Heightening Our Urgency

Sermon Transcript

Well, there’s one Old Testament commentator who calls Isaiah 57 the obituary of the righteous. The obituary of the righteous. And the problem with this obit, according to God, is that no one ponders it. No one understands it. The way it’s put is that the righteous perish and no one lays it to heart. The devout men die, and no one seeks to understand. And that’s a strange way to put it. And it goes on, and I’ll get to that in a second but as I thought of that passage this week, it shouldn’t be a surprise to you why I thought about that. In the last ten weeks, we’ve seen a rapid succession of people whom many of you listen to, you look to, you read their stuff, you listen to their podcast. I mean, think back ten weeks ago John MacArthur dies and then James Dobson dies. And then, of course, Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And then just Thursday Voddie Baucham passed away. These are men whom many of you have gleaned so much from. They’ve been leaders in their own right in so many areas. And so I certainly don’t want to be accused of not pondering this as this happened in such rapid succession. I don’t want to be accused of saying that God says you didn’t seek to understand it. And I know in Isaiah’s day it was clear there were many righteous leaders, spokespersons of God’s truth. Josiah had died. Amos had died. The prophet Micah had died. And it wouldn’t be long before Isaiah himself would die. And the people should be taking that to heart certainly. It was something that they were supposed to think about.

By the way, have you ever been in a relay race? Maybe you were on the track team as I was in junior high. I wasn’t very good at it, but I was on the team for a while, or in high school or even in summer camp. You know, usually there’s some kind of relay race with a baton, and it’s that passing the baton that is so important, especially if the guy in front of you has done such a great job in his leg and you’re kind of ahead at this point. You don’t want to take that baton, fumble the baton, or take the baton and not do a great job getting the baton and, you know, jogging along or, you know, just not doing great when you get the baton in your hand. Speaking of that, by the way, the reality of who got that baton back there in the sixth century B.C. was, actually in the seventh century B.C. as these men were dying and Isaiah was writing. The backdrop, politically at least was Hezekiah, a good king, as he passed away the political scene was tanking. I mean, it really was going poorly as it was shifting from Hezekiah to Manasseh. And if you studied at all, even in Sunday school, if you paid attention then the name Manasseh should make you shiver, because things got really, really bad from Manasseh all the way to Zedekiah at the end of the reigns of those kings, things just got really bad until Nebuchadnezzar comes in with the Babylonian army and just routs the southern kingdom and burns the temple and it was just a horrific time. And that’s why when God comes on the scene there in Isaiah 57 through Isaiah and says, you know, the righteous and devout people are dying and you ought to take time to think about this.

And the way he puts it is in the last line of that section, he says they’re finding their rest, right? And I’m sparing them. In essence, he says, I’m sparing them from calamity. In other words, things are shifting here, especially as we’re getting into Manassas’ reign. And they’re not going to have to see this. It’s like I’m tapping them out. The rapid succession of these guys here, devout men, righteous men, they’re getting tapped out by me so that they don’t have to see what’s going to happen. And then he shifts to them and he says now, I want you to realize that it’s your turn to shape up. Now, there would be leaders who would come along. Of course, Jeremiah was going to pick up the mantle and there would be men like Daniel, of course, and Ezekiel. And now we would have later, 70 years down the road Ezra, and Nehemiah and Zerubbabel and several others that would be leaders. But it’s really not about the leaders, right? The leaders are just leaders. It’s about the people who were listening to all those leaders, who listened to Micah, who listened to Joshua and Amos, who were the people who were supposed to imbibe and drink in the teaching of these people? I mean, were they listening? Were they doing what they were told?

Of course, even as Isaiah was preaching these things, the question was to them, are you listening? Are you doing what the prophets are saying? I mean, the baton was being passed from these devout men. And the question is as God tapped them out, what are you guys going to do? Take heart. Ponder this. I mean, I’m removing them really for their sake. They’ve done their job. They’re tired. It’s like they’ve peeled off into the lush green grass of the inner, you know, circle of this oval track. They get to rest. Now the baton is in your hands. Not just your leaders’ hands because it’s really not about the leaders. The leaders, First Corinthians 3, are nothing. It’s about now the chance for the church in our case, to see what’s going to happen. Right? As the society continues, as I said two weeks ago, to go from bad to worse as difficult times come, what are we going to do? Right? What are we doing in our generation as the baton gets placed in our hands corporately? And are we going to do what we ought to do? And really as we saw this providentially, and I think it’s so providential because we planned this series in Second Corinthians Chapter 5 and 6 many months ago as I laid it out, prayerfully thought through how to preach this whole section. And it was so providential that we hit as we did in Second Corinthians Chapter 5 our job description as ambassadors two weeks ago and this is a time when, of course, culture was just rocking through what was happening and culturally we were at this pivot point and people are thinking about boldness and courage, and so to really be reminded of our job as ambassadors is super important.

And I think it’s no less important, particularly with Pastor Voddie dying on Thursday at age 56 to think about, okay, let’s just think for a second, like let’s take to heart, let’s just think about the fact that really it’s almost like with this rapid-fire succession of a turnover in leadership of so many areas in evangelicalism, like what is the job? What is the word from our study in Chapter 6 now as we continue our series, as we’re trying to reflect Christ’s likeness in our generation? What’s the word from this first section of Second Corinthians Chapter 6 that we need to embrace? And I think it’s so providential that we land this weekend on this text. And the subtitle really says it all. We have to dive into it. We have to dig into it. We have to understand it. But this subtitle that was mapped out weeks ago is so well timed. And here’s what we need to do, particularly now. We need to heighten our urgency. And that’s what this text is all about heightening our urgency, which, by the way, Paul is going to enlist a quotation from Isaiah, Isaiah 49, as he’s going to say, listen, it’s all about now. Now’s the time. It’s like you feel the grip of that baton in your hand and you think, okay. And whatever the reason is, I’m not trying to suggest I know the reason for God tapping out some very high-profile, articulate and wise leaders of Christianity. But I am going to say this. I know for sure it’s going to cause a lot of us to stand back and say, okay, if the baton is in our hands corporately as our generation and we don’t know what’s around the corner in terms of the secular culture but I do know it’s as bad as it’s been in America. Right? And we’re seeing the clash of ideas now at a fever pitch, and it’s getting just gross and vulgar and all the rest. And as God says in his forecasts it is going to go from bad to worse, we’d better be ready to do our job not just with boldness, but with urgency.

