If you turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 6, it seems like an appropriate place to meditate on God's Word on a day in which we've been blessed with new members, although I confess I didn't plan it that way, but evidently the Lord did. The seminary is foolish enough to ask me to host a broadcast. It's an internet radio broadcast. It's a contradiction in terms, but I think you know what I mean. And we've been, this year, going through the book of Hebrews. So I've had opportunity to be thinking about the book of Hebrews, and this is sort of where I am. So this is where we are this morning in chapter 6. And I'll read that, well, we'll read the chapter now, and then we'll look at it. God's word from Hebrews 6. Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits. For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit and have tasted of the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come if they then fall away since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt for the land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated it receives a blessing from God, but if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things. Things that belong to salvation, for God is not so unjust to overlook your work and the love you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, Surely I will bless you and multiply you. and thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise, for people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled to refuge, fled for refuge, might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Thus far the reading of God's word, may he bless this word and may he write it on our hearts. Congregation of the Lord Jesus, there are some insoluble problems in the world. And I was thinking about one of them this morning. For example, when you're sitting down to put on your shoes and socks, do you put on one sock and then one shoe and then one sock and the other shoe? Or do you put on your socks first and then your shoes? I've been thinking about this problem for, I don't know, 45 years. And I can't figure it out. I mean, back home it was tornadoes. What happens if you're sitting down and you're putting on your shoes and socks and the tornado siren goes off? Is it better to have two socks on so that you can run for cover? Your feet will be symmetrical. They'll sustain probably equal damage. Or if you put on one shoe, well, then one of your feet will be protected and the other one will be naked, of course, but you'll have one good foot and probably one damaged foot. And then I think about it here, well, I'm putting on my shoes, what if there's an earthquake? And so this is, I think, an insoluble problem that we won't ever know, to which we'll never know the answer until the consummation. Well, the book of Hebrews, and particularly chapter 6, is difficult, but it's not that difficult. We can actually solve Hebrews chapter 6 if we pay attention. But we do have to pay attention a little bit. There are three things, I think, that God wants us to see about these covenant curses and covenant blessings. We'll see that through the course of the message. And the first is that there are covenant curses. Second, there is covenant confidence. And third, there are covenant blessings. Covenant curses, covenant confidence, and covenant blessings. I couldn't find a C word for blessing, so the outline is a little imperfect, but you'll forgive me. This passage was written, as the whole book was, to a congregation, we don't know where, but it's evidently a Jewish Christian congregation, and this was written sometime in the mid-60s, probably before 67, and certainly before 70 A.D. Because in 67 there began a major rebellion in Judea, as it was known then, against the Roman occupation, which resulted in 70 A.D. in the destruction of the temple and in much of Jerusalem, the damage of which can still be seen to this day. And he writes to a Christian congregation, most likely composed predominantly of Jews who had converted to Jesus. And so they had put their faith in Yeshua HaMashiach, as they call him, Jesus the Messiah. and they had seen in him the fulfillment, and rightly so, of all the types and shadows. These are folk who had been in the synagogue and who had heard the promises recited, who had heard the history of redemption read, who knew about the temple, and there was a temple in their lifetime in the first century. It's the Herodian Temple, the second temple. And they knew about the priests going in and making sacrifices. They knew about the Day of Atonement, and they knew about all the cultic festivals, all the religious festivals that were part of the Israelite calendar. And they had seen, rightly so, Jesus as the fulfillment of all of those things. But now, things are beginning to heat up, and the Christians have been, in a sense, stripped of their protection. For the first several years, they were sort of regarded as a subset of Judaism, and as such, they were protected under Roman law. But after a while, the Jews began to say to the Roman authorities and to everyone who would listen, hey, these followers of this crucified fellow