SPEAKER_00: This is the fourth Sunday in Advent.
SPEAKER_00: We are in our sermon series from the book of Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: It raises the question for all of us today that God asks of each of us, where are you?
SPEAKER_00: Where are you this Advent season?
SPEAKER_00: Do you know?
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever assume.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ever assume that you know where your heart is.
SPEAKER_00: The heart can be quite tricky.
SPEAKER_00: The heart, the Bible says, can be deceitful.
SPEAKER_00: As we've seen the last few weeks, we can we can hide from God in all kinds of ways.
SPEAKER_00: This morning we're going to look at that in particular.
SPEAKER_00: The ways that we hide, but the ways that God finds us.
SPEAKER_00: Reading from the Word of God, Genesis chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.
SPEAKER_00: And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
SPEAKER_00: But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Who told you that you were naked?
SPEAKER_00: Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?
SPEAKER_00: The man said, The woman from whom you gave me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of the tree, and I ate.
SPEAKER_00: Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done?
SPEAKER_00: The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field.
SPEAKER_00: On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.
SPEAKER_00: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring.
SPEAKER_00: He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
SPEAKER_00: This is the precious, pure, powerful word of God.
SPEAKER_00: It's prayed together.
SPEAKER_00: Oh God, we thank you that as you met our first parents in the garden and had a solution, would you please meet us today?
SPEAKER_00: Would your solution for our sin not only be very clearly understood, but greatly desired?
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, only you can do that.
SPEAKER_00: We'll never get there on our own reasoning.
SPEAKER_00: So, Holy Spirit, would you please uncover whatever it is that would be holding us back from seeing what Jesus provides.
SPEAKER_00: In his name we come.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The last two weeks we've looked at the origin of how this mess came about, the troubles and the sorrows in this world, the consequences of our falling to temptation.
SPEAKER_00: Not only did Adam and Eve fall to temptation, but we all have done that.
SPEAKER_00: We all share that sin.
SPEAKER_00: Succumbing to temptation, they lost their peace.
SPEAKER_00: As we've seen in this sermon series, fear and peace do not coexist.
SPEAKER_00: What we fear, we often try to control.
SPEAKER_00: We all know that.
SPEAKER_00: Out of fear, we go into hiding.
SPEAKER_00: We've seen in this sermon series that we all are very familiar with fig leaves, the largest leaves that were available in the Garden of Eden, looking for maximum coverage, maximum protection.
SPEAKER_00: How do we protect ourselves from this world, from others?
SPEAKER_00: God asked the question of Adam, who told you that you were naked?
SPEAKER_00: Once he sinned against God, he just knew it.
SPEAKER_00: He just knew inside that he had lost his shalom, his peace.
SPEAKER_00: Things were not well.
SPEAKER_00: Living in shame, we looked at last week.
SPEAKER_00: Living in shame.
SPEAKER_00: Shame is a beast.
SPEAKER_00: Shame tries to name you.
SPEAKER_00: Shame tries to tell you who you are based on what you've done that has not measured up to God.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus has something better, as we saw last week.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, no, I'm not going to name you by your sin.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to name you by what I've done for you, child of God.
SPEAKER_00: As the call to worship reminded us this morning, behold, what manner of love is this?
SPEAKER_00: That we are the children of God.
SPEAKER_00: Once we come to Christ, nobody is born in that position.
SPEAKER_00: You must understand that.
SPEAKER_00: You are not born with the remedy.
SPEAKER_00: You're not born with the covering that Christ provides.
SPEAKER_00: That's something that we must all receive in this life.
SPEAKER_00: We've talked about that.
SPEAKER_00: We just know that something inside is wrong, don't we?
SPEAKER_00: Are you still trying to kid yourself?
SPEAKER_00: Are you still trying to convince yourself that you're okay inside?
SPEAKER_00: That you really don't need a savior.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to try to disabuse any thinking about that today.
SPEAKER_00: We begin searching for something on the outside.
SPEAKER_00: Again, as we saw last week, it may be intelligence, it may be beauty, it may be our sense of humor, athletic, artistic achievement.
