So Close, Yet So Far

 You were created to know God. At the deepest level, we spend our lives trying and failing to make ourselves acceptable to him. The Law reveals the reason for our separation: sinful hearts that keep us standing at a distance from a holy God. The good news: Jesus died to make us righteous and restore our access to God’s presence. We can draw near because of his grace!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

If you are visiting with us, guys, welcome. It is good to be here with you. My name is Ryan, and I'm one of the pastors here at the church. And we have been going through a series in the Old Testament book, This Historical Narrative of Exodus, looking at this incredible story of God saving and redeeming his people from about 400 years of slavery in the land of Egypt. And then used Moses to do that, and he delivered them from Egypt, leading them into a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, as it's described, where he provides for them. We talked a lot a couple weeks ago about them wandering through the wilderness. Last week about their battle with this group of people called the Amalekites. And we've been taking this story and also showing how it gives us a picture of the gospel of what God has done for us as his children in Christ. That Jesus, the greater Moses, redeems us and rescues us from our bondage and slavery to sin, to Egypt, that is this sinful world, and leads us into a land of promise, new life in Christ, and ultimately, one day, a new creation where sin is no more, right? That land flowing with milk and honey forever and ever in God's presence. And today we're going to be talking about uh probably a well-known part of Exodus you may be familiar with, known as the Ten Commandments. Uh the Ten Commandments. And now that God has delivered his people from Egypt, he's telling them how they are to live in a way that sets them apart from the other godless, pagan, corrupt, evil nations of the world, and how they are to live in a way that represents and reflects his character and also his created order. And so he gives them these ten commandments. Now, in the original language, the word is not commandment, it's the ten words. And I personally prefer this because we think of ten commandments and we immediately go into our dark, depressing, religious mindset of the thou shalt and shalt nots. And it's all about rules and regulations. But when you look at the 10 words that God gives to his people, what we see, it's not an it's not a bunch of rules, it's an instruction manual. It's God telling his people this is how you are to live. It's how I have designed and created life and relationship to operate. We're also reminded through these 10 words or commands that morality, contrary to popular opinion in our culture, morality is not subjective. You guys are aware of this? We have a lot of that. Well, hey, what's true for you? It's true for you, what's true for me, is true for me. That doesn't even make sense. Right? Morality is not a subjective thing. It's not determined by my own personal sense of right and wrong. It's not determined by my feelings, it's not determined by people I may know. It's not determined by the culture that's always saying different things are right and wrong. Morality is not subjective. The ten words, God's law, remind us that morality was given and decided by the moral law giver. And that he writes it upon tablets. He writes it down, but he has first written it into the hearts of his creation. And that's why we have an innate understanding of what is right and what is wrong in the basic sense, because we have been made in the image of God. Exodus chapter 19, let me start reading in verse 5. And before we get into the actual 10 words or commandments, I just want to see what the result of keeping these commandments is. Let's keep this in mind even as we read through them. Exodus 19, God speaking to Moses what he's to tell his people. Verse 5. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, right? The covenant of his law, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. So if God's people keep his law, what will be the result? What is God's promise to them? One, that they will be his treasured possession throughout all the earth, which is his, and two, did you guys catch this? That they will be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation, a nation set apart for God and a kingdom of priests. Now, the priest served a very specific function in Jewish society, and we see it happening even today in Hebrew culture. The priest in the temple, which was where the people of God would draw near to worship God. In the temple, there's the outer courts where the Gentiles and non-Jews would gather, and then there's the inner courts where they would have the different offering places and places where the Jewish people could come and worship. But within the temple, there was this place called the holiest place. It was the holy of holies, the place where God's very presence was said to dwell. It was the place that contained the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the Spirit of God manifest. And so there was a very strict curtain, a dividing curtain that would not allow people to go into the holiest place. Only one group of people could enter in. Who was it? The priests. The priests that were set apart to minister before the presence of God. And they had to go through this whole ceremonial