One more time before we get into
chapter 7, Hebrews chapter 6. I want to start reading verses
13 down through 20 and then we're going to talk about verses 19
and 20 this evening. For when God made a promise to
Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he
swore by himself, saying, Surely I will bless you and multiply
you. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the
promise. For people swear by something
greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath
is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more
convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable
character of His purpose, He guaranteed it with an oath, so
that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for
God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong
encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have
this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that
enters into the inner place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone
as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest after
the order of Melchizedek. So next week we will get into
the shadow of Melchizedek and we will talk about what he represents
and how Christ is after his order or in the order of Melchizedek.
Today, especially in the current culture and the environment,
or the climate would be a better word, that we are experiencing,
I know for myself, for my own heart, for my own soul, for my
own joy, even though we are not embroiled, in all of these things
that are taking place around the globe and around our country,
we are affected by it. We're affected by it because
we look at it. We're affected by it because we hear of it.
We're affected by it because those that we love and care for
are affected. We're affected by it because
we are uncertain of the outcome. We don't know what to think.
We've never experienced anything like it before. And if it wasn't
this, it'd be something else. If it wasn't riots and murder
and pandemics and economies, it would be something else. It
would be scandal. It would be disease of some other
sort. It would be war. No matter what,
we're never going to be in a time where there is ever peace in
the world. I want you to hear that, beloved. We're never, ever
in any lifetime of a million lifetimes ever going to see peace
in this world. We're never going to see unity
in the human race. We're never going to see hope
in a culture. We're never going to see confident
assurance of a government. We're never going to see an economy
where there is equality. We're never going to see people
who are living healthy lives as a standard of living. We're
not going to see people who don't have problems. We're not going
to see people who are going to look back over a hundred years
of life and go, you know, I have no regrets, no problems, no worries,
never pain, never suffering. As a matter of fact, it's going
to be the exact opposite. As it is today, it shall always
be. As it is, tomorrow shall be the
next day and the next day and the next day. And in certain
pockets of certain small segments of societies in certain areas
of the world, God sees fit to stir trouble here and to give
peace here. And then he swaps them. And then he mixes them up and
puts them over here and he does it all for his own purposes.
Eddie and I recorded a couple of weeks of broadcast last night,
and we talked about sovereignty. We talked about sovereignty,
and I don't want to steal away from the point of this tonight,
but let me remind us, beloved, that sovereignty, by definition,
means that God does what He wants, when He wants, with who He wants.
And that there is nothing that he seeks after, nothing that
he looks to, nothing that he knows that doesn't come from
himself that causes him to do anything. Period. And that there is nothing that
takes place in this world, good, bad, or indifferent, that he
has not decreed, that he has not purposed, and then by design,
because of that, that he is not the cause of. But yet in that
same way, God has never done evil. Though God causes evil
and uses evil for his purposes, he does it in a way of righteousness,
and he brings about good for his people, even when it seems
impossible to see for us. And this is not going to change.
That's where I was. It's not going to change. So
it is a fool's errand. It is an immature, infantile
naivety to think that we will ever see transformation in our
culture where there will not be a person, peoples, or groups
of peoples who are hated, destroyed, not cared for, who are looked upon in certain
ways by certain groups and murdered because of it. There's
never going to be a time when any of that is gone. Yes, we
may change it in our own homes, we may change it in our community,
but we will not change the world. We know that because it has always
been the desire of man to build and create things greater. It
has always been the intention of humanity to make something
better than for the generation that's coming behind them. It's
always been the intention of parents so that their children
can have a little bit better than they did, and so on and
so forth, and that can be emotional, financial, relational, physical. mental, academic, community,
politics, whatever. There's always a desire to make
it greater, to make it bigger. But in everything that humanity
has ever accomplished, it's all worthless. It's all temporal. Every speech that's ever moved
the masses to do something great has all just faded away into
history. Every significant creation, every
technology, every medical advancement, one day just poof, gone. Worthless. It shall be no more. It will
not stand. And when we live in the world
and we find ourselves being swallowed up by the world, we are as a
small leaf in the midst of a sea. And the Apostle James talks about
this and he says that oftentimes we are like that leaf in the
sea being tossed to and fro. And when you think of the swells
of the tides and you think of being out in deep water and these
huge battleships that have traversed the oceans throughout the ages. You can park boats and tanks
and airplanes and Everything else upon and there if they were
to sit in the city would encompass the size of our blocks blocks
and blocks of our city Yet in the sea, they're like a tiny
grain of sand and swells from here to 40 feet high to Negative
20 feet from where they were to begin with 60 foot differences
in just matters of seconds just tossed to and fro And beloved,
that's where our hearts are. When we look strong into the
world in which we live, when we look into the mirror of our
brothers and sisters, our neighbors, our friends, our enemies, our
coworkers, our families, our loved ones, and those strangers
that happen to live with us in this world. We see the horror,
we see the fear, we see that there is something that everyone
is looking for and they think that they are able to find it
in some way of creating it through something, some means, some mission,
some motive, some movement. But ultimately, it's never going
to happen. And if we were to be honest,
what people are really looking for is to find a place of stability,
to find a place of normality, to find a place without chaos,
or at least to the point where the chaos that is there is controllable,
is tangible, is something that we can go, okay, we know what's
coming, we've been there before. My second daughter had severe
asthma as a child. severe asthma. Her pulmonologist
gave us strict instructions, sat us down and told us what's
what. He said, your life is going to change as long as this child
lives with you until she outgrows this asthma or dies from it. And we had the plan. Number one
rule of asthma, don't panic. Number two rule of asthma, never,
ever, ever call 9-1-1. Number three, never put an asthmatic
in a child, a child asthmatic into an ambulance or never take
them into an emergency room. They will not survive the hour.
