Full Transcript:
Let us take our Bibles this morning and turn to Hebrews 9. I am continuing in the book of Hebrews and it is turning out to be a tremendous study in the Word of God. We have been pulling back the curtain on the old and new covenant. The old covenant has the priesthood, laws, and leaders. This morning I will look at the glory and beauty of the earthly tabernacle. Every passage of Scripture has one major point and we are especially going to see that in the first ten verses of Hebrews 9.
The last time that we met together I was talking about the new covenant and that was the first time it was introduced. We saw that the new covenant was unrestricted in its power, eternal in duration, and complete in its effects. In contrast to the old covenant which was limited, temporary, and partial. If you look at Hebrews 8:13, it says:
When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
The whole Old Testament system was ready to disappear off the scene. This was prior to 70 A.D. and the destruction of the Herodian temple in Jerusalem. That was the final end of the whole sacrificial system. The priesthood was turned upside down and this new thing was happening which people did not fully understand. God was doing something new, which was providing the complete and ultimate way into His presence and into complete and perfect salvation. It was necessary that the old system ended.
The new covenant as it is written in Jeremiah and Hebrews 8, promise several different things. Number one, everyone in the new covenant will have a new heart. Your mind, emotions, and will is focused in on Christ and God. Jeremiah 24:7 says:
I will give them a heart to know Me, for I am the LORD; and they will be My people, and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart.
Imagine that! A second thing in the new covenant is that everyone will have final forgiveness of sins. Jeremiah 31:34 says:
“They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”
When God finally does not remember a thing about your sinfulness, wickedness, and wretchedness, that is a grand day, right? A third thing is that everyone in the new covenant will have a permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit. remember that under the old law, people could not keep it because they had no power or ability. When God gives you His Spirit, He enables you to obey what He says and you do it with delight. In Ezekiel 36:27, it says:
I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.
It is a desire to want to glorify and worship the Lord. Then of course a fourth thing is that everyone in the new covenant will have the law inside their heart. It tell us in Jeremiah 31:33:
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the LORD, "I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
The last one indicates that the new covenant people will obey not because they have to, but because they want to and have been given the ability and power to obey. That is the difference between the old and the new. The old was never designed to do that, do not get it wrong. God was not going to send a law but a person, full of grace and truth. That was Jesus Christ.
This all means that the new covenant has replaced the old covenant and we know exactly when it came to an end. God clearly indicated that it was no longer in existence when the great veil was torn from the top to the bottom. Matthew 27:51 records that when it says:
And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.
God was making a statement that day that He has torn open the very thing that blocks the common person from coming to Him and has ripped it apart so that it can no longer be put back together. It is at that very juncture that the writer of Hebrews looks back, not to the temple, but all the way back to the tabernacle in the wilderness, to the original blueprints given to Moses on the mountain. He tells Moses to be careful about making the tabernacle in the wilderness and to make it exactly the way God says. It represents how people will approach God, His holiness, glory, and how a holy God cannot be in the presence or have fellowship with sinful men unless that sin is taken care of.
Here is a little historical perspective. The latest temple was the Herodian temple that was destroyed in 70 A.D. Before that was Solomon’s temple in 586 B.C. We are going back to before the first tabernacle before an actual building was built, back to the tent in the wilderness. That is what he points us to right now and is saying to us that Scripture does not want us to forget the tabernacle in the wilderness under the Mosaic covenant, because it was divinely established by God. It was not the whim of men or someone who says what he thinks we should do. It came directly from Heaven. God says that if we are going to worship Him, we should do so exactly as He says. Otherwise, we will die and be separated from Him forever. Look at Hebrews 9:1, it says:
Now even the first covenant had regulations of divine worship and the earthly sanctuary.
We are not so familiar today with the tabernacle in the wilderness but we should be because it is in the Word of God. It is filled with great symbols that point to the work of Christ. Let us take a few minutes and glance at the tabernacle, because that is what the Scriptures do. They give a description of the earthly tabernacle from Hebrews 9:1-5. Verse 1 calls it an earthly sanctuary and he stresses that right here. That means that God among men gives the ability to the people to come to Him. In Hebrews 9:2 says:
For there was a tabernacle prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the sacred bread; this is called the holy place.
