I'd invite you all to turn with me to our scripture passage for this evening. We'll be in Exodus chapter 34 and we'll be looking at verses 1 through 9. And before we read there just a few words of explanation. It's kind of in the middle of a very specific setting. As many of you all will know, in Exodus chapter 32, Moses had been up on Mount Sinai. The Israelites had engaged in the worship of the golden calf. Moses had come down from the mountain, had broken the two tables on which the Ten Commandments were written. God had visited a chastening judgment on the children of Israel. then Moses had pled with God that he would have mercy on Israel. And God had told Moses at the very end of Exodus 33 that he would do two things, that he would show Moses his glory and that he would reveal to Moses his name. And that's what has just occurred at the end of chapter 33 as we get to our passage this evening in chapter 34. But before we read there, let's bow in prayer. Our great God and Father in heaven, we give you thanks tonight for your word. Lord, we confess that you are a God who dwells in light that is inaccessible, a God of such holiness that even the angels who encircle your throne are unable to look upon you. And yet, oh, Lord, you have been pleased to reveal yourself to your people. You've spoken to us, you've given us your word, you have revealed yourself most fully in the face of the Lord Jesus. And so we give you thanks tonight, O Lord, for your revelation of yourself. We ask, O Lord, that you would be with us as we read and consider your word. O Lord, open it to us and give us tender hearts and be pleased, even in this time, to make your word powerful in our midst. For we ask it all in the wonderful name of Jesus. Amen. Exodus chapter 34, beginning at verse one, hear the word of the Lord. The Lord said to Moses, cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke. Be ready by the morning and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain. No one shall come up with you and let no one be seen throughout all the mountain. Let no flocks or herds graze opposite that mountain. So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first and he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai as the Lord had commanded him and took in his hand two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff necked people and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your inheritance. Amen. Now, all of the scriptures are the word of God. From the first word of Genesis to the closing word of Revelation, all of the scriptures are the word of God. But within this uniformly inspired book, there are certain passages that are given special prominence, special prominence even by the Bible itself. And this evening we find ourselves confronted by precisely one of those passages. In verses 6 and 7 of Exodus chapter 34, God speaks to Moses and he tells Moses who he is. God himself describing, revealing his own character, his own being. And this description that God gives, it surfaces again and again and again throughout all the rest of the scriptures. In Numbers chapter 14, Moses prays these words back to God in seeking God's mercy. In Nehemiah chapter 9, the Levites pray these words in thanksgiving for God's mercy. Scattered throughout the Psalms, these words emerge as descriptions of the luminous glory of God and of the sure foundation that His people have to trust in Him. The prophets, time and again, use these words to warn God's people and to comfort God's people. In the New Testament, these words are used to glorify God and to incite His people to a holy worship of His name. In the words of our passage this evening, they don't stop here. They reverberate through the rest of the Scriptures. And their repeated appearance bears testimony to the gravity of their glory. And to the clarity of the glimpse that they afford us of the very character of Almighty God. These are precious words. They're words that have comforted. Words that have challenged God's people for millennia. And if we'll hear them tonight, they'll do both things for us as well. In the words of our passage this evening, we find that the majestic and living God saves his people and wins their hearts. That's the glory of the self-revelation of God that we find before us this evening. And the first thing that becomes immediately clear is that we're receiving here a glimpse of the majestic and living God. Now look at verses 5-7 of the passage again. And we'll come back to verses 1-4. But it seems appropriate to begin here in verse 5. At this point, of course, Moses has re-ascended Mount Sinai. He's standing at the pinnacle of the mountain. And then we read, beginning in verse 5, The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, who will by no means clear the guilty. Visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. The glory described in these words, it knows no bottom, it knows no bounds. And remember what's happening here. Back in Exodus chapter 33, as we said just a few minutes ago, Moses had made this really breathtakingly audacious request of God. Moses had asked God to show him his glory, to reveal to him something of who God was. And at the very end of chapter 33, God had said that he would grant that request. In Exodus 33 verses 