Where's mom? Wait, you're too
near. We're going to start our second
service singing from the hardback, 229. Tell me the old, old story.
229. Tell me the old, old story of
unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory, of Jesus and His
love. Tell me the story simply as to
a little child, For I am weak and weary and helpless and defiled. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story of
Jesus and His love. Tell me the story slowly, that
I may take it in. That wonderful redemption, God's
remedy for sin. Tell me the story often, for
I forget so soon. The early dew of morning has
passed away at noon. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story of
Jesus and His love. Tell me the story softly with
earnest tones and grace. Remember I'm the sinner whom
Jesus came to save. Tell me the story always, if
you would really be in any time of trouble, a comforter to me. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story of
Jesus and His love. Tell me the same old story when
you have cause to fear that this world's empty glory is costing
me too dear. Yes, and when that whose glory
is dawning on my soul, tell me the old, old story of Christ
Jesus makes thee whole. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story. Tell me the old, old story of
Jesus and His love. Our second hymn will be number
176. 176, Break Thou the Bread of Life. I'll say nugget. I'll say nugget. Break thou the bread Lord to me. As Thou didst break the loaves
beside the sea. In the sacred page I seek Thee,
Lord. My spirit pans for Thee, O word. Bless thou the truth, dear
Lord, to me, to me. As thou didst bless the bread Then shall all bondage cease,
all feathers fall, and I shall find my peace, my all in all. truth for thou art loved. O send thy Spirit, Lord, now Thank you. You may be seated. Good morning, everybody. Good
morning. Good to see everyone. I'm going
to be reading this morning out of 1 John chapter 4. Excuse me. 1 John chapter 4. I'll be picking up in verses
11. 11 through 21. Beloved, if God so loved us,
we ought also to love one another. No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth
in us, and His love is perfected in us. Hereby know we that we
dwell in Him, and He in us, because He has given us His Spirit, and
we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be
the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that
Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. And we have known and believed
the love that God hath to us. God is love, and he that dwelleth
in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love
made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment,
because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear
in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear hath torment,
He that feareth is not made perfect in love. We love him because
he first loved us. If a man say I love God and hated
his brother, he is a liar. For he that loveth not his brother
whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
In this commandment we have from him that he who loveth God love
his brother also. Father, we're grateful once again,
Lord. You've brought people together,
Lord, with a desire to hear your son preach today, Lord. We pray
for our brother this morning, giving the message, Lord, that
you'd give him the strength and power to preach your son clearly,
Lord, and to bless our hearts with that, Lord. We pray that
you'd give us the desire to hear it and receive the message, Lord. We pray for your churches all
over, Lord, that are meeting this morning and gathering likewise,
Lord, that your same message goes out and it accomplishes
your will, Lord. We pray that you'd increase our
faith, Lord, our love, and give us your heart, Lord. In your
name we pray. Amen. Okay, brethren, let's turn to
John 3. John 3, and our text this morning
is verses 8 through 15. Now, we'll do some review, but
last week, the Lord was declaring to us the need for regeneration. The need for regeneration, and
we looked at that in the words, ye must be born again. That was John 3, 7. Now, regeneration,
it's a spiritual work. It's not a work that man does
with his effort, his hands, his thoughts, or his heart. It's
a spiritual work. And really what it comes down
to is the Spirit of God giving life to spiritually dead sinners,
giving spiritual life and understanding to spiritually dead sinners. And so this regeneration, this
work of God is revealed in the scriptures to be a work of grace. That is done by God freely according
to his own will for and in whom he will. It doesn't have anything
to do with your works or my works. It doesn't have anything to do
with what you want or don't want. It's not based on the decisions
you make or the confessions you make. It's a work of grace, apart
from works and apart from the will of man, done solely by God
as it pleases Him for His people. And what the Lord shows us, actually,
well, we see this, actually, it's according to his good pleasure,
even, the scriptures say. It's according to the good pleasure
