Alrighty, if you will, turn to Judges Chapter 2, continuing on in the second opening introductory of this very, very deep, deep book that is oftentimes neglected. Again, just to remind you, the movement moving from a very kind of historical approach in the first introduction that has hints towards God trying to show things to us of the downward spiral where the second introduction really comes from a sovereign point of view. God giving his point of view more so of what's going on with his people and how he views their actions, their active and their non-active things of which they're doing or not doing according to his word. So if you will, our section today is verses 11 through 15. 11 through 15, so read along with me. And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods from among the gods of the peoples who were around them. and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtoreth. So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel and he gave them over to plunderers who plundered them. And he sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies so that they could no longer withstand their enemies. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned and as the Lord had sworn to them. And they were in terrible distress. Our good and gracious Father, we thank you for your word that warns us of the wrath to come. Lord, would you give us ears to hear. May we not neglect one of your holy and perfect attributes and stomp one out in light of another. May we take all of who you are, trusting you are good, holy, righteous, just, loving, kind, wrathful. All of these things, Lord, of who you are are good. They are right. May we not neglect who you are at the expense of our own feelings, desires, motivations. Lord, may we, as your people who are called in Christ, trust you for who you are. Lord, we ask all this for Christ's namesake. Amen. As we, thinking just through Sunday School of the attributes of God, there's a lot of material that's involved in that study. As Peter well knows, and we all well know, you sit there and look at it and you're like, wow, there's just a lot to gain when we're looking at who is this God who controls all things, who created all things. But who we are in our culture, where we've grown up, a lot of us, maybe, I would think rightly to assume most times that we easily throw out certain attributes of God to grasp hold, rather, to ones that we like more, that fit a little bit better with my conscience or my feelings. However, if we come to the scripture, we realize God did not hesitate to make all of himself known, all of himself, fully. Psalm 7, 11 through 13. God is a righteous judge and a God who feels indignation every day. A lot of times we immediately want to jump to, let's do theology. Okay, he's being anthropopathic. We're just, these are human men describing God in human terms, so we can, let's try to explain it away by saying, well, it's just, that's a way to understand him, but that's not really how he is. It's just a way of, form of writing. Not that he is, at all times, displeased, angry, full of indignation every day towards the wicked. As it goes on, if a man does not repent, God will wet his sword. He has bent and readied his bow. He has prepared for him his deadly weapons, making his arrows fiery shafts. In Nahum, this is one of those areas I like to go to, to explain to people that, who try to say, hell is a place people go to where God is absent. I try to encourage them, only his love is absent, but he's still there. But they're only seeing full on the wrath of God, and Nahum speaks to this aspect. In chapter one, he says, who can stand before his indignation? Who can endure the heat of his anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken into pieces by him. The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble. He knows those who take refuge in him. But with an overflowing flood, he will make a complete end of the adversaries and will pursue his enemies into darkness. Let that sit for a moment. That the reason people are suffering under torment, we're thinking just eschatologically for a second, they're suffering in torment because it is the torment of God which is pursuing them into further torment. in the very context of Moses' song to his people that he's let out, and now he's giving them a word, but a song from God. The very bent of the whole entire song in Deuteronomy 32 is actually a witness against these people. That's the very motive of going into to understand this song is that it's against me, which is really odd to think about at times, but that's what's going on in the Song of Moses in chapter 32 of Deuteronomy. And here's a section from it. See now that I, even I am he, and there is no God beside me. I kill, I make alive, I wound, I heal, and there is none that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven and swear as I live forever, if I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand takes hold on judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and will repay those who hate me. I will make my arrows drunk with blood and my sword shall devour flesh with the blood of the slain and the captives from the long haired heads of the enemy. Excuse me. I was reading a lot this past week on the anger or wrath of God. And this is something we can come back to to realize this is why we have what we call scripture from God. This is one of those areas we can say we know this is not from men because men would have easily left some of these things out. But the Lord doesn't do that, and He's showing us that here in chapter 2, that this is from the Lord. Here's how He perceives the works