Amen, please be seated. Well, today I'm starting a new afternoon sermon series. I thought about doing a series, and I think I told a lot of you on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, again, going through some of that. I like to do that regularly. But I decided to do this series that I've wanted to do for a long time. And in this series, we'll look at the things that separate us from God and how Christ closes the gap between us and God. The things that separate us from Him. There's so many things that create a distance between us and our God, but He deals with every one of them. And we need to come to Him and we need to look to Him and seek Him for that. In this series, I hope that you'll come to see that as believers, This is really what our life is all about. God in his wisdom has orchestrated the things that come into our life, the trials that we have. And it's about Jesus closing the gap between us and him as our Savior and Lord, as our bridegroom, between us and God the Father as he has as his task to reconcile us to the Father, not just to get us out of trouble so that we're not punished, but to bring us to love our Father, bring us to love Him. Is that not the goal? Is that not the great commandment, that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that we love our neighbor as ourself? What separates us? What keeps us from that? He is bringing us into a fuller, richer, more perfect relationship with Him, in which we, as our catechism teaches, teach, glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We're growing up in our love for Him and the Father through communion with Him. He is drawing us and drawing us more and more to Himself. So today is an introduction to this series. The main point is that our Lord Jesus Christ closes the gap between us and Him. I'm going to wait to have our scripture reading until much later in the sermon today when we get to the third point. I'm gonna make a couple of assertions before that that are true with regards to what the overall teaching of Scripture is. Okay, so we'll look at these two things taught in Scripture overall. The first assertion is that we are separated from God by sin and its curse. Now this is something that we don't need the Bible for, actually, to know. It's quite obvious The Bible tells us that it is obvious, so that means that it is obvious. It is obvious to us. It's clearly shown to every single human being that we're separated from the God who created us. Our relationship with our Creator is broken. You can't be alive and not know that. We do not love Him or trust Him. We are not comfortable with Him. We do not serve Him or worship Him. as the God that He is. We know our own sinfulness, that we're not what we ought to be before Him, or what we ought to be with each other. We can deny it, we can try to push it away, we can try to suppress it, but it's still true. And we can see clearly His displeasure with us in the hard things that are in the world. There's death, there's suffering, There's all kinds of sickness, there's defects, there's wars. We can see, everybody can see this. God tells us in his holy word that our condition of sin and separation from him is clearly seen. but suppressed by us. We deny it. In other words, we look for ways to deny it. We don't want to face the reality of what is and what we know. He charges us with this in Romans 1, 18 through 25. I said I'm going to have our main scripture text readings later, but this is a pretty long reading I'm doing here. Romans 1, 18 to 25. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. They push the truth down, they push it away, suppress it, throw dirt on top of it, try to move it out, try to distract themselves from it. Because what may be known of God is manifest, not just to them, but in them. For God has shown it to them. So things like suffering and death, and death most of all, it's clear that we're estranged from Him. You don't have to be a great scientist to figure that out. It continues. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes It can't be seen with our eyes. His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead or divine nature, so that they are without excuse. The people suppressing the truth are without excuse for denying the truth and saying it's not true. They're without excuse because although they knew God, again, everybody can't be alive and not know, they did not glorify Him as God. nor were thankful, but became vain or empty, futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened." So you suppress the truth and you become stupid, you become foolish. You can be a very intelligent person in one way, but you're missing what is just right in front of your face, what is very clear to everyone. It says, To be wise, that's their self-profession. They became fools and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. People clearly made up lots of things about God. In their suppression of the true God, they make up false gods. They make up idols. So they're like animals or something. There's so many different religions. So this is obvious, isn't it? People say, why are there so many different religions? The answer's obvious. Because people suppress the truth about the true God that's made known to all of us. God says it is because we don't want to think about him or accept him as he is because it makes us too uncomfortable. So he has turned us over to go our own way. Says, therefore, God also gave them up, gave them over to uncleanness and the lusts of their hearts, the desires, the passions