See, it's the exact opposite of what I thought to do. When
your child can't breathe and it's turning blue, its lips are
purple, it begins to go, and blood starts running out of their
nose and then they start to cough and then they throw up blood
and it's just like the exorcist But we learned very quickly that
was normal. We understood the conditions
and the parameters of this chaotic event, and we were like trauma
surgeons. Oh, she's turning blue, she's
having the thing. And then on top of that, when she had an
asthma attack in her sleep, it was almost eerie, supernaturally
so. Because her eyes will be awake,
she'll be screaming and clawing, you're trying to give her her
breathing treatment, she is trying to fight for her life, and she
is screaming as blood comes blowing out of her mouth. This is what
an asthmatic deals with, by the way. It's not just, I can't breathe.
When I say severe asthma, I mean severe asthma. And one night,
a young man in college, he and some of his buddies had been
part of the prayer team at Columbine High School, and they were in
our home that night. And this one young man was sitting on
our sofa and we heard Grace coughing in her sleep. And we just got
ready. Get the little thing, get the
wet towels. We just get ready. Just get ready. And he's sitting there, and what's
going on? Oh, that's OK, brother. Just
be patient. You'll get to see. And we wrestled
in the floor for 20 minutes. And it was all over. It was a
bloody mess, blood on the walls, everywhere, all over us. We never
broke a sweat. We never had an elevated pulse.
It's just normal. What's the point of all that?
At least when you know what's happening, you can be better
prepared. You have an anchor in the midst of the storm. The
preparation for that, when we got through, I get chills looking
at, I look back up at this young man who's like 24 years old,
and he's paler than I am, and he had a tan. And I don't think
he breathed the whole time. And he looks at us, he says,
God help me. How did y'all handle that? I
think I'm going to be sick. Oh, we do it all the time. I'm
sorry. I was about to die of fear. I
didn't know what was happening. You know, it was just traumatic
for him. He wasn't aware of what was gonna happen. We knew what
was happening. We knew how to handle it. We knew that no matter
how hard she clawed, we had to keep that stuff on her face,
whether we had to strangle her to make her take that medicine.
