I'm reading from Hosea chapter 11, verse 1 through 11 tonight. When Israel was a child, I loved him. And out of Egypt I called my son. The more they were called, the more they went away. They kept sacrificing to the Baals and burning offerings to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk. I took them up by their arms, but they did not know that I healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws. And I bent down to them and fed them. They shall not return to the land of Egypt, but Assyria shall be their king, because they have refused to return to me. The sword shall rage against their cities, consume the bars of their gates, and devour them because of their own counsels. My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the Most High, He shall not raise them up at all. How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? How can I make you like Adma? How can I treat you like Zeboim? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath. They shall go after the Lord. He will roar like a lion. When he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt and like doves from the land of Assyria. And I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord. This is the word of the Lord, amen. I don't know about you, but there's a few things in my life that are I just mentally hold intention in my head. And I'm a simple guy, so they're not profound, deep things that I hold intention in my head. But they're tensions that I grapple with, one of them being jumbo shrimp. How can you have jumbo and shrimp? They're little. I don't know. I don't get that. That's a tension in my head. The other one is of a little bit more importance to me, because I've eventually perceived that I'll be in one, but minivan. Aren't all vans big? They should call the really big ones mega van, and then just everything else regular van. Those are tensions that I just grapple with. And they're silly, to be honest. But each of us, I think, in some avenue of our lives or another, holds a certain tension in our minds with the reality, ultimately, of God. We have these ideals about who God is, and some of them might be informed biblically and some of them might not be, but there's these tensions that at times can seem very contradictory to one another. And unless we get a very clear biblical picture of who God is, these tensions will probably drive us crazy. The tension that I'm thinking of in particular, at least it's kind of a tension. I hope by the end of the night you will see that it's not tense at all, that it's very, very harmonious, that it's very real about God. But the tension that I think of most often is the tension between God's justice and God's grace. How can God be a God of complete justice and do what is right all the time, in every way, to every person, always, even in declaring and executing his judgment and wrath against a people, even his own people? How can God be just and right in that way, but yet at the same time, the other side of the tension is God's grace? How can He forgive and be kind and merciful and, from our vantage point, let people off the hook and show love and steadfast kindness? How can both of those realities, God's justice and God's grace, how do they work? How does that happen together? Tonight we're going to celebrate, again, the Lord's Supper, and we're going to see and reflect on who this God is, and from our passage tonight in Hosea, those two tensions of God's perfect justice and his holy grace stand before us, and there we see how God is able to be both absolutely just in every way, at every point, and yes, also completely compassionate and gracious in just the same manner. In fact, that's the point that I would bring you to tonight as we go to God's Word. It's simply this. This is a simple message. There's not a big intellectual point to it, it's very, very simple tonight. It's that the cross of Jesus, in the cross of Jesus, both God's justice and grace were perfectly expressed and satisfied. In the work of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sin, both God's perfect justice and his perfect holy grace were expressed rightly And both were satisfied perfectly as Jesus took our sins upon himself. I want to read from you a passage from Exodus. We need to go tonight to remember the name of the Lord. How has God revealed himself? Because many people get themselves in trouble when they think about these two tensions. They hold one or the other up, and they say, this is it, you know? God is love, and that's all that God does is love. All that he ever is, all that he ever was, is love, and his love is just passing over or pitying over people's sins, so he just kind of removes it and forgets it and doesn't do anything with it. That's one tension that people hold or one extreme that they would go to, but the other side of it is just the opposite, and it's just as worse. God is just all the time and he's wrathful and he's vengeful and so there's no love in God, there's no compassion in him, you're just a unworthy, filthy sinner and all you should get is God's boot against your head forever and ever and that's all you get. Let me take you to Exodus. Chapter 34 tonight, just to give you how God revealed Himself to Moses. And then we'll unpack this chapter from Hosea that shows us how God's graciousness