Final Plague Threatened

Today's reading is from Exodus chapter 11 verses 1 through 10.

Exodus 11 · chapter mention

The Lord said to Moses, Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt.

Afterward he will let you go from here.

When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.

Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.

And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.

Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants and in the sight of the people.

So Moses said, Thus says the Lord, About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all of the firstborn of the cattle.

There shall be a great cry throughout the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor will ever be again.

But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel, and all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, Get out, you and all the people who follow you, and after that I will go out.

And he went out from the uh from Pharaoh in hot anger.

Then the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.

Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of the land.

Thanks, Pat.

I may be seated.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

It is always a joy to gather together with you all on Sunday mornings and to worship the Lord.

But before I begin this morning, I want to offer a prayer.

This week has been a uh uh particularly sad week.

Uh the killing of Charlie Kirk.

I I haven't had as many people reach out to me in the church for anything else since I've been a pastor.

I've been a pastor, as I shared this morning as we gathered to pray.

I've been a pastor since 2016.

This is not like a low uh big event tenure.

Um and I think that there's been I think that there's a um uh just a real chord struck.

And uh then in our own state, just not very far from here, there's the shooting, uh another shooting on a campus.

And these are in many ways the same event.

They are they are evidence of just a nihilism that that has taken over and that uh uh stands in opposition to goodness.

It's a joy to gather together with the church.

Because we can look and we can see the world plainly for what it is, and we don't lose hope.

We don't lose hope in the face of death, even when people are dead are killed because they're Christians.

We do not lose hope because we know the one who conquered death.

We are the ones who are able to come face to face plainly with the darkness itself, even that darkness which you would most like to hide from, that darkness in yourself, and we know the one who has conquered it.

We know the son who has gone forward on our behalf, we know the sacrifice that has been made.

Our lives have been changed by him.

Our lives are modeled after him.

We should expect to see when a Christian is martyred, we should expect to see a glorious outflowing of praise to Jesus.

And we've seen it.

I pray that our lives might echo in the same way for the glory of Jesus' name.

How beautiful.

Psalm 64.

It says, Hear my voice, O God.

In my complaint, preserve my life from dread of the enemy, hide me from the secret plots of the wicked, from the throng of evildoers, who wet their tongues like swords, who aim bitter words like arrows, shooting from ambush at the blameless, shooting at him suddenly and without fear.

They hold fast to their evil purpose, they talk of laying snares secretly, thinking who can see them.

They search out injustice, saying, We have accomplished a diligent search, for the inward mind and heart of a man are deep.

But God shoots his arrow at them.

They are wounded suddenly, they are brought to ruin, with their own tongues turned against them, all who see them will wag their heads, then all mankind fears.

They tell what God has brought about and ponder what he has done.

Let the righteous one rejoice in the Lord and take refuge in him.

Let all the upright in heart exalt.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, we pray that we would gather together as your church and we would rejoice and exalt in you.

What a time to rejoice and exalt.

How could we do such a thing?

Only because we know that you have conquered death, that we have a steadfast hope in you, that you have delivered us from our sins, that wickedness and evil in the world, even that which runs rampant in our own hearts, will be put to death and destroyed and to be no more.

And Lord, by faith alone we might be raised in you.

Because you really came to the earth, you really died under evil hands, you really rose again on the third day, you really sit in the heavens at the right hand of God.

Lord, it is all true, it all really happened.

Lord, I pray that you would give us faith to trust in that and to see you in all your glory and celebrate you in all your glory.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So we're moving into Exodus, and this is Exodus chapter 11.

Exodus 11 · chapter mention

Now, we haven't been in Exodus in our church for about a year, and so we're jumping in to what might feel to some of you like this random part of the book of Exodus, but our church has a typical pattern in which we go through the scriptures.

The pattern is that we go through uh what we had done is we would begin the year in the Old Testament and then uh do something in the summer, and then in the fall, we would go to the New Testament.

And that flipped because we had preached through Genesis in that pattern, and we'd preached through Mark in that pattern, but this year I preached through Mark in the spring because I wanted the resurrection to fall on Easter, because I thought that would be really cool.

It was really cool, it transformed the world.

And now, because of that transition, it's been a year since we've been in the book of Exodus, so I've got to remind you of what's happened up to this point.

The where we ended the book of Exodus was the summer of 2024, and I called it the summer of plagues, and we were moving through the first nine plagues against Egypt.

Now, what's happened in the book of Exodus is God's chosen people are slaves in the land of Egypt.

