Think with me about the situation
in Exodus. Moses is a prince. He has wisdom
and he has done many things in the Egyptian lifestyle. He's
recognized as a powerful man, very wise, very educated, very
noble. And he goes out. He decides to
go out to visit his brethren. With this purpose in mind, I'm
going to deliver them The slaves who were made slaves by the king
of Egypt and made to serve under cruel bondage, even their children
were killed so that the nation of Israel might be put under
subjection and they might not overcome the Egyptians. That
was the intent of Pharaoh to actually wipe out the Israelites
from the face of the earth over time. But Moses was sent by God
to be a savior, a deliverer. And so he goes out to see his
brethren, and when he comes to them, first of all, he comes
and he sees an Egyptian doing wrong to a Hebrew, and he looks
around and he kills the Egyptian and hides him in the sand. And
then the next day he goes out. to look again. And I'm not sure.
He must have thought that no one knew about this murder. But
he goes out the second day to see, and he sees two Hebrews
now fighting. One of them had done the wrong,
and he's beating his brother. And he tries to reconcile them. He says, Why are you doing this?
You're brethren. You can understand he would have
said that because the Egyptians were beating them. Why would
you as brethren beat one another? Or why would you, this man, beat
your fellow, your brother? And so he asked him that question. And the reaction that this man
who was beating his brother gives to him, he says, who made you
a ruler and a prince, a ruler and a judge and a deliverer over
us? And that's actually what God
did. God made Moses a ruler and a
judge and a deliverer over Israel. A ruler to rule them and to give
them to judge between the right and the wrong. And here he is
judging between two men. He's trying to set them at one.
He's rebuking one. And what he gets in return is
this man puts it back in his face. What are you trying to
do? Are you going to kill me like you did the Egyptian the
other day? It reminds me of when the Lord Jesus Christ talked
to Nicodemus that night in John chapter 3, and he explains to
him that there's no possibility for man to save himself, to know
God, to enter heaven, unless God Himself takes the action,
unless God Himself saves him. And that is because man is exceeding
sinful and nothing can save him apart from the grace of God.
And then in John 3, and I'll just read this so you don't have
to turn there if you want to just listen, it says here, after
the most well-known verse perhaps in all the Bible, John 3.16,
Jesus says this, or it says this in the Gospel of John, For God
sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world." Remember
the man who was doing wrong to his brother? What did he say
to Moses? You're here to kill me, right?
Like you did the Egyptian? This reveals to us Jesus didn't
send His Son into the world like this man accused Moses of coming
to kill me when he was actually the one doing the wrong. Isn't
that the way we naturally think? We've done wrong. God sends His
Son. And we accuse God of wrong, and
we think God's out to destroy us, but God reveals, no, no.
He sent His Son into the world on a mission of mercy and grace.
And He didn't send His Son to condemn the world, but that the
world through Him might be saved. Now, we naturally think that
people are worth saving. We naturally think that the reason
God saved people that God sent his son into the world is because
he saw how that man was worth something and God, therefore,
had to find a reason. He didn't need to find a reason
anywhere else but in them. And so he sent his son into the
world to save them. Nothing could be further from
the truth. John 3 at 16, for God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son. It's not a verse that teaches
that reason God saves his people is because of something he finds
in them. But the reason is given in the verse itself, for God
so loved, the reason God saves his people from their sins is
entirely found in God. It's not found in us. And so
looking at Ephesians chapter two, it brings that out here. If you recall, in Ephesians 1,
the whole chapter is about all that God has done for His people
in the Lord Jesus Christ. But chapter 2 opens up in a way
that teaches us the nature, the character, the lifestyle of those
people whom God saves. And it's not pretty. It's not
good. Listen to it. He says in chapter
2, verse 1, And you hath He quickened, that means made alive, who were
dead in trespasses and sins. I suppose nothing would be more
shocking in all the world than to be standing at the grave or
at the coffin of one who had died, or perhaps in the hospital,
one who had just passed away, or maybe had been long dead,
and to see them come to life again. Nothing would be more
surprising, would it? And it actually would set us back And
we couldn't believe it hardly. But here, there's something much
more significant than that in the resurrection of a man spiritually. He says, you were dead in trespasses
and sins. Now, dead in sins and trespasses
has a measure of how evil we are in ourselves. Dead means
that we're totally lifeless to God. Sin has separated us. It doesn't mean that we're looking
for God and can't find Him. It means that we don't want God.