and His justice are both perfectly met. There in Exodus 34, God is passing before Moses and He's declaring His name, and this is what He says about Himself. This is who He declares Him to be, the Lord, the Lord. A God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. We go, there's the love of God, yes, good. Keep going, verse 7, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation. As God declares Himself to be, as Yahweh revealed Himself to Moses in the very early pages of Scripture, Exodus 34, we see Him saying, I am God, who is slow to anger, abounding in love and compassion, steadfast, Forgiving the iniquity of many, and yet at the same time, I'm the God who will not clear the guilty. I will visit the iniquity of the fathers on the children's children. The justice and grace of God, how do they work? How can those two apparent tensions exist harmoniously in one glorious person? I think tonight that Hosea 11 gives us a glimpse of how that could be answered. The first reality of God that Hosea reveals for us in this chapter is this, is that God is righteous in His justice. That God is righteous in His justice. Oh, by the way, tonight, just discard the outline that you have in your bulletin. I scrapped it like a while ago, so just, it's not going to help you. I'm sorry. There's times when I'm getting ready to work on a sermon, and I get to the near being ready to preach it, and I just lean over to Steph and say, I'm audibling. I'm calling something different. It freaks her out, but I'm all good up here. So just punt on the outline there. God is righteous and is justice. Let's look at this. First of all, Here in these first seven verses of Hosea, we see this, this is the way it should go down. I mean, this is the way, as we've been studying this book, this is the way we really feel like it should be for the people of Israel. Here's God saying, here's how I perceive this whole relationship. I called them, when Israel was a child, I loved them, verse one. And out of Egypt, I called my son. I mean, this is the beginnings in God's mind of a great love relationship. He has taken his people, Israel, and he has said to them, you are my chosen people. I love you. You're my blessed people. To you, you will be a blessing to all nations. And he says there, out of Egypt, I called them. This is a reference to the Exodus. There God demonstrated his love for them in their suffering and affliction and slavery. He redeemed them out and brought them as a nation out of Egypt. And there he's just saying, this is how the relationship began. It was good. I loved them. I saved them. I called them out of Egypt. It was a good thing. Furthermore, in verses three and four, God talks about the way that he treated them, how he related to them. It was I who taught Ephraim to walk, he says. I took them up by their arms, but they didn't know that I had healed them. I led them with cords of kindness, with bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws. And I bent down to them and fed them." Here's, there's these two images that God uses. First of all, it's the imagery of a father with a very small son, a very little child. He says, I was the one who taught them to walk. I brought them up. I protected them, I shepherded them, I cared for them." He uses these, Hosea uses these, these imageries of cords of kindness and bands of love. I took them by their arms. The picture that he's trying to get us to see is like a loving father taking his little infant son and holding him by his hands. and just kind of leading him and walking with him so that the son learns to walk. Even the bands of love that he talks about and the cords of kindness there, these are these little ropes or straps that they would use in ancient times just to help their children walk along. So as the father put the cords in the son's hands and he held on to him, he would just hold him up and walk with him, caring for him, loving him, helping mature and grow. My son, Ethan, is right at this stage right now. He has, just in the last month, begun to walk. And he's finally figured out how to stand up, did the zombie thing for a little while, and now he's, he'll be running a marathon next week, I'm pretty sure. But it was, there's such an element of care and love. I loved standing there with my son, holding his hands, and just trotting around the house with him. Just seeing him kind of walk and get his legs about him and figure it out. What a great picture of care here and love, compassion. This is God saying, this is how I was to Israel, to my people. They were so little, so immature, so weak and frail, and I, like a father, just, I reached down and held them by their hands and let them walk and went forward with them. I cared for them and provided for them. What a compassionate reality. Even in the middle of verse three there, he says, they didn't know that it was I that had healed them. Speaking of Israel, in their bondage and slavery, they were feeling, I mean, they were just beat. They were oppressed. Can you imagine the amount of time it took for them coming out of Egypt to just get over what had happened in that generation? And God says, I was the one who was right there in their midst healing them. I was the one caring for them. I was the one loving them. This is great love, great compassion. This