He Will Speak the Word

So here's one thing that we kind of have to grasp on the front end of this message this morning.

And it's this that one of the primary ways God shows his love for us as his people is through his revelation.

The fact that God would reveal himself, right?

That he would participate in this self-disclosure of his person and character, of his will and desire for his people, that's a loving thing that he does for us.

You see, he didn't have to do that.

There was nothing that forced God to reveal himself to us as his people.

But out of love for us, he chooses freely to do that.

Imagine if God did not love us in such a way.

Imagine if he remained hidden or concealed behind mystery.

Well, what would happen is that we would simply be left to our best possible conception or imagination or speculation of who God is.

And we see throughout history where people didn't have the revelation of God's word, and they were left to their own speculation, we've seen kind of the outcome of that, right?

We've seen confusion, we've seen despair, and even in some cultures, even today and throughout history, we've actually seen destruction because of it.

Because left to ourself, we're not going to produce life amidst our speculation.

We will always produce death.

But God loves us.

And because God loves us, he has revealed himself to us that we might have life and in our living might foster and cultivate life around us.

This is why he created us.

And we carry that on even today in Christ.

It is the grace of this revelation that allows us to know God and to have a right relationship with him.

God is able, and he does so through his word, set the terms of our relationship with him.

You want to have a relationship with me?

God reveals through his word this is how you're going to have a right relationship with me.

So we have an obligation to submit to that word that we might live rightly with him.

And throughout the scriptures, we see this kind of rhythm of revelation, the way in which God establishes this divine pattern of him revealing himself to us as his people.

And we see it in the pattern of proclamation and demonstration.

Right?

So proclamation, God speaks, demonstration, God works.

And we see how these are in intimate relationship with one another.

That they are almost sequential or at times even appear codependent of one another.

That the proclamation of God and the demonstration of God gives us affirmation and confidence that we can truly believe him.

In creation, God spoke, and the world and all of life that would fill it came into being.

With Abraham, God spoke the promise of a son and fulfilled that promise in the birth of Isaac.

With Joseph, God spoke to and through the youngest of the twelve sons of Jacob, and the Lord saved a nation from famine and brought them into the land of Egypt to cause them to prosper.

Through Moses, God spoke to his people and to Pharaoh by this servant and performed many signs and wonders so that all might know that it was I am who I am, who delivered his people with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.

You see, it's within this divine rhythm of proclamation and demonstration that we are enabled to faithfully know God.

He declares his word, and his works bear witness to what he has spoken.

Throughout the ages, God would primarily use his prophets to reveal himself to his people.

Moses would be the one whom God would call and raise up and would speak through so that his people would know that he was the Lord their God.

Moses would be the one who would lead them out of the oppression of slavery in Egypt and deliver them through the Red Sea.

Moses would be the one of whom the law and commands of God would be given so that Israel might be rightly governed under God's sovereign kingdom.

He was also the one who established the tabernacle and the temple worship system, that they might have sacrifices to atone for their sin and make themselves right with God.

Truly, there was none greater than Moses.

Yet it was through Moses himself that God prophesied another would come.

And it would be one who was greater than he was.

Deuteronomy 15, 18 outlines this prophecy for us.

I will raise up for them a prophet like you.

God speaking to his servant Moses from among their brothers, and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

Moses was soon going to be taken from his people.

His time of leading Israel was coming to an end.

And not only would Israel be without a leader, but more importantly, Israel would be without a voice.

Throughout the scriptures, the word of God and its proclamation always is light to God's people.

And it's in the absence of the word of God, a mouthpiece servant, that they find themselves in darkness.

A voice of one who would declare the word of God and cast the radiant light of his revelation onto his people.

Yet God would not leave his people in darkness.

This was his promise that he would make to them, that there would be a prophet who would come and he would declare the word and speak his commands.

Now, throughout the scriptures, we see God raising up many prophets who would facilitate the promise, but only in part.

See, through proclamation and demonstration, these prophets would come and they would speak to Israel the word of God and they would declare, uh demonstrate the truth of their word uh through signs and wonders and miracles, but none of them, none of them would be the ultimate fulfillment of the promise that God had made.

