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{# Hidden until the magnifying glass (or "/") opens it. On phones the buttons get their own row so the query isn't squeezed. #}Father, it is very easy, far easier for us to see sin in somebody else's life than it is to see sin in our own life.
And Father, we confess before you that most of the time we are not aware of the fact that we are doing this. We ask, Lord, that as part of your grace to us, as you make Jesus and what he did for us on the cross and who he is more real to our hearts, that you would, Father, help us to change this, that you would help us to see the sin in our own lives and deal with it rather than fretting and being angry and resentful over the sin in others' lives.
So we ask, Lord, that you would do this work in our lives this morning. And we ask this in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Saviour. Amen. Please be seated. So, this text that I had to read this week convicted me of sin.
I don't know if it will convict you of sin, but it convicted me of a sin in my life that was unrecognized, and it's been unrecognized for about a year and a half. And it was a bit of a shock to realize that I was guilty of this sin.
And I'm not going to go into all of the details of the sin, but the text is going to, we'll see what it does when we have a look at it together. But I want to begin by that word of testimony. And I thank you for those of you who pray for me throughout the week that I can preach God's word well.
Part of that, preaching it well, is that I also will be convicted by the scriptures. So thank you for praying for me. So let's look. What sin was it that God convicted me of this week?
Well, we're reading, we're preaching through the whole book of Mark, and we're getting towards the end. We're at Mark chapter 15. And if you would turn to that, Mark chapter 15, verse 1, if you're using these little booklets, it's on page 96.
And Mark is an ancient eyewitness biography of Jesus written while many eyewitnesses were alive. And what's just happened before this in the story is that we're still part of the 24 hours that changed the world because Jewish days begin on sundown, not midnight or not when we wake up, but it's sundown.
And so the very first day of Passover began. And this is now just before dawn. And we're still in the first day of the Passover celebrations. And what's just happened two episodes before this is the Jewish leaders have brought Jesus to the high priest's house.
And one of the most profound statements of who Jesus is is made by Jesus's enemy, where the enemy says to Jesus, aren't you the Messiah, the God, the Son of God.
And that's the most profound, precise description of Jesus in the Gospels made by his enemy. And Jesus says that's true. And that's just happened.
And now we've moved to a slightly different part of this. Then after that, we have Peter's denial of Jesus three times. And now we come to this story before us. And here is how it goes. And as soon, verse one, and as soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council.
And they bound Jesus and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate. Now, just sort of pause here. If you're not that familiar with the Bible, Pilate is the Roman governor of this region.
He has the power of life and death. He has the, he in a sense rules as the emperor's representative and is in charge of the armies as well that subjugate the Jewish people.
And this is not an unusual time for this to happen. Just to give you fair warning, my wife and kids will tell you I am not an early riser. I aspire to be an early riser, but I rarely reach what I aspire.
And if you came around an hour before sunrise to have me talk to you, I would be grumpy. I would try to cover it, but it would make me grumpy because I wish I was still in bed.
But for Roman men of this rank in those days, you began the day just as it's during the skies getting a little bit light. That's when you begin your day. You get everything done by noon.
And then you, I don't know, you read poetry, you drink wine, you feast, you, I don't know, you do whatever a Roman gentleman can do. That's how your days were structured.
So this is not an unusual time. And the Jewish leaders needed and wanted Pilate to sentence Jesus to death.
And so that's why they brought him there. Because, and so what the charge is actually is very, very interesting. And some of you might have heard his odd answer and I'll explain it to it.
Let's look what happens next, verse 2. And Pilate asked Jesus, are you the king of the Jews? So the Jewish people, the Jewish leaders have given the charge. They said, Pilate, you need to condemn this man.
He claims to be the king of the Jews. And Pilate then in verse 2 asked Jesus, are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus answered him, you have said so. And so what's happened here is the Roman authorities don't give a, don't give, they don't care the least whether or not, I mean, Jewish religion is just a superstitious fable that for some odd reason is tolerated by the Roman Empire.
In fact, it's only tolerated by the Roman Empire because it's ancient. And Romans loved old things. And so because the Jewish people could say their faith goes way back, over a thousand years, 1400, 2000 years, the Romans gave it lots of space because they respected that.
But they wouldn't believe for a moment their odd superstitions. And if they were said, you know, by the way, just Jesus claims to be the Messiah, God, the Son of God, Pilate would have yawned. So what happened is they translate the Messiah part into a different title that will have to get Pilate's attention, which is the king of the Jewish people.