He is saying basically that there are two rooms in the tabernacle. You have a curtain first and right before that there is the priest ministering outside in the courtyard. He does not mention the courtyard here but he mentions the two curtains and two rooms. The first room had a lamp stand in it that was meant to provide light perpetually. It was the responsibility of the priest to make sure that lamp was constantly burning and that it never went out. When we come to the New Testament, we see that Jesus Christ is the light of the world. And then he says that there is a table with twelve loaves of sacred bread. Each loaf represents each of the tribes of Israel. The Hebrew word means “bread of the face,” which means that the bread is placed before the face of God. God is very much involved in what is going on in the tabernacle and that bread is found as the bread of life when we come to the New Testament.
In Hebrews 9:3 we find more about the tabernacle. Behind the second veil there was a tabernacle which was called the Holy of Holies. The first room is the holy place, the second room is the Holy of Holies. In Hebrews 9:4, it says:
Having a golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, in which was a golden jar holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod which budded, and the tables of the covenant.
We have a golden jar holding the manna, Aaron’s rod that budded when he went before Pharaoh, and also the tablets of the covenant which were the Old Testament Ten Commandments. There is no discrepancy in the Bible when you get to where it describes Solomon’s temple. When they opened the ark, it only had the tablets of the covenant in it. That is because it is the original and this is what was in the ark. Those things have great representation for the nation of Israel. In Hebrews 9:5 says:
And above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat; but of these things we cannot now speak in detail.
The high priest was allowed to go into the Holy of Holies one time a year and he went in there not without blood but with blood. He poured it over the mercy seat. God had mercy on the people in relationship to their sins and He forgave them. That was the picture there, and this is how he ends: “of these things, I cannot speak in detail.”
Obviously he did not want to go into detail because he was speaking to Jews. It was still going on right around them. He wanted to at least mention it to them because it had great significance, this tabernacle. Now he goes to the description of the service of the sanctuary and the Holy of Holies in Hebrews 9:6, where he says:
Now when these things have been so prepared, the priests are continually entering the outer tabernacle performing the divine worship.
This is all in preparation of that one day so the priests were male descendants of Aaron, who was a Levite. The Levites were other male members of the tribe of Levi. The priest and the Levites were servants of God in the Old Testament Israel and they had certain responsibilities. For example the function of a priest was to look after the vessels during the special ceremonies when they were to approach God. The priest also performed the offerings and sacrifices. In doing their duties they dressed in special clothing, symbolic garments as they approached God. The Levites assisted the priests and served the congregation of the temple. They sang psalms and kept the courts clean and helped prepare certain sacrifices and offerings. They also had a teaching function, it was a very busy job. That was all in preparation of the special function of the high priest. There was one high priest, who was the spiritual head of Israel. That special function was the entering in the Holy of Holies, which was the very presence of God, on the day of atonement.
Kids know that day because they get the day off. It is in the beginning of September, and is called Yom Kippur. Yom is the Hebrew word for “day,” and Kippur means “to cover.” It is a day of covering over sin. The day of atonement was one day that the act of atonement took place over the mercy seat. It was atonement for all the sins of the people, which includes millions of Israelites. All their sins were atoned for on that one day. The high priest alone entered the second room, which was the Holy of Holies, once a year. Look at Hebrews 9:7, it says:
But into the second, only the high priest enters once a year, not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the sins of the people committed in ignorance.
He is going in and he is making the sacrifice even for the sins people commit in ignorance. That means that God is going to take care of every single last one of them. If He does not, you cannot have fellowship with Him. Men cannot come into His presence. On that day, people were cleansed so they could have a relationship with God, which would go hopefully unbroken until the next year, the next day of Atonement. If the high priest came out from the second curtain and before the people and he emerged alive, the people cheered and sang psalms and hymns because they were delivered from the wrath of God on that day. It must have been an incredible sound to hear them worship God when they saw the high priest emerging. What a picture of Christ, emerging alive from the cross. He says that God accepted the sacrifice when the priest emerges.