In essence, they would simply be lesser lights of the true light that God had promised would come.

The people of Israel were constantly wondering every time a messenger stepped onto the scene, every time a prophet would rise up, is this the one that God had promised to send?

But fundamentally, Israel would not be known by the light that was among them.

They would be known by the darkness they dwelt in.

You see, the Bible actually says that Israel is a people who have walked in darkness.

They are those who have dwelt in a land of deep darkness.

You see, oftentimes we think of Israel in a way that they were oppressed by these outside powers, these other rulers and kingdoms that came to enslave them.

And while that is true, they suffered under the tyranny of greater powers around them.

They also suffered, though, most importantly, under the darkness of which they walked in, not having the light of the word of God among them.

And we see at the end of the Old Testament the sun setting of the messenger Malachi, the last prophet of the Old Testament, that God's people from there would endure four hundred years of suffering, four hundred years of darkness, four hundred years without a voice.

His word would not be spoken, they would have no messenger among them.

The promise of God to raise up a prophet, one who would be the ultimate and final deliverer of his people, had honestly just simply appeared to be too far out of reach.

And as we come into the New Testament narrative of the Gospels, we see Israel in a condition.

Their hearts had grown hard.

I imagine that they were wanting to hold on to the promises of God, waiting and longing for the fulfillment of those promises.

But if we see the scriptures and we read through the stories, what we really see is that Israel's heart kind of resolved in this quiet disbelief.

Maybe you've been there.

Maybe you've been in a place where you wanted to hold out for the promises of God.

You were praying, you were seeking God, you were believing that He would move in your life.

And as time went by and your prayers at least weren't answered in the ways that you desired them to be, you might never have said it out loud.

But deep down in the quietness of your soul, your heart resolved in this disbelief.

Maybe God isn't gonna come through on the promises that He's made to me.

Imagine how Israel was 400 years without a voice.

Too many years had gone by, too many rulers had laid claim to their home, too many stones had been turned and reduced to rubble.

Such a time of despair, it would only be natural, though, for them to actually start to kind of grasp for and lay hold on the only true sense of sure security that they had, the law of Moses and the writing of his prophets.

You see, these were the lights of Israel's history, and so they would grasp hold of them, the voices of the past that gave them some sense of an identity, some sense of worth or purpose amidst such silence in the present.

You see, they would take the word of God and they would work to build as much security with it as they possibly could.

We see throughout the New Testament that there's this group of people called the Pharisees.

Now, the Pharisees, fundamentally, if we kind of look at the root of their belief system, believe that the scriptures were insufficient for God's people.

Because it wasn't just do this washing ceremony or clean your hands this way or do this here.

They had to add to it, they had to supplement their own ways in order to make God's word sufficient and right for his people.

I don't know about you, but maybe you can relate to me.

When I try to wash the dishes, I always do them wrong.

I don't know why I'm such an idiot.

But um I use the wrong rag, I use the wrong soap, I do the wrong circular rotation of so forth, right?

And so my my now, in my view, the dishes get clean.

In my wife's view, they do not.

So she has to come in and supplement my work uh to make sure that it's done properly.

This was really the Pharisaical school.

No, you can't just listen to God's commands and be faithful to live them out.

We're gonna have to add to them to make sure that they're really done right.

They were trying to build any sense of security that they possibly could because fundamentally their hope resided in themselves.

Finding themselves amid insecure and unsure times under the tyranny of Rome, they would construct this sense of assurance through the law and commands of God.

The law of Moses was their foundation of identity, and ultimately it was their primary source of light and hope.

But after 400 years of this silence, there would be a prophet named John who would come declaring that the true light of God had come.

We read in John chapter 1, verse 6 through 8, this there was a man sent from God, being John the Baptist, whose name was John.

John 1:6–8

He came as a witness to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light.

What made Jesus the light?

Whom John was bearing witness about Christ the Lord.

What made him the light?

It's because Jesus came speaking the word of God.

That is the light and life of men, the word of God.