SPEAKER_00: It may be shyness.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever it is, counselors call these things layers.
SPEAKER_00: Layers that we put over ourselves so that nobody ever sees what's really going on inside of us.
SPEAKER_00: And we try desperately to cover up.
SPEAKER_00: But nobody does well enough.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever helps us to run from admitting to ourselves who we are to anyone, including ourselves, we discover protective strategies that work.
SPEAKER_00: Anything that helps us deal with life with our souls buried in the same time.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we, the cover feels unbearable.
SPEAKER_00: And that's when we struggle with shame.
SPEAKER_00: The silent killer.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came as we saw last Lord's day.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to take your shame.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to take your guilt.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to take your sin.
SPEAKER_00: It was all nailed on the cross with him.
SPEAKER_00: But again, it's a work that Christ did, but it's a gift that we must receive.
SPEAKER_00: Until we receive that gift, we are still left on our own.
SPEAKER_00: And that's not good for anybody.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we continue this last week on the series, the first point, let's just talk more about the cover-up.
SPEAKER_00: As we go back to that verse we've been looking at, our theme verse, verse 9, where God calls to Adam and says, Where are you?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, I heard you in the garden and I was afraid.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we looked at that week one.
SPEAKER_00: Last week we looked at, because I was naked.
SPEAKER_00: This morning, so I hid myself.
SPEAKER_00: Before the fall, being known and knowing God was a blessing.
SPEAKER_00: But since the fall, it feels like a curse.
SPEAKER_00: We play the game, hide and seek, but it's not a game.
SPEAKER_00: But it's a version of that.
SPEAKER_00: How do I hide from the powerful gaze of God?
SPEAKER_00: Remember the fresco we talked about in Florence last week?
SPEAKER_00: Banished from the garden, depicted in our Adam is just holding, hanging his head down in shame.
SPEAKER_00: He can't even look up.
SPEAKER_00: And Eve's head is thrust up.
SPEAKER_00: You just see the misery on her face.
SPEAKER_00: It's tough.
SPEAKER_00: And so we banished from the garden because of our sin.
SPEAKER_00: We hide and we wait to see if we can remain hidden from God.
SPEAKER_00: We're just going to talk about what that looks like a little bit more in some very practical ways right now.
SPEAKER_00: But before we get into the hide and seek more, let's talk about why we hide and seek.
SPEAKER_00: You know, throughout the Bible, in the Old Testament and the New Testament, people know that they can't stand in front of a holy, perfect God.
SPEAKER_00: It would be our undoing.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah said that in Isaiah chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: In the year that Uzziah the king died, he had a vision of heaven and God comes to him.
SPEAKER_00: And when he sees God approaching him in holiness and knowing that he's not holy, and he was a priest.
SPEAKER_00: He was one of the better ones.
SPEAKER_00: But he said, Woe is me.
SPEAKER_00: I am undone, because right now the holy God is coming after me, and I cannot dare to look at him.
SPEAKER_00: Isaiah came undone.
SPEAKER_00: Moses had the same experience, much like that in Exodus chapter 33, verse 20, where he says, God, show me your face.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, Moses, I can't show you my face.
SPEAKER_00: If I showed you my face, my pani, my presence, you would die.
SPEAKER_00: That kind of hot, pure, the heat of God's glory, the heat of God's holiness, would melt you on the spot.
SPEAKER_00: He says, You cannot see my face.
SPEAKER_00: No one can see my face and live.
SPEAKER_00: What about the New Testament?
SPEAKER_00: Early on, when Jesus and his disciples were out and Peter was fishing with some of his brothers.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Hey, you guys, how's the fishing going?
SPEAKER_00: And Peter says, Not well, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We haven't caught anything all night.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, Well, put the net on the other side of the boat.
SPEAKER_00: And you can just sense this exasperated Peter.
SPEAKER_00: You know, Jesus, we get that, you know, you're Messiah, but we're the fishermen.
SPEAKER_00: We know how to do this.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: He said, No, no, really.