cleansing ritual and process. And even uh maybe you've heard this before, and it's true that even many of them would tie a rope around their ankle and a bell attached to it, so that when they went into the holiest place, if there was still any unconfessed sin in their life and they drop dead, that you would hear the bell jingle and people could pull them on out of the holy place. Right? That's how powerful and holy the presence of God was and is. That there is this veil of separation. So when he tells his people, if you keep the covenant of my law, if you keep this law, these ten words, you will be a kingdom of priests. He is promising and telling them that they will have access to his presence. All of them will have access to him and to his presence, that each of them could know God. What an incredible promise. Guys, this is what you and I were created for. Did you know that? To know God, to be in the presence of God. It's why we were made. It's why God made your soul and put flesh to it so that you could know your creator. And yet we still have more than 8 billion people on this planet, the vast majority of whom spend their lives frantically searching for purpose, for meaning, and for some sense of fulfillment and contentment. There is a Harvard study that became a full class put together by Professor Lori Santos. And the class is called The Science of Well-Being. I'm not sure if you're familiar with this at all. It's the most popular class in the history of Harvard University. And it's also now expanded to Yale and to some other Ivy League schools. More than five million students have taken this course. It's even offered free online at this point. Now, this is a secular course, but here's what's fascinating to me. As you really look through all the different principles and tenets and things that it's trying to communicate about how to live a life of well-being, it is saturated. This secular course is saturated with biblical truth. This Professor Santos claims that most people never experience true fulfillment because they are stuck in a loop of what she calls hedonic adaptation or hedonic treadmill. What is she talking about? It's rooted in the same word for hedonism, right? A hedonist, someone that pursues pleasure and avoids pain. And that is my worldview. It is all that I do in life. And that's what hedonism is: chasing after pleasure and moments of pleasure and avoiding pain at all costs. And so she postulates that we are all stuck by default on what she calls a hedonic treadmill. And think about the imagery here. It is this proverbial carrot out in front of us that we keep chasing after. And it's not a moment of happiness, it's grabbing hold of everything we can on this treadmill, trying to reach the carrot of true fulfillment and soul-level satisfaction. But we spend our lives chasing after it and we never escape the treadmill. You guys run on treadmills? It is not a fun experience. You guys know the treadmill was actually invented as a machine to tread mill, like to a mill to tread grain and wheat. It was it was a punishment used by prisoners where they would take people that were committed crimes and go walk on this mill and tread on this mill to kind of tread out all the grain and use them for cheap and free labor. It was punishment, and it still remains punishment to this day. We are forever pursuing pleasure. We're forever trying to avoid pain. Professor Santos observes that getting what we want gives us a temporary high of happiness. But we always, inevitably, return to our baseline of happiness or contentment, or can I even say our baseline of unhappiness and discontentment? And so we may have moments we're like the little kids who open up our Christmas present and have that endorphin rush of, I got what I wanted, yay, Santa gave it to me. But then an hour later is playing with the box that it came with because the toy doesn't do it for us anymore. And this is our life. We're constantly chasing these things. The result is we never have enough. We're always wanting what's next. We just need to look at our own life and experience to verify this, don't we? Guys, think about where you are in your life right now, what God has blessed you with, many of us, that five, 10, 20 or 30 years ago that we would have loved, we were hoping for. Man, if I could just have this house, if I could just get a promotion, if I could just get this much money and make this much money as a salary, if I could just have these things or get this extra car, if I could just get married, and we start having all of these things, and if I could just get this thing, then my life is going to be amazing. And right now we have all of those things, and we're still discontent, and we're still looking for the next thing that we want, but we don't yet have. The hedonic treadmill. The ultimate conclusion of this professor is that the things we think will make us content, things like money and achievement and romance and houses and promotion and toys and stuff, these things don't bring us sustained contentment. And I read that and go, you needed a Harvard study to conclude that this has been saying that for thousands of years. It's exactly what God has communicated: that true soul-level happiness can only be found in the presence and person of God. It's why we exist. Psalm 16, verse 11. You, meaning God, you make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there is fullness of what, church? Joy