Day Of The Lord - Hear This!

Okay.

I get the privilege this morning of opening our new sermon series on the book of Joel.

Um, and so if you'll turn to Joel chapter one, or look on the screen, uh, behind me, you can, you can read with me the first few verses.

The word of the Lord that came to Joel, the son of Pethuel: Hear this, you elders; give ear, all inhabitants of the land! Has such a thing happened in your days, or in the days of your fathers?

Tell your children of it, and let your children tell their children, and their children to another generation.

What the cutting locust left, the swarming locust has eaten.

What the swarming locust left, the hopping locust has eaten, and what the hopping locust left, the destroying locust has eaten.

Amen.

So let me tell you how things work around here.

Okay.

When we're putting together sermon series and we love going through, you know, an entire book, because going through a book helps us to, to, uh, get the big picture of things also helps us to preach on things.

We may not preach on otherwise, you know, going through a book expository.

Uh, but uh, if, if we're like doling out the sermons, who's gonna preach on what.

And one of the pastors happens to be out of the country at that time.

And they say around the table, they say, who's gonna preach on the locus.

I know let's let Mark do that one.

Woo.

Awesome.

So this is what they give me the locust.

So we're gonna have like a seminar on entomology study of insects this morning.

We're gonna talk about wings, spans of locus and various kinds of locus and the length of cuspids and the length of legs and what they do.

No, we're really not gonna do that.

We're gonna, hopefully I wanna give you a big picture of two things this morning.

Okay.

Cuz this is an introduction, big picture of the old Testament and what God's doing in the old Testament and a big picture of the book of Joel and what God's gonna do in the book of Joel.

So that's what I that's my, my goal this morning and it has to do with generations and it has to do with locusts.

Okay.

So let's see what we can do here.

You know, big picture of the old Testament, God has chosen to speak to us, right?

Which is good news.

He's revealed himself to mankind.

And the old Testament is the story of how he's revealed himself to mankind.

And he reveals himself through many ways through his actions, through his words, through his laws, through his names, mostly he reveals himself to us through his covenants.

His covenants of love his Hesed, this a Hebrew word, HEID, his faithful love his faithful love and kind of covenant love.

So at the core of God's self revelation to us and his plan to us is covenant, or we can call it relationship.

He's made a covenant with us.

Like a marriage is a covenant.

It's a beginning of relationship when we, when you're exchanging those vows.

Right?

And so God has made a covenant and he's cuz his whole heart is about relationships with us.

So if we look big picture the first 11 chapters of Genesis, we do see a covenant.

There is this covenant with Noah and really a covenant with mankind and is covenant with, with creation through, through Noah, right?

Remember there was creation.

There's the fall of man.

There's the effect.

And the devastation caused by sin, the growth of evil and then the destruction by flood.

And then the promise no more destruction by flood.

It's not gonna happen anymore.

And then chapter 12 through chapter 20 in Genesis, this, we see another covenant and this covenant is a covenant of Abraham God making promises to Abraham.

And the idea is that he would have descendants that are more than the stars of the heaven or the sands of the seas that God would make his name great.

And that he would become a father of a people.

Okay.

Cuz the whole idea is God wants to reveal himself through a people.

So he makes a covenant with Abraham and then in ex extras through Deuteronomy, we see in other covenants of covenant with Moses, right where God gives the law.

Okay.

And he gives very specific laws and he gives very specific blessings.

If you keep the law and very specific curses, if you disobey the law, by the way, one of the curses you can read in de around 28, if you disobey the law is plagues of locusts.

Okay?

So this is part of what Joel is tying back to.

There's a covenant with God.

He wants to reveal and stuff to man and through man to the world.

And, and then Joshua is a record of God's faithfulness on his side to this covenant that he made.

And then the book of judges is a record of Israel's unfaithful on their side to the covenant that they made with God.

And then in the book of Kings and Samuel and even Chronicles, we see, um, this covenant with David and God says that there'll be someone, uh, from the line of David that will be on the throne.

