Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Going to read from 2nd Chronicles, verse 34.
[00:00:07] And we're starting at verse 29.
[00:00:10] Then the king sent and gathered together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. And the king went up to the house of the Lord with all the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and the priests and the Levites, all the people, both great and small. And he read in their hearing all the words of the book of the covenant that he had been found, that had been found in the house of the Lord. And the king stood in his place, and he made a covenant before the Lord to walk after the Lord, to keep his commandments and his testimonies and his statues, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of the covenant that were written in this book.
[00:00:50] Then he made all who were present in Jerusalem and in Benjamin join in it.
[00:00:55] And the inhabitants of Jerusalem did according to the covenant of God, the God of their fathers. And Josiah took away all the abominations from all the territory that belonged to the people of Israel. And he made all who were present in Israel serve the Lord their God all his days. They did not turn away from following the Lord, the God of their fathers. Let's pray.
[00:01:20] Dear Heavenly Father, you are a mighty God.
[00:01:25] I thank you that you are a God of covenant.
[00:01:29] I thank you that in your grace, in your deep love, in your faithfulness, when you watch us fail time and time and time again, you never fail us.
[00:01:44] Tonight I pray that you help my words where I lack, Father, and where I just can't, can't comprehend the totality.
[00:01:54] I pray that you step in.
[00:01:57] I pray that your spirit does his good work in this place. And I pray you teach us something good of who you are. In your son's name, we pray. Amen. Okay, I'm doing something different tonight. I'm going to be teaching more than I am preaching. And I know just saying that some of you are like, oh, but here's what I find.
[00:02:20] When I was in my early 20s, I was hungry to find Jesus. I was hungry to understand him. And everyone would say, what? Read your Bible? Read your Bible. But then you'd go to the Bible and there would be the weirdest things and it wouldn't make sense. And you're trying to understand a book that Even as a 40, I almost said 3, 44, whatever year old, I'm still trying to grapple with how to read this, how to understand it. It is rich in the.
[00:02:51] Rich in different kinds of literature. It's 66 books compiled together as one. It's it's not just easy, like, go pick it up. But here's what God's done in my life as I've picked it up and just started reading. He reveals stuff, and. And year after year, he reveals something new and he reveals something more.
[00:03:13] But my hope is tonight that I teach you something in how to read the Bible so that there's not this disconnect for so many people. You'll hear, why is the God of the Old Testament different than the God and Jesus?
[00:03:31] So you get this half of the Bible that sounds like fire, destruction.
[00:03:37] You're bad, and destruction's going to happen to you. And then you get Jesus in this vibrant life. And so some people, it's like, how. Why are there two different gods? And if we understand what we're gonna teach Ton, the Bible will flow for you in a whole new way.
[00:03:56] And so I'm not going to have a lot of illustrations. I'm not going to have a lot of, like, my screaming moments. I'm not going to get sweaty tonight. I just. I want us to understand, because the more I understand, the more I love him.
[00:04:12] I have my dad, Doc, who has been my mentor.
[00:04:17] And so weekly, we will have conversations, and I can sit with him, and I can ask hard questions. And I've been doing this since. Since I was a little girl, and I just want to learn. And even last night, him and I were talking about this sermon specifically, because I just have a hundred questions, and he pointed me to Romans 4, and I was reading it, and it was like everything that I was learning, it just came to life in a whole new way. And I was like, I love the Bible.
[00:04:45] The Bible can feel boring because it's an ancient text, and there's things in it we don't understand. But that's why studying the Bible is not boring. It's so good. It is so good.
[00:04:59] But sometimes you just have to learn how to study it. And that's been one of my hardest things, is my dad has a huge library, but I learn better in conversation. I learn better by listening. I learn better by being in classes. And so I've tried to find podcasts, and I've tried to find things that will help me learn in my learning style.
[00:05:22] And what I want to do is I want to take this idea of Josiah.
[00:05:28] So we have been in this series where for three weeks, we've been talking about this young king, and the idea of his life was he began.
[00:05:37] And I called all of you just to begin, what can God do in the life of someone whose heart is open to him.
[00:05:47] What can he do?
[00:05:49] And then you seek God with all your heart. It's not behavior modification. And try to change your ways. Seek God and let his love and his goodness pour into you, so that in his light and the beauty, the things that he shows us, the stuff we shouldn't be doing and the stuff that doesn't belong, it gets revealed to us.
[00:06:10] It stands out.