So these are two back-to-back good themes to look at. And I want you to look at the text itself and see if we can’t go away recharged by this great text of Scripture. Only two verses today, Second Corinthians Chapter 6 verses 1 and 2. We need this more than ever so put your eyes not on my face, put them on the text of Scripture. Look it up here Second Corinthians Chapter 6 verses 1 and 2, and I’ll read it for you from the English Standard Version. Second Corinthians Chapter 6 verses 1 and 2. We’ll need to get a little context before we finish the first phrase here. “Working together with him,” there’s a pronoun we need to figure out, “then,” there’s a little demonstrative pronoun we need to figure out. “Working together with him.” Now you have to figure out who’s the “him” here. Well, the last word of verse 21 is “God.” And “working together with him,” we know we’re working together, or Paul is at least and Timothy in verse 20. Apparently we’re working together with God as he makes his appeal through us and we, of course, are Paul and Timothy according to Second Corinthians 1:1, that Paul, he’s saying is an ambassador, along with Timothy and all the rest of the church planters there in Corinth as ambassadors, and God is making his appeal through us. Well, that’s the “then” of verse 1, right?

Paul is saying, I have come to Corinth, I have planted this church, and I, along with all the apostles and all the apostolic band, we come through town we’ve made an appeal here to you, and it’s as though God were making his appeal through us. We’ve implored you on behalf of Christ to be reconciled to God. And so we’re working with God in this because, of course, you know, I didn’t float out of bed that morning. I came, I leaned into this, I worked and God worked through me, and I got that message that I said, as I sent you home two weeks ago in verse 21 to go study the richness of that verse, right? That great theology of the message that “for our sake God made him,” that’s Christ, “to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” That’s a great text. And now he says, okay, “working together with him,” with God, “then we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain,” which that phrase should baffle you as I’ll try to underscore. “For he says,” now he’s going to quote Isaiah Chapter 49 verse 8, and he quotes this really short section, “in a favorable time I listened to you,” he tells the Old Testament Israelites, “and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” And after quickly off the cuff quoting that text, he says, now “behold,” hey Corinthians, “now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.”

Now what’s interesting about verse 20 is when he’s talking about the ambassadorship, he does what I so easily did with you and that is I started to think like, oh, wait a minute, let’s think like Paul and Timothy and put ourselves in their sandals. We should think like we’re ambassadors. Do we? We took the we and we made it very elastic. And we said, yeah, it’s easy for us to think that way because most of the Corinthians who were listening to this being read in the congregation when Paul wrote it, they thought, well, we’re Christians, we’re already reconciled to God. And of course, if you’re called to follow Christ, well, then you’re called to be a fisher of men. If you’re part of the church, well, then you’re saddled with the Great Commission. So, of course, all of us are ambassadors of Christ. And there’s nothing wrong hermeneutically with that. We have to look at this text and say, yes, of course, we’re ambassadors of Christ.

And so we put ourselves in those shoes. But now look at verse 1, here it says it’s kind of like he now says, wait, don’t get in that seat too quickly. Right? The point of view here is you stay in that seat there as a recipient of my voice and God’s voice through me to talk to you about receiving the message of reconciliation. And he says, I just want to make sure as we, Paul and Timothy, appeal to you, you Corinthians, not to receive the grace of God in vain. Now don’t get dizzy with this real quick, but let me just say this. I’m going to end up wording these points to you as though we are in the sandals of Paul and Timothy, and I want us all to think where I was with you last time, that we are ambassadors of Christ. So I’m going to word the three points that way. And we’re going to think about our responsibility to make sure those around us are appealed to, to not receive the grace of God in vain. But he is saying to them, and I don’t want you to leave here today without hearing that, because you might be here today receiving the grace of God in vain. But we have to understand that first of all.

So just know the point of view. And this is always a preacher’s dilemma to read a passage like this. If I’m going to preach this, I have to preach this with a point of view in view. Are we going to take the position of the Apostle Paul and Timothy and learn the lesson that way? Or we can take the position of the Corinthians and learn the lesson that way. Anybody following that? If you’re ever a teacher of the Word, you have to think in those terms. But today we have to try to do both. So if you’re here today, we’d better figure out where you stand as it relates to the grace of God. But before we leave, I want to make sure that you really think about how am I doing in helping the people around me? Maybe in my small group, maybe in my family, maybe just the people I sit next to in church. Where are they? Am I making sure that I’m appealing to them to not receive the grace of God in vain? Did you follow any of that logically? Am I speaking too fast for you? I’m not right? Okay, great.

So let me word the first point in the point of view that you and I are going to leave today thinking, okay, let’s just think about it. Right? Are we making sure that others around us are getting this right? And then we’ll just deal with the phrase that’s there in verse 1. Okay, “Working together with him, then, we appeal to you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” Here’s what we’re trying to do. Number one, take notes, please, right? I would wish that you would take notes this morning. Number one, “Plead for a Right Response to God’s Grace.” If you’re an ambassador for Christ, you need to be telling people to be reconciled to God. Now, this is the grace of God that anyone would ever be reconciled to God because they’re sinners, you’re a sinner, it’s all of grace. And to ever be reconciled to God, we don’t deserve it, you can’t earn it, so it’s a gift of God’s grace. We want them to rightly respond to grace. So that’s a good thing. Now, I want you to look at the verb that’s here. “We appeal to you not to,” here it is, “receive the grace of God in vain.” Now slow down when you read that and think with me for a second. “Receive the grace of God in vain.” You know what in vain means, for nothing. Receive the grace of God for nothing.