He was a prophet in his own right.

But he wasn't just a prophet, right?

He wasn't just another Moses or another Elijah or another Jeremiah.

Jesus was the prophet, the final prophet that was promised from Moses himself that Israel had been waiting for.

We see in one of Jesus' first public ministry appearances, after he had suffered through the temptation in the wilderness, he comes into the city of Nazareth where he was raised as a child, and he enters into the synagogue.

And as was custom, they're gonna read from the scrolls, right?

They're gonna stand up, we kind of stand up, we read the word of God here this morning.

That's what they were doing there.

They would stand and they would read from the scrolls.

Jesus stands up and he's going to read, and someone hands him a scroll.

And it's the scroll of Isaiah.

And Jesus opens that scroll and he searches for the place that says where Isaiah had spoken of him.

He says this in Luke 4, 17 through 21, speaking of this account.

And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him.

He enrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

And he rolled up the scroll, and he gave it back to the attendant and sat down.

And the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Man, can you imagine that moment?

Right?

I can just imagine Jesus sitting down on that front row, feeling the eyes of all in the room glaring at him, and probably without even turning his head, just lifting up his voice and saying, It's been fulfilled today.

And there's three times within this passage of Isaiah that the word proclaim is used to speak of what this prophet would do, this one who would be sent from God.

What's he going to do?

He's going to proclaim.

He's going to proclaim the good news.

He's going to proclaim liberty.

He's going to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

But also within this passage, we see the beauty and notion of demonstration also.

Because it was in the midst of this proclamation that we would also see the recovering of sight to the blind and to set at liberty those who are oppressed.

You see, this passage lays out perfectly the pattern and rhythm of proclamation and demonstration, the life rhythm and affirmation of a prophet of God.

Jesus had come to proclaim the word of the Father.

And he was going to affirm that word through the demonstration of his power.

The signs and wonders that Jesus did, the miracles that he performed, the healings and even the removing of demons from people.

This all was to demonstrate that what he was speaking was true.

And he rolls up that scroll in the midst of that synagogue and declares, today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

This is Jesus declaring himself as the prophet who God had promised would come.

The one who, through his word and work, would be the light of all mankind.

The author John in his gospel continues about Jesus in chapter 1, verse 4 through 5.

In him being Jesus was life, and the life was the light of men.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Jesus is not a glimmer of light that the darkness swallows up.

Jesus is the light that dispels all darkness forever.

Yet what we see throughout his ministry in the New Testament is that he would face a lot of opposition because of the word that he spoke and who he declared himself to be.

The people would resolve in disbelief.

Fundamentally, we see because they loved the darkness that they were in.

The word had come, but the people refused to receive it.

They'd been a people in darkness for so long that they began to love the very darkness that they dwelled in.

Have you ever met someone like that?

Have you ever met someone that's that you know the choices that they're making in life, the worldview that they're fostering, the belief system that they're operating in?

It's only producing harm and destruction and death.

It's not producing life, it doesn't have any fruit in it.

And you're sitting out here thinking, like, man, why aren't you getting out of this?

Why aren't you changing something?

And you discover in this weird twist that they actually love the darkness that they're living in.

This was the very heart of Israel.

They actually loved this darkness, and all light threatened what they loved.

It threatened their sense of identity, it threatened their notion of security that they had clung to through the law of Moses.

You see, Israel was known, they had a reputation for killing God's messengers that he had sent before them.

Why?

Because when they spoke the word, the light threatened the darkness of which they love, and so they put his prophets to death.

It would be no different for Jesus.

They would plan and plot ways to arrest and kill him because he declared to be the light, and they loved the darkness that they walked in.

Now, near the end of his ministry, we come to an exchange that Jesus has with some religious leaders and Jewish people of his day.

And we see this exchange happen in John 5.

Jesus has just healed a man on the Sabbath, a man who had suffered for a long time with a condition of paralysis.

And so Jesus heals him on the Sabbath, and this creates this indignation in the hearts of those around him, those who loved the law of Moses and the darkness of which they uh walked in more than they loved the light that was in front of them.

