Show Notes
Exodus 6:9
Pastor Stephen Lauer
View Full Transcript
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Our mighty God.
[00:00:02] We are in awe as we consider how you divided the Red Sea. You brought your people through it after having judged the Egyptians and their false gods through the plagues.
[00:00:15] Your mighty deliverance of your people extended as you brought them through the wilderness.
[00:00:22] They lacked nothing for 40 years, fed by your hand.
[00:00:29] And then you brought them into the promised land and destroyed the nations before them.
[00:00:36] But we thank you that in the death and resurrection of your Son, we have beheld and received a greater Exodus, a final exodus, a final exodus and irreversible departure from the kingdom of darkness, being brought into the kingdom of the Son of your love, our Lord Jesus Christ.
[00:01:03] O Lord our God, we ask that you would grant us hearts open to hear and to receive your Word. And to add to it faith that we might lean upon Jesus our Savior, that we might rest in him and in his completed work alone.
[00:01:28] Bless us by your spirit with faith. We ask in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:35] We're going to read God's Word from Exodus chapter six.
[00:01:40] Turn in your Bibles to Exodus six. We'll read verses one through nine. And we will focus mainly on verse nine.
[00:01:47] This evening in our sermon, hear God's Word, Exodus Chapter six, beginning in verse one. But the Lord said to Moses, now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand he will send them out.
[00:02:03] And with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.
[00:02:07] God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob, as God Almighty. But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them.
[00:02:21] I also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves.
[00:02:39] And I have remembered my covenant.
[00:02:42] Say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the Lord.
[00:02:46] And I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will deliver you from slavery to them.
[00:02:53] And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.
[00:03:01] I will take you to be my people.
[00:03:04] And I will be your God. And you shall know that I am the Lord, your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
[00:03:14] And I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.
[00:03:20] And I will give it to you for a possession.
[00:03:24] I am the Lord.
[00:03:27] Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel.
[00:03:30] But they did not listen to Moses because of their broken Spirit and harsh slavery.
[00:03:42] Please be seated.
[00:03:50] It was about the middle of August that we began meandering or bouncing around in the Old Testament.
[00:04:00] And maybe you're wondering where we're headed.
[00:04:05] I'll recount for you briefly where we've been.
[00:04:09] We began in Psalm 1:2.
[00:04:13] And there we saw that in the law of God. The Old Testament use of the word law, which generally encompasses the five books of Moses, is in the law of God is revealed not only God's righteousness and justice and therefore how we're to live, but the law also reveals God's mercy in Christ Jesus. Because the law not only showed us our sin, but the law also pointed the way to Christ in the types and shadows, especially of the sacrifices.
[00:04:53] We saw God's mercy revealed in Christ in the law. Then we went to Psalm 145:3 and there we looked at the command to praise God for His unsearchable greatness. And we pondered together God's infinite nature, his vastness which has no end.
[00:05:17] And we saw that that command is a command to praise God. God for his unsearchable greatness, his infinity, to praise him forever.
[00:05:29] That is, God's character is related to eternal life.
[00:05:35] That God made us to praise him forever. That forever we might be knowing more and more of who he is and responding to the more that we learn about him. As we search out his unsearchable greatness, we praise him more and more forever.
[00:05:53] Then we went to Genesis 2:9, where we looked at the tree of life. And there we saw that God in the tree of life, offered Adam something more than life in the garden. He was offering to Adam eternal life. The thing that we talked about and saw in Psalm 145, 3, praising God forever. We saw that that was a thing that God had offered to Adam.
[00:06:19] Adam lost not just life in the garden, but he lost the possibility of eternal life forever with God.
[00:06:29] Then we came to our text that we looked at last time, and we'll look at again tonight, Exodus chapter six.
[00:06:37] And last time we looked at this, we saw that God, after the fall, had made a covenant with with man, a covenant of grace, one he made with Adam implicitly, explicitly, with Abraham, and then here with his people Israel.
