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Understand God's Response to Sin - Immersed Series
41 Plays2 months ago
In this sermon, Ridley Barron preached about understanding God's response to sin and the profound significance of the Passover sacrifice. He delves into God's unyielding faithfulness to His promises, as shown through the story of the Hebrew people in Egypt, highlighting His provision of a substitute in the face of rebellion. Barron connects this with the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus, drawing the red thread from Genesis to Revelation, and to the cross, emphasizing the essential role of Christ's blood in salvation. Through engaging personal anecdotes and scriptural insights, he calls for a deeper remembrance of Christ's sacrifice, urging listeners to genuinely engage with the grace and redemption offered through communion in a fresh and meaningful way.
Timestamps:
03:50 "Blood, Life, and Salvation Thread"
08:32 Pharaoh's Defiance and Moses' Doubt
12:15 Experiencing True Darkness
15:28 Reapproaching Spiritual Connection
16:22 Rethinking First Corinthians 11
22:16 Seder Meal and Its Significance
24:06 "Trust and Forgetfulness in Faith"
28:51 "The Flame of Divine Presence"
30:46 "Complacency with the Holy Spirit"
35:33 "Commemorating Christ's Sacrifice"
37:01 Prayer for Repentance and Grace
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Transcript
Childhood Anecdotes and Innocence
00:00:00
Speaker
Good morning. So a little bit of trivia about your pastor. um I was in a gang growing up. um That was not supposed to be a joke. Although it is kind of funny, right? Yeah, I was eight years old.
00:00:26
Speaker
And we were the Winchester subdivision, I don't know what, Wildcats, I don't know what you called us, but we were on we were a biker gang. and Yeah, we were we were not terrors of the neighborhood. We primarily spent our time doing Homer and Derby's in the backyard and playing football down at the Methodist Church where they would let us use their yard. My favorite place though to spend time with the guys was a vacant lot that was at the end of the street between our house and
00:00:57
Speaker
and the church there, and it had a big wooded area, a big creek that ran through it where we would hunt crawdads and stuff like that. And at the back of the the lot was this giant gravel hill. I don't know why it was there, but probably 20 feet high, but in you know you're eight years old, it's like Mount Everest, right?
00:01:17
Speaker
And so one of our favorite things to do is to ride the bike trails through the woods there and all this kind of stuff and and to try to get a run to start and get up that hill. And one day um this random girl from school showed up in the woods, which always leads to problems for me some reason. I don't know what it is about random girls in my stories, but they show up in my story and I wanted to impress this little eight year old girl. And so I decided I was going to turn my bike towards the hill and show her how well I could get up that hill.
00:01:45
Speaker
and I got about probably 75% of the speed I needed to get up that hill and about three quarters of the way up I realized I didn't get going fast enough so my bike came to a stop and then literally flipped over backwards and we rolled back down the hill kind of Jack and Jillish kind of thing you know I woke up not woke up got up and I my My entire arm is just covered in blood, okay? um This was like my first major injury as a child, so I'm seeing blood and I'm being real manly and squealing like a pig. and
00:02:23
Speaker
I got on my bike and covered the distance from the lot to my house 180 miles an hour it seemed like went in the driveway pulled up the carport my dad was in the back of the carport doing something and I remember as I went in he's hollering Ridley Ridley Ridley and I'm just not paying attention to them because at eight years old when you're hurt mom is who you need not dad because dad's just gonna say rub dirt on it you'll be alright you know so I went in the kitchen and I remember my mom looking at me she had this Terrified look on her face and my first thought was I'm about to die. I don't I just don't know what comes next I think that's probably what's gonna happen in this story um Well amazingly enough that horrible horrible injury required like four stitches in my elbow And it wasn't nearly as bad as it seemed my dad said the only reason he was freaked out is said the way you're holding your arm it was like you were broken off at the shoulder or something yeah you know and
00:03:16
Speaker
I became very aware that day of something that all of us here know.
