Good morning again. A couple of people already have
slipped on that porch right outside that door right there. We put
some kind of sealer on it, and it's not finished yet. There's
still another coat of rough finish that has to be put on it. So
anyway, you've been fairly warned, all right? Be careful. You have your bulletin
with you. Tom's going to come lead us in
the hymn on the back of your bulletin, which is a quote from
Isaiah for unto us. A child is born unto us. A son
is given. The government shall be upon
his shoulder and his name should be called Wonderful Counselor,
the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Christ Jesus, the Lord, all about
him. Let's stand together. Tom, you
come lead us, please. For unto us a child is born,
to us a son is given. The government shall rest on
him, the anointed one from heaven. His name is Wonderful Counselor,
the Mighty God. The everlasting Father and the
humble Prince of Peace. The increase of His government
and His Please be seated. For the call to worship, the
scripture reading will be taken from Isaiah, Isaiah, the book
of Isaiah, chapter 51. Isaiah 51. Hearken, hearken unto me, ye
that follow after righteousness, ye that seek the Lord. Look unto
the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence
ye are digged. Look unto Abraham your father,
and unto Sarah that bare you. For I called him alone, and blessed
him, and increased him. For the Lord shall comfort Zion.
He will comfort all her waste places, and he will make her
wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the
Lord. Joy and gladness shall be found
therein, thanksgiving and the voice of melody. Hearken unto
me, my people, and give ear unto me, O my nation. For a law shall
proceed from me, and I will make my judgment to rest for a light
of the people. My righteousness is near. My
salvation is gone forth, and mine arms shall judge the people.
The isles shall wait upon me. and on mine arms shall they trust.
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look upon the earth beneath,
for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke, and the earth
shall wax old like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall
die in like manner. But my salvation shall be forever,
and my righteousness shall not be abolished. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
you and praise you through Christ our Lord that his work in our
salvation is firmly established so that it cannot be abolished.
And that your law, that is the gospel, is likewise written on
the hearts of your people so that they cannot be moved away
from him. Oh, that you'd be pleased to reveal to us and in us more
of our Savior. Then and only then will we worship
you in spirit and truth. Help our pastor to that end,
and we'll give you all the glory. Amen. Number 186 from the hardback
teminal. 186 from your hardback teminal.
Let's stand together again. The Church's one foundation is
Jesus Christ, her Lord. She is His true creation, by
water and the Word. From heaven He came and sought
her to be His holy bride. With his own blood he fought
her, and for her life he died. Her charter of salvation One
Lord, one faith, one birth One holy name she blesses What takes
one holy youth And to one hope she presses Tribulation and devolter war She waits the consummation Of
peace forevermore. Till with a vision glorious Her
longing eyes are blessed, And the great church victorious Shall
be the Yet she on earth hath union With
God, the three in one, And mystic, sweet communion With those whose
rest is won. O happy ones and holy, Lord,
give us grace that we Please be seated. We just sang mid toil and tribulation
and tumult of her war She waits the consummation of peace for
evermore. I stand amazed how the Lord gives
us, and I know that when you're about to stand up and preach
the hymns, maybe they mean a little bit
more to you than when you're not about to preach. But when we sang that, that stanza,
I thought, oh Lord, again. I've titled this message War
and Peace, War and Peace. You say, well, that sounds familiar.
I don't think Tolstoy knew anything about the war and peace that
I'm about to preach to you about. But that's the title of this
message we just sang about, the war and the peace. You have your Bibles, let's open
them together to Psalm 120, Psalm 120. And as we've seen time and
time again, all of these Psalms are about Christ first and foremost. And we find the hope of our salvation
by virtue of our union with Christ. And so when David says in Psalm
120 verse 1, in my distress I cried unto the Lord and he heard me,
we understand that it's referring to the distress that the Lord
Jesus experienced in being made, first of all, in the likeness
of sinful flesh. suffering the contradiction of
sinners, leaving the glories of heaven and coming into this
world and knowing the thoughts of men and the sinfulness of
men. We can't enter into that. We can't imagine what that would
have been like, how much condescension there was in God becoming man
and dwelling among us. But the real distress he experienced
on the cross when he bore the sins of his people and suffered
the wrath of his father, the full judgment of God's holy wrath
fell from heaven on Christ. And he cried from that cross,
my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And in Psalm 22,
where that passage comes from, he goes on to say, I am a worm
and not a man. The Lord Jesus Christ refers
to himself as a maggot. That's what that word worm means. And that's his distress when
he bore the guilt and the shame and the penalty of the sins of
his people and satisfied the wrath of his father's justice.
