The Only Redeemer of God's Elect

For our scripture for this Sunday morning, which are three short scriptures.

John 14, 6 through 7 says, Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me.

If you had known me, you would have known my Father also.

From now on, you do know him and have seen him.

Acts four, ten through twelve say, Let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel, but that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by him this man is standing before you well.

This Jesus is the stone that was rejected by you, the builders, which is become the cornerstone, and there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.

In first Timothy two, verse five says, For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man, Christ Jesus.

This is the word of the Lord.

You may be seated.

Lord Jesus, we come to you because you are our hope.

And you promise us that when we hope in you, we will not be put to shame.

Lord, the world teaches us to despair.

The world teaches us that all things dissolve into chaos and that nothing remains, Lord, but that all things ultimately will be rendered meaningless.

Lord, our flesh denies our future and instead calls to us to deny the hope that we have in the future and instead indulge in sinful pleasures of the moment that are fleeting and leave us only empty and condemned.

And Satan tells us that there is no future to look forward to, as he accuses us in our hearts of our sin, and Lord, as he stands and tells us that there is no righteousness, that there is no hope for us, and so we might as well indulge in the present moment.

But Lord, you offer us hope.

You stand against all of things, having conquered the world, having died, killing our flesh with yours, and having destroyed and bound Satan.

Lord, we have hope in you, and hope that is in you will never be put to shame.

Holy Father, I pray that you would tend to our hearts this morning to cultivate this hope, to let us to remind our hearts what it means to have hope in Jesus Christ.

We have this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Well, thank you for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver, and it is always a joy to gather together with you.

Last night we had our uh Berkeley Carol sing.

Uh, how many of you were able to join that?

Many hands.

Yeah, wonderful.

That was so fun to get together on the front lawn and freeze and uh sing songs together and uh read a sheet of paper that about halfway through the song we couldn't read anymore because it was dark.

Uh but that was a joyful time of gathering together, and it's great to be back together with you again this morning.

Uh this is our first Sunday in our Advent series this year, and this year we are looking at uh this, of course, we're looking at Jesus.

But what I hope for us to see is the what it is exactly doctrinally that Jesus accomplished, that we talk about Him constantly.

Why is it that we are talking about this man, Jesus Christ?

Why is it that last night when we gathered to sing our songs, we sang songs that were all about Jesus?

And when it was to pro when it was time to pray, we prayed in the name of one man who is Jesus Christ.

And in order to understand that, we have to understand what it is that he accomplished on our behalf.

And today, our our theme for this Sunday morning is Christ is our Redeemer.

He is the only Redeemer of God's elect, is the Lord Jesus Christ.

But to get to understanding that, uh first I have to explain to you some bad news.

Uh I've got a diagnosis just for all of you.

Um and so I'm glad you're here that I might share it with you.

There's some things I've just been thinking of, and I thought you should know.

The first thing that you need to know uh about yourself is that you're not you're not present enough.

I don't know if you've noticed this, but you're not present enough.

You know, the the it the you need to be in the present moment and not so obsessed with the future and worries about the future.

Uh you're you're in fact you're so obsessed with the the future that you're missing out completely on the present moment, and so you're not able to be your true self of who you are in the present.

So you need to figure that out as more.

You're not particularly uh optimized for your financial or or uh financial prosperity or your your health flourishing.

There's some bad habits that you've accumulated, um, and they'll probably come glaring at you this holiday season.

And you you've accumulated these these bad habits of the way that you relate to food, the way that you relate to your health.

Also, you're getting too much blue light at night right before you go to bed.

And you're not getting enough blue light in the morning um in your eyes, and this is upsetting your circadian rhythm.

And I wanted you to be aware of that.

So you gotta you gotta figure that one out as well.

Now, the reason that you're probably not able to figure these things out, that you're not present enough, and likewise you're not optimized for your health or your financial prosperity, uh, is because you don't know how to advocate for yourself.

Did you know this?

Here's what happened.

I'm sorry to break this news to you so publicly.

But what happened was that you developed some bad emotional habits as a child, and you needed those for your emotional survival when you were a young child, you know?

But now those habits no longer serve you.

They don't serve you anymore.