Always forever will sit on, on God's throne.

And we know that that's not only David's literal physical throne, but it's actually a picture of Jesus.

So it's pointing to Jesus.

Okay.

So all these covenants and now we come now we come to the role of the profits.

Okay.

What is a profit supposed to do?

Is he just a, uh, an angry guy who points his finger at people?

No, he's a heartbroken guy who is trying to call people back to their covenant.

A co a prophet is an enforcer of the covenant and the, when there's this history of Israel and it's like this, right?

Sometimes they serve the Lord.

Sometimes they fall away from the Lord and then they serve and they fall away.

And then these down times we're seeing the prophets, God sends prophets to call people back into the covenant.

And that's the whole idea.

So through the prophets, God is saying that his covenant is still in effect and keeping it will still bring blessing and breaking.

It will still bring punishment and that's what's happening in the book of Joel.

So that's a big picture of the old Testament, really big, really, really quick one.

But I also wanna give you a big picture of the prophet Joel.

And this book is, um, is an amazing book and has so many things in it.

And in the next few weeks, we're gonna be going in detail over this, but I wanna give you like the movie trailer version.

Okay.

Very quick version of the book of Joel.

Okay.

So here you go.

This is what we're gonna see in the book of Joel.

He starts out by saying this, listen.

Yeah, that's what he starts out.

Hear this.

That's the first two words of he, of, of his message.

Hear this pay attention.

This is something that has never happened.

An extraordinary event.

Tell it to your children and grandchildren and great grandchildren.

The terrible things you've gone through should turn your ear to God.

The famine that's caused by invading army of locusts, real locusts, eating real food and the priests and the tillers of the land are weeping because the land is destroyed.

There's no fruit, there's no bread.

There's no oil.

The seeds shrivel under the clads.

There's nothing in the storehouses.

Even the animals are groaning because there's nothing for them to eat or drink.

And just as the fields are dried up, the hope of men's hearts has also dried up and there are no offerings for the house of the Lord.

And then another army, a powerful nation with fierce fangs lays waste.

The vine of God's people, a literal army that comes to destroy a great army from the Lord is coming in judgment.

And in front of them, the land is like the garden of Eden, but behind them, it's like a desolate wilderness and nothing escapes them horses and chariots like flaming fire burn up the land.

The people are in anguish and are terrorized.

The earth is quaking and the sun and the moon grow dark.

The day of the Lord is very dark and very awesome and who can endure it.

It's time to call all the people together and proclaim a solemn fast, let everyone gather and Trimble and cry out to God.

The day of the Lord is near the day of judgment and it is terrible.

And the Lord says return to me with all of your hearts, with fasting and weeping and wailing everyone, elderly leaders, children, nursing, infants, those who celebrate, let them stop bride and bride groom.

Stop the honeymoon.

This is serious.

Cry out for God to spare you.

Don't merely tear your clothes, but rip open your hearts return to God because he is gracious and compassionate and slow to anger and rich in love, repent to God.

So he will relent on his judgment.

And when you do, the Lord will have pity and he will send reign and the crops and a future and a reputation among the nations.

He will remove your enemy.

Don't be afraid for, he will send the early reign and the later reign and he says, I will restore what the locust have eaten.

You will eat and be satisfied.

You will be my people and you will no longer endure shame.

And after this, after this, I will pour out my spirit, young, old male, female.

Everyone will experience the work of the spirit and everyone who will call in the name of the Lord will be saved.

And then I will gather all the nations and I will judge them on behalf of my people.

There will be another day of the Lord and the Lord will roar in judgment, but he will be a refuge to his own people.

And there is a bright future and the Lord will dwell with his people, these people, wow.

In the coming weeks, we're gonna go into detail about these things.

I want a picture Joel puts forth for us.

But today our job is four verses.

Right?

And we have to understand those four verses in the context of what's going on in Israel.

The problem is we don't know much about the context here.

Okay.

So we don't know much about, so we to ask questions.

Well, always we ask questions when we approach the scripture.

