Tonight, we turn in our Bibles to the book, Old Testament book of 1 Samuel, and this will be in conjunction with Lord's Day 5 in the back of your blue Psalter hymnals, so we'll also be turning there. In Linden, we have done a lot of different approaches to preaching the Catechism, fresh approaches to make it exciting for the people to come and to hear and to see how it's applied throughout the Scriptures. And tonight, I want you to see the very important connection here of Lord's Day 5, what it's showing us and teaching us about the issue of how God's wrath is, is, boys and girls, big word, propitiated, appeased, satisfied. And in 1 Samuel chapter 6, which I'm working through, we see this issue come up. So we'll read together tonight the entirety of the chapter. A bit of history here. The ark had been snatched in battle. Philistines now have the ark. And here we are. Everyone was worried. What's going to happen to the ark of the Lord in Israel? And 1 Samuel 6 tells us about the ark and how it made its way back to the land of Israel. So let's read together the entirety of the chapter and then we'll turn to the back of the blue psalter. The ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners and said, What shall we do with the ark of the Lord? Tell us, with what shall we send it to its place? They said, If you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return him a guilt offering. Then you will be healed, and it will be known to you why his hand does not turn away from you. And they said, What is the guilt offering that we shall return to him? They answered, Five golden tumors and five golden mice, according to the number of the lords of the Philistines. For the same plague was on all of you and your lords. So you must make images of your tumors and images of your mice that ravage the land and give glory to the God of Israel. Perhaps he will lighten his hand from off you and your gods and your land. Why should you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? After he had dealt severely with them, did they not send the people away and they departed? Now then, take and prepare a new cart and two milk cows on which there has never come a yoke and yoke the cows to the cart, but take their calves home away from them and take the ark of the Lord and place it on the cart and put it put in a box at its side the figures of gold which you are returning to him as a guilt offering then send it off and let it go its way and watch if it goes up on the way to its own land to Beth Shemesh then it is he who has done us this great harm but if not then we shall know that it's not his hand that struck us it happened to us by coincidence the men did so and took two milk cows and yoked them to the cart and shut up their calves at home. And they put the Ark of the Lord on the cart in the box with the golden mice and the images of their tumors. And the cows went straight in the direction of Beth Shemesh along one highway, lowing as they went. They turned neither to the right nor the left, and the lords of the Philistines went after them as far as the border of Beth Shemesh. Now the people of Beth Shemesh were reaping their wheat harvest in the valley. And when they lifted up their eyes and saw the ark, they rejoiced to see it. The cart came into the field of Joshua of Beth Shemesh and stopped there. A great stone was there. They split up the wood of the cart and offered the cows as a burnt offering to the Lord. And the Levites took down the ark of the Lord and the box that was beside it, in which were the golden figures, and set them upon the great stone. And the men of Beth Shemesh offered burnt offerings and sacrificed sacrifices on that day to the Lord. And when the five lords of the Philistines saw it, they returned that day to Ekron. These are the golden tumors that the Philistines returned as a guilt offering to the Lord. One for Ashdod, one for Gaza, one for Ashkelon, one for Gath, and one for Ekron. And the golden mice, according to the number of all the cities of the Philistines, according to the five lords. both fortified cities and unwalled villages. The great stone beside which they were set down the ark of the Lord is a witness to this day in the field of Joshua Abeth Shemesh. And he struck some of the men Abeth Shemesh because they looked upon the ark of the Lord. He struck 70 men of them and the people mourned because the Lord had struck the people with a great blow. Then the men Abeth Shemesh said, Who is able to stand before the Lord, this holy God? And to whom shall he go up away from us? So they sent messengers to the inhabitants of Kirath-Jerim, saying the Philistines have returned the ark of the Lord. Come down and take it up to you. May the Lord bless the hearing of his word. Let's turn in the back of the blue psalter at this time to the Heidelberg Catechism, Lord's Day 5. Lord's Day 5. And I will ask the questions and let's respond together with the answers. Lord's Day 5, page 12, in the back of the blue psalter. According to God's righteous judgment, we deserve punishment, both in this world and forever after. How then can we escape this punishment