message is compassion. If you'd
like to turn to Hebrews chapter 5. Hebrews chapter 5. Here the writer is continuing
to expound having established Christ's office as high priest. He called him a merciful and
faithful high priest prior to He's further explaining or expressing
Christ's qualifications, Christ's abilities, Christ being perfect,
being perfect for that office. Christ wasn't made, He's God. So to say he was made for the
office of high priest, that's a negative. He wasn't made. No,
the office of high priest was made for Christ. For Christ to
be our high priest. He was appointed high priest.
And I hope to look at that next Sunday as he mentions Christ
being the high priest after the order of Melchizedek here. The
Lord be merciful, look at that next Sunday. But Christ was appointed
high priest. Understand that whether it's
the old covenant or the new covenant no one could just decide to become
a priest. You didn't wake up one day and
say I think I'm gonna become a priest. I'm going to start
trying to become a priest. Now, we see that's not true today.
Many people think that they can become a priest and in different
churches and different sects, but sects because it's acceptable
and it's valued or whatever else. But what about in the Old Testament? Well, the Lord appointed you
had to be a Levite to be a priest. You had to be a Levite and you
had to be appointed a high priest. You couldn't just decide to be
a high priest even then. A high priest was ordained of
the Lord. Aaron was the first. He was ordained
and then his sons followed after him and they were ordained. Now in the old covenant, Being
a Levi, it was under the covenant of works by the law. And I'm
going to give us a little bit of understanding this morning
to see in order to see the office fulfilled of our Lord. We need
to understand exactly the old covenant, the new covenant, just
a little bit. The old covenant could not redeem anyone. The
old covenant was given of the law. by works, you worked in
order to do that which was pleasing in the Lord's sight. And what
that proved is no one could fulfill the law. No one could do the
works of the law and live. No one could be saved under the
old covenant. They could be saved only one
way, looking to the Lord by faith, looking unto him. They did the
ordinances and that's how they were given the ability to worship.
The blood of those bulls and goats never put away their sin.
It was just a type and a picture of the blood of Christ. And that's
what they looked to was the blood of Christ. They knew it was a
picture. The good news is that the Lord,
our Lord, his blood far exceeds all those other sacrifice. He
far precedes the law as eternity precedes time. He's both king
and priest, as it says here, after the order of Melchizedek.
He's the only priest that's ever been king. Did you know that?
There was no other king other than Melchizedek, which is a
picture of the Lord himself without beginning of days, without end
of years, having neither father nor mother. What the scripture
tells us, that's the Lord Jesus Christ is who it is. Now this
covenant of works was not the covenant where God chose to save
sinners. The covenant that God chose to
save sinners is the covenant of grace. Grace is the opposite
of works, isn't it? If you do something, to obtain
favor with God, that's called works. And the Lord says, I will
not accept your works. Your works are not good enough.
It has to be all of grace where he does all the work. And that's
the good news about the covenant of grace is it's an everlasting
covenant. Never had a beginning and never have an end. Covenant
of grace precedes the covenant of works because it's eternal.
Now here the writer is explaining the office of the priest in both
covenants. Christ couldn't just come as
a priest and completely change every ordinance and completely
do away with the law by saying, well, this now is null and void
and I'm gonna do it this way. He had to fulfill it all. He
had to fulfill it all. He had to perform the works of
the law that we could not do. He had to perform the statutes
of the priests that you and I cannot do. He had to work under the
father to merit salvation, to earn it for his people. And this
is something where most go astray from the truth is that they do
something in order to earn favor with God, or they do something
in order to obtain a certain status with God. I have given
my heart to Jesus. They say things like that. Or
I have prayed this prayer. I have done this. And in doing
so, they're interceding for themselves. They're saying, I have done. And the Lord says, no. That's
the covenant of works. I will have no part with that.
