitumen and pitch, they were either tar or some kind of a tar product that was used to seal this basket to make it waterproof so that it would float. and we’ll have more to say about this so-called basket later, but probably the idea here was that Moses’ mother would put Moses, the infant, in the basket and set it on the Nile River to hide it during the day, then at night she could go to her son in the basket, take him out, hold him and nurse him, and in that way she would be able to keep him alive.

And so God used the craftiness of Moses’ mother to keep him alive at least for a time. But then something happens here that was completely out of the control of the parents of Moses. God intervenes in the most remarkable way. One day, as Moses is floating in his little basket on the Nile River, it just so happened, quote, unquote, coincidentally, that the daughter of Pharaoh went to that very place that day to take a bath. This was the daughter of the very king who had decreed that every baby boy of the Hebrews should be murdered.

But God had given this girl a different spirit. A different spirit than that of her father. She had a sense of humanity, of compassion. And so rather than carrying out her own father’s decree that this baby should be drowned in the Nile, she took pity on this baby boy in the basket and she saved his life. If you think about it, this is the providence of God because there was probably only one person of all the Egyptians who could get away with disobeying Pharaoh’s decree. That would be his own daughter. She would be the one person that he would not put to death for disobeying his commands.

But she is the one who comes and happens upon this basket with Moses inside of it. And not only that, but God used the sister of Moses as well to save him from death. Again, we know elsewhere from the Bible that the sister of Moses, her name is Miriam, and Miriam’s part in all of this was to stand at a distance and to see what would happen. And it wasn’t the case that she was just standing there to watch him if he dies, but she was standing there in case there was a situation in which she could protect her baby brother.

And indeed she can. And Miriam, She had the intelligence and the courage to go up to Pharaoh’s daughter and she says to Pharaoh’s daughter, “shall I find a Hebrew woman to nurse her for you?” We might fill in the lines a little bit. Maybe she said something like, I know just the perfect woman to nurse this baby boy. She would be ideal for the job. Of course, she’s thinking about the baby’s mother, her own mother too. And so Miriam brings her baby brother, or she brings Moses’s mother to Pharaoh’s daughter, and then Moses’s mother is able to take Moses, her son, home to care for him, to nurse him in perfect safety.

And she even gets paid for it. And I’m sorry to say this, moms, but probably in the history of the world, this is the first and only time that a mother ever got paid to take care of her child. But the point here is the way in which this all worked out so providentially. Moses was kept alive through these extraordinary events and under the lordship, the rule of God over all these things. And the Lord not only preserved the life of Moses, but in his absolute control of all things, he saw to it that Moses would be perfectly equipped to be the one who would lead the people of Egypt or the people of Israel out of Egypt.

First of all, Moses, the baby, would be taken care of. He would be nursed and loved by his own mother and father. And so he was with his parents during the most formidable or the most formidable or formative rather. He was with his parents during the most formative, the most impressionable years of his life. He would have been nursed in that day and age probably until he was three or four years old. And by that time, a love of his family, a love for his people would have been indelibly impressed upon his heart because of the love that he received from his mother and his father and his family.

And so already he has been by the providence of God to identify with the people of Israel as his people. These are his people. This is his family. And then later, of course, again, in God’s providence, Moses is raised up in Pharaoh’s household. And there he received what would have been a world-class education, world-class training. He would have studied linguistics, mathematics, astronomy, architecture, music, medicine, law, and diplomacy. And all of that education and training would have formed the bind of Moses to be the perfect person to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and to lead the people of Israel in their wilderness wandering for 40 years.

And of course, that very education in Pharaoh’s court was also what enabled him to write the first five books of the Bible. But all of that is in the future. For the present, at this time, in this passage, the parents of Moses, all they knew was the suffering, the anguish that they were enduring Knowing that despite their best efforts to preserve the life of their son, he very likely could have died in the waters of the Nile. He could have been discovered by any other Egyptian who would have drowned him. And no doubt at this time, the parents of Moses were wondering, thinking to themselves, why?

Why did God allow this? Why are we living under these circumstances? Why is our son, our precious son, our baby boy, why is he living under a death sentence? But of course, as we’ve seen, God had a purpose, even in this desperate situation. He was preparing Moses to be the deliverer of Israel. My parents and sister and I, we once knew a young lady who had to have a bone marrow transplant. Actually, she was going through a bone marrow transplant at the same time my sister was. And so they got to know each other and we got to know her a little bit. They both had leukemia, so they had to have this transplant. and sadly she did not live very long this, my sister’s friend, this young girl that she met she didn’t live very long after the transplant but at some point during her treatment she came to saving faith in Christ she was probably in her late teens, early twenties and she said to my sister something that sounded pretty amazing at the time or maybe even perplexing to someone who didn’t understand what she meant. But she said to my sister, I can see now how all of the pieces of my life are starting to fall into place for me.

Now, on the surface of that, from a human perspective, that sounds just absurd. Here she was, a young woman, again, probably in her early 20s. She’s been diagnosed with this deadly disease. She’s dying from this disease. How could it be possible that all of the pieces of her life are starting to fall into place? But of course she was speaking of her life, not in terms of whatever life she would have in this world, but she was speaking of her life in terms of eternity, in terms of salvation, in terms of her standing with God.

And she came to understand, after she came to faith in Christ, that this also was in the providence of God. that he allowed her to be diagnosed with this cancer that he was pleased to use this disease in her life to bring her to faith in Christ and that’s how all the pieces were falling into place for her that God in his providence was using even this terrible disease, this terrible circumstance to bring her to that salvation that he had appointed for her and chose her for even from before the foundation of the world and I believe that she is in glory with Christ now.

But what if she hadn’t gotten sick? What if she had lived a healthy life? She would still be alive now, probably. But would she know Christ? This was the way in which he brought this beloved soul to himself. So God works even through suffering to bring about his redemptive loving, saving purposes for his people. And there are times when you and I suffer. And we have no idea why this is taking place. Why are we in these circumstances? Why is this happening to me? And when God has allowed you to experience that, to suffer in that way, some loss, some affliction, some inexplicable, some incomprehensible turn in your life, You don’t see how it all fits together, but one day you’ll see how all the pieces are falling into place according to God’s ordering all things for your good, for your salvation.

Even those things that afflict us, the painful things, the grievous things, the suffering, he uses that too to bring about that salvation that he has given you in Christ. So salvation is entirely the work of God. 

The second lesson is salvation is being saved from the judgment of God. So in verse three, when it says that Moses’s mother built him a basket, the word that is used there for basket in the original Hebrew, the word in Hebrew is the word that is translated ark. and the only other place in the Bible where this particular Hebrew word for ark appears is in the story in Genesis of Noah and his ark.

And that’s significant because what that means is we are supposed to read this passage in the light of what we read back in Genesis of Noah and his ark. And they are both stories of God’s salvation, his saving work for his people. With Noah, God saved a tiny remnant of humanity from drowning in the floodwaters by preserving their lives in the ark. And here in Exodus chapter 2, God saves Moses from drowning in the Nile, or from being drowned in the Nile, with an ark. And if Noah’s Ark was the means of salvation from the floodwaters of God’s judgment, then the Ark of Moses was also pointing to a salvation that would be a salvation from the judgment of God.

In this case, it is that Moses was saved by an ark so that he could later save God’s people from God’s judgment. As we’ll eventually get there, but as we look ahead in Exodus, you’ll recall that The Lord brought ten plagues upon the people of Egypt, and that tenth and final plague, the worst of them, was the death of every firstborn in all the land of Egypt. And that’s when the angel of the Lord passed over the entire land of Egypt. He struck down every firstborn of man and beast. And the reason why the Israelites were saved from that awful judgment was because God had commanded the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb that very evening, to smear the blood of that lamb on the doorposts of their home, on the lintels of their doors.

And when the Lord saw the blood of the lamb on the house of the Israelite families, He would spare those families from the judgment of the death of the firstborn in that home. And so in this indirect way then, even here in the infancy of Moses as he’s placed in an ark, the Holy Spirit is indicating in this way that God is going to bring salvation to his people Israel, a salvation from the judgment of God that would fall upon the entire land of Egypt. Now as Christians, part of our Christian vocabulary, the language that we use is we talk about how we are saved.

We might talk about, I remember the year or the day, maybe, when I was saved. Or we might talk about a friend. I don’t know if he’s saved. But how often do we consider exactly what are we saved from? What did Jesus come to deliver us from? What is our salvation all about? Well, Jesus didn’t come to save us from suffering. We would love that, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t we? Jesus had come to save us from all suffering, but that’s certainly not true. He didn’t come to save us from poverty or illness or physical death. He didn’t come to save us from unpleasant, uncomfortable circumstances, but he came to save you and me from the wrath of God.

He came to save you and me from that judgment that we have brought upon ourselves because of our guilt and sin before God. He saves us from everlasting condemnation, from everlasting death, from the penalty of hell. That is the salvation that Christ has worked for you and me. And, there are so many blessings that we receive from the hand of God through Jesus Christ and we rejoice in them, we give thanks to every spiritual blessing that He gives to us. But the question we want to ask ourselves is this, do I rejoice, do I give thanks to God most of all for the greatest gift that He has given me?

Not for the I mean, yes, I give thanks to God, I rejoice in the blessings He gives me, these blessings I enjoy in this life of health and family and friends and pleasant experiences and so on, but do you rejoice and give thanks to the Lord for His greatest gift of all, that He has given you His Son, the true Passover Lamb, to rescue you from the judgment that was rightfully yours, to deliver you from that condemnation that was upon you because of your sin and guilts? is that what causes your heart to be filled with the most thanksgiving and gratitude to the Lord to praise Him for this gift that He has delivered you from that wrath, from that judgment.

So salvation is being saved from the judgment of God. 

The third lesson is this, salvation is yours by faith in God. We’ve already seen in this passage how God’s saving work is a work that belongs entirely to Him. That was true for the Israelites in their deliverance from bondage to Pharaoh. That is true for you and me in our deliverance from sin and guilt. The work of salvation is the work of God, the triune God. The Father planned it, the Son accomplished it, the Spirit applies it, and so we give Him all credit for our salvation.

But for that same reason, salvation is yours and mine only by faith. We don’t contribute to our salvation by our works, but it’s by faith. Faith alone. Trusting in Christ. Resting in Him. Not leaning upon your own works or goodness or righteousness, but by faith alone. And yet the faith that saves you and me is never alone. It is never isolated from a life that is bearing fruits of obedience to the Lord for this gift of salvation. And so the person who has true saving faith in Christ will, by the grace of God, show forth his faith or her faith in works of love and righteousness.

James says in James 2:18, ”show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.” My faith is demonstrated, it is manifested in the works that God enables me to do. And part of the story here in Exodus Chapter 2 is the, it’s not only the sovereign work of God in bringing salvation to the Israelites, delivering them from their slavery, but it’s also about the actions of people whom God used as instruments in preserving the life of Moses. This passage tells us about the boldness, the faithfulness of the mother of Moses, how she built this basket for him to ensure that he would not be killed by being drowned in the Nile.

And as we heard from our New Testament reading in Hebrews, that was an act of faith. So Hebrews 11:23, by faith, Moses, and really it’s referring to parents of Moses, their faith, “but by faith Moses when he was born was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king’s edict”. 

Now let’s ask the question, why was it that Moses’ parents, why did they go to these lengths to protect their child, to save his life? Now obviously they had a natural love for their son and so any parent would do whatever it took in order to save him from death. But according to both Exodus and Hebrews there was something more here even beyond their natural love for their child. There was something about the appearance of Moses that was extraordinary, remarkable. The Hebrew is vague as to exactly what it says, or means, different translations say that he was a fine child. That’s the English Standard Version. The King James Version says he was a “goodly child”. That’s not a typo in the bulletin, but that’s a phrase taken from the King James Bible. He was a “goodly child” or a beautiful child. Probably the sense that is meant here is best expressed by the New International Version.

It says that they saw he was no ordinary child. He was no ordinary child. There was something different, remarkable about this baby boy. Now, I’m sure there isn’t a mother or father in the whole world who, when he first laid eyes upon his son or her son, did not say, this is no ordinary child. This is a fine child, a beautiful child. But again, it wasn’t just the natural bias of the parents at work here. There was something special and unique about this baby boy that somehow suggested that he was set apart for God’s service.

And for that reason, because of their faith in God, not just because of their love for their son, but because of their faith in God, they hid him at home and then they hid him in the basket among the reeds of the Nile. Their faith was in the Lord, but more specifically their faith was in the Lord who had made promises to their forefather Abraham. And those were his covenant promises, the promises that God made to Abraham and to his descendants, which would have included the parents of Moses. And that is, that Israel would become a great nation, that they would inherit the promised land, the land of Canaan, that through a descendant of Abraham all the world would be blessed, Of course, it’s impossible to say for sure exactly how much of these promises the parents of Moses were familiar with.

But at the very least, they knew that they were the people of God. They knew that they belonged to the Lord. And they knew, at the very least, that the promises of God were promises of salvation, of redemption. And it was out of that hope in God’s promised redemption that the parents of Moses hid their son from the Egyptians. They had a hope of something greater for themselves, for their people, for the people of God. Hebrews 11.1 describes faith in this way. It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Somehow by faith, the parents of Moses knew that this child was part of God’s plan to bring about the things hoped for. Perhaps they even had a sense, they knew somehow that he would be a deliverer for Israel. And so by faith in the promises of God and the salvation of God, their faith in the Lord, they hid him. And that faith is yours as well, as a believer in Jesus Christ. That is the faith that God has given you. The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Again, We receive many blessings, many gifts of God’s grace in this world, but those are not the things hoped for or the things not seen.

But as a Christian, your hope is in what is to come. It is in the blessings of the resurrection of your body from the dead, the entrance into eternal glory, the new heavens and the new earth. the ultimate banishment of sin, of death, of sorrow, of pain forever in a new creation. All of these are part of your hope. This is what your hope consists of, things not seen. And if that is your hope by faith in Christ, if you are convicted by the grace of God of the reality of the things not seen, then you also will walk by faith, you will live by faith.

For Moses’ parents, this meant that they would hide this child in this basket in the Nile. For you and me, to walk by faith means obedience to the Word of God, obedience to God’s commandments, living faithfully the life that God wills us to live, seeking to grow in holiness, seeking to grow in righteousness, conformity to Christ and His character. It means worshiping Christ on the Lord’s day with the people of God. It means loving others in the body of Christ. It means all kinds of things, but the bottom line is this, that if you have faith in Christ, if you possess in your heart that hope that you are longing to be realized, that in Christ, All things will be made new that you will have eternal life and glory in Christ.

If that is your faith, if that is your hope, you will show forth the reality of that faith by your obedience to the Word of God. It will bear fruit in your life by obedience. Again, here, James, James 2:18, “show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works”. So salvation is yours by faith in God, namely, faith in Christ. And like with Moses’ parents, you demonstrate that faith by obedience to the word of God or the will of God. So salvation is entirely the work of God.

Salvation is being saved from the judgment of God, and salvation is yours by faith in God. And as we reflect on this passage, just a final thought, God works in remarkable ways in accomplishing his purposes in the world. Who would have thought at this time that this baby boy floating in this little basket among the reeds of the Nile, that one day he would become the great deliverer of Israel, who would bring his people out from their bondage to Egypt. But even more amazing, even more remarkable, who would have thought that 1500 years later, in some obscure corner in the world, a baby would be born to a young girl that no one had ever heard of, that he would be born, that the baby would be born, rather he would be placed in a manger, in some sort of animal stable, that this baby, that this child, would be God’s Son.

That He would be the one that He would raise up, not just to deliver a nation from bondage to another nation, but to deliver sinners from bondage to slavery. That He would be the Savior of the world. That He would be the King and Lord of all creation. And that’s how God works. He works in remarkable ways. And He does so, so that all praise and glory Go to Him for accomplishing that salvation, accomplishing His purposes in a way that magnifies who He is, His power, His glory. And so put your hope in Jesus Christ as your Savior and praise Him and thank Him always for the great work of salvation that He has done for you.

Let’s pray.

The post The Greater Moses appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Exodus 2:1-10 and this is the word of the Lord. “Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son and when she saw that he was a fine child she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the riverbank. And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him.

Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews children. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, go. So the girl went and called the child’s mother.

And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses because, she said, I drew him out of the water.

And now let’s turn to Hebrews 11:23-28 for the New Testament reading. Hebrews 11:23-28, but keep your place there in Exodus. So as you know, Hebrews 11 is the hall of fame of faith, a list of all of the saints who walked by faith and who were obedient to the Lord by faith.

And verses 23 through 28 concern Moses and his faith, which really began with his parents. The first part of this is really talking about his parents’ faith. So I’ll read verses 23 through 28.

By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. When we left off a couple of weeks ago in Exodus, at the end of chapter one, at that point, the people of Israel in Egypt, they were in dire straits.

They had grown so numerous that they became a threat to Pharaoh, and so he began a series of steps in order to decimate the population of Israel and we considered those a couple of weeks ago and all of that culminated in Pharaoh’s edict to all the people of Egypt that they were to drown all the Hebrew baby boys that were born to the Israelites and so in that way he would control the population, control the people of Israel, that they could remain his slaves. So at the beginning of Chapter 2 here, the circumstances for the people of Israel are very bleak.

Pharaoh, the enemy of God’s people, really the enemy of God, he seems to be on the brink here of destroying the nation of Israel. But it’s right now at this time that in the wisdom of God, the perfect wisdom of God, and under his sovereign lordship over the whole world, it was just at that time that the low point, the nadir of the sufferings of the people of Israel, that the Lord acts. When things were at their darkest, when all hope seemed to be lost, God was at work to raise up a man who would bring salvation to his people.

And that’s what this passage is all about. It’s about the birth of Moses, the great leader of Israel, who would lead his people out of Egypt, out of their bondage to Pharaoh, and bring them in to the freedom. And ultimately, not Moses, of course, but Joshua, would bring them in to the promised land. But this is the account of his birth. I said a few weeks ago that the Exodus is the gospel of the Old Testament. the exodus of Israel out of Egypt this is the great salvation event that the Old Covenant Israelites that they celebrated as the the preeminent act of God in bringing deliverance to them and if the gospel of the New Testament begins with the birth of the Savior Jesus then the gospel of the Old Testament begins with the birth of Moses And as we consider this account of the birth of Moses, we learn some things about the way in which God works out his saving purposes for us in Christ.

And so we’ll take three lessons from this passage about God’s saving work for us. First of all, as we’ll see, salvation is entirely the work of God. Secondly, salvation is deliverance from the judgment of God And thirdly, salvation is yours by faith in God. So those are the three lessons that we’ll take from this passage this morning. First of all, salvation is entirely the work of the Lord, not our work, but God’s work. And one way we can see how that is true from this passage is to consider the condition of the Israelites, the position that they were in.

They were hopeless. As chapter 2 begins, the Israelites are in bondage to Pharaoh, and humanly speaking, they have no hope of deliverance. There is nothing in their situation to make us think that even though they are a numerous people, that they have any real possibility of freeing themselves from the bitter yoke of Pharaoh. They were hopelessly enslaved to the Egyptians. And their bondage here is meant to be for us a picture of the bondage that we are in by nature because of our sin. As sinners, you and I are born into a situation in which, like the Israelites, we are hopelessly enslaved.