Theological Discussions and Biblical Connections
00:03:20
Speaker
um Blood is important. When you lose blood, when you become too low in your blood, you begin to feel bad, you can pass out. Obviously, a lack of blood leads to a lack of life. You can die. And it's a very important thing for all of us here. I think it's something like 63,000 feet of veins that that wrap through your body that God has put inside of you.
00:03:47
Speaker
It's a crazy, crazy thing. And perhaps that's because God knew the importance of that, that in Hebrews 9.22, he says, there can be no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood. In a sense, what he was saying to us is it's blood that gives you life and it's blood that's required to give you life again. When you choose a path of sin, when you choose rebellion, when you choose not to listen, this is what it leads to.
00:04:16
Speaker
We're visiting a part of the story today. It's a little little past where we were last week, so let me kind of catch you up in case you weren't here. Today we're gonna draw, um if you will, a thread.
00:04:28
Speaker
The Bible is full of all these incredible stories and they make up this beautiful tapestry of all these different things that God shows us and teaches us and reveals for us. But from Genesis to Revelation there's this one bright red thread going through it. It is the person of Jesus who offers salvation to us.
00:04:46
Speaker
So we're gonna reach back to the story and we're gonna pull it forward to the cross and we're gonna reach forward from the cross and pull that back to where Jesus made this sacrifice and we're gonna connect some dots for you this morning, okay? So last week if you were here, you remember the people, the Hebrew people are in Egypt. They've been in slavery for 430 years. They are crying out under their oppression. And remember last week the verses we read said that God saw, he heard, and he remembered.
00:05:16
Speaker
And I want to again remind you, when the Bible says that God remembers, it's not because God ever forgets, it's because we forget. When it talks about God remembering, what it's saying is God is about to bring back to the forefront of the stage. He's back to bring about to bring back to the center of His attention, our attention, ah this covenant that He's made with His people, starting with Abraham and continuing all the way through to us today, that He would be a God who would be present with His people. And so He's bringing that covenant back to center stage.
00:05:47
Speaker
And it says in that moment, he reached out to a guy by the name of Moses through a burning bush. Moses has spent 40 years in the throne rooms of Egypt learning from the greatest minds of his time, learning what it means to be a leader, learning military stuff, this all this education that he couldn't have gotten anywhere else. And then he's thrust into the wilderness of Midian where he gets 40 years crash course in how to raise sheep and how to live out in the middle of nowhere.
00:06:14
Speaker
And after 80 years of that education, he's now being brought back into the story of the Hebrew people. And that's where we're gonna pick it up today, Hebrews chapter 12. Hebrews chapter 12, we're gonna begin in verse 21. It says, then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, go select an animal from the flock according to your families and slaughter the Passover animal.
00:06:42
Speaker
slaughter the Passover animal. We're gonna talk about what that looks like this morning. It says, take a cluster of hyssop. Dip it in the blood that is in the basin and brush the lentil and the two doorposts with some of the blood in the basin. None of you may go out the door of his house until morning. When the Lord passes through to strike Egypt and sees the blood on the lentil and the two doorsteps, he will pass over the door and not let the destroyer enter your houses to strike you.
00:07:07
Speaker
Keep this command permanently as a statute for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as He promised, you are to observe this ceremony. When your children ask you, what does this ceremony mean to you? You are to reply, it is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, for He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and He spared our homes so the people knelt low and worshiped.
00:07:33
Speaker
Then the Israelites went and did this. They did just as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron." So right in the middle of all this,
00:07:45
Speaker
Moses and Aaron, you know, Moses was really insecure because he's just a shepherd. He's not, in his mind, not very capable, and he's thinking, they're they're really not gonna listen to me if I go back. And so God deals with all of his excuses and says, okay, when you're through making excuses, we can get on with what I'm trying to do here. And so he sends Moses back with Aaron's help. They walk into the throne room of God, and in Exodus 5, 22 and 23 there,
00:08:10
Speaker
It says that Moses and Aaron walk in, they look at Pharaoh and they say, you are to let God's people go into the wilderness for three days so that they can worship and sacrifice to their God. Now, this was never God's intent. He was just offering a low-hanging fruit for for Pharaoh to to do something, okay?