Who, what, when, where, how, why, so what, what does it mean to us?

We ask those questions, but we don't get a lot of answers here in the book of Joel.

Uh, we don't know exactly when he wrote this because he really didn't tell us a lot of the other prophets say in the day of king.

So and so, and we know pretty much the timeframe when they were, they were, uh, prophesying in.

But Joel, didn't say that, right.

Maybe it was after the time of exile, the time of Ezra ne may, because he does mention a temple, but he doesn't mention any Kings at all, but we don't know for sure.

And he seems to have come either after or alongside the other prophets because he quotes them.

He has lot of quotations from Isaiah, from Amos, from Naim, from Obadiah, from Ezekiel, from Zanaya.

He has read his Bible.

Okay, he's read the scriptures.

He has read the prophets that have come before him.

And so Joel refers to their words in his prophecy.

But also we have to understand that Peter, on the day of Pentecost in the new Testament refers to Joel's words.

He hearkens back to what Joel says, and this is an odd thing that, that Joel tells us about a coming judgment, but he doesn't list any sins that the people have committed.

And this is unique because most of the prophets do list the sins.

They list very explicitly.

Here's what you have done.

And for these sins, this judgment is coming upon you.

But Joel doesn't do that.

He doesn't tell him the specific sins at all.

I think because he assumes that everyone has been listening to the message of the other prophets, right?

Who did list specific sins.

But here's the thing, Joel understood what to do in his day.

He understood what was happening and he knew what to do.

And he had hope for the future because he was reflecting on the profits that he had and on the biblical writings that he already had on the scriptures, he's hearkening back to the first five books of the Bible.

He's hearkening back to the history of Israel and also Peter too.

He interpreted what was going on in his day based on what was written, okay.

This is a lesson for us.

We can understand what's going on in our day and how we should respond to what's going in our, on, in our day by getting ourselves in the book.

Right.

Get in the Bible.

Amen.

Where else are you gonna get a trusted source of information?

Does anybody know a trusted source of information today?

I mean seriously, in, in the news, is there a trusted source?

Is there an unbiased source anywhere?

Is there some kind of perspective of real truth anywhere that there is for us there is.

And Joel looked at the writings, he looked at the history of his reel and he understood what to do, cut through the confusion.

Okay.

So we don't really know anything else about Joel either.

We don't know anything about him except for who his father was.

Some guy named PE well, right.

Joel's name means Jehovah is God pretty good name for a son.

Right?

Pretty good.

Maybe he was from the Southern kingdom because he mentions Judah and Jerusalem, but we don't really know.

He just don't know much about it.

But I think the fact that we don't know much about Joel or the time that he wrote might be an indication that his writings were not just time specific for that day, but it's also for all of us, it's for us today.

It's for all generations, it's timeless.

And what is going on here in this con in the, in the, in the day of that, Joe is riding what's going on?

Well, I mean, there's a national disaster.

Something probably we don't, we have never really lived through some of our older saints lived through, you know, part of the depression, probably the great depression, maybe the dust bowl, you know, when it was such a, there was such a famine in, in our country and the depression was going on.

Maybe that kind of national disaster, we can relate to a little bit, some of us under remember where we were exactly when we heard about nine 11.

Right.

That was a national disaster, but this is different.

Okay.

Because this is an attack on the entire economy because it's an AGR economy, right?

This is a, this is a agriculture, is everything.

And locus when agriculture is everything, locus are a big thing.

Okay.

Right.

So we get like cicadas, we get the little locus, every however, however many years.

Right.

And every so often there's a plague of locus in, uh, the middle east.

And in Africa, we could see that.

In fact there was one in 2020, I think we might have a picture of it.

Can you imagine, can you imagine living in a plague of locus?

Okay.

But not just a plague.

This is four kinds of locus.

This is plague after plague, swarm, after swarm of locus and whatever these guys didn't eat, the next one ate, whatever they didn't eat.

If there was anything left, the next one say it was absolutely de solution.

No nothing going on agriculturally.

