God's Son Risen for Us

This morning we're continuing a mini-series. We finished 1 Samuel. We'll pick back up in 2 Samuel soon. We typically go through books of the Bible in order, and this morning we're in the second of three sermons God provides. That's the sermon series. Really a mini Easter series. So last week we saw how God provided a sacrifice for Isaac, Abraham's son, his only son, his beloved son. This week we're going to see how God provides a sacrifice for the firstborn sons of all of Israel, and really for God's own firstborn son that he calls Israel, his nation, his beloved. And then next week we'll gather at Easter to remember how God has provided His true, only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to be the Lamb of God as our sacrifice, and how He has risen to give us new life. As we think about our text this morning, we're in Exodus chapters 11 and 12. And I want to kind of give a topical introduction and then a historical introduction. Topically, I want to remind us of a man named Marcion. He was excommunicated in 144 BC. he was uh... excommunicated not only because he reduced the the new testament to only eleven books uh... partial uh... gospel of luke and then all of paul's epistles uh... he he reduced god's word and cut pieces out out of theological convictions He believed that there were two different kinds of gods. There was the god of Judaism, the god of the Old Testament that was a god of wrath and justice. And then the New Testament god, Jesus Christ, he couldn't figure out how to work these two together. They seemed contradictory because he was a god of love and mercy. He had a problem reconciling those two attributes of God, the righteousness and the love. That's a problem that didn't die with Marcion's excommunication. It's really plagued the church throughout the ages. We hear it today. Let's unhitch the Old Testament from the gospel of Jesus Christ. We forget that when God revealed himself to Moses, when Moses said, let me see your glory, a high point of revelation, he says, this is my name. I will make my goodness pass before you. This is Exodus 33. I will make my goodness pass before you and proclaim before you my name, the Lord. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy with whom I will show mercy. Notice there the very name of the Lord is tied to being gracious and tied to being merciful. He's a righteous judge. But He's a merciful and gracious God, first and foremost, as He's speaking to His own people. At the turn of the New Testament, we cannot lose the picture of sin and how righteous God is in His judgment. If we look at the cross, there is no clearer picture that God is a just judge of sin. When Christ has to die on our behalf for our sin, we see the perfect wrath of God executed, revealing His perfect justice. We also see His powerful mercy that He, Christ, God's own Son, was willing to be punished for us. We see the perfect mercy of the Father that He poured out His wrath on His Son so that we might be set free. This morning we're going to see God's wrath and His mercy. We can't think of these two things apart from one another. They have to be tied together. There's going to be a sweeping judgment for all of Egypt who refuses God, and then a sweeping, powerful mercy for all those who trust God and put the blood of the Lamb over their doorposts. If you're looking for a one-sentence summary of our sermon, of our message today, it's this. God provides His Lamb to save us from His judgment. God provides His Lamb to save us from His judgment. And what's beautiful, the picture that God gives us throughout Scripture from Genesis to Revelation, that's a message that is true for Israel in the Exodus. It's a message that's true for us in Jesus Christ today. There's four points to this last plague, and we'll walk through that in a moment. But if you're looking for an outline, the first is this. I'm just going to walk through the text. Number one, God warns Pharaoh. That's just chapter 11. God warns Pharaoh. Secondly, God instructs Moses. God warns Pharaoh. That's chapter 11. God warns Moses. That's 1 through 20. Then Moses instructs Israel, that's 21 through 28, and then God keeps his word, 29 and following. God warns Pharaoh, God instructs Moses, Moses instructs Israel, and God keeps his word. For background, let's just go back to Abraham. That's where we were last week. Abraham was a practicing pagan. God looked at him, not because of something in Abraham, but just because of God's own kindness said, Abraham, leave your country. I will bless you. I will bless you. You will be a great blessing. I will bless you. I'll bless you. I'll give you a son. And kind of the high point of the Abraham story is his willingness after he's learned after failure and failure and failure to trust God and offer his son up for a sacrifice. That was Genesis 22. And then we saw great faith from Abraham. We saw great power from God and that he provided that ram caught in a thicket so that his son was not sacrificed. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob's name is changed to Israel and Jacob has 12 sons. One of those sons is Joseph. who seemed to be a bit of a bragger, that he knew his father loved him most, and seemed to receive the scorn from his other brothers for that. And so they, this is the promised people of God, the people who are supposed to bless all people, within their own brotherhood, the brothers sell Joseph into slavery. And then he ends up in Egypt, and all of this according to God's plan, as Joseph himself testifies. what you intended for evil, God intended for, God used for good. See, God wanted Israel to be in Egypt because there they would be protected. There in Goshen, they would strive and they would thrive and they would multiply and they would be great, as God said. The problem is, years later, as they multiplied and multiplied and multiplied and God blessed them, a pharaoh came to power that did not know Joseph. And he looked at how big Israel was, and they were terrified. And so they enslaved the Israelites. They put them to task. They treated them poorly. They started even killing off the male sons to hinder the growth. But they multiplied all the more, God says. And the people were their burden, and they cried out to God. That's Exodus 3.24. I'd love to just hang out here for a moment. God's people cried out to the Lord, and it's very important we remember here, God heard them. God's people cried out, and He heard them. He's not distant, He is not deaf, He has attentive ears to His people. They cried out, and He heard them. And His answer to this is, I'm going to let my, I'm going to send my people out. He calls Moses a murderer and a fugitive. He says, go speak to Pharaoh. This is one of my favorite sections. He tells Moses, go speak to Pharaoh. Moses says, well, I can't talk. God said, yeah, that's right, but I'm with you. It doesn't matter how good you are. It doesn't matter what kind of gifts and abilities you have. I'm with you. I have set my purpose to let my people go. You just need to follow my orders. One of the grand things we're going to see in the plague we're looking at, the grand thing we see in all of Exodus, God speaks so His people know what He wants. God speaks so that His people know who He is. It's not a guessing game. I'm with you. I will make it happen. Now, what happens next is there's two signs and 10 plagues. And what is God doing here? Well, one of the things he's doing is he's showing Egypt. The gods you're worshiping are all false. All the plagues are attacking certain gods that the Egyptians were working, worshiping. And those gods were appealing to Israel, as we're going to see over and over again throughout the Old Testament. But God is showing, I am the one true God, Creator, Redeemer, Savior. Here's my name. You can call upon me. You can know me. I am the God worthy of worship. Now, we're not gonna get into the nine plagues, but precede the 10th, except for that ninth one is pretty amazing. For three days there was darkness. The sun did not shine on Egypt. It's a direct attack on the god Ra. One of the great high gods of Egypt. and just forget that it's attacking that God of sun and light, it didn't shine for three days. That should freak you out. That should make you step back and realize we're not doing this right. But no, Pharaoh hardened his heart, his heart was hardened, and God hardened his heart because he wanted to show many wonders. So that without a doubt, to all the Egyptians, to Israel, to all the world, he is the true God. Here we are in Exodus 11. Those nine plagues have happened. The 10th plague is heightened. The other plagues have not directly touched humans to bring death yet. There was probably, there was death because of the circumstances or the consequences of it, but no plague has taken life yet. It's personal because it's the firstborn son. It's attacking the future of Egypt, the future well-being, those who would inherit. It's universal throughout all of Egypt. Every firstborn of the livestock and the families. And God says this one is to be remembered. The last thing that really makes it stand out is be ready to go. Those other plagues, it was like, all right, is God going to let us go? Is fear going to let us go? Yes, and then he changes his mind. But this one, he says, have your belt on, your sandals on. Be ready to move in haste. This last plague is significant and unique, not only because of what it does for Israel here in Egypt, but how it points us to Christ. Let's look at our text, Exodus 11. I'm not going to read all of our text this morning, Our first point, God warns Pharaoh. Judgment is coming. God warns Pharaoh. Judgment is coming. And this isn't the first time God's warned Pharaoh beforehand. Look at verse 4. So Moses said, Thus says the Lord about midnight, I will go out in the midst of Egypt, And every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits in the throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been nor will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. and all these your service shall come down to me and bow down to me saying get out you and all the people who follow you and after that I will go out and he went out from the Pharaoh in hot anger and the Lord said to Moses Pharaoh will not listen to you that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land He's warned him before you lose your firstborn son before all of Egypt loses their firstborn son I'm warning it but but the Lord doesn't want Pharaoh to make the logical clear decision at this point Because he wants to show himself as the one true God Notice the the last plague verse 7 Verse verse 5 the firstborn the land shall all die. I There's a distinction here between Israel and Egypt. He doesn't tell Pharaoh why the Israelites will be spared. He just simply says, you need to know that there's going to be a distinction. Now, is Israel better than Egypt? Did Israel earn somehow the favor of God? Absolutely not. The only privilege Israel has here is that God said, I'm going to give you, these people, my promise. That's it. They're horribly disobedient. They're incredibly discouraging. As we look through history, they