00:08:29
Speaker
But he knew Pharaoh wouldn't, but he wanted to offer that. So he offers it, and Pharaoh has the audacity to say, I don't have a clue who your God is and I don't care who your God is, because I am not letting your people go. In fact, I'm going to make it a little harder on them. You're now going to have to continue to make the bricks that you've made all this time, but now you're going to have to go cut your own straw in this process.
00:08:51
Speaker
Well, the Hebrew people, being the kind supporting people they are, go to Moses and say, what in the world have you done to us? We were better off with the way it was. Why in the world have you put us in this situation? And Moses being the strong, confident leader goes to God and says, what in the world have you done, God? And why in the world did you send me to do this? You must have picked the wrong guy.
Plagues and God's Supremacy
00:09:17
Speaker
Well then we flip over to Exodus chapter 7, verse 5, I think it is, where the story really kicks into high gear. Because this is the moment where God says, hey Moses, relax. I was setting this whole thing up. Now at this moment, in your ears, you should picture the sound or hear the sound of an old-time Western.
00:09:41
Speaker
little John Wayne-ish kind of thing, Clint Eastwood, whoever your favorite is, right? Because God is one by one calling the gods of Egypt out into the streets of Cairo and he's saying, you're going down and you're going down and you're going down. In fact, if you read verse 5 of chapter 7, God says, I am about to show Pharaoh who I am.
00:10:06
Speaker
In other words, Pharaoh's arrogant enough to say, I don't know your God. God says, well, allow me to introduce myself, and you're going to regret that I've ever shown up. I'm about to do something in this place that no world but nobody in the world has ever seen before and most likely will never see again. Now, as a kid growing up, I used to love every Easter watching Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments. How many of y'all remember that? Awful, awful special effects.
00:10:36
Speaker
not the greatest acting, a little bit of bad British accent, not sure where that comes from being in Egypt, but my favorite part was when the Egyptian soldiers would come and they would stand and they would go, so let it be written, so let it be done. And when they would do that, I was like, this is so cool, this had to be exactly the way it happened, right? This is exactly what happened, there's somebody must have written this all down for us.
00:11:01
Speaker
So every one of those plagues captured my attention as a little kid. you know what What were these plagues all about? They seemed so random, frogs and lice and blood and all this other stuff. But quite literally, every single plague was a confrontation with one of the major gods of Egypt. Gods like Newt and Geb and Osiris and Iris Every single one of them given responsibility for a particular area where God would come in and say, not only am I the God over that, I'm the God over everything around it. So then we get to what probably was the most prominent of the Egyptian gods, the God of the sun known as Ra.
00:11:53
Speaker
Now, not only was he the probably most prominent God of Egypt, Pharaoh was considered and believed by the Egyptians to be his son, so he was the son of Ra. And in the ninth plague, God brings complete and total darkness to the entire land of Egypt.
00:12:15
Speaker
Now, it's hard for us to picture this because we live in a world where we have nightlights and flashlights and phone lights and all kinds of lights around us. We think a ah ah dark night is walking out in our backyard and houses and turning off the floodlights, but that's i mean that's just not dark. A couple of months ago, Lisa and I had the opportunity to go over to the Lost River Lost Lake, something over in East Tennessee where there's a big canyon, cave or whatever, okay? And we went over there with their kids and there's this part where they walk you down into the belly of the cave and you're down there and the guy says, okay, if you don't like the darkness, you're not gonna like what we're about to do. Which is kind of scary because you don't know who this idiot is that's you know carrying the flashlight. He says, we're about to turn off the lights for just a minute to give you a feeling of what real darkness is like. And it maybe, maybe was a minute.
00:13:07
Speaker
But when he flipped that light off, I immediately thought, ninth plague. Because in the ninth plague, it says the darkness was so thick you could feel it. And man, that was that was true. But even that kind of darkness didn't impress Pharaoh.