at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. It's not that we're created to not experience pleasure. We're just chasing after the wrong kind, the kind that'll keep us stuck on that treadmill. So if keeping these commandments of this covenant of God's law gives us access as his priests, gives us access to the presence of God for which we were created. Let's take a look at these. Exodus chapter 20. Start reading in verse 1. God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Don't you love that before God goes into what he calls his people to do, he first reminds them of who he is and what he's done for them? And then he gets into it. Verse 3 You shall have no other gods before me. This is a matter of idolatry, that we make other people, other things, gods and goddesses in our lives, that we devote ourselves to them. We find our identity, our worth, our value, our purpose in them. We look to them for provision and protection, not to God. These can be good things, good relationships, and yet we make them the ultimate thing and the ultimate relationship in our lives. Verse 4, you shall not make for yourselves a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. So not only are we to have no other gods, we shall not make idols or carved images. Now, this extends even to the times where we want to carve an image and declare that that is the God that we love and serve. Right? That's what God's people did in Genesis or in Exodus 32, which we're going to study together in a couple of weeks, when they made the golden calf. And they said, This is the God who led us out of Egypt. So it's trying to make God who we want him to be. He says, Don't make me into an image. That's not how I operate. I'm not bound by anything like that. In fact, God's frustration can also be because he already created his image and put it in this world. Where is God's image? It's in us. Imago Dei, the image of God that you and I bear as his people, as his creation. And so think about the tragic irony of this. We who bear the image of God keep trying to make God into an image that suits us best. And God says, No, no, no, I've put my image in you. I am who I am. Worship me as that way. He says, For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. Now, if you read this, this may kind of cause you to scratch your head a bit and go, really? God is jealous? The Hebrew phrase here is Elkanah, the God who is jealous. Because we think of our jealousy. But keep in mind, our jealousy is a sin-broken, selfish jealousy, isn't it? It's possessive. That's not the nature of or character of God. Jealousy is actually a very good thing and it can be a very healthy thing. Consider if I'm out on a date with my wife and some server walks up, this younger guy who walks up and sees how stunningly beautiful my wife is and starts hitting on her right in front of me, like I don't exist. Would my response as he's walking up and paying all attention to her, completely shunning and ignoring me and being Mr. Rico Suave? Hello, madame, you know? And it's so obvious. Should my response be, well, I don't want to be jealous. I'll just let that happen. It's fine. No, because my love for my wife has nothing to do with me being worried about her or what she might do. But who's this chump? Who does he think he is coming up and trying to take his shot with my wife? She's my wife. I'm not gonna share. And wouldn't jealousy and love say, no, no, no, this is not happening. You're gone. We'll go somewhere else or find a different server. Right? There is a healthy jealousy in a unconditional, healthy love relationship that takes place. This is how God is toward us. Verse 7, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. For the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. Taking his name in vain doesn't just mean cursing. Right? It means swearing an oath or a vow and attaching the name of God to it to solidify and validate it and then not following through. Verse 8, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work. You or your son or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Guys, in other words, rest. Rest. You're not slaves anymore. Rest. Trust that it's not your effort and earning that is going to provide that God is Jehovah Jirah. God is your provider. Trust him and rest and let him provide even as you rest. And for those of us who are going through so far saying, I'm feeling pretty good about myself. You know, I'm I'm like four for four. Let's get to the next one. Verse 12. Honor your father and your mother. We're all out, right? Think of your childhood. We're all out. That your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. Keeping in mind, not just honoring them and how you treat them, but honoring them and how you speak to them. How you speak about them to other people. You shall not murder. Everybody good? Okay. You shall not commit adultery. And maybe not just physically, but emotionally. Flirting with the boundary of these things. You shall not steal, take anything that doesn't belong to you. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor, in or out of a court of law. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that is your neighbor's. Guys, I know how badly you want your neighbor's ox and donkey. But what's the word in the command? I don't want anything of your neighbors. Anything that they may have. These ten commands, these ten words, we read them and we kind of read them as commands that serve as a moral checklist for us. It's a moral checklist of behavior that we need to keep in order to be a good Christian, in order to be even just a good person. And that's how most of us think of these things. Now, if we succeed, relatively speaking, at least compared to others, and we read through this and go, Yeah, I'm doing most of these things. That's pretty good. I haven't murdered anybody. What happens? The result is we start feeling a sense of moral superiority, and it grows within us a heart root of pride, of self-righteousness, this legalistic Pharisee type attitude and mindset. That same group of super religious moral people that Jesus rebuked constantly because of their self-righteousness and their hypocrisy. They looked great outside, but inside they were totally oblivious to how messed up they were. But then on the flip side, we may look at this law, and a lot of us we're going through already going, messed up there, failed there, don't want anybody to know about this one. And we still carry with us the guilt and the shame that comes with failing in God's moral law. If our acceptance by God is predicated upon perfect obedience to the law, please hear this. We are all in trouble. Because all of us have sinned and fall short of God's glory. Every single one of us. Jesus reveals this when he's preaching the great sermon on the mount, Matthew chapter 5, right? He's speaking not just to the disciples gathering, but to these religious leaders that thought they were so moral and good and better than everybody. I've kept God's law perfectly, and Jesus is speaking. He says, Listen, I know you've heard it said, do not commit adultery. But I say to you, anyone who could who looks at another person lustfully has committed adultery in his heart. He says, I know you've heard it said, do not murder, right? Isn't that what we just read? Jesus says, I say to you that anyone who is angry with his brother, angry with another person, who calls them racka, it means empty-headed, stupid, fool. Anybody here guilty? I mean, some of you just look to the person next to you. You said it to them this morning. Anyone who says these things, we're guilty and deserving of the flames of hell. Jesus exposes this self-righteous root, saying, I think I'm good because I haven't done these things. And Jesus says, Yeah, but the same root of sin lives in you. And just because you have managed some form or some degree of behavioral modification doesn't mean you are not guilty before a holy and a perfect God. Sin is a heart problem that we cannot cure or fix. The real problem is not our sinful actions, it is our sinful motivations and intentions. Guys, this is all the bad news. Now, the good news is that God's law was not first and foremost given so that we could elevate ourselves through our own effort, morally speaking. That's not why it was given. The Apostle Paul tells us why God's law ultimately was given. As he's having this conversation to the church in Rome, and he's explaining to them that God gave the law so that sin could increase. That's what Paul writes. And he knows they're probably going, What? God gave the law so that sin could increase? Well, is the law then sinful? Here's what he says Romans 7, 7. What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means. Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, You shall not covet. Right? So when he says the law came to multiply sin, he meant our understanding and awareness of it. Hear this the purpose of the law is not moral elevation, it is moral revelation. God's law did not give was not given to us so that we could know how to be perfect before God so that he accepts us into his presence. God's law was given to reveal to us just how sinbroken and imperfect we are. It shows us why we are not this kingdom of priests, why we are not good enough, nor ever could be in our own strength and effort, why we are separate from his holy presence, why we're so far from him, even though we don't understand why. And the problem is sin. Because the wages of sin, what we earn for ourselves through our sin, is death. What is death in the Greek? Literally, it translates a separation, and it separates us from God's holy presence. I think of God giving his people this covenant law and how basic the moral code is. It's like, all right, guys, listen, I'm gonna tell you how to live your life. Ready? Here's the thing: just don't murder each other. Don't sleep with somebody else's wife. Don't take things that don't belong to you. Are these pretty basic moral challenges or codes here? And think about God giving him, giving his people this code, and they still fail. They still fall miserably short, just as we do. I think back to when my son was playing T-ball and then he finally graduated to what they call coach pitch league. You guys ever done the coach pitch thing? So I was the coach that had to try to pitch to these kids, and they never hit a ball that was moving toward them before. It was always just sitting on a T. And so I learned very quickly that my job wasn't just to throw a strike. I had to figure out where these kids were swinging, and my job was to throw the ball to their bat. And I would get so frustrated because I'd be like, all right, take a couple practice swings and they're just swinging everywhere, like you know. And I'm like, okay, I think that's where the bat's gonna go. And so I throw the ball right where their bat was