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[0:00] or nothing that can be slowed down. And we also now turn to a final section in this series of sermons about the glory of God. I read an article a couple years ago where it talks about how different cultures differentiate or divide how they deem power.

[0:18] So maybe on the East Coast you are known as powerful because of your title or maybe how much money you make or even what avenue or apartment complex you might live in. Maybe on the West Coast your power might come from what you look like or maybe what you've done to make yourself look in a certain degree or how cultural you can be, multicultural you can be.

[0:38] I read that and they ignored Garfield County, Enid, Oklahoma. And I kind of started to wonder what does power look like in my own context? And I think in my own context that what really power looks like is not really who you know but how quickly you can connect the dots from who you know to who those people should know.

[0:56] You know, my mom's from Iowa. And if anyone even comes close to being from Iowa, she is immediately being like, what part? And where'd you go to school? Or, oh, did you know so-and-so?

[1:06] I knew him. He was the mayor of that place. And all of a sudden I know, I pick up on this, even in my culture's, my church's context, there's a lot of German people, like I said last night, in our county.

[1:17] But there is a different kind of German people on the north side of town than on the west side of town. And then you go a little bit, maybe 30 miles south, you go into a really Catholic area to where all of a sudden if you're in that and you don't know anyone and you're not a part of anything, you have no power.

[1:33] A theologian once said that the most powerful thing about us is what comes into our minds when we think about God. This is the powerful truth, though it's not the message we often hear.

[1:47] Instead, we're often told that the value that you and I have is the number of friends that we can collect or the number of followers we can have, whether we're leading in an industry or even gaining followers on Instagram or our success.

[2:01] We gather up for ourselves through our grades or our career transitions, maybe even our achievements or incomes, the connections that we have. But our God offers a different and completely different message.

[2:15] He tells us that eternal life is found in knowing him. Eternal life. There's not much more power than that. Eternal life is found exclusively in knowing him.

[2:26] God doesn't want us to be confused about who he is either. So you don't have to go on this, you know, mystic walk in the woods hoping to understand and know who the cosmic power of the universe is.

[2:38] He's made himself known to us, not only so that we can understand his character, but also so that we can enter into a relationship with him. And this knowledge isn't just about facts that you learn.

[2:49] There's this constant tension that's presented to us in the scriptures where the onus of the question is actually placed on you and how you respond to it. God has graciously made himself known.

[3:01] And this power and this knowledge isn't supposed to just stay in your head, but is also supposed to shape your heart and your life, leading to a constant state of worship and day-by-day devotion.

[3:12] So the most important thing about you, the most powerful thing about you, is what comes into your mind when you think about God. And to know God is to know both his character and to know him relationally.

[3:24] I want you to see in the first part of this passage an unveiling, almost doctrine, you could say, an unveiling, beautiful picture of God.

[3:35] If you look at Exodus 34, a passage where God makes himself known in a remarkable way, this chapter offers you a glimpse of who God is. Though it doesn't tell us everything, it offers you an incredibly powerful glimpse of who God is.

[3:48] To set the context, Moses, the author of this text, and in many ways one of the main characters of the movement of Exodus, is leading the Israelites. So you can see him as the commander of their army.

[4:01] And they have been rescued from Egypt. At this point they've been crossing the Red Sea. They've received the Ten Commandments. But after Moses received the commandments, he came down to find his people worshiping a golden calf instead of the one true God.

[4:14] So in response to this, God calls Moses back up to the mountain, and here Moses makes an audacious request. You can see it there in your text. Verse 5, The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

[4:29] And this comes after Moses asked the Lord to show me your glory. He gave him something. He went down. He saw something terrible. God brought him back up. And he wants to ask the Lord to show me your glory.

[4:43] And in Exodus 34, God answers that. Now imagine what it'd be like to be Moses. This is the true God who has performed incredible miracles. This is the God who Moses is saying, Show me your glory.

[4:55] He turned water into blood, sent plagues in the form of frogs and gnats, brought darkness, hail, parted the Red Sea. This is the God who's provided manna from heaven, water from rocks, and now Moses is about to enter God in a new way.