So this is all about him. Notice Let's go from there to
the last verse of this psalm, because this is where I want
us to be this morning. I am for peace, but when I speak,
they are for war. There is our title, war and peace. The Lord Jesus Christ said in
John chapter six, I did not come to judge the world. World's already
judged. The world's already judged by
the law of God. He said, I came to save the world.
I came in peace to make peace between man and God. But men love the praise of men
more than they love the praise of God. And they would rather
be at peace with one another than they would be with God. And so the Lord says, I am for
peace. But when I speak, when I speak,
they are for war. Now we see that all the way back
at the beginning in the garden. When our father Adam raised his
fist in disobedience against God, he declared war against
the Almighty. That's exactly what that was.
It was declaring rebellion against the Almighty. It was the highest
form of treason. that anyone could ever be guilty
of, rebelling against God. Now, if you study history, they'll
tell you that the shortest war ever experienced in the world
lasted 45 minutes. when England fought against some
little Western African country and defeated them. Now, this
is the shortest war. This is the shortest war that
was ever fought. Because as soon as Adam had it in his heart to
disobey God, he died. The Lord said, in the day in
which you eat of the fruit of this tree, you shall surely die. And when Adam died, all those
who were in Adam, which is you and me and every other man that's
ever been born of woman other than the Lord Jesus Christ, who
did not have Adam as his father. He had God Almighty as his father.
Mary was conceived of the Holy Ghost. And so the Lord Jesus
Christ is the only one that wasn't born and conceived in sin. We were. And the scripture says,
by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners. By one man's
offense, death reigned on all. So when Adam raised his fist
in rebellion against God, immediately, God killed him. He died, separated from God. And the evidence of that is that
he no longer felt comfortable walking with God in the cool
of the day and conversing with him, but rather he had to go
hide himself from God and try to cover his nakedness. And we
see that in ourselves. We see that in ourselves, the
guilt and the shame of sin causes us to try to cover our nakedness
with something that we fashioned with our own hands, like an apron
of fig leaves. That's what men do. They try
to make up for their sins by doing something to atone for
themselves. And it's a futile attempt. No, a lamb had to be slain, and
blood had to be shed, and God had to clothe Adam's nakedness
in order for him to be redeemed. And so it is with us. So it is
with us. The Lamb of God, the Lamb that
is without spot, without blemish, had to be slain by God. His blood
had to be shed. And His blood is the only sufficient
covering for our sins. And his righteousness, which
is that fleece that Adam was covered with after the Lord slew
the lamb in the garden, is the only righteousness that will
be acceptable before God. We have no righteousness outside
of Christ. So the Lord says, I am for peace,
but when I speak, they are for war. And so the Lord Jesus Christ
went to battle for us. He went to war in our stead. And he tells us in Isaiah chapter
40, he said to the prophet, to the preacher, he said, comfort
ye. Comfort ye my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye comfortably
unto Jerusalem. Tell them that their warfare
is accomplished, that their iniquity has been taken away and that
I have given them a double blessing for their sin. So in our rebellion against God,
in our father Adam, and in ourselves, God himself was the only one
that could go to battle for us and get the victory for us. And
that's what he did. He battled sin, he battled Satan,
he battled the grave, he battled death, and he got the victory
through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so he says, I'm for peace.
I've always been for peace. But when I speak, they are for
war. Now the Lord's telling us something
else here. Not only was this the shortest war that was ever
fought in the history of man, but it was also the longest war
that's ever been fought. It's also the longest war for
from that day until now, Men have been raising their fist
against God. You and I do every time we rebel
against God, every time we sin, every time we... We're engaging in the, I don't
know whether to call it the highest or the lowest form of treason,
but it's treason at its worst when we rebel against God. I am for peace, the Lord says,
but when I speak, when I speak they are for war. And this war
has been fought, has been engaged in from the very beginning until,
until that day when the Eastern sky splits and the trump of God
sounds and the dead in Christ raise and God sends his angels
for the four corners of the earth to harvest man and to separate
the wheat from the chaff. This war is going to continue
on. And God says, I'm for peace. I'm for peace. But when I speak,
when I speak, they're for war. They're not gonna win this war.