And so Pilate hears the charge. He asked Jesus, are you the king of the Jews? And Jesus' answer, it's literally translated. But what it functionally means is this.
It's really like Jesus saying, well, I wouldn't put it in those terms, but yes. That's what Jesus says. I wouldn't put it in those terms, but yes. He's not going to get into a bit of a quibble.
He's not going to take out his Old Testament and show Pilate from the Bible, all the Bible texts and all of the theology of what it means to be the Messiah. He says, well, I wouldn't use that descriptive term, but yes.
Yes, that's what, in effect, Jesus does. Now, the next bit seems a bit odd to us, and that's because of the great cultural distance between Canada and this time period.
Although it's not a great cultural distance in many, many, many parts of the world, in fact, most of the world. I think a couple of weeks ago I was sharing how, when I was still part of the Diocese of Ottawa, I got called into the bishop to see the Bishop of Ottawa on a Saturday afternoon to be fired.
And I was needlessly, not needlessly, I was obviously very worried about this, and I'd asked lots of people to pray about it. And one of the people who gave me some last-second advice was a lawyer.
And she said to me, when you go into this meeting, first of all, she said, you know, foil them by not going alone, but bring in a couple of people, and I did. But the main piece of advice, she said, George, just remember, they have to prove you're guilty.
You don't have to prove you're innocent. So what you do, if you're in there, you just say the same thing over and over and over again. They make this, say, George, you've done blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You just answer, I am a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada who is faithful to his ordination vows. And then they could say, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, why you're a terrible, evil person.
And my response is, I am a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada who is faithful to my ordination vows. And they have to prove that what you've just said isn't true. You don't have to prove that you're not guilty of those offenses.
And, of course, in Canadian law, you don't have to testify at your own trial. The crown has to give sufficient evidence of your guilt. And you don't have to prove your innocence. They have to prove your guilt.
But it's the complete opposite here at this time period, just as it is for most of the world in the world today. And so that explains what happens next, which is very odd and Pilate's amazement.
Look at what happens next, verse 3. And the chief priest accused Jesus of many things. And Pilate again asked him, Have you no answer to make? See how many charges they bring against you.
But Jesus made no further answer, so that Pilate was amazed. You see, in those days, he had to prove his innocence. And they're successful.
What you see between verses 5 and 6, in a sense it leaves a bit out, but it's obvious from the context, is that they're successful. Between verses 5 and 6, Pilate has come to the conclusion that there's grounds for the capital offense, against Jesus, that he is king of the Jews.
At least there is until there's more evidence, or something else happens, but he's guilty. And now it's going to be a matter of having some type of sentence. But here we come to something in the story which is deeply human, but maybe just for a couple of us.
How many of us occasionally like to do something just to piss a person off? I might be the only person in the room who's like that.
But you all might know somebody who just occasionally does something, or maybe, you know the phrase, yank someone's chain? You do something to yank their chain, to get a reaction, right?
To get them all hot and bothered. And that's what happens next in the story. Pilate yanks the chief priest's chain. Look what happens in verse 6.
Now at the feast, that's the Passover feast, they're still in the first day of the Passover feast. At the feast, Pilate used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked. And among the rebels in prison who had committed murder in the insurrection, there was a man called Barabbas.
And the crowd came up and began to ask Pilate to do as he usually did for them. And he answered them saying, do you want me to release for you the king of the Jews?
So just a couple of things. So here's the thing. First of all, some of you, if you're using different Bible translations, you see a different word there than rebel. You might see the word robber. And as I've explained before at different times, and those of you who speak multiple languages, when you speak multiple languages, you know that sometimes there's no perfect translation from one word, from one language to another.
And in a book like this, they can't put all of the different options. Like if you were translating for somebody on the fly, you could do that. But when you're just writing, you can't.
And so it could be robber, it could be rebel. But the point is this. The chief priest would have hated both robbers and rebels. Why?
Well, it's a little bit like Robin Hood. And Robin Hood, the story, you know, he robs from the rich to give to the poor. Now, unlike Robin Hood, Barabbas would have robbed from the rich, kept most of it himself, and given some to the poor.
Now, who are rich? All the people who've accused Jesus. They loathed guys like Barabbas. They were all probably throwing a party, saying, good, I'm so glad Barabbas and a couple of his buddies, they're going to be, they're getting executed.