is what I want. This is so good. The second image that God uses here at the end of verse 4 is that of a farmer or a shepherd and his flock. He says, And I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws. I bent down to them and fed them. It's this farmer who has this flock of sheep, this shepherd, and he sees they're encumbered by a load. They're heavy burdened. The yoke on their neck is awful. That was the experience and the expression of their slavery and suffering in Egypt. It was a burdensome, hard yoke. God says, I eased it. I lifted the burden. I took it off. He says, I bent down and fed them. Here's this image of this farmer, the shepherd, reaching down to this timid, weak animal who's terrified, who's broken by a burden, saying, I fed you out of my own hand. I've cared for you and loved you that much. That is the way that God describes his initial relationship with this nation, with this people. He says, they're my people. They're my sons. I've taught them to walk. I've cared for them. I've provided for them. Even when they were almost done, I bent down and fed them. Isn't that a gracious picture of God? But here lies the problem, it's there in verse 2. This is their response or their reaction to God. What? Hear God saying, I have been so gracious. I have been so kind to my people. I have called them out of the land of Egypt. I have reconciled them to myself. I have given them a distinction as my sons. I mean, this was like finding a baby in the middle of nowhere that was orphaned completely and saying, you're mine. You have all the rights and privileges and distinctions of being my child, my son. God says, that's what I did for them. And the way they returned the favor, they went away. They sacrificed to false gods. They kept doing burnt offerings to idols. I mean, this is the rebellion that we have looked at in this book all over the place. They're war against God. They're rejection of Him. They're mixing their worship of God with worship of false gods. They're degrading God's glory and holiness. They're rejecting His Word and calling on their lives. Every time God says, I've called to them, it's like they've just heated up the fire more and more to worship the false gods. Every time I've gone out and spoken and said, my people, come back, I love you. It's like they've gone around and sacrificed more to idols. They've entrenched themselves more in wickedness and debauchery. They have spiritually prostituted themselves more and more, even as I have made efforts to and called them and loved them. This is the way that they have responded to my great love. They've warned against me, they've left me, they've abandoned and betrayed me for falseness, for false gods, for false things. When that kind of reality goes down, we better be hoping for justice. It would not be right at this point for us to go, oh, we'll just get over it, God, come on. Quit being so hard and firm with them. And this is how God speaks what he says to them. Because of their sin, because of their rebellion, because they have spurned God, they did not know him and rejected him. Verse five through seven reveals, God says, here's the righteous thing I will do. Here's justice upon the nation. They shall not return to the land of Egypt. Assyria shall be their king. The sword shall rage against its cities. It shall devour them, consume the bars of their gates. God says, listen, justice here is the invasion. The right thing for me to do is to bring the armies against them, to send them off to captivity once again. Instead of returning to Egypt, which is what they were hoping for, God says they'll get Assyria, which is even worse. because they've rejected me, they refuse to return to me. Verse six is just graphic. The way the Hebrew describes it, it's as if this sword is just circling like a, like this, I've got it in my head, like a lawnmower blade just running through a village, just huge, massive, conquering everything. The sword shall rage against their cities, consume them, devour them. And he says, my people are bent on turning away from me and they'll get it. They'll get it. And even though they call out to me, he won't be there to answer me. God says, I won't be there. There is nothing in this passage here about the way God acts toward Israel that we should raise our hands and go, what? How unfair. How wrong of you to do that, God. This is so unjust. This first seven verses show us clearly that God is absolutely right in his justice. That it's perfectly good for God to respond this way to rebellious people. This is what we deserve. This is what we should have coming for us. The sword should be circling at our head. And it's right. That's a hard tension. You see, there's not a person here in this room, there wasn't a person in the nation that was right before God. They had rebelled against Him, rejected Him, and so had we. Every day in our own lives, our sin pushes us away from God. Our sin wars and makes war with God. We make ourselves the king and captain of our own fate and lives instead of God. We reject Him. It would be silly and utterly foolish of my son, as he was learning to walk, to get to the point where he just kind of, ah, waves his arms off and says, Dad, I don't need you, and not knowing how to walk, and just begins to try it at his own, every time he hits