And as uh slaves in the land of Egypt, the Lord raises up a deliverer for them named Moses.

And Moses is exiled from the land of Egypt, then he's called by God at a burning bush, and God tells Moses that he has raised him up in order to go back into Egypt, oppose Pharaoh to his face in the name of God, and deliver God's people from their harsh slavery that they had experienced.

Now, the way that God had intended, and that God does deliver his people from the land of Egypt, is by raising up Pharaoh to oppose him, and then sending ten plagues upon the land of Egypt.

You can think of it like Pharaoh has his hands tightly gripped on the Israelites, on the people of God.

And then one by one, one finger at a time, the Lord is prying the grip of Pharaoh's hands off of his people until they are finally liberated.

They are acts of judgment against the enemies of God.

That is how the people of God are delivered.

It is salvation through judgment.

That is the pattern of the deliverance of the Exodus.

And so, in that summer of 2024, after looking at the wonderful story of Moses and his deliverance as a young boy when all the Hebrew boys were being murdered, uh, he was delivered through the waters, and then he was sent out into the wilderness at Sinai, and then in that wilderness, he is called by the Lord in a burning bush.

The Israelites themselves will go through that same pattern.

They will be rescued through the waters, they will go to Sinai, and then God will speak to them out of the fire.

So, what God has already done in Moses, he is eager to do through Moses.

But the plagues that he shows are that we looked at last summer.

The first nine, we saw Moses turn the Nile into blood.

Many of you remember this, have you seen the movies?

He turns the Nile into blood, and then there's a plague of frogs, there's a plague of gnats, there's a plague of flies, there's the death of livestock, there's boils on the skin of the Egyptians, there's hail, which destroys the crops, there's the locusts which eat up what remains, and then the ninth plague that we left off was darkness.

Three days of total darkness in the heavens.

Today, Moses goes before Pharaoh to threaten the final plague.

This is the decision moment of the book of Exodus.

And we see that the people of Egypt have been brought under intense suffering.

Pharaoh himself has been brought under intense suffering.

And oftentimes throughout these plagues, he's tried to walk back his position by the demonstration of the intense suffering that he has experienced.

But one thing that is made clear in this text is suffering is not repentance.

Saying, I'm going through a terrible thing because of this circumstance, or because of the sin that I am committed, I'm experiencing a horrible thing, and it's very painful and it's very bad, that's not repentance.

That's not repentance.

Pharaoh experiences terrible pain, and it's not repentance.

So the Lord goes to Moses and he tells him of this one final plague, and he brings him to this turning point, this final plague which will realize the deliverance of the people of God.

Exodus 11, 1.

Says the Lord said to Moses, Yet one more plague, yet one more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt.

Excuse me, I can't read.

The Lord said to Moses, Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt.

Afterward he will let you go from here.

When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely.

The plagues before this have been given to Moses to deliver.

It is as though they've been given by God to Moses, so that Pharaoh would see Moses as the as the one who is executing these plagues.

There's a usually like some sort of a trick involved.

You know, throw down your staff or uh grab some dust from the kiln and throw it up into the sky.

And uh then it there's there's some sort of a some some something that Moses does so that Pharaoh would link it to Moses' actions and submit to Moses' God.

This final plague the Lord reserves for himself.

The Lord says, There is one final plague that I will do, because he wants to show that the deliverance of God's people is finally and completely in his hands.

Where do the people of God look for deliverance?

They look to God.

There is no one else that can be looked to.

And so he is delivering this final plague.

This is actually the first time in the book that the word plague is used.

Isn't that weird?

But it means a str uh a stroke or a wounding.

There's a final wounding that's going to take place.

And it shows us that the intention of God is to rescue his people through judgment.

So then the Lord continues talking to Moses, and he gives him this instruction.

In Exodus 11, 2 through 3, the first part of 3, it says, Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.

And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians.

Now this is a bit of an odd thing.

There's one final plague coming against the Egyptians.

So, Hebrews, go ask the Egyptians for their jewelry.

It's an odd request.

Perhaps just as odd as the request is that the Egyptians are like, yep, here you go.

Let me, I think I got, you know, some more.

Why don't you come on in?

And so the Hebrew people are are made, they're made prosperous at this moment.

At this moment of their deliverance, they're receiving the this it's like a tribute, it's like a an offering from the Egyptians to the people of God.

It's an amazing thing, and it starts to show us that there's this real transformation that has happened here, where the people of God, excuse me, the Egyptians are recognizing the people of God for who they really are.

