This is the word of God, Isaiah 40, beginning in verse nine. Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good news. Lift it up. Fear not. Say to the cities of Judah, behold, your God, behold, the Lord God comes with might and his arm rules for him. Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him. He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with you. Well, this is God's holy and infallible word. Let's pray again for his blessing. God, we come to you through your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that as we gather, even now, the Lord Jesus is among us. He walks among his churches. He leads us in this worship. And so we pray that you would help us in our hearing and preaching to glorify your son, the Lord Jesus. We pray that he would be magnified in the worship that takes place in our own hearts, in our minds, as we think about these things from your word. And we pray for the spirit of Christ, the same spirit given to Christ, the same spirit who glorifies Christ and teaches us all things about him. We confess our need for him and we ask for his help. So give us these things by your grace towards us, we pray through Jesus Christ, amen. So do you want the good news or the bad news? I'm sure you've said that to someone, maybe at a meeting or a phone call, you say, do you want the good news or the bad news? What about you? Do you want the good news or do you want the bad news? Well, in some sense, nobody wants bad news because that's why we call it bad. But really, if you stop and think about it, it is interesting that many people do like to hear bad news. And saying in the media is that if it bleeds, it leads. The media knows that they can get you glued to the TV channel if they start off by telling you all the horrible things that are happening in your town or in your state or country. People love to hear about scandals. They love to hear about what conspiracies might be going on in the deep state and what's happening behind the scenes and all the bad stuff that everybody else doesn't know about. People grab their popcorn when a president gets in a fight with his best friend billionaire and everybody just is glued to find out who's going to say what next. People love to watch these sorts of silly fights going on. People love doomsayers. They seem to follow after a man who can say Jesus is coming back by 2026 or that the climate is going to destroy the earth in 20 years or that the economy is about to collapse and everybody needs to invest in precious metals or that AI is about to take over the universe and kill off all of the human race. These are the things that people click on. These are the things that get you to turn the channel to watch that news. story. So it's interesting, isn't it, how much people like to hear about bad news. I think the reason people like to hear all this is really because people have fears, especially those who don't know Christ and their hope is in this world only. They have a lot of fears about the climate destroying the earth or AI taking over civilization. And so hearing the bad news is a way of having control. It's a way of being able to understand and predict something that might happen. If we can kind of wrap our minds around it, then it gives us some sort of ease that at least we know what is coming. And I think that's why people like to hear bad news. But even this desire to hear bad news actually reveals to us that what we all really want is the good news. We all long for and know that what we want is a message that everything will be all right, that there is a purpose to the world, that there's a purpose to our lives, and that there is some reason for the sufferings that we go through. We want to hear good news deep down inside. And so the book of Isaiah here, the prophet Isaiah has a message for us of good news, a message for the world to send out messengers with good news. And especially Isaiah's message we're going to see is towards the people of God. It's directed to the people of God that we are the ones who are actually the recipients of the blessings of this good news. God wants to announce good news to all the world. He wants to offer a savior to the whole world. But Christians can say that we have even better news than that. God is not only offered as Savior, but God is truly our Savior. God is the one who shows his grace and salvation to his people. We don't just have an offer of a possible salvation, but we have an announcement that salvation is actually given to us. And this is the good news that God wants to announce through Isaiah, the good news that can bring life, joy, and comfort to the people of God. So let's look more at what Isaiah says here. And first we see that God calls a gospel herald. We have a gospel herald here in verse nine. Verse nine says, get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good news. Get you up in ESV. It doesn't really make a lot of sense in English. Get you up. But it's the literal of what's underlying it in the Hebrew. Or as the King James will say, get thee up. Get the up was because it's a it's a repetitive. The you is in the verb. Get up. But it's also there's the pronoun you. It's like he's saying it twice. God is saying to this person, this herald, whoever he is, you get up. And this idea up is used three times in this verse. Get up, lift up, lift up your voice. because God wants this message or the messenger to go up high, to go up high on this mountain. Why does he want him to get on a mountain? Well, it's because from a mountain, it's easier to hear. More people can hear the message when he's on top of a high mountain. Just like this pulpit is up here, it's on top of a platform, it's above you, and there's theological meaning behind that, but