of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves. Okay, so they start following darker and darker passions. They start pursuing corruption, looking for things that are not right with God. who exchanged the truth of God for the lie and worshipped and served the creature, things that he made, rather than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen. It goes on to say more, but we'll stop with that. In Isaiah 59 too, the Lord goes straight to the point of what we're talking about and he says, but your iniquities, have separated you from your God, and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear." So we're separated from God, it tells us, so just in plain languages can be, by our sin. Iniquities include sin and the consequences of sin together. Like iniquity is a little bit of a broader word than sin. Like your iniquities can be the things like, you know, sickness and death and things like that that separate you together with the sins that we commit, the disobedience, those things. So separation from our maker. This is a terrible state of affairs. Ephesians 212 brings that kind of home with some vivid language when it says that they were without hope. And without God in the world. Think about those those ominous words. To be without hope. I mean, that's about as bad as it gets. Zero future. And without God, the one who is over all is not with you. Separated from God. We have no purpose apart from Him. We have no chance of happiness apart from Him. One very sad evidence of our separation from Him is that this is the state of affairs and we tend to be indifferent about it. It shows how far we have drifted away from God. We don't care that this is our state of affair until the blessed Holy Spirit comes and wakes us up. That's the next thing I want, the second assertion. We're awakened and reconciled to God by His saving work alone. That's what changes things. That's the second assertion that is generally taught in scripture. Not everyone is awakened. Some continue in their own way, resisting the call. He begins the process by waking us up to the reality that we are separated from him. As we saw last week, or last time that I preached, it was a couple weeks ago, at the end of Revelation, the spirit and the bride say, come. Why do they say that? Why do they say that out in the world? The spirit and the bride say, come to wake us, wake people up. The Lord Jesus uses his church, the bride, believers, to call sinners to salvation. He doesn't even call them directly himself, but he sends us to do it. When he came to Paul, he said, go talk to a man that I've prepared to talk to you in Ananias. Go and talk to him. He didn't actually tell him the gospel, per se. He just said, why are you fighting against me? I'm the Lord. And he sent him to go. And that's how it goes. He uses the church. He uses our example as those who have been reconciled to God and are living in harmony with God. growing and godliness and love for God. People see that. People see it and it pulls on them. They might not like it. Sometimes they hate the way it pulls on them, but it pulls on them. And some people are sweetly drawn. It's attractive to them. He also uses our testimony, what we say. We tell other people about the Lord and what he has done for us, like the guy that Jesus, the demoniac that he cast out the demons and he said, go tell everyone one of the great things that God has done for you. He calls us also to appeal directly to people about their own condition, their own state. Be reconciled to God. The Spirit and the Bride say to people who are separated from God, come, come to God, there's a way. We tell them, the Spirit and the Bride, testify to these things. So to tell them that God is reconciling the world to himself through Jesus Christ, our Savior, who was crucified for sinners, and that he will save all who come to him. He uses us personally to do this with our friends and neighbors, and he especially uses the preaching of the word. That's something that he's appointed, and so we bring people to hear the word of God preached. And somehow God uses that, and we see people come to life through that, isn't that? They were separated from God and they come to God through the ministry of the word that points them to Christ and his salvation. We're to call people then to come and hear the word. We're to call them to come to Christ. Now all this calling of them is done through the Holy Spirit, because it's the Spirit and the bride that say come. He is the one, the Spirit is the one who strengthens us to plead with other people, because we don't have it within us to do it. He gives us a burden to share the message of hope with them, both because of our love for them and because of our love for God. That we want God to be glorified and we want people to know what he's done, we want them to come to him, we want them to serve him, honor him. The Spirit also enables us to deliver the message in a powerful and effective way. And not only that, but he also works in various degrees in the people that we speak to. So he works on both sides, the one that's speaking and the one who's hearing. And that's how he brings people into the kingdom of Christ. They may resist the message and refuse, but with those that he has chosen, The message prevails. It gets through. We had a fellow from Tennessee when I was in seminary and he said, God always gets his man. And he always does. It's entirely their own fault when they do reject his call. The more powerfully the message is brought to them, the more guilty they are