And they, in fact, you're inviting in those things that you're most scared of, that rejection that you're most afraid of, you're you're causing that sort of pattern to happen over and over again in your life.

And if you don't uh address that uh issue, then it's not gonna be good.

Things are gonna be really bad.

So just to recap, a couple of things that I want you guys to work on this holiday season, you're not present, remember?

So focus on being present.

But while you're being present, remember to be you need to be optimizing for yourself and your your health for your and your financial prosperity.

And while you're doing that, you need to be resolving the uh emotional traps that you've created for yourself and that you've caused for yourself.

Otherwise, there's no going to be no health and no flourishing for you in the future.

It's gonna be very bad, very bad time.

Oh, I forgot something.

There's some news about the world that I need to share with you.

Um, housing and food and transportation are all three uh incomprehensibly expensive.

And I don't know if you use any of those.

But uh if you don't get yourself in a situation where those are taken care of, then these other problems that you have, it does they don't even really matter.

So you're gonna be in a bit of a pickle there.

I hate to keep going like this, but I'm also having too much fun.

So it you're if you want to figure out how you can get yourself out of this situation, you can't.

You can't figure out because you're in an you're in an information silo that's been tailored to you and to your particular inclinations and bad habits, and so you don't have any hope of getting a grip on reality.

So here we are.

This is Merry Christmas, happy holidays.

And this is the situation that you find yourself in.

This is this is the problems that I this is just a few off the top of my head of the problems that you have and that you're facing.

And I hope you get it worked out before Christmas, otherwise, you might ruin Christmas for your family.

These are the problems that the world just throws at you constantly.

I I I hope they felt at least somewhat salient and not just funny.

I like the I tried to just go through my mind and the ping-ponging that I do back and forth all the time of my life, my assessment, my uh my trying to cobble together some sort of meaning in the day-to-day.

And I'll ping pong back and forth between we need to optimize, between I need to be resting, between I need to be more financially responsible, and and likewise I need to not uh care about money so much, and back and forth and round and round and round and round.

I'm able to go.

And this is the way that we uh assess and we and we understand our problems, and this is the way that we think of them, and they're and each of those problems that I listed that you have, you know, in some way, in some regard, some some version of those and and others as well.

Uh some more practical and more pressing, some immediate health concerns and those sorts of things.

Each of those problems comes with with a a prescription of what you need to be doing to get out of it.

And something that you need to offer, that you can finally climb your way out from under that problem and then be be able to uh inch towards something like fulfillment or flourishing or happiness or whatever it is that we're supposed to be inching towards or or heading towards.

Well, now that those problems are top of mind, I I want to address what the solution is to those problems.

And the way that we're going to do that, this advent is we're going to be moving through the uh questions 19 through 28 of the Westminster shorter catechism.

That's going to be the heart of our advent season.

Looking at questions 19 through 28 of the Westminster shorter catechism.

And I know now that you realize that you're not optimized and you're not present and you have childhood wounds that uh must be dealt with, lest your life repeat those same patterns and you become a tragic tale.

You're probably thinking, I I probably need a uh a list of questions and answers from the 17th century English Civil War.

And if you were thinking that, then I'm glad our we're in lockstep with each other, because that's that's exactly what I was thinking as well.

But the this list, this list of questions and answers, and this particular section of this list of questions and answers in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, I find to be some of the most encouraging doctrine.

Just this section of some of the most encouraging doctrine you could find anywhere.

And what this doctrine zeros in on is who is Jesus Christ and what has he accomplished on our behalf.

But to begin with, to understand what he has accomplished on our behalf, we first have to understand what is the real problem that we are experiencing.

What real problems do we have?

And the the beginning of the good news is that all of those problems that I listed that feel so salient and that we're able to be pushed around by day to day at any given moment, that we might guilt ourselves with, your your real problem is far, far worse.

It's almost incomprehensibly worse than the problems that we may think we have.

And that's where the good news comes.

So this is the beginning of these questions.

Westminster Shorter Catechism, question 19, says this What is the misery of that estate wherein man fell?

What is the misery of that estate wherein to man fell?

The question is asking about the fall of man.