the ground. And yet, that's exactly what we've done to God. God, I don't need you, I don't want you, I don't want to have your influence in my life, I'm done with you. And God's righteous response in this is his justice. We deserve His just vengeance against our sin and our own lives, we deserve hell. And that's a hard tension. Job was one who thought he was innocent. And as we read the story of Job, we think, you know, he was a pretty clean guy. There wasn't much that fell down on him. And yet as he experienced the suffering that he did, he began to accuse God and say, God, why do you treat me unjustly? Why do you act this way towards me? Why do I get unfairly destroyed? And God's answer to him is, There's not been any injustice done here. I'm perfectly right and just to do whatever I want. In fact, God speaks to Job once and says, I'm God, you're not. Can you even ask these questions? And Job says, let me shut my mouth because I've spoken about God unknowingly. And God says, okay, let's go round two. And he just begins to furthermore unpack how he is God. And this is what he says in Job 40 verse 8 and 9. Will you even put me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be right? Have you an arm like God and can you thunder with a voice like His? God says, I am perfectly righteous in my justice. I can do what I want and it will be done right and well because I am God. I'm just. There is not a person in this universe that will receive anything unfair from the hand of God. Everything that we deserve, every way that God should work against us is just in Him doing that. Please don't put it in your mind and in your thoughts that if you receive some affliction in your life, if there's some suffering, if there's trial, that you didn't deserve it, that it was unjust for God to bring that to your heart and life. He's God. He's perfectly just. And here he's telling the people of Israel in Hosea, if I bring war against you, if I send you into slavery, if I scatter you, you've rebelled. You've worshiped false gods. You treated my kindness so terribly. It's what you deserve. It's right for me to do that. Thank goodness that Hosea 11 doesn't end in verse 7, because there in the rest of the passage, verses 9 through 11, we see the other reality of God, in that God is holy in His grace. There's this turn in this passage, and not that God is confused, and not that God is wavering on what He should do, but we sense the emotion of God. here in verses eight and nine. Here we sense how God really loves and cares for his people, and we see that God is holy in his grace. His grace is a holy grace. He says there in verses eight through 11, how can I give you up, O Ephraim? Do you sense the tension here? God's saying, I'm holy, you deserve wrath, you deserve judgment. The sword should come at your head and destroy you, and yet, How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I let you go? How can I hand you over, O Israel? He mentions these two places in the middle part of verse eight. How can I make you like Admah, and how can I treat you like Zeboiim? These places aren't really familiar to us, but they are outlying cities. They were outlying cities to Sodom and Gomorrah. God here is making these people very aware of what he did at Sodom and Gomorrah when he righteously destroyed those two cities for their sin and their rebellion against him, for their idolatry and greed. And God says, how can I treat you like that? How can I do that thing to you? My heart recoils within me. My compassion grows warm and tender. God in these three, four verses here speaks about His grace and He speaks about what it is that moves Him in grace. In verse eight there, He says that it's His compassion that He has adopted them, that He can't give them up. I can't give you up, you're mine, I've adopted you. Here's a father saying to his son, you're mine. I called you by name. You belong to me. Just as in Jesus, we have been adopted as sons and daughters of God. So you're saying, you're my people. I can't give you up. I'm moved with compassion. My heart, it recoils within me. It's as if God's thinking about his work here, and he's saying they deserve justice and wrath, and yet I can't do that. I love them so much. They're my people, I can't treat them. I can't treat them like foreigners. I can't treat them like Sodom and Gomorrah. I can't give them up. Not only that, in verse nine, he says that he can't give them up. He can't pour out his wrath because he's holy. He says, I will not execute my burning anger. I will not bring down my wrath, maybe is another way that you could say that. I will not destroy, again, Ephraim. Why? For I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst." Here God brings forth the attribute of His holiness. Holiness isn't just moral purity. It's not just complete perfection. Holiness, as we think of it, is God's complete, distinct separateness. It's His unique rarity and individuality. Holiness is God's separateness to Himself. There is no one like God. No one who even thinks or lives or exists like God. He is distinctly other, and where there are seven billion human beings on planet Earth right now, there is only one God, and that's what makes Him holy, that He is one and only. And so when God says in Isaiah 55, eight, my ways are not your ways, my