of God. Now, think about that. Your eternal
soul, where your soul will reside, the habitation of your soul for
all eternity, hangs according to, entirely in the good pleasure
of God. It doesn't matter what our decision
is or our will desires. It's all hanging upon the good
pleasure of God. If you spend eternity embraced
in the joyful, sweet, loving arms of Christ, that's according
to God's good pleasure. or if you spend eternity separated
from God in utter darkness, paying the price for your own sins,
that too is according to the good pleasure of God. He says
in Ephesians 1, 4, and 5, that it's according as he hath chosen
us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be
holy and without blame before him in love, having predestinated
us into the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself according
to the good pleasure of his will." So our Lord was talking to Nicodemus
and he tells him you must be born again. If you're going to
see the kingdom of God, if you're going to see what the spiritual
salvation that our God declares, if you're going to see that,
he says you must be born again. He says in verse three, except
a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God, right? And then to enter that kingdom,
right? Now, maybe you see it, Because
the Lord's given you life. To enter that kingdom, you must
be born again. He says in verse 5, except a
man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of God. I didn't really spend much time
on that verse 5 there with, unless a man be born of water and of
the Spirit. And I'm not going to spend much
time on it now. You know, some have thought that
that water was water baptism, except the man be immersed in
water, confessing Christ, and regenerated by the Spirit, he
cannot enter the kingdom of God. Well, we know that's not true
because that's a work dependent upon man. For a time, I thought,
well, maybe it's just simply accept a man be born, born of
his mother, right? We come forth in a sack of water,
right? Accept you be born, and then
born again, you cannot be saved. And I think that's a bit of an
oversimplification. And we can't necessarily say
that that's so, but some have thought, well, maybe it's from
the time when they stabbed Christ in the side with the spear and
water flowed out from the fluid filling up in his lungs as he
was drowning in the weight of his own body there on the cross,
suffocating in that fluid buildup there, that through his death,
right, it would signify his death and regeneration, we are born
again and enter the kingdom of God. And certainly there's some
merit to that thought, but after studying, I believe it's talking
about I think it's talking about faith. I believe it's talking
about faith through the preaching of the word, not that that there's
Bibles floating around in heaven or because many people can read
the Bible and get nothing out of it. But we do know that it
pleases the Lord through the preaching of the gospel by his
glory and power to reveal faith. All right. So that our savior
as the husband of his bride, the church, as a husband is to
wash his wife with the water of the word, right? And to tenderly
speak of the things of God, so our husband, our savior, for
his bride, man and woman, he washes us with the word, and
through the preaching of the gospel, faith is revealed, right? Faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the word of God, Romans 10, 17. So that's how we enter. We understand by the power of
God revealing faith in us that we are justified by the Lord
Jesus Christ and that we're born again of Him. So the Lord's speaking to Nicodemus
and what we're seeing here is that it's absurd for any of us
to think that A person who's not born again will understand
the spiritual things of God and His spiritual work. They're spiritual
people, but that doesn't mean they understand the spiritual
things of God, because it's only by His Spirit revealing these
things to us that we have an understanding of God and that
we receive His word. He says in 1 Corinthians 2.14,
Paul says, the natural man, that man that's not born again, the
natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God,
for they are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them
because they are spiritually discerned. That is the spirit
of Christ has to reveal them to us that we should know the
things of our savior. And so being born, this example
of being born that the Lord uses It's an earthly example. The
Lord's taking something that we see in the earth. The giving
birth to a child is an earthly thing. We see it all the time. Many of us have experienced that
as well. And so it's an earthly example
given to teach a spiritual truth. He's given us a spiritual truth.
And then our Lord gives, in verse eight, another earthly example,
which is wind. We're all familiar with wind.
We've felt wind and experienced it. And he says in verse eight,
the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof,
but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.
