God Loves Us

This morning we're going to be continuing in Deuteronomy. If you're new with us or haven't been in a while, we're still chugging, we're still going through Deuteronomy and we are now in Deuteronomy chapter nine, which if you're going to use the Pew Bible, that's on page 153. If you would like to take that Bible home, please do so. We would love for that to be our gift to you today. We're in Deuteronomy nine. Again, on the Pew Bible, that would be page 153. There's a man on Sundays that he's a popular preacher. Thousands come to hear him every Sunday. And one of the things he says every Sunday is he gets the people gathered there to stand up and say with him this motto, this commitment. This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do. Today I'll be taught the word of God. I boldly confess my mind is alert, my heart is receptive. I'll never be the same. In Jesus' name, God bless you. That sounds good. There's nothing inherently wrong with what is being said here. A couple things, and I'm sorry, I have to be a little persnickety at times. You all are getting used to that. My Bible, I am, I have, I can do. It's man-centered. A little too man-centered to make me feel really comfortable. The man who says this is somebody I would call a prosperity preacher. He preaches a prosperity gospel where it's all about what God does for me and what I can then do. Most of what he says here is fine. It's not what I would say because the emphasis needs to be on God and worshiping him. If I were to say something like this, and I've written little things to maybe try to implement here, it would be something like, this is the authoritative word of God that stands over me. I am the wretched sinner. It says that I am. And in Christ Jesus, I am adopted, forgiven, redeemed. I cannot save myself with my own works, but by God's grace I am saved, and by His grace I will worship Him and serve Him. My mind must be alert, the Holy Spirit must come inside of me to renew me, to illuminate me so that I can see His truth. Now let's all stand and say that together. somewhat making that up as I went, but those are the basic truths. It lacks that focus on God, but I do like this. This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I am what it says I am. That is a true statement, and we're going to think about that statement as we look throughout our passage this morning. I am who and what it says I am. Do we believe that? Is God's Word more true about us than what we think about ourselves? It's more trustworthy. Now, we lack that. I am what it says I am, I am who it says I am. When it comes to the promises of God, there's something that we can, our hearts rejoice as we hear we're redeemed, we're forgiven, we're new creations, we're born again. These are things that our hearts should rejoice because those are true things about us. But do we like to say that when the Bible says we're sinners, unrighteous, guilty, stubborn, wicked, rebellious? Do we want to say it says what it says I am, that's what I am? Do we say that when it comes to those passages? Do we think about our neighbor, who that really fits? We're prone to think this really meets somebody else, this really fits somebody else, but does it describe us? We need to be alert, we need to be receptive, so that we will not be the same, so that we can repent of these sins that keep us from God. We need to listen and ask, show me my sins so that I can repent. Show me my sins so I can depend upon Christ. Show me my sins so that I do not become self-righteous. Show me my sins so I can worship you more faithfully. This morning, if you can guess, we're not looking at one of those feel-good passages from Scripture. We're looking at a passage that God has designed to help us see our sin. We have to be made uncomfortable here so that we can find comfort in God's grace. Today's text is meant to help us see how sinful we are so that we know how merciful God is. We cannot see God's mercy until we know ourselves as sinners. This morning, the good news is you're going to see that you're stubborn, you're rebellious, you're idolaters. Does this tell me who I am? Will you pray with me? Father, as we look to your word, we thank you that it corrects us. We thank you that it shows us our sin. We thank you that you discipline your children that you love. As we're disciplined, as we're corrected, give us hearts that will thank you. Give us hearts that praise you because you do not let sinners remain in their sin. You call us out by your grace. Help us to see almighty God. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. I wanna make sure we're remembering the context. Moses is speaking to the second generation that was delivered out of Egypt, delivered out of slavery. The first generation, they failed. They failed to see that God would fight for them. When they went to spy out the land that God was delivering them into, so they were taken out of Egypt by God's mighty right hand. He said, my mighty right hand will take you into the promised land. When they went to go spy that out, they got scared. They saw Anakim, they saw giants, they saw fortified cities. And the spies came back and everybody was terrified. They didn't trust God, even though they had just seen him destroy the most mighty nation in all the world. So the first generation, they died in the wilderness. They wandered in the wilderness till God had wiped them out. Now the second generation is being given the promised land. And God has been giving them instruction. When I give you the land, when I go to fight for you, trust me and obey. This is Moses preparing that second generation that he's simply going to be able to stand on a mountain and say, there it is. I can't go with you. Go. God is mighty. This is what he tells you to do. If we were to go back, Deuteronomy 5 gives us the Ten Commandments. This is why it's called Deuteronomy. That's the second giving of the law. Deuteronomy 6, love God completely. He alone is God. Deuteronomy 7, again, this is the one sermon that Moses is preaching to the second generation. Deuteronomy 7, God says, whenever you go in, do not think you were chosen because you are mighty. No, you were chosen and I love you even though you are few. Deuteronomy 8, he says, whenever you go in, make sure you crush all the idols. Deuteronomy 8, do not think that it was with your might that you gained this wealth. Deuteronomy 6, I'm the one God loved me. alone with all your heart. Do you remember seven? I'm the one God, I've loved you, not because you were many. Do you remember eight? I've given you everything, it's not because of your might. Do you remember nine? I will fight for you, I will give you everything, not because of your righteousness. There's a pattern here. God is trying to help them see everything you have, it's yours because I've given it to you and I've done it for you. There's a pattern over and over again. He's correcting the way these people think. They're prone towards idolatry. They're prone towards self-righteousness. They're prone towards thinking they're mighty. They're prone towards thinking they're great. No, what God wants them to see is that they're unrighteous. They're foolish to think they are righteous. They're stubborn and they're idolaters. If they're going to worship God and have no other gods before him, they must first see their sin and repent of it. To make sure we see the point of our sermon, our text this morning, let's go to chapter nine. There's one main point in this entire chapter, and it really goes into chapter 10, but I want you to see the one main point, then we'll walk through and all the details will kind of fall into place, Lord willing. The main point of chapter nine through 1011, and we'll get to 10 next week, is verse four. Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust me up before you, it is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess the land. Notice what he says next. Whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them up before you. It's not your righteousness, it's their wickedness. Look at verse five. It's repetition. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Now, he said it twice. It's not your righteousness, it's your wickedness, but just in case they haven't gotten the point yet, verse six, know therefore that the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. This is a difficult message. It's telling us what we are not. We are not righteous. It tells us what we are. We're stubborn. The outline of the text, verses one through three, is the occasion. God is going to go and destroy those Anakim. He's going to destroy the giants for you. And when you come in, verses four to six, the heart of Moses' message, that second generation, do not think you're righteous. That's the main warning here. What we really see is God's merciful. And then the third. The third part, everything that follows from verse seven all the way through 10, 11, that's just Moses building the case from what has happened so that they are fully convinced of how they are unrighteous and stubborn. So let's begin. The occasion, verses one through three. Here, O Israel, you are to cross over the Jordan today to go in to dispossess the nations greater and mightier than yourselves, cities great and fortified up to heaven, a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know and of whom you have heard it said, who can stand before the sons of Anah. Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the Lord your God. He will destroy them and subdue them before you, so you shall drive them out and make them perish quickly as the Lord has promised you. Now the first thing we need to notice is that Moses is saying again, hear O Israel. This is a catch phrase here. This is a phrase that should draw our attention. Remember he said it right before the great declaration of Israel. The Lord your God, the Lord is one. Hear O Israel, you are to cross over. He's drawing their attention. Listen. you're going to cross over unlike your fathers. And when you go over there, I know they're greater and mightier than you. I know they have fortified cities. This is what they don't have, the one true God. I am the one true God, Yahweh says. I will go over before you. I will drive them out before you. Notice how it describes God consuming fire. Every other place that God has described as a consuming fire, it's about Israel's worship. Worship Him faithfully because He has a desire and a passion for you. He loves you. He's a consuming fire. Now that love