Ascents Psalm 130

Would you find Psalm 130? I'll read this to us and pray

for our time. Psalm 130.

Just get it a a second time before us.

While you're turning there, I should probably issue a warning

for today. I woke up at 10:00 and then I

fell back asleep for about 5 minutes, and I've been up since

midnight. So if I say anything that deeply

offends today, or if it's blasphemous, just please write

me a letter. Be kind, and I'll recant next

Sunday. I'm not anticipating that.

I'm just saying it's a maybe. OK, All right, you're in Psalm

130. Let's read this carefully

together. A song of a sense out of the

depths. I cry to you, oh Lord, oh Lord,

hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to

the voice of my pleas for mercy. If you, oh Lord, should mark

iniquities, oh Lord, who could stand?

But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be

feared. I wait for the Lord, my soul

waits, and in His word I hope my soul waits for the Lord.

More than Watchmen for the morning, more than Watchmen for

the morning. Oh Israel, hope, Indiana,

Yahweh. For with Yahweh there is

steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption, and he

will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

This is the word of God. Let's pray.

Father, we confess with the psalmist as we have gathered

into your presence today, that if you were a God who was

marking our iniquities, nobody in this room could stand.

And yet with You is plentiful redemption, forgiveness, that

you may be feared. So, Lord, we pray that you would

make good on your promises to your people this morning, that

you would send Your Spirit to be our teacher, that we might see

and savor more the person of your Son who is the author and

perfector of our salvation. We pray for this time that you

would give us sharp minds and humble hearts before your Word,

and that we might be the better for time spent looking at your

word. We ask for a blessing now in the

name of Christ and Amen. So the very beginning of this

Psalm says it's, it's just the word a sense and it's the, it's

one of about 14 psalms in the Psalter that the people of God

would sing anytime they were on their way up to Jerusalem to go

to the Temple Mount. So anytime you see, and it

starts in Psalm 120 and it goes to I think Psalm 134, anytime

you see a Psalm of a sense, you need to think about the people

of God gathering, walking up the mountain of God, walking up to

Jerusalem to go to the temple to meet with the holy God.

And so the question is, what kind of things do we do well to

dwell upon when we are coming into the presence of a holy God?

Now this is really, really important because this, this

word here the a song of a sense, it's the same Hebrew word that

is rendered when you're in the book of Leviticus and you come

across all of these different sacrifices.

It's the very same word that is used to describe the, the whole

burnt offering, what's often rendered, the whole burnt

offering, or more appropriately, the ascension offering.

And this is massively important. So indulge me for a moment to

explain why this is so important to us.

Listen to Paul in Colossians 216 and 17.

He says therefore to a Gentile church, therefore let no one

pass judgment on you in questions of food or drink.

And what he's talking about there is the Jewish, the

circumcision judging the Gentile church who've come to faith in

Christ, and they bring with them their love for bacon and pork

butt and those kind of things. And he's saying don't let the

circumcision party sit in judgment over what you eat and

what you drink or with regard to a festival or new moon or

Sabbath. These are all the Old Testament

dietary festival calendar sort of things.

He says don't let anybody pass judgment on you for those things

because listen carefully. These things, those things,

festivals, New moon, Sabbath, dietary code, those things are a

shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to

Christ. So when you're looking at those

things in the Old Testament, you, you are seeing shadow of

the substance who is Christ. So the relationship between the

Old and the New Testaments is not a relationship between bad

and good. It is not a relationship between

dumb and smart like many people want to say.

It's a relationship between a man and a shadow.

When we read the Old Testament, we are meant to see the

silhouette of our Savior Jesus Christ.

And so when we're in Psalm 130 reading about a Psalm of ascent,

we need to understand this has something to do with the way the

New Testament church worships when we gather in the Old

Covenant, there were specific sacrifices that the people of

God were to offer when they came into God's presence.

Things like you had a free will offering, you had sin offering,

grain offering, peace offering, drink offering, whole burnt

offering, all of these different types of offerings.

And each of them had a very special purpose either to

prepare the worshipper to meet with God or to consummate that

meeting. So it's those two ideas.

All of the sacrifices did one of two things.

They either prepared us to meet with God or they consummated the

meeting, our meeting with God. Those are the two purposes of

all of these different sacrifices.

So if Jesus, think about it this way, if if Jesus came to your

house after church today, he just comes and he says, like

Zacchaeus, I'm coming to your house.