And if there's any hope, if there's any hope of them having peace
with God, I'm gonna have to go to battle for them. I'm gonna
have to defeat the enemy in their stead. I am for peace. One of the things the Lord is
saying to you and me is that God bears no responsibility for
our sin. He bears no responsibility for
our rebellion. We are fully and completely responsible
ourselves. And when God makes you to be
a sinner, you see that. What did Adam do? We go back
to Adam in the garden. What did Adam do when God confronted
him? Adam, where art thou? Where art thou, Adam? What have
you done? Who told you you're naked? And
what did Adam say? He blamed God is what he did.
I know he blamed Eve. He said, the woman that you gave
me, she did give me and I did eat. But what Adam was saying
was, God, this is all your fault. This is all your fault. You made
me this way. God makes you to be a sinner.
There's no more blaming God for our sin, is there? We become
fully, you believe what he says when he says, I am for peace. But when I speak, they are for
war. And all the treason and all the
unbelief and all the rebellion is fully, completely at my doorstep. I can't blame my wife, I can't
blame my children, I can't blame my politicians, and I certainly
cannot blame God. Let no man say, James said, when
he is tempted that I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted,
neither tempteth he any man, but every man is tempted when
he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed, and when lust has
conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and when sin is finished,
it bringeth forth death. We live in a world of victims,
don't we? Everybody's a victim. Every sin
is a disease, and every problem is somebody else's fault. And
you know, the psychologists know that the problem that man has
is with guilt. They know that. They know that.
And so what they're doing is they're trying to relieve man
of his guilt. You know, well, you're just really
not responsible. And you're a victim. And your
addictions are really diseases. And so it goes. And men believe that lie the
best they can, but they're never relieved of their shame. They're
never relieved of their guilt. The gospel message that we have
is the only message in the world that relieves men of guilt and
shame. It's the only message. It's the
only one that allows you, enables you to have a clear conscience
before God, knowing that your sins have been borne away. They have been buried in the
depths of the sea. And God said, I remember them
no more. That the Lord Jesus Christ has
sufficiently satisfied the justice of God by the sacrifice of himself. That's why John said that those
that have the Spirit of God, they don't sin. They don't have
any sin. We have no sin before God. But that relief of guilt
can only come as a result of admitting complete guilt. You
see, it starts with taking full responsibility. It starts with
saying, yes, Lord, I'm the man. Oh, when Nathan approached David
and confronted him over his sin of murdering Uriah, who was the
commander of a hundred men. So David was responsible for
a hundred men's deaths and then taking his wife and all that
he had done. And David, Nathan confronts him
and says, thou art the man and God has put away your sin. Yes, David, you are fully responsible. You're the guilty party. And
here's your hope. God's put away your sin. You
don't have to live under the shame, under the guilt, under
the penalty of that sin anymore. God has put it away. No, this is the wisdom of the
world. This is the philosophy of man
trying to relieve us of our guilt and shame, but it's speaking
peace, peace when there is no peace. If we're gonna have peace
with God, then that peace with God is only gonna come through
the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if God before me,
who can be against me? Who can be against me? Paul said,
I don't concern myself with the judgments of man, neither do
I judge myself. I've already been judged in Christ.
My sin's been put away. And the only enticement that
the, it's the goodness of God that leadeth to repentance. The
enticement that we have to obey God, to follow after Christ,
is to know that we've already fully been forgiven. Sin's been
fully put away. Justice has been fully satisfied.
The law has been fully kept. We have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. We have the spotless Lamb
of God to stand in our stead and to be found in Him, to be
found in Him. That's why the Lord's saying,
I'm for peace. I'm for peace. And the distress
that I experienced on Calvary's cross was to achieve that peace. But when I speak, therefore war. Scripture says the heavens are
not clean in his sight. How much more abominable and
filthy is man which drinketh water, drinketh iniquity like
water. The heavens are not pure in his
sight. The angels are not pure in his sight. Now there's a description
of holiness. He's other than we are in every
way. And if the angels are not pure
in his sight, how much more abominable and filthy is man that drinketh
iniquity like water? You see, the only way to be relieved
of guilt is to admit complete guilt. Now I know when the scripture
says if you know the truth, the truth will set you free, it's
speaking of first and foremost knowing Christ. He is the truth. And where the spirit of the Lord
is, there is liberty. And if we know Christ, we have
freedom. Freedom from guilt, freedom from
death, freedom from, say, freedom from the grave, freedom from
shame. Yet here's the truth. The truth
is that we're sinners and that we're guilty of our sin, that
we're fully responsible for our sin. And the Lord says, I'm for
peace. Your sin's not my fault. No,
you bear that responsibility yourself. And we come before
God and say with the Apostle Paul, O wretched man that I am,
who shall deliver me from the body of this death? Thanks be
to God through Christ Jesus, I'm now free. There's now no
condemnation to them that are in Christ. What a, what a glorious truth,
a glorious truth to, to, to accept full responsibility, believe
that your sin is all on you. And then to believe that God
has put it all on him. Yeah, I'm guilty, but you know
what? I'm free to. I'm for peace, God
says. But when I speak, when I speak,
they are for war. Turn with me to Psalm 51. Psalm
51, I mentioned David a moment ago with Bathsheba and Uriah. David didn't write Psalm 51.