19 through 23, God had said that he would do these two things that we mentioned a minute ago. First, God would allow Moses to glimpse the outer margins of his glory. Moses wouldn't be allowed to see the fullness of God's glory. Had he done that, Moses would have disintegrated. But he would be allowed to glimpse the very outer margins of the glory of the living God. And then secondly, God said that he would proclaim his name before Moses. And that might sound a little peculiar, but in biblical terms, someone's name spoke of who that person was. A name wasn't just a group of letters that refer to a specific person. A name provided an intentional window into who that person was. And so when God tells Moses that he'll proclaim his own name to Moses, he's making a trembling promise. He's promising that he'll show Moses who he is, that he will speak of and that he will speak out of his own inmost being. And that promised overwhelming self-revelation of God is what we find recorded in our passage. God's passing before Moses. He's proclaiming his name to Moses just as he promised that he would do. And what's striking is that in the midst of recording this event, Moses doesn't really record what you might expect him to record. And when you read back in Exodus chapter 33 that God would allow Moses to both see and to hear something of his glory. Our minds, our curiosity is magnetically drawn to the seeing of God. What on earth did that look like? That's what we want to know. But Moses doesn't tell us. In verse 5, Moses tells us that the Lord did descend on Sinai's height. He stood with him there. And in verse 6, Moses tells us that God did indeed pass before him. But the weight of Moses's description is on what God said, his disclosure, his proclamation of his name. And obviously Moses is writing here, so it makes sense for him to focus on what God said. And that's much more easily written than what Moses saw. But even so, it's notable that when Moses sets down to record an event in which he both saw and heard the glory of God, he spends almost no time describing what he saw. And he records meticulously what he heard. And what Moses heard is wondrous. It's God's own description of who He is. Moses had asked God to tell him the central glory of who He was. And this is God's response. It's really no wonder that this passage, these words, they take on a sacred power even within the confines of the Scripture. In this sacred description, God begins by repeating his own name twice. In verse six, we see that God proclaimed the Lord, the Lord twice. God repeats this name, Lord. Now, y'all are familiar with this. You know, whenever the scriptures have the name Lord. And they write it in all capital letters. What's being translated is the personal covenant name of God. You know, sometimes you hear people speak of this name as Jehovah. Sometimes you hear people speak of it as Yahweh. There are differences of opinion on how exactly to pronounce it. But what's important is that this is the personal name that God has revealed to Israel. You know, back in Exodus chapter 3, when Moses had stood before the burning bush, this is the name that God had revealed to him. This is the personal, intimate name that God has given to his people. God has spoken all of creation into being. All of reality is to call him God Almighty. But Israel, his people, they call him Jehovah. It's His personal, precious name. And it reveals a tremendous amount about Him. The name essentially means, I Am. It's a name that speaks of God's self-existence. And this is one of the most complex, difficult, glorious truths about God. That He is self-existent. He doesn't depend upon anything else for his being. He's not from anything or of anything or dependent on anything else. He simply is. It's significant and it's helpful, as we noted just a minute ago, that when God revealed this name to Moses back in Exodus chapter 3, he did so at the burning bush. When this name first entered Moses's ears, Moses was standing before a bush that was engulfed in fire. And do you remember what the scriptures pointed out about that scene? Back in Exodus chapter 3 at verse 2, the scriptures tell us pointedly that the bush was not consumed. And in some ways, it's almost misleading to call it the burning bush because the point of the glory is that the bush wasn't burning. Normal fire needs fuel. The existence of a fire depends on the fuel. So when the fuel's gone, when the wood's gone, the fire disappears. The fire doesn't exist by itself. It needs other things. It draws its existence from other things. But not the fire that Moses saw. The fire that represents the presence of God. It doesn't need fuel. It exists by itself. It has its being in itself. It needs nothing. It just is fire. And so it is with God himself. He's self-existent. He has his existence in himself and of himself. He depends on nothing. He draws his existence from nothing. He simply is. He is reality. And what that means, among other things, Is that everything God is preparing to say about himself is eternally, unchangeably true. There's no contingency about it. There's no variable that alters it. There's nothing you can tweak or modify to change it. Your normal fire. You can make it larger, you can make it smaller by adding fuel, taking