[00:06:56] And we looked at the covenant promises, the promises of the covenant of grace, where God promised to save his people out of slavery to sin, pictured by slavery in Egypt. And he promised to bring them into an everlasting inheritance pictured in the land of Canaan, an inheritance that consisted not just in heaven, entering God's eternal dwelling place, but possessing God himself.
[00:07:26] So we saw the promises of the covenant of grace.
[00:07:31] Tonight we want to look at how those promises are received.
[00:07:39] And we see that mainly in a negative fashion. But we'll look at it from both sides here in verse 9. So God has proclaimed his gracious promises to save his people, to give them the land flowing with milk and honey, the land of Canaan, to give them Himself, that He would be their God and they would be his people.
[00:08:04] Do they get it?
[00:08:07] Does someone ever say something to you, something that he thinks is pretty clear and obvious, is good even? You hear it and you don't get it.
[00:08:18] You don't understand them.
[00:08:21] Maybe you've had that experience with your spouse or your children. I'm sure you've had that experience with your spouse or your children. You've told them something you were excited about, you thought it was wonderful and good, and they don't seem to get it. Now there could be lots of reasons for that. Maybe they don't have the context that you have, why you're excited about this thing. Maybe you weren't very clear how you said it. Just maybe right.
[00:08:45] Maybe they hear it and they're so shocked by the words that you say, they don't get it.
[00:08:52] They don't hear you.
[00:08:54] Maybe it sounds too good to be true. And so they sort of don't really get it.
[00:09:02] Here God tells Israel the most wonderful things that slaves in Egypt could hear.
[00:09:09] That he's going to save them, he's going to make them his people, give them this wonderful land, and they don't have to do anything.
[00:09:17] He's going to do it all.
[00:09:20] And guess what? Look at verse nine, they don't get it.
[00:09:26] Moses, God through Moses, tells them these wonderful promises of salvation and of an inheritance. And we read, Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.
[00:09:47] Tonight we want to look at how we are called to hear God's promises.
[00:09:52] First, by considering this hearing they didn't hear. It's this hearing that they were supposed to do. Secondly, looking at why they don't hear the not hearing part. And finally, considering the reasons God gives them and us to hear and to receive his promises. So first hearing the promises of God. Well, verse nine tells us they heard the words that Moses said, but they didn't really hear them. They didn't get them wonderful promises, but they don't get them.
[00:10:31] Now the same thing happens with us in the covenant of grace. And we're going to kind of flip back all throughout the sermon, flip back and forth between Israel and ourselves, because we fundamentally receive the same gracious promises God promises to save us from our sins and to give us eternal life with him.
[00:10:56] Israel was given them in pictures, but ultimately they were to receive the same promised realities. When Jesus, the Messiah would come. He's now come. And so that's what we receive in Jesus.
[00:11:11] Now, initially from some of the Israelites, the reason that they, or I should say they, didn't hear and get God's promises spoken through Moses.
[00:11:25] But it was a temporary thing. In other words, they didn't get it right away, but because of their broken spirit, the harshness of the slavery that kept them from hearing and receiving the promises.
[00:11:35] But eventually some of them would get God's promises and receive them. They would hear it and believe it, understand it, rest in it for a few. Some of the Israelites would eventually get it, but most of them didn't. We read that very clearly in 1 Corinthians 10:5, where Paul tells us that with most of them, most of this generation of Israelites God was not pleased with. Most of them didn't hear it this day, and they never truly heard it.
[00:12:12] Some of them eventually heard it, but most of them did not.
[00:12:17] Now, they didn't just hear the promises on this day, the promises of salvation from Egypt and that God would cause Pharaoh to send them out of Egypt, that he would judge Egypt as he sent his people out of Egypt.
[00:12:33] They heard those promises through Moses, as in they heard the words, and they eventually experienced this exodus that God promised.
[00:12:43] They saw the 10 plagues they experienced the first couple of them, and then the rest of them they saw happening to the Egyptians, and they themselves were spared.
[00:12:52] They actually walked through the Red Sea on dry ground and turned around and watched God destroy, drowning Pharaoh's army in the Red Sea.