So, so there's no food.

There's no hope if everything's devastated.

And in fact it was, it was apparently, you know, nothing like this has happened in any of your lives.

That's what he says.

Has anything like this ever happened, your fathers and yours and the generation after you and your children and the children's children and five generations.

This is apparently like a, you know, 150 year event or maybe a never event.

Maybe it's never happened only once.

Who knows.

This is something that's unheard of.

Okay.

Unprecedented, huge national disaster.

What do you do in a situation like this?

What do you do?

What action do you take?

Well, there's some action words in this chapter.

I'll just show you what I've found in chapter one.

Here are the verbs.

What do you do?

Listen, tell awake whale.

Be ashamed.

GERD.

Your yourselves, consecrate yourselves, sound an alarm in verse in chapter two.

Repent.

So there's action required when these things happen.

So two things we have to think about today in our text.

One is generation generations.

One is locusts, right?

So generations look back, has anything like this ever happened?

Did your fathers ever experience anything like this?

Have you ever experienced anything like this up to this point and look forward, tell your children of it and tell their children of it and let them tell their children of it.

Whatever age you are here this morning, there's a call on your generation.

Amen.

To understand the purpose of God right now and teach it to the next generation.

That's right.

When I read this, I immediately thought of Psalm 78.

And I wanna read it to you.

The first few verses of it, listen to this.

This is a, a wisdom Psalm.

Okay.

And the Psalmist has given like a parable, like a dark saying almost like a riddle here.

Okay.

Give ear, oh my people to my teaching, incline your ears.

To the words of my mouth, I will open my mouth in a parable.

I will utter dark sayings from old things that we have heard and known that our fathers have told us we will not hide them from our children or from their children, but tell the coming generations and the glorious deeds of the Lord and his might, and the wonders that he has done.

He established a testimony in Jacob.

He appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers to teach to their children, that the next generation might know them, that children yet unborn will arise and tell to their children so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments and that they should not be like their father as a stubborn rebellious generation generation whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to God.

There's a mandate on us to teach generations.

Okay.

Uh, I just wanna remind you that God is a God of generations.

God is a God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

He doesn't just think about present.

He thinks future, right?

In fact, in the very nature of God, there is a father and a son and a spirit.

There are generations in his very nature.

It's not just what he's concerned with on earth.

It's who he is.

He is a God of generations.

And after the story of creation and the fall of man, as soon as there were generations to be counted, we have a genealogy early in Genesis.

And at the end of the old Testament, it ends with a promise.

The fathers and the sons are gonna be reconciled.

And then there's a period of silence.

And when God decides to speak again, he opens it up the new Testament with a list of generations leading to Jesus.

And God says, rehearse the deeds of the Lord, tell the story, good story, bad story.

Right?

You know that there were things that, that God ordained, you know, for example, Passover, it was a feast.

It was a big deal.

And the whole point was remembering what God had done.

It done the good parts and even the bad parts.

Even the stubbornness when things were Stu, when, when our fathers were stubborn, these bad things happen, tell it to your children.

So Joel's prophecy is that when the spirits poured out, it'll be poured out on your sons and your daughters and your old men will dream dreams.

And young men will prophesy or see visions.

Okay?

And this is because when old men dream dreams, they inspire vision in young men.

This is why generations need each other.

And not only that, the young are devoid of wisdom, unless the older generation passes on what they've learned.

There's gotta be a connection between the generations.

It's very important.

We love every generation at TCC.

We love every generation in our body.

Every one of them, we're serious about training.

The next generation of leaders, your church staff here is full of bright young men and women who love Jesus and love this church.

And th at thrills us.

And we just had an awesome youth conference, Ted Ted, and it was beautiful to see generations interacting in the midst of that younger teaching, even younger than them and older coming in, we had Lonnie come in and talk to the kids we had the last night, we had a prophetic team of older people, praying for the younger people.

Just beautiful.

And I just wanna tell you, you just, you know, watch out cuz we've got some world changers in our midst in our youth, but God's given a mandate to fathers and mothers to train their sons and daughters, not to the school system.