But of course, our enslavement is not to some Egyptian taskmasters, but our enslavement is to the sin that indwells in us. that reigns over us apart from the grace of God. Jesus said as much. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits a sin, and that is, of course, everyone, everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin. Now, as slaves to sin, we are willing slaves. We have sold ourselves into slavery, but nevertheless, we are helplessly, hopelessly in bondage One of the reasons why we so often don’t have a greater appreciation, a greater love of the gospel, of the truth, of what God has done for us in Christ, there’s the reason why we don’t appreciate that or understand it as we should is because we don’t truly comprehend just how helpless just how hopeless our condition is as those who are enslaved to sin we choose to sin to be sure but because we are sinful by nature because from the moment we are born our hearts are corrupt We have inherited that original depravity, that corruption from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and for that reason, although we choose to sin, we will always choose to sin.

Again, apart from the grace of God, the only course we will take is to rebel against God, to pursue our own sinful desires, to hate Him, and to flee from Him, and to have nothing to do with Him. that is bondage, that is slavery. It is just as a miserable helpless condition as the Israelites were here in Egypt. Not only are we enslaved to sin, but we are dead in sin. There is no life in us. It is against the background of that truth of what we are apart from Christ, before the grace of God, it’s only then that we can begin to appreciating, to give thanks to God for how marvelous, how wonderful His grace is to us, that He has set us free from that sin, that He has made us alive in Christ.

And this is the sovereign work of God in our salvation. This is the truth that we are saved by God’s work, by His action, by His initiative and power and not by our own, not even by helping God a little bit. It’s not as though God saw that we had stumbled and fell and he lends us a helping hand if we will only reach up to him to grab that hand. You’ve all heard the saying, God helps those who help themselves. That’s actually one of the most popular Bible verses that’s really actually not even in the Bible.

I just read the other day that apparently 75% of Americans believe that That is a Bible verse. God helps those who help themselves. But that is not in the scripture and it’s certainly not true when it comes to our salvation. God doesn’t help those who help themselves because there’s no one who helps themselves to free themselves out of their bondage to sin. Just as a corpse does not help himself to become alive, we cannot help ourselves to free ourselves from this bondage. that God in his sovereign power, looking upon us in mercy and pity, he delivers us from our bondage.

He makes us alive together with Christ. And so that’s one way in which we have a picture here of this truth that for you and me as Christians, salvation, we always need to remember that salvation is the sovereign work of God. But there’s another way in which this passage shows us that salvation is entirely God’s work, and that is the amazing providence of God. This passage just is a wonderful testimony to God’s providence, that is, His rule over all things that take place in all creation. In verses one and two, we read this. Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman.

The woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. By the way, we learn later in the Old Testament the names of Moses’ parents. His mother’s name was Jochebed. His father’s name was Amram. And for some reason, Jochebed, Moses’ mother, she was able to keep it a secret that she had given birth to a baby boy for about three months. And so she was able to somehow keep his crying from alerting The Egyptians that there was a child an infant in this house possibly a boy that they of course would be commanded to drown She was able to do this for three months Probably after that time as babies do they grow their cries become louder it became impossible to hide him any longer And so it says in verse 3 that she took for him a basket made of bulrushes, endowed it with bitumen and pitch.

She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. A bulrush is apparently a kind of a grassy plant that grows in the water. Another name for it would be a papyrus reed. And the bitumen and pitch, they were either tar or some kind of a tar product that was used to seal this basket to make it waterproof so that it would float. and we’ll have more to say about this so-called basket later, but probably the idea here was that Moses’ mother would put Moses, the infant, in the basket and set it on the Nile River to hide it during the day, then at night she could go to her son in the basket, take him out, hold him and nurse him, and in that way she would be able to keep him alive.

And so God used the craftiness of Moses’ mother to keep him alive at least for a time. But then something happens here that was completely out of the control of the parents of Moses. God intervenes in the most remarkable way. One day, as Moses is floating in his little baskets on the Nile River, it just so happened, quote, unquote, coincidentally, that the daughter of Pharaoh went to that very place that day to take a bath. This was the daughter of the very king who had decreed that every baby boy of the Hebrews should be murdered.

But God had given this girl a different spirit. A different spirit than that of her father. She had a sense of humanity, of compassion. And so rather than carrying out her own father’s decree that this baby should be drowned in the Nile, she took pity on this baby boy in the basket and she saved his life. If you think about it, this is the providence of God because there was probably only one person of all the Egyptians who could get away with disobeying Pharaoh’s decree. That would be his own daughter. She would be the one person that he would not put to death for disobeying his commands.

But she is the one who comes and happens upon this basket with Moses inside of it. And not only that, but God used the sister of Moses as well to save him from death. Again, we know elsewhere from the Bible that the sister of Moses, her name is Miriam, and Miriam’s part in all of this was to stand at a distance and to see what would happen. And it wasn’t the case that she was just standing there to watch him if he dies, but she was standing there in case there was a situation in which she could protect her baby brother.

And indeed she can. And Miriam, She had the intelligence and the courage to go up to Pharaoh’s daughter and she says to Pharaoh’s daughter, shall I find a Hebrew woman to nurse her for you? We might fill in the lines a little bit. Maybe she said something like, I know just the perfect woman to nurse this baby boy. She would be ideal for the job. Of course, she’s thinking about the baby’s mother, her own mother too. And so Miriam brings her baby brother, or she brings Moses’s mother to Pharaoh’s daughter, and then Moses’s mother is able to take Moses, her son, home to care for him, to nurse him in perfect safety.

And she even gets paid for it. And I’m sorry to say this, moms, but probably in the history of the world, this is the first and only time that a mother ever got paid to take care of her child. But the point here is the way in which this all worked out so providentially. Moses was kept alive through these extraordinary events and under the lordship, the rule of God over all these things. And the Lord not only preserved the life of Moses, but in his absolute control of all things, he saw to it that Moses would be perfectly equipped to be the one who would lead the people of Egypt or the people of Israel out of Egypt.

First of all, Moses, the baby, would be taken care of. He would be nursed and loved by his own mother and father. And so he was with his parents during the most formidable or the most formidable or formative rather. He was with his parents during the most formative, the most impressionable years of his life. He would have been nursed in that day and age probably until he was three or four years old. And by that time, a love of his family, a love for his people would have been indelibly impressed upon his heart because of the love that he received from his mother and his father and his family.

And so already he has been by the providence of God to identify with the people of Israel as his people. These are his people. This is his family. And then later, of course, again, in God’s providence, Moses is raised up in Pharaoh’s household. And there he received what would have been a world-class education, world-class training. He would have studied linguistics, mathematics, astronomy, architecture, music, medicine, law, and diplomacy. And all of that education and training would have formed the bind of Moses to be the perfect person. to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and to lead the people of Israel in their wilderness wandering for 40 years.

And of course, that very education in Pharaoh’s court was also what enabled him to write the first five books of the Bible. But all of that is in the future. For the present, at this time, in this passage, the parents of Moses, all they knew was the suffering, the anguish that they were enduring Knowing that despite their best efforts to preserve the life of their son, he very likely could have died in the waters of the Nile. He could have been discovered by any other Egyptian who would have drowned him. And no doubt at this time, the parents of Moses were wondering, thinking to themselves, why?

Why did God allow this? Why are we living under these circumstances? Why is our son, our precious son, our baby boy, why is he living under a death sentence? But of course, as we’ve seen, God had a purpose, even in this desperate situation. He was preparing Moses to be the deliverer of Israel. My parents and sister and I, we once knew a young lady who had to have a bone marrow transplant. Actually, she was going through a bone marrow transplant at the same time my sister was. And so they got to know each other and we got to know her a little bit.

They both had leukemia, so they had to have this transplant. and sadly she did not live very long this my sister’s friend, this young girl that she met she didn’t live very long after the transplant but at some point during her treatment she came to saving faith in Christ she was probably in her late teens, early twenties and she said to my sister something that sounded pretty amazing at the time or maybe even perplexing to someone who didn’t understand what she meant. But she said to my sister, I can see now how all of the pieces of my life are starting to fall into place for me.

Now, on the surface of that, from a human perspective, that sounds just absurd. Here she was, a young woman, again, probably in her early 20s. She’s been diagnosed with this deadly disease. She’s dying from this disease. How could it be possible that all of the pieces of her life are starting to fall into place? But of course she was speaking of her life, not in terms of whatever life she would have in this world, but she was speaking of her life in terms of eternity, in terms of salvation, in terms of her standing with God.

And she came to understand, after she came to faith in Christ, that this also was in the providence of God. that he allowed her to be diagnosed with this cancer that he was pleased to use this disease in her life to bring her to faith in Christ and that’s how all the pieces were falling into place for her that God in his providence was using even this terrible disease, this terrible circumstance to bring her to that salvation that he had appointed for her and chose her for even from before the foundation of the world and I believe that she is in glory with Christ now.

But what if she hadn’t gotten sick? What if she had lived a healthy life? She would still be alive now, probably. But would she know Christ? This was the way in which he brought this beloved soul to himself. So God works even through suffering to bring about his redemptive loving, saving purposes for his people. And there are times when you and I suffer. And we have no idea why this is taking place. Why are we in these circumstances? Why is this happening to me? And when God has allowed you to experience that, to suffer in that way, some loss, some affliction, some inexplicable, some incomprehensible turn in your life, You don’t see how it all fits together, but one day you’ll see how all the pieces are falling into place according to God’s ordering all things for your good, for your salvation.

Even those things that afflict us, the painful things, the grievous things, the suffering, he uses that too to bring about that salvation that he has given you in Christ. So salvation is entirely the work of God. The second lesson is salvation is being saved from the judgment of God. So in verse three, when it says that Moses’s mother built him a basket, the word that is used there for basket in the original Hebrew, the word in Hebrew is the word that is translated ark. and the only other place in the Bible where this particular Hebrew word for ark appears is in the story in Genesis of Noah and his ark.

And that’s significant because what that means is we are supposed to read this passage in the light of what we read back in Genesis of Noah and his ark. And they are both stories of God’s salvation, his saving work for his people. With Noah, God saved a tiny remnant of humanity from drowning in the floodwaters by preserving their lives in the ark. And here in Exodus chapter 2, God saves Moses from drowning in the Nile, or from being drowned in the Nile, with an ark. And if Noah’s Ark was the means of salvation from the floodwaters of God’s judgment, then the Ark of Moses was also pointing to a salvation that would be a salvation from the judgment of God.

In this case, it is that Moses was saved by an ark so that he could later save God’s people from God’s judgment. As we’ll eventually get there, but as we look ahead in Exodus, you’ll recall that The Lord brought ten plagues upon the people of Egypt, and that tenth and final plague, the worst of them, was the death of every firstborn in all the land of Egypt. And that’s when the angel of the Lord passed over the entire land of Egypt. He struck down every firstborn of man and beast. And the reason why the Israelites were saved from that awful judgment was because God had commanded the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb that very evening, to smear the blood of that lamb on the doorposts of their home, on the lintels of their doors.

And when the Lord saw the blood of the lamb on the house of the Israelite families, He would spare those families from the judgment of the death of the firstborn in that home. And so in this indirect way then, even here in the infancy of Moses as he’s placed in an ark, the Holy Spirit is indicating in this way that God is going to bring salvation to his people Israel, a salvation from the judgment of God that would fall upon the entire land of Egypt. Now as Christians, part of our Christian vocabulary The language that we use is we talk about how we are saved.

We might talk about, I remember the year or the day, maybe, when I was saved. Or we might talk about a friend. I don’t know if he’s saved. But how often do we consider exactly what are we saved from? What did Jesus come to deliver us from? What is our salvation all about? Well, Jesus didn’t come to save us from suffering. We would love that, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t we? Jesus had come to save us from all suffering, but that’s certainly not true. He didn’t come to save us from poverty or illness or physical death. He didn’t come to save us from unpleasant, from uncomfortable circumstances, but he came to save you and me from the wrath of God.

He came to save you and me from that judgment that we have brought upon ourselves because of our guilt and sin before God. He saves us from everlasting condemnation, from everlasting death, from the penalty of hell. That is the salvation that Christ has worked for you and me. and there are so many blessings that we receive from the hand of God through Jesus Christ and we rejoice in them, we give thanks to every spiritual blessing that He gives to us. But the question we want to ask ourselves is this, do I rejoice, do I give thanks to God most of all for the greatest gift that He has given me?

Not for the I mean, yes, I give thanks to God, I rejoice in the blessings He gives me, these blessings I enjoy in this life of health and family and friends and pleasant experiences and so on, but do you rejoice and give thanks to the Lord for His greatest gift of all, that He has given you His Son, the true Passover Lamb, to rescue you from the judgment that was rightfully yours, to deliver you from that condemnation that was upon you because of your sin and guilts? is that what causes your heart to be filled with the most thanksgiving and gratitude to the Lord to praise Him for this gift that He has delivered you from that wrath, from that judgment.

So salvation is being saved from the judgment of God. The third lesson is this, salvation is yours by faith in God. We’ve already seen in this passage how God’s saving work is a work that belongs entirely to Him. That was true for the Israelites in their deliverance from bondage to Pharaoh. That is true for you and me in our deliverance from sin and guilt. The work of salvation is the work of God, the triune God. The Father planned it, the Son accomplished it, the Spirit applies it, and so we give Him all credit for our salvation.

But for that same reason, salvation is yours and mine only by faith. We don’t contribute to our salvation by our works, but it’s by faith. Faith alone. Trusting in Christ. Resting in Him. Not leaning upon your own works or goodness or righteousness, but by faith alone. And yet the faith that saves you and me is never alone. It is never isolated from a life that is bearing fruits of obedience to the Lord for this gift of salvation. And so the person who has true saving faith in Christ will, by the grace of God, show forth his faith or her faith in works of love and righteousness.

James says in James 2:18, show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works. My faith is demonstrated, it is manifested in the works that God enables me to do. And part of the story here in Exodus chapter 2 is the, it’s not only the sovereign work of God in bringing salvation to the Israelites, delivering them from their slavery, but it’s also about the actions of people whom God used as instruments in preserving the life of Moses. passage tells us about the boldness, the faithfulness of the mother of Moses, how she built this basket for him to ensure that he would not be killed by being drowned in the Nile.

And as we heard from our New Testament reading in Hebrews, that was an act of faith. So Hebrews 11:23, by faith, Moses, and really it’s referring to parents of Moses, their faith, but by faith Moses when he was born was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful and they were not afraid of the king’s edict. Now let’s ask the question, why was it that Moses’ parents, why did they go to these lengths to protect their child, to save his life? Now obviously they had a natural love for their son and so any parent would do whatever it took in order to save him from death.

But according to both Exodus and Hebrews there was something more here even beyond their natural love for their child. There was something about the appearance of Moses that was extraordinary, remarkable. The Hebrew is vague as to exactly what it says, or means, different translations say that he was a fine child. That’s the English Standard Version. The King James Version says he was a goodly child. That’s not a typo in the bulletin, but that’s a phrase taken from the King James Bible. He was a goodly child or a beautiful child. Probably the sense that is meant here is best expressed by the New International Version.

It says that they saw he was no ordinary child. He was no ordinary child. There was something different, remarkable about this baby boy. Now, I’m sure there isn’t a mother or father in the whole world who, when he first laid eyes upon his son or her son, did not say, this is no ordinary child. This is a fine child, a beautiful child. But again, it wasn’t just the natural bias of the parents at work here. There was something special and unique about this baby boy that somehow suggested that he was set apart for God’s service.

And for that reason, because of their faith in God, not just because of their love for their son, but because of their faith in God, they hid him at home and then they hid him in the basket among the reeds of the Nile. Their faith was in the Lord, but more specifically their faith was in the Lord who had made promises to their forefather Abraham. And those were his covenant promises, the promises that God made to Abraham and to his descendants, which would have included the parents of Moses. And that is, that Israel would become a great nation, that they would inherit the promised land, the land of Canaan, that through a descendant of Abraham all the world would be blessed, Of course, it’s impossible to say for sure exactly how much of these promises the parents of Moses were familiar with.

But at the very least, they knew that they were the people of God. They knew that they belonged to the Lord. And they knew, at the very least, that the promises of God were promises of salvation, of redemption. And it was out of that hope in God’s promised redemption that the parents of Moses hid their son from the Egyptians. They had a hope of something greater for themselves, for their people, for the people of God. Hebrews 11:1 describes faith in this way. It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Somehow by faith, the parents of Moses knew that this child was part of God’s plan to bring about the things hoped for. Perhaps they even had a sense, they knew somehow that he would be a deliverer for Israel. And so by faith in the promises of God and the salvation of God, their faith in the Lord, they hid him. And that faith is yours as well, as a believer in Jesus Christ. That is the faith that God has given you. The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Again, We receive many blessings, many gifts of God’s grace in this world, but those are not the things hoped for or the things not seen.

But as a Christian, your hope is in what is to come. It is in the blessings of the resurrection of your body from the dead, the entrance into eternal glory, the new heavens and the new earth. the ultimate banishment of sin, of death, of sorrow, of pain forever in a new creation. All of these are part of your hope. This is what your hope consists of, things not seen. And if that is your hope by faith in Christ, if you are convicted by the grace of God of the reality of the things not seen, then you also will walk by faith, you will live by faith.

For Moses’ parents, this meant that they would hide this child in this basket in the Nile. For you and me, to walk by faith means obedience to the Word of God, obedience to God’s commandments. living faithfully the life that God wills us to live, seeking to grow in holiness, seeking to grow in righteousness, conformity to Christ and His character. It means worshiping Christ on the Lord’s day with the people of God. It means loving others in the body of Christ. It means all kinds of things, but the bottom line is this, that if you have faith in Christ, if you possess in your heart that hope that you are longing to be realized, that in Christ, All things will be made new that you will have eternal life and glory in Christ.

If that is your faith, if that is your hope, you will show forth the reality of that faith by your obedience to the Word of God. It will bear fruit in your life by obedience. Again, here, James, James 2:18, show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. So salvation is yours by faith in God, namely, faith in Christ. And like with Moses’ parents, you demonstrate that faith by obedience to the word of God or the will of God. So salvation is entirely the work of God.

Salvation is being saved from the judgment of God, and salvation is yours by faith in God. And as we reflect on this passage, just a final thought God works in remarkable ways in accomplishing his purposes in the world. Who would have thought at this time that this baby boy floating in this little basket among the reeds of the Nile, that one day he would become the great deliverer of Israel, who would bring his people out from their bondage to Egypt. But even more amazing, even more Remarkable. Who would have thought that 1500 years later, in some obscure corner in the world, a baby would be born to a young girl that no one had ever heard of, that she would be born, that the baby would be born, rather he would be placed in a manger, in some sort of animal stable, that this baby, that this child, would be God’s Son.