And that eventually, she'd pass out. And then when she passed
out, she'd breathe. And then we'd clean the blood
up. And we'd put her back to sleep until the next night that
it happened. And some people are saying, I
hope that never happens to me. But beloved, it's not that bad
once you're used to it. It's not that bad. There is an
anchor in the midst of that chaos. And now had she grown horns that
night or fire started shooting out of her mouth or she floated
into the air, said, I'm going to eat you all. I mean, you know,
then we would not have been prepared. We'd have been on the couch with
this guy turning pale, scared for our lives, screaming, running
out the window. But we knew. And I think that's what the ultimate
desire of most every human being is. Not that they want to have
a perfect life, but can we just find some solidarity? Can we
just find a place where we don't have to recreate the script every
six months to a year? Can we come to a place where
we can live as equals and eat and work and pay our bills and
enjoy our family? And when something happens, at
least we're prepared for it. Can we be prepared? Can we have
a point that holds us steady? Are we able to say this is unchangeable? And the answer to that is no. Now you see the word play in
which I tell that story that I hadn't thought about it in
a long time until I stood up here and I thought that's a good illustration
for me whether you get it or not I don't know. But no matter what we're trying
to find in life the only sure and steady anchor as we see here
in verse 19 is the Lord Jesus. I fear every single day, beloved. I want you to hear me say that
again. I fear every single day. I'm a father, I'm a husband,
I'm a pastor, I'm a human being. I have responsibilities, I have
uncertainties, I see things, I worry about every single person
that breathes. I'm concerned for your joy, I'm
concerned for your health, I'm concerned for your relationships,
I'm concerned for your perception of things, I'm concerned for
your spiritual health, I'm concerned for the time that you have, for
the margin that you have, for your marriages, for your children,
for their plans, for your nutrition, and all of that stuff together
on top of the fact that I know that my only calling is to make
sure that you're spiritually fed and prayed for. And I fear. I fear. I fear many of you are on the
internet too much. I fear many of you are listening
to the news too much. I fear many of you are being
divided in your mind and tossed to and fro because of things
that are going on in the world. I fear many of you are into fake
news and true news, which is both bad. I fear some of you
are going to be divided in the context of your relationships
in your own household because of it. I fear that sometimes. And so
every day there is always a burden. It's always there. And by the
Lord's mercy, when we think about these things, what is the outcome? What is the outcome for me to
fear the weather? Nothing but stupid fear. I'm worried about October. I'm worried about October. I'm gonna go sell some plasma so
I can cut down some trees. I mean, you see, why would I
worry about that? Is it constantly on my mind?
No. But when I see the sky get dark and I think, oh, September,
October's coming, that's when those storms like to get real
close to the United States. And we're just not prepared. I'm not there yet. I'm not the
pulmonological EMT for hurricanes yet. I don't have my stuff together. I've got to have it all together.
I've got to have my spiritual 9-1-1 kit. I've got to have my
Bible and my holy water. That's what we want. We want
preparedness. Beloved, we aren't going to be prepared for life.
Christ has prepared for us a place. This is not it. This is not our
home. This is not what our lives are
about. These circumstances are not our problems. Except that
our brothers and sisters are experiencing them and that makes
it our problem. Except that our neighbors have
fears and worries. It's not my job nor within my
power to effectually create success in your life in every avenue
of all of your physiological and psychological windows and
pockets. Yet concern always is there. So what does it do for me to
worry as I'm driving down the road and I'm talking to somebody
and I think, oh Lord, They're scared. Oh, Lord, I wonder how
it went. Oh, Lord, I wonder if they voted. I better start calling the whole
church. Did you vote? Did you vote? Did you vote? You didn't
get registered to vote. Oh, no. Why do we worry about that? What
are we fearful of? It's just a moment in time where
we think about these things, we have this little bit of pressure
on us, and we have the tendency to do one of two things. Freak
out about it or dwell on it. And we don't freak out because
we're civil. So we hold our thoughts and emotions together for a while
so that everybody can see that we're stoic. We're good. Yeah,
I've been thinking about that. I've been scared. I've been scared
to death. I mean, let's just be honest. There is fear. But in the midst of fear, there's
hope. In the midst of hope, there's
joy. And it's not what the world thinks.
It's not even what many of the Christians of the world think.
They think, okay, God's gonna see us through it. He might not. Because through it means it'll
be gone one day. This too shall pass, well so shall the happy
times. A lot of my friends were doing
very well financially before COVID-19. And now they're wondering
how they're going to keep up their third house. You might
lose it. The Lord hasn't promised us one,
much less three. And I'm not talking about the
yard house and the outhouse. I mean, we worry about things that are
outside of our control. If we look at what God has promised
us here in this text, we will see very clearly that there are
unchangeable things by which we have been promised life. God
will not lie. He has guaranteed His promise
with an oath against His own name. That's what we talked about
last week, right? And what we have done by His
mercy is we have fled to refuge in Him. See, as children, that's what
they do. They're scared in the middle
of the night. They flee for refuge. Where do they come? To my bed.
Teenagers. I need money. I flee to refuge. Where do they come? To dad and
mom. I'm hungry. You ate 7,000 calories
an hour ago. I'm still hungry. I mean, you
know, here, eat bread. I don't like that kind of bread.