away fuel, by changing how much oxygen the fire gets. You can use other things on which the fire depends to control and to change the fire. But not a fire that needs no fuel. It is what it is and there's nothing that can change it. And so it is with the God who's self-existent. He is what he is eternally, unchangeably, irrevocably. He is what he is because he has his being in himself and of himself and nothing can change him. Our God is self-existent. And so when he tells us who he is, that never changes. And in verses 6 and 7, after he's given a glimpse of this inconceivable, overwhelming majesty, that's precisely what God does. He tells us more about who he is. In verses 6 and 7, God enumerates this list of his characteristics or his attributes. These are specific details about his character. And now certainly God, being the God who is, You know, these descriptions that God gives here, they aren't exhaustive. There's more that could be said about what God is. But the descriptions that God gives here are true. They reflect the very core of who God is. And one of the first things to emerge from this description is the faithful covenant mercy of God. In verse six, God begins by saying that he is merciful and gracious. He's merciful. He restrains judgment. He bestows pardon on those who ought to be crushed. And He's gracious. He gives good things. He bestows blessings. And He bestows them on those who haven't merited them. And not only is He a God of restraining mercy and lavishing grace, but He also is, as the verse says, slow to anger, as we find in verse 6. He's patient. He abides with the rebellious. His anger doesn't just flare at the first transgression. Faced with the outrage of sin, the mercy of God restrains deserved judgment as he patiently, long-sufferingly waits to lavish the fullness of his grace upon his people. And the staggering grace of God, it doesn't come from some meager store. that's always walking the periphery of being depleted. No, God, as verse 6 tells us, is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. God's love, His unwavering commitment, the radiance of His mercy and His grace and His patience, it exceeds all measures. If you could trace the expanse of the love of God and the faithfulness of God, you'd find no outer limit. His goodness and His mercy and His truth. They have no beginning. They have no end. They engulf eternity. And so we're not surprised by what we find in verse 7. Where we find or read of God keeping steadfast love for thousands. Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. God's relentless love, it never ends. And it expresses itself in forgiveness, in mercy. It's never exhausted, it's never depleted, it's never run its course, it's never reached its limit. It's a mercy of infinite supply. It's a love so vast, so deep, so high, so broad, so long, that it envelops thousands of generations. All of them having their every transgression washed away. You know, God there in verse seven is being intentionally repetitive. He says he'll forgive iniquity and transgression and sin. God, he's piling up different ways of referring to rebellion against his name in order to make it plain that there is nothing, nothing not covered by his boundless mercy. There's nothing beyond the pale of a mercy that knows no containing. My brothers and sisters, if that doesn't make your heart sing. And I tremble and I weep for you. The God of the scriptures is a God of irrepressible, inexhaustible, overwhelming, endless mercy. There's no sin committed so far from him. There's no stain of sin so deep. There's no sin of such towering evil that his forgiving love can't bury it out of all sight. Even that sin, even that thing that you did. It's lost in the blood. And that love is not something that God shows begrudgingly. It's not something that has to be extorted from him. It's part of who he is. The forgiving love that you need is nestled in the very being of God. It's who he is. It's not a passing or a coaxed inclination. It's him. But of course, that's That's not all that the majestic and living God says in verse seven, having said that he endlessly forgives iniquity and transgression and sin. God goes on in the very same breath. To say that he is the God who will by no means clear the guilty. God's a God of mercy. But he also is a God of justice. The guilty won't be cleared. They won't be allowed to go free their sin unjudged. And again, this is part of who God is. It's part of what he says when he's describing himself. God is a God of holiness and justice. He can't simply allow sin to go unjudged. Rebellion can't stand in the presence of who God is. Out of the overflow in the expression of who he is. God judges the guilty. And that judgment, it's no light affair. The next word that God says in verse seven, they are initially quite jarring. At the close of verse seven, God speaks of himself as visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. And when people read those words, they very often take them as being incredibly unfair, incredibly hard. It seems that God is saying that he'll punish people for sins that their great, great grandparents had committed. But that's not what God is saying here. Elsewhere, in places such as Deuteronomy, chapter 24, verse 16, Ezekiel, chapter 