[5:10] And you'd expect a dramatic visual experience, something like being given a golden ticket to a tour factory or something that almost feels 40 in your immersion, virtual reality in your understanding, where you see the inner workings of something so spectacular and amazing.

[5:28] And that's certainly what Moses would have expected too. Show me your glory. The Lord responds in a way that demonstrates that he's about to. But in verse 5, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord.

[5:43] God passed by Moses, showing him his glory before. But here's the surprising part. The focus isn't on what Moses saw. In fact, you actually see no description here of God's appearance at all.

[5:55] Show me your glory. And you and I reading this text today are not seeing that. In fact, there's no description of God's appearance. Moses asked to see God's glory, but instead of a detailed visual image, what Moses receives is a proclamation.

[6:11] Show me your glory. And God gives him a sermon, a revelation of God's name and character. And this is significant because God doesn't satisfy Moses' request by showing a dazzling sight.

[6:23] Instead, he proclaims something. Look here at the text. He proclaims his name twice. In doing so, God reveals his character.

[6:34] Where Moses wanted sight, God gives him a deeper spoken description of who he is. It's as if Moses wanted to see the movie, but God gives him the speech instead.

[6:47] I took a Shakespeare class in high school, and I know you're going to think, wow, that's impressive. But it was a Shakespeare book on tape class where all we would do is sit in the class and hear Shakespeare out loud.

[6:59] And then when we were done with that, we would watch the movie. But then we were tested over the book. It was miserable. I didn't want to read the book. I just saw the movie. And then you start to see, oh man, movies are a little bit different than what the book says.

[7:12] Moses wanted the easy way. God gives him a speech. We're all like Moses before this. Human tendency. How many of you have thought, if I could only see God, then I'd believe.

[7:26] Maybe even if I could only see what God was doing. Pull back the curtain. Show me the spinning gears. Then I'd be calm and content. Then I'd follow you.

[7:37] Moses, in some ways, is expressing the same desire, but God doesn't reveal himself through spectacular visual display. Instead, he makes himself known through his very word.

[7:48] God's revelation isn't meant to give us a physical picture to satisfy our curiosity. He reveals his glory in a way that speaks to our hearts and minds. Through his word.

[8:00] Capital W-O-R-D. Where the lasting revelation of God comes not in sight, but in faith. In truth. Of his own character that's being proclaimed to us by his very word.

[8:13] This passage reminds us that faith is not by what we see, but about trusting the very word of God as reveals himself to us. Where God makes himself known, not through images, but through his proclamation.

[8:25] Where his word invites us to know and worship him. It's hard to give a bigger emphasis here on the doctrine of scripture. In it being effective. In it being sufficient. Where this word is an invitation, again, not to gaze at something, but to see God in his word and to hear his voice in his word.

[8:43] The second thing I think you see in this text is not only the coming proclamation of God as a revelation of himself, but also the revelation of God's glory here in a couple of verses. This is the meaty part, right?

[8:53] This is where you want to do the heavy lifting. Moses says, I want to see your glory, and God gives him a description of his attributes. God reveals himself to Moses, not just through a visual display, but through the proclamation of his name.

[9:05] And in verse 6, you see the Lord, the Lord. And this isn't just a proper name like ours, but when God proclaims his name, he's actually revealing the essence of his being, his character, and his nature.

[9:18] We want this to be the case for us. All of us have something in mind when you hear the name of the Kennedys, the Roosevelt's. Remember when I was like 7 or 8 years old, my dad was like, hey, we're not the Kennedys.

[9:31] The Griffins are not the Roosevelt's. We need to act well, but you need to not be haughty. Your name doesn't bring with it a kingdom. The opposite here. Through his name, God defines himself so that he can be known by his people, inviting them into himself.

[9:47] When God says the Lord, it's the name Yahweh, the great I am. This is the same name revealed to Moses in Exodus 3 at the burning bush, meaning I am who I am. It speaks of his self-existence, his independence, where unlike us, he is not contingent on food or sleep or other necessities.