So is everyone that is born of the Spirit. And so here by this
second earthly example that our Lord gives us, what he's teaching
us is that God sovereignly saves whom he will. It's by his sovereign
good pleasure that a sinner is born again and given spiritual
life to see the kingdom of God and to enter that kingdom of
God. It's a sovereign act of God Almighty. So just in case you didn't get
it with the first example in birth, right? Your parents didn't
ask you, what's your decision now? Do you want to be born now
to us? Do you want to be born to this family? What's your decision? Make a decision now and you can
be born. Our parents didn't ask us to
be born. It was a providential, sovereign
act of God. There's many factors that went
into whether or not we were the ones who were born, but we see
God's providence so that you that are here today were born
according to the will and purpose of God for you. If you didn't
get it the first time, God gives us another example. Our Lord
gives us another example using wind, right? Because what do
we see in wind? Well, we don't determine when
it's going to be a windy day or not, do we? And we don't determine
whether that wind's going to come with gale force winds Blowing
things over garbage cans over and debris around or uprooting
trees or lifting roofs off of houses, right? That's we don't
control that the Lord sovereignly controls that and sometimes it
comes in a gentle warm breeze or a gentle cool breeze to to
comfort you right and so I It goes in the direction it'll go.
It goes over here and doesn't necessarily go over there. It's
according to the sovereign will of God. And we see this throughout
the scriptures. When our Lord was talking to
Moses, there's a tender moment where the Lord reveals himself
to Moses. And he moved Moses to pray and
Moses prayed to see the Lord. And he said in Exodus 33, nine,
sorry, 3319, God said, I will make all my goodness pass before
thee and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee
and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show
mercy upon whom I will show mercy. All right, so it's the Lord's
will. So all these, These grand spiritual
truths our Lord declares, right? He's giving us an understanding
of who he is and how he sovereignly acts according to his good pleasure.
And it comes to Nicodemus and it's met with incredible, incredible
spiritual ignorance, right? Nicodemus just doesn't get it. And what we see in that is it's
a perfect example of us. It's a perfect example of every
sinner. who is spiritually dead until
the Lord gives them spiritual life. All right, now I've titled
this message, The Wind of Grace, The Wind of Grace. All right,
so first off, just understand that what we're talking about,
it's not meant to insult God. people, right, to insult those
who have no spiritual understanding. Our Lord wasn't setting up Nicodemus
for a great fall for all the church to read and mock and laugh
at because he didn't understand these things. But instead, rather,
what the Lord is doing in declaring these truths is it's revealing
to us our great need that ye must be born again and you have
no power over whether or not you are born again. It's not
based on your decision, your will, or your works. So then why do we declare it?
Because the Lord, through the preaching of his word, makes
it very clear to those of us who are hearing it, who are hearing
it by the spirit, that I have a great need. I'm dead in trespasses
and sins. I can't do anything to change
God's mind or to cause him to be gracious and compassionate
to me. And so it causes us who are hearing
it to fear and to beg God for mercy, to ask him, Lord, have
mercy on me. Don't pass me by, but reveal
yourself to me. Lord, I have a great need. I'm
a sinner. And if it's all according to
your good pleasure, please, Lord, Let your good pleasure be to
save me and to reveal yourself to me." The psalmist wrote in
Psalm 65, 4, he said, blessed is the man whom thou choosest
and causest to approach unto thee that he may dwell in thy
courts. All right, the psalmist understood
this. that it's not by man's will. No man wants to be saved,
not by the true and living God. We may have an idea, we may want
eternal pleasure and joy, but that doesn't mean we want to
be saved by the true and living God, by a savior who died in
weakness to save his people from their sins, that we might know
him and be made alive by him and his life. All right, so spiritual
ignorance looks like what we see here in the text. And Nicodemus,
hearing these things, said unto Christ in verse nine, how can
these things be? All he's hearing is the natural.
He's only hearing something that sounds absurd, that he would
need to go back into his mother and be born again. And he's just
wondering, I can't hear what you're saying. It doesn't make
any sense to me. The Lord is saying, you must
be spiritually born, and Nicodemus isn't hearing it. And what we
see in that is, well, Nicodemus, he's an educated man. It's not
for want of intelligence that Nicodemus can understand this.