They're recognizing that these are our people who we ought to pay tribute to, because they have seen all of the signs.

They have gone through them just as Pharaoh has gone through them.

But their hearts were not hardened like Pharaoh's hearts, at least many of them weren't.

Their hearts were softened by the plagues that they had seen.

And in seeing their hearts softened, they are turned by the Lord to honor the people of God by supplying them with the wealth that they would need.

This is the wealth that will become the glory of the tabernacle.

It's given by the Egyptians, just as it was promised by the Lord.

Why did the Lord send them into such slavery and captivity?

Why was there such terror in what they experienced in that place?

Well, one of the reasons was because they would leave with prosperity.

Because they would leave being honored by the Egyptians.

And it's also worth remembering, you know, the Hebrew people were forced into this terrible slavery.

And that means that they were driven harshly to do work that they would never be compensated for.

And it would be invisible.

Because the highest power in the world, who was Pharaoh, would say, This is work that must be done because I say so, and they will never be compensated for it.

That was his punishment against the Hebrew people.

But the Lord saw that work.

The Lord saw all of that labor.

In Colossians 3, 23 through 24, it says, Whatever you do, work heartily as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

You are serving the Lord Christ.

There is no work done for the Lord, which the Lord does not see and honor and reward.

There's no place of futility in the kingdom of God.

He is the one who sees it.

He will reward those who serve him.

And he shows it here as he builds up the people of God.

It's an important pattern to recognize just in your life.

That the place of greatest distress is often the very same place as the blessing.

The place of your greatest distress is often the very same place as your blessing.

It is there that the Lord shows us plainly his power to deliver.

In fact, understanding that principle is the same as having hope.

That's what hope is.

Hope is when you're in a place of incredible distress, saying, The Lord will deliver me and he'll bring me to something greater through this.

There will be something more glorious on the other side of this distress.

And then by that hope, you continue on.

You continue trusting in the Lord and what he's shown you.

Now there's something else to be said about this.

In the second part of Exodus 11, 3, this point is made.

It says, Moreover, the man, Moses, was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants, and in the sight of the people.

So what has happened over the course of these plagues?

Who is great in the land of Egypt?

When Moses walks around, the people of Egypt are looking and saying, I think that guy's in charge.

You know our guy, Pharaoh?

I don't think he's really calling the shots here.

And then one of the others says, What are you talking about?

He's Pharaoh.

He's the son of the sun god Ra.

He's the one who's rules us all.

He comes from these generations.

And then the other, you know, Egyptian that's talking with him says, Yeah, but these past couple of weeks, you remember the Nile turning to blood?

Yeah, yeah.

Things happen.

There's all kinds of different sorts of spills.

Yeah, and the frogs, frogs, that's not a that's no big deal.

It's frogs all the time.

Could be anything.

Yeah, but the flies, yeah.

What have you never seen a fly before?

And the gnats?

You never seen a net, you know?

And they could keep going.

It was like the boils, I have a condition, it's genetic.

The three days of darkness.

Well, you know.

Okay.

They start to see, and there's this shift that's taking place.

All the people of Egypt are beginning to honor Moses.

You know what's what's happening?

This is often missed in the Exodus story that the deliverance of the Hebrew people coincides with a revival in Egypt.

That's incredible.

They'll leave a mixed multitude out of this place.

Because Egyptians will look and be like, I think I'm gonna go with them on account of the they have the true God thing, which factors in.

Do you know how you act like a king in a movie?

The way that you act like a king in a movie is it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what the person who is a king in a movie does.

That's not how they show that someone is a king in a movie.

What matters is how all the other people in the scene treat that person.

That's how we're shown who's in charge here.

What we're being shown here is that all the other people in Egypt are saying Moses is in charge.

Moses is the one who is speaking the truth.

Moses is the one who is not deceiving us.

Our Pharaoh is the one who is lying.

Our Pharaoh is the one who is deceiving us.

And so there is this political revolution that is taking place right in front of Pharaoh's eyes, where his kingdom is being stripped from him by the kingdom of God in Moses.

It is plain that this is happening.

This is, of course, more than a political conversion.

But it is not less.

It is not less.

The allegiance to the king that they choose on the earth must change as they recognize the true God in heaven.

And then what the Lord goes on to describe to Moses is what this final stroke will be.

What this final strike against the Egyptians will be.

And it is a horrific warning.

Exodus 11, 4 through 5.

So Moses said, Thus says the Lord, about midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.

From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle.

This is the plague that is to come.