for His people and His glory is going to be turned against the mighty and the great nations. They will be destroyed for God's glory and for His people. Let us end at verse three. You shall drive them out and make them perish as the Lord has promised you. Now before this, it says God's gonna drive them out. God has promised, I'm going to fight for you, but they have to believe God. They have to trust God enough to go to battle. They have to know that God will keep His promise. This is your land. God says, I'm going to give you this land. I know they're greater than you, but I am greater than them. I'm fighting for them. Will you trust me? Now this occasion is when God decides, Moses decides they need to hear a warning. He knows his people. Moses is a faithful pastor. He knows his people. He knows their tendency. And so he knows that whenever they're going to go over, they're going to think, look how great I am. Look how mighty we were. Look how righteous we must be because God chose us over all these other people that are way worse than us. Moses wants to warn them. Do not say in your heart. Listen to verses four through six again. This is the heart of the message. Do not say in your heart after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, it's because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land. Whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in Are you going to possess their land, but because of their wickedness? Sorry. Because of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. Know therefore the Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people. We were from Deuteronomy 6. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength. What you think about, what you desire, and what you do, all your resources. Here, that word heart comes back. Know therefore in your heart, think properly about yourself. Really, the Christian commitment has to be, I'm going to think God's thoughts after him. What he thinks, what is true, I have to believe and think along with him. What he says is true, that's what I should think about. Do not say in your heart. He knows the tendency. Do not say, it's because of my righteousness. No, it's because of their wickedness. Now you can go to Deuteronomy 18 and it actually lists out some of the wickedness of these people. To give you a simple example or some examples of how wicked they are, they would actually practice human sacrifice in order to appease the God who was in charge of the crops. In order to secure a good crop, they would have human sacrifice. That's how wicked the Canaanites are, the Amorites. They're destroying the image of God, humans, in order to get a better crop. They're a wicked people. And so God is saying, I'm going in and I'm going to destroy them. It's not because you're any more, you're not mightier than they are. You're not more righteous than they are. Even though they are wicked, I'm doing this for my name's sake. The message is very clear. As a theologian, I really appreciate how clear he says verses four to six. One, he uses repetition. Sinners need to hear things repeated because we don't hear them well. Sinners need to hear things repeated because we don't hear them well. Appreciate some of those. Some of you appreciated that. He repeats it. Verse four and five said the exact same thing. There's no new information there. It's repeated because we're so slow, because we're stubborn. Secondly, this is what I really like. He affirms and he denies. This is the clearest way to have a statement of faith. The clearest way to theologically articulate something is to affirm what is true and deny what is not true. He affirms it's not because of, he affirms it's because of their wickedness. He denies it's not because of your righteousness. And just to make sure we have the complete clear picture, he affirms, you're a rebellious, stubborn people. Verse six is the icing on the cake that should make this so clear. No, he's not giving this lamb because of your righteousness. He ends this high point of the application. It's because you're stubborn. You're stiff-necked. This is an idiom. We do not bow our head. We don't submit to God. We're stubborn, too stubborn to listen, too stubborn to obey. Now, before we move on to the case, I wanna show you something that's not explicitly mentioned, that's extremely important. What is not mentioned but is clear is that God is merciful to sinners. The reason Israel gets to live is because of God's mercy. The reason they get to go in and possess the land is because God made a promise and he's merciful to these people who continue to refuse him. If we go back to Exodus 34, which is God's response to Exodus 32, which is the golden calf, we're about to hear about it. This is what God says. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. That's how he defined his name. This is who God is. He's merciful to Israel. He's chosen them to be his people because he said, I'm going to love you and I'm going to be merciful to you. He's doing this because He's a God who's faithful to His promise and He's merciful to the wicked. Now up to this point in the sermon, now remember Deuteronomy 5 through 29, that's one sermon of Moses. He's given them the law. He's told them there's one God, love Him. He's made them realize or helped them realize you're not mighty, you're not strong, you're not righteous. Worship The one true God have no other gods before him. He's still not finished. I wanna continue to build up this case against them. We'll apply these things in a moment, but from verse seven through the end, he's building the case. You're not righteous, you're stubborn. He has to explain it to them. Now there's two things in these verses that I want you to see and I want you to hear, okay? The first, how quickly Israel rebelled. The first thing we have to see is how quickly and fully Israel rebelled. They're stubborn and they're rebellious. The second thing is this, they needed a mediator and God provided for them a mediator. There's two things, there's sinners And secondly, they need a mediator. And the two events that we're gonna look at, verses seven through 21, that's the golden calf, that is the idolatry, the great idolatry of Israel. And then verses 22 through 29, that's when the original, the first generation refused to go up and fight the Anakim. Follow with me, beginning in verse seven. Remember and do not forget how you provoked the Lord your God to wrath in the wilderness. From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the Lord. Even at horrible, you provoke the Lord to wrath. And the Lord was so angry with you that he was ready to destroy you. When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the Lord made with you, I remained on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water. And the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God. And on them were all the words that the Lord had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly. At the end of the 40 days and the 40 nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone and the tablets of the covenant. Then the Lord said to me, arise, go down quickly from here. For your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly. They have turned aside quickly out of the way that I commanded them. They have made themselves a metal image. Furthermore, the Lord said to me, I have seen this people and behold, it is a stubborn people. Let me alone that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under the heaven. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they. So I turned and came down from the mountain and the mountain was burning with fire. And the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands and I looked and behold, you had sinned against the Lord your God. You had made yourselves a golden calf. You had turned aside quickly from the way that the Lord had commanded you. So I took hold of the two tablets and threw them out of my two hands and broke them before your eyes. Then I lay prostrate before the Lord as before forty days and forty nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water because of all the sin that you had committed in doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord to provoke him to anger. For I was afraid of the anger and hot displeasure that the Lord bore against you so that he was ready to destroy you. The Lord listened to me that time also. And the Lord was so angry with Aaron that he was ready to destroy him. And I prayed for Aaron also at the same time. Then I took the sinful thing, the calf that you had made, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it very small until it was as fine as dust. And I threw the dust of it into the brook that ran down from the mountain. Taborah, also, and at Massah, and at Kibroth Hatovah, you provoked the Lord to wrath. And when the Lord sent you from Kadesh Barnea, saying, go up and take possession of the land that I have given you, then you rebelled against the commandment of the Lord, your God, and did not believe him or obey his voice. You have been rebellious against the Lord from the day that I knew you. So I lay prostrate before the Lord for these 40 days and 40 nights, because the Lord said He would destroy you. And I pray to the Lord, O Lord God, do not destroy your people and your heritage, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not regard the stubbornness of this people or the wickedness of their sin. lest the land from which you brought us say, because the Lord was not able to bring them into the land that he promised them, and because he hated them, he has brought them out to put them to death in the wilderness. For they are your people and your heritage, whom you brought out by your great power and by your outstretched arm." Again, two main things. They've been wicked ever since the day they came out of Egypt. Even in the middle of the redemption, even in the middle of the curses and the plagues that God was putting on them, Israel complained. They wanted to stay in Egypt as slaves rather than being freed by God. The thing, Moses has been ordained to be their mediator, to go on their behalf to save their life. Verse seven. Again, the repetition, remember and do not forget how you provoke God every day from the day you came out over and over again, you've been rebellious. Verse eight, even at Horeb, which is also called Mount Sinai, Even at Horeb, even when God, after He delivered you, He put you on the mountain. He said, you're a kingdom of priests. You're my