Now that doesn’t compute in my little eighth-grade, seventh-grade, fifth-grade, fourth-grade brain. Because I grew up in a church that said that’s all you have to do is receive the grace of God. If you receive the grace of God, period, check mark, you’re in. That’s it. You can’t possibly receive the grace of God and it be for nothing because if you’ve received the grace of God guess what you get? Heaven. You get your name written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. You get Jesus Christ. You get eternality. Matter of fact, if I ask you as a preacher, does anyone want to receive the grace of God. You raise your hand, you slip your hand up, you walk an aisle, whatever, you signed your name on the last page of a tract. And then what do I do? I flood you with assurance verses and guess what I tell you. Never doubt that you now have heaven. That’s impossible for you if you receive this to receive it in vain, it’s impossible to receive it in vain. That’s what you’re taught. Does anyone resonate with that? Did you not grow up in a church where the whole verbal response to the gospel is receive, receive, accept, accept, receive, and all you have to do is say, I receive it, I accept it, and guess what? You’re in man. Matter of fact, you’re flooded with verses all over. Your brain is flooded with verses about assurance. Don’t you ever doubt it. Assurance. God’s faith will assure you, you have to believe it. Okay.

Let’s think biblically for a second. Can we do that? That’d be a good thing at church on a Sunday morning at the church called Compass Bible Church, we ought to think biblically for a second. We’re going to try to look for the word “receive” or “accept,” right? And say is that a word we see a lot in Scripture related to the right response to the gospel? You’re not going to see it a lot. Matter of fact, you’re going to see it often when someone is questioning whether or not you have this thing right. You’re going to see it in phrases like this. Did you receive this in vain? Did you receive all this for nothing? Matter of fact, it’s one of the weaker verbs that we see. Matter of fact, you’ll see it in passages and trust me, if you go to the kids’ programs like I grew up in, they’ll find one to make you memorize. Like in John Chapter 1. But even in the context of John Chapter 1 when they take you to that passage and say, oh, we found a verse about receive and they make the kids memorize it in church, you do need to look at the context.

Not only the context of Chapter 1 in John and the immediate context, but the whole point that John’s making throughout his gospel. Right? This is John’s gospel trying to show that the Messiah of Israel was the Messiah, not just for Israel, but the Savior of the world. And as he does that in Chapter 1 he says, you know, here’s the thing. The Christ of God has come, the Messiah of God has come to Israel. “He came to his own, but his own people did not receive him.” The Messiah came to Israel and they said we don’t want our Messiah. Everything about the Messiah was to come to be the King of Israel. They didn’t want him. But to those who did receive him, “Lambanō,” they did take him in. They said you are my Messiah. Well, they’re Gentiles though. Well, to them “he gave the right to become the children of God.” Now, most of us who grew up in church, Boys Brigade, Awana, whatever you call it, right? Pioneer Girls, did anybody grow up in that kind of stuff? Okay. You learn those verses because that was the word that was always bandied about church. Receive, accept, receive, accept, receive, accept. And I’m telling you here’s a passage right here that says you can receive and accept and do it all for nothing, because those aren’t really the biblical words we often see repeated over and over and over and over in Scripture.

The words you see over and over in Scripture, and I hope if you’ve been at Compass Bible Church for a while these are the words you hear all the time. If you’re going to respond to the gospel of grace, you’re going to hear these two verbal imperatives all the time. And what are they? One starts with an “R” and one starts with an “F.” (Some in the audience say repentance and faith) Very good. Thank you for all four of you who said that out loud. Repentance and faith. Repentance and faith. Repentance and faith. Those are two words, “Metanoia” and “Pisteōs.” Metanoia and pisteōs. Pisteōs is sometimes translated “believe.” And that’s kind of sad because believe for most of us is usually just a mental agreeance, right? We agree with it, a mental agreement, and it’s sometimes just translated “to believe.” But it’s always usually then followed after that with a preposition like “believe in,” to believe in or even to “believe on.” And so I can talk about that, some of the nuances of that. But the point is the preposition does add something to the concept of belief. It’s not just believing about. So all I’m telling you is those two words are better for us to understand what it means to embrace the message of Christianity. It’s about an active repentance and an active of faith.

So that needs to be understood. And when I’m telling someone, hey, are you really in this thing called Christianity? Well I don’t want you just to kind of hug this thing, embrace this thing, receive this thing in vain for nothing. Because some people are going to drive by the Columbia loop this morning and see all these people sitting out here listening to this yakky preacher and saying, oh, all those guys are receiving this Christianity thing, right? And that’s a kind of a weak verb. They receive it. But here’s the thing. Not everyone has received this to get the thing that they’re supposed to be receiving it for. Some people are sitting here receiving it for nothing because they haven’t really received it, because they really don’t have genuine biblical repentance and faith. Anyone following me so far in this? Okay.

Turn with me to Luke Chapter 8 to try and help drive this home. Jesus tries to make this distinction all the time. The writers of the New Testament make this distinction all the time. Matter of fact, the writers of the Old Testament are making this distinction all the time. You can associate with the congregation of the redeemed and not be redeemed. You can associate with the group of people who have a covenant relationship with God and not have a covenant relationship with God. You can be a part of the people who call themselves the Bride of Christ and not be a genuine person who is rightly connected to the head, to Christ. That happens all the time. Jesus tells parables like this. And you know this one, the parable of the seed and the sower. He goes out to sow his seed and Jesus tells the story, you’re so familiar with it, four different kinds of soils, right? And now he’s going to explain it. Take a look at this, Luke Chapter 8 verse 11. Now the parable of the soils is this. The seed is the Word of God. So you’re going to go out and share the Word of God, the Word of God, about how to get right with the living God and the first soil is the one along the path, right? That means the dirt you walk on, it gets really hard, the seed goes on that path, it’s not going to grow on the path, obviously.

What is the path? Well, the path, the piece of dirt number one is the person whom the Word gets put on the path but what happens? Well it’s just sitting there and the Diablos, “the devil,” the enemy of God, “comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not,” here’s the word, here’s one active word in response that’s often summarized in the other, it’s two sides of one coin. The right response to the gospel is pisteōs and metanoia, repentance and faith. And so here’s the word. Oftentimes it’s summarized with one word, pisteōs, faith, and sometimes metanoia, repentance. But sometimes both words are used. Sometimes one word is used. But there are two distinguishable words in terms of their definition but inseparable components of one response to the gospel. So here we have it. “And so they may not believe and be saved.” You have to have biblical faith and they don’t have that faith. And it’s obviously they don’t have that faith because the message, as my dad used to say, goes in one ear and goes out the other, usually about my chores. But the point is the same with the gospel. What happened? Because it just gets in there and they’ve heard it.