Jesus, well, these followers are not Jews. We don't recognize them. And they began to be punished in various ways. They certainly were punished under Nero. And now, as we approach the destruction of Jerusalem, things are beginning to intensify as the political temperature heats up in Judea. And so these folks, these believers, these Christians, are facing a couple of different kinds of persecution. They're facing some informal persecution from other Jews who don't believe in Yeshua HaMashiach, who continue to go to synagogue on Saturday and not to Christian services on the first day of the week to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the Messiah, from the dead. And so they're mocking the Christians for serving a crucified criminal. And there was nothing more shameful than crucifixion in Greco-Roman society. And it was Greco-Roman law, particularly Roman law, that was being imposed on these people. Nothing more shameful than being stripped, beaten, and crucified. And where there's smoke, you know, there must be fire. And there was smoke. Jesus was arrested. He didn't defend himself. You yourselves, you Christians, you admit that he didn't defend himself, and he was crucified, and that's just shameful that you follow a crucified man. And so some of them were tempted to turn away from Jesus and to go back to Moses. And you see this in chapter 5, verse 11. And he says to them, and I won't reread all of this, but just from 5 to the beginning of 6, about this, the pastor says, this is really a sermon, this book, About this, he says, we have much to say. It's hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. This is the language of the Old Testament prophets. You are the people of God. You are the church. The name of God has been placed on you. You've been redeemed. You've gone through the Red Sea on dry ground. You've been receiving manna. You've followed the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night through the wilderness. yet the prophets say you become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers. After all these decades, you know. This is 30 years after the crucifixion of Jesus. Where were you? Now, children, 30 years ago was before you were born, but your parents were young. And they can remember, and your grandparents can probably remember 30 years ago more clearly than they can remember yesterday. So 30 years ago, for 30 years they've been following Jesus, and yet he says, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles, the word of God, the teaching of God, the revelation of God. You need milk, not meat, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness. You don't give big chunks of steak to babies, do you children? That would be bad, because they don't have teeth, right? And they can't gum it, and they might not want it, and then they might choke on it, you see? So you give them something that will nourish them, but they can swallow. Well, we shouldn't be that, he says. We don't do this because he's a child, but verse 14, but solid food is for the mature, for people old enough to handle it, for those who have powers of discernment, trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. As we read earlier, we should by now leave these elementary teachings about turning away from sin and about all of the dead works that the rabbis were imposing on the Jews and from which these people had fled. And of faith toward God, these are basic things. And of instruction about washings, right? It's not entirely clear what that means. It could be baptism. It could be something else. He could be saying, listen, we don't do those ceremonial washings anymore. Whatever it is, he considers it basic. Laying on of hands, well, we know what that is. We've seen that done here in our congregation. That's about ordaining pastors. And the resurrection from the dead and eternal judgment. So these are basic things that we should understand. And these are the foundational things. But he said, I can't talk to you about that right now because you're in danger of bringing yourself under the curse of God. I can't talk to you about the things I'd like to talk to you about because you are in danger of putting yourself under the curse of God. Now, remember, he's speaking to the visible covenant community. The visible covenant community. These are the people who've been brought through, as I said, the Red Sea, out of Egypt, placed at the foot of Mount Sinai. If you look at chapter 12, that's where he places us. Not Sinai, but at the foot of Mount Zion. Here we are, the assembled people of God. The redeemed, the delivered, on whom he's placed his name. But always, of course, in the history of salvation, there are always two kinds of people in the visible covenant community, aren't they? Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. Not all Israel is Israel. Paul says, a Jew is one who is a Jew inwardly. In that sense, we're all Jews, at least outwardly. We've all been baptized, and those of us who are old enough have made profession of faith. We've stood before the congregation, before the elders, before God Almighty, and we've said, this I believe. This is my faith. And we've come to the Lord's table, and we've sworn oaths, and we've said, Christ is for me. He was broken, as it were, in two for me, and he is mine. I forsake all other gods. I swear, out of gratitude and loyalty, I swear an oath of fidelity to him who was faithful for me, to all the laws of God. That's what we are. We are that people. And so he says to them and to us, verse 4, For it is impossible to restore again to repentance, Those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted of the goodness of the Word of God and the powers of the age to come, if they then fall away, since they are crucified once again the Son of God. And to explain what he's thinking, he gives an analogy, which they would certainly understand, And remember from our Lord's teaching in the Gospels, for example, in Mark chapter 4, Jesus says the seed, the word of God, falls on different kinds of soils, doesn't it? And one of the soils that he describes is rocky soil, where it never takes root. In other soils, it may take root for a while, but it doesn't stick. And then, of course, there is good soil where it takes root and produces fruit. And he says, to explain what he's getting at here with these covenant curses, he says in following verse 6, verse 7, For the land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. That's why I say this is about covenant blessings and covenant curses. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. This is the kind of language that Jesus used about the fig tree, isn't it? This is the language of prophetic judgment against the people of God who profess faith but do not have it. This is the language of, really, the entire epistle to James, which might also be a sermon. You people say that you believe, and every service, he says, you pronounce the Shema. Deuteronomy 6.4 was one of the basic parts of the synagogue service. that the early Christians carried over into their worship service. Shema Yisrael, Yahweh Elhenu, Yahweh Echad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That was the basic confession of faith. And James says it's, you say the Shema, and that's good. But do you really believe? There is a danger, he says here, of spiritual sampling. That's one way to put it. Children, have you ever gone with mom and dad or grandma and grandpa to a, back home, we call it sometimes a smorgasbord. Lots of Swedes and Norwegians where I'm from. A smorgasbord, lutefisk, I don't recommend it. Eat the schudbulas, that's much better. And the ustekaka, that's even better. That's cake, kuken. Schudbulas are meatball. Lutefisk, not so much. Or a buffet, right? When we go back home this summer, we'll go to a favorite pizza restaurant that's probably actually not very good, but it's familiar food, and they have a buffet. And we always go and we eat the pizza buffet, and I get hamburger pizza, which you can't get out here. People think it's strange, but it's not strange where we are beef farmers, where I'm from, And that eating beef is not strange. It's what you do. It's an act of loyalty. I can still hear my grandfather. You better eat that steak, boy. He did three times a day, and he died at 72 mowing the front yard. Well, there's a temptation in our time to treat Christianity as a kind of spiritual smorgasbord or spiritual sampling. Oh, you know, whatever gets you through the night, that's good. Yeah, I love Jesus. See, he's a great guy. I just talked to a guy this week on the phone who said, I like Jesus, I don't like Christianity, but I like Jesus. And of course, then he went on to say how Jesus was a deluded prophet who thought the end of the world was coming and he was wrong. But he loves Jesus, just like he likes Timothy Leary and he mentioned someone else whose name I don't remember. People think they can cobble together their own religion of Jesus and Buddha and the prophet. Mohammed, have you ever seen the coexist bumper stickers? It's all about, it's all the same thing. So you sample a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and it doesn't really matter what you believe, as long as you believe something. Well, if you climb, children, and don't do this, but if you climb to a high building, does it matter what you believe if you jump off? If you say, well, I don't believe I'll be hurt if I jump off. Does that mean that you won't be hurt? Well, I really, really, really believe I won't be hurt, so then I won't be hurt if I jump. Well, I'm here to tell you, children, that if you jump off a high building, you will be hurt, regardless of what you believe. Because there's objective truth in the world, and one of those is, if you jump off a high building, you will be hurt. That's the way God made the world. It just is. I'm sorry if that hurts your feelings. I'm sorry if that's disappointing or disillusioning. But there are things that are objectively true in the world, and one of them is that there is no way to God except through Jesus Christ. I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. That's what Jesus said, and he wasn't kidding. Anyone who tries to go to God through any other way will find only eternal destruction. That