for rejecting. And some people have the message brought to them very, very powerfully, and even have the spirit work, and they still don't come, because ultimately they were not appointed to salvation, and their unresistance is so strong that they don't ever give in. But if they are appointed by the Father to salvation, the spirit will prevail, and they cannot resist what we call irresistible grace. He brings sinners powerfully and willingly in a wonderful variety of ways. Sometimes it's through a whole lot of struggles. They have a big pile of troubles that come and they just get to the end of their rope and the message comes and God works and they realize that they need him and they cry out to him. And other times, it's almost the opposite. It's almost the opposite for me. I think it's more rare when it's the opposite. But things are going really well. And then you go, well, what good is all this? This isn't going anywhere good. This is just, there's nothing, this is just vanity without God. And people come that way. And sometimes it's neither one. It's not things are particularly bad or things are particularly good. He just works in them and he brings them to salvation. They learn of Christ. He does it all different ways. But in any case, their heart and their eyes are open and they come to Jesus and they receive him for salvation. As our catechism says, they receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel. And what is that salvation when they come? Well, after He awakens them, He brings them into a covenant in which He promises to pardon them and to restore them to himself." Those two things, to pardon them and to restore them to himself. He promises to us complete forgiveness from sin and complete acceptance through Jesus Christ, through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Jesus is presented to us as the one who has taken the punishment that belongs to us sinners on the cross. as the priest who offered himself as a sacrifice that God has surely graciously accepted. He already accepted the sacrifice of Christ for sinners. Jesus is also presented as the one who fulfilled all the obedience that God requires, and we are, upon coming, swept up into that obedience, you might say. Okay, here's the one, we don't obey the way, but Jesus obeyed. He wasn't separated from God. We come to him, and then we're brought into that connection that he has with God, into the covenant connection that he has. We're brought into that in our union and faith with him, so that we're now accepted to God on the basis of his perfect obedience. as well as his sacrifice that atones for our sins. Those two things go together. We have then as his bride complete acceptance and an everlasting place in his house that is his father's house. The scripture calls our eternal inheritance that can never be taken away from us. But that's not all. Okay, it's not just that we're forgiven and justified, but what else did I say? That we're also restored. He restores us to himself. And that's very important. He also promises, and this is the key to really what we'll be talking about in this series. He also promises that for the rest of our lives, he will be involved in transforming us. preparing us as his bride to live in his house. Like when Esther and all the other women were gathered to King Ahasuerus and they were preparing, they were given beauty preparations as it were to come to the king and live in his house. We're given our beauty preparations by Christ. He's washing us and renewing us that we might be without spot and blemish before him. What he's doing, he's taking away, removing all the things that separate us from him. That's what we're talking about in this series. What separates us from him? What does he do about it? He gets rid of it. How does he do that? He will sweetly and powerfully draw us to Himself so that we more and more see His beauty, more and more understand His holiness and grace. All the things that keep us from that, that keep us away from Him, He breaks through all those barriers. We'll have more and more delight in His love, more and more delight in His wisdom, more and more admiration of His power. All of these things, we will be brought to the living God. For the rest of our lives, He will be doing that. I think a lot of times we're not really very aware or focused on the fact that He's doing that. We so often just look at the law in terms of our bad habits and things like that. That's all a part of it. But if there are bad habits, sinful habits, sinful things that you keep falling back into, what's the problem? You don't see the glory of God. The idol's big because you don't see how much better God is than the idol. More about that later. So for the rest of our lives, he will enable us to live according to his commandments, not with a mechanical conformity, but with a love, a fervent love for him and for his ways. In Romans 8, 29, he tells us, we looked at this in the youth meeting, he tells us that he has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his son. As the bride of Christ, He works in us for the rest of our lives to make us more and more like Jesus Christ. To love and worship the Father like He does, to love Him and love each other like He does. To even love each other as He has loved us. Okay, so the dynamic of our new life in His salvation is what we see in the Song of Solomon. It's a very dynamic, book that shows the relationship of God with us, the relationship of Christ with us in all of its ups and downs, really, that are all working in harmony together