I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to Zechariah chapter 3. We're going to be taking a look at Zechariah chapter 3. Remember, we're going through the book of Zechariah. If you're looking for Zechariah, of course, quickest way to find it is find Matthew, the first book in the New Testament, and just go two books back, Malachi and then Zechariah, just before Malachi. And today we're going to be reading Zechariah 3 in its completeness. Now, before we read about this vision that was given to Zechariah, before we pray asking the Lord to bless our time together, I want to give you some brief context of this vision if you haven't been going through the book with us up till now. As you know, when Zechariah was preaching, the people of Israel had returned from 70 years of exile, 70 years of captivity in Babylon. The Lord had promised through the prophet Isaiah that they would go into captivity, but they would be delivered, that a king would be raised up by the name of Cyrus, a Persian king, who would free them. And indeed, that had happened. Jeremiah confirmed that there would be 70 years, and Ezekiel said the same thing. And sure enough, they were returned after that period. Now, during those 70 years, the temple had lain in ruins, and the priesthood and the worship of God at the temple had been suspended. Now, Zechariah the prophet is given a ministry of encouragement by the Lord, a ministry to encourage the people who were understandably weak and dispirited after that long period of the Lord's anger against them. He was there to tell them that the period of anger had passed and that they should return to him. And the Lord was eager to welcome them back as Jesus would tell the people that he is always willing to accept the returning prodigal who goes back to the house of the Father. So Zechariah came to tell them that the Lord was zealous for them and that he was zealous for the rebuilding of the temple and the rebuilding of Jerusalem itself. The Lord sends Zechariah therefore to strengthen the weak hands and to make firm the feeble knees and to restore to them the joy of their salvation, to give them confidence again. And so we're going to read now a section in which the Lord does exactly that. He seeks to encourage and embolden his people. But before we go and we read the word of the Lord, let's go to the Lord who gave this word and let's ask for his blessing. God our Father, we have to admit that whenever we come into your presence, we are entering into spiritual warfare and sometimes we are completely unprepared. No soldier in his right mind would go into battle without his armor and without, oh Lord, his weapon with him. But so often, we end up entirely unprepared for the fray. We have not put on the full armor and we have no idea how to use the weapon, the sword of the spirit that we have been given. O Lord, as a result, we often fall prey to the devil and his wiles. His fiery darts take us down, his distractions, O Lord, do beguile us. We are, O Lord, unmanned by his assaults upon us. We end up, when the word is being preached, not thinking about it, not meditating upon it, not concentrating. We are distracted by things that would never distract us otherwise. But we become susceptible in those moments and we know, oh Lord, that the devil doesn't want your word to do any good in our lives. He wants the seed to fall upon hard soil of the path beside the field and there to be snatched up by the birds and taken away. But we pray that would not happen. We pray, Lord, that you would open our ears and open our hearts, that as the word goes forth, that it would come into us, Lord, go in through the ear gate, go down to the heart, and produce, Lord, a fertile harvest. We want, O Lord, to remember these things, to keep them in our hearts, and then to share them with others. Help us, O Lord, then, to hear and obey your word, and make it, O Lord, our delight. We pray all of these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen and amen. Zechariah chapter 3. I'm going to be reading the entire chapter. I would encourage you to read along with me. Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to oppose him. And the Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan. The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you. Is this not a brand plucked from the fire? Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and he was standing before the angel. Then he answered and spoke to those who stood before him saying, take away the filthy garments from him. And to him he said, see, I have removed your iniquity from you and I will clothe you with rich robes. And I said, let them put a clean turban on his head. So they put a clean turban on his head and they put the clothes on him and the angel of the Lord stood by. Then the angel of the Lord admonished Joshua saying, thus says the Lord of hosts, if you will walk in my ways and if you will keep my command, then you shall also judge my house and likewise have charge of my courts. I will give you places to walk among those who stand here. Hear, O Joshua, the high priest, you and your companions who sit before you, for they are a wondrous sign. For behold, I am bringing forth my servant, the branch. For behold, the stone that I have laid before Joshua. Upon the stone are seven eyes. Behold, I will engrave its inscription, says the Lord of Hosts, and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. In that day, says the Lord of Hosts, everyone will invite his neighbor under his vine and under his fig tree. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. I have to admit this is probably my second favorite chapter in the entire Old Testament after Isaiah 53, and it's no coincidence that it's related to Isaiah 53 in that it bears good news of great glad tidings of the coming of the Messiah, of how he would take away the iniquity of his people. It is such good news. I could survive simply upon this chapter. I'm glad I don't have to. I'm glad I have a more balanced meal in all of the Bible. But if I only had this chapter, I could find the gospel and all the precious promises that God gives right here. The Lord, of course, has been making wonderful promises to his people through Zechariah, the most important of which was in the previous chapter. He had actually said, I will dwell in your midst. In Zechariah 2.10, we read, Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I am coming. And I will dwell in your midst, says the Lord. And this is a promise that's repeated repeatedly throughout the book of Zechariah. I will dwell in your midst. The Lord God himself would be amongst them. He said they don't need the wall right now because the Lord would be a wall of fire around them as he had kept the Egyptian army from overrunning them. on the shores of the Red Sea so he would keep their enemies away from them while the Lord was with them. What did they have to fear? It was a point that many years later Jesus would make to his disciples, wouldn't he, on the Sea of Galilee when they were afraid they were all going to drown in the midst of a storm and he rebuked them for having such little faith. He was there with them. How could they possibly perish? And so the Lord makes that same promise. But the people might ask at this point how Could that be? How can the Lord dwell in our midst? The God whom we serve is thrice holy, holy, holy, holy, perfectly holy. But we are a sinful people and we're descendants of a sinful people. And when we look around Jerusalem, we see the evidence of our sins in the destruction of the city, in the burned rubble still amongst us, in the destroyed temple. He is surely light, but are we not darkness? And how can darkness and light be reconciled and dwell together? These are a people who, and this is a good thing, they felt their guilt acutely. They knew themselves to be sinners and they knew their God to be holy. Now it is sometimes the case that we might subjectively, that is in of ourselves alone, we might feel guilty when we are objectively and legally not guilty. I'll give you an instance of that. Let's say you are on a a long journey on the highway and of course you are seizing every moment you possibly can to listen to good theology so you've got a great podcast going or a sermon or perhaps you're listening to the word being read and your mind is so fixed upon it that you kind of lose that situational awareness and And then you look up and you look in your mirror and you see before you the dreaded sight that no motorist wants to see. A state trooper is directly behind you. And then, of course, reflexively your eyes flick down to the speedometer and to your horror you see that the needle is touching the 70 mark. And you remember passing a 55 miles an hour sign a little while ago and what happens? Your heart sinks. He's got me. I have no possible excuse. I am 15 miles over the speed limit. And then you're thinking, how many points is that? How much is my insurance going to go up? And you're filled with guilt and despair. And certain people I know at this point would probably be shedding a tear or two. There's no way out. And you expect his lights to go on at any moment. And you're thinking to yourself, why are you toying with me? Get it over with. Just pull me over. I am guilty, guilty, guilty. And then to your amazement, He turns on his indicator and he goes around you and speeds ahead. And it's at that point that you pass the speed limit 70 sign. And you realize you're in an entirely different zone. You were doing the speed limit. You haven't broken the law. You felt horribly guilty. But in fact, you are innocent. And here's the problem. In this vision, as it unfolds, it's not merely a subjective feeling of guilt that the people are struggling with, that the Lord wants them to get over. They are really guilty. They are objectively guilty of transgressing God's law. They've been doing 70 but it was through a school zone with a warning blind deaf child area and there were cones up to indicate that there was road work going on and it's about a billion points on your license and probably the death penalty in this case. That's the situation. They really were exactly that guilty. They didn't just feel it, they knew it. They had broken God's moral law. Their ancestors had broken God's moral law in all of its particulars. And they knew full well that every sin, from the least to the greatest, deserves death. Every sin is, as R.C. Sproul put it so well, cosmic treason against a holy God. and that they deserve death, not just death in this life, but eternal death in hell. The sins of their ancestors had brought terrible judgment upon the entire nation, and now how could they avoid the same fate? And we have this vision where Satan, a name that literally means adversary, is telling them that at this point there is no point in rebuilding the temple. After all, how can sinful priests serve in the temple of a holy God? Their