SPEAKER_00: Put the net on the other side of the boat.
SPEAKER_00: You know what happens.
SPEAKER_00: They catch so many fish that the nets start to burst.
SPEAKER_00: What was Peter's reaction when he now he sees the glory of God being manifested through the person of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what he said?
SPEAKER_00: Depart from me, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I can't take this high voltage of your glory.
SPEAKER_00: I feel so unworthy inside.
SPEAKER_00: See, that's why it's really hard.
SPEAKER_00: You just can't look God in the face.
SPEAKER_00: There's too much to hide.
SPEAKER_00: There's too much that we are broken over.
SPEAKER_00: But you can't look Jesus in the face.
SPEAKER_00: That's why Jesus came from heaven to be the Father's representative.
SPEAKER_00: And so we still hide from God in many ways.
SPEAKER_00: When God, the real God, shows up, our real selves can't handle that.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you an illustration from Bible scholar Jim Boyce.
SPEAKER_00: At one time in his life, when he was getting his doctorate living in Switzerland, each year in the town of Basil, the Swiss equivalent of Mardi Gras would be held, and people would don their mask and their costumes, and they would play games and they would do things that they would not normally do because, well, think Mardi Gras.
SPEAKER_00: They had their mask on, they had their costumes, and somehow they felt permitted, they felt permissioned to act out in some ways that they knew would be displeasing to God.
SPEAKER_00: Each year the salvation army in that town would advertise on billboards all over the city with this message.
SPEAKER_00: God sees behind your mask.
SPEAKER_00: And you know that's still true.
SPEAKER_00: God sees behind your mask and mine.
SPEAKER_00: Every day's Halloween unless you go to Jesus for your covering.
SPEAKER_00: Every day is Halloween unless you learn to believe that Jesus died to take that cover.
SPEAKER_00: Boyce's comment, he goes on to comment about that.
SPEAKER_00: There are only two religions in this world.
SPEAKER_00: The first religion is a religion of works.
SPEAKER_00: Let's think of it as our own covering.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to the second religion later.
SPEAKER_00: The first religion is a religion of covering, covering up, putting on masks, putting on costumes, as we've talked about the last two weeks.
SPEAKER_00: Very, it's a very common way, the religion of works, our own covering, one very common way that most of us have done this many times over, is just trying to be good people.
SPEAKER_00: Trying to do good, trying to be good, so that if there is a God out there and he really is holy and he doesn't just wink at sin, that well, maybe this will appease him.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible never teaches any such thing.
SPEAKER_00: It's not true.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on to give the illustration of something that many of us will relate to.
SPEAKER_00: Playing the game of Monopoly.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, but I love that game.
SPEAKER_00: I still love that game.
SPEAKER_00: You know, when you're winning, when you get boardwalk and park place, and you get putting houses and hotels, isn't it a rush?
SPEAKER_00: And you start putting your competitors out of the game, and Sharon says, I'm really too competitive in this game.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe some of you're thinking, a rush.
SPEAKER_00: And then you sit there on the board and you've got all your cash.
SPEAKER_00: You know, you practically own the whole bank.
SPEAKER_00: And then you take all that monopoly money and you go down to the bank down the street to open up a new account.
SPEAKER_00: Alright?
SPEAKER_00: You've got all that monopoly money, and you put it on the counter, and you say, see, I'm here to open up a new account.
SPEAKER_00: And the cashier looks at you like you're nuts.
SPEAKER_00: What's all this?
SPEAKER_00: You put down your winnings on the counter and they say, I'm sorry, but we don't recognize this kind of currency.
SPEAKER_00: It gets you nowhere.
SPEAKER_00: Your monopoly money works well when you play the game, but it has no value, it has no currency with God.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's what we do when we cover up by trying to be good.
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what it's like.
SPEAKER_00: We cover up.
SPEAKER_00: And we do all these things, and we try to be the best version of ourselves that we can be.
SPEAKER_00: We try to be the best that we could be.
SPEAKER_00: Because we just know inherently you're supposed to do this.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to try to be good.
