Show Notes
Exodus 6:1-9
Pastor Stephen Lauer
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] About who you are and most especially for our sakes of the way of salvation in Jesus, your Son.
[00:00:10] Lord, we thank you for the great treasure that you have given us in your Son.
[00:00:16] For in him you give us not just certain things, blessings such as forgiveness of sins and the gift of your spirit, wonderful things.
[00:00:28] But through him and through all the things that he has done for us, you give us the gift of yourself that we may receive you.
[00:00:39] And in him you take possession of us so that we might be your people and you our God. O Lord God, we thank you for how your Word proclaims this clearly to us. And we ask that our hearts might be moved to you in love and praise, adoration, and that we might be moved to give ourselves to you with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength. In Jesus name we ask. Amen.
[00:01:11] Turn in your Bibles to Exodus. That's the second book of the Bible in the Old Testament, Exodus chapter 6.
[00:01:24] Actually, begin reading at the end of Exodus 5 and read through Exodus 6, verse 9.
[00:01:34] Begin reading in Exodus 5:22 and read through 6. 9.
[00:01:40] Hear God's word.
[00:01:41] Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, o Lord, why have you done evil, evil to this people?
[00:01:48] Why did you ever send me since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name?
[00:01:54] He has done evil to this people and you have not delivered your people at all.
[00:02:01] The LORD said to Moses, now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh.
[00:02:08] For with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.
[00:02:19] God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord.
[00:02:25] I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them.
[00:02:39] I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners.
[00:02:48] Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves.
[00:02:55] And I have remembered my covenant.
[00:02:57] Say therefore to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them.
[00:03:08] And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.
[00:03:15] I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.
[00:03:21] You shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
[00:03:30] I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob.
[00:03:35] I will give it to you for a possession.
[00:03:38] I am the Lord.
[00:03:43] Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.
[00:03:55] Please be seated.
[00:04:11] How do promises work in your life when people make promises to you?
[00:04:18] Usually we make promises when there's something really important that needs to happen, or somebody we need to do something important for someone else, or the other way around, they need to do something important for us.
[00:04:35] When we give promises, if we're being wise about it, usually we put some conditions on our promises, right?
[00:04:45] Maybe we give a warning. Well, I'm happy to do that for you. I promise I'll do that for you.
[00:04:50] Except if this happens or that happens, and then I'm unable to keep my promise, and that's okay.
[00:04:58] We're human beings with limitations. It's better to give some warnings and some exceptions or some reasons, some disclaimers, than to make a blanket promise that we're not able to keep some of the most important promises that you want to sort of extract out of people, you can't get them, not in an unconditional way.
[00:05:25] For example, if the Coast Guard goes out to do a search and rescue for your loved one who got stuck out in a storm on a boat, you know what they're going to tell you?
[00:05:38] They're going to tell you, we'll do our best to save your loved one, but they're not going to promise you that they can and will save your loved one.
[00:05:54] Too many things they can't control.
[00:05:56] How big is the storm, what might happen on that boat between the time that they leave the harbor to get out there. All sorts of things they can't control. And so they'll make a promise like, we'll do our best.
[00:06:11] We've got a decent shot. It's worth it, we'll go for it.
[00:06:15] Doctors make similar promises, right?
[00:06:19] If you need a doctor to treat you, let's say to do a surgery for you, that doctor might tell you, look, there's a good shot at helping you with this procedure. I'll go in and I'll do this and I'll do that, and he'll describe the procedure for you. Maybe it's removing a tumor, maybe it's repairing a tendon or something that's causing you pain. He'll explain the procedure. He'll say, we have lots of good reasons for thinking this will go well. Here's statistically how well this procedure does most cases go well.
[00:06:55] I've done X number of this procedure and these are my personal statistics.
[00:07:02] But Then he'll have to explain the risks, the possible complications that could arise.
[00:07:09] If he's being honest. He'll also tell you that statistically, you know, let's say it's a back surgery. Statistically, a certain percentage of people who get that particular procedure done on their back for that condition, a certain number of them end up with what they call a failed back surgery diagnosis. It's actually a diagnosis that you can look up.
[00:07:29] The doctor may be very, very hopeful, but he can't. And he shouldn't give you unconditional blanket promises that what he's going to do will cure you or heal you from whatever your condition is.
[00:07:46] God is different.
[00:07:49] God's promises are different.