00:13:27
Speaker
Oh, he flinched a little bit, but he quickly changed his mind and said, nope, you're not going anywhere, you you're here. you're You're my slaves, I'm gonna continue to do whatever I want to with you. Well, in Exodus chapter four, God had said to Moses, don't worry, when I'm done, he not only is gonna let my people go, he's gonna push him out the door. He's gonna be so ready for you to go.
00:13:56
Speaker
So what comes next is the 10th plague. The death of the first born son. Now many of you are like me. I am very thick skinned. I've served in ministry for 40 years. I've taught high school. I even coach little league baseball. So there's not very many things you can say to me that are gonna hurt me or make me flinch. I don't get upset about very many things.
00:14:25
Speaker
You go after my children, it's a different story. You come after my wife, our friendship is very much in danger. So you can only imagine what the Egyptian people are feeling when the news gets out that God's coming after their children.
00:14:49
Speaker
The Bible says that when it's all over with, that not only will Pharaoh want to let him go, but the Egyptian people will be saying to Pharaoh, get them out of here, because this isn't any other God. This is the true God. And through this, we are introduced to the story of the Passover. So I want to take you to the New Testament. And just a little bit, we are going to take some time to do what we call communion, the Lord's Supper.
Rituals and Their Significance
00:15:22
Speaker
We're going to celebrate that moment together. We're going to remember what Christ has done. But my hope is this morning that somehow we can approach this maybe from a different angle, that we can come at this moment in a way that we haven't in a while. Because for all of us, including myself, there's this danger that it becomes too commonplace.
00:15:45
Speaker
that we forget that it's not just a moment in a worship service. It's not just a ritual that religion requires of us. This is our connection to the event that literally opened eternity to us. That gave us the opportunity to go back to the God who created us and have a relationship that was restored to a right place for us.
00:16:10
Speaker
And for some of you this morning, it may be that you don't understand what we're talking about because you don't know what a real relationship with God can feel like. You've tried connecting through religion, you've tried connecting through good works, you've tried being the best behavior that you can be on, and you're you're kind of going, I don't really feel like there's much different here.
00:16:34
Speaker
And my prayer is that before we're done that maybe this moment together as a family can kind of stir our hearts to think differently about something that's very common for many of us. We're going to be reminded of three things, but let's go to 1 Corinthians chapter 11 first.
00:16:52
Speaker
First Corinthians chapter 11, this is Paul writing just maybe a hundred years after the life of Christ, maybe not even that much, maybe 40 years after the life of Christ. And he says in that moment to the church at Corinth, for I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you. On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread. And when he had given thanks, broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.
00:17:22
Speaker
In the same way, he also took the cup after supper and said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. You see, remembering and reminding is what we need. We said earlier that God never forgets, but the truth is we do a lot.
00:17:51
Speaker
We forget what it costs for you and I to have what we call salvation. We forget the price that had to be paid. We forget the level of sin that we had in our lives before we knew Jesus. And we also forget that every single day we need him still. And so we have to be reminded. We have to be reminded of why Jesus was taken to that cross.
00:18:19
Speaker
And as I said, this thread of the cross of Calvary connects all the way back to the story we're in today. So what do we need to be reminded of? Well, first of all, we need to remember that God always keeps His word.
00:18:35
Speaker
Remember that God always keeps his word. As I told you earlier, Exodus 4, God had made this promise, he said, listen, ah we're gonna deal with this my way, and before it's all over with, I will bring one last plague plague on Egypt and one last plague on Pharaoh, and after it's all done, Pharaoh will let you go. When God makes a promise, he keeps a promise.
00:19:00
Speaker
Then go all the way back to the very beginning, Genesis 3.15. If you were here when we started this entire study, you will be reminded of the very first mention of salvation where God said to Adam and Eve, here's what's happened as a consequence of your sin. And then he looked at Satan and said, oh, by the way, there will be a seed from Eve who will crush your head.
00:19:24
Speaker
And God, with his ability to know all things, was looking all the way forward to the day where Jesus would go to that hill, carry that cross, lay down his life willingly for people like you and I who couldn't possibly earn our own salvation.