[00:13:01] They went to Sinai and heard God's voice with their own ears in the wilderness. They ran out of food and they ate the manna that God rained down from heaven on them. They drank water from the rock.
[00:13:16] They followed God pictured in the pillar of cloud by day, the pillar of fire by night. They experienced the whole of the Exodus.
[00:13:27] But what Moses says about them here, that they did not hear what God was saying to them, that held true. They continued not to hear and receive God's promises. And this is confirmed for us lots of places in Scripture, but one of the easiest places to see it is in Psalm 78:22. And then you can look also at verse 32. It says a similar sort of thing.
[00:13:54] Psalm 78:21 says, Therefore the Lord heard this. He's speaking of the Israelites who left in the Exodus, these ones who didn't hear the promises. Therefore the Lord heard this about them and was furious. So a fire was kindled against Jacob and anger came up against Israel. And then he gives us the reason why.
[00:14:17] Because they did not believe in God, did not trust in his salvation.
[00:14:25] God promised to save them and they didn't just not hear it in the sense of didn't get it. But it's deeper.
[00:14:32] They eventually saw his saving works, they saw his promises fulfilled in the Exodus, and they did not believe him.
[00:14:45] Would Moses is saying when he writes here in verse nine, that they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.
[00:14:54] He's saying, not that they didn't hear with their ears, but they didn't hear and they didn't believe God's promises in their hearts.
[00:15:06] Their response to hearing the gospel, the promises of the covenant of grace, of salvation and eternal life, was to reject it in unbelief.
[00:15:18] They didn't receive the promises.
[00:15:21] Ultimately they died in the wilderness. Those who didn't hear and believe, they didn't enter the promised land and receive that picture of eternal life because they didn't believe.
[00:15:36] So the principle here is that to hear is to believe.
[00:15:42] To hear the gospel and to receive it is to believe God's promises. And only those who truly believe in God's promises receive salvation and eternal life.
[00:15:57] To put it in New Testament language, which is really the fulfillment ultimately of what was pictured in this covenant here through Moses with the Israelites, put it in New Testament language what we might say Christian language. The principle is that only those who believe in Jesus Christ receive the promises of the covenant of grace.
[00:16:22] Acts 16:31 says it this way, believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.
[00:16:31] Romans 10 puts it this way, if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
[00:16:43] God promises salvation and eternal life in the covenant of grace. And we receive it when we hear the gospel preached and we respond in faith. They heard the gospel preached through Moses.
[00:16:59] They didn't hear it, meaning they rejected it in unbelief.
[00:17:06] What we see too here, that's a warning for all of us who are baptized members of the church, outwardly, visibly, is that many are outwardly brought into the covenant of grace. Most of the Israelites standing before Moses, hearing those gospel promises of the covenant of grace Most of them, all of them, were outwardly in the covenant grace.
[00:17:30] They were not baptized, they were circumcised.
[00:17:34] But similarly, they were outwardly in the covenant of grace.
[00:17:39] But because they did not believe, they were not truly recipients of the promises of the covenant of grace.
[00:17:48] Many today are outwardly in the covenant of grace. They are baptized, they live like Christians, they come to church, they seem like nice people, but they never believed truly from the heart. God's promises of salvation by believing in Jesus Christ.
[00:18:07] Now, this is the place where we all start out, where the Israelites were. Every single one of us starts out in a place of unbelief. We start out in bondage to the kingdom of darkness and slavery to sin, like the Israelites were.
[00:18:25] We hear the gospel preached and how is it that we come to saving faith?
[00:18:33] The only way that we come to saving faith, to going from not hearing and not believing to hearing and believing, is when God opens our hearts and gives us the gift of faith. This is what he does in Acts 16, when Paul and Barnabas go, I'm sorry, Paul and Silas go and preach the gospel to. To Lydia, the seller of purple silks. She hears the gospel, she hears the promise. Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. And we read that God opened her heart to believe.
[00:19:05] Faith is a gift, a gift produced in the hearts of sinners by God through His Holy Spirit.