Nicodemus was a religious man. So it's not for want of religion
that Nicodemus couldn't hear this. Sometimes people, young
fathers, a lot of times will say, I want my kid to have some
religion. And so they start taking them to the local church. But
it's not for a lack of morals. I'm sure Nicodemus was a very
moral person and a very sincere man. So it wasn't that he lacked
those things. It says in Proverbs 419 that
the way of the wicked is as darkness. They know not at what they stumble. Nicodemus had everything as far
as what we would think would be good for a person to have
all the means of being able to hear the salvation of God, to
be born again. But he's in darkness, utterly
darkness. He's religious, educated, sincere,
moral, and yet he's in utter darkness. And so that tells us
that it's not those things that we should be focused on. It's
not religion. that we need to focus on. It's
not education. It's not, those things have their
place. Well, education, you know, has
its place and doing right by your family has its place, but
that doesn't guarantee salvation. Romans 9.16 says, so then it's
not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God
that showeth mercy. And it's really truly of the
Lord's will and it's according to his good pleasure and so by
telling us this the Lord is revealing to us we've got a problem. The
problem is us. It's a hard issue and this heart
is hard and cold and dead and dumb to the things of God. I
by nature can't know these things except God give it to me and
so Nicodemus stands as one that In our flesh, any one of us will
look at it and say, this guy's got it all going on. It's good.
He's got religion and smarts and morals and sincerity, but
he's utterly ignorant of the things of God. And so we need
to hear the Lord's instruction. It's truth. When he says in John
6, 44, that no man can come to him except the father which sent
him, draw him, drag him, None of us are going to do that. But
to those that are brought by the Lord, Christ says, I'll raise
them up at the last day. And he said, it's written in
the prophets, and they shall all be taught of God. Every man,
therefore, that hath heard and hath learned of the Father cometh
to me. And so if you have no heart to
come to Christ. If you have no desire to come
to Christ, it's because you haven't heard and haven't been taught
of the Father. Because those that do hear the
Father and are taught of Him, they come to Christ. Because
they see, Lord, I've got a problem. I'm a sinner and I have no way
of saving myself or making this right. Have mercy upon me, Lord. Help me, Lord. That's what we
cry. We're not indifferent. We're
not saying, oh, well, I guess it doesn't matter. I'm just going
to go do what I want to do. No. Those who are pricked in
the heart, they're hearing, I'm a sinner and I need the salvation
that God alone can give. Have mercy upon me, Lord. Save
me. In John 3.10, then, Jesus answered
and said unto him, After he said, I don't understand, he said,
art thou a master of Israel and knowest not these things? How
is it that you're teaching other people, supposedly teaching the
people of God, and you don't understand these words of grace,
right? These words that God and God
alone is gracious to whom he will be gracious and merciful
to whom he will be merciful apart from our thinking and what we
think is wins us salvation with God. Christ said to him, actually
what he did was he's doubting the witness of God. He's not
receiving the witness of God. In other words, he's doubting
what Christ is saying. This can't be. I thought my righteousness
was under the law of Moses, right? I thought that that was going
to be my righteousness whereby God would declare me justified
by my works, by my hard work and sincerity. And the Lord says
to him, we speak that we do know and testify that we have seen
and ye receive not our witness. All right, so he's even talking
of earthly examples and yet man's not hearing it. Now, he should
have known, he should have understood these things from the scriptures,
from the Lord's Word. And Christ said in verse 12,
if I've told you earthly things and ye believe not, how shall
ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things? And that can be a confusing
verse, but that's why I'm emphasizing to you the earthly things he's
speaking of is birth, right? We see children born and wind.
We experience wind plenty of times in our, you know, short
lives here on the earth. And so we're not, if like Nicodemus,
we're not receiving these things or doubting these things or so.
He's saying, how are you going to hear heavenly things? And
Nicodemus had the word, right? If you look over, go with me
to Ezekiel 36, Ezekiel 36, And we'll pick up in verse 24. He says, for I will, this is
the Lord speaking, and notice who's doing all the work. He
says, I will take you from among the heathen, and gather you out
of all countries, and will bring you into your own land. Then
will I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from
all your filthiness, and from all your idols will I cleanse
you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I
put within you. And I will take away the stony
heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh,
and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in
my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." And
so it can rightly be said that Nicodemus should have known what
Christ was speaking of because while he had the law, and the
Jews had the law for many hundreds of years, thousands of years
now, and they kept thinking that this was their righteousness
in spite of the whole history of gross heinous sins, right? And seeing that we're not good. When I look at at what we are
as humans, I'm ashamed of who we are and the things that we
are capable of doing and the crimes that we're capable of
committing against one another. And it troubles me when I see
it and look at those things. And it leads me to think God
is just. to condemn us and to judge us
and to bring this world to an end as we know it. And so, and
he did, right? He did it in Noah's day. He brought that world and had
grace upon Noah. And so only eight souls were
saved. And he says, as it was in the
days of Noah, so shall it be when the Son of Man returns,
right? They were eating. and drinking
and making merry and getting married just as it will be in
our day, meaning that society won't completely break down.