SPEAKER_00: And doesn't it earn us something?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, no, it doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: The wages of sin is death.
SPEAKER_00: But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Not in God's bank account.
SPEAKER_00: We deceive ourselves, as we've said in this series.
SPEAKER_00: Sin is where you put a move on yourself.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm not saying we, it's not that we understand this consciously.
SPEAKER_00: It's not that we're conscious about all this.
SPEAKER_00: We don't even know what's going on in our motivation.
SPEAKER_00: All we know is that we're trying to make it.
SPEAKER_00: All we know is that if there is a God and I'm going to please him, I have to have something to give him, right?
SPEAKER_00: God says, I'm not taking your monopoly money.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not taking your efforts to be good.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not accepting that.
SPEAKER_00: For you to think that just demonstrates that you really don't take your sin seriously.
SPEAKER_00: I cannot atone for my sin.
SPEAKER_00: Neither can you.
SPEAKER_00: We do that in so many ways.
SPEAKER_00: So long as we can convince ourselves that we're acceptable by comparing ourselves to others.
SPEAKER_00: That's a favorite game some of us play.
SPEAKER_00: We can hardly go a week, we can hardly go a day without comparing ourselves, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, we can always find people that make us look better.
SPEAKER_00: But that's not the point.
SPEAKER_00: Those aren't the rules that God plays by.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I'm not playing that game.
SPEAKER_00: But some of us think, well, I'll take my chances if there is a God.
SPEAKER_00: John Flavel, the great theologian, said centuries ago, there are some people who have lived 40 or 50 years or more in this world and have scarcely had one hour's discourse with their own hearts.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's particularly true during the Christmas season.
SPEAKER_00: We can get so caught up in all the activities, all the sentimentality of Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: We can get so caught up with listening to beautiful music.
SPEAKER_00: Sharon and I were at the Kennedy Center last night listening to the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: And you know, I just wonder how many people in that large choir, how many people in that orchestra are playing this beautiful music, but they really don't understand the message of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_00: We can do that.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not ever going to help.
SPEAKER_00: Brennan Manning said the false self suppresses or camouflages our truest feelings, making emotional honesty impossible.
SPEAKER_00: Living out of the false self creates a compulsive desire to present a perfect image to the public so that everybody will admire us and yet nobody will really know us.
SPEAKER_00: I know what that looks like, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: The times when I've just tried to put on that mask, convince myself and convince others that I'm better than I really am.
SPEAKER_00: The cover-up.
SPEAKER_00: It's not for you.
SPEAKER_00: It's not for me.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus came to offer something so much better.
SPEAKER_00: And so let's not focus so much now on the cover-up, but let's focus on the divine covering that Jesus offers us.
SPEAKER_00: Satan's mistake was that he reasoned that if he could get Adam and Eve to sin, God's wrath and anger would fall on them.
SPEAKER_00: What he failed to see, because he's not omniscient, the devil's not omniscient.
SPEAKER_00: What he failed to see is that God's only Son would come and stand in our place.
SPEAKER_00: The Heidelberg Catechism says in Question 11, talking about what happened.
SPEAKER_00: And sin committed against his supreme majesty must be punished with the supreme penalty.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that ring true?
SPEAKER_00: He is of the most supreme majesty, and yet the majestic one came to pay the supreme penalty.
SPEAKER_00: This divine covering, you see it in the text printed in your bulletin in verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.
SPEAKER_00: As we looked two weeks ago at verse 15 of this text printed.
SPEAKER_00: Right after they sinned, Adam and Eve sinned.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't leave them to stew in it.
SPEAKER_00: God didn't leave them without any hope.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the first offer of the gospel in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: God says, You have sinned, you have fallen, but I am going to give you a remedy.
SPEAKER_00: I will send a Son, one day, and that son will bruise the head of Satan, crush the head of Satan, and that happened on the day that Jesus was crucified at the cross.
SPEAKER_00: The day that Jesus was crucified on the cross, Satan was defeated.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible tells us, Paul tells us in Colossians chapter 2, and that moment that God disarmed all the powers of this world.