Right.

And not to the children's ministry.

We'll do our best to come alongside you and help you disciple your kids.

But the mandate is on you, right?

You have to teach, you have to train your children.

Tell of the marvelous works of the Lord, warn them about the times when there was a falling away and still a healthy fear of God that hates what's wrong and loves what's right.

And magnify.

God's kindness by living a life of repentance and living in the fruit that repentance, which is the goodness of God.

It's a gift of God.

So generations are very important.

But what about locusts?

What about locus?

What's the deal with the bugs?

What is the deal?

Well, in Joel's day, in his concept, in his context, this was an understanding of God's judgment.

I mean, it was literally happening right there and he uses this phrase the day of the Lord.

We're hear this a lot all through this sermon series.

He wanna hear the word day of the Lord.

Okay.

Day of the Lord.

What is the day of the Lord?

Well, it's a phrase that prophets use a lot.

You know, a lot of the prophets use that it's a concept, uh, that the, that the, uh, Israelite had and in Israel, they actually thought the day of the Lord was a good thing.

It was a positive thing to them cuz they thought, well, God is going to judge our enemies in the day of the Lord.

He's gonna judge our enemies, which is, which is great.

Right?

But the problem is AMO.

The first prophet who actually used that term day of the Lord, Amos used it in a totally different way.

He turned that whole thing upside down and he said to Israel and to Judah, uh, these prophets in, in, in to, to both sets of the kingdom, there was a division of the kingdom and a Northern and Southern kingdom.

The prophets were speaking to God's people in both kingdoms.

And the idea was you have broken the covenant.

So you have become the enemies.

The day of the Lord is not good news.

The day of the Lord is bad news, but you see, there's also when there's a repentance, there's restoration and there's a day of the Lord on your enemies.

And so you see the, all, most of the prophets, all of the prophets that use the term day of the Lord use it cutting both ways.

Okay.

So it's both, it's both a positive thing and a negative thing.

So, um, judgment on everyone who deserves it, but salvation on those who repent his remnant or his chosen.

So the prophecy here in Joel was hearkening back to times when God moved mightily to save his people like in the plagues of Israel is Egypt.

Remember in Egypt, 10 plagues.

One of the plagues was what?

Locus, locus.

Yeah.

God was bringing locus to destroy the land, to judge the evil people.

So they would let his people go.

But now God's confronting evil.

Again.

It just happens to be in his own people.

Wow.

And also among the nations to bring salvation and deliverance to the world.

So at chapter one we see a national disaster similar to the plagues of, of Exodus.

But this time it's, the purpose is to get the attention and the renewed defection of his own people, right.

Chapter two describes a similar day of the Lord, but similar, but perhaps in the future, we don't know for sure this time, maybe in the following weeks, we'll learn more about that.

Yeah.

Um, this one, uh, seems to be like a military army that's coming and destroying everything and nobody can endure his judgment.

And this is God's army chapter two verse 11 says, this is God's army.

God is sending this army.

So I mean, what are we to do when God sends an harmony army of judgment, will he tells us, and this is the answer.

Real repentance, genuine change, tearing, not our clothes, but tearing our hearts and turning back to God.

And he tells us why we can do that.

And to me, this is like a hinge point of this entire sermon.

Maybe this maybe the entire book of, of Joel is that he tells us why we can repent because what happens is Joel reminds us and reminds his people of something that God told Moses INO 34, when Moses said, God, show me who you are, show me your glory.

And God said, okay, I'll self-identify, here's who I am.

The Lord gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in HEID.

Rich in love.

Covenant love that word.

HEID is a word that we really can't translate.

In fact, scholars, linguists have never found any other cognate in any other language except Hebrew to actually translate this word word for word.

The king James version uses TW 14, 14 different words to translate this one word Hesed, because it means so much.

It's God's covenant love.

It's his loving.

It's not just love.

It's kindness.

It's loving kindness.

It's his tenderness.

But it's more than that.

