SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning everyone.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for uh joining us wherever you're tuning in from this morning.
SPEAKER_00: My name is Mark.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the uh the leaders uh at City Church Dublin.
SPEAKER_00: Very welcome here uh with us.
SPEAKER_00: Um normally on a Sunday like this, uh we would uh uh we would make this uh announcement uh in the Sunday gathering, and there'll be uh cheering and whooping and uh and the telling of the story, but it's worth just giving a shout out to uh to Sartak and to Anya who uh got engaged uh uh just recently and uh announced that uh after all of the things have been recorded and uploaded for uh for Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: But since I'm coming to you live, I'm able to uh to mention that.
SPEAKER_00: So congratulations to uh to you guys.
SPEAKER_00: Look forward to uh to seeing and celebrating uh with you with you both really soon.
SPEAKER_00: Uh let me pray uh for us as we come to this passage that Young read for us and consider it together.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Father, we do thank you for uh for Satak and for Anya and for their love for one another and for their love for Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We pray uh that uh that you would um uh help them, give them wisdom as they prepare for married life together.
SPEAKER_00: We thank you that your word speaks to us uh now and we pray that your spirit would um engender a sense of uh wonder uh in our uh in our hearts uh this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We pray these things in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you've been a Christian for any length of time, you realize that there are various uh temptations and pitfalls to be uh negotiated and navigated uh throughout your Christian life.
SPEAKER_00: There's the uh the allure of sin, uh the temptation towards uh the pursuit of personal gain, the pursuit of pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's the thing about sin, is you wouldn't do it if it didn't feel good, right?
SPEAKER_00: Uh and so there's this constant kind of need to turn away from uh love of self and to uh and to follow what God says.
SPEAKER_00: Another thing or a temptation or pitfall that needs to be navigated is uh is the uh our anxieties that come and the the pitfalls that that come with our um the concerns of life that they they weigh upon us and and tend to kind of uh pull us away from dependence upon God and reliance uh upon him.
SPEAKER_00: But for every follower of Jesus, there is another danger.
SPEAKER_00: This danger is subtle.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come with the neon lights of lust, it doesn't come with the creeping darkness of worry, it comes in plain clothes and speaks in normal tones.
SPEAKER_00: It may even be in your heart right now.
SPEAKER_02: That danger is boredom.
SPEAKER_00: The thrill of the faith that you received perhaps years ago is long since gone.
SPEAKER_00: It is no longer thrilling.
SPEAKER_00: What has crept in in its place is a discontentment, a disinterest, a restlessness, maybe even wanting something else, something new, something interesting, something that would captivate your attention again, your bored.
SPEAKER_00: The uh French poet, 19th century French poet, I'm sure we're all familiar with him, uh, a guy called Charles Baudelaire, uh, he captures the um the danger of boredom.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in his uh poem to the reader.
SPEAKER_00: Let me read you uh a stanza from it.
SPEAKER_00: But among the jackals, panthers, bitch hounds, apes, and scorpions, vultures and snakes and monsters, which scream and howl and grunt and crawl in the sordid menagerie of our vices, there is one even uglier and more wicked and filthier than all the rest.
SPEAKER_00: Although it makes no frenzied gestures and utters no deafening cries, yet it would gladly reduce the whole world to dust.
SPEAKER_00: It would gladly swallow the whole earth with its gaping maw.
SPEAKER_02: It is boredom.
SPEAKER_00: Boredom would gladly swallow your faith, consume the entirety of your interest in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a temptation, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: You get bored with the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: We sit in Bible studies and we think another night where I haven't learned anything new.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not learning anything new, and so it must be boring.
SPEAKER_00: We get bored with church, we get bored with Christians, the same people who aren't terribly thrilling to begin with.
SPEAKER_00: We want a church that is fresher, more engaging, music that is more interesting or thrilling.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even a preacher that is less dull.
SPEAKER_00: We also get bored with long obedience.
SPEAKER_00: That's the Christian life, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: It's long obedience, we get bored with it.
