Open your Bibles to the book
of Exodus, chapter 33. Exodus 33, and we'll be starting
in verse 12. Exodus 33, starting in verse
12. Then Moses said to the Lord,
see, you say to me, bring up this people, but you have not
let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, I
know you by name, and you have also found grace in my sight.
Now, therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in your sight, show
me now your way. that I may know you and that
I may find grace in your sight and consider that this nation
is your people. And he said, my presence will
go with you and I will give you rest. Then he said to him, if
your presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from there
or from here. For how then will it be known
that your people and I have found grace in your sight, except you
go with us? So we shall be separate, your
people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the
earth. So the Lord said to Moses, I will also do this thing that
you have spoken, for you have found grace in my sight, and
I know you by name. And he said, please show me your
glory. Then he said, I will make all
my goodness pass before you and I will proclaim the name of the
Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I
will be gracious and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion. Now, when Drew said that I had
asked to preach because something was laid on my heart, that's
probably the best way to put it. I remember speaking with the
guys in the back one time that I used to think I had a talent,
for lack of a better word, that I could open this up and just
the words would come spilling out. And it's not a talent. That was, that's not the right
thought of it. It's a gift. And it's God's gift. And he can, he can turn it on
and he can turn it off. The word of God comes that way.
It wasn't something I had. And for a long time, it seemed
that that spigot had been turned off. It was, at best, leaky. It just was really hard to sit
down and look at something. But the other day, I sat down
and it just, it came right out. And this one's a bit different. Because I'm gonna talk about
something personal. My favorites. These are my favorite
verses. And I know that sounds kind of
weird. I bet I could ask each one of
you, or if you just ask yourself, what is your favorite verse?
Or what's the most important, you know, verse or book or whatever
to you? And you probably all have an
answer, at least in private, because in public we think like,
shouldn't we consider the whole thing equally as good, equally
as important, equally a favorite, right? I mean, having favorites
feels the same as saying you like one part of God's word more
than another, right? And everything he says is good. It's excellent. And yes, even
though, you know, every believer or true Christian or whatever
you want to say, that we do hold this whole Bible as the Word
of God from beginning to end. And if we hold it in high esteem,
there are parts of it that impact us more than others. There just
are. And you might hold, for example,
the healing of blind Bartimaeus closer to your heart than the
redemption of Ruth Or you might, well, the 24 elders that surround
the throne in heaven, their utterings, which there were several, you
might enjoy those. Or you find the declarations
of Hosea, they bring you great joy. That's okay. I read Matt because
he's always in Psalms. That's his favorite, that's fine.
Can't fault someone for going to their favorite place all the
time. Now a long time ago, probably back when I was a teenager, I
thought that everyone had a favorite verse. And by a favorite verse,
I'm talking singular, just one. And then as I grew older, you
know, things changed. But I know 15 years ago, I did
have just one. And you think, how can you have
just one? I'm getting there. But probably about 15 years ago
or so, I did have just one. And it was Ecclesiastes chapter
three, verse 14. It says that, I know whatever
God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it and
nothing taken from it. God does it that men should fear
before him. And that was a favorite verse
15 years ago, and it still is today. I still love that verse.
But now there's others. Now, you think, how can you have
more than one? A favorite is a singular thing. It means something
that's preferred before all others of the same kind. Well, as happens
with age and experience, I changed my mind. I now have several favorite
verses and that list just keeps growing. I imagine it'll just
encompass the whole Bible eventually. But I have several that impact me
in special ways. And they don't decrease the importance
of the rest of the Bible at all. And I would like to share some
with you this morning. And we've read one of them already.
It's Exodus 33. Right there in verse 19. That
part of the verse that says, I will be gracious to whom I
will be gracious and I will have compassion on whom I will have
compassion. Now I like that verse because
it stands on its own. And it's like a mountain, you
can't move it. It is huge to me. But I didn't always like it for
that reason. We tend to view things differently
at different times in our lives or from a different perspective.
Some things just mean one thing to us the first time we see them
and will mean something different to us later on when we see them
again. Now, when I was in elementary
school learning Iowa history, specifically the history of our
town, they showed us the original general store. They're right
there in the middle of the town. It had been established in 1882,
and it was two stories tall, made out
of brick, and it had a below ground level. At the time, we
learned about it, that top floor wasn't in use. There was safety
concerns for it. The main floor was a grocery
store, and the below ground was a bar. Same guy owned both. Grocery
store on top, bar on the bottom. And on the outside, facing the
street, they didn't used to just put a sign up, they would paint
the wall. And you could just barely see the original name
painted on it. And I don't know if I'm pronouncing
this right, but it was the Foppe Pioneer Store, it's F-O-P-P-E.