It's like his mercy.

It's like his tender mercies.

It's like his faithful love.

And, and there's no way to actually describe it in any language.

It's unique to Hebrew because it's unique to the Hebrew, God, this Hesed God from whom we have the right to expect.

Nothing gives us everything.

That's what he, it is.

And that's how God defines himself.

This is why we can repent.

This is the reason we can repent because God is in his character, in his nature kind.

He's full of covenant love.

This is what he's like.

The Lord is gracious and compassionate.

This is amazing.

You know, we would expect God to reveal himself to Moses, you know, okay.

I'll tell you who I am.

The Lord sovereign and almighty and powerful and holy, but he didn't say any of that.

We would expect the God to be like that.

Right?

But he didn't say any of that.

I'll tell you who I am.

I'm the Lord gracious, compassionate, Slow to anger.

You know, anger is not a character.

Quality of God, slow to anger is it's important.

There's anger because there's natural wrath that comes from a holy God against sin.

That destroys his destruction.

There is wrath, but that's not his character.

His character is not to be angry.

His character is to be slow to anger.

And he's slow to anger precisely because he's rich in mercy.

This is who God is.

What do we do in a national disaster?

What do we do when our sins have caught up to us and we're under judgment, God opens his arms.

And he says, turn to me.

Tear your hearts.

Repent.

Come back to me because I'm full of mercy and covenant love.

We break our covenants, but he doesn't break his covenant.

That's who he is.

That's beautiful.

So this repentance leads to the compassion from the Lord, which leads to reversal of the EF the effects of judgment.

And then, and in chapter three, God says, there's another day of the Lord.

And God's gonna bring judgment on all the nations.

And he will destroy his people's enemies and he will restore the land and he will give his own presence as a gift to the people.

Nah, that's what Peter picked up on in chapter two of acts, when the spirit of God fell and they were speaking in tongues and everybody said, what is going on here?

And God's communicating to all these different nations.

This is craziness.

What is going on?

This has gotta be really Carnell.

They must be drunk.

No, no, this is not, this is not drunk.

This is not drunken this at all.

Peter says, this is what Joel said would happen.

Joel said it would happen.

On the last days, I will pour out my spirit on all flesh,

Pour out my spirit.

In the last days, the birth of the church, born by the blood of the lamb, Jesus Christ.

And Peter says we're in those days now starting then we're in those days now, not only can we be forgiven, but we can be filled with the spirit of God.

And as his chosen people, we can be the light to the world that God always intended.

That's good news.

So what are we gonna learn from Joel?

Number one, we're gonna learn that sin destroys lives.

Sin destroys lives.

Sinfulness of man leads to devastation in the real lives of real people in a lot of different ways.

And the wages of sin is death.

And this hearkens back to Genesis chapter three, remember after the fall of man, and God is telling the man the result of his disobedience and he says, there's gonna be six things that happen.

You can read it in Genesis chapter three, six things that happen.

There's curse and there's pain and there's thorns and thistles and there's sweat and there's death.

That's the result of sin.

And brothers and sisters, I, I just want to warn you.

That's what happens every time we open the door to sin, You crack the door open.

It doesn't matter what sin it is.

It doesn't matter.

Maybe it's looking on that site.

Maybe it's the pornography.

Maybe it's the pornography.

That's in the movie that you're watching that you ought not, maybe it's that you're harboring bitterness against your spouse, right?

And not forgiving.

Maybe it's that you're walking into peacefulness on your job.

Or maybe there's some kind of thing that you're doing.

That's stealing, whatever it is.

Anytime you're opening the door, you crack open the door to sin.

There's a deluge.

There's a flood of curse and pain and sweat and death and thorns and thistles.

That's what happens, especially fathers.

I wanna encourage you, especially fathers.

That's my father's day sermon.

Okay.

Next week.

Right?

Especially fathers.

When you open the door to sin, you're open to floodgates, To all of those in your family, mothers, when you do that, you're opening the doors.

But you know what?