[00:19:12] We said that the covenant of grace ultimately depends upon God and His promises and his work to save. And it's true, even in hearing and believing.
[00:19:23] It's because he works in the hearts of those who hear to open them and receive Jesus by faith.
[00:19:32] So why do the Israelites not hear? They have hard hearts, unbelieving hearts, and they have yet to be open to receive the gospel.
[00:19:43] Now, even those who have been opened to receive the gospel to believe in Jesus, we too still struggle to hear God's promises.
[00:19:54] In other words, what the Israelites were struggling with here, some had yet to believe and would eventually. But even they would struggle, just like we struggle all throughout the Christian life. We have to be pointed back to these promises that God promises to save us. We don't save ourselves. He promises to give us eternal life. We do not earn it. He promises to set us free from sins. We do not set ourselves free from sin.
[00:20:26] Israel had to trust in God, not just in Egypt, not just going through the Red Sea, but all the way through the wilderness and all the way into the promised land.
[00:20:36] Now, this generation, most of them died in unbelief. But the Generation that grew up in the wilderness, they grew up believing.
[00:20:44] They grew up eating the manna day after day. They knew where salvation and life came from. It came from God. And it was that believing generation with Joshua, the Old Testament, Jesus, with Joshua, that believing generation entered the promised land.
[00:21:03] You see, the whole of the Christian life, not just its beginning, but the whole of it is to be lived by faith in Jesus Christ and in God's promises to us in him. You hear that in Paul's language in Galatians, chapter 2, verse 20.
[00:21:20] I am crucified with Christ, died to sin, set free from sin and bondage to sin. I am crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me and the life that I now live. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.
[00:21:43] My Christian life began by dying to sin in Christ. And it continues the whole way through, not by my own life, but by the life of Christ, his resurrection power living in me. You see, the whole of the Christian life is lived by faith in his promises.
[00:22:01] And yes, believers continue to struggle with faith and unbelief. And we continue to need to be pointed back to Christ and his saving work. So you've heard God's promises.
[00:22:15] You've heard them. If you hadn't heard them before, you've heard them tonight.
[00:22:20] Do you believe in them? They bounced off your ears? Have they hit your heart?
[00:22:26] Have you turned to him and been saved?
[00:22:32] There is hearing the promises of the gospel. Secondly, we said we would look at not hearing the not hearing part. Israel, we're told, could not hear.
[00:22:42] They could not believe God's comforting promises of salvation and of an inheritance that they would possess by his grace.
[00:22:53] Why?
[00:22:54] You see, the why for them and the why for us are very similar.
[00:22:59] Why didn't they hear and believe? Why don't we hear and believe? Whether because the first time we hear the gospel and our hearts aren't changed yet, or all through the Christian life.
[00:23:12] Why do we hear the promises and struggle to believe?
[00:23:17] Moses says it is because of the broken spirit of the people and their harsh slavery.
[00:23:27] Several reasons that we can pull out of this broken spirit and harsh slavery.
[00:23:35] What were the people looking at that led them to a broken spirit, an inability to turn and believe?
[00:23:46] They were looking at Pharaoh and his taskmasters.
[00:23:52] They were looking at the one who held them in bondage.
[00:23:59] You read that in chapter five.
[00:24:04] Moses goes, and God says, go to Pharaoh, Tell him to let my people go.
[00:24:08] So he goes. He says, pharaoh Let my people go. And Pharaoh says, no way. I don't know this Jehovah God. I don't know anything about him.
[00:24:18] But guess what? I've decided that these Israelites are lazy, so I'm going to make their work harder. So he tells his taskmasters to go and make their work harder.
[00:24:28] And the people suffer greatly and their spirit is broken.
[00:24:35] As Christians, we deal with this too.
[00:24:39] The Prince of Darkness, the devil, is our old master.
[00:24:44] And for the one who doesn't yet know Christ, he's currently your master.
[00:24:49] He is miserable. He wants nothing but misery in your life.
[00:24:55] He'll do everything in his power to ruin you by tempting you into more and more sin.
[00:25:02] He wants to break you down.