of His people. He sees them as abandonment from their one true love, who is God. The one who saved them out of a slavery, they've abandoned Him. He does not take pleasure in that at all, and He will make it known to them. As you have your hand out there, I've given a structure of a way of thinking kind of through this section here of scripture. I kind of label it in two ways, their actions, God's actions. And you can see a structure here. They serve the Baals. In between that is twice it's written that they've abandoned the Lord and then it ends again with they've served the Baals in Ashtoreth. God sees it as abandonment. What does it look like? They're serving other gods. They're doing things that's outside of God's will, but God sees it as one major thing. They've abandoned me. Then it moves to God's actions. It tells us of his anger. You have the kind of bookends. You have anger, and his hand was against them. But what does that look like? Well, they're being plundered by those enemies that they should have been eradicating and killing. They're now being taken over from them, and that's the outward working now of their actions. Excuse me, the outworking of God's anger towards their abandonment to the one who saved them out of slavery. So the major themes that are going to be starting here and moving all the way through the rest of Judges, some of them are God sees. And what does he see? He sees his people abandoning him and serving other false gods. What becomes of that? God's anger is kindled against this sin. So his hand takes action against this sin, and he sells them into their enemies. We are gonna be, I'm writing something on the side, just something small, but something a little bit more on the idea of language of selling, because a lot of that purchase language is used throughout the scripture, so I wanted to bring that as an aside. I'll send that out later, just to have it for you, just so you know, again, keeping your minds aware of the scripture, how he utilizes language in the scripture of selling, redeeming, purchasing, All of that is language of there's some type of interaction and transaction that's happening. So we'll hit on that briefly here, but I have more of that I'll send out. But we see here that when God sees his people abandoning him, he takes action against them. He takes action against them. So first we see that God sees this. God sees, and the people did what was evil in the eyes of the Lord. So often when people summarize the book of Judges, they actually go to where everyone did what was right in their own eyes. That's not wrong, but I would want to encourage, I think the drive of what we're supposed to be thinking about throughout Judges is where it starts. They did evil in God's eyes. putting God at the pinnacle, not just their sin, but God at the pinnacle of seeing this, a God who's not dormant. He sees these things, and they're evil in his sight. So the first thing we see immediately is that what Judges is throwing at us is that God is the standard of what's right. If he's the one seeing and displeased with what they're doing, therefore, the standard comes from the one who's seeing that and putting that judgment on them, that you are doing something that is not right. He is that standard of rightness. So therefore, to do what is right in our own eyes, where judges goes on to say, is therefore to abandon the One who created us and we are sinning against Him because we are the ones created by Him. But it's first and foremost putting our sights on Him who sees our sin. He sees it. They did. They worked out their sin by doing what God in the heavens sees. What does that tell us about man? Man thinks God doesn't see. To act outside of what God sees as right is to not fear Him. As in, if He can't see me, He won't act against my sin, therefore I don't have to fear His wrath and His anger. So the heart does not fear God. Romans chapter 3 when the when Paul brings all men He says the scriptures brought all of us under the judgment of God that we are all of sin All of us know the Jews not better off than the Greek or the or the Gentile We are all under sin and he goes on to label. None is righteous. No, not one. We've all forsaken God We've all turned aside. We've all turned to our worthless ways, but he ends it with In chapter 3, in verse 18, there is no fear of God before their eyes. So he gets underneath them is that they don't think God sees, so therefore they don't fear who He is, so therefore they do what's right in their own eyes. That's what we do as sinners. But God sees that, and He's making that known right here, and the outworking of His sight is their failure in all of their endeavors. So we move to that in the text. He goes, what is he seeing? He's seeing that they're abandoning God and they're serving false gods. They're turning to these foreign gods. It's really interesting, you can see this comparison if you read those opening portions of the text that we're in this morning, you can see that here's what they've done. They've turned to foreign things in abandoning familial things. Let's put it in simple terms. They've went off to foreign things while abandoning family. Let's put it in that term. They've turned to something that's idle to abandon someone who is active. They've turned to multiple gods when they should have been serving the one true God. These gods that they turn to serve labeled as Baal or Baal or Ashtaroth. Baal would be more of the male god and the Ashtaroth would be his female companion. There's a lot of reading you can do on these different things. There's a lot of even disagreements on all the different stuff, but the idea being