until after Nathan told him that he had been forgiven. Psalm 51 is not David's offering
to God in hopes that the Lord would forgive him. Psalm 51 is
David's acknowledgement of the promise that God had made to
him through Nathan the prophet telling him, your sins have been
put away. Now look what David says in light
of that. You see, because prior to Nathan
confronting David, David was excusing. He was ignoring his
sin. He was denying his sin. He was hiding from God. He was trying to cover himself
with fig leaves. And it wasn't until Nathan said,
thou art the man, David, the Lord has forgiven you. Then David
wrote these words. Have mercy upon me, O God, according
to thy lovingkindness, according to your grace. Lord, I don't
have any claim on you. I don't have anything to present
to you to force you to forgive me. I'm pleading for your grace,
for your mercy, for your lovingkindness. According unto the multitude
of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me throughly
from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin, for I acknowledge
my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee
and thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight,
that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear
when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity,
and in sin did my mother conceive me. Lord, I've been a sinner
since I was in the womb of my mother. I inherited this sin
nature from my father Adam. And it's been passed down from
generation to generation. Lord, it's who I am. It's who
I am. Everything about me is sinful. I'm for peace, the Lord says. You're for war. And you're warfare with me. Not
my fault. That's all on you. But you know
what? I'm going to take it all on me. Because you died in that war.
And a dead man can't do anything for himself. So I'm going to bring you to
life. I'm going to go to battle for
you. I'm going to defeat Satan. I'm going to deliver you. I'm
for peace. I'm for peace all the way. Turn with me to Jeremiah chapter
31. We looked at this passage last
Sunday, part of it. I want us to look at another
part of it. We looked at verses 31. You remember
this is the passage that's quoted in Hebrews chapter 8 and also
in Hebrews chapter 10 where the Lord said, I will make a new
covenant with my people. It will not be like the covenant
that I made with their fathers in the wilderness that they did
break, but I will write my law upon their hearts and I would
press it upon their minds. And no longer will one have to
say to another, in the law of grace, the law of love, the law
of liberty, the law of the spirit that the Lord has put on our
hearts, and the law of sin, the law of sin. Look up just a few
verses from there at verse 29. This is such a descriptive picture. Verse 29, in those days, in the
day that I make a new covenant, in the day that I save them,
In the day that I give them a new heart, in those days they shall
say no more. The fathers have eaten a sour
grape and the children's teeth are set on edge. But everyone
shall die for his own iniquity and every man that eateth a sour
grape, his teeth shall be set on edge. How do I know? if the Lord saved
me. But one reason I know is that
the law of sin's been written on my heart and that I can't
blame God, I can't blame my father, I can't blame the government,
I can't blame my wife, I can't blame anybody for my sin. I cannot
say you ate sour grapes and my teeth were set on edge. No, I
ate the sour grapes. The reason my teeth are set on
edge is all on me. I am for peace, God says. You're
the ones that are for war. You're the ones that are for
war. You're the ones eating sour grapes. Colossians chapter one, turn
with me there. Colossians chapter one. The only way, brethren, my brothers
and sisters in Christ, and my friends, the only way to be delivered
from guilt and shame is to admit your full responsibility. You see, that's what the world
can't see. They're trying to relieve us of our guilt by telling
us it's not our fault. God says it's all your fault. But I have forgiven you. I have forgiven you. And if I
before you, who can be against you? You don't have to live under
the burden of trying to atone for your sins. They've already
been atoned for. They've already been put away.