[00:06:12] And then Tay did such a good job. Can we give it up for Tay Rose Burger?
[00:06:18] Oh, that's right. She got married. Tay Rose Cheney.
[00:06:23] You're legally still Burger, though, aren't you?
[00:06:28] Okay. She talked about letting scripture truly change you.
[00:06:34] Letting this book, not just reading a verse or two or memorizing it and then moving on with your day, but letting it shape your life. Let it change you from the inside out. And now we see in the scripture that I just read that Josiah, he gathers everybody together, and there's this moment of recommitment to the covenant.
[00:06:55] And what I want to spend our time on tonight is this idea of covenant.
[00:07:01] Because what you're going to see is that God, he has relationships with us through these covenants.
[00:07:09] And I've been learning so much about these covenants. But here's what I want to also try to understand, that when we're talking about covenants, it's this idea of contract.
[00:07:21] Don't get bored. Stick with me, okay?
[00:07:25] Stick with me. Covenant equals contract. It's like this legally binding relationship. It's this partnership with God.
[00:07:37] And we see this first realization of this legally binding contract in the covenant of works.
[00:07:47] It's called the covenant of works.
[00:07:50] Now, stick with me because this helps you shape your understanding of scripture.
[00:07:56] The covenant of works we find in the very first couple of chapters of Genesis.
[00:08:02] You see, God did something so beautiful in the garden of Eden.
[00:08:08] It was something spectacular.
[00:08:12] There was no shame.
[00:08:14] There was no sin.
[00:08:16] There was a togetherness with God. They walked alongside of him.
[00:08:22] They were naked. Okay.
[00:08:25] Some of you, that sounds like hell.
[00:08:29] Moving on.
[00:08:32] Okay. They had no shame.
[00:08:36] And there was this relationship with God, this partnership, where there was such a large awareness. Awareness of God, of who he was.
[00:08:49] There was such an awareness in their soul and their heart and their being that they just felt him. They knew him. They. They wanted to be around him.
[00:09:01] But something broke that relationship.
[00:09:04] And we often read and we. We see that there was a tree in the middle of the garden that. That they could not eat from. And. And really, the story's not about the tree.
[00:09:16] The story is about the relationship that God had with Adam and Eve.
[00:09:23] And the idea was, obey God, trust him, live in the blessing that he has to offer.
[00:09:32] But then we see the serpent sneak in, and the devil, he tempts them by saying, does God really.
[00:09:44] And Adam and Eve were deceived, and they took the fruit and they ate it.
[00:09:50] But what happened is it broke trust.
[00:09:53] They did not trust God.
[00:09:57] And that's really what that scripture is about. It's a trust issue.
[00:10:01] And what happened is when they. When they broke that trust, when they said, when they believed the snake over the living God, it brought sin into humanity.
[00:10:14] Now, when I was giving birth, I cussed out evil a little bit.
[00:10:19] You can read in Genesis, and you'll understand it if you read it.
[00:10:22] But here's the deal. If any single one of us were in that garden that day, we would have done the exact same thing.
[00:10:30] And you know how I know?
[00:10:32] Because we do it all of the time.
[00:10:36] Every single one of us can be deceived.
[00:10:39] Things can look good that shouldn't.
[00:10:41] We can lie and make decisions we shouldn't. We're deceived.
[00:10:46] And what happens is it breaks this relationship. Adam and Eve, they had a perfect, whole, shameless, beautiful relationship with God.
[00:10:57] And Adam represents mankind.
[00:11:00] And when the sin happened, it broke that relationship.
[00:11:04] It broke that awareness in our souls for God. It broke that awareness of our closeness with him.
[00:11:13] And sin entered, and it entered for every single one of us.
[00:11:20] And when we think about this covenant of works, there is an idea that that relationship was broken, But God's love for us was not the way we sense God. It's been different.
[00:11:38] Sin has entered the world, and every single one of us feels it and knows it.
[00:11:43] And there's this reality that there is a brokenness from God. And some of our souls can feel it so powerfully. Like some of us just long to feel Him.
[00:11:55] Some of us just long to know him and be by Him.
[00:12:00] And here's the truth. He is a holy and perfect God.
[00:12:07] And what happens is when we sin a holy and perfect God, it looks different.
[00:12:16] We are. We are. He loves us.
[00:12:19] But the sin that encaptures us, the sin that captivates us, it makes us different to God in some sense. When this sin entered the world, he detests it.