deny God, they reject God, they misrepresent God over and over again. What makes them get this privilege of keeping their firstborn is that God has made promises. And those promises are tied to His name and His glory, and so He keeps them. We also need to see here that this is personal for God. He's a loving Father. When we go back to Exodus 4.22, and Moses is to declare this, thus says the Lord, this is Exodus 4.22, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son. And I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son. This is not new to Pharaoh. He's already been warned of this before the other plagues. Notice that language God uses here for his people. The loving, compassionate language. We now know because of Jesus that we get to call God Father, but here he's liking himself to a father. He's telling Israel, you're like my firstborn son because of how much I've committed to you, my love for you. God is a loving father. We know now even more than Israel did that we get to call upon him and he listens. The wondrous works of God will happen. The second thing we see is God instructs Moses. So the firstborn is what is at stake. There is a clear distinction between Egypt and Israel. Egypt really representing the nations that rage against God, representing the enmity between the serpent and God's chosen from Genesis 3.15. Now God instructs Moses. And again, I don't want us to lose this. He tells them exactly what he's doing. He tells them exactly what to do. There's no guessing game. God doesn't want us to try to figure it out from some myth, or from our own wisdom, because he is going to tell us exactly what he wants. Chapter 12, verse 1. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months. It should be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father's houses, a lamb for a household. Okay, so we see here a new beginning. What's happened with the nine plagues beforehand? He's been decreating. here just like we worship on the first day of the week to remember God is beginning a new creation. Egypt now has a new beginning, a new month. As Christians are to the cross, Israel was to the exodus. This is their definitive salvation moment. That scripture is going to repeat over and over again. Our New Testament language for salvation is tied to this event. A new beginning for you. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of the persons, according to what each can eat. You shall make your account for the lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the doorpost and the lentil of the house in which they eat. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs that they shall eat. Eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roast it, its head with its legs and its inner parts, and you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. In this manner you shall eat it with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments. I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." There's a new beginning for Israel. The lamb is required, and notice the lamb needs to be perfect for God as a sacrifice, and a perfect provision for man to consume. They'll select a lamb on the tenth day of this new month. The blood of the lamb will be put on the doorpost. And so when the angel of judgment, when God's judgment goes over the lamb, it will pass over every house. It'll be a sign. This is one of God's families. This is part of God's nation. This is God's people chosen and beloved. His Passover. The blood of the Lamb is a sign that God's judgment passes over his people. Now notice here they have to believe God. They have to obey God in order to have that deliverance, that redemption. Notice I'm not gonna read the next section. It's about the memorial. But God wants this to be a continued remembered feast. Why? Because we're forgetful. We're forgetful intellectually, but we're also forgetful sinfully. We forget who we are and that God purchased us. We forget who we are and that God redeems us. We forget who we are and what God has done for us. And that means we will not be the people God has called us to be. There's a few things we see here that's very important. One, we see God's judgment. God does judge the firstborn of all of Egypt. And to be very clear, God never judges people for sin they did not commit. God is a just judge. The judgment is real. He has to be a just judge. We desire when we're sinned against a just judge. He'll punish every sin. We see also here a God of mercy. There's a substitute. There's a reckoning. There's a provision given so that you might actually receive mercy, and it's tied to the blood of the Lamb. Notice that the mercy, the third thing we see. He's a God who's just. He's a God who is merciful. The third thing, that mercy is not cheap. That mercy was not cheap. It required life. The fourth thing is we see it calls for obedience. There's a trusting obedience that saves his people. But it's all according to his plan, all according to his instruction, they must respond. Notice here next, Moses instructs Israel. Moses instructs Israel. This is verses 21 to 28. Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, go and select lambs for yourselves according to the clans and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin and touch the lentil in the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning for the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians. And when he sees the blood on the lentil and on the two doorposts, The Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your house to strike you. You shall observe this right as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you as he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service? You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. For he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians, but spared our houses. And the people bowed their heads and worshipped. And the people of Israel went and did so as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron. So they did." Notice the importance of this event. It's repeated over and over again. When something's repeated like this, it's meant to be read more slowly. He's told Pharaoh what he's gonna do, he's told Moses what he's gonna do, and now we have Moses recorded telling Israel what to do. And notice again, the instructions are even more specific. This is important. Take the hyssop and mark your door. That's what we saw last time, but something here even more important, verse 22, or as important, none of you shall go out of the door. If you go out from underneath the blood, you're in danger. You will be struck down. God has made his provision for you. God has provided the perfect protection from you. It is the blood, and only the blood, that will save you from destruction and death. If you go out, you will be treated like an Egyptian. The fear here is that Israel might think we may should, you know, Make sure we're not so invested in this as blood. Maybe we should go get a couple idols from Egypt. Maybe we should go out and try to find some other kind of wisdom in the middle of the night as they're hearing the cries and the screams. They just need to sit there and rest and be assured that the blood is the provision. Sit safely in the refuge of the blood. Do not go out. Do not try to figure out something to add. Do not try to find another way. The Lord will pass through. He will strike the Egyptians, verse 23, but you will be saved. Notice here he gives those instructions that we're gonna need to know that when we go out, this is gonna be something we're gonna keep doing. Why? So the children will ask questions. Well, we need to remember here the importance of keeping regular reminders in our lives for our own souls. and for the children. Our children should see something different about the way we order our lives. Not forsaking the assembly, not giving up on the fellowship of the saints, not giving up on our scripturing and prayer. The children should see us doing things that reflect Christ so they ask questions. Why do we always do this? It's because the Lord has saved us. Next week we have one of those signs. Why, why are they getting wet here in the church? Why is there, why is there going to be a, what's baptism? Well, it's because we're all sinners. We need to be washed with the blood of Christ. We need to be buried with Him. We need to rise again with Him. The Lord's Supper, which we normally take, so sad we're not here taking the Lord's Supper together. The children see that cup and that bread pass by, who aren't believers and part of the church, and ask, what does that mean? point them to Christ so that they might hear the gospel? What do the children see in your routine and your pattern? Do we have signs and symbols and regular practices in our homes, in our personal lives, in our church that keep the children regularly reminded of the gospel? And do they see enough pattern to ask questions? Why aren't we like our neighbors? Why don't we do this? Fourth, God keeps his word. At midnight, the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the captive, who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. God keeps his promises. for Egypt, this is devastating. They, they cry out. They're weeping. For, for Israel, this is redemption. We see here the distinction between Egypt and Israel. If you're not a believer in God, if you're not following God, if you're not listening to His Word, if you're not, not trusting who He says He is, there is going to be destruction. That's why the invitation is so powerful. You can become a child of God. You can trust in Christ, who is that Lamb who was truly slain. We'll talk about that here in a moment. But the distinction is clear. And in Pharaoh's outrage, finally he says, get out! All of Egypt says, get out! They give him all their gold. Israel plunders the Egyptians. Notice verse 40. The time that the Lord of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the host of Israel went out from the land of Egypt. In Genesis 15, when God was reminding Abraham after his failure in trying to adopt Eleazar, he had him cut up carcasses. Abraham was put into a deep sleep. God alone walked through those carcasses and said the same covenant that he already promised him. So he added to that was, your people are going to be in a foreign land for 400 years. They're going to be mistreated, and I'm going to deliver them. Nothing happens to anybody, but much less God's own people, without him caring, and leading, and providing. This was all done according to God's plan. Why? For one reason, so that we would all know He is the one true God. But we just back up. We see He's a kind God. He's a caring God. He's a powerful God. Let's ask some different questions. Why did God command Isaac to be sacrificed? Why did the Lamb need to be slaughtered to protect the firstborn of Israel? Why does a sacrifice have to happen every year? because one day God would send his own son, his only son, to be born of a virgin, to be born under the law, so that when his people would hear him speak, when his people would see that he came to teach God's way truly and fully, the way he lived his life was representing God