That He would be the one that He would raise up, not just to deliver a nation from bondage to another nation, but to deliver sinners from bondage to slavery. That He would be the Savior of the world. That He would be the King and Lord of all creation. And that’s how God works. He works in remarkable ways. And He does so, so that all praise and glory Go to Him for accomplishing that salvation, accomplishing His purposes in a way that magnifies who He is, His power, His glory. And so put your hope in Jesus Christ as your Savior and praise Him and thank Him always for the great work of salvation that He has done for you.

Let’s pray.

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Our Old Testament reading this morning comes from Psalm 63. And this is our sermon text also for this morning. So if you have your bibles, please turn to Psalm 63, or you can listen along as we read. Psalm 63, Oh, please hear the word of the Lord. A Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness of Judah. 

Oh, God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in this sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live. In your name, I will lift up my hands.

My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. When I remember you upon my bed and meditate on you in the watches of the night, for you have been my help. In the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me. But those who seek to destroy my life shall go down into the depths of the earth. There shall be a portion given over to the power of the sword. They shall be a portion for the jackals. But the king shall rejoice in God. All who swear by him shall exult, for the mouth of the liars shall be stopped.

And if you’ll turn with me to Hebrews chapter 12 verses one through two, for our Old Testament for our New Testament reading, excuse me. This is Hebrews 12 verses one through two. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight in sin, which so which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. Amen.

Where we turn during difficult or stressful times in our lives, what we long for when our backs are against the wall, can give us a pretty good indication of who and what we treasure most in this life. The Psalm, Psalm 63, was written during a time of distress and trouble for the psalmist David. We can see this in verse nine. He looks there. He says, there are those makes mention of those who are seeking to destroy his life. He is in a wilderness suffering from thirst in a dry, weary land where there is no water.

It’s traditionally believed that the place where David is, and the context for this Psalm is in the wilderness of Ziph in Judah when David is hiding from King Saul, recorded for us in first Samuel chapter 23. John Calvin and others believe this, but there are some who believe that this is a Psalm recounting a time when he was fleeing from Absalom, his son, in second Samuel 15. Spurgeon believed this and others did too. I tend to side with John Calvin that this was a time when he was being chased by King Saul. But either way, no matter where at the location, what comes across in this Psalm is David’s longing for God while suffering a hard and difficult situation.

We’re gonna see in this Psalm, David’s seeking and thirsting for God in the wilderness in verses one through three, his satisfaction, his delight and comfort, which is reflected in worship and praise, in verses four through eight, and then his confidence that God will deliver him from his enemies in verses nine through 11. All things for us that are a great example of who should we turn to and how we should respond in times of hardships. But more importantly, this is a psalm that is a reminder for us of our relationship that we have and the hope that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ as our mediator, our redeemer, and our king.

It is through Christ that our souls thirsting and longing for God is truly satisfied. Christ is our satisfaction, He is our delight, He is our comfort, worthy of all praise and worship. And lastly, Christ has delivered us from sin and death, and will one day at the last day deliver us from all his and our enemies. And if you notice there, if you look at the bulletin, my well thought out title for this exhortation just says Psalm 63. If I could have put anything in there, it would have been what I just said there in that whole entire paragraph.

But the setting for this Psalm is important. The wilderness, the desert as a whole, is the setting for many of the dramas that unfold all through redemptive history. It’s described as a place as kind of the opposite of the Garden of Eden and a land flowing with milk and honey. The wilderness, the desert is a place that is desolate, is void of comfort, no food and water. It’s a place of suffering filled with wild animals, darkness, human weakness, and other difficulties.

It’s a setting for many of the trials they read about in the scriptures and probably most notably, wilderness, Israel’s wilderness journey. It’s also the place of God’s victories over sin and over death, the place where our Lord, Jesus, confronted Satan and the God that’s recorded for us in the gospels of Matthew and Mark.

But there is something very wonderful and something very blessed stirring in the heart of David as he writes these Psalms, as he is led by and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. There is a picture here in this Psalm of someone who was really looking outside of himself, while in a difficult situation, away from his situation, while in trouble, looking away from the wilderness, while in it, to the one who has always been his help, to the one who brings him joy, comfort, and protection.

David says in verse seven, you have been my help. And in the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy. We might think this might be something that is easy to do, right? They would become natural for us that when we’re facing trials or troubles that we would when things become unpleasant or hard, we would automatically just turn to God. But this is not something we’re born to. We are fallen creatures who, because of our natures, are quick to blame God for the troubles that often come our way.

And when difficulties arise, we only need to look as far as the Garden of Eden to see this in our very natures. Right after the fall, Adam and Eve, they hid themselves from God amongst the trees of the garden. Adam basically blames Eve for the problems that arose and basically says, it’s because of the woman that you gave me that these things came upon me. And in Israel, Israel experienced when they did experience trials and hardships, they blamed God for their troubles, for their lack of food and water, complaining that God brought them in the wilderness to kill them, that they would have been better off as slaves in Egypt.

And it’s worth noticing that despite David’s situation in this Psalm, he doesn’t blame God or run from God. But instead, he seeks him, he longs for him, he thirsts for him, he remembers him, he praises God, depends upon God, rejoices in God, trusts in him, and is satisfied in him. And basically, in this Psalm, we hear the words of a man who was engaged in the act of worship. One commentator says, David’s whole being, his soul, his mouth, his memory, his intellect is engaged in worship. James Montgomery Boice says, Psalm 63 is a psalm of man who desires God above everything else.

Excuse me. And this, for us, is a great example. But again, this psalm is ultimately not about David’s example of suffering and faithfulness, but it’s a Psalm that points us to the life, the suffering, and the salvation from sin and death that was accomplished for us by a perfect prophet, priest, and king, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We’ll flesh this out as we go. But let’s first look at David’s response, an example of suffering, and faithfulness while he is suffering. David’s longing for God is very evident in the first few verses. If you look with me at verse at just the first verse, it shows his desire for God and acts kind of like a reminder to himself of his relationship with God and what he is seeking. It’s almost as if he’s preaching to himself. 

David says, oh, God, you are my God. Earnestly, I seek you. David then uses his environment, this desert, his surroundings, his situation, helps us understand what his desire for God is like. He paints a very vivid picture for us of his longing and his desire, and he uses thirst. He uses thirst to describe for us what his longing for God is like. He says, my soul thirsts for you. My flesh faints for you. David needs God and is longing for him like a person who is in a dry and weary land needs water.

If you’ve ever been thirsty, and I mean really, really thirsty. Right? Your whole body just cries out for water. It’s all you can really think about. If you’ve been seriously thirsty, it just consumes you. You get dehydrated and you begin to faint. And his longing for God is put in a very real earthly and creaturely way that we here, as creatures, can relate to and help us understand what his longing for God is like.

Imagine for a moment David’s situation and his reaction. He’s in a desolate wilderness, away from the comforts of the kingdom in Jerusalem. The wilderness of Ziph is not a very pleasant place. He’s forced into hiding. He’s being hunted. He’s hungry. He’s thirsty. He’s being chased from cave to cave, perhaps scared. He’s confused. And where does David turn? He turns to God. He seeks him. He thirsts for him, and his flesh faints for him.

But it’s like David doesn’t really want us to pay attention to where he is so we feel bad for him. Right? He doesn’t want us to focus on what he is enduring, but instead, he uses his situation, a place where, for sure, hunger and thirst are very real concerns, but he uses it to describe how much and to what degree he needs and is desiring God in this situation. 

And I wonder, and this including myself, if we would really turn to God if we had to face something like this? Would God be the one that we thirsted for and were concerned about most? And would it maybe be it’s probably a situation we’ll never be in, like David. But we may be we may be so concerned for our life that our life itself would be the most important thing to us.

We turn from God when challenged with much problems and situations much less threatening than what David is experiencing here in the desert. It’s a real temptation when we have times of troubles that are challenging to run from God, to maybe drift a little away, right, from the things that God uses us, to maybe even suppress the truth of God, and to run from the things that God uses to draw us to himself, like Sunday services, or prayer, or reading of scripture, or fellowship.

And it’s good to be reminded in this Psalm that during times like these, and really at all times, we can flee to God and cry to him and seek him. And it would have been so easy for David just to blame God and to run from him, to give up and blame God for his suffering, for his hunger, and for his thirst. But demonstrated by God’s grace in this Psalm, we see David’s faithfulness to God in suffering, and and his rejoicing in God.

But there was one who came after David, one who is actually David’s greater son, one who David actually calls Lord, and Psalm one ten, and to this whole Psalm, has all of its meaning. One who was also tempted and endured a trial in a Judean wilderness. It’s important for us to recognize that the one who David is longing for in this Psalm, the one that David is thirsting for, the one that David is actually seeking, that he takes comfort in, and that he’s, takes great joy in. The one that David is actually worshiping in this Psalm is ultimately the one that this Psalm is pointing us to. And this is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Again, this is a Psalm that was written, recounting a time of trial and suffering for David. And what David suffered and endured as great of an example as it is for us, it was never suffering as a mediator. This event with David should remind us and drive us to the one who is not just an example in suffering, but the one who suffered as our mediator, who as prophet, priest, and king fulfilled all righteousness.

The one who, in his suffering and faithfulness to his father, and as our mediator, bore our sins, became sin for us, and secured everlasting salvation for sinners, and endured and suffered more than you and I or David could have ever imagined. And he did it for us. No matter how David faithful David was, no matter how faithful we are, we can never, in our own strength, satisfy God’s righteous requirements in the law. 

The Lord Jesus willingly entered for us into an estate of humiliation for us as our prophet, priest, and king. Humiliation consisting in his being born. And that in a low condition, he was made under the law, underwent the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, the cursed death of the cross. He was buried. He was under the power of death for a time.

And Jesus didn’t just suffer against men or face a trial against men, but he suffered against and faced Satan himself from the wilderness. He was betrayed by Judas, accused of blasphemy by Caiaphas, the high priest of the Jerusalem Temple, convicted by the Sanhedrin, handed over by Herod Antipas, tetrarch of Galilee to Pontius Pilate, who eventually handed Jesus to the Roman centurions to be executed, while along the crowds yelled, crucify him. Crucify him. He suffered as one who was blameless and sinless, who took upon himself the wrath of God that we deserved as the one who, in the words of our confession, is the son of God, the second person of the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time came, took upon him man’s nature, and suffered as the one, in the words of our Nicene Creed, who is God of God, light of light, very God of very God.

Philippians two verses six through eight reminds us that though he was in the form of God, did not account equality with God a thing to be grasped. But Jesus emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being found being born the likeness of men and being found in human form. He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Isaiah 53 says he was despised and rejected by men. He was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He was stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. He was chastised. He was wounded. He was put to grief. He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors, with us.

The Psalm points us to the perfect obedience and faithfulness to his father as our high priest in his suffering. Jesus never once wavered in his obedience to the father. At the Mount Of Transfiguration, we hear the words in Matthew seventeen five from the father, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. And in John seventeen four, in Jesus’ high priestly prayer to his father, he says, I have glorified you on earth, accomplishing all the work that you gave me to do. Second Corinthians five twenty one, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.

David does demonstrate faithfulness in seeking God while in the wilderness. But remember, David also was a man who sinned against God many times and wavered at times in his obedience recorded for us in the scriptures, pointing to the need that we have for a perfect prophet, priest, and king who had come to fulfill all righteousness. David’s wilderness experiences all of them, including this Psalm. His whole life as king, points us to the perfect king who was always faithful in our place. Jesus is the very object of our faith, the one we look to to take away our sins, The one who continues to make intercession for us at the right hand of the father.

Jesus holds this office of prophet, priest, and king perfectly as our mediator, both in his estates of humiliation and exaltation. Exalting in his rising again from the dead on the third day, ascending up into heaven, sitting at the right hand of the father, and coming back one day to judge the world. The reason why this Psalm’s ultimate meaning is in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ is because all of the suffering, all of the trials, all the tribulations of David as a type point us to the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ.

David was a king in Israel. Yes. But Jesus is the king of kings. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. The perfect king who came to suffer and to fulfill all righteousness for sinners. Any prophet, priest, and king in the Old Testament who suffered pointed us to the need of a perfect sufferer who did not sin or did not break the law in his suffering.

And I’m not highlighting the differences here between David and Jesus somehow take away from David’s faithfulness and his example in suffering. David points us to the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m doing this to stress the point that the Psalm’s fuller meaning is in Jesus, who is not just a greater example of faithfulness and suffering than David, but he is the very one that David longs for in that desert.

Jesus is the very God to whom David hunger and thirsted for, who through his sufferings takeaways our sins, and brings us to an estate of salvation as our redeemer, including David’s salvation. Think about that for a second. He brings us into an estate of salvation as our redeemer, including David’s salvation. I think sometimes it’s easy to read a psalm here or there and think that this just refers to Jesus. And I think it’s easy to read the Psalms on a very kind of surface level and miss so often that all of the Psalms are about the Lord Jesus Christ.

Doctor Ian Hamilton, who’s president of Westminster Presbyterian Theological Seminary, that’s a mouth word. It’s a lot of words there. Mouthful. Sorry. He wrote an article in Ligonier, and he says, the Psalms are all about God’s promised Messiah King, Jesus Christ. Many Christians would be able to point to Psalms that very obviously speak of God’s promised Messiah King.

Think of Psalm two. And the example he uses is, the Lord said to me, you are my son. Today, I have begotten you. We all know this. Psalm 44 Psalm 41, even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me. So when Jesus is making reference to Judas but he says, the Psalms bear a much larger and grander testimony to Jesus than a verse here or there.

He goes on to say, the Psalms, in their entirety, speak of God’s promised Messiah king. He is the blessed man who exemplifies the righteous life that Psalm one portrays. He is the king whose enemies will become his footstool in Psalm two and Psalm one ten. And he says, he is the righteous sufferer who epitomizes trust in the Lord, Psalm 22.

And we can include this Psalm here, Psalm 63, that displays for us the suffering of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus’ own words in Luke 24, he says, after he appears to the disciples after his resurrection, he even says the Psalms are about him. He says, these are my words that I spoke to while I was with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

And these Psalms not only reflect and point us to the suffering of Jesus as the righteous king, but this Psalm is also a picture of the believer’s heart, our heart, in response to the work of the gospel in our lives. Yes. I realize I’m still on the first verse, but I’m moving on. David goes on to verse two to say, if you look at me there, I have looked upon you in this sanctuary, beholding your power and your glory.

David, rightfully so, as he is in the wilderness in this situation, remembers God’s power and glory, the power and glory that he witnessed in the worship of God in Jerusalem. The power and glory he saw in the sanctuary. He says, I have looked upon you in the sanctuary. David has seen God’s power and glory work in the midst of the people in powerful and mighty ways, not only in Jerusalem, but all through Israel’s history.

He is reminded of the God who has led him safely through many battles, struggles, wars, conspiracies, trials. And as he does this in verse three, he calls to mind God’s steadfast love and does the only appropriate thing that he can do. He engages in worship. Look at verse three. He says, because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you.

What an amazing thing it is, isn’t it? That we have the ability to remember things. The ability to recall things to our minds. I’m sure there are some things that that we would like not to remember. And I have a anything that says insert joke there, so that was the joke. But the ability to pause in the middle of any situation, and to remember God’s work in our lives, and take comfort in the mercies and the grace, to be reminded like David of his promises.

We need we need to be reminded like David of God’s steadfast love. And brothers and sisters, we are partakers and have access every single day, and keep being and can be reminded of God’s power and glory, that David is remembering of this loving, kindness, and steadfast love through God’s word and spirit. What is a more true picture of God’s power and glory and ultimate love for us in the gospel? What is more glorious? What is more powerful than defeating sin and death, and saving the people to himself that rightly, like us, who deserve condemnation and wrath and punishment?

What is more glorious than God building his kingdom through a perfect Adam? The Lord Jesus Christ, after the first Adam failed and cast all mankind into an estate of sin and misery. What is more glorious than God promising to create a new heavens and a new earth? What is more powerful and glorious, and what love is greater that we can remember than the good news that God offers life and salvation, the purse and the work of his son?

As David thirsts for God as his flesh fails for him in this dry and weary land, he remembers and is reminded of God’s power and glory in the time that he witnessed this power and glory in the sanctuary. In the Old Testament, God’s spirit filled the sanctuary in the glory cloud, and dwelt with his people Israel in a special and unique way. This glory cloud provided and protected. It led God’s people all through the wilderness wanderings, leading them in a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.

He is remembering the help that God has supplied to Israel over all of those years. And the reason why we can say that we have access, the reason why we can say that we have beheld God’s power and glory like David, but so much better in the Lord Jesus Christ, is because as God’s glory and spirit filled the tabernacle and the temple in the Old Testament, so too now, because of the gospel, God’s spirit now rests and dwells in all those who have received and rest upon Christ as their sole hope of salvation.

We are considered to be temples of the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians three sixteen. Do you not know that you are God’s temple and God’s spirit? This is a direct fulfillment of prophecy from the Old Testament. In Ezekiel chapter 36, God tells Ezekiel to say to the house of Israel, in ways that he is about to act towards the house of Israel, he says, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will put within you a new heart sorry. I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from the flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will, put my spirit within you.

Our thirst for God, our comfort, our peace, our satisfaction can only ever truly be satisfied in the living waters that the Holy Spirit works in our hearts through Christ. In John chapter seven, on the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, if anyone thirst, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.

And like David, we can look away from ourselves, away from our situation while amidst troubles, away from this wilderness that we live in, this world that we live in, to the life, death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ. And by his word and spirit, have our souls thirst for God, satisfied in him by grace through faith. 

And how do we know this is true? How do we know that the only way to God is through Christ? That the only way that man’s can that man’s thirst for God can only truly be satisfied in Christ. When natural man says there are so many other ways, how can we know this? Well, because we are creatures who are made in God’s image. And whether or not man admits it, all mankind as creatures made in his image know that God exists.

In their hearts, deep down, even the unbeliever who suppresses this truth knows this and can never escape this truth. Romans one attest to this. For what can be known about God is plain to them because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely his eternal power and divine nature, are clearly perceived. Ever since the creation of the world and the things that have been made so that they are without excuse. 

We know this is true. Because the one true God, the God we just read about in Romans one, who has made himself clearly perceived in his attributes, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob says that there is only one way, and that one way is through the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our Lord, says to Thomas in John 14, before his betrayal and arrest, that’s before Jesus’ betrayal and arrest. Interestingly, right before Jesus promises the Holy Spirit, after Jesus says to Thomas that he is going away to prepare a place for him, but that he’ll be coming back, Thomas asked the question, Jesus, how can we know the way?

Jesus’ response, John fourteen six says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.

But because of God’s steadfast love to David, because of all that is stated in verses one through four, the following verses are a response to these truths. Look at verse four. It says, I will bless you as long as I live. In your name, I will lift up my hands. And in verses five through eight, David goes into this chorus, this string of praise. 

Look with me at verses five through eight. My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips. When I remember you on my bed, and meditate on you on the watches of the night, for you have been my help. And in the shadow of your wings, I will sing for joy. My soul clings to you. Your right hand upholds me.

The reason why David can say these things is because of what he says in verse seven, you have been my help. David has been here before. David’s experienced these things before his life has been in danger previously. Maybe he’s remembered the time that he was delivered from the Philistine Goliath, or the many times that he was chased by King Saul or by Absalom, depending upon when he wrote this Psalm.

The many times that God provided for him. The time that God provided holy bread for him. In first Samuel 21, when the ark was brought back into to Jerusalem. In second Samuel six, the time that God made a covenant with David. Maybe he’s remembering the time that God relented from calamity against Jerusalem and stayed the hand of the angel by stopping the spread of pestilence. In second Samuel 24, after David sinned against God by numbering the people with his senses.

How many times has God brought us through hard times in our lives? How often do we fret about something, and then look back to see God’s providence and mercy provided for us a way out? How many times and how often have we looked back to seeing God’s wisdom and his mercy in the way that certain situations played out all of redemptive history.

All of the scriptures are record for us of God’s faithful and merciful help that he has provided for us in the person and the work of his son. A testimony to his power and glory culminating in the greatest testimony and demonstration of his power and glory and the sending of his son in the gospel. This is why Paul says in Romans one sixteen and seventeen, I’m not ashamed of the gospel, for it is what? It is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes. 

And this doesn’t mean that things will always turn out the way that we want them to. Sometimes, the outcome we desire is not what we would hope for in certain situations. But we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. And as a verse that Pastor Johnson quoted last week from Isaiah 55 is, high as for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.

I can’t think of anything in this life, in this universe, that is more of a reason to praise the Lord than the gospel. These verses in five three convey the heart of the believer very well, a true expression of someone who has despite any suffering, any hardship we may endure, been redeemed by a loving savior who suffered for us.

All of this life is a wilderness. All this life is filled with trials and struggles. We are sinners who are redeemed by grace. We’re we’re pilgrims wandering like Abraham, looking for a better city that God promised to us. And oftentimes, in this pilgrimage, we’re struck with illness. We’re struck with sorrow. We’re struck with sadness and hurt. But we have a we have a sanctuary, brothers and sisters. A sanctuary that we can look back to and be reminded of our help, and that we rest safely in the loving arms of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know, when I got to verses nine through 11, and we’re on the last section here, I struggled a bit. This Psalm kinda takes an abrupt turn at this point, kinda takes a darker turn. There are some commentators that say it was just kind of tacked on at the end, that, the ending is kind of an unworthy blemish upon this entire Psalm. But, James Montgomery Boice, calls these commentators pedantic. So I thought it was kind of funny. And I think it’s true.

Go ahead and look at verse nine there. But those who seek my life to destroy will shall go down in the depths of the earth. They shall be given over to the power of the sword. They shall be a portion for jackals. But the king shall rejoice in God. All who swear by him shall exalt, for the mouth of the lyres shall be stopped.

But, you know, when you look at these verses, in the context of where David is, in this wilderness, he’s in danger. These verses kind of give us an insight, really. Right? Into what David is dealing with, and and what he’s been experiencing up to this moment. Helps us to see why he goes into this longing. Why he goes into this thirsting for God at this moment. These verses give us a hope in the way that our story is gonna end.

These verses show the confidence that David has in God to deal with his situation. The psalmist has taken us into the past when David remembers God’s help, God’s mercies to the people of Israel, taken us into the present when he’s thirsting and longing for God in the desert, and now into the future for the psalmist is reminding us that as God faithfully protected and provided for us in the past, he will continue to do so in the future.

There is going to come a time, a last day, when the Lord will come back in all of his glory, with the angels to judge the heavens and the earth. A day when he will send the righteous into everlasting life and glory, righteous by grace in Christ, and the reprobate, those who reject the gospel, those who reject Christ due to damnation. 

There’s gonna come a time according to the second second Thessalonians when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels and flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God or on those who do not obey the gospel of the Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his might.

I believe that these verses like this and the verses in nine through 11 are instructing us to, in humility, and I like to stress here, in humility. Because we are saved by grace alone when we look to that day, and to the time when all those who oppose the gospel will be stopped to pray. To pray for those who oppose the gospel, who oppose Christ because like us, they need the grace of God.

Jesus says, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. Romans 12 says, don’t take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, it is mine. I will avenge, says the Lord. And this brings up a subject to briefly touch on. It’s not up to us. It’s not up to us to fix what is wrong with this world.

There will be, until Jesus comes back on this last day, always issues with a fallen world. In society, culture, politics, and families, and even in the church. In every sphere of life, it’s our job to put it maybe to put it more bluntly, it’s the job of the church to faithfully execute the preaching of the gospel, to call people to faith and repentance in the Lord Jesus Christ, to administer the sacraments and exercise church discipline.

Judgment belongs to the Lord. There will be a time when all of Jesus’ enemies will be made a footstool at his feet. We know this is true because of verses like Psalm one ten. Psalm of David, by the way. The Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.

And interestingly, this verse is quoted by Jesus in the New Testament, in the temple, in response to the scribes and the Pharisees not understanding how David’s Lord is also the son of David. In Mark 12, Jesus says, he taught in the temple. How can the scribe say that the Christ is the son of David? David himself and the Holy Spirit declared, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet. Hebrews says, and to which of the angels did God ever say, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. In Hebrews 10, and he waits for his enemies to be made a footstool for his feet.

You know what? All of this, in verses nine through 11, the verse I just read, culminates on Jesus in his office as a king, that he holds as our redeemer. Verses nine through 11 are pointing us to the promise that victory over this world lies completely and totally in the hands of our savior. Our Shorter Catechism says this, asks a question, how does Christ execute the office of a king? Listen carefully. Christ executes the office of a king in his subduing us to himself, in ruling and defending us, and in restraining and conquering all his and our enemies.

This is a hope and a promise that David would have been familiar with. King David knew that upon the throne of Israel would always sit one of his descendants, who would be a king with an everlasting and eternal kingdom. In second Samuel seven, God makes a covenant with David and he says, this is God talking to David. He says, when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up for you an offspring after you who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. Does that ring familiar? And in verse 16, and your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever.

One of the greatest names in all of the Psalms and all throughout the scripture is God’s kingship over his people. David would have known and believed this as he wrote many of these Psalms. David knew and believed that God was going to fulfill that promise, to establish a forever kingdom, and that his hope and our hope lies in the power and glory and strength of this coming king. Not in any earthly king, and not in the earthly kingdom.

And this is why David says in Psalm one ten, the Lord says to my Lord, referring to the Lord Jesus Christ, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Because David knew. David knew that it would be through this king, this future promised king, the king that David himself calls Lord, the king that is David’s king. David knew that all of God’s enemies, those who oppose God, those who oppose Christ, those who oppose the gospel, will ultimately and finally be defeated. David knew this, and so should we.

We are to trust this to the Lord Jesus Christ and his dominion, not ours, and restraining and conquering all his and our enemies. This is not something we do. This is something he will do. Psalm 63 is a Psalm that points us to the suffering and faithfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ as our prophet, priest, and king, who in his suffering and his life and death accomplished salvation for us.

He is the one who came and did for us what we could never do for ourselves, and that is to fulfill all righteousness and make atonement for sin. And because of this, the Lord Jesus Christ should be praised and should be worshiped. And our souls’ longing and thirst for God is only and truly satisfied in him. We should worship and praise him no matter what our circumstances might be. And he will, at the last day, make all things right according to his power and in his time according to his most perfect will.

And if there are some, maybe there are some here who aren’t sure of these truths. Maybe there’s some here who may not be trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and savior. Maybe you’re asking yourself, what does it take? What does God require to participate, in this amazing grace? Well, here is one of the reasons why the gospel is such good news. The very thing that God requires of us, he gives it to us as a gift, and that’s faith.

Question 86 asked the question this is a I think one of the most important questions to ask in our Short of Catechism. What is faith in Jesus Christ? A very simple and blunt question, which is extremely important. And the answer is, saving grace. How something do work up in our hearts? There’s something God grants to us and gives us whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he has offered to us in the gospel.

I’ll close here with the words of John the Baptist from the gospel of John chapter three verses 36. And these are true and solemn words. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life. Whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Let us all flee. Let us all flee to the Lord Jesus Christ who came to reconcile sinners like you and me to God.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and we praise you that you are merciful and gracious, that you have brought us to yourself through the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you that you sent your son, our savior, to take away our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. We confess that we are sinners who rightfully deserve your wrath, but that the wrath and judgment that we deserve was placed upon the lord Jesus Christ, who as a spotless lamb was led to the slaughter and cursed for our iniquities and our transgressions.

Lord, we thank you that you hear our prayers, and we do, oh, Lord, pray for our congregation at this time. Lord, we thank you for your abundant provision you provided for us, not only that you continue to provide for us financially, but that you raise up to serve here, elders and deacons in this congregation. Lord, we thank you for our pastor. We thank you that you provided for us a man to minister your word and sacrament to week in and week out, labors tirelessly, faithfully preaching the gospel to us, and always placing your son front and center as he brings us your word every single week.

Lord, we thank you for bringing to us the entire Johnson family. Lord, we look forward to next Sunday, when pastor Johnson will be back here in the pulpit. We pray for those who are hurting here in this congregation, those who are hurting physically or emotionally, Lord, we ask them to comfort them by your word and spirit, Lord, that they would be reminded that you love them, that that you care for them, and no matter what they are facing in any, situation, that they can always flee to you, and bring their, prayers and their hearts before you.

Lord, we ask that you’d bless our time of fellowship, after the worship service, Lord. Grow us in our unity here, in Mount Rose. Lord, may we be an encouragement to one another as we fellowship together this afternoon. Lord, lead us to pray for one another, to love one another, to mirror and reflect the charity, the kindness, the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ to another in each of our lives. Lord, and lead us and direct us in ways that we can serve this body here at Mount Rose.

We do pray that this church here would be a bright light in a dark world, that you would keep us faithful to your son and faithful, to the preaching of the gospel. Oh, lord, we thank you that you hear our prayers. We acknowledge and confess that it is the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the head and king of the church, and may all things be done for his glory. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The post Psalm 63 appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading and our sermon text is Exodus, chapter 1, verses 7 through 22. And this is the word of the Lord:

Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply. And if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Ramses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and and made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field, in all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah, and the other Puah, “When you serve as midwives to the Hebrew women and see them on the birth stool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live”. But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this and let the male children live? The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them”. So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.” 

And now let’s turn to the Book of Acts for our New Testament reading. Acts, chapter 5, verses 27 through 32. Acts 5:27-32. And in this passage, the apostles are being interrogated by the Jewish high priest and the council. They had been commanded not to teach in the name of Jesus. And the high priest reminds the apostles that they were forbidden to speak of Jesus. And this is in this passage, we hear these, the apostles’ faithful reply to that. 

So Acts 5:27,32.

And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest questioned them, saying, “We strictly charged you not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching, and you intend to bring this man’s blood upon us”. But Peter and the apostles answered, we must obey God rather than men. The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey him.”

The grass withers, the flower fades. But the word of our God will stand forever.  

Last Lord’s Day we began our study of the Book of Exodus. And The Book of Exodus begins with 70 people–70 Israelite– the children, the grandchildren of Jacob. And of course, they go down to Egypt to escape the famine that was spreading throughout all the land at that time. But over the course of 400 years, these 70 people, they grow to be about a million people– more than a million people. And it’s that fruitfulness–the way that they multiplied, that we considered in part last week. And we saw that that was a blessing from God. It was God who caused the Israelites to grow so numerous and to multiply in the land of Egypt. In fact, it was the fulfillment of his promise, the promise that he had made to Abraham that he should be the father of a great nation, that his descendants should be as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. 

However, with that blessing came affliction. And this passage today that we are looking at is about the great suffering that the Israelites endured when a new Pharaoh came to the throne. But this passage is also about the great faithfulness of two Hebrew midwives who show us what faith and faithfulness look like in times of affliction. And those are the two themes that we will consider as we look at this passage of Scripture this morning: great suffering and great faithfulness. 

First, let’s consider the great suffering of the Israelites. From one perspective as we consider this passage that we’re looking at this morning. We could look at this as a story of profound ungratefulness, profound unthankfulness on the part of the Egyptians. If you recall, it was Joseph who saved Pharaoh and who saved the Egyptians from a terrible famine. He predicted that this famine would take place when he interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh. He proposed an excellent plan for providing for the people of Egypt for the years of famine that were to come. And Pharaoh appointed him to be the man who would execute this plan for the entire nation of Egypt. And so, if it wasn’t for Joseph, Egypt surely would have been devastated–perhaps destroyed–in the great famine that devastated the whole area of that world at that time. 

But apparently, the Egyptians suffered from a kind of national amnesia. They were forgetful. They didn’t remember that part of their history. Specifically, a Pharaoh came into power who didn’t remember what Joseph and the people of Israel had done for the Egyptians. And so we read in verse 8: “Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph”. And this Pharaoh was not only forgetful or willfully ignorant, but like every other tyrant who has come after him, he was fearful and even paranoid of any potential threat to his power. And so when he saw that the people of Israel, by the blessing of God, that they were numerous, that they had multiplied, that they were filling the land, his heart was being filled with dread. He was filled with fear because this people were so numerous. They were a threat to his own power. They were a threat to the people of Egypt. 

And so what he does then again, like so many kings and rulers who have come after him, is he sows the seeds of fear to the hearts of his people by convincing them that these Israelites are a great threat to their national security. He says in verses 9 and 10, he says, “and he said to his people, behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply. And if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 

In verse 10, when Pharaoh says, escape from the land, a better translation of that would be something like “overtake the land”. And so Pharaoh is raising this frightful specter for his people, the Egyptians of the Israelites, becoming strong and mighty, joining with their enemies, fighting against Egypt, overcoming them. And of course, what Pharaoh feared the most, overthrowing his own rule as king of Egypt. 

And so Pharaoh comes, or he suggests he’s, or commands, rather, he is Pharaoh. He commands that they deal shrewdly with the Israelites. And what he means by that is to put them into bondage. And so this is how the Israelites suffered. They were made slaves to the Egyptians. We read in verse 11. “Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens.” And so they were made slaves. But the more they were impoverished, the more that the Egyptians made life unbearable, intolerable for them, oppressing them, afflicting them, the less likely they were to have large families and lots of babies. Or so that was the thinking. That’s what Pharaoh thought anyway.

And so the Egyptians, not only subjected the Israelites to the physical suffering of hard toil. But in that oppression. They also afflicted them with the psychological suffering of being humiliated. In verse 11, the word that’s translated “afflict”, this involves the idea of humbling or humiliation. And so it was the job of the taskmasters to crush the spirits of the Israelites to break their wills as well as their backs with bondage, with forced labor. And so, so much of the suffering that the Israelites endure in this passage is not just the physical suffering of hard toil, but the abject humiliation and dehumanization that they suffered because of their slavery. Deuteronomy 26:6 says this. “And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor”.

Several years ago, I read a book called Unbroken, and I know some of you are familiar with that book. After the book came out, they made a movie about the book and the book Unbroken. It’s about an American prisoner of war during World War II, and he was interred in Japanese prison camps. The prisoner’s name, the hero of the book, is Louis Zamperini. And the book details all of the torments, the agony that he had to endure. And by the way, this was not fiction, but this was a true story about his life. And so Louis Zamperini and his other prisoners, they had to. They suffered savage beatings, starvation. 

But in the book, Zamperini says that the very worst thing of all, the torture that nearly destroyed him, shattered him, was that he was forced to clean out a pigsty with his bare hands. Now we think about it, and we might think, if I had to choose between a savage beating and cleaning out a pigsty with bare hands, I think I would choose the latter. But Zamperini said that was the most demoralizing thing, the most soul crushing thing that he had to endure of all that he suffered at the hands of the Japanese. 

There are some tortures that are worse even than physical torments. The loss of dignity, loss of humanity that comes by being oppressed by others. You can see why the slaves of the American south, why they looked to the book of Exodus in the Bible as a paradigm for their own hopes for freedom. Because as a people, they also knew the suffering not only of backbreaking toil, but the dehumanizing, humiliating position that they were put in as slaves to their owners.

And so Pharaoh is trying to crush this people physically and spiritually. But to everyone’s great surprise, Pharaoh’s plan not only fails to reduce the Israelite population, but actually produces a baby boom. Look at verse 12. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.

We might imagine Pharaoh out one day, surveying his realm, inspecting all of the lands over which he ruled. And he sees all these cursed Hebrews with all their kids running around. He thinks to himself, what do I have to do to stop these people from multiplying? What Pharaoh discovered, to his great chagrin, is a principle that history has seen repeated time and time again in the history of the church, and that is this, that the church so often grows as a result of persecution. 

So often the more that a tyrannical ruler, the more that a government seeks to crush the church, to destroy the church, to eliminate the people of God, the more that the church grows. Tertullian put it this way. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. And when God is pleased to grow his church, when she is persecuted, as he does here in this passage, it brings him glory because he shows that he is able to overturn all the purposes of man. 

We read Psalm 2 responsively earlier, and in Psalm 2, here is a picture of the nations raging, the peoples plotting in vain. They set themselves, they are allied together against the Lord and against His Anointed. They are doing everything they can to oppose the Lord. But it says in verse four, “He who sits in the heavens laughs. The Lord holds them in derision”. As Pharaoh and his advisors, as they fumed and sputtered and cursed, as they saw the people of Israel growing more and more numerous as they sought to do all that they could do to crush the people, you could hear in heaven a laugh resounding as the Lord laughed their futile efforts to oppose his purposes to bless his people, to grow his kingdom. 

You’ve heard it said that the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again and hoping for different results. And that is essentially what Pharaoh does here. He continues to afflict the Israelites. He continues to stay the course: more oppression, more hardship, more humiliation. “Let’s make them work harder. Surely that will work”. And notice how Moses drives home the intensity of the suffering of the people of Israel. When you read verses 13 and 14, you hear these same words repeated over and over again. He says, “So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves”. 

Archaeologists have found an ancient Egyptian text that described what happened one day when an Egyptian slave owner went to inspect the work that the slaves were doing. And it gives you a good idea of the kind of cruelty that the Israelites would have suffered. And this is what that text says–this is extra biblical. This is something that was found at some point, but this is what the text says:

“Now, the scribe lands on the shore. That’s the slave owner. He surveys the harvest. Attendants are behind him with staffs, Nubians with clubs. He says to a slave, ‘Give grain’. And the answer of the slave is, ‘there is none’. He is beaten savagely. He is bound, thrown in the well submerged, head down. His wife is bound in his presence. His children are in fetters”. 

That’s the kind of oppression that the Israelites would have suffered as Pharaoh was seeking to gain control over their growth. Well, eventually, Pharaoh realized the futilities of his efforts. He realized it was futile to reduce the number of Israelites through slavery. And so then he decides to go with a more direct and what would surely be a more effective method of population control, and that is mass murder. He tells the midwives of the Hebrews to kill all the baby boys born to the Israelites, but to let the girls live. Now, Pharaoh decided to have the boys murdered, but the girls, they were allowed to live. Pharaoh decided to do that not because he had some kind of soft spot in his heart for little Hebrew girls, but because the Israelites, of all their boys, are being killed. Gradually, they would lose their ability to field an army of fighting men. 

But just as the Lord laughed at Pharaoh’s efforts to reduce the Israelites by slavery, so he laughs at this endeavor as well. And that’s because of the faithfulness of the midwives, which we’ll consider in a minute in more detail, but because of their faithfulness. Not only did the boys survive birth, but Moses says in verse 20, and the people multiplied and grew very strong. And so again, despite Pharaoh’s best efforts, the people keep growing. 

And so, for this reason, Pharaoh took one last step to try to control the Israelite population. You are familiar, of course, with Adolf Hitler’s wicked final solution, which was his plan to murder all the Jews who were living in Europe. Well, this is kind of Pharaoh’s final solution. Now he commands not just the midwives, but he commands all the people of Egypt to kill every baby boy that is born to the Hebrews. And so the people are commanded to take every Israelite baby boy that was born, to throw it into the Nile river to be drowned and so in all of these ways, the people of Israel were suffering. They were suffering from being slaves. The unending brutal toil that they were given, the humiliation that they experienced. Now they are the object of Pharaoh’s murderous designs. And if we were to ask the question, why? Why did this horrible suffering come upon the Israelites? Why is it that this people suffered so in this passage? Well, one answer would be it’s because they happen to live under the reign of a particularly wicked man. 

Speaking of Hitler, I read somewhere, I don’t remember where, that before World War II, before the rise of Hitler, this the name that people would always use whenever they wanted to give an example, kind of the paradigm, the ultimate example of an evil tyrant who does wicked things. The name they came up with or the name that they used was not Hitler, but Pharaoh. Nowadays we speak of Hitler. He is the ultimate example of the wicked ruler. But before Hitler, it was Pharaoh. And as you can see, it was a well earned reputation. 

But there was more to Pharaoh than just the fact that he was an exceedingly cruel despot. There is a deeper spiritual dimension to what Pharaoh was doing here. And to understand this, we need to go back to Genesis, to Genesis, chapter three, just after Adam and Eve fell into sin and their rebellion against God. When the Lord comes to speak to them and to speak to the serpent who tempted them to sin, the Lord says to the serpent that he will put enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. And that is to say, there would be a continual warfare between the people of God and those who are under the sway, under the dominion of the devil. 

And here, of course, it is the Israelites who are the people of God. They are the seed of the woman and Pharaoh. And the Egyptians were the seed of Satan, the seed of the serpent. And therefore the persecution that we read about here, the persecution on the part of the Egyptians and Pharaoh against the Israelites, the people of God, this is just the playing out of that greater cosmic spiritual warfare between the Lord and the devil. 

As powerful as Pharaoh was, not even he could carry out his purpose if God had not permitted him to do all these things that he did under his sovereign rule, that is the sovereign rule of God. In fact, if we go back to Genesis again, we read there that the Lord revealed to Abraham that the Israelites would suffer in Egypt long before it would happen. In Genesis, chapter 15, verses 13 and 14, we read this:

“Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Now for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years. But I will bring judgment on the nations that they serve. And afterward they shall come out with great possessions”.

Now, when God is telling Abram that his descendants will suffer in the land of Egypt for 400 years, he is not telling Abram that on the basis merely of what he foresaw as happening in the future. But God is telling Abram, “This is my will. This is my decree. This is my purpose for the people of Israel, for your descendants, that they should suffer in the land of Egypt”. 

And so it was God’s purpose. It was God’s plan. As wicked and evil as Pharaoh was, he was raised up by the Lord in order to fulfill his purposes, his will for his people. But that raises the question, why? Why was it God’s purpose for the people that he chose, the people that he loved, that they should suffer in this horrendous way? Why did God allow this? Why was this part of his plan to save his people? 

Now, of course, we cannot give an exhaustive answer to that question. God’s ways are higher than our ways does not reveal to us all of his purposes. But we can give the beginning of an answer to that question, and that is this. That God ordained the suffering of the Israelites in Egypt. Because if their experience in Egypt, if the Israelites, while they were in Egypt, if only they received blessing after blessing, if their experience was only one of pleasure and goodness and prosperity, they would have forgotten all about God’s promise to lead them into the land of Canaan. They would have no hope of that promise. And not only that, they would have never thought about God at all. Their hearts would have been filled with all the good things of this life that they received in Egypt. And God and his salvation, his promises, would have faded quickly from their minds. 

And it’s the same for you and me as Christians. We all suffer in one way or another. And most of the time, it’s impossible to answer the question, why am I suffering so often? It seems so inexplicable. But one reason that God allows you and me to suffer is this. So that we will fix our hopes upon Jesus Christ and on the salvation that he has accomplished for us in his death and resurrection. Just as the Israelites here in Egypt, if they had experienced nothing but blessing, nothing but good times, they would have had no desire for the promised land. 

So in the same way, if everything in your life is perfect, if everything in your life goes exactly according to the way you want it to go, with no suffering, no affliction, you’d have no inclination in your heart at all to seek after God and His saving grace. One author put it this way. He said, “It is hard enough for us to leave aside the treasures of this evil world, even though we suffer in it. How much harder is it for us to desire the new heavens and the new earth when our lives here are so comfortable?” 

So that is one reason that God allows His people to suffer. Perhaps not the only reason or the entire reason. But we can know this, that just as he did with the Israelites, God has a purpose. He has a reason for your suffering. And he says to you today, and whatever it is that you may be experiencing that is very difficult, unpleasant. He says, that is part of my plan for you. That is part of my perfect, my loving, my wise plan for you, for your eternal good. Maybe not for your good in this life, but for your eternal good. 

And so the hope that you have as a Christian, the hope that God gives you as a believer in Jesus Christ, it’s not a promise that your life in this world will be one of uninterrupted blessing and good and. And pleasure, a life free from pain and sorrow. But the promise that God, That God makes to you in Christ is this, that he will use the sorrow and pain that he brings into your life to bring about an eternal blessedness that will far outweigh our light. Momentary afflictions in this life. A blessedness that is for eternity, for your good. And so we can learn then, from the great suffering of the Israelites in this passage. And out of this story of great suffering, Moses shows us an example of great faithfulness. Great faithfulness. And this is the faithfulness of the two Hebrew midwives. Their names are Shipra and Puah, or Shiphrah and Puah. The very fact that Moses gives us their names is very significant. You’ll notice not even Pharaoh is named here. There’s no other Israelites in this passage that are named but these two Hebrew midwives. He gives us their names, and their names are recorded in Holy Scripture for all time to please the Holy Spirit. To do this. Because of their faithfulness to God. Because of their faithfulness to God. 

So Pharaoh commanded that the midwives must kill every single baby that was born to the Israelite women, that is, every single baby boy. And thankfully, these midwives, who most likely were Israelites themselves, thankfully, the. They had no intention whatsoever to go into the business of killing the babies of their own people. They were midwives they probably, no doubt they had a special care and concern for the babies that they delivered. And so Pharaoh’s command to them especially would have been utterly repugnant. And so they simply ignored what Pharaoh told them to do, and they went off and they did their job and they resumed delivering healthy baby girls and baby boys. 

And it could be, perhaps, and this is speculation, but perhaps these midwives said to one another something like the disciples said before the Jewish council, we must obey God rather than men. Perhaps they were the first Israelites to say that. 

Now we could imagine again Pharaoh out surveying his realm, and he notices that despite the clear commands that he gave to the midwives, that they kill every baby boy that is born. He looks around and he sees all these little baby toddlers and their boys, and they’re scampering all over the place. And he thinks to himself, why are they there? Why have these midwives not been putting to death the baby boys as I have commanded them? And so he calls them to the carpet, and he tells the midwives, this in verse 19. Or he asks the midwives, what’s going on? And the midwives say this in verse 19, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. 

If that sounds a little fishy to you, it should. But incredibly, Pharaoh accepted this explanation. One author said this Pharaoh may have been a few bricks shy of a full pyramid, but he accepted this, this explanation. We know that he did, because the midwives go on to live. If he knew it was a lie or even suspected it was a lie, he surely would have had him put to death. 

But what the midwives do here raises a very important, a very difficult ethical question for us as Christians, and that is this, is it ever justified to tell a lie? This has been debated in the Church, and some theologians, past and present, have given the answer, no, never. For example, Augustine, John Calvin, two theological titans, they have weighed in and said both. They have both said that the midwives here were guilty of sinning against God when they lied to Pharaoh. But other theologians have said, other scholars have said that in dire circumstances like these here, in circumstances where a life is at stake, then it may be justified to use falsehood to tell a lie. And my own belief on this, and though I confess I do hold it with a bit of discomfort, but my own belief is that the natural reading of this passage from Exodus would support the view that in extreme circumstances a lie may be justified. And the classic example that is always given to illustrate the dilemma that Christians could potentially find themselves in is the example of what if you were living in the Netherlands during World War II and your family was hiding Jews in your house, and the Nazis come knocking on the door and they demand to know if you have Jews in your house? Well, if you tell them the truth, obviously all those people you are trying to protect will be sent off to the concentration camps. But the only way to save them would be to say no, to lie. 

And that is basically the situation that the midwives find themselves here. They lie in order to protect human life. And I believe that that is justified. But I think it’s also important for us to keep in mind that probably none of us will ever be in this kind of extreme circumstance. Most of the time when we are tempted to lie, it is not because someone’s life is at stake, but because we want to save ourselves from embarrassment or shame, or we want ourselves to look good. That is not a justification for using falsehood or exception. We can’t look to the Hebrew midwives as an example for us then. But here the Hebrew midwives were in an extreme situation. They resort to falsehood. And because they did so, they saved the lives of the Israelites. And they were blessed for their faithfulness. They were blessed for what they did. Look at verses 20 and 21. So God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 

But let’s ask this question. What was the secret to their faithfulness? How is it the midwives could show such courage, not only in disobeying Pharaoh’s command, but in using this excuse, this lie, really, to risking their own lives and saying that in order to continue to protect Hebrew babies, what was the secret to their faithfulness? Well, it’s what Moses says in verse 17 and verse 21. He says that the midwives feared God. They feared God. 

Not only did they not want to kill babies, but they knew that it would be a sin against the Lord. They knew it would be wicked and evil in the sight of God for them to take part in murder. And they feared the consequences of sinning against God more than they feared the consequences of disobeying Pharaoh, even though that might mean their own death. They feared God more than they feared man. 

And it was out of that fear of God that they were faithful. You could put it this way. They had faith. And faithfulness always starts with faith. And for you, what this means is this, that unless you are convinced in your heart. Unless you are convicted in the reality of the lordship of Jesus Christ that you are accountable to him for all that you think and say and do. Unless you know in your heart that one day you will come before his judgment seat, that you will give an account of your life to the Lord Jesus. Unless you truly believe that, unless you believe that man will always loom larger in your thoughts than God, and you will fear man. And what man can do more than you will fear the Lord. 

And so faithfulness begins with knowing Christ, knowing who he is. And if you sincerely desire to serve and honor Christ in this world, there will be a time, there will come a time when you must choose whether you will please man or whether you will please God. The choice will be stark. You can’t do both. You must choose. 

For you young people, perhaps it will be a situation in which your friends want you to go along to do something with them that you know is wrong. And you feel that pressure. You want to please them, you want to get along, but you know it’s not right. Perhaps for others. At work, your boss pressures you to write a false report to help your company. Or maybe you’ll find yourself in a position someday when you’ll need to take an unpopular stand on the word of God in some issue in which everybody else is taking the opposite stand. 

What will you do then? Will you compromise the integrity of your faith as a Christian? Will you say and do only what will make others happy? What will make your life comfortable? What will enable you to get along with others? Or out of fear of God, love for Christ? Will you risk a job? Will you risk a friendship? Will you risk being despised by saying and doing what will please the Lord? 

Well, how can you say, like the midwives said, like the apostles said, how can you say I must obey God rather than man? How can you be faithful? Well, your faithfulness begins with trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, believing in him as your Savior and Lord. Is this where your faith is today? By faith in Christ, are you ready to obey God rather than man? 

And so the midwives, they show us what great faithfulness looks like in times of great suffering. It is believing in God’s truth, acting out of that faith in Christ, and not out of fear of man. 

And as we wind up our look at this passage, just a few final thoughts as we consider the Israelites, where they are now, in God’s dealings with them. They are in Egypt. He has promised to bring them into Canaan, the promised land. But the way to that promise was the way of suffering. First they had to experience this affliction in Egypt before they would be brought into the promised land. 

And then the experience of the Israelites, we begin to see in faint outline the experience of Jesus Christ himself. Because before his exaltation, before his enthronement as the Lord of all, as the Savior of his people, he had to suffer. He first had to suffer humiliation. He had to suffer the disgrace, the humiliation, the curse of the cross on behalf of sinners like you and me, before he could be resurrected and brought into his glory. 

And as a Christian, for you, that is the same way, the same path to salvation in life. It is a path that is often filled with sorrow and pain and affliction. The Bible says that through many tribulations, through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God. 

And if you have a right understanding of your suffering, if you understand that it takes place under the sovereign rule of a wise and holy and good God, and not just God, but a Father, a Father who loves you, that it is for your good, and even in suffering, you will be able, like the midwives, to. To show great faithfulness to the Lord. 

And when you do, you give glory and honor to Christ in a way that you couldn’t do if your life was nothing but sweetness and light, if your life was only one blessing after another, never mixed with pain or sorrow and adversity. Imagine that was your life. And you tell somebody, I love God, I love Christ. They would think to themselves, of course you do, because you experience nothing but blessing in this world. 

But when you say you believe in a Savior who loves you, when you honor Christ in the midst of suffering, then your faith really glorifies Christ. And it glorifies Christ because you are telling the watching world this, that the reality of the truth of God, the reality of God’s promises to me and Jesus Christ are far greater than the suffering that I’m enduring now. 

And even though from all appearances it seems that there is no God in heaven who loves me and is caring for me, yet I know there is. I believe there is on the basis of his word, on the basis of his promises. And therefore I will serve my Lord. I will serve and worship my Redeemer even in the midst of my affliction, just as the Hebrew midwives did. 

And that is a powerful testimony to the truth of the Gospel and to the truth that Christ is Lord. And so great faithfulness in times of great suffering brings great glory to Christ. 

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus 1:1-7. And this is the infallible, the inerrant, the inspired word of God. These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the descendants of Jacob were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. 

Keep your place there and turn to Luke chapter nine. This is the passage of the Transfiguration of our Lord, and we’ll see how this is relevant to our Old Testament passage and sermon text. Luke chapter nine verses 28 through 36. Now, about eight days after these sayings, he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. Of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 

Now, Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep. But when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Jesus or Peter said to Jesus, master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, not knowing what he said. And as he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him. And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone, and they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Last Sunday, we finished our study of the book of Romans. And so this morning, we are beginning a new sermon series through the Old Testament book of Exodus. I’m really looking forward to diving into it together with you and Lord willing, it will be a blessing to all of us as we hear what this part of scripture speaks to us as God himself speaks to us through his word. 

Now, I know that all of you know that all of scripture is breathed out by God. It is profitable for us. And therefore, to spend time in Exodus or in any other part of scripture is valuable, it is profitable, it is good for us. But if we were to ask more specifically, what does this book in particular, what does Exodus specifically have to teach us? The answer that I would suggest to that question is this, that as Christians, you and I are the people of God. We are God’s people, and therefore, Exodus is the story, not just of Israel, but Exodus is your story. Exodus is our story. This is not just a series of stories and accounts of amazing things that took place in a faraway time, in a faraway place, to a people who lived long ago as though this had no real connection to us. 

No. This is your history. This is the history of your God, our God, and his dealings with his people. So even though Exodus or the events of the Exodus took place about three thousand five hundred years ago And by the way, we won’t get into the dating of the actual Exodus events. There is some debate as to when that took place, but most likely, it was around January, so about fifteen hundred years BC, which would be about three and a half millennia before our time. So this was a long time ago. 

But nevertheless, despite it taking place so long ago, this is every bit as much your story as it is the story of Israel. And that’s how the Bible treats the events in Exodus in the New Testament. In first Corinthians chapter 10, when Paul talks about the people of Israel during this time, he connects their experience to our own experience as Christians. Just as we have been baptized into Christ, so Paul says that the Israelites then, in 1 Corinthians 10:2, they were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. 

Also, just as our spiritual food is Christ, so Paul says, the Israelites in Exodus, they all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. So just as Christ is our sustenance, he is our food and drink, so it was for the people of Israel in the days of Exodus. And so this story is very much our story. These are our fathers in the faith. This God in Exodus, their God is our God. And we can say even more their Redeemer, their Savior is our Savior. 

In another place in the New Testament, in Jude, verse five, Jude tells us that it was Jesus, specifically, it was Jesus who saved the people out of the land of Egypt. And so we have the same God. We have the same Lord and Redeemer, Jesus. And so it is good for us to study the book of Exodus to better understand as we see God’s dealings with his people then, to understand God’s dealings with us as his people today. 

And this morning, as we begin our study of the book of Exodus, just by way of introduction, I want to cover with you three lessons that we can, gain not only from this passage that we are looking at this morning, but also from the book of of Exodus in its entirety as we consider, the whole book. And so those three lessons are these. First of all, you are a covenant people. Secondly, you are a redeemed people. And thirdly, as Christians, you are a pilgrim people. 

So those are the three lessons that we’ll take, from Exodus this morning. So first of all, as Christians, as those who belong to Christ, you are a covenant people. If you were to read the book of Exodus in Hebrew, first of all, you would be reading from right to left instead of left to right, and you would notice that the very first word of the book is the word and, a n d. In Hebrew, it’s actually just one letter, but it means and. So verse one would say something like this, and these are the names of the sons of Israel. 

By the way, we’re gonna just take for granted that the author of Exodus is Moses. And, just as we believe, we assume, on the basis of scripture, that the author of all the five books of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, that is Moses as well. One of the major debates between conservative and liberal biblical scholars when it comes to the Old Testament has to do with whether Moses actually wrote the books of the Pentateuch, whether he actually wrote the book of Exodus. There’s no need for us to get into that debate, but I would want to say that the greatest Old Testament scholar who ever lived, he believed that Moses wrote the book of Exodus. And on the basis of his authority, we are safe in assuming that Moses was the author. And, of course, that greatest of all Old Testament scholars, his name is Jesus. And in his teaching, he referred to the book or he referred to the book of Exodus as the book of Moses. He also said that Moses wrote of him. So Jesus not only confirms that Moses is the author of Exodus, but that everything that Moses wrote about had to do with Jesus himself. 

And so the book of Exodus begins with the word and. And by doing this, by beginning the book like this, Moses is intentionally connecting Exodus, to what we read, what takes place in the book of Genesis. Particularly the way in which God dealt with his people, his chosen people in Genesis. 

And it would be helpful for us before we launch into our study of the book of Exodus just to review the background of what took place in the book of Genesis just to give us a better understanding of the context in which this book begins. And so, in Genesis and if you have been coming to the evening services, this will sound more familiar to you since we have just finished going through the book of Genesis. 

But in Genesis, God’s dealings with his people, of course, begins with Abraham. God first spoke to him when Abraham was living in Ur of the Chaldeans. God promised to make of Abraham a great nation, and he told them that in him, all the families of the Earth would be blessed. And the promise was that the Lord would be Abraham’s God. That he and his offspring would be God’s people. And then God extended that same promise to the son of Abraham, that is to Isaac. And then that same promise was given to Jacob, Isaac’s son. And then that same promise was given, of course, to all the patriarchs and to all the people who descended from Jacob. They were the heirs of God’s promise. They were the heirs of God’s calling to be his people. 

And as you know, Jacob, he had 12 sons. And from these 12 sons of Jacob would descend the 12 tribes of Israel. And of these sons, one was hated by the rest, and of course, that was Joseph. His brothers hated Joseph’s dreams. He dreamed that his brothers and father and mother would be bowing down to him. Of course, they hated that. They hated Joseph’s coat of many colors that their father had made for him. And so out of their enmity and envy of Joseph, his brother sold him into slavery. He was taken to the land of Egypt by his new owners. And although there he was a slave, and for many, many years he was even a prisoner, the Lord was with Joseph. He blessed him. He raised him up to such a high position in the government of Egypt that Joseph was second only to Pharaoh himself in power and authority. 

And, of course, that’s what Moses refers to in verse five when he says that Joseph was already in Egypt. In the providence of God, God sent Joseph ahead into Egypt, where ultimately, he raised him up to this place of authority and power. Meanwhile, Joseph’s brothers and his father, they’re back in Canaan. They are on the brink of starvation because of the great famine that had taken hold of that whole area of the world. And Joseph, as you are familiar with the story, his brothers come to Joseph to visit him. Ultimately, he reveals himself to them. He sells them grain to keep them from starving, and then he welcomes, he invites his brothers and his father and their families to come live in Egypt. And so they come and live in Egypt, and there they will be able to carry on their livelihood as shepherds and have provision and survive. And it’s that whole history now that Moses has in mind when he begins in this very first book of Exodus with the word “and”. 

So all of that is in the background, and all of that is the reason why Jacob and his sons and his families went down to Egypt. This is why they go from Canaan to Egypt, to escape the famine, to live in Egypt under the protection of their brother Joseph, under the protection of Pharaoh. But most of all, they are living under the protection of their God. Again, they were God’s covenant people. And God’s promise to his descendants, or his promise to Abraham and to his descendants, is that he would be their God and they would be his people. This is the great covenant promise. 

When you read the scriptures, especially in the Old Testament, you see this. It’s very pronounced. When God says, I will be your God. You will be my people. That is at the very heart of God’s covenant with his people. That is his covenant promise with us, that in Christ, he is our God. We are his people. In all that, as we go on in Exodus, all that we see, in the Lord’s dealings with his people is based on his covenant with them, his commitment to them, his devotion as their God. He will save them. He will provide for them. He will guide them in the wilderness. He will protect them from their enemies. And he will do all this for his people because he has made them his covenant people. He loved them, he chose them, and he makes them his own, and they are his. And specifically, when God made his covenant with Abraham, he made several promises. One, he promised that Abraham would have many descendants, that he would “make of him a great nation”. He said that his offspring would be no more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore. 

Two, the Lord promised Abraham that his offspring would inherit the land of Canaan, that that land would be theirs, it would belong to them. And three, God promised Abraham to bless the nations of the world through Abraham, that through his offspring, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Now that last promise, that all the families of the earth would be blessed through the offspring of Abraham, we are seeing this being fulfilled today. That offspring is Christ, and it is through him that the people of the world are blessed as God in his grace brings sinners, to faith in Jesus Christ to come into that state of salvation, to be blessed by the Lord. And so we are seeing that being fulfilled today. As for the promise of the land of Canaan, from the perspective of the beginning of the book of Exodus here, that promise will be fulfilled a short time later, under the leadership of Joshua when he will bring the people of Israel into the promised land. But as for the promise for many descendants, we see in this passage that the Lord has fulfilled it. At the beginning of Exodus, this one part of God’s covenant promise with Abraham is now being fulfilled. It has come to fruition. 

And and so Moses tells us that when Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt, they started out with, as a family of 70 people. So there were 70 of them. Apparently, the Jewish commentators in history, they noticed that in Genesis chapter 10, where you had the list of all the nations, the table of nations, that there were 70 nations listed there. And what these Jewish commentators said was that the 70 people of Jacob’s family were more worthy than all those 70 nations. And it is remarkable to consider that of all the nations in the world at this time, including the mighty empire of Egypt, that it’s this one family that the Bible zeroes in on. This one small family, a relatively small, 70 people, this nomadic sheep herding family somewhere in Canaan that the Bible focuses on. And of course, that’s the reason for that is because this is the family through whom God is bringing about his plan of salvation for the world. And so, yes, in terms of God’s saving work, in terms of what was truly important, these 70 members of Jacob’s family were more significant than all the nations, all the peoples in the world at this time because these are the people who were God’s people, and through them, God would raise up a Redeemer. 

Now 70 people is a pretty big extended family. If we had that many family members living here in Reno, for example, or or anywhere, I guess. That would be a lot to take, you know, to keep track of. A lot of anniversaries, a lot of birthdays. But it’s a big family, but it’s certainly not as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore. And so at the very beginning here then, it’s safe to say that God has not yet fulfilled his covenant promise. As far as Jacob could see, this part of the covenant promise of God was not yet fulfilled. In fact, this promise appears to be in serious danger because here they were, just 70 people, one family. They’re barely surviving this famine that’s afflicting the whole world. They’re about to go to Egypt, where who knows what might threaten their existence there. 

And what’s more, they’re also leaving the promised land. They’re going in the wrong direction. They’re leaving Canaan. And so it’s not hard to imagine that at some point, Jacob thought to himself, what will become of these promises? A multitude of descendants, the promised land, and all of that. But as we read on in this first passage, we’ll see that God is definitely not forgetting his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Verse seven tells us that after the death of Joseph and his brothers, God blessed the family of Jacob. He blessed them mightily that they became an entire nation of people. 

Exodus one seven says, But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly, exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. A more literal translation would say something like this, “As for the Israelites, they grew. They were fruitful. They swarmed. They increased. They got powerful. More and more, and the land was filled with them”. So Moses, in a not so subtle way, he is telling us that after four hundred years, there were a bunch of Israelites living in Egypt, that they grew incredibly large. And we know from the book of Numbers that at this point, the number of fighting men among the nation of Israel is 600,000. And so what that means is that the total population of the descendants of Jacob has grown from 70 to well over a million people. So under God’s blessing then, in these four centuries, as he promised Abraham, his descendants grew to be this numerous, this mighty nation. And the point of this is to show that as the covenant people of God, they were experiencing the fulfillment of God’s promises to them through Abraham. At least here in this passage, the fulfillment of this one promise, many descendants, an entire nation. 

And one lesson that we can take right here as we begin our study of the book of Exodus is this, that as the covenant people of God today, as those whom he has brought to himself and made us his people, we can know, we can have full assurance that God will keep his promises to us, just as he kept his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He did not fail to “make of Abraham”. As he said, he made of him a mighty nation, a huge nation. And God will not fail to bring about any one of the promises that he makes to you and me in his word, in his son Jesus Christ. Those promises include the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, the gift, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, his continual grace and peace and goodness and love towards us. All of these promises that God makes to you and me in Jesus Christ, he will fulfill them. Some of them he has already fulfilled. We have already been forgiven. We have already been justified. But the promises that we still wait for for the fulfillment of God is faithful. He will keep his promises because he is in covenant with us. He has pledged himself to us. He is true to his word. 

Exodus also reminds us that with these covenant promises and blessings come covenant responsibilities. Getting ahead of ourselves a little bit in Exodus, as we’ll move on in the book, we’ll see that much of Exodus contains the laws that God gave to the people of Israel. And of those laws, of course, in Exodus chapter 20 are the 10 Commandments. And as their God, the Lord delivered them from bondage. He delivered them from Egypt to be his people. He freed them that they would be his, that they would serve him, that they would worship him, that they would obey his commandments. And as we’ll learn from Exodus, we have been as we have been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ, we too have been saved from our bondage to sin and death and set free from that in order to belong to the Lord, to serve him, to obey his word, to find our joy and blessing in that communion with him and as we as we live according to his commandments. And so we have covenant responsibilities as the people of God, as well as covenant blessings. 

For example, Peter tells us that we are to worship the Lord. First Peter two nine, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light. And so Exodus will remind us that on the one hand, the salvation that God has accomplished for us freely in Jesus Christ this is something in which we rejoice, just as the Israelites rejoiced in their deliverance from Egypt. But also, on the other hand, he has called us to himself in order that we may worship him, and serve him, and obey him. And another reason why it’s important for you and me to see that as believers in Christ, we are included among the covenant people of God that we have been brought into this covenant. It’s important to see that in order to appreciate that as a Christian, you belong or you are not your own. You do not belong to yourself. First of all, you belong to Christ. You are his. But not only that, but as your covenant lord, he has brought you into, he has brought you into his people. You belong to the body of Christ. You were made one of the entire body of his people. 

Romans 12:5, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. And so this is a good reminder for us as we go on through Exodus to see how God dealt with his people as his people. That God deals with us individually, yes. But also, he deals with us as his people. That we have responsibilities not only to Christ, but also to those who belong to Christ. We are individually members of one another. And so your faithfulness as a Christian is not just about how you live your individual life before the Lord. It’s not just your walk with Christ as your savior, but it’s also how you spend your life, devote your life in serving, building up, loving those whom Christ loved, those who belong to the body of Christ. 

And so as with the Israelites in the days of Exodus, we have been saved to be God’s covenant people. We are to worship him and serve him together as his chosen and beloved people. So first of all, you and I, we are God’s covenant people. 

Secondly, you are a redeemed people. You are a redeemed people. So Exodus, primarily, is about the great salvation event for the people of Israel. And that is, of course, that under the leadership of Moses, the Lord brought his people out from under their bondage to Pharaoh. They were enslaved by Pharaoh, and he not only enslaved them, but as we’ll see next week, he began to violently persecute the Israelites. Pharaoh embarked on a campaign of what today we would call ethnic cleansing. He ordered all the male babies of the Hebrews to be killed. And in order to deliver them from their plight, from their bondage, through Moses, the Lord brought the devastation to the land, to the people of Egypt, to the 10 plagues. He then brought his people out of Egypt. We’ll see the stories in Exodus, but he brings them through the Red Sea, causes the waters to part for them. When Pharaoh and his chariots and armies start chasing after the people of Israel, he causes the waters of the Red Sea to come crashing over their heads. And all of these powerful and amazing acts of God were part of his saving mercies towards his people. And so the Exodus then, this becomes the signature act, the main event of God’s saving works for his people in the Old Testament. 

Now there are other times in which God would bring deliverance to his people that we read about in the Old Testament, but the Exodus was the big one. This is the one that the Psalmist sang about. As one person has said, the Exodus was the “gospel of the Old Testament”. Here is the great saving work of God in bringing his people out of Egypt. And when we come to the New Testament, and when we come to the salvation that Christ has accomplished for us, significantly, the New Testament refers to that saving work of Christ for us in terms of an exodus. That’s why we read the account of the Transfiguration in Luke chapter nine. In that passage, Luke tells us this in verses thirty and thirty one. He says, and behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. And so Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are on the top of the mountain. Jesus is transfigured. He is seen in all of his glory. And they’re talking about what? His departure. In Greek, that word translated departure is exodus. It is exodus. And so Luke is saying this about Jesus, that the Exodus that he is about to accomplish at Jerusalem, that is his suffering, his death, his burial, his resurrection, everything that he would do for our salvation is an Exodus. And so what Luke is saying is this, that the exodus that the Lord accomplished for his people back here in the book of Exodus, that this was just a type of a far greater salvation, a far greater exodus, in which the same Lord, now incarnate in the person of his of his son Jesus Christ, that he would accomplish for us in his death, his burial, his resurrection, and exaltation. He delivered his people from bondage to sin and death. He will deliver us, or he delivered them from their bondage to pharaoh. He will deliver us, he has delivered us, from our bondage to sin and from the tyranny of death. 

Not only that, but in 1 Corinthians 5:7, the Apostle Paul calls Jesus the “Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed”. Again, you’re familiar with the story. We’ll get to it in the weeks ahead. But the Lord told the people of Israel to sacrifice a lamb, take the blood of it, smear it on the doorpost of their houses. And so when the angel of the Lord passed over the land of Egypt, killing all the firstborn of families and livestock, he would pass over the houses where he saw the blood on the doorposts. But Jesus is called the Passover Lamb. And so just as the Israelites were saved by the blood of that sacrificial lamb, so Jesus is the greater sacrificial lamb. It is his blood shed on the cross that covers us, that saves us from the wrath of God. And so as we study the book of Exodus then, we will be reminded again and again of this truth that we, as a covenant people, as God’s covenant people, we are a saved people. We are redeemed people. And again, we have been saved. Why? In order to worship, to serve the Lord as our God. 

So Exodus tells us that you are a covenant people, you are a redeemed people, and finally, Exodus also will teach us that you are a pilgrim people. And this very first passage in Exodus shows us a theme that will be consistent throughout the book of Exodus, and that is this, that the people of Israel were sojourners. They were pilgrims. And this has been true of the people of God all the way up to this point. Abraham was a pilgrim, a sojourner. Isaac and Jacob were. They did not own the land that they lived in in Canaan. They were guests there, pilgrims. And in verse one, we are reminded of that. Jacob and his sons, they go to Egypt. They sojourn there, they become pilgrims in Egypt. And everything that takes place in the book of Exodus takes place before the Israelites are given the land of promise. And so they are pilgrim people. They’re looking forward to the promised land. 

And as Christians, you and I are also a pilgrim people. We are looking forward to the promised land. And praise the Lord, the land that he promises to give us is not a piece of real estate in the Middle East somewhere, but the land that he promises us is life in a resurrection body, a new heavens, a new earth forever and ever. That is the promised land that he has said that he would give us. But in the meantime, like the Israelites living in the wilderness, we live in a wilderness. We live in a spiritual wilderness. This world is not our home. This world, as you well know, is apathetic at best and hostile at worst to the God who created this world. It is apathetic or hostile to his son in whom God has revealed himself to us as Lord and savior. We live in a world that by and large has no concern for the truth of God, for righteousness, for sin, for salvation, for judgment, for heaven, for hell. All of these spiritual realities that are so precious to us for a big part of the world, they are not precious. They do not hold them dear. So we live in a world that is opposed to Christ and his righteousness, his truth. Because of the natural depravity and the rebellion that dwells in the hearts of all people, including us, though we have been redeemed, we have been saved, and yet because of that natural sinfulness and depravity, the values, the priorities, the desires of this sinful world, of this fallen world are opposed to the values, the priorities that are given to us by God in the scriptures. And for that reason then, as a Christian, if you seek to be faithful to God in this world, you will have to adopt the mindset that you are just like the people of Israel in Exodus. You are a pilgrim people. You have not yet arrived. 

The promised land is still being held out to you as a promise. It is yours, but not yet. Not yet. And so this is not our home. And as we study the book of Exodus, Lord willing, we’ll understand more and more what it means to be faithful in this world to God and to Christ as a people who are strangers, who are pilgrims here. And so by the grace of God, as we go forward from here into the book of Exodus, may we grow in our understanding of who we are as God’s covenant people, as his redeemed people, and in this world until we are brought to our eternal home, a pilgrim people. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Psalm 115, and this is the word of the Lord. “Not to us, oh Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, For the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness, why should the nations say, where is their God? Our God is in the heavens. He does all that he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but do not speak, eyes but do not see, they have ears but do not hear, noses but do not smell, they have hands but do not feel, feet but do not walk, and they do not make a sound in their throat. Those who make them become like them, so do all those who trust in them. Oh, Israel, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. Oh, house of Aaron, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. You who fear the Lord, trust in the Lord. He is their help and their shield. The Lord has remembered us. He will bless us. He will bless the house of Israel. He will bless the house of Aaron. He will bless those who fear the Lord, both the small and the great. May the Lord give you increase, you and your children. May you be blessed by the Lord who made heaven and earth. The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth he has given to the children of man. The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any who go down into silence, From this time forth and forevermore, praise the Lord.”

Now let’s turn to Romans chapter 16. This is our sermon text for this morning. And we are at the final passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The final passage in Paul’s letter to the Romans, Romans 16 verses 25 through 27. “Now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed, and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations according to the command of the eternal God to bring about the obedience of faith to the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ. Amen”. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Some time ago, I was listening to a podcast about the history of classical music. And in that podcast, the of the greatest musical composers of all time. Perhaps many would say he is the greatest of all time. And the podcaster was saying that there are some people, today who are so taken, so impressed with, the genius and the beauty of the music that Bach composed. And they see him as such an extraordinary composer that they almost consider him to be something like a god, as though no mere human being can compose such inspired music as he did. And if you know something about Bach, you would find that to be very ironic because he was a devout Christian. In fact, he was a Lutheran. And as a Christian, he would not have wanted to be idolized by others. But he wanted his music to bring glory to God. And at the end of his compositions, he would write out the letters SDG. And those letters stand for the Latin phrase, Soli Deo Gloria, which means glory to God alone, or to God alone be the glory. And we could say that the Apostle Paul, at the end of his letter here, at the conclusion of this letter to the Romans, that in his own way, he has written the letters SDG, to the end of his work. 

This final passage that we are considering today from the book of Romans is, Paul’s doxology. That is, these are his words of praise, of adoration to the God, whom he has been writing about. The God who has brought us salvation, eternal life through his son, Jesus Christ. And so this final passage, this final sentence in Greek, it’s one sentence. But in this final sentence, this is Paul’s way of saying SDG, Soli Deo Gloria, to God alone be the glory. And this same praise that the Apostle Paul offers to God here in this passage, this should be in the heart of every believer. This should be our desire that we want to see the Lord glorified and magnified. And there is nothing that we should desire more than that, that the true and living God, the God who is our father, the father of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he should receive all the praise, all the worship, the adoration of all creation. 

Apparently, back in the old days, and I don’t know exactly when this was, but some time ago, certainly not in recent memory. But when a candidate for ministry in the Presbyterian church, when he was examined by his presbytery, he would often be asked the question, would you be willing to be damned in order that God would be glorified? Would you be willing to be damned, condemned for the glory of God? When you think about it, the question is something of a false dilemma. Only somebody who has already been saved from damnation, can really truly have a desire to see god glorified in all things. In other words, God would never put anybody in a position where they would have to choose between their own salvation in Christ and giving God glory. But the question was meant to ask this, is the glory of God more precious to you than even your own good? This is a question that is good for us to ask ourselves. Am I more concerned for the praise, the adoration, the magnification of God as God? Am I more concerned for that than even for my own interests, my own desires? We could put this another way. Is your Christian faith only about your desire to avoid eternal punishment, your desire to go to heaven? Or is your Christian faith all about you have come to a knowledge of God, you have come to know the character of God, you have come to know God in all of his majesty and goodness, and for that reason, above all else as a Christian, you want God to be known, to be worshiped, to be adored by all creation simply because of who he is. And that is where our heart should be as Christians. 