They won't be robbing us anymore. And so then, what does Pilate do? Pilate says, well, I'm going to give you guys two options. And the options are, you can let Barabbas free, and you can let Jesus free, but the chief priest hated both of them.
See, Pilate has a bit of a smirk. He's pulling their chain. He's trying to both piss off, am I allowed to say that in church?
I just did. Anyway, it's an English phrase, you all know what it means. It's a metaphor. And he wants to do that. And he also, as we're going to see in the story, he wants to curry favor with the crowd.
And in fact, that's the whole thing about why he's going to release somebody like Jesus to the crowd. Now, some of you might be familiar with the fact that there's this big controversy around this, because lots of skeptics say that there's no record that Pilate ever did something like that.
Now, just, I want to translate that for you. If I was to say that something happened 10 years ago on Parliament Hill, I have people here in the room who were working on Parliament Hill 10 years ago.
And lots of people here know how Parliament Hill works. And if I was to say something like that, there's literally hundreds and hundreds and probably thousands of people who could tell you how Parliament Hill works and what I just said was nonsense.
How many sources do we have for what happened at this time period with Pilate outside of the Gospels? Well, it's actually not zero, but it's just one, Josephus.
There's another small, a little bit by a Roman historian that talks about some of these types of things. But the fact of the matter is, is that Josephus didn't write about every single thing that Pilate did.
Like, it's a foolish type of charge to say that unless Pilate, unless Josephus talked about it, it didn't happen. Well, that's like a ridiculous thing to say. And the other thing about it is, what Pilate does here is as ancient as the hills and as contemporary to today.
Would any of us be surprised if we heard that Putin had pardoned one of his allies? No. And I'm not being political here. What do we all know Biden is going to do in the last week in office?
He is going to pardon his cronies. And I'm not being political. If Ron DeSantis becomes president afterwards, he's going to do it when he comes to an end of his office as well.
If AOC becomes the next president, she'll do it. It's as modern as the contemporary world and it's as ancient as the hills that people in power do things like this.
And it's a very simple type of thing. It's no skin off of Pilate's nose and it makes him look generous and full of, yeah, just generosity.
The city of Jerusalem has, you know what, five, eight, ten times more people than usual. He does it at this time and he can sort of feel good about himself. It's good PR and it's just, it's a completely and utterly believable type of thing that Pilate says, he foils what the Jewish leaders want.
He gives them heart palpitations. They're now sweating from their armpits and all those other parts that can sweat. First of all, they are really bothered that Pilate's made that offer, those two people, and they're worried that Jesus is going to go free.
But the fact of the matter is they want Barabbas dead more than they want Jesus dead. And by the way, there's one other very important thing, just not important, but it's an important thing for you to know about. Barabbas literally means son of the father.
That's what it means literally, son of the father. And it is, it is one of those ironies of history that the choice between the crowd is between two sons of the father.
One son of the father who is a murderer and the other son of the father who is the creator of all things, who is the source of life. Now, so there's another thing if you're familiar with the literature on these texts.
On one hand, there's lots of controversy about from skeptics that this is just invented, which I think is sort of a ridiculous comment. And then the next thing is that people spend pages and pages and pages in commentaries arguing over who's responsible for the death of Jesus.
And one of the reasons there is this controversy is because there is a, an evil stain on much of the history of Christendom.
And that evil stain, not on Christianity, but on Christendom, that ugly stain is anti-Semitism. Throughout the history of Christendom, there have been people who've called themselves Christians who hate Jewish people and want to see Jewish people hurt and killed and robbed.
and it is a terrible stain on Christendom's history. And so because of this profound, because of this legacy for parts of Christendom, there's a big debate about whether or not the Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus.
Now, the text is going to show us that that is false. I'm not saying that it's false just because I don't want to have anti-Semitism. The Bible itself actually shows that it's not anti-Semitism.
And just a bit of a time out, those of us who've experienced prejudice, those of us who've experienced prejudice in any form, what we know, or what we should know, is that when a person is prejudiced against you, they look for evidence to justify their prejudice and hatred.
if you have a prejudice against a particular people group and you see them doing something odd, you say to your friends who share your prejudice, look at that person.
That's what they all do. But if one of your friends does it, you say, oh, that's just Joe. Well, we look for evidence for our prejudices, to feed our prejudices.
And so those who have an evil hatred of Jewish people look for reasons in the text. They don't want to listen to the text. They want superficial reasons.
And so they look at this and so now even today there's lots of writing about whether or not who's responsible. But the Bible itself says who's responsible and this is actually where I was convicted of sin.