that there's more territorial when it comes to these foreign gods, that they would show that he or she would show themselves in different ways in different areas. That's why they're listed in plurality right here throughout the text a lot of times, because they're listed, they show themselves differently in different territories. But a lot of it goes into the idea of fertility. We want the land to produce fruit. We want our wombs to produce offspring. So they would do things in order to provoke these gods to make those good results happen. So, they're abandoning the one who's freed them from slavery, who told them that if they follow him, all of their work will be productive, but they turn to these false gods because, again, they're not obeying the one who's freed them. And with that act comes much sexual immorality, impure actions, and they try to even mix it now with their worship that they were taught from God, they try to now intertwine the two. The great sin of a lot of our day, again, is just this idea of bringing it all and meshing it all together. We can redeem all things, let's just redeem it all and how can we mesh it into what God wants us to do? We're no different than the judge's time. However, we're told As Hebrews 4 makes it very clear, but all of scripture makes it clear, but he says in Hebrews 4, 13, no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account. I don't want to spend too much time of thinking what they did wrong, because the idea is, the focus is trying to drive us to the one who sees it. Because that will burn in us to realize what we are doing wrong if we don't understand the one who's seeing us and he will actively move to teach and train and even sanctify his people. So it moves on in the text. It moves from God's sight and actually moves to a feature of his face. In verse 12, they provoked the Lord to anger. The reason I say it's a feature is because the Hebrew literally states God's nose became hot. So you have a God who sees, he does not take pleasure in what is evil, so it gives you a description that now his face is red, and his nose is kind of curled up, and it's on fire, because he does not like what he sees. It's mentioned four times throughout Judges, and almost everywhere where you see that throughout Scripture, that it's a literal sense that his now has a face that is burning towards anger, towards that sin. God sees this evil and that God's persona moves to show his displeasure. I'm just utilizing persona because that's what the prophet is trying to present to us. This idea of a visual image, though, be careful how you image that. But the idea is being that he's making it real intangible that God sees with his eyes and his nose is now burning hot because he is displeased with what he is seeing. to tie this even in with Peter's Sunday school with the idea of immutability, passability. God is not now different or changed through the acts of his people. He is only showing his righteous anger of what he told them, he promised them that they would see if they turn from him. God doesn't need to be shown evil in order to hate it. to give you an example of this idea that it's man that changes, it's God who's always consistently hated evil all the time, period, because He's always good, always righteous. But Genesis chapter 3, 2, after the fall The Lord says to himself, Genesis 3.22, he says, Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. What that tells us is that man has changed. Man has changed in his relationship to God because he abandons God. But God is already indignant and angry towards evil. Now it's time for man to see that. Because they didn't at one time see that. It is man that has become that is changed from the outside because they have lived and experienced something. But God is all the same all the time. Man has acted upon his disposition. Man was acted upon, excuse me, and his disposition was changed from outside himself because man is movable. God is immovable. He is but showing his righteous indignation towards that which is evil, towards that which he has promised. He would show them, I am angry against sin, and if you provoke me to that, you will see that. It doesn't mean that he's changing, that now at one time he was happy, now he's sad. The idea is that he's showing who he is. I've always hated sin, and now you're just seeing the repercussions. Israel isn't seeing change in God, but seeing who God is. As Psalm 5, 4-5 tells us, For you are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. And it gives no time frame to that. He hates evil and he hates the evildoer. So it moves from his eyes, it moves to his nose, which is indignant towards sin. Now you're giving a visual, if you will, but now it moves in the scripture to his hands. He sees, he's showing his indignation, and now he's taking action with his hands against the sin. Hand is actually very important when it comes to judges because the hand is used of multiple people, used of Israel, used of God, used of their enemies. So it's a constant struggle within judges. It's meant to betray control and power. Who has control? Who has the power? We're starting off in the opening that God is saying, I have control. I have power." So when you see the hand succeeding of even the wicked, it's God's hand who's doing it for His own good purposes. Whatever those may be, it's still good purposes because that's who He is. As Judges 1 opened up, it's giving us the idea, who shall go up before us? God responds, I've given these people into the hand of Judah. Judah will go up first. I've given them into their hand. So it's a power now. We get into chapter two. He's saying they've