there's a practical reason for that, is that when a voice is coming from down there, there are all these objects, like chairs in the way, and they absorb the sound waves, but from up here, the sound waves go out and they're going down to your ears, from the front to the back. It's easier for you to hear when the voice comes from on high. And so when they put cell phone towers or radio towers, they don't dig wells down into the ground or dig holes down in the ground and put the towers in the ground. They put them up high so that the signal can be broadcast. And this is what God wants. Literally, that this message would be cast broadly, it would be broadcast from up high to as many people as possible. Go up to a high mountain and preach this message. Who is this herald? Well, in the way it's translated here, it sounds like it's referring to Zion and Jerusalem. He says, O Zion, as if Zion is the herald. But the word O, or the word, using it as a noun, is not literally there, so it seems better to understand it in a different way. That there's this herald who is preaching to Zion, and to Jerusalem. And we have some parallel verses to give us this idea. If you want, you can just flip over a couple pages to chapter 41. And in chapter 41, verse 27, it says, I was the first to say to Zion, behold, here they are. And I give to Jerusalem a herald of good news. So God says he gives a herald to Jerusalem, the herald is not Jerusalem, it's given to Jerusalem or Isaiah 52, verse seven. How beautiful upon the mountain are the feet of those who preach the good news. And then he says, what is it? Those who say to Zion, your God reigns. And then we have a kind of a parallel of the same message here in chapter 40. It's behold your God. In chapter 52, it's your God reigns. And so in chapter 52, it's this messenger on the mountain. who is preaching to Zion, say to Zion, your God reigns. So this herald, this anonymous preacher is to preach to Jerusalem, to the people of God, and then as this message is received by them, it is then spread to the cities of Judah, They are to then say to the cities of Judah this same message. So who is God preaching to? Or who does God want this message to go to? It's to the remnant, Jerusalem, that is left, the faithful remnant that remains after all of this exile and destruction and warfare. It's to the people of God. God's people need to hear the good news of God's salvation. In one sense, we need to hear the good news because it's how God saves His elect people. God's elect have been chosen from before the foundation of the world, but they are born into this world dead in their sins. How are those dead in their sins made alive? How are those who are perishing made to be imperishable? We'll remember what Peter said last week. It's through the living and abiding word of God that brings people alive. When God's people hear the good news, the elect are saved and brought to life. but also there's a sense in which even after we are Christians, we still need the good news of the gospel preached to us. As Christians struggle with temptations, as they struggle with their sins, as they look at their lives and they see how slow their sanctification is, as we see how much sin is still corrupting our lives and our hearts as we go through our days and we face different doubts and our faith waivers. What do we need? We need a herald who will tell us that God has good news to say to you who are Christians. God uses his good news to help his people persevere until the end. God uses the preaching of the word, the heralding of the message of the gospel, not just for the unbeliever, but for the believer. That's the means of grace. It's one of the primary means of grace that God uses to help Christians to grow, to help Christians to persevere and to grow and strengthen in their faith. This is what Christians need. One of the main keys to your spiritual growth is to sit under the preaching of God's word. God sends heralds. heralds of the gospel to help his church to grow. God didn't say, I need some clowns, clowns, climb up to the top of the mountains and do a comedy show, do a clown routine so that my people will be entertained. He didn't say, hey, let's get some therapists to climb up top of the mountain and get a couch and do some therapy because my people need more therapy. He says, my people need preachers. My people need the gospel proclaimed to them. And so he sends heralds of good news. And he tells this herald to lift up his voice with strength. And he says again, lift it up. Fear not. So we see there the Reason that he might not lift up his voice is because of his fear. Now, why would someone be afraid of preaching good news? Lift up your voice, don't fear. I got a message of good news for them and don't be afraid to say it to them. Does that make sense? Why would he fear to preach good news? Well, think of a dictator. Dictators put everybody in fear. And if you're around a dictator, not that you ever will be, but if you were, you would think that every little thing that you did, or every word that you said, you would be afraid that you might offend him, set him off, trip the wire, and he goes into a rage, and that's the end of your life. You get beheaded. You cross the dictator, it's the end of your life. Or think of someone who is abusive in the same way. You never know what you are gonna say or what you're gonna do that is gonna light the fire of their anger and then you're gonna receive the onslaught of abuse. It's not that the messenger needs to fear because of the message that he has. It's because of who he's preaching to. It's because of who is receiving the message. Not everybody wants to hear the good news, and people might cower even though it is a message of good