We have no interest in Him. We don't know God and would just
as soon have God dead to us. We would be happy naturally. This is our natural condition
as people. Naturally, we would be happy to live our lives without
God. It's kind of like I think of
it as a teenager. They grow up. Everything is provided
for them into their young adult life. Everything is given to
them. And they grow up and they say,
I want nothing really to do with mom and dad. I'm actually happier
to live without you. Remember the prodigal? Give me
what's mine, and I'll leave you alone, and I'll get out of your
life because you bother me." That helps us understand something
about that. But that's the way we are naturally
with God. We want nothing to do with Him.
We just as soon have Him off the scene and removed from our
life because we want to live our lives the way we want to
live them for ourselves. That's what He's saying. dead
in trespasses and sin. No life to God. No interest in
God. God is boring. God is worthless. All I need, just go ahead and
provide for me. Send me the check. Keep the house
going. Keep me safe while I'm driving.
Make me healthy. Let me live my life in peace.
But just don't ask of me anything. But he says here, when you were
in that state, he says, when you were dead in trespasses and
sins, wherein in time past you walked Walk means that's the
pattern of your life. That's the way you live your
life. According to the course of this world, according to the
prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in
the children of disobedience. This is these are the people
of God. He's describing here who who
God has saved. He's describing our nature, not
just our actions, but the way we really are inside in the depth
of our being. You were dead in sins in time
past. You walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air,
the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience,
among whom also we all notice that word all. It doesn't leave
anyone out. All of us had our conversation,
our lifestyle. In time past, in the lusts of
our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind. What we thought, we actually
did. And if we couldn't do it, we would think about doing it.
And we were by nature, the very nature of who we were, the children
of wrath. We deserved God's justice to
come against us. We were children of wrath. Children
of wrath, even as others. Now, look, look with me, if you
would, at Second Kings chapter eight, and you'll see where I
get the title for this message, which which is we'll answer it
in just a second here. Look at Second Kings chapter
eight, because sometimes we have to have it painted to us in graphic
language. There was a prophet named Elisha. Elisha was one of the greatest
prophets in the Old Testament. And in verse 7 of 2 Kings 8,
Elisha came to a city in Syria called Damascus. Elisha came
to Damascus, and the king, Ben-Hadad, the king of Syria, was sick.
And it was told Ben-Hadad, saying, the man of God has come here.
And the king said unto Hazael, this was one of the king's faithful,
trusted Soldiers in his army, perhaps as captain of his army,
says the king said to Hazael, take a present in my hand and
go meet the man of God and inquire of the Lord of him saying, Shall
I recover of this disease? So Hazael went to meet Elisha
and took a present with him, even of every good thing of Damascus,
40 camels burden. That's a lot. And he came and
he stood before him. Can you imagine? a train of forty
camels coming to meet you, and Hazael at the front of the train.
And he said to Elisha, Hazael said to Elisha, Thy son, Ben-Hadad,
king of Syria, has sent me to thee, saying, Shall I recover
of this disease? And now pay attention closely
to what happens now between Elisha and Hazael in the next few verses.
And Elisha said to him, to Hazael, Go, say to him, Thou mayest certainly
recover. How be it? The Lord has showed
me that he shall surely die." And then it doesn't say it exactly
how long, but there was a long silence at that point. And it
says it in these words, and he settled his countenance steadfastly. Elisha is looking at Hazael,
and he just told him, in response to the question, will the king
die? Will he recover from his disease? And Elisha looks at
Hazael in the face and he says, the Lord has showed me that he
may certainly recover. But he's also showed me that
he will die. And then he stops. And he's looking
at Hazael for a long moment. And then he was ashamed because
He looked for so long, and then it says that Elisha wept. And
Hazael, you could imagine what he thought. He thought perhaps,
why are you weeping? In fact, he says, Hazael said,
why weepest? Why weepest, my Lord? He probably
wondered. He just said that he could recover. Are you weeping because you said
then that he will surely die? And Elisha answered, and this
is what I wanted to read here. Because I know, and he's looking
at Hazael and he tells him, I know the evil that you will do to
the children of Israel. Their strongholds will set on
fire and their young men you will slay with the sword and
you will dash their children and rip up their women with child.