In a sense, the text says I was responsible for the death of Jesus. Look at it in verse 10. It's a verse, if you're going to memorize something from this text, verse 10 would be the verse to memorize.
For Pilate perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest had delivered Jesus up. I'll say it again.
For Pilate perceived that it was out of envy that the chief priest had delivered Jesus up. So it doesn't say for Pilate perceived that it was because they were Jewish that they delivered them up.
If that was the case, then maybe there'd be something to it. But it says for envy. Now, if you could put up the first point and leave it up for a moment.
Envy is sorrow or sadness or resentment at seeing someone else enjoying a good or some other enjoying a good.
Envy is experiencing sorrow or sadness or resentment or resentment at seeing someone enjoying something which is good.
Now, the older Christians, if you go back in Christian history, there's been a long established series of books and meditations around something called the seven deadly sins.
Christians. And they've been developed to help Christians examine their conscience, to look at their lives, to try to see whether there's things in their lives that are wrong. And the ancients usually ranked the seven deadly sins in order from the most deadly to the least deadly.
And the most deadly is pride and the least deadly is lust. Now, if some of you say, oh, lust is the least deadly of the sins, well, the word least is there, but the word deadly is still there.
You might say this snake will kill you within one second when it bites you and this one will kill you five minutes after it bites you.
But both of the different snakes will both kill you. But one will just kill you in a second one in five minutes. Actually, I don't know if there's any snakes that do either of that, but that's a whole other... This isn't a lesson on snakes.
It's a lesson on envy. But believe it or not, envy is the second most deadly of the seven deadly sins. This experiencing of sorrow or sadness or resentment at seeing someone other enjoying a good.
Part of the reason the sins are deadly is because they're unrecognized. So one of the things that I was convicted of this week is that for at least a year and a half I've been guilty of the sin of envy.
And I was very self-righteous about my sin, which is often how we deal with the sin of envy. I wouldn't have said that what I was doing was the sin of envy.
I would have said that I was giving insight into the situation. That I had the right explanation for the situation. But the fact of the matter is it was the sin of envy.
There was another or a group having a good thing and seeing that good thing made me resent them. Made me sad.
Made me unhappy. Envy is unrecognized and part of envy is that it leads you to want the others to know disaster.
That you're actually going to be really happy. if it all blows up on them. If you discover that it's revealed that there's something really bad, it causes joy.
Those of you who follow controversies in the church world, when either properly or improperly, somebody who's a high-ranking Christian falls and the Twitter verse and the Facebook verse goes crazy, that's the sin of envy.
Look at that Matt Chandler. That's what they're saying. We always knew he was bad. We always knew that whatever, pick your person.
We want others to fall. It leads to hatred. It leads you to feel dissatisfied with your own life.
It leads you to say things like, I'm just as good as that person. But nobody who ever says that feels pleasure from that statement. It's fueled by your envy of them.
And I'm going to suggest, I mean, I made a bit of a, not a risky thing, but before the service began, almost every single one of us in this room is regularly guilty of envy because you look at social media.
And how many of you look at social media and after looking at it for a while feel discontented and unhappy? And if you do, it's because you're experiencing the sin of envy.
And you don't recognize it. And you come away from watching Facebook or Instagram and your own wife or husband seems inadequate your family isn't as good as it should be.
Your life sucks. And whether you're completely aware of it or not, you also don't really, you sort of wouldn't mind if you end up hearing through the gossip thing that that other person, their life got turned into a big mess.
And even to make it worse, we engage in Instagram and Facebook to create envy in others. to cause them to sin. Now, not everything exactly is done that way.
I don't want to make it that all Christians should flee social media, but, and not every single thing you do is like that. I'm not saying that. I think we need to take it seriously that it creates within us discontentment with our lives.
And not in a way that helps us, but only in a way that makes us, that hurts us. So it's envy, not Jewishness, that led to the death of Jesus.
You know, in a sense, envy is the great human sin along with pride. It wasn't just that human beings, Adam and Eve, wanted to be like God, but they, in a sense, envied God, his position.
And they would like his position. They didn't mind if he fell. You know, I didn't put it up as a point, but most Canadians will say, most very, very good Canadians will say, you've got to look out for number one.
And in a sense, what the Bible says is that's actually really true. You've got to look out for number one. But the bad news is, you're not number one. The bad news is, the triune God is number one.