Like when you bring your neighbor to church and they hear it and they go, oh, that was interesting. The guy talks kind of fast and they hear the message and they’re not interested in it. And the next Sunday they’re out walking their dog at 10:30 on Sunday, and they’re having their Starbucks and no one confuses that they’ve rejected the gospel because it’s clear they’re not interested. You bought them a Bible. They don’t read it. You invite them to church. They don’t come. They have no visible association with the people of God. They’re not interested. They don’t talk about it. They don’t call themselves a Christian. Maybe they say, well, I kind of grew up in a Christian home. Yeah, Christian parents, whatever. But no one confuses them with being a part of the community of the redeemed. No one. Because that’s clear. This is soil number one.

Soil number two, verse 13. Then there’s the “one on the rocks are those who, when they hear the word,” they, here’s this word, this is the word. “receive it with joy.” They not only receive it, this is a word like take it up like a baby in their arms. They receive it, they embrace it, they hug it. They have it now and not only receive it, they receive it with joy like a mom who gets to hold the new baby. I love this baby to tears. Oh, this is awesome. The songs come on. They raise their hands and they feel all this. This is great. They buy some Christian music, they start listening to it. They love it. It’s so awesome. Playlist on Spotify. It’s all about Jesus now. They start posting verses on their social media. They love it. “But these have no root belief for a while.” Here’s one thing about real biblical saving faith. There’s never “for a while” attached to real saving faith. It’s impossible. Right? This is not the real biblical saving faith. “They believe for a while, and in time of,” here’s a keyword, “testing.” Now, here’s the thing about the Bible. The Bible always talks about faith being tested. Have you noticed that? Your faith will be tested and what is it tested for? To see if it’s authentic. Is it real? Is it not real? Do you have real faith or do you have false faith? Is it genuine saving faith or is it not faith? Is it just, you know, some kind of demonic “I believe,” but not real saving faith? Well, we’re going to find out in a time of testing. Well, “in a time of testing, they fall away.” And one clear evidence that it’s not real faith is they do fall away because it’s only for a while.

Now they look back and it’s like, well, they were really happy about this at one time. They embraced it for a while. Guess what? They received the grace of God for nothing. Why? Because this soil only received it for a while. I don’t care what kind of tears they shed in the worship service. It doesn’t matter what kind of testimony they had about receiving it. It doesn’t matter how into it they were. The time of testing proved it wasn’t real. Hey, moms, don’t call your kid a Christian just because he grew up in the church, had a great testimony, went to revival, shed tears over his testimony, got in the baptismal tank and had a story to tell, but then went off and into his adult life doesn’t give a rip about this anymore because his faith was tested, her faith was tested. They fell away. They’re not interested. That proved their faith was not saving faith. You do understand that, right? You’re praying for them wrong if you think little Johnny or little Sarah is just kind of sowing their wild oats, but they’re really saved, then it’s okay. It’s not okay. Do you understand that? This is the rocky soil. You need to be praying differently for them. Your conversations with them shouldn’t be ah you ought to really think about kind of rekindling your salvation, right? You need to pray for them to come to genuine repentance and faith. You understand that, right? Or you should not change your theology because of your soft heart towards your kids. Do not change your theology because of your soft-heartedness toward your children, right? We change our relationships, or I should say, at least our approach to our people in our lives because of our theology, we don’t change our theology because of our relationships. That’s not how this works. Jesus is trying to clarify this for us.

Soil number three, verse 14. “As for what fell among the thorns…” That last part was hard. I’ll give you time to digest that. Should we take a break? It’s the number one problem in our women’s ministry. No, I’m not saying that, it’s what our women’s ministry director tells us. It is. It’s the number one problem. The defection of good theology is usually tested by what happens to your adult children. Be careful with that. I say that with tears in my own heart because this is the problem of us having our love for people often it’s tested. It’s the big test, at least. There are more tests. Verse 14. Let’s keep going. Sorry. “As for what fell among the thorns, they are those who hear,” and we can assume here they also receive with joy because they have had it for a while, “but as they go.” So that assumes they do have some kind of embracing of it. They receive the grace of God in some way, some temporary way, some artificial way, some plastic way. And “on their way they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.” It’s like their branches are out there. It looks like they’re about to bear some real fruit. They look real. They look like they’re going to do it. They’re going to actually have some real biblical, organic fruit. But it doesn’t happen because why? Cares, riches and pleasures.

The whole point about the thing that God is going to do in a real heart, producing real love, the kind of love that loves God with all their heart, soul, strength and mind. That’s the priority love. No other gods before me. That kind of love. That kind of regenerate heart doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen because, well, my worries are bigger than that. My love for riches is bigger than that. The love for pleasure is bigger than that. This is what First John Chapter 2 is all about. That kind of concern outweighs all of the stuff that I got excited about at church. They receive the grace of God for nothing because of all of this. Well, verse 15 then is the real thing, “As for that in the good soil are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart.” How do you get an honest and good heart? How does that work? Have I talked enough so far in Second Corinthians about the translation, the conversion of a new heart? How do you get that new heart? We talked about it in Ezekiel. We talked about it in Jeremiah Chapter 31. We talked about the fact that the heart needs to be changed from the inside. It’s the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s called regeneration. There are people sitting here today who come to church every week. They don’t have a new heart because they don’t have a new heart when the gospel hits that heart the heart is not regenerate and that word doesn’t have the good soil and therefore they can’t hold it fast. They don’t have real, genuine faith or repentance, and therefore they don’t bear good fruit with, here’s the word, it’s not “Makrothumía.” That’s one word for patience. It’s the word “Hupomoné” that means they bear under whatever test they have, whether it’s the trials of life, whether it’s the desire for riches, the desire for pleasure, they continue to stick with their faith. Their faith is never for a while, it endures to the end. This is what happens. And this is the reality of real faith.

