All right, our texts this morning come from the scriptures in Leviticus. In Hebrew, they're the same as they were in Genesis, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, there we go, Numbers, Leviticus. They're the same as what we read last week, and we're finally going to be able to start dealing with them. Last week was kind of an introduction, but if you've got your Bible, turn to Leviticus chapter 16, and if you don't have your Bible, bring it next week, please, so that you can check and make sure that what I'm telling you is true. I might be a liar, you never know. I might slip something in there. Leviticus chapter 16 and verses 15 through 17. We're picking up in the middle of the passage here. God is giving Moses instruction about how to how to do the Day of Atonement and all the stuff that needs to be done on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur is what the Jews call it in Hebrew. And starting in verse 15, then he, that is the high priest, shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside of the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat in front of the mercy seat. Thus he shall make atonement for the holy place because of the uncleanness of the people of Israel and because of their transgressions and all their sins. And so he shall do for the tent of meeting which dwells with them in the midst of their uncleanness. No one may enter the tent of meeting from the time he enters to make atonement in the holy place until he comes out and is made atonement for himself and for his house and for all of the assembly of Israel. Now we kind of pop that passage and hold that in our minds and let's turn to the New Testament book of Hebrews and chapter 10. That's kind of way in the back. Sometimes the easiest way to find Hebrews is to go to Revelation and then go backwards a few books. And the books that you have to go backwards are small ones, so they don't take long. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 1 through 4. For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. Otherwise they would not have ceased to be offered since the worshipers having once been cleansed would no longer have any consciousness of sins. But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Father we ask this morning that you would make your book live for us and that you would show us yourself and your word and that you would show us ourselves and that your word would do what we sang about it doing in us that it would change us, that it would lead us home, and that home is not just a place. Home is a state. Home is a way of being in you and with you. So change us, Lord, into your likeness. In Jesus' name that we ask it, amen. Excuse me. So to start out by way of a review last week, I introduced the subject of the reform view of the sacraments. Now this is not how I had intended to start off my tenure here, but the elders and the deacons have consistently thought that given some of the issues that we've dealt with as a church in the past, that it would be good to go over this information kind of right out of the gate. So I've done as they've asked me to do. And I just wanna have a quick review of what we did last week. Last week we learned that a sacrament is in part, it's more than this, but it is in part a sacred vow or pledge made to God and to your fellow church members that you will behave in certain ways and do certain things. Now what we're also gonna find out a little bit later is the sacrament is also a pledge from God to you. And that's going to be a little bit different way of thinking about things. We're going to learn the benefits of that as well. Second thing, every time you participate in a sacrament, you are reminding yourself of that pledge and you are strengthening that pledge and you are reaffirming or renewing those promises. We also learned that there are two sacraments commanded in the scripture by the Lord Jesus Christ, baptism and the Lord's Supper. And the reason we have to articulate that is there are churches and denominational traditions that say that there are seven and you need all of them to get to heaven. We say, no, no, there's just two. Okay, so there's two sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper. Thirdly, we began to explore what happens when you partake of a sacrament, and in the interest of time, I'm just gonna give a three-point synopsis. Number one, a sacrament not only symbolizes a spiritual grace or benefit, the Holy Spirit also uses it to convey that grace or benefit. Number two not everyone who partakes of the sacrament gets that grace or that benefit only the elect do. And number three the receiving of that benefit is not necessarily tied to the time when the sacrament is received or administered and that's particularly the case with baptism. But when we begin to explore exactly how a sacrament does work, we get into some strange and wonderful spiritual geography. And some of these things, most of these things, were not known at all by the Old Testament saints, even though they were regularly participating in them and benefiting them and using them. And even though we as the New Testament people of God have a little more insight given to us in the New Testament, especially in the book of Hebrews, there's still a lot of holy mystery here. And what we are given to know and what we are given to understand is really, really cool. And if we keep it in mind, worship will never ever be boring and the celebration of the sacraments will never ever be rote and uninspiring and unproductive. There is some strange and wonderful stuff going on in the spiritual realm when God's people faithfully use the things that God has given us as means of grace. But because we are diving into the realm of holy mysteries, let me start with a word of caution. In Deuteronomy 29, 29, it says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and