[10:09] God depends on nothing. I just can't get over that reality. He is eternal without a beginning or an end. I don't know if this is right mathematically, but someone told me the eternality of God is like the number zero with the edges, all the edges being taken off.

[10:25] You just can't understand it. You can't fathom it. For us, life requires all these things, food, sleep, other necessities, but life also requires death. Something must die to sustain our physical bodies.

[10:39] We sleep to survive and we have to have a start date and an end date, but God never sleeps. One of the most comforting psalm verses in the Bible is that God never rests. He never had a beginning and he will never have an end.

[10:53] He simply is the I am. This name reveals a God who is completely independent and self-sustaining these two repetition, defining things about the Lord where you and I are always in a state of becoming something, hopefully in a positive way, becoming a better father, becoming a better friend, becoming a better worker.

[11:15] Our God is never becoming. He is being. This revelation of God's name is not just mind-blowing theologically, but it's an invitation to know him personally.

[11:27] By declaring his name, he is showing us that while he is beyond our full comprehension, he also makes himself known. The Lord. The Lord. Where God is transcendent yet personal.

[11:39] The reverberation from the heavens onto Moses' ears and face. Not just intellectually, not just physically, but relationally. Or to go even further in Exodus 34, 6-7, it's where he describes himself.

[11:55] A God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. These are not just abstract qualities, and so I want to pull at them like balls of string only to understand more fully of what they're about.

[12:11] To see the attributes of God's glory in this particular passage is the first thing that God says when he reveals himself to Moses is that he's merciful. He gives his name, and the first characteristic he emphasizes is his mercy.

[12:25] He could have chosen other things, but he chooses mercy. It's his mercy that hasn't cast them off. It's his pity and action towards these miserable people that has spared them from being put out.

[12:38] It's his mercy that allowed them to cross the Red Sea without drowning like the Egyptians. It's his mercy that brought them to Sinai even after they worshipped the golden calf. And despite their failures, God remains with them because he is merciful.

[12:51] He's poured himself out on mercy and no closer to running out than when he started. He is moved by the misery of others and acts to relieve it. It's a state of pity in action.

[13:04] In our case, you think of the word misery comes in part from the word pity. About a month ago, my very near and dear to my heart, my New York Yankees, greatest baseball team in world history, my New York Yankees, fell short in the World Series.

[13:21] And I understand that probably all of you had great pity on me. I'm sure you sat there and you were like, poor you, poor you, another year. That's not the kind of pity that God has when it talks about his mercy.

[13:34] He doesn't just see us wandering, sinful, in need of a saving grace and goes, poor you, if you'd only done better. But we see this action of pity where it meets mercy, undeserved and unearned, freely given.

[13:50] the Israelites had shown their miserable character by rebelling and complaining from the moment they left Egypt. In Exodus 32, after God delivered them from slavery, they made a golden calf and worshipped it.

[14:04] And yet God in his mercy draws near to them, again, revealing his name and his character. I'm often, and I would imagine it brings us great joy in great tears when we see an older friend come to Christ by God's saving work.

[14:23] Seventy years later, eighty years later, God being slow in his mercy but very powerful in his mercy is the same energy that we look at when maybe our eight-year-old confesses Christ and says he wants to abandon all that he has.

[14:38] And you might look at him and go, you have nothing that I haven't given you. In the same way that it's God in his mercy who would say you have nothing that I haven't given you but come to me in the same way.

[14:48] God is merciful. Lamentations 3, we read, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases and his mercies never come to an end. His mercies never run out.

[15:00] But the Lord is not only merciful, verse 6, the next word, he's also gracious. He freely blesses the undeserving. We often hear that grace is unmerited favor.

[15:12] But we sometimes say that with a little too excitement. Grace is not just unmerited favor. It is love from God towards those who deserve the opposite of love. It is life where only death is deserved.

[15:27] It is power at work in the powerlessness. That's the grace of God. Think of Abraham long before this. Before he was the father of many nations, he was an idolater serving other gods.