treasured possession. You're my holy nation. Here are my commandments. You're not like any other nation. God is speaking with you. God has given you His word. Even then, you rebelled. Even after God had spoken to you and you heard the voice, you saw the fire. You couldn't wait 40 days. Within those 40 days, we don't know how long it took, they started building a golden calf while God was telling Moses, this is what worship is supposed to be like. While God is giving his instructions for how to worship, they've already broken three or four, maybe in all the commandments. They're rebellious people. Look at verses nine to 12. while I was up there for 40 days, God said to me at the end, verse 12, arise, go quickly, because they've turned quickly out of the way. Less than 40 days. Notice also, one of the most, it's slight, I tried to emphasize it so we heard it. The Lord said to Moses, go down quickly. God says to Moses, your people. This is devastating. The only thing that makes Israel holy, the only thing that makes them beloved, the only thing that makes them treasured, the only thing that makes them priests, is that God says, you're my people. God is rejecting his people who have rejected his covenant. He's disowning them. How fearful it has to be to go from being God's people to somebody else's. God's disowning them. Verse 13, Moses continues the story. Further, the Lord said to me, I have seen this people, not my people, this people. And they are stiff-necked. They are stubborn. They've made a golden calf. So Moses destroys it. And there we also see Moses intercedes for them. Moses has been chosen by God as the one who can go before his people and ask for mercy. Well, we'll look at this more in just a moment, but let's go down to this next section, verses 22 through 29. Here's when God says, go up and fight, go against these giants, go against these fortified cities. Look, I did to Egypt. I'm going to do the same thing. I say, no, we don't trust you, God. We don't take you at your word. Look at Moses' prayer. He gives us more detail here. So I lay prostrate before the Lord for these 40 days and 40 nights, because the Lord said he would destroy you. I prayed, O Lord God, do not destroy your people and your heritage, whom you have redeemed through your greatness, whom you have brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand. He wants to remind God that these are your people. Then remember, remember the promises you made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Do not regard the stubbornness of these people or their wickedness. Notice what he's appealing to. Lest the land, which is Egypt, which you brought us out of, lest they say, look, God was not able to keep his promise. God did not love them. Moses' final appeal is to God. It's your glory, it's your name, it's your reputation. Do not give up on these people who are your people. Do not let the nations boast. In order to truly appreciate this, we need to see two things. First, we are like Israel in our sin. We are like Israel in our sin. We are unrighteous and we cannot boast of anything we've done to earn God's favor. The second is this, Christ is greater than Moses. Christ is greater than Moses. God ordained Moses to be a prefigure of Christ as Moses was given the opportunity to go before his people who were sinners and ask for forgiveness and ask for their sin to not be counted against them, to ask for their lives be spared. So too Christ goes before us, one who is greater than Moses. Let's first be convinced of our sin. Here we need to be clear. We are all unrighteous. Now again, the warning. Be careful not to compare yourself to someone else right now. Be careful not to be thinking of how your neighbor needs to hear this. because we're all unrighteous. If we think of ourselves according to our own standards or the culture standards or compared to somebody else, we're always gonna come out on top, but whenever we compare ourselves to God's word, we realize we have fallen far from his glory. We are guilty of every kind of sin. We're sinners. This is actually good news, friends. God's law reveals that we're sinners and it's good. Otherwise, we would never know how to be reconciled to God. We would never know we need reconciliation to God. We would never know how to repent. It's glorious to be able to know in the gospel we're sinners. Amazing thing about scripture is that sin is the backdrop of everything that happens. Apart from the first two chapters, sin is the backdrop of everything that happens. we have to be able to accept it. Let's just look at this one word, stubborn. That's a key word in our passage. You are a stubborn people, God says. Now this is actually a word picture. It literally means stiff-necked. It's borrowed from the farming world. When you have a mule or an ox that refuses to take the yoke, that's connected to the plow, that's a stubborn mule, a stubborn ox. What that ox is telling their owner is that even though I was designed for this work, even though you purchased me for this work, I'm not gonna do it. I'm not going to let you put your yoke on me. I am going to be in charge. This is how God sees us. He designed us for worship. He designed us to know His love and to love Him. He designed us to know His goodness