They've already been forgiven. And any attempt that you make
to add to the finished work of Christ is only going to add to
your sin. It's only going to add to your
shame. It's only going to add to your guilty conscience. The
more you do to try to atone for yourself, the worse you're going
to feel, the worse you're going to be, and the worse you're going
to be before God. Look at Colossians chapter one,
and we'll begin reading at verse, well, let's go to verse 18. And
he is the head. the body the church who is the
beginning the firstborn from the dead and in all that in all
things he might have the preeminence the church of the Lord Jesus
Christ has called his body he's the head of the body every part of your body is important
to you but no part of your body can function without your head
so it is with the church each member of the body, all answering
to the commands of one head who has the preeminence. For it pleased
the Father that in him should all fullness dwell, the fullness
of the Godhead bodily in the Lord Jesus Christ. And having made peace through
the blood of his cross by him to reconcile all things unto
himself. By him, I say, whether they be
things in earth or things in heaven, and you that were sometimes
alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now
hath He reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to
present you holy and unblameable and unreprovable in His sight. You say, well, I don't feel like
I'm unreprovable. I don't feel like I don't have
anything to be blamed for in His sight. You see, it doesn't
really matter how we feel, does it? It doesn't. It's not about us. The Lord is saying, He has reconciled
us to Himself. I am for peace, but when I speak,
they're for war. Well, we see that most clearly
in Luke chapter 4, don't we? when the Lord began his public
ministry and he went back to the synagogue in Nazareth with
the people that he knew and loved and had been around all his life,
30 years, 30 years. He'd been interacting, it's a
small town. And as was his custom, he stood and took the scroll
and he opened it up and he read from Isaiah chapter 61. And everybody
there knew that Isaiah chapter 61 was a prophecy about the Messiah. The Lord has anointed me to preach
the gospel. And he finished reading that
passage and he closed the book and all the eyes in the synagogue
were fixed on him. And he said to them, this day,
this passage has been fulfilled in your ears. And they wondered
at the gracious words that came out of his mouth. Could this
be? Have we been living with the
Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one all these years and we didn't
know it? No, that can't be. He's the son of Joseph. We know
his mother Mary and his brothers and sisters. It can't be that
he's the Christ. And then he told them. In the days of Elijah, the prophet,
there were many widows in Israel, but God showed mercy upon none
of them except for the widow of Sarepta, who was a Gentile. And then he said in the days
of the prophet Elisha, there were many lepers in Israel, but
God showed mercy upon none of the lepers except for that leper
Naaman from Syria, who was a Gentile. And the scripture says that their
wonderment of the gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth
were turned into fierce wrath. And the Lord's saying, I'm for
peace. But when I speak, you're for war. You're for war. What is the Lord telling us?
What was he telling them? He was telling them, and he's
telling us, I am sovereign in salvation. If you're gonna be
saved, I'm gonna have to do it all, and I'm gonna have to do
it all by myself. You can't go to war against the
law. You can't go to war against God. You can't make up for your
sins. Salvation is of the Lord. I'm
going to do it all, or I won't do it at all. And they were offended
by that. Why? The same reason men are
offended today. Same reason they're offended
today. They hate Christ today just as much as they hated Him
then. Why? Because it strips them of their
righteousness. It robs them of their glory.
It gives all the glory to Christ. And men won't have that. They'll
excuse themselves for their sin and say, well, my father's ate
sour grape and that's why my teeth are set on edge, or they'll
blame some disease for their addictions or whatever. They'll
buy into the lies of society rather than accepting responsibility
for themselves. And then when it comes to their
good works, they'll not give anyone else credit for that. No, I'm going to take credit
for that myself. I was the one who made the decision
to follow God. I'm the one that did this or
did that. And God's obligated to me because
of what I did. You see, so they deny their sin
and they glory in their righteousness. And the believer does just the
opposite, just the opposite. When God makes you to be a sinner,
you bear full responsibility for your sin, and then you give
him all the glory for all the good that he has done. And whatever
he enables you to believe or do, he gets the glory for that
too. For it is Christ that worketh
in you, causing you to will and to do after his good pleasure. God says, I'm for peace, but
when I speak, They're for war. I'll go to battle for them. I'll
defeat the enemy. Young David is going up against
the giant Goliath. And Saul looked at him and said,
you're but a boy. And he's a man of war. All his
life he's been a man of war. And David said, oh no, he said,
I've been a shepherd. And when the bear came and took
one of the lambs out of the sheepfold, I chased that bear down and I
delivered the lamb out of its jaws and I slew the bear with
my hands. And when the lion came and stole
one of the lambs out of the sheepfold, I went after the lion, and I
killed the lion, and I delivered the lamb from the jaws of that
lion. And God gave me that grace. He gave me that strength. He
gave God the glory for it. But he made it clear to Saul,
that uncircumcised Philistine is nothing compared to a bear
and a lion. You turn me loose. And Saul tried to put his armor
on him. You remember the story. What was the agreement that had
been made before David even showed up? The Philistines were sending
out their man of war and Israel was to send out their man of
war. And the agreement was that whichever one of the two won
the battle, that is the nation that would rule over the other
nation. So you send your man up against Goliath, nine foot
tall giant. And David tried on the armor
of Saul and he said, I've not tried it. I've not proved this
armor. It was the armor of flesh is what it was. David said, I'll
go out with a sling and five smooth stones. The number five
is a number in the Bible for grace. And David went against,
he said that uncircumcised Philistine who's blaspheming the God of
Israel, I'll go against him. And David went out. and ran towards
Goliath, slinging that stone in his sling as he was running
towards this giant. And Goliath thought, who's this
little boy running up against me? David let that stone go and
it planted itself right in the forehead of that giant. And then
he took the very sword of Goliath and cut off Goliath's head. Now, if you go to Revelation
chapter 13, The scripture makes clear that
the beast has a head of a lion and feet of a bear. And that's the beast that has
to be defeated. The lion being the teeth and
the jaws of Satan. who like a roaring lion seeks
who he might devour, and the bear being a symbol of strength
and stability, the feet of that bear, and the Lord defeats that
lion and that bear, the beast of Revelation 13. Even as Samson
defeated, you remember when Samson went down to Timnah to get him
a wife and he came across a lion And he slew that lion with his
bare hands. And then when he came back sometime
later, there was a beehive inside the carcass of the lion and Samson
ate the honey out of the lion. Then he gave the riddle to the
Philetines. He said, he said, he said, what comes from the
eater? Out of the eater comes meat,
and out of the strong comes sweet, and they were to try to decipher
that riddle. Well, the gospel is a riddle.
It's a mystery. It can't be understood. Who was
the one that revealed the secret of that riddle to the Philistines?
It was Samson's wife. It was his wife. Who's the one
that reveals the secrets of the gospel to the world. It's the
bride of Christ, it's what we're doing right now. And that lion
was Satan, and the Lord defeated him just as Samson did. And out of that defeat comes
the sweetness of the honey of God's grace. So out of the eater
comes meat, and out of the strong comes sweet. David slew the lion
and the bear, as a type of Christ. That's who David represents.
David's not a picture of what we want our sons to be in terms
of bravery. David's a picture of Christ.
He got the victory for all of Israel, all of Israel. He said, I'm for peace, but when
I speak, they're for war. But you know what? I'm going
to go to battle for them. And when the Lord Jesus Christ
went to the cross, he defeated Satan, he defeated the bear,
he took from the ugliness of sin, the sweetness of his grace,
and he provides for his people the victory. In defeating death,
we lament, we're not whistling through the graveyard like those
You know, like people do today in this celebration of life thing. No, we we understand this death
is real. And the consequences of it are
eternal. And without Christ, I have no hope. I have no hope
without Christ. If the lion and the bear are
going to be defeated, he's going to have to do it. And the Lord
says to me and you, I'm for peace. I'm for peace. You're for war. I'm gonna go to battle for you. I'll defeat that enemy. What
hope we have. What great hope. That's what
the Lord did when he hung his head on Calvary's cross and said,
it is finished. Tell them their warfare is accomplished. Tell them their iniquity has
been taken away. It's been put away. It's been
purged. Tell them that they have received of the Lord's hand double
for their sin. I've taken the eater and I've
made him sweet. I've taken the strong and I've
given the meat. What hope? Our Heavenly Father,
thank you for your word. Lord, we confess to you that
all the conflicts we experience are our own fault, our own sin. What great hope and comfort we
have in knowing that Christ Jesus, the Lord, has put them away, reconciled us to God. gotten
the preeminence. Oh Lord, forgive us for our unbelief.
Give us faith to rest our hope in Christ. For it's in his name
we pray, amen. 31 in the spiral hymnal, let's
stand together. We'll repeat the last two lines
in each stanza. of grace and glory, in our dying
Savior's pride, rending rocks and hills of thunder and of hail
to bring us nigh. It is finished, it is finished,
our victorious Savior's pride. It is finished, it is finished,
our victorious it is finished see god's pleasure
prosper in our risen lord it is finished It is finished, it is finished,
O how sweet the Saviour's word! Finished all justice demanded,
Finished all required by law, and promised in the shadows of
the wall. It is finished, it is finished. Bow, believe, rejoice with awe. It is finished, it is finished. Bow, believe, rejoice Jesus finished our salvation
when he died. It is. Praise the Lamb of Galilee.