news. The people who receive it don't receive it well, and so the messenger would cower in fear. You think of Peter. Peter fulfills this verse almost literally. Peter goes to Jerusalem in Acts chapter two, And he is in the middle of the city and he stands up and it says literally in Acts 2, he lifted up his voice. He lifted up his voice and he preached in Jerusalem and he had the Holy Spirit to fill him with boldness. Why did he need boldness? Because he points to the Jews in front of him and he says, you crucified the Lord and Christ. And so the message of the gospel, though it is good news, it can be a fearful message to proclaim because you don't know how people are going to receive it. And yet God calls us to preach with strength, to preach loudly, to preach without fear. This is a lesson even for any Christian, to speak the truth, to not feel intimidated, by what you know is true. The secular world, they try to push their agenda. They try to make their months of the calendar to always be about their agenda, always just trying to push it in your face so that you will cower, so that you will be essentially brainwashed to follow the ways of the secular culture. Why don't we Christians, why don't we just say, well, here's what I think. Well, here's what's true. And fear not, we need not cower to simply, kindly and gently, but directly say what is right and wrong, what is true and false. Because our message is good news. It's not just bad news. We have a message of salvation. We have a message of human flourishing. of how people can have more joy than in the lies that they're being told about how a marriage can actually honor God and bring you joy if you would live according to that biblical pattern of marriage. These are all good news for people. We don't need to fear and cower before the world. So the good news is for us, even Christians too, We need to remember the message of the gospel. That God is not wrathful towards his people. That God does not see us and condemn us in our sins, but God sees us in Christ. And so this is the love that he has for us. This is the delight that he has for his people. Remember this message as a Christian. God wants this message broadcast. God wants it proclaimed. And so this verse also reminds us to pray that God would send out heralds, that God would send people as the feet upon the mountains who proclaim the message of the gospel. We should pray and have in our minds that there would be missionaries sent out from our church. that perhaps some of our children would grow up and they would one day be the pastors sent out across the nation, they would be the pastors sent out to different nations around the world, and they themselves would be the ones planting churches. It doesn't just have to be the other people that we hear about in other churches and in other places. It can be among us. because we know that the harvest is great. And God tells us to pray for laborers. Why not those laborers be even from among us? So God sends out the herald. Now, what is his message? Well, this brings us to the second point about the coming Lord. The message is about the coming Lord. At the end of verse nine, He says, say to the cities of Judah, behold, your God. That is the message, your God, and then as he's going to continue on, the Lord God comes, the Lord is coming, the Lord is coming with might and he's coming to save, he's coming to tend his flock like a shepherd. This message, behold your God, is very similar to the message of the voice in the wilderness from verse three. Prepare the way of the Lord. Why do you need to prepare a way? Because the Lord's coming. The glory of the Lord is gonna be revealed when he appears, when he comes. So prepare his way. And so really verses 9 to 11 are kind of like the central point of this whole chapter. This is the meat of it. This is the main meaning with everything that we're saying in this chapter. Everything revolves around this one point. God is coming. God is coming to save and this is the comfort for God's people. This is the voice in the wilderness, what he's crying out about. This is why we need to understand that the grass withers and the flower fades. But the word of God will stand forever. This is the word of God that God is coming to save. This is what the rest of the chapter is about. Who is this God who's coming? The God who can hold the waters in his hand, the all powerful, invincible and invisible God, he's the God who is coming. And so this is the message. Behold, your God. Behold, the Lord God comes with might. And you can see again another repetition of something that happens three times. Behold, behold, behold. You just you get the excitement in this, these three verses, the urgency, the joy. Get up, go up, lift up your voice, because behold, behold, behold, God is coming. Now, this behold, maybe you remember from a few weeks ago, it's not really like a verb, necessarily. That's not the function. It's not the main command is to behold, but it's like an attention getter. It's a marker to point to the next words, your God. So the focus of these verses is not on how we behold, The focus is on God. What is God doing? God is coming. So because God is coming, we need to look. We need to pay attention. We need to notice. Imagine the tsunami is coming, some island, and there are the people going about their business. They're in the town near the shore and they're just living their lives. And yet someone is able to spot or somehow find out far away there's this tsunami and they see it coming. And so what do they do? They might run up to the top of the hill or they might get on the roof of their house and they will wave their arms and they'll say, everybody, stop what you're doing. Get out of here. Time to