They were in relationship with God. I wish people would think like that today, we ought to be that excited. But here is the significance of this tabernacle. In Hebrews 9:8-10, he is saying that some things are significant. Look at what it says:
The Holy Spirit is signifying this, that the way into the holy place has not yet been disclosed while the outer tabernacle is still standing, which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.
He is saying that the Holy Spirit signifies that the way to God is not disclosed until this inner veil between the two rooms was torn at Christ’s crucifixion. I could not go in there, into God’s presence. No one can! Except for one guy once a year. If he did not do it the right way, he would be in grave danger and trouble. This is the picture, all these priests were in some way responsible for key offerings. But this tabernacle really was a symbol, a parable, and an illustrated spiritual truth. That spiritual truth is that regular people could not come to God. We had to go through this whole system to come to God. What happens after the day of Atonement? We sin again. Sin brings a thing called guilt, ever feel that because you sinned?
Guilt is a funny thing. But this becomes the very thing that he talks about in this passage of Scripture. The high priest was really in charge of five key offerings. One of these was a required, not a free-will, offering and it was called the guilt offering. It was offered to make payment for sin against God or others. That means that if I sin against someone, I was make to restitution and pay them back. But it incurred guilt on my part. Therefore, how do you get rid of guilt even after the day of Atonement? How do you get rid of guilt for the next 364 days?
Turn over to Leviticus 4:1-3 says:
Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, ‘If a person sins unintentionally in any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and commits any of them, if the anointed priest sins so as to bring guilt on the people, then let him offer to the Lord a bull without defect as a sin offering for the sin he has committed.
Leviticus 4:13-14 say this:
Now if the whole congregation of Israel commits error and the matter escapes the notice of the assembly, and they commit any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and they become guilty; when the sin which they have committed becomes known, then the assembly shall offer a bull of the herd for a sin offering and bring it before the tent of meeting.
I want you to see something here. We cannot become guilty really until the offense is known and the law rears its head and says that you did this wrong and sinned against God. Only then is the guilt heaped on. Look at Leviticus 4:22-31:
When a leader sins and unintentionally does any one of all the things which the Lord his God has commanded not to be done, and he becomes guilty, if his sin which he has committed is made known to him, he shall bring for his offering a goat, a male without defect. ‘He shall lay his hand on the head of the male goat and slay it in the place where they slay the burnt offering before the Lord; it is a sin offering. ‘Then the priest is to take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering; and the rest of its blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering. ‘All its fat he shall offer up in smoke on the altar as in the case of the fat of the sacrifice of peace offerings. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him in regard to his sin, and he will be forgiven. ‘Now if anyone of the common people sins unintentionally in doing any of the things which the Lord has commanded not to be done, and becomes guilty, if his sin which he has committed is made known to him, then he shall bring for his offering a goat, a female without defect, for his sin which he has committed. ‘He shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and slay the sin offering at the place of the burnt offering. ‘The priest shall take some of its blood with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of burnt offering; and all the rest of its blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar. ‘Then he shall remove all its fat, just as the fat was removed from the sacrifice of peace offerings; and the priest shall offer it up in smoke on the altar for a soothing aroma to the Lord. Thus the priest shall make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven.
There is a great problem with the old system. It cannot perfect and cleanse and remove forever the guilt that is incurred by sin. It lacked something. The second significance that he talks about is in Hebrews 9:9, which says:
Which is a symbol for the present time. Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience.
Where is your conscience? That is your inner heart inside of you. In the Old Testament, you were able to purify the outside, but not the inside. That was the great lack in it. Even though the people went through everything God asked them to go through, they still could not be made perfect and the sacrifices were powerless to remove sin and guilt. The worshippers experienced no peace and continually had a guilty conscience. I do not know if you know how that feels to be guilt ridden over a sin issue. You cannot do anything about that. You confess and it still seems like the guilt lingers. The very word used here is that he cannot make, which when translated gives us the word power. It is saying here that the Old Testament law does not give you the power that you need so the conscience can be clean. It uses another word there. You cannot make the worshipper perfect, and this means carrying something through to completion. It could never bring to an end the sin that is committed that brings with it guilt. It is a vicious cycle.