SPEAKER_00: Turning from sin and to Jesus time and time again.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even only seeing incremental gains in terms of our holiness.
SPEAKER_02: We get disinterested, we get bored.
SPEAKER_00: The Corinthians had found new teachers who they had replaced Paul with, or who were in the process of replacing Paul with.
SPEAKER_00: They had grown bored with him, and apparently it was easy to find Paul boring.
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't terribly impressive, he wasn't a wonderful speaker.
SPEAKER_00: What's more, these uh, as we see later on, uh their term super apostles, uh, these super apostles had come uh with great oratory and fascinating things, but they'd also come with glowing references.
SPEAKER_00: He said, look at these letters of recommendation that I've got from uh from these people, and these people are very important, and and look what they've they've said about me.
SPEAKER_00: Letters of recommendation about how wonderful they were.
SPEAKER_00: Paul didn't have any of that, and so they they come to him and they ask, Well, where's your letter of reference?
SPEAKER_00: They come to him who, in an earthly sense, they owed everything to, and they said, Well, why should we listen to you?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the indication that you are a reputable speaker?
SPEAKER_00: Where's your letter of references?
SPEAKER_00: His answer, his answer comes at the start of our passage, his answer comes in verses two and three.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, have a look at it with me.
SPEAKER_00: Get a Bible, have it open, look it up on your phone.
SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, let's actually begin at verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: Are we beginning to commend ourselves again?
SPEAKER_00: Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
SPEAKER_00: You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts to be known and read by all.
SPEAKER_00: And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
SPEAKER_02: You are our letter.
SPEAKER_00: Paul doesn't point to the churches that he has planted.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't point to the number of people saved who have come from death to life.
SPEAKER_00: No, he points at them and to the transformation that has taken place in their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: This is how we ought to measure ministry success.
SPEAKER_00: It's such a temptation, isn't it, to equate size with success?
SPEAKER_00: To look at a big church and to say, well, it must be a healthy church.
SPEAKER_00: How often that's not true.
SPEAKER_00: Or the impressive international ministry and say that person must be impressively godly.
SPEAKER_00: Yet, even in recent days, we have realized that men can go through their whole lives harboring secret desires.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying here that the mark of ministry success or a thrilling gospel ministry isn't its size or the soaring oratory of the speaker, it is the transformed hearts of the people who hear the gospel and respond in repentance and faith.
SPEAKER_00: It is not the awesomeness of the pastor that makes an authentic gospel ministry, but the work of the Spirit of God in the hearts of people.
SPEAKER_00: Are people encountering Jesus by the power of his spirit that he has sent into the world?
SPEAKER_00: Or are they just seeing a man speaking flashy words?
SPEAKER_00: These impressive teachers had come to had come to the Corinthians with new teachings, mysterious things.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly as far as the Corinthians were concerned.
SPEAKER_00: They were talking about the Old Testament, telling stories of Moses leading a million people through the sea out of Egypt, walking on dry land with walls of water between them, of coming to Mount Sinai, of fire and lightning, of earthquakes and trembling and mighty voices speaking from the terrible darkness, or stories of Moses coming down from the mountain with his face shining radiant with the glory of God, and it was fascinating.
SPEAKER_02: How can Paul compete?
SPEAKER_02: How can Paul compete with that?
SPEAKER_02: He cannot, but his gospel can, and that's what he does.
SPEAKER_00: You see, this is how you combat boredom.
SPEAKER_00: You combat boredom with wonder.
SPEAKER_02: The antidote to boredom is wonder.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul here does not play their game and show them how impressive he is.
SPEAKER_00: No, he shows them the surpassing glory, the surpassing beauty of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And he does so by drawing three contrasts.
SPEAKER_00: He does it by contrasting it with the old.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at those three ways together.
SPEAKER_00: First, two different locations.
SPEAKER_00: Two different locations.
SPEAKER_00: And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts.
SPEAKER_00: Did you catch it?
SPEAKER_00: Have a look at verse seven and eight.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if the ministry of death carved in letters on stone came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the spirit, uh will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory?