and to work for His goodness. And yet what we do is we tell God, no, I think we would have more fun over here. Even though you've designed us for this great opportunity to love God, we want to stiffen our necks. We don't want to do your work. We want to do what we like. Even more so, this picture's worse when we think about the fact that we were purchased by the precious blood of Christ to bow our necks down to Him and say, Lord, whatever you will. But instead, we're stubborn. We keep our necks stiff, neither bowing down before Him or serving Him. We were designed and redeemed to worship. I mean, think about this. We were designed to have a yoke. We all have a master. We're designed to have a yoke. And this is what the yoke is with God. Love me and be loved by me. And yet we are stubborn and resist this and refuse it. We don't want to listen. We don't want direction. We don't want discipline. We certainly don't want commandments. We must submit our necks and bow down before God. We're also rebellious like these people. We're rebellious because we don't like God's word to tell us what we can and cannot do. Our rebellion is a little more subtle than Israel. As I was studying this passage with some men, we all looked at it, we just said, how could they? God's probably looking at us saying, how could you? Of all the promises I've given you, of all the things I've done for you, how could you? We're very subtle in that we wanna find little ways to get around God's very clear commandments. There's really two sins that I think move us to our rebellion. One is we want to pretend God's word is too mysterious to really follow. Again, we want to pretend God isn't a good communicator. His word is clear. It's not mysterious. He tells us how to worship him. He tells us how to be reconciled to him. We look to this Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit that inspired it also indwells us to illuminate it. Go to the Word with confidence that He can speak clearly. Don't pretend it's mysterious. The second one is something we don't phrase very directly. God's Word is too restrictive. We want more freedom. We need more freedom to be ourselves. Not when We're by nature sinners and rebels. Christ is our liberator. He liberates us. He frees us to follow his word. Praise God, it's restrictive. In short, I could have just cut straight to Paul in Romans. None is righteous, no, not one. No one understands, no one seeks for God. All have turned aside, together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one. Their throat is an open grave, they use their tongues to deceive. The venom of asp is under their lips. Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood, and their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes. Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be stopped and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For by the works of the law, no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin. Is that us? Is God's word right? This is about everybody. Is God's word true? We are all sinners. We have no fear of God apart from his grace. Our mouths are only full of bitterness and curses apart from his grace. Apart from his grace, we're miserable in an anarchy against him and one another. The picture is frightening. which is why we must continue to read Romans. That was Romans 3, verses 11 through 20. I'll now pick up in verse 21. But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law. Although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, their righteousness, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe, for there is no distinction For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified by his grace as a gift. Through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith, this was to show God's righteousness. Because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just. and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Christ comes as a very unique figure. He's sinless. He is perfectly righteous. He is the righteous one that fully reveals God. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but Christ. This is why he makes a propitiation with his blood. He puts God's wrath at ease. If you're not a Christian, this is the most important thing you're gonna hear this morning. If you're a Christian, this is the most important thing you're gonna hear this morning. We're all sinners and we deserve wrath from the just God. He is just. He will punish every sin of every sinner. If you don't believe in Jesus Christ, He will punish every sin you've committed. His wrath is against you. If you believe in Jesus Christ, there's a great exchange that takes place because the righteous one, Jesus Christ, he is punished on behalf of sinners. The wrath of God is poured out upon the righteous one for the sin of everyone who believes in him. His righteousness is counted towards you. You're no longer guilty, counted guilty. You're no longer counted as someone who's gonna have wrath. You're counted as a child of God, forgiven, innocent. You're counted as righteous. God is just because he's punished every sin of every sinner. He punished our sin on Jesus, our Savior, so that we might know God again. Friends, this is the gospel. Jesus dies on behalf of all who