and return to God's favor? God requires that His justice be satisfied. Therefore, the claims of His justice must be paid in full, either by ourselves or by another. Can we pay this debt ourselves? Certainly not. Actually, we increase our guilt every day. Can another creature, any at all, pay this debt for us? No. To begin with, God will not punish another creature for man's guilt. Besides, no mere creature can bear the weight of God's eternal anger against sin and release others from it. What kind of mediator and deliverer should we look for then? He must be truly human and truly righteous, yet more powerful than all creatures. That is, he must also be true God. Well, I've always thought it somewhat tragic that R.C. Sproul had to write a book, even though it's a good book, but that he had to write a book, save from what? It's been Sproul's painful contention that most Christians can't even answer that basic fundamental question of the Christian faith. And I suppose that's really not a new problem, is it? When the framers of the Heidelberg Catechism, when they were writing, they had to get to this very important question, which is so pivotal, so important for Christians to understand and to believe. And if you think of the question, if we deserve God's punishment according to His righteous judgment both now and in eternity, how can we escape this punishment and return to His favor? Isn't that just one of the most important questions we could ever ask? Of course it is. It's a very important question. But what makes Christianity fundamentally different from every other world religion is that all the other religions are offering something to God that He will not accept. They're offering their own works. They're offering their own ways. We'll look at some of that tonight. And what is so beautiful about the Christian faith as we see all throughout the Scriptures is the declaration that we need a mediator. And as our Lord's Day says tonight, one who is true God. And that's the beauty of the message of Christianity, the message of the Christian gospel that the wonderful truth of it all is that this very need is met for us by Jesus Christ who is true God, truly human, and truly divine. Here's the dilemma tonight. Here's the dilemma. What happens when we forget that? You say, well, we don't forget that. Think about it. What happens when we forget that the basis of God's acceptance of us, when we miss the whole understanding and we forget what is the basis of God's acceptance and what does it look like, this is what I want to explore with you a little bit tonight, what does it look like when God's people don't have this knowledge as they should, when God's people have assumed that they understand this, but really have forgotten this fundamental truth of the Christian faith. What happens? There's a question tonight in our text. I don't know if you caught it toward the end. It summarizes everything about this text tonight. Did you catch it? When the Lord struck, what is the first thing that the men of Beth Shemesh ask? Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? Samuel has been building to this. Israel is in one of the darkest moments of apostasy, one of the darkest moments of its history outside of the golden calf event. And this is the question that Samuel has been building to. This is the question, if you study this book and you come to chapter 6 and you've been working through the first six chapters, you've been asking the question, what is wrong in Israel? And it's boiled down to this. Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? Israel had completely forgotten that question, how to answer it. Israel had completely forgotten the basis by which they were able to come into the presence of this God. And a loss of understanding of the holiness of God was evidence that they had lost an understanding of what the Lord God required for him to be among them, which has been the whole point of the exodus. And so am I so often saying today, tonight, as we look at this text and we open this up, that the greatest need in the Christian church today again, the greatest need is a recovery of the holiness of God. You know if I pose that to you and I said that, everyone should agree tonight that that is the thing that has been lost today. That is what people do not grasp anymore in Christianity. And the way that's recovered again is to consider what God had to do, what God had to do for us to be able to stand before this holy Lord God of Israel. It's the most amazing message, as the Apostle would declare in 1 Corinthians, he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. What makes 1 Samuel tonight so amazing as we open this up and we look at this is that when we understand God's holiness, what we see that Israel had lost that, we understand that what they needed in Israel was a simple and plain reteaching of the gospel of their salvation. Let's look at this tonight. Let's consider that. And by the time we're done, I pray that you'll see how this connects so beautifully to Lord's Day 5. Let me set the scene for you for a minute. What you have here in 1 Samuel is