abandoned the Lord. The Lord's going to take action with his hands, giving power to the enemy to now take over his own people because they're sinning against him. So it's God's power, God's control. We need to see it through the lens of God doing these things, not just the outworkings and saying, why? God is doing it because they're sinning against him. He hands them over. He gave them over to their plunderers. He sold them into the hand of their surrounding enemies. Verse 14. So they could no longer withstand their enemies. Verse 15. Whenever they marched out, the hand of the Lord was against them for harm, as the Lord had warned and as the Lord had sworn to them. Again, the unchangeable God said, this is what will happen because I hate evil and I will act against it. No change in God. God is only acting according to what he had warned and swore to do when they rejected him and his covenant. There's a controlling, if you were, or a very important verse within chapter two of the second opening, excuse me, and that's verse 10. Back up a little bit. Verse 10 is very important with how you understand the rest of what's going on. I've already mentioned that before, but I'm gonna continue to remind you because it's easy to forget generation also were gathered to their fathers." That's the generation that lived with Joshua but outlived him, but then they were gathered up to their fathers. And then there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that He had done for Israel. The reason I say that's important is because what is happening after that? Not just that they're abandoning, what's God showing us? He is showing us that he's going to make himself known to the people who didn't know them. How is he going to do that? Well, he starts by showing them his anger. He starts by showing his anger. He's like, he starts again with a new slavery and a new exodus. Think of it that way, because that's a lot of what's going on in Judges. He uses terminology and structure of a slavery and a new exodus. They didn't see my work. I'm going to show it to them. I'm going to show them because I love my people. But it also comes with the idea that there's going to be much suffering because now he's going to show his anger because they've turned their backs on him. but they're going to know this God, though they do know Him, but they are not in proper relationship with Him. People in our day, we would read this, verse 10, leading into then the anger of the Lord, something like this, but they didn't know God or His work. It's not right that He would act out in anger toward them, as if it's just an issue of ignorance. The same could be said of the Canaanites, but that's not how God perceives it. This type of thinking is very big in our days where we try to justify and utilize these terms as in if they didn't know, then why would God act that way? Not understanding that, that is not what God's saying. It's not intellectualism. The idea is that they do know, all people know, there is a God who made them. They abandoned God for unrighteousness. We don't like to consider even our ignorance as our own fault. Just like the Israelites, we have God's Word. Dan spoke on this last week. They knew God. They had the Word of God. They had the proper light for them at that time. They chose to abandon that. So what does God do? He acts out in anger. We should be seeking God's Word from His will, just like they should have been doing. And I would even say, if we're not seeking out God's will from His Word, we will experience the displeasing countenance of the Lord. We can experience the displeasing countenance of the Lord. Again, we want to throw that out because we want mercy to triumph over wrath. So therefore, I don't need to think about wrath. That's incorrect. The very table, which we'll repeat today, what does Paul say to the people at the table? Whoever therefore eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and the blood of the Lord. Let a person examine himself then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For everyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, excuse me, without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself. This is why many of you, okay, we have God's perspective. If you do this, you'll experience judgment. We have God's perspective. What's the outworking of that? This is why many of you, he's speaking to believers contextually, this is why many of you are weak and ill and some have died. Is that not God's indignation towards his people? But if we judge ourselves truly, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world. This aspect of being under God's indignation, you see in Judges here that he sells them, he sold them. Other words could be he gave them up, which is the New Testament equivalent. He sold them, and even in the Septuagint, it uses the same Greek term that's used in Romans 1. He gave them up. In Romans 1, three times, God gave them up into the lust, in the lust of their hearts to impurity. God gave them up to dishonorable passions. God gave them up to a debased mind. It's God who's doing this, and we want so often to separate, okay, what is it for the wicked? What is it for the righteous? But I want you to think very, very, let this hit home with you. Where are you in your walk with Christ? Is everything falling apart around you? Is everything failing? It seems like everything you put your hand to, it fails. Could it not be the call of God to turn, repent, and turn back to Him? Because you may be in your actions completely leaving Him out of your heart, soul, and mind. Could it very well be that He's the one calling you to wake up? You're