very presence there would defile it. So in this fourth vision, we have this law court scene. And Joshua, the high priest, stands before the angel of the Lord. And this wasn't merely a sign. There really was an actual high priest named Joshua at the time. Now why is he here? Why is he standing? Well, in their worship, the high priest represented the people before the Lord. And that is why the high priest, before he went to the altar and offered the sacrifices, he would put on an ephod upon which there were 12 stones bearing the names of the tribes of Israel. He symbolically was representing the people. That's why in the worship of Israel, in the temple, if I were the high priest, I wouldn't be facing you. I would be in front of you, representing you, facing towards the altar, facing towards God. He stands as their representative. Now, the high priest should have been holiness to the Lord. He should have been clad in spotless garments. Instead, he is clad in filthy garments. The Hebrew makes it very clear. The word actually indicates that they are dung-splattered garments, as filthy and stinking and wretched as could possibly be. And what is happening there? He is symbolizing the spiritual condition of the people and they stand before the angel of the Lord. Now, I have given away many a time that one of the ways that you can get a little theology out of your translation of the Bible is by their use of capitals. Angel of the Lord here, is it lowercase or uppercase? It's uppercase, right? Now normally when we use the term angel, just like when we use the term man, it's lowercase, right? But here it's angel of the Lord, and Lord there is all in uppercase in your NKJV. The angel, the malak, the messenger of Yahweh, the capital A, angel. And that indicates that we are once again looking here at an instance of the pre-incarnate Christ appearing to his people. This is a theophany, an appearance of God before his people. Here God himself has sent his son, Jesus, to stand before Joshua. He stands before him, but who stands at their right hand? Who is their accuser? It is their adversary Satan. In this I'm reminded, kids, I don't know if you've seen the movie, it's not a bad movie, the first one in the series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first of the Narnia ones. I'm reminded of the scene where the White Witch comes and she accuses Edmund, vile Edmund, who had betrayed his brothers and his sisters. She says To Aslan, this representation of Christ, obviously, in the Narnia tale, she says to him that he has broken the ancient law, that the curses of the law must now fall upon him, that he is not worthy. That's the kind of scene that we have here. The adversary stands to poor condemnation, to threaten and to unsettle the people. Then the Lord, that is our Lord Jesus Christ, the angel, rebukes the devil and his accusations. He does not say, however, these people are holy enough to stand before me. All they need to do is work a little harder and then change their garments. They just need to wash and wash and wash, and eventually, someday, they'll be perfect. One day, it'll happen. You'll see. The Lord does not say that, because it would not be true. Joshua, representing the people, can do nothing to cleanse himself of his iniquity. It must be done for him. No, the Lord says instead, I have chosen these people to be mine. Yes, they were like a stick about to be burned up in the fire, meaning that they had nothing but judgment and hellfire to look forward to. But I myself, the Lord says, have chosen them and I plucked them out of the fire. Now, I know this for a fact, having experienced it, you only reach in and grab something out of a fire if it is very important. If you don't want it to be destroyed and it is going to be destroyed unless you act, for instance, what would you run into a burning house to save? I dare say that that is a question that would reveal what is most treasured in your heart. To risk your life dying in a blaze? To risk dying of smoke inhalation and all of those things? It would have to be someone or something that you valued, that you loved more than your own life. And please note this, this is the way that Jesus loves his people. He loves them that much. Now, Jesus does not deny that they are sinners, but what does the Lord in essence say about them here? He says, it is not Jerusalem, this is according to T.V. Moore, great expositor on this particular book, it is not Jerusalem that chooses Jehovah. but Jehovah that chooses Jerusalem. It is not the burning brand that plucks the hand, but the hand that plucks it. Hence, though Jerusalem, the people of God whom Joshua represents, are all covered with sin as with a garment, I have chosen them in spite of this sin, not that they should continue in it, but that they should be freed from it. Here then is Joshua, the holiest one in Israel, the high priest standing before the Lord, but all he has is filthy rags. He's not fit to minister before the Lord. He's not fit to be even in his presence. And that, brothers and sisters, is everyone's condition by nature from birth. Isaiah puts it very strongly in Isaiah 64, 6 when he says this, but we are all like an unclean thing and all our righteousnesses, note that, not all of our sins, all of our righteousnesses are like filthy rags. We all fade as a leaf and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. And there, Isaiah is not addressing the world out there, he's addressing the