[00:07:52] When he makes a promise to save his people for himself, his promises are unconditional.
[00:08:01] His promise to save his people that he makes in this story here is an unconditional covenant promise.
[00:08:10] We're going to look at God's covenant promises that he makes to his people here to save them. Here in Exodus 6, we're going to look at two promises that he makes.
[00:08:20] First, he makes a promise to save his people.
[00:08:23] And secondly, he makes a covenant promise to possess his people.
[00:08:30] So first the promise to save the story. Here we begin at the end of Exodus 5.
[00:08:39] Here we are dropping into the Exodus. Remember, there's the story of Moses as a baby.
[00:08:45] In order to save him from being drowned in the river, his mother puts him in the basket.
[00:08:52] Pharaoh's daughter finds the basket. Moses grows up, he leaves Egypt, and then God speaks to him from the burning bush, and he sends him back to Egypt. And he says, you go back to Egypt, and I'm going to use you to bring my people Israel out of Egypt. You're going to go tell Pharaoh, let my people go, that they may come and serve me and worship me on Mount Sinai.
[00:09:17] So here Moses goes and he does what he's been told, and it's immediately a failure. Now, God had warned him it was going to be a failure. You find that back in Exodus 4. But in Exodus 5, we find that not only is it a failure, Pharaoh says, I don't know this God, this Jehovah God that appeared to you. I don't know anything about him.
[00:09:36] These are lazy people. And if you're going to ask for them to be set free to go off and worship God for three days, then I'm going to make them work harder.
[00:09:47] And the result is that God's people suffered all the more. You can read about that story in Exodus chapter 5. But we began, we entered this story reading about how Moses comes to God and says, look, not only did Pharaoh not let them go, but now everything's worse.
[00:10:05] God's people are suffering greater.
[00:10:09] It's worse than before I came.
[00:10:13] God, what are youe doing? You brought evil upon youn people.
[00:10:20] These promises that God makes are his covenant promises to comfort his people who are suffering, suffering under slavery bondage, suffering in their sin, suffering separated from God. And God comes here to promise certain and sure salvation.
[00:10:45] He promises salvation from slavery. You see that there, Verse 5. I've heard the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves. And I've remembered my groan covenant. Therefore I will bring you out from the burdens of Egypt, the Egyptians, and deliver you from slavery.
[00:11:12] Israel was enslaved to the Egyptian nation, but particularly to an evil king, Pharaoh.
[00:11:23] This is all fitting into a broader story that we looked a couple weeks ago at Adam and Eve and mankind in the garden. How we fell and the things that we lost.
[00:11:35] Exiled from the garden, losing innocency, falling into sin, losing the hope of eternal life. All sorts of things.
[00:11:44] But here the story picks up and the story is painting a picture for us that has echoes of Adam and Eve and the early stories of Genesis.
[00:11:57] We have an evil king who oppresses God's people. Israel are the seed or children of Abraham, whom God has said, these are going to be my people, he told Abraham. I'm going to raise up a mighty nation for you.
[00:12:19] And there you had a continuation. When God made that promise to Abraham, you had a continuation and an expansion of, of the promise God had made to Adam and Eve after the fall.
[00:12:30] He promised that there would be a seed of the woman.
[00:12:35] In other words, the woman would have offsprings who were like her and Adam, believing in God, trusting in his promises, but their offspring would be persecuted by the seed of the serpent. If there would be a righteous mankind, who were God's people, following God and worshiping him, the rest of mankind would be persecuting them. There would be enmity between these two offsprings.
[00:13:03] Here we have echoes of this story, or better yet, fulfillment of this story.
[00:13:12] Mankind fell into sin, spiraled into sin and death.
[00:13:18] And then when God looked at mankind after the flood, you remember, he wipes the earth clean, he resets everything.
[00:13:25] And there he looks at mankind. He says what he sees in mankind, including in Noah, righteous Noah, God's people. What he sees are people who are in bondage or slavery to sin. The thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually.
[00:13:44] Yes, there's two seeds. But even the seed of the woman is suffering under curse and under bondage to sin. Enslaved to sin from the inside out.
[00:13:57] Yes. Enmity between two seeds. The seed of the serpent oppressing the seed of the woman, but also slavery.
[00:14:06] Slavery not just to Pharaoh, but slavery to sin.