perfectly, and the sacrifice he was going to give was actually a once-for-all sacrifice, they'll believe. All of these things have been told beforehand so that when he came to his own, they would receive him. Because God giving his own son is a precious gift. He's preparing the way with all these promises. This is just one way in which he provides the promise. But his people rejected him. The call this morning is to belong to God's people. Why should you want to be part of God's people? You are enslaved. We are all enslaved. Now, we might not have a taskmaster like Pharaoh. We might not be part of a nation that's treating the people this way. Really, we've got a much more dangerous problem. It's within our own hearts. The sickness of our soul, the sin that dwells within, that Jesus says defiles us, the sin that is inside that can only be washed away by the precious blood of Christ. And one of the things this virus has made more real to us is the reality of death. We die because of sin. Sickness and death are actually consequences of the fall. And now that we're much more aware that life is short, life is precious, life is to be preserved, God agrees. God's been declaring that from the very beginning. That's why he sent his own Son, so that we could be freed from sin and actually have eternal life. As we turn now, I want us to have three Gospel meditations, as the New Testament picks up on this theme of the Lamb of God very clearly and very regularly. As I said last week, the Old Testament is explained by the New, and the New is contained in the Old. This is one truth of God. He's preparing the way for his son. When Christ was on that Emmaus road in Luke 24, he gave a great theological lesson. Everything from those scriptures is pointing to me. Let's just see how in a few passages. Let's turn to John 1. That was the passage read earlier in the service. John 1. We first see John the Baptist. who declares Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away sin. Verse 29, that's all we need to look at. Behold, the Lamb of God, he takes away the sins of the world. Now John the Baptist is a unique character. He's the last Old Testament prophet. He's the one who gets to say, he's coming, he's coming, he's coming. There he is. Follow him. He's great. I'm unworthy to tie his sandals. He must increase. I must decrease. John declares he is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Now, he declares him to be the Lamb of God, one, to identify him with the sacrifice of Isaac. One, to identify him with the sacrifice of the lamb that saved Israel out of Egypt, and then to identify him with that sacrifice that takes place every year, over and over and over again. But this one is the Lamb of God, who doesn't have God pass over sins. He's not the Lamb of God that covers our sins. Notice the significant difference about this Lamb of God. He takes away our sin. You see, others are the lambs. from the ram caught in the thicket in Genesis 2, to the lambs that were slain in Egypt, to the lambs that were slaughtered year after year, all those lambs were not able to take away sin. And that's obvious because it's repeated. Jesus is the true sacrifice. He came to live the human life we refuse to live, we cannot live. He came to die in our place so that God in His perfect justice punishes every sin in this perfect one so that we can be forgiven. All of the forgiveness of the Old Testament was by faith, but it was God passing over former sins, according to Romans 3.25. Now God has put forth His Son to actually satisfy His wrath. so that we know the power of true forgiveness, God's righteousness perfectly revealed on the cross, the son being punished for our sin, all of it once for all, and God's mercy for us. You're forgiven. You're declared not guilty. You're declared my child. What can you do? If you're not a Christian, call out to him. Again, this is the great declaration of Scripture. He's a God who speaks to be known. He makes his word clear to you that you're a sinner just like every other human being. You're going to die just like every other human being. You're going to face a judgment just like every other human being. And the only hope we have is that we would come before God and Christ would say, Father, this one is mine. I died taking away his sin so that he is now ours. The invitation is to trust Jesus, the true love of God, who alone can take away your sin. The second application, call out to him. Cling to him. Hold fast to him who is your only provision of life. Hold fast to his sacrifice. Hold fast to his word. Stay under his blood. But refuse the temptation to figure out how you can go out from underneath his blood and figure out something a little different, to taste that little sin, to figure out how I can make my righteousness better by doing something outside of his blood. Now stay within the refuge of Christ. There enter boldly into his name. We're supposed to be doing this together right now, but we do this in every aspect of life. We're not able to gather for worship, and it's a wonderful reminder that we are worshipers all the time because Christ sits at the right hand of the Father and now mediates for us so that our lives are supposed to be played out as a worship all the time to God. Enter boldly into his name. Finally, be confident. Be confident. Your conscience is cleansed by the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice of Christ. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away sin. The second application comes from 1 Corinthians 5. 