All of the firstborn of Egypt will die.

At about midnight, the Lord will go out, and all the firstborn of Egypt will die.

Pharaoh, your household, all the way down to the slave girl, the son of the slave girl.

All the firstborn will be killed.

This is a terror, an unimaginable horror.

Firstborn means firstborn sons.

That's the Hebrew word for it.

Is this just some arbitrary act from the Lord?

Is it just the most terrifying thing that he could come up with?

No, it is justice.

Remember where the story of Exodus began.

The story of Exodus began where Pharaoh said that we must kill all the firstborn sons of the Hebrews.

The midwives courageously deceived the Pharaoh.

But then he commissions the whole of Egypt.

Such was the culture of Egypt that the Pharaoh, by decree, would be able to recommend the slaughter of all the Hebrew boys, and the whole nation would comply.

You know how long ago that was since that happened?

It was eighty years ago at this point.

It's important to remember Moses is old.

He's seen some things, you know, like burning bushes and stuff.

Moses is old at this point.

It had been eighty years since the slaughter of those Hebrew boys.

You know, one made it out.

Moses himself.

He made it out.

And the people had likely forgotten that this had even taken place.

They didn't recognize all the missing sons.

But the Lord had not forgotten.

The Lord knew them.

He knew them all by name.

It is not hard for the Lord to know that many names.

He remembered each of them.

And he showed it in the first plague.

The first plague was the Nile turning to blood.

Why was the Nile turned to blood?

Well, because the Hebrew boys, in order for them to be killed, the instruction was that they would be thrown into the Nile.

Because then the wickedness that was done might be washed away to be remembered no more.

And it was washed away.

And they would be remembered no more, but God didn't forget.

He did not forget the injustice that had taken place.

The Lord remembered the injustice that had taken place.

Just as, and so just as the first plague was a recollection of this atrocious murder of God's people, so now the final plague is a recollection of that final murder of God's people.

And just as the Lord did not forget the Hebrew boys who were murdered in that way, such that he would show judgment upon the nation, so too our Lord will not forget the more than 60 million babies who have been aborted in our nation.

Where have they washed away to?

Is sixty million a lot of names for you to remember?

I can't count that high.

What is the hope that would come from the Israelites?

In particular, what is the hope of the son of Israel who was to come?

Who was nearly cut off by the schemes of Satan?

The hope is that from that line, that the true son of Israel would be Jesus Christ.

These are the people whom the promised, the promised son, who has promised to Eve in the garden, who becomes the picture of the church as she looks forward to the son who will be the rescuer.

That is what was being cut off by Pharaoh.

He is not just cutting off the hope of Israel, of this one nation amongst the world.

There have been nations that have come and gone in the world.

There will continue to be nations that come and go in the world.

It is tragic, but it is a terrible historical event.

He was cutting off the hope of all the nations of the world.

He was cutting off the hope of all of humanity when he set out to kill these firstborn sons.

We practice a movement in his image when we do that.

What does it mean when the sons are cut off?

It means the future of a people is cut off.

It means the ones who hold the names of their families are cut off.

So that a people will be utterly and completely destroyed.

I don't want to talk about politics.

I can tell by your faces, neither do you.

I can't say there's two.

I can't say there's two movements that are promoting the annihilation of marriage and family, the equivocating between homosexual marriage and the reality of marriage that God has given us.

I can't say there's two.

Now when I'm talking about those things, I'm talking about Christian ethics.

But you know I'm talking about politics.

What is the most divisive thing in your life?

I know it's political.

Amidst your families, amidst your friends.

We make primarily political assessments now.

That is not good.

We ought to be making primarily biblical assessment.

But if we draw a line around our lives, or if we all if we allow wicked people to draw lines around our lives to where the line of things that are political is so all-encompassing, and you as Christians are not allowed to talk about things that are political, then how can you plainly speak about your faith?

If talking about abortion or gay marriage, talking about transgenderism, if talking about these things is political, and we're not allowed to talk about things that are political.

What other boundaries around your life will you draw that are off-limits for the teachings of Scripture?

We are forced into this because the reality of this deliverance that's seen here is it is a theological deliverance.

It is a competition between Pharaoh's God and Moses' God.

And that makes it a political one.

No hope in that.

Teaching of the scriptures, proclamation of the word, taking of the sacrament, our prayer, our worship, those things will be unable to be conquered.

But I cannot, in good conscience, leave unspoken to the reality that the narrative you will receive from our culture is that there are certain things which you are not allowed to think biblically about.