doing all these things because you don't care about me. You care about these things. So I, as your maker and your savior, am going to ruin all your plans because they're not with me. Could it be? I'll let the Lord decide that in your own practical life. But the idea is that the scripture wants us to gain that eye for things that we would see all of our lives as being controlled by God. And could it be at times when we're failing at everything that he's disciplining us to call us back to himself? Because he hates the sin of which we're indulging ourselves into and neglecting the good things of which we ought to be pursuing instead. And we've already mentioned it. I was even talking with Ryan earlier. He mentioned it. It was good to hear him mention it. And I mentioned it earlier in another sermon, the idea that this is the opening of Revelation. He's bringing warning of coming judgment to his own people in different areas. And some felt that and experienced that, though it may have only been by God's good, loving grace in a temporal sense. but it still was motivated from a God who hates sin every day. He is the standard, not our feelings. God is the standard, not our feelings. So we must turn to the scripture and trust Him. What does it tell us about this wrath, even in judges, but also comparing it with Romans? This is a wrath that is revealed from heaven. Just like His mercies are revealed from heaven, His goodness is come down from heaven, His love is poured out from heaven, guess what? His wrath is also revealed from heaven. We cannot diminish it because it's uncomfortable or we're unwilling to broach it because I think I've read it more times in the New Testament, I've seen grace more than I've seen anger, so therefore anger must now not exist. We take the whole scripture. If you take the whole scripture, actually anger and wrath are talked about more holistically. So we throw it out because grace is now one in the cross. Yes, it has. But what drives you to the cross? God's anger. His hatred of sin. It is not good to neglect something that is perfect and holy and righteous in God because of our comforts and our inability to withstand something that just seems so standoffish. It pushes off. I can't deal with this type of thing. I read so much more in the New Testament. I'm a New Testament believer. Was God not the same when he was telling his people of old that, I will make my wrath known among you if you abandon me. I will make it known that I see that. I will take action upon that. It doesn't mean we'll be lost eternally, but it means now we use language again, rightly so, of discipline. He's doing it for our good. Let me jump into some application. First, we should understand we should often meditate on God's wrath or his anger. We should often meditate on the anger of the Lord. We need to know how God sees sin. So our hearts and minds are changed to hate sin as God does. The only way you can be changed to perceive sin is if you look to the God who hates it. Then He will change you and you will hate it as He hates it. This is why compromise is so huge, because we don't want to meditate on God's anger towards sin. So therefore, we try to redeem everything. Where some things, a lot of things, He's not trying to redeem. He's trying to redeem His people, and He's trying to separate them from evil things. He's trying to redeem His people, not things or ideas. His people, and understanding God's thoughts rightly. Secondly, when meditating on God's anger, it trains a holy fear. In Hebrews chapter 12, the author speaks to this, or the preacher, if you will, speaks to this. Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe. Where does he end in that? For our God is a consuming fire." And speaking of this passage, Arthur Pink has a very quick and simple statement. We cannot serve him acceptably unless there is due reverence for his awful majesty and godly fear of his righteous anger. And these are best promoted by frequently calling to mind that our God is a consuming fire. He tells us to be grateful and doing good in line with God's will, but he bases it on because God is a consuming fire. So a motivation with one of many within us is that we know God hates sin, and therefore I'm growing to hate it as much as he hates it, Lord willing. But the only way you can grow in that is if you meditate on how he hates sin. And thirdly, bouncing off that idea, we need to be grateful. Why can we be grateful? Let me just hit you with some good scripture to show you why. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved. God made his anger very well known to us. By slaying his own son on our behalf. And now He calls us to look to that, to know that He hates sin. So much so, He is willing to put His own Son to death to show that. And the sin is so great, it took God Himself to take care of that debt of sin. That's massive. That should really have us stop and really think for all of our lives how great sin is. If God is the only one who can take away the anger that comes with sin and the punishment. Another, if you will, almost like a gospel psalm, Psalm 103. He will not always chide, nor will He keep His anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. Praise God! For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is His steadfast love towards those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far He removes Excuse me, so far does He remove our transgression from us. As Father shows compassion to His children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear Him. For He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. Brothers and sisters, we ought to meditate often on