[00:12:31] But his love for you never changed.
[00:12:35] And I want to now point to the covenant that we all live in. So there's these two big covenants in theology that we're talking about tonight. It's the covenant of works. Where Adam sinned, broke that relationship.
[00:12:52] But from the Very beginning, there was another kind of covenant, and it's called the covenant of grace.
[00:13:00] And it's what every single one of us live in to this day.
[00:13:06] It's what every human in the scripture lived in from the very beginning.
[00:13:12] You see, when we read Genesis, Genesis 3, we get this story, we get creation, we get these things, and then we get this break of relationship, we get sin entering into the world. And then the whole rest of this book is the redemptive love of God, the whole rest of it.
[00:13:33] And so you're going to see things in here in the Old Testament of God saying, be my people, and I will be your God.
[00:13:45] I will be your God. Be my people. It's at the core of covenant love. It's at the core of it. And what do people do?
[00:13:56] We fail.
[00:13:58] And so time and time and time again in Scripture, it's just people failing and people failing and people failing.
[00:14:06] But God did not want us to be separated from him. He didn't want to lose humanity when Adam broke that.
[00:14:14] And so this covenant of grace, it's always existed.
[00:14:19] And I want to explain it to you through a crazy story. Okay.
[00:14:24] This is part of the Bible that you read, and you're like, what does that mean? Okay, I did not know until last week, if I'm totally honest to you, and even clearer this week. And I've read the Bible every year for a very long time, we're going to find it in Genesis 15.
[00:14:44] Everyone get your bookmark.
[00:14:47] Yes.
[00:14:49] On your chair. So I want you to study Scripture in new ways. And this is just one little way so you can use your bookmark to mark this, because the ride's about to get wild. Because I want us to understand the covenant of grace, and this story is wild.
[00:15:09] So here we go. Ready? Genesis 15. And we're going to read it after these things. The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.
[00:15:18] Fear not, Abram.
[00:15:21] I am your shield, your reward.
[00:15:25] Some versions say, your exceedingly great reward.
[00:15:30] But Abram said, oh, Lord God, what will you give me? For I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus.
[00:15:40] Back in this day, the a son meant everything to the continuation of the family.
[00:15:46] And so. So God's saying, I am your great reward. And. And Abraham's like, but listen, I don't even have a son.
[00:15:54] I don't have anything. I don't have a son.
[00:15:58] And Abram said, behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir. And behold, the word of the Lord came to him.
[00:16:08] This man shall not be your heir. Your very own son shall be your heir.
[00:16:14] At this point, Abram was a great grandpa age. He was an old, old, old man, and he had no kids. So God saying to him, you're gonna have heirs. It's gonna come from you. It will be your offspring. It was, like, unheard of.
[00:16:39] But how does Abram respond?
[00:16:43] No, God takes him out and he says, let's go outside.
[00:16:48] And he says, look toward heaven and number the stars, if you're able to number them.
[00:16:56] And then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. Did we get a picture of stars?
[00:17:03] Kind of hard to see, but I want to put myself and us in this story. Abram is sitting with me. God, there's a reward and a promise, and he's lived years now without seeing this come true.
[00:17:19] And he's seeking God, and God takes him out. And he says, I want you to look at the sky.
[00:17:24] I want you to look at the night sky, and I want you to count the stars.
[00:17:29] Have you ever watched for, like, shooting stars outside?
[00:17:33] One night, my brother and I, we laid out on the driveway because there was supposed to be, like, a meteor shower. And it was like, the more I looked, the more stars appeared. Have you ever seen that? Where it's like, just the more you look, the more stars there are.
[00:17:46] And he's saying, as many stars as you see are going to be your family. It's going to be a huge, huge family. Everyone with me, everyone sticking with me. We together.
[00:17:57] Okay?
[00:17:59] It all is coming together. I promise.
[00:18:02] Okay. Story starts to get weird now, but here's the best part.
[00:18:09] And Abram believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
[00:18:16] Abram believed the Lord, Adam, his relationship was broken because of sin.
[00:18:26] Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord counted it to him as righteousness. Righteousness is just to be in right relationship with God.
[00:18:37] Righteousness to be in right relationship with God.
[00:18:42] What did it take to be in right relationship with God?
[00:18:47] It was his faith.
[00:18:49] It was his trust.