00:19:38
Speaker
But God always keeps his word. And the same God who made the promise that I will provide that seed of Eve was the same God who said at the cross, it is finished, it is done, it is all taken care of. You don't have to have anything else but this gift, and if you will receive it, everything that I have is opened up to you. And he's also the same God who said, I will come again and will take you home to myself. He's a God who keeps his promises.
00:20:09
Speaker
It's interesting that God went after this plague of death because the Egyptians were obsessed with death. History tells us that the Egyptian civilization spent more per capita than any civilization in history on death. Remember the pyramids? They're just massive giant tombstones to dead people.
00:20:32
Speaker
And they literally spent thousands and thousands, maybe even millions in modern currency on trying to take their items with us, packing up all their goods so that when they crossed the river into the next life, they would have those things with them. So God confronted this culture of death head on by saying, you live in death, I have come that there may be a life.
00:21:00
Speaker
The second thing, we remember that God provided a substitute for us. And earlier in Exodus chapter 12, God says to the Hebrew people, this is gonna be your first day of the new year. This is how important it is. Every year on the first day of your new year, you're gonna remember this event. He wanted Israel to know this is a very big deal. It's such a big deal that Passover today is the oldest continually celebrated religious holiday in the history of the world. It's still going on.
00:21:34
Speaker
God knows we are multi-century people, right? What do I mean by that? Well, you read something, you may or may not remember it. You listen to your pastor preach a sermon, good chance you're not gonna remember it. I'm not naive, okay? That's why we give you the sermon notes, because if you hear it, read it, write it down, you're more likely to remember it. If you read it,
00:22:02
Speaker
Write it down, hear it, see it, taste it. You're more likely to remember it even so even more. So God said, I'm gonna make this meal for you that's gonna remind you of what's about to happen. And every time you sit down to have what is known as the Seder meal, you will remember what I have done on your behalf. The Seder meal was composed of a lamb that was slain for the family.
00:22:30
Speaker
And it was intended that it would be just enough for the family because if there was anything left over, it was be to be burned at night. Nothing was allowed to to last the next day. There would be bread with no yeast. Why? Because the people would be in such a hurry to leave Egypt when Egypt told them to go.
00:22:48
Speaker
that there would be no time for leaven or yeast to make the bread rise. And so they would eat unleavened bread. Hence today, we eat the communion wafers that have no leaven or yeast to them. They would eat bitter herbs. And every time they ate the bitter herbs, it was to remind them of the bitterness of 430 years under the oppression of the Egyptian people. And then lastly, there would be four cups of wine, each one with an individual toast.
00:23:19
Speaker
Why four? Well, it was to remind them of the promises that God had made to Moses and to Israel in Exodus chapter 6, where God would say to them, I will redeem you, I will deliver you, I will make you my people, and I will take you to the Promised Land. In each cup, each toast was to remind them of each one of of those promises.
00:23:48
Speaker
He did this because he didn't want them to forget because we are forgetful people.
00:23:57
Speaker
This plague was different than the other nine. The other nine, the Hebrew people over in Goshen in their own territory had been protected and preserved. Not one of those touched them.
Trust and Symbolism in Worship
00:24:07
Speaker
This one was different because Hebrew people, just like Egyptian people, live under the curse of sin.
00:24:14
Speaker
They weren't exempt for bad choices. The Hebrew people had over and over again proven that they did not believe God in his word. They would not trust him fully because they were constantly questioning him. Later in the book of Joshua, when we get to that part, you'll see that Joshua himself says to them, you've got to go get rid of the idols that you have brought from your from your fathers, your forefathers that you've brought into this land. They had taken the gods of the Egyptians and brought them with them on their journey to the promised land. How crazy is that?
00:24:45
Speaker
We love to read the story and look at the Egyptian, I mean the Hebrew people and go, what are you thinking? Have you lost your mind? Have you not seen how God provided for you, took care of you, defended you, led you with his presence? Have you forgotten? And I think it's a question we gotta ask ourselves today as the church. How often do we forget that God is there?