Yes, we give praise to God that he has saved us, that we look forward to an eternity in heaven with all of the the joys and the blessedness that that will involve, But nevertheless, in our heart of hearts, which should be most, important to us is that God receives all the praise and the glory for who he is. And God is worthy to be glorified and praised for who he is and for all that he has done. God reveals his glory in all of his works. God is glorified in his works of creation. He is glorified in his ongoing works of providence. God is even glorified in his works of justice and condemnation. His justice, his righteousness is glorified. But most of all, the one thing in which God receives the most glory, the one thing that he has done that most reveals the truth about who he is, that most reveals his character as a God of grace and mercy, as well as a God of righteousness and holiness. The thing that brings God the most glory is the salvation that he has accomplished for us through his son, Jesus Christ. It is in Christ that God is most glorified. And that is the reason why Paul in this passage gives praise to God. Because his entire letter, as we have seen, as we have gone through this letter, his entire letter is about the salvation that God has worked for us through his son, Jesus Christ. And so it is fitting at the end that God should or that Paul should close his letter by giving praise to God, by giving glory to God for this work of salvation. 

And as believers in Jesus Christ, as those who have been saved by the grace of God, by the gospel, this passage shows us three ways that we give glory to God as his redeemed people. First of all, we glorify God by believing in Christ. Secondly, we glorify God by obeying the word of Christ. And thirdly, we glorify God by worshiping him in the name of Christ. 

So first of all, we give glory to God by believing in his son. Paul says in verse 25, he says, now to him who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel in the preaching of Jesus Christ. The phrase here, to strengthen, can also be translated as to establish. And what that means is that God is able, by his grace and power, to keep us walking by faith in Jesus Christ. He is able to preserve us in our union with Christ, in our faith in him. He gives us grace to overcome temptation. He gives us grace to persevere as followers of Christ throughout this life, through all the tribulations and struggles that we experience. He is able to strengthen, to establish us until the very end. And of course, this is a great comfort for you and me as believers in Jesus Christ, because what it means is that our faithfulness to Christ does not depend upon our own strength, but our faithfulness to Christ depends upon the strength that God gives us by his grace. He is the one who strengthens us. He is the one who establishes us in his grace. And Paul says that God is able to strengthen us according to, he says in verse 25, my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ. And so what that means is that the gospel is not just good news that our sins are forgiven and that we have been made right with God, but it’s also good news that because of the work of Christ, what God has begun in us, he will bring to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. 

In other words, the gospel contains the promise of God that he will care for us, he will love us, he will keep us in his grace until the very end, until he brings us to our heavenly home. He is able to strengthen us according to the gospel. And notice how the gospel is joined together here with the preaching of Jesus Christ. Again, Paul says in verse 25, according to my gospel and the preaching of Christ Jesus. So the gospel is joined together here with the preaching of Jesus Christ. Preaching of Christ Jesus. So the gospel, the good news of salvation in Christ is inseparably bound up with the proclamation of Christ. And this is how this is how this is and this is how the gospel is made known. This is how this is God’s will for how the good news for sinners that there is salvation in his son, it is to be made known through the preaching, through the public proclamation of Jesus Christ. That gospel that is made known in the preaching of Christ. 

He goes on in verse 25. He says, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages, but has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations. Paul uses the word mystery here. And when he uses the word mystery, he’s not talking about something that is inexplicable, something that is beyond our human comprehension, or something that we just haven’t yet figured out yet. He’s not talking about a mystery like we might call, for example, the Bermuda the Bermuda Triangle. It’s a mystery. He’s not talking about mystery in that sense. But in the New Testament, the word mystery refers to something that was once hidden, but is now revealed, that is now made known. And here in this passage, the thing that was once hidden is the gospel, the coming of Christ into the world, that through the incarnate Son of God, that God will bring salvation to his people. That is the truth that was once hidden. That is why Paul calls it a mystery. It was hidden for long ages. That is from the beginning of history. And what was hidden was what is now revealed in Christ. That through the incarnation, life and death, and resurrection of his son, that God would bring us eternal life. It was concealed, at least in fullness. At least it was concealed rather in parts. But now it has been revealed with the coming of Christ into the world, with all that God has done for us through Christ, the truth of the gospel has been made known. It is manifest. It is revealed. 

Paul says in verse 26, it has now been disclosed and through the prophetic writings has been made known to all nations. But now you might be thinking to yourself, wait a minute. Wait a minute. How can you say that this gospel was once concealed? That the truth concerning Christ was once hidden from us? How can you say that? Wasn’t the gospel revealed in the Old Testament? Isn’t that something that we believe? Didn’t the entire revelation that God gave to his people Israel, wasn’t that entire revelation in one way or another pointing them forward to the coming of the Messiah, the Christ? Weren’t all the old covenant institutions, such as the sacrifices, the priesthood, the temple, the Davidic kingship, weren’t they all types and shadows of the Christ who was to come? And didn’t the prophets like Isaiah speak of the coming Messiah, the servant of the Lord, who through his suffering would bring healing and salvation to his people? And didn’t Jesus say your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day? He saw it and was glad. And after his resurrection, didn’t Jesus have a Bible study with his disciples in which he opened the word to them and showed them how the Old Testament scriptures revealed him, what he would do, his suffering and resurrection? And didn’t Paul say in Galatians three eight that the scriptures preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying, in you shall all the nations of the world be blessed? And the answer to all those questions is yes. All of that is true. The scriptures of the Old Testament did, in fact, reveal the truth of the coming Christ, and what he would do for our salvation. In fact, when we look at this passage, Paul even says here that the mystery of the gospel that was once secret, kept hidden, but has now been disclosed, is made known through the prophetic writings. In other words, it is through the Old Testament scriptures themselves that we now have this revelation, Paul is saying, concerning the gospel that has now been made manifest with the coming of Christ. And if all that is true, then how can Paul say that the truth of the gospel, the truth of the coming messiah of Christ, that it was once hidden or kept secret? But what Paul is saying here is this, that compared to the fullness of the revelation that would come with the coming of Jesus into the world, that there was a relative, there was a comparative hiddenness, or opaqueness or obscurity in the Old Testament revelation concerning Christ. In other words, the Old Testament did truly reveal the gospel to the people of God, but only partially, only faintly compared with the revelation that was to come that has now been given to us in the person of Christ. 

One analogy that we might use to understand this is to consider the light of the predawn morning, just before the rising of the sun. As the time comes closer for the sun to rise, the night breaks. There is no longer total darkness. There is some faint light. Nevertheless, the sun is still hidden. It is below the horizon. We cannot see it directly. We do not see the rays of the sun, but there is enough light for us to make our way in the world to see where we are going. But then once the sun rises, we see the fullness of the radiance of the sun. We see the brilliant rays of the sun flood the world with light and clarity. And it’s the same way with the coming of Christ. In the Old Testament, in the Old Covenant, God gave enough light to his people that they could find their way to him. He revealed just enough of the coming Christ that the people of Israel that they could put their trust in him, as they trusted in the promises of God. But only with the coming of Christ into the world, only with the incarnation of the Lord Jesus, did God then reveal in fullness and perfect clarity the truth about his son, that he is the incarnate God. And what he would do for our salvation, his crucifixion, his resurrection from the dead. 

John Calvin put it this way, only when God appeared to his ancient people face to face through his only begotten son where the shadows dispersed and the treasures of heavenly wisdom finally opened. Augustine’s famous saying holds true. The new is in the old concealed, The old is in the new revealed. And one thing that this means for you and me, this truth that with the coming of Christ, the fullness of the revelation of what God has done for us, for our salvation, has come to us. 

One thing that this means is that we are so blessed to live after the coming of Christ into the world. We are so blessed to live in the era we call AD, after the coming of Jesus. Yes. The Old Testament saints received the grace of God. The Old Testament saints, they were saved by their trust in the Lord, by his promises, or their trust in his promises of the coming Messiah, but they only saw faintly. They only saw in parts. And the glory of God has now been revealed to us in the Christ who has come. They lived in a time of anticipation, a time of waiting. And so generation after generation, as they held on to the promises of God, they were waiting, anticipating the day when the Messiah would come. Century after century, they waited. But we live in the days of fulfillment. We can enjoy the fullness of God’s revelation of himself to us in Jesus Christ. We can enjoy the fullness of the gift of his Holy Spirit whom he gives to us in Christ. And sometimes we read the Old Testament and we read about Moses or David or Isaiah. We read about how they saw the Lord, or they heard the Lord speaking, or they saw the miraculous works that the Lord did even through them. And we think to ourselves, oh, I would love to have been a Moses, or a David or an or an Isaiah. I would have loved to have seen the Lord perform these miraculous works that he did and to hear the voice of God. But the truth is, Moses, David, Isaiah, all the Old Testament saints, they would have gladly traded places with you and me. They would have gladly taken the place that we enjoy now, just an ordinary Christian, because then they would have known the fullness of the revelation that they were only looking forward to. That God and the person of his son Jesus Christ, that he would come to us, and that he, by his perfect obedience, by laying down his life upon the cross, by his resurrection, he would bring us eternal life and salvation. They would have preferred to know that than even to experience all that they did as God’s people under the old covenant. And with this revealing of Jesus Christ, with the fullness of God’s manifestation of his son, and through his son of who he is, his character, and in his son all that he has done for us for our redemption, 

With this revelation of Christ and with the preaching of the gospel, there is a moral imperative for you and me to respond in faith to what God has done for us in Christ. We are called upon. We are commanded by God to put our faith in Christ. The gospel is good news of salvation for those who believe, for those who turn to him in faith. Romans one sixteen, for I’m not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. Your eternal destiny. What will happen to you on the day of judgments? Whether that will be an entrance into eternal bliss and glory with Christ in heaven forever, or an entrance into eternal damnation in hell? All of that will turn on this one question. How did you respond to the revelation of God and his son Jesus Christ? Did you come to him in faith and embrace him as your savior from sin and death? Or do you refuse to come to Jesus and continue in your unbelief? 

Jesus said this in John three eighteen, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only son of God. All will come down to this. How did you and I respond to the revelation of Jesus Christ, the revelation of God and his son. Putting your trust in Christ, embracing him as your savior, This is not just a matter of personal preference or choice. This is not like choosing a certain lifestyle, or, you know, choosing a certain kind of car to drive. It’s not as though it doesn’t really matter in the end whether you’re a Christian, or you adhere to some other religion, or follow some other philosophy, or whether you’re agnostic or an atheist, that in the end, it’s all the same. You take your path, I take my path. They’re all leading to the same place anyway. It’s not like that at all. God commands you and me to turn to Christ in faith. It is a matter of right or wrong. Like I said, it is a moral imperative that we believe in his son, that we respond in faith. And if you reject the truth of the gospel, you make God a liar. You are saying that, no, God. You did not send Christ into the world for my salvation. You hold up Jesus to contempt. You trample underfoot the Son of God. But if you come to Jesus as your Lord and Savior, confessing your sin, acknowledging that Jesus alone can save you, then you give glory to God. You magnify the greatness of God because by believing in Christ, you are acknowledging the truth of God, the goodness of God, that he so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that by faith in him we have eternal life. And so as you trust in Christ, believe in him, you glorify God, you bring him praise by receiving, accepting the revelation that he has given us in his son. 

And so, we glorify God by obeying the word of Christ. In verse 26, Paul says that, the mystery of the gospel, the mystery of Christ is now made known to all nations. And he says that the revelation of that was according to God’s command. That means it was according to his perfect plan. And then he tells us what was God’s purpose in that revelation. Why did God send his son into the world in order to save us? It is for this reason. He says in verse 26, to bring about the obedience of faith. Now, if you have a really good memory, or if you have happened to read through Romans recently, you’ll recall that back in chapter one in verse five, Paul uses this very same expression, the obedience of faith. He says, through him, that is through Christ, we have received grace and apostleship, he’s talking about himself, to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations. And so, everything that Paul says in the book of Romans, everything that he unpacks for us concerning the gospel of Jesus Christ, all of that is bookended by this one thought that has to do with the end goal or the final purpose, or at least one aspect of the final purpose of what God has done in bringing us salvation in Christ, and that is this, to bring to lost sinners, not just not just to bring lost sinners to faith in Christ, but to bring them to the obedience of faith, to the obedience of faith. And the obedience of faith means the obedience that flows from faith. The obedience that results when someone by faith comes to Christ as a savior, and the obedience that will naturally result from that. And so the obedience of faith here refers not to obeying God’s command to believe in Christ, though we are certainly commanded to do that. But the obedience here refers to obeying all of God’s commandments. It refers to loving God with our whole heart, soul, strength, and mind, loving our neighbor as ourselves, keeping the 10 commandments, keeping the golden rule, dying to sin, living to righteousness, pursuing holiness, and all of that. That is God’s goal, is to redeem his people that they might render to him that obedience. 

Now if we’ve learned anything from Romans, we’ve learned that we are saved, we are justified, not on the basis of obedience, not on the basis of our works, but we are saved by faith alone, by trusting in the finished work of Christ alone. But we’ve also learned that the faith that saves us, by the faith by which we are saved, we are united to the Lord Jesus Christ, and by that union with Christ, we receive from Christ the gift of the Holy Spirit. And as the Holy Spirit abides in us, he changes us, he works in us so that we begin to render to God that obedience that he desires. We begin to walk in his commandments. And so God’s purpose for us in his graciously saving us from sin and death is that we will render obedience to his will. Ephesians two ten, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And so as you rest in Christ as your savior, as you lean upon him and trust in him entirely for your salvation, and at the same time, out of gratitude for that salvation, out of thankfulness for what God has done for you, you begin to render to God that obedience that he seeks by doing his work, so obeying his word. And as you do that, by the grace of God, you bring glory and honor and praise to God. And so we glorify God by obeying the word of Christ. 

And thirdly, we glorify God by worshiping him in the name of Christ. Finally, in verse 27, Paul says this. Here’s the last verse of Romans. We have finally come to the very end of Romans, verse 27. To the only wise God be glory forevermore through Jesus Christ. Amen. Now in this verse, Paul is not really telling us what we must do. But in this verse and really throughout this whole passage, Paul is showing us what we must do as the redeemed people of God. And that is, just as Paul does here in these verses, we are to ascribe to God and to God alone the praise, the glory that belongs to him. In other words, we are to worship him. We are to worship him. And really in this whole passage, this is what Paul is doing. It’s as if he put down his pen and he lifted up his voice to simply praise the Lord, now to him who is able to strengthen you. And we are called to join him in that worship. Paul, he calls God here the only wise God, and in the context here, because he’s speaking of God’s works of salvation, The wisdom of God is that wisdom that was manifested in that God through the foolishness of a crucified savior, through the scandal of a crucified Christ. God has brought sinners eternal life. He is establishing his kingdom through what the world considers foolishness and folly. Through the curse of death of the Son of God, God has destroyed death and hell, and he brings sinners like you and me forgiveness and eternal life. God only wise. And we can add to Paul’s praise here as he as he praises God for the revelation of his wisdom in the gospel, that God has not only revealed his wisdom in the gospel, but in the gospel of Jesus Christ he has revealed all that is true about him, his holiness, his truth, his power, his faithfulness, his love, his mercy, his compassion. And so we can add to Paul’s praise, he is not only the only wise God, but he is the only holy God. He is the only true God. He is the only almighty God. He is the only loving God. And all of this is revealed to us in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so he is worthy, he is infinitely worthy of our praise and adoration and worship. And so we glorify God as we worship him, as he has made himself known to us in Christ. 

As Adam said earlier in the announcements, you’ll notice that in our bulletin, we have begun including questions and answers from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. And, fittingly, this morning, the first question and answer is this, what is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. To glorify God and to enjoy him forever by believing in Christ, by obeying the word of Christ, by worshiping God in the name of Christ, you not only give God glory, which is, as the catechism tells us, our ultimate purpose for our existence as human beings in this world, to glorify God. But as you do those things, believing in Christ, obeying his word, worshiping God in Christ, that is the way you will not only give glory to God, but the way in which you will find true joy and delight. Because as you glorify God in these ways, he brings you to and into his presence. He fills you with his love so that you could truly know him and enjoy him as your God and savior. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Genesis chapter three verses 14 through 15, and this is the word of the Lord. The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

And now let’s turn to Romans chapter 16 verses 17 through 20 for our New Testament reading. This is also our sermon passage. And in this passage, as you’ll hear, Paul, the Apostle Paul, he speaks to this promise that, we just heard from Genesis three fifteen. So this is Romans chapter 16 verses 17 through 20. I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught. Avoid them. For such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites. And by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive. For your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you. But I want you to be wise as to what is good and innocent as to what is evil. The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

If you’ve ever been hiking in the mountains where, there are bears, you were probably warned by a friend or your guidebook or a sign at the trailhead, to be careful. Watch out. This is bear country. Make a lot of noise as you hike. Wear bells on your shoes. Carry bear spray. Maybe even carry a really big gun. At the trailhead of one hike we took several several years ago, there was a sign that said, that told us what to do if we were attacked by a bear. If it is a brown bear, apparently, we were supposed to play dead. If it was a black bear, we were supposed to fight back. And neither one of those options sounded really good to me. I started to have second thoughts about the hike at that point, but everything went well. But because of the danger of hiking in Bear Country, you need warnings. You need, somebody or something to tell you caution. Look out.

And in our pilgrimage as Christians, we face all kinds of dangers, spiritual dangers. And to keep us safe, the Lord gives us warnings. He cautions us. In the word, there are many words of warning about the dangers that are out there that are opposed to us as believers in Christ. And one of the greatest threats to our well-being as Christians, a threat that even is a danger to our very soul, is the threat of false teaching or the danger of false teaching. And unlike a bear that you might meet in the woods, a bear, presents itself immediately without question as something extremely dangerous, something you want to flee from, for your life. False teaching does not present itself that way, but it comes to us as something that looks very innocuous, very attractive even. The false teacher looks nice. He is friendly. His speech is engaging. It is persuasive. But that false teacher is leading souls away from Christ and into the paths that lead only to ruin and destruction. And that is the danger that Paul warns the Christians about in this passage. And his warning, if we were to read through the book of Romans or even just read, you know, through chapter 16, this warning is very abrupt. It it seems to come out of the blue. Paul is winding up his letter to the Romans. As we saw last week, he he is greeting all of the people that he knows in Rome, and and then all of a sudden, he says, watch out. Beware. And there is this passage here with a warning about false teaching. It’s as though Paul wanted to grab the attention of his readers. In the midst of these greetings at the end of his letter, he wanted to maybe even, jolt them a little bit so that, he would impress upon their minds the importance of being on the lookout for these false teachers who may not have been in the church yet, but, they were sure to come. And of course, this warning is for us as well.