SPEAKER_00: He disarmed them by taking all of our offenses.
SPEAKER_00: We were talking about this in our CFC this week.
SPEAKER_00: All of us have a rap sheet.
SPEAKER_00: All of us have a very, very, very long list of how we have sinned against God.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus Christ died on the cross, that rap sheet, Christian, was nailed on the cross with him.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means that Jesus became sin for us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means that Jesus became a curse for us.
SPEAKER_00: That's what it means that Jesus took our shame, our guilt.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why he can look you in the eye today and say you are forgiven in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: You are righteous in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Who does that?
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is why I love him.
SPEAKER_00: This is why I want to serve him.
SPEAKER_00: Who does this but the Son of God?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so he takes skins, the garments of skins, and clothed Adam and Eve in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: In order for them to be clothed in the skins of animals, the animals had to die.
SPEAKER_00: We know that.
SPEAKER_00: So also for us to be clothed with the righteousness of Jesus, which the skins represent.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had to die.
SPEAKER_00: Let me take you back centuries ago to the Old Testament before Jesus came.
SPEAKER_00: If you were an Israelite and you worship the true God and you sinned, you would come to the priest with your animal, let's say it might have been a lamb, and you would kill the lamb.
SPEAKER_00: The priest would say, Why are you here today?
SPEAKER_00: And you would have to confess your sin.
SPEAKER_00: You would say, I'm here today because.
SPEAKER_00: But you would kill the animal.
SPEAKER_00: The priest would take the blood of the animal and sprinkle it on the horns of the altar.
SPEAKER_00: But that animal had to die.
SPEAKER_00: He was a symbol of the fact that I should have died.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin.
SPEAKER_00: The skins represented the life that had to die.
SPEAKER_00: We said earlier that there are only two religions in this whole world: either the religion of works, what we try to provide, or the religion of skins.
SPEAKER_00: The religion of skins.
SPEAKER_00: Not works.
SPEAKER_00: When he shall come with trumpet sound, oh, may I then in him be found.
SPEAKER_00: Dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before the throne.
SPEAKER_00: You know when you stand before God in heaven, you will not have one shred of condemnation.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
SPEAKER_00: You will be able to look Jesus in the eye because you will have no shame.
SPEAKER_00: You will have no guilt.
SPEAKER_00: You will be able to look him in the eye, dressed in his righteousness, and say thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
SPEAKER_00: On Christ, this solid rock I stand.
SPEAKER_00: All other ground is sinking sand.
SPEAKER_00: This is true.
SPEAKER_00: This is the religion of skins.
SPEAKER_00: My hope is built on this.
SPEAKER_00: Put down your monopoly money today.
SPEAKER_00: Put it down.
SPEAKER_00: Say to him, Lord, I understand maybe for the first time in my life that there's not one good thing that I can bring to atone for what I've done.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus paid it all.
SPEAKER_00: All to him I owe.
SPEAKER_00: Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, again, Jesus was bruised, he was smitten, he was afflicted, Isaiah tells us.
SPEAKER_00: He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities.
SPEAKER_00: The punishment that brought us peace was upon him.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have it printed in the text, but we read it a couple of weeks ago.
SPEAKER_00: If you go further in chapter 3 of Genesis, verse 24, we see that the cherubim were placed at the garden's entrance.
SPEAKER_00: Once Adam and Eve were banished from the garden because they had to wait for the Messiah to come.
SPEAKER_00: They no longer belonged in that garden, in that paradise.
SPEAKER_00: They had to wait.
SPEAKER_00: But God promised that one would come.
SPEAKER_00: The cherubim guarding the entrance so that they would not get back on their own.
SPEAKER_00: They would not get back by their own efforts, by their own works.
SPEAKER_00: The cherubim, most often in the Word of God, refer to these figures over the mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: So if you don't know the story of the Old Testament, God gave his people an ark of the covenant, which symbolized the very presence of the holiness of God.
SPEAKER_00: And above the ark was the mercy seat.