evacuate. There's a tsunami coming. They will set off an alarm. They will sound a siren. The siren is meant to get everybody out because something is coming. The Lord is coming. That's what the messenger is supposed to do. He's supposed to get up to a mountain and he's supposed to wave his arms and he's supposed to yell out as loud as he can. God is coming. God is coming with might. And for some, that's a message of bad news. For some, that's a message of wrath. And the messenger is waving his hands and he's saying, God is coming. You need to flee from the wrath to come because everybody will face the judgment seat of Christ when he comes. But remember, he's not in particular sent to the enemies. He's not sent in particular to announce this message to the whole world. But he's announcing this to the people of God. That's why he says, behold, your God. Not just that God is coming, but your God comes, he comes with might. He's your God. He's your covenant God. He is the one who has pledged himself to you. He's the one you've given your life to. You've given your life to worship him. You've sacrificed for him. You have stood up and announced the truth and you've heralded the good news and people have tried to put you in a corner and make you cower in fear. And yet he will come. He will come with his reward and he will reward you. Your God is coming. What we need is to have the presence of God with us. And the announcement that we hear is that God gives us everything that we need. God comes to be present with his people. God comes to help his people, to deliver them, to rescue them. It's as if his people are there with ruins all around them. They are fighting the battles and they are about to give up. They are walking through this world, wearily walking in the wilderness and they're full of doubts. Their faith is ebbing away and they have little faith left and they want to just throw in the towel. They're about to grab the white flag and they're about to wave it in the air and they want to surrender and they say, there's no point in continuing all this. There's no point in continuing this suffering and affliction because God hasn't come through. And it's as if you're about to pull out the white flag, white towel, and you're about to wave it in the air and then you hear the messenger. Wait. Your God is coming. He's on the way. He's about to come and his arm will come and rule for you and he will bring his reward for you. So don't give up. Continue to persevere, continue to cling in faith. Because God comes. For his people. He comes. and he rescues his people. God's presence is promised to us to give us everything that we need to persist in this broken world, to continue to follow him no matter how hard it gets. Think of second Corinthians nine verse eight, maybe a verse for you to memorize if you haven't memorized it. God is able to make all grace abound to you so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. That's God's promise, all sufficiency in all things at all times. And why can you do that? Because God is able to make all grace abound to you. That's what God does. Behold, your God, your God comes, your God has come to you with all grace abounding to you, the chief of sinners, he makes his grace abound to you. And that is how you have all sufficiency in all things at all times. So going on to verse 10, the Lord God comes with might, his arm rules for him. His arm is the metaphor for his power. As the king, he is able to rule and defeat his enemies. It's like, I think of a chessboard with all these chess pieces on it, and somebody waves his arm. You just wave your arm and knock over all the chess pieces. Was that very hard for you? Is it hard to knock over chess pieces with your arm? No, because they are so small and lightweight in comparison to the power of your arm. And this is God with His enemies. His enemies gather together. And you know the great battle in Revelation 19? It's not much of a battle. The false prophet and the beast, they gather together, and it says, oh, they collect all their armies, and then it's basically like one verse, and God takes them, and He throws them into the lake of fire. That's the battle. There's not much of a battle. It's God's arm coming, and He just wipes them out, and collects them up, throws them into the lake of fire. Ezekiel 38, 39, the battle of Gog and this big warrior Gog comes along and and God is leading him along, trying to bring him to fight against Israel. And then he shows up and in one moment, Gog falls. He's dead. Because God's arm is so much more powerful than all of his enemies. And so when God comes, he's coming to destroy his enemies, and he's doing it on behalf of his people. God comes, it says in verse 10, with his reward. His recompense is with him. Recompense, that's not an everyday word we use in our times, but just think of compensation. It's the same kind of idea. God comes with his compensation, his payment. He comes to Give us the payments for all the things that we have done and endured in this life. We have served him faithfully. We have endured to the end. And so in the end comes and when God comes, he brings his reward with him and he comes and he gives us that reward. God comes to save. He comes and he says to you, the Christian, well done, good and faithful servant. Here's your reward. You can enter into the joy of your master. When God comes, he comes with his heavenly rewards. As Paul says, the light and momentary affliction. Is creating an internal weight of glory for us. And so as we go through this life and we face all of these momentary afflictions one by one by one, you are accruing. Interest. You are accruing a reward. You are building up for yourself by every affliction that happens. It's like