[00:14:12] And what Pharaoh represents in the story, the prince of darkness that started this mess, the serpent, way back in the garden, in the midst of this, God brings a promise to save. It's a covenant promise, A covenant that goes back to the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We've also already drawn this all the way back to Genesis chapter three and God's promise to crush the head of the serpent to save and deliver his people from slavery.
[00:14:46] Here we have God connecting his promise to save Israel to Adam. I'm sorry. To Abraham, and then all the way back to his promise to Adam.
[00:14:59] This is a covenant promise, promise that God has bound himself to keep.
[00:15:06] In Genesis chapter 15, God told Abraham, you're going to have descendants. They're going to turn into a mighty nation.
[00:15:13] They're going to leave the land of Canaan, the promised land. They're going to go down to a faraway land. We learn what that is. Egypt. There they're going to be enslaved. They're going to be there for 400 years, and then I'm going to save them, deliver them out of that slavery.
[00:15:32] God had promised everything that happened here, everything up to this point. He had promised all of that, prophesied it to, to Abraham, but he bound himself to save his people by a promise. And you can read the story there in Genesis 15 of how God pictured himself like a smoking pot, passing between the halves of the animals, promising that he would keep this covenant, not Abraham, but he, God, would save Abraham's descendants, saved them from slavery, ultimately slavery, not just to Pharaoh, but to sin and to the devil himself.
[00:16:17] Here we have then in Genesis 6, God not just saying that he's going to promise, not just saying that he's going to save Israel, but connecting his promises to save Israel to his promises to save all of sinful mankind. That is all of the seed of the woman.
[00:16:43] To put it another way, he's connecting the salvation of Israel with the salvation of sinners, which is the whole story of the Bible story that begins in the garden, flows down through Abraham, down through Israel and her salvation out of Egypt and being brought into the promised land. And it moves all the way forward to the sending of God's Son to save his people by dying and rising.
[00:17:12] The way we talk about this story of salvation and God's covenant promises is. We call it the covenant of grace.
[00:17:20] It's fundamentally the same covenant God made with Adam and Eve in the garden when he promised to crush the serpent's head through the seed of the woman.
[00:17:30] The same fundamental promise he makes to Abraham he now makes to Israel. And he offers to sinners today, by the seed of the woman, he would crush the serpent's head.
[00:17:44] Here he promises to crush a type of that serpent Pharaoh and set his people free. This is one continuous storyline of God showing more and more of how he would save his people.
[00:17:59] You see it in how the promises are connected, like we've been talking about.
[00:18:03] Promises made to Abraham fulfilled in a kind of way in this deliverance, the exodus of Israel from Egypt. But you also see it in what he says about his name.
[00:18:16] Verse two. I'm the Lord. I'm Jehovah. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty, as El Shaddai God Almighty, but by my name, Jehovah. I did not make myself known to them. I was Abraham's God. I promised to be his God and to bless him. I'm promising to be your God, Israel, and bless you. But I'm giving you a little bit more as I enter into covenant with you. I'm telling you not just that I'm God Almighty, but I'm giving you my personal covenant name, Jehovah, the God who is the I am.
[00:18:53] That I am. You see this progression not only of the story and of the promises, but of God's own loving character, revealing more and more of himself to his people, as God would judge Pharaoh and punish the gods of Egypt. You read about those stories later here in Exodus as 3. Through the plagues, he punishes Egypt. He punishes Pharaoh and punishes their gods in a similar fashion, but in a greater way. On the cross, Jesus defeated the principalities and powers, we're told in the New Testament. There he defeated the devil and his minions, his princes of darkness.
[00:19:39] There he crushed the serpent's head.
[00:19:43] There he set his people free from bondage to sin by taking on their sins.
[00:19:49] What God promised here for Israel in the Exodus, he promised in picture form. And he gave the reality, the substance of it to us in Jesus Christ.
[00:20:02] This is the covenant of grace.
[00:20:04] It's a covenant God promises to keep.
[00:20:08] He promised that and he fulfilled it. He kept the promise by sending his Son to set his people free. There's the promise to save the covenant of grace.
[00:20:20] But he also gives a promise of possession.
[00:20:25] That's an important idea in these verses. Not just that he's going to save his people from slavery, but he says he's going to give them the land of Canaan that he promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
[00:20:40] He says, Verse 8. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give, and I will give it to you for a possession.