[00:18:51] And now you're going to get into scripture and you're going to see there's. There's Mosaic law and there's sacrifices, and there's things in here that. That it seems as if.
[00:19:04] That if you do not follow it, you do not get the love of God.
[00:19:09] But here's what I want. From the very, very beginning, when you look at scripture, Abraham believed that one day God would give him a son and his family would grow, and it would be like the number of the stars. He believed it because there was a trust in God, and there's a posture that. That makes us right with God in some sense.
[00:19:32] And it's a deep level of trust, a deep level of dependency on him.
[00:19:39] Okay, let's keep moving.
[00:19:45] And then he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of the Ur of Chaldeans to you, to give you this land to possess. But he said, oh, Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?
[00:19:59] And this is where we get weird. We would be reading this at home, and you would be like, sarah, what's going on here? It says, then God said to Abram, bring me a heifer, three years old, a female goat, three years old, a ram, three years old, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And now we're at this point in Abram saying, well, how will I know this will be. And God saying, a grocery list of ancient animals.
[00:20:28] Okay, it's weird. What does this mean? Why? Why? Why? Anyone know? Let's keep going.
[00:20:37] And he brought him all of these. And then to make it even weirder, Abram cuts them in half.
[00:20:44] And then he lays each half in this pile.
[00:20:48] Okay, I'm gonna get gross for a second. Can you imagine cutting a cow in half?
[00:20:58] It's gonna be bloody. It's gonna be disgusting. It's gonna be a mess.
[00:21:04] And here Abram is cutting a cow in half, and then the goat, and then the ram. And he's taking one piece, and he's putting it on one side, and then he's taking the other piece, and he's putting.
[00:21:16] So now we've got half of a heifer, half of a ram, half of a goat, and then the birds, and it's this bloody mess.
[00:21:27] And you're thinking, why is this in scripture? Like, what is the point of this story?
[00:21:33] And it's like, he's created this pathway.
[00:21:36] And why. Why would he create this pathway?
[00:21:41] In ancient Near Eastern times, they had a ritual.
[00:21:48] When you made a covenant, you would follow this ritual.
[00:21:53] And here's how it went. You would cut the animals in pieces.
[00:21:57] You would put it in a walking path.
[00:22:00] And then the people who were making the covenant, who were making this legally binding agreement contract with each other, they would walk through this pathway.
[00:22:12] Gross. Yes.
[00:22:16] Ancient times. Weird. I don't know. And they would. They would walk through this pathway. But here was what it represented. It represented that it was so significant, this contract. Were taking it so seriously that it would be.
[00:22:34] You would take a look at the animal as you're walking through. And you're talking about this contract. And you would. You would look at these animals and it would be like, it will be unto me as it is, these animals if I break this contract.
[00:22:47] It was so serious that it was like, we're gonna do this bloody messy ritual because we're taking it serious. And if I don't keep my end of the deal, let me be just like this animal who is cut in half.
[00:23:06] It was something they took serious.
[00:23:09] So now, why is God doing this with Abram?
[00:23:15] What do we think? We bored?
[00:23:17] Stick with me. It's getting good.
[00:23:20] It's coming together.
[00:23:22] Okay?
[00:23:25] He brought the pieces. He laid it out as the sun was going down. Verse 12. A deep sleep fell on Abram.
[00:23:33] And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.
[00:23:38] Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and they will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years. He's showing them what happens in Exodus, okay? When you just flip your Bible a book. This is the story of Exodus. Read it.
[00:24:01] He's showing him you're going to have a family. You're going to have heirs. This is what happens to them, okay?
[00:24:08] Verse 17.
[00:24:12] When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.
[00:24:25] Do you understand when I say we go to read the Bible? And you see these things and you're like cut animals. Now there's a torch and a pot. Like, what is happening?
[00:24:36] Okay, here's what's happening.
[00:24:40] In this tradition, you would walk through the path together, and you were both taking full ownership.
[00:24:51] You are taking ownership of the promise, and you are taking ownership if you don't keep your commitment.
[00:24:57] But where's Abram?
[00:24:59] He's clonked. He's out in a deep sleep. It's like God gave him sleeping pills. Okay?
[00:25:05] So imagine you're looking from a bed. There's this mess.
[00:25:09] Abram's asleeping.
[00:25:11] And now God is giving us this symbolic image.
[00:25:17] In the Old Testament, when you read and the presence of God shows up, it often shows up in the form of fire.