[00:25:04] Go read the story of the Gerasene demoniac, living in all utter bondage and darkness, living in tombs, living like a man, dead.
[00:25:19] He breaks us down. And then we look at him and he seems too powerful for us.
[00:25:24] Like Israel and Pharaoh, we want to be free from our sin. We want to be free from the devil.
[00:25:32] And the more we try to break free, the harder it seems to get.
[00:25:38] Ever say, okay, I'm going to stop sinning, and I'm going to try really hard to break whatever this bad pattern is.
[00:25:44] And usually the temptations get worse.
[00:25:49] We experience all these things and we say to ourselves, pharaoh's too strong, and we're discouraged.
[00:25:57] We hear the message of the Gospel, but we can't imagine a Savior that could deliver us from such a master.
[00:26:07] That's where Israel was. That's where many sinners are. That's where many Christians who've been set free get dragged back into old sins and slavery.
[00:26:18] We look at the Master, but we look at the bondage itself, the slavery.
[00:26:24] It isn't just the devil trying to oppress us, but the sin itself is misery. It's like chains that drag us down, like a burden weighing us down. Right? Our lies, our lust, our laziness.
[00:26:40] You can go on. Whatever sins have burdened you for years, it burdens us not just with the awfulness and the misery of the sin, it burdens us with shame and guilt. And all of that weighs us down. And it feels like chains we can't break out of.
[00:26:59] And like a burden on our backs, it presses us down. And as we're pressed down, we can't look up.
[00:27:06] All we feel and see and experience is the slavery.
[00:27:11] And so when we hear of freedom in the gospel message, it rings hollow.
[00:27:18] This is all we've ever known, is this sin and its grip on us.
[00:27:23] And how it keeps us in that cycle and it seems impossible. Too good to be true.
[00:27:32] Not in this passage, but later in Israel's journey, you'll see that Israel looks at what we might call Satan's blessings.
[00:27:42] The Israelites look back from the wilderness. They look back fondly.
[00:27:47] The words sound very fond, wistful on how wonderful life was in slavery under Pharaoh.
[00:27:58] They ran out of food in the wilderness and they grumble against God and they longed to go back to Egypt. They said, would that we had died in Egypt, where we sat with meat pots and we ate bread to the full.
[00:28:16] You read the story and you go, you guys are not nuts.
[00:28:20] You were miserable. You were crying out to God for deliverance in Egypt. And now you look back on that and you say, boy, we had it good.
[00:28:28] We ate good.
[00:28:31] But as sinners, that's what Satan's meager rations seem like to us.
[00:28:36] When we fulfill our lusts and pleasures, when we get angry, when we shouldn't, we feel good about it.
[00:28:46] And when it's all we know, it seems pretty good.
[00:28:51] Yeah, there are mists, fleeting pleasures. We keep chasing that pleasure, that sinful goodness blessing that Satan seems to give us.
[00:29:02] But as we're doing it, that's what we're chasing. That's what we're looking to.
[00:29:08] And because our hearts are so skewed by it, we hear of a promised land, a place of purity and blessing without sin, without slavery. Only freedom in the kingdom of God.
[00:29:23] And we won't hear it.
[00:29:27] Land flowing with milk and honey. No, I want the meat pots of Egypt.
[00:29:33] No sin and blessings of heaven.
[00:29:36] I'll take the sin.
[00:29:38] It felt good last time I tried it.
[00:29:42] Why don't we hear the gospel?
[00:29:44] Because these are the things that captivate our minds and hearts. And there's lots of other reasons throughout scripture, but these are some tied, flowing directly out of Israel's experience. And I think we can relate to them.
[00:29:58] Dear sinner, don't look at these things.
[00:30:02] Don't look at Satan. Don't look at your sin and its bondage and its guilt and its shame.
[00:30:09] And don't look at the pleasures of sin that Satan holds forth to you.
[00:30:14] They're going to keep you down.
[00:30:17] And like Israel, your heart will be broken.
[00:30:21] You'll suffer under harsh slavery. And you will not turn to Christ.