1 Corinthians 5. this is a chapter where uh... it's a difficult chapter to think about because god is is is that paul is calling the church to remove somebody whose sinfulness is so uh... obvious and is so blatantly defaming and defiling the church and defaming the name of christ that he shouldn't be part of their worship and in the midst of the instruction to remove this person for the name of christ and for that person's own benefit that they might repent and be renewed in christ and we know from second corinthians he was Notice verse 6. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? cleanse out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened." Now, we didn't read this part, but the Feast of Unleavened Bread is tied to the Passover. And here he's showing us that the leaven that corrupts us, the reason we eat unleavened bread is to remember that the old leaven, well, he's gonna call it malice and evil. Oh, this next declaration. Why should you cleanse yourself? Why should we be a pure people? For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. A simple declaration. Clearly he's connecting Christ as the one true Passover lamb. He's the one who truly does take with us. Notice how absolute it is. He's been sacrificed. He's died for us. How can we keep celebrating the festival with malice and evil? You celebrate the festival of Christ's sacrifice with sincerity and truth. His argument is that we're supposed to be a new people because of Christ's sacrifice. We're supposed to be a new people who are celebrating in a new way. And notice how it's together. The church is supposed to be pursuing purity together because Christ is the sacrifice. We're supposed to be celebrating that sacrifice together. As I look at an empty room, that's just difficult. But right now, we can help each other. You can actually do the most powerful thing you can do for each other right now, and that's pray. We're not able to see each other face-to-face the way we normally do. We're not able to kind of regularly commune with one another, but here's what we get to do. Commune to God the Father in the name of Christ that unites us all together for one another. That's the most powerful thing you can do right now and all the time, for that matter. So with this different way of living, set aside time. Go through your church directory. Go through the list of friends and family. This is the time. Can you imagine if we learn to better discipline ourselves in prayer, if we became a prayerful all the time for one another church? How much more faithful we could be. It's always the most powerful thing we can do. Right now, it's more important. Here's ways you can pray for each other. We'll put these in the weekly of the prayer list as we go along. Look at the prayers of Paul. You know, we usually want to do like a list. Here's the specific things we can pray for, for that member or for this person. No, for all Christians at all times, we can pray Ephesians 1, that the eyes of the believers will be illumined to know the hope they have in Jesus Christ. Or Ephesians 4, that we'll be filled with power to know the height, width, breadth, and depth of God's love. Philippians 1, that love may abound, so that ye may approve what is excellent. Colossians 1, be filled with wisdom, knowing what the will of God is, that ye may approve what is excellent. Just a few samples of what I prayed earlier from 1 Thessalonians. We would receive his word with joy and be good examples of Christ. Pray the words that God has given us to pray for each other together. Our last meditation comes from 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1. I'll pick up in verse 15 in the middle of an exhortation. The Lamb of God calls us to holiness. But as he who has called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct. Since it is written, be holy I'm holy. That's an Old Testament commandment. That is a weighty, big exhortation. If we were to think about the big exhortations that capture much of the other commands of Scripture, you've got love the Lord your God with all your heart. Jesus said that's the most important. Be only for I am holy is another one. It doesn't just mean separate, it means higher calling to be like God again, to be renewed in that image, to set aside our words and our pattern and our conduct in such a way that we reflect God. Holiness is a communicable attribute. Verse 17, and if you call on him as father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, Notice there it reminds us God only judges us for the things that we do. He is a righteous judge. Conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb. without blemish or spot. The Bible gives us these scarlet threads. We see the dots, right? We see the sacrifice of Abel. We see the sacrifice of the ram in place of Isaac. We see the sacrifice of these lambs in place of Israel's firstborn. And now we see clearly Christ, the one who's a lamb without spot or blemish. He's truly the perfect one who dies in the place. We're not ransomed. We're not delivered with things that we think are valuable. gold, silver. No, something that we can't put a price on. The blood of God. God's spirit. But God became a human Jesus Christ lowered himself a little lower than the angels. He took on our likeness so that now the Son of God, who is perfect, is now the perfect human being. He shed his precious blood to purchase us. So we'd stop being foolish. We'd stop being, following the futility that we inherit. Again, it's important to remember God's people did not earn God's favor. If you think about what happens after the Exodus, they're going to get up next to the Red Sea, and they're