Things will go on as they did, but the crimes that must have
been committed then are the things that we see going on and hear
of today, all right? And so it's troubling. But Nicodemus,
they had this history of the law. They had this history of
trying to make themselves righteous by the law. And yet they were
shown over and over and over again that that will not be our
righteousness because we're the problem. We can't keep the law
perfectly. We come up short of the glory
of God continually and can't bear those fruits of righteousness
as our God deserves, who is holy, holy, holy, right? And therefore, The trust in the
law is an ignorant, spiritually ignorant thing to continue in
because the Lord's showing us that's not gonna be your righteousness.
And therefore he revealed through the prophets, I will do these
things for my people. I'll take out your hard heart.
I'll give you a new heart. I'll cause you to walk in my
paths of righteousness by my spirit, right? So the Lord's
showing it's by me and God does it sovereignly to whom he will. All right, and so the Lord says
to us more plainly now in verses like Titus 3, 5, where he says,
it's not by works of righteousness, which we have done, but according
to his mercy, he saved us by the washing of regeneration and
renewing of the Holy Ghost. All right, we're gonna be born
again. for his people, he's got to give us spiritual life because
we're in darkness and don't even understand the things that we
stumble over and are ignorant of concerning God. All right,
now, Nicodemus, again, is a good example of what we are in our
nature because as carnal men and women, we're completely baffled
by the simplicity of the gospel, the simplicity of Christ who
put away our sins so that we're no longer standing before our
God in our sin and in our works, but we that are his stand in
the righteousness of Jesus Christ. and that he's the one who gives
us a knowledge of these things. He reveals faith in us so that
it's all his work, all to his glory, all to his praise, and
we boast of what he has done for us. It's that simple. And
so in that light, our Lord says a spiritual thing to Nicodemus
in verse 13. John 3, 13. He says, no man hath ascended
up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the son
of man which is in heaven. And so it sounds to me like Christ
is saying, I've already ascended up to heaven. I've already come
down from heaven. And he says that he's already
even now seated in heaven as he's talking to Nicodemus. And so what the Lord's showing
us is that the works were finished from the foundation of the world.
It's already accomplished in Christ. When God in covenant
between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost determined
to save a people, It was already accomplished then and there by
our God. It was as good as done. And so
our Lord fulfilled His very will and purpose in the earth for
His people in the glory of His name. All right? So when He says,
no man hath ascended, what does that mean? It means that none
of us in our own works and in our own righteousness by the
things we do or don't do shall shall stand in the presence of
God in heaven, right? None of us will do that. So if Christ in Christ alone
is the one who's ascended up into heaven, it tells us that
he is the one in whom we ascend and stand before the Father. Even in him now, we are, our
life is hid with God in Christ. Even now, that's how we ascend.
That's how we'll be accepted and received of the Father and
stand faultless before His throne. Having addressed that need for
our regeneration, for our need of spiritual life, for God to
do this work for us, our Lord now in verses 14 and 15, he begins
to declare our justification. How is it that God can be just
to forgive us of our sins and give us the spiritual life whereby
we may know him? How is such a thing possible?
He says there in verse 14, as Moses lifted up the serpent in
the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life. And what our Lord is saying is
that divine justice had to be satisfied. We sinned against
God and those sins had to be paid for. And we already know
we can't work off the debt of the sins that we've accumulated.