covenant community. He says we're all sinners, even our best works are full of sin. As one theologian put it, even my best prayers have enough sin in them to condemn me to hell for all eternity. Here then is a vision of the great exchange that is justification by faith alone, the taking away of the filthy garments of our sin and the removal thereby of our iniquity the removal of our sins. But that is not enough, is it? Joshua's filthy garments, his dung-splattered clothing is removed. But now, when your clothes are removed, what are you? Let's see how bright you are. You're naked! He stands naked before the Lord, and could a priest minister before the Lord nude? Not a hypothetical. No! He could not under no circumstances. He cannot minister before the Lord like that. He can't be in the presence of the Lord like that. He's still not fit to enter into the courts of the Lord. No, something else has to happen. He has to be clothed. But not with those garments that he was once wearing. They're burned up, taken away forever. They're not simply laundered and given back to him. Sorry about some of the remaining stains. He's given entirely new clothing. He must be clothed in the rich and spotless robes of a high priest. And Zechariah, who's watching the scene, cries out at this point, let them put a clean turban on his head. because that was the sign, the ultimate sign of the high priest, and without it, he could not minister. In Exodus 28, 36, we read, you shall also make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it, like the engraving of a signet, holiness to the Lord. And you shall put it on a blue cord that it may be on the turban. It shall be on the front of the turban. Restore, restore the turban to him, that he might be holiness to the Lord, that he might minister on behalf of the people once again. But how could this happen? How could this great exchange happen? How could Joshua's sins, the sins of God's people, be taken away and in their place, righteousness be given? How could the perfect righteousness, the spotless righteousness of God be given to his people? Well, the Lord makes it clear in what follows. He says, in one day, in one day, not over a long period, of many, many years of working, but rather in one day his servant the branch would remove the iniquity of the land. Now that might have been something mysterious to the people at the time, but for those of us who know about the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, the servant on Calvary, the meaning is absolutely clear on how this sin would be taken away and on how righteousness would be established. He says, my servant the branch when he is referring to the Messiah, the one who would take away their sin. Servant is a name used for the Messiah again and again. We see it in Isaiah, for instance, in my favorite chapter, Isaiah 53, 11. He shall see the labor of his soul and be satisfied. By his knowledge, my righteous servant shall justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities. There we see the servant as the sin bearer who would come. Now this name that he's given, the branch, it refers to the idea that the Messiah will be a shoot or a branch. You know how for gardeners it's sometimes a big pain in the neck. You'll cut down an offending shrub. We had a holly bush. For instance, it was right outside the window. All it did was provide perfect cover for anybody who wanted to sneak up next to the house. Whenever you were mowing the grass or the lawn, it would snag your clothing. It was awful. Holly's nice around the house, cut into little bits, and put up around Christmas. But in practice, it's really kind of a nasty plant. And we wanted to get rid of this thing, so we took it down with a chainsaw. Oh, there's the, Holly Bush is gone. I come back, it's on this side of the house. We're usually on this side of the house. We don't see this side very often. But I come back a couple months later, and what do you think I saw? There's a new holly bush growing there, coming right out of the stump. So I had to actually poison the stump to make sure it wouldn't come back. It kept sprouting new ones. Whenever I clipped them off, they would come right back. It is very difficult to take the life out of a tree, and here we have this word, a shoot, a branch, will come out of the line of David, not a nasty snaggy holly bush, but a beautiful tree representing the continued line, the line of the lion of the tribe of Judah, that this one would come from David. Isaiah 11.1 says, there shall come forth, in fact, turn with me to Isaiah 11.1, if you would. Turn back. It's one of the major prophets, so the major prophets are easier to find. You'll find Isaiah just ahead of Song of Solomon. Isaiah 11.1, I want to direct your attention there. There shall come forth, we read, a rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord. His delight is in the fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge by the sight of his eyes. nor decide by the hearing of his ears, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his loins, and faithfulness the belt of his waist." There's a picture of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, in Isaiah 11, 1. So that's the branch. Then we have this idea of the stone. The stone also is a messianic emblem. We have three different references to the coming of the Messiah in this one prophecy. In Isaiah 28, 16, we read, therefore, thus says the Lord God, behold, I lay in Zion a