In the beginning, Adam and Eve were created in righteousness, holiness, knowledge of the Lord, in perfect communion with God, but sin entered the world by their fall into sin, by eating from the forbidden fruit.

They fell into sin.

And then they entered into an estate of sin and misery.

This is the state that we live in.

This is where your life takes place.

It is in an estate of sin and misery.

That's the background noise, the background radiation of all of our lives.

An estate of sin and misery.

Here's the answer to this question: what is the misery of that estate wherein to man fell?

All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.

Three categories of things that are given.

We are shown the misery of our estate is in what man has lost, secondly, in what man is brought under, and third, in what man is liable to.

Now, one of the interesting things about the Christian faith, and this is helpful to know, and I hope it relieves some sort of a burden actually, is that in Christianity our problems are real.

Now, in other world religions, you think Buddhism, for example, your problems are an illusion.

And we've in we've imbibed this in a way.

We we've started to think like this.

I think it's been, you know, it all the like uh, you know, the folks that made this iPad are all like techno-capitalist Buddhists.

And so we've we've all kind of imbibed this sort of idea that like your problems are really an illusion.

And I think even when I listed those problems beforehand, you you might have even started to think, those are just illusions, those are silly, illusory problems.

What you need to do is detach from thinking about problems like that, and instead uh recognize the illusion that your problems really are.

And then what that does to you, it's like this psychological trick, is then whenever you experience a problem, what actually happens, instead of eliminating it as merely an illusion, what actually happens in your mind is you double your problem.

Because now you have a problem, and then you're just thinking to yourself, my problem is that I have a problem.

You see, double you doubled your problem.

It was no way out, it was just a deeper trap.

In Christianity, here's the beginning of the good news.

Your problems, your problem is real.

It's not an illusion that you have a problem.

You're not just thinking about it wrong.

You may be thinking about your problem wrong, but there is a problem there.

Something really has gone wrong, and it demands a solution.

What has gone wrong?

What is this estate of sin and misery?

First, in what man has lost?

All mankind by their fall lost communion with God.

In Genesis 3, verse 24, it says, So he drove out the man, that's Adam, and he placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life.

Genesis 3:24

What is the misery of that estate into which man fell?

All mankind by their fall lost communion with God.

This is the fundamental problem that you have.

It is a relational problem.

You know, the world rarely hurls relational problems at you.

Basically, all of your problems are relational problems, but the the tips and tricks that the world hurls at you will make you think that they're not relational problems.

But this is a wonderful insight.

The main problem in your life is that you've lost communion with God.

I know it doesn't feel like that.

I know that doesn't feel like the most salient problem that you have.

You can think of ten things this week that are more pressing than having lost communion with God.

But there are none that are more pressing than that.

Because in the quiet moments, in your heart of hearts, you plainly know that this is so true as to just be obvious.

That the deepest longing that you have is communion with your creator.

What could meaning for a thing like you possibly be outside of communion with your creator?

And this has been lost with the fall.

We desire the presence of God, we desire his eternal love, we desire his face shining on us with a smile, the pleasing countenance of our Father shining upon us, and we've lost that by sin, by the sin of Adam, which we have inherited and participated in.

We have abandoned God, neglected him, been treasonous against him, and therefore we have no communion with God.

Locked out of the garden.

You've walked outside of your house, and all the doors were locked, and you can't get back in.

You don't get to see your father anymore.

You're homeless and estranged.

This is the condition of the human heart.

That's what man has lost.

Can you think of a greater loss than communion with God?

Second, in what man is brought under, we are brought under his wrath and curse.

So, what is our experience of the world?

We are brought under the wrath of God against our sin and the curse of God on the world.

So the wrath of God is described to us in Romans 1, verse 21.

Romans 1:21

Here's the way it's described.

It says, For although they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks to Him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

In our neglect of God, we become futile in our thinking.

This is why it's so difficult to hope, because our our thinking is just a it's its futility.

It amounts to nothing.

We become futile in our thinking, and our hearts, our foolish hearts, are darkened.

And then the Lord gives us over to our base desires.

This is the wrath of God.

That He gives us over to whatever it is we want in these meaningless, fruitless moments, just to indulge the passions of our flesh.