one of the worst possible tragedies that has occurred. Two nations have been vying to be the power in the land. It is Israel and the Philistines. And if you were to come back and you were to study the previous chapters, they have squared off for battle. They have marked it off. They are having a great showdown here. And the first round didn't go so well. Nobody sought the Lord. They went right out into battle and 4,000 men were struck down. It's not a little number. Now this, the second scene here you'll notice was awful. They came up with a plan. They said, let's go get the ark. Let's go get the ark and let's bring it right out in the middle of the battlefield to secure us the victory. Now, we could read right over this, and we might miss exactly what was really going on. It was a devastating moment. They went back into the tabernacle. They went behind the first holy place. They went into the most holy place. Remember, they weren't supposed to do this. And they put their hands on the Ark of God, and they looked at it, and they dragged the Ark right out in the middle of the blood-stained battlefield using it as a magic wand to secure for them the victory. Awful moment. Awful moment. And so here we are. What happened? It was just a tragedy. The Philistines win and the Ark gets stolen. Now you have to remember what the Ark is. You have to understand what the Ark represented. The ark got stolen. The glory, as Eli and his daughter-in-law realized, departed from Israel that day. And the ark was the great representation, remember, the symbolic place that symbolized the presence of the Lord that He dwelled. It says this over and over. Between the cherubim, the Lord of hosts who dwells between the cherubim. This was the symbol. This was His representing on earth the holy place. the temple, the throne. And God was said to have dwelt there symbolically. And you see, God preserves what follows for us here so that it would be a huge teaching tool for Israel about deliverance and the cost. To have them think very carefully about the cost, what it cost for His presence to go with them. So the ark, setting this up a little further, goes into the temple of Dagon. If you study this, they put the ark, the Philistines take the ark and they put it right next to Dagon, which was intended to be a servant to their god, Dagon. And if you've read this story, boys and girls, you know that in the morning they came into the temple and there was Dagon, knocked over, decapitated, hands gone, bowing down before the ark. It was an amazing moment. You can only imagine what went on that day in the Philistine temple. Prostrate. So here we are. Verse 1. The Ark of the Lord was in the country of the Philistines seven months. And the Philistines called for the priests and the diviners saying, what shall we do with the Ark of the Lord? Tell us how we should send it to its place. So what we have here is a grand kind of council meeting that takes place between all the Philistines' Lord. There were five major cities. Each had a Lord. And here was the Ark. It had been there for a period of seven months. And these seven months have been awful for them. We don't know how bad it was, but what comes out here at the beginning of chapter 6 is they've got to get it out. They have got to get the Ark out of Philistia. They have got to get it out of their hands because as everyone, the scholars have studied this and looked at this with some kind of bubonic plague that was hitting them. Tumors in their private parts, so painful they were dying. And we're going to see that another one of these plagues was rats and mice. Ever had a rat in your house? We had a rat in our house. Not a good experience, especially for a wife. We read at the end of chapter 5, the cry went up to heaven. Great and severe plagues are hitting the Philistines. The men of both the cities, all the cities are being struck and they're dying. And now I'm sitting here and I'm reading this as an outsider coming into the text so many years later. And I'm thinking, wait a minute, this thing's been there. The ark of the Lord has been there seven months. First thing I'm thinking of, these plagues happened immediately. It knocked over their supreme God, making it bow down, which was just an idol. And they keep it there seven months dealing with these plagues for seven months. Listen, I think I would say probably time to get rid of the ark. A lot earlier than seven months, right? But here it sits. Seven months. And what verse 1 is telling us is they can't take it anymore. And verse 6 tells us the issue. In verse 6, we have a very curious question that's posed to the Philistine lords. Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh hardened their hearts? You know, it's the same word, make heavy. And what the narrative is doing here at this point is that it's telling us very purposely to go back and think about the Exodus. All of the history of what we're going to see here is repeated in this very scene. Only this time, the shocking thing about this narrative is the Ark is reliving the path. The Ark itself is in exile. The Ark itself will be Exodus. The Ark itself will enter back into the land, reliving Israel's history. It's very fascinating. How does that make you feel? You think about this. They took the ark of the Lord, thrust it out in the battlefield, the Lord who dwells between the cherubim. And think of the tragedy. I'm thinking from Israel's perspective. We know the Lord doesn't dwell in a temple made with hands. But think of this from Israel's perspective. God just got stolen. Think of it. Our God just got taken. and we threw him out on the battlefield, now he's in the hands of these uncircumcised Philistines. What's going to happen? What a shame of an event, isn't it? All because Israel had no reverence for him, all because in complete disregard for his holiness, they thrust it right on into the blood-stained battlefield, right into the hands. Well, back in the Philistine lands, we're getting some insight here as to what's going on. A giant council meeting happened. A mini-synod, by the way. Plagues have come. And so the diviners get together and the wise men and they start thinking. You know that everyone in the land, all the nations knew about the Exodus. All the nations knew and understood what the Lord had done to the Philistines and there was some kind of knowledge of that. And so, to the Egyptians, excuse me, So the Philistines begin to rehearse the history that they know about. And they know, everyone had been talking. Joshua tells us of how the Lord plundered Egypt for Israel. And so they start thinking here, and they start trying to apply it. They devise a way at the end of verse 8 to send it away and to let it go. I'll come back to that. Get the picture. The ark is in exile. Plagues have come on the Philistines, just like the Egyptians. They have hardened their hearts and they wouldn't let it go for seven months until this appointed time. And after the seven months has passed, finally, after hardening their hearts, somebody says, let it go. See it? Everything's being repeated here. Send it away. Pharaoh, send them away. The diviners are saying, send it away. Get it out of here. So in verse 3, they say, if you send away the ark of the God of Israel, do not send it empty, but by all means return it to Him with a trespass offering. A guilt offering. You seeing where this is going? The Heidelberg? Seeing the connection here? You'll know you're healed. It will be known to you why His hand has not been removed from you, but you've got to propitiate this God. You've got to deal with this God of Israel. God's wrath needs to be satisfied. Now keep in mind, these are Philistines. They don't have the Scriptures. They just heard from a far off land what happened and they knew this holy God doesn't deal with sin very well. He's going to punish it. So what do the Philistines do? There's a very curious statement that's made in verse 4. It's a question. what is the trespass offering which we shall return to him? Now see the connection. In the middle of the text you have, what can we appease this God with? Who can stand at the end of the text in Israel before this holy God? Two very important questions that are here coming out. So what did they offer? They answered, five golden tumors and five rats. According to the number of the lords of the Philistines, For the same plague was on all you and your lords. Therefore, you shall make images of your tumors and images of your rats that ravage the land. Now, I want to laugh at this tonight. I want to stand back from this and laugh. You're going to make images of tumors that hit your private parts and offer that to this God? I find it amazing that the Lord would care to preserve this account. I mean, who's over there in the land of the Philistines? Israel would read this for generations to come. And what would they think when they read this? You know, somebody, here the Holy Spirit wanted this and had it written down for us here tonight that we would think a lot about this. And why does the Holy Spirit want us to think about this tonight? Here the whole ark capture is set in the very framework of the original Exodus. Why? Isn't it something that of all things that could have been raised in the issue with Israel and 1 Samuel in their darkest moment of apostasy, the single issue that comes out is that verse. How can God be propitiated? Single issue. And this is taking place among the heathens. Israel's deliverance came in Egypt on the night of what, boys and girls, you know? Passover. And the blood of a lamb. Marked, remember the doorposts. And when the angel of death went through, he passed over and he brought them out. And here the sad thing about this whole event is the Philistines have no understanding. They can't do it. And all they can come up with is the idea of making a trespass offering with images of plagues that God hit them with and to present back their little golden idols to him, their little images of gold, thinking that God will be satisfied with this. And so they do it. They make images of their tumors and they make images of rats and they plan to offer this to the Lord God. That's the best they could do. Listen, pagan nations have always tried this. The Aztecs