[00:30:27] But you need to hear Christ. You need to hear the message of the gospel. You need to turn to him.
[00:30:35] Mind, heart, soul, body, all of you, to hear his voice, to receive the promises of the covenant, to believe in Jesus.
[00:30:48] Here are some Reasons you need to hear the promises of the covenant of grace in Jesus Christ.
[00:30:56] First of all, these promises of the covenant of grace, the promise of salvation from sin, deliverance from sin and bondage to sin, and the promise of eternal life in heaven with God.
[00:31:08] These covenant promises are backed by God himself.
[00:31:13] That's what God does here when he gives these promises of salvation to the Israelites. Look at verse two, look at verse eight, and then look in the middle at verse six. You see a phrase that's repeated in all three places.
[00:31:29] He begins by saying, I am the Lord, I am Jehovah.
[00:31:35] He ends talking about his covenant promises by saying in verse eight, I am the Lord.
[00:31:44] And then in the middle of it all, in verse six, he says, I am the Lord.
[00:31:51] The basis of God's promises, the reason that is given for him keeping his promise, most fundamentally is that he is Jehovah God.
[00:32:06] He backs his promises.
[00:32:08] You pull out a dollar bill, it's backed by the word of the US Government, right? Federal Reserve note says on it little promise by the US government that that dollar is worth something.
[00:32:24] God's promises aren't backed by by an earthly government or an earthly king. They're backed by the eternal God, Jehovah. God refers to his self existence. He says. Moses says, what God should I tell the people of Israel sent me to save them?
[00:32:43] He says, tell them, Jehovah, I am sent you, the one who is, who was and who will be, the one who has always existed, who depends on the nothing and nobody, who needs nothing from anyone.
[00:32:58] In fact, everything in existence other than God was created by him, comes from him and depends on him.
[00:33:05] Everything comes from him.
[00:33:07] He made the devil before he fell.
[00:33:10] Whatever the devil does, he made Pharaoh. Whatever Pharaoh does is dependent on God allowing him to do it.
[00:33:20] God alone has the power to save his people, not just from Egypt out of Pharaoh and destroy Pharaoh and our enemies, but to deliver sinners out of the kingdom of darkness and to defeat the devil, the prince of darkness.
[00:33:34] He alone has the promise, the power to promise salvation.
[00:33:38] And he promised it.
[00:33:41] And what's more, because he is God, the one who does not change, when he makes a promise, he keeps it.
[00:33:50] So when you hear the promise from God that I will save you, turn to my son and believe in him and receive salvation.
[00:33:59] You can hear and believe that promise because it's backed by the one who has the power to keep it.
[00:34:06] Hear him and believe him.
[00:34:09] Secondly, you must hear and believe and receive the promises of the covenant of grace because God has kept them.
[00:34:23] If you look at verse seven.
[00:34:26] God says, I will take you to be my people future.
[00:34:31] I will be your God future. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
[00:34:41] You will in the future know that I have saved you because I brought you out of Egypt and out of slavery.
[00:34:52] This was still future for Israel.
[00:34:55] This was a promise yet to be fulfilled. Now, in a short period of time, it was fulfilled.
[00:35:04] But what God has done for sinners in His Son, Jesus Christ, that promise is yes and amen. Paul says, it's completed. It is fulfilled. God so loved the world that he sent from our perspective and from the Gospel writer's perspective, he sent in the past. He sent his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. He sent His Son to die on the cross.
[00:35:34] He promised he would save sinners through the death of his son. Then he sent His Son and saved sinners.
[00:35:41] Salvation is accomplished.
[00:35:44] It's not just a promise that would one day happen in the future. It has happened.
[00:35:51] Salvation is free, full, because Jesus has accomplished it.
[00:36:00] You see, Jesus died for sinners.
[00:36:04] Colossians 1:13 says that he delivered us from the domain of darkness.
[00:36:10] Past tense. He brought us out of slavery and bondage to sin and the evil one. And he transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
[00:36:20] That's Jesus, past tense. That's what he's done for his people, his church.