And if you make a plain judgment about them, no matter how plain and in your face that judgment might be, you have left the realm of the church and you have entered the political realm.

And never the twain shall meet.

That's not a violation of a biblical principle.

That's a violation of a modernist principle.

And we're all deeply modern.

We want the purity of our spaces.

But all the people turned to Moses.

And to Moses' God.

Do you think Pharaoh cared about Moses' God?

Pharaoh did not care about Moses' God.

Do you think that the Sadducees and the Pharisees cared that Jesus thought he was God?

They did not care that Jesus thought he was God.

They cared that the crowds went after him.

It was a political caring that led to the death of our Lord.

This is not the way you grow a church, by the way.

I know the things to say to not have this moment.

I know them, believe me.

I've written them and then deleted them.

What I'm trying to do is pry open your heart to reveal any space that you hold so tightly that you would say to God, not yours, but mine.

As plainly as the destruction of marriage.

And we entrust the Lord to work in us even there.

Even in the conflict that would the relational conflict that that will create.

That we would entrust ourselves to Him.

And say, Lord, if you say it, that's good enough.

Exodus 11, 6, there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.

This is the warning of the final plague.

All the sons will die, and what will come in the land of Egypt will be a great cry.

A great cry, such as has never been and never will be again.

Because they will wake up and they will see that their sons are gone.

You know what it is?

It's war.

It's just war.

Because you know what you do in war?

You bet your sons.

It's what you do in war.

And the Lord is saying, I will be absolute in my war against you, and I will deliver my people.

So all those who would have gone to war will be dead.

But there is a distinction that is made.

A distinction amongst the people of God and against the Egyptians.

Exodus 11 7.

But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

The Lord picks sides.

He makes distinctions.

He looks at things and then he judges them.

He makes a distinction between his people and the Egyptians.

Because none of the sons of the Hebrew people will die that night.

He is making a distinction because the Lord is saying, These are my people.

How do we know that they're his people?

He places, it is one thing for God to place his name upon us.

How incredible and how amazing of a thing to consider.

It is another thing for God to take our names and place it upon himself.

When he instructs Moses to call him the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, God says, That is my name.

Such is his love for his people, that he would take our names upon himself.

This is the distinction that he makes.

But do not think that God is some local deity.

That because he distinctly chooses a people for himself, it does not mean that he is not the God over everyone.

He distinctly chooses a people for himself, and he is the God over all peoples.

His law is for everyone, and everyone will be judged by it.

And we can see that because the the warning continues that Moses gives to Pharaoh in verse 8 and all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, Get out, you and all the people who follow you, and after that I will go out.

And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger.

He says, All these your servants will come and bow down to me.

And you will tell us to get out, and all who are with you, and then we will get out.

And Moses left in a hot anger.

Why did he leave in a hot anger?

Because he saw the wickedness of Pharaoh standing against the people of God.

And he adopted for himself as the mediator between God's people and God the very feeling with which God himself had towards Pharaoh.

And he showed it to Pharaoh's face.

And he left in a hot anger because of the depth of his love for the people of God.

Remember their captivity, remember their oppression.

And then the Lord says to Moses, in verses nine through ten, Pharaoh will not listen to you that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.

Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.

Such a warning, such a sacrifice that Pharaoh sees is coming plainly, but the Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart, so that the so that Pharaoh ensures this terrible event of the Passover will take place.

Why does the Lord harden Pharaoh's heart in this way?

He tells us it is so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.

This is not the complete answer to the problem of evil in the world or of why such bad things happen in the world, but it is part of the answer.

And part of the answer is that God permits these terrible things to take place in the world, these horrible acts of wickedness, because within them he will show the greatness of his wonders.

He will show how mighty he is to save.

How mighty is he to save?

Well, he did not sneak his people out the back door from a weak nation.

He went to the mightiest nation that had ever existed, and he forced the hand of the most powerful man in the world to send them out.

And we talk about it to this day.

He accomplishes wonders in these horrific depths, so that we could say no man could have done that.

No man could have stood up to Pharaoh.

He was a god.

In order for that to happen, some other god would have to come in and humiliate the gods of Egypt, which he does one by one.

There's a god of the Nile, they had a god of frogs, they have a god of flies, and then all of these are just utterly humiliated.

Pharaoh was supposed to come from the sun, born.

He was the son of the sun.

Well, it was spelled differently in then.

It was spelled picture of an eye, picture of a foot, picture of a.

You.

It's the same structure.

There's a wicked king named Satan.