And Elisha knows this is going to happen. And he's looking at
Hazael and he's weeping. And Hazael said, But what? Is thy servant a dog, that he
should do this great thing? And so that's where the title
of this message comes from. It's a rhetorical question. Yes,
you are. Yes, you are. You are really
that bad. Now, it goes on to tell in the
rest of the few verses that follow that Hazael goes home He gives
an answer to the king, which was not exactly the way Elisha
said it. Ben-Hadad said, what did he say? And Hazael said, you're surely
going to recover. And then the next day, Hazael
goes in and he dips a big cloth in water and smothers him in
his own bed, kills him, and he becomes the king of Syria. He
really was that bad, but he couldn't believe it. And that's our problem. When Moses came, to the children
of Israel to deliver them. Do you know why this man who
was doing wrong to his brother didn't want Moses there? Because
he didn't need a deliverer. When Moses came, he accused him
of coming in order to kill him like he did the Egyptian. Just
like Jesus said, He didn't come for that reason. When Jesus came
into the world, the people who saw Him accused Him of coming
for the wrong reason. They accused Him of not being
who He was, of not being on God's mission. They accused Him of
being a wicked man and a sinner. All the miracles that He did,
all the good that He did, they thought ill of it. Because they
were envious of him, they were envious that God would so love
his son and be pleased with his son and send him as the only
deliverer. For his people that that didn't
sit well with them, and so we see here, if you look back now
in the New Testament. And I want you to look with me
at a verse in Galatians chapter. I'm sorry, chapter 2 of Galatians.
These things hopefully will all get tied together. Actually, before we look here,
hold your finger in Galatians and turn to a couple of verses
in the New Testament. Look at Matthew chapter 23. We want to see the same thing
because the nation of Israel, not just this one man in the
land of Egypt at that one time rejected Moses. The reason that
The reason that Stephen preached the sermon that he did in Acts
7, and he reminded them of what happened between Moses and this
man, the reason he told them this was because the nation of
Israel had treated Christ exactly like that man had treated Moses. The Lord Jesus Christ came from
heaven, God's own Son, equal with God, God Himself. He humbled
Himself and became a man, came in the form of a servant in order
to obey His Father and deliver His people from their sins. That's
why He came. God humbled Himself, became a
servant, took on the nature of the people He came to save, and
was obedient to the will of God unto death in order to save them
from their sins by His own death, Suffering as a substitute, the
punishment their sins deserve. That's the reason he came. But
that's not how he was received. He wasn't received with open
arms because we, by nature, do not believe we really need a
savior. We're just like Hazael. What?
Do you think I'm such a dog to do such a thing as that? Am I
that bad? Yes, you are. Look at Matthew
chapter 23 and verse 34. He says. This is just before
Jesus goes to the cross. He's speaking to the Pharisees,
those who trusted in themselves that they were good enough that
God would accept them just like they were. I'm just as good as
anybody else. Why, in fact, I'm probably better
than most people. Pharisees definitely trusted
in what they did and what they were in their birth and their
status. in their position they had attained,
the knowledge they had, everything about them was something that
gave them cause for confidence before God. But nothing could
be further from the truth, because we're all by nature just like
Hazael. All of us by nature, in our minds,
we are Enemies of God we naturally hate God we we find it offensive
to hear it, but that's what the Bible says haters of God he says
Dead in sins, but look at this verse 34 Jesus says to the Pharisees,
to the nation, really, who had rejected him, Wherefore, behold,
I send unto you prophets and wise men and scribes, and some
of them you shall kill and crucify, and some of them you shall scourge. That means to beat with whips
in your synagogues and persecute them from city to city. And this
is why he's going to send those men. The consequence of his sending
them is they're going to utterly reject the messengers of Christ. And then he says, the consequence
of that is that upon you may come all the righteous blood
shed upon the earth from the blood of righteous Abel unto
the blood of Zechariah, son of Barakias, whom you slew between
the temple and the altar. Christ lays to their charge the
guilt of all the murders of all of his people from Abel, who
was killed by Cain all the way up to the end of the Old Testament.