[00:36:29] Dear Christian, do not look to your sin, to bondage, to slavery, to the past, to the evil one.
[00:36:37] Look to what God has done for you in Jesus Christ.
[00:36:42] Are you struggling with sin? Do you feel like you've been pulled back into it? Do you not even know what sin you're struggling with?
[00:36:50] You wonder, what do I repent of? Everything seems awful and off, and I don't understand what's going on. Don't look at those things.
[00:36:58] Turn to Jesus.
[00:37:01] Believe in Him.
[00:37:02] Hear his promises. Receive them and be saved.
[00:37:08] Jesus cries out to you from heaven, today I have set you free. Whom the Son has set free is free indeed.
[00:37:19] You're not asleep to sin anymore. You're a child of. Of the King.
[00:37:24] Look to Him. He will help you with your sin. He'll take that burden off of you because he's already taken it on the cross.
[00:37:36] Finally, you must believe the promises of the covenant of grace, not only because they're backed by God's word, His promise, because he's kept that promise in His Son, but because Jesus has already taken possession of your inheritance for you. You, you have salvation and forgiveness, deliverance from sin now.
[00:37:57] Yes, praise God.
[00:38:00] But what's future eternal life. Jesus holds that secure for you in heaven.
[00:38:07] He didn't just rise from the dead, he ascended into heaven. He sits on the throne of heaven. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. Heaven belongs to Jesus and eternal life is his to give free freely to you, his people.
[00:38:25] So Paul says that the Father has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.
[00:38:33] Why?
[00:38:34] Because Jesus has taken possession of belongs to Him.
[00:38:39] And because it belongs to him, it belongs to you.
[00:38:44] Yes, it's still future. Yes. You still struggle with sin.
[00:38:49] Yes, there's still misery and a world under curse.
[00:38:53] But the world that has no curse and the world that has no sin, Jesus has taken that for you.
[00:39:04] It's His. And because it's his, he holds it on your behalf.
[00:39:11] And he seals to you the earnest, the down payment of that inheritance. Inheritance is the Holy Spirit that He pours out on you in your heart.
[00:39:23] He has fulfilled already in his person, taking possession of heaven and eternal life for you. And so you can be sure that one day he will come again and take you his bride and bring you into that heavenly dwelling place. One day you could be sure that you will sit at the wedding supper of the Lamb.
[00:39:46] You can be sure that the Father will receive you and be delighted over you, because he delights over Jesus.
[00:39:56] Stop looking at Satan and his meager rations.
[00:40:00] They're not fit for a child or daughter of the King.
[00:40:05] Not when all of God's riches in heaven belong to you.
[00:40:10] And if you don't know Jesus yet, He says, behold, I stand at the door and knock.
[00:40:19] If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come into him and dine with him and he with me.
[00:40:29] Open your heart wide to Jesus.
[00:40:31] Receive him and he will receive you into his heavenly kingdom. And let's pray.
[00:40:40] Almighty God, and only Savior of sinners, we thank youk for promises made, kept and fulfilled for sinners in Jesus, our Savior.
[00:40:55] O Lord, we thank youk that this is so clear to us now.
[00:41:00] Though it was very difficult for the Israelites to see.
[00:41:05] But now that Christ has come, all of this is revealed.
[00:41:11] But we confess that we still struggle.
[00:41:17] We look back to sin. We look back to slavery. It pulls us down. It takes our eyes off of you. Lord Jesus.
[00:41:26] Lord, set us free from all of that. Take away our doubts, our fears, our misunderstandings.
[00:41:32] Help us as we encounter these struggles and trials to immediately turn to you and to receive from you assurance of forgiveness of sins. To find in you comfort, to receive from you strength by the power of your spirit. That we in your strength might do battle with sin, even with the forces of darkness, our old masters, and that in you we might fight and overcome, standing in faith and trusting in you, Lord Jesus, we thank you that salvation depends not on us, not even on our faith, but upon you, the one who gives us faith and gives us all things. Jesus name we pray. Amen.
[00:42:23] Let's turn in our songbooks at 240.