to bring about God's purpose of closing the gap between us and Him. The dynamic is this. We want Him. We want Him to show us how much He loves us. We want that we might see it more. We want to see it more. And we want to be pleasing and fruitful for him, for our love to be like a sweet aroma that fills the room for Christ, that he can delight in by his great transforming work. But the reality is that we still have a long way to go. After we have come to Him for salvation, we seek Him and we grow, but there is still always a long way to go, as long as we're in this present world. Growth is always needed. So this is what He's doing. To put it another way, there are always things that separate us from Him. Sin and its curse. These are the mountains of Beather. The mountains that stand between us and our Lord that He conquers and subdues. He closes the gap. These mountains are between us. He moves them out of the way and comes together with us. Mountains of Bethar, mountains of separation. So in this series, we're gonna look at the mountains of Bethar, the sins and things that separate us from Jesus and how he overcomes us, how he overcomes them. So the Song of Solomon, this is our third point now, gives us a beautiful picture of how Jesus, our bridegroom, overcomes the things that separate us from him. Chapter two, we have us as his bride, So those who know him and how he closes this gap, we know that he's the one that closes the gap between us and him. We have us crying out to him to come running to us, to close the gap between us and him, like a gazelle or a stag. Here is our first scripture reading from the Song of Solomon. Song two, verse 16 and 17. The bride, we the bride say, my beloved is mine and I am his. He feeds his flock among the lilies until the day breaks and the shadows flee away. Turn, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young stag upon the mountains of Beather. You see in verse 16 that she already has come to him for salvation. So this is not people that aren't saved yet, people that are. She says, my beloved, that's Jesus, is mine and I am his. This is a marvelous thing. We are in the marriage covenant with him, a marriage covenant with him. He has saved us by paying the debt. Our debt is his bride so that we could come into his house debt free without the debt of our sin. It is all because of him that we're acceptable to God. and that we have eternal life. He brings us into eternal life. He does. If we weren't united to Him, if we weren't in His house, we'd be in a house that was cut off from God. Everything else cut off from God, His house, It's not cut off. So he's our bridegroom. He says, come into my house. Marry me. We come and now we have the blessing. So he's transforming us that we might live in that house when he's when it says he fleets, feeds his flock among the lilies. The word flock is added by the translators. You see it's in italics. In the Bible, italics doesn't mean emphasis. It means that it's something that was supplied. I don't really think it needs to be there. The idea here is that he comes to enjoy, to feed. In other words, not to feed a flock so much, though he does do that, but he comes to feed upon. Like to feed he comes to have delight in his people. He's coming with eagerness to see his people's progress. He's closing the gap and feeding us with life. But then he also feeds upon us with delight. The idea here, then, is is that he delights in the growth of his people and their love and service, because that's what's presented so much in this whole book. Now whether that is the case or not, it really doesn't make a huge difference. Because what does she want? What do we the bride want? We want him to come near to us, as he has done in the past. Okay, so she's experienced this already in the song of him coming, like a stag or a gazelle, and she wants him to come and come and come again and again and again. Earlier in this chapter, it portrays him running to her like a gazelle or a young stag with vigor to enjoy sweet communion with her, to close the gap so that they can have communion. What separates them? To express his love to her and receive her love to him. It's what we do when we worship. We hear about our great God, We admire Him, we love Him, we express our love to Him, and He makes promises to us and expresses His love and His delight in us. We meet Him, and we delight in Him and in what He has done for us, and He meets us, and He receives our worship and our service, and He continues His gracious, transforming work in us. That's what happens. But note well here in verse 17, We're making him to come like a gazelle or a young stag across or through the mountains of Beather. Beather carries a powerful meaning in the scripture. Beather, for those who are first given this song, they would have understood this because they were Hebrew people, and they would have understood about Beather. Okay, the word is associated with covenant making. It's used in, just a few times in the scripture. It's used in Genesis 15. It's also used in Jeremiah 34. When people made covenants in those days, it was customary, they were said to cut the covenant because they would take an animal and divide the animal in two bethers, two pieces, And then they would, and the cutting is from the root word bether too. The pieces that are cut, or the cut pieces are from the root word bether. And then, or like the same root word that bether is from. And then the two parties that were making the covenant would pass through those two parts. And they would say, Let