our children forever, that we may do all the words in this law. And what that verse teaches us is that God has secrets. God has secrets. Some of his secrets are things that he kept secret for a while, and then he later revealed. for instance, in Christ or through the apostolic writings. And those things which were formerly God's secrets, which he then revealed, are called in the New Testament, in the Greek, musterion. And we get our English word mystery from that. And I'm going to sometimes talk about the sacraments as holy mysteries. Now in English, A mystery is something that a person can unravel and figure out if she's smart and she pays attention to subtle clues. Agatha Christie or Miss Marple or Poirot, you know, oh we look around and we figure out the mystery. But in the biblical sense, a mystery is something that you could never ever figure out on your own. If it is to be known at all, God has to reveal it. So God has secrets that he reveals, and we call those mysteries. But God also has secrets that he still wants to keep secret. And some of the secrets he wants to keep secret are closely connected to the secrets he's revealed, to the mysteries, okay? Now there is a certain kind of person who is just driven bonkers by the fact that God has not told him everything or her everything that they want to know. They are not happy with what has been given and they want more and they are driven by pride and a kind of spiritual lust to try and figure out God's secrets and then they can be big shots and they can try and draw away disciples after themselves. That's what it says in Acts chapter 20. And verse 30, it says, Paul's talking to the Ephesian elders here, and he says, I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you, and it's actually from among you, not sparing the flock, and from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away disciples after themselves. This is where cults come from. If you want a great example of that that you might know because he was RCA, you remember Harold Camping? You remember that joker? I know when Jesus is coming back. Well, that's funny. Jesus said he doesn't know when he's coming back, but Harold Camping knew, and Harold Camping was wrong, and now Harold Camping is dead. But what Harold Camping did was create this giant radio empire that goodwilled people gave a lot of money to because everybody thought Harold Camping had special information and special insight, and Harold Camping didn't. He wasted a lot of money. He led a lot of people astray. He disappointed a lot of people. When the date came and went, there were a lot of people that were very disillusioned. It was very damaging. And that's the kind of thing we're talking about here. In 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 17, Paul says, their talk will spread like gangrene. And God forbids this. And God has good reasons for forbidding this. One reason is that God is an infinite being with an unbounded mind and unbounded knowledge and power. You are a finite being with limited knowledge and limited power and a limited mind. There's an old Latin saying in theology. Finitum non capax infinitum. The finite cannot comprehend, cannot fully know or understand the infinite. In the same way that a thimble cannot contain the Pacific Ocean. Now, you can take the thimble and dip it into the Pacific Ocean and you can have a little bit of the ocean in your hand and what you hold is genuinely ocean. But it's not the ocean. It's not possible. Do not measure God's mind, which is infinite, by your brain, which is finite. There are some times where you get to things in scripture and we don't understand them. We throw up our hands and we just have to say, God, it has not been given to me to understand this. And if you choose to open my eyes and reveal these things, that's fine. But I bow before the mystery of your word, God. You see, for you to demand to know something that God has not revealed, especially as the price of your confidence in him and your commitment to him, that demands that I ask you a question as your pastor. And the question is this, who said your brain is that good? Who said, why do you think that you are capable of absorbing that knowledge? Your God, the God that you made up in your head and who has to answer to you is much too small. The God you've got rattling around in your head that you think is the true and living God, that's a God you made up for yourself and he's too small. You are an idolater. You should trade in your fake God for the real God because the real God is far wiser, far mightier, far bigger, far wilder, and far more mysterious than you can ever imagine. Romans 11 33 states that his judgments are unsearchable and his ways are past finding out. There's some people say, well, when I die and face him, then I'll know everything. No, you won't because you'll still be finite. You'll be glorified. You'll be without sin. You'll be face to face with him. You can ask him more stuff, but he's still going to have his secrets and you ain't going to figure it all out because you can't. You're not big enough. So this whole issue is important because when we deal with sacramental theology, we are sometimes at the boundary between these mysteries, these things that he's revealed to us, and his secrets that he wants to keep secret. And so this whole issue needs to be approached with some humility and some caution. Now onto the main point that I wanna make today. If you study your Bibles carefully, and especially your Old Testaments, You will find cases where God designates some physical object or even a geographical location and he sets up a connection, a spiritual connection, between the physical visible thing or place and the spiritual invisible reality. And this relationship is such that when you properly use or interact with the physical object, you get a spiritual benefit or a spiritual action on your behalf. And the examples of this are multiple throughout the Old Testament. We could go from issue to issue and it's wonderful to do that because they actually point back to Jesus Christ and they are one of the things that we in the Reformed Church consider to be sort of revelation of God that you only can know after the fact. So if we go back to our Old Testament book of Numbers, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, we can find an example of this where God has set up a relationship between a physical object and a spiritual reality. Numbers chapter 21 and verses 4 through 9. This is a kind of a fun and a weird story. From Mount Hor, they set out by the way of the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom, so they're taking a little detour, and the people became impatient on the way. And they start grumbling. And the people spoke against God and against Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and there is no water. And by the way, we loathe this worthless food. In other words, there's no food we like, right? And so the Lord, in response to their sin of grumbling, sent fiery serpents among the people, poisonous snakes. And they bit the people so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and they said, we have sinned for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he may take away the serpents from us. So Moses prayed for the people. Now look what God does here. And the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole. so that everyone who is bitten when they see it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent and he set it on a pole and if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. So these fiery serpents, as I said, are poisonous snakes. God sends them as a punishment for the grumbling and the rebelling and the complaining. The people repent. They want forgiveness for their sin. They want the judgment from their sin removed. They come to Moses. They ask him to intercede on their behalf, and he does. But here's the interesting thing. Rather than simply forgiving them and removing the serpents, God leaves the serpents among them. And God has Moses make an image of bronze, which is a likeness of the very thing that is afflicting them. And Moses puts it up on a tall pole and he sets it up in the camp and it's where anyone can see it. And if anyone is bitten by a fiery serpent, all they have to do is look believingly to the bronze serpent and they will receive supernatural forgiveness and healing. Because in the biblical sense, to look to something is to rely on it. to place your confidence in it. It's an act of faith. And it apparently worked for a long time because 1,000 years later in 550 BC, we read in 2 Kings chapter 18 and verse 5 that King Hezekiah is having to clean up a lot of spiritual messes and he, it says in 2 Kings 18.5, and he, King Hezekiah, broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it. And they called it Nahushtan. So they kept this thing around for a thousand years. Now here's the thing. This bronze serpent itself did not possess any real spiritual power. It was just a piece of bronze. But the Holy Spirit used the object as a vessel through which spiritual power came from the heavenly realms. And what was the nature, what was the source of this life-saving supernatural power? Well, Jesus himself tells us in John chapter three, one of the most popular verses at all football games. In John chapter three, we're gonna read verses 12 through 16. And look at what it says here. I have told you earthly things and you do not believe. How can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the son of man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the son of man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. So God set up a spiritual relationship between the bronze serpent in the Old Testament that Moses lifted up and the healing, forgiving power of Christ. And whoever looked with confidence on the bronze serpent received healing power from Jesus. Whoever looked with confidence to the bronze serpent received what was promised by the image of the bronze serpent and the word of God. And God decreed that the bronze serpent would also be a kind of prophecy or a sign pointing to the soul-saving work of Christ on the cross so that anyone who looks with confidence to Jesus will be saved. So it was a little tiny salvation in Moses' day. It was just a salvation from deadly snakebite. but it spoke, and the power came from Jesus to do that, but it spoke of a comprehensive salvation. And the mechanism worked in the same way. If you look to Jesus for his benefits, he will save you. And if you looked to the bronze serpent in that time, it would save you from snakebite, okay? The serpent was just a container. It was like a conduit. It was like the wires in your house. The wires carry the electricity, but the wires aren't the electricity. They are conduits of power, but they are not the power themselves. And we see this principle even more clearly in today's passage. In Leviticus chapter 16, we see God instituting a special day with special practices in a special place. This is, as I said, what the Jews call Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. This is the holiest and the most solemn day on the Jewish calendar. And on that day, the high priest kills both a bull and a goat, and he sprinkles their blood on certain objects in the tabernacle. Now, the tabernacle was a tent where the people worshipped. It was like a portable temple while they were in the wilderness. Later on, a permanent temple was built by Solomon. But for many, over 1,000 years, they carried this tent around. They had this tent, and this was where God was worshipped, the tabernacle. And on that day, The high priest kills a goat and he kills a bull and he sprinkles the blood at certain places in the tabernacle. And it says in the Old Testament that this made atonement for the sins of the high priest and for the sins of the people of Israel. Now atonement means forgiveness, forgiveness of sin. So if you asked the people in that day, if you had a time machine and went back and said, what are you doing? How are your sins forgiven or atoned for? They would say, by the blood of the sacrifice of a bull and a goat on Yom Kippur. And in their state of knowledge at that time, they would be correct, but they only had a small picture. You've got a bigger one. In the same way that the snakebite victims would say, I was healed by looking to the bronze serpent, but it turns out this was another mystery, a holy mystery. You see, that animal blood pointed to a heavenly reality, and that animal blood was also a conduit or a vessel through which the heavenly power that forgave their sins was transmitted. And how do we know that? Well, the book of Hebrews tells us so. It pulls back the curtain and it says, this is what's going on in the spiritual realm in the heavenlies when the high priest is doing his thing on earth. How was the sin of the Old Testament saints atoned for? By the sprinkling of the blood of bulls and goats. But what does it say in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 4? It says, for by the blood of bulls and goats was no sin ever forgiven. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. So do the scriptures contradict themselves? No. So how do we explain this? What's going on here? In the Old Testament, they were going, well, the blood of bulls and goats took away my sin. In the New Testament, the book of Hebrews, it says it's impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. What's going on here? Well, the blood didn't take away their sins because it's not possible for blood to take away sins, but that blood was a conduit, was a vessel through which the forgiveness of sins came. The blood itself couldn't do anything. So what was this heavenly reality to which this animal blood pointed? What was happening at the heavenly end of the connection? Well, it turns out that the whole tabernacle was a copy of a very important location in the heavenly places. And the earthly high priest was a copy, he was mimicking, he was pointing to a heavenly high priest. And we see this very clearly in Hebrews chapter nine, verses 11 through 14. and then 19 through 24. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands, that is not of this creation, he entered once for all the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And then skip ahead to verse 19. For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and he sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. And in the same way, he sprinkled with blood both the tent and the vessels used in worship. Indeed, under the law, almost everything is purified by blood. And without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus it was necessary for the copies of heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ entered not into the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. In other words, the blood of bulls and goats not only pointed to the blood of Christ, which was shed for the sins of his people, it also allowed them to participate in the spiritual reality in a unique way, and that's why their sins in the Old Testament are actually forgiven. The animal blood was like the wire in your house. The power of Christ's atoning blood in the heavenly tabernacle was like the electricity. But the wire's critically important, isn't it? And in that time and place, it was the only way to access the forgiveness of sins. In other words, if you were a Canaanite, like Rahab the prostitute, or a Moabitess, like Ruth, or a Hittite, like Uriah, the only way to be saved was to leave your own people, leave your religion, join yourself to the Israelites. You had to be circumcised if you were a man, and you had to participate faithfully and believingly in that ceremonial system. And then you could have those benefits. So that's the big takeaway for today. God can and does set up a spiritual relationship between an earthly object and a heavenly spiritual power. And when that earthly object is used or interacted with in the way that God commands, real spiritual power and benefit infallibly flow to the elect who is making right use of that object. But that doesn't make the object magic. See, that's the first thing that happens. People go, people look at the wire, and the power comes through the wire, and they're like, oh, holy magic wire, and they bow down to the wire. That's what Rome actually does with the sacraments. They call it the veneration of the host. They'll hold up a piece of bread that some priest has mumbled a prayer over, and they will say, this is literally the body of Christ, and everyone will fall down and worship that piece of bread. because they believe it is the body of Christ. It just doesn't look like it, and if Jesus showed up, it would be appropriate to worship him, and they think, well, Jesus did show up when I mumbled the prayer on this bread, and it's magic bread, and the priest is a magic man. I actually read a thing for Catholic children written by a priest that's talking about the priest as a magic man who can turn bread into the body of Christ and wine into the blood of Christ. He's magic. No, no, you're just an idiot if God is using you at all. You're just an idiot that God is using. These things in themselves are dumb things. That's why we don't get all wound up about holy furniture. That's why we don't, that's why I know some people are more bananas. It sounds like Troy was more bananas about the communion table and stuff being on the communion table. You know why? Because he didn't want, in the Reformed tradition, we don't want it to look like an altar. Because an altar is where sacrifices take place, and then all of a sudden it's a holy place where holy things are happening, and it's not. The altar was a hill outside of Jerusalem 2,000 years ago. This is a table. And so he didn't want it to, you know, you don't start putting things on the, like, we can't have an altar call in a Reformed church. We don't have an altar. You can have a communion table call if you want to, but we can't have an altar call. The things themselves through which the power come are not special, they're not magic, and yet the power comes through them infallibly when they are properly used. In the Reformed understanding then, This is precisely the case. What was going on in the Old Testament with the blood of bulls and goats and the blood of Jesus Christ, this is precisely the case with the sacraments. Where the sacraments are concerned, this special relationship is called a sacramental union. Now I'm gonna quote Westminster for a minute, don't freak out, because Westminster is about 100 years later than Heidelberg in Belgium. And so there was a lot of discussion and thought going on all over Europe in the reformed circles. They were communicating with each other in Latin all the time. And what Westminster represents is a consensus of the reformed scholarship both from England and Scotland and Holland and Germany and Hungary and France. Okay? This is what it says here, Sacramento Union. There is in every sacrament a spiritual relation or sacramental union between the sign, that's like the bread and the wine, and the thing signified. Whence it comes to pass that the names and effects of the one are attributed to the other. The grace which is exhibited in or by the sacraments rightly used is not conferred by any power in them. They're not magic. Neither does the efficacy of a sacrament depend upon the piety or intention of him that does administer it. I'm not super holy because I'm administering the sacrament. It works even if I'm being a jerk that day, okay? But upon the work of the spirit and the word of institution, which contains together with a precept authorizing the use thereof, a promise of benefit to worthy receivers. So in other words, if you, as a converted elect person of God, rightly take communion, you will get certain things if you do it right. And it's not because I'm special that day, and it's not because the bread and the juice are special. It's because God says, I'm going to act through these things. I promise to act through these things. And you say, and I promise to receive them worthily. And I promise to keep my word about how I'm going to behave in regards to the commitment I made before I could come and partake of these things. I promise and God promises. And in that nexus of these promises coming together, things happen. Things happen. Now, one last thing and we're done. We Reformed believe that there were also two sacraments in the Old Testament, namely circumcision and the Passover, and we believe that baptism is connected to the same power and the same spiritual reality as circumcision was in the Old Testament. And the Lord's Supper is the same spiritual power and the same reality as the Passover. And we see this, now we're going back to your confessions here, the Belgic Confession at the end of chapter 34. It says, furthermore, baptism does for our children what circumcision did for the Jewish people. That is why Paul calls baptism the circumcision of Christ. Now we'll go to Westminster. The sacraments of the Old Testament in regard to the spiritual things signified and exhibited were, for substance, the same with those of the New. Okay? So, in other words, there's a continuity between what was going on in the Old Testament and what's going on in the New Testament. Now that's important for two reasons. Number one, it shows us that what God is doing in the church is not completely disconnected with what he was doing in Israel. We actually believe as Reformed people, there's always been one, what we call true visible church. It's just before Jesus got here, it was the Jewish people. That was God's address. That was the kingdom of God's address. If you wanted to know God, that doesn't mean he wasn't active other places, but if you wanted to know God, you had to seek out the Jewish people and join yourself to them. What's changed? Well, now he's opened it up to people from every tribe, nation, language, and tongue. That's the visible church. So there's one visible church from Adam to the end of time. We believe that. And there were always two sacraments, and they all meant the same thing. They still mean the same thing. Circumcision in the Old Testament, same as baptism in the new. Passover in the Old Testament, same as Lord's Supper in the new. Same spiritual reality that you're accessing. Okay, so what God is doing is not unconnected with what he was doing in Israel. The church is to Israel what the branches of a tree are to the trunk of the tree. Are the branches distinct? Yes. Are there structural differences between branches and trunks? Yes. But there is also a vital life-giving connection and Paul uses exactly that metaphor in Romans chapter 11. Christ has made it possible for Gentiles to be fully grafted into the people of God who started to be a people when God called Abram out of Ur of the Chaldees and sent him to the promised land. Number two, and this is even more important, it allows us to look at what circumcision, by looking at what circumcision and the Passover meant to the Israelites and how they were practiced, and that helps us round out our understanding of how we should practice baptism and the Lord's Supper in this day. So if they're the same thing, the same reality, I mean, there are some differences, obviously. but there's a continuity there. If they're the same thing, we can look at how they were practiced in the Old Testament and it helps us answer questions about how they should be practiced in the New Testament. For instance, for instance, in Exodus chapter 12, verses 43 through 49, we read about the Passover. And then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, this is the statute of the Passover, no foreigner shall eat of it, but every slave that is brought with money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. No foreigner or hired servant may eat of it. It shall be eaten in one house and you shall not take any of the flesh outside of the house and you shall not break any of its bones. All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it and it shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you." Okay? So then we ask the question, should an unbaptized person take communion? Well, the New Testament doesn't explicitly address that, does it? But when we look back at this passage that we just read from the Old Testament, should an uncircumcised person take the Passover? The answer is, emphatically, no. So that teaches us, we believe as Reformed Christians, no, you need to be baptized before you take the Lord's Supper because that's how the relationship went between circumcision and the Passover. Now, let me just close with a word of encouragement. This is not simple stuff. And for some of you, your head must be spinning a little bit right now. That's okay. Here's what I want to tell you. I want to encourage you. You can understand these ideas. You can master them if you really want to and you apply yourself because you're not stupid people. If you can figure out how much anhydrous ammonia you need to knife into your soil per acre to get the soil chemistry right, you can figure this out. If you can understand common rail diesel injection systems and variable vane turbos, you can figure this out. If you can pressure can your vegetables and not kill anyone with botulism and still make it taste good, you can figure this out. If you can understand the pharmacology necessary to pass your boards, if you can lay out and assemble that complex quilt pattern, you can understand this if you really want to. Now, I want to show you something, and this is your heritage, Especially, not mine, although I've adopted it. There was a guy in Holland in the 1700s, they had something called the Nadera Reformatie, which means a further reformation. And they had all these people that had right doctrine, but their lives weren't changing. And there was a group of Dutch Christians, particularly pastors, who said, something's going on here. We've got the right doctrine. We believe we've got the right doctrine. But people's hearts aren't warmed towards God. They're just going through the motions. And so they launched something called the Naderi Reformatsi, the further reformation. We need more. And there were several very prominent people in the Naderi Reformatsi. And they were internationally known and internationally respected. One of them was a guy named Wilhelmus Abrakel. Wilhelmus Abracal was an amazing man. Now, I want to show you these books here. Four volumes. This was only published in English in the 90s, but it has been continually published in Holland, in Dutch, for over 300 years. In the first hundred years, it went through 20 printings. And this information contained in these books was what Dutch families used to educate themselves and catechize their children about the things of God. And all the stuff that I'm telling you is in here. And your ancestors in Holland read it regularly and profited from it. These weren't university professors. These weren't highly educated people. They were farmers. They were craftsmen. They were laborers. They were people just like you and me. They weren't the brilliant intelligentsia of the place. And all of this, they looked at this and they said, we wanna understand God. We wanna understand the scriptures more. And they would go through this. And what's really cool is volumes one and two are what we would call a standard systematic theology where we talk about things like the sacraments and stuff like that. But when you get to volume four, it's like, all right, what difference does it make? And he starts saying, well, let's look at what kind of a difference it makes. How do you love your neighbor? Well, let's talk about it. What's humility look like? Well, let's write a chapter on that. What is meekness? Jesus said meek people are blessed. What does that mean? How about peaceableness and diligence and compassion? How do I deal with the assaults of Satan? How do I deal with the power of indwelling corruption that still abides in me? With spiritual darkness, with spiritual deadness? How do I know how to fast? How to practice solitude. How to pray. What do I know about the church? What do I know about the end of time? What do I know? What do I need to know? And all these two volumes are like, this is how you live. given all the information in volumes one and two. It's your heritage. If you want it, it's about, I think, 95 bucks. I know the guy at the bookstore. This is Joel Beeky's outfit, Reformation Heritage, and the guy that runs the bookstore actually grew up in Orange City, and he's a friend of a friend, and I met him in person at Alistair Begg's Pastors Conference here a couple of months ago, and I can get you a bulk discount if you want it. If you want to take this home and say, I'm gonna do what my ancestors did, You can do it. And you will learn. And it's not just about learning up here. You gotta learn some things up here, but it's about learning in here. How do I live these things out? What difference does it make that my child is a covenant child? What difference does it make if I pray, if God's sovereign and everything's been decreed? Well, how am I still deal with that? He'll tell you. What difference does it make if I go in and take the Lord's Supper with a crappy attitude? He'll tell you. This is your heritage. I call you back. Redig the wells of your fathers. Amen and amen.