[15:40] Yet, what does God do? He calls Abraham and makes a great promise within him. That's grace. The one who had nothing, was doing the wrong thing, is now fueled and fired up by the Lord.

[15:51] Through Abraham, all nations would be blessed, not just because of anything Abraham did, but because God is gracious. Similarly, Jacob, after him, later known as Israel, the one from whom the nation is named, was deceitful and not of great character for much of his life.

[16:06] Yet, God blessed him and made promises to him and through him would come the Savior. This is all because God is gracious, not that Jacob was great. God's grace doesn't just cancel debt, it actually supplies an infinite line of credit in the other direction.

[16:21] This is the grace of God. He is merciful and gracious and these are the first two words he uses to describe himself after revealing his name. The Lord, the Lord, merciful and gracious.

[16:33] And every human being needs to know these two words after hearing the Lord's name. Without his mercy and his grace, we are like Abraham worshipping other gods or like Jacob going after the golden calf.

[16:45] But because God is merciful and gracious, we can know him. I wonder if this is the way that you talk about God to other people. I would imagine some people talk about God to you in what they want and how they feel they've been oppressed or in how they've been bothered and how do you talk about God?

[17:05] Here's how God presents himself to us. One theologian said that God distributes his blessings where he might otherwise send his thunders. His mercy and his grace are like the sun ever ready shining upon us without effort.

[17:22] But thunderstorms need to be built up. They take time. They take energy. They take development. One of the coolest things I think in the world is the slow coming, more precise predictions of things like thunderstorms and lightning and tornadoes.

[17:43] One of my best friends from college is a meteorologist in the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma. And I just think that's really cool. He's a behind-the-scenes guy. His PhD was in flooding.

[17:54] So if you ever have a question on rivers flooding, race is your guy. So we always pester him whenever it's tornado season texting him throughout the day. He's like, guys, I'm literally working right now.

[18:04] This is the go moment for all of us. And he said, actually, we've been working on this set of cells, figuring out these set of cells for about three days now. It's just now touching Lotton, Oklahoma.

[18:15] And you've got five or eight hours to figure it out. You see this slow-moving characteristic of the Lord where the first few things like grace and mercy are like the sun. They're always shining.

[18:26] But here you have this build-up. of the way the Lord talks about his character. Not that it's ever-changing, but he says that he is slow to anger. In other words, he defers his anger and is willing to be patient.

[18:41] Unlike his mercy and grace, which flow freely, his anger is stirred. Exodus 3 illustrates this beautifully. When Moses encounters the burning bush, he hesitates and questions God.

[18:53] But God remains patient, offering reassurance, promises, and signs. Yet even after all of this, Moses still resists and asks God to send someone else, then only God's anger began to burn.

[19:05] And even then, he remains slow to act. We see the same in Pharaoh's story where God gives him a sign after sign of bringing judgment. Or in the book of Joshua where God waits patiently for the nations in the promised land to repent.

[19:19] And in the story of Jonah where God relents from destroying Nineveh when they repent. Jonah is actually angry with God for being so slow to anger.

[19:31] Jonah knew that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Even in the person of Jesus who is taunted by the very people he created, we see him slow to anger as an attribute.

[19:44] I think there's a, I think this is right. I hope it's right. I recently just preached through the book of Joshua and you see this tremendous figure at the beginning of the book of Joshua where they see something that looks like a soldier of the heavens, an angel of the Lord and he's holding within him a sword.

[20:00] And he says that he's the commander of the Lord's army. And then what does the Lord's army do for the next several chapters? They destroy all of God's enemies in order to do what?

[20:12] Offer peace. Follow the Lord this way. Worship the Lord this way. Obey the Lord this way. You see that, you see that trend coming almost top-sided in the New Testament where Jesus, who I think the commander of the Lord is a pre-incarnation figure of, you see Jesus and what does he come to do?

[20:35] What does he say that he comes to do? Offer peace. Until how long? In the book of Revelation when he comes back with the sword. See here that the Lord is slow to anger where God abounds in his slowness to the degree that he abounds in steadfast love.