me be divided like these two, like this animal's been divided, if I don't do what I'm promising here. I really mean this. And they were actually taking an oath of malediction, it was called, where they were asking God to bring this malady upon them, this division, to tear me in pieces, if I don't do what I say here in this covenant. This is why marriage is such a serious thing. You're saying, God, tear me apart if I don't do what I said I would do. You're asking God to curse you if you don't do what you promised, to make sure to other people that you really do mean it. You didn't just grab this woman and say, oh, I'm gonna hang out with you, but you're actually making a promise, I'm gonna do this for the rest of my life, a solemn promise of a covenant before God, and she's making a vow back to you. So it's an oath, in Jeremiah 34, 18, The Lord complains against those who have transgressed my covenant, listen to the language, who have not performed the words of the covenant which they made before me when they cut the calf in two and passed between the parts of it. Okay, the root word translated bethra is used for cutting and for the parts. In Genesis 15, God instructs Abraham to divide an animal. The root word for cut there is the same as the root word for beether. Actually, the one in Jeremiah is a different word that's translated cut, but the parts are from the root word for beether. But here, the verb cut is also from the root word that's the same as beether. So God Himself then, in Genesis 15, He does an unusual thing. God passes between the parts. You remember the torch that Abraham passed through the parts? That was God passing through, saying, swearing by Himself, let me be torn apart if I don't do what I'm promising to give life to the world through Abraham's seed. If I don't do this, I'm going to do this. I'm promising. Okay, so he passes between the people. And again, the separated pieces are bither. So both the verb for separating, cutting, as well as the word used to refer to the separated pieces is the word bither. So for this reason, many authorities see the mountains of Bethar, if you look in a fuller copy of the New King James when it has notes with it, you'll see that it actually mentions separation in the margin. So many authorities see the mountains of Bethar as a reference to the mountains or things that stand between the beloved and his bride. So as our faithful savior, he is the one who closes the gap between us and him, that's what I keep saying. He has done that in saving us in the first place. But remember, she's already come to him. She's already his bride. And so now he continues to do it as he sanctifies us so that we're drawn together with him in love, receiving his love and giving him our love. You can see that we're eager for him to do this here. Because we keep asking Him to do it as the bride in the Song of Solomon. That is, we're praying for Him to break down every barrier between us and Him, and there are many. That's a great thing for you to pray. God, break down the barriers between me and you. Deal with it, God. Deal with it. There's so much that is in the way. He comes with skill and agility. Like a gazelle. I love the picture, you know, there of a gazelle. He's going around, like, making his way through. You know, I like to run on a rugged trail and you have to jump on the rocks and skip over places and go over roots and all these, every step you have to take. And the gazelle is so beautiful, like, coming with such agility. Here he comes. Where is he going? Where is he coming? He's coming to me. Because I'm separated from him. And then you see the stag. He's eager, right? The stag coming to the doe. You know, here he comes, coming through those mountains. Where is he going? He's coming to his bride. And you see, she's eager for him to do this. She likes, come after me, come after me, pursue me. We're praying for him to break down every barrier between us and him. He comes with skill and agility, and with zeal and passion. The stag is zeal and passion, and the gazelle is skill and agility. It's a powerful image. It's almost too powerful to handle, because we're squeamish about it. Wait, no, no, no, no. That's not about him coming after us. That can't be that. The Bible says very plainly that marriage is a picture of our relationship with Christ and the church. And whether or not you accept that Song of Solomon is primarily about that, or if you think that it's primarily about marriage, it really doesn't matter. Because we're told plainly in the Bible that the one informs us about the other. So you need to get used to this. Don't be squeamish. He's pursuing his bride. He's coming to her. Now let's go to our second reading. It's at the end of the book. She is still asking him to come to her in the same way, but now she refers to the mountains as the mountains of spices. What happened? Our reading is from the last verse of the Song of Songs. Let me read it first. Song of Songs 814. After the entire song, has provided a rich tapestry of the ways that the love between the bride and her bridegroom is enriched and expressed, and the ways that he pursues her, the ways that she seeks him, looks for him to pursue her. It concludes with her continuing to yearn for him to pursue her and to manifest his love for her. It started, let him kiss me with the kisses of his lips, and it ends with her saying, come to me. Come to me with your love. Here's the verse, Psalm 814. Make haste, my beloved, and be like a gazelle or a young sag on the mountains of spices. What's different