You're too bougie. Go home. Go live with somebody else. that kind of bread. We flee,
we look for safety, we look for a hiding place, we want to escape
and sometimes that escape is to find other people who are
frightened who now have a cause and we stand over here so we
find some comfort in this unity that's not real intimacy. And when it doesn't fit our worldview
because we're conservatives and Christians And whatever else,
we step over here and find an affinity with another group of
people who are saying they care about these people, but not so
much to throw away the baby with the bathwater, and the true baby
is nationalism. Yep, you see? This is the most
political I will ever be in this bullpen. And so then you got everybody
else, even in those groups, there's faction after faction after faction
after faction. And everybody hides there in
those affinity groups. That's their refuge. So, beloved,
as Christians, if we're hiding in the affinity of a worldview
that is not the gospel of grace alone in Christ alone, we are
idol worshippers. And we are running to a place
that is not safe. We are running to a refuge that
is not a promise to us. The world and everything in it
has been given to Lucifer to dole out in the name of the false
Christ that he depicts. so that false converts and false
evangelical churches believe the lie and stand in these divided,
non-refuge factions while the entirety of the world looks on
and says, yep, there's my Jesus. No, that's my Jesus. Oh, that's
your Jesus? Well, there's my Jesus. And the sheep are scattered. The sheep are scattered. We have
fled for refuge to the promises of God in Jesus Christ. Beloved,
for us to leave that place is to abandon our hope. I want you to hear that. How
do we leave that place? None of us are apostate. Here's
how we leave that place. We eat the wrong stuff. We listen to the wrong things. We look at the wrong truth. We talk about dying and decaying
temporal things. When we engage our lives into
these things, outside of the refuge of Christ,
we fail to have hope. And our fear is not just a passing
fear. I'm worried about that. Christ. I'm worried about them. Christ. I'm scared about that. Christ.
I don't know what to do here. Christ. If you have ears here,
see. I'm not Anthony Robbins. I'm
not going to be able to give you a motivational speech in the outline of how
to effectually apply those things. I'm not a Zig Ziglar who can
empower you to be motivated within your own self-worth to stand
up and be empowered and to do something different, to make
a change. I'm a servant, a slave of the
Most High God who can only proclaim His name. And if I want to hide
in the refuge of Christ, then I must know Him and Him alone.
And I must teach Him and Him alone. And I must push us all
back into the center of our loving Father, whose arms have reached
out and grabbed us and drawn us into Him forcibly for our
own good and protects us there. Because it takes great wisdom
and it takes great maturity and it takes great spiritual strength
to be able to engage in cultural things without forsaking the
gospel. We have fled the refuge of Christ. so that we might have strong
encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. That's
what it says in verse 18. I'm not even in the text I want
to talk about tonight yet. The encouragement is strong because
the hope is solid. The encouragement to remain fast
in the gospel when the world says, you're not doing anything. What are you going to do? How
are you going to handle it? How are you prepared? Like those
preppers. We're all preppers. Just depends. I'm a toilet paper prepper. Always
have been. If I walk in there and I don't see 63 rolls, I'm
going to have to use 35 rolls before I get over the anxiety. And you might think, you're hoarding.
No, we use a roll a day at my house. Y'all probably do too,
don't you? Yeah, easy. Easy. I had to tinkle. We're going
to total paper a building. He wrapped all of Egypt's mummies
just then. Anyway, a hope. that is steadfast. Why? Because
it is a promise of God. He cannot lie. He has said our
foundation is on the rock of Christ, which is the rock of
offense. We don't go back into law keeping
so that we can feel secure in the same way we don't go back
into activities of law keeping so we can feel worthy of our security. Because here's
what I'm finding. And it's not in view here, but
it works here because Paul teaches it elsewhere. Romans eight for
one. The enemy plays in the playground
of our mind in two specific ways. He tells believers. and tempts
them with these lies. He says, you are probably not
truly in Christ because you are not doing these things correctly
enough, sufficiently. You better put circumcision back
on so that you can feel confident before Christ. When circumcision
is not salvation. Law-keeping is not part of salvation
except that Christ is the righteousness of God. He is the fulfillment
of the shadow of the law and he has put it away because he's
it. The other way the enemy tempts
us, and there are many ways, but two ways specifically that
I think fall into this category. When we sin, either by being tempted to walk
away back into works or tempted to walk into areas of debauchery
or sin, which we know are evil, then the cross doesn't seem sufficient
enough for us to stand bold before our Father in the throne room
of grace and say, hey, Dad, without thinking, He's going to say,
what have you been doing? Shame. Shame. When Paul says there's no condemnation.