as if God is kind of chiseling off some things here in this life and he's putting it over here and he's creating this thing called an eternal weight of glory. And the more momentary afflictions that are happening, the bigger that weight of glory gets. It's creating the eternal weight of glory. So when God comes, he comes with that crown, with that gold, whatever that reward is, whatever that looks like, it doesn't really explain it very much in the Bible, but he comes with a reward. And he says, well done. for all of the afflictions that you endured, for all the ways that you have persevered to the end, and yet you have not denied me, you have not loved your life unto death, here is your crown of glory. So as we think about this, you can ask yourself, do you live a life that is for that eternal weight of glory? Do you live a life such that You're not living for the rewards of this life, but you're living for the rewards that are to come. You're living a life that is so dedicated to the Lord, that is so dedicated to self-denial and loving others and helping and blessing others that you can say you're not living for what you're going to get here in this life. You're living, sacrificing, enduring affliction because you really believe that the reward comes later. Are you living that kind of life? Well, it's for the people of God who are doing that, that here is this message. God is coming. Well, now we come to the third part of this passage in verse 11. God comes and he comes as a caring savior, a caring savior. He will tend his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with young. Verse 11 is a glorious description of God. Because in verse 10. We have the mighty arm of God. Verse 12, we have the immeasurable power of God that can. Grab all the continents in a scoop and a spoon and hold all the waters in his hand. This is the immense, infinite power of God. And in between these two verses, we have the tenderness and gentleness of God. The arm of God that rules for him when he comes with might is the arm that comes to gather lambs. Shepherds have to be strong. And so God has described us tending his flock like a shepherd. Remember when Saul looked at David and he said, who are you to kill Goliath? You're just a, you're a little pipsqueak. You can't kill Goliath. And David said, who are you calling a pipsqueak? I have killed lions and bears. A lion or bear comes after one of my sheep. I go after them. I strike them and I rip their mouths open and I get those lambs out of the mouth of the lions. I've killed lions and bears with my own hands, David says. Shepherds were strong, strong enough to kill. They probably had some sort of weapon, some sort of staff or something, but strong enough to kill a lion and a bear. Shepherds would have to be strong to carry the lambs. Now in our day, it's said that a lamb could be up to 140 pounds in weight. I'm not quite sure if that was true in 700 BC or is pumping them with steroids these days, I don't know. But let's just say there was a lamb that was 140 pounds. What if that lamb gets to the bottom of a ravine and needs to be rescued? And the good shepherd is going to leave the 99 sheep and he's going to go rescue that one lamb. Well, now he's got this 140 pound backpack on and he's climbing cliffs with his hands. That's strength. The shepherd has to be strong, a shepherd has to use his strength to protect and care for the lambs. And this is what God does. He tends his flock like a shepherd, he gathers the lambs in his arms. And so we see the focus in these verses is on the care of God for his people, the tenderness, the gentleness that he has for his people, the lambs, when they are lost or sick or injured, they are especially easy prey for the predators. They are especially in danger And as we've been saying, it's the people of God in this situation, as they are being afflicted, as they are overcome with their sin, as they can't see what's going to happen in the future. They are easy prey for the enemy. They are easy prey for Satan's condemnations, his lies, his dredging up of things to make them feel guilty. We are easy prey. And it's when we are easy prey for the enemy that God comes in and he rescues. He comes in to protect. He comes and he saves and he gently cares for his sheep. At the end of the verse, it says he gently leads those that are with young. Notice he's not leading the young. He's leading those that are with young. He's leading the you, the mother lamb. The mother lamb has a litter and they all need her. And they're all going all over the place. And there are all these little lambs who can barely walk and they're in danger of the lions and the bears and whatever sort of predators around. And this mom's got to take care of three or four of them all at the same time. Mother has three, four kids and they're all going different directions and they're crawling all over north, south, east and west, and they're picking up crayons and sticking them in their mouths. And the mother's got to take care of all of them and make sure they're all safe. And she's overwhelmed. She's at her wits end. How can I do all this? And as those that God comes to lead. He leads the mother lamb who is at her wits end. with her young. And he says, let me help you. Let me guide you. Let me provide for you. Let me give strength for you. Let me give grace to help you in your times of need. That's the image. When we are most in need is when God comes. When we are most overwhelmed, God comes gently, gently to lead us. God comes. to gently handle his sheep. Again, God doesn't come to his sheep with condemnation. That's not the message. The message of the herald is not, you dumb sheep, what are you doing? I can't believe it's you again. How are you off the