And we can't continue in doing that which is needful and righteous
and holy before God. We can't do it. Even knowing
what we know, we can't do these things. Even having the law of
Moses, we can't do it. And a whole nation of people
all around us trying to keep that law, we cannot keep ourselves
spotless and perfect. we needed a savior, we needed
salvation, which God provided himself, a lamb. He provided
himself a fit sacrifice in his son, Jesus Christ, who came in
the likeness of our sinful flesh and committed no sin. He's not
a sinner and he committed no sin. He's spotless, perfect,
holy, holy, holy. And so he is the fit sacrifice
for his people, and in the place, in the stead of his people, he
died. He sacrificed himself unto the
Father to make atonement for our sins, to be our propitiation. The very reason why we go free
is because He paid the price. And the reason why we know Him,
why God is just to forgive us and just to reveal to us the
hope that we now have in Jesus Christ is because He's satisfied. his wrath upon the sun. Those stripes which he bore,
they were our stripes. The stroke of justice which fell
on him was our justice that was to fall on us, but Christ took
our place to put away our sins and to make us righteous before
holy God. Now, this example that he gives
is the brazen serpent, right, and it comes from Numbers 21,
and you don't need to turn there, I'll summarize it for you, but
what was happening is, as was usual, the people were complaining.
They were bitter and angry against God and against Moses. They weren't
happy with the way things were working out, and so Fiery serpents
were sent of the Lord and they came and they bit the people
and they were poisonous snakes so that the people when they
were bitten with these snakes, they received the poison and
died. They died. The Lord revealed
to them that because of their sin, this was happening to them. And so they were turned and they
were moved to go to Moses and say, look, we were wrong for
doing this. We were speaking against you
and speaking against God. Please pray to him for us that
the Lord take this away from us. So Moses prays and the Lord
says, he doesn't take it away from them in the way they thought,
but what he says is make a fiery serpent, make it out of bronze
and put it high, high up on a pole. You lift it up before all the
people and keep it lifted up and lifted high so all can see
it because when they are bitten, because there's going to be a
people bitten by the serpent still, and when they're bitten,
When they look to that serpent that you're holding up high,
make sure it's high and lift it up, exalt this serpent here
so all can see it, so that when they look, they shall live. They shall live. All right? Well, what's this have to do
with Christ? Well, Christ who came in our place was made what
we are. father laid on him the sin of
all his people and he poured out his wrath and judgment upon
him and so we lift him up through the preaching of the gospel we
hold him high so all the people hear and see him and so that
when the spirit Like that wind moves upon you when the spear
goes in your direction and blows upon you and reveals to you,
I'm the sinner. I'm the one who's got poison
in my veins. I'm a dead man. I can't please
the Lord. I can't save myself. God have
mercy upon me. I'm a dead man, right? But holding
Christ up, you hear him. And when you look to him, you
live. you live and so that's why we
declare Christ and that's why we rejoice in him for his mercy
and grace upon us and the Lord Jesus Christ because by him we
are justified of God through the Lord Jesus Christ for his
righteousness and his propitiatory death. Isaiah 45 22 says, look
unto me and be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth, for I am
God and there is none else. And so I pray the Lord, bless
that word to your hearts, that when the spirit reveals to you,
I'm full of poison and spiritually dead, that you are made to look
to Christ and that you may live. So I pray you bless that. All right, brethren. Let's close
in prayer. Our gracious Lord, we thank you,
Father, for your grace. Lord, we ask that you would indeed
bless your gospel word to your children. Lord, that you would
cause us to be delivered from our darkness and our stumbling
and our spiritual ignorance to through your grace and salvation. Lord, we ask that you would help
us to hear the gospel, to hear these words, that we must be
born again. And Lord, that you would blow
upon us, that you would turn toward us to be gracious and
compassionate and merciful, that we might Look to Christ, your
salvation, that we would be given faith to believe on Him, and
that we would be healed and live in Him, and rejoice in your salvation
evermore. It's in Christ's name that we
pray these things. And Lord, You know the things
which we struggle with, and the things we stumble over, and the
difficulties that we have, the sufferings we have, the sicknesses,
the wounds, Lord, the many things that trouble us. We ask that
you would be merciful to us, that you would be gracious and
help us to behold Christ, to be comforted in him, and to rejoice
in him evermore. Help us to love one another,
to be patient and gracious with one another, and to be a help
that we would truly love our neighbor as ourselves as you
command us, Lord. Teach us these things by your
grace and mercy. It's in the name of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ we pray, amen. All right, I'm gonna just