18, verse 20, The Scriptures make it plain that God does not judge one generation for the sins committed by another generation. In our passage this evening, God isn't describing some sort of generational judgment. But rather, He's driving home the seriousness of sin and the perpetual, tireless presence of His judgment against that sin. Sin is almost like a contagious cancer. The sinful habits, the sinful conduct, the sinful thoughts, the sinful speech of one generation, they are imbibed by the next generation. And the wickedness of the fathers is replicated in their sons. So in a very real sense, one man's sin is bringing judgment upon his children because his rebellion is setting the course for their rebellion. And that rebellion will meet with God's judgment just as certainly as will the sin of the father. Sin is gravely serious. God won't clear the guilty. And the sin that has brought that guilt upon the guilty, it will infect their children. And it will infect the children of their children. And each time that rebellion is given as an inheritance, it shall always meet with the same ever-present judgment of God. The sin, the guilt of one man will be judged. Just as it had been judged in his father, who had taught that rebellion to him. And just as it had been judged in his grandfather who had taught that sin to his father. And just as it had been judged in his great grandfather who had taught that sin to his father. God's judgment against sin will never relent. It will never subside. It will never be exhausted. It will never be forgotten. It will chase the iniquity of the wicked through every generation. God's standards don't change and they don't grow stale. And they don't get tired. Now, brothers and sisters, there is here a sobering challenge for all of us. Your sin is disfiguring those who come after you. Your sin is ripening your children. It's ripening your grandchildren. It's ripening their children after them for judgment. I honestly can't list for you all of the things that I do simply because they're what my father did. And I'm no exception. We teach by our very example, those who follow after us. And that doesn't apply just to biological families, it applies to the church. It applies to the family of God as well. I couldn't list for you all the things that I do simply because they're what other Christians did when I was being reared in the faith. My parents, the elders in the church, my pastor, certain men and women in the congregation, even within the family of God, a family of faith rather than a family of physical descent. Even there, we teach by our very example, all of those who are following after us. So what are you teaching? What rebellion are you passing on as an inheritance? If you treat God and His things lightly. His worship, His word, prayer. If you treat God as someone who can be put in second place. Who can be put after an idol. Someone who cares only about external habit. Rather than a sincere heart. If you treat God as someone whose claims on you, your time, your heart, your resources, that that claim can be overridden by the claims of someone or something else. Then don't shudder when you see around you in your biological family, in your spiritual family. Don't shudder when you see others think that there are things in this world more important, more worthy than God. If you speak critically, if you speak unlovingly of the church or of people in the church. Don't recall when you hear the same murderous speech on the lips of your children. Or on the lips of the man in the pew behind you. If you act and speak and live as if you have deserved, as if you have earned everything you have. Don't marvel when your children can't see Jesus obscured behind their own self-righteousness. Sin is serious and there's no limit to God's punishment of it. But before we move on, I challenge you not only to see yourself as the first person in this genealogy of sin and to consider what rebellions you are passing on to others. But see yourself also as the third generation or the fourth generation in this genealogy. So often we adopt attitudes, habits, heart dispositions, we adopt hatreds from those who have come before us. And we assume that somehow the pedigree of these sins makes our embrace of them acceptable. It doesn't. If your great-grandfather had a bad temper, and your grandfather had a bad temper, and your father had a bad temper, none of that diminishes God's hatred of your bad temper. If your great-grandmother was critical, and your grandmother was critical, and your mother was critical, none of that makes your critical spirit any less odious in God's sight. God hates sin. And he hates it and he judges it in the fourth generation as relentlessly as he did in the first generation. Now, we've skimmed the very outermost surface of this glorious revelation of God, we've seen his faithful mercy, we've seen his tireless justice. And we need also to notice one critically important thing about both of these aspects of God's character. When we think about the portrait that's being sketched here in verses six and seven, when we think about God being merciful and being just. We almost automatically think of God as being merciful sometimes and in some situations and then being just at other times and other situations. We