is the truth. And anyone who tells you anything else is a liar from the pit of hell. It doesn't matter if he has a big toothy smile and if he has a big building in Houston with 35,000 people in it. It doesn't matter. False prophets have always had lots of followers. The Bible has a thing called remnant theology. God had 7,000 who had not yet bowed the knee to Baal. But there were tens of thousands who had. So there is the possibility of covenant cursings and he warns them about spiritual sampling and he positions us, he describes us as if we're the wilderness people. And look at the language that he uses to describe us. It is really quite striking language. First of all, we are those who've been enlightened. Some people think this might refer to baptism, and it might, but if you look at this word that's used here, it's a word for actually turning and lighting a candle or turning on a lamp and lighting a lamp. We would say flipping the light switch, that's the same if there was electricity back then, they would have used this word. If you look at the way this word is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, it has essentially two meanings. It's used literally for lighting a lamp, and it's used metaphorically or figuratively for those who've been brought out of some sort of intellectual or spiritual darkness into intellectual or spiritual light. And the image here is most likely that of being led by the pillar of a cloud and the pillar of fire. Being delivered through the darkness by the pillar of light, the pillar of fire. And so these people, just like the Israelites, were those who had been enlightened. They had come to an understanding, an intellectual understanding of the truth. It's probably the best way of understanding this. They had an understanding, and of course it's important, it's essential to have a right understanding of the truth. There are three aspects of faith. Knowledge, a right understanding. Assent, agreement that it's true. You can know things and not agree that they're true. I talked to this fellow this week on the telephone, did an interview with him. He said, well, I know about Jesus, I just don't believe it's true. He had knowledge, but he did not have a scent. And he certainly didn't have faith. That's the third aspect. He didn't have trust, a hearty trust that it's really true for me. And he says, look, it's one thing to have knowledge. Secondly, he says, it's another thing to have tasted of the heavenly gift. And some people think this refers to the Lord's Supper, it may well, but the image again is of receiving the manna in the wilderness. There were Israelites who received the manna from God in the wilderness and yet who did not enter into the rest. They received manna in the wilderness and they did not enter into the rest. These people, he says, are really participating in the life of the covenant community. And God does act in the covenant community. The word of God goes forth. The Lord's Supper is distributed to the congregation. The Holy Spirit is actively working and people even have some experience of this. People say to me, well, pastor, you're always wound up about what people think. Doesn't it really matter what people feel in their hearts? Isn't that the most important thing? And the writer to the Hebrews mentions both of them. We don't have to choose either or. There's nothing we have to know, and we should have a heartfelt trust. Religion is a matter both of the heart and the mind. We don't have to pick one or the other. And if you say, well, I don't know what's true, but I just know what I feel. There were people in this congregation, and people in the, perhaps, at least he's concerned about the possibility of there being people in the congregation, And certainly there were people in Israel who had seen the pillar of fire and who had tasted of the heavenly gift, who had really experienced something and shared, even it says, in the Holy Spirit and tasted the goodness of the Word of God. And, as if that weren't enough, he continues to pile things up to intensify this, And the powers of the age to come, you know, under the Israelite period, in the time of types and shadows, in the wilderness wanderings, they didn't taste of the powers of the age to come in quite the way that new covenant communities do. Under the administration of the covenant of grace in the new covenant, it's after Pentecost. And God the Holy Spirit has come upon the church. And when we come to the table of the Lord, God the Son feeds us on the body and blood. That's what we confess in the Belgic Confession. The proper and natural body and blood of Jesus. The Holy Spirit operates through baptism and through the supper to confirm and strengthen, right? To confirm the promises and strengthen our faith. He creates faith through the preaching of the Holy Gospel. That's what we say in Heidelberg 65. And the Holy Spirit is present. Now, let me really blow your mind. Do you understand now that according to the Apostle Paul, that the heavens, when we are assembled in covenant community, the heavens are open and there are angels present, children. You ever wonder why we