Can't give the Lord. He doesn't want our heart. It's
wicked. It's stony. It's depraved. It's polluted. He's going to
have to give us a new heart. He's gonna have to give us salvation
by grace through faith. Now these qualifications of the
high priest were defined by the Lord. The responsibilities, the
requirements, they were selfless. This is why the first order of
priesthood that was given, or I guess it would be the second
order, the first order was Christ. He was a priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek, and Melchizedek's the first represented
priest in the scripture. We see that, he was far before
Aaron, wasn't he? Aaron was the first ordained
high priest under the Levitical law, under the law. So under
that law, we see the ordinances and the Lord said you were to
be selfish, you were to be compassionate to the ignorant. But how selfish,
I said selfish, I meant selfless, you must be selfless. And we
see though that so many abused that office, didn't they? They
were not selfless, they were selfish. You remember Hophni
and Phinehas, what they did, they were responsible for offering
up the sacrifice of the Lord. Now understand something, under
this Levitical law, what we would do to worship, right now what
we're doing to worship, This is what we would have been doing
to worship. We would have been bringing the firstlings of our
flock unto the Lord for sacrifice because the Lord said, here's
where I'm going to meet with you at this mercy seat. I'm not
going to meet with you anywhere else. If you want to worship
me, here's where you worship me. And it's by blood alone. And if our hope was to be covered
by the blood, we brought the sacrifice. And the priest would
then sacrifice that animal unto the Lord, burn it with fire.
And the responsibility of me and my household would be to
consume that animal. We would eat it whole. We would
eat it whole, burn it with fire. We would not, couldn't sodden
it, couldn't water it down. We would eat it whole and the
priests would take a flesh hook, a meat hook, and take part of
it, whatever it got, for them, for the priests themselves to
eat it. This is a picture of the Lord Jesus Christ having
to be eaten whole by his people. He was burnt with fire on the
cross of Calvary by the wrath of God. He absorbed the wrath
of God and he can't be watered down. He must be eaten whole
by you and I. That was the picture and that
was their worship. Then the priest, once per year, would go in and
he would offer up the blood upon the mercy seat. And did our high
priest go in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption, and not by the blood of bulls and goats, but by his
own blood, he offered up his blood for the eternal redemption
of his people. This is all the types and all
the pictures of the Old Testament. Everything points to the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is why it could never be
fulfilled or they could never have saved anyone under the ordinances
they were doing. They, the priests weren't the
ones saving people. They were just obeying God. These
people that wanted to worship, they were looking forward to
the cross. They were looking forward to the lamb and what
it, what that lamb, they just sacrifice represented the blood
that it shed. It's the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
what they look to. Now this covenant was given in
time, all those sacrifices, and it was not everlasting. Think
about priest after priest after priest that stood, never taking
away the sins of the people. Sacrifice after sacrifice after
sacrifice, day after day, year after year. This is why the Lord
said, and sacrifice, he says, David, tells us that if it was sacrifice
the Lord wanted, he would give sacrifice, but the Lord has,
he only gloried in one sacrifice. It was the Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the sacrifice he gloried in. That's the whole point is
men now have it in our minds by nature that we sacrifice unto
the Lord by what we do and the Lord will be pleased. It's not
true. Christ is the only sacrifice whereby the Lord is pleased.
And so all this Old Testament priesthood, all these ordinances
and sacrifices, and even now what we do is looking unto the
Lord Jesus Christ alone. We rest in him. We rest in him. All those these men were ordained, they were sinful, weren't
they? They had to offer up a sacrifice
for themselves before they could offer up a sacrifice for the
people, but not the Lord Jesus Christ. They could never save
anyone, they could never put away sin, but here's the good
news. When He, the Lord Jesus Christ, had by Himself purged
our sin, He sat down. After He offered up His blood,
On the mercy seat, the Lord said, satisfied, sit thou here at my
right hand. Then the priest work was finished
for the first time ever. Throughout all history, all the
sacrifices that happened, they would offer up daily, they would
go to bed, they would wake up the next morning and guess what
they had to do again? Offer up again unto the Lord every single
day without stop. And it never put away sin, but
this man, when he entered once into the holy place, He put his
blood upon the mercy seat, and the Lord said, sit thou here.
It's finished. The work is finished. Salvation's
accomplished for his people. That was a pretty lengthy intro,
but necessary for us to understand the work of the priest, the responsibility
of the priest. I want to read our text here
in Hebrews chapter five. I just want to read the first
three verses, and I want us to notice one distinct word, compassion.