And for most Canadians, they'd say, well, that sucks big time. And they'd resent it. The fact of the matter is, you know, there's a very profound statement by Augustine that says, God has made us for himself and our hearts are restless till they rest in him.
And that's, that is the most, one of the most profound statements made outside of the Bible that explains human psychology. God has made us for himself and our hearts are restless till we rest in him.
And that means that God has made human beings so that there's a throne in each of our lives. And when we cast off God, we thought we would step onto the throne of our own lives.
But the fact of the matter is, is that God did not design human beings to sit on the throne of their own life. And so what happened is we cast God from the throne, but instead what happens is idols sit on the throne, sin that sits on the throne.
In some cases, demons sit on the throne. And they all push and pull each other, one sin after another, one idol after another, and our hearts are unbelievably restless. And we keep thinking that we can climb onto the throne of our own lives.
But all we do is replace one idol with another or try to put six different idols all on the throne of our life at the same time in four different sins. And then we wonder why our lives have periods of great discontent.
So what can be done and does the Bible have any type of remedy for this?
Well, actually it does. And it does in the guise of something that at first seems to illustrate why the gospel is foolish. Look at what happens immediately after in verse 11.
So Pilate has found Jesus guilty even though he knows he's innocent. His statements here, no, he knows he's innocent but Pilate isn't motivated by justice and he's not motivated by love.
Pilate is motivated by making himself look good and furthering his power. It's a very profoundly human situation that we might say that we're looking for justice but really what we're doing is looking to further and cement our own position.
And so in verse 11 but the chief priest stirred up the crowd to have Pilate released for them Barabbas instead of Jesus. Verse 12 and Pilate again said to them then what shall I do with the man you call the king of the Jews?
And they cried out again crucify him. And Pilate said to them why what evil has Jesus done? But they shouted all the more crucify him. And so Pilate said well Jesus is innocent I'm going to let Barabbas get killed.
No that's not what happens. Pilate wishing to satisfy the crowd released for them Barabbas and having scourged Jesus that's you have leather whips and embedded in the end of the whips are pieces of bone or pieces of lead or pieces of glass.
and Josephus records that cases of people being scourged and they often people die from being scourged. They can't be crucified because they die and it wasn't unusual for the Romans to scourge a person.
They would tie your hands up above your head so your body is completely defenseless and they would scourge you until the bone could be seen through the skin and through the muscle and through the everything until your bones could be seen.
And they scourged and having scourged Jesus he delivered Jesus to be crucified. Now some people would say George this this shows the problem with the gospel right because you know on one hand if you look at this there is something of the gospel in this text.
Jesus dies in Pilate's in Barabbas' place and Barabbas goes free. In fact you could even imagine a dialogue an internal dialogue with Pilate as he's walking outside he's talked privately inside with the chief priest he's heard the accusations Jesus has been silent and he's thinking through and maybe even one of the things he's thinking through is he's thinking you know dang it all I got I went to the bother of having the lads make three crosses and it would be a shame to have to try to find a fourth and it would be a shame to put one of them to waste the lads might be a bit upset that I had them do some work and I let and it all just had to go for naught it was a hot day I had lots of bother so I'm going to pick one guy and another guy and the result of my thing which I'm going to do in a few moments is that cross will not go to waste somebody will die on that cross
I don't want to have the bother of making a fourth and I don't want to waste the third so in some ways the story is you know people would say George I mean aren't you saying the story of Pilate and Jesus is unjust so how is it just that you say that Jesus died for our sins and George doesn't it just seem unjust even if you say that well Jesus dies on the cross instead of Barabbas but Barabbas goes free and just does more evil and those are the reasons why the cross makes absolutely no sense whatsoever and we as Christians would have to say yeah but that's not what's going on here in the story you do get a pointer to the cross but the differences are matter a lot if you could put up the second point Claire that would be very handy I see what Christians would say is that love triumphs over justice not by cancelling justice but by satisfying justice and going beyond it so the death of
Jesus is unjust but what happens in the death and in a sense all of the human beings and they desired harm to come to Jesus but God used our desire to harm Jesus to bring good good for us that in the cross you see the profound love of Jesus a profound particular love for human beings for each one of us who puts our faith and trust in him and and Pilate just autocratically chose this up in Jesus to him and love to die on the cross two of those times he prophesied two of them specifically that he would die on the cross And so what's happening is that it's only Jesus' love that holds him to the cross.
And it's a love offer. Well, it's something like this. My wife is present. I was going to use this as an analogy about me, but then I thought it would make it look like I'm trying to be very virtuous.