swinging, and this time they just swing straight down. This time they're swinging straight up and spinning around. You have their helmets all twirling around. And it was the most frustrating experience because I'm literally trying to pitch the ball to hit their bat and they're still swinging and missing. Can't you kind of feel God's heart here? Here are 10 basic moral commandments, guys. Here you go. And his people then and we still now are just swinging away. Nothing but air. What was the consequence of man's sin? We see this back in Genesis, right? Genesis chapter 3, verse 23. After Adam and Eve sinned, therefore the Lord God sent him, sent Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. This is in the wilderness. He drove out the man, and at the east of the Garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. What was the consequence of man's sin? Eviction from the presence of God. It wasn't just eviction from the garden, because the garden was the place where God's presence met with man and came and walked with him in the cool of the morning every day, where God's dwelling place was with his image bears in creation, and we lost it because of sin. And sin brought death just as God promised. It brought that separation. They had to leave the garden. And guys, all of human history from that point forward has been man's effort trying to get back in the garden, trying to leave the wilderness and get back in the garden in God's presence through our religious performance and all the things of the world. We're chasing after the garden experience, knowing we need his presence. It's the damnable plight of humanity that we were made to be in God's presence, to know his person, and yet our sin prevents us from doing so. And this is all the bad news. As we look to our own heart and what the law reveals, as we should be reading through the Ten Commandments with a sense of conviction, that challenge of going, I have failed miserably, if not in action, in my thoughts, in my motive, my intention, my heart. The purpose of the law is to diagnose our guilt. James chapter 2, verse 10, for whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of how much of it? All of it. For he who said, Do not commit adultery, also said, do not murder. If you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you've become a transgressor of the law. So this is for all of us who would still delude ourselves into thinking, I think I'm doing pretty well. I'm a pretty good person. I'm gonna go to heaven because I'm a pretty good person. Comparing ourselves to people who are worse than us doesn't make us good. It only makes us self-righteous and morally delusional. We're like that Pharisee that Jesus talks about in Luke 18, who comes into the place of worship and he stands in front of everyone with his arms outstretched to heaven and he says, God, I thank you that I'm so amazing. Thank you that I am not a sinner, that I don't commit adultery, that I don't covet, I don't conspire, I don't do any of these things. I'm not like that sinner right there. Sorry, I didn't mean to point at you. Thank you that I'm not like that sinner and tax collector. I pay my tithes, I give to the poor. God, when you made me, you made awesomeness. And Jesus says, and then there's that sinner who won't even lift his head to heaven with a sense of his sin and unworthiness. He cries out to God and beats his breast and he says, God, have mercy on me, a sinner. Jesus says, I tell you the truth, that man went home justified. Not the religious one. Guys, have we come to a place of acknowledging our sin before God? Because we will never receive God's grace until we understand our need for it, until we repent of our sin. And see, I can't get back into the garden, I can't earn my way there through my own effort. So, Jesus, what's the solution? Well, the solution is Jesus. Verse 18, let me bring this home. Now, when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid and trembled, and they stood far off. And they said to Moses, You speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die. The people were afraid, they trembled, they stood far off. This is the proper response of people when they actually understand who God is in his holiness and who we are in our sin. That we cannot be in the presence of God in all of his justice, his majesty and glory as our creator that we rebel against and live our own way and not his way. We understand the wages of our sin is death, that you and I, we don't deserve access to the presence of God. All we deserve is death and separation forever and ever and ever. And yet, what we can't do, God has done. And yet, the good news of the gospel is that God came into this world, into our sin and brokenness, and he made a way. It's why Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through me. And so he brings us into his family, gives us grace we do not deserve. Instead of the punishment we do, we do deserve. And as his children, we now have access to his presence because of faith in Christ, because of his death that forgives our sin. You know, here at the office, I have a window kind of from the hallway that looks into my office. And there's times, most of the time, my doors open, and when the blinds are up on the window. But on the rare occasion where I need to study and I can't have that interruption, I'll pull the blinds down and I'll shut that door and I'll kind of close off access. Man, our