He also says this that it cannot make the worshipper perfect in conscience. This refers to the conscience of sin. Who gives us our conscience anyway? Can you surgically remove the conscience? Can you identify it on an X-Ray screen or MRI? No, but I will tell you what does. When you do something and when you sin against God and you are guilty. That comes from our God and Savior Jesus Christ, from the Holy Spirit, who is convicting you of that particular sin. I am talking about the stuff God does in our hearts. It is to help you feel the weight and to remind you every day that there is something wrong inside of you. Guilt makes you feel like there is something wrong with you. What is wrong is that you sinned against God, who is your Creator. When you sin and break His law, that guilt or sin is laid on you because you have a conscience. That is a good thing.
The soul has distinguished between what is morally good and bad by way of definition, prompting you to do the former and shun the latter. Commending the one and condemning the other. It is like the umpire of your soul. It is an interesting thing. In Hebrews 10 it says something else. He talks about the conscience a little more in Hebrews 10:2, which says:
Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, because the worshipers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins?
He is saying something there that is very important, that God in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, gives us the solution to ongoing guilt. In order to know that you are cleansed by His blood which brings you to think that you do not have a conscience of sin. You may know what sin is, but you do not live under its guilt, dominion, or power. Why? Because of Christ and what He did on the cross. I understand that and I do not have to go around with a guilty conscience twenty-four hours a day. I do not offer sacrifices, but have one sacrifice who stood in my place and was the substitute there on the cross, and that was Jesus Christ.
Let us think about that for a moment, sin is a word often used in Scripture to give the picture of a prisoner that has been taken captive and is dominated by the power of sin. Sin, as said in Romans 7, dwells in us. So basic is the hold of sin over man that sin can hold you in bondage and still you will think you are free. It has a very deceptive nature to it. Sin is not merely, though, an external power, which just exercises a sway over a person’s soul. It has gotten into our fiber and in the center of our hearts, until it occupies us and masters and controls us. Why is it that some people just cannot get out from their sin? Because it is dominating and it occupies like territory. It has taken the hilt and if you let it, it will do that.
Romans 3 though, shows us that there is a close connection between the law and between sin. In fact the law and sin go together. Listen to what it says in Romans 3:20:
Because by the works of the Law no flesh will be justified in His sight; for through the Law comes the knowledge of sin.
Let us put the equation together here a little bit. God gives the law, which says not to do something. The law says not to commit adultery, bear false witness, not lie, not to covet, to have something of someone else. The law tells us that if we do something, then we are going to break the law and with that comes the knowledge of sinning against God, who is the lawmaker. That brings guilt to my conscience. Until sin is defined, a person cannot know what sin is. Until there is a law of sin, a person cannot become guilty of sin. However, once there is a law there is a knowledge of sin. Paul says this referring to Gentiles in Romans 2:15:
In that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.
In other words, you cannot get away from the law of God. God has established it in the fiber of His creation. If you sin against God, you will incur guilt on your conscience. Unfortunately, most people do not know what to do with it so they go to the medicine cabinet, doctor, the psychologist, the guru sessions, etc. in order to try and soothe what is going on in their hearts. They do all of this instead of going to God.
The law has two defects. It can define sin, but it cannot cure sin. It is like a doctor who can diagnose disease, but has no power to eradicate or even help us to stop a disease.
A second defect of the law is to prohibit a thing that is made attractive. Have you ever had to make a turn around in New Jersey and see a big sign that has a circle and a message that says do not turn around. You wonder why because there are no cars coming or anyone behind you. If you go to other states, they do not have those signs. It seems dumb to me but if you get stopped by a policeman even if there is no one around, he has every right to give you a ticket for making an illegal turn. You broke the law. There is something about when someone says to not step on the grass, that makes you want to step on the grass. The law has a weakness to it. By forbidding a thing, it actually makes it attractive to us.