thoughts not your thoughts, He's perfectly right and holy to say here, I can act in grace, I can stay in my hand, I can hold back my wrath, and I can do it justly and righteously because I'm holy. I don't answer to anyone else. I'm not like anyone else. I'm distinct. He says, I am God, not a man. If we get offended at, if we get wronged against, someone destroys something of ours, hurts someone we love, hurts us, if you're like me at least, our immediate inclination is justice, get them back, vengeance, let's have it out, you know, pound of flesh. And God here says, wait. Grace, I'm not going to bring my wrath. I'm not going to execute my anger. Because I'm God, I'm holy, I'm in your presence. What a tension here. God, holy in his grace. He's adopted his people, they're his, he can't give them up. He's holy and gracious. And so the result then falls in verses 10 and 11. What does he do? The imagery here is amazing. They shall go after the Lord. God speaks and promises a time of returning, a repentance, a time of reconciling and coming back to him. They shall go after the Lord. And what God does is amazing. He will roar like a lion. And when he roars, his children shall come trembling from the west. They shall come trembling like birds from Egypt and like doves from the land of Assyria. And I will return them to their homes, declares the Lord. God says, by my grace, I will redeem and restore my people. I'll bring them back. The imagery that's a little bit unique here is the fact that he speaks of himself like a lion. And he speaks of the way that he calls out, he roars. And the very opposite thing that we expect to happen does. If you're in the wilderness, if you're in the wild and you hear a lion roar, birds don't go to the lion. They don't get close. I mean, if birds hear a little dog bark, they fly out and flutter. Here God says, when I roar, my people, who he's compared in Hosea several times to little birds, little doves, flittering about, senseless, not knowing what's going on. He says, now when they hear my voice, they return. They come back from the west, from Egypt, from Assyria, and I'll return them to their homes. It's so counterintuitive to the way that we would think God would do things. God says, I speak, I roar, and my people return. It's a sign of God's faithfulness. God saying, I am God, I am holy, I am faithful and true, and if I promise this to happen, it will. But God also saying, I don't do things the way you do. When I roar, my people return. When I speak, they come back. What's amazing about God here is that we have these tensions. God saying, I am just, I am holy, I am pure, and you deserve my wrath. You deserve my vengeance and justice. Not because you've made a boo-boo, but because you have offended me, a holy God. And God says, yet, I'm gracious and I'm compassionate to my people. I love them, I can't reject them. I can't give them up. I'm holy, I will respond in grace. not in wrath, I will redeem and restore My people." Here are these two tensions that this text brings at us, and we go, how does God do that? How does He answer this? Hosea saw these tensions, but didn't see the full harmonization of these tensions. We do in Christ. And that's the third reality of this passage, that the cross, the very cross of Jesus, is where the wrath of God and the love and grace of God firmly met. The cross, as I've said earlier, is both God's justice and grace perfectly expressed and satisfied. God, to be just, has to deal with sin. He has to, absolutely has to, satisfy it. He has to vindicate his name, preserve his glory, uphold his holiness. And yet God, because he is the God who says, I am gracious and loving, slow to anger, abounding in mercy and steadfast love, he can pour out kindness and grace. That's exactly what he's done in the cross that we celebrate and think of tonight. Jesus is the one who takes the wrath of God for us. And Jesus is the one who gives us the grace of God. Paul puts it like this in Romans 3. Although the law and the prophets, Hosea, bear witness to it. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe Listen carefully here, he says, He's loved us, He's brought us up, and we've rebelled against Him. We've delved into idolatry, we've worshiped false gods, and we deserve the wrath of God. We deserve His justice. There's not a single human being that has any excuse about the justice of God coming against them. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Verse 24 though, and all are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, who God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith. What Paul is saying here is that in Jesus, God's righteousness had to be vindicated and His grace held forth and given were justified or made right with God by His grace as a gift through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. How can we be made righteous? How can we stand before God and be called sons and daughters of God, loved, forgiven? How can God pour out His compassion on us? He's done it in Jesus. Jesus, Paul says, is the one who is the sin bearer. Paul here uses the term propitiation. That word means that Jesus is the one who absorbs or takes in himself the wrath of God. He propitiates God for us. He stood as an atoning sacrifice for your sin and mine. So on the cross, when God