For every high priest taken from among men is ordained for men
in things pertaining to God that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices
for sins, who can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that
are out of the way, for that he himself also is compassed
with infirmity. And by reason hereof, he ought,
as for the people, so also for himself to offer for sins. I want to look at this particular
characteristic of our Lord, our high priest compassion, the compassion
he has for his people, the compassion of the ignorant. Now, You ever
told somebody that they're ignorant? Well, the funny part is, to me,
growing up, I thought that that meant something totally different
than what it meant. I thought that was calling somebody really
a bad name. All it truly means is unlearned,
uneducated. You just don't know. I thought
it was calling somebody stupid or something even more so, and
it can be used, I'm sure, in that matter, but it's the ones
that don't know what the word means, they're the ones that
get offended. They're ignorant of the word ignorant. That's
literally what, you see what I'm saying there? When he says that
we're ignorant, we're ignorant of the things of God. We're ignorant
of godliness. We're unlearned in that, and
we can't come to the knowledge of the truth in and of it by
ourself. We're gonna have to be taught of the Lord. He's gonna
have to reveal himself. Now, the first thing I want us to
understand is that in this ignorance, most will try to take one of
the offices of the Lord. They don't necessarily mean to
do this. And this is the danger that we
have, is trying to take one of the offices of the Lord, whether
it be prophet, whether it be priest, or whether it be king.
And most of the time, most of the time, men do want to sit
on his throne. They do want to proclaim themselves
as God. But most of the time, It's the
priest position that they try to take. By offering up what
they have done, or by offering up what they have not done. Most of your religion in the
world is completely based upon taste not, touch not, handle
not. It's completely based upon I
have done this, and I have done that, and I know that I'm safe
because I've prayed this, or I have abstained from that. Somebody told me the other day
that they've never one time touched tobacco. And I said, well, good
for you. Good for you. And I said, why
are you telling me this? He said, well, because I know
many people who's done that. He says, so I know that it's
a good thing that I haven't done that. The Lord tells us, this
is his words, the Lord tells us that we are to refrain from
certain things. And he says, I know that he'll be pleased
that I've never touched tobacco. And I thought, boy, if he's pleased
with that, I'm in trouble. But the second thing I thought
was it's the same exact thing. Somebody that has, that is ignorant,
that's the word, isn't it? Ignorant, thinking, I think,
okay, I think this, this has to be right. This is the natural
conclusion. I've never touched tobacco. Now
the Lord will be pleased with me. No, it's not what you have
done. It's not what I have done. It's
not what you have not done. And it's not what I have not
done. It's what Christ has done. That's salvation. And if I'm
not found in him, I have not salvation. I have not salvation. What this man was saying, if
the Lord's gonna be pleased with him, he's gonna walk up before
the Lord and intercede for himself. Lord, I have done this in your
name. I have done that in your name. And you know whose responsibility
that is for the Lord's people? Christ's responsibility. He is
the intercessor. That's what the priest did. The
priest stood between God and men, offering up sacrifice unto
the Lord, enabling the people to worship. Without the priest,
there is no worship. There is no worship. In the Old
Covenant and in the New Covenant, without the priest, there is
no worship. Now, our priest, it's not one
we can see, is he? Not by eyes that we have physically,
but it's our spiritual priest, the Lord Jesus Christ. Without
him, we can't worship. We cannot worship. It's of his
mercy that we bow to him, that we see the need of him as our
high priest. It's of his mercy that we see
that he's the only way that we can worship God. Some others
will really believe that they're worshiping God. I watched a YouTube
video. I can't remember if it was yesterday,
but it was about a five-year-old preacher, a five-year-old preacher. And this kid got up and I don't
know why I click on that stuff, but I did. And everything about
it just, Two things make me want to preach. Hearing good preaching,
good true gospel preaching, and hearing bad preaching. That's
the two things that make me want to preach. And that made me want
to preach because it was not good. This young man was just
repeating everything that he heard in the lie, and everybody
was hooping and hollering and yelling and throwing their hands
up and making all kinds of commotion. They called it worship and said,
this is just great. The Lord's been here. This is
the Lord's spirit. No, it's not. No, the Lord's
Spirit is a still, small voice, and it doesn't draw attention
to Himself. If we're going to worship the
Lord, it's going to be in spirit and in truth. The Spirit doesn't
move upon you and I to cause us to lose our mind and run around
crazy. The Spirit says, rest in Christ. That's what He points to. Rest.