When you open the door to righteousness, when you open the door to holiness and to blessing of God, the same thing happens.

There has to be a real fear of God in our hearts because sin destroys lives.

And the fear of the Lord scripture says is to hate what is evil, right?

It's a turning from what's evil because we know the result of it.

And it's a turning to God because that relationship is most important.

Number two, we're gonna learn that God, because of his nature of kindness, invites us to repent from sin and turn to him.

God longs to show mercy to everybody who will own up to their sin and confess it and repent from it.

His kindness leads us to that kind of repentance.

And Joel shows us the goodness that comes from a life of repentance.

We own it.

We repent from it.

Number three, we learn that he will restore and redeem the damage that sin his cost.

This is good news.

God's a Redeemer, right?

Even the things that the locus has eaten, he said, I will restore to you, man.

We don't have to live and regret because of our sin.

When we repent, we turn to God.

I mean, we, we regret those things, but we're not governed by that regret.

We don't live under that shame.

In fact, in the first few chapters, he says, be ashamed of your sin.

In the last chapter, he says, no more will you endure shame?

he takes it away.

It's a power of the blood of Jesus.

It's a power of the covenant that God's made with us.

It's good news.

And God will bless our lives beyond our expectation.

If we will turn to him and even in his restoration, he will return judgment on our enemies.

God will fight for you.

That's good news.

Number four, part of that restoration is an immersion into the life of the spirit.

He pours out a spirit on us.

It doesn't matter who doesn't matter.

Matter your gender or your generation, sons and daughters old young.

He's gonna pour his spirit out on you is beautiful.

The last words of the whole book of Joel are the Lord dwells in Zion.

God lives with his people.

His presence is a, is the precious part of this promise, right?

And the last thing is that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

God's Hesed.

His covenant love is, is perfectly lived out, perfectly seen in the life of Jesus Christ and in the gospel.

Even before all those covenants, we mentioned this morning, even before the covenant with Noah in the third chapter of Genesis, we see a covenant promise where the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent, right?

This is looking forward to Jesus.

You know, in every one of those covenants, there's a thread of Jesus that goes through all of it.

Jesus is in Themi.

He is the Hesset of God.

He is the covenant faithfulness of God.

He is the promise of God.

He is the taker away of, of destruction of guilt.

He is the forgiver.

He's the one that restores removes the shame.

Jesus is the center of all of this.

And now because we're under a new covenant, because Jesus came to fulfill the law and create a new covenant.

And we're under that new covenant Jews and Gentiles can be connected to God.

Again, we're given the opportunity to receive salvation as a free gift and to have his spirit live inside of us.

You know, all those old Testament covenants were made between God and man.

And they were all broken on man's side.

The new covenant is made between God, the father and his son, and it'll never be broken and we can't mess it up because of the faithfulness of Jesus.

We can have this assurance.

That's good news through faith in Jesus.

We have the stay of judgment.

We have the promise of restoration.

We have the life of the spirit inside of us.

So that's what Joel's gonna tell us over the next few months.

And so that's why we're really excited about this series.

Let's pray.

I just wanna ask the Lord to, to help us to apply this.

So father, thank you for your word.

We're grateful, Lord, first of all, that you care enough for us to warn us and Lord, I wanna pray Lord that this warning wouldn't fall on deaf ears this morning for all of us Lord, that there would be a healthy fear of a Lord that hates what is wrong.

That hates the effect of sin.

Lord, that we would understand the effect of Sandy.

We would, we would, uh, close the door Lord that there would not be a door open for, for curse and pain and thorns and thistles and sweat and death.

Lord, that's not what you made us for.

But Lord, we would receive this covenant in Jesus and in his faithfulness.

As we trust in his work Lord, we would live above those curses of the law.

We would live in the blessing of your salvation and of your spirit living within us.

And God teach us how to do that.

Convict us by your spirit.

God make us think correctly about our sin.

Give us a longing for righteousness.

God, let holiness be attractive to us.

God.

And let us hear your voice in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks.

Y'all.