How do you get ready for that? How do you welcome Christ in the

flesh into your home? Well, immediately you start to

say, how do I prepare? And you start to think about all

the dishes that you left on the table or in the sink.

You start to think about the fact that you were rude to your

wife or your kids on the way to church.

And so I need to relationally like, I don't want to welcome

Christ into my home when I'm angry at my wife and we can't

talk. We need to we need to do some

some prep work to get our house ready to welcome the Lord of

glory into into our home. All of those would be any any

action there is preparatory toward the consummation of a

meeting with Christ, which which would be at a table breaking

bread with him, sharing food. Does that make sense?

Sacrifices, the sacrificial system were the same way,

somewhere for preparation and then somewhere for perfection or

consummation. The ascension offering did

something very important. And again, ascension, Psalm is

ascension offering. We're coming into the presence

of God. It was a preparation offering.

It was needful to bridge the distance and the relational gap

between the worshipper who is on earth and the worshiped deity

who is in heaven. So again, when when you think of

sacrifice, when I think of sacrifice, a lot of times what

we think of as a sacrifice is something costly that we give to

God. And then we're that, that's it.

Like we just bring our offering, we give it to God.

That's fundamentally an unbiblical way to view a

sacrifice or to view an offering.

When the Scriptures talk about sacrifice, the way that the

scriptures view a sacrifice is that whatever happens to the

sacrifice happens to the giver. So when we lay our hands on a

sin offering and the and the sin offering dies, we die with it.

OK. And the ascension offering, this

is extremely important. The animal, it's very

particularly meted out in the Old Testament.

The animal was killed. It was cut apart and arranged in

its entirety on the altar and it was burned.

And as the sacrifice ascended in smoke into the heavens, they

viewed it as by faith worshippers ascending with the

offering into the heavenly presence of God.

That's what the ascension offering is.

We are rising up into the presence of God.

And if that sounds strange to you, which it probably may sound

strange if you've never heard it before, it's just because we've

we've not thought carefully about all of the different kinds

of sacrifices and what they meant to worshippers in the Old

Testament, which again, where shadows the substance is Christ,

who does all of these things for us in perfection.

So therefore, when we as a church gather, we order

ourselves biblically and biblically speaking, the the

ascension offering, the offering that is the worshipper being

ascending into heaven to meet with God, always comes directly

after the sin offering. When you're going to meet with

the Holy God, the first problem you have, and the first problem

I have is sin that we have violated his commands.

We have not lived up to expectations.

We have missed the mark, and we're going to meet with the

Holy God. And so the very first order of

business is a sin offering. The second problem is spatial.

The second problem is that he is in heaven and we are on earth.

And so it's no accident that this, this psalmist, as he, as

he gives us an ascension offering, as he prepares to

ascend to worship in the presence of God, he is

immediately struck by an overwhelming need for mercy, for

the mercy of God that's brought on by his own sinfulness.

Listen, he says, out of the watch this space, out of the

depths, OK, It's an ascension Psalm.

We're going up into the presence of God.

And he says, out of the depths. I cry to you, O Lord, hear my

voice. Let your ears be attentive to

the voice of my pleas for mercy. Do you see the space there?

He's in the depths. God is in the heavens.

We want to ascend to Him. We need mercy.

Sin is always dealt with first, and then comes the ascension

again. These are shadows.

The substance is Christ, therefore, how this informs our

worship. When we gather as a church, we

are not gathering primarily for any of the following things.

Things like evangelism, education, worship, or

discipleship. All of those are good things,

really good things. All of those good things have a

part in what we do every Sunday. But that's never the whole of

what we do Every Lord's Day. We are gathering together on

earth to ascend into the presence of our heavenly Father

in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, who has been the

ascension offering for us. He has ascended for us and in

the power we do this in the power of the Holy Spirit who

indwells us. This is what we are doing.

If you've ever wondered Grace and I got on a date, we we went

to J DS and our waitress asked us some questions, left and went

into the kitchen. And then she came back and asked

us the same round of questions and she said, when I went into

the kitchen, I forgot why I was there.

I just didn't remember. And you've had that experience

and you may have had that experience in church where you

just start, scratch your head and like, why are we doing this?

Why are we praying this way? Why are we singing these songs?

Why are we listening to a sermon this way?

What are we doing? This is what we are doing.

This is what we are doing. We are gathering into the

presence of God so that God would renew his covenant of

grace with us. And because of this, one of the

first orders of business on every Lord's day is to cry out

to the Lord for mercy, which is why, if you've ever wondered

like, why do we ask, why does an elder always come and say, hey,

what does this command say? What does it require?

What's forbidden? Why do we, why do we do those

things? Why do we look at the law and

then get on our knees and confess our sins?

This is the reason we always read God's law, confess our

sins, receive absolution of guilt.

We meditate on the law of God because it's the mirror that

reveals our own sinfulness to us.

And it also becomes the tutor that drives us to Christ for

mercy. And so every Sunday we hear the

law and we immediately get on our knees and, and the elders

say all who are able. So if you are, if you've had

double knee replacement surgery or something, you've had back

surgery or something, and you can't quite kneel down in

between the pews, you will never be judged here for doing that.

But This is why we get on our knees before the Lord and that

we repent, we, we confess our sins and then we, we receive the

absolution of guilt from those who are over us in the Lord.

And yes, we are New Testament Christians.

We do believe that God has put us under the authority of a body

of elders who are not to use that authority to dominate us,

to rob us to, to, to hard drive us.

They are given that authority by the chief shepherd who loves the

sheep, gave his life for the sheep and says feed my sheep,

shepherd my sheep. And so they have, we have as

elders the profound responsibility and yes, derived

authority from Christ to look you in the face and say you

confessed your sin. And I'm telling you on his

authority, you are forgiven. And you are to hear that on the

authority of Christ and it's glorious.

It's the best way to prepare yourself for worship.

So, so let me just say this, these things are not meaningless

repetition. This is the most fitting

exercise for imperfect humans that want to meet with the holy

God. This is what we should do every

time, and I invite you to press deeply into these things on

every Lords day, for they will prepare you for every other day

of your life. By the way, in case you didn't

know this, we are Christians and so we should not and do not see

Sunday as the end of a weekend, right?

That's American culture. That's not Christian culture.

Christian culture sees Sunday, what we're doing here, as the

very start of every week. This is the first day, it's the

Lord's Day, and this is the day where we early on in the

morning, get on our knees, confess our sins to Christ,

receive his absolution, hear his Word preached, come to his

table, and are fed by God most kind from his very presence, his

heavenly presence. And so that this day is supposed

to inform every other day. So what do you do?

Let me ask you, what do you do if you need God's help and his

presence on a Tuesday? We do the same thing that you do

here. You say I need God, I need your

help. I want to come into your

presence and ask for your help. And I realized like these sins

are standing between and So I just want to confess.

I want to tell you I was rude to my wife.

Would you please forgive me? I'll make it right.

I keep saying rude to my wife. I don't know why.

I'm not too rude, but you get the idea.

This helps us know. How do you pray?

Start with repentance and then draw into His presence with full

assurance He's forgiven you. And we do this every Sunday so

that we will know how to live the Christian life.

These things so so they they prepare us for sin confession,

drawing into the presence of God.

They also prepare us the way that we have organized our

worship services on a Sunday morning.

These things prepare us to worship the Father listen to me

together, together. This is the very part of what

the American church is languishing because we have

embraced a very treacherous error.

The American church, the American culture is rugged

individualism. We are an army of one which is

the weakest army in the history of the world.

And God help us, we bring that that Lone Ranger mentality into

the very church and and churches are individualistic to the core.

So let me give you some examples of this.

How many Christians in our culture gather on the Lord's Day

only to spend the majority of their worship time with their

eyes closed so that they won't be distracted by you people?

You. You are you, you who dwell on

earth and are a distraction to me?

Parenthetical statement. What are you people?

Are you a distraction or are you what God says?

You are the very body of Christ in the world, and I'm going to

close you off and just be me and Jesus because y'all are a

distraction. No, y'all are the manifest

presence of his grace in my life, my brothers and sisters in

Christ. But churches, when they gather

for worship, instead of singing with uplifted faces and eyes

open together, they close off their eyes, they close off their

exposure to other people. They send their kids into

another room, and they sing most often the Me and Jesus songs,

which are not a problem if you're in your truck or your car

driving to work. Sing those songs because it's

you and Jesus. But listen to me, This is not

you and Jesus. This Is Us and the Lord Christ

who called all of us together. And so we want to lay aside

those individualistic gestures and we want to embrace corporate

psalmody. OK, I hear that it's common for

a lot of churches. This is probably, probably well

meaning, but it is a damnable error with the Lord's Supper.

But I'm told that a lot of churches, what they will do is

they will set off to the side, Lord's Supper tables over there

so that when you're ready, if you want to, you can go off to

the Lord's table and you can celebrate whenever you're ready

at any moment in in the worship service, which is antithetical

to what Christ is doing. When the body of Christ is

together, there's one loaf, there's One Cup, and we come to

the table together. It, it, it's the difference

between a family that regularly gathers together over a meal.

We pray with each other, we look at each other, we talk to each

other, we fellowship with each other versus we never have to

sit at table together because the kids just help themselves to

the to the pantry in the fridge and they're never hungry and we

never need a full meal because they're helping themselves to

snacks all day long. This, this individualistic

nature of the American church really is killing us because

when we gather and ascend to worship God, we gather together

and we gather together because he called us together.

We confess our faith together. Let me ask you something.

Are you edified ever? When one of the other says,

Christian, what do you believe? And you hear however many voices

in this room say, I believe in God the Father Almighty, and

you're not alone because I believe that too.

And you're We edify one another in the faith.

We confess our faith together. We meditate on the law together,

we confess our sins together, we kneel together, we receive

absolution of guilt together. We hear the word preached

together and together. Most importantly, we come to the

Lord's Table together, not on our own, but together to

participate in the body of Christ.

When God calls the church to gather to himself, it is not

like he just catches a bunch of fish in a net.

No, we are rather strings of yarn that he is weaving into the

tapestry of His grace. Individual strands.

Yes, a very colored and and varieties that he's weaving

together into a tapestry of his grace.

We are joints and sinews and body parts that he is knitting

together in the womb of our mother.

And who is our mother? It's the church.

That's what he's doing here. He's making one body out of many

parts, joints and sinews that he's knitting together.

We are, to borrow another biblical metaphor, living

stones, each one of us a living stone with a name that that only

he knows, that he takes and he sets together by God into a

temple that he's building for himself.

So, so it may not be a helpful way to say this, but I'm going

to say it anyway. You cannot participate rightly

in wall hood, meaning you take these bricks and you and you

build a wall. You can't participate as a

brick, as a stone. You can't participate in wall

hood when every time you come together all that's emphasized

is stone hood. You're all by yourself here.

close your eyes because it's just you and Jesus.

You can't do it. You can't do it.

So brothers and sisters, we are gathered here together because

God himself has called us to Himself that we might be one in

Christ. So as we ascend to Him, and this

is for today, this is every Sunday as we ascend to Him, it

is fitting that we would take instruction from Psalms of

ascent. So I'm going to give you 4 brief

things from this Psalm that I think are very important for us

as we meditate on what it what it means for the New Testament

Church to gather to the Father in the name of the Son and the

power of the Holy Spirit. What does that mean and what

should we be thinking on? 1st in Christ, God will not mark

your iniquities. In Christ, God will not mark

your iniquities or mine. Listen to verse 3 of the Psalm.

If you, O Yahweh, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could

stand? So let me just pause and say, be

encouraged. You who think that you don't

belong, you who know that if we knew what you've done, we

wouldn't let you in the building.

And I who know that if you know what I've done, you wouldn't let

me preach, right? If the Lord would mark iniquity,

nobody could stand. But with you there is

forgiveness that you may be feared.

OK, this word to mark iniquity. It's a it's a funny way of

saying that right to record, to remember.

We might say any another. Why Mark?

What does that mean to mark iniquity?

And it's one of the coolest Hebrew words in the whole Bible.

It's the word that when God made Adam and his image and he placed

him in a garden, he he placed him in the garden to work it, to

husband it, make it fruitful and to market to Shamar is is the is

the Hebrew word to keep it, to guard it, to protect it, to

watch over it so that nothing attacks it.

And the Psalmist says if God was doing that with our sin, writing

them down, remembering, never forgetting, going over in his

mind how we sinned against him, that he might become our bitter

enemy, reliving all of our faults if that was gone.

None of us could stand if God, let me say it this way, if God

guarded the Ledger of your sin or mine and held you accountable

to it, none of us have any hope. None of us go to heaven if God

does this. None of us are rightly related

to God if he does this. And incidentally, again, This is

why we kneel every Sunday, because none of us could stand

if God holds on to our sin. And so we kneel and we confess

our sins. And again, it's no judgment if

you can't get on your knees, but it is important that we worship

God in a spirit of, of contriteness.

And so no judgment if you cannot bow.

But listen to me, all the judgment in the world, if you're

too proud to bow, if you're too proud to bow and ask for mercy,

that's all that's left to you is judgment.