path again? I've had to rescue you 50 times and you still keep straying off the path. That's not the message of the herald. It's that God comes to rescue these very sheep. And I think this is really what Christians think God thinks of them. That God says to you again. Are you really this thick? Have you really not gotten the point yet? How many times do I have to tell you? No, that's not what God says to his people. God says you again. I've come to rescue you. That's my job is to rescue, to save you again. That's my job is to handle you gently. And so we know that this is fulfilled most of all in the person of Jesus Christ, the son of God. Now, Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd. When he says that he is the good shepherd, part of what he means is that he is the one who has come to bring God's salvation and to tend God's flock. That's what the shepherd does. He's come with his mighty arm to destroy the enemies and to use his mighty arm to care for the sheep of God. Jesus is the good shepherd, and he tells us who he is in heart in Matthew 11. I am gentle and lowly in heart. Jesus comes as the gentle shepherd. to care for his sheep, that all of his sheep might come to him when they are weary and find rest for their souls. So. Behold, your God means to behold Jesus Christ. Behold, the Lord Jesus. He is the one in whom God has come with might to tend his flock like a shepherd. You remember the famous words in John 19 when Jesus was taken to trial before Pontius Pilate and he had the purple robe put upon him. He had the crown of thorns placed upon his head and Pilate brings him out And he says to the crowd, as he points to Jesus, he says, behold, the man. Behold the man. A few verses later, he points again as they, as he says, you really want me to release him? And he says again, behold your king. And in other places, John tells us Pilate speaks better than he knows. Pilate says, behold the man. I'm not saying that he had Isaiah's words in his mind, but the truth does match up. That Pilate's behold the man is Isaiah's behold your God. It's when Jesus was standing there. suffering and being beaten. Not reviling in return, but treating gently even his enemies as he has that crown of thorns placed upon his head as he has led to the cross and hung up on the cross, nailed there. It's there where the people would look at him and say, behold, the man. That we can also say, behold, Your God, Jesus, God, man and savior. As he was dying on the cross, being nailed, he was taking the debt of sin upon himself, he was taking the records of debt that is against us, and that was what was being nailed to the cross as he was taking the wrath of God. As Jesus was hanging upon the cross, he was coming with his powerful arm to defeat his enemies. Satan was disarmed as the rulers and authorities were disarmed and Jesus triumphed over them, over them in open shame, as Colossians 2 says. He puts them to open shame by defeating the enemy, Satan, while he hangs upon the cross. So Jesus comes and as he dies, he defeats his enemies. And as he dies, he dies to gather in his sheep to be the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep. The good shepherd who will never let any one of his sheep go, the good shepherd who says, I have my sheep and I will hold on to them in my hand and no one, no enemy will be able to pluck them out of my hand. Why? Because his arm is powerful. The same powerful arm that destroys the enemies is the powerful arm that he uses to hold on to his lambs. Through all the afflictions and persecutions of life, through all the temptations and assaults of Satan, Jesus at the cross, by his death and resurrection, is the God who Isaiah says is coming to save. Behold your God and his glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Do you want the good news or the bad news? You've heard the good news. You've heard the good news, many of you, many times. You've heard the good news in the sermon, but I didn't ask if you wanted to hear the good news. I said, do you want the good news? Which one will you receive? Which one will you experience? Will you experience the bad news of God coming, coming for the second time in Jesus Christ to destroy all the enemies? Do you want to be among those enemies that are destroyed? Will you receive that bad news and participate and experience that? Or do you want the good news? Will the good news be for you more than just something that you hear about? Something that you know about in your head? Will the good news be something that you experience, something that becomes your life, something that as you hear it, God makes you alive and opens your eyes to see the glory of Jesus Christ? Well, that's what it means to have the good news. Don't just hear it. But experience it, see it with your spiritual eyes. Here is the good news, the message for you. Behold your God. Look to your God. Look to God in Jesus Christ who has died and risen from the dead. Look to him that he would save you and he will be your God. Let's pray. O Lord our God, to you, Father, and to the Lamb belong all praise and honor and glory and blessing and power and might. We thank you for your great might, O God, your might that you have displayed, especially in Jesus Christ, defeating his enemies by dying and rising from the dead. Lord, we thank you for this good news. We pray that Those who do not know it would look to Jesus Christ and find this good news would be even for them. We pray, Lord, for your church, for us, your people. Please help us to look to you in faith. We pray for your Holy Spirit to continue to comfort us that you might be this gentle shepherd for us. We ask these things through our chief shepherd, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.