went a step further, didn't they? They knew somebody was wrong and so every year on those large stones of the pyramids they would take up there a human being and they would take a flint knife, an obsidian knife and literally they would cut out the heart while they were still living and they would hold up the heart to the sun god. Knowing somebody's angry, we've got to propitiate someone. We've got to satisfy someone. And this has gone on. There's a whole history of sacrifice and offering of all the religions and all the nations that have come before us for years and years and years. And now you understand why the framers of the Heidelberg understood that this is such an important question for us tonight. If God is so holy, if the true God of heaven and earth is so holy and He demands payment and nothing of mere creation can do it, if it can't be gold, could it be one of us? Notice that's the next question that comes up. Could any of us do it? And the answer is no. None of us could satisfy the wrath of a holy, just, pure God. And so here it is. Now I'm thinking to myself, Israel reads this. Those Philistines, come on now, trespass offering. They should know that's because of sin. And they need a perfect ram, don't they? They need a ram without blemish. God won't accept anything else. I could think that Israel would think a lot about that and say something like that. But I wonder if at this moment in Israel's history, it dawned on them, and this is the point I'm driving to tonight, do you know what the first chapters of Samuel show us about the nation of Israel? The whole sacrificial system and the priesthood had been completely corrupted so that they had no understanding at all of this need. anymore. Get that? It was gone in Israel. They had no understanding of this in Israel anymore. And when the Lord thundered down to Eli, when he sent Samuel to speak the word to Eli, do you know what he said to Eli? Listen to this statement. Why do you kick at my sacrifice and my offering, which I have commanded in my dwelling place? The word means just that. I was so curious about that word kick and it means just that they took their foot and they booted the sacrifices right on out of israel stealing from the lord stealing from the people and what a tragedy why had the lord set up the sacrificial system to teach them their greatest need and here's what I really struggle with tonight. How would you summarize this so far? Philistines knew no better. I would love to say tonight that Israel, you know, had the same ignorance. But they really had some kind of understanding but just fell into just, you know, a time of ignorance. I wrestled with what is the real issue here? And it boils down to this. The Philistines knew no better when Israel should have known better and both are presented to us in complete darkness about the need of a mediator. See? Both of them. And the issue the text is raising, boys and girls, the issue the text is raising is what can satisfy the wrath of a perfect and a just and a holy God. Images won't do it. Idols won't do it. None of us can do it. But the Philistines are holding out. Maybe there's no real problem. That's where the narrative kind of goes from here. In verse 7, they devise another plan. They say, well, maybe God's not that mad. Maybe God's okay. Maybe this happened by chance. Maybe the wrath that we're experiencing is just luck, bad luck. So in verse 7, what happens? They make a new cart, and they don't want to put it on the one they brought it in with. So they make a new cart, and they take two milk cows, which have never been yoked, and they hitch the cows to the cart, and they take their calves away from them. Before I preached this, I had numerous farmers in Linden come up to me. They're always concerned about me when I have to speak on farming things for some reason. And they said, Pastor, we don't want you to make any dumb mistakes on this. You need to understand that when you separate out a cow from its calves, That's a nightmare? I had no idea. You don't do that. And when that happens, this just happened in Linden the other day at an auction. They actually separated out a calf from the cow and it just caused hysteria. They just went berserk and they finally put them in a massive bin together and from one end to the other, these two with hundreds of cattle in there, these two ran right to each other. So it's an amazing thing. All of this was a test here And the test was to take the ark, to put it on a new cart on these cows that had never been yoked and taken away from their calves and to just let it go. And if the cows do just what they should do in being natural and they go crazy and they kick over the ark and they go running and trying to find their calves, well then they'll think, hey, this happened by chance. if against all odds these cows go straight and we send it off and they go straight back to Israel, we'll know the Lord was against us. So what happens? We read they set the ark and the chest with the golden rats and the images of their tumors and the cows went straight for the road to Beth Shemesh. Lowing, not lowering. I learned