Don't move. Rest in Christ. The only way
that we can do that is if we have a high priest who entered
into the throne room of God on our behalf. and interceded for
us. And we're taught by him to rest
in him, it's his spirit. As we've said so many times,
God is not approachable by us. Matter of fact, no man can see
God and live, can he? Moses said, Lord, show me your
glory. Show me your glory. I'm not sure if we're going to
talk about that next hour also, we may, but show me your glory. He wanted to see the glory of
the Lord. And the Lord said, Moses, no man can look upon me
and live, but there is a place nigh unto me, a place nigh unto
me where you can see my glory. When I, I'm going to put you
in that place. You can't get there. You can't
get there. You can't climb to the top of
the mountain. You can't approach it, matter of fact. He said,
I'm gonna have to put you there, the cleft of the rock, and whenever
my glory passes by, I'll show you my hinder parts. You'll see
my goodness and my mercy, what I have done for you. And you'll
be hid in that cleft. You won't endure my wrath. You
won't die because you're in the cleft of the rock. That cleft
of the rock is Jesus Christ, our high priest. We're in him. Here's what the Lord says, Exodus
25, 22. There, I will meet with thee. There, I will meet with thee.
And I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat. That's the only place we can
meet with God. But Lord, I can't enter into
the holiest of holies. You'll kill me. I need a substitute. And that's exactly what the Lord
Jesus Christ did. And did you know that mercy seat
represents the Lord Jesus Christ? That's who he is. Now the Lord
says, come, come to the throne of grace. That throne of grace,
that's the mercy seat, isn't it? Come to Christ. He is the
mercy seat. He is the resting place of his
people. He is the place of worship for
his people. This is the only place God meets
with someone in mercy. Now, don't miss this. Anybody
else that approaches, we try to meet the Lord anywhere else
other than the mercy seat. It'll only be in judgment, and
it'll only be in wrath. There's no other place to come
to God but Christ. That's the only place. He said,
I am the way. He didn't say, I'm a way. He
said, I am the way. And then he tells us, if anyone
else tries to climb up any other way, the same as a thief and
a robber, he's very serious. He is our high priest. He must
be, or we have no hope. He is our mercy seed, or we have
no hope. We cannot intercede on our behalf.
And that's the mistake, isn't it? Men try to intercede on their
behalf, try to present something to God. I've done this, or I've
done that. Somehow, look at me. I wrote
a bulletin article, look at me. And we're gonna touch on that
next hour, so I won't spend time on that. But that's what our
natural state is, look at me. The believer says what? Look
to him, look to Christ, don't look at me. Look to Christ. You ever heard somebody say,
I'm not as bad as I used to be? Not as bad as I used to be. That's
true, isn't it? Not as bad as I used to be. We
know we're worse than we used to be. Is that not true? You see yourself as getting better
or getting worse. The thoughts that you have, your
body's getting worse, whether you see it or not. The older
you get, the more you hurt. Your mind goes, I'm having to
write more notes down. I proved it this morning by our
announcements. I gotta write more things down.
You say, you're young. I say, I know, that scares me.
I've got to already take notes, carry on a book, figure it out.
We're falling apart. We're dying. We're dying. Right now, we're dying. Every
heartbeat is. Our heartbeat's numbered. Our
seconds are counting. It's appointed unto men once
to die and after this the judgment. If we stand before him without
a high priest surety, if we stand before him without the one that
entered into the holiest of holies by his own blood in our stead,
hell will be our eternal home. We've got to have him. We've
got to have him. You ever been, you ever felt
like you've been misjudged? Misjudged. You know, that's something
in society that's become pretty predominant. People say, don't
judge me. That wasn't something, I don't remember hearing that
whenever I was really young. Maybe it was a thing then too.
People say, well, I'm misjudged. What they mean by that is, is
they did something, but their intentions were to do something
else, or something was misconstrued about them, and I didn't really
do that. And what's the first thing we do? Well, we want to
take up for ourself. Naturally, we want to take up
for ourself. If you go to a court of law and there's going to be
the plaintiff and the defendant, what's the defendant going to
do? He's going to defend himself. She's going to defend themselves.
Whether they're guilty or not, they're going to defend themselves.
Well, I understand this happened, but it's not as bad as it looks.
Well, I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Well, I'm
not as guilty as it looks like I am. The Lord knows the heart,
doesn't he? He looks all the way down. I'm not talking about
physical things. I'm talking about spiritual things. And only
the Lord's people hear these words, you're guilty, you are
the man, you are the woman, and say truth, Lord. Truth, Lord,
I'm as guilty as you say I am. I'm as bad, I'm worse, and I
can't even see how bad I really am. I'm as bad as you say I am. I need a high priest. I need
a substitute. Lord, I need the blood to be
applied to my heart. I need the blood. When we stand before the Lord,
we're not going to be able to say, Lord, I didn't mean to do that.