the wrath of God, and that's why the New Testament tells us to look to the cross Look to this one who was slain. Why? Not just because your sins are gone. First and foremost, because God hates sin. He will act on sin. Period. So you need to know that. That needs to be a part of our gospel message. Those who live in sin will face the fiery wrath of God, lest they turn to Christ, where that's the only way it can be removed from them. That's the only way. We change so often our language to be acceptable by man that we end up throwing God out of the whole entire message. we need to meditate on the wrath of God, which will work in us a holy fear, which also will push us to the cross, which will work in us gratefulness towards God. I will happily send out two Short, very short things on the anger and wrath of God that I was reading this week, just encouragement from Arthur Pink and Pastor Shelton, which I've brought up his stuff before when we were talking through repentance. Just really, really good. Really, really good. We need to think more often that God hates sin. We need so much for his wrath to train us You realize now his anger is actually for you? It's something that, it's who he is, and now it's towards us, for our good, to train us in righteousness, that we might not fall under his eternal wrath forever. That he is all for us. He is all for His people, because He loves His Son, whom we are hidden under, or in, if you will. Brothers and sisters, we'll be approaching this a lot through judges, obviously. But we need to, because maybe we could stop and think, maybe the, let's just take it in a national level. Maybe the nation of which we're being, the leaders of our nation which we're under, the way it's being guided could very well be, which I would say is, the wrath of God in a way, it's not the fullness of His wrath, but that is the wrath of God leading us into more and more unrighteousness as a nation, so therefore the believers in that nation will suffer under that And we need to be trained by that. Not avoid it. Not try to fix it with another election. But say, no, this nation is God's nation. Because Christ is the God of all nations. There's not one nation that is not ruled by Him. There's not one that's not ruled by Christ. So we should be trained, if our leaders are leading us into unrighteousness, we ought to call them to repentance, no matter what they want to do to us. You should not be ashamed to do that. You should be bold enough to say, what you're doing is wrong in the eyes of God. Turn, lest you be stricken by His sword. Strucken, stricken, I'm making up words up here. But that's, we need to be bold and willing to say such a thing. But we also need to be living lives that's also been trained by that. not being hypocrites, living as we please, loving all the benefits of our unrighteous country, while also saying, oh, but you have to turn and repent. No, no, all of us need to be trained by the direction of where God has placed us in time and space to know that God's still working amongst the nations, as he always did, because they're all his, period. And God is putting all nations under the feet of his son, because he rules all things. So we need to call all people everywhere to repent because He has set a day where He will judge the living and the dead. Who did He appoint to do that? Jesus Christ, the righteous. Who did He do to do that? Jesus Christ. So brothers and sisters, we need to meditate on it more often. We need to have our sins exposed. Lord, search me and know me. and be that expose every evil thing that's within me and purify me that I may live according to your word. How is a man to direct his steps? According to God's word. I was just so encouraged hearing in the distance my wife getting ready this morning and she's listening to Psalm 119. Oh man, that is so good. It is so good. Why is it called a light? Because you can't walk in the darkness without light. You can't see unless you have a light. Why do we so often neglect that light? Which also tells us about the burning wrath of God towards sin. Why do we neglect that? Why, may we not, would you go to me to the Lord in prayer? Gracious Father, you are a God who hates sin. You are angry towards the wicked every day. You will return the deeds of the wicked back on their head because you are right, you are good, you are holy, and no sin can dwell before you and stand before you. But Lord, we praise your name that you have given us an escape You have given us Your Son, and if there's anyone here who does not feel the weight of their sin and the oncoming judgment, Lord, would You impress that through Your Spirit on their heart? that they would see that you are God who will judge them, lest they find their hiding place under Christ the righteous. Lord, you poured your wrath out on your son. He willingly drank the cup down to its last drop. and all of your people will not be put to shame on Judgment Day because his sacrifice was a good and perfect sacrifice. This is your salvation that you have purposed for your people. Lord, give us ears to hear. May we not neglect your righteous and holy wrath to abandon that to other things of which make us feel better. May we feel exactly what you want us to feel. Lord, may we think rightly and you would move and mold our emotions to be more in line with your righteous will. Lord, help us. We know you will because your word is the sure foundation. You have made it clear that you will act on behalf of your people. So Lord, would you do that for us? We ask in Christ's name, amen. Are there people needing to come back from any nursery or anything? Or is everyone here? Anybody know?