Zechariah was killed. And then he says, Verily, I say
to you, all these things shall come upon this generation. And you know what happened to
the Jews after Jesus died. The Romans came and destroyed
the city of Jerusalem. And then Jesus says these lamentable
words in verse 37. Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou
that killest the prophets and stonest them which are sent to
thee, how often Would I have gathered thy children together,
even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings? And you would
not. You did not want your children
saved. Behold, your house, your nation,
in other words, is left unto you desolate. And I say to you,
you shall not see me henceforth till you say, Blessed is he that
comes in the name of the Lord." And look at Luke chapter 19,
same thing there. Doesn't this sound like a rejection
of Christ? It's exactly parallel and the
fulfillment of what happened there in Exodus chapter 2, where
the man thrusts Moses away. I do not want a deliverer. You're
coming here to condemn me. I don't need that kind of a Savior. Luke chapter 19 and verse 41. And when Jesus was come near,
he beheld the city and he wept over it, over Jerusalem. He's
going to the cross, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou,
at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy
peace, but now they are hid from thine
eyes. For the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies
shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep
thee in on every side." In other words, they're going to put you
under siege. "...and shall lay thee even with
the ground, and thy children within thee, and they shall not
leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knewest
not the time of thy visitation." You see that? Now, we all naturally
are just like them." Are you kidding? Am I really that bad?
I've never actually told Jesus, I reject you. Ah, but we have. In unbelief, we have not bowed
the knee and submitted ourselves in our nature to the righteousness
of God, which is what God requires, to submit to the fact that you
are nothing before God, deserving of his wrath, coming in repentance
and asking and seeking forgiveness for what he has done, I mean,
for our sins by what he has done in Christ alone. That's what
we naturally are. We're naturally rejecters of
the Lord Jesus Christ. We are that bad. But what makes
a difference? How then can anyone be saved?
That's really the natural question. If that's true, then how can
we possibly be saved if that's our state? Why are some people,
why do some people come to that point where they actually believe
on the Lord Jesus Christ, seek God's mercy, love his grace,
are thankful to him for saving them? What makes the difference?
the grace of God. The only thing that makes a difference
is the grace of God. And you would say, well, what
about those people then who rejected the Lord Jesus Christ? Is there
no hope for them? The fact of the matter is, there's
no hope for any of us unless God takes the prerogative and
has mercy upon us for His own purpose and for the sake of His
Son, That's the only reason, the only
reason that God will ever have mercy upon us. I'm looking for
a verse here in 1 Corinthians 4. And God asked this question.
Who makes you to differ from another? And what do you have
that you have not received? There's a question. Who makes
a difference between you and someone else? Well, we would
naturally think I do. In fact, we think, why is that
person over there such a louse? Why don't they just pick themselves
up and make a difference? I did before God. In life, we can all go to school.
We can get our degrees. We can increase our learning.
We can get jobs relatively to other people. We can attain a
status. That's not what God's talking about. He's talking about
before God. Who makes you to differ before
God? Only God does. He says, who makes
you to differ? What do you have that you haven't
been given, haven't received? Now, if you received it, why
do you boast or why do you glory as if thou hadst not received
it? In other words, as if you just earned it. The issue is,
is that we are naturally so bad before God in our nature. The Scriptures call us serpents,
children of a serpent. We're like the poison of asps,
that's the name of a serpent, is under our lips because we're
the children of serpents. Before God, God is not in all
our thoughts. And so in Ephesians chapter 2,
where we just read a few moments ago, it says we were dead in
trespasses and sins. We walked according to the courses,
we fulfilled the lusts of our flesh and the desires of our
mind, and we were by nature the children of wrath." God isn't
saying these things about us because God is trying to scare
us into doing something about it ourselves. He's not saying
these things about us because He's so overly picky that He
can't find anything good to say. God always just speaks the truth. He doesn't get like an angry
man who's been offended and self-righteous and indignant. He doesn't get
all flustered about things and just start shouting hyperbole
against us. He's telling us very graciously
what we truly are, and we naturally can't accept it. The picture
is too bleak and too dark and too vile. But the fact of the
matter is, only when God has graciously made us aware that
unless He has mercy upon us, unless He extends His love to
us of His own will, And that love isn't just a pity, but it's
a love that actually does something, actually sends His Son, and His
Son actually pays for our sins. That before God, His Son becomes
a substitute for us, to God, so that all that God requires
from us, the Lord Jesus Christ provides to Him. And all that
we need from God, He provides in the Lord Jesus Christ, unless
God does that for us. That's a love that works, a love
that accomplishes something, a love that actually saves. Unless
God does that, there's no hope for us. And we will justly be
given over to our rejection of the Lord Jesus Christ. And when
we read this in Ephesians chapter 2, you who were dead in sins,
dead in your trespasses and sins, you walked contrary to God, living
for yourself, living as the world does, in the lust of our blood,
doing whatever you wanted to do and feeling good about it,
and telling other people, just stay out of my life, I don't
really care to be bothered. That's a self-righteous. That's
exactly what the man said when he says, who sent you to be a
ruler and a judge over us? Because we don't think we need
God. We don't think we need a savior. And what could be more offensive
than that? Look at Galatians now. In chapter
two, where I was taking you a moment ago, Galatians chapter two, in
verse 21, And I think that sometimes there are verses in the Bible
that are so powerful that we have to recognize the importance
of them. And this is one of those verses.