[00:20:49] Salvation from sin, freedom from slavery. This is wonderful. It's necessary.
[00:20:56] It's a reverse of the exile from Eden.
[00:21:00] Mankind sinned, was thrown out of the garden, driven away from the presence of God because of sin. God promises in Jesus to reverse that by taking on the sins of his people, that they might be brought back near to God and set free from sin and its slavery.
[00:21:19] But salvation from sin, freedom from slavery is not enough.
[00:21:27] We argued that a couple weeks ago.
[00:21:30] The goal of Eden wasn't Eden.
[00:21:35] Eden was a picture of something more, something greater, something better, something that couldn't be lost, something more permanent.
[00:21:47] Jesus death reverses the exile from Eden, but it gives us something more. It gives us a possession.
[00:21:57] Edom was temporary.
[00:22:00] The Tree of Life offered something permanent, something greater, a permanent possession, what the Old Testament calls an inheritance.
[00:22:12] Here God says he's going to give his people a land to possess the land of Canaan.
[00:22:19] God promised Abraham possession of Canaan.
[00:22:23] Abraham had to live in a tent, sojourning as a pilgrim throughout it.
[00:22:28] Sometimes he left the land, sometimes he came back, but it wasn't his permanent possession.
[00:22:36] Here God promises that he's going to take people who are slaves and give them a possession.
[00:22:44] People who own nothing, in fact, people who are themselves owned. They were possessions, and God is going to give them a possession.
[00:23:00] He's going to take them from being sojourners and slaves to being possessors. Those who possess an inheritance, something that they can have and hold and pass on to their children.
[00:23:14] He's going to take them from pilgrimage to possession and inheritance.
[00:23:20] There's clearly something deeper, more than just being set free from slavery. Here.
[00:23:26] You suffer now, my people, with the burdens of Egypt.
[00:23:30] But I have something greater, something more wonderful than you can see or imagine.
[00:23:38] Your own home to dwell in, your own garden, to tend your own fields, to cultivate, not for someone else, but for yourself and for your children.
[00:23:53] That must have been wonderful to hear.
[00:23:56] Though Israel struggled to hear it.
[00:24:00] Verse 9.
[00:24:02] They did not listen to Moses because of the broken spirit and harsh slavery.
[00:24:14] But there's something about this Canaan, this possession, that's just like Eden.
[00:24:22] Eden could be lost, and it was lost.
[00:24:29] Canaan could also be lost and it would be lost, like Eden. Canaan was a place flowing with a river of delights.
[00:24:44] A land flowing with milk and honey. A place teeming with delights.
[00:24:52] But Canaan was still a picture.
[00:24:56] It was a picture of something greater, something richer, something deeper, something that couldn't be lost.
[00:25:07] Something permanent, something secure, something eternal.
[00:25:17] Something that moth and rust cannot destroy, that thieves cannot break in and steal.
[00:25:26] Solomon understood this.
[00:25:29] He built a temple.
[00:25:31] Remember, there was the Tabernacle picturing God's presence with his people. We'll see that later in Exodus.
[00:25:38] Solomon built a temple, not a tent, that moved around because we're not pilgrims anymore.
[00:25:44] God now dwells among his people.
[00:25:46] It's a building made with stone and wood and gold.
[00:25:52] Beautiful, majestic, rich, permanent.
[00:26:02] You would think a place, a house for God to dwell in.
[00:26:09] And yet, when Solomon dedicates the temple, he says, will God indeed dwell on earth?
[00:26:17] Behold heaven. And the highest heaven cannot contain you.
[00:26:21] How much less this house that my hands have built.
[00:26:31] But God, he continues to pray, God, listen in heaven your dwelling and when you hear, forgive.
[00:26:47] See, Solomon knew that earth could not contain God. God did not dwell on earth, but his glory presence that he promised his people dwelt in heaven. And the temple was just a beautiful but temporary picture of that.
[00:27:11] And as the temple was a picture of that, Eden and Canaan also could not contain God and were not his permanent dwelling place.
[00:27:23] So Israel had a possession.
[00:27:27] But it was temporary.
[00:27:29] It had Canaan.
[00:27:32] But Canaan pointed to something greater, something more permanent.
[00:27:39] God's own dwelling place.
[00:27:43] And what does Jesus say when he comes to bring his people salvation?
[00:27:51] He says, I'm going to my father's house.