I meant to do this. Here was my intentions. I know
I did this, but this was my intent. The Lord's not going to say,
oh, OK, I understand that you meant to do this. So it's either
we're guilty or we're innocent. It's not. His judgments are true
and pure and holy. He can't excuse one of his attributes
cannot be diminished. He can't excuse anyone that's
guilty. That's exactly why we need a
high priest, one or one that entered into that within the
veil for his people. That's the only way we can be
saved. Verse two. If he who can have compassion
on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way, for the he
himself also is compassed with infirmity. If he does not have
compassion, we're in trouble. We're in trouble. Here, Psalm
86, 15, but thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion. I love it when it says words
like full. That means, well, there's nothing, no room for
any more. He's full of compassion. And
you can't, we can't diminish it. We can't diminish his compassion. Thou art full of compassion and
gracious, long-suffering and plenteous in mercy and truth.
Along with all the other glorious attributes of our high priest,
he is full of compassion for his people. Think of the condescension
of the Lord for a moment. When you talk about compassion
as if we know about it, our compassion is based upon our humanity. It's
based upon what we see and what we know. If you see someone on
the corner begging, saying they're homeless, begging for money or
whatever else. Perhaps we show compassion by
giving them money or by giving them food or something along
those lines. We see somebody that's less fortunate than we
are or less, have not been given what we have been given and maybe
we have compassion and give them something. What about the Lord's compassion?
What is his compassion based on? Everything about the Lord's
based on his holiness. Everything about the Lord's based
upon his sovereignty. He can't just choose to have
compassion and lay down his attributes. He can't just choose to have
mercy without justice being satisfied. Think about his condescension.
Now you and I have compassion on fellow man, but we're talking
about Christ who is glorified with the Father and he robes
that glory in flesh to become a man. There's no greater explanation
of compassion than that because it was to redeem God's chosen
people. It was to redeem mankind, his
chosen in mankind. Now you gotta think, we have
to think about the sinless God becoming robed in the likeness
of sinful flesh, the scripture says. He didn't just come to
redeem. You and I would have compassion
upon a puppy, perhaps. We saw a puppy that was in need.
But what about a mangy dog that had hair falling out, it's foaming
at the mouth, it was ugly, it was nasty, it stunk, been sprayed
by a skunk. You're gonna invite it into your
house. Probably not, I mean somebody might. My wife probably would.
I gotta be careful what I'm saying. She's compassionate upon animals. But you get what I'm saying.
It would be based upon what we can see and based upon what we
feel. God chose to be compassionate
to his people because he placed them in his son, the Lord Jesus
Christ. It's not based upon what you
look like or how good you are. And thank God it's not based
upon how bad you are either. It's not based upon you. His
compassions are everlasting because it's based upon the merits of
the Lord Jesus Christ. He came to redeem the most vile
creature, they that hate him, that despise him, mocked him,
spit upon him. We would be no different than
those that were crucifying him. How often do we shake our fist
in his face out of unbelief, yet he has compassion. How many times we read, he was
moved with compassion on the multitude. Matthew 9 36 says,
when he saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion on
them because they fainted and were scattered abroad as a sheep
having no shepherd. When he said, when he said he
became a worm, Psalm 22, I'm a worm and no man on the cross
of Calvary. He had to become what we are
in order to redeem us. I've used this analogy before,
I'll use it again. It's relatable to some of us
who, well, we were fishing yesterday for a brief time. And there was
some valuable worms there. Matter of fact, if you had a
certain type of worm, you could catch fish, but everybody else
that didn't have that type of worm, they weren't catching much.
And so that was the valuable worm, wasn't it? Now, he's not
talking about becoming one of us who were a valuable worm that
could have been used for something good and grand. God has a plan
for your life and he's going to make you into something amazing
and you're going to do this and that's not what he did. The word
worm translates maggot there. Something disgusting and putrid
and vile, something that's useless, something that would be nauseating. And yet the condescension of
him robing his glory and flesh and becoming a man, becoming
a worm to save a bunch of worms. That's what he did on the cross
of Calvary. Truly that's inadequate in declaring
the glorious truth of his compassion. When you see a repulsive insect,
you have compassion upon it, especially if it's in your house. What if you had a group of ants
in your cereal box? Do you have compassion upon those
ants? Somebody might, but not usually. No, we put out baits
to try to catch them. What if you had cockroaches?