SPEAKER_02: Stone tablets versus human hearts.
SPEAKER_00: The law was written on tablets of stone.
SPEAKER_00: Here, this is a reference to the to the ten commandments.
SPEAKER_00: You may have seen the Cecil B de Mill film of Moses coming down with the uh the great tablets of stone with the with the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments etched on them.
SPEAKER_02: But the gospel, it's not written on stones, it's written on human hearts, it's not written by the hands of men, but by the Spirit of Christ Himself.
SPEAKER_02: Here's why this contrast matters the law of God, the Old Testament, right?
SPEAKER_00: The letters on stone, they told you what it took to please God, what obedience before God uh looked like, but they had no power to enable that obedience.
SPEAKER_00: That's the difference.
SPEAKER_00: The law told you that you had to live like this in order to please God, but it gave you no power in order to be able to carry it out, in order to be able to live like that.
SPEAKER_00: Paul, this is why Paul says that the law had glory, and we'll look at that more in a second.
SPEAKER_00: It was it was the gift of God, it was a good thing, it was good to be told that this is what God requires, but it was never meant to enable them to live that way.
SPEAKER_00: By contrast, the ministry that Paul is proclaiming, the ministry of the gospel, is not written on tablets of stone, it doesn't just merely tell you what you should do, it actually enables you, it actually empowers you to live like that.
SPEAKER_00: That's the difference.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just an external law, an external duty to be performed, which you have no energy or spiritual vitality to perform.
SPEAKER_00: Is the law written on the heart?
SPEAKER_00: And you are enabled in your heart by the Spirit of God to live a life that is pleasing to him.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that the law could never do.
SPEAKER_00: It was never made to do that, it was supposed to show you your need of God's mercy.
SPEAKER_02: Some people go through their whole Christian life thinking that Christian obedience is about obeying the letter, the letter that brings death, as we'll see.
SPEAKER_00: That the sum total of the Christian life is about dutiful obedience.
SPEAKER_02: No, the message of the gospel is of transformed hearts, of glad obedience enabled by the Spirit of God.
SPEAKER_02: Where is the law of God written for you?
SPEAKER_00: Where's the law of God written in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Is it still outside of you on those stone stone tablets, as it were?
SPEAKER_00: A moral bar that you are trying to clear.
SPEAKER_00: Excuse me, a moral bar that you're trying to clear, or a stone weight that is crushing you.
SPEAKER_00: Or is it written on your heart by the Spirit of God who has transformed you by his grace and who enables you to follow him in glad obedience two contrasting locations?
SPEAKER_00: That's the first point.
SPEAKER_00: And have a little sip of coffee, and I just inhaled my own saliva.
SPEAKER_00: You're welcome.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you know you're a fallen creature because that happens.
SPEAKER_00: Two contrasting locations.
SPEAKER_00: Second.
SPEAKER_00: Two contrasting effects.
SPEAKER_00: The ministry of the old covenant had a different effect than the ministry of the new covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Look at how Paul describes it.
SPEAKER_00: Verse six, have a look at verse six with me.
SPEAKER_00: Um second half of so he's made us competent to be ministers of the new covenant, not by the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
SPEAKER_00: Now, if the ministry of death, carved in letters of stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze on Moses' face because of its glory, which is meant to be brought to an end, will not the ministry of the spirit have even more glory?
SPEAKER_00: It gives life.
SPEAKER_00: There's two contrasting effects.
SPEAKER_00: The letter kills, the spirit gives life.
SPEAKER_00: The law, the old testament, the law told you that you needed forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: The law told you that you were a sinner who had broken God's law and that you needed to be forgiven by him.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the law did.
SPEAKER_00: But the law offered you no mechanism for forgiveness.
SPEAKER_00: There was no way in the law that you would actually be saved.
SPEAKER_00: The whole point of the Old Testament law was that you were supposed to realize, uh, if you're an old testament Israelite, that you couldn't possibly keep it.
SPEAKER_00: And you were supposed to throw yourself under the mercy of God and know his forgiveness then.