And you're enslaved to him.

But it's even worse.

You're enslaved to him because in the depths of your heart you agree with him in his rebellion against the true God.

There's a true king.

The true king is God Himself.

There's a true mediator who, twist, also God Himself, Jesus Christ.

It is not a story about one nation.

What's the maximal version of this?

Well, what if it were the whole world?

What if it were a story about the whole world?

And what if it was not just about a particular king?

What if it was about God Himself?

And what if the people who were to be drawn out, you know, we've got to imagine this is the maximal possible version of this?

What if all the people in the world were rebellious in the way that Pharaoh was?

Could you think of a more maximal version of this story?

What if all the people in the world hated God, did not seek for him, rejected him to his face?

What if that were the true thing, the truest thing about everyone?

Us?

It is.

It is the truest thing about us.

Well then what would that deliverance be?

Who would be the son that could go die?

So that we might be set free to worship the true God?

What would he need to deliver us from?

Not just the oppression on the outside, he would need to deliver us from the very sin in our own hearts.

If we were delivered merely by judgment on the enemies of God, then we would be the ones under that judgment.

And we would be without hope in the world.

But here's the story.

The Lord pours out grace and pleads for mercy.

And we look on Jesus Christ, who is the perfect Son, the true Son, the Son of God, sent by the Father to die in our place, so that we might be freed from the sin in our heart and our slavery to Satan.

So that by his death, the judgment of God, in his death, we are liberated.

We are set free.

And there's another cry that goes up, as for an only son.

It's a cry of mourning at the death of Jesus, but it's also a cry of mourning for the sin and compromise that we have carried in our own hearts as we've neglected the depth of his love towards him, as we've pretended to not understand things which are plain.

And because of his righteousness, the Lord comes to us and he says, His righteousness by faith alone is yours.

I will treat you as though you were as righteous as him.

The Lord comes to the sinners and he says, Repent and come to me.

I have abundant grace for you.

Because the true Son has come.

How great is his grace?

How great is the true Son's grace for his enemies?

When he was hung hanging on the cross, he prays, Lord, forgive them, they do not know what they do.

Have you heard of such a thing?

Deuteronomy says, Have you ever heard of a story like Exodus?

Have you ever heard of a God who came and by great powers and great and outstretched arms drew a people out of another nation for his own possession?

And the people who were listening to Moses, when he said that, they should have said, No, I've never heard of anything like that.

Have you ever heard a story of where to ransom a rebellious people, God himself went to his death and then prayed for mercy upon his enemies?

Do you know how free you are Don't hold anything back from him?

Look at the depth of love he's shown.

Don't fear anything.

I wonder if he'll really take care of me.

Oh, you're talking about the guy that just died in your place as an enemy?

You know, we live in Denver, so occasionally there's gunshots.

And there was at our house last night.

In the neighborhood, uh, you know.

And I was walking around the house.

You know how you do you peek through windows.

And I was so scared because it was vr very scary, you know.

And I just thought the Lord Jesus carried his own cross for me.

Such is the depth of his love towards us.

Such is the fullness of the gospel.

First Corinthians eleven twenty-three says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you.

That the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is broken, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Each week we take communion.

And it is a bloody rite.

It is Jesus saying, This is my body which is for you.

And it is a broken body.

And a cup, where Jesus says, This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

It's a picture of sacrifice, it's a picture of death.

It's a picture of our Lord laying himself down on our behalf, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in him.

It's a picture of that.

And when we partake of it, we partake of it because the bread it nourishes us.

It gives us life.

The wine, it gives joy to your heart.

Because in the death of our Lord, we see our salvation and rescue.

The reality of his love towards us.

The forgiveness of our sins.

Who else has a story like that?

So we invite all of you who've been baptized and who confess Christ Jesus as Lord to come and partake of this Lord's Supper with us.

If you don't confess Christ Jesus as Lord, do it now.

Do it now.

You'll never hear another story of God laying his life down for you.

There is no other name under heaven by which we might be saved, other than Jesus Christ.

Let's pray.

Lord, that you would draw close in your sacrifice, we would see the wonder of who you are.

Lord, that the things that need to be worked out in our hearts, which only your spirit knows, Lord, that you would work those out.

Lord, that we would invite you into places that we have kept you away from.

Lord, that we would seek to honor you plainly with our lives.

Because we recognize the depth of your love towards us.

Lord, may your name be greatly praised.

Only your spirit can do this.

Only your spirit can do this, Lord.

We pray for this in Jesus' name.

Amen.