stone for a foundation, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation. Whoever believes will not act hastily. And then Psalm 118.22, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. This was the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. And that is a Psalm quote that of course Peter quoted in his preaching to the people. This Jesus is the stone of some stumbling. He was the cornerstone that the Lord had always promised. He is and he has come and his cornerstone nature has been laid and upon that foundation the Lord is building his church. And this all will proceed a time when there is plenty and security and peace in the church. Everyone will say to his neighbor, he'll invite him over. It's not a time for fear. It's not a time for dread. It's not a time for sackcloth and ashes. It's a time for rest. You rest under your tree. You rest under your vine, a sign of plenty. There will be abundance again in the land. And this is a promise not just that there will be a material abundance restored to the people, but that rather the time is coming when there will be spiritual abundance and abiding peace, even if the world is still waging war against the church and full of hatred, yet the people will have that peace in their hearts. There should be an abiding peace in your heart, believer, an abundant joy, a treasury of good things that you can draw from, and a lack of fear, ultimately. It amazes me sometimes how much fear lies in the hearts of worldlings. They're afraid of diseases. They're afraid of meteors striking the planet and destroying them. They're afraid of zombies. They're afraid of everything you can conceive of because they have no guarantees in this world. They have this idea dwelling within them that their life is very fragile. Even though they pretend to themselves they'll live forever, they know that at any moment their heart can stop beating and they're afraid of what is to come with a dread terror. But that shouldn't be the case with you because you know who rules over providence. And I don't mean just the church. I mean God's superintendents of everything that happens. And you know also what will happen to you when you die. You have no need to fear death. Death is but a passing through the veil for the believer and an entering into glory. While death is not our friend, death is a result of the fall. It is not good for soul and body to be separated. Jesus did not laugh at the tomb of Lazarus saying, oh, Lazarus has gone to his final reward. Praise God, everybody. He wept because his friend had died and been separated from his loved ones. But there is a time coming when death itself will die. When Jesus crushes it underfoot, the last enemy to be crushed will be death. And so we need not fear it. You need not be afraid. That time is coming. Briefly, there is also this vision of the seven eyes on the stone. This is the one that drives the commentators crazy, but I think it's not that hard to get the idea. Seven is the number of completeness. We know that that happens all throughout the Bible. But the eyes indicate the wisdom and the all-seeing nature of the Lord. So for instance, in Revelation, Jesus is portrayed as a lamb. We understand the sacrificial nature of the lamb, but he's a lamb with seven eyes. thus showing his great and complete wisdom, his knowledge of all things. Notice also that Joshua is not merely given these garments and said, okay, Joshua, you've been clothed in the righteousness of the Lord, go do whatever you want. There's no more sin for you. You go, you know, now the sky's the limit. Do anything that pleases you. No, rather, he's admonished to walk in the ways of the Lord. The people are justified by faith alone, but people who are justified by faith alone are indwelt by the Spirit of God, and they do works befitting their new status. Their relationship to God is they are brands that are plucked from the burning, and therefore they love the one who reached into the fire and was burned in order to save them. who took them to be his own. They are saved. You are saved. If you're saved today, you're saved to do good works for the Lord. And that is the great indication of your new nature, the fruit that you bear. I could tell it was a holly bush, even if I couldn't see the prickly leaves and so on by the little red berries that it had all over it. It's fruit, which are no good for anything. They're actually poisonous. Don't eat them, kids. But you, as Christians, should be bearing good fruit on a regular basis, good and wholesome fruit of good works. And all of this, brothers and sisters, came to pass. The branch is Jesus Christ. He came, He took iniquity upon Himself, and He made full atonement for it. As Isaiah 53.5 says, He was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." And his disciple Peter would say that he, Jesus Christ, himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree. Our sins were imputed to Jesus Christ, laid upon his shoulders. And that, not because of anything that we had done, but because the Lord chose us to be his. He elected us. Why did he love us? He loved us because he loved us. It's not because we were so much better than anybody else, but rather because he loved us and desired that we would be his people. And so our filthy clothes are taken away, and then we are given that perfect wedding garment. It's not, I think Christians too often just think of the removal of sin, and then they don't think of the necessity