[20:56] You see this in verse 6. Another attribute mentioned. This is love that is not fickle or fleeting but reliable and constant. It's not based on the loveliness or the recipient but on the character of God himself.

[21:09] He loves because he is loved to the degree in Deuteronomy 7. God tells them that he chose them not because they were a great nation or did wonderful things but because he loved them.

[21:21] And that's the nature of God's steadfast love. It abounds and is not dependent on us. God's steadfast love is also expressed in his own forgiveness. You see here that he forgives the iniquity, the transgression, in the sin because of his abundance and love.

[21:38] This forgiveness is comprehensive covering every kind of wrongdoing. He doesn't forgive because we are deserving but because he is abounding in love and then finally he is abounding in faithfulness in verse 6.

[21:51] Everything he is and says is absolutely reliable. In a world where commitments are often broken God's faithfulness is actually refreshing to us. When he makes a promise he keeps it.

[22:04] When he made a promise promise to Abraham despite all odds he fulfilled it. When he promised Moses that he would bring Israel out of Egypt that seemed like a big task he fulfills it. God's faithfulness is steady unwavering.

[22:16] It's an unwavering truth that you and I can depend on unlike other gods or religions or other things that you and I can put our trust in. Other things that are unpredictable and very often frightening the God of the scriptures is reliable and trustworthy.

[22:30] He is merciful and gracious. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. I wonder if this is what you would say when you tell yourself about God.

[22:44] I would imagine in a room this size there are a good amount of you who have just gone through so, so much and you're going to ask the honest question why is God doing this to me?

[22:56] Why is God putting me through this? Going back to last night too, very often you have to preach to yourself at least the truth about who God is.

[23:10] And he is not one who punishes his children. He is not one who inflicts sinful ways on those whom he loves. He is not one of those who is trying to trap you into falling into sin.

[23:21] But he is the one who is merciful, gracious, abounding in faithfulness and love slow to anger. Now we see this as wonderful and in the beginning of the scriptures.

[23:35] And you're going to keep reading on and on in the scriptures so many more words, thousands more words, maybe a thousand more pages and there is a tension here in this God making himself known to his people and his people responding not well to this God and this tension continues to unfold itself until finally it is revealed in the coming God-man Christ Jesus where the fullness of God's character is revealed to his people.

[24:05] It's in Christ Jesus that we see the fullness or that we see the fullest display of God where he is the radiance of the glory of God it says. In him the fullness of God dwells bodily and in him we see the fullest display of all of the attributes of God.

[24:21] Because what is happening when Jesus comes on is that he is all of these things perfectly. He is God. This is not some new revelation of God. He's not some new God on the scene where you have to discount the one of the old because now you have something refreshing.

[24:36] This is the radiance of the one that is being portrayed in words in a sermon to Moses. He's showing the character of God because of who he is. He's the greatest display of mercy and grace.

[24:49] He's the one who came to seek and save the lost. When you think about Exodus 34 and a God being merciful and gracious Jesus is the one who is the greatest display of these two things.

[25:01] So when we have the miserable blind man crying out in the New Testament have mercy on me Jesus is drawn to him heals him forgives him out of his mercy and grace.

[25:12] when we have a bleeding woman coming up to him who couldn't be healed by any other person though she spent all of her money and life trying to find relief he just allows a hem of his garment to be touched and she's instantly healed and he doesn't just leave it at the healing because he's full of grace.

[25:34] He heals her and then calls to her and says daughter your faith has healed you. daughter he calls her he heals forgives and welcomes into his family.

[25:47] Also you think of Exodus 34 being slow to anger he's the greatest display of being slow to anger. Here's a man that the scripture calls a man of sorrows acquainted with grief a grief a grief from the hands of people men and women he created and he's slow to anger with them.

[26:05] They're the ones who are literally killing him and he's slow to anger with them. He doesn't call down legions of angels to defend him though he could have. He doesn't bring up those around him to push back on their darkness though he could have.

[26:17] He willingly suffers at their hands because he's slow to anger all showcasing to us like in Exodus 34 the God of love here is the Savior displaying all the love of God where he demonstrates his love for us in this and that while we were still sinners Christ died for us where 1 John chapter 4 says this is love not that we have loved God but that God has loved us and gave his son as a propitiation for sin.