It answers so many questions and is given as an argument,
an argument to shut down all possibility that God could accept
you or me for anything he finds in us. The argument is so powerful
that God cannot receive us for something that he finds in us,
but he must find a reason outside of us, something that that he
does. So here we see it in verse 21,
Galatians 2. He says. Paul says this to those
who had begun to believe that they could do something that
would improve their standing before God. He says, I do not
frustrate the grace of God. The word frustrate means I don't
reject. I don't try to nullify it. I
don't try to make it empty. I don't try to make it of no
effect. I do not try to remove the need
for the grace of God. I don't try to empty it of its
importance and its value. He says, I do not frustrate the
grace of God. And here's the argument. Now,
this is look at there's an if here and there's a then he says,
for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead
in vain. Do you see that? And this is
a this is a tool God has used here through the apostle to argue
a point that completely obliterates all possibility that we people,
any of us, all of us, could ever be accepted by God, could ever
be received in His favor, enter heaven, be given anything by
God, His love or any of those things, apart from the complete
grace of God. He says, if righteousness comes
by the law, righteousness means a purity before God's law, a
right standing before God. God would look on us and accept
us because of something He found that we had done, obedience to
Him. He could say it this way, if
by your own personal obedience you could be righteous before
God, then, this is the consequence of that, Christ is dead in vain. What does it mean for Christ
to be dead in vain? It means that His death was for
nothing. It means that God in His justice required the death
of His own Son and received from Him His offering of Himself and
was pleased with that offering. And there was no need for it.
What could be more offensive than to think that of God? That
would be like taking your body, climbing up the highest peak
in Yosemite and throwing your body on the floor of the granite
foundation of that mountain in order to break the surface of
that granite floor. You cannot violate this fundamental
truth that Christ did not die for nothing, that God's justice
demanded and received pleasure from what Christ did in His death. Nor can you deny that when God
sent His Son to die, He did it out of pure grace, that what
He did you could never earn. How could you possibly think
to earn the death even of a friend? But much greater, how could we
possibly ever think to earn the death of the Son of God, who
came in the likeness of human flesh, in human flesh, in the
likeness of sinful man, and laid Himself down and willingly gave
His life under the wrath of God because He bore our sins? How
could you possibly earn that? Can you earn God? Can you earn
the death of Christ? There's no possibility. And because
that's not possible in such an uneclipsable way that God could
not do that unjustly and He couldn't give His Son because of something
we've done, then it absolutely nullifies the possibility that
by something we do or are in ourselves can please God. But
that's entirely backwards to the way we normally think. We
normally think that God will only receive me if I straighten
up my life, if I do good things and He's going to get me if I
don't do good things or if I do wrong things. And so we hear
the words of this man who was opposing Moses and saying, I
don't need you as a deliverer. And he continues beating this
fellow. He just came here to kill me. And we reflect that
forward into the New Testament and we see the whole nation rejecting
Christ. And we think of our own personal
case and we think, well, then I won't reject him. I'm going
to receive him. I'm going to do what's necessary
to get myself right with God. And we don't really understand
how bad we are. And we don't understand that
we're dead in sins. And we don't appreciate, we don't
even find a need for God to choose us in such a way that His choice
could not be changed. His choice of us in grace to
save us only for reasons found in Himself. is all we need. We need that kind of a salvation.
We need a God who sovereignly and freely reaches down out of
glory of His own free volition, independent of the fact that
we are opposed to Him in every way, and saves us for His own
sake, to the magnification and honor and glory of His grace.