of the imputation of righteousness. Yes, your filthy garments have been taken away, but most of us would not be feeling too good walking around naked. We want, rather, a covering. We need a covering, and just as the Lord provided a covering for Adam and Eve after they had sinned in the garment, he gave them the animal skins, to replace the hopeless efforts that they were making of trying to create coverings for themselves out of fig leaves. So too, he gives us a spotless wedding garment, showing our relationship to Jesus Christ. So in Matthew 22, 8, then he said to his servants, the wedding is ready, but those who were invited were not worthy. Therefore, go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding. So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together, all whom they found both bad and good. And the wedding hall itself was filled with guests. When the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to them, friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment? And he was speechless. And we know that that man was then cast into the outer darkness at the command of the king. In order to stand before the king, we need that spotless robe of the king's own devising. We need the wedding garment because we're going to heaven to celebrate the wedding supper of the lamb. That's what you were made for, for that great wedding between the lamb and the church. Paul sums it up perfectly in that wonderful saying, for he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Now brothers and sisters, if you have that righteousness, you should have confidence. You should have assurance. Now, you will still struggle with sin. Read Romans 7, not right now, but sometime later on today. Read Romans 7, and you will see Paul speaking of the struggle with sin that every Christian deals with. There's a good we know that we should be doing, and yet we too often follow the way of the flesh and sin. And then the devil comes and accuses us, doesn't he, in those moments and tells us you're not worthy? How can you possibly enter into heaven? You're a sinner. You've sinned. I've seen it. You know it. Remember when you, yeah. There's a wonderful episode from the life of Luther. Luther was a man of big emotions, but he, there's a story told about him. He related, while he was in the Wartburg, after he had been taken there after the Diet of Worms, he was being hidden for his own safety, he began the process of writing the Bible in German. A wonderful, wonderful task, so that the people could have the word back. But while he was there, he dreamt that Satan appeared to him, reading a long scroll. And what do you think was on that long scroll? It was his sins. It was a record of his sins since his birth. And as the reading of the list proceeded, Luther's terrors grew until finally he cried out, it is all true, Satan, and many more sins I have committed in my life which are known to God only, but right at the bottom of your list, The blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from all sin. Then grasping the inkwell on his table, he threw it at the devil, who immediately fled." And if you go to the Wartburg, you can still see on the wall the stain from Luther's inkwell. The most famous stain in Germany, somebody once called it. But in any event, that is a summary of what we should say to the devil as well. Yes. Yes, we are sinners, but sinners saved by the blood of Christ. And you can write at the bottom of your own list, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's son, cleanses us from all sin. That is the only way we can be cleansed of our sins. And so I would encourage you, if you have not already done so, flee to the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness that is abundantly made available to you. Close with him by faith. You need what he can provide you with, the wedding garment. Now, sadly, you may not feel guilty, but you are. All of us, every single one of us, have committed sins that should send us to an eternity in hell. But forgiveness, free and full, is available simply by going to the Lord Jesus Christ, confessing our sins, saying, we can't save ourselves. falling upon him and his mercy, which will be freely given. And that is the great exchange. Jesus takes our iniquities, our sins, and bears them on his shoulders, takes them to the cross, and pays for them in full, and then gives us his perfect, spotless righteousness, so that we might serve the Lord, not just here on earth, but into eternity. Let's go before him now. God, our Father, we thank you, Lord, that you have done for us what we could never do for ourselves. You've saved us by sending your Son, Jesus Christ, to die in our place on the cross. He lived a perfect life. He kept your law in all of its particulars. And so, whereas our record is only that long list, that giant scroll that Luther dreamt of, a rap sheet that goes on and on and on, declaring all the ways that we have sinned against you, Although that is the only thing that we could bring and contribute to our salvation. Lord, you sent him who know no sin to be sin for us that we might be the righteousness of God in him. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for giving us a salvation that was so great and so costly. You were willing to shed the blood of your own dear son, Jesus, that we might be cleansed by it. Thank you for the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. We pray these things in Jesus' holy name. Amen.