SPEAKER_00: But the law itself had no mechanism to forgive you, it could only show you your sin and thus condemn you.
SPEAKER_00: As a result, Paul calls it the ministry of death because it could not bring life.
SPEAKER_00: Religious obedience, empty, dutiful observance can never bring life.
SPEAKER_00: It can only condemn you, it can only bring death.
SPEAKER_00: Because it produces people who are either wickedly proud in their moral obedience, or it produces miserable people who are crushed under the standard that they cannot keep.
SPEAKER_00: You see that, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: You see that in people who live in this kind of rule-keeping, religious, uh, traditionalistic sort of way.
SPEAKER_00: People trying to please God because of external obedience.
SPEAKER_00: They either become merciless, merciless jerks who are judgmental and condemning of others, or they become miserable.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's why so many Christians in various parts of the world, even various parts of our island, are miserable.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're actually operating under the ministry of death, trying to bleed.
SPEAKER_00: Please God by dutiful obedience when what they need is the one to whom the law points.
SPEAKER_02: The law could only ever condemn you.
SPEAKER_00: In John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, there's a uh there's a scene that is recounted uh by one of the characters.
SPEAKER_00: That character is called Faithful, and he he tells this story to Christian, who is the protagonist in Pilgrim's Progress.
SPEAKER_00: And and Faithful is recounting this journey up this mountainside.
SPEAKER_00: And as he is journeying up this uh this mountain, he says that uh that an unknown man uh overtakes him and turns around and looks back at Faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And and before Faithful can say a word, the man smacks him and he falls to the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And Faithful gets up again, and the man begins to beat him and he beats him down again.
SPEAKER_00: And Faithful cries out to the to the unknown assailant and he says, Have mercy on me.
SPEAKER_00: And the unknown assailant turns to him and says, I do not know how to show mercy.
SPEAKER_00: And as he's recounting the story to Christian, Christian realizes who Faithful encountered on the way, and he says, You met Moses.
SPEAKER_00: You met Moses on the road, for he does not know how to show mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Faithful goes on and says that another man came, and he he did not know initially, but he rescued Faithful.
SPEAKER_00: And as he rescued Faithful, he noticed that the man had nail-pierced hands.
SPEAKER_00: The one who rescues us from the condemnation of Moses is the man with nail-pierced hands.
SPEAKER_00: And we see that, don't we, in the life of Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Think back to the uh to the story of when Jesus cleanses the leper.
SPEAKER_00: It's there in Luke's gospel.
SPEAKER_00: This leper was a social outcast.
SPEAKER_00: He had uh he had been to the priest, I'm sure.
SPEAKER_00: He'd gone to the priest and he'd he'd shown himself his skin, this dermatological condition that made him unclean, and they and the priest had condemned him, had diagnosed the condition, said, No, you have to now live separate to society.
SPEAKER_00: The priest had diagnosed his problem, but gave him no remedy.
SPEAKER_00: There was no mechanism to save him, to welcome him back into the people of God.
SPEAKER_00: All the priest could do was to condemn him to a life of isolation.
SPEAKER_02: And then he meets Jesus on the road, and he falls down at his feet and he says, Lord, if you are willing, you will make me clean.
SPEAKER_00: And what we read there in Luke's Gospel is and Jesus moved with compassion reached out and touched the man, identifying with him, embracing him, and said, I am willing to be clean.
SPEAKER_02: Then he says, Go to the priest and offer to him the sacrifice that Moses requires.
SPEAKER_02: Only the man with nail-pierced hands can rescue you from Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Can rescue you from the sin that condemns you.
SPEAKER_00: Only the man with nail-pierced hands can make you clean.
SPEAKER_02: Moses can tell you that you need forgiveness.
SPEAKER_02: But he cannot forgive you.
SPEAKER_02: Only the man with nail-pierced hands can do that.
SPEAKER_02: One ministry brought about death.
SPEAKER_02: The ministry of the Spirit gave us life.
SPEAKER_02: Two contrasting effects.