And so they actually planned a way that they could kill him.

And they didn't just want to kill him because he had healed a man of paralysis on the Sabbath.

They also wanted to kill him because of what he was declaring about himself.

That he was actually declaring himself as equal with God, communicating that the unity of him and the Father.

And in the midst of their plotting, in the midst of their judgments and accusations, this burning indignation, Jesus says these words in John chapter 5, verse 45 through 47.

John 5:45–47

He says this, do not think that I will accuse you to the Father.

Listen, there is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope.

On whom you have set your hope.

For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me.

But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?

Now you can imagine this statement.

Would have dumped gasoline on an already blazing fire.

These men were ready to kill Jesus for what he had said.

And now he's going to look at them and say, look, here's the reality.

I don't even have to put forth the effort to accuse you.

This really reminds me of John chapter 3.

John 3 · chapter mention

When Jesus is preaching and he says, I didn't come into the world to condemn it.

I didn't have to.

You already are condemned.

Do you not understand that?

Because you don't believe in me.

And he's saying the same thing here to these people who are looking to kill him.

I don't have to put forth the effort to accuse you.

Moses accuses you.

And he says this, this twist.

Moses, who you hope in.

Who do the Jewish people hope in?

They hoped in the law.

They hoped in their own obedience to it.

They hoped in their own self-righteousness.

And Jesus says, You stand here condemned.

Moses has already done the work for him.

They had built their entire identity and security in the law, but they had not even understood that what Moses was trying to write of, what he was trying to point them to, was the Messiah who was to come.

Moses was never trying to point back to himself.

He was trying to point outwardly to the Messiah, the Savior, the prophet who would come.

He had written of the light that was to come, the word that would be made flesh, the prophet that was greater than he.

Moses wrote of Jesus.

You see, the Jews, they had built this divine Messiah-less culture where they had actually become their own Messiah.

If we can just simply observe the law properly, if we can even add to it to make sure that we're going above and beyond the very law of God, to make sure that every I was dotted, T was crossed.

If we can just, in our own strength and merit, earn God's love and favor, then we will be good.

We will be whole.

We will have life.

And when the promised Messiah actually came, they were in such a state that they were unable and unwilling to recognize him.

They had prided themselves of the law of Moses, but they had failed to understand who the law itself was working to point them to.

You see, the very nature of the law is that it is a mirror for us to gaze into.

As we stack ourselves against the law of God, we should come to a ruin of our own self-righteousness that we are not able to measure up to the righteous, holy standard of his law.

It's a mirror showing us not that we're able to do it, but that we will never be able to do it.

And so our hope must be transferred off of ourselves, off of our own obedience to what God has commanded us, and it must be transferred into the one, Christ Himself, who perfectly obeyed and has obtained our righteousness for us.

By grace through faith, his perfect, righteous life is given to us.

Because we could never fulfill this law.

We are hopeless as we stand up before its measuring rod.

The law was always meant to point us to a Savior.

Jesus, the Messiah, who was to come and deliver his people.

So what I want us to see in this text this morning is this that Jesus is the fulfillment of the promised prophet.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the promised prophet, the one who would come to proclaim the very word of God, to deliver his good news gospel message, and to set the captives free.

You see, Jesus came in proclamation and in demonstration to fulfill all that had been promised to God's people.

You see, the people of Israel who had found their fullness of hope in the law of Moses, they had fixed their gaze on God's servants of the past.

They were unable and unwilling to recognize that Jesus before them was the greater Moses, that he was the faithful mouthpiece of God, the outstretched arm of Yahweh, the deliverer of his people.

And in the midst of their stiff-necked backward gaze, they failed to see the very light that was in front of them.

Jesus had come to speak the word and to fulfill the office of prophet for his people.

And I think as we look through the New Testament Gospels, one of the ways that we see this most clearly, that Jesus was the fulfillment of the prophecy.

He was the true and better Moses is in his transfiguration.

So three of the Gospels record this transfiguration, but I think Luke 9 does this the best.