[00:25:26] You'll see it. Moses in the burning bush. You'll see it. When they were taking the Israelites out, there was fire coming from the sky.
[00:25:34] God's presence was fire.
[00:25:38] And now it's showing this idea that Abram is asleep.
[00:25:43] This covenant ritual is happening. Abram's knocked out, sleeping. And this torch, the presence of the living God is Going on this path.
[00:25:55] And here's what it symbolizes. It symbolizes this. That the covenant promise that he is making, that he will be faithful to see it through.
[00:26:10] But it also symbolizes.
[00:26:17] That if Abram or his family doesn't keep their commitment, he will be like those animals, cut, slaughtered.
[00:26:35] And you get this extreme image of a God in heaven who is saying, I am going to be a God of grace. No matter what you do, you don't have to be part of this ritual with me.
[00:26:54] I am making the covenant.
[00:26:57] You see, the covenant of works, it was between God and man. But the covenant of grace is between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.
[00:27:10] God takes on this commitment.
[00:27:14] This covenant of grace is between God and what he's saying is there's. I want to. I want to partner with you in this life. I want to be in relationship with you in this life. I want to do things and work together so that this world can know something better.
[00:27:32] But even when you fail, because God knows everything, even when you fail, I take on I shoulder the responsibility of your failure.
[00:27:48] I carry the weight of the consequence of the broken covenant.
[00:27:56] And it's like this wonderful image of grace that God is going to show us all throughout Scripture.
[00:28:07] Did you ever see the Sixth Sense?
[00:28:10] Okay, nobody saw the Sixth Sense. Everybody saw it. Yeah.
[00:28:18] The best writers, they have this foreshadowing.
[00:28:22] And. And that's what I had to watch the Sixth Sense again as soon as it was over.
[00:28:28] And I read what the writer had done for the movie or the director.
[00:28:34] In the Sixth Sense, there's foreshadowing that Malcolm has been dead the whole movie. He gets shot in the first scene. And then there's these foreshadows. Like, every time there's a red doorknob or there's a red sweater, it's foreshadowing. Every time Malcolm's in a scene, his wife's not talking to him. Yes. Everyone knowing what I'm talking about. And did everyone read up on this? Okay. It's like a hundred years old. Everyone's bored. I'm getting. We're getting here. Okay.
[00:29:05] There's a foreshadowing that whole movie from the first scene that he gets shot to the end. And so I had to, like, go back and watch it and see what I missed. And this. The. His breath in the cold. You know what I'm saying? Okay. This is how the Bible is.
[00:29:20] There is a foreshadowing.
[00:29:23] The Old Testament, it foreshadows Jesus Christ all throughout it. Okay. And sometimes it's obvious. And then sometimes it's like this story and you're like, what?
[00:29:39] Sometimes there is, there's things that you can see. But when we study it from the very beginning, we see that, how we look back, that Jesus died. But these people, they were trusting in a Messiah to come. And it was the same promise. Ours was fulfilled and we get to go back and see it. They were waiting for the coming Messiah. And this covenant of grace, it covered them.
[00:30:05] The brokenness that happened with sin, the covenant of grace. God said, I am a God who will come, carry and shoulder this. I am going to be faithful even if you're not.
[00:30:19] It's a God who says, and if you are not faithful and you break the prominence, I am a God of justice and I can't sweep sin under the rug. I can't throw it away. But I'm going to do for you what you can't do for yourself.
[00:30:38] And we see this story of Abram and the torch passes through.
[00:30:47] The presence of God is saying, I will be faithful and keep the covenant, but I will also shoulder the punishment.
[00:31:00] Now I want you to fast forward to the New Testament thousands of years later.
[00:31:09] It's the last day of Jesus life.
[00:31:16] And they're celebrating Passover and Jesus.
[00:31:23] You'll find this in Luke 22. Jesus is sitting with his friends, who by the way, even them, they failed him.
[00:31:37] And he's sitting with these guys that he loves and he takes the bread.
[00:31:45] Does anyone know what he does with the bread?
[00:31:48] He breaks it into two pieces.
[00:31:54] Does that sound familiar?
[00:31:58] And he says, this is my body given for you.
[00:32:05] It's almost like they're drawing us to this image of Abram where this heifer was cut into pieces.
[00:32:14] He broke the bread.
[00:32:18] He said, this is my body given for, for you.
[00:32:24] Because what we could not, Jesus did.
[00:32:30] And he took the cup and he said, this is the new covenant in my blood.