[00:27:58] In that house are many rooms and I go to prepare a place for you.
[00:28:06] That's what Solomon longed for. That's what Moses longed for. The writer of Hebrews tells us that's what all of the Old Testament saints longed for. They didn't seek a country here on earth or a city made with hands.
[00:28:23] They sought a better country. That is an heavenly one.
[00:28:31] Jesus went to prepare that place for you.
[00:28:34] He went to possess heaven.
[00:28:38] That's what the book of Ephesians is about.
[00:28:41] It's the New Testament book of Joshua. Jesus, the New Testament Joshua goes and takes possession of the heaven.
[00:28:51] He is seated in the heavenly places.
[00:28:54] He sits on the throne of heaven. And all authority has been given over. Into his hands.
[00:29:01] He rules over heaven.
[00:29:04] That is the inheritance that he has taken for you. And so God in Christ blesses you with every blessing.
[00:29:13] In the heavenly places, in Christ there's a greater promise than Canaan or Eden.
[00:29:25] It is heaven, and Jesus has purchased it and taken possession of it for you.
[00:29:34] That's God's promise in the covenant of grace.
[00:29:39] A promise to save you.
[00:29:42] And they promise to give you possession of heaven.
[00:29:48] Jesus says, when I come again, I will receive you to myself. That where I am, there you may also be.
[00:29:58] But there's actually something better here in the middle of Exodus 6. That's wonderful. That's great.
[00:30:07] There's actually something better than having heaven as your guaranteed inheritance.
[00:30:15] Did you catch it?
[00:30:20] There's a richer, deeper, better possession, possession of something greater and more marvelous and wonderful than heaven, if that's possible.
[00:30:31] And it is.
[00:30:34] It is the bond that God establishes between himself and his people.
[00:30:42] Look at verse seven.
[00:30:45] The result of Jesus saving his people on the cross is that God says to us, I will be your God, and you will be my people.
[00:31:00] I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.
[00:31:07] And you shall know that I am the Lord, your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.
[00:31:16] Here you have the greatest possession and treasure of all.
[00:31:24] To possess God himself and to be possessed by him.
[00:31:31] That you are his, and he gives Himself to you. He is yours.
[00:31:41] You see, God came to his people to comfort them, and he gave them the greatest comfort of all. Do you suffer?
[00:31:50] Does your back hurt? Do you live in pain, weakness, misery?
[00:31:55] Or what's worse than all of the physical miseries, the misery of our sin?
[00:32:00] Yeah, that's all of us, isn't it?
[00:32:03] God comes to you to comfort you, and he says, you see, I take you to be my people, and I give Myself to you to be your God.
[00:32:16] That's the language of mutual possession, belonging to each other.
[00:32:23] This is the end goal of the Exodus. This is the end goal of Eden and the Tree of life. It's the end goal. See, this is the joy that was set before Jesus. Why he was willing to go to the cross, that we would be his and he would be ours.
[00:32:44] This is why he laid down his life for his bride.
[00:32:49] That God and man would be united permanently, forever having one another.
[00:32:57] Not as it was in the garden, or not just as it was in the garden. Yes, without sin, sin gone. But the garden was temporary. God came and went.
[00:33:07] The tree of life pointed to that. Greater, more permanent possession of God for eternity.
[00:33:16] The Sabbath pointed to that and still points to it.
[00:33:21] God entered his eternal rest, pointing that one day we would, in Christ, enter His eternal rest.
[00:33:33] The language of mutual possession. You find it again in Exodus 19 verse 5. So after the Exodus, now we're at Sinai. God's making his covenant with his people. And he says, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.
[00:33:50] You are precious to me.
[00:33:54] Is there a treasure in heaven for you that's stored up waiting for you in Christ?
[00:34:00] Yes. And you are God's treasured possession, which he purchased with the blood of his son.
[00:34:06] You are mine. And we respond to him, I am your yours.
[00:34:12] What does that sound like to you?
[00:34:15] That's what a bride and groom say to each other on their wedding day.
[00:34:19] That's what their vows should say. They should just say, I am yours and you are mine. And she should respond, I am yours, you are mine.
[00:34:31] And that's what they say in that wonderful wedding song, the Song of Songs.
[00:34:38] I am my beloved's and my beloved is mine.
[00:34:46] It is like a marriage.
[00:34:49] The language of mutual possession is the language of marriage, because it's the language of eternal life.