SPEAKER_00: Thirdly, two degrees of glory.
SPEAKER_00: Two locations, two contrasting effects, and thirdly and finally, two degrees of glory.
SPEAKER_00: Pick it up with me at verse nine, if you would.
SPEAKER_00: For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, that's just what we've been looking at, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all because of the glory that surpasses it.
SPEAKER_00: For if it was being brought to an end, sorry, if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.
SPEAKER_00: Notice again what Paul says here.
SPEAKER_00: Paul's saying that the law is a good thing, the law has glory, right?
SPEAKER_00: The law has glory because it is God's gift.
SPEAKER_00: It is God's gift to human beings, his gift to show us our need of him.
SPEAKER_00: What we were supposed to do is we were supposed to read it and realize our inability to keep it and to cast ourselves upon his mercy and grace and cry out to him like the uh like the tax collector in Luke 18, Lord have mercy on me, a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: That's what was supposed to happen.
SPEAKER_00: Elsewhere in Paul's letter to the Romans, he just says that the law is holy, righteous, and good, in insofar as this is how it was meant to be used.
SPEAKER_00: It was meant to show you your need of God.
SPEAKER_00: It was holy and righteous and good.
SPEAKER_00: Rather, it's it's when it comes, it's when the law comes in contact with the sinful human heart that it kills us because we we think that we can achieve our way up the moral ladder to God.
SPEAKER_02: But it had glory nonetheless, but it was a temporary glory, and this is why Moses hid his face.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 12.
SPEAKER_00: Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end.
SPEAKER_00: What Paul's referencing here is he's referencing Exodus chapter 34.
SPEAKER_00: In Exodus 34, Moses comes down the mountain after meeting with God, and his face, much like me standing under the light here, is is radiating.
SPEAKER_00: It is radiating with the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And they uh and the Israelites are are terrified of it.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and so they they compel him to put a veil over his face to cover his face because they can't they can't bear to look at it.
SPEAKER_00: That's the context.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul interprets that and says, No, one of the things that was happening is that Moses realized that that the glory was only ever temporary, that it was fading away, and that's why he veiled his face.
SPEAKER_00: The reason why he covered his face is because he didn't want the Israelites to see that the glory was passing away, and then and he uses that as an image for the old covenant, that it has a glory that was only ever temporary, that it was always passing away.
SPEAKER_00: And in contrast, the gospel comes, the gospel that Paul is proclaiming has surpassing glory.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because it did what the law could never do, it actually forgave and transformed people, and so that is why it has surpassing glory.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul says here to those who find the old covenant more intriguing, more entertaining, more wondrous.
SPEAKER_00: He says, it's like it's like obsessing over a candle and thinking, wow, that's that's so amazing.
SPEAKER_00: When the blazing glory of the sun is there.
SPEAKER_00: They don't compare in Paul's mind.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot you cannot hold up a candle or a torch next to the sun.
SPEAKER_00: Because one of the things that will happen is you'll not really be able to see the light, the glory that is coming from this tiny thing.
SPEAKER_00: The glory of the sun eclipses it.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying that the gospel is like that, it eclipses the glory of the old.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you get bored with the gospel and go back into musing on these things, on these things that were only ever temporary, that were always just passing away?
SPEAKER_00: This is what gives Paul boldness.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is more bold than Moses.
SPEAKER_00: Paul doesn't veil his message, Paul doesn't veil the gospel or the glory of the gospel, he unveils it and shows its brightness for all to see.
SPEAKER_00: He is more bold than Moses.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't hide it, he lets it shine into people's lives, into people's hearts.
SPEAKER_00: But he says that if there is a veil, the veil is over the hearts of unbelievers.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 14.
SPEAKER_00: But their minds were hardened, for to this day, when the old covenant, sorry, when they read the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
SPEAKER_00: Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
SPEAKER_00: And we all with unveiled faces beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.
SPEAKER_00: For this comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: This is something that Paul uses another image for uh in chapter four, at the very start of chapter four, that we're going to look at in more detail next week.