So we ought to focus on the words “repentance” and “faith” and not the words “accept” or “receive,” even though those words are used sometimes, usually in a corporate sense and often in a testing sense, because it’s all about receiving the concept, receiving the community, being a part of the community. Let me prove it to you. Turn with me to Hebrews Chapter 3. This is probably even a more persuasive text for the critics because I can see it on some of your faces. Hebrews Chapter 3. I need you to plead for a right response to the gospel. Don’t just take the story of hey, you know what? I walked an aisle, I prayed a prayer, signed a tract, it’s all good looking back. We need to see the reality of a faith that perseveres, a faith that’s bearing fruit. That’s what Jesus taught us. That’s what the Bible tells us and is what God insists upon. And if my whole point is, Paul says I appeal to God is working through me not just to give you the message of the gospel, but I want you not to receive… I’m appealing for “you not to receive the grace of God in vain.” Well, how do I do that? I do what the writer of Hebrews says here in Hebrews Chapter 3 verse 12. Are you with me here? “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart.” Okay. You mean there are people among us in the congregation who have an unbelieving heart? Well, that’s the problem. That’s exactly what we’re talking about. “Leading you to fall away from the living God.” Do you see how this comports with Luke 8? That’s what’s going to happen eventually to people, right? That’s going to happen eventually to people. Maybe they’ll even endure church for the entirety of their lives. But I guarantee you according to the book of Matthew where Jesus talking in the Sermon on the Mount that one day they’ll hear, Matthew 7, “Depart from me, I never knew you.” They’re going to depart at some point.

But what should I do? Here it is, “Exhort,” verse 13, encourage them, do what you can to put your arm around them and say, please, “exhort one another every day, as long as it’s called ‘today.’” It’s about now. This is the theme of our sermon, right now. Urgency. Now. “That none of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” Is that what Jesus was saying about the soil? Yes. We don’t want anything to get in the way of this. “For we have come to share in Christ.” Perfect tense verb here. “We’ve come to share in Christ.” It’s a reality, “if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end.” If you embrace Christianity, that’s going to be something that carries on to the end. Real faith, real biblical faith, penitent faith will be tested and it will pass the test. And then a great illustration begins in verse 15. “As it is said, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.’” What rebellion? What rebellion? Well, they were rebelling out there in the desert in the book of Hebrews Chapter 3 verse 16, “For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not those who left Egypt led by Moses?” Stop! If someone drives by here and sees you sitting out here in the parking lot as the pastor’s yakking at you in the parking lot, they’re going to think you’ve left your homes on a Sunday morning to be a part of this church. You identify with Compass Bible Church, and they know that’s the Bible, Bible, Bible church. Okay, they’re driving by. You’ve left, whatever, your identification with being the dog walking, Starbucks drinking, Sunday morning sleeping-in person, you’re here doing this thing, okay? And you might even identify it. You might even have a sticker on your car and you wear a Compass Bible Church T-shirt. Great.

Okay, here’s the thing. He’s saying that’s what happened. They left Egypt. Those people of God left Egypt, and they were all under Moses. They were listening to the prophet Moses. Weren’t those the ones who rebelled though? Weren’t those the ones who God wasn’t happy with? Wasn’t, verse 17, those who provoked Moses and God for 40 years? Was it not those who sinned, verse 17, “whose bodies fell in the wilderness”? Wait a minute. Those were ones that God was not happy with. Verse 18, “And to whom did he swear that they wouldn’t enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?” Wait a minute. They never made it into the Promised Land. Weren’t those the ones who didn’t make it into Canaan? If the whole analogy here is that we’re called out of the world, like the “Ekklesia,” we are now the church, we’re called out of the world and we’re making our way to heaven. And here we are, going through the desert of the promise of the wilderness. We’re now going through… And we all sit here in this wasteland of the world. Right? And here we are. Let’s just call it the Days of Manasseh and you’re listening to, you know, whoever’s next here in the leadership of this church, and we’re making our way to… Who’s going to make it to the Promised Land? Right? You’re in the catwalk. Well, converted people are. People are where the covenant people are. Well, here’s a bunch of people who identified with the covenant people of God but they weren’t converted. They were actually people that God swore you’re not going to make it. Why? Because they weren’t right. They weren’t right in their hearts.

Verse 19, “So we see that they were unable to enter because of,” key word, because of what? “Unbelief.” They didn’t have real faith. Wait a minute. You had enough faith to leave Egypt and follow Moses? Yeah, but you didn’t have real faith. You didn’t have faith at Kadesh Barnea in Numbers Chapter 14 when God said ready to take the promised land now. No. Wait a minute, you had enough faith to go to church, but you didn’t have enough faith to trust God to get into the kingdom. Is that what you’re saying? That’s exactly what I’m saying. Real faith is the kind of faith that saved someone’s heart, right? That’s the thing that God is doing in you. That’s conversion. That’s regeneration. “They were unable to enter because of unbelief.” Well they had enough faith to get in the congregation. Hebrews Chapter 4 verse 1, “Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands…” What’s he talking about now? Today we’re not going into some place called Canaan. We’re not in a desert, literally. He’s trying to compare it now in the first century and we’re comparing it now in the 21st century about getting into heaven, into the kingdom. “Let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.” I hope no one listening to my voice this morning is going to not hear, “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” I hope everyone hears that. And I’m really, really, really, really thinking that’s a very hearty expectation. That’s huge optimism. I can only imagine that in a group this size that some of you are going to hear, “I never knew you; depart from me.” And so I know the difference is do you have real faith?

There are some of you who have “received,” you’ve embraced the grace of God, but not really for real. You’ve done it in vain. So that takes us right back up to the very top. Verse 12 of Hebrews Chapter 3. “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.” You look like you’re in just like the people in the wilderness walking around under Moses. They listened to Moses. When Moses said, let’s go, they went. When Moses said, let’s stop, they stopped, but they didn’t enter the Promised Land. Why? Because they really didn’t believe God. Look at verse 2 now, Hebrews Chapter 4. “For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit to them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.” I just want your faith to be real.

Now I want you to be put in the shoes and the sandals of Paul and Timothy. I want you to care enough about those around you. And I want you to be the person and Jesus told us, I can’t pull up the weeds and kick people out of the church unless they’re in open, flagrant disobedience and clearly unrepentant. I’m not talking about that. There’s time for church discipline, I get that. I’m just saying you care enough about people to ask the hard questions like, how are you doing with Christ? How are you really doing? Is there real life there? I’m talking about caring about people in your small groups who you sat next to for years, but you’ve never really heard their testimony. You don’t know really where they stand with Christ. Do you follow what I’m saying here? I’m not kicking people out because their testimony is weak. I’m just saying I care enough about them to kind of dig deeper to find out what’s going on. I want to make sure that their faith is real. I want to make sure that they’ve not “received” the grace of God for nothing. I want them to receive the grace of God with real repentance and faith.