at the end than the beginning? There's been a whole lot of comings that have occurred. The relationship has been enriched and strengthened through all of those comings. There have been growth. There has been growth in that relationship through the many vicissitudes. The imagery here, then, is outstanding. She loves in this change from bether to spices. She loves him more than ever after being in relationship with him as her bridegroom. in going through so many experiences where His love is expressed to her and where she's growing in that love. And now, after all this, instead of referring to the mountains as mountains of separation, she refers to them as mountains of spices. The song speaks a lot of spices and aromas and things like that. It speaks of them as the outflowing of our love and our fruit that he receives and delights in. Love is like an aroma, right? And you know what it's like if you have a relationship with someone that you love, and there's an aroma there of a love between you. It's a very sweet thing. It's a sweet spice. It's something that's very pleasing. So now these mountains of separation are called mountains of spices. The song speaks of love then as a spice flowing from one lover to another, an aroma for the beloved to enjoy. Nothing delights lovers so much as the manifestation of the one that they love. If you become interested in someone and you start to see that they love you, that delights you. It pleases you. And here she is asking for him to come across those mountains like a gazelle or like a young stag to love her. Only now, mountains of separation are mountains of spices. Why are they mountains of spices? There are mountains of spices because now there are mountains of separation that have become a sweet aroma because they have been overcome. Because they have been conquered. They are mountains of what used to separate them that have been transformed into sweet memories of things that have brought them together. Do you see what I was getting at? This is what God does in healthy relationships. Something divides you. When it is conquered, that thing becomes something that unites you. This is what he does in our relationship with him. I'm going to try to flesh this out a little bit. Jesus once asked who would love him more, the one who had been forgiven a little or the one who had been forgiven much. The one who had a great mountain between them and him, or the one who didn't have much of anything between them and him. At least that's what they thought. He's talking to a guy that didn't really love him, right? Of course it is the one who has been forgiven much that loves much. The idolatry. Okay, we have idols, competing lovers. We have things that we want that are not pleasing to God, and things that we want instead of God that we crave, and that we love, and that we desire. Mountains of separation between us and Him. And when those are conquered and forsaken, they become spices that actually enhance our relationship. That idol is still there. But now it's something that we look at as like, how was I ever interested in that? As we grow down the road. Now Solomon talks about patience. It's not like you go like that and all of a sudden all the idols are turned into mountains of separation or turned into mountains of spices. It's a growing relationship that occurs over time. with patience, and it says you can't rush it, you can't fake it. You can't pretend like you hate all the idols when you really don't. You have to grow in your love for Him and your communion with Him so that you become like Joseph, who when a woman comes and you're a young man and you're separated from your people and you don't have any prospects and all these things, and she comes and tempts you, you say, how can I do this great sin against God? You don't compare with what God is to me, with all of your beauty, all your enticement, all the love that you're showing to me. I've got someone that shows love better. And he knew him that way. If you don't know him that way yet, you're a believer, you don't know him that well yet, it's not that, then that's what needs to grow. It takes time. So you're still struggling with the idol. And you say, how do I keep? How do I grow? You gotta grow. Gotta go to Christ. Deal with what separates me from you. And over time, as that relationship grows, the idol becomes more and more something that you don't, it's not so important. And he becomes something that you more and more desire. So that the idols that used to compete with him that were mountains of separation are now mountains of spices that you look at and you say, he conquered this. He came through that mountain and conquered it for me like a gazelle and like a stag. Those idols, now you love him and see so much more of him. You're glad to give them up for him as an expression of your love. as a sacrifice of your love. Jesus was offered all the kingdoms of the world when he was here by Satan and all their glory, all the good part of them. And he said, I don't want that. Because he had something that was far better. Let's draw this to a conclusion. In this series, we'll be looking at the things that separate us from God. I've said that many times. We will be looking at how Jesus overcomes these things in the lives of His people, at how He takes what separates us and turns it into what enriches our union with Him. We will look at mountains that separate us from Him, mountains like unconfessed sin, that through His grace become the sweet spice of confessed, forgiven sin. Isn't that true? Probably gonna