It's strange because you would think that being under the wrath of God, as it's described in Scripture, would merely be just never getting what you want.

You'd think if I'm under the wrath of God, then I'll never get what I want.

That's what it would feel like to be under the wrath of God.

It would be like this constant withholding.

But the way that it's described in Romans is precisely the opposite.

It's you always getting what you want.

It's that when you say, I don't want fellowship with God, I don't want Him to draw close, I don't want communion with the Father, I don't want the light.

I want the indulgence of my sin.

And the wrath of God is to say, okay.

You are under that wrath.

And so we are trapped in darkness and futility, and we are groping in a cursed world that only breeds thorns and thistles.

And so what does that look like?

What happens when we do something like that?

Well, well, we misdiagnose problems all the time because we're futile in our thinking.

And so we think that our salvation is just on the other side of whatever new tip and trick we happen to to uh to discover or to create.

We think that like it's just my I've got habits, but none of them are atomic.

You know, we've got we've we've we've I've learned some subtle arts, but none of them are of, I can't say that book title, but there's there's all of these things that are just moments away, you know, we can just get to the other side, and can't you see how close you are to salvation and fulfillment and to that time with your family, finally feeling like you expected it to look like, and that that you know, and and we get fooled into those things, fooled into those misdiagnoses because our hearts are dark.

Even the light is like darkness to us.

And so it it makes you know, one of the qu one of the questions that we're one of the ways that I think this often gets misdiagnosed, perhaps, in our culture, is w we're like obsessed with uh stories about narcissists taking advantage of people.

And the and those are interesting, you know, stories.

Okay.

Some more than others.

We're obsessed with those sorts of stories.

But why don't why don't we uh why don't we ask the question of why is it that we're so easily taken advantage of?

Why is it that just like a whiff of a solution can be can be uh passed in front of me and I I'm just all in, I just believe it, I'll just go for these silly little rides.

Why is that?

Why am I so susceptible to that sort of thing?

Because our foolish hearts are darkened.

We're groping in the dark, not even understanding the nature of our problems.

So that is what it is to be under the wrath and curse of God.

And finally, in this, we see what man is liable to.

We are made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever.

This is the result of sin.

Made liable to all of the miseries of this life.

You know all the bad things that can happen in the world?

They can happen to you.

Many of them will.

One of the great lessons from Ecclesiastes that we preached through earlier this year was everything happens, and it might happen to you.

That's the truth.

If you can think of it, it might happen to you.

Your one phone call away.

From terrible, terrible news.

That's where you live.

That's the precipice that you are on.

We are made liable to all the miseries of this life.

The miseries of this life, I am sorry to break this news to you, are not illusions.

It's not that you're too attached to the world.

You're a human creature that lives in the world.

What are you going to be attached to?

You know what I mean?

I want to break the, I'm trying to break some of these spells.

It's not a trick that there's suffering in despair.

It's real.

That's what it's like out here.

We are subject to that because of our sin.

All the miseries of this life, to death itself.

All of our stories end the same way.

How do we not remember?

We will die.

As you get older, more and more of the people you love will die.

This is the way all of our stories end.

All of them.

Now, I I want you to imagine that we can we can peddle some of these some of these foolish utopias.

You know, some way maybe maybe we'll we'll discover you know, death is just another technological problem to be solved.

And then you'll get to live forever with a universal high income while robots do your work and you sit around and watch the robots, I think, is the plan for what a what a glorious, hopeful future is meant to look like.

These are foolish errands.

Death is not a biological problem to be solved.

It is the curse of God, it is the result of sin.

And so we face death itself.

And then after death, the wages of sin is the pains of hell forever.

That means all of the futility of this life is compounded for all eternity.

No communion with God.

A place of wailing, gnashing of teeth, bitter regret.

For eternity.

For eternity.

You can't be more present your way out of this type of problem.

You can't optimize your way out of this type of problem.

You can't get the right habits, you can't get the right morning routine, you can't even get your family relationships in perfectly just the right order to get yourself out from this type of a problem.

You can't get your doctrine perfect enough to get yourself out of this type of order.

You can't get your religious life in order enough to get yourself out of this type of a problem.

It is too deep.