00:25:10
Speaker
How often do we take for granted his presence as he's leading us through the wilderness we call this earth? How many times have you had those moments where you see the hand of God providing and within 24 hours you're back to your life with your agenda forgetting it was his hand that got you to where you're at?
00:25:30
Speaker
And in those seasons when we're facing discouragement and frustration or anxiety or depression or anger or all those other things, we are so quick to turn to our friends or to gossip or to alcohol or to any number of things to try to take away that pain. And God goes, have you forgotten that it's always been me who was here to take care of you? Why are you trusting in all those other things? Because none of those are gonna provide for you the way I did.
00:25:58
Speaker
And you think to yourself, surely nobody would be dumb enough to do that, right? Surely nobody would be dumb enough to look at the hand of God as he provides and go, hmm, that's not good enough. But as you read through this story over the next few weeks, as we get into Exodus, sorry, Leviticus and Numbers, what you're gonna hear is a bunch of people who go, we were better off in Egypt.
00:26:23
Speaker
I'll never forget, the remember that reading that story, I thought to myself, you people have lost your mind, you've been in the heat too long. How in the world did you possibly conceive that being in slavery in Egypt is better than where you are now?
00:26:41
Speaker
So God gives us reminders. God reminds us of His substitute, His son. And because Romans 3.9 says to us,
00:26:53
Speaker
What then, are we any better off? Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin. We all need a Savior. I'm reading right now, as I'm trying to stay ahead of y'all with the sermons and stuff, I'm in the middle of the book of Leviticus.
00:27:16
Speaker
And as I was reading this week, it it came to my attention again just how much symbolism is brought into the Jewish faith and ultimately the Christian faith by God himself. Why? Because again, I think there's there's ways that God wants to keep reminding us of his presence. That multi-century experience I was talking about. Think about 4th of July.
00:27:45
Speaker
Fourth of July, you always sit at home and have a quiet day to yourself, right? Not in the South, we don't. There's barbecue, there's ice cream, there's fireworks, there's jag races, there's parades, there's bands, there's all kinds of things that we put together to celebrate that moment. And most of you sitting right here right now would not have to think very far before you remembered every single detail of last July 4th because of all of those senses being involved in this. So back to Leviticus.
00:28:24
Speaker
God orchestrated the building of the tabernacle, the equipping of the tabernacle, even the performance of things that were done in the tabernacle in such a way that they all kept pointing his people back to him and his desire to love them. One of them was the presence of the Shekinah glory of God.
00:28:51
Speaker
Sometimes present as a cloud, most often present in the form of some kind of fire or flame. And I'm pretty sure that their lighters work better than mine.
00:29:07
Speaker
It was the priest's responsibility every night to come in and delight the candelabra that was on the left as you entered the tabernacle. It was his job to make sure that flame did not go out. And so as I was reading this last week, the story of the book of Leviticus, I asked myself, why don't we bring this symbolism into our worship? Why have we detached ourselves from those things that remind us of God being here? Now some of you are newer to our church, I'm just gonna assure you, God's been in this place for seven years.
00:29:48
Speaker
He's been working in ways that just can't be described by human intervention. We've seen families been put back together. We've seen addictions broken. I can't tell you how many times leadership has sat down and said, we don't have anywhere else to put anybody else. And God has said, let me do the packing. We've seen the hand of God provide when we didn't see a way forward. We've had worship experiences that no man could orchestrate.
00:30:18
Speaker
We have had powerful movements of God that remind us the presence of God is in this place. But have we become too comfortable with it?
00:30:34
Speaker
Have we become so self-assured that somehow we believe He owes it to us to be here?
00:30:44
Speaker
Now immediately you might be asking the question, wait a minute, doesn't the Holy Spirit live inside of us? Yeah, absolutely. But have you and I become so comfortable with that we don't allow the Spirit really to control who we are? To control how we think? God forbid to lead us to confession and repentance of our sin? How many times have you and I have uttered those words, God, I've got this.