that. They're lowing. They're struggling. But they don't have the power. They are moving straight. Going right to the land of Israel. And I want you to notice here, we read this. And the lords of the Philistines went after them to the border of Beth Shemesh. Now I'm going to put this together for you here. the whole narrative the ark here has been in exile and the Lord had afflicted them with plagues and they hardened their hearts and after much struggle they finally let it go and the ark has a great exodus it goes out plundering the land of the Philistines and in one last ditch effort hopefully they can go get it back the Philistines march all the way to the border of the land and what does this all remind you of? Verse 14 tells us the ark came into the field of Joshua, a beshemesh, and a large stone was there. Exile, plagues, plunder, exodus, entrance, land, Joshua, stones. Think Israel's picking up on something by now? It's our whole history. And you're saying, wait a minute, whoa, Exodus is repeated for us here and for Israel to consider. And why is the Lord doing that tonight? Why is the Lord putting it in this framework? Well, the Lord was reteaching them through this whole event, the story of their deliverance and the story of what it's all about. How could it have come to this in Israel? Did they really know what this holy God of Israel required for them to have access? Did they get it? Do you get it? Do I get it? Really? Do we really get it? They went into the Holy of Holies, they put their hands on the ark, they grabbed it, and they thrust it right on the battlefield thinking they could secure the victory by manipulating God's power, harnessing His power to give them the victory. You think we do that today? You think this is a problem today? How is God offered today to the masses? Christianity is offered today as something that really works, isn't it? A businessman who's suffering loss, has a whole bunch of stresses and problems in this bad economy. The prospect, as one pastor said, that through prayer, God will keep him afloat. Hey, that's a pretty powerful allure. It'll work. I had a friend in college. He wasn't even a believer. He didn't go to church. And I was heading to church one day and he says, hey, you know what? I tithe. I said, you do what? He goes, yeah, God gives me back double. I said, you've got to be kidding me. He was the most uncommitted person to the Lord I knew. One pastor said, gravely ill persons will often pray. They may have never prayed before. Illness brings prayer out of many a prayerless person. What do they pray for? That God would make them well. If Christianity can do that, it's got great value for people. This is equivalent today. It's not that the Lord doesn't do that for His people. But you see what we do to the Lord? This is equivalent to taking the ark and thrusting it out on the battlefield to use God and manipulate Him for our purposes. And it's amazing that we have to say today, God doesn't exist for us. But it's got to be said. It's a tragedy when the greatest need is forgotten, isn't it? Christianity doesn't just deal with symptoms. The Lord gets to the heart of the problem. And the whole story here is moving to a climax tonight to teach us something about the Lord. The men of Beth Shemesh see the ark. And this is so exciting. God's come back. The Levites come and they take down the ark. And in verse 15, the men of Beth Shemesh offer burnt offerings and they make sacrifices to the Lord and they're having a great worship service out there. It's exciting. God's back. And then we come to verse 19. These very same worshipers, we read, Then the Lord struck the men of Beth Shemesh because they had looked upon the ark of the Lord. It means into. Seventy men of the people, and the people mourned because the Lord had struck with a great blow. And the whole narrative, we've come full circle, the whole narrative has taken us back to the question of verse 20. The men of Beth Shemesh say, who is able to stand before this holy Lord God? And now they're wrestling with the same issue that the Philistines were wrestling with. The Philistines had no concept of how to propitiate this God. And at least they say, okay, well, let's offer up something in gold. But Israel goes back, they get the ark, and you're telling me they didn't know that it was wrong to touch it, to look at it, and to open it up? And all I can say is the understanding of God's holiness had been so lost that they had no concept anymore. No understanding. and no one can stand before Him. So after hearing of all their history of Exodus and Mount Sinai, how does all this happen? It wasn't that they didn't know it. It was at the end of the day that they had created a God of their own imaginations, and in their great familiarity with His forgiveness and His mercy, they forgot that basis by which they can stand. And you see, that's what I'm driving to tonight, that if we can no longer answer this fundamental question of Christianity, this fundamental message of Christianity, this purpose for which we even gather tonight, we come back to the question of the catechism. We miss