It's too fundamental.

That's the real problem.

Did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?

Answer.

God having out of his mere good pleasure from all eternity elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery and to bring them into an estate of salvation by a redeemer.

God, having out of his mere good pleasure, did not leave all mankind to suffer in this estate of sin and misery, but in eternity past, he had determined that he would save some.

Job loses everything in a couple of days.

And it's so much, it's so obvious, it's so to the point.

Every person who shows up after sharing a new loss that Job experiences says, and I alone only am left who live to tell the tale.

That's the way they show up.

All your children were were killed in this terrible house party that they were throwing.

And I alone only am left to tell the tale.

All your sheep and flocks and herds, they were all just attacked.

And I alone only am left to live to tell the tale.

It's this terrible, unthinkable loss that Job experiences.

And in the midst of it, his health deteriorates, his wife turns on him, and he's desperate.

As he's brought face to face more than perhaps anyone else with the miseries of this life, the sin and misery of this life.

There's this cry that he makes throughout this book.

It's this longing throughout the book of Job.

And he articulates it in chapter 9, verse 33.

He says, There is no arbiter between us who might lay his hand on us both.

Who is it that could stand between me and God and lay his hand on us both so that we might be reconciled?

If my fundamental problem is I have lost communion with God, there's nothing I can do in order to regain that.

I can't I can't optimize, I can't be present enough, I can't, I can't get the right habits, I can't, there's there's nothing.

What how will those if I do all of those perfectly, if I get if I accomplish that list perfectly and I become so productive that I'm able to usher humanity into an age of prosperity, and you all have robot slaves that you get to boss around however you'd like, I I can't, it doesn't reconcile me to God.

And I die, and I endure the pains of hell forever.

Who can place their hand on me and God at the same time?

This is why God does this by a Redeemer.

God rescues us by a Redeemer, by a man who is God, who can place his hand on us both.

Because this is not the type of problem that you can solve.

This is the type of problem that must be solved for you.

It must be solved on your behalf by someone else.

God does this out of his mere good pleasure.

Why is it that God doesn't leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery?

Because out of his mere good pleasure, he determined to save.

Electing some to everlasting life, he enters into a covenant of grace with us.

We were in, under Adam, a covenant of works.

That meant that by our works, in our righteousness, we might be saved.

But in the covenant of grace, this means that our relationship with God is established by grace alone, his generosity, his good pleasure, his forgiving us of our sins.

That is the basis of our re-established communion with God.

Hear it in Ephesians, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.

That's Ephesians 1, 4 through 5.

We have been saved by a Redeemer, Jesus Christ, adopted through him by a Redeemer.

So who is the Redeemer of God's elect?

Question 21.

The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being the eternal Son of God became man, and so was and continueth to be, God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever.

There is one name under heaven by which we might be saved.

It is the Lord Jesus Christ.

And here's the story of what he did to rescue us from this estate of sin and misery.

The second person of the Trinity is eternal, eternally begotten of the Father.

There has never been a time where the second person of the Trinity has not been fully God, the Son of God.

Well, this fully God became fully man.

He took on flesh, was born of a woman.

God and man in two distinct natures, in one person, forever.

Who is it that can put their hand on both God and man that we might be reconciled?

It is the Lord Jesus Christ.

Because only He is fully God and fully man.

This is exactly what you need for the problem that you are in.

Because what has been lost in your sin is communion with God.

But the penalty that you are under of God's wrath and curse must be born.

It deserves to be born.

God is not, He is a righteous God.

He does not wink at injustice.

He does not pretend injustice away.

He does not hide his eyes to pretend the reality of the misery and suffering of this life does not deserve a just punishment.

Remember, our problems are not illusions, they are real.

And God recognizes the reality of them.

So how does he address them?

He takes on flesh himself, being born of a woman, he endures the miser and suffering of this life on your behalf.

He endures all the pains and humiliations of this life and the wrath of God itself, the pains of hell poured out upon him on the cross, so that you might be saved from those miseries.

God made him the man to be sin on your behalf, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

What does it say beforehand?

That we are brought into a state of salvation.

Why do we sing all the time?

Why do we praise God all the time?