False teaching is still alive and well in the world today. It is just as deadly as it ever was, and so we need to take heed to all that is written in this passage. And as we hear, from God’s word today, from this passage of scripture, We’ll divide this passage into two parts. First, we have here the danger of false teachers and their teaching, and secondly, we have here the promise of the true gospel. So first, the danger of false teachers. So Paul says in verse 17, he says, I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught, avoid them. Now we know that Paul is speaking specifically here about false teachers and their teaching because he qualifies this phrase, create obstacles. He qualifies that by saying that these obstacles or the creating of these obstacles is contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught. And so Paul is not talking about just any kind of people. He’s not talking about just any kind of person who may, for one reason or the other, create problems in the church. I suppose, that would include all of us in in some degree. But specifically in this warning, he has in mind those who teach false doctrine, teaching that is contrary to the truth that is revealed to us in the scripture.

And one way that false teaching damages the church, and it always damages the church, but one way that it does so is that it creates division and conflict within the body of Christ. Now to be sure, not all division in a church or among the people of God is the result of false teaching, but it’s probably safe to say that invariably, when false teaching is introduced into a church or into a fellowship of believers, invariably it will create conflict. It will be the source of division. And the reason for that is because our unity, what makes us one, what binds us together is a common hope and faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as our Savior and Lord. And so whenever there is teaching that contradicts the truth about Christ, whenever there is teaching that denies the truth of the gospel, then the ground of our unity is destroyed. And so those who remain faithful to the Gospel, who remain faithful to the Word of God, they will inevitably be at odds with those who are led astray by false teachers and begin to deny or reject the truths of the gospel. And so it will create division. And almost always, it is those who remain faithful, to the Word of God who are the ones who are blamed or accused for creating schism and division. But really, it is the false teaching and those who follow it that are the source of conflict in the church. And so Paul says, they cause divisions and create or they cause, divisions in the church.

As bad as that is, there is something even more dangerous about false teaching and that is it can destroy the souls of those who profess faith in Christ, but then who are then turned away from the truth of Christ, and they embrace this false doctrine. Paul refers to the doctrine or the teachings that these false teachers present. He refers to them as obstacles. Literally, they are stumbling blocks. The idea is that they cause somebody to trip up, to fall down, and to to perish as a result. And so false teachers and their teaching, they are a problem not just because they happen to be unorthodox, not just because they disagree with the theology that we hold dear and cherish and all of that, but it is a problem because their teaching, their doctrine is deadly and is lethal. And there is nothing less at stake than the eternal life or the eternal death of the human soul who is exposed to this teaching.

In second Peter two one, Peter refers to false teaching as destructive heresies. Just as a carbon monoxide leak in a house can kill an entire family overnight, so if false teaching seeps into a church and is not stopped, it will kill souls for eternity, at least all those who breathe it in. And throughout all of history, whenever and wherever God has revealed his truth to his people for their salvation, whenever that has taken place, false teachers have appeared with a message and a teaching that contradicts that truth, and so leads people out of the way of the salvation that God has, provided for us.

We see that at the very, very beginning. We saw that in our Old Testament passage, or at least, the passage that we read is in the context of the appearance of a, false teacher, and that is the serpents. He is the first he is the original, false prophet or false teacher. He is the devil. He is Satan, and his message was a direct contradiction of the word of God. God told Adam and Eve, as plainly as could be said, that if they eat of the fruit of the tree of the naught of good and evil, you will surely perish. You will die in that day that you eat of it. But then the serpent came along and said to Eve, if you eat of that fruit, you will not surely die. And so here we have the first instance of a false teacher. And of course, it was none other than Satan himself in the guise of the serpent. And then from there, as we read on in the scripture throughout the history of Israel, even as the Lord sent his prophets to his people in order to declare to them the truth of God, his will, his word for his people, there were also false prophets who who he who emerged, who claimed to speak in the name of the Lord, but their message was a lie. And anytime the people of Israel would listen to the message, to the prophecies of the false prophets, they would experience judgment for that because they followed after a lie and did not believe and obey the truth. And we can go on from the very beginning of the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, from the very beginning of the preaching of the gospel, the gospel that is the power of God for salvation.

Even from that very start, there were false teachers who declared a false gospel. In Romans, this is really the only passage in which Paul directly addresses this whole issue of false teaching in the church. But when you read through the New Testament, it is everywhere. There is virtually, I believe there is maybe only one or two books of that in the New Testament that does not at some point address this problem, this danger of false teaching. And so God is very concerned about it. He gives us a lot in his word concerning that. And then if we go through on from there throughout the history of the church, there have been all kinds of heresies and false doctrines that have plagued the people of God. To study church history in a large degree is to study the history of false teaching and the church’s response to that. And if there is any benefit or if there’s been any good that has come as a result of these heresies and false doctrines that have emerged in the history of the church, it is this, that it has given occasion to those who adhere to the truth of God to more carefully, more precisely, more clearly, define and articulate what that truth means, what it means that we believe that Jesus is Lord, what it means that we believe that God is one God with in three persons, and on and on and on. So at least as a result of false teaching, we have a clearer grasp of the truth. Now, of course, it would be impossible, to especially in one sermon, it would be impossible to identify, to catalog every kind of false teaching that opposes the truth of God. But perhaps, using scripture as our guide, we can boil down most, if not all, false teaching to two types.

First of all, there is false teaching that denies the truth of the person and work of Christ. And secondly, there is false teaching that denies the truth of how we are saved by Christ, how we enter into that state of salvation, that Christ has accomplished for us. The Apostle John had to fight against those who denied the truth concerning the person of Christ, who he was, what Jesus did as the Christ. In first John two twenty two, John says, who is the liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. First John four three. Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Second John seven. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh, such a one is the deceiver and the Antichrist. What does it mean to confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? It means to believe and to confess the truth concerning the person of Jesus Christ that he is true God and he is true man. That as the Son of God, as God the Son, the one who was from all eternity equal in power and glory with the Father, the very Son of God who is God, who was God, that he became man, that he was incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, conceived by the Spirit. And so he was in his conception, birth, and life, and even now, he was and is true God and true man, fully divine, fully human. And to confess that Jesus is the Christ is to believe that Jesus as the Christ, as the promised Messiah, the Savior of the people of God, that he suffered and died upon the cross to take away our sin and guilt. And that as the Christ, he was raised from the dead on the third day and has been exalted to the right hand of the Father in heaven, and he rules from there as the Lord of lords and King of kings, the the sovereign over all creation. That is the truth about Jesus. And the only way for you and me, as those who are conceived and born in sin, as those who have inherited from Adam that sinful nature so that there is nothing righteous in us, there is no good in us, but we are born in a condition of being under the righteous condemnation of God for our sin. The only hope and the only way for us to be saved from the judgment, the condemnation that is ours because of our sin, is to come to the person of Jesus Christ by faith. It is to come by faith to the living person of Christ and to entrust ourselves to him, to rely upon him, to rest ourselves in him. He is the one and only savior. There is no other name given among men under heaven by which we must be saved, and it is trust, it is faith in the person of Christ that saves us. But the only way that we can come to Jesus as our savior is if we believe and embrace the truth about him as he is revealed to us in the scripture. It is impossible for us to entrust ourselves to someone whom we do not know. We cannot put our faith in someone who is merely the figment of our own imagination. But if we are to know someone, if we are to put our trust in someone, we must know him and know him truly. And so we cannot know Jesus Christ, we cannot have him as our Savior, except as we come to him as he is revealed in the scripture. This is why false teaching is so deadly. This is why it is so dangerous. It denies the truth about Jesus that at least one form of false teaching, it denies the truth that he is fully human and fully divine. It denies the truth. Some false teaching denies the truth that Jesus as the God man, that he died for sinners, and every teaching that denies these truths cannot offer a savior. It does not offer a savior for sinners. It is a false hope. It is a false gospel because it is based on a false Christ. And again, knowing and confessing the truth about who Jesus is and what he has done is absolutely necessary for you and me to be saved from our sin. Romans 10:9 says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, confess that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And just as there was in the days of the Apostle John, when he was writing his letters, there were those who denied the truth about Christ. He calls them the Antichrist. They denied that he came in the flesh. So there are today people who deny the true Christ. There are groups and sects today that claim the name of Christian. They go, under the umbrella of being a Christian church organization, and yet they proclaim a false gospel because they do not proclaim the truth about Jesus, that he is both God and man, and that as the God man, he atones for our sin.

And there could be many examples, but just to give two examples of major groups today that teach this false doctrine that can only lead to destruction and death, one would be, of course, the Mormon Church, who denies the full deity of Christ, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses who also deny the full deity of Christ. And so there is false teaching that denies the truth about the personal work of Christ. Secondly, there is false teaching that may uphold these truths that believes that Jesus, yes, he is he is God, he is man, he made atonement for the sin of humanity at the cross, and yet it is false teaching because it denies the truth about how we are saved by Christ, how we enter into the state of salvation. The only way that we can be saved by Christ is trusting in him as our savior and in his finished work, in his righteousness, obedience, suffering, and death at the cross for us. We can only be saved by Christ if we believe and trust in him as the sole basis in his work, his righteousness, as the sole basis is our of our being forgiven and being made right with God forever. In other words, the only way for us to be saved is by faith alone, by faith alone in Christ alone, and not by trusting at all, even in part, in our own obedience, our own works, or our own righteousness.

If the Apostle John fought against the heresy of denying the true divinity and humanity of Christ, the Apostle Paul, especially in his letter to the Galatians, he fought against this heresy of denying that we are justified or made right with God by faith alone apart from works. There were false teachers in Galatia. They were preaching a message that said, if you are to be truly saved by Jesus, if you are to be truly accepted of God, if you are to have the true hope of heaven, you must not only believe in Jesus, but you also must do the good works of the law beginning with circumcision, and that obedience, that doing the work of the law, which is part of the grounds or the basis upon which you are saved. That was the teaching of the false teachers in Galatia. And so they proclaimed a gospel of salvation by faith plus works. Faith and works. But the gospel of salvation that says it is by faith plus works is no gospel at all. It cannot lead to salvation because whoever is trusting in his works, even if it’s it is just in part, even if you are just trusting a little bit in the works that you do, the obedience that you render to God, you are not at that point truly trusting entirely upon Christ as your savior. You have not come to him as your savior. In other words, if you are to be saved from your sin and guilt from eternal condemnation, your sole reliance, your entire trust must be in the perfect, the finished work of Jesus Christ alone, and not at all in anything that you do. And so Christ is either a whole savior, he either saves us entirely based upon his work, his righteousness, or he has no savior for us at all. It is not faith plus works, but faith apart from works. Faith alone, trusting in Christ alone. Paul says that in Romans. Romans 3:28, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law. And therefore, any teaching that claims to be Christian and yet tells us that some part of our salvation depends upon some work that we do, that is a that is false teaching. That is a false gospel. It leads not to life, but to death.

And so in Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he has some very strong words about such a quote unquote gospel. He says, but even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached, let him be accursed. As we have said before, now I say again, if anyone is preaching to you a gospel contrary to the one you received, let him be accursed. Again, Paul is not some ivory tower theologian who is just concerned that all the i’s are dotted, all the t’s are crossed, that the theology that he teaches is maintained because he just wants it to be perfect. He is concerned for the for the eternity of human souls. And a false gospel that deviates from the true gospel leads to destruction, and therefore he says, if anyone preaches that gospel, he is accursed. In this heresy of denying the work of Christ alone as our hope for salvation, this also is alive and well in our day. Every teaching that claims the name of Christian and that explicitly, or at least implicitly says that we that if we are to be forgiven, if we are to be made right with God, in some part at least, we must do good works or we must be good people. Any teaching that says that is false teaching.

And the great example, of course, of that kind of teaching, that message, is that of the Roman Catholic church. And insofar as the Roman Catholic church either explicitly denies justification by faith alone, which it does, or in its message, it communicates or suggests in its teaching that somehow our salvation depends, at least in part, on the works that we do, even if those works are the result of the grace of God. Insofar as that is the teaching of the Catholic church, that is a false gospel. That is false teaching. Now I don’t want you to misunderstand. This doesn’t mean that it is impossible for a person to be in the Catholic Church and be saved. It doesn’t mean that it is impossible that there are genuine believers in the Catholic church. It certainly doesn’t mean that we cannot be friendly to those who happen to be Catholic. But what it means is this, that the official teaching of the Catholic Church of how we are saved by Christ, insofar as they base that salvation partly on works in addition to faith, that teaching denies the truth of the gospel as it is given to us in scripture, and therefore, it is a false gospel. Now I try not in my preaching and teaching ministry to, be mainly negative in tone. My my burden as a pastor, as a preacher of the gospel, as one whom God has called to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, my burden is to declare the glorious truths, the positive truths of that gospel, that what Jesus Christ has done for us, that our salvation is by grace alone, by faith alone, to the glory of God alone. And yet, there is a place where and there is a need, to point out that there are false versions of this gospel. And that’s exactly what Paul is doing here. He’s warning the Roman Christians, there will be false teachers. Beware. And there are false teachers, false gospels today that was that we must be aware of. And it’s so important because the salvation of our souls depends upon a true knowledge of Christ, which in turn depends upon a true understanding, a true knowledge of the gospel.

Now Paul goes on to talk about the character of these false teachers. He talks about the way in which they, deceive and entrap the unwary, the un-watching, the unaware. He says in verse 18, for such persons, do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive. Because Paul refers to their appetites, which literally in Greek it is their their belly, because he refers to this, some people maintain that the false teachers were preaching a kind of anything goes Christianity, that their their quote unquote gospel consisted of a license to indulge in whatever passion or lust that you have, a kind of pleasure seeking gospel. But probably, the word appetite here refers to something more general than just physical or sensual desires, but rather what it refers to most likely is what the Bible calls the flesh or sinful nature. And of course, this is, spiritual. Our sinful nature includes our innate inherent pride and self righteousness. And so that being the case, these false teachers may have been, Judaizers like those in Galatia, that is, those who were Jewish Christians, at least they professed to be Christians, but they were insisting that circumcision and the works of the law were necessary in addition to faith in order to be saved by Christ. And so Paul may have been, or he may have had in mind, that kind of false teaching here as well, or at least, instead of a kind of, anything goes false gospel. But in any case, at the end of the day, we just we can’t know for sure exactly what these false teachers were teaching. All we can say is that they were denying the truth of the gospel. As Paul says, they were not serving the Lord Jesus Christ. That really, kind of brings things to the heart of the matter. They were not serving Christ. They were not proclaiming the truth about Christ. They were not seeking the salvation of others for the sake of Christ, but they were serving their own pride, their own self interest, and their false teaching. And of course, that is true of all false teaching. It is self oriented, self centered, self interested. But they presented themselves very well. Paul speaks of their smooth talk and flattery. False teachers so often appear to be very likable, appealing. They can be charming, eloquent, well spoken. One commentator put it this way, the opponents are urbane, witty, sophisticated. They will not be unattractive bores. And of course, that’s because false teaching is inherently deceptive. As Paul says in second Corinthians eleven fourteen, even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. The false teacher does not appear with the horns coming out of his head and a pitchfork in hand saying, I have a gospel from Satan to proclaim to you, but he appears as an angel of light. Jesus said, beware of false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves.

So how are these Roman Christians to prepare themselves for the day when these false teachers will show up of all their charm and eloquence and begin, if they can, to lead people away from Christ? He says in verse 19, he says, for your obedience is known to all, so that I rejoice over you. But I want you to be wise as to what is good, and innocent as to what is evil. And so they were to be wise as to what is good. That is, they were to strive to comprehend more and more all of the ins and outs of the gospel of Jesus Christ. They were to seek to understand the truth that God has revealed in his word better and better because all of that is good. And so they were to become more acquainted with the truth of God. And not only that, but they were to know the fruits of that gospel, the fruits of the truth of God, which are also good. And so they were to be so familiar and knowledgeable about what was genuine and true and faithful to Christ, both in doctrine and life, that they would not be deceived by the charm, the eloquence of the false teachers and led astray by them. And Paul also says that they were to be innocent as to what is evil. That is, they were to guard their innocence in Christ, their integrity, their purity as believers in Christ. They were to guard that against the evil teaching and the evil influences that that teaching would have if they received it. And what this means for you and me is this, is that we are to be grounded in the truth of God. We this is part of our calling as Christians. This is God’s will for us, is that we grow in understanding, that we come to have a better grasp of the truth that God has given to us in the scripture concerning himself as God, concerning his son Jesus Christ as our savior.

It is so crucial for us that we are immersed in the truth of Christ and his word in the entire revelation that God has given to us in the Bible. The more that’s true of us, the more we’ll immediately recognize and reject falsehood and deception when we see it. I’m sure you’ve heard this before that if you really want to be able to detect a fake $100 bill, the best way to do that is to study very carefully what a genuine $100 bill looks like. Of course, there’s all kinds of, tools that people use now, that merchants use to make sure that that, currency is count or is, authentic, but it still is true. If you knew all the ins and outs, if you knew a hundred dollar bill like the back of your hand and you knew exactly what was printed and where, and then you were given a fake $100 bill, you would more easily be able to, recognize that as a counterfeit. And in the same way, the more that you are grounded in all the wonderful truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the more quickly, the more e clearly that you’ll see right through any false gospel. And so first in our passage, Paul warns the Roman Christians of the danger of false teachers.

And secondly, and this will be brief, but secondly, Paul reminds them of the promise of the true gospel. He says in verse 20, he says, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. And notice how Paul, ties everything that he said about false teachers. He ties that now to what he says in verse 20 in referencing the devil, Satan. And he doesn’t say it in so many words, but clearly, Paul is identifying here, the true source of all false teaching, the true master of all false teachers, and that is Satan, the evil one, the devil. Again, ever since Satan first appeared in the garden in the form of a serpent, he is he has been the original false teacher. He’s been deceiving and destroying God’s image bearers by his deception, his lies, and his false teaching. The gospel is a message of good news that comes from heaven above. It leads to life, eternal life, and in the very same way a false gospel, false teaching comes to us from hell below, and it leads to death and destruction. But the good news of what Paul says here is this in verse 20, he says, soon God will crush Satan under our feet. The Lord’s Supper this morning reminds us that in part at least, this has already taken place. That when Jesus as our savior, when he took upon himself in our place the condemnation, the death, the judgments that was ours because of our sin and guilt, when he took that upon us so that we can be forgiven, we can be free from that condemnation, there, Satan was defeated. He no longer has sway over those who belong to Christ.

But the final fulfillment of this prophecy still awaits. And one day when Christ returns, our victory in him will be brought to consummation. When he comes again, he will banish Satan. He will banish all those who follow him from his creation forever. And in the new heavens and new earth, there will be no more presence of evil. There will be no more evil one, but he will be finally defeated forever. And that is our hope as believers in Christ. And if your faith is in Jesus today, if he is your savior from sin and death, if you have come to him as he comes to us in the gospel, if you have come to him in faith, already you have peace with God. You are already at peace with the God who was called here the God of peace, and that peace comes from your faith in Christ, from trusting in him. And by the grace of God, he will keep you in that, grace in Christ. And by God’s grace, not even Satan, not all the false teachers in the world can ever take that from you. Let’s pray.

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