But it's not from us, it's from the Lord.

So we all kneel, because if He marked iniquity, none could

stand. Listen to Psalm 103 say the same

principle. God does not deal with us

according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His

steadfast love toward those who fear Him, as far as the east is

from the West, so far does He remove our transgressions from

us. And so let me say it again, as

we gather it is, it is essential that all of us remember and rest

in the fact that in Christ God will not mark our iniquities.

Say it this way. In Christ, God has already

marked all of your iniquities. He nailed them to the cross of

Christ and he blotted them out forever by the death of his own

Son. He held Christ responsible and

therefore he will not hold you responsible for the things that

Christ died to forgive. In Christ, you really are

forgiven. And that frankly makes us very

uncomfortable because we especially if we're being sinned

against or if we feel like we've been sinned against.

And there's this idea of like, well, if if you just tell those

people they're just God's just going to be merciful, isn't that

going to lead them to keep sinning against me or maybe not

even against me. But just like, is this not,

shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound?

So let me let me point out the second thing from this Psalm

that's very important in Christ, free pardon, real forgiveness

and mercy leads to the fear of the Lord, not to more sin.

Did you catch that? He says in verse 4, but with you

there is forgiveness, that it's a purpose statement that you may

be feared. So it's the great mystery of the

gospel of grace that you can't, you cannot stop sinning in order

to participate in the grace of God.

That's usually where we all start and we say, man, I'm just

not right. I need to get right with God.

We start to think about I'm going to stop sinning and I'm

going to start doing right. And it always works the other

way around. The worse you are, the more

prepared you are to receive the grace of God, and the greater

the grace of God appears in your eyes.

Jesus said it this way about a prostitute.

She loved much because she was forgiven much.

And they that are forgiven little, which is nobody,

everybody is forgiven much. We just don't realize it.

But when we think that we are forgiven little, we love little.

So when you come as a Sinner deserving death and you know

this and you come to the one who bore your sins on the cross, you

receive grace from him that will certainly produce in you in

God's time, not your own mortification of sin and

progressive obedience and righteousness and holiness.

When you do that, you need to understand all of those that

growth, that mortification of sin, that progress in the faith,

all of that is result. It's not root, the fruit of

works. The the, the fruit is like a

cart. Grace is like a horse and you

can never put the cart before the horse.

Works never bring in the grace of God.

The grace of God always bring in works of righteousness.

So Bodhi Bakkam said it this way.

Faith is all that the gospel requires and that is great news.

What must you do to be saved? Trust in the Lord Jesus and be

saved. Faith is all that the gospel

requires, but it's not all that the gospel produces.

If you want to be saved, repent of your sin and your dead works,

trust in Christ alone for your salvation.

If you want to stop sinning and grow in holiness, then repent of

your sin and end your dead works and trust in Christ alone for

your sanctification. OK, how can these things be?

How can how can grace God? Just saying I'm not going to

deal with you according to your sin.

How can that lead to the fear of the Lord?

Well, forgiveness leads to the fear of the Lord, because

forgiveness is relationally costly to God.

So let me ask you something, Christian.

How did God forgive you? Did he just say ain't no big

deal, I'll get over it? No, he did not.

He sent his Son to take your sin upon himself, to die on a Roman

cross. That was the cost of your

forgiveness. The only way we can view sin

lightly is because we have not seen yet in Christ the full

measure of the cost of our rebellion.

So look to Christ. Forgiveness, real forgiveness

always leads to the fear of the Lord.

Thirdly, in Christ we wait with urgent assurance upon the mercy

of God. Look in verses 5 and 6 He says,

I wait for Yahweh, my soul waits, and in His word I hope my

soul waits for the Lord. More than Watchmen for the

morning, more than Watchmen for the morning.

So don't overthink this one. But how do Watchmen wait for the

morning? There's 2 two ways that I know

of. The first is eagerly.

They've been up all night watching the city.

It's stressful. They're tired.

They want to go home. Come, Mr. Tallyman telling me

banana so that I can get out of here.

Right, eagerly watching for the dawn.

Secondly, they watch for the dawn expectantly.

So they want it to come. They're eager for it to come.

But they also know it's coming, because in all of the annals of

the history of mankind, there's never been a day where the sun

did not rise in the east. So we wait on the Lord the same

way. We hope in His Word in the same

way, with urgent and eager expectation that He will make

good on His word to us if we confess our sins.