don't mess around in worship services and reform services? because it isn't playtime, because God is here. And Hebrews says he must be worshipped with reverence and awe. You say, but I can't see it. And I say, that's the point. You will see it. One day, Jesus will come, and you'll see the angels, and you'll see him in power and in glory. Fools can predict the coming of Jesus. Oh, he's coming in 1994. Oh, he's coming in May of 2011. Oh, I was wrong. I miscalculated. Oh, he's coming in October. No, you'll know when he comes. But you don't know when the day or the hour is. But when he comes, there'll be no doubt. And every eye will see, and every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord. So when we are here in Covenant Assembly, we're participating in genuine, real, spiritual realities. And if you're here this morning and participating in these realities, and you have not yet put your trust in Jesus, if you're waiting to begin shaving before you put your trust in Jesus, you're waiting to graduate high school, you're waiting for some other earthly milestone before you put your trust in Jesus, Because you don't want to be unfashionable, less than hip. That's just foolishness. It's possible to participate in spiritual realities and find yourself under covenant curses because not all Israel is Israel. Everyone, we all have an external relationship to Christ through our membership in the covenant community and through our baptism. An external relationship. But Esau was circumcised. And he wasn't a part of the covenant of grace inwardly. The writer to the Hebrews is warning about playing with spiritual things. And he even says it's possible to re-crucify Jesus. Not in the way that Rome says. Not in a memorial, propitiatory sacrifice. But to strip him naked and to put him back on the cross. When we participate in the covenant community without believing and we turn away from all of that and we walk away, the writer to the Hebrews says, we put Jesus, we strip him naked, we beat him, and we put him back on the cross. Walking away from your profession of faith is no light thing. There is a certain finality to it. Look at verse 7. 8 again. It is impossible, he says above, in verse 4. Impossible. And then he, as I already described, he goes on to give the analogy of a field. That word impossible is a very strong word. He uses it one, two, three times in the book of Hebrews alone. He uses it in verse 18, as we'll see in a minute, that it's impossible for God to lie. When he says impossible, he means it's not able to happen. God can't lie. It's against what he is and who he is. And he uses it in a similar sense in chapter 10 and in chapter 11. So be warned this morning. There are covenant curses for those who turn away from Jesus and who go back to Egypt. But, and this is a big but, But, the writer of the Hebrews says, though we speak in this way, yet, in your case, beloved, I'm going to take a big sigh, big breath, okay. In your case, beloved, we feel sure, we are confident. In fact, he actually says, the verb is in the perfect, we have believed, and we continue to believe, better things about you, things that belong to salvation. Why is he confident? He has covenant confidence about them because he has seen evidence, not just profession, but evidence. For God is not so unjust to overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints as you still do. He is not saying God accepts you because you do things. He accepts you, and be very clear about this. He accepts you because Jesus has done things for us. But your doing is evidence that you have trusted in him who has done for us. And we desire, he says, each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end. Faith knows. Faith trusts. So children, when you worry, well, I don't know if I'm really good enough, let me assure you, you are not good enough, and you never will be. Jesus was good enough, and if you have trusted in him, if you put your trust, your confidence in Jesus, God accepts you, he loves you, and nothing will ever change that. Don't ever doubt that. But we do produce fruit. Believers do produce evidence. And we should have confidence in God's promises. The assurance rests in God's promises. I will be a God to you and to your seed after you. And he has fulfilled that promise, as we will see in just a minute, in Jesus. And therefore, we hang on until the end. We don't have to be ambiguous about perseverance. The Arminians said in 1610, Oh, we don't really know what we think about perseverance. Today the federal visionists say, well, this is a very difficult thing because after all, we're all united to Jesus by baptism and so it's possible that some could be really united and fall away. And I'm here to say that's not true. If you put your trust in Jesus, you are really and truly united to Jesus and you will never belong. But note that if, if you have trusted, and the pastor says, I trust that this is true of you because I see evidence of it in you, in the congregation. But don't be sluggish. Be imitators of the people that he's going to describe for us in detail in chapter 11. All those who look forward to the coming