I was reading through Augustine’s Confessions and they are about his confessions of sins. It is a tremendous book. He confesses to the Lord and puts it in print. Get an abridged version so you can understand it. I came across one little article about him stealing pears as a kid. This is what he writes: “There was a pear tree near our vineyard filled with fruit. One stormy night we rascally youths set out to rob it and carry our spoils away. We took a huge load of pears, not to feast upon ourselves, but to throw them to the pigs. Though we did eat enough to also be pleasurable and fill our stomachs with that forbidden fruit. They were nice pears. But it was not the pears that my wretched soul coveted. For I had plenty of pears at home, even better ones. I picked them simply in order to be a thief. The only feast I got was a feast of iniquity, and I enjoyed it in its full. I liked sin. What was it I loved in the theft? Was it the pleasure of acting against the law in order that I, a prisoner under rules, might have some counterfeit freedom? By doing with impunity what was forbidden with a dim similitude of omnipotence.”
For once second, he felt like he had power to do whatever he wanted. But what was it? Augustine’s words simply say the desire to steal was aroused simply by the prohibition not to steal. It is at this very point that the law is weak. It is at this very point that in regard to sin, it emerges before us because every single one of us has experienced this very thing. I should not sin but I like to sin! I should not do this particular thing but no one is going to know! I will just do it, get over it, and confess it. I will get it out there and that will be it.
The cure for sin in our passage of Scripture cannot depend on the old sacrificial system and the priesthood. In accordance of the parabolic significance of the tabernacle and its arrangements and its gifts and sacrifices that were offered because it could only purge the flesh, not the conscience. It could not clean the conscience. It could only remove the external defilement. It could not restore the man, the person to a right relationship with God. The believer, who is given the ability, when they believe by the Spirit of God, in Jesus by faith then they are set free from the slavery of the dominion of sin and cleansed internally of their guilty conscience. We do not have to be guilty of any sin we have ever committed because of Jesus Christ.
Now, that does not give me liberty to go on sinning. It gives me liberty to become a slave of Christ and love Him. I get the power to say no to my sin. Yes, my flesh wants to walk on the grass but I am not going to do it because it does not honor my Lord and does not please Him. The Spirit of God gives me the strength to do it and I walk away. Each time I do that I become stronger and stronger and the temptations become more fierce and complicated. Satan is very skilled at tempting you to sin. You cannot trick him, but you can put on the whole armor of God. You put on Christ so that you can stand up against what he is doing and have victory. You can stand up and speak the mysteries of the gospel as you have been living with Christ. He has been giving you the victories over sin.
Where does this bring us? Look at Hebrews 9:10:
Since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.
This word reformation means that there is going to come a time when Christ sets it all right. The word reformation in the physical sense means to make something straight. It is the example of restoring a broken bone or twisted limb and making it straight. In other words, there will be a season of reformation when Christ makes everything right. Is that not hope? That is what he is saying here.
What does Jesus set right? I do not have time for that. But I do have time to tell you that Jesus Christ in relation to sin and our circumstances here concerning a guilty conscience. The Bible tells us in Matthew 1:21 that Jesus saves us from sin. We are a people in a position who need to be rescued and that rescue is carried out by Jesus Christ at the cost of His life. Dead sinners have no capacity to rescue themselves. They are dead. Jesus also wipes out sin, as it says in Acts 19. It tells us that He wipes it out. It is a picture of ancient ink that had no acid in it. It could be sponged off the surface of the vellum or papyrus paper that a scribe was using. Sinners had no means to sponge away their sin. In their case, their sin is written with indelible permanent ink. But because of the work of Jesus Christ, the record of our sin is obliterated and sponged away. Acts 3:19 says:
Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.
Through Jesus we are washed from sin. Our lives had been stained and muddied by sin but dead sinners have no way to remove their stain for the sinner is unclean and polluted by filth of their own sin. It is Jesus Christ who has the power to cleans it. Acts 22:16 says:
Now why do you delay? Get up and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on His name.
In God’s mercy a veil is drawn across our sins where it says in Romans 4:7:
Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered.
It is as if God in His mercy and grace drew a veil over our sorry record over our past sins and never looked at them again. In God’s mercy, our sins are not reckoned to us again. In Romans 4:8 it says:
Blessed is the main whose sin the Lord will not take into account.