going to see Pharaoh's army attacking, and they're going to cry out, grumbling. The word grumble is very important. The word grumbling is always tied to idolatry in the Old Testament and the New. They're going to grumble, were there not enough graves for us? Is that why you brought us out? Can you imagine a Heavenly Father who's just given you the sacrifice to free you, the Heavenly Father that's shown His glory over and over again, and then you get out and you accuse Him of wanting to just kill you out of the wilderness rather than in the land of Egypt? That's what Israel does in response to His grace. Then when Moses is brought up to the Holy of Holies and the glory of God is shown on the mountain, They grow impatient. Moses is taking too long. God is taking too long telling Moses how to worship. What do they do? They take the gold God gave them from the Egyptians, and they build an idol. And they say, this is the God who saved us from the Red Sea. Then when they get to the edge of the Promised Land, They send out spies and the spies, most of them come back and they say, wow, that's way too dangerous for us. We're not gonna go. And they refuse to go into the promised land. And so God does not let them go into the promised land. These people would not remain under the blood. They would not remain under the covenant. They would not remember how good God is. God doesn't save good people. God saves sinners. God purchases with his blessed blood. We're not better than the Israelites. We can stand there and judge them, but how often do we grumble? How often do we refuse to obey because it looks too hard? How often do we go outside and find some kind of idol because we're just sick of waiting? Purchase. You have every blessing in the heavenly places. Walk worthy of that calling. One last thing. Let's just remember there's plagues. We're in a place, we're in a time where we're thinking about sickness and death and we're wondering what is God doing and what kind of hope should we have as Christians? I want us to turn one last time to look at a thought from the Red Sea narrative. I want to be very clear that God has not said this virus is a judgment, so we should not. Unless God says, this is what I'm doing, this isn't like the exodus. This new time of sickness is not like that. We do have to recognize every sickness is a consequence of the fall. But if we're just wanting to ask, what is God doing? That's the pressing question. Let's look at Exodus 14. Exodus 14. Then the Lord said to Moses, tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-Harithah, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-Zephon. You shall encamp facing it by the sea. Okay, so God actually doesn't turn back. I want you to be there. For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, they're wandering in the land. The wilderness has shut them in. And God says, I will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will pursue them. And I will get glory for Pharaoh and all his hosts. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. Now this is very specific in context. He's going to send Pharaoh out. His people are going to walk through waves, standing up on dry land. And then, and the glory of God is protecting Pharaoh from attacking. And then when Pharaoh wants to attack after Israel's crossed by, he's going to be crushed. We don't know the specifics of what's going on with this virus today and that kind of detail. But the one thing I would want to say is consistent is this. God will get the glory. He is seeking to make himself known. That's two things I think we can actually pull from this Exodus 14, 4 passage that are pretty universal. God is seeking his own glory, and he will not share it for another, and God is seeking to be glorified, and he is making himself known. Those are two truths that are pretty universal. We can see from Romans 1 that everything that can be known about God is evident to us, but we suppress it with the truth. We look at Jesus Christ. He's the word who became flesh. He's a God who speaks. He's a God who's making himself known. It's important in this time of kind of confusion and chaos, potential anxiety, We have to trust that God is making himself known. He is always speaking in and through his word. He's speaking among his people. He's warning the nations to know he is the one true glorious God. What we need to do as a church, as Christians, is to say, God, help us to see who you are. Help us to be confident in who you are and how you can be made known. And help us to make you known. Again, as I said last week, we constantly look at the one thing that concerns us, and we're not seeing the thousands of things God's doing. Pray for wisdom. Pray for eyes to see. Pray for your heart to be illumined, that you might see the wisdom of God and the knowledge of God, and how He would be glorified by you, by how He would be glorified through you. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that Christ has come, that you have sent your Son to cleanse us from the sickness, to cleanse us from the sin, to wash us. Thank you for next week when we get to see baptism, a picture of that washing. Thank you that you've not left us to die without hope. Help us, Lord, to trust you. Help us, Lord, to not come out from underneath our security in Christ, to never want to leave the blood that doesn't just cover, but takes away our sin. Help us to stand secure in Christ. Because of the wonderful invitation he gives us to be his brothers, to be your children. receive your mercy. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.