And what we're going to do is we're going to try to work through Luke 9 and the story of the transfiguration to see how Jesus actually reveals himself to be the greater Moses, the fulfillment of God's promises.

Luke chapter 9, verse 28 through 36 tells of this event.

Luke 9:28–36

It says, Now, about eight days after these sayings, he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray.

And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white.

And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.

Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep.

But when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, Master, it is good that we are here.

Let us make three tents, you know, one for you, and one for Moses, and one for Elijah, not knowing what he said.

As he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud.

And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my son, my chosen one.

Listen to him.

And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone, and they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.

I believe in this transfiguration, Jesus displays that he is the final prophet, that he is the true and better Moses.

The first thing that we see in this parallel between Moses and his summoning of Mount Sinai, and Jesus and his summoning of this mount, we see first that Jesus takes with him Peter, John, and James, and he takes them up the mountain to commune with God, to be in prayer together.

In the same manner, Moses took Aaron and his two sons, Nadab and Abihu, up Mount Sinai to commune with the Lord.

It then speaks of Jesus' face being altered.

Literally, in the scriptures, it means that it changed its very form, that it was set apart as a unique type, different from all other beings.

Though Moses would come down from Mount Sinai with this derived glory that caused his face to illuminate, Jesus' face itself would be so transformed that it would communicate and be the very glory of Yahweh himself.

Jesus' clothing became dazzling white.

In a more faithful translation, it would read, flashing like lightning.

In Exodus 19, we see that the summit of Mount Sinai was surrounded by thunder and lightning.

It was communicating the presence of God that dwelt there.

And at the summit of this mount, Jesus' very clothes would flash like lightning, communicating that he was the fullness of the presence of God.

Then Moses and Elijah appear with him and they begin to converse with him there.

They speak in regarding to his departure.

Luke records his departure that was going to take place soon in Jerusalem.

That word departure literally is translated Exodus.

They were speaking of his exodus, pointing forward to the final and greater exodus of slaves whom Christ would set free from the bondage of their sin.

Just as the children of Israel were baptized through Moses into the Red Sea, Jesus is the one who is baptized with the judgment of God by drinking the full cup of his wrath in order to cause God's final judgment to pass over his chosen people, his blood-bought children, and bring them into the eternal land of his promise, the new heavens and the new earth.

As Paul writes in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 8, therefore it says, When he ascended on high in his exodus, he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.

Ephesians 4:8

Here we see in this transfiguration, Moses and Elijah, they're present with Jesus at the summit to testify of him, being the fulfillment of the promised prophet to come.

We weren't to look to Moses, we weren't to look to Jesus.

They are standing beside him, looking, or uh we weren't to look to Elijah, they were standing beside him that we might look to him, the promised one who had come.

Their presence displays that Israel was never to look to them, but to the one whom they had written of.

Peter, John, and James, they finally awake from their sleep, right?

And they see this sight before them.

And Peter, as he almost always does, responds in ignorance, right?

I can relate a lot to Peter.

And he says, Hey, I think I got an idea.

We should build a tabernacle, one for you, uh, Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.

But Luke records something very specific in this event.

He says that when the apostles or these disciples woke from this heavy sleep, that they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him.

That it was a unique, distinct glory that was before them that the other two did not share.

It was the only the glory of Jesus that was seen, demanding that if there was any worship, it was not to be shared with another.

And then a cloud envelops them.

Can you imagine Jesus, these two prophets Moses and Elijah, and these three disciples are there, and this cloud just engulfs them.

On Sinai, it would be Moses and Moses alone, who would be able to enter the glory cloud of Yahweh on the summit of Mount Sinai.

It would be Aaron and his children that would have to remain outside of this cloud, outside of the presence and glory of God.

But here at this summit, with this Christ, all are brought into the glory and presence of God.

Finally, at the moment, Luke records, and a voice came out of the cloud saying, This is my son, my chosen one.

Listen to him.

You see, this is the fulfillment of the Exodus 18 prophecy.

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers.

It is to him you shall listen.