everything of Christianity if we can't, if we forget this fundamental issue. And that's why the question of the catechism tonight is so important for us, boys and girls. It's so important for us. If we deserve judgment, the passage clearly shows it, How can you stand? How can you stand? How can his claims be paid in full? And you see, this is why the Lord intertwined the Exodus narrative here to teach them this. The Exodus here of the ark is telling us something much further as we go down the history of reading the Bible about the Exodus, the original Exodus itself that Israel needed to understand. This is telling us a greater story tonight. You know what that story is? Israel needed to be reminded over and over it wasn't that they were more special because they were better people that God brought them out of the land of Egypt. In sovereign grace, it was the blood and the righteousness of the Lamb of God that was the determination and the basis for that acceptance. And that was the basis that God would tabernacle and dwell among His people. And you see, the ark is telling us the greater story that in the fullness of times God would send His Son. And you know He would come into this world alone and going through Matthew's Gospel it would tell us right at the beginning that He was exiled down into Egypt alone and that out of Egypt He would call His Son and that His sacrifice all the way He had to go in exile to Exodus all the way He had to go alone bearing the wrath of God for our sins. The plagues hit him on that cross. And that sacrifice was a perfect one. He was not only truly human, one of us that God would accept it, but he was truly divine. He was true God, able to bear the weight of that wrath and able to release others from it, as our confession says. It's the most important message. And so if I ask the question tonight, what are you saved from? It's the most amazing truth of Christianity, isn't it? That we declare that we are saved by God, from God. And that is the only basis tonight of His wonderful, gracious presence among us that He gave His only begotten Son that whoso believes, whoever believes in Him, should not perish but have everlasting life. You're not redeemed with silver or gold, let alone a golden tumor, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifested in these last times for you. He is our Joshua. He brings us in. And so the exodus, the exile, the exodus, and the entrance is his story. And he's teaching us through Israel's history, showing us the disaster that happens and that comes when people have no understanding of this crucial message. And so the basic application is just that. You know, we're being bombarded today all the time. I see this in Linden. I get so concerned about it. We're being bombarded by trying to bring God to us in a meaningful way. We're facing all these temptations for us and our young people and we're so concerned about that, aren't we? I know you are. I see it in Linden. And we're concerned about all these things of where's the power? Where's God? Look what's happening all around us. Look what everyone else is offering today. It seems so much more exciting and all of these things and the New Testament over and over and over again in light of Lord's Day 5 is telling us don't be ashamed of this Gospel. It is the power of God to save those who believe. And so I pray tonight that we would have great reverence and awe that we've been loved this way to understand that He's given us a mediator who can save us and that we can have confidence when we come tonight and worship that we do stand. We do have access by His blood. Listen, show me a people who understand this. Show me a church that understands this. And you saw that Israel didn't. That God Himself is with us. And how that's possible. And that's relishing in all that He's done. That's inspiring everything that He's done for them. I'm going to show you a vibrant church full of people who are zealous for good works, who love the Lord their God, who are about His kingdom, and who are making a difference in a pagan world that has no idea out there how to propitiate this holy God. In Christ's great sacrifice, we have a mediator who is worthy. Let us never forget it. For apart from that message, we have no basis at all of standing before the holy Lord God of Israel. Amen. Let's pray together. Oh Lord our God, we thank you for instructing us tonight as we consider this wonderful truth of the Christian faith? That that provision has been made? And would it always be something that excites us, that we understand, that we go forward in that power and joy? And Lord, that we would show others that we have everything we need. Everything that has satisfied Your wrath has been accomplished. And that we can live in the joy of that as we saw the fruits of that this morning in the way that the Lord Jesus Christ treated those who still struggled with sins after that great sacrifice was accomplished. Thank you for your wooing love and thank you for assuring us this day for the peace that we have through the blood and the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, Amen.