SPEAKER_00: But the mercy seat was empty.
SPEAKER_00: Why was it empty?
SPEAKER_00: It was waiting for this one to come, this promised one to come.
SPEAKER_00: We who were banished from the garden because of our sins, one day would be admitted back in.
SPEAKER_00: As the high priest sprinkled the blood of the lamb once a year, once a year, one day a year, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies, the tabernacle, and then later in the temple.
SPEAKER_00: And he would go to that mercy seat and he would sprinkle the blood.
SPEAKER_00: He would sprinkle the blood of the animals that were slain for us one day in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The ark represented all the essential elements from the scene of the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, just think of the imagery.
SPEAKER_00: What the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament represented.
SPEAKER_00: The presence of God.
SPEAKER_00: You know what was above the Ark of the Covenant?
SPEAKER_00: Cherubim on either side of the ark.
SPEAKER_00: With their wings outstretched over the ark, and the ark wouldn't would have been roughly this size, and their wings would touch over the ark.
SPEAKER_00: The holiness of God.
SPEAKER_00: The lid of the Ark of the Covenant was covered with solid gold.
SPEAKER_00: At each end of the ark was a golden cherub whose wings covered that ark, that covered the mercy seat.
SPEAKER_00: There were palm leaves that were embroidered on the veil which separated the Holy of Holies from the holy place.
SPEAKER_00: Palm leaves, the garden, all pointing to the day.
SPEAKER_00: We call it Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus would leave heaven to come to this earth to do everything that we could not do for ourselves because of love.
SPEAKER_00: This is the week of love, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's appropriate that we're thinking about the love of God this morning.
SPEAKER_00: The mercy seat had been empty until the day that Christ came and finished the work that he came to do.
SPEAKER_00: He came to do this.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, Eden is open again.
SPEAKER_00: The garden is open to all who come.
SPEAKER_00: The garden is open to all who come to Jesus Christ as their covering.
SPEAKER_00: Put down your rags.
SPEAKER_00: Put down your good works.
SPEAKER_00: Put down your best efforts.
SPEAKER_00: Say, Jesus, I need you.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to be my covering.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you that you are all the covering that I need.
SPEAKER_00: And receive him.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, for as many as received him to them, he gave the right to become sons of God, daughters of God.
SPEAKER_00: But you have to receive them.
SPEAKER_00: None of this happens automatically.
SPEAKER_00: None of this happens because you go to church.
SPEAKER_00: None of this happens because you belong to a certain family.
SPEAKER_00: It happens as you receive him, as you trust him, as you put all your faith and confidence in him, what he did.
SPEAKER_00: Eden is open.
SPEAKER_00: Glory to God in the highest heaven, peace on earth among men.
SPEAKER_00: Glory to God in the highest heaven.
SPEAKER_00: Eden is open again.
SPEAKER_00: Thorns melt away with sorrow and sin as we walk with God again.
SPEAKER_00: Free from the curse.
SPEAKER_00: Your promise has come.
SPEAKER_00: Glory to the Father.
SPEAKER_00: I'm here to tell you this morning that Eden is open.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus' arms are opened, welcoming you.
SPEAKER_00: Come to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one that knows you best.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one that loves you the most.
SPEAKER_00: But you must come.
SPEAKER_00: You must come.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, please continue to speak into the hearts of your people here this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, please continue to speak truth and grace.
SPEAKER_00: We need both.
SPEAKER_00: We need the truth about ourselves, we need the truth about you, but we also need grace.
SPEAKER_00: Unmerited favor.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus, this morning we celebrate the fact that you offer, you offer covering, the only covering that we'll do, that will suffice.
SPEAKER_00: And so we don't have to live in shame.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to live with our guilt.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to live with that guilty conscience.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to, we can acknowledge the truth about ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: We can come out of hiding.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, that's what Christmas is really about.
SPEAKER_00: You left heaven so that we could leave behind our fig leaves.
SPEAKER_00: We come to you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We love you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Holy Spirit, exalt Christ in our midst right now.
SPEAKER_00: Exalt Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We would see Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.