All right. That was super long for point one. So let’s do the world’s record shortest preaching on the second point, are you ready? Go back to our passage, Second Corinthians Chapter 6 verse 2. The second half of the sermon is in the first half of verse 2. “For he says,” now God says, quoting, as I said, Isaiah Chapter 49, “‘In a favorable time I listened to you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you.” Now, quickly off the cuff he’s referencing Isaiah 49 talking about a historical situation when God talks about saving them and giving them an opportunity where the door of mercy was open and a chance for them to be saved in a temporal sense, historical sense and God does it for them. And whenever God gives you an opportunity, you better take it. And that’s all he’s saying and he’s quoting Scripture to do that. I just want you to take that paradigm as he then applies that to them in their day. Now he’s an apostle. He could write New Testament truth without quoting the Old Testament, but he quotes the Old Testament and that’s a great pattern for us. And we should always quote Old or New Testament to quote God’s authority whenever we’re making appeals. So I don’t want you to just go off on your friends at church and try to exhort them to make sure their faith is real just off the cuff, I want you to have biblical reasons for saying what you say.

So let me put it this way. Number two, you need to “Back Your Appeals with God’s Authority.” I just don’t want you to be opinionated with people. I want you to enlist God’s Word. I want you to use God’s Word. I want you to know that God’s Word, if I were to keep reading in Chapter 4 of Hebrews, would end the thought in verses 12 and 13 in Chapter 4, when it says, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.” If you want to get down to whether or not your faith is real or phony it’s all about the Word of God doing the kind of surgery like an MRI, to see whether the thoughts and intentions of your heart that no one can see but God’s Word, but God, whether or not what’s going on there is real. So what we have to do is get the Word of God involved in people’s lives. That’s why Partners, our one-on-one program, just discussing the Bible with each other in a one-on-one context is just so important. And it’s not about the magic of the words on a page in a Partners manual, it’s about the context of sitting down and having these discussions. And if you haven’t been through Partners, please, please make that a priority. It’s just a helpful thing for us to do, to sit face to face and deal with God’s Word and discuss it together. It’s the Word of God that does this work, so important.

You have to back your appeals with God’s authority. God wrote a book. It does its work. Let me just quote this real quick, Isaiah 55 in verses 8 and 9, it starts with the fact that God’s thoughts are not your thoughts, which is always a good reminder when you think you have a great idea and you just think that’s going to be the thing that gets your professing Christian friend to reconsider the genuineness of their faith. Just remember, God’s Word is probably going to do a better job than your best idea, because God’s thoughts are better than your thoughts. And I’m just going to say you always defer to God’s Word. That’s where it starts. And then it goes on to say, “as the rain and the snow come down from the heaven and don’t return there,” without doing what they’re supposed to do and that is making the earth bear fruit. So it is with God’s Word. It goes out. It’s going to do what God wants it to do. So get it out of your mouth. Get it into your conversation, quote God’s word, discuss God’s Word. Get it in your conversation with other people. It’s the key. It is a powerful thing.

Do you remember when Balaam had a donkey start talking to him? Do you remember that in Numbers 22? What you may have missed in that whole thing because we’re so enamored with the fact that the donkey said something, which of course, is crazy. It’s a nutty thing that God did. But in that story, at the very end of the story, God ends up saying this to him directly. “The angel of the Lord said to Balaam, ‘Go with the men.’” Now he’s going off to the king, and he’s going to be hired to try to curse Israel. But he says, “Go with the men, but speak only the word that I tell you to.” There’s some irony in that, if you think about it. Because here was this donkey where the angel of the Lord told the donkey to tell Balaam, right? Stop! Don’t go down this road. And then the point is, if the donkey could listen to the angel of the Lord and speak the message to you, clearly Balaam, I’m just telling you, just tell the king, Balak, tell the king what I tell you. It’s not hard. Your donkey can do this, right? I mean, it’s a poetic, really, the irony of the passage.

And I’m telling the same thing to you without the insult. I’m telling the same thing to you. You got a book, right? God has given you his thoughts on paper. Let’s just use those thoughts. Master the words. Spend time in the Word every day and then get with the people in your small group. Get with your friends at this church and beyond your friends at this church. And let’s just relay the truth of God’s Word even if you’re afraid that you can’t back it up or you’re not the greatest apologist. God’s thoughts are powerful. It divides the thoughts and intentions of people’s hearts. And if you get into the last part of that in Hebrews Chapter 4 verse 13, everyone’s going to have to stand before God. These are God’s words we’re relaying to these people. This is powerful stuff. The authority of what we say is really God’s authority at the end of the day. We just need to relay it. All right. I said that was going to be a short point. That was short. No applause. But that was a very short point.

Let’s go back to the text. Here’s what he says now after quoting that text it’s all about me just pointing out the fact that he’s quoting a Scripture, which we should do. Right? He doesn’t have to but we should, we have to. Now, he says, okay, I just want you Corinthians to know in the first century now is the “favorable time.” Behold, now is the day of salvation. Guess what? For the Corinthians, that day’s past, because they’re all dead. They’re all dead. So no Corinthians right now who this was written to have a chance to be saved. Their day has passed. And for everyone else who we know who is dead, their day has passed. Guess whose day is not past. Yours. Right now your day is not past. So this is a perennial command to anyone as just we read in Chapter 3 of Hebrews, “as long as it is called ‘today,’” if you can still say today is today, well, and today is the day for you to make sure this gets done, both as the one receiving the exhortation to make sure that you haven’t received the grace of God in vain, and also as the ambassador working with God to make sure the appeal is actually genuine. Is your faith real? Is your repentance real? And you ought to be an agent for that. Wouldn’t it be terrible to live with someone for years and never really care if their faith was real, and then wake up on the other side and realize that they hear “Depart from me; I never knew you.” That would be a bummer. I mean to think that you work with someone who claims to be a Christian, but you never really leaned into that. I know they’re going to think that you’re judgmental, but you’re not being judgmental you’re loving someone and you’re not trying to pull the weeds out. You’re just trying to say, you know, I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page here about repentance and faith.