God disciplines. We've already learned that, haven't
we? God disciplined those who belong to Him, so part of the
discipline is for us to recognize what's really happening when
we dabble in law-keeping. and legalism and when we dabble
in sin and rebellion, of which the other is. But I'm separating
them in different ways. So the other thing that the enemy
does is to make us feel guilty. Well, I'm fearful of the things
that are going on in the world. Now I'm guilty. Why didn't I
trust in you? That's the work of the devil. What's the remedy? Stop reading social media, stop
listening to the stuff, stop looking at your life, stop listening
to your so-called friends who aren't in the faith, and rest
in the sufficient promise of the Lord Jesus Christ in whom
we find refuge. Well, how do I know? Because
God said it, that's why. God has said that Christ has
put away sin. God has said that Christ is our righteousness.
God has said that He has satisfied His wrath. He is our propitiation.
God has said that He is the Great High Priest. God has said that
Moses wrote of Him. God has said that the temple
in awe, and He's about to show even before there was the temple,
before there was the law, before there was circumcision, before
there was worship, Abraham was shown the shadow
of Christ in the person of Melchizedek. And even that did nothing for
Abraham. That's what he's going to say.
It did nothing. Christ did everything for Abraham.
Abraham did nothing for himself. So then verse 19, here we are,
sermon starts. We have this as a sure, wow,
long introduction, and steadfast anchor of the soul. Sure and steadfast anchor of
the soul. What do we have? That Christ
has paved the way. That Christ has nailed it down. In 1996, when I named my teaching
ministry, I named it Anchoring Faith. Because I believe that
when we learn the gospel and grow in the gospel of grace,
that our anchor is stronger and heavier. We find a strong foundation in
the gospel. We do not dabble in our flesh,
in our world, in our philosophy, in our worldviews. We don't deal
with culture in a way of trying to see what we can do to get
away from the fear. We hold fast in the midst of
fear, and that is what a little bit of faith looks like. When
we trust only, only, not and, only, in the truth that Jesus
has entered in behind the curtain. Therefore, we know without a
shadow of a doubt that we are in Christ, He is inside the presence
of God, and as long as we're with Him, we're safe. That's
as simple as it gets. And so if I'm trying to peek
around the other way, if I'm looking over the fence like in
John 10, if I'm trying to sneak underneath the fence or if I'm
throwing stuff over, I'm a wolf. A hired hand. And anybody who
tries to teach us to do that, to enter into any other way.
If anybody tries to stop us at the entrance of the Holy of Holies
and tell us to change our clothes because we're not dressed appropriately.
If anybody stops us at the entrance of the tabernacle and says you
need to wash because you're not clean enough. If anybody says,
hey, where's your animal? Where's your dove? Where's your
flower? Oh, you don't have it? Where's
your money? I'll change it for you and give you something to
sacrifice. Anybody that tries to say, where is your gift, is
trying to send you in through another way. Anybody that tells
us that our lives don't look the right part because, and because
of that, we are not guaranteed entrance is a liar because Christ
is already in there and we are in him. And that is our anchor. That is the steadfast and sure
anchor of our soul. Now, beloved, I'm not going to
sit here and become a philosopher. Paul was not a philosopher. So I'm not gonna sit here and
parse out the difference between the soul and the mind and the
body and the gut and the heart and the stomach and the bowels
and the movement and all this other, I didn't mean to say movement,
I said bowels, I said bowel movement. But anyway, and all these different
things that are going on inside metaphysically. I'm just gonna tell you this. When
the Bible talks about the soul, the Bible's talking about the
innermost core of a human's countenance, of the human's existence. The
innermost core, the very thing that taps you on the shoulder
goes ding, ding, ding, fear. The very thing that drives me to
worry, the very thing that drives me to anger, the very thing that
drives me to step outside of Christ and come into a place
of position so that I can do something. that makes a difference I can stand for something that
means something that makes a difference and I'm not talking about anything
specific beloved don't put words in my mouth I'd blow your mind
if you knew what I was really thinking about how to shove certain
identities into that channel let's just say this I'd be that
most hated man in Evans County by most people who look like
me. Jesus has gone through the inner
place behind the curtain. And it's not make-believe or
naivety or wishful thinking to consider the fact that it was
effectual for us. Because Paul says it, look, verse
20, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner. Okay, He's been there on our
behalf. There is no more tickets for
sale And there's no more preparation to enter into the Kingdom of
Heaven that Christ has not already purchased and accomplished. On our behalf, Christ has entered
How did He do that? We've already seen it. By His
blood. He paid the way. He set us apart and we who are
set apart and the one who sets us apart have one source. It is our brother, Jesus Christ. Our Lord, Jesus Christ. Our Savior, Jesus Christ. Our
God, Jesus Christ. So we consider Jesus, who is
the high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him, who
appointed him to bring his people into his presence. And now when
we see the trueness of this promise, Paul takes us back to the eternal
nature of the Son as God. The eternal nature of the Son.