He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us of

our unrighteousness. And if we don't, He won't.

But if we ever do, He never doesn't.

Terrible way to say that if we confess, we know.

We know for certain that God will always forgive our sin.

And so we wait with eager expectation for the Lord, like

Watchmen for the morning. Lastly, in Christ, marvelous

things are already true of us. So as we gather with the body of

Christ every Sunday, we need to remember that in Christ there

are some things that are already true of us that would take your

breath away if you believe them. The problem is you don't, and I

don't listen to these things. He says, O Israel, hope IN the

Lord. By the way, that's an imperative

command and God be praised. It's not an emotion you need to

wait to feel. This is an obedience that you

are to render to God. Hope IN the Lord, put your hope

in the Lord, trust in Him, wait for him, hope IN the Lord.

For with the Lord there is steadfast love, covenant

keeping, love that never dies with him is plentiful

redemption, not just redemption, but an overabundance of

redemption and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.

So brothers and sisters, Christ is our new and better if I talk

about the the the the different types of offerings, what they do

for the worshipper and how those things are shadows.

Christ is the new and better sin offering.

Unlike the blood of goats and calves, He dealt once for all on

the cross with our guilt before a holy God.

And we have been crucified with Christ.

We have been buried with him by baptism.

We have died our our our Savior has died and so have we.

He is our sin offering. Christ is also our new and

better ascension offering because he united us to himself

in covenant oneness and then ascended into heaven, passed

through the veil, and he sat down at the right hand of the

majesty on high. And so when he ascended, listen

to the way Paul talks about his the ascension of Christ and our

relationship to it. He says that God raised us up.

Notice Paul does not say he raised me up.

So we all sort of wave at Christ and we wave at Paul.

Paul tells the Gentile Ephesian church.

God raised past tense, raised us up with Christ and seated us

with him in the heavenly places. So when Christ ascended, we as

his bride ascend with him in the heavenly places, so that in the

coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace

and kindness toward us. Joke's on you, believer.

You thought you were coming to church and today you came to

heaven. You have been drawn into the

heavenly realms with Christ. He is our ascension offering,

and in Him we ascend into the realms of glory.

I told you earlier that in the shadows of the old covenant

sacrifices, all either prepared or they perfected us to meet

with God. They were the preparation or the

the action of meeting with God. Sin and ascension offerings were

all preparatory. Both were preparatory.

They dealt with sin. They dealt with guilt.

They dealt with spatial separation from God.

Guilt was always covered first. Then there's ascension into

heaven, into his presence. But these sacrifices all prepare

us to actually meet with the living God.

But you know what the final and the best sacrifice in the

entirety of the Old Testament is?

It's not sin offering. It's not ascension offering.

It's not free will offering everything built toward an

offering called the peace offering and it was the final

and best because it was the offering that worshippers were

to kill and then eat in the presence of God, having had

peace with God restored to them by grace and fellowship with God

now enjoyed as we eat the peace offering.

Peace offerings were the consummation offering of

fellowship with God. Christ is dealt with your sin on

the cross. Christ has ascended for you and

with you into the heavenly realms, and you are brother and

sister. We are seated with him in the

heavenly realms. And Christ has also become our

new and better peace offering, the offering that we eat and

that we drink in the very manifest presence of God.

This bread is His body broken for you.

This cup is His blood shed for the forgiveness of your sins.

He really has forgiven you. He really has drawn you to

Himself, into His heavenly places, all so that He could eat

and drink with you and us together.

You have been received in Christ into the heavenly realms, and

now you shall be satisfied with Him at the heavenly table that

dwells right here on the earth. So come to the table where the

heavenly city has descended from heaven to the earth.

Come to the bread of heaven newly offered to you this day.

Come to the steadfast love of God.

Come and welcome to Jesus Christ.

Let me pray for us. Lord Jesus, we desire nothing

short of fellowship with you. We can do a bunch of things when

we gather as the church, but all of them pale in comparison with

fellowship with you and with the people for whom you died.

And so we ask you, Lord, through the agency of your Holy Spirit,

that you would meet with us at the table, that you would feed

us on your broken body, on your shed blood, that we might be 1

together. That we might look and see all

of the eternal souls that you have called to yourself and that

you have welcomed to the table. And that we would welcome one

another and encourage one another as we come to the table

and be satisfied in everything that you have been to us.

Holy Spirit, would you minister to your people at the table?

We ask it in the name of Jesus, for his sake.

Amen.