This is about urgency. And I’ll put it this way, number three, you should “Have the Courage to be Urgent.” And I know that’s going to put you in so many social settings feeling like you’re the odd man out. Why does this have to be now? Why do we have to talk about this every Thanksgiving? Why do you have to bring this up all the time? I have the courage to be urgent. And I’ve told you this many times. If someone says stop talking about this I am the first to say, okay, I’m not jamming my religion down your throat. But I’ll tell you what, I will be urgent. And this is a reflection of my concern for you. Let me put it this way. I came home a couple of weeks ago. There was this weird leak in the middle of the road. Well, we didn’t know that. It was my neighbors who actually talked to me about it. There was water coming out of their driveway and they thought it was a slab leak. Anyway, I kind of helped my neighbor figure out kind of who to call. Bottom line, one day there were like five of these Molten Water District trucks out there, and they had their backhoes, and these dudes were doing their thing.

But I thought about this as I was reading this passage and studying this week. I thought, what if they weren’t Molten Water District trucks? What if they were like the gas company trucks and they weren’t in trenches dealing with water pipes, but they were dealing with the gas, right? Natural gas. And so they’re in their trenches and there are backhoes and trucks like six of those instead of water trucks they were the gas company trucks. And I roll up. I mean, I would think a little differently. Now I care about the water, obviously, but I’m not afraid the water is going to blow up. But if I came and there were all these gas company trucks out there and they’re all there doing their thing, sweating in the trenches, and it’s breaking up the sidewalks on one side of the street, sidewalks on the other side of the street, big hole in the middle of the street. And I pull up and they notice I’m going into the driveway where this is all taking place and they stop me and they say, oh, sir, you know, if you live here, yes, I live there. Well, I need you to stop right here. Don’t park in your driveway. I need you to pull over here and I need you if you live here can you go to this house, this house and this house and tell all of your neighbors here that they need to get out right now, and they need to get out and go at least two blocks down the street.

Now, how would you feel if the guy said that? They’re sweating, their sleeves are rolled up, they have all these, you know, tools in their hands, the backhoes are out and they have this look of urgency. You have to tell your neighbors to get out. So I go and knock on the door, hey, I’m your neighbor. Yeah. Yeah. You’re the preacher, right? Yeah. I’m not here to talk about the Bible. I just want to tell you the gas company guys are out here. You notice the trucks? Yeah, I’ve noticed the trucks. Well, they’re just telling me, you have to get out, you have to get out now, you have to go all the way down the street. Yeah, I’m cooking dinner right now. I don’t want to leave. Well, I can understand that, but they said this is urgent. You should leave. You should leave now. I don’t think I want to leave. See, so at some point, I’m going to recognize the extent to which I’m going to insist on this really is reflective of how much I care about my neighbors. Right? And there are some neighbors, I may say, oh, okay, (audience laughing) but some neighbors, I mean, I’m going to plead with them. Plead with them, please. I don’t care how much you paid for the roast or whatever, you’re going to have to come with me now. I’m going to beg you. And I’m not going to say when they say well, are you sure? I’m going to say, oh, you’re right. I’m going to go get in the trench with these guys. Right?

I understand some of you think you don’t know enough about the Bible, but I think you know this, right? Even if you don’t just rely on your experience of knowing what it’s like to be forgiven, you know enough about the fact that the Bible is punctuated with predicted prophecy. You understand enough about the coming of the Messiah. I mean, you know enough to know this is not just pie in the sky, Confucius says. This is predictive, historic truth. And you put your hope in a historic Christ. We date the world based on this and that you know this stuff was called ahead of time. And now we put our trust in the life and death, burial and resurrection of Christ. And now you’re sitting there talking with someone, and I think you should know, this is truth that we should be urgent about. And as Paul just rightly modeled for us, if we love them, we will be urgent with them. Now, if they’re going to say get out of my driveway, get off my property, and they slam the door, okay. Paul said, if you don’t count yourself worthy of this, I’ll move on to your other neighbor. There’s a time to be done. I get that. Knock the dust off the sandals, I get it. There is. But I do think you need to understand the authority is coming from someone who knows more than you, and that’s God. It’s not just the gas company. And you need to know that you don’t have to know everything about the warning. You just need to know that it’s coming from authority.

And it’s treasonous, by the way, in the ancient Near East, if you are going to be an ambassador of an ancient nation, it’s treasonous if you twist the message. Do you remember in Second Samuel Chapter 1 when the Amalekite came in and tried to twist the message about how Saul died thinking that David would be happy with him, maybe give him a reward. Does anyone remember that from Sunday school? The Amalekite thought I know I’ll give a version of the story that the recipient is going to like, and maybe I can get a few bucks on the sale. David will be really happy if I tell the story this way. And so he took a gamble on that. He lost his head over that one. I just thought that was a good little cautionary tale for us. You tell the story as it is. If it talks about sin, you have to talk about sin. If the reality of hell is in the text, you talk about the reality of hell. If repentance is in the text, you don’t soften it. You tell it. You tell it like it is. If not, it’s treasonous. You don’t worry about what they want to hear. You tell them what they need to hear. What they need to hear is the truth.

Time. Time. Traveling lately I was thinking about time. One thing I appreciate about time now, I love that I’m Dick Tracy now. I know, you know, it’s cool guys who wear real watches, but I wear the… It’s nice to be able to know that I’m carrying my stuff to the airport and I know the time on my watch is right and that my, you know, my American Airlines app, I know that it’s telling me that I have five minutes to get to the gate. Right? I love all that because back in the day, old people, you know what it’s like to not know, like in your home in Long Beach, that any clock on any given wall can be 10 to 15 minutes off. Right? You never know really what time it is. You have to dial that number in here. “General Telephone time is at the tone will be 4 15 and 22 seconds. Beep.” It’s just we never knew what time it was. And can you imagine if in modern aviation, what really were to happen is that they told you your flight to Chicago is leaving on Saturday morning but no one knows the hour or the minute. When would you show up for your flight? You’d have to get there early, man. If no one knows the day or the hour, I’m living at the airport. But I’m thankful we know the time, but we don’t know the time when it comes to anything regarding the fragility of our lives. We don’t know anything about the return of Christ, he said we’re not supposed to know. All of that is spelling urgency, urgency. I know it takes courage to be urgent but it’s just a matter of the obvious. Like, duh, we have to be urgent.