think of this as being sort of two sides of a coin. Sometimes you see and know God's justice. Sometimes you see and know God's mercy. But that's not what the passage says. God doesn't say that he's sometimes merciful, sometimes just. God says that he is merciful and he is just. He's always merciful and he's always just. If God is merciful, if mercy is situated at the very core of who he is. He can never be not merciful. Mercy is part of who he is. And he can never be unjust if justice is part of who he is. God is always both. He's always perfectly merciful and he's always perfectly just. Now, the fancy preacher word for this that you can take home and impress your friends is the simplicity of God. God is a simple being. That doesn't mean that he's simplistic, of course, but what it means is that he's one. He's unified in all that he is. He's not partly merciful, partly just. He doesn't have a merciful side and a just side. He's entirely merciful and he's entirely just. His justice and his mercy, they interpenetrate each other. He's just in his mercy and he's merciful in his justice. He doesn't lay down justice so that he can be merciful and he doesn't lay down mercy in order that he might be just. He is always both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. The God who never changes and in whom there is no shadow of turning, he always is both. Now. I know this might seem a little complicated. I hope it's not frustratingly so. But I don't want to shortchange you by glossing over the grandeur of what God is giving his people in these verses. If God is giving his people steak here, I can't very well grind it up, cheapen it and give you a hamburger. God here is opening up the yawning depths of his character. in such a way that we might be overwhelmed by the gospel. Because as you might be beginning to detect in his description of who he is, God has described a seeming contradiction. God has said that he's merciful and gracious. And he said that he will by no means clear the guilty. It would seem that both can't be true. I've sinned, endlessly, ceaselessly, I've sinned. If God is merciful, he'll forgive me. If God is just, he'll crush me. He can't do both. These words filling Moses' ears, words from God's own lips, are describing a contradiction that seemingly just can't be. God's holding out attention That Moses doubtlessly can't fully understand how God can be both merciful and just. And then centuries later, Jesus invaded history. And he said before his disciples and before his opponents, he said, I am. Seven times in John's gospel, Jesus explicitly takes to himself the name, I am. In that and in many other ways in John and the other gospels, Jesus is asserting that he is God. He is Jehovah, the eternal son of God, the second person of the Trinity is God. And in him, we see finally how God is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. You know, sometimes you'll hear people, sometimes even Very famous people allude to the fact that on the cross, Satan was tormenting Jesus. But we all know that's a lie. In the Gospels, you see Satan using his every demonic resource to keep Jesus off the cross. When Jesus hung on Golgotha's cross, when he cried out in desolation, When he almost was at the end of his eternal self, it was God the father who was ravaging him. The just judge of all creation was the one brutalizing the sinless son of God as if he were the accursed one. And we know why that is. The father had taken all of the sin of all of his people through all of the ages and all of the generations, and he placed it on Christ. Who willingly had accepted that weight of cursing. The father had loaded down his beloved son with the sin that he hated. And on that sin and on the beloved bleeding son who had become that sin. The God whose judgment against sin is unrelenting and unflagging, he poured out the fullness of his just and holy wrath. That wrath, unmitigated, undiluted until Jesus's cries of desertion gave way to the shout, it's finished. The perfect justice of God against sin had been satisfied. Its demands had been met. Its penalty had been paid. The judgment was finished. And to those whose sins had been judged in the blistering wrath of Calvary, there broke forth a mercy that will drown all the ages. Men and women who ought to have been in Jesus's place on the cross will instead be by his side in glory. The seeming contradiction, the seeming tension in who God is, has its answer in one word. Jesus. In the black filthiness of Golgotha and in the blinding glow of resurrection morning, we see that God is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. God the Son satisfying in his own bleeding body. The demands of his own justice in the place of a sinful people so that the triune God and the glorious gospel can be seen to be just in his mercy and merciful in his justice. Merciful in his justice because he satisfies his justice in a representative of his people. And just in his mercy, because he's judging those sins that he pardons in his people. On Mount Sinai, centuries before Christ would die and rise again, the living God was revealing himself. He was disclosing his own character to Moses. And in the impenetrable depths of glory that God uncovers, we see that the God of Exodus 34, Could only