[26:45] He didn't see something lovely in the world and go that's the apple that I want to be of my eye that's the flower that I want to be on my dinner table he is love and out of that love he sends his son and makes him a propitiation for sin turning Jesus away from the anger and wrath and wrath of God he does that in his son Jesus we also see that God is faithful in Exodus 34 and it's Jesus who is the greatest display of faithfulness of God he kept all of God's word not one part did he skip over or failed to fulfill he kept all of it we might miss out on one you know you think of the rich young ruler who says I just want a way to be healed or I want a way to have eternal life and what does Jesus say great follow all the commandments and he goes I've done that he goes I've done that and he goes great then sell everything and give it to the poor and follow me but what did that rich young man what did he not believe that it would be actually in his eternal best interest to follow Jesus selling everything actually isn't that hard arguably it's a really good way to make a lot of money if you have a lot of stuff any of you who work in inventory you want to sell everything in inventory don't you even giving everything away that's not really that bad people want to be generous don't you want to be generous isn't it nice like now that I have a son

[28:19] I want to buy I just bought my son a NBA the professional basketball team what are they the Oklahoma City Thunder the mascot is Rumble it's a bison and I like looked at that and saw it online I was like I don't care at all about basketball but I want Bradley to have that rumble it's easy to give stuff away it is impossible to follow Jesus if you think it won't be in your best interest if you don't think Jesus is going to be faithful to provide for you and what I mean by that is eternal life salvation heaven and earth being collided to a new heavens and new earth if you don't think he's going to be faithful then you would actually be logically right to not follow him but here we see that Jesus of everything in the scriptures that he was to obey even the words of the father his response was yes and amen to all of God's promises he's the seed of the woman that was promised in Genesis 3 he's the offspring of Abraham who through many sons would come he was the blessing that would flow through many nations he was the true and better temple the one who made his tabernacle among his people who was lifted up sends his spirit so those people could be a temple themselves and he's the true and better rest that was promised in the land and from the Sabbath that were pointing toward it we see here words that invoke a desire for sacrifice in Exodus 34 recognizing that Jesus was the true and better lamb he was the sacrificial lamb that was not just one like an animal before it but he was the one who was truly God truly man without any blemish where he and his sacrifice could fully truly take a replacement for us as he died on the cross he's the greater king that comes from the line of David surpassing the righteousness and glory of David who followed him he reigns not just for a little while over his people but eternally in Jesus we see the yes and amen the savior king who rules and reigns on high

[30:29] I have one of the I have a privilege of doing a lot of the membership interviews so when people aim to join our church they take a class they're interviewed by one of our elders part of the interview is to understand if they have a good articulation of the gospel and part of that their understanding articulation of the gospel people really step on themselves when they they either do things to Jesus that haven't been done or they don't do things to Jesus that have been done like everyone wants to crucify Jesus in their testimony of what the gospel is no one wants to raise him from the grave he died for my sins and you're like and then what is he still there and they're like oh he was raised from the grave on the third day and you're like and then what is he still roaming around the earth and you're like no he's in heaven yes ruling and reigning on high not a temporary king and he's also the greatest display of God's justice where we don't see a mean God of the Old Testament and a soft loving Jesus in the new no Jesus was no man who was soft on sin he was upset about sin as much as his father and so against sin he's willing to be crucified for it where the cross tells us that our sin is so bad that Jesus had to die but it also tells us that God is so good that he was willing to do this so that there could be forgiveness provided for his people so in Jesus we see the tension of verse 7 relieved in Exodus 34 where Jesus is the one who comes and is the atoning sacrifice for sin the only place for forgiveness and the only sacrifice that can take away sin of the world in him we see God as both just and justifier as he holds up righteousness perfectly and completely and he is still justifying sinners and bringing them into a relationship to himself through Christ so friends what about you