If you have ever been to Chicago, downtown Chicago, you know where the corner of Madison and Clark Street is probably. In the 1870s, I should say in 1870 and 1871 there was a place called Farwell Hall that used to stand there at the corner of Madison and Clark. And Moody was preaching there, D.L. Moody on October 8th actually in 1871. As he looked back on his life, he said he made the biggest mistake of his entire life that night. He was preaching to a large crowd on Matthew Chapter 27 verse 22, preaching on that line as many of the old preachers used to do, preach in one little, tiny line where Pilate was standing there before the crowds and he had Christ there and he examined him, and he found no fault in him. And so he asked the crowds, the text read, what am I supposed to do? Right? “What shall I do then with Jesus who was called the Christ?” That was Moody’s preaching text. At the close of his sermon here’s what he preached, “I wish that you would take time with this text and take it home with you. Turn it over in your minds during the week and next Sunday we will speak about the cross. And then I will ask you, what will YOU do with Jesus who is called the Christ?”

Well, they had already heard, this was just after 9:00, they’d already heard starting about 9:00 some of the bells ringing outside, the alarms they were sounding already. They didn’t take much thought to it. They were busy preaching the Word and this was important. But those alarms were sounding because the fire departments were already sounding because there was a fire that was breaking out, which of course was the worst fire Chicago had ever seen. And of course, at that time in the 1870s, it was all made of wood in downtown Chicago. And that fire swept rapidly through the city. Farwell Hall, of course, was destroyed. Many of the people whom Moody preached to in that large hall never made it home. Many of them died. Moody hardly ever got over that. The same thing happened to Spurgeon at one time with a whole different tragedy. But Moody later wrote, he said, I would never dare, I would never dare to give an audience ever again a week to think about their salvation. Ever. He said if they were lost, they might rise up against me in the judgment. He said I’ve never since seen that congregation and I will never see those people again, but I may meet them in the judgment. That haunted him. I think to myself, as the Scripture has taught us so many times to consider our own fragility of life like a vapor. With all this death of some of these luminaries, these acclaimed preachers and leaders, I think to myself, if there’s one thing God wants us to do in pondering death it is to consider the urgency of what we’re called to do.

We’re ambassadors. We are ambassadors without microphones. We’re ambassadors without platforms. We’re ambassadors in the sphere of influence we have. And I’m so grateful in preaching this sermon last night and earlier this morning, that people have already taken this to heart. There are phone calls being made. There are people writing emails and texts talking to people that they have neglected for weeks, some of them for months. And they’re saying, you know, there’s a conversation that’s overdue and I need to have it now. I would exhort you to do the same. Jonathan Edwards, you might remember, wrote those 70 resolutions when he was a young kid, 17 or 18 years old. Some of them, as I often quote, were related to death itself. One of them famously said, I need to think often of my own dying. And some people think that was morbid. “Memento mori,” that old Latin phrase which was coined firstly by the Desert Fathers in the early third and fourth centuries and reprised in the medieval church by the monastic orders. And now it’s become, I guess, absconded by philosophers and others, but it simply means remember death or remember dying. “Remember that you must die.” While the old pictures of scholars and Christians and picked up by the Reformation and the Puritans who often were pictured with skulls on their desks just to remember that they’re going to die. It was not for morbidity’s sake. It was for the sake to know that we’re not going to have much time. We don’t know when our time is over. It’s like Psalm 37 says you have to know how fleeting our lives are.

And all of that was to remind us, as Edwards tried to remind himself, that life was short. But I reread his resolutions this week and I thought how many of them didn’t deal with death directly but it was embedded in his urgency. Some of them were just about urgency. Like, listen to this one. Number five, a young Edward said, I’m “resolved never to lose one moment of time.” I know these are all idealistic from a 17-year-old but listen to this. “I’m resolved never to lose one moment of time, but to improve it in the most profitable way I possibly can.” That’s a good resolution. Or another one, he said. I’m “resolved to live with all of my might while I do live.” I mean, death was in the back of his mind on that one, of course. And then this one later is resolution 52. He said, “I frequently hear persons in their old age say how they would live, if they were to live their lives over again: Resolved that I will live just so as I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I do live into old age.” I guess by our standards Jonathan Edwards didn’t live into old age. He died at age 54, one month after being named the president of Princeton University. I thought about that, it was called the College of New Jersey at the time.

One month, hardly moved in, at age 54, and Pastor Voddie died this week on Thursday with heart issues, but that was interesting because, and sad obviously, but interesting because he had just been named the president of the Founders Seminary in Cape Coral, Florida one month ago, and he died at age 56, just about the same age. And I thought both of these men had just been appointed to important positions in the presidency of these schools. Plans? They both had preaching schedules, I heard some people talk about how they were on the docket to preach here, there and other places and all of that and God said now you’re done. He tapped them out and we should take it to heart. Not because we’re taking any of their places. We’re not. We’re just the generation that has to follow. And whether we live in Hezekiah’s day or whether we live in Manassas’ day, we’ve got to do our part. But it’s not going to happen if we procrastinate. If we procrastinate, it is not going to happen. We have to live like Edwards to not lose one moment of time. If you aim at nothing you’ll hit it every time. And the reality of us wanting to live not losing a moment of time is critical.

God in these times which I know are affecting everybody in different ways, I just pray that you would ground us and anchor us in your Word. We can’t wait to get through this desert into the Promised Land which for us is a world in which your Son is reigning in charge, the King taking his great power and beginning to reign. Until then, God, we want to be faithful. We’d like to trust you. We’d like to be properly optimistic about the fact that we’re going to see your gospel go out and infiltrate more people’s hearts and lives, and we’d like to be part of that. We’d like Compass Bible Church here in Aliso Viejo to continue to do its work together with all of us contributing, doing our part. I pray that you would do that in a way that would make us just feel that sense of significance on your team, whether we’re an elbow or a finger, a toe, an ear lobe, whatever. Just to think of that First Corinthians 12 analogy of the body. Let us know what a good thing it is to be part of the body, a member of the body. So God, just fill us with a sense of your presence among us. We need that in times of uncertainty and we just pray for your kindness to us. God, please let us be grateful for it, profoundly grateful, even today. Dismiss us now with a sense of your presence and kindness and grace and forgiveness.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.