So I'll use my wife as an example, but it's not a bad example, dear. Imagine for a moment there's a horrible future that scientists figure out a way that they can hook a person up to a machine, and there's a transfer of the blood and of the fluids and everything from one body to another.
But what happens, maybe it's designed in an evil autocratic country like many of them that we know in the world, and we hear about it in the West later on. And what they do is they take a completely healthy, innocent person, and they hook them up to a rich or powerful person who has a terrible disease.
And when they hook the two people up and they move the fluids and everything through the two of them, all of the things which are causing the death of the one, of the rich, powerful person, are transferred to the healthy person.
And the health of the healthy person is transferred to the rich person. And at the end of it, the rich person walks away in the full health of the healthy person.
And the poor one who's forced to do this by an evil government has now the cancer or whatever illness it is, the host of illnesses that was killing, that's now in that person.
But then we realize that maybe that technology could be of use in North America, but how could it ever be used without creating huge injustice.
Well, let's say my granddaughter, one of my granddaughters, let's say Bria or Sophie, were the ones who were sick and were going to die. And there's the conversation amongst the family as to whether one person who might be a match would go in that machine so that the thing which is killing the young six-year-old or the 14-year-old would go into the healthy one and the health of the healthy one would go into the sick one.
And it turns out that maybe Bria's mother or Sophie's mother would be a match. But it also turns out that my wife would be a match.
And I think my wife would take that. It would be very sad.
There would be tears. But I think she would hook herself up to that machine so her granddaughter would have her health. And so whether it's Lizzie or whether it's Victoria, they could see their daughter grow up and maybe see a granddaughter themselves someday.
That's what's happening on the cross. There is no one a better match for you or closer to you than the creator and sustainer of all things than God, the Son of God.
And God, the Son of God, takes your place on that cross. The health in him goes to you. And the sickness and death and illness in us go to him.
And he does it not because it's imposed upon him, but he, in a sense, looks you and me in the eye and says, I am willing to do that for you because I love you. I am willing to do that for you because I love you.
And you know the thing about love? The thing about love, and we all know this, is that when we love, whether it's just friendship or the love of a mother for her daughter or a friend for a friend or a husband and a wife, it's as if they come into you in some way.
There's a place for them. That's why we get so sorrowful when they die. It feels as if part of us is gone. And you see, love is the big difference between what happens. I mean, on one hand, it does have a bit of an inkling.
The guilty goes and Jesus dies. But it's not that. It's love that explains what Jesus is doing. It's love that keeps him to the cross. It's love looking at you.
And we feel the other person in our lives in a small way. But in Jesus, it actually is a real thing because he's the creator and sustainer of all things. And he comes within us. And we now have his love within us.
The Bible describes it as being born again, born from above. And then what is different is that as what Jesus has done for you grips you, as it becomes more present to your heart, a deeper parts of who you are, that that's what he has done for you, that becomes, in a sense, a story, an image of how you are to live.
And it becomes something that pushes you into looking at new ways of living. It pulls you and draws you into new ways of living. And it pulls you and draws you to do the opposite of envy.
Because in envy, we feel sorrow that another person has a good that we desire to have. But love is being willing to sacrifice for the other to know true good.
There is no true solution to envy other than love. And that is what we see in the story before us. That is what grips us.
And it's in the security of his love that I can come to realize that I was guilty of the sin of envy. And I need to pray against it. I need to repent of it.
Invite you to stand. Invite you to bow your heads in prayer.
Father, for some of us here watching for the first time, it's really struck us what Christ has done for us on the cross. And Father, I ask that you would bring that truth home to them, that they might truly know that Jesus in a way of saving faith.
And for others, it's just been brought home to us anew in yet another way. And we ask, Lord, that you bring the truth of who Jesus is and what he has done for us and his great love for us into our hearts more and more, more and more deeply.
That it would become more and more deeply the ground that we stand on. That that which pushes us and pulls us and draws us and shapes us and forms us. And Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit would do that wonderful, gentle, needed work in each one of our lives.
And not just us as individuals, but for us as a congregation, Father, that we would be marked not by envy, but by love and generosity and a love for our city and a love for people groups that still need to hear the gospel here in Ottawa and to the ends of the earth.
That, Father, the gospel would not just shape us as individuals, but us as a church. That we would be a gospel-shaped people and a gospel-shaped church for your glory.
And we ask these things in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.