[32:18] Moses wanted God to show him his glory what about you in him you can have a God who is for you in Jesus you can have a life with his transcendent God through our connection to Jesus by faith through our unity with Jesus by our repentance we can not only know God but also reflect who God is it's at this point that we recognize that we can be true image bearers like we should have been at the beginning with Adam and Eve pouring out the reflection of the image of the one true living God the message of the gospel isn't just recognizing God for who he is Jesus for who he is and what he has done but to recognize what he has done so that you may do what he has called you to do in Jesus we can be merciful because we've received mercy in him we can be gracious because we've received the grace of God we ought to be the most gracious people on the planet and the most merciful people alive in our lifelessness in our powerlessness that's what we know of Jesus in Jesus we can be people who are slow to anger because the worst thing that could happen to us has already happened on the cross as Jesus was crucified on our behalf in Jesus we can abound in love because Jesus abounded in love for us and poured out his love into our hearts where we no longer need to love from the outside of him we have all that we need in him so now we can abound in love toward him and toward others and in Jesus we can be just always looking for what is right in obeying the

[34:05] Lord and good in what is a life in response to God because we know that there is a God who cares about great justice in our hearts and in the people around us in the end there will be no injustice whether dealt with at the cross or in hell no injustice will remain what do you think about when you think about God that's the most important thing about you and God makes himself known not just for our information but also as an invitation for us to know him and the response is left to you response here is left to you but I pray that we would take our cue from Moses in Exodus 34 verse 8 see there with your eyes hold on to it with your hearts Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped us our gracious and heavenly father we come to you this morning again in great thankfulness for all that you have done for us not only in Moses' words but also in the cross of Christ where love and mercy met love and justice met where anger was as it should have been poured out on us it was poured out on your son for us

[35:23] God we are so grateful for this we pray that we would respond by being reminded so greatly of your glorious gospel of the glory of you our God pray this in Jesus name amen well on the night before Jesus was crucified he ate dinner with his disciples and he gave them a picture or a sign of what is known as the gospel if you've ever wondered what the gospel is like you and I have a picture of it a sign of it he took bread in that moment he took bread he took wine there were elements there at the meal he took these elements at the meal there and he passed them around as a meal and said that they should be received as a sign of his body and his blood the bread of the body and the cup of his blood and that he would be crucified for these people and they could see it through these elements by you and me taking these elements this morning the elements of the Lord's supper it takes us back it calls us to a point of reminiscing it's not just remembering something but it's reminiscing something it's almost like we're there we're a part of it because it proclaims his death now I'm the only one who prepared a sermon this morning

[36:37] I would trust but in this moment in this action all of you who partake of it are also preaching a message you are proclaiming the Lord's death now this meal is for those who are repentant blood-bought believers in the Lord Jesus Christ so if you're here today and you're a believer in Jesus Christ this meal is for you it's not for those who are unbelievers we would ask that you would consider the gospel that you would have heard the claims of Christ and allow these moments of passing over or passing by I pray as a catalyst for you to question your understanding of the Lord Jesus Christ your understanding of what his death and resurrection can mean for you Paul is also clear one of the authors of the New Testament Paul is also clear that all of us should examine ourselves before partaking of these elements and to confess our sins and if we find ourselves in unrepentant sins refusing to repent of our sins friend as that is you I also want to ask you to not partake in the supper as well use it as a time of fasting where you see the pain of missing out as others get to partake as a catalyst for you to come to the water where it is good to come to the meal where it is nourishing now in some ways in a moment

[37:55] I'm going to pray and then after that we'll all be invited up to the tables where you'll take the elements back to your seat and then we'll all take them together in a moment but before that as we partake when we partake remember that Christ willingly poured out his blood a new covenant uniting us to God in his boundless mercy uniting us to God in his abundant grace uniting us to a God who was so thankful that he was slow to anger for us uniting us to a God who was faithful drawing us into a fellowship with him through his own sacrifice and we pray and then we'll guide our elements our gracious and heavenly father we thank you for what these moments mean what these elements mean we pray that you would nourish us we pray that he would allow us to reminisce on your glorious death we pray that you would give us joy in this we ask this in

[38:56]  Jesus name amen amen