Would you have compassion upon a cockroach? What about a bee
that stings your child? You gonna have compassion upon
the bee? Or how about a tick? A tick, they carry diseases and
then... A loved one passes away from that tick. Are you going
to love that tick? This is what the Lord did for his people.
This is what God did for his people. Our sin is what put Christ
upon the cross. If we had no sin, he would not
have had to die. And yet, and yet he became, and
that's what we're parasites, aren't we? That's what a tick
is, a parasite. And yet the Lord took our sin
upon himself, that we might be made the righteousness of God
in him. This is what he's talking about,
about being compassed with infirmity, compassed about with infirmity
at the end of verse two, our wickedness being laid upon him,
thereby him becoming guilty as our substitute. That's our infirmity. He was subject to like passions
as we are acquainted with grief, yet he poured out his very soul
unto death as our high priest mediator unto his father, that
you and I would be redeemed as our high priest. See, we have
no other plea. We have no plea before the throne
of God, whereby he would hear our cry in and of ourself. But Christ pleaded for his people. We have no prayer in and of ourself
that we can conjure up, that we can bring forth with our greatest
effort, whereby the Lord would say, okay, I'll hear that prayer.
It pleases me. No, he has to give faith. But
Christ prayed for his people. We can't intercede for ourself
as a high priest. We can't go in by our own blood
and offer up our life, our sacrifice unto the Lord. But Christ entered
in himself and placed his blood upon the mercy seat, redeeming
his people. When we were without God and
could not get to him, God had compassion upon his people. God
became a man. When we could not choose God,
he chose his people in the covenant of grace before time ever began,
agreeing to be their substitute, their surety, and redeem them
by his own blood. When we were unlovable, God sent
forth his son to redeem his people so that it may be declared from
now and forever, I have loved thee with an everlasting love. When we couldn't approach God,
Christ entered in as our surety, our high priest, our substitute. He entered in on our behalf,
placed his own blood on the mercy seat, thereby obtaining eternal
redemption for God's elect. Hear the words, hear the words
of the Lord this morning, brethren. The Lord says, and this is all
because he had compassion. This is all because he had compassion.
Fear not. I have loved you with an everlasting
love. I have redeemed you. I have bought you. Why would
you do that? Because of mercy, because of
grace, because he chose to have compassion. He says, you were
mine. Actually says in Ezekiel 16,
none I pitied you. When you were, how did he describe,
it was a baby in a field that was polluted in its own blood.
It was naked. It was without covering. None
swaddled it. It was dead, wasn't it? That's
what the scripture says. He said, none I pitied you. Nobody
had compassion upon you, but I did. He said, I did. I chose
you for my own, myself. He said, I redeemed you. I clothed
you. He nursed his people, didn't
he? Oh, he saved his people. By my strong hand have I redeemed
you. Bought with the precious blood
of the lamb. Now in closing, I wanna look back just to chapter
four, verse 14 through 16 about our high priest and his compassions.
Knowing he's a compassionate high priest that was touched
with the feeling of our infirmity. He says, seeing then we have
a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the
Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not
a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities, but was at all points tempted like as we are yet without
sin. Let us therefore come boldly
unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find
grace to help in the time of need. Because he successfully
redeemed his people, we have access to the throne of God by
his own blood. We have access. Child of God,
fear not to approach. You don't have to be afraid to
come to Christ. As a matter of fact, you're commanded
to. You're commanded to come to the throne. You've been summonsed. If you're the Lord, you've been
summonsed to come to Christ. All because his compassions cannot
fail. All because he chose to be compassionate.
Listen to Lamentations 3.22. It is of the Lord's mercy that
we are not consumed. Why is it we're not consumed
and given what we deserve? His mercy? Because his compassion
fails not. His compassions fail not. Thank
God he chose to have compassion on a bunch of sinners. Let's
pray. Father, thank you. We cannot
fathom the condescension and the love you have shown. We believe
it by faith alone. Cause us now to believe it. In
Christ's name, amen. Let's take a break.