staff, they're amazing. They know when they walk over around and they see the blinds down, the door shut, they're just like, all right, we can deal with this later. No only emergencies, right? They don't deal with it otherwise. And so they will never knock, they'll never interrupt. One day I'm studying this not too long ago, and all of a sudden, you know, blinds are down, doors shut, and all of a sudden there's a loud knock on the door, and the door starts to open before I even say come in. And I have this moment of who dares enter my presence? The signs are there. It was my daughter. Apparently, she didn't know the signals. She opens the door. Hey dad, hey, honey, and she asked for money. But isn't that what kids do? Whatever barriers of access may exist for people, it doesn't apply to my kids. My kids have full access to me at any point, they always have. If I'm in a meeting, they call, I answer. I love you, you're important, you're not more important than they are to me. Right? There's this mindset of our heavenly Father that has given us access in his Son, Jesus Christ. Hebrews, I'm sorry, Romans chapter 8, verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of spirit, of the spirit of life, has set you free in Christ from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, by the sin nature, could not do. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, because it's fulfilled in him. Us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the spirit. As the life and death of Jesus satisfied the penalty for our sin, it restored access that we could not gain anymore. We are now allowed behind the veil into the holiest presence of God. It was the death of Jesus that we read about in Mark 15 that tore that veil in the temple. He ripped it in half. And Mark was very specific to point out that it didn't rip from the bottom up because it wasn't our effort. It tore from the top down. This massive, several feet thick curtain and veil that separated man in our sin from God's holiness. It was ripped in half by the sacrifice of God's son. We have access. And yet, how many of us never even take advantage of it? We just stay on our hedonic treadmill, don't we? Chasing after all the stuff this world has to offer. Instead of stepping off the treadmill and entering in, being with him and enjoying the grace-filled privilege that we could never deserve for ourselves. We have this privilege of access to his presence because of his sacrifice, and we get to remember that today. We're going to close with some communion. There's hopefully a cup like this somewhere around you if you're in the warehouse. Hopefully it was handed to you. Raise a hand or look to the back if you don't have one of those. Courtyard, loft, same things, but this is a way Jesus gave us to remember his sacrifice that forgives us, that recognizes what we deserve. But Jesus took that punishment of death and separation upon himself. It's why the gospel writers are sure to point out that Jesus on that cross, that when the sin of the world came upon him, that God the Father turned his head. It was the only moment of this separation because of the sin that he took upon himself, your sin, mine. And so because he died that death, we now have life through him. So can we remember that death today? Guys, can we just bow our heads together? Just come before the Lord. If you are here this morning and you have never given your life to Christ, you've never acknowledged, repented of your sin. You've never recognized you are separate from God. And that you can't be good enough. Today is the day you can do that. In this moment, just let him know, Jesus, I need you. I am not enough. I never will be. You are enough. And you have made me enough in you. Jesus, come into my life. Forgive my sin. Make me a priest, a holy person, a nation who belongs to you. I give my life to you today. And for the rest of us who have made that decision in the past, can we remember his sacrifice? The night before he went to the cross. He shared a final meal with his disciples. And at one point we read that he stood up, he took the bread, and he broke it in front of them. And then he gave it to each of them. He blessed it. And he said, This is my body which has been broken for you. Church, can we take and eat of the bread and remember the body of Christ that was broken for us? Let's eat it together. We read that he then stood up and he held up a glass of wine, the fruit of the vine. And he said, This is my blood, the blood of the new covenant. Not a covenant of the law where you're trying to earn God's favor. A covenant of grace. His blood that forgives our sin. Take and drink of it, and as often as you do, do it in remembrance of me. So, church, can we drink of the cup and remember the blood of Jesus that forgives our sin? Let's do that together. Can we stand? Lord Jesus. May we never take for granted and forever take advantage of the access to the presence of our God that we have because of our Savior Jesus. May we approach your throne of grace with confidence. And may we do it every single day. We don't need Moses. We have you. The only mediator between God and man. Our great high priest. And so, Lord, speak directly to our hearts. And make us that kingdom of priests and that holy nation. That declare the excellencies of you, who called us out of darkness and into your marvelous light. Our praise and glory be yours, Jesus. We pray all this in your name. Amen.