And that in the recorded history of Melchizedek, nobody knows
his mom and daddy. He had mom and dad. Nobody knows
anything about him except what Abraham said about him. And Abraham
said about Melchizedek, he's the king of peace and he's a high priest. So I give my worship to him. I give my honor to Him. I give Him esteem. And then there's nothing else
said. Melchizedek vanished off the face of the earth in the
history books, just like billions of people are born and die every
single, in this world, not every single day, that'd be terrible.
But in this world, in its history, billions of people have died
throughout the ages, having never been known by anybody but those
who knew them personally. There's no historical record
for most people in an annals of history. of any kind. We know Melchizedek was, we know
the role that he played, and then we don't see who took his
place. So in the sense of the priesthood
as God later gave it to Moses, it's as if Melchizedek still
sits on that role. That's what he's going to talk
about. And he's going to say that Melchizedek
could do nothing to bring about perfection. But Christ did everything
to perfect his people. Beloved, I know it's tough and
it's hard for me right now as a shepherd not to truly conflate
this teaching with our cultural issues. But they do apply when
we are tempted to sin. to fear, to doubt, to worry,
to engage, to divide. We stand in the presence of God
because Christ our High Priest has done it and it is finished. Is that the tenth time I've said
that tonight? Is that the thousandth time I've said that in the last
twelve weeks? I'm going to say it a billion times more And we'll
keep saying that until the time comes where we stand in his presence.
Beloved, do not be shaken. Find your anchor. For some practical
application, stay in the word. Stay out of the fodder. Stay out of it. Don't read it. Don't listen. Engage with the
community in which you live as you're able to infuse the gospel
message into that noise that it is so different that it streams
like a light in the middle of the darkness. And if you can't
do that without shadowing it over, then just be quiet. Because that is commanded to
us by God as His children to be like our Savior, like we were
talking about earlier. We hate the brethren when we
preach and discuss things that are not Christ. And when we hate
the brethren, we spit in the face of grace. Do you want to
spit in the face of grace? I don't. But when I do, where
is my anchor? in His gracious mercy, in His
love. We have to be corrected by the
discipline of the Lord. His Word does these things. If you are not correctable by
the Word of God, He is not your God. That's a condition on salvation.
If that's the way you see it, then you're more of a legalist
than you'll ever admit. If you have ears to hear, listen
to the Word of the Lord. rest in our sure and steadfast
anchor, Jesus Christ, the righteous. Let's pray. We thank you, Father,
for this just short segue, Lord, into the sting of the life in
which we live this very moment, Father, that we might be shepherded
by your word, that we might apply it in a way that is real and
tangible this very moment. as we never let go of your free
and sovereign grace, as we never push aside the truth of Christ
and his finished work. But Father, for the sake of each
other, all this stuff, though it is important, though it is
urgent, though we are embroiled in our spirit, Father, it is
not useful for us to consider in lieu of your mercy. And even when the world hears
us say and speak of Christ, those who may even claim to be our
siblings in Him, they will argue that there is much more to be
done. But proclaiming Christ, we must not move. We must not move. And Father, thank You for the
simplicity of Your Gospel message. Thank you for the reminder that
we've already dealt with, Lord, in this text, but to be able
to take this night and rest more and more and more in the finished
work of Jesus. Father, help us to serve and
to love each other, to meet the needs that we have, to reach
our hand across to our neighbors, to pray for our enemies, to weep
with those who weep, to get angry at injustice, Father, to exercise
our liberties that we might see change in the world, but to never
lose sight of what this world was intended to be. And Father, it was created that out
of it you would call your people who are no longer of it. And
that as we do that which we've been called to do this season,
we know that one day through Your Word, You will wipe it all
away. And then and only then will there
be true peace, true unity, true love, holistically and fully
and truly in the new kingdom that You create, where there
will be no sin. where there will be no murdering,
no bigotry, no lying, no hate, no fear, no doubt, no division,
no concerns, no burdens, no hunger, no thirst. For we shall feast
upon the glories forever and ever and ever of Jesus Christ,
who is our joy, who is our peace, who is our wisdom, who is our
love, who is our unity, who is our bread, who is the water of
our very souls. And it's in his name we pray.
Amen.