of Jesus, who never saw Jesus with their eyes, and yet they continue to believe, and some of them were put to death, some of them were tortured, and some of them waited many, many years. Be imitators of those. And we wait, we trust, and we hope. So we should have covenant confidence. And finally, the basis for our confidence is God's covenant blessing. Look at verse 13. For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself. God made a covenant. God swore an oath. And he said, I will be a God to you and to your seed after you. And I will bring all the nations, right, many from all the nations of the earth. They will be brought into the covenant people. And this promise, he says, is immutable, that is, it's unchangeable. Children, your parents will promise you something sometimes that won't come true. Yes, we will go to Disneyland this summer. And then the summer comes and the summer goes and you didn't go to Disneyland. Well, parents make promises, but God directs their steps. But when God promises, you can trust him. And how do I know, children, that you can trust him? You can trust him because Jesus Christ came. And that they crucified him. And they put his cold dead body in a tomb. And when they went on Sunday morning, it wasn't there. God made a promise, and he swore against himself. He swore by his own nature. God is what he is. He is who he is. God says, I am that I am. Tell them, I am has sent you. God's promise is as good as he is. And God just is. Therefore, his promise just is. And so we can trust in him. And we can trust in his covenant blessings. Look at verse 18. We who have fled to refuge before refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope that's set before us. We have fled to Jesus for refuge. And we have a sure and a steadfast anchor, he says. What's an anchor? It's a very heavy piece of metal that's dropped off the side of a boat in the middle of the ocean without which the boat would be tossed around. But because it has an anchor, it's solid. Or if you're in the harbor, it drops anchor so that it's solid. It doesn't float away. It doesn't move. You can trust. You can add confidence. We have an anchor. But now look at this. Now he adds another layer to the image here in verse 19. We have an anchor of the soul, a source of confidence, a hope that enters into the inner place. Where? Behind the curtain. Where is our anchor? He is in the Holy of Holies. He is as close to God as can possibly be. He is God the Son, and he has led us, he has taken us. If we are trusting in Jesus, we are with him, we are united to him, and we are in the Holy of Holies with him. We are not far from God, we are near to God. And we are near to God in Jesus. God has come near to us in Christ and he has lifted us up in Christ and taken us to be near to him. So when you pray this afternoon over lunch and when you pray tonight before bed, and some of you when you wake up at three in the morning because you can't sleep, wondering what was that preacher talking about, you just remember this. You pray to the Father in Jesus knowing that he hears you, he accepts you because he is behind the Holy of Holies. The curtain has been torn. He's gone in. He's taken you with him. You're in there. And Father is hearing your prayers for Jesus' sake and your salvation is as certain as Jesus is your anchor. Your acceptance with God is as certain as Jesus is your anchor. We have covenant blessings and covenant confidence. And then finally, he changes the image once more. He says, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner. What's a forerunner? Well, that's the guy at the head of the pack. You ever run a foot race? Guy sounds the gun, bang! And everybody goes off on a dead sprint. And eventually somebody goes in front. That was never me. I was the guy in the back saying, hey, we have two and a half miles to go here. Let's pace ourselves. But there was always some guy sprinting like it was a 100-yard dash. Jesus is the guy who is in front, if you will. He's the man, our man. Our elder brother, Hebrews says. God the Son. And not only that, he adds one more layer. He is our high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. He's not a Levitical priest who will die. He's not Aaron who makes false gods. He's God the Son who has certified God's promise. Certified God's promise with his own body and his own blood. We have the danger of covenant curses, the danger of spiritual sampling. But if you're trusting in Jesus, you should have confidence. And you should have confidence in the blessings that he has given us in Jesus Christ. And so I leave you this morning with a good word. That God loves you who trust in Jesus. And nothing can change that. But that's no excuse for sloppiness. And that's no excuse for waiting. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we come to you this morning in Jesus, our High Priest, who, like Melchizedek, came surprisingly, was with us, and then disappeared. And yet, unlike Melchizedek, we look forward to this one coming back in power and in glory. O Lord, we wait, we trust, we hope, we rest in you. Even so, come quickly. For your name's sake, amen.