And we even We won't even appreciate the fact that Christ died. Why
would He need to die? I'm not that bad. We don't even
think about it. It doesn't concern us. But the
fact that God Himself had to come and die as a man under the
wrath of God to satisfy God's justice against sin, in order
to save His people from their sins, That fact is not appreciated
until we realize, yes, I am, all that God says, a sinner and
helpless and hopeless and deserving of his wrath unless he does something. And so we look in Ephesians chapter
two again, if you would, looking at verse chapter two, and let's
finish that That sentence here, he's in the middle of. He says
that when we were like this, our conversation and time passed
in the lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and
of the mind, and we're by nature the children of wrath, even as
others. And then look at these next two
words. This is what makes the difference. You see them? But
God. But God. But God, so much in
that simple statement, but God, here is a man who rejects his
own mercies. He rejects his own Savior. He comes to his own, and his
own receive him not. That's what it says in John chapter
1, verse 11 or so. And that's the way we are. By
nature, we're no different. We're just as bad. In fact, remember
the publican who came into the temple and he cries and beats
on his chest and he says, God, be merciful to me, the sinner,
the sinner, as if I was the only sinner in all the world, the
one God singled out to point out that you are under God's
just wrath. And so, he says this, but God,
the only thing that stands between my soul and eternal perdition
is God. He's the only one who could.
And He's the only one who would. What would you do if someone
lived their whole life in opposition to you? hating you every time
you made you, you're sustaining them, you're giving them everything,
life and breath and and the flowing of blood in their veins and safety. And you're protecting them at
night when they're sleeping. There's all kinds of mercies God has
given us. And then he's also given us his
word to tell us that we're naturally sinners and opposed to him and
we won't hear it. But God overrules our sinfulness. But God comes when no one else
would or could and reaches out of heaven and saves us by His
mercy. He brings the gospel to us in
a way that's irresistible. And if He doesn't bring it irresistibly,
we'll reject it. If He doesn't bring it in a way
that gives life, as if giving life to a dead man, we'll remain
dead. That's what he's saying in these
verses. You and I stand before God absolutely guilty and helpless. And God alone can make the difference. And God has made the difference
for His people. And our only hope is that even
though we're just like this man who rejected Moses, like the
nation who rejected Christ, like Hazael, who would have ripped
up the women with children and done all these things, we're
no different. We're not righteous. We're haters of God. We do not
fear God, even though that's our case. God has to do something,
and God has done something in Christ. And God teaches us, this
is all your hope. Look to... He says it this way
in Isaiah, He says, Look unto Me, all the ends of the earth,
and be ye saved. Look to Me, and be ye saved.
When the children of Israel were bitten by serpents in the wilderness
and dying, only then would they only look to the remedy God had
given Christ alone. The only time we'll appreciate
salvation is when we are utterly deserving of God's justice. The only time we'll appreciate
grace is when we have nothing to bring. The only time we'll
actually love the doctrine of election, love the fact that
God saves absolutely by what Jesus did. completely by what
he did and that he brings that to us irresistibly and gives
us life and preserves us, doesn't just leave us to ourselves to
finish the job. He preserves us and brings us
to glory when we love these things. It's because God has shown us
this is your only hope, what God does in Christ. And that's
all of it. That's all of it. But, God, you
can't put anyone's name in there besides his, can you? Nobody else's name will do. But
listen to what he says. But God, who is rich in mercy,
for His great love, the reasons found in Him, for His great love,
wherewith He loved us even when we were dead in sins, has made
us alive together, has quickened us together with Christ. By grace,
you are saved. That's the answer. Yes, you are
that bad. But yes, God is that good that
He would save us. The fact that Christ had to die
teaches us how bad we really are. The fact that God's justice
couldn't find another solution to save His people from their
sins teaches us how really evil sin is. How holy God is. But it also gives us this, and
I think this is the most great thing. Is it the death of Christ
gives comfort and joy and confidence to sinners? It's the only thing
that does. Let's pray. Father, we thank
you that we who were sinners, we who are in our nature, no
different. In fact, in our own thinking,
We can't see anyone as bad but us. Before your face we need
mercy because you've been merciful to us. We think what it would
have been like if you hadn't had mercy on us and we fear.
And we think of all you've done for us and we're thankful. But
we know all of this must be brought to us by You and maintained in
us by You according to Your grace. So we pray, Lord, give us the
salvation that we need. Give us Christ. Cause us to trust
Him alone and to look nowhere else and be thankful. And to
fear before You, to walk soberly minded, knowing that You, of
Your own prerogative, have been gracious of your own power hath
saved us, for your own grace and mercy in Christ alone. In
Jesus' name we pray. Amen.