believe in him. Now he says to the father, Father, I've died in their place. I declare them innocent. Their guilt is removed because I washed it away with my blood. If you want one verse to memorize on this point, 2 Corinthians 5.21. For our sake He made Him to be sin, who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. If you're not a Christian this morning, God, I pray, is revealing to you your sin. His wrath will be on your sin because He's a just God. But if you believe in Jesus Christ today, he can justify you. He can declare you righteous by punishing your sin and Christ so that you're forgiven. Please do not leave without talking to somebody about that this morning. If you're a Christian, we need to look to Christ. Because just as Moses, he goes before the people to pray for them, to let their sin not be counted against them, to forgive them so they might live, Jesus is our mediator that goes before us. Moses saved Israel from destruction through prayer. Jesus is greater. We can just walk through the book of Hebrews with some very clear points to see how Jesus is greater. First, Jesus isn't just any old prophet. He is the final prophet, the Son of God who has come to fully reveal God. That's Hebrews 1. Hebrews 3, Jesus isn't just a member of the house like Moses. He's actually the builder of the house who makes intercession for the people of God. Hebrews 4, not just someone who points the people to the promised land. No, Jesus goes before us into the promised land, into the presence of God and tells us we can boldly go with Him. Hebrews 8, he's not just a better mediator, he inaugurates a better covenant, a better covenant with better worship because it's done with his blood. Hebrews 9, Moses inaugurates the covenant with the sacrifice of a lamb that has to be done year after year after year. Jesus Christ sacrificed himself once and for all. There is no more sacrifice because he's washed away our sin. Let me go through this another way. Moses was merely a man chosen by God, a servant of servants. Jesus is the Son of God. Moses was a member of the house. Jesus is Almighty God who created the house and redeemed the house with his own blood. Moses prophesied. He said the promises of God that awaited fulfillment. Jesus Christ is the yes and amen of every promise that has ever been given. Moses instituted the first sacrifice of a lamb that covered sin. Jesus himself is a true lamb that washes away sin once and for all. Moses was a sinner. He didn't get to go on the promised land. Jesus Christ was perfect, leading his people into the presence of God. Moses kept the people at distance from God. The worship that Moses led was full of fear, where he said, you cannot come near. The worship that Jesus Christ leads us in is full of celebration that says, come, come into the direct, immediate presence of God because my blood has washed you clean. Moses could not see God. He asked, can I see your glory? God said, you cannot see my face. John 1 says, Jesus, who came from the Father's side, he has made him known. In Christ, we can see the face of God. Moses' prayer ended. Jesus stands before us as the great high priest who is forever making intercession for us. He's praying constantly for us. Final application. Let's go back to that quote from the other preacher. I am what it says I am. Are we guilty? Are we unrighteous rebels? Are we stubborn? We need to long to be corrected so that we are more pure in our worship. I have what it says I have. You have Christ, and that's it. All you can boast of is that you have Christ. You have nothing else. You bring nothing else but your sin, and when you have Christ, He washes it away. The only thing we can boast in is Jesus Christ and Him crucified. celebrate the victory of Christ. And this is where the beauty of it is. If I can say I'm a wretched sinner, I have Christ, I now know I am redeemed, adopted, forgiven. These are the truths of Christ. I can do what it says I can do. Christ is the perfect mediator. He calls us now to be like Him. Here's what you can do. Here's what you get to do. You get to pray to the Father in the name of the Son. You get to go before God and praise Him in prayer, seeking Christ for forgiveness, seeking Christ for guidance. We need to pray like Moses. Let me challenge you this way, church. One way we can think about this as a body. Are we praying for one another as a kingdom of priests like Moses prays for his people? We're all called now to be like Moses, praying for one another. Do we pray for one another in the sense that we're seeking God's will for one another? We're seeking to know how to forgive one another. We're seeking to love one another. This is the most effective way to love one another, to pray for one another. We're sinners in need of grace, and that grace is found abundantly in Christ. Will you pray with me? Father, we praise you, because you're a God who speaks. You're the God who has spoken to us these words so that we can know who you are, we can know our sin, we can know that we can have redemption and reconciliation in Christ. Forgive us, almighty God. Help us to hear you, to listen to you, to follow you, and to obey you. Help us to glorify our Redeemer, Jesus Christ. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.