It is this very prophecy that God the Father will quote as being fulfilled here in Luke 9, 35, when he speaks from amid the glory clouds, saying to Peter and his disciples, listen to him.

You see, Jesus is the one promised to come.

He is the final prophet who would speak the word of Yahweh and deliver his people through the exodus of their sin.

We have no need to look for another to come.

We have no need to turn our necks toward the lights of the past to find our hope.

We need only to look to Jesus, the final prophet, the true and better Moses, the Son of God and Savior of the world.

You see, we serve a sending God.

It's in his nature to send.

God, the Father, sends the Son, the Son sends the Spirit, and we as his people are sent.

And we are sent in Christ to speak the word of God, to proclaim the good news of Jesus.

As Jesus was sent, so are we.

We are sent to speak the word.

You see, after Jesus' substitutionary death and glorious resurrection, he comes to his disciples to comfort and to prepare them for mission.

His disciples had had hidden for fear that they would face the same fate and outcome as Jesus did.

They just saw Jesus, their leader, be tortured and crucified.

And so they hide themselves, they cower in fear.

And Jesus comes to be present with them, to comfort them with his own presence.

But he doesn't just comfort them by being with them.

What we see is that actually Jesus perceives that their fear is rooted in ignorance, that they don't understand why these things had to take place.

If only they knew and understood why all this had to happen, they might be emboldened instead of cowards.

And so what does Jesus do?

He begins to teach them.

He begins to overcome this ignorance.

And we see in Luke 24 how Jesus actually opens their mind to help them understand that this was all supposed to happen.

This was the storyline of the scriptures.

It says this in Luke 24, 44 through 48.

Then he said to them, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you.

Look at this.

That everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

Here's what was written.

Well, then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures, right?

And he said to them, Thus it is written.

Here's what that means.

Scripture is written in such a way that it communicates, that it tells this storyline that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things.

And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you.

But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.

Jesus shows that there's this crimson thread throughout all of Scripture.

And it's telling one beautiful story: the gospel.

That the Christ, the anointed one, should suffer and die, but be raised on the third day.

Here's what that tells us about our own understanding and relationship with God's Word.

When we dive into the scripture, when we seek to understand what God is trying to reveal to his people, we should come out of that seeing the gospel.

That Jesus died for us and that he rose again to give us new life in him.

That is what all of the scripture points to is this gospel storyline.

And Jesus is helping them understand.

If you just knew, if you just saw, and what did he have to do?

He had to open, can you imagine?

He had to open their minds so that they might understand.

Speak about the sovereignty of God.

These dudes were with Jesus for over three years in earthly ministry.

They had just witnessed him be crucified, and now they're standing in the same room with him, resurrected from the dead, and they're still like, I still don't get it.

And Jesus is like, okay, dummy.

I think Jesus would say to me, like, hey, you poo-poo head.

Let me let me tell you.

Um, here's what it is.

I was supposed to do this, because look at all this scripture.

I was supposed to suffer, die, raise on the third day.

And they're like, ah, now I get it.

How did they get it?

Jesus opened their minds to help them understand.

You see, at the storyline of the scripture, we see the beauty of the gospel.

This is the centrality of scripture.

And it's from this gospel good news that we are sent as messengers for communicating to all of those around us what the gospel has accomplished for his people.

He says that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things.

Church, we are sent to speak the word.

In the way that Christ was sent to speak the word of God, we as his church are sent to speak the gospel.

The word that through the gospel of Jesus we are delivered from our sin and death.

In the final Exodus, we are brought in to the promise of his life.

But the beauty of this is that we're not sent in our own strength, power, and gifting.

We're sent with the Spirit.

This is what Jesus actually promises there at the end.

And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you.

But stay into the city and you clothe with power from on high.

Jesus promises that he will send one with us to be on mission with us.

The message of the gospel goes forth through us, his church, but it's empowered by the Spirit who goes with us.

As Jesus would come to speak the word of God that we might know the Father and find the freedom that our souls so desperately need.

May we also go to speak the word of the gospel to the captives of our culture.

That in Jesus there is forgiveness of sin and life everlasting.

Amen.