Why aren't we just getting together and giving each other life hacks and tips and tricks so that we can overcome these next obstacles?

Why are we singing and praising and happy and celebrating and joyful and happy to see each other?

And why is the church like that?

Why does it have that type of character?

Because we're the ones that just got saved.

You know who you are in the story of Christ's glory?

You're the one who just got saved by him.

You're in a state of salvation by your Redeemer.

You know his name, Jesus Christ.

Who could what can I do to get myself out of this terrible estate of sin and misery?

Do you realize you can't, you can't rescue yourself from that.

But Jesus has.

The man, Jesus Christ, born of a woman, crucified, died, buried, rose on the third day.

He is the one who has accomplished your salvation.

He has applied it to you by giving you his Holy Spirit.

You might receive this by faith alone.

Just by trust in what he says he accomplished, you trust him that he did on your behalf.

And then you are saved.

Why would God do that?

It was just out of his mere good pleasure.

You know this.

You know this.

We forget all the time, we forget every day.

But as we move into this Christmas season, I want this to be front of your mind.

Remember, just hear it, hear the story in these verses, hear it as it goes on, Isaiah 9.6, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace.

Do you hear this is not a how-to?

This is not a how-to be a wonderful counselor, how to be a mighty God, how to be an everlasting father, how to be that prince of peace that your wife always wanted you to be.

That's not what we're celebrating.

We're celebrating the one who we know is.

We're celebrating our hero, our savior, our champion, our Lord, our God, our prophet, our priest, our king.

The one who reigns eternally in the heavens, who takes us with him, because he went into death and it couldn't hold him.

If you went into death, it would hold you.

Because it would be the just dessert of your sin.

Injustice would hold you there.

The justice of God would hold you there.

When Christ went into death on your behalf, it could not hold him.

He laid his life down, and you want to know what type of a guy he is?

He's the type of guy that lays his life down and takes it back up again to reign eternally in glory in the heavens.

We sing of praise to him.

Matthew 1.23, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

What is your problem?

You're estranged from the Father.

Who are we given in Christ?

God with us.

You can't get to him from here.

Your only hope is if he came to you.

I have good news about what God is like.

Out of his mere good pleasure, he came to you while you were in an estate of sin and misery, born of a woman, just like you.

All of you were born of a woman.

So too was the God who created all things.

Why would he humiliate himself like that, so that you might be saved and reconciled into eternal glory out of his mere good pleasure?

John 1 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Grace for you, truth.

You're groping around in the dark with a list of problems that you inherit every day and they change and you're pushed around by them constantly.

You could climb up them and solve them perfectly, and it would be a false solution.

You're in an information silo, and you can't get a grip on reality in the more maximal way than you could possibly imagine.

And then truth shows up.

And what does he have to offer you?

Grace.

Mercy.

What if truth showed up in your life?

It's terrifying.

It's a terrifying thing to imagine that truth just shows up alone in your life.

And says, I've got we've got to meet later this afternoon.

And you say, Truth, can we just talk now?

Can we talk now?

And truth's like, I'm busy now.

You know I wouldn't lie to you.

But can we just meet, actually, could we just meet tomorrow?

You're like, I gotta sleep on this when I got this meeting coming with truth.

And you meet with truth finally, and truth shares with you, you've been doing it wrong.

The whole thing you've been doing upside down and backwards, and it's it's uh it's all been wrong.

But you but who shows up?

Who is Jesus Christ?

He is grace and truth.

You've been doing it wrong, upside down and backwards.

Oh, this seems like it's going to have terrible consequences.

It already did for me.

And for you, there's an eternal glory waiting, because I have brought you into an estate of salvation.

And you say, Is that the truth?

And he says, That's the truth.

You say, This is good news.

That grace and truth has arrived.

John 3 16.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish.

You know, it's these old ones that hit.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

Insane.

Insane.

Why would he do a thing like that?

It's out of his mere good pleasure.

Because our God desires to save his people.

And you are the type of thing whose only hope is if you get saved.

Rescued.

That's it.

Then you become a type of people of worship and praise to God, praise to the one who is your savior.

You become the type of people with a story to tell, a song to sing, a champion to celebrate, a Lord to worship and honor, a king to obey.