be satisfied by the cross because only there could perfect justice and perfect mercy meet. And become utterly inseparable from each other. Through the ages, as God's people leaned on these words, as they founded their cries for mercy and their hopes for glory on this description of who God is. They were leaning on Jesus. Because only in Jesus, the crucified, risen son of God, can the God of Exodus 34 be true. A God perfectly just and perfectly merciful and altogether glorious. Now, brothers and sisters, if you want to know the God of Exodus 34, The God who welcomes his people into his presence and wraps them in a mercy and a grace that will never grow tired and never grow old, that will never be depleted. You can know that God only in Jesus Christ. If you believe in Christ, then in him. The justice of God against your sin is satisfied so that as the Apostle Paul says in Romans chapter 8, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation for them. Because that condemnation has been endured by him. We all will stand before the Lord, but for the judge of all the earth. will stand before the judge who is unrelentingly just. If you have any hope of finding mercy, it must be that mercy that is itself just. It must be a mercy that also satisfies the demands of an infinite justice and an infinite holiness. If you're to find mercy, it must be in Jesus, the Jesus who lavishes a just mercy on those who come to him. So come to him, find a salvation extravagant in mercy and extravagant in justice. Now, obviously, we don't have much time for the rest of the passage and the immensity of who God is takes a lot of time, but for the one minute version, We do see in verses 1-4 of the passage that this majestic God, this living God, He saves His people. You know, in those verses God tells Moses to make new stone tablets. He tells Moses that He will continue the covenantal relationship with Israel that ought to have been shattered by their sin. You see much more of that if you read the rest of Exodus chapter 34. But we need also to notice a third thing. In verses 8 and 9, we see that the majestic and living God saves his people and he wins their hearts. Beginning in verse 8, we read, And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us. For it is a stiff necked people and pardon our iniquity and our sin And take us for your inheritance. When Moses sees and hears the glory of God. He crumbles to the ground, bowing down in worship. Moses here is undone. That's the sort of God we serve, that's the sort of God we find in Jesus, one whose glory is literally unbearable. It's not that His glory impresses us or that it awes us. When we see His glory, when we truly see the glory of the living God, we collapse. We're undone. And like Moses lying on the ground, we almost want to disappear so that all the glory will be fixed on God alone. Moses doesn't want attention. He doesn't want prominence. As a man who heard God's voice, he wants to worship. He wants to worship God, the worship of him and of all of the people to come to God alone. And look what Moses says at the very close of verse nine. You can almost hear Moses's voice quaking at the far extremities of his ability even to speak and crying out, take us for your inheritance. Moses has been so overwhelmed by the glory of God that that last stronghold of sin, that seemingly unbreachable idol of self-worship, even it has been cast down. Moses doesn't say, Lord, be mine, be my God. He says, let me be yours. Take me, take us as your inheritance. The majestic and living God has irrevocably won the heart of Moses. And that's what he does with all of his people. The majestic and living God saves his people and he wins their hearts. And overwhelmed by the God, eternally merciful, eternally just, And in all of it, eternally glorious, overwhelmed by this incomprehensible God who has saved them, brought them to himself. His people fall to the ground and they beg him to make them his own. May that, by the power of the spirit, be the cry of our hearts tonight and in every moment. seeing God in the full splendor of his glory. May we cry out, Lord, make us yours. Amen. Let's pray. Our great God and Father in heaven, we do come before you tonight Overwhelmed by the glory of who you are. You are the God of perfect mercy. The God who washes clean all of the transgression of his people. The God who takes a wickedness that is as red as crimson. And makes it white as snow. And you are the God of infinite justice. The God who sees the inmost rebellions of our hearts and of our minds. And you are the God who is both. The God who has judged the sin of his people in the Lord Jesus. In order that we might stand before you not as condemned sinners. And not only simply as forgiven sinners. but as those who have been made righteous with the righteousness of Christ. We give you thanks, O Lord, for your mercy. We praise you for your justice. And we ask, O Lord, that moment by moment you would work by your spirit in our hearts. That we might love Jesus more. That we might be overwhelmed by your glory more. And that we might more and more be a people who are yours. and who live lives that show forth your glory to a watching world. Do what we pray, for we ask it in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.