do it a little differently. Before I have you guys come up
and hand it out, what I'll do is I'm gonna go to Mark and I'll
just read it and then I'll sit down too and then you could just
come up and if you would just, well, we'll have Scott pray this
time. So Scott and Levi afterwards just come up and then, say a
prayer, Scott, and then hand out the bread and the wine, and
as soon as you guys are done, we'll all take it together, and
then brother, you'll close this in hand. All right, so I'm gonna
be in Mark. Is it 14? Yes, Mark 14. And when I'm in this passage,
I like to read verse 22. 7 first, verse 27, 28. Our Lord
said unto his disciples, all ye shall be offended because
of me this night. For it is written, I will smite
the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. But after that
I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee. And I read
that because these elements here, the bread and the wine, they're
for sinners. Sinners saved. Sinners who have
a hope in the Lord Jesus Christ and have no other confidence
in the flesh. We know what we are. We know
the poison that is in us by nature's birth and our need for salvation. But the Lord has revealed to
us his son. So to those who look to him,
to those who were bitten, and look to the Savior, you have
life. And so this bread and wine is
for you to partake of and to rejoice in Christ your Savior,
right? Though we know in ourselves we're
not what we ought to be, what we shall be, but we know when
He returns, we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He
is. I think that's 1 John 3, 2. All
right, so remember that. Now in verse 22, our Lord said,
or it says, as they did eat, Jesus took bread and blessed
and break it and gave to them and said, take, eat, this is
my body. All right, which was broken for
you, his children, that we may enter into him, right? That's
how we ascend into heaven. through Christ's broken body,
we died with him, right? As we see in the next verse,
he took the cup and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them
and they all drank of it. And he said unto them, this is
my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many. Verily,
verily, I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of
the vine until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom
of God. And so we see there that when
Christ's body was broken, he died. And we died with Him. And when the judgment of God
fell upon Him, it fell upon us in Him. He bore the wrath of
God for us. And when He was raised from the
dead, we were raised in Him. So that we died to the law, and
divine justice has nothing more to say to you, and we are raised
with Him. And He is our life, and our hope,
and our rejoicing, Even now, all right? And then when they
had sung a hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives. And
so brethren, if you come up and Scott, pray and then hand them
out. And then after about a minute,
just come up and we'll close with a hymn. Father, we come to you this morning
thankful for this congregation of people that you brought together.
And Father, as the brother read earlier, we're thankful for the
love that you've given us and for the love that we show one
another. And Father, we are so thankful for the son that you
sent to save a people. Father, there was no other hope
other than him, and we're so thankful that you sent him. And
Father, we just ask that you watch over us, watch over our
pastor, watch over all of us and care for us in Christ's name. I'm sorry about that. I love you. We're going to close our service
singing number 212, Naharbek 212, Nothing But the Blood. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. For my pardon this I see, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. For my cleansing this my plea,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. O precious is the flow that makes
me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. Nothing can force in a tone,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. Out of good that I have done,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. This is all my hope and peace,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my righteousness,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. Dismissed. in the back there there's a sign-up
sheet for anyone that would like to sign up for a week or a month. Anyone can do it, there's usually,
there's always someone back there watching the younger ones, like
the babies, but those children that are old enough to sit in
the class, they just need another teacher, so. Do you guys, actually
I already know this, do you guys have like curriculums for people
that just jump right in? Do they have to prepare something? I think if you talk to Christine,
She sort of has an outline, and I know Joanne, didn't you jump
in once and just sort of, it's just a basic, I mean it's very
basic right now, but I expect that it'll evolve to some degree,
but I would need to find a good curriculum to do it, but we could
ask Christine and Jordan what they're doing now, and go from
there. So we could do that, and then
if I could just have Like five or ten minutes? Are you prepared?
Okay, Scott has the financial thing and then we were just going
to talk about the things we were talking about with buildings.
I don't think we're making the decision, I just wanted to make
sure that's out to everybody so that we can I won't keep you longer. Scott
was asking for a shut-in.