Because he saved me.

He saved me.

Why did he do that?

Because he so loved the world that he gave his son.

Whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but will have eternal life.

Have you forgotten the simple truths?

Have you forgotten your first love?

Have you forgotten the simple gospel?

Don't forget.

Don't forget.

Jesus saved us.

We sing his name.

Matthew 11, 27 through 30, Jesus says, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

I want to describe to you a heavy burden.

You're not present enough.

You're not optimized.

You're broke.

Start working.

We can do it religiously too.

You're not resting enough, you know.

This rest.

That the Lord gives to you, you're not embodying this enough.

You haven't internalized this rest enough.

And so you're not, see what I did?

See what I've done?

I've trapped you once again.

Why can he offer an easy and light burden?

How can he offer rest to us in this estate of sin and misery?

Because he took the burden for you.

Because he suffered on the cross on your behalf, because he is your redeemer.

All of us are well acquainted with this estate of sin and misery.

I have a favorite scene that I like it when movies do.

And if I were ever to write a movie, I'd want a scene like this.

One of the best examples of it is in Finding Nemo.

And but it all it happens in other movies also.

But in Finding Nemo, that's the one where the fish is lost.

And Nemo, of who the movie gets its name, is in a is in the fish tank in the dentist's office.

And one of the fish is like, maybe you maybe your dad will you know come and get you or something.

Maybe he can rescue you.

And Nemo's like, now my dad, he's mad at me because I hated, because I said that I hated him.

And he's too weak to come and rescue me out of this fish tank.

I can't get it, you can't get out of a fish tank when you're a fish.

It's one of the presuppositions that makes the plot hold together of finding Nemo.

And then my favorite scene.

This is the best scene.

The I can't even describe it.

This is Finding Nemo, this is a children's movie.

There's this scene in Finding Nemo where where when Nemo is thinking that, you get this alternate perspective of the story of Marlon, which is Nemo's dad.

Marlon going through the I can't even say it.

It's so silly.

Going through the whole ocean and all the obstacles that he faces to rescue Nemo.

And the the one fish is like, did you hear that he faced the sharks?

And then it goes to the pelicans, and the pelican is it's like, did you hear that he went through those jellyfish also?

And you know, all the stuff that he does.

It's the best way to stage a movie.

Interstellar does the same thing.

You know, when uh the daughter in Interstellar is is he's watching the videos before her and he's just weeping, and she's saying, You're not gonna rescue me.

It's been 25 years, it's been 40 years, you're not gonna rescue me.

And he's watching that as the father who's doing all the work to rescue her, you know, and you and you just think, ah, it's just amazing.

That's what you that here's what I want you to do.

Why it moves me so much is because you're Nemo, you're Nemo.

It's the only thing from this sermon anybody's gonna remember.

And this whole time in your state of sin and misery, your father's been pursuing you.

Your father has done all that he possibly could to accomplish your rescue.

This in the news, because of the pelican, makes its way to the dentist's office and he shares your dad's been facing the whole ocean to rescue you.

And then he gets saved.

This is the news.

This is your story.

This is your story in your state of sin and misery.

God the Father has done whatever it takes to rescue you.

He will not leave you in this estate of sin and misery.

In fact, he has sent his own son to bear the weight of your transgressions so that you might be reconciled to the Father.

That you might stand righteous before him.

You've been saved.

So it's Advent.

We remember that Jesus Christ saved us.

That's what makes us a people.

That's why we sing, that's why we praise him, that's why we honor him as God and Lord.

That's why we know there is no other name under heaven by which anyone will be saved.

It is only Jesus, because only he could do it.

So praise him.

Praise the only Redeemer of God's elect, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Holy Father.

We come to you with thanksgiving.

Hearts that are barely glimpsing the wonder of what you've accomplished on our behalf.

Lord, I pray that we would grasp afresh the truth of your gospel, the news of Christ as our King, who subdues both his and our enemies, our high priest who offers himself up, a true sacrifice that reconciles us to God, our prophet who teaches us the way of salvation, so only through faith in him.

Lord God, we pray that our lives would be songs of praise to your glory because you are our rescuer.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.