[00:35:00] Jesus says, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent to know God and to be known by him, knowing each other. Marriage language. But deeper, there's the language of possession even in eternal life. 1 Corinthians 3, 2, 22.
[00:35:30] All things are yours. Paul says to the church, all things are yours, and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.
[00:35:43] God belongs to you. If all things belong to you, you belong to Christ, and therefore to God.
[00:35:52] First John 2:23.
[00:35:56] Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.
[00:36:03] What a mystery we have to look forward to promised here in Exodus 6, I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.
[00:36:17] It's going to take eternity to explore that wonderful mystery of the marriage between Christ and his Church.
[00:36:28] Whoever confesses the Son has the father also. Or 2 John 1:9, whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.
[00:36:46] And then the Old Testament language begins to make more sense.
[00:36:51] Psalm 16, verse 5.
[00:36:54] The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places. The lines, this is my inheritance in the land of Canaan. My plot that's been mapped out for me by casting of the lot.
[00:37:07] But in the previous verse, he says, the Lord is my portion and my inheritance.
[00:37:16] Forget Canaan, forget heaven.
[00:37:20] You have God himself.
[00:37:25] He is your inheritance. You see, to possess heaven means nothing if you do not possess the Lord of Heaven.
[00:37:34] To be in heaven is wonderful because you belong to him and he belongs to you.
[00:37:44] And so now we understand why Moses pleads with God in Exodus 33, after the golden calf incident.
[00:37:52] You See, he deals with the sin of the people. He pleads with God not to destroy Israel after the golden calf. And God says, fine, I'll forgive them. I won't destroy them.
[00:38:03] And then he says, now, Moses, you go up into Canaan. I'll send my angel. He'll go before you. You, he'll destroy the nations. And you go up into Canaan.
[00:38:13] But my presence isn't going with you.
[00:38:16] And now you understand why Moses then pleads and insists. He says, lord God, if you send us up without your presence, there's no point in our going.
[00:38:27] The whole point of being there in Canaan is that we might be with you.
[00:38:34] That you would be our God and we would be your people.
[00:38:38] That we would have fellowship with you.
[00:38:46] And Moses was just a picture of Jesus.
[00:38:49] If Moses, in his imperfect mediation, secured the presence of God as they went up to Canaan, which it did, pictured in the tabernacle, and the cloud and pillar of fire as it went up with them to Israel, Jesus has secured for his people forever the comfortable, merciful, loving, infinite presence of the Father.
[00:39:15] That's God's promise to sinners in his son, Jesus Christ.
[00:39:20] You will be with me forever.
[00:39:24] You shall be mine. I will be yours.
[00:39:28] The bridegroom and his church will dwell with one another forever.
[00:39:33] And now you know why Paul says in First Thessalonians, comfort one another with these words.
[00:39:42] What does he say?
[00:39:44] The words are, and so we shall always be with the Lord.
[00:39:50] Comfort one another with these words.
[00:39:53] Let's pray.
[00:39:55] Our gracious God and our Savior.
[00:39:59] We deserve nothing but judgment.
[00:40:06] But how we thank you that your mercy is full and overflowing. That nothing can hold back the rivers of your love and mercy and compassion towards us.
[00:40:20] And that you not only promised in the covenant of grace to save the people for yourself, but you have accomplished that salvation in Jesus Christ.
[00:40:31] And so what you promised Israel? That they would know that you were their God when you delivered them. We know that you are our God. For you have delivered us in Jesus Christ, your Son.
[00:40:45] O Lord, our God. We ask that you would fill our hearts with a desire, a thirst to know more of you.
[00:40:54] That we would fill our hearts with the promises of your word. That we would devote ourselves to them. We ask that it would push out the desires for sin and for worldly things.
[00:41:05] That it would push away the desires for the meager rations that the God of this world, like Pharaoh, that he dispenses to us in sinful pleasures. That you would push all of that away. And that we would see the riches that you have to feed us in Christ, that he is the bread of life, that in him you give us all that we need and that we can depend upon you wholly, body and soul, for our salvation and to sustain us in this life.
[00:41:40] O Lord our God, draw us to yourself evermore, that we might be satisfied. Having opened our mouths wide, we would be satisfied with the goodness of your house and that we might grow in our hope and longing to enter your presence in eternal life forever.
[00:42:00] In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