do that one next week. We have unconfessed sin, separates you from God, doesn't it? Until you confess your sin, it separates you from God. You say, oh, I'm not really that bad. And you're going on, and you're separated. But what happens when you confess it? It's a mountain of spice. That thing that was standing between you and God, it's still there as a monument. But now it's been overcome by His grace. And it becomes something that, you know, I remember when I was rebelled against, David, you know, remembers when he rebelled against God? And I didn't confess my sin for so long and I was groaning and everything. And now I know God better because that mountain has been overcome and it's a mountain of spice. You see, see what we're getting at. So my desire, my prayer is that this series will help you to see what Jesus is doing. in us as our Lord and Savior, that He is ably and eagerly coming to us to destroy whatever separates us from Him. There are lots of mountains we can look at and plan to look at. Pride, greed, fear, negligence. How about something like a broken heart? Bad things happen in your life, you got a broken heart. Suffering, That can separate us from God, but it can also bring us to God, can't it? After He conquers it. Abuse. You've been abused. Oh, I can't come to God. I can't trust God because I've been abused so much. No, but he can overcome that. And that can become something that's actually a vehicle of delight and a spice because it enhances your relationship with him. Despair. We could go on and on with things. I'm going to have to be careful that this series doesn't become too long. But again, my desire and prayer is that this series will help you to see what Jesus is doing as Lord and Savior in your life, in all of our lives who know Him. My prayer is that it will stir you up to pray, like the bride does, to look to Him to do the gracious work, that you'll make it a normal matter of prayer for you to look to God, to look to Christ to break down what separates you from Him, to close the gap between you and Him. My prayer is that you will come to see that the purpose of your life as a Christian, as long as you are in this world, could be described as growing in your relationship with Jesus so that whatever barriers there are between you and him are removed. The reason for your trials and the reason for your blessings and your whole life, for your whole life, is that you would be ever growing in your relationship with him and in conformity to him. I quote some scriptures once again, Romans 8, 29. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Okay, so he's refining us, shaping us, making us like him, getting rid of all those things that divide us from God, the sins in our life, conquering these. Okay, Jesus said, another verse, John 17, three, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the Father in Jesus Christ, that they may know the Father in Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. To know the Father, know Jesus. That word, know, is not just, oh yeah, I know about him. That's to really know. Like a husband and wife know each other like nobody else. And then God said, Deuteronomy 6, 4 and 5, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. what stands between you and God and that love. That's what Jesus deals with as your Redeemer. Please stand and let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, how we thank you that you have brought salvation into the world for people like our whole world, our whole human race. that are obviously separated from you by sin. There's no question about it that we're separated from you. And there's so much evidence of that everywhere. But we thank you that you have done something about it to, you're the one that actually devised that separation. You brought that about in your plan that we should be created, that we should be tempted, that we should fall. It was our own doing. We're responsible. But it was your plan. And now there are these mountains. And then you come in your grace and power to overcome those mountains, and we get to know you in a richer, fuller way through the process that you have appointed for us. And we pray that as long as we're in this world, that we would be dealing with those mountains of separation and coming nearer and nearer to you and loving you more and more and growing in your grace. Father, we thank you that your work is very powerful in our lives. We thank you that it does not fail, that the work of Christ does not fail, that he is like that eager stag, that gazelle that is so agile and able. And we pray, Father, that we would see the powerful work in our lives, and that we would yearn for it, like the bride does, all the way through, right from the beginning, let him kiss me with the kisses of his lips. And then, come to me, come to me, come to me, she says over and over, right up to the end, that very last verse is her passionate plea that he would make haste. to come to her after he has already come so many times and each time it's better than the time before. And we pray, Father, that such would be our relationship with you. We know that it's not necessarily wouldn't leave that way, the better each time, but it's better over time. It's better overtime is that love mellows and matures and becomes richer and richer and fuller. We pray Father that we would know these things and that we would experience these things. We pray this in Jesus name, Amen. Receive now the blessing of our God. Peace to the brethren and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen.