Leviticus chapter 4, beginning in verse 13. If the whole congregation of Israel sins unintentionally, and the thing is hidden from the eyes of the assembly, and they do any one of the things that by the Lord's commandments ought not to be done, and they realize their guilt, when the sin which they have committed becomes known, the assembly shall offer a bull from the herd for a sin offering. and bring it in front of the tent of meeting. And the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands on the head of the bull before the Lord. And the bull shall be kindled before the Lord, or excuse me, not kindled, but killed before the Lord. Then the anointed priest shall bring some of the blood of the bull into the tent of meeting, and the priest shall dip his finger in the blood and sprinkle it seven times before the Lord in front of the veil. And he shall put some of the blood on the horns of the altar that is in the tent of the meeting before the Lord. And the rest of the blood he shall pour out at the base of the altar of burnt offering that is at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And all its fat he shall take from it, the bowl of the sin offering, excuse me, and burn on the altar. Thus he shall do with the bowl as he did with the sin offering. So shall he do with this. And the priest shall make atonement for them. and they shall be forgiven. And he shall carry the bull outside the camp and burn it up as he burns the first bull. It is the sin offering for the assembly. When a leader sins doing unintentionally any one of the things that by the commandments of the Lord his God ought not to be done and realizes his guilt or the sin which he has committed is made known to him, he shall bring as his offering a goat, a male without blemish. and he shall lay his hand on the head of the goat and kill it in the place where they kill the burnt offering before the Lord. It is a sin offering. Then the priest shall take some of the blood of the sin offering with his finger and put it on the horns of the altar of the burnt offering and pour out the rest of the blood at the base of the altar of burnt offering. And all its fat he shall burn on the altar like the fat of the sacrifice of the feast offerings. So the priest shall make atonement for him for his sin and he shall be forgiven. Now may Jesus, who is the living word, speak to us this morning from this passage, which is his written word. You may be seated. Now, we will pray before we have the kids come up for a little kid's sermon. Let us pray. Father, we need your presence. Left to our own devices, our minds wander. Lord, even in my own soul, reading a passage like I've just read, and I've been studying it and familiar with it, it's easy for my mind to wander. It's easy for us to glaze over it and miss the glory you have for us to see. Miss the wonder. Father, would you assist us? Would you send your Spirit? Jesus our Lord, would you send that promised Holy Spirit among us? that we would see and behold and marvel at your glory, the glory of Jesus Christ, as demonstrated for us in this text. Help us to know that glory. Help us to marvel at it and wonder at it and be changed by it. I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. If the children would come forward, I've been in the habit now of a month or so of doing a children's sermon to start us off. Sit right down here in front of me with my kids. And if you are feeling so bold as to do that, you're welcome to come down here. Oh, great. Great. Hi, guys. Oh, this is fun. This is great fun to have you down here. Alright, well, I'm going to just give you guys a little sermon first. Does that sound okay? A little sermon? Alright. How do you get into God's kingdom? Because there's really only in God's kingdom or out of God's kingdom. There's only two places to be. You either get to be in or you're not in. So how do we get into God's kingdom? Anybody know? Becca? That is true. That is part of the way He's made for us. Any other ideas? Excellent answer. Well, here is the most basic way you get into God's kingdom. You ready? It's important. It's important we know this. God's Holy Spirit has to come down and give you a new life. We call it being born again. God has to do it. He has to come into you and give you new life. And it looks a certain way. In your new life, you start, more and more, doing what God says, instead of what you want. You know that? We're all born doing what we want. You know that, right? We get up in the morning, we just go do what we want. And if somebody doesn't let us do what we want, we get mad, don't we? I can't have that. I can't eat that. I can't watch that show. Right? And if you're daddy, why can't you listen the first time? I want you to listen the first time, because I do it too. Right? We're born doing what we want. But when God gives us His Holy Spirit, He starts changing us, so that we turn around and we start doing what He wants. Because He's our King. He's our Ruler. And we start trusting in what that King has done for us. Because you know what our King Jesus did for us? You kids know this, I think. What has our King Jesus done for us to save us? He died on the cross to save us from sin. Yes! What were you going to say? Were you going to say that, too? He died on the cross or something like that? What were you going to say? Nothing. Alright, it's okay. I didn't mean to embarrass you. I'm glad you were raising your hand, though. But yes, Jesus died for us. He did. The King of all glory came down and served us. So the Holy Spirit comes into our hearts and helps us to believe that that is true and it's for us. We start trusting that Jesus died for us. For us. That's what being born again feels like. We start changing. Or you know what it starts feeling like at the beginning? I wish I had that. That's what it feels like. I wish I could have that. And there's a simple promise that God has given in this Bible. I have it here. It's from Luke chapter 11. And Jesus said this. So if you think you want this, this is Jesus talking to you from the Bible. And so I tell you, keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for. Keep on seeking, looking for, and you will find. Keep on knocking, and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, everyone who seeks finds, and to everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. You fathers, if your children ask for fish, do you give them a snake instead? Do you think if you ask your dad for something good to eat, he'd give you a snake that might bite you? No, he would never do that, right? Or if you ask for some eggs for breakfast, do you think he'd give you a scorpion that could sting you? No, he would never do that to you. Your dad would not do that to you, would he? That's what Jesus says. So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give you the Holy Spirit to those who ask? Right? God has to do it. But He promises, if you ask Him for His Holy Spirit to change you like this, He will give it. And that is good news. And I hope that you children will believe it. All right, now, all the children five and under are welcome to go downstairs with my kids and my wife, and the older ones, my kids, will be staying up here, your seats, and staying with us for the service. Basic gospel message, right? That is actually what our passage is about. the sin offering, or I've called it sometimes the purification offering, is about that message. But it shouldn't surprise you because the Bible is about that message. You know the proverb in the Roman Empire, all roads lead to Rome? In the Bible, it's all passages preach the gospel. All passages get to Jesus. All paths lead to Christ. It leads to this basic good news message that I've just tried to describe in a basic way for our kids. And for us. Because we all need to be reminded of that. God is the author of our salvation. We must never forget that. And that author always gives us a repentance, was what I was trying to describe there. A repentance where you turn from being self-willed, self-ruling, and turn to a God-rule. God's in charge. He's my King. And believe. That's the second part. You're to repent and to believe. You're to believe what? Who Jesus is, the living God taken on flesh to live among us, to die for us, to live for us first and then to die for us. So, even though you and I need that repentance. We've lived for ourselves. Let's be honest. We're trying to be followers of Christ at this point. I assume when you come to a worship service that most of you in here are trying to follow Christ. And for us people who are trying this week to follow Christ, how many of you were selfish this week? Go ahead. Go ahead. It's okay. Because you're in good company. How many got impatient with one another, right? But we do these things. And we're the ones that are trying to be followers of Christ. So it is profoundly good news to us that we get credit for a record we did not earn. That's the good news. Jesus lived for us. Was Jesus ever once selfish? Did he ever once Not love his father or love his neighbor. Once. In his heart, in his mind, in his thought, anything. Not once. And yet, he identified with us in a sense that he went to the cross in our place. He took our sins on himself and therefore bore the wrath of the living God for us. This is the good news. This is what the Bible is about. This is what creation is about. This is what the life of Israel is about. This is what the life of the church is about. We are all about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. So it shouldn't surprise us that our particular passage for this morning is about that. And it is. You see, in Leviticus 4, they are being taught... Put yourself in Israel's shoes for a second. Let me set up this point. I have this in my notes, by the way. Not my intro, but the Leviticus 4.14 that I'm about to read. You're Israel. You've been saved physically from the Egyptians. You've been let out in a dramatic way You've been led through the wilderness, and you've gotten to sin numerous times, and you've been forgiven. And then at the Mount Sinai, when Moses is up in the mountain, you get into real serious rebellion against God, and you still get forgiven. So, then you get here to these sacrifices where you're taught how to approach a holy God. You're a sinful people, and you're being taught how to approach a holy God. And the first three sacrifices we studied were all free will offerings that you did when everything was okay. But this one we're studying now, the sin offering, or the purification offering, happened when you got dirty with sin, or just contamination with things that sin causes. So, when you get dirty, you need to be purified. It's a sin purification offering. And so, through all this experience, what do you think God is trying to drive His people to understand? I think it's this. You don't just need to be saved from Egypt. You have a much more serious and entrenched enemy that needs defeating. As we talked about last week, we talked about how focusing on unintentional sins, in one sense they're better sins than a high hand, like, I'm going to defy the living God, I'm going to shake my fist at him. Well that, you know, that's really bad. And you tend to think, well then, unintentional sins aren't as bad. But you know what unintentional sins show us about ourselves? Is that our natural inclination is to sin. Because we do them without thinking. We just slide right on and sin. They mean to rebel against the living God, but I did. Why? Because I am corrupt through and through. I landed on that with both feet last week. That our sin corrupts us, our sin defiles us. So we needed blood, we needed a life, we needed a sacrifice to purify God's house. And you know what? We're God's house, and we need that blood purifying us. Because we mess up God's house with our sin. But notice in verse 14, what prompts this sacrifice? What prompts somebody to bring this sacrifice? Here it is. when the sin which they have committed becomes known. God makes it known to them in one way, shape, or form. Do you ever have this experience where you're going along, cheerful, you don't know of anything against you, and then somebody comes and says, you know, that time you talked to me just a couple days ago, you said this. And your heart sinks, like, yeah, I really did. And you know what, at the time I was mad. And I said it to hurt you. And you realize, I got guilt. I'm walking around, a minute ago, you know, nothing wrong in the world, everything's good. But I had this unconfessed sin, I've got this sins outstanding, it's just sitting there. And I did it so quickly, it's just in a flash, and then it went away, and I forgot about it. Because, you know, for me, that's really no big deal, because I do that all the time. And you start meditating down this road, and it's quite depressing, if that's all you do. But he brings it to light. God brings it to light. So this is, in a sense, a commanded offering, but it's a commanded offering that requires them to know they've sinned, when at first they didn't. There's times gone on, and they've been thinking, ah, there's nothing wrong. Oh no! I've sinned! So, dealing with these kinds of sins really starts digging into the corruption of your soul in a more intimate way. Because it doesn't just deal with the obvious ones where, you know, I know when I've gotten angry and I've said things that are unkind and I knew they were unkind when I said them. But they deal with all the things that you did and you didn't even know. And they just start, you know, humbling, you know, you get down lower and lower and lower. You feel like, But we should take Jesus' advice. We shouldn't be discouraged at times like that. We should get in the habit of taking the lowest seat at the table. When you're invited to a dinner party, you take the lowest seat at the table, the most humble seat. And then if the Lord wants to move you up a little bit, then that's His business. Then at least you're trending in the right direction. But we do the opposite. We come into our day and we're thinking, I'm one of these good guys, and then we have to be brought down a few pegs. And it's discouraging. That really wasn't part of my sermon, I just threw that in there for free. But when you are brought to Christ, you are brought to this realization of your sinfulness. And I would just reiterate one more time, it is a good place to be when, from time to time, the Lord brings you to weep for your sin. And not just the big ones that you did that were obvious, but for your state of sinfulness. It is good to weep for that. You don't want to live there. You don't want to live in the ministry of John the Baptist, so to speak, where he's calling the whole nation to repentance. No, you want to live in the ministry of Jesus, where we have forgiveness. That's where we're going. That's where we're going. So then we'll go from the weeping to dancing. But first, first step, the Holy Spirit teaches our heart to weep for our sin. were brought to that repentance, to that turning. All of our real need is an exodus from sin. An exodus from our slavery to sin. We are slaves to sin. We are just stuck and entrenched in it. And dealing with our unintentional sins really helps unveil that for ourselves. But the Holy Spirit never stops there. He never stops there. He brings you on and shows you Jesus our true High Priest. He shows us Jesus, our true sin offering. He shows us that. In our passage, we're just going to meditate on a few points. I've spoken about this offering now for, this is my third week, so if you have other bits as we read through that, like the blood or some other things that you think, maybe I covered those in the previous two sermons, so you might want to take a listen if you're interested. But I'm going to focus in on Jesus pictured here as the true priest and the true Israel and how this passage teaches that. And then we'll move on to Jesus being the slaughtered sin offering. Jesus is the slaughtered sin offering and we'll land on there and make some application. First of all, Jesus as the true priest or the true Israel, I think you see that in this passage and I didn't read the whole thing. I read the part where it talks about the assembly, the whole congregation gets into sin and they brought a bull. And it said, just like the sin offering you do to the bull, this bull. But what sin offering are they talking about? The one in the previous paragraph that talked about for priests. Some scholars think that's the high priest, some think it's any priest. It's not important. Priests were meant to represent people. And it was an identical offering you had to bring if the whole assembly got into sin, or if the priest got into the sin. Right? As it says in Leviticus 4.3, if it is the anointed priest who sins, thus bringing guilt on the people, because the priest stands in for the people. The priests represent the people, and so if the high priest sins or any of the priests sin, it reflects on the whole assembly, because they're there for the assembly. If you remember back, when God chose out of the Levites the priesthood, they were a token for the whole people. I'm not going to take everybody to serve me full-time, I'm just going to take the Levites. They're representative. But who are they representing? The people. The whole people. So, when the priest does some action, as you're reading through these books, the priest does an action, in one sense, it's priest doing this on behalf of the people. If the priest gets to eat some of the sacrifice, which we'll find out later he does in this one, not today, but we'll find out another time, then it's the people eating the sacrifice. If the people have fellowship with God, they have communion with God. The priest representing the people, the people interchangeable with the priest. However, The fact that this is a picture and a sign is evident in that the priest has to bring an offering when he sins. Because the true priest, he doesn't need a substitute. He doesn't need a sacrifice slaughtered. He doesn't need that. Jesus, the true priest, doesn't need a sin offering for himself. He is the sin offering. And he is the true priest. Which means he is the true Israel. I want you to see that. Right from the beginning, it was built in that they should realize that this priesthood that's been established here through Moses, through the ministry of Moses, is a sign, is a pointer. Because even the priests, from time to time, need to offer a sin offering. Jesus doesn't need that. You see that articulated well in Hebrews 7, 26-27. I just cite it there if you want to look it up later on. So, I don't want to land more on that because the whole next section is going to focus on the priesthood. But I want you to make that connection because when we're saying the whole Bible is about Jesus, when we learn about the priest, we're not just studying something that they did thousands of years ago. We're studying Jesus. We're studying Jesus. The priesthood, ultimately, is about Jesus. But let's now change gears and look at Jesus being the slaughtered sin offering. Now, this isn't new or surprising, I think, to anyone, but we need to say it again and again. Jesus is the offering. He's the substitute. He's the one that gets burned up on the altar, and he's the one that gets taken out of the camp, and burned up outside the camp. And that's what's interesting about this picture. You have, first of all, Jesus being a pleasing aroma to God, explicitly stated in Leviticus 4.31 for common people, that all the fat shall be removed as the fat is removed from the peace offering. That was the previous offering we studied, the peace offering, where you're in fellowship with God. God gets to eat some, the best part, the fat part was the best part, and the people got to eat part. Here, you take the best part out of the sin offering, the fat part, which is the best part. Don't read back our modern version of fact. The part that tastes the best, the part that is, you know, from their standpoint, was taken and burned up on the altar, and it was a pleasing aroma to the living God. Showing that God was pleased with the worshipper because of the sacrifice. Because of the offering being burnt up on the altar, there is this pleasure God has with His worshipper because of the substitute, because of the offering. that is burned up on the altar. So God is at one moment pleased with this offering, but this offering is also, as it says in Leviticus 4 verse 11 and following, "...but the skin of the bull and all its flesh, with its head, its legs, entrails, and dung, all the rest of the bull he shall carry outside the camp to a clean place, to the ash-heath, and shall burn it up on a fire of wood. On the ash-heath it shall burn up." Well the picture there is equally clear if you have any A sense of biblical imagery. To be in the camp is good. To be outside the camp is to be cut off from God and God's people. It's eternal death. It speaks of weeping and gnashing teeth, the outer darkness. This is a sign of judgment. Burned up outside the tent is a sign of judgment. Clear and simple. So this very same sacrifice at one moment is a pleasing aroma to God, showing God's favor and pleasure and forgiveness and atonement made, so the worshiper is pleasing to God. And the very same sacrifice is taken outside the camp and rejected by God, receiving the wrath of God being burned up outside the camp. Of course, I mean, I hardly have to say it, don't I? I mean, this again is Jesus. This is a picture of Jesus. And it's simple, but profound. Consider for a moment, even just a little crash course some of you just received in the Old Testament offering system. And you're just focusing on this one. How all of that really is prophesying about Jesus. It's saying ahead of time what Jesus is going to really do. And consider for just a moment the beautiful and compelling fabric of the Word of God. How this picture is picked up again and again and again. For instance, how about Psalm 22? It's the same picture, isn't it? You read the first half of that psalm, and the psalmist is crying out, I'm rejected. I'm surrounded. I'm destroyed. You're not hearing me. My, my God, my God, the cry that Jesus said on the cross. Why have you forsaken me? And then the second half. Last verse, that's the last line. He has done it. He's the victor. All nations will come pouring in, live under his rule. Same song. It's like, do these Old Testament writers have schizophrenia or something? Right? It's the same message. The very same sacrifice that is accepted and pleasing to God and rewarded is the same sacrifice that is rejected and thrown outside the can and burned up. It's there in Psalm 22, and it's there on the cross. This is the key idea of all of Holy Scripture. As John Piper put it, the supreme demonstration of God's love was the sending of His Son to die for our sins and to rise again so that sinners might have the right to approach God and might have the pleasure of His presence forever. Now this is something you need to be given eyes to see this, and I pray that you are. Because, left to our own devices, this is not the kind of hero we look for. I'd much rather go to one of the Marvel comic movies, you know, and see Thor, the big hammer. Bam! Right? Give it to the bad guys. Right? That's the kind of hero we immediately warm up to. We want somebody that's a superhero. Somebody that can take on and keep defeating the bad guys and still remain an honest person and be a good guy. We don't want the hero that is telling the truth, no holds barred, and then gets killed. But that speaks of God's character. That he was willing to humble himself and be our servant and bear the rejection that we are owed. Oh, that you would be given eyes to see it, and you would go, glory! Once you see it, none of these cheap superheroes compare. The character of the living, almighty God who bears all things in His hands, upholds all things, made all things, spoke all things into existence, the God of all gods, the Lord of all lords, the one with a word can do anything He pleases, became one of us in all our weaknesses and died a humiliating, painful death, burned outside the camp in disgrace. Foolishness to the world. A stumbling block to his own people. How could the Messiah, how could the great king that was going to rule over the whole earth, die? But that's the hero we've been given. And we need to be given eyes to see the glory of it. You must be born again by the Spirit of the Living God. As Jesus said in John 6, 63, it is the spirit who gives life, the flesh is no help at all. The words I've spoken to you are spirit and life, but there are some of you who do not believe. See, you can understand the message that I'm saying to you, and not believe it. The spirit gives life. You can say, alright, I see what you're saying there, I just, it's not that compelling. Spirit gives life. So just like I told the children, ask, seek, knock. If this doesn't feel compelling to you, ask God about that. Your soul is at stake. Because we must all be born again. And if you are born again, and these things are striking a chord with you, and you're going, glory in your heart, as I say it. Well, we're fueled by looking at His glory, because this is exactly how we change. We look at the glorious message, this simple message. I don't think I've said anything striking or maybe even anything new to any of you Christians out there. But this simple message, as we meditate on it again this Lord's Day and say, yes, he is my king. And yes, he came and died for me. He is my king. I'll follow him. And he is my savior. He died for me. Accounts for me. We are changed by the meditation. We are changed by the experience of hearing that message again. That message gets into our soul and keeps working on us. And so we hear the call of Hebrews 13. where they're talking about having this food on an altar that you can't see. But in verse 11 it says, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priests, what blood did they bring into the holy places? They brought the sin offerings. There's another sin offering we'll cover in a little bit. It's called a sin offering, but it's a sin offering brought all the way in. Sprinkle blood on the mercy seat, that's the the Day of Atonement, but it is a sin offering, these sin offerings. So the blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. He needed to be rejected so that we don't have to be rejected. so that we could be set apart as holy and go up and be a pleasing aroma to God, he had to be burned outside the camp. Therefore, therefore, see now, fueled by a knowledge of that basic gospel message, fueled by that knowledge, therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. This is a simple plea to say, care more about what God thinks than what everybody else thinks. In that particular context, these Christians were feeling beleaguered from all sides. The pagans thought they were idiots, and their Jewish people thought they traded something for nothing. And you don't have the temple anymore, you don't have the sacrifices, you don't have any of these things. You don't even have a real religion. You don't have any of a legitimate religion. And he's saying, bear the reproach. You feel like a fool out there. You feel like you're the only one. Bear that reproach. Now, our circumstances have changed, but do we not feel the fool in our culture? Of course we do. Bear that reproach. Go out there. Be the fool. You really believe all that stuff? Yes, I do. As crazy as it may sound to you, it is true. I know it for sure. God has revealed Himself to me. As I've read the Word of God, it is true. It is certain. I can stand on it. You can stand on it. You should believe it. Repair that reproach. And then listen how all of your life then becomes about Jesus. Everything in our life becomes about Jesus. For we have no lasting city that's here, but we seek the city that is to come. Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of the lips that acknowledge His name. That's just another way of saying what we just said, isn't it? Going out and bearing the reproach. He is amazing. I don't see it. I pray that you will, but he still, nonetheless, is amazing. He's the superhero that dies and wins by dying. I don't get it. I pray that you will, but he is glorious. Stand on that. Let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. That is the fruit of the lips that acknowledge His name. In verse 16, do not neglect to do good and to share what you have. For such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Now, it's interesting that he's in the language of sacrifice, talking about the sacrifice of being burned outside the camp, and he's got that whole language going on in here, and he says, now your sacrifices are not at the temple. No, what are your sacrifices? What does he say? Do good, share what you have. Do good, share what you have. These are sacrifices. Now, what were the sacrifices for? The point of Jesus. Why are you to do good and share what you have? Point at Jesus. They are not Jesus, but they are signs of Jesus. They are signs of Jesus working in your soul, to be able to do good and share what you have. I mean, this is about the exact opposite of what we do. We do what we want, and we hoard what we have. Why don't I give you some of the extras? But if we're going to be generous and give away what we have, because we have Jesus, we don't need this. We can give away what we have, and we can do good. Not what we want, but what pleases Him. We do good. And these are signs of Jesus. Signs of Jesus in us, and signs of Jesus. Because Jesus came, not to be served, but to serve. To give His life away as a ransom for many. This is not a more generous gift than that. Jesus came to do good and to give generously. So as we do good and give generously, what are we pointing at? We're pointing at Jesus. So I would encourage you this Lord's Day to think on the gospel so that you can do good and be generous so that you can think on the gospel again. So that your life is not just, oh, good, now I'm a nice guy. That would be a sign pointing nowhere. But that we are doing God's will And giving generously to the people around us, to one another here, people out there, whoever happens to be the Samaritan, not the Samaritan, but the man dying in the road that the Samaritan helped. As we do good and give generously of our time and our talent and our money, as we do these things, it's not just so we can say, oh wow, I'm one of the good guys. It's to remember the gospel. It's the point of the gospel. It's the point that Jesus Christ our Lord. Because you know what? Everything in life is about Jesus. That's not an exaggeration for a sermon. It really is. Just at a wedding recently, you know what? Our marriages, they're ultimately about Christ and the church. They're about Jesus. Our creation as human beings, we were created in the image of God. What does an image do? It reflects God's glory. Well, who is the glory of the living God? The image of the invisible. Jesus! Our lives are about Jesus. The only question this side of eternity is, are we going to be telling the truth about Jesus? Or are we going to be liars? And you know what? Unless Jesus gets a hold of us, We'll be liars, every single one of us. But with Jesus, even our sins will be turned into good. Even when we blow it, it'll be a chance to say, remember that he died in our place. Remember that he lived in our place. And we'll remember the gospel. So even our failures will be an excuse to remember Jesus. Then as a Christian, we have nothing but joy. We should be dancing in the streets. That should be our lives as Christians. We should go back and forth. We should be like, the people should worry about us. That man is either weeping or dancing. That should be our lives. Our sins should break our hearts. Our sins are lies about God, but even our lies can't undo God's work, because our lies then point us back to the gospel, the good news Jesus came to save us from that entrenched enemy. And he died in our place, and he lived in our place, and that counts for us! So now I'm back up dancing in the streets. I don't know if you can tell or not, but I've had this verse percolating in my mind and it keeps affecting how I'm saying these things to you. But when Jesus was talking to the Pharisees, and they were talking about John the Baptist and his ministry, you want it both ways. You're like kids in the marketplace, because that's where kids play. Kids in the marketplace. We played the flute for you, which you'd play at weddings, and you didn't dance. That's his ministry, Jesus' ministry. He's a glutton. He goes to parties all the time. And he hangs out with sinners. And we played a dirge for you, or a funeral march, and you didn't weep. That's John the Baptist ministry, the ministry of repentance. You just always react the wrong way. When it's time to weep, you're scoffing and laughing. When it's time to dance, you're angered, scoffing, rejecting, not believing. And you're missing the party. So let us again remind one another to think on the glory of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Father, I do thank you that you have revealed your glory in and through the person and work of Jesus Christ, our Savior, his life of perfection, his self-sacrifice, bearing our debt, bearing our wrath, purifying our souls, bringing us to faith. Help us more and more to see our lives as pointing to Jesus. I pray this in Jesus name. Amen.