Whatever that is, that's what it was called. You can still
see it. And the first thing I thought when I saw that building and
the sign was that's an amazing piece of history. That's really
cool. Something really old. And then as I've grown older
and I think back on that faded marquee there, it means something
different. It means time has passed and
with the passage of time goes our remembrance of things. Instead of feeling amazed by
it as a fact, I feel a bit wistful. Like that hymn says, time, like
an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away. They fly forgotten
as a dream dies at the opening day. And it also reminds me of
this verse. In Psalm 103, as for man, his
days are like grass. As a flower of the field, so
he flourishes. For the wind passes over it,
and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. I changed. Time and experience
change our perspective. In the same way, when I first
came upon this verse in Exodus 33, 19, where God proclaims that He will
have mercy on whom He will have mercy, I thought it was a perfect
sword. Sword. To kill, basically, the anti-Christian
doctrine of man's free will. That was my crusade. This verse became my favorite.
because I wanted to use it to attack the lies on God. I wanted
to be God's weapon. And I thought to myself that
if I could just repeat this in front of everybody in town, I
could turn them. That's all it would take. I did not embark on that little
fight. And as the years passed, though,
that same verse meant more than just a phrase to beat someone
over the head with. It showed me how God saves sinners,
a group of people that, surprise, included me. Now this verse meant that he
showed me mercy, and he showed you mercy, his elect, his church. his people, and all children
of God being equally sinners meant that God's compassion equally
and completely saved them all. Yet today, this verse means yet
something else, something new. I will have mercy. I will have
compassion. And you have heard what they
say about the I wills of God. If God wills it, it will be done.
Just you try to stop God from doing what he wills, you could
line up all the devils at the gates of heaven and it would
not stop God from fulfilling his purpose, from fulfilling
what he wills. This verse is now one of my favorites. because God said, I will, I will. Another favorite verse of mine
is found in Mark 10, Mark chapter 10. And these verses, they all affect
us differently. Some spiritually, some in the
mind, some emotionally. This one for me is very emotional. It's starting in verse 46, Mark
10, verse 46. It says, now they came to Jericho,
and as he went out of Jericho with his disciples and a great
multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the
road begging. And when he heard that it was
Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of
David, have mercy on me. And then many warned him to be
quiet, but he cried out all the more, son of David, have mercy
on me. So Jesus stood still and commanded
him to be called. Then they called the blind man
saying to him, be of good cheer, rise, he is calling you. And
throwing aside his garment, he rose and came to Jesus. So Jesus
answered and said to him, what do you want me to do for you?
The blind man said to him, Rabboni, that I may receive my sight.
Then Jesus said to him, go your way, your faith has made you
well. And immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus
on the road. Now many people, I'm pretty sure
you could find, how many verses is this? Six or seven? You could
find seven favorite verses here. All of them are good. Many people might like the way
in which Jesus pauses his journey for one blind beggar. Just as he was troubled to save
the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, he stops to help
a blind man. It's no trouble for him. Others might appreciate that
this blind man knows exactly who Jesus is without even seeing
him. He knows exactly who he is. he calls him son of David."
Now that's a remarkable thing to consider that men who could
see back in Jesus' day, men who could see, they called Jesus a follower
of Beelzebub, men who could see, while a blind man sees him as
the true son of David. Think of that. And still others will find peace
in this illustration knowing that if Jesus can make a physically
blind man see, he can likewise make the spiritually blind to
see. All excellent points, but my
favorite verse is in 49. Then they called the blind man
saying to him, be of good cheer, rise, he is calling you. And
I just think, oh, to have the consideration and attentiveness
of the Messiah. I mean, if you were feeling low,
if you were feeling low, that ought to cheer you up. Be of good cheer. He is called
you. You. He doesn't call the wicked. He
leaves them in their iniquity, yet he called you. And not to overshadow the fact
that Jesus calls to Bartimaeus, but it is even more amazing when
we consider the state of Bartimaeus in this story. He's blind, that's
told. He's begging, meaning he has
no money. He can't work. and he has no belongings that
we're told of, maybe just the clothes on his back. In other words, he does not have
a splinter of anything that we would consider as having value,
not a thing. But verse 49, be of good cheer. You who have no value to the
world If you are one of God's chosen people, you have value. As God says in 1 Samuel 16, verse
seven, man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks
at the heart. And finally, I'll leave you with
one more of my favorite verses. And we read it earlier, Ecclesiastes
3.14. Let's turn there and read it
together. Ecclesiastes 3.14. It says, I know that whatever
God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it and
nothing taken from it. God does it that men should fear
before him. Now that verse excites me the
way that the I wills of God excite me. It's a truth and an assurity
and a surety to me. two things at the same time.
It's an arrow and it's a shield, a thing that pierces and a thing
that protects. Firstly, as born and bred sinners,
we know that we begin our lives with stony hearts. And a stony
heart is a heart without life, which is to say no spiritual
life. And without spirit, there is no abiding with God. God is
spirit, says John in chapter four, Verse 24, and those who
worship him must worship in spirit and truth. What then can be done
with a stony heart? Can a stony heart be made spiritual?
Can a stony heart be made alive? I'll just repeat the words of
Ezekiel. Oh Lord God, you know, you know. If God pierces a stony
heart, it will become exactly what God wants it to be. Now,
you might think an arrow piercing a heart sounds the opposite of
life-giving. But unlike that deadly arrow
that found its way between the pieces of Saul's armor and that
led to his death, when God pierces your heart, you become alive. alive. Whatever God does, it shall be
forever means to me that God said, I will from before time
began and that he would pierce the heart of every sinner for
whom he chose to show mercy. And secondly, if God, if whatever
God does is forever, that means you and I are safe. in the truth
that nothing that has come before and nothing that comes after
will break the bonds of God's love that he has for us. That's what forever means. God's forever started before
time and endures after time. Because of this truth, Jesus
may confidently say, my father who has given them, my sheep,
to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them
out of my Father's hand. No one can snatch. No one can
take. Because I know that whatever
God does, it shall be forever. Nothing can be added to it. He
will not justify the ungodly. And nothing can be taken from
it. Because once they're saved, Once Christ has died for someone,
they stay that way. Whatever God does, it shall be
forever. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Drew, will you close us please?