[00:32:39] From the very beginning, Jesus Christ was the plan.
[00:32:45] The covenant of grace was the plan. And it was foreshadowed our need for Jesus, our need for a Savior. It was foreshadowed through all out scripture.
[00:33:00] And in this moment, it's like Jesus in his death, in his arrest, when they arrested him, when they sentenced him, when they put him on trial, when he, when he died, he was the torch.
[00:33:23] So that we did not have to be.
[00:33:28] He took the punishment, the broken covenant, and he carried the weight.
[00:33:34] And for every single one of us, we get to live under a covenant of grace.
[00:33:47] I don't know where you're at I'll be honest, I've had a really hard go at it this year.
[00:33:58] A lot of things happening with my husband and work and just things.
[00:34:05] We've had a lot of hospital visits and stays. We just lost my grandpa. And there's like a heaviness of life sometimes that I can feel.
[00:34:19] I'm so longing for a comfort of God.
[00:34:27] I want you to know that. Even the desire to know God, even the desire to be curious about God or have questions about God, it's because of that covenant of grace.
[00:34:48] God initiated a good idea.
[00:34:52] And when we failed him, he looked at the Son, the second person of the Trinity, and He said, I'm going to set apart a people.
[00:35:05] And the Son said, I will redeem them.
[00:35:10] I will bring them back.
[00:35:13] I won't miss even one.
[00:35:17] And then the Spirit said, I'm going to work in their heart.
[00:35:22] I'm going to draw them to you, Jesus. I'm going to draw them to you. You.
[00:35:29] Even the fact that we have a longing or curiosity or questions or want to know God at all is because the covenant of grace is at work.
[00:35:40] Grace means that God treats us better than we deserve.
[00:35:46] So in the heaviness of life, I don't have a lot of extra in me. Anyone know what? The feeling.
[00:35:54] And I haven't loved my kids the way I've wanted to lately.
[00:36:01] And I'm tired and I don't have much left for my husband. At the end of the day, We carry things in life.
[00:36:18] Some of you walk in with shame. Some of you walked in with just what. What you've been carrying.
[00:36:24] Maybe you're trying hard to tear down those idols like Josiah.
[00:36:30] But the pull, the deceit from the unholy one, it's strong.
[00:36:39] Maybe some of you, you're just longing to feel some love and some hope.
[00:36:46] Maybe some of you are trying to soak up the last days of summer.
[00:36:52] But what I want to tell you, where you need to be treated better than you deserve, whatever that looks like in your life.
[00:37:05] There is a God who wants to give it to you. You.
[00:37:12] There's a God who from the beginning of time has had the plan to redeem you, to bring you back into the fold.
[00:37:27] And so tonight, I'm just. I'm going to pray that one. As you study scripture, you can. You can see this broken fall that happened. But all throughout, you can see the redemptive love of God at work.
[00:37:41] His grace shows up and it's fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
[00:37:49] And I just want us to close our eyes and bow our Heads.
[00:38:00] If you just need a little extra grace. All eyes closed. All heads bowed. If you just need a little extra grace tonight, just raise your hand up and down. God bless you. God bless you. God bless you. I see you. I see you.
[00:38:13] God bless you. God bless you.
[00:38:16] God bless you.
[00:38:18] I see you.
[00:38:22] I see you.
[00:38:25] I see you.
[00:38:29] Mighty God, you are a God who is faithful.
[00:38:39] You are a God who bears and shoulders the punishment for us.
[00:38:50] What else, Father, could we possibly want? You are a God of grace. And so that is what our heart longs for.
[00:39:03] We long for you to show us your grace.
[00:39:08] Whatever grace you have, Father, we ask that we will receive it with open arms.
[00:39:18] Whatever love you have, Father, we want to surrender to you and you to God. Be our God. And for us to be under this covenant of grace that you so graciously made.
[00:39:33] How generous is your love for each person that raised their hand. For anyone listening online. For any heart, Father, that. That just needs you.
[00:39:47] I pray they can trust you in a new way.
[00:39:51] That it is by faith that you counted it as righteousness.
[00:39:59] I pray where they are hurting, where they are tired, Will you be their source?
[00:40:06] I thank you for being our God.
[00:40:11] I thank you that in your.
[00:40:13] Your wisdom you give us each other, Father.
[00:40:18] And I pray that we can love one another well.
[00:40:22] In your mighty son's name we pray. Amen.