SPEAKER_02: But this veil remains.
SPEAKER_00: And in this context, it remains because the people cannot see that Moses was only ever pointing beyond himself.
SPEAKER_02: The whole Old Testament.
SPEAKER_02: Every law, every narrative, every psalm, every prophecy.
SPEAKER_02: Speaks his name, it points to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You've missed the point, Paul says, of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: If you do not see that it points to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Paul is saying that running back to the old covenant and obsessing over that is like looking at the finger.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to look at the thing that the finger's pointing to.
SPEAKER_00: You're supposed to look at the surpassing reality, and the surpassing reality, the thing that the old testament is pointing to, the thing that Moses is pointing to, is Jesus, the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: He is the great high priest.
SPEAKER_00: He is the temple where God and man meet, where heaven and earth overlap.
SPEAKER_00: He is the spotless sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: He is our better Adam.
SPEAKER_00: He is our better Exodus.
SPEAKER_02: He is our better David who sits on the throne forever.
SPEAKER_00: And we know this if we've ever been caught up in a kind of ritualistic religion.
SPEAKER_00: There's always a sense of Is this it?
SPEAKER_00: Is there something better than this?
SPEAKER_00: Is there something more than this?
SPEAKER_00: Paul's answer here is yes.
SPEAKER_00: It is the man with nail-pierced hands.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who removes the veil.
SPEAKER_00: The veil that lies over our hearts by nature.
SPEAKER_00: That is maybe lying over your heart now.
SPEAKER_00: And when that veil is removed by the power of his Holy Spirit, what happens?
SPEAKER_00: What do we see?
SPEAKER_00: End of verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: It sets you free.
SPEAKER_00: You actually begin to see clearly clearly, to feel more fully, to feel rightly.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe before uh becoming a Christian.
SPEAKER_00: You were taken to church.
SPEAKER_00: And when you were dragged along, maybe as a teenager or whatever, you were brought along maybe by a boyfriend or a girlfriend.
SPEAKER_00: You thought the church was terribly dull.
SPEAKER_00: The hymns seemed dirge-like and boring.
SPEAKER_00: The sermon was boring.
SPEAKER_00: The people were uninteresting.
SPEAKER_00: And yet when you became a Christian, it was almost as though the songs got better.
SPEAKER_00: It was as though the preacher became more intriguing.
SPEAKER_00: And even the people became just a little less boring.
SPEAKER_00: And then you realized that the problem wasn't those things, it wasn't the other people.
SPEAKER_00: It was you.
SPEAKER_00: There was a veil over your heart, dulling your spiritual senses.
SPEAKER_00: And now it has been removed.
SPEAKER_00: Wonder is always the antidote to boredom.
SPEAKER_00: Paul wants us this morning to wander afresh at the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel that writes God's law on our hearts that brings us to life and has not just surpassing ever-increasing glory as we ourselves are transformed from one degree of glory to another.
SPEAKER_00: Wonder that what God has done for you in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Wonder that he has done in Christ what Moses could never do.
SPEAKER_00: Wonder that the man with nail-pierced hands has shown you mercy.
SPEAKER_02: That by his spirit and through faith you have a new heart.
SPEAKER_02: And you are being transformed.
SPEAKER_00: Please, my prayer and with this I finish.
SPEAKER_00: My prayer today this morning when I was left of the morning is that you don't turn off the computer or your phone and think well I didn't learn anything new.
SPEAKER_02: My prayer is that you come away and you say to yourself, Isn't Jesus wonderful?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, we confess how quickly our hearts become dull and our spiritual senses are dampened such that we cannot see or appreciate in all of its fullness the overwhelming glory of the gospel.
SPEAKER_02: Father, would you show us again the wonder of the old old story?
SPEAKER_02: Would you show us the goodness of things like meeting with your people of spiritual disciplines of long obedience?
SPEAKER_02: Would we see those things as the gifts of grace that you have given us so that we might be transformed from one degree of glory to another?
SPEAKER_00: I pray these things in the name of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen, everybody.