looked at Jesus, He poured out His full wrath as Jesus took our sins on His body. The justice that we deserve, Christ took. The wrath that you and I should receive and should endure forever, Jesus took. He propitiated God so that God can hold out His grace and mercy to us. God's justice has been fulfilled and satisfied. He poured it out on His Son. And God's grace and His holiness has been upheld in Jesus. He gives it to us. Paul concludes this passage this way. He says, this was done 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 called just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. So Paul holds up two realities. First of all, that God was just in passing over former sins. In the Old Testament, in Hosea's day, he looked and he saw the grace of God and he said, I don't get it. How can God just forgive sin? He's holy, he's just, he does it. And that was a future look or a look forward in Hosea's eye and mind of the day when God would pour out His wrath on His son, Jesus. Sin wasn't just passed over, it wasn't just forgotten or dismissed. It was dealt with definitively in Jesus. And grace wasn't just handed out as pity. I feel bad for them. Grace was handed out as full, acceptance, full pardon, full embrace to say, I love you, you are mine, my child. Let me lead you and walk with you once again. It's to show that God is just, he's righteous, and he's the one who by his grace extends righteousness to the one who has faith in Jesus. These tensions are good for our heart because they allow us to see a God who is perfectly holy, who will deal with sin, who has dealt with sin, and a God who is absolutely gracious, who shows us his love and compassion and kindness over and over and over again in Jesus. G. Campbell Morgan said this. Through Jesus, the claims of justice which are against my soul are all met. Through Jesus, the glory of holiness is maintained. For his redemption of the human soul is not a pity that agrees to ignore sin, but it's a power that cancels it and sets it free from its dominion. Through Jesus, the loved one is regained, restored, renewed, and all the lights that flash and gleam upon the prophetic page, astonishing my soul, come into focused unity in Jesus. God says of you and of me, How can I give you up? How can I give you up? I will not, I will not, I will not. You see, what Hosea is calling us to see is a God whose love will not let us go, and yet a God who is perfectly right and holy in his justice. Think with me tonight as we get ready to partake of these elements together. The bread symbolizes the crushed body of Jesus. It should be our crushed body. It should be our flesh torn to pieces. And the bread reminds us that God's justice was given to His Son so that we could have His grace. And the cup tonight, which we'll partake of, reminds us visually the blood of Christ that was poured out for our sin. We put Jesus on the cross and yet he went to the cross for us. The cup as we drink it tonight will tell us and speak to us of his blood that was shed, which should be our blood shed for our own sin. And yet we get grace. We get mercy to be able to come tonight and remember Jesus and what he has done for us and to sing of it and rejoice in it to know that we won't experience the wrath of God. will understand and believe and love His grace and will thank Him for the way His Son took His Father's wrath for us. Let me ask the servers to come forward and the band to come up and I'll pray. And we're just gonna pass these elements tonight. These elements are for you if you are a believer, if you've placed your faith and hope in Christ. They're for you to partake of tonight. If you have not, we'd ask that you just quietly pass the elements along. I want to call you tonight, if you haven't placed your faith in Christ, to do that, to see a God who loves you, who's given His Son for you, so that you can be reconciled to Him, so that you can know Him and be forgiven and enjoy His grace and His goodness forever. If you haven't done that, do that tonight. Just turn to Him and pray and ask Him to be your Lord, confess your sin and embrace Him by faith. May the rest of us tonight as we believe, may as we partake of these things, praise God for the way he has loved us and shown us his grace, and shown us even his justice which he gave in his son. Let me pray and then we'll partake of these elements together. Father, we humble ourselves tonight again and we thank you. All we deserve All we should hope to have is your justice and wrath, your sword coming at us to destroy us because of our rebellion and sin. And in your Son, the Lord Jesus, we get grace. We're given mercy. You say you cannot give us up. You hold back your anger. You're God and not a man. You're the Holy One in our midst. You redeem us and reconcile us in Jesus. And Father, we thank You tonight as we partake of these elements. May it be an act of worship in our hearts to remember what Christ has endured for us, to rejoice that we are made right with You by grace. We thank You for Your Word for this time. In Jesus' name, amen. This message has been brought to you by the Santa Rosa Bible Church. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.srbible.org or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road. Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.