00:31:12
Speaker
God, I don't need you right now in this moment. I'm under control. God, I can handle this on my own.
00:31:30
Speaker
What if the spirit of God were to leave this place? Would we miss it?
00:31:42
Speaker
Would we even know it's gone? Or would we keep pressing on, trying real hard to manipulate it to get it back?
00:31:58
Speaker
God said, my presence will be with my people, but only only if you obey my commands. only if you listen to what I teach you, only if you follow where I'm taking you. The last thing that God reminds us through the Passover is we are saved by his blood.
Salvation Through Jesus' Sacrifice
00:32:25
Speaker
We are saved by his blood. The question is asked many places in scripture, if mankind is so bad then how can we possibly be saved? And the answer that keeps resounding the ages is it's only by the blood of the Lamb.
00:32:39
Speaker
It's only by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. You remember Genesis 3 when we were there, Adam and Eve made this horrible choice to rebel against God's plan. And as soon as the shame entered their lives, the first thing they did is they tried to cover up their shame, right? So they got these fig leaves and they put them together and we asked the question, who in their right mind would use fig leaves to cover up?
00:33:03
Speaker
They try to do inadequately what you and I try to do inadequately. We try to cover our sins with our good behavior. We try to cover our sins by being at church regularly. We try to cover our sins by serving a little more. Maybe God won't notice what's happening at home or on the weekend or in my workplace.
00:33:28
Speaker
So God comes and God kills animals to cover Adam and Eve. and it's by the shedding of blood that forgiveness is introduced to mankind.
00:33:42
Speaker
Then later in Genesis 22, Abraham is asked to do the unthinkable by God. I want you to sacrifice Isaac, your only son. Can we get any more clear picture of what Jesus would ultimately do for us?
00:33:58
Speaker
But God says to Abraham, take Isaac, I want you to take him to the mountain of God, I want you to sacrifice your son. And Abraham and even Isaac, in full faith, go to the mountain of God, they bind Isaac up, they lay him on the altar, and it's God who provides the lamb.
00:34:22
Speaker
Here in Egypt. With that first Passover many, many years later, over 500 years later, it would again be God who provides the blood for forgiveness as it's wiped across the lintel of the doorposts by the fathers of each home. And then finally, ultimately,
00:34:48
Speaker
John chapter 129, John the Baptist, as he's standing in the Jordan River, would see the approaching Savior and say, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
00:35:05
Speaker
Jesus would tell us, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. I am the only way that your relationship with your creator can ever be restored. Revelation 13 would describe him as the lamb who was slain before the foundations of the world. Jesus' life was not taken from him, it was given for us.
00:35:24
Speaker
Nobody took Jesus to the cross, Jesus took on the cross himself because he knew it would be his life, it would be our only hope. And so he willingly lay down his life as part of God's rescue plan. We are all under the curse of sin. And Jesus became the lamb that we could not be. And that's why we come to celebrate communion. This is what we are to be reminded of.
00:35:54
Speaker
Your sin, your sin, my sin required this act. Will you pray with me? Father, as we come to this moment where we celebrate and remember the great sacrifice that was part of your plan from the very beginning, we ask that you would help our hearts to see and our ears to hear
00:36:20
Speaker
our mouths to taste, our nose to smell, our hearts to feel what this moment means to you. And ultimately what it means to us.
00:36:36
Speaker
Father, help us to understand the weight of our sin as it was placed on Jesus himself at the cross.
00:36:49
Speaker
Help us to be reminded of the great grace and mercy and compassion that was required of you to do this act for us.
00:37:01
Speaker
And then give us the courage to open our hearts to receive what you want to do in us in this moment. Our sin exposed before you. Our lives open to your eyes.
00:37:14
Speaker
that we might repent, confess, and receive the grace that you've given. We love you so much for who you are and what you've done. And as we observe this moment, may we be reminded over and over and over again of how great a sacrifice was required. I say in Jesus' name I pray, amen. god