It means that God does not set it down in your account. The idea is that because of our sins we are completely in God’s debt. The debt is so huge because of our sin that we cannot pay it. God says that He is not going to reckon our sin to our legal account. As far as I am concerned, it looks pretty clean to me because of the blood and perfect righteousness of Christ.
We are set free from sin because of the work of Jesus on the cross. Often when some start learning Koine Greek, the first set of vocabulary words has the word luo which means “to loose.” It is the word Paul uses in Romans 6:18:
Having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
You have been set free to be a slave of Jesus Christ, and that is the kind of slavery you want. If you have a good and loving Master, you will want to serve Him! That is the thought here. We are not saved to live anyway we want. We are saved to love and serve and follow Christ and you are going to find that when you do that, your heart will be so full of overflowing joy that you can never replace with anything else.
Jesus in turn also in Hebrews 9:26 cancels our sin. It says:
Otherwise, He would have needed to suffer often since the foundation of the world; but now once at the consummation of the ages He has been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.
He puts away sin and through Jesus Christ we are forgiven of the great offenses we have committed against Him. When Christ puts away sin, He cancels out this huge debt that we owe Him. Our debt is gone and we are forgiven. The essence of the word forgiven is the undeserved release of a person of which he or she is guilty. That it would be right to exact justice on a person and administer judgment on a person who is due that penalty. but through Jesus Christ a person is released from the punishment and penalty that God had every right to inflict.
Can you say that about yourself today? Can you say this morning that you do not walk around a guilty person because you know how to deal with your sin in Christ? Can you say that Christ blots out your sin and reckons you free forever? If you are walking around like that, then you understand the truth. You understand that you also take care of your sin and understand temptation and its design. You are keenly aware that you have armor on because you are in a spiritual battle and do not want to be swept away by the schemes of Satan and be dragged back down into the cess pool of guilt. You do not need to be there as a Christian and only Christ will deliver you and keep you from that.
He is saying that they have to give up all there ceremonies and rituals in the tabernacle because the fulfillment of all those were brought to an end and found their complete fulfillment in the lamb of God Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus Christ made these unnecessary. Because of His death, our sins were completely forgiven and fellowship with God has been completely restored.
Let me just mention this, for a Christian your relationship with God could never be broken by sin. That is why the Word of God uses another word, fellowship. Your fellowship with God can be broken, but your relationship with God as His child cannot. If I want to have fellowship with God, then I take care of my sin. Christ promises me that when I confess my sin, He is faithful and just to forgive me of my sin and all my righteousness. Our identity now is in Christ Jesus, and with that we can walk around boldly praying, ministering for the Lord, and doing everything that God intends you to do with the gifts and abilities and talents and opportunities and time that He has given you.
When all of the shadow fades away and they have served their purpose, the Levitical priesthood and the law that guided it and the sacrifices that were offered were forever set aside because of a better sacrifice and hope. It was the finished work of Jesus Christ so that He could do what no old system could ever do: tear the veil so that we could have complete and unbroken access to God because of Christ’s sacrifice. We go to Him. Amen.
Let us pray. Lord, thank You this morning for the grandness of the Word of God. Lord if I did not know these things, I could not be set free from some very simple things that happened in my daily life. I want to serve You with my whole heart and I know that people want to serve You with their whole heart. That is the promise of the new covenant, that You are going to give us the power to do that. I know that someone who does not have the Holy Spirit cannot have the power to obey, serve, and love You. That means that they never became a believer and asked You to save them. They never came and repented or called out on Your Name and ask you to be their Lord and Savior. I pray that if someone was here like that, they would call out for You and that today would be the last day that they go live their life the way they think they ought to. For all that do know You, I pray that we would realize the magnificent extent Your sacrifice accomplished on our behalf even in dealing with the guilt that we still have because of sin. But we do not have to live there, I pray that we would always be running to the cross and ask Christ to cleanse us for a sin that He has already died for. I pray that our fellowship would be sweet and ongoing and deep and intimate. When it is not, we know it is sin. Help us to see what it is and get back to walking with You. Thank You that when we are adopted into Your family, no one could sever us from having a relationship with You. We give You praise and glory for that.
This morning please do Your work in our heart as You see fit. I pray that Your Name would be exalted. I pray in Christ’s Name, Amen.